Comfort Women Protest

This is a follow-up to a post from November, 2008, that you can see by clicking: Every Wednesday at Noon ...

On a pleasant Wednesday in June, I made my way to Jong-no and stood outside the Japanese Embassy to join the halmoni in attendance and their supporters at the weekly Comfort Women Protest.



Sixty-odd years ago and more, when they were young girls, these women were pressed by various means (from lies about good factory work to outright kidnapping) into "service" by the Japanese military in so-called comfort stations throughout the Asian theatre of World War II where they were raped repeatedly by Japanese soldiers on R & R.

While the Germans have by and large admitted their war crimes in that era, and made reparations, the Japanese government has done no such thing--officially denying that international law was ever violated. Indeed, some in the upper echelons during this era were later elected to high government positions.

Long voiceless and powerless, the remaining Korean women who were violated by this Japanese policy and its execution, or at least those who found the strength to overcome their shame and injury have decided to speak out. Every Wednesday since 1992, those women who were able have assembled here to speak truth to power.


Over the years, their numbers have dwindled as the elderly women grow sick or die; on the handful of occasions I have added my pasty Caucasian frame to the crowd of supporters, the number who attend has ranged from a low of two on a frozen February day to eight on this day.

Someday, and that day is sadly not too far away, the number in attendance will be zero.

Some Good Books

• Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman - Richard Mayhew is one of Gaiman's typically unlikely heroes: a good boring man with a good boring job, good boring girlfriend and good boring prospects. Until the untypical thing happens, and he is led into one of Gaiman's fantasy worlds--this one a dangerous, complex society hat has dwelt underneath London for millennia. Now he must help the Lady Door evade the ominous Mssrs Croup and Vandemar and find the Angel Islington if he wants his boring but safe life back. Rich in action and imagination, well-written and well-paced. Good, very unboring stuff!
  
• Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel - Beatrice and Virgil are stuffed animals, she a donkey, he a howler monkey. They are stuffed. They are the lead characters in a play being written by a taxidermist. The taxidermist sends a copy of the opening scenes to a successful author (who seems much like Yann Martel) to ask for help. So the author and the taxidermist begin an odd and unlikely collaboration that culminates in a scene of unexpected violence. There is much to like in this book, including the way Martel uses animals to explore human behavior as he did in Life of Pi, but I found it ultimately too odd and too unsatisfying.
  
• Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang - Shanghai in 1966 found 12-year-old Ji-Li Jiang an outgoing, ambitious and bright Chinese girl. A class leader, talented, popular, she was on her way to admittance into Shanghai's best middle school, then onwards to high school, university and a great life in Chairman Mao's new China. Then came the Cultural Revolution and the campaign against the Four Olds--old customs, old culture, old habits, old ideas--that must be destroyed. Despite the fact that her family were fine communists, they were targeted by the Red Guard because Ji-Li's grandfather had been a landlord in the old days. This memoir describes what happens to Ji-Li and her family during a two year period at the height of the Four Olds campaign. Highly recommended for anyone interested in Asian history.
  
• The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield - A complex and exceptionally well-written modern Gothic: a decaying manorial estate in the Yorkshire countryside, madness, forbidden urges, untamed twins, sabotage, and murder are some of the common Gothic themes explored in this book. Best-selling author Vida Winter is terminally ill and wishes, once and for all, to tell her true life story. As biographer, she chooses unknown Margaret Lea who has secrets of her own, and so unfolds the memorable story that may have been 'The Thirteenth Tale of Change and Desperation'. I suppose this is Chick Lit, but it was such a damn good read I didn't really notice.
  
• Hiroshima by John Hersey - This groundbreaking piece of long-form journalism covers the story of the first nuclear attack in history by focusing on its effects on a half-dozen ordinary people who were near Ground Zero on August 6, 1945: a seamstress and mother of three, a pair of priests, two doctors, and a young secretary. Originally published in 1946, this 1985 edition includes an Aftermath chapter following up on the lives of Hersey's original subjects 40 years later, only one of whom has passed away. What surprises me most about these people is their disinterest, in the most part, for finding someone to blame--whether the Americans for obvious reasons, or the Japanese hierarchy for failing to protect, or at least warn them.
  
  

Fearing the Future

“Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.”
--Ambrose Bierce, Devil's Dictionary

Only 19.5% of 2,500 Korean teenagers responded that "they would fight" in the case of another war in Korea. The story, in today's Korea Herald, suggested that the survey, conducted by Korea Advanced Youth Association and Teengora media, means that Korean students are not "patriotic". I think it depends on how you define patriotism. It has come to mean to many of us a mindless spouting of nationalistic platitudes, and by that definition Korean teens are just as patriotic as American ones.

