::A Geek in Korea::

The New Super Mario Brothers game is out, and it’s wonderful beyond description. This is a game that makes me revel in the fact that I am a gamer. I’ve been smiling like an idiot the entire day playing it, and I can’t wait to get back to playing it some more. It’s one of those rare games everyone can enjoy. If you want to run through it and beat it for speed, you can. If you want to collect all the coins on each stage to unlock extra levels and secrets, you can. It’s got lots of stuff to see and do, and the new powerups add new twists to the gameplay that make this not only a standout game, but a standout Super Mario platform game. The bar has been raised on everything from the franchise from now on.

One of the memories I had about grow up was when a new game was released, and how quickly the codes and information pertinent to the games disseminated through an elementary school. Students with video game consoles would bring in magazines that were part "Tip book" and part advertising. In it, people would painstakingly map out parts of the game. We cared not for discovery or surprises. We would spend hours at recess memorizing paths, the locations of various powerups, and memorizing cheat codes. The Contra code was our proxy secret handshake. Nevermind that most of the time we never had the skills to actually complete the game.

Hell, I didn’t even have a game console!

The whole point was that someone would find out some sort of trick or cheat, and everyone would know about it. The warp pipe on 1-2 of Super Mario Brothers? Yeah, everyone knew about that, but what about the secret glitch "Minus world"? Yeah, it exists, but do I believe any of my friends saw it? No way. The lies people would make up about games was also astounding. The more modern equivalent would be any Gamefaqs board where people lie about their accomplishments, secrets, or anything relating video games ever. Don’t got to these sorts of places to find out of New Super Mario Brothers is worth playing, or what to expect before you open the box.

I’m not going to spoil New Super Mario Brothers for anyone. Go out, BUY this wonderful game. Thank me when you’re done. Some games are better experienced than simply being told about.

My rather large kindergarten class isn’t phonics based. We aren’t trying to do reading level work since we only have a few hours a week and far too many children to give individual attention. As such, most of the students can’t read. While they can recognize a few hundred items in English and can hold short conversations in English, there isn’t any reading going on in class. Basic letter recognition is all we’ve gone through, and even then, most of my students only know capital letters.

As such, when I wanted to get a game of Memory cards going, I needed to find an appropriate set of cards to use. I went through the cards we had at work to find a set that had the the letters written in pairs, one for upper case and one lower case, with the opposite side having a colorful picture that started with that letter. I put the picture side up for the class, and their task was to find the letters hidden underneath.

Then, to reinforce phonics learning, I would exaggerate the sounds when someone would choose a picture. That way when I turned over the card, they should have heard what the letter looks like. If they were waffling between choosing to card pictures, I would say the words with extra emphasis on the beginning letter once again for help.

The pre-readers that knew most of the shapes and sounds of the letters really did well. Their memories and ability to discover the letters other students turned over but made a mistake with meant that by the end of the game they had a five to one card advantage in most cases. The students that didn’t know the letters were simply turning things over at random and were really kind of amazed that there was a phonetic connection between two pictures of different things.

My manager asked me at the beginning of the week to organize a board that we have on the stairs entering our school. He wanted the highest level classes to prepare a written paper of some sort that would let the school show what the students can do. Since I teach one of the three highest level classes, I got put "in charge" of this little exercise.

This sort of writing exercise is good in an advertisement, as well as esteem sort of role. Students, and Parents of students can see what we do, and perspective parents can see what we do and hopefully enroll their children as well. It just so happens this project was perfect for what we were going to do in the book for the week, so I got my students to prepare on Tuesday, then today spent the day preparing the board.

The project was to make a travel brochure. This meant the students had to collect pictures of places, write a paragraph about different locations and activities they could do, and "sell" it as well. The students were allowed to choose any destination. Most of the students chose sights around Korea, but one girl wrote about a space vacation on Jupiter that sounded great. We started the class by reviewing locations, places to stay, and other things that needed to be included in the brochure.

