Thanks!

Well happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends (yes, they exist) and I hope you're having a good holiday. I felt a bit sorry for my American co-workers who I had some dodgy Korean canteen dinner with a few hours ago. Not what they would be doing back home, I'd imagine. I've been enjoying everyone's 'thankful' status updates on facebook today, possibly because I'm in a bit of a sentimental mood these days. No particular reason. No particular reason not to either. My classes are all going really well and we're coming to the end of term so I don't have long to go before I'll be back home catching up with friends and family. I'm also really enjoying the musical side of things these days. Dead End Friends is going well for us. Our gigs have been pretty tight and we really had the crowd on our side last time out at FF. Our next gig is on Saturday night at Woodstock in Itaewon. It's at midnight so, although it's late, we hope to have a good crowd. We'll be belting out two sets including four covers we haven't played live before. If you're in the area, it'd be great to have you join us. To be honest, it isn't just gigging that's going well. We are rehearsing well and still getting to know each other and gel as a band. At the minute it's all good craic and we're getting on well. How long before the inevitable handbags I wonder...?

My dissertation is coming along quite well. I have to submit a draft literature review on Tuesday so I'll have to spend at least a portion of the weekend being sensible... Somehow I'm managing to work at it at least a little every day. For any of you out there contemplating doing an MA, or with a dissertation looming, I highly recommend Succeeding With Your Master's Dissertation by John Biggam. I'm reading it alongside my other research and it's really keeping me focused and making clear what's important in attempting to get as high a mark as I possibly can. It helps that the reading itself is pretty interesting and that my teaching schedule isn't taking up too much time. The problem is that I'm not spending enough time studying Korean so I'm just stuck in a rut on that front. Those of you engaged in the banging-head-against-a-brick-wall process that is learning Korean might find this interview with an American fluent Korean-speaker interesting. It could even be a bit of an inspiration! I'm hoping so..

I'm heading into Suyu now to meet Tom for bit of grub so I better sign off. Just wanted to write something as I have been falling out of the habit recently. Hope you're all well and I'll try to write again soon.

Job Done!

There was tension, trepidation - perhaps even a bit of fear - but our gig at RMT on Saturday night went better than we hoped or expected. Our rehearsal earlier went really well, but I wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing at the time. It definitely left me feeling a bit more confident. There was a good crowd when we got there and the first half went with relatively few hitches - my collapsing mic stand and a bit of a hash of the intro to 'Jailbreak' excepted. We got through 'Babe I'm Gonna Leave You' unscathed and the positive feedback at the interval ensured we were all a lot more relaxed for the big rocky second set. It definitely feels as though we're up and running now. With the luxury of only playing 10 songs or so at FF next week, we're looking forward to rocking out and having a good time in front of a big crowd. If you're in Seoul, come along and lend your support.

Rounding off a top weekend was FC Seoul beating Daejeon 2-1 at Sangam World Cup Stadium. With a win guaranteeing top spot and a place in the play-off final on December 1st and 5th, it should have been a lot easier than it was against the K-League's third-from-bottom club. In reality, the visitors came at us and will probably feel as though they deserved a point. Kim Chi Woo came off the bench to score the winner on 87 minutes, adding to Jung Jo Gook's very early strike. The celebrations were understandably rapturous. Jeju only managed a draw at home against Incheon United, so we have actually wound up three-points clear. An unbelievable season of stunning home form, attacking displays all over the park, a much-improved defence... we were honestly a bit emotional at the final whistle. We have to make sure not to slip up now and take our first league title in 10-years, our first as FC Seoul.

OK, it's late on a Monday so I'm going to wrap this up here. For the Korean learners among you, I found this helpful (and free) site through another blog on Friday night. Let me know if you are aware of any other good sites. I hope your week has started off well.

Back to Life

Nice to see a few people around campus this morning for their graduation. The Uni is a living, breathing organism (a word I embarrassingly misspelled throughout my first-year Science exam...) but it has been quiet all summer long. With the students coming back in a little over a week, things are returning to normal. Personally, I'll go from having vast swathes of free time to being really pretty busy. That's fine.

I just had my Korean language exchange, which was pretty tough today. I think because I've been studying quite a lot I got a bit ahead of myself. In reality, my level is still extremely basic and, as I'm constantly at pains to explain to my own students, learning a language requires a sustained effort over a prolonged period of time. Na Ra (my excellent Korean teacher) is off on holidays for four weeks but I'm still hoping to fit in a couple of lessons. I've decided that I'm going to keep them up even after my MA restarts. There's no point making progress over the summer only to let things drop again, as I have done before.

Anyway, I'm off to Itaewon now to meet Rob for dinner and then run over a few songs with Kevin, Zee and Patricia (whom I barely know) before the show tonight. I'm fairly hopeful there'll be a good number of people there and I think it's going to be a really enjoyable night. I had been feeling really guilty about pulling out of the Chillis gig tomorrow night and letting Cheon down so I text him earlier to cave in. Thankfully, he has found someone else but they're still pretty disappointed. I'm hoping I can meet them again and play a show somewhere else sometime. It might even be a good idea for the two bands (Cheon's band plus Jim, Jeff, Cheon and I) playing shows together until we can get a full set together. Ok I'm just thinking out loud here so I'm going to sign off. Have a great weekend everyone and if you're in Seoul tonight come along to Rocky Mountain Tavern for Kevin's big acoustic night.