Crossword Puzzles... you're doing it wrong.

I made a crossword puzzle for my students this week. Although they understand the concept clearly, they sometimes fail terribly when finding the answers to the clues (and when I say fail terribly, I mean that it's worse than Kirstie Alley trying to fit into a size 1 pair of jeans).

One class of students today were particularly lazy and did not feel like doing the puzzle. I looked at my one loud-mouthed student's paper in the back -- it was BLANK. I encouraged him to give it a try. I came back 5 minutes later and I saw that he filled out a couple of answers. I was actually surprised he got one in particular:

Clue 15 Down: The word "ad" is short for _____.

It was a 13-letter clue that I didn't expect the slacker to know. I looked at what he wrote and saw this:

"STEPHEN HAWKIN"

He was referring to the theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking. I burst out with laughter. The student who wrote it wasn't laughing at all though.

CROSSWORD PUZZLE FAIL.

Other worthy mentions:

Clue 7 Across: Edison made the first light bulb = Edison ____ the light bulb.

8 letters... "CUCUMBER"

Clue 2 Across: The Simpsons and Spongebob Squarepants are _____.

8 letters... "EHPSWOWO"

Clue 15.5 Down: What is the comparative form of "hot?"

6 letters... "HOTDOG"

Everything that glitters isn't gold...

I saw a picture of a famous Korean girl band without any makeup on.

How do I know they have no makeup on? They look "tired" and also, these girls don't have that universal Korean red hue on their cheeks (from blush) that even the lady collecting cans has.

First, let's take a look at a picture of the band, 2NE1, with makeup:

Quite attractive, but after a wash and that 5 kg of makeup comes off...

... please brace yourself...

... are you ready ??

*runs and hides*

It's not that they are unattractive (they are very cute), but it's just that they put on a shit-load of makeup. I mean A LOT. They put it on like a Russian does with sunscreen on his first vacation to Hawaii. I even hear they use paint-rollers to apply their makeup.

No matter how many times I see before/after makeup pictures, I never tire of seeing them. I think it's important too:

For women, it helps reassure them that the surreal beauty seen in magazines and music videos is actually not real; professional makeup artists and photoshopping does wonders. (I mean, c'mon, I haven't seen a single woman in Korea with a zit here!)

For men, it helps remind us that the gorgeous girl in the club is actually normal-looking underneath it all... as Outkast once said:

"Better come back down to Mars Girl, quit chasin' cars
What happens when the dough get so low

Bitch, you ain't that fine
No way.. no way.. no way "

SImple, Yet Entertaining

What games did you play in your recesses in middle school? I remember playing b-ball sometimes and pogs (milk caps)... though most of the time was spent hanging around try to look "cool."

My middle school students like to play a game I like to call "Kai Bai Boh -- slap!"

Kai Bai Boh is the Korean name for "rock, paper, scissors" (we call it 'jon ken po' in Hawaii, though I have no clue why).

KBB is quite simple: two people play and the winner gets to hit the loser. Despite the complexity of their academics (learning excel function code and learning about asymptotes for example), they are entertained by giving and receiving physical abuse from friends.

Though KBB seems like a simple game, some have suggested that it is quite intricate in nature. Although everyone has an equal chance of winning, the psychological factors can possibly give a tremendous advantage to one party. Maybe that's how I went 0-3 with a student yesterday.

A Bamboo Girlfriend

I planned a group activity in my class. We were studying advertisements in class, so I decided to have my students choose a product and then try to convince me to buy it. One particular product befuddled me: a bamboo girlfriend. One group member explained to me and the rest of the class that you can sleep with their product at night and it will keep you cool. He then asked me if I had a girlfriend. "No." He then said that I can sleep with it if I am lonely.

"A bamboo girlfriend??? This kid must be smoking kim chi," I thought to myself.

After class, my Korean co-teacher explained to me that traditionally, Korean people slept with a bamboo piece during the summer. The bamboo material stays cool and it made summer nights more bearable. Aha... so my student wasn't puffing on the magic dragon afterall.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is "jukbuin," which literally translates to "bamboo wife" in Korean.

Shit, I could've used this during the summer.