Comments Posted By Kevin Kim
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Congrats to Cristy on her victory, and congrats to you on making it to #2.
I didn’t know you could put a rub on meat that’s going into the slow-cooker. Won’t the rub simply float off in the water? Normally, rubs are for meat that you bake, roast, or barbecue. Anyway, good luck with that. I hope it tastes good.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 25/April/2021 @ 6:17 pm
Interesting perspective. Sounds like a lot of simmering hostility out there.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 25/April/2021 @ 10:09 am
Sorry to read about all the dick-waving authorities impeding your walk. Bunch of fucking cunts.
Singles League playoffs—this is the big one, right? Good luck!
Ribeye looks good. Nicely cooked on the outside, hopefully still medium-rare and juicy on the inside.
“It also appears that I’d be the only foreigner living here. Not ready for that adventure!”
Do you have to live in a community of expats? If yes… why? Hell, living among Filipinos might finally motivate you to learn some of the local language—enough to speak in actual sentences instead of tossing around random words and phrases. Here’s some Tagalog homework for you. Learn:
1. the days of the week
2. the months of the year
3. numbers from 0 to 1,000,000
4. the verbs that are basic in any language: to be, to go, to have, to want, to need, to give, to take, to find, to be able to (can), to have to (must), to wait, to sleep, to wake up, to eat, to drink, to poop, to piss, to talk, to yell/shout, to ask, etc.
5. the nouns and prepositions that most often go with the above verbs
6. the adjectives that typically go with those nouns, including adjectives like bad, good, cheap, expensive, sweet, tasty, sour, etc.
7. basic adverbs like fast, slowly, very, really, late, early, etc.*
8. basic “direction” words like left, right, up, down, north, south, east, westAdd a few hundred useful words and expressions to your vocabulary and see how much your life among the natives improves.
__________
*The words “late” and “early” can be both adjectives and adverbs. If I say, “You’re late” or “You’re early,” then “late” and “early” are adjectives. If I say, “You arrived late” or “You arrived early,” then those words are adverbs. Same with a word like “fast.” If I say, “She’s pretty damn fast,” then “fast” is an adjective meaning “quick.” But “She runs fast” means that “fast” is an adverb meaning “quickly.”
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 24/April/2021 @ 6:53 pm
And I saw that, despite trying to hit the “shift” key on my cell phone while I was typing the above comment, the personal pronoun “I” ended up being lower-case, anyway. Alas.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 23/April/2021 @ 2:51 pm
Well, given my own sense of humor, i thought your title referred to toilet logs.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 23/April/2021 @ 2:21 pm
Congrats to Alan on his “hwan-gap” (i.e., five times around the twelve-year zodiac cycle). His woman’s a cutie! (Wife? Girlfriend?)
Again, I have to wonder: how does a foreign gringo end up managing his own place if he can’t even legally own property? Filipino/a partner?
Congrats to you, as well, on the occasion of your latest darts victory! Maybe I was wrong about the consistency thing.
Given your lord-of-the-Sith levels of proficiency, have you ever thought about making a humorous video starring you as some kind of unerring darts ninja, always nailing enemies precisely in the middle of the forehead, scoring bullseyes with no effort at all?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 21/April/2021 @ 8:33 pm
Understood. NB: it would only be a 2- kilometer run, not a 2-miler.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 22/April/2021 @ 11:30 am
John,
re: commas, eh?
You can start by adding a vocative comma to your “Goodbye, Buday” post title. I didn’t want to say anything at the time, given the tragic nature of the situation, but yeah… you left out the vocative comma, my friend. What’s bizarre is that you usually don’t make that particular mistake. Inconsistency is your bugbear, it seems, whether in darts or in punctuation!
re: self-improvement
I think the goals we set would need to be empirically verifiable—i.e., filmable. They’d also have to be predicated on an actual desire to change. If you’re telling me, in your response above, that you’re unwilling/unable to change at this point in your life, then there’s no point in making any sort of self-improvement pact. I’ll just have to go it alone. For what it’s worth, I was planning to set up a modest series of “sub-goals,” with the intention of achieving them all by the end of the year. Failure to achieve even one sub-goal would mean failure to achieve the larger goal. A stark standard, but a motivating one.
