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August 31, 2006 >> Wrapping up the gigThis week has been a mindfucker: saying goodbyes to legions of children, clawing for free moments as I try to fit everything into a period of time that can be counted in hours, not days, before I leave this country. I am now the proud owner of a terrifying "traditional" Korean doll, bestowed upon me by an overappreciative parent. Even now it glowers at me, reminding me that reminiscing is better suited for an airliner aisle seat than here. After all, here is only here for 45 hours.
Posted by Chris at 08:11 AM >> Commentations (6) | Permalink
August 28, 2006 >> All-Natural Preservation
There's a place in Seoul where the age-old baby parts of royalty past rest in a large stone phallus. In Korea, the placenta and umbilical cord are not merely discarded or even made into a delicious post-partum omelet: they are turned into historical attractions.
Urgh?
[Korea] [Seoul] [placenta monument]
Posted by Chris at 11:56 AM >> Commentations (3) | Permalink
August 24, 2006 >> Teaching Privacy
At one of my tutoring gigs, the older boy sometimes fucks up and reads the wrong section of dialogue in our book. When this happens, his mom loudly cries, "Chun Min! Washing face!" Then he has to go to the bathroom and splash himself with water, apparently as a remedy for tiredness, while I try not to laugh. Lately I have been randomly shouting, "Washing face!" even when he doesn't mess up, and his mom still makes him do it. He's onto me but I don't think she has a clue.
The two brothers are fiercely competitive. Every chance they get, they use a new line of grammar as a vehicle for describing bodily assault on the other: "If I kicked Hae Won in the face, he is bury" (later corrected to '... he would be buried') Hae Won's most famous retort is, "You have dog manners," and sometimes "You is a seafood manner," when he's insane with rage. Whenever their mom glances away, someone invariably gets headbutted in the ear and I have to pretend that I am laughing at something funny in the book.
Today we accidentally stumbled into the facts of life.
Hae Won (reading): I have a problem with my boyfriend.
Me: Hahaha... you have a boyfriend, Hae Won.
I am infantile.
Hae Won: Chun Min has a girlfriend!
This statement is apparently delivered as an insult.
Chun Min: Yes. I have girlfriend. Many girlfriends!
Thumbs up from me. Hae Won is nonplussed but still in the dark about the respect accorded a true 'playa'
Hae Won: Chun Min have one thousand girlfriend!
Chun Min: Yes!
A second, more careful, thumbs up. This kid is apparently 1000 times more hype than me. He is now a registered threat on the market.
Hae Won reels, clearly disoriented from this dramatic restructuring of his world. Why the hell would you want 1000 girls? Are girls more valuable than PSP games? Something is wrong here. He fumbles for a split second, before triumphantly coming up with...
Hae Won (pointing at his brother): PREGNANT!
Who is pregnant? Chun Min? One of his legions of ladies? Everyone dissolves into hysterics, Hae Won gets kicked in the knee and poor Mom, whose conversational abilities are vastly eclipsed by her kids', throws up her hands in confusion.
Later I get paid $155.00. Could I possibly do this back home? Please?
[Korea] [teaching] [private lessons]
Posted by Chris at 09:54 AM >> Commentations (5) | Permalink
August 22, 2006 >> No Leg Beg
Most major centers of Seoul have at least one of these men crawling the walkways: beggars who inch along labourously on their faces, pushing a wheeled basket before them. Oftentimes they have a music box that blares tinny tunes which inform passer-bys of their presence down below.
It's a sign of a jaded society, I know, to suggest that such an unfortunate sight might need additional broadcast, but the fact of the matter is that these guys quickly become an everyday fixture. However, I can still remember my first encounter with a no-leg beggar pretty vividly. His situation seemed overwhelmingly degrading - he was wearing a pleather sack around his waist and dragged himself through the crowds like a beached mermaid. It was just, I dunno, incredibly sub-human. I thought, "FUCK, this guy must be really down on his luck to scrape around on his face in such a pitiful manner," and dived for my wallet. But within days I had seen many such men, each with various material substitutes for legs, and the immediate impulse to dump all of one's change into their basket lessens with exposure.
