Rob's World

I’m getting older.

Did you see that? I got 2.5 seconds older just in the time it took to write that sentence. My life has not gotten 2.5-seconds-worth more enjoyable or easier since I began writing, but I did move 2.5 seconds close to my next medical checkup, as well as two and a half seconds further away from the days when medical checkups were just for guys who called me “young man” and told me to turn down that garbage I was partaking of aurally.

That’s what I think people really unhappy about when they complain about getting older: That the aging process has taken place without life noticeably improving. Between the ages of 26 and 32, for example, I planned to become debt free, improve my time running a mile (to “bad” from “so bad you’d rather not say it aloud”) and become well-known by writing a book. What I got, instead of any of those accomplishments, was knowledge.

There was, for example, the knowledge of the wide world of debts one can accrue through buying a place to live. There was the knowledge of four-syllable conditions that can afflict the knee joints of people who take up running too late in life (it turns out that the whole “consult your doctor before starting any exercise program” messages you see on treadmills isn’t a plot by doctors to increase their customer base, enacted by making exercise-machine makers put them there after a few too many drinks and some incriminating photographs).

And, of course, there was the knowledge that the book-publishing world can make a guy well-known only if he’s willing to write about things large numbers of people want to read about, such as whether or not Charlie Sheen, as of today, still has a Twitter account.

So I can’t say that I’ve lived up to the amount of progress I’d envisioned six years ago. And now I’ve got six fewer years to Make My Mark on the World. This is a concept written into the DNA of many of us who will grow to be Hollywood screenwriters, presidents, or possibly even a respectable profession. It’s the inclination we have to take whatever we do well and make sure a good number of people will have heard that we do it well, and maybe one day you will even be so well-known that people will complain to committees appoint by Jimmy Wales that an online encyclopedia entry about you lacks neutrality and reliable sources.

Unfortunately, writing is what I do best, but not about Charlie Sheen’s social media activities. The kind of writing I like to do requires that people be interested in reading, and reading is not something that people in general enjoy doing, as it usually demands that they concentrate, and who wants to do that when Charlie Sheen-related news could be breaking at any second? It also often requires that they be willing to learn things they’d rather not know, such as that Ronald Reagan raised taxes and withdrew from Lebanon or that their recommended 30 minutes of exercise per day aren’t met through texting.

So the odds of my Making My Mark on the World that way aren’t good. This means more and more 2.5-second periods of time are likely to go by without my feeling that I’ve used them in an exemplary fashion. Which means one day I’ll probably be just another bitter man regularly in need of medical checkups and regularly calling my son “young man” and telling him to turn down that garbage he’s partaking of aurally.

But that brings me to a point I hadn’t been thinking of: Somewhere between the ages of 26 and 32 I did have a son. I suppose I did use the time (re)productively after all. And now I have the chance to accomplish something in the years ahead, even if it’s just passing my knowledge along. My son is currently at an age where his priorities typically consist of a) asking his mother and I to buy him new toy cars based on Pixar cartoons, b) ignoring the toy cars based on Pixar cartoons we’ve already bought for him because another child his age has a different toy car based on a Pixar cartoon and that’s the one he actually wanted all along, and c) convincing us to let him stay up one hour longer each night so he can watch more Pixar cartoons and get more ideas for toy cars to ask for.

That doesn’t mean that one day he won’t appreciate knowledge regarding how to minimize debt accrued through real estate purchases, the best treatments for four-syllable knee joint conditions and which book publishers are looking for the most creative explorations of the Charlie Sheen-on-social-media genre.

In that sense there’s still time for me to Make My Mark on the World, even if it’s just a small corner of the world cluttered with toy cars based on Pixar cartoons.

Labels: humor

It's just as good in Japanese.

Labels: humor, Korean Society, music

Meeting my quarterly deadline at Adventist Today is getting harder, but I somehow found the time to crank out this one over the weekend. I speak bluntly therein, much more so than I used to when writing columns for The PI or The Chattanoogan, but I figured with this topic there was no sense in holding back.

Also, I was largely inspired by this Onion clip, whose sentiments I could once relate to. Deeply.

Labels: Faith, humor

So, yeah, I'm in class a lot these days, meaning there's no time for blogging. Probably won't be for awhile, either. But Jeoak is still at it, and I can't really pass this up.