Those modest goals:
1. Be able to do 30 legitimate pushups by December 31.
2. Be able to do a single pullup, from full hang to full flex, by 12/31.*
3. Lose 15 kg by 12/31.
4. Be able to plank for 2 minutes straight by 12/31.
5. Be able to do 60 abdominal crunches, 3 styles, by 12/31.
6. Be able to jump rope for 5 minutes straight, no stopping, by 12/31.
7. Be able to run 2 km, no stopping, by 12/31.What goals would I imagine for you? Not that it’s my place to set your goals, but if I were to let my imagination run wild…
Be in a meaningful, monogamous relationship with the same woman for at least four months, from the beginning of September (at the latest) to the end of December. Criteria for the relationship: (1) no major verbal spats in which shouting is involved [i.e., conflicts are managed maturely], (2) no making or hearing accusations of selfishness or inconsiderateness, (3) no forgetting of special occasions like birthdays or whatever, (4) no confessions of boredom by either party, and (5) no cheating by either party.
What would be the proof that the relationship was strong? That’s a tough one. How do you objectively prove a subjective thing? The best I can come up with is the monthly upload of a video showing the two of you blissfully together, maybe with the lady sitting in your lap and voluntarily giving you an adoring smooch. If she’s pissed off with you, and/or if the relationship is on the rocks, there’s no way she’ll consent to the above scenario, and that’d be proof enough that something’s wrong. Does anyone else have a better idea, or does all of this seem as stupid as a reality-TV episode?
Anyway, it doesn’t sound as if you’re into this project, so I’ll write no more about it.
__________*When I was a college junior living in Switzerland, I got more into athletics than I’d ever done in the past, and one of the things I concentrated on was pullups. (A low-hanging set of pipes in the basement of my Swiss host family’s house served as my pullup bar.)
By the time my year in Switzerland was over, I had gone from doing zero pullups to doing seven straight. Not a huge achievement by gym-rat standards, but a world of difference for me, and I had the flared-out back muscles (a.k.a., lats—latissimus dorsi) to prove it. Those were the days (loudly slaps Santa gut).» Posted By Kevin Kim On 21/April/2021 @ 6:31 pm
Yikes—in that photo of the three girls celebrating their birthday, there’s a dude behind the girls who appears to have a “leaking pussy.” Once seen, it cannot be un-seen.
Snoopy and Charlie Brown need to work on their capitalization. But the sentiment is nice. Live day by day, die once.
“I mean, I enjoy being In Joy, and the sex is much better than it would be with a stranger/prostitute…”
Dude—don’t kid yourself. It’s transactional; she’s a prostitute, even if the trade is more in favors than in money. Hence the empty feeling. There’s no heart involved when it’s just business. As you know.
“Longing for something I lack the courage to pursue is a whole other level of fucked up.”
Possible solution: target those aspects of yourself that are sabotaging meaningful relationships, get rid of them, and then try for love. But, like mastering commas, this takes actual work, and I get the feeling you don’t want to work at this. You like things too much as they are. It’s a lot like me and weight loss: I talk-talk-talk about diet and exercise, but I end up in the same old rut because I’m fucking lazy, spiritually speaking—too content to remain where I am. Changing one’s life, uprooting bad habits and replacing them with good habits, is an uphill battle that is, to be honest, more arduous than any physical climb up a physical hill. I’d rather climb a steep hill once in a while than fundamentally rearrange my life, and that’s the cold, honest truth.
So I’m definitely not saying any of this from a position of superiority; in terms of psyche or spirit, I’m swimming in the shit right alongside you, and for many of the same reasons. Our particular cases may be different in the details, but they’re similar in their themes.
