An Example of Problem Solving at a Korean Company

Technically its an American company that I work at but when 99% of the workforce are Koreans, I guess its pretty safe to say they are adopting the "when in Rome.." line of cultural relativism pretty well.



(I hate that line by the way)



In any case, here is a recent, personal example of how sometimes problems get "resolved" within a Korean company. Not to perpetuate any blanket stereotypes but when statistical evidence shows your country has the longest work hours of any industrialized country in the world while only barely hanging in the middle half of productivity, you've got some efficiency issues.

So, we've recently started a campaign called "Happy Wednesday" (yeah, I know) here at the ol' company. Essentially it's an attempt at culling some of the extremely obnoxious hours that some of us work here by telling us that no matter what, we have to go home on Wednesdays by 5pm. The first week it came into action we were actually told that the lights were going to be turned out on us by 5:30.

Yeah, so let me process this through my limited mental facilities.

Instead of attacking the REAL issues as to why we have so much work to begin with, we are just being told that no matter what, we have to go home at 5pm. We have to tell our clients this (Leave at 5pm?!?! Inconceivable!) and also magically make our work disappear for the day. If for some reason we get past all of the managers telling us to shoo and end up working past 5pm anyways, we need to get a special form endorsed by three separate managing entities. I don't know about you but to me this seems pretty shitheaded.

Let's discuss the realities of this campaign.

1) It was obviously cooked up by HR, a group who is routinely involved in making decisions about things they have no idea about.
2) It really does nothing but push the work load from one day to another essentially making people now have to work later during the other days of the week or on the weekend.
3) It addresses the real issues behind the obnoxious workload by....ignoring them.
4) Is something I suspect was created so they could put up a bunch of dumb yellow posters with smiley faces all over the office with the words "Happy ____" on them.
5) Is obviously completely fucking stupid.

Too add to this, not 2 days after the first week of this goes by I hear this conversation:

Manager type: "Hey, how is everything going?"
Grunt type: "Oh hey, pretty well. Just trying to finish this up and get out of here on time today."
Manager type: "On time? It isn't Happy Wednesday you know."

Yeah.

First post of 2009 in March

Yeah, I'm a douchebag.

Now that we got that out of our system, let's move on.

So lots of stuff has been happening since the last time I updated back around Christmas. I don't have a lot of time to get into too much detail so here is an abbreviated list:

*Christmas Eve was kind of balls to the walls with drinking so I spent most of Christmas Day nursing a hangover and eventually watched the new "The Day the Earth Stood Still". One of the most horrible movies I've ever seen. You have brought shame on us part-asian-but-still-look-white guys with that one, Keanu.

*New Years in Busan was great fun. Though some 14 of us ended up freezing our asses off at the heater-less hotel room the first night after coming in at 7am from the clubs, the second night in the uber-pimp new hotel room more than made up for it. I love sashimi.

*New team and new opportunities at work. I now head up "Global Services" which gives me a great chance to make some new sales. I've been doing just that with about fifty grand worth of new sales so far since January. New ideas currently brewing for work, will post more after I've implemented them.

*First basketball game of the new year and bam! re-dislocated my left pinky finger. Fuck you ball. It is currently shaped like a pig tail and actually set me back about 2 months for lifting since I couldn't grip anything. Of course I used that as an excuse to stop going to the gym altogether and have managed to gain back a little of my former belly. Nothing like a little extra padding for the cold months. I'll get back into it after my trip home.

*Trip to Japan for my birthday with Micah. Managed to meet up my bro and thanks to Doug's hospitality had a nice place to sleep and shower every night. The big night out was Saturday when we did the all you can eat/drink boat ride, all you can drink karaoke and Club Ageha, the biggest club in Asia. Doug has a video of me jumping into the roof pool so bug him for the links after he posts it. Of course my brother in his infinite wisdom decided to go out, waste all of his battery power trying to call us at 8 in the morning and then make me, Doug and Micah come to him while calling my Mom and asking her to call me. Douche nozzle. Despite his best efforts, we finally managed to meet up and lo and behold, he has 11,000 yen in his pocket. For those of you who don't know, 11,000 yen is nowhere near enough money to have a good night out in Tokyo so of course big bro had to spot him. All in all a great time. Thanks to all for coming out and extra special thanks to ol' felkface Doug for letting us crash.

