Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in drkra37's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Monday, December 7th, 2009
2:09 pm	To the girl I saw at On The Border... ...who will never find this and who I will probably never see again: You're gorgeous, crazily stunningly so, and if you ever want to hang out with a fat dude with facial hair who ISN'T gay, let me know. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
12:32 pm	Bah. So being without internet sucks. That doesn't explain the full ten weeks in which I haven't posted anything, true enough. But it explains two of them, and that was bad enough. But that's neither here nor there. Fuller entries (yes, multiple) coming later, but before that I just wanted to say I got to eat bo shin tang on Tuesday, and it was AWESOME. If you want to know exactly what that is, Google is your friend, but be warned that you may not like what you find. And for the record, it tastes pretty much like lamb, only the texture is more like pot roast. Current Mood: bouncy Current Music: nothing, for a change (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
5:05 am	WTF, Google. So apparently if I hover my mouse over the "My apartment" link in my Location field, the Google map tooltip tells me that I live somewhere in or near Kuala Lumpur. I'm pretty sure that's not the case. WTF, Google. Current Mood: amused Current Music: Skull Branded Pirates -- Sea Doggin' (Comment on this)
12:32 am	Time for your monthly book... So. It seems that my efforts to write every day have failed, miserably, but I'm going to try to get back into it, because I want to have something to remember what Korea was like, dammit. If I recall, I have now four weekends of catching up to do. ( First, the weekend off August 18th. ) ( Next, the staff party. ) The weekend after that was pretty lame, actually. I got left behind Friday night and ended up half-sulking in my room alone, then Saturday I went to Coex Mall with Allan to get some books while he got a CD. It's a wonderful place I'm living, that lets me drop $70 at a bookstore on a whim and send home $1500 for savings/credit card debt, and still have enough to last the rest of the month and then some. Anyway, Saturday night I got left behind again, and chose not to hang out with Allan and Mr. Shim because I know where their nights generally end up and I had no desire to go there with them. But that was okay as well, because I got to spend something like six hours playing DnD online with people I know from Alleria and Adylheim, and that was good fun. Much geeky hilarity ensued through crazy misuse of the game mechanics, as always happens when you're playing with good people. Sunday I mostly slept, on account of going to bed at 10:30 that morning. ( Which brings us to this weekend. ) All of which meant that I expected to have a really bad case of the Mondays today, when I woke up at 1:00 to the sound of rain outside my apartment and the knowledge that I had a meeting to go to at 2:45. Not to mention the fact that I was really tired, and almost fell asleep again during my morning routine. However, the meeting wasn't too bad, and apart from being slow and off-time my classes weren't too terrible, and it was probably one of the less painful Mondays I've had, especially considering the meeting. After work, I ran into Jeff on my way home, and after a tasty TwoTwo chicken dinner he invited me to hang out at his place again and watch Saw III, but I declined on the grounds of having laundry and various other chores to do, and got a raincheck for tomorrow night. This is especially awesome since I don't have to work until 7 on Wednesday, which gives me a little leeway for staying out late. (But Brian, you say, you're still posting to LJ at five in the morning! Why didn't you go out? And shut the hell up, I say, because I ended up calling Jeff twenty minutes later to see if the invitation was still open, but he didn't answer his phone and I didn't want to scare the crap out of him by showing up unannounced.) Anyway, as I just said parenthetically, it's 5:00 AM, and I still have to hang my laundry up to dry, so I'm gonna go do that and then head to bed. Oh, but PS -- I discovered tonight on YouTube that there are at least six different bands that play what can only be described as pirate metal. PIRATE. METAL. WHY the HELL did no one tell me this existed?!? Current Mood: good Current Music: Alestorm -- Set Sail And Conquer (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
2:28 am	filler! So, I lost my trail of daily entries. But that's okay. I've been writing and living and DOING more lately, which was the whole point to begin with. Anyway, I have a good deal of stuff to update about, including two weekends of goodness and next term's schedule, but that's going to wait. Instead, I present this list of things men wish women knew. I can say that at least for me, these things are all true. The ones I feel deserve special attention are #5, #10, #15, #21, #22, #32, #37, and #46-48. Conversely, I have also read through the female equivalent of the list, and now I have a question, in the interests of curiosity and the betterment of mankind. See, some of these, such as #23, are blatantly self-obvious bits of common sense. Some, such as #26, are equally obviously piles of steaming horseshit. My question is, what about the rest of them? Current Mood: chipper Current Music: The sweet sweet sound of me winning a (play money) poker tournament (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
