My English Learners' Website

Hey guys!

I haven't updated this blog in a long old while as I'm currently back in the U.K. and there's a distinct lack of Korean madness afoot. But I am doing a site for learning English online free. If you'd like to check it, please go to JonsEnglishClassroom.com.

See ya!

Jon

What Kind of Facebooker Are You?

Well let's face it, most of us use Facebook these days, regardless of the fact that it is an incredible waste of time and often just makes us annoyed and hate people we haven't met. But it seems that most of us fall into one of several categories of Facebook user. Maybe you overlap into two or three of the following categories, but ultimately these blanket terms can be applied to most of us:

1. El Contrario (The Likes to Disagree With Everything Facebooker): This jolly chap will disagree with whatever you or the cultural norm is. He doesn't particularly believe the words he says but he has to be different to be special. He is the one who says "I liked that band but now they've become too commercialised", which actually just means "Lots of people like that band now so I don't feel special anymore". Just to go against the flow, he will say something foolish like "Shakespeare is popularist rubbish" (he has a right to an opinion though- after all, he has read a children's version of Macbeth and seen Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet). His comments generally boil down to "No it isn't".

2. El Farmvilio (The Gaming Facebooker): I understand approximately 96% of the world's population plays Farmville or Mafiaville or something, which is fair enough, computer games are awesome and much better than life. But their gaming addiction will result in your status updates page mostly consisting of things like "Reginald needs a trap for his badger baiting campaign" and "Emma has unlocked the horse execution level on Mafiaville".

3. El Stupido (The Special Facebooker): Some people like to do things like kicking swans and eating their eggs. Unfortunately, they also take great joy in making sweeping generalisations about society in general. Examples might be "All students are lazy bums" or "Religious people are all stupid or terrorists". Generally anything contentious is a good topic. Actually I fall into this category since I love making sweeping statements about other races. But only because foreigners are so funny and eat rice all the time.

4. El Dullsvillio (The Boring Facebooker): This character wants the whole internet to know what he's doing at any given time. "Dave is getting the milk out of the fridge!", "Mary is in the queue at the supermarket", "Randolph wonders what time Neighbours is on" are perfect examples of this Facebooker's constant stream of unimportant updates.

5. El Rage-io (The Angry Facebooker): El Rage-io hasn't forgiven his parents for something, and wants the internet to know how angry he is. He isn't averse to calling people names or swearing over trivial matters, especially if he feels someone disagrees with him. HE LIKES TO WRITE EVERYTHING IN CAPITAL LETTERS TO GET HIS POINT ACROSS.

6. El Pretentioso (The Pretends-to-be-Cultured Facebooker): This Facebooker fills his page with lists of books he bought. Bought, not read. On his "info" page he mentions 177 different books and lists his favourite authors as Chaucer and Tolstoy. However, the truth is, he only reads the Beano. He likes books with pictures as they are easier to understand. He claims to enjoy the films of Charlie Chaplin but actually he only watches American Pie movies. He also likes to win Facebook arguments by misquoting Shakespeare, often inadvertantly misspelling words, much to the mirth of others.

7. El Obscuro (The Irrelevant Facebooker): El Obscuro writes things which he understands but noone else does. Song lyrics are a favourite, especially ones he is rocking out to at that particular moment in time. "I'm gonna bite your face because I am flying like a kite" might mean something to El Obscuro, but noone else even knows which song it is from, let alone why it's important.

8. El Cry-For-Help-O (The Needy Facebooker): This Facebooker draws you in with deliberately vague comments like "Mandy can't believe it :(" in the hope that sympathetic people will ask what's wrong. I like to reply with compassionate advice like "Stop moaning".

9. El Provoko (The Rude Facebooker): This guy doesn't really have any opinions of his own, and works in a factory checking the taste of shoe polish, but he loves nothing better than to insult anyone who cares to express any kind of opinion or feeling. If you post a status reading "My dog died :(" he will say "Ha ha I killed your dog" If you say "I vote Conservative" he will call you Tory scum, likewise if you say "I vote Labour" he will say "You lefty scum".

10. El Jonny Foreigner (The Korean Facebooker): Corea (also spelt Korea) is a geographical cul-de-sac. Since it has effectively been an island since the outbreak of the Corean War 60 years ago, lots of trends don't really take off here. For one thing, 99% of Coreans use Internet Explorer, whereas in the Western World anyone who is at least half geeky has switched to Firefox or an even more modern browser (which I'm not geeky enough to know about). South Corea (Good Corea) is so Internet Explorer dependant that many Corean websites simply won't open if you use Firefox or another alternative. This trend is also seen in Facebook users; not many Coreans use Facebook as opposed to home-grown social networking sites such as Naver or Daum. So it's always fun when a Corean starts using Facebook and says funny things like "Are you going to the England?".

11. El Falso-Inspiro (The Quotes-Other-People Facebooker) His Facebook statuses are regularly things like "'Fried chicken is for everybody!' Martin Luther King Jr." or "'It sure is smelly here' - Mother Theresa", in the hope that people will see greatness in them, too.

12. El Envioso (The I Hate Everyone Facebooker). This guy hates the wealthy for being successful, he hates the poor for taking money from him, he hates students for not having to work hard, he hates foreigners for taking all the best jobs like cleaning, he hates the young for being rude, he hates the old for being slow. Generally there is noone this guy likes. Least of all himself. He reads the Daily Mail.

13. El One-Up-Man-Shipio (The Gotta Be Better At Everything Facebooker). Doesn't matter who you are, or what you've done. This piece of work has already done it, better, quicker, and more aesthetically pleasingly-er. You're Buzz Aldrin? Unlucky pal, this guy is Neil Armstrong. You're Christopher Columbus? This guy is one of those vikings who got there first. Whatever you do, your achievements are worthless because this winner is a better human being than you.

14. El Armchair-Pundito (The Answer to Everyone's Problems Facebooker). It is a shame this guy isn't the president of every country, since he knows just what needs to be done about Iran, Israel, North Korea, the banks, the poor, AIDS... in fact, it wouldn't be unreasonable to say he has all the answers to every problem. He must know more about these issues than the people who actually deal with them, otherwise he wouldn't bother to tell us the solutions.

15. El Constanto (The All-Day Facebooker): Those of us lucky enough to work in an office or in South Korea will find ample time to waste on Facebook, and the ability to comment on every single person's activity. Sometimes there's not even any real need to comment, it just gives us something to do. We like to reply to people's status updates by saying unnecessary things like "Really?", or "Oh.". This Facebooker spends so much time online that he uses words like "LOL" and "ROFL" in actual conversation, not that he ever has a real conversation. He is so used to using the internet that when he writes his name, he just puts his initials with a number at the end.

Travelling: The Bad Bits and the Unbad Bits

Few people have recklessly sacrificed time, money, jobs, health and human relationships to the extent that I have in the name of travelling to faraway lands. This is because travelling is a kind of drug, the more you do it the more you want to do. But it's not all fun and games. Sometimes it's more mosquito than mohito. Here are some reasons why the road is a mixed blessing at best:

1. You have no friends. Sure, when you travel you meet "like-minded people" in hostels, you make friends with your tour guide who is suspiciously friendly until he receives his tip. But ultimately you don't have any deeper relationships than superficial chats over a beer, telling Spaniards and Israelis what your Dad does.

2. When you come home, noone cares about where you have been. When you go to grand places like Jerusalem or Iguaza Falls, you feel moved and that your eyes have opened. But when you get home, you realise that people back home are more concerned about their council tax bill or the leak in the bathroom than how you felt when you held a sloth. Which is understandable, of course.

3. Everything is an anticlimax afterwards. If you have been to the Pyramids, how can you be excited by a Norman fort (which is actually just a hill)? If you have been to Bali, how can you enjoy Newquay without annoying your friends with tired phrases like "in Bali I did this" or "in Bali there was that"? In a way, by travelling to the greatest sites on Earth, you set the bar so high you can never be satisfied with the ordinary.

4. You trash your health. Well, not always. But if you are unlucky, you might die or hurt your back. I visited Guatemala in January, and took a trip through some valleys to visit a lake. On the way there we crossed a number of concrete bridges over ravines. On the way home that evening, we had to stop as one of the bridges had collapsed during the day. It had been replaced with wooden planks and we had to walk across to reduce the weight of the minibus. The remains of the bridge lay in pieces at the bottom of the ravine. All that seperated us from a messy death was a few hours.

5. You miss out on a lot back home. It is incredible to spend weeks, months, years in foreign lands. But the clock doesn't stop back home. While you are getting to grips with the map of mainland China, your parents are getting older, your friends are getting married and having children, your pets are dying. The world keeps turning wherever we are.

6. You realise the world is a dark place indeed. If you only go to Ibiza, Florida and Disneyland, you might believe that Planet Earth is an exciting, shiny place with clean toilets and ample parking. But it's not. Great swathes of our planet are filled with childhood prostitution, poverty, starvation and disease. As a drunken Irishman I met on the street in Korea recently pointed out, "Compared to most of the world, Europe is a shining light."

7. Everyone tries to rob you, either obviously or surreptitiously. Granted, lots of people ask you for money even in England. I mean, if it's not the government emptying your pockets, there are homeless people, petrol stations and students with clipbpoards asking you to give to their bogus charity. But go to rubbish countries like Vietnam or Egypt and you will be amazed at the number of ways people will try to rob you. The honest ones just shake their dirty child at you and ask for sympathetic charity. The smart ones dress in suits before tricking you.

