Sunday, November 30, 2008

Hangeul Test

There once was a supervisor and once upon a time she decreed that there would be a Hangeul (Korean written language) test. She made some books and she made a test. Then she made us take it. Here's the video made by the reporters that "may" be at the test. Two TV programs showed the video in slightly different versions, so here they both are.

If you've seen one... you've not seen Theresa :)









Friday, September 19, 2008

I teach Englisheee


In the interest of this blog being somewhat understandable; I'll start with me! I'm an EPIK Teacher in Taebaek City, Gangwon Province, South Korea.

Being an English teacher in a small city (town really) means smaller schools and smaller classes. That's a big advantage, particularly as no-one in my school wants me to go anywhere, so I don't have another school to teach at. I was told the other day that the Principal gets "worried" anytime I leave the school. He must have had a heart attack when I came back from my one day visit to Kaeseong, North Korea and said "Guess where I went on the weekend!"

Today has been pretty typical, I have one scheduled class and one *bonus* conversation class. I just found out that my normal class is cancelled due to the province wide exams that will be happening next Thursday. I'm cool with that. None of my material is tested and there is enormous pressure on these kids (my students) to achieve 100% in the exams.

But there is an issue with cancelling my classes.. I get bored. Very bored. What to do? Well there's facebook to mess around on, then there are the wedding videos that I've been making (on pause until I complete my hard drive upgrade), Aussie newspapers to read, skype chat with Mike, games to play, oh and yes - lessons to plan. The trouble is that with being bored is that I'm just not motivated to prepare some lessons. So far today, I've made some photocopies of a lesson that's completely ready to go and started on making an answer sheet for the next picture story. I've also read the news, spent a little time on Facebook and played 5 games. What will happen when I move back to Australia? I'm currently not expected to work much and so have formed the expectation that I don't need to do much work at all.

Does this mean I'm lazy in the classroom? Heck NO! I love the time that I have with my students and I give it my all when I'm in the classroom. When I'm teaching I feel alive and I really feel that I'm doing something that's not just for my own financial gain. These students don't deserve a second rate education and it's programs like EPIK that can make a difference. At least I have the delusion that it's possible.

But the staffroom? Am I lazy in the staffroom? When the students are in their classes? I may as well bring in a pillow and have a sleep. I wonder if my toy Kangaroo would be comfortable?

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

I'm soooo ready for Sydney

It's hot here. It's been hot for a while and.. I don't like it!

I'm prepared to make an exception for Thailand, which will have summer but, to compensate, there will be stunning beaches, showers (from the sky variety), wonderful thai food and glorious thai massages. Oh the massages..... Just rub my feet and smack me around with some mystery herb balls.

I'm really excited about the flight, thai airways YEAH! And the hotel sounds cool - the windows are in the shape of a L. Nearby there is a bar, where there are no chairs only beds. Sounds weird but cool. I hope Mike can get in, they might look at his hair and say "you've got to be kidding". I hope not though. I'm going to get the pink back in my hair before we travel - not that it lasts a long time but I like it.

After thailand and some very serious relaxing, we'll be in Sydney, for a day then on to Tassy! We realised that if we were going to do any touristy stuff in Australia then we should get out of Sydney. And at the beginning when Mike's family are away. I'm really looking forward to seeing my family and hugging them all. A few times each.

Tassy. The Gangwon-do of Australia. If that gives you any ideas of what Gangwon-do is like, you're probably right. Except that women are famed for their beauty.

Tassy will be great, Mike's found us a cafe in Hobart to visit. He got talking to the owner when he was watching the World Barista Championship. So we'll be paying a visit to Tasmania's Champion Barista. I'm really hoping that they'll be open for breakfast. The plan is Hobart for 2 days then we'll be heading up to Launceston to visit our friends there. Launceston was lovely last time we visited and we're hoping to chill out while exploring the area a bit further.

So I really should get back to packing & setting up my ipod. Enough procrastination!!

Speaking of procrastination.... here are the photos from the English Camp that Mike & I taught at on Sunday and Monday.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

sixty ninnnnnnneeeeeeeee!

Last november I started a diet. I have a traditional medicine doctor who monitors me, gives me some herbal tablets to take and has helped me keep on track. I check in with him twice a week, I get on the fancy super scales which give not just my weight & height but also my body fat percentage, hip to waist ratio, muscle percentage in limbs and torso, endermal fat number, some other fat number (which refers to fat on my organs - seems the darn stuff is everywhere!), a bunch of other readings, a comparison to the last 9 weigh ins, my fitness rating (?) and how much weight it says I still need to lose. So I'm getting a lot of information, which helps makes sense of what's going on with my body. We have a chat and he checks what I'm eating (that would be the diet part) and how much exercise I'm getting.

