'n Olike week

Die eerste week van elke semester is altyd dol. Ek voel so bietjie soos 'n kind wat net begin leer swem sonder sy armbalonne. Dis nie dat die werkslading in die eerste week dramaties erger is as die res van die semester nie. Inteendeel, die eerste weer vereis eintlik aansienlik minder klasgee aangesien die eerste klasse hoofsaaklik gebruik word vir orientasiedoeleindes: wat is die doelwitte van die klas, watter handboek gaan ons gebruik, hoe word die punte geweeg, hoe kan die studente 'n afspraak met my reel, ensomeer. Nogtans voel die eerste week soos die aanbreuk van 'n klein oorlog. Dit is Donderdag en ek is reeds uitgeput en voel huimweerig na die vakansietyd.

Daar is twee dinge wat hierdie week veral moeilik vir my gemaak het. Eerstens 'n slegte griep. Ek het lanklaas 'n ordentlike griep gehad, met 'n gehoes en proes en 'n olike lyf. Ek is seker dat 'n verskeidenheid stressors my immuniteit af het--nie dinge wat ek noodwendig nou wil deel met die wereld nie. Die ander ding is die trek in 'n nuwe kantoor in. Die nuwe kantoor is natuurlik heel aangenaam, maar so 'n getrekkery is nogals stresvol en 'n mens besef nie watse politiek in die agtergrond gebeur nie. Selfs ek was heel onbewus van die onderliggende gekibbel wat aan die gang was.

More (Vrydag) is 'n openbare vakansiedag in Korea. Ek is erg dankbaar en gaan probeer om laat te slaap. Ongelukkig kort my woning 'n bietjie aan die kant maak, skottelgoed het opgehoop, wasgoed moet gewas;,so ek kan nie die hele dag in die bed bly en flieks kyk nie --- anders het ek dalk.

New Office -- Moved In

The move into my new office is complete.

Yesterday afternoon university staff went into my old office and swiftly moved all my furniture as well as all my books and other stuff I had packed into boxes into my new office. I'm very thankful for the service as I had no idea how I was going to accomplish the move by myself.

There is still some organization and tidying up to do, but for the most part I'm settled into my new office. I love the big windows and I'm sure my plants will thrive.

Today, out of habit, I walked into my old office more than once, but am sure that by the end of the week I'll know my way around better. I'm also happy that three out of five classes I teach are just one or two room adjacent to my office. That is wonderful for when I forgot something and quickly need to dash to my office.

New Office

At the beginning of the previous semester I got promoted. After four years of working at my university here in Korea my title changed from "gangsa" 강사, which means lecturer, to "jo-kyosu" 조교수, meaning assistant professor. In South African tertiary educational terms one can say that I was promoted from junior lecturer to senior lecturer. It was a nice feeling, if only because a "gangsa" is not much different from a school teacher, while the "jo-kyosu" title is clearly related to tertiary education.

Now saying this, I am not trying to put down school teachers. Far from it. In part, the reason I am a university lecturer is for the very reason that I would not be able to be a school teacher. I am not good with children at all. I don't know how to relate to them. People that can work with children have a gift that I do not possess. In my opinion, teaching children is a calling, not much different from a calling to the ministry.

I'm thankful for the promotion in title from "gangsa" to "jo-kyosu" because it fits better. However, becoming an assistant professor brought no additional benefits. No pay in raise. No fringe benefits. No chip on my shoulder.

Well this morning when I went to my office, a small but cozy little room with everything a young lecturer could ask for (except for a very slow computer which will not be replaced for another year), the English Department chairperson cornered me just as I was about to unlock the door.

"O hi, professor," started he. Korea follows the American custom of calling all university faculty "professor" even though that is not their official title. "Professor Jang is moving out of his office," he continued, "so his office is opening up. It is much bigger and you are next in line for a bigger office." Guiding me two doors down, he made me look at the bigger office. All the furniture had been removed, plastic canvas covered the floor, and there was a man busy painting the walls. "So what do you think, do you want to move here?"

I usually like to think big decisions over before making a final decision, but my X's mother once told me something that has become very handy. Her advice was:

If somebody offers you something good, always accept it immediately. You can always change your mind later. 

