Adventures in Blogiversaries...

I just realized I've been Blogging now for 3 years (and 2 days). I was just browsing through some of my first posts and realized I'd forgotten how cute the kindergarden kids could be. I don't miss teaching at that school at all, but I do wonder how some of the little kids are doing.

It's amazing how interesting (or procrastinative) it can be reading through dull little day-to-day blips from years ago. So many things that would normally be forgotten have now been recorded for posterity, so I can re-read them, then forget about them again and again and again.

I hope you've enjoyed reading 'em over the years. It's certainly a mish-mash of "random randomness at random times" to quote the byline of Ben's blog. Thanks for your readership!

Adventures in Bathroom Accessories...

1. My toilet paper roll holder was made by a Korean company: Bum Han.
2. During a nights sleep, my sense of humour seems to reset itself to somewhere around its kindergarden level. After my cup of coffee, my sense of humour tries to catch up with my real age, but it doesn't always succeed.
3. Sometimes, it makes me laugh a little that the word "Bum" is permanently etched above my -ahem- hygenic tissue roll.
4. Sorry you had to read this.

Adventures in Books...

For my birthday, I was given some gift certificates for an English book bookstore here. This past weekend, I used them to pick up a couple of titles that looked interesting. I've just finished reading the first little one, and it was fantastic. It was short, and simple, but it was written from such a unique perspective that it kept me interested. Even though I finished it yesterday, I've picked it up a few times today and read a page here and a page there - mostly because I don't want the story to be over. I keep hoping I might have accidentally missed a few pages the first time through, and might discover them if I pounce on the book (catching it off-guard, of course) and spring it open to a random page. So far, no luck.

I'd like to be able to tell you what book it is, but since I just got a copy of it for my sister for Christmas, I can't. Even so, I hope you're all enjoying a good book today.

Every November, Canadian schoolchildren are encouraged, persuaded, inticed and/or forced to memorize Lt.Col. John McCrae's poem "In Flanders' Fields". (Parents of schoolage kids - is this still a requirement?) Every November, Canadian war vetrans march through the streets to the local cenotaph and lay wreaths in memory of their fallen friends. Every November, regardless of our personal opinions, convictions or reservations about war itself, we are encouraged to show honour, respect and gratitude to those individuals who have fought, suffered and died for our safety and freedom. This November, I hope you'll sign a petition calling on the Prime Minister to offer a State Funeral to the family of the last veteran of the First World War resident in Canada. Only three Canadian veterans of the First World War remain. They are 106 and 105 years of age. You can find the petition here: www.dominion.ca/statefuneral .

After years of learning it, we should all remember the end of McCrae's poem... "If ye break faith with us who die/We shall not sleep though poppies grow/in Flanders' Fields". Neither should we break faith with those who survived fighting in Flanders' Fields. It's the least we can do.

Adventures in Quality Quality Control ...

The university is conducting an internal audit/quality control exercise this month. We were told to expect a staff member to show up to each of our classes with a checklist. We're supposed to sign the list to verify that we are actually teaching each class on time, and for the required 50 minutes.

How this has actually played out across campus is rather interesting. Some teachers have had the auditors arrive to each and every class, and stand outside the classroom until it's finished. Other teachers have had auditors come to ONE class, and had the teacher sign for all 7-9 classes that they teach. For those of us in the Engineering Department (where 6 of my 7 freshman classes are), the lists are on a table in the teacher's lounge for us to sign at our convenience. Now that's top-notch quality control.

Adventures in Gunpowder Plots...

Remember, remember, the 5th of November
The gunpowder treason and plot
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

On November 5th, 1605, the plans of Guye Fawkes and his fellow conspirators to blow up the British parliament were thwarted. (Although the gunpowder was stored in barrels under parliament, by the looks of the gigantic pylon on his head, a great deal of gunpowder could have been stashed away beneath Fawkes' hat.) To this day, November 5th is marked by bonfires, fireworks and burning effigies of Guye "Guido" Fawkes. What an odd holiday. I'm not sure what perplexes me more: the holiday itself, or where on earth I learned that poem, and why do I still remember it!?

