야수와 미녀 (“Beauty and the Beast”)

Watched this last night. You have to watch this movie. It just came out in the theaters here, which means you can probably get a bootleg copy, say…yesterday. Anyways, I haven’t laughed this much at a movie in a long time. In fact, I dare say that it comes close to my all-time Korean fave, 엽기적인 그녀 (“My Sassy Girl”). Well, maybe not in terms of story or picture, but definitely in terms of pure comedy. I admit that a lot of the laughs came from pretty common routines, but hey, I’m not that sophisticated a movie watcher to care. Bottom line, it made me laugh.

The story is not even remotely related to the Beauty and the Beast that we all know and love (my favorite Disney movie!). It’s about a really ugly guy who takes care of a beautiful woman while she’s blind. Well, she gets surgery and regains her sight. He’s too scared to face her with his ugly mug, so he lies about who he is and avoids her. Will he ever be able to tell her the truth? [Cue predictable (but still very funny) antics] He’s really not that ugly, but he’s got that dumbass look going for him. If you can remember the guy from “My Sassy Girl” and his hilariously idiotic expressions, you have a pretty good idea of what I’m talking about. ^^

Of course, there were no subtitles, but my Korean’s improved so much that I understood about 60-70% of what they were saying. Well, the content made it easier to understand (which is why I picked this over a movie about a female serial killer). Yet, sometimes I found myself at a loss. Sometimes I sat there with a blank look of vacuousness, while hysterical laughter ensued all around me. Yes, you can probably conjure up a mental image of my expression in such a situation. =P Luckily, laughter is contagious. So even when I couldn’t understand, just because other people were laughing, I laughed like an idiot too. I guess it’s also part empathy. When other people are having fun, you can’t help but have fun too.


* I’m starting a Pic of the Day for my blog.



Sunset view from my apartment window.




The sunset’s golden rays reflecting off the 63 Building, the tallest building in Korea.

Fireworks

Went to the 6th annual Seoul International Fireworks Festival on Saturday. There was supposed to be an estimated viewing public of 500,000 people at Yeouido (the carved-out island in the Han River touted as the “Manhattan” of Seoul). Forget 500,000. There had to be at least a million people crowded on the island, in the outlying areas, across the river, in the parks, even on the freeways! We avoided the brunt of the mob, but it was still unbelievable. The sight was as astounding as the fireworks themselves.

If you want to see the website, the English site is here, aptly registered as Hanhwa Pyro (good to see the hosts have a sense of humor =). You can also see videos of past festivals.

However, if you want to see it through my eyes, pics are on my Imagestation site and videos are on my FTP site. Here’s the login info:

http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2118363180

Login: coryfriend
Pass: coryfriend

ftp://ftp.coryoh.com

Login: coryftp
Pass: yoomyung

FYI, the pics are a little disappointing because I botched the aperture (and there was a streetlight directly in my line of sight), but the last two videos are pretty cool. I particularly like the brush foreground. We couldn’t get a better spot, but it turned out kinda cool.

* Fireworks in Korean is called 불꽃 (literally, "fire flower"). ^^

blaaarrgghh...

Although my last post may have given the impression that I'm not busy, this past week has been death. Amid grading midterms and preparing midterm review powerpoint presentations, we've had some guest speakers come in to give talks. Following normal business protocol, the obligatory dinner and drinks have not gone unseen.

Thus, I'm now sitting at my computer at midnight with a headache and a lot of work left to do. Even after just two nights in one week, I'm convinced I'm not made for entertaining guests or clients. While fun, it's draining. Koreans drink soju like water and subscribe to the drinking motto: "'Til death do us part". I myself am the model of moderation, but today, after only having toast for breakfast, a bagel and trail mix bar for lunch, and a long island iced tea for dinner, I'm hurting.

I don't think I could ever survive in the Korean corporate environment, where you're expected to sit through frequent 4-hour long "office dinners" and get smashed with the boss.

Well, my brain isn't quite at full functioning capacity, so I'm gonna have to call it a night. Forget Korean class tomorrow morning, I have to prep.

blaaarrgghh...

A New Sound

I guess I haven’t had much time to blog the past few days. It’s not that I’ve been especially busy with work or school – I’ve just been busy with other important stuff. Like doing errands, planning my vacation, hanging out with people, and surfing the net (which CAN be a very substantive and fulfilling activity, if done in a constructive way).

For example, one especially time-consuming, yet very rewarding, internet search resulted in a new sound for emptying my recycle bin on my desktop. Listen to it here.

Wuahaha! Isn’t it awesome?! I love it! Every time I empty my trash it catches me slightly off-guard and I let out a chuckle. ::heehee::

(Okay, after 4 inane posts, I promise to write something of a little more substance next time.)

Midterm Week

Midterms start tomorrow. Awwwww...YEAH!

Here comes the pain, baby! Here comes the pain!!!

muahaha...

M-M-M-Manga

I saw this entry on a manga scanlation team’s message board. He’s talking about working on the releases of Ichigo 100%, my current favorite manga series (currently on Vol.17). Highlight the text below with your mouse for a funny rant. *** WARNING ***: mild profanity.

