Live: Typhoon Bolaven

Hi all,

Preamble: I know I haven't been around for ages, and I'll explain why in another post. I'm not going to waste time on this one though, as I've decided to do something way more exciting. Namely, live-blogging a typhoon. Pretty sure someone has done this before (The Guardian), but it might be interesting nonetheless.

I'm sitting here as the edge of typhoon Bolaven hits me in Siheung City, South Korea (map). I'll try to keep this updated throughout the day with what's happening. Not sure what form the updates will take just yet, but it should be interesting. Anyway, you can read a little more about it here.

6:24am: Awoken at 6.12am by repeated tapping noise. Turns out to be the wind coming through the air conditioning and rattling my bathroom door. The noise coming from the aircon ducts sounds like something emanating from the Temple of Doom. Already quite intimidating and I don’t think that we’ve really got started yet. This photo shows things looking relatively normal. Weird thing is that the wind is whistling, jet engine style, around the 18th floor of my building already, but at street level the trees don’t seem to be moving that much, and people seem to be going to work oblivious. Kids however, aren’t going to school as the government has cancelled it for the day. This more than anything has me worried, as very little manages to separate Koreans and their educational institutions, not even supposed summer vacations. Am on 2 hours sleep so far, so will try to get a little more and then report back.

Brief update - 6:36am. First tiny drops of rain are hitting my window. Strongly suspect that these won’t be the last. Korean weatherforecast seems to agree, but only predicts 3 inches between now and midnight. I guess that’s quite a lot though 

7:40am: Not doing so well at sleeping right now. Not totally sure why seeing as it's bedtime in England. Nevertheless, it's breakfast time here, so am pouring myself a bowl of Strawberry Crisp and watching the storm develop. It's raining steadily, but not heavily here, and the wind hasn't got any stronger either. These updates are exciting huh? There do seem to be less people going to work though - this road is normally nose to tail at this time. On my Twitter, @holterbarbour says:

"Hey Bolaven- pretty lackluster showing here in Seoul so far. Are you a hurriCANe or a hurriCAN'T?"

Hubristic? Stay tuned to find out. And look at this satelite pic while you do. In a couple of hours that will be right on top of me.

9:01am: On the edges of Seoul it seems like a fairly average day. The wind has dropped and the rain has ceased to fall for a while. However, the clouds are scudding across the sky at an alarming rate, and it is expected to get much worse around lunchtime, which is when my colleague Robyn will be out and about. She had this to say:

 I know I'm harping on this, but so far it's really not worse than normal Somerset West winter rain. Maybe later it will be a SW thunderstorm, where some potted trees get blown into neighbours' yards?

Brave words from the people of Seoul... I'm going to try to get some more kip whilst it's quiet.

12.26pm: Well, I managed to sleep pretty well, but I must have been woken up by the storm, which has indeed got a lot worse. There's fairly heavy, sideways rain beating against my window and things are looking a lot more, well, typhoony. There's still a fair amount of traffic on the roads, but I have only seen one person on the street so far, and they were being blown into an involuntary run, so the wind must be pretty strong. I certainly sounds impressive up here on the 18th floor. It is though, still surprisingly clear out there.

2:50pm: Updates are few and far between here because not much seems to be happening in Siheung. In fact, I'm not sure that the sun isn't going to come out. It's still really windy though, and the fact that one of the shared kitchen windows in my building doesn't shut is a bit worrying. Still, we're supposed to be at the worst point in the storm here, and I can see a couple of brave souls walking around in their shorts. Nothing else to report here, though sadly a Chinese fishing boat has overturned near Jeju killing at least 4 people, and I'm reading tweets about trees blowing down the road. For now though, I can't see anything amiss here.

5:51pm: This might be the final update, as again, not much is happening. The wind got up for a while back there, enough to blow open a window in the shared kitchen and turn the corridor into a temporary wind tunnel, but aside from that it's been a very calm typhoon, and a slightly disappointing blog post. Looking out the trees are all standing and there's even a group of old ladies out for a stroll (they do breed them tough out here though). If anything happens I'll update this again, but for now I'm going to go off, have some dinner and think about something more interesting to write about.

A

How are you, Grev?

In which I make one of those general posts about my life. If you're not interested, feel free to stop reading here. I won't be hurt. I wouldn't want to read about me either. For those of you still with me...

