::A Geek in Korea::

Country Style Cold Noodles with Chicken

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My mother in law, wife, and son picked me up from my University yesterday. We were on the way to meet one of her clients, who selected a restaurant he liked. This place is, according to him, “The Best Naengmyeon in the City”.

Cold noodles have gone from something I couldn’t eat when I first arrived in Korea, to one of my favorite summertime dishes.These particular cold noodles were unique. They were made of buckwheat, which gives them an unusual black flecked color. Secondly, the noodles weren’t in a beef broth. The noodles are served with chicken meat in broth, which I was told was “country style”.These might have been trimmings left over from the enormous chickens they serve as a soup (serves four).

This restaurant wasn’t very difficult to get to in a car. If you go to the National Cemetery, then continue walking out of the city towards the gas stations nearby, this is after the S-OIL. It’s been upgraded with a better parking lot and lots of solar panels since the picture was taken above.

I set a deadline of one week for my interviews to be completed so that I can promptly complete the paperwork that is required to finalize grades in a prompt manner. The first step in finalizing grades is to collect all the grades I want from my students, then put them into a spreadsheet that I’ve been working on all semester so that I can calculate their scores. If I lack grades, this prevents me from ranking students. Without being able to rank an entire class, I can’t give grades, because the university requires a curve, and I need to know who is and isn’t going to be affected. Thus, I need all grades for a class before I get any grades.

Because of this policy, I simply fail any students that do not show up for their final interviews with me automatically. I set an emergency day on the last day of the semester, and if the students miss this, I can safely assume they have no intent of passing the class. This semester, I got one email from a student that missed their initial interview date and saw his failing grade on the web. He contacted me to reschedule his interview on the emergency day, and I reluctantly agreed to come in during the morning so I could see the results of his preparation for the interview.

It turns out the only thing the student did right was show up on time. Despite the extra weekend to prepare, he couldn’t construct a simple sentence to explain anything he had learned. The fact that his grade had gone from zero to net positive points was enough to pass him for the semester, but he didn’t deserve marks within the curve ranking after the interview. I went back and doubled up my paperwork to fix this change, but I was really annoyed that someone needed me to come in to save his grade and he didn’t have the decency to even prepare for the interview.

So far the comments left by students checking their scores has been overwhelmingly positive, yet again, but I don’t know if that will translate into higher scores for my reviews. Reviews from students this week would really feel good, because the administration hasn’t been giving anyone in the office “warm fuzzy feelings” these days. Once the fallout from the recent uncivil behavior (this is disgusting behavior, even by Korean Academy standards) by our supervisors becomes slightly less radioactive, I’ll share some of the drama.

Lets just say, I want to finish my Masters as soon as possible.

Superman’s vast power makes him hard to sympathize with, yet his famous origin story is the bedrock that explains his roots so well. It is a hard thing to balance within a movie. Are the only good Superman movies origins to let you see his humanity in contrast to his vast power? You need to see the character grounded to understand his morality, but the retelling of the character in each subsequent film or comic diminishes the impact of the iconic character. You don’t need to see the same story retold if it’s done well the first time.

The most recent Superman movie, Man of Steel, is yet another stab at this retelling. I went into this, despite my recent comic kick, unspoiled about the plot of the movie. Having read a few good Mark Waid Superman (or Superman-esque comics recently) stories, I have a particular soft-spot for the character. Superman is not a simple story to tell. It is the power of the Avengers in one man. That means the scope of the movie is huge to present a challenge. As stated in the movie, that “S” stands for something, and has a lasting resonance with my sense of morals.

Some people think Superman is lame, trying to save everyone. That’s why I like him. He is Sisyphus. He has been given this crushing sense of responsibility. His task is to save everyone. He is what you should strive to be. He is the paragon of Lawful Good. That’s why “Red Son” (my favorite Superman Elsewhere story) works so well. He can hear everyone, see everything, and he would save us all if he had the time. He has to prioritize the biggest threats because he is the only thing that can stop them. He pulls his punches, he takes damage so innocents can survive, and he takes care to protect everyone.

There wasn’t a lot of “protecting” in this movie, and there was a lot of destruction. It looked amazing, and the fights were incredible, but this rarely felt like Superman. It was a lot more science fiction than I bargained for too. I won’t spoil this movie. I’ll just tell you my reflexive reaction to it. When a particular scene at the end of this movie happened that changed my view of this version of the character, I was holding onto a water bottle, crushing it, and I didn’t realize it until after the scene was over. This scene changes the dynamic of the character significantly.

