I designed a "logo" for my new website, this morning. The drawing is not really original - it's a free-hand consolidation of several images found online. For all that, I'm moderately pleased with the result, as a first draft.
I'm least happy with the vertical lettering - but the constraints of the drawn image, combined with fact that the logo needs to be square, made this the most reasonable approach, I thought. I'll work on it more, at some point.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
I try to draw themed alligators for various US-centric holidays.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
Today is Isaac Newton's birthday!
To celebrate, I am at rest, and will remain at rest.
[daily log: walking, 3km]
The latest incarnation of my whiteboard-dwelling tribe of cartoon alligators is feeling cold. We're having cold weather, lately, here in Goyang (highs around -5 C, and -10 or -15 at night). So I made the snowgator.
[daily log: walking, 7.5km]
I don't have much to say. Recently we started our Christmas-themed role-play with my youngest, lowest-level cohort. It might seem early, but with only one 45 minute practice period per week, it's really not too early.
So we are learning some Christmas songs. And I drew this on the whiteboard. We were drawing reindeer characters from the story. I added my own.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
(Poem #445 on new numbering scheme)
He felt a gladness, digging deeper...
his shovel bit the dirt;
but then he found a skelegator
that bit him, oh it hurt!
Picture above drawn at work on a whiteboard as a prompt for a story-telling exercise in an elementary speaking class.
The hungry alligator sat.
He looked at many things:
a tree, a boy, a dog, a boat,
a famished bat with wings.
"What shall I eat?" he wondered. "Boys.
can be delicious, true....
and dogs in boats have lousy taste,
and trees are hard to chew."
- two quatrains in ballad meter.
The animals were gathered there
discussing their sad fate.
They knew they were illusions all
and conjured up too late.
- a quatrain in ballad meter. The picture was a whimsical creation of a few boring moments at work. I had been interviewing new prospective students, earlier, and I often have the students draw an animal ("follow instructions in English" / "Describe a picture in English"). These animals are mine, but inspired by first-grade student-drawn animals.
Now I have made an "inverted" nonnet. I have no idea if this is a thing that's been done before. It's the same as a nonnet, just the other way around. I drew this "blue cicada in a bottle" and originally posted it some years ago.
Blue
singing
cicadas
up in the trees
have explained to me
without using language
that summer is not so bad,
that it passes in a moment,
that the green, breeze-blown leaves caress them.
[daily log: walking, 7km]
As some of you know, one of my strange hobbies is designing imaginary countries. This is a very useless hobby, but one close to my heart.
Yesterday, I drew a capitol building for one of those countries: Capitolio de la Federación Ardesférica. The drawing is derivative, of course. I combined some ideas from other domed buildings that I found online. But the sketch is entirely my own, and only a sketch - about 15 minutes' work.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
On Friday, I drew these alligators (at right) on the whiteboard for my youngest students (1st and 2nd graders).
Yesterday was my last "naesin vacation" Saturday, meaning I didn't have to work, but will have to work next Saturday. My friend Peter came out to Ilsan and we had dinner and walked around a lot and talked a lot. I think he was feeling nostalgic for when he lived in Ilsan. Anyway, it was good to get out of the house.
He loaned me a book I want to read, Hamel's Journal, a book written by a Dutch man who spent a long time in Korea in the 17th century. I'll write more about it when I get around to reading it.
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Yesterday at work I was in a meeting where I was quite unclear what was going on. Someone from outside of Karma was discussing some issues with some online pedagogic software we use with some of our students, called Cappytown.
Anyway, I was at a loss - I understood some of the details, because I was familiar with some aspects of the software. However, I had no idea why I had been called into the meeting or what it was for, in broader outline. Even now, I'm somewhat confused.
During the meeting, I drew a picture on my notes.
[daily log: walking, 6km]
Of course, it is well known that Korean speakers struggle with the phonemic character of the "L-R distinction" in English. In fact, Korean possesses both sounds (at least, approximately, and with some caveats vis-a-vis the retroflex character of the English R), but in Korean the distinction is not phonemic but instead allophonically complementary.
If the above paragraph is gobbledygook, that's OK. I'm just being a linguist.
