Mind Garten

Waking up With 2 Cats on Your Legs I woke up at 4:30am. Approximately 1.5 hours earlier than I wanted to. This may have been the cause of lack of bed space due to sharing my bed with 2 other very large and very heavy cats. Pleading with my body to sleep for at least another hour, I woke up at 5:30 and proceeded to shower. Having so much time before I needed to take off, I scrambled to put an extra hour into my computer games, games that I will probably never play again after a week or so due to the school workload. Putting my coat on and loading my backpack, I stood in the front doorway dumbfounded and kicking myself for not remembering that it rains in Oregon. Of all the things I brought down from Portland, I forgot to pack my umbrella, and now I was faced with the prospect of standing in the rain for 15 minutes waiting for the bus. Screw this. I hopped in my car and found a free parking spot relatively close to campus since it was only 6:45am. Plenty of time. I wa...

Update I just added a mailing list feature to this website. For those of you who I added to the mailing list, this is an example of what an update will be like. For those of you who I did not add to the mailing list, you can add yourself by going to the mailing list page and adding yourself. Or if you think that's too hard, you can always email me at everistj@ucs.orst.edu and tell me yourself.

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Not in Korea, Day 1 The rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. It's not entirely true that this is the first day that I've been not in Korea. In fact, it's an outright lie. I've been back in the States for 11 days now. I've moved back to my university town of Corvallis, found a new apartment, collected my cat from the friend who was catsitting him, and am now killing the time away until school starts again on Monday. All the waiting is boring me to death and it's just like all the waiting I did before I left Korea. And like Korea, I've been indulging myself in frivolous hedonistic activities such as computer games, reading books, and buying ice cream. *shudder* I'm eager for classes on Monday, so that I'll finally have a purpose in my life again. My new roommate herself has 3 cats of our own, so in our tiny cramped apartment, we have 4 cats! Our apartment is like the Serengeti except without the wildebeast and zebras. ...

Korea, Day 86 My adventure here in Korea is coming to a close. I have 4 more days left before my plane leaves on September 17th. I know I haven't been writing a lot lately. This is mostly because I've been counting down the days until I leave. There's not much to do when you have no job, and you're tired of being a tourist. Yesterday, I went to Beomeosa temple which is here in Pusan. The temple, like most Buddhist temples in Korea, is situated on a mountain, or large hill. Nearly all Buddhist temples are in the mountains because Buddhism was persecuted in the Josun dynasty in favor of Confucianism. Despite the dynasty's strong attempts, Buddhism still remains an integral part of Korean society today. Beomeosa is one of the largest temples in Korea. It attained this status by having a large amount of shrines, a beautiful site, and being very wealthy. Beomeosa consists of one main temple site, followed by a dozen temple branches all over the mountai...

Korea, Day 82 Yesterday was a day of animals. I have a few anecdotes about neglected pets in Korea. Plus I went to the Pusan Aquarium which had very impressive and beautiful exhibits. So I was standing on the subway platform in Dongnae, waiting to take the train to Nampo-dong. I tiny dog was walking around, quite curious and quite lost. He may have been abandoned or just separated from his owner. Regardless, I could tell he was new to the streets since he was fairly clean and reasonably friendly. To my suprise, he walked into the subway train with the rest of the people when it arrived. During the trip, he walked around looking nervous and seeking attention. He became startled by all the noises and the opening and closing door. He rode the train all the way to Jwacheon-dong which was about 15 miles away from where he started. Then he exited the train into an underground station. If he was lost before, he was really lost now. There wasn't a whole lot I could do ...

Korea, Day 80 Hooray! I finally upgraded my weblog site and now the archives are showing properly like they're supposed to. With the upgrade, a whole bunch of other new features came that make my life easier. One in particular sends updates via email to a mailing address. These can be used to setup a mailing list, so those that are too lazy to come visit my website can instead receive it in their mail box. Cool huh? I admit that I am starting to slack in the frequency of my posts. This is mainly due to my new sedentary lifestyle ever since I quit my job. So I've been spending this week playing Warcraft 3 , reading Harry Potter, and watching various movies. Since I've already talked about Warcraft, I'll talk about Harry Potter. I've been skeptical of the books and their striking popularity so much that I intentional avoided them for more than a year. I finally decided to start reading them since I could borrow the first 2 books for free from the E...

Korea, Day 77 This is my second day unemployed in Korea. I certainly am having a hard time finding things to do. So I've watched a couple movies now and spend way too much time in the PC bang. Currently I'm working on my Warcraft skills, specifically the Night Elves. The strategy isn't that difficult to master. It's managing hundreds of things at once and making quick decisions that are the parts I have a hard time with. I also have a hard time working well in organized chaos that I become nervous and frustrated when something unexpected happens. Perhaps it's the perfectionist in me that's winning me over and making me cringe whenever I play the game. Regardless, I'm determined to play the game over and over again until I improve my skills and start making some wins. 2 days unemployed and I'm already getting bored. I've been watching the game channel on television where they have news about the newest computer games and also show St...