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	<title>The Nervous Breakdown &#187; David S. Wills</title>
	<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com</link>
	<description>It's going to be okay.</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Mon, 05 Jul 2010 18:30:16 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<item>
		<title>Meeting a Messiah</title>
		<description><![CDATA[DAEGU, KOREA

His name was Daniel and I think he was a paedophile. Whether he was or he wasn’t, he certainly was a violent and delusional man, and his brief stint in my life was alarmingly full of coincidence and fear.


Our first encounter was on the subway in downtown Daegu. I was on my way home [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/11/meeting-a-messiah/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The Penis in the Mirror</title>
		<description><![CDATA[DAEGU, KOREA
I was drunk one night after work, singing in a noraebang (Korean karaoke) with co-workers, when Robbie cornered me in the dingy little bathroom. It was awkward. I barely knew the guy, except that he was a co-worker’s boyfriend and a notorious alcoholic. He was a big solid Irish guy, and I couldn’t place [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/10/the-penis-in-the-mirror/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The Magic Hat</title>
		<description><![CDATA[DAEGU, KOREA -
I didn’t look at a clock or my watch all day. Time ceased to be of any consequence. But not too long after the sun had risen, and well before it hit that point in the sky that said it was midday, we set out to see what Kelly called “real Korea”. When [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/10/the-magic-hat/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Hagwon: The First Day</title>
		<description><![CDATA[DAEGU, KOREA - 
I woke to the most awesome bright light. It was insufferably bright, in fact, and hurt my head tremendously. I could hear a terrible pounding and I wasn’t sure if that was the headache or the light making me crazy, but after a minute of lying there, I realised it was my [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/09/hagwon-the-first-day/</link>
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	<item>
		<title>A Thousand Words: Wilderness Kicks</title>
		<description><![CDATA[BIG SUR, CALIFORNIA -
I used to work on an organic farm in California, living in a barn full of horses and riding tractors through fields under the warmth of a gentle fall sun. I was a Beatnik then more than now – among hippies and flower children, believing everything I was told and digging all [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/09/a-thousand-words-wilderness-kicks/</link>
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		<title>Teaching Mikhail Gorbachev</title>
		<description><![CDATA[DAEGU, KOREA -
It surprised me when I first came to Korea and realized that Korean kids were given English names. Why, I wondered, wouldn’t they just keep their Korean name? Does an English name really make it easier for the kids to learn, or is it for the benefit of native teachers?
Of course, in the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/08/teaching-mikhail-gorbachev/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Shit Needle</title>
		<description><![CDATA[DAEGU, KOREA -
There may be some eyebrows raised by those of you who’ve never been to Korea, but what I’m about to tell you is true. It may also seem like it is exaggerated, or in need of censorship, but this is a serious anthropological study. 
 
In Korea, humour often pertains to the anus, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/08/shit-needle/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The Worst of Weeks: Fleeced Like a Rube, Pt. 2</title>
		<description><![CDATA[DAEGU, KOREA -
Rodney Munch is the sort of guy you’d normally consider pretty damn lucky, but lucky folks fall, too, and they fall harder than the rest of us. 
I once saw Rod being dealt a Royal Flush, only a week after his first game of poker. Another time, I saw him decline to choose [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/08/the-worst-of-weeks-fleeced-like-a-rube-pt-2/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Fleeced Like a Rube on the BBC</title>
		<description><![CDATA[BUSAN, KOREA -
“I’ll never trust another old person,” Bart Simpson once said, and for that nugget of wisdom I’ve always half-respected him. The fact is the elderly are as capable of screwing you over as a menacing looking teenager, or a hardass, stoneface punk twenty-something. Worse, the elderly won’t just take you for a ride… [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/07/fleeced-like-a-rube-on-the-bbc/</link>
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		<title>How to Meet Famous People and Get Free Books</title>
		<description><![CDATA[KOREA -
Some people call it blagging, but for others it’s just being lucky. I guess you might say it is called entitlement when you achieve something that maybe you didn’t jump through all the required hoops to get.
 
Two years ago I was put in a position that many people find themselves in, and I [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/07/how-to-meet-famous-people-and-get-free-books/</link>
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		<title>Sundays, Fucking Sundays</title>
		<description><![CDATA[DAEGU, SOUTH KOREA -
 
I’m not a religious man by any means, and so you won’t find me at church or mosque, or worshipping anything anywhere. I’m also not really a terribly active man, and so whilst I enjoy a walk in the park or a game of football, you also will rarely find me [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/06/sundays-fucking-sundays/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Why I Support Iran (and Cameroon)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[DAEGU, S. KOREA -
I recall an incident last summer when I was almost lynched in downtown Daegu by a hundred angry Korean football fans… It was the 2008 Olympics, and while the rest of the world focussed on the sport, Korea was obsessed – as always – with national pride and the supposed superiority of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/06/why-i-support-iran-and-cameroon/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Jesus Lives by North Korea</title>
		<description><![CDATA[NORTH KOREA -
The Dogs Howl at the DMZ
 
The most heavily fortified border in the world is a strange kind of divide, because unlike the people on either side of most military separations, Koreans seem to view one another as brothers and sisters. It just so happens that one country is ruled by a tyrannical [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/06/jesus-lives-by-north-korea/</link>
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		<title>Roe Moo-hyun and Korea&#8217;s Suicidal Tendency</title>
		<description><![CDATA[DAEGU, KOREA -
In collectivist societies, suicide is often a common and honourable thing. Well, perhaps it’s not honourable exactly, but rather it is connected to honour and the prevention of increasing dishonour.
The recent suicide of Roe Moo-hyun brought this problem to light. Of course, in a country that pretends fan death is real as a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/05/roe-moo-hyun-and-koreas-suicidal-tendency/</link>
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		<title>Korea Hates Google</title>
		<description><![CDATA[DAEGU, KOREA - 
“We have voluntarily disabled this functionality on kr.youtube.com because of the Korean real-name verification law.”
That was the message that popped up on my computer screen today when I tried to post a comment to a video I watched about Hunter S. Thompson and the Hell’s Angels. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/05/korea-hates-google/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>How to Swear in Korean</title>
		<description><![CDATA[DAEGU, SOUTH KOREA - 
It’s strange, but as an immature male who is learning another language, I’ve never really thought a lot about swearing in Korean… I know a few words, but not many, and I’m not even sure if the ones I know are real, or if people are just screwing with me and telling [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/04/how-to-swear-in-korean/</link>
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	<item>
		<title>The Oxes of Evil</title>
		<description><![CDATA[DAEGU, SOUTH KOREA - 
Chairman Moo, Moossolini and the Pyongyang Dancers
A year of living in Korea saw me as confused about Korean culture as before I arrived. I’d read about the fusion of old &#38; new, East &#38; West, and hadn’t known what to expect. I arrived and was left equally confused. Kimchi came as a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/04/the-oxes-of-evil/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>On Travel</title>
		<description><![CDATA[DAEGU, KOREA -
I recent read The Art of Travel by the wonderful Alain de Botton, and it has really made me think about my time travelling over the past two years, and more importantly, about the very notion of travelling. That is the aim of this book, to make the reader realise that like everything [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/03/on-travel/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>외국인</title>
		<description><![CDATA[DAEGU, KOREA -

Did you know that you are a foreigner? No matter who you are, where you are, as long as you are not a native Korean, you are a foreigner&#8230; 
I might not be an expert in speaking Korean, but there are a few things I can understand. Indeed, there were a few things [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/03/%ec%99%b8%ea%b5%ad%ec%9d%b8/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>On Kimchi</title>
		<description><![CDATA[DAEGU, KOREA-
Indeed, it may be “the cabbage you can ravage with the chilli paste taste,” but kimchi isn’t that amazing. I mean, taste is subjective and everything, but can anything really be so awesome that an entire nation of people could be obsessed with it? Even in America people vary their fast-food diets. One day [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/02/on-kimchi/</link>
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		<title>Why Every Girl Wants to be a Flight Attendant</title>
		<description><![CDATA[DAEGU, KOREA-
Blind drunk at five hundred &#38; thirty nine miles per hour, at somewhere around thirty thousand feet, I ponder the question any waegook ponders after meeting a Korean girl: namely, why the hell do they all want to be airplane cabin crew?
“So what’s the deal here? Are you gals pilfering our red wine? Is [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://archives.thenervousbreakdown.com/dswills/2009/02/why-every-girl-wants-to-be-a-flight-attendant/</link>
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