Seoul Seeking

Ding Ddong - Korean poop karaoke cartoon

2008-08-11T01:16:00.008+09:00

Ever notice how whenever Seoul Seeking peeks back out of retirement it's always to talk about ddong?

Well, my friend Gillian pointed me towards this blog about cake disasters and a post featuring a cake with *surprise* a frosting coil of ddong and a bunch of plastic flies.

In the comments, blogger Tom Terranova pointed out this link on the phonetic connection between "luck" and "poop" in Japanese. According to The Poop Report, the Japanese word for poop "unko" (also "unchi") shares the same "oon" sound as the (unrelated) word for luck.

The reader Diane's question related to a golden poop key-chain she saw at Narita airport. She, like myself and anyone else I've talked to about about the ddong phenom, described the Asian poop motif like a swirl of soft-serve ice cream.

Poop Report blogger bilgepump had a great bit of investigative poop journalism regarding the signature ddong shape:

"At the risk of getting too graphic, I really must address shape because everyone I spoke to brought it up. Diane, you described the Kin no Unko as looking 'disturbingly like soft ice cream,' while Fujii, its creator, expressed it as a 'nice tatsumaki-shape (tornado-shape).'"

While the shit storm vs. choco cone debate rages on, let's look at some more instances of Japan and poop.

This site has some cell phone key-chains with a good intro to the "unchi-kun" school of poop:

In Japan there are many stories about unchi and money. If you had a dream of unchi last night, you should go straight to a lottery box and try your luck. Especially golden unchi has a strong power to call big money. Other unchi-kuns have their own power. Please select one depend on your wish. They are funny and cute mascot. Don't they look lovely?

What gets me about this is the honorific "unchi-kun" which is mostly used by senior men refering to their juniors (like young friend or little brother) but can also be used by women to address men they are emotionally attached to, or to a male pet.

The little unchi-kun at the top is the same as the pink and green "banggut banggut" ddong toys that Paul gave me.

Even Salon.com ran a story back in 1999 about the Japanese interest in poop. This provides us with some key terminology:

maki guso - curly or curlicue poop

And the expression for when someone steps in dog poop:

"un ga tsuku," or "luck has stuck to you."

But this Korean karaoke flash cartoon absolutely eclipses everything I've ever dug up on this blog before on the topic of ddong:

Ddong coffee, Dongchimee, Doggy Poo the movie, or even the ddongchim flash game.

What the hell are they doing!? Ddong flossing?

Watch in amazement and sing along to the "ddong, ddong, d-d-d-d-dong!"

I'm still no closer to a bona fide explanation about WHY exactly poop is so popular in Japan and Korea. Some people have speculated that it goes back to Korea's poor agricultural days when family feces was saved to use as fertilizer, and so it was something valuable that kids would have to learn to muck about in. Maybe this in combination with the influence of the Japanese lucky language puns and both countries' penchant for making anything and everything into a cute-eyed toy or bauble? They all churn together in the bowels of socio/scatological progress and at the end of the day there's an unchi-kun in every home and the gods of digestion are smiling the kind of smile that could even make poop look like a friend...

샘샘

New Blog

2008-04-16T11:15:00.002+09:00

Check out my new short story blog:

Fiction Stranger than Truth Stranger than Fiction

http://tis-strange.blogspot.com/

Annyong!
샘-샘 (Sam-Sam)

Zen Kimchi'd

2008-04-01T07:39:00.002+09:00

I'm still a blip on the K-Blog radar!

Consider the ttongchim posts a public service announcement for the next group of expat teachers. Or next wave or next constant stream or whatever. It's like the new foreign legion I'm saying!

215 posts is a nice even number for a little while though...

Ttongchim Evil?

2008-03-31T04:44:00.008+09:00

So in reporting my experience of what I knew as the "dung-chip" phenomenon during my year of teaching, it seems I made an error in pronunciation. It seems the actual act "똥침" is said more like "ttongchim" (d/tong-shim) so mostly the same.

Get this: the rough translation of the special attack is "dung needle."

There is a similar act in Japan known as Kancho. There's a great explanation here.

Here's a bit from the Korean Wikipedia entry! (somewhat translated via Google):

"Iran together into one index finger of both hands ttongchim seunhu, anus of another person with the aim of stabbing one of the children's fun. Chojunggogyosaengdeung primarily, the underage students are often among his age group enjoy the kind of a joke.
Usually done as a joke, or is not ttongchim evil, just like any business, you can be that much violence is in excess."

It goes on to describe (I think) the medical dangers of overzealous ttongchiming.

Be wary.

Wary like this family wasn't...

[Don't be ttongchim evil.]

Dethroning Dongchimee

2008-03-30T17:28:00.008+09:00

It's been more than six months since I left Korea, but a discovery too incredible not to share has drawn me out of retirement.

I stumbled across this game today and it blew my mind.

Move over Dongchimee. [EDIT: or maybe not...]

Assume the role of your average dung-chipping Korean hero— hands permanently clasped in the (not dissimilar) prayer and/or dung-chipping stance— whose goal is to dung-chip a disembodied, starry-thong-wearing flushed pink buttocks into oblivion. Naturally you have to dodge the perfectly formed dung piles that fall down towards you (complete with buh-je-jic sound effects).

Sold?

This totemic dung-chip zealot will periodically fall from the top of the screen to "level-up" your dung-chipping finger shot from yellow to blue to red.

If you hold down your mouse, your dung-chip will power up in high octane anime fashion and your character will launch up the screen to deliver a true between-the-cheeks dung-chip to your diarrhetic adversary.

Like so:

똥침!!!!

------------------>

Be careful because each dung hit to the face will stun your character temporarily and if your energy bar disappears...

YOU LOSE!

...BUT! If you managed to dodge the dumps and dung-chip your score bar to the max then...

And in your victory screen it is revealed your opponent was none other than some poor mohawked slob who you dung-chipped till he wept.

Feels good to win...

[annyong.]

2007-09-17T19:31:00.001+09:00

"Welcome home," said Nova Scotia.

"Thank you," I replied.
"I wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world."

She blushed a little.

Seoul Sought -or- So long, and thanks for all the kimchi

2007-09-14T23:51:00.000+09:00

I leave Korea tomorrow, homeward bound for Halifax via Toronto and a brief back-flip through time, and thankfully no layover in the United States (no offense; airport hassles, you guys know the drill).

I've said most of what I wanted to say about Korea through this past year in posts. I have been trying to think of something conclusive to say about what I'll take with me from my time here— nursing bekseju, pondering Han, laughing with the most wonderfully spirited children I've ever gotten to know.

If anything, I've taken equal parts pride and humility from this year. Pride at where I come from, the values I now choose to see as Canadian, and the things that I realize make up my idea of home. But also the humility that comes from being a long-term guest in a country where life can be baffling, and you tend to feel like a creature of spectacle.

I am incredibly grateful for all the kindness and generosity people have shown me here, from my endlessly obliging hagwon boss, to the kind Paris Baguette proprietor Mr. Kim and his countless free pastries, to the friendly restaurant ajummas who would smile and flip an extra fried egg onto my bowl of bibimbap.

Today was my last day at the school, and I faced a barrage of little people hugging my legs and saying:

"Bye-bye Sam Teacher!"

"Thank you!"

"I love you!"

"Bye-eeeeeee! Goodbye!"

It was pretty sweet. I'm going to miss these little ones. Part of me wants to smuggle a few off in my suitcase and take them off somewhere green, and as far from a classroom as possible.

Thanks to all who read and were entertained by Seoul Seeking. Though this is my last post from Korea, feel free to check back every now and then and I'll post links to any new writing or blogging that's worth a spit.

***

And so it went that 25-year-old Sam-Sam shed both a Sam and a sticky-tacked-on extra Korean year as he climbed onto an airplane and began a long haul backwards in time, grateful for the memories and the new perspective on this mostly green and blue cosmic lump we all inhabit our own little nooks of.

Sometimes it helps to not be so exclusive with our choice of nooks.

Annyonghi kyeseyo, Korea.

(Goodbye.

Polite.

When leaving.)

Don't forget to remember

2007-09-06T21:17:00.000+09:00

In my mailbox this morning I found a helpful letter from the Korean government reminding me that my Visa expires in 10 days.

That's kind of like shouting to a trapeze artist with one hand on the final bar, "Hey! You're almost there!"

Thoughtful, but profoundly unnecessary.

Singin' the Kogal, Eggman, Idoru blues

2007-09-05T21:08:00.000+09:00

The search for Eggman was not over easy.

In fact it was impossible.

I never found the chimeric music club as I wandered through the rain-slick streets of Shibuya in the early evening. With only the map in my Lonely Planet book and a few incongruous landmarks, the streets seemed to me only as a maze of empty yet still open designer boutiques with one word English names.

It was still early on Thursday night, but I had no sense of my surroundings. I knew Shibuya was the creche of Tokyo youth culture along with Harajuku (a fact which Gwen Stefani shamelessly exploits) so with a few spots on a year old map, I was hoping I could find some kind of show to take in.

It was harder than I thought.

I had been walking in the wrong direction for easily 20-minutes, and when I doubled back, I doubled back too far, and found myself walking up and along the infamous Love Hotel Hill.

I got tired and gave up entirely too easy.

It had already been a long day by about 5:00.

Having spent Wednesday night in Asakusa, and the afternoon wandering the Imperial Palace Gardens and the swanky Roppongi Hills, I wanted a calm start to my final full day in Tokyo, followed by an electro-shock of neon signs and street fashion as it started to get dark.

That morning I took the subway to Meiji-jingu, the forested Shinto shrine dedicated to the restoration Emperor of the same name. It was spitting enough that I had to buy an umbrella at the subway station, but the rain really added to the atmosphere of the shrine. I stood at the huge wooden Torii, at the entrance to a 175 acre evergreen forest with just a handful of Korean tourists and residents out to walk. It was remarkable. Here, flanked on all sides by Harajuku, Omote-sando, and Shibuya, centres of couture and consumption all, was a massive forest and temple, dedicated to the souls of passed royalty. Sort of like Central Park if you replaced the park bench wankers with Empress Shoken's memorial lily garden.

Sort of.

The light rain, made the turquoise roofs of the temple proper shine, and the green of the 120,000 trees seemed that much deeper. I was able to get lost in the woods in the middle of Tokyo. That's pretty awesome.

After savoring the green, I headed down Omotesando, billed as Tokyo's Champs-Elysees. I had lunch at a great little fusion restaurant with fluent English speaking staff and then, belly full of swordfish, headed down the street where affluent Tokyoites get their D&G, Benetton and other international names.

Shibuya was next, mid-afternoon. I crossed with the masses at Hachiko square and guessed I had never been part of so big a single crowd before. It's hard to take a step in Shibuya without running into a kogal and her ten thousand friends. Essentially the Japanese valley girl, kogal is a catch-all term for a young thing with bleach blond hair, tanning-bed complexion and clutch-purse fat with disposable income. It's a strange look to see on the Japanese figure and face, but there are thousands of girls who look like this. They make themselves pretty obvious, since people tend to come to Shibuya to be seen. I spent about an hour floating through an HMV listening to the latest J-pop, from L'arc~en-Ciel (who I sadly missed at Incheon) to a group called Ketchup Mania. I got a coffee at the world's busiest Starbucks, but had to drink it sitting on a bench next to Hachiko, since inside there were no seats, since probably years before.

When night fell, I thought of going to Shinjuku and seeing the Park Hyatt where they filmed Lost in Translation. But I was so tired and daunted by the world's biggest city's biggest transport hub, I thought I'd try to seek out some new sound.

"Do you have battle in your life!?" a large video screen asked me, while I waited at the busiest pedestrian thoroughfare on the planet.

"That's a reasonable question," I thought, having not given it much consideration until that point.

"I suppose I don't."

Apparently I also missed my chance, since battle, the aggressive sign went on to explain, was a band playing a popular club next week. Sold out.

This was just the kind of thing I wanted to take in tonight.

However my hopes for Eggman were promptly scrambled (is it just me, or do I get funnier by the minute?) and like the protagonist of William Gibson's Idoru (which I had picked up in Roppongi to help narrate my trip) I found myself seeking a single club in a place where they live about as long as mayflies, in order to dig up the dirt on how a universally popular Irish/Chinese rock musician announced his intentions to marry a holographic Tokyo pop "idoru" and plunge the dataflow into new depths of subterfuge and manipulation.

Or maybe the last part wasn't quite like me.

As I said, it had been a long day about 4 hours back.

Impressions

2007-09-04T22:40:00.000+09:00

My toothpaste was confiscated at Incheon airport. Apparently it exceeded the 100g liquid or gel quota for carry-on baggage. I was going to protest that since the tube itself was 3/4s empty, that it's original capacity was meaningless, but I didn't want to find myself on a no fly list. I can understand their concern in these troubled times. After all, those offending 25 grams could have consisted of snakes.

The complimentary toothpaste at my hotel was just smaller than my pinkie, and weighted in at a respectable 5 grams.

It made me feel safe.

Nothing lurking in there except fluoride.

I guess we're never really safe...

Arriving in Japan was overcast, but the train from Narita to Ueno was a nice ride past some bamboo thickets, so fat with trees they were spilling out over the stone track walls. The sprawl began shortly after, and from that point on I couldn't see anything but city until I was back on a plane over the sea.

Surprisingly, navigating the Tokyo subway system was probably the easiest part of my trip. I cut my public transport teeth in Seoul (I had never been on a subway before) so I can safely say I'm now a pro. Despite the rainbow web of tracks and the multitude of tickets you'd theoretically need for each trip, you can bypass the calculation by purchasing a quick and easy 1000 yen ($10) Passnet card, marked on the ticket machines by a speedy orange public works-issue stick man, whipping through the turnstiles with the confidence of modern Japanese efficiency. All the stops and maps are marked in English also.

Everyone hears horror stories about uniformed men in white gloves, paid to shove that extra parcel of commuting flesh through the metro doors, but I was blessed with well-planned routes through relatively calm transit areas (old Asakusa was my base camp). I did see the infamous white-gloved ones, but they did little but provide helpful service announcements in slightly effeminate Japanese.

Initial observations on arriving at Asakusa from the Narita airport:

- Bikes.

In the short walk to my hotel from the subway station I saw about 300% more cyclists than I've seen in an entire year in Korea. Everyone rides bikes in Asakusa: old ladies, monks, trendy 20-somethings with their skinny black ties flapping at their sides. It's very refreshing.

- Pornography.

Prominently displayed in the front row of all subway magazine and concession stands, even (or was it especially...) those run by ancient old ladies. I don't think there is such thing as a Korean porno magazine! The naughty side of Japan is hardly hidden. In both Shibuya and Omote-sando, I saw a shop (chain?) called "Condomania!"

- Convenience store food.

I can only imagine how many people take most of their meals from Family Mart or 7-11. Not because you're hard pressed to find a meal under $13 otherwise, but because the selection of sandwiches, noodles, steamed buns, fresh-looking salads, and those triangle seaweed rice affairs, is actually quite appealing... and cheap!

I checked into the pleasant Asakusa View Hotel and spent the evening strolling through the streets around Senso-ji. Apparently, it's one of the city's biggest tourist draws, and there was quite a crowd even on a Tuesday evening. The temple itself was most impressive at night, when the pagoda and gate roofs are light up golden against the red. The prominence of red on the Tori gates and temples themselves was something very different between Japan and Korea. The Korean temples tend to feature incredibly detailed under painting in green, white, red and blue, which gives much more of a complex look when standing under the eaves. The redness of the Japanese buildings (as you can see from the photos, last post) is much bolder in effect.

More throughout the week.

Tokyo photos

2007-09-03T21:15:00.000+09:00

The crappy weather in Tokyo during my visit had me taking a lot less pictures than I wanted to, but here are a few of the better ones.

Shibuya, as seen from Hachiko Plaza.

Same deal, but at night.

Shibuya crossing, reputedly one of the busiest pedestrian scrambles in the world. The Starbucks on the second floor of the building on the left is also supposed to be one of the world's busiest. I got an iced coffee there at 2:00 p.m. and the place was still packed to the gills when I passed again at 9:00.

I can only imagine what goes on in this establishment...

Lanterns on a gate leading to Senso-ji in Asakusa.

The main temple at Senso-ji. I love how the lighting turned out in this shot.

The main gate leading into the temple.

Senso-ji's famous five-storey pagoda. Spectacular at night.

Tori gate at Meiji-jingu, the largest Shinto Shrine in Tokyo. Deep green and blissfully still amid 35 million souls.

One of the main guard houses of the Imperial Palace, seen from the outside.

A guard keeping the riffraff at bay since, unlike the palaces of Seoul, this one still plays home to a functioning Imperial family.