3:22 am	The Daily Dose: Mail-In Week Continues For today, I am going to extend the mailing-in of my life to my LiveJournal. Very short post tonight because I find myself completely exhausted, and I'm going to bed. Current Mood: exhausted! Pay attention! Current Music: Better Than Ezra -- Desperately Wanting (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
6:22 am	Note To Self: Do not attempt to read your entire back catalog of LiveJournal entries from the last five-plus years starting at three in the morning. Why the fuck am I still awake? Current Mood: amused Current Music: Enigma -- Gravity Of Love (Comment on this)
4:34 am	The Daily Dose: Mail-In Week! So, this is Week 10 of our term at work. What this means is that I get to essentially mail in my classes for the week, since Day 1 of all my classes is practice for Day 2, which is the big nasty level-up test that determines whether or not my students get to advance to the next class. It's really, really easy on the teachers, and I simply can't tell you how much I am enjoying it. I am also leaning more and more heavily towards re-upping on my contract here, probably for six months, because I would absolutely love to take the Trans-Siberian Railway from Beijing to Moscow, or even all the way across Europe, on my way home. It seems like it would be quite an incredible journey, and I'm looking at an almost once-in-a-lifetime chance to take it. We'll see, though; I haven't quite made my final decision yet. Anyway, it's late again and I'm tired, so off to bed for me! Current Mood: sleepy Current Music: Creedence Clearwater Revival -- Long As I Can See The Light (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 2nd, 2009
11:31 pm	The Daily Dose: Weekend Edition So, the last two days have been pitiful excuses for entries because I've been drunk and tired, so here's a synopsis of Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Friday was okay at work, although my second class of the day was pretty killer, due both to its normal frustration and to the fact that I'm so used to teaching two classes a day that I was expecting to go home, only I still had another three-hour class, and it was just disheartening. After work, we ended up having a couple drinks on "the stoop," which is the name for the nice patio deck they built (just for us, according to the owners!) on the sidewalk of the Family Mart in the middle of town where we hang out fairly frequently. Afterwards, we went to Guri to play darts and drink at Wa Bar, but left disappointed because none of us did especially well with the darts and only Tucker got anything free (but it was a stellar game on his part, and his free gift was a 10,000 won gift certificate!). The folks at the bar also shafted us with drinking, insisting that they were out of the $4 bottles of Budweiser and even the $6 bottles of some other beer, so we ended up drinking $7 Jack & Cokes that we didn't really want, although at least they made the second round pretty strong. Still, a bit unsatisfying. Saturday was pretty quiet during the day. I went to Costco with James and James, and bought a bunch of sandwich stuff, as well as a couple other odds and ends. Saturday night, this guy Mike whom I'd met once before but whom Chris, James and James had hung out with fairly frequently was having a sort of goodbye bash, or perhaps we were having one for him, I'm not really sure which. But the upshot was we went to first Sinchon (not to be confused with Sincheon, as they're kind of in opposite corners of the city) and then Hongdae to hang out at bars. The first few bars we went to in Sinchon were kind of lame, so we went to Hongdae and hung out for a while at one of the many, many Ho Bars in town. It was a really, really good bar, with lots of people, good music, and plenty of hot girls. Nobody got a date that I can recall, but there were two near misses. First, as we were going upstairs, there was a drunk girl who was pretty interested in me and/or Lopez, but her friend showed up to cockblock and I went up the stairs, but Lopez was more persistent and kept trying. He almost got her number or something, but the cockblocker was brutal and it didn't end up happening. Then, later on, we were playing darts on one machine and a group of pretty attractive girls was on the next machine. We asked if they'd be interested in playing pairs, but apparently they had to head out for their friend's birthday. I think Chris got one of their numbers, though, and they seemed open to the idea of playing teams "next time," whenever that might be. Eventually though, we ended up in a pretty sweet club, the name of which I've forgotten, and I danced until the heat, sweat, dehydration and exhaustion made me leave. I'm depressingly certain that I probably damaged my ears, but it was worth it anyhow :P Today has been extremely low key. I woke up at 1:30 or so, went into the office with Allan to make copies for