西洋오랑캐

I recently learned an outstanding phrase in Korean that caused me to realize as a language Korean has a lot of odd words and phrases that use animal words, yet have nothing to do with the afore mentioned animal. Here are some of the most awesome.

새우잠 (shrimp sleep) - sleeping in the fetal position. This expression makes some sense due to the fact that a shrimp, like a fetus, is all curled up.

술고래 (alcohol whale) - a drunk. I guess the guy is like a whale that lives in alcohol.

고래고래 소리 (whale whale sound) - shouting. Um…inspite of their size, aren’t whales fairly quiet? [bonus language note: tack 지르다 on to make it a verb]

출마 / 出馬 (appearing horse) - running for election. Thank god Bush can’t do appearing horse next election term. [bonus language note: add 하다 to make it a verb]

개기름 (dog oil) - the oil found on one’s skin. “Man I need some Oxy…I have really dog oily skin.”

개꿈 (dog dream) - a meaningless dream. Who are they to say that a dog’s dreams are meaningless. The dream that dog had in Disney’s Cinderella seemed pretty meaningful!

개소리 (dog sound) - stupid talk. Well dog’s are pretty stupid, so this one kind of makes sense. [add 하다 to make a verb of this]

공부벌레 / 工夫벌레 (study worm) - a nerd. Not that different from the English expression, “book worm”

So there are some of my favorite animal based expressions having nothing to do with animals. If you know any others feel free to leave a comment.

Earlier this week I mentioned a walk home in a deluge without the protection provided by an umbrella. As it turns out this was the begining of the “rainy season” (or “monsoon season” as comedians Tommy Davidson and Joe Torry refer to it on AFN) here in Korea.

For those of you on the outside Korea has a rainy season (장마철 in Korean) that lasts from the end of June to the middle of July (roughly three weeks). For me this is the most obnoxious weather pattern ever.

The thing I dislike the most is the fact that the rain is not constant, but there is always a constant threat of rain. This leads to a lot of pointless carrying of umbrellas, or a lack of umbrellas when umbrellas are needed.

Last night I was headed over to the corner store to get some brew and right as I walked out of my building it started pouring. It was the kind of rain that was hitting the ground with such force that the drops were bouncing upwards. I went back inside, up a flight of stairs and grabbed my umbrella. By the time I’d gotten back downstairs the rain had completely stopped (I was inside for roughly 30 seconds), but I did not leave the umbrella at my house, since that was only asking for trouble.

I love the end of the semester! Not only do I get to create, administer, and grade tests, but I have report cards to fill out. This is the most pointless and time consuming task attached to my job.

I’m not against report cards for say, since those can be fairly quickly completed. What I am against is the “teacher comments” part of the report cards. This is the most time consuming part of the process and the biggest waste of time. Of the parents 50% never see the report cards (since they are given to kids to take home). Of the 50% that do see them, I’d say that 95% can’t understand English at all (and therefore can’t understand what I’m writing). Of that 5% that do understand, some 99% misunderstand what I’ve written and take offense. When it comes down to it 1 mom can read English well enough to understand what I’m writing.

If not for the fact that my employer is Canadian and can understand English, I would just write some “fake cursive” and be done with it…but alas.

Fake Cursive

The other thing is what I’m writing is very similar and more often than not, kind of dishonest. Since parents don’t want to hear negative things about their children I have to be nice in my writing.

For example when I really wanted to write something like, “Jenna is dumb as a rock. Stop wasting you money on all these hagwons and teach her how to cook, clean, and please her husband since she is destined to be a housewife,” I end up having to writing something like, “Jenna is a polite student who gets along with others. She has some difficulty with the material, but with continued hard work will continue to improve.”

Now if you’ll excuse me I have more of these complete wastes of time to work on.

색즉시공 (Sex is Zero)

Porky’s, American Pie, Road Trip, Freddy Got Fingered…America has a fairly long tradition of teenage, gross out, sex comedies. While Korea may not have quite the same legacy, with films like 색즉시공 they are on their way.

