Hey,
Week number 2 of my journal. So far, so good.
1. I made my first SG friend. Hi Swedgin! It only took me a year. Mission for next week - figure out how to post my cellphone pics. And make more friends. Eventually, you'll see that I'm slightly different in appearance from Filler Bunny. But only slightly different (I'm just one inch tall , and have big, stick-up ears.)
2. I worked 27 hours of overtime this past month. That's an extra $800. Nice.
3. At the end of every month, our students give us gifts, or take us out for dinner, or both. I've eaten more pizza and donuts the past couple of nights than I would in an entire year back home. Especially donuts - I never eat donuts. No more! I had some great samgyeopsal Wednesday night (kind of like bacon, but not salty - you cook it yourself at your table, and when a slice is done, you roll it up in a leaf with grilled onions, garlic, kimchi, bean paste, and mmmmmmm.) Another student of mine owns a restaurant. She invited the class over for dinner, and a few of the other English teachers showed up too (Letty and Nathan, then David arrived later.) Lots of fruit, grilled vegetables and bulgogi (marinated beef.) We ate for about 4 hours. Holy shit. I've never eaten for 4 hours.
4. New air conditioner this week. I need it today, as it is the first really hot day of the year in Daegu. The guys that installed it did a shitty job of cleaning up - they had to drill a hole through a concrete wall to hook the unit up to the outside cooler. The dust is pretty fine, so it hangs in the air for a long time - I've cleaned shit up every afternoon for the past three days, but the dust keeps accumulating every morning. If it fucks up my Mac, I'll be pissed.
5. Vacation time! We have 3 days off (Sunday through Tuesday.) I'm not doing anything today, but tomorrow, I'd like to check out some of the old places where I used to hang out last year. I've been working split shifts 630 - 1100 in the morning, 7-10 at night for the past couple months, so I haven't had a social life since I came back. Next month, I get a couple nights off every week. Very nice.
6. One of my favourite places was The Yellow Bike Room. It was owned by a jazzy Korean hepcat. He had been to the States years ago and his bar was a totally retro-60s jazz club. He also had a cool photo of Bruce Campbell mounted on the wall as you entered the bar. He was an artsy guy - he had painted a bike bright yellow and mounted it just above the entrance to the bar. No reason. He just liked putting a yellow bike above the entrance. He would invite all the English teachers from the school to his bar and close it for a private party every once in a while. He was a really cool guy, and so were his friends. When I got back to Daegu last month, it was one of the first places I checked out. It had closed down and turned into a grocery store. Shitty, all too shitty.
7. I became an English teacher so that I would have more time to write, and I've been writing quite a bit over the past week. I'm also researching a couple of potential articles that I would like to submit to a magazine back in Toronto called "Rue Morgue." The mag covers horror in culture and entertainment, and it often covers material that is only vaguely horror-ish. I'd like to write a short article on Miles Davis. If you've never listened to Miles' electric music, you really should. Much of it is very heavy and very dark, and it was played by some of the best musicians of the day. "Bitches Brew," "Live Evil," "Dark Magus," "Pangaea" are all good places to start. The music is often very bizarre and protean and unsettling, which is unusual for jazz. The editor of RM is a member of SG ("Zombie Queen," or "Zombie Girl" or "Zombie Something" - her less-zombie-ish name is Jovanka Vuckovich, and she's a hottie.) Small world. I'd like to get in touch with the magazine this week and see if it would be worthwhile for me to complete a Miles article for submission. I'll report the results next week.
8. That's all I can think of this afternoon. iTunes is playing the last few seconds of "Lullaby" by Tom Waits (it's a short song.) By the time I finish typing this sentence, "Chicago" by (it just started) Sufjan Stevens will be playing. Very nice. How did I survive 35 years without an iPod?
Week number 2 of my journal. So far, so good.
1. I made my first SG friend. Hi Swedgin! It only took me a year. Mission for next week - figure out how to post my cellphone pics. And make more friends. Eventually, you'll see that I'm slightly different in appearance from Filler Bunny. But only slightly different (I'm just one inch tall , and have big, stick-up ears.)
2. I worked 27 hours of overtime this past month. That's an extra $800. Nice.
3. At the end of every month, our students give us gifts, or take us out for dinner, or both. I've eaten more pizza and donuts the past couple of nights than I would in an entire year back home. Especially donuts - I never eat donuts. No more! I had some great samgyeopsal Wednesday night (kind of like bacon, but not salty - you cook it yourself at your table, and when a slice is done, you roll it up in a leaf with grilled onions, garlic, kimchi, bean paste, and mmmmmmm.) Another student of mine owns a restaurant. She invited the class over for dinner, and a few of the other English teachers showed up too (Letty and Nathan, then David arrived later.) Lots of fruit, grilled vegetables and bulgogi (marinated beef.) We ate for about 4 hours. Holy shit. I've never eaten for 4 hours.
4. New air conditioner this week. I need it today, as it is the first really hot day of the year in Daegu. The guys that installed it did a shitty job of cleaning up - they had to drill a hole through a concrete wall to hook the unit up to the outside cooler. The dust is pretty fine, so it hangs in the air for a long time - I've cleaned shit up every afternoon for the past three days, but the dust keeps accumulating every morning. If it fucks up my Mac, I'll be pissed.
5. Vacation time! We have 3 days off (Sunday through Tuesday.) I'm not doing anything today, but tomorrow, I'd like to check out some of the old places where I used to hang out last year. I've been working split shifts 630 - 1100 in the morning, 7-10 at night for the past couple months, so I haven't had a social life since I came back. Next month, I get a couple nights off every week. Very nice.
6. One of my favourite places was The Yellow Bike Room. It was owned by a jazzy Korean hepcat. He had been to the States years ago and his bar was a totally retro-60s jazz club. He also had a cool photo of Bruce Campbell mounted on the wall as you entered the bar. He was an artsy guy - he had painted a bike bright yellow and mounted it just above the entrance to the bar. No reason. He just liked putting a yellow bike above the entrance. He would invite all the English teachers from the school to his bar and close it for a private party every once in a while. He was a really cool guy, and so were his friends. When I got back to Daegu last month, it was one of the first places I checked out. It had closed down and turned into a grocery store. Shitty, all too shitty.
7. I became an English teacher so that I would have more time to write, and I've been writing quite a bit over the past week. I'm also researching a couple of potential articles that I would like to submit to a magazine back in Toronto called "Rue Morgue." The mag covers horror in culture and entertainment, and it often covers material that is only vaguely horror-ish. I'd like to write a short article on Miles Davis. If you've never listened to Miles' electric music, you really should. Much of it is very heavy and very dark, and it was played by some of the best musicians of the day. "Bitches Brew," "Live Evil," "Dark Magus," "Pangaea" are all good places to start. The music is often very bizarre and protean and unsettling, which is unusual for jazz. The editor of RM is a member of SG ("Zombie Queen," or "Zombie Girl" or "Zombie Something" - her less-zombie-ish name is Jovanka Vuckovich, and she's a hottie.) Small world. I'd like to get in touch with the magazine this week and see if it would be worthwhile for me to complete a Miles article for submission. I'll report the results next week.
8. That's all I can think of this afternoon. iTunes is playing the last few seconds of "Lullaby" by Tom Waits (it's a short song.) By the time I finish typing this sentence, "Chicago" by (it just started) Sufjan Stevens will be playing. Very nice. How did I survive 35 years without an iPod?