Excitement!

Excitement!
(Also, this picture was in school a couple months ago and I absolutely lost my composure… so many memories)

It seems that everything I have done lately has resulted in breaking a previously made promise, whether it be to myself or to others. Maybe it’s the promise that I will go to work 5 minutes early, I will be nicer to my co-workers, I will study harder, I won’t let my students bother me so much, I won’t eat another choco-pie when I am sitting all alone in my apartment while watching a marathon of backlogged TV episodes of my favorite shows and no one is going to know but I’ll know and…, well, you get the point. This remarkable penchant for failing at self-imposed boundaries reveals a stunning weakness of spirit and will that I am slightly unsettled by. However, in this case, it has not resulted in disappointment and self-loathing, but in a most wondrous and exciting happenstance: this blog post. This is not in the aforementioned chronological-transcription of events that I said would happen for my blog posts since I have rediscovered time and energy (but never the talent!) necessary to resume a few weeks ago. Instead, I again break tradition to tell you of my recent joy in life.

You are as-of-yet unaware with my heightened stress levels that the last month has subjected to my life, but I assure you that, through many failings of my own, I have come to a point in my life where I need to de-stress. For a quick summary: tomorrow my walls will be stripped and re-papered to remove the copious amounts of black mold peppering it, work has gotten steadily more oppressive with it’s micro-managing, the semester is winding down and the new one begins on Monday in all of its glory, I’m trying to juggle three online courses (none of which are for credit, just personal enrichment. So, really, I’m just a nerd), I’m trying to keep abreast with TV shows and movies and friends and this blog, and I am trying to think about life after my contract. Plus, being separated from loved ones and your biggest support structure while constantly subjected to the brutal perspective that you are not worthy of respect or are not deserving of even a modicum of decency is a little stressful for me. Nevertheless, as the great Freddy Mercury said, “I consider it a challenge before all human race and I never lose!”

YAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!

Which brings me to the excitement with which I am currently imbued. As many in the fantasy realm are aware, a monumental chapter in history was closed with the release of A Memory of Light, also known as “that last F*&%ing book in the Wheel of Time Series.” I promised myself that I wouldn’t go all “nerd/geek/loser” over it, but now that it is sitting in front of me… GAH! THE CULMINATION IS HERE! THE 14TH BOOK! I CAN REEEAAAADDDDD!!!

*Achem* Excuse me. That’s been trapped in there a while. SOOOooooOOOoo, I’m going to go start that. I have 909 pages of sheer literary bliss to wander through in mind-reeling amazement. I don’t know if you can tell, but I am incredibly excited about this. This is my way of relieving stress. This is my way of righting my listing world. This is how I justify not sleeping at night. Now if only I can convince my bosses that I can give all my kids essays while I read in school…

Lindsay and the Coex Mall

Doesn’t that sound like a nice story for children? “Lindsay and the Coex Mall by Jon Ordog, illustrated by Eric Carle” (because I SAID SO!). Well, if you don’t know me, or you don’t know Lindz, or you don’t know us, we are pretty much the most sickeningly sweet couple you can imagine. I don’t think that is true, per se, but my coworkers and most everybody we know has told us that repeatedly. Why did I tell you that? Because I am secure in being a “whipped bitch” as it was so kindly explained to me one day by an esteemed associate of mine. Plus, if it’s on the Internet, it’s true.

Now, Lindz loves animals. She loves aquariums, zoos, nature, and anything where she can see/touch/imagine/play with animals. As the World’s Best Boyfriend (not just self-anointed, that title is), I couldn’t very well drag her over here without taking her to an aquarium. “BUT, JON!” you scream at the screen in front of you, “THE POST SAYS ‘LINDSAY AND THE COEX MALL! NOT COEX AQUARIUM!” First of all, have you ever heard the term ‘don’t kill the messenger?’ Then stop yelling at a screen, it solves nothing and hurts its feelings. And B: Yes, doofus. It does say Coex Mall because the aquarium is inside the mall. Well, don’t you look foolish? I thought so. But we can still be friends because I am a forgiving sort. Just don’t try my patience further.

So, Lindz and I went up to Seoul to show her the big city, go to the aquarium, taste Seoul’s nightlife, and enjoy some International spice in our lives. It was an incredible weekend and one I greatly enjoyed. I won’t post too many pictures lest I bore you to death, but the following should suffice.

I talk with the fish. For I am of them and we know our own.

Korean animals are more badass than American ones.