The day did improve (after the cat licked my 'do smooth.)

Adventures in being 30-something...

If the state of one's hair on the morn of one's birthday is any indication of the year to come, I'm in trouble.

Sorry for the scare folks. I'm off to brew a barrel of coffee; as you can see, I need it.

Adventures in Dysfunctional Appliances...

Last Thursday, my fridge made some really odd noises, then quit working. By noon on Monday, the repair person still hadn't come to fix it. Except for some of the meat and dairy items I was able to send to chill out with the neighbours (HA! Sorry about the dreadful pun.), everything else had to be chucked. About 2 hours after everything wound up in a trash bag, the repair guy came and fixed it. It seems that there's something on the underside of the fridge that sucks up things like dust and cat hair. Lots and lots of cat hair. Eventually, the fan thingy choked on cat hair and expired. The upside of the whole thing is that now the inside of my fridge and freezer are really clean. Tomorrow I'm going to go grocery shopping, and shave my cat.

Adventures in Daylight Saving Time...

Korea doesn't have Daylight Saving Time. My only way to get an extra hour of sleep tonight is to go to bed an hour early. Since I've spent about 8 or 9 hours on trains, busses and subways and me poor achin' feet over the past 2 days (I went to Seoul), I'm going to do just that. Goodnight.

Adventures in Arms Trade...

Hey folks, I'm swamped with a pile of midterm exams and papers to grade, but the following tidbit of information caught my eye. Since I'm a chronic procrastinator, I decided I should take a few minutes and share it with you.

Does anyone else find it odd that even though the current US government is so all-fired-up & gung-ho about fighting the war on terrorism, they were the ONLY country, out of 164 countries, to vote AGAINST a proposed UN international arms trade treaty that would help stop the export of arms to conflict zones and countries who are spending more money on arms than on development? I don't get it. One one hand, they're doing all they can to fight the war on terrorism. On the other hand, they're the only ones opposed to restricting the willy-nilly distribution of arms across the globe.

If you want to read the whole article, you can find it here. I confess I've got a bias, so feel free to read the article and tell me I'm off base. Go ahead.

Adventures in Autumn Descending like a bucket full of cold, wet leaves...

Wednesday, October 18th* - Wow, it's really warm and sunny. I can't believe how warm and sunny it is. Hey, what's that awful haze in the air? I'm starting to get a headache.

Thursday, October 19th - Why did I unpack Fall clothes? Why did I put away all my Summer clothes? I must have a T-shirt here somewhere, it's so warm. Hey, what's that awful haze in the air? Why do I have a nasty headache again? Ugh, I feel awful.

Friday, October 20th - It's so warm, oh yeah, it's so warm. Sandals again to day. It's too warm for socks. Really, what is that haze? I bet I'm going to get another headache this afternoon........yup, here's the headache. I'm going to bed. Drat, it's only 6pm. I don't care. I'm going to bed anyway.

Saturday, October 21st - It's midterm exam day, and I'm locked in a stale classroom for 6 hours with groups of stressed out and/or sick students. Oh well, at least it's warm and I'm wearin' sandals. Oooooh yeah, love the sandals. Hate the haze, love the sandals.

Sunday, October 22nd - Off to Daejeon for church. The sun is shinin', the haze is hazin', and the sandals are on. Hey, where did this rain come from? I wonder if it's raining in Daegu? I think I need to buy a new umbrella, since I left all 5 of my other ones at home. Hmmmm, I wonder if anyone needs a slightly-used umbrella for Christmas?

Monday, October 23rd - Wow it rained a lot last night. Oooooh - look!! The haze is gone!! The sun is shinin', the air is clear, and the sandals are.....drat. The sandals are going back in the cupboard, and the wooly socks are going on. Autumn has arrived in all her wet and chilly splendour. Huzzah.

*Some dates and events may have been changed to protect the forgetfulness of the author.

