At the end of my last post...about a month ago...I said I would post about what we in America can learn from Korea.
I'm not ready to post that yet. Mostly because there's a lot of information; it'll take awhile for me to synthesize my ideas.
Secondly it's because Avoyelles parish got a D- to F+ for two of it's biggest schools. I think America -especially Louisiana- needs more than a blog post.
How far down the road to hell does Edwin Edwards think we are? That guy's a Brouliette from Avoyelles. He tried to sleep with my mother that one time. His current wife dated one of my uncles, I think (though I think everyone in Avoyelles parish dated the uncle I'm thinking of). Edward, the guv.
I'd say the 1980s under Edwards was the closest that South Louisiana really came to a coherent voting bloc. The only other Cajun politician who could do that was Dudley LeBlanc, until Huey Long put an end to that (and it wasn't a right-wing vs. left-wing thing; they were both left, Huey just had that great quality of being an anglo protestant).
But, seriously, South Louisiana could unite under some kind of shared cultural identity and collectively improve itself. I mean, there'd have to be a better appreciation of history down there to become conscious of a cultural identity and for that to happen there'd have to be better educa- d'oh!
But enough about that. One of my favorite colleagues is the art teacher and musician Mr.M--
Mr. M-- is an excellent guitarist and a good singer. He also has Parkinson's. Now, this is tragic, but it makes for good times.
_Cut to scene and Mr. M and me in his car_
Mr. M: You (body twirls violently; we barely miss a taxi) cannot ask the priest for money because if you do (straightens self after ramping sidewalk) you will not get blessing.
_fade back to me typing_
Mr. M managed to get me to give English lessons to a Buddhist monk for two months for free. I never got paid for it. It is, first off illegal (so, if anyone from the education office is reading this, I never asked for money either) and b would detract from my blessings.
I'm not a Buddhists at all. I mean, the temple is nice and peaceful and because of that old woman who would slap my elbows when I wouldn't be in the right posture I now look like a good Buddhist; but the free bibimbop is delicious. I would become a Masonic Scientologist if it meant there was free bibimbop involved.
But mostly I ended up at the temple because I like Mr. M. He invited me to the temple one day. On another day He asked me to call him Samchun (uncle). That's a big deal.
After tea with the men in the temple Mr. M asked me if I would like to tutor the Master in English. I said sure.
The Buddhist priest seems like a nice, serene guy (would you expect anything else from a Buhhdist priest?). He's also an army chaplain so there's often guys in uniform walking around his temple complex. Makes it feel like Tibet.
However amiable this priest is he hardly speaks english. What's worse, it came to figure that he wanted me to teach him english because he had his master's exam in theology coming up and the questions were in english. So he gives me a copy of some lectures by Paul Tillich entitled 'Christianity and the Encounter of The World Religions' and expects me to explain this to him. It is difficult to pantomime ontology.
Needless to say we had some laughs but I had to get a third party to put an end to that malarky. I got the cafe owner across the street -she calls me little brother (should I have used quotations marks for 'little brother'; I am literally traumatized by a time I violated the mention-use distinction in college and now I just don't use quotation marks unless I absolutely have to)- to explain to Mr. M that I wasn't doing the priest any good; and I wasn't. I did get a couple of good books on Buddhism out of the deal and that's nice. I've also found an appreciation for Paul Tillich.
Mr. M will make several more appearances.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Thursday, November 10, 2011
National Exam Day and Education
A week ago I bowed to a pig's head with money in it.
Let me explain. November 10th is National Exam Day. This is the day my ladies in the senior class have been working their entire lives for. In this exam you have three core subjects: Math, Science, and English. I hope that I influence their score in English for the better. I'm not too sure if the foriegn teachers have an effect either way on the scores. Some truths are too scary too uncover, and I think I'll leave this one in the ground. I like my job.
Anyway, if you are a Korean student you want to make the highest possible grade. That way you get into a SKY (Seoul National University, Korean University, Yonsei University) school. The three top schools. You'll get the good job.
So behind my school is a mountain. I was told a week ago that everyone is going to the mountain to pray for our students and would I like to join them? Of course!
