To be totally honest with you all, I hate Halloween. It’s loud, kids are all jacked up on crappy food, teenagers act even dumber than normal, and bars will inact cover charges under the guise of a “Halloween party.” The only thing I enjoy about Halloween are the specials about ghosts or which that appear on the History Channel, but since those don’t exist here, Halloween has no real redeeming value to me.
So I was a tad annoyed when my boss proclaimed, “Let’s have Halloween parties for the classes at the end of the week.” Fortunately she holds a similar view on Halloween and added, “They can decorate pumpkins, wear costumes if they want, get candy on the way out and we’ll be done with it.”
So on Monday and Tuesday they kids had their end of the semester exams, and on Wednesday the Halloween madness began. Wednesday and Thursday saw the students decorating pumpkins. Since it would have been truly insane to allow kids who come to blows at the drop of a hat to carve pumpkins with knives, the students instead used paint, glue, yarn, googley eyes, and other assorted nonsense to create jack o’ lanterns.
During this process I learned a valuable sociological lesson: girls make better leaders and work together better than boys. Larger classes would be divided into a boy group and a girl group. The girls would talk about what looked good or not on their pumpkin, and would help each other in attempting to impliment their plans. The boys on the other hand would spend half the time attempting to wrestle each other and then when they did try to make a jack o’ lantern, they all had their own vision which they were unwilling to change (if it differed from others in the group) so their jack o’ lanterns looked like complete shit more often than not.
With pumpkins all decorated, Friday was the Halloween party…the worst Halloween party ever. You want to wear a costume? Fine. You don’t? That’s cool too. Special events? Well, we’re going to do a Halloween themed worksheet about some grammar we covered earlier in the week, and then play some pin the nose on the jack o’ lantern game I crafted a year ago…oh and there will be snacks. After that it’s time to get some candy and kick them out of the school.
So thankfully today marks the end of Halloween and the end of kids acting like morons and the end of all frustration.
From time to time in my classes the students will play a game known as “The Hot Seat.” The game consists of one (or two students depending on class size) seated with their backs to the blackboard, in the hot seat if you will. The other students in the class can see the word written on the board, and will attempt to get the person in the hot seat to bellow this word.
Occassionally some kid in a class will be a smartass and request a “hard word” when it is their turn in the hot seat. Usually I will oblige them in this request and offer up some impossible word for their level to explain. Something like Marxism or diplodocus. The students in the class who have to explain these words will groan and I will change it, but the other day something strange happened.
One girl in the hot seat asked for a word that was “a little bit hard.” I wrote “Germany” on the board, a couple kids moaned, but before I could erase it and write something else, one girl bellowed (in English) “It’s Hitler’s home!” and did a Heil Hitler salute. The girl on the hot seat (who is not really the sharpest crayon in the picnic basket) asked, “Uh…Germany?”
Seriously it made no sense what-so-ever. These were 4th and 5th grade students, not high school or college aged students. How were those girls able to guess the correct answer so quickly? Trying to think back to my youth I’m not even sure if I knew who Hitler was in 4th grade, but I know for a fact that being told in a language other than my native language that “this country was Hitler’s home,” would have caused me to sucessfully bellow “Germany” in whatever foreign language is being spoken by me in the alternate 4th grade reality.
Yesterday, after a tough day of doing a whole lot of nothing, I met up with 진희. We had planned on to check out some firework event at the Han River. Upon arriving at the rendez-vous point she told me that a couple of her co-workers upon hearing of this event wanted to come along, and asked if I was cool with it.
“Sure, the more the merrier!”
So we headed towards 인사동 to meet up with her co-workers, and her co-workers’ boyfriends/fiances (I wasn’t really sure what was going on with them). Her co-workers were both nice, their boyfriends (both of whom were also Americans) were kind of quite, saying about 3 words when I was introduced to them.
None of us had eaten yet, so we decided to grab some dinner before heading off to the fireworks event. Attempting to find food was something of a difficult task. One of the boyfriends was something of a picky eater. “That’s too spicy.” “I don’t like fish.” “That smells weird.” So after about 10 minutes of wandering around, it was decided that we’d have 삼겹살.
