Puppies!

Letters

I was teaching magic last week, so I lots of the kids wrote me mail in post office class. I always get a larger stash in my mailbox when I'm teaching magic or one of the other more fun classes. It's more fun for them anyway - it can be quite draining to teach over and over, but it's rumoured that we'll have a children's magician coming at the end of the month to teach a couple of us some new tricks. I'm so excited! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ To: Ryan magician Hi! How are you? I'm finde magic show is good! very good! card magic show amazing. good! "wow" Abrycatabry good! bey bey Ryan Abrycatabry! So cute. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Teacher's magic was really amazing. Why don't you be a global magician? I want see that again. Teacher have nice ability of magic and make us fun. Thank you for teach English to us and show nice magic. Thank you very much. Global magician. That's totally what my new career's gonna be. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dear Ryan Hae my name is james How are you? I am 10 nears ar I like SEV [Seoul English Village] I want to cone again My favorite teacher is It is very fun by by by james... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dear: Ryan Hi! teacher. my name is Tim. How old are you? I'm 13 year's old. please give me a magic rabbiet. teacher! the magic is very good. I like magic. I think you are very kind. Good Bye teacher. Korean kids love magic. Some of them go to magic schools - occasionally I've even managed to get through a whole class without needing to perform a single trick myself! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dear Ryan Hi! i'm James Jino Be 'ABracadabbra' gngogilW. Ji-cu-cu gom co HoBnin-o-six two seven nu-n four u - I one fourign James u gngni m At least, I think that's what he wrote. It's hard to tell where one word ends and the next begins. Maybe he's writing in code. He spells his name 'Jamts' on the envelope, but he does gets bonus points for drawing a picture of me shooting thunderbolts from my fingertips. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dear Ryan I like magic. Do you like magic? Your magic is very fun! It is good! I like this!!! -> Abracadabra~ Ho Ho Ho You are a tall and Handsome. You are a very very good man. Always nice to hear. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Where all my time goes

I am, like millions of other wasted souls out there, seriously addicted to the Internet. I can easier squander two hours or more doing nothing other than randomly surfing. You'd at least hope that in doing so much reading every day, I would at least be learning a hell of a lot. But the truth is, half of the time I'm not convinced I even remember what I've been looking at. It just goes in one..um...eye...and out the other. I thought it might be interesting to check out a random sample of my surfing history, so below is a list of every 10th page I've visited for the last two days. Let's see what junk I've been looking at. 1 The chocolate connoisseur's website, fair enough I do like chocolate. I was looking at the reviews of their highest rate bars. I might order some, but the cost of shipping here is twice as much as the chocolate. 2 Not a photo of a dead man in Phoenix, by a photographer who keeps a blog detailing pictures that he wishes he had taken, and opportunities missed. 3 Another one, not of two guys having a fight over a hat. 4 kottke.org - the starting point of many a pointless surfing session. 5 The page editor of Blogger. 6 Blogger log in. 7 A torrent search for Santana - which I ended up not downloading 8 An Amazon review for Yo La Tengo - which I did end up downloading and am listening to now. 9 A google search for a band called Hotel Lights; a song by them which I'd never heard before came onto my itunes and I wanted to know who they were (the drummer used to be in Ben Folds Five). 10 A message board for Disturbia, a new PG13 movie based on Hitchcock's Rear Window. 11 Google news 12 Notes for an upcoming Linguistics and cognitive science lecture. 13 Searching for an old episode of Buffy to watch online while I wait for Christa to get her ass out of bed so we go out for pizza as planned. 14 Before Buffy I had been looking for a movie. 15 I don't know how I got onto this, but I ended up reading all about the American (and Canadian) fraternity and soriety system. 16 The Alexander Technique - since my posture sucks and I was after some tips to improve it. Which I didn't find here. 17 & 18 The Wikipedia articles on press ups and sit ups - I've decided I need to start doing more (ie. some) exercise, so I naturally had to research the matter first. 19 & 20 A couple of blogs about the Korean language. 21 A news article on the massive damage done to coral reef after a recent Indonesian earthquake. 22 Doug's Concert Crisis - I can only imagine I chanced upon this via Wikipedia's 'random article' button, as I have no idea what it is. 23 A site about Vietnam - which I don't remember seeing before. 24 An finally, an email from one of the kids that was here last week, Ken:

Teacher!!

What is Margaret e-mail?

Sorry!! more e-mail....sorry~!!

