Ooh ooh ooh! More Cirque!

I found clips online!

This is one of my favourite ones. The toys are called diabolos -- they're a juggling toy, similar (in a lot of ways) to a yo-yo, but bigger, and cooler-looking when you're in Cirque du Soleil.




This is a clip of the contortionist in curtains I described earlier.




The skinship act--in my show, it was a little different than this, but amazing, absolutely amazing:

Survey of the day.

Put your answer in the comments. They'll show up soon.

Question:

To you, what would be the coolest "first thing people say when your name is mentioned" possible?

For example, when somebody says "Hey, do you know Rob?"
I wish people answered "Rob? That guy enjoys his life so much, it makes me enjoy my life more, too."

I don't know if that's ACTUALLY what people say, but I sure wish it were.

What about you? What do you wish people said at the mention of your name?

(My runner up: "Rob. Yeah, he sure is rich.")

Cirque Du Soleil

Let it be known that Cirque du Soleil (Circus of the Sun) is one of the most remarkable entertainment companies in the world. It's the high-art version of a Chinese Circus (known as the best in the world, which I saw in Shanghai) -- instead of just stunts and cool costumes, it's all tied together conceptually, with themes and choreography and characters and some (highly symbolic) storytelling.

Now I am a sucker for circuses -- just to be clear. I saw a Chinese-style circus in North Korea, and as soon as the lady with the plate balanced on a stick balanced on another stick held in her jaw, started swinging through the air on a trapeze without losing grip of the stick in her jaw, or upsetting the long stick balanced on that stick, or the tea set balanced on top of that stick, well, I was sold. Heck, I wasn't just sold, I was six years old again.

Cirque Du Soleil takes that kind of "golly gee whiz" amazing-ness and adds cool costuming and choreography -- there was a part where the protagonist (the girl in orange below), and singer, sits, and groups of clowns in white run around her banging on progressively larger drums, perfectly evoking a thunderstorm, like rainy day at home, alone with one's imagination, transitioning into the next jaw-dropping set of acrobatics. That kind of stuff didn't show up in a regular circus, until Cirque du Soleil came along. They'd just throw some clowns on stage to distract people while they set up the trapeze. I liked this better. The music was all original, and. . . just wow. (*Plus, Cirque is a Canadian company, from Montreal, so that gave me bragging rights for a good, oh, three minutes!*)

The whole thing began with a girl putting on her imagination, in the form of a clown's purple hat. You can see her here, about to put the hat on.

Then, all the normal rules for the world, and her (totally) mundane house/nuclear family arrangement, fly toward the ceiling, and it's imagination time! (With the music, the way her whole house started to float when the hat touched her head, was an immediate entry into the world of awe. Just like that, I was, once again, six years old.





I loved it so much I bought the DVD, just so I could post a few pictures and show you an inkling of what I saw.

Disclaimer: I don't own Cirque du Soleil or the rights to these images, I'm posting them for pure fun and information, not for profit; if you like what you see, go see the show. Seriously. Go see the show. Hopefully that endorsement will cancel out my mild copyright infringement.

There were a bunch of elements in the show that involved so much speed and motion that to show pictures wouldn't do them justice, so I'll just say that you're only seeing a very small bit of what I saw.









This was probably my favorite element of the show. A woman, a contortionist, hung from the ceiling, wrapped in these two long pieces of red silk. At first, when she appeared, she was invisible, covered by the red cloths, in an image that struck me as primal -- almost foetal -- and then she came out dressed in a leotard exactly the colour of the cloth and the light, so that she seemed nude (in keeping with the sense of birth, and primal life), stretched between the sky and the earth in these fantastic, bent-around, straining shapes, moving between gorgeous frozen-ness and surprising tumbles up and down the red lifeline. It made me think of the old greek myth about the three sisters who cut each person's thread when their life is through, her twists and bends, moving up and down that blood-red line, slowly working her way down to the end.








When she finished her stretches, I felt like her journey had completed; she wrapped the silk into a noose and hung by her neck, and the silk cloth lowered her closer to the ground, until one of the lead clowns (the one in purple, helping the girl put on her hat above) took her and carried her away. She never touched the floor, and if she had, I don't know what I would have done, after seeing her stretched between the top and bottom of the silk cloth for such a perfect seven minutes.

Umm, self-explanatory. Just look at these guys!

These guys were tossing each other through the air like cheerleaders, except more intricate, more dangerous, and more wow. (Can wow be an adjective? Just for today?)

Then, when I watched the show, they were in a line, passing the light ones from one pair to the next one, with the light ones doing a flip in the air before coming down, head-first into the next pair's hands. One of them nearly fell -- he came down at the wrong angle, or misjudged where to place his hands, or something, and we watched the three performers scramble to stop the small one from landing, head-first, on the ground. The strangest thing is, seeing that wrinkle, that one imperfection, made the rest of the performance more exciting -- it reminded everyone in the room that these were humans, normal humans made of meat and bone, and not just costumed creatures made of air, imagination and wonder. If that guy fell, he might have broken his neck, and some of those performers did their acts three storeys above the ground, some without harnesses.

Exactly because of that imperfection, the Shanghai Circus, of the ones I saw, was the least perfect, but also the most exciting -- there were several spots where someone almost lost balance (while blindfolded, walking around the outside of a hoop-shaped cage set inside a large, rotating ring) and fell two storeys. People in the crowd shrieked, and for the rest of that act, and also while they had eight motorcycles whirling around inside a steel-mesh globe, everybody felt this terrifying, thrilling, "if anything goes wrong" tension.

These ones spun around in hoops. It was cool. I like this shot, because it hints at all the action and motion their act contained. Most of the circus was so dynamic and fast, or slapstick funny (which doesn't translate into written descriptions) that pictures or words can't do any justice to it at all. Sorry -- I'm totally incapable of describing a lot of this circus to you, but I still want to share it, kind of like when a four-year-old hears a joke.

I said:

"Why did the chicken cross the playground?"

"To get to the other slide."

Four year old says:

"So, there was a playground, and the chicken came in, and he saw, like playground things, and then, um, he's a chicken, and he saw a slide, so he went down the slide. ACROSS THE PLAYGROUND!!! HAAHAHAHAHA!!"


This next series of pictures was the achingly slow counterpoint to the rest of the show. Beautifully slow. These two are balanced on each other, using nothing but the traction of their own skin on skin. There's a word -- it originated in Japan -- called "skinship" -- it's a word for the kind of relationship that forms through touch, as well as the act of touch, as used to build intimacy and closeness. In this act, when I saw it, I was blown away by how aware the two performers were of each other's bodies -- the intimate, total trust that comes of performing this way together. I think it would be impossible to perform this act together without dearly loving your performing partner, at least on some level. It was incredibly powerful to see such intimacy expressed in feats of balance, strength and flexibility. I'm still kinda speechless (but not TOO speechless).

This is a sequence -- you've seen acrobats go from the ground to balanced, hands on hands, but these two did it in slow motion. It was amazing to see.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

I discovered a great spaghetti restaurant this week. These days, a restaurant needs to have five our six great dishes I've tried, just to crack my top five favourite restaurants in the neighbourhood. Boy I love my life!

