new job

Okay. If you are curious to see the place that offered me my next job, unscramble the following words and follow the directions below. They are a new school - a month old - and have a pretty nifty website. Peep the interior, yo. Check out the building. Koreans are pretty good at design:

A: ernomd B: hseling C: diostu

A:(as in not rustic; contemporary) + B:(the language this is in) + C:(where artists work)

go to www.ABC.com


And, dig the music. So I should take this shit, right?

The people posing aren't my future coworkers, but are models. They set up the website so they could market aggressively, for both students and employees. The existing testimonials, I was told, come from the previous students of the owner's method, which is pretty innovative.

Perks:

• 4.5 hours of teaching a day, with ample breaks and very little preparation time. 6 hours actually spent in the office, with half an hour between classes
• They fly you home for Christmas for a week
• You get 4-5 weeks of total vacation a year, plus the dozen or so three-day weekends throughout the year.
• Apartment included, featuring a queen-sized bed with Western-style sheets and an actual closet. I didn't actually see the apartment. Once I saw the inside of the school, I took his word that the apartment is as nice as he says it is.
• Apartment is a 10 minute walk from the school, which is right off one of the more major subway stops and fun (though pricey) areas of town
• A guided tour of Korea once a month.
• A trip to Thailand in April. A trip to Hong Kong some other time.
• During the interview, the owner said "your students will want to take you to lunch and dinner often. Will you be able to oblige?"
• There will be 22 foreign coworkers by November. They don't hire exclusively North Americans like most schools here. Not that I have anything against North Americans, but I looooove Aussies.
• They're taking me two weeks early to keep me from being homeless. They're sending me to Japan during the week that I will be homeless. So, I'll be trained for four weeks instead of their usual two.

The biggest "drawback" that I can think of: really nice things make me a bit uncomfortable, if only because I'm not used to really nice things. The morning shift starts at 6:30 - but then you're out of there by 12:30. If you're late once you get a warning. If you're late twice you get sacked. Also not a big deal. I'll buy three alarm clocks and put one in each corner of the apartment, if I have to. This is a new business; there's no guarantee that it will succeed. However, I'm pretty sure it will. It's pretty innovative, targets the upper class, and pampers the employees and the students. After a somewhat "hellish" (only for lack of a better word; things really aren't so bad, I'm just running on empty when I have nine teaching hours a day) last few weeks, I could stand to be pampered a bit. There's no wetnurse on your doorstep every morning, but I aired that grievance with the owner, and he's willing to consider it.

The salary's a little on the low end, but I should still be able to save half the paycheck. Plus there's a fat bonus for finishing the year. And, lifestyle - not money - is my main reason for coming here. There's no reason for me to get greedy about money with the above perks. But then you have the option of teaching an additional class, for a total of 6 hours of teaching. Then, the salary's a little on the high end. Some months I may want to work more hours - like once it gets cold. But, I'm totally starting on the low end so I can start exploring the city.

So I should take this shit, right?

Man Bites Dog

Here's a pic from a few weeks ago. I'm wincing like a sissy bitch, but it actually tasted like pot roast.

Job Interview

So, I had this job interview tonight. I was offered the job on the spot, and am totally taking it. They're going to take me a couple weeks early to keep me from being homeless - and they're giving me a fat grand when I move in. Also, I'll be going to Japan soon to get a new visa. The building is a touch opulent. Koreans totally kick ass at design. In the lobby, they have a cappuccino machine, so I totally slurped on an iced coffee through the interview.

request

If anyone back home wants to get drunk-dialed at weird hours in the afternoon, email me your phone number. There's a really rad bar nearby that has free international calling.

Job front.

I'll be homeless soon. My current employer will only tell me that my final date is sometime between 12 and 20 October. I don't really want to be there any longer than I have to, but in exchange for a visa release document, I'm also agreeing not to be paid until my last day on the job. So, the sooner I leave the sooner I'll have some dough. However, I will be sans casa as soon as I leave the job, and won't have another until someone else gives me a job. I have an interview at one of the most famous elementary schools in Seoul, but the job wouldn't start until February. I can't go without a house or job for that long unless I live as an illegal for a few months and teach English lessons on the side while masquerading as a full-time tourist. The other option is holing up in Thailand or someplace like that where I can live on $50 a week until the job opens up. Or, I can settle and get a job teaching conversational English to businessmen - and I should be able to find one of those jobs whenever I want.

