The Museum of Tanaitapor

His shop is like a cluttered information center devoted to a single life—his own. Mr. Kasol Tanaitapor of Bangkok, Thailand has lived a full life, and he has the goods to prove it.

“Here,” he says, taking me by the hand to a sepia-toned framed photograph, “Here is me with King. Thailand King.” There is a neatly but modestly dressed man standing opposite what is obviously a much younger version of Tanaitapor. The King’s posture has military precision and regal confidence. The young Mr. Tanaitapor seems awed. He might be thirty years old in this picture.

He goes on, “Once a year, I meet King”. To Thais, who idolize their legendary monarch, this is like having an annual appointment with God.

Kasol Tanaitapor is not the kind of person you meet in the states. In fact, he’s not the kind of person you meet anywhere. He’s unusual even by Thailand’s very high standards. But no country in the world is so well suited for a man of his personality and interests. He’s a fish in water—or a Venus fly trap at a garbage dump. Here’s what he does: He sits in his shop facing the street and waits for an opening with a foreigner to present itself. In my case, it was offering to help me make an overseas call. He saw me struggling with the pay phone and told me I could make an international call from his phone, which I gratefully said I would like to do. Trap sprung!

Once you enter the shop, you discover that it is not a shop at all—it is a museum, and the subject matter is the same as the tour guide: Kasol Tanaitapor. The 25’ by 6’ museum has 3 loosely organized “exhibits”. Up front we have “Family history”, in the back we’ve got “All the places I or my family have been” and smack in the middle, in the position of most importance is “And this is where you come in”.

In that order then:

Family History. The first 8 or 10 feet of the shop feature an astonishing array of photographs displaying 5 generations of Tanaitapors. In addition to pictures with the King, there are family photos from 55 years ago, photos of parents, cousins, children, siblings (Kasol is one of 5 children), and neighbors. His grandparents, who lived to be 100, look down impassively over a wall crammed full of their very successful progeny. They will have a grandchild who will fraternize with the monarch, and he will have grandchildren of his own, whose education and professions will take them all across the globe. They are the roots of a tree whose branches will encircle the earth.

The centerpiece of this collection is undoubtedly the enormous panoramic photo of his grandfather’s funeral. Everyone attending is posed for the shot. They are standing 7 rows deep, and the rows stretch on and on, endlessly. There must be a hundred people in each row. When this man died, a village lost its elder. They’re like an ocean. It’s an unbelievable tribute.

We move on to the back of the shop.

In comparison to the august display at the front, our next exhibit looks very humble. We go to the back where we are awaited by… a refrigerator. The first rule of memorabilia is, if you’re going to have a lot of it, put some on a refrigerator. And the first rule of refrigerator aesthetics is, clutter looks good on a vertical surface. With these two things in mind, Kasol is really in luck, because his fridge is absolutely covered in shit.

It’s mostly magnets, but the magnets adhere strictly to a theme. Places Big K has gone. By this time, I’ve been joined by my friend Brent, who’s come to investigate why this call is taking me so long, and K asks us both to look through his huge magnet collection and point out all the places that we’ve been. I see Disneyworld and say I’m from Florida. Brent sees Toronto, his hometown, and several European countries he has visited. We ask K how many he has been to.

“All! All!” he says proudly.

It’s a huge collection. There must be 50 countries represented here, as well as many individual cities. It’s a life time of traveling. Here I am feeling like a traveler in Thailand—my 4th country, and this guy’s got a whole door full of destinations I’ve never seen. Show off!

There are also a few pictures. Kasol tells us how many times he has been abroad (“Ten times! Ten!”) and points to a picture of himself with two young adults. They are his grown sons. They don’t live in Thailand. They are doctors. The three of them are hiking together on a mountain in Central Europe. Boss.

Now it’s almost time to bring this tour to its conclusion. One thing you can be sure of on any tour, though; you will be exiting through the gift shop. The last exhibit in the museum of Mr. K Tanaitapor is called “And this is where you come in”. You see, if you thought this tour was just a man who is very proud and happy about his life, and that his offer to allow me to use his phone was simply out of kindness, oh ho, my friend, you have another think coming. To you, this may have been fun and games. To Mr. K Tanaitapor, this is business. The transaction, as Mr. Tanaitapor sees it, goes like this.

I showed you my life.

You owe me a shirt.

Right in the middle of the shop, across from the phone, there is a desk and a chair, and both are covered in packages. He begins going through them to show his credentials. This one is from Texas. This one is from Switzerland. Here’s one from New Zealand that came with a letter enclosed. He shows me the letter. Some nice Kiwi thanks Mr. Tanaitapor for being such a swell guy and says he hopes the shirt will fit. I assume similar letters were enclosed in the other packages.

I’m being instructed—we’re being instructed, because Brent is a part of this too, now—that when we get home, we should find a shirt in his size, and send it to him. He tells again. He shows us a shirt he was sent from Texas. He makes the point one more time. Send me a shirt. Go home and send me a shirt from your home. I’m going to let you use the phone in just a minute, but first, you need to understand that I want you to send me a shirt.

And there it is. Before I know what the hell is going on, there is a pen and paper in my hand and I am taking down a name and address—so that after I make my phone call, enjoy my trip, and go home, I can send Mr. Kasol Tanaitapor a shirt. Well, hey, what the hell. Every museum has a suggested donation.

Goodnight all. Much love.

Randy

Free Falling

When I was 13 years old, I had a terrifying experience on an amusement park ride. While on a class trip to Sea World, I had a moment where I was certain I was going to die. I think it remains the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me.

Here’s what happened:

It was on our year end class trip. Everyone was feeling pretty good because summer was about to begin. The weather was hot and sunny, and couldn’t have been better for a day at Sea World. And hey, get this, some skanky girl on the other bus flashed her boobs out the window. Boo-laka-shah!.

But that’s not the story here.

The story happened on the ride “Journey to Atlantis”. It’s a water ride with a big drop. You get in the car and pull the bar down across your lap. You go through a few minutes of themed “story” sections, similar to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, then you get to a big drop. It’s probably about 60 or 70 feet, and it ends in a pool of water, like Splash Mountain. Your basic water roller coaster type drop.
About halfway through the ride I realized I hadn’t pulled my lap bar down. I thought it would do it automatically.

So here I am, and let me tell you, I don’t remember one damned thing about the story sections of the ride, because all I am thinking about is how the hell I am going to bail on this ride. I’m completely unsecured in a car that’s going to hit about 40 mph while falling more than 60 feet, and if the drop starts in darkness, I won’t even know when to prepare myself for it. I thought about abandoning the car but there really isn’t any way to do that. The ride is on a sort of flowing river, and the themed scenery is raised up high so that if you to jump in the water you wouldn’t be able to get out. There’d be nowhere to go since all the scenery stuff is too high up for a person to get a hand on anything. And it’s not like I could just swim back to the start or something. The current would have taken me to the drop anyway.

This whole time I didn’t say one word about my predicament to my friends. The cars are two-seaters and there were five of us. I was alone in the third car. I could see them (and that their lap bars were secured right over their thighs) but they couldn’t see me unless they turned around. They had absolutely no idea that while they were having a good time, I was growing increasingly frantic worrying about what would happen at the drop.

I came up with nothing.

Finally, the drop came into view and I realized what I had to do. I had to stand up so that I could get a good grip on the lap bar, push my feet down as hard as I could, and just hold on to keep from flying out of the car. So that’s what I did. I white-knuckled my way to the bottom, crying out in absolute terror.

I decided not to buy the picture of us on the ride.

Looking back on it, it’s really strange that I never said anything. Even after the ride, I didn’t mention it to my friends. I was weak-kneed and bleary eyed but I stayed quiet about it. I was afraid I’d sound like a pussy. In retrospect, that is completely insane, but it’s exactly the kind of decision I’d make back then. I was such a nervous sort of person. The fear of being on the ride was over, but I still had to fear of people finding out that I had been scared. Bizarre.



Anyway, after that I was kind of soured on rides with big drops. The next year our class trip was to Islands of Adventure, and while I had fun riding The Hulk roller coaster, which uses a fast accelerating boost start rather than a big drop, I couldn’t bring myself to go on the Deuling Dragons, which starts with a huge drop. Later that day I went on another water ride similar to Journey to Atlantis, something with a Jurassic Park theme, which also ended with a drop just like the one on Journey to Atlantis. I felt nothing but fear on that drop. The loops and curves of The Hulk were great, but rides that take you down, down, down were just out of the question.

Now, here’s what happened yesterday.

The most popular water theme park in Korea is Ocean World, part of a larger complex called Vivaldi Park. During summer days it is swamped with tens of thousands of people packing every corner as they try to beat the heat of Korea’s notorious Junes, Julys, and Augusts. Our party added six more to the endless crowd.

As we entered the park, the first thing we all noticed is, a lot of the lines were incredibly fucking long. I mean, like, whoa. Some of these lines were the stuff of legend, wrapping around the ride itself and out onto the walking paths. We jokingly started to call the place “Line World”. “This line is famous—it’s the longest line in the world!!” Oh, we’re such jokers.

Anyway, if you’re going to wait in a long line, it might as well be for something awesome, so we found ourselves heading to the far side of the park where its two most famous attractions awaited. Since early spring Ocean World has been running ads EVERYWHERE featuring two beautiful women, one in red clothes, one in blue, who represent one of two rides spectacular rides that are right next to each other. The red ride puts you and another rider on a little inflatable tube and sends you down a very long twisting, coiling slide. Its biggest asset is its length. The Big Red Slide is a journey.

The other ride, the blue one, is called Super Boomerang, and its biggest asset is an absolutely insane drop. We chose Blue.

Here’s the scoop on Blue:

Super Boomerang is a ride in which a whole group boards a circular raft, which the staff then sets spinning, for some strange cryptic reason that I’ll never understand. The raft is pushed onto a slide, which takes you around a little bend, and then straight into Armageddon. The slide gets very, very steep and you have about a second or two of insanely fast acceleration before the raft gets to the wall. Oh, right, the wall. You see, this isn’t a simple case of going DOWN a big, fast slide. The Boomerang also takes you UP a big, fast incline. Your raft slides up a wet wall till you’ve got at least fifty solid feet of air, and then, finally, it’s time for the big drop. Down the wall you just came up, your momentum carrying you away from your starting point and onto a new path, picking up incredible speed, then over one last bump and finally careening into a calm pool at the bottom. The line actually passes by this pool area, so you can see the reactions of riders as they get out. Most are deliriously happy. One woman, though, had to be helped out of the raft, like she couldn’t stand. Daaaamn.

