South of Nunavut

Some pics..

2007-09-05T22:04:00.000-07:00

.. to illustrate the last post.

Our caravan of kayaks:

The night before:

Happy to be rescued:

View from our campsite on Gambier Island:

Our Kayaking Adventure

2007-09-03T11:52:00.000-07:00

Gale force wind : Average surface wind speed of 34 to 47 knots (63 to 87 km per hour or wind force of 8 or 9 in the Beaufort Scale). - severe.worldweather.org

This weekend I went kayaking. The plan was to go from Bowen Island to Gambier Island, camp one night on the shore of the latter, and paddle back to Bowen the next day. There were seven of us. Two doubles and three singles. A mixture of experience levels from beginner to intermediate. The designated course was to cut up along the west side of Bowen, make a dash across the open ocean (Howe Sound) after letting the ferry pass, and dock at a small cove that had campgrounds (Halkett Bay).

Everything went as planned on Saturday. We took our time, mooring on a stony Bowen Island beach for lunch, and paddling hard across Howe Sound after letting the ferry pass. The waves were fairly big across the open area, but not that much of a hinderance. I was in the back of our double, steering, and I got a bit wet because my skirt was of a different, more shoddy construction than everyone elses'.

Despite the waves and lots of wakes from boat traffic, it was so peaceful and beautiful on the water.. we could see the steep cliffs and luxurious, precariously perched houses on Bowen Island behind us, the zig-zagging shore of Gambier ahead of us, and the Sea to Sky highway cutting into the mountains to the right. Other little islands dotted the ocean here and there.

We found the perfect camping spot just 15 metres from where we landed, with no other campsites or people nearby. We stepped over dozens of little crabs, carried the kayaks up onto a grassy knoll and set up four tents. Later on at night we decided we wanted a campfire. The waterproof matches failed to work, so with collective brainpower and a few hours of trial and error, some flint, a knife, sparks, shredded toilet paper, and gas from a stove, we finally made a fire. I'd never seen fire made from a hand-generated spark before and we all cheered when it finally lit. Part of our group went on a small hike and found a dead deer.

In the morning it was rainy but the water looked the same, and we set off around noon, aiming to be back to Bowen before 5. The wind was in our favor this time, and we barely had to paddle.. just coasted along. We were chatting and joking, all five kayaks close together, when suddenly, the waves picked up and one of our single kayaks flipped. He was okay, and smiling as he hung on to his kayak. We circled around him. I grabbed his paddle and hat. Because the waves were so close together though, he found it impossible to get back in, even though he was a strong, experienced outdoorsy type.

The waves started to peak and grow white caps. They were meeting together from two different directions, making it impossible to angle perpendicular to them all. 'Confused water,' they call it. The two weakest paddlers, forgetting to paddle, started to drift far away in their double kayak. Luckily, a large white motor boat, which was pulling into the cove, saw our capsized member and pulled a U-turn to help. We saw him pull up close to our friend and grab a ladder. It was a struggle to stay in one place against the waves, and our double kayak started to drift away a bit too. From what we pieced together, the boat had managed to pick up our friend and tow his kayak.. but to where we didn't know.

One of the more experienced girls went off in her single kayak to chase the two weaker kayakers, who were drifting farther to the open ferry course and choppier waves. Her boyfriend who was the most experienced and thus our inofficial leader, went to pick up the paddle float our capsized friend had dropped. Then he followed us towards the shore and pointed for us to go there. But then for some strange reason we saw him change directions and head towards Bowen. We waited until we were certain he was not coming back, and satisfied knowing all four friends were continuing towards Bowen, we made our way back to Gambier to find our capsized friend and the motorboat he was on. While focusing on bracing against the waves, we had forgotten to watch where the boat went. But we were very sure we'd seen it go toward our campsite. Because of the winds, it took us an hour and a half to return.

Needless to say, we were exhausted. We had kept drifting farther west when we wanted to go east. It started raining. Salt water stung our eyes. I had to stop to pump water out of my kayak; the waves had been washing right in and I was sitting in a few inches of water. I couldn't find an ideal place to store our capsized friend's paddle. Everyone had scattered; we saw nobody. As we finally reached the little cove where a few boats were moored, we asked the only man we found whether he'd seen our friend's boat but he hadn't. I wanted to camp another night as I was too tired. Just as we were pulling up to the shore, a large white boat pulled into the cove, honked at us and a guy hung over the railing, waving emphatically.

We squinted: was it the boat that had picked up our friend, and now it was returning to get us? It wasn't. It drew closer and we saw a friendly and concerned-looking older man inspecting us and asking many questions. It was the owner of the kayaking rental place, riding in his friend's boat! They asked if we needed help. I didn't want to cause trouble so I said we'd just camp another night and take off early next day when the water was calm. I stayed quiet and let my friend do the talking because I didn't want them to see how cold I was.

On account of finding the rest of our party, we ended up loading our kayak into the boat, the end of it sticking out over the stern. My friend was a bit annoyed at having to give up our day of kayaking so early, but I was secretly relieved to get a lift back. The boat was almost yacht-like: a handsome leather-seated alternative to our wet kayaks. They gave us some jackets to wear and we set off to find our friends.

We were almost 100% certain all of our friends had reached the Bowen Island coast by now, as that was the direction we'd seen them leave. There was no way they could've returned, especially the novices, as they had been so far out. My friend and I scanned the Bowen coast, while the kayak rental owner scoured the Gambier coast and the boat owner drove one handly and binoculared ahead with the other. No more than 10 minutes had passed before we spotted a double kayak on the Gambier coast. I was shocked, having never thought the girls with the least experience would be able to get where they were. They looked very tired and were slow to respond. They might have been experiencing the beginnings of hypothermia.

We had no room for their kayak so the kayaking club owner yelled at them to meet up at the campsite in an hour or two. We motored on for another 10 minutes and saw nothing. Then another 5 minutes. Finally, the boat owner spotted what looked like two kayaks beached on a stony shore. There was only one person standing beside them and we couldn't see who it was. Finally we saw that it was indeed one of our friends; the girl in the single kayak that had gone to chase the double. But where was her boyfriend? 'Where's Chad?!' we yelled, from where the boat idled, but she couldn't hear over the sound of the engine.

More gestures and yelling. Suddenly, we saw Chad running down the stairs that led to houses up on the bluffs. We were relieved. Then another, smaller motor boat pulled up behind us and two bearded men, apparently two of the residents on the bluff, said they had come to help. Chad had gone knocking on the doors asking for help and they'd left their campfire burning to come help. But the kayak club owner said we'd be fine and he had a plan to tow all of the kayaks in a single line. There was only one dock along the rocky cliffs and it said 'No trespassing; Private Dock.' There was no way for our boat to get closer, so the kayak club owner waved to the house above and yelled ' Can we tie on for a few minutes?' He then got our friends to paddle out to the dock.

The boat pulled up beside it, and our two friends jumped in their kayaks and met us there. As we pulled up the first, he told us his girlfriend had simply stopped paddling and 'burst into tears' at one point because she was spent. Being the two with the most experience, they were surprisingly the most shaken up. Almost hysterical, but deservedly so as it's a lot harder to turn single kayaks against the wind. We pulled them out of the water, the men tied the kayaks together, and I held the rope to prevent them from banging against each other, the dock and the house owner's boat as everyone lifted our double kayak out of the motor boat and down into the water. The three kayaks bobbed along in single file behind the boat as we motored back to the campsite to find the first two girls. The girls were helped out of the water and the fourth kayak was tied onto the caravan.

It took us a long time to get back to Bowen. The boat went slowly so as not to upturn the kayaks. Still, the front kayak overturned twice, and we had to circle back to grab a cushion that fell out, the kayaking club owner leaning far off the starboard side as Chad held his legs. The whitecaps made even the 30 foot boat sway. Six out of the seven in our group had been found; the only person left was our capsized friend whose misforture had started the whole adventure. As we slowly chugged into Snug Cove in the the anything-but-snug downpour, our capsized friend waved, casually leaning against a railing in an undercover area, in warm dry street clothes, sipping a coffee.

The boat that had picked him up had turned out to be a taxi. It had, like we'd thought, gone back to our campsite cove, but then it had left and made several other stops along Gambier before bringing our friend back. So our return to the campsite had been in vain. On the other hand it was perfect because we had run into the owner looking for us there (he had immediately left when our capsized friend had returned, and told them there were six of us out there). It also kept us from reaching the 45 knot winds and waves around that troubled corner.

Our capsized friend told us a number of other kayakers had been stranded on the island because of the windy weather, which had arrived a day earlier than forecast. One was a tour group; the leader had been able to judge the waves and turned the group back early. We were the only group who had attempted and gotten separated. The kayaking company owner was so concerned about us, even apologetic for the weather, even though we thought we'd get a lecture. And the boat owner donated a lot of time, and the use of his boat to gather us all. We plan to go back and bring them a gift to show our appreciation.

July Ho Hum Diddly Dum

2007-07-24T00:44:00.000-07:00

I have a decision to make. Go back to working at the greenhouse part time in Sept, and also teach? Or just teach? I just found out today that there will be a lot of teaching hours available nearby me in Sept. And I've saved so much gas this summer not having to commute to Aldergrove. I was always so tired and hot and sweaty having to go from greenhouse to teaching.

On the other hand I learned so much at the greenhouse. I wouldn't have known what lobelia, bacopa, potato vine, or lysomachia were, or the numerous ways to treat aphids, or how to plant a hanging basket. Maybe I should work there two days a week to keep my knowledge up? I really do learn best by doing, rather than reading books.

Teaching English doesn't educate me as much, but I earn 2.5 times as much money doing something twice as easy, and I could spend the extra time saved by reading books about landscape design and gardening. Then I could send myself to school later....

I still have a month to hum and haw.

July is being a bitch. It rained this weekend and hiking plans were thwarted. It feels like summer never really came. And it's already half over. Two measly months of the year, and one of them is gone already. On a lighter note, BC roadtrip and another annual surfing trip to Tofino is in the cards. It'll be my fourth summer in a row going to Tofino! Can't wait.

Other things that are new that nobody wants to hear about: The washing machine is clogged. Lady is shedding a lot. Everything in my garden is producing fruit and veggies like they should. The aphids are pretty much non-existant. Even the strawberries are starting to grow again. Julian's back from training in Cupertino, California. So far he likes his new job at Apple. And he's turning 30 this weekend. And we're gonna go see Daft Punk in Seattle! Yes indeed, we are.

Oh joy!

2007-06-13T21:49:00.001-07:00

Today I made a mental note: blog that I am really happy and lucky that I have not one, but two jobs that I enjoy. I am also lucky that I like all my supervisors. I sure have had some crappy ones in the past (as well as good ones) and I definitely can appreciate the value of a good one. Both jobs are also 100% flexible with each others' time tables, so I've chosen to drop the greenhouse job for July/Aug and just teach fulltime at this summerschool program that'll be starting up.

I've been learning a lot this week as far as the greenhouse job goes.. mostly the names of plants, and how to divide tufts of grass. Today I learned what thrips look like. Apparently they are not good insects at all. My mom and I went to the Van Dusen garden show on the weekend. We frolicked around like crazy monkeys and both bought 8 watergarden plants.

Big Musical Update

2007-05-28T20:23:00.000-07:00

I've gone to three concerts in the past month and I want to quickly write about them before I forget! The first was Cocorosie, and it was the best concert I've ever been to.

It's hard to summarize them but.. two sisters, raised by artists in a burnt out station wagon in the desert, where they shot at tin cans. Separated for a decade, one went to opera school in London, the other showed up at her sister's door one day and they moved to Paris and started making music using kitchen utensils, household objects, kazoos, harps, and children's toys. This song summarizes them perfectly:

At their ethereal yet intimate concert, held at Richards on Richards, older sister Sierra, wearing a long black sleeved dress, unzipped at the side, sang bits of haunting opera, while sister Bianca, dressed in hiphop clothes, a beret, and a baseballcap on top (yes, two hats) did most of the singing in her croaky 'japanese anime' voice. Here's a clip from the concert:

Both girls wore entirely too much blush, which looked perfect on them, and Bianca had a shaved head and two long braided rat tails. They did covers of various mainstream songs such as Akon's "You Wanna Love Me," which were amazing. The visuals contained corrupted files of My Little Pony porn, glimpses of Britney Spears' shaved head, disturbing clown loops, and religious and political icons. After our concert they flew to the states, where they promptly got arrested and their whole US tour was cancelled. Nobody knows why. Words cannot express how much I love Cocorosie.

The second concert I went to was Bjork, at Deer Lake Park.

It was a sunny evening, perfect weather. The crowd was as diverse and unique as Bjork. Many hippies, old and young. Newborn babies too. The old hippies were wearing kitschy outfits, like paper mache'd strawberry hats, or teletubbie-esque outfits. As Bjork played, the sun set the moon shone overhead, and the strobelights fired away to the accelerated versions of her songs. Inyeob and I moshed to it.. it was more like a heavy metal show!! Even the spotlight men hidden behind the curtains were tapping their feet. She introduced the band, which she called the Icelandic Orchestra. The keyboardist was the only Canadian. I have a newfound love for her song Hyperballad.. look up the lyrics, they make you wonder. Like my friend Ross says, 'Bjork is Bjork.. a magical pixie.'

Hyperballad at Deer Lake:

Human Behavior Video, directed by Michel Gondry:

Everything is Love Video:

Finally, I went to Dubforms 3 at Open Studios on First Avenue, featuring Kode 9. Dubstep. It's slower than most techno and has lots AND LOTS of low growling bass. It's big in Southern London and New York, and not that well known here. Wiki article on Dubstep . It was the second dubstep event I've been to and apparently only the third live dubstep performance ever in Vancouver.

First, the venue. It was great. So hidden, a warehouse amongst warehouses.. that I drove by slowly about ten times and then left, thinking nothing was there. The doorman made fun of me, saying, YOU DIDN'T LISTEN! Which was obvious because the whole building was vibrating with so much bass, they gave out complimentary earplugs. I didn't care that the friend who came with me left early and I had trouble locating the others for over an hour.

I just stuck around.. and I've never stuck around at a club by myself but the music was just too good. I can listen to it for hours. Eventually Martin and Lauren showed up, and I met some other people I knew by chance, and we danced, and the room got more and more filled with weed smoke and hippies and dreads and smiles. And then slowly it thinned out. I left alone, with a big smile on my face. Oh yeah, there was also a lyricist for most of the time.

Some pics from Martin's cam:

This isn't from the same night, but it's representative of the awesomeness that existed. Minus the sketchy looking Dutch barstars:

Finally, I'll briefly mention the concert I WANTED to go to, but decided not to, since I'm not made of money, and also because it was the day after Bjork.. the band was The Arcade Fire. It was also at Deer Lake Park, and thankfully, most of the concert is on Youtube. Here is my favorite song, called Rebellion. A must-see, it's just so good. I want this song played at my funeral should I ever have one:

After the song played, the band walked off and the crowd hummed the ending to Rebellion, until the band came back for an encore. Makes me sniffle a bit.

That's it. I've been spoiled by good music the past few weeks and I rarely put the energy into posting about music that I love. So it's nice to finally share.

Extra video by Royksopp who also played here recently:

Today's task: chopping petunias..

2007-05-03T22:11:00.000-07:00

I haven't updated this week in the greenhouse because I've basically been doing repeat tasks, like seeding herbs. Today's task (click to see larger pic) :

See all those flowers? I have to chop each one off. The plants are perhaps a foot tall and we're hacking them down to 2" as they've grown out unevenly. Then they'll grow back nicely and flower again later. That cart thingy in the distance is the monorail, which I put buckets of chopped flowers on, and send them hurtling down the aisle to dump on the compost heap..... Petunias are STICKY. They have some kind of sap on them that builds up and gets all over everything.

Greenhouse Entry 3:

2007-04-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

Friday! I spent the whole day doing one fairly brainless task, which helped compensate for the brain overload the day before. A couple hundred flats of herbs (basil, dill, mint, cilantro, petgrass, etc) had to be de-potted and thrown out because they were either too 'leggy' and 'droopy' or too underdeveloped. I was given three ladies to help. A cart with a base and four support rods on the side is wrapped around with saran wrap to make temporary walls, and the dirt is thrown in.

The tractor guy accidentally got his tire stuck in the ditch after bringing me two pallets to stack the empty trays and pots on. They kept revving and couldn't get it out, and it smelled like burning. The depotting is a slow process. Part of my task is to supervise the East Indian contract workers who work with me. I'm supposed to tell them to hurry up if they're slow and give instructions. I don't really like bossing people around though, cuz I want everyone to like me. :| And plus I'm new and most of them have worked there longer than me. Sometimes I tell them to do something and it ends up being the wrong thing, so then I feel like an idiot.

So I learned to start things myself, and after I've figured out how to do it, then ask them to help. And also spy on them from a distance, and come show them the technique that works better. If I just tell them, it doesn't work. Showing works better, a la Montessori. Learning their names is also super hard.. they all end in jeet or deep.

Greenhouse Entry #2

2007-04-26T20:57:00.000-07:00

Thursday:

Today I learned so much my head hurt, and I was ready to come home after 8 hours, even more hours are available if I want. First, I was tasked with spraying the mini carnations with a fertilizer / iron mix. This mix is red in colour, and keeps the fussy carnations from losing their pigment. 45 minutes later, the iron needs to be washed off their leaves so that they don't turn brown. The fertilizer we use is indeed high in nitrogen and potassium, and low in phosphorus. It's also high in calcium and magnesium, hence the name 'calmag.'

Next, we mixed about 80 bags of fertilizer into four giant vats that feed it through the entire greenhouse irrigation system. Approximately 18 bags go in each vat, and blue dye is added. A water test shows the chlorine level. Adding one drop of solution to the sample before it turns black equals one part per million. The chlorine level in our water was about two parts per million. The fertilizer should be about 1.7 parts per million. The vats are located in the hottest part of the greenhouse, unfortunately, and I was sweating and covered in blue fertilizer and dye. I am going to have to devise some ingenious plan on how to get myself from blue collar job to white collar job within 45 minutes, when I pick up more teaching hours. I already bought nail polish to conceal the grime under my fingernails, which won't scrub out.

After that, we checked a bunch of sweet potato vines that allegedly had aphids. Inspection proved otherwise. They were just producing too much sugar, a condition known as botrysis due to improper temperatures, fertilization, air and light. I did however go see real aphids. They're light coloured with dark elbows and their butts stick up in the air. They suck out the nutrition from the plants so that they wither. Caterpillers on the other hand, eat holes. There are two other common and annoying insects that do a lot of damage (tryps and.. ?)

Next, we dusted the greenhouse floors with about 15 bags of baking soda. This has a high PH and kills the liverwort, slugs, moss and other weeds. I learned that snakes and frogs also make their home in the greenhouse, and that a lack of frogs means an unhealthy environment. Good to know they're surviving the chemicals.

Then, I sprayed some plants with a fertilizer mixed with a very potent growth inhibitor hormone plus fungicide. The spray has to be distributed very evenly, or the plants will differ too much in height. I guess it's my own fault that my head hurts.. the girl who hired me, M, is so good at explaining things, and I take advantage of that by asking way too many questions!

David. By Earle Birney.

2007-04-26T20:46:00.001-07:00

David and I that summer cut trails on the Survey,
All week in the valley for wages, in air that was steeped
in the wail of mosquitoes, but over the sunalive week-ends
we climbed, to get from the ruck of the camp, the surly

Poker, the wrangling, the snoring under the fetid
Tents, and because we had joy in our lengthening coltish
Muscles, and mountains for David were made to see over,
Stairs from the valleys and steps to the sun's retreats.

Our first was Mount Gleam. We hiked in the long afternoon
To a curling lake and lost the lure of the faceted
Cone in the swell of its sprawing shoulders. Past
The inlet we grilled our bacon, the strips festooned

On a poplar prong, in the hurrying slant of the sunset.
Then the two of us rolled in the blanket while round us the cold
Pines thrust at the stars. The dawn was a floating
Of mists still we reached to the slopes above timber, and won

To snow like fire in the sunlight. The peak was upthrust
Like a fist in a frozen ocean of rock that swirled
Into valleys the moon could be rolled in. Remotely unfurling
Eastward the alien prairie glittered. Down through the dusty

Scree on the west we descended, and David showed me
How to use the give of shale for giant incredible
Strides. I remember, before the larches' edge,
That I jumped on a long green surf of juniper flowing

Away from the wind, and landed in gentian and saxifrage
Spilled on the moss. Then the darkening firs
And the sudden whirring of water that knifed down a fern-hidden
Cliff and splashed unseen into mist in the shadows.

One Sunday on Rampart's arête a rainsquall caught us,
And passed, and we clung by our blueing fingers and bootnails
An endless hour in the sun, not daring to move
Till the ice had steamed from the slate. And David taught me

How time on a knife-edge can pass with the guessing of fragments
Remembered from poets, the naming of strata beside one,
And matching of stories from schooldays ... We crawled astride
The peak to feast on the marching ranges flagged

By the fading shreds of the shattered stomcloud. Lingering
there it was David who spied to the south, remote
And unmapped, a sunlit spire on Sawback, an overhang
Crooked like a talon. David named it the Finger.

That day we chanced on the skull and the splayed white ribs
Of a mountain goat underneath a cliff, caught
On a rock. Around were the silken feathers of hawks.
And that was the first I knew that a goat could slip.

And then Inglismaldie. Now I remember only
The long ascent of the lonely valley, the live
Pine spirally scarred by lightning, the slicing pipe
Of invisible pike, and great prints, by the lowest

Snow, of a grizzly. There it was too that David
Taught me to read the scroll of coral in limestone
And the beetle-seal in the shale of ghostly trilobites,
Letters delivered to man from the Cambrian waves.

On Sundance we tried from the col and the going was hard.
The air howled from our feet to the smudged rocks
And the papery lake below. At an outthrust we balked
Till David clung with his left to a dint in the scarp,

Lobbed the iceaxe over the rocky lip,
Slipped from his holds and hung by the quivering pick,
Twisted his long legs up into space and kicked
To the crest. Then, grinning, he reached with his freckled wrist

And drew me up after. We set a new time for that climb.
That day returning we found a robin gyrating
In grass, wing-broken. I caught it to tame but David
Took and killed it, and said, "Could you teach it to fly?"

In August, the second attempt, we ascended The Fortress.
By the Forks of the Spray we caught five trout and fried them
Over a balsam fire. The woods were alive
With the vaulting of mule-deer and drenched with clouds all the morning,

Till we burst at noon to the flashing and floating round
Of the peaks. Coming down we picked in our hats the bright
And sunhot raspberries, eating them under a mighty
Spruce, while marten moving like quicksilver scouted us.

But always we talked of the Finger on Sawback, unknown
And hooked, till the first afternoon in September we slogged
Through the musky woods, past a swamp that quivered with frog-song,
And camped by a bottle-green lake. But under the cold

Breath of the glacier sleep would not come, the moonlight
Etching the finger. We rose and trod past the feathery
Larch, while the stars went out, and the quiet heather
Flushed, and the skyline pulsed with the surging bloom

Of incredible dawn in the Rockies. David spotted
Bighorns across the moraine and sent them leaping
With yodels the ramparts redoubled and rolled to the peaks,
And the peaks to the sun. The ice in the morning thaw

Was a gurgling world of crystal and cold blue chasms,
And seracs that shone like frozen salt-green waves.
At the base of the Finger we tried once and failed. Then David
Edged to the west and discovered the chimney; the last

Hundred feet we fought the rock and shouldered and kneed
Our way for an hour and made it. Unroping we formed
A cairn on the rotting tip. Then I turned to look north
At the glistening wedge of giant Assiniboine, heedless

Of handhold. And one foot gave. I swayed and shouted.
David turned sharp and reached out his arm and steadied me
Turning again with a grin and his lips ready
To jest. But the strain crumbled his foothold. Without

A gasp he was gone. I froze to the sound of grating
Edge-nails and fingers, the slither of stones, the lone
Second of silence, the nightmare thud. Then only
The wind and the muted beat of unknowing cascades.

