This next part isn’t public knowledge at the school yet, but this blog is not read by my Korean co-workers, so it’s probasbly safe to post here: his sister, Young Sook, who is currently the manager and runs all of the class schedules, etc., is ready to move on, too. So, with her potentially leaving and my leaving, its almost a sure thing the school will transform into something other than a full English academy. Hiring both a manager and foreign teacher would be daunting. Not impossible, just difficult.

So, having gotten that part of things squared away, I feel better about it, especially know Young Sook’s plans. If she were leaving before I left my remaining time on the contract would be difficult. She’s a great friend, but new managers always like to shake things up.

Meanwhile, in my own head, things have taken a turn for the surreal. But first, a little history here.

My lovely wife, Myeong Hee, is the daughter of a fisherman. A poor fisherman, but one who was able to put his two sons through college and his daughter through cosmetology school. They lived in a little fishing village on the outskirts of PoHang.  Myeong Hee has always proclaimed she’s a country girl. Having been to her family’s home, there was never any doubt. But when she declared that because she is a country girl and she likes American country music I was a little skeptical. Korean country music bears little resemblance to American country music but when I bought her an MP3 player two years ago I loaded it up with all the country music I have in my collection. That wasn’t much, as most anyone who knows me knows that there two forms of music I least enjoy: one is country and the other is western.  I downloaded a few more than I thought she might enjoy. Her list of favorites include Kenny Rogers, Brooks and Dunn, Roger Miller, Toby Keith, Tammy Wynnette, Alan Jackson and Willie Nelson.  Go figure. So, over the months, she  listened to country music on her way to and from her hair shop.

Sometimes, we’d listen to country late at night while laying in bed. We’d hold each other and she’d ask me what the songs meant. Her English has gotten much better, but discerning lyrics at two-step speed is asking a bit much. She would sometimes have an idea of what the song was about and sometimes she just liked the beat and  melody. Of her favorites she didn’t fully understand I would explain the concepts of cowboys, pick-up trucks, horses and Texas, among other things, while doing my best to translate who left whom, who was crying for whom, who left in their pick-up and who went boot-scootin’ and who came runnin’ back to whom.

And here’s where the surreal part comes in. I’ve already mentioned I’m coming home next year. By then it’ll be four straight years in Korea with only a few short trips to the land of apple pie and mom. I’ve been missing not just my family and friends, but America. But then to be engrossed in discussing what I’ve come to realize is a music genre that is uniquely American has caused me to turn a corner in my mind. I actually enjoy listening to country music.  I’m not about to start wearing a Stetson, boots and a dinner plate for belt buckle, but I like country.  But the surreal part is not the music so much as the lyrics.  There’s not another form of music that so succinctly describes for me America, American places, American activities  and American values. When I hear some of the songs she plays I can get pretty nostalgic about coming home. In particular, the ones that mention places like Chatahoochie, (no, I’ve never been there) or vague references to American history like Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town, (never went to Vietnam) or even dancing like Boot Scootin’ Boogie (which I cannot do) I get the I-Wanna-Go’s and be a part of the country that raised me.

When it’s music I want, country still isn’t what I turn on. But it’s great for when I want to get all warm and fuzzy about America again.  It’s just fun to enjoy something with my wife, albeit we both enjoy it for sometimes different reasons.

It’s not because Koreans don’t watch movies. They watch plenty. It’s because there’s no money in renting movies when they can be downloaded for cheap or for free in less time than it takes to get in your car and drive to a video store.  Koreans have no compunction about pirating movies. In fact, many of the major studios choose to release at movies in Korean theaters at the same time or even slightly before they are released in America simply because they know they will be pirated and they’ll lose money. Better to get their money early at the theaters before they show up on the internet.

