2008: Year of the Robot

I slept exactly seven hours last night, and whenever I sleep exactly 7 hours, I wake up in the middle of a dream. I've started scheduling my sleep time around this, because they're usually pretty interesting.

Last night I dreamt I was witnessing, from the air, a sea of scrambling people, running away (or toward?) some kind of creature - at first I thought it was a robot, and then I thought it was a dragon, and then I thought it was some sort of robotic dragon, and then (of course this is fanciful dream logic) - I KNEW that this was the incarnation of Year of the Dragon, the Chinese New Year that's coming up in 2008. And then of course I looked it up and this next year is actually the year of the Rat. Robot rat?

On a completely unrelated note: If you're like most people, you've seen a Ron Paul video or two on the internet, or read about his amazing fundraising day on Nov. 5th. I have no idea what the buzz is on American TV or off-line in America, but all I can say is ... wow! Wow. I watched this video the other day:



The music sounds like I'm watching the cathartic ending of some big-budget action film, and then of course the Simon & Garfunkel - classic hippie nostalgia. It all sounds great - limit our military overseas, get back to the constitution, cutting our bureaucracy and our spending - but then I checked out Ron Paul on this:

http://www.2decide.com/table.htm

Sure, small government works for issues when I want small government. But what about environmental and oil industry regulations? Help for illegal immigrants to achieve citizenship? A woman's right to abortion? (This one seems opposite, but take a look at his voting record - I remember from the Rep. debate he wanted to leave it to the States.) Suddenly, I want government back - but only for those issues? Suddenly, it's not so simple anymore. But hell, the simplicity of his position sure is seductive.

At the same time, I agree with Paul that we are acting more like an empire than a republic. And maybe electing someone this radical would be the only way to make even minimal steps in cleaning the mess from the past 8 years. So, what do you think? Discussion welcome.

I can't believe I forgot to post this before - the night I finished the first draft of my novel, I had a little party downtown.

Good friends, good times.



Me and Chang-Hun had an epic battle to see who could drink the most soju. We both won!



There was many a tender conversation over a bubbling pot of 만두국 (dumpling soup).



Oh oh! Cute.



And then I flew away. The end! ^^

Wow, it's been almost a month! I think I have trouble focusing on more than one thing at a time. Well, my novel is done, I finished it in the afternoon of November 30th - I'm not saying it's good or anything, but it's DONE. That's what I signed up for. I think it's okay for a first draft, it definitely needs a lot of editing before I can think about submitting it anywhere, but it feels so good to complete what I started. Did I think I'd actually write a novel when I started it on November 1st? Well -- no. I think I thought I'd have some decent excuse - maybe my job would give me another class to teach, or I'd down with a bad case of the mumps or something - and it would have to be put on hold. The cold weather here made going outside so unattractive that it wasn't hard to just sit in the library and in cafes and let it write itself. :)

I'm on another little semi-vacation right now for a week - the CAMPS start this Friday, during which I've been warned that we'll be working weekends, evenings, weekend evenings, and perhaps new hours will be added to the original 24 just so we can work a little bit more. It's the calm before the storm. So in the spirit of togetherness and bravery, our department took us all out for a hike on one of the oreums (small mountains) of Jeju.



Being December, it was a little cold, but the views were still beautiful.



When we came down from the mountain it was still morning - amazing! I'm not used to waking up early for these kinds of adventures. We went to this horse and pork restaurant which was filled with these little cartoon pictures of horses and pigs frolicking together and raising hoofs in cheery, smiling hellos. I love horse - I've had it before - the best part being raw horse meat with sliced pieces of pears. Ohh ... I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.