Thursday, August 31, 2006

West Coast Stop-Off

On my way back to Korea, I decided to stop off in Vancouver for a couple of days. Not only did this ease the stress of the Eternal Flight back to Busan, but it allowed me to visit with Tanya who I met at my first teaching gig in Ulsan. We had a super awesome time eating good food, shopping and drinking coffee. Here's Tanya at one of Vancouver's typically artsy cafes (Tanya herself is quite artsy so it works out well~!).Another super fun part about hanging out in Vancouver was driving around in her big bitchin' pimp-mobile...Nowadays with the price of gas and all I just assume most people I know would choose to drive a small, fuel economical vehicle. Not Tanya! Check that sweet sucker out:
Even though the car is a million times larger than Tanya, she drives this thing like Steve McQueen in Bullitt! Awesome!

Nature

I am a big fan of nature. I grew up with lots around me and it makes me feel calm and comfortable. During my Canadian sojourn, Rich was kind enough to arrange for himself, myself and friends Yan and Daisy (the adorable dog) to go up to his folks' cottage. It's somewhere west of Ottawa, and it's a lovely quiet place to spend a weekened swimming, fishing, lounging and eating. Here are some cottage scenes:

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Local scenery

The university I teach at has two campuses, but it was only last March that I actually visited the second one, Yongdang Campus. It is quite isolated (read not much goin' on over dere) up on the side of a hill, but wow do I love the view!! My students must wonder what's wrong with their teacher as I often catch myself just staring out the window during a lull in class. What I'm looking at is a lovely composition of distant mountain (Young-do), sea and shipyard - Busan Harbour!!! Some find the shipyards ugly, but I revel in the colourful uniformity of the heaping stacks of containers. (click on the image to see a larger version)
This guy represents a pretty short lived enterprise from a few months back. It's hard to see from the picture, but this is a one man show whereby he's got a canister of fuel on his back and a grill suspended in front of his mid-section where he roasts up 'German traditional hotdogs' for about a dollar a piece. My friend tried one. He said it wasn't very good.
Finally, some of you heard about my encounter with a bodily fungus which goes by the ominous name 'ringworm'. Well here's who gave it to me. At the time of this photo she was about 3 or 4 months old, and encaged for treatment of the whole fungal affair.
While I was away, Xena continued to get into trouble in various ways. She nearly burnt down the Teachers' Residence by somehow landing my hairdryer in the ON position in the open toilet - NOT good! This was followed by the oatmeal incident, where I guess she thought it would be fun to tear open packets of instant oatmeal and then play with them, thus spreading oatmeal throughout my room. There are still traces.

She's been doing much better since I've been back though. She's also lost her kitten fuzz and is maturing into a sleek, long-legged feline, albeit a still largely insane one. It seems her signature moves are the Halloween Cat Pose and the Spastic Summersault. And now she doesn't bite me every single time I try and pet her! Only every second or third time! Good job Xena!!

Oops - Not dead~

Well, I guess I got busy folks! You know how it is....

It was nice to hear that people had actually noticed that my blog hadn't been updated in many moons. I guess that means at least some people periodically read this here stuff!

I'd like to finish with my Middle East pictures, but due to technical issues those shots are (hopefully) temporarily not retreivable
.

So, we'll just have to settle for some local news then won't we!