Jon Sumner Versus South Korea

My English Learners' Website

2011-12-15T06:02:00.000+09:00

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?

2010-11-25T12:02:00.011+09:00

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

2010-11-23T14:58:00.012+09:00

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

2010-05-31T15:07:00.002+09:00

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

2009-09-21T01:38:00.003+09:00

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

2009-09-14T00:01:00.001+09:00

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

2009-08-25T09:40:00.009+09:00

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

2009-08-07T10:17:00.007+09:00

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

2009-07-18T03:19:00.020+09:00

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

2009-07-03T12:48:00.010+09:00

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

2009-06-18T08:57:00.001+09:00

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

2009-06-02T04:06:00.000+09:00

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

2009-05-10T19:48:00.004+09:00

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.

Stupid Readers' Comments; How to Cure Indigestion with a Pin

2009-05-03T15:17:00.002+09:00

Sometimes my more intelligent readers post comments on my posts. I would like to share one with you today:
"Anonymous" wrote to me and said:
"They really should do a better job of screening people to be english teachers in teacher's in Korea. Hopefully they will find more people who go there not just for the paycheck but someone who understand that it's a different culture with a relatively recent democracy."

Thanks for your comments "Anonymous". Since you offer such mystery regarding yourself, I can only infer your details based on what you have written. I assume from your excellent use of English ("They really should do a better job of screening people to be english teachers in teacher's in Korea"- pardon?) that you are either Korean, or that you are in fact a spider monkey who has escaped from the zoo and got hold of a computer. In either case I implore you to continue your English studies (your writing isn't quite there yet).

I should inform you that "they" are very strict when it comes to recruiting English teachers. At least when recruiting foreigners. Korean English teachers don't actually need to have any kind of English qualification, or indeed any kind of teaching qualification. This is true. They just need to like baseball, since this shows they are pretty up to speed with American stuff. As for recruiting foreign English teachers, well, where shall I start? There are the interviews conducted by incompetent recruiters which have to be completed before we can enter Korea.Then there are the lengthy police checks to prove we aren't rapists, child molesters, or Japanese. We have to submit photos to show we are white enough, good-looking enough, and non-disabled enough. Once we get here, we are subjected to various medical checks, all of which we have to pay for. Some of the more fun tests we undergo include AIDS tests, and in the case of many Western women, chest inspections by male Korean doctors. Why is this necessary for an English teacher? It isn't of course, but it gives a cheap thrill to an old Korean doctor who hates the sight of his wife.

"Hopefully they will find more people who go there not just for the paycheck...". Hmm. Two years ago, when I left my job in the UK, I was earning the equivalent of US$40,000 per year. My salary in Korea is about US$27,000. Now, I may not be a maths teacher, but even I can see that I didn't come to Korea for the paycheck. Maybe this kind of money would be a payrise for you, since I can only surmise from your ignorance that you sell flowers next to a Burger King; but it was a big paycut for me.

Actually the reason I came to Korea was to experience an extremely different culture. So you wisely reminding me that I need to "understand that it's a different culture" was somewhat superfluous. Every day I can see that it's a different culture, and if you put down that banana and read the rest of my blog you will realise that (a) the entire thing points out how different Korean culture is to Western culture, and (b) I love Korea and spend all my time learning about the culture and improving my grasp of its language.

Finally, I'm not sure why you told me that Korea has a "relatively recent democracy'". I can only assume that you must be one of those people who rants on about how wonderful "democracy" is, at the same time as watching your country invade weaker countries in order to force "democracy" on them too. What does democracy have to do with anything? I don't even understand why you mentioned it. I'm talking about a country where female babies are aborted because they aren't boys; kids commit suicide because their parents are disappointed that they didn't finish first in the class; married men never see their families because they are either sleeping at the office or spending their family's money on prostitutes; and everyone gets plastic surgery to ensure they look identical to each other. This is a crazy country by anyone's standards. A friend of mine brought this home to me recently. He visited the Philippines and was surprised to find that the locals there refer to "Krazy Koreans", based on the South Korean tourists they receive.

I should also point out that a comment on one of my recent posts said "Im a korean, living in England, so I totally empathise with most of your views".... So even some Koreans realise that while Korea may be a wonderful place, it is also a ridiculous, hilarious place!

