User:Informa3 Seoul blog

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Contents

[edit] Shanghai

Take a look at Simona's blog to view some photos of us in Shanghai.

[edit] Back in Seoul

Marching Band girls

Marching Band girls

Seoul tower twilight

Seoul twilight

Bridget and Blake having a late nite dip in on a Gangnam rooftop

Menu

Menu

Menu


[edit] Fukuoka Visa run

Yahoo dome

A hotel

Hard Rock cafe

'hamburg'

Izzy's Guitar

Slash's Hat

Fukuoka tower and beach scene


[edit] English teaching resources (Insane Korean Nursery rhymes)

I found out about these from Dave's esl job related discussion forum:

Each one will leave you asking "What the hell was that". Welcome to a world of sadness, maddness and cruelty - Kind of like the Korean peninsular actually.

[edit] 23/06/07 Current situation

We got a job with Win education in Seoul which is another after school program that is run quite like Iyah. I am working at Jamwon elementary which is near the Express bus terminal in Gangnam. In many ways it is better than Incheon since it is a nicer school and classroom and also because we can live in Itaewon and have much better access to english speaking services than in Incheon. But in other ways it has turned out to be worse. There are less benefits in the job, such as they don't offer airfare or even realtor fee. Basically I'm getting paid the same as last time but the apartment is much nicer. The worst thing of all though is my new co-teacher. She is a witch! She is the most difficult to work with person I have ever dealt with. Basically, if there's a way of turning an ordinary situation into a conflict she will do that.

Example:

I was asked for money for lunch. I didn't have the correct amount, so I gave Sarah the nearest amount that I had. She said she didn't have change so I went to get some from the office. The office didn't understand that I needed change, and took the whole amount as payment. When I came back Sarah again asked for the money and I said I had paid the office. She then started shouting at me and saying I should have told her.

We just keep on having massive conflicts over minor issues. She has no redeeming features. She can't speak english very well, but if I can't understand what she's saying she acts like it's me who has a comprehension problem. It's infuriating.

There is also a whole lot of pressure from the company and the school over the teaching which has to be the best because it's a school in central Seoul.


[edit] 26/06/07- Getting a Medical

I went to get a medical which I apparently need to teach in a public school in Seoul and so someone from the company took me to the hospital. First I had to hug an Xray machine then I got to give a urine sample (as the other guy commented "It's a good thing it's been a while") finally I gave blood. Since I was giving blood I thought I would find out my blood type, since I didn't know. Incidentally, Korean hospital procedures involve alot less in the way of privacy and hygiene than in a western hospital setting. For instance the guy was wiping my blood off his ungloved hands. How did it get on his hands? Well he was doing the tests on it right there and then of course!

Anyway I found out that my blood group is 0- which is quite rare apparently, at least in Korea where the incidence is 0.1% Whereas in Australia it is 9%. There are a number of interesting things about this for me though.

First of all my girlfriend is also 0- so we're 'compatible', and there's only a small chance that we would have the same blood group.

Secondly; it means that I'm a kind of a rare creature that needs to be preserved.

Thirdly; it means that I'm something called "universal donor" which means that I can give anyone blood but I can't accept blood from anybody except another 0-. I'm sorry but I just can't accept your blood.

Universal doner, that's me. I just give give give but I can't accept anything in return.

Oh there's also something called the Japanese blood type theory of personality which was created when the Taiwanese were rebelling against Japanese rule and they were found to have a high incidence of the O blood type. From this it was deduced that people with an O blood type were more aggressive - at least to Japan. Of course this theory might have the fatal flaw that it was the Japanese who conquered the Taiwanese in the first place.

So what's your blood group? Not that it matters to me, But if you have a horrible accident and are in danger of bleeding out you might need to hook into some of mine in order to live.

See: Japanese_blood_type_theory_of_personality


[edit] 27/06/07 - Drugs in Food

After a restless night I worked out that the problem was the chicken that I ate last night. The thing is that Korean farmed meat including seafood is full of all kinds of unsavory things that seem to cause a bad reaction in me. Having fish, or in the case of last night; chicken can be like taking speed for me. This is great if I want to stay up late but less great if I actually want to go to sleep. Soju is only a partial solution. So I've decided to cut back on the amount of meat that I purchace and consume. Read why below:


[edit] Antibiotics in Livestock Harm Human Beings

070625_p05_antibiotics.jpg

Consumers Korea, a civic group seeking to protect consumers' right announced surprising news a few months ago that beef in Korea, whether it is domestic or imported, is the most expensive in the world. Korean and imported beef were 55,800 won and 54,500 won per kilogram on average, respectively.

The civic group pointed that inefficient and complicated logistics is the main reason for the high price of livestock in Korea.

Probably, another reason for the high price, though it is not the most important factor, is that livestock farmers in Korea spend more money than anyone else in the world in feeding antibiotics to their pigs and cows, according to a recent report by civic groups on animals. Korean livestock farmers spent 0.91 kilograms per one-ton of livestock in 2002, which is about three times more than the Japan's 0.35 kilograms, according to a report of the Korean Animal Welfare Association.

The use of antibiotics was followed by the United States with 0.14 kilograms, New Zealand with 0.04 kilograms, Denmark with 0.04 kilograms and Sweden with 0.03. The association conducted the survey with the support of the U.K.-based civic group, the World Society for the Protection of Animals.

