Rob's World

Suddenly I know why why Gmail has been acting up.

Forget what I said yesterday (and what this guy said weeks ago)! Kim Jong-il must be stopped!

As published earlier on Korea Beat, the panel of the popular show “Chat With Beauties” had some particularly harsh things to say about foreign couplings here, particularly among Korean women and English-speakers who aren't so good at Korea.

Must say this part made this 6'3 Caucasian rather uncomfortable:

Kenya-born Euphracia said, “in Korea it seems that if you’re tall and just speak English well, you’re treated as the king… My other Kenyan friends were so surprised when they went out with they Korean girlfriends.” Germany-born Vera said, “if a German guy is tall then everybody thinks he’s handsome in Korea… They come to Korea and start acting like Casanova.”

There are many theories being tossed about as to how this subject came up (just check the Korea Beat posting's comments section), but it seems very few Korean males, much less foreign ladies brought onto Korean programming to make Korean audiences feel good, have asked why these couplings are so common.

At his blog, Chris Backe has started a list of such reasons, all of which are pretty good, if not the entire story. My wife likes to tell me that, before we met, she had dated a few Korean guys (who had much deeper pockets than I do) who were interested in marriage.

A big reason she turned them down had to do with alcohol. I don't blame them, though. If I had to go through the same school system they did, I might be tossing my cookies every weekend, too.

I started this blog site in September 2005, just after I started living in Korea. It began as, and has continued to serve as an anthology of sorts for my columns, letting people see them before they end up in The Paris Post-Intelligencer, The Chattanoogan.com or, at times, The Herald.

There comes a time, though, when a guy feels the need to branch out a bit; in my case, I've wanted to start using a blog for it's most useful purpose, which is to offer rapid up-to-date news on something that will interest people. For the most part, the market for Korean bloggers is saturated, with many, many, MANY sites already catering to that market.

Besides, I feel I have too many interests to be contained to one subject. If only I were Roger Ebert or some other guy so famous that he can pretty well blog about whatever's ticking him off on that particular day and get dozens of comments.

Anyway, I've come to realize that one thing I can do is keep people at home up to date on the situation with North Korea. I have gotten queries about that oddity of a nation just to our north on many occasions, and most of the questions can be summed up in this way:

"Are you scared?"

To which I'd have to answer: No. At least, not at the moment. North Korea long ago was left behind to eat the South's dust in economic terms, and their repeated attempts to get attention are just that: attention seeking. The North wants more aid from the United States to keep their nation propped up, at least long enough for Kim Jong-il to pass his baton to his son, and Kim shows no desire to jeopardize that transition.

No matter what he says, he knows that attacking the U.S. (or nations allied with it, such as South Korea) would be suicidal, and the U.S. government knows that, after our Iraq misadventure and the economic bubble burst, that we can't afford another costly war (in terms of both money and members of the armed service we would lose). My limited faith in governments should be made clear by the links under "liberty" at the side of this page, but I think both the Kim regime and the Obama administration are intelligent enough to avoid a disaster of this sort (start on pg. 10 of this report to see the consequences of such a war from our perspective).

So, as news develops I will use this page to inform you of reasons why I don't worry, and why you shouldn't either.

(PS-I was planning this entry long before news of the cyber attack on U.S. and South Korean government sites broke. It doesn't change much, though, as a source near the end of the story says "no immediate reports of financial damage or leaking of confidential national information" emerged and "the alleged attacks appeared aimed only at paralyzing Web sites."

Click here to read my story about Busan Haps, the new publication aimed at Busan's foreign community, helmed by the inimitable Bobby McGill.

Son,
No matter how hard you try, I’ll always be 30 years older than you. And, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in that time it’s that those older than you will assume they know more than you do, no matter what unique situation you find yourself in, or what newfangled technology is being used.

I could be the one to break the cycle and be less smug, but hey, after 30 years I think I’ve earned a turn at being smug with someone.

It’s good to have ideals that will push you to greater heights in all areas of life. Unfortunately, reality will probably be at odds with your ideals, constantly tempting you to aim lower. Therefore, you’ll find that the trick to maximizing your achievements is to delay your realization of reality as long as possible.

Here are a few examples:

* Work
The Ideal – You want to perform a task that puts your talents to work performing tasks that make your community a better place and you a better person.
Reality – Your boss has connections to make and budgets to meet, and will have you spend much of your time performing tasks helping him/her meet those goals, rather than the ones we listed above. You may think that your employer is consistently selling out your collective integrity by making you work on things of no – what do you call it? Oh, right – value, just to help his/her reputation, and you’re probably right.

