RAVING/HAPPY SH!T MEGATHREAD

It's not as humid anymore.

I bought my train tickets for my train trip during Chuseok.

Nice.  Where you headed?  I and a friend are gonna check out Jeju for the first time.  Probably gonna be hella crowded but it's our last hurrah. 

It's not as humid anymore.

I bought my train tickets for my train trip during Chuseok.

Nice.  Where you headed?  I and a friend are gonna check out Jeju for the first time.  Probably gonna be hella crowded but it's our last hurrah.

Just to Busan. My mom is coming to visit during Chuseok and she wanted to go there. I haven't been to Jeju yet, but I hope to before I leave! Good luck with the crowds.

잠진도착장 is the ferry terminal name. No idea for a car. They are a cabin with blankets and a floor and wall outlets. THAT'S IT hahahaha. You can rent BBQ shit from the general sttore I've been told

I couldn't find much info about a spot on the beach. Could you send a pm or something about the spot on the beach?

I wish I could binge watch this all weekend, but I have plans that can't be changed on Saturday.

Awesome! More background stuff to throw on and half-watch while I do other stuff!

I was stoked that they're releasing season 3 of Rick and Morty as it comes out on TV but I already blew through those episodes, Bojack should entertain me for another 2 days or so :)

Oh yeah, I am so happy.

On Friday, somebody scraped the fender and light on my nice imported sports car while it was parked in front of my apartment. They proceeded to drive away without leaving any details.

I checked my black box. It was night so the picture was awful, but the design of the lights was very distinctive. There was white paint on my car, so I also knew the other car must be white.

I scoured the car park for a white car with crash damage, using the flashlight on my phone. Sure enough, I found a white car with lots of dents, a beginner driver sticker, and my car's beautiful paint right where I'd expect to find it based on the black box video.

I called the cops. They said there was not enough evidence, but the car had a parking sticker with an address, so they knocked on the door in the hope of extracting a confession. She didn't answer the door, but her neighbour talked to us and said she was an older woman who had just started driving. The cops said I should check the apartment CCTV and call them again on Monday.

This lunchtime, I went to the maintenance office and was given access to the CCTV. We checked the CCTV and saw her old beater scrape my marvel of Japanese engineering. We then watched her drive around one block and park right where I found her car on Friday night.

The maintenance office called her and at first she denied being responsible for the hit and run. However, when she got to the maintenance office, she timidly walked over and apologised. I told her that if she called her insurance company and admitted what she'd done, I wouldn't involve the police. She agreed.

The insurance company will pay and the dishonest old lady lost quite a bit of face. I decided not to lecture her on why parking at a 90 degree angle - when you're almost touching the car you're perpendicular to - is a bad idea. 

@StillinKorea I'm glad you got justice for your car!

I found my USB and my third grade class is canceled today. 

One benefit of using my personal laptop as my work computer - apart from not having to deal with powerpoint in Korean or any nonsense "security" software - is I can use it to inject gaming into some of my lessons, since it's a gaming laptop.

Case in point: I've been teaching basic grammar lessons to my middle schoolers this year, since many of them were pretty lost any time something grammar-related came up. They just finished learning about adjectives, so this week I'm using that as an excuse to play Scribblenauts Unlimited with them.

For those not in the know, Scribblenauts is a series where the protagonist has a magic book that can make anything you write in it appear, and you have to solve puzzles by creating items. Scribblenauts Unlimited adds adjectives into the mix, so you can either create items or add an adjective to a preexisting item.

For example, one puzzle involves choosing to either help a lumberjack cut down a tree, or help a hippie stop the lumberjack from cutting it down. You could do something like create an ax and give it to the lumberjack, or you could do what my students did and add "diamond" to the description of the tree, so it will be too hard to chop down.

So far it's been fun seeing how they approach problems, and their reactions to successfully solving a puzzle. Sometimes they get creative, and sometimes they get... weird, haha. One boys class (my school separates classes by gender) tried to solve as many puzzles as they could by writing "girlfriend," and a girls class did the same thing but with "t-rex" instead. The boys class' success rate using that strategy was surprisingly high, and while the girls' strategy wasn't as effective, their failures were much more spectacular to witness, especially once they realized they could add "flying" to the description.

It's going to be a fun week.

I remember rushing out to buy the original Scribblenauts and it being one of the most disappointing things I've ever purchased. Has technology and their development caught up with what they wanted the game to be?

