Absence

Due to problems with my gmail account, I was also frozen out of my blogger accounts...I hope that absence did, indeed, make the heart grow fonder.

Today I'm musing about a problem that we are having here in the school now, but which is simply a symptom of a bigger problem I have spoken about before - violence in Korean society.

Three of the third grade boys here in the middle school have beaten up about 8 or 9 of the grade one boys because they did not show enough respect. The boys were taken to the doctor where some of them were treated for bruises and cuts. One of the parents of the victims has now lain charges, taken the story to the newspapers and is basically doing everything they can to get the story out.

Of course I deplore the violence that was done, but at the same time, in Korean society, at present, very few examples of an alternative are shown. Teachers discipline students with beatings, so why should the students not follow that example when they have to discipline someone?

Only when they have alternative examples, and the prevailing mood of society is a peaceful settlement of conflict, can we blame them unequivocally for their actions.

Some more train stories

During my recent trip to SA my son and I took a trip on the Simon's Town line of the Metro rail, surely one of the most scenic railways in the world.

Travelling all along the edge of the sea from Muizenberg all the way to Simon's Town, it is a wonderful way to catch all the glimpses and views that False Bay has to offer. However, we ran into one of the problems that beset this line - breakdowns. It is the line that has the most cable theft in my opinion, because whenever I travel on it, there is some kind of problem.

This time, we had to de-train at Fishhoek, then cram ourselves into a bus for the remainder of the journey, which kind of defeated the whole purpose of the trip.

This made me think nostalgically of the steam trains of my youth. Yes, I know they were pollution factories, covering the lines on either side with soot and ash, belching steam and smoke into the atmosphere, but they only broke down when the stoker did, and a steam whistle has a much nicer sound than the electric siren does.

Also, the engines had personality - they came in classes, had names, and were marvels of brass tubing and paint.

Alas, they are now, sadly, relegated to museums and the occasional historic society run, when horde of photographers snap them coming, going and standing still. How I wish the Simon's Town run would trot them out now and then, as a special tourist treat!

Seasons

For those of you who also read my e-mail journal, much of what I have have to say here you may have read before.

For the rest of you, what I'd like to muse about today is winter, snow and ice, and the fact that really, when you think about it, the world has only two seasons - winter and summer, which both seem to last and last and then suddenly switch places. We think of the switch as spring and autumn, but really, they last a fraction of the time that either the heat or the cold is getting you down.

I used to think, and proclaim, myself a winter person. I prefered cold to heat, but I now realise what I liked was the temperate, mild season we call winter in Africa. The season when a sweater and some jeans and heavy socks would see you through the day, and at night you could burrow under a duvet and some blankets to construct a cosy nest warmed by your body heat, and if you are lucky enough to have one, your partner's.

Now that I've had three Korean winters below my belt, and particularly this last and still present one, I am no longer so sure of my love of winter. Especially when it contains the amount of snow that this one did. It's not that I object to snow - it is very pretty, it serves the purpose of watering the ground for summer - I object to the fact that walking becomes a problem.

When you are young, slipping on the snow is fun and, since you are closer to the ground with elastic bones, not as dangerous as when you are fifty plus and conscious of all the past broken bones, and hence averse to breaking any more.

Also, as the snow is trodden into ice, or melts and freezes into it, it becomes even more of a problem.

Luckily the present apartment does not present me with quite the problem of overcoming the cold that the last one did, but leaving the cosiness of heated floors for the outdoors is always daunting.

So I have to amend my preference - a temperate, mild 22 degrees Celsius all year round, please!

All quiet...

What with a trip to South Africa, moving house and getting visa extended I've been very quiet on the blogging front.

To make matters worse, the internet connection in my office has decided not to connect me to anything, even though it shows the wireless network is running, and my computer space at home is not conducive to long stretches of sitting and typing.

So, just to set minds at rest (not that it seems as if I was missed), yes, I am still here and still musing away...

Trains

In many ways I can call myself a railway child - both grandfathers worked on the railways in some capacity, and I've always enjoyed travelling by train far more than any other form of travel.

In a way, all travel is little capsule of people moving through time and space, but for me trains are even more so than buses, cars or planes. On trains, especially long distance trains, you can travel in your own space, the compartment, where you are able to spread yourself out the way you never can on a plane (even in first class) or a bus.

Of course, on metro trains (the ones who serve a city either as a subway or above ground), that does not exist, but still each car has an own dynamic, not similar to the other cars on the train simply because of the people who inhabit it, however briefly.

From where I currently live, a little village close to the west coast of South Korea, an hours bus ride will bring me to either Suwon or Banwol, from which I can enter the metro system of Seoul. From Banwol I catch a train on line 4 - above ground as far as Geumjong, then subway for the rest of the route, while from Suwon I have an above ground option on line 1, or the Mugungwha KTR train to Seoul station or down to Busan etc.

I have caught the KTX from Seoul to Busan three times now, and experienced how truly relative speed is - 300 km/h does not feel like that when you are sitting in a comfortable seat, watching the landscape roll by. Unless you focus on the ground next to the train, you do not get an impression of speed, simply of movement.

One of the things I've experienced a lot on the subway and metro trains is the reaction of small Korean children to the foreigner - especially to my blue eyes. Some duck their heads and try to crawl to safety in their parents laps and bosoms, others stare with wide-eyed wonder, still others will give me smile and play a game of peek-a-boo and some start talking to their parents about this stranger in their midst.

The worst, and most surreal, was a group of boys, about 11 to 14 in age, who were in the next car to the one I was in. The train was crowded, and I was standing next to the door between carriages, which happened to have quite a large window in it on this line. The boys were up agains the door on the other side, and, when I noticed them, were surreptitiously giving me the finger.

The surreptitiousness was shielding their action from the people in the carriage with them, while trying to get me to see what they were doing. They did not, however, expect my action - I tore open both doors and as they scattered before my wrath, let them have it in my best teachers voice: 'You have brought shame on your houses.'

In future posts I'll take you back in time to the years spent travelling around South Africa by train, and share some more absurd and magical moments with you.

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.