the Friday agenda

Every Friday this semester, I have the day off. That's nice because I have an unbroken series of sixteen three-day weekends. Today, I've got a few things to do:

1. Appointment. A dental appointment, to be precise—but not for me. One of my coworkers, who speaks extremely fluent French but only very rudimentary Korean, has asked for my help in getting him an appointment with a Seoul-based dentist—Dr. Lee, who speaks English and French along with her native Korean. So I'm going to make that call today.

UPDATE: Tried to make the call, but no one's answering.

2. Laundry. Given how sweaty I've been, laundry happens twice or three times per week, and today is Laundry Day. I sometimes wonder whether my tiny little washing machine can take all this punishment; I try to compensate by not overloading the washer. My feeling is that, if I'm good to it, it'll be good to me. That said, the washer has given me a "too heavy" warning signal before, despite the fact that the drum was half-empty. Not knowing what else to do, I opened the washer's door, manually spun the drum around three or four times, then closed the door and restarted the machine. That seemed to work, but I'm afraid that, once the problem appears, it'll appear again with greater frequency, a sign of the washer's mulish recalcitrance and sad decline.

3. Ot suseon. Yes: clothing repair. One of my dress shirts' pockets is starting to peel away from the main shirt, so it needs a bit of reinforcement. I tried handing the shirt off to a laundry/seamstress place yesterday, but the guy managing the establishment said he couldn't repair any clothing. When I said that "clothing repair" was written in big letters on his storefront, he had no answer for me, perhaps because his pride made him unwilling to admit that he didn't know how to sew. This is Korea: never trust signs. They may advertise one thing, but you just never... goddamn... know.

4. Movie. I'm going to take the 809 out to Lotte to see "Gravity." My buddy Charles, who is supposed to be visiting me (with his wife) next week, told me that I need not delay my viewership for his sake. So off I go!

5. Shopping. A Home Plus sits right across the street from the movie theater. I'm now officially out of my Target-brand psyllium fiber (au revoir, solid poops and regularity), so I have to go somewhere that sells what I need. I'm gambling that Home Plus will not disappoint. All the same, finding cheap fiber tablets will be nearly impossible in Hayang and Gyeongsan City, I'm sure; I'll be lucky to find a super-expensive ($30-$40) tub of Metamucil, if Home Plus sells such a thing (or the British equivalent). If I can't find proper psyllium in bulk, I may have to resort to eating a bowl of dry cereal every night—also an expensive solution to the fiber problem, given that a W5000 box of cereal will last only a few bowls.

6. Lessons. Next week, except for my Wednesday class, I'm back to regular teaching. For my intermediates, this means business as usual: the round-robin format, plus an extra worksheet/activity by yours truly. I just need to prep the worksheet, which in this case will be Part 2 of a pronunciation exercise that I had given my students earlier in the semester.

7. Proposal. Our department's director, Dr. Y, has tasked me with writing up a course proposal that she would like to submit to a planning committee for approval. Dr. Y liked an early idea I had presented to her: a pronunciation workshop. If the proposal is accepted by the planning committee, it will become an official course next semester, and I'll likely be the one to teach it. I told Dr. Y that the course, which I designed and taught at Sookmyung, was originally a short clinic that lasted only 6-8 weeks; she felt it could be expanded to a full, 16-week length. So one of my tasks, today, is to draft a comprehensive course syllabus that will be incorporated into the formal proposal. I have until Sunday night to email this to Dr. Y.

That ought to be enough tasks for one day, yes?


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