You’re probably wrong, though, in thinking that you can escape this by going to a bigger, better place to work. The bosses at those places just have bigger connections to make and more complicated budgets to meet. You’re also probably wrong in thinking that, if you were the boss, you’d do any differently when faced with those budgets.

The Benefits of Denial – The longer you can go without learning this the more valuable you’ll be to your employer/co-workers, because you’ll actually try your best at every task ahead of you.

Stay in Denial Until … your mid-30s. Make it that long and you’ll be doing great. Better than me, anyway.

* Education
The Ideal – You want to study something that will enrich your mind and prepare you for your life’s work.
Reality – In order to get the degree you want from the university you want, you’ll probably have to go thousands of dollars in debt and lose a lot of sleep. At the end of those four … okay, four and a half years, you’ll look back and realize that only two, maybe three of the classes you took were really – how do you say? – valuable.

The Benefits of Denial – The longer you can go without learning this the higher your grades will probably be. Low GPAs on résumés are hard to explain, unless you’re a member of Skull & Bones.

Stay in Denial Until …at least your last semester. If you must go to graduate school you may need to find another means of avoiding acceptance of reality. Blunt force trauma has been known to work.

* Love
The Ideal – You will almost certainly get to know more wealthy, athletic or charismatic males who have no trouble attracting female attention. They may act as though they don’t know how fortunate they are, which will motivate you to believe you’d never fail to show appreciation if you were in that position.

Reality – One day you will be married, and if your wife is nice, you will eventually come to expect the good things she does for you. This will probably cause you to fail to respond in kind at times. No matter how nice your wife is, eventually you will be criticized for failing to reciprocate.

The Benefits of Denial – Those aware of this reality too early in life tend to desire neither marriage nor wives who are “nice.” This, in turn, lowers their chances of leaving offspring they care enough to write letters of advice to.

Stay in Denial Until … Denial? Denial of what?

*Regrets
The Ideal – Maybe you’ll get to experience all that life has to offer: seeing the world, meeting important people, and leaving behind a body of work that will be highly regarded by future generations in your field. Maybe you’ll be a modern-day Ernest Hemingway.

The Reality – For all his experiences, the pre-modern-day Hemingway apparently didn’t encounter whatever it was that prevents a person from doing their own lobotomy with a shotgun.

The Benefits of Denial – The longer you can go without realizing that everyone has regrets later in life, the more empowered you’ll feel to address the ones you have now. You may actually succeed with some of them.

Stay in Denial Until … your mid-60s. Make it that long and you’ll be doing great. Better than Hemingway, anyway.

Congrats to Federer, but I can't even imagine how much this must hurt for Roddick. Stay with us, Andy, you make the game better.

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Sometime last July (the exact date escapes me) I attempted to bench press 210 pounds four times. Well, I didn't just attempt, I succeeded, but I've never been the same since.

The next day a pain in my upper left pectoral began to throb, and soon it had spread all over the shoulder area. It lingered mostly in the region where the arm and the shoulder connect. At first I decided to hold off on the lifting for a few months.

In October I tried lifting some light weights at home, and after a few times it started acting up again. I went to a doctor at the hospital where Catherine works, but he mostly dealt with spinal problems and didn't have much to tell me except to rest (a very common suggestion among doctors, I find).

There was another doctor at her hospital who was an orthopedic specialist, but I had trouble arranging appointments with him because of my schedule, in which I traveled from Chuncheon to Seoul and back almost every day. When I finally did get to see him in March, he said there was a bit of fluid between the arm and shoulder bone caused by repetitive exercise. He advised me not to lift (except leg exercises, plus bicep curls were okay) and also to avoid putting my left arm above my head or behind my back.

He seemed confidant that within a month it'd be okay.



Well, I can't say I followed his advice perfectly (do you ever really think about how often you put your arm behind your back over your head?) but I followed closely enough that it should've gotten better, I think. It hasn't, though, and I've had recurring painful inflammation in that area every time I've been required to lift something, even a relatively light box over my head while working around the house.

I saw the same doctor in early June, and this time he gave me some plastic bands for exercises designed to strengthen my shoulder muscles. I used them for about three days, after which I could tell that if anything they were making it worse.

This drove me to consider acupuncture. I've had it done before; first when I was really sick in Suncheon about three years ago, and then last year when I severely sprained my ankle and it swelled up like a water balloon. I could see an obvious effect in terms of how the swelling diminished, so I figured it would be worth a try in this case.

I first went yesterday, and found it to be nothing like the acupuncture I received before. Usually they put lots of needles in the point of injury and in a few other places. This time, after I told the doctor the problem, he had me lie on a bed with a heating pad over my shoulder for about 10 minutes. Then he came in and poked me several times with a needle on my shoulder, back, arm and side. Didn't leave it in, just poked.