my classes tomorrow (which was a BITCH, talking like two and a half hours of copying, sorting, collating and stapling, and sorting again), then went out for a delicious pizza dinner while Allan tried to figure out a date with his girlfriend, and since then I've just been chilling at home writing, playing poker, doing laundry and generally trying not to broil in my apartment. It's ridiculously hot here, and has been for the last week or two. I really kind of dread what it'll be like in three weeks in the heart of summer. :< On a different, completely random note, I also got a very unexpected half-invitation to dinner at some unspecified time "soon" from a really cute girl this evening, so that has me in a pretty good mood even though it doesn't really mean anything :P At any rate, though, that's long enough for now and I have laundry that needs to be taken out of the washer and hung so that I have clean clothes to wear in the morning. I should probably also be heading to bed fairly soon, but we'll see if it actually happens. Oh, and one last thing: If you aren't familiar with I'm On A Boat, you really need to be. It's roflarious. Actually, on second thought, my grandparents, who will almost certainly read this, probably don't need to click that link since I sincerely doubt that they'll enjoy the song :P Current Mood: content Current Music: The Lonely Island -- I'm On A Boat (Comment on this)
5:02 am	The Daily Dose: Incomplete Edition Went to Costco today, followed by drinking, more drinking, and clubbing tonight, to say a fond farewell to this guy Mike whom I met a couple of times but who was a pretty good buddy to Christopher, James and James. However, it's 5 AM and I am both dehydrated and incredibly frickin' exhausted, not to mention having my knees hurt from about two solid hours of dancing in a club with (okay, more "next to" than "with") hot Korean girls. More details tomorrow, but for now I'm going to nurse my Gatorade and pass the crap out :P Current Mood: exhausted Current Music: Billy Joel -- The Downeaster "Alexa" (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 1st, 2009
4:53 am	The Daily Dose: Only Not Really Went out to have a couple drinks and play darts tonight, after nine hours of teaching, after five hours of sleep, so I really just don't have energy to type more than this today. Current Mood: sleepy Current Music: Led Zeppelin -- Stairway To Heaven (Comment on this)
Friday, July 31st, 2009
3:25 am	The Daily Dose: Drinking and Cheating Students So I found out several days ago that one of the students I caught cheating on a test a week and a half or so ago has dropped and isn't coming to our academy anymore. Today, I discovered the reasons. It seems that she was being pressured in different ways from each of her parents, and the poor girl didn't really have any good options. Mommy, from what I've gathered, was relentlessly pushing her to get better grades and excel in her English classes, and so I guess she'd cheated on a test and been caught before. Because of this, apparently Daddy's opinion was something along the lines of "I'm not paying my hard-earned money for you to cheat on tests -- next time you get caught cheating you're done at the English academy." This, by the by, would explain the fact that when I caught her cheating she wrote me no less than two separate notes begging me to be nice and not give her a failing grade or tell anyone I caught her cheating -- which obviously I couldn't do. At any rate, I guess it came out that she'd been caught cheating, so Mommy and Daddy were both terribly disappointed in her and she'll no longer be attending our academy. I dunno, I can't support her decision to cheat, but being caught between parents like that is almost enough to make me feel a little bit sorry for her. ...Almost, but not quite. I mean, the way I caught her cheating was when she put up a wall made of closed books leaning against one another so that I couldn't see her looking down at her crib sheet. How inept is that? I mean, honestly, I don't especially mind cheating in and of itself because the grades I give these children on their weekly tests barely matter even within our academy, and matter not even remotely in the real world. Generally I adopt a policy of "If you can get away without me seeing you, more power to you; if I catch you, you're not good enough at it and deserve the F that's coming to you." This one definitely fell into the latter category, with a side of "What, dyou think I'm retarded?" So yeah, no sympathy whatsoever. Especially after some of my other students told me that she'd been cheating off their papers for months (which, to be honest, I'd suspected, but I could never prove it). Anyway, I was a bit intrigued to find out the reasons behind it. After work, I went out for a drink with my buddy Christopher, which turned into two or three drinks with Christopher, Allan, Jeff and James, and later on we were joined by Jay, the dude who runs the hot dog stand we love in Pyeongnae. From there, we went to the new fried chicken tender restaurant, and from there we went to go play crane games, and between it all I end up coming home at 3 in the morning, still catfoodless. Added to all this, I still have nine