西洋오랑캐

Across the street from my apartment there is another apartment building. Living there in one room is a group of four jerks with no shirts. This guys sit around their apartment in front of the huge bay window with no shirts on, so that anytime I am cooking or washing dishes I see them if I happen to look out my window.

Now I have no problem with their shirtlessness. It’s not the lack of shirts that make these guys jerks. What pushes these guys across the possibly gay men with no shirts to jerks with no shirts is their lack of volume control.

A jerk with no shirt. Though not the jerks with no shirts. Taking pictures of them from across the street would have been far too creepy, and would probably be boarding on being illegal.

Each and every night these guys are bellowing and whooping it up until all hours at night. There are nights when I personally don’t mind, as I don’t exactly go to sleep early, but there are some nights when I need / want to turn in early: either I have to wake up early the next morning, or I’m ill, or I’ve gotten a horrible sleep for the past 3 weeks due to some people being unable to control the volume of their voices. When this is the case I feel it neccessary to take out my frustrations on the jerks with no shirts.

Now I could just open my window and bellow something a long the lines of, “야 씹새끼들, 아구청 닥쳐! (Yo you motherfuckers, shut that fuckin’ hole in your face!)” but where is the fun in that? What I usually choose to do is shoot their eyes out with a laser.

What, you think I’m joking? Like I said earlier, from my kitchen window I have a clear view into their apartment. So on nights where they get too rowdy I’ll shoot them in the face with a laser.

For some reason being hit in the face with a laser pointer causes most jerks with no shirts to freak out in the same manner as someone who walking into a spiderweb. They kind of spasm and twitch as they attempt to get the laser off their face. The best results were the time one guy (who was laying on the floor shirtless) flipped out when hit with the laser and in the process knocked over an open beer that was next to him, spilling it all over the place…

Unfortunately the laser broke the other day, so now I have nothing to use to passive agressively take out my frustration on the jerks with no shirts. Guess I’m going to have to bust out, “야 씹새끼들, 아구청 닥쳐!” after all.

Last night, when I came home from work, I decided to be a chef for the evening and set to work whipping up this dish.

This is 유부초밥 (油腐醋밥), a dish consisting of vinegared rice (초밥) stuffed into shells of fried bean curd (the afore mentioned 유부). Originally a Japanese dish, it is fairly popular in Korea, especially for things like picnics.

It’s also extremely easy to make (though fairly time consuming). Bascially all one needs to do is cook some rice, boil the 유부 in some water, mix some vinegar and seasoning into the rice, and then stuff the rice into the 유부 (like you would stuff meat into a hard taco shell), and you’re done. Cheap, easy, and delicious! It’s hard to beat 유부초밥.

Stupid middle school girl that doesn’t know how to use a phone! This morning, someone (I assume a stupid middle school or possibly high school girl but it was obviously a girl) sent me a text message at 7:30 (which in my opinion is the crack of dawn) inquiring (translated from the Korean) “WHY DIDN’T YOU COME3?!!!!!! BRING ‘TRIANGLE RIC E (삼각김밥)’ AnD COME!!@!!!” This stupid bitch was is such a frenzy to get her grub on that she typed in the wrong phone number. Either that or due to eating crazy ammounts of 삼각김밥 at the crack of dawn, she is rediculously fat and can’t opperate the cell phone’s tiny buttons anymore…kind of like that Simpson’s episode where Homer becomes morbidly obesse so he doesn’t have to work.

So it being the crack of dawn, and me still being confused (”Did I agree to meet someone well before 7:30 in the morning and bring 삼각김밥 along with me?”) I send the message (again translated from Korean) “Do I know you? Why must I buy you food?”

The girl never responded, but the damage was already done. I was awake with hours to go before I actually needed to be awake, and I was totally unable to fall back asleep, so here I am now, presenting you with this great adventure.

“Yesterday I got to go to the Showcase Showdown!”

Every once in awhile you have one of those days where you feel like your name should be Parker Lewis. A day where everything goes well. While yesterday didn’t net me the same cash payouts or houseboats a trip to the Showcase Showdown on the Price is Right could have, it was pretty awesome to say the least.