Snooty Fish

This lizard was… august and regal.

Cutest thing there…

River otters! They be so happy!

Yes, I took this photo, no it is not altered. I’m that good.

The most majestic of ancient creatures (but it totally reminds me of Donkey Kong on Game Boy)

They even had manatees!

Underwater tunnel! So cool!

Boom! Pretty exciting stuff! I think one of the most interesting aspects of the whole experience was how none of the Koreans understood the concept of patience. It was a pell-mell rush to press ugly children against the glass while simultaneously trying to snap pictures with their cameras. True, this is just how the country seems to operate in all areas of life, but it was just slightly more irritating when trying to get a shot of Lindz sans Korean children. It never got to the point where I wanted to pick up one of the kids and throw them into the live electric eel tank (I promise). A pretty good afternoon considering the aquarium cost roughly $20 to get in and we went through the whole thing in around 2 hours. By the way, the Coex Mall is huge. It has hundreds of stores, the aquarium, and too much stuff to see all at once. Really, all we needed was the aquarium and the subway because…

It was off to enjoy the evening with Heather, Lindsey, and Erin! So we hopped on the subway, headed to the Hongik University area (also known as Hongdae) and hit the bars!

A glowing Gin and Tonic reprise…

You know the night starts well if you need to “Get a Room…”

This is Lindsey’s cumshot

Agwa liquer (made from coca leaves) and Red Bull. a.k.a. Agwa Bomb.

What a fun night! So much excitement! Ah, you don’t want to hear about more partying in Seoul, that’s already been covered here.

Surprise! Special double feature: I’ll tell you about when Lindz and I went to the zoo, too! All animals are the same, right? Well, a couple weekends after Seoul, I still wanted to show Lindz to the few things that Cheongju has to offer. Specifically, there are three things to do/see in Cheongju: the fortress, the zoo, and the bus terminal (get it? It’s what gets you out of the city!). In all seriousness, there are several other things to see – like the Jikji museum and several other seasonal sports events – but those were not available. So, we went to the zoo. I must say, I was quite saddened by the living conditions of some of these animals. You know it is bad if I’m saddened. Lindz was downright depressed, what with her “sensitivity” and “empathy” and all those characteristics a healthy, functioning society classifies as the best it has to offer. I’m only including one tough picture, simply for illustrative purposes:

Zoo layout!

Bare concrete, steel wire cage, almost no water, and nothing to play with… except for what the Koreans would throw at the poor creature.

Haha. It’s so damn literal.

“It’s a jackal! It’s a jackal! It’s a jackal! Is it a jackal? It’s a jackal! It’s a jackal! It’s a jackal! Is it a jackal? It’s a jackal! It has to be a jackal!”

I hate this picture (because I look horrendous), but I can’t resist. She just looks so good!

So the zoo was lovely and it was a nice quiet afternoon. There were exotic birds, exotic big cats (not a one of which peed on Lindz either!), dogs, a wolf (!), some monkeys, and some bears. It was no where near as impressive as even the Roger Williams Park Zoo, or the NC Zoo, and it definitely made me appreciate American zoos a lot more. To be fair, whereas it costs $15-30 to go to most American zoos, the Cheongju Zoo only ran about $1.25 (kid price was like 50 cents). Can’t do much with those funds…

So that pretty much sums up Lindz’s trip here. We went to the aquarium (awesome), went to Seoul (awesome), saw the Cheongju local flavor (meh), and enjoyed each other’s company for as much as we could stand in our short month together. I’m not going to tell you everything we did (you don’t need to know how many movies and TV shows we watched), but I will say that I make a damn good breakfast in bed:

Dragon fruit-clementine-kiwi fruit salad, french toast, and scrambled eggs. A steaming cup of Lavender tea to complement.

Sorry to have bored you, I seem to have broken my promise. Oh well, you’ll get over yourself/skipped all the text and just looked at the pictures. That’s perfect because it’s like a normal conversation with me anyways! Har! Thanks for suffering through this and I’ll try to be better next time!

Intensives (and Winter Term in general)

I didn’t really post about my winter semester, now did I? Slight oversight on my part, I assure you. As ever, I exist to serve and aim to “strike!, balance!, redress!” all manners of informational deficiencies. Well, let me start by saying that as of right now I only have around 1.5 weeks left in the Winter Term… so… uh… better late than never? There were some significant changes in my schedule, which led to significant changes in my daily life that I am sure resulted in my unfortunate inability to keep you updated on my every errant thought. For such a grievous error, I humbly implore you to skip these sentences and begin the following paragraph.

