Halloween in South Korea - Night of the Ninja

Yeah, I know, Halloween was 12 days ago, but I have been busy... better late than never.

I dressed up as ninja! I wanted to go as Goku from Dragonball Z, but I could not find an orange jump suit that could be altered. An all black ninja was my fall back and I have to say that I did a good job putting it together on the cheap and in little to no time.

Here is a picture of me with a Korean girl I met and had a few drinks with that night.

My mask is just a black shirt. If you pull the neck line through and wear it like a chin strap, you can tug up the front of the shirt to make a mask. It is really quite simple and everyone seemed impressed by it. Likewise, I am wearing black tennis shoes, black cargo pants, black gardening gloves, a black turtle neck, another black shirt over the turtle neck with the sleeves cut off, I'm wearing the cut off sleeves as a belt sash, and, finally, I am wearing children's black soccer shin guards on my wrists. I could not find a decent looking ninja sword, so I had on me padded black nun chucks. Also, when I was at the shoe store buying the shin guards, I showed the lady that I wanted to tie them to my wrists and bought some black shoe laces to tie them with. She did not at all find this odd for some reason.

I dressed up and went out both Friday and Saturday night (Halloween was on Saturday). I did not get the memo that people were only dressing up on the actual day. So I was dressed like a ninja and went downtown and just played darts on Friday. Back in college at Eau Claire, people dressed up and went out to the bars in costume all week... but I guess I am a grown-up now and not in college anymore. I think my Halloweens in the future will always be limited to one night.

While out I ran into a couple pirates. I had to fight them on the spot. By my night's count, I rid the world of 26 of them. Pirates are the scum of the Earth and there is no higher priority for a ninja than eliminating them.

It was just a really fun night. I tried to stay in character and I kept sneaking around and startling people. I did a couple laps around the downtown block both nights, sneaking from alley to alley, so people could tell what I was. I got a lot of good laughs and a couple people actually ran away from me scared when they saw me coming. I also met a ton of new people that night (mostly hagwon teachers I didn't know) and I had a bunch of Koreans ask for my picture.

The English bar downtown, The Speakeasy, was packed as well. There were a couple hundred people total maybe dressed up and partying downtown. Halloween is not widely celebrated or recognized in Korea, and it was a lot of fun to see some of the Koreans getting in to it. I have a picture album here if you want to see more photos.

Here are two videos I took of the party at The Speakeasy so you can get an idea of how packed it was.

Here is the video for the best female costume.

And I will leave you with my super intense ninja pose...

Base Shooting and War Protestors

I watched two Al Jazeera news clips recently that I saw as being related.

The first relates to the US Army base shooting at Fort Hood. They have yet to give the official reason, but it is believed that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan became upset about being told he would be soon deployed to the Middle East (after requesting not to) and shot up the base, killing 13 people and wounding dozens more.

I obviously have never served in the military. And something that really pisses me off is that when I publicly state my opinions about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on a blog or in a newspaper, I usually get an upset or nasty response from an active service member or a veteran. The replies usually have the tone of "shut up, asking questions or being critical of war plans just makes the job harder." I respect and appreciate their opinions (especially their accusations of my unpatriotic beliefs). So, with that said...

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are hopeless. The hubris and absurdity in the belief that America can now or ever invade, occupy, and force convert over night millions of people to democratic capitalism at the barrel of a loaded gun is insane. The Bush Administration officials are all war criminals and every dollar spent in the Middle East and every life lost their has been wasted. Additionally, the world is now ever increasingly less safe from threats of global terrorism, as anti-American views continue to grow with the death of every innocent Muslim civilian by US forces. The stories of Iraq and Afghanistan will not end well and whenever we do give up and pull out of there, we will have absolutely nothing positive to show for it. Just hundreds of thousands of dead bodies and hundreds of billions wasted.

In the meantime, US soldiers will keep dying. And soldiers will keep killing themselves and other people from stress and trauma. There have been 75 suicides alone on base at Fort Hood since 2003. How can a nation continue to exist and claim any moral authority or honor when this is considered to be just an unfortunate side effect of our economic imperialist policies? Obama has changed nothing, and the war machine keep turning.

