the new front porch

Miss H and I have done it all. When we were in Bucheon (2012-2013) we were in an officetel, which is a building which rents out rooms for commercial and residential purposes alike. Generally there's one big living area with a kitchenette, a bathroom and a loft, and that's exactly what we had at our old building.

In Gwangnaru (2012-2013) we lived in a villa, which are usually only three or four stories tall and have about four or so rooms on every floor. They're cheaper than officetels, but you have less space. We had a studio apartment, a tiny kitchen, and a twin bed to share. It's a wonder we didn't murder each other. 

We had to keep the door to the enclosed glass veranda (which nonetheless was exposed to the open air and mighty cold) open, because Charlie's litter box was out there. So I put some nails into the door frame and clipped those blankets over the threshold to block the chill night air. 

I stood with my back pressed against the front door as I snapped this picture. Not even enough room to swing a cat. Believe me. I tried. 

Daecheong, in the Gaepo ("get rid of the dog") neighborhood in southern Gangnam-gu, is the first place in Korea where we've lived in an honest-to-God apartment. I won't give you any of the "before" pics (taken before we mopped after the two twenty-something male meatheads who lived here before us). I'll just show you the nice after pics so this post doesn't get too huge:

This actually has nothing to do with new apartments, cleaning, or Gangnam. Miss H and I have decided to be a bit more adventurous when it comes to using our toaster oven as...well, an oven. For baking stuff. These are the necessary supplies. The corned beef hash is my vice. 

And pay no attention to that mess of bottles on the gas range or the fermenter on the kitchen table. The boys were coming over that day to bottle our robust honey-molasses porter, and I was laying out the materials. 

  

Guest bedroom, pulling double duty.

So much storage...[drool]

I'm really glad we're not paying for this place; it cost $450,000. That's US dollars, not Korean won. We have an 18-hour security officer, free large-trash pickup, three bedrooms (I keep mentioning that, don't I?) and a splendid view off the unenclosed veranda-thingy we have out front in lieu of a hallway:

Not pictured: my trusty mountain bike. 

 

I like it. Gives me some nice fresh air to smoke my pipe in. 

Let us get the laundry racks down and the floor swept and I'll put up some images of our apartment's fetchingly-decorated office/den and master bedroom. Oh, that's right! We have to make a run to Insadong or Garden 5 for decorations...

Stay tuned. 

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 16: create a budget

This is something I've desperately needed to do. My finances have always been the weakest link in my life. I keep receipts, but they wind up in a big Ziploc bag (or worse, an untidy heap) in a drawer somewhere, unsifted and disorganized. I don't keep track of how much I spend per month, so what I have left over before and after payday always comes as a complete shock. As such, while living in Korea, I've probably been spent a bit too much money on things that don't matter: pipe tobacco, whiskey, sushi, and overpriced appetizers served up by rude Bulgarians. This is a hell of a way to run a railroad, particularly since I have some rather large expenditures in mind when I get home to the States: marriage, children, an instrument rating and a commercial pilot's license, among others. Jeez, you'd think I'd be better at this. My sign is Libra, after all.

So, to amend this reprehensible state of affairs, I set aside today to create a budget, as per the instructions on The Art of Manliness's website. I won't go into too much numerical detail. Telling you how much I make (or worse, how much I spend) each month would be indiscreet. I'll just say that I followed the directions to the letter: I determined my monthly income, totted up all my fixed expenses, and set a goal for the variable ones. I had to get Miss H's help with some things. Since her school is renting out this apartment for us, most of the utilities come out of her paycheck (except for Internet, which I pay for). We split the difference each month. We also try to limit Costco runs to once per month, 'cause everything there is so danged expensive. We've been eating out a bit too much, too. But anyway: Miss H worked up a lovely utilities spreadsheet for me, and using it I managed to come up with a number. It's what I should have left over after all expenses are said and done (barring incidentals and fun) and I'm going to try to stick as close to it as possible.

(I was tempted to use Mint, which is what the author of the AoM article recommended. But something tells me it won't work as well with Korean won as it will with American dollars. I think I'll wait until I get back to the States to get into web-based budgets and spreadsheets.)

Now the only hard part's going to be keeping track of my monthly expenditures — although, thanks to the bank books that are so popular here in Korea, my checkbook balances itself. I'll just have to remember to glance at it every month and make sure I've stayed in the black.

