Saturday, October 12, 2013

lazy Saturday, and further agendas

Saturday is almost always a day of late starts for me. It's a day for la grasse matinée, desultory futzing about, and being a slob. Today's lax agenda, already in progress: laundry, working on an art project for my buddy Charles, printing out midterm-exam rubrics (most of my classes have oral interviews next week), and perhaps taking an evening walk around CUD's campus to get to know the place better.

Sunday, assuming I wake up early enough, I'll attempt the temple again, and will try two hours of meditation there. And because I'm idly curious about Home Plus, I may give that place a visit on Sunday as well: there's a Home Plus right by the Lotte building where I saw "Rush" the other day. I can just take the 809 down to Gyeongsan City and get off at Lotte.

Tuesday is another big day: I get paid (will also be sending about 80% of my pay to my US bank account to propitiate the god of hypertrophic debt for another month), and I plan to attend a mini-conference on campus that day. I'll also be receiving my automatic download of the pre-ordered Kindle version of Stephen R. Donaldson's epic finale to The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, his novel The Last Dark. I've been waiting over a year to read that book, and I'm very likely going to lose sleep while devouring it.

Later in the week, I might train up to Seoul and see Alfonso Cuarón's well-reviewed "Gravity" with Charles and Tom. Of course, I need to see whether such a meet-up is even possible; both gents are busy people—busier than I am. But "Gravity" is an Event Movie, if ever there was one; it'd be a shame to watch it alone. Besides, the theater will need warm bodies: when I saw "Rush," which is huge in the US, there were only eight other people in the Lotte Cinema theater with me. If that mentality holds—i.e., Koreans not jumping at big American films—the theater for "Gravity" might be empty as well. Hence the need for warm bodies. (Then again, a Seoul theater might be naturally more crowded than a Gyeongsan City one.)

Otherwise, the coming week is going to be devoted to midterm exams, except for my Wednesday classes, who are a week behind everyone else. I've reviewed the material on the midterm; I hope my students all do well on it. So we'll keep our fingers and tentacles crossed for them, ja?

So that's the present and the near future. How smoothly will it all unroll?


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3 comments:

Bratfink said...

Ah, it's nice to have plans. It's almost like making a list.

I like lists.

Charles said...

Depends on when you're planning on coming up. Thursday I'm going to be busy all day: classes in the morning and then a conference in the afternoon/evening. I should be able to swing Friday afternoon/evening, though, as long as I can get all my student feedback done in the morning. Have you talked to Tom about this yet?

Kevin Kim said...

C,

I had originally planned to come up for KMA-related reasons, but was told not to try until December/January.

I did mention the prospect of a trip north to Tom (specifically to watch "Gravity" with you guys), but the discussion never evolved into anything specific.

What I could do is train north to Seoul and arrive Friday afternoon... I could spend Friday evening doing the movie thing (or dinner plus movie), stay overnight in a yeogwan, then train back to Hayang Saturday morning.

Now if only I can get Tom to say "yes"...