Good bye~!

(And spookily, he's just emailed me again this very second). Anyway, point is that too much time is wasted unproductively. So new resolutions (although shouldn't call them that as bound to jinx it) are: less internet, and to make time every day for a minimum of 10 minutes exercise, a little art, even if only a quick sketch or doodle, and I'm gonna start taking a daily photo again. I'm not promising a daily blog, but I will attempt go for at least one weekly entry. And it's 22:37 pm, and I haven't done any of this yet, so gotta go!

Vietnam closure!

A non-random selection of mine and Christa's photos from Vietnam (I still haven't managed to recover mine but you never know). In Hanoi and Sapa we were continually besieged by street traders trying to flog us their wares; I thought we might get away from it at Halong Bay, since we were onboard a boat most of the time, but no: they just sail right up alongside. She had Oreos too, but I resisted. Hoan Kiem Lake, Hanoi. We're sitting out the back of a restaurant in drinking whiskey and smoking cigars (sharing a cigar actually, as the smoke goes right to my head, and it always makes Christa hack and gasp like she's never tried it before, so one's always enough!) We didn't get much sleep some nights. The night-trains in particular, while a fun experience, are not really designed for sleeping. Well, no, I guess they are, but it was way too hot and bumpy to get much done. On Thursday morning as we were eating our breakfast in Hanoi we were plunged into darkness as part of a rolling blackout that lasted for most of the day in our district. Apparently it's fairly common, and is linked to low rainfall. Of course we didn't mind this as everyone knows blackouts are cool, but I wouldn't like to have to live somewhere where it's this common. Christa on-board the night train. I now realise that these photos are in reverse-chronological order. Deal with it. She's sad because we bought some peanut M&Ms and they turned out to be all melty and congealed. We also got these tasty dried fruits. I do love me some fructification. Aah no, this is what I really love. We ate some much fresh pineapple all week - and mango, and dragon fruits and other exciting delicacies - that my digestive system went into shock upon our return to Korea and refused to process the cafeteria food that I tried to foist upon it again. It's taken nearly two weeks to acclimatise back to my usual sad diet again. Cute Vietnamese kids at Halong Bay (okay, so these photos are in no coherent order at all). We tried ramming some with our kayak but got yelled at by their parents. Oh, speaking of kayaks. I'd never done this before and was convinced Christa was gonna have us over at any minute with all her attempts to stray away form the pack into random caves. I was having done of it, to her frustration! Our course stayed straight and true with me at the helm. I later discovered that it's actually much easier than I ever thought it was to stay afloat in salt-water. Have I really never swum in the sea before? Guess not. Nobody was gonna but Christa insisted, then I followed her, and then everybody else followed suit, including sweet Vietnamese lass Hnung, who dove in fully clothed. It was cold. Got bitten by sea-lice. Christa and Hnung sharing a moment. Hnung, whose name is pronounced something close to 'Hune' kept spelling her name for us, as though it would make a scrap of difference. We never did really master it. The Santa Maria. Back in Halong with a few hours to kill, Christa suggested going for a foot massage as we'd seen a string of massage parlours earlier in the week. Although it was officially just a foot massage, they managed to incorporate our hands, arms, legs, backs and heads into the routine. It was lovely, and only slightly marred by my oh-so-professional masseuse's giggles at what are (in Asia) my comically hairy legs. By the end of the hour the two of us couldn't even look at each other: every time I looked at her she would start laughing hysterically, and I couldn't help laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation either. This is the restaurant at the eco-place we stayed at in Sapa. It was a gorgeous location. So peaceful and remote. We loved it. Thanks to Katie for the recommendation. Here's a rice terrace. For now, my photos of the local tribes-people and the shots I took on our treks remains stranded on the damaged memory card, does the footage of us getting motorcycle rides back to base along the narrow mountain 'roads'. Tall buildings in Hanoi. Land is expensive, so they build tall. And to save money often only one or two sides of the building will be painted, the others left as blank concrete. There's some pretty architecture to be seen in Vietnam thanks to the old colonial French influence. My faithful poncho. It didn't rain too much except in Hanoi, where I do believe it's always raining. I haggled aggressively with a woman on the street for this, and it probably only cost a few pence. By the end of the week, we'd both got pretty tired of constantly bartering so ended up paying whatever price was quoted first most of the time - it's not like we couldn't afford it as everything was really cheap. We did not want to come home.