fin

I finished my finals and my papers last week, including a mammoth sit-in to finish my final paper. I'm 95% proud of one, 90% proud of the next, and 75-80% proud of my all-nighter paper -- I'd done the reading and planning beforehand, but then typing it ended up being more time consuming than I'd expected.

Partly because, over the last two months, my computer had been slowly getting slower and slower, until by the time of my all-nighter paper blusterschlutz, it was running somewhere around 20% of its normal speed, and I had to switch between the internetz, where I was searching places like the CIA factbook, the OECD library, KOCIS and NationMaster, for comparative statistics on Korea's performance in various metrics like educational achievement and Gender Inequality Measure (I can't accurately remember what it's called right now -- the old one, the "gender empowerment measure" was easier to remember). I can't be arsed to look it up right now either, because flipping around on an ipad is a little more of a pain than flipping around on a laptop. Funny thing about them is that Korea went from 68th in the world on the Gender Empowerment Measure (which had more emphasis on women reaching elite positions like CEO-type and government representative type roles), Korea took a leap to 15th in the Gender Inequality Thingy, which has more emphasis on access to education and adequate health care. I'm not sure how reproductive freedom measures in, given that it just became possible to get morning-after pills without a prescription in Korea...but at the cost of birth control pills being prescription now... which would be OK, maybe, if we didn't still hear stories about doctors lecturing women on the choices they make with their bodies...

So while a Facebook friend kindly offered to help me out with my computer's failure to restart after I reformatted it (Thanks, David. I appreciate your offer, and I'll buy you a beer sometime even though I didn't take you up on it), I brought it into the authorized service people at Yongsan Electronics Market, because I'm hoping they can see to it that the little bastard is running at 1000% speed again by the time I get it back, and that's a little more touchy than the boot record thingy. And if you need service done on your maccy stuff, the authorized service people are not in the main iPark building, but the older market area behind it, where you can find a cinema that ALWAYS has tickets available, and better prices on electronics than anywhere else in Seoul. If memory serves, the Macbook Air there was around 200 000 won cheaper than it was at the Frisbee store in Myeongdong... but memory might not serve. I might be comparing the slow model and the fast model or something, so don't quote me on that, and then get back to me with angry butthurt "you led me on a bum steer" type comments. But I WILL be buying my next mac product at the Daihwan Computer Shop in the Yongsan market, next door to Twosome Place in the Jeonja Land building.

Anyway, Mac also has a new macbook pro coming out with a fancy high-definition screen, but after carrying a 15 inch macbook pro around in my backpack for a whole semester, I'm leaning toward an air (I played around with one at the store, and I think I have a technology crush) for my out-and-aboutsies, and a desktoppy thing (maybe a mini-mac) for home and video editing and that kind of business.

Blogging with an i-pad and a (nifty) wireless keyboard is a bit of a hassle compared to laptoppy work, so expect mostly bits and pieces until it's easier for me to cut and paste things, and embed things, and return to the full glory of blogoseyo... I owe some people an apology and a retraction for the "Gendered Spaces" post, in which I stepped in it, big time... and that deserves a proper write up. Once I have MacBookOseyo back.

but I'm back, in a sense... and I'm glad to be.

Later!