A closer look from the inside.

"Maman" a statue of a giant spider at the ritzy Roppongi Hills development.

Popular canned coffee godhead who seems to be channeling a stern, Japanese Bob Dobbs.

More photos and stories to come.

Four Cloudy Days in the Land of the Rising Sun

2007-08-31T14:56:00.000+09:00

I'm at Narita airport on a coin-operated Internet kiosk, with a pocket full of 100 yen coins from a purchase of Mentos (I forewent the Pocky, Black-Black or trusty Crunky) on a 1000 yen bill.

The Mentos are also in the pocket.

Don't worry they aren't touching.

Tokyo was intense. I can't imagine living in a city that size and functioning as a well-adjusted human being. That said, wandering around the Imperial Gardens or deep green Meiji-jingu in the light summer rain made it hard to fathom that I could be in the middle of the biggest metropolis on the planet without a soul in sight.

More tomorrow after I've recovered.

My feet hurt.

Gaijin & Tonic

2007-08-27T16:53:00.000+09:00

Sorry.

Really.

I couldn't help myself.

I'm heading to Tokyo tomorrow for a 4 day sensory overload.

Stories and photos will follow on the weekend.

In which Sam-Sam meets drunkenman and becomes the wall

2007-08-25T18:23:00.000+09:00

"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOhello!" said the red-eyed man as he saddled up beside me in the subway station.

"Hello," I said.

"Where are you from?" he asked, making himself comfortable against the same wall I was leaning on. He was shorter than me by at least 4 inches. He was probably 50, but definitely wore a golf shirt. His eyes were really much redder than when I just said "red" that one time in the first sentence.

"I'm from Canada," I told him.

"Waaah! Canada," he said dazzled, his eyes bulged quite amphibian. "Quebec?"

"No."

"Ahhh, Toronto then!"

"No. By the sea."

"Canada is a verrrrry beautiful country, a very green country, forests are the best, Canada has the best forests in the world, Canada is great!" His words all ran together like Lego bricks stacking up a precarious stairway to nowhere.

"Canada is very beautiful, " I agreed.

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Sam."

"Sam, you have a very beautiful name."

"Thank you."

"I am drunkenman."

"Pleased to meet you drunkenman," I said.

"Have a wonderful visit," he said in what would commonly be considered the end of a conversation, but he continued, pulling an incredibly wrinkled 1000 won bill out of his pocket with mysticism that was entirely uncalled for.

"This is Korean money," he announced.

"I know."

He tried to force the bill into my hand, but I refused adamantly.

"No, thank you."

"Please! yesyesyes."

"No, really. I have my own Korean money," I insisted.

"Sam, you are a careerman?" he asked.

"No I'm a teacher. An English teacher."

He cast his eyes off to the speeding trains.

"Once upon a time I was an English teacher," he said, leaving the thought hanging vaguely in the air.

I was going to ask him about his life as a teacher, when he suddenly started to chuckle to himself and began rubbing his forearm against mine, obviously amused at being tickled by my arm hair.

Suddenly, drunkenman spread his arms out and leaned back flat. He looked over at me and leaned in close as if to tell a secret.

"We are the wall," he told me and raised both his eyebrows.

"We are the wall," I agreed.

It was 4:00 in the afternoon.

My Rights vs. Yours

2007-08-25T10:54:00.000+09:00

Two short things:

I am on vacation until the 3rd. Then just two short weeks until the big flight.

I am in love with the new New Pornographers single. Listen to it here.

I always knew these guys were excellent but this song makes me so happy I've just been listening to it and smiling all morning. Every now and then you find a song that perfectly captures your mood.

In this case it is being on the edge of something you've been waiting for— seeing land
from the sea if you will.

No you aren't

2007-08-21T19:17:00.000+09:00

"Hello, how are you?" I said to the two teenage girls who were walking in front of me and alternating peeks and giggling.

This prompted a look of shock from one, and bashful laughter from the other.

"Hi-eee!" she said awkwardly.

"I like your shirt," I replied, finding it hard to keep it to myself during the block I'd been looking at it.

"?" she said with her face.

I just smiled and passed them.

"Pure-f**kin' Canadian! 100%!" the shirt yelled again as I walked by.

That so?

Choi Hong-man vs. The Wall

2007-08-21T09:29:00.001+09:00

Another unique Japanese game-show that puts the rest of the world's entertainment to shame.

The kicker is about half way through when you see one of the contestants is the giant Korean boxer Choi Hong-man. Watch him try to squeeze through tiny holes in fast approaching pink walls.

Twice one hundred speaks

2007-08-20T18:46:00.000+09:00

200 posts.

Less than a month to go.

I wish I had something inspirational to say.
Paul found a copy of the infamous book Everybody Poops and showed it to me today. He was so excited I thought he might add his own illustrations.

I guess it was only a matter of time.

Carefully Remiss

2007-08-18T09:21:00.000+09:00

There has been a bit of a posting drought around here lately, so I'll rehydrate using the collective tears of the nation's youth.

Yesterday I came across a certain Korean English proficiency test, which will remain nameless. I hate standardized tests mostly due to the fact that there is no standardized education, especially when you sent your kid off to "talk" to some random foreigner for a few hours a day and expect them to return as foreign investment bankers quoting Chaucer. Here is an example of one of the questions on this test designed for 5th and 6th graders. Granted, the test is more or less intended as a challenge for kids who have been sent to study abroad and attend a number of English Villages and Academies since they were old enough to say "ne" and their parents saw that as the first step towards saying "neo-anarcho-syndicalism."

Question:

"Red was in so many ways a heartbreaking figure. He was physically unsuited to riding. His intellect made him an oddball at the track, and he was incredibly accident-prone. While his peculiarities suited him to Seabiscuit, a kindred soup, he was by no means a great rider. After Seabiscuit, he was consistent only in failure. Racing punished and humiliated him. But for all his failures, Red lived exactly as he chose. Most of us don't, and live narrower lives because of it. He just loved to ride, and so he did."

Which of the following best describes the author's tone?

1) respectfully celebratory
2) pitifully grudging
3) carefully remiss
4) gently aloof
5) reluctantly sympathetic

A better question would undoubtedly be, Which of the following best describes even the most studied and intellectual 5th grader asked to answer this question?

1) quintessentially aghast
2) unfathomably depressed
3) congenially challenged
4) vengefully scorned
5) "I hate English."

I hope prize money is involved.

Gyeongbokgung

2007-08-11T23:38:00.000+09:00

Today was a hot, hot Saturday of touristy fun with Shane in Seoul.

We started off with a lunch of galbi (marinated beef) and dwenjang jigae (soybean paste soup) at my favorite out of the way restaurant at Insadong:

The spread.

Me psyching myself up for the feast. Our table was in a little nook of the restaurant with ceilings so low we had to seriously crouch to get there.

The next stop was Gyeongbokgung— main royal palace of the Joseon Dynasty.

Mount Bugaksan in the background.

The palace guard.

Sajeongjeon, where the King received officials and such.

A grand, off limits staircase to the heavens.

Shane, ever industrious, is seen here in a small underground thatched-roof hut he constructed to escape the sun. Doesn't he just look so pleased with himself?

There were swarms of dragonflies all throughout the palace complex, but near these statues in particular there were dozens upon dozens. I tried to get a picture but they wouldn't stay still despite my giving them all the change I had on me. I didn't press the point to avoid having my lips sewn shut.

Lonely.

Content.

Thirsty?

C'est tout. After this my camera got heat stroke and went on a manic, unstoppable slide-show until the battery wore itself out.

I Feel Pretty

2007-08-09T21:37:00.001+09:00

I think this is pretty much the best photo of 2007.

Despite the obvious significance of the summit to take place between the Two Koreas later this month, I think J-Il's mind is elsewhere.

In fact, if I didn't know any better I could swear by that impish grin and deliberately concealed twinkle-o-the-eye, that the Dear Leader is so pleased by the success of Yonggary director Shim Hyung-rae's new movie D-War that he is planning the entire summit as an elaborate ruse to kidnap Mr. Shim and coerce him into making the long overdue Pulgasari II.

Don't Fear the Teacher

2007-08-08T19:12:00.000+09:00

Today as I was passing out books to my little ones, I did a little dance and a twirl and brought the last one down overhand on a girl's desk in a funny little flourish.

She flinched and held up her hands because she thought I was going to hit her.

God damn...

Rice is Nice

2007-08-06T19:56:00.000+09:00

Some days I am so frustrated after work that I can barely unclench my teeth on the walk back to my apartment. On those days, instead of picking fights or lifting weights, I realize I need to take a walk down the rice field. When the sky is clear the trail is just so calm.

There are hundreds of dragonflies zipping through the dusk. Now that the fields are thick there aren't as many cranes picking through the water, but you still see a few gliding.

It is exactly what I need after a hard day.

Silence.

Oh, and in case you were wondering why Koreans all haul out the "V" when they have their pictures taken, I don't have an answer why but I can tell you that even abandoned gardening gloves pose for the camera.

"Kimchi!"

Please Call Stella

2007-08-05T11:34:00.000+09:00

Anyone who's interested in accents should check this out. It's a linguistics project from a professor at George Mason University in Virginia, collecting recordings of people reading the same short paragraph, but with different naturalized accents.

I've always found this kind of stuff interesting a) because putting on an Irish or East Indian accent is always an amusing pastime for me and b) living in Korea for this past year(ish) makes me really notice my own accent when speaking English. Being from the South Shore of Nova Scotia I run my words together a lot. "Going to the store" kicks aside nice art-tic-u-la-tion, and becomes, in my mouth "gointutha store." We usually don't notice our own dialects until we're faced with having to correct someone else's.

Back at J-school I got repeatedly nailed in radio performance training for saying "ta" instead of "to." I'm very conscious about trying to speak clearly now when teaching, because I can't even imagine how hard it is for them to follow me much of the time.

I slam my words together and they draw them out by adding extra vowels. "Damage-e, change-e, strange-e" things like that. There are some students who speak good English with an incredibly thick Korean accent, and some of the younger ones, who, if they go to study in North America won't wind up with an accent at all. Well... that's not true either is it? They'll unconsciously sponge up any number of subtle dialects. One of the presenters on the English Channel Arirang has very significant traces of a South African accent. Others pronounce words with a unmistakable British or Aussie lilt, but don't have a full blown "accent."

I just think it's so interesting. A friend of mine from university did recruiting for another school before she did the program at King's. She spent some time in... Denmark or Finland... one of the Nordic countries. Anyway she said that many of the people she met there all spoke English with a different dialect because they had all studied abroad in different countries.

The speech site is pretty comprehensive, and there are many obvious distinct accents in North America alone (Quebecois, Kentucky etc. no Newfoundland sadly...) but check out the quadrangle— each of the coasts. Nova Scotia to Florida to California to Vancouver. It's interesting the differences you notice. The Maritimer has the same run-together tendencies as me, and the guy from B.C. has an incredibly pronounced "s."

I could waste all day on this site.

Less is More

2007-08-01T19:35:00.000+09:00

With August comes the mantra of "just a month and a half" and that is an ever growing comfort.

Today Paul made me laugh so hard I thought I was going to choke.

I fight it so hard because I know it just reinforces his wacky behavior, but I am only so strong.

The assignment was to write how to make something (anything) in five simple steps. I walked the perimeter of the oval table to see how everyone was progressing.

I made the mistake of leaving Paul until the end.

His page looked like this:

I'm going to write about how to make... poop.

Step 1: Give all your power to your butt.

That's all I needed to read.

I started laughing, and my multi-pronged donkey laugh gets the kids going on its own, so soon everyone was on the verge of accidentally laughing all of our power to our butts.

That could have been a bad scene.

But seriously, I think that is the best, most evocative description of flexing I've ever read. There's an occasional clarity in the descriptions of people who are just learning English, that sometimes evades native speakers who flog their words. Their minds aren't junked up with synonyms, and words that "sound smart" which I think is the biggest curse of writing anything. When you only know so many words, I think you're required to be more creative with them. Judy didn't know the word for cigarette ash so she called it "fire seed."

It's interesting to observe.

Dang

2007-07-27T19:48:00.000+09:00

So I only found out yesterday that Muse, Damien Rice, L'arc~en~Ciel, Ocean Colour Scene & The Chemical Brothers are playing a 3 day festival in Incheon this weekend, about a half hour away.

I am left ticketless.

Life is shit...

Nature Calls

2007-07-26T19:13:00.000+09:00

I could write a book on Korean kids and dung. But it would just be a thousand questions without an answer to the proverbial WTF?

Literature and collectibles abound (I bought a Dongchimee pencil case at the Dalki store in the COEX) and furthermore, there seems to be a generally-accepted sound affect for evacuation.

Joseph spelled it for me as "buzizic" (buh-je-jic).

That is the dung sound. It was sadly not an isolated case of one boy's madness and class-clownism.

Now I know.

My file is growing.

On another, eventually-related note, Korean kids tend to be very patriotic. Even very young ones have an opinion on the fierce territorial debate between Korea and Japan on the Liancourt Rocks in the East Sea/Sea of Japan, known as Dokodo or Takeshima respectively.

I've been asked numerous times by the children if I think "Dokodo" is Korea's or not. When I respond that I don't care, they are shocked.

I explain my traveler's neutrality to the best of my ability, amounting mostly to "it's none of my business, I'm not Korean or Japanese."

Many other historical sites in Korea are so old and culturally instilled that the kids are shocked that I don't know about them.

"Teacher! You know Mount somethingsomething???"

"Nope."

"!!!"

"I've never heard of it."

Joseph, 13 and so more nationalistic, seemed almost angry that I didn't know about this random, but reputedly amazing Korean mountain.

"Why you don't know?" he challenged me.

"I'm a guest in this country Joseph, I'm not a citizen. Your history isn't mine."

"..."

"Do you know about Gros Morne?" I said tossing some Atlantic Canadian landmarks at him.

"..."

"Bras D'or?"

"..."

"Sable Island?"

"..."

"Kejimkujik?"

There was a beat of silence as if the set-up had been intentional.

"Buzizik?"

Cash or Charge?

2007-07-23T19:07:00.000+09:00

Koreans kids love to poke each other, and by extension me, in the arse. See: dung-chip.

Despite the fact that I'm obviously having none of it, they still try and get their shots in when the opportunity arises.

Today, Joseph unleashed a secret move the likes of which has never been seen before.

He calls it Card Slash.

The principal is similar to dung-chipping, but the execution is more like swiping a credit card through a scanner, only the credit card is a karate-chop gesture, and the scanner... well, you can read between the lines.

It's now the shenanigan-de-jour during breaks between class.

Metaphorically speaking, the 5-minute crack between two 40-minute classes must be filled with something— why not a card slash?

No one has yet performed the move on me and lived to tell the tale.

Fan II - Low, Medium, DOOM!

2007-07-22T16:02:00.000+09:00

My fan committed suicide last night.

There was a horrible, prolonged screech as the motor choked on its own bits, then a final rattling that sounded like a stick across a picket fence, before the unmistakable stillness of death.

It was a hot night to come.

Today, in the interest of not meeting the same end as the ex-fan, I headed to the neighborhood appliance shanty to find a suitable replacement.

There were sales upon sales, and I settled on a sturdy-looking powder blue affair.

When I got it home I checked out the instructions and found many helpful illustrations letting me know exactly what I shouldn't do with my new fan.

Now, I can't read Korean... so I don't know if this is straight-up saying "YOU WILL DIE IF YOU SLEEP WITH YOUR FAN ON!" but the threat is surely implied.

Fan death is apparently a commonly believed urban legend in Korea, that I'm sure every blogger whose ever been to this country for an extended time has written about in disbelief, so I won't waste much time.

The basis for the danger is thinly explained as being either related to carbon dioxide, vacuums
or hypothermia— warn a Canadian that they might get hypothermia from a fan, and you'll find yourself on the business-end of an anecdote about passing out drunk overnight in a snowdrift in Winnipeg, then going to work the next day.

I'm of the opinion that the much more grave and unreported danger, is in the other helpful illustration:

Let's get it together people— do not stick your neck into the unassembled, but still plugged-in fan motor!

It may seem tempting, and I'd be lying if I said I hadn't considered it when I was putting the thing together. If you saw this sexy thing in action you'd want to get it all up in your neck too. BUT YOU CAN'T, DAMN IT!

Those of you who know me, and might be worrying about my eminent asphyxiation DON'T! because the fan is equipped with an anti-fandeath timer. What it isn't equipped with, however, is a device that suddenly makes it seem like a bad idea to give yourself a rollicking-good throat massage on the ol' oscillator.

I'm sure that if the late, great Mitch Hedberg had known about fan death, he would have written a good joke about it. He never had the chance. While I'm not saying fans killed him, I'm also not saying they didn't...

