Snow falling on hagwons

I write as I watch the infinitesimal drifting snow descend, just beginning to make a checkerboard pattern on the flat roof of the bank building across the street.  It's cold enough to think of making waffles as my common cold makes its common exit - lengthy, episodic, and just present enough to abrade my face.

The hardest events of the year are over now (soon to be replaced by the new hardest moments of the year), those being the return to work rhythm, offshore inspection, open house, observation, and the dreaded parents' night.  The parents' night, as it always does, ended up being much ado about nothing, and a source of free oddly-bottled dutch style coffee and macarons. I got 30+ years into life without having a macaron, incidentally: I could think of worse ways to get diabetes.

The apartment has been improved since I arrived on a sweltering Saturday evening in August. The multitudinous legions of long dark hairs left by the previous occupants have been given a solid thrashing, an entire floor has been torn up and replaced, doors painted, a new giant bed delivered, the dryer demystified, and the toilet/vanity replaced.  The only cost here was my sanity as I swept and swept, only to find the hairs had made another feint out into the exact middle of the kitchen.

This ignores the other improvements, such as the mountain of houseware-type things that became immediately necessary after Lynette arrived but that I had somehow survived without before.  Ignored, also, would be the products of scavenging - my neighbourhood is a pretty ex-patty one, and so there is turnover and thus stuff put out for free regularly.  Yesterday I collected two nice bedside tables, to go with my earlier free 27 inch TV and $250 super-vacuum that had, bless its heart, a plastic spoon stuck in the hose (thus, thrown out...fixed in 3 minutes).  This comprehensively beats buying such things, in my opinion.

I've hosted large dinners at my house, but think I'm out of that business for a while; the disadvantage is that nobody else has the facilities (or seemingly, the desire) to hold dinners I could cruise into and escape from as a fatter person.  It's just as well, in a way, that I'll be tropically away for the Christmas season, as I can dodge playing chef/butler/scullion boy.

It'll be interesting to be in Vietnam for Christmas, as I imagine there won't be ice falling from the sky.  I think I'll celebrate with a mai-tai, preferably in a coconut, inevitably in shorts.

I have my first confirmed visitors to South Korea, following in the footsteps of Tangle and Tyler who visited darkest China (respect) - Lynette's mother and father.  They've arranged moderately comfortable flights and a nice looking airbnb not too far away, and cherry-picked the warm start of May to drop by.  It will be interesting to see them here, as their recent travels seem to have been limited to shuttling back/forth to Amsterdam.  Seoul is a place where things can be as comfortably western as you can possibly expect in Asia, I'd imagine, but that can get fairly exotic if you turn down a side street; I really recommend anyone come visit, but I understand the cost being a barrier to most.

I'm off to loudly blow my nose and make waffles, because I have to and because I can.  It can keep on snowing all day for all I care; I loaded up on food at the Costco already.  Because, you know, Asia.

One month in.

That was a pretty quick month.  Forced reflection time!

Accomplishments:
-found local grocery
-figured out garbage/recycling
-found good cheap local restaurants
-got phone and internet working
-cleaned apartment (soo much hair everywhere before)
-got a handle on the electronics mall
-got all classes rolling at a nice pace
-started extracurriculars (guitar, hw club)
-survived school open house
-annoyingly good start to fantasy football (for the other guys - I picked my team based on name suitability for a law firm, I have no idea what I'm doing)
-found big free tv on the street where somebody was throwing it away.  Heavy ass CRT.

Most annoying moment:
Various school related things I built up to be worse in my head than they ended up being.

Best moment:
Tired on subway going home.  60-70ish year old man comes up to me and asks if I'm American; when I say Canadian he is equally impressed and begins talking about how young Canadians came and died to help Korea, and how people won't forget that.  He said he was a senior high school teacher and that he knows I have a difficult job.  Warmly shakes my hand with one while grabbing my tricep with the other, then walks off down the train.

This week I'm acting as a chaperone on a school 3 night trip to Jeju island, the 'Hawaii of Korea'.  Sounds good, could be a ton of work.  We'll see.

Sandwicherie

If you read some type of spy-transcript of my actions, you would have to assume one thing: I'm clearly strung out on Moroccan sandwiches.

