Various Thoughts

I'm suddenly inspired to write some thoughts down.  I should be finishing my lesson plan for next week but as I was eating my lunch I felt a great urge to tickle the old keyboard for a few minutes.  Nothing truly inspirational to note.  No political opinions or social commentary.  Just things that have been going through my head over the past few weeks regarding my day to day activities that I feel compelled to document at this particular point in time.

But first check out this Korean commercial.  I'm pretty sure it's an advertisement for a bank and I think it's just super.


So where to start.  Well, since this sudden desire to convey my thoughts came at lunch time perhaps I'll start there.  Lunches in school suck.  That's not to say that Korean food sucks...it's just that school lunches suck.  This is a sentiment shared by almost every expat teacher I know.  There might be one day out of twenty when the food is not something gross like gelatin cubes and seaweed soup or dried, bony fish with yesterday's kimchi.  In fact, I'm trying to write a piece on the sub-standard quality of Korean school lunches sometime soon.  If you are a English teacher in Korea and have a few moments maybe you can help me.  One day take a picture of what you had to eat and e-mail it to me.  Your co-teachers won't mind you snapping shots during lunch.  They're used to foreigners doing weird things.

I'm also trying to do a video post soon on my favorite Korean city and home for the past few months, Suwon.  I've been carrying my camera around for the past week or so, shooting some B-roll, but I really want to do this one right.  I think that past video's I've posted are all right but still a little amateurish.  The problem is with the voice-over.  I'm currently using the latest iMovie software and can't figure out how it will let me record the voice-over first and then let me match the video to it.  In past videos I've laid down the footage first and then tried to match my voice to the video segments.  This always makes me sound, how should I say...douchebagy.  When I do the next vid I'll probably try to do the voiceover in GarageBand and then import it to iMovie.  Yeah...that'll work.

While I'm talking technical stuff, I've currently found a hobby in the completely legal practice of backing up XBOX360 games for an online friend of mine who I've never met.  I'm "testing" these backups on my personal 360 that I had modified in Yongsan.  The modifications include the chip, cooling fans, and having the optical drive flashed, though I'm unsure what version of iXtreme this has been done with. This complicates things when it comes to knowing what wave the game has to be stealth patched for.  I'm using a MacBook so once I unRar the .iso file I run it through abgx360 and it usually comes out fine.  Then I've been using OSX360 to mount the game to a Dual Layer DVD.  I've got 1 or 2 games to work but as I'm an amateur I've ended up with a lot of coasters.  Most tutorials recommend using Verbatim discs but in Korea I can't seem to find any so I've been using Memorex.  Maybe this is the problem.  If you're someone who understands any of this and you've done it before, maybe you can offer me some advice.

So tickets have finally been purchased and confirmed for Thailand in January.  I'm pretty excited about this.  There is probably too much for me to try to do there with only eleven days but if I get to pet a real tiger and attend a Full Moon party I'll be happy.  If there is extra time and financial resources I'd like to got to Cambodia to blow a cow up with a rocket launcher.  There's also a city called Phucket which we'll try to hit.  I'm curious as to what a city with that kind of name has to offer.  My brother Jonathan Smokowicz was talking about flying over to visit us while we were there but he recently chickened out.  Dang brother, I was really looking forward to drinking snake blood in the jungle while giving each other satanic tattoos with razor blades and Sharpie pens.  If anyone has some free time why not message this guy on Facebook and persuade him not to be such a quitter.

The school has been freezing this week because the Principle refuses to turn the heat on, but aside from teaching in a heavy overcoat classes have gone surprisingly well.  I'm showing the kids a Korean disaster flick called Haeundae while we discuss natural disasters.  It's about a tsunami that hits a beach town on the south side of the country and it was one of the biggest movies over the summer.  Most Koreans I talk to love it.  Probably I'm sure, because it comes from their domestic film industry and not Hollywood. It's like a national treasure here.  They actually got the government intelligence agency involved when people started pirating it.  But I think it's one of the worst pieces of cinema I've ever seen...and I'm not saying Koreans can't make good movies.  I mean, look at Old Boy.  Despite being a blatent remake of the Count of Monte Cristo it was a work of art.  Great character development, an engaging plot line, brutal cinemography, and action sequences you can watch over and over again.  But Haeundai is absolutely terrible.   It's really just an hour and a half, wishy-washy love story with ten minutes of action.  And even then the action isn't great.  Just a fake CGI tidal wave smashing into a fake CGI city.  Boo.  But maybe I hate it a little more than the average viewer because I've seen it 19 times this week.

Well, I think that's all I've got for now.  I'm sure something else will hit me later but I'll cross that bridge when i get to it.  I love you Korea and this weekend I'll show you just how much.

Cool Thing About Korea #35:  Korean women, whether they are 15 or 35, all look like they're 22.  It's a dangerous place.