I'm also still writing regularly, making some friendships, and finding my way around. I'm studying Korean more than I was before (though still not as much as I should).

A girl just sat next to me in the PC room, and she smells EXACTLY like one of my ex-girlfriends. It's almost frightening how evocative smell can be -- brings back memories as quick as a brick.

The other day an old man, drunk and stinking of soju, and wearing the traditional, ancient Korean peasant field-worker's outfit, came up to me and my friend, shook my hand, tried all his English out, and then gave me an alcohol stinking hug. It was fantastic, in its own odd way. I've witnessed four car accidents since I moved to this neighbourhood, and about a dozen shouting matches.

I don't know why but, in keeping with my people-watching habit, for some reason, watching people argue always gives me a kick. I think it's a bemused curiousity with the way, here in the big city, there really is just no privacy anywhere, so anything that has to happen between two people, pretty much has to happen in public. Couples don't go to each other's houses, either because of cultural expectations about the appearance of virtue, or just because most young people live with their parents, and nobody wants dad coming out of the bedroom to interrupt the fight by saying "Could you two quit arguing out here? I'm balancing the checkbook!" And this means that, in dark corners of parks, on subway station steps, in coffee shop booths, you can spot people arguing, confronting each other, fighting outright, as well as getting together, falling in love, praying together, and making amends. Some of these, I've done myself.

I also, perversely, enjoy watching arguments between family members, in Korea and in Canada -- watching how people argue with the ones who know them best is just interesting to me, the way people go immediately into the usual modes (be that passive-aggressive, or sullen-silent, or loud and angry, or whatever), and especially, the way family members know exactly which buttons to push to get exactly the kind of visceral, emotional response that can only be stirred by a scratch on a raw nerve or a sensitive spot. (Saw a couple get into a fight on the sidewalk today; last week, saw two ancient hobos ready to take swings at each other. I have no idea why this is to fascinating to me, but I can't look away from the raw human-ness of it.)

Take care, all! Go see Cirque du Soleil if you get the chance. It'll be pricey, but worth it, so pony up, and be ready for a really wow afternoon!

love:

Roboseyo

King for a day

I discovered the ultimate answer to the question: "what law would you make if you were king of the world for a day?"

If I could make one law, this is it: Every high school student is required to spend one year in a different country, on a different continent (in a homestay).

Think about what kind of a young population we'd have if every young person in the country had a year's experience on a different continent, imagine how diverse the viewpoints and thinking styles would be! Imagine how impossible tribalism and bigotry would be to maintain! And I'm not just talking about first world countries -- every country. Wouldn't that be interesting? I like it.

Nothing personal, but the countries that need it most are the isolationist ones: America and Canada are too rarely exposed to a REAL paradigm shift in cultures. Island nations like Japan and England could benefit. Korea would benefit (Korea is functionally an island right now because North Korea is blocking it off from the mainland, and it's been known as isolationist all through its history: hence the nickname "The Hermit Kingdom"). Even countries like Belgium or Austria, which are surrounded on each side by different cultures and countries, would benefit from a trip to a whole other continent. It would also teach hospitality, and patience in the home countries, as each country played host to students from all over the world, even while it sent its students abroad. Students who travelled to third world countries would see the need, and it would be an immediate, urgent thing, rather than just a theoretical, distant, "Think of the kids in Africa" velleity.

There we go. That's MY way to fix the world. It would take some time to bear fruit, but wouldn't it be interesting to see how it played out?


(PS: velleity is the word of the day. Its definition is "a mere wish, unaccompanied by an effort to obtain it." -- a wish to do something that is not strong enough to take action. "oh. I should work out more often." "I should clean my room." "I should really organize my desk" "It would be nice to travel some time")

The Roboseyo code of taxes and bonuses

This is one of Rob Ouwehand's personal silly theories: the discount/tax system. It's a fun conversation topic. People's life choices ought to have financial implications: it might lead certain people to correct their behaviour. For example:

1. The stupid tax. People who do stupid things should get a stupid tax. Speeding on the highway is a ticket. Speeding in traffic, on a crowded highway, or being rude to the officer who pulls you over should be subject to a stupid tax at the officer's discretion. The stupid tax is also what you pay for things like forgetting to pay bills on time, not returning library books, etc. -- money you're paying that you shouldn't need to. SUV owners should be paying $20000/year of stupid taxes. Brand name items should have a stupid tax. . . or maybe a sheep tax . . . on them.

2. The smart bonus -- people who do things that make common sense should get the smart bonus -- people who consistently recycle, who put aside money for retirement, who buy used cars instead of new ones, etc., or avoid credit card debt, or write shopping lists to save making extra trips, should get a smart bonus.

3. The nice guy discount -- self explanatory. Just be polite, people. It's not really hard, and it makes everybody feel better. I just got a "nice guy discount" at my dentist, and managed to save a goodly bit of money! Maybe you should even be able to get "nice guy discount" vouchers for volunteering. . . but then it wouldn't be volunteering anymore, really.

4. The rude tax -- this is a big one. Rude people, if they won't care about other people because of pure human dignity, should learn to be polite because it'll hit their pocketbook if they keep pushing to get the empty seat on the bus, arguing with cashiers about prices (they don't set the prices, dumbass!), spitting in the street, and leering at young women wearing skirts.

5. The green bonus -- people who drive hybrid or low output cars, people who use public transportation, who recycle, carpool, use trash cans, conserve water and turn off lights, absolutely deserve a green bonus. SUV owners, people who drive everywhere, who buy over-packaged goods, may even need to pay a green tax. I think fossil fuels should be taxed right through the nose. As should cigarettes.

6. The sheep tax -- see "brand names" in point one. People who pay extra for brand names, people who buy celebrity gossip magazines, people who buy new clothes with each fashion season, who go to "trendy" places just to show that they're hip. Of all the taxes, this is the one that could have the most far-reaching implications, culturally (though the green bonus might be the most important one).

The sheep tax could even extend to counterculture people -- counterculture can be just as herd-ish as pop culture. If you shop at second hand stores because your friends do, if you hate certain singers or movies on principle, rather than because they suck, or get all your music or fashion choices from the "underground/indie" website/zine du jour, if you choose to dislike the Beatles or Shakespeare, for the pure sake of argument -- you're making choices based on other people's opinions, rather than focusing on what actually makes you happy, and that's just silly.

Now that I think of it, really, cigarettes deserve a stupid tax, a green tax, and a rude tax, and maybe even a sheep tax, if you started because your friends do. Can anybody think of anything that deserves to be taxed more than cigarettes and SUVs that never go off-road?

OK, now it's your turn. Post a behaviour that deserves one of these taxes or bonuses -- sound out! When you hit "post comment", I have to check it before it goes up, so you won't see it right away, but don't worry: it's there, waiting for me! Propose another tax or bonus I ought to add.

A few thoughts.

Regarding the Virginia Tech Shootings, even though every blogger in the universe is talking about it:

1. wow. Overwhelming. Sad. I don't know what to say about that kind of tragedy. For the families, I can't even imagine.

2. If the shooter had been a Spanish, Italian, German, British (that is, white) immigrant, his immigrant-ness wouldn't have mattered, wouldn't have been discussed.