I wasn't disappointed with the OG Scribblenauts on DS, but I suppose I can see how one might think it didn't live up to its own ambitions. The addition of adjectives mixes things up a bit in Unlimited, and they changed the sort of puzzles accordingly. Now rather than putting you on a stage with a star at the end you have to go fetch, it puts you in a setting like a forest or a castle and you have to go around helping the people there to earn stars.

 It's still the same "write things in book, things appear" sort of deal, but now rather than being able to solve every puzzle with either a gun, a rope, or some glue, you've to be a bit more creative. Instead of "get the star from the other side of the electrified spike pit," it's "give the pioneers everything they need to cross the Oregon Trail" type stuff.

It isn't particularly challenging (apart from the quests that are needlessly obtuse), so if you're looking for a challenge then it won't really be for you. If you just want something silly and fun to fart around with for a couple hours, though, you could find worse ways to spend your money. My students seem to be enjoying it, at any rate. 

Cleaned out my desk this morning and found an unopened tin of Altoids I'd forgotten about. 

Cleaned out my desk this morning and found an unopened tin of Altoids I'd forgotten about. 

Peppermint, wintergreen, or other?

Does anyone else remember Altoid sours?

Smile of the day:

I was listening to Great Big Sea's "Excursion Around the Bay" on my way to work today.  The lady at the toll both was named Oh Me Young.

https://youtu.be/Kqz6mLRYHj4

Cleaned out my desk this morning and found an unopened tin of Altoids I'd forgotten about. 

Peppermint, wintergreen, or other?

Does anyone else remember Altoid sours?

wintergreen

Can't wait to try one of the other 호떡 places that opened up right beside my place. Last year there were none nearby, this year I got 3 already with competitive pricing :D

Can't wait to try one of the other 호떡 places that opened up right beside my place. Last year there were none nearby, this year I got 3 already with competitive pricing :D

I love the smell of the dry ones. Of course they're full of sugar poison so I don't eat them, but they smell delicious.

Naw, I like 'em sopping in grease, straight off the grill in to a cup that burns my hand as the poison leaks out :)

Had one yesterday that was pretty good, but I need to see what the others have to offer :)

Can't wait to try one of the other 호떡 places that opened up right beside my place. Last year there were none nearby, this year I got 3 already with competitive pricing :D

I love the smell of the dry ones. Of course they're full of sugar poison so I don't eat them, but they smell delicious.

Naw, I like 'em sopping in grease, straight off the grill in to a cup that burns my hand as the poison leaks out :)

Had one yesterday that was pretty good, but I need to see what the others have to offer :)

If you ever get a chance to try the dry ones, you should give them a shot.

I wish they made meat versions. Sopping in crease and stuffed into a cup and stuffed into my mouth.

I had a japchae hotteok in Seoul.  I was wondering what this huge friggin line was all about and saw this woman at a stall making a gigantic batch of japchae and stuffing them into hotteok.  You bet I hopped in line!  It moved pretty quickly, wasn't a terribly long wait at all. 

Greasy hotteok stuffed into paper bag and promptly stuffed into my mouth.  Strangely addicting.  I immediately wanted more but resisted. 

Can't wait to try one of the other 호떡 places that opened up right beside my place. Last year there were none nearby, this year I got 3 already with competitive pricing :D

I love the smell of the dry ones. Of course they're full of sugar poison so I don't eat them, but they smell delicious.

Naw, I like 'em sopping in grease, straight off the grill in to a cup that burns my hand as the poison leaks out :)

Had one yesterday that was pretty good, but I need to see what the others have to offer :)

If you ever get a chance to try the dry ones, you should give them a shot.

I wish they made meat versions. Sopping in crease and stuffed into a cup and stuffed into my mouth.

I had a dry one once but wasn't too fond of it. But maybe it was just from a place that wasn't very good.

Classes cancelled today because the kids have gone for swimming lessons 

Had some horrid back pain (don't recall anything out of the ordinary happening so I have no idea what the cause was) that started late last week, suffered through the weekend and the earlier part of this week.  I figured I'd give it a few days to see if it would improve on its own.  It was, albeit very incrementally.  My coT found out, insisted on taking me to the hospital-- turns out a doctor there actually speaks English very well! 

Doctor:  On a scale of 1 to 10, 2 ~ 3 being mild pain, 7 like giving birth, and 10 like you wanna die. 

   Apparently he studied abroad in the US for a year.  Had a brief consultation, got prescribed some pain meds and physical therapy.  The physical therapy took about an hour and it cost only ... cheon won.      And it was so effective that I didn't bother taking meds.  Had another round today and I imagine I'll be fully recovered in no time!  I only wish I'da gone sooner!