Korean Testicles

Student: “Teacher…hungry?”
Me: “Yes”
Student: “Lunchee…Bulgogi…Faia Meat”

At first I thought he meant spicy, but most Koreans don’t really get what I say when you call spicy food “hot”. After a few seconds of thinking I realized he meant fire, as in grill. For some reasons Koreans calls bulgogi barbequed meat, but I fail to see why. The meat is boiled with spices and often squid until you won't be able to recognize what it is if it wasn’t for the texture. Aaaaaaanyway…

The name Bulgogi (불고기) is made up of two words Bul (불) translating to “Fire” and Gogi (고기) translating to meat, hence Firemeat. Funny thing is that when you look for Bul in a dictionary, you’ll see that it can also mean scrotum. What is scrotum meat other than testicles? Would cooked testicles also be called Bulgogi in Korea?

Come fly to me

Your guild is getting ever closer to downing Ragnaros, the final boss in the Firelands raid. On Wednesday we started a fresh run and downed 6/7 bosses and spent the whole of Thursday evening’s session dying to Rag.

At least we are getting closer each time and our main issue at the moment is learning how to handle the last phase. This phase is crazy town, let me tell you. As a healer I have to find a way to stay close to my tanks , keep shields on them, try to find a way to heal and run when I get a debuff that starts doing damage if you stand still for too long AND worry about steering rolling meteors in the right direction when they randomly target me. It is madness, and I am not talking about the long sentence! But that is not what I really want to write about today.

Just before you get to Rag, you have to clear some trash. One of the things that happen is that a sort of fire pool spawns under you, and if you don’t move away before it blows, you are thrown in the air. Normally that would be just annoying, but in this particular case we are standing on a bridge. Nine times out of ten you will be thrown off the bridge and in to the lava for an annoyingly slow, red death. My raid awareness is steadily improving and I am now able spot when I am able to use a spell I didn’t really use before.

Leap of faith is one of the funnest (better than most fun) spells in a Priest’s bag-o-tricks. A when a friendly team member is in range, this spell literally pulls them all the way to you. There is a cool sound effect, the target gets angel wings and they do some fast low flying. It doesn’t look that great if you are the target, but from my side it looks SWEET. It is mostly used in Player vs Player where you will run ahead and pull your flag carrier forwards and out of a fight. (It is also good for annoying people when they are trying to be first back after we all died, but that is a whole other strategy guide.)

Last night I was able to use leap of Faith with afore mentioned trash. One of our healers was standing in the fire. It is not always easy to see when you are in it, but I was able to see that I WAS NOT and she WAS. I targeted her and readied myself to pull her if she did not move fast enough. I didn’t really expect her to get blown in the air because she is usually much better than I am with these things, but when she did get thrown, I went a mashing on my keyboard key for that spell.

What a boring story, you say. Yes, I suppose, but not for the two of us, or at the very least, for me, and lest face it, I am the only one who really matters *wink*. She was blown completely out of my view but I managed to literally pull her out of the air. I watched her get thrown up, start speeding away, disappear off my screen and next thing I knew she was whoooshing to my side, alive and well. That is going in to my book of Sweet Moment in Gaming

It was so good I was a little turned on, and yes, sometimes I am THAT geeky.

Yes, that is a negative.

Student: “Teacher, we have class today?”
Me: “No.”
Student: “We have class?”
Me: “We don’t have class today.”
Student: “Oh? We don’t have class today?”
Me: “No.”
Student: “Uh? We HAVE class today?”
Me: “No, we don’t have class today.”
Confused Student: “No class?”
Me: “No class.”
Still a little confused Student: “OK. Bye Bye.”

Only after she left did I realize that this was what I had learned last week. See, in Korean, in a situation like this “Yes” will mean something like, “Yes, I agree with you and what you are saying is true.” It amounts to basically saying the opposite of what you would normally want to say in English. A better answer from me would have been…

Student: “Teacher, we have no class today?”
Me: ”Yes” (That is correct. We have no class today.)

Art Binge

Over the past weekend I was on a bit of an art binge. On Saturday I went to the Seoul Art Center where they have something new every few months. Currently they have an exhibition consisting of work mostly by Korean artists. Many of the artists were present at their allocated spaces and most of the art on display is available for purchase.

The new and improved, one month long Icheon Ceramics Festival is still on and I finally visited the competition display at the re-designed Ceramics Museum (I’m not sure if that is what is it called at the moment.) Along the way I gave my phone and the new instagram app a workout.

Happy.

“Just after high school a girl asks me ‘what do you want in life?’ My answer was big and lengthy including a large home, cars, money. After I finished, I asked the same question. She answered ‘I just want to be happy.’ That answer had changed my life and still does. Nothing really matters if you're not truly happy.”

That is a post from someone on my Facebook friend list. At first it seemed like such a profound thing to say. It seemed like such a simple, noble goal. However, when I thought for a minute longer I started wondering what “I just want to be happy” means in this context.

My conclusion was that it meant nothing, nothing at all. Everyone wants to be happy. Everyone KNOWS they just want to be happy. No one, when asked what they want in life will say “I hope to be miserable someday.” (Mentally disturbed not included.)

When I ask someone what they want in life, my implied question is “What would help you reach happiness?” When I ask you what you want from life, and you answer me with a list of things, be they material or metaphysical, then you are merely telling me what would make you happy. You’re just answering a very basic life question with more detail. Sure, your idea of what would make you happy might be misguided, or not, but that does not change that fact that you are in essence telling me that you want to be happy and that you think these things would help you achieve that goal.

If someone asks you “What do you want in life?” , feel free to list things because. I’m sure that, just like me, you just want to be happy, but unlike me, you at least have an idea of what you think will work.

*** This post, and an answer like that, does make you think about your current path, and if what you choose to focus on will indeed make you happy. Happiness is a feeling, a feeling you can have right now. Getting things might make you happy, but sometimes getting rid of things might do just as well. Find out why you are not happy first and work on correcting that.

This week in apps

I've been looking at what was to be found in the app store and needless to say Google's apps were first on the list searches and keeper. All the rest, with the exception of the Amazon app went the way of the bin.

Today I was listening to This Week in Photography and the photographer being interviewed mentioned Instagram and how popular it was. Based on her recommendation I went in search of it.

Imagine my surprise when I found that it was free, and awesome. It let's you take square photos which is always a nice option for phones and then let's you choose from a selection of preset prosessings, all nice.

What I looked most was it's ability ti instantly share the photos. It would seem that all photos taken with Instagram are immediately uploaded to the Instagram website where people can view it. I haven't tried it yet, but it seem that you can do the same for most of the photo sharing sites such as Facebook and Twitter.