Ethical behavior?

Picture this: your coworker, who has seniority over you due to his/her position, calls you into his/her office for a talk. As you go in, s/he asks if you mind if the secretary joins you. Of course that’s fine, you say.  Then this coworker begins to ask a series of questions about why s/he feels there is a communication gap between you and why you seem to constantly be questioning his/her authority, despite the fact that the things you do are only part of what is necessary to your job and despite the fact that s/he is not your employer. You try to keep an even temper while responding to this grilling but then notice that the secretary is writing down every word you say. When you ask your coworker why she is writing down your words, the coworker responds that it is so s/he has ‘written testimony’ in case s/he needs to show it to your supervisors.  Your permission was never asked to record your words.

Question: Is this a breach of privacy? In any other situation in which you record someone’s words–at least in the academic world–you always have to get permission from them to do so. Or is this only when you are actually using the information in a study? But wouldn’t the fact that there was some intent to show this record to others also require that they receive permission?

Gentle reader, what do YOU think?

Jet lag

At one p.m., still being in my pj’s gives new meaning to the ‘lag’ in ‘jet lag’. Slept till 4 am and was wide awake. 4 hours of sleep is luxuriant for people such as Rob Swanson, who does more on 4 hours of sleep than i can do on 8.5, but for me it is a sad, sad thing. I have never had that problem before, waking up early; usually I just get super-tired really early in the evening but then i can sleep straight through. So maybe this is the effect of not having been there long enough to get really adjusted to Korean time.

I’m still trying to process the trip.  when I got there, it seemed like i had never left. Now that I’m home, it seems like I never went.

Troy’s coworker sent him a link to pics of NK. It is a pretty interesting view.  The photographer kind of goes on and on about the housing but actually it looks the same as traditional houses in the south so I am not sure what he was trying to say about that.  The apt blocks, too, look fairly similar to SK ones, except more run down; style’s the same tho. What struck me was the lack of trees in the photos of the countryside–totally deforested in some of them–and the lack of automobiles in the city, as compared to the 2 hours it takes to drive 15 miles into Seoul on a Sunday.

There’s lots I should do today but I’m completely unmotivated. Story of my life!

Welcome back

I had to go into a staff meeting tonight. TWO AND A HALF HOURS! I ask you. And about what? Just the coordinator talking. 😦 Unhappy me.

I have nothing else really to say seeing as how i slept till 12:30 today. Just did laundry and proofreading, nothing too stressful. Not really looking forward to getting back into classes.  Right now no one has signed up for my class yet but probably they are just being slow since they have till tomorrow to sign up. And even if no one enrolled, I would get moved to a beginning reading class so either way, i have to teach. Alas, alack and lack-a-day.  I am sure there are worse jobs!