Fiction:

Inherent Vice, by Thomas Pynchon:

The guy who gave us Gravity’s Rainbow and The Crying of Lot 49 spent a very long time writing two huge back-to-back epics of mind-numbing complexity. Then he took a break and wrote Inherent Vice for fun. It’s the early 70′s in Southern California. Surfing, free love and good weed are still around, but the great party that was the 60′s seems to be fading and signs of the inevitable hangover are looming. The story follows a hippie-haired private investigator as he searches for his missing ex-girlfriend and her new man. In a style reminiscent of The Big Lebowski, the main character stumbles his way into conspiracies far beyond his paygrade, involving among other things: real estate development, drug smuggling, police corruption and dentistry.

Pynchon is my favorite prose-writer ever, and this book contains a few pages that can sink you right into a mindset you hadn’t sampled before. Plus, as his amusing side-project, it has plenty of smart, fun dialogue. Today a friend pointed out one of the better lines in Inherent Vice:

“Man, you’re one crazy white mother fucker.”

“How can you tell?”

“I counted.”

The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien

I was told that this was a series of short stories about the Vietnam War written by a guy who served there. The opening story is the most famous one, and it shares the name of the whole collection. I wrote an essay on that story in college, focusing on how O’Brien writes cyclically. Like a really good stand up comedy routine, in moments of lingering tension, old and relevant material from earlier in the story pops up again. Small phrases in the story become loaded with thoughts or emotions, and they become ammunition for later; at a tense pause in a story, O’Brien can call down a lightning strike of thought or emotion with just a couple of words.

The above were my thoughts on just one of the stories. I read another later in college and didn’t like it very much. It gave me the impression that the book was a series of unrelated stories, some of which were good and some of which were mediocre. Yesterday I picked up The Things They Carried while waiting for a friend in a book store and read the second story. To my surprise, it was practically an epilogue for the story before it (the one I wrote the essay on), drawing significantly on it and taking the feelings from it in new directions. My mind started contemplating the potential of this style over 200 pages, and I was sold.

I’m over halfway done with the book now, and all I can say is wow. It’s deliberately not about shock or tragedy or bravery or anything you can neatly package and take away. It’s about the experience of the Vietnam War, avoiding explanation and understanding, focusing instead on intense sensations and feelings.

O’Brien brings about those moments where one phrase explains a great many things at once, where you stop and think: “wow, he just communicated that in the perfect way.” Lots of books have these moments, but I can’t recall a book that has these moments in higher frequency than The Things They Carried. More than once per page. That’s more than Pynchon. It’s more than most Shakespeare. Read this book.

The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch:

If you like unapologetic fantasy novels, this is a great one. I actually read it over a year ago, but I just started the sequel, so I’m reminded of it. It follows a gang of lovable con-artists in a corrupt fantasy city as they get in waaaaaaaaaay over their heads and have to think and scheme their way out of it.

Nonfiction:

Charlie Wilson’s War, by George Crile

It was made into a movie with Tom Hanks. I haven’t seen the movie. I hear it’s relatively faithful to the book (though it can’t possibly include more than 15% of the info from the book). This non-fiction reads like fiction, like a mockumentary. This is partly due to George Crile’s writing and partly due to the simple fact that the characters involved are larger than life, or rather larger than life should be allowed to get.

This is the story of how one written-off playboy congressman and a couple of black sheep agents at the CIA tricked, outmaneuvered, strongarmed, won over or circumvented both houses of Congress, the media, civil rights groups, the heads of the CIA, the President, and several foreign countries in order  to fund a war against Soviet Russia in Afghanistan–a war no one wanted the Afghans to win. This true story is so entertaining because there is a constant barrage of amazing events that just shouldn’t be possible.

Outliers, Tipping Point and Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell

Very good books about the counter-intuitive way in which the world works. Gladwell has a very entertaining non-fiction voice, and uses it to present alternative ways of looking at how we tick. Outliers breaks down the makings of extremely successful people, from athletes to entrepreneurs. He finds some very serious patterns, and they’re not what you might think. Tipping Point looks at social phenomena, from resurgence in retro fashions to inexplicably plunging crime rates. Blink examines the mechanics of people’s ability to make snap-judgments, and why they’re usually right. I like all three books, but I’d definitely recommend Outliers most highly, then Tipping Point, then Blink.

A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson

The title says it all: from the big bang to quantum mechanics, covering everything in between. Bill Bryson is a travel writer, so this book is not only accessible to lay people, but often wildly entertaining. It covers the major scientific advances of humanity, and also the weird stories of the people making those discoveries. From stuffy aristocratic rivalries to the man who voyaged to India during British colonial times to take measurements of Venus moving across the sun, arrived late and missed it, stayed in India for 7 years to catch Venus the next time around, and had his view obscured by a cloud. This book is both illuminating and entertaining.

Twenty minutes later my wallet was gone, probably dropped. I’d had it at the door on the way in. My friends and I borrowed a few of the plastic light-rings to look around on the floor, but didn’t find it. However we did find out that storage space was rather limited at this club. I’d been on a raised stage when I probably lost my wallet. Underneath the stage were lots of storage boxes. One was hanging open and had a few hundred of those little plastic light-up rings, still in their blister packaging. Well, my wallet was gone, I was almost certainly going to stay out until the subway opened at 5:30am, and I’d been doing my share of drinking; it was time to not worry about anything and dance my way into Christmas morning.

I grabbed a double-armful of little light-up rings and started distributing them to my friends. Ours was the rave corner of the dance floor; each of our hands was a Christmas tree covered in those things. If the club staff noticed (not sure how they could miss it), they didn’t care. We were very popular with the Koreans on our section of the floor. I danced with many of them and we handed out rings to cool people. A lot of Korean girls held out their hand for a ring and gave me one of their practiced Oppa pouts, at which point I’d usually laugh and then give a ring to the girl’s boyfriend instead. I was very pleased that 20 minutes later, the boyfriend generally still had the ring and was lording it over his dance partner. Thank god. I hate princesses.

