::A Geek in Korea::

I recently don’t have the energy for much more than a casual flash game between work tasks or anything more intense than something that sits in a browser window. I haven’t even been following gaming news all that frequently after I started following the presidential election. I don’t have the budget, or the time, to pay for and play the next big thing.

I’m also not motivated to “have it first”, so if I wait till something goes on sale or turns up used at a store, I’m happy enough. Failing that, I can always visit an Xbox room and play a game with friends when we have the time. I’m not even interested in Nintendo’s new hardware, which is a first for a while.

Hell, the last “game” I bought was an interactive recipe book for my wife to use on the Nintendo DS. She’s the last person that’s used the DS! Now that it seems I am officially a “casual gamer” (Oh, the horror), I’ve got time for all those flash games at Kongregate.com.

I’ve been a member of that site for a long time, but I didn’t really visit all that often except for the occasional game of Boxhead. The site has a great idea behind it. People that play games get to rate them. The more games you rate, the more points you get. Playing games and achieving certain tasks like a high score or something difficult gets you more points. Getting enough points gives you a certain level.  Leveling up gets you…nothing. Well, it gets you a little number next to your name for status I suppose. One of my friends must have been playing a lot of web games in the past year, because he’s way higher than I am!

The game I had been struggling with today was “Dolphin Olympics 2“. This game has a series of badges that are based on score, as well as distance or height jumped. I could not figure out the game mechanics. It was trick based, but the first badge was about score. The rest seemed much easier to accomplish, but I wasn’t coming close.

Then I thought about it for a moment, and youtube’d the game. It turns out people spend significant amounts of time on this flash game trying to get the high score, do all the tricks, or accomplish all the goals for the badges. Just when I think I find something casual to play, someone goes and makes it competitive and hardcore again. I used the few tips I learned, accomplished my badge for some easy points and moved on.

I like Kongregate because the best games are rated by the players, and you don’t need to sort through a ton of crap to find interesting games. For example, I found a new version of Boxhead, as well as a cool physics based thought puzzle game called Splitter all today. All this, for free? Wonderful.

If anything, I am a creature of habit. When I go to work, I purchase a T.O.P. Espresso from the same smelly store because it’s the cheapest. I bring the same cheese rolls to work from a bakery because they are easy to finish during the day. I work as soon as I sit down at the computer, and I get my planning out of the way as fast as possible in case I need to design tests, or make copies for students. I work diligently for about 40 minutes, then do whatever I need to prepare for the rest of the day before students arrive.

When I return home, it’s much the same. I eat, and if I’m finished and we have nothing else to do, I go to the computer. She watches her dramas while I surf the web for a bit, then hit my blog to post something. I spend about an hour, all told, thinking of something to post and trying to write. It takes longer if I have a mental block, and I might sip a beer, snack, or surf until inspiration its me. If I have a solid idea, I’ll post while listening to music, if not, I’ll find it distracting. I can not listen to new music while I post. It must be something I know well and work as background filler.

When I go to bed, I should be sleepy. If I am not tired, I’ll lie awake at night, toss and turn, and never get restful sleep. Worse, I’ll keep my wife awake, which is bad for everybody involved the next morning. Breaking the pattern leads to problems and grouchiness, so I stick to my rules and make a routine of everything.

Last night, for example, I had finished my blog post, and found nothing holding my fancy on the Internet, so I went to bed at 11:00. My wife noted that this was unusually early for me. She was right. Normally I go to bed an hour or two later than she does, but last night I was beating her to the pillow. Odd. We talked like we normally did, but by the time she was ready to drift off, I was no closer to sleep.

I got up, put a movie on my PMP, laid down on the floor on some sheep skin rugs my brother game me as a wedding present, and watched nearly the entire movie from start to finish. My wife asked me why I wasn’t just watching the movie in bed, since she could sleep without fear of me waking her up a second time. I told her that I treated the bed as a place for certain things, and if I added “a place to watch movies”, I’d never get around to using it for sleep because I’d be too busy thinking about other stuff I could be doing.

Eventually I did get to bed, and I woke up relatively well rested. I went to bed after the movie around the same time as if I had just spent the time on the computer or doing something else. It’s strange my body has such a regulated routine that I can’t get more rest if I try.

I’m not looking forward to the idea that I won’t be able to get sleep for several months when the baby comes.

Eek.

I hate, hate, hate holiday parades. They used to take precious time away from the cartoons I used to watch as a child. They are advertising dominated sleep-fests. Boring commentary. Boring floats. Boring boring boring. Why are they televised at all?

