Life, to me, is like a quiet forest pool, one that needs a direct hit from a big rock half-buried in the ground. You pull and you pull, but you can't get the rock out of the ground. So you give it a good kick, but you lose your balance and go skidding down the hill toward the pool. Then out comes a big Hawaiian man who was screwing his wife beside the pool because they thought it was real pretty. He tells you to get out of there, but you start faking it, like you're talking Hawaiian, and then he gets mad and chases you.

Like so many other westerners, I have come to Korea in order to teach English. Not that English teaching is something I'm especially fond of, but the pay is good and there a great many things I'd like doing less.

I like exploring new places and meeting new people. I play guitar and drive a motorcycle. I'd like to go paragliding of the Namsan tower, but my boss tells me it's illegal. I'm sure he's just saying that because he's jealous I thought of it first.

I like beaches. If you're a native Korean and not from Busan or Jeju, you might not know beaches. They're the best thing ever invented by anyone. This is a scientific fact. On beaches you've got music, bonfires, swimming, drinking, and occasionally potato cannons. These are my most favorite things ever.If you are very very lucky, someone will bring their dog to the beach, and then you can play a game called "stick."

"Stick" if you don't know, is a game in which you throw a stick, and then the dog chases the stick, and brings is back to you. It's more fun than anything has any right to be. Variations on stick include "ball" and "someones baby cousin." The latter is legal only in Australia and parts of Newfoundland.

Knowing you're good at something is an interesting challenge. I can balance on two feet but so can everybody else. You're not good at something unless everyone else is bad at it. So, what can I do that you can't?

I speak English, German, and a small amount of French and Russian. I am currently trying to learn Korean. So far all I know is 김치안녕하세요, 김치냉장고, 김치하고맥주주세요 and 김치맛있어요. I have an extensive vocabulary.

Things I used to do in Canada but don't do in Korea anymore include beermaking, potato cannonry, archery, boatbuilding, cliff diving, and cooking. I used to make the "best goddamned pizza in the universe" but now I don't have an oven. But I can still make spoodles. Spoodles are like a plate full of orgasm that you can shove into your face. To prove this fact, I am now going to tell you how to make spoodles. You should write this down:

Things you need:
-frying pan
-pot
-stovetop with not less than 2 burners
-strainer

- 1 package linguine. Not spaghetti. Not macaroni. Not fettuccine. Linguine.

- water

- salt

- garlic. Powdered is best. Fresh is acceptable. Avoid using ground if you can.

- Parmesan cheese.

- Dill (this can be difficult to find in Korea. The hannam supermarket sometimes has some. Make sure you get the fresh kind that is saran-wrapped to the styrofoam tray, and not the dried seed kind. It's not the same, and the seeds to not taste as good as the stem and leaves).

- olive oil

- 1 tomato

- Cream. You can use milk, but it doesn't work as well. You want cream. Thicker is better. Use whipping cream if you can get it. Coffee cream works, but thicker is better. Use nothing less than 10% if you can.

Are you ready? This is real simple, but don't screw it up. The difference between deliciousness and disaster is all about timing and attention to detail.

The first thing you do is boil a big pot of water.

While the water comes up to temperature, turn your attention to the tomato. You need to cut it up into little bits. The fancy culinary term for this is "dicing." You want to cut the tomato in little tomato cubes, about the size of the nail on your pinky finger. If you hack up the tomato like you're mad at it, this works too. Just make sure you don't lose too much of the delicious tomato juices. For this you need a knife. It should be sharp enough that you are seriously worried about what would happen if you dropped it on your foot. I wear steel toed boots when cooking.

By the time you have finished dicing the tomato, the water should have reached boiling point. Once this happens, add salt. It will fizz and bubble and might spit at you. This is normal. You want to add between 1 1/2 and 2 tablespoons of salt. Yes, tablespoons. That the water be salty is important. It prevents the noodles from sticking and is necessary for the flavour. You want salty noodles or it doesn't taste right.

Find your Linguine (you did get linguine, right?) and snap the bag in half. You can do this by holding the middle of the bag on the edge of the counter and pressing down on both the ends. The noodles will bend and then break. If you are very lucky and bought noodles in an expensive bag, they will remain inside the bag after they break. If you are unlucky and bought noodles in a cheap bag, it will explode and you may need more noodles.

Add what's left of your half-length noodles to the boiling water. Stir occasionally.

Pour enough olive oil into the frying pan to cover the bottom. If it is a teflon coated pan, you will need more because the oil will bead. Turn on the heat, and once the oil begins to sizzle, add the tomatoes.

You will need to stir the tomatoes constantly to prevent them from burning. If the oil begins to spit at you, turn down the heat. Grease fires are a bitch.

Remember to stir the noodles occasionally.

Once the tomatoes begin to dissolve, add the dill and garlic. You want a lot of dill, not a lot of garlic. Maybe a cup of dill (about 7 stems worth), and a teaspoon of garlic. Once they're thoroughly mixed, remove from heat and add the cream and parmesan. Do not cook the milk and cheese. However much dill you added, add about twice that in parmesan.

By now the noodles should be boiled. Remove from water (you do have a strainer, right?) and add the tomato/dill/cheese mix.

That's it. Now you have spoodles.

Delicious, no?

It all depends on the situation. Today at work for example, my boss noticed that my desk was on fire.

A coworker had handed out some scented candles as gifts, and to show my appreciation, I decided to light mine. Some time later, I was talking to my director about something, and his eyes suddenly got real big and he starts pointing and waving and yelling at me for no reason.

After several seconds of staring blankly at him, I noticed that my arm was feeling a bit warm. I looked over and that's when I noticed the tests I had been grading were slightly on fire.

Oops.

To make a long story short, some middle school students now have to re-take their writing exam and I'm not allowed to have lighters anymore.

Books: Tolkien, George Orwell, Jack London, Michael Crichton, John Grisham, Thomas Harris, Chuck Palahniuk.

Movies: Other than movieizations (it's a word) of the novels of the above authors, James Bond (all of the earlier films), Braveheart, Equilibrium, The Matrix (the first one), Pi, 12 Monkeys, 300, A History of Violence, Anchorman, V for Vendetta, Boondock Saints, Mean Girls, Pans Labyrinth, Gladiator, Lord of War, and Terminator 2 (as an aside, one day I WILL own a Fatboy FLSTF), and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

Music: Kiss, Nine Inch Nails, Hendrix, Metallica, Rammstein, Sabbath, Maiden, and every other band you've never heard of in Korea.

Food: Anything containing the word 김치.

Why does the Russian word for forty translate to "a bag of dead squirrels"? And what was going through the head of the first person to drink milk from a cow? "I think I'll squeeze this big dangly thing sticking out of my bovine acquaintance. And whatever comes out, I'm having for breakfast. It makes perfect sense."

People do strange things.

Also: The moon. Think about it.

It's a big giant ball of rock floating in space. Giant ball of rock. Floating in space. There are sciency type people with your maths and equations and graviton things and particles and einsteins and things with the explaining it with "science" and "facts," but that doesn't change the fact that when I look out my window, there's a giant rock hanging out there staring at me.

And it glows in the dark, too. It's a glow-in-the-dark floating space rock. It's like something out of star trek.

Also, I've decided that the sun tastes like lemonade.

Since I work evenings, the answer is "at work" at least until 10:00. After that, who knows? There's no such thing as typical. I might be drinking in Nowon, or drinking in Hongdae. I've even been drinking in Itaewon.

That said, I'm fully capable of going out and not drinking, and want to go out and see korean culture, but unfortunately all the people I can ask about such things are either clueless English teachers, or don't speak English. I need a tour guide or something. I would absolutely love to take my motorcycle out one Friday night and spend the whole weekend up in mountains in the countryside. I want to find and visit every Buddhist shrine in this country. But I've yet to even see Suwon.

Deep down, I still believe in Leprechauns.

You are on Jeju-do South Korea. OkC thinks I'm in Seoul, and I can't find the button that tells them otherwise.