Twenty-ten

If this is your optometric diagnosis, you need a monocle.
Ten is half of twenty - how many times has this happened in our modern dating system? Off hand I can think of years 63, 84, 105 etc. Last century? Half of 19...so did not happen, I guess. 1809 was the last, unless I'm mistaken.
SA and soccer fever - good luck, as I see everyone is climbing on the bandwagon of offering accomodation...
The end of a decade.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Johannesburg Daily Photo(s): Hyundai Sky Park

I just had to post this link. Johannesburg is my birthplace, and Sandton was my shopping area for many years. And guess what - Hyundai is there, upgrading waht used to be a fairly ratty open expanse into this....good? Bad? Until I see more than just photos, I won't judge, but for the saffers in Korea, we'll feel right at home in both countries now...LOL.


Johannesburg Daily Photo(s): Hyundai Sky Park

Baking bread

Turning the hard seeds of grains into edible food is surely one of the oldest, and in many ways, one of the most satisfying things to do in terms of nutrition. And, may I say it, the best meals I've ever had have been something simple along the lines of bread and cheese, bread fresh from an oven with a cup of coffee or tea, or simply bread and water.

And of course, there is such a variety of bread - sourdough, rye, milk, ciabatta, pumpernickel...

One of the things that has happened since coming to Korea is the change I've seen in the bakery, or have I? Have my tastes simply adapted to theirs? Sorry, let me start at the beginning of this story.

Coming from Cape Town, with its huge multi-cultural population, you are able to fill a basket, nay a bushel, with bread. Soft, hard, fried, baked - all shapes and sizes. And, dare I say it, some of the tastiest options available in the wheat to bread range. Cape Seed Loaf, white dinner rolls, ciabatta, naan, rye - both dark and light, vetkoek (deep fried rolls) and the good old traditional standby, the sandwich loaf. In Korea, at least at first, my complaint and that of many of my feloow expats, was the lack of bread! See, in Korea you have the word 'pang' - and this covers bread, cake and any other thing made in a bakery!

Problem was, it tasted like that as well. The bread was fluffy and too sweet for bread, the cake was fluffy and not sweet enough to be cake. Moreover, if you bought a baguette (if you found a place that made them like the ubiquitously named Paris Baguette chain of bakeries), you got given a tub of the same sweetened cream that got spread on the cakes to have with it.

However, as I say, things seem to have changed. These days the bread is more like bread, and the cakes - well, they look really good but are still just whipped air and cream. In Seoul, especially, there are a lot of places these days where you can actually get some sourdough bread, and in Iteawon is a little pizza place that does proper ciabatta.

As you have gathered by now, I love bread! I also like baking. And if you head over to my other blog, South Korean Experiences, you'll see I recently made some apple jelly. Which called for some really good bread. Without me heading into Seoul.

I decided to try my hand, once again, at baking. Now don't get me wrong, I have baked many loaves of bread and they always satisfy me in some way, even if only in taste, but I usually rush the process and so I never end up with perfectly risen bread, something I'd share with someone else. They taste good, they just don't look very good.

I decided that what I was lacking was patience, so this time I tried it. I dissolved the dried yeast in warm water with a little sugar and salt, and set it close to the heater and waited - yes, waited - until I saw bubbles and foam. About an hour or so? Then I mixed this with my flour (I did half and half rye and white), some more sugar and salt and some olive oil. This got kneaded, then set aside for 10 hours - the time it took me to get to work and get back home again. The risen dough got punched down, shaped into the loaf tin, then set aside for another 3 hours, by which time it had doubled in volume (yay!) and it finally went into the oven for an hour.

The warm end crust was eaten fresh out of the oven with some butter and jelly, and this morning the first slice was eaten with coffee...and it was everything I had hoped for. It not only tasted good, but actually looked like bread.

So, in future, my bread recipe will call for a generous helping of patience, as well as all the other stuff I'll be putting into it.

"tis the season...."

We are, in some way, still in the the season of holly and jolly and as, Terry Pratchett says via Susan Death, other things ending in 'olly'.

I suppose at the back of our minds the spectre that lurks at all feasts lingers, but for many it really is not a merry time, or even a time at all that they want to remember - family dying, hunger, poverty, oppression - and yet they are forced to confront these memories again and again as each year rolls by. What do they do on these days? When all around cheer and they are exhorted in the media to celebrate, what do they feel? Where do they go to escape the incessant commercial pressure of the day and the season?

Even though many have blogged and commented about how, in Korea, Christmas and Easter are not really celebrated to the same extent as in America etc., there is still a lot of it all around - in stores, on TV - enough at least to cause pangs in those who live with loss and grief.

I wish them the waters of the Lethe at this time!

...and selection.

One of the major cornerstones of the faith I was raised in but do not profess anymore is the idea of free choice. We can choose good or evil, etc.

One of the reasons why I no longer profess that faith, or indeed consider any religion to have a claim on what they call my soul, is that while they tell me I have this free choice, they also told me that I had, simply be being born, chosen evil, and in fact, could never, of my own volition, choose good.

OK - so if I'm bound to choose evil, and have already done so, why should I even try to be good? As in a good girl, a good daughter, a good citizen...well, you get the idea that I thought their logic faulty and irrational.

However, enough of the religious implications of free choice, let me rather talk about the exercising of this in the marketplace.

More than any other era in history, we live in the consumer society. We no longer produce simply what we need to keep us warm, well fed and safe, no, the majority of goods out there have the sole purpose of entertaining us.

And here choice really does enter the equation in a big way - rejection of models, books, movies etc. are so much part and parcel of everyday life we are not even aware of the fact that our decisions, our choices, are impacting on someone's life.

The JK Rowling story is well known - truly rags to riches, but how many other struggling writers are there, whose books are also on the remainder piles, and who never get chosen by someone who starts the ball rolling by raving about how fantastic the book is? Similarly, how many movies that are every bit as great as Gone with the Wind end up straight to DVD? And take their director and cast with them into obscurity?

How ready would we be to make a choice if we knew that by rejecting an item, any item, we are perhaps ruining a life?

Interviews...

Any situation in which a group of people or one person has to choose between another group for a winner, a leader, an employee, is fraught with problems.

The first of these is personal prejudice. Even though the criteria might be a set of skills, and that it may be very clear that a certain person among the selectees meets those criteria better than any of the others, prejudice may kick in and, if the person among the selectors is powerful enough, their prejudice may decide the selection.

Another is the criteria used to select - are people really aware of the skills needed? Do they know how to measure those skills?

The final problem I see is that random factors may influence the process - a person may be well qulified, personable and ideally suited, but arrives late due to a subway drivers strike, or reports to the wrong office, or has received outdated information about what to bring to the interview.

These musings follow on the treatment my daughter received at a university she applied to. She was approached by a professor from the university, and invited to attend an interview. She then received instructions about what to prepare, that were superseded a mere 24 hours before the interview, and which she ignored since she had been given the instructions at the university offices and thought these new instructions to be unrealistic (they involved getting hold of a textbook!). She was also told she would have 15 minutes to teach a demo lesson, which was cut to 5 minutes, during which she was interrupted a number of times.

