::A Geek in Korea::

This week is one of the special activities at our school that makes it great learning environment (to a mother) or a stressful summation of every fear possible (for students). We will have an announcer contest in front of the entire school. The idea is this: Students will get up in front of the students that are in the school at that hour and either recite or read a story from one of their text books.

It’s their choice as to the material they read and it’s their responsibility to get ready. It’s one of the least structured activities that we’ve done at the school so far. Some students have finished memorizing the two paragraph stories in their books, while others are planning on reading more challenging longer material flawlessly. Once they choose the material, they need to practice.

I’ve been helping them with some general rules about public speaking that I learned in my college communication classes. At the time, I hated that class, but now, considering I make a living on my public speaking skills, I’m rather glad for some of the things I’ve learned. I tried to give the students some tips they could use to improve their skills, like looking at the audience, proper speaking posture, and keeping books from blocking faces when reading. Instead of regular "reading with the class" style activities, I called the students up to the front of class to read while their peers watched. Most of the students were fine speaking in front of their friends and classmates, but I’m sure when there are 50 other students watching they might freeze. They will also get to use microphones and speak with a podium, things we haven’t practiced.

This is all in preparation for later in the week. On Wednesday, we will go "upstairs", which will be fun, because it is one of the locations I used to work at of my previous employer. My current school uses the large conference rooms, one of which I used to teach in when I worked at the location upstairs two years ago. I’ll be returning to my previous place of employment for the first time. Interesting and potentially awkward. However, since they closed the English language program after I left that location, I don’t expect to see anyone I know.

Wal-Mart,  has completely left Korea, selling their assets to E-Mart, the dominant Korean owned retail food outlet in the country. The local Wal-Mart across the street from my apartment has now been completely re-branded as E-Mart for around two months.  There also other problems with the change over to a Korean owned company.This is all anecdotal, but I’ve been feeling the sting of the change recently.

Since the change, all the old Wal-Mart branded items have either been sold out, or removed from the shelves, significantly diminishing the product mix. I now have less choices about what to purchase. Just because Wal-Mart chose to stock five different kinds of oatmeal that I never bought instead of three, the fact that I no longer have a choice to buy any of those items if I chose to, stinks. I don’t think Wal-Mart’s product mix was right for Korea, but it was nice, as a foreigner, to stumble upon something long neglected on a shelf and purchase it. This isn’t how you run a business however. Maximizing shelf space is one of the ways of keeping costs down and profitability high.

Perhaps E-Mart really has a better product mix, but I doubt it matters that much. Between different retailers in Korea, there is a disturbing amount of homogeneity. Outside of Costco, retail stores in Korea all stock the same items. E-mart does have generic items like Wal-Mart did, but they are, by and large, copies of Korean foods that are well established. Wal-Mart had generic items with no Korean equivalent which was good for me at times.

Parallel with the decrease in foreign items and Wal-Mart specific brands being taken off the shelf, there has been an increase in the number of people in the store whenever I shop at E-Mart. There happens to be another E-Mart not far from the Wal-Mart that was taken over. I stopped going to that original E-Mart location because I would get stressed out from the crowds. The place was insanely popular. There were times where there wasn’t room to walk, there weren’t enough carts for the shoppers, and the simple act of trying to check out could take as long as the shopping experience itself.

The Wal-Mart near our apartment, pre-liquidation, was much less busy. It was usually empty, with the employees outnumbering the customers. This lead to a much more pleasant shopping experience for myself. I don’t like fighting for carts or needing to push people out of the way to get down the aisle, but that’s just me. While there were only a few check out lanes operating at any one time, the line was never more than a few minutes to check out. This wasn’t retail heaven or anything, but you could get in and out of the store in a few minutes if you tried.

Now, when I got to the newly E-Mart branded store, I’m seeing the crowds and insanity that was prevalent at the other location where I stopped shopping. Is this all spillover? Did people get fed up with that location like I did, and start shopping at the second location down the street. Did people from other nearby stores defect now that there is an E-mart in a closer location? Where the hell did all these people come from, and where did they shop when Wal-Mart was here? At any time when I enter the new E-Mart, ever checkout lane is not only full, but the line is backed up and waiting. It’s the same stuff you can buy anywhere else. It’s not cheaper or more attractively displayed. Why are all these people shopping here now? It’s insane. The other E-Mart location is doing the same amount of business from what I’ve seen, despite the fact that there are twice the number of stores in the same neighborhood of town. They must be doing something right.

