::A Geek in Korea::

Back when my wife and I were first married, there was always a struggle to be the first person asleep in the house. She claimed I snored, I know she snored a little, and so whoever got to bed had a better chance of sleeping through the night. It was never as bad as living with my parents, as my father could shake the house with his snoring. I never understood how my mother could have slept next to that man for years without medication to knock her out.

I’ve had a sore throat for the past two nights, and it is slowly evolving into a head cold. The past two days I could barely breathe through my mouth. Now, I’ve got a nice general stuffed up nose too, and I was sleepless most of the weekend.

My wife has made some medicinal tea, which tastes as foul as medicine should, with only some of the effectiveness. Anything hot soothes my throat for a while, but other than that I don’t know how good it actually is treating my symptoms. I dutifully drink it anyways and try to fall asleep.

What I didn’t know was that my snoring has been amplified by my cold. I don’t know if it is because of my stuffy nose, or my raspy throat, but my wife claims that my snoring now sounds like someone trying to start a chainsaw. She said that my father’s humorously loud snore had nothing on me these days, and that she hasn’t got a bit of sleep since because of the noise since I got my cold.

Seeing as I can’t remember getting any sleep for the past few nights because of aches and pains in my head, I don’t know when I had a chance to snore to keep her awake, but she swears I’m the cause of her not getting any rest.

She says that she will do subtle things to try to stop me from snoring while she is unable to sleep. If I had my hand out on the bed, she’ll reposition it to be on my belly. She might put her finger on my nose and wiggle it to see how deeply I am asleep. She’ll steal covers, roll me from side to side, or hit my leg. I don’t remember any of this, so I must have been asleep. I don’t know what I would have thought if I had to see her, sleep deprived and red eyed, wiggling my nose when I opened my eyes.

I do remember waking up and going to the bathroom approximately five times a night because of all the tea she forces me to drink. I try to get back into bed after that as gentle as possible to not wake her up, but she’s likely to be telling me to flush the toilet, open the door, or something else I might have forgotten in my sleepwalk to the bathroom.

I thought my sleeplessness was from the sore throat and getting up all the time to go to the bathroom, but now I have to factor in my wife actually poking and proding me to stop snoring from time to time as well.

If anything, I am a creature of habit. When I go to work, I purchase a T.O.P. Espresso from the same smelly store because it’s the cheapest. I bring the same cheese rolls to work from a bakery because they are easy to finish during the day. I work as soon as I sit down at the computer, and I get my planning out of the way as fast as possible in case I need to design tests, or make copies for students. I work diligently for about 40 minutes, then do whatever I need to prepare for the rest of the day before students arrive.

When I return home, it’s much the same. I eat, and if I’m finished and we have nothing else to do, I go to the computer. She watches her dramas while I surf the web for a bit, then hit my blog to post something. I spend about an hour, all told, thinking of something to post and trying to write. It takes longer if I have a mental block, and I might sip a beer, snack, or surf until inspiration its me. If I have a solid idea, I’ll post while listening to music, if not, I’ll find it distracting. I can not listen to new music while I post. It must be something I know well and work as background filler.

When I go to bed, I should be sleepy. If I am not tired, I’ll lie awake at night, toss and turn, and never get restful sleep. Worse, I’ll keep my wife awake, which is bad for everybody involved the next morning. Breaking the pattern leads to problems and grouchiness, so I stick to my rules and make a routine of everything.

Last night, for example, I had finished my blog post, and found nothing holding my fancy on the Internet, so I went to bed at 11:00. My wife noted that this was unusually early for me. She was right. Normally I go to bed an hour or two later than she does, but last night I was beating her to the pillow. Odd. We talked like we normally did, but by the time she was ready to drift off, I was no closer to sleep.

I got up, put a movie on my PMP, laid down on the floor on some sheep skin rugs my brother game me as a wedding present, and watched nearly the entire movie from start to finish. My wife asked me why I wasn’t just watching the movie in bed, since she could sleep without fear of me waking her up a second time. I told her that I treated the bed as a place for certain things, and if I added “a place to watch movies”, I’d never get around to using it for sleep because I’d be too busy thinking about other stuff I could be doing.