Meanwhile, in another survey conducted by Chungcheongbuk-do Office of Education, about 37.6 percents of male teenagers replied “yes” to the question concerning their willingness to join the army in case of war.
The study revealed a high gap between genders, as 5.9 percents of female replied positively to the same question.
Another 32.7 percents of boys said they would assist their nation indirectly, making total of 70.3 percents to involve in the war.

What I don't quite understand here is how this question is relevant in face of the fact that Korea has compulsory military service for males. These teenage boys are required by law to perform military service of about two years by the time they reach age 28.

My experience with them, in fact, is that they have three main "fears" in their lives, in this order: 1) their score on the Korean SAT; 2) their military service; and 3) girls.

In a happy coincidence, the JoongAng Daily has a story about a Korean man who was AWOL for 16 years being given a "second chance."

Lee deserted the Army in 1994 due to his grief and confusion following the death of his parents in a traffic accident.
It is hard for a deserter to live a normal life in Korea because every organization is required to cooperate to find runaways.
There is no statute of limitations for the crime, which the military calls a “violation of the order.”
Lee has not publicly disclosed how he lived during his 16 years AWOL.

He turned himself in and was sentenced to, drumroll, please... twenty-four months of military service. And now, at thirty-seven, he is the oldest rank and file soldier in the Army.

Insadong: Little India

Insadong is a great place for top quality Korean food, but when I was there recently I decided to try Little India--I was in the mood for curry, and I had been wondering about the place. It looks authentic enough from outside:


...and from inside as well:


Of course, what really matters in a restaurant is the food, and I was quite pleased. I chose from the "special set" menu, which was a little pricey at 23,000 W but was plenty of food. I ordered chicken masala, lamb curry (meat dishes are your choice of beef, lamb or chicken), yoghurt and fruit desert, and a mango lassi (a kind of Indian shake). It came with rice and naan. And a samosa. It looks good.


My first bite of the curry was reassuring--it was really tasty, just the right heat, sweet and meat flavors. My first impulse was to finish it off, but what if the masala was a disappointment? I wanted to save half in case I needed to wash away a nasty masala.

Fortunately, I needn't have bothered, as it turns out the masala--despite being chicken instead of (to me, at least) tastier lamb--was better, more nuanced, than the curry. The samosa, the tetrahedral pastry, tasted fresh and light.

Next time you're in Insadong, unable to get any decent street food since the pocha have been moved along by the local office, I can recommend the Cafe Little India.
UPDATE: Recent visit 2018, quality of food considerably downhill.

This Week in English B

This week my classroom was converted into the Exhibition Hall of the Young-il Job Fair. This is one of my favorite lessons, and one of the students' as well. It comes from BogglesworldESL, but it has to be beefed up for my classes since I need 10 HR reps and 31 job-seekers in order to accommodate 40+ students.


The activity is essentially the same as described at the website, but I increase the range of skill sets, and sneak in a lot of names that Koreans aren't used to pronouncing--lots of l, r, f and consonant blends. I also use a wider range of companies, including Korean chaebol like Hyundai Heavy Industries and Dongwon FB, and some internationals like DDB Agency and Chevron. Each company has two job functions to fill, so the interviewers have to use the information they learned from the applicant to decide which job to tell them about.


I made a couple of "Welcome to the Young-il Job Fair" type banners, and arranged the classroom as you see in the photos. My co-teacher chooses 10 students to man the interview booths, and gives instruction to the job-seekers in the hallway while I go over the duties of the company reps. "The success of this activity," I intone, "is all up to you. If you are serious, and if you make the others speak and listen in English, this will be a great lesson." Even high school boys respond well to being put in a position of trust and responsibility.


Once that is done, the lesson runs itself, except for guarding the entrance door to ensure an orderly process, monitoring conversations, and checking that interviewees are writing the information they learn correctly and in English--spelling doesn't matter in my class, but not writing in Hangeul does.


Monday 5th period was the Open Class for my contract renewal process, and I was told to expect several members of the administration as well as English Department members to observe. Only the vice principal showed up, walked around for about ten minutes, and left. I was told he was "very pleased". He is rising to become principal when Mr Jun retires in August, so that's a good sign.

Every 토 is 놀토

... at least, starting next year, and at least, according to a story in the DongA Ilbo titled, Schools to introduce 5-day week from next year. 토요일 to-yo-il is the Korean for Saturday, and nol-to is a contraction for "no school Saturday".

Some years ago, Saturday was just another school day for most of Korea's middle and high school students. Then, the government cut down to half-days on Saturday, and more recently to half-days on only the first, third and fifth Saturdays. At my school, these are club days.

"A five-day school week system will be introduced on a voluntary basis at all elementary, middle and high schools nationwide in earnest beginning with the 2012 school year,” the [Education, Science and Technology] ministry said.
Since schools have different educational environments for class, the ministry plans to require school steering committees to review the system and implement it on a voluntary basis.
In line with the expansion of the five-day workweek at companies in Korea, the five-day workweek for the entire population will start in full swing from next year.