Needless to say, she did not get the job. This, even though, based on the skill set required according to the advert, she was the best for the job!

Etiquette

...but there's some special time to forget etiquette! Never smile at a crocodile...

These lines from a famous Rolf Harris song (apparently it was due to be in the movie Peter Pan but got cut), seemed to apply recently.

The situation I found myself in was this - having taken pains to make sure that my two co-teachers and their husbands would be able to attend the end-of-year Sakornet party, I duly proceeded to book the tickets at 75000 won per person. Only to be told a day before the party that they would no longer be able to come! And could I cancel the tickets.

No, I couldn't! The whole idea is that the pre-booking is to ensure that there is food prepared and tables laid etc. and hotels generally don't allow cancellations on stuff like that!

OK, so given the salary I earn, 150000 won is not that much. However, to have wasted it in this way really drove me nuts. If I had that money to waste, I would be sending it to my family in SA, where it is worth over R1000 - think what they could have done with it! Or it could have gone towards paying for the room.

Coming from a culture where, if you accept an invitation like this, especially well ahead of time, you basically have made a firm commitment and other invitations have to be set aside, this kind of rudeness is, I suppose, what is meant by culture shock.

On my other blog...

Does anyone else also try to keep three or four blogs going at the same time, and end up, as I do, falling further and further behind with each of them?

I guess this falls under the good intentions that pave that famed road to hell (which is, by the way, still my favourite Chris Rea song). You know, the idea was that each blog would allow me to indulge in a separate part of my life? This one was to be the general one for venting, sharing  and otherwise discussing frustrations, one is for sharing thoughts about teaching methods and lessons, one serves as a general photo blog of my time here in South Korea and the last is the place where I'm publishing the Tarot card deck I've painted.

That last one is the furthest behind at this stage, and I really do need to bring it up to date, but before that I have to do some serious scanning to get all 74 cards scanned in and on file!

And what with applications for University posts going out and me sending copies of a stack of papers on a regular basis, the copier/scanner is far too busy with other things to bother with cards!

Maybe if I land a post I'll be able to spend more time on these things.

Congratulation?

One of the most pervasive errors in English here is the use of the word congratulations - it keeps being used as congratulation on cakes, cards and in conversation.

This started me thinking, why do we, in the English world, offer each other either congratulations or condolences, plural? Why not a single congratulation or condolence? We can offer words of congratulation and words of condolence, but then the plural rests in the use of words. Does it perhaps rest in the fact, that, to be grammatically correct, we need to append a or the, since these words are, after all, nouns?

So, if I'm not that happy about your achievement, can I offer you a congratulation?

Liberty and responsibility

I am reading a very interesting book at the moment, dealing with the rise of liberty as a concept in western society.

I am purely at the initial stages of the book, and so have not yet formed an opinion as to how accurate the thesis is, but it started me thinking about the concept of liberty, and how, to some extent, the idea of responsibility had been abrogated with respect to this concept.

Let's talk about liberty. The idea of freedom is intoxicating - being free to live life the way you want to, not having to answer to anyone, free to think and say and do what you want. Most of us consider ourselves free - we live life freely and without being a slave to anyone. Yet, if you really think about it, what does our freedom consist of?

If we broke a law, we'd be imprisoned. If we gave in to our baser impulses (and we all have them!), we'd be rapists, murderers, thieves etc. We do not live exactly the way we want to - we conform to the norms of the society we live in. In that sense we are slaves, slaves to the idea of civil behaviour.

However, so ingrained has become the idea of freedom of speech that people can stand in the streets calling for Obama to be assassinated! Or publish blogs calling for abortionists to be strung from lampposts, blacks to be castrated etc.

Which brings me to responsibility. Unless we temper freedom with responsibility, where we consider the consequences of our deeds and are prepared to bear those consequences, we cannot really have a free society. And, moreover, that responsibility should not be 'I killed him but I can live with it' kind of responsibility, it should be the kind that asks what effect your actions will have on those around you, on the community and on the world.

Tests and short-term memory

It is said that we humans can hold only three items in short term memory at any one time. So, there is a continual shuffling of material between short and long term memory, all happening at incredible speeds, which is why our thoughts can seem so chaotic at times.

Yet, if we think of this in the light of helping students to study more effectively, we certainly would not overwhelm them with mock test papers to do, but instead would give them three concepts to study, test those extensively, then do three more, test those etc. and repeat the formula the next day with the exact same set of concepts, but different tests.

In this way, we would utilise short-term memory most effectively, promote the retention of information as the short term memory repeatedly shuttles the information to long term and back again, and prepare our students for tests far better than we do if we simply have them write mock tests, give them the answers and then proceed to test them for real.

Building, weather and kids

The school is adding a gym, and so we've had about four months of ground-levelling, digging, cement pouring, scaffolding etc. until we are now at the stage where the skeleton of the building is receiving the flesh, so to speak.

Bricklayers are building up the walls in between the concrete pillars, roofers are laying panels on the steel girders and the sound of hammers echoes through the building.

It's getting to the nice part of autumn in terms of weather - lovely cool breezes during the day, and just cold enough at night to need a cover but not uncomfortable if you kick it off. If only I could find a job that allowed me to travel around the globe, staying in this zone all the way! I like autumn more than spring, because the green is still around, the fruits are there ripe and ready and it seems more leisurely than spring.

The kids are being typically Korean about it - Koreans like living in hothouses. They are horrified that I'm walking around in short sleeves still, and that I don't seem to mind the coolness!

Housework is hard work

In this humid, hot climate that is the South Korean summer / autumn, you have to pretty much wipe and spray with either bleach or a mold remover unless you want to live inside a penicillin experiment.

Now, I am not a good housekeeper, and a lot of my wiping is surface stuff, but when you open your cutlery drawer and see green spots on the forks, you know you have to do a major clean-up.

So, out came the gloves, the bleach, several cloths, the bowls and the brushes, and I started - cupboard by cupboard I unpacked, wiped, dried, washed what had been inside and then repacked. After twenty minutes I was dripping with sweat, by an hour I was a sweat machine - dripping all over.

So I decided to take regular breaks for sticking my face into the airstream of that dreaded machine of death - the fan (Koreans will tell you very earnestly that to leave a fan running all night will kill you, since they 'suck all the air out of the room'), or to splash cold water over myself.

In this fashion I managed to clean the kitchen and bathroom, thoroughly demolding them, and I got the mold wiped from the cupboard in the bedroom, but I still have to clean that room thoroughly - shifting furniture, wiping, bleaching and drying - and its gonna be hard work!

But that got me thinking - maybe I can start a cleaning service where I don't pay the help, they pay me! Instead of going to gym, just come and clean a house - more calories burned and the satisfaction of leaving behind a sparkling house!

Writing in the void

I find myself wondering at times whether anyone but me is reading this, just as I wondered whether anyone else but me was watching what I had put on YouTube. Then I realise that it does not matter - I am, after all, using this as a way of putting down my thoughts and my feelings.