Eventually I did get to bed, and I woke up relatively well rested. I went to bed after the movie around the same time as if I had just spent the time on the computer or doing something else. It’s strange my body has such a regulated routine that I can’t get more rest if I try.

I’m not looking forward to the idea that I won’t be able to get sleep for several months when the baby comes.

Eek.

At this point, weird stuff like this actually almost expected more than it is a surprise. It still makes me do a double take and pull out my phone for a picture, but yeah, unholy combinations attached to hot dogs on sticks are no longer a surprise for me. Korean food makers haven’t completely explored a possible range of toxic combinations until there is a green tea variety available for every possible foodstuff anyway.

I’ve got my planning set up for multiple weeks in three classes. I’ve got to time their class schedules well so that they’ll be finishing their books around the time when we’ll move to a new owner and not have to select books anymore. I’ve got my system set up so that I’ll have two different books to last me as long as possible. I work independently from whoever is my “partner” teacher splitting the book with me. I take as long as I need to finish the book.

I had worked out that the students would be finishing two books in the next two weeks. I had a review tests lined up for Wednesday, and would start using a workbook no one had thought to use that came along with our book series as supplimental material to last me through an extra month. I get to work on a review test, then plan out the next two weeks of classes for this material.

Then, I walk into class with all my stuff planned out. I had made a kick-ass review tests that would take up the entire class next time I see the students, and I was going to spend time prepping them for parts of it today. I told my students last week to bring their long forgotten workbook so we could get started on that for homework. My students have brought it along, as well as an entirely new books I’ve never taught before. They’re asking me when we’re beginning this new reading book in my class, since I had more than half the chapters unfinished.

Uh…what?

Somewhere along the line, someone forgot to tell me they were moving to an entirely new book. I have two months to finish it, which isn’t a problem. The book I had planned to use was already cut up into multiple pieces for different teachers. I was going to be teaching the majority of this new book, but no one had told me about it.

All of this is actually GREAT, because it means I have a wealth of material, instead of a lack of things to do, but it’s a pain because no one had told me before I walked into class. Had I known a week earlier, I could have planned earlier and worked around all the review tests I spent time making thinking. I went from needed to stall, to needing to get started on this material to finish on time. Now that the review test is written, and my schedule set up, the students would have wasted their time if I didn’t go through with the test.

When I asked my new coworker about this, she surprised me. My old Korean coworkers were conversationalists. They could joke around in English and Korean, and were really good at office stuff to keep us on task. This new coworker hired a few weeks ago was giving me a Korean, “Ung….ung…” nodding along like you would for a conversation you weren’t paying much attention to on phone. I was shocked that she might not have been following me when I was asking about books she was teaching. It’s her job to know what parts of which books she is responsible to teach. It’s also her job to TELL me when picking new books. I have to know which parts I’m responsible to complete.

I shouldn’t be finding any of this out from a student.

There are only two months left before this school is folded into some sort of franchise, and they are still dragging their feet on the different issues regarding the handover. There are going to be actual promises made to parents in a few weeks, but no one knows anything in detail. It’s going to be a hectic meeting if no one from the franchise is there to handle the details, because it looks like no one on our side knows what is going on. The newest rumors are classes on Saturdays, which is an impossibility on my part. When the final contract is put in front of me and I need to walk away after asking for WEEKS for information, I won’t be to blame.

Since students are always walking to their different academies in all sorts of weather, they have tricks to keep themselves warm. Back when I worked at a school that had inadequate heating, the students used to bring in chemical-reaction hand heaters to show off to their friends. They’d never, ever let me touch one, or explain to me how they worked. I thought they were neat, but never remembered what they were called, so I couldn’t find out where to buy them.

It turns out that the word in Korean is translated as “hand heater” (손난로) (soun-nallo) These are sold in the ubiquitous pencil shops in any apartment complex, and any place where children might go in winter to buy supplies. You can buy these reusable packs cheaply for 500 won each. I got caught in a late night snow earlier in the week and bought one while I waited for a bus.