Somehow I worked down the fifty impossible feet
To the ledge, calling and getting no answer but echoes
Released in the cirque, and trying not to reflect on
What an answer would mean. He lay still, with his lean

Young face upturned and strangely unmarred, but his legs
Splayed beneath him, beside the final drop,
Six hundred feet sheer to the ice. My throat stopped
When I reached him, for he was alive. He opened his grey

Straight eyes and brokenly murmured, "over... over."
And I, feeling beneath him a cruel fang
Of the ledge thrust in his back, but not understanding,
Mumbled stupidly, "Best not to move," and spoke

of his pain. But he said "I can't move ... If only I felt
Some pain." Then my shame stung the tears to my eyes
As I crouched, and I cursed myself, but he cried
Louder, "No, Bobbie! Don't ever blame yourself.

I didn't test my foothold." He shut the lids
Of his eyes to the stare of the sky, while I moistened his lips
From our water flask and tearing my shirt into strips
I swabbed the shredded hands. But the blood slid

From his side and stained the stone and the thirsting lichens,
And yet I dared not lift him up from the gore
Of the rock. Then he whispered, "Bob, I want to go over!"
This time I knew what he meant and I grasped for a lie

And said, "I'll be back here by midnight with ropes
And men from the camp and we'll cradle you out." But I knew
That the day and the night must pass and the cold dews
Of another morning before such men unknowing

The way of mountains could win to the chimney's top.
And then, how long? And he knew ... and the hell of hours
After that, if he lived till we came, roping him out.
But I curled beside him and whispered, "The bleeding will stop.

You can last. " He said only, "Perhaps ... For what? A wheelchair,
Bob?" His eyes brightening with fever upbraided me.
I could not look at him more and said, "Then I'll stay
With you." But he did not speak, for the clouding fever.

I lay dazed and stared at the long valley,
The glistening hair of a creek on the rug stretched
By the firs, while the sun leaned round and flooded the ledge,
The moss, and David still as a broken doll

I hunched on my knees to leave, but he called and his voice
Now was sharpened with fear. "For Christ's sake push me over!
If I could move ... or die ..." The sweat ran from his forehead
But only his head moved. A hawk was buoying

Blackly its wings over the wrinkled ice.
The purr of a waterfall rose and sank with the wind.
Above us climbed the last joint of the Finger
Beckoning bleakly the wide indifferent sky.

Even then in the sun it grew cold lying there ... And I knew
He had tested his holds. It was I who had not ... I looked
At the blood on the ledge, and the far valley. I looked
At last in his eyes. He breathed, "I'd do it for you, Bob."

I will not remember how or why I could twist
Up the wind-devilled peak, and down through the chimney's empty
Horror, and over the traverse alone. I remember
Only the pounding fear I would stumble on It

When I came to the grave-cold maw of the bergschrund ... reeling
Over the sun-cankered snowbridge, shying the caves
In the névé ... the fear, and the need to make sure It was there
On the ice, the running and falling and running, leaping

Of gaping green-throated crevasses, alone and pursued
By the Finger's lengthening shadow. At last through the fanged
And blinding seracs I slid to the milky wrangling
Falls at the glacier's snout, through the rocks piled huge

On the humped moraine, and into the spectral larches,
Alone, By the glooming lake I sank and chilled
My mouth but I could not rest and stumbled still
To the valley, losing my way in the ragged marsh.

I was glad of the mire that covered the stains, on my ripped
Boots, of his blood, but panic was on me, the creek
Of the bog, the purple glimmer of toadstools obscene
In the twilight. I staggered clear to a firewaste, tripped

And fell with a shriek on my shoulder. It somehow eased
My heart to know I was hurt, but I did not faint
And I could not stop while over me hung the range
Of the Sawback. In blackness I searched for the trail by the creek

And found it ... My feet squelched a slug and horror
Rose again in my nostrils. I hurled myself
Down the path. In the woods behind some animal yelped.
Then I saw the glimmer of tents and babbled my story.

I said that he fell straight to the ice where they found him,
And none but the sun and incurious clouds have lingered
Around the marks of that day on the ledge of the Finger,
That day, the last of my youth, on the last of our mountains.

Earle Birney
1942

Mail carrying is like, so last month. So.. wanna know where plants come from?

2007-04-25T17:20:00.000-07:00

The real reason I have this new job is for blogging purposes. I plan to keep changing jobs once a month so that I have something new to blog about. So far I LOVE my new job. I work at a greenhouse that supplies all the plants to Home Depot and other such stores. It's huge -- probably a few acres large. I get lost in it a lot. Here's a summary of my first three days:

1. Monday: The day began with sorting through catnip and lemon balm plants, throwing away the small ones, and amalgamating the good ones, to make room for new plants. Next, sowing sweet basil and red rubin basil seeds. 300 flats of the first and 75 of the second. Seeds are very expensive, especially the red rubin, so they're kept locked up in the office, generally speaking, until sowing. 15 seeds go in each pot. Too many, and the middle of the plants grows fungus. Sowing the seeds all in the centre of the pot means each individual plant supports its neighbour.

Part of this involved getting dirt and filling the pots. Planter soil comes through these conveyor belts in the roof, and when they run, dirt rains in your hair. :( The belts lead to three separate planting machines worth $2 million each. The machines fill the trays with dirt, and delicately place plants in them. But because we were seeding by hand, we had to shovel out the dirt ourselves, and cart it over to the herb section. The greenhouse is divided into three main sections: the seeding area, growing area, and order picking area.

Next, I learned about how to fertilize using an irrigation pump. Basically, you take this pump that looks like a motor and bucket on wheels, and you hook it up to a network of pipes that run above the plants. You take fertilizer and mix it with the water. Then you put a hose into the water and hit a switch that removes the air from the water. You keep adding fertilizer and testing the water that comes out of the hose with a guage that reads the concentration level. In this case, for flowering baskets, we wanted a .2 concentration. It takes a while for the plants to get soaked, but you keep measuring the soil's concentration level using the guage, until it hits around .2, and then you stop.

2. Tuesday: The day began with destroying the most beautiful easter hanging baskets I ever saw. A few hundred baskets of pastel coloured pansies (yellow, purple, pink) in full bloom hadn't sold, so we were given scissors and instructions to deliver a Britney-Spears hack job. We chopped off every single flower. This allows the plants to bloom again, in time for Mother's Day, when they will be sold.

After that, I spent the day picking off sticks and buds from miniature carnations. They were a more ugly colour (fluorescent pink), so I didn't mind quite so much. The plants were still so small even though they were sown in October. From birth to sale, each plant must be plucked of its buds ELEVEN times, to allow them to grow bushier. It seems so labour intensive!

3. Wednesday: Today was a fun day. First, I put tags on the basil we sowed on Monday. Then, I hand-watered a bunch of plants. I watered them because they were about to get a dose of growth inhibitor spray. This spray actually destroys and / or delays a gene in the plant, to keep it small and compact. Then, after being purchased, the plant will grow. Who knew that the plants you buy are genetically engineered via a simple spray?!

Other plants are also sprayed with a myriad of different types of fertilizer. Some are made of kelp, some of fish eyes. Some are 400 parts per million and possibly toxic. Others are 4 parts per million. Luckily I won't have to spray the toxic stuff if I choose not to (for now). I think I watered verbena and durango gold marigolds.

Next, the fun part! Hanging baskets are hung on conveyor belts on the ceiling. Push a button, and they move. Push another button, and they rotate past a sensor that sends a shower of water on them. My task though, was to pinch the buds of the osteos (African Daisy), down to the second set of leaves. It was sort of like duck hunting - trying to pluck before the basket whizzed by. Some conveyor belts didn't work, so I ended up balancing things precariously on each other, climbing poles and table tops in order to reach.

All in all, working there has increased my interest in gardening, rather than make me sick of it. When I come home, I want to mess around with plants even more! I just planted a whole tray of foxglove, for example, and put them on Jules' window. They're biennials, so they won't bloom until next year. That means there is so much chance for them to die between now and then, so they will be a challenge. On the weekend, we also planted the blueberry (Elliot and Nelson varieties) and raspberry (Tulameen) in the front flower bed.

I'm tired! Sleep, please.

Granville Island Market

2007-04-22T21:53:00.000-07:00

BaH! Stupid Google appears to have bought stupid Blogger, just like Yahoo bought Flicker. So they make you sign in with your user ID and password from the parent site.. and then it said Safari wasn't accepting cookies, even though it is, so I had to open a new browser.. and now the format is all different. Blargh on monopolizing companies pac-manning small independent companies that are doing perfectly fine without them!

Anyway, that's not why I came here. I came here to say one of my favorite things to do with the boi is explore artisan markets, wineries and cheeseries, be they on Islands, the Interior, or the Lower Mainlaind. Today we went to Granville Island, and check out the weird assortment of things we bought:

+ A FEDORA for Moolz (that I have fun wearing and pretending to be a spy)

+ A blueberry and a strawberry rhubarb tart

+ Cured horse meat

Tomorrow I'm starting a new job. Guess what it is! That's a pretty tough challenge, considering I change careers about as often as the wind blows.

The following post contains..

2007-04-14T23:26:00.000-07:00

....Graphic images of some of the booboo's incurred by my former letter carrying job. I never even noticed until after I quit my job, how many I had. I counted 14 bruises, 9 cuts or welts on my hand, and one recurring blister on my toe. I'm so excited that they are going to disappear soon.

I quit my job!

2007-04-12T16:34:00.001-07:00

Toner ink - $40
Fancy Resume paper and envelopes - $20
Hiking shoes - $200
Custom Orthotics - $400
Driving lessons and rental - $200
Pants - $30
Massage to attempt to relieve back tension - $80
Wool Socks - $10
Busfare downtown for training $60
-----------------------------
= $1040 invested in attaining this job, which is more than I've put into attaining any other job.

And yet, today, I formally quit my job. The past three days have been miserable. The footwalk routes I could deal with. Getting lost isn't such a pain when you're delivering on foot. But it's the mobile routes, the ones with 70+ large parcels, plus 1.5 hours worth of footwalk, plus driving bundles for two other routes, and clearing a couple red-letter boxes, then dropping off all the carded parcels at the retail postal outlet, that kill me. These mobile routes involve driving a large diesel truck and a good sense of direction, which I don't have. One of these days I would've hit somebody while desperately scanning office buildings for addresses.

Added to my bad spatial abilities is the fact that my position is the position with the second highest rate of accidents in Canada (the first highest being longshore workers). I haven't had any serious injuries yet, but I've had tons of little ones and I can see the potential everywhere for large ones. In the last hour of my work I scraped my finger on something and it was gushing blood, but I didn't even know I was bleeding until later, as I have cuts and scrapes all over my hands that feel similar.

They tell you the load will never surpass 35 lbs but that's definitely untrue. My back has never ever caused me problems, but it started hurting one day as I carried a load up a steep hill. It's fine now, but do I really want to risk my health for a $45,000/ yr unionized income? No, health is more important than any income. My cuts and scrapes are insignificant but I hear of all the retirees needing physio and having chronic pain, and getting attacked by dogs, and slipping and falling and cracking their skulls. Not to mention, I haven't even been eating lunch or dinner, so I often have been eating nothing between the hours of 7 am and 7 pm. There just hasn't been time to stop for breaks.

Next, I am not physically strong enough to do mobile routes (at least, not without tacking on about 6 hours of overtime, which management detests and will make your life a living hell for taking). I don't know why they hired me knowing the weight, size and amount of parcels.. I'm a skinny girl.. people are always telling me to eat more. The kind of route I am assigned to needs a big muscular guy. People in public, in elevators and office buildings would stop and stare or shake their heads with pity because I look so out of place hauling around boxes as big as shopping carts, dropping stuff everywhere, and banging into things. Speaking of the public, I started envying happy, well-dressed, clean people as I toiled away with dirty hands and a sweaty scowl.

And my idea of being a happy permanent fixture in peoples' days, and idea of building a sense of community in an individualist, faceless and wary society is shot, because a) I'm not on the same route every day and b) a lot of the public harps on mail carriers, using them as a scapegoat for not recieving their welfare checks on time, etc. The dolly used to carry heavy loads is so heavy itself, I can barely carry it out of the truck without hurting myself! I talked to both supervisors and the superintendent to ensure there was no other option regarding switching my route. The two nice ones told me that a) the workload is only going to get worse, so I should look out for my health first and that b) there was no way to avoid doing mobile routes for the next few months or years, as everything is assigned by seniority, and it would take over a year to bid on a permanent route.

The next reason I quit is because the main supervisor and route that I have, as I mentioned before, are known throughout all of Burnaby and Vancouver as being the worst. With no seniority, you take the worst routes in the station, and the one I've been doing this week used to be all contracted out to an independent parcel delivery service. That's why there are so many parcels. This one supervisor who has been in charge of me this week is the biggest bitchcow villainess I've ever met. I heard about her in training, and at other depots before I even met her.

Take all the evil villainesses in every Disney movie out there, and roll them into one big ball, add a dose of Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest, and voila. She is the type that purposely ignores you when you walk by her, and is always right, even when she is wrong. She has a face of steel and the only time I ever saw the corners of her mouth twitch upwards was when I told her I was thinking about quitting, this morning. Who knows, maybe deep down inside there's a nice person in there, but she sure hides it at the expense of making a whole depot lose its morale.

All in all though, I think I could even deal with the bitchy supervisor (and countless bitchy old workers) if I was just doing a footwalk. I did like the fresh air, and some of the beautiful lawns and gardens, and not having to interact with many people in a customer-service way. I liked sorting and pulling the mail; it was kind of fun in a comforting, routine-ish way. And many people at the depot really went out of their way to help me out and answer questions.

I wish the job had been accurately advertised as a 'mobile courier' or 'parcel delivery' position, rather than 'mail carrier,' because then I wouldn't even have sent in my resume. I almost didn't go in to work today but I had some delivery notice cards to drop off so I decided to give it one last shot. They paired me up with someone to follow me around the whole day to give me hints and tips, and I took notes. But even with all the help I was still miserable doing the parcel delivery. So I feel pretty good about having survived a month of being a postie. Now on to job applications again, which I'm becoming pretty expert at. I know there's something better for me out there..

:(

2007-04-11T22:11:00.000-07:00

Horrible, horrible day. One of the worst supervisors, so bad, she has a reputation at every other depot in Van and Bby, was in charge of me today, and she assigned me the worst route at the depot, one that is so bad, it also has a reputation that extends to depots in other cities.

Combine this together with the fact that I'm not very strong when it comes to lifting heavy things or good with directions = me working a 14 hour day with no lunch or dinner break.

Gardening

2007-04-09T17:19:00.000-07:00

I just woke up from a two hour nap. I'm exhausted because I've been gardening non-stop for all of Easter long weekend. Here is a list of things we are growing:

Climbing on a trellis:

-White evergreen clematis
-Peachy pink antique climbing rose

Evergreen clematis:

In containers and pots:

- Long New Zealand sedge grass
-Three perennials (One is called 'blue-eyed grass' and has tan/purple star flowers, one has pink globes and no name for now, and the 'fanfare blanket flower' has orange/yellow flowers)
- Strawberries
-Tomatoes
-Herbs (English mint, lavender, lemon balm)
-Two types of blueberry bush, one raspberry bush (undecided where we will plant these)
-Rhubarb

New Zealand sedge:

Blue-eyed grass:

Fanfare blanket flower:

In the garden:

-Sunflowers
-Peas
-Beans
-Spinach
-Green onion
-Carrots
-Zucchini
-Corn

I spent hours and hours working the soil and adding things to it, and only about 5% of the time actually planting. We now have many buckets of concrete and tile that I removed from the garden, and are looking for somewhere to dump it. I'm looking forward to many delicious salads in the summer!

37th and Dunbar

2007-04-06T07:41:00.000-07:00

So after that day I spent driving 600 k, I spent the next day compiling duplicate copies of 'return to sender' magazines and periodicals, ripping off the front cover, placing each cover in a new envelope, and addressing them. It's such a waste of paper. Who knew the federal gov't wasted so much paper?! I guess in the end it all gets recycled though. :/

Then, yesterday, I was sent from S. Burnaby to S. Vancouver, and from there I covered two-thirds of a route beside the UBC endowment lands. The area is SO beautiful. It seems like every house owner is an expert in gardening and I saw ponds, a buddhist garden with wind chimes and gnarled driftwood, lots of doorways and arches draped in vines like clematis and wisteria, and the smell of flowers, topsoil and mushroom manure everywhere.

The volume of mail was bordering illegal. I am quite sure I was carrying about 70 lbs on my hips, and I had to hold on to the sides of the overflowing mail bags as I stomped up and down stairs. I guess when you're well off, you belong to more organizations and have more credit card statements. I started walking at 2pm and finished at 6:30, and feel incredibly satisfied that nothing went wrong and I was done before sunset. I even knocked on one guy's door to tell him his headlights were on.

In total, tax dollars paid $80 for my cabfare yesterday. I can see why we pay such high taxes here..

Anyway, it's Friday of the long weekend, so I'm gonna go work in the garden.

So you wanna know how the mail works?

2007-04-03T21:18:00.000-07:00

I feel obliged to report more about work. But it's kind of hard to summarize in a few paragraphs. It's hard. The learning curve is steep. I work at least an hour overtime everyday.. sometimes two, and once, four. I learn so many new things each day. I do a completely different route or task every day. Up until today it has been pretty much all walking on foot. However, today I drove about 600 kilometres dropping off items around Burnaby, in a right-hand drive vehicle. I also dropped off a truck in Vancouver and brought another one back to Burnaby. It's when I'm driving north in 10 am traffic on a sunny day and seeing the snow-dusted mountains framed by clusters of cherry blossoms that I'm glad I'm not stuck in an office.

But there are times I envy the office folk to whom I deliver. Their feet aren't calloused and blistered. Their hands aren't all papercut, with fraying cuticles. They don't have to worry about getting lost, or circling the block multiple times, looking for an address. They don't risk back injury (though they do risk carpal tunnel and flabby flesh!)

Every day I'm more thoroughly amazed at the process the mail goes through, and how much of it is done by hand. Another new recruit and I were marvelling about this, and he said, "Whenever I saw mail carriers, I always thought the mail poured out a giant chute and somehow ended up all sorted and bundled in their bags, ready for delivery." That is SO not the case!

Every single piece of mail that comes through your mail slot has been sorted at least three times by the carrier and driver alone. First, mail is hand-sorted in piles according to street name. Then, it is sorted into a 'case.' A case has about 600 slots in it, one for each house on the route. Then, it is 'tied out,' or gathered into handfuls, wrapped with elastics, and each pile is hand-numbered. Then, the piles are put into 5 or 6 separate bags, or 'bundles.' These bundles are driven out by the driver, and dropped into the grey boxes. Then, the carrier visits the boxes and retrieves the bundles, unties the mail, and double checks the addresses before sending them through the slots. Assuming each house or business gets on average 5 pieces of mail a day, that's 3000 pieces of hand-sorted mail!

That may not include the 'unaddressed admail,' or flyers, that must also be delivered, and can really add on extra time and weight. Also, each route typically has about 12 or so 'registered items,' which are parcels or mail that need signatures, cash on delivery, or need to be received in person. When you change your address, there isn't some giant machine that redirects your mail. Instead, orange 'address change' cards go into your cubby hole in the mail carrier's case, and each day, the carrier checks the card against the mail, and takes both card and mail to the registration desk, where it is collected and redirected, and the card returned for the next day.

I don't want to be a bore with the processes.. I'm boring myself already.. but I guess my point is, the system seems much more archaic than I expected! I expected machines and robots, and all I would have to do is stroll down the street and fling paper airplanes made of mail in the general direction of houses.

Cyborg Executive Assistant's Routine Update #2355

2007-03-19T19:14:00.000-07:00

A bunch of random news..

1. My new job.. yes it is mail carrier, and yes, the company is what you think it is. Haha! I'm not gonna type it out because I know blogging about work can be.. detrimental, if one intends to stay for any length of time. Anyway, I'm beginning week two of training. Today was a very long and boring day learning about safe driving. Picture video upon driving video made by the national government. The last one, about winter driving, was very funny and I had to hide my snickering. It featured a slow-talking, happy-go-lucky guy with a French accent who kept trying to outrace the 'good guy' who was driving the company van. French guy kept accelerating into snow drifts and having to dig himself out, while 'good guy' drove on by, slowly and safely. Last week I actually got to spend a few days sorting and delivering mail on a 'footwalk.' It's a lot more work than it looks. Tomorrow I start three days of 'mobile training,' which means delivery using a truck. I don't think this job is going to be a 'lifelong career,' so I'm just treating it as a learning experience and as something that fits for the time being.

2. Remember the pleasantly plump receptionist at the orthotics place? (Ok, 'pleasantly plump' is me being very polite. She's quite hefty.) The last time I was there, she told me about how her sons were skiing at Whistler, but when I asked if she went skiing too, she said 'Are you kidding me? I'm too old for that stuff! I stayed in the hot tub!' She looks about 40. She's not even done half her life. And she seems like such a nice cheerful person with a young face.. it's a shame she limits herself like that. The funniest part, though, was when she said 'Have a good weekend!' and as I was halfway out the door she added "Oh, and try to gain some weight!' I thought I heard wrong, so I said "Try and what?" Try and gain some weight, she reiterated. I was a bit shocked, but I said "I'll try." You don't even want to know what I would have said if I'd spoken my mind. If I went around telling fat people to LOSE weight, I'd probably get beat up. Why is it okay to tell people to GAIN weight? Thin people need political correctness too!

3. This past Sunday I went hiking in the Lynn Canyon area in the pouring rain. We did a three hour loop on this closed-off trail beside a raging river. The water levels looked higher than the trail we were on, and I think we were actually pretty stupid to attempt the trail. We came across two landslides that had wiped out trees that were probably about 20-30 years old. The fresh conifer scent was delicious though. The trails were so waterlogged, they turned into rivers themselves, and we just sloshed through them because staying dry was no longer an issue. Overall, a great day.

4. I change interests faster than the weather. I think I have the skills required for fashion design, but I don't have the patience. Sewing takes patience and careful planning. I think I'm happiest just coordinating my own outfits, or at the very most, coordinating other ppl's outfits, but not sewing from scratch. So now I'm obsessed with survival, ecology, botanist, indiginous culture, and plant identification books. I've been reading a whole slew this month, including Bradford Angier's How To Stay Alive in the Woods and Ray Mears' Bushcraft Survival. My latest thought is it would be nice to in a few years get a bachelors and a masters in ecology, biology or environmental science, and somehow combine it with art and indiginous culture. I'm really interested in local first nations, such as the Nuu-Cha-Nulth clan on Vancouver Island. I'm also particularly interested in jungles and rainforests, including ours in B.C. I think it's better for me to pursue interests as hobbies first, before allowing them to influence my career. Part of the reason I chose the letter carrier job, for example, is to see if I can stand the rigors that would be associated with ecological fieldwork.

5. Aren't we cute smurfs? Katherine has alighted upon the town of fluffy sheep and green hills (aka Aberyswyth, Wales) and prior to that, we feasted on KOREAN BBQ at Insadong, which is said to be the best Korean BBQ place in Vancouver.

Lucid Dream

2007-03-06T23:26:00.000-08:00

Ever lucid dreamt? Or had sleep paralysis? Or dreamt of the 'Old Hag?' They are all very common and if you google, you'll see that the Old Hag exists in all cultures. I think I dreamt of her because I've heard other ppl talk about such dreams, and wanted to have one myself! I had been woken up earlier, and was lying on my back, which are two common ways to ensure sleep paralysis occurs. I was awake enough to see that the room was bright, through my closed eyelids, but not awake enough to move or open my eyes.