The second clip is about a group of protesters in Oregon. They have been meeting every single day from 5pm-6pm to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They meet everyday to protest and have done so for the last 3000 days. They outlasted the Bush Administration and are beginning to lose hope of anything changing under Obama as he continues to consider whether or not to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan.

An amazing story...

950th Time is a Charm?

This is either one of humanity's greatest triumphs or the scariest news ever. I woman in South Korea finally passed the written portion of her driving exam after attempting it 950 times. Here is the story.

SEOUL, South Korea – A woman in South Korea who tried to pass the written exam for a driver's license with near-daily attempts since April 2005 has finally succeeded on her 950th time. The aspiring driver spent more than 5 million won ($4,200) in application fees, but until now had failed to score the minimum 60 out of a possible 100 points needed to get behind the wheel for a driving test.

Cha Sa-soon, 68, finally passed the written exam with a score of 60 on Wednesday, said Choi Young-chul, a police official at the drivers' license agency in Jeonju, 130 miles (210 kilometers) south of Seoul.

Police said Cha took the test hundreds of times, but had no specific total. Local media said she took the test 950 times.

Now she must pass a driving test before getting her license, Choi said.

Repeated calls to Cha seeking comment went unanswered. She told the Korea Times newspaper she needed the license for her vegetable-selling business.

Westerners here all the time comment about how horrible driving is here in South Korea. This may be the reason why. Should you (or can you) really be learning a new skill as complicated as driving a car when you are sixty-eight years old? If she ever passes the driving portion of her exam, how long before she hurts herself or another innocent? I do not have any "just" ideas to prevent her from driving, but this just seems like a bad idea that will end in tragedy.

There has also been a lot of speculation on the blogosphere that she failed the test so many times because she is illiterate. Which makes sense... but do you need to be able to read... so you can drive... are there not important signs everywhere that require people to read them to avoid accidents. Yeah, this is scary stuff.

Is This Semester Over Yet?

The last couple weeks have been very long ones. My first semester teaching had a lot of random holidays and school event days that cancelled my teaching classes. That has not been the case for this semester and I actually do a lot of work (what's up with that?). I find that I cannot keep up with reading my google reader subscriptions or find the time to blog everyday (only three posts in the last week, sorry).

I am so short for time, I am even behind on watching episodes of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. It's that hectic!

What seems to be killing me the most at the moment is a Korean language class that I have signed up for at Chonnam University in Gwangju. The EPIK program was nice enough to set aside some funds to make the class free for EPIK teachers to take. So I go tuesdays and thursdays and the class lasts from 7pm to 9pm. The problem is that I live on the outskirts of town and it takes me more than an hour to get to the University during rush hour. An hour is the fastest I can do it and on Tuesdays (because I come from my rural school WAY ON THE OUTSKIRTS of town) I end up taking a bus, the subway, and a taxi to get there. On the way home I carpool with other people in a taxi to a subway stop and it usually takes me about forty-five minutes to get home. Those are very long days for me.

I really do enjoy the class, and I finally feel like I have been making improvements in learning the language. I have already been here nine months and I never thought learning the language while being immersed in it would be so difficult. It is nothing like learning how to speak Spanish or another latin based language.

I think I have about six weeks left. Considering there are sixteen in a semester, the time I have left is pretty short. Pretty exciting!

Here is a picture of me at the traditional Korean folk village in Boseong.

K-POP Video of the Week - "My Ear's Candy"

This week's K-POP video is actually pretty different from what I usually find. The artist behind it is Baek Ji Young and she teamed up with Taekyeon (from 2pm) for a song named My Ear's Candy. She has been making music for over a decade now, and I guess they are calling this a comeback.

I cannot say I appreciate the title, but the song is pretty good and I enjoy the duet lyrics of a man and a woman singing. Their singing really reminds me of Aqua... Likewise, the song has a K-POP foreign house style beat and the video is pretty unique. It is not just 5 to 13 identical looking people with slightly different hair cuts dancing in unison. I like it!

Here is a pretty good live performance:

And I cannot resist myself, I have to post a song by Aqua. We all know Barbie Girl, so how about I post Lollipop!

"Kept a Stable of 16 Young Men"

Yeah, you sometimes read a story and laugh. I read this article and thought to myself... good for China. I am glad that women in China can successfully climb the crime syndicate ladder and be a crime boss who keeps a stable of 16 young men to provide sexual services.

