Today:

1. I found out I am now an uncle! Yay! Marie, Troy, Nathaniel, congratulations to all of you! Now’s one of those times I wish I could step into a teleporter machine and visit home to see the little fellow… and everyone else too, of course.
2. We had a meeting and managed to set up the desks in the office in a way that not only make me happy, but also leave open a nice huge space in the middle of the room, which is good for everyone. Whew.
3. We had a lunch paid for by the University. It was alright. I had some kind of meat soup, slightly spicier than 갈비탕, but the meat was scarce. Ah well.
4. To everyone’s shock, we got professor ID cards, after (for some of us) over a year of waiting. Of course, I went immediately to the library and signed out the following from the English collection:
   • Collected Short Stories, W. Somerset Maugham
   • North, Seamus Heaney
   • The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, Mikhail Bakhtin
   • The Allegory of Love, C.S. Lewis
   • Collected Poems, 1909-1962, T.S. Eliot (this one, I got purely out of a desire to copy for my own collection)
   • The Quiet American, Graham Greene

   As you may imagine, I am quite excited to have access to these kinds of books. The poetry section isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but between what I can borrow and what I have at home, I will be certain to have reading of all kinds.

   I also wanted to take out Dickens’ Bleak House but resisted the urge, my bag already being too full as it was. Next time, I shall get only that. I intend to let the style and mood of that book shape the way I will write the next (short) novel I plan to write, once I’ve finished snipping and adding to the one I’m just finishing now. Anyway, more about that when there’s something to say. I’m just happy to have professor’s (6-months, no renewal necessary) borrowing privileges in a library with a fair amount of semi-interesting English texts.

5. One downer, I tried to locate my missing plug attachment at the dormitory, but it seems the cleaning women took all the powerbars for some mysterious reason. So I’ll just have to buy a new one, which will be cheap… if I can find one, that is.

I think nobody would disagree that all in all, it’s been a good day.