Unfortunately, contracts here only exist in year-long increments. So, do I settle for something that's still really cool and cushy (roughly 4.5 hours of teaching conversation classes [no prep], with 4 weeks vacation) or do I wait until February and take a job at a school where Korean celebrities send their kids (slightly less teaching time with 3 months vacation)? The latter option is in a hippie school that doesn't believe in walls.

At any rate, I have an interview tomorrow (Friday) night at 9, at this swank-looking conversation place. I seems a little plush, so if offered I'll probably take it. They take their employees to Hong Kong and Thailand every year as a bonus, and there are all kinds of other ways in which they pamper their staff.

Poo-man

Yesterday was a review day and a catch-up day at school. Since I'm pretty much busting my ass to stay on schedule, I ended up playing about 3 or 4 total hours of hangman. My most advanced class wanted to play a version that translates roughly to "poo-man." One of the things that intrigues me about Korean kids is that they all draw poop the same way. In 4 weeks of teaching, I've encountered the same identical depiction of feces (at least 15 times). Anyway, this is what poo-man looks like. There's a man who descends the staircase into a vile pile of poo. Korean kid-drawn poo always looks like a digested pyramid. Invariably, poo in Korea exists in stacks of three. I'm not sure if the lines coming out are flies or stink marks.

I went ahead and depicted my hair how my students did before I got sheered. They all drew my Jew-fro the same way, too.

I still can't find my way around for shit. All the landmarks and neighborhoods look the same. It's like being stuck in a cheaply-animated cartoon.

I made my first original grammatical sentence in Korean yesterday. I was walking around a market with a ginger friend. To pay for a small purchase, she accidentally pulled out some yen instead of won: "Oh, I'm sorry. We are Japanese." The shopkeeper laughed, which I take to mean that I was understood. Or maybe she laughed because I was only almost understood. At any rate, I can successfully make a sentence in the following pattern: subject, object, verb. The problem, though, is that I only know about 5 verbs right now.

The main verbs come at the end of sentences, which makes communication akin to chess right now. Also, main verbs end in a stem "-yo," which indicates politeness. This "-yo" can only be dropped when you're talking to a very close friend, supposedly only in private. So, once I have some communicative competence - still months away - I'll end most of my sentences in "yo," which is something I already do in English most of the time. I love when my idiosyncrasies are validated in Asian culture.

Some men interpret nine memos

My last few posts have been a touch frantic and hasty. A few people have sent emails asking if I'm coming home. Hell no I'm not coming home. I'm too stubborn to leave Seoul, even. I'm legally in the right here. I've been teaching eleven classes with no breaks. Most days, even going to the bathroom is kind of a big deal. This is saying nothing about being able to plan for classes. If in fact I want to be a professional teacher, which is what I'm saying right now, I especially want to be doing a decent job in the classroom. Instead, I'm exhausted after five kindergarten hours, and I'm grumpier in my afternoon classes than I'm comfortable with.

Also, the lack of breaks and heaps of classes violate my contract, so I tried to negotiate for a break. Then, I was threatened with deportation and accused of "complaining too much." So, I'll be staying in this somewhat uncomfortable situation until 20 October. Luckily, a week of that is vacation - Korean Thanksgiving - so I have some time to relax, see new things, and look for a new job. I'm also bargaining for visa release papers, which I'll receive next week. Actually, I'll refuse to come to work unless I receive those papers I'm promised.

To be honest, the whole situation sucks. I'm only hanging around this long because on principle I can't leave the kindergarten kids without a teacher. I had a really good week teaching kindergarten. It took a couple weeks to figure out how six year olds act, but I've picked up a lot of tricks to make it work. Namely, stickers. Give stickers as bribes and take them away if you have to - taking a sticker away will probably make a kid cry, apparently. Anyway, I feel bad stranding the kids. A lot of them brought me gifts last week - lots of drawings, tea, and a copy of Freakonomics - and they are excited as hell in the mornings when they first see me. Luckily, little kids of goldfish memories, but I'll still be bummed to leave them.

I'll be very, very appreciative of a good employer when I find one. I will only, however, take a job at a public school or at a university. The owner, the one who threatened me with deportation, will only grunt at me now. It's so much better this way.

