I hate it. I really do. I know coming from a blogger this could smack slightly of hypocrisy, but there you go. In fact, I take that back. Blogging is one thing- expressing one’s thoughts in a ramblingly long and hopefully rounded update on whatever one is writing about. Then there’s facebook- letting your friends know how you are and what you’re doing, and perhaps taking a quiz to see which type of biscuit you are. But twitter actually does take the biscuit- its Facebook status updates gone mad- egotistical nonsense about random crap that no-one should care about. On the Guardian website they’ve been summing up each artist’s Glastonbury performance “in a tweet”- 96 or whatever characters (or less). Since when did brevity become such a virtue that it locks you into a one sentence review of something?
Plans are proceeding apace- Jeju Island, Busan, paying for flights, paying for hotels, getting things and sending things, Vietnam and Thailand, and thinking about where I’ll live next year.
After being offered some cash by SOAS it looks like London will indeed be my destination after all- I can always travel in the future (and, in fact, surely will travel in the future), but a year back in the UK isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Plus SOAS is full of wonderful Japanese and Korean people.
Not sure where I’ll be living in London yet though- a nice penthouse apartment would do, but unless my suitcase gets mixed up with another suitcase full of cash at Heathrow airport, this is unlikely
New SNSD song is out- not as catchy as Gee, but a nice tune. Still, I always liked them more for their pulchritudinous qualities than for their musical talents.
Things have been quiet on the blog front recently- apologies. In fact, things have been quiet on every front really, with usual till-morning drinking on the weekends, and lessons during the week, with the occasional trip to the gym. Underlying all this is the growing list of tasks I need to complete before leaving Seoul: visa for Vietnam, flights to England, parcel back to England…
Baseball is also quiet this week with the Japanese Kouryuusen, or Inter-League, finished. To be honest I lost my way with it toward the end, due to Hanshin’s general crapness. Softbank triumphed for a second year in a row, and Hanshin came 9th. Games resume from Friday, with Hanshin facing the Baystars at Koshien.
From the weekend the baseball hots up- Korean baseball that is! Doosan take on Samsung on Saturday, then there’s a run of three Heroes-Doosan games during next week. I don’t have any lessons, and my friends here are a motley bunch of Heroes supporters, so this is the closest to a baseball rivalry that there will be for me in Korea. I’m going to try to make it to all three games if I can.
Since finishing Heisig my kanji studies have taken a backseat too- I think a rest is ok, and although I’ve started on my next project- Kanji Odyssey’s approach to learning the readings of kanji through compounds, after adding a few cards to Anki I realised my reviews per day were very quickly increasing. So I’ve stopped- I’ll take a few weeks off, then try to hit the books again. The marathon of Nihongo continues…
Expect some Korean baseball excitement on the blog next week, as well as some other stuff if I get round to it during my copious free time at work.
Brazelle has made a great start to his Hanshin career, even if we’ve been on the receiving end of some pummellings recently thanks to Mayumi’s crap management.
As I type he’s batting at 0.344, with 5 homers and 8 RBIs from 9 starts. Yesterday him and Arai both hit homers to see us squeeze past Nippon Ham 4-3.
As my time in Korea is drawing to a close I thought I’d write a long piece about Japan vs Korea as countries, cultures and places to live. That’s in the pipeline.
Two months left of my soujorn in Seoul. The clock is ticking, and I’m yet to decide what to do next year. I’ve got my place at university, but no idea of where I should live in London. I’m gonna be fairly poor, and probably living with other people. I’m gonna have lots of work to do, and little time to party. And I might have to work as well. Is all this really a good idea?
Having lived happily in financial comfort in my own apartments in Japan and Korea for three years, all this will take quite a bit of adjusting. I can help but think that maybe finding a job- a real job- is a better thing to do at this moment in time that a Masters course that, despite being fun, is of little value in furthering my CV.
Or a third option is to live my dream and just disappear round the world for 8-12 months- thats what I really wanna do, but should I spend the money I’ve saved over the last year and beyond on something like that. Is it reckless, or the pursuit of something I really do want?
Hanshin have now won four- yes four- games in a row, something that hasn’t happened for a seriously long time. Are we turning the corner? Is Mayumi coming good? On both counts its too early to say, but there is certainly cause for optimism. …continue reading>>>
