::A Geek in Korea::

Some of my intensive period students are the annoying “I’m being babysat and resent learning English” types. I’d be a little annoyed waking up on my vacation to study English in the morning, but they’ve been there two hours before seeing me, and making me angry doesn’t mean they get out of class any earlier.

I’m pretty lenient about students with food in class as long as they are responsible to clean up after themselves. As long as there is no mess, or smell, I don’t care if you eat between classes. Of course, these students threw garbage and food containers on the floor on day one, so they got their food rights revoked. “I’m not a garbage man, go eat outside from now on.”

Students like this love to think of “clever” solutions to problems. Instead of eating outside, or not eating until after my class, the students bought the exact same food, then hid the wrappers behind a window shade. I know WHO buys the food. I know WHAT class they are in. I know WHEN they have class, and the BEST way they think to disguise their plan is to hide it in the SAME ROOM?

I told my director, and showed her the massive pile of garbage I had to clean up when I found out. Revenge will be mine. I’m not sure what I’ll do, but those students will suffer my wrath.

We got a notification that evaluations needed to be done by the end of the week. This is the first time that foreigners got the notification before the Korean teachers. I’m taking advantage of having access to all the evaluations at once to try to get them done early for a change.

Evaluations this time around seem to be going smoother. Perhaps it’s because I get to set down the tone of the report card with my own scores before I see what the rest of the teacher’s feel. If I want to heap praise on a student, I can without looking like I’m out of whack with what the Korean teacher feels.

I’ve also done way more testing than I usually do. This means I don’t have to worry about not having enough scores to justify my final grades.  This means when parents come in to see us in the office next week, I’ll be able to point to something to explain grades. This is key.

What if Worms, Soldat, and Kirby had some sort of weird threesome? The result would be Teewars. The cutest little buggers with guns ever.

What is it?
This is a mutliplayer, 2D, stylized deathmatch game with five weapons. Characters look like they would fit in any Kirby game, except for the guns they carry around to blast each other. The levels are bright and cheerful, with an anthropomorphic sun grinning in the background as you rain death on your opponents below.

The tools of death:
Hand to Hand:
The Ninja rope deals no damage, but lets you swing around the level. It also works great with the Hammer. The Hammer (default, no ammo), is for the up close and personal kill.
The Sword is for a slashing swipe of death. Lethal. This is the most powerful weapon, but spawns infrequently and has a timer to limit you from slashing everyone for the rest of the round. For 25 seconds you are a complete bad ass.

The Guns:
Pistol (default) is when you want to shoot it out John Woo style.
Shotgun, for that bird shot spray of death for those people that tend to hop around on the Ninja rope.
And of course, Rockets. No deathmatch game would be complete without them. These are more like grenades, but the explode on contact. They have an arch that lets you shoot when you don’t have a direct line of sight on your opponents.

Pick up health, as well as armor in the level to keep dealing out death for longer. In addition to the ninja rope, characters also have a double jump to help them navigate the levels.

How do I play it?
It’s available for free on Windows, Linux, and Mac version too, for Intel AND PPC computers
There are multiplayer servers. Just connect and start blasting away.

Modes?
Death match, Team deathmatch, Capture the Flag…all the normal game variations are available. The most common server set up seems to be Death match to 20 rounds.

I’ve been playing this game for the past few weeks. It’s a great find for anyone looking for a less tactical shooter than Soldat with a similar style.

Hitler bar.

So I was invited to geek out and play Magic the Gathering for the first time since college. I met one of the people I’d be playing with at Say Department store. We walked to the guys house in the middle of a neighborhood dominated by villas. If you don’t know where places are in these neighborhoods, you’ll never be able to find them. They follow no logical numbering system, and Korean streets lack names.

We had been waiting for someone, but they were late. They called us as we were walking to the destination, and my friend got to utter the phrase, “Turn left on the street before the ‘Hitler bar’.” to help them find the place.

The Hitler bar is one of those “What the FUCK?” sorts of things you hear about and witness only in Korea. It’s pretty famous in the foreigner community, but no one goes inside. It’s a “Hitler Themed” bar. I’ve never been inside, but I got a picture to prove it’s existence for the world.