*My B-day/Micah's going away party. I wanted to have another party in Seoul for my birthday and since dude wife was leaving we decided to mash the two together. We made it a "silver suit" party since Korea is the only place that still sells these abortions from the 80s. Here is the result of that:

Uber-pimp, I know. From left: Dude wife, Glen, Drew, Shaun, Me, Kevin and Dave.

It's sad to see another friend of mine leave Korea but I've been there and done that so many times now its become routine. The party was probably the best one we've had when you include all of the efforts for the look so we sent ol' Micah back with style. Cheers to us.

* Next week: Back to Chicago!

I'll post more once I get back. Until then, look at this:

Merry Christmas 2008

Merry Christmas everyone. Have a safe and happy holidays as we await the coming 2009 year.

I hope you are looking forward to it as much as I am.

So I've been busy

I know I have a lot of photos and stories I am still behind on so I hope to get one or two of those out of the way this coming weekend when work dies down. I still haven't posted on my trip down to Muido and that happened like 3 months ago now. Jeez. I'll get on it soon, I promise.

So anyways, 2008 is almost over and I still can't believe how fast it went by. I guess my routine lately hasn't given me too much time to sit back and reflect on all that happened this year but I'm looking forward to two 4-day weekends coming up around Christmas so hopefully there will be some time then. I was planning on going home for Christmas but a combination of a horrible exchange rate and dickweed clients has made me put off my trip home yet again. This time I'm thinking I won't get home until April-ish.

Why April? Well, allow me to elucidate my fiendish plan for the first 1/3rd of 2009.

First, starting in January I will be attending Korean language courses in the evening during the weekdays. Since I haven't officially studied any Korean in over 2 years, I thought it was about time to finally get some sort of certification and actually improve my language abilities in ways besides bullshitting with co-workers and arguing with old guys. The program runs until the end of March and I'm hoping that it will at least bolster what I already know. We'll see I guess.

Second, my work schedule will remain the same for the most part with the exception of adding a couple clients and dropping a couple more. I probably won't see too much of a workload increase but I have been wrong before. 2009 is going to be all about managing time for work since I'll have to leave at 5:30 sharp every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday to get to classes on time and won't be able to work any of that wonderful, unpaid overtime on those days. I guess it just means I'll be making it up on the weekends behind my trusty little laptop. Yay.

On top of work and classes, I've also realized that if I want to continue exercising like I have been I'll have to switch from evenings to morning at the gym. This means I have to drag my tired ass out of bed at 6am sharp if I want to go at all. Considering the fact I have rarely gotten up before 7:30am this past 2 years, I guess I need to start working on that now. Damn.

Add to these three activities my ability to get sidetracked by things like reading, fooling around on the internet and occasionally throwing everything up in the air with a big "fuck it" and going out with friends, I'm in for a much busier lifestyle for the first three-four months of 2009.

Did I say I've been busy? Shit, I guess I'm just getting started.

Halloween 2008 - The Monarch

I present to you my 2008 Halloween costume. I dare you to find me a better The Monarch, I dare you. If you don't know the Venture Brothers yet, you best to educate yourself.




I have made it my vow to win every Halloween costume contest in Seoul from now on. I'm sure I could have won this year if I could have made it to the judging in time. That leaves a whole year to plot...

More pics to follow.

No Chorus

I haven't been able to add many pictures lately since I've lost my camera but I plan on posting a whole montage of the last few months on Sunday. It will be composed of pics from friends' facebook postings and will show what I've been up to since late-summer.

The pic events included will be:

1) Trip to Muido from Chuseok
2) Dave's Wedding
3) This coming Halloween party
4) Random spots around Seoul where cool pictures were taken

I guess that about sums it up so be on the look out come Sunday.

