...

Letter From Home (A Rant).

I'm often unsure if I'm out of touch with what's really going on in the US because I've been overseas for sauch a long time, and part of me suspects that life back there has gone on in a very different direction than it has for me.

I was here in Asia during the attack on New York and Washington of September 11, 2001, and I've only been back a few times since, and relativeley briefly each time. Therefore, it has occurred to me that my impressions may be skewed from only being able to read and watch the news the news from international press sources.

I don't know if you are aware of the speech that the idiot sitting in our leaders seat (that should be occupied by anyone but him) gave at the re-inauguration but it gave me chills. I’m actually very afraid of the next 4 years. That’s fearful, I could not believe the words that came out of that crusaders mouth. He needs to be removed from office immediately, forcibly if necessary.

He has drug Americas name through the international mud and he’s not going to
stop. Iran is next. He wants to force our form of freedom on the rest of the world; he believes this will stop terrorism; actually he used the word tyranny. Quote “The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. “ “We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right. “ isn’t this what we were afraid of Russia or China doing to us? He is leading us into a world war.

Thankfully people are speaking up, and hopefully we can stop him before he goes even further. I’m baffled that we are not calling for his impeachment. I’m writing letters to my representatives although I’m concerned that that will wind up putting me in another database, I’m already in at least one, after the Trade Center “they” confiscated student records from the dive center I attended, too many databases and I won’t be able to fly. Anyway I could go on about this for too long. I’m going home now and numb myself with family and film.

In that last bit he alludes to some things. I've been telling my friends that it looks like you can be put on "watch lists" for things like giving a speech at an anti-Bush rally or signing the wrong petition. Turns out you can also get on such lists just for possessing certain skills, or seeking to learn them, and the guy who sent this to me has in the past enjoyed such gentlemanly pursuits as skydiving and scuba. Maybe some people might think that makes him a dangerous guy ...

The real scary part is that he's nervous about even writing a letter to his congressional officeholder. No evidence (yet) that addresses and names of people who write letters critical of the pResident will be given to the people whose job it is to watch you - but we don't know how things will be next year, or the year after.

I want to say that he's wrong to be nervous, but I can;t be sure enough to send that kind of advice. He works for a company that often does manufacturing worked jobbed out from major Defense Department contractors. He has a wife and two kids, a whispered word in someone's ear could possibly find him on the street and looking for work, and he ain't so you ng any more ...

...

Amusements


I get too serious, and sometimes I even make myself tired. This stuff is just for fun. I need to remind myself to try for that once in a while.

Item One : You know how Michael Moore made such a fuss over Geo Dubya spending sitting there reading "My Pet Goat" to a class of schoolkids while the planes were crashing into the WTC? Well, now we know the truth about what Bill and Hilary were doing at exactly the same moment ...




Item Two : Kittens and landmines do not play well together.




Disclaimer : No kittens were harmed in the production of this anonymous-sourced photo found (I forget where) on the worldwide web.

I think so, anyway. I do notice that the depth-of-field focus is very narrow, indicating that it was taken with a telephoto lens probably from far away. It would be safe to assume that photographers are not so stupid as kittens.

By the way, there is evidence that suggests that the kitten in this picture was actually a tool of the North Koreans, sent across the DMS infested with anthrax-laden fleas. Of course, we'll never know for sure.

Item Three : Speaking of kittens, and yes, they are damn cute, here's a game you can play that doesn't require a whole lot in the way of downloading : Night of the Zombie Kitties ...

See, our hero, a good undead cat has taken a wrong turn and is walking across a field where the evil undead felines ripen and scurry out of the ground - fortunately, he (or she) is armed with a mortar weapon that shoots dogs at them. When the flying dog makes contact with the zombified meoowmeow, they all blow up real good.

Item Four : This is from Seoul Classified, a magazine in English given away free at various sites in the city where foreigners are likely to hang for a bit. Their ads are free, and this was found on their website.

FREE Kamasutra! Learn the Ancient Indian Love Making Techniques . Very experienced instruction you'll enjoy for the rest of your life. Be the perfect lover you always wanted to be! Instruction will be in the English language by a handsome, energetic male Caucasian foreigner. One-on-one instruction preferred. Ladies only and no couples. Serious inquires only!!

The Bobster must note with approval that this listing is under the section "Free," as any real gentleman would never think of charging money for this kind of education.

...

I Like Tobacco

it's easy to quit smoking. I've done it hundreds of times."
(attributed to) Mark Twain.

