100 Things

Posted on November 28, 2003
Filed Under static page stuff - about |

  1. I have had an email address since 1995, which is not as long as it feels like it has been to me. In fact, I have had a total of 6 email addresses since 1995, and three or four of them are still active (but only two of them are ever used in a given month).
  2. I was born in Blantyre, Malawi, on the 4th of the March, 1974. My family emigrated to Canada in 1975.
  3. I do not own a car and do not wish to unless I am driven to it by necessity. I have managed to survive in several cities without a car, and think it’s easier than you think.
  4. I do not have have a driver’s license.
  5. I am writing a novel and a collection of poems right now. The novel is SF and the poems are about a 19th Century rebellion in China. A real rebellion, one I’ve been researching for about three years and which fascinates me because of the bizarre pseudo-Christian cult that led the rebellion.
  6. I live in Jeonju, South Korea.
  7. Most of my clothes are a size or two smaller than when I left Canada.
  8. I like swimming.
  9. I hate swimming everyday.
  10. I prefer dogs to cats.
  11. My favorite musician of all time is John Coltrane. But I rarely listen to him anymore, because it reminds me that I’m not a very good saxophonist.
  12. I have a tenor sax, a soprano sax, a flute, a harmonica, a tanpura, a teak Nepali flute, and assorted mic and effects processing gear. I play most of this stuff in a rock band called Dabang Band.
  13. I’d rather be playing jazz, or would be if it weren’t for the cute girls you meet playing rock.
  14. I sometimes dream about co-workers testing me in Korean, or dictating their crappy novels to me for me to type out. Especially a jerk I once worked for named Tim.
  15. My shoe size is 300 (Korean size, which is a centimeter-length measurement.
  16. I have a nice, shiny new cell phone; CYON is the brand, but unfortunately it’s a CDMA phone like all the phones in Korea. Argh.
  17. I’m pretty smart at bookish things. I can often remember who said what about what, and I kind of soak up books, and connections between different writers, without working too hard. I don’t know as much about literature or philosophy as I may seem to, but I wish I did.
  18. I cannot imagine life past about 35. Not until about the year 2040… I’m quite good at imagining the future, just not my future.
  19. I have not yet lost anyone I knew well to death. But I know it’s coming, eventually.
  20. I listen to most of my music these days on a Sony Net MD MZ-707 which I bought discounted at the Iksan Lotte Mart on clearance when a much better new Net MD was released on the market. Songs listened to while writing this: “Get it Together” by James Brown; “Dead Man Walking” by David Bowie.
  21. I’m listening to James Brown because my friend Marvin brought it up to me during a discussion of aesthetics.
  22. I am fundamentally unable to deal with ambiguities and I am usually noncommunicative of this inability at the crucial moment.
  23. I sometimes think that my band would sound better without a sax player, until I hear them play without me, and I realize that’s wrong. But I still feel like an appendage to the band rather than a member.
  24. I like girls who wear sweaters and/or wear glasses.
  25. I wish I could step into the person I will be when I am fifty just to look back on my life and see if it was worth it… or see some of the big mistakes coming up so that I can avoid them.
  26. I tend to perceive things either cyclically, or as part of a pattern. One of the most profound challenges in my life is seeing the world as linear, foreseeing the end of stages or periods in life, changes of mind or approach. So often enough I find myself stuck in ruts of thought, emotion, or behaviour.
  27. If the day were two hours longer I’d practice saxophone everyday. Or learn to play sitar.
  28. I am rarely an outright jerk.
  29. I tend to experience life as a series of crises. I’m trying to cut that out. It’s hard.
  30. When I was a little child I believed that I had previously been a Viking. Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but I can’t remember whether I had begun to read Viking legends before or after I found myself convinced of this. I do remember insisting it was true. I also remember watching The Beachcombers eagerly hoping they would should Nick Adonidas having another Viking longship dream.
  31. The first bit of nudity I ever saw was in a Playboy magazine stolen by Marc Guppy, a fellow nerd in my seventh-grade class whose friend Michael Armstrong had stolen it from a Mac’s Convenience Store. I was amazed by the thing and claimed the best page (in my opinion) for myself. I folded it and put it into my pocket it to take it home, but on the way realized my mother would probably find it, so I discarded it in the gutter by the road in front of the apartment blocks near my house.
  32. My first kiss happened sometime in May 1992, on a small hill in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. I know the spot exactly, and occasionally paused when walking past it by chance in later years. It was very surprising.
  33. My last kiss was very early in January 2003 (on the first of January, in fact). It was hesitant, confused, and regretful, but honest.
  34. I find it exceedingly hard to buy antiperspirant in Korea.

