Back in September, I wrote about how the municipal government was ruining my favorite mountain in Korea. That is, my local mountain.I figured I’d give a (mostly happy) update about that.
Category: GENERAL
The Asia Pages
Remember The Asia Pages, that blog that Jodi used to run down in wherever-it-was near Busan? Now that was a blog. A good Korea-blog. I miss that blog. Jodi, I hope you’re doing well out there, wherever you are!
IPA, or, The Boys Done Good…
Yeah, yeah, yeast is not gendered. I’m calling them that because the Belle & Sebastian song “The Boy Done Wrong Again” is in my head. (I never saw that video before looking it up just now — how gloomy — so no, that’s not a cry for help.) Anyway… the IPA I bottled a couple of weeks ago has mellowed some, and the carbonation on it is just excellent, excellent. Okay, the head still isn’t staying long — well, maybe the ring around the top, but not a thick creamy head — but that’s okay. It tastes good, good enough …
Pearls Before Swine, Or, The Time Has Come to Saw off the Brakes
You know. You know better. You know most people would rather eat what they always eat, think what they’ve always thought, drink what they’ve always drunk, read what they’ve always read. You know that so many people have no idea how interesting a world of diversity and difference is. They say “Everyone does it this way,” whether explicitly or implicitly, because they wish everyone was just as boring as they are. So many people — is it wrong to say most? I’m not sure it is — couldn’t be bothered. They’d rather just stay in their rut. It’s comfortable, it’s …
Question for Y’All , and a Little Manifesto
Is it just my imagination, or do administrative bureaucrats at institutions of higher education in Korea seem to be the sort of people who, through sheer incompetence, simply got shuffled from position to position until they ended up behind a desk? Sometimes the people sorting bottles in community centers, working jobs created especially for people with special needs come to min, actually. Test For Theorem: Step 1: Submit an abstract for a conference. Step 2: In the process of writing the paper, realize you had it wrong in your abstract, and change the scope, content, and thrust of the paper. …
Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble
Okay, this has reached the point of weirdness. My Coffee Stout is still fermenting. Or, rather, once again it has begun fermenting energetically, which is, I think, a fair bit weirder than “still.” I started this one beer on the 17th of November, which puts us at just over two weeks. That in itself isn’t quite so weird, but consider this: it pretty much stopped fermenting after about five days or so. I racked it to a carboy for secondary fermentation. There it stayed until it reached about 1.010, which was the gravity the last time I checked it. I …
Dear Young Master Fancyhair
Dear Young Master Fancyhair Who Was In the Men’s Toilets Beside My Office at 15:43 Today, You’re a disgusting pig. I don’t care how much money you spent on your designer glasses frames. I don’t give a damn how much time you spent assembling your wardrobe or preening your (sadly, rather goofy looking) hair this morning. I couldn’t care less how many hours you practiced that saunter of yours, either. If you take a crap and don’t wash your hands, you are a pig. Done. End of story. Finito. There’s no excuse. You’re not in that big a hurry. You’re …
General Update
Work: I am almost completely caught up on my grading. (The only things I haven’t graded are the reaction papers I was handed last night. I do, however, also need to tabulate participation scores for student discussions — their peers have ranked them; I think I can get a trust office assistant to do most of the data entry, though, which is nice.)”I am almost completely caught up on my grading” doesn’t sound impressive, I know, but usually at this point in the semester, I have a couple of huge piles to get through. I got a bunch done on …
Shine Competition
So did I mention there’s a competition you can take part in, for the upcoming SHINE anthology? The rules are here, and the prizes are here, and here are the excerpts you need to work with to play. If you are too lazy to click on the prizes, well, the top twenty (20!) entrants get a copy of the book and a T-shirt. But the top ten get one bottle from a wonderful selection of cognacs, whiskies, and wines. Jetse knows his hooch, so you definitely ant to enter. Go on! By the way, if I showed you the story, …
Pumpkin Ale
Well, and I’ve finally arrived at the last batch of homebrew I’ll be making in November — a pumpkin ale. I couldn’t get my hands on a big old orange pumpkin — or, rather, I figured I’d have less mess and trouble, and better results, working with a smaller pumpkin. Mind you, I haven’t seen too many “sugar pumpkins” in my neck of the woods, so I went with “단호박” which are the small greenish squash one sees often in Korean groceries. They’re sweet enough when you cook them, have a decent amount of flavour, and they’re available. So anyway, …