Happy New Year! Well, it seems de rigeur to post a retrospective of the year, so this post is going to be a little personal. Feel free to skip over it if you’re not that interested. In 2006, I managed to do a lot of things: My father passed away. I miss him, and I wish I could call him… and I wish I’d called him more often. Lime and I got through a major hurdle, which was managing a relationship where one member is working 120-hour weeks. She’s been so busy, but now that’s over, and she’ll have perhaps …
Month: December 2006
Not Bad, But Taking It Easy
I haven’t posted here in a distressingly long time. On Thursday, 28 December, I was finally finished grading and over the very congesting cold I’d caught, and I decided to go to the gym. I did 20 minutes of oscillating speeds on the treadmill, and about 10 minutes on the stationary bicycle. However, I’d been noticing something weird, which has prevented me from going back in the last few days. About my heartbeat — mostly that I’m aware of my heart beating in my chest something like 60%+ of the time these days, and that the slight tightness in my …
Movies and Reading of Late
I’ve been watching a lot of movies, and reading a little too. First, movies: Death of a President is just weird. Weird, and interesting, and basically all about race post-9-11. Race as in skin color, and race as in hurrying to find someone to punish. I am surprised the film has been released in the US. I am unsurprised to find a lot of Americans angry about it without knowing what it’s even about. I betcha the Bush family is very weirded out by this, though. IT was sad, though perhaps on purpose, that the White House speech writer got …
Saddam Dead
For months now, my students have been submitting reviews of one film/book: 우리들의 행복한 시간 (Our Happy Time), which is, I’ve basically taken from their reviews and discussions, the Korean version of Dead Man Walking. The death penalty in (South) Korea exists but hasn’t been used for some time now, and this movie seems to have young people convinced it should be abolished. What’s interesting is that I ended up objecting to the arguments the students made, because in general they were either sentimental, or based on non-demonstrable assumptions, or what have you. If the death penalty is wrong, it’s not wrong …
Test, test…
Wondering if the lamebrained network security is still in effect… By the way, can others comment without problem?
Network Madness?
On my various Linux boxes, Gmail has gone all coy — meaning, I could access it but not send or save drafts — and I was poking around for a while looking for a fix. It looks like another URL thing. I banged my head against this for a while, and then found something in one of the Google forums somewhere that seemed to fix it: https://mail.google.com/mail/s/ Except that now I can’t even post to my blog without trying this https:// trick, and I can’t submit info to forums. In fact, uploading any kind of information at all seems to …
Cut Cable in Hong Kong
Yes, if you tried to connect to my website today, and couldn’t, it’s because some kind of underwater cable in Hong Kong (where this site is being hosted) was cut. They’re working on it, but access has been sporadic for a while.
Starting to Understand Form Letter Responses
I’m ripping my way through a pile of somewhat-unimportant assignments, and the killer is, I’m not sure which students expect feedback and which don’t… but I am pretty sure that not all of them do, and I’m also pretty sure that some of them very much do want some. However, the feedback and the grading process are not the same thing. Havng discovered that the wait for a tourist visa to China is no less than 2 days (or, at a cheaper rate, 4 days minimum), I will have a little time next week to add comments to some of …
Inter-Hakwon Warfare
The Hankyoreh has a story about accused teaching method-piracy: An English teacher at a language institute in Seoul has been indicted on allegations that lectures she delivered to her students were stolen from a neighboring institute. I think I have a defense. Look for the original text which the original institute’s examples were stolen from. Teachers are unrepentant thieves. They also are often happy to share, since they stole themselves. I am somewhat doubtful that the teaching material was wholly original in this case. If it was, they should have published a textbook, in order to further learning. If that …
Goodbye, Cavendish Banana?
Oh, no, not again.