What’s going on? Did people instinctively stay away from Wal-Mart, but are somehow entranced by the yellow glow of E-mart? Does the "Happy E-mart Song" have anything to do with this?

I just don’t get it.

Back in middle school I was one of those comic book reading geeks sitting in the back of class. After I got my homework done, I was all about reading comics in my spare time. I grew up reading Marvel superhero comics, but I dabbled in the DC universe from time to time. Anything about superheros and justice was my thing. Eventually, I realized I didn’t have the time or interested to read every comic under the sun, and I dropped the hobby like a bad habit. I had a few friends in college that still collected, but even they couldn’t draw me back in. They didn’t read my books. There was even a local a comic shop, but the people in there looked at me like I was a freak by simply venturing outside in the daytime. They lived in realms of untold geekdom I never ventured to see in much detail. By the time the comic book shop had closed in my second year, I had ceased to care about comics entirely.

Fast forward to some day after the launch of the Nintendo DS. I was sitting on the toilet one day, playing a portable gaming system with two colorful, bright screens. Not only that, but I was thinking, "Hey, with a touch screen interface, you could simulate turning pages in a book, or scrolling around a document. That’s a really cool idea. I hope someone, somewhere, thinks of a clever application that would make use of the Nintendo DS in such a way. I would like that very much." Then I flushed, and forgot entirely about this idea.

Suddenly, two hobbies collide, and their offspring is: Comic DS.

Bam! A Nintendo DS friendly homebrew comic book reader. Awesome.

The program works as advertised. Drop some files supported by any comic book reader program and watch it work. These can either be some legally obtained comics (Golden Age Comics) in .cbr, .cbz formats, or just some zipped files or just a folder with images of your pictures of your last vacation. Once these are placed into the bundled conversion software, simply wait for them to be converted into a .nds file. This file can be read by the Nintendo DS. After that, preview them with the included .nds reader to see if they were correctly compiled. From there, placing the files onto a Nintendo DS homebrew solution is simple.

Using the Comic reader on the DS is great. The screen might be small compared to an actual comic book, but there are options on zoom, options to use both screens, and handy ways to scroll through the images using both the touch screen and the control pad. The program even uses thumbnails for easy navigation and a bookmarking system to remember where you left off. It’s a very polished, well designed homebrew application that does exactly what you want. This is rare, but worth looking into if you are considering dabbling into the Nintendo DS homebrew scene.

Comic DS extends the machine to something that not only does "just games", but into a multimedia device. I have a music player, but I don’t have a portable image viewer. Now I do. This is great, because if I want to look at pictures, or read some comics, I’ve got a way to easily carry it with me. Now when I sit on the can, I can ponder what is next in the homebrew scene while I read some comics to keep me entertained.

With the shrinking of the retail food market, trying to procure certain items in Korea is very difficult. Even more difficult for me, because I’m male. It is nigh impossible to find root beer in Korea. The only way to get it is via import, as there are no local bottlers. If you want to get some root beer, you need to either to go the black market shops that sell things from soldiers to civilians near military bases, or get onto the military bases themselves. Considering my interaction with soldiers here is as limited as possibly by choice, and I do not live near any military bases (thank goodness!), I have very little chance to stumble upon root beer in its "wild" state in Korea.

My normal course of action is simply to wait until enough people go abroad to "discover" the item in question and then create a Korean copy or import a regional variant. My attempts to get my local Costco to import a case for me to jump start this process failed. Koreans that I know have tried root beer. They all react like they’ve just swallowed medicine. It simply doesn’t agree with their taste buds. It’s like the first time you drink beer with friends. It tastes awful, but you don’t say so out of fear of disappointing your peers. Eventually you get to the point where it has killed enough of your tongue and you move past the taste and begin to enjoy it for the first time. Everyone here is still a root beer virgin, and they never take to it immediately.

I had a source for root beer. She is heading back to Canada soon. This girl got invited to military base parties all the time. She got on base, then was allowed to shop at the base store. Import only food at sweet military prices. She would even transport the stuff she bought back at cost. All my wife had to do was meet her at work. Say what you will about the military-industrial complex, or in this case the "military-industrial food complex", but it’s ability to deliver my carbonated beverage of choice around the world at incredible prices wins some points from me.