Did they actually use a stable? Or is this just an analogy of comparing young men to stallions? It could have been a real stable...

Female crime boss jailed for 18 years in China

Tue Nov 3, 2:29 AM

BEIJING (AFP) - A court in southwest China sentenced the ringleader of an illegal gambling syndicate to 18 years in prison Tuesday, the latest verdict in a massive series of trials targeting organised crime.

A municipal court in Chongqing convicted Xie Caiping -- sister-in-law of the former head of the city's judiciary, Wen Qiang -- of a series of crimes linked to the gambling syndicate, said the verdict, posted on the court's website.

She was also fined 1.02 million yuan (150,000 dollars).

Xie, 46, allegedly ran 20 illegal gambling dens in Chongqing hotels, night clubs and tea houses, was involved in illegal detention and drug activity, and bribed police to turn a blind eye to her crimes, earlier press reports said.

Twenty-one other suspects were sentenced along with Xie to jail terms ranging from one to 13 years, the court said.

The former vice director of a Chongqing public security precinct, Guo Sheng, and policeman Gan Yong were sentenced to 13 and 12 years in prison respectively for accepting bribes and offering Xie protection, it said.

Luo Xuan, 29, who reportedly was Xie's lover, was sentenced to four-and-a-half-years in jail for his role in the syndicate, it added.

Last month, courts in Chongqing sentenced six people to death in the trials linked to the murky underworld in the city of over 30 million -- a spectacle that has fascinated the nation with tales of sex, gambling and corruption.

State media reports have especially shone the spotlight on Xie, who reportedly drove a Mercedes-Benz, owned several luxury villas and kept a stable of 16 young men to provide her with sexual services.

Her brother-in-law, Wen, served as a top Chongqing police official for 16 years before taking over the city's judiciary.

He is the highest-ranking official ensnared in the crackdown that has led to the arrest of more than 1,500 suspects. Wen is accused of protecting an intricate web of businessmen, officials and mobsters.

This reminded me of an Onion news (fake names) that I saw a while back. Good stuff:

East Timor's First Female Dictator Hailed As Step Forward For Women @ Yahoo! Video

Make the Yellow Dust Go Away

A negative for living in South Korea are yellow dust storms. It has happened two or three times that I have noticed since coming here. I usually wake up in morning to go to work and the sky is yellow and everyone is wearing masks. It is easy to think that it's not that bad, but after about 20 minutes outside breathing the stuff in you start to feel the effects.

It is not pollution or anything man made. It is just a very, very, very fine grained sand that gets blown of the Asian super continent from China's Gobi Desert and Mongolia's Kubuqi Desert. It happens when there is a large storm system moving through China and Mongolia. The stuff (along with China's pollution) gets blown all over the planet, and South Korea ends up getting a sizable chuck of it.

I have yet to take any pictures or videos of one of these days, but I will the next time it happens. Here is an article in the Korean Herald about a proposal that South Korea is putting forward to address this phenomenon. I do not think they can stop it from happening, but I cannot imagine how planting more trees is ever a waste of time and money. Who knows, it may help a little.

The Seoul city government will help fund a tree-planting project in a Chinese desert to reduce the amount of harmful "yellow dust" blowing over Korea, the AFP reported.

According to the report the government agreed Tuesday to invest 50 million won ($42,000) in the planting project led by Future Forest, a Korean environmental group based in China.

The investment will be used to purchase and plant some 72,000 poplar and desert willow trees in Inner Mongolia's Kubuqi Desert, some 600 kilometres west of Beijing.

"We who suffer from yellow dust hope it will contribute to solving the problem and improving the South Korea-Chinese friendly relationship," a Seoul city official told AFP.

He said the Kubuqi Desert, the world's seventh largest, is blamed for causing 40 percent of "yellow dust" that blankets the Korean peninsula every spring.

Quality Finally Follows Quantity

A couple weeks ago the EPIK Coordinator for the Gwangju Metropolitan Office of Education sent out an e-mail with some comments about people planning on renewing their contracts for another year starting next March, 2010. I happily already gave my intention to stay for another year. But this is what the EPIK coordinator had to say that I found interesting.

