::A Geek in Korea::

Being the only American, there is a bit of work we have to do to bring the joys of Halloween to other cultures. I did my part and wore a costume. I also learned a lesson from last year and made sure my costume didn’t involve my face in any way.

I fired up The GIMP (Graphic Image Manipulation Program) and made a Jack O’ Lantern cutout. Since I didn’t have markers or crayons, this was easier than drawing it, and it kept the sharp lines I needed to make it look like I had carved out something from a pumpkin.

Next, I cut out my pieces, put them on thick cardboard, and secured them. Next, I got an orange sweater I liked to wear and affixed the pieces I just made onto the front. Instant Jack O’ Lantern shirt! I could still teach without it affecting my pronunciation, everyone “got” my costume, and it cost nothing to prepare or to remove. It was not threatening too, so the younger students cold enjoy it. Perfect costume.

We gave out chocolate bars between classes. I gave out for a “Monster Quiz” I did with my students at the end of each period. I only accepted English answers for questions like, “What Monster drinks blood?”  The kids knew the answers, but only a few knew them in English. If they got it from a hint I gave them some candy.

Eventually the teacher’s room were filled with students begging for candy. From time to time I’d get up and kick them all out. It’s like a zombie hoard trying to get brains, only, not so much.

Teaching wise, today was like any other day, except all the students were hyped up on sugar. Make that “Hyped up on MORE sugar.”

I also got disciplined for a comment I made for a student. My director told me using the word “never” in any context would come off too harsh went translated into Korean out of context. I told her that I’m writing ENGLISH comments, and that I’m not going to rewrite an English comment because of how it could potentially be mistranslated in Korean. I clarified my comment by adding a positive sentence at the end, but I refused to change the comment entirely because of a “forbidden” word.

I really hate having my comments moderated because of “potential misinterpretation”. That’s really beyond the realm of reasonable expectation of a teacher. The next time I have a comment on my comments, I’ll suggest she write her own.

Last week, after a request to move some music around on my wife’s iRiver H10, I completely messed up her device. I had installed Rockbox, which worked well-ish considering the maturity of the firmware. Rockbox doesn’t support Korean fonts in any manner I can figure out on my own. My wife’s music, being mostly Korean, was showing up as a series of blocks, not characters. It wasn’t acceptable. She asked me to switch back to the original firmware.

Luckily, switching back to the original firmware was easy. There were no signs Rockbox had ever been installed. This is a good thing, because I damaged the music database that the device uses to sort and organize music. Without it, the player was nothing but a Windows-Only paperweight. P.O.S. My wife took it to the after service center and they wiped out her music and rewrote her database to get it working once again. I had made backups of her collection anticipating this, so she didn’t lose anything.

I was handed a blank Mp3 player and told, “Please, put my music back on this.”

I decided that I’d go back to what I had originally planned when I started Windows XP virtualization. I’d run my VirtualBox Windows XP install, mount the USB drive, and use the Windows application that comes with the Mp3 player to manually rebuild the database each time I add or remove songs from her player.

Now, how the hell should I go about that?

First: Install the PUEL version (Non-free) of VirtualBox. It includes support for USB.

Second: Enable USB support for VirtualBox. I followed this guide.

Third: Install the propriety Mp3 database program. In this case iRiver Plus 3.

Fourth: Add music to Mp3 player in Ubuntu. Unmount.

Fifth: Load of Windows XP. Fire up the Mp3 database program. Rebuild Database. Unmount.

BOOM. New music on the player that doesn’t damage the database anymore.

FINISHED!

Now I don’t need to bother with the damn thing anymore, and my wife can get her music with Korean fonts. I’ve gone from defeat and threatening to throw the player out our balcony to mild annoyance at poor Linux support and the number of steps it took me to get to this point. It took around a year, but I’m finally done with it.

Last time I had to do evaluations, I got scolded for one of the comments I left for the parents to read. Not because it wasn’t true, but because it made the parents upset. The paraphrased comment was something approximating this:

“This student causes problems in class that make it difficult to teach. He often starts fights, and throws books at other student’s head. He picks on one girl in particular, and can’t be in the same room with her. If his behavior improves he will be better to have in class.”

This was a fairly…diplomatic evaluation considering the antics this particular student pulled in class. As far as I know, the comments are complete free of consequences except when the parent complains I was overly harsh. No one has quit over them that I’m aware.

Before I was even handed an evaluation to grade I’ve been warned about their content this time around. My director came in when I was in the office to tell me I had to be very careful about telling parents that their kids were poorly behaved in class.