Now, as I finish this post, I am sipping the last of my root beer in Korea. That is until I find another source, or start going on "beer runs" myself. I doubt I’ll be invited to party with "the guys" over at the military bases any time soon, so I better start looking for seedy underground stalls that might contain some sugary sweet goodness the next time I’m around a base. Oh future sugar pusher, where art thou?

Suicides relating to the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) that High school students took today are common enough to be a yearly occurrence. When a school test defines your place in society, and as a result defines your parents standing later in life, people take it very seriously. Too seriously.

That is why I am always listening to the student’s chatter around this time of year. I don’t teach any high school students, but my students hear stories and know many more people than I do. Today, one of my students mentioned the word "cha-sal", which is "suicide" in class when talking to someone. I listened in to hear what was going on. He went on to give a general description of someone, and the students in class looked even more shocked. It seemed they knew the person somehow. The boy talked to the other students in class who were saying, "No way." or "That’s a lie. I don’t believe it. How do you know? Who told you? How did you find out?"

I asked the boy to explain what had his classmates so worried and disturbed. He told me that a girl in his apartment building, and his brother’s classmate, had killed herself. She had jumped out of her apartment window. She was 13 years old. This happened in the last 24 hours. The apartment building in question is directly across from the school. He said that the girl’s apartment had been taped off, and that when his brother had gone to class, she was absent and everything in her locker/shoe place was emptied.

I was a little worried about the details he had told the students, and since I had walked in only hearing half the story, I waited until the class break to hear more of what was going on. I told my director that one of my students had talked about a school related suicide. She said, "Oh, that happened a few weeks ago, right?"

I went on to explain that this was in fact another case (see, freakishly common), and that there was a local connection in that the girl lived in the nearby apartment complex. We pulled the boy into the teacher’s office to repeat the story. Then I caught the detail that had freaked everyone else out before. Not only was the girl a young local girl, but she had also attended our school. The description he was giving everyone was so disturbing because the students knew the girl. She had attended the summer intensive classes. She had stopped coming to the school afterwards, but it seems that they remembered her. She was one of my students.

Needless to say, when we found out that detail, all of the teachers and directors screamed or shouted in surprise. I think, "Holy shit!" was the best I managed to express before I realized the rest of the school was listening in on our conversation was were concerned at how we were acting.

I’d like to say I remember her, but I don’t. Even with the picture I was shown by my director, I can only bring up a fuzzy memory of the students and room the class was in. She had a large forehead and glasses according to everyone’s description of her. My director said she was an excellent student, and I taught the students at her level. I can’t recall her face, and I don’t know if it makes things more difficult or easier.

Since she’s only a middle school student, there would be no connection with all the high school suicides that happen around this time. She wasn’t taking the soul-crushing tests that have rendered so many high school students to a similar fate.  A coincidence? Who knows? It’s sickening to think about.

Many of the students that heard the news are in shock, stopping by the office asking if it was true. For the boy’s sake, if it isn’t true, he’ll be on my shit list forever. He didn’t seem like someone that would lie about such a thing, and his story didn’t change as he told it from what I could understand. He was passing on information from other sources indirectly, and rumors sometimes fly out of control. I really doubt he is lying though.

Wow. I’m at a loss for words right now. Total shock.

This sucks.

In my last class of the day, I had the same standard lesson as always. We read our books, wrote down our definitions, did some "free talking" conversations, then waited for the bell to ring. Today I had prepared a quiz for the students over the last three units of the book. It had multiple choice answers and had been stuff we had covered recently. The students were given ten minutes to complete the quiz.

I hate giving multiple choice tests unless I have a strict punishment system in place before I give out the test. The problem with multiple choice tests is that if students guess, you don’t know how close they are to knowing the actual answer. Since they students are awful and hate to study now, they simply circled questions at random and failed the test.