3) For those of you who will be renewing (renewing is a much better word than resigning right? !!) their contract in the near future, you probably received some small paperwork asking you about renewing. Here's how the renewal process works:

i) they give you this paperwork (usually at the last minute because that makes plenty of sense)
ii) you declare your intentions and give it back
iii) they have a committee (maybe all your coteachers meet? I know little about this...) to discuss whether to a) accept your renewal b) transfer you to another school (this usually happens if there is an issue with a particular co-teacher but they like you as a teacher) or c) fail (if they believe you are not a suitable candidate for EPIK).

Mr. Lee told me that we will now be focusing on the *quality* of teachers as opposed to the *quantity* (in other words, almost all the schools in Gwangju have a foreign teacher so now their focus will be on keeping and attracting the best of the best). That doesn't mean that they will be looking for you to make a single mistake, but it means that if you are only putting in the bare minimum, it might not be enough for a renewal.

There are about 120 public school teachers in the city of Gwangju right now and we are all assigned to two schools. Logic would assume then that there about 240 schools in the city. It is interesting that EPIK has been around for more than a decade and they just now have finally reached a saturation point. It only took a global recession not seen since the 1930s to trigger a bigger enough mass exodus of educated people from English speaking countries.

Indeed, when I came last February, thirty new teachers were hired to come to the city. This last August, almost fifty new teachers were hired to come to the city. I checked how many new teachers are expected to be hired for February of 2010 and it is only twenty. The new people are no longer being placed in new schools that have never had a teacher. They are simply replacing native teachers who decide to leave.

Of course, now that I am here and grandfathered it, I really do not have a problem with them focusing on quality teachers for hiring and rehiring. When I applied to come here I had a bachelors of science in geology and not a single hour of teaching experience or training. If they raise the bar for new applicants at all from where it is now, I never would have got this job. But I am here, and I want this program to succeed, so I am happy with them raising the bar now.

Likewise, I can really imagine how easy it would be to become complacent or lackadaisical in this job and stop trying. Some people need to be shown the door if they do not challenge themselves as a teacher or continue to progress. Additionally, there are some people who were hired that really should have never been, and they need to be sent home as well. There is the argument that having the warm body of a native English speaker in the classroom is better than no body, but some people really are doing more harm than good here.

For fun, here is a picture of some of my sixth grade boys getting ready to play baseball after school. The kid on the far left goes to an English hagwon and is one of the best speakers in the grade. They are all a lot of fun.

Biannual Government Physical - BP 100/60

I was told by my coteacher that I had to go to the hospital and get a medical exam done. I asked around for what reason and it turns out every person who works for the government has to go and get a full physical done once every two years. I have only been here six months, so I thought it strange that they gave me a two month deadline to get this accomplished. However, I plan and being here a couple years, so hopefully I am good now for two more years.

I do not like going to the doctor's. I just read so many nightmare stories and my own personal experiences with doctors have always involved me going to the emergency room. So, I naturally get nervous and harbor trepidation when told to go to the doctor's.

But similar to my first Korean health care experience when I was having difficulty with my ear, the treatment was excellent. The staff was very helpful and polite, despite the obvious language barrier. I had my eyes and ears checked, my height and weight recorded, a blood and urine sample taken, a check x-ray done, and spoke briefly with a doctor. I was in and out of the hospital in less than 30 minutes and there was no waiting for any of the procedures.

I also was confused if I had to pay for this exam or not, but they never asked me for money. I am guessing the government covers it. Likewise, they said they would mail my test results to my school. Hopefully I did not develop any serious illnesses between now and when I got a health exam when I entered the country.

They also took my blood pressure, and my BP was 100/60. The nurse looked very impressed and told me that was very good. I went home and googled how good it was and apparently my blood pressure is comparable to a very fit athlete. It must be all the good food and walking I do.

They also took my weight and I am up to 71 kg. I was 73 kg when I came into the country and I dropped as low as 68 kg this last June. I simply was not eating enough food in the spring when I first go here. My clothes did not fit me anymore because I was so skinny. Since then I had discovered Han's Deli and I have been trying very hard to eat more food whenever and wherever I can.

Whale Whores on South Park

My love for South Park is week to week. Some weeks their comic brilliance is awe inspiring and some weeks I want to jam a fork in my eye because I wasted twenty minutes of my life on sophomoric putrice.