As you may have noticed, I haven‘t written for a while. This is for various reasons, most of them based around laziness and my childlike ability to be distracted by almost anything. But also I have discovered something of what it is to be a Korean person: that is, always at work, usually tired and ill.

Koreans don’t mean to be tired or ill. But the trouble is they are ALWAYS at work, even when they are dying, so they don’t really make time to get better. This is helpful for me though, as it gives me something to write about.

One strange irony about Koreans not taking time off work for sickness is that they will go to the hospital for virtually anything, just to receive some kind of syrup to drink, or be told to eat more kimchi, or have acupuncture, or whatever. Any kind of illness, be it a cough, a cold (for which those of us who don’t eat decomposing cabbage, there is no medicine which cures a cold), an amusing rash, even some unsightly (or sightly) moles. The hospital is the place to be. However, the hospital trips are done in much the same way as everything else in Korea- that is, quickly and inefficiently.

Recently the whole world is getting very excited about the latest farmyard disease- swine flu. Apparently a handful of people around the world have been kissing pigs or something and caught a nasty cold. Ok, so a few people have died. But as usual, isn’t everyone just getting a bit carried away? I can’t speak for your country (unless you are Korean), but I can say for certain that people here are just a little bit stupid. Today several people have told me to be sure to wash my hands “six times a day”. As if in normal circumstances this wouldn’t happen. Hmm. Well let’s firstly point out that I am not Korean, therefore I actually do wash my hands after going to the toilet. This is because I bite my nails and I don’t want to taste my lunch from two days ago, post-digestion. Even though Koreans don’t wash their hands after toilet trips, they don’t notice since Korean food actually tastes like faeces.

In Korea there are currently 13 suspected cases of swine flu. But none of these are confirmed yet. One of them turned out to be a bad cold. But everyone is panicking again, just like they did about the American beef (which didn’t have BSE anyway). This is so stupid. If Koreans want to reduce their chances of spinning off this mortal coil, they should just wear a seat belt. Hilariously most Koreans will probably meet their maker because of pigs, but not because of swine flu; rather because they eat a hell of a lot of pork, which, even your non-Muslim friends will tell you, is a really bad thing to eat.

Every day and I encounter amazing examples of Korean superstition and general ignorance about health and the human body. Elly is fortunate enough to sit next to the "first aid" officer at her school. On one occasion a child came to the first aider, complaining of indigestion. What cure was offered? An indigestion tablet? No, that would be far too simple (and effective). Instead, the teacher tied a piece of string tightly around the student's finger. She then fished an old needle out of a drawer, and pricked the student's finger with it. Maybe this was to let the ghosts out or something. I don't know. To finish off the medical procedure, the teacher bashed the student on the sides several times. Let me point out two things: The child had indigestion, so pricking her finger with a pin and hitting her was about as effective as drilling a hole in your head because you have an ingrown toenail. Secondly, the pin used was the same pin that was used for every student. I know Koreans eat a lot of kimchi and they believe it stops all diseases, but pricking various people with the same pin offers all sorts of exciting opportunities for our friends- tetanus, AIDS, and the whole alphabet of hepatitises.

Last year I was having dinner at the family home of a fellow teacher. Three generations of the family were present, including the elderly grandmother and a 2 year old child. Some fireworks were heard in the distance, which upset the child. She probably thought the North Koreans were coming. After a few minutes she was ok again, and went to sleep. After an hour or two, the grandmother woke the peacefully sleeping child and made her drink a tablespoon of sesame oil. This of course took the child from a state of peaceful dreaming and made her cry at the shock of having to drink sesame oil. So of course the child was upset again, stressed and crying. I asked my friend why they did this. "It's because the child had a shock" was his response. So rather than allow the child to sleep and naturally recover from trauma, they woke her up and made her drink something which tastes strong to adults but probably tastes like scabies to a child. They didn't really have any logical explanation for this, other than "It's what our ancestors always did". Well, I am from the United Kingdom, where centuries ago, my ancestors used to drown or set fire to young women, in case they were witches. Should I be doing this too? I just don't know anymore.