In my dream, I was running through a huge circuit of connected buildings, looking for the 'haunted' one. I knew before I went in that I had found the right room, and as soon as I went in, there was an earsplitting, pervasive sound like standing next to a fire alarm, or a chainsaw. There were a whole bunch of action in the room.. the most chaotic, frantic movement by hundreds of thousands of beings that I couldn't see. And the 'old hag' was standing right in front of me, but to my left, in my peripheral vision. I couldn't see her face, but she was all in black and had super thick black hair piled over her shoulder.

As the chainsaw screamed and the room swirled, my arms and legs slowly raised. All this time I was conscious I was dreaming though, so I had some control over it. I said "hey, sexy" to the death hag (hahahahahhaa.. I can't believe I said that!) but she didn't react. So then I ran out of the room, and the ringing stopped, and the spirits disappeared. Then I ran in again.. two more times, and each time was just as terrifying as the first. When I woke up, I was extremely stiff and rigid, and was conscious that I had been whispering things while in my dream I had been trying to yell. And my feet were a little elevated whereas in my dream, my hands and feet were raised way up. And my room was super bright, like it had been in my dream.

I'm so screwed next week :(

2007-03-06T22:05:00.000-08:00

The director at my job in the Surrey location has proven to be more and more incompetant over the past six months.. I lost 80% of my students there in the past month for example. I told him on March 1st that I start training for my new job on March 12th. I even sent TWO resumes of friends who are interested in replacing me. One of them I had to RESEND because he overlooked it when I sent it in January. My training starts Monday March 12th, and runs from 7 am to 3 pm. That means I have to get up around 5 am, and with the time change it will really be 4 am.

So I'm gonna be exhausted from training, and now, because he still hasn't hired anyone, he's begging me to work Monday and Wednesday. That means an hour and a half window to SPEED from downtown to Surrey during rush hour traffic, teach four hours, come back at 10, and get a maximum 7 hours sleep before waking up at 5 am again the next day. I feel so stressed just thinking about it, and I'm worried it might affect my knowledge retention at my new job.

On Turning a Quarter Century..

2007-03-04T23:37:00.000-08:00

I turned 25 today! At first I was sort of dismayed at the prospect. But now I'm okay with it, I guess. Sera took me out to Capone's tonight and totally spoiled me with sparkling wine, three tapas and three desserts! We had goat cheese bruschetta, salmon wrapped prawns, crabcakes, chocolate cheesecake, mango and raspberry sorbet, and mango creme brulee. We also went shopping beforehand. The boy got me the SAS survival book, and mini Vancouver plant identification pocket guide, both of which I was going to buy myself. So very intuitive gift.

Also went for goodbye dinner #2 with Kat and her close allies at Insadong (Korean BBQ). It was great having galbi again, and introducing people to it! And the night before, my family and boy went to Banana Leaf (Malaysian) which is also very good. One hour wait time though.. egads! Anyway, I spose its nice being 25 because you mellow out a bit when you're older and hopefully get a bit wiser. I wish I could be mellow, wise and 19 though. :(

Rods and Cones.

2007-03-02T00:00:00.000-08:00

How do you view life? Is it cone-shaped, wherein you do all your exploring at a young age, and then narrow down into a select few activities you do when you are older? Or is it rod-shaped, whereby you are always trying new things, and make sure each and every synapse in your brain is ready for reception should something new come your way?

So I got a new job yesterday. It's a federal job and it involves lots of walking. There will be two weeks of training before I actually work. I'm a bit hesitant to give up the comforts of my current job, because, well, it's downright terrifying to suddenly jump into a brand new career when your current job is not too shabby. The only thing my current job can't offer me is more hours, and that's why I'm changing.

Anyway, because of all the walking that is to ensue, I went to see a podiatrist today. I was chatting with the receptionist, this pleasantly plump early-40-something lady. We talked about my first job (waitressing), third job (teaching English in Korea) and new job-to-be. She was remotely intrigued about Korea. Was it big and crowded? No, it didn't feel like it. In fact, I said, Vancouver felt more overcrowded upon my return.

Then she mentioned how it was good I got that travelling done and out of the way before I settled down and had no money (Cue perfect timing as she handed me the bill for $400). I nodded complacently and smiled but inside I thought, "ARE YOU SERIOUS??!!! What a defeatist way of thinking! I couldn't disagree more!

Why do people feel they have to be bound to things like a traditional office job, a mortgage, kids, marriage, boring jaunts to the local coffeeshop or drinks at the local watering hole as the only excitement in life? Who wrote the rule that you can only travel when you are young, that it's a frivolous, irresponsible thing to do, because you'd best be coming back to your home country to make babies and swim in debt?

I don't envy those people one bit. I want to continue to travel all through my life if I feel like it. Life is too short to conform to norms while reminiscing about the excitement you had when you were young. Life is too precious to waste it away wishing you could live in a hut in the Amazon rainforest, or sell all your belongings and become a surfer, or get a PH.D, or start a new business, or become an award winning photographer, when you could just do it now.

My Review of Infinity Dining Experience

2007-01-27T00:32:00.000-08:00

Dine Out Vancouver is on; an event that allows you to sample a three-course meal at upscale restaurants in Vancouver. I went to two others this month (Arroy-D and La Terazza) and was relatively unimpressed (small servings, and long waits, respectively) so I won't post those reviews. But tonight, HOO boy. Tonight was a cosmic tastebud adventure. Here is my review:

Which restaurant did you choose? Infinity Dining Experience
What date? Jan 26
What time? 8:30 PM

APPETIZER:
What did you choose? Butternut Squash Fondue, complimentary foccacia bread with garlic/shallot dip

How was it? The fondue was pretty good, but I think it was pushed out of the spotlight by the garlic dip. Our whole table was obsessed with the garlic dip, which was unlike any dip I ever tried. It was so good, we even put it on our steak, prawns, potatoes and mandarin orange garnishes. The prawn appy was also amazing, and so was the mandarin orange chutney that came with it. All the appies were thoughtfully and creatively seasoned.

ENTREE:
What did you choose? New York Steak with Blue Cheese

How was it? Very good. I'd never think of putting blue cheese on steak, but it complimented the steak very well. The chips were also delicious, fried with red onion, bacon and herbs. The flavors of all the food are unexpected and surprising. Oh also they don't skimp on the size of the steak.

DESSERT:
What did you choose? Pear Tarte with stilton fondant & a pomegranate syrup

How as it? Again, I was expecting something boring like a mini pear pie. But I was pleasantly surprised by the presentation.. very artistic, with a flat unsweetened triangle of pastry on the bottom, and thin slices of marinated pear strewn about on top. Served with a garnish of strong aged cheese. My bf snuck a taste of cheese, not knowing what it was, and he looked like he'd been hit by a truck. Strongest cheese ever.. but when you mix the salty, more bland crust, the sweet pears, and the aged cheese together, it's a really poignant medley of flavours.

I also tried some of the Jagermeister icecream that comes with the torte. It was subtle and good. The cornbread dessert was also great, served with a dollop of smooth mascarpone cheese. Some things we tried that aren't included on the Dine-Out menu: I highly recommend trying the homemade cola and ginger cola as well. Very interesting flavors. The Darjeeling tea was a great palate cleanser at the end.

OVERALL SERVICE? Perfect. The server was very quick and efficient. There was a clear emphasis on practicality and the food, rather than show. Our appetizers came out within 5-10 minutes. (La Terazza, hope you're taking notes! ) The rooms and decor are very simple, but that didn't really matter, because the lights were low, the ambience was good, and everyone was busy being wowed by their food.

RATE YOUR DINING SATISFACTION?
5 out of 5 stars, with a cherry on top. This is the only Dine Out Vancouver I've truly enjoyed from start to finish. (Out of the five Dine Out dinners I've been to in the past two years). Also only $25 per person. This is the perfect place for Vancouverites to go if they are tired of boring food, and want a swift kick to the palate.

Inconvenient Global Warming

2007-01-10T21:31:00.000-08:00

Those who live under a rock, or who are not from Vancouver, might not have heard that we are having the worst weather imaginable this winter. It's been rainstorm after windstorm after snowstorm, and sometimes rainy windstorms, though I have yet to see a windy snowstorm. We don't live that close to a firewall, but all the firetruck noise has been sounding like Korea's air raid siren test (except the siren switch is jammed in the 'on' position and they can't find the right wrench to pry it loose).

Today marks the fourth day this winter I've been without work. Two of the times were due to wind, two to snow. Yesterday the power was out at the Coquitlam school. Today I drove all the way to Guildford because the school wasn't closed, but when I got there, no students showed up, and driving back was all black ice, abandoned semi's that couldn't make it up hills, firetrucks and police. In fact, one farm vehicle on Hwy 1 got in an accident, the doors opened, and the cows were wandering the highway.

Stanley Park, a forested oasis for city-dwellers, looks like 'pick-up sticks,' with fallen trees mangling fences and bridges. BC Place, a stadium with an air-supported roof, deflated during the last windstorm. One family in Vancouver is still without power from the first windstorm we had a month ago... the one that caused most of the Lower Mainland's water to become muddy with silt for days.

The snow today not only kept me from applying for a job in New West, it also kept me from working today and yesterday, and will probably keep me from working the rest of the week, as the roads are supposed to ice over in the next few days. This weather has kept me inside watching lots of interesting documentaries though. An Inconvenient Truth is very worthwhile to see, and explains why the weather is wreaking such havoc.

For example, global warming causes the atmosphere to absorb moisture faster from the deserts, but then all that moisture has nowhere to go. So dry places get drier and rainy places (Vancouver) get inundated with the heaviest rainfalls ever recorded.

I also really recommend watching The Vice Guide to Travel and Who Killed the Electric Car?, two very amazing documentaries. The former involves people going to Chernobyl to find mutant animals, to a hidden munitions town in the mountains of Pakistan where handmade guns are produced at the rate of 5000 a day and bombs made from nuclear waste can be bought on the black market. The latter is about why the first electric car, EV1, is no longer on our streets today, and how a corrupt, oil-hungry US government allegedly worked to ensure it disappeared.

Also, watch Jesus Camp, a documentary on Pentacostal church camps in the U.S. that seems to be taking advantage of young childrens' emotions and teaching them to 'go to war,' and adopt the mentality of muslim suicide bombers. Can't find the documentaries? Ask me and I'll burn copies. Or get Julian to burn copies, since he's mastered all that technology stuff or whatever kids are using these days :P

My best friends.

2007-01-09T23:08:00.000-08:00

Often I'm given 'homework,' aka essays from new students to evaluate, so we can assign them the right level. I thought this grade 4 student's essay was cute, so I typed it out:

My best friend is Nour. Because she is so pretty, and always good for me or every one. Me and Nour we're always play together. and another friend too.. I have two best friend too. (I like Nour better than they...) Jessica, and Amana. they're pretty good too! we're always play together. we also play tag. that my teacher ms. wood, she always said "you guys are always play together! It's like best friends!!!"

I like yellow hair and green, blue eyes. Nour and Jessica has it. but Amana don't have it... but I like Amana very very much in the world. Because she is so pretty and so good for everone! (It's like Nour!) I always teach my best friends. That is about korea. They're like to listen about korea. When sometimes, they're sick, that they can't come to the school... also Nour is always sick... that I don't like when they're so sick. I'm so sad... TT;TT

Nour like to eat korean snack, so I give to Korean snack to Nour, Jessica, and Amana! They said "thank you ~ Sally ~ " Then I'm so happy to see they when they're smile or feeling good! ( I like my best friends! <3 ) Jessica, Amana, Nour.

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-25T01:00:00.000-08:00

Here are some cookies I made this year:

And here is a really BIG cookie.. or gingerbread house, to be specific. We went to see some Christmas lights, and these people decorated their house like this. Complete with plastic over the front lawn, for icing.

Wishing you a holiday that is happy and relaxing! :)

Fa la la la la la!

2006-12-15T03:12:00.000-08:00

I popped into the eBay Christmas party at the Pan Pacific tonight, as it was wrapping up because a friend of a friend had an unused ticket. It was GREAT seeing the expression on people's faces, as it was two years ago I worked there.. saw about 20-30 happy faces I knew. Half of them no longer work there either.. I wonder what percentage of the attendees tonight actually work there now!

Got about 3/5ths of my Christmas shopping done today.

Holy crap.. the wind is so strong outside, I hear the beams of the house creaking and groaning.. I hope it doesn't topple over. :(

Mochi the Maltese

2006-12-11T00:31:00.000-08:00

Today, my friend's gf and I took my friend's friend's dog Mochi, and went hiking at Lighthouse Park in West Van. It was a perfect length hike, with a bit of rain, which I prefer! We went with a local hiking group. Mochi, the dog, is this tiny white Maltese that looks like these:

It was the friendliest, most energetic dog out of all of them. Its legs were like three inches long and yet it jumped up stairs three times its height and tumbled down cliffs along with the big dogs. The only two times I heard it yelp was once, when someone stepped on its foot, and another time, when the biggest dog was playing too rough with it. Add the fact that the dog is hypo-allergenic and doesn't shed, and the result is that I really want a Maltese now!

In slightly related news, I also decided to jump back into soccer this weekend, at a local indoor sports arena. I played on one team that was incredibly good, almost a professional level, and then stuck around to play on another friend's team, which was not quite as good but still a higher level of play than I'm at right now. Needless to say, I'm sore but it feels soooo good.

"Pimp my Walnut"

2006-12-08T03:42:00.000-08:00

"Oh my! Tis cold outside!"

"Guess I should hop in my roadster and crank the heat!"

It's Snowing in Langley!

2006-11-25T03:25:00.000-08:00

I went to Langley tonight to visit an old friend and attend an art gallery opening. My friend Neel's friend's Helene's mother had just opened a spectacular gallery in White Rock, filled with oil paintings and sculptures. My favorite was a painting of a bright green field with a creek, and grass so long and plush, it looked like gently rolling waves on a green sea. We added dots to a painting that is going to be featured in the Guiness Book of World Records for having the highest # of participants (30,000).

A definite highlight of tonight was getting to hold a kitten, AND a baby. The baby was literally shoved in my arms no more than two minutes after I had met it's aunt, while auntie scurried off to do something. It was the most docile, well-behaved baby ever, and didn't seem to care who was holding it, as long as it had a collar or necklace to play with. The kitty was much the same. I MUST have a kitty, or a baby. Preferably both. Jules? ;)

Highlight number two was munching on smoked salmon, crackers, goat cheese and wine while writing haikus in a big book with many blank white pages. Highlight number three: partying in Club Citrus, which my industrious friend remodelled from the ground up. And the last highlight was driving from downtown Langley to North Burnaby in a beautiful snowstorm in 30 minutes flat.

Rock Your Body till Canada Day.

2006-11-24T05:05:00.000-08:00

Let's Go To The Mall Today!

I went to the mall with a couple of friends
I had a whole week's allowance to spend
I want hoop earrings and a Benetton shirt
We came here to shop and we came here to flirt
I turned around and who should I see
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney
He said, "Young lady, I don't approve."
So I had to get down and bust a tasty move
Hit it Fred, come on
Let's go to the mall

Robin Sparkles Myspace

Beats w/out Borders 2nd Anniversary

2006-11-24T03:30:00.000-08:00

That little taste of dubstep last weekend was addictive. I downloaded a bunch of tracks, including this one, which I really recommend. Click to download: Noir/Cyrus/Omen/SgtPokes

Then Martin, Lauren and Kat convinced me to check out this tonite:

I was dragging my heels (only because I'm a homebody who hates driving downtown, and detests finding parking, especially if it involves the PARALLEL variety), but it turned out to be pretty good. When we arrived, there was an east indian dance troop in full costume. Then, Lady Ra spun some really eclectic multicultural beats (including Manu Chao - Bongo Bong), followed by Adrian, who played dubstep-ish stuff with intense bass, that was more up my alley. Next, this amazing violinist played side by side with the DJ for about an hour. I took a bunch of videos, might upload some later. Oh screw it, I'll upload it now. Here it is!!!

Adrian also played this instrument that looked like a bong hooked up to an accordian. Later, a couple people, including Kat's friend (oops I forgot her name) beatboxed and rapped while Tarun played the drums.

The crowd was the most multicultural I've seen in a club.. an outstanding moment for me was watching blonde-haired Lady Ra, who hails from Guelph, mash a celtic, an east indian and a mexican track together, as fully bearded and turban'd Sikhs, Africans, Iranians, Asians, dreadlocked hippie types, and gyrating junglists all danced together. Only in Canada! Here are Martin and Lauren enjoying the sounds (and each other.. aww!):

I can't wait to go back and check out Jewel of India, though. I really liked the dubstep there. PS. The volvo was good tonite.. she held 5 ppl without breaking down! Woo! Good girl.

Pantaloons complete!

2006-11-18T04:25:00.000-08:00

Here are the pants I made in sewing class:

Mango Lassi and Dreads

2006-11-18T03:49:00.000-08:00

"Dub without tweeter is a little less neater, but dub without sub ain't dub at all." - uttered when the power to the sub was shot

My good ole buddy Martin, along with his friends Sobe, Jovian, Julia and Caitlin, introduced me to this place called Jewel of India in Gastown. I'd never heard of it, nor had I heard of Six Acres, the last cool place he introduced me to. Anyway, upstairs is a restaurant. They serve great East Indian food. And downstairs is a grand fireplace and dark lounge area, filled with hippies and the ILLEST dub music I have ever heard. Listen to this:

Beats without Borders is their name.

: Miss :

2006-11-10T04:17:00.000-08:00

I'm a blithering sentimentalist and here's a post I made tonite on Dave's ESL cafe:

I miss Korea too. I was just bitching and whining tonite about missing it, with my friend who got back from 2.5 yrs in Japan.. the nightlife, the cheap entertainment, the social life.. just sitting on the street drinking and chatting, the cool arcade/dvd places, etc.

Luckily I teach at a Korean school here so I get to hear the language, keep my basic phrases fresh, reminisce about Korea with ppl who actually know about it, and be secretly smug to see that THEY are now the 'weigooks' and I am not.

PS. I also miss the sketchy yogwans!!!! And adventures like the evil, sketchy ajumma who tried to kick our asses when we tried to fit 4 ppl in a 1-bedroom 1-closet room! I miss going to Pusan and being drenched all weekend by horizontally raining monsoon! I miss hailing a cab on any block and having them fall over each other trying to get your business! I miss dragging overly inebriated friends home as they make fools of themselves. I miss how all the cab drivers were so naively interested in foreigners, asking the same questions over and over.. (are you married?!). I miss just walking around an uber-bustling downtown, getting lost in a big crowd, and absorbing the stimuli.. I miss trivia nights and how dumb they made me feel, and all the awesome local talent that would perform at thunderbird, communes, ol 55, and the monk jazz club. I miss yanking the kids' chains and telling ridiculous fictitious stories, using their names as characters till they were bawling with laughter. I miss having all the extra work piled on me at my hogwan, because it made me feel needed and productive. I miss all the drama.. hearing the horrific hogwan stories, but seeing ppl overcome it and growing wiser.. I miss living on a bustling, active street where I knew all the shopowners.. I don't miss the incessant noise though. I miss dancing till daylight and walking home on Sunday mornings when the streets were misty and quiet enough to hear the birds, crickets and light rain. I miss being able to jump on the KTX and head to Seoul or Daegu at the drop of a hat. I miss the feisty ajummas who nearly plow over you on their mopeds, and push you aside to walk past you. I really miss Mijung, the best galbi place in Korea, located at Manchon Negori. I miss the commute to school, which was a 30 second jog. I miss the satisfaction of speaking rudimentary Korean and actually being understood well enough to feel confident going anywhere myself..

Ahhhhhh life. The grass is so green on the other side! PS. I'm not drunk. :P

Real Canadian Superstore

2006-11-03T22:23:00.000-08:00

Today, after work, I went to Superstore to stock up on baking supplies. It's become a tradition to bake every Christmas. The past few Christmases have been mainly pie-centered. This Christmas, it's time to get a little more daring. I'm planning to make chocolate torte with chocolate ganache, 7-grain bread, a New York Cheesecake, wheat germ cookies, dog biscuits for Lady, and possibly tiramisu. I've already made two rounds of raspberry shortbread squares, which turned out great. There never seems to be any shortage of hungry mouths to bake for.

Anyway, as I got to the milk section at Superstore, a two year old started crying. Temper-tantruming full-out roooooarrrrrrrrrrring. I HATE the sound of kids crying. I think females are programmed to really hate that sound and I'm definitely not an exception. I can feel my breath grow short, my ears try to grow inward, and my uterus permanently shrivel up and die. Ha! The dad hoisted the kid on his shoulders, and they followed me from the milk section to the egg section, and all through the produce section. Roooooooooarrrrrring.

Finally, I ducked into the farthest empty checkout isle with a sigh of relief. With my full cart of $109.62 worth of baking items, surely nobody would dare line up behind me, especially with half a dozen other empty checkout isles and an almost-closing store. But lo and behold, who is hot on my trail? Roaring kid, dad and mom. I glare at my cart as I unload, and feel them watching me, gauging my level of pissed-offness. Then I snap. I look up, wearing my biggest smile and say "Awwwwwww. Is it past his bedtime? He's so CUTE!" Much to my amazement, the kid actually IS super cute, and looks just like his parents. They are all perhaps First Nations... maybe Inuit?

"Haha. No." Dad shakes his head. "He just wants a cookie."

"Aww! Cookie? You want a cookie?" I say to the kid. He looks at me and stops crying. Then he tries to grab my cart, and starts bawling again because he's in his mom's arms and can't reach it.

But now he's only sobbing part time. And the parents, obviously more relaxed now that they have seen evidence their offspring isn't annoying me or the cashier, smile at each other.

"He hasn't learned to hold his breath yet," dad quips. "When I was his age, I learned to hold my breath. Then I got everything I wanted!"

I laugh, say bye to the kid, who has been reduced to a silent wide-eyed statue with a few tears rolling down his face, and walk out in the rain.

Goodbye Halloween, Hello Christmas!

2006-11-03T14:42:00.000-08:00

To be completely blunt and honest, things are going very boringly here. The highlights of my weeks are going out to eat, or going out to walk around lakes with Moolz. I've taught one Korean class that inspired me with the same enthusiasm I possessed when teaching classes in Korea. It was a substitute class with 5 energetic kids; one that forced me to answer questions non-stop and wow them with entertaining stories. The rest of my classes are much more boring, consisting of 1 or 2 students.

I've completely lost whatever vision I had for sewing. I have a whole bunch of sewing books sitting on my floor, some almost-finished pants, and a machine on my window ledge. However, without any ambition or idea in my mind of an end goal, sewing just seems laborious and overly intricate.

To continue to occupy my time, I've been busying myself with learning Cantonese via an audio/book course from the public library, and to continue searching the joblists for that perfect, non-existent, high-paying, possibly-but-not-necessarily-career-oriented, hopefully-non-customer-service job. I've even been considering going back to the dreaded eBay until I decide what I want to do, but eBay made me go loopy and hightail it to Korea, so I might as well save myself some trouble, skip the eBay part, and hightail it back to Asia right away. Which I'm trying to avoid doing, since the plan is to settle down in Vancouver and actually make a living in my own country, rather than somebody else's country! On the plus side, things are going swimmingly at the Moolz household. It's SO good to be back, and to see my boy everyday!

Now that I've completely bored you with my trite career mournings, here are some cool pics from the Parade of Lost Souls, which maintained its stellar reputation for having the most amazing costumes. Some of the coolest ones I didn't get pics of.. such as a giant tree spirit from Princess Mononoke.

Here is a group shot of us, minus Pirate Richard, who was buying falafel (my costume is "Recycle Queen"):

A bunch of ninjas, who kept completely in character, running around simultaneously and crouching behind things:

And a very cute lion and Towelly from South Park:

The rest of the pics are on my flickr, as usual.

