I’ve been using WordPress as the backend software to this blog for over three years. There’s a lot of content here. It’s been great – until now. These days, wordpress is acting crotchety. I can’t edit an existing article without going through some hoops. I’m finding that making comments is failing as well. My friend Jacek tried and gets a blank screen. I do too.

I’ve tried to get some technical support through the wordpress forums, but that’s a dead end. WordPress is free and open-source, which means that the good people who make it don’t charge for it. It also means you get what you pay for and if it breaks, well, you get that, too. I used to be a programmer. It’s way more fun to write new programs and features than it is to debug and fix problems, so the multiple attempts I’ve made to get help have gone unanswered.

This isn’t just a simple matter of reinstalling. The content is mixed in with the software files and the articles are within a database.

I’m not sure which way I’ll take it. I may open a new blog and just call this my archived Korean blog. I may try to fix it which means something might break. I may just hobble along until a clean solution appears.

You may have noticed the recent news of N. Korea firing a few shells and the South firing some as well. Just thought I write a sentence or two in case anyone was worried about me being in Korea. No one I know is particularly worried. There’s always some saber rattling going on and life here doesn’t change when it happens. I think both sides understand the mutual destruction theory well enough.

For a native English speaker such as myself, teaching English as a second language here in Korea leaves me with plenty of free time. Although I work 7 hours a day, my commute time is zero, which leaves me 14 hours a day to indulge myself in other activities. For the past year, I have been actively engaged in another job, more for the enjoyment of creating than any monetary reward. I am the Editor and Chief Technical Officer of UlsanOnline.com, a website for foreigners here in Ulsan, Korea.

I joined the website when it was in its infancy at a time when I was just coming off as Editor of the Korea Sun – a slick glossy magazine that failed after only six months in publication. The Korea Sun had never even published the issue I started working on before dying, so I was more than ready to jump into another creative endeavour. The founder of UlsanOnline is Fin Madden, the first foreigner I had ever met here in Ulsan back in May of 2004. He and I were rock climbing partners and would spend mornings and weekends out at Munsu Mountain. He is also one of founders (and I, a contributor) of “The Ulsan Pear” a now defunct newspaper that filled the same niche of English language local and events news for foreigners here. Both the Korea Sun and the Ulsan Pear failed, as so many other paper publications have: simply due to costs. It wasn’t feasible to pay for paper, ink, printing, distribution and rely on the advertising or paper sales. Print is dead. Or dying rapidly. Since we have no paper, ink, printing or distribution costs other than the webserver we are much more financially viable.

For the last year, the website has been doing quite well. While we are small relative to the big websites, we fill a needed niche in Ulsan and provide a valuable service to the ever changing population of English speaking foreigners here. We haven’t made much, but since I enjoy both writing and programming, getting anything for doing it was a kick. I’ve made much more fame than fortune and I’m very happy with where things stand.

But as the old saw goes, “nothing is permanent.”

After almost 7 years in Korea, Fin is leaving the country and returning to Canada. He hasn’t been much involved in the website in the past few months so I have been the defacto Editor in Chief. But he still retains 50% ownership. I have the other 50%.

With his departure now less than a month away, he’s now focused on getting out completely and is considering selling his half of the site. Aaron, a New Zealander, is interesting in buying Fin’s half. Jared, an American of Korean descent, is also interested in buying in.

Aaron, Jared and I will meet this afternoon to hammer out where we want to take things in 2010 and how we might improve our readership, community standing and revenue. I am a little apprehensive about the two new guys, but only because it’s a lot of unknowns. I’ll know more – and feel differently – as things progress.

SaTang takes a break while the pups are sleeping. This doesn’t happen very often as there’s always one of them that’s hungry. I snapped this shot on a quiet morning after all the in-laws had gone and it was just me and her and the pups.

Almost all of pups are sacked out near her belly. One traveller is way up by SaTang’s head, curled into the corner. 

Shredded newspaper is nice and warm and easy to clean when the box gets messy – just throw it out and put in new shreds.

We weren’t counting on having pups for another 5-7 days. I counted days, the vet counted days and SaTang was only 56 days into a pregnancy that should normally be 60-63 days. But she started panting and being unable to lay down last night so we put her into the whelping box and sure enough, within an hour puppies were here.

I think it was around 1:30 when the first pup slowly came out. The 2nd was right behind, coming within 30 minutes. A 2nd pair arrived an hour later within minutes of each other. Since the vet told us only 4 pups, we thought she was done. We went to bed at 4am. She seemed fine. And I guess she was. She let loose another pair  sometime before MyeongHee got up at 6:30.  So we have 6 pups. 4 girls, and 2 boys. 3 mostly white, one with a few brown spots and two mostly brown spotty ones.

This morning, I went to the vet here in the neighborhood and he said to feed her beef and seaweed soup about 5-6 times today. Luckily, my mother-in-law is staying here this week and quite able to whip up a little Miyeok guk as it’s called here. She snarfed that up and is now resting comfortably with her 6 pups.

A while back I wrote on the continuing saga of the playground across the street. In that story, the city officials had put on shiny new lockable doors on the soccer field while leaving numerous gaping holes in the chain-link fence around it. I mused about how silly they were putting a new door on an enclosure where there were so many other man-sized holes that I wondered why even have a fence.