Work

This is more or less my entire life these days, at least Monday to Friday. As I've griped about previously, I get up, start working, stop and go to bed. Actually it's not that bad, but I would think by the time 2011 finishes I'll have put as many hours into professional activities as I did in two when I worked in England. This isn't a bad thing - a lot of those extra hours are put in voluntarily and are aimed at making me a better teacher, which is often a very engaging and enjoyable process, which doesn't really fell like work.

At school I am two days away from being finished for the semester. Realistically, I am already done, as I'm spending this week doing listening discovery exercises with episodes of The Simpsons. Not a very tricky way to spend a week. However, teaching never really stops here, as the following two weeks I have summer camps to work. Korean education tends to view quantity of education as more important than quality, so there's never much of a chance to rest for student or teacher. I shouldn't complain too much though, some of my Korean colleagues get no summer vacation at all this year.

Similarly my studies are winding down. I say winding down, they're more winding up, as I have a little under 4 weeks to produce my final project for this module. For once I have made a decent start already, and I'm already 3,000 out of 6,000 words in. This weekend I have to listen to and transcribe 28 student interviews though, which is not going to be a lot of fun. Still, I'm confident of coming out of it with a decent grade.

Life

I am still finding time to have a little fun outside of work. It's been raining on and off here for the past three weeks which has dampened things a little, and completely wiped out football. One of the times it rained on was Monday evening and I was 8 miles away from home on my bike. I don't think I have ever been out in heavier rain. I could barely see 50 yards in front of me.

This weekend I was out and about in Itaewon. That's the district of Seoul where foreigners are almost in the majority, and where many of the embassies are based. It's actually a pretty nasty place a lot of the time as it's where all the American army members go out, but it's sometimes necessary to go there as it's possible to get essentials like lime pickle and mango chutney that just aren't available anywhere else in Korea. It also has a surfeit of not-shit (I'm not giving the American fruity muck they serve any better than that) beer on tap. I stayed there drinking until the baseball hats indoors crew turned up, then I cleared off to Hongdae instead.

What is pleasing me these days is Korean. I'm still not much good, but I can converse pretty easily with my friends as long as the topic is simple, and get along fine in everyday life. My MA is seriously limiting study time, but I've reached that wonderful stage in language learning where you start to pick up things just through exposure, rather than having to study them. I still want to get much better though.

Staying in Touch

I know I haven't been particularly good at keeping up with this blog, or with people who I should write to. I'm afraid that isn't that likely to change any time soon either, though if anyone is moved to send me a message of any kind I promise I will get back to you. These days I seem to be tumbling into a maelstrom of social media, but it's part of the job. Thus, if you want to contact me, or just read about me, there are a number of ways to do it:

- Email is the same as always.

- I still spend too much time on Facebook, so you can always get me through there.

- I now have a Google+, and invites to give away. Add me if you like.

- I will endeavour to write a blog post here every couple of weeks. You can always subscribe and leave me comments.

- My teaching blog is at http://breathyvowel.wordpress.com -this is mostly stuff I've been up to in the classroom, but may have the occasional interesting / funny piece.

- There is also an accompanying Twitter: @breathyvowel - I'm planning to use this as a general one from now on, but there will be quite a few ESL related tweets.

I think that's more or less it. Visitors are still welcome here if you fancy an exotic Asian getaway.

Was this post a bit needy? Oh well.

Until next time,

A

I'm back

Finally, a post! Christmas break rather messed up my schedule, and knocked me out of my regular blogging routine. This is not to say I didn't have time, I did in fact have more time than usual, but never quite the time to post.

Anyhow, I've now been back in Jinbu for two days, which has been my first chance to pause and catch my breath for some time. Since my last post I've been through Christmas, New Year, three weeks of English Camp and then four weeks in the UK. It seems like a lot, and it was. It's been nice to get back to some stunning, and relatively warm weather, given that when I left the thermometer was holding steady around the -10C mark. This winter was by all accounts exceptionally cold. Too cold sadly for my boiler, which froze up during my absence and spat water all over the floor. Fortunately it's back in some kind of working order, though nowhere near what it used to be. What wasn't good was getting back feeling terrible, and having to retreat to bed for a while. I'm not sure whether it was readjusting to Korean germs, or the collected effects of jetlag and hangover, but whatever it was I didn't feel particularly well. I'm almost back to top form now though. Here's a nice shot of round where I live, seeing this always makes me feel better.

