summer daze

It's Tuesday, that time of week again. I should be prepping in earnest in order to make the day go more smoothly. For that reason I decided to take a walk around the park this morning, having woken up too early again. Unfortunately, the sunshine was beating down like an angry fist so the walk wasn't entirely pleasant and I didn't get the coffee I had set out to get. I did, however, get some toast-u, which was probably the better money value anyhow.

So I'm back at home with the air conditioner on and the lights off. There would be nothing better than to just go back to bed and sleep for ten hours, then get up and walk to Dangsan or somewhere, get some food, then walk back. But work is work, and we all have to make our cheese to live another day. So perhaps it's time to turn the air off and the lights on.

Meh. Another ten minutes... there're still three hours left anyway.

One of these days, I may have a real job where I won't be afforded this kind of leisure. It's better to take advantage of it while it's still possible, especially as there isn't much time left.

In other news, bicyclers should stop wearing handkerchiefs on their heads and around half their faces, topped off with sports sunglasses. It kind of reminds me of something in between 'the invisible man' and a gangster from LA.

Walking Around

There is nothing worse than being awake when the sun comes up. That means you have been awake too long and should've been sleeping several hours ago. It's 5:43, the birds have sung their songs, I'm tired, but I'm not sleeping yet. What the hell.


At 1:30 AM, I decided to take a trip to 여의도 for some reason. It's only about 3.5 km away, so I decided to walk it. I'm not sure why though as there was no particular reason to go other than boredom.

As the Hangang park is under construction, there was no choice but to go to Yeouido Park. Less awesome than expected, it was a bit of an anticlimax in my all-night adventure. Eh whatever.

It's 5:47 in the AM right now. It's hard to bring myself to care about anything.

Tuesday

So Tuesday has rolled around again. This can only mean one thing: hakwon. While I have finally learned how to control my massive urge to destroy noisy children, the new challenge of actually teaching in an effective manner has arisen. This is for the sake of the one or two kids who actually want to study. For understandable reasons, they're usually sitting alone too.

Since it's been about 2 1/2 months since I started, the pressure is on to keep up with the schedule. There are times when it's not enough to ignore the students and just keep teaching; their constant attention-grabbing measures actually force me to stop class and put a stop to their shenanigans. If their problems are not addressed, the class will turn into absolute chaos known as the sixth layer of hell. This is more prone to occur in the younger classes of course. So I'm desperately trying to keep the ball rolling, whether or not anybody's listening, just so I write down in my schedule that we technically covered the material.

Tuesday is primarily a listening class day for me. 3/4 classes I basically have to play a CD and hope that the kids are getting it. The other class... I forget what it is. Ironically, listening classes are the most difficult to get through because it's difficult to force them to actually LISTEN rather than screw around with their friends the whole time. No amount of shouting, pleading, or making an ass of myself, seems to grab their attention for more than 2.5 minutes. I can't really blame them, but good GOD. They could at least refrain from screaming at the top of their lungs for no reason or banging on the walls.

Man... I can't ever have kids... not after the horrors I've seen...

In somewhat unrelated news, I had a conversation class with a single ninth grade student (everyone else was on a field trip). This totally normal-looking girl told me she was on a diet. It was about 9 PM and she said she hadn't eaten since about 12 that day for lunch. She claimed to not even be hungry. So imagine this... a teenager attending school from 8 AM to 11:30 PM, only eating twice a day. Initially I was aghast. How does she have the mental, let alone physical strength to endure this kind of schedule?

Then I thought... hmm. If she can do that, why can't I resist eating after 12 AM? Hmm. Something to ponder. And perhaps act upon. If I feel like it.

Anywho, in spite of the hakwon, life is looking all right. Crystal Castles is rockin my socks, the weather is fine, and I have plenty of time to slack off. Ah... being a foreigner is good.

solar powered

The car that is usually parked immediately outside of my window went on a three day vacation, leaving my 3" view of the ground and 3" view of the sky fully unobstructed! People were free to pass within mere feet of my window while hocking loogies and, like last night, fart apparently. Life is great.