I’m a pretty passive person in a group. I don’t really like to make the decisions. I mean, sometimes I’ll step up if the group is being really indecisive and it seems like no one else wants to decide what’s going on, but generally speaking, I’m happier just leaving it to someone else. I like being along for the ride. I find I like my outings better when I don’t really know what’s going to happen next. And, I’ve got to say, it worked out great for me on Saturday, because there is absolutely no way in hell I would’ve chosen the blue ride, but it ended up being fantastic.
I wouldn’t have chosen it because, frankly, it looked damned terrifying. When you first get in the line, you’ve got a great view of the Wall. You can’t see, from that angle, the rafts coming down the slide that starts the ride off, but you can see them as they go up the Wall, and then back down. We were already standing in line, already committed, as a group, to going on this one, when I first saw a raft go up, up, up, that huge wall. Not only saw it, but HEARD it. The raft has enough speed that you can hear the shlick sound of the water under the plastic from two hundred feet away. And that sound is mingled in there with the screams of the riders. And the damn ride goes UP A WALL. Before stopping from the force of gravity and falling back down a full fifty feet, most of that at nearly a ninety degree angle! Are you SERIOUS, Ocean World? Are you SERIOUS?

When I saw that first raft going up that Wall, I immediately felt my stomach drop. I could not believe I was going on this ride. I couldn’t believe this was actually about to happen. But this time, when I decided not to say anything to my companions, I was making the right choice. And I knew it. You can’t let one bad experience ruin something for the rest of your life, no matter how bad that experience was. It was time to get over the fear and have some fun.

Needless to say, the ride was awesome. I managed not to think about what was coming all through our long stay in the line, which was maybe an hour or so. It only hit me as we were boarding the raft, and it hit me hard. For about five seconds I thought about bailing, but luckily the line was long enough that I could never have justified it. I went along, and before I knew it, I was screaming my head off—in a good way. Down at the bottom, in the calm pool, before the anxious onlookers going through their own hour long wait, I watched myself, as though it was someone else entirely, babbling away about how great that was, and how it was worth the wait. I hadn’t waited an hour. I’d waited ten years.

Good night folks. Much love to everyone.

Karaoke-fu

In Korea, they don’t have “karaoke”. They have “noraebang”, from “norae” meaning song, and “bang” meaning room. Song-room. I’ve decided, though, for the purposes of this writing to use the term “karaoke”. Karaoke means something to people. It’s more than simply a word to describe a machine. Rather, it describes an act. You do karaoke. Foreigners over here don’t refer to “doing noraebang”. We say “going to a noraebang”. The act of singing along to ridiculous reproductions of popular songs while the words flash on a screen, either to the joy or the despair of present company will always be “karaoke”. So to any of my fellow waygooks who might be reading this, consider that an explanation for my use of Japanese nomenclature.

Conventional wisdom states that being successful at karaoke is all about confidence. Throw yourself into the performance with all the gusto you can summon and you’re sure to win the crowd. Show them your swagger and never look back. Bonus points for singing without looking at the lyrics. Pick songs that people think they’d have a hard time doing themselves, then belt them out without a trace of nerves, and that, in a nutshell, is what a great karaoke performance is all about.

For the most part, I agree with all of that. I have a couple of quibbles with it, but in general, that’s all true. Karaoke, like so many other things, is an activity which is easy to take for granted, but can speak volumes about people. You’ll get a pretty good picture of a person’s confidence level by doing karaoke with them. It doesn’t take long to spot it, either. You’ll know the karaoke pros by two things: their energy and their level of comfort. Comfort-level is the really telling sign. An unconfident person who’s seen a few good performers might be aware that he should put in as much energy as he can, and that’s good, but it’s a hundred times harder to fake being comfortable in your own skin. When you take an energetic perfomance, and add visible discomfort, you get camp. Camp can be fun, too, but whenever I see it (or catch myself indulging in it), I feel like the performer would rather be showing his or her sincere emotions—that is, to be rather than to seem confident—but just can’t quite make it happen. So the quest to deliver a great karaoke performance becomes a challenge where you must triumph in battle over yourself.

One other thing worth noting here is that you should always remember to play to your strengths. If your falsetto is your best voice, sing the Bee Gees, sing Mika, sing Queen, sing Scissor Sisters, but please please please, don’t even consider Marvin Gaye. It’s not a failing of confidence and character to steer clear of your weaknesses. In fact, a false denial of those weaknesses would be the real failing of confidence. To be a good performer, you must know just what it is that you do well. Then, learn to do it even better.

I’m not sure whether, or to what extent, all of this is applicable to other aspects of life. I have a feeling that it’s relevant, but not so much so that it’s worth thinking about all day. I do feel that having regular experiences in noraebangs throughout Seoul has served as a sort of barometer of my self-confidence over the last eight and half months. When I’m all set to belt ‘em out all night long, things must be going alright. And you know what? That seems to happen more and more lately.

Good night, world. Happy 4th.

Randy

Resonance

I feel like one of the most important challenges in life is finding your resonance frequency. Resonance frequency is a physics term that refers to the tendency of systems to show more powerful effects at some frequencies than at others. One example of this can be found in this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9K93AUFuvk

The water in the class is being moved by nothing more than a steady tone. The frequency of the tone is the water’s resonance frequency. That means that this is the perfect sound to get that water jumping. The tone is just right, strongly amplifying the oscillations in the water. If it was a little higher or a little lower, the effects on the water would be much smaller. It’s as though the water is humming along with the tone.

A more playful explanation is offered by wikipedia:

One familiar example is a playground swing, which acts as a pendulum. Pushing a person in a swing in time with the natural interval of the swing (its resonance frequency) will make the swing go higher and higher (maximum amplitude), while attempts to push the swing at a faster or slower tempo will result in smaller arcs. This is because the energy the swing absorbs is maximized when the pushes are 'in phase’ with the swing's oscillations, while some of the swing's energy is actually extracted by the opposing force of the pushes when they are not.

Imagine yourself pushing the swing. You want it to go very high. What do you do? Your first instinct might be to simply push as hard and fast as you can. But this wouldn’t be the best way to make the swing go higher. If you push too fast, you’ll actually be wasting a lot energy because you’ll be opposing the swing’s natural timing. You need to get in time with the swing. Stand behind it, wait for it to come to you, then give it a little help on its way back the other direction. You’re synergizing with the swing. It’s much better and more effective than just trying to tell it what to do.

I see this as a great metaphor for life.

The greatest feeling, the most fulfilling, the most validating, the most triumphant and certain feeling is when you know you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. You can be in a quote unquote “good situation” where everything is great—your job is good and it’s very secure, you live in a great place, you’ve got a great girlfriend—and still find yourself feeling strangely unfulfilled. On the flip side, you can be working 80 hour weeks for shit pay, wrecking your health, just getting by on the skin of your teeth—and somehow feel like you wouldn’t trade it for the world. Maybe you’re helping to raise awareness about a cause that inspires you. Maybe you’re an extremely dedicated coach at a lesser-known college athletics department. Wherever you are, what matters is that you know that’s where you’re supposed to be. You are where life is telling you to be, and that feeling is more valuable than health, more valuable than money, more valuable, even, than happiness. There’s no more feeling than knowing exactly who you are and exactly what you are doing. A person with purpose is an invincible thing.

Now, that might be easy to say, but it’s not easy to do. How do you find this purpose? Where do you begin to look for your natural resonance frequency? You certainly can’t find it by thinking about it. You’ll be distracted a thousand times before you reach your final destination by the very tricky human tendency towards wishful thinking. It’s all too easy, when you’re looking for the answers, to convince yourself that the path you’re supposed to be taking is the easiest one you see. If you’ve been offered a nice scholarship to law school, and you don’t know what else to do next, you’ll be very tempted to convince yourself that that’s what you should be doing. But just because someone hands you a pile of money to do something doesn’t mean that doing it will resonate with you. It only means that it’ll be an easier path to start down.

Don’t get me wrong here. If you don’t know what’s next in your life, then it’s very sensible to take the easier softer way. Making the most of a law school scholarship while you have the chance is a very prudent thing to do. On the other hand, if you don’t feel that resonance when thinking about law, and you do feel it when thinking about something else, then you need to reconsider. Push with the swing.

But how to make the call? How can you learn what you need to know?

I haven’t figured this part out at all, but I think all that a person can do is try as many different things as possible. Try to get as many different experiences as you can. Talk to people who seem strange. Go far and wide and look for things you’ve never seen before. Read widely. See a lot of movies. Try having different kinds of jobs. Give different kinds of creative self-expression a try. Oh, and somehow find time to process it all and figure just how you feel about all these things. It might be impossible to do all these things, but that’s not important. More important is the idea of discovery. Somewhere out there, or somewhere inside yourself, is the life that is just right for you—the purpose that will make you powerful. You’ve got to search with determination. It’s not going to find you. You’ve got to find it.

Good luck, folks. Lots of love.

Randy

The profession

Children are complicated.

People have the perception that they are simple, but in fact, it’s much harder to understand a child than an adult. Adults are articulate. Adults have far greater insight into their character. Children are all at sea in life. They go where the tide takes them, and they have no idea where they’re going or why.

I’ve been watching a lot of my kids very carefully, trying to figure out what makes them tick. I’ve always loved studying people. Whether it’s a friend, a family member, co-worker or even myself, I’m always analyzing behavior, forming hypotheses, and imagining what it’s like to be in their head. This is my most practiced pasttime.

