Korea, Day 18

The interesting thing is how Koreans judge the quality of something. If something is popular, it must be good quality. Although, to be fair, Americans make the same mistake as well. However, we have certain things like watchdog groups, investigative media, and the Better Business Bureau. I'm not certain that Korea has any of these beyond a slightly inquisitive media. Beyond that, all reputations are based on word of mouth and number of people.

One example is last night, a Korean friend and I were looking for a bar. I had the friend make all the decisions because I couldn't read the signs to tell what kind of places they were. Eventually we selected our bar based on how many people were there. Apparently we were at a good bar, but I'm not sure how useful that was since all we had was bottled beer which could be had anywhere.

Another instance is the school that I work at. My school is very popular and very reputable. As a result, many people want to send their kids to our school. I don't know if our school has ever been a "good school", but much of the teaching tactics are centered around keeping the kids happy and, vicariously through the kids, the parents happy. If the parents are happy, they want to continue sending their kids to our school. As a result, it's difficult to discipline kids who are continuously disruptive or who have no desire to be here. If I had my choice, I would teach only kids who wanted to learn English. However, I teach all elementary school, so most of them really don't want to be there anyway.

My school is a hogwan, which is basically a private school students go to to specifically learn English. The most common goal is to pass the TOEIC test which is a common requirement for many jobs such as sales, business, waitressing, etc.. Not all places require TOEIC, but "good places" do.

The only problem with the TOEIC test is that it is exclusively a written test. So you can have Koreans that pass the test with 95% and can't speak a word of English. This is also a source of conflict in the hogwan as well. A few of our Korean teachers can't speak English very well but teach all vocabulary and grammar. Some teachers can speak English well and they teach well. But the ethical question is, should we be teaching students to pass the TOEIC test or should we try and help them speak?

The rationale for including foreign teachers in the hogwan system is to help with speaking and pronunciation. However, many foreigners are underqualified and simply don't care about student learning. Many are just here for the money, to have fun, and to date Korean women. In fact, this majority contributes to the low level of respect that foreign teachers initially receive. Though they may be polite to you and offer you gifts, they are only thankful that you are here to fill in the marketing position for their school.

Normal public school is going to end July 19 and the hogwan is shifting its schedule to daytime to accomodate the influx of new students. Most parents put their kids in hogwans for the summer to study harder. There are several gems in my classes who have bright futures. They speak well and many of the good speakers have the intention of enrolling in good universities in Korea or abroad. However, most of my good students got bumped up to the "elite" class. There, they are being taught only by Korean teachers with a little more intensity.

Yesterday, I tried a new tactic with my 7-8 year old phonics class. We sung "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and "Patty-Cake" together which turned out to be a huge success. I kept their attention for a good longer time then I normally could. And I can't really discipline them or yell at them because they wouldn't understand me anyway. "Patty-Cake" was a real hit because of the clapping and hand motions and the fact that the lyrics of the song included the name of a student in class. Everyone kept saying, "Do me, do me!". We did "Patty-Cake" for about 15 minutes. After singing we played picture bingo for the rest of the class. I think edu-tainment may be my only option to educate these little kids since I can't control them very well.

Korea, Day 16

I met another Korean Jehova's Witness today. This would make the second in 2 weeks. She introduced herself with a textbook perfect "How do you do?" and "Pleased to meet you." She then tried to hand me a pamphlet talking about the end of the world or something. I politely declined her offer saying that I had already received one. Of course, by this time, I was feeling a little resentful that I had to repeat this whole affair. Just then, a bit of mischief twinkled in my eye and smirking grin appeared on my face.

I complimented her on her English and said that she spoke very well. But I politely informed her that we no longer say "How do you do?" because it is old and antiquated. Instead, we normally say "What's up ma nigga?" That is the most common phrase we use when meeting someone for the first time. It's very popular. Just watch the movies if you don't believe me. I also said that it's very popular with black people, that if you say it to them, they will love you and surely take one of your doomsday pamphlets. We had to sound it out a couple times to get the "ma" and the "nigga" right, but I think she walked away with something learned that day.

(Disclaimer: I'd like to say that this happened, but it didn't. I only thought of this after the fact and am kicking myself that I didn't do it.)

But this leads us to the topic of Korean gullibility in the face of Western bluntness and rudeness. I have one friend who finds the typical Korean social ettiquette very amusing. So amusing in fact that one time, when he was hailing a taxi, an old woman stepped in front of him to try to get the taxi before him. He then went around and stepped in front of her. The old lady followed suit and jumped in front of him. This continued back and forth for a couple blocks down the street. My friend continued this just to see how far they would actually go. He didn't actually care about getting a taxi first, but just amused by the tenacity of this old lady and him racing down the street.

In another instance, a different friend got sidestepped by a Korean when trying to hail a taxi. When the taxi pulled up and the Korean opened the door, he simply yelled at the Korean and he was so embarassed that he let the foreigner have the taxi. Apparently Koreans can't stand up in the face of Westerner's blunt demands.

Another instance was the DVD room. This is basically a place you rent DVDs and go play them in a private room. There's windows in all the doors, so you can see what people are watching. When my Korean friend and I were leaving the room, I looked into the windows to see what everyone was watching. My Korean friend got really embarassed and told me to stop it. My question is, if the DVD rooms are meant to be private, why are their windows on the doors? Apparently DVD rooms are usually a romantic couple's activity, but still, the windows and the implied privacy just don't make any sense.

Another thing that gets on your nerves after being here a while is that when a subway or elevator door opens, the people trying to get in don't give the people trying to get out any room to do so. So as a result, the people trying to get out have to force their way against the current of people. Its absolutely ridiculous.

Korea, Day 15

Experience the Korean tea houses, marketplace noodle shops, underground malls, and Koreans with afros.

My Sunday was pretty dull. I spent the first 4 hours of my morning (which started at 2pm) watching English language movies with Korean subtitles. I think they were Hunt for Red October and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. However the transmission of the video was fairly incompetent, since the volume was an order of magnitude smaller than the volume of the commercials. So whenever they cut to a commercial, the TV would blast its volume and wake me up from a dazed stupor.

After 4 hours of wasting my life in my room, I felt compelled to get out and do something. I called up one of my friends and he said there was a Canada Day celebration at some pub. So I thought, what the heck? I went to the exact same bar I got drunk at 2 nights ago, had one beer, and watched the second half of the World Cup final. My friend didn't show up yet, and I realized that I didn't really feel like being here.

So I left I decided to wander around the streets looking at all the shops. One thing to understand about Busan, Korea is that nearly every corner of every block in the city is a business establishment. Many people usually live at their place of business. So there was a lot to explore. The area I was in was PNU (Pusan National University) which is a fairly trendy place to be. I walked down this one strip of road that had all this activity. One thing I noticed was that nearly all the shops were devoted to women's interests such as clothing, cosmetics, shoes, jewelry, etc. Sure there was a couple stores that had glasses or cell phones, but this was all very trendy stuff.

Still weary and dazed from my 4-hour movie trance at home, I took the subway back towards home and spent the remaining 3 hours of my day at a PC bang (PC room).

Monday was our hard-won day-off for the declared national holiday to celebrate Korea's achievement in the World Cup. Of course, I didn't participate in any of those festivities, nor did I know where they were going on. Eager to avoid another wasted day like yesterday, I took the time to travel down to Youngkwang bookstore to get some Korean grammar and conversation books.

Youngkwang is actually a very famous bookstore in Busan. However there is a very serious market struggle going on. Sure, Youngkwang is doing okay now, but just down the road, a large chain book store from Seoul, Kyobo, just opened up for business. Kyobo bookstore was actually the scene of a protest a couple weeks ago by supporters of the local bookstores. I haven't actually been to Kyobo yet, but it sounds like they're the Starbucks of bookstores since they've harnessed the selling power of "atmosphere". You can think of Kyobo as your Barnes & Nobles, or Borders books or whatever.

After I got my books, I went to some random pub and spent 4 hours reading the books and trying to avoid watching the large screen television in front of me. I ordered what I thought was a bowl of fried rice and turned out to be a full course meal, complete with kimchi, soup, a type of coleslaw, and some chicken-fried steak which was actually pork. Of course, I should have known better by now that every meal comes with side dishes and more than you can eat. The only place you can get one-course meals in Busan is at the 7-11 or Family Mart.

After 3 hours of reading, I ordered a beer. I was surprised again when they gave me the bottle, a glass, a bowl of popcorn, and a bowl of peanuts and cashews. Again, I got more than I was expecting.

I then went with a Korean friend to a marketplace noodleshop. We had some kind of noodlesoup that was very spicy. I've been getting used to having spicy foods in this town. Nearly every Korean meal I've had has been spicy. It was pretty good, and I almost finished it, but I dared not drink the broth. I probably would have started sweating profusely from spice and pain.

Next we went to a teahouse in a very secluded place on the top floor of a building. The aroma in the shop was very intoxicating. We ordered some kind of tea which came with a tiny kettle with some sort of plant stuffed in it and a thermos of hotwater. The tea itself was subtle yet tasty. I found it very remarkable how much tea we could make from this one plant since we went through three thermoses of hot water over the course of 2.5 hours. I had real difficulty with the seating arrangements though. We didn't sit on the floor like you would expect, but sat on these recliners with short tables. As a result, I could not put my legs underneath the table, so they were bumping into the side. How can anyone sit like that?