Every time I make the trip from N America back over here I have to quit smoking for just about 24 hours - it's a 16-hour plane ride, and add the hour or two they make you wait in the airport before and after, check-in and customs, what not, plus whatever ride to and from the airport. My usual strategy is to stay awake at least 24 hours before the flight, ask for a whiskey and soda (or three) from the lovely ladies in the uniforms when they go by with the bar-carts and then try to sleep through most of the flight.

Ahh, though, I do very fondly remember the first time I did a visa run to Japan, that was back in '96 - stayed in Korea for a while and then went back to teach in California for a few years more before coming back here - and back then still that gray area between when the US had banned smoking on all flights to or from the US and a short time later when the rest of the world went along and did the same for all flights between international borders. Has anyone but myself who is reading this ever sat on an airplane and smoked a cigarette while drinking a cup of coffee and reading a newspaper?

(It's a short flight, less than 2 hours so I really didn't want one so much, but I remember thinking I could read the writing on the wall, and that doing such a simple thing as that might one day become the stuff of legend ...)

Fact is, I really like tobacco far too much to want to quit. I remember being at a party with some other foreigners over here a few years ago, and a guy leaned over and said. "You know, I was about to ask you to put that out, but then I noticed how intensely you seemed to be enjoying it, and I started to enjoy watching you almost as much - you know, vicariously - so I'd really prefer you continue right now." That guy still gets Christmas cards from me, by the way.

Living in a city like Seoul, with the air quality here, can't imagine how quitting cigarettes would possibly have any discernible effect. One theory I've been working on lately is that with the rate industries and cars have been tossing poisons into the air the last 8 or 20 decades, and the way things are likely to continue for a while, I sort of figure us nicotine fiends are gonna have a leg up on the rest of y'all ... call it an evolutionary strategy, if you will.

Funny thing, though. Last time I made that transpacific flight I was awake for all of it and I didn't mind - and I've worked summer and winter intensives sessions here of 10- and 11-hour shifts in the classroom, no sweat. Keep me busy, and I don't think about the cancer sticks ... truth is, honestly I've really never tried to quit so I couldn't say if it's difficult or not - I like it, so I guess I haven't found a good reason yet.

.

And to anticipate your objections, I guess if I were afraid of dying I wouldn't a chose a workplace two hours drive from the most heavily fortified border in the world for the past 50 years or so ...

I came here outta California - earthquake country, you know, and we grew up with the certain knowledge that the ground could fall out from under you at any minute. I was five years old during the Cuban Missile Criisis and I still remember all the adults standing around thinking maybe the bombers where already in the air and on their way overhead ... the Cold War was real thing, and I had bad dreams up until long past the Reagan administration that involved watching mushroom clouds bloom over the horizon and knowing no amount of running or driving would get me beyond the slow death of the fallout poison carried in the wind and heading my way.

And a pack of Marlboros over here is much cheaper here than back home, haha ...

I've tried cigars and they give a good buzz, but that might be because I'm so used to inhaling cigs I likely pull too much of the stronger stuff in ... what the hey, I smoke because I enjoy it, same as living in Korea, and when I stop likiing it I'll probably quit and do something else ...

Damn, now, where'd I put my lighter?

...

Sauna

The Korean word for it is actually mokyoktang but it's very common to see the English word "sauna" translated directly into Korean characters. Such places are to be found everywhere, though I used to pass them by with no notice during my first couple of years over here.

They've been around a while - some Koreans seem sure it is a tradition that goes back hundreds of years, but I suspect it's an inheritance from the years when Korea was a vassal holding of the Nippon Empire, roughly from 1895 until 1945. From my reading, which could be in error, it appears that Japan's tradition in this regard goes back much further, and I'd hazard some accuracy in that at least due to the greater amount of volcanic hot springs over there.

They are, of course, separated by gender. What I'll describe here is the basic, old-style bathhouse, and I'll leave it for another time to discuss the newer spas called jim jil bangs) that hand out smocks for a central coed communal area.

You'll take off your shoes at the door and place them in a small locker just that size, then give the key to the guy at the counter and he gives you another key that will allow you a locker for your clothes. In the wet area just beyond the glass doors there will be at least three or more bathing pools. The hottest is usually set at around 44 C., and will sometimes include a some kind of herbal mixture like green tea. The medium pool is in the area of 40-42 C., and often has jacuzzi jets. The cold pool is really cold sometimes around 19 C., and there are often showever nozzles near them to dump a waterfall on you at that temperature for those in the mood to try out the Tarzan lifestyle.

