• KOREA

    Is it Too Much to Ask For…

    by  • December 19, 2011 • KOREA • 0 Comments

    … that, despite the nonexistence of an afterlife, despite all odds, somewhere out there a bunch of recently-departed souls are caught in a lineup, the processing of the world’s dead being backlogged, and Christopher Hitchens has just looked back and noticed that, lo and behold, amid many bedraggled, starved people stands the ghost of...

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    A Society Without Debate

    by  • November 23, 2011 • KOREA • 4 Comments

    UPDATE (25 Nov. 2011): So, I got some of my facts wrong. I first heard the news about the FTA vote verbally, in the form of a couple of rants about how it went down. When I read the article, the wording was such that it didn’t contradict what I’d been led to believe...

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    Wonder Indeed…

    by  • November 21, 2011 • KOREA • 5 Comments

    Miss Jiwaku was once offered a job to travel to Indonesia, accompanying K-pop groups like Wonder Girls and translating for them. She was not, I must note, impressed with the fact she would be traveling with a pop group she considers a blight on Korea’s international reputation; for her, it was about getting paid...

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    Student Brew

    by  • October 7, 2011 • HOMEBREWING, teaching in Korea • 0 Comments

    Note: I wrote this last night, but fell asleep before posting it. *** So I mentioned a while back how I’d be hosting a learn-to-brew session with some of my students, with the goal of producing two (approximately 5-gallon) batches of beer for a cocktail party being held later this semester. On Wednesday night,...

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    And by the way…

    by  • August 30, 2011 • teaching in Korea • 0 Comments

    School has started again. Apparently the start date was changed from Sept. 1st (which is what is has been for the last however many years) to the week of Sept. 1st, which this year began on August 29th. For some reason, not one of the foreign teachers I know (except one) was told about...

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    This is Your Own Foot, In Which You Have Just Shot Yourself — or, Why TEFL Teachers Should Read The Inner Game of Music

    by  • August 26, 2011 • teaching in Korea • 0 Comments

    Not long ago, I was riding the escalator up to the local subway station when I took in a bizarre and amusing — but not very surprising — sight. I don’t know if it’s common outside of Korea, but around here, women who are wearing skirts — not even necessarily short ones — tend...

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