::A Geek in Korea::

My first comic book hero was Spider-man. I remember reading Spider-man comics way back in elementary school. There was also a Spider-Man cartoon I liked a lot too. I’ve seen all three of the Spider-Man movies too, despite the third movie causing pain.

Anyway, I was hanging out at a housewarming party with some fellow geeks and the host had a copy of a hard cover trade of a collection of Ultimate Spider-man. (Is trade the right term? Collection of issues in a hard cover book for easy reading. Whatever that is.) I got to borrow the two books, which have a total of 27 issues.

The first two books deal with the origins of Spider-man, The Green Goblin, and Doctor Octopus. There are a spattering of other minor characters, like Electro, Sandman, and an issue with Kingpin. Basically all the classic characters have been reinvented. The plot is a lot more centered on the same set of circumstances creating several different of the origins at once. There are some tests, things get out of hand, and now there are a bunch of different genetic freaks running around.

They’ve played with the origin a little, and also changed some of the relationships around. The re-imagining of the characters doesn’t really bother me that much. The hardest part of getting into a comic is the massive about of backstory you are missing each time. If stripping away some of the history and streamlining it so that is easier to attract new readers is the goal, I think they succeeded.

I think this is a little short sided, because if you have an “Ultimate” Spider-man running around, eventually you’ll reference something that happened in that character’s past, and you’ll be right back to the problem of new readers not knowing some of the background. Since there are divergent books with different histories, it seems like it would split the fans into new and old.

The artwork wasn’t fantastic. The stories were basic origin tales. It was the same story I’ve seen on a cartoon, movie, or in a comic book a few different times. They’ve modernized and streamlined the story. It still works, but isn’t nearly as a compelling story as it was in my youth.

I must have ended up in the sock fetish section of the low cost accessory shop “Elves” when I took this picture.

In the continuing list of “Things I never want to discuss with students again” set of topics, I had a gender preference chapter in our reading book today. These students were around 12 years old, and chapter was talking about how Asian countries favor boys over girls, and how the lopsided birth rate affects social problems.

The very class itself was a reflection of Korea’s bias for boy children over girls to a degree. Overall the girls and boy students are very close, but in this class there are 6 boys to 2 girls. When I asked the boy students if they would prefer to have a brother or a sister, they all answered a brother.

When I asked them if they wanted a boy or girl when they were parents, two said they’d never get married, and the other four said, “I want a boy, because I am a boy.” The two girls responded that they, of course, wanted girls. I think this is probably normal worldwide for any group of children their age.

The current distribution in Korea is for 116 boys, there are 100 girls being born. According to the book, a normal country might end up with a ratio of 105 boys to 100 girls when no bias was found. The book talked about other countries where this became a problem.

The girls in the class didn’t know that some parents abort children based on gender in Korea. They were a little shocked to find out that this ratio was being manipulated by parents trying to have boys, and that there would be social repercusions felt by the children due to this later on when they were adults.

The boys wanted to live in a Korea with no women. They are also utterly homophobic without any sort of contradiction. They just don’t like girls, and they don’t “like” men.The boys called me a “gender traitor” for liking and defending girls in the class, insisting they have equal rights, or even suggesting that an even boy to girl ratio is in the best intrest of a country.

The book talked about the Amazons capturing men for reproduction and killing male babies. The class was surprised that women could be strong and “capture” men. They didn’t like the “male baby murder” the Amazon practiced.

I don’t know why this was in a book for elementary and middle school children. This is why a gender bias question is inherently useless in a class of pre-teen “Eeew, people of the opposite gender are gross” sort of class. However, it did make this The Daily Show clip extra funny.

I’ve got my Ubuntu “Hardy Heron” 8.04 LTS beta upgrade running in the background as I type this. It says it’ll take less than an hour to download (I love my fast connection), and I’ve clicked a SINGLE button to upgrade the entire OS. Amazing.

I’m really pushing my luck by upgrading today. This afternoon, right as I was settling in to watch The Daily Show on my Cowon D2, something weird happened. I was watching the show, but all of a sudden the screen went dark and it output a bunch of random numbers. The hardware wouldn’t turn off properly, so I did a reset. It rebooted, but then crashed at the opening screen. Now it no longer turns off or on. I hadn’t upgraded the player, dropped it, or did anything to change the player in months. I had a weird issue earlier in the day where files I had deleted didn’t disappear from the player properly. I don’t know why that would have occurred, but I’m not sure if it is related.