With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that I’m finding it pretty fascinating at times to be working with young children. The kids I’m working with are young enough that it’s easy to see changes in their character. By the time we reach adulthood, change is slow in us. People continue to change throughout their lives, but it usually takes much longer the older we get. With kids, it’s totally different. Even a month can make a huge difference. A kid at four can be one way, and another way entirely at five. After all, that a period equivalent to 25% of her life that just passed! Think how quickly a month passes. Now try to remember how long a month felt when you were in kindergarten. It was like an eternity.

When I first arrived I didn’t think about how much I’d be learning about kids. I hadn’t been around children much before I got here, so I didn’t really know what they were like. I mean, I remember how I perceived childhood, but that doesn’t tell me anything about how adults perceived me. I hadn’t seen childhood with an adult’s perspective. I didn’t think much about it as a way to learn about people because I assumed none of my students would have enough English to really talk to me. That assumption had two problems. The first is that many of the kids speak very good English. The second is the idea that it would matter. I know the kids in my homeroom class very very well, even though they none of them can carry a conversation. They figure out how to get their feelings across.

The things that’s been the biggest surprise to me is just how much children are like adults. They’re dead complicated. Classroom politics change all the time. The battles may revolve around crayon use, but don’t let the subject matter fool you. These kids are actually fighting for their place in the social order. And they do it with striking ability. In one of my classes, a student brought a little notebook with nicely decorated paper to school, tearing out sheets to give to her classmates as a gift. The next day, another girl in the same class struck back. She brought a notebook of her own and did the same gift-giving, except she added a twist: first she let everyone pick a sticker from her sticker book to add to their paper. The first student knew she was one-upped. You could see it. It turns out, five year olds can go to war. Or at least the girls can.

The biggest difference between children and adults, though, is that children are very impulsive. They are pushed and pulled in a thousand directions by their emotions, which they are almost helpless to resist. Everything is a whirlwind for a child. Everything is a rollercoaster. When something is funny, they laugh hysterically. When they are upset, the world is ending. Just as their pencils are wobbly under their hands, with their motor control still loose, their emotions are the same. All the tools are there, they just haven’t figured out control yet. They have a thousand complicated tasks to master before they are ready to be on their own. This is why I don’t see myself as just an English teacher. They also need to learn how to get along with others, how to express their creativity, how to stay focused on the task at hand, and dozens more essential skills. If all they learn is English, then we are failing them. They’ve got about 10 or 12 years to learn how life works, and after that, good luck to them.

In any case, I just got the book “Teach Like a Champion” by Doug Lemov. I talked about this book before. Lemov compiled a slew of teaching techniques commonly found in the most successful classrooms, named them, and explained them in a very detailed and clear book. I’m about a fifth of the way through it and it is just rocking my socks. But one thing I notice is that Lemov and I seem to agree that there’s a lot more to a teacher’s job than teaching kids the answers. Over and over again, the book explains how certain teaching techniques will encourage kids to become more intellectually curious, or to push themselves harder, or to be more self-disciplined. It seems the best teachers don’t just teach facts and figures. The best teachers teach life.

I must push myself harder as a person to be worthy of teaching of the subject.

Goodnight folks. Lots of love.


Randy

Someday they'll say they learned all they know from me!

Hello. Today I thought I’d share with you some essays that were written by 5 year old Koreans. Enjoy!

“Name: Beth
Once opon a time
miss duckling and Mr. snake
Went to The shop
to Buy lemons to eat
and they get home.
So they get scissors
and they eat the lemon.”


Good story.


“Name: a mom man Stephanie
Bunny is very cute.
The bunny swam.
The bunny read.
The bunny”


Not sure what went wrong on the way to writing her name here, but my theory is she was testing how to spell words that she didn’t end up using. That wonderfully unresolved ending makes me think the bunny was supposed to have adventures with a man and a mom but, sadly, never got around to it.

Also, the alphabet is written in capitals down the right side of the paper.


“Name: (no name at the top)
Jan has new friend
Jan walk by the street
but there is another
boy friend. It was ugly
Jan hit the boy
but Yap Yap Yap oo oo oo YaYaYa
The boy became bird.
and Jan became bird to
and they married.
Minnie”


Everything about this is amazing. I have no idea who wrote it. There is no one named “Minnie” in the class.


“Name: Henny
When There is Kimchi and
There is only man and man very
love very much and man eat
the kimchi and man eat
and eat eat eat and eat
eat eate aand eat eat
and eat and tow much eat and
then that man is very fat
then finish and this store is kimchi and man store”


Can’t argue with that.


Another nameless one.
“Once upon a time
in house and a ugly
shoes. But ugly shoes
love the pretty shoes
But pretty shoes Dont’
like agly shoes
But agly shoes goes pretty
shoes house But pretty
Shoes shout and agly
Shoes go out agly
Shoes goes agly shoes house
and eat bread
and juice and sleep
But pretty shoes like agly
Shoes and pretty
Shoes goes agly shoes
house and agly shoes
is love the pretty shoes!”


An epic worthy of Homer.


Have a good one folks. Remember to love your neighbor.

Randy

Saunain'

Another weekend, another first, this time as authentically Korean as it gets. Jjimjilbang.

A jjimjilbang is a public spa/sauna. You pay a pretty reasonable price to get in the door and then all the sauna rooms and hot tubs are free. You get a little scanable bracelet that charges you for any additional services, which you use in lieu of carrying your wallet around, what with being semi-naked and enjoying some hot, steamy, bath related action. What kind of "additional services" you ask? How about massage chairs, holmes! You feeling that? Get yourself all loosened up by a steaming hot sauna, then when you go back out to the main room, have a chair run it's wubbly knobs all over you back. MMmm-hmmm. Oh yeah. The chair loves you. You love the chair. You're just a couple of cool cats finding love in the unlikeliest of places. In a chair.

Jjimjilbangs have been around forever in Korea. There are references to them in court documents from King Sejong, this king from 500 years ago who was basically the dopest pimp in the history of Korea. If he was doing it, it must have been the thing to do. And that remains true to this day. Jjimjilbangs are among the most popular form of recreation in Korea, especially for families. There are typically arcade rooms and other kid-friendly stuff, so mom and dad can drop off the little ones and then go relax on their own. Even in the middle of the afternoon on a weekend, the main hall area will be surprisingly crowded, and at night, the place is packed. People often stay overnight, sleeping on the heated floors, and the main area will be simply crowded with bodies. Careful not to step on anyone on your way to the toilet! I could never sleep at one of these places though. Too noisy, and the floor is too hard to sleep. I opted for the sunrise subway myself.

Oh! One more thing. The jjimjilbang we went to had a restaurant on the top floor called “Indian Barbecue Café” or something like that. I was imagining, based on the name that it was Indian food, like curry and whatnot, except with barbecued meat. Nope. The “Indian” in that title refers to American Indians—Native Americans. O…K. Not sure if I can name a lot of cuisine in that category. Corn? I guess?
In any case, the restaurant featured a few statues in full on Indian caricature mode. Like straight up, “Holy mother of Choctaw, that is some racist shit” type statues. You see this stuff now and again around here. Racial stereotypes are no big deal, it seems. I would have been a lot more surprised if the décor wasn’t off the wall offensive. Here’s a story for you: I asked kids in an elementary school class if they knew anything about Africa. The response? “Oh, Africa… OOGA BOOGA OOGA BOOGA!” Yikes.

Till next time,

Randy

Whether the weather be cold, or whether the weather be hot, we'll be together whatever the weather, whether we like it or not

Spring is here! Sound a cheer! Raise your hands! You can feel it in your glands!

After an incredibly long winter that stormed in with a record snowfall and lingered weeks after it had worn out the last of its welcome, the good guys have won at last. The snow is gone, the t-shirts are out, and it feels great to have my bare arms exposed to the air. As I was walking down to the street to get some lunch, my elbow lightly scraped a tree. The feeling of the bark on my skin made me feel so alive and so happy. It’s been months since I’ve been able to wear short sleeves outside. My skin was hiding away from the cold. Now I’m free again.

The climate here is known for being highly seasonal. There can never be any doubt about which season you’re experiencing. The winter is cold and oppressive. The summer is hot and wet. Fall is cool and colorful. And spring brings life back to the earth with astonishing speed. Already, the trees outside my apartment are in full bloom, shedding white petals into the grass and drinking up the sunlight of the longer days. Flashes of pink and yellow are like electric neon shocks in the scenery. The colors of blooming bushes are more than eye-catching. They stop traffic. People stop to talk about the end of winter or the beginning of spring.

I love metaphors and symbols and I’m always searching for them. For my first winter—my first real winter, in a place where it actually gets cold and dead, it was important to draw something out of the experience. What does it mean to experience this long period of inactivity, lifelessness, and featurelessness? Why is it necessary and how does it affect how we look at the world? The expressionist artist Jean-Michel Basquiat once said “Every single line means something”. Well, every little component of our world tells us something about what kind of world we live in.

For me, the first thing I think of when I think of the differences between winter and the other seasons is the way it makes the outside world so uniform. After a snowfall, everywhere you go the ground is stark white. Trees that once bore wildly different kinds of leaves and flowers are now plain brown twins. Visibility is low. Go up to a high place and see how far you can see. The fog of winter keeps you from seeing very much. Below the horizon, all is white. Above, all is gray. Even the sun seems weak, like its powerful yellow rays just can’t shine like they used to. It’s a monochrome world.

The rest of the year, each individual plant can really show you who it is. The rest of the year, sunsets are multi-colored and vivid. There is a raw beauty to the starkness of winter, but it’s only in the other seasons that the scenery seems to be breathing with life. It’s not just the people who feel liberated by the changing of the season and the return of warm weather. Look outside and we can see our feelings mirrored by every little life-form, stretching out and moving freely, and wearing their best colors. Come spring, everything is in flux.

And I think, what this does, is it brings excitement. I mean, I’m excited just because a tree scraped my arm. What does that tell you?

Damn near everything is a feedback loop. For example: Let’s say you think you should exercise more. You never exercise, you’re completely sedentary. At first, it’s very difficult to get started. You’re not used to getting sweaty and exerting yourself for a while. Your habits are a powerful pull on you, discouraging you from changing anything. Your muscles protest. You struggle with yourself emotionally, finding it difficult to keep motivated. It seems a lot easier just to quit.
Then, after a few weeks, something strange happens. Things begin to change. The fruits of your labor become obvious. You aren’t as tired anymore. You feel better. You’re getting stronger and more fit. Your body has adjusted to your new routine.