On my way home on the subway, I watched Korean music videos in the subway station. Apparently they can reach a fairly large audience this way. While I was watching the video, I noticed several Koreans wearing afro-wigs and getting into some kind of gang battle. These are 70's style afros, and they must seem to think that they give them the stigma of being dangerous men. It's quite funny actually.

Thus ended my day-off and the next day I start doing classes again.

Korea, Day 12

Over the past couple days I've been hanging out more with Koreans instead of foreigners which has gained me a much more interesting insight into the culture. I've experienced the karaoke rooms, Korean restaurants and soju.

Yesterday, the hogwan boss took the whole elementary school staff out for dinner as a going-away party for 2 teachers. One, a Korean, transferring to a different branch, and a foreigner, who coincidentally happened to have his contract end on Friday and is no longer going to work. The partiers included the very same foreigners who staged a strike the previous day, and the very same Korean teachers who secretly applauded our efforts because they got the day off too.

Of course, a little background might put things into perspective. You see, even though the hogwan knew that the foreign teacher was leaving, they still hadn't found anybody to replace him. They even asked him to stay an extra 20 days. He rightfully demanded more money to stay for the extra days, and they politefully declined. So, the hogwan currently has a teacher shortage which will probably end up getting filled by one of the Korean teachers. Pretty sucky situation, but pretty typical.

For the party we went to a restaurant where you sit on the floor with your shoes off. This isn't the first time I've been to a place like this. I have no problem sitting on the floor since I do it a lot anyway, but some Westerners have real back problems when trying. Our dinner was quite a treat. We had bulgogi, which is basically barbecue beef. There's charcoal barbecues embedded right into the tables, and you cook the meat right on the table. When the meat is done, you pick it right off the grill with your chopsticks and dip it in some sauce and eat it. Very tasty. There was a type of barbecue sauce that was difficult to describe, and a very tasty sesame seed oil that does well with the meat.

So the boss, as ritual dictates, left the dinner early to pick up the bill, but he also left the group with some money to have more fun tonight. The other 2 foreign teachers that we were with opted out to go to the foreigner bars. I, for one, was not ready to give up just yet. We did however receive an invitation to go to the foreigner bar after midnight when things get more interesting.

So it was just me, and 8 Korean women out on the town. So what do Korean women coworkers do for fun? Well, I can only guess that what we did was similar to a "typical outing". I can only guess how the dual presence of a man and a foreigner changed behavior and ettiquette.

The first thing we did was go to the karaoke bar. Now this isn't quite what you expect. I had heard about these places and was interested in seeing one. Basically, a karaoke bar consists of a dozen or so private rooms that you rent for a while to sing your favorite tunes.... in private. Of course, you have your friends as your audience, but the whole idea of singing in private secluded rooms seems very absurd to me. Nevertheless, I went and I sang.

They mostly sung Korean music that I had never heard of. Most Korean music has a lot of techno-like features to it. This is in contrast to Western music which is usually instrumental in nature, only because it is easier to market with a touring band. Popular Korean music doesn't seem to have this restriction. Hence, there's a lot of unbridled digital music out there.

Now, I knew I had to sing. I could have easily opted out, and they would have understood. But dammit I came to Korea for a reason, and I'm going to get the most out of this trip. Very self-conscious and not very music savvy, I know I needed to get some more beer in me before I could do it. I drank and watched the Koreans make fools of themselves for a half hour. 2 drinks later I was singing "Under the Sea" from the Little Mermaid.

I also sang Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody". I think they were more impressed by the first 2 since the rapid wording was very difficult for a Korean to perform. Finally, out of principle, I felt the need to sing some obscene angry music with Marilyn Manson's "Beautiful People". But somehow it didn't quite come out as I expected. Without good ol' Manson screaming into the mic, the song became really deflated and lackluster. It didn't quite give the impression I wanted to make.

By this time, the time on the machine had ended, and we were deciding what if anything to do. I made the tactful suggestion that we could go to the foreigner bar we were invited to at dinner. The name of the bar is Soul Trane which is one of several very popular places for foreigners. Soul Trane was actually the scene of some controversy earlier in the month. The police raided the bar because they were dancing without a dance permit. In addition, they forced a lot of people to give urine samples for drug testing. 2 foreigners were among these people, and being too drunk to think things through, they failed to realize that it's not legal to demand a urine sample and could have refused. So they got busted and spent 2 months in jail without being charged with a crime before finally being deported. One was actually smoking weed, and the other just got it second-hand.

So, details aside, we took a taxi to the famous Soul Trane to see what it was all about. The place isn't as big as I expected it to be with such a reputation. We arrived at 12:30 which was still pretty early for this bar. A band was finishing its performance, and there were scant people. To my surprise, Stanley, the guy who I stayed with the first few days, and also the guy who is our English-speaking liaison to the hogwan was sitting at the bar by himself. I went over and talked to him and found out that "he's working". Apparently he's here to try and recruit an English teacher since they still don't have someone to fill in for the recent shortage. It all seemed very pitiful.

By this time, our group had dwindled down to only 4 women and myself. We were then accosted by this really drunk Korean guy. Well, weren't really accosted, but we certainly were by Korean standards. He kept trying to talk to the ladies and kept touching their arms and whatnot. I was actually surprised to see the ladies very visibly uncomfortable and completely unequipped for the situation. This Korean had obviously been heavily influenced by Western culture since he was acting like a Westerner would when looking for women. Being a man and a foreigner, I sort of felt a chauvinistic and cultural obligation to take care of the situation. I tried to talk to the man and say they were with me, but I don't think he spoke much English. Obviously my territorial grunts were not impressing him, so I asked the bartender to help since she would likely be far more adept at handling situations like this. And it worked, he didn't bother us anymore and his friend seemed very embarassed since he gave us a deep bow of apology.

So it was 1:30am and the ladies were ready to go home. I, however, was not. I decided to stay and see what else happened. I talked with other foreigners there. Many foreign men in this country have Korean girlfriends. I was actually quite amazed by the number of good-looking women hanging around real butt-ugly guys. I hung out with a few geeky guys who all had Korean girlfriends and knew lots of Korean women. Of course, mind you that these Korean women they associate with are significantly transformed from your average Korean girl. They wear sexy clothes, act like Westerners, and have the appearance of having been around the corner once or twice. (I don't know what that means) Needless to say, I was amazed, amused, and disgusted all at the same time.

So the night drags on and both of my foreigner co-workers show up to the bar. (The 2 of 3 that actually drink and go out.) One was really quite drunk and it was interesting to see the party life-style that he's been living for the duration he's been here. Of course, before I knew it, it was 6am and the sun was up. I followed my drunk co-worker to see what happens at this hour in the morning.

I think the highlight of my day was meeting Johnny. Johnny was hanging out with my co-worker, so that's how I met him. I've heard quite a bit about Johnny because he's a recruiter for schools in this country. Johnny is a Korean-American, so he's speaks perfect American-English. This also makes him very easy to communicate with. Anyway, Johnny has a long history with the hogwan I work for. He worked there for a long time and developed most of the programs that we do currently. Apparently he was very successful and brought the hogwan a lot of business and reputation. The reason for his success is two-fold, 1) he's a competent person who speaks Korean and 2) he's not crippled by Korean culture and politics. Of course, I don't know how much of this is true. He could be a swindler just like the rest of the Koreans, but so far he's been the most down-to-earth Korean I've met so far.

Of course, the current issue right now is our hogwan's refusal to get a new teacher through Johnny. Johnny charges a commission which is not too unreasonable, plus he has tons and tons of connections and know-how. This is the reason why Stanley was at the bar earlier that night. Trying to side-step the middle man. However, I have to agree with Johnny that direct recruiting is a losing proposition. Most people in-the-know won't trust you, and people who aren't in-the-know will be resentful after they sign the contract. With all this uncertainty clouding the hogwan business, reputable middle-men seems like a great thing.

Of course, Johnny is a businessman too. He told me how once I finish my schooling, he could get me a professor position at one of the universities here teaching engineering. You don't even need a Ph.D. In fact, I could probably get one right now with only a bachelor's. But I don't want to, since I have plans for more schooling. Johnny also complimented me by saying that I'm one of the few foreigners in Korea who actually care about getting kids to learn. He said that I'm about 1 in 50. From what I've seen, this is probably not far-fetched, but you have to be careful about what people tell you in Korea. It could be just another line of bullshit.

So after having microwaved rice at the 24-hour Family Mart (7-11 competitor), I headed off to catch the subway with another drunk foreigner whose been in Korea for only 30 hours. A lot less time than I. Johnny apparently gave us bad directions since we never found the subway stop or we were just too drunk to follow the directions. We got a taxi to take us to the subway station. Very sad. Of course, I sat in the front seat with my seatbelt, and the new guy sat in the back where there are no seat belts. I joked to him that if we crashed, he would be the one to die and the driver and I would be saved. Morbid humor indeed, but you have to laugh at the absurdity of it all. The straps are there, but the buckles are pushed in between the cushions because they "get in the way".

