Having read and very much enjoyed the Portable Korean Library translation of “The Photo-Shop Murders” and especially “Whatever Happened to the Guy in the Elevator,” I went into this book expecting something dark, funny, and entertainingly disturbing. Kim scores on about half of those expectations: this “novel” (at 120 pages, it’s more of a...
Read more →I’ve decided to stop doing the “bookdumps” I’ve been doing, where I briefly review a ton of books, and instead give individual reviews — however brief they might sometimes be — their own individual posts. I’m starting with the Hawai’i If you’re a foreign educator in Korea (a rare beast, compared to the more...
Read more →Huh? I’m somewhat mystified, but had to share: Lime just informed me that, among Korean fans of the TV series Lost, in online discussions the character Juliette, is (sometimes: see the comment section) referred to as 슴리에트 “슴리엣”, which for those of you who can’t read Hangeul sounds like “Seumniette.” The “n” sound is...
Read more →I think I spelled that right. Tonight, Lime and I were riffing on the theme songs of TV shows we watched as kids. She recognized far more of mine than I did of hers, which is only to be expected — English-language media got aired here more than Japanese or Korean shows got aired...
Read more →I have a feeling that the Season 1 DVD of this show (video below if you’re not reading this on LJ — a promo for This American Life, the TV version of the show) would be an excellent resource for courses in Intercultural communication or even just listening and discussion. (Even if I’d have...
Read more →It was, though technically we sort of celebrated it a day early. I made dinner (steaks, steamed vegetables, and even the gravy turned out!) and we had wine, and chocolate cake, and Lime gave me all kinds of terribly fattening but delicious treats — chocolates, shortbreads — and a very fine new wallet, which...
Read more →It’s the first day of the semester, and things are a little chaotic but mostly fine. The students in my Monday morning 9:00 am class seemed to get most of the jokes, or at least laugh in the right places — humor is a great test of comprehension, you see. The office is still...
Read more →I need to update my site. Nothing to drastic, actually just some basic modification of what I’ve already got up, though it will be quite different once it’s done. Slick. Hip. Bad. Unlikely to need a new template update for ages, if I get my way. I don’t imagine it’ll take a ton of...
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