A wonderful irony about Koreans giving me advice on how to avoid swine flu, not die coughing up my other lung, and generally live longer, is that they live so dangerously. South Korea is a rich, developed country, but it is still the Wild East where you can be killed in any one of a smorgasbord of amusing and hurty ways. Take seatbelts for instance. Everybody knows seatbelts save lives. In an emergency stop or crash they make the difference between getting a bit of a jolt and becoming a scrambled egg 50 metres from your car. Seatbelts are cool, and everyone should wear them. But in Korea they are still seen as something you wear because you are told to, rather than because you really should. In Korea it’s against the law for people in the front of a vehicle not to wear one, but in the back you don’t have to. So when I am a passenger in the back of someone else’s car, they usually tell me to stop buckling my seatbelt, or even to unbuckle it, as “you don’t have to wear it”. What? That’s retarded, I’m sorry. Firstly because I don’t want to be in an accident and become Stephen Hawking’s dumb friend. And secondly because Koreans cannot, cannot drive safely. They drive like they are a chimpanzee in a go-kart. They cut blind corners by driving on the wrong side of the road. They jump red lights. They drive on the pavement. They are just plain dangerous. So I always wear a seatbelt here. Saying “you shouldn’t wear your seatbelt because you don’t have to” is like saying “you should lick power lines because you’re allowed to”.

"Expensive Fish Cake Leads to Violence", or "In the News Today"

2009-04-03T01:02:00.005+09:00

Lately I have been following the news in South Korea. Not the trivial stuff, like North Korea's preperations to launch a test missile, but the big stuff. Let me elaborate on some of the headlines:

Expensive Fish Cake Leads to Violence: This is just plain awesome. A man ordered a fish cake on a stick and expected to pay 500 Korean Won (about 25 of your English pence). On receiving his snack he was charged 1000 Won (50 pence). So he hit a policeman. You can't tell me East Asians have a short fuse.
Source: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/04/117_40480.html

Women Have Smaller Faces than Men: I'm sorry, this just is not news! Of course women have smaller faces than men! They also have smaller hands, smaller feet, smaller brains and smaller ball-throwing ability. It's just nature. This is not even science, and I am a man who spent six months timing how long seaweed flies take to mate with each other, all in the name of science and entomological pornography. However, it might be worth considering that in Korea it is considered a compliment to tell someone they have a small face. Really.
Source: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/04/117_42331.html

Lift Accidents Jump 58% Over the Last Year: It seems Koreans haven't got used to how to use lifts yet, which is why their misuse is on the rise. Over the last 5 years 66 Koreans have died in lifts ("elevators" for those of you who drive on the right). How do you die in a lift? I don't understand how what is basically just a box with some buttons could be dangerous, unless you climbed out of the top and tried to scale the cable with your bare hands. As "jimbo1a" sagely points out on the messageboard, "One way to avoid elevator accidents is to actually wait for those people who wish to exit the elevator to do so before rushing on like your life depends on it." To feel this way I can only guess that "jimbo1a" has spent too long in Korea. Maybe six or seven days.
Source: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/04/117_40560.html

60% of Korean Adults Not Afraid of Death: This is fortunate, as the Korean way of life is pretty dangerous. Whether it's being run over by a moped on the pavement, developing bowel cancer from eating pork 5 times a day, choking on smog from Korea's beautifully overcrowded cities, being murdered by a North Korean agent, committing suicide from the stress of being at a Korean school (students that is), falling off a mountain, or just dying in a lift, in Korea opportunities abound to spin off this mortal coil.
Source: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/04/117_40562.html

Woman Takes Own Life After Online Game Quarrel: Of course this is a tragedy. I know. But at the same time, I mean, really! The story goes that she was playing some kind of online game in a dark room and a fellow geek swore at her. Her boyfriend didn't go and cyber-punch the rude online dude, so she killed herself. Korea is a wild place. Very normal behaviour.
Source: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/04/117_40438.html

Cash is Most Wanted Gift on Valentine's Day: Those romantic, sentimental Koreans! After cash, the most sought-after gifts were a day out or a wallet. A wallet?! I don't understand it either! Amusingly, men were also quoted as saying they wanted girls to kiss them, cook for them, but most of all be obedient to them. Brilliant!
Source: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/04/117_39310.html

