::A Geek in Korea::

In one of the books I was teaching today, students had to choose someone they wanted to emulate and describe why they wanted to be like that person. I wanted to generate a list of people that were famous, then we could start picking people someone might want to be like, or they could get an idea for someone they liked.

The boys yelled out names of wrestlers, of course. Someone yelled out a few famous Koreans. Then a girl yelled out, “Picasso!”

“Oh! Very interesting choice! Picasso! Pablo Picasso!”

The girl got very offended and said, “Teacher! Picasso isn’t stupid! Why would you say that?”

I looked at her for a minute, thought about it, then started laughing. “PAB-LO. Not 바보!”

She thought I had said 바보 ba-bo, which is the Korean word for a fool, or a stupid person.

The entire class thought it was very funny that you’d name someone “Babo“, or anything that sounds like that in Korean. If only they knew what some of their names sounded like, or meant, in English, I think they’d be a lot more sympathetic.

I’ve been reading Quicksilver: The Baroque Cycle Volume 1 by Neal Stephenson. I have this massive 900 page paperback book that contains the first of the three books in the series. There are two more volumes in the series, which are equally massive. Each paperback is broken up into three separate stories with plots that may or may not overlap. I’ve only finished a third of the first book. If I finish this series, I’ll have read close to 3000 pages of literature.

While I was up in Seoul, I went looking for the second book in the series. I wanted the 900 page version that contained all the next parts of the stories I’ve been reading in my current book. While I couldn’t find that, I did find a book called “The King of the Vagabonds: The Baroque Cycle #2“. This book was wrapped in plastic, and the cover was incredibly vague. Was this was I looking for this book? I hadn’t finished the previous volume yet, but I didn’t know the next time I’d have the chance to find the next book in this series at all.

I didn’t know if this was the entire next book or not, but with #2, I thought it was the sequel and what I was looking for. I couldn’t open it up and check, and I didn’t have the massive 900 page paperback available to check.

When I finished the first third of my first volume, I discovered that the vague #2 on the cover was referring the second story in the first volume. The book I bought was already in the volume I owned. I didn’t discover this until today. Luckily we kept the receipt, and I never took the plastic off the book. Now I have a book that cost 8,000 won, but no reason to read it. While it would be nice to carry around a 400 page book instead of a 900 page book, it’s not worth that much to me since I can only focus on Stephenson’s work in the quiet of my home.

The cost to deliver the book back to the store by delivery cost more than the book was worth. We’d lose money returning it to them on our own. There are no book stores of this franchise in Daejeon either. Someone we know is going to Seoul soon, and we’ll pass it off to her to get our refund.

This is the second time I’ve attempted to read this book. The first time, when I bought the book in Europe, I failed. However, since visiting London, I’ve grown to appreciate the story to a greater degree. Having seen the setting personally, and learned some of the history, it was much more interesting. If I can get through the second and third “books” in this volume, I’ll look for the next volume. It’s taken me several years to get through this first volume though, so I’ll have some time.

Battle for Wesnoth 1.4 got released today, and it’s a substantial improvement over the default version currently available in the Ubuntu apt repositories. I went ahead and compiled the source so I could have my own up to date copy of the game (!) because it’s such a huge improvement.
I had been playing the 1.3.15 unstable release for a few weeks. When my friends from England visited, we played a few local games which got me playing again. The new 1.4 stable release builds on all the awesome new features and even had some more surprises in store. All this in a free game? It’s hard to believe.

The new animations and portraits of the characters are so much better and more professional. I haven’t played enough of the new game to know if the balance is better, but the classes and factions seemed very balanced to begin with. If anything has been tweaked, it’s almost certainly for the better in my experience.

I’m working through one of the new campaigns that are included in the 1.4 release. I’ve moved on to playing at “Intermediate” levels. Right now this is providing a good challenge, but is in some ways less challenging than “easy” levels. Larger enemy armies means more experience, which translates into more upgrades for my characters.

I hit a wall several times in some of my previous campaign attempts, but I’m having an easier time these days. This might be due to better balancing, or that I’m learning the game rules better.