So I headed her words and said yes. Unfortunately I will not get any new furniture for my freshly painted bigger office. I have to move over my old furniture from my old office and then the new lecturer will get new furniture. It is going to look a little silly sitting in that big office with my humble few furnishings.

Today I spent much of the afternoon packing all my books into bags so that I can more easily move the bookshelves tomorrow. Apparently the paint ought to be dry by the afternoon and that is when they want the new lecturer to move into my old office.

It seems that my promotion six month's ago is slowly starting to bear some fruit after all -- a bigger, more airy office with large windows being the first. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there may be more in the works. A man can dream.

'n Geheim

Vanmiddag gaan maak ek 'n draai by 'n vriend se plek. Ek sien daar is 'n afbakening, maar die klim-en-klouterkabouter wat ek is steur my nie aan sulke dinge nie en tjoef-tjaf is ek daaroor. Aan die anderkant bekyk ek die wereld en wonder waar die mense is, en voel toe hoedat die vloer onder my plakkerig is. Dis toe dat ek sien dat ek sopas in nat sement geland het en aaklike spore daarin laat. Die afbakening was dus om mense soos ek van die nat sementvloer te hou. So vinnig soos ek daar beland het, spring ek terug oor die obstruksies en glip weg sodat niemand my met bloed op die hande betrap nie.

Ek voel baie skuldig oordat ek my vriend se mooi vloer so aangerand het met my growwe skoensole. Ek voel veels te sleg om hom te bel en te vertel dat ek die skuldige een is. Ek is te bang vir sy woede en / of telleurstelling. Die gedagte dat hy more oggend by sy voorportaal gaan aankom en die blekke sien en die ontsteltenis wat dit hom gaan veroorsaak is genoeg om my 'n slapelose nag te gee en wanneer ek hom Vrydag sien gaan ek waarskynlik bloos en hakkel in sy teenwoordigheid.

Moet ek my ergelike skuld aan hom onthul, of moet ek maar eerder die geheim saam met my (en die Internet) na die graf dra? Gelukkig verstaan my vriend nie Afrikaans nie en is dit hoogsonwaarskynlik dat hy hierdie brokkie skuldverklaring onder oe gaan kry. Maar wanneer ek weer een Sondagaand saam met hom in 'n Bybelstudie is en die Heilige Gees langs ons op die bankie kom sit, wat gaan ek dan doen? Die vernedering is sterk bitter soos Ghanese koffie. (My vriend hou van koffie.)

On Friendship While Living Abroad

“How do you survive in a foreign country like you do?” asks my brother.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” replies he, “you have so many friends in South Africa. Doesn’t it bother you?”

My answer was that of course I have friends here in Korea too. But his question is not brushed off that easily. While it is true that I do have friends here too, the depth of friendships are less than what I have in South Africa. A big part of it is the cultural and language gap, making it rather difficult to develop the type of depth in relationship that I refer to. Just making friends of the more superficial variety is easy, but I’ve never been one for mere superficiality. Since I was a child, I’ve always preferred quality of quantity as far as relationships go.

On Sunday I met up with two friends of whom I’ve grown quite fond, but who are both now leaving Korea. I cannot say that we were exceptionally close—not in the way I am with my friends back in South Africa—but these friends had served a very valuable role, filled an important gap, in my social life. We met around three years ago as part of a creative writing critique group. We were a group of writers (of the speculative fiction persuasion) who would share our stories with each other via email and then meet up to give critical feedback to each other as part of the editing process of the stories and to grow personally as writers. Even though I did not submit stories as frequently as most of the other members, I did benefit tremendously from the group. I learned much about our craft. I also found it wonderful to meet with other foreigners and spend time together doing something that is completely unrelated to our lives as expatriates in Korea. For those few hours that we met, often every other weekend, we would just be writers sharing our love for writing, not expatriates in a foreign country.

But this little community of speculative fiction writers huddling together in coffeeshops for each others benefit has come to an end. We had our last meeting this past weekend and by the end of this month I will be the only one remaining in Korea.

