May 9, 2006 - It's getting hot over here!

Things are heating up over here, in both the literal and figurative senses. Today was somewhere around 25C (77F), a bit toasty for my usual longsleeve getup. Worse, at my university class, we're faced with a choice of a stuffy classroom or an inaudible one, at the behest of the traffic-plagued main drag through the university district in Sinchon, which conveniently runs right past our window. There's also some major highway being erected across the street, but making note of "construction in Seoul" is as relevant as pointing out that the Han River is wet. I've gotten in the habit of sleeping with earplugs in the afternoons or if I plan to sleep in past 7am. About three months back, I reveled in the sight of a building next to my apartment being torn to shreds with a mini-demolition team (see photo). What I hadn't considered at the time was that anything that comes down, must go back up - one creaky girder at a time. This building is, without exaggeration, directly outside my window, and I reap the benefits of its construction seven days a week, starting when the sun does, without exception. No doubt other neighbors are as vexed, but does this justify a low-key guerilla war? The easiest solution: move.

I did mention that life is heating up figuratively. In the sense that my workload is tilting closer towards the level of, say, "hell", I suppose it's a legitimate claim. Last weekend practically all of my writing students came back from their mid-term exam hiatus and bombarded me with essays to mark. I'm not insinuating that they voluntarily handed in such a heavy load.. it's simply the result of teaching 4 TOEFL writing classes (NB: don't try this at home), each with 6-13 students and two essays a head. That makes me the happiest bloke in the writing department one day each month (payday) and the sorriest chump for the other 30 days.

Also at Seogang Univ. (Korean language classes), this is our final week of class. It's been just under two and half months of an intense 9am-1pm, Mon to Fri, curriculum, where during this time I've no doubt quadrupled my vocabulary and overcome my weak spots: listening and speaking. At this point I'm confident enough to get past what I observed last summer as First Date Syndrome: having only enough lingual ability to impress one's date for one evening, where thereafter, conversing about the weather gets old real quick. Rather, after having completed level 2 at Seogang University, I can tell you not only the weather, but what my friend thinks about the weather too! ^^ Actually I saw the fruits of all this effort a couple weeks back when I hung out with one of my professors for an evening, covering quite a range of topics (in Korean) from family issues to human rights in China (that one didn't last long, but...). Also today in class we held a mock job fair with students from other classrooms, which was rather successful. Job interviews are nasty because one has to resort to the rarely-used impersonal, honorific form (there's actually a conjugation used only for news broadcasts, military subordinates, and... job interviews). Throughout the class I played a representative for GS25 (a 7-11 equivalent) and hired a French girl who offered to start work that day for a humble salary. Later on as we switched roles, I got the post as a foreign language teacher at Seogang! (considering the amount of paid vacation time that university instructors get here, this is something well worth considering if I'm to stick around any longer than 6 more months).

As disappointed as I am to see my time at Seogang come to an end, it'll be a necessary change, where in the future I'll have more time to pursue grad school plans, pay off the more bacchanalian moments of my Winter vacation in Thailand, and get back to poisoning my liver in the company of friends I've snubbed for the last few months. This is neither a shift towards over nor underachieving. Call it what it is: a horizontal thing.

Busan, Korea - May Day, 2006

Wha...what is this medium..a bl..blag? If you can believe it, the nomad is back on the web, three long months since my Kohphanghan, Thailand post. Let me catch you up on things since then: Bangkok, Koh Samet, Seoul, Sokcho (east coast), Seoul, Seoul, Seoul, Seoul...... ahhhhh. But at last, let's take the soju canteen back off the shelf, wipe those cobwebs off the backpack, we're going to Busan for May Day.

I had just finished teaching my last class on Sunday, finishing at 7:30, and was racing to get all those grades in the books before packing up and fleeing the scene. Jini and I reserved tickets for 9pm, so there was enough time to race home, switch gears (and shed the dorky suit jacket), and get to Seoul Station with enough time to pick up a pack of Uno cards and a mini-Jenga set (classified under: must-haves). The Busan-bound KTX train itself is an amazing development, modeled after the Japanese Shinkansen, the original bullet train begun in 1964. Racing southeast through major city after city, the television monitor above the aisles proudly informed us that we were flying at around 288km/hour (180mph), which, on the ground is pretty damn cool by any speed-demon's standards. Unfortunately it was too dark to see the Korean countryside fly by, but I had an alternate plan anyway - blink (sleep) and wake up in Busan, 3 hours, 400 miles later.

From Busan Station, it's another 25 minute taxi ride to Haeundae (해운대), the beachfront neighborhood. The view was riddled with shipyards, skyscraping piles of shipping containers, and unsurprisingly in Korea, construction. Part of me felt the usual jaded "Is this Seoul Jr.?", while another part of me was thrilled to finally come to the second largest city in Korea. But, I didn't come to appreciate it so much until the next day, when the sun came out.

The next morning, I couldn't believe I was still in Korea at all. In fact, I dare say that I didn't believe a Korean city could be clumped in the same sentence with the word "beautiful", but this moment proved me wrong. The city limits stretched right up to the shoreline, where there was a 2-3 kilometer stretch of beach from Dongbaek (a rock promontory) to Moon Hill (달맞이고개), and from the coastline was a panorama of ships, craggy sea peaks, and blue, blue mist. On the "Hill that meets the Moon", the mist seemed to leap right out of the ocean and cover the hill, giving it a mystical mini-planet-that-just-crashed-into-Earth visage. Not something I see on my daily commute across the Han River.

We wandered around, lounged in the sand, explored the Dongbaek peninsula, where the 2005 APEC summit was held last November (Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation). I didn't take much notice to the summit as it was happening last year, but it's not hard to put together why Bush, Hu Jintao (China), Tran Duc Luong (Viet Nam), Thaksin (Thailand), and Arroyo (Philippines), and others from Asia and South America were under the same roof - to advance the liberalisation of trade and promote the agenda of the WTO. I mentioned these particular leaders because they're all despised in either in their own countries for abuse of power and corruption (Bush, Thaksin, Arroyo), or despised from the outside for the same (the remaining "communist" lot). Naturally this debate never crosses threads when discussing liberating Middle Eastern folk from their assorted yokes. If I sound cynical, it's because I am. The building left standing after the summit was a museum full of awkward photos of Bush and Roh wearing hanboks, glitzy APEC 2005 souvenirs and memorabilia, and anything else to commemorate the multi-million dollar occasion. If I had a protest sign at the time, I'd bring with me a stolen petting zoo sign that reads "please do not feed the animals".

After our stroll around the tiny peninsula, we made our way back to the beach and plopped down in the sand for a round or three of Uno, yes, the same card game Sam and I used to play to no end on summer vacations. Playing with an Uno rookie is a real test of ethics and trust, however, as I found myself creating rules and limitations wherever necessary or convenient. "No, Wild Draw 4's can't be placed on top of yellow cards, and no, you can't choose blue with a wild card. I don't know why, it's just a rule." I don't mean to take a stab at Korean culture, but it is rather analogous to the ill-necessity of explanations in this hierarchy-dependent culture. Workers don't ask their bosses why they have to do something, they just grumble, nod, and do it because the boss says so. I encourage my students to break this habit with every opportunity. "Teacher, why am I doing this?" is met with no greater welcome.

Snapshots from Busan