Then, he poked the spots on my shoulder seen above with a smaller needle, drawing blood. His assistant attached small bottles to the sites he poked, catching the blood while leaving me with the bruised areas you see. After leaving the bottles attached for several minutes, they then attached a kind of electronic massaging device, which left a pair of lesser marks, one of which you can see in the pics if you look closely enough.

After that, I was done, and he told me to come back the next day if it still hurt.



As of today the pain had diminished, but some remained, so I returned to the acupuncturist again. I received the same treatment, except this time the electronic massage came before the stabbing with the small needle. I feel a little soreness in that area (and quite a bit from the poking with the needle), but we'll see if it continues tomorrow. I don't know how any of this is actually supposed to help, but I didn't know last year and it seemed to then.

I would like to begin exercising more vigorously again, though I doubt I'll ever attempt to bulk up through lifting heavy again. Right now, I'd settle for being able to lift a box over my head without feeling it for three days afterward.

We'll see how it goes.

Someday if anyone asks me what the aftermath of my son Daniel’s birth felt like, I will probably be able to say, without hesitation, that it was very humid.

Korean tradition dictates that a brand new mother should not be exposed to things that are too cool, fearing that a sudden drop in temperatures could potentially be fatal. I’m sure that there is an anecdote dating back to this country’s agrarian past that can explain why new mother’s should avoid things like bathing, air conditioning, short sleeves and Nicholas Cage’s recent film career, and one day I’ll look it up.

(While I’m at it, I’ll painstakingly research what it is that makes them believe leaving the fan on at night can kill you, and why Koreans believe themselves to be genetically prone to mad cow disease.)

In the meantime, all I know is that my wife observes this traditional view, basically for the same reason Americans elect a vice president: not out of a conviction that it is necessary, but because it’s always been done. It’s not like I wasn’t warned it would be like this; back in September, when we were newly wed, my wife told me she would prefer not to have a baby in the summer months because it gets very humid here and we wouldn’t be able to use A/C.

But, to quote millions of first-time fathers everywhere: “Oops.”

Daniel was born in the middle of June as temperatures soared and millions of Koreas lay in bed sweating for fear of turning their electric fans on, my wife went into labor. Approximately 20 hours later, after my son had been delivered via c-section, we were together in the hospital room, and I had to decide on my sleeping arrangements for that night.

I knew I couldn’t leave the hospital, because my heavily sedated wife might need something, and then I’d have to spring into action, and call one of the nurses who might be able to understand what she was mumbling in Korean. In order that I might perform this vital service, I chose to sleep on the couch in the hospital room.

On that sultry not-technically-summer evening with no air conditioner and all the windows and doors shut, I had a dilemma: Should I sleep with a shirt on and sweat out an extra kilogram, or should I take my shirt off and risk terribly embarrassing the female Korean nurses, most of whom react to the site of a shirtless man the way an American nun might if she accidentally walked into the Cincinnati Bengals’ locker room?

Ultimately, I chose to latter option because, if a nurse should walk in before I was awake and fully dressed, I was confidant that I’d have perspired enough to give the blanket a certain adhesiveness.

The next day my wife and I were given the opportunity to view our offspring at designated times. My first glimpse at him was in the evening, when they allowed me to view him from behind a glass door. From that position, there wasn’t much I could do except look at him, snap a few photos and compare his appearance to that of the previous day. I can definitely say that, on day two, he looked a lot less red.

I’m guessing we weren’t let near him because the people here are concerned about germs; new parents rarely have visitors over to their homes for the first several weeks for that reason, after all. Still, when I relate this to female friends, they are often outraged that I wasn’t allowed to hold Daniel right away. I did get to do so on day three, though, and got to experience the two timeless sentiments felt by new fathers everywhere.

The first of these is “I’m not going to break him, am I?” and the second is “Does it hurt to be in debt?” It is kind of a shame I couldn’t have gotten those out of the way on day one or two.

On the fourth day my wife took over, by which I mean she began feeding. Although, since she began answering his cries every couple of hours when Daniel was ready to eat again, the expression “took over” might not be correct, as it implies she was in some sort of control. Still, it meant that both of us would get to see him with much greater frequency.

This situation repeated itself for several days, until on June 22nd, when he was six days old, Daniel and his mother came home for good. Now we’re together in a place where there’s still no air conditioning, we have to answer to his cries every couple of hours, and begin planning how we’ll react to the decades’ worth of needs he’s going to have.

Even if it weren’t summer, I’d still have many reasons to sweat.