3. Over here in Korea, there's a lot of shock and dismay at the fact the guy was Korean. A lot of head shaking, even some anxiety. I know if the guy had been Canadian, I would have just said, "wow. Some people in the world are messed up," and left it at that. Some of my Korean students are trying to figure out what aspect of Korean culture led to such an act. My answer has to be: none. There are fringe people in every culture; the only difference is that this guy had access to guns; sure, he fell through the cracks, but you also have to make choices, and I'd have to say, nobody but Cho himself is responsible for his making the choice to kill more than thirty people rather than to, say, take up vandalism as a hobby, or work his frustrations out on a punching bag.

4. I'm glad I wasn't in North America when it happened because I hate, hate, hate, the way North American news networks cover stories like this. The same day of the 9/11 attack, I was already desensitized to the images of the buildings falling down, because they replayed on TV again and again and again, and that's just wrong. Somebody's sticking a camera and a microphone in the face of a family member or a student who ought to be left alone to grieve, and footage is being played and replayed beyond reasonable limits, because people will watch, and advertisers will pay. Lurid. Gratuitous. Wrong.



In other, less heart-breaking news:

Once again, my friend Tamie's blog is turning out to be a goldmine. "Every activity we neglect to do which could make an outsider an insider makes us poorer." Click on the quote to read the whole entry. It's a discussion of outsiders and integration and community that sure rings true for a guy living in Korea, where I AM a visible minority.

Cool student story: I was teaching my students the phrase "butting your head against a wall", the idea of fighting against something that one could never actually change. One of my students explained that the Korean equivalent phrase is "attacking a rock with an egg" -- I LOVE that. The other one was: I taught "the pot calls the kettle black" and he said the Korean equivalent is "the dog covered in shit scolds the dog covered in dust".

I'm still happy over here, doing well, having fun. I'm in the process of getting a root canal, so my tooth is a bit delicate until the process is finished, but I'm doing well, still writing, making friends, eating good (inexpensive) food, etc..

Interesting development: my interest in movies has almost totally waned since I started writing more consistently. I just feel like I don't need them: I've got better things to do. Sure, I'll still take time for something like West Side Story, I'll watch a movie with friends, but it's no longer what I want to do with my free time.

Take care!

Rob

At the dentist.

So on Saturday, I climbed a mountain by myself. Since starting a job with less pressure and less stress, I've found myself leaning toward activities that I actually want to do, that actually make me feel better, and less inclined toward activities that are basically my various ways of responding to stress. This, of course, is a positive thing. Instead of wanting to veg out and watch a movie, I feel like reading, or writing, or getting some exercise. Or buying a calling card and trying to get in touch with people back home (nobody was home).

Today I went to the dentist, and got the first of three steps in a root canal treatment. Root canals are covered by medical insurance here, so they're fantastically cheap! (I paid 80000 won, which is about ninety dollars Canadian. . . depending on how strong the won is this week.) In other dentistry news, I now have a gold half-crown I've been running around and showing everybody I know.

Also, by being nice, and funny, and polite, I've won the affection of the entire dentist's office staff; they gave me a "nice guy discount" -- from 250-200 for the crown, and from 110-80 for the root canal. Nice.

I finished the first draft of my first novel last week, which means now I'm editing (and developing other projects). This makes me really happy.

I just watched a guy who might have been drunk, and had definitely just had his clock completely cleaned -- he was out of his mind and had bruises on his face -- get shooed off the bench in front of a restaurant. It was one of those funny situations with two loud ladies and a broom against a man who 1. didn't even know where he was, and 2. might just be extremely dangerous, if push came to shove. Fortunately, he eventually wandered off, making a butterfly-line (as opposed to a beeline) for the next nearest bench. Good thing there was a bench nearby: he was so out of his mind I wondered if he would wander right into traffic.

I opened up my old "Seoul Food Finder" food guide which, despite very poorly drawn maps, has all kinds of reccommendations for restaurants that serve up good stuff. The main drawback is simply that, as it was published in 2002, a good quarter of those restaurants have closed or moved since then. Oh well, it still has lots of great locations.

Still happy: this weekend, I just started feeling more alive again, despite never having noticed exactly when I stopped feeling alive all the time. Oh well: I'm glad it's back.

Be alive!

Have a vivid day.

love:
Rob

This is from my friend Tamie's blog.

You can see it in its original form here.



Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal
by Naomi Shihab Nye

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.

Well -- one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she
Did this.

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?

The minute she heard any words she knew -- however poorly used -
She stopped crying.

She thought our flight had been cancelled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we're fine, you'll get there, just late,

Who is picking you up? Let's call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her -- southwest.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.

Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies -- little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts -- out of her bag --
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo -- we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers --
Non-alcoholic -- and the two little girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican American -- ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.

And I noticed my new best friend -- by now we were holding hands --
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,

With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Not a single person in this gate -- once the crying of confusion stopped
-- has seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost.




***rob again

I really love the sense of community in this poem, that community can still spring out in unexpected places.

I was walking home on Thursday night after posting this poem (I'm adding to the post now), and somehow my senses just switched "on" -- I've written about that sensation before. Suddenly I was just seeing everything around, and everyone was my friend. This was unexpected, because a friend had cancelled an appointment on me that night, and that usually bums me out, but tonight, the entire world was just glowing a little, as if wet, or catching sunlight on snow crystals. I walked home as slowly as possible.

Hope you all walk home slowly sometime soon.

-Rob

Osaka!!!

So I went to Osaka recently to renew my work visa. It was very nice -- it's just an overnight stay, but a necessary part of getting and keeping a legal job in Korea. One nice thing about doing this is that the Korean consulate in Osaka is smack in the middle of one of the coolest areas in Osaka. I had to walk around for a while, after handing in my form, to find a reasonably priced hotel, but after that, I had to wait overnight before my Visa was ready, so I just pretty much had time to kill for one night.

Now, last time I did an Osaka visa run, I wandered around all evening by myself, ending up with nothing to show for it except sore feet. This time, things went much better. Personally, I don't like travelling unless it includeds 2 elements:

1. food
2. people

If I travel alone, I'm not a happy cat, and if I don't enjoy the food, I'll have a sour taste in my mouth when I get back (har har har). That's why malaysia was so great to me: I was travelling with Anthony and Amy, my awesome coworkers, and I was eating fantastic food like, every single meal. Well, my first time in Osaka, all I really knew was that a lot of Japanese noodle dishes include buckwheat, one of my two allergies. This meant, since I couldn't read Japanese, I had to wander around looking at the picture menus outside restaurants to try and find a restaurant where the dishes looked like they didn't have grey noodles, and wish for the best. Plus, I was travelling alone.

This time, I was sitting in a Starbucks when a white dude swooped in on a seat as soon as a Japanese lady left. Turns out, his name is Paul and he is from Vancouver. He'd lived in Osaka for four years, so we had a nice, two-hour long conversation about living, as Western Canadians, in Korea and Japan. It was pretty fun. Then, before he left to meet his friend, I asked him the crucial question:

"Do you know any good places to eat around here?"

"Sure. Let me show you my favourite sushi place, and another place you gotta try."

SWEET!

