Barack Obama for President!

Ever since his speech during the 2004 Democratic Convention (when I found myself wishing that he, not Kerry, were the Democratic nominee) I have been hoping that Obama would run in 2008. I know who I'm voting for!

Not a damn thing going on here.

I went on a walk today,
and all I got was a shot of a sidewalk and a headache.

Purchase Prints!

These prints and more are now available for purchase!
Either click here or on the image above to see the photographs available.

Another JPG Magazine submission - Please Help!

I hope you guys aren't getting tired of this by now... but this is my latest submission to the JPG Magazine contest. The theme is Breakthrough: discovery, invention, progress, and revolution. Obviously, I'm going for the discovery aspect with this photo. If you think it fits the theme, please click on the image to vote. Remember, you must register with JPG Magazine for your vote to count, but it's free and easy. Thank you for your support!

New Glasses!!

I bought new glasses today, complete with a new prescription - and fabulously cheap. Why are glasses so freakin' expensive back home? My last pair (frames, lenses and consultation with an optometrist for new prescription) cost nearly $600. These cost $80 - framses, lenses, prescription and all. I am seriously going to buy a new pair of glasses every month for the rest of my stay here. Check them out!

What do you think?

The eyesockets of the glasses curve at the sides, and the lenses end before the curves begin. This is apparently some kind of new style - they had a wide selection of this kind of frames. I think they're pretty awesome, although they are a little weird!

I changed things up just a bit over at the main pad...

Click on the picture to check it out!

Four Substantially Less Controversial Book Reviews

My last book review was of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. This post is going to be substantially less controversial. For Christmas, my Aunt Mary gave me a gift certificate to Amazon.com (thank you, thank you!) and I was able to purchase a nice little stack of books to keep me occupied for a while. Four of the books I purchased were mysteries from two different series which I enjoy.

The first two books are The Game and Locked Rooms by Laurie King. These books are the final two (at this point anyway) in King’s series featuring Mary Russell, the young wife of Sherlock Holmes. I’ve been a fan of everything Sherlock Holmes for as long as I can remember, and I absolutely adore successful adaptations of the tale. King’s Holmes is as similar to Doyle’s original creation as if he were penned by Doyle himself… and if Doyle’s Holmes were to marry a Jewish feminist less than half his age, he would surely have married none less than Mary Russell. The books are intelligent, well written, captivating, and quite addictive. I thoroughly enjoyed the final two as much as I enjoyed the previous six, and I very much hope that King will continue to produce this series. I highly recommend this series to anyone who loves a good mystery. I would also recommend starting at the beginning with the first book in the series, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (which I actually read on my second trip to Korea back in 2004), and reading the series in order. While each book stands alone and does not require knowledge of the previous books to be enjoyed, I recommend reading them in order, if simply to witness the evolution of the relationship between Holmes and Russell.

Sometimes I stumble across literary characters whom I feel would become great friends, if only they could leave the confines of their books to mingle with one another. Two such characters, whom I feel would become the best of friends are Mary Russell and Fremont Jones from Dianne Day’s Fremont Jones series. The latter two books which I just finished, Emperor Norton’s Ghost and Death Train to Boston both feature the ever-awesome Fremont Jones. I first discovered Fremont last winter when I was home for the winter holidays and found a copy of The Strange Files of Fremont Jones, the first book in this series, in my mom’s house. I have now read five of the six books in this series. Fremont Jones resides in early twentieth century San Francisco (the great quake of 1906 occurs in the second book of the series). The final Mary Russell book brings Russell and Holmes to San Francisco, albeit approximately twenty years later than the setting of the Fremont Jones stories. However, having Russell in the domain of Fremont (so to speak), vastly increased my feeling that if only they were to meet, a great friendship would transpire. But alas, that’s not what happened. Instead, I was somewhat disappointed. While King’s books were solid, both of Day’s were quite the opposite.

Emperor Norton’s Ghost was actually well written and quite entertaining… all the way up to the final chapter, which wrapped everything up quite rapidly and rather weakly, and with what appeared to be a giant leap of intuition on the part of Fremont. To me, a good mystery story is littered with clues which can help a savvy reader to solve said mystery. The skill of a mystery writer lies in the peppering of the story with these clues without allowing the reader to determine whodunit before the denouement. (As a totally unrelated aside, my spell-check just automatically replaced whodunnit with whodunit. Hmmm. Spell-check now replaces nonexistent words with other nonexistent words.) The one clue discovered by Fremont which connects the victims to the killer is tenuous at best, and the denouement is, well, rather vague and hasty, quite a disappointment, given how great the rest of the book was.