And that is pretty much the problem of an expatriate anywhere in the world. Foreigners seldom stay indefinitely. But then again, that happens even to friendships in the same country. Due to work or other reasons, people sometimes need to leave and so friendships are fractured due to distance. That’s not completely true, I know. I’m still in contact with my best friends in South Africa and around the world. We email, Skype, text. However, I cannot pretend that it is the same as one-on-one, face-to-face conversations.

Usually this time of year I visit South Africa and I try my best to visit with as many loved ones as possible. This year I could not go. I’m sad about it. And I do fear that if I stay “out of sight” long enough, that for some of them I will become “out of mind”, as the idiom goes. In some ways it is inevitable.  The daily burdens of life but also unshared joys fill our minds with “new” things which occupy our mental space so that we do not always think of far off friends and loved ones. Unless you make a deliberate effort to stay in contact regularly, that is just the natural state of things—entropy. To prevent entropy from decaying a system it requires a constant input of energy.

I try to think of my loved ones and make an effort to keep them in the loop of my life, but sometimes when I feel the energy input being only one-sided I slack off also and rather divert my energy towards those friends that actually do make an effort stay in contact with, and on new friends here where I live.

So how do I survive in a foreign country? I guess the same way one survives anywhere else, by focusing your energies where they are likely to be most fruitful. This doesn't by default mean giving up on old friendships that live far away just because of the inconvenience. There is a benefit to old friends in that they share a history with you, they already know your quirks, there is a comfort of familiarity. All these things first need to be build in a new friendship. But new friendships are valuable too. They are like falling in love afresh, providing you with an opportunity to see yourself again through someone else's eyes, while expanding your own horizons through sharing in these new lives. I thoroughly enjoy both old friendships and making new ones.

PhD Plans

My vacation is hastening to an end, yet I feel like I have done very little vacationing. Usually this time of year I go to South Africa to thaw from Korea's cold weather. The South African sun and greenery do me good. But this year I just stayed in Korea, saving money. I've saved enough, I am happy to report, to pay for the tuition of my first PhD semester, and for buying a laptop for my studies. This past Friday I had to pay half of my class fees. However, most of the week I was still in a state of uncertainty about what to do.

Last year I was going to study something else here in Korea. I enrolled into a master's degree program in Public Health (Natural Therapies)--with promises that they are planning a PhD in the same field. Now I already have a master's degree so I really do not need another, but I needed some prerequisites for the PhD that I had my sights on, so I was willing to enroll and carry the credits towards the PhD. Then, suddenly, I was informed that the PhD will not be offered in English and that they will not be accommodating to foreigners. I promptly quit and started looking for alternatives.

I eventually found a PhD in Physical Education at a pretty elite school and with some hiccups and regardless of an interview that I really thought I messed up on, I got accepted to start this coming semester. I've been saving hard for it, did the paper work, and was happy with my plans.

Then, suddenly, I got a phone call to tell me that the PhD in Public Health will be offered in English after all, would I like to enroll again? This left me quite distraught. Should I take up the Public Health option that I originally wanted to do, or should I follow the Physical Education option?

I decided that since I'm already excepted into the Physical Education program I will give it a try for at least one semester. If it is not to my liking I could always just quit after a semester and pursue the Public Health path next year.

I'm very much interested in Public Health, particularly the natural remedies side of it, but I figure that I can make Physical Education work for me in a similar fashion. After all, both fields of study are concerned with physical health and once I have the PhD I can focus my research in which ever related direction I'm most interested in. Or, once I'm finished with the Physical Education PhD I could take up that master's in Public Health to supplement my field of knowledge if natural remedies is still my interest. We'll see what the future holds.

In the meantime I'm still an assistant professor in Humanities and enjoying teaching English Lit.

By the way, I did end up buying the laptop of my choice -- the Samsung's Smart PC which I have been eyeing for probably a year.

Government Is Like Fire

Not too long ago I re-posted a tweet by Gerald Celente on another social network site I use for family and familial friends. Nearly immediately people asked me about it. I guess mostly because of the tone of the post—I practically never voice negative comments, trying instead to share my life in a positive manner.

This is what Gerald Celente tweeted:

@geraldcelente How disheartening & disgusting. Otherwise functional adults still believe in phony political religions & worship their 2-bit political gods. 

