A Little About Me - Allan Pollett

I am originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

I studied at Dalhousie University where I recieved my physics degree. In 1996 I met my wife, Hye-mi Song, a Korean woman who was learning English in Canada. Inorder to stay with her I moved to Korea. Now I teach English to kindergarten students. It's hard work, but it's worth it to stay near my wife. We plan to move back to Canada next year. We hope to go to medical school. If there are any deans of medicine reading this please contact me. :)

Being in Korea has also given time to practice Judo. I have enjoyed this sport for a long time. I finally recieved my black belt at the beginning of 1998. Also, I have fought in several Korean regional competitions. Most of them not with much success; however, I did manage to get a silver medal in a large provincal competition.

(Sept.20/98) On Tuesday, I'm returning to Canada after two years of being in Korea. I'm really looking forward to gong home. It's going to be like Christmas only better.

Here is a picture of my father and his staff. He is a pain specialist and has one of the few specialized computers for dealing with pain treatment. I am very proud of him. When I go back, I'll have him treat me with that computer. Doing judo in Korea has done some nasty things to my arm.
(Nov.28/98) I've gone to Canada and returned to Korea. I liked my stay in Canada. But I was so busy that I didn't get to finish all the things I wanted to do. I tried to get into medical school. However, like many others, I tried and failed. My grades were the problem. I was such a horrible student when I went to university. At the time I really wasn't ready. Next year, I plan to go back and do a make-up year.
I did manage to sort through some of the things I had at my parent's house. My room was a mess. I've getting all my magazine orders sent home and my parents lovingly threw the dozens of parcels into my room. I was really quite unbelievable. There was no room for me to stay. However, I was impressed that all the things I had ordered arrived and were as the sellers said they would be. It goes to show that people are generally honest. It would have been very easy to have ripped me off, so THANK YOU for your honesty!!
Now I'm back in Korea. Sometimes I wonder why I came back. But upon seeing my wife, I realize. However, it is really strange to be living in a foreign country, where you are obviously a foreigner. I stick out like a sore thub. Generally, the Koreans are very good to North Americans. Actually, they treat us better than they treatment themselves.

Feb.21/99 Well, it's a new year. Last week I celebrated Chinese New Year. I guess it's the year 4332. I'm working as much as ever and plan to return to Canada sometime in the summer. It will be good to get some rest. Also, it will be nice to be in a country where everyone can speak English.

I'm trying to learn some more html language so that I can improve this site. I probably will have to buy a book, I've pretty much exhausted the resources available on the net. I want to add a quiz to this site but I've had problems setting up the page. I'm still not sure how to get users input from a webpage. I'm still new to this html-thing. keep on checking in and hopefully I can add more new and interesting sections to this site. Thanks for visiting.

July 18/99 I'm finally going to be returning to Canada, after almost three years of living in Korea. Though Hye-mi and I are married on paper, we haven't had the offical wedding yet. So, on August 21/99 we'll have the offical ceremony in Canada.

December 21/99 I'm back in Canada. I thought originally that when I came back I could easily find a job however this was not the case. I had applied to almost everything that I could but with no luck. It's hard to get an accurate understanding of someone from a piece of paper entitled "Resume". I knew that I have been blessed with many talents which I did not want to go to waste. I decided to create my own job. Recently I started my own business Global Net Trade. It is an internet company with for the time being one site UCanBuyArt.com . The site's goal is to help artists get online and to help make art accessible to the world. I am trying to get artists from around the world to join the site. I has been quite the project. I began with just with an idea. I looked at my home town and saw great talent in the community's artists. I felt that the people are just as skilled as anywhere else why do they lack the recognition. So far I have depleted my savings and built a site. Everyday, more and more artists join the site. They see the Internet's potential and want to be a part of it.

January 3/01 My business is fourishing and have had sometime to enjoy visting my parents again. One problem has been that I recently lost my job and I'm looking for work. If you want to help me out check out my resume. Thanks! More to come....

August 15/04: It is very interesting to finally come back to this site. I haven't had much time to update it. I felt guilty because it seems to have become quite popular dispite my lack of effort. I think it is very cool that so many share the same hobby and love of the old horror magazines. The loss of my job which I describe earlier lend to me spending more time on my own business. My business now fortunately generates a modest income and allows me to buy the occassional piece for my collection. The problem I have is running my business(es) is very time consuming. I feel like my life has been one of potential and disappointment. The UCanBuyArt site was almost bought out for half a million but things fell through. After I launched a partnership with several real estate agents, where I promoted their businesses on the web. It looked like things were going to go really well for these agents and I would receive a modest success as well, but then DMOZ got in the way. DMOZ is important because it is used by Google and Yahoo to determine the quality of a site. It is run by volunteer editors who have a lot of power to decide which sites should be listed. I got these agent's sites approved and listed by over 30 different editors. Then one day, one editor decided the all the sites should get banned from DMOZ. There was no justification and neither myself or the agents had any recourse. The problem was the ranking of the sites was instantly affected and suddenly the business was almost dead. After one year of making appeals (where I had other editors agree that I did nothing wrong) I still haven't been able to resolve the problem. I business has only partially recovered.
My current goal is to achieve success without worrying about DMOZ or other biased sites. I hope that I can help many others become successful in the process.