Judge Holden Was Here

New website

2011-07-24T16:39:00.001-07:00

Let's see how long it takes for Google to notice it.

http://www.tkocur.com

Shanghai on American Dad

2011-02-10T16:34:00.001-08:00

I'm not in Korea anymore, so unless I go back to Korea, consider this website...

2008-10-26T16:53:00.000-07:00

DEFUNCT

Is keeping busy

2008-10-02T23:36:00.000-07:00

So the past few weeks I haven't posted any pictures on here, as usual, but I've actually been relatively busy since it's my last few weeks (now my last weekend), so here's some of what I've been doing to kill time.

I went to a soccer game.

Very few people like soccer here, apparently, which makes it pretty embarassing that they have half-a-dozen "World Cup Stadiums" scattered across the country, of which the most imposing is in Seoul of course.... They anticipated that it wouldn't really be used though, because there's a mall, a spa, a theatre and just about everything attached to the complex, including a "World Cup Wedding" space.

I also took the two-hour subway ride to the Incheon coast to see what it looks like. There was a tiny little Chinatown area, above, a lot of memorials for the Korean War landing and a pretty little park with numerous monuments to the long and happy relationship between Korea and the U.S. of A.

Including a General MacArthur statue!

Along the coast, there's also a boardwalk area that seemed a little grittier than it needed to be. It's always surprising/saddening how down-scale the outskirts of Seoul can be in places, but I figured the promenade along the coast would be a little nicer.

Who am I kidding. It was a little nicer than the view from my apartment. Shutup Tim.

I've also been doing a lot of the stuff I like to do over and over again, like rollerblade into the city. I hadn't done it in so long due to the global warming that comes each summer to the northern hemisphere of our planet. One of the effects of climate change this year seemed to be that it made my back seize up and hurt whenever I did something remotely physical for two months, which I blame on China and George W. Bush, not heredity.

Such pretty flowers. I wish I were a four-year-old girl so I could get a permit to pick one.

I also like to do things I can't afford to do once in a while, like hang out with my friend at the Hyatt bar up one of Seoul's mountains. I got one drink and I'm not telling how much it was.

See the river!

I take pictures of the river very many.

I need to do something more productive with my life, huh.

Maybe I'll build a rocketship ro something.

Korean Thanksgiving Time For Cute Traditional Clothings

2008-09-13T08:49:00.000-07:00

In Korean, they call it HanBok, which I think means "Korean Clothes."

Anyways. The kids wear these for the traditional holidays at this school, and I guess all the outfits are bought by grandparents, naturally. One of the kids had a tag inside hers that said "ikoreandress.com," so I wonder how talented her grandparents are on the internet.

Big Benedicto. With careful gene-splicing, all children will be this cute someday, although hopefully they'll make the boy model sit down in his chair and be quiet more often.

When I yell at him, he sits down quietly and mumbles under his breathe, "Tim Teacher, scary teacher."

This is my new favorite Sally in pre-school. If you don't think she's cute, you're a communist fascist terrorist.

Nearly every day, she wears a type of shawl to keep warm, so she looks like a grandmother. In fact, everything about her (shy, well-behaved, always clean, quiet-but-playful and she corrects her behavior when she thinks she's being too silly or does something "not pretty") suggests she's been raised by grandparents, which I think is the case.

What's the best part of being a Canadian during the Olympics?

2008-08-14T02:20:00.001-07:00

I can cheer for whichever country or athlete I choose, because Canada doesn't have an Olympic team.

I haven't posted this many pictures in a long time, so this might be fun. (Mom edition)

2008-07-31T04:10:00.000-07:00

Yup, my mom's here and for the first week or so, the stream near my house where I roller-blade looked like this...

When it was supposed to look like this...

That's some real flooding, too. Other parts of the stream where the walls aren't so high got their streets flooded, and seven people died across the country, according to the news.

Mom didn't die though. She just wandered around my neighborhood and probably spied on all the stuff in my room while I was at work.

Here we are in Busan, where instead of being rainy and stickyhumid, it was blazingfrickinhot and stickyhumid. We spent short bursts of time outside and then long bursts inside, so ask us how many Dunkin' Doughnuts there are in Busan.

Here's mom swimming in the Pacific Ocean.*** She's either the man in the white shirt or the woman in the black full-piece.

The bridge in the back is hilarious. The beach is the inside of a bay, so they built a two-tiered bridge across the outside of the bay.

*** It's hard to suggest you're swimming in the Pacific when Japan's somewhere in the middle, but you don't need to know that.... On your capitalist American maps, that water would be called the Sea of Japan, but here in capitalist Korea, they call it the East Sea, because the Japanese don't exist.

Here we are at a temple up in the mountains of Busan. It wasn't as touristy as we expected and everybody was praying inside the individual buildings.

Mom kept asking the monks to take pictures of us, but no matter how loud she yelled and how hard she pinched them, they kept it up with the praying. ****

**** Mom didn't actually yell at or pinch any monks.

The monk with the laptop. We laughed, but not too loudly.

Today in Seoul, we ate an enormous enormous lunch with some of my kids from last year... They're "on vacation" this week, but still have Chinese, Art, Music and Speed Skating***** lessons. How about that.

***** They call it LONG SKATING here. hehe

This is the Olympic Park in Seoul. It's a beautiful park in the middle or a luxurious part of the city and I hadn't even heard about it until a few weeks ago. Oops.

It also has a museum of the 1988 Olympics, so guess what that means!!!!

Oh Canada, Our Home and Native Land....
True Patriot Love, In All Our Hearts Command....
We see the rise, We see the rise....
Our Hearts Command for Thee....
Oh Canada, Our Home and Native Land....

The museum staff said my spontaneous singing of the national anthem upon seeing Ben Johnson was the most passionate and inspiring they'd seen in weeks.

One of the biggest highlights of the museum was the collection of mascots from all the games. Mom and I couldn't stop laughing at some of them, and the best was of course Canada. The Montreal black-and-red beaver was easily the silliest of all.

I can't imagine the joy I'd feel if my father the sports reporter returned from the 1976 games with a mascot that looked like charcoal with a ribbon. Bravo, Montreal.

(And the below mascot is from Moscow 1980. Some kind of Boris the Bear or something.)

Looking into the empty subway tunnel, I thought about ditching mom and regaining my independence, but then I heard the train coming and I got scared and hid behind mom's leg.

Mom meets munchkins

2008-07-24T05:23:00.000-07:00

Some of them even thought she was my sister...

Mom is here

2008-07-19T00:25:00.000-07:00

She got here an hour early and brought cookies.

And it's raining a lot. Hehe.

The Rainbow Man who used to infest every sporting event...

2008-06-21T22:29:00.002-07:00

I've always been a little interested in this guy and I saw this short documentary quite a few years ago about him... After seeing him in the background in a 1988 Olympic gymnastics video, I thought I'd try and find it again, and I did!

Watch it. Funniest and then saddest story.

The Rainbow Man --

2008-06-21T22:29:00.001-07:00

Funny Story

2008-06-21T20:16:00.000-07:00

I got a kick out of this story about eastern Europeans coming to America for the summer to work as lifeguards.

According to ChanX, this website is turning into a creepfest, so...

2008-06-15T07:14:00.000-07:00

I'm writing a post that doesn't include pictures of young and photogenic children.

Why?

Because I just finished reading one of the big Tolstoy books, which always makes one feel smart, doesn't it?

He makes you jog through 900-1500 pages, but in the end, Anna Karenina and War and Peace have roughly the same message on the last page. The best part is that I seem to be clever enough now to suggest -- to myself at least -- that all the great stories have the same message in the end. I'm also going to suggest I'm clever enough to suggest that the best television shows, The Wire and the Sopranos, specifically, have the same message, too.

And will I tell you what this message is?

Hell no, because while I've had an idea that this message was the guiding source of everything I've enjoyed for the last ten years, I'm not sharing because I just finished reading a 1500 page book and I don't feel like giving away the ending.

Suckers.

In Anna Karenina, the whole friggin' ending is that the main character won't share the message with others, so I guess that's kind of the point anyway. Mr. Tolstoy suggests that his character knows everything, but then he won't share it...

Wait, I'm the sucker?

Middle Finger to you, too, Tolstoy.

I took some pictures this weekend, but none of them are any good, so...

2008-06-01T05:35:00.001-07:00

I'm posting a picture of Leon Trotsky/The Platypus...

and the smallest kid I have, Stephanie.

She's not even 4-1/2 yet.