Over Christmas they patched those holes. They re-strung the chain-link and covered up all the holes. They even repaired the lockable door, which the kids were already tearing apart, its cheap, thin wire merely soldered on and easily plucked off.

For a couple of weeks, all was well.  The park looked like it was going to survive and not fall into a heap of disrepair. Kids played there on the weekends and when winter vacation commenced, more kids came.  They had even patched the nets on the goals to keep the balls from flying out. All was looking well.  When one day, the nets were again torn so some lazy-ass kid who couldn’t be bothered to walk the 20 meters to the gate (this is a very mini field) the string became straws and the proverbial camel’s back was broken.

Someone got the idea that nets weren’t truly long lasting anyway. Much too easy to rip or cut. Indeed, a few months in the elements and most of the string was rotting or frayed anyway.

So the city got smart. They put the chain-link fence everywhere. Even around the goals. Locked the whole damn place up tighter than 3-dollar alarm clock. They repaired some of the structural metal holding the fence up and it looked as if the place would stand up to a tornado again.  All of my worrying about the state of disrepair a few months ago was all for naught. It was new and shiny and strong looking.

That was on Thursday. They finished wrapping the new chain link and soldering on some more wire to the front door – even double panelled it with extra strands of cheap wire. By Friday it looked as if the whole park had been given a makeover.

And then the city got real smart.  They figured that since it looked so nice, it simply wouldn’t do to let the kids play there. So on Saturday, the door was locked. No holes to crawl in and play any more, so it stayed empty.  Until Saturday night.

A bright shiny new soccer field and no access to it was just too much to take for these pent-up Korean kids with damn little to occupy them outside the 20 hours of school they endure.  The fence is once again shredded. It wasn’t enough to rip one hole. Nope. Several holes had to be ripped, some mere feet from each other.

The pendulum swings back and forth. On one end, its the kids and their need for a place for activity in this mostly urban environment. On the other, its the city with their demand for fixing shit up and keeping it fixed. One day, the pendulum might stop right in the middle, but these days it simply swings from side to side, going from complete repair  – and inability to use –  to complete disrepair.  I just watch from the sidelines. And chuckle.

Here’s my dog SaTang. She’s 7 of 9 weeks pregnant. Officially not due for 2 weeks, she looks really uncomfortable.

Compare the pooch in the picture above with the svelt thing on her wedding nightday back  in November of last year to appreciate the difference.

Despite the best efforts of the Korean government and banks, the American dollar  has taken a huge plunge against the Korean won.  In a few days, the dollar has lost about 4.5% of its value. To most of the readers here, that’s a big “so what?” But for me, that’s huge consideration. It would have been nice to have that plunge before I went to America for Christmas – it would have mapped into bit more dollars in my pocket. Instead those dollars simply floated away into the ether of the exchange rate.

With my daughter’s graduation from university last year, the student loans are due. That means I need to be dropping money into American banks often to pay them off. I haven’t had to do that in a while and have been comfortably keeping my money here in Korea. Now, therefore, I need to be mindful of the exchange rate and try and send my money when it will net me the most dollars for my won.

Personally, I hope the dollar goes right into the shitter. Just down to zero. With all the trillion$ of bill$ printed this past year to cover the multiple bailout$ it’s amazing the value is still as high as it is.

My ideal scenario is for the dollar to be worthless – I could take my Korean won and buy a boatload of American real estate on the cheap. Of course, if it did go to zero or even near it, there would be a whole lot of pitch forks and torches to circumvent for anyone still buying big in America.

Maybe it’s that I only had 9 days to enjoy seeing my family and friends. Maybe it’s that I didn’t get a chance to see nearly as many friends as I anticipated. Damn, I didn’t even get to see all of my family with Lizzie not able to make it. And many of those I did see, I saw only once.

Whatever the reason, I’m feeling a little more than homesick today.  In the 3 years I’ve been here, I’ve been home 3 times. The first, I was excited to come back because my wife, MyeongHee, was moving in while I was in America and we’d soon be getting married. The 2nd time, I went with MyeongHee and we shared our sadness (or at least mine) at not being to see everyone again for a while. This time, it’s hard.  I hope it passes quickly.

I probably mentioned to many of you while I was home that Korea is not the forever home for us. I told MyeongHee a while back I wanted to move back to America after her son, DongHyun graduates from high school in the spring of 2011. Not permanently, as she’d feel as homesick as I do now. But she agreed that a few years here and a few there would be difficult, but best for both of us.  It all depends on DongHyun’s college and mandatory military service schedule. We’ll see, but I look forward to the day when I won’t be counting my days left in America. I’d like to think that I’m home long enough to watch my granddaughters recognize me when I come in after just a few days  absence. Having them come running for a hug when Grandpa comes to visit, just as my daughters did when they were young is a goal I look forward to.

MyeongHee’s nephew, ChangHyun is staying with us this month. He’s on winter vacation from his school and he’ll spend it with us. He’s 10 years old and a good kid. Typical TV and video game infested Korean boy.  He’ll start taking English lessons at my school today. He’s got some English knowledge he learned from his older sister, MinGyoung, who is a very good English speaker, but he’s never been to an English school himself. Being family and just for a short time, we’ll get the big discount and it won’t cost him, me or his family anything for the classes. We just have to pay for his books, which should be $20 or so.  I hope to send him back to his parents with a bit more vocabulary and grammar.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Love to all.