So I show up to work (everything leading up to work was fairly uneventful, though every time I had to transfer vechicles during my commute the vehicle I needed was just arriving) and my boss asks me, “Hey do you need a Korean tutor still?” Anyone who has read this website before might recall that I was looking for a Korean tutor some months back, but then went to America and then came back and had forgotten about my search. So I was in fact still in need of a tutor.

My boss explains that she has some sort of distant relative looking to go into education or some such nonsense, and she (the distant relative) would be willing to tutor me. Awesome! So my boss phones her up and tells her it’s a go, so much later this morning I have to go meet up with this woman to finally be taught some Korean….I guess it’s a good thing I picked up those Yonsei Korean books over the weekend.

As my boss and I have this conversation, the secretary is reminded of something, and launches into rapidfire Korean exchange with the boss where I hear the words, “Amy 엄마 (Amy’s mom),” “친구 (friend),” and “선생님 (teacher, and in this case me).” It turns out that one of my student’s mom’s (the afore mentioned Amy’s mom) has a friend that she wants to set me up on a date with. “Make it so!” “She’s 30 does that matter?” “Not to me!” So this is getting set up I guess as well.

Oh and then one of my students in my last class of the day bought 호떡 (some pancake type food item with honey and peanuts inside) for the class so I got one of those as well. All in all nothing to complain about…now if you’ll excuse me I really must be going, somewhere someone is waiting for me and the 삼각김밥 I was supposed to pick up.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING ENTRY WILL DEFINATELY CONTAIN LANGUAGE THAT IS CRUDE AND OFFENSEIVE TO ALL! IF YOU ARE PRONE TO SEND HATE-MAIL, PLEASE SKIP THIS ENTRY! ALL OTHERS…PLEASE BE AWARE OF THE FACT THAT I AM SMASHED SO IF THIS MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL, BLAME SOJU! ON WITH THE SHOW!

Like all men, I have a love / hate relationship with the vagina. I enjoy the feel of a vagina, I like what a vagina looks like, I like what a naked vagina before me heralds, and hell I’d go so far as to say I enjoy the taste of a vagina.

On the flip side of that coin I hate what the vagina represents. No, let me rephrase that: I hate the power that vaginas hold over me. Fairly recently I had a conversation with a lady. To put it that I am angry at this woman would be quite the understatement, but within minutes of answering my phone I was telling this lady to have a nice evening, and that I looked forward to seeing her, and to sleep well, all because of the secret powers of the vagina.

Damn the vagina! Because of the vagina, women have such power over men. It’s a lot like those Hawaiian Punch commercials where that fucking psycho guy asked the man in the hat, “How about a nice Hawaiian Punch?” and the guy in the hat would be like “SURE!” Instead of getting a refreshing fruit drink, the “SURE!” guy is treated to a punch in the face.

Men are the “SURE!” guy, and women are the punchy psycho. Offer up even the promise of vagina, and men will become total morons. We know we the punch to the face is comming, but we still have hope that perhaps it will be the refreshing beverage and not a punch to the face so we bellow “SURE!” and hope for the best.

But the best never comes. It’s always the punch to the face. Even when the ladies let us sample some legit Hawaiian Punch, you never know when they will switch it up on you and you’ll end up with a knuckle sandwich as opposed to a nice Hawaiian Punch.

So once again, I say damn you vagina, and the power you have over my sense of logic and reason. Damn you for making me unable to see even the most obviously bad situations comming. But praise to the vagina, for all the hope it gives me…and all straight men, and lesbians for that matter!

The other day at 11 something in the morning I was heading off to work. I walked past a bus stop on my way to the subway station, and there up against the side of the rain shelter was a crouching middle aged lady with her pants around her ankles taking a piss…in the middle of the sidewalk, and in broad daylight. I have a serious problem with this kind of behavior.