Oh, I've got food from other locations (just had glorious tacos from Vatos - the trendy mex spot from everything I've seen), but there's something about the spicy chicken, lettuce, pickled things etc. that keep me coming back.  Plus they're $7, and 4 minute walk away.  I'm building up the courage to chat more with the guys, because it'd be badass to have an in with the cool sandwich guys.

Why talk even this much about this?  Well, mainly because those delightful baguettes are emblematic, to me at least, of the neighbourhood, and of the ease of use I'm experiencing from Seoul as a whole.  As you walk around HBC you see people of all skin tones, languages, and ages, and they mostly want to have a cold drink and relax by about 5pm when I get back to the area post-work.  I've never lived in a more diverse place, even if I'm not being diverse with my meal choices.

Other than eating sandwiches I'm going to work, planning classes, and trying to live (mostly) cheaply.  My students are miles better than any I've had before, and they're relaxing into both the course material and my comedic stylings.  I've got ancient Egypt and the first world war this week, should be a good one.

I'll close this off because I'm not done my prep for the week yet, and can't fool myself any longer.  Soon I'll have a camera cable so I can get back to photo-journalizing...for the nonce all I can do is pull web material.  How much longer can I go without sharing the picture of super-busty Ultraman from across the street? Only time, and lethargy, will tell.

Once upon a time, in the HBC..

In the local Woorimart (stressful-sounding grocery dungeon) you can buy a litre bottle of maple syrup that the owners clearly bought from one of the Costcos.  It costs a fair amount, which I can be reasonably sure could be undercut by going more directly to the source, but the cost isn't the point.

If you find yourself living in, say, China, and find yourself becoming acclimatized to how difficult day-to-day life can be, or the unavailability of fairly normal products of all kinds, you might want to consider moving to Seoul.  I've pointed to the jug of maple syrup at the corner grocery down the road, because it shows that entrepreneurial impulse commonly seen in my old city - it's just that your reward for investing your income is a waffle topping, not dried silkworms/sea cucumbers/etc.

Purists, though, would say that you aren't scoring any 'traveller' points by living somewhere where you can usually get things done in a blend of English and the local parlance; they're right, but my desire to beat my head against pointless walls declined with each hundredth time I felt like jumping into the clearly radioactive river of Zibo.  So to purists I say: enjoy your days brutally struggling to get drinkable water in your house - I'll be having an IPA as I head to a baseball game.

Seoul is westernized (and you'd see more of this if I hadn't forgotten my camera cable...off to the electronics market again for me I guess), but still plenty exotic for somebody from small-town Vancouver Island.  I don't need to be constantly frustrated to do things outside of the apartment in Asia, it turns out...I just need a couple thousand Won to rub together.  It's great.

The environment, both physical and emotional, is immeasurably better here than in my old city.  Yesterday I hiked (pictures forthcoming) up a small mountain/big hill right in the middle of Seoul that was the equal of any fancy tourist mountain in China, in my estimation, and it cost nothing.  No long bus ride, no waiting in lines, no jet fuel..just a desire to get out for a stroll to see the native plants and ACTUAL ANIMALS that exist right in the middle of a city of millions.  Namsan isn't even considered to be the 'best' of the local 'guardian mountains' for walking around in, to say nothing of the mountainous country as a whole.

The school clearly has resources to burn, my classes are small, and I've been here for more than a week without any crippling GI issues.  It could be worse - in fact, it has been wildly worse in every measurable way.  At the start of this school year I'm happier than I was at any point in my two-year internship at Annoyance Inc.

I'm not going to save as much money, or score as many 'exotic points' amongst the hipster-travellers, but at least I can take the clean/punctual subway to any of the temples/palaces without seeing an old man shoot a snot rocket on the seat next to him.  That's worth something.

Burying the lede.

I've had enough of deer.  They are so stupid...stupid enough to prefer eating my delicious garden's leaves while millions of non-fenced leaves abound.  This is a stupid thing to do, because when I get a chance I set the dog on them and/or pelt them with rocks of varying sizes.  This prejudice will colour the following story.

I was driving home a few nights back on a winding island road when I saw two fawns making a break across the road.  I actually really dislike deer (shockingly enough) but I'm not about to begin hitting them on purpose, so I slowed to a stop.  A car coming the opposite direction slowed to an almost-stop, and bumper-punted one of the fawns - the other having retreated directly in front of my car.  Deer are stupid.

