Consumerism/Anti-consumerism

You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy. ~Eric Hoffer



At the moment I'm living a fairly spartan lifestyle. Everything I own will fit into a couple of bags, it has to if I want to take it home with me. Yet the things that I do have are generally quite energy intensive: mac laptop, graphics tablet, dSLR, lenses. I tend to swing quite wildly from a fairly anti-consumerist/environmentalist outlook on life, to thinking how wonderful the new ipod touch looks.
A big part of my desire to reduce my consumption is to reduce my impact on the world. This year I've already flown a couple times and will be making at least three more international flights in the near future. Big CO2 emissions right there. That said, my day-to-day life is fairly low impact: I take to bus to and from work, I'm trying, fairly successfully to not use plastic bags and I recycle my plastics, tins and glass.

During my final year at university I took an environmental politics class so I have a fair idea of how bad the state of affairs are at the moment. I'd certainly like to do more to keep up to date with current environmental issues. I listen to a few podcasts here and there but just keeping abreast of the issues isn't enough, especially when done through electricity guzzling gadgets. This revival in trying to do my bit has been sparked by the trailer for the film No Impact Man, a film about a New Yorker who for a year tries to ensure that his family and himself have zero environmental impact. Some may think that do such a thing would require serious curtailments of their comfortable living and I for one am eager to see just how big the adjustments are that they have to make.

This led me to thinking, just how much would I be willing to sacrifice in order to help reduce my impact on the planet? I suppose the wise thing to do would be to first workout what my current impact is. I'll let you know how that goes. But just doing a mental checklist of the things that I do have, I don't think I could do without many of them. I love digital photography, and hoopefully through wildlife photography I will be able to use my skills to raise awareness of environmental issues so no getting rid of my camera. Which means I need my laptop. And my external harddrives. I could probably do without the graphics tablet but I don't think that adds much to the equation. I don't have a car or a motorbike, but I do tend to sleep with the air-conditioning on. So that's something right there I could deal with.
The next major impact I have would be the traveling I do. In just over a fortnight I'm flying to China for a week, then I'm flying back home to the UK for about a month, then the plan is to take a one way flight to Thailand. I do have the option of offsetting that through a company that specializes in such things but I don't really trust many of them. Partly because I don't really understand them. How does my money offset my carbon? Another thing to look into. Before leaving university I came up with the idea of traveling the globe without flying. The idea of a world trip is beginning to lose interest for me as my time in Korea has taught me the value of staying in one place to gain a more complete experience. So perhaps I could look into more terrestrial travel for the shorter trips I hope to be making. It might mean more time and money, but it will lead to a better understanding of the distances I'm traveling and the way the landscape changes, experiences that are difficult to have from 30,000 feet.
Just some of my rambling thoughts.

Unique Position

Why are you reading this blog? It's a question I've been asking myself recently. Why would anyone want to read my blog? There are plenty of amazingly talented photographers out there, all with their own blogs. There are plenty of people out there traveling, all with eloquently written websites.
Recently I visited a few websites offering tips for writing better blogs and the general theme is to have a unique position, give the people something that they can't get elsewhere. I think I occupy a fairly unique position.
Straight out of university I started teaching English in South Korea. I've been here a year, hoping to move out to Thailand to teach there for a year and after that, who knows. Not only am I participating in a long term kind of travel that not many people do, I'm also trying to worm my way into the photography business. I hope to use this blog as a record of the things I will hopefully learn about finding jobs teaching abroad, creating a life for yourself in a foreign land, and the steps I hope to take towards becoming a professional photographer. If no one else gains anything from this it will serve as a good reminder for myself of what I've learned already.