So I got home and slept until 1:30pm. I then spent about 4 hours watching TV, trying to recoup. Uncharacteristically, I got completely obsessed with 2 English-language movies on TV. It was 5:30pm before they were done. I was supposed to call a friend at 5pm but slacked. I can't call cell phones from my room phone, so I had to go to a pay phone and make the call. At the subway station, there's 30% coin-op phones and 60% card-op phones. I've never actually seen anyone use the card phones, so its kind of irritating when you urgently need to use the phone.

I just remembered that I was asked to keep the events of this evening secret. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think its something of a cultural sensitivity of segregating the personal life from the professional life. Maybe I'll understand more later. What I can tell you is the things I learned about Korea.

I had the most delicious spicy chicken stew and drank soju, a very common drink in Korea. If you're not careful, soju will knock you out fast since it doesn't taste that strong. I learned that if you have an empty glass, it will be filled by someone next to you. Filling your own glass is not something you do. I'm not sure if its rude or just awkward. You also pick up the glass when its being filled. When filling, you hold the bottle with 2 hands if you don't know someone, or one hand if that person is your friend. If you don't want anymore soju, you have to leave the glass not-empty. This is actually the case for all food and drink in Korea, which leads to a lot of food waste. Not-finishing your food is a must in any dining situation.

Also, the person who was going to pay the bill flipped back and forth a couple times. I wasn't quite sure what to do in that situation, but I do think that the oldest person usually ends up being the one to pay. This theory coincides with my age being asked earlier in the evening. I'm not sure though. There was a lot of subtextual interactions going on that I don't fully understand yet, and it may be difficult to illicit explanations.

And finally, I went home and have spent the last couple hours in a PC bong typing on the computer, sitting next to Koreans playing the stupidest of stupid games. Koreans have such poor taste in computer games, its sad. They play mostly Korean remakes of well-established gaming genres such as Bubble Bobble, BomberMan, TankWar, quizzes, chatrooms, so on and so forth.

So now I have to figure out what I'm going to do with my Sunday and my extra day off on Monday.

Korea, Day 10

It was quite an interesting day in Korea yesterday. It was my fourth day of classes at the hogwan, and my seventh day staying at the yeogwan.

For starters, I had a long conversation with my yeogwan landlady. What we talked about, I'm not quite sure. She did provide me with the means of getting rid of some of the mosquitoes in my room. She gave me this insect repellant device, and they were somehow supposed to be killed by it or make them run for the window. I'm not sure which, and I'm not sure if it was that effective. Probably because I used it wrong.

Also, when I got home last night, I found all my piled laundry cleaned and folded on my bed. How lucky I am! I asked my landlady about the issue, and apparently her solution was to do it herself. Now, if I can only get her to do this on a regular basis. So, this morning, I went to the Megamart to find a small gift. A plant, and a thank you note that said literally "thank you" on it Korean. Since besides my name in English, that's all I wrote, so hopefully they'll know who it was from and what it is for.

And work turned out to be a very exciting day. You see, Monday had been declared a National Holiday for all since Korea is going to be playing their final game against Turkey for the 3rd place position. Nearly every hogwan in town is taking the day off except ours. This is despite the fact that our contract says that we get all National holidays off. This is pretty typical of Korean businesses. They try to get as much from you as possible through the smallest things. Of course, the only way to not get screwed in Korea is to take a firm stance and you're position will be respected.

So, this is what we did. There are 4 foreigners working at the hogwan, and we all decided to walk up to the office together and announce to the boss that we would not be showing up on Monday. This would leave them no room for negotiation. The ironic thing about all this is there's no real way we can get fired. If they fired us, what would they have gained? By removing all your foreign teachers, you remove your main selling point about your school.

So we marched up to the office floor and asked to see the boss. The look on the receptionist's face was something along the lines of terror when he heard we wanted to speak to the boss. I don't quite understand the whole taboo about talking with the boss, but we were escorted into the meeting room to wait for our native speaker liaison to arrive and handle the issue. The unfortunate thing about all this is the time we spent at the office gutted 10 minutes of class time from our students. It's unfortunate, but it had to be done.

Our native speaker liaison showed up a little flustered and asked about our concerns. He told us he'd get back to us and let us know what could be done. Of course, that line collectively set off our bullshit detectors, and we collectively announced that we would not be showing up for class regardless of what was decided. We then when back to our waiting classes.

Later on in the day, our liaison showed up announced that it had been decided to let the elementary school have the day off. This also meant that all the Korean teachers had the day off too since if you have no foreign teachers, then you have no hogwan. This was probably more important than our getting the day off personally. You see, the Korean teachers could not have pulled this kind of stunt that we did since none of them were under contract (which doesn't mean much anyway), and if they so much as raised their voice, they would have been immediately fired.

So, our little strike apparently didn't affect our relationship with the hogwan very much. We're still very polite with another, and I still like working here. It's just that this is how business is done in Korea. Our liaison's job seems to be dealing with crisis after crisis. Lack of teachers for classes and things like our foreigner's strike are among the many crises that they encounter here. The sad thing is that most of these problems could be prevented with some foresight and a little more respect in the business arena. To give our hogwan some credit, here they pay you and they pay you on time with little to no hassle. Of course, you may have to heckle about the end figure, but you'll generally get the money you are owed. This is in stark contrast to other hogwans in the business which are the source for many a horror stories.

Korea, Day 9

Korea lost their game versus Germany last night. I found the whole matter very depressing since I invested so much time and energy in it's support. The Korean people actually took it fairly well. Sure they were a little dissappointed, but they also applauded Germany's accomplishment and were generally pleased that Korea had made it to the final four.

After the game, everyone took to the streets and walked home. There was cheering, but noticeably deflated. I and the foreigners I was with all went to another bar and did a lot more drinking. We were there for quite some time. It was about 2am when everyone else left and I decided to take a taxi home. Fortunately, everything worked out okay. Even though the taxi drivers are quite insane here, it doesn't really bother me anymore since I'm quite used to it.

Classes yesterday were a little overshadowed by the impending game. I, for one, was trying to figure out things to do the whole time. I really felt I couldn't work on a lesson plan since my predecessor had often designated Tuesday as a puzzle day. I didn't have a puzzle, but I did bring in a new game for the class which they seemed to like. We played 20 questions, where students have to ask questions in English to guess what a word is. I gave them a point for successfully asking a question, and 3 points for successfully guessing the word. A wrong guess throws them out of the game for the round. It worked fairly well.

Korea, Day 8

Today is the day of the big game of Korea vs. Germany. I'm wondering how many students are going to show up to class. The game starts at 8:30 pm, but it may take the whole day for some people to prepare. At least a couple of my students went to the actual game itself on Saturday.

Yesterday was my first day of classes too. I had 6 classes of 3 different skill levels. There was the little 4 and 5 year olds who are doing phonics, only sounding out words. They're pretty easy. All I have to do is sound out words and repeat them while they follow along.

The elementary kids are more difficult. I have 2 classes in particular which have a few catalyst kids who really rile things up. So far I haven't had to punish anybody. The way they punish students in this country is they eject them from the class and make them stand outside the door with their hands in the air.

I think the most difficult part is trying to get away from the mentality of appeasement that I have had relating to other people. Avoid conflict when possible and make people feel as comfortable as possible. Student-teacher relationship is very different. It's my duty to make sure kids learn as much as possible while maintaining a certain amount of order and discipline. A very difficult balance to strike.

A child also told me to "shut up" in Korean which is apparently very rude. Fortunately the other students clued me into it, and I told him to never say it again. Now the hard part is remembering the phrase and catching it when it happens again. "Datchko"

Korea, Day 6

Sunday has been pretty low-key. This morning I had peanut butter and bread, and some frosted flakes. I was also faced with the conundrum of trying to figure out how to do laundry. There's no washing machine in the building and there isn't a drier in the country. Most people hang there clothes out to dry.

I tried filling up the small plastic tub up with soap water and cleaning it in that. I think the tub is for washing ones self, but I haven't yet found out how it's useful. I'm not sure how well I washed the clothes. I rubbed some soap on them, wrung it several times, and rinsed it with tap water, then hung them on the clothes line in my bathroom. It may take some time for them to dry in there, but we'll see how it goes.

Apparently yogwan's (motels) offer some degree of service if you ask for it. They will do your laundry for a fee and clean your room to some degree. They will also provide purified water. I have yet to discuss this with my yogwan owner, since they don't speak one word of English. I'll have to attempt a conversation in Korean.

The stench in the streets is really starting to get to me. At first I didn't think it was so bad, but now that I know what it is and have been around it for some time, it's really becoming debilitating. All the streets have open sewer grates, so there's pockets of stink all over the city. It's worse in some places and not so bad in others. The stench is also not good for Korean cuisine. There's street vendors all over the place selling various dishes. It's hard to take interest in them when fresh food sits on a table over a stinky open sewer grate.

I forgot to mention that earlier in the week, when I was at the mall, we were approached by Jehova's witnesses. 2 women, one of which spoke extremely good English and proselytized to us. When she said she was a Jehova's Witness I lauged at the sheer absurdity of it all. Korean Jehova's Witnesses! I also hear there are Mormons around here. I did see foreigners walking around with brief cases, white shirts and ties which is the archetype of Mormon missionaries.

