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Post-241: Eating Shrimp Burgers at Lotteria (Or, the Shrimp Burger War)

10/28/2014

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Since time immemorial, as far as I know, Lotteria has been "the only game in town" for shrimp burger fans,

But, lo, McDonald's has announced its own shrimp burger to South Korea, and
Lotteria, worried, held a "buy one shrimp burger, get one free" in the last week of October to rally the faithful. I carefully investigated.
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A Lotteria in Incheon, South Korea. The sign says:
"Shrimp Burger 1+1" (buy one get one free) / From the 28th to the 30th / From 2 to 10 PM
That's the Lotteria I found. In I went. This Lotteria, like many others, is multi-storey. You can see the second level of seating above. The inside of the ground floor was interesting in several ways:
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Post-240: "First World, Third World" Travel Essay

10/21/2014

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From my experience in international travel since 2007 (I left the USA for the first time on Jan. 1, 2007), I'm led to believe that no other rich country on this planet is anywhere near as unpleasant to fly in as the USA. The only airport I've ever been in that was less pleasant than the USA's airports tend to be today must be Manila, designated the "World's Worst Airport". (If you go through it for any length of time you will see why. I did.)

I discovered a stinging and incisive travel essay that captures the feeling of air travel in the USA today
. Who among us can't echo most everything the essay says (those who have traveled by air in the USA in recent years)? The writer writes specifically about New York City, a place I've been in and out of several times lately. His social commentary about NYC in the quoted excerpts below I can also agree with.

I find it to be good, engaging writing, which can be hard for travel writing to achieve. Here:
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First World, Third World: A Travel Essay
By Peter  Van Buren

You travel a bit, and you wonder what happened. [...]
Read the Essay

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Post-239: [My Korean Essay] Mistakes by Foreigners in Korea

10/19/2014

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Our teacher's usual whirlwind style whirled on as she handed out papers filled with small boxes, and let me try to approximate by using the written word what her speaking style feels like to listen to by which I mean lots of words without many breaks and accordingly you can hardly keep the logical flow of what's going on and thus it gets confusing whereupon despite the strain you may feel somehow you've got to keep up since walking out and leaving the room is not possible and so when all is said and done you've got to figure something out. See what I mean? Hah. (If you read it quickly you can get some idea of what the class tends to feel like to me). But I digress.

There I was with my two sheets of paper full of boxes on them, puzzled. Han Teacher starts talking something about mistakes foreigners make in Korea, but as it sounds a bit to me like the previous paragraph may sound to you, I figure out what's going on more through logical deduction than true understanding of the fine points of the instructions. We were to write about our own experiences making (humorous) mistakes in Korea.

In each box, there could only be one Korean character, or a space, so we were limited to a certain number of characters, 400 to be precise (closer to 300 if counting spaces). It was implied that we had to more-or-less fill in all the boxes and be done with it. Not less, not more.


Here is my essay in Korean (after corrections) and then a translation into English.
한국에서 했던 실수에 대한 글
한국에 있는 외국인들은 실수가 많다고 합니다. 저도 실수를 해본 적있습니다. 여기에 제가 했던 실수에 대해 성명하겠습니다.

먼저, 미국에서는 우리가 보통 집에 들어가면 신발을 벗지 않습니다. 하지만 한국에서는 한국인들이 항상 신발을 벗는 것 같습니다. 그래서 저는 실수를 했습니다.  제가 신발을 벗지않고 집에 들어갔습니다. 저는 한국인들은 왜 이렇게 신발에 대해서 조심하라고 궁금했습니다.

다 른 실수도 했습니다. 이전에 한국말을 잘 못했습니다. 문법을 잘 몰라서 재미있는 실수를 했습니다. 저는 "발표를 잘 할거예요" (영어로: "You will do well") 말하고싶었지만, 저는 한국 문법을  잘 몰랐기때문에  "잘 거예요!"라고  이야기했습니다 (영어로: "You will sleep"!). 이런  재미있는 실수를 하고 지금까지 그 실수를 기억합니다.


A translation into English is below:
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Post-238: Back to Sailing the Seven Seas

10/17/2014

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I am led to post the song in #13 again, "Sail the Seven Seas", also called "Rocking Chair" by "Jack the Lad" from England.

