Thursday, July 23, 2009

The Boys Love to Dance

Ok, ignoring how long it's been since the last post and the failed attempt to start something new at Wordpress (maybe I'll move someday, but not yet.) Let's get started with a real post!!

Right now my school is in it's summer camp season, which means I have a one class for 4 hours but as a rare treat I can do whatever I want in class. Two of my passions being music and movies I decided to make my camp on those and focus on Western, and more specifically because I know it, American pop culture.

Today I decided to compare American pop music to Korean Pop music. For those who are unaware of it the boy and girl bands live on and strong in Korea. Something that I thought I left so far behind in my early teenage years when *NSYNC and Spice Girls were popular. However, the thing about KPop is that it gets under your skin, plus there is nothing like seeing your students break out into the full dance of a song by mentioning two lines or seeing an entire club of Koreans go into this dance when it comes on. Think I'm wrong? Tell me you aren't entertained by the thought of people breaking out into this.

So, how does one compare pop music to 4th, 5th, and 6th graders who barely understand English...show them *NSYNC videos of course! Let them know that Korea is not the only place that had boy bands and I wanted to see if any of them would try to do the dance. Well a few of them did, more specifically the boys did. I found this very interesting. While I'm trying not to get horrible high school flashbacks by listening to Bye Bye Bye the young boys are standing there, studying the movements of Justin Timberlake and the other boys whose names I can't remember and trying to pull them off. Meanwhile the girls just sat there and watched.

Maybe this is because I'm thinking of my brother who wouldn't try to dance if his life depended on it but in American culture at least, wouldn't it be the girls trying to dance and the boys refusing? Perhaps it was because it was a boy band and the girls didn't want to dance to a "boy's song," but they did not move! Eventually one of the boys gave up and decided to do one of his Tae-Kwon do forms, but made sure to do it to the beat of the song, which I really appreciated and wished I had my camera for.

But now I'm definitely scouring youtube to see if I can find anymore good girl or boy band music vids from back in the day to show my students. Who knows, perhaps I'll be able to get them to learn an English dance!

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Where has my English gone?

Wow...so I just made a post about my new blog and there I am, checking it out when I notice things...
"bite the bucket"
"After I finished the movie I had was this idea..."

WTF?! Where has my English gone?!

I used to be able to write better than this! I know I wasn't the best writer before but seriously! The only thing I can think of is while I'm teaching these kids basic English my own English skills are fading. Spending my day hearing "Teacher finishi!" and other similliar phrases has clearly put my brain into this mode where I cannot help but to stay in all the time...so I now ask for your forgiveness as I continue to screw up my home language...and maybe I should find an editor before I post anything...

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

A Dumb Podcast Idea?

A few weeks (months now?) ago chaos happened on Twitter. Kumar over at The Kumar Expirience took up the challenge to watch Star Trek: The Original Series and many of us followed suit by saying we would watch something that we had been avoiding. I chose the Exorcist, because I'm not a fan of horror, thrillers yes, horrors no. But really I could have chosen from a huge list of films that people consider classics. Films that I honestly have very little desire to watch.

There are many reasons for that. One big one is that my Mom is a huge film buff and would often quote and reference films that I have never seen and when I was little my parents would watch a lot of the classics like Gone with the Wind or The Godfather when I was about 7 and I remember either being bored out of my mind and annoyed that they were taking up the TV for what felt like days and just not being interested in any of them. Then there is the fact that I've grown up in a culture where a lot of those classics, and even recent things are parodied rather quickly and more often than not the parodies make me not want to watch the film even more. And finally there is that when I was a teenager if it wasn't an anime I didn't really want to watch it and as a result I missed out on a lot of movies that kids growing up in the 90s would see. I've gone back and watched a few, but my list of films that shock people I haven't seen is still long and impressive.

