ilbon

I went back to the hospital today. I was expecting to hear that my platelet count was low, I was fearing that if it was low I'd have to stay there for a while for treatment. It turns out that I had nothing to worry about. Everything was normal. The doctor doubled my dosage, but now I only take it every other day. Progress!

As part of my journey home from the hospital I was waiting for a bus downtown. While waiting, a guy in his 50s stepped out from the building he works in to have a smoke, and started to chat me up. He spoke no English, and asked if I spoke Korean. I told him I could speak a little bit. He asked where I was from and if I liked Korea. I told him America and yes. He asked me what Korean companies were popular in America. I told him Samsung, Kia, and Hyundai. I told him my mom drives a Hyundai. He gave me a high five. It was really riveting stuff.

Then he asked me about Japan. I said they were good, too. He disagreed. He proceeded to say a lot of things that I couldn't really understand, but the message was clearly that Korea is better than Japan. I think at one point he was trying to explain to me that Japanese men have tiny dicks. Kinda kicking them while they're down, don't you think?

Soon enough my bus arrived. I shook his hand and said goodbye.

Tonight I had a one on one class. It's just one kid and me. I had a class like this last year and it was great because the kid was a baseball fan and I converted him into a Phillies fan. The kid I teach now isn't nearly as cool, in fact he's a huge nerd. But, his English is very good, so I pretty much just have to talk with him for 50 minutes. 

Tonight's topic of discussion was global warming. I asked him if global warming was a big issue in Korea. He said yes. I asked him why. His answer was one hell of an answer. He said, and this is what he's been told by his teachers, that if the polar ice caps melt, ocean levels will rise and Japan will be underwater. Now, it wasn't the fact that Japan and its 125 million occupants would be underwater which was the cause for concern, but rather that if Japan was underwater, there would be nothing there to protect Korea from tsunamis. I had him clarify that if Japan were underwater, the main problem would be that there's no buffer from tsunamis. He said, matter of factly, yes. 

So: Japan is a land whose sole purpose is to absorb tsunamis and is inhabited by men with small penises.

gallimaufry

gal-uh-maw-free

I'm just gonna touch on a few things here. Each individual topic couldn't sustain its own post, but together they'll hopefully be worth something.

Remember Tommy, one of my least favorite students? He was absent all last week. Come to find out he had to have his appendix removed. It made me feel bad for disliking him in the past, and when he showed up the other day I was happy to see him. However, within five minutes he'd aggravated me enough to restore my disdain for him.

I watch a lot of sports these days. I started watching a lot when my medicine made me only have to sleep 5 hours a night. I'd wake up at 6am with nothing to do. So I bought the NBA and NHL accounts that allow you watch all the games online. So for the past 4 months I've seen almost every 76ers and Flyers game. Now I have the MLB package as well. The Flyers got jobbed by the refs today.

I yelled at a kid today. I mean I really yelled at him. He's this punkass 12 year old who talks throughout class, so not only does he not learn anything, he actively prevents other kids from learning as well. I don't recall exactly what I said, but I know I managed not to swear at him. I just got in his face and yelled something along the lines of, "Why do you come here? Do you realize you waste your and everyone else's parents' money by being here. Shut up!" He got really quiet and muttered stuff to himself in Korean. Then I assigned him 5x as much homework as everyone else. I don't think I've ever yelled at a kid like that before. I'm usually the cool teacher.

Last night I had dinner with a friend. We had a soup called "gamja-tang". It's pork-spine soup. It's a really spicy soup with kimchi and vegetables in it, as well as a hunk of a pigs spine. The meat pretty much just falls off the spine because it's so tender, and there's bits of cartilage as well. It was one of the best things I've ever eaten. If you ever find yourself in a Korean restaurant, order it.

On the health front: It's been three weeks since I last saw my doctor. My next appointment is for a week from today. The last time I went I didn't see my normal doctor, but the doctor I did see was one who treated me when I first got sick and was in the emergency ward. She seemed surprised that I hadn't relapsed yet. Then she cut my dosage of corticosteroids by more than half, saying, "This might cause a relapse." I thought, "Hey maybe can we not try to make me sick again," but I just went with it. I guess I trust her.

I'm interested in what my next blood test shows. I think I could be relapsing, but I'm not sure. I've got a couple tiny red spots on my arms which resemble the bruises which covered me when I first started spontaneously bleeding. But isn't it normal to sometimes find tiny red spots on your skin? I think I remember seeing things like these before and it not being cause for alarm. I don't know. I don't remember what it's like to be healthy.

I thought about cutting a finger or something, and seeing if the wound clotted quickly, or if I'd bleed for a while. I hope you appreciate living a life in which you don't have to think about doing that.

My appetite is back to normal; I'm no longer eating insane amounts of food. My weight increase peaked at +15lbs. As I am now, I'm 7lbs heavier than I was the day I was admitted to the hospital.

I saw a really bizarre English notebook the other day. I didn't write it down, but I remember it had the phrase "instantaneous coffin" on it.

I have 9 weeks left on my contract. 9 weeks from today I'll be on my way home. I seriously considered re-signing at my school. I thought about re-signing because I like the kids, I'm good at the job, and I have healthcare here. I'm quite concerned that when I go home my body will try to kill itself again, and I'll be stuck with loads and loads of medical costs. But, I gotta go home. I miss it.

respect

If there's one aspect of Korean culture which I disagree with, it's their reverence for old people. It's not that I think old people should be spat on or anything, I just don't think that old age should be the only prerequisite for being respected. Because let's face it, just because you're old doesn't mean you're not a dickhead.