Her stance was laid out like this, ” Parents of bad students know that their children are badly behaved. They don’t have the power to change how their children behave. No one wants to hear their child was acting badly in class to you. So don’t mention it, okay?”

Even if the children are not learning due to their behavior, I’m not supposed to mention this. It might be the only thing from holding them back, but it’s not something I’m allowed to discuss. I’m suppose to bring up what they ARE doing well. I tried to always do that anyway. It’s like a one-two punch to catch parents off guard.

“Your child has managed to learn phonics, and he can stab people with pencils with great accuracy!”

Or…

“You middle school student is mastering English speaking. He talks in his sleep in class most of the time.”

Apparently even THESE sorts of comments are no longer allowed! I’ve got to think of positive things to say about every student! I’m snarky online and off, and yet I’m trapped in writing 100 nice things about students that may not be nice to me a single day of the year! It’s either that, or resort to boilerplate stuff so vague that it could apply to anyone. With my director watching my comments like a hawk, I wouldn’t even be able to get away with this.

To be truthful, I’m lucky. There are only a handful of students this time around where behavior is even an issue at all, unlike previous semesters where I wanted to slaughter whole classes with cruel remarks from my pen. These children will be spared as I try to think of some sort of glimmer of hope for them.

There are some trivialities in life you never know you need until you are introduced to them. It might be visiting someone’s home or business that makes you aware of their practicality. Or it might be something you never needed before, but because of a new undertaking you suddenly realize that life would be better with them. At least, slightly.

I’ve gone my entire life without owning a shoe horn. Koreans call them “shoe scoops”, using the same word for the scoop they get rice from a large bowl to serve it to people. While I find a shoe “horn” nonsensical, the idea of “scooping” my heel is disgusting for some reason. I always attributed them to old people. When I was a child, I outgrew my shoes around the time they were too damaged to wear, so there was no point in keeping my shoes undamaged.

The reason my last shoes wore out was that when I had to take them off and put them on in the house, I’d just wedge my foot in. The shoes have no laces, so the “spine” of the heel of the shoe would break. I would use my finger to help my feet slide into the shoe, but the friction of trying to pull my finger out would leave one finger cracked and dry. My last pair have spines so damaged that they rubbed my ankles, forcing me to buy a new pair.

I got some nice, comfortable leather shoes and wanted to keep them in good condition as long as possible. They cost enough that I’d like to avoid damaging them when I put them on. I was at a restaurant that had a shoe horn. I never saw the point of owning one before, because they were short. If I was going to bend down to put on a shoe, I don’t need another tool. This shoe horn was a nice length, so you could slip on your shoe without bending over. It would also double as a nice weapon to fend off small children. We bought one for the house the next chance we got. I never thought I’d get to be an old man with a shoe horn, but now, here I am.

I’ve never owned a kitchen scale. My mother cooked with measuring cups and whatnot, but most of the time we’d always “eyeball” the amounts. Cook for taste. That sort of thing. Now that my wife has started a cooking school, she needs lots of new cookware gadgets to replicate what she is learning in class. She’s also trying to do more baking, and anything that facilitates peanut butter cookies is okay with me. We now own a nice plastic kitchen scale that will help us with such things.

I’m not going out of my way to fill my house with useless baubles and tchotchkes. Eventually all the useful stuff I swear I need will be discarded. The next time we move in Korea my wife has promised me the use of a moving service. That way we won’t have to move all the useless stuff we end up with ourselves. We’ll be paying someone else to haul our useless crap around.

We went to the Wolnamsam (Meat with rice paper and vegetables) restaurant in my school’s neighborhood this evening. I took some pictures. I also made a slideshow.

It’s well commented about the progression through the steps, as well as all the delicious ingredients. Check it out.

My wife has been repeatedly targeted by a group of Confucian cultists. There is a somewhat modern “cult” that has started to use Korean traditions and philosophy to get money out of Korean people using peer pressure.

Her first exposure was while she was running to a bus stop. The bus was turning the corner, barreling down the street. My wife was jogging with her bag to try to make it to the bus stop before it arrived. A man approached her as she was jogging, trying to cut off her path.

“Do you believe in Confucianism? Let’s talk about it for a little bit,” he said as she broke into a run. He actually put a hand to her arm and tried to grab her for a little “chat”. She pushed him away and ran to the bus stop. She beat the bus by a few minutes, so she had to blend into the crowd. There was actually a pair of people that had followed her. They couldn’t corner her in the crowd, so eventually they gave up looking for her and left.