He did write this joke however, which I'll leave you with:

"I have an oscillating fan at my house. It goes back and forth. It looks like the fan is saying 'no.' So I like to ask it questions that a fan would say 'no' to. Do you keep my hair in place? Do you keep my documents in order? Do you have 3 settings? LIAR! My fan lied to me. Now I will pull the pin up. Now you're not saying anything."

Truth.

Hangeek

2007-07-20T20:23:00.000+09:00

I love how endearingly geeky Korean kids can be sometimes. It's one of the few times I can see myself in them.

"Teacher! Minwoo is hacking me!" one child wailed today, when he noticed his answers were being copied.

Later, when I had one on one with Paul, he dropped his head into his book and said, "Teacher... I am exhausted, I have spent all my mp (magic points, for you normals)."

Ha!

Loose belts sink spirits

2007-07-18T23:50:00.000+09:00

My sunburn was a big hit in school today. Many of the students suspected arson... though I suppose it's not longer arson if you try to burn down a person. In any case, there were several impressions of me running along a beach in flames.

You should have seen it.

Joey, always a wild card lately, had the strangest comment.

"Teacher! At the beach you wear the heart panty?"

"No, Joey. Shorts."

"Teacher! Roosevelt is wear the heart panty!"

"Roosevelt, as in U.S President Roosevelt?" I had to clarify since he spoke it, mixing the r/l and v/b as Koreans do, making something similar to "Loosebelt." Therein lay his joke.

"Yeah! Every time he go to talk 'ladies and gentleman' thing, belt is loose and his pants fall down and there is the heart panty!"

All curiosities about my swimwear aside, I think he'd been waiting a long time to use that one.

Sights

2007-07-17T11:49:00.000+09:00

I didn't take many photos on the weekend, since I was mostly caked in mud and I didn't think my camera would appreciate it as much as I did. So here are just a few of the non-mudded times:

The view from the Motel.

Again at night.

Traditional Korean drumming in the plaza.

Drama, as in "I don't want no..."

In keeping with the previous guests, I left my mark on the headboard. Those who know, know.

This lady was decked out in maximum sun protection gear, including the mask with clothes-pins holding it in place. I saw her roaming the beach selling the most random stuff, as you can see: ice cream, along with inflatable devil pitchforks.

The watery, sloshing mud shenanigan pool, looking much tamer on Sunday afternoon.

"UV, whut?" or "Whitey's last stand."

Life's a beach.

Flaving. Mad Flaving.

The Mudening

2007-07-17T09:44:00.000+09:00

We're in the car behind the conductor's, sitting room only, so I'm curled away in a tiny alcove between a sliding door and a protruding wall. Riley is stretched out next to some foreign girls whining about relationships. She's reading my (borrowed) copy of On The Road, since I can't concentrate because my arms and feet hurt too much. I stare out the window as the mountains and sky start to get darker. We're on our way back from the Boryeong Mud Festival, and it kicked our asses in the best way.

Flashback to my random meeting of an old high school acquaintance during the Lotus Lantern Festival in May. I asked what I definitely needed to do while I was still in Korea. He told me to go to the Mud Festival.

"What's the Mud Festival?"

"Go and you'll understand."

Designated by the Tourism Department as the best festival in Korea, Riley quickly heard about it too, and we made plans to see what the fuss was about.

So last Friday night we convened in Seoul, stayed over at a friend of Riley's and early Saturday morning we headed down to the massive Yongsan station complex to catch the 9:30 train to Daechon. There were plenty of other foreigners milling around who were obviously in a beach state of mind, so we knew we were on the right track. Not only popular in Korea, the festival is a big draw for international tourists. Riley posted a Aussie video from last year's festival which you can check out for some background.

Anyway we got our tickets for the 3-hour trip (on the cheap, only $10 each) but when a Korean train sells all it's seats it still sells something in the range of 400 more "standing room only" tickets. This means you get to sit, stand, squat or squeeze yourself into any available inch of space not allotted to the fat-cat seat holders. We staked out a spot on the steps to one of the exits. It was a good place, except we randomly had to stand to let on old women hauling orange buckets full of god-knows-what wrapped in black garbage bags. It was hardly like the ironic images of packed to the gills, hanging out the windows and wherever there's footing East Indian train rides, but it was pretty full at times.

We left Seoul with dark clouds, and were greeted by relentless, yet glorious sunshine in Daechon-Boryeong. After a lunch of bibimbap (spicy rice and veg) we cabbed it to our awesomely named "Motel Drama" which lucky for us, turned out to be almost directly on the beach. We checked in, suited up, and went to see what was happening on the sand. Across the street from the Drama was an open plaza with a fountain shooting off like a giant lawn sprinkler. A crowd of Koreans were getting muddy in a big inflatable sloshing pool.

No for those of you imaging garden mud, think facial mud. Boryeong is famous for the quality of it's mud beauty products, harvested from a mud plain near the beach. Apparently it's super high in Bentonite and Germanium and other skin-friendly minerals.

The beach itself is about 3.5 km long, and we were on the far right end facing the sea. So as we walked to where the action was at (on the opposite side) we started to see more and more people painted up in grey-green mud. There were more foreigners than I've ever seen congregated in one place in Korea. Mudless, Riley and I were standing out even more than usual, so we made out (ED: ha, Freudian slip? I meant of course, "made our") way to the main-stage area. Past the Mud Wrestling Flats, "Mud Jail" and watery, sloshing mud shenanigan pool (not official title) was a spread of tables with beach umbrellas, buskets (Suicide Kings fans?) and brushes to "self-massage."

We did just that.

I can compare the sensation to applying a mud pack on the face, then putting your face in front of a fan. It was like that, but on your whole body. The cool breeze off the Yellow Sea blew over our muddy bodies and took any hint of stress away with it. It was a glorious feeling.

Now as one with the muddy masses, we wandered in the crowd near the main stage where a band of foreigners played happy, dumb punk-rock covers. In spirit I got Riley to craft me a mud mohawk, but compared to the mud slicked hair of the stylish Korean guys, crafted into dos of impossible anime proportions, it was only an accomplishment to me. In the crowd we met up with Riley's friends who would be staying with us, Deb and Adam from California, and Michael from Ireland. They were fine folks all and we took in the wild atmosphere of the moment.

It was mid-afternoon by now, and in the main area was packed with muddy revelers and hundreds of photographers. They were staked out in the windows of cafes or on the tops of RVs. Many were just wandering the crowds with plastic bags wrapped around their massive lenses. We all had dozens of photos taken of us, and a guy from a TV News crew stopped to ask me some simple questions in English about how I liked the festival and if I found the language barrier a problem (my answer at the time was no, but the tune would change when it was next to impossible to find something for dinner later on). The only thing that totally outnumbered the cameras were the beer cans. Booze sells at convenience stores throughout Korea, and no one (the law included) has any problem with drinking in public. So all around us, burly Aussies, Yanks and Canadians were either drinking soju straight from the bottle as they walked, or carried towers of tall cans of Hite beer. I saw a guy with a full back tattoo of Dali's The Elephants. The beer cans were stacked about as high as the Elephant's spindly-mosquito legs.

All inside the stores, cardboard walks had been set down for muddy feet, and dirty, drunken people left their hand-prints on the drink fridges. When in Rome.

We shared a few beers as our mud dried in the sun. My mohawk was now decidedly faux. As the rest of the gang got Chinese lunch, Riley and I went swimming. It was wonderful to float in the shallows and clean off the first batch of mud and just relax. This was the first time I'd been to the beach since I've been in Korea, so I was relishing the warm water and warm sun. After basking for a good while, we grabbed some Cobra beer (fun at the moment, a bit venomous in after-taste) and rejoined the group. The evening was coming on, and we meandered to our fancy, winding up at the mud spa/not-quite-Jjimjilbang and spent the better part of an hour in the tubs and steam rooms. It was slightly disappointing since the "mud bath" portion wasn't the thick, shallow quick-sand type pool I'd hoped, but more of a mud-water tub. In any case it was more invigoration, and sweat and cool showers before back out into the madness.

We reconvened at the Drama, and Riley and I embarked on a laborious task to find food. Since (obviously) Boryeong is a costal community, seafood was heavy on the menu. Despite being a Maritimer born and bred, I've never been a fan of the pulsating marine life on my dinner table. This would be an obstacle, since the strip near the beach was a veritable Clam-o-Rama, with seafood restaurants packed one right after another, all with tanks outside full of fresh clams, conch, squid, sea slug and/or cucumber, and even the occasional small shark. I'm sure this sound glorious to some, but I wasn't too turned on. Finding an alternative proved a bit tricky since neither of us can read Hangul, and the wait at the only pizza place was close to 2 hours. Defeated and brain-drained from the sun and hunger, we settled on a kindly old lady's chicken cart for some BBQ skewers and ddeokbokki (rice cakes in red pepper paste). After that it was more beer, beach and fireworks before we retired to our one bed room, tossing the second mattress on the floor for 6, slumber party style.

The next day was more beach, less mud. The mud situation wasn't in full tilt until later in the afternoon, so Riley and I rented an inner tube and hung out on the beach— flaving (a Newfoundlander friend's borrowed word for total relaxing). We took the tube and a few more beers to the ocean and floated and drank and just enjoyed complete peace of mind. It was glorious.

Soon, sadly it was time to go, so after some disappointing lunch we boarded the most packed bus I've ever had the displeasure of being on, and rode for what seemed like forever in traffic as backpack zippers chaffed my now horribly apparent sunburns. We missed our 4:30 train, and had to wait for two hours until the next. That brings us back to the opening of the hunched, painful standing room only ride back to Seoul on feet that could barely work, and as red as a bull-fighter's muleta.

It was a fantastic time, with good fun, good weather, and good company. The weekend saw me as both the filthiest and cleanest I've ever been in my life, more so even than mucking about in the slip buckets of my parent's pottery shop as a kid, and being baptized respectively.

Respectable records both, to have broken over two days.

Now I rest on "Constitution Day" with no school, covered in sesame-smelling burn ointment and enjoying what has become a 4 day holiday of pure and unadulterated flaving.

El Scorcho

2007-07-16T14:31:00.000+09:00

My feet are so sunburned, I can barely walk. I have to take the day off to recover.

The Mud Festival kicked my ass, but in the best possible way. So fun.

I will write more when my digits are a little less stiff.

Welcome back, Kotter

2007-07-12T12:21:00.000+09:00

Children are pop culture sponges.

But when it's not their pop culture they're absorbing the results always have a peculiar bend.

I mentioned Harry Potter (who the kids frequently compare me to... because of my glasses and wizardly forehead?) in my last post, and his influence, naturally, is widespread.

I see lots of kids, reading the books translated into Korean, and telling me about the adventures of Harry, Hermione, and "Lon."

The most peculiar instance of Harry Potter poking up randomly, is in insults unique to one student. If those around him are saying things he doesn't like, he'll exclaim: "Shut up, Malfoy!" though it sounds closer to "Sharrup, Malpoy!"

I've written before about the prominence of E.T., Gollum, Shrek etc. They are the big three. I've also often heard kids use the term "Fiona" (read: "Piona") as an insult, referring to the Shrek character. Many also sing an irritating little alphabet rhyme alone the lines of "A B C D E.T. Gollum, Sh-rek, Gollum, [indecipherable]."

They also make frequent jokes about "Hairy Kotter" since apparently "Kotter" (I don't know how its written in Korean) is a word for nose hair.

J.K. Rowling is a subject in numerous reading comprehension books.

So it goes.

Harry Potter & The Hefty Gallows

2007-07-11T20:53:00.000+09:00

Today Paul was peeking over my shoulder as I read the Globe & Mail online. He noticed the title of the review for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

He laughed.

"Teacher? Harry Potter does not know English?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"It says Order of the 'Phonics.' He studies phonics like us? I thought wizards were genius."

"Fenix, not phonics," I said. "Phoenix is a firebird."

I explained using Google Images.

This:
Not, this:

That however made me think, what if I taught phonics using this:

I think I've had a brainwave, especially given Joey's recent obsession with "the gallows." Last week, he drew a little picture of a hangman's noose on his book and asked, "Teacher, what is name of this place?"

"The gallows," I said sinisterly.

"G.a.l.l.o.w.s." He wrote it out on his fingernails in pencil, so he would remember.

After class he followed me out into the hallway. "Teacher! Let's go the gallows."

He skipped happily behind me singing the word gallows.

"Gallows, gallows, ga-lows!"

Soon, a few more impressionable bystanders were following along, and joining our little macabre parade, not knowing of course what gallows meant, but figuring it must be good from Joey's tone of voice.

I headed down the stairs.

"Teacher, we are going to the gallows?" Joey asked.

"Let's go to gallows!" another said with glee.

"Okay kids, lets go to the gallows!"

"Hurray!" they cried, and followed me out to the sidewalk like I was the Pied Piper.

When they saw that we were actually going to the Crown Bakery, there were moans of disappointment.

I think a field trip is in order.

The Great White Hype

2007-07-10T22:02:00.000+09:00

The walk from my apartment to school is less than five minutes, but it is my least favorite part of the day.

The sidewalk is narrow and uphill, along the base of the mountain. There is a metal guard rail that follows along street-side and keeps us nice and fenced-in. Normally this wouldn't bother me, but everyday I share the walk with hundreds of high schoolers, taking their afternoon break as I head to work.

It's a great tide of clean, white dress shirt uniforms, and I'm walking against it.

Again, this is something that wouldn't normally bother me, but I find it tiring to have to walk uphill, in the afternoon sun while avoiding eye contact with those who tend to see me as a curious novelty humanoid.

I'm more than willing to say hello or even stop and talk to anyone who would wish, but wave after wave of the same meaningless exchange:

"Hi-eeeee!"

"Hello."

"HAHAHAHA!"

That starts quickly to wear on you.

I hate to complain. Especially on a blog, because... I mean c'mon... but being seen as an oddity, either suspiciously or as novelty, is something that you can't really prepare for.

The worst are those who don't say anything, but as soon as they pass me in silence, burst out laughing.

As a foreigner living in another country and not knowing the language, you sometimes feel paranoid and borderline resentful, assuming that everyone is talking about you all the time. No one welcomes this state of mind, but it sort of invites itself in as the stares and snickers start to gain weight and influence.

I'll regularly be eating in a restaurant, and hear only two words I understand but still be able to delineate the conversation. "Wayguk or waygukin" (foreigner) and "hamburgers."

I imagine the conversation goes along the lines of:

"Oh, a foreigner. And he can eat Korean food."

"Isn't it too spicy for him?"

"He looks like he's enjoying it!"

"What do foreigners usually eat?"

All together: "Hamburgers!"

Just so we're clear, hamburgers are our (North Americans in general) cultural thumb-print on the world. Jughead is North America, Pop Tate's is the globalization that provides him with an unlimited supply of burgers, and Korea is a little kid with its face pressed against the diner window, agape at the masses of beef this freak of nature can pack away.

My friends and I had an old joke about "burger-lust" and how it was an affliction that would reduce the overweight to a state of slavish helplessness, and make them willing to do anything for a hamburger. Wimpyism, if you will.

Joey's long-standing dream is to run off to Canada so he can eat hamburgers for breakfast.

Is this the spark of burger-lust burning in his guts?
Where was I before I got on about hamburgers?

Ah yes, being paranoid.

I'm fully aware that Koreans have no obligation to spare my unknown feelings and make me feel comfortable in their space. My business in their country is my own. I don't belong here. It would be foolish to expect to feel normal in a small town, and I never did expect that. Those who I have a professional or even regular face-to-face relationship with (like shopkeepers etc.) have constantly gone out of their way to make me feel welcome and comfortable. I'm indebted to many people for their goodwill and friendliness. That's not it. It just gets old being a constant object of attention to strangers. After all, it's one of the oldest and time tested comedic set-ups isn't it? Something unfamiliar but in a familiar situation? I must be pretty hilarious to some.

I'm all for self-satire, but every now and then I just kick the days in the arse as they pass me by.

66...

*whump*

"Don't come back..."

Mixed Messages

2007-07-09T20:15:00.000+09:00

"Paul, you're so sweet you hurt my teeth," I said mockingly today as he pulled a dumb cutesy face.

"Teacher," he replied missing the joke, "you're so sweet you give me severe diarrhea."

More than knees the eye

2007-07-07T21:05:00.000+09:00

Today Shane and I descended on the COEX for caffeine, hamburgers and giant robots. Robots in disguise to be precise. Apparently the ticket clerk warned Shane against our second row seats, saying we'd get motion-sickness.

EXTREME!