I'm posting pictures for my mom. That's what this website is for, I guess.

2008-05-27T05:06:00.000-07:00

This is one of the four Sallys I have in my pre-school classes. This one can already read though, so when the Moms were watching my class today, I leaned on her heavily to suggest that ALL the kids are this smart due to my teaching skills.

Jocelyn is cute. She frowns upon amateur attempts to be cute -- like that on the right.

The Platypus always looked a little like Trotsky to me.

These are the two I'd keep if it were allowed under my visa.

Benedicto, as in Benedicto Mussolini.

Another of the Sallys (Sallies?).

Born to be cute, I suppose... At least for a year or two until the attitude and the entitlement set in! (But I should be back in Canada by then.... right?.... right?.....)

So that's why there are no boats...

2008-05-05T03:38:00.000-07:00

I really like this river. I like that's it's empty and I like that there are a lot of bridges that go across it, but it took me over a year to figure out why there are absolutely no boats here (aside from the odd tour boat.)

A few books I've read in the past few months made me notice that the estuary of the Han River (I guess an estuary is the protected bay that usually acts as a natural port at the mouth of the river and the sea) is RIGHT ON THE NORTH/SOUTH KOREAN BORDER.... That said, it has fences and artillery and doubtless hundreds of land mines.

It took over a year to realize this because most maps don't really draw the north/south border here, or at least leave it a little vague when they can.... I blame the maps.

I told Mom I'd put up a new picture, so...

2008-04-28T05:42:00.000-07:00

Here's a Zombie.

Emily.

10 times out of 10 I'm going to turn down people my own age to visit this kid. Still my favorite Korean.

And my nose is still growing. How about that.

No Subject. These are just funny.

2008-04-12T06:36:00.001-07:00

I say "platypus" and she does this.

The Platypus is in the reflection on the left. The reflection on the right looks like a woman getting punched in the crotch.

I didn't tell him to do that.

After watching Rambo I and II....

2008-04-07T22:15:00.000-07:00

I've decided to e-mail the American Film Institute and ask them to update their list of Hollywood's 100 best films.

1. Rambo II: First Blood Part Two
2. Citizen Kane
3. Rambo I: First Blood
4. Casablanca
5. The Godfather

What the hell were they thinking in the first place. In Rambo II, he single-handedly rescues the POWs from the Vietnamese and the Russians! What the hell were they thinking!

(And I haven't even seen III and IV yet!)

Nice Weather. Busy.

2008-04-06T02:49:00.001-07:00

I bought some roller blades to go down the stream through Bundang that goes all the way to the Han River in the city... It takes an hour and a half, but it's fun. I've done it three times in the last week.

The place where the stream hits the Han River is where the Olympic and Baseball stadiums are, and now it's baseball season, so....

This picture was taken about a minute before a 10th inning walk-off home run. We were on the opposite side of the field though, so the Busan Giants side was COMPLETELY SILENT as the game ended and the other side of the stadium went nuts.

Oh, and that's Bizarro Tim. He lives in my apartment and does the same job as I did last year. He's even a little bald, in fact, the only significant differences between us are that he's half-American and meditates.

Then I tracked down the tallest building in Korea with Bizarro Tim. It's just a tall-gaudy apartment complex. Celebrities live here, supposedly, but how the hell would I know who they are.

And Sunday I went to visit some of the kids I had last year -- Jonathan and JoAnn beside me in particular. They're still cute and funny.

The right idea (I want this shirt...)

2008-03-19T05:43:00.001-07:00

Forget Grandma.
Forget Blue Whales.
This kid's my new favorite mammal.

Oh, and I didn't make a single kid cry today.... That's called progress.

UPDATE: Oops, I did make one kid cry. I told him I had to give him an X in my book for not doing his homework... He told me, "But Teacher, if I get an X, my mom will hit me," and then he cried and cried and cried.

Maybe tomorrow, I say, nobody cry. Maybe tomorrow, but not today.

Small Kids

2008-03-14T04:05:00.000-07:00

So they've got me teaching pre-school kids and I had to post some pictures to show how embarassingly small some of them are...

Apologies for the creepy grin, but it's next to impossible to stop laughing around these kids. They're so small I crack up at just about everything they do.

Even when they cry, it's funny.... And yeah, they cry about everything, from me telling them they can't go to their "Oma" to me telling them to hurry up and finish their worksheets.... they cry when I write a sad face beside their name when they're bad or speak Korean too much.

Here's some more...

And here's some more...

The girl on the right has a habit of screaming down the hallway whenever she sees me, "Tim Croaker Teacher, I looooovvvvvvvvvvve you!!!!!"

And here's another one.

Wow, I don't take very many pictures...

2008-02-29T19:24:00.000-08:00

But I did today because it was the last day I'd have with these classes and I wanted to document some cuteness.

This is Fiona, and don't be fooled by this picture, she's the biggest clown I've had this year.

As you can probably see, she also has eyes you can pick out a mile away here and she'll probably make a lot of grown men cry someday.

I had someone take this picture to show how truly miniscule the girl on the right is.

Grace and Sarah look remarkably similar. The one on the left is a minute older.

Grown men wearing aprons? In public?

I think I know why Korea keeps getting occupied.

I always liked running through sprinklers...

2008-02-18T04:43:00.000-08:00

It looks like I missed my opportunity to go take pictures of the burned down gate... They've got it completely surrounded now and there's only a dusted-out plexiglass window to take pictures through.

Oh well.

A quote from Christmastime

2008-02-13T04:45:00.000-08:00

"Oh, and Obama beats McCain. 12/22/2007. I called it."

All those hours watching The West Wing must have taught me something...

(And yes, this is arrogant... I know McCain could die... I know people could realize Obama's half-black and that he nosed-up some candy... This could all go astray, but remember that six weeks ago Clinton had a 20% lead in national polls and Giuliani and Romney were polling better than the guy they call McCain.)

Long Weekend Over. Didn't kill self without internet.

2008-02-09T23:13:00.000-08:00

Phew, I made it. I'm actually kind of looking forward to going back to work. What an idiot.

Oh, and a few weeks ago I met with the guy who took my old job and lives in my old apartment... We took a picture for him to show my old students.

He let me into the old school and I left messages for the kids...

It was funny to see my old apartment, because he'd kept just about everything I'd left. (Including the mats that ghetto ChanX slept on... He uses them as prayer mats! hehehe.)

The best is that he kept this ugly coconut turtle that I'd bought in Vietnam and didn't feel like bringing all the way home... He said I could have it back, but it turns out that neither of us wanted it.

That's right. None of you got this thing as a present. I'll bet you're peeved.

Internet (and World) F***ed

2008-02-03T00:39:00.000-08:00

Howdy,

Yeah, so nice internet guy came and gave me a new modem thing yesterday. The internet worked for EIGHT HOURS before breaking down again, so don't expect to hear much from me... Who knows how long until it's fixed again, even for eight hours.

I swear to God. I've got five days off without the internet. This could get violent.

Play Date? Yeah, that's how the cool people spend their Saturdays.

2008-01-26T22:47:00.001-08:00

I thought the kids were going to show up with their mothers and we'd have lunch together, but then Winnie the Korean teacher showed up with just the two kids, including my super duper favorite Emily, who's now missing her front teeth (see below) and it was incredibly weird but fun to walk around the mall with two Korean kids and have people watch us confused all afternoon. Haha.

Can't help it.

2008-01-23T03:33:00.000-08:00

Skating is funnnnnn

2008-01-18T03:15:00.001-08:00

They made us wear helmets, so I look like a total dorkcreep in every picture.

I especially like the picture of me being the biggest dorkcreep in the group photo.

Uncanny

2008-01-16T03:28:00.000-08:00

Hillary Clinton is Tracy Flick from Election.

If you can't say anything nice.... (Shanghai/Beijing/January 2008)

2008-01-11T21:01:00.001-08:00

I've been hesitant to put any pictures of China on here because it seemed to be a disgusting mess of a country in almost every way. I won't get into that though, because everybody seems to give China a free pass nowadays, and also because it's not nice to say mean things!

Hurrah! China! Ping Pong!

After a few days in Beijing, above, it was hard to get excited about much. However, beginning in Shanghai, it wasn't so bad. It was actually cleaner and more organized than I was expecting.

After the Great Wall, this is probably the most iconic view of China these days. Along the river in Shanghai, you look one way and see the skyscrapers, and...

... look the other way and see the old colonial bank buildings. If it weren't for the constant hassle of beggers and people selling trinkety crap, it might be charming.

