Yep, having collected the majority of those assignments from my writing class students, it turns out that more than one group decided to write about how Hangeul is superior to English. When you ask people to compare and contrast something, it’s interesting how some immediately feel the need to prove that whatever they feel is theirs is absolutely superior.
Month: November 2006
Great Review of a Book I’ll Never Read
Kingbaeksu has a review that basically eviscerates, with clear, sensible logic, that “What’s So Good About Korea, Maarten?” book that’s been on shelves for a while. I was put off by the white guy wrapped in the Korean flag (you can see the cover at the link above) and the contents look pretty poor too. Repeating the blather you’ve heard from friends is no way to write a book. A blog, maybe, but not a book. However, there are some good books recommended at the bottom of the page. I think I’ll bear that list in mind next time I …
Play Editing
I’m currently editing the plays that my students have written, just to tidy up the grammar and, occasionally, to ramp up the suspense and/or tension in a few scenes. Among the very colorful language in a few of these plays, the most shocking to me was the following: Mike: Damn, you dirty bitch… I’ll teach you to talk to me like that… (He grabs Trish by the neck and strangles her to death.) No need to worry that it’s sexist: everyone in the story has a nasty streak, and almost everyone dies, I think. It’s looking that way, anyway. Some …
AFM
AFM stands for A F___ing Meltdown. Both of my computer systems went bonkers today, which is strange, and is one of those little things that happens when you use a totally-free OS, I suppose. Ubuntu went mad on my laptop, though in that case, simply running the LiveCD fixed it, which sometimes happens in good old 5.10. But in version 6.10, something weirder’s going on. My DVD-ROM drive won’t even open once the system has started up, and I also had to put in some little file blocking part of the startup system, as outlined here. (Though, you might note, …
Ask, Receive
Lately, I have thought about asking whether anyone reading this site knew of films about Indians that are not Bollywood films. What do you know? Bruce Sterling recently posted a link to filmholic, where I found links to some titles! Easy as that! And worth viewing, for a first pass, isthe film linked here, which is “Pria”, a story about an Indian-Canadian girl who tries to lose her accent in order to meet the boy of her dreams. I’m considering playing it for students who worry so much about sounding like a “native speaker”.