Korea, Day 5, Apeshit!

Yes, I know I missed a day. That was mostly because I went out to the bars with a bunch of other foreigners and got completely hammered. And I did the same thing tonight, only less so because my body was still saturated with alcohol.

Anyway, KOREA BEAT SPAIN!! The whole country has gone completely apeshit over this. The streets are completely packed with people singing, screaming, jumping, and making noise. It's about 12am now and people are still milling about and getting completely hammered. I had to dodge an inebriated woman just to get to the computer room.

So here's the situation. Spain scored 2 goals on Korea that were invalidated by offsides calls. Additionally, Spain made so many goal attempts on Korea that's its very amazing that they didn't win. Of course, Korea was sucking it up in the first half, but they began to hold their own in the second half and overtime. Overtime ended with still 0-0 and Korea miraculously beat Spain in the kickoff. Korea plays Germany on Tuesday and Tuesday has allegedly been announced a National Holiday. That means I won't have to work that day and we'll all watch the game and get smashed.

I started watching the game on Haeundae Beach. They have a huge big screen television there, but there was over 10000 people there so that it was very difficult to see the game well. Instead we moved out and went to a bar to watch the game. We drank many beers and there was much rejoicing. Let me tell you, that game was highly stressful. I was eager for either side to make a goal and win for it to be done with.

Every 2-3 min, the crowd in the bar would start another cheer. After we won, we filed out into the streets and participated in the festivities. Since I was in a group of foreigners, we instantly became a center of attention. Several of the guys had drums and they drummed up some excitement. I think Koreans were amazed to see foreigners support Korea so vigorously. Someone threw some toilet paper. Some of us convinced this kid to shake up his Pepsi and spray it all over the crowd.

After about 30 minutes of this, we decided we needed to take a rest and went down to the beach to play some hackey-sack. The end of the cheering was nowhere in sight. The chants continued, the noise continued, and people drove by in their cars perched on top, piled into the backs of trucks, waving flags and doing very suicidal things.

After a while of chilling in the beach, we went to an Indian restaurant that served the best Indian food I have ever tasted. They had this tomato soup that was absolutely divine. And I had a chicken/spinach dish with bread that was really good but also really spicy. It was a very expensive dinner at the price of 15000 won.

After dinner, we went to another bar to cheer for Senegal against Turkey. Sadly, the game did not turn out how we hoped and Senegal lost. But Korea winning is a nice consolation prize.

We discussed a little about the performance of the Korean team. Apparently, Korea has never won a World Cup match in its existence. Not one game. This was due to the last coach they had who selected players for the team based on their status and family connections. Consequently the team sucked big time. 1 1/2 years ago they got a new Dutch coach which re-organized the team and selected players based on merit. Korea is now in the semi-finals and their accomplishment is truly amazing.

You may have seen all the red-shirts and Korean flags in the Korean World Cup game. In fact, you'll see them in just about all games since a lot of the games are played in Korea. Those shirts are everywhere, and I have resisted buying one. I now think I'm going to cave in and buy one even though the slogans are stupid. The shirt slogan says "Be the Reds". I'm not sure what this means, but Korean culture is full of these non-sensical phrases. Another one is "Korea fighting!"

So I'm going to attempt to sleep tonight if the noise doesn't keep me up all night. From my experience on Tuesday, the excitement should wane at about 3-4am. That's plenty of time for sleep!

Fighting!

Korea, Day 3

Yesterday Terry took me to the mall and the grocery store. We hopped onto the subway which was a lot like the BART in SF. Fortunately, since the World Cup came to town, a lot of the signs were translated into English and Japanese, so it was considerably easier to get around if you didn't already know what you were doing.

At our stop, we walked out into an underground shopping mall. Supposedly, this underground dwelling is supposed to go on for miles. Perhaps some day I'll explore it, but our main concern was to visit the mall. We were going to get lunch and see if we could find a Korean grammar book for non-native speakers.

We stepped into the mall which was a 10-story building. The first thing that struck me was that it was a lot like the ground floor of Nordstrom's or Meier and Frank. There was lots of perfume and cosmetic stands and other frivolous items. The other thing that struck me was the salespeople: that they all wore the same black dress and that there was 3 times as many of them than in the US. All the goods were categorized and displayed in large squares, and each square had about 4 saleswomen devoted entirely to the particular products. In some cases, the number of salesmen completely outnumbered the potential customers. I kind of wonder how these malls stay in business if they have so many employees to pay. Normally in the States, whenever I go to the store, I get really irritated when the salesmen begins to hover over you waiting to help you at a minutes notice. In this case, it didn't bother me so much even though they were all like gnats hovering over a stagnant pond.

We went up a couple floors to the foreign goods section to see if we could find some coffee. Practically all the coffee they had was gourmet stuff and it was all really expensive. Of course, couple this with the fact that I didn't have a coffee maker or a coffee grinder, buying coffee beans wasn't really a very good option.

We then hopped up to the 9th floor to the food court. Up there you could find Starbucks, Subway, Wendy's, TGIF, among others. In TGIF, the waitresses wore these long stockings up to their knees with short skirts and cowboy hats. One of the strangest things I've seen in a while. We went to the Subway and ordered sandwiches. It actually cost the same amount in Korea as it does in the US. All the menu sandwiches are the same, but they had a few variations here and there. The tomatoes were actually greenish which made them taste a little different. And the pickles were made differently somehow that made them taste like gimchi. They also sold "doritos" which were actually just generic tortilla chips.

At Subway we actually met one of the teachers at our Hogwan. Obviously, the Western food joints are reasonably popular with Western people. I wasn't so sure I wanted to spend my money on Western food when Korean food is a lot cheaper. We sat and talked about the nuances of Korean culture and how you have to be firm when you want something. How you'll only be screwed if you let yourself be. How public safety and civic awareness is extremely lacking. We commented on all the car accidents, all the extra-marital unprotected sex men have, the fact that there's no homosexuals in Korea and that it's only "a Western problem". We speculated what the HIV rate might be in this country what with all the unprotected sex men have with prostitutes and affairs. To give credit though, I saw an AIDS awareness commercial on the way there on the subway there, but I can only speculate how effective it is.

After this banter, we went back on the subway to the MegaMart. At the entrance they have what I call Techno-Diva Ticket-Takers. They're these women who stand in a booth playing loud techno music, with microphone headsets, and Michael Jackson gloves. Whenever a car drives up, she flutters her hands around in a weird way and makes some sort of announcement followed by giving the motorist a parking ticket. On the way out, the driver gives his ticket back to another Techno-Diva, and she does the weird hand fluttering.

Terry is a body-builder, so by this time he was hungry again. We went upstairs to the food court of MegaMart. Yes, the grocery store has a food court. We took the escalator up and we ran into the bow-boy. I'm not sure what else to call him because that's all he does. He stands at the top of the escalator and bows at people coming up. That is the extent of his job.

We went over to the McDonalds and Terry got himself 2 fish fillets, french fries, and a sprite. Again, McDonalds was about the same price as in the States. Although, I've never been impressed with McDonalds before, its just amazing how identical they make the franchises here in Korea.

Then we went to a PC room. Apparently they're all over the place, but its a kind of difficult to recognize them if you don't read Korean. These PC rooms are usually very smokey. People surf the web, play games, or do email. Terry had to test out his webcam at home. They gave us 2 tiny little fruity yogurt drinks and an ashtray while we did our computer thing. The popular games here in Korea right now are Diablo2, Starcraft, Age of Empires, and to a lesser extent Lineage and Counter-Strike. I actually haven't seen the latter 2 played at all, but I saw them on television.

Yes, there are games on television. In fact, there are 2 channels entirely devoted to video games. This morning I watched a Counter-Strike tournament on TV. Basically it consists of the computer screen in spectator mode, with a superimposed scoreboard, and Korean commentators. Not terribly exciting since I've already burnt myself out of that game, but it's amazing seeing the Koreans giving video games the respect they deserve. They also have a lot of Starcraft on TV.

My second day in Korea.

Hear about hung-over Koreans from the Korea soccer victory celebration, crazy taxi drivers, and the nuances of Korean culture.

I went and saw where I was going to work yesterday. The school, a hogwan, is place where students come to learn exclusively English. Hogwans are a very common place thing in Korea. There is a huge demand for English teachers and especially native-English speakers. I'm mostly going to be working with elementary school kids.

I went and visited some of the classes that I'll be taking over from the person whose going to be leaving the country. Kids are a bit different here in Korea. For one, they give their teacher more respect, but you can really lose it if you try to be their friend. This was explained to me by Renee, the person who I'm taking over for. She has a real difficult time controlling the class, but she said things would probably be easier for me since I'm a male and they give more respect to males.

One thing I noticed is that kids are fascinated by the hair on my arms. Twice so far, some kid has run his hand across my arm to feel the hair. I wonder what they'd think of my chest.

