Gangwon's ambassador

I just received an email -at my defunct kwandongbrian account that I only checked by chance this morning- about Gangwon's new ambassador from Koreafornian Cooking.

The news comes from the Chosun Ilbo:

Actor So Ji-sub is to be named a goodwill ambassador for tourism for Gangwon Province on Friday.

In a recently published travel journal, So featured photos and essays he authored while visiting areas of the province, including Cheolwon, Hwacheon, Yanggu and Goseong. 

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Wow! Two posts here in one week after months with no activity.  At the same time, Surprisesaplenty has had no new content in ten days.

Bloggers invited to travel Korea

I am still  in Kyeongsangnamdo and looking for work in Busan.  I am still unsure if I should be writing Busan or  Pusan.  Anyway, I am using my brother-in-law's computer so it doesn't feel comfortable writing many or long posts.  More later, sometime...

But not me. Rahul Prabhakar was invited, and traveled through Gangwon Do and elsewhere.  Listen to, and read about, his interview with KBS.

Oh, nobody invited him, but  Chris Backe has also blogged about  his trip to caves in Gangwondo.

Is this...Is this the end of Gangwon Notes?

In the next few weeks, I will be moving to Busan, to join  my wife who will be leaving sooner, as she has been transferred there.

I have been looking for work there and have some good prospects.  If nothing comes up, I will look at teaching from my home.

I love Gangwondo and have enjoyed my time in Sokcho and Yangyang.  This is a beautiful place to live and raise a child.  Busan will be nice, too.  I will enjoy having a bookstore with English language books in stock.  Still, from this apartment in Sokcho I was able to walk to the beach and to a mountain.  I was able to ride my bike in safety.  The friends I have here have been wonderful.  I will certainly have many reasons to visit after I leave.

I will not start a 'Busan Notes' blog but I will work on a name and a new (but linked) blogging identity.  The 'Kwandong' in Kwandongbrian is the name of historic tourist areas in the region and won't be all that appropriate in Busan.

This blog is fairly smalltime but would anyone like to take it over?  I might post here once in a while, but I don't know.

K'brian was wrong about 'Slow Cities'

In March of this year, I discussed the Slow City movement in Korea.  A 'slow city' - which could be a small town, I think the translation from Italian is a little misleading - is an idyllic place where people live as they have for centuries, in a quiet, peaceful place where everyone knows their neighbors and nobody hurries.

This sounds very nice, but the examples I looked at in March were of slow moving town which were slow because the young people had left and people were dirt-poor and insufficiently educated to find better work.

Today's Joongang has an article that works to change my mind somewhat.  It describes  a slow city that is attracting tourism with its relaxed ways and is working to be successful; quiet, but successful.

It does sound like a pleasant place but I hope it is more than a gimmick.  Should visiting these slow cities feel like visiting an Amish colony in the US?

Anyway, Korea has slow cities that are 'slow' by choice and not by economic failure.  I was wrong.

HT to Bizarro Brian.

Skindleshanks in the Herald

Photo from the peak of Seoraksan. Also from the Korea Herald. Now its time for you to dust off your blog.

Movember

Movember is an annual, month-long celebration of the moustache, highlighting men’s health issues, specifically prostate cancer and depression in men.

Mo Bros, supported by their Mo Sistas, start Movember (November 1st) clean shaven and then have the remainder of the month to grow and groom their moustache. During Movember, each Mo Bro effectively becomes a walking billboard for men’s health and, via their Mo, raises essential funds and awareness for Movember’s men’s health partners – The Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue – the national depression initiative. At the end of Movember, a series of Gala Partés are held to thank Mo Bros and Sistas for their support and fund raising efforts.

I think we have one more coworker who is growing a mustache for Movember.

In this photo is fellow G-blogger, Paka (with hat).

I am disappointed that my mustache is light coloured and doesn't stand out so well. I think I see a lot of grey in it.

KOTESOL REVIEW # 1

I hope to describe a few of the seminars I went to. I wanted to do this last year, but lost enthusiasm; here's hoping I don't this time.

