CAVEAT DVMPTRVCK

Caveat: Be Independent

오늘 삼일절이에요. 역사적인 운동 인때문에 저는 그휴일 좋아해요.

어제 병원에 걸어간 때 이 사진들을 찍었어요.

[daily log: walking, 1km]

Caveat: Obligatory hospital waiting room blog post

I saw snowy trees and fields while walking past the park. More later.

Update, a few hours later: I gained a clearer understanding why it is they seem to be procrastinating on doing further surgical work. The issue is that to dig down deeper in that area puts my right sublingual nerve at risk. This is a really big issue, because I lost most of the functionality of my left sublingual nerve during the cancer surgery. So my tongue has been operating all this time on the right nerve only. That's one thing the doctors mean when they say my tongue is asymmetric. So the one thing they really don't want to do is mess around with the right one. So anyway. They looked there, they said that some bone was showing (which somehow implies it's necrotic?), but they decided to continue to "wait and see." I'll go back next month. 

[daily log: walking, 11.5km]

Caveat: el ingenio del odio

It's a snowy Sunday afternoon on the Korean Peninsula.

My friend Bob asked me to help translate a song he's using (he is a music professor). 

What I'm listening to right now.

Victor Heredia, "Todavía cantamos." This song commemorates September 11th (the other one). 

Letra.

Todavía cantamos, todavía pedimos,
todavía soñamos, todavía esperamos,
a pesar de los golpes
que asestó en nuestras vidas
el ingenio del odio
desterrando al olvido
a nuestros seres queridos.

Todavía cantamos, todavía pedimos,
todavía soñamos, todavía esperamos,
que nos digan adónde
han escondido las flores
que aromaron las calles
persiguiendo un destino
¿Dónde, dónde se han ido?

Todavía cantamos, todavía pedimos,
todavía soñamos, todavía esperamos,
que nos den la esperanza
de saber que es posible
que el jardín se ilumine
con las risas y el canto
de los que amamos tanto.

Todavía cantamos, todavía pedimos,
todavía soñamos, todavía esperamos,
por un día distinto
sin apremios ni ayuno
sin temor y sin llanto,
porque vuelvan al nido
nuestros seres queridos.
Todavía cantamos, todavía pedimos,
Todavía soñamos, todavía esperamos...

My translation (I found a translation online but it was quite poor - perhaps merely an exhalation of the googletranslate). 

We still sing, we still ask
We still dream, we still hope
Despite the blows
That were dealt in our lives
By the shrewdness of hate
That exiled to oblivion
Our loved ones.

We still sing, we still ask
We still dream, we still hope
That they to tell us where
They have hidden the flowers
That scented the streets
Where we sought our destiny
Where, where have they gone?

We still sing, we still ask
We still dream, we still hope
That they give us hope
To know that it is possible
To brighten the garden
With the laughter and singing
Of those we love so much.

We still sing, we still ask
We still dream, we still hope
For a different day
Without coercion or hunger
Without fear or crying
When they return home,
Our loved ones.

We still sing, we still ask
We still dream, we still hope...

[daily log: walking, 1km]

Caveat: Beside the clock’s loneliness

THE THOUGHT-FOX

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

- Ted Hughes (British poet, 1930-1998)

[daily log: walking, 6km]

Caveat: naufragia fecerunt in marique perierunt

At Diagoras cum Samothracam venisset, atheus ille qui dicitur, atque ei quidam amicus: "Tu, qui deos putas humana neglegere, nonne animadvertis ex tot tabulis pictis, quam multi votis vim tempestatis effugerint in portumque salvi pervenerint?"

"Ita fit," inquit, "illi enim nusquam picti sunt, qui naufragia fecerunt in marique perierunt."

— Cicero, De Natura Deorum

Diagoras, who is called the atheist, being at Samothrace, one of his friends showed him several pictures of people who had endured very dangerous storms; "See," says he, "you who deny a providence, how many have been saved by their prayers to the Gods."

"Ay," says Diagoras, "I see those who were saved, but where are those painted who were shipwrecked and perished?"