We’re going to take the player to the Cowon service center tomorrow, and hopefully I can get it back quickly. The last time I had to return the machine,I had accidentally bricked it when I had upgraded the firmware. This time it is absolutely not my fault. I wonder if they can fix whatever is wrong.

I was looking at players in a similar class at the store while they were telling my wife where to go to fix the player. Even a year later, there is NOTHING on the market in Korea that can TOUCH the features, battery life, and flexibility of the Cowon D2. The 52 hour battery life is so insane that it DOUBLES the closest players in the same league.

I’m so happy with the purchase, so even this problem will be forgiven. Maybe if I’m really lucky, they’ll even upgrade my unit to one with a few more gigs of onboard storage. I’m not crossing my fingers or anything, but it would keep me from needing to upgrade my mp3 player for a while.

One of the dangerous parts of teaching children not yet in middle school or high school is that they haven’t been taught to look at both sides of an issue, or to treat things objectively. This might be a child development thing, a Korean education thing, or a cultural thing, but I’ve been bumping up against super-nationalistic children all week and it’s getting on my nerves.

It all started on Monday. I gave the students their five topic choices for their writing challenge. They had to pick something and write an essay. One of the girls chose the following topic:

“Some people like to travel in Korea. Other people like to travel outside Korea. Which do you prefer. Why? Give reasons and examples.”

Her first question was “What is the word for ‘money from other countries?” She was writing about foreign currency, so I thought she might be saying that you had to buy other kinds of money, so it’s a little annoying or something. I asked her why the money issue was the most important issue to her when traveling.

She said that if she traveled outside Korea, she would spend some money. That money would not be going to Korean people, so she was in fact hurting her country. She would never travel outside Korea because she LOVES Korean people, and would never want to spend money that didn’t go to other Koreans. (Never mind she attends a school that pays my salary, and I’m not Korean.)

She said that she only travels in Korea because if a foreigner asked her about Korean culture, and she couldn’t answer their questions, she would feel embarrassed. Then the foreigner would think she hated her country, and she would hate that. So, she only wants to travel around Korea.

I told her that unless she’s spending a lot of money on vacation, her spending is not going to have a tremendous impact on the Korean economy. I asked her if living and working in Korea meant that I must hate The United States by her logic. I told her that I didn’t think that was a very fair way of looking at things, but my director chalked it up to the girl “loving Korea very much, and being very nationalistic.”

I didn’t mention that anyone as Xenophobic as she appeared to be wanted to travel outside Korea, she could book a Korean owned tour. They make SURE none of the money ever gets into a foreigners hands.

Next, the students had to talk about things they liked and disliked. For some moronic reason, the book used “Home Country” as a topic. I asked the students what they liked and disliked about Korea.

I don’t think students had ever been asked this question before.

“Korea is my home, so it’s just so-so, not good, not bad,” was the most common response.

After pulling a few teeth, some students said they liked Korea because their friends and family live there, or that Korean culture is from there.

Then, trying to get ANY student to write something they disliked about Korea was really, really difficult. I wasn’t asking them to write they hated Korea, or that Korea was bad, just that there were things they disliked in ANY degree.

Students told me there was NOTHING they dislike about Korea. This students complain about EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME. They complain about homework, English, tests, weather, classes, buses, friends, games, EVERYTHING. How could they not think of a single slightly negative thing about Korea?

I offered “Yellow sand wind making the air difficult to breathe. Choking bad air pollution from factories. Oil spills. Overpopulation? Online crime? Gaming addiction?” Anything? They couldn’t think of ANYTHING wrong with any of those things. The boys wrote about how it was bad one of their classmates lived in Korea, and the girls wrote how it was bad that the boys lived in Korea. Ho ho ho, what a waste of time.

Whatever indoctrination they are getting at school, it’s working. These kids are fiercely loyal to their country, which is admirable…to a point. When people start ignoring obvious problems that impact their health or lives, or worse yet, give excuses to justify why those things are actually strengths, starts to get into “creepy” territory.