If someone does read it, finds it amusing, controversial or in any other way it stirs them, then that is a bonus.

It is, however, sometimes useful to get feedback - so if you are reading, drop me a line, even if it is to tell me you hate it!

Sundays

I must say this morning I really could do with being able to pop down to the Waterfront in Cape Town, set myself down at one of the many cafes and order a big English breakfast while reading the Sunday Times!

Comfort zones come in many shapes and sizes, and breaking free of them is not always easy. For instance, I was sure that moving into a gypsy kind of lifestyle, my predeliction for clutter would be ameliorated, however, I find myself having to pick my way through bags, books and knick-knacks! I'm due for another de-cluttering, and fairly soon!

Some other comfort zones may include what you eat, who you read, what music you listen to etc. Of course, being pattern seekers, we tend to also be most comfortable when we live inside a pattern, a routine, a set of behaviours.

The age of a society

One of the blogs I follow posted about some mistreatment of a bear cub on a Korean TV show, and while I agree that the footage is pretty terrible, with terror evident, and that the obligatory Korean sound track of oohs and ahs and laughter is as terrible, I realized one thing. Maybe a society can have an age - some are infants, others children, and then adolescents and adults.

What would characterize the child? Well, most children have a distinct lack of empathy as illustrated in the above incident. The fact that animals generally get badly treated, and that their interactions with each other tend to be violent and physical, indicates that Korea is perhaps a child.

However, considering America and that they find so many of the humiliating and painful incidents depicted on America's funniest videos, well, funny, they have to rank right up there.

Are there any nations that can be considered adults? Who behave responsibly? I can think of only one, the Swiss. They stayed neutral in WWII, offering help and succour to wounded of both sides, they are trusted as the world's bankers (and some might argue with me that this gives them no credibility, since much of the money is stolen or tainted), and they have a low crime rate while upholding democracy.

Swine flu and other infections...

There are some things that will always amaze me, and one of these is the way in which people will react to a perceived threat as opposed to how they blithely live with actual ones. There was an article many years ago in New Scientist that discussed how people will not see that crossing a street has a greater risk factor than jumping out of an airplane with a parachute on, and other similar examples.

Since reading that article I have seen numerous examples of this in action, most notably in the field of medical risks. Forgive me, but I'm going to use some dance steps to illustrate just how ridiculous these were and are. To name just a few, there have been the 'Mad-cow disease panic boogie', the 'We're all gonna die of avian flu waltz', the 'Terrorists are going to post letters with anthrax in two-step' and now the 'Mexican flu is gonna kill us mambo'.

Let's put the latest and the previous flu virus outbreak into some perspective. Nearly 2.5 million (that's 2500000) people have died of TB in 2008. That's according to the World Health Organization's report. Over 5 million have died from malaria. OK, so malaria is not transmitted through contact with the infected person, but TB spreads in exactly the same way as flu does - an infected person coughs, sneezes or even just breathes in an enclosed space where others are and they can get infected. Compare that with the fact that in 2008 only 9 people died of avian flu. And that so far, worldwide, we have had just a little over 600 deaths and only about 120000 confirmed cases of the new dread disease, swine flu. Hell, more people die of the ordinary old garden variety of flu just in the USA (estimated between 30 and 40 thousand people).

Do I think that people should now drop all precautions against swine flu? Should we all just ignore it and return to normal? Not at all - washing your hands, practicing good hygiene, staying home when you are feeling unwell or getting treatment right away are good things to do. And that goes for TB infections as well.

All I'm saying is that we should drop the unreasoning panic about this new 'threat', as illustrated by the cancellation of the Choir Competition that was due to take place this week here in Korea. And that the SA Youth Choir, when they heard about this while en route, chose to spend a miserable 48 hours at Dubai airport rather than fly on to Korea and spend their time until they could get flights back to SA in a comfortable hostel, because 'they are not setting foot in a country where there is swine flu.'

Grading on the curve

I've completed the 'speaking test' for two out of the three grades here in middle school, and will complete the remaining grade tomorrow.

As we were giving feedback to the completed grades, I once again realised just how futile my efforts to educate are, given the following:

Points scored in main test Points Awarded Points scored in speaking test Points Awarded

16 - 20 20 6 - 7 10

13 - 15 19 4 - 5  9

10 - 12 18 2 - 3  8

 7 -  9 17 0 - 1  7

 0 - 6 16

From this it can be seen that a student who has scored 0 on both tests will still have 23 out of a possible 30 points! If this is how the English grading works, I'm pretty sure that the other subjects follow suit.

Why, oh why, should anyone try to learn in such circumstances? Those students who love learning for its own sake are the 30 out of 30 students, but for how long can they remain motivated by that? They end up expending their efforts on the subjects they love, and blow off the rest since they will pass anyway!

And, even worse, the attitude to a test being meaningless carries over until they are then confronted with one that does, and then the stress sets in and we have students killing themselves because of the failure they were set up for.

hagwons

So my friend the American warrior poet finally was fired by his boss, the hagwon owner, after a long and bitter battle between them.

A lot of us saw the signs and basically got Scot to hang in there, forcing the owner to sever the contract and thus having to pay the penalties such as giving Scot a months' salary. 

All this got me thinking about the various economic systems and how capitalism seems to be the system that is outlasting the rest, at least as far as our modern society goes. Yet, will it truly last in the long run?

The idea that each man gets rewarded according to how hard he/she works and how much financial risk they assume is, like most theories, great on the face of it. And, so far, it is working. Despite the fact that the risk-taker (owner, manager etc.) seems to take a short-term view of the labour pool.

What do I mean? Well, case in point - Scot will certainly spread the word that this hagwon cannot be trusted, the word will spread among others that it cannot be trusted, and as the reputation wanes, so will the profits, and eventually the risk taker will end up losing all.

Sure, the business may outlast a few changes of staff, but eventually a business that treats its labour badly will do the same to its clients, and then it is only time before it falls into total disrepute and bankruptcy.

Unfortunately, of course, the cupidity of human nature is such that socialism has failed and no clear alternatives to the 'dog eat dog' world of capitalism has emerged.

Icons

How ironic that two of THE icons of the late seventies and early eighties, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson have both died, almost within hours of each other.

Farrah, she of the hair and teeth and tan, golden and lean, every young male's fantasy and every young woman's object of envy, died of cancer. And how disturbing is it that the news reports are not only specifying the type of cancer, but are adding that little rider - usually acquired from sexual activity! And, at least in the NY Times, she is a sidebar, while...

...over on center stage, the king is dead, long live the king! Michael Jackson is reported dead of a heart attack, and the eulogies are there from family, friends, music moguls etc.

Now of course I appreciate that Michael was the bigger star, which probably accounts for the discrepancy, but is it only due to that? Forgive me for trotting out a feminist rant, but, if Michael had not died, would Farrah have had a front page spread? Or would she still just be a sidebar?

