“He went to the hospital!” he or she would say, and follow up with an ambulance noise. Usually the syllables ‘bee’ and ‘woo’ were used in conjuction to make such a noise. Then, everyone in the class would laugh.

And then, to my astonishment and quite often on cue, said student, who apparently went to the hospital, would come running through door, probably panting from sprinting up the stairs to our Hagwon.

When I first heard them make that joke way back when, I thought it was clever and funny. What’s funny is that I hear it every time, still, and the students still all laugh.

And, when I do hear it, I know they’re simply late.

September 27th, 2006 | Life | 1 comment

The best way to get better at something, in my opinion, is to do it over and over.

In grade 4 I started doing Kumon. Kumon was this math camp type thing. You’d do this little booklet of math every day of the week. I hated it. But my multiplication was phenomenal.

In grade 9, I bought a guitar. I’d sit there in my room, quite often for hours, playing, and playing, and playing.

In grade 9 I got a C- in my grade 9 typing class. In the following months, I also got addicted to chatting, and instant messaging. I now type a 100 (nerdy) words a minute.

My dad, is an amazing golfer. His putting is especially good. He’s the best amongst his friends. He’s always practicing in his bedroom, twice a day.

In my last year of high school, I became more interested in literature. I still don’t read very much, but my vocabulary, and writing has improved from it.

In my classes in Korea, unless my kids really bust their asses to not speak ANY Korean in class, they won’t really learn to speak English.
Hell, even the stockboy at our store, Allan, couldn’t talk to customers back before he worked the cash. His lack of people skills drove my mom bonkers until she forced him. Now he can’t stop talking to customers (and if you back track my livejournal, you can see some of the interesting stores).

At the moment, I’m writing to improve my writing. I’m writing for the sake of writing because I want to be a better writer. I have ideas in my head, in my brain, in the forms of pulses of miniscule sparks of electricity, flowing around the inside of my giant noggin’. I need to harness these, move them down my arms, into the keybaord, and onto my screen, and into peoples eyes, and in the case of music, ears.

Today, I start to write more.

Sidenote: I’m using this great program called ‘Darkroom’ to help me in my efforts. It’s wonderful so far. I never realized how easy on the eyes it is to write in green text with a black backroom. It’s designed to give you a distraction free environment to write freely. If you’re looking for something like that, you should check it out (I’m looking at you Julie).

I will post most things to my journal, and some only to my Livejournal. If you are my friend, but aren’t on my LJ friends list, let me know.

September 27th, 2006 | Life | 5 comments