hours to teach tomorrow, and before I can do that I have to go buy my poor cat some food so she doesn't end up hating me, ideally with time to make myself some delicious concoction of beef, onions and peppers with some noodles (we'll see if I have time). Bad, bad times. I also talked to folks back home today. My mom is apparently in New Mexico for her summer dance camp, which is nice, and my dad was at work plugging away as usual. Tried to get ahold of my grandparents, but they didn't answer the phone, presumably at lunch, so I called my old Circuit City buddy Christina instead. She was working too, but she still answered the phone, and I told her I'd try to get ahold of her tomorrow night her time, which ought to be something like Saturday morning over here. We'll see if I can force myself to get up in time, but I should be able to. Anyway, I'm looking at about six hours' sleep right now, so I think it's time for me to go hit the sack. Current Mood: tired Current Music: Creedence Clearwater Revival -- Long As I Can See The Light (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
3:58 am	The Daily Dose: Google, Girls and... er... something else that starts with G? Yeah, I couldn't think of a third one that fit. So sue me. Today was fairly uninteresting, really. Woke up earlier than I like to go in and teach my intensive class at noon, which went fairly well, and then had a bit of free time so Allan and I went to the bulgogi place that we tried out Sunday lunchtime, and it was just as delicious as I remembered. I think I'm addicted. After that, I had a bit of free time, so I went home for a little bit, and instead of doing something productive, I ended up playing a bit of poker. I won $10, but ended up losing $15 later this evening after work, so I'm not especially proud of that. A random side note: I wish today had been Friday like you would not BELIEVE. This intensive is KILLING me, despite it really being not all that bad. At least they're paying me for it, mostly. I get paid, I think, for all of my extra hours this month, and next month I think I only teach something like 6 or 9 hours for free. Now granted, my overtime pay is less than the hourly teachers' REGULAR pay, but that's neither here nor there -- at least I get it, unlike poor Robert who I think isn't teaching enough to make overtime. Poor bastard. Lately I've been thinking again, fairly seriously this time, about whether or not I want to re-up my contract and stay a bit longer. The prospect of moving all my shit back to the States, of course, is daunting, but that's not the only reason I'm thinking of staying. As long as the economy is still in the crapper, I really don't have that much to go back to, aside from the few friends I have in the Denver area and an easier time of chatting with the other folks online. Here, on the other hand, I have an incredibly active social life, a decent, stable job, and am able to save money each month. Not to mention that if I want to take the Transcontinental Railway home all the way across Russia and fly home from Moscow or something, that is something that would be VASTLY more enjoyable in May than in November or February. All of this is nothing to sneeze at, yknow? So I'm going to ask Jennifer, the owner of our academy, if it would be feasible for me to re-up for six months instead of a full year. I haven't decided yet that that's what I want to do, but it seems to me that it would be worth knowing, since the wrong answer decides the question FOR me. Anyway, back to the couple of random tidbits. When I was on Google today looking for a place to play darts in Hopyeong, I came across a blog written by a couple folks who live in the same town I do. This isn't especially unusual, I suppose, except that I was under the impression that I knew most of the foreigners around here -- especially the ones in my own dong (a dong is essentially a borough or division of a larger city, or si)! But apparently there has been a couple living not four blocks away from my house for the last while, and I've yet to meet them. This is something I hope to rectify soon. As for the girls, well, I'm not going to talk about it because it was an incredibly minor experience, and because of the merciless (and well-deserved) mockery that I'll receive if I do. Suffice to say I had a small, pleasant surprise today after work, and am reading no more into it than that it happened. But still, it was nice. Anyway, that's about it, I think. Until tomorrow... Current Music: Third Eye Blind -- The God Of Wine (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