The Penultimate Minute

How do you go about making major decisions in your life? Do you have a plan, or like me, do you leave everything to pretty much the last possible moment? I seem to leave things to the last minute quite often. After graduating university my decision to go and teach English in South Korea was a little last minute. I was graduating, I wanted to travel, but didn't have any money. An add popped up on Facebook about teaching in Korea, I clicked on it and about 2 months later I landed in Incheon. Haven't looked back since. However it was a bit of a rush trying to get everything organised. I resolved to try and get my stuff together in a more timely manner. I've been planning on going to Thailand to teach for about 4 months now, with about 2 months until I want to go. But only yesterday, with a little more than 2 weeks until their deadline, I applied to ECC's CELTA course. I don't know when I'll find out whether or not they have accepted me but I don't really have much of an plan B. I need some sort of qualification for teaching in Thailand and so far I've put all my eggs into the CELTA basket.
So far everything seems to have worked out for me. Just hope it keeps going that way.

Animal Cafes

Courtney and I took Colleen to Hongdae, a very hip part of Seoul. Lots of art galleries, independent fashion outlets and plenty of little coffee shops to explore. We'd planned on taking her to a selection of slightly more unique coffee shops, ones that where based around interactions with animals. The plans was to visit, in no particular order:Dr. Fish, where fish nibble on your feet while you drink, the Bau House, a cafe with a variety of dogs running around, and GioCat, the same concept as the Bau House but with cats.

In Hongdae we found that Dr. Fish had closed down, so that was struck off the list. GioCat was also shut, its schedule showing that Monday is its regular day off. We arrived at the Bau House to find that closed. Fortunately we managed to work out that we were just early and that in 20 minutes it would be open for business. So we wandered around the backstreets of Hongdae admiring the various shops and tastful graffitti that is dotted around the area.

We returned to the Bau House and found ourselves to be the first ones there. The dogs all seemed very pleased to see us, as dogs generally do. I wasn't in there for even a minutes before I had a large patch on slobber deposited on my shorts. However I should count myself as lucky as a Korean girl got peed on. The risks of playing with nervous dogs I suppose. We stayed in there for just one drink, we played with the dogs, several came and joined us for varying amounts of time. We were even treated to a sex show on our table. Something the staff there are quick to put an end to. The Bau House is quite a unique experience. Just being in the same room as so many dogs is interesting, but trying to drink some coffee with a poddle on your table, a beagle on your lap and a lab at your feet is a whole other thing. Its a very high energy place, as the dogs are all eager to greet any and all newcomers. Definitely not a place for people who aren't comfortable with animals.

Jeju Day 2

Despite Thursday's early morning and late night I was up early, partly to do with sleeping on the floor in an overly warm room, partly because my body hates me. More evidence to support my body hating me is that generally, once I'm awake, there's no going back to sleep. So rather than just lie there and stare at the ever so interesting white ceiling I decided to take a pleasant stroll. It did me well last went when I went to watch the surf at midnight. So tip-toeing over sleeping carcasses I collected my camera stuff and headed out.
I tried some long exposures of waves breaking over the volcanic rocks that makes up Jeju island before exploring the small collection of houses near our holiday home. Just as I was entering the village I passed a Korean guy standing in a lot with some industrial looking buildings behind him. I anyeonghaseoh-ed him and he smiled and nodded a hello back to me. Just before I passed him he asked me if I like to see his farm. With nothing else to do I said that would be nice. So he led me into a huge low, dark building that was a fish farm. It had maybe 20 or so massive shallow tanks sunk into the ground. Only maybe 7 or 8 had water in them, but those tanks contained over 40,000 baby flounders. Granted it wasn't the best tour that I've been on but it was a completely unexpected and very welcome act of generosity on Mr. Jay's part.
Back on the official holiday, our first stop was to the Teddy Bear museum. The epitome of kitsch there are bear dioramas of the moon landing, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Normandy, the Titanic, there is a Mona Lisa bear, a Van Gough bear, all sorts. Not exactly my cup of tea but it certainly seemed like a popular place to go.
Our second stop was to the beach. While I'm on holiday I'm not too much of a beach person. I get bored quite easily, so once I'm tired of swimming, an activity I actually quite miss, sitting on the beach tanning holds little appeal for me. Still I was in good company so it was hardly and ordeal. For lunch we played rock paper scissor to decide which people should pay. Now I have always seen it as a game only two people can play, yet Koreans young and old can play it in groups seemingly as big as you like and know who wins and loses. It was, and still is, a mystery to me how it works, but I was one of the losers, still it only cost me 15,000 won, about £7.50.
After the beach we had a sushi dinner before heading to a nearby waterfall. By this time it was about 10pm. Fortunately I had my tripod with me, a must have for any waterfall shot, as a long exposure blurs the water into the misty white one often sees in waterfall photos. It was all the more important of me as it was dark. Still, managed to get some okay shots of the falls. Got quite a nice group shot of the OES crowd too.