Danced until 6am then took the subway home. Got home and to bed by 7:30am. Woke up to a friend’s phone call at 10:30. Was I going to meet up and head to Xmas brunch? Uh… sure, gimme a minute. Fortunately, I’d stopped drinking early and was only minimally hungover. Headed to a friend’s apartment only a few minutes away from where I’d been the night before. The hostess had set out a brunch for 20 people. Nine came and ate heartily.Included on the guest list were my two best friends in Korea, the hostess who’s a positive acquaintance, and a list of interesting new people that ranged all over the place, including:

• A Canadian guy working as a news correspondent for an Iranian network
• A Russian guy working as an actor & set worker for a Korean TV show that reenacts historical events. He’s been in Korea for 8-ish years. His Korean and English are both rockin.
• A Korean girl who’d grown up in Paraguay and I think spent some time in the US. Now she works for a Korean investment firm in their stock analysis department.
• A Korean girl who I found out later only lived 1 year in Mexico, but was also rocking the Korean/Spanish/English combo because she worked in sales and used them at work a lot.
• One guy in his late 20’s who looked Korean, was way fluent in English but had a slight foreign-sounding accent that I couldn’t place. When I asked him where he was from he said he’d moved all over the place. When I asked him where his citizenship was, he grinned, adopted the appropriate twist in his voice, and said “Joisey.”

In general, English, Korean and Spanish were flying everywhere. I asked the Jersey guy and the Paraguayan Korean which language they usually spoke to each other in, and they said that they varied from topic to topic and sometimes from sentence to sentence between all three languages. I turned slightly green and said something like “Merry Christmas. You guys suck.”

If chilling were an Olympic sport, we could have represented five countries in it. I like to think that I had a slight edge on everyone else that day, because I’d gotten less than three hours of sleep the night before. We made a brief excursion for beer and karaoke, then returned to pillage the buffet table one last time. It had just passed midnight, and the subway was closed. The hostess was gracious enough to let me crash on the couch, since I was both too cheap and too tired to take a cab home.

The next morning (the 26th), I woke up on the couch we’d had Olympic chilling tryouts on the day before. And I had a story idea in my head. It was a good one. It was a different take on a story I’d tried to write already, and it was muuuuch better than the original. Knowing full well that I ruin stories by thinking too much about them before writing them, I bought a pad of paper and wrote my way through breakfast at a nearby restaurant. I didn’t want to take an hour-long break to hop the subway home, so instead I went to a PC-room and wrote for over eight hours.

I discovered on Monday morning that someone had found my wallet and had had a very merry Christmas with my Korean check card. I had realized Christmas morning that I should call the bank and report my card missing, but a few things got in the way: firstly, it was Christmas morning. Secondly, calling my bank and trying to verify my identity in Korean would invariably be a huge hassle. Thirdly: I was having a great time hanging out with friends. And of course, fourthly: I’d gotten less than three hours of sleep the night before. The damage came to be $350ish, $80 of which was spent on taxi rides… I applied to get the money reimbursed from the bank. Looks like I’ll hopefully get half of it or so.

New Years’ Eve was similar. Started out at the same house (actually the spread on New Years included some leftovers from Xmas). Almost everyone from Christmas was back, plus 8-10 more. Koreans add a year to their age to account for the time spent in the womb, and they all increase in age with the coming of the new year (everyone gets older on Jan 1). Jersey guy got a photoshopped image of a Korean news show sent to him. The scrolling news story said in Korean: “For all you people born in 1982: you’re 30 tomorrow.” That, as it turned out, got massive boos from 3 people. Poor guys. Hope your 20’s were good. This time we went dancing in a bar/club in Hongdae. The bar’s interior was all molded in white plastic to look like an ice cave / igloo thing. It was way cool. Old friends and new acquaintances danced together until the wee hours of the morning.

When we left the ice cave bar, roughly half of our original number went on to grab a final beer and some potato pancake while waiting for the subway to open. We’d also brought along a German and a South African that we met in the club, thus adding four new languages to our repertoire (yes, the South African added Afrikaans, Zulu and French all by himself). Went home, crashed, woke up and it was 2011.

Like, whoa.

So yesterday I decided it was time to rectify this. A Korean friend just finished her TESOL course and I said we should go do something fun to celebrate: ice skating.

First off, I can’t overstate the importance of getting tight ice skates. Similar to skiing. If there’s any wiggle room, your skate blades will  be wobbling all over the place on the bumpy ice and your bum will be repeatedly introduced to Mr. Rink.

I had loose skates on.

Now, I’ve gone in-line skating a half-dozen times or so, but wow; ice skates are so much more responsive. The Korean friend I went with had been skating 5-ish times before. Shortly onto the ice, she fell down, at which point I set my master goal for the day: not to fall down.

I did alright at it. At not falling down, that is, not at skating. I impersonated a windmill every 10 feet or so, but managed to stay up. You might call it flailing like an idiot, but I think of it as my ice-dancing routine.

After falling several more times, my companion balefully accused me of not being adventurous enough. She said if I didn’t fall down at least once, I obviously wasn’t challenging myself. So I started going faster and flailing more. I ducked down and skated between two Koreans who were holding hands, which I almost pulled off (but didn’t).

By this time, I’d figured out that everyone else’s skates went in more or less straight lines, while mine wobbled all over the place. So I got tighter ones, and things began working out much better. I could go faster and glide for longer. My Korean friend was not pleased with my lack of falling down. Some vicious shoving and skate-kicking ensued.

Then it happened.

All on my own, I fell down.

I fell down spectacularly.

My bum hit the rink lightly, but my upper back and head whip-lashed into the ice. With that kind of form, I was lucky it was a relatively light fall, and it didn’t hurt too much. But it looked spectacular. Within five seconds of falling down, I had two skate-patrol guys at my side, asking “you okay,” in Korean and English. I said I was fine and got to my bladed feet.

But the Korean friend didn’t see my spectacular fall. She insisted it didn’t count, and that I had to fall again. I said too bad, but nonetheless kept trying funner and riskier skating stunts (like turning).

She fell a couple more times before I fell again. When I went down the next time, she laughed at me vengefully, though it was a light painless fall. Regardless, within 10 seconds, there was another yellow jacketed skate patrol guy over to help me up. What a nice guy. My companion, for all her falling, had never had a skate patrol guy come help her up. I, however, was two for two. In fact, since the first time there had been a pair of them, I was three for two.

