Ever decreasing circles

I'm about ready for bed, it's already too late. I just finished watching the show Medium on Fox Korea. It's about a psychic who helps the DA solve crimes. So anyway, I thought for a moment about my impending end of contract (hopefully subject to an extension) and about life in Busan and life in my neighbourhood in general. I recalled watching the movie Chingu a year or so before I came here, it's actually set in the neighbourhood I work in now. I changed channels and, oddly enough, it happened to be playing and the next scene was of a guy singing My Way in a noraebang. Then I remembered the first night that the teachers took me out for a welcoming party we went to a noraebang and I sang two songs: My Way and Play that Funky Music. Just a little odd.

Something else a bit unusual about this film is that they speak a dialect of Korean local to Busan and general Korean audiences needed subtitles to understand some of the dialogue. I keep joking to friends that I'm learning Busanese dialect so that when I speak Korean they'll know where I'm from. :D

Korean Postal Sevice

So I had my first taste of the using the Korean Postal System today. I sent one 15 kg (that's 33 lbs for you oldtimers) box to Canada; it cost me $115 to send it via EMS (Express Mail Service), a kind of guaranteed delivery, trackable, expedited parcel service. The guy next to me was mailing what looked like a crate of truck axles to Russia! I guess the postal system here is really useful to small businesses.

The bigger post offices even sell the boxes, seven sizes up to about a half cubic metre in size, the boxes cost about $4 for the biggest, double corrugated box they have and there's a guy in a booth who will package everything, including bubble wrap, etc., for you for a small fee. You can walk in with a bag of stuff and they'll do it all for you. Crazy service!

Seyoung sent a parcel to her sister in New York last week: a total of three days to delivery. Canada Post never looked so poor next to these guys. It costs about the same to send a standard service parcel of half that weight from Canada to Korea.

I had to fill out the EMS form twice because I filled out the return address in Korean and the clerk explained in broken but passable English that Canada requires its return addresses in English. All other countries will allow return addresses in Korean. So I guess Canada Post provides as poor a service to its international brethren as it does to the citizens of Canada. So much for a privatized post office.

Rainy December Day

It was warmish (~10C) and raining this morning in Busan. Kinda of like Newfoundland in early June. One of my adult students gave me a small bag of ddeok and told me about making Ddeok Guk, a kind of rice cake soup. I have lost all taste for anything fish-flavoured lately and wanted something different so I made some soup with ddeok, Korean instant beef stock, fresh spring onions, dried shitake mushrooms and frozen mandu. It was the best breakfast I've had in quite a while and perfect for a wet, grey day. There's a recipe for Mandu Ddeok Guk at My Korean Kitchen. Although I didn't follow the recipe, or even read it all before, my soup is very similar! Maybe I am becoming a Korean, as my director is fond of pointing out.

There are a few new photos posted to Flickr, descriptions, etc. will follow as time permits. I'll post an article or two about them later...

I've been thinking of building myself a hidey-hole somewhere. A little house to stick my books and junk in while I "wander up and down upon the earth". While Googling for "cabin building" info I found a link to this site with a freely downloadable PDF file that you can print to make a model of Thoreau's famous cabin at Walden. The site also has links to the Thoreau Reader, which has some good annotated versions of Thoreau's stuff.

Although I am admittedly a materialistic person (not in the sense of riches, but in the love of objects) one of my favourite personalities in history is Henry David Thoreau. There's a lot to be learned from his writing, even if you aren't the minimalist Trascendentalist he was. Have a look, go build your own shack, or for the more time restricted, download the PDF and build it on your office desk :D .

monk