There is a small flat metal disc suspended in a liquid in a thick sealed plastic bag. When the pack is “charged”, that is, in a liquid state, you trigger a chemical reaction by bending the metal disc inside slightly. The liquid crystalizes before your eyes, and you’ve got hand warming heat in 5-10 seconds. They last for fifteen to twenty minutes. I had my gloves on, but there was definitely considerable warmth going through the entire heater to my hands. I have very sensitive hands that ache in the winter. It was great to have a portable heater I could stow away in a pocket, and for 500 won it’s amazing to think it’s reusable!

I told my wife about my cleverness in buying such a convenient little tool to stay warm. She reacted really negatively. “It smells so bad! The plastic smells toxic! Ugh!” The heavy pouch does smell like foul plastic, but I don’t really go around smelling items I don’t need to, and I wasn’t planning on wearing it anywhere near my nose.

To “recharge” the chemical reaction, I had to wrap the bag in a cloth to prevent the bag from melting onto the pot, then put it in boiling water for five minutes. This turns to hard crystaline white pouch back into the clear plastic solution I originally saw in the pencil shop. If I went about fiddling with the metal I could trigger the chemical reaction again and have twenty more minutes of heat.

I’m guessing the students were paranoid about letting people see their hand heaters because they’d have to boil the heaters if someone set off the chemical reaction in class, and that would mean cold hands as they walked to their next school. I’m going to keep using my little heater when I’ve got to take a bus ride, or if I walk my dog before work on a particularly cold day. I’m kind of worried I’ll open my bag to find out I’ve accidentally crushed the metal catalyst and set it off by accident. I don’t know how many times the chain reaction can be triggered, but it’s fun to watch science at work.

One of my classes had longstanding behavior problems between the female students in the class. A new girl had been added to the class, and the biggest girl, who also happened to be the dumbest girl, picked on her mercilessly. Calling her a “big girl” isn’t understating it. She’s only 11 years old and is as tall as I am. Anyway, this giant bully refused to let any of her friends in class talk to this new student.

The new girl is very shy, and also very bad at English. The bully might have been jealous there was a race for the bottom, because they are always the lowest two scores on a test by a wide margain. Whatever the reason for the bully’s dislike, things turned nasty. The students grade their peer’s tests in class to save time. I hand out tests basedon three criteria: Are they sitting next to their grader? Do they have their own test? Are they good friends?

I should have had added “Are they bitter enemies?” to the list. The bully in class would trade for the new girls test whenever possible. Then, she’d grade the girls test looking for mistakes. When she couldn’t find mistakes, she’d use her pencil to add extra letters or change what the girl had written, then mark it incorrect. The secretary caught her doing this on the tests because they used completely different pencil types. It was totally obvious that the extra letters were NOT the same handwriting or pencil type, but without catching her on camera, we couldn’t accuse her. The girl was covering her forgery cleverly to hide it from the camera by using her long hair and drooping down in her seat.

The bully has the WORST victimization complex. She claims she has never, ever done ANYTHING wrong ever. If you accuse her of something you SEE her do, she’ll deny it. When confronted with anything less than photography or video, she’ll tell you that you are lying. It’s repugnant and a bit disturbing. Her parents also take her side and are vocal critics of discipline measures we take in class.

The secretary and director told me that they knew about what the girl was doing, and was letting her hang her own noose. They were going to wait until the girl got busted on camera, then confront the entire class. Anyone else they caught helping her, or talking badly about the girl would be added to the dragnet.

The new girl had tried to mend fences and add friends. She had one friend, who was also new in class, but the rest of the class continued to shun her. I made a new seating chart to separate the two girls. Other teachers and I had discussed petitioning to kick this bully out of the school, but the director said she needed hard evidence on camera to show to the parents.

The girls are cruel to their own. It wasn’t anything violent, but the new girl’s parents were upset about how their daughter was treated. Things like buying pizza for the class seemed like good moves, but the bully girl would complain about it saying, “Oh, new girl, you are so poor, you can’t buy a enough pizza for everyone. Two pieces? Who think’s that enough for anyone. Who buys this cheap disgusting pizza?”

It’s not like the new girl can win, because if you eat too much pizza, you are, “A pig, a fat pig who loves to eat junk food.”

So, with this in the background, we fast forward to today. The bully came to school with a broken leg. She had been picking on a TINY boy in the class, and he had pushed her down. She broke her leg. If it had happened to a nicer student, I would have had more sympathy.

Anyway, while in class, the director and secretary came in to my room and asked for students that had said bad things about the new student to step forward and apologize. It was like Peter before sunrise. “I’ve never said anything bad about the new girl. Never. Nope. Never.”

All around the classroom, they went around claiming they were all BEST FRIENDS. It was pretty obvious that my director was just adjusting their nooses at this point, they had long since hung themselves. She was just willing to see if anyone was going to take the step of owning up to it.

She called all of them out of the room. ALL of the girls had to leave the class! Woohoo! The boys and I had a wonderful, fun class by ourselves. They sat around in the directors room and had a face to face talk. The director had been listening in and recording everything that happened in the classroom. She had all the proof she needed for five of the six girls.

The last girl, the big bully, went on denying everything. I’m guessing they had some sort of new video proof, and they confronted her about all the other stuff we knew via hearsay. She refused to apologize. The rest of the girls went back to class, a few of them crying uncontrollably, but the bully claimed total innocence. She got held in the office for twenty more minutes of yelling. I don’t know if she’ll be enrolled next month or not. Her sister quit recently (also a pain), so if they cut this girl I’ll be overjoyed.

My middle school students have to come to school to study for their big tests. For whatever reason, I still have class with them, but the next two hours they spend their time sitting in class studying whatever they need to for their final tests in school.

They’ll be for the next week, so giving them homework is somewhat pointless, as they’ll be too busy with tests to complete it. I decided to share some terrible puns I had made this week with them. We did them as riddles the students had to figure out:

• What do you call a white bear from the North Pole that makes your breath smell like candy? (Polo Bear)
• What does the polite Korean food say when you leave the restaurant? “Have a Rice Day!”
• What do you call a green Korean dinosaur that prefers pistols at dawn? Dooly.
• What is red and white, smells like French fries, and has many toys? Santa Hamburger!

The last one only works in Korean.

Anyway, the students knew they were complete groaners of jokes, even across both languages, but it didn’t stop them from laughing at them in the “so bad it’s actually good” sort of way people do when they hear a good pun. They’ll be spending the rest of their time freaking out about their big tests, so I hope that laugh got a little stress off their shoulders.

I gave three tests to three different classes, supposedly at the same “level” today. The classes are somewhat scaled so that students of roughly the same age and ability are together. Some kids reached this level by failing to proceed with their age group. The majority reached the level by progressing successfully through the previous levels.

The difference between telling the good students and the bad students in different classes can be found out immediately after I announce a test for the day. For the past week, I’ve been giving out tests on the last unit of our book. Every day in class the students know there is a test because I tell them we’ll have one more test each day until we finish the unit.

The good student’s reaction is, “Oh man, a test. I’d better find out what page it’s on so I can prepare for it.” They spend the time mumbling the words to themselves to pound it into their brains. They usually do very well.

The bad student’s reaction is, “Oh man, a test. I’d better find out if I get detention if I fail the test badly.” Korean teachers give detention for failing tests, and I used to, but some students have walking arrangements, while others MUST take a bus because their mother called and told the school to never hold them after. Most of the WORST students in the class would never go home on time EVER if we could discipline them based on performance, so their parents opt out of the extra time spent in the school. If two students bomb the test, and one goes home early because of his mother calling to complain, it’s total crap, so I don’t bother with detention anymore.

The good students in my first class waited for me to announce it was time for a test and said, “Teacher. Time out, we’d like five minutes to review materials. Is it okay?” I told them they had their full five minutes if they used it for studying, and most of the students that did well on the test used it to review and memorize the materials. The bad students in the class used it for goofing off or chatting. The variation between the best and worst student in their study habits was 70% points on their tests.

The second class full of much worse students (20% on average worse than my first class), spent half the time complaining I test too often. Then time asking what page. Then asking what kind of test. Then asking if there would be a re-test (detention). Then asking what the cut off point was….etc. By the time I called their five minutes, most of the students had barely looked at their book.