  35. My favorite Asian film director is Wong Kar Wai, whose Hong Kong movies like In The Mood For Love and Fallen Angels are so humid and fragile I can’t resist watching them again and again. The shot to the right is taken from the movie Fallen Angels.
  36. I think Karl Marx got a lot of things right, but that he was also a bit wrongheaded… still, I think him far less wrongheaded than the people who read him later…
  37. I think Allen Ginsberg was brilliant about 5% of the time, but didn’t write most of his poems during that time.
  38. I own a Motorola cell phone. I don’t know the model. It has a few stickers on it, including one put on the front by a little girl named Ha Eun, who was my student months ago. The sticker has a little icon-art figure running and proclaiming, “Sarangah! Kaeseotgeora!” (My love! Stop fleeing me!) When Ha Eun stuck it on my phone, I told her: “Hajiman, naneun yeochin eobtda!” (But I don’t have a girlfriend!) to which she replied, “Ah… sunsengnim! Keojitmalhaja!” (Teacher, sir! Let’s lie!).
  39. I have bank accounts at three different banks in Korea. Why is a long story.
  40. I love telling long stories… over a beer.
  41. The best dish I cook is vegetarian lasagna… or so it was when I had an oven. Living in Korea, the best dish I cook is a Thai-style chicken curry with coconut milk and vegetables mixed in.
  42. I much prefer cooking for a guest to cooking just for myself. But I usually just cook for myself.
  43. I originally wanted to play the guitar, but my mother said no. She similarly vetoed the drums and the bagpipes before I settled on the saxophone.
  44. I sometimes worry about what might happen to some member of my family while I am living abroad.
  45. I miss people who are far from me whom I don’t imagine missing me at all. And I don’t mind much, though on difficult days sometimes I mind a little.
  46. I have an extremely long memory.
  47. I generally think I was born sixty years too late… or sixty years too early.
  48. From the age of 11 to the age of 16, and again from the age of 21 to the age of 25, I was an avid player of RPGs (Role-Playing games). I started out with AD&D (Advanced Dungeons and Dragons) but finally got bored with swords & sorcery and moved on to White Wolf’s various gothic-punk games. I have not played RPGs for years now, but I have several SF RPG books that I either brought with me to Korea, or was sent after moving here. I also have my polyhedral dice, which I have used in the ESL classroom on occasion.
  49. When I hear people say that there is nothing in their lives that they would not do over again, I think they’re either crazy or very lucky. There are many things in my life I would never ever choose to experience again, not for wealth or power or even good karma.
  50. I am technically working on my second novel, not my first. My first novel was a horrible mess that I wrote to help myself get through one of those things that I would never choose to experience again.
  51. My favorite alcoholic drink these days is a White Russian cocktail. They are mild and sweet and wonderful.
  52. I am trying to decide which musical direction I want to go in after Dabang Band disbands. I am not sure whether I want to do some kind of electronic post-funk, or straight-out experimental jazz (a la Pharoah Sanders or McCoy Tyner in the 70s) fused with Korean traditional music.
  53. If I could eat any one thing right now, it would be a slice of beef pie with crust made from scratch.
  54. I attended Catholic schools from about halfway through elementary school until finishing high school. I am grateful as this speeded me in the realization that I do not believe in the faith, nor do I believe in the existence of a God, no matter how tempting and consoling the idea seems at any given moment. And it does seem tempting to me from time to time.
  55. I cannot express the amount of pleasure I feel when my website’s layout is changed and someone enjoys it, or expresses enjoyment of it.
  56. I am trying not to eat pizza these days. And almost entirely succeeding.
  57. I can see clearly how I am related to my father, but sometimes I wonder just how much of my mother’s genes have anything to do with how I am. Except stubbornness… I have her stubbornness, for certain.
  58. People usually either think I’m a snob or a snooty academic-type at first, until they realize that I’m not using big words on purpose, it’s just how I talk, and that I’m not necessarily looking down on them.
  59. Sometimes I am in fact looking down on them, and in fact sometimes I am using big words on purpose… but for reasons quite different from what others tend to suppose.
  60. While, in my life, I have actually been to many countries (especially if one counts one-hour stopovers in airports, or journeys made during infancy), I only remember experiencing the following countries: South Korea, Thailand, America, and Canada.
  61. I want to have visited every continent (except Antarctica) before I am 35. I am skeptical that I shall actually achieve this.
  62. Many of my ancestors on my father’s side were actually journalists, writers, publishers, bookbinders, and otherwise working in publishing.
  63. I am apparently entitled to British citizenship through my grandfather, but I have not yet procured a British passport.
  64. There are two people in the world I would like to visit right now more than anyone. One of them knows who she is. The other person is Charlie.
  65. I am a shameless pirate of MP3s. Mostly I argue that I cannot buy most of the music I am interested in, in Korea. This may or may not be true. Regardless, I pirate rather happily and quite excessively.
  66. I need a vacation rather badly.
  67. I have not seen all of my family together since 2000. I did visit my family before coming to Korea, in 2000, but in 2001 my sister had left for Venezuela a few days before my arrival in Saskatoon.
  68. Despite living in Asia for two years, I still feel less well-traveled than my two younger sisters, one of whom lived in Central and South America and has traveled to Europe several times, the other of whom has both seen Europe and toured Africa with her husband.
  69. I am the only member of my immediate family who is single now.
  70. I am the only member of my immediate family who has traveled to East Asia. I may well be the only member of my whole extended family who has done so, but it’s possible some ancestor on my father’s side did so during the era of the British Empire, as Scotsmen were shipped out everywhere.
  71. I have a habit of writing ink-and-paper letters to people and not sending them, while I almost always send emails after the first draft.
  72. On personality tests I almost always register as an INFP or an ENFP. Which doesn’t mean much to me either way.
  73. In war stories, the guys who get shot to pieces in the middle are the ones I always think about most.
  74. Despite the fact I think it’s silly, sometimes I feel very old at my age… or perhaps, rather, I feel old for my age.
  75. I would rather own very little in my life, and leave the world a better place by my actions, even if it means not leaving much stuff or money to whoever I leave behind.
  76. No matter how much I hate my schedules, or get fed up with students who don’t give a damn, I actually like teaching. I wonder if I will be able to find a venue for teaching in the future, but I think that I would be happy if a certain amount of my professional life was spent educating young people.

