print.pitas.com | happy lists :) Wow. A while back, I submitted a Happy List to the Happy Lists Site, over at print.pitas.com. Today it seems this list has finally gotten posted, for the Monday, August 11th posting. Maybe it’s a reminder to try be a little more epicurean, appreciate the little things a little more and find those unique joys that only dumplings or a a cup of coffee can give one.
This weekend’s been difficult, painful and harsh on me, for reasons so complicated I don’t know how to broach them here. So I’ll just post a good quote I found from Aristotle’s Poetics: Tragedy is essentially an imitation not of persons but of action and life, of happiness and misery. All human happiness or misery takes the form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind of activity, not a quality. Character gives us qualities, but it is in our actions ?what we do ?that we are happy or the reverse. This is important to remember. …
In my second kids’ class – the younger class, incidentally – the kids found something unusual on the floor. On excruciatingly cute stationery was written a note from a girl named J– H– to a girl named H– K—. I understood some, but not enough to figure out what was being said about me. However, a friend read it and banished my misgivings with a rendering that went something like this: What’s up? This is J– H–. You heard? Gord, Thai, and John R. are going back to their hometowns [in their home countries]! They won’t be teaching here anymore! …
Last week my sister asked me to write a story to use at her work. She works for an NGO called the Mennonite Central Committee, which works at international development and is quite respected. The program she’s working in now is really very interesting. It’s called the In Exile, For a While Refugee Simulation Program. They take young people out on refugee experience simulations, complete with exploding landmines, starvation diets, nasty border guards, and long forced marches in awful weather, to give them a better idea of how to imagine a refugee’s experience: take this one awful day and imagine …
Charlie gave me this. (Link deleted since the site has changed radically. Try this instead. Probably not the same thing, but… it’s fun.) I should know by now that Charlie always gives me weird things, but they still always surprise me. We humans are such a weird species.
File Not Found Much better than the default error page.
The Rise of the Russian Criminal State by David Satter Updated Link: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State by David Satter David Satter writes about the rule of law and its necessity in order for democracy and capitalism to succeed, something which, as the world knows, has not happened in Russia. He’s right, of course, Russia has become a horrible criminal state. But I couldn’t help reading the beginning of the article with a slowly mounting sense of irony. Consider this excerpt, from the middle section on “Kleptocracy in the Guide of Reform”: Perhaps more important than these economic features, …
UPDATE (20 March 2013): For the curious, here’s the scarf image. Nice enough that I may make a banner from it… Original Post: The handkerchief that Sun Hee (one of my students, who also works in the office at my workplace) bought for me in Japan is very pretty. It’s a cute scene of little children playing in the fields of Japan, jumping rope and chasing butterflies. You may note that is the new background image of this webpage. I’ll be changing the layout so you can see it better, soon, but until then, have a look at the scarf …
Basically I am cutting and pasting from an email to a friend here. Let’s see. The folk village I went to on Saturday with my friend was fun. Pictures coming soon, probably tomorrow. Will be buying a digicam this week, probably. Today one of my old students — who is now someone else’s student, a little girl names Su Yeon — brought me a nice big bottle of bok bun ja sent by her mom! (Raspberry wine, purportedly with powerful effects on a man’s virility… which I can neither confirm nor deny.) She didn’t even bring one for her new …
Note (4 Feb. 2012): I originally wrote this post back in August 2003. However, at the time there were downloadable MP3s in the post. I was, let’s say, not so aware of copyright issues. Anyway, I’ve updated it with embedded videos from Youtube for almost all the original songs today (4 February 2012). ORIGINAL POST (4 August 2003): Lately I’ve uploaded some music to my server that I am recommending via one of my friend’s Korean Daum Cafes. Since I am hosting it here, I’m going to include the links on my own blog. I suppose I shall have to …