::A Geek in Korea::

I am extremely talented at wasting my time. If there was an Olympics for time wasting, I’d be in contention for the goal every single time. Once gain, today, I had nothing dire or serious to do the entire day, save for a few errands around town. Walk the dog, feed myself, and keep myself entertained for the day was all that was on my agenda. While I managed those things admirably, I didn’t do much else. While I don’t have pressing things to do, I have plenty of other things I could be doing that I procrastinate about that I really should start to get going on.

Sometime this year, we are planning to go on a European vacation. That requires a budget, planning, and all sorts of time to work on things in advance. Other than buying a book that I’ve only given a cursory glance to, we haven’t started planning anything yet. Considering the travel book is something over a thousand pages, and we have to do things in two languages, the sooner I get on it, the better. Did I start planning the trip or even narrow down my choice of destinations yet? No.

I’ve got a pile of papers from work to grade every single week. I fought off the last pile in an epic, multi-day struggle that left my hand cramped, my eyes sore, and my spirit broken. I was even more downtrodden to discover another pile of papers waiting for me over my "vacation". It’s like a long drawn out poison that slowly kills your brain with dangling participles, misplaced punctuation, and all sorts of horrible grammar. Sisyphus had more of a sense of achievement. Did I start grading these papers on my vacation? No. But I’ve promised myself I’ll get them finished before I got in tomorrow.

I know what I should be doing, but without someone cracking the whip, I never get around to actually doing them. Throw in balancing a family life that needs some time, and a dog, and I’ll never get everything done. This is what keeps me going, but also what makes me wish my vacation and long days off were even longer. My next days off will be in the middle of February for Lunar New Year. I’m looking forward to it already.

What did you do today? Nothing. That’s right, nothing. It was as wonderful as I thought it would be. Today is my sole weekday off work where I have absolutely no responsibilities what so ever. No classes, no promises, no meetings, nothing to buy, nothing to pick up for the house. Nothing. I spent the day lounging around and looking after Yoshi. I spent my time doing things around the house that I usually don’t have time for.

For example, I watched another Rifftrax title. This time I purchased "Star Wars: Episode one: The Phantom Menace". I had a longstanding dream I would get to hear the guys from Mystery Science Theater 3000 condemn this movie in the harshest words. Well, they were none too kind to this "film". I hadn’t watched this movie unedited in a very long time. That’s probably because I value my sanity more than I did when I was a hardcore MST3ie and spent my time watching terrible movies as a hobby. Even with the Rifftrax crew joking around during the film, this was a punishing experience that’s not for the weak. That movie is freaking terrible.

Next up: Battlefield Earth. (Note: If this blog ceases to be updated for a few days, assume I’ve gone insane trying to watch Battlefield Earth without drinking enough alcohol first.)

Since I was bored, I reinstalled Warcraft III, and the expansion, The Frozen Throne. Since I completely can not win a game of strategy online, I slowly worked my way through some of the single player campaign maps that came with the game. I couldn’t last a minute online or versus a computer AI opponent, but the campaign gradually introduces units and has a nice learning curve. I haven’t played this game in years, so all this is new to me. I’ll probably just play through enough so that when they show Warcraft tournaments on television I’ll have a clue about what is going on. I know Starcraft well enough to see why a player is losing and what they should do to counter, but Warcraft remains a mystery. Besides, with my newer computer and full sized keyboard and mouse, the game is a lot more tolerable.

Between gaming and watching movies, I’ve worked in some resting, sloth, and laziness. The long days of classes really wore me down mentally. I’d love to take the whole week off, but I only have one more day of "rest" before I get to jump into the next set of classes and materials. I’ve got some stuff to do tomorrow that keeps me from really calling it a day off, but I’ll at least be working less. It never ends.

Today I had a long lunch break after my morning classes. I was running some errands and was in the neighborhood of the school. I needed to get the school early, as there were tests to give today. As I was walking to the school, I ran into a few of my students waiting on the street corner for the school bus to come and pick them up. They were surprised to see me away from the school, but I was surprised to run into them when I was running a little late. They told me the bus was on the way, so I waited with them. I’d got to school on the bus with them!

The students were thrilled. When I got on the bus, everyone thought it was really very funny. They kept asking me where I lived and why I was on the bus. I explained the situation, and they wanted to know if this was going to be something that would happened often, or just once. I assured them this would be the only time I’d be on the bus with them. They looked relieved. They kept telling me things like, "Watch your head," or "We’re going here next," as if I had never ridden a bus before.

