I’ve lived quite a few places in my life so far. I have been working on this map for a while now, trying to remember as many places as I could. I have intentionally left a few places off this map for privacy, including my current address, but this is 90% complete.
I’ve done a lot in the last 10 years. Maybe that’s why I’m so tired. Heres my last 10 years in a few quick notes:
Of course, things have happened in between and since 2006 but things have slowed down A LOT from what I was used to and the things that do happen don’t seem very exciting any more. I’m a pretty laid back guy but I like to experience new things but Saskatchewan and, to some extent, Canada are not great place for such experiences.
I was inspired to write this post because of wherethehellismatt.com. I watched his videos and read his FAQ and I felt hopeful again. Now, I think I need to see the world more and I realize how important it is to me.
Perhaps I have been spoilt or lucky, maybe both, by seeing more of the world than most people during my short time here. However, it has changed me for the better. I have a hard time calling anywhere “home.” I live in Saskatoon and I was born here, but it just feels like another place I have lived and not like where I belong. I have felt more like I belonged somewhere while sipping chai and smoking a beedi in Jaisalmer, India or riding my bike through streets of central Osaka, Japan. These are just two examples but what I am trying to say travel has opened my mind and allowed me to find things about myself that I would have never realized had I lived in one place like most of the world does and it scares me to think I am getting myself dug in to a life that I find dull and unimportant. I really need to get going (for my own sake)…
I was just going through some old photos on flickr that need to be geotagged. I found a few photos from my trip back to my old neighbourhood after not being back for roughly a year and a half. The old parts of the neighbour hood had been completely demolished and there was now a large metal construction fence around a huge area of land where much of the neighbourhood used to be.
This was a shock for me at the time even though I had been living in Seoul for nearly 3 years and I thought I had grown desensitized to the constant reconstruction. However, this had fundamentally changed what I had first recognized as “Korea”. The market was not nearly the same as it used to be and that is where I have some of my earliest memories from. It was kind of like losing a memory
The point that I am getting at is that some places move very quickly. However, some places also move very slowly.
I have been in Saskatoon for nearly three years now. I was born here. I have lived here for longer, but not by much, than I have anywhere else in the world. I will always love it, but I am tired of it. It made me realize that hardly anything has changed here in 3 years let alone the last 15 months like I had experienced in Yeoksam-dong.
In my previous posts, Recollections Of Daechi-Dong (Kelly Teacher - Part One) and Recollections Of Daechi-Dong (Kelly Teacher - Part Two), I introduced you to Kelly teacher whom I worked with when I first arrived at Daechi Wonderland in 2001 and how he had enjoyed admiting that while working with children, he let them touch him inappropriately and repeatedly. Here is the conclusion, if you wan’t to call it that…
After work on the day of Kelly’s admission a few of the teachers, Korean and foreign, went out for drinks. Of course we went without Kelly, Dave R., or the boss. The other teacher, that I had been with during Kelly’s admission, and I told everyone else what had happened that day. Of course everyone was sickened, but not really shocked. Remember, Kelly always acted strangely. We exchanged stories about other weird and inappropriate things Kelly had done. We also discussed what we should do. We decided to inform the boss, and owner, of Daechi Wonderland about the incident because we did not feel comfortable working around him and we did not trust him around children.
We found a time when Kelly was not around and several teachers including myself had a talk with the boss. We told him exactly what Kelly had told Dave R., the other teacher, and I. He was not shocked. He expressed very little emotion at all. We told him about other incidents and how we didn’t feel comfortable working around him. The boss mearly said that he could have been joking and since there was no proof he couldn’t fire him. He also mentioned that the parents liked Kelly. So we all left the bosses office very down and feeling hopeless. However, our talk must have had some impact and the news of the discussion spread quickly. Also, I assume that the boss must have had his own talk with Kelly.
A day or two after the talk, Kelly did not show up for work. Someone from the school went to his apartment to look for him and all of his things were gone. This was the first time I had seen a teacher do a “midnight run” and I was surprised. Dave R. became furious and pouted for a couple days at home because we had “made his friend runaway.” All the other teachers were glad that Kelly had gone and we quickly moved on. The rumour was that Kelly returned to Prague to teach English there. I just wish we could have done more to prevent him from working with kids again.
That was the biggest event during my first two months of work at Daechi Wonderland in 2001. I continued to work at Daechi Wonderland until the end of my contract when I chose to leave. It was a fair place to work at and I met many great people there.
Note: I refer to Daechi Wonderland and it’s staff in 2001. The current staff is completely different.
In my previous post, Recollections Of Daechi-Dong (Kelly Teacher - Part One), I introduced you to Kelly teacher whom I worked with when I first arrived at Daechi Wonderland in 2001. However, the best (worst) part of the story is still to come…
One Monday my perception of Kelly changed dramatically. It was either first thing in the morning before classes started or maybe it was returning from lunch. As I was approaching the institute with another teacher we saw Dave R., the head teacher in 2001, and Kelly talking outside the building. Being friendly, we stopped to chat with them a bit before we headed into the office to prepare for classes.
