The Final Countdown

I bet there's a certain guitar riff bouncing around your head right now... Am I right? Sorry. Well, not really. All right I'll try to replace it with something else...



I have no idea whether or not that link will work. I spent a couple of hours yesterday uploading Dead End Friends videos onto facebook. Some worked, others didn't. I'm still none the wiser as to how it operates but I think I put enough on to cover us for the next few months at least. We had a fun gig at Ting Tings last Saturday for the Rubber Soul event, which raised an impressive W9,000,000 or thereabouts as far as I understand it. The gig itself was a bit strange as Jimbo was kinda tucked away in the corner so he and Jeff couldn't hear each other very well. As the guitar amp was right behind me, that's pretty much ALL I could hear. When you're watching a band, you have no idea how different it sounds onstage to how it sounds out on the floor, I promise you. Still, we're tight enough these days that I don't think it hurt us too much. Although the new band is going well, there's still just that undefinable something missing. We have a bit of a break now before we play with 'Sticky Fingers' at Stompers on New Year's Eve (not best pleased about the venue, but it's good to be playing). January will include gigs in Gangnam, Gwangju and Bucheon, so we should have a chance to work on the performance element of things and, perhaps, rehearse less.

Today I've been conducting final interviews with my General English girls. I've already had three hours of it on Monday (that was fun after the FC Seoul win on Sunday and ensuing celebrations) and an hour this morning. In general, the students have been pretty good but, as their levels are SO similar, it's tricky trying to identify the more able candidates in such a short time. My hope is that I'm able to be fair to everyone and not face any angry doubters when I come back in late-December. It seems that at Korean Universities, there's much more scope for questioning grades than what I was used to. I get the feeling that, at Magee, you basically took the score you were given and that was that. Here, I definitely get the impression that the grades we give are open to negotiation. In saying that, my instinct would be to take time to give the right grade, then stick with it. No doubt that may be tested over the coming days...

Having effectively wasted Monday and Tuesday, I now have more to do before going home on Saturday than the time to do it all. Final grades, one-to-one lessons, a meeting with my boss to get things arranged for January, sort out the chaos going on all over my desk, pack for Ireland, pick up a few presents from Korea, get this unruly mop on my head sheared (I believe sheared is the appropriate verb at this length) and try to spend some time with Ji before I leave. It has been quite the year, and I'm looking forward to some down time before whatever comes in 2011.