So, this is my idea: I want you to challenge me to watch some of these movies that I've avoided. Tell me about some film that I probably missed (I'll try to work on a list to help people out) give me a reason why I should watch it and then I want to see if I can turn this into a podcast. The goal is to have many many guests as they challenge me to something and then we go back and review whatever it is I saw. And you know what? I'm not going to limit this to movies; tv, books, music, and since I've mostly stopped watching anime you can challenge me to that too (I've never seen Evangelion people, still plenty to challenge me to there), whatever you want to challenge me to, go ahead.

Now, this may turn into an epic fail idea. I have no idea how to record or edit a podcast, especially to record phone conversations that would be required for this. I don't have a mixer and am a little reluctant to get one knowing that I'm going to be travelling a lot...if there is a good travel one that'd be great? This was mostly an idea that I had for something to do during my free time that I feel like I'm wasting. I want to do something productive and this is the best idea I've had so far.

So let me know what you think. If you want to help out in anyway, be on or have any tips. I could definitely use it. Or if this is a bad idea...like I said I can see this ending in Epic Fail, but might give it a try...

or maybe a better idea would be to just make this into a blog since I know I will be traveling more, back to home and then to somewhere else after that?

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

April Fool's

Well, it's that time of year. If you are living in the Western world then I'm sure you know and are expiriencing in someway shape or form April Fool's Day. The day where all the pranks come out and people try to trick one another in the most specectaluar way that they can.

This often leads to property destruction or people getting injured...and really that's not all that funny. I hate seeing people get hurt, I've never found that amusing and too often people get caught up in the idea of pulling off the perfect prank that it no longer becomes funny. Or if it's the internet, it just means that I'm going to get Rick Roll'd a lot...we need to find a new joke internet...this one gets old quick today.

Now, I have no examples on bad April Fool's jokes...yet the day has just begun for the rest of the world, but I'm keeping my out for one ot report on...but I will tell you about the best April Fool's joke I've heard about.

I'm sure many have heard about it but if you haven't last year Think Geek, known for their wide variety of geeky apparel, especially interactive shirts claimed they had a shirt that would be the soundtrack to your life. It would play music and you could control it, so it would be like living in your very own movie with your very own soundtrack. Or you could annoy the shit out of people and by playing your music through your shirt with very little they could do about it. Either way, awesome.

And people bought it! So many people believed that it was a real shirt! Which truly makes a great April Fool's joke, that people truly believe in your joke and no one gets hurt. In fact, so many people believed that this shirt was real that Think Geek has gone ahead and made it! It's there in the store right now for you to buy for only $39.99...that's ridiculous for a shirt like this. I'm pretty sure I have a shirt or two that cost close to if not more than that...and they don't have special features...I just wear them to death. Go and check this out here.

I hope there is a prank that awesome this year. Cause that was seriously awesome. And I may need to get that shirt soon...

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Just a Small Drink After School

So, talk about one of the most surreal moments of my life so far...the other foreign teachers and I leave school slightly early to go activate phones for those who didn't have one before or those whose broke mysteriously (mine won't even work as a clock anymore...and I can only call the last person who called me, unless I have your number in front of me...ungh). And on the way is a nice little Mom'nPop type convinience store that we usually pop into...only this time when we stopped it was quite different.

I suddenly felt a hand on my arm and I turn to look and see one of the older gentelmen that usually hangs out there handing me three hard-boiled eggs, one for me and my two fellow teachers...I first thought they were these pickled eggs here that I hate, but then I saw the pot and portable stove top over the register...well he was so nice and earnest we couldn't say no and now no way I wasn't buying anything even though I wasn't hungry...so we go to the register to pay and start eating our eggs when another man comes over and blops down a bottle of soju...

For those who don't know soju is Korean vodka that you can buy in any convinience store in Korea for about 1,000 won (that translates to less than a dollar...it's very popular here). It generally tastes very weak, especially once you mix it with anything and often will be the destruction of your night.