While 삼겹살 is delicious, it’s far from being my favorite food of this land, and I don’t really like eating it if I have to do other things, as going to a 삼겹살 restaurant means you are going to smells of grilled meat and cigerette smoke for the rest of the night…which is what happened. At the restaurant I learned that neither of the other boyfriends knew how to speak Korean. One apparently could drop a couple key phrases and could read a menu, but the other guy (the guy who wouldn’t eat anything) couldn’t tell 태 from EH.
After getting our grub on, we trekked off to a park on the Han River to check out some fireworks. The fireworks were decent, and it always amazes me that people will actually go “Oooh! Aaahh!” while watching fireworks. At the conclusion of the fireworks, the couple that included the guy who wouldn’t eat anything, or speak Korean took off.
DSC02553 Originally uploaded by wdunn.
Fireworks at the 한강공원 (Han River Park).
The rest of us headed to a tea house for a cup of tea and a chat. At the tea house, the coworker’s boyfriend was a little more talkative. So we all talked and joked about this and that until the tea house closed. He and his girlfriend left in a cab and 진희 and I walked in the cool autumn night air to the subway, and then parted ways until next time.
So I have a language partner that I meet with occassionally. She is a law student and from time to time we get together, have some coffee, and talk about random junk in English and Korean. The other day while meeting with her, a sheepish look swept over her face.
“May I ask you a question?” she asked looking down at the table.
I reply, “Of course you can.”
“I don’t understand the word ‘fuck.’ How can I use that (word)?”
So I explain to her some of the more common uses of the word fuck in the English language. I explain that fuck can be an explitive (Fuck!), or an intensifier (It’s fuckin’ awesome!), or profanity (Fuck you!), or a verb (I wanna fuck you. I fucked up. I fucked that guy up. And so on).
So after explaining this for a while the young woman looked and me and proclaims, “I want to fuck you.”
“Say what?!”
“Is that ok?
“Well, I’m spoken for.”
She giggled and then clarified her question, “Did I say it right? Is it ok?”
“Yes, the way you said it was correct, but it’s kind of a rude thing to say. So just be careful.”
Roughly ever four or five months I go through the folder on my computer lovingly known as “Tunes” and go through the countless tunes contained within searching out rarely listened to uh…tunes. Occassionally I’ll find something worthwhile that I had forgotten about, but more often than not the crap I find is promptly deleted.
Recently I took it upon myself to undertake a “Tunes” purge once again. There among the one-hit wonders of early 90’s alternative rock, and random Pantera tunes, I found the Pimsleur’s Korean program. Apparently I had downloaded this awhile back and promptly forgotten about it, so this past week I’ve gave it a spin to check out how worthwhile it was, and now I bring you this report.
The over all program is not that bad, but my one major gripe with it was how formal the entire thing was. For those of you not in the know, Korean is a language that words (verbs in particular) change based upon who you are speaking to. You aren’t supposed to address a senior citizen the same way you would talk to a classmate, or a kindergarten student. Anyhow I digress…the form presented in this program are some of the most formal I have heard…which leads to some akward situations.
My personal favorite was the exchanged prefaced with “Imagine an American man meeting a Korean woman. He wants to begin a conversation with her.” Ok I’ve imagined it…what follows is the most formal exchange of words I have ever heard uttered in Korean. These people are dropping 선생님 (seonsaengnim) as the pronoun “you.” Now in Korean there are a couple different words meaning “you.” You got your 너 (neo), the lowest (in my limited knowledge), then you got your 당신 (dangshin) which is more formal than the previously mentioned 너, and in my experience is the version of “you” that one would drop anytime they are talking to someone that they don’t know that well, or that custom dictates you show respect to. And then there is 선생님. Literally this word means teacher, but as a pronoun it would be akin to “sir” or “ma’am” in the English language.
So there is this guy trying to mack it to a girl and using the most honorific forms of the language. He rocks something like this:
MAN: 실례합니다, 영어를 알심니까? (I am begging your pardon honorable ma’am, but do you have knowledge of the English language?)
WOMAN: 아니오, 선생님. (No I do not gentle sir).
Now I don’t frequently “spit game” at the ladies, but I’m willing to bet that this style of hitting on people of the opposite sex (or same sex if that’s what floats your boat) would not be extremely effective in scoring the babes. By the time you finished calling her ma’am she’d be off chatting it up with the dude who arrived in a sports car.