8. It costs more than we would care to admit. Sure, you bought that pair of Levis for a fiver, and since you were in Indonesia they were actually from the Levis factory. And your five star hotel in Thailand only cost 25 quid a night. But how much did you spend to get there? 500 pounds. And how much money did you lose by quitting your job to go travelling? Thousands. Travelling is a wonderful, exciting thing, but it's juvenile, misleading and pointless to brag about how cheap things are.

9. Things aren't like the tour brochures. Think the Pyramids are in the middle of a desert? Wrong. Well, on one side they are. But on the other side, they are about 100 metres from an enormous dirty council estate. The photos you see always show the endless desert behind them. You don't see the ugly, infringing, filthy sprawl of Cairo, which incidentally was built by the Arabs and didn't exist when the Pyramids were made.

10. Those places are filled with other tourists. The trouble with amazing places is everyone wants to go there. And in the 21st century even your grandmother has been to Angkor Wat. It's difficult to find somewhere incredible that doesn't contain even a handful of British and Dutch tourists. Of course, the world is a big place, and there are thousands of undiscovered gems. But if you think you will have the Taj Mahal sunset to yourself, think again.

11. You don't usually get below the surface of a place. Think that eating local food makes you a local? It doesn't. The thing about your white face is it means as soon as you get the runs from the rats which also feast on the awful street food, you can go to McDonalds or a fancy restaurant or home. You don't have to eat that crap forever, gradually poisoning yourself with lead, mercury, salmonella and rabies. You have the amazing opportunity not to be crippled with daily diarrhoea (which is as painful to spell as it is to pass).

12. You can't go back. From the people I have met, I can ascertain that those of us who spend an extended period of time travelling or living overseas have a difficult time getting back into normal life in the U.K. or wherever home is. Employers aren't interested in how many countries you have been to (unless you apply to work for MI5 in which case they are extremely interested). You might have learnt to surf but do you have any of the boring skills you will need to run down the clock at a desk in the Midlands? Plenty of people who have taught in Korea and then go home end up coming back to Korea.

13. You meet lots of British people. Honestly, is there anything more annoying than the British on holiday? Especially the ones who want to talk as loud as possible about all the other places they've been. I call those people "stamp collectors", on account of the fact that they simply tick off the "must see" places without thinking about why they are there in the first place. Last year I travelled to Beijing and of course visited the Great Wall of China. However, I had to go there twice as the first trip was ruined by a group of 21 year old Brits who spent the entire time comparing which cities they'd visited in Australia and which movies they'd watched on the plane. They didn't once mention where they were or the significance of that fact. I wanted to say to them "Until I was 18 the furthest I had been was Dorset. Now I'm here. And so are you. You're on the ****ing Great Wall of China. Now shut up."

Of course, that's not to say overseas travel is a big waste of time. Think of the pluses:

1. No reality TV. In the 21st centruy we may have no Hitler or Stalin but we have blanket reality TV, which in a way is much much worse. Honestly, why do so many people watch this crap? I know what it's like to see someone throwing up or crying, why would I spend my free time choosing to see a bankrupt celebrity doing this on TV? I wish celebrities would fade into obscurity gracefully, rather than humiliating themselves in the hope of making a few quid to pay for their all-consuming crack habit. Thankfully, if you are in a country with three TV channels, two of which are government propoganda, you are more likely to see El Presidente kissing a sickly child than a rerun of Strictly Celebrity Who Wants to be a Big Brother Gordon Cowell Factor on Ice Easter Get Me Out of Here Special.

2. You don't pay any tax. This is a good one. Since you don't actually make any money or even sleep in the UK, you don't have to pay for the soon to be disbanded armed forces or the soon to be disbanded police or the soon to be disbanded unemployed. In fact, you can read the news online thousands of miles from home, complain about Brown or the Coalition, and go to bed without having to divide your rubbish between your seventeen bins which you didn't ask for but now have to pay for. Thanks a lot, Brussels!

3. Occasionally, usually by accident, you have genuinely amazing, unforgettable experiences. Events conspire, in the form of time, weather, people and location, to give you memories which change your way of thinking and your perspective on everything. Watching tiny Indonesian men carrying back-breakingly heavy baskets of sulphur out of the steep sulphur gas-spewing crater of a volcano for a couple of dollars a day made me think doing data entry for 6 pounds an hour is a pretty good occupation.

4. Less chance of being killed by a suicide bomber. Think about it. Unless you are in the United States or in Israel, anywhere is safer than the UK. Who wants to blow up a train in South Korea? There aren't many trains, and more to the point, there's only one mosque. I am more concerned about the North Korean uranium enrichment program (which is in itself a non-starter since the North Koreans don't even have enough money to buy new tyres for their bicycles, let alone take on the might of the US army).

5. Great stories to tell. When you are old and your bladder is unreliable, you are going to need a way to make up for all the mess you make. The conversation will go something like this:

BLACK NURSE: Could you lift up your legs please Mr.Sumner?
ME: Ahh, a black lady! I've been to Africa.
BLACK NURSE: Actually I'm from Oxford.
ME: I remember I saw a hippo and a car crash where someone almost certainly died and a boy who had malaria.
BLACK NURSE: We're going to need to wash these pyjamas Mr.Sumner. You've made a right mess.
ME: I know why you Africans don't have any money. I saw it in Mozambique, you lot hate working, that's your trouble.
BLACK NURSE: Let's give you a bath Mr.Sumner, you can't stay like this all day.
ME: You don't have AIDS do you?

Those stories are valuable.

6. You don't have to put up with the British weather (unless you are from another country and you go to Britain). Really, I know people talk about how it is mild and comfortable and the Autumn is beautiful and all that, but ultimately that is the same mentality that makes people say things like "Wales is OK really" and "I don't mind having swine flu". The British weather is grey and depressing and unpredictable and worst of all it tricks you and gets your hopes up with a sunny morning before ruining your barbeque and raining on you and all your friends.

7. You get out of responsibilities at home. You don't have to help your cousins move house, you don't have to do the washing up (since you eat out of polystyrene most of the time), you don't have to visit your sister in hospital. Just send an e-card and wash your hands of guilt, you did your best.

8. You see yourself change quickly, your hair grows long, wrinkles form on your sun-bleached skin, you get cool scars from sharp edges just getting on a rusty bus. The new combat trousers you bought in the expensive camping shop back home get torn and replaced with colourful baggy pyjama bottoms which are suddenly your best clothes.

9. You can taunt your friends with Facebook status updates like "Dave is chilling with a beer in the pool after visiting the moon", and your friends can all write comments like "you deserve a holiday honey", or more likely, "bastard!".

10. Likewise, you can read about the lives of the people you know and laugh at them. Your friends will post Facebook statuses like "Steve's smallpox is getting worse by the day" or "Jennie's car broke down. AGAIN! :( ", and you can reply by saying "Ha ha, an Indian man drives ME to MY destination, and if we break down HE has to pay to get the car repaired! :)". What better way to feel better about yourself than to laugh at the pitiful lives of the people you love the most?

11. You meet the maddest, most interesting people. If you can steer clear of the stamp collectors and the British, you meet people who are fascinating and probably too crazy for normal society, people who have been on the road too long and probably taken a few too many drugs. Often they look like Osama bin Laden's hairier cousin but turn out to be wise, articulate, educated, experienced characters who just don't fit well into Western life. Equally of course, some of them turn out to be thieves who take your stuff in the night. Which just goes to show, really.

And Then the Karaoke Bus Got Stopped by the Police

I was getting ready for school one day, when I received a phone call from a colleague informing me that my school were going on a trip that day. Noone had bothered to tell me about this. I was disappointed we were going on a trip as I realised this basically meant I was going to spend the entire day on a bus singing karaoke, and so it proved. The bus left at 9:00am. At 9:05 am people started handing out cans of warm beer. Seriously. How horrible is that? A warm can of nasty Korean beer (put it back in the cat), on a bus, and you haven't even had breakfast yet. Luckily people also handed out dried squid, so at least I could be sick an even number of times.

The plan for the day was we were going to take a trip to a famous-for-seafood town on the coast, two hours away. We would eat our fill of still-moving nasties and then drive the longest route home possible, presumably via North Korea, in order to maximise the karaoke time.

Koreans love seafood. They love it. Anything which has had salt water on it is like crack to the kimchi-munchers. They will eat anything which they steal from the ocean, whether it is some kind of ugly shellfish resembling a human eye, or one of those fish with a light at the front. The more disgusting the food looks, the more Koreans believe it is "very healthful" and take delight in offering it to you. Once I was offered what I can only assume was a dolphin turd and basically informed I would never be impotent if I ate it.

So we went to the seafood town. First we walked around the seafood market, which consisted of lots of cold people in rubber overalls selling crabs and eels from buckets. I cannot overemphasise how cold and miserable Korea can be in the winter. I am from England and I have experienced the kind of weather which puts people into a coma, but Korea is so freezing and damp in the winter that you would be warmer in the sea than on the land. Strolling around the market, I enjoyed seeing the exclamations of my Korean co-teachers, which ranged from "Those octopi might look disgusting, but they would taste wonderful if you cut them up and ate them while they are still moving", to "I love the way we Koreans only eat disgusting food".