Since I've been living at Stanely's house, the Korean whose been escorting me and driving me around all day, I probably have to find alternate place to live at a yogwan. A yogwan is something like a hotel and you could probably find a place for $250 to $300 a month if you bargain properly. Of course, you need a Korean to do the bargaining because if you're a foreigner, you'll get ripped off. I initially didn't think I needed to find my own place since staying at Stanley's would be cheap and the food is good. However, on the urging of Terry, another foreigner who works at the hogwan, having your own space might be an important thing as time goes on.

Terry and I hopped into a taxi last night to go looking for the yogwan he once stayed at. As soon as we got in, the back seat where I was sitting, didn't have a seat belt buckle. This made me pretty nervous, but I considered it just a fluke at the time. The driver immediately pulled out into traffic and made an 8-lane U-turn right in front of a dozen cars forcing them to break to prevent collision.

By this time, I wasn't really surprised by this maneuver. I had been riding through traffic for quite some time and noticed the craziest driving maneuvers. The ironic thing about all this is that Koreans are actually really good drivers. I don't mean that they follow the rules (which they don't), but they drive their cars with such speed and precision that it makes me cringe when they pass a car at 35mph with a one-inch clearance. The same thing with pedestrians. They'll drive at 45mph past a pedestrian on a crosswalk. Very crazy, but very skilled.

Finally we got dropped off and began walking through alleys and backroads. There's a shop of some kind on every corner and people usually live at their place of business. The air smells a lot like gimchi which is a type of dish made of cabbage and spices. Its a very common thing, almost like french fries in the US. Another thing is public-drunkeness. On the way we saw a man sitting in the road, completely hammered. Terry commented that you only see older people drunk in the streets and never the younger generation.

We arrived at the yogwan and tried to strike up a banter with the owner. After much attempts, we eventually just exchanged phone numbers to get some of the administrators at the hogwan to do the bargaining for us. So, we headed on out and caught another taxi. I got the back seat and wouldn't you know it? There was no seatbelt in the back seat. The driver was equally erratic in his driving and I was equally nervous. I think I've made a resolution to avoid taxis whenever possible.

I think one of the more interesting observations I've made so far is the large amount of laws that are completely disregarded. Of course, Americans regularly disregard laws such as jaywalking, speeding, and software piracy. However, the amount of ignored laws is actually staggering. Practically all traffic laws are disregarded except traffic lights. Not to mention they also disregard a number of laws regarding business practices. The fact of the matter is, many laws just aren't enforced very well. However, not what you expect from this attitude, I haven't really seen any theft. I can leave my things around and they won't be stolen. Of course, I haven't taken very large risks either.

First day in Korea

I stepped off the plane from Tokyo to Busan jet-lagged as hell. It had been 16 hours since I got on the first plane to San Francisco. I met Stanley at the airport after having gone through customs and drove off in his car.

First impressions: driving in Korea is crazy! The stoplights, signs, and lanes seem to be only a loose framework for a barely contained chaos. People are constantly running red lights and stopping short of an inch before hitting a pedestrian. Oddly, the pedestrians seem to be strangely unaware how close to death they are. I haven't seen any accidents yet though.

The soccer game between S. Korea and Spain was on last night, so everywhere you went in town, you saw people crowded around a TV and people screaming "Korea"! When we first showed up, Korea was losing 0-1 and the game was about to end. Miraculously, Korea scored a goal to tie and the whole town came to live. You could hear cheering in all the neighboring buildings, in the streets, and the honks of the cars. A national pride was at stake.

Around this time I was at Stanley's house attempting to settle in. They gave me a bed and I plopped my luggage in the room. A half-naked kid was wandering around the house that seemed to really like me. The dog outside was barking at me because I was a stranger. And of course, the whole family was watching the game on their TV. I was given watermelon and we watched the rest of the game as it went into overtime. Korea eventually scored and the cheering was intoxicating throughout the whole city. You could hear it in all the buildings and in the streets

After that I went to bed and slept a bit uneasily given all the noise.

I woke up to the sound of fish trucks traveling through the alleys and soliciting business through automated recordings. In this area, all the buildings are very close together and you can hear what's going on nextdoor. Stanley's familiy lives in the same building as their business which is a public bathhouse. I had the privelege of going to the bathhouse this morning since those are the only cleaning facilities in the house.

Very bizarre I must say. When you shower, you sit on a little stool in front of a mirror and a shower hose completely naked in front of all the other guys. They have a couple spas and a sauna as well as some other features that I don't quite understand yet. For instance, I saw one guy put his back onto an auto-massage machine of some kind. Maybe it was to loosen his muscles or something. Also, some of the men wash each other which is pretty unheard of in the US.

When you walk around in people's residences and businesses, you always take off your shoes. I immediately realized that I'm at a handicap since I seem to be the only one with shoes that have complicated "strings". As a result, I have to pause a great deal longer before I go in and out of the house. I'll probably wear my burkenstocks more often here.

For breakfast I had rice with a sampling of a couple other foods like gimchi, seaweed, and some other vegetable dishes. I wasn't too hungry this morning since I had a total of 4 meals on the airlines. Then we drove over to the school where I'm going to work since Stanley had to teach a class. That's where he is right now, and I'm sitting in the lobby on the computer waiting for him to get done. Not sure what we're going to do today.

Society for the Promotion of Minor Chords

Joyfully, I completed my book report for my Chinese culture class. Strangely, I had to wait until the very last day, the very last night to actually hammer it out. I even got up early this morning to proofread it.

The weekend was spent completely slacking off on Saturday, followed by frantic work on Sunday trying to catch up. The 5 page report was the hardest thing to do.

The thing I have with writing is that its so difficult for me to put myself in front of a blank page in my word processor and hammer out a composition from beginning to end. Its so intimidating and so time-consuming.

Contrast this with journal entries and email messages and I can do complete novels. I think the difference is that I feel that I am communicating to someone, so I know exactly what I need to say. In the case of a blank page, I am communicating to no one in particular but rather trying to fill the space up with somewhat meaningful words.

After the composition is done, I wash my hands of it and refuse to touch it thereafter. There's something that seems so alien to me with these writings. It doesn't even feel like they belong to me.

Sadly, I need to learn how to do this better if I'm going to be successful in my pursuits.

Well, in 2 weeks I will be graduated and will have my degree in Computer Engineering from Oregon State University. So what will I do next you ask?

For one, I'm going back to school in the Fall to pursue a Master's in Mechanical Engineering. I know it starkly contrasts with my computing background, but I want to get into robotics and space engineering, so I think this is a good stepping-stone in broadening my education to pursue something like that.

Second, I'm going to Korea this summer to teach English. I actually learned about the opportunities there at Acts of Gord. I talked to Gord about it, but the problem was that I wanted to do a Summer only position instead of a year contract which are the standard fare these days. Since summer positions were more rare, I had to find one on my own, so I'm going to be working just a few miles (er.. kilometers) at of Busan. Small classes, kids of all ages. Should be a great experience.

Going to Korea was really a no brainer for me. I've been itching to get out of the country for years, but there hasn't been any excuse to do it. I could have taken a year or so off of college and do Peace Corps or study languages, but that seemed so costly in terms of lost study time. Not to mention the debt I would put myself in if I didn't work. Couple this with the fact that there was virtually no good paying summer work during this time in the economy that going to Korea seemed the best of both worlds. Actually working there is going to be financing my entire trip and stay. Not to mention Korea is cheap as hell, so I will net about $500-$1000 in 3 months after all the expenses are paid.

Today I worked on a new website to showcase my interest in Near-Earth Asteroid Mining which I now believe is going to be the focus of my career pursuits. The other day I discovered a great series of conventions for topics related to this. Unfortunately it was in March and I just missed it. The next won't be held until 2004, so in the meantime, I'll have to content myself with the submitted papers of past years. Hopefully in 2 years I'll have my own paper to submit.

I actually discovered 4 copies of proceedings of past years in my university library. Too bad that I'm not going to be in town long enough to read them all. Truly, if you look closely enough and research closely enough, you will realize that your university library has a huge treasure trove of information from a large variety of subjects. One important thing to realize is that most of the good stuff is in journals, not books. This took a while for me to catch on, but there are hundreds of scholarly periodicals out there with very smart people submitting there works for publication. The library usually carries decades in archives. Its not like the web where you can just type some keywords in a search engine and get what your looking for. It requires more effort, and you usually have to use 3rd party databases that catalog all that information for a subscription fee. Fortunately the university pays that fee and not me.

Now I have to see if I can get the library to buy or borrow the remaining books of conference proceedings because they are prohibitively expensive for the likes of me. It's upwards of $60-$100 per book from ASCE, the people who host the conference bianually.

It's now the end of a long week in which I worked day in and day out trying to finish projects due today. I wrote an entire research paper and finished my computational geometry homework. Of course, in order to do this, I had to delay some other homework until this weekend which means I will be very busy until Memorial Day.



Bentley, my cat, or rather, Bean as I now call him, is doing well. He settled in pretty fast, and he's synchronized to I and my roommate's schedule. Bean usually sleeps with Logan at night. He wakes up three times in the morning. First when the sun rises, then when I get up, then when Logan gets up. After that, he spends the day by himself until I get home in the afternoon. Quite an interesting life he has.

