Alas, time to say goodbye to an old friend . . . it seems that I have done something wrong with my Opera Unite account, and as a result, I came back home yesterday (Saturday) afternoon, after work, to find that I could no longer access my Opera Blog. Eight years of blogging, lost! I'm confused and inconsolable . . . and just before Christmas, too . . .
For some time, the new versions of the Opera browser allowed people to set up access to sets of shared files from specific folders, so that others could (for example) have private chat with them, view their photos, and so on. This meant, in fact, that many web functions normally available at separate web sites could now be replicated on one's own home machine, for free. So I found a free template online (I actually contacted the author about this, and he was (a) amazed that it was still in circulation, and (b) very pleased that I liked it), and got to work.
My intention was to discuss, offline and with private access, topics which were well off the beaten track and relating to the nature of the world we live in, which are not often discussed online due to their contentious nature. I may try to find another solution to this (or maybe Opera will relent . . . some hope!!!), but in the meantime I have other blogs set up in various places and I have changed the design of this one to resemble the offline one. I hate bright web pages - a web page is not a paper page, folks, even though it is often designed to look like one by default - and I hate whiteness that stings my eyes (think about fluorescent lights, for example). So I sat down this Sunday morning and decided that moping about it all weekend was no way to go about things . . . time for change. I've always been an agent of change!
So let's have something of an update . . . since the last entry here, I have worked at schools in Gwangju, Yangsan and now Busan. As usual, how long I will stay here is anyone's guess, but I have transitioned to teaching English to adults; I may change my mind and revert to children next time, though. The style of the place feels uncomfortable to me.
I was in fact fired from the Gwangju job after only three weeks, despite the fact that at the interview, the manageress pointed out that (a) she had chosen me from among over fifty applicants worldwide, and (b) she thought that I should stay there for ten years. But when it came to the crunch, there was no discipline and I simply could not control the youngest students. I then had to finish a second agonising month before moving to another public school in Yangsan, north of Busan, for some kind of non-standard contract which was for fifteen months, rather than the more usual year.
Probably the most difficult part of the long-term foreigner teacher's sojourn is the process of settling down. At the original hagwon (private English school) where I worked in Changwon, the boss had been happy for me to stay for as long as I wanted, and although the situation could be stressful at times, generally, I felt okay. However, when the school franchisor decided to update the materials, it suddenly became amazingly difficult, and after a few other unhelpful events, I finally resigned and left my job of five and a half years, moving to Miryang. They didn't want me to stay when the contract year ended, so I shifted to Gwangju; that was a fiasco, so I moved to Yangsan; I didn't want to stay there myself because it was so boring and out-of-the-way, so now I am in Busan. And I don't really feel happy here, either . . . I often think that this is a problem many (often younger) foreigners never really face, because their time here is a passing phase in their long-term journey to somewhere else; they do not feel the need to accumulate possessions, as this is impractical when hopping between countries. The long-term foreigner has other considerations to make.
These thoughts were in my mind the other weekend, when I stuck a load of old photos on my Facebook; I don't have a scanner here, so I used my current cell phone to photograph the, er, photographs, and posted the results to My Albums. As my editor in England once wrote: "How much water has passed under the bridge since then!" . . . and that deep, melancholic feeling returned, that times have passed and will not return . . . where are all the little friends I used to know? What happened to them? And do they ever wonder what happened to me?
It is in this frame of mind that I regard the loss of my blog of eight years, that record of places, times and feelings, with a sharp and unexpected sadness. It is a reminder that the wonders of twenty-first century technology are transitory, and that one of the reasons we lose them is because we do not control them ourselves . . . we trust third parties with arbitrary and arcane rules with our property, only to suffer loss when they are somehow displeased with our actions, and at its heart, this represents a loss of both personal privacy and personal sovereignty. And so I return to Blogger, where perhaps I should have been all along, as the other functions originally taken by Opera have been taken over in the meantime by my membership of Facebook.
Will I miss it? Hell, yes! I could see the usefulness of the services the browser offered for connecting my workplace with my home PC, and allowing me to access documents when I needed them but they were otherwise unavailable, and as I prefer to use Linux at home, it was a perfect solution. But now it's gone, and they have not told me why.
So thanks, Opera. I'll still use the browser of my choice, but now you lose out to others who offer similar services. And if this is how you treat a loyal, long-term customer who has actually been with you since Version 4.x, I won't be recommending you to friends and acquaintances any more. Not when you treat people like that.
