Having neglected this blog for nearly a year, I return again, this time with new found inspiration and motivation for elevating my prose. Encounters and exchanges with two recent friends over the preceding months bring me back here.
Yesterday (Saturday) I spent the better part of the evening with my new friend, who goes by the pseudonym Thomas Tye. While currently teaching English at a Hagwon here in Korea, Thomas is a true "Renaissance" man in every sense of the word. Sporting a burly black mustache and long, curly hair, he also manages to pull off a thick soul patch beneath his lips. Writer, film-maker, martial artist, musician, teacher and traveler, Thomas, his Kiwi friend and I spent the evening exchanging tales of our travels and adventures.
Thomas told me a wild tale of gallivanting around Asia and Europe on credit cards to finance a film project, that ended abruptly and tragically with a crazy story about an unreliable colleague embroiled in gang violence in Spain.
What really inspires me though, is Thomas' industriousness. I first met him last summer, as he promoted his self-published science fiction novel at one of the local expat watering holes. And so this evening, I finally opened to the first page of Finding Jack and began reading. The book is interesting, (to say the least), and I've only just started it, but already the possibilities of what I could possibly accomplish are there.
Thomas is also currently working on film projects for a Film Based ESL website. We both had a great time hanging out.
My other friend, Jack Cobb, is also looking to publish a book soon - a comprehensive guide for Westerners moving to Asia (and Korea specifically) to teach English. I've only read and offered feedback on his introduction so far, but he promises it to be a comprehensive guide to culture, customs, food, work habits and all other aspects of living in an Asian society.
His other project he's discussing is a screenplay drama/sitcom pilot. The basic concept of the sitcom is a foreigner/expat bar in Korea. He succinctly described it as, "basically Cheers meets MASH." It sounds almost crazy to me, but then Hawkeye once said, "Insanity is just a state of mind." Hopefully I can find the time to hang with Jack before too long. As I'm now single again, perhaps that will be more manageable.
1 comment:
Hi, Tyler! This is Kelly who sat by you instructing in the Korean class in Masan~^^; Your blog is really cool! Soooooo impressive! I'm glad to see you've restarted here. I would love to be a regular here^^,so don't neglect~
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