And it held up. Each time I fell down, there was a yellow jacketed safety employee over to help me up. It was awesome. After a couple more falls, a couple more gracious visits from the skate guys, and a couple grumblings about racial privilege from my Korean friend, she finally judged: “okay, you’ve fallen enough. You can stop now.”

I’ve decided I like ice skating.

So, I took a few months off from blogging. I’m back now. Blogging will probably happen in spurts, since my work load lightens up during mid-terms/finals.

In general, instead of blogging, I’ve been reading and writing. If you still haven’t seen a copy of Voices, send me an email and I’ll get one to you.

Interesting recent stuff:

First, yes, North Korea shelled a South Korean island. It’s the first time that NK has shot artillery at a SK semi-civilian target since the Korean war (though they have sent assassin commandos into Seoul before and they have blown up a passenger airliner).

The first step to understanding how South Koreans feel about the situation is to understand that South Koreans generally operate under the assumption that there will not be a war. This is because no one has anything to gain from a war. South Korea would be crippled and North Korea would be utterly destroyed. Unless at least one side wants a war, there won’t be a war.

Now, people say Kim Jungil is old and dying and kinda crazy, so maybe he’ll just say “screw it” and start a war. Unfortunately for him, NK isn’t a monarchy; it’s a military dictatorship. He’d have to convince his military elite to get annihilated with him. I guess with some serious coolaid drinking, it could be possible, but it’s not likely.

NK is really unstable at the moment, because their dictator is dying and his chosen successor is really young & has no experience. Also, the country is broke and people are starving and foreign relations are so bad that there’s no economic bright light to be seen at the end of the tunnel.

To gain internal support, Kim Jungil is “standing up to the USA/South Korea.” Showing that he and his cadre can sink ships and shoot at towns and get away with it discourages opposition. Also, since the international world has no more sticks to use short of all-out war, they can only persuade North Korea with carrots, hence the image of North Korea as a screaming toddler which I’m sure everyone’s heard of.

South Koreans were surprised and enraged at the island bombardment a few weeks ago. The reaction was not fear of/zeal for war, but was basically “okay, how much more of this crap do they expect us to put up with?” So, the south changed its rules of engagement so that, if provoked, they can hit back harder. Hopefully Kim Jungil will get the message: “if you want to make yourself look good by shooting at us, then we will humiliate you.”

Also, the wikileaks about China’s growing annoyance with North Korea/openness to Korean democractic reunification are encouraging, though the context of how the information was obtained is a little bit suspect (it’s not like it was a Chinese internal document; it was a record of a Chinese guy talking to a South Korean).

Hopefully things settle down.

Investment Stuff!

I just did my annual investment planning, and all I can say is: wow. I have no idea what’s coming up, and the list of possibilities is really broad. This is a new feeling. For example:

- If the USA keeps printing money with low interest rates, or if all the world’s countries try to devalue their currencies, we might see really serious inflation.

- If the developed world’s consumers keep paying off debt instead of consuming, there will be an excess of goods produced and no one to buy them, which could cause really serious deflation.

- The US could get stuck in Japan-style economic stagnation which it won’t be able to escape from for a decade or more.

- Because lots of US companies have production and sales overseas, the stock market could continue to rise, even if US employment keeps sucking.

- Crappy growth prospects in developed countries might send investment money overseas, causing an investment boom in emerging markets.

- Crappy consumption in the developed world might lead to economic problems and dangerous instability in the export-dependent developing world, causing a decline in emerging markets.

- Much of the developed world is re-thinking its approach to taxation, public spending, free/fair trade, budget deficits, sovereign debt and business competitiveness. What will they decide, and what will the impacts of their decisions be? Who knows?

In all this confusion, the value of stocks, bonds and precious metals have all gone up and up and up. As the picture changes and some of the things on the above “could happen” list migrate to the “are happening” list, every conceivable investment option (including just hanging onto cash) could go way up in value or way down in value. It’s an exciting time, a time to diversify into just about everything (domestic/international/emerging market stocks, bonds, industrial/consumption commodities, precious metals, real estate, cash).

Had an awesome trip home! Actually, the fun started before I’d even left:

I worked a half-day before leaving for the airport. The day after my departure is the teacher training retreat, which is part training and mostly hangout. Tons of teachers were under the impression that I’d be going along. And I would, if I hadn’t bought tickets home.

I used to worry constantly about pissing off anyone at work. I’ve heard horror stories about employees rubbed the wrong way which fester until eventually a cadre of co-workers are dedicated to making life difficult for the foreign teacher, sometimes up to the point of the foreign teacher getting fired. This is a culture about groups; you’re either inside the group or you’re outside the group. I’ve got a fair amount of respect at work now, but it’s best to err on the side of caution.

So, on my last day, I sent an instant-message to everyone at work saying I’m not going to see my family again until 2011, so I wasn’t going home for an extra 2 days instead of going on the retreat. Also, thanks for a great year. I’ve had a good time and I’m looking forward to next year. Everyone’s been patient with me and great, so enjoy the cake. Thanks to some conscripted student labor, there was a cake in each teacher office. That went over well. Also, the note was in Korean, so now the secret’s officially out; Jeff can stumble along in Korean. I printed out all the replies to translate on the plane.

I’m now pretty well accustomed to 10-12 hour plane flights. I actually kinda look forward to them. It’s not often that I get locked in somewhere with books, movies and writing projects and nothing to distract me from them. Landed at 11:30am (the lame part of flying West => East) Berkeley was dinner out with friends, board-games, video-games and sarcasm; all the good things in life. By the time my head hit pillow at a decent sleeping hour I’d been up for ~30 hours. Slept well.

