I don’t mean to be nasty about this. I really am wondering. So are most of the people I work with, and most of the foreigners I know personally in Korea. So if anyone can offer me some explanation, it would be very nice. I have found that that during the summer months, Koreans’ sense of a comfortable working temperature is, in general, on average, close to my sense of a comfortable working temperature. Sometimes I’ve preferred it a little cooler, and sometimes it has been Koreans I’ve worked with who preferred their office environment a little cooler than my …
Tag: KOREA
Her Japanese Nurse Friend’s Favorite “Character”
Yes, my girlfriend actually has a friend who is a Japanese nurse. (Get your minds out of the gutter, all you naughty people.) The real question that came to my mind is this: what the heck is a “Miffy”? Calls out from the wilderness to Google, the Keeper of All Knowledge. Oh, that. Okay. Pan-Asian Cartoony cutesy character thingamadoodle. That was what I thought when I googled Miffy. That gave me pause. Why are these things so popular in Asia? I can understand a cultural difference in which people came to like “cute” things much more unabashedly here — I …
Decorum
This is one thing I think we miss. We miss, meaning we as a society long for it, we wish we still had it around. Or, at least, we think that we do. Or, at least, some os us think that we do. Not that your ancestors and mine are all that likely to have been courtly, or refined. Most of our ancestors were not like that. Most of us Westerners’ ancestors — those of us of European extraction, I mean — were drinking liquor all day long because the water was poisonous. They were dying at age thirty of …
The Book Hocker and the Real Percentage
Well, I can’t REALLY complain, I got a new book to scam exercises from, but I tend not to enjoy the kinds of “presentations” that some guys make which really consist of them hocking books. I can usually tell within a few minutes of silent scanning whether or not a textbook will be useful to me or my students, and all the talk in the world won’t change how I perceive my students’ needs. Of course, it might be thatI’m generalizing about students and that in fact, many classes could sort-of handle the kind of text we looked at today, …
Poetry Reading in Jeonju
Lime called me this afternoon with some news. A co-worker, Jason, and I had asked her about whether poetry readings of the sort we’re familiar with back in the West happen in Korea. She said she didn’t know of any such venues or regular readings, but said she’d keep her eyes open for us. As part of the local traditional culture festival, there was a reading held at the top of a hill. It featured, according to Lime, some of the major voices in contemporary Korean poetry, all people from Jeollabuk-do. And before I give my honest impressions, I want …