Saturday, September 22, 2007

we're on break

A 9-day break begins today, as we Smoolings have all of next week off. It feels strange to have a long vacation when the semester has barely begun, but the Chuseok holiday will not be denied its rightful place on the lunar calendar, and the university knows that many students won't come to class if class is held on Thursday and Friday next week (the Chuseok holiday is Monday through Wednesday, with the harvest moon itself appearing on Tuesday). Upshot: the whole school week off, bracketed by weekends on either end. Nine days.

[Trivia: I had no idea that Chuseok is also referred to as han-ga-wi; I learned the term just yesterday from a student.]

I'm off to a celebration this evening: my Korean buddy's son is turning one, so his family is throwing a party, which is being held at a hotel. I'm not looking forward to dressing up, but a little sweaty discomfort seems a small price to pay for my friend's family's happiness.

This 9-day break promises to be busy: I have a ton of student journals to pore over and correct, and a whole raft of TV transcripts to create for the rest of the semester. I discovered that transcript-making is a four- to five-hour process, and I'm hoping to do two transcripts per day, starting tomorrow. I've got eight transcripts to make, which means a goodly chunk of vacation will be spent right where I normally am: in the office.

That thought makes me itchy. Namsan beckons.


_

3 comments:

Jelly said...

Hey there Kevin!
Are you still transcribing "Friends" episodes? Did you know they're already transcribed online? http://www.twiztv.com/scripts/friends/
or
http://www.friendstranscripts.tk/
Even if you're transcribing another program you might be able to save yourself a lot of time by googling it.
Happy hiking and partay-ing!

Kevin Kim said...

J,

Gracias. Several people have either commented or emailed to tell me about the "Friends" transcripts; I'm OK with those (they still require extensive proofreading, and they often contain too many mistakes for my taste, necessitating a massive overhaul), but for seven weeks we're going to be doing "Three's Company," and a quick search for transcripts has proven more difficult than anticipated. Do you know of a site that has all the first-season transcripts for 3C?


Kevin

Anonymous said...

You might want to try http://www.script-o-rama.com/snazzy/dircut.html
or switch to "Prison Break." I saw both the Pilot and Allen episodes today at a bookstore in Daejeon. Odd pages in English, even in Korean. It even breaks down obscure English words for the Korean readers who may not know what Jell-O is. Each screenplay book costs 12,000 won.