The film is your pretty standard “college loser guy (played by 임창정) falls for the popular girl who is dating the campus stud (and by default the biggest asshole in the film) and has raunchy adventures in an effort to win her heart” fair. Since this is Korea not only is the guy a geek, but he’s much older (due to mandatory military service) than the other characters in the film.

So what are some of the comedic high points of the film?

● Dude eats a mouse ala Tom Green in Road Trip (unlike Tom Green, this happens off camera and is only implied).

● Dude eats a sandwich consisting of rat poison and fried jizz. I guess the guy who jerked off into a frying pan should get honorable mention as well.

● Girl pukes after drinking too much. This was allegedly a legit vomiting, and after doing so she proceeds to make out with a guy.

● Guy gets caught with his pants down watching internet porn.

● Guy attempting to squirt ketchup on some pizza (which is gross enough in its own right) gets the last of the ketchup on a poster of the crotch of a lingere clad model, and then proceeds to lick the ketchup off the crotch. Of course he gets caught by a lady.

● Presence of inflatable lovedoll.

● While a girl is engaging in sex with a quasi-gay character (or at least a virgin) who doesn’t know what he’s doing and going very slowly. The girl encourages him to ram it in, which he does, only in the wrong (in her opinion) hole. In the next scene she walks slowly, gripping her ass.

But this is Korea, so aside for the raunchiness and sleaze, we need some drama. This comes from an unwanted pregnancy and the decission of the girl to have an abortion. This part of the movie kind of detractions from the overall rhythm of the film and feels forced.

The first hour or so is sex joke after sex joke, guys getting hit in the nuts, spit takes, and faggy dudes screaming about mice and then suddenly it’s an afterschool special…and a aerobic dance competition. Then in the last five minutes things are wrapped up in a manner that was fairly obvious from the outset of the film.

The film is pretty fun, and a nice change from the historical dramas I’ve been watching lately, but like I said before, the overly dramatic middle segment felt really forced. Korean film makers, save the dramatic parts for the dramas and keep the rawkus sex romps pure and um…sleazy!

So this evening I headed over to Baram to check out No Brain, Sugar Donut, and Schizo. For some reason the bulk of the audience was composed of ladies (not that I’m complaining). The first band up for this show was No Brain, who incidently, are probably the most famous of the three bands. They used to play punk rock, and now play more straight ahead rock. In that regard they’re kind of like Green Day.

Next up in this odd lineup was Sugar Donut. They play kind of power pop. Sounding something like Weezer, but like older good Weezer, not newer suck ass Weezer. They really rocked hard, and the kids ate it up. The best song of the night was “Spinner Jump,” played by these fellows. Everyone was going nuts, including one really drunk girl (I think she was a highschool student) who did this really odd move in the pit. She would lean forward and walk into people headfirst into their midsections. Whatever, it’s all well and good, since she didn’t puke.

The last band of the evening was Schizo. Schizo are a metal band. They play metal music. Among their set were covers of Rob Zombie (”Dragula”) and Rob Zombie’s earlier work as White Zombie (”Super Beast”). Anyhow they had this bass player who was totally hot in a heavy metal sexpot kind of way.

They show was totally awesome and I learned something about Korean rock music fans; for the most part they are women, and they are ruthless. These girls would go totally aggro during the heavy parts of songs jumping, kick, headbanging with fists pumping in the air. At one point I turned around and saw a girl behind me had a bloody nose, but wasn’t letting that stop her. She was still jumping and flailing about like a dervish.

The other thing was the venue was about a million degrees, but that didn’t stop anyone from going totally apeshit during the show. By the end of the night my clothes were drenched with sweat as were the clothes of everyone else at the show. I kind of had the same feeling after the show that I had after a sparring class from back in the days when I did tae kwon do: I was hot, sweaty, on the verge of puking do to overwork, and had been hit in the nuts…you gotta love out of control rock shows. With the final notes having been played, it was time to go home.

I stepped outside into a torrential downpour, and realized my umbrella was gone. So journeyed home without an umbrella for 20 minutes. When I arrived I was completely soaked, only now it was rain water and not sweat. All in all not a bad night.

Oh and in case you have not realized it, I now have Flickr, and more pictures from this show can be seen here.