Maybe you and I should make a self-improvement pact—set some clear, realistic short-term goals, then vow to meet those goals by the end of this year. I’ll get back to you on this if you’re interested.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 20/April/2021 @ 11:13 pm
Good luck this Saturday. Meanwhile, congratulations to my namesake on his well-deserved win.
Those meatballs look good, but not very ball-y.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 19/April/2021 @ 7:57 pm
Brownies look perfect, crusty top and all. Brown knees also look good… were the girls too shy to show their faces?
I enjoy your sunset shots whenever they appear. Are they a metaphor?
Hans the Minion looks about as obliviously cheerful and frustratingly irrepressible as the Hans I’d written about.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 18/April/2021 @ 4:32 pm
“I’ve heard dogs want to be alone when they die.”
An understandable and relatable sentiment. Condolences. I know she was special to you. Don’t be too hard on yourself. As you said, she was another owner’s dog. Nothing to be done.
Maybe hoist a glass and dedicate your darts victory (congrats!) to Buday.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 17/April/2021 @ 5:17 pm
The ribs look good, glaze or not!
I could learn a thing or two from your disciplined schedule. Part of my problem is that I’m juggling several projects but not accomplishing much with any one of them precisely because I’m not scheduling my time in a disciplined manner. While I can’t follow the monk’s schedule of sleeping at 9 and waking before dawn (Korean monks sleep at 9 and wake up around 3:30 a.m.), I can probably come up with a better schedule than the chaos currently ruling my life. Thanks for the wisdom.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 16/April/2021 @ 10:02 pm
Inquiring minds wanna know: homemade quesadilla???
They’re not that hard to make. The easier “cheat” method is to use a large tortilla that you then fold in half. German chef Wolfgang Puck, who’s about as Mexican as I am, offers a further trick: paint the outer sides of each tortilla with mayonnaise. This sounds weird at first, but mayo is mostly oil and a bit of egg (with a splash of vinegar), which means it’s great for frying and browning your tortilla nicely. The “cheat” method also makes it much easier to flip your quesadilla when the time comes. If you follow the harder “two tortillas” method of quesadilla-making, it’s a bit of an acrobatic stunt to try and flip the damn thing without having it fly apart.
I see that the house-hunting continues. Well, you know what qualities you want in a domicile, and you have a better idea of what’s fair, rent-wise, so I assume you’re a much wiser shopper now. As for feeling cheated… it occurs to me that there’s a bit of a conundrum: once you discovered you’d been paying a high rent for three years, did that upset you more or less than your landlord/landlady’s current bid to raise your rent? To me, it seems that the real reason to move out isn’t the current bid to jack up the rent—it’s the fact that you’ve been grifted for three years already. So this becomes a value judgment: you’ve tolerated being pissed on for a long time, so what’s a little more piss?
I saw that other commenters suggested being a hardass when renegotiating your new rental contract. I agree. Maybe go for a five-year contract with a written guarantee that rent WILL NOT be raised during the contract period. Whether you begin that period at a higher rent is up to you. What’s your piss tolerance level? Anyway, good luck as you continue searching. I have a feeling, though, that a “foreigner’s tax,” as you put it, is unavoidable if you’re looking for a home that matches your standards.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 15/April/2021 @ 8:17 pm
Love the Hunter pic. Also had a chuckle at the cartoon about mask-wearing: half the people pictured in the cartoon are wearing their masks with exposed noses, thereby heightening their hypocrisy. A subtle touch, but noticeable.
“Nancy would have to beat me twice (win two best-of-three matches) to take first. I offered her a deal where we call it a tie and split the money (300 pesos each). She accepted my offer. That’s a win-win for everyone, right?”
Are you saying that you guys didn’t play each other and simply settled for declaring a tie, thereby splitting the cash? Is that what happened? I bet the sparse audience was disappointed if that’s the case. Imagine two high-profile boxers doing that in the ring. “Nah, man. We don’ need ta prove nuthin’. We good. Later.” It’d be chaos! Then again, people don’t pay for expensive tickets to local dart matches, so there might not be an uproar.