After a few more months, you’ve completely switched feedback loops. Now, if anything, it would be hard to STOP exercising. If you skip a day, you’ll miss it. You won’t feel as good, missing that high for the day. Whereas a few months ago, everything was pulling you back, trying to keep you from getting active, now everything is pushing you to continue, or even increase your load. You’re fully in your new loop. Every bit of exercise pushes another button that increases your motivation to continue.

This basic pattern is true for a huge variety of human behavior. Something just has to provide that spark that allows change, and soon enough the change becomes self-reinforcing.

That’s where spring comes in. The winter is oppressive. It does everything it can to keep people inside. It sucks the color from the landscape and tries to make everything feel bleak. It wants to get you down, and it’s no wonder so many people suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and become depressed each winter. All it takes, in many cases, to cure people of their symptoms? A sunlamp.

The sun and the warmth are such easy and wonderful rewards. You go outside, and you feel good. It’s as simple as that. For the last four months, especially January and February, I often felt like hiding away in the apartment. I wasn’t depressed, but I just did not want to go outside, not even on the weekends. I went out anyway, knowing that if I didn’t, I WOULD probably get depressed, but it wasn’t made easy by the weather, which offered pretty stiff resistance.

Suddenly, though, things have changed. Now, going outside is its own reward. And I couldn’t be more excited about it.

See ya'll next time.

Randy

Short takes from a busy weekend

I think I may have just had the best weekend I've had yet in Korea. Saturday in particular was such a well-rounded day full of great stuff. Normally I try to have some kind of "angle" on these posts, but there's just no way I can pull that off this time. Too. Much. Stuff.

So here goes!

The main event on Saturday was an outdoor pillow fight in downtown Seoul. We left my apartment each with a pillow in tow and boarded crowded subways full of confused looks. Foreigners carrying pillows onto the subway. Koreans wondering if their country should rethink this whole “teach our kids English” thing. Anthony trying to ignore stares as he caught some sleep standing up, pillow propped against a pole.

The pillow fight was at 6 PM at the plaza square near Seoul City Hall. The green man from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia showed up. There was a Korean dude who brought a helmet into the fracas. He faced stiff opposition from folks allied against the use of hard armor to defend against pillows. I whumped the shit out of him. Sometimes a feather pillow would break open and feathers would fly through the air like pink sparks from a roman candle.

A great outdoor pillow fight is a lot like a mosh pit. There’s a loosely defined circle on the outside, and chaos and insanity in the middle. When you’ve enjoyed your fair share, you can go for a stand along the outside and just sit back and watch. It’s almost as much fun to watch as it is to fight.

About thirty minutes into the thumping and shouting, I took another break. Pillow fighting is surprsingly tiring work. More than five minutes at a time and you start to feel like you’ve run a mile. I pull my glasses out and settle in to spectate for a while.

Suddenly, a mysterious stranger approaches.

“Hey,” he says, referring to the melee, “do you know what this is for?”

Do you know. What this is for.


DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS FOR??

Something stopped that man’s heart in his chest years ago. I had no idea what to say. How do you explain the purpose of a pillow fight? Where do you begin? What I should have done is, I should have said, “This!” and hit him with my pillow. Or maybe I could have said that we were all jazz musicians, and we were warming up for a show in half an hour. Or maybe I should have answered his question really seriously and said that we had all been hired to test the durability of different kinds of pillows under the most extreme conditions that pillows are likely to see. One more. I should have said “To raise money to impeach the Pope. Donate here” and then held out my hand.

Anyway, the answer I actually gave was “There was a thing on Facebook”. He seemed satisfied with that answer. Kinda scary, isn’t it? Any behavior can now be explained with a one word answer. “Facebook”. “Ah, I see”. Strange.


Also in the history books from Saturday: Arts and crafts jam session. Over the last couple of weeks I have been stocking up on art supplies. Water color paints, poster paints, colored pencils, markers, construction paper, enormous sheets of white paper, 9 paint brushes, a pencil sharpener and a glue stick. Fuck yeah.

Early afternoon Saturday, the door was open for any passersby who wanted to do some painting, drawing, or cutting and pasting of any kind. Proceeds went to the aesthetic betterment of my bedroom. The catering was handled by Domino’s. The music was Sgt. Pepper’s. A pleasant time was guaranteed for all. Fuck yeah.
I’ve noticed something about my spending habits. I try to buy experiences rather than acquire possessions. The purpose of paint is to use it. When it’s been put to good use, it is gone. It’s not like a nice jacket, or a fancy TV. I’ve also spent a lot on travel since I’ve been here. My trip to Japan cost about $1000. Hikes and ostriches are experiential purposes too.

I feel great about this. Ideally, when I leave Korea, I’ll have almost nothing to show for it except a huge list of experiences (and some decent savings besides). This is totally the best way to spend your money. I must’ve dropped $80 on art day, and I couldn’t feel any better about it. It was memorable. It was fulfilling. It was a great experience to share with the folks who showed up and took part. And there are a ton of supplies left over for future painting and playing. I can’t even think of a better bang for my buck.

The thing is, that’s not some revelation. I’m not surprised to discover this or anything. I think we all know instinctually that, looking back years down the line, spending two grand on a vacation touring southeast Asia is a much more worthwhile expense than spending the same money on a sleek new TV, or as down payment on a car, or whatever. We all know that our time on earth is short, and that we’d better do all we can to fill our lives with adventures and memories. The trouble is, sometimes money is short. And when you’re short on cash, you want all your big purchases to be tangible things. If you have to save up for a year to have the two grand to spend, it’s much easier to make the decision to buy the TV, because it’ll be around for years. The vacation will be done in a few weeks and you’ll be back to square one.

That’s why I’m so grateful for what I have here. I have a job that pays me pretty well and let’s me see the world at the same time. I have the freedom to spend whatever I think it will take to put together a solid afternoon of arts and crafts. I’ve never had this before. I’m free to do whatever sounds like a good time without having to stress about it. It doesn’t get old. In fact, as my list of lifetime “firsts” grows, it gets sweeter and sweeter. People say that money can’t buy happiness, and it’s true. But it does enable you to do things that you think will make you happy.

Now, all that said, something else “they” say is that the best things in life are free. And let me tell you what: I got to sit in VIP seats for a soccer match featuring FC Seoul and rival club Suwon for free, and it was pretty damn sweet. So
I guess “they” really know what they’re talking about.

A cold bug is making the rounds in Seoul right now (actually, I’m a little sick myself) and it has unfortunately taken my co-teacher Emma out of commission. She spent the weekend in bed, resting up. You gotta be rested come Monday. Kindergarteners can smell tiredness on an adult, and they respond like ravenous wolves presented with blood-dripping fresh steaks. They even snarl at each other as they fight for the biggest pieces of your flesh. It’s horrifying.

Anyhoo.

So, Emma’s fiance Mark called me up and asked me if I felt like taking her ticket for the match Sunday. Emma and Mark are season ticket holders, so they have good seats. And I’d never been to a soccer game before. And did I mention the price tag? (FREE!) Woo! Count me in!

The game was great, mostly because our team, FC Seoul, managed to score 3 goals in the space of about 8 minutes. Suwon had a pretty huge contingent of fans show up—about 10,000 altogether, but they were a little more subdued after the 3rd goal. They even slowed down on waving their giant Che Guevara flag around (Seriously.).

Also, soccer is better in person because it’s the sport where you need to see the largest area simultaneously in order to enjoy what’s happening. It’s routine for a player to kick a ball up field 50 yards, and on TV they have to follow it through the air where you can’t see much of what’s going on down on the field. In person, you can see everything that is relevant to see at a glance. It is not, as American football is so often labeled, a game of inches. It is a game of hundreds of feet. That, in a nutshell, is why the NFL is awesome on TV but not very good in person, and soccer is good in person but not great on TV. Educational.

Well, there ya go. That was some of what happened this weekend. I left out a story about a Korean woman who we met in a bar on Saturday night where the soccer match between Chelsea and Manchester United was being broadcast. She was about 24 years old and had been abroad for one month, where she stayed in London, and somehow picked up a cockney accent during that time. I also left out the Indian food place that was called “Durga” which somehow seemed like a racial slur of a name.

Apologies for the lack of focus/quality writing this week. But, actually, I feel pretty good about that. It’s like what happened when I went to Japan. Too much stuff happened to write something cohesive about it. Feels good!

Much love to the world, especially the human parts of it.

Randy

Take a seat right there by the fire and let me tell you something about birds

(I just watched Big Fish again. It made me want to write this one a bit differently.)

“The thing you have to know about ostriches, if you so choose to mingle with them, is they aren’t very well socialized. In fact, they are hands down some of the most impolite creatures you might ever have the pleasure to meet. An ostrich will as soon chow down on your pinky fingers, and your ring fingers, too, as it will take the grass out of your hand. They don’t care at all if it offends you.

Now, if they had thought things through a bit more, they might realize that they should take care, lest they cut off their own supplies. Poor penned in creatures they are, there’s little they can do to gain access to the grasses on just the other side of the fence. Silly old humans are more than happy to help them out, but it’s most discouraging when you offer charity, and get rewarded with a bloody fingernail. But you can hardly blame ‘em, can you? If I were 300 pounds big and it was all concentrated round my stomach, I might get a little peckish myself.

One more reason why it’s a very rare ostrich that gets elected prom queen or king: They never take showers. Or baths. And it’s not too often that they hang a nice pine tree air freshener around their necks. What I’m trying to say, in so many words, is that they have a smell to match their eating technique. It’s not friendly.

But if you can overlook the pecking, and try to hold your nose, you’ll find their company rewarding. What you’ll find, when you look past that exterior, is a creature most curious about its distant cousins, the humans. They’ll size you up, they’ll let you in close with nary a bite done in anger, and, if you’re lucky, they might even show you some of their dance moves. If you look right here, you’ll see a rather silly looking performance (not the performance, I was privy to, I’m afraid, but it’s on the way, just you wait), but please try not to laugh at the poor gent.
That’s all he’s got to impress the ladies. And in fact, I have it on good authority that they go nuts for it. If you were an ostrich hen, that little video would give you the vapors.

