Last Day at School

Ok, so here I am dusting this thing off for possibly one last post. It's hard to know how to finish these things, last posts and such. But I guess I just wanted this to serve more as a marker than a post. A statement to the time-stamping powers that be that here I am, Sean Stanhill, posting from school on my last day, August 25, 2014 (KST). Four years after I started.
Saying goodbye is hardest when said to the students, especially when they surprise me with a visit to my desk between classes!

My Students' Photo Comic Strips - Winter Camp, 2014

New Song "Can't Find My Way Home" by Ryan Horne

My friend and bandmate, Ryan Horne, came to me with an original song and asked if I would help him produce and record it. He sent me a demo he recorded a number of years before and asked if I would re-record it and add instrumentation. After many hours of recording, programming and mixing, I present the final mix of "Can't Find My Way Home" by Ryan Horne, whom performs the vocals, guitar and mandolin.
Speaking for myself, I am very proud of this track and represents a high water mark in my path as a music producer.
We both sincerely hope you enjoy the song and share it with your friends and loved ones.

The Edge of Development

Note: I do not attach a positive nor a negative connotation for the the word “development” and while its connotation and use is contentious, this post is not a forum for such semantic disputes.

 A summary of the beginning:

In the beginning, there was the Earth. It was really hot and then it cooled down. Eventually, plants and animals inhabited the more reasonable climates of the sea and land. Critters scurried, plants did plant things and over the course of time untold, humans walked erect out of the cradle of humanity (Ethiopia) and into the cradle of civilization (the fertile crescent of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers). As I imagine it, whomever first walked into the area stood, eyes squinted and deeply focused on the horizon, one foot propped on a rock, hunched over, their body weight on their elevated knee (think a Homo Erectus Captain Morgan) and thought to themself, “this’ll do.”

After that they may have stopped for a snack, scratched their nether regions and defecated but the very next day they started kicking over rocks, diverting streams (think children diverting hose water in the street with sticks and rocks) and modifying the land the suit their needs. Indeed, this triggered a reversal in our relationship to the Earth. The Earth could no longer provide for us much in the way that we found it. We had terms now and for the first time in our history the Earth would abide by them.

This moment (or series of events, more likely) marked the point in which we discovered that we could design our environment: harvest wheat in fields, raise livestock, build fences out of trees, chisel pictures into rocks, write lasting testaments to our ingenuity and cultures on papyrus and then paper and then the Internet, build shelters out of diverse materials, cool them down with air conditioning and shop for dead animals, neatly organized by organism and vacuum sealed to guarantee freshness. Since this moment, humans have been on a trajectory and in the West it is a trajectory out of sight, out of mind.

Having lived in East Asia for the last 4 and a half years or so, I see the above image not as a contrast but as a continuation. The East has and is developing so quickly that one finds juxtaposed hand-tilling farmers and terraforming backhoes literally side by side. 

Nowhere in my travels have I seen such a stark and bold expression of the spirit of the tamers of the Earth than here in East Asia, specifically in South Korea and China where the economies and cities have developed at break-neck speed. While the lines between farmland, exurbs, suburbs and urban areas blur in the West,  the edges of development here in the East are as clear as a road or a line of demarkation. Like the four corners of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado, there many places one can stand, straddling urban chaos and developing, terraformed wasteland like in Zhuhai, southern China.

I took the above picture while visiting my brother in Zhuhai. On the right, urbanized and developed land and my brother’s apartment building and, on the left, an area that was once the Pearl River Delta. This land on the left is zoned for apartments though development seemed to be on hold at the time. Chinese developers have been dumping the excavated earth from flattened mountains in some areas and filling in the sea and wetlands in Zhuhai and elsewhere; this also happens in places like Hong Kong where the airport now sits atop land that was claimed from the sea.

It wasn’t until I combined the two images at the top of the post that I realized something profound and interesting: both men, the tilling farmer and the terraforming backhoe operator, were both trying to accomplish the same thing, a charade as old as civilization, moving an imperfect Earth to manifest our desire for abundant food and shelter.

Cherry Blossoms and Flowers, pt. 2

Some more pics of flowers from around the 'hood.

Click "Read More" for more pictures!

Cherry Blossoms Around My Neighborhood, Sunrise

Didn't even know there was a 7:00am on Saturday mornings! Here are some of the blossoms around my neighborhood, before they disappear until next spring :)

Click "Read More" for more pictures!

정월대보름 - First Full Moon of the Lunar New Year

February 24th marked 정월대보름 (Jeong-wal Dae Bo-reum), the first full moon of the lunar new year. Koreans celebrate this holiday from the biggest cities to the smallest hamlets. People gather together, usually by a riverside, to tie their wishes for the new year onto an effigy. Writing and tying the wishes happen around five o'clock, before the sun starts to set. As people line up to write out their hopes for the new year, musicians perform, people eat street food and children fly kites. As the sun begins to set, people gather around the effigy, hoping for a good spot to watch as the straw is lit from all sides by people in traditional Korean dress, called hanbok (like a Korean kimono).

Hayoung and I went to the one in Andong. Fortunately, the site of the celebration was just about a 25 minute walk from the apartment. We arrived in time to write our wishes to paper and tie them to the effigy. We then walked around admiring the kites people were flying around the site. They say that the first person to see the first full moon of the lunar new year will have good luck for the reminder of that year.

After the effigy is lit, people light candles inside paper lanters to send off into the sky, again, taking their wishes on the lanters' journey.

The ceremony itself was a sight to behold, a thing of great beauty and destruction, noise and music. Hayoung wanted to be close to the fire while I opted for a nearby hillside for a better angle (I was shooting f/40). As usual, I find myself at a loss for words and find that my pictures may tell a better story than I am able to conjure with description alone. Here are some of my pictures from the event. Click on the pictures for a bigger view. Use the left and right arrow keys to move to the next picture. Press Esc when finished.

The whole ritual felt very pagan. Below is a video I took on my phone (sorry about the poor quality) of traditional music being played next to the pyre as it spat burning debris into the air on the cool, crisp early spring evening.

As a side note, I thought it interesting and worth mentioning, though probably not significant, that the event landed on the Jewish holiday of Purim. Purim is homophonic to the Korean holiday Bo-reum (when pronounced by a Korean). Both Koreans and Jews follow the lunar calendar. If that weren't enough, there is an interest in Judaism here that is hard to figure. For example, I saw the book at right in a book store here in Andong. It literally translates to "Talmud Humor" (as stated at the top of the book). Indeed, after asking Hayoung, she said she was familiar with and had parts of the Talmud though she never brought it up; she said she didn't realize it was a Jewish script. This book is proof that people here have enough of a basic understanding of the Talmud to understand humor around it. Now these are either really interesting conincedences or Koreans just may be one of the lost tribes of Israel. As I have said before, Koreans and Jews share a lot in cultural similarity. These are uneducated musings but significant enough that I thought they were worth mentioning. After all, some scholars believe the Khmer of Cambodia/Vietnam to be one of the lost tribes. In that respect, it doesn't seem so outlandish.

Back from the dead - I can breathe!

For the longest time, my whole life as a matter of fact, I have found it difficult to breathe. I don't have a respiratory problem nor do I suffer a psychosomatic malady. My nose, more specifically my septum, was a twisted as the gnarled roots of Old Man Willow. After some consultations with the top-rated ENT doctor in Andong and a couple noggin x-rays to boot, I was scheduled for surgery January 9th, 2013, days after I came back from my vacation in Minnesota.

Hayoung had to work, it being a Wednesday and all, so one of my best friends, Zach MacDonald, accompanied me to the hospital. I'm so glad he was there. We sat there for about three hours while we waited for the surgery room to be ready. While we waited, we played Ticket to Ride on me and Hayoung's iPads and we talked. I had a lot to talk about, I guess. God, I was so nervous. There is hardly any English spoken at the Andong hospital. There wasn't a single person who could string two sentences of English together. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not going to go to a foreign country, to a hospital there and demand that they speak my language and how dare they fail their end of some kind of linguistic agreement of which they failed to uphold on their end yada, yada, yada. The truth is, they have no obligation to speak English. I am the visitor in their country. I was grateful to any of the staff whom attempted communication with me. But that was the source of my uneasiness. Up to this point, throughout the consultations, etc., I still had never spoken to my doctor. Hayoung, bless her heart, translated for me. But still, feeling like I was unable to communicate with anyone around me, sparing Zach, and have them breaking my nose, digging around in my skull and whatnot, I was scared to death. I just kept telling myself to have courage. And I think I did just fine. 

After a while, they had me dress in my surgery outfit, which I totally rocked.

At this point, Hayoung was able to join us, right before they wheeled me into the operating room. They rolled me into the O.R. The man whom I assumed was the anesthesiologist smiled at me and connected a giant syringe to my I.V. tube. He smiled at me and I thought, "there is no backing out from here" as he emptied his concoction into my veins. I don't remember putting my head back down on the operating table. 

After cutting me up for about an hour and a half, they wheeled me out to be with Hayoung, Zach and Hayoung's friend, So-Young and her son. Never wasting a photo opportunity, Hayoung posed in front of my unconscious body. 

They all spent the early evening with me at the hospital and I fell asleep promptly after their visit. I had plastic splints along either side of my septum and cotton packing stuffed all the way into what I only assume to be my sinuses.

If it weren't for the angels in white who brought me the happy juice in the form of buttocks shots, this would have been excruciatingly painful. I spent 48 hours in the hospital, in the care of people whom I could not communicate with though they took the best care of me.

Hayoung spent the second night in the hospital with me even though she had work the next morning and my buddy Ryan came in to see me hours before his trip to Taiwan and Hong Kong. The last few hours in the hospital, the doctor took the cotton packing out of my face. This was the most excruciating pain I have ever felt and I have had to stick a Q-tip into my own urethra (mandatory chlamydia test for Peace Corps) . It was over soon enough.

I was prescribed a myriad of pills to take while I recuperated at home, watching zombie and old science fiction flicks. I was also told to head back to the hospital the following Wednesday (one week after my surgery) to get the plastic splints taken out.

Well, I'm still taking the pills and yesterday I finally had the splints taken out. While that was painful in its own right (the splints were sewn together through the bottom of my septum), it was nowhere near as painful as removing the cotton packing. Anyway, after the doctor removed the plastic splints, I could breathe, not only for the first time in a week but like, I could really breathe, like I never had before in my life! Both nostrils were operational and I could smell the hospital. I still have to wait for the inflammation and swelling to go down (they also removed a lot of excess skin within my nostrils) but even now as I type this one week after my surgery, I can breathe better now than I ever had before, even when assisted by Allegra and decongestants.
Last night I fell asleep easier than I think I ever had before.

On a very optimistic note, I did a little calculating. I quit smoking just over 5 months ago. That's been a battle in and of itself but this little statistic made me feel like I had not only won the battle but had won the war! Check this out; I saved USD$362.83 since I quite. And that, my friends, is literally $20 shy of how much the surgery had cost. Indeed, by not smoking for the last 5 months, I paid for my surgery and hospital stay. I feel like a mensch, a well oxygenated mensch.

Hilarious Video About the Origins of Pizza

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QizaFkegFcQ?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

How I learned to stop worrying and love the eReader

3rd Generation Kindle

As most of you know either by being a friend, relative or acquaintance of mine or by the amount of geeky tech posts that appear on my blog, I do not eschew technology and am oftentimes an early-adopter of anything I can afford. However, the eReader represented a hurdle over which I was not yet committed to jump. I graduated with a double major in English lit and history and have a rich appreciation for books. I do not quite border on bibliophilia (Colin!) but I love the weight, smell and intimacy of a book. Having backpacked a number of times, there is a bond of companionship which grows between the dead weight and the reader. I have unpacked clothes and other items to get the weight of luggage down to cart around books here and there and I have never regretted it.

Needless to say I was leery of electronic formatted books for a number of reasons. The biggest speculation of mine concerned battery life, "the day my book tells me it's dead and I can't read it when I wish is the day I give up on life," I recall telling a friend. Secondly, I benefited enormously from the book exchange that took place while I was in the Peace Corps, which made books more valuable than, say cheese or peanut butter. Books are, while travelling, a currency in and of themselves. So the obvious issue of transferability presentes itself immediately to a) those who don't have an eReader and b) the books which have encryption so they are not transferrable anyway.

There were some obvious benefits that finally made up my mind to try out the Amazon Kindle, third generation. Living in Korea with, for lack of a better description, a 

lack

 of English books made the idea of having a library of thousands of titles from which to choose very appealing. I knew my parents and brother would appreciate it, not having to ship me books upon request. Moreover, having any of those titles within 60 seconds of purchase made planning out what I would read months in advance a thing of the past.

I looked into the Amazon Kindle simply because a friend of mine here in Korea has one and I got a hands-on as well as it being the only reader that enables purchasing books abroad. The Kindle I bought has both 3G and wifi. The 3G works in over 100 countries, including South Korea and I suppose North Korea if you stand close enough to the DMZ. Regardless, the Kindle is the obvious choice for the international traveler.

The battery life has bowled me over. Advertised as having a battery life of one month, I felt reassured that it wouldn't die on me at any given moment. On the contrary, I read the unabridged entirety of

The Count of Monte Cristo

, a 1,300 page tome, on one battery charge. Good enough for me.

And finally, as for the portability of the book files themselves, there is a simple hack. Within the limits of the DMCA, one can run a python script to unlock their legally purchased books. This does not solve the issue of passing on books to someone who does not have an eReader, but it makes the prospect (which I do not condone for legal reasons) of sharing a book with a friend with an eReader much easier. There is

Kindle software

that can open the unlocked books on Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPod, Android, Blackberry, et. all and allow someone to read the book on any of the supported devices, for those without an eReader.

For the easy-to-follow step-by-step guide to unlocking the book files, please see below.

Unlocking Kindle Books

If you wish to exercise your rights within the DMCA and unlock the DRM copy protection of your Kindle books to read on other devices, please refer to this very helpful website. It is difficult to amass the software required for the project so I have collected the publicly available software into one convenient package at this link. It is important to follow the steps mentioned in the above-linked article, however they do fail to mention that you need the beta version of the Kindle software for PC. Once installed, it is imperative that you open the application, go to the settings and turn off automatic updates as more recent versions of this software break the unlocking script. If you choose to download the software from my link, you can ignore the site's directions on finding and installing everything.

Update: There is a great Google Chrome utility that sends an article from your browser to your kindle in one click, reformatted to compliment the screen of the kindle. I just installed it and it's pretty slick!

Get a US phone number for unlimited sending and receiving texts - US Only

Disclaimer: This process is fraught with communication breakdown, getting multiple services on multiple services working together and is in no way fool proof or 100% reliable. 

I have somehow come up with a way to to combine directions I stumbled upon on Lifehacker.com and a mobile device such as iPod Touch, iPhone or Android to obtain a US phone number and send, receive and make calls for free. This is a bit of a complicated process, combining a proxy, SipGate, Google Voice, the Google Voice app on iPhone and Android and Fring. While I am an Android user and advocate, this post will focus on the iPod Touch and iPhone due to their prevalence among the expat community here in Korea and abroad.
Following the directions linked above to Lifehacker will enable you to obtain a US number from SipGate just for calls to send and receive calls from your computer for free. There is one issue with getting an account with SipGate: they require you to have a US number to for verification purposes only. They will send you a confirmation code essentially to make sure that bots are not signing up for the service. An easy walk around was having them send the confirmation code to my dad's phone and he simply IM'd me the code.
Note: The following no longer seems to be the case.Unfortunately, SipGate is not available outside of the US; in order to get to their site, first download, install and launch HotSpot Shield. Once this is launched and connected, all web traffic generated by your computer will appear as if it were coming from within the US and not South Korea (or any other country for that matter). Once connected, you can sign up for the service. In order to save time, I will not review the steps already posted in the Lifehacker article but please feel free to contact me through the comment board below with any questions as the steps have altered slightly since Lifehacker published the original post.
I will start this guide assuming you have already obtained your US phone number from SipGate and have set up a Google Voice account.

1. Texting: once you have obtained the number assigned to you by Google Voice, you can now text anyone in the States and they can text you back. There is no charge sending texts to them and they are charged the cost of a domestic text. In other words, if they have an unlimited texting plan, they will be able to text you under that plan.
2. Phone Calls: you will be able to make calls for free as long as you have the SipGate client open on your computer. Folks in the States will be able to call you at your Google Voice number and it will be forwarded to the SipGate client on your computer. 

So this is great, right? What could possibly make this better? How about this functionality on your mobile device? If you have a mobile device, simply download the Google Voice app for iPod/iPhone and you can take the texting functionality with you wherever you have an internet connection. But what about the voice?

So essentially, at this point, Google Voice will handle all outgoing calls, outgoing texts and incoming texts. What about incoming calls?

Enter Fring. Fring essentially replaces the need for the SipGate client on your computer and moves it over to your mobile device. Essentially Fring has nothing to do with the texting features of this project nor making calls. Fring simply lets you receive calls made to your Google Voice number for free on a mobile device. 

To set up Fring:

1. Download Fring here
2. Once the application is launched, choose a Fring user ID and password. These credentials are only for logging into Fring. 
3. Once logged in, go to the settings menu and select Add-ons. After being presented with the accounts you can link to Fring, select "Sip". 
4. To link Fring to SipGate, Go to your SipGate Account page and click on the SIP credentials link. There you will find the information you need to enter into Fring. Enter in the unique SIP-ID and SIP-Password and sipgate.com for the proxy into Fring. Click login. 

You should now be able to receive calls on your mobile device if someone in the States calls your Google Voice Number. 

This is scattered and is a very complicated project to replace Skype, which serves the same functions much more simply but at a price. I hope this will put you on the right track and will help you get in better touch with friends and loved ones back in the Sates.

*Note: this process may in fact work for Canadian users as Google Voice is available in Canada but I have no contacts in Canada and cannot verify that it works.

It's Getting Cold

It is currently 29 degrees as I type this...
I woke up this morning, jumped in the shower, made coffee, caught up on Twitter and left the house in a hurry, just like any other morning. But this morning was different. This is what I first saw as I walked through my door:

Snow-capped veggie mounds

I stood in disbelief, jogging my memory trying to remember what this white stuff was. It's been about three years since I have experienced a winter, bouncing around the world (and between hemispheres), working with the Peace Corps in the Philippines and moving to Phoenix after my Peace Corps service. But winter seems to be making up for lost time and is creeping here in Yecheon with a vengeance. I somehow must have spited the winter gods and, as the Spanish proverb goes, revenge is a dish best served cold.
I keep telling myself that I'll get used to the season, having lived in Minnesota for 8 years but my "snow legs" just aren't what they used to be. But the living situation here in Korea is a little different than the islands and pockets of warmth one finds throughout Minneapolis and Saint Cloud.
Let's start with my apartment, heated by hot water pipes running through the floor. Convection floor heating is common throughout the living quarters in Korea. It is awesome and I have noticed vast improvements with my hot-air-related sinus issues. There is a small digital control center with which I dial in the desired temperature and the apartment is gradually heated and my feet stay nice and toasty.
Leaving the apartment is a completely different ball game. Indoor spaces, most of all public spaces, are generally not heated save an electric space heater. People huddle over the heaters, vying for any available space around it at bus stations, train stations and some restaurants.

The teachers' office at my school is heated by two massive electric heaters and the office stays quite warm. Leaving the office is a completely different story, however. The hallways remain quite cold and, more often than not, the windows in the hallways remain open for some inexplicable reason. Students wear full winter garb around school and in the classroom, doing their best to stay warm throughout the school day. In the language lab, we have a large heater such as the one in the teachers' office pictured to the right, that students encircle as if in a rugby huddle before class begins. But there is no place where heat has been more necessary that in the bathroom. The school bathroom is in a separated building with a sliding door and windows which have for the most part remained open, which I suppose is a mixed blessing. With icicle fairies dancing in my head and my bladder filling with the morning coffee, I was waging costs/benefits of racing out to the bathroom. But to my surprise, there was a space heater next to my favorite urinal and the windows had been shut! I just hope this situation stays consistant until I once again can sport shorts and flip flops.
And for your smug pleasure (if you happen to be in warmer climes), a photo taken this morning of a bush and statue just outside of the teachers office in which I am currently sitting.

My Apartment

Due to overwhelming demand for a glimpse into my apartment and living conditions, here is a post on the apartment in which I live. But first, a disclaimer: my living situation is not typical and I have been very fortunate; I live in the building owned by my coteacher. It is a large two-story house wherein he lives on the second floor and there are three apartments, including my own, on the bottom. Most foreign teachers live in studio apartments, meaning that the bedroom, kitchen and living room are one room, the only separate room being the bathroom. That said, we are guaranteed certain elements such as a fridge, washing machine, microwave, a gas or electric range and bed, to name a few. See below for more details, after the pics.

My kitchen

My dining area

My den/living room

My bedroom

My bedroom

My deck and chair

Moving into a place of your own, for the generation who grew up on video games, feels a whole heck of a lot like playing The Sims, without the rosebud cheat code (much to my chagrin). I have spent the better part of my last paycheck amassing and coordinating things. A friend of mine on Twitter, who served with the Peace Corps in Cameroon once said that Peace Corps makes one more materialistic. I'm indeed discovering the legitimacy of this observation with a paycheck and a place of my own.