The Grand Narrative

Well not quite, but a well-overdue start towards one! The technical problems I’ve been having with the blog, which I’m wise enough not to bore you with any further, have been very annoying but fortunately came at a time when I would have been busy anyway with some new blogging work(?) I’ve started.

As I said in the introduction to this post of mine, I recently added a few comments to this post on the Marmot’s Hole about the identity issues people like him and I have who have spent most of our adult and/or professional lives in Korea, and naturally long-term readers of my blog would not have been surprised that I quickly brought up the issues of working in the ESL industry in Korea, or rather the seeming curse placed upon me that prevents me breaking out of it. Most of the advice there from people who have managed to do so themselves I had already worked out for myself long ago, but it was still good to be reminded because it’s made me ask myself what I have actually been doing towards achieving my goals recently. And, I have to confess, the answer is “Not a hell of a lot,” at least since I started this blog 5 months ago.

I’ve already had my wake-up call about my Korean abilities, and I’m glad I had this one too sooner rather than later. It’s a bit ironic (and just a tad annoying) to have worked out all your issues, set some definite goals, and found a new passion and sense of carpe diem over putting your plans into action…when you’re just about to spend a long vacation out of the country! Oh well, one can’t time these things.

One thing I have managed to do before I go, and will do so once while I’m on vacation too, is become a contributor to the blog ZR5 Asian News. To be specific, I’ll be using my Korean skills there to provide information about Korean actors and singers that are not well-known outside of Korea, and so for which there’s limited information about them in English. Unfortunately as I type this (on Monday evening Korean time) my first post there is 99% ready but some technical issues over videos have prevented me from publishing it: wordpress.org is very different from wordpress.com, and now that I’ve had a detailed look at it, I’m a bit scared about ever making the jump for this blog myself. Blog owner Andy and I should have worked things out by tomorrow, but I couldn’t wait until then to give the news. Sorry. I’ll give a link to the post here once it’s up.

In the meantime, I’m actually very chuffed with myself. If you look at ZR5…and if you like my blog, then you’ll probably look for a long time…then you’ll soon discover that according to Technorati, it’s the 6,126th most popular blog in the world. Like I said, I don’t think much of Technorati’s authority system at all (interested fellow bloggers see here for exactly why), but still, there’s probably something to the difference with my blog’s ranking of…*cough*…437,475, so I’m very grateful to Andy for the opportunity to have the chance to have my name on something so many people read (grovel grovel). Seriously though, I am grateful, and committing myself to providing a post there every weekend for a year will not only provide me with some much needed discipline, but as it’s not my own blog, and has a much wider audience, then my posts have to be muchmore focused than the all-too personal, rambling discursions mine always often are, good practice for when I do that for money. And as each post will involve some translating, then the blog will sure as hell go on my resume as soon as that post is up! 

I originally thought I’d be doing translations like this and this there, but as those were not really of articles per se but pictures of women in bikinis with some accompanying writing for decoration, than Andy and I quickly decided that not many people would want to ‘read’ those, so, as you’ll see, the translations I’ll be making will be of actual articles which really do have some information to pass on that they’re worth reading to find out. And having made that decision to discuss Korean actors and models there, I also decided that I really don’t want to duplicate my efforts here, and I’d like to spend more time producing much better quality but less frequent posts on Korean social issues than I have been doing so far. So I won’t be putting any posts like those two in the links just above ever again. But never fear! I’m just going to think before I write, I’m not becoming a priest, and for me personally attractive Korean women wearing revealing clothing will always play a big role in studying Korean and examining social issues such as Korea’s drinking culture. And 95% of my blogging time is still going to be spent on this blog.

On that note, I’ll put this post to bed (11:30 here) and get started on a (hopefully) more interesting one in the morning. While you’re waiting for that, my wild and exciting post™ for ZR5 should be up there after a cup of coffee and a few clicks here and there tomorrow morning.

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