My point for this blog post is that sometimes my students make humorous mistakes. My student Cody was trying to give a debate speech about why zoos are not good for animals, and he was trying to say that life in a zoo is boring for animals, but his pronunciation consistently and clearly rendered "boring" as "boiling" - this is not just an L-R mistake but I think he was genuinely confusing the two words. Added to this is the typical "agent/patient" confusion typical with Korean learners of English (i.e. "The sea lion is bored" being rendered as "The sea lion is boring.").
I was struggling to explain to him the difference. Finally, on a piece of scrap paper, I sketched a zoo with bored animals, and then added a boiling sea lion. This seemed to get the message across - even though I received a lot of criticism for the quality of my sea lion. I agree it's a pretty implausible sea lion, but he is clearly boiling.
[daily log: walking, 6km]
During an exceptionally frustrating staff meeting yesterday, I wasn't understanding much that was being said, and misunderstood at least one important point. This is due to my linguistic handicap (i.e. not having mastered Korean).
So I withdrew and drew on the margins of my new class schedule. Here is what I drew.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
This drawing evolved on the whiteboard in my Betelgeuse반 the other day. The girls insisted that the robot was fighting the giraffe, although I hadn't really intended that to be the theme of the drawing. To me, it looks rather like the robot wants to fight the giraffe, but the giraffe is calmly uninterested - above the fray, so to speak.
What I'm listening to right now.
MC Frontalot, "I'll Form The Head."
[daily log: walking, 6km]
During some staff discussion we were having, Curt attempted draw a cow on the whiteboard. I think it was in the context of explaining the principle of "rumination" - i.e. a period during which students can ruminate on their input. This shows pedagogical awareness, but the staff discussion got distracted by the quality of his cow illustration. He attempted again, in response to feed back that cows don't have round faces. Soon, everyone was laughing.
Curt said to me, "Hey, Jared. You're an artist. You draw a cow. Fast."
So I stepped up and drew my own version of a cow.
The three versions are at right. None of them are very good cows.
I have been having an overcast and lazy Sunday. I went to 본죽 and bought 단호박죽, as a kind of commemoration of the arrival of winter.
What I'm listening to right now.
[daily log: walking, 1km]
My teaching schedule is slowing down some, now that the middle-schoolers have started test-prep, but I'm still filling in for Grace, and working hard getting caught up on all the work and projects I let fall by the wayside during my busiest time the last few weeks.
I've been pretty grumpy at work - I'm not very good at letting go of things that piss me off, in this case the issue of parents complaining about my more laid-back teaching style. I feel this need to "prove" myself - to do extra work to prove that I am, in fact, teaching something despite the more laid-back style. Hence all the work I'm doing in posting videos of my speaking tasks and tests on my work blog, all the work in showing that the kids are actually doing English-learning stuff in my classes.
Meanwhile, alligator meets mouse, drawn the other day.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff—and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.
And from the inside, too, I’d duplicate
Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:
Uncurtaining the night, I’d let dark glass
Hang all the furniture above the grass,
And how delightful when a fall of snow
Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so
As to make chair and bed exactly stand
Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!
- Vladimir Nabokov
(Russian-American novelist, 1899-1977)
This is a snippet from Nabokov's poem "Pale Fire," which is not simply a "poem by Nabokov." Rather, Nabokov wrote the poem (999 lines) and embedded it in his novel Pale Fire, wherein the character of John Shade is the purported author of the poem.
For some reason this poem made a major impression on me from when I read the novel (I think in late 1980s), and certain lines have stuck in my memory. For that reason I have an interest in waxwings. Above right is a sketch I made of an imaginary species of waxwing.
Today is that peculiar Korean holiday, "Children's Day," which works ironically for teachers, since we don't work, and therefore do not see children on children's day, unless we have our own.
I drew this on the whiteboard yesterday, with my trademark phrase.
[daily log: walking, 1 km]
Yesterday I finally did something I have been meaning to do for quite some time.
I took the time to scan one of my alligator pictures, "trace" it into a graphics application (Inkscape, which I'm trying to learn how to use), touch it up a little bit, and then convert to a scalable graphics image (e.g. a .PNG file in this case).