And now you must excuse me. I have to go see if I have enough wiggle room for a new iPod Nano. I want to grab one before I head off to Hokkaido. Please loiter around for Day 17. 

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 4: increase your testosterone

The article on The Art of Manliness website has two lists: the first tells you why low T is bad for us dudes, and the benefits of having good loose testosterone floating through our systems. The second list is what we can do to increase it. The challenge is to pick three of those things and do them today. 

Not smoking was kind of a cop-out. I don't smoke anything but pipes and cigars anyway, and then only on a biweekly or semi-monthly basis. Therefore, the three things I decided to do today were: 

• get at least 8 hours of sleep tonight (easy)
• eat a serving of good fat (as if I needed an excuse to eat olives and nuts)
• meditate for 10 minutes

I started going back to the gym recently, and I happen to be going today. I'll probably do some resistance training while I'm there. I took the liberty of looking ahead at the upcoming challenges and I noticed that Day 26 is "Take the Marine Corps Fitness Test." Part of that test is doing pull-ups, so I'm going to try to get in shape for those. (Maybe I'll finally be able to do more than one stinking pull-up by the time this is over.) So I'll do some resistance training at the gym, including pull-ups (or attempted pull-ups).

So there you go! Five things I'm doing today to increase my testosterone. I expect that, by the end of the day, I'll be ready to go deep-sea fishing or run with the bulls. More likely I'll have the energy and pep and pickup to add five thousand more words to Novel #3 (which I'm trying to finish before Miss H gets home on Sunday, so she can read it). At the very least, more T should help me grow this dang beard out before I head to Hokkaido in February.

Wish me luck...  

2013...as it relates to 2014

Dear Blogsphere: 

Miss H has flown home for her brief winter break. I just saw her off at the sparkly, well-lit Incheon Airport. I now have eight lonely days to devour pungent seafood, scratch myself, burp, shower every 72 hours and just generally act like a mangy orangutan an unwed male twentysomething.

This was originally supposed to be a post about what I did during my recent Facebook hiatus, but then I thought I'd go one better and tell you what-all I did during 2013. (It's becoming a tradition.)

So here, as noted in my little black spiral-bound notebook, is what I did during the two-month break from the Book o' Faces:
 

• read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• started reading The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (which are the reasons I didn't read more during the break)
• wrote, printed, administered and graded midterm exams
• wrote, printed, administered and graded final exams
• bet on the winning horse and scored ₩1,200 at Seoul Racecourse Park (about $1.10)
• watched the sunset from Gwangjin Bridge (pictured below)
• toured Seolleung and Jeongneung
• found and ordered Coleman waterproof matches (for my pipe) on Gmarket
• joined a gym
• rode a two-person bike with Miss H for the first time (at Ttukseom Resort)
• watched Red Dawn (2012), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), Wrath of the Titans (2012), The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013), Catching Fire (2013), The Edge (2010), and In the Fog (2012) 
• had the fraying cuffs of my two coats repaired (our tailor's a magician)
• assembled a bug-out bag (in case the NoKos invade)
• discovered a bitchin' new bar in Cheonho (Heaven's Key)
• tried to catch the O-Train and failed
• edited Novel #2
• got nearly 40,000 words into my NaNoWriMo project
• took my computer to Gangnam to be repaired
• failed at NaNoWriMo
• brewed my first partial mash beer with the boys (a British red ale)
• drank expensive cocktails on the 41st floor of the Sindorim Sheraton Hotel with Miss H
• explored Gapyeong and Namiseom
• tried a new shrimp-rice dish at the corner diner
• dumped the red ale down the toilet (suspected bacterial infection)
• bought a new backpack for Australia (₩58,000)
• went to the Seoul Lantern Festival
• took several glorious naps
• bought my own set of beer-making supplies
• had corned beef hash at Butterfingers in Gangnam
• went to Incheon for our customary Thanksgiving dinner at Fog City Diner and bought sourdough bread from the proprietor
• had my first halfway-decent conversation with a Korean cabbie
• brewed (and drank) a nice chocolate porter with the fellas
• finally mailed those souvenirs from China to my parents
• rode down to Busan on the KTX for a Christmas party; met up with everyone on Geoje Island; had tapas and wine, watched a football match at an Irish pub, and wound up at a noraebang
• watched the sunset from the top of the Lotte Department Store in Nampo-dong, Busan
• caught the night train to Seoul
• booked my Hokkaido junket
• reconnected with an old friend (my illustrator)
• came down with rhinitis
• went on the Itaewon Foodie Crawl (French, Spanish, Russian and Italian)
• picked new names for the fictitious cities, countries and continents in my sci-fi series
• brewed a nice ginger IPA with my beer-buddies
• did 18 hours of extra classes during finals week
• took Novel #3 to 81,000 words and Novel #4 to 38,000 words