I'm going to try to put up a few posts over the next few days covering my period of absence. In truth they'll probably be photo heavy and text light, but that's probably no bad thing.

I'll start with Christmas. It's not quite the same festival in Korea as it is in the Western world, with just a single holiday falling on the day itself, and even on the 25th a lot of shops seemed to be open anyway. It certainly wasn't much of a holiday "season" as it is in the UK; in fact I had probably my busiest week of the year starting the 27th December. All in all it didn't feel much like Christmas at all.

Linda's birthday falls on Christmas Eve, so we went out until very late and didn't get up until about midday on the 25th. We popped out for a wander around Incheon's Chinatown, and then (having failed to secure a traditional Christmas dinner) attempted to take down an entire duck between two of us. This noble mission was sadly halted when we realised we could get a doggy bag. We did manage about 2/3 of it though, and it was delicious. For those that don't know about Korean duck, it comes part garlic steamed and then you finish it off over hot charcoals in front of you at your table. Then you wrap it in a lettuce leaf with some bean paste, garlic and pickled onions, and eat. Delicious.

After that it was back home for a Skype call with my family (this is the first Christmas I've not been at home) and then bed. Perhaps not a normal Christmas, but a good one all the same.

Linda's colleague Cindy and her husband, whose name escapes me.

Birthday breakfast (well, lunch by the time we got up)

Incheon Chinatown's Mural Street

Me and Incheon

Not sure what this was.

Nor this. I realise that this is not the finest captioning ever.

Cabbage art.

Cool, isn't it?

Douglas MacArthur, whose daring landing at Incheon changed the direction of the Korean War, and thus nearly 60 years later the direction of my career. Cheers Doug.

Confucius. And you wonder why he preached respect for the elderly.

Duckfest: Two people and one duck will enter. Two will emerge feeling bloated, one will emerge in a doggy bag. BUT WHO WILL IT BE?

Grillin'

New Year here is similarly low key, partly because Korea has two calendars and so has two New Years celebrations, with the lunar calendar festival (the Chinese New Year) being the bigger deal. Still, this doesn't stop thousands of Korean's heading to the East coast to catch the first glimpse of the sun on New Year's day, usually after drinking heavily on the beach all night.

We decided that we'd go and try to do similar, braving some freezing temperatures to get to Jeongdongjin, where we'd also been in the summer. The key attraction was the turning of the giant hourglass on the beach there. We were told that the festival was cancelled, but headed down nonetheless. When we got there we saw a suspiciously large amount of sand left in the glass, and having stood for a while in the crowd, realised it was already two minutes past twelve. Happy New Year.

Still, we got some sparklers, and then retired to the warmth of a chicken restaurant. Neither of us fancied staying up all night on a freezing beach in the end, so we caught a taxi back to Gangneung just as everyone seemed to be flooding in to Jeongdongjin. A bit of an anticlimax, but we did get free doughnuts and persimmon from our taxi driver.

All aboard... the night train!

The hourglass.

Jeongdongjin by night.

Annoyed by the hourglass not turning, Alex decided to effect a terrorist attack on it instead.

I'll try to post some more winter activities over the next few days before school starts again. Until then...

A

Grev takes to the (shallow) slopes.

Brrr. I've just checked tomorrow's weather forecast. It's getting down to -15C tonight, and won't get above -6C for the entirety of tomorrow. That's getting pretty cold, even compared to England's new status as an Arctic outpost. Still, I'm not too cold as long as I'm inside. Korean people seem to feel the cold worse than most. They've been complaining and banging the heating on since the temperature dropped out of the 20s this autumn, so the school is equipped with fierce sounding gas stoves in every classroom, and the teachers' room is kept at a sub-tropical temperature. The snow, however, is yet to become a regular feature.

This doesn't deter the Korean ski resorts around me, who have fired up their snow guns and been open for several weeks now. It's this can-do spirit that will hopefully see them land the 2018 Winter Olympics. It always amuses me to see Pyeongchang described as a candidate city, when it is in fact a tiny town of around 7,000 inhabitants. Anyhow, it seems a bit of a waste to live in the best winter sports area in Korea and not at least give it a try, so when fellow-teacher Tom announced he'd be out of town one Sunday I borrowed his boots, board, lift pass and goggles and headed for Yongpyeong to try some snowboarding.