How do we measure their respective worth? Certainly in terms of fortune, Jackson wins hands down. In terms of notoriety he does too. So maybe we should ask, if another pop icon, such as Britney Spears, had died, given her notoriety as compared to that of Ms. Fawcett, would she have graced center stage?

Someone recently suggested that happiness is how many people tell your story once you are dead. I'm sure Michael Jackson is a happy man by this definition.

All work?

There is a mysterious thing that happens when we study something, then leave it and do something else. Know what I'm talking about?

It's as if, during the time you are not thinking about the new stuff, it somehow settles into your brain, and then, when you pick up the book or listen to the tape, suddenly it's all so familiar. And, you suddenly see connections you did not see while studying.

As teachers, therefore, it behooves us to grant our students time to do this. Time to go away and not even think about what they've studied, but to play.

Maybe this is where the old saying: 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.', comes from?

Wednesdays' child

According to the old rhyme, the child born on a Wednesday is full of woe.

Why exactly, is not clear. All the other days get reasonable things, some get great things assigned to them - Monday is beauty, Tuesday gets grace, Thursday will travel, Friday is kind, Saturday will work hard, Sunday gets the whole package of blithe and bonny and gay - so why is Wednesday the day for crying?

And, of course, it does not mean the rest of us don't get our share of woe.

Of course, this is just as arbitrary as thinking that all whites are racist, all blacks are lazy or violent, all Jews are grasping, all Asians are cunning etc. etc. The stereotypes are always there and are always arbitrary. How can we break free?

Bread

The transformation of some kind of grain (wheat, rice, corn etc.) into a loaf of bread by grinding it, adding water, letting it ferment, then baking it is one of the oldest of the kitchen crafts, and also, dare I say it, one of the most satisfying.

A truly great loaf of bread, hot from the oven, is surely one of the most wonderful things to eat - the crisp or chewy crust, the soft center gently aerated and smelling of sugars, yeast and flour - no wonder I used to hollow out a fresh loaf before my mom could get it home!

The bread of my childhood was a standard white sandwich loaf - square with a crisp crust and robust insides - just right to hold chicken mayonnaise or be spread with Marmite. The taste of this bread is still to some extent my touchstone when I judge other breads - does it have the same bite, the same flavour?

Korean bread falls far short from this standard, although they have suddenly learnt to make baguettes, and these will do in a pinch.

However, I've developed two recipes that I use to bake my own bread as and when needed. One is the traditional labour of love - kneading, resting, proving etc. and you should start this about 12 hours before you want to eat it; while the other is an almost instant bread, needing about 2 hours, including baking time.

First the instant bread.

Measure out two measures (cups, bowls, handfuls, whatever you have available) of flour. I mix white bread flour and wholewheat in equal proportions. Mix in about 1 tsp salt (more if you like salty bread), 1 tsp sugar and 2 tsp instant yeast. Boil some water and let it cool until you can dip a finger in without being scalded. Fill the same measure you used for the flour with this water and add to the flour mix. Stir with a fork or a heavy duty whisk until it is all mixed. This is quite a soft dough, very sticky, so dust your hands with flour when you do the next stage. Also check that it will hold its shape to some extent (not runny). Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius, oil a baking sheet, then scoop the dough from the bowl onto the sheet and form it into a round or long shape, depending on you. Bake for 1 hour or until the loaf sound hollow when you tap the bottom.

Next, the traditional loaf.

Use two measures white bread flour, one measure wholewheat flour and one measure rye flour. Mix this with 2 tsp salt, 4 tsp sugar and 3 tsp instant yeast. Boil some water and let it cool to where it won't scald your finger but is still hot to the touch. Using the same measure as the flour, put in 1/2 a measure water and add 4 tbsp good virgin olive oil or grapeseed oil. Make a hollow in the flour mix and add the liquid. Work the liquid into the flour until all the flour is absorbed into the dough. If needed, add a splash or two more water, but be careful - this should not be a wet dough. Now comes the kneading - at least ten minutes or more of turning, punching, pulling, and otherwise mixing the dough to activate the gluten. Form the dough into a ball, place it in a greased bowl, grease the top of the dough and cover with cling-film and a damp cloth. Place it in a warm spot and leave it overnight or for twelve hours. The following day you can shape it into a loaf in a loaf tin, make it into small balls for buns, shape it into a cottage loaf - whatever you like. Then leave it again for about an hour, preferably two to prove. Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for an hour or more, again until the loaf sounds hollow when tapped.

Both of these recipes can also be used to make a deep-fried version (vetkoek) by dropping balls of them into hot deep oil if you want.

Add things such as seeds, raisins, nuts etc. if you want to the dry mix.

Enjoy!

Complaints

My friend the warrior poet, as he styles himself, has been in Korea for six months now and has a litany of complaints that he regularly rattles off to me, using these two phrases:

But wait, it gets better...

And then....

It made me revisit my first month in Korea via the journal entries I made at that time. Here are some of the entries.

26 March 2007

Well, I’ve been in Korea for just over a week now, and exactly one week in Seoshin. My arrival here last Monday was compounded of equal measures confusion, misinformation and Korean efficiency.

27 March 2007

Once I had settled on a flat (the second option) we had to furnish it – in my contract there is a list of items (headed sample inventory) but taken as literal gospel by my hosts. No substitutions allowed so instead of a bedside lamp, which would be really useful, I have a tiny little toaster oven! At least I have a really useful fridge and microwave oven, and a two-ring gas cooker! All these appliances and the actual bed, wardrobe etc. had to be bought in Sanyong, a bigger centre, to which Mr. Hong drove me. Here we also bought a duvet, a sheet (which is really like a very flat comforter with plush on one side and linen on the other, and which just lies flat on the bed, no tucking under!) and a pillow. Since all the furniture would only be delivered the next day I spent the night tucked up on the floor in my new duvet on top of my sheet. The thought kept running through my mind as I tried to get comfortable – I’m getting too old for this...

2 April 2007

Well well well – I never thought to say this but boy, does SA have efficient banks in comparison to Korea! Maybe it was just the language difference, or maybe its just me, but a relatively straightforward transaction such as remitting money to a foreign bank took on the aspect of Sisyphus’ stone. I’m hoping that Internet banking, which I have now signed up for, will solve this problem and that I will be able to transfer money fairly painlessly in future. 

5 May 2007

As to yesterday’s teaching – after nearly three months of fairly advanced reading, lots of sentence construction (all on paper, though) and lots of vocabulary (all via translation) we played Simon says with the grade one class. Out of them all (51) only about ten students could actually do what the sentence ‘Simon says touch your nose’ or any other body part instructed! It just goes to show that the grammar translation method of language teaching is great for producing literates, but not speakers of a language.

Unfortunately the worst part of it is that the schools remain wedded to it (it’s how they teach Chinese, too) and as far as they are concerned it’s all about whether the children pass the tests!

So, to borrow a phrase - 'wait, it gets better!' Although I have come to terms with a lot, and I live quite happily here after two years, some things have not changed - the teachers still translate everything while the kids still struggle with the most basic of sentences, the bank system is no better or worse and the people are still as efficient in one sense and confused and confusing in the other as ever...