Whenever we went to pick up new students, I’d hide my head. The students on the bus would call the students getting on the bus to the back where I was seated. As they approached I’d put my head up and ask them a question in English. Their look of shock was like something out of a haunted house. Everyone in on the joke would laugh even harder as we picked up more people and got the same reaction out of them. The bus is one of the few places the students can socialize together in a Korean friendly environment without anyone pressuring them to "Speak English" all the time. Being on the bus broke that barrier down, so students were even speaking English on the bus too. If my director gets wind of this, I’ll be riding the bus every day and giving them tests as we ride around in no time.

We arrived at the school on time. The students waiting in line to go home enjoyed me getting off the bus as much as the students riding the bus. It was something unexpected that they had never seen before. Even the secretary was laughing when she saw me exiting the bus. It must be something about this tall guy getting off a bus full of tiny children that is innately funny.

For whatever reason, when it comes to fruits, cherries in Korea are the most irrationally priced item ever. I grew up in the United States, and not that far from Michigan, which happens to be the largest exporter of cherries in the Midwest. The United States is also the number one exporter of cherries worldwide, so perhaps I grew up spoiled and had no idea of my luck.

My mother could purchase cherries when we wanted them for a snack. I think they were my brother’s favorite fruit growing up too. My fondness for cherries comes not from the fruit, although good, but from home baked cherry pies. We got to choose the pie we could have for a birthday dessert, and I always chose cherry. Waiting for it to bake and for the first slice to be served was really difficult. Even better was waking up early the next day and eating the rest of the entire pie with a huge glass of milk was heavenly.

We noticed that Costco had a sale on cherries. Most supermarkets and grocery stores don’t even stock cherries. I emailed my mother for her cherry pie recipe (even though she used canned cherries) and got excited about the prospect of hand made pies again. We set off for Costco today since it was the very last day of their sale with the coupon. We didn’t know how much the final price was, but since we had a coupon, we didn’t think much about it. We arrived at the store and did our usual route through the aisles.

When we got to the fruit aisle, we were a little downtrodden. Two pounds of cherries for 19,900 won. With our coupon, it would be 17,900 won, or about $19 dollars (USD). $9.50 dollars a pound! While we were debating our purchase, several people came up, picked up the box, stared at the price, then backed away slowly. They looked like excellent quality fruit, but even the most spendthrift shoppers didn’t pick them up.

A funny old couple walked up. The woman was very enthused. She shouted to her husband, "Look! Look at this! This is great! It’s on sale!"

The man remained unconvinced. "What are these? How do you even eat them?"

She left empty handed.

So did we. Even if we purchased it with the coupon, that was far too expensive. I remember getting a large bag full of cherries while we were in the United States and was completely blown away at a price one fifth or less of what we pay here. Until I find some cherry pie filling somewhere, it looks like I’ll have to forget about my dream pie for now. If anyone wants to experience what it is like to buy cherries in Korea, I suggest ordering from this site.

My wife and I went out to a new restaurant in the neighborhood now that our old standby restaurant, Nolboo, has had their service and quality go down tremendously quickly in the past few months. We judge the new restaurant to be acceptable by peering inside. We saw a ton of people eating, and they were all chowing down on a ton of vegetables and side dishes. We went inside and got a semi-private table. We sat on the floor and were separated by a sliding door from the main room, but our room was subdivided by half-walls that blocked us watching people, but didn’t block any of their noise.

The loudest noise was coming from a group of people that were in a sort of Korean investment "club". The group would pay a membership fee to a person each month, then use the money they pool together to go on big nights out. The problem was that each time they elected someone to hold the money for people from month to month that they hadn’t yet spent, the person would run off with the money. The group was arguing about how much each person owed, or who was going to hold the money next time.

My wife’s mother does a similar sort of collective money scheme. 10 people choose to put money into a collective bank account each month. Perhaps they put 100,000 won into the account each month. Then, in a predetermined order, they remove the entire amount when it’s their month. Thus, one month, you remove 900,000 won. The remaining time you pay back into the pot. So, if you had the first month, you’d pull everyone’s money, then spend the next nine month’s paying back the money you got. If you go last, you pay for nine months, then remove that 900,000 won and a bit more for waiting. It’s supposed to compensate you for waiting. The idea is that if you needed money home quickly, say to buy a car right away, but didn’t want to pay interest to a bank, this is a "better" option. It relies on the connections between people in the group to keep people honest and paying each month.

Seeing as how there are perfectly reputable places that do this exact same sort of thing (BANKS) that do the same sort of transactions, I was wondering why people would go to the hassle of doing something that could easily turn into a debacle. It seems that people here are really big into liquidity, and don’t like investment in banks. Perhaps this has something to do with the 1997 financial crisis and a deep suspicion of financial institutions. I’m not sure, but I spent the rest of the evening trying to explain to my wife about what I learned way back in my college finance classes. Phrases like, "The purchasing power of money", and "Risk vs. Reward" were used.