Korea. After being unable to find a decent-paying summer job, I found an opportunity overseas in Korea to teach English. What do you know about teaching you ask? Well, not much, but I have been watching teachers for the better 80% of my life, so I believe that I may know some basics. Besides, the only requirements for the job is that you be a native English speaker and have a college degree. You need a college degree in order to get a work visa in S. Korea.

There is such a major shortage of English teachers in Korea because nearly everyone there wants to learn. The entire country is dotted with these tiny schools called hogwans, which are something like tutoring schools. There's a major learning ethic there. Most people know some English, but they need native speakers to help with their conversational skills and pronunciation. That's where I and hundreds of other foreigners come in. They usually do 1-year contracts with paid housing, paid plane ticket, and a year-end bonus, but since I'm only doing the summer, I get none of these benefits :(

I'm leaving for Busan, Korea the day after I graduate, so that's cutting it pretty close. It should be an interesting adventure.

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I've been extremely busy with homework and such. 19 credits really kicks your butt near the end of the year. But don't fret. The end is in sight. After this week, I will have considerably more time.

Plus, after the term, I will be spending the summer in Korea! I'll elaborate on that later.

And yes the cat's fine.

New Cat

I finally caved in and got myself a new cat. I still miss Chester and will take him in if he turns up, but I'm not very optimistic. This is going to be a very stressful term, and I think a kitty in the house will greatly help me relax. Not mention I have all this cat food with no cat to give it to.



Surprisingly there was a whole new assortment of cats to choose from at the humane society. Apparently Corvallis has a really high adoption rate. Anyway, the cat above is the one I chose and his name is Bentley. Bentley has a interesting history. He was originally brought in because he was found trapped in a garage or something. They thought he was feral, but who knows. They called him Major and I actually remember seeing him a month ago. He was one of the very noisy cats in the kennel. He was subsequently adopted and returned a month later. The reason he was returned? Let me quote off his file: "Couldn't deal with the hyperness." Yes indeed, this cat is a loud, noisy, frisky, needy trouble-maker. But I digress.



This is Bentley checking out the new place. It didn't take him long at all before he started running around and seeing where he was.



This is him sniffing the spot where Chester sprayed before he took off. I did my best to wash that as clean as possible, but there's only so much you can do. Besides this initial inspection, he didn't seem to mind it too much and too my knowledge, hasn't made so much as an accident around the house.



And this is him relaxing about 10 minutes from his arrival. Quite an easy-going cat and very very demanding of attention. This cat talks so much you can't help but do everything he demands.



I think this is one of the reasons he got returned from his previous home. At about 5pm, while I was doing homework, I went looking around the house for him and couldn't find him. I started panicking but eventually he meowed at me and I found him up on top of the kitchen cupboards. He's quite the jumper. There wasn't much I could do to get him down, and I was trying to decide if I should discourage this kind of behavior. He didn't spend much time up there though and eventually spent the night sleeping with Logan.

I think this was the worst time for me to get a cat because all while this was happening I was progressively developing a terrible cold which climaxed this morning. All I need is this nuisance running around and jabbering at me. Seriously, the minute you look him in the eye he'll meow at you. So I have to deliberately ignore him to make him shut up for a while :)

He's a good cat though and I think I lucked out. He's pretty clean and uses the litter box just fine. The house was wasn't trashed when I got back from school today, and he's a real pleasure to be around.

Chester Still Gone

Its been exactly a week since Chester ran away from home, and I still haven't heard anything from him. I left a bowl of food and water out by my door, and its a week later and of that same food, only half is missing on the count of ants and birds.

I made a "Lost Cat" poster with a color picture of Chester on the front. I made 40 copies and posted them all around the neighboorhood in a 3-mile radius. All the major intersections in the area have 4 posters, 1 on each corner.

I put in a notification at Petco and the Heartland Humane Society. Fortunately, the people at the shelter knew my cat well, so they'll very easily recognize him if he ever comes back in. Unfortunately that hasn't happened yet.

I've received 2 calls so far responding to my posters. Unfortunately both leads turned out to be different cats. I didn't see either one of those cats, but I could get enough information by questioning its appearance that I was quite sure it wasn't him. That and the cats were found way too far away.

So I've spent the last week contemplating what I'm going to do. However, I usually have a lot of homework that I need to do, so fortunately it hasn't bothered me that much. I went to a Mechanical Engineering advisor last Monday and in a panic, I discovered that I needed to take 2 new classes this term so I can manage taking ME curriculum next year. So I had to drop one of my CS classes and add 2 more engineering courses that just happened to have schedule conflicts too! So now I'm bumped up to 6 classes with 19 credits. Its lots of fun. Its actually kept me quite busy and coursework has been so exciting. At least that's what I tell myself. That seems to work good enough for me.

Something Terrible

Yesterday we let Chester roam around the apartment free from his bathroom confinement. Things went relatively well. Nothing was torn up, but he did urinate on the rug at the top of the stairs. It took us a while to find it, but we did.

I took him to the vet yesterday and got his rabies shot. I also got him some flea mecidine that you put on the back of his neck. The vet told me to take off his collar during this time. For what reason, I don't remember exactly.

I also went to the store to get some cleaning solution to clean up specific cat messes, a spray bottle to discourage certain activities like furniture clawing and extracurricular urination, and a laser pointer to give him something to play with. Turns out he wasn't interested in the laser pointer at all. Quite odd since I've never seen a cat that aloof from chasing frivolous moving objects.

Logan and I went nextdoor at about 6:30 to play games and have lasagna and pie. I came back to the apartment at around 10pm and discovered the metal screen in the window was pushed out and Chester was nowhere to be found. I started panicking and asked for help from my neighbors to search the premises and bring him back. We walked around the apartment complex for about a half hour and he was nowhere to be found.

Really quite upset, I didn't quite know what to do. I've had Chester for only 3 days and in that time I managed to completely blow it. To top it off, the vet told me to take off his collar, so now he's out lost without an ID tag. Did I do something wrong that made him want to leave? Was there something I could have done to prevent this? How was I supposed to know the metal screen wasn't fixed into place?

Endless questions, regrets, and guilt. I decided the only thing I could do at the moment was leave the window open and hope he'll come back in the night or in the morning. I slept on the couch next to the window, so I would meet him when he came in and discourage any opportunists from looting our apartment.

I stayed up until 1am reading a book and passing the time hoping that Chester would make an appearance. After that I drifted into an uneasy sleep. My dreams were filled with false scenarios of Chester coming home and their being a joyful reunion. But I would quickly realize that this was a dream and that he really hadn't come back.

Morning came and there was no kitty. I walked around the complex calling him, but no luck. I left some food out in front of my door with the hope that if he didn't come back when I was there, he would at least eat the food and continue to come back as a source of food.

I also made some Lost Cat posters that I'll be posting around the area and at the animal shelter and pet shop. I'm embarassed to go back to the animal shelter with my situation since I only had him 3 days and I still managed to fuck things up. I'm resentful of the veterinarian for having me take off his collar which drastically reduces the chances that I will see him again.

Its been a bad past 24 hours.

Rough Weekend

Chester's been having a rough weekend. He's been very stressed over settling into a new place. Consequently he's been spending a lot of his free time in the bathroom cupboard.



Since he's spent about a month of his life at the animal shelter couped up in a cage, he's become used to that way of living. I suppose having all this open space to move about in has been a little overwhelming. After I left him in the bathroom the first time, I came back in and he'd disappeared. Turned out he had pried open the cupboard door and snuck in with the door closing behind him. I just decided to leave the door open since that seemed to be his new safe spot.



I left to go to Portland for Easter Sunday and left Chester locked up in the bathroom. When I came back he was a lot more relaxed and extremely demanding of attention. Right now as I type this he's chilling out on the floor next to me. I've found that I need to deliberately ignore him to make him physically relax in his surroundings. He seems to use people as an anchor of stability in a stressful environment. He seems to be doing okay if I'm in the room somewhere with him, but I have a feeling he'll run back into his cupboard if nobody is around.

I also walked into the bathroom to encounter a litter box explosion. It seems that he didn't like the plastic liner I put in there and decided to tear it all up. So out came the plastic along with a pint of litter onto the floor. I removed the plastic to avoid any more accidents of that nature and swept up the huge mess. Hopefully we won't have any mishaps in the future of that magnitude.

New Cat

Well, I down to the Heartland Humane Society today with the intention of adopting a cat. I finally took my camera this time.



Like I said before, the building is very high quality and well funded. The cattery in particular appears quite comfortable for the cats that live there. On the left is the cages for the cats who don't do too well with other cats. On the right is the communal pens for those cats that get along with others.

So one of the first things I did when I got there was go visit my chosen cat Gilbert.



Gilbert's a real friendly cat that loves attention and I was sure to get him. However my mom recommended to me that I perform a couple tests on him before I took him home. Those were: putting him on my lap and seeing if he'll stay there, and holding him in my arms and seeing if he'll relax. To my dismay he failed both of these tests. He jumped out of my lap when I put him there, and he tensed up when I held him in my arms.