To begin with, I struggled. But stick to the diet I did - well 90% of the time. It really did help me to start losing weight, as opposed to putting it on! However, I did start to worry, what happens when I come off the diet. Will I turn into the
Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters? That would be horrible. So seeing as the diet does help, I taken a less strict approach with the herbal stuff and really used it to help me change some bad habits.

One of those bad habits has been intermittant to non-existant regular exercise. There's a podcast I've been using called yogamazing, it's free and the instructor is really good. I started by doing one yoga session, 25 to 30 minutes long, in the morning. I got up to 2 yoga sessions before realising I'd best get back to going to the gym. I was stuck above 70 kgs and really didn't want to be. So I plan out a weekdays the gym, weekend yoga or walking or tennis. I'm trying to do yoga at night to balance the gym in the morning, it's something I really need to proritise.

This week has been a yoga week, I've had trouble sleeping and felt that yoga was a better choice than the gym. I get up at 6:30 am for yoga, 5:30 am for the gym. Next week I'm going back to the gym, it could well mess with my weight and that's ok. So long as those body fat percentages keep going down.

So why blog about it? Because today for the first time since I started university, my weight was less than 70kgs!! To put this in perspective my final target weight is between 63 and 65 kgs (to be decided on as I get closer to it).

The first moment of excitment I had was, at the hospital having some health tests done (for my visa renewal), my blood pressure was 120/70 which was a good sign and then the scales had me at 69kgs. I pulled Mike over and said "look at that!!". Then proceeded to do a little jump for joy as there were lots of koreans watching us and I didn't want to be too weird (not that purple hair is...). After the initial elation cleared a little, I realised I couldn't really take the 69kgs as fact, I had my phone in my pocket, a bunch of coins and some other bits and pieces. Also this isn't the super scale that I've been hopping on and off with regularity. I had to have my normal weigh in.

So as soon as the hospital stuff was done, we nipped over to the traditional medicine doctor's office and had my weigh in there. That's when I was happy then sad. You see I can understand some of the super scale's read outs but I always need to wait until we can compare the print out with the previous one. That's when it gives me something useful and understandable. So when I saw 69.8kgs I was thrilled but saddened when I saw something t
hat usually indicates my muscle mass has dwindled and my body fat has increased. There was no little jump of joy here. I trudged into the doc's office and asked him "what's the story?" He looked at it and then double checked. He told me I'd not only broken the 70kg barrier but it was 80% fat reduction and 20% muscle. He gave me the papers to check and all my results, except for the fittness test were substantially better than the last weigh in. I jumped around and gave Mike a slap on the shoulder. It somehow seemed fitting!

I am totally thrilled to have gotten to this point and now I have a party to look forward to. The doctor and his family and friends had said one night that we'd have a party when I broke the 70kg barrier. It'll probably be next week but I don't care. I'm going to wear my pink dress - even if it is far too raunchy in Korea. It's going to be great - so long as there's a side salad to be had :)

If you read this far, I think you deserve a before and after photo.
I chose these photos because Mike (not his hair) is a constant.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Fiji Wedding

This is the first video from Frankie & Steve's wedding in Fiji. It was a beautiful day, if a bit windy, matched only by the serenely stunning bride herself! 2 or 3 more videos will follow very very soon.



Thursday, May 15, 2008

Sunday, February 10, 2008

3 Days in Mumbai

We flew in to Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport on one of Thai Airway's pov pack planes. We were surprised to find ourselves in an airport (in fairness: under renovation) that closely resembled a large bomb shelter. We walked through, regaining the use of our limbs and hoping like hell we didn't get hit up for a bribe or as it is more quaintly referred to a Baksheesh. I located the baggage carousel and we were introduced to the Indian queuing system; a system where the least pushy is last. Then we walked outside, Mike to find an ATM and I to guard the bags. To say the heaving mass of people was a shock would be about right - I mean who brings their entire family to pick up one person at the airport at 1 in the morning? Fortunately Mike finds an ATM that is plugged in (the one in arrivals wasn't) and secures us a fixed price taxi.

We thought we'd gotten away without having to pay baksheesh. Or so we thought, it was just short of 500Rupees for the taxi to our hotel and the guy who got our taxi changed (so that we wouldn't have to wait) wanted a tip. First he said 100Rps then he saw Mike open his wallet (holding all the rupees that we had) and suddenly he wants 500Rps! Mike gave him 250Rps as we weren't about to tip more than the fare! While all this was going on, I was staggered by the yellow & black cabs (non-air conditioned) that were parked across from us and went on for as far as I could see. It was a sea of parked cabs!