However, Rick Astley just used the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade to Rick Roll the entire American audience. Millions and Millions of people that had no idea what was going on were subject to an Internet prank. That almost makes up for all the hours of boring television in my childhood.

ALMOST.

At this point, weird stuff like this actually almost expected more than it is a surprise. It still makes me do a double take and pull out my phone for a picture, but yeah, unholy combinations attached to hot dogs on sticks are no longer a surprise for me. Korean food makers haven’t completely explored a possible range of toxic combinations until there is a green tea variety available for every possible foodstuff anyway.

My parents had two forms of punishment I could remember, and they changed when they got older. The first thing my parents used to make me do when I was little was “stand in the corner.” I wasn’t sent to my room, most of the time that was better than sticking around and hearing them complain. Instead, I was put in a corner, forced to face the corner with my nose to the wall, and they would continue on with a meal. I had stand AT ATTENTION at all times, and if I leaned or shrugged I had to start the time over. It was a physical punishment, and it was fine, never abusive or anything, but you can only make a kid stand for so long. It also required them to be there to check on me. It was embarrassing because the entire family was watching you stand around looking dumb.

When I got older, and they were working longer hours, they moved to using a written punishment that really sucked when I was grounded. Back when I was still able to be grounded, they would write out a tremendously long sentence, then make me copy it hundreds or thousands of times to earn back my freedom. This is my most lasting memory of punishment. Hearing the phrase “Do you want sentences?” was terrifying. It also killed my hands, killed any desire to use cursive (Writing words in a block down the page was faster), and wasted tons of my free time.

There is a student in our school who is notoriously awful. The number of times he has passed his vocabulary tests on his first try could be counted on one hand, and he has been attending this school for three years. He’s foul mouthed sexist bully, and has the attention span of a fly. In class, if you don’t keep poking his book and telling him what and where to write, he’ll zone off and be behind in classes that are far below his age range. He’s just that bad student every school has that sticks around because their parents don’t want to deal with him. He’s there all day long doing homework and harassing the secretaries trying to get them to let him go home earlier. If he didn’t spend so much time at school, he’d have plenty of time to do his homework at home, but he’s never actually thought that far ahead.

Anyway, I don’t teach him anymore, but I hear stories from my foreign coworker. I don’t know what finally set my coworker off, but he’s had about as much as one person can stand of this horrible student. My coworker took him out of class and made up a unique punishment with the help of the secretary. It seemed almost inspired by my father.

My coworker made the boy write, in Korean, an essay two pages long about why he should pay attention in class and study hard. The secretary then took the essay, wrote his name on it, and posted it on the wall in the middle of the reception area of the school at eye level for ALL the other students to read. All the other students know this boy is a terrible student. They’ve probably been in class with him at one point or another and leveled up past him if they are good at English in any way.

Having your failing posted up on a wall is a very Korean idea of punishment. The board at school is exclusively reserved for achievements most of the time. If students get into exclusive private middle schools, or get accepted to study abroad, they get their name up on the board. This is the first time an embarrasing “punishment” sort of essay is taking up that space.

I doubt the boy cares, because he unabashedly hates to study, but if he cares one shred about what others think about him, he has to be embarrased that his punishment is on display. I’m not sure if this will have results or not. It’s not a “Scarlet Letter” or a Tattoo to tell people their crimes, but it’s as harsh a form of public embarrasment you’ll find at our school.

I’ve got my planning set up for multiple weeks in three classes. I’ve got to time their class schedules well so that they’ll be finishing their books around the time when we’ll move to a new owner and not have to select books anymore. I’ve got my system set up so that I’ll have two different books to last me as long as possible. I work independently from whoever is my “partner” teacher splitting the book with me. I take as long as I need to finish the book.

I had worked out that the students would be finishing two books in the next two weeks. I had a review tests lined up for Wednesday, and would start using a workbook no one had thought to use that came along with our book series as supplimental material to last me through an extra month. I get to work on a review test, then plan out the next two weeks of classes for this material.

Then, I walk into class with all my stuff planned out. I had made a kick-ass review tests that would take up the entire class next time I see the students, and I was going to spend time prepping them for parts of it today. I told my students last week to bring their long forgotten workbook so we could get started on that for homework. My students have brought it along, as well as an entirely new books I’ve never taught before. They’re asking me when we’re beginning this new reading book in my class, since I had more than half the chapters unfinished.

Uh…what?

