Cliff N. Hansen

The new Slainte magazine is online at http://www.mistercliff.com/?page_id=545 enjoy!

I haven’t posted anything for a while since I took my website offline during the job search. James has a big rubber glove on his head on his Facebook profile and that was noticed by a potential employer and I figured rather than having to defend anything I had online, I’d just take my website down for a bit.

Things are going pretty well these days though I’m not 100% sure what’s happening on the job quest. I’ve got some solid options though. Yeungjin College has offered me a job teaching freshman English which is really rad. That’s a school I’ve been wanting to teach at for a while and that’s exciting to have that opportunity.

I am, however, also looking at a potential position with Peace Corps response that would bring me to Liberia for 6 months to help make libraries in that war-torn country a sustainable part of their education system. It’s a tough choice since there are so many pros to both and few cons. Right now, I guess it’s a race. Yeungjin wants me to sign a contract tomorrow, if I’ve not heard back from Peace Corps by then, there you go, I work for Yeungjin.

North Korea’s about to test another long-range missile….

Or, for those of you who don’t speak Kriolu that translates to “damnit!” I was too late in booking my tickets to Indonesia and so the price went up. I doubt I’ll be able to go. All work and no play makes Cliff a dull boy and he’s been looking forward to this trip for so long. The more I’ve been looking through my travel guide the more I’ve been drooling about the place and starting to understand why Professor Houseman has been so obsessed with that neck of the woods. I guess I’ll either use my vacation days to peruse Korea or go back to Japan. I enjoyed Japan when I was last there, but with the exception of Cape Verde and Ireland, I’ve always planned to check out new places.

There are still some affordable tickets to the Northern Mariana Islands, but there are no hostels there and all the hotels seem to be geared to US Corporates who go there in groups. Camping isn’t recomended due to a crime rate, and so as cool as it would be to go snorkeling or scuba diving above the Marianas Trench, I’ll probably end up calling this a miss. ChungWoo hinted that I could go visit her in France, which would be cool (not because I have much of any desire to go to France, but I do expect that I’ll miss her and it would be cool to hang out with her there and have her show me around), but I have only 6 days and the airport would eat up at least a day travel if not more, and that would be a lot of money for such a short trip.

As far as the job search goes, right now I’m applying for jobs at a couple different universities and for an editing position at a local academy. If that doesn’t work, I might just apply for one at a public school here. I’m interested in staying in Daegu. If I can’t get a job in September, I’ll try for one in December and spend the interum months Jimmy Buffeting it in the Phillipines as a beach bum near Tim. Frankly, if money weren’t such an issue, that sounds almost like a better option!

While I’m generally quite happy at my hagwan, one of my biggest complaints is lack of vacation days. We get random days dotted here and there around the year, but there is no real time available to have a vacation. Well, we have one vacation actually coming up and so I’ve been planning a trip to visit some friends in Indonesia. Wouldn’t you know it, the school posted a notice officially requesting that we do not leave the country because many parents have been calling in afraid that the foreign teachers have the swine flu. Apparently a couple foreigners ended up with the flu in Korea and so people are afraid that we’re the ones that bring it here (of course Koreans can’t travel to other countries and get infected by such diseases….).

I am going stir-crazy and need to travel and as much as I have yet to explore hardly any of Korea, I’m in need of something different. I’ve really been looking forward to this Indonesia trip and so now I have to decide what to do.

North Korea just pulled out of the 1953 truce that ceased the war between our countries. It’s probably just rhetoric, but disturbing.

I told ChungWoo that since we’re only friends now and that there’s only about a centimeter left in my deoterant stick I would no longer be wearing deoterant around her as I had to ration if for times when I met other women–I’ve long ago stopped wearing it to work. She laughed and told me she heard of a place that has deoterant. She took me there and there were a few sticks! I’m going back this weekend and buying them all!

This morning North Korea just test-exploded a nuclear bomb they claimed was about the same yield as the one we destroyed Hiroshima with. The explosion was in North-Eastern North Korea and I can’t believe it would have been anything other than an underground test which means that as long as the bomb was buried deep enough and did not breech the surface we probably in no danger of fallout or radiation. Still, I’ll probably start avoiding local milk products just to be on the safe side (although I’d probably already be exposed to the radiation from their 2006 test if it were going to be a problem). It’s interesting looking at my four-footish world map on my mall and seeing that the test was about an inch away from me there.

“Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.”

So the doctor I’ve been seeing has turned out to be a gynocologist. I suspected this and heard rumors about this, and thought he had a few more pictures of vaginas on the wall than the usual quota. But one of my friends was sick and so I took him to see the doctor, but I forgot to warn him about my suspicions. Yesterday there was the awkward question from Wooster, “why do you go to a woman’s doctor?” So, apparently it’s true that he is a gynocoloist and what’s more, everyone now knows I’ve gone to see him! This rumor will be a laugh to get under control.

As most of you know, I am learning mandolin. I’m still very much crap at it, but significantly less crap that I was when I came to Korea. Here are a handful of videos to show you where I’m at with it right now. Very rough, lots of mistakes, whatever. I apologize for the singing.

“Theme from Gilligan’s Island” by Unknown

“Act Naturally” by the Beatles

“Cold Rain and Snow” by the Grateful Dead

“Looking out my Back Door” by Creedance Clearwater Revival

“Barroom Hero” by the Dropkick Murphys

“Margarittaville” by Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefers

“Knocking on Heaven’s Door” by Bob Dylan

“Death Valley Queen” by Flogging Molly

“The Wanderlust” by Flogging Molly

“Cocaine Blues” by Johnny Cash

“Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash

“Before we Kiss Goodbye” by Cliff Hansen

“Tangled up in Blue” by Bob Dylan

“The Weight” by The Grateful Dead

“A Boy Named Sue” by Johnny Cash

“The House of the Rising Sun” by Unknown