[rant]
I just realized that I never downloaded or read our first release of v16. And I translated it too. Damn you real life! Fuck you professors! I am sick of being everybody's bitch! FREEEEEEEDDOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!!
Posted by Roots 09 Oct 2005, 19:47
[/rant]

If you didn’t understand a word in the above paragraph, basically, I like to read Japanese comic books (manga), which are translated into English by fans (usually students), then re-scanned into images and distributed online to thousands of other fans who are unable to read Japanese (like me).

Man dies after 50 hours of computer games

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6448213/did/8888579/

Even I don’t get addicted enough to be this stupid.

Although this does make me worry about my brother.

I am Teacher, hear me roar

At the end of each semester, students can fill out an optional evaluation of their professors. From 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest), they rate the professor’s effectiveness in teaching, preparation for class, fairness, and approachability, among other things.

I received last semester’s printout of this information, as well as some other interesting statistical data that I will disseminate below.

65.1% - the number of my students who completed the evaluation. A pretty good showing.

4.354/5.0 – my average rating from all my students. An excellent score of which I am very proud of. The average rating for professors in our department was 2.945.

67/69 – my “strictness” ranking out of all professors in our department. Based on the number of A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, and F’s a teacher gives to students, 1/69 is the most generous in giving good grades while 69/69 means you gave the least A’s and the most F’s. I’m 67/69, the third strictest teacher in our department!!!!

454/477 – my “strictness” ranking out of all professors in the entire school. Damn! I’m one badass @&%(*$!

I really couldn’t stop laughing at the numbers when I saw them. I mean, I couldn’t possibly be that strict, right? I just followed university policy and graded on a standard C+ bell curve. How can I be ranked that high? Err, low? Maybe I am starting to get a rep around here…But I guess the ranking doesn’t matter. I mean, if I still get such a high rating from my students, I guess they like me even though I fail them. It’s like I hand a student an F and he says, “Thank you sir! May I have another!”

While we’re on the subject of my austerity, a student of mine just disclosed to me some underworld utterings of one of my current classes. It went along the lines of: “Professor Cory is so strict! It’s the last class of the day…why doesn’t he ever let us out early? Just once? And why does he give so much homework? Argh, he’s so strict!”

At the beginning of the school year, our head of academic affairs stated that although students complain about a teacher’s strictness, they usually like it. Or at least respect it. Many times they rate a teacher poorly if the teacher is a pushover. So, in other words, they like getting slapped around. That’s good. ‘Cause I like doing the slapping. ^^

Round 2

My extended absences from blogging usually result from 1) either not having enough time or 2) pure laziness. This most recent time was a combination of the two. But let’s just focus on the more honorable reason, if it can even be considered ‘honorable’.

I thought my second semester teaching at the university would be easier than the first, since I’d already have all my lesson plans done and would just repeat what I did the first semester. Well, seeing how only two of my classes are the same subject from before, that was a foolish notion. However, I did have two of my classes completely reassigned during the second week of the semester, so I do have some sort of an excuse. I went from two easy Beginner Conversation classes (which I had last semester) to two Employment English classes. These classes involve writing resumes and cover letters as well as interviewing (all in English, of course). Considering my past job history, I do have quite a bit of experience in these areas (although my success in such endeavors may be up for debate). Regardless, I’ve had my hands full figuring out what to teach and how.

As for my Technical Writing class, it’s been chewing me up and spitting me out in little bite-size Cory-Oh cookies (I just made fun of myself using a nickname I’ve despised since childhood). I spend a minimum of 3 hours prepping for each class. Usually more. However, I have succeeded in reducing my class size. Now, why would I want to reduce my class size? Well, I don’t want to have students who are not ready to take the class or who don’t even really want to take the class. Plus, grading a dozen or so papers every week is just way too much work. So, after administering a wrathful grammar quiz, a merciless style quiz, and finally a doomsayer’s warning that many students will in all likelihood fail the course, I put my scythe to rest to find that my mighty swing has indeed scattered the timid and tested the steadfast. Of the 15, only 6 remain. I actually wasn’t trying to cut out that many…maybe 5 at the most. Maybe I shouldn’t have sharpened my blade so much…

Anyways, to sum up, I’ve been doing nothing but work. And study Korean. 4 hours of Korean each day, then 3 hours of teaching, then office hours, then another few hours of prep. Then sleep. Life is no fun.

Return of the Blog

This is the result of my negligence. A pot of rice that has been left out in the still warm tail end of the "Summer That Just Won’t Die". After just five days, my once edible, pure, white sustenance had mutated into a living, breathing mass of organisms.

You may be attempting to suppress the gagging reflex, just as I did when I first opened the lid and discovered a wonderful scent wafting into my nostrils. Even now, just looking at the picture brings back the memories. “The horror..the horror..”

I went back and forth trying to decide if I should clean it out or just throw it away. I eventually cleaned it, but for days wondered if I could eat rice from this pot ever again. But I did, and fortunately, I found no aberrant taste in the first batch after “The Plague”. V!

This was a great welcome back post, wasn’t it? ^^

(btw, if you click on the pic, I left the original 1280x960 size available for download, in case you want to set it as your desktop wallpaper.)