As you recall, my Fall Semester educational buffet consisted entirely of Avalon fare. While nutritious for a growing boy and greatly aiding in the digestion of turbulent agitators, it was rather like a child having the option of “All you can eat” and just picking pizza, ice cream, and mashed potatoes because that is all he knows. Well, for my second pass, I was gifted with the broadened knowledge of a little salad bar I like to call LangCon. Now, I mentioned last time that LangCon is generally for the younger kids – from kindergarten kids just learning the alphabet all the way up to later elementary kids who are near-fluent. When they reach late-elementary, they either have to go to Avalon or find another school entirely, although we do like to keep kids in the family for their middle school years. My schedule, as such, reflected a much more sophisticated palate:

Oh yes, still with the color coordination. I am boss!

Now, you’ll notice some small changes between my fall and winter schedules. First, my hours are slightly different. Well, tally-ho! my good friend! You are ever the astute observer. Indeed my hours have changed from 2:30-11:00 PM to 1:00-10:00 PM! Earlier in the day is nice and all, but it does make it a little more difficult to communicate with you in the evenings or make myself an extravagant breakfast in the morning (or recover from late nights…). Also, you’ll see that my first two classes of every day are the same. Again, you always were a bright one, which is why we’re friends, you know. Now those two classes are LangCon 5D classes (the “5” stands for “5” and the “D” stands for “day.” Look at you learning!) and they are for the youngest kids I teach. The Nina-g (“g” stands for “green,” meaning first semester at that level) class is hit or miss, but the Nina-p (“p” stands for “purple” and means second semester at that level) class is always hellacious. I mean that in the most respectful of terms for a class where the kids routinely kick me in various manly places, yell over me, draw on the board with their own markers, use their cell phones and video tape class, don’t do their work, and generally disregard any attempts at education that humans have developed since the stone age. I’m sorry, I think those were inside words… These two classes actually perform the most interesting punishment ever exacted upon a teacher: the dreaded “poop rocket.”

I’m traumatized right now… the flashbacks… Courtesy of ViaKorea (Click at your own risk)

Oh yes, my dearest confidant, that is exactly as its name implies. Whilst the teacher continues in perfectly executing each and every responsibility and requirement so charged to said august position, a fiendish young devil hiding within the cherubic bodies of the children will suddenly seize control and manipulate that child into forming “the rocket.” The rocket is a simple achievement where the child clasps his or her hands angelically, but then extends the pointer fingers of each hand together much like what we in America would call a “Finger Gun.” Then, with the little devil fully in control of the under-developed child’s mind, these hands will be thrust into the backside of the teacher (who is either walking between rows to check homework or ask other students to please stop eating tape), producing an indignant squawk from the teacher and raucous peals of laughter from the entire class. The humiliation is bearable, but only barely so as it is considered improper to scream at the kids or beat them severely as such a violation would warrant. (In all seriousness, WTF?! This is a country that thinks “crazy” is tantamount to a swear, and “raspberry” noises are considered incredibly unclean, but shoving fingers into a person’s butt is completely acceptable? I guess cultural diversity really is a wonderful thing.)

Well, that little tangent aside (Haha, tangent! Aside! Woooo…. nerd!), I’ll finish with: Pinta-g is the next level above Nina-p and I really like my class. They are really good kids (no poop rockets) who know a decent amount of English and we can have some fun. I used to teach two sections of Pinta-g, but that second one got switched to a Navi-p. Now, the reason behind that was: Alice (one of the Korean teachers) has been forced into taking some extra responsibilities in LangCon and does not have time to teach all of her classes. So, there was a big shuffle of everyone’s schedules a few weeks ago and I was placed in the curious position of teaching the subjects typically taught by the Korean teachers (Social Studies and Science). So, I am now the “Korean” teacher for that class and have absolutely no idea what I am doing. Yay. Luckily, I had 3 of the 4 kids in that class in my Intensive Debate Class (getting to that soon) and they are all very smart kids (it’s the 2nd highest level I think). Hooray LangCon! Otherwise, my Avalon classes are very much the same as last semester (HA and MB and JB) and I see many of my students from last semester in my classes. That is a very interesting feeling, knowing that I taught these kids last semester and to see how a new class dynamic affects them. So, that’s the schedule! I have earlier hours, I work more hours, I have more work to do outside of class for my LangCon kids (journal grading and whatnot), I am settling into being a teacher, and I’m learning more and more every day.