Downloading is big business here in Korea. Although movies and TV shows can be downloaded for free anywhere, because Koreans typically need subtitles to view Hollywood movies an entire cottage industry has arisen. A number of sites are set up whereby Koreans download a movie from the internet (usually one in which someone else in Italy, Spain, Russia or Greece has filmed the movie with a camcorder in the theater, although higher-quality DVD copies are also available) and adds Korean subtitles to it. This “set” is then sold on a website for the average Kim of Cho to download and watch either on a computer or burned to a DVD and to watch on the home big screen.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Legitimate corporations have gotten in on the deal. One such company, QOOK, has taken it to a whole new level. QOOK provides digital cable and Internet access to their customers, much like a Time Warner or Comcast. But they, too, offer first-run movies, sometimes while they’re still in the theater, for a fee. Without the hassle of downloading yourself or burning a DVD, they’ll pipe the movies they’ve pirated into your home. For a few bucks, they’ll take a movie they’ve gotten for free off the internet pirate sites like The Pirate Bay and repackaged it for video-on-demand to their customers. Slick, huh?

Now I won’t lie and say I’ve never downloaded a pirated movie or a song. I have.   But I’ve never taken what I downloaded and tried to turn it into a business model, wiping out scads of Mom-and-Pop video stores in the process and redirecting millions of dollars from studios and into my own coffers. There’s a diffference here, and while subtle, seems like the kind of thing movie studios and record labels in America should focus on rather than suing the individuals who post them.

It’s hot here in Korea. Way hot. It’s been 32-34 C. degrees most days. Which is only in the mere 90s in the F world, but it’s still hot. All you Dallas folks who will bitch and moan and say “that ain’t hot, it’s 300F here, THAT’S hot,” can kiss my booty.  It’s hotter there, sure, but it’s hot here. Period.  I hated Texas summers, anyway.

I’ll be happy when Autumn arrives here. It’s my favorite season, with bright blue skies, warm, not too hot days and cool nights and very little rain.  One or two more weeks of this and then we should be in the clear.

Not much else going on here, just working and coming home to turn on the A/C and relax on the sofa at night.

More later.

Since 2007 I’ve stored a few things in a Public Storage unit in Dallas while I’ve been here in Korea.  Not much, but just enough to be a burden to have someone stash it all for me at their house, in their garage or in a closet somewhere.  But as soon as I can get home and find a suitable home for my things, Public Storage will no longer be getting any of my money.

When I first arranged for the unit, they charged me a mere $10 per month.  Not much.  I paid for a year in advance and things were just ducky. Once that year was up, they raised the rate to $18 – a 12.5% raise for themselves. No big deal, I told myself. Two dollars won’t break me. Less than a year later, they’ve raised the rate again to $21, a further 16.5% and a total of 31% from the original price of $16. That’s quite a jump.  I was willing to pay that, but like Ginsu knives, there’s always more.

At some point in the past six months, they started charging late fees. Despite them having my email address, my physical address and even my Korean phone number they have neglected to inform me.  I’ve always paid electronically and always paid for multiple months, but somehow, they charge me a late fee. How much of a late for a $21 bill? $10. More than 47% of the actual rental fee.

So, I tried to get on their website and how many times they’ve charged me this and if it jives with my bank record. I was able to create an account and check, and find out that the invoice they finally emailed me isn’t even correct. Their online invoice lists other fees they neglected to inform me of. And when next month rolls around and those wouldn’t be paid, I have no doubt they’d happily charge me another $10 for being “late.”   But wait, that’s not all. There’s another Ginsu knife!

Having thought about it some, I went back to their website to check the history again and reconfirm some thoughts. No dice. The first time I logged it asked me for my account number to create an account. The 2nd time I want to go in, there’s no place for an account number, but simply a “username” for which I was not given an opportunity to create. I can’t go back in the same way, because to create an account again simply says that account already exists. But I have no way to get to it.  Nice programming, you frickin idiots.  Hoping they might have emailed a username after signing up, I checked my spam box – maybe it got caught there. Nope nothing but spams ads for penis enlargement or breast implants (apparently the spammers can’t quite decide if I’m a man with a small penis or a woman with small breasts)

So, now my only option is to call their “toll-free” 800 number which is anything but free for those living outside the US.  I have to spend money to get them to open up my account to see how they’re not correctly counting my money.

Nope, that doesn’t work either. To get phone service, one enter the phone number used to open the account. Since I knew I was leaving the country, that wasn’t an option. I don’t have that phone number now and haven’t had it for three years.  When I tried to call I got put on hold and then unceremoniously hung up on.