♬ “I’m on my way….I’m on my way….HOME SWEET HOME!” ♬

That’s right ladies and gentle-ladies, this morning I picked up my airline ticket, and in approximately a month’s time I will be arriving in New York for some rowdiness and tourism.

Actually picking up the tickets was fairly uneventful, but on the way to the travel agent I saw a pair of outstanding t-shirts that made no sense for the people wearing them to be sporting.

The first shirt was being worn by your typical Korean college student. You know the type: skirt, high heels, t-shirt, carrying a book. Anyhow these girls consistantly wear shirts with fairly random English slogans, but this shirt was something special.

The front of the shirt had a picture of Donald Duck, but on the back were a series of pictures of Donald’s face with various drug names written above the face.

The shirt looked something like that, only with way more drugs illustrated. Did you know that cocaine makes you look like a cowboy? I would have thought it would make you look like an extra from Miami Vice.

Mere seconds after seeing this typical Korean college student with her pro-drug t-shirt, I came across the most ironic shirt ever, except the irony was more likely than not lost on all who witnessed it.

I noticed a gentleman in a pink shirt, a fairly common shirt color for the gents here in Korea. As he came closer I noticed the slogan scrawled across his chest: “DON’T SEND MY JOB TO MEXICO!”

Now this shirt is very bizarre for a number of reasons. First off I’m no expert on Korean economics, but I pretty sure Korean companies aren’t sending jobs to Mexico (South East Asia maybe, but not Mexico), so this guy is walking around with a shirt proclaiming his hatred for people sending his job to a country that does not recieve jobs from his country, but that is not even the most ironic part of it.

The real irony comes from the shirt itself. I learned awhile back that a lot of the seemingly random shirts here are surplus shirts ordered from overseas. So maybe your school is having a cross country run and wants to make up some shirts. They send them to a printing company in Korea. The company runs off some extra shirts and sells them in the country…hence kids is Korea walk around with “TOWN OF COLONIE SUMMER YOUTH LEAGUE BASKETBALL” t-shirts.

So what this dude’s t-shirt was really saying was “Don’t send my job to Mexico, but it’s perfectly fine to have t-shirts made in Korea.” Oh I also find it hard to believe some Detroit assembly line worker would be sporting a bright pink t-shirt as means of supporting America.

I told myself I wasn’t going to write anything about my breakup until I could do so with humor, and though it still hurts, I think I can write about it in a quasi-humorous fashion (if it’s not that funny, please don’t hold that against me and remember normal posting should return shortly).

First of I want to thank those of you who acted in the porn movies that made their way onto the internet called, sent emails, left messages, offered advice, bought me coffee, and offered to set me up on blind dates, for helping me get through this difficult time.

On Wednesday of last week U-rim and I were supposed to meet. At this point I had not seen her for roughly a month. I was going into this meeting with the intention of having a serious discussion with her about her lack of time for me, her fear of her mother, the fact that she stopped calling me because her mother “didn’t like it,” and her overall shabby treatment of me since her mother’s return to the city. However, as has become par for the course these days, U-rim sent me a message that, because of her family, she couldn’t meet me that day.

So, much to my dismay, I broke up with her. This was perhaps the oddest breakup I’ve ever had. I liken it to going to see a horror movie after reading spoilers for it online in that I could see everything comming before it happened. Sure you don’t jump when the spring loaded cat comes flying out of the closet, but you still feel gross and can’t sleep when it’s over. That and one desires to listen to far too much crappy emo music and drink a lot of alcohol.

The other thing that was rather odd was the fact that I have no ill will towards U-rim. There was never an “I hate you bitch!” moment, which is not to say I don’t have any anger…it’s just not directed towards her. “The who are you raging at?” Well for starters, her mother.

Since her mother returned in April I have seen U-rim for approximately 5 hours. Since U-rim never tells her mother who she is with, it doesn’t really have anything to do with my whiteness in this case, but more to do with the fact that her mother is bored and needs a hobby or friends. Since she is bored she constantly “needs” to see her daughter, thus leaving U-rim no time for me. I offered to take her mother out to dinner as a means of making some inroads into being accepted by her family, but her mother would have none of that. So I blame her mother.