(For those of you impatient enough to download the new version, but hate compiling for whatever reason, get the Windows version and run it in WINE. It runs flawlessly.)

I’ve also learned that the core team that’s made Wesnoth is moving on to “Silver Tree” that hopes to create a 3-D RPG game. Basically the game is “Wesnoth 3D”. This is both good news because modifying 3D models and creating new ones is much easier than doing good 2D art. That means more interesting things will be produced, easily, and open up people’s creativity. While I want the Wesnoth game to continue to flourish and grow, a new groundwork being laid out in 3D will allow for more things to be done (hopefully!).

Back when Cloverfield was released in January, some foreigner friends invited me over to Rodeo Town to play some Call of Duty 4. I went from being the “noob” of the group to being able to shoot and occasionally toss a grenade when I needed to on the first game day. By the second time around, I was shooting with more precision, and I learned the perks of the different classes in the game to a better degree. By the third time we played, I had found the class I liked best, and was running around holding my own for the first time, affecting the outcome.

Today, I dominated the game for the first time. We played free for all and I’d slaughter people. I was completely surprised to be getting the drop on people the first time and shooting first. We played teams and I’d have a higher kill to killed ratio. We’d play domination games where you needed to hold certain points of the map, and even short handed (2 vs 3) my team would still win. Yay! I only got shut down on the “elimination” game mode, because I tend to never pick up sniper rifles, and have problems aiming “up” while drawing a lot of fire from everyone else trying to eliminate me.

I’ve got to keep my head about myself and not get cocky. I’ve got a terrible habit of getting a big head when I think I can win. I know I don’t like playing people like that, but I always realize something I say might come off as cocky only after I’ve said it.

I’m also going to need a speedy delivery of Super Smash Brothers Brawl now that it’s been released in America. I want to host a series of games at my house, and I’ve got to get people to come over and play. Being a bad winner is never good for encouraging future gaming sessions.

Today my wife, aunt, and two cousins went to see the Van Gogh exhibition in Seoul’s art gallery. Ever since visiting the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, I’ve been a fan of Impressionism in general. We were going to see this art, despite the 6:50 AM train ride, the crowds, and everything else standing in our way. I had been talking about going for three months, and I finally got my chance to see some Van Gogh in Korea.

My wife and I had talked about museum manners and social norms the last time we had been in Seoul to see some art from the Louvre. I hate to stereotype and generalize, but from my experiences in museums, it’s clear there is a lack of understanding as to the proper behavior of people at an art exhibition in Korea.

Seoul, in general, is a twisted mass of people with several inches of body space writhing around with very little social grace. This might be acceptable in a place like a subway (actually, it’s not), but I was always taught that a museum is a place for quiet contemplation on the deeper meaning of art, the history and backgrounds of different cultures, and insights into the mind of the creators.

If this is what you expect at a museum in Korea, prepare to be flabbergasted. We arrived EARLY. We were in the first 100 people into the museum. There was a line, but it was totally acceptable by Seoul standards. People actually didn’t just swarm the door and push their way through! There was an actual order!

Off to the side of the line, there was a large plasma television playing video footage on a loop showing the proper way to stop, look at, and appreciate art. It featured people standing a certain distance away from the barriers, looking at the paintings thoughtfully, perhaps even pondering what the artist was trying to say. Then, when they had finished looking at the art, they’d move on to the next piece and start over.

Unfortunately this was off to the side of the line, and had no audio. No one paid any attention to it at all if people’s behavior in the museum itself was any indication.

When we arrived in the first gallery, there was still a line. Children instantly broke off from their parents and started playing tag and other games in the larger galleries while their parents read the displays and listened to the audio guides.

Some of the children viewed the guide ropes as playthings to hop on, over, and around. This got them a warning from the staff, but never the parents. I remember doing that as a kid when I went to boring historical sites. As long as the line kept moving, and I could see what I wanted, I didn’t care.

No pictures were permitted either. I actually saw a staff member cover up a visitors lens with their hands to stop someone from taking a shot of a painting. This was the strictest rule enforced in the entire museum. That’s fine. If they want to protect their art, or their contract, let them do what they need to enforce the rules.