This "if they're older than you, they're better than you" mentality is ingrained in Koreans. The language has different grammar for different levels of formality, and of course there's the ubiquitous bowing as a sign of respect. I've asked students what would happen if they used informal grammar when speaking to someone older, and they've said that they would probably be hit for it.

You might be guessing that this post is heading toward an encounter I had with an old person. That's good work.

I had dinner earlier, some kimchi stew at a local kimbap restaurant. I go to this place maybe once or twice a week. It's good food and quiet and I can listen to podcasts or music on my ipod and not be bothered.

Tonight was a little different. Shortly after I sat down, a really old and drunk guy enters. For the next 20 minutes he sits at a table and angrily yells about god-knows-what. Some of his yelling was at other people eating, some at the staff, some of it at me. I had my back to him, but I could see other people nervously looking at me, so I kinda wish I knew what he was saying. But as I've mentioned before, old Korean people terrify me, so maybe I should be glad I don't know. Maybe I look a lot like a soldier who murdered his brother or something 60 years ago.

Anyway, this yelling goes on and on, and nobody says a word about it. People just sit there and listen to him. Nobody says, "Hey you old madman, shut up and go home!" In fact the staff even seemed make him priority number one. As soon as he sat down, he got some side dishes. Meanwhile I'd been there for 5 minutes and hadn't even gotten my kimchi.

That's bullshit, man.

numbers

I like my job, but it's not always easy. When kids are too wound up, it's hard to get control of them. Doubly so when you don't speak their language. When kids are too tired to give a damn about studying, it's hard to motivate them to do so. Doubly so when you don't speak their language.

There are also occasional problems with just the way the English language is presented to them.

I was teaching a very low level class today. Their vocabulary for this particular unit was simply the numbers 1 through 10. This should be easy, especially because every kid over here already knows English numbers. However, the way that this information was presented to them was so ridiculously complicated and confusing that if anything these kids had education taken from them.

Here is how it is presented: There's a cartoon picture of children doing different things while holding a sign with a numeral digit on it, and each kid is labeled with a letter. This is already too confusing, but it gets worse. Next to the picture are the numbers 1 through ten, like this:
1.
2.
3.
and so on...

Next to each number are the English number names, HOWEVER, the number is not necessarily the same as the number name. So it looks like this:
1. three
2. six
3. nine
and so on...

The kids are tasked with having to match the number of each English number name with the child holding it's numeral equivalent in the picture. They then have to write the number of each question which corresponds to the different written out English name of the number each character in the picture is holding in an empty circle next to the character. I swear I'm trying to explain this as best I can.

Here's how it went down in class:
Me: Okay, who can do number 1?
Students: 1 is "F"!
Me: Well, yes, the boy next to "F" is holding number 1, but number 1 is 3. So where is 3?
Students: 3 is "B"!
Me: No, no, that's the answer to question 3. We're still on question 1, which is: where is 3? Look, number 1 is 3. What boy is holding 3? "D", right? So, in the circle next to the boy holding 3, write "1".
Students: *staring blankly*
Me: *goes to each child, fills in their book for them*

I'm sitting here now trying to think of a more bewildering way to teach children the English names for numbers, and apart from flat out lying to them, I can't think of anything. It angers me that I help the fools who put this shit together make money.

radiation

It's raining right now. I knew it would. My students told me. They also told me that this rain will kill us all.

According to them, it will kill us all because the rain is full of radioactive fallout from the Japanese nuclear plant. I'm not sure where they picked up this piece of misinformation, but it doesn't surprise me. This place can get thrown into a panic pretty quickly over threats that aren't that serious.

For instance, did you know that there are frequent protests here against importing beef from North America? Some Koreans are convinced that all North American beef is riddled with mad cow disease, because like ten years ago a case of it popped up. I know we've all forgotten about it because it wasn't a big deal, but here, ten years on, it's still an issue.

I told my manager about my students' warnings of imminent death, and she sided with them. "Make sure you shower very well," she advised me. So, listen up rest of the world: soap will save you from nuclear radiation.

It doesn't surprise me that half of this peninsula is ruled by a maniacal totalitarian. I can see how these people would take to it, how they could get swept up into a mentality where the rest of the world is a threat and will kill them where they stand.

moon face

I've only recently become aware that I can track certain statistics of this blog I keep. Stats such as how many pageviews I get per day, week, month, and all time. Today I had my 3,000th visitor ever. It was someone from Slovenia.

Other countries which have visited recently include: Malaysia, India, France, Argentina, Slovakia, Germany, and Hong Kong. I'm not sure what brought you beautiful people here, but I hope you've enjoyed reading about my misery!

I went back to my old city of Daejeon yesterday to see some old friends. I drank 4 beers. My liver didn't explode or anything.

A couple pictures were taken of me while I was there. These pictures have really made me aware of what 3 months of corticosteroids have done to my face. I posted a comment on my last post about the "moon face" side effect, and that people have told me that my face is fuller or fatter, but I kinda suspected that they were imaging most of it. I figured that since they knew that I'd been sick, they were looking for changes and perhaps seeing things that weren't there. I'm starting to think maybe it's not their imagination. You might be thinking, "Sim, have you not looked in a mirror during the past 3 months? How have you not noticed this before?" I really don't have an answer to that. Maybe you get used to what you see everyday, and don't notice little changes.

Let's look at the evidence: