Korea

Lau and I made it to Tongyeong. We've been here a week now. Of course I apologize for the lack of updates.

I've got internet now, but I'm not using it tonight. Tonight, I'm in downtown Tongyeong, a short walk from where I had my first non-spicy food in days: sushi. I'm in what the Koreans call a PC-봉 - pronounced PC /bong/ and translated internet cafe. Except I may be the only person here actually using the internet. All around me high school and maybe college age kids command vast armies in a game I played when I was 12. Starcraft, the best seller from 1996 or 97, has yet to fade in popularity here. Apparently there's three Korean cable channels devoted to broadcasting computer game tournaments and Starcraft players have a shot at celebrity: one champion has a fan base of 500,000 and another named earnings in 2005 of US$200,000 (according to the Wikipedia article on StarCraft).

Speaking of TV, now that I have a "real" job, I feel far less guilt when I crash for a day and just watch reruns. On Sunday I watched almost the entire second season of Prison Break, nearly commercial free. Now I understand the hoopla, and now I'm about ready to put my TV back in the box.

I would actually, but for two reasons: 1) I put the box on the trash pile across the street. The box disappeared; however, the trash remains for the succor of a growing population of flies. How homey. 2) CNN. Yep, CNN. The liberal rag that relies on sensationalism in lieu of accurate, thorough reporting. I can explain: CNN in the US is geared towards the popuation (of course it is -- that's how they profit). CNN for the rest of the world also targets its audience. It's simple business logic. And the most obvious deduction is that US Citizens have the IQ of your average turtle. CNN in the rest of the world employs reporters to cover the news. They expose. Oh, they're still liberal, but a pet rock could detect their bias, so we can forgive them for having one. We all do, anyway. I take that back: BBC might not have a bias. They're reassuringly balanced. They're like the hyper intellectual you danced with in high school who apologized every time they sort of stepped off beat. I split my news-time between the two triliterate stations and I'm feeling pretty well informed.

I meant to say something more about bugs. If you've ever seen a spider and shuddered, don't even consider crossing the ocean to this land. First of all, the mosquitoes are brutal, persistent and thirsty. I kill them willingly, apologizing to Gandhi and Buddha each time. I'm not sure they'd disapprove, All Men Are Brothers aside. I might even be improving my karma by killing those dark agents for malaria. Plus, there's enough of them to go around. The spiders clearly aren't doing their job. Speaking of #@%^*@# spiders. Have you ever taken a forked stick and gathered spider webs to catch dragonflies? Me either. Our spider webs aren't that strong. Our spiders aren't that big.

Yep. In Korea the spiders are so large and so evil, you can recycle their web to make a net strong enough to catch dragonflies. ... They're big. And black. And metallic. Neon green, red and yellow mark them. I'm pretty sure that means, "Poisonous, hah! We're not poisonous. We're chemical warfare."

And my vice principal picked one up like they were cuddly kittens. Yes, they're that large.

"He mentioned his vice principal!" you're thinking to yourself. That's what you're really interested in. My school. Ok, fine. I teach English at a school full of adorable, raucous monsters and gregarious, conniving angels. In every single class someone has asked me if I have a girlfriend. In one class they tried to marry me off to my co-teacher. I told her I was ineligible for a green card seeing as I ask too many questions and that persuaded her to peel her arms from around my neck. No I didn't really say that. Have more faith in me than that.

Mom, I'm engaged. Kidding. Relax.

I teach at two schools in the area. One's rural and fairly poor. The other is fairly urban and rich. Both are populated by the nicest people in the world. Come to think of it, this entire country is nice.

My days consist of four classes in the mornings, lunch and then a few "office hours" in which I flip coins and try to learn Korean. Or watch the dollar regain its former strength. The dollar is stronger now against the Korean Won than it's been in 5 and a half years. Did I tell you when I was in Poland, the Zloty was stronger against the dollar than it had been in years?

Money hates me.

Oh the cockroaches here are huge. And mosquitoes are devouring me as I type, even though I'm inside and surrounded by very distracted prey.

Before class my co-teacher gives me a run through. She leads the first class so I can see what we're aiming for. I lead the next three. She told me today that one of her worst behaved classes has calmed down and learned since I arrived. I'm glad to have such clear feedback that I'm making a positive impact. I've taken advice from Clinton's escapade in Newark and decided to be difficult to please, to instill discipline and respect first, and then to be nice later, once I have them whipped. Hah. Always the idealist.

Our apartments are nice but poorly constructed. Can't wait for the first earthquake. We're a three minute walk to the water, but we're on an inlet, so we're protected from the main bay by a mountain. That means pleasant weather and no tsunamis. I can walk to school in about three minutes. Lau's co-teacher gives her a ride everymorning. We're both pretty happy here, I think.

Time's up. I don't feel like spending another 80 cents to tell you more.

How Palin convinced me to vote for the Democrats

Until a few days ago I remained ambivalent towards the two presidential nominees and their selections for Vice President.

Sarah Palin changed that with her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.

She seemed like the sort of normal citizen I've met all over this country. She felt like she's one of us. (I acknowledge, of course, the argument that the figurehead of the US should possess more sense and poise than your average U.S. Citizen.)

Intrigued, I researched some of her more interesting claims to measure her veracity.

For example, she said Barack Obama has not "authored" a "single major law or reform -- not even in the state senate."

The word "major" is open to interpretation, but I found that Mr. Obama has his name on at least two bills -- one to reduce the number of weapons in the world and the other to increase the transparency of government spending and to ban gifts from lobbyists. In the US Senate he has sponsored 136 bills and cosponsored 659 pieces of legislation. If you want to know about his state senate experience, look at this summary at the New York Times.

Ms. Palin does make an interesting point: Mr. Obama cannot claim complete authorship of the two bills bearing his name. My research showed senators don't really "author" legislation: rather, the Senate writes bills collectively.

Here's the process: Senators introduce legislation. Committees then edit and amend it. Senators debate the bill on the floor and modify it further. A vote determines if the bill is rejected, returned to committee for amending or sent to the president for veto or approval. No one senator deserves credit for the passing of a bill.

Next: Ms. Palin said, "Our opponent is against producing [energy]." It didn't take very much digging to identify her exaggeration. It seems Mr. Obama intends to implement immense new renewable energy sources -- 10 percent of our demand by 2012. That's a lot of new energy. And clean energy.

Ms. Palin lauded "clean coal" as part of her energy plan. She meant technology that reduces Co2, sulfur dioxide, and mercury emissions from coal burning power plants.

However, my research showed that however you burn it, coal itself remains dirty. Look up "mountain-top removal" and you'll see what I mean. Further, it seems that mercury from coal burning will still make it into our water supply and our oceans, continuing to poison our food supply.

Clean coal -- what an oxymoron!

Last, I researched Ms. Palin's statement that she "championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress." I found an article in the September 2nd Seattle Times stating Ms. Palin had requested 197 million dollars in earmarks from the federal government, just this year. What makes that number remarkable is that on September 4th, the Los Angeles Times reported that next year Alaska's estimate budget surplus will total between $5billion and $9billion.

If you have that much money available, why bother asking taxpayers in other states to pay for your state's projects? And if you want other states' taxpayers to fund your initiatives, why say you're against earmarks?

Ms. Palin almost won my approval tonight. If I hadn't researched her claims she might have convinced me. But I won't vote for a candidate for Vice President who obscures facts, whether due to ignorance or willful deceit.

Now to investigate Senator Biden.

Positivity

You know what I like a lot right now? I like the Discovery Channel commercial -- the boom-de-yada one. I just can't get it out of my head.

What I like about it is it's nice to hear what someone likes for once. It's great to see some realistic positivity.

It's something I'm not all that good at. For whatever reason I tend to vocalize things I don't like a lot more than I praise things I do like. Sometimes I scare myself. I remind myself of Holden Caulfield quite a lot. There's this warning Mr. Antolini gives Holden, near the end of Catcher in the Rye, where Mr. Antolini says, "It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everyody who comes in looking as if he might have played football in college. Then again, you may pick up just enough education to hate people who say, 'It's a secret between he and I.' Or you may end up in some business office, throwing paper clips at the nearest stenographer. I just don't know. But do you know what I'm driving at, at all?"

I differ from Holden in that he tells Mr. Antolini that he only hates people for a short while and then he misses them. I'd have told Mr. Antolini that he's right and I'm terrified of turning thirty and only running into people I don't like, because there's no kind of people left that I do like.

One of my friends once called me "cynically optimistic" and I like that because it seems accurate -- I'm actually pretty idealistic about things, but then I have this cynical streak on the other side of the teeter totter, except that it's a portly little tyke and when he sits down my idealism falls off. The good thing is that the idealistic kid doesn't get flustered all that much. He just gets up and dusts himself off... I'm losing myself in this analogy.

The point is that even though I'm philosophically cynical -- by that I mean I really like to get to the root of things and pretty much ridicule anything that's veneer or superfluous or hyperbole -- even though I'm cynical in an optimistic manner, trusting the good in people and not locking my car doors, I hate myself when I disregard a person because they aren't as cynical as I am.

To tell the truth, I'm really bored by all sorts of scripted speech and I'll say obnoxious things just to say something original. Like Holden, I really can't stand what he calls "phonies" and I sort of say the exact opposite of small talk to avoid acting like a pretentious phony myself. And see there's the catch: when I disregard the phony, I'm being pretentious and phony, just at a higher level. I'm creating my own clique the phony can't join. It's like magnitudes of infinity. Even if somone's entirely exclusive, I can be more exclusive.

I really generally get along with me and like being around me, but the cynic in me sees no reason to exclude people or to waste energy deriding people.

I'd rather talk about what I like. And what I like a lot right now is this video. Watch it. You might like it too.