3:34 am	The Daily Dose, Vol. 5 So two kinda spiffy things to report today. First, after work i headed over to E-Mart and bought myself some little chunks of beef on end-of-day special. When I got home, I cooked 'em up with some pepper and soy sauce, then added some E-Mart stir fry noodles with all their attendant vegetables, more soy sauce, and just a dab of hot sauce, and it was pretty damn tasty! The beef especially, which is pretty damn good for someone who doesn't know how to cook, if I do say so myself! Grandma wouldn't have liked it, though, as it was a little bit tough, but it wasn't dry or chewy at all, so I thought it was fine. Then, after dinner, while randomly clicking through TV stations, I discovered that Arirang-TV, the international Korean network that broadcasts in something like seven different languages, has a show called Let's Learn Korean!, which completely made my day. I only wish I had been smart enough to write some of the stuff I learned down, since I've already forgotten it. That's pretty much it, really. I was going to compensate for the slow day by posting that piece I mentioned about the early morning a couple weeks ago, but time has apparently snuck up on me and I don't really have enough of it to do so tonight. Soon, though. Oh yes, soon... *drywashes hands and cackles* Current Mood: tired Current Music: Better Than Ezra -- Desperately Wanting (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
4:38 am	The Daily Dose, Vol. 4 Another day, another far-too-late-at-night LJ post, eh? Nothing much to report today, either. After getting far, far too little sleep last night, I was really exhausted at work today, and I'm positive it showed in my teaching. Also, the kids were whining constantly about how low I had the AC (and honestly, even right under the fan it was 64, so srsly, stop bitching :< ), so I didn't get to have the room as cool as I'd like. Between the long pants and the too-hot room, I was sweating slightly more or less all day long, and by the end of the day it was becoming noticeable, which made me horribly embarrassed. But there really wasn't a whole lot that I could do -- I took a shower in the morning before class, tried to drink lots of cold water to cool down, and tried to stay to the cooler parts of the room. This whole long pants in an 80-degree, inadequately air-conditioned room thing is just killing me :< After work, though, I went out to Kimbap Heaven with Chris and Chris (or Chris and Kang, or Christopher and Chris, or Stega and Kang, or whatever), and on the way we ran into James, and Allan came and joined us after we'd been there for a few minutes. I had chamchidonkasu, or a pork cutlet that was supposed to have something to do with tuna (chamchi), but I didn't really notice any if it was there. I think it's possible that my order got mixed up with Tucker's. Either way, though, I enjoyed what I was served, paid for what I ordered, and walked away happy, and Tucker seemed to have done the same, so no big loss, eh? anyway, I am quite tired still and I think tonight may be one of the first nights in a fairly long time that I won't need to go take a melatonin in order to be able to sleep. G'night... ...Oh, and PS -- I think I vowed again to make damn sure I get to bed early, have lunch prepared Sunday and Thursday nights, and/or get up earlier Mondays and Fridays, until my intensive ends. today was much, much more rushed than I'd have liked in the morning : (Comment on this)
Monday, July 27th, 2009
1:28 am	War! HUH! What is it good for? Actually, apparently it makes for a pretty cool museum. As I swore yesterday, I spent a nice chunk of today goingg to the War Memorial of Korea, as the guide pamphlet calls it. But "War Memorial," while accurate, is a very incomplete description. The Museum has plenty of relics and pieces dating to the Korean War, of course, and about two-thirds of the museum does relate to that conflict, but they have tons of other things, too. ( text ) Anyway, after that, we made our way over to Techno Mart, the ridiculously huge emporium of all things electronic. Seriously, the place is nine fucking floors tall, and although there are two floors of clothes and the top floor is restaurants and a movie theater, the other six floors are absolutely crammed with electronics shops. If it's got a plug, or has something to DO with something that's got a plug, you can find it there. They were closing, so I didn't really get to spend a lot of time there, but I did manage to pick up a new microphone headset for my computer, which was nice because it meant I could call my dad tonight to tell him happy birthday. I could have done this before, only my cat seems to have gnawed a hole in the microphone part of the wire for my old headset, so it stopped working. Anyway, that's about it for today's adventures, and I should really be heading to bed since I want to be waking up in seven hours, but I have sandwiches to make and a shower to take before I can do so. At least all the walking around in the heat will help me get to sleep before five AM tonight... Current Mood: tired Current Music: Within Temptation -- Are You The One (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 26th, 2009