So, to recap: exhorbitant price hikes, outrageously high late fees which have been wrongly applied, hidden fees, an emailed invoice that doesn’t match their online account, an online account that is inaccessible once created and a customer service phone system that provides no service.

Public Storage: Kiss my Big Pink Ass!

Anyone want to volunteer some storage space for my stuff?

I haven’t been riding my bike as much as I’d like to partly because of the heat, but also because of my schedule. Last week I finished teaching at short course at the university and that kept me busy in the mornings. I finished that on Tuesday and on Wednesday I finished my vacation at my regular school. Essentially, no vacation for me this summer as I spent it doing the part time gig.  I didn’t get to ride the bike for almost two weeks because mornings are best for that. Once its dark its just too frickin dangerous to ride here in Korea.  Anyway, now that I have my mornings off again, it’s just too frickin hot, even at 9am to ride.

Meanwhile, back at the hogwan (that’s what private after-school English schools are called), the owner used the one week vacation we had to remodel the bathrooms. Apparently, sometime recently the government made new regulations regarding bathrooms. It was a single door for both boys and girls with separate stalls for each but with a  urinal outside the two stalls. I always hated that bathroom and would wait until it was empty of boys and girls and go in alone and lock the door while I peed.  I hated the thought of standing there at the urinal while some grade school girl or one of the teachers was in the room with me.  So now we have two rooms and I don’t need to worry about girls in the room while I pee. The first problem is that the light switch is outside the bathroom (almost all Korean bathrooms are this way) so when a girl finishes and leave the girls’ room she’ll turn off the lights for both. That happened three times while I was there last week.  The second problem is that while only boys would be in the room, the re modeller didn’t bother to put up a screening wall around the urinal and it’s directly in front of the door. So, if I’m standing at the urinal and a boy walks in, everyone in the main lobby will see me.  So, I still wait for it to be empty and I lock the door. I’m not overly embarassed about nudity or anything but around little elementary school girls and female teachers its jut not cool. It’s always something here.

A new thing I’ve started here is a shopping service.  With western foods like cheese and bacon nearly non-existent in most Korean grocery stores, it’s a challenge getting to Busan or Daegu where Costco is. Costco has a lot of those western foods and a great number of the foreigners here have no car.  Since I already have most of the English-speaking population reading my ulsanonline.com website, it seemed a no-brainer to build a shopping cart application for it and let people order food. Me and my partner in this venture, Lee, will makes trips to Busan to the Costco and bring back their orders. – with a 30% markup on items.  We’ve only been up for two weeks and it’s been a little slow, but its summer. A new crop of English teachers will arrive later this month for the beginning of the fall school term, so hopefully we’ll have a lot more orders.

Which brings me to my last point. This website.  I’m not stopping it. Although I (and a lot of other people) use facebook to keep up with each other, it has two flaws that for me don’t work. First, it’s somewhat limited in how much you want to write and be readily visible to “All.” Second, “all” is simply one’s friends. I like having this website be as wordy as I want and available to everyone, not just friends.  Having said that, though, I’ve realized that I don’t update it as often as I used to. I’m lucky to get one article a week.  But that’s just here. If you want to know more about what I’m up to, you can find my name all over the articles on ulsanonline.com and my newest website, which we hope to turn into a glossy magazine, ShillaNow.com. This last one will be a lot less daily news oriented and more travel/food. Check it out and see what you think.  It is still under construction but ready to have people read.

Ta ta for now.

MyeongHee and I had decided earlier in the week that’d go out on Sunday and have a picnic along one of the rivers. We started out early to beat the crowds, but apparently, everyone else had the same time at the same time. We left a little after 9am in search of a spot where we would wade in the cold water coming down the mountain but still find some shade out of the fierce August heat. Our usual spot about 30 minutes out of town was already full. SO was the next spot, and the next and the next. The roads were jammed with people, and sometimes, in typical Korean fashion, the roads were jammed with empty cars, the owners of which didn’t seem to care if they blocked or impeded traffic.

We ended up driving nearly two hours to find a spot that wasn’t overrun with people. But that’s not all bad. We ended up taking some roads we hadn’t travelled and found some interesting sights.

