Deskwarming: An Introduction

I am deskwarming today. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you've never worked as an English teacher in South Korea. Deskwarming basically means that you must be at work, even if no one else is there and/or you have no actual work to do. It's in my contract that I be at work Monday through Friday; unless it is a national holiday, a day off for staff, I'm using my contractual paid vacation days, or I'm using my paid sick leave, which is heavily discouraged.

Deskwarming can actually be fun. I use the time to do a wide variety of things, especially if I'm alone in my office. Here are a few.

Things to do when I'm not alone in the office
If I've found a new subject to fascinate me, I do tons of online research on the subject. Recently, I've been looking at ways to publish my writing online and for guidelines for new writing I might like to do.

I keep up on Facebook, doing what I call tabbing. Tabbing is when you go through a list of links, in this case all of my wall posts on FB, and open all of the links in other tabs, allowing for the pages/videos/etc. to load. Then, I go through the tabs, look at everything and then re-post to FB and/or Google+.

Learning something new is always fun and there are so may ways to do so online. Recently, I've been watching videos and doing the exercises for math online at Khan Academy. Math has never been my strong suit and I decided to stop making excuses for why that is and work on it. Khan Academy

Write out postcards. I belong to a site called Postcrossing, where you are given another Postcrosser's address and you send them a postcard. You also receive postcards. It's really cool and I've received postcards from all over the world. Some of them were even from expats studying or working outside of their own country, like me. Postcrossing

Things to do when I'm alone in the office
I also exercise. There's no one here to see me so I get up, stretch and throw in some body weight exercises, like elevated push-ups or high knees. Every little bit of exercise helps.

Turn on the air conditioning and set it to a temperature that is actually cold, as opposed to the same temperature, or HOTTER than the temperature, outside.