Since it is "voluntary", I'm not going to hold my breath. I am sure a great many mothers are unhappy about this, but at least schools will not fall down on their baby-sitting task: "child care classes will be conducted every Saturday for children whose parents both work".

On the other hand, hakwon owners will be happy, as each hour out of school is an hour potentially in academy classes. As the article describes:

The five-day school week system, however, has fueled fears over a hike in private tutoring expenses and lowering of academic performance.
As such, the government will test the new system at 10 percent of elementary and middle schools from this year’s second half. The system will be operated on a trial basis at certain schools to make final check on side effects that could arise from the expansion of the five-day school week as well as countermeasures.

Whew! We can see they've thought it through quite thoroughly: a 4 month trial in one-tenth of schools is certain to iron out the kinks in a social change of enormous magnitude; this is not about shortening the school day by ten minutes, it's loosing 1.5 million children on the streets twice a month.

On the one hand, of course this is a positive move for the health and well-being of Korean children; but on the other hand, I do wish the-powers-that-be here would be a bit more circumspect in these kinds of undertakings.

But it doesn't actually impact me in any case: a) my school will no doubt opt to continue with Saturday school; and b) I don't work on Saturdays.

SSGT Reckless, Korean War Hero

Last week was a lesson on Sports in my first grade classes, which is mainly a survey activity: teams are given a specific topic and they work together to devise three good survey questions to elicit the opinions of their classmates. Topics in sports include favorite sport, attendance at sports events, women in sports, etc. This year, gambling and game-fixing was included, due to the K-League scandal.

And Animals in Sports. I make that team ask some form of the question, Is it morally right to use animals for our entertainment? I make them ask because I want to know what Korean students think on this issue. I myself am a bit conflicted on it: I love the circus, elephant parades, dogs pushing prams and lion-tamers included, I have been to the racetrack a few times in my day, I even saw the cobra show in Thailand last month and uploaded video to Youtube! But I'm always a bit je ne sais quoi: it's one thing to use them for sustenance, another to force them to perform just for the purpose of relieving our ennui. Of course, being wild creatures, they'd probably be dead otherwise, rather than, say, populating lawn chairs at a clean yet inexpensive resort.

Interestingly, my students seem to be divided right down the middle: 50%, more or less, think it is uncool to treat/mistreat animals like this. Fast forward to today, when when one of my old (well, thirty or so) students posts the link at top on his FB--he's a horsey type from way back.

I'm wondering what my current students would think of this use of an animal, or this particular animal. What do you think? You can read more here: http://www.scuttlebuttsmallchow.com/mascreck.html

It's quite a story, but it ended pretty well for SSGT Reckless. One cannot say the same for many other animals drafted for military use, particularly bomb-carriers like the Soviet anti-tank dogs or the USA's Project Pigeon. Go to this Wikipedia article, scroll down to "As living bombs"--is a content warning here really necessary?

A Fable of Aesop

One day, an ESL Teacha was thinking of ways to make his conversation students actually speak English in class. The Teacha thinked and thinked until he was all thunk out. "Oh well, I guess I will just repeat the Aesop's Fables lesson plan I have done before. It wasn't too bad, and some students did actually speak English." In the lesson, teams of students performed one of Aesop's fables in front of the class.

The Teacha also knew that this lesson plan forced students to wrestle with English comprehension in a way that was new to them--they had to simplify the language of an old-fashioned story and make it clear and easy-to-understand.

The time came for the lesson to be implemented. In the first session, teams of students got an Aesop fable of their own to read and simplify, and make into a script. The story was already in English and students were told to rewrite or restate complicated words and sentences in easy English.

Alas, some of the ESL Teacha's helpers "helped" students to rewrite their story in Korean and then translate it back into English. Using "grammar-translation" like this impedes fluency and should rarely be done according to modern language teaching theory. When the Teacha found out, he chewed up the bad assistant helpers into small pieces, spit them out, and buried them behind the library in a kimchi pot, never to be seen again.

In the second session, the students presented their stories in front of the class. As the teacha expected, some of the teams just stood in front of the room and took turns reading parts of the original story without much change. But many of the teams stripped away arcane language, found the key parts of the story and acted it out so other students could understand it! Also, they enjoyed themselves a little bit.

The moral of the story: "Aesop's fables are still accessible today--2500 years and 10,000 miles away!"



I've montaged together one of the stories above, the Bear and the Two Travelers, and will do the same treatment to two or three others if I have the energy. However, I would appreciate feedback on whether you were able to hear and understand the story as told this way--does it need subtitles or captions? Thanks.

For the record, I started with a version of each story at www.aesopfables.com/, then did some amount of editing and simplifying myself before printing out two copies per team. I chose stories on the basis of: 1) did I like it? 2) did it have some action, not just dialogue? 3) did it have some dialogue, not just action? 4) is it short? 5) could it be staged sensibly, with just a desk, a chair and some paper plate masks? 6) did it have 4 characters? (I also have one story with 3 and one with 5 to cover my bases.)

