One thing I hate having to do so much is say goodbye to people who’ve become an important part of my life. I find it’s a pretty recurring theme in the life of an expat–or of those who spend time with expats. (I remember a few Koreans back in Jeonju who seemed always to be heartbrokenly saying goodbye to people.) It’s probably harder when you’re staying, and even harder when you thought you, too, would be one of the people leaving and turned out not to be, as is my case. Two members of my writing critique group–well, a circle …
Tag: PERSONAL
Back
I am. Back in Korea. And will be for a few years, off and on of course. Long story, buy me a beer and I’ll tell you it. Or I may parcel it out in bits here, if I ever get the time to blog more often. Rome was outstanding, and I have places to recommend, which I’ll write up sometime this coming week. Hong Kong was a mad rush, and I have only one or two places to recommend, but they’re very good ones. I slept too little, including close to no sleep for about 40 hours the last …
As Promised: Gorgeous Renaissance Music
The other night, I was saying how the world is so full of beautiful things that one could hardly spare the time to be interested in all of them. (It was really my over-stated reason for not having managed to read any of Kelly Link’s stories yet; the real reason is just there are too many books, and SF pushes my buttons more than fantasy, even good fantasy.) I made some comment on how Renaissance music is utterly beautiful but almost nobody listens to it, and ended up promising to play some for the people who were over at my …
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year, everyone. I got a call from a former student the other day who was talking about the job she is working now, and how miserable it is making her, and how she’s not sure whether it’s better to quit in a year’s time (for the sake of her resume) or now (for the sake of her boss who won’t be able to retrain someone in time for the big project that will be thrown into crisis if she quits by then). After carefully telling her that I thought she had other options in terms of income (she …
The Year in Review
I don’t think I have the strength to write a whole year in review, because I ended up staying up all night to finalize my grading, and then waking up early because I hadn’t heard back from the office assistant I emailed the gradesheets to (for system entry). I’ll give it a stab, though. Let’s see:
Whew!
Well, I’ve been home for about 48 hours now, but it was a busy couple of days. Tuesday I had a full day of classes, well, from noon to 7pm; and today, I had an empty day but had some things to do, especially getting my ankle looked at. Oh, yes, sprinting across the Sydney airport on Monday morning, as well as the cold weather in Melbourne, resulted in a recurrence of the tendinitis in my left ankle. Which sucks. But it’s getting better, with hot packs and pills and so on. I’ve written a few posts that I’ll be …
What The Zen Cowboy Said
Caveat: I know zilch about horses. But I think this says something worth saying, just the same. Been a long time in coming, too. # You wonder, how could a cowboy be so much like the zen monk in that strange book your auntie from San Francisco sent you? He rides up as the sun is coming up, serene on his old stallion, a faint half-smile on his face, and dismounts. Hoisting the saddle off the horse’s back, he rubs the horse down and smiles at you. It’s the only greeting he ever gives anyone, but friendly enough. You ask …
ER Horror… and Why I Think “Just Bear It” is so Toxic
Miss Jiwaku needed to go to the ER the other night — no worries, she turned out surprisingly okay — but we saw people in pain, and the worst pain we saw was, indeed, emotional. There was a family in which the son had some kind of respiratory problem. He’d just had minor surgery and was recovering. His mom and younger brother had brought him in, and I can only guess that the father had been out with his buddies, drinking, because he seemed to show up all of a sudden and start shouting at people. Yes, shouting: it was …
An Update, Scattershot
Been raining hard occasionally, quite late at night. I’ve drawn close to the end of the first of three papers, which is pretty good considering all the crazy grading stuff I had to finalize last week, and some other stuff that came up over the weekend. I have some editing to do, I have a story on the go, I have some references to look up. I have a movie to go watch, maybe. We’ll see. But mostly? I have some serious laundry to do. And brewing of beer, but I have to find some place to crush my grains …
Back on my feet (sorta)
All the posts that have gone up in the past four or five days have been prewritten, in fact were pre-scheduled a week or more ahead of time. Why am I mentioning this? Because anyone following along on my blog might think I was okay the past weekend, when in fact I had the worst case of food poisoning I’ve had since Jakarta. Unfortunately, I think I know where I got it. I wish I could say it was my own fault… well, maybe it was, but I don’t know. I will say this: whenever I eat anything at Times …