Sorry about a post concerning the weather. Since I spent most of last week with a nasty headache, and slept as much as possible, my only other options for my online ramble to amuse myself were:

(a) I bought Catticus a new brush, and she loves it.
(b) I bought Catticus a new collar, and she hates it.
(c) I bought myself a new toothbrush, and I'm ambivilent towards it.

Adventures in the Blogosphere ...

Long long ago, in a decade far, far away (1990's), a department store known as E-Mart opened in Korea to challenge the arrival of Wal-mart. Last spring, E-Mart declared department store victory as Wal-mart started preparing to retreat from Korea. Personally, I shop at E-Mart all the time. How often? Let's see...I went in the other day to pick up some lotus root, and realized my pants, shirt, jacket and undies were all from E-Mart. E-mart plays this sickly-sweet E-Mart jingle every hour on the hour, and there have been times, due to a lengthy shopping list, or a deeply rooted browsing-lust, that I've heard the "Happy, Happy, Happy E-Mart" song 3 times in an afternoon. If you open my kitchen drawer, you will see a plethora of yellow E-mart shopping bags. Infact, it is those bright yellow bags with a big, black, stylized "E" on them that prompted this posting.

"Why on earth would you write a blog about a plastic bag?" I can hear some of you asking. I can also hear some of you saying "Hooray!!! I can never get enough blogs about plastic bags!!" I worry about some of you.

To get to the point, I was checking out Rick Mercer's blog (www.rickmercer.blogspot.com) and he has recently posted another photo challenge. I was scrolling through the pictures of Joe Volpe like you've never seen him before, when I noticed that in one of the pictures he was holding an E-mart bag!! (With a baby in it, oddly enough, but an E-mart bag nonetheless.)

Okay, so it's not earth-shattering news, and it didn't make me think any lofty or profound thoughts. It made me think "Hey, that's an E-mart bag." It also make me think "Who the heck is Joe Volpe?" So before writing this post, I did some homework and found out he's the guy in the Liberal leadership race who will accept $5,400 from any infants, toddlers, pre-schoolers or other young'uns that feel compelled to donate to his campaign. Infact, my cat was on her way to the post office with a donation before I stopped her and reminded her that $5,400 could buy a whole lot of catnip.

Adventures in Knitting...

Every Wednesday night, a few of us ol' ladies gather for our weekly "Stich'n'B$%#ch". I'm currently working on an afghan...same one I was working on last year...and judging by the lack of progress, I must be doing more bitchin' than stitchin'. We all know I can't do 2 things at once.

A few weeks back, Glenys gave each of us a skein of beautiful wool that she had spun herself. Not having any needles of an appropriate size, I've put off starting a project with that wool. Today, I was in a stationary store on an un-related errand, and my eye caught a bag of knitting needles collecting dust on a shelf. I picked the two straightest ones, and added them to my other items. After paying for everything, I did some quick calculations, and discovered I had just paid a whopping $0.30 for a pair of knitting needles. I don't know what they usually go for, but I think that this pair was a bargain. Here's hoping they'll last the 8 years it will take me to finish the scarf.

In other news, nobody around here seems too concerned about North Korea's latest brouhaha. From what I can see from this persepective, CNN seems more concerned than anybody else.

Adventures in Iceland...

Iceland is such an incredible country. I loved the landscape the first time I saw it from an airplane window. I loved it even more after spending a few days touring around it. It's capital, Rekyavik, is absolutely the cleanest city I've ever been in. Everything is heated with geothermal water, and seems to run so efficiently. This morning, I noticed an article that reminded me of how much I like Iceland. Recently, all the streetlights in Rekyavik and surrounding towns were shut off for 1/2 an hour while an astronomer used a radio station to broadcast what citizens could see in the night sky. How cool is that? Police and public officials used the time to guage what might happen in the event of an unexpected blackout, while citizens used the time to appreciate the solar system. There were no crimes reported during the blackout. How awesome would it be for your city to turn off the streetlights for a little while, so people could look up and marvel at the stars. I think Rekyavik should make that an annual event.

Adventures in Not-So-Ordinary Days...