4:14 am	The Daily Dose, Vol. 3 Not much got done today, really. I slept in very late since I was up far, far too late last night, and got up at about 2:00 because Jimmy, Chris and I were gonna go to Pyeongnae and try this Mexican restaurant Jimmy had seen. Unfortunately, as it turned out, the Mexican restaurant was actually a regular old chicken place, or it was as far as we could tell. It was difficult to figure out, since the menu was all in Korean and there were no pictures. We briefly entertained hopes that it might still be Mexican food, but after deciphering a few of the dishes' names, it became clear that it was just Korean food that we didn't know what it was, since none of us could really imagine that they would call a burrito anything other than 버리토(that's "burrito" in hangul characters, btw).  So that was a damn shame.  But we went to the delicious pork soup place near Chungdahm instead, and it was cheap and delicious. After that, I went into work for a little while to print all my stuff for next week's classes, although I didn't make the copies, since I don't want to have to do any more work than necessary Monday morning -- I have to go in early enough as it is and teach for nine hours; I have no desire to be there any earlier than I need to. Apart from that, today was a really lazy day.  Played a lot of computer games, and that's about it.  I wish I could say I worked on my writing, or organizing my apartment, or touristy things in Seoul, but those would all just be lies.  I'm also realizing that this coming week is Week 10 of my THIRD fucking term in Korea!  What the hell have I been doing all this time?!?  I only have four more weeks of this term, then twelve weeks of the next before I go back home!  Sixteen short weeks, unless I re-up for another term or something, but right now I'm not sure that's really something I want to do.  Still, it seems like it's coming far, far too quickly, and I'm not sure I'm going to be ready to leave.  We'll see, I suppose, but I'm beginning to feel like I'd better make my mind up fairly quickly.  Lovely, something else to worry about. Not that I worry about much, really, but still, it feels to me as if I've frittered my time here away without really using it as best I could, and I'm not pleased with that.  What am I going to do about it, you ask?  Well, for one thing I'm going to hope like crazy I get Wednesdays off next semester so that I can go do things then.  But more importantly and far more actively, i'm going to go do something in Seoul tomorrow, see something I've yet to see.  What it might be, I don't really know, and it may very well greatly depend upon the weather.  But I'm gonna be doing SOMETHING, that's for damn sure. Which means you all will have a much more interesting entry to look forward to tomorrow... Current Mood: surprised Current Music: The sound of my fan fighting its losing battle against the heat (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, July 25th, 2009
6:19 am	So as it turned out, the night was fairly abortive. I didn't get drunk, and I didn't really go partying, but I did head over to the hot dog and hamburger stand across the tracks in Pyeongnae, and cashed in on a couple of 1,000-won dogs and a couple of 1,500-won beers before the special expired at midnight. still a pretty dick move to end it right at midnight, rather than at close, but whatever, it's Jay's business and he'll run it how he likes. Afterwards, we all piled into Jay's car and had a good laugh about the fact that the poor machine was struggling up hills with over half a ton of men in it, and ended up having a drink at Hof & Hof before we broke up for the evening. Jeff, Jay and Jimmy Lopez ended up going on to some other spot, and Tucker, Chris and I went home. I played a little bit of poker, but mostly play money and freerolls since I wasn't really feeling it, and only lost $0.25 at Stars. There was a short, irrational spurt of being slightly grumpy at the world, but not in a depressed way. More just because for some reason it felt right at the time, I guess. I dunno. I also really don't know why the hell I'm still awake at 6:20 in the morning, apart from the nocturnality which seems to have become par for the course for me. But whatever. Not really a whole lot to say, apart from a passing teaser mention of the fact that I had a frantic burst of ideas last night right before I went to sleep and ended up filling something like 2/3 of a sheet of paper in the notebook I've started keeping next to my bed in only two or three minutes, so there'll be a lot of that stuff coming up in the next few days. And with that, it is, as I said, 6:20 in the morning, and I'm going to bed. Current Mood: awake Current Music: Audioslave -- I Am The Highway (Comment on this)
Friday, July 24th, 2009
2:45 am	The Daily Dose, Vol. 1 So here I am, fulfilling my promise to myself that I'd write here every day. Nothing terribly exciting to report, really. Classes were pretty normal, with the exception of the fact that I more or less inadvertently made one of my students cry. Now granted, I had help, but still, I felt bad about it for a few minutes. See, she had called me stupid for the second time in about ten minutes, and since this is a student that occasionally needs to be brought in because she likes to think of herself as a bit of a badass, I thought I'd set an example and send her out of the class to talk to our school director (and yes, "talk to" means "get yelled at by."). Only, like all the other students at our academy, she is absolutely terrified of the director, so she was flatly refusing to move. I think she even thought I was joking at first, since I'm fairly certain she was joking by calling me stupid in the first place. One of the other teachers asked me a little incredulously if I'd had my feelings hurt by a student calling me stupid, but it's not