With that in mind, it might even be seen as a bit risque to be parading himself around in front of citizens of another species, but who am I to criticize? A man has got to strut his stuff sometimes. And truth be told, I think my companions and I were rather flattered to receive such attention. One thing this poor videographer wasn’t lucky enough to capture was a rather distinctive sort of call that preceded that bumpin’ and the shakin’ that our party was witness to. Before he got up to get down, our friend the ostrich let us all know that he had something special for us by announching, loud as he could “WOO. WOO. WOOOOOO!!”

Well, now that got our attention. From that moment on we’d all learned a new phrase, and those are always useful to pick up when traveling in a foreign country, regardless of the language. We must’ve whooped and hollered in the fashion of that footloose ostrich no less than thirty-five times over the next hours. And everywhere we went, that call worked just as well for us as it did for Mister Ostrich. People’s heads turned and they looked up from what they were doing and they were all wondering, “What on Earth is going on here?” And what would they see when they found the source, but a goodly sized group of foreigners, about 9 strong all letting out syncronized “WOO. WOO. WOOOOOOO!!”’s until their throats were dry.

But anyway, as I seem to have lost my train of thought here just a bit, let’s get back to the ostriches. I still haven’t told you the best part! You see, ostriches aren’t just for feeding, or for eating, or for dancing. Ostriches are also for RIDING. At least according to humans. Now, if you ask any ostrich, they’ll tell you it’s not true, and they aren’t for any such thing. But then you have to ask yourself just who’s providing the grass around here, and then there you go.

Riding an ostrich isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but if you ever get a chance to have a go at it, you should take it. The secret is in the leaning. You gotta lean back! Way back! If you don’t, you’ll slide on down that bird and end up nestled next to her neck and then no one is happy. Unless there are any onlookers. Truth be told, if I had seen that happen to one of my merry companions I would’ve been laughin’ and guffawin’ and not doing myself any favors. It was funny enough when poor Brent got his leg caught in the wing and couldn’t quite dismount. It was quite the show. But then he is a city slicker coming as he does from fancy Toronto, or thereabouts.

When all was said and done, though, it was a little bit sad for that ostrich. One lone bird had the full duty of scortin’ us all round its little track, and the girl was plainly tired as we were getting near the end. Think of it now. We were about half her size, so just imagine you had to piggy back ten fifty-pound dogs around your back yard, and they’re all making a bunch of noise, and when they’re done they line right back up for a second ride. You’d probably do what our friend the bird ended up doing, and just call it a day and take a seat right there on the ground. She’d had enough, thanks. Now, we could’ve been rude houseguests and started making demands and call her back to duty, but if you ask me, a certain respect for civil niceties is one of the defining differences dividing man and ostrich, and so we simply took that for our cue to get headin’.

So, that’s my yarn, and I hope you like the way it was spun. Have a good evening or morning, whichever it may be. If you aren’t quite sure, just look out the window."

-Randy

Typically Awesome

Yesterday was a great big hike with delicious food and squishy mud capping the whole experience. Our tour group must have been about 40 strong, and we competed with cold winds and impenetrable mists to climb to the top of one of Korea’s most famous mountains. “Manisan” mountain is known to climbers throughout the country for its spectacular views. On clear days, the peak provides climbers with a panoramic view straight to the ocean. Its unique combination of rocky mountain hiking and ocean views makes it one of the most beloved areas in the country to see and enjoy nature.

But before going into any more detail about it, I’d just like to say that the most exciting thing about this whole expedition was that it was completely typical of daylong hiking trips in Korea. The winter is thawing at last, and the weather is finally warm enough to allow for frequent hiking. This hiking trip included a big group lunch with some interesting people, stops at several locations, a good climb and a visit to a very peaceful and beautiful Buddhist temple. In other words, it was completely normal in almost every way for a Korean hike. And yet it was very interesting, introduced me to several nice people, and cost barely anything (barely 20 bucks for a very full Saturday). With spring nearly here, good times are ahead. I can’t wait.

This particular group was organized by a Korean guy named Warren (that’s his English name, anyway). He’s been putting these hikes together for about 2 years. He’s warm and friendly, and endlessly energetic. Warren’s English is mediocre, but his enthusiasm and knowledgability make him the perfect man for the job. He’s kind enough to organize the hikes at cost—the group pays only what it cost Warren to book the buses and pay for the lunches. Everyone likes Warren. He’s a stand up guy.
The bus left Seoul at about 10 AM. We were westbound, headed for the coast, though we did have one stop along the way. We swung by a “dolmen” site. A dolmen is a stone structure in the shape of pi. Kind of like one of the parts of Stonehenge, but not quite so large. Ancient Koreans built quite a few of them it seems. Truth be told, the dolmen wasn’t too exciting but it was interesting to look at the diagrams explaining how they were constructed. You learn something new every day.

Soon after getting back on the bus, we arrived at the coast. Lunch came first. Fresh fish. Kimchi. Quail eggs. Tofu soup. Rice wine infused with ginseng. I ate with no regard to the hike ahead. When a meal is all you can eat, I eat ALL I can eat. If anyone asks me what I learned in college, I will say “the value of free food”.

We stumbled out of the restaurant and headed down to the beach. I should describe the weather at this point. It was fairly cold, quite windy, and completely overcast. Not exactly ideal beach weather. But then, this was no ordinary beach. The beach at Manisan is a “mud beach”. When the tide is out, a huge plateau of mud is left behind. For hundreds and hundreds of yards, there is wet muddy sand that sucks your feet two or three inches deep. It was, of course, very cold mud, but that was beside the point. When you see hundreds of yards of mud, you must walk on it (or in it). There is no choice.

Mark, Anthony, and I waded out a few hundred feet into the stuff, our feet growing numb, surrounded by endless gray and brown. The featureless terrain seemed to stretch on forever, but Anthony, up ahead, found the perfect stopping point. A single large stone, maybe 2 feet across and 6 inches high was resting all alone in the middle of nowhere. That was it. The stone’s job was to provide a destination for cold mud-waders. We stood on the rock in turns, then turned back to wash our feet thoroughly before getting back on the bus.

At last came the hike. Manisan is about 1500 feet high. We climbed it in about an hour and a half. So, let’s do the math. 90 minutes/1500 feet = 16.66… feet per minute. Shit, son! It was a truly invigorating hike. It was quick and just the right amount of strenuous. Big rocks were all over the place, and continuing upward often meant finding a way to all but leap up to the next spot. Find a place to put your hands and jump up on to the net big rock. The path zigzagged all over the place and the mountain mist was so close you couldn’t see past a fifty foot bubble, shrinking the world down to a small window of scraggly leafless trees, jagged stones and slopes and drops. Each patch of trail was a small test to pass, each test made of the same components, yet each completely different. It was physically demanding, but there was a constant sense of progress. I am putting a mountain beneath me, bit by bit.

Time disappeared, of course, but at some point the top came near. To our surprise, there were stairs near the top. These finished off the last burst of elevation and we reached the ridge. It was incredibly misty here. I mean, there was almost no visibility at all. And the wind was howling with incredible strength. Just standing upright seemed dangerous. The wind was strong enough to feel like it could push you down. There’s an additional 30 minutes of hiking here, along the ridge, but Warren made an executive decision for all of our safety and declared that we would be turning around. No one disagreed with his thinking. It would have been nice to keep going, but we had already reached the top, at least, and no one had gotten hurt. We’ll just have to save exploring the ridge for another day.

After descending, we visited the mountain’s temple. It was great in the way that temples are great. It’s not an experience subject to being put into words. I’ll just say I felt very good there, and enjoyed it very much.

That brought the tour to a close, and it was time to head back to Seoul. About 12 of us got dinner together at a typically excellent and inexpensive Korean restaurant, then Mark and Emma and I headed home to sleep. We’d set out together at 7:30 that morning and we got home at 10 that night. A full day’s adventuring hand built our appetites for rest.

So there it is. Pretty good stuff, eh? You can see why I’m excited for spring now. Soon that will be a routine Saturday. Hooray for warm weather!

Tune in next week, as I go ostrich riding. That’s right, OSTRICH RIDING.

I love you all,

Randy

No runnin, yall kids

Well, It’s a new term and we’ve got some new students, so I’m putting more pressure on myself to be a better teacher. I’d probably be having more fun as a teacher if I lowered my standards a little. I met a girl yesterday who said she loves her job. Said that she lets the kids run around the classroom. Her supervisor asks her why they’re doing that, and she says “Because they’re kindergarteners.”

Good point. I agree, to be honest. Mandatory schooling is one of the many authoritarian aspects that comes with the territory in any society built around the pursuit of money (meaning, by this point in the 21st century, the entire world), and I wouldn’t mind seeing it get thrown out the window totally. But there are other things that would have to be eliminated first. Why are the kids learning English? To improve their future job prospects. Why do they need to be in their seats the whole day? It makes it easier for them to learn English and other subjects, and prepares them for the adult world. Now I might fundamentally disagree with the way that adult world is structured, but it’s still there whether I like it or not, so I might as well try to be a good teacher and impart as much knowledge as I can.

I don’t let the kids run around in class.

Not that I’m all serious. I try to get them to laugh a lot, and they usually do. It’s easy to make kids laugh.

In any case, the point is that many foreign teachers don’t really have any standard that they’re trying to live up to. They just want the kids to have a good time, and to have a good time themselves. That’s the way my predecessor Robert was. It’s pretty normal for foreign teachers. But not for me. I think a lot about my flaws as a teacher and what I can do to fix them. I’m a perfectionist at heart, and I have my mother’s guilt streak, and I just can’t relax if I know I could be doing a better job, and am not making the extra effort.