Once the Magic cards were brought out, it was clear I was no longer the biggest geek in the room. People had carefully crafted theme decks, lots of cards, and had a better grasp on the new rules than I did. I was able to find a deck I really liked to borrow. I was able to pick up two quick victories against it’s creator, but lost every single game after that. I still had a blast playing. In the end, our six on six free for all ended with the rookie who had never played before winning it all.

I invited everyone over to play a Super Smash Brothers Brawl when the game finally arrives. I hope the geekery will never end.

(not my flickr)

Korean road trip! Some friends of my wife had a son that was going to Australia to study. Someone decided to make this an excuse for a road trip to a Sokri mountain two hours away from Daejeon by car. Little did we know there was a giant Buddhist complex to visit called Beopchu temple.

We went to a traditional Korean restaurant and ate a huge meal. I met the group my wife’s been hanging out with on the weekends, and their teacher. He’s a really nice man who speaks English fluently. Not only that, but some of my friends also came along. We had a nice walk to the temple chatting.

The most astounding thing at the temple was the giant 33 meter tall gold plated Buddha. The original statue had it’s construction stopped when the Japanese invaded Korea. They later completed a second version in concrete, then spent 4,500 man hours improving the statue complex. Then they sprayed 80 kg of gold in a 3 micron thin layer over the entire statue. There was a museum in it’s base, and an even shiner Buddha below hidden from the weather. Unfortunately, that statue hadn’t been dedicated yet, so it was partially covered.

The temples and buildings reminded me of Bulguksa. Beopchusa is closer, but I don’t know if you can reach it easily without a car. I’m scouting out new places to take my friends when they come to Korea. I might want to switch up the tour, since my parents were really tired from running around all of Korea. If we could go to a few places that are closer that would keep down the travel time while still giving them the flavor of Korea.

After the trip, we all went to Bennigan’s. We had a giant order, and even got desert. Cursing our swollen stomachs, I invited everyone back to our apartment. I hadn’t expected everyone to take me up on the offer! I needed to do something for the entertainment. I fired up Wii Sports, and got someone to make a character. Two minutes later, we were playing Tennis and everyone was having a blast trying to burn off the calories we had put on during dinner.

We played Wii Sports for 90 minutes! People that had never played a video game in their life got to try, and they were hooked. The older teacher said that he really liked bowling, as it was very true to life. He’d be able to play it at home on his own. Three of the couples present said that they’d buy the console simply because they watched us play and had that much fun with it.

My wife and I suggested holding off to a Korean launch so they could find it cheaper. People were asking where we got it online, and even the markup we mentioned wasn’t dampening their enthusiasm. I hope no one goes buying a Japanese version by mistake, because that doesn’t come with Wii Sports. The “everyone’s welcome” intuitive approach to gaming really works.

I need to buy some Nintendo stock. I’m their best salesman in the city.

One of the problems I’ve always had with speaking tests is making it high stakes enough for students to care about their results. In a class with ten students, only four might memorize something to recite. One or two will try to memorize something in the five minutes before class start, fail, and get caught. The rest will basically just give up immediately.

Students too lazy to commit to memorizing a few sentences usually view studying like a zero sum game. The more they study, the grumpier they become. If they can get out of a test more quickly by failing, and that also means they don’t have to study, that is what they’ll do. Even if this costs them a reward or gets the teacher angry, it means they still didn’t have to spend time studying.

I’ve tweaked my speaking tests to reflect this fact. Now, I give the students a full day warning. They know they have a test, as it’s their only homework. I tell them to prepare by listening and reading the sentences many times. Because I don’t give them any other homework, I tell them that their speaking tests must be perfect.

Then, I detail the new system for determining scores. Anyone that scores 100% on the test is finished. They can begin the puzzle, do other homework, or work silently. Anyone that makes a single mistake will write the topic once. Two mistakes means they write twice, and so on…
The maximum amount of times people can write depends on the length of the piece they have to memorize. Long pieces have more chances for mistakes, and cause hands to cramp when repeatedly rewritten. So far my limit has been five to seven rewrites for students that fail the test with no effort. One of the students was pushing for a ten time rewrite for complete failures, and ironically he failed his test entirely.

The important part of this style test is that you have the students write immediately after they fail in class and don’t let them do anything but write until they are finished. Then, all the students that did complete the task get a word search or puzzle to work on. That’s something students like doing in teams. If students who are writing get left behind, they’ll have to do all the work by themselves, meaning they’ll have even more to do.

