Gimbap Blues

I think part of the issue is that I live in the middle of nowhere, but my strong craving for Korean convenience stores is real.  One-dollar gimbap.  A single three-dollar can of Japanese beer.  A decent two-dollar sandwich.

Maybe it's just knowing that they're there, 24 hours a day without fail.

Snacking just isn't the same in America.

One Thing That I Can Depend On

Along with a new car I've been taking the time to go through my music collection and finally get rid of stuff that I simply don't or have never listened to.  It's still painful, since I don't really collect anything other than books or music, but it's interesting that I left behind at least 150 novels in Daegu and couldn't have cared less.  But for some reason deleting an album from my hard drive always makes me hesitate, even when it's more than likely available on Youtube.

Anyhow, I pared my collection from about 65 gigs down to 60, and that fits somewhat snugly on my new phone.  (I am just filled with the spirit of conspicuous consumption these days.)  I also got rid of iTunes, which felt great.  Over the past decade it's managed to garble and/or murder a lot of albums that I'm going to have a less than easy time replacing.

It's interesting that new cars (my car at least) don't come with CD players any longer.  I spent an hour playing with satellite radio, and I was thoroughly unimpressed.  The thought of a long drive where I'm dependent on someone else's taste in music honestly frightens me more than it should.

Anyhow, as I told some ex-pat friends, I guess I'm an American now, again.  Having my music library all set makes that go down a little smoother than it would otherwise.

What Up, James?

It's hard to believe I've been back in America for almost six weeks now.  Life is moving along and most importantly, despite some bumps, my Dad is doing well.  Today was a "town day" so I drove him in for some shopping.  It's still cold here though -- I really want spring to get to it.

I wasn't totally sure what would happen to this here blog once I left Korea.  Thing is, as much as I yap about Korea, I've always considered this to be a personal, early 2000's era type of thing, i.e., an online diary that very few people actually read.

And I think we'll continue with that!  I'm getting back into taking pictures, and you might notice I've been putting together a series called The Give and The Take.  I'm working on short prose pieces to give any and everybody a sense of what it's like taking care of an older relative -- mostly good things I hope, but inevitably some bad as well.  In addition, I brought a notebook-and-a-half of material from Daegu sketching out my life as a (former) English teacher.

I'm really happy for anybody to come by, honestly.  Sitting down to write a little bit and post some photos at night, even a relatively meaningless little post like this, gives me a fair amount of pleasure these days.

And I'm reading a ton, as well, so expect even more straight-up book reviews.

I should be getting a COVID shot this spring, and as long as things continue to go pretty well I'll be here in Bellingham for the rest of 2021.

A crystal ball would be nice, no?  But I'll settle for this for now.

Will I jinx 2021 by saying it's going OK so far?  For everybody I hope?

So Long For Now

Dynamic Duo, "Chul-Chek"

I never did take to K-pop.  Korean hip-hop, however, is the balls.  The good stuff, at least.

I'm in my office at lovely Daegu Health College for the last time today, taking care of some stuff.  It's actually freezing outside, but it's supposed to warm up a bit this weekend.  I'm going home to do some more cleaning and packing (haven't started the latter, to be honest), and tomorrow morning I'll get a COVID test (i.e., the "brain Q-tip").  I'll head up to Incheon Airport on Monday.

This is easily the best job I've ever had, and I realize I was very lucky in finding a boss in Korea who was for the most part both supportive and flexible, and willing to let me do my thing as long as the students (both college and adult) were happy.  For the most part, they were.

I'll get to Bellingham Monday and enter a new world of caring full-time for my dad.  I wouldn't say I'm either optimistic or pessimistic about it -- just ready to make sure his needs (at almost 92) are being met.  He's stubborn and fiercely independent though, so what will be tough is walking the line between taking care of him as needed, but not babying him or taking away his sense of power or volition.  His house, his rules, as they say.

I'm looking forward to the mild weather, the beautiful mountain and forest views, and air that is as fresh as fresh gets.  As I close out my to-do list here, I've got a new one for Bellingham as well, but it's not nearly as extensive.  The goal is to adjust and continue from there.  I'll be taking a long walk every morning after coffee with my dad, and probably one in the afternoon as well when he takes a nap.

My dad is scheduled for a vaccine, but not until late March (this is where I mention he's a die-hard Trump supporter).  I'm guessing at best I'll get mine in summer at earliest.  Hell, that could be optimistic.

And from there?  Nobody knows what happens next, other than I'll be living in a nice house in the quietest of neighborhoods five minutes from the border of Canada.

I'm pretty sure I'll read a lot of books.

