Tuesday, February 22, 2005

German Toilet Rant

Someone I know has spent some time living in Germany recently. According to him there are some flaws in the design of German toilets. He has created a rant of clarity and wit, with compelling ASCII diagrams.

Monday, February 21, 2005

Irritating Thing

It's impossible to keep contact information completely up-to-date at all times, and so naturally it occaisionally happens that an email message gets sent out to an invalid address. Now how is it that we learn of an email's expiration? Well, from another computer of course. We get one of those unfriendly messages titled something like 'failure notice' from a sender known only as the 'MAILER-DAEMON". Now surely no one actually thinks this 'MAILER-DAEMON' is an actual person, so why does the programmer responsible for such notices feel it's necessary to express the advent of a failed message in 'human terms'? This is what one such 'MAILER-DEAMON' told me today:
Hi. This is the qmail-send program at yahoo.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to
the following
addresses. This is a permanent error;
I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.


Now here is a computer referring to itself in the first person,
offering apologies and condolences. How ridiculous is that.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Gallery Addition

A brief write-up and photo gallery about my maeju-making experiences are now up. If you don't know what maeju is, then you'd better go look at the page, no?

Maeju Page

Sunday, February 13, 2005

Neptune's Kitty

Last week I had a few days off for lunar new year and so headed down to Ulsan to visit my good friend Amy and her angry rabbit. Actually, she lives on the other side of Ulsan, in a place called Bangojin. Bangojin is the home of Hyundai Heavy Industries, which is their world class ship-building facility. It's very big, as it should be, as they produce very big ships. In the evening we decided to go out for a drink, and ended up at a place called Neptune. Neptune is a bar which caters to foreign engineers. As such, the decor included large posters displaying recent innovations in ship-building. The proprietor had a little dog we thought was silly, but she also had a cat. The cat was cute, and I couldn't help snapping this shot of the kitty posing on the bar. As I was trying to adjust my camera for the low light, I also snapped this shot, where the cat's eyes have strangely been replaced by headlights.

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Good Luck Burger

This past week brought the lunar new year, which is called Seollal here. This is Korea's biggest holiday, with people throughout the land heading back home to meet with their family. For foreigners with no family around, it means a few days of holiday! I saw this coupon on the road, and it looks like MacDonald's is trying to cash in on the good luck aspect of the new year. The coupon reads "MacDonald" (맥도날드), "lucky burger" (행운버거), "lucky coupon" (행운쿠폰). (I'm not entirely sure, but the I think the Chinese characters on the bottom half mean "new year".) For some reason I find this amusing. It also kind of highlights the amount of English being absorbed into Korean. On this flyer, the only Korean word is "lucky"; the other words have just been transliterated.
****** Update: The chinese character at the bottom means 'luck' or 'fortune'.

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Anatomy of a Lunch

Yesterday brought glorious weather - mild, fresh and sunny. So instead of taking the subway all the way to my destination, I decided to walk to the next station down the line. The day was so fine, it turned into the next, and then the next station. Along the way I got hungry and found a restaurant specializing in duck. They offered a duck soup for lunch. So I tried some. The soup wasn't spectacular (the meat was certainly of the leftover variety), but the side dishes made up for it. And the kind lady must have thought I looked malnourished or something cause she gave me an extra bowl of rice! Total cost : 5000 won ( ~ $6.00 CAD)

Sexy Beast


raorrrrr...

Thursday, February 03, 2005

Love letter from immigration

What's fun about living in another country, is that not only are you legally an alien, but sometimes immigration sends you little letters in the mail. I think the blokes who wrote this kindly reminder should drink a little more of that ESL milk if you know what I'm saying... (I particularly enjoy the second point)

This one makes you smarter...and that one a genius?!

You know I don't much like milk, but with brands like these, I feel maybe I should reconsider. I mean, the one will help me improve my English as a Second Language, and the other will help me understand...the nature of the universe? Not bad for something secrected directly from milk cows. Must be all that natural DHA.

Spot the Difference!!

Can you see it? This is the face of my cell phone (if you hadn't already guessed by reading my name). Not only do I use it to rarely receive phone calls, but also as my alarm clock. Now can you see? The tiny little clock at the top on the left hand part? That represents my life for the past 10 months or so. Waking up to teach at the unusually cruel hour of 7:40am. But see the one on the right? No little clock to disturb my sweet beauty sleep! For the first time in a long time, I've been granted an evening schedule. For anyone that knows me at all, this is great news, as I am so not a morning person. I thought I could change, learn to enjoy waking up before the dawn, or at the very least get used to it. Turns out not so much. I'm a hard and fast night person. And that's what's so great about no little clock.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

A New Month

January was a very busy month (almost traumatically so) with many many extra hours of teaching due to Children's Winter English Camp. That's right, kids in Canada go to camp to recreate, Korean kids go to camp to study. In any case, February's shaping up to be a little more relaxed. I've got a week of vacation time, as well as next week gives us 3 days off for Lunar New Year, or Seollal (설날) as it's known here. Phew!
I did manage to squeeze in a movie last week though, and it was unusual viewing. 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou' starring Bill Murray. This comes from proven director, Wes Anderson, whose previous films include the quirky but highly entertaining 'Rushmore' and 'The Royal Tenenbaums'. So what's with 'Life Aquatic' then? It certainly was quirky, but not necessarily in an amusing way. In fact, I'm fairly unsure what I think of the movie. Seems there were points being made concerning legacy (or lack there of) but that's about as far as I got. If you've seen this movie, I'd be more than interested in your 2 cents...