::A Geek in Korea::

Growing up, my house was filled with different board games. We had all the classics, like Candy Land, Monopoly, and Chess. This is in addition to all the card games my family used to play together. One in particular I remember was Rummikub, which I know I liked to play, but couldn’t recall why. I had seen Rummikub at a department store in Korea and pointed it out to my wife, but when she asked me how to play it, I drew a blank. We didn’t end up getting it, because I couldn’t give her a reason why it was worth the purchase. It was a bit too expensive for a impulse buy.

As luck would have it, one of my students happened to bring the exact same game in with English and Korean instructions. He said he had gotten it as a gift for Children’s day and didn’t know how to play it.  He asked me if we could play it in class after we finished studying if I taught him how to play with the rest of the students in class.  I had played board games in the class with students in class before, but I guess I was his last hope to learn how to play. I agreed to his offer. Since I didn’t remember how to play myself exactly, I took him up on the offer and studied the rules to prepare. We had a great time playing the game, and eventually I remembered why I thought it was fun.

I immediately ran out and bought a Rummikub set after class for my own. It was expensive, but I like having the chance to play lots of different games. It’s also not language intensive, which is a plus.

I’ve mastered the art of Moblogging, the abbreviation for "Mobile Blogging". I can now take pictures on my camera phone, upload them to Flickr, then have them appear here directly. This is seriously scary, as now I never have an excuse not to update this website, even when bored in the bathroom. Bored in the bathroom with a camera phone. That’s simply a terrible combination of things, as we can all agree. I’ll do my best to limit my abuse of this new found skill.

Retention, when coming back from a holiday, is a word that takes on a double meaning. First of all, it means how many students did you keep from last term, and it also can apply to the amount of knowledge students remembered when they come back from a long holiday like last week. I was extremely happy to see that my student retention was exceedingly high for both.

While enrollment isn’t yet complete, I’ve kept all but three of my current elementary school students. One student couldn’t read and was recommended to be placed in another level before the year started, failed all his tests, didn’t do any homework, had a poor report card, and quit. I knew he was leaving and had washed my hands of the whole incident when I told my boss beforehand. One girl moved to the United States to study for the next few months. One girl disappeared, but I hope she will return later in the week. She might be taking tests at her elementary school, which prevented her from coming back. This means I’ve kept almost everyone I had expected to have back in my first four classes. My kindergarten class is short three students at the moment, but they alternate teachers on different days, so I might not know if I am missing anyone until we have a full week’s worth of classes.

Out of fifty or more students, I lost one. I can’t expect to do much better than that. If my other classes are as good as this and we have more enrollment, I might even be able to have a few classes grow.

Now, keeping students is all well and good, but if my students forgot everything I taught them two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have accomplished much. Today was our review day, and I got to see how much my students remember from their lessons. While students weren’t "in the groove" again from their long weekend and week off speaking English at the school, their retention level was very high. Most of them completed the exercises perfectly, or with minimal help. It seems they may actually be learning. Amazing.

Disappointed that my steadfast belief I was immune to cavities proved to be erroneous, I have sought yet another unique physical attribute that would let me claim to have a power that would make others envious. While seeking out something about myself to make this claim, I stumbled upon something that while not exactly awe inspiring, was a physical skill I possess that surprised me. Bow down, as my claim to mutant-hood is once more founded in factual accuracy!

It seems that my nose, while not particularly sensitive about any other smell, can detect onions on towels with an amazing degree of accuracy. If my wife ever washes her hands using a towel in our bathroom after coming in contact with onions, I can sniff the pungent odor for days. In fact, the smell of onions on towels is so overwhelming, even if my wife washed her hands multiple times before using the towel, I can still smell it.

While my sensitivity to onions borders on the uncanny, my nose is actually fairly bad at detecting most other scents. Unless my nose starts gushing blood after being forced to smell perfume or potpourri for excessive amounts of time, it usually can’t detect much of anything. Perhaps living in the land of garlic and kimchi this is a defensive maneuver on my nostrils part, sparing me the agony of elevator rides with drunken fellows stumbling home from the local barbecue restaurant.

Sadly, this skill isn’t useful at all. Actually, it’s more of an annoyance, as my wife can’t smell anything when I interrogate her about the towel scent. My over-sensitive olfactory system demands more fresh towels than she does. I simply can’t stand the smell when I dry my hair. I’ve been cursed with this ability, unable to live like the rest of mankind, forced to do larger loads of laundry as an outcast.

Don’t hate me because I am different.

