Just another Saturday (Now with Fungus Gnats!)

Andrea's out at a language exchange lesson where she is trying to learn some Chinese. I also need to organise that for myself.

I have my hot coffee, a partially obscured view of the harbour skyline, and almost a week's worth of facial hair.

Our potted plants have been struggling lately. Being from arid Australia, I thought that they needed more water. That turned out to be the wrong thing to do. We have been plagued by small black flies for a while now and I thought that they were fruit flies. They seemed to love playing in the soil in our potted plants. We only discovered this morning that they are the adult forms of Fungus Gnats. Here's a picture (not to scale):

[source: Texas Agricultural Extension Service; http://insects.tamu.edu/extension/bulletins/uc/uc-028.html ]

Yuck! I hate Fungus Gnats. And they have been killing our plants! Bastards!

Yes, with a quick search via Google we found a description that matched our situation and when we investigated the top inch or so of soil we found a plethora of Fungus Gnats in the larval stage, wriggling around like they were part of some kind of perverse Disco Fever boogie woogie. Argh! There were many treatments suggested in the sites we visited but one recurrent piece of advice was to let the top layer of soil dry out. Oops! My arid origins had proved the undoing of my favourite ferns which I intermittently doted upon with the care and concern of grandfather who loves his kids when he has time for them (when he remembers to water them). Well, to be honest I only watered them a few times. Andrea watered them more regularly as part of the grander scheme of watering for which I respect and admire her. It takes a lot of memory to remember to water plants all the time. I would probably have to write it on a calendar or come up with some other kind of memory cuing system. Anyhow, while we are stuck with the Fungus Gnats for the time being, their days are numbered and don't extend into double digits! Try to tell me that I don't know how to talk tough!

Fungus Gnat kill sheet: Saturday 19th April - larvae 7, adults 12.

Friday Fruit

Ahh, finally Friday has arrived and mostly diffused into the space time continuum, leaving only the bit after I finish work and get home. And now that I am home I'm having a nice guava and a hot cup of tea - perfect. The guava is fresh too; None of that two-week-old, picked-too-early produce that fills the shelves of the supermarkets and markets back home. No, I can be pretty sure, despite not being able to ask them due to a non-existent mastery of the Chinese language, that a large proportion of the fruit and vegetables I buy are grown by the guy or lady I'm giving my money to. I can also be pretty sure that what I buy here is a lot fresher than the stuff back home. That's one of the great things about my existence here.

I was thinking today about how strange life would have been for our ancestors living in an age before time was being tracked and measured. In a time before clocks and calendars. In a time where... how did people conceive of the passage of time? They would have had the daily diurnal cycle, the passage of the sun through the sky and the transition from dark to light to dark again. The concept we know as the day would have been pretty obvious as the cycle takes place relatively quickly, fast enough to be noticeable. I'm sure that they would also have, over time, seen and predicted the seasonal rhythms, the transition through summer to winter and back to summer again. Thus they would have been familiar with the concept we know of as the year. But beyond that unit of time, what else is there? There is nothing else. Nothing external to human goings-on anyway. Beyond the yearly cycle there is only repetition of what has gone before. What kind of sense of the greater passage of time did our ancestors have?

I suppose that throughout the span of an individual's life he or she would experience and afterwards live with the evidence of the accumulated changes that took place as they lived their lives. You could look at it another way in that perhaps, lacking objective and properly quantitative measures of time, their sense of the passage of time was more qualitative. If I lived in those halcyon days where you could work a few hours a day and spend the rest at leisure (as Jared Diamond suggests) wouldn't I have a sense of how my own body had been changing over time? I would have been aware of how a living human body physically ages over time from birth to death and I would have some idea of where my own body belonged on that spectrum, giving me an idea of my age relative to other humans. I think this would also provide a sense of the passage of time that extended beyond the current generation to generations that had gone before (direct ancestors known to the current generation) and generations to come. I think that the length of a human life would have been a very important ingredient in whatever conceptualisation of a greater time scale people possessed. You could then measure the seasonal cycles that came and went and it would mean something when viewed in the context of human lifetimes. You could work out how long an average life was by keeping track of the seasons that passed and measure the greater passage of time in terms of generational lifespans. Thus you would have at least a rough measure of time greater than a year, the largest afforded by our environment.