If a movie affects the audience, I guess it is successful, but it was farther than I expected it to go, and I’m glad I didn’t know about this change in character going in. I think it could have been handled differently and just as well. I expected a lot less collateral damage, and a lot more selflessness, but perhaps I am simply a different generation of Superman fan. If they would have shown him to care about anyone other than a character with a spoken line, perhaps this would have felt different.

The DC movies never seem to lead anywhere. I know there will be an origin free sequel to this movie, which I’d probably watch, but this movie simply doesn’t exist in the same universe as the “Batman” franchise. It’s so different in scale to think of Superman blowing up stuff and Batman running around in the same world. Totally different themes and tone. It’ll be interesting to see if they follow the Marvel strategy any time soon.

My family, when it departs, is never actually ready to leave, and has never actually left, until there has been at least fifteen minutes from when they last walked out the door. Whenever we as a family unit make the determination what we, as a whole on in parts, will be traveling to a destination, the process of leaving the house takes at least two trips back to the apartment for something, and elaborate staging process, and lots of trips to gather things to bring along.

I am guilty of this when I need to bring something specific with me to the office. I might think to myself, “Bring an umbrella” when I hop into the shower, as I eat breakfast, when I put on my shoes, and while I walk past the umbrella closet, but it won’t be until I am around the corner on the way to the bus stop before I realize that I forgot to bring my umbrella and I’ll need to return home.

This effect is multiplied for every person when we leave together. If we are planning on going shopping with the stroller, we’ll put the children into their shoes only to realize that my daughter has worn her pants backward. If we manage to get down the stairs with all the clothes on in the right direction, someone’s shoes might be on the wrong foot, or they might need a hat. It doesn’t matter how elaborate the checklist we prepare, it always falls short of the mark.

Whenever my wife leaves for the grocery store, I might as well never call her to tell what we might need in the refrigerator, because she never remembers to bring her phone. If I’m lucky, she will remember her wallet, but she might have loaned me her credit card. The number of times she has called to cancel that card in a panic only to follow up and say, “Wait, never mind, found it in my husband’s wallet/pocket/nightstand” is probably close to double digits now.

I have no idea why I can remember someone’s score on an exam, or a quote from the Simpson’s from two decades ago, but can’t remember to bring a jacket if I think it might be cold later.

I’ve had students teach nonsense like tarot or reflexology to their group members. Since the grade is based on using English to teach skills or information to people, I don’t have a “content is superstitious crap” grading metric. When students have to sit through lessons about touching someone’s hand to cure disease, I roll my eyes and just see if they are actually asking questions to their group. If the students are properly skeptical, they should ask if the people have any evidence for what they are teaching. Sadly, very few of my students are bold or interested enough to actually ask if their group members about the content.

One of my top students this semester was teaching something new to her group this semester. She was presenting “Superstitions from around the world.” She taught things like “palmistry” or “physiognomy” to students, explaining what people believe around the world. She didn’t claim it to be true, but simply talked about how in one country a physical feature could be interpreted to mean something portentous.

The problem was that she didn’t convince me that her research was very sound. She said that an American superstition was smashing a mirror. Her group members told me that smashing a mirror is bad luck because “Americans believe that it holds their soul or a spirit.” If you were going to make a statement such as this, wouldn’t you want to ask the American in the room if he agreed? I’d say that many Americans think breaking mirrors is a superstition, but I don’t think souls and spirits are involved in any myth I’ve heard connected to this. There is the whole “Summon a spirit by talking into a mirror” stuff, I guess, and she conflated the two? I don’t know. Maybe it was in a movie?

The group members also told me some other interesting things from her lesson. One student, in the middle of his final interview, prefaced a statement with the expression, “Unlike Americans, Korean parents love their children very much so….” I was so shocked at this statement that I couldn’t focus for the rest of the time this student was talking to me. Why would you state that parents don’t love their children? Why would you say that about an entire country? Why would you say that to a person from that country? Why would you say that to a person from that country with children? Seriously? Thanks for letting me know that as an American I don’t love my kids. What the hell are you thinking?

