Well, today started out just swell.

I'll preface this by saying that last night I got some really wonderful news. That is that my high school classes next week are cancelled due to exams. I'm thrilled about this because I am at about my wits end with this stupid evening class. With next week being cancelled, I currently have 5 more days of classes. To make it even sweeter, one day is a final exam (each student will do a speech), and another is preparation for the speeches, so really I have just 3 more days. Aaaaaaaand, the last day of class, I think all the teachers will combine our classes and have some kind of big fun game or scavenger hunt or something. So that leaves today and tomorrow. I'm so happy I could just cry tears of joy.

Anyways, on to my day starting out just swell (while via the internet this sarcasm is hard to convey, I think you, my readers, will understand shortly).

Last night I was sleeping soundly (with most of the lights on and myself still half-dressed in my clothing from the day... my high school wears me out so much that I can hardly manage to change into pajamas some nights) until 4 a.m. when I abruptly woke to the screech of multiple sirens that sounded frighteningly near my apartment. My initial thought was oh my god, North Korea is attacking Incheon and I'm gonna die tonight. I literally thought that I bolted upright in bed and tried to get my bearings in what I presumed was a warlike attack on my house. I got out of bed and thought I have to figure out how to get out without dying in the shellings. I peeked out my bedroom window and with that my fears were allayed. The sirens were, in fact, not bomb sirens as I had imagined, but the sirens of 4 fire trucks approaching and parking immediately across the street from my apartment building.

While the thought of a nearby raging fire (which I couldn't actually spot from my window, warning sign #1) is not pleasant, I'd say that I felt thoroughly relieved when the only other possibility I had imagined was hundreds of artillery shells razing buildings and shredding limbs.

So, I laid back down in bed as the firetruck sirens died down to a low mew, and just as I rested my head upon my pillow I was startled once more by an even louder, closer alarm. Welp, I thought, maybe North Korea is attacking after all. And stood up, more annoyed the fearful and I discovered the source of the alarm was my own building's alarm system (not labeled as or resembling a fire alarm by western standards). This unnerved me given the plethora of fire trucks outside my window. And I cracked open my door to discover a thick cloud of gray smoke.

OH. MY. GOD. I'm gonna die in a fiery apartment accident. Lovely.

I raced back inside and grabbed a coat and my cell phone and stepped back out into the cloud of smoke to see about 10 firemen whom I half-expected to sweep me up and rush me down fire ladders to my safety. Instead, they brushed past without so much as an acknowledgement of my presence. As I rounded the corner by my door, I discovered the smoke's source. A room a mere two doors from my own was emitting volumes of smoke and I just stood there thinking, do I need to run down the stairs or is this under control. No one was talking to me, but the sirens were wailing, and increasing, residents were poking their heads out the door and trying to figure out what was going on. I seemed to be the director pointing the other residents to the source of the commotion and the firemen finally said, it's okay, go to your room.

So through the smoke I trekked again, and went back into my room which now faintly smelled of smoke and climbed back into bed remembering to be thankful that both I and the country I'm living in remain safe for another night.

It was fucking scary though. I couldn't sleep until 5:30 or so, and I had to wake up at 6:30, so that was awesome. Today my students are bitches and are totally like teacher, you have dark circles, and I was like, yeah, well, that happens when you almost die.

OH MY JESUS.

The YG countdown revealed everything! OMG OMG OMFG IM FUCKING DYING.

G-Dragon and T.O.P. are releasing a double album. First digital single released Dec 14. Album out dec. 24th. MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ME.

Also, BIG BANG COMBACK FEBRUARY 1 2011! OH MY GOD COMEBACK NOW.

Also also, Seung-ri is gonna have a single out January 3rd (happy birthday to my brother!)

No word on a 2ne1 international release. But aside from that, my life is complete. Everything will be entered into my calendars soon, and I will be counting down the moments till my happiness reaches its most ultimate point.