Before anyone who has gone out drinking with me starts yelling, “You hypocrite, you’ve pissed outside,” allow me to explain what my problem is. My problem is about the timing and the location. Yes I have urinated in quasi-public places, but always under cover of darkness, and always somewhere off the beaten path. Perhaps this comes from the fact that I was raised in a puritan society and have such shame about all bodily fluids and the means by which they exit my body, but I for one find it wrong to take a piss at a bus stop at 11 in the morning.

Similarly I have a problem with the moms that take young children on the subway. This children are not fully toilet trained, yet are not wearing diapers. Instead, in the midst of other commuters, the mom will pants the kid (usually a boy) and have him piss into an empty bottle…on the subway, in front of all the other passengers.

If you have that little control over your blatter, go pick up some Depends lady! If your kid can’t hold it until the next stop, he still needs to be in diapers!

Welcome to Dongmakgol

Yesterday, I started the day with no plans to speak of. Around 11 or so in the morning I had a conversation with one of my friends. She too had no plans so we decided to go check out a movie together, and that movie was Welcome to Dongmakgol.

The film was pretty good, and not nearly as anti-American as the Korea Herald lead me to believe. Set during the Korean War (1950 to be exact), the movie tells the tale of a group of North Korean soldiers, a group of South Korean soldiers, and an American pilot who all independently wind up in a small village completely unaware of the (the afore mentioned Dongmakgol).

Over the course of the movie, all of these guys realize that none of them are really that different from each other while removed from the war. I took the film to be more anti-war than anti-American. All sides in the film were shown doing horrible things during war (North Koreans attempting to kill off their own injured men, South Koreans blowing up a bridge with people on it, Americans beating up civilians during an interogation), so no one comes off smelling like roses. Joel over at, About Joel has a much more detailed account of the movie for those of you who care (there are spoilers there just so you know).

Anyhow now a couple of none plot related things regarding the movie. This film had white guys in it, and while none of those actors will ever win an Oscar (or probably ever be in an American film for that matter), they were slightly better than the chuckleheads that starred in the film 수취인불명 (Address Unknown).

Secondly, is it wrong to think that an actress portraying a retard is hot, if you know the actress is not actually retarded? I ask because the lead actress in the film, 강혜정, is super hot, but in the film was a retard, but I still thought she was super hot.

After the movie, my friend and I went for a walk and then went to a 비빔밥 restaurant. The restaurant was really nice, and the food was delicious, but the conversation was better. It’s been quite some time since I’ve actually carried on a conversation in Korean. So we had dinner, and then went window shopping (아이쇼핑 - “eye shopping” in Korean).

We then shared a frozen yogurt concoction and chatted about various nonsense for another hour or so before calling it a night. All in all it was a really enjoyable evening, the first I’ve had in quite some time.

Today in celebration of Chuseok / because all of my friends are out of town due to Chuseok, I decided that it would be a good day to pay a visit to a palace (since they are pretty much the only place open today). For today’s adventure I traveled over to 창덕궁 (Changdeokgung). Since it was Chuseok, there were a bunch of traditional games set up at the enterance.

After purchasing my ticket, I tried to enter. I don’t know if it was something this palace does (since I don’t think I’ve ever been here before), or it was a special event due to the holiday, but all people got put into guided tours. The English tour was going to go down in like 40 minutes, but there was a Korean tour begining right then…so I joined up with a group of Koreans to learn about 창덕궁.

The tour group I ended up in consisted of a lot of elementary school kids and their parents (not a lot of old people like some of the other groups I saw) so it was kind of geared towards kids, which was good for me since that’s about the level my comprehension of Korean is at.

This is where some kings did business.

A tree.

After checking out the palace proper, we headed over to 비원 (Biwon), or as all English materials call it, “The Secret Garden.” At this point I was pretty sure I had not yet been to this palace…since I really had no recollection of seeing any kind of garden…secret or otherwise at any of the palaces I’d been to.

Secret Garden.

This pond had some koi in it that I attempted to photograph, but my camera wasn’t having it.