I spent yesterday morning in the hospital. I was told to get tested for pneumonia, just in case. I don't have it, which is good. An American doctor - the hospital is somehow affiliated with Johns Hopkins - told me that I've got some super germ that no longer has a cell wall. This slime is usually carried by kids, and it developed after decades of abuse of antibiotics in Korea - or something like that. Then I explaining my high blood pressure by telling him about my work environment. He laughed - it's so typical an experience for a first job in Korea. The best jobs are obtained once you're already here, but I didn't quite have the balls to get on a plane here with no job. Anyway, I should be healthy in time for Korean Thanksgiving, which is in a week.

Body hair in the classroom

Yesterday, I was teaching different names of fruits to one of my kindergarten classes - I have two, that I oscillate between from 10-3. Anyway, one of the fruits was "kiwi." They pretty much all knew what it was. The vocabulary and grammar of these kids is somewhat surprising. So I asked, "And what is - on the outside - of the fruit? How does it feel?" "Oh, it's like teacher's... arms." These kids crack me up.

But that's the great part about six year olds. They're more than happy to spend 20 minutes talking about their favorite fruit.

Movin' on ... up?

So, here's the deal. Yes, week three and I quit my job. I really enjoy working with kids, but there's too many of them. To borrow from Mitch Hedberg, it's like pancakes. They're all fun and exciting at first, but by the end you're just fucking sick of 'em. But, that's not even true. I actually enjoy the kid aspect, and I'm decent at getting them to do what I want them to do already. Also, 6-year-old problems no longer freak me out. My hours were totally misrepresented on my contract. MWF, for example, I teach eleven classes straight from 10-6:45 with absolutely no breaks. While I get to enjoy a deliciously underspiced kindy lunch every day, it's not a break for me as I'm the only adult in the room then. And, finally, I'm working over 50% more than the minimum on my contract, and almost 30% more than the maximum stated on my contract. And anyway, during these aforesaid "breaks" that only appear on Tuesday and Thursday, and doing stuff like writing overly polite notes to the kindergarten parents - not planning the classes. Education is secondary here, and making students happy is what matters the most.

I tried to work out a compromise with my supervisor to get my hours down to something that I agreed to when I signed my contract. Wait two weeks and they can get me one break on MWF. Wait until December and they can move me from 10-7 to 3-10. She agreed that I was busting my ass, so she seemed willing to work with me. And so I very generously agreed to that compromise.

Tuesday morning, I asked another supervisor to please let me cover one of my classes. I have two breaks in a row on Tuesday afternoon, and if she would only cover the class before my breaks, I would have enough time to go to the hospital. I've been more than a touch ill for the last 10 days maybe. She refused, saying I could wait until Thursday, when I have a 2.5 hour window. Later, I asked the school owner if I could take off half a day Wednesday to go to the hospital. He wait he'd send me to the doctor during my 1.5 hour break on Tuesday. In the waiting room, the owner was totally trying to psyche me out. Eventually, he stopped beating around the bush: "You complain too much. Do you just want to get on a plane and go back to your home country?" "Actually, sir, I imagine that you won't be paying for a ticket back. So, you can't tell me where to go. And, actually, I plan on staying right here in Seoul." Then he said, "Well, if you aren't happy here then maybe you should..." "- yeah." "What are you trying to say?" "I guess that I didn't come this far away to be overworked and disrespected."

Then I spent 20 minutes hooked up to an IV. I'm taking 8 pills three times a day. I don't exactly know what they are, but I feel a lot better. I'd imagine that the yellow one is for compliance, but it ain't workin'. I agreed to my hours on the contract. Anyway, 10 minutes after jumping off the IV drip, the boss fully expected me to teach again. My break was over. At the end of the day, it was cheaper for him to pump me full of meds than it would be for me to miss a couple classes.

So that's that. Hopefully, my recruiter will help me smooth the transition. Hopefully I won't have to stay here any longer than a couple weeks, because things were a touch icy yesterday.

Ding ding ding; we have a winner.