Now I mentioned something about an Intensive Debate Class. That was no mistake. There is a curious practice in these private academies where they add extra one-month-long classes to the standard schedule. These classes are offered in the second month of the Winter and Summer semesters to coincide with school vacations. Back in the middle of December I was asked to develop and implement a debate class for the month of January. “All well and good,” I thought to myself as I stroked my beard. “However, you said ‘develop’ instead of teach. Why the verb change?” Well, as it turns out, LangCon has not done a debate class in quite some time (if ever) and I was tasked with creating a course. Now, I have little experience in debates and less experience with kids, so of course there is no way that this could go poorly. Oh, it also turns out that they wanted to offer this class twice. The catch being that one of these classes would be the normal “twice a week” for 4 weeks (8 classes) and the other would be five times a week for four weeks (20 classes). Well, I’ll be darned if I wasn’t going to make the best debate class I could for both those classes and teach them both myself! Mostly, I was excited about how all of it was overtime pay and the chance to maybe try to teach kids something not in a book. So I put my own spin on it! Made up all the materials, handed out packets, made them do research, and had them do some debates. For the 5D Debate class I even did a whole week on public speaking. It felt fantastic to teach material I had designed myself. And you know what? It wasn’t a total poop rocket. It wasn’t the best thing to come out of LangCon, but it was fun, the kids learned stuff, and I learned stuff too. Hooray for learning! (Hooray for 28 hours of overtime!). Ah, and I did all of this while entertaining Lindz for company! True story: I’m awesome.

Well, I seem to have exhausted your eyes from just solid text for the past 1400 words. I’m so sorry. To you and your brain. Consider yourself fully informed about what my schedule was like this past semester (considering that it changes in two weeks, it really isn’t worth that much). I’ll have more for you soon. I promise!

Korean Christmas

I know that it’s a little late to be posting this, but I still wanted to share it with you. I spent my first Christmas away from long-time-friends and family this year (and Chanukah, too, but that was covered here) and was a little unsure how festive this season would be. Part of my apprehension about the season had to do with how few vacation days we had to celebrate. Now, I’m used to having at least two weeks for Christmas and New Year’s since that is how life worked in the American public school system: You generally had a week of play time between Christmas and New Year’s, sometimes 2 if they fell on Wednesdays. Then, in college, I had final exams in the first two weeks and was home until the first week of January (Hooray for J-Term classes!). Here, we had Christmas Day off (A Tuesday) and New Year’s Day off (Again, Tuesday). Couldn’t even take off the Monday… So, could we go anywhere? No. Make plans? Not really. What ever could we do?

First I decided to set up my Christmas decorations in my apartment:

This is how I prepare for Santa in Korea.

As my parents were kind enough to send over a package of gifts and festive items to make the spirits bright (no spirits in the package though, suitable spirits were acquired here), I displayed them under a fake tree and a coat hanger-turned-general-purpose-Christmas-pole. Preparations complete, I still had to find a way to celebrate.

“Hmmm…. I can help with that!”

Chris’s girlfriend, Angels, was kind enough to invite us to her apartment for a little party on Christmas Eve. So we went over and had some fun, drank some wine, watched some Aeon Flux (apparently it was an animated TV series on MTV?) ate tons of delicious food prepared by Angela and Chris, and enjoyed ourselves. I was made happiest by the lovely cookie I found:

The perfect Yin-Yang Cookie. It means that balance and harmony will dictate the life of whosoever consumes it.

So that’s a good Christmas Eve, but what about Christmas Day? Well, we were debating the available options – go to a bar and bring food, go to a Chili’s or Outback Steakhouse or some such restaurant, or go to a place and cook food – when our bosses surprised us by allowing the use of their apartment! We were incredibly thankful for the opportunity to cook a delicious Christmas meal, do some Secret Santa stuff, relax with friends, and enjoy a fully furnished apartment. Everyone brought a little something to cook up or drink down, a Secret Santa gift, and a joviality the likes of which had never been seen before in Korea. Me? Oh, the newest co-worker Lindsey was my Secret Santa so I got her some chocolates, wine, and a bottle of Soju. What food did I make? Traditional Jewish food of latkes. So I’ll just let the pictures do the talking for how well it turned out:

The view from our bosses’ apartment.

“….Lo, on the day of His birth, they feasted upon the latkes…”

Our delectable spread!

That’s a plateful.

The gang feasting.