Nobody can deny the awesomeness of the magnet train that runs between the airport and the city in Shanghai. It was expensive, but I ended up riding it four times... It's always fun to watch grown men get excited and take pictures of the speed gauge. (I'm too mature to take a picture of the speed gauge myself. As you can see above.)

Shanghai also has older neighbourhoods from colonial and dynasty times, but I didn't spend all that much time there. I took a few pictures, but I was more interested in the skyscrapers.

Like this one. This is the Jin Mao Tower, the third tallest in the skyline photo higher up. It has a hotel at the top and you can see down the 50-storey atrium from the skydeck.

Gee, I wonder where this is. I think I spent about a quarter of my time in Beijing trying to find a way to get to Badaling, the touristy part of the wall seen here, without going on a tour. They're notoriously full of side-trips to less-exciting destinations where they try to scam you. I ended up finding some British people to share a cab with, and splitting it three ways, I spent $13. With no side trips! I was quite proud.

At the Wall, I again got tricked into climbing a mountain for the sake of being a tourist. I never intend to leave somewhere with aching calf muscles, but it always seems to happen.

The entrance to the little-bit creepy Forbidden City, here I am in the middle of the ultra-creepy central Square. Lots of soldiers and even more video cameras.

No comment!

Beijing has a lot of sights, and here's another one. The Temple of Heaven. All the touristy places were so sterile and depressing, as you can probably see in my face here, and overall a lot worse than Shanghai in general.

Ahhh. The Beijing Zoo. What a sweet way to spend my last day in Beijing, I thought.

Grandparents and adults outnumbering children about six-to-one? Check!

Animals in barren cages and crumbling buildings? Check!

(The brick-and-mortar complex of the prized Pandas was nicer than the other animals' buildings.... although to be fair, there was a brand-new aquarium where they'll likely direct CNN cameras next summer. Just watch.)

Oh well, if you can't say anything nice, right.

I wish Beijing the best of luck at their Olympics. They'll need it.

----------------------------
If anybody has an idea of where to travel next in proximity, give me some ideas. I was thinking Singapore or Hong Kong, because I like big cities, but after China, I'm not all that interested in half-Chinese Hong Kong.

I have five days off in mid-February, so I'll have to think quick or not think at all.

Christmas isn't so bad... And this kid is really funny.

2007-12-25T03:30:00.000-08:00

I hope I don't get really sick before next week. I'm going to get sick in China anyway, because EVERYONE gets sick in China in the winter.

2007-12-21T20:31:00.000-08:00

Oh, and Obama beats McCain. 12/22/2007. I called it.

Have you ever played the best game ever?

2007-12-21T02:27:00.000-08:00

Go around the room and each person gets to ask the next person a question.

The answer to every question is "SAUSAGES."

You ask a question, any question, and the next person has to answer without laughing.... If they don't laugh when they answer, they're still in the game and they ask the next person a question. If they laugh, they're out!

The possibilities are endless.

What do you put in your cereal?
Sausages.
What do you use to wash your face?
Sausages.
What does your mother look like?
Sausages.

Imagine how dirty this could get! I can't wait to play this with the kindergarten class.

Election so exciting. I feel so smrat.

2007-12-19T09:11:00.000-08:00

A year ago when Obama and Huckabee entered the race, I called it that they were the most attractive candidates on either side. I thought they'd be vice-presidents though. Not this.

It's so exciting reading the headlines every day. It's like the good stretches of West Wing episodes. Yay. Yay. Yay. Until the Wire and Lost come back, this is the best soap opera around.

P.S. Lee Myung Bak is the new prime minister here... He's anti-North Korea, so there might be some more bomb testings soon. So much drama!

So Happy Today

2007-12-18T04:01:00.001-08:00

With the slightest of efforts, I purchased a $10 cable to hook my computer to the TV, and POOF LIKE THAT VOILA, I've got a 21" screen for all my (legally, I swear) video files on the computer!!!

Yay. Yay. Yaya Yay. Yay. Yay. Yayayaya. I'm so happy right now.

I don't know what to watch though. So I wrote this.

I'm related to this guy.

2007-12-17T03:23:00.000-08:00

He lived until 116 near Chernobyl. Can you imagine what he saw since 1891? He could have bullied Stalin at the public pool. What a gangster.

So I'm shoppin' at E-Mart and...

2007-12-17T01:36:00.000-08:00

A kid no older than kindergarten comes up to me with an ice cream cone in his hand and says, "You speak English?"

I look down at him and nod, kind of shocked.

"Me, too," he says, and walks away.

I finally figured out that girl from "Juno" is....

2007-12-15T02:15:00.000-08:00

Jim Lahey's daughter on Trailer Park Boys... It was quite a few years ago. She was his super cute daughter that wanted to hang out with Ricky and Julian.

I want to see this movie now.

Not my kid

2007-12-06T05:30:00.001-08:00

I'm #4

2007-12-03T16:30:00.000-08:00

This is what a really smart second grader wrote about me. I'm kind of proud:

"Our grammar teacher is Mr. K. His nickname is Mr. Cucumber Park. My class thinks that his nickname is funny, and so do I. Mr. K is not like other teachers, he doesn't seem like a teacher, and he's very funny. We like Mr. K because he makes our learning fun. Sometimes he raises his voice and gets a tweeny bit mad (He's scary!), but we don't care. I think Mr. K is the 4th best teacher I've ever had."

And she's in Grade 2, so she must have had at least five or six teachers by now.

The best pop song since "I want it that way."

2007-12-03T04:57:00.000-08:00

I'm a little obsessed, I know, because I've been pushing this song on people for a few days already.

They call this the National Anthem here now, it's that big.... If you like this Korean pop, I can post a few more links to the stuff you hear every day here. Some of it's really fun.

More than you wanted to know: The musician they're making fun of in the beginning is Park Jin Young, a sensation in the mid-90's who now produces nearly all the Korean stars I've heard of... Here's what seems to be his biggest song -- 10 years old, but I still hear it all the time. (It's good, too.)

Hip Hop Charts

2007-11-30T05:01:00.000-08:00

This is a special kind of brilliant. Hip hop, represented in charts.

My favorites:

Frickers, Christmas is here.

2007-11-28T16:42:00.000-08:00

It's totally Christmas time. People are calling in sick like crazy and the kids are starting to sing Christmas carols really, really poorly.

It'll be funny for about 2, 3, more days, but not on the 24th of December -- which I'll be working, by the way.

And TIM hasn't gotten sick yet, because when he feels it coming, he follows his mother's advice.... Drink orange juice! Go to bed!

A kid wrote in his book yesterday that the flood "frickered" everything up. What a good word.

-----------
* Did I mention that I'm in a super good mood.

Me in 100 words.

2007-11-25T21:22:00.000-08:00

Please spell check this bio of me from the school's website... I guess one of the bosses didn't like the profiles we wrote for ourselves, so they asked us to write a pseudo-resume in order to cull the best quotes.

Here's what they came up for for me:

Having trouble with my weight... Need more exercise

2007-11-22T04:23:00.001-08:00

Thanks to Uncle Mike and Gord for pictures. I like.

Vacationing in Bowmanville

2007-11-19T04:27:00.000-08:00

I was looking at hotels online and decided to look into a vacation in Bowmanville, Ontario. Unfortunately, there's only one hotel advertised on expedia.ca, and it seems a little pricey.

$73.33 for a 1-and-a-half star hotel?

I'm looking at 3-stars in Beijing for half that price. What's the deal?

Bowmanville HOJO's luxurious looking facade.

On the other hand, who wants to see the Great Wall or Tiananemen Square when you can see...

NEARBY POINTS OF INTEREST:

Downtown Bowmanville - 1 km (0.5 mi)
Lake Ontario - 1.5 km (1 mi)
Bowmanville Zoological Park - 5 km (3 mi)
Jungle Cat World - 16 km (10 mi)
Mosport International Raceway - 20 km (12.5 mi)
Cullen Gardens - 29 km (18 mi)

You can even fly through the following airports...

Toronto Buttonville Airport (YKZ): Approximate driving time to the Howard Johnson Bowmanville is 46 minutes and distance is 69 km (43 mi).

Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ): Approximate driving time is one hour, 11 minutes and distance is 85 km (53 mi).

Bowmanville HOJO's luxurious looking hotel.

All I want for Christmas is a

2007-11-17T20:29:00.000-08:00

copy of the fourth season of the Wire on DVD... Thanks, mom.

