Ed Ames Tomahawk Toss - The Tonight Show - April 29, 1965

Now this is some classic late night TV

Friends in Korea

Now that Ahreum is working, its a good thing that I have a pretty good number of Korea friends.  Last Friday I met up with Heejoo, a former language student in Exeter, for some coffee and sam geop sael (grilled streak pork).  We were then able to meet Ahreum when she finished work.

 

At the cafe

 

 

Then it was time for some grilled meat and kimchi!

 

Some ice cream perhaps?

 

There was even a good picture of me!

 

 

Finally Ahreum finishes work and meets us, much better.

 

Once more into the breach,

 

Ben

Cafe Culture

My research on John Locke provides me with no small interest in the history of cafes.  Locke and a number of his contemporaries frequented coffee houses in London long before tea had become popular in Britain.  They would most likely have drunk Turkish coffee, and the socializing was not just for amusement.  The coffee houses were major centers for literary, scientific, philosophical, political, and artistic discussion and work.  There are of course obvious parallels with French cafes a century later.

 

The coffee house scene in England is now markedly changed.  It had died almost utterly, and has now been revivified halfway by Italianesque espresso cafes and halfway by Starbucks and its clones.  In fact, chains dominate the market both in London and in the hinterlands (Exeter).  London cafes and the Exeter equivalents may be run by the same companies, but there are notable differences in the cultures of their patrons.  In London I found that there is a good deal of pure aimless socialization, reveling in discussion, and simple enjoyment of rich espresso.  But I have also overheard business meetings.  One sees a lot of reading and work on laptop computers.  I think particularly of a two floored Starbucks on Tottenham Court Road that has a large table upstairs replete with multiple power outlets.  Perfect for portable computer users.

 

The cafe's in Exeter are not so cultured.  They are brash, noisy, and the patrons are mainly taking a break from shopping.  This is fine, but if I'm studying in a cafe, I am pretty much alone.

 

Now the reason why I've written about the past and present of the coffee house in England is purely by way of introduction to my present position - studying in a cafe in Korea.  The name, Cafe Pascucci, the place, Gangnam.  One of the things that strikes me about this place, is the rather different culture of its denizens.  In some sense I am reminded of the multifaceted role of coffee houses in 17th century London.  Some of that is preserved in London, but divergent aspects have coalesced here in Gangnam. 

 

By no means is Gangnam typical of Korea or Seoul.  From what I understand (and what I see) it is a wealthy area.  I do not mean upper middle class, but proper wealth.  Parents might be highly trained professionals or businessmen.  They have been very successful in Korea's last 50 years of development, and their children are not hard pressed.  As such the people here have ample leisure time.

 

This is reflected at the cafes.  Most of the people around me are probably between 20 and 35.  They are not here for a brief lunch break, in fact many may be here for hours.  Furthermore, almost everyone here is female.  There are men, but they tend to be meeting ladies.  The wealth of their parents explains their freedom to do this, but doesn't give a reason.  Consequently, it is not their wealth, but their sense of leisure that interests me.     What do they do to occupy their time?  What entertains them?  What do they pursue?  How does the cafe fit into this.  Not monetary gain, they are in a coffee shop and don't seem to be working or meeting clients.  Not gluttonous consumption, they rarely have more than 1 or 2 drinks over an afternoon.

 

From what I see conversation seems to be very important here.  I can't understand what people are saying, but they aren't yelling, a la Exeter.  The best I can guess is that a variety of topics pass back and forth between them.  Socialization and company seem to be the reason to be here for many.  A convenient and public place in which to meet friends over an afternoon.

 

But this is not what I find most engaging about Gangnam cafes.  What I find most striking, and unprecedented in my experience, is the art.  A lot of people, particularly ladies, bring sketch books, and even paint and brushes here.  I've been here about 4 times this trip and about 6 last time, and there have almost always been people painting, drawing, taking photographs.  Today I even saw an array of hair extensions being put into a lady's hair by her friends.  This was peculiar.

 

What I'm digging at is that there seems to be a connection between coffee shops, monied leisure, women, and visual art.  At least in Gangnam.  I can't really speculate about what the reasons underlying this association might be.  I might wonder, are most artists in Korea female.  Is that the relevant fact, rather than the leisured status of the particular women here?  Perhaps these artists are here purposively, seeking inspiration?  In which case the social conditions of Gangnam might have relatively little to do with the artists here in this cafe.  Or perhaps wealth daughters in Gangnam take up art professionally or for recreation, enjoy doing this socially, and hence come to local cafes?

