a photoblog about life, the universe and everything
i’m completely obsessed with boston globe’s new feature called the big picture. this is a regular photo gallery of large, high quality photos focusing on world events. the last three have been hurricane ike, north korea, and observing ramadan.
the big picture represents the best of photo journalism and photography in general. the photography is absolutely brilliant.
life in korea is a bit of a drag … the weather is about as fickle as the natives. it constantly switches between rainy, hot, cold, smoggy, and combinations of the four. yesterday, just to be different, we had hail. admittedly, it was the first hail i’ve seen in korea and the first ever hail most of my students have seen. it hailed very loudly for about 20 minutes before returning to the regular downpour.
the day’s are long and tiring. however, i’m managing it all and also finding some time to relax. this weekend is a three day break, thanks to memorial day, so i plan on making the most of it. friday i have a dental appointment (checkup and clean), saturday i’m going to cheunmuro and getting my film developed. while i’m there i have a few things on the shopping list. the biggest item is a filter system for my camera. i’ve got my eye on a few smaller things, but mostly just accessories which won’t take up too much room and will be handy during my trip.
i did something crazy on sunday. i fired an email to an organization which has an arrangment to send teachers to north korea. they wrote back straight away with the contact details of the lady directly in charge of the program. they told me that the jobs in north korea don’t come up often, but i’m welcome to try. i sent an email to the woman who runs things and i’m waiting to hear back from her … i have no idea what i’ll do if they tell me i can actually get a job in DPRK. lol
the jobs are all plodding along. i’m dividing my time between my school and two offices. i also have a private ‘one on one’ lesson (authorised by my school). the school job is really annoying. my boss is a bean counter and tries to screw the teachers out of every possible cent. i’ve no doubt that i’ll have a run in with him before too long. however, i have passed the 5 month mark. so in another 4 weeks i’ll have completed half of my contract. that will leave me 6 more months and probably an extra 2 months to take me through to march 1st when i’ll leave korea.
speaking of which, i’m having fun planning my travels but i have two major quandries. the first problem is trying to work the 2010 world cup into my plans. the world cup starts in june and i don’t realistically think i’ll have made it to cuba by then. the most likely option is that i’ll just cut the travel wherever i am, fly to africa for the world cup, tour the rest of the continent, then fly back to where i left off. it’s not ideal, and hopefully i can work it so that i’m in the region at the right time … but if worst comes to worst i can at list wrangle things together enough to make it work.
i also tried making a travel calendar … but that went horribly awry. it’s almost impossible to calculate how long it’s going to take me. travel times between countries, the number of cities, how long in each place, are all really hard to guestimate. so i have given up on trying to make a calendar. instead, i’ll plan a comprehensive travel route and not worry about sticking to a time schedule.
and i’m pissed off that bhutan is going to be so damned expensive to visit … i’ve got the famous ‘tigers nest monastary’ on my list of things to see, but unless i can work out how to get around without spending $300 a day, then i’ll be forced to skip the entire country.
why did the icc agree to give this country an olympics???
more scary shit coming out of china thanks to a documentary about the effects of the one child policy. apparently it’s illegal to register the birth of a child if the parents are unwed. that means couples who have a baby out of wedlock are forced to bribe an official, pay a massive fine, or sell the child on the black market.
it just gets worse and worse … and there’s nothing being done about it.
the full story is here … people are buying and selling babies to try and get a boy, who would guarantee a better life for the parents … and the demand for babies is so high, that 70 000 children go missing every year, as black market trading steal babies from their homes to meet demand.
in my opinion, china is one of the most evil countries in our time. not only do they harbour militant states like north korea and burma, but they annexed tibet, were responsible for the north/south korea split, and the list of human rights atrocities are endless …
and how do we reward them??? 2008 beijing olympics … what kind of fucked up world is this?