Today started out like any other Thursday, except I didn't eat breakfast. After my one-and-only class of the day finished at 11am, I was ready to head home for brunch, but I didn't. My friend Marietjie and I made our way to the Gumdo Hall instead. A local hospital is running a free physical check-up here on campus, and instead of paying $200 for a physical in Seoul, I figured I'd take advantage of the freebie here. As it turns out, my pee, hearing, eyesight, teeth and bloodpressure are all A-OK. I do need to lose a dozen kilograms, and I won't have the results of my blood test or chest X-ray for a while, but apparently I'm pretty healthy.

After lunch, I had a quick stop to make at the art building where I used to take pottery classes. One of the art students in the office there had asked Jen Jordan and I to sit for a few photographs last semester. She wanted to use the photos to practice painting portraits of non-asians. She told us that when she was finished the portraits, she would give each of us a pencil sketch of ourselves. I stopped by to pick up the pencil sketch, and discovered that there had either been a miscommunication, or the artist had changed her mind. I now have a fully framed oil painting of myself hanging on my wall! It even kind of looks like me.

After hanging the picture, I changed into a pair of Old Navy, just-below-the-waist, Large sweatpants ( just incase Santa is reading this), and an old T-shirt. Since then, my day has proceeded in it's usual Thursday afternoon fashion.

(10 minutes later...) yup. Still proceeding.

Adventures in Oddities...

I was just checking the news and chatting with Mom on-line before hitting the sack. In Yahoo!'s odd news section, I found something that I'm convinced is going to produce an awfully unpleasant dream in about 3 hours time...

Apparently, an Australian fan of the late Steve Irwin has decided to feed his newborn son's placenta to his pet goannas, "to bring his family closer to the giant lizards." If you want to read the whole article, you should be able to find it at http://ca.news.yahoo.com/odds
If you do want to read the whole article, you might also be interested in spending some time slapping yourself in the head with a spatula, or building a replica of Mount Rushmore with earwax. Either of the above activities would be more productive wastes of time. Gross. Really, really gross. G'night, and sweet placenta-free dreams.

Adventures in bucking the trend...

I recently read an article that indicated a correlation between how busy a person is, and how often they update their blogs. The article seemed to suggest that the busier a person is, the more infrequent their postings become. I don't think that's the case with me. I've done close to nothing that past little while - and I haven't posted, because there's not much to write about. I'm reluctant to sit down and tell you things like "I had corn." or "I bought milk." or "My cat is cute." Honestly, that's just nutty.

Also, for a good fourteen days, if I had attempted to write what was going on in my head, all you would have read would be "BANGbangBANGbangBANGbang." You see, a new dormitory is being built just outside my window. (Well, across the street from my window, but that's close enough.) For 2 weeks, the heavy drilling started at 7:00am at the latest, and continued until well past 5:00pm. The big BANG was the pounding of the drill itself. The little bang was the echo of the big BANG bouncing off the other dormitories. BANGbangBANGbangBANGbang. 9-10 hours a day, 7 days a week for two weeks. I couldn't listen to music in my apartment, because the percussion of the drill wasn't in sync with the percussion of my music. I couldn't read, watch TV, sleep or stretch without having BANGbangBANGbangBANGbang reverberating through my brain. Just as I was about to go truly mad, the drilling stopped and now I'm gently roused from my sleep every morning with the soft rumbling and beeping of big trucks. I hardly notice the trucks, they're like a soothing lullaby compared with incessant BANGbangBANGbangBANGbanging.

A brief disclaimer...

Just incase you're inclined to think I've turned into a simpleton based on my internal dialogue during my bike trip, I should mention that most of my mental resources were focused on (a) trying to stay upright, (b) trying not to get lost, (c) trying to encourage my legs to keep pedalling, (d) silently drinking in the beauty that God created on that little island.

So before you think I'm a complete dolt, remember that only a small part of my faculties were available for entertaining myself.

Thank-you.

Adventures in Internal Monologues...

Day One: Wow! What a beautiful coast line. You can see where the lava oozed into the sea and cooled in black, poeous blobs. The sky is so blue, and the ocean smells so...so...oceany! This is going to be an awesome trip. Hmm, my butt's getting a little sore.