Today there was no one else at the bus stop when she arrived except the cultists demanding another chance to talk. They blocked her in as she waited for the bus.

“Do you believe in Confucianism? You must have done good deeds in a previous life. I can see that you have. How else would you keep having the fortune to keep running into us? You’ve probably met a lot of people that believe in what I believe. That’s because you are virtuous. Can we talk about Confucianism some more?” the man said.

My wife, totally creeped out, kept looking at the bus schedule and averting her eyes.

“Anyway, you’ll be here until the bus arrives, so it will give us a chance to chat.”

“Uh, no,” she answered three times weakly in Korean.

They kept bothering her. My wife had heard from friends that these sorts of cultists pressure people into performing ceremonies such as “chaesa“. This is the ceremony Koreans use to honor their ancestors. After the ceremony, they’ll demand a cash payment to honor the dead. That’s the “gotcha”. After they’ve talked to you, at length, about the importance of Confucianism in Korean society, you’ll look extremely rude to turn down money as a gift to your ancestors. One girl said she was even forced to give up her bus money when she was caught with nothing else to offer. It’s best not to get involved in a discussion at all with these people.

Seeing as the bus wasn’t on it’s way, my wife took another approach.

She said, “I’m sure I could understand what you are talking about if you could tell me in English.”

The man stared. Stunned. “Speak Korean, please.”

“Explain it in English so that I can understand. If you don’t, I probably can’t understand what you mean.”

The two cultists hung their heads in defeat and walked away.

If it wasn’t for the fact that these people kept following my wife, I’d find this story totally awesome. Yet ANOTHER practical reason for learning a foreign language. Now all the damn cultists will be bothering us for English lessons though.

I was sitting around reading a book before class. I had prepared all my tests for the day, so I really had nothing to do. My director approached me and asked me a few questions about reworking a syllabus mid-term to add a second teacher to help me. It turns out that one of my awesome Korean coworkers (the old head teacher) is going to return, as a free lance part timer for a few weeks. Also, my troublesome coworker will be leaving the school permanently in a few weeks.

If I hadn’t already been clued in by reading some of the journal entries my students wrote, I might have betrayed my feelings at that moment. I just kept my cool as she went on. Seems that since I was away in Europe, this one book didn’t go smoothly. She wanted me to split it up so that when the new teacher arrives, she can help me cut down the workload per class. We’d split up the book and I could spend more time working on the things the students needed to focus on. I was more than happy to pass off some of the material if they needed me to do such a thing.

The students had complained the book was too hard because it was a radically new sort of focus. I picked it out specifically for their level, so if anyone was taking the fall it would be me. It’s hard to blame a substitute teacher that doesn’t know the torture that is IBT-TOEFL, my area of expertise at the moment. They didn’t choose the book, and without wading through some of the 800 page books we used in previous classes, there isn’t enough material or background to make the point of teaching the class clear to a substitute. I’ve used the other hellishly long books, and even completed some of them, so I know WHY I’m going with the simple, minimal style book this time around. I picked the book best for my class, not my substitutes.

While the students had tried to pull a revolution while I was away and tried to pressure the director for a new book, no one had mentioned the book’s difficulty in a few weeks since I started back at the school after my vacation. I had changed the way I had approached the book when I returned to school, and I guess it worked. My director said that since I had gotten back the students were better able to cope with the work load of the book. Turns out having a teacher in the class that knows what he is doing is worth it.

 The student in the picture came in and started showing everyone her knife. She was running around the school yelling, “Look at my knife! It’s a CANDY KNIFE!”

None of the Korean teachers thought this was odd. I stopped her and asked her what she was doing. She said she had bought a candy knife, and was going to give it to her brother. She had paid 500 won at her Korean school. It was made of sugar, and was sharp enough to possibly poke out an eye, or leave a nice scratch. If it broke off in someone’s mouth, it’d be very dangerous though. I don’t think it would kill an attacker, but it would make them very sticky.

Korean schools are selling cheap candy blades made of sugar. They’ll get the children hyperactive, have them running around with a sharp object in their mouths, and then…there HAS to be more to the plan than this.

There HAS to be some sort of logic behind selling candy knives other than hating children. Right?

Let me tell you right now, this story ends anti-climatically. I wish this story would end with a raid on some fortified position. Someone with a telephone in one hand, gun pressed to the head of a hostage, shouting demands until the SWAT team kicks down the door and there is some glorious gunfight that will be discussed on the International News as that “Great Tragedy” or “Something we hope is never repeated”.