Midway through the gallery, large groups of children were running around the gallery. As we worked around half a room, an entire class ran down the hallway and sat in the middle of the gallery’s floor. Their leader had a large microphone and speaker, and she talked about the paintings to the children.

The parents chaperoning the students walled off the children from the gallery by standing around them on three sides, and the rest of the visitors blocked the front as they tried to squeeze around the obstruction. The very reason the students were sitting there, the art, was the one thing they couldn’t see. They did, however, stop everyone else from enjoying being in a museum by being extremely loud.

I’m FINE with bringing children to a museum. I’m fine with bored children at museums! They are supposed to be bored at museums! That’s why children HATE art museums! However, you have to teach children that just because they want to run around all the time, certain places do not allow that sort of behavior.

Bringing large groups of students to art museums and then letting them run around and be as noisy as they want means that students do not learn the proper behavior of people in museums. Then, when they are adults, they don’t know that chatting endlessly on a phone in the middle of the museum is unacceptable. Social inertia. No one makes an effort to learn what they should be doing, so this haphazardness is passed onto the next generation as acceptable behavior.

Now that my wife has been to art galleries in Europe, even she found the behavior in Korean galleries to be unacceptable. You don’t have to be a snob to see that the behavior of people in a museum should not impact other visitor’s viewing of art. She said she wanted to complain about noisy tours. There was no excuse for using a standard microphone and speaker when quieter headset solutions are available. It’s just rude.

By the time we had departed the museum, the wait to get in the museum had increased about 500% . We were some of the lucky people in that the crowding was only minor compared to what it would be like for the rest of the day. I imagine the crowds only brought more bad behavior with them after waiting several hours for their chance to see the paintings.
All of this, however, paled to another rude little girl on the train ride home. There is an unspoken rule that states that train rides are supposed to be a time when people should be quiet enough not to disturb their neighbors. No one has to act like it’s a museum, but generally if people want to sleep, you should make an effort to be a little more quiet.

We got onto the train at 7 pm. It’s not a “sleeper” train, but the sun was down and a few people were snoring before we left the first terminal. We had been traveling at that point for 13 hours around Seoul shopping and whatnot. Every person in our party had looked forward to the train ride home as a time to sleep. We even had a chance to sleep for a stop or two before a pair of women brought their young children onto the train. These girls were probably 5 to 6 years old.

I knew we were in trouble when one girl stated to the other, “If I sleep now, I won’t be able to sleep later tonight. I’m not going to sleep the ENTIRE train ride!”

That’s probably true, but that’s not hear when a little kid sits a few seats behind you on the train right as you try to take a nap. I don’t care if a little girl wants to stay up to enjoy a train ride. I do care that this girl thought that the normal tone of voice on a train was 4x louder than ANYONE else on the train. Deaf old people on cell phones couldn’t out shout this little girl. She was the chattiest little girl, and she wanted to let EVERYONE else know that she didn’t give a damn if THEY wanted to sleep, she wasn’t having any of it.

She talked for 2 solid hours about the same stuff any other six year old girl would say. It wasn’t endearing. It was just non-stop blather. Her mother was getting eyeballs of death from every single person on the train near them that couldn’t sleep, and she didn’t do anything to tell the girl to just talk a little more quietly.

That’s just simple manners. Yeah, your child is probably a handful. You are probably really tired of telling her to behave well. However, as a parent you have to at least PRETEND like you can control your kid, or be embarrassed and TRY to accept the blame of all of those people you’ve annoyed for two solid hours with your rude child.

The attitude of “Children can do whatever they want, and I don’t need to discipline them even when many other people are inconvenienced by them, let alone apologize for their behavior” is bullshit. Parents that let their children do whatever they want need to be held accountable to some degree more than they are.

When I was walking around with my cousins in Seoul while my wife and aunt shopped, they got tired. I took it upon myself to get them someplace to rest, fed, and entertained while the rest of our party did what they needed to. Hanging out with some middle school kids isn’t the same as herding 6 year old children all day, but the principle is the same. When they started to whine, I negotiated a compromised that let everyone remain happy without annoying everyone else around us.