The test works because the students hold their fate in their own hands. You have to administer the test fairly, because students monitor each other like hawks. The glee bad students get finding a mistake in a good student’s speech is matched only by the glee of the good student watching a bad student write a ton of times. Students help enforce each other’s punishments, which makes it easier on me to check on people.

The level my students now put into memorizing their work has increased dramatically. Students will come into my office to practice their speeches before class start so they don’t mess up in front of their peers and be forced to write. Some of my students said that they thought they really knew the speech until it was time to get up and say it. Once they felt the pressure, it all was forgotten. I can’t get that in my normal speaking tests. It’s also great for review, and had helped me slow down the pace of a few classes before I burn through all my material for intensive classes.

Reviews of things that offer an actual score are meaningless and stupid.

I don’t really like partaking in “10 ten” numerical list memes (most times) because I find ranking things by score and placing a numerical limit on their number subjective and dumb. Yes, ranking every single song by an artist, or every single movie ever made is too time consuming to be worth anyone’s time. However, top ten “best” lists and memes are pointless wastes of time regardless of length most of the time.

At best scores serve as barometers of taste, or shorthand for actually knowing someone in detail. All a score serves is a way of ranking something based on arbitrary criteria that vary from person to person. In aggregate, taking in consideration the subjective tastes of a person, they might serve as a guideline as to what someone might like, but only if you had the exact same tastes.

It’s very rare that people like the same things all the time. Since a score is just a shorthand for someone’s opinion, scoring something only works if you know a someone’s tastes and rubric they use to decide said score. If you know someone’s tastes, you probably don’t need a score in the first place. Ask them what they thought, and they’ll tell you.

The methodology for finding the score is much more important than the score itself, as it tells you what the person making the judgment values. If you know what a person values well enough and agree with them, you don’t need a score at the end of a review to tell you what they thought.

People with expert knowledge can craft a list, explain their choices, and have a reason for liking or disliking something. But slapping a score on the bottom demeans the discourse. If people praise something, or pan it, let their words be enough. Don’t give it a grade, stars, points, thumbs up, or anything else to try to justify their opinion.

I’m really not sure when I had this tectonic shift in thinking, but I do know this revelation has freed up considerable amounts of my time. Today, I had to teach about “The Oscars”. The students wanted to know what movies won the 2006 Oscars. I told them I don’t know, and I don’t care. The number of Oscars something wins isn’t an absolutely seal of quality. There were a few years were I’d sit around rooting for one movie to beat another. What’s the point? As long as I like a film, who gives a damn what anyone else thinks?

There are good movies, and bad movies. Things that do well, things that do poorly. I listen to a few people that I think have good opinions. If they like something, I might go out of my way to try to see it. If they say it’s not worth my time, I’ll take it under advisement. But if I wanted to see something, I wouldn’t let a score, star, or a point system stop me.

I really like the video podcast Play|Digital. The host gives brutally honest commentary about video games, is well informed, and reaches some of the same conclusions I do about certain games. However, at the end of the segment she always sticks a numerical score as a guide to what she thought. I really dislike that, because if I needed a score to tell me what to think after all that she told me, she didn’t do her job in the review.

This is the exact reason I really like the Totally Rad Show. Three guys talk about movies, television, video games, and comics. When they like something, they can tell you why. If they hate it, they tell you that too. They don’t give scores, but they talk about their opinions and justify them. I might agree with one of them about a particular subject, but because they don’t try to “sum up” everything in a score, they can’t just fall back on a rating for a lazy review. They might compare things to each other, but it’s always based on their merits. I can get a feel for what they like and dislike better from this conversation way more than a score.

While I might rail against a scoring system, I spend my work hours grading papers and giving students scores that will rank them in future classes. I try to apply the same rubric to my papers, but my foreign coworker might grade entirely differently. No one consults us to make sure scores are fair either. It’s basically a meaningless number that summarizes my opinion because I don’t have the time to write down a detailed review of every single paper that crosses my desk. This is fine because as a teacher I’m only expected to offer detailed critiques at evaluation periods. Those evaluations are supposed to be backed up by my grades as proof. While I do try to keep grades as way of comparing students against each other, it’s never absolute. Parents want a number, where I’d rather give them an opinion.