So I went to a really delicious, inexpensive sushi place -- sushi can be two kinds. Pay a big price for "all you can eat" and they'll keep feeding you until you're stuffed, but you get what you pay for at a place like that. Low price = low quality and the worst cuts of the fish. There's also "all you can afford" sushi -- where it comes on revolving places that run around a track, and you can pick off different ones, and pay according to the colours of the plates you pick off. This adds up quickly, especially if you're hungry, and (like me) can eat sushi like candy. But Paul showed me a nicely priced place, and I ate fantastically my first night.

Then, later that night, I was wandering aimlessly again (a common practice among those who don't know the best places to hang out in a neighbourhood), and crossed paths with another fella whom I'd spotted several other times, on the flight, and then also at the Korean consulate. He was also living in Seoul, and doing a visa run. As we started chatting, it seemed like we had quite a lot in common. He and I both love writing, think along similar lines, and had similar upbringings.

Well, we just kept on chatting, about the people walking by, about Korea, about our life stories. We ate Japanese style ramen at a little place, spotted a hobo sleeping in a phone booth, and then, as we walked by an empty sort of plaza/courtyard, we spotted something fantastic.

Out there, in the middle of the courtyard, were about twenty-five kids -- teenaged or early twenties -- in mildly disorganized groups, dancing their hearts out! They didn't seem organized, there wasn't any instructor apparent; they just danced, practicing sequences, giving each other tips, some playing music and some moving to the rhythm in their heads. Some were extremely talented, others only moderately so.

I'm told there are, what amounts to street-dancing clubs, in some of the poorer countries in south Asia, too -- just dancing for the joy of it, for the fun, for the escape, maybe, but whyever they did it, there was this crowd of kids out there just doing something of pure joy. Especially, it was great to be watching such a thing of physical joy, with another lover of writing -- a different kind of expression of joy. We watched for about forty minutes, and still, they danced. Some tired and left, some stayed. Security guards from the building came by to watch, but instead of dispersing them or turning off the lights, just left them be.

The next day, I saw Mike again (the writer) -- we talked until late, and then went home. We met again at the consulate, and again, spent lunch and the afternoon walking around and chatting. He has an interesting history I'm still learning about, he's ALSO from British Columbia, Canada, and he's been in Korea for about five years, so we have a lot to talk about, and we both love going to cool restaurants.

Lunch that day, we went to the second place Paul had recommended to us. It was a dish called okonomi yaki, a cake made with a bit of horseradish and green onion with a nice flavour to it, topped with sauce, vegetables, and (at the specialty restaurant) anything else you wanted, pretty much. Here are the ones Mike, Steve and I ate.

This is probably in the top ten dishes I've eaten in the entire last five years. (And that's saying something, the last five years encompassing most areas of Seoul, trips to Malaysia Alberta and Tokyo/Yokohoma, but there you have it.) Ridiculously delicious! I don't know how to describe it, except to say, if you find a Japanese place that serves okonomi yaki, I won't guarantee it'll taste as good as what we had in Osaka (just like Kimchi in Canada doesn't even hold a match to Seoul Kimchi, much less a candle), but give it a try, I suppose. Here's what it looks like.





After that, we wandered around an underground shopping center, found a park and chased pigeons, tried to get lost but couldn't, and enjoyed the sheer variety of Osaka architecture.

Here in Seoul, I'm walking around finding new, cool neighbourhoods, and enjoying the hell out of my new job. The way Matt said (after a great, silly walk around his neighbourhood,) "at first, the job situation doesn't look that impressive, but then, on second glance, your current job fits you like a glove, Rob". I agree. I've been walking down the street and bursting into a silly grin at random intervals, just for pure joy of life. It's been nice.

More later everyone! Love you all.

also: thanks for posting comments! it lets me know who's been reading my blog, and that makes me happy. Feel free to add something.

Take care.

Rob

So I started this new job yesterday. . .

After stomping around jongno and myeongdong to find a pc room where you're actually allowed to log onto blogger (some places won't let me log on -- nature of their networks or something, I guess), I've finally found a spot, and the time, to fill you in, my loved ones.

(Yes, I do still love you all. You've been on my mind. Really.)

Well, for the first time, I don't have any cute kid stories. Instead, I have cool grown-up stories.

I'm teaching at a school right in the middle of downtown Seoul, near the city hall where all the insane soccer-game-watched-by-a-million-people kind of stuff happened during the world cup (you can check my post about the world cup: I added some pictures.)

This is really great for me, because I'm realizing that one of my great pleasures in life is eating out in restaurants. Discovering the best chicken soup, or the best california roll, in my neighbourhood makes me really happy, and gives me something to share next time a friend comes by. So, I've been systematically trying new restaurants all month at lunch time (my split shift means dinner is usually something light), to find the best of certain dishes, and just to find more good eats.

To get my visa, I travelled to Osaka.

I'll do a separate post on Osaka when I have another free three hours, except to say it was fantastic: miles better than last time I went there.

But here's the great thing.

Yes, I love my area -- I live a block over from an "old korea" souvenir market, a block the other way from a quiet shrine that's also one of three "UNESCO World Culture Sites" (that's an interesting thing to read up on, world culture sites -- check which famous places made it and which didn't -- my favorite world culture site was "head smashed in buffalo jump" in Alberta. I'm also a block from a restaurant that serves one of the most delicious foods I've ever eaten, right next to two movie theaters, all of which can be accessed through a network of winding little back alleys in the old traditional Korean style, with cobblestones and elaborate doors and just enough width to push a cart. I do need to stock my fridge yet, and I also need to find a clothing repair shop to fix two pairs of pants I own, but I still love my area.

However, the thing that's made me most happy is this:

a 530am wakeup call. Yes, that sounds counterintuitive, but here's how it works:

To get to work before 7am (and pick up a McDonalds coffee on the way), I have to set my alarm at 530 -- time to wake up, shower, and dress. Then, I start walking at 630, with Sonober, my cool coworker.

To wake up at 530am with enough sleep to make it through the day, one must go to bed early. I usually shoot for 1030 or 1100, with 1130 as my MUST HAVE LIGHTS OUT BY cutoff. The things I used to do between eleven and one AM (my previous lights out cutoff) were almost never productive: drinking a beer with Anthony (as nice as he is) never got me closer to achieving my life goals. Nor did chatting on MSN, visiting humour websites, or watching movies. These days, because of my split shift (yay teaching adults!), most of my free time is between 1pm and 7pm, which are much more productive hours than 11-1. I think I wrote about a hundred pages in the last month, in different short stories, poems, and a few plays. I've finally finished a notebook I was working on for more than a year. This is immensely satisfying, and as I accomplish more writing, I WANT to write more. This, unlike MSN and the rest, is getting me closer to my life goals, and so, between living in a really fun neighbourhood, eating great food, and writing every day, I'm kicking butt!

I hope all of you have had equally satisfying months!

Sorry it's been so long since I posted, but once I have internet in my house I'll be more consistent again.

Love you all!

Next time: Osaka!

Tomorrow I start my new job.

