News and more news

Hi everyone! It has been about 10 days since my last post, and that's not because I hadn't meant to write: on the contrary, it has been such a busy and incredible week that I did not have time to post anything decent! I will just try to make up for that now, a quiet Thursday morning (no class today, but lots of things to prepare for next week) at home... although I am not alone: my flatmate's brother (he's got a 1-week leave in the middle of his 20-month compulsory military service) and mother are here. Anyway, let's go with the stuff.

First thing I want to tell, is that I finally made a decision on one of the courses I would take, to the surprise of many of my Korean colleagues (and also to the relative dismay of one of them, who really wanted to share a course with me and now he won't): I'll take a Proseminar on International Relations, conducted by a young and allegedly tough Korean professor, instead of the Introduction to IR course with the oh-so-cool and prestigious Korean-American professor, recently imported from the U.S. and who loves showing his unrefined sense of humor every ten seconds or so. Of course, everything seasoned with some nice doses of arrogance and belief in a certain racial superiority... yes, I did not like him at all, that's why I chose the course offering me more work, but also more reward.

The other courses I am taking are International Public Law (with a very good American professor), International Relations of East Asia (for which I have to prepare a presentation already due next Tuesday) and The European Union and the World, both conducted by Dr. Daewon Ohn, the Vicedean of the Graduate School and the person responsible of my arrival here. On top of that, I am also auditing two courses on Friday, one on conflict (causes, tipologies and resolution) and another on research methodology for the social sciences, something that can be quite useful towards a future Ph.D!

Second piece of recent news: I also started learning Korean. After our polite complaints, the Graduate School (namely Dr. Ohn) decided to hire a teacher for us and "create" a new Korean course. It's every Monday morning, 9AM... not the most convenient schedule for me (both for the time and because I have another class on Monday afternoon, and one which will require quite a lot of presentations). Moreover, the first class was a bit hectic: the teacher goes way too fast ("bali bali", as they always say around here) and the other 3 students are already a bit proficient in Korean (in fact, one of them is a Chinese Ph.D student who's been living in Korea for 2.5 years now) and have more free time to study (i.e. they take less courses) than I do. The combination might well prove being fatal, but hopefully I will manage to stay competitive enough (just to follow the rythm, even if barely) and to make sure the original syllabus is respected (i.e. that they don't accelerate beyond control due to the "proficiency" of the other students).

In any case, I am lucky I have found some very nice people in the U-Peace program (a joint Master's program of my university, Hankuk, and the UN University in Costa Rica). They are just starting now, very friendly and willing to learn survival Spanish for their upcoming trip to Costa Rica. Yesterday we were learning both languages for 3 hours with 2 of them, Bin and Saeha, it was really fun!

So, apart from my lively academic life, what else has happened around here lately? Well, let's start with last Tuesday, March 8: I attended a live basketball game! For those of you who are my friends on Facebook, you have surely seen the pics. For the ones who haven't, here's a brief summary and a couple of pictures to give you an idea of the overall experience.

We went to see a game between Seoul Knights and Ulsan, both pretty average teams of the Korea Basketball League. I can't say the quality of play was high: they both showed lackluster defense, not really polished offensive skills, too many isolation sets (with not-so-talented players taking the defenses 1on1)... and unfit American players who grabbed every single rebound available (yes, Koreans, even tall ones, don't fight for the rebounds)!

However, the game itself was probably the less important thing there: a KBL game is the Asian magnification of the "family experience" of NBA games, but without the star power in the court. So, who's the star there? Of course, our friend, the male cheerleader: a guy who did not stop for a second, stomping his feet to make everyone shout "DEEE-FENSE!", igniting the crowd with his chants and phrases and showing a very peculiar dressing style.

Of course, he was not alone: the usual team of female cheerleaders was also there, as were a bunch of guys dressed as cans, pots, donkeys and a red, Korean copy of Megaman. I wondered which is the worst job: acting dressed as a soda can or as a donkey... Timeouts and pauses were a real freak show, with the cameras catching glimpses of the sparse public available (the arena was pretty small, and I'd say it was only at 40% of its capacity, and I also guess a lot of the attendants did not pay their tickets... just as we didn't!) and the weird guys throwing basketballs and other presents to the stands. Anyway, I can't say it was the best basketball game ever, but I had quite a lot of fun, it was an enjoyable experience... and really worth it for the price I paid (free ticket, reasonably priced pizza slice and nachos as dinner)!

Oh, yeah, something else also happened that Tuesday: I had the chance to become a movie star, but I refused. Well, actually not a star, more like an extra... and the conditions offered were quite grueling: a 24-hour stint, departing Seoul at midnight and getting back home a full day later, including 16+ hours of shooting out in the cold, attired as Nazi soldiers in Stalingrad for a meager €80. A French pal of me went there and said it was not "the best experience", but he was still pleased with the outcome and he's going to another shooting session tomorrow.

How did I get such opportunity? Well, I was just getting ready to meet the people who'd come to the basketball game when a pretty Eastern European girl approached me saying I was what she was looking for. After my initial surprise, she told me that she was a (very stressed) head hunter for Korean movies and TV shootings, specializing in Western-looking extras... and they needed "spare" Nazi soldiers for the day after. It was tempting for the experience, but I felt tired (the night before had been a bad one) and a bit ill (I caught a low-intensity flu last week), so I politely declined, also offering my services for future occasions. I think she called me yesterday (I guess for the same shooting my pal Darius is going to), but I failed to hear the call... maybe next time! :-)

Hum... quite a long post... and still a lot of things to say! Why don't I continue this evening? Yeah, I think I'll do that: there are a couple of very interesting things I still want to tell you all... including a very special "start of the semester" party with my fellow European Union Studies students... and all the concerned professors! And no, it was by no means a very formal party! Maybe this picture will serve you as a decent sneak peek into how it went...

More on that later! Cheers!