In the same area, usually two actual sauna, what we would call saunas, that is - hot rooms, one with steam and one without. The steam room is in the area of 52 C., and are often decorated on the inside with multi-colored quartz, agates and geodes sawed in half and polished, set into the walls in some design or other, occasionally depicting a scene from traditional agrarian Korean life. The dry sauna frequently has one wall piled with charcoal logs which serve to deplete any humidity that might have entered the room when you opened the door. The dry sauna is most often about 95 C., sometimes more.

There are also showers, of course, and it's good form to use one, or at least dump water over yourself before entering a pool. About half of the showers are stand-up affairs, the kind we are used to seeing at health clubs and gymnasiums back home, and the other half are faucets with movable nozzles on hoses - which is the kind most of us have in our homes here in Korea - with a stool where you can sit, shave and scrub away for as long as you can stand it. Koreans love to do this, big fans of defoliation it seems, and many say it helps to account for why they tend to look younger in general than westerners.

The central area near the lockers usually has a large screen TV, a vanity area with comb provided (kept in a sterilizing container) hair tonic and gels, and in most cases a barber as well. They will sell snacks and healthy drinks from a refrigerator, and I often like to sit and eat a few hardboiled eggs before getting dressed. It might be the first place I've seen Korean men playing paduk, the local version of the Japanese game we call go.

I've seen gangsters in the older mokyoktangs, especially the ones a bit removed from Seoul. In fact, it's one of the few places I might recognize and be certain that a Korean man in my presence is a member of the gaungpai. It's possible that not every soldier in the local version of organized crim have large ornately-designed tattoos of dragons and tigers covering the entirety of their backs but I'm told by my Korean friends (universally) that anyone who does possess is such is definitely part of the Mob.

(I believe it is yet another tradition brought here from Japan. The tattoo thing is something I had first heard of years ago with respect to the yakusa, and I have heard there is a certain museum in Yokohama where - macabre as it sounds - such men as this bequeath the artwork they carry about them to be tanned, preserved and then displayed in a gallery for the edification of future generations. No, I have ve not witnessed this, but suffice to say, I've heard stranger things about Japan and this seems mild in comparison to some of those.)

A charming thing to be observed in a Korean public bath : fathers and older brothers bathing and interacting with the very young children in their families in ways you seldom see much in other public venues. Korean men are often serious and/or aloof in public toward people who are close to them yet in a lesser position on the social ladder - girlfriends and wives, children and younger business associates have specific places in the Confucianist spheres of male responsibility and status - but in the sauna I've sometimes seen another side, a realm of tenderness that might be otherwise difficult to credit them with. On occasion, I've witnessed siomilar scenes of middle-aged men accompanying and bathing their elderly fathers. Needless to say, I can't imagine any similar custom or tradition back in my own part of the world

I'd been in Korea for more than two years before I found the courage to go into a mokyotang, and in retrospect I'm not sure if I was shy or just lazy, but when I did get around to it I recall being annoyed with myself over all the time I'd wasted from my life by allowing myself to remain as unaddicted as I now am. I generally go at least once and sometimes 3 or 4 time a month, and last few times visiting the people back in California I found I simply could not get clean enough in Mom's shower any more. And I've yet to find anything to beat the level of relazation that can be found this way.

Still, I know one or two expats over here who have been here twice the time and still haven't tried it even once. Only one of those guys has an excuse, a moderate sized tattoo on his right shoulderblade that generally scares Koreans when they get a glimpse of it, for the reasons mentioned above ... nearly without exception, every other such westerner seems absolutely sure, without a single doubt, that Korean men are going to line up to stare and point at their caucasian private parts. It has never happened to me, though I'll admit to a faint possibility that there is nothing unusual or noteworthy about The Bobster's package that Korean men would find worthy of their curiosity.

...


Teaching in S Korea

.

Part 1 of a series

A lot of private schools are poorly organized, but there are days when I wouldn't have it any other way.

A highly-structured workplace often means a whole lot of policies, usually made by some guy in an office far removed from my classroom, and I often suspect it's some mid-level manager who needs to justify his job by generating paper disguised as product. There is a lot of freedom within chaos - do a lot of policies and rules make it easier for me to help my students learn? Usually not.

We all have lofty notions about education when we enter the classroom, and with luck we can hang onto them for every moment of our teaching career, but you might be going too far to think an employer at a private English institute (hagwon) is engaging in a "scam" just because he'd like to make a profit as well.