I was so on an elementary school field trip. These were the other people in my tour group. The lady with the microphone was our tour guide. She was explaining the sundial (in Korean), and because (like I said earlier about this being about my speed in terms of Korean language), I was the one who answered the tour guide’s question as to why the sundial did not have 24 hours on it (”밤에 해 없어요.”)

The men’s quarters.

A kid, an old school wall, some power lines, and an office building.

Being in the tour group was actually a lot of fun. I could understand the bulk of what was being said, and the first time I asked a question of our tour guide I saw the looks of surprise I’d seen in quite some time…and then had to explain to a bunch of people that I could understand spoken Korean, and speak Korean a little bit. Anyhow from there it was time to go home so I got on the subway and traveled back to my homestead….to drink.

Wow, it’s been something like two months since I last saw a show. Being a holiday, no one is about so I headed out to go rock out. Off I went to Ssamspace to check out Moombatrap, Mongoose, and 3rd Line Butterfly. It being Chuseok, the venue was fairly empty. It was me, some Japanese reporters / photographers, some Korean American girls who were really loud and sounded like Valley Girls (”Like oh my god are you kidding? Oh totally oh my god! Oh my god get out!”), and a couple other people who looked like they had nowhere to go.

The first band of the evening was Moombatrap. I knew nothing of them, but I was throughly impressed. The band consisted of two ladies that sat on the floor and seriously rocked out. The one girl played quasi-heavy metal riffs on an acoustic guitar while the other girl played crazy jazzbo drumming on a bongo drum (and in one song a snare drum on the floor). They were amazing!

Next up was Mongoose. I’ve seen these guys a couple times before, and I think they are my favorite band. Their jams kind of sound like the soundtrack to some oldschool Nintendo game with crazy disco-beats. Anyhow apparently while I was in America they released a new album, so most of the jams they played were new. Holy crap are the new jams awesome. If you have the means to do so, check out Mongoose’s new album, “Dancing Zoo.”

The final band of the evening was 3rd Line Butterfly. They kind of had a shoegazing indie rock thing going on. The thing that impressed me the most about this band was the singer’s shoes. She had some incredibly high high heels on, and was somehow able to still work effects pedals, jump, dance, and rock out. Oh and she was super hot. Their guitar player on the other hand was not super hot. He was chunky, looked to be in his mid-30s, and had a crustache. He rocked out pretty hard though.

Anyhow the show was pretty dope ass. There are more pictures to be seen here.

I work in a small town…a damn small town. As such, all of the kids I teach attend the same school. Today that school held their annual 운동대회 (運動大會 / Sports Contest). On Tuesday and Thursday I teach three classes, and today, this 운동대회 interfered with each and every one of them.

My first class of the day was a class of first and second graders. This class runs from 2:30 until 3:30, and the sports contest was not supposed to end until sometime after 4:00. “Great! One less class for the day!” WRONG! Earlier this week, a pair of kindergarten kids that had lived abroad (and gone through American kindergarten) got stuck in that class. Since here in Korea, kindergarten is not part of elementary school, this kids were unaffected by sports day. The class itself wasn’t that bad. We reviewed some of the material we had covered before and then played Chutes & Ladders. I actually enjoyed that class a lot more without the mob of first grade boys who have no idea what I’m saying because they never listen.

At 3:30 the kindergarteners took off to their homelands. The secretary was sitting out in the waiting room with one of her friends, and informed me that all the kids in the next class were still involved in their sporting activities. So I had a conversation with the secretary and her friend. It was one of those extremely random conversations that went all over the place. We talked about the upcomming holiday, the lack of a nightlife in the boondocks, ovens, the fact that I can eat spicy food, and the lack of adult English classes in 고양.

The secretary’s friend was attempting to talk me into moving to 고양 for some reason. She claimed it was so she (and other ladies) could “learn English,” but me being so full of myself, think that they wanted other services….hey now!

Anyhow with roughly ten minutes of class time left in the second class period, one student showed up. One kid! Man, what is that? With ten minutes of class, what can possibly be done? Not a whole hell of a lot, so we talked about what went down in the sports contest (apparently the blue team won), and then I sent her on her way.

