Life in General I was up late last night copying links for my sidebar. Ungh. Now I must go attempt to teach, and then it’s a lunch date with some old friends, writing up report cards (I had to peel your boy off the wall last week. Please feed him less sugar. or Your child is destined to become an evil genius. Whatever you do, do NOT let him start hanging out with Jedi Knights. If he does, it’s all gonna be downhill from there.), marking notebooks, and then going home for a quick bite and meeting my friend Young …

Studying Korean. It’s hard. But fun, at least. Yes, really. These days, I am working on things like: – being able to say things in the imperative, like “Stop the car over there please,” or “Give me a phone card, please,” or “You have a nice day, now, y’hear?” – being able to do negations with the greatest of ease in all forms of address, from the most informal to the most formal. There are lots of ways to do this. Too many. Imagine in English being able to say, “Don’t do that!” or “Do that don’t!” or “Not do!” …

By the way, I had a strange conversation with a middle-schooler student who, when he was informed (by me) that Dunkin’ Donuts is an American brand, retorted by insisting that Dunkin’ Donuts is an “Honour Brand”. I have no idea what that means. But we did, as a group, manage to correlate the increase in Korean waist sizes with the incursion of foreign food in their diets… though the kids in the class continued to insist that they like Dunkin’ Donuts’ donuts because they are “delicious”…

Well, where to start? I have an ear infection, so swimming is out for a couple of weeks. The hospital experience here is a bit unusual. Thankfully I was helped by a friend of mine who is interning at the hospital but it was still a little weird. The doctor looked into one ear, and then the other, and said to himself when inspecting my (troublesome) left ear… “Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-HO!” It wasn’t all that reassuring. Then he pulled up a standardized presciption listing on his computer and sent it down to the main prescriptions desk of the hospital. I would hesitate …

The Incheon Airport Limousine bus glides through the heavy mist. I’m
almost there, and I need to shake off the lethargy. My girlfriend is already
high in the air, soaring toward Adelaide in a Cathay Air jet, and I feel somehow
deflated, exhausted.