Sacramento was Persian food—mmmmmmmmmmm—Jacuzzi dips, and pool/darts/beer. On Saturday six of us decided on the perfect solution to 100-degree heat: let’s float down the north fork of the American River on innertubes (and an inflatable dolphin) with a kiddie-raft full of beer and snack food. We put in up in the hills and dropped a car 4 miles downstream at (I kid you not) Yankee Jim’s Road. Seriously. We aren’t in Oz anymore, Toto. This here’s Kansas. iPhones would not avail us. None of us had ever been on this part of the river before, so we weren’t really sure if this trip was a good or terrible idea, but at the beginning we tricked a Cyclops out of his eye and then taunted him about it…

The water was a bit low, and a lot of the time our rears were bumping over rocks in 6-inch deep (or less) water. Fortunately the flow was low enough that we could dig heels in to stop, or cling to a rock and check things out ahead.

Then we went into a rocky gorge, and things got a little exciting. Our progress consisted of sending advanced scouts down to check the mini-rapids for any long drops or fast-flowing parts. We skirted some and rode down others. I wish someone had a waterproof camera… about a mile in, the gorge was only getting more exciting, and we had a little meeting. We decided to send a vanguard down to check around the next bend. If there was no improvement, maybe we’d hoof it back to the start. The last thing we need is someone to break an arm out of cell range and a 2 mile boulder-hopping trek from Yankee Jim’s road.

Just as our vanguard returned to the group, another merry band of adventurers came whooping down the mini-rapids, also on innertubes. There were maybe eight guys. We asked them if the roughish water kept up all the way down to Yankee Jim’s road. Their field expert told us it was just another couple of bends, then it smoothed out a bit and stayed that way for the rest of the ride. He was a solidly built guy, mid-20’s, short hair, outgoing, and fearless. Everything about him yelled ex-military. And he was drunk or getting there.

We pushed on, secure in the knowledge that ex-mil-crazy-drunk guy said everything should work out fine.

After the next few bends, it did smooth out. Some. It was alternating placid segments and weeeeeeeeeee the whole way. I think we made pretty good time. When we pulled out at Yankee Jim’s, it had been nearly nine hours since putting in (just a little over 4 miles upstream).

Overall, we lost three innertubes (brought spares), the beer raft, some of the food, sunglasses, a shirt, a $40 water filter, a waterproof canvas cooler and the bruiseless quality of our behinds. But the inflatable dolphin survived! And we spent a day in cool water, beneath a 360 degree panorama of Sierra Nevada gorgeousness! What’d you do with your weekends in July? We conquered a river.

If you ask today how the trip went, three of us will tell you it was seriously great fun, and three of us will glare at you and inform you that we do not mention such things anymore…

Also saw Inception in Sacramento. It was good.

On Monday went to DMV and got my driver’s license back from expired land. Paid a little visit to my two ex-bosses. One of them whisked me into his office where, among other things, we talked about his retirement strategy. He wanted my opinion on the changes he’d made to his retirement plan since I’d left. Check. Check. Check. Looks good! Saw people and people and more people until on Thursday, grabbed a rental with two friends and headed for Denver.

Middle-of-nowhere Nevada and Utah are really pretty as long as you have air conditioning.

Got to Colorado and was surprised at the lack of picturesque peaks along I-70. It was more like road tripping through the Green Rolling Piney Mountains, which were also nice. Went through one breathtaking canyon, though. We split the 20-hour drive into 2 days, reaching Denver around 10pm on the second.

We stayed with friends and their twelve-week-old daughter. Relaxed, read books, saw the King Tutankhamun exhibit, which was really cool, and giggled back at a plush little Winston Churchill who taught us a thing or two about drooling and staring wide-eyed at everything. It was great! Can’t wait until she can talk (with words)!

Saw Bluecifer on the way out of Denver. Flew to the last stop: Seattle. The family had gathered there around my sister and her hubby and kid. Didn’t bump into Jaebom, sorry girls L. I did meet my brother-in-law’s friend who’s half Chinese and half Korean. We threw a few Korean words around. He had a strange accent. Also eves dropped a little on a Korean family at the Seattle Zoo. Good refresher.

My niece is five now and fully capable of telling us grown-ups what’s what. Did some drinking, some hiking. I spent time with the little boss. I learned that the world looks cool and exciting and tall through five-year-old eyes, and I learned that I am a chicken butt.

An expert said so.

But she’s a booger head.

So there.

First off, spending the World Cup season in a country that cares about their soccer team is awesome. I saw the Daehan Mingook (means ‘Korea’) vs Greece game with a crowd of tens of thousands of people. Was awesome (they won, too!). Their last game vs. Uruguay was heartbreaking. Lost by 1, with several near-misses. Too bad.

Zhuo came back! Yay Zhuo! Actually, it’s kinda sad because he’s moving back to the US and just arranged a layover in Seoul for 4 days. But still, any Zhuo time is good time! We went out for beer and chicken, which was great.

I convinced Zhuo to go back to our Sunday night pub quiz. Zhuo had been kinda handicapped the first time, because he was raised in China (missed out on 18ish years of obscure fact absorption). He decided the trip was worth it for the drinking and the people and the darts.

Well, when we got to the quiz, we ended up with 9 people and a team limit of 5. So we split up into a 5 and a 4. Zhuo went on the 4 and I went on the 5 (was gettin’ kinda sick of him anyway…).

As we got down to the last question, our 5-group was waaaaaay in the lead, and the last question was a bet-as-many-points-as-you-want question (final jeopardy style). The competition was fierce. The subject was geography. We knew our top competitors (our counterpart team of 4) was going all in… So we put in a pretty hefty bet, too.

Also sprach the trivia nerd: “Name at least 9 of the 14 countries that share a land border with China.”

Well, damnit.

Zhuo trashed us. He got 12 of the 14 in no time flat. We took second, though! Represent!

Unfortunately for Zhuo, he visited during my interviewing 110 kids each day week. So, monday and tuesday he went off on his own and saw awesome things like Namsan Tower (big tower on big hill in the middle of the city. 360 degree view of awesome). He also read a copy of the short story I’ve been working on and immediately drilled down on everything that I was kinda-sorta-vaguely aware needed work, and he nailed it. Things you don’t expect an ESL Phsyics major to say include: “Ayn Rand did something similar in Fountainhead. When she did it, it worked. When you did it, it didn’t. Here’s why…” I could call Zhuo “Ibsen” from now on.

You can take the boys out of Sacramento...