Once the pictures of our destinations and accommodations were chosen, we got to writing. Since this was "for show", I made them write their paragraphs in their notebooks first, proofread them all, then had them copy it on their final "brochure" sheet. Then the students went about decorating what they wrote with pictures, crayons, and colored paper. Some of them were really creative with their work and it took the entire period from start to finish to create the board. I’ll put the finishing touches on it tomorrow, such as the level and age of the students, the books we study, and explaining the theme. I want to make sure my students get the recognition they deserve for their work.

A Korean MMO, Maple Story, is extremely popular with the six to twelve year old crowd. We have a bank of computers that the students can use before and after classes. Children that play Maple Story are likely to be found hanging out, killing the same enemies over and over, collecting loot, and leveling up their characters. Students that play the game will challenge each other by stating their levels and the coolest monster they’ve killed. Since the game takes no actual skill to play, and all progress is measured by how many times to kill the same enemies and collect the same sorts of items, it’s an incredible timesink. Since children have limited access to computers at home, any second they can have power leveling a character while they wait for class is quickly seized upon. This alone has probably caused many students to do poorly at my school.

This is all well and good, but now I hear that Nintendo and the company that makes Maple Story, Nexon, are close to signing a deal to bringing the game to the Nintendo DS. If this game has WIFI and that will let you level the character you play on the PC, this might be something approaching the "Killer App" that the Nintendo DS might need to become overwhelmingly popular in the younger set outside of Pokémon. While there are already mobile phone versions of the game, but those aren’t nearly as popular. While in increase in Korean developed games is appealing, as well as the increased popularity of my gaming system of choice in Korea, I really don’t want to see my students start playing the game constantly.

There is hope that maybe the popularity of the game will fade before they release the Nintendo DS version. Recently, some students have started playing the Romero designed classic Dangerous Dave’s Risky Rescue. They are going for scores and highest level playthrough runs. I’m not sure if I should alert the archives yet, but it’s refreshing to see the students playing something else for a change.

I can’t stand dogs. I’ve never had any emotional attachment to a dog ever. If this makes me a cold heartless bastard, so be it. My family never purchased a dog in my childhood, seeing as all the outdoor pets we ever owned were quickly run over on the interstate road next to our house. We were never, ever permitted to have indoor pets other than fish, so the whole "animal empathy" emotional connection people have, I lack. I peeled far too many of my own pets off the side of the road for burial to care.

That being said, I did actually assist in the purchase of a canine today.

My father-in-law has been depressed recently since he’s been out of work. In a bid to cheer him up, my wife decided she was going to buy a dog today for his birthday. He has a long history of bringing animals home, only to be forced to give them up. Ironically enough, the last pet he tried to domesticate was a fowl of some sort while my wife still lived at home.  Due to her paralyzing fear of birds, my father-in-law’s last pet lasted only a day. He’s tried to get puppies in the past, but sadly his last dog ran away.

We went to the local pet stores to see what was in stock. At the second store, we happened across a shih tsu that caught our eye. My wife went into bargaining mode and happened to get the dog, food, a brush, a water bottle stand, shampoo, ear medicine, and bone chews for under the original price. The price of the dog didn’t bother me, nor did the idea of buying a gift for her father on his birthday. The simple fact that it was a dog did cause a lot of concern.

The agreement was that the dog was not going to stay at our house longer than a few hours today. It was a gift for her father, and we wouldn’t be keeping it. I also made her promise I didn’t have to take care of any of the dog’s business while it was with us. I don’t like cleaning up after anyone other than myself, and I only do that when absolutely necessary. I am not, by any sense of the words, a "dog person".

We hailed a taxi driver by hiding the dog in my wife’s arms as I waved. Since the dog was so small, we didn’t have any problems. By the time we got out of the taxi, my wife was already talking about keeping the puppy.

She and I both had never had a dog before. We needed to keep the dog at our house until we could both bring it over to her father’s place later in the evening. I made a barricade in the veranda that must have seemed huge to the tiny puppy. We found some old tennis balls for it to play with. We got the water bottle set up, fed it, and played with it before going to work.