The third class is on average 30-40% worse test wise than my first class, and this is only because two bright students break the bell curve of the tests and keep the class somewhat competitive. The rest of the students are 50-60% worse than the average students in my first class. These students have stabby problems. (Side note: The same boy that took a pencil to his classmate has come to school in the past month with a broken leg AND a broken arm/hand from soccer. Think he studies much?)

In this final class I have students that are about to enter middle school and can’t write a complete sentence in English. Students half their grade have passed them in the academy. These students are burned out already at the age of 12 from studying. With the exception of the students in the class simply due to time constraints preventing them from being in other classes and score highly, these students are the worst of the worst.

These students FIRST needed to get copies for the books they forgot to bring. Then they needed help getting on the right page. Then they needed to be reminded, and watched over to keep in line. I tossed one student out of class and fed him to the director, who spat him back out and put him down in front of the class and made him return to class just as we started the test. He didn’t accomplish much on the test.

Fostering good study habits and keeping children interested and ready to learn is something parents need to instill into their children. The difference in a “Can try hard,” and “Will do as much as I need to to avoid punishment” attitude is obvious at even the lowest grades.

We’ve recently started letting our dog into the house at nights. It’s been too cold to keep him on the veranda, so we had been putting him in the cage we bought for him two years ago. He hates being in that cage, and will shake and rattle the cage for an hour after we make him go to bed. Since he is a pretty well behaved dog, we’re also letting him stick around the house while we were out of the apartment.

He’s been trained to go to the bathroom on the veranda, as well as in his cage. He doesn’t make mistakes while we are home, but we can’t open the veranda door while we go outside now that it’s too cold.  We’ve moved his second toilet into our second bathroom this week so that we don’t have to clean the floor of his cage all the time. He sleeps on our couch, and is there in the morning when we wake up. He’s got his little niche and doesn’t do anything to disturb us, so there is no reason not to let him out during the evening.

Part of his good behavior in the house is dependent on him getting walks in the morning, or before we go to sleep at night. As long as I give him a walk, he doesn’t need to use the bathroom the rest of the time he’s unsupervised in the house. He lives up to his part of the deal on the walk, and I let him stay in the apartment, out of the cage, when I’m not watching him.

Today, I got Yoshi ready for his walk. He got shaved last weekend, so he’s been wearing a hooded winter sweater. It’s been too cold for him to go outside without it. I had him walking around the apartment block so that he can do his thing. We took a walk to the pet store for food. We walked around the park. We walked around the apartment. And again. And again…We paced around the apartment ten or more times.

Nothing.

It was getting late, so I had to leave for work. I couldn’t let him into the entire house if he ran around and made a mess. Keeping him into the cage while I left for work seemed like a stressful situation for him. I decided to let him out in my computer room, but not in the entire house. He might spend the entire afternoon in the room and not do anything but sleep. He might make a huge mess and get punished when my wife returns home. She told me to put him in the cage and be done with the risk. I’m hoping he won’t regress to that.

I’ll be home late tonight, and I don’t really want to take him on another walk if I don’t absolutely have to. The temperature is finally getting cold enough that a late night walk requires me to bundle up to not freeze on our way around. If he just got his stuff done normally, there’d be none of this wondering if he had left me a present or not when I get home. I’m not as bothered by all of it as my wife is, and if he made a mess she had to clean up, he’s in big trouble.

I don’t know if the cold weather has affected him somehow, but I can’t go walking around for an hour every morning when it’s getting colder every day.

99 Bricks is a wonderful flash game. You have 99 tetriminos to reach as high as possible. The difference between this game and Tetris is that there are physics rules to be weary of. If you bump a piece, your piece will fall.

If your piece falls off the tower, it can disqualify you for some of the game style building bonuses. You can build up to higher tower heights, but creating a line doesn’t make your tetriminos disappear. In fact, it’s better to use pieces conservatively to create a solid base, then shoot for high towers at the end if you can make it high enough. Once you start having pieces you can’t place, you can destroy them with the “C” key.

This is a good time waster on Kongregate. I’ve beaten the first two challenges, and I could see myself playing it at work.