— Cicero (106 BCE - 43 BCE), On the Nature of the Gods

This, in fact, addresses what is sometimes called the "survivorship fallacy," a logical fallacy that frequently arises in even high-level formal research in economics and the social sciences.

[daily log: walking 6.5km]

 

Caveat: A useful idea

The Korean word 엉동이 [eongdongi] means both "butt" or "ass", as well as "hips." The meaning is completely ambiguous, and undifferentiated in the language. I don't see this as a defect - it's just how it works. 

It can be difficult to explain to my students that there is a difference, and confusions are constant - and with elementary kids, you will not be shocked to learn that this is an important group of vocabulary items.  Thus you get "Teacher, he hit my hips" when "he hit my butt" is meant,  or "He was standing with his hands on his butt" when "He was standing with his hands on his hips" was intended. 

Yesterday with my 9th graders - who should already know this - I was explaining to Doyeong this difference. Probably, I've explained it before to him, given his potty mouth. I stood in front of the class, I put my hands in my hips. "Hips." I reached behind. "Butt." I explained, "They're completely different, in English. Different words, different concepts." 

"Really," said Doyeong, after a long pause as, it appeared, the distinction was finally sinking in. 

"Hey. That's a useful idea," he declared.

[daily log: walking, 6km]

 

Caveat: 0.02%

I was listening to Logan Vath's song, "Ain't It Like Nebraska," yesterday, and had this very weird thought: how much of my life have I spent driving across Nebraska? For whatever reason, I have vivid memories of some of those drives - especially that perfectly straight 70 mile stretch of freeway between Lincoln and Grand Island.

Because my main two "homes" in the US are California and Minnesota, and because over the years I have on many occasions had a better reason to drive than fly between them, I would estimate that, conservatively, I have driven across Nebraska at least 15 times. Given it takes about 6 hours on I-80 (with appropriate stops for gas or food), that means I've spent at least 90 hours driving across Nebraska. Since I've been alive approximately 441,000 hours, that means I've spent 0.02% of my life driving across Nebraska.

Of course, I've spent much more of life driving across other stretches. The 30 minute drive between Long Beach and Newport Beach is much shorter, but since it was my daily commute for a year, adds up to much more. Likewise the one-hour drive between Lansdale and Cherry Hill and other daily commutes from different times in my life.

Perhaps this should be contrasted with 0.46% (over 2000 hours) - the percent of my life I've spent walking between between Janghang and Hugok, in my seven years living in Ilsan. 

Sometimes I t hink about strange things.

[daily log: walking, 6km]

 

 

Caveat: <html>37 years of markup</html>

I had this weird realization, over the weekend, as I did some little thing on my computer, that I have been hacking around with HTML for more than 20 years, now. I was first exposed to HTML in maybe 1994, when I was taking grad-level courses at the University of Minnesota in preparation for my formal application to grad school, and was messing around on the U of M's intranet, which was in its infancy but was well ahead of the technology adoption curve, since the WWW was only about 3 years old at that point - note that the U of M was one of the innovators in the WWW realm, having been the original home of "gopher," a hyperlinked, markup-driven proto-internet that was one of the coneptual predecessors to Tim Berners-Lee's creation of the WWW at CERN in 1991).

Less than 2 years later, as a grad student at the University of Pennsylvania, I "published" my first web page - several webpages, actually, a simple website that provided me with a means to communicate homework assignments and ideas with my students (I was a TA, teaching lower-level Spanish language classes). My website included a little compilation of interesting bits of Spanish language culture such as could be found online in that early period of the internet, and when I was no longer teaching, I moved the site over to a geocities site where it lasted a year or two more, but it eventually died (along with geocities, of course).

HTML (hyper-text markup language) was not that hard for me pick up. I was already familiar with the concept of "markup," since even in 1995 I had already been dealing with some other types of markup for almost two decades.

I was exposed to the concept of "markup" in middle school in the late 1970's, thanks to my computer-literate uncle, who had an Apple II that he'd kludged together with an IBM Selectric typewriter (well, not brand-name, I think it was a Japanese clone of an IBM Selectric). This unholy marriage allowed him to produce letter-quality printer output in what was still a predominantly low-resolution, dot-matrix age (picture at right, for those too young to remember). I wrote my middle-school English essays (and later high school essays) using this arrangement. To send the unformatted text files to this printer required the use a fairly arcane set of markup commands (possibly these commands were ancestral to what later became LaTeX? I'm not sure). 