Anyway, the last bit of misinformation her groups brought up were that Americans never put shoes on a table because that means that someone is going to hang themselves. This might be an old movie trope, where they hang someone in the wild west but can’t show something graphic or realistic. I’ve literally never heard this before.

It’s rare that I am flat-out insulted by students in a class, and while I commend a student for trying a new topic, perhaps something with a bit less stereotyping and misinformation would be better.

The university I work for has a ban on gifts from students to professors in classes for credit. The most I’ve ever gotten from a Freshman student I teach is a balloon animal to give to my daughter after someone completed a project, or a caricature of myself done on a piece of scratch paper at the end of the semester. Students might have poor ethics when it comes to taking tests, but gift giving bans are enforced and policed by the students themselves.

Contrast this to my wife, who just finished making lunch for my daughter’s kindergarten teacher. My daughter is going on a field trip and picnic today, and it was my wife’s job to make food for the teacher. This was assigned to us because we were the last family to join the class, and all the easier parent assigned tasks had already been divided up by the parents of the class. My daughter isn’t in competition with the other students because she is too young. I don’t think there are grades yet, so there aren’t any “stakes” to this meal, but Korean parents complete in everything else.

Adding on to the list of things my wife wants to do to make a good impression at the school, she is working extra hard to do a good job. I think  she should just go to a fast food place and buy something, or give the teacher a coupon for something near where they are going. There is a “PTA” of sorts that confers with the teacher whenever there is an activity in the classroom that requires the cooperation of the parents, and the longer someone has been enrolled in the class, the earlier their opportunity for picking something off a list. We got the last spot, so we get the more intensive job.

If I had to pick  a job where I had to decide between getting gifts and teaching small children, or teaching young adults and getting none, I’m taking the young adults every time, so perhaps I shouldn’t complain.

The unit on non-verbal communication in our speaking book is very confusing. It seems to be written as an excuse to do charades in class, as it’s been introduced after the unit about movies. The unit about movies doesn’t work in the Institute class because there is a huge age gap between students and no one has seen the same films. Adding a non-verbal component and having students try to guess movies? Not making that any easier.

My only other “go to” non-verbal activity is “Four Panel Comics“, which worked well because the students still get that same numbered facial expression sheet earlier in the session when we attempt to describe emotions. I had some backup copies of that old sheet on hand, walked to a second building to collect the portable dry erase boards, and began the activity. These students were very focused artists, so I gave them plenty of time to work on their masterpieces. I contributed one to the “gallery” in front of the class, then we all tried to guess what the other students had intended from their comic panels.

It was interesting to throw around words like “semiotics” and explain some of the consequences of signage like I knew a little about the topic, but it wasn’t my focus of the last paper and I am only exposed to how to interpret images through my coworkers discussions. I would like to read that if I had spare time thought.

I had also prepared a bit of vocabulary around proverbs. We talked about the meaning of a few proverbs specifically about money, but the students were having too difficult a time. I decided I’d try to expand the activity a little by also trying a “visual” proverb. I’d draw the elements of proverbs and see if they could reconnect the elements back into a phrase, decipher the meaning, and explain it to me.

They were startlingly effective at this task. Both “A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush.” and “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” were clearly explained by students after they decoded the picture. If I had read more background materials about semiotics, I’m sure I could devise an entire lesson out of this activity, but instead I had to run to my next set of class after collecting the white boards. I only was able to complete my grading and interviews for the rest of the time I had left to me in the office. There is no more time at the end of the semester for content development, and I am too far behind on my paper to pick up a topic from last module to read up and work on it when I have more pressing matters.

Anyway, I’ve been falling short each class because there simply isn’t enough time in the day for all the work I need to do when I am outside the house, and the kids are on a solid tear of several days preventing any rest. It’s been brutal.

My classes all end with my students doing one on one interviews to prevent possible cheating from being the deciding factor of their grades. I know students look for advantages by asking their friends about my class, tests, and how to do well. If all their friends can tell them about how to secure an A+ is to speak well in an interview, I can live with that.

Today and tomorrow I have 50+ interviews to complete, which is very draining. I had to learn about guitars so often I just banned it from the possible interview topics for the day after the damn randomizer had it come up seven times straight. No more!