So I’m not particularly fond of this course. It is important to know how to speak formally, but this is a conversational program, and the bulk of people that one would be conversing with would not be speaking in this fashion (or require being spoken to in such a fashion). Additionally I felt the course moved far too slowly. Granted it was all materially I already knew, but over the five hours that made up the course they taught extremely few phrases. So overall Pimsleur Korean is not that awesome. Pantera’s “Cemetary Gates” on the other hand….
On a particular day in October of 2005, I went out with 진희. She asked me if I enjoyed 짐치찌개 (kimchi jjigae), which is a stew made of kimchi and other ingredients (meat, vegetables, and tofu are common) for those of you not in the know. I told her I did, so she suggests we travel to 잠실 to a restaurant (오모리찌개 전문점 if anyone in Korea cares) famous for their kimchi jjigae…made with 3 year old kimchi.
That’s right kids I dined upon 3년 숙성되 김치찌개 (Samnyeon Sukseongdwin Kimchi-jjigae). Inspite of my initial misgivings (”Food that’s three years old and isn’t alcohol? That’s insane!”) the 찌개 was some of the most delicious I’ve consumed, and I throughly recomend it to everyone.
So yesterday afternoon I met up with 진희 again and together we headed to Olympic Park in Seoul to check out an display of the “Buddy Bear” statues. These are bear statues created by artists around the world. After a fairly lengthy stroll through the park (neither of us has a great sense of direction), we came across a pretty large fountain, before hitting the Buddy Bear display.
After doing our duty and snapping some pictures at the fountain, we moved on to the actual display. If you want to see more pictures of insane looking bears check out my Flickr account. As I’m too lazy to post the insane number of pictures I took more than once.
After checking out the bears, we wandered about the park talking about this and that, and generally enjoying each other’s company. After a few hours of wandering around the park, until it was time for dinner. 진희 suggested that we have 김치찌개. Sounds good to me. “It’s really specially 김치찌개…the 김치 has been aged for three years.”
“Three years? Well…I’ll try anything once.”
So we head over to this restaurant to eat three year old food. To say the place was jammin’ would be an understatement. There were insanely long lines, yet somehow we didn’t have to wait at all. So we were seated and ordered up two bowls of 3 year old 김치찌개. Within a minute the food was on our table, ready to be eaten. Inspite of my initial misgivings, the 3 year old 김치찌개 was fantastic! The kimchi itself (which was presented among the 반찬) was much more sour than your standard issue (not 3 year old) kimchi, but it too was awesome.
After the meal, we decided to go for a walk around a lake located nearby. So in the cool fall evening air, we strolled along the side of this lake, before bidding each other farewell until next time.
Each morning I read the newspaper and this morning I came this most outstanding editorial. As someone has recieved more than my fair share of motorcycle enemas, I for one am totally on the same page as this guy.
[A READER’S VIEW]A closer look in the Korean mirror
I was born and lived in Seoul until the age of 28. Like all Korean males I dutifully performed military service. After graduating from university I lived overseas in various countries doing various jobs. I am now 32, living in Seoul again, and am married with two lovely children. I mention all of this because, with the exception of having spent almost four years overseas, I am exactly like you: an average Korean, who works an average job, is devoted to his family and loves his country.
I said that I love Korea. And because of this I want to shout out and warn all of us to give this country the wake-up call it so desperately needs. Aside from pockets of wealth throughout the city and country, as a whole we are still living in the mid-twentieth century. In comparison to other first world countries - which we like to believe ourselves on par with - we are years, if not decades behind. We have the financial means to keep pace with the planet’s heavy rollers, but that is where the proverbial buck stops.
Why are we sharing sidewalks with motorcycles and scooters? Our Seoul government office has just spent billions revitalizing a river and recently hosted a global mayor’s conference. I was there. And I felt anything but pride. It was embarrassing having mayors (and their representatives) from Rome and Tokyo sidestepping scooters and breathing in their fumes as they walked along city-center sidewalks. This doesn’t happen in other large first world metropolitan centers. A motorcycle zipping along the sidewalks of Chicago? A scooter blowing on its horn for pedestrians to clear the way in London? Never!!