My guava was very good.

The first post

I have huge expectations for my first post so I will keep it brief lest the enterprise be mangled by all sorts of preconceptions and politics.

Friday morning and I have a bit of time before I leave for school (work). I have been getting up at 6:30am for at least a month now and it feels good getting up out of bed and doing more than just getting to work. I usually read for a while and take my time getting ready for work. I might start spending some time on the internet as part of my morning routine.

Akk!, I can't handle the performance anxiety. This post is over!

Pre-Blogger email: March update

My apartment, Tainan City, Taiwan.

Tired. I have been tired a lot lately. I just had my second coffee this morning in an attempt to wake up properly. The alternative would be to attempt to sleep again, and I am sure that I would not be able. If I tried that, I would end up lying there thinking about stuff and I would experience a growing anxiety that the day was passing me by and I was missing it. No, unless I was really tired I would not be able to go back to sleep now. Besides, I have reset my internal chronometer so that I can be up and awake at 6:30 in the mornings. That allows me time to read every weekday before I start on the slippery slope to work and the chores at home when I finish work. I can't read at home after work, or not very well by any measure. My mind is too busy and fatigued and I cannot recover that peace of mind with which I started the day, a state so conducive to an hour of immersive, proactive reading.

I feel that in a way Taiwan is passing us by. It is all around us but we don't have the time to invest in getting to know it, not proactively anyway. Our familiarity with our newly adopted landscape develops mostly of its own accord as a consequence of incidental insights and unintended tourism. We don't have the time to be tourists, and we don't have a lot of that cold, hard paper currency to speed us along in that endeavour. And yet we are both intimately involved in Taiwanese lives. Being teachers here, of children at that, we are privy to the inner worlds of the families who are of this place and this culture, something that as regular tourists we would have no clear notion. So while Taiwan passes us by we pass through it, almost as if we were able to eat the cake but have no possession or control of it.

It makes sense to say "thine" when you think about it: Me -> my -> mine. Thee -> thy -> thine. I guess "thy" is out of vogue these days and so thine has no lower limb on which to support the maintenance of an erect posture.

We have some plants in our apartment now and I am really impressed with what a difference they make to the place. Our home seems so much nicer and fresher and friendlier than it did before. On a random note (but only because it comes after and in the same paragraph is the sentences about the plants) the Schwarzenegger movie Predator was on cable TV last night and I didn't watch it because A) I was too tired, and B) I saw it on the same channel only a month or two ago.

On that random note, I will sign off here and return to write some more when I am less tired and less literarily pretentious.

Pre-Blogger email: First big email from Taiwan

We arrived in Taiwan two weeks ago today. We were picked up at the airport and driven to what was supposed to be our new apartment for the coming year, not far from the school at which we were both supposed to be working. Similar to our Korean experience, it was all a bit random. A couple of the girls who worked at Kid Castle and their friend told us that the school was no good. We had gotten the impression during our negotiations with the recruiter that we were going to be on the outskirts of Taipei somewhere near some trees and hills where we could go hiking and enjoy a bit of clean air but the school turned out to be 10 minutes from central Taipei, very noisy, dirty and generally not pleasant with very few, mostly sad-looking plants and trees. We didn't want to be there for a year so after about 24 hours we were ready to tell the head teacher at the school that we would give it a miss (despite having signed a contract for 12 months). Among other things, the girl whose apartment we were staying was about to return to the US, quitting 4 months into her contract.

One night we were kept up by the Sugar-Glider that Erica was keeping as a pet in a small plastic cage (very sad). Apparently they are very common here as pets and she bought it at the local marketplace. I had to corner it in a room and somehow get it back into its cage.

We went reconnoitring and checked out some of the other cities in Taiwan. We got to Tainan and really liked the feel of it, despite its being twice as big as Jinju which had been a nice, manageable size, and after a couple of days we decided to give it a go.