 

I haven't seen anything much like this before.  That's the benefit of returning to Korea.  It is very interesting to get a sense of how people behave in different places.  I can't say anything about Korean's from this experience, but that isn't the point.  I actually find it quite refreshing that people here take art seriously.  My love of photography is partially a channel for my creative imagination (I can't judge of the success of this outlet).  Here's to the unexpected and the delightful.

 

Once more into the breach,

 

Ben

They need a native speaker

I was on my way to a wifi enabled cafe in Seoul today,  I'm still plugging away on that  secondary source on Locke's theory of will, when something very amusing happened.

I will start by way of background.  Some of my Korean readers will know that gaining English proficiency is very important in Korea.  Sometimes to a state of inflated ridiculousness.  In some sense this is very important because I communicate in English with Ahreum.  Luckily she never got caught up in some of the more extreme efforts some Koreans make to learn English.

Anyway.  I was getting out of the subway station, and this lady was handing out some professional looking information packets, complete with attached pen.  Normally such people don't hand me anything because I'm clearly not Korean.  But this time I could tell the situation was different.  She gave me the packet without hesitation.

I said thank you in Korean, and began to walk away.  Intrigued, I began to leaf through the pages in Hangul.  Then something jumped out at me.  This was an advertisement for speaKing, a Toefil preparation company (the Toefil is a standardized test Universities use to make sure non-native English speakers are up to University work).  I don't think I need to explain the irony in this situation. (Though I do wonder how well I would do?)

I went back and returned the literature to her, saying, "I think you had better give this to someone else."  I smiled, "Thank you," this time in English.

I walked off with a great big grin on my face.

 

Once more into the breach,

 

Ben

Jetting off

 

London

10:12 am.

I'm now sitting at the Pret A Manger at Heathrow terminal 4.  This is my first time flying out of terminal 4, and it is largely disappointing.  It feels as if I were at Luton or Stansted.  Even Gatwick is better than this place.  There aren't even any fast food restaurants here.  Just ready made sandwiches and an vastly over priced gourmet fish bar.  Where is the McDonald's, the Panda Express, or the Emporium of Grease when you need it?

Update: The staff at the duty free shopping centre in Terminal 4 are incompetent.  It is crucial that all liquids purchased in the EU be packaged in sealed bags prior to reaching the final destination.  I asked them if my purchase needed such treatment, and they said no.  They assumed that Amsterdam was my final destination.  They should have asked.  They should have sealed it anyway, just in case.  Their service is irresponsible and pathetic. 

 

At least the ready made sandwich joint I'm at is pretty good.  And I can only find the Emporium of Grease at American airports anyway.  I'm sure I'm better off without it.

The most annoying thing is that KLM are rather asinine when it comes to their weight policy.  They seem to really stick firmly to 20kg for checked luggage.  Too bad I don't have a companion coming to the airport.  I was at 26 kg, and forced to pay an extra 66 Pounds.  I don't even have anything particularly heavy in my suitcase.  In fact, if I had everything packed into my smaller suitcase, the total might have been 3 kg less.  They might have turned a blind eye to that.   Oh well.  This is probably still cheaper than shipping the extra weight.  And I would have still paid more to fly on Korean Air with their greater weight restrictions.

My next stop is Amsterdam which I feel rather ambivalent about.  The airport is quite fine as a structure.  It is comfortable, has amenities, places to sit.  It even has a Macdonald's, thought it lacks an Emporium of Grease. 

But all this aside, the Dutch staff are the problem.  I have several Dutch friends and colleagues, and am myself descendent from immigrants from the Netherlands, so I don't have any particular grief with the Holland,  The staff are generally fair and generally efficient.  However, they are not warmhearted to strangers (and I don't mean foreigners, I just mean anyone they don't know) and they don't respond well to unexpected situations.  Since such problematic situations occur or less frequently for international travelers, this can be trying.

Update: In a very stressful situation caused by the duty free shop in Heathrow Terminal 4, the people at Shiphol have been wonderfully helpful.  The information desk staff are friendly and willing to be flexible.  My prior experience is now confounded.  I feel like paradigm shifts may be underway.

 

 Amsterdam

3:54 PM

I'm now sitting in Shiphol airport.  As you can see above,  World duty free has caused me a bit of a mishap.  What will be will be.  It tests my resolve, ingenuity, and eye for fine details.  Luckily, the people at Shiphol may be a bit colder, but they aren't screw ups (sorry Mom). 