As for Daegu, I hope this wretched virus gets handled as soon as it's possible.  I want people wandering around eating and drinking and laughing downtown again.  I want the undergraduates back, in person of course, studying hard and goofing off all at the same time.  I want my local movie theater to stay in business if it can.  I want the local restaurants and coffee shops of Chilgok / Northern Daegu to make as much money as possible.  I want to see Samsung Lions Park filled with people cheering and drinking beer and eating fried chicken at yet another spring or summer ballgame.

Samsung usually loses.  I don't care.  True fans know winning is only ever a part of it all.

"pan it, can't understand it, ban it"

 

MF Doom, "Money Folder"

Happy New Year from lurvely Daegu.  It's Monday afternoon, and I just turned in my final hard-copy grades and attendance sheets for my last semester here in South Korea.

While the Lunar New Year isn't until February 12th, it's safe to say we're moving from the Year of the Rat to the Year of the Ox.

As we've gone back to restaurant lock-down of no more than four people per table, I did pretty much nothing for New Year's (just like Christmas!).  I called my Dad and I think it's finally sinking in with him that we're going to be room-mates soon.

So back to bank and pension office visits.  The former is actually pretty much done, the latter will take a bit more extra paperwork.  (Have I mentioned Korea pretty much runs on paperwork?  Yes, millions of times.)

R.I.P. MF Doom.

Farewell Transmission

Songs: Ohia, "Farewell Transmission"

Didn't start listening to Jason Molina until I landed in South Korea.  Go figure.

I just spoke with my boss and made it official -- I'll be leaving South Korea and my current job this February.

My dad is getting older and needs full-time care, whereas for the past five years or so he could get by with part-time care.  My sister has been doing more than her share of maintenance, and it's time for me to step up.

To say I have mixed feelings is an understatement.  I love Korea, and I really like my job here.

But it's also been 12 years (!) since I came here thinking I'd just do a year or two.

Timing is a feeling more than anything else.  Or maybe an instinct.

I'm just chuckling to myself in my office right now -- Obama wasn't even president yet when I started this little English-teaching adventure back in 2008.

And while moving back to America in the midst of the Trump Virus and Recession might seem daunting, I think it's going to work out.  I'll be living with my Dad in Bellingham, Washington, a beautiful and bizarro place closer to Vancouver than it is to Seattle.  (It's Twin Peaks with a shittier economy and more hippies and meth labs.)  I'll get to spend time with the old man, but also get to see my sister and nephew more than just once every summer.

I'm planning on buying a real bike for what it's worth once I touch down, and taking more pictures, and keeping up with my Korean language skills, and playing guitar again.  (My Fender Strat -- American made! -- sits unused for over a decade in my dad's garage.)

This blog shall remain in place.  I'm sure I'll still have some semi-intelligent things to say about Korea from time to time, but also incredibly fascinating insights into elder-care, or the fact that my 91 year-old dad still loves to talk about his sex life in fairly graphic terms, both past and present.

I'm sad.  I'm happy.  I'm moving on.

Happy Chuseok!

It's Chuseok again, Korean Thanksgiving, and the city, or at least the northern suburb where I live, is totally quiet.  There's the occasional shriek of kids playing, but that's about it.  The weather is Platonically ideal at 75 with a few clouds, and I'm in the middle of a five-day weekend staycation.

I had pizza for dinner last night, which I haven't had in over a year if I'm remembering correctly.

For what it's worth, there is decent South Korean pizza out there but the place I ordered from on a bit of a whim was not it.

Insert bad pizza / sex jokes here.

It's already October.  Three months left to ago in this hell-year.  I got an e-mail from Washington State to let me know my e-ballot has been received.

It's something, I guess.

Happy Chuseok to you and your family.

(To get technical, far too often Korean pizza cheese and toppings don't "meld" with the crust.  They sort glide on top and come off way too easily.  The flavors are there, but the marriage between crust and cheese and toppings never seems to come together like it should.  And I'm pretty sure this places makes their dough from scratch, so the problem is somehow in the cooking process, not the ingredients.)

Wet. Damp. Gross. Dangerous.

I realize I do a lot of complaining about the weather here in South Korea during summer, where it alternates between roasting hot and crushing downpours of rain.  But a lot of folks have actually died this month due to flooding and mudslides.  No es bueno.

Even without Covid it would take quite a lot to get me to leave the old apartment during August -- lunch or dinner with friends, or baseball games, sure, but not much beyond that.

Throw in torrential rains and let's just say books are being read, movies are being watched, and the stationary bicycle is being put to good use.

