well there were plenty of tourists, and me being there didnt help that at all
11/6/08
8/23/08
technopolis
do you really read this thing? i rarely put anything here. here are some new pictures http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2512858&l=e3392&id=7926653
you can see my trip to japan, and to seoul.
lately ive been thinking about whether mosquitoes hear a loud sound right before they die in between my clapping hands. bravo. i hope there is some as of yet undiscovered organism that slowly leeches the life out of mosquitoes while they sleep, because i'd like to think that all things are created equal.
7/20/08
6/24/08
6/3/08
blogger is driving me nuts
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2427057&l=051f8&id=7926653
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2430778&l=b6e76&id=7926653
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2439881&l=82422&id=7926653
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2449254&l=80d1f&id=7926653
I had this whole blog written out and it took me half an hour. I did spell check and I had zero typos! woooo. But then blogspot screwed it up and erased it all when I hit "Publish Post." Go figure.
I'll (re)do this really short because I'm sleepy and I'm waking up early tomorrow.
Despite multiple trips to the doctor and several ventures to relatively expensive restaurants, I saved a lot of money this month. Thats good, because I'll need it. I'm quitting my job. It's making me feel burnt out. My last day at work is June 27th. Tomorrow I'm getting a cellphone, and on Thursday I have an interview for a job teaching adults. The future is bright, maybe I'll get to go to Japan to get my new work visa. Enjoy my facebook albums if you haven't already. Just cut and paste the links into your browser, I would have made links out of them, but I'm pretty sure thats what overwhelmed this sophomore effort of a blogging website called blogspot. Fuck, it even autosaved my post, but only one link instead of the 1000 words that I couldnt just copy from somewhere else. Dammit! Goodnight.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2430778&l=b6e76&id=7926653
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2439881&l=82422&id=7926653
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2449254&l=80d1f&id=7926653
I had this whole blog written out and it took me half an hour. I did spell check and I had zero typos! woooo. But then blogspot screwed it up and erased it all when I hit "Publish Post." Go figure.
I'll (re)do this really short because I'm sleepy and I'm waking up early tomorrow.
Despite multiple trips to the doctor and several ventures to relatively expensive restaurants, I saved a lot of money this month. Thats good, because I'll need it. I'm quitting my job. It's making me feel burnt out. My last day at work is June 27th. Tomorrow I'm getting a cellphone, and on Thursday I have an interview for a job teaching adults. The future is bright, maybe I'll get to go to Japan to get my new work visa. Enjoy my facebook albums if you haven't already. Just cut and paste the links into your browser, I would have made links out of them, but I'm pretty sure thats what overwhelmed this sophomore effort of a blogging website called blogspot. Fuck, it even autosaved my post, but only one link instead of the 1000 words that I couldnt just copy from somewhere else. Dammit! Goodnight.
5/22/08
Demian by Herman Hesse
I read the novel 'Demian' by Herman Hesse and I used a bank envelope as a bookmark and I also took notes on it. Here are the notes.
words i looked up: chthonic, loquacious, lasicivious, imprecation
art i looked up: spinoza, actus tragicus, st. matthew passion, max reger, buxtehude passacaglia
quotes/ideas:
"one cannot apologize for something fundamental"
"I realize today that nothing is more distasteful to a man than to take a path that leads to himself."
"eternal stream of great ideas"
"what isnt part of ourselves doesnt disturb us."
"I was incapabale of giving advice that did not derive from my own experience and which I myself did not have the strength to follow."
"The world, as it is now, wants to die, wants to perish-- and it will."
"Love must have the strength to become certain within itself."
"I will not make a gift of myself, I must be won."
"But most people love to lose themselves."
and here are my thoughts on the story:
The book i read before this was "Shogun," and i think i was in the wrong state of mind for it. I was looking for the kind of novel that Demian is. Shogun is great, but it is still pulp fiction. Demian is florally written and full of immense fuzzy images. It's about one boy's youth and adolescence and how he grew up through various trials, and with the help of a variety of role models and mentors, to come to a tragic understanding of his relation to society. Well i guess all the gawdyness in Shogun meant that I was ready to read something like it, because I didn't seem to be in the mood for Demian while I was reading it, thankfully it was fairly short.