really that. It's more irritating than hurtful, especially given the fact that she's only eleven. But I guess because of who I am, that really is the one insult that I can't abide. There are very, very few things that I'm proud of, to be honest, but my intelligence is one of them, and I respond incredibly badly when people seem to be suggesting that I lack it. Call me fat, call me a pig, call me ugly, whatever; I am at least two of those things and often wonder about the third. But my intelligence is one of the two focal points of what little confidence and self-worth I have, and I really have a very hard time tolerating people calling it into question. Aside from that, though, I can almost guarantee that the FIRST instance of calling a teacher "stupid" in her public school would get her spanked soundly, or at the very least yelled at liek woah. But that's neither here nor there. Especially since the entire paragraph completely REEKS of defensive justification, when there probably isn't really any need for it. At any rate, I was about to relent and let her have one last chance, because I'm a giant teddy bear and kind of a pushover, but one of our secretaries had heard me say (quite loudly, I must admit, though not even close to yelling) "I'm not stupid, I'm your teacher, now get out." She came to investigate, because she's awesome, and it turned into a bit of a scene. My student hadn't moved in the face of repeated demands in Korean of what I can only assume was something like "fcome follow me and get what's coming to you," so the secretary tried to actually physically pull out her chair and drag her away, which she also resisted. The secretary said something very sharply, and my student's face basically just crumpled and she started completely bawling. After a very tearful conversation with the secretary, I guess it was established that she'd suffered enough and wouldn't have to talk to the director until the class break, so the secretary went back to her desk and class resumed, although my student stayed at her desk sobbing for a good five or ten minutes after that. After the class break half an hour later or so, she came back late accompanied by our school director and apologized, and seemed more or less fine for the rest of class. She wasn't even upset when I called her up after class and told her not to call me stupid anymore, so I'm assuming the talk was probably something along the lines of "Don't call Teacher Brian stupid anymore, as you can see he goes a little crazy." But maybe that's just my paranoia talking. Whatever. Anyway, that was probably the biggest event of the day. Went to see Harry Potter last night between work and insomnia, and I thought it was pretty good. My favorite part, I think, was how the liquid luck potion apparently affected more or less like cocaine laced with Valium, and my least favorite part was the removal of ambiguity when Dumbledore says "Please" to Snape at the end. It was not at all clear in the book exactly what he was asking Snape for, but it seemed to me that in the movie it was really clear. But maybe that's just my own awareness of what happens in the last book talking, and perhaps it wasn't that blatant. Allan hasn't read the books and seemed to realize what was going on, yes, but Allan is also an English major and smart enough to recognize the pattern of the first five books setting Snape up as a straw man Every Single Bloody Time and having it come out in the end that oh, no, he's not actually evil after all. So more data would be needed to see if I'm actually right or not. Wow, that got off track quickly. Impressive. Anyway, not much else to talk about tonight. Allan and I had dinner at the samgyeopsal place we call the Happy Cow, and as always their BBQ sauce was just about the most delicious condiment I've yet found in this country. Then I came home and played a bit of poker. I lost $10 on Cake Poker, which doesn't really bother me since even afterwards I've still got $74 of the $100 I put in, and since I won $1.41 or something like that in a $0.25 tournament on PokerStars. If I keep winning on Stars, I may well end up with a decent bankroll, and all from the $2.30 I won for participating in a Guiss World Record tournament last weekend. But again, I digress. It's 3:15 in the morning, I still have to take a shower before bed, and I want to be getting up in seven hours or so to take another one. These two-a-day showers really suck since in the heat and humidity my bathroom floor is never, EVER dry, but that selfsame heat and humidity really give me no choice. And I am DEFINITELY not going into work tomorrow to teach for nine hours straight without taking a nice shower first. My room has enough odd smells in it as it is, and what with the students bitching every time I take the AC down below 77, I have no desire at all to add to said odd smells. Anyway, I think I've left my water heater on (yes, in this energy- and more or less environment-conscious country you actually have to turn on the water heater) for long enough to take a shower, so I'm gonna go do that and then head to bed. Current Mood: hot Current Music: Kansas -- Dust In The Wind (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