Halloween is Upon Us

2006-10-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

And Parade of Lost Souls is this Saturday, 6-10 pm, at Grandview Park!! Be there or be a scare!

Cool video

2006-10-26T12:53:00.000-07:00

I love this video! About logging.

Oh boy.

2006-10-19T23:13:00.000-07:00

Cars are great.. when they work. The past few weeks I've learned a lot about the ignition systems of cars- because as soon as the rainy season started, the Volvo's ignition system started to self-destruct. This resulted in the car completely shutting down in the middle of the highway, intersection, left-handturn lane, or wherever happened to be the busiest place it could find.

At one point I stalled in the left-hand turn lane of a busy intersection, rolled back into the car behind me, and a police officer who witnessed the whole thing pulled up beside me and gave me a tongue lashing about the use of brakes. Thankfully the guy behind me laughed it off and drove away, citing 'no damage.'

Anyway, $700+ later (haven't seen the total wallet damage yet.. my brother has the receipts), and many hours spent by my brother installing parts (for which I am very grateful for), it now runs fine, save for a small 'hiccup' when idling. When I first brought it home, my bro repaired the rust on the door, welded the door on more solidly, and I washed and waxed it. I bought a club and thought that was a lot of work already.

Enter the mysterious ignition conundrum! The first thing to go in was a new battery.

Next was an oil change and powersteering fluid. Then I bought some car mats just to stroke the car's ego a bit (or bribe it to stop shutting down).

But it was still crapping out, worse than ever before. So my brother came to test it, and brought a very neat flashing strobelight that clamps on to the ignition. When it misses a flash, it means the ignition is missing a spark. I was also very surprised to see that the car can 'talk' to you and tell you what's wrong (in an eerie ouiji-board manner). Under the hood, there is a little black box with a flashing red light on it. Push the button, and it flashes a series of codes, which correspond with a list of problems in the manual.

The code indicated 'camshaft position sensor.' The camshaft position sensor senses when the pistons are up or down, and lets the ignition know when to fire a spark. So in went this new part.....a part so tiny, lightweight and simple-looking, I am tempted to start manufacturing them myself, since they are worth $260.

And that did it! The car stopped shutting down completely! But it was still stuttering between gears, and at one point refused to go past 80 km/h. So in went a new distributor cap

Disributor rotor

Ignition wire set

and Spark Plugs.

The car runs fine now, save for the mysterious hiccup. A main ignition wire will be going in soon as well, as the original one is corroded. Hopefully that will be the cause.

It has been a harrowing week, what with being stranded on the highway, angry officer action, cancelling appointments, and lots of commuting between Delta and Burnaby.

The front left-turn signal light cover also fell off somewhere while driving today and I have just been informed it needs a new thermostat too. I already have a list of future things that need to be done (aka 'things I will mostly bug my brother to do someday'):

-Recharge A/C
-Repair wiring so that I can see whether I'm in Park, Reverse, Neutral, or Drive at night
-Fix door so it doesn't make gunshot noise
-Fully paint over door that had the rust patched up
-Lower headlights so ppl stop highbeaming me
-Figure out what makes the scraping noise when it starts
-Add a chrome tip on the rusted exhaust pipe
-Test the cd player and see if it really is skipping

Dear friends: I now have a car so that I may visit you, and we can do sociable, fun things. But now I have no more money to do sociable, fun things. So how about you come over, and we sit on the curb and gaze at my newly fixed car? It'll be rad.

Fry that Chicken.

2006-10-06T13:45:00.000-07:00

"I got a pan, I got a plan. I'm gonna fry this chicken in my hand!"

A number of things have been occupying my time lately, preventing frequent blog updates. First, I decided I needed a car, so I spent the past month eating, breathing, sleeping cars, and learning some interesting things about the car hunting process. Most important thing I learned is to always check out the car's VIN # on CARFAX.

The first car I looked at ran great, and I was going to return the next day to get it, but then I saw it had been reported stolen on CARFAX. The second interesting thing I learned is that age and mileage aren't nearly as important as make and model. If it's a reliable car, it can be 20 years older and have fewer problems then a brand new crappy car.

Anyway, thanks to my brother, who has taken apart and rebuilt many cars and was happy to provide some much-needed expertise, I ended up with a '93 Volvo 850 GLT. It's fully loaded, with leather heated seats and power everything, which is ridiculously awesome, considering I was going to get a '97 Honda Civic, base model, for twice as much cash.

Next, I started working at.... drumroll.... a Korean school, teaching English! The pros are good, intelligent students who are at a much higher level of English than the ones I taught in Korea. The cons are, it's only part-time, and a 45 minute commute by car (formerly an hour and a half by bus). So I'm still looking for fulltime work. Or at least another part-time job.

Third, I started sewing class last night! We're making pants from a McCall's pattern. I'm using a cranberry-coloured tweed. So far, we've cut out the fronts and backs, and are in the process of stitching the inside and outside seams together. Our teacher is this old lady with coke-bottle glasses who cancelled last week's class and showed up half an hour late for this week's class. So I'm not really impressed with that, but at least she's a pretty good teacher. Plus the class size is relatively small, the facilities are nice and it totally reminds me of grade 8 home-ec.

Fourth, a bunch of us went to Bodyworld's 3 last weekend, which is an exhibition showcasing dozens of preserved human bodies. They are preserved using a new process called 'plastination.' Photography wasn't allowed, but a friend managed to snap a few shots anyway. Below is a man doing the splits, and holding all his internal organs in one hand. I don't know how they managed to balance, let alone transport the bodies.

And this is a body sporadically dissected to show the density and compactness of the human body. Pretty grotesque eh?

There is also a smoker's vs. non-smoker's lung that would convince anyone not to start smoking, and a head-to-toe cross section of a 300 lb overweight body. The exhibition will remain in Vancouver till November.

Tofino '06

2006-09-16T02:52:00.000-07:00

This is the third summer in a row I’ve packed up my bathing suit, warm clothes, and penchant for moss and bull kelp, and headed over to Tofino. Version 3.0 included Kat and Gord, a rainy Thursday to Saturday, and a sunny Sunday and Monday. We pulled into Bella Pacifica Campground around 10 pm, a stone’s throw from a beautiful dark beach complete with full moon and pounding waves. We grabbed some drinks and explored, marveling at the powder-soft sand and the way the tide seeped toward the shore in little meandering rivers, trapping one lawnchair-reclined couple on a small sandy island. The fog created little ghostly orbs of light in our photos, and we fell asleep listening to the waves crash like an intermittent roaring river.

The next day was spent gathering info and deciding what to do. We ate fish and chips again at the Sea Shanty – permanently etched in my mind last year not only for the food, but also for its beautiful view of Tofino Air floatplanes taking off in the harbor. We then signed up for a four-hour kayaking tour, and then headed over to Schooner trail, a short boardwalk that leads down to the northern edge of Long Beach.

The rain was refreshing and we spotted a bear near our hiking trail. The weather ensured no other hikers on our trail. Bursting out of the forest in our tacky yellow ponchos, we came upon the most spectacular rainy beach – first nations reservation in the forest to our left, and rocky islands and a low tide in front of us.

Hours drifted and blended as we poked and prodded at sea anemones, starfish, clams, and barnacles. Kat was particularly intrigued with these clams buried under the sand that shot water in our faces. After observing them for a while, she determined that they have an in-valve and an out-valve. I thought that they were perhaps geoducks, a kind of clam that burrows under the sand (to avoid the hungry Chinese). We tried to grab the clams but they burrowed too fast and we couldn’t even find them when we dug at the spot.

Other tidal pools had little fast brown spotted fish, and larger flat fish that completely blended in with the sand. We caught some flat fish and hermit crabs and put them back. The island had extremely black rocks and a small forest of brilliant fall colours.. but it was dusk and we hiked back on the pitch-black trail, scaring each other re: the bear.

After various amazing meals cooked by Gord on the Coleman stove (despite the rain, there was a fire ban in all campsites except the national park), Saturday rolled around, and we hopped into our kayaks. It was the three of us, and two guides, Daniel and Viva. The main outline of the trip involved paddling across the protected waters between Tofino and Meares Island, walking in an old growth forest, and paddling back.

We passed by the oldest first nations reserve in North America, situated on Meares Island.. I think it was 4500 years old. Next, we stopped to eat some of the giant bull kelp floating around. Our guides pointed out the giant eagle nests on a small island and noted that in one nest, 47 cat collars had been found.

Paddling the kayak was smooth and more efficient than a canoe, also less tiring. Because of the full moon, tides were extremely high, and we basically had to latch our kayaks on to the rocks and trees of Meares Island. We were greeted by a rustic moss-tinged boardwalk that was hand-cut and laid by the local native kids who gathered to stop logging 20 years ago. Our guides pointed out various lichen, ferns and edible berries, as well as hemlock, red and yellow cedar. Each tree we passed was larger and older than the next – the largest being 1400 years old. The inside was hollow, and we crawled in.

The forest had the most amazing, clean smell. Like fresh laundry that’s dried on a clothesline ( Martin says I should say 'like wet laundry that has been washed with unscented detergent,' but since so many soaps and air freshners are made to smell like 'forest breeze' or 'morning dew,' the scented detergent analogy works just fine. Plus the dry laundry will have a natural outdoorsy scent from being hung outside all day). Daniel pointed out the Old Man’s Beard lichen, which is the first plant to disappear at the sign of pollution, and thus what biologists look for to gauge the health of the forest.

On the way back, we were paddling against the current. Our guide showed us how to aim 90 degrees from our intended destination, in order to allow ourselves to be carried sideways by the current. At one point however, Gord and I got carried away by the current. It was quite alarming, and reminded me of the strong rapids on the Gangwon rafting trip earlier this summer. No matter how hard we paddled, we were pulled downstream, and around a bend. Kat and Viva were out of sight, but Daniel, a strong kayaker, was literally dancing circles around us in his one-man kayak. Instinct dictates paddling fast, but he coached us to take long, slow strokes, and eventually, after three separate attempts, we made it out of our rapids and around the corner. What a relief - it definitely freaked me out a little.

The rest of the trip back was smooth sailing and good weather. The next day, we went to the Wikanninish Educational Centre, which was definitely worthwhile, save for the cheesy Parks Canada movie. We then took off on a hiking trail that lead us to South Beach, a gorgeous smooth-pebbled beach with tall, precarious-looking rocks and crashing waves that reminded me of photos of the east coast.

We lay around on the rocks, collected shells, and I made some shell art forms. We hiked on through a bog, and saw Labrador tea, lots of salal berries, and peat moss. It was late when we hit the second beach, and thankfully an older couple from Edinborough gave us a ride back to Wikanninish.

We had a small campfire on the beach, for about half an hour (enough time to make hot chocolate and toast a marshmallow) before a giant, unloved man in black shone a flashlight in our faces and asked us to put it out. Campfire ban still in effect, after 2 days of solid rain.

Other highlights of the trip included the best chocolate I ever laid fangs on, courtesy of Tofino Chocolates. Their chocolate is made with local ingredients, such as bog cranberries, and is completely organic. I also went down to our personal backyard beach a few more times, to inspect the sealife, and watch as the little tongues shot out of the barnacles to rake in micro-organisms from the water.

Before we left, we all filled waterbattles with beach powder (hesitant to call it sand), and filled our pockets with driftwood gathered from Big Beach and Little Beach in Uclulet. What sort of creations will be made from these is yet to be determined.

I was very sad to leave Tofino once again, but it has inspired preliminary talks regarding a) hiking the Westcoast Trail , b) winter camping and c) visiting the Queen Charlotte Islands, in the future. It has also renewed my interest in First Nations history, wilderness survival, and identifying plants and marine life.

FOOD.

2006-09-04T14:34:00.000-07:00

I'm still obsessed with food, and I'm sure I will be for the next six months. I am in the process of being reaquainted with the awesomeness that is food in Vancouver. On Thursday night, went to Kwong Chow, the place where I first hung out with Moolz. I was craving calamari one night and he said he knew the best place ever to get it. Kwong Chow calamari is so piping hot, crispy and seasoned with jalapenos and green onion.. and I put some in my Hong Kong style congee... ahhhhhhHHHHhhhhhhh... I think it was the most tastetacular experience I ever had. Plus their iced coffee, iced tea and iced coffee tea with condensed milk is superb. Will most likely go back for squab and that awesome watercress and pork dish I used to order by delivery when I lived on Commercial.

It's Labor Day Weekend!

Friday noon, went to Havanas on Commercial for a jug of white sangria, some smoked scallop tapas, and a plate of sausages, homestyle hashbrowns and overeasy eggs on toast. Actually, I ordered the tapas but I forgot how tiny tapas are in the western world. So I helped Moolz eat his hashbrowns and they were the best I've ever had... lemony and spicy, and great dipped in hollondaise, with egg yolk drizzled on top. That afternoon, Moolz and Ben stocked up on some very interesting beer, including a Belgian one I was quite partial to, called Framboise, by Morte Subite. It's light amber in colour, but tastes like it should be ruby red.

Friday night, went shopping with Wy. We didn't buy anything, but.... we went to Kalypso, that Greek restaurant on Robson with the dude in white costume who stands in front advertising. We waited 40 minutes for food, which is pretty ridiculous, considering we ordered 2 simple souvlaki dishes. They were a little overcooked too. Last time I went, the restaurant was packed and they had bellydancing performances. But it seems to have gone downhill since that time, so I don't recommend eating there. But it was great to taste lamb souvlaki, lemon potato, greek salad, tzatziki sauce and that zesty rice again. Then we stopped at Dragonball bubbletea (one of the best places to get bbtea in Van). I gotta remember to order the GREEN preserved mango, mixed with regular mango, for the ultimate Moolztacular Taste Sensation (I ordered half powder half real mango by mistake.. a bit too sweet).

Saturday morning, had some awesome congee made by Moolz, and later, some hummus, goatcheese and garlic butter on toast. Then we went to Tokyo Lounge, which has little to do with food at all! We got a little crazy for Kris's bday, and Moolz opened for Scumfrog.

Last week, Don had taken me to Gecko, and while the music was great (dark electro), the crowd had been sparse and still a little barstarrish. The vibe and crowd at Tokyo Lounge were most excellent and gave me renewed hope re: having fun at Vancouver clubs. The music for the most part was very danceable! There was a bongo drummer in the crowd, and his rhythm was so precise that for the first half of Scumfrog's set, i thought he was mixing in a drumming record.

After 5 hours sleep, we woke up for a marathon of grocery shopping, for Hotpot / Sangria night. The first people showed up at 4pm and the last few dawdlers left around 2am, which made for a decent ten hours of consumption. I made a pitcher of red sangria using two red bottles of wine (one Korean raspberry wine which I brought home with me, and one Australian), fresh squeezed orange juice, fresh squeezed lime juice, guava pineapple juice, and a touch of 7up. I chopped up grapes, peaches, mango, papaya, lemon, lime, and apple, and let them soak overnight in the sangria. The result was mindblowingly delicious and very, very fruity.

Next, Moolz made some white sangria, using white wine (Riesling), with vodka, white grape juice, apple juice, bit of soda. and squeezed orange juice, plus pineapples, golden kiwis, starfruit, lemon and apples. It looked particulary cool when half the fruit floated to the top, and half sank.

Various new sangria forms were made throughout the night, including mixing the red and white sangria together to form pretty blush sangria, as well as this vodka grape sangria I made by pouring half a mickey of vodka into Julian's leftover fruit. It looks pretty, but apparently didn't go down very easily.

Hotpot consisted of spinach, watercress, radish, thinly sliced lamb, beef and pork, fishballs, udon, prawns, bundled noodles, tofu, wontons, XO sauce and chili oil. We feasted, watched TV, had some delish keylime pie and apple pie that Sera brought, watched more TV, digested, turned on the hotpot for round 2, and then the boys polished off two more jugs of sangria.

I had planned to make some cheese and salami pizza pinwheels, and salmon-wrapped creamcheese hors d'ouevres, but time was tight. So I made crab dip, a cheese platter (with cheddar, swiss, and this AMAZING smoked gouda), smoked salmon on its own and sliced garlic sausage served with baguettes and triscuits. It was all quite labour-intensive, and made me bow down in reverence to all Martha Stewart types out there. Today is a lazy day though, and we are snacking on the leftovers.

North of the U.S. of A?

2006-08-28T01:46:00.000-07:00

So I think I'm going to change the name of this blog to 'North of the U.S.' or something. Doesn't have quite the same ring to it, but whatevs. I officially hate clubbing in Vancouver. Went to Gecko's last night downtown. It was ok, good electro, very danceable, but the club was quite sparse. The overall mood in the club area: hostile and bling. Felt like I was going to be jumped at every corner.. hummers, girls prancing around in literally undies and 5" heels, guys looking for fights, police everywhere. I thought I'd club a lot more here, but now I can at least scratch that one off my long list of things to do here. Suburbia is also driving me nuts. A 25 minute walk to the mall, and I see not one soul on the sidewalk. Everyone is barricaded behind copious amounts of sheet metal and glass. So isolationist. Oh and the prices are pretty bad, especially at London Drugs. I think Fukuoka, Japan was cheaper in some aspects. The big city vibes, the hostility, the highschool gangstaz, the materialism, the seemingly HUGE influx of druggies on Hastings.. I hate it all. But these things were pretty much anticipated.

In these voids, the sensual appeal of Vancouver compensates. Walking to the mall, I can smell the cedar, fresh cut grass, pinecones, blackberries. I can see the whole skyline from many points in the lower mainland, and watch the whole sunset without buildings blocking my view. It's gorgeous. Went for dim sum today with Brento, Kat and Moolz, and the taste sensation made me want to leap out of my chair and do a jig. It was so nice to see the gaudy red and gold dragons again. Later, we went to Safeway. THANK GOD ALMIGHTY FOR ETHNIC VARIETY!!!!! I went nuts in the Italian / Greek section and made rye sandwiches with hummus, about 6 kinds of olives, goat cheese, the smelliest gorgonzala I could find (that looked like something died in it), and salami. Oh yeah, and we went to my parents place to visit my dog, take a walk in the woods and pick blackberries by salmon-spawning streams.

Oh Vancouver, how I love and hate thee. But mostly love thee. Just like how I love and hate Korea. :)

Hello Vancouver!

2006-08-24T01:42:00.000-07:00

Got into Van around noon.. the total flight time equalled about 16 hours.. I flew west, to Hong Kong, where I went through a tirade of additional security checks and got some of my makeup thrown out (though they didn't find my toothpaste in the bottom of my bag... if I were a terrorist, my explosives would be in the toothpaste tube, not the tiny lipgloss tube).. then I flew east, passing Korea and Japan again, before ending up home. (Mental note: shop around at other travel agents next time, to find a more direct route!)

The 'reverse culture shock' I was anticipating hasn't really occured! Rather, it's just plain GOOD to be back. The multicultural airport, English everywhere, and the laidback westcoast vibe. There's a lot more construction here than when I left, and the roads are long and winding. So far all I've really seen though, is Moolz's place, which seems 1000000 times bigger than my place in Manchon. When I left, they were deciding on the colour schemes for their new house, and I gotta say, back then I never thought red and cream would go together so strikingly. But it works! They really did an amazing job designing and furnishing this place. I just stepped out on the balcony, and it's amazing how cold it is here.. 14 degrees! Best of all, it's eerily, gloriously quiet and dark. No yowling cats, none of the banging and shrieking and laughing I'd normally hear late at night at 1050-99 Manchon 3-dong. The noise was comforting, as it brought a sense of community, and I really do miss all the nice shopowners on my street (I only said bye to one of them, but I'm sure she'll tell the rest on my behalf). But I think I prefer the quiet overall. And I can smell the trees. Mmmm, fresh air.

Overall, I'm very happy with my year in Korea. I accomplished everything I set out to do there. I read several books on business and careers have a clearer idea of what I want to accomplish, and started scrapbooks of ideas. I paid off my entire student loan, and saved enough $ to get a car here, which will make living in Van MUCH easier. I learned enough basic Korean phrases to get by on a daily basis, and learned to read Hangul. I learned how to party really, really hard. I proved to myself I can survive in a third world country alone (yes, I recently found out that Korea actually has official third-world status - but mainly so that it can recieve international tax breaks and government grants). I enjoyed my job for the first time in my life, and gained valuable leadership skills. I travelled all over Korea, and to Japan, Malaysia and Thailand. I acquired a whole new wardrobe, and got to observe and absorb fashion trends in a distant country. And best of all, going to Korea has made me appreciate Vancouver all the more.

I nearly wept eating some of Moolz's homecooked Chinese food just now. And this is just the beginning...

(^ 2nd last night partying in Korea!)

(^ Gangwon rafting trip) More pics of rafting here.

Bye, Korea!

2006-08-22T07:02:00.000-07:00

20 minutes till we start our 5 hour busride to the airport! WOOOO!!! I've been dreaming of this all year! ^^

More posts on reverse culture shock to come. See you in Vancouver!

:)

Gangwon Rafting

2006-08-12T07:53:00.000-07:00

We went rafting today, white-water style.. though it was mostly brown placid water, with the odd tufts of white. Nevertheless, we got to see some beautiful Korean scenery that is usually only experienced from behind the window of a train. Paddling thirteen kilometres down the wide, meandering river, we gazed at mountains and hills as they rolled and blended into one another. Every inch of mountain is heavily blanketed with a certain very green deciduous tree. Our guide pointed out various faces and images hidden in the rock forms around us. He then proceeded to push every last one of us into the frigid water, then stretched out with a sly smile as we all hopelessly attempted to clambor back on.

Along the edges of the river, small areas of fine sand were interspersed between the cliffs; silt that had been carried along and remoulded into new mini-beaches after the recent monsoon rains a month ago. High up on the cliffs on either side, plastic bags, frayed grey cloth and faded tarpaulin clothed pine trees like scraggly, disheveled scarecrows - eerie testament of a much higher water level during the monsoon. Apparently this was one of the villages that had lost some material possessions - and lives - during the flooding.

At one point we moored on beach of smooth, round rocks and went for an official swim. I love feeling the power of nature firsthand. Thunderstorms, windstorms, etc. Whenever I see the Squamish river running at different strengths, I always have an urge to jump in and see how strong the current is, and how fast I'd be catapulted down the river. Luckily, I got the chance to feel the undertow today. Drifting to the middle of the river, my toes could no longer reach the bottom, and I let the river pull me a bit. Then, I quickly tried to backstroke against the current, to no avail.. it kept pulling me farther down at a frightening speed.. and then a second later, I swam toward the shore, rather than against the current (surfing class 101) and suddenly I could touch the ground again.

All in all, not a trip to go on for the ' white water rafting' aspect, but rather for the scenery, and great way to spend a hot Korean day cooling off, without using aircon.

Everyone knows a kid like Anthony..

2006-08-09T10:16:00.000-07:00

Before I sleep, I just gotta jot this down..

I have a kid in my preschool class, Anthony. He's smart, cute, extremely talkative and precocious; a little engine, and unstoppable. Always up to something; always has that gleam of mischief in his eye. I teach his older sister too, Lily. Lily is outgoing and very smart too, but the similarities end there... she's the perfect, well-behaved A+ model student. When I had a parents' demonstration lesson for Lily's class, I started off by writing 'Present Progressive' on the board, and from the back of the room, a little voice started yelling out, "P-R-E-S-E-N-T.." until his mom shushed him. Today I noticed he was extra hyper, doing a few extra cartwheels than usual to the front of the room if I called on him to answer a question. Later, when I taught Lily's class, she interrupted the lesson to tell me something. Apparently, Anthony and Lily had gone to Costco last evening, and Anthony had randomly approached a Canadian couple. Guess what he said to them.......

"Are you crazy?"

Haaahahaha!

PS. Hi, comment posters! It's so nice to know that I'm not talking to myself in this blog! Can't wait till I see somma y'all soon! And to those who didn't post a comment, I knooooww whooo you aaaaree and I will find you and make you start your own blogs as punishment. ;)

Entry #70: Japan Reigns Supreme!