The last class of the day had every kid come in fifteen minutes late, but they all showed up. So that class went as planned, though a bit shortened due to time constraints. From there I headed on home….to think about a possible move to the sticks to try and score with housewives…man what am I talking about?!

The Korean holiday known as 추석 (秋夕 / Chuseok) is rapidly approaching. For those of you not in the know, 추석 is something akin to Thanksgiving in America (and I’m assuming Canada, though I’ve never celebrated Thanksgiving in Canada)…though there’s more to it than that. Check this site if you want more info on what 추석 actually is.

For me, 추석 means three things. The first thing, is three days off in a near abandoned city. This year, the holiday falls on the weekend, meaning I only get one bonus day off…damn.

The second thing is a nonstop alcohol party. Since everyone departs Seoul and most shops are closed, there’s not really a lot to do save for get my drink on. I have already begun stocking up for the party that will commence. Additionally I’ve been on detox the past few days, so Friday, Saturday, and Sunday aught to be a hoot.

Thirdly, and most importantly (since this is where today’s title comes from) 추석 means free loot. At 추석 people exchange gifts with each other, and as a teacher I recieve a fair amount of gifts from parents who want to curry my favor. Today I recieved my first gift of the holiday season.

Apparently I stink, have greasy hair, and bad breath.

Now this gift is pretty common. In America students bestow totally useless crap upon teachers: silver bells that say “World’s Best Teacher,” ceramic apples, and crap made out of wicker. Here in Korea gift sets are a tad more practical.

Aside from personal hygine products, other common gift sets include (I swear I am not making any of this up): fruit, seasame oil, SPAM, and alcohol. God I wish I got some SPAM or alcohol, especially since I just purchased toothpaste, soap, and shampoo on Monday.

My class of six graders finished all of their work with several minutes of class remaining, so I told them that if they could agree on something quickly we could play a game. As if there was a single mind controling four bodies, they yelled out, “Bingo!”

“Alright, then…Bingo it is.”

Bingo cards and markers were handed out, and the game began. The Bingo game I have is not your standard issue “B-15! G-36!” style Bingo, but rather the Bingo I have is “Sight Word” Bingo, so it’s like, “B-School! N-Bear!”

On and on it went, I-House…O-Cup. Suddenly a voice cried out, “I’M BLACK!”

(Sound of screeching breaks) “You’re what?!” I looked at the student, mainly to check if he had somehow changed his race in the five minutes we’d been playing.

The boy repeated it again, “I’m black…see!” He motioned to his Bingo card, displaying the fact that he had achieved a Bingo.

What he wanted to say was, “Bingo!” or “I win!” Somehow these phrases got crossed with “I’m Black,” and that’s what he bellowed upon his victory. Which got me thinking, how often do I, while speaking Korean, pull similar moves? Because I know I do, and not just when I offer up non-sequitors to random people on the subway. Well I’ll see you later, or as they say here in Korea, 난 흑인입니다! ^^*

Today I met with my boss for lunch, but I arrived before she did. The weather was pretty nice and there were some benches outside the restaurant, so I figured I’d wait out there and study a bit before her arrival.

While I was waiting a bus of Chinese tourists arrived on the scene, and instead of entering the restaurant, were hanging around outside much like I was. Several tourists sat down on the bench near me, and I learned I am extremely interesting to Chinese tourists. While I was studying two ladies were way leaning into my line of sight to investigate what I was studying. Granted it was 漢字, so perhaps it was interesting to them, but the one lady was pointing to things on my notebook, while touching the notebook, while addressing her friend. Being unable to speak Chinese, I had no clue what she was saying.

While these ladies were critiquing my work, various middle aged Chinese men would come up to where I was sitting and offer me cigerettes. I don’t smoke, and like I said, I have no knowledge of spoken Chinese and the knowledge I have of written Chinese is limited to a Korean context, which is not the same as written Chinese in a Chinese context, so I had no idea how to politely turn down their offers.

