Remember to sleep.

It's been busy here, as the weather has tipped from strikingly cold (November to early March was just awful) to shorts-friendly mid 20's celsius sun.  The land is replete with flowers, insects have returned, and the ajeossis and ajummas have started tending the hot pepper plants that captivated my interest upon immediate arrival - every residential street is dotted with them.

The first semester ended with a flourish of work and stress, followed by the comfortable march through the increasingly warm months to find me here, at the start of May.  Other than work, though, what happened?

Desperate aversion to cold almost had me booking an escape holiday during a week off in February, but in the end I saw the fiscal light and held off on holiday-making until early April, when I returned to Tokyo.

It was Hanami time, which means having beer and street food under trees and contemplating the temerity of your short existence...or something along those lines.  I mostly walked around relaxing during this trip, as I didn't have to catch all of the novelty I could.  Coming from a civilized country to visit Japan takes a touch of the wonder out, but it was nonetheless satisfying.

Since then it was a few weeks of nose acknowledging the existence of grindstone, but more or less opting to work from a sensible distance.  The volleyball club I've been playing with since late January (HBC High Flyers) has been really kicking into gear, culminating in the last couple of weeks.  It's been both weekend days each time of flailing away, trying to play defence for me, plus the novelty of last Wednesday.

We were invited onto a Korean TV show to play a group of celebrities, which was a surprisingly competitive match.  I won't spoil the results, but I did get a lot of playing time due to an injury by another player.

It was a lot of affixing small stickers to the logos on our new jerseys, getting makeup patted onto us, waiting around (5-6 hours to make one hour of TV), and standing around while the hosts chatted in Korean with those who could converse.  I spent most of the rest of my time playing a bit of defence and jumping when appropriate.

The uptick in sporting has me in decent physical shape but I finally had to take a practice day off to try to recover/dispel sickness after playing in a beach tourney yesterday.  I had to remind myself to get more sleep after reflexively waking up early this morning, which felt good when I achieved it.

For now it's stretch drive time with a dusting of domestic trip planning possible for a June jaunt, as well as a visit from Nette's parents.  They've not been to Asia before as far as I know, so I'm sure there will be some bewilderment; as I said, though, civilized country.

Go Wyverns, Go M's, Go High Flyers, Go to bed.

Year in review.

2015 highlights time, in no particular order:

-Hopeless sprint through the tubes and Heathrow to inexplicably make it to my Greek holiday.  I am still so happy that I got to take a first visit to the classical world, as I officially decided to grit out attempting to get to the flight despite my possible making it being illegal by Heathrow’s own policies regarding international flights.

-A good job, finally: after the debacle of my second year in China, in which I suffered under a B-movie style terrible boss, I was a bit shell-shocked.  My decision to return to the profession landed me a bad job to start 2015, in which I dealt with some of the worst behaved students I’m likely to see. Fall 2015 brought a good school, good students, good workmates and a sense of calm I hadn’t felt at work since 2013.

-Catching fish! I had two transcendent episodes of icthycide during the year: catching a champion-sized (for SSI) rainbow with Lynette in the boat (proving I wasn’t just buying them or something beyond all doubt), and catching a decent spring in about 8 feet of water with my Dad using 60+ year-old tactics that people generally don’t know about anymore.  Both were tense affairs that led to exaltation and great meals, and count highly amongst the year’s experiences.

-World travelling: I visited the UK, Greece, Germany, Scotland, Canada, South Korea, and Vietnam during 2015.  7 countries in one year, without cheating by using a cruise or a long train journey… not bad.  Alas that I had to renew my passport halfway through the year.

Track of the year: Ukifune by Go!Go!7188

Meal of the year: stuffed grilled squid in Athens with pitas/hummus and beer.

Biggest personal expense: custom-made suit and shirts in Hoi An!

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In a lot of ways, 2015 was characterized by being cold; I managed to be uncomfortably cold in all seasons but the early fall – late fall being when the Siberian air started to drift into Seoul.  In a lot of ways, it was a cold ‘world tour’:

-UK: bloody freezing, living in a poorly insulated house from January – April with people who (rightly) never wanted to turn the heat on, and who always stood near a door to smoke cigarettes out into the cold…rather than step into the cold, it became both cold and smoky inside.

-Greece: remarkably cold, to the point of snow each morning.  I remember looking at the forecasts from the UK and viscerally looking forward to the highs in the high teens…and arriving to find I had to wear my winter coat to take in the Parthenon, the ancient agora, and all the Mythos beers I could find.

-Germany: confusingly cold, with one form or another of ice falling from the sky each time I left the apartment.  My brother and sister-in-law were both shaking their heads at the litany of unseasonable hailstorms, rain, snow, sleet, etc etc that accompanied my visit.  I still gamely went out, but with the incredulity of someone who hadn’t really been warm in four months.

-Scotland: atypically wonderful, warm and sunny.  Don’t think the weather gods knew I was there.

-Canada: made the foolish mistake of going camping in the summer.  Struggled up into an unremarkable mountainous area (Golden Ears park – skip it) only to be walloped by a huge 2-day rainstorm that defeated my tent’s waterproofing and soaked my friend’s sleeping bag.  After some deliberation we legged it back to the parking lot to get sushi.  Cold fatigue setting thoroughly in.

-South Korea: blisteringly hot in the early fall, changing to lip-crackingly cold after about a two week goldilocks-zone of habitability.  Siberian air is no joke.

That’s 3 continents of cold (apologies Africa/South America…absolutely not, Antarctica) covered in one year, with the antidote forced at the end: Vietnam.

Vietnam was warm, inexpensive, and an altogether nice place to give a meteorological middle finger to the rest of the year.  The food was fantastic, the people were great, and the sun was out more than the forecast had dictated.

We spent days wandering around the old town, eating huge lunches, siesta-ing when appropriate, and questing for the best bahn mi the town could offer.  It was cheap, warm, and easy: an oppositional end to a year’s worth of difficult, cold living.  I write now from a chilly New Year’s day, hoping 2016 is a warmer year.  If I had a resolution, it would be to not be freezing cold as a throughline for my years’ travels and travails.

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.