My students have been impressive in their consistency. The grades I gave in class tightly predicted their expected results, and I only had a few disappointing performances. There were a few students that failed, miserably, but them showing up at all was a sign that they took the class seriously enough to at least try.

I have a class where I expected expect more than 20% of the students will fail to show up for the interview because they have no statistical hope of passing. If they all show up, it’ll be awkward when I share their grades. My coworker suggested offering supplemental homework for students that are in danger of failing that could give remedial students a chance for a C+ after they demonstrate they aren’t up to pushing higher into the curve.

I might introduce that to my syllabus next semester. These failing students would need to complete additional projects outside of class to demonstrate that they wanted to pass, but it would wipe out bad scores and give them slightly better grades at the end. That way they could work at their own speed and also make progress to improve so that if they took the class over they would have a leg up on the next set of students. It is additional work, but if it doesn’t impact on the curve and was explained early in the semester, struggling students might not be as willing to quit.

For the past few years, whenever the semester changes, or there is a significant shift in my life, I “deep dive” into a topic. This is when something begins to take up all my free time, and I get obsessed with the minutia of something most people find inconsequential. I’ve been doing this all my life, and my blog has served as a sort of catalog of my most recent obsessions for a while now. Usually the desire to “deep dive” into something happens reflexively during the summer as a way to stave off boredom. Normally these deep dives also coincide with a change in my habits, and my media consumption, social circle, or living situation. I’ve been doing this all my life, but I’m just more aware of it now.

When I first got married and started living with my wife, I was trying to learn how to use, install, and be a daily Linux user. I decided I wanted to start learning how to use my computer better, and I wanted to avoid Microsoft in Korea after I had some computer problems. I installed Ubuntu distro files, got frustrated by how backwards Korea was treating non-Windows users, and simply gave up my principled stand once I could use English versions of programs once again. This was my last “philosophical/moral” deep dive that I can recall. I wanted to see if Linux was viable in Korea and decided not to bother after too many setbacks.

During this time, my media consumption was different. I was into audiobooks for a time, and would listen to hours of people reading while I walked around. This was before I had a media enabled phone, and podcasts weren’t really a thing yet. This was also the last time I was interested in watching television, because my wife and I would buy DVD sets with subtitles and sit down to watch television shows together. We haven’t had the time, and we don’t buy media like that anymore. I haven’t watched regularly scheduled television on TV for the past seven years.

After we moved into our new home, I was really into video games. I was obsessed before I was married too, spending huge amounts of money on Nintendo consoles. I bought a Wii, Nintendo DS, and played computer games for a long time. This obsession with video games came about way back in university, solidified after my first year in Korea, and stuck with me until I got married.

I also got really into politics through a video game forum that had a discussion board. There was a shift in my interests, where I got less into games and more into following the news. I followed the 2008 election for over a year and a half, and spent hours each day analyzing the news, and listening to podcasts. This led to my love of Google Reader, RSS, and lots of time on the computer keeping up with events around the world. I still listen to a few of the podcasts I found during this time of my life on a weekly or daily basis.

When I changed jobs and started working at the university, I started to get really into D&D 4e. I had no more time for solitary video games, so I spent hours of my time listening to podcasts while walking my dog and trying to come up with twists for my campaign for friends. My idea of a good time was trying to mix-max a character or come up with a new back story.  When the development of materials for D&D slowed down, and my time for story telling changed, I got into other things, and haven’t had a chance to play in a good role playing game in a few years now. Occasionally inspiration for a character will hit me and I would love to find a group once again, but time prevents me from restarting this hobby. I would stay up late into the night writing creative materials for campaigns that would never be played, and bought pounds of dice, books, and read everything about role playing I could get my hand on. It was a very rewarding hobby because it encouraged social interaction. I really wish I still had time for this.

From D&D, I got into card games. Some of my long time friends in Korea got me into different types, whether they were collectible or simply strategic, they bridged the game from D&D to something less time consuming. I played days worth of Race for the Galaxy a few summers back, and even bought the game myself, but it’s been languishing on my shelf since then. From there, I started on Magic: The Gathering with some of my D&D buddies, which was a rabbit hole that I paid for with hard cash for two years.