On that note, I just read an article in the New York Times about a guy named Doug Lemov who co-founded a string of mega-successful charter schools. He’s been going around the country interviewing and observing teachers with reputations for excellence and cataloguing their classroom techniques. He’s of the opinion that great teaching isn’t some uncodifiable magic, but rather that great teaching is the result of a lot of little things. Example:

At the Boston seminar, Lemov played a video of a class taught by one of his teaching virtuosos, a slim man named Bob Zimmerli. Lemov used it to introduce one of the 49 techniques in his taxonomy, one he calls What to Do. The clip opens at the start of class, which Zimmerli was teaching for the first time, with children — fifth graders, all of them black, mostly boys — looking everywhere but at the board. One is playing with a pair of headphones; another is slowly paging through a giant three-ring binder. Zimmerli stands at the front of the class in a neat tie. “O.K., guys, before I get started today, here’s what I need from you,” he says. “I need that piece of paper turned over and a pencil out.” Almost no one is following his directions, but he is undeterred. “So if there’s anything else on your desk right now, please put that inside your desk.” He mimics what he wants the students to do with a neat underhand pitch. A few students in the front put papers away. “Just like you’re doing, thank you very much,” Zimmerli says, pointing to one of them. Another desk emerges neat; Zimmerli targets it. “Thank you, sir.” “I appreciate it,” he says, pointing to another. By the time he points to one last student — “Nice . . . nice” — the headphones are gone, the binder has clicked shut and everyone is paying attention.

The article goes on to explain in greater detail how Zimmerli accomplished this small feat of classroom management. Basically, he used two techniques. The first was extreme specificity in directions. “Get out your things” seems clear enough to many teachers, but it turns out to be far more effective to use more detailed and clear instructions like those offered by Zimmerli. Second, he provides the class with positive examples by singling out the students who have already followed his directions. That’s all you gotta do.

There are lot of little things like this that Lemov has collected, and he’s got a book coming out next month with descriptions of all of them. So I’m buying that. I’ve got high hopes for it. It sounds great because it’s going to be full of concrete steps I can immediately take to improve as a teacher. It's kind of part of a larger pattern for me lately of trying to learn to get better at all kinds of things. Drawing, writing, whatever. Someone leaving the country gave me his guitar and I've been practicing it an hour a day every day. It's great.

Anyhoo. That's it for now.

See y'all next week.

Love,
Randy

Shake a spear.

Last night, for the first time in my life, I finally saw Bill Shakespeare done properly. But it wasn’t the staging of the material that made it great. It was the nature of the audience. Let me explain.

Time has a way of distorting how works of art are interpreted, especially in terms of what audiences think they are supposed to get out them. The Mona Lisa was not a well-known painting for several hundred years after Leonardo da Vinci’s death, but has become synonymous with greatness in portraiture. A person viewing it in 1650, at a time when it was not a legendary icon, would probably notice the great technique that must have went into painting it, and would likely have stopped there. However, later generations began to see the painting as one of the most enigmatic pieces of art ever created, (“What does that smile mean?”) and few can now look on it without feeling an urge to wrestle with mysterious, confounding questions. And yet these intricate interactions between painting and observer were either not present for 16th, 17th and 18th century audiences, or they were simply not considered remarkable by commentators for hundreds of years.

If the Mona Lisa represents one extreme of a spectrum, then the other end might just be occupied by the 1960’s Batman TV series. Yes, the extremely campy one with the catchy theme song. When generation X laid their eyes on re-runs of this goofy show, some viewers found it easy prey to be mocked. The absurd fight scenes (“Bam!” “Pow!” “Spiff!”), scenes of Batman and Robin riding a tandem Bike around Gotham, a Joker who was perhaps the least menacing villain in television history; it seemed laughable that this show was supposed to provide any sort of thrills. It became a staple of ironic appreciation. The only problem? The show never intended to be taken seriously in the slightest. Present day viewers interpreting the show as evidence of the naivete of past generations have missed the point. The show’s creators saw it as an exercise in goofiness, meant to be enjoyed as silly camp. Viewers getting a laugh out of the show because they can not imagine who anyone could take it seriously are simply unaware that no one was ever supposed to. A simple change in assumptions can cause greatly different reactions and interpretations to the same material.

Today, Shakespeare has been moved into some strange realms. Above all, Shakespeare’s plays are now made by and for high school students. Because the language of the plays can sometimes be pretty dense, and because the material is hundreds of years old and treated by many as sacred text, both the actors and the audiences tend to assume that the material is somehow above them, or “over my head”. Interested students are aware that Shakespeare wrote his plays for the masses, but even with this awareness, because of the mystique that now surrounds Shakespeare as the most legendary writer in the history of the English language, it’s very hard to picture these plays as being for the everyman. I don’t think there’s much to be done about it for teenaged thespians. I’m now convinced that to understand what it was like for audiences hundreds of years ago, you need to see it performed in the right circumstances. Now, let me tell you one way that the circumstances can be ‘right’.

First, it should be Saturday night. You’re going to see Shakespeare! What could be greater? Seeing some Shakespeare is a perfectly good way to spend your Saturday evening. If you were John Q. Peasant living in the Elizabethan era, this was like, the highlight of your week.

Number two: It should be at a bar. Or maybe outside somewhere. But there should definitely be people in all different states of sober and intoxicated, all mingling about between performances, but falling silent at the appropriate time. Rowdy, but respectful. Good old riff-raff, here for a show.

Third, it needs to be packed. Let me tell you something about this bar I was at watching this Shakespeare. Half the people couldn’t see for shit. There were heads in the way. There was a side area where a big black curtain was blocking much of the stage for anyone who happened to be standing over there, and there were a good twenty people over there just because there was no where else to go. This place was jam-packed with people and there was no way to improve your view. You were stuck with whatever you got. And that was a good thing.

And finally, you need actors who really like the material, but don’t think that they’re delivering the word of God. Everyone on that stage believed in what they were doing, and were thrilled to be doing it, and none of them fell into the trap of losing the humanity of the characters. That’s what happens when people view Shakespeare’s work as beyond them. The characters cease to be people, full of expressive emotion. There was none of that last night. The energy was always high, and the actors were so at ease with themselves.

All these factors combined together to make a truly special experience. The show was a selection of scenes and monologues from throughout Shakespeare’s work, most of them very famous, a few relatively obscure. There was a good mix of the light and the serious. When it was serious, the crowd was clearly very engaged. When the scenes were comedic, the performances really shined. I’ve never laughed nearly so hard at Shakespeare before. It was a real joy to see these scenes working so well (particularly when they did the final scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream). It’s always impressive when very old comedy can still get big laughs. Nothing dates as quickly or as permanently as humor.
Anyway, I really wish I could go into more detail about this experience, but I can’t. In fact, that’s my whole point. I appreciated these scenes more than I had in the past because I was seeing them properly, in circumstances similar to how they were viewed centuries ago. It’s not something that can really be conveyed. In other words, you have to be there. But I think I’m very lucky that, last night, I was there.

Aspects of Korea

This week I thought I’d try something a little different. It’s time to pull out the report card and grade Korea on some its finer points. I present to you: Aspects of Korea

Ajumas: Holy hell, Ajumas. An ajuma, for those who aren’t aware, is basically a middle-aged Korean woman who wears garish clothing, does lots of power walking and will KICK. YOUR. ASS. In a male-dominated society, ajumas are like a power-bloc with dreams of revolution. In fact, the boss at my school refers to them as a “third gender”. I think he’s scared of them. Honestly, though, a little bit of fear is in order here. Ajumas take no prisoners. When you see them power walking at you on the bike path, sweat all thick on their brows, orange sweaters and green pants temporarily stunning and confusing you, faces stern with purpose, be sure to leap out of the way. You may need to dive. Do what you have to do. Get to safety.

B+


Restaurants: This is it. This is why we’re here. When it comes to eating out, Koreans have found the way. Here’s the wa y it works: Everyone shares everything, there’s a call button on the table that summons the waiters, there is no tipping, there are numerous side dishes and you can eat as much of them as you want without increasing the bill, and you cook the meat right at your table on a big burner in the middle of everyone. You get all this for about 6 bucks, as long as you don’t order anything to drink. And if you do order a beer, say, it’ll come in a very large plastic bottle and with as many glasses as there are people drinking. It’s customary not to pour your own drink, but to rely on your fellow diners to fill you up when you’re empty. The side dishes and the meat are also shared among everyone, rather than each person getting an individual order. The communal aspect of it is really nice, and the price is impossible to beat. It’s no surprise that eating out at restaurants with others is the centerpiece of the average Korean’s social life. It’s much the same for foreigners living here as well. Simply put, there’s no reason not to go out to eat with others at every opportunity.

A+


Not having a dryer:

Here’s how it goes.

“Ah FUCK! Forgot to hang up my wet clothes… Guess I’ll just run back and forth between the balcony and the laundry room 8 times with loads of clothes, and… SHIT! I totally dropped that shirt on the floor. Ah, man it’s so not clean anymore… I mean, it’s not so bad… I guess I could use it as a mop head or something… “

24 hours later

“Well, I guess I’ll just take a shower and put on some of my new clean clothes. Doo dee da doo… Which shirt should I wear today? Oh wait, none of them are dry yet! And none of my jeans will be dry for another full day! And everything will be as wrinkly as a damn golgi apparatus anyway.”

Fuck not having a dryer.

D-


Pepero Day: Pepero Day is November 11th. 11/11. Pepero is a kind of candy that has many different varieties, but basically, the thing that makes it pepero is that it’s a cookie stick with stuff on it. Just a long, thin, round and crunchy candy snack that can be covered in chocolate or something. It’s similar (maybe the same?) to the Japanese snack, pocky. In Korea it’s called pepero and it’s usually manufactured by Lotte, the shadowy overlords who rule Korea with an iron fist. (No fooling. In addition to dominating the candy market, Lotte has a chain of department stores, major real estate holdings and even a giant indoor amusement park called “LotteWorld”. They remind me of BnL, the megacorporation from Wall*E.)

So anyway, pepero is okay but not exactly amazing, so Lotte came up with the genius idea of making up a fake holiday where people would just buy a shit ton of pepero and spend all day giving it away and receiving it. It’s on November 11th because the ones are supposed to look like pepero sticks.

You can imagine how the kids at school feel about pepero day. If they have pants, they poop them. If they don’t have pants, they poop something else. Pooping happens.