Internet goes from 0 to 1

2007-11-17T06:03:00.000-08:00

Finally, I can check my e-mail without going to work or sitting outside.

Here's some pictures of my apartment. I know you probably don't care, unless you're my mom.

Hi Mom.

It's pretty big. I have a dance floor in the middle. I dance to Talk Talk songs. Talk Talk made good music. The 1980's were awesome.

So far, I have TV and phone still hooked up from the last person in the apartment. Unless I screw it up somehow, it's cheap enough to keep both.

Oh, and the kitchen and laundry stuff are hidden behind that steam glass window. I don't have a view this year, unless a view of another apartment building counts as a view, and then I have a view.

Here's the ultra cramped kitchen and laundry area. I can slide the doors right to make food and left to do the laundry. The double steam glass windows from the outside and then in the room seem to be better insulation than I originally guessed. We'll see though.

Anyways. That's my apartment. It's probably nicer than last year, except for the lack of a view. But now I can watch the Discovery Channel at night, Larry Kudlow in the morning, and various Korean dramas in between.

Still no internet

2007-11-10T21:04:00.000-08:00

So I moved into a nicer apartment, but the internet doesn't work.... Boo.

Oh, I have a phone number now, so if you want to call me, send an e-mail for it.

Gord sent me a picture. Thanks Gord.

2007-11-05T16:24:00.000-08:00

Korean World Series. My team lost.

2007-10-29T22:53:00.000-07:00

In the background, if you look close, it says Miracle Doosan, although I'm not so sure it was a Miracle that the Doosan Bears went to the Korean World Series. They were on top of the standings all year and finished second.

Anyways. They stunk. They were leading the series 2-1, then lost 3 games in a row to lose it all. I saw the fifth game, their second straight loss, and I even resisted the urge to bandwagon and sit at the other side of the stadium. I'm loyal and I love losers... and the stadium was completely packed anyway.

Julie/Stella/Soo-In

2007-10-26T05:57:00.000-07:00

I got my camera working for a couple pictures before the battery died.

This is Julie from my old school -- the only familiar face I saw at the new school. She left our school almost a year ago in Seoul and somehow only showed up a few months ago at the new Bundang school.

I asked her and she doesn't have a clue where she was in between.

At the old school, she was Julie. Now she's Stella, and I call her by her Korean name Chung-Soo-In, because I like it.

I'm hoping my camera works for a few more pictures tomorrow. I'm hopefully going into the city again. Yipee.

Only 50 weeks to go

2007-10-24T21:26:00.000-07:00

Celebrate. Good Times. Come on.

Oh, boy. The fact that this even crossed my mind is bad, bad, bad. I need to find a way to keep busier at work right now.

From an old student at the other school

2007-10-23T18:02:00.000-07:00

"In poly school when another teacher is bad every student say .." Tim teacher was not like that...!"

Haha. I was so easy.

Bad time to check e-mail

2007-10-22T20:20:00.000-07:00

I don't have internet in my room, so I only check my e-mail during worktime... which is when 95% of the people I know are sleeping.

I hate looking at an empty e-mail box. I have to stop checking.

Also. Posting on here is really boring when people don't respond once in a while. I hope I can keep it up until I actually do something interesting, but it's going to be tough.

I might take ONE real picture of myself this weekend though... I think my camera has enough juice to take ONE real picture.

It's my Birthday

2007-10-18T17:21:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday to me.

Last year, my birthday turned out to be just about the worst day I had at work.

Maybe this one will be better. Maybe I'll be picked as the next Yankee coach.

E-Mart

2007-10-16T18:51:00.000-07:00

Trying to check in here once in a while, but I still won't have internet for another week or so until I'm formalized as an alien or something.

Getting into work a little bit, but it's still embarassing how little I'm doing each day. I'm kind of HOPING to be busier soon, because I don't really enjoy looking lazy all day.

Oh well, can't really complain about much right now. I found an e-mart really close to my apartment. I'm right on the border of a slum, so if you walk one way it's ugly and the other way it's e-mart and something resembling luxury... I'm also right near a creek, which is nice.

OUT!

Internet not yet

2007-10-12T18:37:00.001-07:00

I'm typing this from the stoop of the apartment building next door. I didn't realize this before, but in Korea, to get an internet hookup in your room, you need to be registered as an alien... which takes about a week after you get here. I guess that's why I was internetless last year, too, but they never told me then.

Oh well, I'll keep coming here once or twice a day, and I can always go online at work if I want someone looking over my shoulder. Hopefully soon I'll have internet and a phone in my room, too, because I'd like people to actually be able to call me this time around. I seem to be a lot lonelier.

Oh, man, why'd I come back here again?

2007-10-11T14:50:00.001-07:00

So I'm back in Seoul, but further out in the suburbs this time.

I've only seen my apartment so far and haven't met the teachers. The apartment's a little disturbing because they didn't give me an air conditioner, which I'll hopefully get soon.

Oh well. Hopefully the teachers will be nice and the job won't be too much different from last time.

** That's a stock picture, not mine. I actually think I forgot my battery charger for the camera, so there might not be any originals on here at all. Oops.

It took three weeks to bother to write this, but...

2007-07-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

I won't be writing anything here for a while. Anybody got a job for me?

And oh yeah, go to my brother's website. It's like this one, except he actually leaves his apartment.

TWO DAYS LEFT (Yeah, I'm counting days now)

2007-06-29T18:55:00.000-07:00

Juliet says Goodbye. She still says Christine is her favorite teacher, but I'll forgive her.

Now that I'm done at the school, I'm posting pictures of all my favorite kids.

Here you go...

This is Juliet and Brian, the consumate Ladies Man. He chose well.

Yoonseo loved Andy and wanted to marry him.

Andy was scared of her.

Kelly was one of two students I saw every day for the entire year.

Karren.

I took more pictures of Emily than anybody else. Cute, cute, cute.

Emily liked to headbutt people.

Annie.

Jessica didn't know how to stop smiling.

John, probably the most photographed of the boys.

He was the other student with us every day for the whole year.

John liked to kiss people. What a stud.

JoAnn, probably the most gifted kid we had. I used to keep her busy by letting her do three assignments while the other kids were finishing one.

Her brother Jonathan was probably the most clever we had. He came up with a story about how the commas in contractions (can't, won't) were ghosts for the dead letters they replaced. He was in pre-school at the time and I almost flipped out.

JoAnn and him had some good blood.

Judy and Sarah. Judy was the most grown up kid we had. She had mini-breakdowns when she thought she'd forgotten her homework.

Sarah was the biggest class clown. She came from Arizona where people called her "Wobbles" or something and she really knew how to get under a teacher's skin with personal questions. Very clever kid.

Also grade three girls. They stuck together to protect themselves from the boys. They actually outnumbered the boys though, so they were often on offensive.

Grade one, cutest class ever. Yoojin (second) used to write me secret letters and I carried her bags to the bus when it was time to go home.

Christie, grade six. She wouldn't let anyone take pictures of her unless she had veto privileges, so I guess she liked this one.

That's it. I'll never ever ever ever see (most of) them again.

I guess I'll miss some of them, but not ALL OF THEM. Hehe, and I probably won't miss being at the school 10 hours a day either. Yuck.

Two more days to kill and I can finally walk on grass again. WOOOOHOOOOO.

Books

2007-06-26T08:39:00.001-07:00

I'm bored of sifting through pictures and burning them on cds. Thanks to Darryl for giving me something to do.

1. One book that changed your life

I didn't think these questions would be so tough. None, I guess. I've gotten more inspiration while cutting my grandmother's lawn than I have reading any book in memory.

Now that I think about it, I kind of miss cutting lawn. That's something to look forward to next week.

Are there any books in the canon about cutting lawn?

2. One book that you’ve read more than once

Aside from books I read for school, the only multiple-read was Blood Meridian. I usually don't re-read because I get it the first time or it wasn't worth the time and effort again. With Blood Meridian, I wasn't sure why it was so good until the second or third read, but I knew I liked it. I guess it's also a bit of a literary jerkfest -- a literary jerkfest I appreciated for once.

3. One book you want on a desert island

No way. Having any book would be so useless (not to mention ironic) that I'd throw it in the ocean. And wouldn't you end up using it as toilet paper anyway?

I'd prefer an issue of Club.

4. One book that made you laugh

Confederacy of Dunces -- but only the first 100 pages or so, which I read while at the factory. I've given five or six copies of this book as gifts and I don't even remember the ending.