When I saw that my much delayed Master’s was going to become an inevitability, I used last summer to play Magic: The Gathering, and specifically EDH to put myself at ease. I hung out with other players, met friends, and genuinely tried to enjoy my last bit of free time before I would need to study and write all the time. Playing games with friends was a lot of fun, but the cost of this game was prohibitively expensive, and the Korean players I met did not have reasonable views on “fun”. My foreign buddies and I might make an attempt to hang out once a month these days, but it’s not enough to keep up with everything. People still invite me to come out for the occasional Magic game, draft, or whatever, but the stars need to align for me to be able to join and I can’t spend the time keeping up with the latest strategies and decks anymore.

The birth of my second child put an end to the expendable finances required to play Magic: The Gathering at a competitive/ casual level in the environment at the store where I was involved, so I’ve been looking for new “deep dive” materials recently. My latest thing (as evidenced by my blog) has been the increased importance as my role as an educator and parent. I have no free time that isn’t structured around when I need to help out with my screaming children (I’ve been interrupted no less than a dozen times trying to finish this post.).

Being able to meet other people outside the home has been nearly impossible, and our budget is limited to a few frills for our daughter, not some expensive cardboard to play games. I have to help my wife out as much as possible, while still trying to earn enough money to pay for our bills and my own education. As of right now, I can listen to a few podcasts, read the news, and try to blog, but that’s about it. It’s really about trying to finish my Master’s without being completely overwhelmed by stress at work and at home.

My current outlet of curiosity and interest have been a few television shows and some comics that I read. Having a tablet to consume media while not being trapped at a desk has been a must, and being able to be mobile with my media consumption is the only way I can find time during a commute or between classes to keep up  with anything.

With this current deep dive into comic books, I’ve been listening to a new comic podcast, The Comic Shack. Trying to read everything is impossible, so knowing the best comics, or the most highly recommended runs on books are the best ways to approach the hobby. The show is from the perspective of people who used to read comics years ago, and have recently come back to the hobby, which describes me. I’ve been out of comics for decades, but enjoyed the movies and would like to see what is going on on comics. (If you are interested in this show specifically, skip the first host and catch up on the Moisés Chiullan hosted episodes only.)

I went on a hike up the local mountain like I was doing last summer this weekend, and I spent it listening to shows about all the comic books I would like to read if I could find the time. Last year I was hiking the mountain and listening to podcasts about Magic and EDH, and now I’m listening to things about comics. I’m not really interested in the promotional, recent, or newest comic materials, so it doesn’t take much effort for me to listen because being current isn’t a goal. Good old stories are just as good as new ones. Back episodes where people recommend their “best of” runs are perfect. Finding about about an author, character, or story I might like to read has been enough to keep me entertained.

Like each “deep dive”, I get a little obsessed, spend a disproportionate amount of my time thinking about the materials, and ultimately abandon it for something new. Right now, with two children that demand constant attention about everything, simply having something else to think about  is a huge benefit. I love my kids, but I need an escape. Eventually I’ll get into writing my next paper, and the amount of time I can spend looking at comics will shrink down to nothing. When my dissertation comes in a year, I’ll be too busy to do anything else.

Who knows what will be next?

I love my wife. We’ve been together for seven years, and we’ve had two wonderful noisy children together. We have our ups and downs, but mostly we get along. The one thing that causes stress in our relationship like no other is when we need to use the credit card to pay for anything on the Internet outside Korea. I don’t know why, but Korean banks denying payments, requiring Active X, and generally not working the first through twentieth time you try to pay for anything abroad is one of the biggest tests of our relationship. We both are working together against a monolithic and stupid set of roadblocks set up by Korean banks, but it causes so much stress that the idea of buying anything online fills me with dread. I hate to even ask for help paying because I know it’s going to cause so much stress.

Now that I study online, there are going to be three points each year where I know I am going to have to pay for my tuition using our home computer, and this will never, ever work as it should. There are always things to install, instructions to read, things to fill out, and lots of problems when it comes to making a simple payment to my school. No matter how many times we do it, there will always been some mysterious failures that prevent either one of us from being able to complete the transaction alone. It’s only by extreme patience, annoyance, frustration, cursing,  confusion, followed by defeatist clicking that were are ever able to complete the payment online.

It only took us an hour for a routine  transaction this time, which is days faster than our previous best. At least we accomplished it on the new replacement laptop, so we could replicate the procedure (theoretically) next time when we needed to pay. That’s a few months away (thankfully), but already it fills me with dread to think about.