Based in Debased Busan . . .

Busan Montage

(Image from Wikipedia)

My family and I reached Busan yesterday afternoon after celebrating the Lunar New Year in Daegu with one of Sun-Ae's brothers and his family, as most regular readers are already aware.

We're currently staying in a hotel with a shamefully slow internet connection, so slow that an operation that ought to take two or three seconds takes five minutes or longer despite Korean pride in its position as the world's most internet-integrated nation.

Also, the keyboard is too low, banging against my knees, and happens to be fastened rigidly in place, forcing me to sit with a fixed orientation rather than turning the keyboard toward where I want to sit. And the lighting's poor, barely illuminating the keyboard. Damn, I hate this keyboard!

Clearly, this debased hotel room is constructed to test my moral resolve, but I guess I fail that test because I'll probably be keeping any blog posts that I happen to write brief and to the point.

Or is that a moral virtue?

Vacation in Daegu . . . and Beyond!

Daegu City

(Image from Wikipedia)

We left Seoul yesterday afternoon for Daegu, my wife's childhood home in the southern part of the Korean peninsula, to celebrate the onset of the Lunar New Year, and we shan't return till Sunday the 6th of February, after a couple of days in Busan, too. I might be unable to blog some days, and I'll also not have much access to the news at a time when North Africa and the Middle East are boiling over.

To make up for that information vacuum, I'll ensconce myself in the latter 16th and early 17th centuries, reading John Heilbron's biography of Galileo. I've already begun the book and am enjoying it immensely and will eventually be reporting upon it on this blog . . . as soon as I have something worth saying (undoubtedly after I've finished the book and had time to digest it).

I won't have much to say about Milton until I return to Seoul, where I can access my personal library -- and just when the posts were getting interesting, too. I have an ulterior motive for these Milton posts, the need to prepare a paper on "eating Death" in time for this summer's International Milton Symposium in Tokyo at Aoyama Gakuin University:

Milton's 'Awkward' Grecism: "Know" with Nominative Participle

My paper will also be awkward, but such are our graceless efforts in this fallen world. I'll have to apologize for the false advertising since my paper will be rather broader than implied by the title.

I'll also be blogging in the next few weeks on the European Union and European integration, or lack thereof, for I'll be teaching a course on the subject this coming semester in the Division of International Studies at Ewha Womans University, in addition to the usual writing and cultural courses for the English Program Office.

Meanwhile, life goes on . . .