I'm In

Well I just applied to sit my Med School entrance test (UMAT) in Singapore in July, so now it's on, I'm going to med school.
Wow.
N.B. Mom and Dad can you please pay my credit card bill please, add it to the tab :)

July 25th in Singapore, and my holidays start that weekend, so I ain't going back before the break, thinking about spending a week in Thailand, do some diving, do some surfing, oh yeah.
If anybody has any knowledge of that part of the world, I'm open to ideas.
And in other news I found hash browns today, woot.

Joost

Anybody want a Joost beta invite, they just gave me three

Life ...

Edit: Chris has made a point here with the "weekends?" phrase, whilst my weekends aren't covered here, they generally get their own post, or I don't do anything at all.

Well I thought I'd write a post about how life's been going in general lately, this ain't gonna take long.
WORK
Work's still going along fine, the teaching's good most of the time, the marking's alright but some of the stupid vocab lists and the monthly reports are painful.
We had our first kindergarten videos this week, so there's two 15 min videos on a website somewhere of me 'teachin my kids'.
I really hope they don't keep up the monthly thing, cos its stressful for the kids, and stressful for us, unnecessarily, i think I might just not prepare from now on.
My kids are maturing, in other words a serious divide is forming, I have Atticus at one end and Charlie at the other. Atticus knows all the alphabet, can name a lot of things, can do single digit addition, can recognise the occasional word and can remember something the next day. Charlie still doesn't understand the concept of coloring, can't repeat more than a 2 word phrase and is slowly learning the hard way not to climb up slides.
I say this but my kids are all still pretty aware, some of the kindergarten kids, are still learning what their hands are for.
The rest of the kids are various levels in between, not really sure where, cos i still don't have enough resources to check the non-trouble makers.
OTHER
I'm still doing Kung fu, its really hard to make myself go after work, so tired, but its usually worth it. Yesterday we did some sparring, so I actually should be able to hold my own in an even fight now, which is a step.
Today was awesome, I finally got to touch a weapon, getting to play with a staff, just the real basics but great fun. Luckily the ridiculous amounts of time I've spent playing with "staff" 's (staves?) translated slightly, yeah.

We got a new teacher yesterdya, another Dave, he's taking over Nick. He's a Canadian and he's a giant, but he seems like he's gonna fit in well.

If you wanna know anything more, jump on msn or gimme an email.

Night All

Out of Seoul

On Sunday, I got out of Seoul for the first time since I've been here, me, Dan and Oona went out to our masters place to talk some English with his kid and eat a ridiculously sized homecooked Korean meal. So I've put a coupla photos, they're nothing too special, there's a couple I like.

Randomly the place he lived was an old Korean village thingee but across the road was a country club, these two photos show opposite sides of the river.




One of the mountains, sadly it ws overcast and I haven't quite worked out Lightroom properly, though it caught quite a cool shot



And this photo is nothing special but it just came out really well, showing off my camera yeah, you probably wanna look at a larger version.



Click here to see the full album

Photos

I've just uploaded some photos i took last weekend at Olympic park.
Seoul is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in the world during spring, th eblossoms really liven it up, these are all taken of the same area but hey.

http://picasaweb.google.com/beeerad/OlympicPark

The last few polls

So I'm sick of these polls so they're being added as a blog post, they always be here if you wanna see them later but they'll slowly sink away into oblivion. Mwhaha
For a recap, I am holding up one finger (apparently)
The thumb is the favorite finger and noone likes there middle fingers or pinkys.
And finally, the poll which i am not in any way happy with, the Giant Chicken would win, I now pose an actual test, someone find all those creatures and put them in a room. Cmon, for me...

Yes I am still alive, I present me, Brad, in all my glory, look I still have an emanating glow.
This photo also serves to support one of the very few things I have to say today, that being, that I have now been called a lion by several people including one of my co-teachers, Yeah, lion.

Umm, went to Kung Fu again today, I only went twice last week (now a total of three times), I missed Thursday last week and yesterday, not my fault, at all, Thursday master was drunk so Dan didn't wanna go, and yesterday both Dan and Oona piked, Grrr, myeh my cupboards needed restocking anyway.
I started learning my first proper form today, the first stage of "Tanteo" or something like that, in fact I don't think it's anything like that but hey. And I'm also now most of the way through 5 stances fist, now just to spend 20 years perfecting it.

Well time for me to hit the sack,
Keep it real

My New Axe

Ok so I bought a guitar today finally, and here it is, absolutely nothing special, it sounds pretty reasonable, plays pretty well, oh and it has a built in tuner neat.

The well respected Linus Music brand

However the place where I got it from was awesome, the entire second floor of a huge builing, just smaller than a city block, on the outside it is this incredibly boring unadvertised place, but inside is just crazy amounts of any music gear you could want.