And here, included as a...supplement? Addendum? Appendix? Well, whatever. Here's the rest of what I accomplished in 2013:

• read Hiroshima by John Hersey, Skybreaker and Starclimber by Kenneth Oppel, Distant Thunders and Rising Tides by Taylor Anderson, Dubliners by James Joyce, The Last Time I Was Me by Cathy Lamb (part of a book-exchange program with Miss H), and five or six other titles I don't recall...far short of my goal of 30
• tried and failed to keep a book diary (obviously)
• finished my contract at Avalon English in Bucheon
• moved to Seoul, the world's most populous city (proper)
• got a job at Sejong University (and successfully completed my first year there)
• got straight A's on all my teaching evaluations, too
• started the semester with tonsillitis, though
• attended a family reunion in Iowa in July
• swam in a man-made lake
• went to see Jesse James's childhood home
• finally got to eat (and drink!) at the Yardhouse in Victoria Gardens
• fired a Smith & Wesson Model 10 
• traveled through western Japan on the Shinkansen in August (Tokyo → Kyoto → Kumamoto)
• rode the JR Beetle from Hakata to Busan
• ate horse meat
• got into home brewing with my coworkers
• toured Beijing and the Great Wall of China for the Chuseok holiday
• ate fried scorpion (that was on the bucket list!) as well as roast duck and bullfrog soup
• picked up a pile of PC games on Steam
• wrote humor pieces for Rabble Rouse the World
• bought a Stanwell beechwood pipe and Captain Black tobacco
• purchased a bottle of 10-year-old Ardbeg single malt Scotch with spare change
• started Novel #4
• submitted a dozen or so short sci-fi stories to e-magazines like Space Squid, 3LBE and Daily Science Fiction (publication still eludes me, however)
• grew a beard (bucket list!)
• received an e-reader (a Nook) from my significant other as a gift; haven't touched it

And that's about all I can think of for now.

Here's the part where I'm supposed to tell you what I've got planned for next year. Alright, here you go: another two semesters at Sejong University, the Sapporo Snow Festival in Hokkaido in February, a summer trip to Alaska and some other destination as-yet-unchosen, e-publishing Novel #2, shopping Novel #1 to publishers, finishing Novels #3, #4 and possibly #5, smoking the dickens out of my pipe, moving out of this hellhole villa, brewing the tastiest beers this side of the East China Sea, planning my wedding, and growing this beard down to my sternum.

Postman out.

why I quit Facebook (and should quit the Internet, period)

Civilization is what makes you sick.

— Paul Gauguin

It's been three weeks to the day since I went dark. "Dark" is something of a misnomer; I haven't quit the Internet entirely. Facebook accounted for, at best, 10-15% of my total time surfing the web. It's fair to say, however, that it was the main reason for my being on the web in the first place, if you know what I mean.

Some of my friends have only just discovered that I'm gone. I've received text messages and e-mails asking me what's up and when I might be coming back. I have no definite answer to give, because honestly, I'm not sure myself.

The answer is "When I'm ready."

But why did I quit in the first place? I've been wrestling with this question for nigh on a week. As of this morning, I was still at a loss.

Then, this afternoon, I went down to the Han River to read. I took a folding chair, my new Stanwell pipe, a plentiful supply of tobacco and matches, a bottle of Jim Beam and a copy of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The air was crisp. The sun was sinking behind feathery clouds. The trees were dripping with reds and yellows. The river was iron-grey and lay at rest like a freshly-tempered sword. I unfolded the chair, lit up my pipe, filled a glass with bourbon, opened the book, and read the final four chapters in one go.

Upon finishing, I felt that I'd reached new levels of clarity in my search for answers.

Civilization.

That's the problem.

Civilization.