And that is just the beginning. I live next to a traditional style Korean market, and I walk through it daily as I commute to work. I am amazed at how vehicles are allowed to pass freely down these narrow paths. It creates a dirty mesh of chaos amongst those shopping and walking. But more drastically, with the inherent congestion, these vehicles are allowed to idle endlessly, allowing their toxic exhaust to pour over the fresh produce which we feed our children. And this is not even to mention the insects and flies allowed to crawl on the raw meat for sale (shaded by only an umbrella), or the men and women spitting up phlegm next to the onions and cabbages that my four-year-old daughter has to eat. Frankly, it is disgusting. I feel as though I am walking home back to my cave in these instances - not my fancy high-rise apartment.
My favorite, however, and one that makes me wonder who is running things in this city - and brings me to tears every time - is the mosquito repellent pumping out of the back of makeshift three-wheelers. Again our kids breathe these toxins in as parents allow them to chase these toxic fumes on their bicycles.
This is absolutely archaic. No other first-world country in the world allows these things to happen. Aside from an architecturally blase stream of apartment buildings rising from the ground, Seoul at street level more closely resembles Calcutta or Shanghai - and even then a Shanghai of five years past. As Koreans we have been entirely blinded by our quick rise to financial wealth. Sure Koreans can build top-rate mobile phone products and a great flat-screen television. Sure we are connected to the internet at a higher percentage than any other country. But is this really how we want to be seen - as a group of technological nerds that has no concern about the day to day well-being of citizens and neighbors?
You may wonder why I am writing this in English. I have done so in an effort to show foreigners who live or travel here - those that send messages about Korea back to their home countries - that self-awareness is on the horizon. Korea may be starting to wake up to the 21st century in a manner that is not just digitally and financially induced (though sadly there is hardly any evidence pointing to this at present).
As Seoulites, and as Koreans in general, we must recognize and acknowledge the global community that now lives amongst us, and recognize that money and technology are not the only keys that open the door to the international community. Even China is already taking steps in this direction, having recently banned spitting in public and queue jumping. In order to build a better place for everyone to live in, in order to attract foreign investment and make Korea desirable, we not only have to wave the merits of the Korean flag, but we also need to acknowledge our faults and correct them. As a community working together we can build a country that really is up to date in every manner - and not just an archaic throwback to third world levels with fancy mobile phones on our hips and the occasional thick wallet.
By Park Kyong-don
2005.10.14
Park Kyong-don is a systems engineer living in Seoul. - Ed.
I mentioned a couple posts back how I had spent extremely little time at my homestead this past weekend. Things have continued in that fashion throughout the course of the week. Rare is the day that I spend more than a couple of hours in my apartment (and most of that time is spent sleeping or studying). So what actually have I been working on?
For starters I have Korean lessons in the morning twice a week. These lessons are going pretty well, but I have come to realize that I know very few verbs. My teacher will have me explain in great detail how I go about some menial task. The other day while explaining to my teacher how I go about cooking frozen 만두 I learned that a microwave doesn’t “cook (요리하다)” frozen mandu, but rather “thaws (해동하다)” it.
Other than my Korean lessons I’ve been meeting with my friends much more often than I had been in the past. For example, yesterday following a tough day at the office in which I had to teach a class of one student (since all of his classmates attend a different school and were on a field trip), I headed to 이대 to meet my friend 진희.
We had 닭갈비, and then went to a cafe for a cup of tea and a chat. She imparted all manner of Korean language knowledge upon me, including the word “동침하다 (同寢하다).” This word literally means “to sleep with another person,” and why she brought it up, I’m not really sure, but it’s certainly an important word to know, and I can’t believe that I’ve gone this far in my studies without coming across it.
We parted ways to return to our respective homes. I got home in about 20 minutes and about 20 minutes after my arrival, 진희 called me up and we chatted until my phone’s battery died. We chatted about this and that and finalized our plans for this Saturday.
So it looks like things will continue to be fairly busy around here for the time being, which is outstanding. I’d much rather be getting busy with the business of life, that sitting around my apartment watching MacGuyver reruns and using the internet.
