Fri Sep 5, 2003
It might be the fact that it’s finally the week-end, but I seem to have regained my peace of mind. Hell, I’m even thinking about staying in Korea another year. If I did though, I would shoot for a university position. Nothing more prestigious than being an English prof ‘ey. I’m certainly not going to let a bunch of five year olds push me around. I’ve started integrating an aggressive point scoring system into the very fibre of the classroom experience. I’m going to refrain from using any physical punishment or excessive verbalization. I have to be patient because their training (read: taming) will be a slow and agonizing process. Like dripping water erodes even the hardest rock over time so will I persist in turning these kids into respectable members of society. I must say though, given my own independent nature it’s rather tiresome to keep on hassling the kids again and again to sit nicely, don’t speak in Korean, do your homework or to eat their food and brush their teeth and go to the washroom and all that stuff. I reckon I’m going to be a crackerjack father after all this.
I didn’t hesitate to ask for a bonus at the end of the Summer session, but of course this is tantamount to a slave asking for his freedom. Anyway, to thank us for all our hard work our director took us out to dinner this evening. Big whoop. Only cold hard cash in my pocket will ease my suffering. Anyways, although I was dreading another scrape with a live octopus, we ended up going to this posh Western restaurant called “Camp”. It was fine dining indeed and I made sure I ordered the most expensive delicacies on the menu. The decor was unbelievably ostentatious and bizarre to the extreme. It consisted of brightly lit glass cabinets lining the walls. Inside these cabinets were displays of jewels, silver necklaces, diamond rings and other such shiny trinkets. I can only assume they were fake, but fancy that, eating dinner in a mock-up of a jewelery store. The waitress was a distinguished looking lady wearing classic Princess Leia flowing white robes and dripping in (fake) diamonds.
Meanwhile….back in Canada…The bank has been constantly bugging my parents for me to call them about my student loan. I recently gave them my new banking information, so I was wondering what the crisis was. I call them and can you believe it, true to the plodding bureaucracy, they wanted to tell me that “they had received my new banking information”. I made an expensive overseas call and got put on hold listening to Celine Dion for that? Bastards.
My sister is taking Creative Writing at Douglas College and apparently one of my old poems is in her curriculum! We think it is quite hilarious she gets to study her brother’s work. It’s funny that, unbeknownst to me, thousands of eager young college kids have been pondering over my poem these last five years, for it is quite nonsensical and in fact the only sonnet I’ve ever felt obliged to write. And still the legacy of “The Grammar-shark” lives on. I am highly amused and secretly quite pleased that my creation took on a life of it’s own.
By the way, Angela reckons I’m the spitting image of Ryan from Canadian Idol! Granted my hairline is receding at an alarming rate but come on Angela, it’s not that bad. Or maybe it is, oh how I shun the mirror and grind my teeth at the superficialty of the shallow society that has forced me to be concerned about such things!