[Paddlewise] Who's Who

a) Name: David Kosofsky

b) Contact Details &/or Location:  d.avid_at_i.am  or
kosofsky_at_soback.kornet21.net
                        Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul KOREA

c) Kayaks owned or paddled: Feathercraft K-Light 
(boat names also if you like): With a skin-boat like a K-Light, the
relationship to the paddler is so intimate that it would seem odd to give
the kayak a name. After all, I don't have a separate name for my knee or
my liver.

e) Special interests: travel, reading, writing


f) Specialist knowledge: Asian affairs; English rhetoric; comparative
history


g) Strong opinions: by the thousand, and typically on several sides of the
same issue. If there's any coherent theme, though, it's probably a deep
distrust of all forms of cultural nationalism.


h) Most interesting kayak trip: In the just under two years that I've
owned my K-Light, I have paddled it in Florida (Keys and 'Glades); in
British Columbia (Gulf Islands, Sunshine Coast, etc.), and New Zealand's
South Island (crater-harbors, lakes, fjords), all of which are famously
lovely and hardly need any public-relations help from me. But I've also
done a bit of paddling on some of the lakes right here in South Korea,
with landscapes (brooding cliffs, layers of pine-covered mountains)
straight out of an Oriental hanging-scroll brush-painting. And since
kayaking (other than as an Olympic sport) is totally unknown in this
country, these trips are more special in that the experience, thus far, is
mine alone. I'm inclined to tell other kayakers about it, but on the other
hand....


i) Short Bio (personal description):  I grew up in the suburbs of
Washington, D.C. (lived `inside the Beltway' before the Beltway was even
built) and did quite a bit of boyhood paddling on the Potomac in a Grumman
aluminum canoe.  Left USA in 1977 and have lived in East Asia ever since:
Japan, Malaysia, and Korea (for the last 17 years), where I teach in a
university and also do freelance writing on Asian cultures and travel
destinations.  When I tried kayaking in Vancouver in the summer of '97, I
rediscovered a love of paddle-sports that had lain latent for nearly three
decades.  Since then, most of my free time (fortunately the Korean
academic calendar allows me one two-month vacation in the winter and
another in the summer) has been fairly kayak-centered.... though not quite
as much so as I'd like. Apart from this new-found passion, I am an
indoorsy, bookish, married forty-six year old with a very young son...
five months younger than my kayak, in fact.


***************************************************************************
PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not
to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission
Submissions:     paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net
Subscriptions:   paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net
Website:         http://www.paddlewise.net/
***************************************************************************