The Who

Who Now?

Hopefully you haven’t come to this section of my blog in the vain hope of finding something related to much-loved but now rather dated (thanks to American TV nabbing taking their tracks and bastardizing them into theme tunes) band, The Who, but rather, to take a dip into the life of the man who writes and keeps this blog.

Go on, then…

In Autumn 2009 I, Tom, left my hometown of Melksham, England, for sunnier pastures and better economic prospects. Actually, having spent my undergraduate life attending a church with a relatively large international community, I ended my time at Royal Holloway, University of London, with a First Class BA in Drama and Theatre Studies and a hope to teach English abroad. This eventually turned itself into a plane ticket to the Republic of Korea and a graduate job (you need a degree to work as an alien here), something that most graduates in England aren’t fortunate enough to have due to the worldwide economic crisis. I’m particularly lucky in that the country I’ve moved to hasn’t been drastically affected by this, and that it also happens to be the home country of my girlfriend, whom I met and began dating during her year abroad studying in England.

Oh Right, So What’s The Plan?

Currently, then, I’m here to teach for a period of one year until July 2010, when my contract ends or is renewed. The plan is currently open ended, as is my future, and it seems as though the course of my life could change drastically in the next year. Starting with the fact that I’ll be able to speak a decent amount  of Korean, something I wouldn’t have counted on a few years ago.

But Tom, Do You Have To Be So Pretentious And Over Indulgant?

Yes. I like to think that outside of the virtual world I’m not quite the same as I appear to be from this blog. Keeping a decent level of interesting and complicated English flowing from my fingers in this space gives me the sense that, as I learn a new language and culture, my own isn’t silently slipping from my grasp. Hopefully you can look over the fact that I started this so that you could keep up with what I’m doing but I’ve now turned it into something you might occassionally have to sit down with a dictionary or suchlike to comprehend. And if you don’t need a dictionary to read this blog then I intend to sit down with a Really Big Dictionary and pick some really short but really subtle words that you won’t understand, and neither will I come tomorrow.

After teaching “Do you like apples” three million times I feel the need to use words like Gangflabuous and Pyromenicidinal freely, sporadically, and, most importantly, transphofopangicabuously. So please excuse me.