We went to a restaurant which specialised in crab. Some of the crabs on display cost US$150 each, which is a lot to pay for a watch, let alone a crab. But Koreans love eating the things which other nationalities put in the bin. Crabs taste quite nice, I have to admit I have grown to enjoy the flavour, but I am well aware that about 80% of a crab is either inedible or will give me the kind of diarrhea that makes my lungs drop down a little bit. When people eat meat, they use most of the animal at least. Look at a chicken. We keep it in a box exactly the same size as its body to make sure it doesn't get tired. Then we cut its head off and let it run round for a few minutes like a children's cartoon character. After that, we cut open its stomach to get the eggs out, cut the feet off and send them to China and South Africa (for the black people, not the white people), harvest the organs for medical research/KFC, and then eat the rest, apart from the bones which are ground into a fine white paste and sold to Colgate. But a crab? Most of it is just thrown back into the sea or fed to dogs, which are also eaten here. Crabs are an extravagent wasteful food which should be left on the beach to surprise you and give your dog something to chase.

So once we had filled our stomachs with parasites, it was time to start the 6 hour drive back to our school, 20 miles away. We piled onto the bus, drove around the block, and stopped outside the same restaurant. Half the teachers got off the bus and went back to the fish market to see if they could buy anything smelly to take home on the bus. Then we were off. It was drunken-karaoke-bus-danger time.

If you have never experienced karaoke on a bus, count yourself lucky. I have read reports of people waking up during major surgery (in poor countries like Italy) and it sounds nicer than the Korean equivalent of Chinese water torture.

The bus the school had hired was specialised for karaoke in the following ways:
1. The tv at the front was big and didn't appear to show anything without subtitles.
2. The length of the bus was lined with flashing lights.
3. There was a disco ball in the middle of the bus.
4. A microphone attached to a long wire could be carried all the way to the back of the bus so that you could annoy absolutely anyone with your horrible singing and bad face.
5. The driver was deaf, which is lucky as, thanks to the racket, he would certainly have crossed the central reservation of the motorway (if there was one).
6. (My favourite:) Eight of the seats had been taken out of the bus to make room for a dancefloor on the bus. I swear this is true. And in the middle of this incredibly bad idea was a small table on which were rested lots of glass beer bottles which were poised to fall on the floor, smash anywhere, roll under the brake pedal, etc. And to top it off, the table wasn't secured to the floor or anything like that. No, it was just taken off someone's patio or something and rested on the floor.

I made the ridiculously bad decision to sit next to the dancefloor. I actually wasn't in much of a mood for partying as the day before I had arrived home from a trip to Central America and the 32 hour journey back to Korea had left me sleepy. But there was no stopping the Koreans. No, they were in a mood for partying. In fact, they were in such a mood for partying that they had actually cancelled school that day in order to take the bus trip and get drunk. This was a scheduled school day, the first day of the new semester, but they had contacted all 450 students and told them not to come to school.

The karaoke started out relatively civilised, but within about a quarter of an hour the lights on the bus had been replaced with the flashing disco lights, and the volume on the speakers had been turned up so loud that I longed for the sweet relief of death. When you are on a karaoke bus there is no escape. You can't turn the noise down, you can't hide, you can't get off. It's like being on a plane. But I don't know which is worse to travel with, a shoe bomber or Korean karaoke.

I tried to sit quietly and leave my body, but it was impossible to ignore the scene unfolding before me. Karaoke was turning to chaos. People were drinking as much horrible Korean rice wine as possible, turning their standing ability into falling ability. The dancefloor table was wobbling like crazy, half-full beer bottles falling over and spilling onto the floor, and every time the bus stopped all the people dancing and singing fell on top of each other, the table, and the other passengers. Most of the beer that was being drunk ended up on my lap or inside my bag, I later learnt.

Despite the excitement going on on his noisy dark bus, the driver managed to avoid driving us into a ravine. But after a couple of hours of this, the bus pulled up in a layby. My co-teacher informed me that we had been stopped by the police because there were too many people standing up on the bus. So the karaoke was turned off, everyone sat down, and we were off again.

A couple of minutes later, the karaoke was turned back on and everyone stood up and started singing and dancing again. The whole karaoke bus ride home took most of the day, and during that time I was able to see many highlights. My personal favourites were the 55 year old vice-principal holding the hand of the 25 year old computing teacher (again), and the school janitor getting hidiously drunk and trying to hit my female co-teacher, before falling asleep on some seats and being too drunk to answer his phone when his wife called about dinner. He subsequently rolled off the seats and hurt his face.

When Korean people are drunk they are so stupid. They have such poor judgement about things. Whenever the teachers in my school get drunk they start touching my leg (which in itself is poor judgement) but also start saying they want to come to England. I hate when they do this thing of saying they are gonna come to England. Thanks to them learning absolutely no geography in their farming national curriculum, they don't realise that it takes like two days to make a round trip to England, and that's before you've done the tourist stuff like being mugged by teenagers in hooded sweatshirts and having your identity stolen. Seriously, Koreans have absolutely no idea about geography. One of my students recently asked me how much it costs to travel from Korea to England by ship. By ship! What? Is this 1912? How much does it cost? Well, two months of your life, for starters. When I tell them the airfare (a thousand pounds) they don't seem at all taken aback, despite the fact that they often scold me for wearing a pair of shoes that cost twenty pounds (too expensive). I don't think they realise the exchange rate. The ticket costs a thousand pounds, not a thousand Yen, or a thousand Won, or rice bowls, or whatever they spend here, I don't know.

So I have to be polite and tell them, yes, of course you can come to England, and yes you can stay at my parents' house for free, and yes, I do like you, no seriously, I do like you, and yes, I will give your kid free English lessons, and yes, I will water your garden for you. What is this? Do I look like an Indonesian? I came here to make money and have a good experience, not change your grandmother's dressings.

At about 7pm we finally arrived back in Geochang. But the fun hadn't finished then. No, there was another meal to go to, washed down (unsurprisingly) with more disgusting Korean alcohol. Korean alcohol really should be better. This isn't a third world country like Spain where you buy your beer in old plastic milk bottles and the crippled old lady selling them asks you to wash them and bring them back. This is the country that brought you Samsung and LG and makes most of the things you see in the electronics shop and wish you could afford. Koreans are not stupid, they can do things really well. But they still make booze which tastes like herpes medicine. And as for the food, well, some of it is nice, but some of it is made for YouTube. Dog soup? Octopus which is still alive? When I have dinner in Korea I keep expecting everyone to stop me just before I put the food in my mouth, and say "No no, we are just kidding, you don't have to eat that. Here's the real food."

A Letter to My Unborn Son

Hi son,

Well, you aren't born yet. In fact you haven't yet been conceived, so you are just a twinkle in my eye. But one day you will be growing up and looking for a lot of fatherly advice. Unfortunately at that point I will be struggling with my second mid-life crisis and will only be interested in beekeeping. Therefore I will tell you everything I know right now in a letter. Don't worry though, I don't intend to learn anything for the next 20 or so years, so you're not missing out.

So, here are 53 things for you to remember as you fill the time between now and the gentle relief of your own death. (I did tell you you're going to die one day, didn't I?):