64% of Koreans Back the Death Penalty: South Korea (very much unlike North Korea) does not carry out the death penalty, and has not done so since, well, 1997. But there are 58 people on death row in South Korea. And by the sounds of things, two thirds of Koreans would like to take those guys off death row, if you see what I mean. 64% seems a very high percentage, and does not suggest a merciful, forward thinking society. It conjures images of a group of farmers with pitchforks and fiery torches chasing black people through rice fields. Which, in a country that refers to black people as "negroes", is basically a national pastime.
Source: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/04/117_40014.html

Elderly Man Arrested for Talking to Scottish People: This one is completely understandable, but I will elaborate nonetheless. A 71 year old Korean was drunk in a restaurant, and approached two Scots (who were probably trying to order a kimchi haggis). The restaurant owner asked the man to leave the foreigners alone, and was punched for his trouble.
Source: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/04/117_39161.html

I'd like to say that all of this crazy news comes as a surprise, but of course it doesn't. Korea is like a computer game, or a movie, or an episode of the Magic Roundabout, all at the same time. This place is bizarre and wonderful. If Korea were an animal, it would be the duck-billed platypus.

Turning Korean / An Apology / Korean Drinking

2009-03-30T14:33:00.009+09:00

The more time I spend in this country, the more I act like and am treated like a Korean. During my recent holiday back to England, I found myself doing really Korean things, like saying "thank you" and "excuse me" in Korean (those are obvious ones), and also stupid things like putting one hand under my forearm when someone gives me something. It's a difficult habit to break. Every day at work I study Korean, and these days I often find myself understanding what Korean people are saying to each other. It's interesting as I now notice people lowering their voices when they are talking about me (I know they are talking about me as they say "Jon" and words like "England" and "lazy freeloading work-shy foreigner"). I am also now expected to take my place in the great Confucian line of importance, which basically means the older and more stupid you are, the better the treatment you receive. Therefore I now have 60 year-old teachers asking me if they can have the food off my plate at lunchtime, or coming and asking for teabags. It's not that they are poor or homeless, it's just that I am younger. Therefore what's mine is theirs. I don't mind this system generally, as it does mean I can take food off the plates of my students. The trouble will come when I move back to a Western country and start treating people like servants just because they are younger than me.

Another interesting way I've started acting like the people around me is that I find myself constantly busy. I have never really been someone who likes to be busy; I quite like free time and I am a champion daydreamer. But since I arrived back in Korea a month ago I have done an average of an hour of hiking every day, two hours of studying every day, gone to work all day, had various social gatherings, and (crucially) been to karaoke three times. I find I don't really stop doing stuff. I know there are those amongst you who will say "I have nine children and a donkey, and I would love to put my feet up in South Korea". Well it's your own fault, you have too many kids and why did you buy a donkey? Actually in no way am I bemoaning the lifestyle I have here; I love it. But it's amusing that the Korean way of living has finally rubbed off on me after so much time trying to avoid it.

It seems I recently put a cat amongst the pigeons (or eagles, I don't know what birds are pests in the States but eagles must be as I gather most of them have been killed). This was through my (accurate) revelation that baseball is a sorry excuse for a sport. I know this because I received the following well-written comment from an American English teacher I know who lives in Korea:

"while I appreciate your humor, lay off of the baseball dude, you don't see me mocking cricket or polo or whatever. And if you want to keep your teeth, you might want to keep these feelings from (name deleted as people will probably get all emotional and hassle me for pointing out the truth)"

Thanks for your comments. However I must point out a few things: Firstly, sentences usually begin with a capital letter, and end with a full stop. Secondly, I wouldn't mind if you mocked cricket or polo. Cricket is not a sport either, as I pointed out in my previous post. And polo? Do you know anything about England outside of the depictions in bad Hollywood movies? Polo is a sport for people who own lots of horses and land. Basically the only people who play polo are Prince Charles and a load of guys who spend their weekends fox-hunting. And thirdly, I have to note that you are threatening me with violence because my viewpoints differ from your own.... how very American of you!!!!!

Another helpful comment comes from my dear friend Remco, a computer programmer from Holland who wears clogs to work and lives in a windmill. He offers these ponderings:

"There's probably more to baseball than you think. Cricket is boring yes but that's only because I don't understand all the rules and tactics, I once got explained the rules, England drew because some Indian team did something sneaky and I enjoyed it."