Somewhere along the line, someone forgot to tell me they were moving to an entirely new book. I have two months to finish it, which isn’t a problem. The book I had planned to use was already cut up into multiple pieces for different teachers. I was going to be teaching the majority of this new book, but no one had told me about it.

All of this is actually GREAT, because it means I have a wealth of material, instead of a lack of things to do, but it’s a pain because no one had told me before I walked into class. Had I known a week earlier, I could have planned earlier and worked around all the review tests I spent time making thinking. I went from needed to stall, to needing to get started on this material to finish on time. Now that the review test is written, and my schedule set up, the students would have wasted their time if I didn’t go through with the test.

When I asked my new coworker about this, she surprised me. My old Korean coworkers were conversationalists. They could joke around in English and Korean, and were really good at office stuff to keep us on task. This new coworker hired a few weeks ago was giving me a Korean, “Ung….ung…” nodding along like you would for a conversation you weren’t paying much attention to on phone. I was shocked that she might not have been following me when I was asking about books she was teaching. It’s her job to know what parts of which books she is responsible to teach. It’s also her job to TELL me when picking new books. I have to know which parts I’m responsible to complete.

I shouldn’t be finding any of this out from a student.

There are only two months left before this school is folded into some sort of franchise, and they are still dragging their feet on the different issues regarding the handover. There are going to be actual promises made to parents in a few weeks, but no one knows anything in detail. It’s going to be a hectic meeting if no one from the franchise is there to handle the details, because it looks like no one on our side knows what is going on. The newest rumors are classes on Saturdays, which is an impossibility on my part. When the final contract is put in front of me and I need to walk away after asking for WEEKS for information, I won’t be to blame.

Since students are always walking to their different academies in all sorts of weather, they have tricks to keep themselves warm. Back when I worked at a school that had inadequate heating, the students used to bring in chemical-reaction hand heaters to show off to their friends. They’d never, ever let me touch one, or explain to me how they worked. I thought they were neat, but never remembered what they were called, so I couldn’t find out where to buy them.

It turns out that the word in Korean is translated as “hand heater” (손난로) (soun-nallo) These are sold in the ubiquitous pencil shops in any apartment complex, and any place where children might go in winter to buy supplies. You can buy these reusable packs cheaply for 500 won each. I got caught in a late night snow earlier in the week and bought one while I waited for a bus.

There is a small flat metal disc suspended in a liquid in a thick sealed plastic bag. When the pack is “charged”, that is, in a liquid state, you trigger a chemical reaction by bending the metal disc inside slightly. The liquid crystalizes before your eyes, and you’ve got hand warming heat in 5-10 seconds. They last for fifteen to twenty minutes. I had my gloves on, but there was definitely considerable warmth going through the entire heater to my hands. I have very sensitive hands that ache in the winter. It was great to have a portable heater I could stow away in a pocket, and for 500 won it’s amazing to think it’s reusable!

I told my wife about my cleverness in buying such a convenient little tool to stay warm. She reacted really negatively. “It smells so bad! The plastic smells toxic! Ugh!” The heavy pouch does smell like foul plastic, but I don’t really go around smelling items I don’t need to, and I wasn’t planning on wearing it anywhere near my nose.

To “recharge” the chemical reaction, I had to wrap the bag in a cloth to prevent the bag from melting onto the pot, then put it in boiling water for five minutes. This turns to hard crystaline white pouch back into the clear plastic solution I originally saw in the pencil shop. If I went about fiddling with the metal I could trigger the chemical reaction again and have twenty more minutes of heat.

I’m guessing the students were paranoid about letting people see their hand heaters because they’d have to boil the heaters if someone set off the chemical reaction in class, and that would mean cold hands as they walked to their next school. I’m going to keep using my little heater when I’ve got to take a bus ride, or if I walk my dog before work on a particularly cold day. I’m kind of worried I’ll open my bag to find out I’ve accidentally crushed the metal catalyst and set it off by accident. I don’t know how many times the chain reaction can be triggered, but it’s fun to watch science at work.

Pipe wrench Fiiiiiight!

(Pipe wrench fight.)

One of my classes had longstanding behavior problems between the female students in the class. A new girl had been added to the class, and the biggest girl, who also happened to be the dumbest girl, picked on her mercilessly. Calling her a “big girl” isn’t understating it. She’s only 11 years old and is as tall as I am. Anyway, this giant bully refused to let any of her friends in class talk to this new student.