I have had and treated a urinary tract infection for which I had to go to a hospital. None of these things are easy in a new country where you don't speak the language. You've got to go to the tourist information service and ask about hospitals and maybe get them to write a translation of something so that you don't need to mime it when you get to the hospital. You also need to call the company through which you are insured for travelling to find out where you need to go and what you should do and also to inform them of the situation. They might give you the address of a preferred medical organisation and you might need to ask at the tourist centre for directions to that place. When you get there you might have trouble overcoming the language barrier with the front-desk staff. And so on.

I was going to write a big summary of what has happened since we got to Taiwan 2 weeks ago but I actually started this email 2 days ago and didn't have time to continue until now. After abandoning Kid Castle in Taipei we have decided to settle down in Tainan which has a population of about 700,000. A few days ago we moved into an apartment with a few other guys. Incredibly, when we met Derek, who Andrea had contacted about room for rent, he turned out to be a guy we knew from Korea: he had taught at one of the camps at Gyeongsang University where we were working. We're back to square one or square two with a lot of practical things, having to learn how things work here and trying to achieve what you want.

That will do for now. We're both looking for jobs and have had a few job interviews. I have another tomorrow while Andrea is ready to choose from a couple of promising job opportunities. We should both be working soon.

Pre-Blogger email: Quick update, Adrian and Andrea in Australia

This is a long-overdue update on our situation but I will have to make it brief because we have a lot of work to do (when do I ever have time to expand on things and wax lyrical these days?).

Andrea and I got to Taiwan two days ago after I was flat out at home with the move from Collie to Donnybrook. We came to start a job for which we signed a contract a few weeks ago but it is not what we were expecting and last night we had dinner with the head Taiwanese teacher after sitting her down and explaining that we weren't going to be working at Kid Castle (the English academy). Now we are here on a 2-month visitor's visa with no job commitment. We have started looking for another job and are lucky enough to inspired the pity of some of the foreign teachers we were going to be working with and we are staying at our friend Erica's apartment not far from Kid Castle. Depending on what we turn up tomorrow, we might take a trip to another part of Taiwan, out of Taipei, on a job-hunting expedition. The future is uncertain but that is definitely preferable to the certain misery we would have endured had we stuck to the original plan and worked at Kid Castle.

Another update soon.

I have to tell you that if you reply I might not get to it straight away but I think everyone is used to that by now.

Pre-Blogger email: October update

Well I'm exceedingly glad to be able to tell you all that our travel agent (or Cathay Pacific) came through and we were just about to leave the small mining town of Mt Magnet and quickly checking our email on the single dial-up internet connection at the town visitor centre when we read the email telling us that we had been refunded almost all of our money. At our next stop down the highway we bought expensive icecreams to celebrate. Huge relief.

We're in Exmouth up the WA coast right now. We got here and saw the sea for the first time on our trip the night before last. We had to drive very slow for the last 40 km into town because it was dusk and there were a lot of kangaroos and sheep near the highway. We came from Karijini National Park in which we swam in the Gorges and it was beautiful.

Cheers

Ado (a deer, a female deer)

Pre-Blogger email: September update

Just a quick update on where I am and what I'm doing. But as usual I have to begin with an apology to those people who have been trying to get in touch with me and have sent me an email or left me a message on Facebook or tried to phone me and haven't received a reply. I'm sorry for not spending more of my time in front of my computer writing emails or adding details to my Facebook profile. However, if you have sent me a message or tried to contact me I will get back to you, I promise you. It is just a matter of time.

I have set aside a portion of my time today for emailing and trying to reply to people because I know that soon I will be having trouble getting to internet. In two days Andrea and I will be leaving my hometown of Collie to travel northwards on a roadtrip into the outback, and I might not be able to do anything about emailing or the internet very much.

I'll backtrack a little... start at the start, you know. Forgive me for repeating myself if you have heard some of this before.