While it is usually assumed that these beggars are victims of the Korean War, someone once posited the theory that perhaps some saw their own limbs off for the sympathy factor. I find this extremely unlikely, as legs are pretty sweet and one would have to make a real killing on the streets to make their removal worthwhile. Plus it would hurt like acid bananas.
I will tell you this, though. I noticed one day that Sanbon's no-leg beggar was in a wheelchair at the bottom of the subway ramp instead of his usual prone position. His basket was pretty empty. The next day, he was back on the ground and the wheelchair was nowhere to be seen. The money seemed to be much better. But still, the way I figure, you do the best with what you have - you don't fucking chop off your own legs just because you happen to be down and out.
I find it pretty hard to write about this, and it was even harder to take a picture. I felt like a tourist piece of shit, honestly, with my finger on the shutter. I felt guilty for taking notice and dropped a proportionately large amount of guilt money into the basket afterwards. It's easy to gloss over uncomfortable subjects - to step over them and pretend they're just a mute fact of life in the interest of "compassion" and "respect" for the victims. A lot of people do it. A lot of cultures do it. But you also have to wonder: if everyone follows the politically-correct line of ignoring troublesome things, of conveniently leaving them out of informal discourse, will we ever really see how fucked up the world can be?
I would've talked to him, but I didn't have the language. I only have this.
Posted by Chris at 10:58 AM >> Commentations (2) | Permalink
August 21, 2006 >> Sleep Anywhere
One of the quaint things about Seoul is the enthusiastic desire of its citizens to pass out without reservation on city property... flopped out on benches, lying in gutters, that kind of thing. In fact, just tonight I had the jolly good fortune to step over a soju-steeped man in a wrinkled business suit, unconscious and comfortably sprawled across a public walkway. Everyone just sorta looks the other way, although I've noticed that many take a quick peek just to make sure that isn't their uncle or husband or a loved one gnawing the pavement.
The subway is also a good spot to catch public embarrassment. Those long, boring Line 4 trips are vastly spiceified with the addition of a dude sitting and holding his head, moaning and rocking back and forth. Without fail, he will rock too far forwards and topple skull-first into the aisle. After some twitching on the floor, and a fine display of every spectator present studiously examining the ceiling, he will blearily crawl back to his seat. Onlookers (or not-lookers) will breathe a sigh of relief that they don't have to perform CPR on him.
Other pertinent sightings of public pass-out ribaldry:
-A wealthy looking man spooning a garbage can in a side alley
-Two guys in fancy suits shouting fiercely at each other and then slumping down in tandem for a quick nap between rounds
-A man asleep on a bench in the middle of a main street, cell phone precariously balanced on his ear. The flashing light indicates that he has passed out mid-conversation, perhaps while telling his wife that he'll "be right home".
I suppose this sort of thing is to be expected when your national liquor costs $1.50 a mickey, and an exceedingly macho culture demands that colleagues harangue each other to get absolutely shitfaced.
[Korea] [soju] [passed out businessmen]
Posted by Chris at 11:24 AM >> Commentations (2) | Permalink
August 20, 2006 >> Schizophrenic Seoul
It's strange when you can see
both of these skies
on the same day, in the same city
and they are nowhere near the same
Posted by Chris at 02:22 PM >> Commentations (2) | Permalink
>> Can I take your whore-der?
Today I was cordially ordered by management units to abandon any and all plans for Sunday Goodness and spend my day serving coffee and little pieces of shrink-wrapped cake to Korean families. But first I had to play pamphleteer and harass and annoy people strolling past the Sanbon fountain outside on their weekend jaunt. Yes.