My own feeling is that if I teach well, everybody wins - the students, my boss, and me.

One problem is that teachers who come into class with a board game under their arm every day might be more popular than one who has a lesson plan and a pop quiz, and sometimes that's a battle you have to fight with your boss, too. I've also had other bosses who locked the Scrabble game away in a cabinet because he didn't think it looked good when the moms come by and look in the window. (I like to let the kids use a dictionary to find words, then put the words they chose on a vocab test the following week ... dirty trick, I know.)

I think it's true that sometimes we have to struggle to give our students what they need ... but if we care about them, we'll expend the energy to make it happen.

I've never met anyone who didn't sign a contract and come to Korea of their own free will. I worked at a school once that had so many penalties in the contract for giving notice and leaving early that we'd have to work for free for an entire month - not surprisingly, we used words like "slavery" to describe how we felt ... and yet, we did sign the contract, and we had read it carefully before we signed. Can we really call it that if we voluntarily chose it? I don't sign such contracts anymore, of course, but even at the time I think we were being unfair to our own sense of character to complain after the fact about an agreement that we had made made without coercion. Nobody duped us, we read the agreement, signed it and got on the plane.

It's true that sometimes we are working in a school where we are "not expected to teach," but I think it's true in many workplaces that the quality of your commitment to the work remains your own. Does it mean you are actively discouraged from teaching? In the end, what happens in the classroom, good or ill, is largely under your control and remains your responsibility.

Finally, we need to be very careful when choosing where we work. Even a school that is well-run and consistent with its own ideals may use a philosophy or educational model contrary to your own temperament. Talk to teachers who are there now to get a feel for this, but yes, also ask them if the management keeps its word and pays people on time. Bear in mind they may not be entirely trustworthy but also consider that if they mislead you, they will have to work with you later - in this respect, they constitute a better source than someone who has finished and left the school.

...

...

From the notebooks, 2002, late spring. I was then living near the outermost fringes of the city of Gimpo, several hours from Seoul.

High-rise

I've spent so much time in big cities that now the calm and peaceful atmosphere of this area seems merely dull. I've been making some effort (surprisingly hard) to slow down the pace of my interior life to match the rhythms of the life that goes on around me in this place. Life in San Francisco, and then in the center of Seoul, for so long has made me feel a craving for constant sensory stimulation. The noise, the crowds, and the sense of hurry-hurry which at one time had preyed on my mind and spirit now seem to be an empty place in my life.

Odd to admit that I miss that stressfulness. The energy the kids shoot out in the classroom is a bit of an antidote to the quiet of the rest of the time here.

Our apartment has large windows that take up the floor-to-ceiling space of one entire wall of our spacious living room. We are at the top floor of this 20-story building, one or two flights higher than the apartment buildings surrounding us and located at the edge of the complex, so the view of the landscape is unobstructed, a bit like living in a stationary low-flying airplane.

The rice fields that surround this residential cluster lost their smattering of snow quite some time ago, and for the past month they have been irrigated and turned into paddies. Most of them are now tinged with green from the early shoots poking above the flat water.

I'm usually teaching at the time of day when the sun meets the horizon, but when I happen to be home on the weekend, and if the atmospheric conditions are right, the reflections of orange light streaming from the irregular geometry of the ponds produce an effect that is spectacular and hard to describe well.

...

...






New Uses for Old Car Doors in Korea


I can't think of anything to say about this, except that it's cleaner than most such outdoor toilets I've seen over here.

(Found the image stored on the hard drive of a computer in the public pc room. Wierd what people don't delete from these things.)



...

..

Inauguration Day

.

.

George W Bush will be taking the oath of office again, and no doubt a speech will follow. I'm not interested. His speeches have been poor so far, except as excuses for the rest of us to look (not even very closely) and see how many lies we can spot. Never did see the point of a parade and swearing in for the second term - what's up with that? You took the oath once, what's the point of doing it again?

I don't even want to talk about the Dubya today, but if you are interested in that there's a halfway interesting piece in the recent New Republic Online that says a thing or two about what we might expect.

Instead I'll use this space to talk about another inaugural speech and another time in history, and even though I am sort of old, it is not one of my times in history. I was just a little over a couple of years and some months past birth when John Kennedy gave his inaugural speech in January of 1961, yet I've heard this speech several times, usually in bits and pieces, and chances are so have you. It might be some of the most stirring rhetoric in existence, and it might even seem a bit dated from our present perspective - we've all become too jaded and cynical to have much patience for the high-flown idealism Kennedy employs.

