Gratitude – 03/11/2009
Today, I am grateful for:
1. Engrish. A coworker reminded me of this site a couple days ago, and revisiting it brought some additional mirth to my day. Having spent a year in South Korea, and being the owner of a t-shirt proclaiming “Every good and perfect thing you have heard about calif ornia is probably true”, this site ministers to me.
2. Plastiki. I saw David de Rothschild speak earlier this week, and what he’s doing here is both crazy and awesome. He’s sailing across the Pacific in a boat made entirely from recycled plastics, to help raise awareness of the massively polluted state our oceans our in.
3. Plants. My wife and I recently started some seeds indoors, in anticipation of beginning a modest garden (a la Lynnita). The first shoot erupted from the soil yesterday, a lonely green sentinel in an otherwise barren wasteland of inch-by-inch squares.
I must confess to being a little surprised by how quickly this little guy popped up. Maybe he didn’t get the memo.
photo credit: jtloweryphotography
I love those first seedlings. They fuel hope that spring may come after all. Good luck with yours!
Thanks, Lynnita! I’m a little nervous about the whole exercise, having never really gotten up close and personal with plants before. Growing up on a farm, putting seeds in the ground was more about dumping several tons of them in the back of a drill and roaring around the fields on a tractor. I must say, there’s something transcendent about watching the seedlings sprout one by one.
I’m assuming, at this point, that more than one will sprout. Otherwise, the whole transcendence starts to break down in a hurry.
I couldn’t agree more with your gratitude towards Engrish.com What a great site. I have often thought of contributing to it with what I see here in Korea on a daily basis. Is it catharsis that allows me to celebrate the degradation of my blessed language even while aiding and abetting the linguistic colonization of Korea? Perhaps….
Thanks for the Plastiki link; I hadn’t heard about it.
Thanks for swinging by, Geoff. I remember visiting Engrish.com when I first returned from my foray in Korea, but had drifted away from it over time. It’s good to have people around who can remind me of the important things in life.
Glad to be able to share the link to Plastiki. I look at the adventure he’s proposing with equal parts horror and awe.