Trip to the DMZ

After being in-country for almost one year, I finally went to the DMZ with a couple of friends who will be leaving Korea come August/early September. For those unfamiliar with the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in Korea, it is a narrow strip of land which divides North from South. The DMZ roughly follows the 38th parallel, which demarcated the line of the cease fire at the end of the Korean War, 1953.
While the DMZ has been a flashpoint of intense violence in the past, it is open to tourists visting either country. Often, tourists from Western countries visit the DMZ on the side of South Korea while tourists from China, the East and Western Asia visit the landmark from the North. It is impossible to visit the DMZ aside from one particular area, known as Panmunjom (as heard in Billy Joel's classic "We Didn't Start the Fire"), wherein the United Nations' Joint Security Area is established and outlines the only meeting point between the two Koreas. This area was definately the highlight of my visit to the DMZ, which also included a visit to Fort Boniface, the 3rd tunnel, a lookout point over North Korea and a train station which will eventually connect Seoul and Pyongyang, pending reunification.
The JSA was my favorite part of the tour. Located within the JSA is the famous conference room wherein heads of State of each country confer and meet. Standing in South Korea, I saw, for the first time, North Korea and North Korean guards.

A view of the conference room between the two Koreas. North Korea is opposite where I'm standing.

United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission Building

Me and North Korea. We're tight like that.

There are four guards (two pictured) who watch the North 24/7.

The microphones on the table represent the line of demarcation. I do, in fact, have one foot in North Korea and one in the south.

Me and a soldier of the Republic of Korea, defending freedom and looking good doing it. Ray Bans are standard issue, not even kidding.

A real-life North Korean guard

This concrete divider represents the literal dividing line between the Koreas. And yes, I am standing in North Korea.

We had many opportunities to look over North Korea. One such opportunity came when we got to look upon, what the South calls "Propaganda Village."

This village was, in the 1960's, a modern and confortable looking town to lure South Koreans into the North. It was later discovered that it is not occupied by anyone and never was. In fact, the lights which light the town at night are completely automated. Approximately six North Korean soldiers man the town, their job is to raise the Korean flag, pictured atop the 525ft (160m) flagpole.

Another highlight of the tour was visiting the third tunnel, one dug by the North after the cease fire, to transport soldiers and weapons into the south. The South Korean government detected the digging. Upon questioning the North, leaders said they had sent miners down to excavate coal. In a quick and strange attempt to substantiate this story, workers from North Korea quickly and haphazardly painted the inside of the tunnel black. The South Korean scientists who investigated the matter were not impressed.

We then went to a lookout where we could overlook North Korea. I half expected a baren wasteland, void of trees; something baren and desolate, a land which reflected the human suffering and desperation plaguing the country. Instead, I overlooked a lush and beautiful country, shrouded in fog and mist. The mystery that was and still is North Korea, in my mind, was symbolized by the fog.

A candid shot from a vantage point where photography was strictly prohibited. Many Bothans died to bring us this picture.

Finally, our tour ended at a train station which will connect Seoul to Pyongyang pending reunification.

"Not the last station from the South, But the first station toward the North."

I have wanted to visit the DMZ for many years. This trip was something of a History major's dream-come-true or as my companion Jamie put so eloquently, a "dorkasm." Visiting the DMZ, standing in North Korea, was something of a surreal experience. Like visiting Narnia. Much like my trip to and experience in Palestine to visit Hebron, I felt like I was entering into a void in the American psyche, a place that existed in spite of the geopolitical, political and economic will of others. 

I felt like I was trespassing into a forbidden place. I later realized that such forbidden places exist only in the mind. North Korea is, I am sure, full of warm, kind and open-minded people, given the opportunity. The North Korean people are not the enemy and North Korea is not a pariah-state, a taboo in the Western media. The enemy in North Korea, the same in every nation on earth, is oppression. Oppression knows no ethnicity, skin color or creed. It knows only exploitation and feeds on apathy and ignorance.

