Hi Deedley Dee

Hey everyone.....

So I am officially finished my 1-year contract, and about to embark on a crazy month long trip that will cover a good chunk of China, plus Hong Kong, more Korea, Japan for a brief moment, Canada and then back to Korea again for five more months of teaching....

Here's a quick update before I head off into the abyss of questionable access to computers/no energy to write blogs.......

-Bethany has been here a little more than a week and we've been having lots of fun.....she really loves the food! And she bought some sweet shirts....lego batman....how cool does that sound?

- My day to day boss Gabrielle told me yesterday she wa

s probably going to be gone when I came back.....which is really sad......she was great and I don't like my chances of finding someone anyone close to as good as her when I come back...... kind of a downer actually....her replacement is just going to be a secretary type....not a boss.....so that will be different too......

- It's kind of sad how useless my Korean skills will be across the border in China....depressing thought - going back to the feeling of not understanding

anyone or anything at all.

That's all.....

Things a Canadian Boy and a Korean Girl have to fight about.

I've been meaning to write this post for a long time....

I was going to write it one time when we were actually fighting....but this is not my "rant about relationship problems" blog.....so this is more of an amusing cultural difference narrative......

Our first fight....apparently one cultural difference is the way that way that boyfriends/girlfriends act with other members of the opposite sex. Our first fight was she was scandalized because I went to Kyle and Amy's house with Amy after work to wait for Kyle who was getting off work soon, but not yet home. That and apparently I talked about Amy too much....like "this is Amy's favourite restaurant" or whatever. I have plenty of good reasons...generally you talk about common friends right, and they were the only two friends we had in common at the time, plus I worked with the girl everyday, and on top of that, I was avoiding overt anti-korea sentiments, which ruled out sharing most of Kyle's opinions :)

Anyway, next, one time I had some zit going on on my face, and she was like "whaat is that??" And all wanting to see....and that was super weird and awkward. Apparently, if you don't ask in Korea, that means you don't care. Needless to say that is kind of offensive in Canada.

Um, when Kyle and Amy left we said bye to them at the airport just before going on vacation....and I was sad when they left, of course.....but right after they left she was super pissed, like "how can you look so sad when you're with your girlfriend!?!" And I was like "whaaat?" You can imagine how much you'd want your girlfriend to flip out at you for looking sad after your friends fly home. So that was not a happy conversation. Anyways, Korean's keep stuff in a lot more, so apparently boyfriends wouldn't look uber sad in front of their girlfriends. Because that means the girlfriend is lacking or something....anyway... I was sad, but no offense to Kyle and Amy, but a hug, and probably 15 minutes later, I would have been thinking more about the tropical beaches that I was headed to next then about how much my life sucked without my friends.

Um....haha....this one is still not really funny.....we were on vacation and it ruined an entire 24hrs...for seemingly no reason....anyways....Jenny is one year older than me....which doesn't matter two shakes at home...but is somewhere between slightly and a bit unusual here...so anyway, we didn't have any gas in the car, and neither of us had cash either, and we were on vacation so we didn't know where any banks were.....and she always pays with a card anyway, so I said "why don't you just use your card...?" Makes perfect sense right? Right.

Followed by 24hrs of icecold stony silence. Which was a real blast on vacation let me tell you. Apparently here older girls that date younger boys...because they're older, it's like the boys are doing them a favour, so they can expect to be used for their money, and their boyfriends will tell them to use their credit cards. So she was feeling bad. And trying not to because she knew that wasn't true, and that was only a Korea thing...but anyway, that was super laaame.

Um, one time I was under a lot of stress, having just come back from a 5hr trip, trying to sort out passport details....and on my way to work....and I was trying to figure out how to call Canada on my phone, so I asked the operator, and she only gave me the code for Canada, and assumed that I knew the international prefix.....before the code....and I didn't.....so it didn't work....so I said something biting like "seriously, how hard is it tell me how to call Canada, that's her job! Stupid!" or something to that effect.....and she was all upset..."the lady's not stupid....you complain too much!" And that's exactly what tired stressed frustrated Matt needs to hear at that moment....riiight. I thought maybe it was the Korea factor, like she took it personally....but it wasn't....just same thing, Koreans tend to keep stuff in more and not complain that much openly, but I don't think anyone at home would have cared. Maybe....If the operator was your Mom or friend or something.....but otherwise it's just blowing off steam......

Maybe I'll write a part two sometime......but for now that's all I've got.......hopefully and interesting insight into things that a Canadian Boy and a Korean Girl have to fight about.......

Attack of the Camera Dork

I figured since I am now a certified camera dork....having spent much of the last 11months studying cameras, lenses, (not only from Olympus mind you), reading books, scouring the internet, and now being able to tell you which copies of 30yr old lenses you should look for in the bowels of Seoul's never ending camera shops and with the newfound ability to bore even camera enthusiasts with the history of camera companies, I should at least have one post related to my passion for photography....

So here goes....I will keep this as straightforward and unscientific as possible.....I am comparing an old Olympus lens 50mm f/1.8 to a new one. I am looking at them for the purpose of taking picures of people.

The new one 12-60mm f/2.8-4 is a star and lives on my camera....Dpreview calls it "suberb...one of the best zooms available" so the old one is in tough. Then again, the old one has a simpler job, because it doesn't have to zoom.

I bought the old one because ( for reasons which I won't bore you with) it has the potential to be a perfect lens for shooting portraits, with the ability to really blur the background and keep the subject the center of attention. Basically it can remove the ugly cars, trees, people or whatever happens to be in the background.

So...with that in mind. The test was an identical(ish) shot, both at 50mm, with each lens's blurriest possible background....in my house, on a tripod....of a stuffed Vancouver Canucks bear. (for those who care, that's f/4 for the new one, and f/1.8 for the old one)

*To keep up with the new lens, I have to crank up the sharpening and contrast in camera for the old lens because it is noticable soft*.

Without further adieu....the old one followed by the new one:

So, obviously, bloggers max image size sucks...but if you're going to notice anything...look at how much more detail you see in the guitar in the second picture than the first. As well as how much more detail there is in the book or the curtains. Even though there's a only a very small distance between them, the old lens does a nice job rendering the bear and throwing the back ground out of focus.....check out the pictures below for a closer look.....


























These ones (again Old one first, new one second) give you a better idea...if you need some help, look at the guitar next to the bears ear....













The Contestants

1. The "star".... the ZD 12-60mm F/2.8-4 SupersonicWaveDrive, the world's fastest autofocus blah blah blah

2. The humble, admirably performing OM 50mm F/1.8

Crisis averted

So the job thing is sorted. Thought I should clear the air for those of you who aren't facebook stalkers...

They were shocked that we resisted, but they understand that I wouldn't come back if that was the schedule.

They got another foreign teacher from Jenny's school to take the class....(what kind of sucker is he? Or maybe he's getting paid extra I don't know. He's been here seven years, so maybe he has a different arrangement. Still, I can't see anyone in their right mind agreeing to that without significant compensation)

So I have to take his adult class that he was teaching. As it stands I'll be working an extra hour a couple times a week after my usual classes teaching adults...which is fine, because I work less than I am supposed to right now. I mean, nobody wants more hours for the same pay...but whatever.

The first thing they tried to make me do was a clear violation of my contract....in a different city, split shift, overtime.....
But this one is okay because I signed to teach up to 30hrs/wk...and now I will be working 28hrs or something instead of 24....so that is fine......