The new girl is very shy, and also very bad at English. The bully might have been jealous there was a race for the bottom, because they are always the lowest two scores on a test by a wide margain. Whatever the reason for the bully’s dislike, things turned nasty. The students grade their peer’s tests in class to save time. I hand out tests basedon three criteria: Are they sitting next to their grader? Do they have their own test? Are they good friends?

I should have had added “Are they bitter enemies?” to the list. The bully in class would trade for the new girls test whenever possible. Then, she’d grade the girls test looking for mistakes. When she couldn’t find mistakes, she’d use her pencil to add extra letters or change what the girl had written, then mark it incorrect. The secretary caught her doing this on the tests because they used completely different pencil types. It was totally obvious that the extra letters were NOT the same handwriting or pencil type, but without catching her on camera, we couldn’t accuse her. The girl was covering her forgery cleverly to hide it from the camera by using her long hair and drooping down in her seat.

The bully has the WORST victimization complex. She claims she has never, ever done ANYTHING wrong ever. If you accuse her of something you SEE her do, she’ll deny it. When confronted with anything less than photography or video, she’ll tell you that you are lying. It’s repugnant and a bit disturbing. Her parents also take her side and are vocal critics of discipline measures we take in class.

The secretary and director told me that they knew about what the girl was doing, and was letting her hang her own noose. They were going to wait until the girl got busted on camera, then confront the entire class. Anyone else they caught helping her, or talking badly about the girl would be added to the dragnet.

The new girl had tried to mend fences and add friends. She had one friend, who was also new in class, but the rest of the class continued to shun her. I made a new seating chart to separate the two girls. Other teachers and I had discussed petitioning to kick this bully out of the school, but the director said she needed hard evidence on camera to show to the parents.

The girls are cruel to their own. It wasn’t anything violent, but the new girl’s parents were upset about how their daughter was treated. Things like buying pizza for the class seemed like good moves, but the bully girl would complain about it saying, “Oh, new girl, you are so poor, you can’t buy a enough pizza for everyone. Two pieces? Who think’s that enough for anyone. Who buys this cheap disgusting pizza?”

It’s not like the new girl can win, because if you eat too much pizza, you are, “A pig, a fat pig who loves to eat junk food.”

So, with this in the background, we fast forward to today. The bully came to school with a broken leg. She had been picking on a TINY boy in the class, and he had pushed her down. She broke her leg. If it had happened to a nicer student, I would have had more sympathy.

Anyway, while in class, the director and secretary came in to my room and asked for students that had said bad things about the new student to step forward and apologize. It was like Peter before sunrise. “I’ve never said anything bad about the new girl. Never. Nope. Never.”

All around the classroom, they went around claiming they were all BEST FRIENDS. It was pretty obvious that my director was just adjusting their nooses at this point, they had long since hung themselves. She was just willing to see if anyone was going to take the step of owning up to it.

She called all of them out of the room. ALL of the girls had to leave the class! Woohoo! The boys and I had a wonderful, fun class by ourselves. They sat around in the directors room and had a face to face talk. The director had been listening in and recording everything that happened in the classroom. She had all the proof she needed for five of the six girls.

The last girl, the big bully, went on denying everything. I’m guessing they had some sort of new video proof, and they confronted her about all the other stuff we knew via hearsay. She refused to apologize. The rest of the girls went back to class, a few of them crying uncontrollably, but the bully claimed total innocence. She got held in the office for twenty more minutes of yelling. I don’t know if she’ll be enrolled next month or not. Her sister quit recently (also a pain), so if they cut this girl I’ll be overjoyed.

My middle school students have to come to school to study for their big tests. For whatever reason, I still have class with them, but the next two hours they spend their time sitting in class studying whatever they need to for their final tests in school.

They’ll be for the next week, so giving them homework is somewhat pointless, as they’ll be too busy with tests to complete it. I decided to share some terrible puns I had made this week with them. We did them as riddles the students had to figure out:

• What do you call a white bear from the North Pole that makes your breath smell like candy? (Polo Bear)
• What does the polite Korean food say when you leave the restaurant? “Have a Rice Day!”
• What do you call a green Korean dinosaur that prefers pistols at dawn? Dooly.
• What is red and white, smells like French fries, and has many toys? Santa Hamburger!

The last one only works in Korean.

Anyway, the students knew they were complete groaners of jokes, even across both languages, but it didn’t stop them from laughing at them in the “so bad it’s actually good” sort of way people do when they hear a good pun. They’ll be spending the rest of their time freaking out about their big tests, so I hope that laugh got a little stress off their shoulders.