*Note: From now on, whenever I can't think of a good title for a blog posting, I'm going to call it one of my favorite rap tracks from back in the day. That should open the door to literally thousands of title choices so I'm not stuck thinking about them anymore. If you can correctly guess what it is, I'll buy you a drink.

I'm regretting this already

I rarely check my gmail account. Mainly due to the fact that I have an msn, yahoo, aol and work email account, I've probably checked it 3 times in the past 4 years. So today, out of sheer morbid curiousity, I logged in to see what I had going on in there. Now since the only thing I run out of my gmail account is this blog (jappy.chan@gmail.com, clever I know) the only mails I found in it are related to it.

So lets see...

I've missed 3 job offers from random headhunters in the past 7 months who happened to stumble upon my blog and find out a)I'm a young American living in Korea and b) I work at a professional job. Some of the offers weren't that bad but honestly, based on the above credentials, is that really enough to want to offer me a job? Really? If so, I like the chances I have once I do decide to once again test the job market. Fingers big and crossed.

I received a mail from some place called VerveEarth which apparently wants to start a site where you can look up blogs by geographical location. This is a cool idea I guess but there are several, far more well maintained, useful blogs in this country and I wouldn't want to take up space. I'll keep it in mind in case this blog evolves sometime in the future. (Hint: not likely)

Finally, I found the gem and the very reason for the title of this entry. This email was so good I have to copy and paste it verbatim:

I came across ur blog w/ a goggle search for "gay Korea." Are u indeed a gay Russian in Korea? Sometime searches are weird.... and the content is even weirder ;)... I taught in Daejeon last year, looking for a good ticket Seoul this year--any tips?...

--Kevin

Okay, take your moment to laugh.

Finished?

Okay.

Now, I obviously had a few new things to ponder in my brain trove after this doozy of an email.

First, why google search "gay Korea"? Besides the obvious reasons, I'm just thinking there are special sites that already cater to that. I mean, when I'm in the mood for porn believe me when I say I've already got a bunch of sites lined up to go to when I click that browser. So why google search? Moving on.

Second, how the hell did he come up with a gay Russian living in Korea from my blog? Okay, living in Korea is easy, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned dealing with my client in Russia a couple times, but gay? Besides all the times it's popped up in this entry, how many times have I written the word "gay" on this blog? It must have been to describe some sort of gathering I attended but didn't enjoy or I was talking about Glen.

Finally, how creepy was that winking eye emoticon? I mean really, even if I were gay, you'd have to make a much better attempt at being flirtatious than that Kevin. Seriously. And this is coming from the guy who's best pick up line is "So, I've got 10 gigs of Looney Tunes on my computer at home, care to partake"?

Ouch

For those of you not in Korea who don't know, while the US economy (the global economy for that matter) is in shambles at the moment, the exchange rate here has been taking quite a hit. In the past 4 days alone the exchange rate for the dollar has increased by over 200 won.

A personal account:

Back in 2007 I sent money home to my account in the US. The exchange rate was 948 Won to the Dollar. The exchange rate today closed at 1,395 Won to the Dollar. That means sending home 1,000,000 Won last year got me about $1,055. If I sent that same amount home today I would get me $717.

Like I said, ouch.

Awesome

I love it at about 11 seconds in when he chases after the police. One would think at least one of them would have thought to deliver a swift kick to his generously exposed crotch area. Oh well.

Something tells me this will be Doug in like 15 years after he runs out of other outrageous stuff to do over in Japan.

10,000 won to the first foreign dude to this somewhere in Korea...

More fun with Babelfish

This time, instead of getting a few laughs at the expense of friends, I decided to make a little quiz of sorts. Below are 10 lines quoted directly from famous (and some not so famous) movies that have been translated from English into Korean and then back into English through Babelfish. Some of them are pretty easy, some of them aren't. Let's see who can guess the correct quote and the movie it came from.

(Bonus points if you can tell me the actor/actress who said it.)

Let the game begin.