Now I'm enjoying a larger table, a more comfortable seat, and a generally far more pleasant airport.  Heathrow has improved in the last few years, but it is still antiquated and overfilled.  If I have to go by KLM again, I think it would be far better to go via Bristol.  BAA doesn't operate Bristol's airport, and that makes a huge difference.  Usually the workers there are more flexible and customer oriented.  But even when they aren't the place is small, clean, pleasant, and easy to manage.  One never finds the massive crowds one would at Heathrow.

 

The Dialectic of Grey:

Hear in the northern world things are already almost dark.  There is still light in the sky, but it is cloudy.  The clouds hide a certain dynamism though.  They are filled with power.  Each one bears subtle gradations of colour from deep grey to misty blue.  Highlights of white clouds which seem like they might just possibly bear just a touch of yellow. 

This is a starkly different scene, to the one I saw when I was on the coach this morning.  I woke from sleep at just a little before 8, and the sun was just groping above the horizon.  The structure of the coach prevented me from seeing the whole expanse, but what I could see was glorious.  Fuchsias and oranges dancing together in lines of cloud which cut across the sun's rays.  The sun itself was largely obscured, I think because it was still too early. 

The view here is one that requires more subtlety to appreciate.  It is somber.  The glory is sedate but present.  There is a stunning potentiality about this greyness.  But this is not what I want to say about it.  One need take only a glance at a thunderhead on the horizon, and its power and magnificence are apparent.  These clouds would seem to be far more pedestrian.  Most people would look at them, dismissively and come to the conclusion, "it's an awfully dreary day today."

Perhaps such thoughts are conceived purely in terms of sunlight and its effects.  They are affected by our star.  But what of the cloudy day.  The sun is subsumed, although not removed.  It is not night.  Does this mean less happiness?  Some people feel dreary.  But why should happiness by tied to sunlight.  What is the emotional content of clouds.  Is there even a right wrong question here?  Surely the feelings on a dreary day simply well up inside many people.  They are not the products of forethought. 

However, I do not share that feeling today.  Today it is grey that is right.  Sunlight would be strangely inappropriate for a journey of this length.  For me grey is a comforter.  It soothes.  It calms.  What more could I want.  And the shades of grey give depth to all things.  The colours of the sun would give us no sense of shape and proportion without the shadow of grey shades.

Hegel said that it was at twilight.  Between night and day that the owl of Minerva flew.  There is wisdom in the mediation of differences.  That is the core of his dialectical method.  It is the source of my appreciation of grey today.

That doesn't mean I'm forswearing sunlight.

 

Signing off

The first leg of the journey, and by far the most laborous is now over.  I'm in the plane, have pushed and have been pushed by Korean's who don't believe in lines.  The funniest thing was a business man who had almost pushed his way into the front of the queue for economy class so he could board right away.  Then when they called out business class first, from a new queue, he had to walk all the way back through the line to get out.  Not to fun for him, but extremely amusing for me.  He still got in before all of us, but had he been less pushy, he wouldn't have had to wait for everyone in business class either. 

We are scheduled to depart in about 6 minutes, but that looks to be unlikely.  The plane was delayed coming in, but it looks like the hold up now is simply the fact that many people weren't at the gate when they were supposed to be.  When my fellow passengers delay my travel, especially when it is to see Ahreum after three months, I am none too happy.

But the point is that I will soon be in the air, and on the way to Seoul.  Ahreum will be waiting for me at the airport!  Until then, I need to get some rest.

 

Once more into the breach,

 

Ben

Volition, or the Will in Locke's philosophy

Now that term is over, its time to do some serious thinking.  I've been working on a chapter on John Locke's theory of will in The Essay Concerning Human Understanding for my PhD Thesis.  The chapter is nearly finished now, but I have recently discovered a book which I feared replicated much of what I wanted to say.  I'm not going to name it or the author yet because my thoughts about it are far to provisional. 

Luckily (and in the end not surprisingly) the book is not nearly the threat I perceived it to be.  While philosophically interesting, and often plausible, the argument doesn't seem to interface with the Locke's thought.  The interpretation is in terms of contemporary debates on will.  Much of these debates are more or less similar to their predecessors in the late 17th century, but not entirely.  In fact, when one gets down to the brass tacks, the differences are quite surprising.  While some of the issues are the same, their occurrence in 17th century discussions is for different reasons.  So while the book I'm reading at the moment, often seems to get a good sense of Locke's meaning, it lacks precession.  It fails to accept the specific purposiveness Locke envisioned for different categories human agency.  It seems to miss the nuances, the directionality, of Locke's though. 