As for the $400/mo. place… it looks like quite a grungy step down from where you are now, and you definitely get what you pay for. Having potentially contentious neighbors living one floor up would be a deal-breaker for me; I’m pretty much done with apartment living. If I ever go back to the States, I’m getting a free-standing house with plenty of yard/lawn/wilderness space so that I don’t hear my neighbors, and they don’t hear me. There’ll be space enough for my dogs to roam around freely all day, and for me to practice shooting, slingshot-ing, and axe-throwing in the backyard, not to mention a spot for me outside to hang a canvas Everlast 70-pound kicking/punching bag so I can work out my frustrations on the bodyweight equivalent of a fifth-grader. Leather bags are for pussies; canvas is rough and makes your knuckles bleed. Toughens the skin.
I sympathize with your desire not to get cornholed by your landlord (I thought it was a she… did someone get surgery?), but I think you need to keep looking until you find a much better deal.
As for $900/mo. being expensive… I have no standard of comparison. I haven’t lived in the States since 2013, and back then, the price for an average, 850-square-foot apartment in northern Virginia (2 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms, kitchenette) was anywhere from $800 to $1300/month, depending on how close you were to DC. Is $900/mo. expensive for the Philippines for the size house you’re in now? I have no idea.
Anyway, good luck with your search. Maybe narrow your search by thinking about what counts as a deal-breaker for you. Do the neighbors matter? How about the neighborhood as a whole? Access to shops, bars, etc.? What about the roaming-animal situation? And crime? The degree to which the new place is a fixer-upper? Etc.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 14/April/2021 @ 8:40 pm
A good day, a good Hash. What more could a man want?
(Don’t answer that.)
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 14/April/2021 @ 12:10 am
The Korean on that spice-rating chart isn’t an exact translation of the English, but it conveys roughly the same idea, albeit in a jokey, Korean-style way. I just checked with my Korean coworker, and here’s roughly what the Korean says:
하수 (hasu) = inferior person, untouchable caste
평민 (pyeongmin) = close to a regular person
중수 (joongsu) = regular person
고수 (gosu) = expert, master
지존 (jijon) = lofty, respectable person
초인 (cho-in) = some kind of superman
겁 (geop) = fear, terrorSo the English is conveying a person’s reaction to the spiciness, but the Korean is talking about what kind of person can endure each level of spiciness (except for Level 7, which appears to be a reaction, like in the English rendering).
As for whether your life has meaning or purpose… it can be perfectly meaningful to enjoy every moment deeply. No Zennist would contradict you. If you’re ever in doubt as to whether life, as you live it, is worth living, just ask yourself whether you’d be better off killing yourself right at this moment. The contemplation of suicide has its uses, and not just for the suicidal.
I recall doing a thought experiment about suicide once, and then I saw the same thoughts expressed online by someone else. My thought was that, when someone claims that life is empty and he wants to kill himself, just grab him and thrust his head into a bucket of water, holding him down for as long as you can. It’s almost inevitable that the supposedly suicidal person will thrash and struggle to escape your grip because, at the cellular level, our most basic instinct is to live. Now, the person might escape your grip and claim he still wants to die, but on his own terms. That doesn’t invalidate the insight that he struggled and resisted when confronted with death. Just as any animal will.
None of this is to imply that I think you’re suicidal. If anything, your post argues or implies that you, at least, see yourself as leading a fairly fulfilling life right now. My point, though, is that there’s an easily available thought experiment you can perform any moment you think your life is meaningless or purposeless, i.e., that there’s little reason to go on living, or that there’s little difference between life and death. Just think about what value there might be in suicide, and you’ll have your answer as to whether your life has meaning, value, and all the rest.
Sorry if all that sounds morbid, but I mean it in a life-affirming way.