1. "Frankly, is valuable, does not give an imprecation"
2. "He will can refuse I to him and provided"
3. "I go against and until former times i ascend, is having i will always become and the shaft and"
4. "Me convey the welfare in the small friend"
5. "You stand about the wall and to be you say! where I say and your this i listen closely with! where"
6. "Is the first time rule of the combatant club and - you do not speak about the combatant club"
7. "In order calling who you? The ghost the person whom destroys"
8. "The trick which is most serious was understanding the world where demoniac he which comes to pull until now does not exist"
9. "The boy is a quality where the penis and the young girl are furnishing"
10. "You killed prepare the fact that dies my father."

Mandatory Gift Giving

The one thing that has continually pissed me off while working my office job here in Korea (besides the fact that probably less than 30% of the males in my company wash their hands after they use the facilities) is the stupid mandatory gift giving that goes on so often.

Essentially we have a group of about 30 people who constitute my larger team. If its someone's birthday we all have to pool money to pick up the person a gift which varies in price depending on the level of the person. What happens is we get one of the interns or new people to the group to handle collection of the funds which, once again, is set based on the person's position. So in the end, I end up plunking out about 40-70,000 won per month ($40-$70) on this kind of stuff. In the end I'm spending close to a grand a year on this mandatory "show of gratitude" and it gets on my nerves.

I think the reason it pisses me off so much is because its mandatory. I also have the snot-nosed little interns chasing me around and nickel and diming me to death whenever its time to ante up. It probably wouldn't bother me so much if it wasn't just a huge charade.

Damn cockgobblers.

My Official 2008-2009 NBA Predictions

Even though the NFL season just started and I joined a fantasy football league just a week ago, I still can't help but think about the upcoming NBA season (which starts in less than a month) and what's going to go down this year. I've never done a breakdown like this on paper (or in this case, on blog) but bear with me as I try to give my analysis on the coming season.

Eastern Conference

It was cool to see an Eastern Conference team win it all again last year (even if it was Boston) but this season it looks like the east will be even tougher. The 76ers are on the rise after adding Elton Brand (and Donyell Marshall) and keeping all of their crew from last year's playoff team. The Cavs ended up getting Mo Williams which is a great move for them and there was a lot of other player swapping between some of the mid-level teams during the offseason. Here is how I see the breakdown:

Atlantic Division

1st) Boston Celtics (so they lost Posey, but they did add Darius Miles which could be good)
2nd) Philadelphia 76ers (as I said, this team is going to kick some ass next year)
3rd) Toronto Raptors (nice add in Jermaine O'Neal, too bad they aren't in another division)
4th) New Jersey Nets (got rid of Jefferson, that is gonna cost them)
5th) New York Knicks (new coach and........yeah)

Central Division

1st) Cleveland Cavaliers (Lebron plus MoWill is going to be formidable, just hope they add that big man)
2nd) Detroit Pistons (I think this is the season age catches up with them, they will probably make some trades before the deadline)
3rd) Milwaukee Bucks ( added Jefferson from New Jersey so hopefully Villenueva steps the game up and Michael Redd isn't injured all the time)
4th) Chicago Bulls (even this might be pushing it but I really think Derrick Rose is going to be an all star in a few years)
5th) Indiana Pacers (I hate Reggie Miller and his stupid face)

Southeast Division

1st) Orlando Magic (Dwight Howard is a beast, there is nobody stopping this man underneath)
2nd) Washington Wizards (this is based on the fact that Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison all stay healthy, if they perform they might even take 1st)
3rd) Miami Heat (this team is potentially dangerous, Dwayne Wade is my favorite player in the NBA right now and when he is on, he is ALL day. If Beasley adds right away, and I'm sure he will, and Marion starts playing like he did in Phoenix, they will surprise people)
4th) Atlanta Hawks (I like their team and all but they got lucky most teams in this division were screwed because of injuries last year. Go Al Harford)
5th) Charlotee Bobcats (fuck an Emeka)

Western Conference

This conference is down right nuts. 50 win teams aren't even a guarantee to the playoffs and despite some of the talent moving east, its still rough to say they are anywhere close to being even yet. Some of the really good teams got even better (Houston, Portland) and some teams just switched their whole damn roster around (Clippers, Warriors). This is the conference to watch for some bad-ass, old school type games.