Pizza and Beer

It's time for the "World Beer Festival" at your local E-Mart, well, my local E-Mart anyway, so I toddled over to see what they had on offer. Several varieties, like Singha, Kirin and Budweiser, were only available in multi-packs, so I forwent those brands and picked up one each of the "World" brands one could pick up only one of.

I needed something to need all that beer to wash down, so I got a big slice of the Combination pizza. You can see there is no corn or sweet potato on it, and the toppings are plentiful. The crust gets a bit soggy in the middle but I'd say this is as good as any reasonably priced pizza I've had in Korea, and better than most.


Beer: W20,970 total; Pizza: W2,500 per slice

Education News

1) The World Competitiveness Yearbook is out, and Korea quickly flipped through it to find its picture. "Geez," Korea said, "did my hair really look like that?! And no one said anything?!" More to the point, Korea’s education ranks 29th in world, according to the folks that put out this annual snapshot of 59 countries.

A story at JoongAng Daily explains that the ranking is based on an analysis of 11 quantitative factors, such as total public expenditure on education and student-teacher ratios. The number also figures in 5 factors culled from corporate surveys, such as how well the education system meets the needs of a competitive economy.

2) Online lessons invade schools, says another JoongAng headline this weekend. The story quotes several people who are unhappy with a trend for teachers to show online videos, parents and education officials, and a few people who like it, mainly students and teachers.

The story focused on the Internet as video provider rather than investigating its capacity to provide interactive learning, review and reinforcement. The article concludes:

“It takes more than the Internet to help students develop creativity and build character,” said Joo-Yun Cho, a professor of elementary education at Seoul National University of Education.

That's certainly true, but it takes more than mind-numbing lecture and rote memorization, too.

Read a Book

• Look at the Birdie by Kurt Vonnegut - This is the third posthumous collection of unpublished stories from the great writer (the other two being Armegeddon in Retrospect and While Mortals Sleep) and its content conforms to many of the themes he elaborated in his published stories as collected in Welcome ot the Monkey House: the dehumanizing effects of modern life, the underappreciated educator, the insanity of the Cold War. The wry humor, the O. Henry twist, and the spare prose of his best writing is there in some of these pieces, but it's still in development. This book is for the Vonnegut fan, or the student of writing more than for the fledgling in Vonnegut. But for me, weak Vonnegut is better than none at all.
  
• It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini - Sophomore Craig Gilner is attending New York's prestigious Executive Pre-Professional High School, the first step to a good college, a good job and a good life; but he can't sleep, he can't eat, he can't keep up in school. Finally, after suicidal thoughts get the better of him, he checks himself into the mental hospital a few blocks away from his house. What follows is the humorous but realistic story of how he starts to get better.
  

• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe - Okonkwo is a leader in his Ibo village in Nigeria. He has learned from the example of lazy, perennially-indebted father, and his hard work has given him a large barn full of yams, three good wives and numerous children. A tragic accident leads to his banishment from the village for seven years, and upon his return, not only is his position much lower, but his village has been changed--white man has come, built a church and started to establish white government. Their tribal religion, and tribal justuce are under threat. Okonkwo convinces a few of the elders and other villagers to take a stand, with tragic results. A powerful fable on the theme of man vs society, and an interesting read.
  
• Invisible by Paul Auster - Paul Auster has published two dozen books, including a collection of poetry, and I had never heard of him before picking up this book. Weird, yes, but fascinating, and a solid reading experience. The summer of 1967 found Columbia junior Adam Walker preparing for a Year Abroad program, earning spending money as a clerk in the University library and splitting a flat in Morningside Heights with his older sister. He meets a French couple at a party, and soon a random moment of violence alters the trajectory of his life. The story has three narrators, covers forty years, and stretches from Los Angeles to Paris's Left Bank to a Caribbean island. I'll be on the look-out for more with his name on it.
  
  

Air Con--On

I have mentioned that the weather this spring has been quite mild--with windows open and fan running, my officetel has been quite comfy. Until this weekend. This weekend, it got hot. Oh, the weather outside was around 29 or 30 C, but with my southern exposure and eight-foot windows, my thermometer climbed to 33.5 C at 3 PM on Saturday. That's 92 degrees in American!

So, I finally turned the air con on. Or tried to, but neither the remote control nor the button on the wall unit would make it do anything. I made my way downstairs and fond the security guard who speaks English and explained the problem.

"Oh, it's not a problem," he assured me, and showed me an announcement buried on the bulletin board at the elevator bank. "See, 'Air con preparation announcing,'" he read, "they will turn on air con on June first, it will not be a problem."

"Yes, problem," I countered. "It's too hot now; I am not worried about next week, but today!"

He laughed. "I understand; already many people have complained."

"And ...?"

