Good visit with Omoni

As oftentimes happens with the terminally ill, my MIL is on an uptick this week, and is able to enjoy our visit. It's wonderfull, seeing our children make her old heart so merry and glad, just by their presence. I've been trying to explain this to the kids, how grandchildren have a special gift to make grandparents glad, simply by showing up. The children are pretty grumpy at times, wanting to leave and go play computers games, but I make them stay and sit with halmoni for a decent interval. I keep telling them that later they will be happy that they were able to make their Korean grandmother glad. They don't see it now, but they will understand later, in the fullness of time. Especially when they see the videotape of her laughing over them, squeezing their hands, and caressing their faces. Sorry, but for privacy I won't be posting the vids online.

My MIL is an educated woman, but she put in a lifetime of sacrifice to put her daughters and son through higher education and enabling them to become prominent professionals in their respective fields. It's very lucky that her twilight days are spent surrounded by grateful and attentive children--and, from time to time, cute as a button American grandchildren.

Fashionable Korea

I'm in Gwangju at the moment, near Chonnam National University. While my wife is visiting her mother and sisters, I've been out strolling the grounds of the nearby university. The students are sleek and fashionable, mostly dressed in black. It's uncanny what a strong hold fashion has on them: the same Beatles mop haircuts for the boys, the same black clothes, cut in an assortment of hot fashions, the same rectangular tortoise-shell eyeglasses. It's wrong to say so, but I can barely tell these kids apart, and I'm glad I don't have to.

Stimulus job boost in Massachussets exaggerated

While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Globe review shows that number is wildly exaggerated. Organizations that received stimulus money miscounted jobs, filed erroneous figures, or claimed jobs for work that has not yet started.

And I doubt that the Bay State is altogether unique in this regard. It's hard to create a solid foundation for economic growth when your political philosophy views money as just something to be flung with both hands from the back of a speeding bus.

Via Viking Pundit

School will stop fundraiser that sells higher grades

That pots-&-pans crashing racket you hear is the sound of a school districk suddenly coming to its senses.

Bing now a serious challenger to Google

So it says in this PC World article. However, the only time I see a Bing search show up in my sitemeter is when someone is using it to look for gay porn. Sorry, pervs: the only thing you're going to find here are these old blog posts of mine.

Of course, I've probably just attracted more unwelcome attention to myself. But if Bing is so smart, maybe it'll direct the rough trade traffic elsewhere, after I post this.

Life is a long song

Well, the sad news has finally come around. My mother-in-law is terminally ill, so we're flying back to Korea to see her before it's too late. This lovely rendition of this lovely song seems appropriate. Last time I was in Korea the in-laws surprised me by asking me to sing. I blanked, and managed to croak a few words of The Beatles' "In My Life". If they ask me again this time, I'll offer this:

When you're falling awake and you take stock of the new day,
And you hear your voice croak as you choke on what you need to say,
Well, don't you fret, don't you fear,
I will give you good cheer.

Life's a long song.
Life's a long song.
Life's a long song.

If you wait then your plate I will fill.

As the verses unfold and your soul suffers the long day,
And the twelve o'clock gloom spins the room,
You struggle on your way.
Well, don't you sigh, don't you cry,
Lick the dust from your eye.

Life's a long song.
Life's a long song.
Life's a long song.

We will meet in the sweet light of dawn.

As the Baker Street train spills your pain all over your new dress,
And the symphony sounds underground put you under duress,
Well don't you squeal as the heel grinds you under the wheel.

Life's a long song.
Life's a long song.
Life's a long song.

But the tune ends too soon for us all.

Now this is inspired!

I enjoy Glenn Beck's radio show in moderation, haven't seen much of the TV show. But this satire will forever color it for me from now on. I love impressions, and this is just great.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The 11/3 Project
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Islamic Creationism

The phenomenon has raised concerns among scientists and educators - especially those in Muslim countries and in countries with growing Muslim minorities - who see in it a threat to scientific literacy, a drag on the potential for Muslim countries to build up their languishing scientific research sectors, and as another flashpoint in the Muslim world’s long-running struggle between religion and secularism. Unlike in the West, creationist beliefs are not associated in the Muslim world with religious fundamentalism, but instead are often espoused by members of the mainstream intellectual elite - liberals, by their own lights, who see the expansive, scientific-sounding claims of creationism as tracing a middle way between the guidance of religion and the promise of modern science. Critics of the movement fear that this makes it more likely that creationism will find its way into policies there, especially when the theory of evolution is portrayed among Muslim thinkers, as it often is, as an instrument of Western intellectual hegemony.

Cue Han Solo: "I got a bad feeling about this..."

How to be a good K-blogger

Ex-pat blogger Roboseyo has some good advice on better blogging. It's geared towards K-blogging, but a lot of the more general tips are well worth heeding. In fact, I think I will try to heed them. My health problems are in abeyance, and things are going better at work. So, maybe I can try to make this blog more worth looking in on, from time to time.

The Daily Show goes to Iran

Jon Stewart's crew went to Iran and didn't get eaten alive, therefore Iran is just a misunderstood victim of the U.S. propaganda machine. Wonder if the hipper-than-thou jerks spoke with any of these Iranians?