On Zhuo’s last night, we hopped down to Bundang and visited AJ. Sactown REPRESENT! Three people from Sacramento in one little bar just outside Seoul… Who woulda thought. It was a strange and welcome little glimpse of home. And, somewhat coincidentally, we’ll all be home in three weeks! So, there will be a Sactown reunion reunion somewhere in mid-town, assuming we can actually arrange and keep a meeting without cellphones…

One more piece of linguistic awesome. In Korean, as in English, many words can be used to modify people or things. When we say “I am sad,” it means something different than when we say “the movie is sad.” No movie ever cries, it just inspires sadness in people. Anyway, one such adjective in Korean means ‘difficult’ or ‘tough’ or ‘strenuous.’ When used on actions, it means that action is tough. When used on people, it means they are having a tough time.

It was during break time at one of our Korean classes. One of the teachers came up to a group of us, one of whom was looking a little tired.

“Hey,” She greeted us.

“Hello.”

To the guy who was looking a little tired: “Are you hard?”

*awkward face* “uh, excuse me?”

“Are you hard,” she asked again.

Oh, that was awesome. Fortunately, there was an advanced student standing there who got the whole thing, and we had an impromptu English idioms lesson. Teachers learn stuff, too.

As mentioned in the above Zhuo section, I gave my speaking exam to 530ish high school kids. Similar to last time: individual interviews, they pick the topic and I ask them questions about it. Only about a minute long per kid. I always get a few really funny/interesting/sad responses. Here’s this semester’s crop:

S: Four years ago I caught my head in a revolving door. Went to the hospital.
M: Wow. Did that hurt?
S: No. I was unconscious.
M: When was the last time you went through a revolving door?
S: Four years ago, when my head caught. I’m done now.

S: If I had a million dollars, I would give it to you. *Big Smile*
M: …

S: Korea has only 2 woman fighter pilots. I want to be the third.
M: That will take a long time… Ya know you might be fifth or sixth by then.
S: No. Third.
M: …

S: My hero is Lee Yo-Hwan. He’s famous Starcraft player.
M: What race does he play?
S: Terran.
M: What was his best year?
S: Maybe 2003.
M: He is very creative?
S: Yes.
M: We call him “Boxer” in English.
S: Oh! You know?
M: Tell me about his best game.
S: Boxer was losing set. Lost two games. Then won three. Very difficult!
M: Role models are people we learn from. What is one important thing you have learned from Boxer’s example?
S: Vultures.

S: My favorite time was when I lived in Dubai.
M: Sounds like fun! Why did you like it so much?
S: My dad lived with us. He lives abroad for work a lot.
M: How much do you see him now?
S: Once a year.
M:  

M: What’s your topic.
S: My favorite places. I lived in the USA for 7 years. We moved all over the place, so it’s like kinda hard to decide which city I liked best. Probably Seattle, cuz I lived there the longest and I still have lotsa friends there.
M: Thanks. Next.

M: What’s your topic.
S: I just moved here from Singapore. I have no idea what’s going on.
M: You know finals are next week, right?
S: Yes. That will maybe be bad.

S: My hero is Einstein.
M: Why?
S: He’s smartest scientist ever.
M: If you could ask him one question, what would it be?”
S: Your wife… pretty?

There were a few more good ones, but I can’t recall them now. See, doesn’t that make ya feel good after the Japanese prison thing?

We slept in on a Sunday and then answered the eternal question: what to do today?

After some pondering, it was decided:

Let’s eat a giant western breakfast and then hate Japan for a day.

Sounds good.

I called up a third amigo and had the following conversation:

A3: What’s up?

M: Big western breakfast, then an afternoon of Japan hating.

A3: Yeah?

M: Yeah.

A3: Sounds awesome. When do we start?

Breakfast was solid, as it always is at the Wolfhound in Itaewon (eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast, beans and real coffee – mmmmmmm).

Then off to Japan-hate central: Seodaemun Prison!

So, what is Seodaemun Prison, you ask? I’ll let the sign give you the intro (click on it and zoom in):

So, Seodaemun Prison was built by its inmates to house resistance members, activists and generally troublesome Koreans during its occupation by Japan. It was used to house a total of 40,000 people over the period of its existence. While I’m sure it takes some serious cajones to be a resistance fighter against Imperial Japan, we weren’t here for aggrandizement of patriots. Just bring on the Japan hate, please (although one Korean woman apparently lead a resistance organization in Seoul from inside the prison – that’s badass!).

Right at the entrance was a carved flag-printing block, which would have been a very unfortunate thing to be caught with, since owning a Korean flag was illegal and punishable by imprisonment.

They’d set up manikin reenactments in a lot of the various processing rooms:

Beatings, electrocution and jabbing things under fingernails. I skipped out on taking a picture of the “sexual torture” room. While I imagine these things would be set up based on personal testimony of the 40,000 people who went through the prison, I can’t say with certainty that they aren’t exaggerated…

But the stand-up boxes certainly looked uncomfortable:

That bottom plank segment is only about 6 inches wide. Standing in one of these would certainly start to suck after a few hours… days, maybe?

This one speaks for itself pretty well:

The above-mentioned badass Korean resistance leader was kept in one of these underground cells. You can look at the people for a sense of scale. The cells are too small in every dimension for an adult to stretch out straight. Lovely.

Here’s a memorial for the people who died inside.

It’s right next to the gallows house, but they didn’t allow pictures of that. While not quite as stilling as a concentration camp crematorium, the gallows house was up there.

Overall, the prison grounds are kinda pretty now.

Zhuo and Amigo3 and I got some refreshments at a little shop just outside the prison and reminisced about Japan’s other less-than-savory deeds, including:

- Forcing Korean women to accompany the Japanese army in WWII as professional rape victims.

- Forced POW labor (and dangerous/malnutritious living conditions).

- A whole slew of war crimes/rights violations in China and Southeast Asia, among which are accusations of killing lots and lots and lots of noncombatants in creative ways.

Now, yes, I’m singling out Japan on this one (it was, after all, Japan-hate day). Other countries that we think of as generally upstanding have done plenty of unsavory things… English colonization, Native American genocide, the holocaust, nuking Japan (twice), slavery, apartheid, carpet-bombing Dresden for no good reason.