< < >

My heavy metal experience

Now this is barely even a cultural difference but I almost laughed.
I was teaching my last class yesterday, it consists of two teens, and one of them wasn'y there, so it was just two of us, and this class is a whole lot longer than it needs to be, so I've always got like 15 odd minutes at the end where I'm just supposed to chat with them in English.
So i ask him what kinda music he listens to, and he says "heavy metal". So I grab a piece of paper and explain I'm trying to find some Korean heavy metal for a friend back home, and can he name me some Korean heavy metal bands. Sadly he says there aren't really any, he listens to English heavy metal, damn, well I'll keep trying. Now being an ex-metal lover (I had a phase) I thought maybe I can have a chat to him about it so I ask him what kinda bands does he like.
Answer: Linkin Park, well there goes that out the window, on pressuring he also mentions Bon Jovi, he explains that his parents hate him listening to this heavy metal.
Roooaaarrrr!!!

Happy Birthday Albie

Firstly happy birthday Albie, hope you have an awesome 21st.
before anyone else bitches that I dont mention theirs- Suck it.
Actually happy bday Lachlan for 3 days ago, and happy bday Tyler 3 days pre-emptively, done.

Today I started learning Kung Fu {insert random voiceover comment here}
I said I'd give it a try and if I liked it, I'd give it a month, I liked it, so I'll give it a month, now to get my shoes back from the gym, oh an I get to buy Kung fu pants awesome.
This however means that no-one will hear from me in the evenings during the week at all really anymore, I'm on MSN during my breaks randomly these days tho

Now on yet another completely unrelated topic, Katie was having a conversation with her kids about swearing and they could think of 12 korean swear words, collectively we could only think of 7 in English, now this is without any composite swear words. How can Korean have more swear words? What did we miss?
Shit
Fuck
Ass
Cunt
Bloody
Bastard
Damn

edit:
Crap
Bitch
(Cheers, Cam and whoever JC is)

Ok so we did have those ones, remember I wrote this at midight, but English is still short


Oh BTW not safe for small children, myeh too late now
Ta

It's my quarter birthday

Woop

R.I.P Nail Clippers

You may think from the title that I'm just bored and writing a post for no reason, well you're wrong I'm taking a moment to recall the heart-warming story of a young pair of nail clippers long journey home. From me rescuing it from a little shop on Santorini, one of the Greek Islands, to its travels through most of Western Europe, then NZ, it's finally been laid to rest in it's country of birth the Republic of Korea.

You will be missed

Day of the Dark Horse

Edit:Actually posted 6/4/07 but pre-dated so it is hidden as people were being fuckwits
Re-edit: Now with picture

Today is only halfway through, actually mostly, but hey, and it's definitely been a day of surprise... in my kids, sorry nothing really that interesting to you guys but I gotta record this for myself.
Today I noticed one of my Kindy kids for the first time, not literally, but you know that kid who sits there, keeps to themselves, does their work,doesn't annoy anyone,does what they're told, that was her, good old Briar.
I think she's actually been a little bit scared of me, well anyway today I took the kids up to the playground in the middle of the morning, (I had no control all morning) and for the first time Briar came up to me for attention, she wanted me to play with her. I guess I had semi-unconsciously written her off. But then I realised, this kid is great, she is a good student, and now she's interacting with me. After this newfound recognition that she was in fact human, back in the class,
I had a look at her work and she's one of the brighter kids, I was stoked, I have found another good kid, my class is slowly but surely dividing itself in my mind. What was really awesome was then after Kindy, I found a little parcel that she'd given me this morning, I'd completely forgotten about it. (It's not like I get lots of presents or anything, I've only had one other, which was a piece of homemade walnut caramel cake from Roger, it was awesome).
It was wrapped in a little piece of green paper, so I unwrapped it and there's a little self made envelope, with a little sticker of the NZ flag on it, I was stoked, so I open it up and inside is a piece of paper that she's written on herself in perfect spelling(I'm assuming the parent wrote it out first) but also, we're only up to J in the alphabet and all her letters are drawn right and there's only one eraser mark.



Brad tea
cher (a smiling face with the label Brad)
Howareyou?
Briarlike icecr
eam Thankyou
verymuch
I Love you
Brad

Wow, this beats the cake, this is great, I'm going to treasure this
I'm gonna try and find a scanner or otherwise upload it, but still as I said before this is more for me than for you.
Also I'm not sure if there's a photo of Briar on Picasa, I know I have one at home but I don't think I uploaded it, I'll put it up and update the post when I get home.
You probably don't understand the amount of torment these kids put me through, this made my week to see one kid who can write and has wanted to write me a letter, to get some kind of recognition for your hard work from 5yo Non-English speakers is a big ask I know but she did it.