Death Train to Boston was a disappointment for a variety of reasons. Let’s start with the name. Death Train to Boston? That’s just a horrible title. But in the interest of not judging a book by its cover (or its name) let’s delve a little deeper. The previous four Fremont Jones stories were mysteries, Death Train to Boston is also marketed as a mystery, but the thing is, it’s not. Granted, there is a mystery involved, but the mystery takes a minor second-stage to the main tale, which is more of an action/drama than anything else. The thing is, I quite enjoyed the little misadventure that Fremont got herself into, as well as the adventures that her partner (the Watson to her Holmes) Michael Kossoff and her friend Meiling Li have while searching for her… but those things would have made an awesome backdrop to a mystery. Instead, they all but supplant the weak little mystery which somewhat lurks in the background of the tale until the very end… when it rears its weak little head in order to be rapidly squashed by Fremont, Michael and Meiling. And to make matters worse, the villain turns out to be one of the bad guys from The Bohemian Murders, not even someone original. (This also meant that I had to dig out my copy of The Bohemian Murders in order to remind myself who this guy was...) I definitely felt let down. There’s still one more book in this series which I have not yet read, and I will read it at some point. I’ve grown quite attached to Fremont and Michael, and am quite interested in what happens next in their lives, although after reading these two, I’m not as excited about reading the final installment as I once was. I highly recommend the first two books in this series, The Strange Files of Fremont Jones and Fire and Fog. As to the rest, they’re enjoyable, but after the quality of the initial books in the series, you’re bound to be disappointed.

PS - Thank you again to my Aunt Mary, who made all of this possible. I still have one more book from my Christmas purchases to go - Buddhism for Beginners by Thubten Chodron. I'll let you guys know what I think once I've finished it. For now let's just say that reading a text on Buddhism hard on the heels of Atlas Shrugged is tough on the brain cells.

Pink/Green/etc

I decided to wear my new shirt today, which then inspired me to take some absurd photos in my living room.



Koreans have long torsos.
I'm wearing low-rise jeans,
the top of which is located roughly at that pink arrow...
and the shirt keeps going and going...

My new pajama pants :-)

We were discussing family trees in one of my classes the other day.
I asked the students to draw their family trees -
one took the word "draw" literally and made
chariacatures of all her family members. I love this one!

The Korean middle-school take on racism

In one of my middle school classes, we are currently working our way through a conversation book. We read a short (2-3 page, fairly large print) article on a topic and then discuss. We've only had the book a short time, but so far we've discussed habits, world population, the future and most recently, racism. The article we read essentially defined racism and then talked a good bit about why racism is bad. After reading the article, I began to ask my students some questions.

I started off with this one: What is racism? I was looking for an answer along the lines of what was presented in the article, which was that racism is when someone thinks his/her race is superior to other races. Well, the answer I got was a little different. My students were unanimous: Racism is when white and black people don't get along. But only white and black people. What about Asians? Can Asian people ever be racist? No. Racism is something that happens when white and black people don't get along. Period. Um, okay.

What about Hispanic people - can they be racist or experience racism? I was told that Hispanic people don't count; they're not important.

Is racism good or bad? Bad. Why? Because black people are sad and poor.

Are Korean people ever racist? No! Never!

Is there racism in Korea? Not now. There was racism back during the early part of the 20th century when the Japanese invaded Korea. The Japanese thought that they were superior to the Koreans, and beat them and made them work for the Japanese. Also, all Japanese are monkeys. All Japanese are monkeys? Isn't that racist? No. [As an aside, the sheer hatred my kids display towards the Japanese is unnerving. The other day we were learning adjectives for nationality in one of my classes of sixth graders. There was a picture of a Japanese woman. I caught one of my students drawing very graphic images of blood coming from various parts of her body. But only the Japanese woman - the people of other nationalities on the page were untouched. I asked him why and was told, "I don't like Japan"]

So, there are many white people in Korea. Why are there so few black people? (I know that this is because one must submit a photo with one's job application... this is so non-white/Asian people can be weeded out. Even Asians have a hard time getting jobs here.) Well, according to my kids, black people are too poor, that's why they're not here. I decided not to get into the photo thing.

Are you racist? No.

Do you think that Koreans are better than people from other countries? Yes.

One can't blame the kids for having these opinions; it's their parents and teachers who are propagating such views who are at fault.

TGIF: Thank Goodness It's February

I am quite relieved that January, and the hellish schedule that came along with it, is now over. Yesterday, January 31st, I awoke following six hours of sleep, threw on some clothes, tied a scarf around my unwashed hair, popped an excedrin (mainly for the headache I woke up to, but also because I was out of coffee and excedrin contains caffeine), and ran to work.

In contrast, I woke up today, February first, after twelve glorious hours of sleep. I puttered around on the internet for about an hour, waiting for my hot water to heat up. Then I took a shower, got dressed and had breakfast. Now I'm blogging. I plan to play with the cat and clean up my apartment in the remaining hour before I begin my leisurely amble to work. Hooray for the return to normalcy.