The fawn was alright, and scampered into the woods without delay.  All its legs were working, etc etc...I imagine it woke up to a nasty bruise but not much else (car only going about 20-25km/h when it hit the fawn's backside).  The other car pulled over, so I thought I might as well follow suit.

A middle-aged woman got out and began scanning the roadside grass for a body.  I told her that the deer was fine and that I had seen it scamper away, but she had the idea to inspect a roadside copse for a corpse (of course).  After an unsteady start, she made a leap down a grassy ditch towards a gravel walking-path.  This wasn't a great idea.

She landed more or less on her stomach/face, having made a miscalculation of sorts.  At this point, all I hoped is that the woman wasn't unconscious...which she somewhat happily reported as she got up and brushed herself off.  It took a small bit of self-control to not giggle at the absurdity of the situation, but after doing a second round of ascertaining her continued health I bid her adieu and went back to my car.

All this for a deer!  I don't know why we don't just eat more of them, as I had venison in New Zealand and it was delicious.

Oh, and I'm moving to Seoul, South Korea in 53 days.

Delerious

Why am I playing guitar? Who is this viking-looking guy? Is that a toad? Why would you try to light a van on fire? Why is the train going backwards?

My only job on March 28th was to get to London, and get to sleep.  I know this, because I was going to go to Germany the next day, and had to leave early - so as not to get into another Grecian run situation.  I actually still think that's probably my best title ever, by the way.

I woke up fairly hungover.  That's not a surprise, because I had been up late having farewell beers with my workmates/roommates/assorted hangers-on.  What was surprising is that I woke up at 6am to a banging on the door.  I thought it was likely to be important, after a minute or so's deliberation, and so stumbled out to open the door.

Through my myopic haze I recognized the alcoholic ex-tenant of the house I lived in, who had left in December but had inexplicably showed up the night before.  I let him in and steered him towards a couch while hearing the story of his blackout episode/attempt to use cardboard to light a van on fire.  I'm guessing he didn't actually set a van ablaze, so I tell him to sleep on the couch and go back to my own blessed sleep.

After some stumbling around town paying final bills and saying final goodbyes, I got onto a train and immediately started to feel sick.  I'd say it was 50% being a bit hungover, 50% garden variety motion sickness, and 100% shitty.  The train I was on filled up quickly, and then did a weird stab into some side-town; this led the train to rocket backwards the entire way up to London, which led me to want to throw up on everybody nearby.  I didn't do it in the end, but it was something I thought about.

After abortive attempts to get some fresh air at Victoria station (smokers everywhere) and to take the underground out to Brixton (platform closed, but not found out about under after I'd paid a fare..great..), I was onto a replacement bus service that did absolutely nothing to improve my nausea. I was very seriously considering jumping off the bus with all my bags to vomit into a potted plant when we started to near the station, and thus found the will to resist peristaltic action.  I got off the wildly-swaying bus and sat down in a public square to call my friend, who was putting me up for the night.

There was a problem.  Her husband organizes music nights for various local pubs, and they were an act short: that act was going to be me.  For context, I have not played guitar in 3 months, haven't played a show of any kind in years upon years, and still wanted to turn my stomach inside out; I had about 2 hours to get ready.  I got to their place as fast as I could and worked up the following set on an inexpensive acoustic guitar that had my fingertips aching after 5 minutes of practice:
Keep fishin' - Weezer
I wanna make it wit chu - Queens of the Stone age
Forget Texas - A punk/folk song I wrote years ago
Yoshimi battles the pink robots part I - The Flaming Lips
There there - Radiohead
Everlong - Foo Fighters
...along with various instrumental practice pieces that I would play between songs to break up the singing (mostly so I wouldn't 'fakie-eat' onto the mic).

As we walked to the pub (3 bells in Streatham hill, I think it was), I had a feeling of deep dread, perhaps heightened by seeing a strange omen: a giant brown toad on the sidewalk.  I thought it was a toy, but no, it hopped along in the normal fashion.  It was surreal, because I had about 6-7 hours' sleep in the last two nights combined; I couldn't tell if I was hallucinating.  This feeling was heightened when I took the stage.