When I made them correct the test, they simply chose another answer. Their odds dramatically increased each time they got an answer wrong. This means that they had a better chance of getting the right answer even if they didn’t know. Some of the students started coordinating their answers to eliminate the choices faster. If they simply studied and worked a little bit harder for the effort it took to organize such a cheating ring would look like a waste. When you see students cheer because they got the last "wrong" answer possible, you know that a test format is simply broken. The next time, I’ll punish students severely for every wrong answer and won’t return tests after I grade them. I’ll probably require a written answer as well, since circling things takes less time and effort than trying to correct sentences by hand.

I told my head teacher about students cheering for wrong answers. She apologized to me and said, "You know, they were fine when they started this class, but now, I think they are actually…getting…dumber." She shares the class with me, so it’s not an attack on my teaching or the lack of progress I’ve had with all students using the same books. It’s a souring of attitude and hormones mostly to blame.

We have some friends coming in from out of town tomorrow. Out of country to be truthful. One of my friends and his family is back in the country after a year in England. He bought an opened ended return flight ticket and decided to live in England instead of returning to Korea after some time away. Now that their baby is a year old, and his wife is pregnant again, they’ve come back to visit Korean family, pick up the stuff they left behind in their last (what was to be temporary) move, and visit friends. They’ll only be in Korea for a few days total, and we offered them our apartment as a place to crash while they stay in Daejeon. They’ve accepted, and now we’ve been tidying up.

To be fair, it’s been mostly my wife that’s been doing the cleaning. She made me a deal today. "Take Yoshi and disappear for two hours outside. I’ll clean up what I want with you two out of the house faster." It seems I make as much mess as the dog, and I’m just as worthless when trying to clean.

Yoshi and I took our banishment well. We walked across the bridge and over into nearby Yuseong. I found a new pagoda hidden in the garden of a government building to hang out in for a while. Yoshi started to get cold, so we got a little early, but even then the work wasn’t entirely done. I’ve been trying to keep a low profile and help more than I usually do. It’s just that I’m so awful at cleaning and whatnot. I don’t know where things, "go" so to speak.

Yoshi’s had a harder time than I have. In preparation for the visit, he’s had a very long walk, gotten a haircut, then a bath, all in the same day. He’s tired and stressed. Most of my job today has been keeping him out of trouble and making sure he doesn’t make a mess of things. Right now we are getting everything ready, and tomorrow will be spent cooking. I’m looking forward to a fun evening.

My foreign coworker and I have our dinner break today at the same time. We make it a point to go out to eat and chat about our day or week. It’s better than sitting around in the office since the Korean teachers don’t really talk to us much, and there are lots of cheap, quick restaurants around. We walked out today wearing our coats because it was a cool autumn evening.

As we were crossing the street to go to one one of our usually eateries, we saw a bizarre sight. A middle aged Korean man walking in the middle of the road, shouting at people wearing boxer shorts that were wet on the backside. He didn’t appear to be crazy, only seriously angry about something. Whatever he did to get into this state, he was shouting at people nearby.

He walked over to a van that had pulled over to pick him up, dropped of the clothes he was carrying, then went to pick a fight. There were five guys in nice suits that kept holding him back. The nearly naked man was pissed off at something they had said or did, and one of the suited men was taking off his coat and was stripping down in a challenge to fight as well. Before anything happened, someone took the man wearing the boxers back to his van and sped off. The suited gentlemen sat around looking thuggish and tough after their victory.

I thought I had witnessed all the craziness I was going to see for the night, but then when I was walking Yoshi with my wife, we stumbled upon another fight near our apartment complex. There are vendors that set up to see things just outside apartment complexes. The park near our apartment is a popular place because it is near an intersection and two apartment complexes, so it has people selling things on the sidewalk every day of the week.

The vendors vary by day and time. Weekdays it will be fruit vendors. Weeknights, clothes vendors or cheap bulk crap from China. I don’t know how they work out their rotation, but they don’t sell clothes and cheap crap on the same day, and they don’t sell fruit when they sell other stuff. Something happened tonight where two vendors showed up at the same time, and both of them had set up their things. The cheap crap guy was threatening the knock off clothes vendor, and vice versa. They were cursing at each other while someone tried officiating between them and trying to pull each of them away.

Since there aren’t guns in Korea, lots of fights look like middle school brawls where someone is just waiting for the first punch to be thrown so they can claim self-defense and start swinging. With Tae-kwon-do being taught in the armed forces, and military conscription mandatory, fights can get nasty very quickly from what I am told. I don’t want to stick around to see.