We took this twisting mountainous road which winds up the right side of this lake. While it’s not that far from home as the crow flies, its a long way since we had to drive around several mountains to get there.

This is pretty much what our little corner of Korea looks like once outside the city. There are a lot of mountains and not much else. There aren’t a lot of roads through them, and few, if any, homes tucked into and around them.  That’s always amazed me as I compare them with my memories of Colorado or New Mexico there are homes sprinkled throughout most places. For whatever reason, as crowded as the cities are, Koreans tend the leave the mountains to themselves. Sure, there are the very occasional mountain homes, and of course some Buddhist temples, but the majority of the buildings near the bases of the mountains, along the rivers.  In fact, one can find numerous “pensions” along most of the mountain rivers. Pensions are what we would call a “lodge” or “cabin” but are essentially the same – a rented building for a weekend getaway.

This was our “shady spot” we found. Not even a tree, but a weed that regrows every year and produces enormous leaves.  We picked this place at the base of the dam (visible behind MH)  in the previous two pictures. The water flowing from out of the damn was wonderously cool and refreshing. For our picnic, MyeongHee made samgyeopsal – pork with slices of garlic and red bean paste wrapped in lettuce leaves. Meanwhile, I relaxed in the shade and played with the two dogs while throngs of people played in the water away from us.

Next time, we want to go to “Ice Valley,”  another mountain valley with a cold running stream nearby. This one is famous for it’s summer (not winter) ice forming because of the strange thermodynamics of the rocks and wind.

Anyway, there’s an annual festival on the west coast of Korea – the Mud Festival!   The city is just a small thing tucked into a bay that has some serious mud flats. They decided a few years back to capitalize on their geology by making the festival around the mud – some of which is used in making makeup and skins creams.

A group of my friends here all decided to make it a group trip so 22 of us crowded into a small bus for a five hours trip to the west coast. We left at 6:45am and spent the ride drinking and telling off-color jokes.  It rained the whole way there and was still raining when we got to the beach. Not that rain was going to matter – we were planning on playing in the mud, so what’s a little rain? By the time we got settled in our resort, unpacked and headed out to the beach the rain was just a slight drizzle but the air was warm.

Although there were quite a few Koreans there, this is probably a 70% foreigner attended affair. Lots of young people – teachers, engineers and more than few military.  The event had lots of activities including colored mud body painting, mud slides, mud mosh-pits, mud slinging areas and mud slathering areas. We liked the slathering area as it was more of a love-fest, rubbing gooey sticky mud all over each other. It turned into a mud slinging area when the army boys got there and got rowdy.

I had my camera in a ziplock baggie to keep out the rain and the mud – it worked pretty well, but it was cumbersome and a couple of the pictures didn’t turn out well.   I thought about posting them here, but it’s just too easy to post to facebook. I hope this link to my facebook album works for those of you who don’t facebook.

My facebook MudFest photos

Our resort was really nice. It was about a 30 minute walk from the beach but that was fine – everything near the beach is a 24 hour party and those of us who aren’t into that were happy while the others could make a short trip to party ’til they puked. They did and they puked. A lot.  The resort was less than a  year old and still had that new building smell.  We had a hot tub that got some serious use, too.  Although my pictures of the hot tub are fuzzy (probably a good thing) there was a significant amount of nudity.

Across the parking lot, there was a pool for the whole place. Lots of little kids and families. When we got in to play on Sunday morning, the Koreans all moved to one end and left of us to our end. We did a couple of experiments and slowly eased our group off the center and into “their” side, each time crowding them further and further into the shallow end. Whether it was fear or loathing, we weren’t sure. But the Koreans in general could be herded into a rather small area by subtly expanding our little circle. Fun stuff – someone should write a paper on non-verbal communication about it someday.

We headed back around noon on Sunday and by then the rain had finished and Sunday was bright and sunny and humid. Just in time for a hot bus ride home.