I almost missed the first presentation as I had trouble with registration. Luckily, I had a small receipt from the bank machine showing that I had transferred money to the treasurer's account. Part of the problem is that the Korean software only accepts Korean length names. We found 'Bria' on a page of unknown depositors on the date listed on my receipt. Anyway, I had to enter my name into a word processor and my card was printed on the spot. It wasn't a big deal, but I waited more than half an hour to get it straightened out. I entered my name and university, but if it happens next time, I will be entering my name and "presenter" to get access to the behind-the-scenes areas.

Anyway, I did make it in in time to see Raymond Wong's presentation on having student make presentations in listening class. He clearly had put a lot of work into his class and his presentation and the information he gave us will allow me to plug it into next semester's classes without great adjustments.

Briefly, he prepared information on eight or so videos and the students (working in teams or pairs) could choose the video they liked. The students needed to find Japanese definitions (his is a Japanese university) for a word list he created. Then, he provided them with a videoscript and they made two pages of questions. Teams that chose the same videos peer-reviewed the question pages, then they were provided to other students.

Mr (Doctor?) Wong used TV programs and burned them to DVDs but I think Youtube would work just as well. He also used documentaries, rather than TV shows.

I found it very interesting and also found the person I sat next to interesting. She was wearing a nametag saying "Chris Backe" and I had thought that person was a he. Anyway, she was, in fact, Mr Backe's "guest" - part of how the registration worked. I later met the man himself.

Oh, Chris and his guest were interesting in their own rights as well. I later had lunch with them and JoeSeoulMan.

Joe taught us a new term for something I admit I had long done but hadn't known such a term existed. Spousal Money Laundering is something a man married to a Korean particularly might do. As many such men are put on an 'allowance' from wives who control finances, one way to get a little more pocket money is to go out to lunch with a group, collect cash from that group, then pay by credit card. Suddenly, one has a surplus of cash.

KOTESOLed Out!

Just got in the door. I'm going to crash soon but thought I'd relax with a beer first. I will post again, later, in more detail about various presentations.

The big-name speakers were not as interesting as in previous years but There were three presentations that I will be thinking about and researching further before next semester's classes. I also sat in three presentations about Masters programs in TESOL.

I think I spent more time with friends than at previous conferences. You couldn't walk down a hallway without tripping over a blogger - that seemed to be true for all of Seoul.

At the conference, I saw the EFL Geek, JoeSeoulman, Chris in South Korea, the Chosun Bimbo. There were even more bloggers but I got the impression that they weren't blogging anymore (John in Kwangju, what is your blog, anyway?).

While walking down the street by city hall, I saw a foreigner and asked him if Bando and Luni's bookstore was nearby. He swiftly responded, "Are you Gangwon Notes?" It was nice to bump, completely randomly, into ZenKimchi. He didn't know where the bookstore was, but may soon have a book published to be placed in such a store. Congrats on his recent wedding.

Names in Foreign languages

Imagine you're a teenage girl in a Confucian country that values neither youth nor females. You try to assert yourself, possibly for the first time, and discuss your opinions about your country to a newspaper columnist you disagree with. What happens next? BizarroBrian shuts you down. Hard.

Alright, there wasn't much controversial or explosive there but I was interested to read his post about the English name for the Sea to the East of Korea and West of Japan, then read an article in the Chosun about the prevalence of English names in Korea*.

"Coffee is imported, so we cannot do anything about the names," says one man in his 60s. "But why are the sizes classified as 'short' or 'tall' in English?"

...

stress levels began rising in the mid-1990s when so-called "family" restaurant chains began to pop up in Korea. T.G.I. Friday's, Bennigans, Outback Steakhouse and other restaurants featured menus in English, or words created by mixing Korean and English.

...

Eight students at Doseong Elementary School in Pyeongchang, Gangwon Province sent a letter in 2007 to the heads of confectioners asking them to use Korean names. The petition drew support from around 1,000 people after it was posted on an Internet portal. At about the same time, a survey of third- and fourth-graders in elementary school showed that 79 percent favored Korean names for snacks, saying they sounded more familiar and made it easier to determine what kind of snack it is.

Korean language experts say we may end up thinking that it is only natural for products to have foreign names. This perception becomes ingrained as we become adults and create stereotypes that favor foreign words and developing disdain for our own words.