2006-07-30T07:02:00.000-07:00

Given that the name of this blog is 'North of Japan,' I decided to venture down South and see exactly what it is that I am North of. Two days in Japan sounds so short, and indeed it is.. but we managed to cram in a lot of things: walking through shrine areas in the city, sightseeing at a temple + reclining buddha tucked in the countryside, hiking through a giant bamboo forest, strolling through shops at Canal City, people watching in the park, clubbing, arcade (to play airhockey and take stickyphotos... I haven't done that since grade 10!!!), Fukuoka Historical Museum, more clubbing, and watching the sunrise on the beach. Food highlights included sushi, okinomiyaki (Japanese pizza), bubble tea and soba noodles. I attempted to go shopping, but 45 minutes was just barely scratching the surface, so what better excuse than that to visit again sometime.

My shopping excursion resulted in a jackpot of a different sort: I managed to run into the yamamba-est of all yamamba gangs. This in itself made the whole trip worthwhile. About 4 girls and a guy, walking down the street, looking similar to this:

They were crossing the street in the opposite direction, and my heart actually beat faster from the shock! I couldn't decide whether to chase them for a photo or not (they looked pretty intimidating) but by the time I actually decided to turn around and look for them, they had disappeared. Yamambas are a subculture in Japan; they spend hours tanning and applying white theatrical makeup to their eyes, lips, and most recently, noses. They wear stuffed animals, 5-inch platforms, and sometimes pajamas, in order to stand out.

Later that evening, after dusk, we came upon what were probably the same group I'd seen earlier. We watched as the yamambas in pajamas practiced their ritual 'para para' dance by a pond in the park. It looked sort of like raver-with-glowsticks dance in slow motion. The lines between the cliques in the park were so distinct, due to clothing and appearance alone.. the skater punks, the yamambas, the barbies, the 2-inch skirt group, etc. It was like highschool, magnified to grotesque proportions. And yet, the cliques were calm and laid back, with nobody trying to pick flights like they would have back home.

I can't believe how much Japan surpassed my expectations. I always thought of Japan as being crowded, expensive, with robotic people and sensory-overload. (Everyone and their dog wants to go, or has gone to Japan, or at the very least praises the culture.. so I suppose this also made me skeptical of its greatness.) But it was indeed the opposite! Streets were busy but never crowded, prices were about the same as Vancouver ($18 haircut, $18 for a big meal of sushi, $6 cocktails at clubs, etc), people were amazingly friendly and spoke excellent English (every old person seemed to know how to say 'excuse me!'), and I don't think I saw a single piece of litter on the ground. They are definitely environmentally friendly.. many bikes, like Amsterdam.

However, it was not at all a 'sterile' place - every nook and cranny is brimming with character, little gardens, fountains and plants. Lush and green and diverse foliage. There is nothing ugly in Japan.. it is basically an aesthetic nazi's heaven. The air smells fresh and clean, and you can see the blue sky. The sun is amazingly bright. Japanese are incredibly friendly and hospitable! Hanging out at the deserted train station by the temple, a man and his wife gave us handfuls of red bean fish pastries.. for no reason at all other than to be nice!

Some of the other cool things I saw but didn't take pictures of were:

-A modified ATV with a microphone attached; its Japanese owner just parked it and started rapping
-Around 5 am, a motorcycle gang of youth- each motorcycle glowed a different colour in the dark
-Electronic traffic maps above major intersections, showing traffic problems and best routes
-Beautiful songs play when you cross the street
-Black leather seats and UV-protected windows on the local sky train
-Modified car, that lit up the road underneath it with various changing colours
-Cabs look like little English cars, with lace-lined seats; the doors automatically open and close
-Tall palm trees here and there, thanks to sub-tropical climate

The only things I noticed Japan didn't have were very many good places to dance / go clubbing. It was also hard to hail a cab, and cabs are very expensive (They start at $5 and go up $1 each minute). But really, a drop in the bucket considering everything else. I'll definitely be going back to Japan!

More pics here: Fukuoka Pics

Three more weeks left to post entries in "North of Japan." I'm curious who still reads this blog.. If you're reading this, I invite thee to post a comment underneath, to commemorate entry #70! :)

Korea.. Random Thoughts after Almost One Year!

2006-07-24T08:20:00.000-07:00

Wow, less than a month and it's over already?!! The second half of this year in Korea has gone by in the blink of an eye. The weekends of the last few months have more or less been spent on the beach in Pusan, or clubbing till daylight. I still find that a fascinating thing, clubbing till daylight. I think I might've done it once or twice in Vangroovy, but it's definitely a hard task to accomplish, considering most clubs close at 2 or the latest 4 am.

I'm really going to miss clubbing/barhopping here, despite the questionable music. I'll miss the flyers strewn so thickly you can barely see the streets, the easygoing crowd, the ridiculous black clubs-on-wheels (modified buses) that drive by to promote their venue, the abundance of stages to dance on and poles to swing around. I'll miss how everyone in the teacher community knows everyone by one degree at most. I'll miss strolling home at 7 am on a Sunday morning while the odd adjuma passes by, smiling as she reminisces her younger clubbing days. And hearing the birds chirp in a quiet, foggy, hazy city that would normally violate all sorts of sound pollution bylaws back home. Something else I appreciate is how the weigooks here are always ready to hang out or try new things.. I've met a lot of adventurous and inspirational types here. Of course, there are lots of adventurous and inspirational types in Vancouver too. One month before I came to Korea, I was missing Vancouver so much already, and enjoying life so much.. now it's the exact opposite.. missing Korea already, having a great time.. though if I knew I had a whole year ahead of me I'd probably want to be in Vancouver.

Just a few random pics I uploaded.. here's some galbi (sambap style.. aka with rice, wrapped in leaves) I cooked tonight! I'm gonna explain how to make it! First, go to a Korean supermarket and ask for 'dwegi galbi.' It's thinly cut meat attached to the rib, very flavorful. Grab some galbi marinade (I'm using asian pear variety now) and pour it on, with salt and pepper. Sear the galbi in a frying pan at high temperature, then slow cook it a bit more. Drain the juice as you cook it. Then, cut some garlic into large pieces, and roast in the pan. Stir fry some veggies. Grab a thick stack of sesame leaves and some samjang (this is salty soybean paste. It is crucial, in my opinion, because I'm such a diehard fan/addict) MMMM. This is where it gets good.

Pile in rice, lots of garlic (don't be shy.. Korea is the biggest consumer of garlic in the world... you can't out-eat them when it comes to garlic.. in fact, that's the story of how the Korean race was started. To make a long story short, a bear ate garlic for 40 days and became human, procreated with a god, and the first Korean was born.) Add galbi, samjang, raw white onion, kimchi, etc, to the leaf and stuff it in your mouth. You must insert the full leaf for the best effect, so that all the flavors combine! :D

I will never ever be able to make galbi as good as Mijung does it. But it satisfies. If I ever come back to Korea, I'll definitely come to Daegu for the galbi alone.

As much as I love some Korean food, such as galbi, I also have bitterly missed other food this year, such as Chinese food. Hell, I've missed Chinese culture a lot. Who would have thought Vancouver would have way more Chinese culture than Korea does? I was CRAVING congee the past few months (Hong Kong style, not the gross prisoner gruel that Koreans call congee) and have nearly perfected the recipe. Actually, coming to Korea may have been a good thing in that I never bothered to try making my own congee at home, since it was so readily available. Anyway, I put in chicken, seafood, green onions, lots of ginger, dried fish.. mmmm it was good! I have to figure out how to add flavor (ie. chicken broth) without turning the whole thing brown though.

Here are some first attempts at Chinese watercolor painting during that 'homesick for Chinese culture' weekend as well:

To be honest, part of the reason I came here was to try and discover more about the 'asian' side of my family. Because.. you know.. Asia is one big homogenous blob! Hahaha.. WRONG! I can't believe how much Korea has managed not to fit into my stereoptype of 'Asia!' It's got the small spaces, the busy city, the noise.. but it didn't have the mooncake, the dimsum, the gaudy red and gold dragons, the dragon dance, the raucous businessmen screaming about money, the extravagence, the gambling, the savory and methodical blending of flavors to create food that takes on an art form, and the international awareness I was expecting.

But don't get me wrong.. as much as I have been assured of my cultural preferences, I have come to love and appreciate certain things about Korea. Korea is one tough country. Every country around it has tried to conquer it at some point.. China, Japan, North Korea, Stalinist Russia, and of course now it's filled with American troops. But Korea withstood all of that and is developing SO FAST. It's amazing to be in a country where people work so doggedly, and this mindset is reflected in every part of the culture. Korea may not have gaudy gold art, but that's because it's humble and too busy working 12 hours a day to dabble in fine arts. Even it's food reflects it's hardworking, survivor nature. It's simple, unprocessed, and healthy (the real meals, like galbi.. not the street meat). I can just picture the Koreans saying "Quick, Japan's attacking! Throw all your food in this sesame leaf! Let's call it sambap.. but first, run for your life! Or.. let's throw this rice, tuna, and radish into some seaweed and wrap it up! A hearty meal for the battlefield.

I'll miss many other things about Korea than solely what I wrote here.. for example, the feisty adjumas, all the kind shopowners on our street, the language, the customer service, the low taxes, the excellent transit system, and just the excitement of being part of a rapidly growing country. I have so much more to say about Korea.. perhaps I'll make another entry later, with a big pro/cons list. In short, I could see myself coming back to Korea in the future to work.. the jobs are good and plenty. But right now, time to search for some info on Japan nightlife, in time for this coming long weekend!

Happy Birthday Canada!

2006-07-02T21:46:00.000-07:00

11 beers in my tummy and it's only 4 o'clock! ;)

My Trip to the DMZ

2006-06-29T21:25:00.000-07:00

Living in South Korea has this cool perk whereby it's attached to a totalitarian country run by 'The Dear Leader.' As such, visiting the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea was more exciting than any palace tour!

First, we went to the Military Armistace Commission Building. This is the little blue negotiating room through which the military demarcation line passes. On one side of the table lies South Korea; on the other, North. We could walk around the table to the other side of the room, but were warned not to pass this guy guarding the door to North Korea:

Here's an arial view of the same building I grabbed from Google Earth. It's the blue building in the centre. The big building to the north is North Korea's Panmungak, and to the south is South Korea's Freedom Building. The tension is definitely palpable in this area. Many areas where gunfire or death occured were pointed out.

Both our US Military tourguide and Korean tourguide regaled us with stories to highlight the stupidity, disrespect or brutality of the North. Stupidity: N. Korea dug many tunnels in the 70's towards S. Korea, 10 of which S. Korea discovered. N. Korea then said they were to mine gold or coal, though everyone knows the rock in the area is pure granite. Disrespect: When U.S. dignitaries visited the Military Armistace Commission Building, N. Korean guards took down the US flag and polished their boots with it. As such the flags no longer exist in the building. Brutality: The 1976 Axe Murder. During a routine tree-trimming, N. Korean soldiers grabbed the axe and killed two U.S. soldiers.

Next, we went up to Checkpoint #3. From this elevated area, we could see a heckuvalot: Propaganda village with the 160 M flagpole (built so that it would be 60 M taller than S. Korea's), the Bridge of No Return, radio towers designed to jam signals to keep the minds of N. Korean's as innocent as babies', many watchtowers (no doubt filled with North Koreans watching our every move) and a lush green strip of no-man's land that, due to being untouched for 50 years, has some of the most diverse wildlife in Korea.

Here is Propaganda Village. If you squint, you can see the large flagpole in the haze. You can also see the lush foliage of no-man's land that exists between the north and south:

Next, we passed by the site of the 1976 axe murder, which bore this memoir (click to read):

Next to this lay the only bridge connecting the north and south. It is called the Bridge of No Return because after the war, prisoners were given the choice to go back to their country, but could never return. During this part of the trip, we were obviously not allowed out of the bus, to prevent the hassle of a shootout lest someone decide to defect.

After a surprisingly simple yet good lunch of bimbimbap or bulgogi..

..we drove for an extended time, bordered on both sides by forests filled with landmines, until we reached the Dora Observatory, a big building on a very high hill overlooking North Korea. We arrived at the same time as a group of war veterans, some of whom hailed from the U.S. and spoke fluent English (shocking!).

Dropping a 500 won coin into the binoculars at this observatory allows one to zoom in on Propaganda Village, surrounding farmland, and an industrial area in North Korea. We were able to see farmers or soldiers walking around on the dirt roads. After being rendered giddy by the joys of spying on North Korean laypeople, we were whisked over to the 3rd Infiltration Tunnel, one of the many tunnels N. Korea dug in hopes of springing a surprise attack on the south.

I love tunnels and mines, so this was a definite highlight. This particular tunnel has been turned into a full tourist attraction, with a modern building leading into a long cement-lined shaft with seats for resting weary limbs. After walking for 5 or 10 minutes, you arrive at an intersection, and then continue walking down the actual tunnel dug by the N. Koreans. This tunnel is darker, narrower, about 2m x 2m. It requires walking like a hunched over jinja harmony (great grandmother) to prevent hitting your head on the rock. The tunnel is cold, dripping wet, and lined with dark soot. I didn't really understand through the guide's thick accent, but from what I gathered, the N. Koreans painted it with soot to create the facade that they were mining coal.

Next, we arrived at Dorasan Station, which connects the north to the south by rail. S. Korea built it in hopes of reunification. The N. Korean portion of the line exists, but they have yet to officially open their tracks for use.

While standing inside, we noticed a bunch of schoolkids clamber through the gates in the arrival area. We thought perhaps they had gone to North Korea, but perhaps they just saw the train and tracks that lead there. One of them yelled something and grabbed the white-gloved hands of one of the normally stoic guards, who cracked a smile.

We then toured a giftshop, where one can by pieces of fence that were taken down between the two Koreas. Brent bought some tea made in North Korea. And before we knew it, we were driving back through the various checkpoints, past the intricate roadblock artforms, back to Seoul.

Upon returning home.. err, 'home' to Daegu, I've been once again obsessed with reading up on North Korea. I'd hate to write a blog entry that leaves one with the biased idea that North Korea is the 'axis of evil.' In fact, despite the obvious sins like starving people, North Korea does seem to have a lot of positive virtues, especially after reading this Russian's account of his trip there: Click Here..

The people seem to support themselves well and live humble lives in a land that resembles eastern Europe. The streets are kept immaculately clean, and people share a sense of responsibility to keep their city looking pristine. Corporate advertising exists nowhere. There is little crime. They live like South Koreans did many years ago.. for example, heating their houses by an underground tunnel attached to a burning pit. Fields are plowed by oxen, profit is split by cooperatives, and the scenery is actually quite beautiful, lacking the highways, cement and neon lights of South Korea. Rather than playing computer games, kids spend their time honing their music and dance abilities. In a way, The Dear Leader has reached the utopian goals he set out to achieve.

Donald Trump Won't Touch Teachers!

2006-06-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

...because they have 17,000 germs per square inch on their desk. Those in other professions have only 1700 per square inch.

Click Here.

Hahaha!

You love pics, I love pics, we all love pics!

2006-06-19T07:20:00.000-07:00

Uploaded a bunch of pics from the past month or so. They include a trip to Pusan, Un-Birthday, and two separate incidents where inadvertent partying until the sun rose, occurred. :P

"Where shall we dine? Everything's closed!"

A lighthouse on a rocky island in the Korean Straight.

Teaching English has permanently disfigured our hands from constantly lunging to wring our students' necks..

Sorry, this pic surpasses my captioning abilities.

Intrigued? All this and more! Click here:

Pics pics pics pics pics pics!

Dae Han Min Geuk!

2006-06-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

The world cup in Korea has proven to be a very educational experience!

So far, here are the players whom I know about:

Back row, second from left: Ahn Jung Hwan. Handsome, has crazy perm hair, married to former Ms. Korea, scored the second goal against Togo.

Front row, left: Park Ji Sung: The favorite of most of my students. Born 1981, hails from Suwon, south of Seoul.

Front row, second from left: Li Chun Soo: Has a big mouth and dramatic past; also has crazy hair (usually a bright colour). Scored the first goal against Togo.

We ended up going to Beomeo Negori (closed off intersection) to watch the game on large screens. Seeing the nationalism of Korea all condensed in one spot brought a tear to the eye and sprinkling of goosebumps to the arms. A giant sea of lit red horns.. it looked like Asian hell! Despite the fact that several thousand people were crammed into an intersection, everyone sat down politely, sharing their mats.

It's amazing to see how united a nation can be, thanks to a shared hard past, appearance, culture and goals. Canada's multiculturalism is one of it's best traits, but the tradeoff is that it's cultural diversity will never allow it to unite in the same way as Korea for any national event.

Anyway, here are a few vids I took:

Chanting Dae Ha Min Gook! (Go Republic of Korea)
Fireworks at the end of the Game

And some pics..

Sea of red horns..

Baby devil

Korea Won! Some people in front of us shook up a whole case of beer, bottle by bottle, and sprayed it on the crowd..

Showing devilish spirit..

Some crazy fans..

We remained crazy right up until we were apprehended and carted away for civil disobedience..

Discussing soccer with my classes is now one of my favorite pastimes.. their ears perk up and their eyes become shiny. I think my preschool class is the most hardcore.. when the Korean teacher was gone, I threw away the lesson plan and took a survey.. about 7 out of 9 students went to Beomeo Negori! They're only 5 & 6 years old, barely speak any English, but they know enough to discuss favorite players. Asah!

:)

Google Map of My House!

2006-06-11T09:48:00.000-07:00

Hey, check it out! Google Maps improved it's zoom-in capabilities within Korea! Here is where I currently call home. Downtown is 15 minutes to the west by subway. As you can see, the school is a 2 minute walk away, close to the intersection. During the air raid drills, the siren sounds from the Korean army base across the road from the school. Click on the image to view the detail and labelling:

Boo Urns.

2006-06-08T07:53:00.002-07:00

Dear Ms Shi,

Thank you for inquiry about bringing your pet goldfish home to Canada from South Korea. Canada does not require any import permit in order to import live ornamental fish that will be maintained in aquariums.

Since the importation of ornamental fishes for hobby aquariums or the pet trade is considered to pose a negligible risk to native aquatic fish species, Fisheries and Oceans Canada has no act or regulation to licence the importation of live fish for ornamental use. No official documentation is necessary to clear Canada Customs and the importation of ornamental/hobby
fish is not restricted. You may wish to bring a copy of this email with you in the unlikely event you are challenged by Customs.

Please be advised, however, that if you are returning to British Columbia, this province does maintain a list of prohibited species of live fish which are not permitted entry into the province. Carp, which includes goldfish, is on the list. http://www-heb.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/intro_trans/prohibited_e.htm

Please be advised that in Canada, you are prohibited from releasing or disposing of aquarium fish into wild fish habitat.

Nancy House
National Registry of Aquatic Animal Health
Registre national de la sante des animaux aquatiques
Fisheries and Oceans Canada/Peches et Oceans Canada
200, rue Kent St.
12W114
Ottawa, ON
K1A 0E6

Chamchi Kimbap, Doogay Juseyo!

2006-06-07T22:55:00.000-07:00

Here's a more positive post to balance things out a little. CHAMCHI (TUNA) KIMBAP IS SO FREAKING DELICIOUS! I never get tired of that mix of sweet tuna, egg and mayo, sour radish, hot kimchi and salty seaweed. I recently found a new kimbap place that does it even better than the 'green restaurant' near our school.

(Pic courtesy of Fatman Seoul)

>.<

2006-06-07T08:37:00.002-07:00

RIP Shawn. Shawn was a former English teacher in Korea who committed suicide not long ago. Some friends mentioned recently his death, and how they were going to participate in a charity fundraising to send his ashes home. I didn't realize who it was until tonight.. I've often come across his thoughtful and articulate posts on Dave's ESL Cafe. He kept blogs and even published a few books about living in Korea. I remember replying to his last thread on Dave's ESL, about how he was really happy in China.

I remember this thread in particular, because people seemed to mistake his happiness for gloating, and seemed intent on proving him wrong. He seemed really easy going about it, apologized, and changed the thread title from 'I'm in China now. It's better than Korea' to 'I'm in China now. It's different than Korea.' He had real-life problems, but it's sad to think that maybe some of the online bullying contributed to his mental state. I suppose it serves a good lesson to err on the side of being nice to everyone, even through the internet, as you never know how your words could influence someone. Here's a great example of his writing. I know some people who could definitely use an alternative garlic mincing solution!

The Subway Salesman

November 22, 2002
by Shawn Matthews

I was riding the subway in Busan reading the Korean Herald when I heard someone make an announcement. I glanced up. It was a Subway Salesman. I have always found these people rather entertaining. They are usually lively, animated middle aged men that deliver their sales pitch with such gusto that you suddenly find yourself needing their wares, even if you can not understand Korean.

On this particular afternoon, the Subway Salesman appeared to be selling some sort of ring. He held it up and showed it around. Many people watched, whether because they were genuinely interested or because there is not a lot else do on a subway I am not sure, but they followed his hand intently with their eyes. He spoke at length about this apparently amazing ring, his voice rolling on, slowly getting louder, faster, rising higher and higher until it reached an almost feverish pitch. Then suddenly he stopped. All was quiet save the sound of the subway rocking down the tracks. He paused a moment for effect. Then, to my bewilderment, he put the ring on his thumb. Several people began to murmur. An Ajuma gasped and covered her mouth. The Subway Salesman held his thumb out and slowly showed it around drawing the close attention of every passenger in the car at this point. Next he reached down into a black bag and dramatically whipped out a clove of garlic. This is getting pretty bizarre, I thought. But then I finally figured it out. It was not just an ordinary ring. In fact it was a garlic cutting thumb ring! There was a blade on it! Within a few seconds the Subway Salesman had diced the garlic into a small pile in the palm of his hand. He held out his hand showing each passenger. As the strong odor filled the air, he continued on with his sales pitch. I wondered what he could possibly be saying for so long and so ravenously about it.

When at last he ended his spiel several men and women held out 1000 Won bills and purchased the extraordinary garlic cutting thumb ring. As he passed me, he gave me a look as if to say, "You must be crazy. You will rue the day you passed up this great bargain." The subway squealed to a stop and the Subway Salesman moved on to the next car.

He was right. Even to this day, whenever I slice garlic with an ordinary knife, I wish I had purchased that ring.

Russia (and Korea) need more Faggotry.

2006-05-29T06:54:00.000-07:00

"Russia needs some faggotry," writes Bryanboy, host of the token gay blog on my sidebar links, Bryanboy.com .

Indeed, I have just been eating my dinner tonight, minding my own business, when two anti-gay news news clippings coincidentally sailed my way. The first was this gem Ryan found in the Seoul Times. I normally don't write about political or human rights issues because they make people hate each other and argue, and make my head hurt. (I prefer to wrap my head around deeper, more pressing issues like what Victoria Beckham is wearing and what brand of Swiffers to buy). But this article is so blatantly... fabricated and bigoted, to put it nicely, that it deserves a mention.

"Some women who have a domineering father will only be attracted to those of their own sex because they have learned not to respect men. The same is true of some men who have a domineering mother. Others, should one of their parents/guardians not truly love them, from a very early age may unconsciously imitate certain masculine or feminine characteristics of the parent/guardian that they most admired."

Where are the footnotes to show what study these hailed from? Oh, right, Vincent Bemowski - Writer (U.S. Politics & World Affairs) & Webmaster of Catholic Messages USA - wrote the article. He is a Writer and Webmaster with capital W's, so those credentials alone should be enough to substantiate his hypothesis. Plus, with gays ' frequently attacking' the Catholic Church, I don't think Mr. Bemowski has time to commit to any formal studies as he busily dodges flying bullets.. and AIDS-filled syringes.