Day Two: I smell bad. I hurt. My legs hurt, my arms hurt, my butt hurts. Whew ~ I smell REALLY bad. I wish the showers were open last night, or this morning at least. It's so hot, and I'm so tired. I think my legs could keep pedalling if my body could find a bit more energy to send their way. Ewww, I really do smell very bad. I'm glad I'm the slowest, so nobody has to pedal behind me.

Day Three: (Morning, I'm on my own. Jen and Annelie backtracked a kilometer to go to a sculpture park. I'd be lucky to make it around the island without spending time going backwards too.) I smell better, but I feel worse. I...just...can't...seem...to...find any energy. Stupid bike. Stupid rain. Stupid bike trip. Stupid Janice for coming on the Stupid bike trip. Stupid. Stupid. Stooooopid. Hmm, Stewwwwpid. I like stew. Stew. When I was in highschool I had a crush on a guy named Stu. I wonder what he's doing now. I bet he's not pushing a stupid bike up a stupid hill. That's it. I give up. I'm pushing the stupid bike all the way to Seogwipo (the next meeting point) then checking into a nice hotel with a pool and getting the bike shop to come fetch my bike. I'll meet Annelie and Jen at the airport on Thursday.

(5 hours later, after a nice rest, a nice lunch, a nice tour through the botanical gardens, and a nice cinnamon bun from Cinnabon) Amazing island. Perfect weather. I feel like I could pedal forever. Cruizin' down a hill. Cruizin', cruisin', cruisin'. Glad I'm wearing a helmet. Pushin' up a steep hill. Pushin', pushin', pushin'. Ooh, this is a really steep one. Having some trouble pushin'. Maybe I can get that taxi to take me to the top of the hill...hmmm... logistical problem of letting go of the bike to hail the cab...it's a REALLy steep hill. Darn, missed the moment. The taxi's gone and now I'm nearly to the top. Feelin' great, glad I didn't give up.

Day 4: Singin' "Queen" Lyrics: : I want to ride my bicycle / I want to ride my bike / I want to ride my bicycle ... Hmmm, those seem to be the only lyrics I know. I'll sing 'em again: I want to ride my bicycle / I want to ride my bike / I want to ride my bicycle ... etc. (As you can imagine, this made for a rather tedious, but upbeat day in my head.) I hope we stop for lunch soon.
(after lunch)
Sweet...we get to take a ferry to Udo island. Boats, boats, boats, I like boats.

Day 5: Spent the day on the beach on Udo island, so didn't have any internal biking monologues going on.

Day 6: Oh my goodness, I can't believe this is our last day! I'm glad I told Jen and Annelie I'd go ahead when we got off the ferry. If I can get a bit of a head start while they buy more water, I won't be so far behind by the end of the day. What a beautiful morning. Hmm, my phone battery is dead and I have the tire pump. I hope Jen and Annelie don't run into any trouble. I like to ride my bicycle, I like to ride my bike... It's been a while, Jen and Annelie should have caught up by now. I wonder where they are...I'll wait for them at the next bench or shady curb I find. (30 minutes later) Okay, they really, really should have caught up by now. Oh! There's Annelie and.... uh-oh, it's just Annelie. (Jen did have a flat tire. After I gave Annelie the pump, and she gave me her cell phone, we decided it would be best if I kept on going. They were sure to catch up soon.) I like to ride my bicycle, I like to ride my bike... It's getting really hot, I'm going to pull over and rest at the next shady spot. (45 minutes later) It's sooo hot. Where oh where is the next shady spot?!? Looks like I'll have to keep on going. (30 minutes later) Uh-oh, I'm nearly out of water, and it's really hot. A Shady spot, a shady spot...my kingdom for a shady spot!! (30 minutes later) Finally!! A covenience store with a table and umbrella outside. I'll get a yogurt and a banana and wait here for Jen and Annelie. (Look at my map) Oh! I'm back in Jeju City! There's not much farther to go to the bike shop. Sweet. I can't believe how fast those kilometers flew by. I should go biking more often. What a great trip.