1. Despite what the world will tell you, German is actually a very sexy language, (so long as you only speak to German people).
2. People sometimes check the things you put on your CV/resume, so it's best not to write the following: I can still bite my toenails; I am actually Elvis; I can name every person in India; I can count to infinity; I know who really shot JFK; I know how to build a space shuttle; I went to a real university; I could do this job standing on my head; I have a Siamese twin; my father was a time traveller from the future; I know the answer to all the world's problems.
3. Be careful of women. They may smell great and have lovely hair, but don't be deceived. They can pull your heart out with a few words and leave you wishing you had never been born. On the other hand, they will iron your shirts and wash the dishes, so best to get married as soon as possible and hope for the best.
4. If you have good friends, you will never wish for money.
5. If you have money, you will never wish for friends. Money never lies to you or wants to talk about its feelings, so I suggest pursuing money and maybe you can be friends with the bank manager or something.
6. Best never to lie. But if you do, for goodness sake don't get found out! If you get caught lying, you will have to come up with a more elaborate lie to cover your back. But be careful. If you say you were doing airship driving lessons you may have to prove it.
7. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Except for homeless people. So you might want to pursue a career in homelessness.
8. Whatever any of those hippies and lesbians tell you, capitalism is just the best thing in the whole world. Have you been to countries which they don't have capitalism? I've seen countries where people look at donkeys to pass the time. Donkeys! If they just had a shopping mall and a McDonalds they could ride the donkey instead of marrying it.
9. You don't need to respect other people's opinions.
10. It's ok to laugh at people who are different. It maintains the food chain. Do you think antelopes laugh at lions? Of course not. Lions laugh at antelopes, then kill them and eat them, and everyone goes home happy.
11. Don't waste any money on pens, paper etc. Make sure your first job is in an office, then fill your bag with supplies at the end of each day. You can fill your lounge with enough paperclips, staple removers etc. to last a lifetime.
12. Go to the toilet at work. You will save money on paper, soap etc., and you will get paid for it. Win!
13. You can save time in the mornings by only doing the essentials at home, then doing the following once you get to work: brushing your teeth, brushing your hair, shaving, sleeping (in Asia anyway), having breakfast, putting on your tie, putting on your socks, and putting on your undies (don't forget your trousers though). My current time saving technique is I don't tie my shoelaces until I get to work.
14. The only certain thing in life is death. People say taxes are certain too, but if you can go your whole life without lifting a finger you will never have to pay taxes, and you will have beaten the system.
15. Keep track of all the taxes you do pay, and make sure you get your money's worth. I have a little book I write in every time I use something which was paid for by my taxes. I like to balance the books, and if I am behind at the end of the year I do something to even things up, like stealing all the pens from the council office.
16. Putting coins in railway tracks is cool. They get flattened, and the trains hardly ever come off the tracks.
17. I know it's fun to steal stuff when you are at university, and there's nothing more amusing than putting "For Sale" signs in the wrong peoples' gardens, but be aware that the police can see that roadworks lamp you put in your front window.
18. Yes, fire is exciting, but don't get it in your eyes or bring it into the house.
19. Getting fired from your job isn't a good idea, but you should always push the boundaries and get away with as much stuff as possible. Bosses usually give you a couple of warnings, so you can do some really crazy stuff AND get caught before you are at risk of losing your job.
20. People with speech impediments NEVER find impersonations of them funny. They are so sensitive.
21. It's ok to pick on people who are weaker than you. It's stronger people you have to be nice to.
22. German people hate being called Nazis. They get really offended.
23. If you get an ugly friend you will always look more attractive. I used to hang out with Polish people just so I could get a girlfriend.
24. Women really care what you think. You have to be careful what you say. In order to stay out of trouble, be sure to use the following line whenever a woman asks you a question: "I have no idea, can't you just ask someone else?"
25. Guys on the other hand are ok. But they don't like holding hands. Not with other guys, anyway. Don't make the mistake I did.
26. If you aren't good at sports, don't worry. Just wear lots of sports T-shirts and say things like "I was semi-pro before my injury", then look ruefully into the distance. Everyone will think you are a winner.
27. If you want to be more attractive to the opposite sex, lie about everything to make yourself more interesting. You will probably have broken up before you get found out. And if you haven't, by the time she realises you aren't James Bond she will be too attached to you anyway and she probably won't have the heart to chuck you. Goal!
28. Dogs are much nicer than people.
29. Make friends with people who have lots of money. It doesn't matter whether you like them or not.
30. It's ok to give people money to make them like you.
31. If you break someone else's stuff, don't tell them it was cheap anyway. They won't see the funy side.
32. If you are ever best man at a wedding, don't do that predictable thing of pretending to have lost the rings. If you are going to be funny, at least lose the rings for real.
33. Always make sure you are the last one to buy a round of drinks, then have an imaginary phone call and go home early before you have to spend any money.
34. If you get something in your eye, washing up liquid doesn't wash it out very well.
35. If you meet any black people, don't bother complimenting them. They are naturally ungrateful. I always say things like "you're alright for a black guy" or "I don't mind that you're black" and they never thank me.
36. Likewise, don't ask Asian people if they wish they were white. They never see the funny side. Jealousy, I guess.
37. Don't listen to anyone who tells you that "the good old days" were better. In the old days everyone had smallpox and drank out of drains.
38. They also wore sacks instead of clothes and ate squirrels for breakfast.
39. And in the old days, peoples' idea of a good job was working in a windmill. A windmill, for goodness sake!
40. I am not a very good role model but I will always say what I think, regardless of whether I have done prior research or considered people's feelings. You should be very proud of me.
41. You might want a suntan, but if you are anything like me, spending more than 9 minutes in the sun will leave your skin red and your vision blurry. Best to get a black girlfriend. They won't expect you to compete with them.
42. White people are good swimmers, black people are good runners, Asian people can't swim but they enjoy raquet sports, Spanish people throw tomatoes at each other for exercise. You need to know all of this.
43. Western women act tough but if you upset them they will cry. Asian women on the other hand, act sweet but if you upset them they will kill you.
44. And they all know karate.
45. I'm actually not really sure about women, I should have mentioned this much earlier.
46. I don't understand electricity, or plugs, or any of that stuff. So don't waste your time asking me. I think it's all magic. As far as I understand, there's a dragon in the microwave and lots of tiny people in my TV.
47. It's ok to talk to strangers, but don't talk to any paedophiles.
48. Don't kill anyone.
49. If you have to kill someone, make it look like suicide. Forge a suicide note, but do it your computer. For goodness sake don't handwrite it! And remember to save it in "My Documents" as "murder fake suicide note", in case you need to use it again.
50. Only borrow money from people who are very old or dying.
51. Don't try to understand women. They aren't there to be understood. They are just there to be survived. Women are beautiful, kind, elegant creatures (well some of them are anyway), but they were made by God to confuse you and give you something to lie awake worrying about at night.
52. Don't waste your time listening to anyone else. Just listen to me. If I've got time to talk to you, anyway.
53. I think there's some kind of secret handshake you can do when you go to the bank which makes them give you more money, but I'm not sure if I just dreamt this. I guess you might as well try it.

Well, if none of this works just ask your mother. All the best, anyway!

Dad

Sit Down South Korea, We Need to Talk

Dear South Korea,

Look, we need to talk.

As you know, we've been together for a while now, more than 18 months, and I feel that it's time we sat down and talked about our relationship. We both need to be honest about what we want, and where we feel things are going.

I love you. You know this. I loved you when we first met. Even though you didn't seem very welcoming, even though you stunk of fish and smoked all the time, even though my first impression of you was that you were a little, how can I put it, ugly, I knew that we were meant to be together, and that we would grow to love each other. Actually, when we first met, you were pretty rude to me and tried to lie to me about some really important stuff, and even to this day you deny you ever lied. And when we were first together, you were so clingy! I was in a new country, couldn't you see I needed space and free time to adjust? Why did you make me come to your mother's house every day to eat fish soup? You know I hate fish!

I'm not breaking up with you. Really, I'm not. And there's not someone else. You're the only country in my life. Before I met you, I didn't think I could ever fall in love with an Asian country. I always thought we would be too different, that all the rice and seafood would drive me crazy. But I realise we're actually incredibly similar, more than most people would realise.

But there are things that really come between us, things that stop us moving our relationship onto another level.

Why don't you ever try to learn English? I spend all my time trying to learn your language, the least you could do is make an effort to learn mine! And I mean really learn it, none of this "go lunchee", "same same" rubbish you come out with.

Do you know about my family? Do you know my middle name? Do you even know where I am from?! Half the time you are saying I am from America, just because I am white. Have you any idea how hurtful that is? That's like me calling you China, just because you occupy a region in the Far East. I learnt all your provinces, population, history... you don't even know the differences between England and the United Kingdom. They're not the same thing! You're so insensitive sometimes. Remember when I visited your sister North Korea? Actually North Korea's pretty beautiful, not spoilt and fat like you... sometimes I feel like I am with the wrong Korea. I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. Just understand how much you hurt me sometimes.

You're never affectionate except for when you are drunk. And grabbing my thigh in a restaurant is not real affection. Why don't you ever hug me? And what's wrong with a kiss, even a kiss on the cheek? In 18 months here I haven't had even a single kiss, and the one time I hugged you it was like hugging a snowman. I realised I had probably overstepped the mark with that hug, and I was completely expecting you to tell me to go back to England the next day.

You never ask me about my country, except for stupid questions like "do you have apples in your country too?". You never ask me about my family, or if I miss my own country. You didn't make Christmas special for me. You gave me one measly day of holiday. One day! In my country we have two weeks. You could at least have got me a present.

I hate the way you drive mopeds on the pavement, and spit on the street, and drive on the wrong side of the road when you've been drinking. I hate the way you tell me your food is so healthy and wonderful but never try food I like to eat.

Leaving a fan on in a closed room when you go out will not keep the room cool for when you come back. It just moves the air around.

Sometimes I feel like you don't love me for who I am, but for where I come from. Are you just using me because I speak English? What if I was Korean? Would you still be like me? I really wonder sometimes.

You always tell me how lucky I am to be with you, but am I? You never make me feel special. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate everything you do for me. I like the apartment you rent for me, and I appreciate all the spending money. But you need to realise some stuff. I've had offers from Canada. Yes, really. And I know England would take me back in a flash. I know you thought England was out of my life, but sometimes the way you make me feel, it seems like even being back with England would be an improvement. You know, before we were together, I really looked around? I really played the field. I had a love affair with Thailand, I thought about Singapore, I even considered a Middle Eastern country, although I realised that was just for the money. Sometimes I think about Thailand, and Singapore, and I think to myself, "What if?". You know, I could have done really well for myself. I could have had any country I wanted. But I chose you, because I really believed you were interesting, and amazing, and mysterious, and that you would treat me right.

Please, stop crying. I'm not breaking up with you. But just hear what I'm saying. Yes, I love you too. It's ok, calm down. But I needed to say all this stuff. You deserve the truth.

Jon

P.S. And another thing! Air conditioning doesn't work if you leave the doors and windows open at the same time! Are you trying to air condition the whole universe?!

The Sadness of the Traveller

You know the deal. Every week or two, or whenever I bother, I come on here and write about the latest absurd experience I've had in Korea. We all laugh about the eccentricities of this sheltered Asian land and then go back to our lives, wondering what to have for dinner and whether the weather get any better tomorrow.

But today I talk to you with sadness in my voice, a cloud over my head. Why? Because once again I realise something about the life I have chosen. It can be a very sad, very lonely one.

What's brought this nonsense on? Well, a few days I made a new friend, a Korean who works and lives in the States but was visiting family in Geochang. We met for the first time when I was hiking with a coteacher, and then, lo and behold, we met again at the summer camp I taught at for the last couple of weeks. Both being mountain-obsessed loners, we went hiking together a number of times. We talked about life in three countries, we visited the most beautiful places on the mountains, and we encouraged each other to make the most of our lives in foreign lands. But then time ran out, and my friend was gone.

I was really cut up about this. And it brought something home to me. The life of a traveller, whether a backpacker who stays in one place for two days before moving on, or a teacher who lives as an "ex-pat" (immigrant) for years in the same town, is a life that contains adventure, excitement and mystery, but also a good deal of sadness and regret.