I've been staring the matter in the face this whole time and never recognized it. The problem of civilization is a central theme in Brave New World, just as it is in my own novel series (the third installment of which I'm writing for NaNoWriMo).

What do I mean by "the problem of civilization"? Bread and circuses. Mustapha Mond, the Resident World Controller of Western Europe (and the closest thing to a villain that Brave New World has) explains it thus: you can't have a civilization full of intelligent, independent people, or it will dissolve into chaos. There'll be differences of opinion, boredom, ennui, insanity, or outright war. Hence the system of control which is so thoroughly explained in the beginning of the novel: the intelligence, physical beauty, and usefulness (or lack thereof) of any particular human being is determined at the embryonic stage, and a series of clinical processes are enacted to ensure that the resultant human being is molded and shaped to be a cog in the machinery of civilization. Menial tasks are performed by big, dumb, ugly people who've been chemically and genetically altered in their test tubes and then conditioned in childhood to accept their lot and perform their tasks with joy. Administrative duties are performed by handsomer, prettier, smarter, and wiser human beings, whose development and conditioning were likewise controlled from the get-go. To counter any malaise or dissatisfaction, humans are encouraged to imbibe soma, an ecstasy-inducing drug; have as many dalliances as they like, with no strings attached; watch "feelies," tactile versions of movies; and play ridiculous sports like Obstacle Golf. With their minds mired in pointless pursuits and carnal pleasures, and their days filled with the drudgery they've been preconditioned to enjoy, human beings have no need to ever worry about things like war or civil strife. Anyone who shows "subversive" or "devious" preferences for solitude, monogamy, or sobriety is sent to an island, severed from the main population to preserve the public's general state of contentment. Only in remote places such as Western America, on the so-called "Savage Reservations" (vast tracts of land surrounded by electrified fences) is humanity's inherent barbarity allowed to continue: religion, viviparous birth, marriage, love, and natural aging.

Fascinating book. You should read it. Mightily depressing, though.

Why? Because it's coming true. I look around now and I see the same thing that John the Savage sees when he leaves his Reservation and comes to London: thanks to drugs like the Internet, amusing diversions like video games and smartphones, and Facebook—that saccharine filter of friendship and raw experience—we have a civilization more blinded to the ebb and flow of reality than ever before. I see people more concerned with emoticons, abbreviations, Bubble Crush, Angry Birds, KakaoTalk, YouTube, Twitter, news feeds, discussion forums, and torrent downloads than they are with a lavender autumn sky.

That's the way I saw myself heading. And I didn't like it.

When I originally quit Facebook, I told myself I was doing it because my right hand was moving of its own accord—creeping, crawling toward that Facebook tab, clicking on the bookmark unbidden. I also felt that my brain's natural tendency towards autodidactism had been superseded by a base craving for input: information of any stamp, no matter how sordid or simplistic. I perceived that I was logging onto Facebook every morning for two vile reasons, and those reasons alone:

(1) to peer at the winnowed grains of my friends' (and coworkers', and distant acquaintances', and too-distant relatives') lives and assess them subjectively; and

(2) to make myself angry. I'd foolishly become involved with ("liked") a slew of conservative political Facebook groups, and my news feed teemed with their inflammatory rhetoric on a daily basis.

I was fed up. I felt like Facebook wasn't much good for communicating with or keeping track of loved ones anymore; now it was just a place for my friends to post insufferable political views, hackneyed jokes, fatuous memes, mushy musings on pets or spouses or babies, and pictures of cats. I felt like I wasn't really contributing anything to Facebook anymore; I realized that I was reposting quotations and news stories basically in order to annoy my liberal friends. I had degraded. I was no longer an intellectual, upstanding member of the online community. I was little more than a troll. Enough was enough. When I woke up and saw that Facebook was making me miserable, that my hand would relentlessly click on the link and prevent me from accomplishing anything worthwhile, and that I was spending nearly six hours of my day—all of my free time—just staring at screens, it became clear that I was a full-blown Facebook addict. 

I didn't feel like I was really living.

You'll notice that "living" is one of the tags I use for posts. You'll find it in the tag cloud over on the right side of this blog's webpage. (Even using the term "tag cloud" makes me want to puke.) I did that intentionally. I want to highlight the posts that are actually about Life, life with a capital L, not life through a fiber-optic cable. I want to keep track of how much living I'm doing. I want to feel like the two hundred hours Steam so thoughtfully tells me I've spent playing RAGE have been counterbalanced by at least a thousand hours of pure-D experience. 