Secret Santa!

Christmas success! Ah, I forgot to mention that we got another little gift from the universe. At 9:00 PM on Christmas Day, our newest teacher arrived from the United States. His name is Nolan and he is replacing Ryan down in LangCon. Here he is with us out at dinner a few nights later:

Nolan (L), Phil (C), Andrew (R) prepping some delicious Korean BBQ.

Here’s hoping for the best in his stay!

Finally, the last, best part of December. I got a facebook message from someone I hadn’t seen in three years: Paul Cross. His sister is apparently a teacher up in Seoul and he got some time off from work to come visit. So:

Paul (L) and HyeMee(R) out for a mid-afternoon jaunt through Seoul.

After this photo, I actually had to split for the airport because I was slightly more excited about a different event. Lindsay Van Brocklin had graciously agreed to take one month away from her job search and her family to come visit me for a month. She landed on Dec. 29th and brought with her a new energy and life to my depressing little apartment in the middle of snowy Korea. You’ll hear more about her once we get to January’s make-up posts, just suffice it to say that she arrived and made me the happiest I’d been the whole time I’ve been here. Ok, too much about the personal life! Next!

Recap: Christmas was all about – bosses’ apartment, great food prepared ourselves, successful Secret Santa, & new teacher.
Got to catch up with Paul, Lindz arrived.

What did January have in store? Read about it next!

Andrew’s Birthday

Well, this is a combination post about the first 1/2 of December and the birthday of one of the best guys here in Cheongju – my coworker Andrew (who you may recall from this article). Normally, such an event wouldn’t merit more than a cursory comment, however I am feeling generous this evening in further efforts to redress my inexcusable absence from my blog.

Dinner bonding!

The first week of December passed uneventfully. I started my new semester of split time between Avalon and Langcon, we all bonded over evenings out and dinners, and I became slightly disenchanted with what was apparently one of the coldest winters in Korean history. I thought it strange when all of the students kept freaking out about the snowfall – it was maybe a couple inches – and I later asked why. I mean, Korea is about level with RI and only a couple hundred km from Russia, so I reaasoned it would have seen this much snow. Apparently it was just an excellent year for snow here and we got some very pretty landscapes. It felt almost exactly like home.

My lovely street with a light blanket of snow.

With such an abundance of perfect snow, Ryan, Erin, and I had a great little snowball fight in the park on my street. We met up after classes ended, went to a convenience store for some brews, and proceeded to go winter-ninja on each other for a splendid good time. 3 people, midnight shenanigans, Koreans staring at us out their apartment windows and thinking the White People are crazy… That’s how we like to spend our time. On a side note, I had to destroy all photographic evidence of said incident for fear that it would lead to extreme jealousy.

It was the next weekend that two events coincided in a most unfortunate manner. The handsome young fellow in the first picture at the top of this post was forced to return to the land from whence he came to finish his Master’s degree program this Spring. His flight was on Friday, but Andrew’s bday was on the next day – the 15th – and they had been thick as thieves since before Korea (having known each other from beforehand, and being good friends to boot, tends to do that). So fending the lowered spirits of departure, we saddled up and headed South to Daejeon for some Mexican food and ‘Ritas.

‘EEEEYYY! I’TS MY BIRTHDAY HERE! WHAT YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT?!

I GUESS… Ah… Is that cake?

Our favorite part about the Mexican restaurant was that it proudly proclaimed “Made by real Mexicans” on the top of their menus. So, you know it’s legit. We know he enjoyed the evening and felt happy to be the center of attention, which menas the weekend wasn’t a total wash.

On a more religious note, Chanukah took place in December and for the first time I can remember, I had literally no one around me who understood a single thing I was talking about when I said, “I’m going to run home, grab a bite to eat and do my Menorah.” Big thank you to Aunt Laurie for the wonderful – and unattended-apartment-friendly – glow stick menorah so I could at least semi-pretend that I was participating in the rituals. It was incredibly weird to not have family close by or any one to really share the experience with.

Snow, new classes, departures of dear friends, and the everyday struggles of life as an adult. The first few weeks of December were pretty un-noteworthy. Oh well. I guess there were only two other things worth mentioning from December, but I’ll do so in other posts.

