Saturday, September 21, 2013

Some Korean Expressions on QI

This season's QI (Quite Interesting) is devoted to the letter K. We had only to wait for episode three for Korea to come up. It's all about idiomatic expressions. The fun begins at the 4:53 mark:


I only knew one of these, which I learned as "Too many captains send the boat to the hilltop". I was able to find another, "The other man's rice cake always looks bigger," in the book, "How Koreans Talk" by Sang-Hun Choe and Christopher Torchia, previously mentioned here.

Monday, September 2, 2013

My New Digs

I moved last Saturday (August 24), because the officetel I lived in went into tax arrears, never having paid taxes in its eight years of operation. It was a long, busy afternoon packing and moving all the stuff I've accumulated in five years, plus several pieces of furniture belonging to the school, like the desk, bed, TV, etc.

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Finally, the new place is taking shape, the blind man came today--but had measured wrong initially, which I would have told him if I knew how, the washing machine repairman fixed the leak, the cable/internet guy hooked me up last week, and I've added or taken from storage boxes some accent pieces. Now that I'm used to it, I have to say it's the nicest apatuh I've had here, better appointed, brighter, and even roomier, despite the fact there's no loft.

The location is a place called e-Starville in Mokdong, a complex with two eighteen floor residential towers, about fifty restaurants, a greengrocer, a butcher and bakery right outside the entrance. There is a 7-Eleven, Buy the Way and a GS25 all within sight of each other. The best thing about the location is that it's a seven minute walk to school. The worst thing about the location is that it's a fifteen minute walk to the nearest subway station. And that station is Yangcheon-gu Office, in the middle of the line 2 west spur, convenient to absolutely nothing. Still, I walk to school five days a week, I take the subway once or twice.

Anyway, the guided tour. First, the view of the exterior wall, you can see by the desk where the blinds come up short. The view is nothing spectacular--the roof of the next building, mainly--but it lets in a lot of light.

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Here's one wall, where I have hung these enormous Korean masks. The cable guy came back the next day to install a box on the TV which gives me a crystal-clear image of 120 channels of crap. The AC unit is directly over the bed.

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The kitchen next, with more storage space than the old places, and this pullout table that is an excellent feature. The washing machine has a dryer function, which most people only dream of. You can't see it, but on the left side of the hallway is a huge (comparatively) fridge and about twelve running feet of clothes/general storage.

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The bathroom. Main feature: enormous, separate shower stall. It's also got a quite large medicine cabinet.

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So there you have it. This, together with my Thailand vacation, from which I returned mere hours before I had to show up for the first day of the new semester at school, the new semester itself, and a variety of other draws on my time, will explain to your satisfaction, I hope, Dear Reader, the dearth of posts here in the Patch. More to come.