Now, giant robots and Asia go together like coffee and cream, so it was definitely an appropriate venue to see Transformers. Though I sense the Korean audience balked a bit at John Turturro's product pitch, as his character tosses a secretly Decepticon cellphone into a holding chamber and says: "Nokia: gotta respect the Japanese."

On the topic, here's why we should, in fact, respect the Japanese: for allowing the rest of the world to bask in the glory of giant robots of all persuasions (meriting even a titular J-culture mag), but also for their blank-faced, blood-thirsty pink bears.

Don't see the connection? Allow me to flip the switch:

Shane and I were wandering through the mall after the movie, and we happened upon a little open air shop, sort of built into a corner. We were drawn in by a display case of strange figurines and shelves of strange plush characters. On closer inspection, we found a good portion of the tiny shop's stock was devoted to the characters pictured above. A hapless little boy getting his ass-kicked nine ways from Sunday by a blank-faced pink bear. On one package I some literature on the nature of their sadistic relationship:

"Gloomy is Pity's pet bear. His height is about 7 ft. He is well trained... except he has a hard time remembering not to attack humans."

I checked out the website (Japanese) as soon as I got home, and even there this (aptly-named) kid is getting the crap beat out of him in animated gifs. The more you click on the it, the more he wails on him. Is there no reprieve for Pity sake!?

Gloomy & Pity are the brainchild of Japanese designer Mori Chack. Here's some more company back-story on the pair:

"Gloomy, an abandoned little bear, is rescued by Pity (the little boy). At first, he is cute and cuddly, but becomes more wild as he grows up. Since bears do not become attached to people like dogs by nature, Gloomy attacks Pity even though he is the owner. So Gloomy has blood on him from biting and/or scratching Pity. The Gloomy with blood is called Chax Colony Edition."

I think this is interesting. Bears are consistently marketed to children as being cute, cuddly and harmless. Gloomy is the first two in spades. But harmless? Bears' biggest detractor, Stephen Colbert would not be wrong in calling this fellow a "Godless killing machine."

Among the subversive cutesy collectibles at the shop, was this:

A big plush bear claw which you can wear on your arm and do wholesome things like wail on your younger sibling with. Presumably it could also double as a neck pillow if you're the milquetoast type.

The star of the sick product show however, would have to be the series of key-chains, each one featuring a unique pose of Gloomy serving Pity his just desserts.

I got the flying head-butt:

So in conclusion, we must respect the Japanese not for their sexy, sleek Nokias, but because they can sell a staggering product line of meaningless baubles featuring a pink bear devastating an unfortunate young lad, all without making us think twice about it.

Also giant robots.

Respect, people.

Respect.

Livar & Young 'uns

2007-07-05T22:06:00.000+09:00

The kids have a habit of creating strange nouns out of verbs (and additional nouns) by tacking on -er. The opposite of a killer becomes a "dier", a person in the habit of personal evacuation is a "dunger" etc.

Additionally, competitiveness is bred into them at an early age. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why they are so whiny. Personal competition is so steep, that if anyone thinks that anyone else is getting even the most mundane or slight advantage over them in any situation, they weep sauvignon blanc with gale force. It goes without saying that fighting for grades is a fact of life.

Everybody knows that L vs. R is a tricky pronunciation hurtle for Asian-language speakers.

Now that these three points have been established, allow me to explain why.

A while ago, Paul and I were eating dinner together. He was glued to Yu-Gi-Oh! as usual, but was thoughtfully giving me a play-by-play.

"Teacher! That tough guy is the hero's livar," he announced.

"Livar?"

At first I heard "Li-ver" like "alive -a +er" as in, one in the habit of being alive. All of us for example.

"Li-var," Paul clarified.

"What's a livar?"

"You knoo-ooow!"

"Li-var?"

"Yeah, like... Judy is my livar."

"Huh?"

"Because we are almost the same at speaking English, so we fight each other. LIVAR!"

"AAAAAHHHH... rival."

Finally understanding, I thought it was awfully strange that an 8-year-old boy would have an academic rival. I can understand that competing with someone can be a real motivator, but is it really necessary in grade school?

In Korea, the answer is always yes.

It seems cancerous sometimes...

A rout of hapless stragglers

2007-07-03T11:28:00.001+09:00

Seoul Seeking has hit 10,000 page views. Neat.

2 1/2 months to go!

How toast got the Vote

2007-07-02T20:32:00.000+09:00

Korean foodstuffs try so bloody hard to express themselves, it's only a matter of time before they get universal suffrage.

It started with poetry on a lassi. Today I read this baffling missive on my bread bag:

"It kneads a dough with the boiling water high temperature and hour from low temperature
and maturing 56 a natural taste deeply and it saves with chewy it is soft there is the recording wall hundred which it will chew it does and a possibility of feeling simultaneously with the bread, the flavor taste is a possibility of seeing and it is a bread."

Finally, the world is awakening to the feelings of the staple foods. Though decades behind in animal rights, Korea seems to be paving the way for this new kind of compassion.

Let us recall the plea for understanding from the bread-lender Ryelock in one of Shakespeare's lesser known works, The Matza of Venice:

"If you prick us, do we not knead?"

Phallus or them

2007-06-29T00:41:00.000+09:00

How can I possibly maintain any kind of composure when my kids are so unintentionally hilarious?

"Teacher!" Joey said this afternoon, "Why some penis [said 'pen-is'] is have a moustache [said 'moose-tache']?"

Ridiculous Freudian images bounced around in my head all day:

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar— unless of course it has a moustache.

Summertime in the Void

2007-06-27T19:59:00.000+09:00

The Korean summer is making itself very apparent.

The days are getting steadily more humid, and you seldom see a closed window on the huge high-rise apartments.

Next to most residential telephone poles is a squirming bag of compost, which is mostly watermelon rind.

Umbrellas are out in full force, and won't go away after the rainy season. Sun umbrellas and huge black sun visors are staples of the older Korea lady's outside gear.

Ice cream is everywhere and at all times, often bought by the armload from convenience store freezers. There's no special Korean word for ice cream (that I know of...) so "ice creamu" is a catch-all term for any plastic-wrapped ice related treat— freezies et al.

When I make a trip to the bank, I'm suspicious about half of the people sitting inside aren't waiting for service, but sneakily enjoying the air-conditioning, like the way we used to loiter in the frozen food isles of supermarkets as kids.

I don't have air-conditioning.

I think I need another fan, or four.

I almost forgot...

2007-06-26T01:50:00.000+09:00

Today I sawr [sic] a weasel.

Vs.

2007-06-26T00:42:00.000+09:00

Paul and the gang have a real talent for asking me strange questions about the outcome of wildly improbable battles.

It all started back in the winter with simple animal vocabulary books.

Obviously "vs." is immediately recognizable to most kids, but no one before me had explained that it stands for "versus", so the initial questions were along the lines of:

"Teacher! Moose vs. fox, who win?"

It was literally like this with every creature we would come across, and Joey in particular was curious which docile herbivore might knock another's teeth out.

As the kids have gotten better, their questions have become more... let's say esoteric.

"Teacher! Electric blanket fight fart, who win?"

Along those sort of lines.

Today I said we didn't have any more time for ridiculous fighting questions.

Paul couldn't resist a coup de grace.

"Teacher! Ridiculous fight horrible, who win?"

"Adjectives can't fight each other Paul."

"Adjective fight noun, who win?"

"No parts of speech can fight each other."

"Speech fight writing, who win?"

As you can see, it's these kids that give me the strength to handle the rest, some of which I'm sure make a habit of muttering disparaging remarks about me in Korean under their breath daily.

In my one-on-one class with Paul he wrote the definition of the word "challenge" as this:

"Conan the Barbarian and Jack Bauer fight."

He picks up the most random stuff. Jeremy was talking about 24, and those Chuck Norris-esque jokes but with Jack Bauer's name instead (like, "Jack Bauer could strangle you with a cordless phone") so Paul insisted on knowing all about this Jack Bauer character. I mentioned one of his random drawings looked like Conan the Barbarian, and he needed to know all about it. This kid is obviously learning oodles from me. Now I just need to hammer home the proper grammatical pattern: "If __ fought __ who would win?" Or is that more or less like requesting an umbrella during water torture?

Excessive use of exclaimation marks in Indian poetry on convenient lassies (not Scottish girls)

2007-06-24T15:21:00.000+09:00

Today I bought a pineapple lassi drink from the convenience store down the street. It had a poem written on it:

"You are the evening cloud floating in the sky of my dreams.
I paint you and fashion you ever with my love longings.
You are my own, my own dweller in my endless dreams!
Your feet are rosy-red with my heart's desire, gleaner of my sweetest songs!
Your lips are bitter-sweet with my wine of pain."

-Tagore (1861-1941)

Pretty heavy for a yogurt drink.

Spare the antenna

2007-06-20T21:10:00.000+09:00

One of my twice-a-week classes is with two girls who are both at a very beginner level. They are really delightful though and we've worked up quite a rapport. They are the kind of kids who think I'm hilarious, so I can clown around a bit for them and put on a show.

They are also the only two who regularly call me "Sam-Sam." I think it's sweet. The series of books I teach from mostly is called "English Time" and features the recurring characters Digger and Max. They are two dogs who do a Bert & Ernie odd couple routine at the end of each unit. They usually revolve around Max eating too much, and Digger saying his catch-phrase "Oh Max!"

When I do something in an exaggerated ridiculous way, like drop my marker then kick it away when I bend down to pick it up, the girls laugh and say "Oh Sam-Sam!"

It's a pretty fun class.

The other day however, something happened that kind of disturbed me.

It was business as usual and I was pointing at some vocabulary words with a makeshift pointer which was really a confiscated antenna from a hand-held radio. I'd flick it here and there and pretend to conduct an invisible orchestra and things like that.

While I was occupied the girls swiped an extra pencil each from my cup and began drumming on the table. It was funny for a short time, then I plucked the pencils from their hands and they whined as if I was plucking feathers. As I made the way back round the circular table, one of the girls effectively "lost" her original pencil.

"Teacher! I'm no pencil!"

"You have no pencil?"

"Yes!"

"Where did it go?"

"...I'm no pencil!"

"That's okay you don't need a pencil."

"I'm no pencil!"

"Yes, but you don't need a pencil. No writing."

I crossed my forearms in an X— the definitive "No" pose.

This same exchange went on for longer than it should have, and I got a little bit frustrated. The girl got out of her seat and walked up to me with her two hands held together at about the height of my chest.

I took it to be an asking gesture.

"You don't need a pencil," I said again.

"No, no!" she said, and pointed to my little metal antenna.

"You want this?"

"No, no!" she said, and mimed taking the thing out of my hand, hoisting it high above her head and bringing it down hard on her palm.

I was shocked.

"No, no!" it was my turn to say.

I know that corporal punishment is a presence in public schools, so many of the students come to expect it from any teacher— even Sam-Sam. She obviously thought she had done something wrong by jokingly hiding the pencil in her desk, and had come to me to receive her punishment. Her expression hadn't changed. She didn't appear concerned about having her hands hit with a small metal rod. She looked resigned. That's just the way it was.

When I told her no, she actually protested.

"Please!" she said, now holding her hands together in a gesture that couldn't be misread.

I actually took me some time to get across that I wasn't now or ever going to hit her, especially for something like hiding a pencil. Eventually she accepted it and we got on with our class, but for awhile she was obviously upset that the strict power structure she was used to didn't fly here. Like suddenly learning black is white... but sometimes it's black.

But I find it sad that learning you aren't going to be hit by your teacher is what causes the sudden shock to the status quo.

Bidet's the day?

2007-06-19T21:55:00.000+09:00

My haircut has been much better received by the students this time around. Kids are naturally fickle and blunt and love to be cheeky when they know they can get away with it. So they'll combine simple words and gestures to insinuate that you look like spaghetti vomit and things like that.

The first wee one to see me today was Young-chang who is nothing short of adorable with his little perm and big curious eyes.

"Oooooh!" he said peeking into the teacher's room.

"Who are you!?"

"Don't you remember me?" I laughed.

"Teacher! *insert hair-cutting gesture* is beautiful! You are prince!"

Shucks.

Throughout the day I was told my "style" (the be-all personal commodity) was "cool, and very best." I was also compared to Spiderman, Harry Potter, David Beckham and a host of others. Some compliments, naturally, were simply bribery towards leaving the class for a drink of water.

"Teacher! You are handsome, and Superman and Batman and Spiderman. Okay!? I'm going water..."

Reminds me of a childhood note to my mother, to the tune of: "I love you and you love me right? Right. I would like to go bowling."

In other news, I've decided a moratorium on electronic dictionaries in class is required. The ability to find the English equivalent of anything Korean that pops into their heads generally gives more in the way of inappropriate words than anything else.

Today I got this from the relatively harmless "I get along well with............... because............"

"I get along well with penis because it is very clean."

Too much information my darlings...

Fancy Bruises

2007-06-18T21:30:00.001+09:00

On Sunday Shane and I went out to the "Rodeo Road" district near Jamsil (not to be confused with the swanky Rodeo Drive in Apgujeong, which subsequently should not to be confused with the actual Rodeo Drive in Beverley Hills.)

The occasion was my second and last haircut in Korea, and to do a little shopping as the fancy struck me.

Suffice to say, fancy got in a nice right hook. A couple.

Wanna see the bruises?

One of the dangerous things about wandering around in Seoul with a wallet full of cash is not the chance you might get robbed. Seoul (and Korea in general) is incredibly safe. No, the danger lies in your impulse to buy all the ridiculous things you stumble across, instead of candidly snapping a picture and later exclaiming to family and friends: "Look! This actually exists!" With a wallet full of Sejongs, each blending into the next, you find yourself suddenly able to say: "Look! This actually exists! And I own it..."

It can be a bad situation, but at least I'll have plenty of gifts.

First up is my new favorite magazine (from Japan):

It's essentially a Japanese glossy music and style magazine, but it seriously has the greatest name ever, and well deserving of an exclamation mark. It leaps right out at you off the rack...

Shane suggested the name might actually be pronounced "Bar-fout!" but I refuse to be swayed.

Next up is an item that Paul himself already owns, and Shane noticed before at a booksellers expo, being advertised by a three-foot-high plush dung in a mortarboard:

"Why? Dung."

A "science comic" on the the process of digestion and the history of human feces, as narrated by an anthropomorphic turd with strange little antennae.

A must have for any respectable member of the Global Village.

Shane bought this initially, but sensibly had regrets several hours after the purchase. I snapped it up at a handsome discount, figuring such a thing really did have to been seen to be believed.

Lastly is a ridiculous t-shirt found in a vast sea of ridiculous t-shirt street vendors:

I just can't grasp what ties together even a few of the many elements of this shirt. An "Armadillo Christmas" is bizarre enough as it is, but has the world really had occasion to celebrate seven of them? Do the festivities somehow involve "Quality Paint"? Am I already thinking ten thousand times harder about this than the designer's Mad libs-style production formula allows?

In any case friends, here are the photos so now you know these things actually exist. If you ever need something more tangible, look me up, because for better of worse, these things actually exist, and I own them...

Armadillo Christmas

2007-06-17T21:19:00.000+09:00

Tomorrow: photos of recent ridiculous purchases.

The title is a hint.

Wisdom

2007-06-13T21:10:00.000+09:00

“Now you understand the Oriental passion for [ice cream bars]" said Japhy. "Remember that book I told you about the first [bar] is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy.”

- Jack Kerouac, Dharma Bums

Gassed!

2007-06-12T22:13:00.000+09:00

This evening as Paul and I were leaving the school to get our dinner, we got gassed. Us and a pack of high school students who ducked inside the glass door entry way of our building to avoid the fumes. It was coming from a passing truck. You'll find out why that's funny at the end.

The truck was driving through the city streets, blasting out some kind of mass insect repellent. It would have been funny because the way the gas was shooting from the contraption on the back made it look like the truck was being propelled by a bunch of fire extinguishers. It turned out being not funny because we got it right in the face.

The smell was like a nasty chemical bouquet of OFF! and the vapor from boiled Dettol (I would imagine.)

We took shelter behind glass until the truck had gone.

"What was that?" I asked Paul.

"Teacher!" he said delighted, "It is a farting situation! Don't you know? That was a fart truck!"

"Oh."

Mr. Beefly

2007-06-11T22:34:00.000+09:00

Paul has a new name.

It is the greatest name ever.

He has absorbed the word ridiculous, and now he uses it at every available opportunity. It has become less of a novelty and more something he aspires to.

He wants to be "ridiculous boy."

As such, while I was teaching him some simple writing techniques, he signed his short essay "Pauly Beefly." Later amended to "Ridiculous Pauly Beefly."

That's Beefly as in relating to beef, not like bee+fly.

I totally lost it.

"Paul, why Beefly? What is Beefly?