Desk Warming Is Killing Me...Literally

For those unfamiliar with Guest English Teacher (GET) jargon here in South Korea, desk warming is the act of sitting at one's desk during the obligatory eight hours at school for reasons including cancelled classes, test days, etc. and not teaching. A GET literally sits in her/his desk chair and must find something to occupy her/his time and wait out the clock. Why subject us to this cruel and unusual charade? I have heard a myriad of reasons, from inspectors from the Office of Education (of whom no one I know has seen heads or tails) inspecting schools to ensure Korean tax money is not "wasted" to co-teachers getting jealous and inciting a mutiny. Whatever the reason may be, desk warming is, for me, the greatest hardship of living here. When I have to deal with one day of desk warming, I usually enjoy catching up on reading blogs, reading a book, playing guitar in the broadcasting room adjacent to the teachers' office, taking a nap (how is this not wasting tax money again?) and generally minding my own business. Desk warming is indeed a double-edged sword and when stretches of time, such as finals week arrives (and the week of review preceding it), I can anticipate at least a full two weeks of sitting at my desk, staring at the clock, thinking to myself, "if only I could be cleaning my bathroom".
I have always harbored a suspicion that desk warming will be the end of me (read Sean's Bane). I found this infograph which beautifully illustrates and substantiates my suspicion. Indeed, sitting for eight to nine hours a day can literally shortening our lifespan up to 40%! Credit for this infograph is listed at the bottom.

Credit and hyperlink for infograph removed due to content provider's request - 6/3/2013
And for those who have made it to the end of the infograph, here is a video of Hitler having to desk warm.

Waiting for Something to Happen

It seems as though I spend a lot of my time in Korea waiting for something to happen. Part of it may have to do with a lot of the friends I have made here are getting ready to leave in August, having opted to stick through only one contract; it's difficult not to resonate with the excitement they share via SMS, phone calls, Facebook, etc. But I have chosen to stay. I know what to expect in August: I'll show up to school the day many of them depart and I'll most likely suffer the real though unreasonable feelings of being left behind, wondering if, in fact, this was the right decision.
If Peace Corps was a swing to the direction of living more or less tech-less, Korea has afforded me the revolution of the pendulum and my head is now awash with tech mill rumors, keeping up with the latest information technology trends, Web 2.0, living and thinking in the Cloud and buying gadgets galore. This month, in fact, major software updates are coming to my new Android phone (2.3) and my MacBook (OS 10.7). While there are no specific release dates, both Motorola and Apple have promised the updates will be released this month. I obsessively check the rumor blogs multiple times a day hoping that today (whichever day it is) might be the day. This is proving to be exhausting and the feeling that something could happen any day now has seeped into many aspects of my life.
I never thought of myself to be the kind of guy who lives for the weekends either. But this sort is what I have become. I spend five days a week waiting for two that go by way too quickly. This is problematic; it feels as though I am in jettison, in perpetual motion racing to something which will pass all too quickly and then looking for the next big thing. This is no way to live.
I used to believe that routine is the fastest way to a short life; but my experience this last month or so has revealed otherwise. I'm not exactly sure how to put it into words, but here goes; it is not routine, but anticipation which robs one of "the moment", keeping one's mind and attention one step ahead of one's feet, which accelerates the inevitable demise. No one can be sure what happens next after this dog and pony show which is life, but I, for one, am not in a rush to find out. Nor am I interested in answering the question, " why are we here on earth?" for that matter. I just know I want to accept and appreciate where I am before my 20's, my 30's and so on, becoming memories instead of the inevitable.
I haven't blogged in a long while and I'm not sure if I'll keep it up. But I needed to make a declaration and put this into words where, perchance, friends and family might know some of my more intimate thoughts. I'm done rushing and ready to sit on my balcony, enjoy a beer and the falling rain and going everywhere slowly.
I'm a quarter century old and am in no disposition to rush into the rest of what lies beyond. I'm in a good place, with good people. I may not see everyone as much as I like but damnit, they're important people in my life and for that fact I should sit contentedly and just watch the rain. Many of my friends are going to their respective home countries but many are also staying here.
Peace Corps made me somewhat of an optimist; the self-appointed purpose of my life is to accept warmly those who come into my life and leave an impression on on those who I may with something whole and heart-felt upon our divergence. Folks in their 20's live at a velocity that rarely runs parallel to one another but the vertices of our acquaintances leave the same lines of longitude and latitude which outline the maps of our lives.

I couldn't say it better

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bniwLF4hYHQ&w=480&h=390]

Quitting Cigarettes and Twitter

Well I finally decided to quit smoking...again...and Twitter.
Why quit smoking? Well, I have tried six times in the past because I should quit. After my heart complications mentioned in this post, the fact that I'm winded when I walk the five minutes to school and I'm the only one in my social group who smokes regularly, I decided I actually wanted to quit. Wanting to quit is 80% of the battle, so I'm told. I have been going on walks of varying length, chewing crappy Korean gum, making a plethora of cups of herbal tea and, when all else fails, rolling around on the ground in the fetal position cursing God and everyone. The first night of my cold-turkey approach, last Saturday, I went out with a few friends in Yecheon for a couple of drinks. If I had ever had a 100% chance of lighting up, the conditions were perfect then and I still obstained. Having that kind of a mile stone anchoring the effort right away has actually boosted my resolve not to lose that achievement.
In an effort to be more productive and not rely on time killing habits, I have decided to eschew Twitter for a while as well. Fewer and fewer of my friends are on it and it has become a way to kill time more so than the useful social networking tool I found it to be a while ago. It used to make sense but not anymore. That's for another post.
And as I sit back down to finish this post after lunch, I feel good about not smoking even though my co-teacher and I used to have a smoke everyday at this time. I still joined him but had a mint instead and, walking back into the building, I felt good about my decision.
So which is more addictive? I have gone 3.5 days without a smoke and have not been able to get off of Twitter. I decided to compromise with the little voice in my head and top out my tweets at 3,000 first (I have two more to go) so today will (hopefully) be the day.

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!

A Trip to the Hospital - A Hypochondriac's Tale

Thursday morning I felt my heart swell and a rush of fluid throughout my body while watching Seinfeld. This was not the typical physical response elicited from Jerry and the gang but I brushed it off and blamed it on the grilled cheese, which usually does inspire a rush of endorphins, couch potato that I am. But throughout the course of the day, my body began to tremor more and more intensely, my pulse rising exponentially.
I thought it might have been the two cups of french press coffee I had had on an empty stomach that morning, the half stick of butter I had consumed that week in making said grilled cheeses, the petroleum in the only cheese available in town, or the stress at school or my uneasiness about going back to the Philippines come January 22nd.
Anyway, I decided I would sleep it off and skip coffee in the morning. Later Friday afternoon, I took my pulse and my heart was still beating at about 130-140 beats per minute, no improvement and I had restricted my diet extensively to crackers and sandwiches. That evening, I asked my coteacher, Mr. Do, to take me to the Andong hospital in the morning, to which he responded in the affirmative.
Andong is about 40 minutes away and the hospital was ranked first in the country in terms of cleanliness and customer service.
Indeed, the customer service was apparent. Men and women wearing yellow sashes stood throughout the hospital helping people find where they needed to go. The computer system forwarded each interaction at each desk to the succeeding desk with a full description of what had happened prior to that desk kept wait times and interviews to a minimum.
Within 10 minutes of arriving, the desk clerk at the cardiology department input my insurance information, took my blood pressure, directed us to sit down and then showed us to the doctor. The doctor, who spoke decent English, prescribed me a chest x-ray, heart sonogram and to wear a machine (seen above) for 24 hours to monitor for irregular patterns in my heart beat. We went from office to office for each test and waited no longer than five minutes at each station. The staff was helpful and friendly. After leaving the hospital with what felt like an octopus strapped to my chest, I received a text from the hospital asking if I had had a pleasant experience.
Oh, and by the way, my insurance here doesn't cover heart issues so I had to pay out of pocket. And how much did it cost? Are you sitting down? A mere $200 for the doctor visit, sonogram, two x-rays and the device with a followup visit for the results. I love the medical system in this country.
Monday morning I noticed my heart rate go down (way down) to 60-70 bpms (normal).
Anyway, I got the results this morning and the doctor said my heart size and patters are completely regular and there is nothing perceivably wrong. I think I'll just chock it up to a panic attack. I am quite nervous about going back to the Philippines, having some ghosts there to put to rest and am stressed at school, not to mention living in a country that is still technically at war and where I can't understand anything. It's feasible.  So now I have resolved to go on regular walks (which last about an hour) and eat lots of stir-fried veggies for dinner (I just discovered our grocer has broccoli!).