Day 1 on Jeju

Woke up pretty early to get to the main branch of OES for 6am. We all tumbled into an assortment of cars and minibuses and headed off to the airport. We didn't depart from Inchon as I was expecting, instead we fly out of the much smaller Cheongju International Airport. Despite claiming to be international all the flights seemed to be heading to Jeju.
The flight itself was a sort one, less than an hour in the air. My first impression of Jeju was that, from the air, it seemed to be much flatter than mainland Korea, despite having the tallest mountain in South Korea, Hallasan.
We went from Jeju airport to a breakfast place by a bus Mr. Oh was renting for our time on the island. Breakfast was good, not entirely sure what the dish was but I've had similar dishes before. From breakfast we went to Hallasan Park where Joanna, Peter, Dora, Jay-Hun and I got off. Us four were the only ones willing to climb a mountain that day.
It was a very nice climb. Quiet and shaded for most of the ascent before opening up to pre-Alpine grassland for the rest of the way. We lunched on rameon at the summit which wasn't really the summit, but was as high as we could climb as the rest of the way to the top was shut for conservation purposes.
We descended via another route. The weather closed in a little by now and at times we were walking through mist, which added a great deal of depth to the drop on the left side of the trail. Towards the bottom the mist lifted enough to let us see how deep the drop-off really was.
We soon re-entered the tree line and the trail became a fair bit steeper. I was stopping to take pictures so Joanna and Jay-Hun pulled ahead while Peter and Dora dropped behind. This meant that pretty soon I found myself alone on the trail. It was a very pleasant experience. Soon I reached the bottom and had icecream to distract me from my thoughts.
We had to grab a taxi from Hallasan Park to our hotel. We knew that it was going to be quite a long taxi ride, and with four of us stuffed into the back it wasn't going to be a particularly comfortable one. In the end it wasn't too bad. Our taxi driver took us to 'Ghost Road' where things appear to roll uphill. He obligingly turned off the engine and sure enough up we went.
Our place of residence is one of two villas on the northeast corner of the island. Its a very spacious affair, but very few beds.

Raptor Pee

After dinner we were walking back towards my apartment building when, circling overhead we saw a small bird of prey. I really need to start learning whats what so I can identify these critters but from here on in it shall be referred to as 'the raptor'.
The raptor settled on a building adjacent to mine, which my building overlooked. As I live on the top floor of the 12 floor building I decided to stick my head out the window and see if I could catch another glimpse of it. Well I was scanning the neighbouring building for any bird forms. Some way off there was a magpie on a rooftop, but my raptor, it appeared, was gone. Dejected, I hung my head and there, perched on the open window 4 floors below was the raptor. Excited about being so close and the unique perspective I rushed to my apartment, hastily attached lens to body and rushed back to the window.
Alas the perch was bare. I gave the surrounding windows another looking at before once again hanging my head. On the roof of the building next to mine, quite far down, there was a woman with two dogs, so I watched them for a little while. Then something moved from within the eighth floor. It was wing. The raptor was in the building.
Figuring that waiting for the elevator would take too long, barefooted I dashed down the stairs. I reached the eighth floor and tentatively poked my head around the corner. Sure enough, inside my apartment was this gorgeous bird of prey. I gingerly eased my camera to eye level and managed to just snap off one frame before the decided that it no longer wanted to be there and slipped out the window.
Hoping to get some shots of it gliding through the evening sky I dashed to the window, It was when I reached the window that I stepped in a puddle. A puddle that was directly under where the raptor had just been perched. I didn't managed to get anymore shots of it, but such a close encounter with an animal such as that was a great experience for me.