And, the only African Americans that a roomful of Korean 8 and 9 year old prodigies can name are: Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. Very good guesses, though. And, Grant, your Scottie Pippen references always brighten my day.
Oh, and in other news I quit my job yesterday. We'll see how long I get to enjoy the relative comfort of working 15-20 more hours a week than my contract says and enjoying a place to live. A few people have offered me a place to crash for a few days, so that's actually not a huge concern. My contract says I should be teaching a minimum of 36 classes a week (24 teaching hours) with an absolute maximum of 45. Then they did some sneaky shit, like kindergarten classes are 50 minutes long and I don't get paid for supervising lunch everyday (so there's an extra 10 hours I didn't agree to right there). I have a kindergarten teaching assistant that I share with a few other teachers, but she doesn't do a whole lot. She plays with her cellphone much of the time. So, she's totally not my Scottie Pippen. Given the fact that she doesn't even understand the most basic things I say, Tony Kukoc might be more apt: yeah, thanks for the 2 rebounds a day, biatch.
I got my supervisor to agree to the fact that I'm working 56.5 classes a week - counting the 7 breaks I have all week between my MWF teaching schedule of 10 - 6:45, and my TTh schedule of 9:30-6:45. I'm pretty sure I spent 20 minutes punching in numbers on a calculator while sitting next to her on her desk Monday, thining of all the various combinations of numbers that I didn't agree to because they weren't in my contract.
Basically, the terms of my contract - and a conversation with my supervisor before I got here led me to believe that I'd be working roughly 40 hours a week with ample time to plan and thus take some pride in my work. In reality, I'm working over 50 hours a week - especially when you include all the work I'm expected to take home with me on a daily basis - with no breaks from 10-6:45 on Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
I'll need to say more about the conversation I had with the school owner in a physician's waiting, who was being a complete dicknose. I spent my two breaks yesterday hooked up to an IV drip and having an awkward discussion with the Korean bossman. He did back off a bit, however, when he saw my bloodpressure. Something kinda scary over something kinda scary. I've never been a hypertension kinda guy, so I'm now looking for a university job - a job that I'm qualified here for - that runs about 15-20 hours a week of teaching with 8-12 weeks of vacation a year.

Welcome to Koreo!

I got welcomed to the country by a driver holding a sign in the airport: "[Mark Hernandef] Welcome to Korea!" It made me happy. Luckily, one of the two verbs I knew at the time was "please give."

Never odd or even

I got my hair cut yesterday. My boss hinted that I look like a slob, and strongly suggested that I start wearing a tie (then he gave me 5 really swank neckties from his personal collection, so I didn’t have much of a choice) and cut my hair. I didn’t have a bedframe for my first 12 days in this country, and, tacitly, I was holding out on the haircut until bossman hooked me up with an elevated bed. There are these weird little red ant things running amuck here, so a mattress on the floor was actually a bigger deal than it otherwise would be. As of Friday night, I haven’t had to worry about sharing a bed with these antlike things, so off I went to axe one of my few bargaining tools.

The guy cutting my hair spoke pretty good English, so it wasn’t that hard to tell him how I wanted it. There is, however, another problem. I held up my fingers to show him how I wanted my hair, and he said, "OK. Five centimeters?" "Uh, yeah." I have some idea of what that is, but not really. I just thought that maybe he was a bad estimator, because he totally saw how far I spaced my fingers apart. Anyway, I wasn’t really paying attention for the first several snips, and by the time I looked up he was definitely taking off a healthy chunk of hair. I just wanted one inch taken off, but it was really more like 3-4. I haven’t had hair this short since I was a kid. Apparently, I now look "like a hobbit." Ultimately, he ended up giving me a Korean haircut. He was not digging on the "Jew-fro," apparently.

I’m thinking about following the lead of bell hooks and Carolivia Herron and writing a children’s book for Western kids growing up in the East. Tentative title: It’s Easy Being Greasy (these rhyme a little better in the Am South, and, thus, in my head). Seriously, though, in one of my favorite classes I teach all week, I’m either a Math, Social Studies, or Science teacher to a roomful of the most precocious 8-10 year olds I’ve ever met. Last Tuesday’s lesson introduced the term "African American." Out of curiosity and to reinforce the "concept," I asked them how many Af Ams they could name. As a class, they came up with two. Any guesses?

