I've got some pictures but I've been careful about shooting for no good reason.  You can't get a charger for the Pentax here apparently, and I haven't tried the charger plus travel converter.  In theory a battery is neither heat-generating nor software-enhanced and thus should be fine with a converter.  In my experience Korean wall plugs can fry ( Read more... )

Watched The Hunger Games last night--I'd downloaded it and a few other things a couple weeks ago.  I can totally see both ends of that lawsuit (plagiarism charges by the producers of Battle Royale).  On one hand the death-battle premise is not the commonest in the world, though post-Survivor (the reality show) I can see where Collins might have ( Read more... )

I'm scanning a lot of papers, and am doing this to make them more portable.  In other words, in most cases the originals are getting tossed.  I feel kind of bad about that, especially with sentimental stuff like letters from students (even if it was clearly a class assignment, some of them are very sweet.  Farewells from my Geumchon students).

But ( Read more... )

So the plan is four cities in seven days, and at each one (two for Tokyo, but also two days) one job-related stop and one pure tourist stop.  The latter were generally unplanned, the former carefully mapped out.  I packed all nice clothes, not a t-shirt in the batch unless you counted undershirts.  Seoul was cold and there was a chance that parts ( Read more... )

Still basically exhausted, though I've gotten some sleep.  Now I'm realizing how much maintenance this home needs.  Last night it was a comfy place to relax.  Now it's a place where I can't find my medication, need to wash dishes, and has far too many dustbunnies.  Welcome back to ground level, I suppose.

No, ground level will be the financial ( Read more... )

( Duplicate of post in my community foreign_men )

First about the thing that went wrong, and then about all the things that went right.

I`m wandering around Hiroshima after finding and photographing the cathedral (it`s lovely, uploading the pictures now but it will take forever).  I`m crossing the street, walking on smooth pavement, not a bump or crack in sight when my right ankle just folds ( Read more... )

after chasing the pancake around the pate last night I remembered a little joke S--- played on me.  There was a pea on the plate and she asked to watch me pick it up with chopsticks.  I did this my usual way, sort of a cross between grabbed it and scooping it up.  No, she said, points straight down, backs straight up, grab only.  Which, with some ( Read more... )

So I'm at a retirement dinner for our principal tonight and my mind wandered, often does at these dinners because there are very few people I can chat with, they go on for two hours and there's only so much you can talk about.  LOL a whole other story that ( Read more... )

...which is remarkably difficult to write while listening to Buck Cherry's "Crazy Bitch".  Love that song but it's so so very American, lusty and cynical and aggressive and nothing like peaceful curious Kyoto, and Uji, despite Uji feeling familiar, like Long Beach, like Hermosa, even though there's no ocean in sight, just the river, the lovely ( Read more... )