Most importantly it lacks a sense of the historical context of Locke's work.  The author's interpretive methodology begins with what we  (or at least what he presumes we) expect a free agent to possess.  It is not just the freedom to do things without external constraint.  It involves something extra, which he describes as the "elusive something." (he says this after saying, in terms not at all elusive, of what this consists).  The problem is he never begins with what Locke might envision.  Now what Locke expects a free, rational, adult agent to possess may very well be the same thing we do, but that is a historically contingent possibility.  Locke may have subtly or radically different views than author as to what freedom entails.  But if the author looks for his elusive something in Locke's text, when he finds it it will be, of methodological necessity, read into Locke rather than interpreted out of the book.  What the author finds may end up agreeing with what Locke purports, but only through historical chance. 

 

This unwillingness to grapple alongside Locke with the concerns, questions, and ideas that were incorporated into Locke's Essay in the first place is reflected in a disjunction in terminology.  The author seems to spend little effort coming to serious grips with Locke's sense of terminology in the account of will.  Because of this the author tends to muddle up freedom and will.  Certainly they are tangentially connected, but Locke did his best to separate these terms for a reason.  The very act of looking for Locke's account of "fully fledged free agency" as the author does, is to ignore the fact that volition, not freedom, is Locke's primary concern.  What men call the freedom of the will is revealed in the way the will can work, but it is always wrongly called a freedom.  The author sometimes acknowledges this, but it doesn't seem to affect his terms of analysis. 

 

Furthermore, the author misses out the sense in which a good deal of Locke's discussion is terminological.  What kind of terms and ideas can the mind form when it first learns about volition?  What kind of terms, and discourses add up to nonsense speech?  These are crucial for understanding Locke's over all purpose, and the distinctive turn he makes toward analyzing the will in a more metaphysical and psychological sense.

 

Having finished putting these thoughts to ether (not really paper eh), I feel a good deal more secure.  I'm not going to be caught out on Locke's theory of will.  I have a unique but grounded interpretation which isn't duplicated elsewhere.  This brings great joy to the heart of a PhD student.  Huzzah!

 

Once more into the breach,

Ben

Flickr posting and WindowsLiveWriter Beta

Hey this is pretty cool.  I can post pictures from Flickr using the new WindowsLiveWriter for blogs.  Its quite a bit nicer posting from here than from Blogger's fidgity unreliable system.  I may have to get a pro account over at Flickr to keep the photos coming your way.  Here's some goodies from Wales.

 

Tintern Abbey

 

Ragland Castle

 

Welsh Coast

 

Carnarfon Castle

 

Carnarfon Castle

 

Llandudno Beachfront

 

Llandudno Beach

 

Beaumaris Castle

 

More coming up soon.

 

Once more into the breach,

 

Ben

End of Term

My bandwidth limits are now refreshed over at Flickr, so I'm planning on uploading some Wales pictures.  Today.

My extremely busy term 1 is almost complete.  I really feel physically as well as mentally exhausted.  That said, its been an immensely rewarding semester.  I've succeeded in Bristol, and the students seem to be very fond of the course.  Knock on wood, I have evaluations next Tuesday.  Tutorials in Exeter have been going well too.  I'm not sure this years class will bubble forth with as much exuberance as my first class two years ago, but I have good feelings about them nonetheless.

 

What makes me most happy is that I've been talking with Ahreum, usually twice a day for the entire term.  I can't think of a better way to spend my first waking moments and the last hour of the day.  Of course this means my time to keep in contact with everyone else is reduced rather drastically.  So a big apology to everyone out there who is wondering where I am and what I've been doing.   I've got break coming up next week, and I'm planning to rectify this.

 

My biggest news is that I'm about to head over to Korea.  I'm leaving before the crack of dawn next Wednesday from Exeter's coach station, and I'll arrive in Korea at 1:00 PM next Thursday.  Its a long trip, but well worth it.  If Ahreum and I are lucky, she will get a new job while I'm in Korea.  If were extra lucky, she'll start work a little while after I arrive.  But she might start work, just when I arrive.  This is a little sad for me, but I can manage.  I'm so proud of her, and really hoping that everything comes together.

 

Now I should get to work on Locke's theory of will.  I'm reading secondary sources at the moment to make sure that I disagree with everyone else on the subject.  But not so much as to appear peculiar or ungrounded.

 

Once more into the breach,

Ben