He grinned.

"Teacher, it is just ridiculous word."

The "essay" he was writing was about the ninja frog Dororo, from the cartoon Keroro which I mentioned before.

He looks like this:

Anyway, the essay was insightful, and ended with the conclusion that Dororo "is a cool brain, and handsome beefly."

I'm now curious about the implications of this new word "beefly." Is it an adjective or a noun? A muscular situation or a redneck culinary evaluation?

"How's them tenders?"

"They's too beefly..."

"Aw spit."

One thing is for certain. It is ridiculous.

Paul has that in spades.

Fresh & Minty

2007-06-10T16:13:00.000+09:00

Time for a cool new summer look.

Bonus Milk

2007-06-10T15:33:00.000+09:00

In Korean grocery stores I frequently see little "bonus" items taped to products to make them more desirable. Looking through the refrigerator aisle of the local K-Mart or i-Mart (but not E-Mart, they're too classy, read: close to 'A') you see these boil-bag spaghetti dinners with cans of Pepsi stuck to the side with packing tape. Also there will be 1L cartons of milk with small packages of processed cheese slices attached.

It's a fairly reasonable assumption that someone who likes milk would not be opposed to bonus cheese, at no additional cost to them. Pepsi and instant spaghetti obviously compliment each other nicely. This is just the small grocery chain's answer to "service", like when the swanky department stores give you a free box of instant coffee tubes when us bean-heads shell out $24 for a bag of Columbian.

Who doesn't like free stuff? Why have one thing when you can have two? Who cares if the second thing is something you wouldn't have necessarily paid for in the first place. The store obviously already new that and liquidated it accordingly.

This is not a consumer philosophy I subscribe to. I definitely don't disregard sales, especially when they involve certain ice cream bars, but on the whole, I just want to buy what I want to buy. I'm a very single-minded shopper.

Working under that set of values, it becomes hard to avoid "bonus milk."

This is an interesting phenomenon where EVERY available carton of your preferred brand of milk comes with a mini bonus carton taped to the side. Sure, it gives the illusion of added value, and makes you feel like something of a milk tycoon, but I go through milk slowly enough as it is. A splash in my coffee from time to time, or a bowl of cereal is all I ask of it. In fact I'm sure I need to reevaluate my casual relationship with milk, since its not one for waiting around until you feel like using it. It's a spiteful creature that I think actually curdles faster if ignored. This makes bonus milk a problem, albeit not enough of one to make me switch to less "fully-featured" brands like Einstein or ESL Milk. I'm a Seoul Milk man myself.

In conclusion, this is probably the most asinine anecdote I've ever written, but this is what I think about while alone in Korea.

The View

2007-06-09T21:24:00.000+09:00

This is the view off two sides of the mountain near my apartment. Even on the scenic side, you can still see the layer of haze under the blue sky:

This is the other side:

Now here's Mahone Bay:

Sigh...

That potato-head kid

2007-06-08T21:44:00.000+09:00

Despite the cultural grudge against the Japanese that is bred into many Korean kids, it could never keep them from watching Japanese cartoons. No amount of indoctrination can keep kids from cartoons of any persuasion. That would be like dropping a steaming plate of Yaki soba in front of a starving Korean patriot and expecting them not to swallow it— pride and all.

The most popular are the omnipresent Yu-Gi-Oh! (with accompanying card game), Keroro Gunso (think Invader Zim meets Keroppi, where alien frogs who intended to overthrow the Earth are instead foiled by an average family) and of course, the squealing, bulbous-headed Crayon Shin-Chan, known to the Koreans only as Jjangu:

This character drives me nuts.

The fact that he is everywhere, and that I have no way to judge him but by how he looks and sounds, makes it that much worse. I'm sure like most Japanese cartoons, it's well-scripted, story-boarded, and squirming with cultural quirks like a unagi buffet. But given the fact that its obviously not broadcast with English subtitles, it takes on the more unfortunate qualities of a mosquito in the ear.

The Korean name Jjangu (짱구) apparently means "protruding forehead" so the kids always lose it when I refer to him, in Peanuts fashion, as "that potato-head kid."

It assumes the "Dr. Katz Professional Therapist" quality of animation that is irritating because it is bad on purpose. The fact that Jjangu himself seems like a weiner, dubbed by a voice actor who is whiny-like-only-Koreans-know-how, doesn't help.

Shane understands the pain.

I can't really go into much detail about why I find this creature so annoying. Maybe this is the same sensation felt by the parents of our generation who thought Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was the stupidest thing they had ever heard of, and were forced to endure their toothy figure-8 smirks on toys, Halloween masks, pajamas, lunch boxes, action figures et al. for the better part of a childhood.

Apparently Adult Swim in the US airs a more adult-oriented English version, which takes advantage of frequent fecal plot-lines and Jjangu's tendency to drop his pants and wave his arse about.

Cultural grudges aside, these are things we can all share. If so, Paul is preaching the gospel.

There are Ngels in your Angles

2007-06-05T22:46:00.001+09:00

Here is a sample of the most ribald Korean late-night TV has to offer. As far as I can gather, this show is called "TV Ngels" and takes place on a sexy beach nowhere near Korea. The contestants are sexy girls locked in mortal, yet sexy combat, in a reality-TV situation where they compete for some guy's attention by acting... sexy.

The show seems to represent everything that I think is decisively unsexy about Korean popular culture, while attempting to be the exact opposite.

Since virtually no English literature exists about the show online, I can only go by what I observe. The deal, as it seems, is that this guy is equipped with some sort of device with which to measure the sexiness of the soft-core stripteases the girls act out. The rating system seems similar to the US Terror Alert Level, running the gamut from a yellow bashful beagle, to an orange pig who can barely believe his own sexy fortune, finishing with a red monkey who is so overcome by sexiness that his eyes have rolled completely back into his head, in a sexy coup de grace.

Shane tells me that the device is actually rigged up so each stage springs corresponding to the guy's heart-rate. I think that's pretty intense because it eliminates the possibility of pity points, which would seriously undermine the quality of the sexy, currently being flung about like a big, wet fish.

The thing that I find completely drains the sexy from this pointless exercise, is the constant whooping of the two hosts.

"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Ahhhhhhhh! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Who could possibly think sexy thoughts with those two hemorrhaging lawnmowers going off?

And what's with the riff from "Paranoid android" that plays like 3/4's of the way through? Nothing says sexy like sadly staring at your shoes.

Somewhere down in the crust of the Earth under the Korean peninsula, Confucius is summoning up an earthquake to put a stop to all this misdirected sexy energy.

"Waaaaaaaa!"

Another kind of Madness

2007-06-04T21:20:00.000+09:00

Korea has us beat (badly) on at least three fronts.

The first is obviously personal technology like cellphones, electronic dictionaries and portable TVs.

The second is cuteness, but the kind of cuteness that's for sale. I'm talking about notebooks, erasers, and stationary (Dongchimee notably excluded...) that are saturated with bashful clouds, cheerful rainbows and adorable puppy eyes so swollen with moist tears of friendship that they're in danger of popping like a overripe lychee fruit.

The third and perhaps least expected, is domestic ice cream treats. Obviously handmade Italian ice cream can't be beat, but if you put an Orange Creamsicle, arguably the apex of the North American frozen treat freezer, against its natural Korean adversary, the Creamsicle would meet its maker as a neglected, curdled puddle.

Two words people: Honeydew Ice-Cream-Bar.

Shut up, it counts as two.

Regardless, these things are amazing.

Worthy expats should already know about this 50 cent taste sensation. If not, you have marching orders for your neighborhood Family Mart. The summer has only just begun, and already I have had a vision of how I will survive— it involves a white sheet tent, an open fridge, and 1,000,000 won worth of ice cream bars.

Madness will come naturally, and without resistance.

Sort of like this (at 6:55), but without the zero G.

Bring it on humidity. I have my beloved ice cream bar.

Comrade of the Monsters

2007-06-01T21:13:00.001+09:00

Every week I go to the bank down the street for some pocket money and in so doing pass a Noraebang called the "Young-Gary Musig [sic] Park." It's in the basement level of a cavernous-looking building and above the sign outside is a large, plastic bust of Godzilla.

Or so I thought...

I figured the proprietor of the "Musig Park" (the g and k sounds are interchangeable in Korean, so to some it's kimbap, and others it's gimbap) was a fellow named Young, maybe with the English first name Gary.

As I learned recently from Joey, "Yonggary" is Korea's guy-in-a-rubber-suit monster movie gift to the world.

Here's the handsome fella in his original form:

(Stomp Tokyo)

I'm quite delighted I came across this information, since I'm a big fan of all things B-movie. Inspired by the Toho's Godzilla franchise, Korea coughed-up "Taekoesu Yonggary" in 1967. Yong is the Korean word for dragon, and Yonggary appears accordingly, only with a prominent laser-shooting nose horn, an appetite for gasoline, and an apparent weakness to ammonia precipitate. According to IMDB reviews, this weakness brings about one of the most grizzly, and realistic rubber-monster demises in the genre, what with the melting, the chemical burns and the hey-hey-hey it hurts me.

As it turns out, at the same time Godzilla 2000 was being produced, Korean director Shim Hyung-rae, produced a flashy new Yonggary in 1999, with an all-American cast, English scrip, and eyes for foreign distribution:

This is exactly how Yonggary appears above the entrance to the "Musig Park" so I'm inclined to believe that the owners bought a set piece in a studio fire-sale after the movie obviously bombed (Korea has since figured out how to do monster movies quite well).

After a little digging I discovered a the far more interesting story behind the North Korean monster movie "Pulgasari." It's generally well-reported that the Dear Leader is a movie fan. As the story goes, he had his secret service abduct South Korean director Shin Sang-Ok, and make him Pulgasari, where a jailed pacifist blacksmith dies in prison but first makes a tiny doll out of rice from his daughter, which, on contact with blood, turns into a metal hungry dragon that rebels against the tyrant King but then turns on the villagers. One scene even features 10,000 extras from the Korean People's Army.

So now we have a guy-in-a-rubber suit championing himself as a state-sponsored-metaphor-for-unchecked-capitalism, a sub-genre of "Gojira-rama" which you can understand has not had much in the way of follow-up...

As a bit of trivia, the Japanese actor who played Godzilla from 1984 on, Kenpachiro Satsuma, was also recruited into donning the Pulgasari suit. Satsuma was apparently critical of the Hollywood CGI Godzilla (I know you're wondering... HOW!?) and was pleased at Pulgasari finally being shown outside North Korea, more than a decade after it's 1985 release.

In my searching I found this gem of info at the IMDB trivia listing for 2004's "Gojira: Fainaru uôzu":

"As a treat to die-hard Godzilla fans, the namesake title monster from the much-maligned Hollywood box-office fiasco, Godzilla (1998) (directed by Roland Emmerich), makes an appearance in this film as Zilla (or Jira, short for Gojira), an assassin monster engineered by the aliens from Planet X to kill Godzilla. When director Ryuheu Kitamura announced this at a press conference in late August, he said that he named the Hollywood version Zilla for his film, because he felt that the 1998 film "has taken the 'God' out of Godzilla." The fight between Godzilla and Zilla takes place in Sydney, Australia, and is computer-generated, just like in the Hollywood movie."

Ha!

Those with time to kill, and a high tolerance for terrible audio and video quality can watch Pulgasari here in its entirety.

I guess you never know what you might find walking down a street in Korea...

The Score

2007-05-31T22:02:00.000+09:00

Sometimes I have no faith in the mechanics of what constitutes teaching at a Hagwon.

It just sort of feels like unadvised, unregulated meandering towards a set of standardized tests which are either overly ambitious, or outright wrong.

PELT and TOEFL are the big tests that are used to quantify a kid's skill in English. I've always been of the opinion that standardized testing is a useless exercise, even back home, but here in the multi-million dollar ESL industry, grades are the Holy Grail and they've got to come from somewhere.

There's a new test that we were looking at our school which contained a particular question that made me balk at the process. It asks the student to choose one sentence out of five, which is "awkward or incorrect in standard English."

Although they claim these tests are written in part, or at least reviewed by native English speakers, they still contain strange turns of phrase such as "this cake eats crisp" or misquoted idioms like "beggars are not choosers." That's fine I guess, but the following really baffled me:

1. Thanks for filling me in.

2. It's not over till it's over.

3. I can't stomach his jokes.

4. Are you still sored at me?

5. Could you amplify it a bit?

Obviously no one would use the phrase "are you still sored at me?" and the proper thing (though a bit dated) would be "are you still sore at me?"

According to the answer key, the appropriate correction should be:

"Are you still soring at me?"

What drunken pastiche of a film noir hero would use a phrase like that? Is soring even a word?

I didn't figure it was.

I looked it up.

"v. sored, sor·ing, sores:
To mutilate the legs or feet of (a horse) in order to induce a particular gait in the animal."

Is this a common exchange I've been oblivious to until now?

"You wouldn't be altering that horse's gait at me, would ya?"

"Yeah, what of it?"

"Well don't get blood on my spats, 'cuz the cold plate special's an open-faced knuckle sandwich and you look hungry, bub."

"Don't swing your flim-flam my way chippy or I'll tell roscoe here to spit metal."

"You're trippin' for biscuits fella."

"Aw, horseradish."

"More like glue, wiseguy."

Seriously folks. I don't think it's that subversive to suggest we play this, not as a numbers game, but at a level of practical understanding.

Then again, it's not my millions, my kids or my country.

A Query

2007-05-29T22:13:00.000+09:00

"Sam, did you eat that entire cake by yourself?" asked the Creator Of The Universe.

"Shut up," was all Sam replied.

Temporary Temporal Tack-on

2007-05-28T21:32:00.000+09:00

For a birthday alone in Korea, a guy can do a hell of a lot worse than free chianti and chocolate cake.

Look out 25, I'll be test-driving you for 3 1/2 months, until I return to Canada and lose the year I falsely assumed as time in the Korean womb.

They are born 1, to clarify.

I went to the Paris Baguette after work and bought myself this small chocolate affair.

I said it was my birthday and friendly Mr. Kim asked me how many candles I needed.

"Too many to fit," I told him.

He wished me a happy one, and gave me a free apricot pastry— one without so much cuttlefish ink in it.

Paul bought me a tiny magnetic chess set, of which he has the same.

"Teacher, we can be a couple," he said excitedly.

"I'm too old for you kid."

4 points is all I have in me

2007-05-27T19:00:00.000+09:00

- I had a most excellent time in Hongdae last night.

- I'm paying for it today.

- The days are getting hot, hotter.

- As I walked to the subway with a bottle of wine in one hand and a crossword puzzle in the other, I couldn't help but think such instruments would be better for a Sunday by the pool, than a long, groggy mixture of bus and train.

Small World Syndrome

2007-05-26T16:51:00.000+09:00

Right now I'm at a PC Bang in Hongdae in Seoul, surrounded by the shrieks of gamers, the sound of "head-shots", clashing steel and the twinkle of collected gold.

Under a blue light in a basement, on this beautiful, sunny Saturday it's a little surreal.

I'm just killing time, as those around me do instead with trolls, waiting to meet up with an old university friend (like I'm allowed to say that 2 years out of an undergrad...) for a night on the town. It never ceases to amaze me who I discover is in Korea as well.

Case in point: for those who don't know me, I grew up in small town Mahone Bay on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. Before you get any romantic Twin Peaks notions of small town mystique, I'll clarify that though everybody knew everybody. everything was in fact EXACTLY how it seemed.

But it was nice.

Then I went to university in Halifax, surrounded still by family, friends, family-friends, and people I had gone to pre-school with.

Still, it was nice. Community, blah-blah.

When I left for Korea, I only did so knowing that Shane was already here, and spoke enthusiastically about his experience. I accepted that I would be alone but for one friend, in a strange foreign land. Once I arrived though I started finding others. I wrote in my first column for Halifax Magazine about a surreal experience at the Lucy Pie Kitchen in Ichon, sitting with 3 other King's alums from Truro, Trenton and Sydney respectively. All under the watchful eye of Lucille Ball.

"It's a small world" is the truest of the great cliches, because once you understand it to be true, the world just keeps getting smaller to hammer the point home.

I've since discovered a couple from NS in Ulsan, half of which I went to pre-school with, the other half being a friend from high school and former roomate of another South Shore friend.

Then I found another South Shore gal, high-school chum, and good friend of an ex living way down South.

Then there was the Lotus Lantern Festival.

I was on the street in Jongno-ga at about 6, killing time (as those around me are still doing with trolls) before dusk and the parade.

I was taking a photo of a story-high mural of Buddha suspended by a crane, lit up with spot-lights and looking grand.

I got my shot, turned my head to the left and saw, here in a city of around 20 million Koreans, a Chester, NS native and high school friend taking the same picture as me, and turning his head at exactly the same time... only to the right.

It's just amazing.

I return now, to the light of day.

God, Speed...

2007-05-25T21:24:00.000+09:00

So I bought one of those fancy 5-bladed razors.

Yeah I know...

The very concept was the subject of parody back when the 3-bladed jobbies came out about a million years ago.

I was examining the razor display at the local K-Mart (not to be confused with the other K-mart) and my eyes drifted from the dusty looking Mach-3's to the grandly displayed, excessively-bladed "Fusion." I was wondering why they didn't stick with the Mach moniker, when a hyper-real scenario flashed through my head of Speed Racer's Pops leaping over the cash and shouting in bad dub:

"Sam-Sam! The Mach 5 is not yet ready! Aha!"

It cracked me up in the check-out, at least.

Speaking of Speed Racer, as most of us hopefully aren't in the habit of, here's a strange bit of information on the upcoming Wachowski brothers film version of the 60's cartoon.

Apparently everybody's favorite Korean pop idol (Bi) Rain is in talks to appear in the film in an unspecified role.

The world is not yet ready...

Aha!

Lanternpalooza -part 3- "Paper Sky"

2007-05-24T00:51:00.000+09:00

Here's the last batch of photos of the Buddha's Birthday festivities last Sunday.

Jogyesa temple at night, during and after the parade:

"Father Abbot, I hate to be the one to bring this up... but is that lantern baby humping the sacred trees?"

Upside down, it looks like rolling hills of lights.

Evidently, the fellow in the lower right thought I was taking a photo of him, and posed accordingly.

Lanternpalooza -part 2- "The Parade"

2007-05-22T00:15:00.000+09:00

The Lotus Lantern Parade in front of Jogyesa Temple. The colours, children! I'll let them speak for themselves:

Lanternpalooza -part I-

2007-05-21T00:11:00.000+09:00

Today was the Lotus Lantern Festival in celebration of Buddha's Birthday on the 24th.

I am deadly tired from spending all day walking and clicking. But I certainly have lots to show for my troubles.

The exhibition of traditional paper lanterns at Bongeunsa temple, the Lotus Lantern Parade itself, and its culmination at Jogyesa temple all deserve their own posts... so let's start with the Bongeunsa lanterns:

Dragon boat vs. fish.

Fair?

Hardly.

Then again, that fish has a pretty tough looking reverse moustache and torpedo-like gait...

Lotus.

Lotus and girl.

Does this thing not have the greatest expression ever? I love the eyes... can you believe this is a lantern??

Melancholy Buddha.

Heil hangnail?

Kid monks.

The English temple guide explained this to me as representing the traditional Korean figures of resilience. The things that will exist forever: sun, moon, cloud, tree, stone, deer, crane and turtle.

Buy stock.

An old Chinese legend says that if a carp swims all the way up the Yangtze River, it will transform into a dragon.

I think this one's face is incredibly expressive. The guide described it as a boy in the time after the war, waiting for his mother to come home from work because he has no toys or friends.

Gross, guys.

I *love* this photo. Rock me dragon-fish.

Apparently the shrimp is a symbol of a happy and successful marriage...

And finally, gathering round the Buddha.

Phew.

This was a totally amazing day. More words and pictures tomorrow.

Dalki & Dongchimee

2007-05-19T16:29:00.001+09:00

I wrote before about a fellow Korea blogger who commented on the dung fetish, and introduced me to the character Dongchimee.

Well, I found his website.

As a bit player in the popular character brand Dalki, Dongchimee has his own bio on the Dalki site:

"Dongchimee loves Dung very much. It is his own creation.

It is hard to adjust and makes him feel good every morning.

Dongchimee tries to test to have creations.

He sometimes makes dung watery or dry.

He makes sketches of such satisfactory dung and put it in a glass bottle.

Dongchimee spends most of time at home.

He sticks out dung of others unconsciously when he is outside.

He can't stand just watching it. That's why they call him 'Dongchimee'."

After that introduction, I find it very telling that Dongchimee's astrological sign is misspelled "Virgin."

The character Dalki herself also seems like a bit of a reprobate:

"She sometimes creates accidents and troubles, however she also troubleshoots troubles of others. (Through, most of the time, she is troublesome… -_-;;)"

Sounds like trouble.

Not the least of which:

"She often gets absorbed to heroin of cartoon or movie."

I know TV can be a bad influence, but this sounds like a serious case of hard drug osmosis.

Anyway, the "dung wave" continues unabated.

I'm going to hit the stationary store tomorrow and try to find some Dongchimee swag for those at home.

Failing that, dung-on-a-stick, Dalki style.

Jave Jibe

2007-05-19T15:49:00.000+09:00

Shane, my co-pilot in Korea and one of my best pals, got me a fantastic early birthday present that I must share with the world forthwith:

It's a dung coffee mug! I couldn't believe it. The Korean writing even says: "ddong kopi" or "dung coffee." And if the oozing rim and soft-serve swirl on the front doesn't whet your appetite for a cuppa joe, check out the inside:

"..."

I deliberately chose the photo where you can see the reflection of my hand, so it looks like I'm using a camera with dung in lieu (or "loo" as the case may be...) of a lens.

"Dear Korea,

Please explain to me your love of dung. If I learn but one thing in my time here, let it be the answer to this mystery...

Yours,
Sam-Sam"

Round 2

2007-05-16T12:11:00.001+09:00

"...a perky, Bollywood-sashaying castrato who got kicked out of his community theatre staging of Rocky Horror for being more Strawberry Shortcake than Frank N. Furter."

"...a singing dancing fireworks accident."

Was I right, or what?

Calm before the storm

2007-05-13T09:46:00.000+09:00

The light was really cool last night at dusk before the big rainstorm, so I went down the road to the rice field/bike trail and snapped a few of the Siheung horizon.

Enjoy:

Singin' in the Rain

2007-05-12T20:38:00.000+09:00

A notch below belly fire

2007-05-12T14:16:00.000+09:00

Last class yesterday night, Paul and I were reading an article in his book about the biggest fire in the history of Yellowstone, which burnt 1.2 million acres of the park.

Paul read this line and burst out laughing.

"What's so funny?" I asked.

"Oh Teacher..." he howled. "1.2 million arses burn to the ground?"

Androgynous genius

2007-05-11T00:44:00.000+09:00

Sorry about the multiple postings of that clip... I tried to put it up on the weekend, and assumed, after multiple tries, that the YouTube to Blogger function was buggy. I guess I just had to wait...

That's really not something an unsuspecting reader should be subjected to more than once.

This is an old commercial and ran, like the "Hyundai Capital Prime Loan" one, ad nauseam (pun intended) many months ago.

Well, in the spirit of an old-tyme boxing adage, i.e. "the ol' one-two" the ad agency think-tanks have deemed these monstrosities too good not to repeat.

The guys from the commercial make up the Korean band Fly to the Sky. They are pretty goofy, but they seriously have nothing on the "Grapefruitade" sequel, currently in HEAVY rotation on Korean cable.

Though I have no clip, the offending duo are seen here:

The guy on the left? Well... picture a perky, Bollywood-sashaying castrato who got kicked out of his community theatre staging of Rocky Horror for being more Strawberry Shortcake than Frank N. Furter.

Yeah... I know...

Apparently he too is a Korean pop hero, from the mighty group Super Junior.

On principal alone, I'd rather wring a flamingo through a wash bucket and drank whatever that yielded than give Sunkist Korea any precedent to make more of these commercials by buying their product...

But good God all this talk about lemonade is making me thirsty...

EDIT: I watched a few interview clips and shows with this Hee Chul character from the band, and in the interest of fairness, he seems like a pretty normal guy. It's a pity the director of the commercial seems to want to promote him as a singing, dancing fireworks accident.

Le-le-le-appalling

2007-05-10T16:37:00.003+09:00

Different Strokes

2007-05-09T21:06:00.000+09:00

I'd be mistaken to label the bulk of Koreans as a non-physical bunch, who prefer the respectful distance of a curt Eastern bow over the over-bearing handshake of a foreign investor, or a big boisterous Mediterranean man-hug.

The kids, of course, are all over each other all the time, and sometimes see me as a wayguk jungle-gym with the bonus attachment of curious "golden" arm-hair for them to stroke with wonder, or try and rub their little cheeks against when I'm not looking.

Kids are kids.

When puberty hits however, there's the instinctive polar separation of girls and boys in the classroom, and everyone, naturally, becomes more awkward and reserved. I've noticed though that the boys, even the 12/13-year-olds, are very affectionate with each other. They'll stroke each others heads and legs, and there'll be the occasional "good game!" style butt squeeze. It would definitely raise a few eyebrows in school back home, if not get you A-listed on a daily beating schedule.

My Junior High school was an incredibly homophobic experience, where the worst possible thing that could befall someone was to earn the scornful, and savagely misdirected title of "gay." It was dreadful, but doesn't seem to register with these Korean bosom chums, where the touching seems to be just a display of male camaraderie. I guess the rampant racism makes up for that fact, but I won't get into that now...

Anyway, there must come a time during young adulthood when Confucian conditioning kicks in, and propriety takes center stage; don't make prolonged eye-contact, unless you're looking for a fight, and keep the touching to a minimum safe distance. These are, of course, old values and ones witch are changing with an increasingly Western-influenced generation, who don't think it inappropriate to take to the streets and embrace the "Free Hug" campaign, which I wrote about briefly before.

The reason I bring up the subject is something happened last night when I was out for a drink with my boss and our other two teachers. We spent a couple of hours in a neighbourhood bar, sharing some beer, laughs, and strange Korean bar food (I could write a whole series of entries on that...). It was a really nice time. It didn't feel awkward like some of our other drinking nights, and we had some good laughs. In fact, my boss mentioned to me today that he really enjoyed himself last night, but for one, apparently traumatizing experience towards the end of the evening. The trauma in question was having his head touched by a portly, middle-aged New Brunswicker, who had guzzled down 2 bottles of soju by himself.

Strangee?

The offending fellow was apparently a teacher at another nearby academy, and was sitting in a booth next to us the entire time we were there. He meant absolutely no offense, and was in fact an incredibly pleasant guy who came over and introduced himself to the other teacher and I, but being as tall he was, and as tipsy as he must have been, and with my boss' head at about chest level, I guess he must have brushed it absentmindedly, or maybe missed his shoulder? I don't know, and I'd employ the cliche "don't lose any sleep over it" only apparently my boss did. As he explained it to me tonight, after he told me he had such a nice time with us, he said he couldn't sleep that night because the contact had made him so uncomfortable. I guess I wouldn't cherish what he had apparently counted as 3 seconds of desperately inappropriate contact, but then again I didn't suffer any after I had to hoist the sleeping soju wino off my lap in the subway...

He was very confused about the whole affair, and even said he was angry with the hapless Canadian for being so impolite.

We have very different notions of personal space. I guess this shows not to overstay your visit to someone else's.

Underdog

2007-05-07T10:38:00.000+09:00

So I seem to be having problems loading YouTube clips onto the blog, so for the time being you're all spared the Sunkist Lemonadu "Fly to the Sky" serenade, or seeing Korean giant Choi Hong-Man dancing with a bunch of schoolgirls in a commercial for "chewlets."

I know, you weep.

But don't worry babies, Sam-Sam doesn't disappoint:

Image: Itasca Studios

Korean dung culture prevails! This time in the form of an animated kids film called "Doggy Poo."

Though made in 2003, I'm sure this is news to most of you. When I found this I just didn't have the strength anymore to be aghast. Korea has sapped all my will to be aghast at anything strange or dung-related. I feel like an old sailor having seen a lifetime of wonder and terror at sea, so stumbling across a website for a movie starring an anthropomorphic poop and its crisis of self-worth is kind of like being shown a thimble full of Sea Monkeys by your friend's kid— you put on excited airs, but really, you've seen it all and then some.

So enjoy the trailer for "Doggy Poo" and don't listen to the haters over at IMDB who say "I walked away angry from watching this turd for gosh dongle 45 minutes!" since they're obviously some sort of deranged prospector...

Nah-nah

2007-05-06T01:10:00.000+09:00

Not much interesting has been happening lately, but I'll share a neat little cultural-crossover I learned of this week.

Paul and one of the girls were playfully teasing each other and suddenly Paul threw up his hands and announced "Mirrorgate!" as if he was executing a stylish Yu-Gi-Oh Card technique.

I thought it was funny, so I asked what he meant. He said that it was like a shield against insults that reflected them back at the hurler like they were looking in a mirror.

Sort of like the playground taunt "I'm rubber you're glue, what ever you say bounces off me and sticks to you!" only adapted to fit the style of kids whose doodles of puppy dogs even have "Hit Point" stats...

More Olympic Park Strangeness

2007-05-01T12:21:00.000+09:00

Is it a buffalo with a man for a groin and no arms? Or a man with a buffalo for a groin doing a headstand?

This statue was described previously as the "Praying Mantis God" but I think it's more accurately described as a domesticated Jabberwocky. In any case, the actual name of the piece is "View to Avacucho" by Peruvian artist Fabian Sanchez. This kid wandered into the shot...

...but then insisted on sticking around and posing for another. I missed the next moment when he crawled up on the creature's lap.

Any Farside fans in the house? This statue reminds me of the one with the Indian Chief addressing his assembled tribe, holding up a bizarre multi-tubed organ and saying: "Take a good, long look at this. This is the only part of the buffalo we don't use."

Well, I think this is the totem pole.

A moment of pause on a tiny, metal chair.

After we hopped the rope, everyone suddenly wanted a picture of themselves on the chairs what proportionately increased in size. The scene was in danger of growing stale so Shane and I quickly split out.

Here we finally see the row of naked statues that were molested by that old man on Christmas Day, 2006.

This device, which has the outward appearance of a fire hydrant spliced with a mailbox, with a crank on one end and an arse on the other, is in fact a piece entitled "I want my beloved" by Parviz Tanavoli of Iran.

This is "The Elephant Man."

This is the Elephant Man's son/toadie.

And this is the Elephant Man's elephant.

It's Paul Van Hoeydonk's fault...

The Great Olympic Park Mystery

2007-04-29T23:02:00.000+09:00

Today was a groin-grabbingly beautiful Sunday (a reference both to the Simpsons, and the fact that last time Shane and I visited the park on Christmas Day we saw an old man fondle the junk of several anatomically correct statues) so we headed to Jamsil to bask in the strange splendor of Olympic Park.

By and by, we came across the following exhibit, slightly off the beaten path, in a little copse of trees:

There was something immediately intriguing about this disconnected set of rusty door, chair and (behind the door) cage. Especially since it wasn't marked with a plaque of title and artist, like the others.

A side view gives a little more insight into how out of place this set-up was, which is a feat in a Park full of such strange art.

This was the only clue as to the identity of the mystery artist and their work.

On closer inspection we see a Merry-Go-Round pony trapped in a rusty cage in the second "room." We decided there must be more to this overall piece, so we did a little more poking around. Our first breakthrough was this:

Shane brushed away the leaves at the base of the chair to reveal a set of bare footprints. This especially piqued our curiosity when a strange old man, carrying a soundless white dog emerged from behind us as insinuated himself in our investigation.

"Ahhh," he said, apparently to us.

We kept staring at the footprints.

"What have you found?" he asked.

"Footprints," Shane said.

"Aha. And how did you find them?" he persisted.

"I brushed the leaves away with my foot," Shane recited from his detective handbook.

The man smiled strangely, and started walking as if to leave, only to turn around again and say:

"You are interested in this sculpture?"

"Yes," Shane said matter-of-factly. "It's interesting."

"Aha. Interesting," he said quietly and wandered off down the path with his tiny white dog in his arms.

We both sort of looked at each other in acknowledgement of this Twin Peaks moment that had just happened.

"Do you think he was the artist?" Shane asked me.

"No," I said. "I think the artist would be more like a guy solemnly standing next to his work, and when people looked from it over to him he'd just say 'yes, this is my fault.'"

That said, the old man was definitely an omen wrapped in a red herring, like "the cowboy" in Mulholland Drive.

We took a closer look at the pony cage:

A strange silver light bulb. Curious, but much more so after the next discovery:

An immovable switch attached to the seat of the chair! And look closer and you'll see a wire also half-buried under the leaves.

Shane uses his crack dusting skills to uncover the path of the wire...

Aha!! So the electric wire from the immovable switch feeds into the silver light bulb in the rusty pony cage... and... uh... uh... are we any closer to answering the aching question WHY?

In the end, the mysterious sculpture is a riddle best left unsolved. Again, like a David Lynch movie; the clues are there, but the closure can never be given. The rusty two room facade, with its pony cage, silver light-bulb and white face with closed eyes in one half, and through the half-cracked open door, the chair with the naked footprints, the immovable switch, and the powerless wire as the only thing linking the two disparate, yet indivisible halves.