Well, And nothing. Someone in the management offices decided that it wouldn't be hot enough for air con until June, and that's it. Now, this only flummoxed me because it has not been the procedure in the past. I don't know when they have turned on the air con power circuit before, but it wasn't as late as June first, and it was before I needed it.

33.5 C--come on, that's hot. I know the temp because I bought a little thermometer a while ago, the red alcohol type: cheap, dependable technology. I just couldn't abide there at home, so I made my way to Itaewon for some frosty cold beverages and returned when it was a bit cooler. So, yes, Adeel, that may well have been me you saw!

Moving ahead, today is June first. The temperature today was somewhat cooler because of the rain; right now it's 20 C, or about 68 F outside. But I don't care, I've got the air con blowing!

Tuttle News Wrap

1) The kenari, harbingers of spring here on the peninsula, finally bloomed this year nearly three weeks later than in 2009. Spring has been mild, to say the least, but it looks like we've turned to corner on warmer weather.

You couldn't call it hot, but there is a definite warming trend, and very nice weather for sitting at a sidewalk table and enjoying some chicken and beer of an evening.

2) Prosecutors are investigating a match-rigging scheme in the soccer K-League involving brokers in Changwon and unnamed players in teams participating in the Rush and Cash Cup--mostly "relatively low-paid players on the second string", according to a Korea Herald account.

3) Just Monday, I asked my new "handler" if he had heard anything about my contract renewal process; he hadn't. Today, I got the first piece of paperwork in the process, titled "End of Term Report", which sounded ominous until I saw the first question was about my intention to renew: yes or no?

For the record, and for the time being, the answer is yes.

4) It's week one of a two-week lesson on Aesop's fables in first grade, wherein each team is given a fable to dramatize in front of class next week. This week, they have to read and simplify the story and then write a basic script. Their command of "simplify" and "write a script" seems a bit tenuous this year compared to last, but stay tuned for some photos and perhaps a video...

5) There is no number 5.

6) The Rapture happened this weekend, and it seems I got left behind. If you are reading this, you did, too.

Can We Make A Difference?

At a get-together a few nights ago, one of my fellow English teachers here in Korea was feeling frustrated: after nearly three years of teaching here, he has not been able to really make a difference in the way his school works; by extension, we foreigners will never be able to make positive change in the Korean educational system.

I feel his pain. After three years, I still can't get my co-teachers to speak English in my presence at English Department meetings--well, at least not until sam-cha (third round), when the libations have loosened lips somewhat. Each new department head has asked me for my opinion on what the school can do to improve my effectiveness. My answer is: 1) give me smaller classes; or 2) more class hours per week with my students; or 3) at least stream the classes by English ability levels; and 4) periodic, regular meetings with my co-teachers. So far, none of those things has been implemented.

The Korean educational system, not unlike education bureaucracies anywhere, seems particularly entrenched. Although one can trace numerous attempts by national administration after administration to decrease the reliance on after-school academies (hakwons), to change the memorization-based, rote-learning culture of instruction, to encourage creativity, and to raise the level of education for the poor and middle class, most who follow education policy here would agree that nothing has really gotten better.

An article in the JoongAng Daily a few days ago illustrates this point, with a a story titled The widening educational divide. Acceptance rates to Korea's most prestigious universities is proportionally much higher for so-called autonomous or special-purpose schools than for "ordinary" high schools. Of course, that's one of the goals of the autonomous school idea. Key grafs:

A closer look at the numbers shows that the overall number of students accepted by the best universities in the country from normal high schools started to decline beginning in 1974 - when the standardization of high schools began. One school in Seoul that sent 67 students to Seoul National University in 1981, had only six successful applicants last year.
The standardization of high schools was implemented by the government in an attempt to narrow the gap in the quality of education received by the rich and the rest, and root out memorization-based education methods. This meant getting rid of all entrance exams that high schools utilized prior to 1974 and assigning students to random schools.
But what was meant to broaden the quality of education, ended up having the opposite effect. Indeed, the Korean education system has never been more polarized, and a memorization-based approach to learning prevails throughout Korean schools.

If the Korean government can't fix it over a period of thirty-five years, I don't think a few thousand foreign English teachers will do it within our typical two to five years tenure.

But can we make a difference in our little realm? After all, many of us are given minimal guidance on our curriculum and classroom activities--what we may see as an annoyance can be an opportunity to make a difference. Think outside the box, focus less on grammar and more on communication; have students move and act rather than sit passively; create a scene or a stir (in a good way, of course), let the powers-that-be know you're here and you're serious about teaching.

My friend has done just this at his school: he reads storybooks at lunchtime; he teaches an afterschool science class; and so on. In fact, his school recently won an award from the city for its outstanding English program! I think it's fair to say he has made a difference. Alas, the presentation of the award, and some great perks, were lavished on the Korean faculty members, and he was completely ignored. Such thoughtlessness is inexcusable, of course, so I won't try to excuse it--still, this isn't the first time a foreigner has been slighted in this way, and it won't be the last. Hurts your feelings, naturally, but it doesn't decrease your impact.

