Someone in my Facebook friendslist (whatever it’s called there) posted a thing about acupuncture and how it actually works, at least as an analgesic. And, well, yeah. Done right, it can work as an analgesic. It can work as advertised. Unless of course the practitioner is a total quack asshole who advertises that acupuncture (or other oil-of-smoke medications) will cure cancer. Somewhere on the Korean internet is a web forum where doctors hang out and chat, something like Dave’s ESL Cafe, and one of the long-running topics of complaint is how often patients show up at the conventional doctor’s office, …
Month: June 2010
There You Go Again, Reality
In the story I’m now working on (working title Capped), some software glitches (actually, algorithms in weak-AI software used on the stock exchange) causes a massive, worldwide economic crash (and especially one specific part of the world economic system) in the space of a few minutes. Ooops, then it happened in real life. Well, not as catastrophic (thank goodness) and not worldwide, and not with AIs exactly, but something eerily similar. So now I have to find a way that these circuit breakers could crash, or be overridden. Or something. That is, if my story is going to work in …
Beer Festival (at Homeplus) and man, VB sucks!
So, a guy I know at work (hi Dave!) alerted me to the fact that the local Homeplus (a grocery store chain) is holding a “beer festival” which means 5 bottles of a number of imported beers were on sale for for $10-ish. (Probably more like $12, but we think of W10,000 as about $10 here.) He specifically noted that Paulaner Hefeweissen was among those beers, and it turned out to be the only beer worth it, unless you have fond nostalgic reasons to want to drink Singha outside Thailand. (I figure there’s a reason why Beerlao — the Laotian …
You Do Realize That You’re Baring Your Soul To Me, Right?
I’d heard from others that teaching Creative Writing to undergrads, one tends to see things that those students don’t or can’t express anywhere else. In Canada, I recall hearing classes tended to have to wade through story after story of students’ first sexual experiences, of their best or worst sexual experiences, of imagined sexual experiences, and of course the perennial fantasies of sexual violence (mostly by male students). Well, I am happy to report that this isn’t my experience in Korea.
GBH and Unknown Famous Koreans
Be warned: this tune is slightly addictive. Not because Kylie Minogue is prancing about in a space-kimono getup, which is amusing the first time through, but because it has one hell of a groove. Not bad for 20th century music (of a relatively obscure sort — it has a poor release history, this track does). So is Towa Tei well known in Korea? Is it widely known that he’s a Zainichi Korean, or do most Koreans who hear of him assume (as does most of the West, I guess, and understandably) that he’s Japanese? It fascinates me which Koreans outside Korea …