Additionally I blame Confucius. I wish I could remember what book I read this in, but back when I was a scholar I came across an awesome quote that went something like, “Once the Koreans adopted Confucianism, they quickly became more Confucian than the Chinese.” I have never been in modern China, so I couldn’t tell you how much of a role Confucian thought still plays in Chinese society, but here in Korea, Confucianism is still guides all social relationships. For example in the case of two kids born six months apart, the one six months younger will have to defer to his elder and show them the utmost respect. The same thing goes for parents. Here one must never question their parents. A parent is never wrong and must be obeyed.

In my two years living in Korea, I think I’ve done pretty well in terms of cultural differences. I came here understanding that Korean culture and American culture are different and accepted these differences. One is not better than the other, they are just different. But today I learned that at least in regards to dating, Korean culture is wrong. In America if an adult is in a relationship with someone their parents don’t approve of, the parents can express their displeasure, but ultimately it’s the child’s life and the child’s decision. The relationship between parents and children here is a lot like those nut job parents you would see on talk shows who force their kids to play football or do beauty pagents as a means of living out their dreams (as opposed to letting the kids live out their own dreams).

So anyhow up yours U-rim’s mom! Up your Confucius!

Since breaking up, U-rim has sent me three text messages and attempted to call me once (I was teaching at the time and couldn’t answer the phone. When I called back she wouldn’t answer). In those messages she told me she missed me and that she needed “time for thinking.” For now she’ll get time for thinking, as I’m still too upset to go have anonymous sex with random ladies, or non-anonymous sex with the girl who works at the corner convenient store, but I’m not holding my breath for anything to happen. We were going out for almost a year and a half, her mother has been here over 2 months, and she has not done anything to attempt to remedy the situation.

Additionally the day after breaking up with U-rim, a girl I used to be “language partners” with called me out of the blue. I hadn’t really spoken with her that much since I started going out with U-rim since the entire concept of “language partners” is just ruse to attempt to meet foreigners / nationals of the opposite sex. Rare is the “language partner” who did not begin with the notion that, “I need a girlfriend / boyfriend.” So this girl calls me out of the blue, like she had some sort of ESP that Wyatt Dunn is now availible. In the course of the conversation she revealed the following information: she had a fight with her mother because she broke up with a guy her mother like, but she didn’t (willing to go against her mother’s will), and the fact that her father said it would be cool if she married a foreigner (parents accept the concept of international marriage). So if U-rim really wants me back she better get off her ass quickly and do something, since the ladies are already lining up…

“Get Well Soon”

This will be quick and then I’ll let you get on with your life, or since this is the internet, downloading pornography.

Many moons ago I saw a Christian death metal band. They were sharing a bill with my brother’s ska band (you gotta love those bizarre lineups that can only come from all ages shows). I tell you this, because today’s ride on the subway was about moronic and annoying as the concept of “Christian death metal.

I boarded the train in 합정 as usually. Normally during my commute to work the trains will be be and several elderly Koreans…possibly a housewife or three. Today for some ungodly reason, the train (or at least three cars of the train) were filled with Korean elementary school kids and their overlords.

These kids were running around in the cars, screaming, swinging from hand rails, fighting each other, and whinning to their overlords. Basically they were behaving like animals. I was not sure if this is seen as appropriate behavior or not, because none of the adults in charge of these kids said a word.

I was not in the best of moods to begin with, and these little bastards were quickly getting on my last nerve. Unlike fans of the Christian death metal band in “the pit”, I couldn’t very well smack a bunch of second graders about on the train. Something needed to be done, and quick.

The train arrived at the next station, and when none of the children moved to get off, I figured I would. So I got off the train and turned around to face the door I had just exited from, awaiting the next train. For some reason the train sat there about a minute. During that time several non-school children passengers noticed what I had done, pointed me out to their cohorts and applauded me.

I waited five minutes for the next train and arrived at work with my sanity in place.

In the couple days while my computer was in the crapper, I did a lot of beer drinking reading. Among the tomes I perused was a copy of 어린왕자 (The Little Prince…ou, en français Le Petit Prince). I have no idea how this book came to be in my possession. I didn’t purchase it, I have no memory of receiving it as a gift, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t steal it.