Teaching in Korea can be frustrating; cultural differences like han and nunchi cause us to stumble and misunderstand things, to create rifts of which we are unaware, and to offend or be offended where no offense is meant. Open criticism is not something familiar to Korean, or indeed Asian, culture, at least on a one-to-one basis. When my lesson has not gone well, my co-teachers will not critique it for me; lacking a meeting protocol where they would be comfortable in critiquing me, I have had to figure out ways to ask for their input whereby I am not directly on the line. When I need them to change their ways, I approach them with I am having trouble with so-and-so; what do you think it is? Perhaps you can help me by doing such-and-such.

I would guess most foreign teachers would point to the testing culture as the biggest problem with Korean education--a student's entire future seems to boil down to one nine hour period on a Thursday in November of their senior year, the Korean SAT, or 수능 suneung. In order to get into prestigious universities, Korean students must forego sports, dating, and fun to attend cram schools, spend untold hours in "self-study rooms" and, in too many cases, contemplate suicide.

But so would Korean teachers. They are just as frustrated with their inability to change the system as we are. Well, much more.

Despite all the English grammar and vocabulary they are taught, the average high schooler has great difficulty putting together a simple English sentence expressing their own thoughts.

So I no longer worry about the "average high schooler"--I confine myself to my own, the ones at my school. Through practice and repetition, by giving them need and means, I will make it easier and easier for them to express a simple thought well in English. Then a slightly more complex one. And so on.

Of course, it's neither simple or easy. And I'll never change the system. But the occasional success is reward enough to keep me going, and the paycheck doesn't hurt, either.

Vacation Reading List

Well, I had a nice two week vacation, and devoted much of my time to reading: on the subway, on the planes, on the buses, on the porch of my bungalow, on the beach, in the restaurant...

I did, therefore, a good bit of reading, and here are my brief reviews of what I read. The list is arranged sort of in order of recommendation, though I have to say I really lucked out in my selections (either that or you can judge a book by its cover), since this is a really strong collection. Room is a strong #1, but #2 through #5 are all really good, and definitely worth a gander.

• Room by Emma Donoghue - A seriously creepy but ouststanding book! Five-year-old Jack, our narrator, lives in Room with Ma. He knows Room really well, from Bed Wall to Door Wall and back; he sleeps in Wardrobe, wrapped in Blanket, at least until Old Nick comes and goes. Eventually it becomes horrifyingly clear that Room is an eleven-by-eleven-foot high-security garden shed where Jack and Ma are kept as Nick's prisoners. There is Room, and there is TV, for Jack--one is real, and the rest is only TV. But this paradigm begins to break down as the boy realizes that Old Nick brings their food from the grocery store--how much of TV is real, Outside of Room? A leaf silhouetted on the skylight is the tipping point, and Ma realizes they must somehow escape. Harrowing and gripping, the escape scene happens about midway through the book, and had me actually pacing the floor as I read. Highly recommended!
  
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows - While it seems on first blush to be Chick Lit, this is a book for everyone who loves literature and believes in its power to transform lives. The novel is a collection of letters from the aftermath of WWII, among a writer and her publisher, their friends, and a group of people on the British Channel island of Guernsey. It tells the story of the island's occupation by Germany during the war, how a clandestine pig roast led to the formation of a literary society, and how a tragic love story between a German and a local leads to another love story that is not so tragic. Well, that second love story is how the novel ends, but at least we can hope that it isn't tragic.
  
• Feed by MT Anderson - Teenager Titus has been reasonably not-unhappy with his life thus far in this novel of the future, allowing his "feed"--a transmitter wired directly into his brain-- do most of his thinking for him. Until he went on Spring Break trip to the moon and met a girl. Violet was different: she asked Questions; she toyed with her feed to make her consumer profile impossible for the Corporations to read; she wanted to visit Nature--real Nature, outside the city domes. When her feed begins to fail, and cause her body to fail along with it, Titus begins to examine life and love. Happily there are no pat answers in this book, but there is an ending that is uncontrived and powerful. And a Tuttle Award-winning opening line:
  

  We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.

• Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer - One of the most unusual books I've read in a long time, and one of the most puissant. A character with the author's name travels to Europe to trace his roots, particularly to find the Jewish shtetl of his grandparents, which had been blasted to oblivion by the Nazis. He engages a tour guide, Alex (whose charmingly broken-English letters after the trip comprise about half the novel) and Alex's grandfather, and the search is on. The story of the little village and its ultimate fate are by turns humorous and heart-rending.
  