Kind of depressed, I went to go visit my cat of second choice: Tom Love MD



Tom was extremely friendly and didn't mind so much sitting on your lap and being held. Although he was a bit more hostile to other cats as he started hissing at the cats in the other cages when I took him out. No big deal since he's in a very stressful environment. So I picked Tom.

First things first, I changed his name to Chester since I didn't really like the name of "Tom Love MD". That was just the name the staff gave him when he came in a month ago. He was a stray who came in with a gash on his ear and 3 broken teeth. He's since been treated, neutered, and his broken teeth removed. The shelter guessed his age at 5 which would seem consistent.



We took him home and put him in the extra bathroom. He was a little nervous at first but quickly adapted and began seeking lots of attention from us. We took this opportunity to start brushing him since his fur is a little coarse and he's beginning to shed. He didn't mind the brushing one bit, but we didn't seem to ever "finish" the job.



We got almost enough fur off of him to make another kitty. After that we gave him some alone time to relax a bit in the bathroom. After about an hour, the neighbors came over to see the new kitty. I ushered them into the bathroom but the cat was nowhere to be found. To our surprise, he had opened the bathroom cupboard and crawled inside with the door closing behind him. Apparently he likes that spot better than the carrier box he came in. I decided to let him stay in there, and I kept the door open to make sure he didn't get stuck in there.

Like I said, Chester is extremely friendly and he's got this cute habit of rubbing his face over whatever part of your body he can reach. If you put your face up close to his, he'll rub his nose all over you. Fortunately he's got a warm nose, but unfortunately he'll wipe nose goo all over your face.

Cat Sitting

It's spring break, and I've been spending it at my parents house catsitting. It's not so bad. I've been lying around a lot, watching movies, reading, and doing important stuff that I haven't had the time to do during school like job-searching and filing my taxes.



This summer I need to find a job because I'm planning on going right back to school in the Fall. I'll have graduated already, but I want to continue my education and get a Mechanical Engineering degree. It should only take me about 2 years and a lot of work. Problem is, whose going to hire an engineer for only a summer job? The job market is pretty poor right now, and most people want career employees. I'm not ready to go there yet. I'll probably have to find work through a temp agency or something. Hopefully they could help me out.

I'm also planning on adopting a cat from the Heartland Humane Society in Corvallis. I went and visited the cats on Thursday and Friday, and I think the cat I want is Gilbert. You can see a picture of Gilbert on this page. He's black and white and real big and stocky. Kind of funny looking. He's seems to be friendly enough. Of course I still need to make my pet deposit with the landlord, file an application to adopt, and buy tons of cat supplies. But those are mere details. I'll probably do all that stuff tomorrow or Friday.

Scream!

Well, finals are finally over. Last night I stayed up until 12:30 studying, but couldn't get to sleep until 2:30am. Then I got up at 6am to go to a final at 7:30am. After that I studied some more for a final at noon. Needless to say it has been an exhausting day. On top of that I did my laundry, did some reading, went to the bank, bought school textbooks, practiced guitar, and am now writing this.

One of the side effects of getting up early is that you get to see sunrises:



There's also not that many people around at 6:30am on campus. I sat out in the freezing cold in front of the Bagel Sphere waiting to get a breakfast snack. This is a shot of me from a bench trying to keep warm:



So now that finals are over, what do I do? Well, I have a whole week that's free, and half of it is going to be spent babysitting the cats at my parents house. You see the whole family but myself is going on vacation to beautiful Palm Desert, California. Not that I mind being left out. I've been to Palm Desert before, and its nothing to get worked up about. Its all golf courses in the middle of the desert with hundreds of super expensive houses out in the middle of nowhere. Everywhere you turn is collared-shirts and security guards. There's about a 100:1 Latino/Caucasian ratio with the whites acting as the real estate owners, and the Latinos are their diligent servants. The whole landscape was never meant to support the amount of greenery and frippery that is now lavished upon it. I estimate that it requires hundreds of millions of gallons of imported water a day just to keep the damn thing from drying out. A day without running water in this desert environment would be disastrous to the golf courses and man-made ponds.

So instead of vacation, I'll probably spend time with some friends in Portland. I plan on spending more time with my guitar, reading a book or two, and working on some of my extracurricular hobbies.

Finals Week

I haven't updated in a while because I've been busy preparing for finals. This week is finals week and I just got done with my hardest final. Now that its over, I only have easy finals to take, so I thought I'd spend some time to update my website.

I haven't been taking as many pictures I've done in the past. I think I'm in a photography drought. Usually in the past, I just took pictures of everyday things I encounter in my life, but now I think I've covered most of it. As a result I've been a bit uninspired to go out looking for new things. Perhaps I'll devote some more time in the future. In the mean time, lets look at a bit of the backlog pictures.



This is a small slough or creek that I walk over on my way home. This shot is from the bridge on Kings Blvd. As you can see, its quite nice, and you couldn't possibly tell that this is in the middle of suburbia and next to a very busy road. When it rains heavily or snows, the water level significantly rises and turns brown and muddy. Kind of expected I suppose when there's high erosion from the lack of vegetation.



There's also some garbage in the creek. Above I took a good shot of a rusted folding chair. Besides this obvious blemish, the river looks like its in good condition. Of course, looks can be deceiving because there could be significant deviations in pH, nitrate levels, oxygen levels, etc.. I don't have a kit to go down there and check it out, but I didn't see anything living in there. Of course, its still in winter, so in Spring things may yet come alive.

Cat Etiquette

I must confess that I haven't put up anything about cats in a while. I have a few cat pictures that have been sitting in the queue for a while, and I think its time that I showed them off.

Every cat has its own personal set of rules, its own personal protocol that you have to follow or fit into before a cat will allow you the privilege of gracing your unworthy hands on its magnificent fur coat. And this cat is no exception.



When I first saw this cat I called upon him, and in response he called upon me. He seemed friendly enough, but all my calls and invitations to come over to me did not seem to impress this cat. He called to me again repeatedly and gave me the look that said, "I don't care one way or another if you come over here or not, but I sure as hell am not answering your summons like a petty servant."

He began walking away and I caved in. I had lost the battle of wills and approached him to stroke his magnficinent-- one could say god-like-- fur.



He was quite friendly, but he also didn't seem to care that much. Perhaps he was a nihilistic cat, and not so full of himself as I had previously thought. Perhaps he had some bad child-hood memories that made him numb to the world all around him. If so, I feel sorry for this poor cat, and I wish him luck on his soul-searching.

Memories of Snow

It was a very exciting day yesterday. It was very very cold. It snowed, hailed, and melted off and on all day. Apparently it snowed earlier in the morning and stuck to the ground, but this is only rumour and hearsay since I slept through all my classes yesterday and cannot confirm this myself.



This is around 5pm yesterday, about the time I decided to get out of the house and do something semi-important. It started out hailing as I was driving to the bank, but quickly turned into a lot of hail, and then finally into a flurry of snow. The snow was quite intense, and sadly this picture is only the waning end of that event.

Although this morning I woke up to find patches of snow on the cars and trees as I was walking to the bus stop. It was all melting very rapidly and one could hear the sound of dripping all around. It was quite a surreal experience knowing that a fantastic drop of snow had created this sometime between yesterday evening and last night, and I was only witnessing the disappearing aftermath.

One-Armed Villains

A weird idea came into my head today. I was thinking about what I would do if I made an adventure story. I didn't think much about the story, but I knew for certain that the villain would have only one hand. Furthermore, the villain would have in place of the missing hand a weapon of some kind.

You see, having a prosthetic in place of the missing hand just isn't evil enough. What's more, its too practical. So the replacement hand has to be a hook, or a retractable sword. Of course, these blade like weapons are a little too mundane for my taste. They have to be something fantastic and completely useless like a flamethrower!

Well, a flamethrower does have its uses as an area effect weapon. But can you imagine using your prosthetic flamethrower in a hand-to-hand combat? I think you'd end up burning yourself more than the enemy. Furthermore, you have the problem of finding a place to store all that fuel somewhere on your person. It can't be a big backpack tank because that destroys the image of being evil and ominous. It has to be somewhere concealed, and most likely small.

As a consequence of having a small tank of fuel somewhere hidden on your person, it's going to be a small amount of ammo and you'll have the extreme danger of that tank somehow rupturing and igniting on your person. So in the final combat scene between the hero and the villain, the villain is almost certainly going to die in flames from his own fuel tank.

The moral of this story? If the villain hadn't been so pre-occupied with looking evil and intimidating and equipping himself with foolish prosthetic replacements, he might have been able to win that final battle with the hero. If he hadn't have won, at least he would have died a more honorable death by the blade or bullet of the hero. Even further, there might not have been a fight at all, because he had dressed normal and worn a normal prosthetic, thus people never fully realized he was evil enough and completely ignored his evil ways.

So all you villains out there missing a hand, please stick to normal prosthetics.

Maximum Wednesday

A lot of interesting things have been happening lately. I haven't had that much homework to do this week, so I've been kind of bored. When I don't have homework to do, I usually end up wasting my time on unimportant things, but when I am loaded with homework I spend more time doing cool things that aren't homework related. Fortunately, I have a couple things due on Friday, so I've been more busy today.