Have you ever seen a movie or read a book about someone with superhuman strength? Inevitably there is a scene where some once-undefeatable baddies are spraying with machines guns or blasting away with lasers and the superhero just stands there and waits, invincible. It's the kind of thing that lets the audience enjoy watching the enemy get destroyed. Well, I kind of felt like a superhero reading Demain because the book is about coming of age in Europe just after World War one. Many of the references to european sentiment came off as crusty and snobby instead of drawing me into the author's web. But you can tell that the book is written sincerely, or maybe all of it was the translation from German into English. At any rate, you can get a sense of Hesse's genius, of the potential of a human mind. I didnt experience ww1 or any of my friend's dying in it or my country being destroyed and subsequently taken over by fascists. I'm absolutely positive that having experiences like those would have made the book a better read for me. Sometimes i get exhausted with all the images a book can make, all the questions it can pose, and i'd rather do something physical with a real object, even if its just bouncing a ball off of a wall over and over. Have you ever seen an antique comedy? The Honeymooners comes to mind. Somethings are old enough that they've lost their cultural reference, and they become independent cultures of their own. From my, admittedly vague, memory of the Honeymooners not much seems to be happening, especially not much funny. But, there is a curious arrangement of activities, sayings, and behaviours that make it entertaining in a way that cant possibly be the same as that for which it was created. Thats how I feel about Demian.
After you, my dear Alphonse
words i looked up: chthonic, loquacious, lasicivious, imprecation
art i looked up: spinoza, actus tragicus, st. matthew passion, max reger, buxtehude passacaglia
quotes/ideas:
"one cannot apologize for something fundamental"
"I realize today that nothing is more distasteful to a man than to take a path that leads to himself."
"eternal stream of great ideas"
"what isnt part of ourselves doesnt disturb us."
"I was incapabale of giving advice that did not derive from my own experience and which I myself did not have the strength to follow."
"The world, as it is now, wants to die, wants to perish-- and it will."
"Love must have the strength to become certain within itself."
"I will not make a gift of myself, I must be won."
"But most people love to lose themselves."
and here are my thoughts on the story:
The book i read before this was "Shogun," and i think i was in the wrong state of mind for it. I was looking for the kind of novel that Demian is. Shogun is great, but it is still pulp fiction. Demian is florally written and full of immense fuzzy images. It's about one boy's youth and adolescence and how he grew up through various trials, and with the help of a variety of role models and mentors, to come to a tragic understanding of his relation to society. Well i guess all the gawdyness in Shogun meant that I was ready to read something like it, because I didn't seem to be in the mood for Demian while I was reading it, thankfully it was fairly short.
Have you ever seen a movie or read a book about someone with superhuman strength? Inevitably there is a scene where some once-undefeatable baddies are spraying with machines guns or blasting away with lasers and the superhero just stands there and waits, invincible. It's the kind of thing that lets the audience enjoy watching the enemy get destroyed. Well, I kind of felt like a superhero reading Demain because the book is about coming of age in Europe just after World War one. Many of the references to european sentiment came off as crusty and snobby instead of drawing me into the author's web. But you can tell that the book is written sincerely, or maybe all of it was the translation from German into English. At any rate, you can get a sense of Hesse's genius, of the potential of a human mind. I didnt experience ww1 or any of my friend's dying in it or my country being destroyed and subsequently taken over by fascists. I'm absolutely positive that having experiences like those would have made the book a better read for me. Sometimes i get exhausted with all the images a book can make, all the questions it can pose, and i'd rather do something physical with a real object, even if its just bouncing a ball off of a wall over and over. Have you ever seen an antique comedy? The Honeymooners comes to mind. Somethings are old enough that they've lost their cultural reference, and they become independent cultures of their own. From my, admittedly vague, memory of the Honeymooners not much seems to be happening, especially not much funny. But, there is a curious arrangement of activities, sayings, and behaviours that make it entertaining in a way that cant possibly be the same as that for which it was created. Thats how I feel about Demian.