• Your Republic is Calling You by Kim Young-ha - Ingenious and carefully crafted, the story is about a North Korean spy who has acclimated so well into Seoul society that when the order comes for his return, he can't bring himself to separate from his wife and child--or can he? The action takes place in one 24 hour period but still seems to cover the lifetimes of all involved as well as the history of the two Koreas. Kim is one of Korea's best-known writers and his wordcraft and tellingly observed detail (as translated by Kim Chi-young) go a long ways to explaining why.
  
• Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen - It's open season on tourists in south Florida just ahead of the Orange Bowl parade, and reporter-turned-gumshoe Brian Keyes has to run the the infamous terrorist group Los Noches de Diciembre (the Nights of December) to ground before they kill still more sun-seekers and the hotel reservations start drying up. A hilarious and ascerbic take on the Sunshine State's condominium lifestyle and the havoc it has wreaked on the Everglades and its wild denizens. Hiaasen is a prolific bestselling novelist and award-winning Miami Herald columnist--this was his first solo book, from 1986, but it's got all the elements that have made him so successful.
  
• The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte - This book was a grand chase, but unfortunately the quarry turned out to be a dead mouse--by which I mean the ending was an enormous disappointment. Those of a keenly literary bent will enjoy the dissection of Dumas and his contemporaries, as did I, but that should be fodder for the plot rather than an end in itself, which unfortunately is what it is. The jacket blurb which led me to select this book called it a cross between Umberto Eco and Anne Rice--alas, it was the medieval historianship of Rice and the macabre fantasy of Eco.
  

Bungalow on Koh Chang

I spent Monday through Friday on Koh Chang at a really great little resort called Porn's Bungalows. Nothing fancy, as you can see from my beachfront bungalow:


It's located at Hat Kaibae, about 2/3 of the way down the west coast of Koh Chang from the Centerpoint pier. Facing the west afforded some great sunsets:


From my bungalow porch:

https://imgur.com/fQEedRY
From the restaurant:


This view cost 900 Baht per night, including hot water and fan.

Thailand: Floating Market, War Museum, Cobra Show

Since I reserved my hotel for a three-night stay, I got a choice of half-day or one-day package tours. I chose the one with the main destinations you see in the title, except the Cobra Show was supposed to be a tour of a coconut processing facility, which would have presumably included monkeys climbing up and down palms gathering coconuts--on the a whole, I got the more exciting deal.

The floating market is rather more a tourist destination than a market these days--I wonder how many mangoes this lady sold from her boat on a given day:


A few more photos and you've got the gist of it. The bottom photo shows starfruit, lychee and mangosteen, the triumvirate of Thai exotic fruit.




From there, we took a longtail boat down the klong for about a twenty minute ride to a temple that specializes in snake worship; adjacent to it was a "Thai Cobra Show" for only 200 Bt extra. I made a video collapsing the 30 minutes into about three minutes, with just the exciting bits:



From there, we stopped for lunch and headed west to the bridge on the River Kwai in Kanchanaburi province, part of the Siam-Burma railroad built on the backs of Allied POWs. There is a famous movie about it, but it's not very accurate. Some 13,000 POWs died in building the railway, along with 60,000 or more civilians under brutal Japanese rule.




You can pay your respects to those who lost their lives by buying some "jewelly" at cut rate prices.


Adjacent, more or less, to the bridge site is the JEATH War Museum, with the acronym representing the nationalities involved--"Japanese, English, American, Thai and Holland". But it is much more than that. Much more. Rubbing shoulders, or at least sharing exhibit halls, with military armament is a collection of Miss Thailand Pageant formal wear going back thirty years; a vast collection of dilapidated typewriters and wireless sets, coins and bills with a face value totalling millions; a collection of rocks and gems that seemed promising to an old rockhound like myself, but alas was quite ordinary, aside from a couple of two-foot amethyst geodes. Most exhibit halls were decorated with floor-to-ceiling wall murals depicting various events and personages in Thai history, including every king and every President. Alas, the lighting conditions were poor and flash photography forbidden (and my camera sucks).

Still, there was a strange display that claimed to contain 106 bodies from the Siam-Burma Railroad construction. (I had hoped to visit an Allied cemetery but we just drove by instead of stopping.)



The ground floor porticos (the museum is a sprawling, massive facility) had a series of statues--the left hand building had key WWII figures, including the bad guys:



... and the good guys (that's Truman and Einstein in the first one):



Finally, a few shots of the exterior of this extraordinary place:




Time to call it a day and head back to the hotel.

Bangkok Street Scenes

I slapped together a video (under five minutes) of footage taken in various kinds of vehicles in Thailand, like a tuk-tuk, a klong boat, songtaew, etc.

