October 29, 2004
Yesterday was action packed, as usual. To begin with we had the second day of testing at my school, and the results were a lot better then Wednesday’s exam results, so I was pleased.
After work I met with U-rim to go and see the movie “Before Sunset.” This movie starred Ethan Hawke and Julie Delphy, and was the sequel to the early 90s flick “Before Sunrise,” (a movie that I fell asleep while watching some years back). Anyhow on to the flick. So U-rim likes herself the look of some mid-90s era Ethan Hawke. Her idealization of Mr. Hawke was shattered when his herion addicted skeltor-esque old man visage appeared on the screen (”Oh my god…he looks old!”), but other than that she seemed to enjoy the movie.
I on the other hand was not so keen on it. For an hour and a half we were treated to a voyeuristic look at two people. They walked and talked about everything or nothing for an hour and a half, and we in the audience listened to them. It was no different than going to a park and listening to random conversations there…well it was slightly different, in that the viewer was even further removed for the scene. In the park, at least you were really there, in the same place as the people you were spying on. In this movie on the other hand, you were sitting in a theater while Ethan Hawke Skeletor King talked with Julie Delphy.
I for one would have liked to have a conversation than listen to people I don’t care about have a conversation about sex and spirituality and happiness other “deep” topics. But U-rim liked it, so it doesn’t really matter what I thought of it. Since she was happy, I was happy.
Oh and speaking of “deep” subject matter, some Jehova’s Witnesses came to my door yesterday, I told them (in Korean) I didn’t believe in God…because I was a Buddhist. Which instead of making them try to convert me, caused them to start asking me questions about how I became Buddhist and how long I had been studying in Korea and such. After I answered they thanked me and just left.
Anyhow today I don’t have to teach, but I have to meet some parents and tell them how poorly behaved, or awesome their kids are.
WOOHOO!
October 27, 2004
Today was testing day for my students, and boy was it annoying. The students (save for the kids who listened to me) did incredibly poorly, which is not really a surprise. During this testing period I realized that there was one thing I miss about working for Korean nationals, and that is the absence of “touchy-feely” discipline.
I have a couple of classes of morons who don’t listen to me at all, but there’s nothing I can do. I ask them to listen to them nicely, which they don’t…I have the owners “tell” them to listen, which they don’t, and after that…well I’ve got nothing. It’s a far cry from my “training” at Kid’s College where I was told by the regional director to march rowdy children up and down flights of stairs until they cry and listen to me.
If I was their normal teacher I’d be yelling at them and hitting them, but since I’m white I can’t do such things, and because I’m white, the students are less likely to listen to me, and therefore more deserving of a hollering…
October 20, 2004
Today was one of those days where had I been in America, or if I was a Korean, it would have been a hell of a lot easier. Nothing extremely heinous happened, it was more a series of hella annoying events than a “I hate this country” series of events.
As you may or may not know, in Korea cellphones are a way of life. Everyone (including Buddhist priests and kindergarten students) have cellphones. So, like a good denizen of Korea, I have my stupid little phone, but due to my foreign status, I can only use my phone if I pre-pay for a certain ammount of time (like 10,000 won and I can use my phone for an hour). When I use up my time, I am no longer able to make phone calls (but I can still recieve them). So that went down last night, and I knew I had to head to the phone company. It’s a tad annoying to have to do this, but it’s not really a big deal. All I have to do is just go to the phone company office prior to my calligraphy class, plunk down my money and my phone is in business.
Now in Korea there are offices for the cellphone companies all over the place, except for the subway station I usually depart from. So I walk over to Shinchon station (which is further from my house and my ultimate final destination). I walk into the phone company’s office and tell them that I need to pay. It turns out that the computer system required to let me make a local phone call doesn’t become operational until 11:00 (it was 10:20 at the time). Since I didn’t have time to wait around, I headed off to the subway station and adventure…just in time to miss the train.
I waited for 10 minutes before the next train arrived. I get on, and as the train departed I realized I was going the wrong direction. Not a big deal, I’ll just transfer at the next station, a station I arrive at just in time to miss the train. So I wait 10 more minutes for another train. It’s then 10 more minutes to my destination (it’s only 2 minutes from the station I usually depart from). By the time I arrive at the station, there’s only about 20 minutes of class time left (which would have ended up being about 15 minutes by the time I got out of the labarith-like subway station).
I don’t really have enough time to go to class (5 minutes preparing, 5 minutes cleaning up leaves a scant 5 minutes in which to practice), but I also realize that if I carry on to work, I’ll be extremely early, so I decided to kill some time at the crazy 1,000 won ($1) store in the station (the one that sells nunchucks and knock-off Pringles from Indonesia). This plan falls through since the shop is not yet open yet…wtf dudes?! It’s friggin’ 11:00 dudes, where you at yo? So with nothing else to do, I head off to work.
Now this whole, annoying, inconvient scenario could have been avoided if I could have recieved a phonebill like a normal human being, instead of having to go to the phone company and juice it up everytime I want to make a call.