I'll go to a new place called Jonggak, which is right in the beating heart of downtown Seoul. This is exciting to me. I'm within walking distance from Seoul's most important cultural landmarks: the national theatre, the palaces, the President's house (called the blue house), the park where the protests against Japanese occupation began, and the stream that symbolizes Seoul's effort to make beauty an important part of city life. I'll teach adults now, and I'm looking forward to that. I have my books and my schedule, I got my new passport (my old one was expiring) and now its time to move my things.

Also: I fleshed out the "holy cow my student almost died" post. You can find out how, and why he didn't.

More later!

Love:
Rob

Saw a really cool movie.

So I saw this movie a couple weekends ago. . . I think it's also out in N. America these days. It's called "Bridge to Terabithia" and it's about an imaginative kid who's a bit of a loner, and I don't know when was the last time a movie managed to touch as many nerves all in such a short space.

Really enjoyed it -- don't want to say too much about what happens and how it kept tossing its darts right through me, bone-deep if you will, because I'll give away some of the film's surprises, twists and turns, but. . . touching, wonderful film. If you ever played "let's pretend" in a forest by your house, if you ever invented a new country in your imagination, if you ever had a best friend when you were a kid, or didn't get along with the other kids in your class, or got bullied, or fought with your sister, or lived in, or knew somebody who lived in a small North American town, and went to a small-town North American elementary school, well, you might relate to parts of it.

Maybe part of the reason I related so much to it was because of its rural, N. American setting, and the way I've been away from that for so long -- urban Seoul is about as different as you can get from rural N. America without being on a space station, but it sure got the texture and the details bang-on.

I saw it with a friend, who was disappointed that it was closer to real life, and not as deep into the fantasy world as "Chronicles of Narnia", but when a film is as true to life and true to its characters, as compassionate and honest as this (it's from a Newberry Award Winning book: no surprise there) I'll forgive that.

So, if you are, or ever were, 13 years old, go see this movie. Worthwhile. Plus, Disney just gave me a free wristwatch for writing this blog post! (I wish.)

(PS: While I worked at POLY School, which had a large library of English books for young readers, I got a chance to read a bunch of books for young adults, and gained a serious respect for writers of that genre. It's difficult to get it right, to relate to that age but also add grains of learning and truth. If you ever see a book with a "Newberry Award" sticker on its front, read it, or give it to the nearest 13-year-old you know. Just awesome.)

Holy Cow my student almost died last weekend!

So I came into class on Tuesday, the 20th, the first morning after a three day weekend. Here in Korea, Lunar new year is the second biggest family holiday of the year, kind of Thanksgiving to Chusok's Christmas. (Chusok is the Korean harvest festival, and it's amazing: EVERYBODY goes to their ancestral home/town/grandparents' house, offers up special foods and dishes to the ancestors in the old way, dressed up in the traditional hanbok clothes. I've seen the ceremony at a friend's girlfriend's house, and it's quite impressive.) The city empties out -- it's almost eerie. Even the street food stands are closed up! Then, at the end of the weekend, everybody returns to Seoul, and the gridlock begins fifty kilometers outside of the greater Seoul area, all the way into town.

{Tangential story alert: Once I travelled on a holiday weekend, and the trip took four hours out by bus, and twelve hours back, because of seventy kilometers (no joke) of stop and go traffic. Even better, the tour organizer had rented three movies to watch on the trip: X-men (not bad) Black Hawk Down, and Saving Private Ryan. That's comic book action movies: 1, Gory gory war movies: 2. Being trapped on a bus, in stop and go traffic, hung over (as most of the group was), with "Oh GOD IT HURTS" "I can't stop the bleeding Ty!" "You're gonna be okay, Eddie. You're gonna be okay. What's your daughter's name? You'll see her again, Eddie, I promise." "I feel cold Ty. I feel cold" for two hours is just hard to manage. So after Black Hawk Down (the noisiest, most overwhelming war movie I've ever seen: long and just gross), the guy was about to put on Saving Private Ryan (the second noisiest, most overwhelming war movie I've seen) on, and the entire bus vetoed the choice. At the next rest stop, somebody went to the DVD stand and bought "When Harry Met Sally" or "You've God Mail" or some Sandra Bullock romantic comedy, and the travellers were placated. End of tangential story.}

Well, some people go into the mountains, to see their ancestral gravesite, as did my student Lucas. As I asked about the students' weekends, this story came out, piecemeal, as Lucas remembered different impressions of his adventure. The total innocence in his eyes matched my own sheer disbelief at how close this kid came to being hospitalized, at least.

He saw a snake, and decided he didn't like having that snake in that spot. So, being a kid, innocent as all Eden, he chose to move that snake along by prodding it with his foot. "Teacher and then the tail is up and," he held his hand up and moved it side-to-side to copy a tail's shaking. Shaking a raised tail is a common warning signal for poisonous snakes (not just rattlesnakes, as I learned by research). He poked it again, and "teacher, it biting me in the pants" and he pointed to the cuff of his pants, right behind his ankle. Because it was February, and cold, the snake was slow; had he poked it in June, it probably would have had the speed and wherewithal bite him properly, but as it was, the thing missed his ankle. By then his father had spotted Lucas, and saw what was happening. His dad ran over and punted the snake, kickin it far clear of his son, but I don't think he saw the whole scene, because Lucas never mentioned an extremely angry father in the jumbled account of his story.

I was so incredulous I immediately went to the next class to tell Caleb about what had just happened. The kid never even realized how close he was to serious danger.

(Side note: there are four species of poisonous snake in Korea, in the viper/asp category. None are as deadly as the cobra, the black mamba, or the dreaded snakes of Australia, but none are to be trifled with either. Lucas being a child, the poison would have been more dangerous because he has a smaller body mass than say, me. Of the snakes in Korea, the one with the coolest name is called (in Japan) the mamushi. Just say that together with me one time. Mamushi.)

I'm glad Lucas made it through honouring his ancestors, without joining them. He's a sweet kid. Except when he isn't.

These video clips made me laugh.

Deb, I think you'll especially enjoy the second one.

This one is short. And funny.

You might recognize the thin, silly one as Hugh Laurie, now most famous as the abrasive star of the TV series "House". He actually has a background in comedy that goes all the way back to "Black Adder", the early '80s sitcom that also gave Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) his first big break, and is FAR superior to Mr. Bean in every way. I also like Hugh Laurie's comedy stuff far better than the TV show house. . . what's with all the medical and crime investigative dramas on TV these days? Here in Korea there are only three or four channels that regularly play English programming, and at any given time, one of them is playing a Jean-Claude VanDamme movie (which cease to be entertaining even ironically after two watchings) and another is playing CSI, or one of its spinoffs, rife with grotesque modes of death and gratuitous autopsy scenes.

Sigh.

Oh well. At least it's weaned me off watching TV.

But THESE clips are funny. You should watch them.





This one plays around with actors, lines, and scene setups. It makes me smile, having acted on stage myself.



This third one. . . I think they're making fun of flag-waving singers. I'm not sure though.

Valentine's Day. . . meet a friend of mine.

I have a friend named Zooey. Here's a picture of him, partaking in a vice. . . usually he's not that bad. Really. Upstanding, even. (And let's give him a break: Leffe is a really good quality beer.)