After you, my dear Alphonse
4/4/08
viva korea
yesterday morning i went to the hospital to get the results from my TB/AIDS tests. the head teacher went with as an interpreter, and after a solemn exchange in korean with the nurse she told me that both were positive. i felt like i had about five seconds to live and my face got all red and i was about to start crying when she told me she was kidding. dead pan humor is hard to do in a second language. she told the whole office about the story, they thought it was hilarious. my boss kind of even made her apologize to me. i dont think any of them understand how bad it would be to have those diseases, especially since i would then be unemployed and would not only have to pay back my school for my flight here but i would have to pay for my flight back home. basically, i would be in the hole a few grand automatically and i would never have a happy life again. i got her back in a few minutes by pretending to forget my passport at home, and for a few seconds she panicked.
i ate some korean barbecue and it was delicious. i tried two types of oysters, both were really fresh and delicious, and i also ate sesame leaf for the first time. i cant remember exactly how it tastes but the closest thing i can put it at is mint, even though thats way off. you grill the meat yourself and then wrap it in lettuce or sesame leaf and eat it, maybe with some sauce or onions or seaweed too.
i went to some expat bars, i felt like i could have been anywhere in the world. 90s hiphop, darts, foozball. at this point i'm more comfortable being surrounded by koreans, even after only two weeks. the foreigners have unpredictable accents and behaviours. i heard an intriguing story about teaching english in the middle east, apparently ireland and arabs have a close bond what with the IRA training in the area and all. Sometimes people will be released after theyve been kidnapped once they prove theyre Irish. I also heard that there's no alcohol in Saudi Arabia, which I think is awesome. I heard you get paid $100,000 a year to teach in libya, and that people will frequently interrupt class to say things like"all christians should die", or "if my cousin married a christian i would kill her." i cant tell if thats just bar talk. at the second bar there were bands, and they tried. i cant tell if its sad to pick a genre or if its sad to pick a lame genre, but austin got me real spoiled. they were kind of like a band formed by 19 year olds who were in highschool band together, except theyre adults there was a 'punk' band, with three 35-ish dudes playing greenday, it just seems wrong. the crowd seemed to love it, apparently live music is rare at this particular bar, usually its dance music and dancing, which is what i would have preferred.
at one point i was waiting in line for the bathroom and i was looking through my wallet, i found like 200,000 won, or $200, but then i realized in the dark that 1000 notes look a lot like 10,000 notes. it still cheered me up though. i took a bunch of pictures, maybe you can see em
i ate some korean barbecue and it was delicious. i tried two types of oysters, both were really fresh and delicious, and i also ate sesame leaf for the first time. i cant remember exactly how it tastes but the closest thing i can put it at is mint, even though thats way off. you grill the meat yourself and then wrap it in lettuce or sesame leaf and eat it, maybe with some sauce or onions or seaweed too.
i went to some expat bars, i felt like i could have been anywhere in the world. 90s hiphop, darts, foozball. at this point i'm more comfortable being surrounded by koreans, even after only two weeks. the foreigners have unpredictable accents and behaviours. i heard an intriguing story about teaching english in the middle east, apparently ireland and arabs have a close bond what with the IRA training in the area and all. Sometimes people will be released after theyve been kidnapped once they prove theyre Irish. I also heard that there's no alcohol in Saudi Arabia, which I think is awesome. I heard you get paid $100,000 a year to teach in libya, and that people will frequently interrupt class to say things like"all christians should die", or "if my cousin married a christian i would kill her." i cant tell if thats just bar talk. at the second bar there were bands, and they tried. i cant tell if its sad to pick a genre or if its sad to pick a lame genre, but austin got me real spoiled. they were kind of like a band formed by 19 year olds who were in highschool band together, except theyre adults there was a 'punk' band, with three 35-ish dudes playing greenday, it just seems wrong. the crowd seemed to love it, apparently live music is rare at this particular bar, usually its dance music and dancing, which is what i would have preferred.
at one point i was waiting in line for the bathroom and i was looking through my wallet, i found like 200,000 won, or $200, but then i realized in the dark that 1000 notes look a lot like 10,000 notes. it still cheered me up though. i took a bunch of pictures, maybe you can see em
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