January 21, 2009

  • Humping Along & Getting Old

    Dear Folks,

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    Here above, we have father and eldest son in the local Krispy Kreme factory store, a great place to gather with a few friends, a cup a jo and enjoy fresh hot doughnuts which melt in your mouth.  My Flagship (oldest son) enjoys my adult friends.  One, a 64-year-old lady from Tennessee, former Greyhound Bus driver, Seventh-Day-Adventist, never-married, is fond of taking in abused dogs and caring for them.  She has eight right now.  This is a hobby she has taken up since we met her a few years ago, when she had only one dog, a very pampered poodle.

    We have a group of foreigners who meet at my house once a week on Saturday mornings for a coffee-klastch.  This coffee-klastch has been going on for maybe four years now.  I don't know what we'll do when we move to the U.S. next year.  I thought we were going this year, but Wifey says we will leave in April of 2010.  So be it. 

    Yesterday a neighbor moved out and in typical fashion, abandoned a large pile of furniture.  I picked through the rubble and came out with two keepers, new desks, pictured below:

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    Above:  We have two new desks in the waiting room, which we will let our children claim, use and keep clean.

     

    I have two more days teaching at a winter camp at Daejeong Elementary School on the outskirts of Taejeon, South Korea, Land of the Morning Calm.   I ask my students to predict when their peers will elect a minority of the darker persuasion (people of color) to the highest office of South Korea, and they say it will not happen in 100 years.  They say that 99 percent of their friends would be willing to marry a person of color.  I tell them most people in America believe that they cannot be free when they hold negative judgment against others for the hue of their covering (skin).  They say they agree (in theory), but could never put something like that into practice in their families, as it would not be acceptable. 

    But I have seen a two or three cases of Black people marrying a South Korean.  There is a lovely young girl from just such a mixed marriage who attends our elementary school.  She is a happy girl, but cannot speak any English.  I talk to her in Korean.  She does not know her father, and her mother is in Japan, making money somehow, while the girl lives with her maternal grandparents.  They tell her her daddy's dead, but from what I know about the typical expectations and behavior of South Korean women, I believe he may have gotten fed up with his wife's way of doing things and went back to the U.S. 

    Too, she may be atypical; I know my wife is.  Other women in this area remark often just how different my wife is.  She has no friends here, and typical South Korean women are big gabbers/friend-makers.  She never goes out to eat or goes shopping, either, both hallmarks of young South Korean yuppies.  She has the money to do so, but would rather just keep socking it away.

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    Outside Central Gate Baptist Church

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    My Dandelion" Dancing and "My Shining Knight" Chowing Down in Church

    My little slew of curtain climbers and skirt tuggers can do some mean eating and damage on the snack table at the back of the sanctuary, just after the English sermon and before our Sunday school begins.  My Clever Lad, partially obscured behind My Shining Knight, above, makes sure he gets enough extra bread in his hands that he will not be wanting for the next twenty minutes.  He knows what's up. 

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    My Wife and Child Above Sure do Take Blurry Photos.  Maybe they're dancing.

    I just got back from the local E-Mart (Walmart knockoff) with my burgeoning brood.  They had a good time together, playing outside on one of their favorite monuments.  I should include a photo of it, and probably will add one later.  This post is, like most, a work in progress.  I go back and jazz up my posts of yore from time to time. 

    Computer Phobia Reduction Galore:

    And hey!  I may actually become computer proficient, and start adding videos and little sermons with yours truly delivering the message, on account a how come why-for I started a computer programming class recently and although the content of this course is strictly programming (in C++), I already sense that it is having the spin-off effect of reducing my fear of computers, which should yield dividends in other aspects of computer usage. 

    Homegrown Music:

    They don't have a place for you to notch in your own children, below, where you can select an album or cd to show what music you're currently listening to.  I am listening to my daughter play the piano.  She has gained confidence over the past two weeks of lessons.  It shows in her piano playing.  She spends much time on the thing at home, given that we don't push them to do much during vacation, unlike their peers in school, who are logged into ever more hagwon hours during their vacation, negating the whole purpose of vacation, eating up their free time.  If you're not free during vacation, what's the point of having a vacation? 

    Retroactive Observation:

    Similarly, I'd like to make a retroactive observation.  Christmas was a festive time for us all.  The children got some nice presents from Santa Claus, and we all had a good time.  Friends came over, lonely Westerners estranged from their families.  But I'm talking about hooch.  If I can't have eggnog, what's the point of having Christmas? 

    And now that I am 47, knocking on half a century, if I can't have some kind of hooch on every holiday, then will you kindly tell me what's the point of getting old? 

    Do you see my sanctimonious, self-important, solipsistic, sheet-eating grin below?  That's my baby with me.  He should inherit virtually all of my traits by virtue of living with me through the first two decades of his life.  That should ensure that the next generation of Longs has a phlegmatic, puscillanimous, pontificating pipsqueak to keep the tradition going full swing.  Right now, he's just about a clean slate, but you let him live with me, and we'll see what we can do. 

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    My Lovely Young Wife and New Baby Boy (The Little General in a Party Hat)

    Love, Padooker