By the way, since I want to say this: What a crappy month it’s been for films in the cinema. I hadn’t gone in some time, but of the three films I saw, only Kung-Fu Panda amused me. Actually, it was good fun, once you got beyond the feelgoodishness of it all. I mean, it was very nicely animated and had some funny bits, some cool imagery — man, that scene with Master Oogway the turtle and the peach blossoms, man — and all that badass Tai Lung business, that was some fun, even if I was snickering (inwardly, always, …
Month: June 2008
& Here Once Again Commences the Deluge. (Wherein Students Grumble Their Way to a Higher Grade… Not!)
The grades went up late this afternoon, and then I took Lime out to celebrate. She has a job interview next week, and I’m done grading. On the way home, though, I joked with her that my email inbox would be full of emails from students begging for a higher grade. This is a binannual ritual in Korea: professors enter grades into the system, and then students email pointlessly begging to have their grades increased by some modest, or immodest amount. Korean professors claim that this is much rarer occurrence between Korean students and themselves — that Korean students seem …
Only One?
There’s a student in one of my classes who got herself an unofficial final grade of 115.7% in one of the classes she took with me. The deal is that there’s a class blog, and students who post constantly during semester can do so at an unlimited amount, provided it’s quality stuff. They get one point per post, and one point per comment on others’ posts, or in response to comments made on their own posts. This one student posted fifteen times during the semester — a little more than once a week — and she left nearly thirty comments …
Night Guard Question
Langage barrier with the dentist, so I’m asking here! I got my night guard today from the dentist, to deal with the teeth-grinding issues I have when I sleep. But when I first got it, the thing was REALLY tight, like, to the point of hurting. The dentist made some adjustments and all, but it still feels extremely tight. He said it would adjust to my mouth and feel more normal after some time. (It’s made of hard resin.) 1. A website I saw suggested wearing it during the day (about 8 hours per day) for a week before trying …
Voix Angelique
One of the things I miss, over here in Korea, is how few really interesting foreign acts come and do shows here — at least, how few of such shows are accessible to me, given my schedule and given the range of what comes here. There’s no demand here for, say, a group like the Trevor Watts Moiré Music Group, or, say, for someone like Pandit Ulhas Bapat to drop in on Seoul. Once, long ago when I still lived in Montréal, I got the chance to see Salif Keita live. Which, my friends, if you don’t know how cool …
Inept Security Theater
It’s one thing when people have to put up with security theater in the airports of the world, but my sense is that, unlike one might expect, the Korean airport security have not quite upped the ante on pointless and officious ritual. It’s possible to get through security relatively quickly. Though, uh, that might not be such a good thing. Recent high rankings for Korea’s Incheon Airport — the main international airport in the country — in customer service and airport quality seem to ring a bit hollow, once you hear the story that just hit the news… Because you …
Clarion West Write-a-thon, 2008
This year I’ve decided to do the write-a-thon again, though not in such a demanding way as I did last year. Last year, I wrote something like 15,000 words a week. Which made me, physically, a little sick, so I won’t be doing that again. (I need to get my blood pressure and health under control, plus I’m working on a big textbook-writing project and a few articles this summer.) So instead, I’ve got a more manageable goal in mind: I will write or co-write three or four stories during the write-a-thon, of which three will be going out by …
Damn You Little Old Ladies!
Damn you, little old ladies! How dare you hike up Wonmi Mountain at a pace that puts me to shame! Damn you and your smiling faces as you head back down past me, having passed me on the way up, while I’m still struggling along. Damn you, fellas with neon-yellow- and hot-pink-eared poodles who go along the mountain trails without a drop of sweat in sight, whilst I leave a veritable trail of stinky dew behind. Damn you, teenaged couple who, having reached the top, do not take ten minutes to stop dripping and catch you breath but immediately start …
The Story of Banana Mountain
My father used to tell me stories all the time, stories of the Old Country. That Old Country being Nyasaland, of course, and sometimes Rhodesia. Neither of those countries existed by the time he left the Old Country with my mother and me for Canada. His stories were weird in the kind of way that stories immigrants tell can be, but it used to hammer home to me the fact that, despite being a white man, he was absolutely a foreigner to the place I was growing up. It’s not to say he didn’t have advantages over, say, some of …
Fan Mail
I got fan mail today. Perhaps my first piece of Fan Mail ever.(1) It was about “Lester Young…” What a very nice feeling. It made my day. But now I should clear off my desk and grade some essays and exams. With a big grin on my face. 1. I’m not counting comments on the site here, because, although that also makes me happy and is appreciated, comments are not “mail.” I’m not counting emails from reviewers because, while reviewers can be fans, they’re not, er, “civilians” in the way I think of when I think of fans. I’m not …