Somehow, despite this, it still seems to work, and even having read it a few times in my life for one reason or another I still get an emotional reaction from certain parts - to refresh the memory of any who need it, this is the famous "A torch has been passed to a new generation" speech, the one that concludes with the oft-quoted epigram, original with Kennedy here, of "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

Thurston, Clarke, a scholar and author on the subject of JFK, recently wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times called "Ask How," in which he comments on those aspects of the the speech that lent its greatest power for those who heard it and were inspired by it.

It was Kennedy's life - and his close calls with death - that gave the speech its power and urgency. Those who study the speech would do well to pay less attention to the words and more attention to how he wrote the speech and to the relationship between its words and Kennedy's character and experience.

Behind this structure lay five pivotal moments in his life: his travels through Europe on the eve of World War II, his experiences in the Pacific in 1943, his visit to a devastated postwar Berlin in 1945, his tour through Asia as a young congressman in 1951, and his encounter with the abject poor during the 1960 West Virginia primary. All but one of these had occurred overseas, a reminder that he was not only the most widely traveled man ever to become president, but someone who had experienced many of the defining moments of his life outside his own country.

I'll publish the entire speech at the bottom of this entry, and recommend also that anyone who wishes to do so should visit the website American Rhetoric, where the audio of the speech can be downloaded from the Kennedy Library - although I find it works well enough on the page, there are many who say it's the delivery that makes the difference.

We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom, symbolizing an end as well as a beginning, signifying renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe -- the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans -- born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage -- and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

This much we pledge -- and more.

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do, for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.

To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom -- and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.

To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required -- not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is
right.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge: to convert our good words into good deeds, in a new alliance for progress, to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers. Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas.

And let every other power know that this hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.

To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support -- to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective, to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak, and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.

Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace -- before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.

We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed. But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course -- both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind's final war. So let us begin anew -- remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof.

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.

Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms, and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.

Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.

Let both sides unite to heed, in all corners of the earth, the command of Isaiah -- to "undo the heavy burdens . . . [and] let the oppressed go free."

And if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor -- not a new balance of power, but a new world of law -- where the strong are just, and the weak secure, and the peace preserved.

All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days; nor in the life of this Administration; nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.

In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.

Now the trumpet summons us again -- not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need -- not as a call to battle, though embattled we are -- but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.

Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility -- I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our
country and all who serve it. And the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

...

It's about a place where I lived for a while and some people I knew many years ago, while doing a little youthful vagabonding
.
.
Graveyard Shift

There are lone cemeteries,
tombs full of countless bones
the heart a threading tunnel,
a dark, dark tunnel

like a wreck we die to the very core,
as if drowning at the very heart
or collapsing inwards from
skin to soul.

... Pablo Neruda, "Death Alone"

New Orleans is a city where the dead look down upon the living from the tops of hills. The cemeteries are a tourist attraction, hundreds of years old and crowded with ornately carved marble and granite. The frequent flooding that took place in the years before the taming of the Mississippi led the early inhabitants to bury their loved ones on high ground. This is true of many cities, of course, but New Orleans is a city built on a swamp, and surrounded by more swamp, and the term "high ground" may refer to a place no more than ten or twelve feet above sea level.

It is an old city, and there are many cemeteries.

I have no relatives of my own buried in New Orleans and during my entire time there I met only one person who did. I was a short-timer, though I didn't know it, and most of the people I met there were as well. Though I'd come out of a suburbia full of lawns carefully as tended as the daily coiffure of a television news reporter, and had a little college, I was at that time as without any sense of purpose or place as can be imagined. Everything I owned was in a Navy surplus duffel bag, and besides the cash it carried, my wallet held on a single credit card for some dire emergency.

Through a weird internal algebra, I added these elements together and came up with a wonderful sense of freedom. No one knew me here, and I could be anything I chose to be. Anything at all could happen, and I felt surrounded by dark, exotic possibilities.



It had seemed the purest sort of luck when I landed a job desk clerking at the Townhouse Inn. The position included a free room, which solved one more problem, but the motel itself looked as though it hadn't been new since MacArthur's last quarrel with Truman. At night it didn't look half bad, though it could be argued that few things really look good in the harsh, white glare that daylight brings to this part of the country. We turned on colored lights at dusk to reflect greens, blues, and reds onto the walls and the second-story sun deck overhangs. At night you couldn't see the pitted gravel of the parking, or the concrete block buildings badly in need of paint, and the burned out husk of a diner next to the office was likewise invisible. The hallways were poorly lit passageways of cracked plaster and worn carpeting, every imperfection in the peeling wallpaper thrown into sharp relief by under the shaded ceiling lights.