The survey result indicates that a variety of livestock produced in Korea are tainted with antibiotics, which raises a new problem because the antibiotics in animals are transferred to people who eat them.

Economics of Giving Antibiotics to Animals

The Korean Animal Welfare Association (KAWA) said in its report that the unclean, enclosed and artificial environment for livestock requires farmers to administer various medicines.

``It is almost impossible for animals, who live in a crowded environment where fresh air is filtered, not to depend on medicine for survival, the report said. ``Farmers administer antibiotics in order to improve the immune system of the animals to ensure their survival, but the overuse of antibiotics leads to human's development of resistance to certain diseases. Farmers administer antibiotics regularly even when livestock are not ill to prevent animals from getting a disease.

Actually, overuse of antibiotics is an economical matter. Administering antibiotics pays off for farmers.

``We know giving antibiotics to my pigs are not a good idea ultimately, but if my pigs get sick or they die due to some disease, we lose money, a 38-year-old livestock raiser whose last name is Kim in Paju, Gyeonggi Province said. ``It is much more economical to buy antibiotics than to see my pigs sick or dead.

But the problem with the administering antibiotics has many negative aspects.

These days it is common for doctors to find patients who are resistant to certain medicines because they have eaten meat containing antibiotics. According to doctors' surveys, vegetarians tend to have less resistance to medicines related to antibiotics.

In addition, the more concentrated the farms of livestock, the more likely epidemics such as foot and mouth disease and pig cholera are to develop. For example, when foot and mouth disease took place in the United Kingdom in 1967, the incident was limited to a certain area but in 2001 the disease spread across the nation in two weeks, the report said. Particularly, considering the increased number of foot and mouth diseases, avian flu and pig cholera in Korea since 2002, KAWA said the amount of antibiotics given to animals would have also increased.

`Awful' Environment of Livestock

The association attributed Korea's No. 1 use of antibiotics to the poor environment livestock are kept in. It conducted another survey, visiting 11 pig farms and 7 abattoirs in the nation, and concluded them as being ``awful.

Video footage from the association shows that pigs can't move freely in their pens because they are so crowded, and the floor is full of excrement. They eat and sleep with the foul environment 24 hours a day.

Farmers on small breeding farms also removed teeth and cut the tails of baby pigs _ without an anesthetic _ to prevent them from leaving scars on each other while fighting. The fights take place regularly because of stress, and scars on pigs lower their price on the market. Female pigs are forced to give birth two or three times a year in small pens where they cannot move even an inch, the report added.

However, all these poor conditions form a vicious circle: the poor environment of livestock aggravates their health, which requires the use of antibiotics even before they get sick.

Government to Introduce Measures

Aware of the need to take action, two weeks ago the government finally announced a package to fix the situation.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry said it will give subsidies to farmers who raise livestock in an environment-friendly way including not using antibiotics.

The ministry will select ``environmental-friendly farms and give them cash over three to five years in order to support their environmental-friendly facilities.

If farmers produce organic livestock or raise them without antibiotics, they will receive another cash payment, according to the ministry.

Park Hae-sang, vice minister of agriculture and forestry, said that the ministry will basically improve food safety by expanding food control process from production to the logistics of livestock farming.

He said that the ministry will designate over half of the total livestock farms under the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) system by 2017. The system is a preventive approach to food safety that addresses physical, chemical and biological hazards as a means of prevention rather than finished product inspection.

The government will also financially support the installment of clean breeding farms on the condition that the farms adopt the HACCP system within three years.

The first recipient of the benefit came out early last week as a chicken farm in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province received a certificate as an antibiotics-free chicken producer from the government.

From http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/special/2007/06/180_5376.html


[edit] 15/7/07 New MacBook Computer

I bought a New Computer yesterday, because my current one became completely unusable through crashing all the time. See Death_of_Apple.

I also whet to the Hae Bang Chon Summer Festival where various bands played.

I'll upload a video shortly.

[edit] 06/08/07 Shanghai

I'm going to Change the way I format these pages so that I'll only have the heading here and the actual info here: User:Informa3_Seoul_blog/Shanghai


[edit] 07/08/07 User:Informa3 Seoul blog/Seoul's 'French Quarter'

Investigations into Seoul's Bogus 'French Quarter'.

[edit] 08/08/07 A Visit by the Chinese

Today a whole lot of Chinese people came into my classroom. They had video cameras and the like. I've been told that my English classroom is some sort of 'showcase classroom', so that's probably why. The deputy principal was escorting them and he announced: "He is an English teacher - He is Canadian. I am Korean. You are Chinese. Well that put them in their place. They can probably only afford New Zealand English teachers in China ...like he knows I am.

[edit] 12/8/07 I uploaded images from Shanghai

http://www.informationism.org/index.php?title=User:Informa3_Seoul_blog/Shanghai#Pictures_of_Shanghai

[edit] 18/08/07 - News from North Korea

North Korea has just had the most devistating floods in its history. In other North Korean News...

[edit] 21/09/07 - Going to Qingdao

Qingdao Photos

[edit]  ??/09/07 - Seoul Wall

[edit] 20/10/07 - Poetry page

[edit]  ??/9/07 Seoul Prison (Appropriate)

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