I’m basically a podcast addict. I’ve accepted this. If my podcast feeds run out before I’m home, I’m annoyed to listen to the same old music day in and day out. I’m a sucker for free niche programing, and podcasting lets me scratch intellectual itches while I commute or walk my dog. I’ve got a few more podcasts added to my feed list to share:

Koreanclass101 has an awesome series of podcasts for people interested in learning Korean. There is a native English and Korean speaker, and they guide you through a dialog line by line. They review concepts, explain grammar, help with politeness levels, grammar, and all sorts of other stuff related to learning Korean. The website itself is a confusing mess of check boxes and sign up offers. The feed itself is free, but you won’t have any written documents that supposedly accompany the material unless you sign up. Anyone trying to get a little studying done on the subway will be able to follow this podcast and learn some basic to intermediate level grammar.

60  Minutes (The Full Broadcast) is an enigma. Who would have thought a show like 60 minutes, who’s target audience is approximately 60+ years old would be hip enough to offer a podcast? Also, offering the entire show as a series of podcasts so you can listen to what amounts to an advertising free version for everyone is astoundingly progressive considering the source. The interviews are top notch too. There are some intense stories on this podcast too. It’s not a light or fun podcast in the slightest.

Nova’s podcast is very lame compared to 60 minutes. This PBS science show is made of teasers and only introduces concepts that are discussed on full shows on the actual television show. “Like to learn more, watch the whole thing when it airs…” LAME. The Naked Scientists are the premiere science podcasts I subscribe to at the moment. It’s a shame, because Neil deGrasse Tyson is a really entertaining fellow. If he did his own podcast, I’d subscribe in a second.

This week has been good for diversifying my news sources. NPR is great, but nothing beats a slow, grinding interview with 60 Minutes. Plus, Andy Rooney’s nonsensical rants are as bizarre as I remember from childhood. Maybe even moreso, as I can understand what he’s saying, but can’t understand why he’s still on the air.

With the mashing up of different classes, I’ve got students that I haven’t taught for a while. One of them is a bright, cute boy that is in my lowest level class. He’s been at the school for as long as I have, and tries hard to study as well as he can. The only thing “off” about him is a crippling fear of tests of any kind.

Every day since I’ve started teaching him, the first question he’s asked me when we meet is if we will have a test in class. I tend to test two times a week if possible in his class. This means he’s got pretty good odds of seeing a test. His reaction has always been to fall straight down on the ground and possibly start crying too. He once did this for 20 minutes in the teacher’s office in the fetal position under a desk.

Everyone else in the class sort of shrugs and says to cheer up. He will run off, lie on the ground, and sulk until class starts. This is weird behavior, because Koreans treat a floor of a school like it contains a coating of Ebola virus. Seeing a student lying on a floor weeping is not common at all. Other than this weird panic attack brought on by tests, the boy is pretty normal. He’s smart, does homework, and has friends. He’s a good reader, and wants to learn English. He just really hates tests. His homework scores and anything else is fine for a boy his age.

Today on his test, he had another serious fit. First, he crumpled up the paper and started crying when he started writing. I kept telling him it was a “True/False” style test, so he should do very well. Then when I graded the paper, he made some mistakes and got an average score. This sent him into tears, then he ran out of the room. I found out later he had ran to the bathroom and had vomited into the toilet repeatedly. When he returned to class, he was still crying hysterically.

My near daily tests are NOT A BIG DEAL. It’s simply a mandatory thing instituted by my director to provide parents feedback as to the effort their children put into their studies. I write down a score, and they are forgotten about until the report cards are issued for another term.

Forgotten by everyone except this student’s mother. When the boy ran out to vomit in the bathroom, I looked around the class to try to get a clue why tests sends this student into a full blown panic attack. His friend told me in low voice why the boy is so upset by tests.

His mother beats him for every incorrect answer he brings home on a test.

In hindsight, that was a spectacularly obvious answer to all the questions I had about this particular student. His obsession with tests. His crippling fear. His obsession with correcting tests perfectly. I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before. Perhaps I was too innocent to believe a parent could do something so cruel to a child so young.

What can you do when you find out information like that? The student in question doesn’t know that I know about what’s going on. It seems everyone else in the class knew long before I did and they must have thought I was a moron for not figuring it out on my own.