There were some issues with the set:
1. My hands were weak.
2. I was out of practice from the mechanical/playing perspective.
3. The audience was almost exclusively made up of drunk 60 year old men who wanted to hear 'Hey Jude'.

The final factor was a remarkable one, as I realized my alt-rock/pop-rock selections were going over rather like an erudite lump of granite that was trying out its wings for the first time.  Consequently I started screwing with them by speaking Japanese to intro my songs...which definitely had the desired effect.  I actually sang pretty well though, I thought..I'm pretty sure a guy from another pub offered me another show at a different pub sometime in the week.  I'm also pretty sure I had to sleep like those drunks had to hear 'Always look on the bright side of life', and so I made my eventual way to the floor mattress at my friends' place.

I was, of course, immediately woken up by a knocking on the door, which I had to answer in my underwear (well, I didn't have to).  It was yet another friend, who looked like an extra from the show 'Vikings', who informed me that he, too, would be sleeping in the living room.  Past caring at this point, I shambled back to the foam mattress and got a much-needed 2-3 hours of sleep before my wakeup to internationally travel.

It was a long goddamn day.  Thinking about it after a few nights of 9+ hours' sleep and good food/company has me shuddering with distaste.  Thankfully I'll be able to shake that off... it's traditional huge beer and schnitzel night tonight! Huzzah Deutschland!  Give me all the saturated fats!

Ode on a Grecian run

Pacing the landing at South Kensington station with a winter coat, a hiking backpack, and a bead of sweat working its way down my spine, I waited.  There wasn't really any choice in the matter.  Follow the timing of the signs, get on the train...which is going to an obscure branch I don't need.  Get off the train.

At this point, there isn't any room for error.  The next one is going where I need, and will take 32 minutes to get to the second terminal.

Online check in doesn't work because I'm not a euro, and my prepaid mobile won't let me call any of the company lines.  I thought back to when I paused to tie my shoe at Victoria station, and how I might have been able to more or less dive into the train had I continued/sped up the run.  Not really much I can do, now.

The rule is 45 minutes; I'm going to arrive with 37 minutes remaining.  Every station stop on the laborious trip out makes me more and more agitated.  Three stations for Hounslow? Inwardly swearing, outwardly sweating. I arrive on time, as far as the train is concerned...and then it's just running.

All people-dodging skills from Asia come back into full use as I pelt up the escalator out of the station, down a people-mover (amazing pace achieved), and up to the top floor, where the check in machines don't work.  To the desk of Aegean airlines, and a man has dipped in front of me.  I theatrically pant while my boarding pass is printed off: euphoria.
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I really should have got going sooner; no excuse.  My own judgement led to the longest sustained period of hustle/wait in my life, as I got from south Brixton to a boarding gate in comical fashion.  As I sat down in my seat it was incredible to feel the sweat darkening my shirt and to know that a trip I had basically considered impossible an hour before was happening.  I wanted wine; I asked for water.

I got to the hostel after some predictable consternation with the inability to read Greek train instructions, and was offered an ouzo shot.  I had that, and a Mythos beer.

This beer featured in every day plan, because I was on vacation, goddamnit.  This is what I got for all of my outright sprinting up escalators, for all the patience exhibited in the face of adolescent ridiculousness...for everything I'd weathered...to say nothing of the weather. Whether or not it would help my heretofore withering health, it was time for beer...and food.  I ate all of it.

I ate things in Athens that I hadn't liked before, and loved them.  Greece is really quite a good place to get Greek food, as it turns out.  My first meal was calimari and a large block of feta drizzled in olive oil and sprinkled with spices.  Game on, weight loss accumulated via weeks of cold dreary misery.  The best thing came a few days later, though:

Grilled fresh squid with a basil sauce next to salad with house-made pita and tzatziki peeking through the background.  I had a nearly-religious experience as I ate the mollusk, based around the idea that I'd never tried to do this myself.  In China I very happily drunkenly ate grilled squid on skewers at the slightest provocation.  What have I been doing in my largely squid-free life in Canada? My god, man.

I also did all the sightseeing things one does.  I'd get up at my leisure, skipping the spartan fare on offer downstairs in favour of a yogurt bar where toasted walnuts and dark pine honey abundantly topped hand-pressed goodness....where was I...right, sightseeing.

