The summer of intentional BC.

I fly back to Seoul in 3 days.  It's back to work in a new building, to live in a new apartment, to be puzzled by new students, and to puzzle over a new subject (History 12). In anticipation of this, I laid out a summer with a focus on BC and various experiences therein.

The first immersion into BC (other than a physical lake and Phillips' beer or three) came in the form of a redux of my West Coast Trail adventuring of years ago.

The West Coast Trail takes 5 nights, which deep introspective analysis has shown is one more than I really enjoy sleeping in a tent and eating dried food for. I actually anticipated this and tried to beg off for a smaller trip, but my masochistic friend who feels the need to escape his real life for the longest time possible overruled me.  The weather was fine more than it wasn't, and all was going smoothly up until the last day.

We got up late and leisurely, leaving camp (Camper bay) at 11:30am in the sunshine.  We'd made a game, being 30-something reasonably strong guys, of how many people we could pass while hiking, while still stopping to enjoy views/take pictures/etc., and today's goal was 10.  As we counted up the passers-by, and enjoyed the food-free nature of our emptied bags, I got a bit ahead of my friend.  As I approached a couple who were standing to the side of the trail I did the late trip analysis - what do their boots look like, how is their hair, do they have mud on their hands/shirts/so on... I reasoned they must have just started and asked them if that was the case. Their non-immediate answer led to my tagging on a "....or are we just catching up to you?" at the end of my query.  This was apparently the case, which I didn't think much of.  Later, I learned that they had camped at the same site more or less the whole trip, and that we had passed them every single day.  My friend said they had left camp more than three hours earlier than us that last day, and we caught up to them in just over an hour.  We were moving.

As inevitably happens I had to wait up for my friend, so I chose a sun-dappled wood bridge over a watery ravine.  I did another round of pointedly observing and enjoying the BC wilderness, listening for the eventual trudging sound that accompanied his arrival.  It was then that he called out that the boat off of the trail, which one must make, was going to leave in about 40 minutes.  After some disbelief on my part, it was clearly time to go and go we did. I arrived at the ferry landing, after seeing the ferryman starting his boat and calling out to him from a bluff or two en route, some 2 minutes late and so he was gone.  It was then that the grand borrowing (temporary theft) scheme was formulated.

The parks Canada trail workers had come over in a canoe complete with paddles, life jackets...all the things one might need, and the river was narrow enough to throw a golf ball over.  The answer was obvious - take the canoe over, drop the things, bring it back to its original location, and swim back over.  We talked about this as we rested, for some 15 minutes, before it was go time.  The canoe was brought down to an area for loading, I went back up the beach and started to undress for swimming...when the ferryman came back.  After some castigating, and accepting a few dollars, we were back in the embrace of 'civilization'.  That this came in the form of watching a drunken midday party involving dogs, swearing, golf cart doughnuts, loud heavy metal, and more dogs didn't matter - it was shower and pub time.  Bliss.

The second of my two intentional adventures involved going to a concert (Weezer) in Vancouver (where so much marijuana smoke was in the air that the thought of it increasing post-legalization boggled the mind) and driving to visit friends and increase my knowledge of an area previously hazy to me - the 'interior'.

The route was Coquitlam-Kelowna-Nakusp-Salmon Arm-Kelowna-Salt Spring Island.  Driving to Kelowna via the Coquihalla exposed me to midsummer heat in Merritt, a place I stopped for gas and food; in the time it took to eat a couple sushi rolls (clearly, what one must eat while in a blasted semi-desert) it became so hot in the car that my iPod refused to function.  I don't want to live in Merritt.

Kelowna was more comfortable, if no less hot.  The trouble with Kelowna is that it seems replete with young nouveau-riche who want nothing more than to work out, dye their hair, and spend too much on fashionable food and drinks lakeside.  A friend called them "Kelownafornians", an apt if awkward to spell term, and derided them as only a local can.  The rolling dry hills and giant lake of Kelowna appealed to me, but due to the populace I can confidently say I don't want to live in Kelowna.

Nakusp I visited because a fellow Seoul teacher said she lived there and I had no idea what she was talking about.  It really is a town in BC, and it looks like this:

It followed the mountainous template of lake+flat area+elevation=cute town, and was an agreeable place to visit for a couple days.  One could imagine the static nature of the one-street town while listening to tales of rebellious youth staying up late to hang out on the park benches near the Overwaitea and immediately see the quiet appeal.  The main adventure came on the second evening, in the form of a destination at the end of a long, terribly bumpy road into the woods - one gross enough that I saw fancy low-slung cars quitting entirely and turning around.

Nakusp is known as a gateway of sorts to hot springs, and so we drove off interminably slowly into the woods to find them.  After the trip, and some hiking down to the springs area, we found the following:

A happily rushing river right next to a decreasingly-warm series of hot spring pools, all of which were full of...

French Canadians gearing up for Shambhala, complete with mad max-style leather vests, multi-coloured dreadlocks, and an addled sense, in conversation, that Vancouver Island (where I come from) is a 'magical place, man'.  As I relaxed in the muddy hot pool, a young man called out the availability of 5-6 very illegal "party favours" available for anyone interested.  I didn't partake because not only do I not do acid, I didn't want to make the terrible drive back in anything but an attentive state.  As it got darker I left the pool, cleaned the essence of 'la belle province' off in the river, and, after an acrobatic slip where I gouged my ankle on a rock in the said dirty hot spring water (bringing to mind all manner of exciting possible infections) got my friend to head back to the car.  As I looked back over my shoulder at the hot springs one more time, it was apparent that the ladies of the group were delaying their toplessness until our departure.  Apparently my friend and I were drug-selling cool, but not nipple cool.  I bet they had a fine night.

My last morning in the Kootenays I decided to visit the nearby hamlet of New Denver, on Slocan lake, to see the Nikkei Internment centre.  It's a remnant of where Japanese Canadians were sent to while away their time during and after WWII, and provided many scenes like this:

Tagging along were my friend, her mother, and her mother's old pug dog.  I took many pictures with the goal of eventually enlivening SS11 classes, for example with primary documents:

It was an interesting cultural/historical accompaniment to the interior trip, something lacking since the vacuousness of Kelowna was made concrete in my mind.

After leaving Nakusp I visited a friend in Salmon Arm, saw another play an excellent show in Kelowna, and headed back to the coast with a box of Okanagan peaches.  Since then it's been a mishmash of trying to consume the peaches (I'm just fine on the peach front for a while now, thanks), selecting a new apartment in Seoul, and generally trying to relax as hard as possible before the school year starts.  I've had about all the BC-style bbq, beer, fruits, lake fishing, and downtime I could possibly fit into 7 weeks, and I don't regret any of it.  Could probably do with a bit of cardio, though...

It's refreshed my desire to eventually reside in BC, and expanded the lens of possibility when it comes to areas of BC.  The Kootenays seem speckled with cute lake towns that would be fine places to live, and if I could excise 50% of the population Kelowna, too, is a slice of perfection.  Now it's back to Haebangchon, and taking the bus every day.  The Christmas holidays are planned, as are some spring ones, and it's time to return to work.

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.