These diarists aren’t Anne Frank

I swear that if you took the Oxford English Dictionary, detonated a stick of dynamite in it and then stuck the pieces back together randomly you’d get something that vaguely resembles the sort of diary entries that my students have written. Reading the diaries is like reading normal English text except that it’s been written backwards, and I read it while hanging suspended from the ceiling, upside-down. I feel like the gestapo in some way, correcting their sentence constuction. Maybe I’m just a grammar Nazi.

Some entries are okay, but some are making me feel the urge to throw myself on my pen, or maybe the student who wrote it.

The diary of Anne Frank
Anne Frank

Versatile Superloo to (i) let

“Placed in rustic settings, this free standing abode comes superbly equipped with three self cleaning toilets”.

It turns out there’s another “Super loo”, only this one is located at the base of one of Su-jeong mountain.

Faux piping fixed with the blow of a spanner

Not quite up to my elbows in it, but still trying to fix the sink plug. It one of those spring loaded types that the Koreans prefer and it had jammed after I (admittedly) had pressed too hard. I fixed using the spanner to push, meaning hitting rather hard with one of the pincers on the spanner from below. The sink plug now works again.

Looking at the piping below to sink I had fully expected to find u-tube plumbing underneath. What I did find was thin plastic piping, no u-tube at all. No this plastic wasn’t even the PVC type. It had the look and feel of the cheap plastic toys I used play with when I was a kid. The sort that crumpled when looked at too hard.

It didn’t even need a spanner it was ‘hand tight.’ What made it even look flimsier and cheaper was the worn off silvering that was on the piping.

I can be such an engineer sometimes!

Hunters and Collectors, Spike did not return

Left to right: A Hong Kong Octopus card, a Korean T-money Card and a Tokyo Metro Suica card

They are keepsakes of my travels to these respective countries.

My new T-money card has a curious design on it. Blue pills. I feel like I’m toting a card of ecstasy.

Stone cold, with heady goodness

If I were to get a hamburger set, the burger would be normally cold. Stone cold if it was made even just a matter of 5 minutes before. God help them if they make a move on New Zealand, they wouldn’t last a week.

Having said they’re the only game in town when it comes to Westernised food in my town.

The top left quarter of the poster celebrates their 30 years in South Korea.

I’ve got a 55mm. *Put your lens cap back on!*

To be seen touting a digital camera in Korea these days is a show of prestige. The digital camera has become an accessory. Something to casually sling over one shoulder, I’ve even seen people take them to the supermarket. If it’s not to take pictures of their kids while they rifle through the stock, then what? Corporate espionage for the opposition?

If it were a professional type camera body (i.e. big and heavy) then I might take more notice. Think of 1-2kg instead of 0.7kg for a sub-frame camera. Not to mention more than four times the price for the professional camera. What would impress me even more if you were able to carry it for a whole day without complaint.

The monster from the deep only cost 100 won

The guy I watched, had almost landed it when the tail hit the back of the machine and the lobster tumbled back into the water. I’ve seen books sold from a vending machine, but this is the first time I’ve seen one that sold live lobster as a game of skill.