And what of the old man?

A curious bystander? An architect of intrigue? A human key to a lock with no latch!?

Interpretations are appreciated...

The Burning Sensation

2007-04-26T22:10:00.000+09:00

"Teacher!"

*ack* *gasp* *tears welling*

"W...water!"

Rarely a day goes by where I don't hear this forlorn cry, and the more sympathetic among you might say "Sam Teacher, for the love of God, let the children drink!"

But your cries would be for naught.

Not because I'm a sadist— quite the opposite— I'm trying to curb self-destructive behavior in the guise of innocent snacking.

The culprit? Ddeokbokki.

Photo: Galbijim

Rice cakes stir-fried in excruciating red pepper sauce, and a permanent fixture in the spasming, sweaty hands of school children throughout the country who are under its spell.

Ddeokbokki is spicy— virally spicy— in a way that masks all semblance of flavour, save burning.

I tried it unassumingly once, and was so overcome by the potency that I actually drank Korean tap water to calm the inferno. "That's the spiciest thing I've ever tasted," I thought, "and I once ate a big heaping bowl of spice!

(The latter being untrue.)

For some reason (possibly because it is cheap and everywhere... so really, forget "possibly") the kids can't get enough of it, despite the fact that it obviously causes them physical pain. Children clutch burning lips and cry out for a drink, but if you're going to sneak it into the class and munch in my blind spots, you're going to suffer smart guy.

I ask the kids why they eat it if it causes them such pain.

They shrug.

It's a fixture of Korean youth culture. You'd be a social leper if you didn't like ddeokbokki. One of my students (my favorite, You-jin) wrote in a journal entry:

"My favorite food is 떡볶이. It is a thin rice cake in spicy sauce. It is very, very ultra-good, but Sam does not like the taste... WHY???"

It was as if I forced her to question the very fundamentals of being human:

1. Bipedal.
2. Tool-making/using.
3. Thinking (occasionally).
4. With Soul.
5. With ddeokbokki.

It may be a small step in a hopeless war, but my tiny effort in the fight against culinary masochism will at least leave a few reconsidering their position on going through 40 minutes of gochujang hell, for a sweet, forbidden nosh.

Sam-Sam: 1

Colour your palate patriotic

2007-04-23T21:16:00.000+09:00

"Teacher! Canada is very clean?"

"Very." (TO? Tar Ponds? Forgetaboutit...)

"Teacher! Canada is very peaceful?"

"Very."

"Teacher! I want to be a Canadian and eat hamburgers for breakfast!"

...oh?

This is one Korean boy's vision of Canada: a great northern giant, full of clean air, wildlife, smiling people and... hamburgers on tap.

Is that an entirely flawed picture?

Coming from West to East, the most obvious difference is multiculturalism. We North Americans may be neophytes with regards to... well... civilization... but diversity is a real strength when it comes to cultural currency.

Korea has been here for thousands of years with a firm sense of national identity, tempered through umpteen invasions and subjugation from foreign nations. As a recovering(?) "Hermit Kingdom," the insular tendencies still remain.

When I'm asked about Canadian food I find it a little hard to give the kids original answers. What is fundamentally Canadian food? Everything "traditional" is borrowed from Ma Briton with a frontier bent, and most everything else is a spread of necessity and world cuisine. Korean food is Korean food, straight up; a rich tapestry of soups, rice and side-dishes to last until the end of time. After 150 years of just stuffing whatever was around into our faces, doesn't that just seem like an after-dinner belch in comparison to a cuisine that's been kicking around since majorly BCE?

I tell them about standard fare like fish, lobster, fruit and meat pies, stews, salads and potatoes of all persuasions. "Famous" offerings like Montreal smoked meat sandwiches, donairs, Lumberjack breakfasts and other iconic heaps (a uniquely North American form of presentation). Not to mention a table of diverse ethnic items which came as ingredients and wound up part of the greater stew.

We're free to eat a little of what everyone eats, with the benefit of it being prepared (generally) by those who hail from the food's country of origin. Greek food from a Greek family, Indian from 2nd-generation family secrets, a hodgepodge of flavors and cooks all fitting nicely into a microcosm of that "melting pot" to which we so frequently refer. That bias tends to draw attention to Korean-style Western food, which seems to generally be conceived from a picture, rather than a recipe. To those other expats who've shoveled in a mouthful of baked potato only to find the sour cream was in fact whipped cream— you fully appreciate what I mean.

That's not to say there aren't foreign restaurants in Korea. Far from it. But the majority of people's diets I'm sure is made up of traditional Korean fare, with some Western injections.

Sometimes kimchi comes off looking like a secondary flag; a symbol of national pride, albeit fermented. Time, patriotism, tight borders and shifty looks come together to spell out "I'm Korean, what else would I eat?"

I hope this isn't coming off judgmental or condescending. It's just a complete shift in perspective for me, coming from a country where we're all immigrants in one way or another, to one with, like, 99% ethnic homogeneity.

It's just a case of "you are what you eat" I suppose.

I'm eager to hear opinions though— those of you at home, if you were me, what food would you miss? To those here, would you (like myself) kill for good cheese?

Thanks John Williams...

2007-04-19T12:58:00.000+09:00

So I have one student who is about 7 or 8, and at the most basic level of English possible. He barely knows his ABCs which frankly should the most basic prerequisite for getting into a hagwon.

Anyway, he's a bit of a challenge to keep occupied since most everything is over his head.

I've discovered the key however, to making him at least like me and not think I'm this pale ogre trying to beat him over the head with a club of knowledge twice a week.

Movie themes.

He knows 'em, he loves 'em.

I saw him doodling a shark on the corner of his worksheet.

"Jaws?" I asked, testing the waters.

His eyes lit up.

"Hahaha. JAWS!"

One afternoon I could tell he was spacing. There is only one other student in the class, so I have some liberty with diversions. I started to draw the iconic shark mouth on the white board.

"Da-na," I started.

"Da-na."

Again for good measure.

"Da-na, na-na, na-na, na-na, ahhhhh!" he happily chimed in, ending in a swimmer's untimely demise.

Granted, the subject matter is no more interesting now, but at least I've won him over to the fact that I'm not completely lame.

He knows "My Heart Will Go On" too.

I let that one alone.

So say we all

2007-04-18T21:07:00.000+09:00

The media is currently full of stories on Cho Seung-Hui, the South Korean resident alien who killed 30+ students at Virginia Tech in the US on Monday.

I hadn't read anything about the shooting until today, but both the Globe & Mail and the Korean media are inundated with new and breaking stories about the 23-year-old killer. Many of the kids at school are surprisingly aware of what happens in the media. When I was in junior high (older than almost all of my students) I wasn't the most socially aware kid, only vaguely understanding why the OJ verdict was announced on the radio in my computer class. But these kids are up on many grisly happenings, like guys chopping up their girlfriends in the news and such, so they were definitely aware of this.

Jeremy, the American teacher at our school even said some of the students apologised to him, as an American, on behalf the the country.

Reading some of the stories at the Korea Herald, it's interesting to see how this has really galvanized people. University students are holding memorials for the victims; people on the other side of the world whose lives they had no part in, but were taken away by one of their "countrymen."

Koreans take their cultural identity very seriously. They are very proud and nationalistic and eager to advertise their culture. Watching commercials for broadcasts of American reality TV like The Apprentice, or Survivor, they will always mention if a Korean-American is participating. The English TV Station Arirang regularly runs documentaries on Koreans who are involved in local politics all over the world (from New Brunswick to Hawaii). If a Korean is making good in the world, other Koreans want to know about it.

Fair enough. Most countries are the same.

Through the media coverage of the shooting in Virginia, as well as the general response from the students, it seems this cultural ownership goes both ways. If a Korean does something horrible out on the world stage, the government seems quick to respond and apologise and make sure it doesn't injure that image of Korea which they are trying to project. I'm not by any means saying that this is opportunistic or just empty politicking, but I think that Koreans are just generally concerned with how they are seen. Maybe this comes partly from notions of a collective society, where everyone is just part of a big family (hence the familiar honorifics). As such, if a member of your family commits a horrendous crime, though you yourself are not responsible, it still reflects badly on your family situation. A few rotten apples puts the bushel in question, so to speak.

Take this excerpt from an apologetic editorial in The Herald:

"The slayings were a crime committed by a member of the Korean community, one rotten apple. But the savage act was not sponsored by the Korean community or the Korean state. Nonetheless, there is no denying that the shocking incident will taint the good image that the Korean community and the Korean nation have strived to build among Americans."

It goes on to make some rather paranoid predictions:

"For example, it would be a good idea to send a delegation to Virginia Tech to express the condolences of the nation. It will also do well to consult closely with the Korean community in the United States on what they can do together to improve relations with the host country and avert another outbreak of racial conflict like the L.A. riots back in 1992."

I doubt this situation will degenerate into race riots, but again the concern is to look after (and own up to) one's own.

That said, there are always differences of opinion. An unfortunately named "netizen" was quoted in this article posting their concern on a Korean website:

"'As a Korean, I feel the need to apologize to the victims and family members. We should hold a nationwide candlelight vigil to show Korea's grief,' said user foxyfox26."

But maybe a younger demographic is less influenced by this older idea of National "responsibility":

"'The suspect is an American who spent most of his life in the U.S. I cannot understand why him being a Korean is suddenly the core of the issue," said 25-year-old college student Park Yu-ra. "We should lament what has happened, but this is not an ethnic issue that the whole Korean society should apologize for.'"

In any case, all notions of Nationhood aside, this is still a tragic loss of life and it is reassuring that so far away, people still feel for those lives senselessly lost.

Then again...

2007-04-16T00:45:00.001+09:00

Oh, the bounties of YouTube...

Remember this bizarre Cherry Coke commercial from the 90's?

I guess we're not without absurdity and Eastern kitsch in advertising.

How strangee...

Hyundai Capital Prime Loan

2007-04-16T00:16:00.001+09:00

Okay... so this commercial used to play NONSTOP on TV, and I thought it was strange and annoying, but now— oh boy— now they have new one which is even worse.

In stead of just one strange Children of the Corn/Betty Crocker bleach blond droning on about "Hyundai Capital Prime Loan" they have a whole family.

A coven of peroxide slick Australians are sitting at their antique dinner table and the son makes a solemn announcement:

"Dad... Prime Loan."

*gasp!*

"Prime... Loan?" the father replies with a pause as if to declare "you killed... HOW... many hookers with my car?"

"Yes, Prime Loan," the son responds this time with confidence.

"Prime Loan..." the Grandfather says with wise resignation, that speaks "well, that's settled then isn't it?"

"HYUNDAI CAPITAL PRIME LOAN!" the mother says with such absurd celebration, as if a life-long metal rod has finally been removed from her "arse equator."

It is ridiculous!

Hyundai has some extremely strange advertising agents.

First the commercial with the Willy Wonka song and helicopters being built out of Lego in time-lapse, and now this bizarre emission with caricatures of blond, smiling white people saying the same words over and OVER.

It gets into my head, it does.

Sorries to other K-land readers if this now winds up whistling through your head too, like a nonstop bullet train to nowhere.

Where's my happy teacher?

2007-04-13T21:19:00.000+09:00

Habit is an important crutch when it comes to learning a language. The difficulty is in learning to expect pragmatic answers. Ask any Korean how they are, and I swear even if their dog or grandmother just died they'd tell you: "I'm fine thank you. And you?"

My last class of the day (most days) is with Paul's little sister, and an adorable but uncontrollable 6-year-old named Young-Chang. They usually drive me a little nuts because it's late and they don't want to study, and I'm exhausted and starving and I don't want to wrangle them.

Today I got up to erase the board with the kind of silent gloom that spells out to them "uh-oh, we've done it this time." Sometimes if they know they've pissed me off they'll actually say they're sorry at the end of the class and hug my legs and I'll tell them "that's okay."

Today they tried the same scam and I just didn't say anything.

Young-Chang looked up at me with a sort of sad, confused face.

"Teacher... where is my 'that's okay'?"

How could you possibly stay angry after that?

Dung sleuthing

2007-04-11T12:34:00.000+09:00

A quick internet search turned up this blog with further insight into the Korean children and their dung fetish. The author tells us of a fecal-friendly notebook character named Dongchimee, who's entire existence is made clear by the accompanying illustration.

Recently I was watching an online Flash cartoon with Paul's sister where a snooty girl who ignored her friends at the beach to work on her tan, is pooped on by a seagull (of course the dung dropped from the bird is a perfectly formed, iconic pile, rather unlike real bird shit...) and winds up with a severe tan, but for a pale patch of skin in the shape of the tell-tale dung.

Further investigation yielded the fact that the word "dung" itself is a false cognate with the Korean word for poop: 똥 "ttong."

This enlightens us as to why they all know the word, but the mystery of why it's the stuff of little girls' stationary, and an entire quarter of Paul's brain will never be explained.

-ing lot

2007-04-09T23:59:00.000+09:00

At this point my tragic face has dissolved into something more like fighting the smile at Shane cracking up while taking the picture...

Lowdown on Yeouido

2007-04-09T21:27:00.000+09:00

Sunday, Shane and I added our bodies to the hundreds of thousands of Koreans who descend on Yeouido for the inaugural Cherry Blossom Festival.

Yeoudio is an island in the middle of the Han River in Seoul, and is famous for two things: commerce and little pink flowers.

Called "the Manhattan of Seoul" or the "the Wall Street of Seoul" by those seeking cheap points of comparison, Yeoudio is the commercial heartbeat of the city, and is home to many of its most prominent skyscrapers, such as the 63 building.

Long before the thought of teaching in Korea ever ricocheted around in my brain, I had wanted to see the cherry blossoms of Asia. I'd seen Chinese and Japanese films where choreographed battles played out in lush copse of cherry blossoms like spastic butterflies having sex. To me it was such an exotic image— pagodas and temples aside, it was the picture of Asia.

Being a rural kid in Nova Scotia, and no stranger to orchards or the apple blossoms of the Annapolis Valley, I don't know why the image of the cherry blossoms struck me quite like it did, but as I set out for Yeouido on a crowded subway on Sunday, I was excited.

I knew it wouldn't be an afternoon as vividly rendered as the scenes in a film, but nonetheless I was determined to check out every single blossom the place had to offer me. With a map from my Lonely Planet Seoul City Guide, I plotted out the route to maximize ogling. We would follow the masses to Yeouido Park (I think Seoul's second largest after Olympic Park...) then along the Riverside Park by the Han, before heading west around through the Satkang Ecology Park, and culminating in a place listed on the map simply as "Cherry Blossom Park." This was to be the proverbial pollen in the blossom crown, since I imagined it to be a lush grove of pink and calm, and an antidote to the dirty, swollen weeks of the same old eyesores.

I met up with Shane at Yeoudio station and we bought some delicious dried fruit (a real variety too: apricots, kiwi, pear, figs, Chinese dates, and many indistinguishable) for a snack in one of the many parks on the agenda. We followed a throng of weekenders out and across to Yeoudio Park, past many street vendors selling cotton candy, chestnuts and small cream cakes.

The entrance to the park was fairly congested with kids and young couples renting bikes to take out on the red cycling paths. We reached the open middle area and headed to where the trees began. Since it's only early April, we were denied the full effect of the thick, falling blossoms, but the touch of pink was enough to lift my spirits. The hills were covered by families enjoying picnics of kimbab and other favorites. Many women were out with their toy dogs, and old folks took naps under trees despite all the noise of the day. I even noticed a couple sort of passed out on each other with a few empty Budweiser bottles next to them.

We took turns posing for photos by the giant statue of King Sejong the Great, one of the most important figures of Korean history and the face of the 10,000 won bill (it's all about the Sejongs...)

We walked the course of the park and came up alongside the Han, and the festivities that were going on there. By this point the smell of the bondaegi carts every 10 feet or so was starting to take its toll, plus the congestion was starting to reach critical mass. If the sidewalk was a nose, you'd be pounding the Sinutab, or perhaps enjoying the immunity to the bondaegi perfume. Regardless, we had reached the river and were trying to scout out the locations used in the Korean monster movie "The Host."

We made our way along the riverside where thousands of more families were having picnics, flying kites and riding bikes. The sun was shining despite the haze of smog along the mountains and building tops on the other side of the river. We walked past a Exhibition-type carnival of giant inflatable rides for kids, most of which generally involved the children being flung out out of somethings mouth: a shark, dragon, palm tree, Titanic.