Later, as an undergraduate in 1983-1985, I had a work-study job in the department of Mathematics, and they discovered my mastery of the principles of markup and they made use of me for some departmentally published mathematics textbooks - even today, mathematical printing requires a great deal of markup to come out looking good - just look at the "source" view, sometime, on a math-intensive wikipedia page. 

So, as I said, markup was already an "old" concept to me when I met HTML in grad school. And HTML is a conceptually quite simple implementation of markup principles.

20 years later, I've realized that despite all my shifts in profession and location and lifestyle, not a week has gone by, probably, when I haven't hacked a bit of HTML. Of course, having this blog exposes me to opportunities - but most people with blogs avoid the markup, sticking to the user-friendly tools provided by blog-hosts. I, however, somehow manage to decide to do some HTML tweak or another with nearly every blog post. Ever since I started keeping a separate work-blog to communicate with students, I have made even greater use of my HTML hacking skills, since it allows me a convenient way to bypass the Korean-language user interface on the naver.com blog-publishing website.

So ... enjoy the fruits of markup - happy web surfing.

[daily log: walking, 6km]

Caveat: Roses, Violets, Ideas

This is an homage to Chomsky that ran across somewhere online recently.

"Roses are red
Violets are blue
Ideas are green
And colourless too"

Life goes on. 

[daily log: walking, 6.5km]

Caveat: For ever and for ever

A Farewell

Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
Thy tribute wave deliver:
No more by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,
A rivulet then a river:
Nowhere by thee my steps shall be
For ever and for ever.

But here will sigh thine alder tree
And here thine aspen shiver;
And here by thee will hum the bee,
For ever and for ever.

A thousand suns will stream on thee,
A thousand moons will quiver;
But not by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.
- Alfred Lord Tennyson (English poet, 1809-1892)

[daily log: walking]

Caveat: 십일번 타고가다

I learned this idiom from a coworker.

십일번 타고가다
sip.il.beon ta.go.ga.da
eleven-number ride-and-go
...take the number eleven [bus route].

Literally, it means "take the number 11 bus route." But the number 11 bus route is a metaphor for walking. Why? The digits "11" resemble two legs, I guess. I think this an idiom I can find much use for, given how much I walk as opposed to other forms of transportation. I like when I learn such useful things to say. Although who knows when I might actually find myself saying it - the next time someone offers me a ride that I turn down, I suppose.

[daily log: riding the number 11, 6.5km]

Caveat: Poseidon said “ Okey dokey Yo!”

I have a small elementary cohort, called Newton2T, with a very fast student and a slow student. They were using class time to work on their essays sitting at the computer (i.e. typing - I use these classes as typing practice, too) - because they hadn't finished them as homework. The fast student, Brian, finished his 120-word essay in a matter of 15 minutes or so, and asked me, "What can I do?"

I suggested doing some work for another class, and he didn't like that idea. So I told him to write a story. "I can't think of a story," he complained.

"Write about about the alligator and the monkey," I said. He wrote this story - verbatim, below.

One alligater and monkey is in the box. One alligater name is Donald and monkey’s name is Jared       Donald was hungry. So Donald look at Jared. Jared was scared. So, Jared prayed for Jejus.          So Jejus gave super power to Jared. Jared was happy. Why?He was strongest in the world

Jared was King in the world. Jared have bad imagine. That imagine is jared kill Jejus and get EVERY SUPERPOWER. Jejus was very angry.. So thunder to jared. Jared fly to sky castle. And shouted for Jejus. “ Hey Guy Come on!” Jejus was SO angry. So Jejus said poseidon “ please help me, one crazy monkey have super power.” Poseidon said “ Okey dokey Yo!”

[daily log: walking, 6km]

Caveat: killing unarmed animals

Justice Scalia died, I've seen in the news. I have some curiosity about this, just in the sense that I tend to follow American politics despite my frustration with it.

There has been some of the typical hagiography of Scalia that, given his record, seems a bit unjustified. He wasn't really a great person, as far as I can figure out. He was bitter, legally insonsistent, and pointlessly combative. I saw this humorous quote about Scalia, attributed to Clarence Thomas, of all people: "He loves killing unarmed animals." That's snark from one supreme jerk to another.

---

Unrelatedly - two days ago, it was snowing as I went to work. More climate volatility, among the redwoods (metasequoia) of Ilsan.

[daily log: walking, 6km]

Caveat: Things Koreans believe about immigration

Since I teach debate, I sometimes have the situation where students express views or even "facts" with which I don't agree or which I dislike. Only with the most advanced students have I ever tried to go into the realm of evidentiality and "sourced" arguments - mostly I focus on using debate as a means of expressing opinions using English and without regard to the veracity or even acceptability of what they're saying. Also, since I often make students "switch sides," I can hardly complain if they end up coming up with some implausible argument for a position which they wouldn't have chosen in any event on their own.

The below, however, is not one of those cases - the student chose the position apparently sincerely, and furthermore, I can sadly say that the opinions he echoes are quite widely held. Most interesting, vis-a-vis the question of immigration to Korea, is the seemingly circular argument that foreigners should not come to Korea because, since Koreans are racists and nationalists, immigrants would therefore have a bad experience here. It boils down to: "Don't come here because we don't like you, and so it would be bad for you to come here." 

Still, perhaps the most bizarre are the beliefs about how dangerous foreigners are. Yet this kind of thinking is hardly unique to Korea - just look at the American discourse around immigration, and such views are easy to find.

There are many people who are coming from other country these days. Korea can develop by accepting these kinds of people, but there are many people in different opinion that disagree about accepting these kinds of people.

People who are coming from another country have different religions. IS which is one of the most dangerous groups of people in the world have the Islamic religion. They are very dangerous, so most people do not like to live in the same country with them. Korean people often eat fork after work, but Islamic people can not eat pork. Hindu people can not eat beef, so they can not join in the Korean company dinner. Many people who are coming from other countries can not live with Korean people.

There is the wall between Korean people and foreigners. This wall is called nationalism. Korean people express a very powerful nationalism. For example, Korean people do not like black people because they think that black people make scary situation. Korean people are also disregard immigrant workers who are coming from Philippines or Vietnam. Immigration is harmful for foreigners.

Foreigners make crimes. American soldiers make crimes almost once a week. They kill many Korean women and rape them. Chinese are psycho. Chinese kill Korean people, cut into their bodies and also they eat human meat. Foreigners are dangerous to live with.

In conclusion, immigration is sometimes helpful but not always. Foreigners have different religion and make many crimes. Korean people also have nationalism, so foreigners can not endure it. People should know that immigration is not always good for our country.

I can say that among my students, such views as these are not that common - just by virtue of being a middle-school student who is in the top quartile of English ability (such is the case with my students, since I don't teach the lower levels) means that one's views of things like globalism and internationalism are probably moderate. Nevertheless, in the broader public, I can also say that such views are probably more common than anyone would like to admit. 

"While the secret knowledge is only available to some members of the society, there is an ideology, an ethics, and a phenomenology of ignorance that is shared, to some degree, by all." -Jonathan Mair

[daily log: walking, 6km]

Caveat: 求之不得

I learned this four-character idiom from my building's elevator last night. I might learn more idioms if I took the elevator more often. But I would get less exercise. And there are other places to find four-character idioms.

求之不得
구지부득
gu.ji.bu.deuk
seek-go-not-get

This was hard to figure out the meaning. I'm not totally confident. There is no entry for the idiom in the Korean-English online dictionary, but the Korean-only dictionary gives (for the verbalized form, 구지부득하다): "구하려고 해도 얻지 못 하다," which the googletranslate renders "Even trying to save is not obtained." That's not that helpful on seeing the meaning. I had better luck googling it as if it were Chinese. In an online Chinese-English dictionary, I found it is an idiom meaning "to be exactly what one has been looking for." I could kind of see that, but it's not clear to me that the Korean usage has the same meaning, or if the Korean usage is more negative, which would be more simply, to try to find but fail to find something.