Christmas Time pt. 1

It is Christmas time. This is on a shopping street around the corner from my house. These lights were put up the day before United States' Thanksgiving but they didn't turn them on until the night of Thanksgiving which I am sure the city didn't realize but it was still nice to see some wait. Christmas music has been playing in Christmas stores for two weeks now

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Early Christmas for This Lucky Teacher

I know it's not Thanksgiving yet(although its the afternoon of the 25th here in korea) but today felt like Christmas when a student and a coteacher came to my office with a big box and two rolls of paper in their hands. Inside the box was a whole stash of goodies including white board erasers, board markers, two 12-packs of multicolor board markers, and ten packs if twist up crayons for my students. Clearly I care enough about my job to actually jump around and clap when I saw these new things.

My coteacher also told me that there is still money left in the budget for other materials so if I need anything at all I should let her know. To any of my esl- or teaching-literate friends, your suggestions or input are welcome.

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Things at Haesa Go

Things at Haesa Go have been a little shaky these days.

After a particularly rough week last week, things are finally starting to look up. To start with the negatives:

Monday: I called in sick to work because I felt like hell and couldn't possible teach for three hours.

Tuesday: 1st period. One student looked me in the eyes and repeated constantly for at least 10 minutes (followed by intermittent repetitions for the next 20 minutes) only "Teacher, you ugly, ugly, you ugly, you ugly." This was interrupted only by his answer to my question, "What does a zombie look like?" which was, "Zombie ugly like you." Another pair of students spent 30 minutes talking (not whispering) throughout my speaking, my instruction giving and preparation of an activity. I repeatedly asked them to stop and they completely ignored me. Another student found a sewing kit (not his) in the desk at which he was seated. He proceeded to open the kit, pull out a needle and begin playing with it. I told him to stop (uh, playing with a needle that isn't yours??? WHO DOES THAT?). I turned to write on the board and I turned around and discovered this student had put the needle in his ear (which had already been pierced, but that's entirely beside the point). Who puts a needle (let alone one that isn't his/her own) in his/her ear?????? So, livid at the general disrespect I had been shown by my class, I sent this student out of my classroom. One minute late, one of the constantly talking students raised his hand and blurted out, "teacher, bathroom." I said, yes, go and don't come back to my classroom. I was completely fed up with this class. It's unfortunate because two or three of my best students are also in this class and I feel awful for them. After I sent the two students out, two other students began complaining, "teacher, me too. Make me leave too." At the point, I lost it. I looked at the remaining students in the class (the bad ones at least) and I just said: "WHY? Why are you so rude? Why do you disrespect me? If I was Korean, would you do this? If I spoke Korean, would you do this? If I were the principal, would you be rude like this? You are always talking and you never do you work. You take my pens and you waste them. You throw away everything, you are unprepared for your tests. You are wasting my time and it isn't fair to me. Every day I come here with work that I did, and you don't care." They understood nothing and just looked at me and said 뭐? (What... in low speech). At that point I lost it. I started crying. Hysterically. And I made everyone leave.

What a fucking waste of my time. I almost quit on the spot. I'm glad I didn't because my 2nd and 3rd classes were quite good and I was happy.

I complained to the schools native speaker. I complained to my co-teacher at my middle school.

And the school informed me that there would be dire consequences for students who misbehaved (a separate class with disciplinary teachers).

Wednesday: I came to my first period, the boys were like corpses. Like dead bodies, seriously. No one looked at me. No one talked to me. Just sheer anger. They were mad at me????? what. the. fuck.

Anyways, today was better. My students were only a little bad as opposed to positively hellish. So I am now in a good mood.

I just wish I could make the first class less evil.

The good news: 4 more weeks. To be exact: 11 classes. That is, 33 hours. Then, I am done with that stupid place. Forever.

Good night!

A

I like things other than k-pop and hello kitty.

I'm sometimes just as apple-pie American as the next girl.