It's a steep treacherous mountain. I was expecting a little walk, but man, I am out of shape.
I get to the top of the mountain and there's most of the staff and teachers (most of them got there before me; good thing one of my teachers is diabetic otherwise I would have been one of the last to reach the summit). They clap for me because I made it.
There's a nice little stone monument at the top of the mountain. In front of the monument is a pig's head. The heads of the various departments take their turns bowing, putting money in the pig's mouth, and pouring a glass of makoli (rice wine) as a libation. then we take a box of prayers that the students had written and burn them. Of course, nobody believes there is really a mountain god (South Korea is about 1/3 Christian, 1/3 Buhhdist, and 1/3 unaffiliated); it's a tradition. Similar to how in Louisiana we often name our Krewes after Greek or Roman gods. Few people believe in the old gods, but it's still fun and meaningful to entreat them on festive occasions. Traditions are important.
It would be nice if the appraoch to education was changed a little bit so we could have fewer student suicides.
Looking at this in context, though, it's pretty inevitable that things would turn out like this. During the 1950s South Korea was one of world's poorest nations. It had come out of Japan's colonization, and as we know, colonial powers tend to gear the colonized economy not toward the benefit of the colonized but instead for the colonizer. It had just come out of WWII, which wasn't too nice to Korea, and to top it off one of the most devasting wars of the 21st century was raged across the entire peninsula.
Fast forward to today and South Korea has the world's 12th largest economy. The quality of life here is easily comparable to any western nation. A lot of this is because of their education system. But the thing is, you don't go from 40 to 12 in forty years without casualities.
So besides leading the developed world in suicide rates, South Korea also leads the developed world in alcoholism. Surprisingly (or made not given the alcoholism) South Korea also has a higher rate than the U.S. of aggravated assaults.
South Korea's traditional emphasis on education (from the Confucian tradition) and its survivalist mentality (from the Napalm-the-Communists-Until-the-Country-is-a-Desert tradition) have added to a sometimes stifling Confucian Corporatism.
One would hope that South Korea, having made it, would slim back a little on the rigor for the sake of its mental health.
And look, I'm not knocking South Korea for the sake of knocking South Korea. I don't have a lot of patience for expat complaining sessions. If you were to ask me if I would rather be poor in the ROK or in Louisiana I would choose the ROK. They have an outstandingly better education system here and universal healthcare. But perhaps it has gotten excessive.
Too lazy to continue, next post I'm gonna talk about what I think the U.S. education system could learn from South Korea. I'll also talk about how Confucianism is really interesting and complain about the fact that philosophy departments don't seem to teach it. Also, East Asians may be genetically more likely to be sad.
Let me explain. November 10th is National Exam Day. This is the day my ladies in the senior class have been working their entire lives for. In this exam you have three core subjects: Math, Science, and English. I hope that I influence their score in English for the better. I'm not too sure if the foriegn teachers have an effect either way on the scores. Some truths are too scary too uncover, and I think I'll leave this one in the ground. I like my job.
Anyway, if you are a Korean student you want to make the highest possible grade. That way you get into a SKY (Seoul National University, Korean University, Yonsei University) school. The three top schools. You'll get the good job.
So behind my school is a mountain. I was told a week ago that everyone is going to the mountain to pray for our students and would I like to join them? Of course!
It's a steep treacherous mountain. I was expecting a little walk, but man, I am out of shape.
I get to the top of the mountain and there's most of the staff and teachers (most of them got there before me; good thing one of my teachers is diabetic otherwise I would have been one of the last to reach the summit). They clap for me because I made it.
There's a nice little stone monument at the top of the mountain. In front of the monument is a pig's head. The heads of the various departments take their turns bowing, putting money in the pig's mouth, and pouring a glass of makoli (rice wine) as a libation. then we take a box of prayers that the students had written and burn them. Of course, nobody believes there is really a mountain god (South Korea is about 1/3 Christian, 1/3 Buhhdist, and 1/3 unaffiliated); it's a tradition. Similar to how in Louisiana we often name our Krewes after Greek or Roman gods. Few people believe in the old gods, but it's still fun and meaningful to entreat them on festive occasions. Traditions are important.