First, note that the article is not specifically about English infiltrating Korean**. The sizes of coffee are often not in English. The comment about coffee sizes being in a variety of languages is a staple of English stand-up comedy and the like. I am under the impression that 'Grande' and 'Vente' are words in two different languages for tall but used at Starbucks for different sizes.

The mixing of Korean and foreign words for product names has been a source of amusement for, well, forever. I am particularly amused by 'Coolpis', 'Ricetards' and 'Lezpo' - the latter sounding like slang for lesbians, but here is short for leisure sports.

The final paragraph, the one about favoring foreign words and disdaining native ones, is one I am learning to care about. Being from English-speaking Canada, I was annoyed, when I bothered to think about them at all, by the efforts of French-speaking Canadians to protect their language. And that is an international language, while Korean is very discrete and poorly known.

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* BizarroBrian has also blogged about this article.

**I remember an ex-blogger, possibly the Lost Nomad, discussing the same thing when a Korean wrote to a newspaper complaining about English names like 'Vita', which I believe is Latin and was the name for a make of car.

Stupid Daily Reviewer

Apparently Kimchi-ice cream is a 'Top 100 Korean Blog'. Jason received an email from the Daily Reviewer giving him the news.

What's he got that I don't?

Oh, wait, I had better check my various email accounts. No, nothing there.

I only see about thirty Korean blogs on the list. Maybe they may yet contact me.

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Anyway, congrats to Kimchi-Ice cream (who really does deserve it) and the others.

Save a blogger!

A fellow K-blogger might be becoming disillusioned with blogging. He needs comments on his blog, quick!

The EFL-Geek injured himself running:

About 10 days ago I hurt my leg exercising and now it’s really painful to walk. I went to see a doctor twice and got some pills and an injection each time. the injection did wonders, but only lasted one day. Basically I was told to do nothing for one week and everything will be fine. However, it’s pretty much impossible for me to do that unless I take a week off of work – good luck on me doing that...

He posted this information on both Facebook and his blog. On Facebook, he notes:

Interesting - I get more comments on facebook, then I do on my actual blog.

This is clearly a cry for help - both for the physical injury and for people not reading his blog (man, for some people it's all about the hits).

He currently is at 13 comments -including some of his own - on Facebook and only 3 on his blog (all mine, trying to save his blog).

This is a call to arms! Visit his blog and comment - and read a little, it's pretty good.

H1N1 quarantine rules changing

"Why are we forbidden to leave the country during Chuseok? With 10,000 cases of swine flu in Korea, how is leaving the country putting us more at risk?"

LATER: BizarroBrian said: With roughly 10,000 cases in South Korea, and swine flu popping up in schools all over the place, seems you're at as great a risk in the country than out.

I hate to leave this quote (or paraphrase) unattributed but I cannot recall which blogger said it nor can I find it. If you think you're the original, tell me and I'll give you credit.

I can credit the DongA Ilbo, which has an article titled, "Gov't Bans School Closures due to H1N1 Flu".

Schools will not be closed despite the outbreak of H1N1 influenza, and a restriction keeping students who traveled abroad out of school for a week will also be lifted. As the flu began spreading among ordinary people, the Education, Science and Technology Ministry yesterday issued a revised guideline banning school closure even if a confirmed or suspected H1N1 patient is found in a school. ... Schools and private academic institutes can notify each other when their students are infected with the H1N1 virus after gaining consent from students’ parents.

I think the new guidelines are designed to reduce hysteria, to cut down on people being terrified of THE FLU. 'It's not so bad; take some precautions, but live your life.' I am concerned about the final paragraph quoted above: schools are busy places and hagwons work toward for the bottom line - giving them voluntary extra duties isn't the way to see them followed through.

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These days I am concerned about the state of my son's daycare. It is well-run and as clean as any place with hygiene-ignorant four-year-olds can be. my son could catch the flu there which would be a serious and scary problem, but also, what do I do if someone else catches it. I suppose the little guy could play in a corner of the classroom for a week on campus.