Alas, this is not that kind of story. This story ends more with a whimper than a gunfight. But it’s still a story with industrial spying, so it’s not all dull. Try to keep your interest as I retell it.

So, a few months ago, our revolving weekly “New Secretary” routine ended. I was introduced to a secretary one week, and the next week, the SAME woman was at the job. Not only that, she stayed the next week as well. After setting an endurance record by lasting at our school for a few weeks, the new secretary had a new assistant that became the “Revolving secretary that quit every other week”.

Having a permanent secretary was decent enough, except she wasn’t exactly top quality. She made frequent mistakes on the vocabulary tests, and couldn’t speak any English. She didn’t do anything to endear herself to any of the teachers either. She lasted about six months on the job, and I don’t remember having a single conversation other than work.

I wasn’t surprised to see her gone, replaced by a new secretary. This woman could speak English, and was much better at socializing and the other duties of the job. New secretary, moving on.

Dear reader, if you were wondering where the promised industrial espionage starts, I will now deliver. Students files and records are the domain of the secretary. They have their own computer that does all the work of tracking who the students are, who owe money, who has quit, and how to contact everyone.

For every student, the file contains contact information. Anyone that had access to the computers could have made a copy of those files. For example, a disgruntled employee that ended up working for a new school might have a reason for holding onto those kinds of files.

I’ve got a relative that used to attend my school. They had quit a few months ago when I was negotiating my contract. They were cold called by the ex-secretary. She asked if they remembered her, and if they wanted to change schools. She could get them into a different school nearby if they wanted since she now worked there.

Hmmmm. That’s awfully coincidental.

So, my relatives give us the word about how this woman had called them and what she had been up to asking. Our relative wasn’t very happy that the security on documents that had their information had been stolen by an ex-employee. The relative suggested we alert the director as soon as possible about this privacy problem before we got a slew of angry mothers calling us.

I did just that. It seems my director was aware that the secretary had ample access to the information before she quit, but had no idea that she was in contact with old students. My director called around and found out that not only had old students been called, but implied to me that current students were also getting called as well.

Stealing students or teachers is very frowned upon in the industry. Things are so intensely competitive people will go to great lengths to find new potential students. I’ve heard of schools calling people at random from yearbooks to see if students have younger siblings that would be looking for a discount to study at a school. When I was in contract negotiations with other schools, they said I wasn’t allowed to “bring” students with me, because if word got out that people were switching schools, all the other schools in the neighborhood would be unhappy.

So, while I don’t know if it was an actual crime, it’s certainly not something which people approve of doing. There have been no arrests, no hostages, or inadvisable tragedies yet. But one can hope.

Did you know, the number one way to lose the concentration of a classroom of children would be do exhibit any bodily function best reserved for a bathroom? For example, anyone with gas should never, ever be a teacher. Letting one loose in the classroom would cause such a problem you might as well forget ever trying to ever be in the same room with the children again. Children never forget something like that, even when they soil the air with their foul stenches daily.

This is just a theory, as I can’t say that I stand in front of class and “banggu!” as the students might say. That isn’t to say that I haven’t taught while in the middle of a stomach problem from time to time, (See the entire year from 2003 to 2004, for example) but you’ve got avoid putting yourself in that situation. Make time for a stop to the bathroom between classes. Get it done somehow. Be stealthy. Worse comes to worse, step outside. Or blame it on a child you don’t like.

[spoiler]

You never realized it before, but those teachers that would duck into the hallway from time to time to “talk to the principal” were TOTALLY outside farting up a storm.

[/spoiler]

Today, however, had me in a social situation where I had to visit someone’s home. Same rules apply in a guest’s house as in a classroom. As long as someone is in the room with you, you can’t go sneaking one off. It’s just impolite and gross. Unless you are elderly, then you are free to let them fly.

I am not an elderly Korean man, thus, for the entire social engagement I was wiggling, moving my stomach, and generally avoiding any moves that would have sent my cheeks flying. My wife has named me “The Farting General” for a reason. While I might be more liberated at home, I’m not one to subject strangers to such bodily functions. I had to sit, knowing full well any mistake would have led to total embarrassment.

(And yet, I WILL write about this on a website. Go figure.)

Anyway, when my visit was over, and the door slammed shut behind me, I let something epic escape. The stairwell echoed. Warning sirens should have gone off. Evacuations should have commenced for a biological attack. It’s something so loud and so sudden it was startling.

I’m just lucky the people in the apartment didn’t open to door to check to see if a bomb went off in the hallway.