One of my students from last semester asked, after I’d failed to mention it, whether I’d be running a class website like I had last semester. She seemed to be relieved that I’d be leaving it up, including the list of useful links in the sidebar. I’d say that in itself is a sign that the site was a useful resource for students. Now I just need to go in there and retool it so updating is less of a hassle. Should be easy, if I can work in a few template thingies and so on. Maybe this weekend… Another …
Category: KOREA
On The Ever-Raging English Teachers in Korea Debate
One of the best posts I’ve seen to date on the ongoing Foreign-English-Teachers-Are-All-Sex-Maniacs mediafest in Korea can be read at Scribblings of the Metropolitician. As for me, this crap is old news. A few weeks after arriving in Korea, I was accused of being a sex maniac and a tempter because I was having a conversation with a female Korean bartender, who was explaining the names of the various bar snacks to me. Which says a lot about the idiot who was saying that to me, much more than it says about me. Most human societies are obsessed with sex …
Do You Really Want to Know…?
How many readers are actually curious at what it’s like to have one of the more disturbing medical examinations a man can have across a language/culture barrier? Show of hands? And yes, it does involve the prostate. (And I’m fine. Just wondering whether to blog this in the interests of, well, amusing people, or not.)
BigHominid’s Mad, Man, Mad
For anyone doubting the truth of that statement, see his Konglish ravioli night post.
A nation of phone junkies…
Here’s an interesting article from December, probably blogged elsewhere, but which caught my attention. It’s titled Korea becoming a nation of phone junkies: South Korean teenagers are so attached to their mobile phones that some researchers are classifying them as ‘addicts’, according to recent reports. Almost a third are obsessed with their phones to the point that they sometimes imagine hearing them ringing when they are not. There’s more, including a student group campaigning for monthly voluntary phone-free days, in order to help people get people back in touch with other forms of social interaction. Kind of like how Adbusters …
The Sock Puppet Story
It’s a sign that I’m on the right track, how far behind I am on the Kushibora scandal. Now, you know you’ve got a community of sorts when there’s an actual “scandal” because someone’s been (supposedly) misrepresenting himself. Now, many of the people who read me these days aren’t connected to the Korean blogosphere, so I’ll give you the background you need in case you’re like me and prefer to get the beans from the first site instead of linking like mad: There is a vibrant commenting culture on the set of websites included in the “K-blogosphere”, meaning blogs that …
The Devil’s Language?
While looking up Japanese idioms for a section of my newest story draft, I found this interesying little tidbit on a site on the language: In the 16th century, St. Francis Xavier reported to Rome that the Japanese language had been devised by the Devil to prevent the spread of Christianity in Japan. Many who have attempted to crack the Japanese market and learn Japanese might agree with St. Francis! Occasionally I joke with Koreans that the Korean language was designed by the Japanese to make transmission of Western technical knowledge into Korea slower, as a part of their colonial …
War Museum Controversy
About a year ago, whilst traveling in Canada, I happened on a news report about a display at the Canadian War Museum being altered because some soldiers were embarrassed at the statistics about STD rates among Canadian soldiers serving during the Korean War. I clipped the article, intending to blog it, but then misplaced it and only found it again just now.
The Terrible Trio
Meetings with the three students who participated in the mini-outburst in class the other night were mixed. One student was very reasonable, asked me to reconsider the grade on a paper she’d submitted a long time before, and said that she felt the emotional hysterics of the evening before were out of line. The second student, once she saw that the main reason her grade had tanked, and that a higher grade on her final paper wouldn’t make a difference, acquiesced quickly and left. The third student, however, decided to make things as uncomfortable as she could. She questioned my …
You’d Think
UPDATE: There’s an update to this post, but it’s in the private posts. If you read it, you’ll see why. You’d think by the time graduation rolls around, every student would have learned that doing homework leads to good grades, and not doing homework, especially homework graded in cumulative performances rather than leveled evaluation, leads to bad homework. You’d think they’d know to make sure what the basis of their grades will be at the outset, to pay attention when it’s stated and ask carefully if they missed it. And most of them have. Most of them.