Southeast Division

1st) New Orleans Hornets (my favorite team last year added Posey but lost Pargo, I might be being biased here but Paul for MVP this year)
2nd) Houston Rockets (they added Artest-- if Luis Scola plays like he did in the Olympics and McGrady and Ming don't sit out 95 games, shit could hit the fan)
3rd) San Antonio Spurs (2003, 2005, 2007, 2009?....no I don't think so)
4th) Dallas Mavericks (Save Dirk and Josh Howard, burn the rest of em)
5th) Memphis Grizzlies (Marc Gasol is a beast and I think they also have the rights to Ricky Rubio in '10 (?) so maybe in like 4 years they'll be somewhere)

Northwest Division

1st) Utah Jazz (this is based purely on the skill of Deron Williams)
2nd) Portland Trail Blazers (I really, really wanted to put them first because I think Greg Oden is gonna be really good and they got a lot of other young talented bastards)
3rd) Denver Nuggets (they lost Camby in the STUPIDEST way possible but I have a new found love for Carmelo Anthony after watching him almost bitch slap Oberto in the Olympics final)
4th) Minnesota Timberwolves (the funny thing is, i wouldn't put them any higher than this even if they still had Kevin Garnett)
5th) Oklahoma City Thunder (yeah, ummm...who's on this team again? oh yeah Kevin Durant...whatever)

Pacific Division

1st) Los Angeles Lakers (Kobe is unstoppable when he's motivated and with a healthy Bynum, Gasol and Odom, this team is probably headed to the finals again)
2nd) Phoenix Suns (I would love to see them play San Antonio in the playoffs again)
3rd) Los Angeles Clippers (Call me crazy but I really think this team is going to be good this year even though like 90% of their players weren't on the team last season)
4th) Golden State Warriors (I love this team's energy but I don't see Corey Maggette making up for the loss of Baron Davis in their offense)
5th) Sacramento Kings (Sorry Kevin Martin but I do hope I land you in fantasy basketball again this season...)

So there we have it. My prediction on the NBA season. This of course will change during mid-season if there are any major roster shake-ups (there will be) but as they stand now, this is how I see things going down.

I'll post my play-off predictions after the all-star game.

Debate away.

Comic Strip

http://www.stripgenerator.com/

Head over and make your own comic strip.

Here's one I did:

http://lyferipsmics.stripgenerator.com/2008/08/31/glen-teacha-1.html

Mountain Mike

This past weekend, me and some of the boys decided to head down to Surisan Mountain (수리산) and do some some hiking/climbing. The weather was great and it made for some pretty decent exercise as we trudged our way up to the summit. It took about an hour and twenty minutes for us to traverse the entire thing and we managed to take a few good photos. The outing reminded me why I need to hurry my ass up and buy a new camera because I missed out on some quality shots.

I'll even post the ones that Micah took of Glen's freakishly huge toe once I get ahold of them but for now, you can enjoy these:

Some big pieces of mountain fungus we took pictures of. I named them (from the left) Micah, Greg and Phil.

Us at the top about to pose on the rocky precipice.

Some random old couple that apparently lugged a whole camping set up to the foot of the mountain. The other guys thought it was weird for some reason. I thought it was cute.

This is easily one of my favorite photos of all time. As one friend put it, I look like Godzilla getting ready to ravage the city.

I'll post more photos as I get them.

Sportage

The 2008 Beijing Olympics are over. I'm planning on being over in London for the 2012 Olympics to take advantage of some of my friend's hospitality and hopefully Chicago wins the 2016 bid so I can return the favor then. In any case, the Olympics are a pretty huge event apparently.

I barely paid attention.