But this week they had a hilarious episode about the Japanese and their "obsession" with killing dolphins and whales. If you are a fan and have yet to watch the episode, then go watch it online right now for free at South Park Studios.

But if you want to skip to the best part of the episode, I will fill you in and then you can watch this clip. Stan gets upset over the Japanese killing so many dolphins and whales and he decides to join the cast of some TV show I have never heard of, Whale Wars. Cartman and Kenny show up because it becomes a hit show and they want to be on TV. The Japanese capture them and take them to the memorial at Hiroshima to explain why they hate dolphins and whales so much.

Que the tape:

What is interesting is that frequently people give the number that about 200,000 people died in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet the prime minister in this episode only gave the figure that 140,000 Japanese died. I caught this discrepancy in the episode because I learned this last August during the 64th anniversary of the bombing that about 40,000 of the people who died in the bombings were actually Koreans. Nearly all of them being forced labor. I mentioned this in a post and I am excited that South Park got the figures right and that I was able to notice the difference.

Amazing Fact: while on the wikipedia page for the bombings, there was a story of a man that was a double survivor of both bombings. This is indeed one of the craziest things to ever happen in human history.

On March 24, 2009, the Japanese government recognized Tsutomu Yamaguchi as a double hibakusha. Tsutomu Yamaguchi was confirmed to be 3 kilometers from ground zero in Hiroshima on a business trip when the bomb was detonated. He was seriously burnt on his left side and spent the night in Hiroshima. He got back to his home city of Nagasaki on August 8, a day before the bomb in Nagasaki was dropped, and he was exposed to residual radiation while searching for his relatives. He is the first confirmed survivor of both bombings.

K-POP Video of the Week - "Hot Issue"

Okay... I am a little dizzy. Even I admit now that I am starting to lose track of all the girl pop groups in South Korea. They keep popping up out of nowhere and honestly I find many of them indistinguishable in style and sound. But this week's group is 4Minute and their group members are Jihyun, Gayoon, Jiyoon, Hyunah, and Sohyun.

The song and dance for Hot Issue is pretty popular with my sixth grade girls, so I checked the group out. The group was announced in May of 2009 and there was some excitement about the group because Hyunah used to be a member of Wonder Girls. Hot Issue was their first single and it climbed into the top five of various digital music charts in Korea its first month.

I also checked out their homepage and on their group profile page gives pointless facts about the girls including their heights and weights. I also checked out their birthdays and the oldest member of the group is 19 years old and the youngest is 15 years old. I really do think the pattern I am observing of pushing 15 year old girls up on stage to shake their asses is creepy... there is nothing wrong with all the attractive 20 year old women in this country. Doesn't this country have child labor laws? I worked at a McDonald's when I was 15 years old and I was limited to like 20 hours a week. I'm guessing these girls work longer hours than that.

Although their music video is pretty nice, I watched a couple of their live performances and have to say I was not impressed at all with their dancing or on stage presence. I might just be ruined now that I have watched some great live performances by Kara and 2NE1.

This was the best video I could find of them live.

And for fun, if you feel like learning any of the dance moves, there is always someone on Youtube willing to learn them and film themselves for fun.

First Non-Latin Domain Names Approved

This is rather interesting. I suppose I never thought about this before, but all domain names currently are written with latin script. There was a conference this last weekend in Seoul and the first non-latin domain names have been approved in many diverse languages. English and latin based speakers are losing their monopoly on the internet. I say this is a good thing, the more inclusive the internet becomes, the more connected people across the globe will ultimately become.

Korean Movie Night - The Sword With No Name

This is the third Korean film that I have gone to the theaters to see without any English subtitles. I cannot describe to you how much fun it is to sit through these movies and not know exactly what is being said. The first movie I saw was about vampires, the second was about secret agents, and this one was about the final days of the Korean monarchy. I do not need to know what they are saying to completely understand what is happening. Just from simple context, and through all other forms of verbal and non-verbal communication available, I can enjoy and follow these films completely.

The Korean name for the movie is "불꽃처럼 나비처럼"and that translates to "Like a Flame, Like a Butterfly", but they gave it the English name of The Sword With No Name.

Que the trailer!