Without tradition life would be as shaky as a pansouri performance on a pagoda!
And besides, my girls have it tough. Really tough. Korea has the highest suicide rate of the first-world countries. Education and the drive to suceed is really something fierce.It would be nice if the appraoch to education was changed a little bit so we could have fewer student suicides.
Looking at this in context, though, it's pretty inevitable that things would turn out like this. During the 1950s South Korea was one of world's poorest nations. It had come out of Japan's colonization, and as we know, colonial powers tend to gear the colonized economy not toward the benefit of the colonized but instead for the colonizer. It had just come out of WWII, which wasn't too nice to Korea, and to top it off one of the most devasting wars of the 21st century was raged across the entire peninsula.
Fast forward to today and South Korea has the world's 12th largest economy. The quality of life here is easily comparable to any western nation. A lot of this is because of their education system. But the thing is, you don't go from 40 to 12 in forty years without casualities.
So besides leading the developed world in suicide rates, South Korea also leads the developed world in alcoholism. Surprisingly (or made not given the alcoholism) South Korea also has a higher rate than the U.S. of aggravated assaults.
South Korea's traditional emphasis on education (from the Confucian tradition) and its survivalist mentality (from the Napalm-the-Communists-Until-the-Country-is-a-Desert tradition) have added to a sometimes stifling Confucian Corporatism.
One would hope that South Korea, having made it, would slim back a little on the rigor for the sake of its mental health.
And look, I'm not knocking South Korea for the sake of knocking South Korea. I don't have a lot of patience for expat complaining sessions. If you were to ask me if I would rather be poor in the ROK or in Louisiana I would choose the ROK. They have an outstandingly better education system here and universal healthcare. But perhaps it has gotten excessive.
Too lazy to continue, next post I'm gonna talk about what I think the U.S. education system could learn from South Korea. I'll also talk about how Confucianism is really interesting and complain about the fact that philosophy departments don't seem to teach it. Also, East Asians may be genetically more likely to be sad.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
The Ghost of Dongborex-uh
Happy Hanguel Day!
Kyul is like my crack-cocaine.
my invevitable demise
I go through the big one in about two days. I've long since got past the hole in my stomach. It's the kidneys that I now worry about.
Moore's Paradox
In essence, the times where you know something is the case, but you don't believe it. Or, in this case, of intuiting something but knowing that it is not the case.
I'm pretty sure within a measure of probability and predictability in what constitiutes knowledge that ghosts do not exist. However, I was convinced there was a ghost in my apartment for maybe two months or so.
I didn't really think there was a ghost in my apartment. I just had this continual sense of foreboding upon entering my apartment that there was a ghost in my apartment.
And Asian ghosts are the worst! The Grudge, The Ring. Those things will just attack you for watching the wrong video tape and won't stop until you're dead. In Amityville Horror it was over as soon as they left the house. In The Grudge, if you walk into that house the ghost will hunt you down!
I make sure my students keep their hair well groomed and cut.
I want to make damn sure none of them are ghosts.
I told my department head about the ghost and she just laughed at me, and then she told my class about it. And they laughed at me.
So I realized I'd have to take matters into my own hands. There's a Catholic Church not far from where I am; I figured I'd buy some salt, get it blessed, and then circle the perimeter of the apartment complex sprinkling the salt on the ground as I walked. I let that solution sit in my mind for only a few seconds; after all, how would I explain to my landlord why I'm circling the apartment with salt?
Again, I figured at this point that I just felt -had an intuition- that there were ghosts about. I didn't actually believe -in an active sense of the word- that there were ghosts around. I just figured that sense my psychology is already hardwired to be superstitious -and since the problem here is of a superstitious nature- I'd do best to find a superstitious solution. Show me the man from Acadianna that doesn't in the back of their mind expect to get eaten by the loup garou, or to encounter a person possesed by spirits, and I'll show you a liar.