In which case, I tried to find the exact meaning of this idiom, but failed. 

[daily log: walking, 6km]

Caveat: Where's New Zealand, Anyway?

I don't have much to say today - I had a rather braindead weekend, after that thunderstormy Saturday. Actually, right after writing about climate volatility, it started to get cold again. It's bright and sunny and about -6 C (21 F) now, midday on Monday.

---

Meanwhile... did you know there is an entire website dedicated to maps that fail to show New Zealand? I mean, just in case you needed that information.

[daily log: walking, 6.5km]

Caveat: The well-composed in his burnished solitude

In the Element of Antagonisms

If it is a world without genius,
It is most happily contrived. Here, then,

We ask which means most, for us, all the genii
Or one man who, for us, is greater than they,

On his gold horse striding, like a conjured beast,
Miraculous in its panache and swish?

Birds twitter pandemoniums around
The idea of the chavalier of chevaliers,

The well-composed in his burnished solitude,
The tower, the ancient accent, the wintry size.

And the north wind's mighty buskin seems to fall
In an excessive corridor, alas!

-Wallace Stevens (American poet, 1879-1955)

 

[daily log: walking, 1km]

Caveat: on climate volatility

I have been so tired lately. I came home from work and took a nap today - the work-in-the-mornings Saturday schedule always discombobulates me slightly.

I awoke to a thunderstorm outside. In February? The weather is weird. This moment, an hour after sunset on February 13th, it is 16 C (60 F) in suburban Seoul. Meanwhile, according to the internet, it's -20 C (-4 F) in Minneapolis. Last month, these numbers were reversed. Both situations are abnormal. People like to argue about anthropogenic global warming and climate change, but I wonder if new terminology might improve the acceptibility of the concept to the sceptics, borrowing from the world of finance: "increasing climate volatility."

[daily log: walking, 6km]

Caveat: pv bschk z 5 0 4 5 5 0 4 4

Funky...  the googletranslate gets funky.

What I'm listening to right now. 

Davie504, "GOOGLE TRANSLATE MEETS BASS."

Lyrics.

pv bschk z 5 0 4 5 5 0 4 4 

etc.

[daily log: walking 7.5km]

Caveat: . . . waiting is the hardest part

I awoke very early so I could have time to face my day before heading off to the hospital. I walked into the rising sun feeling my normal mix of apprehension and the weird, uncharacteristic optimism that I only seem capable of experiencing when facing imminent discomfort and adversity.

Now I sit waiting among the near-ghosts and their attendants and hangers-on, on the utterly familiar east wing, 2nd floor of the superfun cancerland theme park.

Sometimes, waiting is the hardest part.

Several hours later - update... 

Good news: No more necrotic bone presented.

Bad news: 3 weeks after the surgery, there has been almost no healing. This is due to necrotic soft tissue in the same area. Basically,  I have big hole in the back of my mouth where they took out the dead tooth and bone. This is exactly why this procedure couldn't be done by a regular dentist. It requires monitoring and maintenance. Low grade infection is inevitable. Impact: eating will remain problematic, and mouth hygiene is critical and remains tedious. "Come back in 2 weeks, we'll decide what to do next." 

[daily log: walking, 11.5km]

Caveat: The Escherian Escalator Trip

I have had terrible insomnia, the last few days. It impairs me sense of feeling productive in my life, and renders me even less motivated than usual.

I suspect it has to do with the discombobulation of my regular schedule due to the long weekend, but mostly due to my apartment flood, last week, which forced me to make do with a temporarily altered sleeping arrangement - substitute bedding that is less comfortable.

Yesterday morning, I woke very early (3 am), and then lay down to take a nap later on, after the sun came up. During that nap, I had a very strange repeating dream. It repeated many times. I was a police officer. I was going down an escalator. My colleagues - the other police officers - were all children. Yet they were more aware of what it is we were supposed to be doing than I was, and they were telling me what to do. I was at a loss - so much so, that I couldn't make it to the bottom of the escalator, no matter how hard I tried. I could see that I was needed at the bottom, and everyone was telling me to go there, but I couldn't get there. As I looked around, the whole arrangement of the moving stairs was like a complex Escherian machine. All the children were leaving me behind. On and on and on...