What am I on about? I love being in a land of confusion, challenges and surprises. I have a better life here than I ever had in England. So why be such a sadsack? Because of the goodbyes. I hate goodbyes. I cannot do them and every "real" goodbye to a person I like is the same as a kick in my heart, a paper cut in my soul. There is nothing worse than a botched goodbye, a goodbye where the words don't come out right, or a goodbye where you know, deep down, that it's really goodbye. In this "traveller" life, we meet people, get to know them, become close to them, and then they, or we, are gone, like clouds that drift into the foreverness of the horizon, never to be seen again. And what about saying goodbye to your family, and your friends, all those that you love in the land of your childhood? These are things we have to do if we choose this overseas life.

Today I helped a close friend in Geochang to research jobs overseas. He is so tired of the bad treatment he receives in Korea that he is compelled to leave. I help him with enthusiasm but inside my heart breaks at the thought of another friend going. Another person I spend a lot of time with talks about going to another place in Korea when his current contract expires. We say we will stay in touch, but I know what people are like, and crucially, I know what I am like. I am terrible at keeping in touch with people, and I will allow our friendship to fade like the evening.

The thing about travellers, you see, is that deep down, we are very selfish. You can't rely on us. We get to know you, get close to you, love you and allow you to love us, and then we're gone. And what's more, we do it to each other. We make friends in other countries, start relationships, become part of each other's lives, then desert each other. We run from our families, from stability and familiarity, we run from our problems. We will always mask our selfishness and unwillingness to deal with reality. We mask those things with tales of heroic excitement and discovery. At times I wonder at the madness of not living a life like mine, wonder at the sense of putting up with the same old problems, the same old people. Then at other times, like this week, I am engulfed in the fog of instability, of fleeting friends and aborted relationships.

What's my biggest fear? Heights. But what's my second? Snakes? No, snakes are beautiful and mysterious. Spiders? No, they fascinate me with their countless eyes. The thing I fear more than anything but stairs with gaps in them is the feeling of not being able to contact the people I care about, to lose touch or be distant from those I need to be close to. How about those botched goodbyes? What about when they are followed by days of not being in contact with each other, or worse, you never see each other or speak again? How can a final, lasting memory of a person be one of frustration, disappointment or sadness? Make the most of the people you care about. Tell your closest friends you love them. Because, whether literally or figuratively, you never know when you or they will be stepping onto a train on a busy platform, or being rushed through airport security, and your shouted words of love and regret will be lost in the noise of the world, unheard and too late.

What's Hot and What's Not

If you speak to any man on the street in Geochang, he will happily inform you (with his finger in his ear and his other hand on his bare belly) that Korea is a world leader in, well everything. As I am currently living (stuck) in such a hotbed of culture, I have my finger on the nub of what's cool and what's not. So it's my duty to advise you pitiful foreigners of what you will be following in a few years, when you catch up with Korea's ground-breaking trends.

WHAT'S HOT

1. All men smoking. Even if only at karaoke.
2. If it is hot outside, rolling your T-shirt up so your belly hangs out.
3. Men wearing make-up whenever they have their photo taken.
4. Women covering every square centimetre of skin when the sun is shining. Better to be as white as a ghost than have a sun tan.
5. Korean copies of Western style music (Western songs are actually copies of Korean songs, but the Korean artists hadn't got round to publishing the songs yet).
6. Making sure foreigners know how lucky they are to be in Korea.
7. Mind-numbingly enfuriating whimsical poorly thought out spontanaeity.
8. Accusing foreigners of bringing the following evils to Korea: bird flu, obesity, smoking, AIDS, gayness, pollution, bad weather, other foreigners.
9. Ridiculous perms that Kevin Keegan would envy.
10. Having a small face.
11. Loud public farting.
12. Microwaves and fridges with plastic diamonds on them.
13. Three or four prostitute mistresses per middle-aged married man.
14. Spending six or seven hours per evening at a piano school.
15. Playing tennis till your arms drop off.
16. Beating students with a stick.
17. Having four seasons (something Korea is famous for).
18. Mail order brides from poor countries.
19. Staying at work as long as possible (if you feel sleepy just drink some brown muddy water masquerading as coffee).
20. Sausage shaped plastic cheese (which is actually pronounced "chee-juh").
21. Suicide.
22. Drink-driving (see 23 and 24).
23. Car accidents.
24. Paralysis.
25. Watching overly sentimental music performances and crying.
26. "Education".
27. Showing foreigners the correct way to eat, stand, sit, brush their teeth....
28. Misinformation
29. Kimchi
30. Polyester golf wear for all occasions

WHAT'S NOT

1. Japan
2. Foreigners
3. Handwashing
4. Blowing your nose (better to snort the mucus out and spit it on the floor)
5. Seatbelts
6. Giving advance notice of anything
7. Making plans
8. Speaking English
9. Good skin
10. Grey hair on women (replace it with a short, jet black perm)
11. General knowledge about anything
12. Naming more than 4 countries (did you know New York, Africa and L.A. are actually countries?)
13. Spending time with family
14. Cell phones from pre-2009 (if your phone is not from this calendar year it must be thrown away)
15. Cars which weren't made in Korea (in Geochang 98% of cars are Korean made)
16. Telling the truth

THINGS I DIDN'T KNOW BEFORE I CAME TO KOREA BUT NOW I KNOW BECAUSE I AM TOLD THEM EVERYDAY BY EVERYONE, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER I ASK OR NOT:

1. Japanese people are short (have you seen Japanese people? Korean people obviously haven't. Japanese people are as tall as Westerners).
2. There are no dentists in Japan so Japanese people have bad teeth.
3. Korean is the best language and has the most words, like cheese- "chee-juh"; bus- "buh-serr" and cellphone/handphone- "hend-uh-pon" (These words are known as Konglish and sound like the speakers are a bit retarded.).
4. Japanese people can't speak any English, and are envious of the Koreans' innate ability to speak excellent English.
5. Bread makes you fat.
6. Koreans are the hardest working people in the world.
7. Pork is the most delicious and healthful meat and should be consumed twice daily. Note that the only word in the English language to describe tasty food is "delicious". And if food is good for you it should be called "healthful".
8. Chicken is very bad for you and can only be eaten fried in batter.
9. Korean food is the only food worth eating, as it's very delicious and healthful.
10. Western food is very bad for you, even bread, tomatoes and olive oil. However Korean tomatoes are very healthful as "there is no chemical".
11. Korean beer is the most delicious.
12. Japanese people don't know how to use chopsticks.
13. Bread actually contains lots of sugar and is called "cake" (or "cay-kuh").
14. Foreigners are envious of kimchi (Korea has the best kimchi).
15. Korean sushi has nothing to do with sushi (which is Korean anyway).
16. Only foreigners can catch diseases, which is why we have to have expensive health tests all the time.
17. Korea is the most beautiful country in the world.
18. Most countries have just two or three seasons.
19. There is no pollution in Korea, just beautiful mist.
20. Kimchi consumption prevents SARS, bird flu and swine flu.
21. Japanese chopsticks are too short, and Chinese chopsticks are too long, but Korean chopsticks are, like the proverbial young bear's bed and porridge, "just right".
22. Slimy seaweed soup is ideal for women who have just had a baby.
23. Dates (the fruit) are poisonous and take all the toxins out of soup, so don't eat them, dear God don't eat them!
24. Noone is as wise as their great wise ancestors, who knew best about everything despite their lack of scientific, technical or medical knowledge, poor nutrition, wars and short lifespans.
25. Western people can't eat spicy food or garlic.
26. Garlic is spicy.
27. Korean people hate pizza or burgers, they just eat them to be polite.
28. Korean fruit is the most delicious, despite the lack of anything which isn't an apple, orange or melon.
29. Soju (the Korean rice wine), is at 15% alcohol, much too strong for foreigners.
30. You can die if you close the doors and windows and leave a fan running.
31. Photocopiers don't work when it's raining.
32. Chinese people are ugly.
33. "Meeting" actually only refers to a romantic date.
34. "Booking" means paying girls to sit with you in a bar.
35. Words with a "ch" or "j" sound at the end should have "ee" added, therefore please practise the following pronunciations: lunchee, changee, watchee, Englishee.
36. A gymnasium should be referred to by its correct name, which is "hell-suh club-ber".
37. Eyelashes do not exist in nature. They are all stuck on. And eyebrows are usually painted on.
38. There is nothing, nothing more ugly than a mole or freckle. But it's ok, as you can have these things removed by lasers, leaving you with a red scar, but thankfully no mole.
39. Western people with curly hair have curly hair because they get perms.
40. Black people all live in Africa, except Obama.

Dog Meat for Lunch / How I Would Look If I Was a Chimp, or Worse, an Asian

It finally happened. It was inevitable. After 16 months of becoming institutionalised in the parallel universe of Geochang, I gave in. I ate dog.

My co-teachers had been berating me for a long time for my non-canine eating experience. Usually they mocked me for not enjoying the taste of pig's colon or sea cucumber, two things I would probably only eat if I was an Ethiopian being interviewed by Lenny Henry and I wanted sympathy (and money). I always said I wouldn't resort to eating dog meat, but like the spotty kid in class who doesn't want to join the other glue sniffers, eventually the peer group pressure caused me to cave in and I was reaching for the proverbial super glue. I know that dog is said to be man's best friend, but I always think man's best friend is another man.

So off I went to a local restaurant, a good one too, as the "Good Restaurant" sign on the wall informed me. We sat down and were served steaming hot bowls of soup. The soup was red and spicy, with lots of herbs and ginger. Floating in the middle were strips of brown meat. Yes, it was dog meat.