In fact, I used that time to buy them their first coffee ever, and we made a unique experience out of it deal by hanging out in their first coffee shop. Instead of being saddled with some annoyed kids that annoy people with their bad behavior, they got a shot of caffeine and were ready to go on the next leg of our trip. They had fun, did something new, and I didn’t have to hear any whining about it.

If I can do it, why can’t other people manage something like this?

If I was going to recommend any game to students to help them increase their word power and make the world a better place at the same time, the only thing I would tell them to play would be Freerice.com.

The concept behind Freerice.com is simple. Use the banner ads of players to pay for 20 grains of rice for every correct answer to a vocabulary game. For every third answer you get correct, you increase your level and difficulty. For every word you get wrong, you decrease your level. The entire time you play, you are slowly building up your bowl of rice. Altruism that is benefited by self-improvement. That’s brilliant!

The useful part of this game is the scaling of difficulty. While my coworkers and I can struggle to break into the forty level range, if you do poorly on the first batch of words, you get easier vocabulary to study. This means that it benefits students as well as teachers. This slowly increases as you go up levels. This is like the student’s vocabulary tests on steroids, but it helps people for every correct answer. That’s certainly a wonderful incentive to try to get a correct answer.

The pronunciation of the word is even given in addition to the correct answer after every guess. There is no timer, so they can go as slowly as they need to find the answer. Students can learn a new word, learn how to say it, then have to choose the correct answer. They can use word roots, use dictionaries, translate, or anything they need to get the correct answer. All I care about is the results. Higher level vocabulary scores, and lots of donated rice.

I gave students homework. They have to play the game and achieve a certain level. Then they have to print out a screen shot proving they got to at least the right level. I might even make it a class wide, or even school wide competition to see who can donate the most rice as well as who can get to the highest level.

The students were really enthusiastic about the game because they knew that by playing the game they were helping someone else get food. 20 grains of rice per correct answer isn’t very much, but when I showed them the world wide totals for everyone playing the game, they were blown away by the amount of food that had been donated by people learning English at the same time.

What parent would kick their student off the computer if they knew they could learn English and help poor people at the same time? Only a heartless person would say no to that!

Korean Class 101 fills a dual role for me. It’s an interesting podcast, so I enjoy listening to it, and it’s also a great way to study Korean. I’m not a paying member of their service, and I’m not getting paid to plug this podcast, but anyone with an mp3 player and a desire to study Korean should check out this site.

Keith and Seul, the hosts of the show, introduce the topic and context for the podcast. Usually there is a set of characters we are introduced to over the course of the conversations, and they remind listeners what the story has been about so far. After the topic has been introduced, they begin the dialog.

The dialog is done in Korean. There are different difficulty levels. The beginning level is basic Korean that is survival level “WOW! I remember when I didn’t know this! How did I survive here?” sorts of things. The intermediate level is harder stuff that can introduce more advanced grammar and slightly longer dialogs. The advanced stuff is a Korean audio blog that is a lot more challenging.

After the first dialog, they slow down and read line by line. You can get a better grasp on the syllables spoken to help with pronunciation. The third reading is Korean, followed by an English translation word for word.

After they finish the dialog, they chat a little about the topic. The basic chat is done entirely in English, while the Intermediate chat is 50% English and Korean. Advanced is entirely in Korean. They break down the vocabulary word by word. They tell the dictionary form, the politeness rules, and how to conjugate the words found in the dialog.

Once they explain all the vocabulary, they move into grammar. I find this extremely helpful. I know 90-95% of the vocabulary for every basic and intermediate lessons, but I don’t know what the root words are, or why they are conjugated in any particular way to form sentences. They give examples of words in different sentences. I usually am always able to translate them to myself the first time I hear them, but when I’m walking my dog or waiting for a subway I can repeat things to myself to improve.

Keith and Seul also explain the CONTEXT in which certain words are used. A lot of the silliness I get into with Korean is that I’m around female Korean coworkers and my wife more than another other speakers. Learning which words are used by a guy, or how they’d react differently to a situation helps me become a more natural speaker and also lets me fit in.

