iSeoullife

Are always awkward. The conversation that follows is never promising. 

Although I lived most my life in New Zealand, a tiny sliver of land in the Pacific, I am not here in Korea as an English teacher in a hagwon or a public school. /// Working in a company here is the most strangest experience of edge walking. I feel like my tongue and mind have grown dull. The best I can do is literalize my experience here. Work releases the most giddy adrenaline. It make my heart feel smaller and my lungs are more cautious to inhale. Read More

Urban planning in Seoul is weird. There are islands of really well organized architectured places in an ocean of chaotic ugliness. 

Etymology of: “time limit,” 1920, Amer.Eng. newspaper jargon, from dead + line. Perhaps influenced by earlier use (1864) to mean the “do-not-cross” line in Civil War prisons, which figured in the Wirz trial. And he, the said Wirz, still wickedly pursuing his evil purpose, did establish and cause to be designated within the prison enclosure containing said prisoners a “dead line,” being a line around the inner face of the stockade or wall enclosing said prison and about twenty feet distant from and within said stockade; and so established said dead line, which was in many places an imaginary line, in many other places marked by insecure and shifting strips of [boards nailed] upon the tops of small and insecure stakes or posts, he, the said Wirz, instructed the prison guard stationed around the top of said stockade to fire upon and kill any of the prisoners aforesaid who might touch, fall upon, pass over or under [or] across the said “dead line” …. [“Trial of Henry Wirz,” Report of the Secretary of War, Oct. 31, 1865] From etymonline.com  Working in Seoul= living in one of the most vibrant dynamic places in the developed world, being given work to do that cannot be completed given the number of working days, ploughing through hours of no sun, not experiencing the vibrant dynamo of Seoul, spending spare time to sleep.   I suppose this goes for any place in the world, but Seoul is a great place to live if you have a lot of money and time. If you can afford to live leisurely, this place is amazing. Otherwise, it just smells bad and fast food places will deliver to you at 3am in the morning.