Kelly was in a different mood. He was excited about something and much more talkative than usual. He was telling Dave R. a story and did not slow down or hesitate when we arrived and I will never understand why he chose to tell us what he was about to say.
For some reason, Kelly had volunteered at a hospital over the weekend. He had volunteered to be a clown for disabled kids. This is when I knew that something was very strange about this man, but I digress. As I recall, most of the children were blind, maybe all even all of them were blind so I’m not sure why they needed a foreigner dressed up as a clown to entertain them. Regardless, for some reason, some person and/or organization had allowed this creepy man to dress up as a clown for entertaining kids.
Kelly continued with this story, apparently equally baffled by the circumstances but still elated. He started to talk about how the blind kids behaved and he said that as blind kids, they had to rely on their sense of touch. So the kids were touching his face and realized that he was a foreigner because his facial structure was much different from that of a Koreans’. The kids also touched his clothes and his hair to determine he was a clown. However, the touching continued after these discoveries.
I can still remember Kelly saying, while looking right at me, “They were touching me, so I let them.” He had one of the creepiest grins I can recall and his facial expression was not what you would want to see from a responsible person who works with kids. He had enjoyed it and he was enjoying telling the story. He continued to describe where the kids had “touched him” and how he “let them.” I will not go into detail about how he described it because I do not recall the exact words he used and I don’t care to think too much about the details. However, please understand that the touching had become inappropriate and Kelly was proclaiming how much fun it was. The other teacher I was with and I were stunned; we just stood in shock unsure how to respond as Kelly stood grinning and Dave R. chuckled.
Note: I refer to Daechi Wonderland and it’s staff in 2001. The current staff is completely different.
As I had previously mentioned in Recollections Of Daechi-Dong (Preview), I want to write my memories of my first year in Korea before I forget them. Without further ado, here is the first instalment of that series.
When I first started working at Wonderland in Daechi-dong, Seoul in 2001 there was another teacher named Kelly. I have no idea what Kelly’s last name was or even if that was his real name.
He was a creepy guy. I believe he was in his mid to late thirties at the time, which was much older than the typical ESL instructor in Korea. He was American but had been an ex-pat for some time so I’m not sure what part of the states he was from. He had a degree but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t real as he mentioned on several occasions that it was very easy to obtain a fake degree that would fool Korean Immigration. He wore a suit every day. I think he only had two suits and as I remember they were both grey so it looked like he wore the same suit everyday. Now you might say that many men dress that way, but Kelly’s situation was different. Kelly never perspired. Even when it was 35°C and 100% humidity, Kelly was dry. Working at wonderland required a tie or at least a nice shirt 4 days of the week but he was the only one that wore a suit on a regular basis. As part of the duties of instructors at Wonderland, we had to serve lunch to the students. Thus, Kelly wore an apron over his suit, but he never took off his jacket. Kelly also had Robert Palmer hair which was a bit creepy in 2001. In addition, Kelly never smiled. That is, he rarely talked to any of the other teachers in the office and when he did we was ranting and/or manically laughing about something that nobody else thought was funny.
Kelly easily stuck out as the odd teacher when I arrived in August of 2001. He was friends with the head teacher at the time who was older than Kelly and also very strange but at least he was generally nice and spoke to everyone in the office. Other than Dave R., the head teacher in 2001, Kelly did not associate with anyone at work. I began hearing strange stories about Kelly and his personal life; stories about how he had come and gone from Korea several times, had a violent temper, had a wife in Prague, etc. However, there was nothing concrete to show his true character. That is until that one fateful (and horrifying) day…
Note: I refer to Daechi Wonderland and it’s staff in 2001. The current staff is completely different.
This is the first “panorama” I ever took and I took it without ever realizing what it was. This was the view of Daechi-dong from the 5th floor of the Daechi Wonderland building on September 23rd, 2001, the building where I worked and the place on the 5th floor teachers would go when they wanted to smoke, gossip, flirt, or hangout away from our insane “office”…
I am working on a blog post to try to cover the experiences during my first year of living in Seoul, Korea. I don’t know how long it will take me or how long it will be. Likely, I will get bored of it and end up dividing it into parts and the later parts will never get done. Regardless, I am working on it and I’ll try to continue because I should write some of these things down.
This site has tons of user made subtitles in Korean for the latest movies. Here is the link for the most downloaded subtitles on cineast.kr. It’s really quite an amazing list…
I just watched the video of rush hour in a Tokyo subway and it reminded me of rush hour in Jong-no, Seoul. It may seem crazy to some people but its really quite normal easy to get used to. The Indian trains are crazy, so here is a video of that too.
Rush Hour In Tokyo Subway
Leg Slappers On Seoul Subway
Crazy Couple In Mumbai Train Station
Busy Mumbai Train
During my first year in Seoul, South Korea television crews visited the institute I worked at, Daechi Wonderland, several times. On this day, they wanted to shoot a video of my class. So I got to be on Korean national TV doing “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” with some of my kindergarten kids.
My Korean is pretty awful so I don’t know what the report is fully about but I’ve been told that its pretty negative.
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