The whole appeal of the book is in the author's story (he wrote it and then shot himself, probably because it captured how pathetic he was), and in the main character's ahead-of-his-time personality. He's essentially an eccentric heavy-headed blogger and I know way too many people like him, including large portions of myself.

5. One book that made you cry

I don't know if I cried, and I wouldn't admit it if I had, but the saddest story I've ever read was a dollar-store marvel called The Theory of War, by Joan Brady.

It's the mostly-true story of a white child slave after the Civil War, and there are parts where he runs away from his captors to simply find a creek and play -- not to really run away of course, because he's too young and doesn't have a clue how to do it.

Now that I think about it, I also liked Roots. Slave stories are awesome, especially if they're mostly-true.

6. One book you wish you had written

Easy. The Da Vinci Code. That guy made like a million dollars.

I'd say Harry Potter, because that British girl made a lot more cash than Dan Brown, but the first 50 pages I read of Harry Potter were childish trashcrap, whereas The Da Vinci Code was one of the best books I've ever read -- especially impressive when I was reading it to see how bad it was, like my friends said. What idiots.

The people who say the Da Vinci Code is bad writing are as crazy as the people that say Harry Potter is good.

Also, I wish I'd written the four best books by Arthur Hailey. He was a better bad writer than Dan Brown.

7. One book you wish had never been written

I'm changing this to screenplay.

Waiting...

I cried when I heard there was a movie about a day at a restauraunt and I cried even more when I realized it was almost as cultworthy as Office Space. I always thought I was the one to write a book about the Fifth Wheel, but these jerks did it before me, did it low budget, and did it well enough that anyone who ever writes another book or screenplay about a restauraunt like the Fifth Wheel will be called a hack.

8. One book you're currently reading

I just finished skimming The English Patient to see if it was as lame as I imagined. It was.

Books with constant reference to classic literature are lame. Sorry to every Canadian and British writer in existence. You're lame. Think up your own s***. There are still new ideas out there. Find them.

I'm also in the middle of at least a half dozen books, including Brideshead Revisited, Away (Joan Urquhart), Middlemarch, Darryl's book (Sorry Darryl, I can't finish it)...

God, we could go back years here. I guess I'm technically in the middle of War and Peace, Don Quixote, de Tocqueville, not to mention at least twenty textbooks from UofT and five to ten from Western.

9. One book you've been meaning to read

The Dos Passos U.S.A. Trilogy. I've never seen proof that it exists in a store, and we're talking about years as a troll in the shops. I'll probably break down and order it soon.

10. Six people to tag (to do this themselves)

I don't know six people with websites. Sorry, continuum.

(Updated) Cutest Kid Ever

2007-06-15T23:19:00.000-07:00

"Juliet, who's your favorite teacher?"
"Christine."
"Christine? Why is she your favorite?"
"Ummmmm. She's very smart."
"And Tim Teacher isn't smart?"
She nods her head in agreement.

TWO HOURS LATER, AFTER FAVORING JULIET ALL DAY:
"Juliet, who's your favorite teacher?"
"Christine."

The best song composed since October, 1982

2007-06-13T06:58:00.000-07:00

Poor quality video, but here's further proof that "Smells like Teen Spirit" is the greatest song of my lifetime, if not yours.*

This sounds too good, even by a freshman band, and there's little doubt in this mind that more legitimate orchestras will be playing this in a hundred years, if we're still alive, along with more obvious fare like "Bittersweet Symphony" and "Wonderwall," two of the other great songs of the 90's.

Anyways. Wanted to post this because it's fun, and it backs up the best explanation of Nirvana I've ever heard, which is "lullabies played through foot pedals."

----
*If you were born previous to 1972, "What's going on" is the best song of your lifetime.

ChanX is gone. He treated me like a lady /// Three Weeks Left

2007-06-11T05:22:00.000-07:00

We went to a fancy restauraunt.

We rode the subway.

We went to numerous baseball games.

Only three weeks left, so it's starting to feel like a holiday again. All I have to do is go shopping, see a bunch of crap I want to see again or haven't seen yet, and then go home.

Don't ask me questions about what I'm doing next. Don't.

ChanX is here. We worshipped Ben Johnson together.

2007-06-03T07:08:00.000-07:00

I've been sightseeing, but not taking too many pictures. Here's two.

The notorious Ladies Man and I went to a baseball game... The game was played between two Seoul teams who play out of the same stadium. They each had their own side of the stadium, so it made it extremely easy to bandwagon. We switched sides whenever we wanted to feel like winners.

The baseball stadium was right beside the Seoul Olympic Stadium, now renamed BEN JOHNSON MEMORIAL PARK.

(* now re-named by me)

This is me holding back the tears, realizing that the great Ben Johnson had once walked these very concrete steps.

-----------

P.S. ChanX wants you to know that "JOTT KAWH" in Korean means "Kick Penis!" Apparently, it is the equivalent of saying "F-word Off."

PHOTOODUMPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!111TWO

2007-05-27T05:47:00.000-07:00

This is a fun way to kill time on Sunday when you're done praying... The last time I did this is here.

Back in my streetball days.

Ko-pa-ji-mah!!!

(Literal translation: Nose. Dig. Don't do.)

Chillin' in Walden's shack, pondering the virtue of unemployment.

That's a frog scarf.

Check the tan. This picture reminds me of the good ol' days at J-school posting more stupid crap on the class website than anyone else.

If there's ever a war, be secure in knowing that I can take three Korean kindergarteners at once.

Victory.

Never, ever, ever trust foreigners.

Visiting friends up north

2007-05-15T04:08:00.000-07:00

That's two and a half million little tiles of Stalinist glory. Click to look closer and you can probably see it. Very, very beautiful.

However, that's the only propaganda photo we were allowed to take. You aren't allowed to take pictures of real North Korean people and there were certainly no souvenirs with anything to do with the Kims or the North Korean government in general.

Where I went is a mountain range on the eastern coast of Korea just past the DMZ. It's been a tourist resort since 1997 or 1998 when the CEO of Hyundai met with Kim Jong-Il and made a goodwill deal (which hemmoraghes Hyundai money each year, by the way).

This is the only place South Koreans can go in North Korea. I've heard other nationalities can tour Pyongchang and elsewhere on very guided tours, but you have to enter through China or Russia.

Anyways, it was fun to say I've been there, even if the passport stamp doesn't really say much and I've been almost nauseous from the horrible commute there and back, not to mention the exhaustion of climbing for a few hours a day downwind of China's fantastic industrial pollution. Yum, yum, sand and sulphur and silicon in my mouth for the past two months.

AND THAT'S TOO MUCH TALK! Here are some pictures.

As you might have noticed, there are a lot of rocks. Sadly, the most exceptional rock mountain, which looked like a cartoon drawing of a mountain, was in the DMZ itself, where we couldn't take pictures. (Little North Korean soldiers line the road and customs office with red flags. They signal to the others if anyone takes a picture and probably confiscate the camera... Some pretend-to-be-tough English teachers on the trip kept insisting they would take pictures anyway, but I didn't see any heroes actually try it.)

What you can't see, because I don't take very good pictures, is that a few of these mountains are very very high, which makes climbing them....

.... a little bit scary for Tim.

This is probably the worst picture ever taken on my camera. Let's just say that the photographer probably skipped Mrs. Pryjma's ninth grade lecture on photo composition. Yikes.

I like this picture much better. This is at the top of the tallest mountain we climbed, and you might wonder if it was windy at the top. It was. And scary.

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I already mentioned not being allowed to take pictures on the trip through the DMZ, which was too too too too too bad. That was probably the best part of the whole trip.

I'm thinking about making a mspaint picture of the DMZ from my recollections, to be posted later...

I NEED GAMES TO PLAY IN GYM!!!

2007-05-07T19:25:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I didn't ask for input on this before, but I'm having a hell of a time coming up with good gym games.

We only have a gym the size of a small classroom with soft floors, and since THE MASSACRE,* we've been avoiding running games that will get the kids sent to the hospital.

Does anyone have ideas? Games I already play are...

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* The massacre was the time a student went headfirst into the corner of a wall and opened up her head above her eye -- you know, the spot where wrestlers cut themselves because A LOT OF BLOOD COMES OUT. Needless to say, it was a mess, and I still have the bloodied pants to prove it.

A famous Bowmanvillian

2007-05-06T03:00:00.000-07:00

People from my high school era are writing books and making records, but they got beat to the spotlight by this guy... a convicted pedophile at 24.

Yikes.
This is the best account I've found on the net so far.

If anybody from home is reading this, please keep me in the loop with details!