Even though he sometimes drinks beer (he swears it was only that once), he also really likes to come to school with me and meet my students. He lives an adventurous life: adventurous enough that he often appears in the stories I tell to my students. He's a bit of a rennaisance elephant: he speaks tiger, bear, octopus, English, Korean, and a handful of other useful languages (not to mention African elephant, as well as Indian elephant).

When Sally the genius' family was struck by a tragedy that shall go unmentioned, I introduced Sally to Rhonda, the only other known mini-elephant. Here's Rhonda. (Un?)surpringly, Zooey and Rhonda hit it off when they met, and have been courting in the traditional mammothian way. Rhonda's even helping Zooey with his addiction to peanut butter.

Here's Rhonda.




My students love Zooey, and love to hear stories about Zooey. One day, after visiting Sally, I accidentally left Zooey at her house, and Zooey and Rhonda spent that whole week together. After that, Sally asked if Rhonda wanted to come to my house for a few days. I agreed, so that Rhonda could meet my students. My students loved her, and wanted to hear all about Zooey and Rhonda.

Then, two months after her appearance at SLP, on Valentine's day, Arooh made valentines for all her classmates, including me, and even one for Zooey. However, she couldn't remember Rhonda's English name, so she had to write her Elephant name.

Here is the card she wrote for Zooey and Rhonda.








It made me smile a lot.

I will be teaching adults next month: my contract with SLP is up, and I just couldn't imagine another year of teaching little kids, and mediating conflicts like "Kevin hit me." "James hit me first." "No, Zach pushing me so I hit you accident." However, I'll miss the sweetness of Arooh trying to sound out an elephant's trumpet.

For sure.

Kevin's Really Funny.

On February 26th, we have a graduation show: my preschool class is finishing their two year preschool program, and graduating to elementary school. This is nice. The graduation show, though, is stressful. We have to put on a big old show to prove to the parents that their money was worth it and their kids now kick butt in English. As the preschool director, it falls upon my head to make sure everything comes off well.

Today, during gym class, we practiced with the six-year-olds. That was as cute as you would ever believe. It's such an easy job directing a performance of six-year-olds: if the kids get it all right, it's really impressive. If they get it wrong and somebody turns the wrong way, it's really cute. You just can't lose! Anyway, the kids did a really good job, considering the graduation show is almost two weeks away.

The seven-year-old kids are working really hard to do a good job, of course.

Well, I was practicing the lines with my class of seven-year-olds during phone teaching today, and the kids really impressed me: they really have their lines down cold! (With one or two exceptions.) The thing about phone teaching, though, is that it's really repetitive and a bit tedious: it's my least favourite afternoon of the month (other than the month when I actually lost my temper at Tom because he was standing in the corner, with his hands over his head and his eyes closed, and still giggling and speaking Korean to Peter). In order to keep myself from shoving a pencil in my ear just to spice things up a bit, I play around with the students on the phone. When I call them, instead of saying "This is Rob teacher," I say, "This is Ashley teacher," and argue with the students about how they know I'm Rob, for sure. Well, today, I had to phone Kevin. "Is this Kevin?"
"Yes."
"No, it isn't. This is Kevin's grandfather."
"No teacher, it's Kevin."
"No. It's Kevin's grandfather!"
"Teacher!"
"Nice to meet you Kevin's grandfather!"
"Teacher!"
"Can I please talk to Kevin now?"
Without missing a beat, Kevin says, "OK," waits for five seconds in silence, and then says, "Hello this is Kevin!"

Quick wit, that one. To play along as subtly as that, with a purely verbal joke, over the phone, at seven years old, in his second language, is pretty impressive to me. I laughed out loud. Kevin's awesome. He has these squirrely bright eyes and a face whose entire shape seems to have been created for the express purpose of laughing. He's great.

At lunchtime today, David broke my heart.

During my first four months at SLP, David was in my homeroom class, and he was like one of those tempestuous days when you never know whether, five minutes later, there will be a downpour or a sunny break in the clouds. He was moody, and his bad moods were awful. Few kids manage to sulk on a par with David's epic glowers. He's the smallest kid in the class, asthmatic, with pale skin and eyes that crinkle when he smiles.

Then, in March, a new student joined, named Belle. She was a nice girl, and she and David became best friends. They played together, sat beside each other, and were really sweet. David always picked her when we played name games, and openly told people that he loved her. Their parents became friends, and they played together after school. When Belle broke her collarbone in August, she missed a month, and then came back to school sooner than the doctor's recommendation, so the doctor told her she had to stay in the classroom during lunch and breaktimes, for about four or six weeks after she returned. Every breaktime, David stayed in the classroom with her, colouring or making paper crafts, to keep her company. David's one of my favourite kids because of that kind of stuff: an absolute sweetheart.

Well, over the last two months, Belle has fallen under the spell of Willy, the most charismatic student in the class. He's bright and sociable, he has good ideas for games, and he's funny as anything. Arooh (the other girl in the class) has taken to following him around like a puppy (while Lucas follows her around like a puppy, saying things like "Arooh I love you. I want to give you a present and chocolate and everything!") For the last two weeks, David, always a slow and somewhat picky eater, has been eating even more slowly than before.

Today, as he mulled over his honeyed sweet potatoes, poking them and contemplating them, instead of eating them, I said, "Davarino? Why are you eating so slowly?"

He looked up at me and said "Teacher, in the playtime Belle is say 'don't play' and everyday 'don't play' to me," and his sweet little eyes had this forlorn helplessness that just about melted me right then and there. He was a really sweet kid, and Belle's been spurning him to be another of Willy's groupies. Silly girl doesn't recognize loyalty and sweetness when she sees it. I hope she figures it out before she grows up, that she doesn't become just another of those young ladies who shunts aside the sweet, generous boys who'll take good care of them, for the charismatic guy who attracts people into his group, but then (as Willy does) plays a bit of a tease, never quite letting a person know whether they're really in the group or not, so that they're never sure if they're in or not, so they have to keep working at the guy's approval (and stroke his ego along the way). (Arooh's had some days when he's made her feel totally rejected. . . but then other days Willy can be a really sweet kid.)

Willy has good parents (I've met them). And I've told them point blank about Willy's ability to do this, and Willy's a sweet kid by nature: he'll figure out, between his parents' guidance and his own innate sweetness, that there's a better way to treat his friends, but for now, it's sure sad to see little broken-hearted David's devotion totally ignored.

So, in summary:

Kevin's funny
David's sweet
Belle's inconstant
Willy's charismatic and charming but unaware just how much influence he has over his classmates
And I'm going to teach adults next month (found a new job) so I don't have to worry so much about issues like that between students, because I know that my students will be adults who can figure such things out on their own.

(Just to show willy's usually a good kid: two stories.

1. Caleb's wife, Heather, brought their baby, Kylie to school to meet the students. The students get so excited to see the baby, they run the risk of mauling her, so Caleb and Heather have to set clear limits on how much they can bug her. Paul reached over, once, and touched Kylie on the nose. To head off a swarm of hands that would follow, Caleb said, "Paul, please don't touch her."
Willy commented, "Yeah. When they're little they die really easily."