Each and everyday, I head out of Seoul out towards my place of employment out in the countryside. While usually I am trying not to throw up and praying to any deities that will hear me that I make it to work alive, the other day while looking out the wide I noticed a bunch of hand signs and banners had sprouted up overnight. Apparently in the area known as 구파발 (Gupabal) a unit known only as 뉴타운 (New Town) is causing all sorts of chaos in the streets…or at least on one side of the street.
Only those living on the right side of the road (while leaving Seoul) are feeling the crushing grasp of the foul archfiend known as 뉴타운. Those on the left side of the road (the side driven on while coming into Seoul), are either unaffected, or simply don’t give a shit. So those on the right sound of the road slapped up a bunch of signs and banners proclaiming, “뉴타운은 필요없다! (New Town is not needed!)” and a bunch of 漢字 of which I can only recognize a handful of while being driven by an insane bus driver that looks like a hobbit at high speeds.
The problem with this protest is that it doesn’t have a song to go along with it. What the citizens of 구파발 need to do is recruit the guy that wrote “Fuckin’ USA,” and that anti-MacArthur song to create a kick ass anthem talking about how wicked 뉴타운 really is.
This weekend I ended up doing more in two days than I had since the begining of September. Here’s a brief run down of the madness that went down. Saturday evening I got a call from Darrell that went something like, “We’re in Hongdae drinking with that guy from TV. You wanna come?” “Sure.” So I head out to drink in Hongdae with “the guy from TV.”
Turns out “the guy from TV” was Stephen Revere, host of the television program Let’s Speak Korean on Arirang TV. So at this party jam, I macked it to a geeky Korean girl, only to be cock blocked by a guy from Nepal. Seriously how did a guy from Nepal cock block me? Anyhow it made no matter…I headed home alone to rest up before my Sunday hiking trip went down.
Earlier in the week I had made plans with my friend 진희 to go climb a mountain with her and some her friends. I arrived at the subway station where we were scheduled to rendez-vous, and while I was waiting 진희 called me up to inform me that her friends would be unable to attend, so we would be trekking up 북한산 (北漢山 / Bukhan Mountain) alone. Fine by me!
So up the mountain we went. The weather was great! It kind of cool, there was a nice breeze, and the sky was clear. As we hiked up the mountain we chatted about this and that. All in all it was a really nice hike. At one mountain peak, we stopped to eat some 김밥 and have some 두유 (soy milk), and then snapped some photos. After chowing down (and taking pictures) we started heading down the mountain.
Somehow in the course of our journey we ended up going across the top of a mountain range and came down an entirely different mountain. As we were coming down the mountain we happened upon a small area with exercise equipment. So we stopped to do some situps.
Once at the bottom of the mountain we caught a bus and headed off to meet one of her friends in 신천 for dinner. Her friend was very nice, and way too complimentary telling me that I was good looking, kind, funny, and could speak Korean well…all not true, but still it’s nice to hear such things. After dinner 진희 and I bid adieu to her friend and headed off to City Hall to check out the 2005 Seoul Drum Festival.
진희 and I in a subway station after our mountain climbing adventure and our dinner with her friend. We were heading off toward City Hall to go catch some Drum Festival.
The drum festival was truly awesome. We sat on some mats on the lawn of city hall in the cool fall air and watched insanely awesome drummers from all around the world. I attempted to take some pictures, but most turned out like junk. 진희 took some better pictures than I did, so I will have to snag then at some point.
Drummers rocking out at the 2005 Seoul Drum Festival. During the drum festival, while some America drum squad known as “Blue Devils” was performing (and blowing my mind) I told 진희 I’d never heard of them before which prompted her to ask who were some famous drum squads in America…the best I could come up with was the guys in STOMP (since she but the kabosh on drummers who are parts of bands). Other acts featured were Bob Percussion Duo who were two Swedish dudes who had taped techno noises, and did crazy drum beats over it on drum kits that included way too many tom drums and no kick drum at all, and 뿌리패 (Root Gang [or Group depending on how you want to translate it]). 뿌리패 rocked traditional Korean drums, and rocked the hell out of them. There were about a million dudes in this band and most had mullets, or long rocker hair in pony tails, like they should have been playing in a Slayer cover band as opposed to a traditionally Korean percussion band…
After the Festival came to an end, we head off to our respective homes, and made plans for next weekend. 아싸!