5:56 am	Insomnia? Is this what insomnia feels like? I really don't know. I don't think so, though. For whatever reason, though, my body clock seems to be almost entirely reversed. I have a hell of a time waking up in the mornings (with "morning" defined as generally between eleven and one), and I simply cannot seem to go to sleep at night. I mean, really, here it's just barely before six in the morning, and after tossing and turning on my bed for 45 minutes I've given up for the moment. Some of it is probably temperature based, I suppose -- my apartment is a pretty constant 27 degrees Celsius, or about 81 degrees Fahrenheit, which is ricockulous. Some of it, though, I really don't know. I just seem to have a backwards sleep cycle, for some reason, and frankly it sucks. I'm trying to force myself to change by getting up earlier in the hopes that I'll be exhausted at night and therefore able to sleep and readjust, but it doesn't seem to be working terribly well. I dunno. Anyway, point is, here it is six AM and I'm up and unable to sleep. So now, while I wait for the melatonin to kick in, is as good a time as any to post an update, which my home page tells me I haven't done for eleven weeks now. Eleven weeks is a pretty long time, and I'm kind of kicking myself about it. Hard. In the face. But I seem to have been disregarding almost everything for the last three months. I don't call or write anyone at home, I barely speak to anyone online, even, and I'm doing a piss-poor job of commemorating the incredibly awesome experience that is a year teaching in fucking South Korea. To all of you back home, I'm very sorry for that. Not that I really have had all that much to update about, which is kind of the problem. I just don't seem to be doing anything worth recounting, y'know? Well, no, that's not fair. But when I do things that are, I rarely seem to have energy or motivation afterwards to write about them, and that's a damn shame, because memories fade far too quickly, and I really want to be able to remember this trip much better than it looks like I'm going to be able to do. So here, then, is the plan, for anyone who still checks my page or still cares: First, I am going to stop living my life so damn passively. I told my students on Tuesday that my motto is "Why Not?" which I admittedly made up on the spot. But still, after thinking about it the last couple of days, I think that comes about as close to a motto as anything I can think of. It just seems to sort of fit, y'know? But I certainly don't seem to be living up to it, and if it's going to be my motto then I need to do a much better job of acting like it. Which brings me back to the beginning of this paragraph. Thus far, I've really been kind of coasting. Not REALLY, not COMPLETELY, no, but far, far, FAR too much. I seem to have completely frittered away and wasted more than half of my time here (unless I re-up, and the jury is still WAY out on that one), and that's inexcusable. So the goal is to just seize the crap out of the day from now on. No more lazy Sundays, no more ignoring the history and the beauty that surround me every moment. I'm going to play tourist. I'm going to go hiking. I'm going to LIVE, dammit. Not that I haven't been living, not at all. But I can sure as hell do a damn sight better, and I'm going to bloody well start. Second, I seem to have completely dried up creatively. For a while I was writing fairly prolifically -- the LJ, a pen-and-paper journal, and a rune journal as well. Not to mention trying to play Alleria and occasionally just writing something that seemed to need to be written. But that's dried up almost completely, and I love writing far, far too much to allow that to stand. So from now on, I'm going to force myself to sit down and write. Every day, I'm going to update the LJ, whether I've got something important to say or not. I'm going to try to get Alleria going again. I'm going to finally start a character on Adylheim. Yes, I'm a nerd. Shut up. Anyway, a few of the things you can expect (for real this time, no more stupid empty promises) in the next few days or weeks: Uploading the last half of my Vietnam vacation. The entries are written, but for whatever reason I haven't typed them up yet. A short... I dunno, "essay" isn't the right word... A short piece about the absurd peace and beauty of the early, early morning here, just around dawn. Updates on friends, life, shopping, and all the other stuff that I live day-to-day. It seems ordinary to me, because I'm in it and living it, but to others, and to me in the future, perhaps not. Or maybe so, but either way it's worth preserving. Finally, I am going to start communicating again. People can expect phone calls and emails again. I'm finally going to get to the damn post office and send out Christmas and birthday presents. I've been here eight months, dammit; it's time to get my shit together! Anyway, this has turned out to be a great deal longer than I anticipated it being. You're probably bored, and I think I can feel the melatonin kicking in, so I'm gonna go try to get some sleep for six hours or so, and I'll post more later tonight. Current Mood: resolved Current Music: Shinedown -- Simple Man (2 Comments |Comment on this)