As part of the grand old spirit of private education competition, our school regularly engages in such mad endeavors. I offered a token level of protest to this 'English Cafe' - "I will lick the drinks and hopefully I have hepatitis and then everyone will have hepatitis and we'll have to teach the English term for 'weeping sores' next week" - but my heart wasn't entirely in it. I have never worked in the food service industry, you see, and I am not entirely adverse to trying new kinds of labour. At least not for more than 4 hours.
As a pre-game pamphleteer I had more luck than my Korean colleagues. They were waved off dismissively, more often than not, as there are always people handing out brochures and stupid shit around town and many citizens have adapted a comprehensive policy for avoiding them. I, on the other hand, had the element of surprise on my side: I could hide behind pillars and jump out, roaring "I AM YOUR PAMPHLETEER!!!" to the terror of many children. Then I would tell them to listen to the Weakerthans and cram as many leaflets into their hands as I could disguise as one. In this manner I disposed of my paperstuffs efficiently. I think many people were genuinely interested to see what the hell kind of service a Westerner could be coerced into hawking on the streets like a common vagrant. It probably helped that I got bored of saying "English Cafe" and started cryptically advertising things like, "Monkey coffee choco-bong-bong" instead.
So pamphleteering was easy, but serving was a different story. I honestly don't know how you people do it - staying on top of one table was easy enough, and maybe two, but once the cafe started to fill up I was fucked.
Part of the problem was that it was an English Cafe and, as such, it was generally expected that the kids would get a chance to speak... y'know... ENGLISH. Sadly this was not the case as our students are notoriously shy when in the company of their proud, tuition-paying parents and are reduced to simpering giggle-ridden mutes. Basically I had to ask how their vacation was, although chances are they'd already told me twenty times in class, and then sit by as aforementioned parents tried to coax something, ANYTHING, out of them. When embarrassment of teacher and family alike reached its climax I would say, "Oh wow, Sally, that's wicked... you went to the beach," even though she hadn't said a word. Then I would scuttle off to another table. The general flavour of the afternoon was that Herald School kids suck ass at English, although their telepathic abilities are beyond contestation.
Some of the children remembered enough to call me crazy though, to the great consternation of their overly-respectful parents. And one ten-year-old tried to order a "love beer" and I was like YES and high-fived him until I noticed his mom's face, which was visibly trying to work through the uncomfortable questions of "How did my kid learn how to say 'beer', and has this terrible white man before me been feeding my little darling alcohol at school?" The answers, respectively, are 'I told him' and 'Most certainly.' Love beer keeps em placid!
The din and crowds eventually died down and the last families bowed themselves all the way out the door. I threw down my apron, confident that, although I never mastered carrying one of those round trays piled high with tall drinks (How do you do that, anyways?? It's wobbly!), I have basically cemented my status as a distinguished and venerable community servant. Sanbon will undoubtedly erect a statue in my honour when I leave, an obsidian Chris firmly grasping a weeping child's hair in one gauntleted hand and spilling a tray of tomato juice with the other.
[Korea] [Sanbon] [pamphleteer] [English Cafe] [mute children]
Posted by Chris at 09:49 AM >> Commentations (0) | Permalink
August 16, 2006 >> Dream Metal Tool
Ahhhh Liberation Day. I could kiss the Japanese for their crumbled empire, retracting in defeat to their diminutive isle fifty-ish years ago and leaving the Korean work-horse to declare a national holiday in proud response. Little did those Japanese know that in abandoning Korea, they were incidentally granting much-needed reprieve to overworked ESL teachers much further down the historical archipelago. And so I thank you Japan, immortal failure of colonization, for providing me with a Tuesday free of tests and constructing stupid cardboard houses for pigs to build and wolves to blow down. It was thoughtful of you to leave Korea in August.
While many locals celebrated their freedom from the villainous ILBON with traditional activities like visiting theme parks or the omnipresent "Grandmother's House", we looked elsewhere. Everland is mad crowded on holidays and grandma always makes us bottle three tons of rotting cabbage for kimchi when we stop by. No, grander plans were afoot: we had secured our places at a more modern massacre of Korean folk. On the anniversary of this country's reborn autonomy, they were haphazardly trying their luck on the basketball court against the New World Order, America's Dream Team.