As anyone with any knowledge of profession women’s golf knows, there are quite a few female South Korean golfers that are dominating the scene. One Kim Jeong-kyoo over at the trusty Korea Times offers up this well researched, scientific report detailing exactly why there are so many South Korean golfers running rough shod over the LPGA.
By Kim Jeong-kyoo
Korea Times Golf Columnist
LPGA.com, the official website of the U.S. Ladies Professional Golf Assoc. showed as of Sept. 18 that 10 South Korean lady golfers ranked in the top 30 of its official money list, indicating that South Korea is one of the golf powerhouses of the world.
Those posted on the top 30 LPGA money list are Jang Jeong, ranked 5th with earnings of $950,647; Lee Mee-na, 7th with $749,247; Gloria Park, 9th with $685,250; Birdie Kim, 10th with $663,914; Han Hee-won, 19th with $495,039; Kang Soo-yun, 21st with $457,941; Christina Kim, 25th with $421,060; Kim Mi-hyun, 26th with $415,527 and Kim Young, 28th with $379,889.
Some other brilliant players that should also be mentioned are Kang Ji-min, Grace Park, Yim Sung-ah, Kim Joo-mi and Ahn Shi-hyun.
Ahn, earning the title of 2004 Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year, became the LPGA’s fourth Rolex Rookie of the Year from South Korea, following Pak Se-ri, the first Korean who won the award in 1998, Kim Mi-hyun who wrapped it up in a row the next year and Han Hee-won who took the title in 2001.
Pak Se-ri, at the moment suffering from a long slump, once stormed onto the LPGA scene by winning 22 career victories including the U.S. Women’s Open in 1998. She was the heroine who paved the way for South Korean golfers to advance into the U.S. LPGA Tour.
Without her providing motivation and establishing a firm foothold for her compatriot golfers who followed suit, it would be impossible to see the South Korean lady golfers who are now dominating the U.S. LPGA Tour.
What enables South Korean lady golfers to be so formidable in the U.S. LPGA Tour? It is nothing less than the Koreans’ talent to make things skillfully with their hands, a trait handed down from generation to generation for thousands years.
Celadon in Koryo and the Yi dynasty are world famous for blue and white china in quality, and you know that pottery involves the same skills as playing golf.
Not to change the subject, South Koreans’ special talent to make things skillfully with their hands is also believed to greatly contribute to their making almost a clean sweep of the World Skills Competition.
By the same token, Koreans are good at various sports that are played chiefly with the hands: handball, archery and table tennis, to name a few.
Professor Hwang Woo-suk of the Seoul National University who led the first cloning of embryonic human stem cells told in a public lecture that one of his assistants surprised the stem cell big shots of the world with his skills, which were beyond their imagination but actually nothing for Koreans.
Professor Hwang, referring to the use of chopsticks, mentioned that the Koreans’ skill with their hands contributed to their success in cloning embryonic human stem cells.
An editor golf fan of an English daily newspaper mentioned that one of the root causes for Korean ladies to play such great golf in the U.S. is closely connected to dexterity, which is also critical to preparing delicious Kimchi, a Korean side dish loved by the people around the world.
We all know that even when you use the same materials for Kimchi, it tastes different depending upon the hands that mix the materials.
This is why a so-called hand-taste or rather a typical taste created by the hands is heard frequently in Korea when it comes to preparing foods.
Japanese, who also use chopsticks like Koreans, once produced a golf great named Ayako Okamoto, who became a member of the LPGA Tour in 1981 and won 17 events between 1982 and 1992. She was recorded as the first woman from outside the U.S. to top the LPGA tour’s money list in 1987.
Among Japanese golfers playing in the PGA of America is Shigeki Maruyama, who is often compared to South Korean golfer Kyung-ju Choi.
Despite this, the Japanese do not surpass Koreans in the golf world possibly because they do not attach as much importance to the hands in preparing foods. They use sashimi knife in preparing raw fish, their all-time favorite, instead of directly using hands as Koreans do.
