It doesn’t seem like it could be so long ago, but it’s been nearly three years since the previous resurrection of this blog and probably two since it’s had any wind in its sails. Then I wrote:
Well I’ve just spent a year working on the project that I hoped and increasingly had reason actually to believe would enable me to make my bones - not in the sense that I’d be set for a life of leisure - in fact getting the deal would have meant a working life over at least the the next five years like that of the sole large draft animal on a big non-mechanized farm - but the work would have been self-directed, very satisfying and very rewarding. Anyway, it’s pretty certain that it’s not going to be happening, so I’ll have a lot of time for this log for the foreseeable future.
In fact, it didn’t happen and I did have the time, but it turned out that, like Bartleby, I didn’t have the inclination to sustain the effort. I’m not entirely sure that I do now either, but I am tiring of simply commenting in other fora - in particular The Marmot’s Hole - if only because the commentary format, and the temptation to take some of the abundant troll bait floating there, has been a distraction from thoroughly developing and articulating what I want to say in my own way.
on Aug 31st, 2008 at 10:30 am
Welcome back!
on Sep 5th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
About time Mr ____.
but the work would have been self-directed, very satisfying and very rewarding.
This is the problem with you american expats, you’ve forgotten the reasons for your own struggle against colonialism.
You need more than a juicy girl wife to open a [business] in Korea _____, but I think you have learnt that now. Bet you look a fool to your [investor] pals. We are open for foreign business, just not open to carpet baggers.
Welcom back to blogging.
Sperweractual Reply:
September 6th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Thanks for stopping by and providing an illustration of the sort of behavior that sparked my following post.
You are a vicious little git. All that’s unclear is whether you are ignorant and malicious or just malicious.
The pals to which you refer came to me, not vice versa, after they had been invited by the Korean government to advise on and then to lead a development project . And one of the two principals had at the time more than fifteen years previous experience on the ground in Korea. And, oh, did I mention that he was Korean - and that the site of the project in question is still a 4 square modern city block empty lot? Quite a sandbox; maybe you can play there with your plastic bshovel and bucket. Anyway, I’ve also lived here more than 14 years. So much for the carpetbagger slur.
Your even more scurrilous imprecations about my wife would be pathetic if they weren’t bathetic. She has undergraduate degrees from first rate universities in Korea and the US and an MBA from an equally good US business school. She’s currently the CEO of the Korean subsidiary of a US firm that does USD 100 million in Korean sales. Her family is of the class that in old Korea owned slaves like I’m guessing your ancestors were.
Your vicious attitude is in my estimation shared by a very large percentage of the Korean political, professional and business elites — who are just more hypocritical about it. That mindset, and the related underlying delusions that you’ve suffered under the US colonialist boot and/or that because Koreans suffered under Japanese colonialism you ipso facto are entitled to unfair advantages over all other would-be players in the Korean sandbox — is one of the principal reasons “Why Korea Will Fail”™.
You’ve amply demonstrated in The Marmot’s Hole and here that you having nothing to offer except resentment-driven vitriol and, since this is my blog, and “the ebb and flow of the Atlantic tides, the drift of the continents, the very position of the sun along its ecliptic: THESE are just a FEW of the things I control in my world:
hasta
t3_terminated