2. During the same phone teaching afternoon when Kevin cut me up, I asked Willy, "What special day is it tomorrow?"
"Valentine's day."
"What will you do for Valentine's day?"
"Give chocolate to the teachers."
"Will you give chocolate to Ellen teacher?"
"Of course, teacher." (He's taken to saying, "of course," lately).
"Will you give Ellen teacher a lot of chocolate?"
"Of course."
"How much chocolate will you bring for Ellen teacher?"
"Maybe she will die."

He's not a bad kid. He just doesn't realize how much he influences his group of friends.)

OK. Enough for now.

Love you all! Take care.

Rob

Some photos.

I like to draw pictures on the board during attendance time in my homeroom class. It entertains the kids. Here are some examples.




Seals are cute. I can also draw rabbits and elephants and rabbiphants (Rabbiphants are very rare: most elephants are protestant, um, I mean, protephant).










Sam is absolutely incapable of staying in his chair. One day I joked that I need to stick him in his chair with a hammer and nails, and made this illustration.



Then I explained that I could't really do that, because of course, Sam would grow up, and then he wouldn't fit into the small chair, and modified the picture to look like this, to show everybody why I could't nail Sam to his chair. (Though I've been tempted to get out my stapler a few times.)




I'm actually proud of this one. I think it actually looks like a polar bear.



This is one of my favourites.



Sometimes air in Seoul is dirty. Those apartments you can barely see are about two kilometers away. No more than that.



Cute Konglish in a soaps shop.

Another typical day in Seoul, Korea.

So this morning I woke up as usual, poked around on the internet, started up the coffee maker (at eight in the morning, it's worth it to have the starbucks stuff on hand), and took my shower. I boiled an egg. (Boiling eggs is fun for me right now, because I just finally got the hang of it -- I'd always either do them half-raw or rubbery dry-yolk overcooked. I'm so pleased with myself for figuring this boiled egg thing out, I've been popping them like candy!) On the way to work, I bought a cinnamon swirl at the bakery I mentioned before, where they changed their baking schedule so I could have a cinnamon swirl every morning, instead of just on mornings when I was late.

Got to school, and before I even made it into the classroom, James was saying "teacheeeeerr" in that way Korean kids have perfected, where suddenly "No" can become a fourteen syllable word that requires a two octave vocal range to properly pronounce. He's telling on another student, who pushed him, or stepped on his foot, or looked in his show-and-tell bag without his permission. . . or something.

I'm thinking about implementing a policy where the student who did wrong gets punished, but the student who tattled gets an equal punishment. That's how tired I am of kids coming to teachers with their little "he looked in my book" disputes. We have a teacher named Eunice who's unreal: every time, she hears each kid out and gives them a reasonable solution to their problem. Listening to "he said I don't want to play with you" "no I didn't!" makes me want to chew holes into the inside of my cheek after a while. Her patience is laudable.

Right after that, Willy cracked me up by taking the stuffing out of me, teasing me about something I'd told his family when they invited me to his house: I'm good at cooking a bunch of foods, but I've never managed to successfully cook rice: I always make it too sticky, too dry, burnt at the bottom, or something (now that I've mastered boiled eggs, rice is next). Willy had the whole class poking fun at me about not being able to cook rice. It was funny.

Then, during break time, I was chatting with Caleb in the hallway, when right at waist-level, a little girl in a blue hooded sweater flies by us with her fists up in the air, in the "I'm a flying superhero" pose. On second glance, she has her sweater's hood pulled right over her face. It's Lisa: she has a hooded sweater with a mask on the hood, and eyeholes, so that she can be a superhero anytime she wants. Here she is, in superhero and in secret identity mode.






The boy with Lisa in the first picture is Andy, a funny little boy with gangly arms and legs who doesn't move around so much as he flops. As soon as he's moving faster than walking speed, he always reminds me just a bit of a rag doll -- a Raggedy Andy, if you will. The girl in the second picture is named Sue, owner of my favourite student nickname ever: "Soodlee-Doo!" I used to say it out loud to her, but then other students called her Soodlee-Doo so much she told us to stop calling her that, so now I call her over, and whisper it in her ear, and she twinkles with glee every time.

Anyway, lunch looked unappetizing, so I walked (in a fantastic cold that was so sharp I opened my jacket just to have myself a good shiver: sometimes a good shiver's as invigorating as twenty push-ups) to the sandwich shop near the school, where they know exactly what I want as soon as I walk in, because I always order the same thing. "Kuh-lop senduhweechee, cheejeuh bae-go, ahmaeleekah-no shirop manhee" means "club sandwich no cheese, cafe americano, lots of sugar" the lady smiled: she's seen me coming in there ordering over-sweet americanos since my first year in Korea, 2003, when they first opened, and her husband didn't know how to count out correct change yet -- if the sandwich and coffee was 4900 won, and you gave him 10000 won, he'd give you 6100 won back, or 3100, or 4900. He's much better now.

After the sandwich and coffee (takeout), back to school. More teaching, other stuff, then, after I left school, I popped by my house, picked something up, and headed out to Lotte Mart. You see, I like to hold a keyboard in my lap, but having an entire laptop in my lap is cumbersome and worrisome: what if I spell my coffee, or a sparrow flies into the apartment window and startles me, and I dump the computer on the floor? Yesterday, I bought a keyboard, plugged it in, only to discover that the J key was garbage: it didn't register when struck, unless you really cracked it, and it had a weird feel, different than the other keys. Unbearable, when you're trying to type fast -- like jogging with a stone in your shoe. By phone text message, I asked one of my Korean friends how to say "This keyboard had a broken key when I bought it. Please replace it." She sent the reply, and then I brought the keyboard away.

On the way to Lotte Mart, the taxi driver tried to rip me off, but I caught him before he could go past my destination. This made me feel half-annoyed that this kind of thing still happens, that the driver still sees white skin and thinks I'm some chump tourist whom he can filch by playing dumb, and half-pleased that I'm savvy enough to catch him heading the wrong way and ask him, in Korean, "why aren't you turning right?"

Then, I exchanged the keyboard easily, by showing the text message, the receipt, and the wonky "J" key to the fellow, but was stopped on my way to the escalator by another store clerk who didn't speak English, and didn't understand that I'd already exchanged the keyboard: they thought I still wanted to change the new one, and laughed at my broken Korean and body language. Finally, by going to the clerk who'd already made the exchange (who resolved the issue in three words), they got it, and let me go. I walked out of the store, noticed halfway home that they hadn't taken off the unit's anti-theft security tag, but also noticed that no alarms had gone off on my way home, anyway.

This is my life in Korea. The rule of twos still applies from time to time (in my first year I formulated the principle that every new thing you attempt here takes two tries to get it right, and any task you might want to do takes twice as long as it would in a country where everybody speaks English). Sometimes it's maddening, sometimes it's hilarious, sometimes it's just brilliant. In the end, it's not that much different, I suppose, than life just about anywhere.

Amy teases me about telling pointless stories, stories that don't go anywhere. But I don't think they are pointless. When she worked at the bakery, Mom used to come home every day, and tell some story or another about a grumpy, or a funny customer, or an order she nearly got wrong, but then luckily she re-counted the hot cross buns just before she put them in the box, or other such minute details.