I beg to differ! That's like saying if you understood how cross-stitch works you would find it interesting. Yes, an Indian team did something sneaky at the expense of the English. It was a team led by Gandhi and resulted in us losing the jewel in our crown! And yes, there is more to baseball than I think: I believe that a game takes 9 hours whereas actually a game takes about 6 days and results in grey hairs caused by boredom. Being from the Netherlands you probably know a lot about sport since you cycle everywhere. However, you only cycle as your country is flat as a pancake. Once global warming really gets into fifth gear your country will first flood and then become one big ice rink, into which the Germans will merrily skate and park their Panzer tanks. They will then take away all the liberties which make Amsterdam so popular with young British tourists, close the Anne Frank museum, and as a final insult, they will eat all your precious Edam.

I hope I haven't offended anyone. I just write what comes into my head. Therefore I wish to extend an olive branch and offer the following apology:

"Dear Jon,

I apologise profusely for making you watch baseball, the most boring "sport" in the world. I am sorry for all the time you wasted watching a load of drug-taking "athletes" standing around posing and generally not doing anything. I am sorry I wasted so much of your time, and I'm sorry such a pointless waste of life still exists in a world which already has so many problems.

Sincerely,

Jon"

I really mean this apology. I hope it will suffice.

Last week I had another spontaneous afternoon of volleyball, raw fish consumption and rice wine drinking. Actually unlike last year's equivalent, this time I was actually looking forward to it. I had been given a whole 45 minutes' advance notice this time, so I was well-prepared to play volleyball with men in suits. After the game, an exhausting escapade during which I realised that white people can only play voleyball if they are from Brazil, I joined the other teachers in the school canteen where we were served bits of fish that had only died a few hours ago and hadn't gone anywhere near a cooker. In true Korean "we know what's best for you Jon" style, the school insisted on buying me a takeaway portion of chicken with a can of Pepsi, just in case I didn't like the fish or rice wine (which I don't). Bless their hearts, the Koreans always try to help me, even if it means ignoring my instructions and requests. I told my co-teacher before the meal that I didn't want to be different, since I am already the only foreigner in a school of 500 Koreans. But no, it was mandatory for me to have fried chicken and stick out like a fussy sore thumb. I decided to eat the raw fish anyway, since I already like sushi and thus have a bowel riddled with fish worms. And sure enough, the Korean version was actually pretty nice. I don't understand myself. I hate seafood generally, but I especially hate fish. So why do I enjoy raw fish? I'm not being rhetorical. I genuinely don't understand. In any case, the meal was good fun but was made even better by the brilliant display of Korean alcoholism.

I love it when Koreans drink alcohol. They always do things the same way. They start off by asking you if you would like beer or soju (Korean rice wine that is actually made from sweet potatoes). I always ask for beer, to which they knowingly smile and congratulate themselves on being harder drinkers than this soft white man. Actually, soju isn't a strong drink. It's about 17% alcohol, which basically makes it a bit stronger than wine. But they only drink it from a shot glass, so they don't have much. They then start doing this hilarious mixing of drinks, first putting soju in their beer, then quickly going red as they've drunk more than three units of alcohol and Asian people can't really drink. It's horrible mixing spirits with beer. Students do it as they want to get drunk quickly and then try and catch herpes, genital warts and co. from their coursemates. But grown men should not under any circumstances mix spirits with beer. On this particular occasion, one of the staff was given a present: a bottle of 21 year old Scotch (as in proper Scotch, not some vile Korean whiskey). I guess in the UK this would cost about £25. But in Korea it probably cost about double that. I was asked if we have Scottish whiskey in the United Kingdom. I tried to point out that Scotland is part of the United Kingdom. And the label on the bottle was in the English language, and said "made in the U.K.". But the drunk Koreans didn't really understand. In true Korean "I will share everything with you, even my kidneys and you can have my daughter too" style, the member of staff in question insisted on sharing his whiskey with everybody present, rather than taking it home and drinking it over the course of a year or two. But he didn't realise that you should probably have it without any kind of mixer. Cheap whiskey should probably be mixed with coke or something, so that you don't taste the paint stripper. But quality Scotch? Enjoy it! Unfortunately, these well-read, cosmopolitan Koreans decided that mixing it with the equally fantastic Korean lager "Hite" was the way to do things. So I was presented with a drink that would either make me sick or make me blind. I tried to drink it but it was like being given a hysterectomy.

