A Cascading Cavalcade of Catching Up

Well, gentle readers, it has been a good long while again since I updated with anything actually directly relevant to my personal life, so here I am! Life continues as usual here in Suji, teaching has been picking up gradually since the Chuseok holiday, and now we're back up to full speed and full class sizes. I must confess that it's been more difficult as of late, a little bit of that "new-job enthusiasm" is waning and my stockpile of Creative Teaching Ideas has begun to dwindle, many of those ideas having been proven ineffective for the students I've been teaching.

In terms of actual events affecting my life here, it is a very interesting and important time to be here in Korea, as I'm sure everyone has heard. Here's a great BBC article discussing some of the potential implications of this historic meeting. Having polled several of my students, I've been surprised at the variety of reactions these events have triggered. One of my more outspoken and articulate students, Jason, is strongly in favor of reunification with North Korea, because he feels that rejoining the Korean Peninsula would greatly improve the country's economic standing in what is becoming an increasingly competitive and important theatre - Eastern Asia. It's hard to argue with him when nearby economic Cinderella Story China is putting its vast resources to great use. Other students weren't as optimistic, indicating a long-held bitterness toward the North Korean government. As for myself, an my outsider's opinion, I'm cautiously optimistic about these peace talks. While I am 100% behind finally ending the stalemated war along the 38th parallel, and in that respect I wholeheartedly endorse the actions of the summit, I also believe that reunification would be a sticky and expensive matter. For South Korea, reunifying with North Korea would be an economic sinkhole, and the tremendously high standard of living enjoyed here in the south would take a hit as the government would be forced to split up very uneven contributions between the very wealthy and very impoverished nations. In other words, South Korea would be contributing the lion's share of the money.

However, Jason makes a good point, and in the long run, South Korea has a lot to gain in terms of international standing by reabsorbing its wayward Northern brother, despite initial financial setbacks. Reunification aside, as I mentioned before I still think the economic shows of good faith are an excellent idea and will hopefully assist the people who really deserve help - the average citizens of North Korea.

Moving on to more personally current events, the most salient where this blog is concerned is the latest addition to my pantheon of consumer electronics - a new camera! I have named him Hermes (after the messenger of the Gods, naturally):


Taken with my old camera, here is Hermes in all his tiny little glory. He's an Olympus (of course) 790 SW, which means I can take him underwater up to three meters, and even drop him from my full height and he'll probably be ok (I'm not taking any chances, though). Best of all, he boasts some pretty incredible video capabilities. Excellent framerate and sound pickup. One of these days I'll find something worth taking a video of, and I'll post it on youtube and get it up here.

Well, I had planned on sharing some more pictures and stories, but it seems that Blogger's Photo App. is a little under the weather at the moment, so I shall return later and try again. In the meantime, on a musical note, my favorite band as of late has been the irresistibly catchy, American Indie-pop dynamo The Format. In the interest of sharing them with you, a quick YouTube search turned up several of their music videos, which I hadn't seen and which are very creative and enjoyable.

This is the music video for "Dog Problems," the title track of their second and latest CD. I always thought it sounded like The Format was channeling Queen a little bit in this song (it has moments that sound quite like "Somebody to Love" and moments that sound a bit more like parts of "Bohemian Rhapsody"), and this music video, in a very strange way, confirmed it. Watch the formation of the hands during the bridge and tell me it doesn't remind you of the iconic formation of Queen during Boho Rhapsody:


And this is "She Doesn't Get It," which I think quite nicely illustrates just how catchy the band is:


In any case, they're an excellent band, just hitting their stride, and they've got a third album on the way. If you like what you heard, try searching YouTube for "Inches and Failing" or "The First Single." Those are two of my favorite songs by the band, and there are many fan-made videos for them.

I shall return when I figure out what's going on with the photo app. (the error message is, due to my IP, in Korean) I fear it may be the rather large size of my photos, but that's never been a problem before, so I'm not sure.