The entire time, I had this gnawing feeling of loathing, as I knew that every second that dog stayed in our house, it was going to be more difficult to pry it out of my wife’s hands to give away. The dog passed the noise test, as it never barked, it was fairly cute, and it didn’t eat much. The only variable would be what it would do when we were both away at work. How much would it destroy?

My wife tried bargaining with me. She said she was going to keep it, and take the entire responsibility of taking care of it. Then she defiantly declared she was going to keep it despite her previous promises to me otherwise. She said she wanted more time to adjust to having a dog, seeing if she liked it. I caught her starting to use "puppy talk" in her language. I stood firm and denied every opportunity for the dog to stay. It was not staying in the house tonight.

I felt bad doing it, and it’s not because of the dog either.

My wife has told me about her desperately poor childhood. She didn’t have enough food to eat from day to day, let alone have enough money to ever have a dog. She always wanted to own a dog, as it was a sign that you were rich enough to pay for not only yourself, but a pet as well. It was a sort of status she never had before, and here I was asking her to give it up after only a few hours.

By the time I went to work, she and I had text messaged each a few times. I listed out the numerous reasons why pet ownership is not a good idea for us. I had second and third opinions from the people at work and multiple Internet sources about the breed. We purchased the dog with no real insight on what it takes to raise a dog, and the more I read, the more I thought, "Hell no. I’m not doing anything of that."

I had to be the rock in the storm of puppy cuteness.

I won out in the end, and we headed over to her parent’s apartment after work with the dog. By the time we got there, her father was already asleep, so we basically woke him up and stuck a puppy in his face. He liked the gift, or so I was told his reaction was something of pleasure. The man is makes Spock look passionate, so I don’t know if he was overjoyed or not. The comment out of his mouth was uttered by everyone in the receiving household," What about the fur?"

The real test happens to be the mother-in-law. She liked it "well enough" I suppose, but I don’t know what to expect the next time I see the house. This woman cleans up enough at home, and adding a puppy seems like it will just add to her dervish of cleaning responsibilities. She did seem to enjoy playing with the puppy. Of course, playing with this puppy means walking around cleaning up after it while the dog tried to bite her Achilles tendon. (Aww, it’s trying to make me crippled! How cute!)

If I had to do it over again, i would not buy a dog as a surprise gift ever again. The chance that her family could have rejected the gift seemed high, and this was one deal we couldn’t get a refund on. Also, the more my wife played with the dog, the more she wanted her own, or to keep it for herself. Plus, it’s a dog, and those things stink. The probability that this dog will take up residence at my abode in the future is almost guaranteed. I just know we’re going to end up with this dog on our hands, and I want none of it. Visitation is much, much better. If her parents had any inklings of an empty nest before, let it be filled with the dog. I can only hope.

I just want a house that doesn’t smell like fecal matter. Is that so much to ask?

Excuse my messy desk, I had too many gifts to clean up.

This has been the absolute best teacher’s day ever. I met up with my old students at a Japanese pork cutlet and sushi shop near where we used to go to school. When everyone arrived, we got around to ordering food. We spent the better part of an hour talking about what we had been up to for the past two years since we last saw each other.

All of the students are in high school now. One of the girls is in a foreigner high school, the most elite of all schools, and she studies entirely in English. She is also learning French, and will travel abroad to France next year with her class. Another student went to the Philippines for a month to study. He said that while he was a freshman he could spend Teacher’s day off school, as a sophomore he wouldn’t be given the luxury. In fact, by the time he was a senior, he would be going to school seven days a week to study. One of the girls told me about life in Australia, and how she was doing since then. She gave me the cute light sensitive dancing statue on top of my computer. The other girl told me about what she had been up to since I last saw her.