Facebook wasn't letting me do that, and I knew it. I've known it from the beginning. I mentioned something in my original post about wanting to accomplish more during the hiatus, such as touring Gyeonggi-do, riding trains, visiting Hwaseong Fortress, exploring Ganghwa Island and so forth.

I don't know why I got so wrapped up in Facebook and the Internet at large. I can't explain why it's so easy for the human brain to fall prey to instant communication, electronic entertainment, and easy access to moving and static images. But that's what happened to me. Maybe it's a byproduct of civilization. We're social animals, and we've been conditioned to be even more social by our millennia-long habit of living in cities. We want to feel connected. Perhaps it also has something to do with the way our brains our wired. After an eternity of playing with things like marbles and Jacob's ladders, video games and streaming video are a quantum leap forward. (Whatever the reason, the effects are insidious.)

I just want to feel alive. I believe that civilization, and with it technology and all its insidious tendrils, is sapping the genuineness and joie de vivre from the existential equation. I was on Facebook for the sake of keeping my brain entertained during its downtime, like a kid with a Game Boy in a waiting room. And I wasn't even using my time on Facebook in a constructive way (as far as it's possible to use one's time on Facebook in a constructive way, anyway): I was just trolling. If it wasn't Facebook, it was something else: editing pages on TV Tropes, looking up trivia on the Internet Movie Database, watching Grand Theft Auto V videos on YouTube, researching firearms on Wikipedia, even browsing news sites with the same ulcerating anger with which I once patrolled my Facebook feed. Technology, man. The Internet. It's eating my life. I'm 13,000 words into my NaNoWriMo project, and I can ill afford to be wasting time wholesale—now or ever. 

So I quit Facebook. And I might just quit the Internet, too, at least until November's over. We'll have to see. Something's gotta give. Civilization's making me sick, especially now that I've finished Brave New World. I read about soma, and feelies, and sex-hormone chewing gum, and Obstacle Golf and Centrifugal Bumble-puppy and Assistant Predestinators and bottles and television and I thought, Man.

No way. Not for me.

As the Savage defiantly tells Mustapha Mond, "I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want goodness. I want sin."

Living, in other words. Not virtual reality.

If you agree with me, then get off my blog and go eat an apple in the autumn air. You'll thank me later.

a hodgepodge of cool stuff

I think the secret to happiness is being happy. It's just that simple. To be contented inside, you need to actually be contented. One of the ways to do that is to surround yourself, as much as possible, with things that make you happy. I'm not talking about being a materialist and buying yourself a bunch of plasma TVs and expensive tequila. I'm talking about appreciating the little stuff. When the little things make you happy, you'll never be unhappy for long. And you'll live a longer life because you'll enjoy more of what's in it. Now, not to brag or anything, but I'm one of the people who does that. I appreciate the small stuff, I mean. I mean, take Friday, for example. Got up in the morning and had a beautiful flight to Barstow-Daggett. Got informed by my instructor after landing back in Apple Valley that I'd be soloing the next time out. Went home and had my favorite sandwich ever for lunch. Got invited to a party that evening and had a marvelous time. Came back and listened to my new favorite Led Zeppelin song. (Just when I think those guys couldn't possibly get any better, I go and find another tune of theirs that I've never heard before that breaks all previous records for awesomeness.) On Halloween I got up and went shooting, played 36 holes of mini-golf with a couple of good friends, then went to my best buddy's house, sat around the fire, sipped some 14-year-old Clynelish, and got to try smoking a pipe for the first time. Now, some people might frown on this kind of lifestyle. Some people might not see anything exceptional in it. But I see happiness, the simple happiness that comes from taking time to enjoy the little things, to be with friends, to have some clean fun, to surround yourself with what you like, making your life a hodgepodge of cool stuff. The scrapbook of your life should be full of images that, viewed side-by-side, make you (not anyone else) pause and think, "Yeah, cool." I look back over the past few days and see pipe tobacco, Scotch, mini-golf, philosophical talk, bad jokes, friends, Led Zeppelin, costume parties, delicious sandwiches, flying, and good news. Have I got a good life or what?