Reading Alex Garland’s The Beach on the Gulf of Thailand
Alex Garland’s The Beach is a novel about the backpacker’s desire to be authentic, to be something different from the average tourist.
Essays
The tragedy of Oh Mi-Oh and Ju Ri-Hyeon.
My adventures in attempting to stage a production of Romeo and Juliet with Korean middle school kids at my university’s Winter English Camp.
Apple, or, Slight rebellion off 근거리
A long story about an extended attempt to avoid desk-warming, an apple, and a beautiful Korean art-student.
Working in a call centre.
In 2009 I made a resolution to change my life. A few months later, this resolution would take me to Korea. In the meantime, it led me to getting a job in a call centre, something I was terribly unsuited for. It was a brief if memorable experience that gave me a friend who I still communicate with twenty years later, and a good essay.
The Third Person.
At around two in the afternoon, on Christmas Eve, it began to rain, and he decided the Christmas rush had ended. He didn’t so much close the store as abandon it – half the lighbulbs blown, boxes of empty and half-empty books everywhere, a back room full of boxes of catalogued books that he had […]