So how did it taste? Well, it was wonderful. I hate to admit it. I want to tell you it was disgusting, or chewy, or gave me scabies or something. But I can't. Because it tasted like the sweetest, tenderest beef I have had in years. I have eaten the flesh of many interesting animals (such as crocodile, elephant and mouse) but I imagine only human could taste better than this. Wow. I know lots of you (such as my family) will berate me and not talk to me ever again, and my wife has already told me to sleep outside, but it was worth it. I'm not saying Koreans have the right idea about everything, in fact they are positively backward in most respects. But as for the tradition of eating some dog each year, I will have to treat it like I treat the fact that my clothes were made by hungry pregnant women and tiny children in a hot, crowded room- I reap the rewards, put my fingers in my ears and hope the sheer badness of the real situation doesn't creep into view.

A while ago I was doing my usual thing of wasting my precious existence on the internet, and I discovered a wonderful tool cooled the "Face Transformer". Designed by academics at St.Andrews who clearly have too much time on their hands and funding which had to be spent by the end of the semester, the Face Transformer is a free to use online tool which manipulates an uploaded photo of your face into a number of different faces, giving you an idea of what you would look like if your father was from Syria and not Sheffield, or if you were much younger or older, or actually a painting.

I will demonstrate. Here is a picture of me from late last year:



















Now, here is what I would like if I was still a young lad trying to meet school girls.



















And now, as a dirty old man trying to meet school girls.



















Change of theme now, what about if I had no money and malaria, and I was from Africa?



















And maybe let's imagine if I had a bomb strapped to my chest?



















And what about if all that Kimchi finally got into my DNA and I became a Korean?




















Good one this. What I would look like as a woman (with facial hair).



















I may be more Uranus than Venus, but imagine if I was painted by Boticelli.




















Or by an artist I hadn't heard of (sorry), El Greco:




















This one is cool. What if I was a big-eyed Japanese Manga character?




















Here's my favourite one. Me as an ape in clothes. I will save you the trouble of making the hilarious joke that you can't tell the difference between this and my original photo.



















I can tell you are anxious to waste hours of your own time seeing what you would look like if you stayed out in the sun too long or lived inside a cartoon, so here is the link:
http://morph.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk//Transformer/

I won't be updating my blog for a couple of weeks as tomorrow I'm off to China with Elly for a much-desired rest. To temper the pleasure of going on holiday, the education office expect us to have a health check when we return before we are allowed near the precious unloved Korean kids again. Never mind that people here don't wash their hands. Never mind that (rumour has it) little old Geochang has two cases of swine flu. The fact is, every other country in the world is much more disease-ridden than Korea, and if we go to one of them then we are sure to catch bird flu from eating non-Korean KFC and probably contract AIDS from a prostitute. The Korean government is doing the right thing charging us US$100 for a compulsory health check every time we go abroad. They're not ripping us off. And they certainly aren't discriminating against foreigners. They have their finger on the pulse, that's for sure!

Three Amazing Things

Today I would like to share with you three things. The first is funny, the second alarming, and the third alarmingly funny (or funnily alarming).

1. In an amusingly over-the-top attempt to reduce the number of students who go and smoke in the toilets during lessons (mostly during my English lessons), my school has employed a middle-aged man whose job it is to sit on a chair outside the toilets and watch, supervise and generally sniff everyone who goes in and out. All day long he sits there, waiting for someone to take a piss. Imagine if that was your job! That guy must have really made some bad decisions in life. It says a lot about the wages in Korea that it's cheaper to pay a guy to work full time than it is to buy a smoke detector.

2. This week I was almost killed in that most Korean of accidents- a car crash. I went to lunch with some of the other teachers, and this descended into the usual drinking and karaoke (yes, it was lunchtime). Koreans don't really mind drink-driving, in fact they seem to rather enjoy it, as the regular paralyses and fatalities of friends of friends in Geochang will testify. As we drove through the countryside from the special goat meat restaurant (seriously) to the town, the four passengers all fell asleep. We were warm and full of homemade ginseng wine. Suddenly we awoke to the feeling of massive sudden braking and the sound of screeching tyres. The driver had fallen asleep too! Indignant that we were sleeping while she had to drive, she had decided to get back at us us by killing us all. We didn't hit anything, but my life flashed before my eyes. It was mostly Facebook, trips to McDonalds, and reruns of Simpsons episodes.

3. I read today the alarming and hilarious news that a single species of ant has basically conquered most of the world. Originally from South America, the Argentine ant has been spread by stupid humans to pretty much everywhere except Antarctica. This ant species is unusual in that individuals don't kill members of other colonies, meaning groups can mix and spread into each others' territory without naturally controlling each other through fighting. Ultimately this has resulted in colonies that go on forever. In Europe there is one colony of ants that spreads for 3,700 miles along the Mediterranean Coast. Someone must have left a lot of jam sandwiches lying around. Ants are amazing. You just can't kill them all. There are something like a million ants for every human being, and their success seems tied in with our own (much like rats, cockroaches, and French people). My apartment in Korea has approximately 700,000 ants in the kitchen area. In the past I used to spend long periods trying to kill them all. In February Elly and I left Korea for a month, and I assumed they would starve to death during that time. When we arrived back in Korea there were no ants. But within five minutes of me opening a Kit Kat I had smuggled through the customs Taliban, they started to come out. I realised that there is no use in me trying to starve the ants in my apartment, because they are spread throughout the fabric of the building. They go between apartments. They don't stick to one address. They don't have a key or anything like that. They just go where they want. In fact, the colony of ants which is in my apartment is probably linked to the same ants in the rest of Geochang, the rest of Korea, in fact if you think about it it's quite possible that they are in the same big colony as the ants throughout Asia and Europe. Just think, the ants which went in your Sangria when you were in Spain might be from the the same group of pikeys that went in my precious marmite.

And like cockroaches, and rats, there is no way to rid the world of ants. They laugh in the face of pest control. Sure, you can pour boiling water on them and kill 100, or 1,000, or 1,000,000. But can you kill them all? Of course not. In fact Wikipedia (that oracle of all knowledge) informs me that "spraying with pesticides stimulates the ant queens to increase egg laying", thereby increasing the number of ants in your biscuit tin. It's like Heracles cutting the heads off the hydra. Have you ever counted to infinity? Because that's how many ants there are in the world, if not more. The conservation status of ants is listed as "secure". Which is hilarious actually, because there isn't a word that means "likely to be here long after humans have killed each other in a big stupid war about oil and pride". We think of things like lions as being the king of the jungle (even though they don't live in jungles, that's Tarzan) but lions could easily be made extinct by the greed and stupidity of man. But ants? They are more likely to kill us than the other way round, crawling into our beds when we are sleeping, and eating us alive like a million malnourished Chinese people. Sometimes when ants really want to scare the sh*t out of you, they grow wings and fly around for a bit. The whole exercise is pointless and reminiscent of the Japanese (those other great exponents of suicide), as all that happens is lots of sparrows come along and eat them from the sky. But this kamikaze activity reminds us that ants are scary, crazy bastards that will die just to spoil your picnic. In fact, much like intelligent women, ants are wonderful, terrifying things.

Hiking with Skeletor

Last weekend should have been a relaxing period of doing nothing, especially after working 12 days straight (the previous weekend was spent working in another city). But, being Korea, and being me, Saturday and Sunday involved getting up early and hiking up mountains for hours and hours. I should really know better. Unfortunately I am hooked on this hiking lark. It's just awesome.

On Saturday I went to Mang Shil Bong, located about a mile from my apartment. This is the mountain I usually climb on Saturdays. However, I will normally climb it alone or with another Westerner. This is always a joyful experience, involving plenty of rest stops, a gentle pace, and generally no sense of urgency. This Saturday just gone, I made the hilariously misguided mistake of inviting Mr.Kang, my 60 year old Korean co-teacher, to join me for the walk.

Mr.Kang may have been born just a few years after the end of World War 2, and only weigh about 55Kg, but that doesn't matter. He is a beast. He is a sinewy, lean, remorseless hiking machine who doesn't need food or water to stay alive. He suffers from insomnia but that doesn't matter- since he is not human he doesn't need to sleep. He has a kind heart and a gentle nature, but he would kill you with his bare hands if he had to. Elly pointed out that his gaunt figure makes him look like Skeletor from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

Mr.Kang climbs a mountain after school, every day of the week. At the weekend he goes to various parts of the country with his mountain hiking club. A mountain hiking club! Every summer he takes part in a 10Km race on a mountain. His finishing time last year? 47 minutes. 47 minutes! A 20 year old running on flat ground would be quite happy with that time. But a 59 year old running on the slopes of a mountain? That's an unbelievably good time. He's a machine. I asked him what his Korean name means, and he told me: "iron stone". And his students used to call him "Robot".

So all things considered I should have realised that a 3 hour mountain hike with Mr.Kang might have an adverse effect on my well-being. So it transpired. The first 30 minutes of the chosen mountain are on a steep slope, where I tend to rest every 10 minutes or so (since walking up this slope is like running pretty fast). During these rest stops I like to have a drink of water, do a few stretches and generally do anything to keep my heart beating and my muscles working. But not Mr.Kang. No, he walked up the entire thing without stopping, without a drink, without stretching, nothing. When we reached the top of this section, a place where I like to have some more water, catch my breath and admire the view, he didn't even slow down. He just continued to power onwards, occassionally looking behind to see if my lungs had collapsed. After about 50 minutes of relentless effort, he took pity on me and suggested we stop for a drink. I fell to the ground and poured water in the general vicinity of my mouth.