Next, I hopped over to Bryanboy's site to see that Moscow's first gay pride parade has been botched by "some 100 religious zealots and nationalists who, according to the AP, kicked and punched the marchers."

I guess the paraders should be glad they aren't in Iran, where they'd be hung from gallows. (Remember these boys from last year?)

Apartheid ended merely 51 years ago when Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of the bus. Apartheid makes a great example, because the religious right was also very slow to denounce racial segregation. For example, my dad went to Bob Jones University in the late 70's. Almost 25 years after Rosa Parks had glued her hiney down to the seat, this university from the fundamentalist, religious right still forbade black people from registering as student. It also forbade interracial dating.

Thankfully, my dad didn't hold the same values. In 1982, the year my little interracial self was born, the Supreme Court ruled against Bob Jones University, but the university "refused to reverse its interracial dating policy, choosing instead to pay a million dollars in back taxes (Wikipedia)." It was only in the year 2000 that BJU reversed it's interracial dating policy, after a battle on Larry King Live. But only because it's moved on to newer battles.

"In October, 1998 the Associated Press reported that "Bob Jones University has a message for gay alumni: Stay away or be arrested." The administration partially retracted the ban after realizing that the policy could jeopardize the tax exempt status of its on-campus art museum (Wikipedia). "

Alas.. I hate to dredge this one out of the shadows, but it serves a point here: I also happened to spend the academic year of 2000-2001 at a religious university in Canada. Not only did I witness a ton of anti-gay sentiment (along with knowledge that a thriving, underground gay community existed on the campus- they would often butt heads with the religious right in the school paper via extremely long anonymous debates), but I also befriended one of the campus's only black students.

Her flatmates, about 5 girls from the U.S. - wonderful, shining Christians on the outside - were racist on the inside, making her do all the housework like a slave and at one point locking her out of her own house while they laughed inside. They called her a 'nigger' when they thought she was out of earshot. I met these people.. they are the lingering embers last century's human rights movement failed to douse.

So, as you can see, religious folk and the fundamentalist right will slowly catch on to things and grow accepting of others in due time.. one issue at a time.. but in the meantime, countless people will continue to be hurt, denied human rights, and killed.

For those who are hovering between both stances (pro-gay and anti-gay) I highly recommend reading The Chrysalids by John Windham, a book I read in grade 10, and which I'm re-reading now. It has nothing to do with the gay rights movement. Rather, it is a warning about what happens when humans create categories for groups of people who are 'deviations' from the 'natural, God-ordained' race. It can be applied to Auschwitz, Blacks, Homosexuals, The Disabled, The Elderly.. just about anyone who has ever been treated unfairly in history.

Okay, back to the regular 'Yay I ate kimchi' entries tomorrow, I promise.

Seoul and Pusan - Long Entry, Watch Out!

2006-05-21T21:52:00.000-07:00

Been a little slow uploading pics, but better late than never!

The first set is here. Sera is a friend from Vancouver who has been studying there for 4 or 5 years. She comes back to Seoul every year to visit, so we met up for a long weekend. It was especially interesting to stay with a Korean family and see Korea through the eyes of someone who grew up there.

One of the coolest experiences was going to the wholesale clothing locations near Dongdaemun. Sera's mom runs a men's wear retail store in a mall, so we met up with her at 3 am and spent several hours following her around and carrying stuff while she bought thousands of dollars worth of summer clothing. Some of the wholesale buildings where overwhelming, with store owners haggling prices and checking off long lists. Business moved much more quickly than in retail stores, and clothes were taken outside in garbage bags and left unattended in long lines, waiting for buses and trucks to take them to smaller cities. Equally fascinating was how the wholesalers slept on small pieces of wood and mats, amongst their clothes. They had TV's, water, bright fluorescent lights shining on them, and an old lady came around selling kimbap. They would never get a full night's sleep, as the wholesale buildings are open 24 hours, and retailers would wake them up for service.

Lady sleeping amongst her clothes. Unfortunately we woke her up laughing about something unrelated:

The next day we went to Everland, Seoul's biggest amusement park. We were the biggest kids there, and I think we did just about everything.. popcorn, cotton candy, safari busride through lion and bear infested areas, seal show, ferris wheel, bumper cars, roller coaster, Europe-land, etc etc.

Later, we drove an hour and a half north to the mountains in Chil Cheung, to visit Sera's parents' hobby farm. Sera's dad is a chief of police in Seoul, but he spends his weekends developing the farm with plans to retire there. When they first bought the land, it was nothing more than a side of a mountain. They cut down the trees and created three layers; the top for a house, the middle for a pool, and the last for the garden. Sera's dad planted many pine trees, which are dug up and sold for $50,000 when they are big. We had pork (galbi), beef (sulgogi) and eel, barbequed on some rock slabs on top of a barrel, overlooking the valley. "Every Korean's dream," said Sera's mom via translation, "is to have their own piece of land to farm."

I used to think Sera was feisty, but her mom is even feistier. When she's not busy pumping merchandise out of her shop, she's off hangliding in Thailand while her husband scuba-dives. She even taught us how to play a Korean gambling game called Go Stop. We took this game to the local Jim Jil Bang (a public bathhouse/sauna/massage/gym with a giant TV room where people all sleep communally on the floor on mats), and played for a few minutes until the staff made us fold it up (apparently it's illegal for Koreans to gamble).

The Jim Jil Bang was a neat experience. Basically, you change into some prisoner garb and then sit in one of several saunas. Each sauna is different. The first one was dome shaped and had amethyst and other semi-precious stones completely blanketing the walls. You feel like Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, when they discover the pile of loot in the cave... the whole room sparkles in the dim light. White rocks of salt are on the ground, and you can bury yourself in them for extra heat induction. The next sauna had straw mats and different rocks on the walls, and the last one, a 'traditional' Korean sauna, had a clay floor and clay walls with etchings, and red lights. Then we had some cooling barley drink, and sat on the floor amongst the dozens of sleeping people, while the TV played a documentary on bullying.

Overall, I was sad to have to return to Daegu, but hey, at least Daegu is in between Seoul and Pusan. This weekend, several of us headed down to Pusan to sit on Haeundae beach, check out a casino and stroll though downtown. Pics here. Also checked out Poetry Plus at the Monk Jazz Club again.

One guy told this story of how he was Nirvana's #1 fan and went to a zillion of their concerts. One day, he was in the supermarket and Kurt Cobain was nearby. He and his friends acted nonchalant and as musicians themselves, ignored Kurt as a common courtesy. Then Courtney Love came over and said to the guy "I'll pay you $5 if you go over there and ask Kurt if he's the lead singer of Alice in Chains. Meet me in the produce section." So he did. Kurt looked at him with big blue wounded eyes and asked "What's your name?" The guy told him, then ran off to the produce section, where he recounted Kurt's reaction to Courtney, who laughed her ass off. The guy felt he had done a horrible thing, especially when he really thought Kurt was God. Two weeks later Kurt committed suicide, and the guy wondered, "How many other people did Courtney pay $5 to f*** with him?"

Here's what English teachers do on their free time.. they insult each other using the most grammatically incorrect English possible:

On Haeundae beach, we happened upon some surfers, whom I asked whether there was a surf school nearby. Apparently there is, so I think I will be heading back to surf. Thank goodness! :D

Happy Teacher's Day!

2006-05-15T04:50:00.000-07:00

Two holidays we don't have in Canada are Children's Day and Teacher's Day. Today was Teacher's Day, and also coincidentally Mother's day back home. We didn't get the day off like most of the other schools, but we got spoiled with tons of gifts from the kids. My loot included:

+ starbucks travel mug and coffee gift cert
+ 14 k gold earrings (!!)
+ mother of pearl letter opener
+ cake, rice pastries
+ box of exquisitly decorated little heart-shaped cakes
+ darjeeling tea
+ socks
+ hand lotion
+ pantyhose
+ Pepperidge farm cookies
+ cutely scrawled notes and cards from the preschoolers (aww!)

Not too shabby!

Mr. Mole and the Pile of Poo.

2006-05-13T04:42:00.000-07:00

Koreans seem to have quite the obsession with poo. We took the preschool kids on a fieldtrip to a local bookstore last week. Many the books seemed to be about poo.

This is my favorite one.. I returned today to buy it for a friend's upcoming birthday, as we both enjoy discussing poo from time to time. For example, did you know that sesame oil is a natural laxative? Anyway, check it out:

>> By clicking this link heeeere <<

World Cup Stadium

2006-05-11T06:14:00.000-07:00

Went to World Cup Stadium in Daegu for a preschool fieldtrip and I got sunburned today!

Maaaan. One of our coworkers, Richard, is in the hospital hooked up to I.V. now, with pneumonia. I totally didn't see that one coming. I'm still polishing off my 10-day dose of antibiotics for my own infected tonsils which are doing MUCH better. I had to beg the doctor for a 10-day dosage.. he originally gave me TWO days! I don't understand Korea and it's insistence on short doses of antibiotics.... Ryan's in Japan now, and with Richard gone for a week, it's just Brent and I holding down the fort at work(with a lot of help from the Korean teachers too).

These cartoons by a guy on Dave's ESL cafe crack me up:

(FYI: 'Waegook' means foreigner)

Cuteness and not so cute.

2006-05-09T21:05:00.000-07:00

Check out my cute new student! Just kidding. Who he be? He be cuteness personified! Here's a story to go with the pic:

Moolz grew up with his grandma, who doesn't speak English. So he learned Cantonese before he learned English. On the first day of kindergarten, he didn't know what the heck anyone was saying, so he got up and walked home. That's Moolz.. taking no BS, since kindergarten!

Last night, I found this on the wall by my bed.

I put my heroic roommate to work catching it. They have this uncanny feature whereby they let a few legs fall off when you try and catch them. The legs wiggle wildly on their own to distract you from harming the centipede. I didn't see, but Brent said the legs were sticking on my wall, wiggling more than he's ever seen legs wiggle. :( Needless to say I didn't sleep much last night.

PS. Goat farm ideas postponed till I'm a rich middleager. I think I will start fashion design!

I need a new career!

2006-05-07T21:29:00.000-07:00

I need a new career. Part of the intended purpose of coming to Korea was to think seriously about what career path to take. Well I have been thinking seriously the whole year, reading books and googling jobs, asking around and starting over from scratch. I want to for once wake up in the morning and be EXCITED about my job, not just be able to tolerate it. And not even just 'enjoy' it. Right now I enjoy my job, but I'm definitely not EXCITED to go do it.

Here is the list of stuff I've considered this year:

Bath and body product retailer
Fashion design
Mini landscape design
Human Resources
Graphic Design
Biologist
Oceanographer
Park Ranger
Children's book author
Elementary school teacher
ESL college teacher

This is only the tip of the iceberg of things I've considered. And right now? I'm reading up on organic farming, particularly starting a goat cheese farm. It would be perfect.. I like goats, I like goat cheese, I would prefer not working with people, I like working outside, and I like making stuff. The downside is, there aren't too many goat cheese farms in Vancouver to practice on before I save up an inordinate sum of money to start my own.

This is ridiculous.. 3.5 months left and I still haven't decided what I want to do when I return. I don't want to end up doing some boring office job I hate again. :(

I want to do something challenging, preferably in the great outdoors! :)
Any ideas? Then.. please for the love of all things fuzzy and cute, leave a comment.

Yellow Dust Storm

2006-04-25T07:10:00.000-07:00

I don't have to visit China. Because it's come to visit me... in the form of dust from the Gobi desert in northwest China.

I'm heading up to Seoul this weekend. Apparently the yellow dust is a lot worse there. A coworker today told me it sticks to the window so that you can't see out. And that people in China and even here die from respiratory problems caused by the dust. As the dust spreads, it picks up carcinogens and heavy metals over industrial China, before it is dumped in Beijing, Korea, Japan, and even California! I did notice it the past few days, getting in my eyes a bit and making me really thirsty. Here's a short article about it.

Here is Beijing in 2001 dust storm:

Holy fauking crap! I can't believe how some can think that the world is advancing and is in the best shape it's ever been... I hate to admit it, but i think the world is beyond repair. :(

Act 1, Scenes 1 & 2: The Foiled Escape

2006-04-21T21:38:00.000-07:00

Charlie's Angels make for a quick escape in the catacombs known as the Pusan subway:

But the killer eventually finds them:

º April º

2006-04-16T06:10:00.000-07:00

Ahhh it's so much easier to be entertained and gratuitously read others' blog entries than to do the entertaining!

This weekend has been a badly needed domestic one. Stayed in on Sat. and cleaned the bathroom, my room and kitchen (even inside the microwave!), worked out (first time in a month?), skipped Korean class but studied Korean on my own, and did some reading. Man, I love hanging out with me. Today, went to Seoman market to get odds and ends. Went to an East Indian restaurant and sat on the floor next to a cockroach. It was promptly squished. Found some Nag Champra incense. Asaah!!! Saw a guy in a pastel pink Baby Milo™ sweatshirt with about 20 Milo heads all over it. I'm sure Moolz would have uttered at least a squeak.

Something that made me squeak personally was a random t-shirt at one of the zillions of open-air clothing kiosks downtown. The word 'Richmond' caught my eye and I did a double take and saw '# 3 Road' and 'Shell Road' and 'George Massey Tunnel.' Upon closer inspection, #3 road actually read '#S' road. #4 and #5 roads were also '#S' road. Somebody had gone and put a small section of a GVRD map onto a bunch of shirts. Best of all, it had USA emblazoned in large letters above it. I think they meant to put a map of Seattle on it or something, and veered too far north.

Last weekend went to Pusan:

And Jin Hae, to see the Cherry Blossom Festival:

Here's a video I took of a friend reading some poetry at the Monk Jazz Club in Pusan.

Daegu had one of it's sporadic air raid drills on Friday. During these drills, traffic stops for 20 minutes, military convoys drive down the streets, fighter jets dart across the sky, and the radio asks people to report North Korean spies should they come across any. Took a video from our roof and one from in front of my school. You can see the idling traffic.

Dong Hwa Temple

2006-04-03T06:23:00.000-07:00

Went to another temple this past weekend. Dong Hwa. It was colder than expected up there and I'm battling an on-the-verge cold.

More pics here.

Past Halfway..

2006-03-30T16:31:00.000-08:00

5 more months in my contract left. Yesterday I was taken aside and asked to already start considering renewing my contract.

Internet, meet kids. Kids, meet internet.

2006-03-29T07:04:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd do a post to show off some of the kids I named after family and friends.

On the left is Mia, named after my new little cousin, once removed. On the right is Kathy, named after my aunt.

In the middle is Jacque, named after a Korean friend in L.A. (Terry on his left and Bradley on his right)

On the left is Jared, named after my brother. Justin, his twin, is on the right. I think they're adorable. My bro is lucky to have such a cute namesake!

Here's Ross, named after a friend back home. Ross was hoping his kid would be smart. I think he looks like he'll grow up to be a bully. :( Hope not!

Here are more faces from that 14-kid class I opened last week.

These kids I didn't name, but they were next door and my camera was hungry. Foreground is Yun Gui and behind him is Jay. Both troublemakers! In the background is Ian and on the right, Sara and Lily, all of whom are good students.

I managed to capture 3 troublemakers in one shot. Jae Ho, Yun Gui and Daniel.

Who says it's just the kids who are troublemakers? Monica and I show the kids how it's done.

Here's the view from my desk. These are the muses who inspire me daily to become a troublemaker.

PS. Sorry, Joanna, Katherine and Julian. Unfortunately, the kids I named after you decided not to keep their names. Some of them already had English names unbenownst to us, so they reverted back to their original names. I'll try again later to proliferate your names ;)

Korean Class: The Afterparty

2006-03-25T10:28:00.000-08:00

I left for Korean classes at 10:30 am today and didn't get back till 3 am. It seems every time I go to Korean class, crazier things happen.

Today I went to the beginner class, then jumped to the intermediate class after the break. There, I met some very rad people, many of whom are 'long-termers' here. In particular are Chelsea and Anne, who take art classes, play the guitar, love nature, dance, and reading. We went for bokimbap with a bunch of other Korean class people, then Anne and I headed over to Seattle's best for a book exchange. I picked up a compilation of John Wyndham stuff, which includes The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes and The Chrysalyds. They also have a book discussion club that meets twice a month. They're discussing something this month called 'Three Generations.'

Then we went to an orphanage to play with the kids! The orphanage was much better than I expected. The kids are quite socialized and it's more homey and less institutional. Mora and Cathy, the two ladies I met last month at Korean class, came as well. We folded origami, taught them some colours and alphabet. The plan is to go every other week and create a sort of two-hour semi-educational program for them, involving songs and activities. Weirdly enough, Mora's from Rockwood, the town I grew up in, and Anne studied at U of Guelph, which is right by Rockwood.

Then, we headed over to the Ariana. Anne told me she'd lived in Italy for a year, so I introduced her to Sprint's drummer, who is half Bulgarian, half Italian. Had spoken to him briefly last time we were there, and he recognized me at the buffet. The band is great. They had some really awesome songs with a violin solo, and the lead singer does a very convincing Alanis Morissette impersonation. The buffet is much better when enjoyed over an hour prior to the cut-off time. I loaded up on lychee, Weizen and Stout, mostly. And salmon salad. Mmmm. Then we hopped over to the Commune and met up with Kate, from Leeds, and a few other girls.. over to Thunderbird for a bit of foosball..

Then Chelsea and her roomie Mel headed over to Itaewon and Kate and I lost them. But we ended up outside with a bunch of hyperactive young men whose names I don't totally recall. Two of them were here just for a few weeks, working for Boeing. They managed to convince us to come to Gypsy Rock, where we had a jolly good time shaking our jelly rolls to Fiddy and Snoop. Apparently recent renovations removed the stage, but Darby, my dancing partner in crime, and I managed to clear out a nice section of floorspace in which to do the robot, shopping cart and many tailfeather-shaking moves.

Next week, a Palgonsan mountain trek with artsy things in tow is being planned. I <3 Korean class! ;)

The end.

starfishgirl

2006-03-21T04:38:00.000-08:00

a small girl stands alone
on the seashore, an urchin
clutched hard in one fist, stick legs planted
in the sucking sand, her toes curled
and cold inside rubber boots three sizes too big
passed down from a growing brother; her other
hand at her brow, shading
her gaze
wind ruffles her wild
anenome hair,
narrows her obsidian eyes

her family is scattered along the eternal
curve of beach, their shapes smudged and dim in seamist
but close as a heartbeat

through white noise of surf
the girl kicks rocks onto their backs
crunches sand in her teeth
finds treasure in the dictionary
between flotsam and jetsam:
glass fishing float bobbed over from Japan
its eggshell bulb unbroken by the Pacific
kaleidoscope bottles, their notes dissolved and unread
if there even were any
and the million vermillion
starfish
who freely give her their name

on those long summer days she walked for miles
but the sentinel headlands distant
sprouting crook-fingered trees
remained static, remote bookends
through all the slow ebb of childhood.

Then a change
in the weather;
clouds take wing
seasons speed up

and one morning
the rubber boots fit, grow snug,
and by evening
are too small
cast away
to the licking tongue of the sea

Now she walks the beach with no shoes
the sand smooth on the sole
and the rocky headland
gripped by naked feet,
turns turtle and runs
under her new and moving horizon.

-poem by bradley

Ouvrir une classe avec un Jacque.

2006-03-20T04:44:00.000-08:00

So I guess I've been procrastinating with writing a new post because I don't want to see that beautiful aquamarine tropical water in the previous entry disappear beneath new entries.

I guess I'll have to post sometime though. I was hoping it could wait until the day the local galbi restaurant handed over their keys and said "Here, we want you to have sole proprietership, including access to the secrets behind our recipes, particularly the onion salad and galbi marinade." Or perhaps the day all our students decided to go on strike, and made the picket line a neat little circle around South East asia so that we'd be forced to take refuge there and eat Thom Yam soup all day.

Alas, the galbi restaurant seems content without foreign ownership and the kids seem to prefer displaying their anarchism by stealing my precious stickyballs instead.

Today I opened a 14 kid class. I was a bit apprehensive, considering I had never had a 14-kid class before, let alone opened one (the largest classes at our school have been, up until today, 13 students). I do have a couple 13 student classes, but who's to say that one extra kid won't topple the fragile class ecosystem over like a teetering Jenga castle?

Fortunately that one extra kid did no harm.

Opening classes is kind of like doing a 25 mintute stand-up comedy act in a room full of Easter island moai.. Behind the baby-statues sit equally grim mother and father statues, lips pressed tightly as they seek to ensure their fledglings are absorbing the highest quota of West Germanic Indo-European language possible. As they quietly text-message their cousins' brothers, once removed, with frequent updates re: the performance, you sashay around like a spineless scarecrow, chanting 'put your tongue in, put your tongue out, put your tongue in, and shake it all about,' then hokey pokey like it's the coolest fad ever to hit Asia.

Another cool thing about opening classes is getting to name the kids. They all have Korean names of course, but their new English names will (usually) also stick with them for the rest of their lives. This humbling sense of permanency has lead certain other teachers at my school (ahem, names withheld) to name their classes after the Justice League, or certain sports teams. Luckily for my mini moai, I went primarily with names of friends and family.

So now we have a mini Joanna, Julian, Janet, Jennifer, Jacque and Katherine amongst others (Not to mention a Jared and Ross who reside in a friend's new class from last week). I even named one after an ex bf (I liked his name.. and that's about it) and a character off Lost, the TV show I still recommend very, very highly. In fact, time to go watch it right now.

S.E. Asia Continued

2006-03-01T06:04:00.000-08:00

Selamat Petang! Well, it took me 3-4 hours to upload and title my photos. Holy crap! I'm going to reference them now and pick up where I left off in the last post. The pics are all here if you want to look at them while reading this entry. Some corrections on the last post: the 'village' language is 'Hokkien,' not 'Fokkien.' The nightmarket is 'Petaling' not 'Penang' Market.

Anyway, in the last post, we were on our way to see Badu cave in Kuala Lumpur. We definitely enjoyed seeing this mother of all caves. The arguably best part was being surrounded by wild monkeys on the way up. They are indifferent about people being around them, and I think they are fed fruit by the Hindu worshippers who gather there, so they are overpopulating the area. I also held a python named Sobe, near the entrance of the cave. You can feel it's skin grabbing at your flesh. The interior of the cave was massive, with Indian music playing, and roosters crowing. I don't know whose idea it was to put roosters in there. They seemed pretty content pecking at garbage though. Later that day, we went to the National Museum. Unlike the history museum, which contains many artifacts, the National contains mostly life-sized diaramas of historic Malaysian life. Kind of like a wax museum. It also contains lots of stufffed Malaysian wildlife, like an alligator, and some rocks from the first trip to the moon, given by the U.S. as a present.

The next day, we hopped on a plane to Phuket. We were greeted by our tour guide, a middle-aged lady who later revealed to us she had once been a man. She had me totally fooled, which is ironic because I laugh at the absurdity when my youngest students mistake me for a boy (due to my short hair, which is uncommon on Korean girls). Our guide told us how she and her spa business had been swept away in the tsunami. She drank too much debris and saltwater. After she was hospitalized for 3 months, her esophagus valve no longer shut properly, so now acid reflux causes her to lose her voice often. She also showed us a dent in the middle of her forehead caused by debris. She told us how her maid had given birth to a daughter but they couldn't find the father. So she signed as the father, and the little girl asked her 'how can you be my dad if you are my mom?' She then talked about how the lack of tourism after the tsunami made her wish she had died in it. She told all these stories in a comedic way, but I still found them sobering.

I preferred the humid, tropical climate of Malaysia over the drier Thailand, but Thailand has some gorgeous beaches, and is a bit cleaner. The food was probably the best I've ever tasted, but I could say that about all the food we ate during the trip. Lots of coconut, seafood, and the to-die-for Thom Yam and Laksa soups, which are clear, sour broth with lime, lemongrass and seafood. I got some heartburn but couldn't stop eating that danged sour soup. We saw a Buddhist temple called Wat Chalong. It was very colourful and ornate; much moreso than anything I've seen before.There was no blank space on any of the walls on each of the three stories; they were all filled with paintings depicting stories.