I like Korea very much, but every country has it’s flaws. Ignoring them isn’t what you should do.

Today I was trying to explain the difference between animals. I had to explain what a rattlesnake was, but I didn’t know the word in Korean. Instead, I was going on the description of “A snake that has a rattle on it’s tail that it shakes to warn predators.” Seems simple enough, as long as they knew the word “rattle”.

I said “Rattlesnake” a few times, and one student tried translating for another in class. She told her friend that I was talking about a “Pyeonji baem”, which was a really bizarre translation I knew was incorrect.

“Pyeonji baem” would be “Letter snake.”

I drew an envelope with fangs and two eyes to explain what she had told the other student.

“No, that’s not it,” she admitted.

She has problems with her “L” and “R”, so my “Rattle” was her “Letter.”

Her classmate was caught up on what a “rattle” might be. “Is it a castanet? A maraca?” I don’t know how students know what those musical instruments are, but don’t know the word rattle. Eventually I drew a baby holding a toy, which luckily no one confused for a snake.

Once they understood the word rattle, then they knew what a rattle snake was. “Oh, a RATTLESNAKE. We know THAT.”

Ugh.

For anyone curious, after the class I went to look up the words I had needed. The word for a “babies rattle” in Korean is 딸랑이 (ttallangi), while the Korean word for “Rattlesnake” is “방울뱀” (bangulbaem). The “방울” (bangul) part of “rattlesnake” actually refers to a small tinkling bell, like you’d see on a reindeer harness or puppy’s collar. Their word is just as musical as ours, but I think the sound of a rattle more accurately describes the sound a rattlesnake makes.

The Guild, Episode One.

I was listening to a “Cultural Gabfest” podcast from Slate.com (an online magazine) that was pondering the creation of a short, episodic web television only series called “The Guild“. They talked about it as if short, web-television shows are something NEW, and could only list “LonelyGirl15” and “QuarterLife” as their main exposures to the concept. I guess they totally missed Chad Vader, I expected more from people that claim to be cultural enough to justify gabbing on a podcast for extended periods of time.

Despite that oversight, I checked out “The Guild”. It turns out that it had been available for AGES on Miro, but because of the name I thought it was something completely different. I thought it was a video podcast about people who like to play Massively Mutliplayer Online Role Playing Games, which puts it somewhere above “watching paint dry” in my scope of interests.

Instead, it’s this really clever show delivered in short, professionally produced shorts that advance a hilarious plot. The show starts with a webcam confessional from the main character who’s character’s name is “Codex” (who happens to have been an actress on Buffy the Vampire Slayer!), and then picks up the action where it left off from the previous show. Over the course of the eight episodes, there are other characters from the online guild that Codex interacts with via computer, and then later in real life.

It’s amusing to see this premise played out using online terminology. It’s funny, because if I ever met some of the people I chat with online, I’m sure I’d have an awkward sort of reaction around them too. The impressions you get from people’s voices, or their writing isn’t always as accurate as you expect when you meet them in real life. You say and do things you never would do in person, and that’s where most of the humor in The Guild comes from.

It’s only a 30 minute time investment, so I’d recommend checking it out. According to the Gabfest, The Guild even has an agent, and is possibly going to jump to Television. All of this from a fan supported show on the Internet! I don’t know if it would work as well on TV, but “The Office” meets “Gaming” might be awesome. I think it’s exciting that web is producing shows recognized by people outside of the geek subculture as something worth watching.

Whenever I have a chance to play any sort of character based role playing game with classes, there are certain “builds” or styles of characters I like to play. I have no idea why I tend to play these characters, or why I like different types of characters based on the game.

Whenever I specialize in a roguelike game,I tend to go for big, strong, and dumb. I dislike managing inventory, because most of the time I’m dead before I get anything good enough to care about. Messing around with magic spells or wands gets me killed very quickly, so I’d rather have a big sword and HIT things with it just to see how far I can get before starting over. The simpler, the better. I also tend to die HORRIBLY and very quickly. I’ve never done well at any of these games as a rule, but if I could get over my impatience of playing them, I might try more diverse characters with ranged attack of some kind. I’ve never, ever been good with a Wizard, and I don’t really think I’ll start. I think I have a low tolerance for “infant mortality” (low level death) when I don’t get to see cool skills they develop later.