Fortionatly, this time they were kind enough to ask us if we wanted soju...well they asked me, they assumed my co-teachers would drink because they were male...and being the only female in the store I couldn't let a couple of Korean or Yorkshire men out drink me (although they probably could...) So we had a drink...no mix even though I hate my soju straight...and suddenly I'm being handed another egg...and another cup of soju...this time I was smart enough to bring my juice out and mix it myself. They didn't even really ask...only for politness sake, because after one of us said no thanks to the egg the owner started peeling it for him.

We were finally able to leave after the second one, but still, we were right by the school. We see students in there all the time and I avoid buying alcohol there so they don't think we are drinking right after school and this time school hadn't even fully let out yet!!! This has offically marked one of the top ten surreal moments in Korea, let alone my life!

Man I love this country.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Crab Ball

Thanks for my talking down guys...I need to stop reading multiple articles in a row about this while I at work, my imagination tends to run away from me...

ANYWAY!!!

Time for another silly game to waste countless hours on and that I had forgotten about until I starting cleaning out my bookmarks last night.

Crab Ball.



A very fun game that I used to waste hours on over at Spikey Thing. It's the easiest and the hardest game in the world. What you do is play volleyball against another crab using only your arrow keys. Easiest thing in the world to figure out. If the computer, or as I like to think, the evil crab in this epic battle, misses the ball you get a point and after 5 points you get the chance of earning an extra ball. However, if you miss the ball not only do you loose one of your lives, but you loose a point as well! This makes getting a high score really difficult and why I call it the easiest and the hardest game in the world.

My personal best score is around 20, but others on the list have stuff in the 230's....I can't imagine how much time they must spend playing this game.

But it's great fun and probably the best of the things I've tried out over at Spikey Thing and if you need a mindless game to clear your head, this is definitely one of the tops of my list!

Thursday, March 19, 2009

I Need a Talking Down

So in enjoying my internet working at school again this week, I decide to write a new blog post about the silliness of Crab Volleyball when what does one of my friends tell me about?

This article and this article describing how North Korea no longer wants food aide from the U.S. and that they are detaining one, maybe two reporters for reasons that are unclear in that article... This seems to be in preperation for the big satellite launch that you can read more about here.

I've always been a bit skeptical about anything happening with North Korea, I mean after so long you would've thought something would've happened by now. But more and more it is looking like buttons are getting pushed too far. South Korea, Japan, and US are not going to like North Korea sending up their missiles and there is a very good chance at least one of those nations will do whatever it takes to stop those missiles. And like in the last BBC article I linked said if they do, the North Korean government has stated it will start a war over this...something I didn't fully believe until now.

The act of closing off their borders once more to even businesses, refusing aide from the US (I don't know about other sources of aide...but still) and now holding reporters...this makes me think that they are serious about their threats and are prepping for a war to start...talk about my worse fear at this moment!

Maybe because I'm living here and I tend to run to panic mode fairly quickly is the reason why I'm so scared at this moment, but I am...this just feel so much more serious on my end and I am scared. Please someone tell me I have nothing to worry about...

Friday, March 13, 2009

Nevermind, this is fucking Scary

Ok, I know I joked about the electric shock that happened earlier this week, but this is getting ridiculous.

Every time I get back from the bathroom I'm getting a shock...and it's not from the water after I wash my hands, I make sure I dry them really well afterwards. Not only that it went through my headphones and into my ear this time!!!

This is starting to scare me...The IT people can't come to school soon enough.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

I am a Mutant.

I apparently have developed mutant powers.

Do I have super speed? Can I leap tall buildings in a single bound? No, I can do none of that now.

Apparently, what I do have is powers over electricity.

Let me tell you about my origin story.

It is a short tale, one that has not fully finished yet.

I sat down at my computer at work after finishing up classes early that day and ready to enjoy the new Facebook Uno game (actually quite nice if you like Uno, can't play with friends yet, just strangers, but looking good) and I even get the urge to try and clean up some of the apps I have on there. When suddenly it happens!

A shock, a very large electric shock goes through me from my mouse and causes my computer to restart. I kid you not, it took all I could not to yell because there were official looking people talking around my desk checking out the English center. Then well, I want to continue my life and what happens...there is no internet. Apparently that short circutted something because there was no sign of any internet anywhere on my computer, like it's never been connected.

So it's not big, but it has resulted in me not having internet at school until at least next week. Which really sucks. I hate it.

I actually get a lot of shocks at my work computer, every couple of days I get at least 2-3, but still to get a shock that big?

Maybe someday I'll get my own comic book then. :-D

Monday, March 9, 2009

Brains...

My brain is dead...as usual after teaching a day of classes. It's not like it's hard material, just after I have classes non-stop, especially 6th grade classes my brain goes a little ...well do you remember the season 3 finale of Buffy when she was all like "fire...tree..pretty?" Yeah, that's me right now.

I don't even have a podcast right now that I think I could listen to at the moment to make this better...and I really wanted to listen to Starbase 66 and Skeptics Guide to the Galaxy right now...

If anyone has a cure for brain-deadness to keep me from turning into a complete zombie for the rest of the day, I'd be greatly appreciative.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

It's ALIVE!!!

So...I did something on Friday night...something I never honestly thought I'd do my entire life...

We had a goodbye dinner last Friday for our Principal and the other 6 teachers who are leaving at the end of this week. Instead of the normal gal bi dinner we went for seafood. Now seafood restaurants are a sight to behold in Korea. The outside has these tanks full of fish and other creatures that they serve inside so there really is no question on the freshness of your fish, it's right there still alive until you order it. Except one thing...

Octopus...that's right, there was actual live octopus served at this meal. I couldn't believe it. In fact, for a few seconds I thought it was dead...until I noticed it move...Now if you've seen Oldboy you'll know that there is a scene where the main character eats a live octopus...and for proof that even Koreans don't normally eat this weird food, here's a clip I found of the behind the scenes for that part...


It wasn't whole like the one here...this was just the tentacles chopped off and moving all around the plate and trying to even leave it. Like here.

Although unlike them, I couldn't chew fast enough!

And well, because I was trying to be polite, it was apparently expensive and on the Principal's bill so I decided to try it...And I liked it...it was a bit sticky at times and let me tell you I couldn't chew fast enough, but over all the taste wasn't too bad...

Of course that was that night and after more than enough soju so now the more I think about it...the more disgusted I am by it. OMG, I actually ate that!!! Talk about something that will never happen again.

I'm not really all that upset that I did eat it. I think you should try most things at least once (although if you offer me dog I may have to cause some harm) and I was drunk enough to enjoy it at the time. Will I ever go after this supposedly rare delicacy again? Absolutely not.

But it was fun for the time, and hell, now I have another story to shock and amaze people with!

Friday, February 20, 2009

I Wanna Be a Muppet!

Who doesn't love the Muppets?

If not...then I must sit you down and have you watch countless episodes of Seasame Street, Fraggle Rock (which I will need to see much more of) and every Muppet movie I can get my hands on outside of the space one until you see the error of your ways.

I always wanted to be on Sesame Street, hang out with Big Bird or go chill over with the Muppets and sing a song with Ralph while Gonzo crashed through the ceiling. Not to mention Miss. Piggy just rocks

I'm totally stealing this from AfterEllen.com, but it's fun and I want to share it. But there is a quiz, perhaps the quiz of the week where you can discover what muppet you are.

Which you should also be able to take on the side of my blog right now, if it worked right...

And now, to end the suspense, who did your fair proveyer of silliness at this blog get?


You are Gonzo the Great.
You love everyone, and still you get shot out of a cannon on a regular basis. Oh, and you are completely insane and have a strange fascination for chickens.
ALSO KNOWN AS:
The Great Gonzo, Gonzo the Great, Just Plain Weird
SPECIES:
Whatever
HOBBIES:
Tapdancing blindfolded on tapioca while balancing a piano on his nose, backwards, five times fast.
FAVORITE MOVIE:
"From Here to Eternity...with no brakes."
FAVORITE TV SHOW:
"Touched By An Anvil"
QUOTE:
"No parachute? Wow! This is so cool!"

You have no idea how happy this makes me. The King of Crazy himself! Gonzo is hysterical and never fails to make me laugh. And after the Muppet Christmas Carol where Gonzo played Charles Dickens himself and was quite probably my favorite part in the movie, few characters could make me happier.

Now, just to go find my Rizzo.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Facebook Games

If you haven't heard about Facebook by now you clearly are living under a rock somewhere and I'm wondering how you've gotten this far on the internet without at least hearing about it.

Now there are many haters out there for Facebook, but I'm a fan. I love being able to keep in contact with people from back home, especially since I'm living so far away right now. It also has a ton of games on there that keep me from dying of boredom after I finish teaching class but am not allowed to leave the school. They are pretty much ridiculous and a very silly waste of time, but at least once a day I check them.

Attack! is probably one of my favorite games on Facebook. It is essentially their version of Risk and I'll usually spend some time everyday taking over the world against friends and sometimes strangers. There is a small strategy to the game, but mostly it comes down to luck as soon as you've figured it out. Nothing challenging, but really, who doesn't like to conquer the world every now and then?
Texas Hold'em is another one of my favorites on here. Pretending I'm rich, and can actually afford to place $400 bets on things and taking everyone elses money makes me go into full on Mr. Burns mode, "Excellent..." Especially when I find out that I have more money than someone else since it displays your ranking among your friends at the bottom of the screen. It's fun for about 15 minutes, then I find my brain going numb and having to do something, anything else, but then that's all these games.

Scrabble...I actually kinda hate scrabble a little bit...but I believe that's mostly due to me losing 95% of the time...but it's probably the only thing I do on Facebook everyday that gives me the slightest bit of education by helping me to learn what are words. But I still don't know what prads are, even if it is a word...This has got to be the nerdiest thing I've seen on Facebook and I'm actually too scared to fully play it. Supposedly it's DnD...just on Facebook, and it sounds almost exactly like it too. You pick your character, you let the dice roll from an automatic generator and just watch to make sure you don't run out of items or health before you finish your generic quest. That's it, little boring sounding and I'm not exactly sure if it will give me my roleplaying fix that I miss ever since moving to another country. (BTW, if anyone knows of any good online ones for cheap/free NO WOW, I'd be interested).

But what makes these game so compelling for me to play? Why do I go back there every single week day whether or not I'm going to win or lose and waste some precious time? Is it because I'm that bored? Well partially, altough I'm sure I could find something, anything more productive to do with my time. But I think what keeps me coming back to it is the competition of it. I play with friends, I get to beat them and it's really the closest thing we have to playing a game with one another while at work. And no, I still won't play WoW...

Those games where I play by myself and am competing alone...I usually give up about a week or two later, these games where I get to conquer friends, see how much more money I have than everyone else or maybe pray that someday I will beat someone at Scrabble. There really is no other explanation for it; boredom and a combination of a desire to beat all my friends on there keeps me coming back to these games time and time again.

Friday, February 13, 2009

It's All in a Name

Well, I want to thank everyone who responded to my poll and told me to just keep posting, but after some careful thought I've decided to do a giant make-over and pretty much start over.

My reasoning for this is that I created this blog when I was very unhappy with the world. I hated my job, had no life, and was trying to find an outlet that had no real direction. Then my life started to change. I changed jobs, locations, got new friends, and my outlook on life has changed a lot since I moved and I wanted my blog to reflect that, to become a new outlet for me. So let me go through the changes here and explain some of them.

1. Name: It's probably going to be the first thing you ntoice since it also had me change the we address to the site. Handles are probably one of the silliest things in the internet. A name people create for themselves to take thesemselves out into the internet. Some find it silly and just use their real name, which is kinda what I was doing before. However, I've grown up with the internet and many different handles, I figure I should finally embrace it and stick with the one that's lasted me the longest.

Sissillie has been a nickname of mine since middle-school, my best friend at the time just started calling me it and it stuck for so long that when I was going through one of my handle changing times I decided to go with that and everything has become that since, forcing me to create this ridiculous spelling). I recently thought of changing my handle from Sissillie to Sicily because my real name is Sydney and a. I thought it would be symarty with teh two names that are places and b. I wasn't sure if I wanted to get away from Sissillie. After getting the amazing responces on Twitter on my name I decided that I not only wanted to keep it, but embrace what it means to people. Silliness. Therefore becoming the inspiration for this blog.

I'm sorry about the adress change and if it causes problems for anyone, but I thought I should change the address to reflect the new name as well.

2. Color: Who doesn't like a a little color in their life? I wanted to give my representation of my life a little color too.

3. Missing posts: Yes, I admit. I deleted a few posts. Mostly the ones of me being a winy twit about not posting in my blog. I'm feeling kinda done with that and didn't like how the majority of my posts lately seemed to be about that.

Sorry about that...I really doubt you wanted to see those again so I just got rid of it.

4. Links to other places: In case I scare you off, these are some of the best places and people I know of on the web. I think they are all smarter than me so go check them out.

5. Random Useless Fact: Because what's sillier than a random fact about something you never needed to know?

Well that about sums up all the changes here. I hope you like them and stick with me on this. And not everything will be silly, but I will try to find the silliness in everything. :-)

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Should we start over?

So once again after trying to make a rpomise to write in my blog I've forgotten and not written in it again for a few weeks...so this is leading me to wonder why do I even have this blog if I'm not going to write anything in it?

Perhaps it's my lack of direction that I want to take this. Not sure what I want to write about or what to do here nothing is happening. Perhaps it's time to figure something out and maybe start completely over. Go with a theme maybe...or maybe not...who knows...

ARRGH!! Opinions would be nice...

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Smoothies!!

Right, I said I would be writing everyday, so let's get this day started!!

Today, I'm going to give you a smoothie recipe of mine.  You should know I adore smoothies.  They solve that sweet-tooth problem of mine while not being fatty and calorie ridden ice-cream or other processed shit that I sometimes still indulge in.  And, if done right, they can be a meal on there own.

This is a fruit smoothie that is my breakfast today and serves one person if they want a large, or two people looking for a small/medium.

Put in equal parts strawberries and cantadew.

** For those who don't know cantadew is a new melon that is a cross between a cantelope and a honeydew.  The outside looks like a cantelope, but the inside is green and but still tastes like the yummy orange cantelope and is what I'm finding here in lovely South Korea.  If you want to subsitute real cantalope please do, I do not attest to honey dew though...

About a teaspoon of Vanilla Protein powder -

**I'm not a buff person, but I love this stuff because it gives me that little bit of extra flavor and some protein in my smoothie that supposedly keeps you full longer...does that work, I'm not a doctor, but if you put in only a little bit you get a nice vanilla flavor to it.  Warning though, too much and your smoothie will taste like shit, I suggest you experiment.

Then fill the rest of the container with berry juice. 

**Multiple juices are found all over Korea with a lot more ease at times than in the States at least.  For instance, I don't remember seeing a nice berry juice (rasberry is the focus on this one) without spending a lot more for a lot less than I would want.  Here, their cheap so you may see me expirementing with lots of different juices.

Blend

If you find your too be too thick, which I often do because I freeze my fruit to last longer, you can do 1 or two things.  Leave your smoothie to sit out for about 5 minutes if you and let the frozen stuff melt just that little bit and mix again.  It works, I do this one often.  Or you can just add a little bit of water right then if you are impatient. 

Final step:  Enjoy.

If you like it let me know, if you want more recipes let me know.  I often expirement with cooking and other things like this.  Although I warn you, I don't always measure very well when I do this stuff...eyebaling FTW...
 
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