Returning the kings to their roots.

The life of an under qualified king is never simple is it?

I had finally done it, broken through the mould of being under qualified and had at last become a king. Well sort of... I had made it to the bottom of a ladder, ready and primed to slowly stumble my way up in a pair of fairly painful but beautiful heels.

I had finally achieved what I was meant to have achieved over 2 years ago when I could actually call myself a "graduate" without a little bit of shame. I had moved to London, and followed the usual London routine... I hate it, I love it, I hate it again, sod it, lets get drunk, love it... f*ck this place, no wait, its alright if you let yourself sink into its "charms".

I was in a fantastically glamorous and monotone routine. Yeah that sums it up perfectly.

Anyway, if you've been paying attention, you may have noticed the use of the past tense. Yes, alas, it truly is the past. It all had to come to an end. The company I have been working for, although doing well, has been forced to budget over the following months, which means saying a sad goodbye. Life of kings eh?

It has been exactly one year, eleven months and six days since my first "under qualified king" entry; the entry that described a life of the hopeful unemployed. One year, eleven months and six days and I'm back to where I started.

Its ok, I like to tell myself that it all happens for a reason. A king wouldn't be a king without the knocks and bruises would it? So back to the land of pajamas at noon, "job applicator" for a title and maybe a little bit of tea, biscuits and Pacman.

Kings!
Watch this space :)

x Mum x

Happy Birthday mum
Tally Bermeister
R.I.P
16.09.61 - 07.07.10

I haven't been able to find the words or the right way to really blog since the passing of my mother. Nothing felt appropriate, still nothing feels appropriate. The simple fact was, she was the one who truly loved reading it. She was the one who inspired me to always find humor in the world around me and write it down, just so she could have a giggle at her computer screen. She was a very proud mother who always praised her children and encouraged each of our own skills and creativity. This blog would go on forever if I truly began to sum up what a beautiful, warm and strong woman she was so I'll leave it as it is.

She was my mother, best friend and angel in life and now in death she remains the same.
Always an angel.

Love and miss you always,
Happy Birthday.
xxx

"Shes my number one fan, my first blog reader, my only twitter feeder,
when I rhyme, I'm Browning, When I sing, I'm not a cat drowning,
When I dance I'm divine,
When I ctrl, alt, delete, I'm the new age Einstein.

She's beautiful, she's my muse,
a wondrous example of those Israeli Jews,
A smile covers pain, a story calms the insane,
A warm meal comforts cold, her hand was always mine to hold,
... and I know it's too late to write you this, but if I can't give you a kiss,
I might as well reminisce..."

Leora Bermeister 09.2010
A short segment out of the poem entitled "19.06"

Something I should have been proud of sooner.

Chinese New Year... In China!

So the Lunar New Year was approaching, all I could think was that I'm sitting here, a two hour flight away from CHINA, the words "CHINESE New Year" bouncing around my head, I may have possibly been eating CHINESE food at the time... It seemed like I had no other choice and without thought or hesitation I rounded up some friends, some visas and some air tickets and we were off to Beijing for the long weekend.

There were a number of memorable moments within my short 3 day stay in the city, such as the Great Wall, the great hostel and the not so great duck; but I feel that I should focus my attention on the New Year itself.

Much like my skiing experience, I had an image in my head of what to expect. It included parades, dragons, one massive firework display somewhere central, more dragons, street shows, dragons, bright lights, dragons and fireworks. Unlike my skiing experience, all my expectations were surpassed and were nothing like I had imagined.

On Saturday we went on a hunt for action. Where are the people? The People setting up camp for the evenings show? I grew up in Australia, and my idea of a firework display included setting up during day light to secure a spot. Where were the dragons?!?!? Had we come to the wrong city?

After chatting a few times to our wonderful hostel staff, they assured us there was "no where to be", which disappointed us greatly. Luckily, the manager took a liking to us and said to be back by midnight to join her on the roof of the hostel for a drink.