A live in a really posh area. I’m totally in need of a bedside lamp, that way I can induce sleep via reading and try to finally get on some kind of weekday sleep routine. Yesterday, I hopped to the local lamp shop, and kept gesturing retardedly.* I can ask "how much?" - but at the time I couldn’t understand what was being said in response.** And I sure as hell don’t have the linguistic faculties to ask for the cheapest lamp in the store. So I just said "twenty" - the wrong "twenty" - and kept pointing to all the lamps in the store. The shop owner was more than a touch rude in response. She ushered me out of the store, madly flailing her arms. The only Korean epithet I know is "dog baby" (taught to me Friday night by an illegal Canadian - wtf? Everything is truly backwards here), but that hardly seemed appropriate. I was a little pissed, though. This summer, I really boned up on my pleasantries when I was trying to learn the Korean alphabet and phonology, and everything I can say is with the most polite verb stems possible. There really aren’t any English equivalents to my repertoire of pleasantries, but a rough translation of the things I say most often would be "humble dame, if it were possible, I would gladly exchange my maidenhead for your service." Or whatever.

So, yeah. Spent 7 `til 6 hanging out with old friends - people I’ve known for seven days - and their pals. The evening involved a meal of dog, a rooftop house party with the most amazing view of the city, and a few bars - some divy, some not. My buddies helped me ask for a vegetarian meal, which wasn’t on the menu. The specialty restaurant only serves two dishes: dog and chicken. After a bite of what I thought was really delicious tofu, I realized that they put in blocks of spam. After not eating meat for two years and then accidentally eating canned whateverthefuck, there was no valid reason not to try a bite of dog. My eyes welled up a bit, but I was able to conceal that from my new pals. The Korean waiter who spoke a bit of English claims that dogmeat is fabled to give you power (which I took to mean sexual stamina, but who really knows). If you're going to lapse as a vegetarian, then lapse as a vegetarian. The meat industry is the meat industry; at least a blown-up newspaper article in front of the restaurant mentioned the eating dog is a controversial issue; it also claimed that this particular restaurant went out of its way to be as ethical as possible. But, yeah. Sorry, Danielle (and Niko and Max [totally left out one]). :(

It’s so amazing not to wake up hungover. I’m off to do something enriching, which may involve schlepping my happy ass to the nearest taco shop. I need something familiar in my belly.

* I’ll always make the claim that this word is kosher when used as an adverb, and it's pretty apt. There are canaries who can find their way around town better than me.

** Korean has two number systems. One that is "pure Korean" and used for counting, and one that is Sino-Korean and used for everything else. I boned up on the Korean system before I got here, but I didn’t learn Sino-Korean until I went to my first ever Korean language class a few hours later. To make it even more of a mindfuck, hours are in pure Korean (maybe because you count them?) and minutes are in Sino-Korean. So, yeah, I’m wearing a wristwatch for the first time ever.

The job

I teach kindergarten by day, from 10-3. I realize this might seem at odds with my last post, so this is one of the many reasons this blog is anonymous. It is what it is. In the abstract, it seemed like a really good idea. But, I guess I really didn't know a whole lot about kids, until, you know, my first day in this country, when I had to figure out pretty much everything on my own.

It's a frustrating job, but also a rewarding one. I can't exactly articulate what the rewards might be at this moment, but I'm sure they're there. At least the kids are really honest if they think you suck as a human being, and about half of them don't think I suck. I really thought there would be serious communication barriers between me and the kindie kids, but this isn't the case at all. These English-speaking Korean 7 year olds (Western 6 year olds; life truly begins at conception here) sound like 5 year olds back home, except perhaps with not as extensive a vocabulary.

I really enjoy myself from 3-7, when I teach anywhere from first through sixth grades, at a variety of levels of proficiency. Essentially, I teach at a private academy for kids whose strict parents make them attend ancillary English classes between their cello lessons and soccer practice. Today, in a unit on household chores, I introduced the phrase "sweep the floor" to a roomful of Asian 10 year olds. I'm pretty much Mr. Miyagi in whiteface. Also, all 10-12 year olds here draw me the same way, with gigantic poofy hair: "Teacher, your hair is like a bird nest."