Ideas worth spreading

Courtesy of TED, ideas worth spreading, I spent the past twenty minutes listening to Ken Robinson talking about the future of education.

Please please please - go there. Look at it and at some of the other videos they have there. It will certainly make you think.

The link is www.ted.com - easy enough to find.

Clothes

The temperatures here are finally in the 'sweaty' range, which meant that I could pack up the winter clothes for storage and break out the summer clothes.

One product that I have finally found to do the job it is advertised to do is the vacuum storage bag. I bought these last autumn and packed away my summer clothes in them, and have just used them for the winter clothes and bedding. What a pleasure! A whole closet full of stuff reduced to a single shelf!

So this morning was a check and discard sort of morning - what did I not wear during winter? Toss it out! I suppose all of us make these impulse buys. We walk past a clothing store and see a blouse, jacket or shirt in our colour scheme, and we buy it. Sometimes these work our really well - a jersey in brown with big purple and green leaves on it has turned out to be my favourite this past winter; but sometimes they are disasters. A green blouse with rhinestones and a belt just under the bust is definitely going out!

Yesterday in Iteawon I did shop for shoes, so out with some things and in with the new. I bought some sandals for all-terrain, wet or dry conditions (you know the ones with the velcro straps and plastic soles), and some lightweight sneakers in green and blue checks - very funky. I also got a speedo one-piece swimsuit to frolic around Caribbean Bay in once Sean gets here.

Basically I am now all set and the summer clothes are hanging on the dryer, ready to start wearing.

Perceptions

Having spoken about religion, wars and other such stuff with my daughter at six this morning, I thought about this word perception.

How much of what we perceive is real is open to a lot of debate - for instance, we all have a literal 'blind spot' of stuff that our eye really does not see because of its construction, and our brains 'fill in' the blank using cues and memory of what should go there. But maybe this blind spot extends to more than just the physical world.

At the heart of the human experience lie these things: food, shelter, company, love and sex, birth, health, death. What makes these into culture is how we eat and what we eat, how we build and what we build etc. In other words, culture is in the details.

Which made me think - the proverb says that the devil is in the details. And what do we fight wars about? Not whether we worship God or not, but how we worship seems to be a major issue these days.

I can understand the struggle over resources to some extent - we want to live and will fight to do so, but less understandable are the ideological battles - at least for me.

What do you perceive as evil?

Craftsmanship and painstaking

Once a week I get to teach a whole 45 minutes of 'my' lessons - in the schedule these are shown as 'supplementary' classes, and for quite a while I taught these in the following way:

Each grade at this present school is split into two groups, so we have 1-1 and 1-2, etc.

Only the first and third grade get supplementary classes, and the whole third grade and the whole first grade have to be accommodated in the space of one period.

So I would spend 22 minutes with group 1, then dash to the classroom of group 2 and spend 22 minutes there. The two Korean co-teachers would each be with a group, and use the time to drill the grammar.

Lately, we have changed this - one week I see group 1 for 45 minutes, then next week I see group 2. This has allowed me to prepare more kineasthetic classes for them. However, the latest such class, where I asked the students to use ribbon, paper, crayons, stickers and glue to create a birthday invitation (the curriculum is focusing on the 'will you come...? I will...' grammar construction, so this was a nice way of getting them to write it out as well as reinforcing the use of 'at' and 'on' - at my house, on the 14th etc. It also gives me a chance to spend time talking to them about what they are doing while they are nice and relaxed.

I observed the following phenomenon - those who are good students are also those who took the most pains to make interesting and carefully crafted invitations. Those who are poor students generally just did a scribble or made a mess in terms of glue all over, jagged cuts, bad writing etc.

The idea of the craftsman who patiently and painstakingly makes something out of nothing, even something of the mind, is alien to the poor student. The idea of instant is in their minds, and if a thing cannot be attained in an instant, they give up on it.

Teacher's Day

May seems to be the month, at least in Korea, when groups of people are honored - we had Worker's day on the 1st of May, then Children's day on the 5th, followed by Parent's day on 8th and today, the 15th, Teacher's day.

I wonder if we could start a movement to have this particular day acknowledged worldwide as a public holiday? A day when teacher's are thought of with pride, with acknowledgement of their contribution?

Of course, now I must play Devil's advocate a bit - there are truly terrible teachers out there, and taking pride in them hardly seems possible. Acknowledging a teacher who bullies children, or calls them stupid, or ignores them is difficult to do.

However, isn't this just as true of all those other days mentioned? There are lazy workers, bad parents and terrible children. In any group of people you will find the bad apples. But, as the saying goes, don't let them spoil the whole barrel.

To those teachers out there who teach in schools where there are hardly any books, where kids sit on the ground, who teach with passion and commitment - happy Teacher's Day!

Learning

You know how we say some people never learn? Usually when they do something so stupid we want to smack them on the head and go 'duh'!

But then, don't we all, at some stage or another, do just that? Something that you wonder to yourself, what was I thinking?

And, of course, in these days of video cameras and access to YouTube, Flickr etc. you no longer have to wait for America's funniest videos to show people in pain, in agony and horribly embarrassed. 

Watching some of these made me once again think of an argument I had, quite a while back, with one of my co-workers. I made the assertion that all comedy is, inherently, cruel. We laugh at the discomfort of others. He scoured jokes and websites to convince me otherwise, but I kept proving my thesis with each example he brought.

Now, the thought strikes me, maybe laughter is a way for us to learn from the experiences of others? Apparently we remember funny things a lot longer and a lot better than others. So, to benefit from watching our neighbour saw the branch he is sitting on out from under himself, so that we don't do it, we laugh?

Education

Since I am, now, mainly a teacher, education is something I tend to think about a lot. What do we want to achieve with education? Why educate? And what should we be teaching?
My daughter and I were discussing this last night, and a couple of things came up that I think we should be thinking about more seriously.

It is generally agreed that educated people are better citizens - they pay their taxes, they obey the laws, they are generally more tolerant and more civic minded than the uneducated. They are healthier and their kids are generally better looked after. However, what is an education that will achieve this?

Initially, education for everyone sprang from the reform movements, who felt that illiterate people will be exploited by bosses and rulers, and so pushed for education for all. This was allied to the industrial revolution, and the need for workers that were trained according to some mass production method. 

There was a lot of opposition, and to a large extent education remained the province of the rich, until state school funding started, and gradually we have what is now, if not universal in all countries, certainly in most of those that value education, the accepted system: Children attend school from the age of six to about sixteen or eighteen, then go to university or college, and then become part of the workforce. Schools have set curricula for the subjects they teach, usually drawn up by some board or ministry of education.

During the initial reform a number of critics were very scathing about teaching the masses, especially as this would make them dissatisfied with their position in society. Obviously the use of education to stratify society did not end there, and in fact, is still with us today, where children with wealthy parents generally get a better education than poor children.

So, my thoughts about changing education are these:

Remove all impediments to children attending schools - whether rich or poor, white or black give them an equal opportunity to learn.