"Asian gonorrhea," we said!

He's a machine.

Labels: humor, Life Updates, music

I hadn't heard this song before Jeaok buffalaxed it, but that doesn't detract from its pleasures. His skills extend beyond Korean songs, by the way, and into Mongolian ones.

Labels: humor, Korean Society, music

Jeaok is back. I will gladly do PR for him for as long as he'll keep it up.

Labels: humor, Korean Society, music

Just watch. I have nothing to add.

Labels: humor, north korea

My latest column on Adventist Today is up and available here.

Labels: Faith, humor, Shameless Self-Promotion

I'm of the opinion that the best types of humor, whether it's Dilbert's office satire or The Onion's needling of the U.S. government is rooted in some sort of problem. These things wouldn't be so funny if they didn't talk about things that bothered us greatly.

And now comes Jeaok, a YouTube user who has found a niche mishearing songs from around the world and giving them hilariously rendered English translations. I, of course, take a special liking to his renditions of K-Pop songs. Most of these translations wouldn't be to my liking if I hadn't been subjected to listening to these songs at the gym - often played so loudly that I can't hear my own iPod clearly.

So, if you've ever been exposed to the wonder that K-Pop, you're in for a treat. Be warned, though, that Jeaok seems to think that a lot of Korean words sound like English obscenities or, worse, racial slurs. Prepare yourself for that fact and you'll probably find this highly amusing.





My favorite of all of his translations would have to be "Sorry Sorry" by Super Junior, probably because it's the most annoying song.

Labels: humor, Korean Society, music

So, long story short, my wife had swine flu this past week. Daniel and I were also sick, though we didn't test positive for it.

Click here to read about it. I tried to have a fun time with the experience, but it was a hard tone to maintain throughout.

Labels: Expat Issues, humor, Life Updates

Just so you know, I'm thankful for all eight of you who follow here.

Why? Well, according to this, I break pretty much every rule of popular blogging.

I suspected as much. Maybe in my next incarnation I'll narrow the focus a bit. Maybe the politically satirical musings of Korea's tennis pros.

Labels: humor, Life Updates

If I’d been a bit chunky in high school, I probably would have an aversion to Twinkies today that bordered on religious zeal. If I’d had a speech impediment then, perhaps I’d now be giving an earful to anyone I could trap long enough to tell how I overcame it.

Those weren’t problems of mine, though. My concern was that I was 6’3” and weighed 160 pounds when fully clothed. This is probably why, in my adulthood, I have demanded of myself that I be able to bench press more than any of my coworkers.

Fortunately, in the newspaper industry this is an easy target to reach: most reporters rarely lift anything heavier than a full coffee cup, and the best ones are too consumed with finding the scoop to concern themselves with exercise or a nutrient-rich diet (personal hygiene is also known to suffer).

When outlifting my fellow journalists got to be too easy, I began targeting the top 5 percentile of the gyms I used, and the top 2-3 percentile after I moved to Korea. I adopted the technique which states that each set should consist of no more than four repetitions, and on the fourth the vein in the lifter’s forehand should be visible from the moon.

After following this method for four or five sets, if the lifter is still able to open doors for himself, then he probably could have tried harder.

By my mid-20s it had paid off; I weighed in the neighborhood of 210 pounds, more and more people were asking me for help in ensuring that heavy things around the office were in the right place, and in the spring I could be seen tugging at shirts whose short sleeves weren’t quite wide enough.

Eventually, though, I paid the price for this obsession.

One day last year I pushed a weight as heavy as myself above me for four sets, four times each. The next day there was a sensation in my upper left pectoral that I at first mistook for the bounty of exercise, which is soreness. When it had spread to my left shoulder and grown more intense the day after that, I knew something was wrong, and that I needed to stop for awhile.

I didn’t pick up a weight for another two-three months, and when I did it was significantly lighter. Still, the following day the sensation, which I imagine is similar to having liquid magma poured in between your shoulder and arm bone, had come back.

I visited a doctor, who was immediately able to locate a creaking in my shoulder indicating that there was a fluid buildup between in the joint. He casually recommended that I avoid putting my left arm behind my back or over my head, and said in about four weeks I’d be fine.