A Brief review of November

If you get this, you’re a nerd. If you don’t, go to amazon.com and buy every single Steven Erikson book, wait for them to arrive, read them all, then come back and read the first paragraph of this post again and appreciate it…

Before the previous post extolling my regrets in search of pardons, I was so closed-hearted, closed-minded, and distant as to have not posted in over two months. The indecency of it all! And not once did anyone remind me that I hadn’t, The affrontery of it all! As such, I can only conclude that either your esteem of myself had fallen so far as to refuse ackowledgment of my mere existence, or you were so grateful for the cessation of my seemingly interminable ordure that you deigned to ignore it in hopes that it wouldn’t restart. Well! I accept a challenge and, like a resurgence of a cold late in the season, will return with full force to win back your affection and restore my honor! Ha! Avast, ye devils of my literary spirit, thou shalt be vanquished by the words of greatness (Get it? “Words” is an anagram of “sword!”). Attend! and Witness.

Apparently, I have not posted since November 18th, 2012. It being February 5th, 2013, this is inexcusable. So, I have too many stories to recount satisfactorily in a single post. I will therefore simply waste a post in the condensed recording of the events that transpired between November 18-30.

I don’t remember much about the end of November. It was the end of my first semester here in Korea and all of us teachers were trying to prepare ourselves for the transition. At the beginning of December we were losing a number of esteemed colleagues – Craig, Mike, and Haru (2 foreign teachers and a Korean administrative person, respectively) – and were starting a new semester full of new students, new rules, new placements, and new expectations. So, the last few weeks of November passed smoothly: using the weekdays to shape the multi-cultural leaders of tomorrow, using the weekends to blow off stress. As I recall, I got heavily into the TV show Castle around this time, as well as several other tv series and movies. Actually, I know this to be true because a severely distressing incident occurred in the midst of a Castle episode – my beloved of four and a half years, my MacBookPro, died. Turned into a brick and would not start again. So, I bought a new computer the following weekend (A Toshiba satellite with better specs than my Mac for only $400!) and made plans to fix my Mac when I could. That was a fun trip with Andrew, as I recall, and I am mighty pleased with the solution, all things considered (although I do plan on returning to the realm of Mac as soon as I can afford it). Pretty uneventful, but still exciting.

Oh wait, you know how I am less than enthused about the “sport” of golf? Do you know how I’ve never done anything more professional than minigolf in my life? Well Korea has something fascinating:

Look at that form!

Oh yeah, screen golf! For $20 you can buy a round of 9 holes, bring your own booze, food, and extra entertainment if you so desire. Phil, Chris, Andrew, Josh, Jesse, and I played a full round, watched Caddyshack, drank a little, and ended up somewhere between 20-40 over par. Yay.

“But, Jon!” you squeal into your screen, “What about Thanksgiving!” Well, I must admit, Koreans don’t do Thanksgiving the way Americans do, so we didn’t really celebrate. A couple foreign teachers decided that we would go out for a nice meal on Saturday at the “best restaurant” in Cheongju – VIPS. It’s a steak place that is apparently one of the most expensive in Cheongju at $25 a plate. I had planned to join them, but was laid low by a little illness and could not join them. Sad for me, I know. Aside from that, the month wrapped up smoothly. If I can’t remember anything big, I guess nothing happened. My facebook doesn’t offer any evidence to the contrary either. Feel free to correct me if you can recall.

Hope you liked November. Onto December posts!

All apologies

I’m sorry…

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears, for I am abased in your eyes and must offer my person up for judgment. It has been over two months since my last missive, which means I have failed you and broken your trust. Indeed, it is with a heavy heart and downcast eyes that I stand before you in digital form, pleading my case for one more opportunity to regale you as I did before: To sing to you of vaunted towers in Seoul, to confide in you in manners of business, and to conspire with you in the plans of life yet unseen. Ah, such a life as I can share. Lifting back the curtains with a hesitant hand, I can give you (only you, I so solemnly swear) a glimpse of the vista beyond. Perhaps you’d like to hear the tales from days of yore when men were men… and… and… we’ll that’s another story for another time. Instead, if my grovelling has successfully warmed the cockles of your heart for sufficient pity to steal into your veins and stay your hand from execution…! Well, then I see no need for me to continue on this course of unceasing deprecation and can return triumphant to the more important matters at hand.

As forgiven as the babe who wanders lost in the forest, so I shall be. As repentant as the sinner reborn, so shall I be. As loquacious as the great orators of old, so shall I endeavor. Excelsior!

Please, dear friends, let us dwell on this triviality no more. Nay, let us redouble our efforts to comingle our lives instead, for the very essence of life is that ephemeral spirit of contact. Huzzah! New posts shall abound!