So we finished working at Summer English camp at Gyeongsang University in South Korea. We left a few days later, but only after a painful experience at the airport. The wrong airport. Yes, we went to the wrong airport. We went to Incheon Airport near Seoul instead of Busan airport which was on the other side of the country and on the front side of our e-tickets. My luggage started to burst open on the (long; 5-6 hours) way to Incheon airport and so I had to repack it and then get it secured before going to the check-in counter where we found out that we had come to the wrong airport. Wacky hijinx then ensued. Much running around with multiple Cathay Pacific staff trying to help us get to Australia. Here is a quick summary:

Secure my luggage W5000 (AU$ 6.25)
Travel agents downstairs all just closed for the day.
Bought new tickets - W900,000 each. (AU$1,128.63)
Paid excess luggage fee - W600,000 ($AU752.42)
Andrea's credit cards wouldn't work.
Time running out to catch only relevant plane to Hong Kong.
Andrea uses Australian spending money to get ticket. I contribute difference - have to withdraw cash from Australian bank account - transferred all money from Korean account to Aust account that morning - AU$ 20.00 in ATM charges.
Rushed through checkpoints and finally get on plane feeling quite stressed only to realise that the ticket they just sold us from Hong Kong to Perth is on the same flight as our original tickets, on same flight at same time, so we spent lots of money on something we already had.
Get to Australia, go straight to hometown of Collie, rain everyday for one week.
Organise refund for plane tickets we never used.
Korean travel agent charges us refund processing fee - AU$ 76.00
ANZ bank charges me transfer fee to pay for refund fee - AU$ 26.00
Refund will take about one month. Still waiting to find out how much we will get back.

Since we got to Australia we have spent time in Perth, Collie, Busselton, Bunbury, this general area.
My mum recently bought a house in another town so besides travelling around and being a tourist (Andrea has never been to Australia before) I have been packing up my stuff and been trying to be useful and moving some of it to the new place.
We also got our picture in the local newspaper. I'll try to attach the article.

So anyway, I'm sorry again if you've been waiting for a reply from me or wondering how I can be so busy that I don't have time to write you a few lines. We're in and out of home so our internet access has been sporadic as well. If you have written to me then I will reply when I can. Please be patient. If it is something urgent or important to you then let me know and I will make it a priority.

Bye for now
Adrian

PS - Andrea says hello to all.
PPS - I have to and clean out some lockers now so that we can move them to the shed at mum's new place in Donnybrook later today (if the weather is good).

Click on the image below to get a high-resolution version of the article that appeared in the local newspaper.

Too good to not share

This picture was emailed to me with the caption "A dingo stole my baby".

Pre-Blogger email: October update

It took me about two weeks to finish this in about 4 attempts. Pathetic.

Cheers
Adrian

PS - I am okay. I should be home in Australia again after Winter camp. I'll stay there for a while then I'll probably go off to somewhere else for a year. I've been thinking about South America, maybe Chile or Argentina. Who knows. I haven't actually looked into the job situation there yet. But South America has ancient Mayan tombs and the Nazca Plateau and general mysteries, crystal skulls for example. Sounds great. We'll see.

Also, we now have a fridge in our apartment - big news worth celebrating. I can have yoghurt and milk with cereal and raisins and walnuts every morning. So good.

[The attached document:]

Yea, here are the images that they wouldn’t let me show you. Only by garnering sufficient goodwill and trust over the last 7 months of my stay here have I reached the point in my relations with the authorities where I am able to send you these never-before-seen (as far as I can remember although I may be wrong) images of life in Korea. Enjoy your privileged photo-montage insight into the Korean world of …. of Korea!

Contradictory Tea Cup

If you look closely, you can see that the words “A green pepper” accompany this picture of a red pepper. Contradictory? Yes. It often seems much more important that manufacturers manage to put English language on their products than the words that they choose make any sense. I have since lost this cup. I am currently using another cup adorned with a picture of a sunflower and the accompanying words “Flower: we present you to simple life”.