My hotel was located in the downtown Banglamphu district, between the Grand Palace and Khaosan Rd. The area could be termed seedy--even though the streets are lined with august government offices, they are populated by street vendors, beggars, women (and ladyboys) of easy virtue. Some photos taken within a few blocks of the hotel:






I also like pictures of balconies:



Finally, some guys having a cockfight at 9:30 on a Sunday morning in May:

Last Day in Bangkok

https://imgur.com/uIKysiI
Banglamphu is the cultural center of Bangkok, where you will find that tourist Meecca, Khaosan Rd. Okay, just kidding. No, I mean you will find Khaosan Rd there, but the tourist Mecca is really the Grand Palace, Wat Pho (reclining Buddha temple) Wat Phra Kaeo (Emerald Buddha temple), Giant Swing, etc.

Sunday morning was a bright, warm time to go the Grand Palace/Wat Kaeo compound for some standard tourist shots, as above, a short walk from my hotel. Along the way, a multitude of "tour guides" and tuk-tuk drivers informed me that a) the palace is closed today for special ceremonies, come with me to the Lucky Buddha temple; b) it's only open after 1 PM to tourists, come with me to the Lucky Buddha temple in the meantime; or c) you must wear long pants, you can rent them free but only after 1:30 PM, come with me to the Lucky Buddha ...

Don't listen to these guys, they are hucksters and scam artists--they are right about one thing, though: you have to wear long pants to get into the Grand Palace compound. However, you can leave a 200 Baht deposit for free rental of one size fits all long pants--anytime the palace is open to visitors. You can see mine were a stylish browny-green. Some detail shots:





One of the things I remember best from my childhood visits to the palace was the acres and acres of wall murals telling the history of Thailand. Giant elephants, spirit gods and monkey kings mingled with real kings and human warriors in those ancient days, so it's as much mythology as history.





After getting my full of gold-gilt spires and magic warriors, I took a quick tuk-tuk ride due south to Pak Klong Talad, the flower market in Chinatown, right on the river.











After that, a bit of pig's knuckles from a street stall for a late lunch. This meal was 35 Bt, about USD 1!



I went back to the hotel and took a nap before my final evening in the city--the next morning was to be a long bus ride to Koh Chang along the east coast, about six hours. I arranged for a dinner cruise along the Chao Praya River; both the lonely Planet guide and the hotel recommended the Wan Fah cruise, at 1200 Bt ($40) a little less pricey than some of the others. The boat departs from the River City pier at 7:00 so I ordered up a taxi at 6:15 for the 20 minute ride. If you know me, you know I hate to be on time, I like being early.

Well, the driver assured both the hotel clerk and me that he knew where to go, and proceeded to take me to two places completely unconnected to the river. Via hand gestures and some forceful pidgin, I made him understand I was going on a dinner cruise--river, boat, eat--so he took me to some effing dead end street. Meanwhile I'm watching the fare rise, the time tick away, and my mental state achieve a mix of apoplexy and catatonia.

Finally, at 6:57 he pulls into the Sheraton Hotel, where I can see the River City complex next door. I curse his grandchildren, toss him some money and race toward the pier. 6:59 I can see a riverboat whose roof is emblazoned with "Wan Fah Cruises"--looking very elegant. I breath a sigh of relief, realizing that this is Thailand: hell, the damn thing will leave ten minutes late, at least. Just as I arrive at the Wan Fah counter, the boat starts to drift away! I can't believe it!

Fortunately, the counter rep had a walkie-talkie and got the boat to pull in at the next pier to take me on board. I looked at my watch significantly:7:02. In Korea, I would understand, but this is Thailand, for St. Christopher's sake!

Unfortunately, most of my photos came out very poorly, but here's my review of the Wan Fah dinner cruise: good. They have two menu choices, Thai and seafood. I chose Thai, which began with spring rolls, then a spicy prawn soup. The main course had four dishes: steamed veg with prawns, red curry rice, chicken in massaman curry, and fried fish in sweet and sour sauce. These were all fine except for the fish, which was so drenched in sauce it wasn't recognisable as fish. Desert was a fresh fruit plate with some tasty Thai candies--yummy.

After dinner, the boat turns around and heads back south, and the entertainment begins, which is a sampler of traditional Thai dance. A few pics:




The cruise returns to River City a few minutes ahead of schedule. The day began with unscrupulous tourist ripper-offers, and alas, ends with them as well. I showed the first cabbie that met me my hotel card, he said "300 Baht." I said, "You're crazy, it's 60 Baht!" "300 Baht!" "I'm not paying you 300 Baht for a 60 Baht cab ride," I said. I walked to the next guy. "We will all charge 300." "Meter," I said. "Who will go by meter?"

Turns out none of them would. "Fine," I told him, "I'm not paying you 300 fucking Baht for a 60 Baht ride. I'll just walk a couple blocks until I see a taxi who will go by meter."

About this time a cab comes along not part of the River City rip-off clique. I say to him, "Meter!" as I give him my hotel card. The other driver starts to talk to him, and I get pissed. "You shut up!" I say. He does.

Long story shor less long, I take the metered ride, he lets me off at the corner by the hotel--56 Bt. Tipping is not usually done in Thailand, but this was an exception.