Month: January 2014

On Trust

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I just made my first real, serious edit to Wikipedia. I’d been reading about Yu Gwan-sun the other day, so I couldn’t help but notice something interesting mentioned in he book I’m reading now, Donald Clark’s history of foreigners in Korea from 1900-1950. In passing, Jeanette Walter is mentioned, and if that doesn’t mean much to you, that’s not surprise. But if you do know who Yu Gwan-sun is, then you will realize the significance of the woman’s testimony: Walter was one of the missionaries working at Ewha University who (reportedly) pressured the Japanese into giving back Yu’s body, and …

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TEFL RPGing Aplenty

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So, a while back I posted about using an D&D-like role-playing game as part of my teaching with one of our students. (See: Youngmin and the Magic World.) I recounted the story, and promised an update, but I haven’t followed through… Not for want of RPG action, of course. Youngmin has since rhyme-battled a forest ogre the size of a high-rise, teamed up with a goblin and a dragon to beat his nemesis, then teamed up with a mysterious capoerista girl (yes, capoeira has made its way into the game) and the goblin village’s witch to take on the dragon …

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Last Night I Dreamed…

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… and woke remembering the dream, so I figure, it must be noteworthy. What I remember is that I was involved in making a film with Jetse de Vries. Mind, he was in the body of this other guy I know, a filmmaker in Korea named Josh, but it was Jetse alright, and he piled us all into a train with a ton of gear including stuff you’d see inside the van of the Lone Gunmen (the conspiracy theorists guys from The X-Files) that was about to cross Korea. Jetse/Josh began monitoring something that looked like a heart monitor, with …

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Akai EWI 5000 announced

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UPDATE (25 Jan 2014): Video of the thing in action. Doesn’t reveal much, but I’ve added it anyway: Original Post: I plan on getting back to my promised post about Korean education, but this news deserves a little post, so: Although I have a Yamaha WX5 waiting for me in Seoul, my newest piece of musical kit is an Akai MPKmini, which I picked up to help me get some soundtrack work done for Mrs. Jiwaku’s latest ongoing film project. It’s an SF film, so a spacey, electronics-heavy soundtrack is needed, and the MPKmini is cheap, portable, and versatile enough …

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Two Disconcerting Trends: Korean Kids, School Systems, and Parental Appraisal

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This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series The Bloom Effect

When we are contacted with inquiries as to our tutoring services, we always hold a preliminary “interview” before agreeing to start lessons. In fact, it’s not any kind of an organized interview: whoever is being requested as a teacher sits down with the student or students in question, and we chat for about half an hour. We sort of try to get to know one another, and along the way try to figure out of the kid is right for the way we teach, among other things. When it comes to kids, normally the parents come along, and it becomes …

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