Of course, if you really do want to kill yourself, just order something from that Korean place at Level 7 spiciness.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 12/April/2021 @ 4:20 pm
My mother hated carrot cake. I never understood why; when it’s done right—moist, with a good layer of cream-cheese icing—it’s almost good enough to make me forget how much I love chocolate.
Good luck as you try to surmount Cristy’s insurmountable lead. Meanwhile, have fun getting your steps in.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 11/April/2021 @ 7:52 pm
That’s a good-looking, happily messy cheesesteak. I might have to make one now.
Congrats on the sweeping victory! And congrats on being out and about, hiking as you normally would!
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 10/April/2021 @ 11:01 pm
Congrats on the hard-earned victory! Maybe a “Dart Stud” tee is in order.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 09/April/2021 @ 7:56 pm
Well, good luck to Dennis. “Solitary nomad,” eh? Where does he get the money to travel?
The pic of the Monte Cristo shows a proper Monte Cristo—battered and deep-fried, with a fruit-jam dipping sauce on the side. Perfect. I’ve seen some people try to get away with an egg-dipped and pan-fried sandwich that is little more than French toast. A proper Monte Cristo is always batter-fried to crispness, and there’s always a dipping sauce—usually raspberry jam/preserves—on the side.
Ha—just looked at the Wikipedia entry, which says the egg-dipped version is more traditional. I call bullshit on that. If you want French toast, then for fuck’s sake, just order French toast.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 08/April/2021 @ 6:42 pm
Sandpapering apparently is a thing.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 09/April/2021 @ 1:30 pm
Congrats on the win! You’ve beaten Cristy a few times since labeling her “the best.” Is she still the best, or did you steal her crown?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 07/April/2021 @ 8:53 pm
Mary’s looking to put a little tempest in that teapot, I see.
So—does this mean your record is still unbroken, even if you’re doing a route that’s different from the official Hash route? Do the Hash bigwigs formally count your “alternate” routes as completed Hashes, such that your record is officially unbroken?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 06/April/2021 @ 7:59 pm
Every once in a while, it’s good to be spendy. Glad you’re back.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 05/April/2021 @ 5:09 pm
And then there’s the matter of not closing one’s HTML tags, thus making the rest of one’s comment boldface for no good reason. What’s that thing you like to say… you can “serve as a warning to others”? Yeah. Me, too. Well, if you can’t laugh at yourself, the world will oblige by laughing at you.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 05/April/2021 @ 3:11 am
Also:
“And so beings the task.”
I clicked the link… and you typed “begins” correctly back in 2005! You could’ve just done a cut-and-paste!
Not that I have a leg to stand on. The passage of mine that you quoted contains… comma errors. On the bright side, my ability to detect such errors in my earlier writing probably means I’ve improved as a writer. I often learn by making mistakes. I doubt I’m alone in that. It’s the people who never learn from their mistakes who deserve pity. And maybe a cookie.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 05/April/2021 @ 3:08 am
The Biden tee is hilarious.
Good to see you’re out walking again. It might take some time to beat back your fatigue, but you seem to be on an upward trend.
“Happy Beaster,” as one of my friends says. He also call Christmas “Cursemas.” He’s a witty one, he is.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 05/April/2021 @ 12:45 am
I joke a lot with my friends and coworkers about my vampiric schedule. Then I hiss at the sun, transform into a giant bat, fly off to a nearby cave, and bide my time.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 04/April/2021 @ 2:49 pm
«« Back To Stats PageSounds like a typical Saturday for me. I normally use my weekends to catch up on sleep and just laze about… unless my buddy JW insists we go walking somewhere. I’ll occasionally do long walks on my own, but I’m more likely to do those at night during the work week.
Anyway, I hope the rest has done you some good. For what it’s worth, Happy Easter. Maybe you’ll leap out of bed Sunday morning like a man resurrected, all while shouting “I AM RISEN!” as you stare down at your morning wood.
(Is this the wrong time to say “Joy to the world”?)
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 04/April/2021 @ 3:45 am