Welcome to Staypuff.net, home of me, David, a twenty thirty-something year old Australian bloke living and working in South Korea. I'm originally from Perth Western Australia, but decided my life needed sea change and moved to Korea, where I have been since the end of 2004. Have a look around the site, and please feel free to comment on any of the posts (constructively please). alternatively you can email me at: dehere(at)iinet.net.au

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 Recipe: Chap chae.
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

Last Sunday night, the girlfriend and I thought we’d try our hands at yet another culinary feat, making Chap chae, or Korean glass noodles with vegetables. Its not a particularly difficult dish to make and you can buy it quite easily at any of the markets or supermarkets fairly easily. The problem is, for me anyway, is that 99% of the time they put pork in it, which I can’t eat, making it almost a luxury item for me when I do find it without pork. There used to be an ajumma in Andoing that used to do it without pork, and I’d buy it quite often from her, but I’m still to find one in Daegu (and I’m positive there are place you can buy it without pork).

The recipe is easy enough to find online, but I’ve placed one below at the end of the photos if you want to try make it yourself.

So here we go, chap chae; Click here for photos:

(more…)

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Written by: David @ 10:45 am
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 Cartoons from Korea: Waiting in line.

andongbus
In Korea, being a miserable old bat does have some benefits.

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Written by: David @ 9:00 am
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 We have a financial crisis.
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

The second half of last year was filled with news of how the world is heading to a huge financial depression and that we’re all going to feel it. That’s not news I like to hear on my picture wireless so, much like everyone else, I braced for shaky times ahead.

Now I’m not an economist. In fact my understanding of economies, money, and trade don’t go past the one-year of economics I did at university, but I have a fair understanding of how things should be in a perfect economy (which of course doesn’t exist). But then again, when the news says the stock market has fallen 9% in one day, you really don’t need even a year of economics to know that isn’t a good thing.

So how will the world fair in 2009 and beyond?

I personally believe in the scenario of Pierre Boulle in that apes will eventually take over the world. I should point out that I don’t actually think it’ll be apes but rather their primate cousin’s the gorilla (and small monkeys for domestic chores) that will be our supreme rulers.

kimchi-gimbapOne slightly less watered-down theory, although equally as interesting, is by Yale professor Paul Kennedy who has compiled a list of countries that will continue to do well and those that will struggle. Germany, China, India, and northern European nations should all fair very well in the latest financial crisis. Well, not well, but I think not as bad as the rest of us. He accounts this for quality developments, huge bank reserves, and infrastructure by European nations and by sheer size (and I’m guessing a relatively cheap labor base) for China and India.

Having around a billion people will do that. There’s always someone who’ll work for a little less merely to get some sort of income.

The biggest losers in the financial crisis will be Russia, Venezuela and Iran, most of Africa and Latin America, and Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. He accounts this for dependency on oil and trade as primary (and in some cases the only form) industries running their economies.

And here I was thinking Kimchi making was the primary industry of Korea.

The biggest loser out of everyone is the US. That’s not surprising seeing as they’re funding two wars and dealing with what can only be called a major fuck up in domestic economic policies. President-elect Obama is going to have one hell of a hole to dig his country-to-be out of.

I’m not sure how Australia will fair, but I’m guess due to its natural resources (thanks Western Australia) we should at very least, stay afloat.

Why am I not surprised to see South Korea mentioned?

Personally speaking, I haven’t seen too many changes here in Korea aside from a currency that is rapidly making better use as paperweights. I haven’t sent any money home in nearly a year and will probably wait till my first contract is up (when I’ll receive my bonus) before doing so. It’ll also be at a time when the won falls below 900 won to the dollar (now its about 930, although it did get to 870 last week).

It’s also seen the average hagwon wage rise from about 2.1 million won to about 2.4 million won in the space of about 6 months. Anyone who signs for less than 2.3 million won (as a first year teacher that is) is an idiot. I made damn sure I was getting more than that with my second contract, although when that starts next month, I’m hoping its still as good as it sounded back in October when I resigned.

I have also lost a couple of students simply become there parents can no longer afford to send their children to an English academy any more. That’s the reason the Korean teachers are telling me which sounds a lot better than saying it was something I did! That said, they’re easily being replaced by new students. In fact this month alone I’m teaching about 110 students.