Well today the car is back, but the sun's output (from what I can see through the 3" gap) is at 80%/maximum power. This kind of makes me wish I had left the building before now (5:33 PM) but I was too busy sleeping until 2. At any rate, the return of the sun has certainly heightened my spirits. The removal of trash also helped clear up the perpetual funk odor that was wafting through my window last night. So we have 80% sun power and relatively fresh air. If I had a TV, PS2, Katamari Damacy, and some Orville Reddenbacher popcorn, it'd be just like home!

Man, I have a hankering for KFC. There's something about the chicken in this country that is just positively mouth-watering. The only gripe I have is that they have the tendency to slather on too much sauce, but that's easily remedied by just squeezing it out of the sandwich prior to consumption. Oh yeah, and I'm talking about the Zinger Burger. It's a mystery and a damn shame they haven't exported this idea to the States.

I'm currently debating what shirt to wear outside. It's not as if there's a huge selection available to choose from, but this weather really has me chagrined. When I go out, it'll be warm. When I come back here, it'll be chilly. Most people solve that by just dressing too warmly in the first place, but I'm the kind of person that likes to take full advantage of the warmth and wear sandals/short sleeves whenever possible. I may be regretting my words in July when I'll be bursting into a sweat the second I step foot outdoors.

And with that... I'm off to "work."

On recent activity and thought

My computer is a better heater than the boiler that is trying desperately to heat my floor. This thing is on fire!!

Tomrrow it's going to be 74 degrees... fahrenheit of course. A nice day, but I'm desperately worried about my clothing situation. Dear lord. In the year and two months I've been in Korea, I've never worried this much about style/fashion. It's almost as if appearance matters more than teaching (what a revelation!!). Recently I've had this strange discomfort with clothing 'reruns,' although I'm pretty sure no one else gives a shit. Perhaps it's time for trip #35094820394823 to Myeong Dong, my most hated place on earth.

But hey... the last time I went to Migliore, the big mall over thar, the shop worker actually gave me her business card. We seemed to have some employee/shopper chemistry going on. Perhaps that's why. I came in, tried on some jeans, she complimented me on how thin I was, I bought the pants... the best case shopping scenario. I could barely breathe in them, but she said it's how they were supposed to be. I'm inclined to believe her, since either way, she was going to sell some jeans. Relatively expensive, but that's what I get for pants that are "made in Korea" and not that cheap "Chinese stuff."

I have a problem, which is that I have an addictive personality. Part of the reason I hate clothes shopping is not because I hate clothes in and of themselves, but that once I start buying shit, I can't stop. This leads to a severe depletion in my already swooning bank account. My brother made a dangerous precedent by purchasing nearly 100,000 won (approximately $90?) worth of clothes including one pair of jeans, a leather belt, a dress shirt, and a t-shirt. When you put it all together like that it doesn't seem like much, but the belt alone was $28. Coincidentally, the jean shop owner had the exact same voice as Hwayobi, an old pop singer now featured on "We Got Married," a Korean reality tv show. This may mean nothing to you, but it was a little hilarious at the time as her voice and way of speaking is very unusual and induces laughter whenever heard.

Well, the point of all this is that spring has sprung in Korea. It's time for a change not only in wardrobe but attitude. In the end, everyone's searching for their own happiness. For now, seeing green on the trees is enough. A car to take midnight drives in would be nice but... gotta take baby steps into adulthood...

Fleeting Moment of Childlike Wonder

Last weekend I had the opportunity to visit a friend in Jamshil which lies in the eastern part of Seoul. Whenever I go to Jamshil, I have a strange feeling that it's not actually Seoul, but a smaller town in which the buildings are not towering overhead left and right, the streets are broad, but less congested, and the air smells a hell of a lot better.


Near Jamshil station is a popular amusement park called 'Lotte World' as well as a medium-sized lake, open to the public. The walkway is bordered on both sides by cherry trees. Unfortunately most of the flowers had given way to greenery, but there were still enough to produce a shower of petals when the wind blew hard enough. This made me full of girlish glee and even dared to utter the words "It's magical!" out loud in front of a friend who had perhaps thought I had gone temporarily insane.

On Sunday, I had the chance to go for a car ride with my brother. Since neither of us are particularly familiar with the roads of Seoul, we spent a fair amount of time being lost. That, however, also gave us the chance to take in the sights, breathe some good air, and enjoy the reawakening of the earth that is spring.