Dampity Damp

Daegu is a moist, tepid hellscape these days pic.twitter.com/iCEh3SvOn5

— Antifa #BLM James (@wetcasements) August 7, 2020

Celebrated Summer

Albert Ayler, "Sun Watcher"

I just taught my last adult class of the semester and handed in my final (hardcopy) grades for my college classes.

I have no right to complain.  I went from teaching five college classes to one, basically, via video recording.  In my defense, I did have to learn two new programs from scratch (one for distance learning, one for distance evaluation) with little to no help from my boss.  I think I also mentioned some drama over the "we won't have a grading curve this semester but then again we will" situation.

But it's over.  And it's strange to think I'll be in Korea for a full August for the first time in over a decade.

I just got some new books though, so I guess vacation is off to a decent enough start.

Maybe I need another Project Herzog in my life.

Because Korea

To recap, my five sections were done entirely online this past semester.  And from the beginning my boss has stressed that our (online) quizzes, midterm, and final should be relatively easy.  This is in no small part because across Korea, students and parents are complaining about paying full tuition for largely online courses.

So I came in to the office Thursday, only for my boss to complain that I was about to give too many As.

He's usually a good egg, but I'm spending a happy weekend not thinking about him at all.

As for next semester, it's 50-50 whether or not students return.  I'm guessing we'll have some come back, but continue online for non-essential things like, oh I don't know, English.  (There is no English major available at my school, and I'm fine with that.)

Suffice it to say, if Korea isn't going back to 100% this September there's no way the US or UK should.  They will of course due to politics, and within a week major classroom outbreaks will ensue.

"I wanted to see the world / Then I flew over the ocean / And I changed my mind"

Phoebe Bridgers, "Kyoto"

I spoke with my Dad last night for Father's Day (Sunday morning, his time).  My sister is out visiting him right now, which is a treat for him and also a reassurance.

He lives with his girlfriend in the middle of nowhere, Washington State.  He asked me how much I enjoyed the Trump Rally in Tulsa (in his mind-set, everybody loves Trump and watches FOX News for at least five hours a day).

Anyhow, his girlfriend wants to leave and go back to Florida.  My Dad, at 91, is definitely entering into the early stages of dementia.  It could be a bluff, who knows, and that's part of the reason my sister went out in-person.  She'll go again in August with my nephew.  It's no secret now that we're getting into "maybe this is the last time they'll get to spend time together" territory.

To be blunt, this woman is horribly abrasive and a compulsive liar.  And as unpleasant as she is by nature, not even my Dad's money can seem to keep her around any longer.  (We aren't talking mega-bucks, but a very comfortable full-on Federal pension that comes in every month.  She was scraping by with her criminal son on Social Security back in Florida.  She's claiming she wants to go back to that.)

I'm 95% certain I'll return to America in February.  The idea is that I'd move out to Bellingham and stay with my dad.  (He can't live alone any longer.)

Given that Trump has literally given up on fighting the coronavirus, I'll be moving back to a country in the middle of a pandemic with no health insurance to speak of and presumably looking for some kind of work in the middle of what's going to be a major recession at best.

I've got savings, but I'll probably need to buy a car as soon as I get back.  Insurance.  Gas.  Tires.  Some drunk asshole yanking off your side-view mirror just because.  All that shit I've gratefully not had to worry about for over a decade.

My mom died at 51, relatively young.  Ovarian cancer.  1992.  About one month before I graduated from high school.  A whole different set of nightmares and complications.  But it was over in under a year.

There's no good way to watch a parent die, obviously.  But given his isolation and refusal to consider moving back east, this is looking like the only viable plan.

Daegu Is Punishing Me Already

To state the obvious, this is Daegu's early June heat.  It only gets worse, and it goes all the way through September.

And that rain later in the week?  Cool refreshing wawa from heaven?  Not so much.  It's hard, nasty sideways rain (jang-ma) that does little to actually cool things down.  It floods everything, making even walking treacherous, and by the time it finishes the humidity has sky-rocketed to sauna-like levels.

I beg of you all -- please break out your tiny, invisible violins for me now.

Summer

Since I moved to South Korea in 2008 (!) I've been travelling back to America every summer starting in 2010.  I have February and August off, so summer is a good time to get back in touch with my awesome sister near Baltimore and my FOX-addicted dad north of Seattle.

I contacted sis last night and told her I couldn't make it back this summer for the annual visit.

For starters, South Korea expects a 14 day quarantine for all people coming into (or back into) the country.

Then, two days ago, new requirements were announced, including the need for a coronavirus test 48 hours within the time you re-enter Korea.

