my predicition: george w bush

i don't know, nor claim to know, anything about US politics or politics in general. my prediction is based on nothing. but i like to be right, so let's see.

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halloween is the bestest

did i ever tell you that halloween is my favourite holiday?
there's nothing you have to do and even if there is, you don't even have to be yourself when you do it...i mean, no family functions, special dinners, gift exchanges...as you get older, it becomes more about drinking, well at least another reason to drink, and less about the candy. but i do still trick or treat whenever i can...

this year, it'll be at the warehouse and of course, i think back to a year ago, my second weekend in this country at bumpin' and how i feel about korea now, after one year. last year i went as neo, from the matrix, i planned before i left vancouver and brought all the necessary "gear" with me.

this year, i'm an ajummah (see how this country has affected me). yes, an ajummah. if you have never lived in korea, it's kind of hard to describe this one. i'll be sporting a turquoise jogging shirt and red cardigan, gold and purple mc hammer pants. i have a pink towel (stolen from a yeogwan) for my head and the essential sun visor. i found an old "winnie the pooh" washing bin behind my school last week, cleaned it out, and went by Hanaro-Mart this morning to get some cabbage, leeks and oranges to fill it with. on the way back home, i passed a Family Mart and decided that a bottle of soju would complete the picture. yeah and i've got the woven white gardening gloves for my hands and i'll sport a pair of men's argyle dress socks (a party favor from glyn) with my korean rubber bathroom slippers in blue.

and then to top it all off, i've been practicing my 90 degree angle walk...i'll let you know how it all works out...

three weeks to go until i leave...
tick...tick....tick...

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AHHHH!!!!!

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Leaving Gangneung

So here I am with 37 days left in Korea. I'm getting emails from Glyn about how his last day was today and how I'm a sucker...the lucky bastard...free at last! I'm at a year and a week at my school, I've been teaching almost 9 hours a day, Monday to Friday, since March and it's taking it's toll. I'm certain that I've lost a large portion of my hearing, who knows if it will come back? I lie in bed at night and hear ringing in my ears....from screaming children who still don't know how to talk at a reasonable volume, everything that comes out of their mouths could be heard across a football field...not even kidding.

Today, we took the Kindergartens on a train ride to Jeongdongjin. The weather wasn't that nice, a bit cloudy and windy. The train ride was nice, along the coast. In Jeongdongjin, we toured a Korean Naval Battleship and a North Korean submarine that was captured about five years ago after running aground on the shore. About half of the 30 or so officers aboard died in the accident, the others escaped into the woods, where several of them committed suicide. Others were captured and some have not been heard from since. It was nice because I didn't really have to teach and I let the Korean teachers do most of the disciplining. I love field trip days!

I also decided to get some "Name Cards" made here in Korea, because it's supposed to be fairly cheap. I found a printing shop that charged 30,000 won for 500 cards. It sounded reasonable and so I went with it. The shop was a mess though, papers piled on printers, a dirty floor, a single flourescent bulb blinking in the dark. I couldn't expect much more from Gangneung. The ajeoshi and ajummah running the place were very friendly and tried their best to understand my requests in English. I had fashioned a sample card at school with felts and card paper. I was mighty proud of it and I'm sure it helped them a lot too. I knew it wouldn't be exaclty what I wanted, they certainly weren't trained graphic designers and my Korean is shit. I kind of just wanted something that I wouldn't be embarrassed to give out, with my web address and contact info for people I meet while travelling.

Well, I went and picked them up today, with four mistakes...glaring, but probably just for me.
1. They wrote my name and email in Times New Roman, I requested Century Gothic
2. They put spaces in my web address "the second layer" instead of "thesecondlayer"
3. They capitalized my email address "Parghi" instead of "parghi"
4. They didn't kern the fonts at all...

Now everything else looked pretty good. Unfortunately, they didn't have Century Gothic exactly, which is my favourite font, but had some Korean version of it called Human Gothic. I don't know why, I'm pretty sure Century Gothic is a Windows True Type Font and should be pretty universal, anywhere in the world. Human Gothic was acceptable, but for some reason the "y" in "the second layer" doesn't sit flush with the bottom of the other letters...that I won't ever be able to explain to them, so I'll deal with it. I also couldn't explain kerning and so I'll deal with that too.

Anyways, I took them back, tried to explain all the changes I want made, and they'll be ready on Saturday!

What is Kerning?

Kerning is the spacing between letters. When you use straight text as a graphic or logo, it's always important to kern it properly. When someone creates a font, they space the letters fairly uniformly, but to make text looked acceptable and balanced, you have to adjust the spacing between certain letters after. Take "A" and "W" for example. Because the angle of the "A" down matches the angle upwards of a "W" or "V," you need to adjust the spacing between those letters closer than you would for say an "A" and an "I." It can really make or break a logo, unfortunately, most lower end graphic programs don't let you adjust kerning in your text. (Adobe Photoshop does though, I miss it!)



Why do I know this? Well, I had a good friend who was really into graphic design, she drilled this kind of stuff into my head...so words like "white space," "kerning," "interrobang" and "interpunct" dance through my head every time I see a sign or logo, read a magazine or brochure.

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Superman's Dead

Christopher Reeves, the Man of Steel himself, died of complications resulting from an infected bedsore last Sunday, October 10, 2004. After a few well publicized comic book series and two big hit singles foreshadowing the event, kind of makes you wonder why we didn't see it coming.

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New Photos

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Guess Who's Back?

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