I awoke from the nap and took a walk outside. The weather is springlike, despite it being the midwinter festival. I went into a bakery and bought a sandwich, the first since my surgery (and in anticipation of my next surgery, coming up tomorrow). I had all these preconceptions of how I might enjoy that sandwich, but they were preconceptions that were mostly based on experiences from many years ago. In point of fact, eating the sandwich wasn't really very enjoyable. I hate when that happens.

[daily log: walking]

Caveat: dentro del agua

Mi corza

En Ávila, mis ojos...
- SIGLO XV

Mi corza, buen amigo,
mi corza blanca.

Los lobos la mataron
al pie del agua.

Los lobos, buen amigo,
que huyeron por el río.

Los lobos la mataron dentro del agua.
- Rafael Alberti (poeta español, 1902-1999)

[daily log: walking, 2km]

Caveat: OK. Bring On The Monkeys!

Today is 설날 [seollal = lunar new year]. A holiday, and the beginning of the Year of the Monkey.

Koreans celebrate the lunar new year by eating seaweed soup with ttoek (plain rice-cake) for breakfast. I had some "instant" 미역국 (miyeokguk = seaweed soup) and had bought some tteok in a bag from the convenience store downstairs yesterday. 

So I did that - picture at right.

Utterly apropos, because of the video...

What I'm listening to right now.

Coldplay, "Adventure Of A Lifetime."

Lyrics.

Turn your magic on
Umi she'd say
Everything you want's a dream away
And we are legends every day
That's what she told me

Turn your magic on,
To me she'd say
Everything you want's a dream away
Under this pressure under this weight
We are diamonds

Now I feel my heart beating
I feel my heart underneath my skin
And I feel my heart beating
Oh you make me feel
Like I'm alive again
Alive again
Oh you make me feel
Like I'm alive again

Said I can't go on, not in this way
I'm a dream that died by light of day
Gonna hold up half the sky and say
Only I own me
And I feel my heart beating
I feel my heart underneath my skin
Oh I can feel my heart beating
Cause you make me feel
Like I'm alive again
Alive again
Oh you make me feel
Like I'm alive again

Turn your magic on, Umi she'd say
Everything you want's a dream away
Under this pressure under this weight
We are diamonds taking shape
We are diamonds taking shape

If we've only got this life
This adventure oh then I
And if we've only got this life
You get me through
And if we've only got this life
In this adventure oh then I
Want to share it with you
With you
With you
Yeah I do
Woohoo
Woohoo
Woohoo

[daily log: walking, yeah right]

Caveat: Briefly Deinternetted

I decided to rearrange my apartment today, to prepare for the monkeys, as well as to recover from the flood a few days ago, and it got complicated - I disabled my internet somehow. It appears to have been temporary, or my fiddling around fixed it, as it is working again. I'm not sure what happened. Maybe the cable was bad, or suddenly discovered its innner badness when I moved it around.

[daily log: walking, 1.5km]

Caveat: 더불어...

I was walking to work this morning, and noticed the political banners at the big intersection of Gobong and Jungang. I guess it's not just political season in the US, but here too?

I tried to make sense of the 민주당 (Democratic Party) banner as I waited for the traffic light to change so I could cross the street. It said,

더불어민주당
deo.bul.eo min.ju.dang
[come] along with the Democratic Party

The dictionary gives "throw your lot in with..." as a gloss for 더불어 but that has a bit too much of a negative connotation (as in, just give up and throw your lot in with) in my mind to serve as a good translation of a political slogan, so I preferred to try to read it as "come along with." 

The Democratic Party is the slightly more leftward of Korea's two parties - I was standing under the banner of their opposites, the more right-wing 새누리당 [sae.nu.ri.dang = "New Frontier Party"], who currently control the presidency through the dictator's daughter. I don't think it's quite time to elect a president (that will be next year), but I think there are local elections and maybe parliamentary ones, coming up. 