I've suddenly become very interested in the subject matter of my CS class. We're talking about very large/hard/unsolvable problems. Its kind of hard to explain what these are. Basically, you have a program that won't finish running before the end of the universe, and you have to cope with that fact and find ways around it. Its very interesting. Its also very very geeky.



I haven't taken any new pictures for a while. I haven't been very inspired lately. Mostly I've just been going through the motions of day-to-day living and grabbing scraps of entertainment whenever I can.

I went over to my neighbors' house yesterday and watched JAG with them. My friends were getting very involved with the show, so I felt obliged to join in and yell out insults at the characters whenever they did something particularly naughty. It was almost exactly like a soap opera except not as slow and stupid.



I've also become re-interested in my old pet project, Near Earth Asteroid Mission Planning. Actually this project is significantly smaller in scope than when I originally planned it, but its still huge. There's so much stuff that I don't know, that I will have to learn before I can get started. So most of my time is spent reading about Orbital Mechanics, looking at pieces of software on the internet, and looking for past research. I don't know what ever made me pick such a large project to pursue, but I've been consistently interested in it since last Summer. Actually the subject matter of my CS class directly applies to my project objective which has made the class much more enthralling to me.

Mexican Food!

I went and had Mexican food with my roommate on Saturday. Here is the story:


This is Logan eating tortilla chips.


This is me eating tortilla chips.


This is the almost empty chip basket.


And this is Logan having more chips.

Mornings

Usually when I wake up in the morning, its not an easy process. I admit that morning's are the worst part of the day for me. I have to argue with myself why I should get out of bed, why I shouldn't skip class, why I shouldn't sleep until noon. I usually win that argument, but sometimes I don't.

Regardless if I win or not, I usually set my alarm clock 2 or 3 hours ahead of when I should be getting up on the off chance that I might be willing to get up early. Honestly, I can't remember the last I "felt" like getting up early. So what ends up happening is the alarm wakes me up, I reset the alarm clock an hour later, then sleep until it wakes me up again. This process continues until I absolutely have to wake up. And trust me, I usually push it to the very edge.



So I'm usually dragging myself out to the street to meet the bus.



I've got into a habit of showing up to the bus stop at least 10 minutes early because the driver doesn't always stick to the schedule. I remember one time the bus was early and arrived just as I was running out there. Actually several people were running after the bus, and I just happened to be the last one. I happened to be in front of the bus as the driver thought that everyone was onboard and was startled when he saw me in front of him. When I got onto the bus he proceeded to scold me for my carelessness, but I didn't really hear anything he was saying to me because I was too focused on showing him my pass which he refused to look at. I just merely nodded my head until the sentences stopped, and he looked at my pass. He acknowledge my legitimate right to be on that bus, and I took my seat. What lesson did I take from this? Show up early to the bus stop so it doesn't take as long to show the driver your pass. ( I need help )



The bus ride is pretty short. You take your seat and do your best to ignore those around you. You go out of your way to avoid eye contact and when somebody asks you a question, you pretend that you didn't hear them. If the bus looks like its going to be full, clear out the seat next to you ahead of time to avoid the altercation of someone politely asking you if they can sit there, and you politely responding that they can.

Of course these rules only apply if you don't know anybody on the bus. If you know someone that comes onto the bus, you say, "Hi", and ask them how they are. That's usually the extent of conversation and the rest is silence until you reach your destination. If you know a person and you regularly see them on the bus, you can usually get away with a short glance before ignoring them.

Finally the bus stops on campus, everybody gets off, and the crowd disperses. Everyone walks in their separate directions, and I usually go get a bagel before class. Some juice too. Mmmmmm juice.

Death by Programming

I spent about 5 hours today trying to complete my Computer Science homework. Most of it was spent hitting my head against the desk trying to figure out how to program the Fast Fourier Transform. What it is, isn't important. What is important, is that it's done!

This my CS teacher, Professor Cull:



He's a real crazy guy. In one respect we are kindred souls because we both wear bright hawaiian shirts. He also wears shorts just about every day which is pretty impressive when its cold out. Of course he has a jolly personality and a long beard, so he's a shoe-in for a Santa Claus. Although the beard isn't grey yet, that's nothing that can't be fixed with a little hair dye.

He's also a cigar smoker.

I sit down in the front row, and every morning he places 3 small cigars on the table. For what reason, I don't know. I know from going to his office that he likes to chew on the cigars without smoking them, but he never does that in class. So the 3 cigars is something of a mystery to me.

More Cats!

I thought I'd talk about the cats at my parents house. Here they are in order of oldest to youngest.

Misty

Misty is by far our oldest and longest lived cat. She's 12 or 13. She's overweight, partially blind from cataracts, and had a stroke which impaired the effectiveness of her hind legs. Despite all of these setbacks, she's stubbornly outlived 2 of our other cats that we got after her.

Misty's story is pretty short. She spends most of her day lying around, napping, and waiting for dinner. It's a big day if she walks up and down the stairs more than once per day. Like all the other cats, she recognizes the familiar sounds of the food dishes when they're going to be fed. But gradually over the years, she's become more and more cautious about immediately running towards the kitchen. You see, we humans are notorious for setting off false alarms just to get them to come to the kitchen so we can ensnare them and apply whatever devious designs we might have. Regardless, Misty has consistently waited until she was absolutely sure that she was being fed before she finds it necessary to leave the comfort of her napping place and begin the arduous journey up the staris and towards the kitchen. (And it is an arduous journey with her stroked legs.)

Maurice

Maurice has a very emotional history. We got him as a kitten primarily to be a companion to our other cat Hank. Hank had recently lost his brother to Leukemia and was going through a bout of depression. Needless to say, Maurice latched on Hank very nicely. He constantly teased him and picked fights with him and all was good.

A year or so later, Hank was killed in a car accident, and Maurice quickly became a new cat. He spent most of his time outside wandering around. Sometimes he would stay out for more than a day before he would come home, eat, then crash for a whole day. He became very nervous and very skittish. It was almost impossible to approach him without his running away. He got into lots of fights and came home with lots of scratches. This continued for about 2 years.

Then one day my mother took him to the vet to get his teeth cleaned. After that he was a new cat! He instantly became more friendly and more loving. In fact, he has become the most affectionate cat we have to date. He still goes outside but doesn't spend enormous amounts away from home. I would say he is in a pleasant elderly retirement.

Flap

Flap was given to me as a kitten from a friend of mine. I had recently lost my cat Hank to a car accident and was in mourning. Flap was meant as a gift to console me for my loss.

When Flap came to us he was a very sick kitten. He had a respiratory infection and was very sluggish. After he recovered, he became a cat with no boundaries. Flap jumped into new experiences with no inhibitions. He picked on Misty persistently even though she was very hostile towards his pestering. He befriended the dog next door which is a feat in its own. I even have second hand accounts that he fraternized with raccoons! He even tried to socialize with a couple of hyper golden retrievers, but to his shock ran away at full speed when he realized that the dogs were not slowing down their top speed sprint towards him.

In his older years he's become something of a nihilist. He's very apathetic to everyone and everything and it is difficult to irritate him or capture his attention. Although he still does play as a kitten.

Belle

Belle is our newest addition. She's still a kitten and she's the brat of the household. I haven't been around my parents since they've got her because of school, so I don't know that much about her.

She is persistently attacking all of the household cats with no inhibitions. In particular, she still pesters Misty even though she is traditionally the most hostile cat to annoy. Even though Belle gets smacked pretty good, she still goes back to bug Misty some more.

Another interesting thing is that Belle almost hung herself a few weeks ago. She was climbing up some of the metal bars of our stair case and got her head wedged in the framework somewhere and lost her footing. If my mother hadn't have been there, she probably would have choked to death. But guess what:


she hasn't learned a thing!

I fear for her future. :P

I feel lucky today. Today I found out that I get the 6th highest grade in our Chemistry exam. I also discovered that my computer science assignment is due on Friday instead of tomorrow. Life is good. Well, at least today is.

This weekend I went up to Portland to visit my parents. My brother also came up to Portland, so for a while the whole crew was back together again.



This is my brother Jerry. He's a firefighter down here in Corvallis and he's also going to school to get a Bachelor's degree. As you can guess, this was taken in Burger King while we were having breakfast.

My mom is always saying how we are complete opposites and that she's amazed that we're related. That's generally true since Jerry has always been the active, jovial, sports-oriented tough guy, and I have always been the bookish, cynical, holier-than-thou weakling. I used to be able to beat up on him until he got bigger than me. After that I had to learn to appease him so he wouldn't beat the crap out of me. I guess its a good idea I got put in my place since we've had a good relationship ever since. Thank god he doesn't hold grudges!



My sister Catherine. I believe she's a Junior in high school and 16 years old. I don't know for certain because I just can't keep track of these things. Every time I ask, I always forget. Its a common trait I have and its always expected with my family.

She's a raging athlete and a fierce student. She could really man-handle me if she wanted. My brother and I used to beat up on her when she was little, and lucky for us, she almost always fought back. I think that's the best kind of sister a big brother could ask for. If she hadn't been around to pick fights with when I was younger, I don't know how I would have learned the benefits of appeasing people instead of always trying to irritate them. Regardless, I have a lot of respect for her and her accomplishments.