So today I was watching some dope NBA highlights on youtube and something reminded me of that time Dwight Howard, LeBron James and Shaq had a dance-off at their all-star team practice in 2007. Shaw is fucking hilarious.

A Text conversation with my boyfriend.

Me: I called for delivery!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I did it I did it!!!!!^^ (this is the exact transcript... I was really happy because I had to speak Koeran)
Me: but it never came... ㅠ ㅠ ㅠ ㅠ ㅠ(1 hour after calling... I was really sad)
Me: Nevermind it came (Ten minutes after the preceding text)
BF: (1 hour after my most recent text) Kitty! (That is his nickname for me) Bring your baby!! and my parents and grandmom will come.
Me: (utterly confused) my baby??? and when will your parents come?
BF: Yay gostop. and idk well. maybe they will come to eat dinner.
Me: My baby is gostop? 왜? (Korean for why?)
BF: because I think gostop looks like my baby. so my baby means your baby too~
Me: you have a baby???
BF: hahaha no 고스톱을 아기라고 생각했어요. (rough translation: hahaha no I thought to call gostop a baby)

what. the. fuck.

For two reasons.
1. Me calling for delivery alone and without help is a big step and he didn't recognize it.
2. what. the. fuck.

For the record, he and I have never had any conversations with this much confusion in them. I have no idea where this came from, and I'm sort of still trying to figure that out.

from sports day

3학년4반

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America meets Korea: music

So I just found this video from the past summer of 2ne1. They are doing tributes to artists they admire or look up to. CL did Lauryn Hill's DooWop (That Thing) which was pretty awesome and the songs were all in English. It's worth watching for both my k-pop fans and my friends who don't give a damn about k-pop because it's interesting to see these singers sing these songs. Plus at the end they sing Fire, which is easily still one of my favorite Korean songs of all time.

Also, holy shit, Minzy's dance is naughty. She was 15 at the time.

Lastly, uh, what's with the rain at the end when they are performing Fire? Bizarre.

Interesting Read

I found this on Knocksteady.com, which is this interesting collective of artists, musicians, and designers who make music and write blogs on varying topics. I just copy and pasted the whole thing here. Enjoy this commencement speech. I thought it was great. Credit where credits due. Hit up www.knocksteady.com for more awesome music, some weird.interesting.funny.adhoc blogposts, and a dose of the just plain odd every now and then.

Written by Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988), was the guest-of-honour at a recent NTU convocation ceremony. This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.
—–

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

xoxo,

A

I haven't eaten yet today

Instead I fucked around on youtube and facebook and played doodle jump or slept all day.

This must be how Joseph Gutierrez feels all the time. Weird.

Anyways, I thought this was cool. I'm kinda obsessed with him, but not in a weird way. He's just really talented.

waste

I just wasted the entire day.

But I wanted to share some stories.

Last night I went out for dinner/drinks with the boy and his cousin, who is an electrical engineer for SK. It was hilarious and really really really fun.

His cousin is crazy, but in an awesome way. He told lots of really funny stories. My favorite:

Me: I really want to buy a scooter.
Boy: Nooooooooo. Not safe.
Cuz: I had a scooter once.
Boy: 맞아, tell about the time you had an accident.
Me: *horror* you had an accident??
Cuz: *laughs heartily* yes. I was really drunk.
Me: OH GAH. *horror x1000*
Cuz: And I was driving on an access road and I realized, hey, I'm not supposed to be here, because it's not for scooters.
Me: uh-huh...
Cuz: So I turned right onto a street near Yongsan and I saw just a shadow.
Me: *Cringing in fear* Oh god, uh-huh...
Cuz: And I hit a tank.
Me: Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?????
Cuz: I hit a tank. A military tank. Well, actually I fell under the tank.

Yes, folks, that's right. He hit a fucking tank. And fell under the tank. I'm not sure if the tank was moving, but I'm going to assume no. Evidently he ended up with just a bunch of bad scratches, and was okay. He didn't realize he was bleeding. But someone there told him. Phew.