I think the result went well. I printed out a bunch of these cloned alligators on our color printer at work, and immediately had tribes of elementary students bidding to "buy" these pictures with their alligator bucks. Helen said I should charge what the market would bear. I didn't charge - I gave them away. Socialist: alligator illustrations to each according to their need.
I will try to do a few more, I guess. This alligator is specific to our upcoming talent show.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]
My notes from a recent staff meeting included a very cool alligator.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]
These are allegations, left lying around on whiteboards.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]
I got nothing. Here's from the whiteboard, the other day.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
This is an aphorism from my aphorism book.
희기는 까치 배 바닥 같다
hui.gi.neun kka.chi bae ba.dak gat.da
white-MYSTERYENDING magpie belly bottom be-like
To be like the belly of a magpie - white.
I wasn't able to figure out any parse of -기는 that really made sense. "White" is verb-like (what is called descriptive verb, which stands in for adjectives in Korean). If I parse the ending as "summative" (기 - a bit like a gerund) + 는 (topic) I guess that gets close to a valid parse. It would make the whiteness the "topic" of the sentence, while the magpie's belly is a kind of complement, with nothing tying them together except the comparison for some unmentioned subject. Anyway, even without clarity on the grammatical issue, I think the translation is more-or-less passable.
The meaning, according to the book, is that it applies to someone good at lying, especially white lies or bluffing.
I painted this picture a long time ago and posted it on the blog, but I think this aphorism merits a reposting of the picture.
"가을의 까치" (ink and watercolor).
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
I was trying to explain to a student the distinction between the /th/ phoneme and the /s/ phoneme - many Koreans have trouble with the distinction, since the /th/ doesn't exist in the language, and the problem isn't helped by some sector of the English education complex teaching them that there is really not any difference in the pronunciation between e.g. "mouse" and "mouth".
So I drew a picture, because he was quite young. It was a spur-of-the-moment illustration, but I was pleased with it.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
I have these "Hello Kitty" index cards, which are pink. I got them for free somehow - I don't recall when. But I use little index cards quite frequently (almost universally) in my speaking classes, when I allow students to make notes - I find the small format makes them think more about what information to put on their cards in preparation for speaking, and at least sometimes prevents them from writing out their speeches verbatim, because they can't fit the full speech so well on such a small card.
Some of the students (boys, of course) complained about having pink, Hello Kitty index cards. I said deal with it. On a whim, I tried to create a less "girly" version of the Hello Kitty character. I called him/her "Yo, Cat." Here is a bad-quality photo of a bad-quality sketch.
I guess I conceptualized this character as a hiphop artist.
내가 지금 듣고있어요.