It's my understanding that in America you can only get a test in most places if you're already symptomatic.  That would make it impossible to actually return to my job.

South Korea has done an exceptional job with this plague, so they get to make the rules.

The quarantine I could probably deal with (although it certainly wouldn't enhance my current level of mental health).

But needing a CV test that I might not even be able to get?  That's too much.

And that sucks.

I miss crabs.  And my nephew.  And the dogs.  Especially the hyperactive black one that seems to like me very much.

His name is Periwinkle.

One Step Forward...

I'm in my office on a beautiful Monday afternoon completing my online midterm.  It's frustrating writing tests for students you have literally never met or taught.  My boss said keep is as simple as possible and that's fine, but also kind of underlines the point that online teaching of a foreign language just isn't ideal.

Anyhow, the big news here in South Korea is that over the weekend a huge Covid outbreak took place up in Seoul centered around Itaweon, a known foreigner / nightlife hotspot.  Apparently one of the vectors is centered around a gay club, giving just enough ammunition to the usual suspects to blame gay / foreign sybarites for all of this mess.

I mean, it is a shame.  South Korea was within weeks of shutting this thing down in my opinion, and now we start over.  It could have been the gayest of gay bath-houses, or the most holy of Christian churches.

Stay the fuck home, people.

Almost May, Brain Thinks It's Still February

It seems like my college is on track for a May 11th in-person start.

I have no idea how we'll handle the midterm.  I can't in good conscience test them on grammar stuff that I haven't been able to explain to them fully in person.

Honestly, everything feels like it's been in a weird time-stasis event since as early as February.

Nationally, lots of students (and parents) are calling for partial tuition refunds due to a perceived low-quality in distance learning materials so far.

Don't tell my boss, but I agree.  (Especially for language courses but then again English is an elective for my students, not a major, so I might dodge a bit of heat on this one.)

The "Korean way" would be for the students / parents to suck this up as a one-time deal and assume that with good governance and health-care it won't happen again.  Optimistically speaking I think that's the way to go, but who knows what happens come next fall / winter and the possible pre-vaccine "second wave."

Since I've finished all my video recording required so far (basically, half a semester's worth of material, along with quizzes and grammar supplements) I think tonight I'll enjoy some red wine and download Disco Elysium.

The spring weather here in Daegu is absolutely gorgeous as always, but then I get all sad-like wishing I could attend an actual Samsung Lions ball game or even an FC Daegu soccer match.

Buying a stationary bike is probably one of the smarter things I've done since moving to Korea, despite my boss thinking me a crazy person for exercising at home instead of at the school gym.  (Which raised its "faculty discount" prices recently, not to mention is currently shut down, so even better.)

So ends this highly detailed but fairly incoherent update.  Things could be better.  Things could also be a whole hell of a lot worse.

Also, Tiger King was actually kind of shit wasn't it?

Fifth Time's The Charm

Word now is that my school will re-open, meatspace-wise, on May 11th.  Over Facebook and Twitter it sounds like Korean colleges and universities are all doing things their own way.  Some are shooting to open in May, others have already cancelled the entire semester.

In terms of "feel," I think there's a cautious confidence that if new cases flare up the structures are in place to contain as necessary.

We shall see.

"If the dead just go on living / Well there's nothing left to fear"

Waxahatchee, "St. Cloud"

A beautiful song no doubt, but that album cover is also lit.

The start of the semester has been pushed back to six weeks now, April 13.  I'm not the only one thinking we might just have to scrap the whole semester at this point.  My boss is having a meeting with us foreigner teachers Monday to discuss "distance learning" options.  Thing is, we're totally not equipped for that sort of thing.

If there's an upside, it's that my school focuses on health sciences.  English is not a major, but only an elective.  (A mandatory elective.  It's Korea.  It's complicated.)

Anyhow I'm wondering if we might expand out "Global Zone" program in lieu of actual classes.  This is something we've been doing for about five years.  At a desk in the library students can drop in for "free talking," to basically practice their spoken English.  We have a computer opened up to Google translate to facilitate things.

Who knows.  I guess I'll find out Monday.

What's a weekend mean, anyways?

Ugh

My college waited until the first week of January, which also happens to be the first very cold and wet week of winter, to replace all the heating / AC units in my office building.

They had all of fall to take care of it but no, this is the week you get to suffer.

2020!

Hey fam just wanted you all to know that my 2020 raw-cookie-dough-and-whiskey-only diet is going pretty well so far.#health#winning#newyearresolution#healthandfitness

— Baby New James (@wetcasements) January 2, 2020