The next solution was brooms. In Louisiana I've heard some people put brooms across the threshold to stop witches. I figured if it stops witches it'll stop ghosts. I laid 'em out and felt the foreboding, but also felt a little more relieved I must admit. Then my landlord came by to check on the condition of the wallpaper (they were considering changing my wallpaper) and gave me a stare for the brooms laid out at the threshold of every door. That, as well as me tripping over brooms in the dark, made me abandon that idea.
Eventually I got used to the spooky feeling. And then winter ended, and there was no reason to leave my boiler plugged in. I unplugged it and -low and behold- no spooky feeling.
A few weeks later I read an article on infrasound.
Infrasound is low-frequency, barely-audible/ non audible vibration that, shown experimentally, leads subjects to think there is a supernatural presence within the vicinity.
Hence, from the best of what I can say, there are no ghosts here. Just a paranoid foreigner.
It was nice to go through a method for finding out if there are ghosts here. I like methods. Furthermore, I don't think the sceintific method excludes weird explanations. The reasonable person isn't some kind of Mr. Spock impersonator dismissing everything offhand as highly illogical. I don't want to be Spock; I want to be me. I don't think the reason to apply the scientific method to everyday problems (ghosts are everyday problems) is so we can become robots. The scientific method rocks because it rewards dilligence and honesty. I don't think that science, mathematics, and philosophy are awesome because of some kind of fetish for rationality, but rather because of a fetish for accountability. I think it is important to always be painfully aware of what you don't know - and also aware of all the silly quirks that might make your intuitions work one way over another.The point is an admittance that reality is more than the sum of one's personal intuitions or pet theories. Integrity shouldn't be about suppressing feelings and intuitions that may seem odd or irrational; rather, integrity should be about measuring your feelings and intuitions against the unforgiving yardstick that is reality.
In this case my intuitions did not measure up to reality. Fortunately for me (could you imagine the inconvienance of having to move because your apartment is haunted; and those Asian ghosts follow you, too) there are no ghosts at Dongborex Apartments.
Kyul is like my crack-cocaine.
my invevitable demise
I go through the big one in about two days. I've long since got past the hole in my stomach. It's the kidneys that I now worry about.
Moore's Paradox
In essence, the times where you know something is the case, but you don't believe it. Or, in this case, of intuiting something but knowing that it is not the case.
I'm pretty sure within a measure of probability and predictability in what constitiutes knowledge that ghosts do not exist. However, I was convinced there was a ghost in my apartment for maybe two months or so.
I didn't really think there was a ghost in my apartment. I just had this continual sense of foreboding upon entering my apartment that there was a ghost in my apartment.
And Asian ghosts are the worst! The Grudge, The Ring. Those things will just attack you for watching the wrong video tape and won't stop until you're dead. In Amityville Horror it was over as soon as they left the house. In The Grudge, if you walk into that house the ghost will hunt you down!
I make sure my students keep their hair well groomed and cut.
I want to make damn sure none of them are ghosts.
I told my department head about the ghost and she just laughed at me, and then she told my class about it. And they laughed at me.
So I realized I'd have to take matters into my own hands. There's a Catholic Church not far from where I am; I figured I'd buy some salt, get it blessed, and then circle the perimeter of the apartment complex sprinkling the salt on the ground as I walked. I let that solution sit in my mind for only a few seconds; after all, how would I explain to my landlord why I'm circling the apartment with salt?
Again, I figured at this point that I just felt -had an intuition- that there were ghosts about. I didn't actually believe -in an active sense of the word- that there were ghosts around. I just figured that sense my psychology is already hardwired to be superstitious -and since the problem here is of a superstitious nature- I'd do best to find a superstitious solution. Show me the man from Acadianna that doesn't in the back of their mind expect to get eaten by the loup garou, or to encounter a person possesed by spirits, and I'll show you a liar.
The next solution was brooms. In Louisiana I've heard some people put brooms across the threshold to stop witches. I figured if it stops witches it'll stop ghosts. I laid 'em out and felt the foreboding, but also felt a little more relieved I must admit. Then my landlord came by to check on the condition of the wallpaper (they were considering changing my wallpaper) and gave me a stare for the brooms laid out at the threshold of every door. That, as well as me tripping over brooms in the dark, made me abandon that idea.