2 months to go

2007-04-28T20:34:00.000-07:00

I have a few things to look forward to in the next two months, so it shouldn't be too painful.

If you haven't seen this. Smells like Teen Spirit.

2007-04-20T05:07:00.000-07:00

I'd like some discussion on this one, remaining readers. Perhaps the most popular song written since I was born, performed very poorly.

Update on the last gnarly hair post

2007-04-17T05:02:00.000-07:00

Obviously, that hilarious interview was from American Gladiators, but I didn't realize until today that it was also considered the greatest moment in the shows history. Here's the part of a previous show leading up to it, where Malibu takes "the most excellent hit" of his life. It's pretty good.

If I were 20 years older during the 80's, I like to think I'd be this guy...

2007-04-13T04:37:00.000-07:00

Motion capture headbutt

2007-04-11T06:25:00.000-07:00

This makes me happy

2007-04-06T20:56:00.000-07:00

All five BILL BRASKY sketches from SNL.

Three months to go

2007-03-28T20:37:00.001-07:00

I think the next two months are going to be boring. At least the weather is getting better.

That's it.

XO March Madness

2007-03-25T05:59:00.000-07:00

This is what I see when I open the door of the teacher's room

2007-03-24T05:59:00.001-07:00

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Can't think of a better title)

2007-03-18T09:02:00.000-07:00

I was browsing the guest speakers list for the OAC writing class at my old high school. The first result was more obvious, a former classmate of mine who now writes werewolf stories (hence, the joke in the last picture post), but this one, I don't know what to say.

It seems Bowmanville is home to a very respectable writer of "romance novels for full-figured women."

You'd better believe I'm buying "Love by the Pound" as soon as I'm back
in town.

A Boring Day in Pictures

2007-03-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

If I ever find a career writing werewolf books, the left side of this picture is going on the dust jacket.

Also, I finally spent the 7,000won to go to the observation deck at the top of this building, where I saw...

The river at night, and...

Where all the people in Seoul live.

I spent a healthy amount of time trying to count the number of buildings in this community, which is pretty much a field of 15-storey apartments.

The cars weren't very high rent, so the apartments must be fairly small. I'm guessing about 300 people per building, and there are about 80 to 100 buildings, so this would put my population estimate for this community at just under 30,000 people.

Now that I think about it, there has to be more people living in these buildings than in Bowmanville, so maybe the number is closer to 50,000.

At least someone misses me.

2007-03-10T18:40:00.000-08:00

I was sitting in the taco bell on yonge & charles today and "Down on
the corner" came on.

It was definitely a tim moment.

-- Anonymous

I spent ten minutes typing the fifty states of America and missed three

2007-03-05T07:00:00.000-08:00

See if you can type the type the name of all 50 states in 10 minutes.

I got about 30 in the first two minutes and then struggled to picture the states where basketball and hockey teams come from to fill in the blanks.

I got 47 out of 50, and I won't tell you which ones I missed, because then you'll have a head start on the hard ones.

White People, Bad, Bad.

2007-03-03T04:52:00.000-08:00

I almost committed a crime today. I was buying two weights at the store and through a poor understanding of Korean managed to pay the price of one weight for a set of two. Poor girl at the counter. I didn't even realize what I was doing until I was half way home.

She'll probably be beheaded or sold as a wife to a rural farmer.

I did help an old lady carry water jugs though. For the day, I hope my white person goodwill rating is at least even.

Four months to go

2007-02-27T16:03:00.000-08:00

Wow, this is awkward. I'm so worried about going home and tracking another job that I'm starting to enjoy being here. If it weren't for the 10 hours a day that I'm at work, I'd probably consider coming back. Too bad Koreans work so damn much.

That's about all I have to say. See you in four months, give or take a few days.

-- Tim

Look, a white person! Let's go sit near him.

2007-02-24T19:52:00.000-08:00

I'm telling you, this is Las Vegas (TIM, TOKYO, FEBRUARY 2007)

2007-02-23T07:05:00.000-08:00

Well, I was immediately dissapointed when the toilets at the Tokyo airport wouldn't answer my questions, but the trip wasn't half bad, as rushed as it was.

Gord and I somehow managed to visit about seven or eight of the 10 worthwhile areas in the downtown core. That said, anything I say about Japan or the Japanese below is completely focused on the over-crowded but still somehow spacious downtown area of Tokyo. (We visited Tokyo, yes, but really we just saw the Manhattan part of it, where 12 million of the larger 32 million live.)

MY 12 READERS, PLEASE ENJOY!!!!

I'm telling you man, Las Vegas. It turns out my hotel was the biggest in Tokyo, consisting of multiple buildings with escalators and people movers going everywhere... Get it? Like Las Vegas.

This is Tim almost crying. It only rained for a few minutes on two occassions, but still. I'm Canadian, so I braved it without a coat to save on weight when it wasn't raining. And yes, people looked at me like I was white or something.

(SIDE NOTE: White people don't give each other the same courtesies in Tokyo as in Seoul. When us brothers come across each other in Korea, we usually nod and smile. In Tokyo, all the white people just looked at me like I was white or something... I suppose they're a higher breed of white people than the slackers here in Seoul.)

Does this building look like a robot or do I have stereotypical ideas about what Tokyo is all about?

Come on, those are eyes!

The most expensive bowl of Mr. Noodles I've ever had.

And Holy Jesus is Tokyo expensive. Seoul is expensive, but Jesus Jesus Jesus. We were charged extra for everything in the hotel from the TV to the swimming pool, and just about everything else, from Coca Cola to souvenirs, seemed to be at least 20%-30% worse than Korea.

(Or, I can't calculate the exchange in my head properly. We report, you decide.)

Simon (the only person reading this who cares about food), I'm going on the record:

Japanese people make better food than Koreans, thus, Japanese people are better than Korean people. I'm siding with the Japanese in the next war.

I'm not sure if it's the more money thing or the fact that nothing is spicy in Japan, which is super amazing spectacular, but it's true. The only meal I had this past weekend that disgusted me had the "Chinese" label, much the same as in Vietnam, so I can't wait to get home to Canada and eat some real Chinese food.

Also, just because a piece of uncooked shrimp sushi costs $4 doesn't mean that it's better than the $2 piece of cooked shrimp sushi. I learned this the hard and expensive way. And as a general rule, I always avoid a piece of sushi that looks like raw beef (tuna?) and I always, always, always avoid eating fish eggs that are bigger than that dotted ice cream stuff. Yucky.

So they don't have talking toilets at the airport, and worse, the most impressive technological invention I encountered was the space under restaurant seats for your Canadian winter coats and Anime museum souvenirs. Gord and I discussed this for at least three or four minutes. We're very simple folk from Canada, you see. We're new to all these bells and whistles.

No, I take all that dissapointed toilet stuff back! At some food courts, you order food by paying for your item at a vending machine!

Have you ever pumped $10 into a vending machine? It's fun.

Unfortunately, you only get a ticket for the food court. It's not really like the movies, but those sneaky Japanese had me going for a second.

Look closely. I did.

Don't you think the biggest city in the world could do better for the male lead in Chicago than the old guy from the Backstreet Boys? Yucky.

So it isn't New York, where I've never been, but the skyscrapers are wholesale here, too. Compared with Seoul, the buildings were much larger and actually seemed to have some architectural diversity. Said again, they weren't skinny towers in dying shades of grey tinged with neon at night. This appears to be an area lined with older skyscrapers from the booming 1980's, though I'm not an expert, not even an amateur, so you should have stopped reading after the words "architectural diversity" in the first place.

Nonetheless, Tokyo is a much nicer city than Seoul. Much, much, much nicer in almost every way imaginable. It's cleaner, they actually have manners, there aren't as many drunken old dudes, they have a lot of style, their buildings are more beautiful, their women are more beautiful, their subways are cooler (and cleaner), their food is better, they have Wendy's, they have a lot more parks...

Gord wouldn't shut up about this, and I wasn't stopping him. And he's Korean.
Oh, and look closely again to see one of the beautiful Western-Civ entrances to Tokyo station.

Biggest city in the world, huh. Wouldn't you expect to see a few cars? I'm aware that we were there for a long weekend holiday, but still, the subways were topped to the rim, so what gives? Gord and I spent a lot of time jaywalking just so we could laugh about it later, and this is an eight-lane road.

OH YEAH, I almost forgot. They drive on the other side of the road here. This also made me giddy for about half the bus trip into the city from the airport. I've never been in one of these wonky British weirdo cities... (Wait, British, what did I just say?)