Paintballing Crew

I think I might have sent this one already, or one very much like it. At the end of last semester a bunch of us went paintballing near Busan. This would be a great picture but Richard’s head was cut off because he chose to pose standing somewhat Stallone Cobra-style behind us all on the highest sod of turf, and that is a great shame because Richard has a nice head, very British Cockney-like. When I think of Cockney Londoners, I think of Rick. Right now, Rick will be somewhere in Australia, probably wishing that his ancestors had not been so clever in avoiding capture by the constabulary, but instead been shipped off to sunny, beachy Australia, land of BBQs and Tim Tams and water conservation issues.

Teacher’s Day

Rather obviously, I think, teacher’s day is a day where students celebrate and appreciate their teachers. That works out just fine for me, being one of the latter myself. I suspected that something was afoot when I approached the classroom for homeroom class and noticed Yu-Gyeong, the class captain, waiting at the door as if she was waiting for me. As it turned out she was waiting for me. Class 24 had bought a cake and other snacks and some drinks. And then someone went crazy and started smearing cream on me, but that’s okay because it was very tasty cream.

Final TESOL certificate course graduates

Here we have some of Jinju’s finest: the graduating class of the Spring semester TESOL certificate program. TESOL stands for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages by the way. So I guess I’m double qualified to teach English. And I’m going to start capitalizing the name of the language, English, again. I checked it on Dictionary.com’s style guide and apparently you should capitalize the names of languages, for example, Russian, Greek, Hebrew, etc. And now only 3 of these people still work here, including my intransigent self. You might notice that males are over-represented in this sample. I will also bring to your attention that fact that the guy in the light blue shirt at the top left is a bit of an alcoholic. I smile when I think of the many times that our taekwondo instructor had to tell John that his pants were the wrong way around.

I say Final TESOL because that was the last time the course was run. The new management that had come in had problems with it and wanted to scrap the whole thing, and they did.

Dinner with the Public Officials

Every semester there is a camp run at GNU for government employees. It’s an English camp and they have lessons and activities in English from 9 to 5 five days a week for about 6 weeks. The applicants who made it onto the camp are lucky enough that they are sent overseas towards the end of the camp to practice their English in context. This group went to Australia. Why do all the foreign teachers have an attitude.

My friend Paul does another crazy thing. That’s him with his hands in the air. Crazy Paul. And now he’s getting married. Crazy Paul.

My other family

Ummm, did I mention that I started a family here in Korea and I now have two sons? Here they are, Impy and Kronky. Good boys but they need to practice their English.

Week 3 class at Summer Camp

This would be middle school class F. They were a bit annoying because they were so loud and wouldn’t shut up and listen to me when I needed them to…but…at least they were being talkative and loud in English. It was quite a hot day that day and I was really glad I took my hat. This shot is taken on a field trip to Woo-bang Tower Land, so called because of the presence of Woo-Bang Tower in the Park. Mmm, simple. After being at Everland a few times, I have to say that Woo-Bang Tower Land was a bit of a lemon.

Sugary food plus kids plus amusement park rides equals sick!

I remember that there was at least one girl on this ride who was sick. Ha ha. I suppose it’s not really funny, but, ha ha. This ride is called the Viking by the way. There is a similar ride at Everland also called the Viking. Somehow, the Everland version is better. Woo-bang Tower Land just comes across as being a poor man’s Everland. Besides, it’s in Daegu. Daegu is nowhere! I’ve been there – it’s boring. However, I did see a snake in Daegu, the biggest snake I’ve seen in Korea. It was slithering into someone’s garage.

One more…

I am the Quiz King!

Summer camp contains many varied and stimulating activities conducted in English. This particular one is the quiz show we held in the auditorium. You can only see the middle school students here. The elementary and university students are doing other things. Note that when everyone is wearing the same shirt, everyone’s pants look somehow very similar, except for the one kid wearing the shorts with some kind of plaid pattern on them.

Well, that’s it for now. If you don’t hear from me for a while, it’s probably because the relevant authorities have detained me for questioning regarding allegations of possible espionage being conducted by myself for neighboring rogue states such with nuclear weapons. Hawaii for example. Oh well, enjoy and I’ll see ya later.

Cheers
Adrian