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It's three AM and I'm rambling a little:

The rumours at our school put the number of infected students at seven. I know of one class that was told to go home for a week as a classmate was infected, although I don't know how large that class was. We ESL teachers typically have classes of 20 students and several teachers work with the same major at any given time. It appears that the 20 students were sent home - but not the ESL teacher. in discussing the vaccine earlier, I wondered who should get it; the students who are at risk of being sick or the teachers who are at risk of (being sick and) carrying it widely. To leave the teacher in-place, capable of infecting a few hundred others, is strange

Swine flu...forever

I think I'm a bright guy and am capable of thinking things through. Still, sometimes I need to hear or read or see something, as per my example below, dozens of times before it really sinks in.

My great epiphany last week was about swine flu, or rather contagious disease and our future.

Many K-bloggers have been describing the over-reaction to swine flu found in Korea. Roboseyo just blogged about the number of swine flu deaths compared to the number of suicides and asked why Koreans weren't investing more in suicide prevention.

At the same time, the ex-pat community has been discussing the lack of hygiene seen in Korea. I'm talking about people using bathrooms but not washing their hands, sneezing or coughing without covering their mouths and sharing food even to the point of all customers for an entire day sharing the same bowl of soy sauce. I'm going to point out here that I need to rub my eyes less and wash my own hands more as well.

Well, Korean officials have not been overreacting to swine flu; they may well be reacting exactly right, but they need to do this forever. This is what globalization is all about, this is what is meant by the cliche, "It's a small world." There will always be another disease on the horizon, people will always be in contact with international travelers and preventative measures will always need to be taken.

SARS, bird flu, swine flu, ... disinfectant gels and infra-red cameras and the rest will be with us til the end. The Asian bow will replace European greetings and even the North American handshake. Maybe online classes will come into their own.

I was told all this again and again since my university biology classes in the '80s but only now, standing in line to have my temperature taken and seeing disinfectant stations at doorways on campus, do I really understand.

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One more thing. Matt Ridley wrote a book about the evolution of sex called "The Red Queen". The red queen that Alice in Wonderland met had to run as fast as she could to keep up with the others, to stay in place. One of the explanations for sex in Ridley's book was to shuffle our immunities and cell markers. This kind of evolution is not the sort to change Australopithecus to man but to change the locks on our cells so diseases couldn't get in. For this kind of evolution, our grandfather's locks would work just as well for our grandchildren - as diseases found keys to one set of locks, they lost the keys to the old locks. A newborn, with an entirely new (or very old) immunity suite would be in a better position than a clone, young in body but with a slightly older immunity suite.

Anyway, I wonder how this affects my son. He was born relatively late in my life - I was thirty-eight while my father was in his twenties when I was born. Is he getting a better or worse immunity suite? Will the trend in developed nations of having children later in life make a difference in immunity?

Global Warming news -mostly about Gangwon

Blogger note: In the 'create a new post' window, the two quotes below are the same colour, although the fonts are different. I have this problem frequently now that I am on a Mac.

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The joongang and the Chosun have articles about unusual crops in Gangwondo.

The Joongang has this to say:

Melons now grow in greenhouses in Yanggu County, Gangwon, and apples grow outdoors. Tangerines are being grown in Gangneung, Gangwon.

All of this shows that semitropical temperatures are moving north, leaving some to wonder what the temperature will be like in 100 years. The meteorological administration says that if the temperature continues its meteoric rise, the average temperature in Korea will be about 4 degrees higher. Ski resorts in Jeolla and Gangwon may have to shut down. Pine trees, which are symbolic of the Korean soul for many Koreans, could also disappear.

Apples growing outdoors is a sign of increased temperatures? I confess that I chiefly remember only wild apple trees rather than orchards in my part of Canada, but I have trouble thinking of apple trees as sub-tropical.

"Ski resorts may have to shut down"? Well, perhaps we can be done with Olympics bids, then.

From the Chosun, we learn that Gangneung has planted a field of sunflowers along the Namdae River:

The 8,000 sq. m field is made up of one million sunflowers and it is drawing people out of their cars to get a closer look. These sunflowers are different in that they only come up to a person’s waist, whereas ordinary sunflowers usually grow to the average person’s head.