It was my first foray into the land of the classics I've had interest in for so long, and it delivered on monumental architecture.  I'd see a sight in the A.M., go for an inevitably delicious and vaguely pricy lunch, have a nap/read up on something for work, then either see a quick sight or wander around.  The Mythos would come back at a certain point, followed by something revelatory (moussaka! delicious!), a bit of house ouzo (inevitably on the house, which was a nice touch) and more sleeping in.

The only thing that made the trip more pleasurable than it already was was the fact that I came so preposterously close to missing it based on my own stupidity regarding choosing a leaving time from where I was staying.  Lesson learned!  I have three (well, two..but almost three..so close to three) more countries to visit in the next month, before I prepare for my new job in a fourth.

Oh..I could have mentioned that I know where I'll be working in the fall.  Another time, I guess.

Faux-peregrination for the win.

What a month.

Actually, that's probably not the right way to start.  I mean, it was a singular month within my personal history of months, but if you really focus you could say that for almost any month.

Anyways, it was crap.  Sort of.  Semi-lucrative crap, anyways; I climbed the learning curve at my school, herding cats (year 7's) the whole time while occasionally considering just not going in the next day...and yet I continued to do just that.  It was odd: I've finished 5 weeks at this job, which was utterly inconceivable when I started.

I had to teach Macbeth (which I didn't know), Of Mice and Men (same), Jekyll and Hyde (still nope), a poetry unit to year 9's who quite dislike poetry (kindred spirits), and an intro to Shakespeare unit to some year 7's that, by and large, have no business attending a school of any kind.  Yet, time has passed, and here I am.

I spent the entire month being cold and annoyed, with a festive zest of being sick for the last 3+ weeks.  The house I live in is spartan, moldy, and still my favourite place to be, because it means that I'm not at work or walking about in the cold.

At least the days have become noticeably longer, which lets me get out after work and still be able to capture stunning frames like this:

This city gets remarkably ropey once you get off the side streets.  We tend to romanticize red brick buildings in western Canada, I find, because there's a look of permanence about them that you don't get with stucco and vinyl siding...but in practice you see a lot of permanent piles of crap.  It could be that a veritable orgy of beautification takes place once spring comes around, but when you walk down the side streets...well, you can see.  At least it serves to highlight the general ok-ness of my cul-de-sac.

Thus I sit on a sunday, reflecting upon the personally remarkable feat that I've continued to go in since the first few harrowing days - with an inordinate amount of work waiting for me to resignedly lean into after I'm done.  I just thought that my literal tens of readers might be interested in some kind of update.

My prize, by the way, for all this drudgery, is visiting a city next week that my brother described in an email as a 'dogpatch'.  While I understood the context of his comment, I still turned to my Chinese friends for affirmation on my vacation choice; it is exciting, really, for most people to get a chance to visit the 'ancient world'...you best believe I'll be taking some pictures.

As a parting shot, here's a parting shot of a remarkably country-road looking lane near my school: just don't take pictures of the old brick houses and things look a bit more elegant...

Faux-peregrination ftw.

New year, new location.

Why not return to public epistolary form with the following:

Hastings is a town on the south coast of England, populated (it seems) largely by old people.  Now, this is based on a small sample size of walking a corridor from the northern outpost I live in (more on this later) to the downtown area....but I feel I can say with confidence that the aged are holding sway. Now, perhaps the young people are all hiding inside next to TVs or some such...I suppose I'll know more once school is in full swing.

I'm here with a job to teach the subject of English to a bunch of English boys; that sounds a bit silly, but there it is.  The school clearly needed somebody to fill a space for them, so why not me?  At least the hiring process was slightly more vigorous than that job in the china.

My house is expensive, populated by expats, and close to the school.  I've been learning about sundry additional expenses above and beyond rent, all of which are depressing and largely unavoidable.  I foresee at least a couple months of serious belt-tightening in my immediate future, which makes me wish I'd had more turkey these last weeks - alas.  The only bit of positive financial news I've received today is there is apparently a gym at my school that is free for teachers to use - if I have the energy to do so.

The other teachers speak dauntingly of how busy they are when things are in session, which I take in with a certain weary forbearance... it's been too long since I've been at work.  Well, it all starts tomorrow.  Cheeri..oh.