I worked the graveyard shift, and since we were but one of many such little motels vying with each other along the interstate that led to the airport, there was little business to speak of at that time of night, just the occasional amorous couple or hooker with a customer. I usually spent these hours of the morning reading, writing letters and watching the lights of the cars going both ways on the highway outside the window. I felt myself on good terms with a certain lizard who lived inside the plexiglass sign out front, getting fat off the insects attracted to the light. Like so many things of that time and place, I could judge his size and shape only by the shadows he cast on the inside of the sign, and they would change from evening to evening depending on his position and the direction of the light.

I clocked out of the office one morning and found a morgue truck and a small crowd clustered around the pool. It had been a normal quiet night for me, but not even a hundred yards away some poor fool's lungs had filled with water and his blood has stopped its steady passage through his body. It was a white sexless thing they dragged from the water that morning, and we all tried to look, tried not to look. Strangely enough, I grew bored rather quickly. The thing had lost any drama before I had arrived.

I searched hard in myself and could not feel any responsibility for the corpse, and in fact no one ever tried to persuade me that I should. The man had been drunk, no business in the pool in that state and definitely not after posted closing hours. Even in a litigation-mad American court, the management could not be held to blame.

...

.

Excepted from parts of a letter sent back to the people who still remember me in the USA ...

.
.

A Bobster Xmas

.

.

Dear Tomster and Family,

.

.

I have to hang my head a bit. I got your email at Christmas, and I have been rather too preoccupied to send a reply. Doesn't mean you were absent from my thoughts, though, and it was fun to imagine you carving the turkey (did the vegans in the house allow you to have a turkey?) and stirring the mashed potatoes with your wife and kids. You probabaly recall that I have no great and special attachment to the frenzy that goes on around commemorating the birth of Our Lord - but I do miss the food, and more and more while over here, I do also miss the chance to get together with family members.

(It's not at all necessary to be bereft of American-style meals over here, though they are expensive and seldom done as well as I remember them done back home - ends up making one more nostalgic rather than less, in fact - and what you are able to find is usually more expensive and not done nearly so well as the local stuff. Turkey, though, is a bird that is nearly unknown in this country, and I do miss it this time of year.)

Though I did not reply immediately as I ought to have done to make sure you know I am well and alive, the following are some notes scibbled in a coffee shop while I was in-between job interviews and private lessons - no, I have still not settled on a permanent job yet. Work is all around to be had, but I am a bit picky because I know more about this place now that I've lived here a while.

My own Christmas Eve dinner was Korean food, but it was home-cooked, served on small tables while we sat on the floor, as is the custom here, with children and families present. They were friends of Kyehyun that she's held onto since university days, professionally-educated people and very apologetic about their lack of English skills - I felt equally apologetic, of course, that my Korean skills remain so inadequate after 5 years, but in truth, most of those years were intended to be the last of them, as I never did intend to stay so long over here ... now, of course, I'm not sure if I'll get tired enough to come back to the US.

The food was no doubt quite different from what was on your table. In Korean homes and most restaurants, the only individual container for food you'll have in front of you is a small bowl of rice, usually made of stainless steel, which comes with a small lid to sit loosely on top of it. Everything else is on platters, and shared communally - the only thing close to this back home is pizza, I think.

The food was not elaborate, and the amount prepared was nothing like the overkill bounty we do in America, but it was quite good, and I much prefer a comfortable meal well done rather than a complex and elegant affair. It's something in general I much prefer abnout Korean cousine, and Korean culture in general, especially compared to the ostentation of Japanese food, for instance.

One of the main meats was something called bbo ssam, a cut of pork that goes horizontal to the skin so that the muscle is interspersed with layers of fat. It's then boiled in a broth with some spices (sadly, a lot of Korean food involves boiling) then cut crosswise into pieces so that it resembles uncured bacon and then eaten after being folded inside of a fresh and tender leaf of the sort of cabbage which I think we call "Nappa," from which Koreans make kimchi.

Along with that we had raw oysters, and I'm proud to say that I've mastered the thin metal Korean chopsticks well enough that I can even maneuver slippery food like this into a dipping bowl of red pepper and soy sauce and then into my mouth. Next to the oysters was a plate of lightly grilled tofu with sauteed kimchi chopped very fine, which is a dish simple enough to do that I sometimes make it for myself at home. Healthy, too.

