davidsmeaton.com

wow … 2008 was a hell of a year. for me, it was probably the busiest and craziest year of my life.

the year started with a bang. first came the big d, followed by quitting my university job and starting work at an adult education school. i really missed my university position. it was such a fun, cruisy job. moving to the adult school was hell on earth. i spent the entire year waking up at 5.40 am, having to be at school by 6.20 am. i began classes every day at 6.30 am.  the school had its ups and downs. the schedule was terrible, but my students were always fantastic. the management was moronic, but the actual classes were fairly easy … overall, however, i’ll be very glad to leave that school … worst. job. ever.

i’ve saved a lot of money this year … a bi-products of working like a dog. that’s definitely been the biggest highlight of the year, since it has opened up a lot of doors in terms of future options. it’s hard to believe that i worked four jobs this year. i had money coming in from everywhere. just when i thought i couldn’t get busier, i’d pick up a job editing a thousand page textbook, or some other assignment which would keep me up late at night, make me tired and grumpy, but keep the bank account ticking along nicely. i have to be honest and i can definitely say that i know now how it feels to be korean - working long hours, getting very little sleep, having no social life, and focusing on the money … it’s a terrible way to live, and i definitely couldn’t do it forever.

this has also been a good year for photography. i picked up a few odd jobs, made a little bit of money, bought some lenses and gear, started a photography club, published columns in korea’s english newspaper, made a bunch of friends and taken heaps of photos. i’ve learned a lot and had a lot of fun with photography this year. i think i’ve improved and i can take away a lot more skills. but i’ve still got a lot to learn, especially with editing, but there’s plenty of time to work on that.

i bought my first leica this year. my film camera was so much fun … and just what i needed to mix things up a bit. i got to play with film, as well as do some printing and developing. the leica is going with craig back to australia. hopefully he’ll get some use out of it for the next few years.

my website has done well. i’ve started getting traffic and making a few friends. the site has been through a few redesigns as i try and find my style. the design that i’ve got now is hopefully the design that i will keep for a while. it’s fantastically minimal. i bought a few domains and played around with internet stuff.

i don’t usually talk about my relationships on my blog, but i did have a good relationship this year. i know i have not always been a perfect guy, but i’ve learned a lot from my mistakes.

i started reading books again, which was nice. i tried to learn the ukulele, but gave up. i tried to learn korean and spanish, but gave up. i tried to spend more time learning php and css, but gave up too. i attribute my failures to a lack of sleep and lack of time, rather than a lack of willpower!

liverpool had a good year. despite the lack of trophies, they fought hard and played well. the signings of torres and keane have been huge for the club. liverpool finish the year on top of the table, for the first time in 12 years. here’s hoping that they can hold on until may and take home the league title.

rubberchicken winging his way to korea in december was the cherry on the cake. i hadn’t seen my little buddy in three years, so it was good to hang out with him. happy new years mate!

the year will finish tonight and now i have to look forward to 2009.

my resolutions are to travel, take more photos, learn spanish, work as little as possible. i’m not a big ‘resolutions’ person, and 2009 is a difficult year to make promises, but i’m hoping that it’ll be a good year with much more fun and much more freedom.

to all my friends and family, happy new year. i wish everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous 2009.

it’s been a busy week … and a little stressful at the same time.

i’ve been trying to organise my last few months in korea. my contract for my school finishes at the end of december. i wanted to stay on for two more months so that i can leave korea in march, when the weather’s a little warmer.

however it seemed like i wasn’t going to be able to stay. that put me in a bit of a panic. it means i’d lose my apartment in 8 weeks and i’d need to start acting fast to make all the necessary arrangements. so last weekend i started selling off the stuff i can’t keep. i sold my umpc, cd player, guitar, webcam, blender, tripods, electronic junk, as well as a few other bits and pieces. i’m selling a bit more today and tomorrow as well. i also started packing and throwing out unwanted clothes.

but last night i got a reprieve. my boss said that i can stay for two extra months. it was quite a relief. i’m going to continue selling off my unwanted household goods, but i’m secure in the fact that i don’t have to move and find other work for two months in january and february. it also means the rubberchicken will have somewhere to stay when he arrives.

this morning i have been lazing about the house waiting for people to pick up items they’re buying. i’ve used the time to re-design my website’s colour scheme. while i like my site’s design, i think the colours were a bit hodge podge. so i’ve narrowed the entire site down to 3 basic colours (blue, gray, black), as well as white for the background. i also changed the default fonts and the link mouseovers … the site looks heaps better!

while i’m still busy, i have a bit of breathing space. i think i’ll go out this afternoon and get my film developed. i can enjoy the rest of my weekend, watch the liverpool game tonight, and sleep in tomorrow.

i went out for dinner with some friends last night. we headed to a restaurant and ate heaps of australian beef. of course, the beef went down very well … and there was lots of soju to go with it. i got a little pissy, but i had a good time.