The big difference between most of these and Japan’s WWII-era no-no’s is that in all the other cases there’s been admission of wrongdoing. I read about biological warfare vs. Native Americans in my elementary-school textbooks. Similar stories with slavery and racism. Right after WWII, Germany went through Nuremberg, which was pretty cathartic, and has since reinvented its national identity and moved on. Dresden is a stretch, but at least the general who planned it got demoted for it. The US justified its use of nukes in Japan by saying that ensuring Japan’s surrender cost less lives than a land invasion would have… but there’s still widespread sentiment that even if it was justified, it certainly wasn’t classy. There’s a better case to be made for the dropping of the Nagasaki bomb being too soon after Hiroshima to be justifiable. The Belgian Congo also comes to mind…

Anyway, Japan has admitted shockingly little (any?) of the above unsavory things from its WWII and colonial occupation days, and apologized for very little (none?) of it. Specifically, I am aware that many of the Korean women forced into sexual slavery during WWII have been demonstrating and petitioning the Japanese government to recognize them and issue an apology, and that they still haven’t gotten it.

I’ve spoken to Koreans about this, and they’ve told me that the opinion of Japanese people they know is generally: ‘it was a long time ago; move on.’ First of all, people who suffered from it are still alive. Second of all, if it was a long time ago, why can’t Japan come clean about it? As time goes by, it should get easier and easier and easier…

While spending time in Korea has definitely put an edge on this feeling, it’s one that I’ve had for a long time. The two main reasons I chose to live in Korea over Japan were that 1) Korean has a phonetic alphabet, and 2) The idea of living in a country that can’t admit its epic-scale transgressions after the whole rest of the world knows about them just doesn’t sit well with me.

Stay tuned for the next post; it’s already written. Just waiting a few days to put it up. It focuses on a wide range of much lighter topics, promise!

I noticed that I was spending more money on useless stuff than I’d originally planned on (coffee shops, eating out and gadgets mostly). So, for the month of June, I decided to track all my spending and make an effort not to waste any money (exempting social events). I’m pretty sure I’ll end up eating better, getting more done and not really missing the little stuff I was wasting cash on before. I was spending a lot at coffee shops, because I could bring my netbook and get writing done. Now I’ve started hanging out on park benches instead, which is working out well.

I found out that every time I change my hairstyle at school, it’s favorite water-cooler talk for a week. A couple weeks ago, an English teacher approached me quietly and informed me that another teacher wanted to set me up on a blind date with an American who was also over here teaching. I decided to have a little experiment. I said I’d think about it, and what was her name, and don’t mention it to anyone, b/c I don’t really need the whole school talking about it. It was three days before another teacher came up to me and said ‘so, I heard you’ll be going on a blind date.’ This means that most teachers probably knew about it within two days, maybe one. I reined in the experiment, said I’d pass on the date. Two days later, a student–who isn’t even one of my students–asked me why I didn’t go on the date. Whoa. Secrets don’t exist here. Noted.

I’m making vacation plans for my two weeks off this summer. So far it looks like late July-early August. Seattle/Sacramento/Berkeley is the current plan, with a possible road-trip in there somewhere. Also, my driver’s license expired. Since every minute of my time back in the US will be precious, I’ll either head to DMV before it opens, or I’ll bring drinks/snacks/boardgames, and we are having a waiting-in-line-at-DMV celebration! That’ll be a new one…

So, I imagine everyone knows that a SK warship got sunk in March, and ever since the international investigation announced it was pretty definitely due to a North Korean torpedo, North Korea has gotten all pissy and launched test missiles and made threats and cut off ties with South Korea and claimed that every time someone in Seoul sneezes, it’s a provocation of war.

Things on the peninsula are definitely worse than they’ve been for… well… a few years at least.

While my knowledge of all this is pretty sketchy, let’s just back up a bit. In 1998, SK president Kim Daejung started the sunshine policy, which can basically be summed up as: let’s be unconditionally nice to North Korea. Spawned off of this were things like food aid, ceasing to spread anti-NK propaganda across the border, and several joint economic experiments (opening a resort just North of the DMZ to SK citizens, for example).

While this didn’t stop NK’s nuclear & missile tech projects, it did make Korean relations much more civil and boring. In addition to the obvious niceties, this was also hugely beneficial for SK’s economic development, especially attracting foreign investment.

SK’s next president, Roh Moohyun, kept up the sunshine policy in a big way.

Then along comes the current SK president, Lee Myungbak in February of 2008. Lee says that the policy of aid to North Korea should be continued… as long as NK dissolves its nuclear weapons program and is generally more chill and happy-go-lucky. He removed the “unconditional” backbone of the sunshine policy.

In July of 2008, a SK woman wandered out of the above-mentioned SK-friendly resort in North Korea. She wandered onto a neighboring NK military base and got shot dead by NK guards. SK demanded an investigation. NK said that if the woman hadn’t been in the wrong place and hadn’t tried to run away from soldiers, she wouldn’t be dead. Her fault. No investigation necessary. SK ceased allowing its citizens to go to the resort (which in turn cut off a significant flow of desperately needed cash into NK).

In 2008, six-party NK-disarmament talks (SK/NK/US/China/Japan/Russia) appear to be going well. Toward the end of ’08, they broke down (apparently b/c of NK/US disagreements), and in mid-’09, NK announces it’s facilities are back up and running and it’s got big-bad-nuke potential just over the horizon.

In November ’09, there’s a naval skirmish, probably resulting in a few dead NK sailors, and definitely some injured pride.

A SK warship goes down in March ’10… NK is blamed… There is much yelling, every sunshine-policy-spawned relationship between the two Koreas gets cut. We’re back to the 90′s, but with some fresh bitterness. Okey Dokey.

Big Question: Does this mean war?

Short Answer: Probably not.

The best explanation for this that I’ve heard yet is: “before there’s a war, someone has to want a war.”

A war would be devastating for SK’s economy, in no small part because Seoul is damn close to North Korea. A war would also result in lots of dead people and generally no fun.