Similarly, the Chinese do not distinguish themselves as much as Koreans in the LPGA tour of America because they do not stress the role of hands in making foods. Their food culture features fire. Mostly they use fire to create taste instead of using their hands.
Among Chinese golfers, Hong Mei Yang became the first Chinese player to win a tournament in the United States in April 2004 by capturing the IOS Futures Golf Classic in El Paso, Texas, the developmental circuit for the LPGA Tour.
Of course, there are some other factors that make all the great achievements possible including tenacity and indomitability, two characteristics of Koreans, along with quite a lot of synergy among the South Korean golfers. But without the dexterity unique to Koreans their great success would be hard to imagine.
Wait! Did I say well researched and scientific? What I wanted to say was complete ethno-centric bullshit. For starters, let me say I’m not much of a golfer, but in the golfing I have done, manual dexterity played no role what so ever. The idea that the use of metal chopsticks foster manual dexterity is sketchy to begin with, but it’s not even a skill needed to play golf.
Additionally I don’t see what using one’s hands (to prepare kimchi) has to do with golf. Last time I played golf you didn’t use your hands to hit the ball, you used a golf club, so I don’t see why the Japanese (who according to Kim uses knives to prepare their food) would be at any disadvantage.
If I were any of the golfer mentioned in this article I would have been offended by the way the author downplays the hard work and dedication these women have put into perfect their craft as a means to make a particular ethnic group look good. So let’s ignore everything after the six paragraph in the article, give mad props to these ladies for kicking ass on the links, and get back to things that are really important…namely the fact that Kang Soo-yeon (강수연) is friggin’ hot!
Living in a country outside of America (or Canada for that matter), I am exposed to a different culture on a daily basis. One of the smaller cultural differences that exist in Korea (and the rest of Asia to my knowledge) is the fact that one does not wear shoes inside their house. For the longest time I didn’t really understand the logic behind this practice, that was until last night.
Last night I was waiting for the bus to take me out of the country back to the city. This particular bus stop is in front of a small restaurant. So I am waiting at this bus stop with an assortment of other people: old men, some high school aged girls, housewives with babies strapped to their back, everyone. Suddenly, a man came out of the restaurant with a small child and in one swift move, pulled the child’s pants down so the child could proceed to urinate…all over the shoes of one of the high school girls.
The man then took the child back into the restaurant to finish up dinner, without so much as apologizing to the girl. If I had been that girl I would have been seriously enraged and would have torn the man and his kid apart like a lion, especially when you consider the fact that the restaurant has a bathroom in it (this I know from first hand experience), so instead of using the bathroom there (or waiting to use the bathroom), this guy and his kid decided to urinate on someone’s shoes.
As I got on the bus I had a light bulb moment, “Ah ha! So that’s why Korean’s take off their shoes inside…they never know who might have pissed on them!”
Sometime between Thursday of last week and Saturday morning of last weekend, fall weather hit Korea like the Kool-Aid Man crashing through a brick wall screaming, “Oh yeah!” and I for one couldn’t be happier. I would have to say fall is my favorite season, the weather is not too hot like it is in summer or too cold as it is in the winter, and I don’t have seasonal allergies like I do in spring.
But more than all of that fall in Korea means that I can now get some of my favorite food stuffs in existance. Each season in Korea, the vendors that sell food on the street and convienient stores carry different seasonal items, and let me tell you, that in the fall two of my favorite things become avalible. For those of you that care, they are 찐빵, a steamed bun filled with various uh…fillings (I personally enjoy the vegetable and meat filling), and 호떡, which is a quasi pancake thing filled with honey and peanuts (and on occassion peas or corn).
And since it is the right season, I might as well mention an appropriate 四字成語 used here in Korea.
天高馬肥
(천고마비 / Cheon-Go-Ma-Bi)
(Heaven High Horse Fat)
This phrase when combined with (의 季節[계절]) means “the season of high sky and fat horses,” which apparently fall. The sky doesn’t look any higher than usual (though I did hear the sky listening to Darkside of the Moon the other day, so I’m going to guess it was indeed toking up), and I haven’t seen a horse in several years, so I couldn’t tell you if the were fat or Kate “Hi, I’m on coke” Moss thin, but anyhow go ahead and impress some Koreans with your knowledge of fat horses and high skies.