    Except middle schoolers. I hate teaching them.

  77. The problem with me is I want to do everything excellently; not perfectly, which is a goal that can be easily criticized; but rather, I want to do everything I do very very well. Criticism of myself, and my options, is always just on this side of reasonable; but the pressure I place on myself is not.
  78. I haven’t owned a rubber duckie for years but having one would be pleasing to me.
  79. I do own a plush Osama bin Laden doll retrieved from a Happy Crane toy vending machine on University Street in Iksan, South Korea. It’s excessively cute and slightly disturbing.
  80. I check my email in excess of ten times a day, and live in dread of the time when I will not be able to do so.
  81. I spent several of my summers during middle school and high school laid up in bed because of some mysterious respiratory problem connected with my asthma. My parents, rather than taking me to the hospital which they distrusted, gave me “natural treatments” that never helped me, until I insisted that someone take me to the hospital or I would crawl there, so help me God. I was diagnosed with asthma and have always been able to get a ventolin inhaler since, though my parents insist to this day that I do not have asthma.
  82. I am often easily confused.
  83. You should probably take me seriously, no matter what I say, because I am usually quite serious about things, even when I am joking.
  84. Songs that have been My Theme Song in the past: the Extended Dub Mix of Pictures of You by The Cure; A Man In A Shed by Nick Drake; The Season of the Shark by Yo La Tengo; Parchman Farm by Bukka White; Giant Steps by John Coltrane; and Paradise City by Guns ‘N’ Roses (the last one, a long, long time ago when I thought that liking G’N'R was rebellious).
  85. Some of my friends tell me they admire me because I fight my depressions with all my strength but also know to ask for help when I need it.
  86. I wish I didn’t need it ever again.
  87. I like flying in airplanes, but it makes me very very nervous.
  88. If you ask what my favorite color is, I’ll look at your blankly. I haven’t had one since I realized the kindergarten teacher was only asking it because she thought everyone had one… but that, in fact, plenty of people didn’t have a favorite color at all.
  89. I tend to look better in autumn colors, as well as in pale blues and greens which bring out the color of my eyes.
  90. When I asked my father whether he believed in the existence of God, he gave me a copy of Erich von Däniken’s book Chariots of the Gods. To provide a brief explanation, Däniken believed that aliens came to Earth and genetically engineered a servant race from the most promising species on the planet: chimps. Däniken believed that we are the descendants of those aliens’ servants. I liked the idea for a while in high school, but then realized it was hogwash and the only premise from Däniken’s writings was that there obviously is no such thing as an anthropic deity of the sort that so many religious believers describe.
  91. In general I find my atheist friends to be more forgiving, trustworthy, humane, compassionate, and honest than the religious believers I know. This does not surprise me in the least.
  92. Nonetheless I have a great respect for some religions and religious persons. CS Lewis’ writings on the proper ideals of Christianity are outstanding; I also find the Mennonites, my sister’s ex-employers, to be astoundingly humanitarian, believing as they do that faith is a mission to help other people… the reasoning by which they have formed a gigantic and well-respected worldwide network of development organizations.
  93. I once considered a life either in religious orders, or working with people less fortunate than myself in some fucked-up corner of the world. I still sometimes wonder if the latter is where I properly should be.
  94. I’m too lazy to volunteer for anything most of the time.
  95. When my high school best friend came out of the closet to me, telling me he was gay, the first thing I said was that he should never worry about losing my friendship over it (a concern that he expressed at the time).
  96. The second thing I asked him to do was rate me in terms of attractiveness from 1 to 10.
  97. He copped out by saying he’d never thought of me in that way and couldn’t rate me.
  98. Another of his friends gave the same response as me, later that month.
  99. I’m basically legally blind in one eye.
  100. It’s my left eye.

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