It's not that I disliked watching the events or anything, its just there were several other things I saw as more deserving of my time besides watching TV. While I'm sure I'd feel differently if I was physically at the arenas watching the events, since I was mostly just meandering around Seoul the entire time, I didn't really take too much notice. The things I did manage to hear about were: some man-fish hybrid named Phelps won a bunch of gold medals, some little Korean girl was able to clean and jerk a small comet's worth of weight, the Korean national team took gold in baseball, and the U.S. team finally got the gold in basketball again.

Now, the only event in the entire Olympics that I paid attention to and went out of my way to watch was basketball. When put against this backdrop, it's pretty plain to see why I don't really pay attention to the Olympics as a whole -- because basketball is the best sport on the planet.

Let me do a quick sport breakdown for everyone.

Basketball: The only sport I love to play, watch, talk about, etc. No other sport even comes close to it in my mind.

American Football: I'll watch the SuperBowl, pay attention to the stats of the guys on my fantasy league team, and occasionally go out to watch a game with the guys over a couple of beers but that's about it. Honestly, most football games are just plain boring for me to watch.

Baseball: Call me if the White Sox win, if not, I'm fine checking the final scores on mlb.com once a week.

Football (Soccer for you Yanks): Cool to watch occasionally but the low scoring dulls my attention span.

Golf: I'll play it once in a while but watching it is going to be my torture if I end up going to hell, I know it.

Swimming: Okay, swim really fast and you win. Ummm...no.

Running: See above; switch "swim" with "run".

Weightlifting: Sort of cool but I usually only watch on the small percent chance that someone's intestines are going to get ejected from their anus as they stress too hard.

Fencing: Okay, this is actually cool to watch but matches are too short and there isn't any blood.

I'll have to continue updating this later on as I think of more sports.

俳句

Haikus are incredibly awesome. Anyone who doesn't think that is a useless piece of human existence.

My throat really hurts
Probably from smoking fags
British "fags", dick face

Why does Glen suck so?
Maybe his job should stop him
from raping himself

Micah has a man
He is made of wood and stuff
He fits in condoms

Marc bobs and weaves
He can dodge your attacks well
Like Don Flamenco

Doug wa inu
Update your blog some more guy
Old School: "Ooki na"

Handball is so gay
Why do they bounce once only?
Olympics my ass

Ralph has no lips
That was not too clever so
I will move on now

Ryan likes Sea Men
He rides a big man boat then
Ha I said Sea Men

Korea Dokdo
Takeshima in Japan
Its just a few rocks

Dave can't get erect
Liliputians even laugh
at his stupid face

Sandals are George's
attempts at fashion statements
give it up my man

Chris and Majin Buu
are both big, pink and cuddly
and they smell like farts

Dwarves call Joel their friend
because he is half their height
when he stands on chairs

Damn white underwear
No matter how much i wipe
They never stay white

Haiku kicks ass. I gotta do this again sometime.

Having fun on Babelfish

Babelfish is this little translation program that they have connected to Yahoo! Korea. Anyone who has used an online translation program knows that it doesn't work that well when translating anything beyond very simple sentences. So as I was sitting around today wondering what would be fun to do, I decided to screw around on Babelfish and test out it's translation and translation of translations functionability. Here are the results:

Okay, so far so good. Now let's translate it into Korean...

Okay, well that Korean isn't too bad. Now, let's see what happens when I re-translate that into English...

Well, it's not completely unintelligible. Let's see what happens if we make it a bit more complicated...

The first sentence went through pretty well but that second sentence got mangled. Now let's translate it back...

Wow, that's pretty messed up. "Me him there is his baby boy and thinks the thing". Does that accurately describe your feelings for Obama, George?

Okay, I don't know how the hell "Silicone" got in there but alright. Now let's see the translation of the translation...

Okay so "the boy and him under kissing the thing"? That sounds pretty sexual to me. Never figured Micah for a pederast though. Let's move on...

That Korean is so mangled it hurts my brain to read it. Should be fun to see the re-translation...

How the hell does a canyon rise? I will agree that "attempting the fact that comfort starts that oneself" though. That makes more sense than anything ever.

That was fun, now wasn't it? You guys can go to Babelfish on your own time and make your own if you want. Here's the Korean web address:

http://kr.babelfish.yahoo.com/

I might have to do this again. Stay tuned...

