Papa Sparks by the numbers

Days until I am with Aon, Jeremy Aaron and Bia:  50
 
Pages I’ve completed on my novel about Korea:  98
 
Kilometers I ran at the gym on the treadmill in one hour: 10
 
Kilograms I have lost since May 1st:  25
 
Slices of pizza I can eat while watching a “pizza movie” (a movie that goes well with an [...]

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How did you end up in Korea? Part 1: Lost Luggage, Digestive Crackers, and David Letterman

“I turned left at Japan.”
When you decide to leave your country and travel halfway around the world to live and work-in my case to teach English in Korea-there are some things that you are never going to forget about your experience abroad and your life as an expat.
It goes without saying that for every foreigner [...]

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Pimping a Post

With Halloween two days away, I thought I would pimp a post, in this case a Halloween short story I wrote about Tipping Outhouses on Halloween. Take time to read it and vote.
Happy Halloween!

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Let’s Boogie on down to the Boogie Café

It was a cold, rainy November Friday evening when my Japanese friend, rock and roll and tattoo brother Kenny Shangrila took me to the Boogie Café in Yokohama. On my way from Bangkok to Chicago via Japan, I had a three-day layover in Japan where I would be hanging out with Kenny. After he had [...]

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For my Mother

For my Mother, Marlene Marie Miller who passed away on October 25, 2008
Mom, It’s been one year
since you’ve been gone;
and not a day has passed
when I haven’t thought
about you and missed you
more than one can imagine.
 
You brought me into this world
nurtured and protected me;
instilled in me what was right
kept me out of harms’ way;
you gave [...]

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Papa Sparks by the numbers

Papa Sparks by the numbers for Monday October 26, 2009:
56 more days until I am with Aon, Jeremy Aaron and Bia; 97 pages of my novel completed; 10 kilometers in 60 minutes on the treadmill today.

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The Dolmens of South Korea

On the island of Kanghwa, west of Seoul, South Korea is a very large and interesting stone structure that from a distance, looks like a rock table. Known as a “dolmen” or “goindol” as it is called in Korean, it is a kind of single-chamber megalithic tomb, usually consisting of three or more upright stones [...]

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It’s all a lie!

“Liar, liar pants on fire
Hanging from telephone wire.”
At one time or another we’ve probably all had to lie—for better or worse. Maybe it was a little white lie you had to tell a friend that he or she looked good in some outfit when in fact he or she didn’t or maybe we had to [...]

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The Band’s “The Weight” from The Last Waltz

The first time I heard The Band’s “The Weight,” at least the first time I can remember hearing it was in 1983’s The Big Chill. I might have heard it before, but it didn’t, if you can excuse the pun, touch a chord as much until that movie. It just wasn’t [...]

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All Quiet on the Eastern Front

It’s 7:00pm on quiet Friday night in Daejeon, South Korea (for those of you not familiar with South Korea, Daejeon is about 100 miles south of Seoul)—quiet in that I am sitting alone in a classroom at the Woosong (pronounced oo-song) Language Institute waiting for one or two students to show up for their 7-9 [...]

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