Of the motley crew of nationalities opposing the U.S.A. in the World Basketball Championship, Korea is among the motliest. I have mentioned, I believe, the silly state of professional basketball here. After a grudging and lengthy battle with Seoul's public transportation system and face-melting heat, we arrived at Olympic Park to learn that things have not improved since. It was interesting to see that many Korean supporters were healthily attired in NBA jerseys; futility leads to some whimsical, disjointed scenarios. For example, a drunken old man trying to impress a hot booth girl outside the stadium with his awkward jump-shot, airballing completely and hitting her right in her squealing face. Stuff like that.
Inside, one quickly learnt that attempting to hydrate oneself with beer was a poor idea, especially when the effort of lifting the can to one's lips resulted in a cascade of sweat equal to or greater than the net liquid in the beer. But dammit, we tried.
To their credit, Team Korea started off okay. They had prepared some decent plays to move the ball around and find an open outside shooter (as the battle under the net was lost from the onset, clearly). But when you have guys like LeBron James and Chris Bosh flying around like fucking airborne Jesuses (Jesii?), even the best plans tend to break down. Within minutes, the game became not a question of who would win, but whether the Americans would double up on Korea's score.
Korea's defense quickly degenerated into a series of sexual molestations but the Dream Team, unphased, continued to throw down dunks like a Harlem Globetrotter exhibition. One particularly riveting play involved half of Korea's team lying prone and injured in their own court, perhaps taking a cue from their flop-happy soccer team, while the Americans pranced downcourt and made yet another spectacle out of two points. The crowd roared with every dunk, but they roared louder whenever a Korean somehow sank a ten-foot jumper against all odds; peals of Korean pride rolled throughout the stadium periodically despite the lopsided score. That's the mentality here: always fighting, always down but never out.
But they still lost. Bad. Despite being given a variety of bizarre free-throw penalties by sympathetic referees, Korea was submarined by fifty points, victims of sporting assassination in an era where culture is the new colony. However, the fact that the results of the game were universally expected and, indeed, the subject of many rueful head-shakes and sardonic anticipation made it okay somehow. Down but not out: Japan probably would've lost even worse. And everyone got to see motherfucking LeBron James! In Korea!!
Everything seems cooler when it's in Korea, especially something you could see back home that would be no big deal. You could go to a Flock of Seagulls reunion show here, and it would be badass just because it's LIVE IN SEOUL!!!
So imagine how much more badass it would be if there happened to be a good band in Seoul, or perhaps two good bands. At the same time. And the show was frustratingly sold out for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, but it just so happened that the promoters released a fat block of tickets to discourage scalpers on the day of the concert. And the venue was coincidentally just three minutes from where a basketball game had been lost by a courageous squad of overmatched Koreans. And the bands were METALLICA and TOOL. LIVE IN SEOUL!!!
Needless to say, my final holiday in Korea immediately became the best.
Crowds milled outside the stadium, Westerners trying to look unexcited and "oh yeah, we're totally used to this kind of thing back in Sudbury," and Koreans trying to look metal - which doesn't work particularly well, given the country's aversion to tattoos and piercings and willingness to don ridiculous T-shirts with Lars Ulrich's leering goblin face. We wandered into the venue, none too soon, because before we even had a chance to relax and say "Holy shit, we're seeing TOOL! IN SEOUL!!!" we were seeing Tool. In Seoul.
Maynard and crew strode unobtrusively on-stage before maybe 1000 onlookers and immediately launched into "Stinkfist", which is a damn good thing to launch into under any circumstances. Mohawked and energetic, I'd never seen Maynard quite so accommodating or, dare I say, congenial: he bantered sparingly without the scathing admonishments of the crowd that he's usually fond of. I guess maybe he figured Koreans wouldn't get sarcasm.