I don’t know if these guys didn’t understand, “No no no,” with the “no thanks” hand motion, but these guys kept coming as did the offers of cigerettes. Anyhow my boss then arrived and we headed into the eatery.

The restaurant was a lot nicer than the places I usually frequent (김밥천국 I’m looking in your general direction). It was an Italian place, but not like the Olive Garden. It was the kind of Italian place that you feel like you should be drinking wine at, or attending some sort of important dinner at. Not the kind of place you hit for a business lunch, but what the crap do I know? I can’t even tell middle aged guys, “No thanks I don’t smoke.”

Wow two posts in one day about crappy mainstream Korean music. Flipping through the television I came across a performance featuring five decent looking ladies doing some standard issue light weight pop music. I mention my low tolerance for boybands…well I have a slightly higher tolerance for girl groups. Their music videos are the reason God created a mute button.

So the video comes to a close and I see the group’s name for the first time: Redsox. I rubbed my eyes. “Are they serious? Are they baseball fans? Are they Bostonians? Wait, am I drunk?”

I decided to check it out online and see if there was indeed a group known as Redsox. Naver quickly confirmed what I had seen. But wait that’s not all!

Lee Hye-rim

This is 이혜림 (Lee Hye-rim), one of the members of the aforementioned Redsox. Like all good Korean websites, the Redsox website gives critical information about each of the ladies. The stats of Miss 혜림 were clearly the most interesting. Let’s examine them shall we?

생년월일: 1986년
신장: 172cm
체중: 44kg
특기: 포즈, 운동
학력: 명지대학교 재학 중

So lemme break it on down for those of you with no knowledge of Korean. The first item is her date of birth. She is apparently too cool for school and only provided the year of her birth (1986 if you are slow on the draw). Next up is her height. She is apparently 172cm tall, but I wonder if this height is taken while wearing high heels, since 172cm is really tall for a woman in this country. Next up her weight…44kg, damn metric system causing me to have no idea how much this is in pounds…all I know is it’s damn light. Since professional wrestlers being announced as weighing 215 pounds are subtitled as weighing 90 some-odd kilograms. She’s clearly less than a hundred pounds. 특기 is speciality or talent…or skill. 운동 is sports or exercise. Alright maybe she’s athletic, likes jogging, or shootin’ hoop. It’s something some people are good at and others are not. It’s a skill. But 포즈?! Oh, I’m sorry “pose.” Yup, she’s good at posing….that’s her talent. She’s highly skilled in getting ready to have pictures taken. Oh and the last part is boring, it just says that she’s currently attending Myeongji University. But posing?! Seriously…how is that a skill?

Now if you ever need to argue with a Red Sox baseball fan you can just be like, “At least no one on (insert your team here) lists posing as their talent!” Oh wait I’m confusing the baseball Red Sox with the singing Redsox. Whatever, go away I need to practice my poses!

I don’t often watch MTV here in Korea, and it’s not because I hate the Real World. Unlike in America, Korea’s MTV actually shows music videos and concerts and uh…music. No, the reason I don’t watch it is I have a very low tolerance level for things like ballads, crappy techno beats, and boy bands (which is pretty much what the mainstream Korean music industry is made up of).

But I digress, for some reason yesterday I watched an hour or so of music television. I came to the conclusion that being a singer in Korea must be the easiest job in the world. All you have to do is get some backing music featuring piano and sappy orchestras and then sing the following words and phrases in the “I want to be a large black man” r&b voice: 사랑해요 (love [as a verb]), 눈물 (tears), and 영원히 (eternally). From there all I’d have to do would be toss in a few lines of nonsensical English, or on occassion toss in one English word into a line that is otherwise completely in Korean (this word is usually “baby” or something dealing with time).

I then changed my plans again. I decided to simply do the flipside of what these Korean singers are working with, and write some songs in English and then include complete bullshit Korean passages in the song. So today for no reason what so ever I give you the lyrics to the song, “I Want To Be A Singer In Korea.”

I want to be a singer in Korea.
Then you’ll love me.
but you don’t love me.
Eternally!

맥주 한잔 주세요.
조폭 안이야.
김밥 좋아해요!

