Shocks are always sudden, and while we often learn to expect a shock or two in life, we never see them coming. That’s why they are shocking. Some shocks are a passing thing: I know a young woman (a student of mine here in Jeonju) who was just dumped by her boyfriend. One day he told her he loved her, and the next he said, “Forget I said that,” and dumped her. I can’t guess why he did this, but I know that the girl’s shock is a passing thing, for she is very young and very nice and is …
Category: PERSONAL
Musical Weekend
Well… this weekend was busy. Friday I mostly slept, aside from some phone calls and SMS messages. I didn’t get enough sleep, but I did sleep. Saturday I wrote an email, which I won’t get into here but it was important for me to write it. Saturday afternoon, I planned on reading and writing and working on my blog a little, but I got a call from Myoung Jae telling me that the band needed to meet that afternoon, if possible. He was sick and medicated on Contact, so I didn’t feel my own slightly sore throat, by then mostly …
Cong-Ja and The Confucian Society That Does Not Read Confucius
So it’s funny… The other night I was bitching to my friend Myoung Jae about how in Iksan, I was the only person I knew who’d actually sat down and read Confucius (or, as he’s known in Korea, Cong-Ja). Now, I’m not just talking about foreigners, I mean Koreans too. Korea’s supposed to be a Confucian society, after all. So you might think that a fair number of people are at least passingly familiar with The Analects or The Great Learning (I think this is the same book, by the way, but I am not sure). I asked Korean friends …
Tattoo
Okay, so in a string of comments on a previous post, I mentioned the idea I had to get a tattoo in Korean. I toyed with the idea as something I would do if I ever left the country, to remind me of my time here. I thought of some funny tattoos I could get. In Canada, I was thinking of getting something like, “I lived in Korea for ___ years and all I got was this lousy tattoo”… in Korean, of course. But I think I can do better than that. Here is the one that came to mind …
Ever Have This Feeling?
Ever kind of find yourself plodding along in one direction in life because it just seemed as good as any other, and then, sudden as a car crash, or a safe dropping out of the sky, you turn your head and realize you’re just on the wrong path altogether? And realize that you’d kind of intuited it all along, and begun to wonder whether your doubts were a sign of some kind of neurosis, and then, no, you realize, you were just going through the motions? You realize because of that adrenalin from the crash, or the safe falling, maybe, …
Singularity Action Group
During my bored surfing I found a link for the webpage of the Singularity Action Group. They strike me as slightly unhinged, and I have severe doubts the Singularity is coming anytime soon… just as I doubt the end of the world is nigh. Still, they’re interesting enough. I think they underestimate both the risks and benefits of a Singularity. What the heck is a Singularity? Uh… well… there are a lot of people who can explain better than me… even the previous link does a better job than me… But anyway, while the concept was first mentioned by Alvin …
Beautiful Distortions
This post is NOT about poetry. Just found a great site called London Photos with all kinds of Polaroid manipulations and stuff, all done without photoshop. Lovely. (Makes me wish I had such skill with a camera!) Click on the photo to go there and see more great stuff…
ENFP
Today everyone in the office took an online personality test. It’s the Jungian sort of Myers-Briggs test, where you’re assigned four letters that supposedly encapsulate your personality traits. In high school when I took this test I scored as an INFP, but with the I/E balanced at 50/50. This time, I scored as an ENFP… and I am sure on another day it’d be just as easy to score as INFP. The interesting thing was degree: I was only very slightly Extroverted, and only very slightly Feeling, while I was moderately Intuitive and rather pronouncedly Perceiving. Interesting, since I thought …
Test Time and Stinky
Teaching invitations is very fun, sometimes. It’s the first unit I’ve broken away from the textbook for, because the textbook isn’t really very clear about what’s really a very simple process. When you want to invite someone out to do something, you need to do four things: Figure out if they like the kind of activity you’re thinking of inviting the person to join you in… Figure out when the person is free to join you in this activity. Extend an invitation to the person. Set up a time and place to meet. Some classes get this much more easily, …
Swimming and Space Fashion
Tonight I started swimming again, after work, and that was pretty uneventful except for some cute kids taking lessons and their teacher who was REALLY hassling them. He kept teasing them about being scared and then reassuring them they’d be okay. And of course they were. But when I left the pool, I heard a REALLY loud ruckus coming from over where the students are holding their festival. Loud, sexy music… what else could it be, but… YES! A FASHION SHOW! Now, this may surprise you. I used to hate fashion shows in Canada, I hated them with a passion. …