It was really cool to see all of these student again. I don’t really know anyone in the high school age range. Once someone is too old to go to my school, I usually lose touch. All of these students are excellent English speakers, and we spent most of the time just talking. They were curious to know why I would want to study Chinese characters. They sort of looked at me like I was crazy when I told them I thought it was interesting.

I invited them to my school, since I had classes in the afternoon. Turns out that one of the girls had studied at my school previously before she met me. She said her teacher was "From Mexico." She asked me if they speak English in Mexico. I told her she must have had a bilingual teacher. When we checked the pictures of old teachers, it turns out that the teacher had a graduated from "New Mexico".

"There’s a NEW Mexico now, too."

Once my students had seen my new school, we took some more pictures outside and they left. I got a few messages later in the day from each of them that leads me to believe they had a good time. They went to a sticker shop and took pictures together. All of them wanted to hang out in the future, so I hope we will see each other occasionally on the weekends when everyone has time. Schedules being what they are, I’m pretty sure they are actually busier than I am most days.

The rest of the day, presents kept rolling in. I got everything shown in the picture above, plus two espresso coffee mugs (I don’t drink coffee, but I do need mugs at home), a slice of pizza, a jar of candy, two handkerchiefs, and two cute notes from kindergarten students. While I didn’t suggest anyone bring me anything, I did subtly remind everyone on Friday that today was Teacher’s Day. Specifically, I used our Grammar lesson, "I am going to…." to tell the students, "You are going to bring me something for Teacher’s day."

Okay, so it wasn’t so subtle. I made sure they knew it was a joke before I let them go, but it seems to have worked.

Anyway, my wife, who is also a teacher, got several roses, a roll cake as long as my arm, and various boxes of fruit. It’s been a good hall this year. Not a single pair of socks yet. I’ve still got tomorrow’s classes to see if anyone will bring me anything to add to my total. Thank you everyone! It makes me feel great to be at teacher when I see everyone’s appreciation.

Monday happens to be Teacher’s day. This isn’t a "national bank" sort of holiday, so while teachers that work in actual schools get the day off work, people that work in academies don’t share the luxury.  It’s a holiday when students bring in presents to teachers they like, or try to meet old teachers for lunch. Usually this means I get a few different pairs of new socks, shampoo, and any other number of hints that used to lead me to believe that my student’s parents are worried about my physical appearance. Now that I’ve been around a while and know what people like to give as gifts, I’ll chalk the gifts up to Korean pragmatism instead.

One of my students from my last school has gotten in touch with me about a meeting for Teacher’s day. Once you’ve been teaching for a few years, the faces become a blur, and only the truly exceptional students stand out. In particular, this student was special because she had gone off to Australia and had emailed me to tell me that after six months she was able to join regular level English classes. I was extremely proud to hear that she had achieved her goal of studying with other native English speakers and that I had helped her achieve this goal.

Not only did I remember her, I remembered all the other students in her class. This is extremely rare. They were one of the first groups of students I really enjoyed teaching. They might have driven me crazy, but we sat around and talked far more than we actually studied. All of them were very high level and we hardly got any work done. Several of the students were really cool people. One even was admitted to the most exclusive sort of academy in the entire city with the highest English scores of the entire school. Given the boy’s drive and passion for learning English, it’s no surprise he made it that far.

Hearing how well they did always made me happy, but losing touch as they went on to high school was part of the job. At the time, I had never taught anything beyond middle school, so they sort of "outgrew" me as a teacher. Seeing them quit for their different reasons before I left my old school was always sad.

This student that contacted me shared some good news. She told me that most of the class has kept in touch, and they wanted to meet me for lunch tomorrow. Instead of just one person I used to teach, we were going to have a mini-reunion. I’ve been getting a flurry of text messages all day from different students as they ask me if I was coming, where we would meet, what to bring, etc. I think they are excited about meeting with me again.