All of this made me realize how much I've missed the sun, the smell of fresh air, and driving a car around I guess. However, having those things for even a short time was quite energizing and helped shake the bugs of winter out of my head.

In other news, I had to take a local bus today. The light was red, and the car in front of the bus left about 2 meters of space between himself and the car ahead. This apparently made the bus driver angry, who honked repeatedly so he could move up ... 2 meters. I'm not sure if the bus driver thought he was about to drag race someone to the next light, but he was angry enough to start muttering curses and things under his breath about how people don't know how to drive. Someone needs to take a trip to the park and chill out.

positive and negative

So I moved into this tiny basement apartment. It's the same price as the previous one, except crappier. During the day, the air is ok, but for some reason it turns into this rotten egg funk at night. That is not cool because I'm usually sitting next to the window (at the chair in this picture) primarily in the evening. Another problem is that the fridge randomly unplugs itself. I'm pretty sure it doesn't have a free hand that unplugs the cord but it tends to shut off at night or when I'm gone for several hours at a time. So I shove it back into the socket... but who knows what's going to happen 12 hours later.

I discovered that there are actually other people living in the basement on the opposite side of the hall. The door was open this morning and when I came home from work around 10:30 PM. There was a young woman standing there. She looked at me, then closed the door. Maybe I seem like a suspicious person. Or it was just time to close the door.

Well, that is the negative side of my life. My housing situation became significantly worse. Hardly any "options" in here, the air sucks, and it's tiny. However, there are still some positive points in my life.

Work. Who would've thought that work could be ok? And at a hakwon no less? I'm only working part time, which probably has a great deal with my level of happiness. In my last class, which happened to be a conversation class, I asked "Are you guys hungry?!" One kid in the back answered, "Yes!! I want to eat donuts!!" The other students started clamoring that they were hungry and wanted donuts/hamburgers/pizza/drinks. I said no pizza as it's too expensive, but I can buy drinks or donuts. Then they said they have to take a test after class, so I thought the snack thing was out of the question. Well...

After class was over, two students said they were really going with me to get donuts. Surprised, I grabbed my wallet and we headed out. They were skipping part of a test for snacks. Well, that's not my responsibility haha. So I got my stuff, said bye to my coworkers, and we headed out. At Dunkin Donuts, all the donuts were gone... just a handful of regular ones. So we went to Burger King instead. They each got a 진거버거 (?) and I just got some onion rings. They wolfed that shit down. Anyway, I was glad to feed them and hang out a little bit. It's a better way to get to know the students. However, I advised them to eat some gum so the other (obedient) students wouldn't get a whiff of the hamburger in their breath.

At any rate, I just come, work, and leave. No worries outside of class. This is heaven compared to my previous hakwon experience. I dunno if I'm doing the right thing or not, but no one has complained thus far. 송파구 is awesome. The kids are awesome. The coworkers are awesome. The pay is... almost awesome. Work life is far better than before, even if I have to travel over an hour to get there.

So in the end? Life could be better, it could be worse. I'm going to be positive though and say that everything is fairly ok right now though.

Going to Graze in Greener Pastures

So I've been in this apartment for all of... what... three weeks? At first I thought the neighborhood was kind of shitty and a break-in was imminent, but I realized after a week that this is exactly the kind of 'hood that I needed. It has everything a youngster like myself could need. DC marts, grocery stores, convenience stores, cheap vegetables and meat, kimbap chungook-esque diners... in short, it's awesome. Everything I could possibly need for home/food is within ten minutes walking distance, and it's cheap to boot.

Last Thursday, the landlord stopped by to pick up a gas bill that was to be paid by the previous person in this room. I told him I left it in the mailbox, which he found, but he insisted on seeing me for some reason. So after I returned home from shoe shopping (another hellish story in itself), he stopped by my room. He started the conversation with 다른게 아니라, which to me means "I'm about to drop a huge bomb on you, so get ready." That's not what it really means, but that's basically what happened. The landlord said that his business hasn't been doing so well, so he needs to rent out the room to someone who will pay 전세 (jeon-se), basically meaning payment for the entire year up front. For a room this size, I would guess jeon-se would be 25-35,000 USD. Obviously, I don't have that kind of money. So he is, in essence, kicking me out of the room despite having a contract.