A war would end the existence of North Korea and would end the ultra-prosperity of everyone in its tiny aristocratic ruling class. I’ve heard worries that since Kim Jungil is probably sick and doesn’t have much time left, maybe he just wants to take everything down with him. Even if this were true, the government and military are run by individuals who have a whole lot to lose.

Smaller Question: Why is all this happening?

The short answers are, in my opinion:

1) SK’s abandoning the sunshine policy has hurt NK. They are showing that they will not be hurt without hurting back (yes, even though SK just stopped giving them stuff for free…)

2) Even though NK is desperately poor and unable to feed its own people, one of its main founding ideals is isolationism/self-sufficiency. Giving concessions for foreign aid would openly contradict the ideology that NK touts to its own people 24/7 (TV programs, music, marches, holidays, more marches, radio broadcasts, more marches…). Also, in their current debilitated state, NK probably feels that the only way to ensure its continued existence is by maintaining a strong military offensive capability. And they just might be right about that…

3) NK doesn’t need to go to war to hurt SK. Since the international investigation announced that NK sank the Cheonan, the value of my paycheck has dropped by 10% and the SK stock market has been less than peachy. I imagine tourism will also take a hit.

Cultural Note:

Since moving here, I have become aware of a cultural phenomenon I think of as “open verbal dishonesty.” If a speaker and a listener both understand something to be untrue, then it isn’t a lie; it’s just a different form of communication.

I’ll give you an example. The village doctor on a small rural island offered to take me out to dinner (he wanted to hang out and practice English). Okay. During dinner, he asked me what my favorite Korean foods were. When I told him, he said “Ooh! Those are expensive! What other Korean foods do you like?” He looked at me like I’d just said something really rude. I told him I also really liked this spiced rice porridge, which is really cheap but often really good.

Ten minutes later there was rice porridge on the table. He wasn’t asking me what my favorite foods were. He was asking me what food he should buy for me, and in the strict sense of the word, he was expecting me to lie. When I honestly named expensive foods, that was rude.

Most Koreans I have talked to take anything their governments say with a grain of salt. Here’s a policy change I read about on the internet (second-hand, so I’m not sure of its validity): during the time of swine-flu fear, an important government building announced that it was no longer taking children or foreigners on its tours, due to swine flu fears. More specifically, they were concerned that children should be protected from the risk of the disease and that foreigners might have a difficult time getting medical treatment.

Let’s break this down. As a foreigner employed here, I’m covered by the same healthcare system as every other Korean, and all Korean doctors get their med-school education in English, so there’s no communication problem. Also, the people who work in the government building are ultra-important desk-jockeys. The visiting kids spend 5 days a week in germ-exchanging cesspools (schools) and the foreign tourists are more likely than average to have acquired the disease overseas and brought it in.

Who exactly needs to be protected from whom, here?

Protecting your government workers from high-risk swine-flu carriers might be reasonable. But coming out and saying so would be rude… So the kids and the foreigners are excluded for their own protection, of course.

The point I’m trying to get across is that it’s part of the cultural value system here to place higher importance on words’ impact than on their strict dictionary-based honesty. In fact, bending the truth for someone else is a courtesy (the proper thing to do here when someone gives you a compliment is to deny it). And if the person you’re speaking to understands both the dictionary definition of your words and their intended impact, then it’s not deception at all; it’s just a normal chat.

Expand this concept to international politics… And life gets interesting. I’m not saying that Korean political rhetoric is more hollow than Western political rhetoric (because that’s a tall order).

But it’s somehow different…

See? Isn’t “before there’s a war, someone has to want a war” such a simpler way of putting it? I’m not particularly worried about the prospect of a reignited Korean War. That said, weirder and stupider things have happened. If you’re a foreigner living in Korea, it’s a good idea to check out your government’s emergency evacuation plan.

I woke up at the couchsurfers’ and was showered, changed, fed and out the door by noonish.

I hopped a bus from Gwangju to the furthest southeastern city on the peninsula: the little fishing city of Mokpo, also the gateway to the western islands. From the intercity bus terminal, I caught a regular bus to the ferry terminal, set on making it to the island before the day was out. On the steps of the ferry terminal was an ajuma (middle-aged woman) who asked me where I was going. When I told her Heugsando, she said the last ferry had already left. I’d have to wait until tomorrow, and she just happened to have motel rooms to rent.

I told her I wanted to eat food first, which did not please her one bit, since there were doubtless other motel ajumas on the prowl. Then I went into the ferry terminal and verified that there were in fact no more ferries today. Never trust motel owners. I also picked up a ferry schedule so I could choose a time for tomorrow. The ferry schedule made no sense, saying it would take me 6 hours to get to the nearest island, with stops, breaks, and opportunities to catch boat tours around other islands in between (turns out my ferry schedule was a ferry-tour schedule… oops). So, I decided to go with the motel owner’s suggestion: taking the first ferry at 7:50am. By the time I got settled in my room, it was about 4:00.

There was a big hill in the middle of the town, with trees and little pagodas along it. I decided there would probably be good photo ops from up there, but the sun was getting close to slipping behind the mini-mountain. The race was on!

Still not sure if this sign means "place to fall in love," or "place to get it on."

After the climb, I was good and tired. Grabbed some food, worked on some writing and watched some TV until sleepy time.

Day 4: Heugsando

Yup. I made it to the ferry at 7:50 am. It stunk. Bought some pastries, mixed nuts and coffee at the mini-mart across from the terminal. The ferry had no observation deck, just a little rear deck for loading/unloading; it smelled and sounded like engine. The ride was comfy enough, though. I asked a bunch of the people around me where they were headed to and memorized which ones were going to the same island as me, b/c the PA was really hard to decipher. I got into Heugsando at about 10:30am. I headed straight for the minbaks (basically, people convert their houses into hotels, renting out each room with mats to sleep on and a shared kitchen).

If there had been any doubt that I was in rural Korea, the first minbak owner clinched it. He was probably early-50′s. I knocked and asked him if he had a room. Generally, the reaction to my asking for stuff in Korean is one of amazement or appreciation or hey-look-what-the-monkey-can-do! Not here. The minbak guy responded to my question about the room with something I didn’t understand. Then, when I politely informed him that I didn’t quite get all that, he gave me a look of “dude, you’re seriously gonna make me say it again?”