On the way to Patong beach, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to ride an elephant. We opted for the 45 minute 'river tour.' The river was dried up, but we walked for the most part through a rubber tree forest. Our guide sliced some rubbertrees and I leaned over and touched some of the white oozing rubber sap. It was sticky and gummy at first, but after rolling it between my thumb and index finger, it dried into a small hard gob of.. well, rubber. Our guide also poked at gigantic black and yellow spiders. Deep in the rubber forest, we came upon villages with small, clustered houses. People were going about their daily business, feeding babies and washing dishes, mostly outside in the shade since it is so hot there. Our elephant was very docile and quiet. They are constant grazers though, always pulling up veggies with their trunks while carrying us around.

After that we went to Patong beach, which was hardest hit during the tsunami. You couldn't tell there was ever a tsunami there, aside from some new sidewalks that are still going in. I had heard stories about how this beach was unclean and filled with hookers, but I guess the tsunami cleaned off the beach. The beachside town is a huge tourist trap, and sort of an asian Vegas. Lots of fake goods for sale, and neon lights. That night we went to see the ladyboy show, which was better than I was expecting. The ladyboys were more feminine and pretty than most of us girls who were born female! Their performance featured elaborate sets and costumes including Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Egyptian and tribal. That night we went for Italian and I found the best pepporoni pizza I've had since Italy. I must find out where to get true Italian flat-crust pizza when I return to Van.

The next morning we got up super early and I was way too tuh-ired. But it was worth it. We hopped on a boat and set out for the Phi Phi islands. At one point, we moored near a beach, jumped off the stern of the boat, and went snorkeling. There were hundreds of fish all around us; mostly clownfish, but also bigger grey ones. Some jellyfish and small sharks were also spotted near the bottom. The fish cluster around you with mild curiosity and you feel like an ornament that's been tossed into the aquarium at the dentist's office. I'm not sure how the water is so clear, but once you stick your mask under, you can see all around for a distance of like 20 ft. I tried to catch some fish with my hands.. very close, but no. Finally, we arrived at Phi Phi Don island, the one where the movie The Beach was filmed. It was the most beautiful beach I've seen (except for maybe Long Beach in Tofino, but that's a different kind of beauty). It was the beach of my cliche'd beach dreams. White sand, clear water warm enough to swim in for extended amounts of time, palm trees, and most importantly, WHITE SAND! The nearby hut with a buffet lunch was an added plus. I wish we could have spent more than an hour and a half there.

Alas, we headed back to Phuket, ate a seafood dinner, played Go-Back-Stop (A Korean drinking game), had the best breakfast I've ever had, and flew back to Kuala Lumpur. From there, we stayed at Ming's aunt and uncle's place for another night. Every night we stayed there, an epic thunderstorm occured and I think watching the grape-sized pellets of rain beat down on the palm trees 16 floors below, seeing the lightning light up all the red rooftops, and hearing the birds in the rainforest beside us made me fall in love with Kuala Lumpur. Ming's uncle told us he hadn't seen monkeys in that rainforest but I was convinced I'd see some. After staring long and hard, I finally saw some in the top canopy, swinging across huge distances of 15 feet, their little monkey sillhouettes exactly how they'd look in a kid's comic.

That night we went back to Petaling market. Ming bought some rambutan fruit, which I tried for the first time, in addition to jackfruit and dragonfruit. The night before I arrived, Moolz went nuts buying his favorite fruit, mangosteen, as it's 20x cheaper there than in Van. The market mainly consists of two very long and narrow (as in 4 feet wide) strips with makeshift shops on either side. You're pushed through like in a pinball machine, and the salespeople are aggressive, clapping their hands, stomping, waving things in your face to get attention. I got a fake Coach bag. Moolz got a ton of tshirts for friends and some watches.

The next morning we drove 3 hours north to Ipoh, a tiny Muslim Malay / Indian town. Ming's Indian friend took us for lunch. All eaten by hand off banana leaves, of course. Really good roti. We saw another cave, and by then I was feeling quite nauseous from the heat, the airconditioning, the streetfood, the flights, and the many flights of stairs we climbed to get to the top of the cave-mountain. We carried on an hour north to Penang Island, which was altogether different from Ipoh. Penang is filled mostly with rich Hokkien-speaking Chinese. Lots of young people milling about with disposable incomes. We met up with a tableful of Ming's childhood friends for lunch. While Moolz was able to speak Cantonese in KL, he wasn't able to use it in Penang. It was very interesting to see a bunch of Chinese yakking away in something other than Cantonese or Mandarin. Hokkien speakers hide their knowledge of the language in places like Vancouver, because it's considered a 'village' language, something not up to par with Cantonese or Mandarin. What a shame, because the language sounds cool, and diversity is a good thing.

After checking out a couple more beaches on Penang, we headed an hour East, to Ming and Lee Ern's hometown. I was especially excited to see this place, and Ming got more excited as we got closer. Throughout the whole trip, and on the way there, I had been looking intently at the roadside banana trees trying to spot a banana. I must have looked at 1000 banana trees. At last I saw clusters of green bananas. Perhaps I didn't see them because I was looking for yellow objects. Alor Setar, Ming Ming's hometown, was quite the cultural icon. All the streets had bright red and yellow painted buildings; it looked like a historical China-town spruced up for tourists, and yet we were the only tourists. Apparently the government paid people to paint the buildings just for the sake of looking nice. Ming nearly exploded with excitement as she pointed out the type of rickshaw she used to ride to school in as a kid. Basically an old man pedalling a bike with a seat in front. She pointed out her grandma's old house, some mango and papaya trees, and a river she used to cross as a kid to get back home.

The river was extremely polluted, with old boots and garbage bags visable under the water and strewn across the banks. Ming mentioned the houses had no proper sewage disposal, so it kind of emptied into the river. To get across, you step into a small boat and a man rows you over. You leave 20 cents on the seat. Finally, we went to the mall where Ming's parents and brother run two optometrist practices. (Ming also works as an optician in the UK). It was great meeting her mom again after several years. We stopped by Secret Recipe for a last bite of divine cheesecake (All their recipes really are secret), and then went to Alor Setar airport, the most ghetto airport I've ever seen. Lizards and peeling paint adorned the walls, and the 90% Muslim presense there made it feel more like Baghdad. Moolz and I flew back to Kuala Lumpur and caught our respective flights home.

I'm very grateful to Ming and Lee Ern for being so hospitable and giving us such an awesome tour. I am also very lucky to call someone as awesome as Julian my bf. His insight and understanding, endearing humour, and carefree approach to life are all things I don't take for granted.

Anyway, off to sleep. Tomorrow is the start of a new school year for preschool. Then two more days till my birthday, and off to Seoul for some shopping, clubbing and possible hiking. PS. Happy birthday, bro!! (Bro's bday is March 1st).

Lizards on the wall!

2006-02-19T16:49:00.000-08:00

I arrived in Kuala Lumpur! On the 18th, met Moolz at the airport and took a cab to Regent Hotel, which was totally amazing. Had a view of the twin towers. My first impression of KL: "And I thought Korea was ghetto!" Theres tons of abandoned buildings and construction; they start buildings and run out of money to finish. We ordered some cheese spring rolls and chicken kababs with peanut sauce, cucumber and white carrot, for room service. Then met up with Ming and her brother Li Ern the next morning.

We walked around downtown, went to Penang market where all the fake goods are. Went to a temple, with multiple buddhist statues, kids splashing their faces with holy water, and a tortoise pond. Went to the museum and saw the bikes the Japanese army rode on to conquer Malaysia. Saw a bike race, and stood at the gate of the King's Palace. The current king is near the end of his 5 year reign. There are 14 provinces in Malaysia and the king rotates from province to province. We went for noodles at a small outdoor place that had lizards climbing all over the wall. Apparently their tails come off if you grab them, and they grow new tails. The food is the best I've ever tasted, and also the cheapest. The weather is also the bestest. I think I want to move here.

We came back to Ming's aunt and uncles' place and went swimming in the pool. Their apartment is more like a resort! It's next to a big tropical rainforest interspersed with palm trees. There may be an occasional monkey or two in it. After dinner at an outdoor patio, we came back in a tropical thunderstorm with huge pellets of rain. We watched from the balcony as the palm trees swayed in the sheets of rain below us and lightning lit up the city.

Everyone here speaks a mixture of 5 languages. They switch from language to language in mid-sentence! English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Malay and Fokkien. Julian can talk to locals here in Cantonese. It's a heavily Muslim city too. There are hoses in the public washrooms for Muslims to wash themselves before praying. Ming said the population is 60% Muslim, 30% Chinese, 10% East Indian. People are friendly here, and really forward salespeople. Gonna go shower now and climb 200 steps to see a cave with monkeys in them.

Weekend Report

2006-02-12T05:26:00.000-08:00

This weekend, went to Korean class Sat AM. It was pretty advanced; I told the sungsaynim I will return on March 18th, when the new class starts. Went for bokimbap with some of the weigooks after, which was pretty ironic considering Brent wasn't even there (It's sort of a running joke that he's dragged them there so many times, he made them sick of bokimbap). Susan's in her late 40's and teaches in a remote village, I think called Changnyeong. It's an hour south by bus. Mora, in her mid 30's, teaches at Moondong, which is my school's competition. Daniel, who is 30, teaches adults. He mentioned that it's not quite as gravy as one would imagine. The students can be feisty; one girl argued with him and ran out. Or they can be quiet and shy and not want to participate at all. Today is the full moon festival. Susan told us about this mountain there that's currently on fire there today and all through the night. They are burning off the overabundance of azaleas, but Koreans also gather on the mountain to watch, eat snacks, and celebrate. They also eat a special '5-grain rice.'

Then Monica and I met up for shopping! We did some serious damage at Debec Department Store. I got a jean skirt, a black top and a camisole. They all look pretty basic for the amount spent, but they'll last a long time. Monica got this really nice beige pencil skirt from the same store. We share a really similar taste in fashion. After, we went for some dolsot beef and seafood udon. Then I went home and stayed up till 4 am watching episodes of Lost. Lost is probably my all-time favorite TV show. It is also F*D up, and that's why I like it so. I'd compare it to the likes of Memento and Being John Malkovich, two of my favorite movies.

Sunday morning (this morning) I slept in and was late meeting up with Pill Ku. He lives in Gyongsam, close to Yeongnam University, where he and his gf study. He has never been outside of Korea and has never had a foreigner friend... until I stopped him on the street for directions! Kim Pill made a traditional Korean lunch with lotus root, 3 types of kimchi, bulgalbi, good-health bean sauce, rice, chamchi (tuna), glutunous rice balls, and these really interesting nut-like objects that he said are good for your stomach, and also are part of the 5-grain rice ingredients.

We traded English / Korean lessons, did some norebang, and then rode his motorcycle to his dad's workplace (his dad manufactures window frames). It's cool because motorcycle laws are much more lax here; you can weave in and out of traffic, make turns that would be illegal back home, and pass cars on the shoulder. My knees were nearly scraped off as we squeezed through traffic. We went by some humungous, neatly stacked piles of shrubbery, some of which were being lit on fire, probably for the moon festival. People milled about, flying old-fashioned kites. Then Kim Pill stopped and asked if I wanted to go slow, or fast. FAST!!!!! I said, and we reached a nice healthy 147 km/h on an open stretch of countryside, with brown, sunny mountains all around. There was a small cat at his dad's company that was so docile, you could pick it up by the scruff of it's neck or pretty much any body part and it kept purring.

I was going to go shopping downtown again tonight for the trip next weekend, but I was too tired, and by the time I woke up the stores were closed. So I'm just staying in to pack and watch more Lost. Brent just got back from Seoul with his gf. They went to club M2 and danced on the stage all night! Woo!

Hahahahaaaa!

2006-02-07T07:41:00.000-08:00

Success! Korea as a collective is teaching me how to salsa! This adventure is definitely worthy of a blog entry. About 4 months ago I made a post on Dave's ESL cafe asking if anyone knew of places offering salsa lessons in Daegu. Someone responded with info on a few clubs, but due to a repetitive barrage of sickness the past few months, I had to keep postponing investigation. Lo, I am well now. So after my last class at 7:30 today, I beelined over to Kyungpook National University via subway for the 8:00 salsa lesson. When I got there, I called the nightclub's number for further directions, as they supposedly could speak English. Nada... the guy eventually hung up on me. So I wandered outside looking for the major intersection, resigned to the fact that I might not find the club for a while. Then I started asking random passerby. They were very helpful, and one of them even offered to escort me all the way to the club.

On the way there, I found out my kind escort's name was Kim Pill Ku, and his nickname/English name was 'Feel Good,' as it sounds like Pill Ku. Feel Good is my age, and a Seoul resident currently studying at Yongnam University here in Daegu. We had a good laugh about how he was giving me the 'Feel Good Tour.' Feel Good even called the club and asked them in Korean how to get there. We exchanged #'s and are going to meet up to exchange language lessons this weekend. So I got to the club, and it was a cozy little thing in the middle of nowhere. I peeked in the room and saw a couple clusters of older Koreans (Age 30-40) standing around. It looked pretty dead.

Of course, they all stared as I walked in, wondering how on earth a lone weigook got so lost as to find her way into such a remote club. I wasn't sure if the class had already finished or hadn't yet started, as it was so dead. But I waited around, twiddling my thumbs, and then a few more people trickled in until there were maybe 25 in total, and dancing commenced at 8:30. A cool lady in her mid-30's named Genie grabbed me and started coaching me on the forward/backwards basic. Holy crap, was I ever off! What I've been practicing on my own has been devoid of a whole bunch of little nuances.. so much so, that what they were doing looked completely different.

I can tell that they are very good dancers though, as they pay attention to every little detail. They even corrected me on the exact same problems that Diego (salsa instructor in Vancouver) tried so hard to fix. For example, when I do the forward/backwards basic, I don't put enough weight onto the feet moving forwards and backwards. After Genie left, another guy, 'glasses guy,' grabbed me, and tutored me for an hour, mostly on doing the underarm turn. I couldn't sit down for long without somebody else pulling me up to dance. Some of them even danced meringue with me. When I went to Mesa Luna last year, this old Latin guy had danced meringue with me for the first time. I thought he was a crazy weirdo, because the dance basically consisted of rapidly shuffling your feet in one spot, and doing multiple twists and turns in slow motion.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the exact same dance exists 9000 kilometres away on the other side of the world, so Mr. Old Guy at Mesa Luna, I'm sorry I doubted your sanity. The dance is still ridiculous though. When I left at 11, everyone was still dancing.

On the way back home, on our block, I ran into one of the ladies who serves us Galbi. The really nice smiley one with curly long hair. She came over and said hi... I discovered she lives pretty much across the street from us! Anyway, I'd say it's been one successful night! Salsa lessons are Tues / Thurs, so I might just head over there again this week.

Two-headed baby

2006-02-06T07:58:00.000-08:00

This two-headed baby got me thinking. I printed out the article and gave it to my oldest class to read today. Basically, the baby was born with an extra head that could smile, suck a pacifier and blink independently of the other head. But it was taking a toll on the first baby's heart so the surgeons chopped off the 'parasite' head when the baby was around a year old, to give the original baby a better chance to live. Did they kill a second person in the process? I think they did. It had no body, but I'm pretty sure it was still a person. How sad and horrifying for the poor bodyless head.

Itinerary - SE asia

2006-02-06T07:16:00.000-08:00

Here's the fairly finalized itinerary for our Malaysia trip, which has changed a lot since it's initial draft, so much so that it now includes a 3-day package tour to Thailand.

18 Feb Arrive in KL, stay at Regent Hotel.
19 Feb Kuala Lumpur- Ming's aunt's house
20 Feb Kuala Lumpur
21 Feb Fly to up to Phuket
22 Feb Phi Phi
23 Feb Fly Phuket back down to KL
24 Feb Kl, drive up to Penang by car-4 hr scenic drive ;)
25 Feb Penang to Alor Star (aka Alur Setar aka Ming's hometown) back down to KL by flight

Penang is the little island off the coast of Kedah, under the 'Alur Setar' script.

Latin moves, Hangul grooves

2006-02-05T05:36:00.000-08:00

I've been constantly dreaming of doing salsa again ever since I picked it up briefly a year ago. I miss it SO SO SO much. Salsa is mesmerizingly beautiful, evocative, and highly addictive. So I found a cool website with animated gif's to dust off those rusty moves.

So far, I tackled:

1. Forward / backward basic

2. Sideways basic

3. Underarm turn

4. Backbreak to inside turn - I had trouble with this the first time I learned it as well as when relearning it. Basically, you do a sideways basic and then pivot two times, first, 45 degrees, and then 180 degrees, so that you are facing you are facing to the right of where you where facing when you first started.

5. Cross body lead - this is one of the easiest moves, it starts with a forward/backward basic, and then you pivot 180 degrees on your left foot to end up facing the opposite direction (trading places with your partner).

On Tues night I'm going to check out this place called Babalu's that apparently has salsa lessons. I called them on Lunar New Years and they were, of course, closed, but said lessons were on Tuesday. But on Tuesday I had to fill in an extra lesson for an absent teacher (gahh that's one thing I won't miss about Korea.. unpaid short notice overtime!) and I missed the lesson. So hopefully this week I'll be able to get to the club.

Brent, my new roommate*, is currently creating an awesome loop of music that is facilitating the salsa-relearning process. He basically took an ugly sounding tune, played it backwards so that it sounds like space-age middle eastern music, made the volume fade in and out, and layered it on top of drums. I think he's adding vocals now. Sounds really neat.

In addition to picking up salsa again, I also officially started Korean classes. On the way there, an ajoshi (older Korean man) fell on me going up the escalator, bruising my knee, but thankfully he chose my buff biceps to fall into, and we all escaped relatively unscathed. The classes are definitely worth getting up early on Saturday mornings for. The ratio is 3 teachers for 7 students! I learned a lot about numbers and we acted out buying/selling scenerios. The classes are so helpful, I'm a little disappointed I'll have to miss three weeks worth of them coming up!

Anyway, back to bustamove.com to check out some more moves.

*Ryan and Brent switched places so the former can live with his best friend, Richard, who has been summoned to teach at our school.

Say Bong Mani Badosayo! (Happy Lunar New Year)

2006-02-02T06:18:00.000-08:00

Hello loyal blog readership of two! Yeah, I guess nothing big enough to warrant a blog entry has happened as of late. Last weekend was Lunar New Years, though, and two interesting feats were accomplished. First, I ate bundeggi (silkworm larvae). It was actually more tasty than not, and I ate about a dozen! For the curious-minded, they didn't taste 'insecty' like other foreigners have mentioned, and I didn't notice any 'gooey bubble-gum' texture either. They simply tasted like mild nuts or tofu marinated in soy sauce.

I think they were good because everything else on the table wasn't that appetizing.

In the top left is the ultra-hot dukbulgi (you can tell by the ultra-red sauce). In the bottom right is some kind of weird egg custard jello that isn't sweet. In the middle are boiled mussels. They were okay. The other dishes were like cold seafood cakes. We also went hiking up the mountain behind my coworker's house, and did some tight-rope walking near buddha. Pics in flickr.

And the second big feat was.. *drumroll*

I learned the Korean alphabet in under 4 hours! Now I can pronounce (in a heavy Canadian accent) almost every Korean word in print! It's really quite thrilling to be able to read every sign out there. Of course, I don't understand what most of it means, but I can pick out some words. I never imagined that it would be so easy to read an asian language.

Yeah, work has been a bit of a drag the past few days. Due to the oversight of a sister school which let three teachers go without finding replacements, some deal between the educational gods (ie. various directors) has been cracked, which involves pimping me out to said sister school for three days this week. Due to aforementioned oversight, I've had to do lesson plans at my own school, then take a 45 minute cabride over to the sister school, do lesson plans there, and teach their classes. Today, my first four classes were great, but the last two were devil spawn. They made me want to break things. Instead, it is just my voice that is breaking, like a 12 year old boy's. :|

At least the weather here has been phenomenal. It's been mostly sunny (as sunny as a smoggy asian city can get), and I think it's rained a total of 4 times since I arrived! Best of all, it's been around 5-10 degrees in the daytime. No more -10 degrees. BLISS.

<3 Peace and Love, Daddios.

Random Thoughts

2006-01-11T05:10:00.000-08:00

1. Many have been travelling lately!

Brent came back from Thailand with some gorgeous pics.
Ryan: New Years in Japan Pics
Alex and Megan in Tokyo went to HK last week.

2. December 25th was the fourth-month mark of being in Korea! Feb 25th, the half-year mark, I'll be celebrating in Malaysia. That's in a month and a half! And after that I think time is going to fly by really quickly.

3. I've been sketching and painting like mad lately.. but not as mad as I should be! The return to Vancouver is creeping up and I want to have a nice portfolio when I return, whether or not I enroll in a fashion-related program any time soon.

Here's my cute family modeling the Korean clothes I sent for Christmas:

4. I'm still exploring the 30 or so gigs of music my audiophile friend put on my computer before I came here. In fact I deleted about half of it recently because I needed more room for Seinfeld, Southpark, Project Runway and Lost episodes. But amongst the typical shoe-gazing, emo audiophile selection I've found some gold nuggets. For example, I'm REALLY into Praga Khan's Mutant Funk album right now. I highly suggest checking it out. Good lyrics, and electro-clash / drum n bass-y / Depeche Mode-esque in some tracks. I've been playing their Dreamcatcher track for 2 days non-stop. Another album I like now is 13 & God by 13 & God.
They somehow manage to rap to the sounds of strings, piano, gentle drums and woodwind instruments.

5. Daegu's really dry right now and a lot of buildings are burning down. A girl who works with us mentioned her house burned down under a year ago. All her photos and clothes, and everything are gone. Another girl who works at reception.. her mom had a store in Seoman market that burned down the other week when I mentioned I saw that fire from the 15th floor of the travel agent's building.

Here are some pics from that building. Click on them to see what a Korean building looks like up close:

New Cousin!

2006-01-01T00:58:00.000-08:00

I have a very cute new cousin! (Second cousin, once removed, to be exact). Congratulations to my cousin Valerie and her husband Tiee! Baby Mia was born Dec 27th.

I am SO happy to have a new addition in my extended family, because there have been no new babies born since my own toddlerhood :)

I think she looks quite serious and sophisticated. Not surprising, as she comes from a line of beautiful, smart and gracious women (ie. her mom, aunt, grandmother, great grandmother). My dad thinks she looks like her grandmother.

Shake that thang, Moolz!

2005-12-30T21:23:00.000-08:00

Yes I'm proud of him and yes I'm gonna brag!

Moolzie was given props in Beyond Robson (the blog is linked under my Daily Reads but for some reason I missed seeing the entry till now) for his stellar Red Room set on Christmas eve, and he's just stepped out to play tonite at Richards, with Judge Jules! That's right; there's gonna be more Jules in that room than you can shake a fist at! Aaand sometime after that, he's got an interview with Rice Paper, the asian-Canadian magazine, on 'what it's like to be an asian-Canadian DJ.' I'm sure it's gonna be filled with lots of revealing insight like 'whenever I throw down a record, I just can't help but think about my asian roots, and a big bowl of rice and soy sauce.'

New Years Long Weekend!

2005-12-30T03:36:00.000-08:00

This is day 2 of my 4 day weekend and it has turned out to be sooo relaxing and opulent. I'm so glad I stayed home! Yesterday I spent the whole day with my heated blanket, sketching and drawing with pen, crayon, and my new watercolour pencils and pastels! I'm uploading some of my sketches if you're wondering what those weird scribbles on my Flickr have been. Then I watched Episode 4 of Project Runway, which was at the same time hilarious (I can just picture the show's editors slapping their thighs as they manipulate the footage to make certain people look more ridiculous than they already are) and frustrating (I think the judges all have a skewed taste in fashion).