The last thing on the menu was possibly the best, bulgogi. This is thin slices of beef marinated in soy sauce, garlic, and other spices, and cooked with sliced onions on a skillet. The hostess - Kyehyun's friend from college, Chang-ah, apologized a little awkwardly that she'd used American beef, which is less expensive than Korean beef right now because folk here are afraid of Mad Cow disease. (Hey, it was just two cows, and they came from Canada anyway, right?.) Koreans think that their home-grown beef tastes better, and The Bobster is far too polite to tell them othewise - but Chang-ah was told very clearly nevertheless that I've had better bulgogi exactly once before, and that was in a very pricey restaurant.

Christmas Day was even more relaxed. It happens to be Kyehyun's birthday and the plan was to do anything she wanted. She claimed to want to have dinner with one of my sweetest pals, Luke, and his girlfriend Sohee. They're good people and we enjoy each other's company despite an age difference of a couple of decades. Back in November, the four of us did an overnight trip to Seokcho on the east coast, stayed at a swank resort spa at a massive discount due to a perk from Sohee's job at Samsung.

This evening met up in Hongdae, which is near one of the more presitigious univerisites, Hongik, and has become populated with arty nightclubs and trendy bars - restaurants, too, of course - and it has become one of the preferred areas for foreigners to come out to in the evening. It was on Kyehyun to choose our direction, and she chose a barbecue place, probably trying to please everyone. We settled on a meat called mok-sal, a cut from the neck portion of the pig, and Luke and I talked about our work while SoHee and Kyehyun talked about ... gee, what it is Korean women talk about, anyway? Probably us.

After dinner, nightclubbing. Luke had some friends performing in a drum concert and qw trudged up some hills and around some corners in the cold to find the place. We'd missed most of the first set, but I found it interesting nevertheless, a mixture of styles with a mix of performers, Korean and Western guys together - no sticks, of course, flat hands on drums too large to be called "bongos," but not so large as the huge Japanese drums called taiko that stand as tall as a doorway and need an athelete holding a huge mallet to bang on them.

I suppose it was actually what's being called a "trance event," a recent outgrowth of a musical form called "ambient music" pioneered by an artist named Brian Eno back in the early 80s, and back then it was almost exclusively an art for the recording studio, seldom for live performance. "Trance" seems to be supplanting the "rave" scene of a few years back, was heavily infested with designer drugs (Ecstacy and the like), so good riddance.

The drummers were accompanied by a dj, and nowadays of course, these are considered musicians as much as the guys who play instuments - they don't just choose music to play but also mix in sounds from a variety of sources, including spoken word recordings. I was probably the only one in the room old enough to identify the voice : Alan Watts, philospher, sometime mystic, and proponent of transcendental meditiation dating from back in the 60s and 70s. That was back in an historical epoch when FM radio did more than just play the same music as AM stations (but in streo) and also provided a venue for music and ideas not often heard or scene in the corporate marketplace - this is no longer, of course, but we still have the internet as an alternative ... for a while, anyway.

Upstairs from the drumming was another party, some kind of activity described as "Psychodrama," in the xeroxed explanations that were being handed out at the door. Didn't seem so confrontational as the word might imply, more like a party game to help people interact and become acquainted. We Westerners don't seem to need that so much, but even a lot of modern Koreans seem to have relatively strong taboos about starting conversations with people unless they have been introduced by a third party. For us, though, it tends to be one of the reasons we go out in the evening at all, the spark of uncertain serendipity of the unexpected stranger - and it might be especially true over here, because it's a little more likely that any two non-Asians who happen to pass on the street in Seoul might stop and make introductions, each being so far away in a strange land ...

Also upstairs was a guy sitting in the corner, youngish and Korean but dressed in baggy black pants and sporting sparse and exotically-long and wispy moustache and goatee, armed with ink and brushes and making designs on people's faces. Uncle Bobster indulged, requesting a dragon, left side of the face only, and I really ought to have gotten more assurances about how indelible it would be - but I was lucky, and most of it seemed to have come off on my pillow in the form of a fine dark powder. No great loss either way, as I've see WAAAY better dragons in my time ...

New Year's Eve was for drinking, in Itaewon (a part of town foereigner like me often hang out in, near the American base at Yongsan) in the usual places and with the usual people. One thing I learned that night is that a fairly large number of my friends and acquaintances are starting to look for a job as I have been for the past month or so. It's not uncommon to change schools after 12 months for one reason or another, and I'm taking longer than necessary - jobs are not hard to find, but the market is slow right now, and I've decided to be choosey anyway.