So I read this work, for the third time in my life. The first time I read it, I was an elementary school student. At that point I thought the story was a lot of fun, probably in part due to the fact that there was a poorly animated Little Prince cartoon on Nickeloden at that point in my life.

In my high school French class, I again read The Little Prince, this time in its original language. This reading was not as enjoyable, primarily due to the fact that I was not a fan of my French class, but reading about baobab trees beat the pants of the endless stream of, “J’ai un rendez-vous avec David en vingt minutes,” that was my high school French class.

Reading it this week (in language number 3) I found myself loathing the book and all of the characters. Perhaps I’ve become an adult and no longer find the adventures of the small alien noble engaging or magical. If anything I found the Prince to be annoying. Perhaps I’ve become too Korean, but when the Prince first appeared, I found him to be incredibly rude.

For those of you with no knowledge of the Korean language, verbs are conjugated to show different levels of respect between speaker and listener. One would not address a stranger and a lover the same way, nor would a child address an adult the same way an adult addresses a child. So with that in mind let’s examine the Little Price’s first words.

“아저씨, 양 한 마리만 그려 줘!” (Mister, draw me a picture of only one sheep and gimme it!)
Traslated into English it doesn’t seem very rude, but the final word 주다 (to give) is conjugated in a form (줘) that would be used between close friends, or by adults speaking to small children, certainly not a child speaking to an older person they didn’t know well. He would have been much better off using 주세요, which is a much more polite way to demand something.

But rudness of the Prince aside, the thing that irked me the most about the book was how creepy the narrator, a pilot who had crash landed in the Sahara, was. A creepy loner guy who claims to have no real friends, he quickly befriends this small, sheep demanding child, due to his own sense of arrested development. The entire time I was reading the book I was creeped out at how much of a child molester the pilot was…the only thing missing was the mustache.

But as much as I hate this book, it holds a special place in the realm of junk I’ve read. The Little Prince / Le Petit Prince / 어린왕자 is more likely than not, the only book I will ever read in three languages…that is unless I decided to run away to Hong Kong, learn Cantonese, and read 三國志 again.

A few days back I mentioned my computer troubles. Today I’m back in business. In the process of getting my computer up and running again, I found another thing to add to my list of things that I like about Korea (since that question comes up a lot when I speak with random Koreans).

“I like that fact that even computer geeks are delivered to your door.”

That’s right kids, unlike America, where a busted computer means a trip to CompUSA or some equally foul trek to a place where upon arrival you are scoffed at and scorned by computer geeks and told that it will take 3 to 5 business days to repair your computer, here in Korea things are different.

In America the only things that will be delievered to your house are mail, newspapers, Chinese food, and pizza, but here…all manner of things (including computer geeks) are delivered to your house. But I digress. This morning at roughly 10:20 am, the computer repair man arrived at my domicle.

I had computer trouble one other time while living here, and that involved my computer being picked up by the computer repair guy and taken back to HQ to be serviced, so imagine my surprise when the computer repair guy sat down, turned on the computer and began throwing down upon my computer, computer-science major style. I didn’t really know what to do.

My house is incredibly small, and he was hard at work taking out the trash on my computer, so an akward silence permeated the entire process. I tried to make myself busy, but there’s not really a lot one can do in a one room apartment while a computer repair man is there and not seem like a weirdo…so I played some Game Boy, occassionally answering questions he possed to me.

When he was finished, he stood up and said, “Show me how you use the computer so I can make sure everything is working.” So I sat down, turned on some tunes (…And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead if memory serves me correctly), logged into a messenger program, and looked at a couple webpages while the guy stood there. As I chatted it up with my friend I realized that the computer repair guy was still there.

“Everything seems to me working,” I said, “You want some water or something?”

He did. I gave him some hydrogen and two oxygens and some money and he was on his way. So now my computer is working again, and I’m going to try to keep it that way this time. No illegal downloads. No illegal downloads. No illegal downloads.

Last night while comming home, I saw the biggest asshole I’ve ever encountered in my life. All Korean men are required by law to do 2 and a half years of military service, usually while they are in college. Men who are too fat, too short, too tall, have bum knees, or other maladies, are exempt from military service, but instead serve as civil servants. Clad in green jumpsuits, these civil servants work in public parks, subways, or according to the lads in the band Popstore, the post office.