I can just imagine my interview for admittance into the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants right now:

Magento: What is it, exactly, that you said you were able to do?
Torgodevil: I can detect the scent of onions on towels days after someone has washed their hands! Think of the implications of this power!
Magento: Well, it’s like this, we aren’t exactly hiring right now and…

Blob: I’m fat! GRAH!

Toad: I have a long tongue, and I look like that guy from That 70’s show! I also can listen to stupid lines by Halle Barry and get hit by lightning!

Magneto: On second thought, your hired.

Torgodevil: Sweet!

My wife, determined not to spend another day in the house, decided we were going to take a walk to one of the larger stores a few blocks away in the rain. We had some fun while we shopped.

One of the differences between shopping in Korea and the United States is the fact that you must purchase your own plastic bags when you go through the cashier. This greatly reduces waste, as each bag is something like 50 won (~5 US Cents). People cram everything into one bag to avoid paying for more. Trying to get two bags for one trip to the store makes people look like you arrived in a limousine. People usually opt for the free cardboard boxes also provided by the store for larger loads.
Before we went shopping, she went to the consumer return area to cash in some of her plastic bags.  My wife went to the woman with a few bags and said in Korean, "How much do you get for each Plastic Bag?" She used the English word "Plastic Bag", instead of the Korean word "bi-nil bong-chi ".

The woman at the counter didn’t know the word "Plastic" in English, and said, "Plastic bag? What’s that? Home Plus…you are shopping at Home Plus. I think you mean to say "PLUS bag" in English." Way to correct someone’s English counter lady! People speaking with an air of superiority that make such mistakes are always a source of entertainment living in another culture. I’m guilty of this 99 times out of 100, but I never correct people’s Korean. Jeeze.

(Fun Fact: Green houses used on Korean farms are called "bi-nil houses", not "bi-nil chibs". They use the Korean word for "plastic", but the English name for "house". What the hell? I’m sure this sort of inconsistent language makes everyone more confused in the end.)

The language barrier grew even greater as we walked around the electronics section. We saw people frantically grabbing English dictionaries, and there were no less than four people slowly speaking Korean to a confused foreigner. I heard the man speaking in slow, confused English, which would get translated into even worse Korean. It was painful. I decided to see if we could help everyone involved and sort out what was going on. The women at the counter looked like they wanted to do backflips when we showed up offering to try to translate for them.

Alas, the man spoke Russian, and according to him only, "Basic English". Lovely, this would be a challenge.

He wanted to make a phone contract, but was having trouble understanding that no Korean would ever let him sign a contract involving credit. The only contracts available for people without a Korean co-signer are "debt" style where you pay up front, get minutes, then used them up before your phone deactivates, and those usually aren’t handled by stores selling typical phones. We knew of a place in our neighborhood where he could probably get some sort of contract sorted out, but it was closed for the weekend. We tried explaining how to get there, but his eyes sort of glazed over. The next idea was to give him a paper that read, "Give this to a taxi driver." We wrote detailed directions for the taxi driver to drop him off in front of the exact building we were talking about.

It was clear this Russian man didn’t understand any Korean and even my basic English (as slow and basic as I was willing to go without risking offending someone anyway), wasn’t getting through. We saw him trying to convince people after we left, but a second attempt to convince him to just go to the place we told him just left everyone more confused. I have no idea what it must be like for someone that can’t even scrape by with English. The size of the Russian speaking community in Daejeon is much smaller than what it would be in say, Busan or Seoul, or even Incheon where sailors are more common. How this guy ended up in the middle of Korea is a bit of a mystery. Maybe even he didn’t know.

Plans were made for today. This was the first day both my wife and I had off that gave us both an extended weekend in a long time. The break was caused because this was both Buddha’s birthday, and the last "Children’s day". They canceled a holiday about spending time with children, so we wanted to make sure we tried to celebrate it the best we could this last time. We were determined to do something this weekend instead of lounging around the house. So many inconveniences happened between the time we tried to make those plans to the time we actually tried to do something, it leads me to believe there is some deity personally trying to give me a good messing with. It simply wasn’t to be.

For example, our original plan was to go to Jeju island, specifically, Udo. We called the travel agency only to learn we were trying to book tickets at the very beginning of the tourist season, where rates shoot up to ridiculous levels. Seems everyone had the same idea we did. Also, since Udo is on the north eastern side of Jeju, almost the opposite of where most people stay, we weren’t able to confirm hotel reservations to make a package. We were going to have to rely on our luck and find an empty room at one of the min-bak. We tried to call some friends to see if they wanted to come with us, but they balked at the price.

