March 2026
Saturday, March 14th -- Saturday Morning Weekly Roundup
Still figuring out what the structure of this blog will be. At the moment I'm gonna try a weekly round up for general updates, and then have intermittent posts on specific topics. I think I can very easily wander into journalling territory which I should probably avoid since I will very likely link this site on my socials and have people I know in person reading this. Then again maybe I'm overselling the interest of Instagram followers wanting to go three clicks deep on some raggedy-ass website I've created. I'll settle in the middle, I'll be open and honest here but I will avoid specific shit talking (for as long as I can at least).
This week was a great but hectic week. A thing I've been struggling with personally is the nature of a lot of my friendships. I love my friends but I was feeling like I was always the one inviting people out, and never got invited out myself. To a degree that's fine, I'm super proactive about filling my week with socialisation so it doesn't give other people the chance to reciprocate very much. However I was serendipitously spontenously invited out for drinks on Thursday and had a great night, so that helped soothe those feelings quite a bit. I've absolutely overbooked my weekend though, what was supposed to be one simple hangout with a friend tonight has turned into a lot of other things as well. The reason chiefly being that school clubs in Korea apparently do entrance interviews as standard practice.
Yesterday I went to the Korean Martial Arts club which looks super cool. Based off of an army basic training manuscript from the Joseon period, we'll be learning how to swing swords and spears with some degree of accuracy and flair. The people running it seem like really fun mega-dweebs, which is exactly the vibe I hoped for. Half the new members are foreign students as well so that makes it easy to talk to people in English (although I really should be practicing my Korean).
Tomorrow I'm interviewing with the skateboard club. I've always wanted to skateboard, I owned a hand me down one when I was 6 or so, but growing up in Qatar it wasn't really a popular or accessible thing. I'm doing this club for my inner-child, and also because I want to veer my fashion style towards a skater aesthetic anyway and there's nothing worse than a poser. Totally not tubular.
Finally, I also signed up for a film club. Not sure when the interview for that is, but I've had an intense passion for filmmaking since high school that I've never really truly followed up on practically. In high school I took media studies as a subject and made some short films, but I've been terrible about doing anything in my adulthood. This website's creation is partly to spur those creative desires since posting to somewhere helps motivate me quite a bit. I'm hoping this film club will do so similarly, plus give me access to a lot of equipment I'd rather not buy or rent myself. The catch is that the club is entirely in Korean though...but Korean movies love a foreign white actor who can barely perform somewhere in them (thinking specifically of the Australian parents in Lady Vengeance (2005) for this one).
So that's me booked. And that's not even to mention the actual language classes I have to go to every week day. I'm currently repeating level 3, apparently the most common level to repeat, and it's a bit of a slog. I know all the content so class is boring but an attendence rate of 70% is mandatory for my visa. My classmates are also a bit boring so far, maybe I just don't know them well enough yet. They obviously all know each other from the previous level while most my friends went up to level 4, but moreso than last semester I can really feel the age difference this time. Most students here are taking the language course to enter into university, making them mostly 18-20 years old. I generally don't mind an age gap but the class can feel very high school instead of university level at times. It'll get better, I just need to push through and socialise. And maybe not overbook my week and then also go on a bender on a Thursday night (even if it does fulfill my wish to be invited out). Ah, who am I kidding, I'll still find ways to do stupid things at stupid times, I just need to do so in moderation and actually pass this level. Next week should be a bit more easy going, a promise I need to force myself to carry out...but I guess we'll see by next week's round up.
Wednesday, March 11th -- First Post
My first post. It'll be a brief one, more a test than anything. Today was a fun day! After class I joined some friends for lunch and then went to the uni's club day. Being that I am now a 28 year old language student, my uni days are far behind me, but it was fun to get the air of it again and see the Korean twist on it. I signed up for a bunch of clubs, chiefly a traditional Korean martial arts club (swords included!), a skateboarding club (they said I was really impressive, I think they were blowing smoke up my ass) and a film club (hopefully I can finally get my ass in gear and work on my first short film since high school). That combined with my working on this website really bodes well for my creative output this semester!
I also had a brief chat with a masters student from England (in archaelogy, not too far off from my hope of a masters in history) and found out he was not the early 30s I had pegged him for, but actually 40 yeras old. He said it sheepishly but truthfully it really helped lift my own guilty burden of not having started my masters yet. Maybe there's hope for me.
Oh, I almost forgot! I bumped into the guy who hit on me at a bar two weeks ago (tragically do not swing that way). He is now back in my DMs. I am learning to sympathise with disinterested women the worldover, some attention is fun but it's possible to have too much. Not unknown before but now very strongly reinforced in my psyche. My apologies to my high school crushes a million times over.