The budget and production value for the film was very impressive. The costumes and sets were a pleasure to watch and I understood and developed rapport with all the characters. I cannot speak to their acting ability, because that would largely depend on their ability to deliver their lines (which I could not understand). But I enjoyed them all. Their fight scenes were a lot of fun to watch and even though the CGI got silly at some points, the backdrops actually changed colors and styles so as to give it more of a graphic novel feel. Likewise, there were a couple scenes where I could not help but cheer for the absurd fighting odds similar to a Dynasty Warriors game.

The historical setting was around 1895. At this time, the last queen of Korea was in the process of negotiating with Western powers (Russia, France, England) trade deals to open up Korea, which had up until this point always been very reclusive. Japan at this time was a growing imperial power and they were conspiring to invade and annex Korea for their empire. The story revolved around the queen and her bodyguard in her final months.

The movie was a riot because they made the Japanese look so bad. The actors playing the Japanese were deliberately dressed ridiculous and given absurd amounts of make-up so as to make themselves charactures of themselves. (***SPOILER***) In the end of the movie, pretty much everyone dies in a glorious blood orgy. The Japanese could not have looked any worse taking pleasure in the slaughter of defenseless, unarmed female servants. But to be fair to the Koreans, it is historically accurate and the Japanese did kill their queen. The Japanese should have thought about the cinematic repercussions of their actions before they killed defenseless monarchs.

If you want to watch this movie, I suggest checking mysoju.com in a couple months and see if it has been uploaded yet. It was a lot of fun to watch.

In the event there are any other Dynasty Warrior fans out there aside from me, maybe you can enjoy this clip of Zhao Yun playing the Battle of Hei Fei Castle on the side of Wei on Chaos Mode. Very impressive...

Boseong Tea Fields

I've been starring at Brian's banner picture for months and I never knew what it was off. But I finally figured it out.

The Gwangju metropolitan office of education sent all of the Gwangju teachers to a teachers' workshop in Boseong, which is in the southeast corner of jeollanam-do province. The first day we did lectures all day, and the second day we visited the tea fields of Boseong and we visited a the Boseong Korean folk village. The tea fields were spectacular. I have never seen anything like this in my life.

The tea plants are trimmed shrubs and they were planted and grow vertically on the southern slopes of hills and mountains. I have more pictures in a facebook album.

I think this might be the exact spot where Brian got his picture from. But it was probably in the spring time, when the the bushes were looking more green.

And I went off the path so I could reach the top of the local hill that I took these pictures on. I took a video from the top, and the view was pretty spectacular.

Two Day EPIK Teachers' Workshop

I still occasionally sit at my desk and blink, looking around wondering what it is I am doing and how I came to be here. I was a powerless student/child the first twenty four years of my life and all of a sudden I have real responsibilities and nobody is accountable for taking care of me other than myself.

I have a real job, but I still do not recognize it for some reason as a real job. I still feel like a tourist that is getting paid to do cool and interesting things, and at any moment I will get caught by the fake teacher authorities and be made to go home.

Last week all of the EPIK public school teachers in Gwangju (more than 120 of us) were given two days off of work, Thursday and Friday, to go to a teachers' workshop. They paid to have everyone stay overnight in a hotel in Boseong. Boseong is about an hour and a half drive southeast of Gwangju. The hotel was extremely nice and everyone had a gorgeous view of the ocean and coastline.

Here was my view,

The hotel made a banner to welcome us. It was a very nice hotel.

The first day we had series of lectures. I was not very impressed with most of the speakers. I still got good information from a couple of them, but all the speakers are just other teachers and they volunteer to do it. Some of the people volunteered to present because nobody else would and I felt that some of the presentations failed to inspire or renew our passions and skills as teachers. But I did not volunteer, so I should not be such a critic... We then partied it up in the hotel that night.

The second day we got on buses and visited the local sites, I will have another post soon to come.

They also fed us a bunch of great meals. I have never posted what a typical Korean restaurant meal looks like, but this is what they usually look like when this many people get together. In the stew was beef, and the rest you can see for yourself. It was very good.

And it would not be a Korean meal unless you had enough side dishes to guarantee the dish washer boy that night would be going home with sore hands. The food here is a spectacle in and of itself.