Ahh, the magical fairyland of the Imperial Palace, where you can look, but not touch. Everything is closed except for two days of the year, and no, we weren't there for either of them. Anyways. The grounds were nice and all the men guarding the enormous gates looked like they might be fun to talk to, if only we spoke the same language.

(SIDE NOTE: This is pure Tim ignorance. Everyone related to tourism in Japan spoke very passable English. This is just another area where Tokyo is superior to Korea. There were bag carriers that answered our questions almost fluently.)

Hey look, another reason Tokyo is better than your city. All the major rail lines are actually rail lines, not ugly subways. Everywhere we went, the trip was fun because you could always look at something other than the Japanese people staring at you.

This is me turning up my nose at the pompousity of Americans. Who else would build a city like Las Vegas with enormous useless saws like this for the amusement of simple folk, drinking their Coke, eating their Doritos and watching their Fox News. I mean, seriously, people are starving in rural India and African children have metre-long Guinea worms coursing through them and trying to escape, and here are the Americans and their Las Vegas monstrosities that probably have some metaphorical significance to about three bureaucratic city planners and seven art school lackeys...

Wait, Tokyo, What?

Oh crap, I forgot I was talking about Tokyo. You see, it's just that it all looks the same as Las Vegas over here. Get it? Forget what I just said.

If you think I'm being an idiot with the Las Vegas comparisons, observe the above picture.

#1 The Statue of Liberty, about the same size as the recreation in Las Vegas.

#2 Tokyo's Rainbow Bridge, which is clearly a blue miniature version of a certain suspension bridge from San Francisco.

#3 In the background, Tokyo Tower, which slightly resembles another famous tower that has a recreation of its own in Las Vegas.

Hmm, I wonder where Tim gets this crap.

SHIBUYA!!!!

This is the Tokyo of the movies. Well, the more modern movies, not that Tom Cruise one.

Above is the busiest intersection in the world, where every two and a half minutes there are people from sidewalks on four converging streets and a major train station walking in any direction they please.

Beyond these lights are old neighbourhoods filled with Love Hotels, where cheaters and creeps and couples avoiding their parents go to spend a few hours... Observe the rates...

(Hehe, it's named after my cousin Claire. Hehe.)

4,720 Yen = $45 Canadian

That's actually kind of reasonable, now that I think about it.

And no, I'm not posting one of the funny pictures of Gord and I in front of any seedy establishments. Jokes about such things will be censored, too. You jerks.

Apparently, the man behind the counter inside these places can't even see you. They can't tell if you're going in with your wife, your girlfriend, your dog, your eight-year-old niece...

As the saying goes: What happens in Vegas, stays in... OK, I'll stop.

Now for some stuff I was dissapointed to see so little of. Campy crap. As I said before, the English in Tokyo is almost perfect, so there weren't any funny t-shirts to buy. And as for the good stuff I did find, I'm saving it for the people who are still talking to me in four months.

SEE YOU IN FOUR MONTHS!!!!! I CAN'T WAIT TO COME HOME!!!!!! BEING AT THE AIRPORT IS SO DEPRESSING NOW BECAUSE I WANT TO BARNSTORM THE FLIGHTS FOR TORONTO!!!!!! AHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

(How do you like that for a blog post, too. 1500 words and 18 pictures. Go Tim Go.)

Wow, how unbelievably appropriate this article is.

2007-02-22T03:35:00.000-08:00

Korean men are finding wives in Vietnam at an increasing rate, as reported by a very good newspaper.

This is so awesome. Korean men can't find women to knock around as easily as before, you know, with women actually holding degrees and jobs and junk. And of course, Vietnamese women are cool with a little bit of old pathetic dude in order to live in Seoul, with all the Blade Runner visuals and stuff.

My favourite story is the Vietnamese girl who applied for a Korean husband straight out of high school. How's that for immediate financial stability! I wish Canada had some kind of program where an 18-year-old could have a house and a car and an apartment in a major city within five months of high school. Jesus, within 15 years would be nice enough.

Lame

2007-02-21T03:54:00.000-08:00

I can't post any pictures from the past weekend in Tokyo. Something about this new blogger thing is completely off. Everything is in Korean for one, and I can't seem to load any pictures.

Oh well. I'll try on the weekend if I have any good ones. I suspect they're quite boring anyway. Taking pictures in Tokyo is like taking pictures of the pictures of Tokyo you've already seen. (I think I'm ripping off a Delillo book now, so I'll stop.)

Two days until...

2007-02-15T03:13:00.000-08:00

Robotic Dogs and Jetpacks. Yay.

Also, Tim Hardaway hates gay people. You learn something new every day.

Also, also. I really, really hate stories like "Former NBA player comes out of the closet." I also hate stories like "Harvard to elect first woman President" and "First black and/or woman to run for President." I guess we're a long way from past this.

I guess I don't hate it enough to not mention it here though, so please use that against me.

Also, also, also, I'm totally psyched about this North Korean nuclear deal that Bush has finally allowed. I wrote this screed about it yesterday comparing it to Nixon in China and suggesting that Kim Jong-Il would soon be spotted at the Bellagio with Britney Spears, but I took it down for fear of looking like a complete idiot when it all falls apart around the time I leave here. Diplomacy is dead when I leave the peninsula.

My Kindergarten class is smarter than yours

2007-02-11T19:45:00.001-08:00

With the exception of 2 or 3 students, everyone in class understands these words.

---------------------------------------
Kindergarten Vocabulary List
For Quiz on Friday, February 16, 2007

Words:

1. delighted
2. goldfinch
3. thoughts
4. composition
5. narrative
6. covered
7. journey
8. pleasant
9. tripped
10. nature
11. conversation
12. batteries
13. apology
14. Spielberg
15. Einstein

Oh yeah, they picked these words themselves, which is the reason I was impressed this time. As long as a few of them could prove they understood the concept, I let them put it on the list.

Is Tim a loser?

2007-02-09T19:50:00.000-08:00

This is a list of 235 movies.

If you've seen 85 or more, you're apparently a loser.

Let's see.

(x) Rocky Horror Picture Show
( ) Grease
( ) Pirates of the Caribbean
( ) Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest
( ) Boondock Saints
(x) Fight Club
( ) Starsky and Hutch
(x) Neverending Story
(x) Blazing Saddles
(x) Airplane
Total so far: 5

( ) The Princess Bride
(x) AnchorMan
(x) Napoleon Dynamite
( )Labyrinth
( ) Saw
( ) Saw II
( ) White Noise
( )White Oleander
(x) Anger Management
(x) 50 First Dates
( ) The Princess Diaries
( ) The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
Total so far: 9

(x) Scream
(x) Scream 2
( ) Scream 3
(x) Scary Movie
( ) Scary Movie 2
( ) Scary Movie 3
( ) Scary Movie 4
(x) American Pie
(x) American Pie 2
( ) American Wedding
( ) American Pie Band Camp
Total so far: 14

( ) Harry Potter 1
( ) Harry Potter 2
( ) Harry Potter 3
( ) Harry Potter 4
( ) Resident Evil 1
( ) Resident Evil 2
(x) The Wedding Singer
( ) Little Black Book
( ) The Village
( )Lilo & Stitch
Total so far: 15

( ) Finding Nemo
( ) Finding Neverland
(x) Signs
( ) The Grinch
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
( ) White Chicks
(x) Butterfly Effect
( ) 13 Going on 30
( ) I, Robot
( ) Robots
Total so far: 17

( ) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
( ) Universal Soldier
( ) Lemony Snicket: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
( ) Along Came Polly
(x) Deep Impact
(x) KingPin
( ) Never Been Kissed
(x) Meet The Parents
( ) Meet the Fockers
( ) Eight Crazy Nights
(x) Joe Dirt
( ) KING KONG (I didn't watch the whole new one, but I've seen the original)
Total so far: 21

( ) A Cinderella Story
(x) The Terminal
( ) The Lizzie McGuire Movie
( ) Passport to Paris
(x) Dumb & Dumber
(x) Dumber & Dumberer
( ) Final Destination
( ) Final Destination 2
( ) Final Destination 3
( ) Halloween
( ) The Ring
( ) The Ring 2
( ) Surviving X-MAS
(x) Flubber
Total so far: 25

( ) Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
( ) Practical Magic
( ) Chicago
( ) Ghost Ship
( ) From Hell
( ) Hellboy
( ) Secret Window
( ) I Am Sam
(x) The Whole Nine Yards
( ) The Whole Ten Yards
Total so far: 26