I’m actually pretty excited too, as this is the first Teacher’s day I’ll have spent with old students. It’ll be cool to see how these students of mine turned out as they’ve gotten older and grown up since I last saw them. The students are now in high school, and they study from 8 AM to 10PM every day. To think they want to spend one of their rare free days with me is pretty special. We picked the restaurant, and I’ve gotten out my wedding pictures in anticipation. I’ve spent the day trying to think how far back I need to remember to fill them in on the things that have happened since we last saw each other.

There are so few teachers that I can remember as being exceptional in my childhood, and I probably wouldn’t have much to say to them if I saw them again for fear I would have been one of those faces they had forgotten long ago.

Over the course of five years of writing on the web, I have developed a sort of "method" that helps me keep up the quantity and quality of posts found on this website.  I’d like to share what I am doing, why and who I am writing for, and what helps me achieve a nearly daily post count. This is the oldest blog on the Korean blog list, so I must be doing something right. I studied web design to a minor degree in college, mostly for business applications, but I’ve found that the planning and background has helped me create a website that has fulfilled my goals as a writer online.

My goal is to make this website full of daily content for people to read. Specifically, I want to provide interesting information on a set of sub-topics relevant to me.  These include teaching, my life in Korea, and gaming. I approach all of these topics in a different way, but with the overall goal of trying to express myself in a concise, humorous, apolitical manner. Pictures have always been secondary to writing, and daily content is more important than length. Barring technical difficulties or physical impossibilities, I want to write something on this website every single day.

The first thing I learned when planning a website is, "Know who you want to read it, and make them want to read it. If you can’t think of ten people you know that want to read  your website, it’s probably best you don’t waste your time writing it."

I’ve always tried to keep my website, when explaining Korean culture, simple enough that I could explain it to my mother without her having to know anything about Korea beforehand. This is my "market" so to speak. New teachers in Korea, people considering coming to Korea, people interested in Korea, my friends, or anyone that stumbles upon this website. When writing about Korea, it has been my choice to intentionally not use Korean characters. While using Hangul would allow for greater accuracy when discussing topics relevant to Korea, I believe it greatly limits the number of people willing to read material. I’m comfortable with bilingual blogs only when the language is not a barrier to anyone reading this website.

When I first started writing, the main reason I didn’t use Korean on this site was that I didn’t know any. I also wouldn’t be able to accurately recreate the sounds I was hearing into English characters. This is still a difficult problem when I try to use English characters to represent Korean sounds. It’s never going to be a perfect reflection of the language, but that’s not my goal.

I want someone that stumbles upon my website to be able to learn something about Korean culture without being able to read Korean characters at all. I think that websites that try to impress people with, "Look how much Korean I know!" are missing the point. Only extremely capable bilingual are going to take the time to read a post with lots of Korean in it, and that’s hardly the majority of web users. This doesn’t mean that extreme niche blogs can’t be successful, but that the time people are spending trying to reach a smaller number of readers is hard to justify sometimes. While I might struggle to read something posted on a bilingual blog for the satisfaction of learning or for the cultural understanding provided, most people probably won’t bother, and they shouldn’t expect to wade through posts that are, for the most part, incomprehensible.

I’ve also never worried about my web traffic when I do anything. I check logs once a month, at most, and that’s only to find out of there are any interesting blogs linking to me I’ve never read before. I don’t ever plan on advertising on this website, so my focus can remain on providing daily content that I want to write, not what will get me more hits. Plenty of blogs go for the site-whoring method and the instant people figure out that you are more interested in selling something than providing something interesting, they depart.

When talking about teaching, I try to keep names and specifics off the page. This allows me to talk about schools in general when possible, and not specific people. There are only a handful of teachers in my city, and when you badmouth someone in any way, digital or in real life, it gets back to them. Also, students and parents read these websites from time to time, and the last thing you want is an angry parent using your own words to nail you on a post. I enjoy talking about fun activities, humorous things students say or do, and the generalities of teaching in another country, but I don’t like letting work politics spill over into this site. I occasionally use this site as a way to vent off a bad day, but I try to keep that at a minimum.