Random Korea reflections, 8

I was hiking in the brushy hills behind my sister-in-law's luxury condo in Gwangju. It was hot, I was sweaty, and when I came to a clearing with a small playground, I found a bench away from the other people there and sat, panting, and staring at the ground. Soon, I noticed a small commotion on the ground a little distance away. Something white and something black were rolling around. It was a white spider, and a wasp attempting to capture it, to feed to its larva. It looked very much like this:



They tussled, and the spider broke free and made a run for it. The wasp took flight, acquired the target with its large compound eyes, and pounced again. They rolled into a clench again, until the wasp managed to ram its stinger home. The spider, on its back, unclenched its legs, like a fist slowly opening. The wasp scooted around the inert spider, in that abrupt way insects have, and stung it again for good measure. Or maybe it was laying its egg inside, I don't know. It started to drag the spider up a blade of grass, and seemed to dither quite a bit doing that. So, I got up and headed back the way I came.

I don't know why this little scene has stayed with me so long, other than because I've always loved nature. And I think wasps are superb little predators.

Wounded warriors tell their stories

This seems to be from a longer program, anyone know what?

Finally took the plunge...

I finally, after all the decades of being on my anti-television high horse, have signed up for cable TV. Yes, I am now actually paying real money to watch television. I pick up about 20 broadcast channels--in high definition, nowadays--but now I am paying to view the same channels and a couple of dozen others, most of which I will never tune in to.

So what made me do this? Why, it's for the children, of course. Mine are too old for PBS kids stuff anymore, and there aren't any shows for their age on broadcast TV, to speak of. It's not like when I was growing up, when I could watch Saturday morning cartoons, and also the Three Stooges on weekdays before school. All that stuff has decamped to pay TV.

So, out of consideration of my kids' need to have a reasonable grounding in American youth culture, I've shelled out for them to watch Nick, Cartoon Network, and Disney. Now they won't feel like little foreigners when their friends are talking about what happened on Total Drama Island yesterday. And I confess: I would have been a big fan of Spongebob Squarepants if it had been on when I was a kid. If I'm lucky, I might get to watch the History Channel from time to time, after they go to bed.

Philadelphia Library to close?

Well, this is drastic. It sounds like they're trying to force the state's hand, like the National Park Service closing the Washington Monument when they're threatened with budget cuts.

And when did Philadelphia become such a blighted slum?

Philly has an amazing number of poorly-educated adults. Sadly 22 percent of the 1.1 million adults who live here don't even have basic literacy skills. Almost 400,000 adults have not earned a high school diploma.

Who sucked the spirit and vision out of all those people?

Update: looks like they're going to escape the ax after all. Whew!

Trapped Chinese Miners

Every so often I'll search "trapped miners" in Google's news aggregator. It always comes back with stories about trapped Chinese miners. Shows how much the worker's paradise cares about the workers....

Update: An explosion at an illegal coal mine killed 35 miners in central China’s Henan province Tuesday and left another 44 men trapped, the government said.

*Illegal* coal mine? How'd that happen?

14 Cows For America

NPR had a heartwarming segment this morning, about that Masai tribe which donated cattled to the U.S. after 9/11: 14 Cows For America. I had forgotten about that act of friendship, and how touched I was by it at the time.

(Picture swiped from http://www.raw-milk-facts.com/ )

Random Korea reflections, 7

One enduring image of Korean traffic is of the scooters. They come out of nowhere, zip between cars and between pedestrians on the sidewalk, and ignore traffic lights. And if there's a girl in back, she's riding sidesaddle.

Weather idiots

What kind of idiots bring their seven year old child to the rocky coast to watch a hurricane, as if they're visiting the effin' IMAX or something? These kind of idiots.

Well, that didn't take long...

...At work we're back to our old pattern of back-stabbing office politics. I had to pop tranquilizers yesterday and today. I'm dealing with some difficult subordinates, and they are determined to make trouble for me in retribution. Ugghhh... Memories of my Korea trip are still sustaining me, though. Plus, I got on a workable exercise and diet plan, and have lost ten of the twenty-five pounds I would like to lose by next summer. So, there's that.

Random Korea Reflections, 6

I've been following a number of blogs by expats in Korea since I got back. Many of them go on about the rudeness or at least tactlessness of the Koreans they meet. I guess I have to count myself lucky, since I encountered almost nothing of that sort myself. I drew a few stares, but--so I reasoned--it was because I turned up in residential areas, in a city where foreigners are not so common as in Seoul and Busan. Plus, I usually had my children in tow, who are cute enough to make you mess your britches.

Early some mornings I went out of the house we were staying in, down the winding residential street, to a small playground, where I let the kids play. From time to time people would cut through the playground, and give us a long look. But there were not a few smiles from the ajummas too, as they took in the sight of the giant foreigner appa pushing the kids on the swingset.

One morning an ajumma was sitting in the gazebo where I usually sit, so I sat down beside her. I offered her one of my water bottles, which she refused. She gestured at the kids on the monkeybars and said something. I had no idea, so I just replied, "Hankook umma, Migook appa." Korean mother, American father. She tried to talk with me some more, leaving me increasingly embarrassed, when the kids came over asking to go back to the house. I rose and bowed to her, and she to me, and parted ways.

Actually, I think the longest stare I got the whole trip was from a white women, whom I passed when leaving a Dunkin Donuts.