For the young men working in the subways, they usually make sure that people aren’t jumping turnstiles, or keep people behind the yellow line while trains are arriving. However after nightfall, they also have to deal with the drunks who ride the rails.

Like I said, last night I saw the biggest asshole ever. I came up a flight of stairs to the platform to await the train. I was greeted by a barage of, “개새끼 (son of a bitch),” “씨빨 (fuck),” and other lovely Korean words. Looking up I saw a biligerent drunk 아저씨 (middle aged man) being restrained by a lad in a green jumpsuit. The civil servant was attempting to escort the drunk 아저씨 off the platform, but the drunk was having none of it and was attempting to break away from him.

All of those in Korea who have witnessed drunken “fights” can attest to the fact that very rarely are these fights anything more than screaming matches or who can say “새끼” the most contests. Drunks will get all up in each other’s faces and holler at each other, veins popping out of their neck and face like the Incredible Hulk, possibly jabbing a finger into the chest of the person they are arguing with. Very rarely do fights become legitimately violent (ie. punches thrown). So I was surprised when I saw the 아저씨 smack the civil servant in the face.

Somehow the civil servant guy was able to remain professional and attempt to restrain the asshole without choking him out, kicking him in the nuts, or allowing him to get hit by a train, but I’m getting ahead of myself there. Had it been me, I would have wrecked the drunk guy’s shit if he was slapping me in the face for doing my job. But not this civil servant, at one point after slapping him in the face, the drunk almost fell off the platform into an oncomming train, and instead of letting him fall to his death, the civil servant grabbed him and pulled him away to safety.

“So Wyatt, why is this drunk guy the biggest asshole ever?”

Allow me to explain my logic. I am throughly against anyone who comes into a place and berates people for doing their jobs, or treat store employees like crap. Now the green jumpsuit lads are doing their job…but unlike a McDonald’s employee getting bellowed at for forgetting “no pickles!” these green jumpsuit lads are not being paid. This is something he has to do, and to have to deal with getting smacked in the face and not recieving any coins for it is a little much to ask.

Like I said if it was me I would have wrecked that drunk guy’s scene after getting smacked in the face for doing my job.

Korea’s First Amendment

As of late I’ve been watching a lot of films: comedies, dramas, action adventures, historical epics…I’ll watch anything. The film last night, 대한민국 헌법 제1조 (Korea’s First Amendment) was your typical underdog overcomming adversity story in the style of The Bad New Bears, Rudy, Cool Runnings, or The Big Green. Unlike those films this film was not about underdogs playing sports, but about prostitutes running for Congress, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The film starts with a Congressman engaging in some extra-curricular activities with a hooker with a tattoo of a crab on her ass. This proves to be too much for the old man who ends up dying as a result of the sex.

The film then cuts to a brothel and we are introduced to most of the principal characters: the brothel’s manager, his assistant who wants to be an oldschool bitch slappin’ pimp, 앵두 (Cherry) a rookie hooker with some seriously nice cans, Kimera the old ‘ho, a hooker that wants to be a reporter, a good girl who’s name I forget, and 고은비 (Go Eun-bi) a firey woman that doesn’t know what she wants with her life. Additionally early on in the film, a ballbusting female cop and her cohorts raid the brothel, primarially to start crap with 은비, but this cop comes back later.

One day the good girl hooker is on her way back from chruch where she was volunteering at the Korean version of a soup kitchen, when she is brutally raped and left for dead. She is hospitalized, and 은비 demands justice. The police are unwilling to do anything because the girl was a prostitute and money was left at the scene. So after headbutting the ballbusting cop, and being bailed out of jail, 은비 decides to run for Congress in an effort to make things better for the prostitutes.

Along the way she somehow becomes a spokeswoman for the voiceless, and gets support for oldfolks in the oldfolks home, mothers with handicap kids, internet geeks, and prostitutes. Like all good underdog stories we are treated to some devestating plot developments right before the conclusion. In this film the hookers appeared in a news story, which their families saw and lead to beatings, and depression. But like all Bad News Bears-esque movies, things turn around in the movie and the hookers win the big game.