When I play fighting games, specifically Super Smash Brothers, I usually go for light to medium build characters, preferably with a ranged attack of some kind. I dislike “heavy” characters with big, slow attacks, because I’m usually bad at predicting what my opponent will do, and leave myself open to counter attack. I’d rather have a smaller, faster character with better recovery, so that if I do make a mistake I can overcome that problem and rejoin the fight. Light characters can’t take enough damage, and usually lack the “oomph” to push someone off the stage in a big blow. Medium characters are a nice compromise.

In racing games, specifically Mario Kart, I like aspects like acceleration and handling, but really can’t stand being bumped around the track to my death. I like medium to heavy characters that can push people off their lines and don’t need to get out of the way when trying to squeeze around a corner, but I tend to suffer because of their poor handling. If I can’t use a heavy character, or have difficulties manuvering on a level with someone heavy, I use someone with good handling and good items and hope to grab a box that’ll put me in the lead. I pick one of the extremes and tend to go all out.

In turn based strategy games, I like characters that things that deal status effects that make the opponent easy pickings when I get good enough at the game to actually know how they affect the outcome. When I start, I’m the exact opposite, and tend to heavily favor healing and other “buff” style effects to try to make my units better.

Usually my strategy is, “When in doubt, throw more characters at the problem and hope for a few lucky hits”. When I know which status effects are worth worrying about, I tend to change my style. Surround and pound will get me so far, then I move to a more precise strategy. Fragile characters are usually difficult for me to use because I tend to be very aggressive. I need something that can take a hit from time to time, but I dislike “tanks” with lots of HP. When I play Wesnoth, I’ve recently taken a liking to the Northerners because of their poison, and also the Undead because of zombies. Tell me about anything with zombies on my side, and I can’t say no, honestly.

In class based FPS games like Call of Duty 4, I’ve discovered I’m only good with units with an excess of ammunition like the Survivalist. “Spray and Pray” seems to be my method of dealing with people. I’ve never liked using any sort of sniper rifle in any game with guns, ever. I recognize the skill involved in picking someone off across the board, but I’d rather watching someone’s face as I pump them full of lead. Anything that makes me tougher and better capable to deliver more shots is welcome, because I’m no good with a shotgun. I’m more likely to charge at someone than ever camp a location.

I like simplicity in my role playing games, but versatility in my fighting games. I guess it’s all about success I’ve had in the past using those styles in other games.

I’ve “rolled” my first 3.5 D&D character based on what the DM recommended. It’s a “Warforged Juggernaut”, a total monster TANK like character that’s going to be bashing in doors and cleaving people in twain. I built a character around the group’s needs, but also added a few quirks to keep myself amused. I hope to have a simplier experience when I first start playing. Cutting people in half and bashing in doors? How hard could it be?

Two photos (here and here) of scrunched-up 1,000-won bills have gotten some views on the Chosun Ilbo’s netizen photo collection. The second one is “on a diet”.

I had a little time to search the Internet before classes, and I found a few riddles my students could do at any level. I had challenged my lowest level class for the day to write three to four sentence animal riddles. They had to write them in their notebooks, and as I checked their homework on the board, I’d write up their best for the rest of the class to solve.

“I am an insect. I drink blood. I like wet places. What am I?” was the best riddle my students made. After they finished all the riddles, I wrote one for them up on the board. I wrote “isisisisisisisisisis” on the board at the beginning of class, but it took them to the end to solve what it meant. They thought it was a very good, funny riddle.

Later, in higher classes, I repeated the same riddle. The middle level students, when told the answer (they didn’t solve it) said they hated me, and thought my riddle was lame. They think everything I do is lame, so I don’t pay much attention to them.

My higher level classes both thought that it was an amusing riddle. I had a few more riddles that went pretty well. I’ll post the answers in shortly in the comments.

Riddle Challenge

1. “isisisisisisisisisis”

2. “I am a man with four or five hands, but I’m normal. How is this possible?”

3. What is something the poor have, the rich don’t need, and if you eat it, you will die?

4. What begins and ends everything?