Now I’m going to go pull some sweaters out of boxes.
Anyone who rides the rails in Seoul…funk dat, in any city anywhere in the world, can attest that the subway is lousey with beggars. Here in Seoul the beggars usually attempt to provide some sort of service to the riders. They might walk around with a low quality cassette player strapped to themselves, blasting tunes (usually tunes about God). They might sing along to the tape. They might sell packs of gum marked up 300%, but they all attempt to provide some service to the riders…until the jerk I came across today.
It was roughly 12:00 in the afternoon and I was riding the orange line (line number 3) into the countryside where I work (actually I was riding to the station where I catch the bus into the countryside, but who really wants to split hairs). For whatever reason I was completely exhausted earlier in the day, and while riding the rails decided to take a quick nap. Who am I kidding, I didn’t decided to nap, I just fell asleep.
I couldn’t really tell you how long I was asleep, or if I really was asleep, since I recall hearing all the stations being announced, and what side of the train the exit was on, but I also know I had some crazy dream, the contents of which I am going to keep to myself…but I digress. I was roused from my slumber by someone shaking my arm. I opened my eyes and saw a hand in my face. Some crazy old man was shaking me with one arm, and waving his other hand in my face looking for money.
I looked at him and asked, “What?” (it’s amazing how quickly I loose the ability to speak Korean when panhandlers or “courtesy” calls get up in my area), so the guy moved on. I was now awake, and started to watch this jerk at work. His tactic was to shake the people who were asleep and then stand and continue shaking them until the put coins in his waiting fist. I know at one point this fucking prick smacked some guy in the face attempting to get his attention (the guy was way too into studying some text book and was oblivious to the beggar). Thankfully there were few people on the train and the fucking asshole moved on rather quickly.
Now I know it is a lot harder to be poor or homeless in Korea than it is to be poor or homeless in America (or Canada). I know of no actual social services in Korea (aside this), but that being said, if you are going to ask people you don’t know to give you money, you could at least do so with a little respect, and to any Korean hobos that happen to be reading this, don’t bother waking up sleeping foreigners…they aren’t going to give you any money.
Oh how I hate Gwyneth Paltrow, let me count the ways! For starters, she is Cameron Diaz only instead of being a dumb blonde, she is a self-righteous dumb blonde. To quote the great sage and poet of our times, MC Hammer, “You think you’re better than me? That’s foolish!”
Next up, she’s married to the asshole from Coldplay, which has to be the most retarded band ever. “Hi, we are in Coldplay, we make the same album of bland, inoffensive ‘rock’ again and again, and morons keep buying it!”
Lately, for some reason, Mrs. “I Breed With a Member of Coldplay” has become quite the corporate whore. First she accepted a multimillion dollar deal with the manufactures of iPods, and Apple ][, Apple Computers to name her unholy spawn of Coldplay, Apple, and now here in Korea I have to see her face all over television and the sides of buses, whoring herself for a clothing company named Beanpole.
I’d not heard of Beanpole prior to moving to Korea, and I have my doubts about Beanpole being a truly the “international” company as it’s webpage claims it is (since all searches I’ve done only turn up results for Korean pages). So perhaps Mrs. “I’m Cameron Diaz But Will Make You Feel Guilty About Looking At My Ass” Paltrow, thinks that she can fly under the radar, make some quick greenbacks (or won since this is Korea), and still act like she’s a serious actress who is seriously about her “craft.”
Well, fuck you Gwyneth, I’m on to you! And now the 12 people who read this website and live outside of Korea will be on to you too! Behold, the commercials!
I don’t know who the dude is, but hopefully he too is someone that takes their “craft” really seriously so people can yell about him being a “sellout” for appearing in these commercials.
Greetings, my name is Wyatt, and I am an American living in Korea. For those of you who don’t know me, I’ve been living and working in Korea for over two years now. I studied Korean in college and decided to kill two birds with one stone after graduation (continue studying Korean and pay off student loans) ending up in Seoul.
I previously had a blogspot blog, but have decided to make the move over to wordpress. For the time being things are going to look bad over here (as I transfer over old posts / learn how to actually use this software). Therefore I present you with this picture to enjoy while things get organized. Enjoy!