At the time, I thought that Finance was useless, but once I got thinking about the Korean lending/borrowing system, there was a lot of potential to make money and abuse the fact that people don’t know or understand the power of investment. I don’t know if the people setting up these loaning rings are trying to get rich off people that know less than they do, or what.

There is an expression that, "Many hands makes all work light" that is applied to Asian cultures. Collectivism is part of this culture that is very alien to me, coming from an individualistic and independent country. However, I don’t think I’ll let our money go anywhere near a non-insured loaning agent. We’ve heard about people we know getting burned by these plans as well. There is risk, reward, and just plain stupid.

I’ve been working in environments with closed circuit televisions in them for the majority of my working life. My boss when I was a lowly sandwich maker had cameras set up to watch us when we dropped money into the safe. This was supposed to prevent the massive amount of fraud and theft that was happening at our store location. All it really did was make us more creative when we were bored as hell at work and needed to find a place to be unseen. I wasn’t stealing anything, but the system didn’t actually do much other than record a grainy 24 hour tape that was never looked at before it was taped over again.

My second school in Korea also had cameras. This meant that student’s parents could come into the office and watch us teaching their children, and how they behaved in class. There was no recording feature, and parents had to come to the school to see what was happening down the hallway. Unless the student was a complete moron, they usually weren’t going to misbehave when they knew their mother is down the hall, watching or not. The cameras in the classroom were positioned to watch the students and board, and usually were above the bookcases. I usually sat on the bookcases since I wasn’t technically "allowed" to sit down on the job all day. All parents saw were students staring in the direction of the camera and the top of my head.

Fast forward. My current job has cameras with monitors in the director’s office. They used to be the same style system as at my second school, but recently they got upgraded. Now they run to one single monitor that can be used to zoom, watch many classrooms at once, or monitor all the classes at the same time. The most disturbing thing about this is that it also monitors the teacher’s room as well as the classrooms, so our director can watch everything we say and do at work. The only thing not being monitored currently at the school are, to my knowledge, the director’s room, the secretaries’ desk (ironically, since they have the money), and the hallways. Storage rooms and other non-critical spaces are also left unmonitored.

I’ve been fine with cameras in the class because I run a tight ship, don’t do anything bad, and don’t waste time. On occasion the director will swoop into my class, grab a student that was misbehaving, and yell at them outside them with the force of an imploding sun. This alone will scare the other kids straight. "How did she know?" they will ask each other. I’ll point at the cameras and all is explained. It gets to a point where you don’t even remember the cameras. There is so much footage, and the chance that anyone is watching what you are doing at any one particular moment is so slim, you forget they exist. They are there, subtly changing your behavior, but never a concern in your mind when you do your job. It’s simply an occupational annoyance.

The final twist is this is somewhat unsettling to me now. Due to another significant upgrade to the camera system, not only can my director watch us at work all times, but she can watch us over the Internet, and record what we do all day as well. Remote viewing, as well as recording. The end is extremely fucking nigh for privacy. Now our boss doesn’t even have to be at work to have a record of what we do or say at all  times. While the entire teaching staff watched in horror, the man installing the system went on to show her how to check any point of the day. There was a fight in one of the classes earlier. She told him to rewind to an hour ago and show what happened in the classroom. We got to see ourselves teaching, the students arriving for the next class, and the fight breaking out. Everything was being recorded with sound in every classroom. Everything.

My foreign coworker and I both had rather low opinions of the uses of this gadgetry. If parents are given access to such a system, it could be a truly terrible thing. It’s one thing to have to deal with a director sniping at you when they think you’ve done something they don’t like. It’s totally another when a parent is given the ability to stalk the teacher and tell them how to do their job. The first time I am given "teaching tips" by a parent that’s watched me via the Internet, heads will roll.

The absolutely worst thing is the fact that the teacher’s room is being watched. We already work in a glass cage, surrounded by windows that let the students watch us like fish in an aquarium. Now the director can listen and record everything that happens in the room. My two Korean coworkers spend most of the time between classes complaining about the impossible demands our director makes. Now, all that will be recorded and possibly publicly available. Imagine every off hand comment, sigh, or nasty look for all to see, and recorded for your director, who controls your salary. The only way we’ll be able to speak our minds freely at work will be to sneak off to an unwatched corner or go outside.