A E I Love U by the EV Boyz

This video was posted on Youtube over a year ago, but I just discovered it and found it hilarious. The AEILoveU chorus is cheesy, but the verses are hilarious and for any men who have ever taught English in South Korea, this is some pretty funny stuff.

My favorite line was about the girl having to be home by ten and not being able to meet her family... I know what that is like...

DMZ Has Become Wildlife Sanctuary

Thanks to the Marmot's Hole for showing me this.

A South Korea camera crew spent 18 months filming inside the Demilitarized Zone. This CNN clip is short, but interesting. I would love to find more of the footage of what the wildlife in this area is like.

There are 200 over species of birds and 52 types of mammals. The area spans 155 miles and covers coastlines, wetlands, forests, and mountains. It is truly ironic that one of the most dangerous places on Earth for people has become one of the safest places (minus the occasional land mine) on the Korean peninsula for animals to take refuge from man. I hope if there is someday reunification of the peninsula, that they will retain much of the area as a biodiversity zone.

BSG: The Plan Released Tomorrow

One of the first things I did when I got here was download Battlestar Galactica. I am pretty big into Sci-fi and I never had the time to follow the show or know for sure when it was on the Sci-fi channel while I was in college. It looked interesting and I did have a couple friends who were watching it, so I was looking forward to watching the whole series after it officially ended, which happened in the sping. Also, for all the other Sci-fi nerds out there, Deep Space Nine was and still is my favorite space opera (with a respectful and mournful second nod to Joss Whedon's short-lived Firefly).

It took me about three months to get through the four seasons, all the mini-clips and the movies. I had some mixed reviews about the series as a whole, but I was glad that I watched it. The themes and stories were very thought provoking and visually the show was amazing to look at. My favorite character(s) on the show was actually a Korean woman (from Canada), Grace Park. She easily had the best character(s) gave great performances. I gave her a mention already in July.

But even though the TV show finished in the spring, one more scheduled movie was made and it will be released tomorrow, Tuesday the 27th. The name of the movie is "Battlestar Galactica: The Plan" and it is rated R and going straight to DVD.

Thanks to a good friend of mine, The Internet, I was able to get an advanced copy of the movie this weekend. Although, I do not have time yet to watch it and I am saving it for when I can give it my full attention. There will be a lot of flashbacks and stock footage and I have a feeling I am going to have to search some fan websites to catch everything they are going to toss at me in this final movie.

But I want to thank The Marmot's Hole for bringing this to my attention. As a promotion for the final film, Grace Park and Tricia Helfer did a photo shoot for Maxim magazine. Oh, yeah. Nerds rejoice!

And I found a little clip of the shoot.

K-POP Video of the Week - "FIRE"

I have been giving a lot of careful reflection on my dream of becoming a pop star in Korea... I am beginning to think the odds of that happening are not in my favor.... So, I will have to do the next best thing and date a Korean pop star.

I recently discovered this girl group and I think I am going to target one of these girls. The group's name is 2NE1 and their names are Lee Chae-rin (Center Right), Park Bom (Right), Sandara Park (Center Left), and Gong Min-ji (Left). Now, Gong Min-ji is only 15 years old (born in 1994!) so she is out of the running for me. But the other three look pretty good. Maybe I can get them to fight over me.

Their big hit is "FIRE" and there are actually two different music videos for the same song (great idea!). There is a Street Version and a Space Version, and I like the Space Version more.

I found a video of one of their lives performances and I have to say that 2NE1 so far gets my best rating for a live performance. I thought their dancing, attitude, and sound in this performance is the best of any K-POP group that I have seen on the web. Well done!

I love it when groups do this too, but they released a "making of" video for the FIRE videos. It is interesting to see how polite they are interacting with the staff and camera crew. They look like really nice people.

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Gwangju Kia Tigers Win!

The Korean Series ended last night in dramatic fashion. The series was tied up at three games each. It was the bottom of the ninth and the game was tied 5-5 and it ended with a walk-off home run. A pretty entertaining game and an exciting finish for the Gwangju Kia Tigers' season.

I was downtown after the game ended and hung our until after 2AM. There was no rioting or even a lot of excessive partying in the streets. Korea has yet to adopt the western tradition of trashing your own city after your home team wins a championship.