Next, we decided to try to go to Boseong for it’s green tea farms. Nothing says hyper-caffinated like traveling to a series of green tea farms to sample their different teas while enjoying nature. This place has also been our destination in the past, pre-marriage. We still haven’t worked out an easy way to reach it. Trains that usually are reserved no sooner than a week in advance had already sold all their tickets. The only we could have gone was by standing on a train for four hours each way. No thank you.

Next, we attempted to get to Buyeo. This is the largest city near my grandmother-in-law’s house. My mother-in-law was planning to go visit her, and we were going to ask to be dropped off in the city to make our own trip around there easier. This would have been easier than try to take a bus due to traffic. We heard about the trip to Buyeo yesterday, and called this morning to see if we could come along. Turns out that since my mother-in-law was feeling under the weather, she didn’t want to go anymore.

Our third destination ruined, we decided to head to the river near a park. There we could relax, take a nap, and read. We packed up, got our bikes in working order, then set off for our much closer destination. Two blocks into our trip, my wife’s bike tire popped, and we had to divert our trip to head to a bicycle shop to get it fixed. We told them the problem, and they replaced the inner tube, which promptly exploded as well. It was rather loud. Seems my wife’s outer tire had gotten damaged when the air of her tire had been let out by the bicycle thieves that stole her valve. When I had re-inflated the tire, something had been out of place which popped the inner tube. To get it replaced, I had to pay 28,000 won (~30 USD). I’ve gone from "slightly annoyed" at bicycle valve theft, to really pissed, since it’s cost me the equivalent of 30 valves to replace the tire.

Once we got to a park that seemed like a good place to stop, we headed to a pagoda to lounge. We sat, with one other girl, and read in peace for about twenty minutes.  The park was almost entirely empty. The pagoda was near the entrance of the park, so whenever anyone went by, we had to hear the children. Every single time, people decided that instead of going out to the rest of the park , they would hang out near the pagoda, speak loudly about what they were going to do, and basically keep around us. There was a huge park to run around it, yet they stuck to the 1% that was near us. I wanted to grab our picnic mat and clothes and relocate in the exact middle of the park, away from the pagoda to see if the people would follow us. I had a feeling they probably would. I know Korea is a small country, so people are used to being in groups, but the park was really big. I just wanted to yell, "Don’t annoy everyone just because you can’t handle small groups. Get away!"

At this point, I had a less than pleasant headache. It might have been caused by the oncoming rain. We had no chance to move our picnic, because it looked as if it was about to storm any second. We grabbed everything, left for home on our bikes, and started working our way, block by block, back home. On the way, a bright red American style school bus with a loud speaker advertised a new restaurant.

The concept of "noise pollution" doesn’t exist here yet. Frequently people advertise nightclubs, fruits and vegetables, as well as anything else by simply getting a vehicles, strapping the largest possible sound system on it, and then driving around. There are laws preventing these sorts of trucks from parking in large apartment building parking lots and pissing rich people off, but nothing that stops them from driving by banks, hospitals, and schools to annoy everyone. I don’t know what Koreans think of this style of advertising, but it pisses me off.

Since the modus operandi of this style of advertising is, "damage the eardrums of as many people as possible," the bus drove incredibly slowly. Say, around the exact same speed as a bicycle that would happen to be traveling on the sidewalk. The same speed as my bicycle, which was trying desperately not to get caught in the rain that was about to fall at any time. Since I had the choice of either getting really wet, or being annoyed by the bus, I kept riding, and luckily the bus turned at the next intersection. I could hear him from a block away, and even saw a police car go in the same direction that had to be able to hear what he was doing. I can only hope they caught and punished him.

We got home before the rain, I took some aspirin, and simple gave up any attempt at trying to have a nice day. My firewall has been actively fighting the usability of my Internet experience, Windows Explorer is locking up from time to time, and I have bloodshot eyes from looking at my screen trying to figure out what’s going on. All and all, I’ve been having a horrible day despite my best efforts not to let things get me down. Sometimes I don’t know why I try, it was simply not to be.

My personal stylist was first introduced to me and my wife when we were looking for a place to get a decent haircut. We went there together at first. I was shy and introverted, not wanting to get too involved in the process due to the inexperience of not knowing the language well enough to answer her questions. I let her decide how things were going to look. I was there more or less for the experience. The first time was a little painful, as we weren’t sure if her vision of my hair matched with my own. My hair cut might have suffered a bit as a result.