The point of Mom's stories was not so much to teach me something new, or even (usually) to make me laugh. The point of them, I think, was more cumulative than specific -- it wasn't so much any one story she told me, as the fact she told stories about those little things. That said to me that the little things, the pointless uninteresting things, are worth noticing. They are the texture and rhythm of our daily lives, and they keep each day different from the next. If we notice them, suddenly our lives aren't a metronome-dull repetition of wake up, eat, work, eat, work, go home, free time, bed time -- our lives can instead be all cluttered with sounds and smells and personalities we never noticed before. In his book, Letters To A Young Poet, my favourite poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, wrote, "If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it, blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place." So maybe that's why I tell stories like these: not so much because I think you'll find them riveting; more because I want to be the kind of human being who notices them. In Seymour: An Introduction, J.D. Salinger (another of my favourite writers) says, "Seymour once said that all we do our whole lives is go from one little piece of Holy Ground to the next. Is he never wrong?" So forgive my rambling if it bores you. I'm just looking for those patches of holy ground.

Love:
Rob

I'm easy to please, really.

Tonight we'll have a wine and cheese night at my house. I can't even eat cheese, but I'm excited to have company, and have a good time. Maybe I inherited the hospitality gene from Mom -- nothing pleases me so well as seeing people around me having a good time (especially if it's partly my doing -- through hospitality, or through suggesting an activity, or [best of all] through recommending a restaurant. For some reason, taking a person to a restaurant I know of, and seeing them really enjoy the food/dish, gives me inordinate, almost inappropriate amounts of pleasure.)

That's really enough to make me happy, right there: some people at my house, some nice conversation, some laughs, and some good food. Wine is the best conversation drink, bar none. Beer is too loud, and lends itself to binge drinking. Hard liquors either must be drunk too slowly, or lead too quickly to drunkenness, and, once drunk on hard liquor, people make bad decisions, and have odd moods (for example, the "let's see what happens if I throw X at Y!" mood). Wine's taste is rich and subtle, good to be savoured (especially red wine), which means it gets sipped rather than gulped. Add to that the way alcohol lowers a person's inhibitions, and you have more honest and interesting conversation than coffee or tea (because they're alcohol free, people's defenses never quite drop). Plus, wine is a happy drunk. People don't start throwing things or swearing or punching when they've had wine.

It doesn't take much to make me happy. Wine and a friend will do. So will wearing my leather-soled doc marten boots and walking in Lotte Department store, where the floors are polished stone, and where I can slide for almost three meters after a short running start. (Yep. That's me. The grown man sliding around on the department store floor like a little kid on an ice patch. Stare if you want, but don't tell me to stop, because I won't. And if you don't like it, just look at the grin on my face and reflect upon whether I'm really hurting anyone. Yay me!)

In other "I love this country" news, the folks at the bakery where I grab a bite every morning on my way to work figured out that the cinnamon buns they make are my favourite thing they serve (Ha! Diagram THAT sentence!). The cinnamon buns are not as good as the ones at Kent Pastry and Bakery, but anything cinnamon is better than no cinnamon. Problem was, their baking schedule had the cinnamon buns ready about five minutes too late for my morning schedule: the only time they were ready by the time I came through was on days when I was already late for work. One day, I came in to find no cinnamon buns, and used the best Korean I knew to say "Nine o'clock. . . cinnamon buns. . . please! Cinnamon buns, ummm, delicious!" The lady gave me a knowing "isn't he cute" smile -- she's been seeing me come in there regularly for more than a year now -- and answered in Korean.

Since then, every morning, the cinnamon buns have been on display by the time I pop in for munchies. I can't even communicate with these people (other than "Have a nice day!" "Do you want a bag?" "Two thousand won, please!" and "Nine o'clock . . . cinnamon buns. . . please! Cinnamon buns, ummm, delicious!") and they're going out of their way, if only just a little, to make my day better. People are great.

And that's all it takes to make me happy, really. Add in a good book to read and good music to listen to, and enough personal time to write stories and poems, and I'll love life, whatever else is happening.



This also makes me happy.



His name is Micah P. Hinson. Beneath the Rose

Home, and Cat Stevens, and some Malaysia pictures.

Just had a great conversation with a friend about how, to me, home is people. Home's a slippery kind of idea -- my Dad just moved to a new church in Niagara Falls, which is great, but it also means that the house where I lived for most of my last decade and a little, is no longer my house. I don't have a bedroom in Canada anymore, by any stretch. There are numerous couches I could probably crash upon, but none that I'd call my space. Even if I DID go back, Agassiz has changed so much from the way I remember it for me that I wouldn't really feel like I belong there (at least in the way I used to).

But you know, I'm not complaining, really. Coming to Korea my first year hurled me so far out of my comfort zones that I had to create some new ones, fast, so now home is not so much a house or a place with my posters on the wall (though that's nice). Rather, home for me has become a starbucks latte on a sunday afternoon, a long walk around my neighbourhood after work, cooking one of my specialty dishes for a friend, showing a friend a restaurant I love, hanging out with someone around whom I don't have to talk or entertain. Curling up on a coffee shop chair and writing poetry. As long as I have access to these things, I'm no longer too far from home, and if I'm near somebody who can ask me good questions, I'm set!

More than anything else, though, home for me is people. Having people around me who know me and respect me gives me a grounding from which I can go off in other directions.

By the way:

I'm listening to Cat Stevens right now (speaking of feelings of home). Wow, this guy's great. He isn't the best singer, not the best musician or composer by any measure, and his songwriting, while simple and well put-together, certainly isn't as clever or intriguing as a Tom Waits or a Leonard Cohen (and certainly not as intentionally obscure as Bob Dylan). Yet, despite that, listening to Cat Stevens, for some reason I can't quite name, is one of the most satisfying things I can think of. It's like sitting down and having a mug of coffee with a good friend -- not spectacular, not even quite memorable, just nice, and relaxing. After listening to one of his songs, I feel like I've gotten to know him a little, and that's nice. There's a warmth and a humour in his music that makes it easy to be around, like that friend in a group who doesn't always say a lot, but just manages to set everyone at ease, and seems to really enjoy everybody's company. So give Cat Stevens a try. You don't have to buy his box set or his complete works, but it's sure nice having his best of in your collection -- sort of like having a tin of hot cocoa powder in the cupboard. You don't have to use it often, but it's sure good to know it's there.




Modelling one of the shirts I bought.



Sliding down the rock slide at seven wells.



The tower on the highest peak of Langkawi Island. There was this fantastic structure with a bridge where tourists could wander (accessible by cable car). It was all held up by this tall tower support, and I have NO idea how they built that whole thing right up on top of a mountain. Best of all, there was a sign tucked away on one corner saying, "If you see dark clouds feel drizzle or rain, or see flashes of lightning, get off the tower immediately! That made me smile.



I may not have mentioned yet that it's really pretty there.





I climbed this rock and swam around in the waterfall pool. Then I looked up and right there, inches from my face, were three black toads, blinking up at the waterfall. I didn't go under the stream because I had no idea how deep the pool was, but it was pretty cool being that close to the waterfall.

On the way up, I was stepping over slippery rocks, and lost my footing as I tried to step around an eight-year-old kid. By twisting my body ridiculously, I managed to fall sideways into the water instead of crushing a child. Once I surfaced, I looked up, and Anthony was laughing at me.