( ) The Day After Tomorrow
( ) Child's Play
( ) Seed of Chucky
( ) Bride of Chucky
(x) Ten Things I Hate About You
( ) Just Married
( ) Gothika
( ) Nightmare on Elm Street
( ) Sixteen Candles
(x) Remember the Titans
( ) Coach Carter
( ) The Grudge
( ) The Grudge 2
(x) The Mask
( ) Son Of The Mask
Total so far: 29

(x) Bad Boys
(x) Bad Boys 2
( ) Joy Ride
( ) Lucky Number Sleven
(x ) Ocean's Eleven
(x) Ocean's Twelve
(x) Bourne Identity
(x) Bourne Supremecy
( ) Lone Star
(x) Bedazzled
(x) Predator I
( ) Predator II
( ) The Fog
( ) Ice Age
( ) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
( ) Curious George
Total so far: 37

(x) Independence Day
( ) Cujo
( ) A Bronx Tale
( ) Darkness Falls
( ) Christine
(x) ET
( ) Children of the Corn
( ) My Bosses Daughter
(x) Maid in Manhattan
( ) War of the Worlds
(x) Rush Hour
(x) Rush Hour 2
Total so far: 42

( ) Best Bet
( ) How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
( ) She's All That
( ) Calendar Girls
( ) Sideways
(x) Mars Attacks
( ) Event Horizon
( ) Ever After
(x) Wizard of Oz
(x) Forrest Gump
( ) Big Trouble in Little China
(x) The Terminator
(x) The Terminator 2
(x) The Terminator 3
Total so far: 48

(x) X-Men
( ) X-2
( ) X-3
(x) Spider-Man
( ) Spider-Man 2
( ) Sky High
( ) Jeepers Creepers
( ) Jeepers Creepers 2
(x) Catch Me If You Can
(x) The Little Mermaid
( ) Freaky Friday
( ) Reign of Fire
( ) The Skulls
(x) Cruel Intentions
( ) Cruel Intentions 2
( ) The Hot Chick
( ) Shrek
(x) Shrek 2
Total so far: 54

( ) Swimfan
( ) Miracle on 34th street
(x) Old School
( ) The Notebook
( ) K-Pax
(x) Krippendorf's Tribe
( ) A Walk to Remember
( ) Ice Castles
( ) Boogeyman
(x) The 40-year-old Virgin
Total so far: 57

(x) Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring
( ) Lord of the Rings The Two Towers
( ) Lord of the Rings Return Of the King
(x) Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
(x) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
(x) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Total so far: 61

(x) Baseketball
( ) Hostel
( ) Waiting for Guffman
( ) House of 1000 Corpses
( ) Devils Rejects
( ) Elf
( ) Highlander
( ) Mothman Prophecies
(x) American History X
( ) Three
Total so Far: 63

( ) The Jacket
( ) Kung Fu Hustle
( ) Shaolin Soccer
( ) Night Watch
(x) Monsters Inc.
(x) Titanic
( ) Monty Python and the Holy Grail
( ) Shaun Of the Dead
( ) Willard
Total so far: 65

( ) High Tension
( ) Club Dread
( ) Hulk
( ) Dawn Of the Dead
(x) Hook
(x) Chronicles Of Narnia The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
( ) 28 days later
(x) Orgazmo
( ) Phantasm
(x) Waterworld
Total so far: 69

(x) Kill Bill vol 1
(x) Kill Bill vol 2
( ) Mortal Kombat
( ) Wolf Creek
(x) Kingdom of Heaven
( ) the Hills Have Eyes
( ) I Spit on Your Grave aka the Day of the Woman
( ) The Last House on the Left
( ) Re-Animator
(x) Army of Darkness
Total so far: 73

(x) Star Wars Ep. I The Phantom Menace
(x) Star Wars Ep. II Attack of the Clones
(x) Star Wars Ep. III Revenge of the Sith
(x) Star Wars Ep. IV A New Hope
(x) Star Wars Ep. V The Empire Strikes Back
(x) Star Wars Ep. VI Return of the Jedi
( ) Ewoks Caravan Of Courage
( ) Ewoks The Battle For Endor
Total so far: 79

(x) The Matrix
(x) The Matrix Reloaded
(x) The Matrix Revolutions
( ) Animatrix
( ) Evil Dead
( ) Evil Dead 2
(x) Team America: World Police
(x) Red Dragon
(x) Silence of the Lambs
(x) Hannibal
total: 86

86
You've got to be kidding. I'm a loser, plus one.

There are too many people

2007-02-07T06:01:00.000-08:00

I come here over and over. The Wikipedia population site -- always a beacon of wisdom about the world's only real problem.

Fun facts!

With 0.5% of the world's population, Canada is home to almost exactly one out of every 200 human beings.

China has one in five.

If you include East and West Pakistan (Bangladesh and Pakistan), India's population is slightly over 1.4 billion, or, about one hundred million more than China within roughly the same land area.

China's population grows at a rate of about one person every second. If you factor in the people who are dying, it still goes up about one every two seconds. You can watch the ticker right here.
(This is pretty sketchy. It's fun though.)

Among the countries with larger populations than Canada: Burma, Algeria, Columbia.

Among the countries with populations more than double that of Canada: Ethiopia, Egypt, Thailand.

Four times more people than Canada: Nigeria.

Eight times as many people as Canada: Indonesia.

Top 5:

1	People's Republic of China ^[3]	1,316,200,000
2	India	1,123,400,000
—	European Union (combined)	494,900,000
3	United States of America	301,150,000
4	Indonesia	234,050,000
5	Brazil	188,078,261

Pakistan and Bangladesh are the next two. Go India.

Was Prince as awesome as he should have been?

2007-02-05T03:35:00.000-08:00

I'm so pissed that redneck Bush-voter Peyton Manning has a championship. He's suppossed to be like Marino and only get a taste. If it weren't for the fact that I'm hearing about a Prince halftime show, I'd be a lot more pissed off right now.

Was Prince good? I've heard a lot of jokes about him being lame, but people seem to forget that Purple Rain is the best record of the 1980's. Don't even argue.

(Not quite the best movie though...)

This is what I did all weekend.

2007-02-04T00:46:00.000-08:00

Now I've seen all the movies nominated for Best Picture, except for the Clint Eastwood one, and in my brilliant opinion, THE QUEEN should win. Unless Letters from Iwo Jima is better than Platoon and Saving Private Ryan's best scenes combined, it can't possibly be better. I've watched The Queen twice, now. It's like a really good documentary.

Little Miss Sunshine is derivative and lame.

Babel is a foreign language film with Brad Pitt in it, and while it's good, the same sort of thing has been done better in Syriana and Traffic.

The Departed is entertaining and really pretty to watch, but the ending is so, so, so stupid and it's a fun-loving gangster film, and like Goodfellas before it, these movies shouldn't really be celebrated as high art, if that's what Oscars are pretending to be about. It's just a fun movie.

Oh, I also watched the Idi Amin movie, which is really scary. Obviously, Forest Whitaker is a great Amin, and he should win the Best Actor award. I can't imagine Leonardo Dicaprio or Ryan Gosling are offering up better performances. However, as one of my friends pointed out, the whole movie has you trying to feel sorry for one Scottish doctor while a quarter million Ugandans are dying. It's kind of awkward that way.

Haha. Funny. How women shower vs. How men shower.

2007-02-03T05:06:00.000-08:00

Mmm, happy days.

2007-02-02T07:09:00.000-08:00

I'm in a good mood. Finding money on the ground will do that to you. I like money so much.

Has anyone here seen Little Miss Sunshine? I'm hearing that it's probably the late contender for the Best Picture Oscar (a la Crash, Shakespeare in Love, etc), and half way through watching it, it kind of seems like boring crap.

I'm trying to download the other nominees, and somehow, they all seem like movies I might want to watch -- except for Babel, which kind of looks like crap. Ok, I guess the Clint Eastwood movie and the Queen Elizabeth movie look like movies I might want to watch.

FIVE MONTHS TO GO

2007-01-27T20:30:00.000-08:00

We were on a field trip to a Science Centre kind of thing and this is a lot of the kids after they put their faces into one of those pin things... Am I a really bad human being for suggesting that the kids do this? I did watch the other side to make sure some idiot wasn't pushing the pins back into their eyes. I knew to do that.

Well, it's the 28th of the month, so another month has past.

Nothing really good to report at this point. I'm just living for the weekends and trying to avoid the cold weather as much as I can.

See you in a half year less a month.