Alright, maybe sunflowers aren't tropical either (and the article made no such connection) but they have the word 'sun' right in the name. Read critically, people!

I will work, next week, on finding and photographing one or both of these crops.

Roboseyo* has (re)posted a video about global warming that compares the costs and benefits of acting on global warming with whether or not such warming is taking place. The speaker in the video makes a fair point but I feel the worst-case-scenarios (while possible) aren't the way to convince fence-sitters.

On the other hand, I would have added that if we take action against global warming and it never does occur (and that Gore and the others, the many, many others, were wrong), we still come out ahead. I say this because most of the action needed to reduce or slow global warming have other great benefits - reducing fuel emissions is good for more than keeping us cool, it also prolongs how long we actually have fuel, reduces other forms of pollution, and walking and cycling rather than driving may make us healthier.

This is a point that GI Korea (link is to a search on his site for global warming) might not get. Either that, or he wants to argue the problem on it's own merits (is global warming happening or not) and not go off on tangents. Anyway, his blog is the best place for clear-headed anti-global warming information (not that I agree with it, mind you).

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Added later:

the Korea Times also has an article, an editorial this time, about Korea becoming subtropical. The writer is concerned that Lee Myoung-bak isn't doing enough. I can't really say, but I do know that Canadians have/had trouble accepting their government's One Ton Challenge, and Canadians produce far more carbon as individuals than Koreans do. I'm not exactly blaming Canadians: citizens are fewer and spread further out than Koreans are, making automobiles far more necessary.

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Roboseyo is also involved in KIVA, which is very cool. Follow the above link to his site. KIVA is sort of micro-loan bank. Instead of giving large groups piles of money, the micro-loans go to small-business people - to buy a sewing machine or a bike or, well, I don't know, but the loans are in the order of $20 to $50 or so. I don't think the loaner, Roboseyo in this case, makes money, but he has a wonderfully high likelihood of having the loan repaid and so is able to use it again. I have wanted to get involved but have always been too lazy.

bloggers are harming newspapers?

Note: Either Safari or blogger is having formatting problems. If this post, not yet seen on the blog, is formatted strangely, I wash my hands of it. If you find spelling and grammatical errors, I'm probably to blame.

GI Korea has a post up about AP news expecting/requiring bloggers to either embed an AP article -with ads but with no charge to the blogger, or pay to quote excerpts.

As GI Korea says, "Interesting stuff and really something that shouldn’t be too surprising considering how more and more newspapers are going bankrupt." Still, I think newspapers are going bankrupt for other reasons. Bloggers who link back to the original article are likely to encourage visits to the paper's website, rather than discourage them.

Now, I would say that some bloggers, myself occasionally among them, do harm newspapers - or try to. Some of the reporting in Korea is terrible - from poor English to extreme and obvious bias, these papers need to improve their game.Oh, the news media in North America that credulously post anti-vaxer nonsense also deserve some attention. A few years ago, many people commented that Jon Stewart's The Daily Show was offering better 'fake news than the legitimate networks could manage. Part of why I blog is to encourage mainstream media to offer better information to the public. I blog that information because the newspapers often don't.

Anyway back to GI's post. They want to charge people for posting excerpts? I can understand it if no link is given or citation listed. I even want to charge my own students to drive the rules of plagiarism into their heads. Is there a problem of length? Are some bloggers posting two paragraphs of a three paragraph story?

I understand that AP can easily search for their content and find those who post it, but charging such people would be very problematic. GI's post is about 'protecting content' and I had figured it was about a new kind of DRM or way to make their pages non-copyable.

Well, its a new world and we're all still trying to find our way in it. We always will be. We sure won't be going back to the 'good ole days' and we never will be. I hope newspapers can find a way to be commercially viable, but bloggers won't be going away.

Updated before I posted:

Boingboing looked into the subject over a year ago.

The New York Times, an AP member organization, refers to this as an “attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt.” I suggest it’s better described as yet another attempt by a big media company to replace the established legal and social order with with a system of private law (the very definition of the word “privilege”) in which a few private organizations get to dictate to the rest of society what the rules will be. See also Virgin Media claiming the right to dictate to private citizens in Britain how they’re allowed to configure their home routers, or the new copyright bill being introduced in Canada, under which the international entertainment industry, rather than democratically-accountable representatives of the Canadian people, will get to define what does and doesn’t amount to proscribed “circumvention.”