The rest of the ascent was in much the same vein. Once we reached the top, we admired the view, and did that most rewarding of all things- drank cold beer on the top of a mountain.

I don't know your life experiences, and I know that there are many exciting things I haven't experienced yet, such as parenting and genocide. But I can safely say that few things I have known in this world can match the feeling of climbing to the top of a mountain, nearly having a heart attack, then drinking cold, cold beer and looking at the world below. There can be few things that make you feel more manly, apart from maybe urinating off a cliff. It's awesome, envigorating, unbelievable. Wow. I love it. So I am hooked on hiking. I shouldn't be. It's bad for my knees, it gives me a headache, it takes up all my time, it makes me smell like my bowels are on the outside. But I love it, I love it, I love it.

Thankfully, being in South Korea, and especially being in Geochang, there aren't many things to distract me from my hiking. There are mountains everywhere, and Koreans love walking up them, so there is usually someone who will go with you. Not that this matters. I quite enjoy going up them on my own. Especially when something awesome happens. Recently I walked up the mountain by my apartment in a thunderstorm. What an evening that was! It was incredible. The noise of the thunder was deafening. I was sure at any moment a tree in front of me would be struck by lightning and explode. Probably only slightly quicker than my pants exploded. What a rush, what a thrill. Thunder and lightning on a mountain, almost destroying your head. Fear and excitement. Fantastic.

Another evening I was hiking and heard crashing in the undergrowth. I wondered what it could be. To my amazement, a pig suddenly ran across my path. A bloody pig! Living in the woods! How cool is that? I've heard they are there but had never seen one on the mountain before that. I tried to find it in the woods but the trees and plants were too thick. I had a bright idea that maybe I would catch the pig and eat it. But after about 3/1000ths of a second it occurred to me that (a) I didn't have any weapons and so would have to strangle it; (b) pigs have no neck, making strangling inconvenient and time-consuming; (c) I would be too timid to kill an animal bigger than a small wasp. Also, I had images of myself walking into his den and realising I had been lured into an ambush, shortly before being eaten alive by his piggy older sister. Oink oink.

Travelling down the mountain with Mr.Kang was also a killer, in its own way. I am a very clumsy, inefficient exerciser. I use a lot of energy just to do anything simple. So going down steep, dusty mountain paths with no grip is a pretty slow process for me. Not for Mr.Kang. He ran down the path as if his feet were stuck to the ground. There was absolutely no fear in his movement, unlike my amusing "giraffe on rollerskates" impression as I slid and stumbled, trying to negotiate the twisty track.

Upon arrival back home, I had hoped to take a shower, have some lunch, maybe write this blog, and generally act like a normal Homo sapiens. Unfortunately, my stinking, dirty, dusty, sweaty body had had enough and collapsed face first onto the bed sheets which Elly had spent that Saturday morning cleaning and changing. I slept in that position, oxygen-free, for about 90 minutes. I woke up with a splitting headache and was politely informed by my wife that I smelt like a dead skunk in the desert.

As if nearly giving myself a brain aneurism on Saturday wasn't enough, I decided to go hiking again on Sunday. This time it was with a group of six other teachers, none of whom seemed particularly athletic. The problem with agreeing to do anything with Korean people is you have no idea what preparation to do. "Taking a trip to a mountain" could mean a photo stop on the way to lunch. Or it could mean an all day trek up a mile-high mountain. And so it proved on this occassion. When I was picked up by the other teachers, they commented and laughed at the fact that I had brought a litre of water with me. "What a loser!"; "Talk about overkill!" they chuckled. "Fancy bringing water on a hike in the heat of summer!" Koreans just don't drink anything you see, so they found it hilarious that I was bringing water. Of course, the water came in handy during the four and a half hours we were walking in sunshine in the middle of the day, and after calling me a retard, the other teachers then commented on how wise I was. Unbelievable!



The mountain we climbed was stunning. The rocks were beautiful and we could see for about 75 miles. The height was about 1300m. A wonderful breeze swept across the roof of the mountain, and green wooded mountains and farming villages could be seen in every direction. It was breathtaking. I always say Korea isn't half as beautiful as most of the other Asian countries I have visited, but this was pretty special. At the top we had lunch- kimbap (rice and vegetables in a roll of dried seaweed) and kimchi. In the past I hated that fermented cabbagey crap, but these days I've grown to love it. I think I've become a little bit institutionalised, like people in prison. I kind of expect the outside world to be like Korea now. The thought of leaving is weird and frightening.


On the way down the mountain we stopped at a stream, took off our shoes and socks, and generally splashed about as much as possible without resorting to frolicking. The water was icy cold and made my feet go numb, but it was so refreshing. Oh, I can't describe how good it felt to put cold, cold fresh water on my face, arms and legs after four hours of walking on the mountain in the heat. It was blissful. I realised I really don't want much in this world. Give me a mountain and some cheap home made rice wine, and I won't ask for much more. What a great life. And the strange thing is I could have enjoyed these same pleasures 1,000 years ago. Amazing. Of course, I would be hanged and burned for looking different, and I would struggle to find food that didn't give me dysentry, but you get the idea.



Speaking of cheap rice wine, that's just what we drank from china bowls when we got to the bottom of the mountain. It was cold and refreshing and made my whole body feel like I was flying. Awesome. I guess semi-exhaustion made me particularly susceptible to the effects of alcohol, but if you have ever had a cold beer at the end of a really physically hard day you will know the feeling I mean. Wonderful. With the rice wine we had the usual Korean fare- lots of spicy vegetables that make your face shrivel up. But we also shared some kind of fried potato pancake which I ate most of, being a potato-greedy white man. And then came the next drink- homemade cherry blossom wine! I didn't even really consider that you could make wine from cherry blossoms, but it seems you can. One of the great things about this country is the amount of food and drink which is home made. The cherry blossom wine was brought to us in a big glass and then poured into smaller glasses for us. It didn't come from a bottle, not from a supermarket. This stuff was from cherry blossoms which were grown within a mile or two. Now, I'm not one of those people who think that local produce necessarily tastes better than imported stuff. In the UK we have a lousy climate and can't grow pineapples bigger than a cherry tomato. So I won't act like I'd rather have a British pineapple than one from Swaziland. But if you go to places where stuff is actually produced, like eat tropical fruit in Thailand, you REALLY notice how much better it is than tropical fruit which has been imported. I don't know. I just think it's cool drinking alcohol made from plants that you can see.



A lot of people rave on and on about being by the sea, about swimming in the ocean, feeling the sand beneath your feet and accidentally throwing a frisbee at someone bigger than you. I love beaches and the sea and all that stuff, but I have to say given the choice I would always choose a life surrounded by mountains. There are no tsunamis for starters, and what's more you don't run the risk of finding a turd in a plastic bag that's been buried in the sand for six months. Mountains have an almost mystical quality to them; a feeling of being outside the real world and all its restrictions on time and space. A walk in the mountains cleanses your mind and takes away your troubles, unravelling them like a tangled ball of wool. Sometimes when I walk in the mountains the path just goes on and on and on, almost forever. And at times it all looks the same. But somehow it doesn't get boring. And when I get above the trees and see the world like a patchwork quilt, tower blocks the size of fingernails, cold wind cooling my sunburned, filthy skin, the feelings of space, freedom and contentment are indescribable. So I won't even try.

What's Going On? / How to Avoid Swine Flu

What the heck is going on? Why haven't I written for four weeks? Well, these days I don't have much free time, due to my school insisting on me working 177 hours a week. Also, various factors such as my hilariously exciting new body-building regime are using up the 19 seconds a day that I'm not at school.

The body-building is going well. Or I think it is. I'm not sure that I'm actually getting any stronger but I'm certainly body-building, insofar as I'm putting on weight. Part of the training plan involves greedily eating as much as I can manage, at the same time as watching re-runs of Live Aid (so I appreciate the food more). Last week I gained 2 kilos (or 4.5 pounds). That's a lot. It's as much as 2 kilos of something heavy, or 4.5 pounds of monkey skeletons. I'm hopeful that this weight is in the form of muscle, since the exercises I'm doing basically involve leaving my body and going to a happier place whilst my physical being narrowly avoids cardiac arrest. Time will tell. Maybe I will just develop jowels like Susan Boyle. Speaking of Susan Boyle, a few weeks ago I read that she had been voted in as the new Queen of England and was being described as an "angel" and a "fairy tale", I gather mainly because she is from Scotland so is poor but can still sing, and has never had a boyfriend. But I was amused and bemused to see that despite all this, you lot voted for someone else in that talent final! Amazing. British people are as fickle as the British weather.

Why am I doing this weight-lifting stuff? Well, believe it or not, it's not vanity. It's actually because I am a ridiculous thrill seeker who hates allowing things to be straightforward or simple. If my heart is beating at 180 beats per minute after running up a mountain then I feel alive. If I am at home comfortably enjoying a tasty meal then my mind wanders. For most people marrying the girl of their dreams would be enough. I wish it was for me. But I always want to do something more ridiculous and challenging, hence making Elly leave her home, family, friends and job, and live out of a backpack in sleazy Asian hotels for 4 months, followed by an indefinite stay in South Korea where the idea of a romantic evening is sending a text message to your wife before you go to the karaoke room, drink two gallons of rice wine and throw up on an elderly prostitute. Through weightlifting I have discovered the physical thrill of making my muscles ache so much that they might just snap, and I love it. It's such a rush. Like setting myself on fire but not having to put cream on afterwards. Yesterday evening I almost managed a chin up- a proper one! Cripes. There was a time when I had to take the lid off a biro before I used it because the weight made my back ache.