It was a much needed getaway from Ulsan. This week, I started a short, two week course at Ulsan University. They have a group of students who are going to spend a semester in Canada so they’re prepping them for living in an English-speaking city with a 4-hour/day intensive speakign and writing class. I’m working 4 hours in the morning and then  another 7.5 in the afternoon/evening at my normal school. For two weeks, I’ll feel like I’m back in the real world again working long hours and having to wake up with an alarm clock. It’s been a few years since I used one – other than vacation buses or planes.   I’d actually like to turn this short time gig into a full time job – and I might have a good shot at it. The head of the English department at Ulsan Univ, a Korean man, studied in the US – at the University of North Texas – same as me. We traded some stories of bars and restaurants in Denton that we’d both been to.  He’s a nice guy and I’m hoping our shared past might help me get into the University. We’ll see.

Well, indeed it is. As of this writing, I’m 50.  No one ever believes that. And in Korea, where age determines whether people tack on the honorifics for older people or leave them off for younger, asking someone’s age is not uncommon.  Still, I try to take decent care of myself, exercise often and eat well. I’m in better shape than a majority of the 50 year olds that I know.

Of course, when I grow what little scruffy beard I can grow it comes in a little white. I don’t have as much collateral when it comes to guessing my age.

So, when close shaven for my birthday party, I also shave a few years off my looks and again look far younger than my 50 years of age.

I’m off for a night of drinking and possibly singing.  Happy Birthday to me!

A clean half a dozen of them, ghostly pale yellow parallel marks on the ugly green sofa in our apartment.  The first, when it arrived, was a mystery. The 2nd more so. The 3rd became a damn full-fledged investigation with no one owning up to it.  By the time the 4th and subsequent ones showed up I had begun to suspect a problem.

It’s a cultural thing. Specifically a Korean thing.

Despite the fact the MyeongHee’s son is 18 and in his senior year of high school, MyeongHee gets up early every morning to fix his breakfast, prepare his clothes and style his hair. If she’s late, he’ll open our door and rattle it ’til she wakes. Then he’ll sit on the sofa watching TV while she prepares his breakfast.

After he eats and gets his school uniform on she style his hair. He sits on the floor while she blows his hair dry and using the straight iron.  All this extreme mothering for a boy about to be in college and/or the army is strange to me. But that’s another story for another time.

The pale yellow marks are burns from when she puts down the iron to brush or spray his hair. Asian hair is thick and can be unruly so she’s gotta get both hands in there.  I fussed at her for burning the sofa. The apartment is free and is part of the contract for teaching here. A good chunk of the furniture is not ours, and is furnished by the school including the ugly green sofa. When one day we depart, we’ll have to make amends for this poor old thing and its burns.

MyeongHee is a wonderful wife and mother.  She never once bitched, talked-back or gave me grief about the fussing I did over the old ugly green sofa. It’s not that expensive and we’ll have little trouble repairing or replacing it. And I never considered how she was managing the daily styling sessions – that happens early in the morning while I’m still in the sack. But the pale yellow marks increased no more. The six already there stand as silent sentinels to a bygone era. I was happy.

This week I learned how she was managing to style with just two hands a brush, comb, blow drier and a hot straightening iron.

This birthday was for GaEun, MyeongHee’s younger brother’s baby.  He’s nearly 40 and he and wife tried for years to have one of their own. They gave up and adopted her last year.  She’s a sweet baby.

The event calls for transitional Korean clothes, a “hanbok” which both the mother and GaEun wore. They matched, actually.

Part of the ceremony is for the baby to pick one of several items on a tray. Tradition says that when the baby grows up her choice will determine her career, wealth, health, etc.  I haven’t been her long enough to see if  that holds true, but its a cute tradition to watch.  GaEun grabbed with both hands and picked up a golf ball and a toy stethoscope, meaning she’ll be a doctor and will play golf – which sounds like a reasonable match.

During the ceremony, DuHong, the father, got a little choked up on his speech. Just a short sentence or two about the joys of being a parent, and given their history of trying for over 12 years nearly the whole room full of folks leaked a little around the eyes.

The other tradition about 1st birthday’s is the food. They’re nearly always held at a buffet restaurant and the amount of food is staggering.  All good stuff. The one thing I passed on was the ultra fresh octopus – those little guys were still wriggling on the platter. I saw a couple of people take a few wrigglers and pile them on their plate to be eaten still squirming.

Take a gander at the video: