A GENTLE SEOUL

THE PERSON WITH ME BELOW IS JUNG SOEK.

I've posted about him before. He's from South Korea, near Seoul. He moved to Canada with his wife and two sons (now three) a couple of years ago.

I met him when I volunteered as an English as a Second Language tutor through the International Centre.

Initially, I volunteered hoping to be able to help disadvantaged people, particularly refugees from war-torn countries, who had come to Canada to escape persecution.

I got him instead. OK, I thought at the time.


I tutored Jung Soek for more than a year. We met every Tuesday at a shopping mall. His English improved dramatically, but that's not really what this is about.

This is about how two human beings from completely different cultures can meet and share their experiences and help one another to more clearly understand what being is all about.

Jung Soek is driven. He is driven to becoming a Canadian.

And the reason for our most recent meeting was because he has now been granted Landed Immigrant Status, along with his family.

I was his first tutor. He became attached to me like a moth flies to light. Yes, we talked about the English language. I'd correct him all the time and we tried to use books, etc.

But what became more valuable to him -- to us both -- was just talking about our different lives, cultures, experiences.
I've gotten to know a lot about South Korean life through him.

They are much more serious than we are in North America. Honour means so much more. Discipline. Respect. People don't smile there nearly as much as they do here, he has told me.

But we here are much more impatient, he has lamented...especially with people from other places who don't know how to speak our language very well.
We don't treat them with respect.

He is often treated as stupid, even though he is very intelligent. And I know this. He is very emotionally intelligent, as well as intellectual. There is a huge difference.

I have gone with him to his banker, to his lawyer, to cell phone salesmen, to help him do what he needs to do.
I understand his accent and what he's trying to say, because of that year or more with him. I've been his translator many times.

Others don't seem to want to take the time to understand, literally or figuratively. And I know it can be frustrating.

But I tried to imagine myself moving to South Korea and getting over the language barrier there, trying to learn Korean.

Good luck.

I wrote some letters of recommendation on his behalf to the Canadian immigration people.

It took what seems like a long time, but he has finally received that Landed Immigrant Status.

Now Jung Soek has the freedom to move away from his oppressive South Korean/Canadian employer, who brought him over here in the first place as a dental technician on a work visa.

Now he can move to Calgary, knowing he has a future here in Canada.

And that's what he plans to do and what he wanted my advice on this week as we met at yet another shopping mall, where I took these pix.

Jung Soek has been bugging me to let him measure my teeth so he could make me a new set that would hide the gap between them.

I told him I had lived with these teeth my whole life and I wasn't about to have them "fixed" now. He doesn't understand that, but he smiled that big smile you see and accepted it with grace.

As thankful as he is to me, I am equally thankful. He is a deep-feeling person with a completely positive outlook on what's ahead of him and he's very happy to be here.

What more can you ask of any person, no matter where they're from?

WEATHER WHINER, NOW LIFE'S FINER (UPDATED)

REMEMBER THIS PICTURE?

Probably not, actually.


It's a pic I posted back in January about the weather, just another Winterpegger's whine about the onset of snow and cold that would only get much worse in February.

And oh, how it got so much worse.

Windchill factors around -50C. Some of them were record-setting days for cold, as I recall. My bones, getting more brittle all the time, trembled in that weather's wake.

And I whined. And whined.

You Aussies were complaining about 38C-degree heat while we were shut indoors here; you Mississippians were talkin' tornadoes only a week or two ago.

You Euro-Peons were hit by snow, tsk-tsk, and some of you flew off to Greece or Morocco.

But here in the Great White North, where we know this sh** is going to happen, I whined and whined when it did.

What a bore that must have been.

So now, as February thankfully turns into March, I'm here to tell you that things have improved, drastically.

Not as illustrated in the pic directly below (I have to admit, it's not a current photo, dang, but I can dream of what once was when aviator glasses were all the rage)...

WE INTERRUPT THIS POST TO BRING YOU THIS BREAKING NEWS...

MS. VAL SAYS I LOOK LIKE NAPOLEON DYNAMITE IN THIS PIC BELOW FROM ABOUT 20 YEARS AGO.

WE'LL LET THE AUDIENCE DECIDE.

WE NOW RETURN YOU TO REGULAR BLOG PROGRAMMING.

OK, so I know I won't be able to go bare-chested and jump in the lake for another several months, but I am starting to feel more like a human again instead of an icicle.

And while these today pix I took below show you that winter is FAR from over here -- yes, that's a neighbour's bike almost entirely covered by snow -- you'll also notice the pic with the guy walking around in a t-shirt.

While that's a bit extreme, it shows what Winterpeggers tend to do. With a break in the weather, we start thinking it's summer or at least spring right away.

Everyone sheds the 18 layers of clothing they've been wearing for the past month or two and they start preparing for the warmth they know will eventually get here...

Then, of course, once the hot weather does arrive in our climate of extremes and it gets up to 35C, we start whining about how it's too hot and the mosquitoes are brutal.

And we all go inside anyway...

To our air-conditioned apartments and houses, seeking shelter from the heat the same way we sought shelter from the cold. I wonder if we can ever be truly satisfied with what we have no control over...

But I guess that's just the way we are in a world of extremes.

Marvin experiments with his

Uranium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator

Issues of True Import

SO THIS IS HOW FAR WE'VE COME.

Web headline Friday:

"As Anna Nicole decomposes, James Brown looking good"

This, folks, was not on some joke website. It was the headline in a Houston Chronicle story they picked up from the world's largest news agency, The Associated Press.

And I hate to get all serious or anything.

But what it tells me is that we care more about two dead people and their respective states of bodily decay during ridiculous battles over the money they earned as so-called celebrities than we do about, well, anything.

Thousands dying in Darfur? A war that should never have been in Iraq? Yeah, they're there, not here...not in the civilized world, where we are. We have more important things to focus on.

So let's do that.

As Anna Nicole decomposes, James Brown looking good
By KATRINA A. GOGGINS
Associated Press
COLUMBIA, S.C. — While a medical examiner in Florida says Anna Nicole Smith's body is decomposing so rapidly that a public viewing may not be possible, the funeral director handling the still-unburied corpse of James Brown says the soul singer is looking good.

"No problem," said Charles Reid, director of the C.A. Reid Funeral Home, which handled The Godfather of Soul's funeral service.

Reid said this week that he has checked Brown's body almost daily in the past two months during the legal fight over Brown's estate and where he should be buried.

The reason for the difference in their condition, experts said, is that Brown was embalmed within a few hours of his death, while Smith's body was refrigerated for more than a week before being embalmed.

Refrigeration creates moisture that contributes to decomposition.

Brown, who died of heart failure Dec. 25 at age 73, looks almost unchanged from his December funeral and could even be displayed for another public viewing, Reid said.

Earlier this week, Dr. Joshua Perper, medical examiner in Broward County, Fla., said that Smith's body was decomposing more rapidly than expected.

In an embalming, blood is removed and replaced with chemicals that mostly consist of formaldehyde and wood alcohol. The preservatives dramatically slow decomposition.

The body is bathed and covered with a disinfectant before being dressed and placed in a casket. The mouth and eyes are closed.

Experts say there is no set time for how long a corpse can remain unburied. Eventually, dehydration sets in and a body deteriorates from the outside in. But Reid said the skin can be revitalized by applying beeswax.

On Thursday, the court-appointed lawyer for Smith's baby daughter said the centerfold would be buried in the Bahamas next to her son, but he did not say when.