October 13, 2004
Yesterday was an extremely busy day, that much like the Energizer Bunny, kept going and going and…well you get the idea. So this week my schedule at work changed, no more finishing at 7:00pm WOOHOO! However, I had to move around my outside schedule as well. So yesterday morning at 11:30 I headed off to my calligraphy class. On the way there I was without the protection offered to me by an mp3 player, and therefore some random dude started to talk to me. He’s artist in Hongdae and asked me what my hobbies were. I told him playing guitar and some other crap, and he got really excited. He asked if I had a band, which I don’t and then said some crap about getting a band together or some nonsense. We exchanged phone numbers so I’ll see what happens. Anyhow in the subway, because I had no headphones, and I was an able bodied male, so grandma asked me to lift some huge box so that she could balance it on her head. I obliged the grandma, and she trotted off with some crate of something atop he cranium.
When I finally arrived at me calligraphy class, there was a room full of middle aged and up women. They all got their stare on at me…I take it not too many twenty-something white dudes take up calligraphy while in Korea (most do take up drinking, and a liking to Korean vagina however). So I’m getting my calligraphy on, and the ladies keep checkin’ my calligraphy out….WTF? I mean c’mon ladies you gots to like me for more than my consumate brush strokes…check out bod! Anyhow those ladies chatted it up with me a bit, so it’s all good…I had to use Korean that didn’t use the phrase “재 수 없어…” (jae su opso…[it sucks]), so I got some serious practice. Best occurace while in class…some lady took a nap while writing a scroll in Chinese characters…on top of her work!
I then when to work. Work was work. I got on the bus and headed off to tutor my students in Soongshildae. I got there early so I wandered around on the street and had an uncomfortable encounter with some aged white dude. He clearly was here due to his inability to function in his home land. I tutored and then headed home to meet up with my honey.
Once reunited, we head for Beer Campus for a drink. Beer Campus is our favorite beer (or school) related establishment. It’s cheap, not noisy, clean, and the owner is a good dude. Since it’s mid-terms right now, the place was virtually empty. We chatted with the owner about spicy food, and mountain climbing, and my knowledge of obscure Korean vocabulary. Additionally we ate some extremely spicy chicken dish known as 닭갈비 (dalk kalbi). After that it was time for sleep.
October 6, 2004
I’m not going to lie, I’m a rock guy. I have been since I was in middle school. I own and listen to other genres, but if you were to look through my CD collect you’d see it’s mostly rock music.
As you may or may not know, I live in Korea now. Since arriving here, I’ve beens surprised by the extreme lack of indigenous rock music. I’m by no means saying it’s non-existant. There is a rock scene, with some really decent rock bands in it, but what surprises me is the lack of rock not compared to the mammoth nation of America, but compared to Japan. I mean Japan and Korea are similar countries in many ways, yet where there’s a lot of Japanese rock bands there are surprisingly few Korean counterparts.
I’ve been trying to figure this out and can’t really put my finger on it. Geographically the two countries are similar in size and terrain. Their diets are similar. Both countries were ravaged by war in the middle of the 20th century and rebuilt. Their cultures are fairly similar with a heavy emphasis on family and “the group” over the individual. Both countries are also fairly male dominated socities.
So why is it that there are so many more Japanese bands then Korean bands? I don’t live in Japan, I don’t have a lot of exposure to Japanese entertainment, yet I know of a lot more Japanese bands than I do of Korean bands (and with the Korean bands I’m counting bad college punk bands with no records and even with those bands, I can still name a lot more Japanese rock outfits.)
For awhile I thought that perhaps due to the male population of Korea’s mandatory military service, bands couldn’t get their act together for any duration of time, and that seemed like a reasonable answer, but then I realized roughly 50% of the population never has to serve in the military. Which brings up another interesting point, women are serverly under-represented in the Korean rock scene.
If it was strictly the Confucian, patriarcical society that caused women to be excluded, Japan’s rock scene would be similar, however that is not the case.
Countless Japanese bands are fronted by ladies (Shonen Knife, Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, Pizacato Five) or have female members (Boredoms, [insert some other band who’s name I forgot here]). The number of Korean bands with female members is drastically smaller than in Japan. Out of those bands, two of them have ties to Japan. Cherry Filter (perhaps the biggest female fronted rock band), has a female lead singer, who was originally a solo artist in Japan. Another band, Nonstop Body, is a female punk band whose albums, with the exception of some compilation work, are released on a Japanese record label.
Cherry Filter has a female lead singer (who incidently got her start as a solo artist in Japan), Schizo (an indie metal band) has a female bass player, and Nonstop Body (a punk band) is composed completely of females (they are actually on a Japanese record label).
Even when looking outside of the realm of rock music, the pop music of Japan tends to be more, for lack of a better word, rockin’. The most popular music in Korea (aside for eye candy boy bands, and even they have this style tune) are sappy ballads about unrequited love, which always have music videos in which someone dies.
This is not to say Koreans don’t like rock. Perhaps the most well known and popular musician in Korean is Seo Taiji, an artist credited with bringing rap, rock, metal, and emo to Korea. It is also quite telling, that Seo Taiji spends the majority of his time outside of Korea.