Korean people are bat-shit crazy.

This story also reminds me of this time I was at a bus stop on this MAJOR road (3/4 lanes each direction). I was waiting for my bus home, and this lady comes up with her children, ages maybe 4 and 7. The seven year old sits nicely next to his mom. The 4 year old however is curious and wanders around a bit, which makes me nervous. We are next to a major road mind you. The child, in his curiosity, steps down off the sidewalk curb and into the bus lane and I almost pee my pants with anxiety. The child walk around a bit, and the mom looks over and is like, oh, hey, Minsu, come over here all nonchalant as if her extremely young child wasn't in the middle of a bus lane where bus come rolling through at speeds fast enough to effectively smash grown men and women flat.

I think this is one of the only things I hate about Korea. The non-caring attitude people seem to take about driving and pedestrianism. People literally think, oh, it won't happen to me, and they drive like crazy mother fuckers. Or they think, oh no one will hit me and cross streets recklessly or other such things.

Thats it y'all.
A

Mid-Term Elections from Afar, and others

These subjects appear in no particular order of importance, but it should be noted that the McDonalds news is probably the most important. Not really though. I'm not that much of a fatty.

The Things I learned from the 2010 Mid-Term Elections


It should also be noted that I didn't vote in this year's round of elections, although I wish I had because it was so depressing. Not that it would have mattered because mail-in votes aren't counted unless it's really close, right?

Nonetheless, Democrats lost their hold on the House but managed to maintain more than half the senate seats, in spite of losing 6 seats to Republican control. Florida voted Republican virtually across the board. I can take a half-hearted pride in the fact that my home county of Palm Beach swayed slightly to the vote away from Republican Senate Seat winner, Marco Rubio, in favor of independent Charlie Crist (current Florida governor, a former Republican party member, and a pro-choice and socially moderate candidate). However, Marco Rubio won in something like 59 or 60 of the 64 counties in Florida. Additionally, the governorship was won by Republican Rick Scott in a much closer race over Alex Sink, who previously held the office of CFO for the State of Florida. Again, Palm Beach County and my University's county both voted Democrat. But alas, it was not to be. Rural Florida beats urban florida yet again (Miami, Palm Beach, Broward, Orange, St. Lucie, Hillsborough and Leon counties, which are home to 8 of the 10 largest cities by population, and 4 of the 5 largest metro areas in the state, all voted Democrat).

Also, Prop 19 failed in California. It doesn't really affect me in any way, but it'd have been nice to see that prop pass because people are stupid about marijuana, and because California is struggling with one of the greatest financial crises in the country now, and I think Prop 19 could have potential helped in at least some small way. Oh wells.

Next, this website is awesome: http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com/ Aside from the rather vulgar site name, it's a pretty good site. I mean, everyone is pretty much shitting all over Obama, and it's nice to see some people sticking up for the fact that Obama has done 100s of little things to change America. Sorry he hasn't entered America into new wars or passed hugely controversial and famous bills. He has done a lot of little things, and they are far less awful than the shit Bush did.

Lastly, McDonalds has brought the quarter pounder with cheese and double quarter pounder to Korea. Now, I never actually ate this burger in America because I pretty much never ate at McDonalds, but now that I'm here, I eat McDonalds probably every week for it's sheer convenience. I think I'll avoid the double quarter pounder because I kind of think that's gross (I'll add I've never had even one bite of a big mac before, and I'd like it to stay that way) but the quarter pounder with cheese could be tasty.

Lastly, I almost killed my high school boys yesterday. I'm gonna lose it one day and just go off on them and they won't know what him them. They are so freaking annoying. It's always the same class... first period and they consistently ruin my day.

That's it.

xoxo
A

Sports = Wearing Crazy Shit in your Hair

Me and a student. Sports Day 2010

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Bored

Please don't ask me where I find the time to discover gems like this: