Oktoberfest, Tree Swapping, Artillery Shelling and Lamb

One thing that exports more effectively than BMWs or Gaelic Football is a thinly-veiled excuse to drink. When I was living in smalltown Australia, although only some of us had heard of Mercedes or Hurling before, everyone knew what St Patrik's Day was.

The South River Toastmasters decided to hold an Oktoberfest (spelled with a K for authenticity) last month, for two reasons. Firstly, because it was October, and secondly, because who can say no to beer and sausages?

Certainly not us, it seems.

On the left in this photo is SRTM's very own mother, Jenny Vrontakis, and on the right is our 2009 Wedding co-MC of the year, Chris Lee. We're all one big happy family, except for sometimes when an odd member goes a little nuts.

I was jokemaster of the night, tasked with lightening the mood with a little humour. Finding good clean jokes online can be a huge challenge these days. For a start, they're mostly not good or not clean.

But I managed to find two pretty good ones in the end, which were delivered with a bit of added flavour. They're a little long, but here they are, for your humouring:

Joke 1: A man dies and goes to hell. Upon reaching hell, he is greeted by a rather affable and upbeat Satan. Satan says to him "G'day mate. Welcome to Hell. Because I'm a good bloke, I'm going to let you choose which room you want to spend the rest of eternity in." The man thinks it's not such a bad offer and asks "Can I see the rooms first?"

"Sure," replies Satan. The door to the first room opens. Inside the room is a crowd of people, standing in a pit, up to their chests in raw sewage. The stench is unbearable and everyone looks miserable.

"Okay, that's pretty gross. Let me see the second one" says the man. The door to the second room opens. The situation inside is very similar, with people standing in a pit, but this time, everyone has raw sewage right up to their nostrils, and they can barely breathe.

"I see. Well, show me the last one then" requests the man. The door to the third room opens. The people inside are standing in a pit of sewage, but they are all drinking coffee. Furthermore, the raw sewage is only up to their knees.

"Oh, wow. I'll take this one" exclaims the man. Satan motions for him to enter. The man goes in and is about to grab a cup of coffee, when all of a sudden Satan claps his hands in the air and says "Okay everyone. Coffee break's over. Time to get back on your heads!"

Joke 2: Three women die and go to heaven. On the way, they are greeted by St Peter, who tells them "You can enjoy heaven all you like, but if you step on a duck, you shall be punished for all eternity." The three women think it's a strange rule, but arrive in heaven nonetheless. To their astonishment, there are ducks absolutely everywhere. The first woman takes a couple of awkward steps, before losing her balance and stepping on a duck. St Peter (who never misses anything) pops out of thin air and brings forth an extremely ugly man. "Aha!" says St Peter. "For stepping on a duck, you will be forever bound to this ugly man." St Peter handcuffs the distraught woman to the ugly man and they walk off together. The second woman, having seen the punishment, tries hard to avoid the ducks. But within a few minutes, she too has stepped on one of the many ducks. Instantly, St Peter pops out of thin air with another ugly man, even uglier than the first. "Well, it happens to the best of us" remarks St Peter, before handcuffing the two together. The third woman decides to be very careful. She hardly steps anywhere and moves with the utmost care and certainty. St Peter pops out of the air after three days, although the woman had not yet stepped on a duck. "Admirable effort" quips St Peter. "As your reward, you shall be accompanied by this man." St Peter handcuffs the woman to a very dashing and handsome young gentleman. "Wow!" exclaims the woman. "I wonder what on Earth I did to deserve someone as handsome as you!"

The man replies "Well I don't know about you, but I stepped on a duck."

The Toastmasters audience seemed to enjoy them, and the night overall was quite a lot of fun.

Things are moving slowly and steadily at university. We've got a pretty good view from our lab, over a garden area below. Standing and observing the goings on below from a window someplace high, happens to be one of my favourite pastimes.

It's a hobby that I assume I share with such luminaries as Donald Trump and Mr Burns. 

Eeexcellent.

Now what on Earth are these ajosshis up to (you may quite rightly ask)? *Wasn't quite sure how to punctuate that sentence correctly. Anyhow, what those ajosshis just happened to be up to, was an activity we may like to name Tree Swapping.

Tree Swapping, you may quite rightly ask, is the act of digging up trees and replacing them with different ones. Although Korea has a jaw-dropping total of four seasons, it seems that our endemic campus flora can only handle two of them. As a consequence of such a pickle, every six months a bunch of ajosshis with a crane come and dig up our trees, replacing them with different trees that are better suited to the incoming weather.

While the author of Lee's Korea Blog questions the necessity of such a surely expensive undertaking, he cannot help but ponder the aesthetics of the storage facility where all these trees must be kept.

Two days ago, I peered out of my university lab window to see two fighter jets flying northwest over Seoul. North Korea shelled Yeonpyeong island, killing four people and wounding more.

I'm not a North Korea expert, and only ramble on about the insanity of the regime when intoxicated. I think it's quite unlikely that Seoul will ever be under threat, because it's plausible that the North's seemingly erratic behaviour is part of an unsophisticated blackmailing campaign and to refocus internal dissent away from the ludicrous dynastic succession. But any porcine madman and his heir apparent are capable of killing civilians to prove a point, so despite the counter-intuitive restraint exhibited by the South, I think that overall it was the wiser thing to do. However, as an armchair observer with no relation to those who were killed, it is of course, disturbingly convenient to arrive at such a conclusion.

One thing that surprises me is the unbalanced response from the general public here. The nation went absolutely nuts in the middle of the Mad Cow fiasco, where it was claimed on TV that Koreans were more genetically susceptible to getting mad cow disease from US beef. Seoul's biggest protests in 20 years erupted, with police buses set on fire and 80,000 protesters converging on the city centre. Fast food outlets around the nation jumped on the bandwagon, proudly claiming that none of their meat was from the US. All this, despite the fact that no case of mad cow disease in humans has ever been linked to US beef. 

And then there's two (only recently inhabited) islands in the middle of the East Sea / Sea of Japan which have been the centre of a territorial dispute between South Korea and Japan, prompting angry protests, the burning (and eating) of Japanese flags, killing of live pheasants, as well as self-inflicted finger severing and stomach stabbing in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul.

There are some warranted ill-feelings left over from the brutal occupation of Korea, which ended in 1945. However, I don't see a fundamental distinction between whether it's the Japanese oppressing, enslaving and killing thousands of Koreans, or the Kim Jong Il regime doing the same. North Korea eliminates all meaningful dissent by interning political opposition in labour camps, while its population starves. Japanese killing Koreans in the past and Koreans killing Koreans in the present, should both be viewed with equal discontent.

But as a mere mortal whose opinions are limited to a tiny blog drop in the ocean of cyberspace, this author has long since realised that such ranting is to little overall avail. For better or worse, life goes on relatively undisturbed for the majority of Seoulites.

One thing that seems to be gaining traction here is lamb skewers.

They're quite delicious.

Heather and I recently discovered a lamb skewer hideout near our dwellings. There's a few places open around here and a good one in the Gangnam area. Lamb is not such a popular meat in NE Asia, because it apparently has a strange aroma to those who haven't encountered it before.

And here's my lovely wife, singing unintoxicated, and oblivious to the maddening threat in the North. Sometimes it's better to just sing a song than analyse the world's more pertinent issues.

Always look on the bright side of life, eh?

South River Toastmasters - Speech Competition

Every once in a while, the South River Toastmasters hold a club speech competition. These events are similar to normal club nights, except that they have 6-8 contestants, five judges, a larger audience and a greater tendency to induce pant-wetting in the speakers.

I signed up for the competition a couple of weeks before the event, and the wheels of destiny were set in motion. Backing out of a speech competition has no real repercussions, except for the ones that your conscience will inflict upon your ego for doing so.

Here's my speech, entitled "What are you wearing?"

I think it turned out fairly well, although there were some delivery errors that I noticed after watching myself on video (a peculiarly unsettling affair). I need to work more on audience engagement, as well as better transitions and more pauses between sections. In the end though, I was awarded second place which is a pretty good result. It simultaneously gave me a pat on the back as well as room to improve.

Thanks go to Heather for sitting through rehearsals with me on the weekend beforehand. She played an excellent one-person mock audience, complete with canned laughter at the appropriate times. The feedback I received really helped turn the speech from a regular affair into something more presentable.

Toastmasters is more than just about improving your public speaking skills.  It's a great way to work with motivated people while having fun at the same time. If you still haven't visited your local Toastmasters club yet, I think it's high time that you gave it a try.

2010 SRTM Summer Wine Party

After a good month of planning, and due to the excellent aforementioned research, the SRTM summer wine party came off as a roaring success. We attracted exactly 99 guests, from various clubs around Seoul and consumed enough wine to keep the importers in business.

We started with a few announcements from club presidents, including the elusive Joseph Jeong, who is back from Chicago for the summer. Joseph is a Malaysian food enthusiast, and I've been meaning to cook for him for so long that anything I come up with will probably fall short of inflated expectations.

And Korea appears to be one of the rare countries without a single microgram of belachan.

Here are my two favourite nunas, Alice and Judy. Even though they're Korean native speakers, when they're talking to each other at Toastmasters events, they usually stick to English. I often wonder if it's because they're being polite to eavesdroppers like myself, or just because it's confusing to switch between languages too much.

Only the nunas themselves would know...

Later in the evening, we all went up to the rooftop garden for some lively mingling. Wine parties are interesting creatures because at the peak of the night, nearly everyone is at the same level of tipsiness. If you charge $30 per person, only those who drink will attend. But because they're more civilised than a beer or a vodka party, very rarely will anyone go overboard too early.

Getting drunk and causing a scene at a wine party is technically referred to as a party foul, I believe. Such rules are more relaxed at parties featuring other drinks, say for example, Tequila.

Look, it's Chris Lee. Chris is quite popular with the ladies, and not only because he's tall. It's also because he knows how to listen well, and that's exactly what ladies look for in a man.

One day I need to confirm with Chris whether the secret is actually listening to people, or pretending to listen. My mind tends to wander after a while.

Before long it was time for the second round at the nearby Izakaya. You can tell how successful a night is by the percentage of people in attendance at Round 2. By this time we were all in pretty good spirits and having trouble coordinating a group menu together.

Tipsiness is fun, but it also distracts you from questioning the wisdom of dropping a shot of soju into a glass of beer and drinking it all at once.

And there's Yulim Sung, evidently delighted at such an enjoyable night. Yulim is one of our favourite drinking friends, but we only started hanging out with her relatively recently, and we drink less these days. If she had met us back when we were young whipper-snappers, oho... there would have been a lot of pavement collisions.

Here's a mystery man being saved from an impending pavement collision by Chris Lee. Chris's long arms allow him to handle such situations with relative ease.

And here's our very own Robert Cha, taking care of a prominent member of SRTM. On American Forces Network (a TV channel here), they call friends like Robert a 'Battle Buddy'. You need one when you go out drinking, to make sure you don't get into more mischief than you can handle.

In Australia, when we drink too much and can't remember how we magically got home the next day, we attribute it to the mythological Beer Scooter.

When was the last time you rode one?

Korea Toastmasters 3rd National Conference

Toastmasters events are great places to strike up a conversation with friendly strangers. Even if you go by yourself, assuming that you're relatively sane and can string a coherent sentence together, you'll make friends. On the other hand, when I go to science conferences, people seem less friendly on average and more socially awkward. And conversation generally revolves around a narrow topic field. Not to dismiss the scientific community entirely though, they have been known to drink a post-conference beer or three and duly experience 'declining social inhibition as a result of ethanol intoxication'.

But at Toastmasters, the whole focus is on improving communication and interpersonal skills. So if anyone gave you a cold shoulder after you greeted them, it would be they who were in the wrong place.

The 3rd Korea Toastmasters conference and speech competition was held at the Dragon Hill Lodge, on the US army base at Yongsan.

I'd never been here before, and was impressed with the gardening. You know you're getting old when you go to a garden party and get more excited by the garden.

Ka-Hee likes Toastmasters, but doesn't often get to attend due to work commitments. Every time I post a photo of her on this blog, I promptly ask her if she's seen it yet.

The answer is usually no.

One thing we both like are refreshments. I usually wait until she takes the lead.

The conference kicked off in the main building. The MC for the night was the same as last year, a funny man who runs the show with military precision.

"Testing! Testing! 1..2...3! Your attention please! The conference will begin in exactly 2 minutes. Exactly 2 minutes ladies and gentlemen. 2 minutes. Be ready!"

During the event, one of the workshops we attended was on voice projection, run by Jinsuk Lee (a reporter for MBC). Apparently if you practice trying to speak clearly with a chopstick in your mouth, your clarity will improve. Sitting next to my wife in this photo is Ka-Yong, who we just met. She's a student in my department, in the forest ecology lab.

Inspecting the pink camera in this photo is Ju-Hee, an SRTM member who found my blog online. She said she really likes it. Thanks Ju-Hee!

To the right of her is Pil-Soo Oh, the CEO of Lundbeck Korea. I still tutor his employees during the week. He likes to play golf and is a pretty friendly guy.

Around 240 guests showed up for the event, and more wanted to come but tickets were limited. I'm guessing next year they'll have to do it someplace bigger. No one in Korea Toastmasters is paid a penny, everyone is a volunteer and all proceeds go into further club events.

The food was not very good, and there wasn't enough to go around.

But we're a forgiving bunch.

Here's our very own Ron Cahoon who represented SRTM in the speech competition.  Ron is a gifted speaker and has a very powerful presence. The standards of all of the speeches were admirably high.

And this is Keith Ostergaard, an international Toastmasters director who flew here from Beijing for the event. He has three DTM awards, which means he has completed at least 165 prepared speeches, plus various other leadership activities. If you earn the DTM award, you get a wooden plaque and a letter from HQ to your employer, explaining what you have accomplished. A single DTM would take a focused person quite a few years. 

DTM: The Distinguished Toastmaster award.

And here's our table. We're a happy bunch. Next month we plan on going to the beach together.

Want to get involved?

www.srtm.org

South River Toastmasters 10th Anniversary

A doctoral degree really demands your full and undivided attention, if you want to do it properly. Like a newborn child, it penetrates every aspect of your existence, even creeping into your dreams as an uninvited guest. After an extended period of time, it will eventually transform your personality into one probably less sociable and often preoccupied with thoughts other than those relevant for the immediate situation.


In an effort to counteract my slow transformation into a stereotypical proto-professor, I'm making mild efforts to reclaim the last remaining vestiges of my social skills. Luckily, the Toastmasters are here to help me. Recently, the South River Toastmasters celebrated their 10 year anniversary at Amorzio in the Posco building.


Heather has been an avid enthusiast of the Toastmasters experience since her arrival in Seoul. She's been going to both SRTM and the Neowiz clubs, but unfortunately her new job is starting next week so she'll have to cut back. She just landed a vice branch manager position at a private language academy near our house.


We arrived early on the day because James, Alice, Catherine and I were on the planning committee for the event. It takes a lot just to organise an evening at a nice place, but with the right team members, it all falls into place in the end.


The members and guests of SRTM started rocking up and it wasn't long before the bottles of wine were mysteriously opened. SRTM has a long history with members from all over the world. There are some that only come back to gatherings like this, because they're too busy with their work or families.


Because we're all about improving our communication skills, a Toastmasters event is probably the single best place in the world to strike up an interesting conversation with someone.


Here's Heather with some of her new SRTM friends. She's been attending so well that she quickly grew out of her old name of Lee's Wife, and people call her Heather now.

I actually preferred Lee's Wife, myself.


James ran the main part of the agenda for the evening which included messages from past presidents and the club awards. I was the MC and also ran a trivia session called "How well do you know SRTM?"
We gave out bottles of wine as prizes and I think it went fairly well.


These days I quite like public speaking, but it really is something that you need to keep up the practice with. If you speak on a regular basis, it becomes pretty easy. But because I'm busy, I get in about one speech every seven weeks. So I have to deal with a small but annoying amount of adrenaline. If only my primitive subconscious would realise the pointlessness of the fight-or-flight response in such situations. I believe it is the amygdala that is partially responsible.

Unfortunately a non-removable part of the brain.


Overall the night was pretty successful and we're looking forward to the next 10 years of SRTM. Thanks go out to the past presidents and officers who sent back congratulatory messages for the event. Hopefully next year I'll have a little more free time to finish my CC award at the club. Wishful thinking, perhaps.

See you soon!

South River Toastmasters Summer Wine Party

SRTM holds social gatherings every year and our club in particular is known for some of the better ones. That's because we're lucky enough to have lots of people who are good at organising things. Last weekend we had a summer wine party at Casa Mio, which is behind Kyobo Tower in Gangnam.

Like any good summer wine party, it started off with plenty of chatter and catching up with friends. For KRW25,000 there was unlimited wine to drink and some light food. I probably had around 3 bottles in total, because I like wine and I wanted to get my money's worth. These days 25,000 won is a lot of money to me.

More than 8 cafeteria lunches to be exact.

Here are some of the SRTM people after a moderate amount of wine. I love Alice's face (second from the left). She looks like a little bunny rabbit with closed eyes.

On the left is Judy, one of my favourite nuna's (older sisters) here, and in the middle is Chris Lee, who I like a lot. Chris becomes twice as fun when he's tipsy.

Here's James Lim, the president of SRTM, who ironically had a stomach ache on the night of the party after giving a speech on the Wednesday beforehand that was all about a stomach ache he had in China. But, being the Aussie Battler that he is, he dragged himself into the venue that night and gave a short speech to the guests.

On the left is Luke Shim from Neowiz Toastmasters, and on the right is my new friend Anthony who studies in the fungus lab at Seoul National University. He's only here for a few months and is an international student from Uppsala University in Sweden.

The second round was at JJ's in the Hyatt hotel. I had been there before, but it was a long time ago. Quite a trendy outlet although a little crowded.

I ended up going home around 4am that night, only to wake up a couple of hours later and arrive at the lab at 7am. That's because once a year our building shuts down the electricity for maintenance, so we had to pack all the freezers with dry ice. These days I'm tutoring 3 days per week, going to Toastmasters, sampling down at Suwon for the PhD and trying to make sure the honeymoon is planned properly.

I think I'll be able to relax once I step on the plane with my new wife. For now though, I'll take each day at a time and try and make the most of it.

Joseph Jeong Leaves Korea

Right before I left to Busan last Friday, I dropped in on Joseph's farewell party. He's off to do his MBA at the University of Chicago and is one of the sorts of people that you always have on your backyard barbecue invitation list. To fit such a criteria, one needs to be mildly knowledgable about cooking, have a reputation for good behaviour when drunk and have interesting things to say and know when to say them.

He booked a room at the Oakwood Premier Hotel in Gangnam, which is near COEX. Quite a flashy place that I can only imagine cost more than a hundred cafeteria lunches, which is my new unit of value judgement (one cafeteria lunch = $3).

Joseph prepared some of his mother's bulgogi recipe and also brought along some Mongolian vodka from a recent trip to the land of the raging horde. Although once the birthplace of the mighty Genghis Khan, Mongolia is now a land of grassy peacefulness, so I am told.

Like any good party that you throw when you leave somewhere you've been for a while, there was a good mix of some new friends and some old ones. If there are too many of either group, you may have inconsistent friend-making skills.

This is me, heating up the tobacco for the shisha water pipe. There are a lot of different things that you can do with a can of butane.

Here's Joseph, enjoying a pipe while trying to open a window from a seated position. I had to leave early that night to catch the train, but I'm sure they continued to have fun late into the night.

Good luck in Chicago, Joseph!