when i woke up this morning i felt a little fuzzy. but the hangover wasn’t bad and i recovered quickly. school was easy today, since it’s the last day of the month and all my students have returned to their university studies. so i finished early and headed out to do some errands.

on my list of things to do was get a few shots. i was due for my second hep B shot, which i got done, and i headed to a children’s hosital for a hep A injection. in 5 months i get my last hep B shot and in 6 months i get my second (and last) hep A shot … i also need a yellow fever injection (which is probably going to make me sick) but it is difficult to get in korea. so i’ll probably get it abroad.

in other news, the korean won is diving like crazy. last week it was 1080 won to the US dollar, now it’s 1130 won. while it doesn’t affect my savings (which are already in US$) it means that i’ll be losing money on my income for the next six months … damn it!

there’s talk of a second economic crisis (only 10 years after the IMF last intervened and bailed out korea’s ridiculously over-inflated economy). the IMF has warned korea numerous times to control their economy. foreign companies are pulling out their investments and it’s widely predicted that shit and fan will meet.

i just hope the country can hold itself together for 6 months … or the won recovers. i really don’t want this to explode before i get out.

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.

… well, it wasn’t the bestest birthday ever, but i had a good day.

the irony of teaching in an adult hogwan is that i get a lot of leeway regarding my lessons. today, i took two of my classes to paris baguette to celebrate my birthday. the first class bought a cake for me and we had coffee with it. the second class just had coffee, but we had a lot of fun and talked for a long time.

at my office i also had another small party, this time with pizza and coke. then when i retuned to my school, my boss gave me a gift voucher for the local buffet restaurant (enough for 2 people to eat free) and my late class went out with me to enjoy beer and snacks.

so, it was a good day overall. i didn’t work too hard, the weather was fantastic, i had a good time with my students and i had a surprisingly nice day.

 

sleeping in … damn it’s great. i woke up at 8.15 this morning, had a long hot shower and headed to school. i taught a 3 hour lesson at my academy today because another teacher was unable to work. the boss asked me and i agreed. of course, i got paid for the lesson.

after school i headed to itaewon to meet up with the other columnists from the newspaper. the korea herald threw a free lunch at a very nice italian bistro. it was a small “thank you” for our contributions. i ate a lot, met some of the columnists, and made a few good contacts. i met the dude who runs the metropolitan blog in korea. he’s a photographer too and has joined my photography club. i also met another nice bloke who writes book reviews. he’s a part of the gay community and knows some guys who might be interested in modeling nude.

everyone headed to the wolfhound bar, after the bistro, to have beer and i departed in the direction of namdaemun. i went to my regular camera store and bought a fisheye lens. for the past few weeks i’ve been debating whether to get nikon’s 10.5mm fishey, or go with the tokina 10-17mm f3.5-4.5 fisheye zoom.

after i tested the tokina (during the photo exhibition) i realised what a great lens it was. it’s cheaper than the nikon and the zoom is a useful feature. the only disadvantage of the tokina is the aperture. since i plan on shooting in mostly bright conditions, i don’t see the aperture as a major issue. the image above is a test shot i took in the camera store.

i also bought a $15 cable release, should i decide to do any long exposure work.

overall, i had a pretty good day.

i got my little kohjinsha back today … and it has windows xp on it!! yay!!

i had been trying to get an english operating system on the damn thing for almost 6 months, but the service centre kept putting it off. finally i sent it away last week and he returned it this morning. it’s got the full system, with windows xp in english, and a ghost boot cd … which will come in handy.

it’s a bit of sunshine in my otherwise terrible start to the week. had a shitty day yesterday. i just felt really alone and stressed out. i don’t know what was the problem was, but i was in a terrible mood all day. the problem may partly be due to lack of sleep. i’ve always had lots of sleep each night, and now i’m living off 5 or 6 hours. it’s taking some getting used to.

last night i also tried to go to the local supermarket, following the directions of my adult students, but it turns out that the supermarket is actually a small convenience store … which is of no use to me whatsoever.

today i finish at 6.10, which is nice. i’ll do some laundry, wash dishes, hang posters on the wall, mess about with internet stuff, then head to bed early. i might get 8 hours if i’m lucky … which will help.

apparently this was some kind of prank in a japanese school … who cares … this is one very, very cool picture!

i have this girl in my class, every friday, and she’s driving me crazy … she’s gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. she’s about my height, very long straight hair, fair skin, deep watery brown eyes that i could just drown in. she’s got nice high cheekbones and her face lights up when she smiles. i could sit and stare at her for hours. i’d love to get her into a studio and take her photograph.

there’s only one problem … she’s dumb as a brick. she’s a sweet, sweet girl, but she speaks zero english. i’ve been watching her work and without her friend’s help, she’s completely clueless. i know, without a doubt, that this girl is going to fail my class.

it’s such a shame …