I tried another stylist, but things weren’t right there either. Not every time can be the first time at a hair shop. It wasn’t as special. We decided to part ways after just one cut, and I ended up where I started once more with the stylist my wife and I had chosen from the beginning. Things were better then, as we had important things to worry about. Things like weddings and meetings with the family that demanded good hair. Things that required hair that looked like it was cut by a professional stylist that knew what she was doing. I even introduced my brother, who got a haircut from her as well. I didn’t mind sharing, as it seemed natural to do considering her expertise in the craft.

Because of my vacation from work, I had time for a quick impromptu cut. It’s true, I didn’t have a reservation and I showed up out of the blue. I saw my stylist cutting the hair of four or five high school students in rapid succession. Harsh, school mandated style cuts to conform with the dress code while still being stylish enough to scream, "This is not a bowl cut."

It wasn’t the same careful consideration I had once seen filling her eyes as she cut away that young hair. There was no deliberation about whether to use a razor or scissors to trim the hair over the ears. The stylist looked cold, distant, unfamiliar. One haircut after another, as if she had realized, "Has it come to this? Where did the joy go?".

 "Where was the passion?" I wondered, "Where was the soul?"

How could a stylist look herself in the mirror after such drudgery? Perhaps I am being to hard on her, as everyone needs to earn a living. But I expected better. I know the stylist certainly was capable of it.

Sure, she tried the small talk with me when she cut my hair, but we had lost something in the way of chattiness. Perhaps she was just tired, or maybe it was me. She asked me about my wife, and I told her she was still working. That was the limit of her questioning. After telling her I wanted my hair shorter, she basically didn’t say anything for the rest of the cut. In fact, she was preparing for another cut at the chair next to me while I got a shampoo from her assistant. I was hardly out of the chair before she was cutting someone else’s hair next to me.

While I’m sure there will be a cut involved in our future, I’m now no longer sure I can think of her as "my stylist".

I’ve been watching the Japanese series Bleach and have made it through two of the major story arcs. Characters were introduced in a modern setting of Tokyo. Since I’ve been to Tokyo, and listened to many people talk about this series, I decided to give it a look. The series got me hooked on the premise of a boy who was given powers and learns of his responsibility to fight the forces of the restless undead as he grows in power. It’s something like a Japanese version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer now that I think about it. Perhaps I liked it for the similiar themes of responsibility, duty, and loyalty to friends in the face of crisis.

Then, the story arc shifted to a secondary story about the rescue of one of the characters in a land of souls that was like feudal Japan. Characters entered this society and did battle with the resident captains of the army. They all gave their swords silly names they would call out, then strike each other repeatedly. No one ever "died". They simply vowed revenge, ran away, then fought another day. They introduced a ton of new characters, each with special swords and special attacks. Entire episodes centered around these new characters battling each other started to draw out the simple story into something much longer and more complex about duty and the fate of people in society governed by rules.

While some of the episodes were interesting enough to watch, I started getting annoyed by how slowly the arc was moving towards it’s completion. The story had started to stall. Instead of resolving things, people would battle, run away, only to battle again in another episode. I’m about three episodes from completing the story arc, and then I’m going to stop watching show entirely. From what I’ve read, the next set of stories will be entirely made of "filler" episodes. Nothing happens important enough to keep me interested any more. Now I’ve invested all this time into a series only to have the story turn to crap. There was even a video game based on the animation I was considering buying, which is something I very rarely do. Sadly, without the interest of the animation, I won’t be purchasing it.

My wife and I have had this happen to us before. We started watching the box sets of Alias before the series was done on the recommendation of a friend in the States. We got hooked, watched two seasons together, then found out that the quality of the third season wasn’t worth bothering to see from the same friend. Instead of sinking more money and time into a series that went downhill, we decided to stop watching immediately.

My wife’s rule seems to be that she doesn’t invest herself emotionally in following a series that isn’t complete. That way she can make a judgement about if it is worth a purchase or not before getting emotionally attached to something that eventually will either end, or get worse. Her sole drama at the moment has begun to extend its story line and she’s just waiting for it to get bad.

I happen to be of the opposite style and like to watch a show progress and evolve as I watch it. I follow several series at a time and love the suspense of waiting for the next episode of an anticipated show because I want to see what happens next. If something gets bad, or betrays its roots, I give it a few episodes to see if it will clear up, then drop it. I’ve stopped watching Lost this season for that very reason, saving myself from buying the DVD set and getting set up for yet another disappointment.

I won’t get upset about losing another series until Battlestar Galactica comes back. If it’s not good as season two was, you’ll hear my geeky rage.