There is no particular reason why I reposted this other than that I agree with Mr Celente. I find it very sad that people still actually have faith that their politicians are going to save them. How long will it take for people to realize that there are nothing special about politicians? They are very flawed and selfish, just like the rest of us. We need not, in fact we should not, look up to them. Anyone with the ambition to become a politician is not to be trusted. Their ambition is often a reflection of their megalomania. People who want to rule over other people are the worst kind of people to have as rulers.

By extension, just as we cannot trust politicians, we cannot trust governments, for governments are merely institutionalized politicians. I'm not saying that we ought not have governments. Unfortunately governments are a necessary evil. However, I am adamant that we ought not trust governments, especially not those types of government who has this silly notion that they are there to “govern”. The only government that is remotely trustworthy—and I say this with a bad taste in my mouth—is the one that knows its place, which is to serve the people, not govern the people. That is why we call people working in government public servants. Any other type of government should be feared and put in its place.

Government is like fire. It is very useful as long as it is strictly confined to its place of purpose: the fireplace, the stove-top, the lantern. In all these cases it has a particular function and is specifically controlled. The moment the fire moves outside of purposefully limiting borders it must to be quenched with absolute determination and resolution, otherwise it will become all-consuming and destructive. And even while it is functioning within its assigned borders it must at all times be considered as dangerous and watched closely. And it seems, I'm not the first person to thinks so. While searching online for an appropriate picture to include with this post I found to my surprise that George Washington made the exact same analogy:

Image Source

Vacation, Cats, Cloud Atlas, and Being on Korean Television (sort of)

It's been a while since I posted something and I'm trying to think why that is. After all, I am on vacation so I should have lots of time to write stuff. Usually this time of year I find myself in South Africa, travelling from one place to another. However, this year, for the purpose of saving money I did not go to South Africa nor did a travel to any of the other countries here in Asia as I usually do. I'm happy that my decision has been fruitful, as I have now saved enough money for this coming semester's tuition fee. I'm starting a PhD program at a university here in Korea.

Since I have been saving a lot, I have not been doing many activities requiring much expenses. Being my vacation time I'm taking the opportunity to sleep in most mornings, I do some writing work in the afternoon, go to martial art training in the evening and come home to watch some things on my computer. I also do some reading.

Something interesting I did recently was that I visited a "cat cafe" in Korea. There are a number of these in Seoul. Cat cafes can basically be described as a cat-themed coffee shop. You pay a fixed amount, something like $8, and get a drink of your choice (e.g. coffee, tea, juice, etc.) and then hang out with cats. This particularly cafe I went to had an estimated 25 cats. There are all sorts of cat toys, platforms, tunnels, and humans for the cats to enjoy and copious amounts of food. It is indeed "cat heaven". I'm not allowed to have pets in my apartment, so this was a great way to get my feline fix!

I also went to see some movies recently -- the most memorable being Cloud Atlas. While books often make me want to see the film adaptation, I seldom have the opposite feeling. If I hadn't read a book, but did see the film adaptation of the book, I almost never feel an urge to go and buy the book on which the film is based. Cloud Atlas, however, did make me want to read the book and I might indeed do so still -- I just have too many other things on my reading list to make it an immediate priority.

There is one moment in the movie where a character writes to his lover saying: "an unfinished book is like an unfinished love affair". It really struck a chord with me, as I believe the opposite is very true as well. If you are in a relationship, it is important to let it run its course. Let the story come to completion. It might not be a happy ever after story, in fact it may even be a tragedy, but it is important for it to get to its end.

Half a story is not worth telling. 

The above is a little proverb I made up after watching the film and has become somewhat of a theme for me recently. It's about seeing things through to their end, about not starting anything lest I plan to complete it, about not doing things half-heartedly, about rethinking my priorities. It is also about going along for the ride, about enjoying the journey even though you may not know what the destination is, how the story will end. Yes, it is about relationships and allowing myself the space to just experience it, without torturing myself with worries if this is the one or not. 

In other news, the gym I train at literally made the Korean news as a human interest story with it's children's English Taekwon-Do program. I don't teach children so I wasn't really involved with any of this, but there is about 4 seconds of me towards the end of the insert. See below: