My apologies for my long absence. One of my good friends from college came to visit for a week, and most of my time was spent doing what friends do best. Namely, shopping, seeing the sights, eating, and generally enjoying the many possibilities offered by Seoul night-life. For example, it is perfectly acceptable to drink outside of a convenience store for many hours. As my friend quickly realized, Korea is one of those countries that really doesn't care about a lot of things.
But I digress! I was going to show you some more things my students have drawn. Ah, such talented and sweet children...
Note that it says hitting, but clearing shows stabbing.
Well, that was just the kid who likes to blow up tomatoes. Let's see about some other kids.
Violence!
Perhaps I should explain what's going on here. The prompt for this presentation involved relationship problems. The Canadian, Steve, had just started dating the Korean, Sun-hee. Well, Steve doesn't realize that kissing in public isn't considered appropriate, so he keeps trying to kiss Sun-hee. The students were asked to give advice that would help resolve the situation...
I don't know what this is, but it has something to do with Steve shooting off guns in public and getting arrested. Stupid Steve.
Okay, so Steve is really stupid. Having grown up with someone named Steve, I am well aware of this fact. Let's see what the group came up with for advice.
Man, relationships are so easy!
The lesson to be learned here is simple. Never get relationship advice from your students.
For our next class, we talked about Tibet and China. At first, they didn't care. Then, one of the brighter students brought up China's involvement in the Korean War, and they became a seething mass of fury. Here's a propaganda poster one student made.
Mostly, he was excited that he got to draw a gun.
That brings me to something I've been wanting to talk about for awhile now. Namely, reunification. In America, we call the Koreas "South Korea" and "North Korea". Here, if you call the country South Korea, people look at you funny. It's Korea. That's it. As far as my students are concerned, there is only one Korea. Any map of Korea shows both North and South with no dividing line in between. All of my students want Korea to be unified because they believe it will make their country stronger. I'm really glad that I studied the Cold War during college because even the little bit that I know about Korean history has awed my students. Yay, knowledge!
Sometimes, like right now, I cannot sleep. And then it becomes a great opportunity to keep up with my fans. Fans is what I shall have to call people now because it seems that my blog has acquired over 1000 views. While I imagine that most of these views are poor people who accidentally found their way here through facebook, I still feel a measure of success. Somehow, the material here was interesting enough for it to be viewed more than once.
When we last saw our adventurer, she was aglow with the after-effects of a good old-fashioned K-pop concert. Since then, I have embarked on a number of adventures.
Last Saturday was the International Fireworks Festival in Seoul. I don't know if that's what it was actually called, but the name I have given it is a pretty good description of what happened. Teams from around the world gathered in Seoul to show off their fireworks. Meanwhile, mobs gathered in strategic viewing places all around Seoul. This is how I found myself in a park on an island in the middle of the Han River, eating fried chicken and drinking beer with my coworkers. I should probably mention at this point that Korea sees no problem with public drinking or drunkenness, as evidenced by the vast number of tents at this event that were selling beer for dirt cheap. Meanwhile, the sun slowly set until, at last, the festivities began. The teams from Germany, Italy, and the US were pretty standard. They were loud and they were beautiful, which is really all one asks of one's fireworks shows. But, of course, the Korean team had to show off. So from the very beginning, it was like a continuous finale, complete with geometric patterns and the name PSY written in giant flaming letters. So spectacular was the show that it left me wondering what exactly they were going to do for a finale. Silly me. They, of course, set the bridges on fire. Perhaps I exaggerate. They attached fireworks to the bridges over the Han and then set them all off at once. Was traffic rerouted, you ask? Silly Westerner! Of course it wasn't! Drive onward over the flaming bridge, brave traveler!
In the United States, we would call this a terrorist attack. In Korea, it's national pride.
Two hours later, the show was finally finished. I got up, thinking that I'd just pop on home to enjoy a nice cup of tea and a book. Again, silly Westerner! Did I mention mobs before? Mobs. The crowds leaving the island were like every disaster movie evacuation. Realizing that boarding a train immediately was impossible, I decided to wait a bit until the crowds died down. Surely, I thought optimistically, half an hour shall be enough time! How very wrong I was. There was a line to get into the subway, then there was a mob scene on the platform as hundreds of people tried to shove their way onto already crowded trains. I took a few pictures because there was nothing else to do.
I look at this and think of zombie hoards.
Good luck leaving any time within the next two hours.
The air here has the distinct flavor of kimchi.
Three hours later, I finally made it home. In summary, I can say that the fireworks were great, but if I ever see them again, it will be from a different location. Perhaps a location that isn't on an island.
I work every day of the week. Most of my coworkers have off one day out of every week, and I usually gaze longingly on their free Fridays or Wednesdays. But yesterday I realized that I am in fact the fortunate one. For you see, I leave work early on Thursday. And it is because of this beautiful blessing that I was able to attend the once-in-a-lifetime Psy concert in downtown Seoul. (extra bonus: it was free!)
Hopefully, we've all heard of Psy by now. And although I discovered this morning that neither of my brothers have ever heard of Psy, I hope they're the only ones who live under rocks.
I left work promptly at 7 and arrived at Seoul Plaza in front of City Hall around 7:45. Even though I was over two hours early, this was not enough time to be within sight of anything on the stage, and as it was, I had a hard time seeing the screens. Meanwhile, the crowd pressed so close that I nearly got crushed a few times. Two old drunk guys got in a fight behind me, and had to be lifted up and pushed over the fence because there was no room for them to just walk out of the crowd. While struggling to stay afloat, I came across a family of Spaniards who had somehow wandered in by accident and had no idea what was going on. Spotting a non-Korean at last, the dad asked me in broken English about what was happening. Once they realized that the concert wasn't for another two hours, they left in disappointment. They missed out.
The crowd settled down eventually, and I was able to work my way further inward, although I was still too far away to see much. In fact, the only time I caught a glimpse of Psy was when, halfway through the concert, he got on top of a giant platform that lifted him high into the air.
This is the only picture I took that doesn't suck. The screens tell me that Psy was somewhere up there.
Psy is a hell of a performer. He sings, he dances, he moves everywhere, and he thanks everyone. There were disco lights, backup dancers, fireworks, explosions, and lots of glitter. Though I didn't understand a single word of what was said, I understood the feeling. This wasn't just another show. This was special. This was a guy coming home from wild success abroad to find an audience of 80,000, all of whom know every single word to every one of his songs, dancing with pure joy and energy for two hours straight as they requested encore after encore. It was a triumphant moment for Psy and a great moment for Korea, too.
There were many highlights of the concert, but my favorite has to be when Psy declared, "this is for Korea" and chugged an entire bottle of soju, then, removing his shirt, performed Gangnam Style for the second time. Korea, you are a beautiful place, and I thank you for producing such a man.
Though video cannot properly convey how awesome the performance was, it can, perhaps, convey the extreme size of the crowd. Check it out.
I am somewhere in that seething mass of singing people, and I am singing just as loud as anyone else.
Today, I told my students that I went to see Psy last night. They were all incredibly jealous. Only one of my students was able to top my story. Her mom is best friends with the organizer, who managed to get them into the front row. This student got a high-five from Psy. I told her that she better introduce me, or I'm going to fail her. No word yet on whether such threats will yield results.
When my students aren't saying ridiculous things, they're drawing pictures for their class presentations. I encourage them to draw pictures each class, and I tape these to walls. The kids really enjoy it. Those who are nervous about speaking in front of the class can at least put their efforts into a picture. It's a good way to use their imaginations, their classmates like it, the pictures add nice atmosphere to the classroom, and it gives them a feeling of pride to see their artwork on display. That being said, sometimes they draw...interesting things. I present to you...
Things My Students Draw
This tomato man just wanted a job. Instead, he was repeated shot and blown to hell with a giant grenade.
The tomato man is actually my favorite picture. It has nothing to do with anything discussed in class. This student drew it on the back of his vocab test and gave it to me as a present at the end of class. He is incredibly adorable. He comes to class early, just so he can show me Korean webcomics on my Galaxy tab.
The assignment was to invent a disease.
The most important fact about this disease: It goes to your butt.
When you tell a group of boys that they can invent any disease they want, beware. These boys searched for every disgusting word they could find and used them all to describe this disease, which was created by terrorists to kill people in the year 2476. It is spread through smelly farts.
Psy, doing the invisible horse dance.
This assignment was to present on awesome things from Korean culture. This class was particularly fun because most of the students ended up performing their favorite Korean pop songs. It not only amused me and their classmates, but also amused our neighbors because the rousing "Heeeeeeeey, sexy lady" chorus was loud enough to penetrate walls.
Stay tuned for more updates, as I photograph more priceless student works.
While my life in Korea is pretty fabulous, I cannot say it is always so. For example, when my favorite television show takes a turn for the terrible, this upsets me greatly. Warning, this contains spoilers and vast amounts of horrible nerd rage. So you're probably better off skipping it. In fact, I don't know why I'm writing this. Probably because this is the age of the internet and that's how we take out our anger these days.
The writing this season has been pretty terrible, and the writing of the show in general seems to have become incredibly lazy. And they keep getting away with it. I've made a list. I hope you enjoy it. Please excuse me if I start foaming at the mouth or my writing becomes completely incomprehensible.
1. Create rules. Then break them. Then distract the viewers with a love story.
Let's talk about "Angels Take Manhattan". There were many problems with this episode, and the most obvious one involves the use of the angels themselves. The episode in which the angels first appeared, "Blink", still remains one of my favorite episodes. It had all of the elements of a good horror story, combined with good characters, and, most importantly, a set of rules. When you're dealing with science fiction or fantasy, it's essential to create rules that govern your universe and the creatures that populate it. The angels are deadly, but they do have weaknesses. If anything, even another angel, is looking at it, the angel cannot move. Then, because the angels were so cool, Moffat decided to revisit them in the very poor choice that was "The Time of Angels". Maybe Moffat doesn't know this yet, but sometimes when you have something really cool, it's best to use it sparingly. That's why the Daleks do not appear in every episode. I digress. They added more rules to make the angels scarier. Now, even an image of an angel becomes an angel.
So by those rules, let's think about "Angels Take Manhattan". The Statue of Liberty is revealed to be an angel. First of all, I find it very hard to believe that there's ever a time when no one is looking at the Statue. It's lit up at night and it's the most famous landmark of New York City. Second, and, more importantly, if every image of an angel becomes an angel, that means that every picture or miniature of Lady Liberty is also an angel, which means that the entire earth should be one giant time distortion because we're being constantly zapped back in time by our touristy souvenirs. Also, the angels were looking at each other almost continually throughout the episode. By that rule alone, almost none of the action of the story could have happened. But all of this gets ignored by the love story of Amy and Rory and how oh-so-tragic their exit is. Spare me, Moffat. I would have shed a lot more tears if your plot holes weren't the size of Manhattan.
2. Consistency of Character???
Quick! Name one thing the Doctor consistently avoids and has avoided for almost his entire life. Was it murder? Congratulations! You know the character better than Moffat does! While the Doctor has killed his share of evil aliens, it's always after giving them a choice to redeem themselves. He always gives them a choice. Change your ways, leave this planet and these people alone...or else. It's when the evil aliens laugh in his face that the Doctor kicks their asses into the Land of Eternal Suffering. For example, remember what the Doctor did in "The Family of Blood"? The villains wanted to be immortal. So he made them immortal...so they could suffer for their crimes for eternity. That is why the Doctor is awesome. He never loses his temper and kills people, even if they deserve it. And yet, the Matt Smith Doctor, under the direction of some terrible writing has been doing just that. In this season alone, he's done that several times. He outright murdered the smuggler in "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship". In "Asylum of the Daleks", the Doctor let the Daleks commit genocide on their own people AND let a character die because even though she was human on the inside, she was still Dalek on the outside. So basically the Doctor let something die because it looked Dalek. This is quite different, if you recall, from season one's "Dalek", in which the Doctor shows pity for his enemy. Then we get to "A Town Called Mercy" in which the Doctor tries to murder a man. So what happened to the Doctor?
3. Overuse:
Moffat can write things, but only in small quantities. He wrote "Blink", "Silence in the Library", and "The Girl in the Fireplace", all three of which happen to be excellent stand-alone episodes. My conclusion is that Moffat can write good small stories, but when it comes to planning an entire season, he's terrible. Instead of writing new material, he returns to previous ideas and expands on them. River Song was really cool in "Silence in the Library", but the more Moffat used her, the more annoying and confusing she became. Do you remember the episode "Let's Kill Hitler"? I try not to because then I remember that River Song was supposedly Amy's best friend growing up, even though she's never mentioned in a single episode up until that point or after.
4. Setting:
For a SCIENCE FICTION show that has all of time and space as its backdrop, the settings have become incredibly narrow. The benefit of science fiction is that you can create any sort of civilization you want and use that civilization to examine morality, social norms, or just have an awesome adventure. Aliens running amok in London is fun, but any science fiction show can cover that. In fact, that's exactly what Torchwood does. The best episodes of Doctor Who take place on distant planets in distant times with characters who may not even be human. When humans are the stars of each episode, you start to forget how vast and awesome the universe supposedly is. Last season's crown jewel, "The Doctor's Wife" was a masterpiece written by Neil Gaiman and featured long-dead timelords, a sentient planet that eats TARDISes, and prolonged conversation between the Doctor and his TARDIS personified as a woman. (By the way, the romance between the Doctor and his TARDIS is so much more believable than anything with River Song. In fact, River comes off as a desperate attention-whore by comparison.) If you make a show about how awesome and exciting alien life is, which stars an alien who's sole principle and goal in life is to observe and respect all alien life, and then you surround him with human characters all the time and give priority to those human characters, your show becomes decidedly xenophobic.
5. Laziness and Making Sense:
There's only so many times you can rely on the power of love to solve your problems. In classic Doctor Who, "reverse the polarity" used to be their solution to various problems. It was silly, but it worked because SCIENCE. Now it's a wave of the sonic screwdriver 2.0 and the power of love. Stop it, Moffat. You can't pull miracles and solutions to time paradoxes out of your ass. And you can't wave the magic love wand and resurrect the Doctor while simultaneously killing him and marrying him to the psychologically scarred, previously brainwashed by mysterious evil people daughter/childhood best friend of your companions. In the strange universe where Moffat lives, that sentence just made sense.
If you still aren't convinced, look back at previous seasons. Many fans complained that Russell T. Davies had made the Doctor too much of a romantic interest. They were outraged when the Doctor developed feelings for Rose because in the history of the show, the Doctor had been decidedly uninterested in those sorts of things. But even if you disagreed with the decision to let the Doctor fall in love, there was the satisfaction of a coherent storyline. Romance was secondary to a good story. Bad Wolf still blows my mind. And don't even get me started on the glorious majesty of season three and the Saxon vote. The characters had depth and their own personal story arcs, but the show still knew what it was about. It wasn't about melodrama or how much of the universe you can destroy in a single episode. It was about telling a good story in the Doctor Who tradition.
Finally, "The Power of Three" was a terrible episode. You cannot bring people back to life fifteen minutes after they've collapsed from cardiac arrest.
For your patience, here's a music video by the band Muse. It has cyborgs and cowboys and is way better than "A Town Called Mercy". Enjoy. Also, sorry that the still for this video is dirty.