I do like this song. In many ways it is a very traditional English folk song, but below you will hear a 1970s rock kind of style (thus "folk rock").

The song's narrator is an old man, looking back wistfully on his own life. He compares it to his own grandfather's life. The narration of the song weaves in and out between the present day and two sorts of memory: (1) The narrator speaking in the present day (as an old man); (2a) Entering the narrator's memory of his own life (life review); (2b) Entering the narrator's memory of his grandfather's life.

Although recorded forty years ago, its message is relevant to really any time. The category to which I assign it is "Purpose of Life". Why? Listen and read the lyrics, below. You'll see. (According to Google, in 2013-2014, these lyrics can be found nowhere but here. Transcribed by me).
____________________________________
When I was teaching English more regularly, I tried to get my most advanced students to think in this sort of way. I once told one group that every essay is, can be, should be, important, no matter how trivial it may seem.

I told them this: "Every essay you will ever write is really an answer the same question,'Why are humans on this planet?'" I admit this may sound...uh, pretentious, but it 
helped some of them. Understand, the standard attitude was all essays were "punitive", mini-punishments to  endure. Write as boringly as possible; in an inane "cookie cutter" style; "run out the clock".
This re-conceptualization was appealing to the bright kids. The "Purpose of Life" is an open question, which is why it is exciting: They (we) have the power in hand to make of it what they (we) want.
___________________________________
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Painting by James Williamson
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"Wanderer in the Fog" by Caspar Friedrich [1818]
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Recording of "Seven Seas" (Rocking Chair):
"The Seven Seas" (Rocking Chair) Lyrics
By Jack the Lad / 1975


Sitting by the fire
In an old rocking chair
Like my grandaddy taught me to do
Listening intently
To the words he had to tell me
Because in my mind
I knew they were true
He said he'd sailed the seven seas
In ships, with tall masted sails
And he'd ridden, from London to Leeds
In one day-!

[Lyrics Continue]

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Post-237: [Scene from Korean Class] Famous Person from Kenya: Obama

10/10/2014

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The tedium of our Korean reading class was broken for a spell on Tuesday September 30th.

I will, below, do my utmost to reliably
re-create (in translation) the dialogue, as it happened:

Cast of Characters
Nine Students Present (born between 1985 and 1994): Seven Chinese [two absent during the below episode], one Singaporean, one Russian (Siberian ancestry) [absent], three White-Americans. (Those absent this lesson have a habit of disappearing during reading class.) Two of the present Chinese and one American (not me) are featured in this episode.
  • [Featured Students]
  • D.D. : Chinese Female (from somewhere around Shanghai) born circa 1992
  • J.R. : Chinese Female (from near Xian) born circa 1991
  • L.A. : American Male (from Texas) born 1985
One Korean Teacher (born 1987, I'm told): She is from Gyeongsang Province, the region that produced the generals who ruled South Korea from 1961 through the early 1990s. (Sidebar: I am proud to say that I was the one who figured out her region of origin. It so happened that her Seoul Accent veneer at times slipped away when she got annoyed at students, and Gyeongsang shone through. I later asked her if she was from that province, and she confirmed it). A graduate of Ewha University, the number-one women's university in South Korea. She teaches our class reading.

We sat in a kind of modified semi-circle, with the teacher at the center, and the white board behind her.

Episode 1: In Which the "Obama Origin" Question is Discussed (Yet Again)
One of our reading passages dealt with Kenya. It talked about safaris; wild animals; coffee. The main comprehension questions were knocked out without much difficulty. Then this:
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Post-236: Speedy Gonzales (1962)

10/9/2014

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"Speedy Gonzales" is a song I heard for the first time fifty-two years after it was released. I heard it on satellite radio in my uncle's car in Connecticut, August 2014. It is based on the old cartoon of the same name.

It is a lively and fun song. It would also never, ever, be allowed
by today's "gatekeepers of acceptable discourse" in the USA. No way would a major pop singer be allowed to release anything like this today. There are still plenty of acceptable cultural targets of mockery, but this one would today be verboten.
Lyrics below:
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