Up a sleep flight of stone steps near the Seogang bridge, with bright yellow hyacinth blooms on either side, we were met by yet another dense pack of pedestrians, as well as a man selling coconuts to drink from. I will never, ever, be surprised by what I might be able to buy on the streets of Korea. The next bit of walking saw us backtrack through the busiest sidewalk I've ever traversed in my life (see yesterday's photos) and through Yeouido Park again, to reach the Ecology Park on the other side.

By now my feet hurt, but I just imagined the pink tranquility of our final destination.

The Ecology Park was very bland, but a welcome slice of peaceful. We scaled down a stone incline and walked along the boardwalk over the river with no fish, and shitty magpies that I could swear were mocking me. The dry reeds and the 4:00 sun had a nice warm sepia tone, made even nicer by the saxophonist who had parked his motorcycle on the street-side of the park, and was camped out playing mellow tunes for no one in particular.

After emerging from Satkang, we checked the map; not far from the Cherry Blossom Park, and my fantasies fulfilled. First however, we stumbled into a small square with a statue of two nude women, and a large plaque informing us that this was the Ankara Park in appreciation for the Turks who were sent to help fight in the Korean War. We made our way through the surprise bonus park, passing a re-creation of a traditional Turkish chateau-type house, and a sad looking guy in a fatigue jacket, smoking in an open pavilion. We climbed back up to the road and saw a street lined with cherry trees.

"It must be on the other side of that hill," I said to Shane, and we jay-walked to our mission objective. I scouted over the thicket, expecting to see an orchard type field of cherry trees nestled between the river and the hill.

It was a heavy machinery plant.

"Maybe it's a little further down?"

We walked.

A dirt soccer field.

We walked.

A parking lot.

Needless to say, as we walked the sidewalk itself was lined with cherry trees, and the horrible realization dawned on both of us. Is this sidewalk the park? No... that would be cruel to label an entire portion of the map as a Cherry Blossom Park, only to have the park be a stretch of
sidewalk with cherry trees every bit as present as they are on pretty much every sidewalk on this goddamn island... right?

That was, in fact, the case.

Perhaps the "-ing lot" portion was cut off by the printers?

Shane took a great photo of me looking crushed next to the lot (see above).

Despite being let down by my grand imagination, the afternoon and the blossoms we did see, were lovely. We got a little lost trying to make it back to the subway, but all prevailed and we soon found ourselves in the familiar environs of O'Kim's Brauhaus, sharing a big plate of sausage with German microbrew, just as Jesus would have wanted us to do, had he the means to say so.

After the brigand known as Patenaude and I parted ways, I made my achingly long subway ride back home. When I finally scored a seat it was next to a pretty girl, much to my delight, but one who stayed only two more stops before getting up and spilling the soju wino who was sleeping on her shoulder. He spilled right off her and into the now empty seat space beside me. The guy reeked of booze and had seemingly little control over himself. He stumbled awake, and straight-up, but soon fell again to dozing and leaning closer and closer to me. I was pressed for dear life against the metal rail at the end of the seat. His ball cap fell off and he didn't notice. A man in the other set of seats picked it up and balanced it on his knee. The wino himself was the next to fall— on me.

He let out a contended sleepy sigh and flipped over onto his back, letting his head flop into my lap like a teething baby, drunk on rum.

I poked him a few times in the head.

"Ya... ya..." I said in a drawn out way to get his attention.

He was perfectly content not to move.

I slapped his forehead a few good ones, and he grunted but didn't budge.

Everyone on the train found this terribly amusing, and I couldn't help but laugh myself as I put both my arms under the wino and none too softly shoved him into an upright position, not unlike an airline tray.

He grumbled himself awake only to pass out again in the opposite direction. Now he was the auburn haired kid in the cream-coloured Converse's problem.

The kid quickly changed seats.

When I finally arrived at my station, I got in line for a taxi outside. I was cold because my jacket was put to use sensibly preventing the salsa bottles in my shoulder-bag from smashing together. It was a good 10 minute wait before I opened the door to a yellow cab and was immediately struck by two things:

Thing the first: "This cab smells like butterscotch... or a butter-toffee cappuccino of incredible potency."

Thing the second: "Holy shit, does that cab driver look exactly like a Korean version of Bruce Campbell!"

It was true.

He had the long, pronounced face and chin, cock-sure grin, and all the chutzpah the Army of Darkness could handle.

It was weird.

We had a few short exchanges in simple English, and Bruce offered me some cigarettes because I was Canadian. He lit up himself because, frankly, he was way too cool to not be smoking and driving at the same time. Oh, and he was chewing gum too.

Butterscotch.

After recklessly driving the swerving back roads to just under the big neon sign for the Hotel Bellagio, I paid Bruce the $5 and change the 15 min. drive had cost me, but before I got out of the cab, he put his hand on my shoulder, looked me straight in the eye and said: "Shop smart, shop S-mart."

...

Not really, though.

Easter & Cherry Blossoms in Yeouido

2007-04-08T22:25:00.000+09:00

Today Shane and I walked the entire perimeter of Yeoudio island in Seoul, looking at the cherry blossoms.

I am very tired.

Tonight pictures, tomorrow words.

Bondaegi: a Korean snack of silkworm pupa, boiled in their own juices at busy pedestrian thoroughfares. What could go better with ice cream? At first I thought the cones were for serving the silkworms and, all cultural differences aside, that is just malevolent.

Me and the Great King Sejong. We were pretty much just chillin'.

Fish.

The 63 Building: a landmark Korean structure, famous for having... 63 floors.

Pretty flowers with urban haze.

A sidewalk crushingly packed with people all eager to see the first cherry blossoms. Casualties are largely overlooked.

Another shot of the cherry trees lining the sidewalk. There's a story to be told about this diabolical stretch of Yeouido, but that will have to wait for tomorrow.

As will the tale of the sleepy soju wino and Bruce Campbell's Butterscotch Taxi.

Happy Easter!

Seek Salivation... OKAY!?

2007-04-03T23:20:00.000+09:00

On Tuesdays and Thursdays Paul and I eat dinner together at a little kimbap shop down the street.

I had finished shoveling down my dolsot bimbimbap, and Paul was transfixed by the TV in the corner playing Yu-Gi-Oh, so I said "hello" to the Korean man who had been desperately trying to make eye contact with me while I ate.

He and his lady companion gave out a little cry of delight, and asked me if I spoke Korean... in Korean.

"Anio."

They proceeded to explain to me in very limited English, that they worked at a church nearby (they gave a admiring gasp when I said I was from Canada) and they'd like to have me come by after work to have a coffee and a short talk. Now, usually there would be alarms triggered when someone from the Church offers you beverages and conversation in their place of worship, but being generally lonely as I am here, and always curious what it might be like to have someone attempt to "save" me in a second language, I took them up on their offer. Since I'm a foreigner I figured they wouldn't try any funny business, and I could pretty much bugger off whenever I felt strained.

So after work I met with the two clean cut, if pleasantly desperate looking (missionary types do tend to have a look do they?) and walked with them to the "church" which I'd passed by a million times before but didn't register. From looking at the little complex it was in, the place could have been any number of PC Bangs or shitty billiard halls, if not for the small letters that spelled out "World Mission Society" on the threshold.

We got upstairs, and walked into a very open, slightly chilly hall which looked pretty much exactly like any church hall you've ever been to in your life. I would have felt like I was going to a Cub Scout meeting to play soccer baseball, only I wasn't allowed to wear shoes.

I was greeted by an incredibly enthusiastic man (the right reverend whatever he calls himself) who had a fairly good command of English and urged me to sit on a cushion in the middle of the floor. He pulled up a small table that had a painting of the Last Supper laminated on it with some Korean text. The room was very bright, and there was a noticeable presence of nothing-in-particular. Halls like this tend to be built for capacity, so for small gatherings the stretch of teaky laminate floor from the cheesy vestibule to the obligatory kitchenette seems almost universally bland. It's the same in Korea as it was at your Sunday School or the Strawberry Suppers at the United halls down on the Shore.

As it turned out, there was no coffee.

A clever ploy O Lord...

But even better (since it would have been Maxim anyway...) was some wonderful sweet lemon and orange rind tea one of the young woman brought me.

The whole thing turned out to be quite an unexpected speech. The man was incredibly animated, so I had a hard time keeping my composure. More than once I had to stifle a chuckle into my teacup, which was graciously deep. He kept ending his sentences with an enthusiastic "OKAY!?" as if to make absolutely sure I was drinking long and deep of the truth.

Then the scrapbook came out, and with it the pictures of Kim Jong-Il and Roman Catholic conspiracy theories.

The yarn that was spun for me, and subsequently flossed through one ear and out the other, was that an impending clash between the U.S. and North Korea will bring about a nuclear apocalypse and the End of Days, as it were. This is the reason why there are almost no American teachers compared to Canadians these days (which I think is blatantly false). Apparently it's because "Bushey" (he says it too!) is planning his attack.

To prepare for this, I must find the facts of "salivation" (I had to fight down my snicker) and speak to the Mother God.

"OKAY!?"

He flipped through his bi-lingual Bible from Revelations to Isaiah to Ezekiel, showing me all of the meticulously highlighted (in 3 different colours, mind) words to backup his claim that the Second Coming would be the decent of this secondary Mother God, and that it would happen in Korea: the land "far in the East" and "at the end of the Earth" as it is in a direct line from Jerusalem.

By this point my delicious tea was long gone, and I had been sitting on my feet for about a half hour. I started passive-aggressively looking at my watch, because I was still interested in his strange ideas, but I wanted the guy to cut to the chase.

"You know who the Devil is?" he asked me.

"Who?"

"I know."

"You know?"

"I know."

"Who?"

"I know."

"..."

"Let's find it."

This is where he got to the conspiracy stuff about the Pope and how his "wonderful, expensive cap" and the latin "Vicarius Filii Dei" if seen as roman numerals ads up to 666, and that the crimson, purple and gold of the Catholic robes also describe the Whore of Babylon in Revelations, and a whole lot of other strange sectarian sputtering which I had heard tell of before, but never in a setting so strange.

So the Pope is the Devil, and Bush is going to end the world, and God is a woman? Tell me something I don't know man...

At this point I declined the offer to be Baptized in "only 3 minutes!" thanked the folks sincerely for the tea, which really cleared up my lingering sore throat, and went on my way, cheerfully declining a ride home since I really won't want them to know where I live.

An interesting evening.

Back home I used to deflect wandering Jehova's Witnesses by telling them I was a Scientologist. For Korea I think I need a new one...

Something along the lines of: "Seek salivation? No thanks, I just ate."

Mind your Ps and Qs

2007-04-02T22:16:00.000+09:00

It's hard sometimes to shake unplanned native expressions when you're teaching.

You want to be as informal as possible when you speak of course, to get the kids accustomed to how English is spoken naturally, but every now and then you break out the idioms or abbreviations without realizing it.

"Teacher! Come here please!" (this is something I had to vigorously drive into their heads through a steady process of instructing the proper expression, while ignoring anyone who said simply, "Teacher! Coming!" or "Come on!")

"Just a sec," I said to the student.

"Huh!?"

"A sec, just a sec," I said absentmindedly, trying to finish writing on the board.

"What is that?" she asked.

"Oh..." I clued in, "Sorry... Ahh... "sec" sec is short for second, like smaller than a minute— a very short time."

There was single beat of what sometimes feels like precise comic silence, since I always end up laughing over what is said next.

"Sex?" she asked innocently.

Free Kills? Anybody?

2007-03-29T22:01:00.000+09:00

While reading a comprehension passage about "why we laugh" I brought up the topic of the '"free hugs" campaign, which was only recently taken up by young Taiwanese, Chinese or Koreans looking to spread goodwill by dispensing free hugs.

I knew the kids would be aware of the idea since there's a commercial on TV where free hugs abound, and these were a gifted bunch.

Paul had cracked me up earlier in the class with an unexpected "Rreeex!" (though I've discovered that he spells it "reacks") and I tried to pass it off as a "demonstration" since laughter was the point of the lesson, and I figured if we were all serious about it, the point would stand missed.

The two sisters were confused why I found the sound so funny (as I'm sure most of you are as well) but I found myself at odds how to explain it to them.

"It's hard to explain WHY you laugh sometimes, you just do, right?"

"YES! Many times I just laugh by myself!" the cool sister said.

"Me too!" I confessed.

She was glad I did.

By this point, Paul stood up and said: "Teacher! You say about 'free hugs' but isn't there 'free kills' too?"

I laughed.

"I don't think people would be happy with a 'free kill.'"

"YEES!" he protested, "You Teacher! You would be happy!"

"No, I wouldn't want a 'free kill.'"

Paul raised both his hands, one holding an imaginary knife, and the other a sign that read "Free Kills."

"Teacher! If I give the free kills many people will come and I do this *stab* and they say *reacks* many times and you too laugh very many times!"

I've got to give the kid credit for twisted logic.

The textbook said most people laugh about 13 times a day. I stand in defiance of their science.

"Reacks!"

P.S.

2007-03-28T02:58:00.000+09:00

Hedwig in Korea (The Origin of Love) & the original (movie version).

If Aristophanes only knew...

How do you solve a problem like Maria?

2007-03-28T02:21:00.001+09:00

Does Debbie Harry have a penis? Because she certainly has a husky voice...

Allow me to explain.

Above is a video for Korean singer Kim Ah-joong's cover of "Maria" by Blondie. It is also featured in a popular Korean romantic comedy "200-pound Beauty" seen in said video. The song is also severely over-played on Korean commercials, and in turn is parroted ad nauseam by the kids at school, but of course all they sing is the chorus, so day in and day out it's "Mariaaaaa! Ave Mariaaaa!" and ooooh, it makes me wanna cry.

Recently Paul busted out the pipes and began singing it in our last class of the evening. I asked him and the two other girls in the class if they actually knew who sang the original version. One girl who is especially quirky and feisty, and is quickly becoming one of my favorites, said that she had heard it but didn't know the name of the group.

"Blondie," I told her.

"Blondie?" she said, "Teacher, the song sounded so strange! Her voice was so deep... (there was a beat of silence)... she is transgender???"

I don't know if she picked up the word off the internet, if her Dad took her to the Korean staging of "Hedwig & the Angry Inch" I saw advertised on the subway, or if they just finished an unlikely unit in public school on sexual identity, in any case, I laughed away my bad feelings about the song.

Now whenever a student hums that infectious chorus, I'll just giggle about how to impressionable Korean ears, a raspy, druggy voice can make even the most feminine of New Wave sex symbols seem like they're packing a little something extra under that mini-skirt.

The Black Shadow Knows

2007-03-27T22:01:00.000+09:00

"Horrified."

I wrote the word up on the board, followed by a colon and "very, very, very, very scared."

"Easy," I assured the sleepy students, "If you are horrified, it means you are very, very, very *pause* very scared by something."

"Teacher, I am question!"

"Really? I though you were Joseph. Okay then Question, what can I do for you?"

Yukyukyuk.

"No, Teacher, I have a question!"

"Ohhhh! I see, what's your question?"

"What is 'horrified?'"

"Isn't that what I just told you? *sigh* horrified is what you'd be if you woke up in the morning and found a vampire in your bathroom."

"Vampireu?" he asked his best friend sitting next to him.

"Dracula," the friend replied noncommittally.

"Aaaah! Is scary?"

"Yes, you'd be horrified if you saw Dracula in your bathroom, or like, a giant spider that was as big as your bed."

"Noooo! I fight it! Everyday!"

"Everyday huh? Everyday you'd fight a giant spider in your bathroom?"

"Yes! Every day I fight and win!"

This sort of rountine could go on for a long time, so I just let it be, as noraebang patrons, and to a lesser extent, the Beatles, often say.

We read some short paragraphs with a few other idioms. I explained the term "make yourself at home" like this:

"Joseph, remember last week when you and Jin-hyuck kept asking where my house was?"

Laugh.

"Yeah!"

"And remember how you also said you wanted to come to my house and knock on my door, then when I answered the door you two would rush in, play computer games for 8 hours, and then when you were leaving you would finally say 'hello'?"

Uproarious laugh.

"Yeah!"

"Well... that's 'make yourself at home' too much."

If you can explain something by even a limited anecdote, it tends to sink in a bit more. Mostly though, it's in one ear and out the other, so I'm always pleased when the kids can show me they've learned something.

Towards the end of the class as I was erasing the whiteboard, the boys' chattering suddenly came to a hushed stop.

"What?" I asked.

"Black shadow!" Joseph said.

"Black shadow?"

"Yes, Big Teacher walk by the door!"

The boss of our academy sometimes makes his rounds through the hall and peeks in through the top of the small window in the door. He is very tall and almost always wears a three-quarter length black coat.

"Black shadow..." I chuckled to myself.

"Is horrified!" Jin-hyuck said with a big grin.