I could bitch and moan about the hours - and probably will sometime - but when I made the somewhat impulsive decision to move to Korea I was days away from seeking employment at a temp agency and filing for the next several months. So, it's all relative here, yo. And in Korea I've got relative Jew-fro.

oy, yo

Hello everybody. It's Sunday night, I've been in a Korea for a week, and my hours are still pretty fucked up. Seoul's a pretty fun city. My job is manageable, but a touch overwhelming at first. So, I arrived in this country on Sunday night, and Monday I had to teach 9 classes. I got through it, but holy shit. Jetlag + no training + roomfuls (roomsful?) of screaming kids make DrAwkward* grumpy for a few days. My MWF hours are a touch brutal, but TTh isn't so bad. It was a fairly difficult week, but (in theory) it will never be this rough again. I feel a little unlucky with the hours, but this is a reputable hagwon (in short, a private school) and I have some really cool coworkers. Also, most of the kids are really sweet and genuinely interested in learning. There's just a lot about kids I don't know, and having to figure it out on the fly isn't the greatest. But, should I ever decide to reproduce, teaching kindergarten for a year is probably a good idea. Sometimes the school feels like whitey indoctrination camp, but that's a story for another day.

And, after a pretty spectacular weekend, I'm sure to have that fucking Loverboy song stuck in my head tomorrow morning when I'm dealing with snotrags and papercuts (seriously, I witnessed 6 in the last week; either the paper is more lethal here or paper confuses children; I'm not sure which).

So, here are a few jumbled anecdotes.

Seoul is a 24 hour city. Bars here don't close until 6. So, obviously I took advantage of that as soon as I could. It's a lot easier to strike up a conversation with strangers overseas than it is back home. Single middle aged whities here are pretty fucking creepy. Last night, this one older gentlemen (seriously, he looked like the pervert [in Korean "pervert" is "piante"; Western women seem to learn that one quickly] who claimed to kill JonBenet) chatted my ear off. The first thing he told me is that "the rest of Asia is so much cooler than Korea." "Alright, buddy, then why the fuck are you here?" Then he proceeded to tell me all about his "fucking stupid" 19 year old Korean girlfriend who he completely disrespects. His story kept shifting, so she was either a fabrication or an embellishment. When the sketchy but cool bar closed (the sun had been up for an hour), I went with a Brit and an Irish lesbian to a noraebang (karaoke-y thing). This dude from St. Louis asked to watch me pee. "Dude, I hear it sucks being queer here. If you'd get off on watching me pee, then go ahead. I mean I guess." Then he felt me up, and "dude, I'm straight. This is doing nothing for me" didn't get the message across. Guys are so fucking persistent. Sometimes my fear of appearing homophobic puts me in really awkward situations. But a few hours earlier I'd used a urinal in a coed bathroom. When in a country not founded by Puritans... So far the biggest piante in this country have been Western men. And, that's really my last memory for awhile. I'd only had 4-6 beers all night/morning (the previous night was a bit rough), so I reckon that somebody put something in my drink (I hear that rarely ever happens here, but that's really the most rational explanation for my next memory, esp. since I wasn't drinking that heavily).

So, yadda yadda yadda. And next thing I know I was walking down the street sans shoes (your guess is as good as mine, but you know how 'em Orientals are, with all the taking off of the shoes in situations where I normally wouldn't). Judging by the holes in my socks - about the size of my fist, but then again I have fetus hands - and the pain of my feet, I must have been walking for a couple hours. I don't yet know too many landmarks, and my Korean isn't remotely good yet. I can ask where something is, but I've yet to understand an answer. A much revered Korean folklorist told me never to take taxis here, but I eventually woke up enough to stop heeding that advice. At any rate, it's week one and I'm already the biggest hillbilly in town.

A coworker (and neighbor) showed me the most effective hiccup remedy today. Crouch down like a dog, and sip water upside down.

A couple Brits invited me for dog next weekend. I don't even eat meat, but I'm trying to psych myself up for a bite. This may upset a few of you, but it's really not that much different than chicken to me. Or really any worse than the cheese I had on my pizza today. But, yeah. I'm not yet sure that I'll be able to.

Very generously, a coworker brought me back to the noraebang to help me look for my shoes [and my salmon jacket :( ]. They all looked the same to me (the noraebang), so we went into about six different places. I'm going to kick all your asses at charades when I get back home.

Anyway, I hope to do something other than boozing next weekend, but it's really the fastest way to get to know people who aren't coworkers (not that my coworkers aren't really cool; I'm really lucky in that regard).

*For a variety of reasons, I'm keeping this blog anonymous. So, pals, please don't refer to me by my given name. In short, this will allow me to be more candid than I would otherwise be.

this is a test

Just trying out this new techmology. I'll post something else when I'm not hungover. Thanks again Ohio people for a really good send off. You rule.