It works out great for the teachers because some of the kids will come in and their moms have loaded them up with huge bags full of boxes of pepero so they can give the teachers and staff mounds of the stuff. When I finished work on pepero day, I had more than ten boxes of the stuff on my desk, and spent about two weeks eating through it.

What’s hilarious is that Lotte tries to deny that they invented this holiday. They claim that they noticed sales of pepero went up around that day anyway and they just started to capitalize on it. Like people were writing the date and saying “My God! That’s it! Pepero!” It’s a delightfully feeble lie. I bet at this moment Lotte goons are dreaming up new kinds of candy that look like numbers. “We just noticed that a lot of people were eating our ‘3’ shaped cookies at 3:33 everyday! What? Stop looking at us like that!”

B-

Only the finest ingredients

The lights are still up as the last of the audience make their way to their seats. A large projection screen is presenting a series of facts and instructions to help us pass the time. “’Nanta’ was selected a top tourist attraction in Korea.” “Everybody clap! Now only the ladies! Great job!” It’s a very well-mannered screen. Only minutes to go now. The crowd seems energetic, and the theater is at capacity. Another sold-out performance for the most successful show in Korea.

“Nanta: Cookin’” has been running for 13 years. It’s a drum performance, it’s a slapstick comedy, and it’s a family show with lots of audience interaction. It’s been almost absurdly successful. It now plays at four theaters in Korea, each doing several performances every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, all of them selling out or coming very near to it. It’s been exported around the globe and has played in over 200 cities. Now, you’re probably wondering, “Well what the hell is it? I’ve never even heard of it.” Good question, reader!

Basically, Nanta is kind of like STOMP with kitchen utensils. There is a threadbare plot about some chefs who have to prepare a wedding feast by six o’clock. None of the characters have names and there is very little dialogue. None of that really matters. That’s not what the people come to see. They came to see actors doing flips and dropping mad beats with butcher knives. And that’s what you get!

Where they find these actors, I don’t know. I’m guessing they grow them in vats made of pure power, and produce them by the dozen. It’s the only explanation. Where else are you going to find people who have perfect rhythm, excellent comedic timing, advanced gymnastics skills, juggling ability, knowledge of magic tricks, and easy rapport with audiences? The number of skills required of the actors to be a part of this show is just unbelievable. And if it’s that’s not asking enough, they have to have the stamina to do three performances in a row, a true marathon on stage. It’s ridiculous.

So anyway, the show has about ten “scenes” with fairly generic (and basically irrelevant) conflicts that a group of chefs might face. In this one they need to make a great mass of friend rice, and whattyaknow, it sounds great when they cut up all the ingredients. In this one they need to clean up, as the floor has gotten very messy and the cool guy chef and the goofball chef get in a Jackie Chan-inspired duel with brooms, the rhythm supplied by the tapping of the broomsticks. There was one scene that didn’t have any music where one of the characters got stuck in a trashcan and tried increasingly drastic measures to free himself. Watching it live, I get the impression that the creators of this show must have been big Buster Keaton fans. Slapstick might be one of the lower rungs on the comedy ladder, but when it’s executed really well you can see the devotion to the craft the performers must have, and it is admirable. These folks are fearless and tireless and their energy becomes contagious.

Oh, and oh yeah, I almost forgot. THEY BROUGHT ME UP ON STAGE AND HAD ME PROVIDE THE BEAT FOR SOMETHING!! In your FACE, rest-of-the-crowd. I knew it, too. I saw the actor get off the stage to hunt through the audience for people to recruit, and I was like, oh man, this is mine. I caught his eye like a bear trap catches a lazy rabbit. Pick me, dude. Pick me.

The show has a good deal of audience participation towards the end. For the part I got to participate in, they brought up four people, and divided us into two teams. I was the drummer for my team, and my poor teammate had to make mandu. Mandu is the Korean word for “dumpling”. She really got the raw end of the deal. The competition consisted of the two teams trying to be the first to make ten plates of mandu, but only one of the two teammates had to actually make the mandu. The other one (and that would be me, in the case of team blue) was the drummer and announcer. I kept the beat with a giant pestle in a pot in my left hand, which made a big “BOOM” sound, and in my right was a rolling pin that I smack against a cutting board and made a piercing “CRACK”. When my partner finished a plate of mandu, it was to be put on a conveyor belt, where I would retrieve, hold it up, and announce what number we were on to the audience. “OOOOOOOOOOONE!”, “TWOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” I said as loud as possible. You might think it would be nerve-racking, but I really wasn’t nervous at all. I have UF improv to thank for that, I think. Compared to making up comedy on the spot in front of a hundred people, keeping a simple beat and counting plates of mandu in front of three hundred people is a walk in the park. And you know what? We won! My teammate was the fastest mandu master in the east, and we got little prizes. Hooray!

The best part is, one of my students might have been there. On Fridays, I usually ask my kids what they’re doing for the weekend, to get them talking about different topics in English. One of them said she was going to see Nanta on Saturday! She didn’t seem to believe me at first when I said I had the same plan. I can’t wait to see how she reacts when I tell her what happened at the show I went to. I don’t think she was at the same one as me, because, knowing this girl’s personality, as soon as she saw me on the stage she probably would have shouted “RAAAAAAAAAANDY TEAAAACHERRRRR!” loud enough for the whole place to hear. But we shall see!

Well, that’s it for now. Ah-nyung-ha-se-yo!

Randy

The Tape Delayed Super Bowl

Few things can bring people together like sports. Crisp Christmas mornings opening presents at Grandma’s house, with most of Mom’s family there (4 uncles, 7 aunts, teeming masses of cousins) would give way to the family football game, played every year when the sun was high and there wasn’t a cloud in sight. Almost every male in the family would join in at some point. With such a big cast of rotating participants, and only a small area to play (the yard being half covered with cars), there wasn’t much structure to the “game”. There was just enough room to fit in all the thrills of football. We’ll throw. We’ll catch. We’ll hit each other. Merry Christmas to all. Beautiful.

Worldwide, the ultimate in sports unity is soccer’s World Cup. Entire nations will come to a stop when their team has a big match. People will stay up all hours of the night to see if their homeland will advance. Surprisingly, another World Cup is nearly upon us. It’s hard to believe it’s been 4 years since the last one. In fact, it seems like just yesterday I was ignoring this event. I kid, I kid. Soccer is a wonderful sport—if you shrink the field by about a hundred yards. And widen those goals a bit, too. I’m tired of seeing all those nice open shots fly into the stands. The goal is about 800 times bigger than the ball! What do they pay you people for!?

Okay, so Americans have a hard time enjoying soccer. Too many ties, not enough blood. Soccer is a sport where there is incentive for a player who is not hurt at all to roll around on the ground screaming like a sissy trying to draw a red card on his opponent. Football is a sport where players whose tendons are pathetically hanging by a thread will shoot themselves up with cortisone, then play as though nothing has happened. They won’t be able to walk when they’re fifty, but that’s OK. They never intended to live that long anyway! Hoo-ah!

Therefore, the ultimate in American sports togetherness is the Super Bowl. Super Bowl Sunday is the 2nd biggest food day of the year in America. That’s a fact. Someone crunched the numbers and determined that more food is consumed on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day except Thanksgiving.

It’s not such a big day in Korea, it turns out. In fact, I saw no sign at all that anyone was aware what day it was. That’s not too surprising. In Korean time, kick-off was at 8:30 AM on a Monday. And also, there’s the small matter that no one knows what the hell a football is. Furthermore, the game was going to be broadcast while I was at work reminding six year olds to speak in complete sentences. It looked like I’d be high and dry for what promised to be one of the most exciting Super Bowl match-ups in years.

Then I got the facebook message. Brandon (who is Canadian, actually, so I dunno why he cares) found a place that would be replaying the game that night at 9. Excellent! I spent my Monday in media blackout. No internet at all. I was rooting for the Saints, but I didn’t think they would win. But who knows? Football is one of the least predictable sports. Just two years ago the Giants beat the Patriots, and that was ten times more David and Goliath than Saints over Colts would be. By the way, I just noticed that calling that Giants-Pats Super Bowl a David and Goliath story is funny because Goliath himself was a giant. Can’t believe that took me two years to notice.

There were four of us traveling out to Sinchon, where the bar was located. Sinchon is a busy place with tons of bars, so it wasn’t easy to find. Luckily, it was obvious what we were looking for. A foreigner, who turned out to work for the bar, walked up to us and said “Are you guys looking for Beer O’Clock? It’s this way.” He saw some Westerners and said to himself, ah, here are some of my customers. Smart plan. Trolling the streets for foreigners on the night of the Super Bowl replay.

About the game itself, what is left to say? It was an epic game. I think the page has been irrevocably turned on the reputation of the Super Bowl in terms of game quality. When I was a little kid, everyone always talked about how the Super Bowl was always a terrible game. And, in those days, that was true more often than not. Usually one team would dominate and the other would be ruthlessly humiliated in the most watched TV program of the year. It was ugly.

But somewhere along the line that changed. I think the transition was the Rams-Titans game. That was a great, close game with a highly memorable finish. That Titan player extending his arm as far as he could and coming up a yard short of the end zone as time expired is one of the best photos in NFL history. Since then, good games have clearly outnumbered bad ones at the Super Bowl. The only 2 stinkers were Ravens-Giants and Bucs-Raiders.

Even in a decade of good Super Bowls, however, this year’s stands out. Simply put, this was one of the most exciting football games I’ve ever seen. There were goal line stands, a two-point conversion complete with the drama of a successful replay challenge, A FUCKING ON-SIDE KICK TO START THE SECOND HALF!!, hardly any penalties, and of course, the game-clinching pick-six.

I may be a suspicious character in Brandon’s eyes because of that interception. I swear, I saw nothing and heard nothing about the game. But somehow, after more than a full half with no turnovers, I got this strange feeling that any turnover would be taken back for a touchdown immediately. I think I based this on a few things. 1. It was a pass-happy game so any turnover would likely be an interception, which are more likely to be turned than fumbles. 2. The defenses of both teams are kind of middle of the road, overall, but both have a mean opportunistic streak. They capitalize on the opportunities given to them. 3. The game was just so damn dramatic by this point that a turnover not leading to an immediate touchdown would have been anticlimactic somehow.