This advice seemed at once both unrealistically hard and simplistic. For one, you do realize how hard it is to avoid such motions until you’ve put on a belt or taken off a shirt. For another, the sudden recurrence of pain months apart indicated something much more serious than what he had diagnosed me with.

So I went to an Oriental medicine doctor, who very quickly found that something more was wrong: My whole skeletal system was out of alignment. My pelvis was crooked and my left shoulder higher than my right. The first step toward correcting it would be acupuncture.

Many Westerners fear this, but I actually was not worried about the idea of having needles in my shoulder. Too bad none of them went there: Apparently treating bone alignment problems requires lots of needles in fun places like right beside the thumbnail, the tip of the pinky toe, and the underside of the knee.

You may be wondering if this was painful: Let’s just say that after the last needle had been inserted and I’d released my last gasp, I understood enough Korean to know that my doctor was laughing, not just at me, but at Westerners in general who have a low tolerance for needles in their digits.

The second part of my treatment has been rest, and after a few weeks the pain has decreased. What’s more, the number of needles required has also gone down, and they’ve been moved to places that result in less gasping.

Still, the doctor insists that I get rest, and he knows just enough English to tell me to avoid the gym because, as he puts it, “You might fatigued.”

"You should only walking,” he continues. “Otherwise, I think you will fatigued.”

I take him at his words, no matter how poorly utilized they may seem. My attempts at surmounting my high school insecurities by bench pressing a compact car will have to wait.

And so will this column. Until I’m sure I can left both arms over my head without paying for it the next day, I have to assume I haven’t rested enough. Hopefully it won’t take more than a couple of months before you see me again.

Whatever happens, though, I wish you all well, and that you won’t too much fatigued.

Labels: humor

It's the Korean capital of cows that are actually excited about being eaten.

Labels: humor, Korean Society, photos

Makds pekfext sezce to me.















And good company it is.











This Is Not. A Complete Sentence.












I know what you're thinking and yes, there is audio.

Labels: humor, photos

If asked to list the best things about being the father of a newborn son, I would probably list the occasional flashes of a smile, the times he has stopped crying after I’ve picked him up, and the fact that I can see a lot of both myself and his mother in him.

If asked what I’d want to list if I were sure that no mothers were listening, I’d probably say that the best thing is that I’m backup.

In the sport of parenting, I’m the quarterback who had a fine collegiate career but can’t expect much success in the pros because I’m only 5’10. Even so, I still get the Super Bowl ring because my wife is the Tom Brady of child care.

Actually, since I live in Korea, I’m actually the third-stringer, because Korean grandmothers often come to live with the family after the new baby is born, and my mother-in-law’s stature in this game could be compared to that of Peyton Manning’s in his arena.

Sometimes it’s unfulfilling not to get onto the playing field more frequently, but all too often the cries and occasional shrieks coming from his crib bring to mind a 300-pound linebacker with barbed wire tattooed around his bulging bicep. Therefore, I’m usually content to sit on the bench and cheer.

But what happens when the first and second strings are on the disabled list? That’s a question I had to answer on a recent Friday night after my mother came to visit. My mother-in-law took this as an opportunity to get out of the house and visit other family for a time, leaving her grandson’s care in more Caucasian, but still capable hands.

For much of that week very little changed; my son’s mother and American grandmother took care of him as I stood on the sidelines drinking Gatorade and studying the playbook. Then, we decided to take my mom out of the house for just a day to see the Korean countryside, just so she could say she’d seen something in this country besides the inside of our apartment and the interior of the baby’s diapers.

We got back around 9:30 p.m., and the still-jetlagged Caucasian Grandmother was on the DL shortly after that. My wife, having not slept much the previous night (I hear that’s common) and been out much of that day, began responding to his cries with decreasing urgency.

Sensing my opportunity to get some playing time, I picked up the ball and ran with it. Well, not run so much as walk back and forth while holding him and whispering “Shhh” and “It’s okay!” while he grabbed and pulled at the hair on my arms and chest. After a few minutes even this was no longer placating him, so I decided to sing him some of the lullabies I knew.

When I realized I didn’t know any, I considered singing all the ballads I knew.

When my ballad knowledge also proved deficient, I chose to sing any song on my iPod shuffle that was not built around power chords.

The serenity that he could attain from this was also short-lived, forcing me to try for the pacifier and the baby chair that rocks back and forth electronically. I honestly don’t know how I was able to make a whole hour pass this way, but somehow I did, constantly readjusting the angle of his electronically rocking seat and helping him to reinsert his pacifier five seconds before he would spit it out again.

One might call this the parenting equivalent of running out the clock.

Finally, after an hour had gone by, it was something of a relief to note that his diaper needed changing. After 60 minutes of fruitless guessing as to what might be contributing to his state of discontent, it was a blessing to see a tangible problem that could be seen, and certainly detected using other senses.

Unfortunately, his crib and extra diapers are located in the bedroom, making it impossible to address my wailing son’s needs without taking him within earshot of his mother. To my surprise, just one hour after her eyelids appeared leaden, she seemed rather refreshed and ready to give him the change of diaper and feeding he needed before falling asleep again.

“Thank you,” she said. “Because of you, I got to sleep for another hour.

“You are a good father.”

So, again, you may ask what the best part of being the father of a newborn son is. To the list of things I’ve already mentioned, I have a couple to add:

First of all, people don’t expect a lot from the third-stringer.

Second of all, the starter on this team is unbelievably resilient.



Here I am with my son and the electronic rocking chair, whatever it's called in actuality.

Labels: humor

June 17
Positions Available: A pair of personal assistants will be needed to perform the tasks of feeding me and watching me sleep. Each of the assistants must be willing to devote a period of time of up to 30 but no less than 10 minutes at a time, anywhere from three to five hours apart, to accomplish the effectuation of my eating.

Skills required: Ability to supply milk via the pectoral region will be required in at least one assistant. Three-to-five years experience is encouraged but not required.

Additional duties: Often between the periods of time in which I consume my nutrients and go into hibernation I will evacuate myself of the food supplied me. As I am not yet accustomed to performing this in private through special plumbing fixtures, it will be your responsibility to see to it that I am cleaned afterwards.

When I am ready to sleep for a few hours, you may resume the fragments of whatever existence you enjoyed before you were hired. However, just in case I wake up suddenly you ought to enjoy them somewhere within earshot.

Personal assistants will be summoned through cries that will vary in volume and/or pitch depending on the severity of the need at hand.

Hours: 18 per day
Payment: You get to take pictures of me, post them on Facebook and get lots of adoring feedback from people who remember you from college.

June 24
Positions Available: A pair of personal assistants will be needed who have all of the same duties as on June 17 and who will give me a bath.

Skills required: Since I don’t have an actual interest in receiving a bath, and am certainly not going to do it myself, this will require an assistant willing to take on the delicate task of using a safe amount of water to wash my hair and skin while I complain loudly and at a high pitch.

Additional duties: Drying me off and dressing me again would also be good.

Hours: 20 per day
Payment: Occasionally I will smile (by accident) and make funny faces for those pictures you’re taking and posting on Facebook. Now your friends you barely remember from high school should be in on the comments and congratulations.

July 1
Positions Available: A pair of personal assistants will be needed who understand that my needs go beyond eating, sleeping and evacuating. Sometimes, long after I’ve finished extracting nutrients through the pectoral area of one of my assistants, I just want to keep nibbling on something. Am seeking someone who knows of an object that I may continue chewing on long after I have had enough milk.

The object in question would preferably be small, round and plastic, with some sort of mouth shield attached.

Additional duties: You should rub my stomach and say “Shhhh” while I’m nibbling on the plastic thing.

Hours: 20 per day (pacifier will do at least some of your work for you)
Payment: If you’ll assist me in stationing myself upright I will belch for you after eating. For whatever reason, personal assistants seem to take great joy in this.

July 6
Positions Available: A pair of personal assistants will be needed to provide their services when I need to eat, sleep, evacuate, bathe and cry even after all those tasks have been accomplished. Sometimes I just want to cry, and it will be your job to take turns trying figure out why. This job’s duties will require great patience and a high tolerance for loud noises and emotional distress.

Additional duties: Keeping your fellow personal assistant from breaking down into tears.

Hours: All of them
Payment: A greater appreciation for the time in which I’m asleep. Plus, by now even the people you friended on Facebook just as a favor to your wife’s aunt are starting leave congratulatory comments on your pictures.

July 13
Positions Available: A pair of personal assistants will be needed to provide me with all of the services requested in previous weeks without feeling like a failure. Yes, there will be moments when you’ve fed me, cleaned me, waited patiently for me to evacuate and then cleaned up after me. On top of all of these essential services you’ve performed, I will insist that you hug me every hour than I am awake.

If you don’t hug me, I will probably complain in a manner that is most inhospitable to your eardrums. Your choice will be to: a) hold me until I stop crying, thus establishing a pattern in which I prove able to manipulate you into giving me what I want for your entire stay in that position, or b) come to accept the fact that sometime I’m just going to cry.

Just because I’m crying doesn’t mean you’ve failed in your duties as an assistant. I know you’ll feel down on yourself if you can’t satisfy me all the time, but hey, what boss is completely contented?

Additional duties: Thinking about meeting my future needs in between the ones I’m already complaining about.

Hours: Refer to previous advertisement
Payment: A philosophical epiphany. After all, if I can’t be satisfied at a time when I have just a few needs and an entire team of people working to ensure that I meet them, is it any wonder why so few people seem fulfilled later in life?

Labels: babies, humor

When his wife is carrying their first child, it’s not a good idea for a man to complain about certain things within earshot of those who are already mothers.

One thing he should never complain about is how tired he feels. Another is how busy he is. Other things he should definitely avoid talking about include minor bodily aches, not to mention how stressed he feels.

Okay, let’s start over: When his wife is carrying their first child, it’s not a good idea for a man to complain – within earshot of those who are already mothers – about anything. It doesn’t matter how petty, legitimate, unique or commonplace his complaint may be, the already-mothers demographic knows a simple truth that he isn’t aware of: The suffering hasn’t even begun.

He doesn’t know anything about being tired because his baby isn’t yet crying at 12, 2, 2:30, 3:45 and 6 in the morning, every morning. He can’t complain about pain because he isn’t the one who carried the baby to term, nor is he the one who had it force itself out of him.

And busyness … ha! He doesn’t know anything about busyness, nor will he until its time to change diapers, prepare and provide baby formula, not to mention bathe a baby multiple times daily while holding down a job.

Now that weeks have passed since my son was born, I can say definitively that, yes, all these mothers who have or have had newborns to care for were right about what they told me before: I didn’t know what it was like to feed, clean or bathe a baby on top of maintaining my regular work schedule.

In fact, I’m still behind the curve in that regard, and may never fully figure it out, because my mother-in-law does most of it for us.

Living in Korea, I can now see that this is one of the most different (in a good way!) variations between their style of parenting and what we do in America. After the birth of the baby, the grandmother typically comes to stay with the new parents and assist them with the things they don’t yet know (I’ve never stopped to wonder how my mother-in-law could know these things if her mother had to help her a generation ago; if I tried to figure it out I’d probably blow my own mind).

This saves a lot of confusion for the neophyte parents, adds an extra pair of hands around the house, and let’s new fathers who remember what it was like to have valid grievances dismissed and mocked respond to their dismissers/mockers with the following well-reasoned, well-thought out reply:

“Ha ha!”

That’s not to say there aren’t downsides to this arrangement, and most of them stem from cultural differences between my mother-in-law and I. A woman who has devoted the majority of her waking hours during the past few decades to cleaning things tends to view untidiness as a personal affront, and will attack the task at hand in the most vocal manner possible.

She also has a clear mandate to prepare at least two meals a day, and demands prompt attendance at the dinner table. These meals also tend to lack from a perspective of variety, in that practically all of them involved rice, green vegetables and some kind of hot pepper paste, with fish or beef serving as variables.

I’m unable to secure much in the way of variation as I get very little unimpeded access into my own kitchen. Of course, as I have 30 years experience being a guy I wouldn’t really know what to do in there anyway.

Child care also represents an area of compromise, as my exposure to my son is often limited to watching him and holding him after his needs have been met. Whenever he makes a vocal noise of a certain frequency, my mother-in-law springs into action, enquiring as to whether he needs feeding, a diaper change or a bath.

I usually stare back at her blankly, not because I don’t understand the Korean words she’s using, but because I can’t explain the problem in any language. All I usually know is that the baby was fine, now he isn’t, and my standard technique of patting him on the stomach, saying “It’s okay, it’s okay!” isn’t getting him anywhere closer to “okay” status again.

Soon, she’s upon him, and just by a glance at his expression and a quick listen to his pitch, she somehow knows the issue at hand and it’s solution. It’s a relief to know that somebody has some idea of how to address the problem, but also leaves this parent with the feeling of being a spectator in his own child’s rearing.

But these are, I suppose, the tradeoffs. She does the laundry and cooks, and I have to give up the right to cleaning my own clothes and the option of attempting to prepare my own meals. She offers her expertise in dealing with babies, and I lose out on the right to change diapers.





Ha ha!

Labels: humor, my mother-in-law

Son,
No matter how hard you try, I’ll always be 30 years older than you. And, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in that time it’s that those older than you will assume they know more than you do, no matter what unique situation you find yourself in, or what newfangled technology is being used.

I could be the one to break the cycle and be less smug, but hey, after 30 years I think I’ve earned a turn at being smug with someone.

It’s good to have ideals that will push you to greater heights in all areas of life. Unfortunately, reality will probably be at odds with your ideals, constantly tempting you to aim lower. Therefore, you’ll find that the trick to maximizing your achievements is to delay your realization of reality as long as possible.

Here are a few examples:

* Work
The Ideal – You want to perform a task that puts your talents to work performing tasks that make your community a better place and you a better person.
Reality – Your boss has connections to make and budgets to meet, and will have you spend much of your time performing tasks helping him/her meet those goals, rather than the ones we listed above. You may think that your employer is consistently selling out your collective integrity by making you work on things of no – what do you call it? Oh, right – value, just to help his/her reputation, and you’re probably right.

You’re probably wrong, though, in thinking that you can escape this by going to a bigger, better place to work. The bosses at those places just have bigger connections to make and more complicated budgets to meet. You’re also probably wrong in thinking that, if you were the boss, you’d do any differently when faced with those budgets.

The Benefits of Denial – The longer you can go without learning this the more valuable you’ll be to your employer/co-workers, because you’ll actually try your best at every task ahead of you.

Stay in Denial Until … your mid-30s. Make it that long and you’ll be doing great. Better than me, anyway.

* Education
The Ideal – You want to study something that will enrich your mind and prepare you for your life’s work.
Reality – In order to get the degree you want from the university you want, you’ll probably have to go thousands of dollars in debt and lose a lot of sleep. At the end of those four … okay, four and a half years, you’ll look back and realize that only two, maybe three of the classes you took were really – how do you say? – valuable.

The Benefits of Denial – The longer you can go without learning this the higher your grades will probably be. Low GPAs on résumés are hard to explain, unless you’re a member of Skull & Bones.

Stay in Denial Until …at least your last semester. If you must go to graduate school you may need to find another means of avoiding acceptance of reality. Blunt force trauma has been known to work.

* Love
The Ideal – You will almost certainly get to know more wealthy, athletic or charismatic males who have no trouble attracting female attention. They may act as though they don’t know how fortunate they are, which will motivate you to believe you’d never fail to show appreciation if you were in that position.

Reality – One day you will be married, and if your wife is nice, you will eventually come to expect the good things she does for you. This will probably cause you to fail to respond in kind at times. No matter how nice your wife is, eventually you will be criticized for failing to reciprocate.

The Benefits of Denial – Those aware of this reality too early in life tend to desire neither marriage nor wives who are “nice.” This, in turn, lowers their chances of leaving offspring they care enough to write letters of advice to.

Stay in Denial Until … Denial? Denial of what?

*Regrets
The Ideal – Maybe you’ll get to experience all that life has to offer: seeing the world, meeting important people, and leaving behind a body of work that will be highly regarded by future generations in your field. Maybe you’ll be a modern-day Ernest Hemingway.

The Reality – For all his experiences, the pre-modern-day Hemingway apparently didn’t encounter whatever it was that prevents a person from doing their own lobotomy with a shotgun.

The Benefits of Denial – The longer you can go without realizing that everyone has regrets later in life, the more empowered you’ll feel to address the ones you have now. You may actually succeed with some of them.

Stay in Denial Until … your mid-60s. Make it that long and you’ll be doing great. Better than Hemingway, anyway.

Labels: humor

Labels: humor, photos

Labels: humor, Life Updates, photos