Even though the basic and intermediate dialogs aren’t extremely difficult, they keep my interest because they are presented as a cohesive story, and the commentary on the different situations by the hosts is funny and charming. The chemistry between the two hosts also makes for a funny podcast.

The advanced podcast is beyond my level at the moment. I can only listen to it, and I’m not good enough to catch everything the first time. If I wanted to study using their advanced audio blog, I’d need to subscribe and pay to get their scripts and higher level help. I need more grammar practice and a bigger vocabulary.

Right now I’m getting around twenty to thirty minutes of Korean practice a day because of their free feeds! Their beginner and intermediate programs are great for people living in Korea that want to practice and live more comfortably. It’s incredibly awesome that this is a FREE service that does such a great job teaching the basics needed for survival, or review of basics to improve skills.

I’d recommend this podcast to anyone interested in the Korean language that wants to study using conversational dialogs. A lot of foreigners I know could use this podcast to get better at their job, getting around town, or with a Korean boyfriend or girlfriend. It’s improved my conversation skills with my Korean wife too.

I have a class full of students in intense competition with each other. They aren’t competing about getting the highest scores, or getting better at English. They are competing as to how much time they can get to have me dawdle in class to check their work exclusively, and give them praise the most.

I’ve got a class with 11 students. Eight are old students from different classes mixed together. Three are new students that need more attention because they are much lower level and don’t have a clue how to do anything. Who do I need to spend my time on? The new students. Who do I have to spend more time on? Shutting up my old students that SHOULD know better.

I’ve got two girls that sit next to each other that talk so loudly I can hear them in an office around a corner. They sit in the front of class and will NOT do a single thing without being told exclusively by me, at the detriment of all the other students in the class. If I don’t start with them, they talk LOUDLY about how they don’t understand, and won’t do ANYTHING until I explain. They don’t realize I have better things to do with my time than explaining everything a second, third, or fourth time only for them.

They are in competition for the loudest student with “screamer”, who needs to be the absolutely LOUDEST in class at any time. If anyone tries to outdo her with volume, she’ll scream to be heard above them, even if it is to say “YOU ARE TOO NOISY!” At least she’ll yell directions and tell the boy in front of her to calm down.

The boy in front of her is “Test Anxiety boy”, who now gets up and kicks his chair if he doesn’t score a perfect result on his test. At least he’s only vomited in his mouth once in the past two weeks. His new habit is to grab me, and when that doesn’t work, wait till I walk by and stand up in my way. The next time he does this he’s going to get bumped to the ground as if he got in front of a Korean grandmother on the way to a cabbage sale. No physical contact with me is acceptable.

Late boy comes to class after all paperwork and important clerical tasks are completed, making me reopen files, correct attendance, and circle around again for homework. He alone wastes about five minutes of my time because I can’t do anything till he arrives, but I also can’t wait for him to get the class started. No matter what I do, he manages to arrive at exactly the wrong time.  He sits in class with his hood up, chin on the desk, never prepared for anything despite always being late.

Late boy has a friend in class that sits at the very front. He has an attention span shorter than the period at the end of this sentence. He’ll construct elaborate things out of pencils, notebooks, and books every time he needs to be reading or doing something in class. He never does homework correctly, but refuses to listen to directions when they are given.

This leaves the two GOOD kids in class that are smart enough to do all their work by themselves, but ask me if they are allowed to go on in their books. I check their homework, correct their pronunciation, and try to keep the rest of the bad students from bothering them too much.

The three clueless students are so out of it that if I don’t write down an answer, or tell them specifically what to do at every second, they’ll go into an English induced coma. They not only have no clue, but they are so far away from a clue, that if a clue was driving at them slowly and carefully, honking a clue horn and flashing it’s clue lights, they’d be run over by it and left to die. I’m just the animal control worker scraping them off the clueless highway with my clue shovel at this point.