My time is also eaten by my avid learning of the Korean language. It helps me understand the answers my students give in class (which are never in English). I now have a much better understanding of how much English my students know (none). This is helpful as it makes me realise they are a blank slate and I can teach them a variety of hilariously outdated expressions with extremely obscure usages, such as "chocs away". I can also teach them to tell the time using nothing but nautical expressions from the time of Nelson. And they will only discover in the future how fortunate they are that I used an old advert for Lilt as the listening test. If they can't speak English in a thick Jamaican accent and discuss the relative merits of the Lilt Man then they shouldn't speak English at all.

So how about North Korea? Plenty of friends and family have written me encouraging messages such as "come home now" and "you're an idiot". I know people are worried there will be a nuclear attack and I will end up having a tail that glows in the dark (like a firefly), but there's really not much threat. It's all hot air. The government in North Korea has to flex its muscles every couple of months, just to make everyone wet their pants and think there will be a war. But the truth is that the North just doesn't have the resources to mount a full scale war. A country where everyone has to ride a bicycle and eat the flesh of their departed relatives will struggle to defeat the might of the extended US and South Korean armies. They just have to remind us that they're big and scary. As I said on this blog last year, the real issues in North Korea aren't what you see in the news every couple of weeks. No, the real issues are the twisted propoganda-filled education; the freezing cold "hospitals" with no supplies; the millions of starving children; the executions; the forced abortions and rapes in prison camps.... These are the things that should be in the news, but they never are. Stupid BBC. Stupid CNN. They all suck.

So how about swine flu? Have you caught it yet? My school has helpfully given me the Korean anti-swine flu leaflet. For your consideration I attach herewith the text of said advisory document:

How to Avoid Swine Flu:
Swine flu is a disease invented by foreigners which threatens Korean sovereignty and might make us have to drive cars which aren't made by Hyundai or Kia. Thankfully Johnny foreigner doesn't know our secret weapon: fermented cabbage. So long as you are eating your body weight in this rancid kimchi crap every couple of hours you will be immune to swine flu.
Symptoms: If you catch swine flu you will likely start dribbling and talking like a jibbering wreck, making assertions that your country is better than Korea. In fact what will have happened is that the evils of swine flu have turned you into a Japanese person, which is of course a nightmare worse than having to pronounce English words properly.
How is swine flu spread? By Japanese people. Don't worry, you can't catch it by eating pork. We really dodged a bullet on this one, since being Korean we ONLY eat pork (and sea cucumbers).
How to avoid this disease:
1. Don't kiss any pigs.If this is unavoidable, then at least don't use tongues.
2. Don't talk to, buy, eat, look at or think about anything Japanese, except to desecrate it.
3. Even though you are Korean and you hate washing your hands when after defecating, please at least wash your hands with cold water (no soap) after you defecate.
4. When you spit green mucus onto the ground every couple of minutes, please ensure you do it in the path of a foreigner. Of course, this advice is superfluous, since you do this already.
5. Put lots of Korean flags everywhere. This will ensure everything is extra-awesome through its sheer Koreanness, and the disease will cower and die like a starving tortoise.
6. Leave doors open regardless of whether it is freezing outside and you have the heating on, or it is baking and you are using air-con. Just make sure the door is open so the swine flu can escape.
7. Be sure to never clean anything. At most give a broom to some students and expect them to make the place sanitary. If everything is filthy your immunity will be better, and even the AIDS won't get you.
8. Don't travel to another country (again, totally superfluous advice). It costs a million dollars to leave Korea, and when you get to your destination you will miss the safe roads and excellent variety of cold, fermented foods you enjoy so much.

My Personal Trainer

You know how they say pets end up looking like their owners? Resembling the people who provide for them? Well, I live in South Korea.

Living in Korea, I have come to resemble my owners (employers, masters, call them what you will). Yes, I am now a bit like a Korean. I don't mean I have bad skin or am good at maths and computer games. What I mean is, my body has become like that of an Asian- a little bit weedy as it's fuelled by rice and seaweed. So sometime last year I decided to start doing something about it. I needed to make my upper body stronger. I started off gently, like carrying the shopping instead of getting Elly to do it, and carrying my keys in my jacket instead of my trouser pocket.

But after a while I was up to doing 50 push ups (press ups) a day, plus lots of hard dumbbell exercises that made my face screw up and obscenties leave my mouth like rats from a fire. After a few months, looking at my arms no longer reminded me of a 7 year old girl, but a 12 year old girl who likes swimming. So I was feeling pretty buff, showing off my new physique, you know, going to work in a vest, offering to carry milk for people, stuff like that.

But then I met Mark. Mark is a 37 year old bodybuilding former monk from Australia who eats live sheep for breakfast. It's funny because he is one of the gentlest, kindest men I have ever met, but at the same time I am aware that he used to wrestle and could kill me with a single thought.

At about 5 foot 5 inches but weighing I guess 70Kg, from a distance you would think that Mark is another good-looking midget who enjoys milkshakes but wishes his Mum hadn't been a smoker when she was pregnant. When we first talked I wasn't really aware that he was into any kind of physical training. Mark loves heavy metal music and wears T-shirts advertising bands with names like "I'm Gonna Eat Your Head" and "Shut Up Everyone", so I guessed he was much the same as most people who like metal music- very intelligent but too fond of takeaway food and computer games to ever get into shape.

But then he asked me if I wanted to go to the gym with him. I wondered if he would be a good training partner, but then he said something scary- "At the gym I go to, the dumbbells are pathetic- they are only 25Kg each." 25Kg each?! Pathetic?! I can't even think about lifting a 25Kg dumbbell without getting a hernia. That's the weight of my rucksack when I am sneaking concrete into the cabin of a plane, and when I carry that ON MY BACK I feel like I am going to collapse. So the thought of lifting that much with each arm makes me cringe. Meeting a man who laughs in the face of such physical exertion is a little unnerving but kind of exciting. A bit like meeting a pirate. Mark is actually an incredibly wise, educated and knowledgable guy, due to his 7 or 8 years as a Catholic monk, plus various experiences doing nursing, teaching, homeopathy, martial arts, actual art, in fact pretty much anything chicks go for. So when he offered to show me how to train I agreed.

He came to my house and greeted me by saying "Are you ready for a one-way ticket to Bufftown?!". Brilliant! He then asked to see how I was currently training. Unimpressed at my humourous training schedule (lifting weights in the lift when it is going down, to fight against gravity more) he insisted that he show me some new exercises. The first one was one-armed push-ups. One-armed! What?! How crazy is that? I was aware that such things exist, but I always thought one-armed push ups were just for circuses and drunken bets, a bit like sword swallowing or putting your head in a lion's mouth. I didn't realise people did them as actual regular training. Mark showed me how to do them. It was unbelievable. I suddenly realised just how strong that guy is. His muscles suddenly appeared from nowhere, and he looked like the lovechild of King Kong and one of those female East German shotputters from the 1970s, before everyone realised they were men. He effortlessly did about 20 one armed push ups, without warming up first and without stopping to swear or complain about how hurty the whole endeavour was.

Then it was my turn. I went to the toilet a couple of times first, since I was so nervous about attempting such a ridiculous exercise. Then I knelt down, put one arm on the floor, tried to put all my weight on it- and fell on my face. It was awful. The floor in my apartment is wooden, so there wasn't really anything to stop me getting an amusing facial graze which looks like I took some big dogs for a walk. I bashfully admitted that maybe I wasn't quite ready for doing one-armed push ups.

He showed me how to do chin ups. Not the ones where you turn your fingernails towards you and use your biceps. And not the ones where you jump off the ground and pretend that you used your strength to lift yourself. But the ones where your fingernails face away from you and your arms are spread wider than your shoulders. They are horrible. I didn't manage one. Not one. I just made childbirth noises, got a red face, and generally made a fuss. To top it off, we used a chin up bar that is in a playground next to my apartment and school, so I'm certain that all my neighbours and students enjoyed the show and will ask me about my hemorrhoids on Monday.

Mark told me he was planning on teaching me some leg exercises. I informed him that my legs are already pretty butch since I play a lot of football and run up mountains, and that I have to be careful with my old man knees. So I politely assured him that I didn't need to do any leg exercises. Mark looked at me with a smile, then said "That's crap. The only reason people don't do leg workouts is that the legs have bigger muscles and so are more difficult, and the reason your knees hurt is that you don't have strong enough tendons yet." I apologised for being born a girl, then allowed him to show me how to do squats, lunges, and many other things which made my legs so sore that it was impossible to walk up stairs or sit on a toilet without calling for help.

Other exercises followed, all of them painful and humiliating. But the thing is, I know that they were good exercises, since even now, two days later, my arms are so tired that my toothbrush feels so heavy I think it's made of lead.

The fact of the matter is, Mark is much stronger and tougher than me. It's kind of upsetting to admit it, especially since he is from one of the colonies, but Mark is a seriously manly guy. He is from Queensland and used to do things like kill snakes before they killed him, and go on camping trips with no supplies ("We just drank from the river and ate what we found"). I don't even go to the shops without a packed lunch and a whistle. Mark is such a good (and sadistic) guy that he is planning to come to my apartment four days this week, just to show me again how to do the exercises and make sure that the whole escapade is a hellish one. I will either embrace him with gratitude at his generous, giving personality, or I will borrow a pitchfork from one of the farmers, close all the windows and start a fire in the corridor outside my front door.