At that time, I was so out of my mind I just decided to move out. The landlord told me he would cover the moving expenses. Well, after thinking about it some more, he should be covering a bit more than the moving expenses. Perhaps even the real estate company fee, which was $200. If he pays up a bit, perhaps moving wouldn't be so bad.

While I've been living here, I've had difficulty sleeping and waking up. The problem with falling asleep has been the fact that I used to fall asleep while using the computer. I'd roll over onto my side, half awake, sometimes drooling, while playing a game. The moment I decided to sleep, I would simply turn off the computer. Well, I can't do that here since the computer has a fixed place on the desk. The problem with waking up is that there is very little sunshine that comes into the room. I'd much rather prefer that Mr. Sun arouse me to consciousness, rather than my loud ass cell phone alarm.

So there have been good things and bad things about living in Shindaebang, but I'm always counting on life taking a turn for the better. 'Better' has a lot to do with personal perspective, and I think I'm ready to consider any room bigger than 4 pyeong as better than this room. Who knows what the future holds...

New Room

Last Saturday (February 28), I moved out of my plush, enviable officetel, to a cramped, semi-ghetto one room apartment in Shindaebang. Well, the building is new, but the area is a bit questionable in the latter hours of the evening. In order to avoid getting lost, I meandered about the neighborhood to acquaint myself with the surroundings and to find the local groceries/restaurants so I would have some landmarks to refer to in the event of an emergency. While this is no Shindorim, it has all the conveniences I need within 10 minutes walking distance. But back to the room.

Refer to exhibit 1.

This is basically 80% of the 'apartment'. You got your desk area, kitchenette area, and fridge/microwave nook. To the right of the fridge is the bathroom. No shower booth this time, just a box in which everything gets sprayed with water. Mold may be readying itself to attack at any moment.

Due to the abundant moisture, my clothes aren't drying well and it takes upwards of 15-20 hours for them to be wearable after laundering.

In defense of its tiny nature, it's not as if I have to walk very far to get anything done. I may, however, have to shove several objects out of the way to move one meter in any direction. Another advantage is that cleaning will probably require less time overall, but again, I'll have to remove several large things in order to efficiently sweep for dust bunnies.

In other news... wait, there is none.

Lemonade From Hell

So I bought this E-mart brand lemonade a few days ago. I favor this one over the other brand (Sunkist or some such) since it's about 300 won cheaper. Well guess what?

I can't get the damn cap off!!

You could say I brought this calamity on myself since I've bought this brand a few times before and have had similar results. The first time I came across this, I grunted, sweated, and struggled with that cap for minutes at a time before throwing it back in the fridge to try again another day. Suddenly... one sunny afternoon... the cap came off like nothing. Like it was just another ordinary bottle of lemonade. Imagine my surprise and delight that I finally could accompany my sandwiches with a very cool glass of E-mart brand lemonade that I saved 300 won on.

Thinking that I could outsmart and even out-manpower a plastic bottle cap, I continued to purchase this product. Well here we are today, present day Korea, with another bottle of E-mart lemonade. It's practically screaming "Try me bitch!!" with those pictures of sliced lemon, ever taunting me. I have used a couple methods ranging from using a coarse cloth for friction along with banging the hell out of it on the counter, to just plain old-fashioned twisting-till-your-hands-burn. Some crying and pleading with god usually ensued afterward. But hey, it's only day 3. Maybe tomorrow, the lemonade's uppance shall come.

In other news, the yellow dust has taken the greater Incheon/Seoul region by storm, signaling another beginning to spring! Ah, nothing says spring like a national warning to close all windows and wear masks when outside. :D

The Jump From Geocities

After some debate with the ol' self, I decided to make the jump from Geocities to... Blogger, or whatever this particular blog site is called. Honestly I feel a little dirty since I'm no longer in control of the format of the page, but I gotta get with the times. My HTML knowledge is obsolete, and let's face it, who's got the time to dink around with making pages, adjusting the parameters, and uploading all the BS only to discover several wrong codes/typos? Actually, I do, but my life-long nemesis that is laziness has once again walloped me while simultaneously laughing maniacally at my inability to withstand the fuzzy comforts of technological convenience.

So here is me. Not as happy-go-lucky as before, not as 'hehehe'-ish as before, but more or less, it's me. Hi.