Okay, the last poll closed out with the following results: for the question, What would you like Gord to post more about on this page? 33% of the 15 voters chose the response, “Monkey. Tell us about Monkey.” Second place with 27% of the votes was the response, “His own creative writing: give us poems and bits of stories!” You can see the full results here. As a result of this poll, I shall be making some changes in my posting here. I’ll be putting up more creative writing, more reminiscences of expat life in Korea as well. And to …

Yeah, apparently it looks like all the water in the city will be shut off, for two full days. Not our zone, it seems, but the complete city. My first reaction is something I still hold to: some government official must have either screwed something up that needs to be fixed in a hurry, or else some high official made a command decision while on a power-trip: “Well, then turn off the water for a couple of days and fix XYZ.” Meanwhile, we peanuts and other vegetables will be without water tomorrow and the next day. I don’t know how …

Taken as a break from the research I’m doing while working on this article… I found this on Marvin’s site: Take the quiz: “Which Random Irish Gaelic Phrase Are You? “Pog mo thoin Pog mo thoin – ‘Kiss my ass.’You’re one tough bastard, and if anyone doesn’t like it, they can kiss your ass. You enjoy fighting and causing grievous bodily harm. Hey! What are you lookin’ at, punk?

A big stir went through the office today because apparently the water supply for our zone of the city is scheduled to be turned off for two days starting tomorrow. Let me say that again in case your eyes skipped over it: apparently, the water supply for our zone of the city is scheduled to be turned off for two days. How much this “zone” covers is difficult to say (especially considering that everything is hearsay), but it includes the whole of the University campus and a lot of the nearby suburb in which most of the foreign professors live. …

Next week on Wednesday we have a day off celebrating the birthday of Buddha. Amusing that at this Christian University we all worked on Good Friday, but have a day off for the birthday of the Buddha. Hmmm.

Waaaah. I have a rash. It’s on my right arm, and it’s all over my right side and my back. If I don’t touch it, it doesn’t itch, but if I do touch it it drives me crazy with the itch. I’m thinking that on that hillside when I sat down with Lime, the hillside overlooking the ocean, that I shouldn’t have lay down on my back in only a t-shirt. I’m thinking perhaps it was some kind of poison plant on the ground. I wouldn’t know, but… there’s no other sensible explanation for this rash. Luckily for her, she …

It seems that everywhere I see articles by this Christopher Hitchens fellow, and they’re usually quite interesting. At The Atlantic this month, Hitchens has published one about Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, and his Scouting movement. It’s titled Young Men in Shorts and it’s rather worth a read. Its emphasis on the outdoors and on personal courage and initiative notwithstanding, the scouting ethos had always had something modern and totalitarian about it. B-P could not even keep his nature notes under control: he told his trusting readers that industrious bees were to be admired: “They are quite a …