Don't be alarmed...

I awoke Saturday at about 10 am. I enjoy that I needn't set an alarm on Saturdays, but I try to remain within certain scheduling boundaries so as not to throw myself out of whack and have to make gross adjustments for the work week. I'm up for roughly ten minutes before the air raid sirens sound.

For any who may not know, I'm living in Seoul South Korea for the year, and while I don't pay much attention to the news, there are those around me who keep me dutifully informed to the extent I'm willing to pay attention regarding the goings on in the world, and more specifically, the growing uncertainty of North Korea's "posturing" antics... or so I've understood them to be, so when air raid sirens sound for the first time in six months, given the recent news, it gives one pause. I paused and waited, mildly curious what it would be like to hear a bomb drop, see an explosion outside of my window, or whether or not I'd feel anything during the imminent ordeal.

Questions arose: Do I remember my EMT training? Could I help if I lived? How many could I shelter in this meager abode if the need arose? What's the fallout radius of a nuclear weapon? Can I enlist in the US military from here? WWJD? Am I okay with God?

I found my peace pretty quickly. And with no whistling sounds from overhead, no growing panic in the street, no mushroom cloud on the horizon, the day soon settled into a regular Saturday with eggs for breakfast, a failed attempt to connect with Dad on Skype, a trip to the gym, a Starbucks coffee, and the added bonus of a small get together with some friends from work to look forward to in the evening.

So y'all know, there's evidently little to worry about. I try to live relatively worry-free anyway and find I'm pretty successful, I think largely in part for my willful ignorance of the so-called news. I like good news, which colloquially means either no news, or gospel, so I try to filter information appropriately, but I have it on good authority that there will be days' notice of imminent danger and I have a good US intelligence contact who (without breaking protocols) has reassured us that measures can be taken if necessary to get out of Dodge (Chrysler/Buick/GMC is another story, so I hear).

Anyway, Saturday night culminated in a great dinner, and the uncommon luxury of a game of Life. That's right: Milton Bradley's own!

The game started pretty quickly for me. I raced through college, got a job as a lawyer (as my mother always thought I should) making 90K, picked up my wife, had a kid (a little girl), bought a house, picked up a few raises, met a few risks, and was doing pretty well to the chagrin of my opponents. I quickly became a target, fending off lawsuits (despite my warnings), before succumbing to a few, but still doing my best to uphold certain standards when all of a sudden I spun the spinner, and lost my now 130K career, to become an athlete (I presume a golfer) quickly followed by a financial tailspin of fraternal twins, shared expenses, college funds, tuition costs, refurnishing bills and before I knew it, I was at the end of the game with the losing number: a measly million and change. The winner was the tortoise, as I predicted from the onset when she was miles behind the rest of the board, struggling along, stuck with the ones and twos through college, still single well past others' first and second children, and still I reiterated the fable, and indeed the tortoise beat not only the hare, but all others in the race with a whopping 4.5 mil.

I did some reflecting today on how apt the game of Life can be to our lives if we think about it... rather, if we don't. If we get caught up in the race and struggle to acquire wealth thinking that we'll somehow win if we have the most at the end of the game instead of taking all the experiences we have, the good and bad, and looking at them with the perspective that there is so much more of value than wealth. I really started to think that the "life" I lost with would be a great life, with kids and grandkids and relationships and stories to tell and trials and tribulations and victories and failures on a sliding scale from massive to miniscule, and it served to reinforce a lot of issues and ideas I've been working through over the last few years concerning what this game is all about, and what it means to win. Perhaps I should write ol' Milt, just to say thanks...

I have one last duty today, thanks to a fellow Blogger who "tagged" me (Ronnie at "http://www.ronniekerrigan.com/"), and now's as good a time as any to fulfill the imposition placed in doing so:

Eight things I've always wanted to do (or keep doing):

i. Love someone to the best of my ability for as long as I'm granted the privilege.
ii. Live well.
iii. Write a book, a screenplay, and a song, and see all of them through to their respective points of completion/production, being involved creatively, along the way as much as possible.
iv. Travel.
v. Learn a martial art.
vi. Do a one-armed pull up.
vii. Skydive.
viii. Believe.

Eight Favorite Foods (this is a bad list for me... I'm not sure if I have the liberty to change these parameters, but if not):

i. Communion.
ii. A hearty, healthy, delicious meal with friends and/or family.
iii. A paltry, healthy, delicious meal with friends and/or family.
iv: A healthy meal with friends and/or family.
v: Sustenance with frinds and/or family.
vi. A healthy delicious meal.
vii. A healthy meal.
viii. Sustenance.

Eight Things (I use the term "things" loosely... I'm trying to get over the love of most things) I Love:

i. The idea of Love in the Bible.
ii. Various expressions (ambiguity intended).
iii. Creative use of (the English) language.
iv. Truth in fiction/storytelling.
v. Stories.
vi. Relationships.
vii. Nature (after too much time spent in Urban Centers).
viii. Urban Centers (after too much time spent in nature).

If you've followed this post thus far I applaud you. I'm supposed to tag others, but I won't. I'll just look for others' willful expressions, thoughts, feelings, confessions and such and hope to continue learning a thing or two along the way. If you decide to post something along these lines, let me know. I'll read it.

Cheers.

Nuclear Tests, Swine Flu, Immunity, and Teaching Metaphor to Children

I just heard that North Korea has been performing underground nuclear tests and that most of the world is not all that happy about it. Perhaps I should watch the news more, but I doubt it. Anyways, Obama's miffed, South Korea's a little perturbed, and I'm sure other countries care to some degree, they're just not mentioned on the MSN homepage hotmail sends me to when I logout.

Still, at the school, the nuclear tests haven't been raising as much concern as the swine flu epidemic. Evidently a few foreigners have brought a resurgence of the dreaded disease into the city not a few massive blocks from where I teach, and since foreigners do nothing but fornicate and languish in each others' sordid, endemic, parasitic hovels or the equally infested hangout hotbeds of diseases frequented in our spare time, we've become greater pariahs of late. So until further notice we're being subjected to daily temperature checks, have been issued filtered face masks, and it's been recommended to us that when we're not at school we confine ourselves to our apartments. The jokes on them though, I've pretty much been doing that anyway.

It not all bad, however; I've been working on a new story idea and this little hysteria has played directly into inspirational material for the plot. The working title is "Immunity". I'll let you ponder the rest for now. At least until I get a little further along and post it on my writing blog:

http://fosterink.blogspot.com/ (I'm trying to work more [shameless] plugs in.)

Stuff in the classroom seems to progressing relatively well; by that I mean I'm still working and haven't been fired yet. I've been teaching poetry to third graders for a few classes now... as though poetry isn't hard enough to get in one's native language. Still, I feel like I'm making headway. The word for the day was Metaphor. Since we've already covered imagery, simile, personification, alliteration and rhyme scheme, I figured it was time. One of their worksheets had a list of words that the two kids had to create metaphors for. The first was "star".

"So, I can write, 'sparkling flower'?"

I'd never heard of a sparkling flower so I thought about it for a second. It was a second that ignited a whole conceit! If a star is a sparkling flower, then space can be the garden in which it grows, the milky way the water nourishing it and the other plan(e)ts in the garden's midst. The possibilities were endless. I got excited and tried to share this with the blank faces looking back at me and finally decided that, yes, a sparkling flower would do fine. My writing on the matter is far from over.

From the mouth of babes...


- Foster