Turns out he was booked up, which he communicated on the third try with “try the house next door.”

Next door, minbak owner 2.0 was similarly unimpressed with my lack of Korean fluency. It was awesome! But, despite my crappy lingual skills, he had a room for me. I asked him what time the bus around the island stopped running, and he shrugged. Well, I imagined the bus driver would know.

The island had one circular road and–you guessed it–one bus. I grabbed some lunch and some snacks for the bus and went to hang out at the bus stop. There was an older ajumma (middle-aged woman) waiting at the stop. I smiled at her as I sat down, ready for a standard-issue bitter ajumma look (lots of ajummas stare disapprovingly at foreigners on public transportation as a passtime). Instead, this ajumma gave me pieces of dried squid to eat. Best ajumma ever. I thanked her. An early-40′s married couple joined us. They’re from near Gwangju. They apologized for not speaking English. I apologized for sucking at Korean. They were more than happy to chat using miniscule words and bastardized grammar, and the Ajumma soon joined in, too. They asked me why I’d chosen this island, not the nearby and more famous Hongdo. I said it was because most of Hongdo is closed off and only accessible by boat tours. Scheduling boat tours and finding rooms on basically uninhabited islands are scary for someone with my Korean skills. They told me everything I needed to know about the bus route: how often, when it stopped, which direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise on the one road) it went at what time, etc.

The bus ride around the island was gorgeous. The windows were dirty, and the ride was really bumpy, so I only snapped off a couple pictures. I got the driver to let me off at a mountain about 80% of the way through the island circuit. Got some great shots from there before my camera battery died. I walked from the mountain to a village just across the bay from the ferry terminal. Here I pulled out the laptop and started doing some more writing.

This didn’t last long, because a mid-40′s Korean guy came up to me and invited me fishing. I got a weird and mega-clingy vibe from him, but what the hell? Why not?

I went fishing with him and his friend. His sister-in-law was driving past. She stopped and gave us all rice cakes. Sweet! I also ate some nearly-raw shellfish and something like makgoli. I say something like makgoli, because it came in an old water bottle, was obviously homemade, looked like river mud and was just as thick.

We didn’t catch anything. I said I had to head back to town; I was meeting friends (this is almost true, as you’ll see later). Clingy guy said he’d drive me in his car, so I could stay a bit longer. I did.

Then it comes time to go. Clingy guy motions me to the car, stows a few fish that someone else caught in the trunk, and we’re off… in the opposite direction from town.

This is a problem. I reminded him that I was needed to go to my minbak, which was next to the ferry terminal. Then I informed him that the ferry terminal was behind us. He nodded that he understood, which is when I started to get creeped out, and recalled that I was alone on a tiny island 10,000 miles from home, with some weirdo who was knowingly taking me in the exact opposite direction of my hotel room. I asked him why we were driving in the wrong direction. He mumbled something in almost-English which he was obviously okay with me not understanding.

We drove up the switchback road seen in the above picture. I told him he could do a three-point turn on any one of the switchbacks, and let him see that he was pissing me off. At the top of the hill is a wide intersection. I decided that if he drove through it, I would yell at him, tell him to stop right now and let me out, threaten him, and then if he kept driving, I’d punch him and put the car in neutral.

Good thing he stopped. At the top of the hill was a lookout spot where a bunch of people were hanging out. He pointed to the view and smiled. He wanted to show me this special spot on his island. I was pissed. Very slowly, I told him in Korean that it was very beautiful and that I had already seen it this morning.

I stopped being worried for my safety at this point; the sad guy would just do anything to hang out with the foreigner for a little longer. Before I got back in the car I asked him in my slow and angry voice if we were going to the hotel. Then I asked him if he was sure we were going to the hotel. He said yes.

Then he took me toward the hotel. Then he turned off to stop by his house, saying “five time. Just five time (minutes).” My god… We stopped by his house. His kids were too scared to meet me. He gave me soju and rice candy. When 5 minutes was up, I said it was time to go, and he took me back to town. In front of a random minbak which I said was mine, I got out. He asked if we could hang out again before I left. I told him he’d lied to me twice and then I walked away.

That was really creepy.

I had dinner with the town doctor, who showed off his English to his sister and brother-in-law. They appeared used to this. The doc asked me beforehand not to speak any Korean to them… He was buying dinner, which was a really good chicken and ginseng stew, so I culturally humored him. I wanted to get the sister and brother-in-law alone to ask if he takes them out to dinner with foreigners often, but I didn’t get the chance. I’m pretty sure the answer is yes, as they seemed rather unimpressed with me, except on the two occasions where I bypassed the doc’s no Korean request and talked to them directly.

After dinner, I headed to a little public deck with a view of the harbor. There were a bunch of elementary/middle-school kids hanging out up there. When I got there, one of the kids said “hey, it’s a foreigner,” in respectful-style Korean, so I said “you’re right,” back at him, which got a big “oooooooooooooooh!”

I pulled out my laptop to do some more editing, and I heard the kids start speaking to each other in English. I recognized this as revving up to talk to the foreigner. Happens on subways a lot in Seoul. At this point, I had pretty much had my fill of Koreans starving for foreigner attention and English practice, so I ignored the kids’ impromptu English symposium and focused on my editing.

With all of her friends watching, an 8-ish year old girl walked up to me and said “Hello.”

I said “Hi.”

She said “Do you like cookies?”

I said “Uh, yeah.”

Then she gave me a cookie, smiled, waved and went back to her friends.

I edited the story, ate my cookie and was happy with Korean kids again.

When I got back to my minbak, the minbak owner decided he liked me now. I told him I’d had dinner with the doc b/c he wanted to practice his English. Minbak guy laughed at this. He set up my floormat while I said “I can do it… Really, I can do it myself.” Then he showed me how to use the TV remote. What a guy!

Day 5: The return

I got up, put on clothes that were utterly dirty and rode one ferry, two buses and a subway for 8ish hours. Rockin’ day that ended at home-sweet-home in my very own bed!