Hope the holidays were fun for all back home. Pass this letter around to anyone who is interested, and some version of it may show up on my website in a week or so also.

Love you all, and I miss you.

.

Tsunami
.

I'm aware that nobody's clicking on The Bobster's pitiful excuse for a web presence to read the grim statistics one more time, so I'm not going to bother posting the latest version of the body counts. If anyone still has people in their life who were anywhere near that part of the world in late December, here's a search engine that might help if you had friends in that part of Thailand.

Searching
For Missing/Dead/Injured People from Tsunami

We've all seen the pictures, so I'll resist the impulse to cadge from other sites to post here - we've seen the numbers also, numbers of the dead that at last look were startiing to rival the population of a city the size of San Francisco. It's becoming more and more clear that we'd have to go back 100 years or more to find a natural disaster that affected even close to the same number of people.

And, while the news sources are wager to proclaim the latest tally of dead bodies, it's probably not being pointed out quite enough that millions - that's millions, plural - have been "displaced," that is, stripped of all possessions and made homeless ... and of course a large majority of these people are among that faceless mass that we already had very little to keep their lives going already.

And perhaps what is nearly as sad is the way a few among those of us in countries far removed have latched onto the tragedy as as one more stick that we can use to beat on the head of this country or that one for not being generous enough. Anyone reading this who is even a little bit flush oughta be waving their checkbooks in this general direction :

UNICEF
American Red Cross
Americares
Network For Good
Oxfam
America

As it happens, I had a good buddy, sometime drinking companion, and former co-worker who went on vacation to Thailand just a few days before Christmas, and when the news of this came out I didn't think much about him (because disasters always happen to people I don't know, you see) and then a day or so post-tsunami, I get this email from him with the slugline reading only : "thailand help."

Well, obviously, I'm all like, "Whoa, dude," when I open it, imagining he's a refugee or injured or something - see, I had not thought to ask where exactly he was going in Thailand this time, Chaing Mai in the north or the fleshpots of Bangkok or to islands as usual, and which island ...

Happy ending, he'd gone to Koh Samui, on the eastern side of the Andaman Peninsula, of course, and he was only writing me because he'd gotten a little stupid and spent too much his first day, couldn't access his Korean accounts, so he needed me to wire him a couple hundred bucks so he'd be able to drink on New year's Eve ...

The other story is, I've been looking for another job and got a phone call last Monday about a resume I'd sent out. While talking to the guy, I accessed the notes on my computer and expressed some curiosity at the fact that the starting date posted was a week before this. Guy said they filled that position but another teacher at the same school had gone on vacation in Phuket and didn't come back, no phone call, nothing.
Spooky, because I suddenly wondered if I might be in danger of profiting from this disaster. (Still don't know if I want the job, really ...)

Happened again, but worse ... maybe.

Guy called me yesterday because he saw my resume online and asked me to meet him for an interview. Took me to the school, found out he didn't really work there, but was a nephew of the owner, and when I saw the place I sighed, Oh, I got out of a warm bed and put on a tie for a ... Kids College?

But here's the story, if it is to be believed. Six Canadian teachers, they all went to Thailand and didn't come back. I walked in with the nephew and another fellow he'd picked up along the way, and they tried to shove me in a classroom within 5 minutes - they've had no teachers since Jan 3, apparently. I said, sorry, hey, I don't go in the classroom without a contract, and I want to see the apartment, and maybe something that looks like a contract, and then we can talk to the grey men in Mokdong about a visa ... you know, all the stuff we smart people have figured out by now.

The impression I was getting was even stranger. The owner, a fine Christian man, had even considered going WITH the teachers to Thailand, make it an office vacation maybe. He decided not to, and get this, the fellow has naturally concluded that the Canadians didn't believe in God and that he (hagwon owner) had been saved by "God's Mercy."

That's when I picked up my bag to leave, oh, sorry I have two more interviews today ... obviously, god's mercy for him is god's wrath for someone else. I was angry, tell the truth - your God, sir, is a sick puppy. Tried hard to get the names of the teachers, but only came up with 3 first names out of the 6 by poking my nose through paperwork left around the teacher's room : Russell, Pamela and Stephanie. The school is near (actually 3000 won by the taxi) Chalsan Station on the No. 7 subway line.

Anyone know teachers of that (limited, sure) description in that general area?