Parents will love the access it will give to their children. They’ll be able to review what their children learn, see if their teachers are doing a good job, and watch their children’s behavior at home. Any and all incidents will be explained before anyone needs to "call home". There will be a record of any wrongdoings that can be laid out as proof of someone’s misdeeds. There are tremendous benefits to bringing cameras to classrooms if you are the parents or administrators, but it makes teachers even further subjects of scrutiny.

I do all I can to earn my salary, do the best I can, and teach with as much enthusiasm as possible, and I don’t expect any problems with my performance at work. However, I find cameras in the classroom loathsome when I’m not told the conditions in which they operate, who they are available to, in what instances they can or can’t be used. I don’t know who is watching me, why they are watching me, how long they can watch me, or what will happen as a result of them watching me. That’s frankly terrifying, even if I am a good  teacher. The whole "nothing to hide" argument wins no points with me.

On Tuesday, one of my classes studied how chocolate was made. This is an incredibly cruel thing to do to children. The large pictures of chocolate bars looked so real that children were pawing at the pages and imagining melting them in their mouths. The students tried hard during the lesson, and we always review the previous lesson each time. I knew we’d be talking about chocolate again today. I told the students on Tuesday, "Next class is a chocolate party. Bring chocolate for your friends. We’ll eat it together."

The whole thing slipped my mind today when I went to lunch. I had meant to buy chocolates, at least one per student, the day I proposed the party. I got busy, things didn’t happen, and I forgot. Luckily, I ran into one of my students from that class coming to the school early. He was so excited to have chocolate to share, that he gave me a chocolate coin on the street. He said he had a huge bag for his classmates. If he hadn’t come early, I would have totally forgotten. I ran to the local corner store and bought some individually wrapped chocolate food my students.

I ran into my student again, bragging about how he was going to eat chocolate in class. His friend was very impressed. This generated a huge buzz around the school. We didn’t do anything cool for Halloween, (Korean or American) Thanksgiving, or Christmas, but suddenly one of the lowest level classes for their age was getting a "chocolate party"? The students took every opportunity to brag to their friends in other classes. I didn’t expect it to be a big deal, but eating chocolate in class was something the students were looking forward to doing.

For being a party, was exactly the same as any other day. We did the same classwork and did the same routine, except that whenever anyone got an answer correct, they got a piece of chocolate to eat. Also, if students ate in class, they wouldn’t get in trouble. The students were fairly buzzed from all the sugar, but were working too hard to really enjoy much of a "party". They did volunteer to answer questions for the chocolate though.

After class, my director was wondering why I was trying to dump off a ton of candy I had gotten from students  by giving it to the secretaries. All the secretaries already had been given chocolate by my students. All the teaching staff had gotten chocolate. The director wanted to know if it was a special day. "It’s not Valentine’s day. Where did all this chocolate come from?"

I explained about the lesson. She liked the idea. She said, "Oh, so you made today a special day for the students. That’s good."

My next hour, the students came into the class early. They saw me disposing of the wrappers and wondered what we had been up to. One of them asked,"Why did the last class have a chocolate party?"

I told them, "We studied chocolate, so I gave them some chocolate."

The student then opened his book, "We are studying money today."  They were indeed studying dollars and cents in the next unit. He opened his palm and gave me a smirk that said, "I’ve got you now."

I put the chocolate coin from my student in his hand. He was amused and satisfied at the same time. I actually had enough of the coins for the entire next class, so no one had to go without chocolate today.

It’s getting to the nitty gritty time of the current term. If there was a miracle, and you taught a book alone, you could have paces yourself well enough to assure that you have enough material for the remaining classes. The likelihood of this diminishes for every teacher you add to the book series through the week. In some of my classes, three or more teachers share the same book, which means that if one person went long, or did too much, someone’s going to end up needing to think of activities to do to make up for that time later on.

One such class of mine has required me to think creatively about class materials for the past week, since I’ve been in danger of finishing the book way earlier than I should have. I’ve got two or three more classes, and perhaps a single page or less material for each. This means that I planned a spelling bee for one of my classes today. We had done a dictionary style review sheet in the previous class, where students looked up words that fit into different categories and then wrote them on a word list. I assigned these lists as the word pool for the spelling bee.

Today, I arranged the class so that my desk was at the back, and the students would sit in a row of chairs facing me. This is a way to keep them organized, as well as break the class more easily into groups according to their results. I did an elimination style spelling bee, but with a twist. For any incorrect word, the next student got a chance to spell it. If they got it correct, they knocked out any previous spellers that got it wrong. This meant that to be the best speller, the students paid attention to each other and listened to how the people before them attempted to spell words. I immediately stopped students when they made a mistake, so good listeners could remember where the person before them made a mistake.