I'll continue my journey to destiny some other way . . .
For some time, the new versions of the Opera browser allowed people to set up access to sets of shared files from specific folders, so that others could (for example) have private chat with them, view their photos, and so on. This meant, in fact, that many web functions normally available at separate web sites could now be replicated on one's own home machine, for free. So I found a free template online (I actually contacted the author about this, and he was (a) amazed that it was still in circulation, and (b) very pleased that I liked it), and got to work.
My intention was to discuss, offline and with private access, topics which were well off the beaten track and relating to the nature of the world we live in, which are not often discussed online due to their contentious nature. I may try to find another solution to this (or maybe Opera will relent . . . some hope!!!), but in the meantime I have other blogs set up in various places and I have changed the design of this one to resemble the offline one. I hate bright web pages - a web page is not a paper page, folks, even though it is often designed to look like one by default - and I hate whiteness that stings my eyes (think about fluorescent lights, for example). So I sat down this Sunday morning and decided that moping about it all weekend was no way to go about things . . . time for change. I've always been an agent of change!
So let's have something of an update . . . since the last entry here, I have worked at schools in Gwangju, Yangsan and now Busan. As usual, how long I will stay here is anyone's guess, but I have transitioned to teaching English to adults; I may change my mind and revert to children next time, though. The style of the place feels uncomfortable to me.
I was in fact fired from the Gwangju job after only three weeks, despite the fact that at the interview, the manageress pointed out that (a) she had chosen me from among over fifty applicants worldwide, and (b) she thought that I should stay there for ten years. But when it came to the crunch, there was no discipline and I simply could not control the youngest students. I then had to finish a second agonising month before moving to another public school in Yangsan, north of Busan, for some kind of non-standard contract which was for fifteen months, rather than the more usual year.
Probably the most difficult part of the long-term foreigner teacher's sojourn is the process of settling down. At the original hagwon (private English school) where I worked in Changwon, the boss had been happy for me to stay for as long as I wanted, and although the situation could be stressful at times, generally, I felt okay. However, when the school franchisor decided to update the materials, it suddenly became amazingly difficult, and after a few other unhelpful events, I finally resigned and left my job of five and a half years, moving to Miryang. They didn't want me to stay when the contract year ended, so I shifted to Gwangju; that was a fiasco, so I moved to Yangsan; I didn't want to stay there myself because it was so boring and out-of-the-way, so now I am in Busan. And I don't really feel happy here, either . . . I often think that this is a problem many (often younger) foreigners never really face, because their time here is a passing phase in their long-term journey to somewhere else; they do not feel the need to accumulate possessions, as this is impractical when hopping between countries. The long-term foreigner has other considerations to make.
These thoughts were in my mind the other weekend, when I stuck a load of old photos on my Facebook; I don't have a scanner here, so I used my current cell phone to photograph the, er, photographs, and posted the results to My Albums. As my editor in England once wrote: "How much water has passed under the bridge since then!" . . . and that deep, melancholic feeling returned, that times have passed and will not return . . . where are all the little friends I used to know? What happened to them? And do they ever wonder what happened to me?
It is in this frame of mind that I regard the loss of my blog of eight years, that record of places, times and feelings, with a sharp and unexpected sadness. It is a reminder that the wonders of twenty-first century technology are transitory, and that one of the reasons we lose them is because we do not control them ourselves . . . we trust third parties with arbitrary and arcane rules with our property, only to suffer loss when they are somehow displeased with our actions, and at its heart, this represents a loss of both personal privacy and personal sovereignty. And so I return to Blogger, where perhaps I should have been all along, as the other functions originally taken by Opera have been taken over in the meantime by my membership of Facebook.
Will I miss it? Hell, yes! I could see the usefulness of the services the browser offered for connecting my workplace with my home PC, and allowing me to access documents when I needed them but they were otherwise unavailable, and as I prefer to use Linux at home, it was a perfect solution. But now it's gone, and they have not told me why.
So thanks, Opera. I'll still use the browser of my choice, but now you lose out to others who offer similar services. And if this is how you treat a loyal, long-term customer who has actually been with you since Version 4.x, I won't be recommending you to friends and acquaintances any more. Not when you treat people like that.
I'll continue my journey to destiny some other way . . .
