Full disclosure: I am receiving a stipend for writing this blog entry. Not on the topic itself, but just for using one of the links you see below. However, it is still an interesting subject, one I have wanted to put out to the blogging community for a while. When I first started my...
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And we’ll meet it if it does. I’ve got exactly four teaching days left before my replacement arrives, all green from Dallas, and just under two weeks until my flight to San Francisco. I wish I could say I’m looking forward to returning “home”, but the truth is I’ve been very numb to both...
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I didn’t have a real drink until the night of my 21st birthday. Call me a liar, if you like – I scarcely believe it myself. My perception of social drinking has evolved, I believe for the better, over the last fifteen years. Although sometimes it’s difficult for me to revisit the boy that...
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Today is a holiday in South Korea: Buddha’s Birthday. My original plan was to enjoy a temple visit, but the weather did not oblige. So, I sit inside my clean apartment and think of things to write. Once you get out of the habit of blogging, it’s hard to start up again. This past...
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Naturally, for one who has spent a great deal of time abroad, I have many recurring fears involving being thrown into unfamiliar potentially dangerous situations. But perhaps my most prevalent worry is being dependent on others, especially my family. Although I generally enjoy spending time with friends and crashing at home on occasion to...
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Now that rescue efforts are underway, some people who were trapped on rooftops and the hills in Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima Prefectures have been able to get access to food, water, and Internet. As a result, new witness videos have been pouring on to YouTube and the news: I had a rather disturbing moment...
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I get a lot of emails from random people across the world. Some just want to connect, probably as a means of living vicariously through me. But the overwhelming majority have read my expose on AEON, one of the major private English-teaching companies in Japan. I was a little surprised at the way some...
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Why travel with others? I can think of a few reasons. Dining out I’ve been facing this problem with restaurants in my small town in South Korea. Although you can find plenty of places willing to accommodate one, the majority of those in my area only offer food portions for a group of two...
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More of a few small notes here on living abroad: dealing with numbers in other countries. 1. Le Système International d’Unités Recently, a Korean friend of mine raised in the states invited me out to dinner. We were discussing body weight, and I casually mentioned I had lost a few kilograms, now weighing in...
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What can I say? I’ve really been going for classy blog titles. My thinking this evening is probably the result of watching too many episodes of The Big Bang Theory and other shows I used to watch that really made me pity myself. Let me clarify that. I wanted to show how even though...
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