So I did my first hour in the English Cafe today. It was alright I suppose, though there was one conversation and one expression I thought worth noting. I’ll start with the expression first: 동부인 하다. It means “to go out with one’s wife” or “to accompany one’s wife”. What a nice thing, to have a specific verb for going out with your wife. Sounds nicer than saying, “We still date, even though we’re married now.” Anyway, I liked it. More amusing was this conversation I had with a girl who came to the cafe to interview a foreign teacher. …

Okay, it’s probably more like “our song, coming to a cell phone somewhere which you’re unlikely to call…”, but hey, it’s my baby and I am a little pleased. Apparently, SK (or is it KT? one of those big Korean telecom companies, anyway) has purchased the rights to provide users with a “Color Ring” using one of Dabang’s songs, “Deep End” which was penned by me. (See lyrics here.) What’s a Color Ring? In Korea, telephone companies provide all kinds of services to users. One of them, among the many hundreds, is that for a small fee, you get to …

As usual, Simon over at Simon World has another edition of Asia by Blog. It’s the easiest way to keep up with all kinds of news from all across the continent. And here’s a really interesting and well-written essay on American memory and forgetting, titled Nothing New In The World, presented by gareb in the journal The cultivation of a political Asian consciousness’. Finally, Sarong Party Girl wrote a very powerful love letter (full of bittersweetness, as the best love letters always are) to her parents that is worth reading. It made me think of what Lime told me after …

While I don’t like the fact that my Monday is chock full of holes (three one-hour classes, the first at 10:30am and the last running from 8:45-10:00pm), I do get a kick out of going to the practice room with a book of manuscript paper and chunking out chords until I’ve got a usable progression. I looked at something I attempted to write last year, and decided that, in fact, I was wrong to get angry when Seong Hwan claimed it was “a mistake”. What sounded like a sensible chord progression then suddenly sounded like a mess. But I could …

It’s not a complete overhaul, it’s not even something I’ve applied to my subpages. The graphics aren’t even 100% up to snuff, given that one has a border and the others, save a white line on the bottom of one, don’t. But anyway, I decided to go ahead with it, and I think the concept looks good. See my departments panel in the sidebar? The old multicolored text graphic is gone and now there are photobuttons in its place, plus a minibanner for imagisme, my photoblog. I’ve also updated the RSS feeds option, and I think that’s all the minor …

The weekend’s over, waaah, I sob and whine to myself and roll over, now suddenly awake, and consult my only alarm clock: my cell phone. It’s 6:30 in the morning, and if I didn’t need to go to the bathroom so badly, I’d be asleep again in an instant; except that I do need the bathroom. Desperately. Last night, I fell asleep dizzy and weak from some kind of bad intestinal activity and, well, what do you know? It’s finally worked its way through me. So I write up the syllabuses (syllabi?) for my classes. It takes an hour. You …

I was looking for a review on the newer version of Movable Type, trying to make up my mind about whether to upgrade my own blog software, and I found a wonderful review of MT 3.0 at Neil’s World and though it described version 3.0 (and is dated) I’m pretty much convinced. I wish I’d done this a while back. I was skeptical about it, especially because I didn’t want to have to delete one of the blogs I run (I have 4 right now, one of them a private notebook and the other three public) but since I’ve decided …

I’m not just grouchy when I am woken from sleep; I’m also pretty grouchy when roused from the far edge of almost-falling asleep. I’ve never noticed that before. Gotta watch that.

Actually, I just log into Bloglines, but when I get there, often enough I find, in my “Asiana” folder, one of Simon World’s Asia by Blog entries. They provide a useful set of links to issues not only in Korea but all across Asia. I follow at least half the links every time I go. Which means that at this hour, when I have precisely sixty more minutes to get to the office, I shouldn’t be going to Simon World at all. But you, on the other hand, should go there immediately.

I said that last post would be the last, but it isn’t. The last is just saying that it’s nice to be finishing work at a sane hour like 4:30, or, like yesterday and tomorrow, at 2:30pm. Ah, that’s downright lovely. Today Lime worked at the Protestant Hospital only a few minutes (by bike) from my home, so we met up, had dinner and then a long talk over coffee. It was absolutely great. Now, I’ve done my daily blogging and sort of caught up on my subscribed feeds at Bloglines, and I’m not working till 10:30 am tomorrow, so …