The problem with achievement based competitions are the lazy students that intentionally fail to be "out". If the price of not spelling a word is sitting around bored for an hour, some students are going to choose the alternative to studying every time. To discourage such behavior, I did three things. I limited the categories to ten or less words. That meant that bad spellers never had to wait too long to get back into the game to try again. I awarded winners who survived a round of good spelling by giving prizes. I also punished students that were out. Every word I gave to students in the game they had to write in their notebook multiple times. They had to find the word in the book and copy it down. This kept them busy, listening, and improved their spelling at the same time. It also stopped people from failing on purpose.

We went five rounds before the class ran out of time. The better listeners and spellers knocked out the people that were chatty every time. One of the problems I had was that because I didn’t assign seating, between rounds students would jockey for position at different seats. Some students wanted to follow bad spellers, others wanted to follow good spellers in hope they would knock out a hard word before it got to them. I could have assigned seating to cut down on seat switching, but it was only a minor annoyance. If someone couldn’t spell well, it really wouldn’t matter where they were to begin.

The most important thing of the spelling bee was the fact that most of the students were excellent writers and spellers for their age already. They were the elite of the age, so no word I gave them from the book was too hard. Had I tried it in the lower class at the same age, most of the students wouldn’t have been able to make a decent attempt before being knocked out. The challenge level was good enough that the students weren’t complaining, but at the same time it wasn’t easy enough for people to get bored.

I wanted to order a book I saw for sale at the local English language bookstore. I wanted to have it for class, as it was a very flexible book I could use for a few of my classes that were about to finish their own materials in class. I didn’t mind the price tag for a book I would use for ideas and adapt from, as it was going to get immediate use. I had seen the book on three previous occasions when I didn’t need a book but had considered purchasing it because I liked it that much.

I didn’t carry enough cash on me to just purchase it on a whim, so I always ended up putting it on the shelf when I left. On one trip, I checked out the information, wrote down the ISBN, and even looked at it online. The idea was I would check to see the price online and order if it would appear I could save any money.

Prices online made it seem like buying it in the book store, while expensive, was the best option. On my last trip to the book store to pick it up, cash in hand, I went to where my book usually was found. It was gone! Someone else had bought book while I had been waiting! Not only that, but when I asked them to check the store for another copy, they said they were completely sold out. I told them to order a copy for me, then call me when I was able to pick it up.

The call came a few days later, but it was not a confirmation of order. It was a cancellation. The book no longer is for sale. It’s out of stock in Korea. I went to a second bookstore and placed another order. I told them that the other book store had said they could not find any copies, that it was out of stock, and that they wouldn’t order it for me. The second book store assured me that finding a copy wouldn’t be an issue. My order would arrive today. No problems. I wouldn’t have to worry about trying to find new material for class. It would arrive exactly when I needed it.

I got a second cancellation of my order today. No book stores in Korea will be getting any more of these books in. Either I get it online, or I don’t get it at all it appears. Curses. I had to go to the bookstore and pick up a backup sort of book to replace this book I had my eye on. Nothing exactly fits the niche it did as well, but I gave an hour or so of my after work free time into looking for the best replacement possible. I found something suitable and narrower, but not nearly as good.  However, they only had one copy of the book, which I immediately bought. I needed a few more, so I put in another order. Now I have to hope that they don’t cancel my replacement order.

I’ll probably end up ordering the book I want while I finish off the book I chose as it’s replacement. While prudence and financial responsibility are good attributes, sometimes you need to reach out and grab what you really need, no matter the cost.

In the book today in my first class, we were talking about Abraham Lincoln’s ghost. The best thing about ghost stories in class is getting to act them out and see who is afraid. This class is somewhat low, so I had to act out some parts of the tale.

The tape played, "Abraham Lincoln’s footsteps can be heard walking on the second floor of the White House."

I walked around the room loudly, "You can hear my footsteps."

The tape continued, "A woman said that you could see him walking in the hallway."

I pointed out of the room, into the hall. "This is the hallway."

So far, the students were completely bored.

"You could hear Lincoln’s ghost knocking on the door."

I went to the wall at the front of class and knocked loudly three times. Everyone’s attention was on me knocking on the wall at the front of class because I was doing it as loudly as possible to wake them all up. At the exact same time I started to knock, the attendance secretary opened the door to collect our attendance folder by complete coincidence. The entire class screamed in surprise as the door opened.

The secretary had a very confused look on her face, so I explained the situation and her excellent timing. Everyone had a good laugh from the released tension. It was probably the highlight of the otherwise boring lesson.