I spent the class trying to keep the students from screaming, running around, or doing stupid stuff the entire time. I walked out of class to get some material for a new student that wasn’t prepared by the secretary on time, and came back to a zoo. The bell was also 3 minutes late, causing the students to worry they’d miss their buss.

The director asked why my students were SO noisy. She put 11 students, 6 of which are well know as the NOISIEST in the ENTIRE school in one class, and then ASKED why my class was basically a madhouse. I thought that’s why they had the security system in place. She’s supposed to be watching what’s going on so that this sort of thing didn’t happen.

I’ll be tossing half the class out on Friday if I have to deal with a 1/10 of what happened in class today. My tolerance for this sort of bullshit is over.

I’ve got a few students that are close friends. I’ve taught them before, but I don’t know them very well. They are middle school students and are very busy.They are busy enough that they come to school wearing their middle school uniforms because they don’t have time between classes to change.

I was writing on the board today and had my back to the class. I heard some gossip going back and forth for a little while as I wrote. I didn’t know who was talking to who, or what they were talking about. A girl said, “초은비!초은비!” “Cho-un-bi! Cho-un-bi! ” very quickly, followed by some rapid fire Korean slang.

I was surprised and a little confused. Because Korean doesn’t have a “Z” sound, the word the girl was saying sounded like a Korean person trying to say the word “Zombie” in Konglish.

One of the girls was calling out trying to get her friend’s attention in class while I had my back turned. Sure enough, a middle school student had her name 초은비 stitched on her pocket. I gave her a look after I realized her name and said, “Do you want to eat my brain?”

The other girls looked at each other confused for a second, then started laughing in good humor when they figured out the pun. Except “Zombie,” who gave me a look that suggested if I ever repeated the joke she probably WOULD eat my brain. This isn’t unusual, as she gives me these looks often.

Now I know why.

Next time I’ll stick to calling her the name she chose for English class instead.

I do not watch procedural shows. I don’t like CSI. I do not like Law & Order. “Show crime, list suspects, cops talk about doing cop things, and 30 minutes later, a bad guy confesses to everything.” I don’t like self-contained “wraps up in an hour” neat little dramas. I was a fan of shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer that brought in arcs that span entire seasons, with side episodes and smaller filler that made up the “meat” of the remaining episodes.

I have started watching “The Shield“, and I’m hooked. I blame this on Jeff Cannata from Totally Rad Show. I started watching The Shield after Battlestar Galactica went off the air on Fox Korea. I had made it a habit to stay up and watch BSG, and when this show called “The Shield” took it’s place, I gave it a chance because it came very highly recommended by Jeff. He and I have very similar tastes, so I was willing to watch a few episodes. It’s not like there was anything else on television, ever.

I watched most of what I found out to be the third season. For an arcing story, it didn’t seem too hard to follow the characters. Cop dramas make it easy to jump in most of the time for the sake of new watchers. Their are still “busts” from week to week, but fifteen minutes or so of each show is based around the arc for the season.

Now with MegaTV, I’ve started to catch up to what’s been broadcast so far in Korea. I’ve got the first season finished, and I’m working through the second. The back story stuff has filled in a lot of the questions I had, but it’s made me like the show even more. I still hate the same characters, and root for others like I did before, but no one is a saint on this show.

The Shield is a show that should be very predictable, but shocks and surprises me every single episode. Just when you think a character hits rock bottom, they go farther. Just when you think you’ve witnessed the worst, you get shocked by a new crime. Just when you think someone crosses the line, you worry, then see if they can make it right again. The show plays on my expectations of a cop show and does so much better than the standard procedural drama. I understand Jeff’s passion in trying to promote the show to people now that I’ve seen it. It’s a show worth spreading the word about.

Jeff Cananta’s recommend a few other things I like, like Super Mario Galaxy (he defended it while the other two hosts trashed it), some comic books (Preacher), and a few movies that I ended up enjoying. It’s incredibly cool to watch TotallyRadShow, as it feels like I have a kindred spirit working to sort out the good stuff for me and save my time. Now that I found out that they have a Cowon D2 friendly video podcast (!), I can even watch their show easily when I don’t have time to watch the feed in Miro. So awesome.