Korean Klassic: Early Impressions

I maintained a blog (nexenheroes.blogspot.com) on and off during my year in South Korea. This post, from April 2011, details my early impressions of the country.

YAY: No tipping. 

Takes some getting used to. This meal costs...what it costs? That can't be right. 

Pickshers

Pff, reading. So lame. Let's look at some pretty pictures instead.

In addition to never updating this blog, I like to draw cartoons from time to time. Here are some of my favorites (click to expand if necessary).

Stupid People Who Have Robbed Me

In my six months as a bartender I've had two tabs walk out on me. Both parties carried out the operation in curiously short-sighted fashion.

Dry Cool Wit, Pt. 2

One night towards the end of senior year, my roommate threw a party for all the people on his Global Outreach team. At some point, in one of those "no grace skill charm chemistry or common ground required" (NGSCCOCGR) hookups that are possible solely on college campuses, I made out with one of these team members, an Asian girl named Jill (not her real name). She was cute, and the next morning I felt good about it.

OPP (Other People's Puppies)

I looked down at the floor. It was my last day as a dog runner. 

I owned three pairs of running shorts. I ran five days a week. I did laundry, you know. Sometimes. All three pairs were revolting. Two had gotten so bad I'd recently placed them inside a plastic bag as a kind of DON'T WEAR THESE memory cue. The third I'd worn four days in a row. 

I searched around for another option. In the back of one drawer I found a pair of faded cotton pajama pants. They'd been left behind in my room by a girl who spent the night months before. I thought it over. I had only three dogs to run that day, and knew none of the owners would be home. It was my last day. I'll be like the senior who wears funky glasses to graduation. That guy's funny, right? Whatever. I put on the shorts.

The How I Met Your Mother Script

Earlier this year, I wrote a script for an episode of the TV series How I Met Your Mother.

I chose HIMYM for this project specifically because it's not really all that funny. Don't get me wrong, I dig the show (and, during the course of writing the script, watched I think every single episode). It's solid TV. Still -- it ain't Arrested Development. It's a traditional, multi-camera series with a laugh track that is by now louder than most of the dialogue. This was my first time trying anything like this, so I wanted to stick to the basics. HIMYM seemed like a good place to start.

The Tami Taylor Paradox

The music used in TV and film can be split into two groups: Diegetic and non-diegetic. Music is "diegetic" if it originates within the action of the movie or show, and both we as viewers and the characters onscreen can hear it. (So, for instance, "Tiny Dancer" in Almost Famous = diegetic.) Non-diegetic music, on the other hand, originates outside the action onscreen, and is audible only to us as viewers. (So, for instance, the Jaws theme = non-diegetic.)*