Eventually I got used to the spooky feeling. And then winter ended, and there was no reason to leave my boiler plugged in. I unplugged it and -low and behold- no spooky feeling.
A few weeks later I read an article on infrasound.
Infrasound is low-frequency, barely-audible/ non audible vibration that, shown experimentally, leads subjects to think there is a supernatural presence within the vicinity.
Hence, from the best of what I can say, there are no ghosts here. Just a paranoid foreigner.
It was nice to go through a method for finding out if there are ghosts here. I like methods. Furthermore, I don't think the sceintific method excludes weird explanations. The reasonable person isn't some kind of Mr. Spock impersonator dismissing everything offhand as highly illogical. I don't want to be Spock; I want to be me. I don't think the reason to apply the scientific method to everyday problems (ghosts are everyday problems) is so we can become robots. The scientific method rocks because it rewards dilligence and honesty. I don't think that science, mathematics, and philosophy are awesome because of some kind of fetish for rationality, but rather because of a fetish for accountability. I think it is important to always be painfully aware of what you don't know - and also aware of all the silly quirks that might make your intuitions work one way over another.The point is an admittance that reality is more than the sum of one's personal intuitions or pet theories. Integrity shouldn't be about suppressing feelings and intuitions that may seem odd or irrational; rather, integrity should be about measuring your feelings and intuitions against the unforgiving yardstick that is reality.
In this case my intuitions did not measure up to reality. Fortunately for me (could you imagine the inconvienance of having to move because your apartment is haunted; and those Asian ghosts follow you, too) there are no ghosts at Dongborex Apartments.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Post II: The Case of The Missing Bike
I live in a section of Wonju called Usandong. Usandong is on the north side of Wonju (to get more perspective, I live in the southern inland tip of a province -Kangwon do- that borders North Korea. I'm in the northeast half of South Korea. The province I live in is literally split in half by the northern border). Usanddong has a fair amount of greenery for urban Korea, an abundance of machine shops and light industry, and is as of now kinda Wonju's ghetto. Up until either a year or two ago the bus terminal was in this bureau. Well, it moved to an area of town called Dong-ee-tech-shi and took a good amount of the business with it.
In the American mindset, poverty=higher rates of theft and burglary. This isn't quite the pattern over here, though. I suggest a good book that my girlfriend lent me, Confucius Live Next Door by journalist T.R. Reid. I could make this entire blog about the different patterns of crime between modern Confucian and modern Liberal nations, but I won't. I'll consider touching on those differences in another post or two. Point is, check out this book if you want a good intro for understanding the differences between East Asia and Western Europe/The Americas.
Anyway, I got a bike when I got here. No, that's not quite right. The teacher who lived in my apartment before me had a bike, was going to sell it to one of her friends and I instead bought that bike from said friend. A New Zealander in Yeoju.
It's a Pascal 300. I love triangles! Clearly a sign that this bike was meant for me.
But then one day I couldn't find it. Did I leave it in the stairwell? By the bakery? By that bar that has a mural with Ghandi, Jim Carrey, and Sinead O'Connor on the ceiling? My memory was hazy. I would stop and stare at bikes I'd find on the street. This made a few locals nervous, so I figured I'd just end my search.
After little deliberation, I gave into that Franco complaceny that we in Louisiana are so good at, and bought a bike from a friend.I was happy with my new bike. I figured someone stole the old one; my collegues thought that was possible given the youth of Usandong.
But then last week I decided to go down to the river by my apartment. I was passing a junkyard and -lo and behold- there it is, the Pascal 300. But we must be careful with such things. That it has a similar security lock (placed over the handle bars and not bolting it to anything) and description does not mean it is mine. My visual memory is very, very bad. So I decided to stake out the place. I'd pass by and give the bike a little smile. I'd like to think it remembered me, if I lived in some alternate world where bicycles have cognition. After three days of this, I decided to take the bike.
The bike is now back in my possession and I'm trying to sell it. I'm going to need the key for the lock, but I left that in America. Hopefully that'll arrive soon.