That third point isn’t really based in logic, but I’m sure it motivated me anyway.
So, during the 3rd quarter I declared, “I will bet 5,000 won” (about $5) “that the first turnover will be returned for a touchdown”. There wasn’t an immediate response. People are thinking about the fact that this game was recorded. It already happened 12 hours ago. But I’ve been whooping like a madman every time the Saints do something good and I’m obviously way into the game. I must have seemed trustworthy enough to Brandon, because he took me up on it.

You know the rest. There was a single turnover. It was an interception returned for a touchdown. It was the game-clincher, and it was clear after that the Saints had pulled off the upset. Brandon paid up immediately, but he did ask me directly if I knew what would happen. He was wondering if he’d been cheated. I can’t blame him. It’s a crazy bet. Jason remains convinced that I did know the outcome. I feel kind of weird about it, actually. I mean, I’m honest to a fault. I won’t even tell someone I like their new haircut when I actually don’t. It’s almost pathological. But of course, no one here has known me for longer than 4 months, and how can they know?

In any case, it was an awesome game. Truly one for the ages. Considering that I hadn’t seen a football game in months before this one, I was just in ecstasy. It had everything, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer team or a cooler city. Long live the Saints!

See you next week!
-Randy

Hell If I Know!

As promised, this week I'm writing about going to church last weekend. It took me a long time to get started on this post. It turns out that I have a lot to say, and at the same time, very little to say. I guess I'll start with Phil.

I met Phil a month after I got here. I was in Seoul for a meet-up of foreigners and Koreans who want to meet foreigners. Basically, some guy just rents out a bar and serves refreshments, and people meet people. It's nice.

So I met some folks, had some drinks, ate some snacks and then 11 o'clock rolled around and it was time for the party to come to an end. Sadly, the bar had other plans for the late evening, and they were kicking us out. That suited me fine. I was really tired that weekend and ready to go home anyway.

I got on the subway and settled in for my long ride back. I was just spacing out staring at the empty seats across from me, nothing on my mind, when the train became the second place that night to evict me on account of lateness. Going from Deokso to Seoul takes anywhere from 40 to 90 minutes, depending on where you're going. This little gathering was a little more than an hour away from my place. And if you know your subway systems, you know this: They hate to be out late. Even in Tokyo, the most populous damn city in the world, the trains stop running at midnight. Get a cab, you lout! the city planners seem to be saying.

Here's where Phil comes in. Being evicted from a train along with a couple dozen others seemed like the perfect opportunity to strike up a conversation with a random foreigner. He was the only other foreigner around, so why not play the spy game with him? The spy game is where you talk in English with another native speaker in a country where hardly anyone speaks English. It's like a secret code! We could be talking about stamps, or football, or Whitney Houston singles, or whatever. They'll never break our code!

I saw some major super experts at the spy game a few weeks ago. On the way back from this snowboard jump competition thing they did in Seoul, there were 5 deaf (or maybe just hard of hearing) guys having what appeared to be a really involving and fast-flowing conversation in sign language. It was IMPOSSIBLE not to stare. An animated conversation conducted in silence. It was so fucking cool. I will never look that cool playing the spy game. The most interesting part about sign language conversation with many participants: they're always scanning around the circle of people to make sure they aren't missing what anyone is "saying".

Back to Phil. We started talking and we found out we were both headed in the same direction, so we should split the cab fare. He was getting off before me, in Guri, about 7 or 8 minutes cab ride from Deokso, but right along the way. We found a cab as soon as we left the train station, as they were all lined up outside to take advantage of the trains stopping. A cab driver looked at us and revealed himself to have psychic powers by asking "Deokso yuhk?" meaning "Deokso station?" Yes, indeed, Mr. Cab Driver.

During the cab ride I'm asking Phil a lot of questions. I'm intrigued because, although he is a teacher here (like almost all foreigners living here) he is around 40 years old. It's kind of novel to meet someone as old as 30. 40 is downright mysterious.

He tells me that he found out about teaching Korea because of his church in England. It seems his church of choice back home was a Korean church. The pastor was Korean, and so were most of the congregants. Phil volunteered to help some of them out by giving them English lessons. He enjoyed it, and they thought he was good at it, so when he hurt his back and had to quit his previous job, coming to Korea to teach English seemed like a natural fit.

I was intrigued. For a while I was describing myself as agnostic in the sense of "I really don't think there's a God, but I know I can't be sure". But about four months before coming to Korea that changed. At this point, I have almost no idea what I believe. It's all very ambiguous for me, and I can't say I feel certain about anything at all. But I definitely lean towards believing that there is such a thing as a greater purpose to our lives, and I'm also pretty sure that strict materialism (meaning the idea that only what is physical is "real") is wrong. I like the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin. I don't know if I really believe in them, but you should check 'em out.

I wanted to talk to Phil about church. I thought it would be interesting to go and see how I felt. I can't see myself coming to be an adherent of any organized religion, or any sort of religion that has some book they point to and say "There it is. It's all in there." Just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. On the other hand, it could be very moving to go to a place that serves as a center of both faith and community in the lives of many people. I figured I'd get something out of it.

Phil told me he'd love to have me along one day. Talked about how he just feels like something is missing when he hasn't been going to church. It seemed very important to him. I gave him my phone number. Why not?

Well, it turned out he would need that phone number right away. When we got to Guri, he got out of the cab and we had driven off before he remembered to pay his part of the fare. He called me up immediately, sounding very embarrassed and told me he'd pay me back when he saw me again. I said not to worry about it.

Flash forward a couple of months and I've just never felt like calling Phil up. It's still in the back of my mind, but I'm not really thinking about it. I'm on the subway one day, heading home after buying an SNES (hell yes!) when some foreigner across the aisle seems to want to play the spy game with me. I don't want to play, and I'm listening to music, so I just nod at him. At the next stop, the person next to me gets up and the foreigner comes over to me with a 10,000 won note in hand (that's about $10). It's Phil! I didn't recognize him! He hands me the bill and says he never paid me back for the cab. What a man!

Well after that there was just no excuse. The next weekend I could just go ahead and pencil in "going to church" on my daily planner that I don't actually have. Unless you mean my BRAIN!

I met Phil at the subway platform in Guri at about 9 AM the next Sunday. Immediately I had a rush of church nostalgia. Phil was drinking coffee and the smell suddenly transported me back to my childhood. It reminded me instantly of the smell at the tables where all the ladies would gather after the service to chat and drink coffee. Church coffee smells different somehow. Even if it's not church coffee. Even if it's Guri subway platform convenience store coffee, if it's being drunk by someone early Sunday morning it is church coffee, and it smells different.

And unfortunately, that's where the magic ended that day. Well, that might be going a bit far. But it is true that that sudden flooding of an old memory was the most vivid emotional experience of the trip. The sermon was about tithing.

Tithing, for those not familiar with the term, is giving 10% of what you earn to God. That means giving it to the church. This is explicitly stated in the Bible that you are to do this. The pastor made it quite clear (the sermon was in Korean but Phil and I had little radio receivers with earbuds so we could listen to a translation being done by one of the congregants) that the rule about tithing applies to absolutely everyone, and that a man who makes $100 a month has as much obligation to give $10 a month as a man who makes $10,000 a month has to give $1000. This was the topic of the entire sermon. Poor Phil. He apologized to me about our luck after the service. Then he told me this tidbit which was just tragic. He recently convinced another friend of his who is skeptical, or even antagonistic about religion, to come with him to a service at a totally separate church. The sermon that day? It was about tithing. Phil's skeptical friend felt completely validated. The church just wants your money, he said.

Now, I know some of you who are reading are faithful Christians yourselves. I have a sincere question for you (and anyone else who cares to comment, too). When I met Phil the second time, I wondered if that coincidence held meaning. As a person who has no idea what he believes, apparent coincidences are wide-open to interpretation. Maybe there are no coincidences. Maybe coincidences are all that there is, and everything, including the universe is just one big coincidence. I had renewed vigor about the idea of going to church after that second meeting because, hey, maybe it meant something. Maybe it didn't, but maybe it did.

That was a coincidence that seemed to point in one direction, and then I had one that seemed to point in the other. Or rather, Phil had one. Both of his God-curious friends get a sermon on tithing? I went to church plenty of times as a kid and I don't ever remember a sermon about tithing. It's not exactly the first topic pastors want to go to. It's not a very popular one. It doesn't do much to get people excited about going to church, and really, that's what all pastors want. Even if a pastor is just looking to take people's money (which I think is probably a rare pastor indeed. a person with a fraudulent nature and an ability to lie convincingly and con people could make more money with far less effort in lots of other jobs.) their first priority will still be packing those pews. Tithing is, at most, a twice a year type topic. For both of Phil's tag-alongs to pick a day where they'd get this not-at-all-friendly-to-newcomers type message is quite a coincidence itself.

Acknowledging, of course, that it might mean nothing at all, and that all coincidences are just noise, what could it mean if it's more than that? What does a devout Christian make of this? My thought is, if it does have some meaning, or carries some message from the Universe to me, it's that organized religion is probably not where I'm supposed to be looking for answers. I feel like organized religion, with its "here are the answers" appeal, are lacking in mysticism.

But what on Earth could it mean for Phil? I dunno. In any case, I don't think that a coincidence that seems to lead away from church is some kind of effective evidence against the Christian God. Taking the longview, feeling unengaged by a sermon about tithing could be one step on a long roundabout path towards salvation. But it seems strange.

I don't know how to end this post anymore than I knew how to begin it, so I'll just leave you with something I wrote in my notebook a few months ago.

"If there is purpose, I don't know it. If God is trying to tell me something, I haven't been able to make out the words. It's time to make it up."

I hope this post was entertaining or interesting. I can usually assess what I write through other people's eyes pretty well, but I'm totally in the dark this time. My own feelings are too ambiguous. I'd love to see all kinds of comments or questions, on the blog, or e-mail or on skype, in person, or whatever. As always, I love you all.

Randy