When I mention games, or gaming related items, I try to keep in mind my friends. They are casual gamers at best and probably don’t spend the time I do keeping up on daily gaming news. I don’t want this to be a gaming heavy blog, so I intentionally try to limit the things I talk about to more easily approachable topics related to gaming. If I don’t think I could explain an achievement to someone that’s casually interested in gaming, I probably won’t bother.

I also demand a certain level of professionalism in myself. Posts will be spell-checked and proof read. I try to correct factual mistakes when possible. Pictures and content will be, at worst, PG-13 rated. I try to keep everything "Safe for Work", because that might just be where someone is reading my site. There is no reason to have a website that you aren’t allowed to read at all times.

While all these parts are integral in deciding what you see when you come to this website, the most important part is daily content. Without a reason to return to this website every day, you wouldn’t. That’s why it’s my goal to provide something new whenever possible. This eats into my personal time significantly, but I find it immensely rewarding. Whenever I have the time, I’m writing, and I wouldn’t like it any other way.

Since I have a reputable employer that actually provides me with a semblence of basic health care, we were asked to have a health check up. This is my first health check for quite some time. I haven’t had any causes for concern over my health since I got rid of my cronic stomach problems of a few years ago. Luckily since then, I haven’t gone to the hospital for anything serious. I went with my manager and one other coworker to the hospital. It was another affiliate of our school, meaning we didn’t have to pay anything.

They did the standard sorts of tests. Height, Blood, Body Fat, Eyesight, Urine, and we even got a chest X-ray. Since I was there with the other teacher, and the nurses spoke no English, if our manager wasn’t available to help us, I was the default translator. Most of it was of the "come here", "go there", "take off that" variety. Thank goodness that my manager gave us enough dignity to not follow us into all of the examination rooms.

On the healthy survey, our manager told us the general idea of the questions.  I could tell what the answers were about and was able to fill it out once I got pointed in the right direction. The drinking question was tabulated by "How many soju bottles do you drink?" (Less than Half, half, one, two or more.) The fact that there is a "two or more" catagory scared me.

We both were told that more detailed results would be given in a week. They said they were going to look into my tests a little more to see if there were any potential problems and tell me. The doctor spoke almost no English, so I’m unable to even guess as to the seriousness of any potential condition, or if any worry is justified. It seemed like there was something he was trying to tell me, but I won’t know until the results return.

I’m already fully insured now for health. I’ve got a policy beyond what is covered by the school that I started last month. I don’t need to push my luck, so a health check like this is good for me.

If you heard a collective deep breath around a bunch of Nintendo fans today, it’s probably because they were doing the same thing I was. It was a gasp of unbelief. It was caused by looking at what we would be spending our disposable income on in the following year. E3, the gaming expo extrodinaire is upon us once again, and things are looking expensive for me.

I’ve already sold myself on the Wii, the new Nintendo console coming out this year. The Wiimote being able to do pixel perfect pointing, while sensing depth and rotation as you play is beyond cool. Moving with the game is another layer of immersion. The added feature of a speaker to add positional and directional sound is awesome too. Not only that, it will be lower in price than the other two rival consoles. I’m not interested in Blu-ray or HD movies, so the fact that this console doesn’t play them doesn’t bother me at all.

Not only that, but between the Wii and the Nintendo DS, I am interested in ten or more titles as "must buys". Those are just the new games made by Nintendo first party developers! I’m sure there will be other developers that can come up with something interesting enough to warrant a purchase as well. With import prices being what they are, I’ll probably end up spending a small fortune on all the games I want in the coming year.

:sigh:

Such is the life of a gamer.

Things to look out for:
Super Paper Mario
The Legend of Zelda: Twillight Princess
WarioWare Wii: Smooth Moves
Yoshi’s Island 2
Kirby DS
Super Mario Galaxy (Temp Name)
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
New Super Mario Brothers
Starfox DS
Elite Beat Agents (AKA, US version of Oendan!)

Check the Comments section for screen shots.