This movie was odd for several reasons, the first and most obvious was the fact that at its heart it was a light hearted comedy, yet it included a fairly brutal rape scene. This particular scene revealed something about the Korean film industry. While showing cocks is a no-no, a realistic dildo is allowed.

There were a lot of really funny parts in the film, but since it was about a political campaign in Korea (something I have very little knowledge of) there were probably jokes that went over my head. Anyhow if you can deal with some nice looking nude Korean ladies, a pretty intense rape, and want to see a fairly rediculous comedy movie check out 대한민국 헌법 제1조.

I’ve recently been having a lot of conversations with random citizens of Korea, so I’m thinking it might be in my best interest to get business cards (명함 in Korean) created. Now these business cards would not have my phone number, or profession, or even my name for that matter. What these cards would contain are the answers to all the questions I am asked by any Koreans that meet me (be it grandmothers, highschool students, punk rockers, businessmen, or shopkeeps). Anyhow without any further ado here is a sample of what my business card would look like (answers on the actual card will be in Korean).

Q: Hello?
A: 안녕하세요!

Q: WOW! You can speak Korean?
A: Yes I can speak Korean. Since this is Korea, I will say I can’t speak Korean well to be modest, but in reality I can speak Korean better than large swatches of my fellow English teachers.

Q: Where are you from?
A: I’m from America…New York to be specific.

Q: How long have you been here?
A: I’ve been here two years.

Q: Why did you come to Korea?
A: I studied Korean in college, and I wanted to continue to use and improve in the language.

Q: Can you eat kimchi? (This is the Korean way of asking “Do you eat kimchi?”)
A: Yes. I eat kimchi and many other Korean foodstuffs. I think Korean food is incredibly delicious. (This prompts the follow up question bellow).

Q: What is your favorite Korean food?
A: I really like 비빔밥 a lot, and 갈비, but it is hard to pick a favorite.

Q: How old are you?
A: I was born on August 19, 1980…you figure out my age. (This is my actual answer. I’m not being rude, it’s just that different people calculate my age differently. I’d say I’m currently 24, but some Koreans say I’m 25 others say I’m 26).

Q: Where do you live?
A: By Yonsei.

Q: Do you have a girlfriend?
A: Why, are you looking for a boyfriend? No, seriously I do have a girlfriend.

Q: Is she Korean?
A: Yes she is Korean. She is totally awesome! She’s smart, cute, funny, and kind. She can speak three languages and is a really sharp dresser. I’m really lucky to have met her.

Q: What do you think about 독도?
A: 독도는 우리 땅. (”Dokdo is our land.” This is the battle cry of all Koreans, and people are usually happy when I give this answer, until they realize that they are speaking to an American.)

Q: What do you think of Japan?
A: I have Japanese friends and their country is really clean, but with the exception of wassabi peas their food is a tad bland for my liking.

Q: Do you have siblings?
A: Yes I have a brother and two sisters. One sister is a nurse, and by brother and sister are twins and are in college.

Anyhow that about does it the questions that would be answered upon my awesome, fantabulous business cards. If I’ve left out any of the standard issue questions Koreans pose to foreigners please let me know (that’s what the comments are for).

Delicious Sex And Then Love

Last night I saw a truly excellent film entitled, “맛있는 섹스 그리고 사랑 (Delicious Sex And The Love).” I know what you are all thinking, “What are you doing reviewing porn now?” Well, this film is apparently a legitimate film, so here we go.

The plot of the movie is fairly simply: boy meets girl, boy humps girl, boy humps girl again, and again, and again, and…well you get the idea. For all the sex that occurs in the film, it’s not like the sex that appears in your average porn film. For starters, the viewers are not subjected to nonstop shots of cocks. Additionally the cinematography of the film is much better than “shot on video” look of a lot of porn (not that I’ve seen a lot of porn…honest!)

