Hey, you, foreign teacher living in Seoul/Incheon/Gyeonggi-do! Go help a scholar find out more about the expat experience in Korea by filling out this survey. I found most of the questions on this survey interesting, though a few (such as assumptions of what “nationality” means among expatriates) were a bit oddball to me. (Via Hub of Sparkle)
Month: March 2009
Diet Soap #3! (Get One Free!)
Diet Soap #3 is finally out! It includes my poem “Tian Ju Zhao,” which is the first poem ‘ve published in ages. (Though a couple more will be showing up in a future issue of Diet Soap.) There’s a heck of a lineup too, including none other than Howard Waldrop! You can pay to download or get a print copy at Lulu, but there’s a special offer on, at least at the time of writing, where you can request a free copy of the current issue in PDF format (presumably to see whether you like it enough to subscribe). Might …
Got a Kick Out Of…
A few things I got a kick out of in the last few days: Seeing a drunken old man jogging in place on the express commuter train out of Seoul. He jogged for ten or fifteen minutes, stopped, rolled his head around for a while, then jogged some more. I seemed to be the only person taking any notice at all of his performance. It was amusing. Seeing my name on a few of the “Here’s who I nominated!” lists for the Hugos and Campbell Award. I didn’t see a lot of these, but I saw a few, which is …
噬 (shì)?
I’m looking for a Mandarin word I could use as a translation of “devour.” It ought to have a visceral feeling, though it’s a word used by a Chinese ghost hunting the Japanese bioweapon experimenter who killed him with bubonic plague (or some similar horrific illness) in Manchuria back during the war. It’s the final finishing touch on a story I want to send out as soon as possible, maybe even tomorrow. I’ve tried a few online dictionaries but I don’t know any Mandarin at all, so I don’t trust any of the results. I’ve emailed/twittered a few Chinese speakers, …