Weed out the scholars, the knowledge seekers, and place them in one track. Allow the rest to be trained in basic literacy and numeracy, and to discover their aptitude and be trained to the best of their ability in that aptitude.

Why am I asking for this rather radical strategy? Simple. Every day I've been a teacher I see the scholars or potential scholars, the ones who would love to explore a subject, either becoming bored because they have to proceed at the pace of the slowest child in class, or educating themselves. And, conversely, I see the agonies and boredom of those children who have to struggle with subjects they have no interest in and no aptitude for. Radical? Maybe. But think about it a bit...

The soundtrack of your life

What would you consider the soundtrack of your life to have been?

By that I mean, if your life was a movie, what songs, by which artists would feature prominently? Who features in your personal top ten?

I must say the two artists who say most about me and my life are Billy Joel and Carole King. Listening this morning to Billy Joel sing 'A Minor Variation' just brought it home to me again. Then I must add a more contemporary element in Maroon 5, who are poets of the failed relationship and the complexity of the human experience. Add to the mix a touch of Haydn and a generous dollop of Mozart, backed all the way by the rock stars of the sixties and seventies such as Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Def Leppard, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Queen, the Beatles, etc. and you start getting some idea of what I'd sound like.

But - deep down, at the heart, the music that brings a smile, gets my feet tapping and sits at the core - country! As my current favourite country singer, Trace Adkins, says: Ladies love country boys! Amen.

The Orange Couch

I had a visit from another English teacher yesterday, and when she saw my couch she exclaimed: 'I have the exact same couch in my apartment! And so does my neighbour!'  In my experience, the furniture for the NET's come from some pool - obviously the cheapest! - but also the least likely to be chosen for any decor magazine.

The orange couch is not only orange, but a faux leather vinyl orange, and, more damning, not a really comfortable couch to sit or lounge on. The seat is too narrow, giving only 48cm of space, just enough to catch you behind the knees, so there is no leaning back and relaxing on this couch.

Then, the TV cabinet, cupboard and bed - made from a plywood covered with melamine in a dark brown with white trim - contribute to a rather gloomy picture.

Most of us manage to brighten things by adding individual touches in terms of the bedding, picture on the walls etc., but if you are a NET in Korea, and you are living with this same furniture, what are your thoughts? Can you live with it? Or do you just suffer it?

Or do you, like me and my friend, find it an absolute hoot and enjoy living in an art-deco meets trailer trash taste set-up?

wellness

A 10 day course of antibiotics and a sinus wash later, I am again feeling somewhat human.

The enforced inactivity combined with misery had me musing about this little word 'well' that we use so cavalierly and in so many ways in English. There is of course the well is in healthy, well as in place to get water, well as in rise up slowly ( a tear welled up in my eye), well as in 'please give me an explanation for this' (surely one the marvels of both brevity and intonation) and well as being good at something.

How are you? Well, thanks.

Really? Well? Which well? Healthy? Good at life? Or the other meaning of well, as in leave well enough alone?

Then there is its use as a means of indicating a pause for thought - well, let me see. 

So at this time I am well on my way to getting well and I leave you with wishes for your own wellness!

colds and chills and fevers

Both Christine and I are suffering from a bout of flu - aching bones and muscles, fatigue and a general wish to crawl of somewhere and die.

Sharing the world with viruses and bacteria sure is difficult, especially when they attack you like this. What's worse, for me, is that no matter what you do you are not comfortable. There is no way to sit, lie or stand that will ameliorate the feeling in your bones of being slowly crushed, or the general ache in your muscles.

Add to that the infected sinus that I've got, and you get misery that even Victor Hugo did not dream of.

Thursday's child!

There's an old rhyme that goes something like this:

Monday's Child is fair of face,

Tuesday's Child is full of grace,

Wednesday's Child is full of woe,

Thursday's Child has far to go,

Friday's Child is loving and giving,

Saturday's Child works hard for a living,

But the Child that is born on the Sabbath day,

is bonny and blithe and good and gay.

I myself am a Thursday's child, and I can say that I have gone far - I moved to a number of towns and cities in South Africa, spent time in Australia and am now living in South Korea, and  intend to go even further than that if I can. So, by coincidence, is my daughter, who is with me here and intends to stay with me as we roam the world teaching English.

My son is a Sunday's Child - supposed to be blithe and bonny and good and gay. Well, he has had his share of grief, but generally he tends to be fairly good, however, the blithe passed him by completely. He has a hairtrigger temper that has flared up to his cost a number of times!

So, the question, do you agree with this? What's your day?

Pika and dreams

Rain, pika in Korean, which is falling even as I write this, driven by a rampaging wind, has stripped the cherry trees of most of their blossoms. Luckily the leaves have taken over, and cloak the tree in a verdant green, as can be seen from this picture.

The building operations, once the trees were moved, are now at the measuring and marking stage - theodolites everywhere! However, the rain is sticking a spoke in that wheel, and all is quiet today.

I'm not sure if it was the rain drumming on the roof last night, or something I ate, but I had an unusually vivid dream in which I was on a date with Liam Neeson (I wish!) to see a movie, and at the theatre we ran into a particularly obnoxious person who I detest (in the dream) for always name-dropping, so I make a great point of introducing him to Liam. At this point, however, Liam runs away, shouting that he is not Liam Neeson, but S L Lee. I pursue him, thinking that I have now violated his privacy, and when I catch up with him, that is indeed what he admits - that S L Lee is his alias for when he just wants to spend time as a normal person. And I woke up.

Now here is the interesting thing - if you do a numerology analysis of Liam Neeson, S L Lee and Leonie Overbeek, they all add up to 8. So is Liam Neeson actually my alter ego? Or do I just wish he was?

Rough

She is slumped in the seat, one arm out the window, head lolling on the arm, obviously the worse for the lunchtime soju. Her partner is pulling at her, trying to get her to sit up straight, thumping her head into the back of the seat. She bats at him with the slow-motion clumsiness of the truly drunk, and he jerks her arm aside. Soon she is slumped over again. He thumps her on the back and she starts retching, then mumbles at him and he settles back in his seat.

We are on the 3 o'clock bus from Suwon to Jeju.

Her hair, with brown and blond streaks and a bad perm, is coming adrift from the clasp holding it at the back of her head. Is she wife, girlfriend, 'companion'? He is in a suit, but is sweating the soju sweat.

Variations on the thumping, jerking, mumbling, passed out stupor continue to play during the next half an hour or so, until they reach their stop. He wakes her, starts gathering parcels tied up in well used black bags, and then does up his fly and belt. They stumble off the bus.

Scenes like this have played themselves out with variations on the Sunday afternoon bus trip during the last two years. Not every trip, not every bus, but enough to not be anything special. At least, to the rest of the Koreans on the bus, nothing to intervene in.

But then, they never do intervene in anything that I, coming from the west, would consider close to assault. Whether it's the kids at school, the teachers and kids, or the bus passengers, rough handling seems to be the only way to interact.

There is a word in Afrikaans - hardhandig. Literally translated this means 'with hard hands'. It seems that the Koreans prefer to interact with hard hands rather than with gentleness.