The actors in the film are also a lot more proficent in their craft than someone like Shannon Tweed, for example. Both 김서형 (Kim Seo-hyeong) and 김성수 (Kim Seong-su) are fairly well known actors inside Korea, each having appeared in some popular Korean dramas. Both actors play their characters in a believable manner (unlike the bulk of Korean dramas). Neither character is over the top, or overwrought with emotions. Compared to a lot of other Korean films, there was a refreshing level of realism brought to the film by these actors.

But as any middle school boy can tell you, no one watches a movie on cable with “sex” in the title for realistic characters, or beautiful cinematography…you watch it due to the promise of sex. So how was the sex? It was abundant!

A lot of films will have risque titles and then not deliver the goods. This was not one of those films. The first instance of sex occurs within the first five minutes of the movie, and the sex scenes themselves are pretty hot. My personal favorite is a “round two” sex session that occurs early in the film. After finishing up in the bedroom, the film cuts to a shot of the woman drinking some milk in out of the fridge in her panties. The guy comes into the kitchen and they go at it with the woman leaning in the open refridgerator (note to self: clean the fridge before attempting something like this myself). These scenes also do not suffer due to the fact that 김서형 is hot.

The sexiness that is Kim Seo-hyeong.

There was one odd part of this film and that was the presence of digital mosaic. Like their more baudy neighbors to the east, the Koreans have a problem with genitalia appearing on film, and use digital mosaic to cover this up. Unlike their neighbors, films made in Korea are usually shot in such a way as to not need to use this digital mosaic technology. So you get a lot of low quality Cinemax style porn that shows the torso of some shirtless Korean dude and then cuts to a woman’s “sex face.” This film was shot in a more western style: panties removed…digital mosaic.

Anyhow, like I said the film is pretty decent, and if you are not easily offended (or are a fan of the Korean drama “Full House” and want to see 김성수’s ass) check it out!

Today I had to be somewhere at 8:00pm to meet a friend. So that meant I had to go directly from work to the rendez-vous point. For the bulk of my commute I was making outstanding time. I usually go from bus to subway at 7:00pm, but today I was on the subway at 6:52. Things were going well until I got on the line two, the green line!

For those of you outside of Seoul, the green line is the subway line in Seoul that goes in a circle around the center of the city. For me the green line is the heart of the subway system in Seoul. Anyhow each and everyday I have to take the green line one stop to get to my home, and usually things go off without a hitch, but today I was going in the opposite direction.

I live north of the Han River, and when I take the green line from 합정 to 홍대 the subway cars are fairly empty. There is room to breath, and more often than not seats to be had (not that I use them since I’m going on stop and like to be the first one off the subway).

Traveling across the river to the southern part of the city is another matter entirely. The cars are packed tighter than Pamela Anderson attempting to cram her surgerically enhanced tit-flesh into a training bra. Additionally, more often than not someone has their hands on your ass since there is nowhere else for said hands to be placed.

So today I was heading south. I’m used to rush hour traffic, be it cars or dudes on a subway, so unless someone is being a prick (ie honking horns in a traffic jam, or opening a newspaper on a way to crowded subway car) I don’t really have a problem with high traffic times.

What I do have a problem with is a mass transit system that decides rush hour is a good time to kick everyone off a train and take that train offline for the day…which is exactly what happened today. We were all rocking along in the cramped subway car. I had one station to go before I needed to transfer. It was at this time that a voice came over the subway’s PA system annoucing that we all need to get our asses off the train at that stop. So the crowded car empties onto the already crowded platform. Over the Distillers, “Coral Fang,” (which is blasting over my iPod) I can hear an army of Koreans moan in disgust.

We stand on the platform awaiting the arrival of the next train. It’s hot, sweaty, and smells of people: alcohol, grilled meats, stale cigerette smoke. I can feel myself getting dirty and sweaty just standing there amongst these throngs of people. After about five minutes, another sardine can like subway train arrives. As the doors opened people lunged forward, cramming themselves into an already overloaded car. Somehow I was at the head of the line, but the force of the crowd surging pushed me clear across the subway car to the doors at the opposite side.

The doors slammed shut, probably crushing someone’s ass in the process, and the train limped forward. “It’s only one more stop,” I thought to myself as some overweight, balding business man attempting to claim some personal space, ground his pelvis into my ass with a slow mechanical resolove, “It’s only one more stop…”

And it was.