We wandered the streets and side-alleys for a while, only to watch all the locals setting off firecrackers everywhere and anywhere. I even saw children lighting them and cars driving around them; it was madness. This sight is unbelievable within itself, for 15 days straight this is a normality; every where you go, day or night, you will either hear or see explosions; its how I imagine a war-zone to be... obviously, without all the death.
Midnight came and we headed up to the roof of the hostel with our beer; and in the cheesiest words I could think of "the magic happened." This is a sight that I feel everybody MUST experience at least once in their lifetime. The city is literally on fire! All around you, 360 degrees, every Person in the city is burning up the sky. I was over-whelmed and had no idea which direction to even look in. Fireworks were exploding next to me, behind me, to the left and right and above me... to top it off, this doesn't end. It peeks at midnight and continues for possibly an hour and then slowly calms down but still continues throughout the night.

The hostel manager explained why this was happening all across the country. There is an old story that tells of a ghost that brings bad luck; the ghosts name in Chinese means "Year". The Chinese people believe that if every year, they make as much noise and light as they can outside their homes and work places, they will scare off the ghost for yet another year. I wouldn't want to be the one person in China who forgets. She also explained that the Chinese people happily spend on these 15 days, buying as many of the most elaborate fireworks as they can; regardless of income.

Long story short... It was Awesome.

ASR... A Ski Rant

Skiing is not for everybody.

Let me start by saying that I am not judging the sport itself nor the people who do it. I'm just sharing my first experience and the disaster it was. If you LOVE skiing, you may want to stop reading because realistically, I'm going to be doing some heavy whinging.

This weekend I visited Muju ski resort (South Korea.)

I left JeonJu with so much excitement, I knew I wasn't going to master the sport in a weekend but I looked forward to the image I had running around in my head; cabins, lodges, hot chocolates, romantic ski lifts, beautiful people laughing, cute ski bunnies, snow fights oh and of course a bit of skiing; which to be honest looked a lot like this:

Obviously that reference would have made a lot more sense if there were actually people skiing in that video. Don't question me! They were holding skis, that's enough for me.

This is what it really looks like.

I got there, its bloody cold obviously, and I ask some people where the beginners go, they point at a queue and I get in. I stand in line for what feels like forever before getting on the ski lift which takes me to the top of a massive mountain (not for beginners). I fall while getting off the ski lift; at this point I realize that there is a possibility I may have not been ready for what it is I was about to face. I panic when I see just how steep the slope really is and instantly head into the mountain-top cafe (lodge?) for the hot chocolate I had dreamed of.

It turns out the lodge was actually a small dirty room filled with a few benches, a man who serves you an instant hot chocolate for twice the price and another man who after one sip comes over, tells you to throw away your drink and get off the mountain as they are closing the slope. Thanks for telling me this AFTER I buy the bloody thing.

I get my skis back on and look down the slope only to realize that I have absolutely no idea how to ski. No one has ever spoken to me or told me anything about skiing and here I am alone, looking down and thinking to myself;
"what the hell do I actually do???" More men come over and tell me to get off the mountain...

In their best English "GO! GO! SKI! NOW! SLOPE CLOSE! GO"

I make an attempt, I fall, I don't know how to get up, I remove a ski, get up, put the ski back on. I go, I fall, oh for god sake! All the while these men are still yelling at me to go. I manage to get going only to realize I don't know how to turn which leads me into a fence. Finally a man holds my hands and skis backwards in front of me down the mountain. He lets go, I fall. (This is starting to sound like a joke.) Finally after a long time of the man laughing to himself as to how the hell I ended up on that slope in the first place, he calls over some sort of embarrassing stretcher and throws me on it to be taken down the mountain to face my friends at the bottom. Humiliation at its finest.

The experience slightly improved in the evening when I actually found the beginner slope and practiced alongside all the other people just as bad as me... but here is my summary of skiing: I can't ski, it sucked, I sucked... even when I got the hang of it (at 9pm on the beginners slope) it still sucked. Its cold, frustrating, expensive, uncomfortable, scary and abusive.

Okay now I've gotten that off my chest. Honestly, its probably not that bad. I may have just had an exceptionally bad first experience. I'm assuming that if my day had gone the other way around, hitting the big slope AFTER learning how to turn or stop; I would be sitting here saying how absolutely amazing skiing is but it all kind of happened backwards for me. Never mind... I guess skiing just is not for everybody.