[UPDATE 20180328: Video embed updated due to link-rot.]
매드 클라운, "콩 (Hide And Seek)," (Feat. Jooyoung 주영)
가사.
하루의 시작 똑같은 생활의 반복
속에 끈질기게 나를 놓지 않길
난 세상이란 바구니 속 작은 콩
행복이란 게 내 청춘의
방구석 어디쯤 숨었다면
난 쓰레기통 탁자 밑 신발장
안까지 싹 다 뒤졌겠지
하지만 나 바랬던 것들
여기 없네 내게 행복은
소문만 무성할 뿐 목격된 적 없네
속쓰린 아침 다시 밥과 마주했고
이걸 벌기 위해 이걸
또 삼키고 난 나가야 돼
삶이란 건 어쩌면
아빠의 구둣발 같은건가 봐
끊임없이 바닥과 부딪혀
닳고 아픈건가 봐
행복이란 게 마치
숨바꼭질과 같은 거라면
난 모든 길 모퉁이 모든 골목
구석까지 미친 듯 뒤졌겠지
모두가 모르겠단 표정으로
날 비웃을 때 답을 찾았다거나
답이 보인 게 아냐 난 그냥 믿었네
2011년 11월 난 보자기에
씌워진 저 작은 콩
까만 비닐봉지에 싸인
저 위가 내 하늘일 리 없다
믿었고 반복된 일상
평범함은 죄 아니니까
난 웅크린 채 숫자를 세
아직은 한참 밤이니까
스물일곱의 그 밤
무작정 걸었던 그날 밤
가로등 아래 우두커니 서
난 어디로 갈지도 모른 채
스물일곱의 그 밤
내 모습이 초라해
눈을 뜨면 꼭 잡힐 것 같아
아득한 그 시절 그날 밤
해 뜨면 어제 같은 오늘을
또 한 번 나 살아가겠지
붐비는 지하철 똑같은
발걸음들 나 따라가겠지
술잔 앞 꿈에 대한 얘기 할 때면
사실 내 목소리 떳떳하지 못해서
누군가 눈치챌까 괜시리
목소릴 높였지 이 곳을
벗어나고 싶어 난 내가
나로서 살고 싶어
더 비겁해지기 전에
겁 먹기 전에 이젠 나 답고 싶어
작은 콩 몸 속에는
서러움과 눈물 몇 방울
그리고 그 빛나는 믿음을
끌어안고 견디는 중
이 수많은 밤을
나를 믿는 것 꿈을 견디는 것
지금의 내 초라함은
잠시 스쳐갈 뿐이라는 것과
언젠가 머릴 들이밀고
솟아날 콩처럼 까만 보자기 속
난 한없이 더 질겨지고 있지
스물일곱의 그 밤
무작정 걸었던 그날 밤
가로등 아래 우두커니 서
난 어디로 갈지도 모른 채
스물일곱의 그 밤
내 모습이 초라해
눈을 뜨면 꼭 잡힐 것 같아
아득한 그 시절 그날 밤
하루 견뎌 또 하루
세상에 바짝 약 오른 채로
용기를 내긴 힘들었고
포기란 말은 참 쉬웠던
난 숫자를 세지
꼭꼭 숨어라 머리카락 보일라
어디로 넌 숨었을까
어디에 있건 상관없다고
자 하나 둘 셋 넷
다시 다섯 넷 셋 둘
세상은 나를 술래라 해
난 그래서 눈 가렸을 뿐
한때는 헷갈린 적도 있지만
난 이제 갈 길 가네
열까지 숫자를 세고
내일이 되면 난 더 빛나네
나는 더 빛나네
스물일곱의 그 밤
무작정 걸었던 그날 밤
가로등 아래 우두커니 서
난 어디로 갈지도 모른 채
스물일곱의 그 밤
내 모습이 초라해
눈을 뜨면 꼭 잡힐 것 같아
아득한 그 시절 그 날 밤
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Yesterday during the staff meeting I was grumpy, because ... well, it was because of something that was ultimately my own fault, for having failed to validate some work someone else had done. Anyway, I will have to adapt my curriculum for my Sirius반...
I took these notes during the meeting. They are quite detailed, but don't really make clear what I need to do.
Later, my student Hansaem made some minor additions to the notes in red pen, including her name and the name of an imaginary friend.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
I'm not sure these three things belong together. But here they are, together in this blog.
THE DESOLATE FIELD
Vast and grey, the sky
is a simulacrum
to all but him whose days
are vast and grey, and–
In the tall, dried grasses
a goat stirs
with nozzle searching the ground.
–my head is in the air
but who am I
.
.
?
And amazed my heart leaps
at the thought of love
vast and grey
yearning silently over me.
- William Carlos Williams (American poet, 1883-1963)
What I'm listening to right now.
[UPDATE 20180328: video embed replaced due to link-rot]
Jean Sibelius, "Lemminkäinen Suite."
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
Last week during the staff meeting I made the following detailed notes about what I was listening to (i.e. long debates in Korean about minutiae of curriculum and scheduling and parental complaints):
As you can see, I got a lot out of the meeting.
Sigh.
[daily log: walking 4 km]
I spent part of the weekend trying to resume my drawing habit, which has been moribund. Because the weather was hot and unpleasantly humid, I decided to draw snow. That helps me feel less hot, I guess.
I made this picture.
It is titled The Snowy Road to Hwna. This is an imaginary place (of which I have a plethora in my mind). Specifically, it lies somewhere in the mountain country on the island of Puh in the western part of the Mahhal Archipelago.