I had my doubts about snowboarding. I tend to enjoy sports where I can make up for a complete lack of grace and finesse with physical effort. Snowboarding is definitely not one of these sports, seemingly requiring only balance, and the adjustment of downward pressure on your toes and heels to keep you pointing where you want to go. However, largely thanks to the Rudy's patient efforts to teach me, I was able to tackle a biggish beginners slope by the end of the day, turning both ways and being able to stop more or less where and when I wanted. Of course, I still managed to hit the ground spectacularly a few times, for which I am still paying now, but overall the fun I had was worth the pain, and I'll definitely be going again soon.

Here's the indisputable evidence that I was, at one point at least, on a snowboard:

Getting ready

Headshot!

Up...

Up...

And away!

Rudy's training methods get a bit ahead of themselves.

I didn't go up there. It looked terrifying.

This took a little while while they worked out what Yongpyeongs initials were.

On the lift. Proof that we at least went up high.

Smiles mixed with a hint of terror.

We went down here. As with the cycling photos, it's steeper than it looks. Promise.

Caitlyn in action.

After a hard day on the slopes, what better than some delicious Korean fare to warm the chill from your bones and the pain from your buttocks? We ended up in a restaurant in Jinbu that I'd never tried before. The menu didn't reveal much about each dish, and so I managed to persuade everyone to just pick something, in an attempt to expand my knowledge of Korean food. The restaurateur assured us that Do-ru-mok-jiggae was really delicious, so we rolled the dice. It turned out to be a spicy concoction of pieces of pregnant fish, with radish and onion. Interesting to say the least. In actual fact it wasn't too bad, but the eggs were a little chewy and didn't really taste of too much. My big complaint with Korean fish recipes is that the fish skin, bones, tail, eyes and everything else is simply chucked into the soup, meaning you spend as much time picking bits out as you do eating. Still, at least I know what Do-ru-mok-jiggae is now, and so do you.

Timing!

Bits and Pieces

Digging through my camera's memory card in search of blogging material, of which there is plenty to come, I came upon some interesting photos that don't quite deserve a space of their own, but might be interesting to you nonetheless.

What are you eating?

Yes, this might not look too appetising, but I promise you it's good. This is Doenjang Jiggae. This is one of the most traditional Korean dishes. You can put almost anything in it (I used vegetables and tofu here) and then just add soy bean paste, garlic and an anchovy and you're more or less good to go. Serve with rice, and a selection of kimchi (four types above, all provided by my co-teacher).

The real beauty of this dish is the dish (sigh). The ceramic pot that this is in goes on the stove, and you cook the stew in it. Once it's ready you just pop it on a wooden block and carry it to the table. Your food stays hot for longer, and it halves the amount of washing up you have to do. Beauty.

What are you up to with your kids?

These are my kids in grades 1 to 4 of one of my elementary schools. I realise there aren't many of them, but there are only 30 kids in the entire school. We spent a couple of after school classes translating their Korean names into the Roman alphabet, and then making them into masks. I took these photos to help me remember their names. Not my greatest brainwave, given that none of their faces are visible.

How's the weather?

Right now the temperature is plummeting, as we head towards the bitter mountain winter. Apparently last year it got down to -27C here. Chilly. I bought a pair of tights the other day to wear under my trousers when it gets really cold. I somehow feel like less of a man, though probably still more of a man than I would if I didn't have the tights and certain important parts of my anatomy froze off on the ride to school.

The phot's above were from a couple of months back, when a few days of biblical deluges turned the trickle that passes through Jinbu into a raging torrent. This is maybe 6 times the size it normally is.

How about Korean aesthetics?

Bewildering. My friend Stacy and I went for a walk in the buckwheat fields, and came upon a gaudy bench and a plastic pillar box. Beats me who put them there, and why.

Probably about to throw in some awesome fall scenery then?

Yup.

What were you saying about Korean aesthetics?

That they're mental. Feature this London bus sitting in the grounds of the Kensington Stars Hotel in Seoraksan. Complete with all original signage. Almost made me pine for Willesden, but not quite. Quite why a country with such a beautiful natural landscape has stuff like this dotted about is still beyond me.

Get to Seoul much?

Not if I can help it, but with a girlfriend living just the other side of it it's getting more difficult to avoid. This sunset almost makes it look nice though, and I did feel good at this point. Mostly because I was going home.

Adios,

A