Mumbai drivers are something else! It wasn't just that they are constantly on the horn, it was that I thought we would crash so many times. Playing chicken It seems that India drivers operate on a "if you don't crash it doesn't matter how much you miss by" mentality. I noticed that many taxis don't have side-view mirrors - no points for guessing how they got removed. Finally we arrived at the Hotel Manama. We had booked a deluxe room but ended up with a tiny room with a renovated bathroom. I was feeling ripped off and ready to do battle with the front desk but Mike checked out the other rooms that were available and he said we had the best of what was left. I mean Mike could almost touch the wall while laying on his bed. It was all too much but knowing that tomorrow was a new day gave me hope and helped me sleep.

We ventured upstairs to the Manama restaurant for breakfast. If last nights less than helpful service was a downer then the food and help from the solo waiter was a bit upper. Mike discovered his first favourite dish of the trip Aloo Chaat, it was full of potatoes, coriander and cumin - other spices too I'm sure. It was so delicious I completely forgot to take a photo of it - oops!

We walked out of the hotel with a spring in our step and a plan. A walking tour plan! We were armed with LP's Best of Mumbai and had found the walking tour called "Footsteps of the Raj"; seeing as we were staying next to the end point of this walking tour, we decided to do it in reverse! We saw some cool stuff and took plenty of photos! The photos miss out on one important thing: The Maiden Oval. There is an amazing number of boys & men playing cricket, some in whites, others wearing tees and shorts. There are batting nets - all in use and more games than I can count. This seems to go on all day long. Cricket rules Mumbai.




The end of our tour was the Gateway of India. It was massive! It stood looming over the harbour, surrounded by a multitude of people and barren cement. A few different people, all Indians, approached us to have their photo taken with us. It was very weird. It's not like we were the first tourists here, we'd seen plenty of tourists on our tour - some doing the tour in the correct order. I started to wonder if someone was going to pick our pockets or something. Fortunately that didn't happen. What did happen that as we were admiring the hazy view, there's a lot of pollution, a priest of some kind came up to us to give us a blessing, he put string on our wrists and a red dot on our foreheads. He then expected that we "re-imburse his time because he'd travelled so far to bless us" as was explained by a man who'd previously been trying to sell us a boat tour. Mike took care of it and we decided to vacate the area. I couldn't help feeling like we'd just been marked as easy marks.

So as we're walking along in the meagre shade, an Indian man walking towards us says something to Mike which neither of us understand. He seems to be saying Mike has something on him, so Mike stops but then he pulls out two long metal sticks and looks like he's about to put them in Mike's ear. So I yell at him No, No, No! and pull Mike away from him. He shouts something else after us but no way in hell am I going to let some weirdo put something in Mike's ear. Shortly afterwards I work out the trick, the man would have poked around in Mike's ear and then produced an ugly bug from up his sleeve. This would have led to insisting on Mike needing some special cleansing or something, probably at a price. Honestly this freaked us both out and we got away as fast as possible.

We venture back to CST to arrange train tickets to Goa and found we couldn't go through the ticket office if we wanted 1AC tickets (1AC means a sleeper compartment for 2 people only with AC). Fortunately we had some assistance in finding someone to book internet tickets - turns our they were emergency tickets! It cost extra - I think we had to pay a bribe to get the tickets and not be wait listed. So in trying to get to the coffee shop we'd spied earlier, we are caught by 2 small street urchin girls. They tried to attach themselves to us with cries of "ice cream". I clicked faster than Mike as to what was going on and freed myself much faster than Mike did.

We find ourselves a little café called café Coffee Day and we hide from the madness outside. In a surprising turn of events we get chatting to a couple of Korean University Students. It's really nice to swap stories and to agree that Mumbai is in your face. Walking around we find we can't even look at a stall without being harassed to buy whatever we looked near. The chillout does us good but we're not enjoying Mumbai, it's not a fun city but one overflowing with people & cars. We're glad that we'll be moving on soon - Goa can't be worse can it?

After the chillout, we grab our tickets and decide to walk to a mall. We've seen plenty of street stalls today but no actual malls. We end up at Chowpatty beach - near the mall we were heading for but we couldn't find it. It's late enough for dinner by now, so we try a vegetarian joint of Mike's choosing. While we're waiting the standard 30 mins for our food, Mike confesses that right now all he wants to do is hop on a plane and leave. I try to encourage him (quite the role reversal!). After all we have a plan for our second day in Mumbai and then the next day we're out of there!