Today I actually parted ways with my heated blanket and withdrew $1000 US from the bank (Mom and Dad.. remember that question about whether I'm saving much $$ here? The answer is closer to NO) .. $700 which I took to Danny, the travel agent, to pay for my flight to Malaysia. Danny has a great view of Daegu on the 15th floor. He pointed out a bad fire in the distance: a building was burning down in Seoman market. As I looked out the window I realized just how dense the smog/pollution is, and how crap the buildings look from above... dull, Communist-apartment block style, and not that well cared for. I was moping a bit about the heinous price of travel when Brent texted me the message 'I LOVE THAILAND!!!!!!' I gave him a call and he couldn't stop talking about the good weather, the good food, the incredible shopping and how it was 10x more fun than Japan. "You know how you felt when you first came to Korea and saw the shopping?" said he. "Well, the girls I was with, they had that same look in their eyes." It's a crazed predator look, I know it well, and suddenly my faith is renewed that the Moolz and I won't be sorry about taking this trip. It's imperative to always have something fun to look forward to :D

After snagging some coffee candy and doughnuts from Paris Baguette downtown, and some bodywash and strawberry scrub from the Face Shop, I headed in the other direction to Walmart and got lots of tasty things...western food that can't be found nearby. Parmesan cheese (been going nuts with the roommates' Parmesan since he left: Parmesan with butter on toasted baguette..mmm), fried chicken, grated Mozza, chips, instant cappucino, two Toblerones and a big pack of Lotte chocolates, a bottle of Yellow Tail Merlot (thanks to Kat's blog, which has given me immense chocolate and wine cravings the past few days, especially the chocolate, after reading the website about how it's made and how it has drugs in it similar to THC.)

And now I'm back home patting my chicken/wine/chocolate-filled belly and contemplating what to sketch next.

Ho Ho HO

2005-12-25T21:06:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas!!!

Last night was the Christmas Potluck, hosted at the Smithsonian/Westward flat. It was a spectacular success, with an abundance of good food. We even managed to re-create a traditional western Christmas dinner, with chicken posing as turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, french bread, brie, curry, rice, wine, beer, soju, mandarins, chocolates (from Rob's mom in England!) and cake!

Guests included: Ryan's friend Erin and her friend David, brother Ryan, his wife Kristy; our Korean friend KG, our old Korean coworker, Jasmine, our coworker Rob and his Korean girlfriend Boo.

Brent, Ryan, Jasmine and I also did a Secret Santa gift exchange. I got Jasmine some stuff from the Face Shop (A big Korean cosmetic/soap chain that's just opened up and is doing very well in Canada) and Ryan got me some rad art supplies. Jasmine got Brent a scarf, and Brent is currently in Thailand, getting Ryan something presumably. We may leave the xmas decorations up for the rest of the year :P

Pics here.

PS. I heard from a lil birdie that mah Moolzie-poo spun an AWESOME set at the Red Room last nite, which included Portishead's Roads, mixed into something called "Alex Dolby's Psychic garden."

PPS. Best Christmas present is being at the tail end of my cough. It's almost gone! The Korean meds did help, all 17 pills a day. I swear I will do whatever it takes to NOT get sick again as long as I am in Korea.

High as a Kite

2005-12-20T02:57:00.000-08:00

I am high as a type this! I finally caved in after a month of having this cough, and went to the doctor. Being a Communications major, I have it drilled into my head that pharmaceuticals are evil. And if anyone loves its pharmaceuticals it's Korea. Alas, on Saturday, my mom warned me such a longterm cough could turn into TB or pneumonia, and on Sunday I made a trip to the doctor's post haste.

Every time I go to the doctor, I have a weird new experience. This time, they put me in a room with a contraption that looked like a cross between a 1950's electroshock therapy machine / oxygen bar. The dials went from 1 to 1.5, to 2 to 2.5, to 3. I was instructed to hold a mask a few inches from my face and they walked away. Some steam came out. The nurse never came back. So I got my prescription from the front desk and left.

If anyone ever finds themselves sick in Korea, note that you can only find a doctor's prescription at the pharmacy immediately adjacent to his office. I went to three other pharmacies before I found my drugs.

But now I have them. 17 pills a day for 3 days. I feel like I'm on a soft fluffy woozy cloud.. there must be some Tylenol 3's in there.

:|

2005-12-13T05:17:00.000-08:00

Why is my immune system so weak? Why am I sick 90% of the time? It's frustrating and incapacitating.

Must...survive...to...leave......Korea...

If I don't post again, it was a lung infection that did me in.. :|

Day 2 - Vancouver Blizzard 2005 - Revenge of the Commuters

2005-12-08T21:16:00.000-08:00

Chilled Vancouver commuters faced their second day of winter hell
today, as an additional 1/4 centimeter of the peculiar white stuff fell,
bringing the lower mainland to its knees and causing millions of
dollars worth of damage to the marijuana crops. Scientists suspect
that the substance is some form of frozen water particles and experts
from Saskatchewan are being flown in. With temperatures dipping to the
almost but not quite near zero mark, Vancouverites were warned to
double insulate their lattes before venturing out.

Vancouver police recommended that people stay inside except for
emergencies, such as running out of espresso or biscotti to see them
through Vancouver's most terrible storm to date. The local Canadian
Tire reported that they had completely sold out of fur lined sandals.
Drivers were cautioned to put their convertible tops up, and
several have been shocked to learn that their SUV's actually have four
wheel drive, although most have no idea how to use it.

Weary commuters faced soggy sushi, and the threat of frozen breast
implants. Dr. John Blatherwick, of the Coastal Health Authority
reassured everyone that most breast implants were perfectly safe to 25
below.

"The government has to do something," snarled an angry Trevor
Warburton. "I didn't pay $540,000 for my one bedroom condo so I could
sit around and be treated like someone from Toronto."

-Sent to me this morning in an email

China

2005-12-02T08:33:00.000-08:00

I want to see China. I'd like to see it this year while I'm in Asia, but I'm in no rush. I'd rather wait for a time when I can spend at least a month there. Most people who visit China see this:

and this:

and this

I want to see this:

And.. in other news, Japan scares me. :|

Persimmons

2005-12-02T06:29:00.000-08:00

In the fall, when you ride the train around through the countryside in Korea, you see flecks of orange for miles and miles. On the slow train to Andong, I was able to make out that these flecks were all pumpkins and persimmons. They seem to grow like weeds here.. SK is just blanketed with food when you think about it.. I don't see how anyone here could starve. The pumpkin vines often trail up onto abandoned rooftops in the middle of nowhere, and pumpkins sprout all over the roofs! Koreans also eat the pumpkin leaves, I've heard.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the persimmons. Koreans seem to eat them *very* raw here. They like them hard and hardly sweet. I was at one of the corner stores down the street a few weeks ago and the sweet adjummas behind the counter, who had been giggling and probably conversing about my foreign presense the whole time, handed me a persimmon slice with a grubby hand as I paid for my groceries. Isn't that the awesomest customer service ever? Oh, one of the other grocery stores near us gave us a small branch of delicate and pretty weed-like flowers too.. the kind that kids pick for their mothers from the roadside. (That's the kind of personal touch thats missing from.. ahem.. large corporations :P)

I digressed again! Back to persimmons. Yes. Persimmons. So after I ate the slice, I said "Masheesiyo!" Which means 'delicious.' The ladies grinned and stuck a whole persimmon in my bag. It was rock-hard though. I let it ripen on top of the fridge for two whole weeks! And just yesterday it was soft enough to eat (by my standards) and so much sweeter!

"Persimmon Ghosts"

A Collection of News-Worthy Items

2005-11-24T03:52:00.000-08:00

I spent last night writing a letter of complaint to Fido phone company. To make a very long story short, they charged me $60 for an extra month of not using their services, after I requested my phone be disconnected. I do not like large corporations. They can get away with murder, because they are faceless. Nobody takes responsibility for anything. Tonight, I thought about the customers whom I dealt with when I worked at eBay. I remember some of them were royally screwed over by eBay, but because of company policy, there was nothing I could do to help them. In particular, I recall this one member, ' beautiflstuff . ' She sells body jewelry. To make another long story short, eBay deleted one of the categories that she had hundreds of items listed in. eBay's computers automatically dumped all these listings into a different, inaccurate, category. As such, she lost business because customers were not finding the listings. She had to end these hundreds of listings one by one, and relist them. I could not refund her anything and there was nobody to help her list the items again. All I could do was sheepishly apologize. I talked with her for an hour, and to this day I still feel bad about her plight.

Tonight I had an idea. What if I emailed 'beautiflstuff' out of the blue today, and said "Hey, I'm that ex-eBay employee you talked to," and offered her $60 out of my own pocket? Rather than achieve some justice in the world by prying my $60 out of Fido's hands, I could take some responsibility on eBay's behalf, and right a wrong that a large, faceless corporation caused.

So, what do you think? Am I silly for wanting to play God, and bring justice to the world? Will I weird out the jewelry seller and lose $120 between Fido and eBay? Or should I do something wild and crazy, in order to make the world a fraction of a better place?

In other news, thanks to Ryan's mom for including nummy cheese and crackers in Ryan's care package. He shared them with me, along with some peanut butter and jam. I also got a care package of a different sort, from my mom today. As soon as I saw the customs declaration, which states 'precision ball pens,' I knew something was fishy. The parcel also had a 'security' sticker on it, something I didn't recall my previous packages having.

My mom can be an unpredictable woman sometimes so I tried to inconspicuously put it aside to open later. I didn't want a whole room of teachers to see the scalp of a metis my mom sent, or worse yet the multiple personality disorder medication I forgot to pack with me (Shh, they don't need to know that, Henrietta!).

But a chorus of 'open it, open it!' egged me on. Inside the package were.... precision ball pens. But the package was folded and taped in an odd manner around... another package, of papermate pens.

The suspense was palatable as I opened the second box, to reveal six more pens, and (wait for it.......................) drugs.

Hidden behind the pens was a prescription of Oseltamivir phosphate capsules, the 'avion flu virus cure' that my mom had said she was going to send a few months back. Apparently they are quite expensive and have either a 50% (according to my mom) or 70% (according to wikipedia) success rate.

I was not aware exactly how coveted this drug is until I looked it up on wikipedia just now. Apparently, this drug cannot be synthetically produced; rather it is made from an acid in star anise (a Chinese cooking spice that tastes great with bbq duck).

Star anise is grown in four provinces in China and harvested between March and May. The shikimic acid is extracted from the seeds in a ten-stage manufacturing process. 13 grams of star anise makes 1.3 grams of shikimic acid, which can be made into 10 Tamiflu capsules. 90% of the harvest is already used by Roche in making Tamiflu.

Goverments have been stockpiling Oseltamivir phosphate capsules, which were widely used in Southeast Asia during the outbreak this year. Only one company, Roche, makes the drug, although a second company is vying to gain the rights to do so as well. Roche has stopped all shipments of this drug to North America as of this October, due to stockpiling issues that result in a shortage of the drug in high-risk areas. Roche says it will now only ship the drug to China's health ministry. Another twist is that Tamiflu has also been known to cause people to jump out of windows and moving trucks, in studies conducted in Japan. Anyway, thank you, Mom, for smuggling me the drugs. I'm quite touched you want me to live should a pandemic occur. Thank you also for the cough medicine you sent last month (labeled 'candy' on the customs form). I currently have a cough and am putting it to good use.

Moving along to other news, kids vomit a lot here in Korea. Brent said he counted 8 piles of vomit on his way to work the other morning. That's about one pile per every two minutes of walking. Today a kid threw up in my K7 class. Actually, class was over and I was scrambling to finish stuff up when some of the kids started pointing at Jordan. I looked over to see his hand clamped over his mouth. I mentally rolled my eyes, thinking oh no, what did he manange to do.. bite off his tongue while sitting in his chair? The poor boy couldn't move though, as he was clutching a rather large fistful of vomit, and trying not to spill. I ran to get paper towels, but changed my mind and grabbed a garbage can instead, which was a very good decision in hindsight. I then grabbed the nearest kid, Antonio, and instructed him to hold the garbage can under Jordan's mouth while I ran for paper towels. The look he shot me was priceless. It said, "Teacher, you expect me to do what?!" He looked like he was going to throw up too. I was touched that he held the can for his classmate anyway. Remember that post where I commented about Korean kids having exceptionally bad teeth? Perhaps it's due in part to eating crappy Lotteria fastfood and 'streetmeat,' and throwing up a lot. Stomach acid can definitely wear down teeth.

Finally, here are the photos of Palgong Mountain and Gatbawi Buddhist statue, the prize at the top. We hiked this mountain a couple weeks ago.

Guilty as charged!

2005-11-17T06:37:00.000-08:00

It appears I have caved in to the internal peer pressure and created that 8th blog I said I wouldn't create, the fashion blog now dubbed Dawn J'Heureuse. I have posted in that blog three times in the one day it's been up, and I'm already foaming at the mouth to post more.

Anyway, now that I don't have to pollute this blog with fashion-related stuff that would most likely bore some of the people who originally bookmarked this blog in order to learn about Korea, I can now post about the originally intended topic of this blog; namely, Korea!

Today was a rather crazy day at school. I only had preschool + four classes. But.. first, my preschool class was observed by a girl from a different franchise, who is training to become a preschool teacher there. I didn't catch her name. With someone watching, it always provides that extra motivation to 'make it the best class ever' and I was quite pleased with the shining example the girl was provided. I praised the kids a lot, gave lots of high-fives, made the material varied, staggered active activities with non-active ones, had them repeat material after me before drilling them with games, made my face animated, pet them lots (or a bit more than usual since I'm not really the touchy-feely cheek-pinching type of teacher), and all the things we've been taught to do. Now that I think about it, we've learned quite a lot about teaching!

Later in the afternoon, I had my first parent-observation class. I was quite worried, since K6 is my second-largest class (11 students) and also the quietest. The kids are always lethargic and half of them never want to participate. Right before the class began, I was surprised to find I would be teaching a K7 a half-lesson. K7 is the new class that Ryan opened, and it has grown to be what is now our largest class.. 13 students. They are all about aged 8-9 but brand new to English, so that makes it more challenging to teach them. They also have a tendency to all vie for attention at the same time. John will be head-butting my back while Dora is chirping about how she finished her work, Tim will be rolling on the ground, while Wilson is popping up and down wanting to share with me that Alan was out of his seat, tugging at my shirt to tell me that Kevin was speaking Korean.

That was a worst-case scenerio, though, as challenging as they can be, they can also be one of the best-behaved classes at times. They are really a joy to teach. Anyway, thinking I was about to teach K6, I received notice I'd be teaching K7 for 25 minutes.. and the same observer from my morning preschool was also there watching. I kept adding a few more activities.. and a few more.. trying to time it right so I'd be done at half past. Half past came and went then 35 past, and Ryan didn't come to replace me.. and Jenny didn't come to get me, so I freaked out a bit and went to get Ryan. I'm sure I was early or something; I just like to do an extra special freak-out dance at prime times like such. When I came back, our director was ahead of me, and walked into the class to see 13 students sitting perfectly at their desk with their textbooks open, an observer in the corner, and no teacher in sight to enforce their good behaviour! Even Tim, the rambunctious one, who had somehow bloodied his finger 10 minutes earlier, was sitting in his desk. Her surprise made me giggle.

My K6 class went much better than expected. Although I was expecting horrible results, so that's not saying much. We managed to get through the whole lesson plan rather smoothly, and I was shocked at how well the kids participated when their parents were watching. I am still shocked. For the last half hour, the Korean co-teacher and our director talk to the parents, and they occasionally asked me to comment on the kids, which they translated for the parents. While they talked, I tried to infer what Korean parents are like based on their tone of voice and non-verbal cues. A couple of them were lighthearted, but most were quite serious and dressed for a board meeting. At the end, our director told me her normal spiel about 'caring' more for the kids.. "It's a sort of care and control." I'm sure Brent and Ryan have heard that line a million times. Since she didn't go to any lengths to prepare a personalized lecture of how to improve, I take it the class went pretty well.

i've seen things i've seen them with my eyes

2005-11-11T19:51:00.000-08:00

i've seen things they're often in disguise:

like carrots handbags cheese toilets russians planets hamsters weddings poets stalin kuala lumpur pygmies budgies...

whoohoo! i'm going to kuala lumpur in february. it will be an international conference with two of my favoritist ambassadors. moolz is coming from van, i will hop over from korea, and my friend ming ming will be hopping over from london to be our tour guide and translator.

i met ming on my europe 2002 trip and since then she's been (successfully) persuading me to come check out her hometown Alor Setar, which is north of kuala lumpur. we will also go to kuala lumpur and either head north, to phuket in thailand or south, to singapore.

moolz wants to ride an elephant. i want to see him ride an elephant.. while I lay comfortably on a white sand beach on Langkawi island.

Halloween in Seoul

2005-11-06T06:35:00.001-08:00

Brent and Ryan already did wonderful jobs summing up our Halloween in Seoul, which allows me to lazily link to their blogs rather than blog about it myself. However, I have chosen to do a special report on the costume that was the brunt of many jokes and much howling, as our bold and motley crew ventured out onto the Seoul streets for Halloween. With no further ado, here is.. How to make me laugh on Halloween:

Don a $30 Walmart clownsuit

Get stuck in the subway turnstile and keep a serious face as you nearly roll down the escalator:

When you notice businessmen trying to discreetly snap pics of you with their cameraphones, pose for them:

Ensure the entire subway car is watching you by just sitting and smiling:

Be the only one on the dancefloor busting moves, despite apparent rear end problems:

Thanks to Aaron for being a clown.. in a country that largely doesn't celebrate Halloween.

For more pics of our pumpkin carving get-together, Halloween in Seoul and preschool events: Click Here.

Oh right.. and as promised in the previous post, here is the pic of me in my soldier uniform:

I borrowed the uniform from Brent's Korean friend KG. What made it especially fun to wear was the fact that soldiers in these same uniforms are all over Korean streets. Every male must complete 2 years of military training at age 18, and receive a two-day training refresher every year thereafter for 10 years. So a girl in fatigues really made people scratch their heads. KG completed his two years military training, so I also had the badges, along with his Korean name, on the uniform, which caused a lots of squinting and pointing, mild shock, and amused laughter from Koreans all night. :)

Phear!

2005-10-22T05:09:00.000-07:00

I Phear this may turn into a consumer whore blog. I was contemplating creating a separate blog to post about fashion and purchases, but I decided against it as that would officially up the blog quota to eight. Ironically enough, a few weeks ago I created a new blog to brainstorm business venture and career ideas. The how-to-spend money blog cannot be allowed to trump the how-to-make money blog, dagnabbit! And anyway, I do love fashion and shopping, so I might as well post about it here, otherwise I may never post here again if I am too busy posting in my other 7 blogs.

Today we went to Seoman market, a local outdoor market downtown that spans many blocks, and sells everything.. puppies, chunks of beehives complete with bees, stretched out dried medicinal frogs, clothing, bedding, deep fried food and hotas (delicious folded pancake with brown sugar and nuts inside). We also went to Lotte Department store.

I bought:

Rock candy

Lancome Juicy Tube in Peche!!!

MAC blot powder in 'medium'

And a glock bb gun (with bullets):

Why a glock, you may ask? It is to be a part of my 'Korean Military Service' Halloween costume! Pics to be posted later! :D

Art in Vancouver

2005-10-19T06:42:00.000-07:00

I was browsing, and somehow came upon a cool Vancouver blog. With an entry about a mysterious and passionate Vancouver street artist. Instead of grafitti-ing freehand, he and his friends tag the city with stencils. And in more 'heated' places (places with a higher risk of being caught) they paste pre-made posters.

><))'> Suicidal Fish and Why I Like Korea

2005-10-13T08:01:00.000-07:00

I like Korea! But more on that later. First, we got fish! They were .50 cents each. Mine is named Maeun-tang ('spicy fish soup' in Korean) and the roommate's fish is Seppuku. Formerly Midas but it was renamed after the Japanese form of ritualistic suicide after it decided to try just that.

I came home for lunch yesterday and noticed only one fish in the bowl. I looked on the floor, the table, under my feet. No fish. I widened my search and rescue perimeter and found he was a few feet away, next to the phone. Dead, I presumed, for he was dry and roasting in the sun. I intended to scrape him off the table for a quick toilet flush burial, but when I poked him, he started breathing. His slime had turned into glue and he was adhered to the table. I peeled him off and it made a sound like tape ripping off a surface it doesn't want to come off of. I dropped him back in the bowl and he stared ahead glumly, mad that I foiled his suicide attempt. No floating on his side like high-maintenance Vancouver fish that get sick despite three types of water conditioners, a filter, pre-soaked organic food, and PH adjusting chalk blocks. Ok, so a few of them died because I left soap in their bowl.. but pshh what kind of fish die from a few bubbles in their water? Korean fish are invincible!

Maeun-tang's on the left, and on the right, you can see that Seppuku's mangled tail is no longer split into two. It has fused together after his adventure:

Next, I've been having fun with the fashion here. Asia is really the place to experiment and not have to worry about depleting walletry. I found a store here I really like that has funky Japanese clothes at about $20 a pop. ( http://www.ypz.co.kr ). I bought this shirt:

And tried matching it with other wardrobe pieces like so:

And solicited ideas from people, one of whom suggested wearing it like this :

So this Saturday is shopping day, and I plan to see if I can find a red shirt, army green bag, skirt and nylons, and thick brown belt to wear with this pesky shirt. And maybe some winter boots. And a jacket. And a bunch of xmas presents. Phew!

And finally, about this 'liking Korea' thing.. Since the Andong trip, I've gone for about two straight weeks not thinking vile, mean thoughts about Korea at all! Ok, so I still raise an eyebrow at the overflowing toiletpaper bin and germ infested communal towel in the washroom, and I still fantasize about easy access to random products like Revlon New Complexion One-Step Compact Makeup in Ivory Beige (the only foundation I've ever used, since grade 10) but overall, every aspect of Korea is warming up to the idea of my presence.

My students are no longer wicked devil-spawn brats. They are simply brats. Sometimes they even make me laugh. Like yesterday, when they started asking me a million personal questions, which I answered, until I realized 10 minutes later it was a joint effort to postpone the lesson. Or today, when we were playing my patent-pending 'Dragon game.' (I draw a dragon on the board, they answer questions and roll a dice, and we advance along the dragon like a snakes n ladders game.) They suggested I draw 'Ryan teacher's head,' on the dragon and they added a goatee which looked like double chin. Much guffawing was had.

Other things I like about Korea:

-The $6 galbi, which is my favorite food ever. It's more than just food. It's a deep and deadly addiction. Brent and I sometimes go, and spend about half the dinner raving about how much we adore it and plotting how to obtain the recipes.

-The food in general. It's all much better than what I was bracing myself for. In fact, it's quite amazing.

-The cheap transportation, and cheap cost of living in general, and as a ratio to salary.

-The people. Yes it still irks me that they keep to themselves and can be xenophobic. But Koreans are quite a playful and loving race. They're cutesy and always have their arms around each other, and their ringtones are so sugar laden it hurts. Where else can you see two grown male cops holding hands as they walk the beat?

-The events / entertainment. Andong festival, the Pusan film festival (I didn't go but check Ryan and Brent's blogs for reviews), the recent exhibition at the local Polytechnic college, and even in downtown Daegu there's more often than not some sort of sexy dance competition.

-I really do like my job. I enjoy being able to inject creativity into each lesson. I like the freedom of choice. If I don't want to teach something, I can scratch it off the lesson plan. If I want to invent a new game or use new props, I can do so. I get to mould childrens' futures, and strive to be that 'fun teacher they always remember' when they're older.

Being not-too-sick right now helps a lot as well. All in all, things are looking up, and I could even see myself staying in Korea longer after this contract. *Knock on wood*