Korea: Intact Culture

Anne Hilty writes some great articles on life in Korea for Seoul Selection and this week her topic was Korea's "Intact Culture" and what that means for foreigners visiting or living in Korea. It's a very well written and compassionate explanation for what can often be an uneasy relationship between Koreans and foreigners. I was talking at a party this weekend about what living in Korea was like and struggling a bit. It's hard to really convey to people who really know very little about Korea.

A Very Special Celebration of Phil

Phil & the ladies - Pamela, Cindy, Shanna, Phil, Gretchen & Pamela
Originally uploaded by leef_smith.

Thursday was my friend Phil's birthday and a big ol' crew of us got together for dinner at the Last Super Club to celebrate. It was absolutely flippin' AirWolf!

and the baby came also

My niece, Zoe, drew this for me and wrote this about it.

"On the table was a pie and some green apple juice. And inside the tent was the big sister and the brother was outside on the sand. But anyway they wanted to camp at the beach. So they brought their hammock and they brought their tent and the baby came also."

50,000+ words per Dollar!

So was just reading about Amazon's new Concordance feature and had to check out one of my favorite books and see how it rated. What a bargain!

Though these are some pretty good word for your dollar here too.

Leef Dog

Yeah! I'm going to be changing jobs soon and moving over to Dogster.com to work with my friend John and crew. I'm very excited to be simplifying my life (read not commuting), working with cool people and pushing my tech skills in different directions. I'm really looking forward to it.

empty nest

empty nest
Originally uploaded by leef_smith.

The pigeon chick I've been watching for the last few weeks has disappeared. It was getting pretty big and full feathered, so I'm guessing it was just time to leave the nest, but haven't noticed it flapping around. So who know...

Pollan Attack!

Went and heard Michael Pollan speak at the City Arts & Lectures last night. What an amazing passionate and humorous speaker! He spoke primarily about his new book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma in which he goes explores four different modes by which food is produced in this country, industrial factory farming, industrial organic, "grass" farming or pasture based agriculture, and hunting and gathering food, and then has four different meals from the food each of these systems produces. The first part of the lecture was pretty depressing with lots on the marriage between capitalism and corn (particularly for animal feed), and the only consolation I had was my participation in the worst parts of factory farming is pretty minimal just by virtue of being a vegetarian. Though even with that, it was a good wake-up call to my own complicity in my food choices. Michael Pollan a much more forceful speaker then I expected, and far more radically anti-capitalist. He mentioned that Omnivore’s Dilemma was recently referred to as the Das Kapital of food.

Can't wait to read the book. Maybe we can choose it for our next book club book. In closing he suggested two sites www.eatwell.com and www.eatwild.com for further information and steps.

Rejected by El Dorado County DA

I just called the El Dorado DA's office and my case has been rejected. Whew! I knew it was going to be, but still a relief. Now I can put that whole DUI incident behind me. But I do wonder if I should pursue some action to try to help prevent the same thing happening to others like me?