Doom and Gloom

Koh Lanta, Thailand.

As the 'chilly and breezy winds' of my second South Korean winter are subsiding, I'm hoping my lack-luster attitude at work is going to accompany them. I have been lazy lazy lazy in more ways than one. A few changes that confirm my slight drop in form are as follows. My bedside book is collecting dust, I've started playing scrabble on-line again, I go the gym twice a week rather than three times a week, I've been editing a lot of old photos recently, I'm eating less food, but more ice-creams, I have worn the same t-shirt two days on the bounce a couple of times over the last few weeks and finally, I paid my rent on time this month, rather than early. A slight rise in general laziness (not reading books, not washing my clothes, playing games, eating bad food, not paying rent early, wasting time by editing images that don't need editing) all act as valuable evidence that, right now, I don't give a damn. This might coincide with a few structural changes at work. I think that when one stays within a company for a long period of time, one starts to pick holes. Holes that, to the newcomer/outsider aren't holes at all, they're merely things that have always been their, regular tunnels if you like. I find myself breathing a bit more deeply at work...... elongated sighs are creeping in more and more. Anthony Teacher had an opportunity to take a change of pace and change schools, as his contract was up. He took his opportunity and is leaving in 7 days. My change of pace was confirmed today with the notification that I'll be teaching two seven year old classes from the start of March. So hopefully this will be the DW-40 that I need to kick start my life again, and also matching this will be the arrival of Spring. Happy Days. I'm looking forward to reading a new book and hitting the gym hard again. Also, with going to the gym more frequently I can enjoy that extra ice-cream without it being a burden on my waistline and conscience. And finally, I can wear clean clothes to work and not be paranoid about sweating and smelling out the teachers room.


Me, Seoul.

It isn't and hasn't been all doom and gloom recently. My Korean is booming. I have injected myself with Korean grammar to the point of explosion, and furthermore overdosing on sentence making, with my newly acquired vocab and grammical structure knowledge. My come downs are brief but distracting as I realise the mammouth size of my task. Learning a langauge is 'oh so solid', in other words, very very difficult. One will get carried away with a weeks studying and start to think 'wow, I can do this'. Then reality slaps you accross the face like a big smelly freshly caught Tuna. There isn't an end to learning a new language. No-one can call themselves fluent in any langauge, not even in their own, it's too deep an ocean, too diverse and a forever changing world, is a langauge. Marine-Scientists are still finding new species the deeper they go and learning a new langauge I think has similar attributes. I can't see a completion to my learning of Korean, which is daunting. I just have to 'roll with it' and set myself weekly/monthly goals. By the way I have bought tickets to see Oasis in Seoul.

Around you are the images that I spent time editing. Nothing drastic, I just flirted with the brightness, contrast and color of some images. Enjoy.

Tokyo.

Fish Market, Tokyo.

London, August, 08.

Jebu Do, South Korea.