[daily log: walking, 6.5km]

 

 

 

Caveat: once you have walked the length of your mind

Continuing To Live

Continuing to live — that is, repeat
A habit formed to get necessaries —
Is nearly always losing, or going without.
It varies.

This loss of interest, hair, and enterprise —
Ah, if the game were poker, yes,
You might discard them, draw a full house!
But it’s chess.

And once you have walked the length of your mind, what
You command is clear as a lading-list.
Anything else must not, for you, be thought
To exist.

And what’s the profit? Only that, in time,
We half-identify the blind impress
All our behavings bear, may trace it home.
But to confess,

On that green evening when our death begins,
Just what it was, is hardly satisfying,
Since it applied only to one man once,
And that one dying.
- Philip Larkin (British poet, 1922-1985)

[daily log: walking, 6km]

Caveat: Never Wash Dishes Before Having Coffee

I won't say my kitchenette sink is broken. It's just a little bit wonky. The drainpipe under the sink is just snapped on. Thus, if I am moving something around under the sink, it's possible for the drainpipe to snap off. It's easy to fix - just snap it back on.

Yesterday I took out some of my recycling, and so I was pulling the bag out from under the sink. I guess the pipe snapped off.

Normally, when this happens, I notice immediately - the water runs down out from under the sink cabinet, instead of down its drainpipe, and onto the floor where I'm standing. This is hard not to notice, and thus I will stop, mop up the spilled water, and move on.

Last night, we had hwehsik (회식 = work dinner). It went quite late. I am not drinking alcohol, because of my ongoing surgical procedures, but... I was really groggy when I got up this morning. Fuzzy-brained. Out of it.

For some reason, I decided I needed to do the dishes, first thing when I got up. The sink was full of dishes, and they were in the way of filling my coffee pot. I have been busy with work, lately, so I had been letting the dishes pile up a bit - as much as they can, given my limited supply. So I started doing dishes. I did them all.

Somehow, I was utterly oblivious to the river flowing at my feet. I guess that sets a new standard for groggy.

I flooded my apartment.

My bed, being on the floor, served as absorptive material to mop it all up. Now I am doing a lot of laundry.

On the plus side, my floor has been cleaned.

Never wash dishes before having coffee.

[daily log: walking, 6km]

Caveat: Lucky Seven

I've written before about how I reward my students with "alligator bucks" sometimes - a kind of point system or in-class currency. I also have a rare, special "Lucky Seven" bill, denominated at 7 alligator bucks. If you possess one of these "Lucky Sevens," you can use it as a homework pass, to get out of a zero point result for undone homework.

Yesterday, my student Sophia came to me right before our listening class. She brandished her "Lucky Seven" and I thought she was going to confess to not doing homework. Instead, she wanted to know if it also could be counted as a normal seven dollars, in our economy system. She was really hungry, she said. I sometimes have snacks on hand that I "sell" to my students. She wanted to buy some chips that she knew I had in my "snack drawer." 

I shrugged, and said sure, if she wanted to spend her seven dollars on a snack, that was fine. "Are you sure you don't want to save it in case you don't do your homework, sometime?"

She grinned. "I always do my homework!"

"I seem to remember a few times when you didn't do homework," I observed.

She was adamant that she would never need the lucky seven. "I will always do my homework in the future," she promised.

We went into our listening class. "OK, let me see your homework," I began.

"We had homework?!" Sophia said, with a dismayed look on her face and a handful of chips paused, halfway to her mouth.

[daily log: walking: 6km]

Caveat: 桑田碧海

I learned this four-character aphorism from my friend Seungbae on Saturday.

桑田碧海
상전벽해
sang.jeon.byeok.hae
silkworm-orchard-blue-sea
"[Like a] silkworm orchard [becoming] blue sea"

This indicates a situation of intense, complete change - as if a silkworm orchard is tranformed into blue sea. It came up in the context of discussing the fact that, because I was stationed near to my current home when I was in the US Army in 1991, I had seen Ilsan back when it was a small village amid rice fields, and now it has become a high-density connurbation of half a million. Seungbae used this phrase to describe that kind of transformation.

[daily log: walking, 6.5km]