It was pretty funny to watch people rush into the stadium once they realized their posturing outside meant they were actually missing the show. Tool ripped through a fairly straightforward set: lots of Aenima, "Vicarious" from 10 000 Days and, of course, "Sober". 8 songs, 1 hour, in and out before people knew what hit them. It was like a backseat-of-the-car fuck between shifts at Zellers. I think maybe Tool decided that since their name was about an eighth of the size of Metallica's on the banner outside, they were only responsible for an eighth of the set time. Still, the deed was done; an afterglow left.
As the light died and the stadium filled like a bucket of faces, anticipation built. The sound-check and light guys screwed the crowd around with dummy dims and tantalizing guitar jabs, but Metallica took their sweet time getting to business. We amused ourselves in the meantime by watching hordes of fans try to circumvent the harried and understaffed security team by jumping barriers and rushing the stage. There is possibly nothing funnier than watching a man in a three-piece suit and earpiece chase a tiny flailing Asian girl into a throng of Metallica fans. New and interesting methods of jailbreak were developed to adapt to defensive reconfiguration, involving daring jumps over concrete ravines and elaborate distraction ruses.
I had never seen Metallica before, and I think Lars is a gigantic tool for his part in the whole Napster thing, but wow. They finally took the stage to an enormous roar that groped the sky, and went and went and went and went. Sticking primarily to older stuff from Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets instead of pumping St. Anger (like I semi-feared), Metallica did strange and wonderful things to Korea. All around us, people who couldn't speak a word of conversational English were screaming and pumping their fists along to every song, from "Unforgiven" all the way to "Seek and Destroy". It was strange, to say the least: perhaps we've been teaching English the wrong way. Maybe the key lies in metal, as it rightfully should, and we've been too blind to see it.
Bare-chested kids flailed umbrellas in air-guitar glory. Headbanging ensued. Stage rushes swelled and petered out and swelled again whenever a security person left to go to the bathroom. Two hours passed and Metallica left, fawning and heaping praise on a hungry crowd. Who out there bought St. Anger? Not me, but I downloaded it. It was okay. And then I paid 80 bucks to see your show and I'm a lot happier spending that 80 bucks than I would've been spending 18 on your new CD.
I don't think they heard me say that though.
Then Metallica returned for the predictable encore and left and returned again, somewhat less predictably this time, and a large number of people outside the stadium on their way home were made to feel foolish for doubting the tenacity of metal.
And standing on the edge of all this, life felt pretty good.
... until we saw the line-up to get down the stairs into the subway station. Sometimes the afterglow smells like sweat, sometimes it's saying "fuck this, let's just get a cab." Sometimes Japan has to fall down for me to have a wicked holiday. IN SEOUL!!!
[Seoul] [Korea] [Olympic Stadium] [Dream Team] [basketball] [Tool] [Metallica]
Posted by Chris at 11:00 AM >> Commentations (1) | Permalink
August 12, 2006 >> Superficial Pickle
As expected, I have become rather acclimatized to Korean society during my stay here. Getting pushed and shoved along in a crowd feels pretty normal now, and I don't even glance at the buckets full of stinking giant crabs strewn along the roadways anymore. But one thing that still gets me is pizza.
Pizza in this country is sorta seen as gourmet, not the cheap, greasy university food it is back home. It's expensive here, although it's still greasy. But the toppings. As far as I can tell, the two most popular things to put on a pizza are corn and sweet potato. Always with the fucking sweet potato. Instead of dipping sauce, you get a little cup of sliced pickles. Somewhere in the course of importing to this noble country pickles and pizza have been inescapably linked, much like fries and burgers in the Western world. Our school refrigerator is full of these damnable little pickle cups. I often wonder whether anyone will get around to eating them, or whether we will all be drowned one day in a sea of shrunken cucumber and briny green juice.
[Korea] [culture] [pizza] [pickles]
Posted by Chris at 03:34 AM >> Commentations (1) | Permalink
August 11, 2006 >> Thanks for coming, and...