In all likelihood I probably forgot the bike somewhere and some civil servant put the bike outside the junk yard. Of course, given I don't have yet have the key to confirm that this is indeed my bike, it may well be that the only bike thief in Usandong is myself.
In the American mindset, poverty=higher rates of theft and burglary. This isn't quite the pattern over here, though. I suggest a good book that my girlfriend lent me, Confucius Live Next Door by journalist T.R. Reid. I could make this entire blog about the different patterns of crime between modern Confucian and modern Liberal nations, but I won't. I'll consider touching on those differences in another post or two. Point is, check out this book if you want a good intro for understanding the differences between East Asia and Western Europe/The Americas.
Anyway, I got a bike when I got here. No, that's not quite right. The teacher who lived in my apartment before me had a bike, was going to sell it to one of her friends and I instead bought that bike from said friend. A New Zealander in Yeoju.
It's a Pascal 300. I love triangles! Clearly a sign that this bike was meant for me.
But then one day I couldn't find it. Did I leave it in the stairwell? By the bakery? By that bar that has a mural with Ghandi, Jim Carrey, and Sinead O'Connor on the ceiling? My memory was hazy. I would stop and stare at bikes I'd find on the street. This made a few locals nervous, so I figured I'd just end my search.
After little deliberation, I gave into that Franco complaceny that we in Louisiana are so good at, and bought a bike from a friend.I was happy with my new bike. I figured someone stole the old one; my collegues thought that was possible given the youth of Usandong.
But then last week I decided to go down to the river by my apartment. I was passing a junkyard and -lo and behold- there it is, the Pascal 300. But we must be careful with such things. That it has a similar security lock (placed over the handle bars and not bolting it to anything) and description does not mean it is mine. My visual memory is very, very bad. So I decided to stake out the place. I'd pass by and give the bike a little smile. I'd like to think it remembered me, if I lived in some alternate world where bicycles have cognition. After three days of this, I decided to take the bike.
The bike is now back in my possession and I'm trying to sell it. I'm going to need the key for the lock, but I left that in America. Hopefully that'll arrive soon.
In all likelihood I probably forgot the bike somewhere and some civil servant put the bike outside the junk yard. Of course, given I don't have yet have the key to confirm that this is indeed my bike, it may well be that the only bike thief in Usandong is myself.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Post 1: The Little Things
It’s the little differences between Korea and America. The many little, small details that make being in Korea being Korea. Don’t get me wrong, every now and then I’ll ride my bike by the Buddhist temple near my house or walk up and down the flashing neons of downtown and think ‘oh wow, I’m in Asia’, but the thing that solidifies living in Korea are the tiny variations that I had always taken for granted.
When I visited my family over the summer that there are so many small differences between Korea and America that I could spend all of my time talking about it (so I didn’t lest I become too boring). When I told a couple of my friends here about my observation –that it’s the little things that solidify for me the fact that I currently live in East Asia- they asked me what those little things were. I was lost for words.
I think if I were to make a pie chart of what I’ve done with my life so far, at least 25.8% or so of that chart would be times when I look like an idiot.
I composed a list in my head. And here it is, the little things (in no particular order):
-Using scissors to cut meat and noodles (why didn’t we think of that?)
-The Yo-gi yo button (a little button at most restaurants that sits on your table that you press for service)
-Lack of Kleenex, abundance of toilet paper
-Lack of public trashcans (but the streets are still relatively clean)
-All the trucks here are small cabovers.
-Cigarettes have way less nicotine (though I’ve more or less quit smoking)
-Almost no fat people
-Almost no scrubby looking people
-the weed-whackers don’t have plastic strings as their blades, but rather large metal propellers. They could easily double as outboard motors.
-having to put used toilet paper in the trash can instead of flushing it
-fruit as a side dish for drinking beer
-generally having to order food at every place that serves beer
-heated floors
-there’s more, I just can’t think of them right now.
That’s what makes living here different, really. It would be one thing if this was just Louisiana with mountains and multi-colored pagodas, but it’s very much not. These small alterations mean there will always be a good chance of Korea surprising me. That’s part of the charm.
So there you go: my first post. Many will follow. Weekly is the plan.
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