Elephanta Island. That's our plan - we'll take a deluxe ferry out (apparently it just means larger seats) and hopefully have a better day. We get down to the Gateway of India by taxi and then we manage to find the grumpiest ticket seller to purchase our deluxe tickets from. Our "Luxury" boat took 50 mins to get out to the Island, we saw a few oil refineries and mega ships on the way. At the bottom entrance we are hit with our 5Rps entry tax. It's almost 12pm so we stop for lunch, after giggling over the mini-train on the pier. It's a non-veg thali with a view of a cow & a goat & the people streaming past. It's not brilliant but it's not bad either. Refreshed we start walking up the stairs and are amazed that you can pay to have 4 men carry you up! It's not just that the chair doesn't look comfortable, it doesn't, but surely it's not that hard to walk up. The stairs are lined with stalls, monkeys and trees. It's a lot cooler than Mumbai city and the stairs while long don't go on forever. We reach the top and have to pay an entry charge - this is somewhat more annoying as we don't even get to keep the ticket. While queuing, to pay, we watch the monkeys attack a girl holding a bottle of juice - she squeals and the monkey gets the juice. No one is hurt but these monkeys sure aren't scared.

We start in the main chamber, a cave temple. It's enormous and what remains of the wall sculptures are beautiful. When the Portuguese landed on Elephanta Island they systematically chopped off arms, heads, legs from the statues and wall carvings. It's such a shame as the detail in these carvings is incredible. We even come face to face with the Brahmi - the 3 headed dude and he's very very big! We spend the next 2.5 hours wandering through the smaller caves, taking photos and enjoying ourselves. The crowds aren't too bad as it's a Friday. We head back down the stairs, having decided that trekking to the top of the island just to see some old cannons is not for us. The Island isn't that much cooler! On the way down, Mike finds me a pretty pair of purple earrings and I find a pink bracelet. This price is very cheap and we barely haggle over the price. It's not until that afternoon that I notice that my pink bracelet has had the pink added and now it's transferring to my wrist.




The next day, Mike is feeling poorly, so we hide out in our room until it's time to hop on the train to Goa. I'll tell you all about the train ride in the next post :)


All the photos from this trip are online here.

Here's a map showing the main places that we visited over the 3 weeks.


View Larger Map


Quick Hotel Manama Review

If you are thinking about staying at Hotel Manama - don't bother paying for the deluxe room because deluxe is the one thing it won't be, the rooms are noisy (traffic & pigeons), the bathrooms are NOT spacious, there was no safe in our room - it wouldn't have fit! Also we saw no computers or internet access high speed or otherwise within the hotel.
We requested a double room and were given a twin, which I can accept, but then we were only given 1 towel and no soap - this was rectified quickly but shouldn't have required my complaint.
The rates, if you walk in, are cheaper than their Internet advertised rates and I saw people get given discounts purely for complaining about the first rate given.

Honestly they are convenient to CST and that is all.
The other plus to this hotel is the restaurant, it's delicious, cheap and the solo waiter is kind and helpful - he patiently explained many of the terms on the menu to me over the 3 days.

Having said all this; if I go back to Mumbai, I'll stay in Chowpatti next to the beach - I'll also be prepared to spend more money because Mumbai accommodation is disproportionately expensive.

Monday, February 04, 2008

Squeezy's Watched List 2008

It's that time again... time for a new watched list! So in order of watching:


Movies

  • The Golden Compass (2007)
  • National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007)
  • Waitress (2007)
  • Rocky IV (1985)
  • The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
  • Stardust (2007)
  • Crank (2006)
  • Asterix and the Vikings (2006)
  • Shoot 'em up (2007)

TV Series

  • Doctor Who (2005) completed.
  • Oz & James Big Wine Adventure (2007 ) started. Don't check imdb on this one as they don't have season 2 (which is the 07 vintage as opposed to the 06 vintage). BBC & Wikipedia have series 1 & 2 info.
  • Torchwood (2007) started.
  • Doctor Who (2006) obtaining.
  • 5th Gear (2007) started.
  • Top Gear... waiting for the new season.
  • Brass Eye (1997) started.

Podcasts

  • (Cool) Shite on the Tube this show is linked because I'm a huge fan, they watcheth the crapeth so that we don't haveth to and they bring more entertainment than all my other podcasts put together! I heart CSoT!
  • Yogamazing - 20 to 30 mins of yoga
  • SModcast - this show I've queued to watch
  • Diggnation - watch it with Mike most mornings
  • Wine Library TV - watch it with or without Mike
  • The Totally Rad Show - I've only watched it once, not totally sold on it
  • Gordon Ramsay's Fast Food - found it recently, as I like Gordon's cooking philosophy I like this show
  • Ford Models How To - chucking on makeup & doing stuff with your hair - it's chick stuff :P