I went to speak to the director after my class was finished. My coworker also confirmed the boy’s behavior in class with tests with the director. He told me that after one of his tests, while he was waiting for the bus, he was so upset that he vomited on the street. Our director was shocked that I found out this information, but doesn’t seem to be willing to do anything about it. I think she was shocked to know it was happening, more that I had figured it out. She deals with mothers all the time. She probably knows this is happening, and probably at more than one house.

In her position, there is almost nothing she can do. Calling someone and accusing them of abuse is a serious allegation. Simply suggesting someone did a crime, proven or not, is defamation. Korea has INSANE laws that no other country in the world has to prevent attacks on people’s character. I can’t use real names for fear I’d get sued for this post. Even physical evidence wouldn’t be enough to prove something like this in Korea. There are no “Child Service” workers to deal with something like this.

I don’t have physical proof anyway. Other than the panic attacks, vomiting, cowering, and mental breakdowns of a student 9 years old I’ve witnessed for the past few weeks, there could be nothing wrong. For all other intents and purposes, the student is well adjusted. I don’t know what kind of abuse he is going through. He wears a coat because our classrooms are freezing. If there is a physical mark on his body, no one would ever see it.

My coworker and I were at a loss as to a course of action. Do we change the class to stop giving as many tests? Do we alter the student’s tests so that he always gets perfect scores? How would the other students and parents react? Can we do anything to help the student avoid having to bring home tests? Should we tell the Korean teachers to alter their classes? What do they talk about when they phone this mother about class? Did they know about the behavior? When did this start? How will it affect the student in the long run? How do we go on teaching this student knowing that something we do can cause physical harm for him at home?

The abuse alone is horrifying. But taking to it’s logical conclusion, devoid of the intense pain it’s causing this wonderful boy, it’s just stupid too. If the mother in question is trying to INCREASE a student’s desire to study and do well, and lets assume that’s the “rational explanation” for this crime, giving a child a literal panic attack at the word “TEST” is the stupidest thing ever. This boy will have profound psychological damage from this abuse, and it will never help him in the long run.

If he freaks out when he hears about a five minute test that literally means nothing in the long run, what kind of damage is this student going to do to himself when he has to take a test to get into a competitive high school? College? Will he even be able to live under the stress that affects even well adjusted students leading up to that test? I don’t think so. Why would a parent do something like this?

It makes me sick. The words of a foreign teacher in this situation means NOTHING. I’m powerless to prevent this from happening, but I have to keep doing my job knowing. The “Korean” solution to the problem would be to provide the boy with a second test to write corrected answers on so that he could bring home a perfect test to spare him some punishment. I don’t know what other rubric the parent uses to judge the student, so even that might not be good enough.

This is one of those times when those “commonly known” but “never discussed” sorts of problems Korea has in it’s culture infuriates me. Everyone will go on trying to act like nothing is happening to keep the parents from getting upset. The school gets the money. The parents get to think they are raising a smart son, and everyone ignores that a child is being hurt. This situation is wrong. It happens everywhere, but that doesn’t make it right.

I’m not sure why, but I’ve had the ultra-lame “Chuck E. Cheese’s” “Today’s your birthday!” theme stuck in my head. It does happen to BE my birthday today, but there is no excuse for that song. Even worse, the parody that appeared on the Simpson’s from “Wall E. Weasel’s” which only had the lyrics “You’re the birthday, you’re the birthday, you’re the birthday boy or girl!” has also been stuck in my head all damn day too. At least Chuck E. Cheese had a good guitar riff.

My gifts were my new phone, and my Wii, which were also my Christmas presents as well. I got a sweater from my mother-in-law, some very lean steak from an aunt, and dinner with wine from my wife. While this was very nice, I got an even better gift via email.

Two of my friends have confirmed plane tickets for summer! They’ve plunked down considerable cash to see an old college friend that’s been abroad for a long time. I’ve offered them a Korean tour around the country with me as the host in exchange for them finally getting on a plane to come to see me.

They are on a tighter schedule than my family was for my wedding. Can a 10 year relationship with friends last after I whip and prod them across the country? Will 20 hour flights break their endurance and send them screaming for rest, only to have them recover from jet lag at the exact time they need to return to the States? We shall see. I wait in anticipation.

This is all much more than I expected for simply surviving another year on this planet.