The style of the drawing is strictly derivative, of course. I think of it as a "contemporary Korean faux-traditional" style - the kind that is ubiquituous in cheesy decor and is for sale as paintings on street corners by third-rate artists. Regardless, I was pleased with it.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
My blog has been utterly down for more than 24 hours now, as far as I can figure out. At least it's accessible on the "back end" - meaning I am able to write this post. But it's like talking into nothingness - I'm writing a blog post that no one can see.
I've been putting a lot of energy into trying to extract the content of this blog from the host and configure a new, back-up location for my nearly 4000 blog entries. I've got something that is up-and-working, but getting all the pictures posted with my new back-up blog turns out to be more difficult. I may have to manually download all the pictures (one by one?!).
I'm looking into longer term alternatives for changing my blog host - the down time is pretty annoying but what's more annoying is the lack of clear communication from the host provider to me, the customer, about the situation.
Meanwhile, here is a picture of some doodles I did while taking notes in a meeting a while back. I'm posting it to test a new picture-posting method (which is much more laborious but ensures I have copies of each picture posted in multiple locations).
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Here are my exhaustive notes from the staff meeting today.
Recent life summary: eat read work sleep repeat.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
The picture at right are some cats I drew on the board for my Copernicus반 elementary students today.
We had a 회식 [hoesik = business lunch or dinner, sort of] today for lunch, before work. It was at that buffet-slash-steakhouse that Koreans love so much: VIPS. I call it Korean wedding food. It's OK, I guess.
I ate some cream of broccoli soup that was good. Really, texture-wise I'm handling most things OK, as long as I take small bites, chew carefully, and down it with lots of liquids. I had a few bites of salad which is very hard to eat but that I miss eating.
At work I allowed my TEPS-M반 middle schoolers to "buy" a pizza party with their collected "alligator dollars" - for 100 (which they pooled among themselves) I ordered them pizza, and we skipped the vocab test (which may have been the highlight, for them). I ate a slice of the pizza, even.
Curt had asked me earlier how it is I get those TEPS kids to talk so much. I suppose buying them pizza helps - but to put it in more methodological/theoretical terms, I'm finding intrinsic motivator for them to seek out communicative proficiencies. Or, um, something like that.
[daily log: walking, 3 km]
생각이란 생각하면 생각할수록 생각나는것이 생각이므로 생각하지않는 생각이 좋은 생각이라 생각한다.
I decided a while back to do a series of Korean tongue-twisters, in the same way I have been doing aphorisms and proverbs. Here is one that I have had on queue for a long time but was feeling intimidated by the grammar. I made a stab at it finally.
생각이란 생각하면
saeng·gak·i·ran saeng·gak·ha·myeon
thought-AS-FOR think-COND
As for thoughts, when [I] thought them
생각할수록 생각나는것이
saeng·gak·hal·su·rok saeng·gak·na·neun·geos·i
think-THE-MORE recall-PROB-PAST
the more I thought the more I recalled
생각이므로 생각하지않는
saeng·gak·i·meu·ro saeng·gak·ha·ji·anh·neun
thought-be-SINCE think-NEG-PRESPART
since it's thoughts, unthought
생각이 좋은 생각이라 생각한다
saeng·gak·i joh·eun saeng·gak·i·ra saeng·gak·han·da
thought-SUBJ be-good-PASTPART thought-be-PROP think
thoughts being thoughts that are good think
As for thoughts, when I think them, the more I think the more I recall, since being thoughts, I think unthought thoughts are good thoughts too.
Seems like there is a lot of thinking going on. I think.
This was really a puzzle, grammatically - it's not so much a meaningful sentence as it is a "showcase of endings" - a single word, "thought" is nounified and verbified at least 9 times in 9 different ways, that I can count. I don't have a lot of confidence on my guessed-at meaning, but, like a Dr Seuss rhyme, I'm not sure that that really matters - possibly, something equally non-sensical but more poetic or farsical could be derived for the English, that wouldn't violate the spirit of the original.
In any event, I spent about an hour puzzling through my grammar bible and even recoursing several times to Martin before settling on this interpretation.
What do you think? I really like it. 재밌당.
For the next three days, it's a giant holiday here: the lunar new year. I'm not planning on any trip or major activity, so I mostly will focus on trying to get lots of rest and improving my habits.
I'm such a homebody these days.
[daily log (1130 pm): walking, 5 km]