Hobbies

The weather has been a little hot and humid, but nothing like what the rain will soon bring. The mosquitoes have abated, thanks to the labors of the mobile bug-fogging squad. The worst thing is when you are walking down a narrow block and you hear this low constant humming noise coming your way. There is nowhere to run. You just put anything over your mouth and nose and charge through the white cloud in faith. It's pretty gross, but the locals are well used to it, one of the drawbacks to living in a rural city. Needless to say, I take more showers these days.

I have been enjoying the use of my electronic drum set more. I have a book of jazz patterns that I am "wood-shedding," in the hopes of liberating my swing feeling on the kit for future jam sessions. There are so many great drum books that I want to work my way through! My guitar has been a bit too dormant these days, hibernating its way through a winter of my lack of inspiration. No doubt that will soon change. Recently, I made an important decision to leave the ranks of taekwondo. I am not keen on the idea of practicing the same material for another 3 months just to take a black belt test that I am competent to take now.

My friends will go to Jeonju tomorrow to test and I hope they do well. At any rate, none of us are convinced that we are learning much about fighting skills. It is unfortunate that much of our practice time has been running around the mat, yelling numbers and shouting, doing a kind of

coordinated dance to some Korean-pop music with accents for the moves. It has been a great help to improve my stretching and condition my legs. I will take some time off from formal training, and use my leisure to improve upon my tai chi form work. At some point I will seek an introduction to a local hapkido studio and set myself down that path. It is a discipline that shuns the repetitive form work in favor of a fluid capacity to manipulate an opponent with the least resistance.

I have been making but little progress in learning Korean these last few weeks, but I am going to wake up early and push myself to study in the morning. (Taekwondo practice was a problem because I didn't get home until 9:15 pm and my dinner schedule was inconsistent.) I have a plethora of learning materials now, so it is up to me to take advantage of them. I recently realized that I have a knack for collecting materials and tools to excel in my hobbies and interests, but I rather too consistently neglect to capitalize on their advantage. I am relatively lazy.

These days I am reading "Pride and Prejudice" and some books about the culture and history of Korea. The former book is my girlfriend's favorite, and upon loosing a board-game bet, I promised to write her a one page essay, in Korean. In return she will read a Korean translation of my favorite book, "Walden" by Thoreau. As for the culture books, I am not content to indulge in the common stereotypes of Korea without first considering some of the complexity of this country. She is now reading a book on American customs and we are having some lively discussions about who these strange people are. I must confess that I read the news rather less than I should, it being forever easy to indulge in a relative solipsism when things are going good. I know that there are some horrible problems yet in this world, and my affluence is not wholly independent of them. If for no other reason than to be thankful for my blessings in life, I find it indispensable to take some account of recent history. It's funny how some news, like today's soccer or weather headlines will guarantee an easy entry into conversation; whereas more timely topics such as war and suffering are conversation stoppers. Speaking of which...