The Amazing Travel"l"ing Mixer Party

Phil, Micah and myself were sitting around having a night cap last Sunday after gorging ourselves at Hooter's thinking about stuff we could do for the remaining portion of this summer. The idea for the traveling mixer party just sort of came together after only about 20 minutes of talking and we quickly expanded upon it.

The idea was that we meet up and travel around to each other's houses and each person would have a different liquor base with which to mix drinks. And hats. Everyone had to wear a funky hat that we would switch with someone everytime we went to the next place. We also got a signbook to write things in at each person's apartment. It was a simple idea that worked really well and everyone in attendance seemed to have a blast.

Basically the plan came together as we made a facebook event and spent the week hammering out particulars. It turned out that we would start at 4pm on Saturday at Phil's house for Rum based drinks, move onto Glen's place for Gin base, then onto Dave's new place for Vodka base. After we did that, we ran over to Gangnam and grabbed some food after which we went over to George's pad for Whiskey base. George's was probably the most dangerous since he set up this cool little shot game which was similiar to "Quarters". Glen had to drink a ton shots. After George's we went all the way across the city to my place for Tequila base where I made Long Island Ice Teas with the spoils of war I had collected at each house. Finally we went out clubbing.

It was a great night and I hope we can put something big like this together again sometime before the summer ends. Maybe a camping/rafting trip.

If you would like to read some of the quotes from the signbook, head over to George's Musings over Makkoli blog where he has some of the choicest quotes up.

So without further ado, the pictures:

This was the first group photo at Phil's place. From the left we have: Glen, George, Brooks, Gowoon, Me, Dave, Micah, Claire, Shandi, Yena, Lucas, and Phil

This is at the second spot, Glen's house.

The third group photo at Dave's new pad.

The 4th spot was at George's house but we needed to first take a picture of the hats we wore at the chicken spot.

The official George's house photo. Some of us were pretty tipsy by this point.

Only some of us made it to my place for the 6th group photo but it was fun nonetheless.

Here we are making asses of ourselves at Club Cargo after my place.

I was sad because I was too hot to dance anymore. Poor me.

Micah fell down and went "boom".

I was angry at what I saw in Carl's collar.

Brooks was excited. He also later pulled his pants up to damn near his armpits and tried to woo an unwilling Korean girl into doing his rendition of the Steve Urkel dance. It was priceless.

One of the final pictures at about 4am. Our energy is amazing.

"America, Fuck Yeah!"

"Rape, hammer, whistle."

"What? You want summadis?"

Books I Be Readin

I've recently realized that since I began my current job back in late 2006 that I haven't been doing much real reading (besides comic books) at all. This is rather strange to me since I've always enjoyed reading and up until that point, I would usually be carrying around a book or three about various topics of interest. So, in an attempt to return to that favorite of habits, I went out recently and bought a few books. Here are the two I am reading now:

Kind of old, I know. I actually went through this book somewhat half-assedly about a year and a half ago but am now trying to give it a more thorough reading. I'll post my comments about it when I am finished.

Also, as I can never seem to read just one book at once, here is the other one I am currently reading:

This seems to be a rather well written book and offers up some pretty good ideas against globalization. I can't comment too much as I am only through the first chapter or so, but so far it seems like it will be a most interesting read indeed.

What are you guys reading lately?

(porno doesnt count)

Aaron's Farewell Party

Aaron is finally leaving Korea tomorrow and his going away party is tonight. Yet another of the somewhat old guard is leaving and will be replaced by more fresh-faced newbies. English teachers here are like the fabled Hydra, chop off one head and more grow in its place. Maybe more like a planaria since they are less dramatic.

In any case, I'll miss his bleak outlook on anything that has to do with Korea and the fact that he's the only person I've met here who doesn't look at me strangely when I eat french fries with mustard. Flat-footed dancing in the gay clubs won't be the same without ya, big guy. Have fun back in Chicago and make sure to keep dose muddy shoes outta da fruchroom!