Cherry trees and buildings

The school is getting a new gym, which means that the garden area, previously filled with cherry trees, is getting leveled.

Once thing at least about the South Koreans, they try not to waste stuff. So, instead of just pushing the trees over, they are moving them. This is something I applaud, as it means that next year we will have some more of the kind of view shown in this video.

As for the actual building work - I am dreading this since my office will adjoin the new shared wall between the gym and the existing building. As if I don't have enough noise from all the kids!

last-minute changes

I thought I had gotten the whole schedule thing under control - I can understand that there is sometimes a need to change the schedule as teachers have to go to some meeting or another - but no! Once again a last-minute change left me standing in front of a classroom, books in hand, only to be told that maths and English was switched.

Problem is, I have no way of knowing how last-minute this was. See, this morning I went to the schedule postings, and no changes were showing, and my fellow teachers even told me - no changes! So when did the change happen? And seeing that you know full well that I am not in the teacher's room to see the changes being made, how about just sending me an instant message via the LAN?

Patience is a virtue, patience is a virtue...

gremlins

You all (if you are old enough) remember that cheesy movie about little furry creatures who, when they get wet, take on evil characteristics and multiply?

Well, it seems that they have been working on my case with both hands and a steam shovel!

My sister finally got the documents we need for the E2 visa renewal out of the South African authorities and shipped them off to me via TNT couriers. Hooray, right?

No - when I now entered the tracking number on their website, I saw this disquieting status - shipment not received, recovery steps in progress. Timed at Singapore on the 9th of April at 12:53. It is now the 10th of April, 9 or thereabouts my time. 

Getting duplicates issued is out of the question, at least within the time frame available. My only hope is that the package will be found and delivered before the 15th!

That aside, I find that in general life at the moment is on one of its periodic downslopes - I have a bad cold that has now developed into laryngitis, we've just completed a huge tussle with ABSA about Sean's money and we had my dad's illness and operation followed by my cousin's death.

This is one of those times when you just hang on to the surfboard and hope you find the exit to the wave tunnel you are in before it collapses and pushes you under! Cowabunga!

Death and taxes

It's often said that there are only two sure things in life - death and taxes.

It also seems that people are equally uptight about both of them. On the tax front I still keep trying to get SARS on the same page as I am via e-mail, and no joy. On the death front, I find that people tend to react very differently to it than I do.

To put that statement into perspective, let me explain the circumstances.

My dad has had a recent brush with death, having five arteries bypassed in open heart surgery, and then, just as the news came that he was allowed to go home to recover, the news came that one of my cousins died in a motorcycle accident.

In the first I have had to listen to my family bewailing the possibility of my dad's death, and how wonderful it was that they got it in time and 'saved' his life. In the second, all of the family that are in touch with me are doing a lot of 'oh if only he had' kind of stuff.

Of course there is sadness when a person who was in your life is no longer there, I'm not denying that, but the reaction that death can be avoided, can be put off, can, in fact, not happen at all if you only take certain steps is what gets me. Death comes. Maybe today it is coming for you, maybe tomorrow it will come for me, but it is coming.

The way to live is not to keep thinking about it, but to acknowledge this reality, and then to live today as if you know for sure that it will be there tomorrow. Live fully, live in joy, live with abandon, and so that you can say when death does come, that you have no regrets.

And as for those who die before you - celebrate their life and what they meant to you, what memories they gave to you while you were alive and how they changed you.

Bread

My son reported on a failed attempt to make bread. This got me to send him my tried and trusted recipe, which is very similar to a recipe given by Mark Bittman on his cooking site for no-knead bread (the video is available on YouTube).

Basically it's two cups flour, one cup hot water, 1 tablespoon oil, 1 tsp salt, 2 tsp sugar, 2 tsp dried yeast, mixed together to form a slightly sticky, wet dough. You cover this in its bowl with a warm damp cloth, let it rise in a warm area for an hour, then either turn it onto a baking sheet dusted with flour and shape it into a loaf shape, or turn it into a baking tin greased and floured, and bake for 1 hour at 180 degrees Celsius, or deep fry small portions for that wonderful SA snack, vetkoek! This gives a bread with a chewy crust, similar to ciabatta, and can be varied by the kind of flour used, or putting in raisins, seeds or even fried onions and cheese folded into the middle.

However, I have found that the success varies with the altitude, the flour (hard or soft wheat) and the oven, so you do need to experiment by adding more or less water, and baking for a longer or shorter time, or even giving it a longer proving time.

But it also made me think about bread generally - the many varieties, the most basic being simply flour and water kneaded together, then baked over a fire, to the complexity of a really good sourdough bread, where the process can take weeks from the moment of getting your starter dough going until your final loaf.

The chemistry of bread is also quite complex, but the final product is almost always great - the yeasty smell of freshly baked bread, the taste of that loaf with some butter and coffee or just the use of good bread in a cheese sandwich must surely rank as one of the most satisfying meals in the world.

No wonder we think of it as the staff of life.

Clothed

On reality TV there are quite a number of shows that have to do with either dressing yourself, some celebrity or your dwelling.

My favorite among these must be Project Runway - a show, for those who don't know, where 15 designers compete in challenges each week until three of them are left to present a collection at Bryant Park in New York. The challenges range from the sublime to the ridiculous, including such things as designing outfits for a character in a TV show, designing for some drag queens, designing an outfit made from edibles or flowers etc.

One of the things, that, however is never taken into account during the judging of the outfits, is comfort. For me, always, dressing has been about comfort first and then how fashionable it is. And, as I'm now realising from watching these shows, fashion is about creating silhouettes and shapes, and that often these are created by tight garments or the kind of undergarment that used to be known as a foundation garment - squeezing you into shape, or at least the kind of shape people think you should have.

All of this got me thinking about our preconceptions as far as people are concerned. It's not enough that they are clean and fully dressed, they have to also be dressed according to what we think of as suitable to whatever it is they do as a job.

And as teachers we really have to consider the preconceptions when we dress - we cannot dress in our own individual style unless it matches what the concept is of professional - covered, rather dark than bright, and very groomed. Once we have settled into a relationship with the kids and our fellow teachers, we can often relax and be more individual, but we still cannot be fully ourselves.

How much of who you are do you give up to match preconceptions? And do you think it is important? Or is it small stuff?

confusion in confucianism

So yesterday we go to a meeting for NET's held by Hwasung Educational Board, and there we receive two very rambling and incoherent books, supposedly meant to help newcomers to Korea survive, and to give us information about the contract, shopping etc.

One of the items stated that, when you have lived in Korea for more than a year, then, in order to renew your visa, you have to have a Korean Police Clearance certificate, which your school is supposed to arrange for you!!! However, Suwon Immigration is waiting for what we believe to be the South African clearance certificate.

So who do we believe?

And, if we now do get our SA clearance certificates, and we got to the Immigration department on the 20th of April, will we be told that we have the wrong certificate?

One of the ideals of Confucianism is harmony in the society by everyone knowing their place and how to act in that place.

