There’s some good advice over at Goldbrick in Seoul about not doing drugs while you in Korea: Don’t do drugs. If you do them, don’t come to Korea and do drugs here. Wait until you’re back in Canada, or the Netherlands, San Francisco, Seattle, or wherever it is that trained you to think there are no consequences to violating drug laws. Combating drugs is a big deal to the Korean government, and picking on relatively defenseless and isolated potsmoking teachers is a lot easier than catching violent criminals. We understand that college campuses, dance clubs and gay bathhouses (not that …
Month: September 2004
Where Do I Go For Updates?
Actually, I just log into Bloglines, but when I get there, often enough I find, in my “Asiana” folder, one of Simon World’s Asia by Blog entries. They provide a useful set of links to issues not only in Korea but all across Asia. I follow at least half the links every time I go. Which means that at this hour, when I have precisely sixty more minutes to get to the office, I shouldn’t be going to Simon World at all. But you, on the other hand, should go there immediately.
Ajummas, Sexy Ajummas, and
In Korea, there are words for every social role. Frequently, the job position titles aren’t inherently gendered as they are in French, where a male translator is “traducteur” and a female is “traductrice”. Believe me, it’s not because of a lack of gender equality in the French-speaking world, or because of greater equality of the sexes in Korea; far from it. Gender is just different in the Korean language. The pronouns we use to address people, for example, are constructed not only to indicate the sex of the person referred to, but also the relative age of the person (relative …
I Lied
I said that last post would be the last, but it isn’t. The last is just saying that it’s nice to be finishing work at a sane hour like 4:30, or, like yesterday and tomorrow, at 2:30pm. Ah, that’s downright lovely. Today Lime worked at the Protestant Hospital only a few minutes (by bike) from my home, so we met up, had dinner and then a long talk over coffee. It was absolutely great. Now, I’ve done my daily blogging and sort of caught up on my subscribed feeds at Bloglines, and I’m not working till 10:30 am tomorrow, so …
A Prayer I Can Relate To, Finally!
Last post for the day: via Adrienne, a little gem I’m so glad I remembered to download and check out. It’s a prayer I can relate to and understand, a wonderful little MP3 from Neil Gaiman’s new CD, Telling Tales. Gaiman’s a better reader than I imagined from his interviews on the old TV SF show I used to watched in Canada, the name of which I cannot remember. Anyway, the MP3 is definitely worth a listen, especially for the end.