Now is the time hagwon’s need to be busy. I don’t see too many breaks around the corner and to be entirely honest with you, I’m happy about that. I fear a lot of these smaller hagwon’s will be closing down very shortly (talk to anyone who was here during the IMF crisis in ‘97 and they’ll tell you that most of them closed down very rapidly). I hope it doesn’t happen, but hagwons are more a luxury than a necessity.

As for commodities, well I haven’t seen a huge change in prices, but a few things have gone up. I didn’t really notice a huge change in price last time I went to CostCo, although I don’t buy a lot from there anyway so its a little difficult to compare. Certainly food doesn’t appear to be much more expensive (I’d say its gone up at most 5%). And because I don’t buy oil (directly) that hasn’t cut into our savings. This is one of the few times I’m happy I don’t have a car or oil heating.

While I understand the financial crisis has happened (durrr…) I’m kind of waiting for it to hit me more directly (although not really inviting it to). When it does come, I’ve made sure that both Em and I will be ok (at least for a while, then I’ll be hitting the streets with a card board sign looking for work!).

How have the rest of you faired during the economic crisis? Have you had to make any changes in your life to accommodate for rising prices?

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Written by: David @ 10:41 am
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 Some WordPress problems.
Monday, January 5th, 2009

I’ve had a few errors with my site lately that I’m wondering if anyone can shed some light on;

  • My comments feed appears to be broken. I know what the error is, but I simply don’t know what the solution is. I’m wondering if it has anything to do with my stylesheet? It broke sometime around Christmas and doesn’t appear to be a bad comment killing it.

 

  • Secondly; how do I display tags for each post? I’ve been using the code <p><?php the_tags(); ?></p> within the Wordpress loop, but it doesn’t display anything. Do I need to pass further parameters?

 

  • Thirdly; I’m using the plugin Yet Another Related Posts Plugin, which adds related posts to each post I create. The problem is that the links aren’t displayed on the blogs main page and can only bee seen in the main blog feed (as expected) or if you click on each individual post. How do I get the links to display on the main blog page? I’ve tried it manually, but that doesn’t seem to work either. Perhaps it’s a setting?

So there’s WordPress getting me down, although nothing really major. Any help to these problems would be much appreciated (and to be honest I should spend a bit more time trying to figure it out).

Any other plug-ins that anyone else would recommend? There seem to be some great ones out there.

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Written by: David @ 12:52 pm
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 Rosebud, ‘Yes, Man’ and all the rest of the weekend.

It’s nice to spend a relaxing weekend not doing a great deal. Since my parents left last Sunday I haven’t had that much downtime. The holiday on Thursday definitely gave me a day of laziness but the weekend was well welcomed and accepted.

On Saturday we didn’t get out of bed till around lunchtime. To be honest, both Em and I were exhausted and our bodies simply told us we needed to rest. When we did get up, we took a walk to the university area and popped into Rosebud for a coffee and a piece of walnut bread/cake we had earlier bought from Paris Baguette. We walked home and had a quick meal of bulgogi rice (불고기덮밥) and chili chicken rice (닭갈비덮밥) before preceding to buy some movie tickets to the 11pm show of ‘Yes Man’.

The movie was very funny and I think the Korea audience really appreciated the few moments of Korean jokes. Jim Carey seemed to speak pretty good Korean to me!

On Sunday we did our weekly grocery shopping and then went to E Mart for some late night shopping.

Last night we also took the Christmas tree down. I can’t believe its been only 5 weeks since we put it up, and I have to admit I was rather said to take it down for yet another year.

Actually, since Christmas, the time has really flown buy. I recall looking on my cell phone and seeing it was 60-odd days till my parents arrived, now they have come and gone, and Christmas and New Years has gone too. I’m rather sentimental this year about such milestones, I guess that can happen once you pass the threshold of thirty?

I also start listening to the New Years Eve LIVE! Seoul Podcast. I forgot about it until 11:30 new years eve, and by then the phone was ringing hot, but I’m happy to catch up with it now. I’m already impressed by how well its come out.

So, its back to work. I don’t mind, it gets me back into a nice routine, and I’m looking forward to it.

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Written by: David @ 10:36 am
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