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.