One very very important facet to this, which the Koreans seem to have forgotten, is that in order for you to act according to principles and rules, you need to know what they are! Especially if you were not raised in the culture. It's not like we're stupid, we are just acting on the incomplete information given to us.

red tape

Last year the regulations concerning the renewal of the E2 visa here in Korea were changed, requiring updated versions of your health certificate and your police clearance. However, from a lot of enquiries, the information I got was that it would only be needed if you are getting a completely new visa - in other words, when you leave, then apply for a new job.

As it happened, we only took along the contract and letters from our schools, and we got the visas renewed for 2008/2009 February.

However, this year, when we went with exactly the same situation as last year - i.e. we are both staying at the same school, we were told that we do need the documents.

As you can imagine, getting the police clearance is the main problem - the whole getting fingerprints taken here, courier to SA and still waiting for the certificates to return!

Upon returning from the immigration department, where we got another extension until we get the certificates, we were talking about the strangeness of how there is really no reason that this process should be so cumbersome in this day and age of information technology.

What prevents countries from putting together databases on their population where things like criminal convictions, tax evasion and other problems are noted along with their ID number? And then opening that database for queries from other countries?

So that, when someone in SA wants to issue a British citizen with a visa, they could simply call up his or her ID number and either see an all clear, or a problem and deny it then and there.

Now I know there are the fears of invasion of privacy and unwarranted entries, as well as stolen identity - my point is that all of us already have an enormous amount of data entered into a myriad of databases. All I'm saying is that I cannot see why the existing information cannot be centralised and used to check on a person.

Or is my utopian fantasy kicking in?

teach?

I love playing word games - crosswords, anagrams and target, and from the word teacher we can, at quick glance, get teach, reach, ache, ace, tea, her and ta - a slang word that a British friend of mine used for 'thank you'.

Quite a selection there, and not without some synergy and symmetry to it - after all, what does a teacher do but try and reach 'her' students, which may become quite an ache for some, needing to be soothed with tea, but best soothed by the occasional 'ta' we get from a student.

A while back I had a little mini rant on Facebook regarding the hiring of teachers who then are not expected to teach! I was referring to one of the current and historical situations in Korea - the wholesale importation of English speakers to act as assistant teachers in school classrooms, where the majority of them either end up being frustrated by their Korean co-teachers, or the system, or both.

From the Korean perspective, I am sure there is just as much frustration with a lot of people who have no teaching qualification, who often mangle their own tongue quite seriously (and glancing at the writing skills displayed by some contributors to Dave's ESL Cafe, sometimes criminally so) and who regard Korea as one big party spot.

Unfortunately both perspectives are skewed, and since I can only really speak about what I and some of  the people I speak to have experienced, I will leave it to a Korean teacher to vent their frustrations, and only address those that seem to be common to most people I have spoken to during the last couple of years.

The major frustration is the lack of information - understandable when they cannot really be called fluent speakers of English, but even mangled information is better than none. What tends to happen is that a circular, instructions etc. are sent to schools in Korean. These form just one small, nay, minuscule part of the immense mound of paper that governs the school system - another thing to be read, signed and passed on to someone else to read, sign and pass on. This means that if the school receives a communication from the GEPIK program, say, the administrative assistant has to read it, sign it, file it in a neat folder, pass it on to the administrator, who signs it and passes it to the senior teacher in charge of languages, who then passes it on to your co-teacher who finally passes it on to you. So something could take as much as two weeks before being brought to your attention, by which time the due date is that day or the next, or the changes have already been made and you found out about them the hard way, by violating the new regulations.

Right up there next to this one is the attitude towards English in the country. Policy makers and parents have bought into the idea that learning English is a passport to wealth, either as individuals or as a country, and so have instituted English as a subject in school. However, they have not decided exactly what it is they wish to accomplish. By that I mean that they still do not really know if they want to speak the language, or study it.

If they want to speak it, they are wasting the best resource they have - those foreign teachers who are qualified to teach English as a second language, by shackling them to a curriculum designed for studying English.

The result is a whole generation of kids who can read English quite well, since they do a lot of that, who can translate English phrases into Korean, since they also do a lot of that, but who are unable to speak or write it.

Of course there are schools where the teachers spend a lot of time drilling the speaking skills of the kids, and there are private academies where kids get taught to speak, but by and large the majority of kids end up passing vocabulary and grammar tests, given to them in Korean!

A final word of optimism - despite the drawbacks I know there are kids who do benefit, who do start using the language to communicate in, and who are taking the first steps to becoming bilingual. From them comes the much-needed 'ta!'

baphallhouse?

I'm very fond of public bathhouses - starting with the Turkish baths in Longstreet in Cape Town, and before that places like Warmbaths and the suanas in health clubs - I've always enjoyed steaming, scrubbing and relaxing in a place with lots of hot water.

Since coming to Korea, the onsurol has become a wonderful weekend (and sometimes midweek) getaway, particularly as they are very affordable and each one has its own unique character.

This last weekend, however, I came across one with a rather unique character in this country where the naughty bits in the early morning soft porn movies (don't ask) get pixellated and blurred. In fact, where even the breasts on a dressmakers dummy gets pixellated and blurred.

What was so unique? Well, the various jacuzzi pools all had the water fountaining into them through very realistic, circumcised erect phalli (phalluses?) - ah heck, c*cks! All of them were at least a hundred times life size, but painted a lovely flesh pink.

I could not help but wonder what, if anything, served the same purpose on the male side of the bathhouse?

fragility

One of my favourite songs by Sting is Fragile, especially the refrain - on and on the rain will fall, like tears from the star, like tears from the star, on and on the rain will show, how fragile we are, how fragile we are.

Why start the blog with this?

In the first few months of this year my mom fell and broke a hip (dangerous at age 77) and my father has just had bypass surgery (at age 82). Will I soon be an orphan? They have already lived well into an age where most people don't get, and maybe these are the beginnings of the end. Either way, they will certainly no longer be able to live independently, as they have been doing. They will have to, finally, acknowledge how fragile they are.

For me that realisation came about ten years ago, when I got struck with pulmonary embolism, something you have a 20% chance of surviving. I realised then that I am also fragile, and that no day is guaranteed to me. Maybe that is why I live to the utmost of which I am capable.

This, of course, does not mean that I jump out of airplanes, mainly because I just don't feel the need to. What I do mean is that I get the most enjoyment I can even out of lazing in bed, or teaching a class, or traveling on the subway - I do not allow boredom to be part of my vocabulary any more.

In terms of taking risks - at the age of 55 I still love roller-coasters (in fact, my ideal death would be a sudden stroke or heart-attack on one!), I embrace new experiences and new activities, and despite knowing how fragile bone and flesh are, I treat them with respect and try to do what I can to be in good health.

Most of all, I think, in fragility there does lie strength - when you embrace it and realise that you are not alone, but part of a family, a community and that they can carry you when you need it, you become strong enough to face the one thing most humans fear the most - death.

And once you have died to your fear you become strong enough to see the cycle of life and the role you play in it, and to accept both.