On a final note. ASR (a ski rant) may also refer to A.S Roma, Air-sea rescue, apple software restore, and Asian soybean rust. ^^*

The joy of teaching

Being a teacher is not without its perks; I'm sure many teachers will agree. Please do not get me wrong, there are days where I look at the students staring blankly at me or shouting and throwing pieces of their table and think to myself; Why would anyone put themselves through this torture day in day out for the entirety of their lives?

Anyway, the big perk for me is just some of the funny stuff these kids come out with... pure gold. I felt I should share some of these moments with you.

When asking a child to form a sentence using the word "bee."
Student: My mother is not bee......... ..... ?

During a game of scattegories, the letter is R; category is animals: A middle school student yells out with such pride... "RION!" after a short explanation as to why this is wrong whilst his fellow students laugh to themselves, the next category is girls names... once again with pure pride the boy yells "RIORA!!!" His friends next to him crack up and all start shouting L around the room.

"I have many books. In these books I have a diary. The diary is empty. This is because I can't write words. This is because I am dead."
- What I get when I ask middle schoolers to write a story about books.

Teacher: What is bob doing in the living room?
Student: Tv?
Teacher: YES! Watching tv... ok can we make a sentence... Bob *blank* watching tv. Fill the blank...
Student: MONKEY?

^^ yes that is David Beckham giving me a headshot...

Playing a game of word "go fish" and a middle schooler seems to have figured out the basic formula to making words. He throws together "H,E,M,P" I ask him to make a sentence and out of panic he says "Hemp is delicious" I only then let him look the word up on his dictionary at which point whilst trying to hide his face in horror he retracts his previous statement.

Teacher: Who is your best friend? Describe them.
Student: My best friend is Obama, he has black skin and smart and has good character.

I hope you enjoyed these moments as much as I did and remember;

Pepero Day

For years I have heard phrases like "consumer" and "greeting card" holidays but these have only really ever been used to describe days such as Valentines day and in some cases the modern versions of Easter and Christmas, but S.Korea has actually taken these words to a whole new meaning all together.

Inspired by valentines day, the company Pepero (a brand of chocolate biscuits/bread-sticks much like the more widely spread Japanese "Pocky") decided to celebrate itself on 11/11 purely because the four digits resemble four of the chocolate coated sticks that they market. They claim that the holiday was actually started by a group of middle school girls who on 11/11 gave each other Pepero and repeated to each other "may you grow to be tall and thin like a Pepero," which is fairly ironic as I doubt a bread stick coated in chocolate could ever aid in the growing or dieting process.

As the day has progressed and grown it has become a big tradition here in Korea to buy Pepero in abundance and basically hand it out to anyone you feel like really. Boyfriends are expected to shower their girlfriends in large boxes of the treats or overly sized versions. Children buy D-I-Y kits and decorate their own at home, some just buy backpacks full of it, even bakeries sell their own freshly-baked versions.

As a teacher; I spent my Pepero day being greeted at the beginning of every class with a new box of the stuff and as much as I appreciated the gesture it did make me laugh. I have always laughed at the concept of Easter; buying a disgusting amount of chocolate eggs to hand out to friends only to receive the exact same number of eggs in return as it would only be rude to accept and not to give. The joke was always when the gift giving and receiving was over, you realize that you technically bought yourself a room full of chocolate that isn't really all that good and you probably preferred the brands you gave away anyway.

My collection by the end of the day.

After a few giggles; I began to think to myself just how genius this idea really was. A single company has basically managed to create a national holiday that all children adore and take part in every year. I would love to know how much Pepero sales actually boost by in November. The only figure I was able to actually find was on wiki which says;

"Lotte usually does about 55% of their Pepero business in November every year."

I wonder if such an concept would be possible in other countries; Many people in the UK and USA already turn their noses up at valentines day claiming that it was created by greeting card companies. I just wonder what would happen if Cadburys or Heinz ever decided to devote a day to celebrating themselves, do you think it could actually hold any success on the other side of the world?