I think it's time to tell a tale here, and get this outta me. Over the years, a lot of people have asked me, (particularly employers, actually,) what a guy with a Bachelor's in Journalism was doing working on cars. A valid question, and one I couldn't easily answer for a long time. And aside from the fact that once I had been to Journalism school, I found the field to be rather underpaid and stifling in terms of style, something, seemingly I could not easily come to terms with, (particularly, in retrospect, having been an undiagnosed, or at least untreated ADD adult for a long time,) there was still another component that drove me off.
Some of you may recall the tale of Budd Sawyer, the State of Pennsylvania treasurer who, in the late 80s, was about to go up the river for embezzling from the state. In response to his conviction, Mr. Sawyer called a major press conference, read a short, rambling statement, and then produced a 357 Magnum from his briefcase, stuck the barrel in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. As a journalism student, it was a crisis moment when I heard about that, and I had a copy of the AP piece with a picture of Mr. Sawyer with the gun in his mouth, tacked on my wall for a long time. I could only keep thinking, "what if it had been ME at that news conference?" could I have gone on? As it is, that picture from the paper is still a crystal-clear image in my head. I wouldn't characterize it as haunting, but it makes you think. And then, every so often, I'll hear stories about journalists who were abducted and killed as spies--the higher you go in a field like that, the greater the risk. What I decided in journalism school was that by the time the Budd Sawyer story happened, I was past the point of no return in terms of my education. It would have cost me more to quit than it would have to go on, but there was still no way in hell I was going into journalism as a professional. Not until I figured out what I really wanted to do with it that wasn't going to get me killed. So, here I am, 20 years later, writing my blog, and teaching a group of kids who really do need to know my language what it's all about.
The other thing that's really come to my awareness is that, in terms of Asian culture, there's Japan, there's Hong Kong, and then there's the rest of Asia, Korea included. The "other countries," beyond Japan and Hong Kong, are still in development, still solving their problems, and essentially coming to grips with themselves. Korea is fast-tracking, but they're definitely not there yet.
I also watched with interest on CNN the story about eight new species of marine life found in an underground lake in a quarry in Israel. Scientists say that this is only the tip of the iceberg, too, in terms of the magnitude of the discovery. Fear not for nature, because man is the mortal.