Also, the 'I love you' my kids have learnt last night, cos they didn't know it yesterday but today, in the elevator up to the playground, three of my girls told me "I love you Brad teacher"

Now for dark horse number two, Lucienne in my KG1A class (first year of school, 3/4th year of English) she's new to the class, most of the class has stayed together from last year, but she came up from the class down with 4 others (2 of whom don't belong) so she's taken a while to adjust. But today I gave the class a dictation test (as I do every day, they study a whole lot of sentences overnight and I read them a few of them and they write them down) and this is by far the hardest test I've given them, and she makes one mistake, she missed an 'a' in one of the sentences. This dictation was hard, I doubt anyone of you could get it all right.

And that is all.
Cheers

Nacho's vs Fruit Salad

Though I have to say I'm getting used to the random incredibly strange attempts to imitate Western food here, the "Mexican nachos" we just had were awesome.
I am so disappointed I didn't have my camera on me, so sorry no photo,
Anyway the nachos come out.
Nacho chips - good
2 types of cheese sauce- good
Jalapenos- Good
Cherry tomatoes-good
Salsa-Good
Pineapple(from fruit salad)-Umm sure why not
That unnameable white fruit from fruit salad-Ummm
But the Piece de resistance definitely went to the huge mound of whipped cream on top of everything, we had to doubletake, yip that is in fact whipped cream.
They've definitely seen a picture of nachos, gone hmm ooh it has a white cream on top, that must be whipped cream, gotta love imitation

My Day

What a day, the job's actually becoming enjoyable, I hope I'm not jinxing it, but Janet is no longer irrational, the afternoon kids are controllable and my kindy kids are.. just.. dunno, I'll get there, they give me plenty to laugh about. And I guess that my las class of the day the kids didn't turn up, fuck yeah
Today just after lunch I was trying to explain to my Kindy about family, so i got them to draw their families, not an easy task, but hilarious. Bear in mind when reading that I'd drawn up my family in stickish figures and explained Mother, Father, Bradteacher, brother, brother, brother, Family 1,2,3,4,5,6. And we've covered it several times in the last few weeks, so they know what it is.
Now Rufus is reasonably smart, I explain it to the class wander for 30 sec, come see Rufus, he's drawing a dinosaur, hmmm, luckily after one try he scribbles four humanesque figures.
Hmm a dinosaur i the family awesome.

Now there's Charlie, he's right next to me so he gets the best explanation, draw mother, draw father, draw charlie, come back 2 min later. He says"Tank" and he's drawn a tank, good Charlie but it's supposed to be your family, Ok, so he can be a little hard to explain to, so I turn the paper over write Charlie and indicate draw yourself, then I wrote father, mother. Go help another kid, he comes up to me a couple of minutes later, "Tank", and yes he's drawn me another tank. Take him back give him another piece of paper, draw Charlie, draw mother, draw father. Then I took the pencil drew a circle, say Charlie's happy, and I drew some eyes and mouth, happy Charlie, now you finish charlie. Come back again and guess what "tank." Hmmm so i turn that over and draw three figures, so you colour them in. Come back again, and the three figures are part of, you guessed it, a tank. Move on.



Fastforward to the end of the colouring, I'm going round getting them to explain, it goes "(insert students name), mother, father, sister/brother" I get to Charl Hee Lee,
Ok so who's this, "Father" and this "mother", this "brother", ok so who's this "father"....ummm
So who's this (point to "Father"), "Father" and this "other father", and I have to stifle a laugh, awesome.
Though I hafta say, Ann's was the best
"Mother, Ann, Snowman"

And done

Harrro

Hey guys, I'm on an hour break in the middle of my afternoon, pretty unnecessary, myeh can't complain. I need a break.
I finally got sick, painfully sick, I lasted a lot longer than I expected, 2 whole months.
Last night was one of the most painful in my life, after a super electrolyte boost this morning I was feeling earthly again, but I think I'm about to get it again, hmmm, all I really need is one good day of bed rest, however I think it might be 2 or 3 bad days cos you can't really get time off here without getting your head ripped off.
On a brighter note, Payday tomorrow, I'm pretty set on buying a guitar this weekend so that money will come in rather useful. N.b. to my creditors(mom & Dad) don't worry you'll get your money eventually.
I tried actual lychees yesterday(i think) we were at a buffet for lunch, and I decieded I'd try that crazy looking thing, I'm pretty sure it was lychee after peeling it, weird.
No new pictures due to my collapsing as soon as I got home last night. If I'm feeling alive tonight, I 'm gonna go to my roof and take a couple of snaps, man my camera is awesome. If Ben is out there somewhere can you tell me what model your bro's camera is, Cheers
Well anyway I think it's nap time, I'm gonna try this pzizz thing it sounds awesome

브래드

Photos

I took 250 odd photos today, here's a couple of reasonable ones.
My kids at the Playground - for details and more pictures click them and you will be magically transported to my Picasa site.

From My Winnies

From My Winnies

From My Winnies