"My blog and Facebook account are private"

... or are they?

Government officials in bozeman, Montana are requiring job applicants, on their application, not merely to list their social networking sites, but also their passwords.

“Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.,” the City form states. There are then three lines where applicants can list the Web sites, their user names and log-in information and their passwords.

I have been somewhat careful to speak well or neutrally about my workplace and seldom mention it by name at all.  This blog is not found by searching for me by name.

I think I would be comfortable with an employer or prospective employer reading this blog, but I would have to think about it before posting it on my resume, for example.

Facebook is another story, and especially with my password.  With my password, you can visit the pages of all my friends so it isn't even my privacy I would be concerned about.  Although I would be concerned about that as well.  Readers of this blog and visitors to my Facebook profile can easily see my thoughts on religion, although no student learns of them except occasionally after a direct question.

Cory Doctorow at Boingboing is up in arms and a Google search seems pretty full of relevant links.

UPDATE: Here is a link to the form - which may soon change, I suspect.

Walking Festival

I learned that the 20km course follows a route that is only opened twice a year.  It is really tough but also, because it is available so seldom, it is very crowded.

We did the 5 km course and it was long enough considering I carried my little guy at least one km.  We did the walk with the four Domestic Blisses and I notice that not one of these photos has Mrs Bliss in it.

On the way to the start, from the bus, we saw a deer running in the dry riverbed.  We didn't see many other animals but, thanks to the clear air, the scenery was sharp and the horizons distant.  I am sure the adults had fun, but the walk was mostly about the kids, who had fun during these photos at least.

The people at Seoul Podcast are dangerous and out of control!

...and they haven't invited me onto their show!

I've found the Seoul podcast to be interesting but, for my taste, too long. considering the length of my commute and such (for me, up to 45 minutes is good; an hour and forty-five minutes, not so good).

Their most recent 'cast was about swine flu and has stirred up a (I was going to say 'hornet's nest' but, let's face it, Korean blogging isn't that big a deal) tempest in a teacup.

Kimchi Ice Cream is upset, Stafford is explanatory and Brian (yet another) is stubborn.

Oh, Kimchi Icecream, I presume, is a listener, Stafford is one of the podcast personalities and Brian was an interview subject. The cause of the hullabaloo is a cold call they made during the 'cast. Did they reveal too many personal details? Humiliate the person called? I may have to listen to this one.

Updating news on temple stays

I enjoyed my temple stay five, wow - five, years ago at Naksan Temple.  Since then, of course, large portions were burnt in a forest fire.  The temple looks good now, but no longer hosts temple stays.

In Gangwon Province you can stay at Baekdamsa, which might be a little closer to Seoul and is newsworthy in it's own right.

Many years ago, an ex-president (Chun Doo-hwan) was charged with corruption and took a sort of coward's way out - he sought asylum at Baekdam Temple until people calmed down.  This story has no current significance, by the way.

Read about other temples offering overnight stays in the Korea Herald.  Read about my temple stay here.  GI Korea also visited the temple.

UPDATING my update: Naksan does offer Temple Stays.  I will try to find contact information as I have misplaced the info I was given.

Obligatory post on Roh Mu-hyeon

I consider myself a regional blogger, although I do follow a few national and international issues.  Politics is not my beat and I was happy to let the other blogs discuss the ex-president's suicide.

Still, here is a chance to post another pic of my little guy, posing now with a memorial ribbon, the meaning of which he has no idea.

He seems proud of it, though.

The post I like best, of those other bloggers I mentioned, is Roboseyo's.  He describes the many ways the suicide was the wrong thing to do.

Hmm, I thought I had read a bit suggesting that Roh might have had the chance to recover from bad decisions and gain a positive international image, much as failed-president-but-Nobel-prize-winner Jimmy Carter did.  I can't find it now.  I might have been thinking of another blogpost by someone else. I still like Roboseyo's though.