You have some tears.
Cuz my songs are weak.
But don’t cry baby.
I love you enternally,
and maybe I’ll write some better tunes.

Oh baby!
Yeah yeah yeah baby!
Baby yeah oh baby!
Baby oh baby yeah oh baby baby yeah!

I know you have tears
but I’ll wait for you 매일
But you still will cry
Beacause now I’m a singer in Korea
and I’ll be gone eternally.

Oh baby! (OH BABY!)
Yeah oh yeah baby!
Baby yeah baby baby!
Oh yeah baby!
Oh baby yeah yeah baby oh oh baby yeah!!

The Korean in the song is literally, “Give me one beer. I’m not a gangsta. Kimbab is delicious,” and 매일 is Korean for “everyday.” Now if you’ll excuse me I have some shitty techno beats to assemble before pianists arrive.

저는 어제밤 7시30분에 퇴근했어요. 8시45분에 유림을 만났어요. 우리는 저녁을 같이 먹었어요. 저는 유림에게 내년 미국에서 대학원 입학하고 싶는다고 말했어요. 유림은 피곤하느라고 10시에 집으로 갔어요.

Declarative Indirect Quotations

Action Verb stem + -ㄴ/는다
Descriptive Verb stem + -다
이다 + (이)라

A few days back while walking home I came across this awesome sticker on a van. It reads, “CAUTION!! CHILDREN in this SUPER CAR We protect out children with Childseat!!”
It kind of lacks the simplicity of “Baby On Board” while maintaining all the stupidity of those warnings.

I do however give the owner of this vehicle his or her propers for actually having a car equipped with child seats. Most vehicles I see just have toddlers rocking out in the back seat (without even seatbelts on). So SUPER CAR owners, keep rocking out with that Childseat!!

Summer school is over. The parent-teacher conferences have been wrapped up, and last week I went back to my regular schedule at work…sort of. For you see I now have an additional class added to my pre-summer workload. This class goes until 7:30 pm on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but with the commute I don’t get home until 9:00 (in I catch the bus and make all the transfers in a timely fashion.

Since coming back from America I’ve become slightly dissatified living in Korea. The new work schedule made me even more so. I recieve additional money for this increased workload, but I for one would rather have the time then the money. I’m the kind of guy (like most people) that works to live as opposed to living to work. I was already more than comfortable: I could pay my bills, pay off loans, put money in the bank, and still have cash to blow on things like alcohol and rock and roll. Now I have time for neither rock nor roll nor any other sort of “living,” for that matter.

The other day while riding home at a million o’clock at night, I had something of an epiphany. “Why am I still here?” With my current level of education, I can’t really get any jobs much better than the one I have. So the cogs in my head start slowly turning…go back to school! Yeah that’s a plan. “You can’t very well go to school here in Korea and expect to ever leave this country….there’s a reason most Koreans who persue higher education do so outside of Korea.” That’s right Internal Dialogue Wyatt.

So I formulate this plan: finish out my contract, and then return to America to get my masters degree in Teaching English To Speakers of Other Languages. That way if I decide to come back here I can go to work somewhere other than a 학원…or I can stay in America and get summers off.

With the end of my contract many moons away I still have a lot of time to wrestle with this decision, and find a way to get over two years worth of accumulated crap back to America.

I recently saw the film “댁의 아빠도 이렇습니까?” (which translates to something like “Is Your House’s Father Also Like This?”) This movie, released in 1971, holds the distinction of being one of the oldest Korean films I’ve seen (to date). It also holds the distinction of being one of the most boring.

The movie begins with a wife waiting for her husband to come home. He is out playing some Korean game I’ve never seen before (it looked kind of like dominoes). The wife is worried and extremely jealous, and while attempting to go to sleep imagines him getting it on with another lady.

The husband returns home early in the morning and his wife is quite upset. He eventually convinces his wife that nothing is going on. Things are right in the world and he heads off to work…where a woman named 미스 김 (Miss Kim) calls to thank him for the good time.