Today I received an Advance Notice on Expiration of your (my) Stay Period, which cordially reminds me (you) to "please note that overstaying, which means violating the Immigration Law, will not enable you (me) to escape any punishment." The word punishment sorta makes me think that I will be publicly spanked or bullwhipped if I don't leave Korea pretty soon.
I'm booking my ticket.
Posted by Chris at 11:06 AM >> Commentations (2) | Permalink
August 08, 2006 >> Scary Crazy Soju Man
Soju is a helluva drug.
Posted by Chris at 11:17 AM >> Commentations (4) | Permalink
August 07, 2006 >> The Rise of Mercury
In my undercover snooping in Thai affairs, I found out that the amiable citizens from the "Land of Smiles" are working on something big. Since most of Thailand's smiles are a direct result of aggressively pilfering Western dollars and Euros and Canadian Tire money, the next step makes a lot of sense: a tricked-out big budget superhero movie in the vein of Spiderman. It's time to get out of the markets and aim for the big bucks of Culture.
Mercury Man actually taps the pulmonary artery of Spiderman, since the hero looks like a giant ripoff of Venom. Because he has a black suit and mask, you see. That shit's trademarked. Except this newcomer to the heavily trademarked superhero scene speaks Thai. And his superpowers presumably orbit around elemental unit mercury, which imply pleasant results, as my only recollection of this particular metal is that it slowly makes you fucking insane. Remember the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland? That dude had mercury in his hat.
The trailer shows Mercury Man regenerating skin wounds sorta like Wolverine. This will be poor for the world at large if our masked hero happens to turn into a raving lunatic - which he should because otherwise the movie won't be scientifically accurate - and nobody will be able to cut off his arms to render him babbling and harmless. Limbs will just keep growing back and Mercury Man will ramble away about dancing bears in his retinas, and bash the White Witch from Narnia (who is his arch-nemesis, no joke) with well-choreographed Muay Thai assaults and the whole thing will spell D-E-G-E-N-E-R-A-C-Y and the eventual collapse of the exclusively Hollywood blockbuster. This is huge.
Mercury Man.
One Element, One Man. Chemically insane, with any luck.
One man who suspiciously resembles Marvel Comics©©©©' Venom©, but just different enough to avoid copyright suit.
On August 10th, Thailand will smile wider.
Posted by Chris at 10:48 AM >> Commentations (0) | Permalink
August 02, 2006 >> 10 baht, 15 minutes
After several days down south in a pimping beach resort, I am back in this hideous sluttish monstrosity known as Khao San... I tried to escape, go anywhere (anywhere) else, but somehow a bus has landed me amidst the neon debauchery despite my best efforts. Now I have a 3 dollar hostel room which looks like cancer and my only recourse is to sleep in it until it is light and I can plot my escape.
Things I have learnt thus far:
-Many attractive Thai girls are actually ladyboys. They are scary.
-Do not thumb wrestle small Thai children. They have gigantor muscular thumbs and will defeat you. Then you will have to purchase a rose or some useless trinket because you suck so bad at thumb wrestling.
-Same goes for Connect 4. Thais are righteously amazing at Connect 4. Sometimes they will let you win, like say a certain bartender at Potang, and you will get a free tequila shot. Then you will lose many more times and have to buy her tequila. You will be encouraged to keep playing because she gives you a 'free' tequila every time she drinks one, and before you know it you've had a trillion tequila shots and are puking vicariously.
-You can get weed, but only if you endure many invitations for "fucking, fucking!" first. There is lots of fucking going on apparently.
-And there are a disturbingly large number of old men with teenaged Thai girls.
-Kickboxing is terminally awesome.
Okay that's the end because the little number is flashing at me and it means I either put 10 more baht in the little coin-hole or I go pass out, and I'm really looking forward to that filthy bed.
Posted by Chris at 01:10 PM >> Commentations (7) | Permalink