The husband and wife. The film was not black and white, though these pictures are for some reason.

Back at his homestead, the man’s wife with her friend call up the husband’s office and discover his cheating ways. Simulataneously, Miss Kim’s man discovers her cheating ways and confronts the husband. Things don’t really go well, and Miss Kim’s man vows to get revenge.

He then dupes the man’s wife into coming to a hotel where he proceeds to rape her. This is a pretty horrible thing to say, but the rape scene was almost comic in the way it was executed. The pair ran around the hotel room, knocking furniture over, and fighting back and forth. The camera would then cut to a clock in the room showing the passage of time…it took like 3 hours for the rapist to finally get the wife on the bed.

The rapist later mails a picture of the wife (clad only in her undergarments) to the husband. This picture pushes the husband over the edge. Instead of explaining what happened, the wife flees to her mother’s house.

After getting yelled at by her mother, the wife returns to her husband’s family, but things are not so good. Everyone looks at her like she’s a skank ass ‘ho, and her husband can no longer bear to be around her, so he takes off for parts unknown. The wife begins having dreams where her husband returns bearing gifts.

She becomes more and more depressed, and eventually leaves her daughter behind with her in-laws and sets off to find her husband. She discovers him at a construction site of some sort, but after overhearing him talking about Miss Kim does the only logically thing…she throws herself off a cliff. Somehow she survives this and ends up in a hospital.

Back at the construction site, the rapist returns and confronts the husband about what has happened. For his efforts he gets a beat down (a lot of punches to the face, but no visible injuries). Meanwhile in the hospital, the wife is nursed back to health by Miss Kim.

In the end the husband and wife get back together, as do Miss Kim and the rapist. All is right in the world, thanks to a punch out.

The film did include several interesting bits. First off the wife was constantly clad in a 한복. So there were shots of the wife doing dishes, cooking, and ironing while clad in way to formal clothing. I guess this could be compared to American television shows from the 1950s and early 1960s where housewives would be shown preparing breakfast while wearing pearls and highheels. Additionally the shots of the city were pretty interesting. It’s amazing how much a city changes in like 30 years.

There were several things I could have done without as well. First off the film had such an overbearing soundtrack. Someone would proclaim something, and like a bad soap opera, extremely dramatic music would kick in for 2 seconds and then disappear as quickly as it began.

And speaking of audio weirdness, there was something really weird about the daughter’s voice. It may have just been the audio recording tactics, but I’m pretty sure the elementary school aged daughter’s voice was dubbed in by an adult woman speaking in a child’s voice. I’m not really sure why.

Like I said earlier, the film was pretty boring, but that might have something to do with the fact that this movie followed the storyline of basically every other Korean drama that has been on television since the my arrival. There’s only so many bloodless fist fights over a woman and I take without becoming completely numb to them.

I need to stop doing laundry. Or at the very least not do laundry until after nightfall. This afternoon I went out to my verenda to get some laundry out of the washing machine. As I unloaded the machine, I looked out the window to see my neighbor up on his roof.

I mentioned awhile back how I found several chickens living on the roof across the alley from me. Well, let’s just say there’s one less chicken there now.

Right as I was pulling laundry from the washing machine, my neighbor, with a large knife cut the chicken’s head off. Now I know chickens, cow, pigs, sheep, fish, goats, deer, eels, dogs, ect. have to die in order for people to eat food stuffs in the meats food group, but what was surprising to me was how out in the open it was.

In America if you aren’t a hunter, fisher, work in a meat packing plant, or a late 19th century muckraker, you aren’t going to be exposed to things like decapitated chickens. Yet here was my neighbor spending his Sunday afternoon killing, plucking, and cleaning a chicken. I think the thing that was the most shocking was how big a waste of time the whole thing was.

South Korea is not a third world country, especially in a major metropolis like Seoul. Chicken meat is extremely cheap and easy to come across. Hell I had bought four chicken breasts for a little over $3 earlier in the afternoon. Seriously dude, couldn’t you think of a more productive thing to do on a Sunday than butcher your own chicken? I know I can!