I really love the whole experience of being around Koreans who are drinking. It's not like in England where a well-educated fellow in a Chelsea shirt will break a chair on your head. No, it's actually like being around incredibly friendly people who can't drink much and know they have to work 167 hours a week, so are really glad for the opportunity to have 9 minutes of leisure time.

Koreans quickly get wasted and then start doing the drunk Korean compliments game. This entails telling you you are very handsome, to which you have to reply in kind. They then tell you they are very happy to meet you, to which you say you are also pleased. They then tell you you are a good teacher, to which you have to say "no, I am a crap teacher, you are the master of teachers, please show me how to be a good teacher". They then smile at you, and with a twinkle in their eye (which means they agree with you) they tell you they don't agree with you. Usually the whole farce moves onto a karaoke room, at which point serious Japanese-hating people who were born during the bloody mess of the Korean War turn into crazed teenagers, hugging you and cheering you as you pelt out a lousy rendition of Yellow Submarine. But this time there was no karaoke trip; the teachers just dispersed around the school. It was only 6pm, so plenty of students were still in the building. Two 2nd grade students came to me and said "Jon, my teacher drank a lot of alcohol". I agreed and told them it was ok, as he was about to drive home.

Let's not hear it for baseball

2009-03-17T10:41:00.004+09:00

At the moment an amusing tournament is taking place- it is called The World Baseball Classic. It is supposedly the World Cup of baseball, even though it is only in its second installment. If you are in the UK you probably don't know about this event, and the reason for that is simple: baseball is rubbish.

I've never really got to know the game. I was born on the side of the Atlantic that fought in the whole of the Wolrd Wars so was too busy helping rebuild London to spend time following what is basically rounders, a sport for schoolgirls where you have to throw underarm and promise not to run too fast.

I know that more than half of the people who read my blog are in the States, so I apologise. Actually I don't. Baseball is so dull. It takes about 9 hours to play a game. Now, I know the reason that people follow it. It's because you can drink beer for an entire day and pretend to be active by following a load of fat guys who have steroids for breakfast and are much too sterile to ever reproduce. I can appreciate that. But don't pretend it's an interesting sport. I know it's a big part of American heritage and traditions are important. But don't most kids secretly find the game immensely boring? We have plenty of traditions in England, like school assembly and black pudding, but noone really likes them. People just maintain these traditions so they don't feel guilty that they never visited their grandparents in the nursing home.

In England we have cricket. This is a game for people with two surnames who had to stay in boarding school and whip their friends with bathtowels. Noone can pretend cricket is exciting. Maybe it's good for people in the West Indies who are too hot and lazy to play anything with a higher tempo, but in the UK we have cool enough weather to do something energetic like football (or "soccer" as it's called in North America and Korea). Cricket is rubbish. It takes about a week to finish a game, and even when it's hapening you don't ever know who's winning as you take it in turns to try and score runs. It's like giving one football team the ball for 3000 kicks and seeing how many goals they score, then telling the other team they can kick it 3000 teams and try to score more goals. And I gather you can do things like wait till it gets dark and call the game a stalemate. What? Why were you even playing when it was dark? Go home and do something more exciting, like counting the cabbages in a field.

So now I find myself with the misfortune of sitting underneath the TV in the teachers' room, surrounded by about 30 excited teachers who pretend to understand what's going on but clearly don't. I know this because on several occassions they have seen a replay of a point or homing run or whatever it's called, and actually cheered as if it had just happened for the first time. All the Korean players look the same to me but even I can see when a replay is being shown (mainly as it's much slower and says "replay" at the bottom).

Baseball seems to have been created so that there is as much advertising time as possible. In between a 72 hour commercial break, the action unfolds thusly: a fat man will look moodily at another fat man, and then throw a hard ball at him at 267 miles an hour. If the batty "the batsman" is nimble enough, he can avoid being hit in the teeth and even hit it with his racquet. Should he make satisfying contact, the ball will fly into the sky and be caught either by a man in a hat who has been standing still for two hours, or a fan in the crowd who is so drunk by now that he is lucky if he doesn't fall out of the stand and suffer a spinal injury. What usually happens though is the batty fails to make contact, often because he didn't even swing his racquet. What?! Imagine turning up to play baseball, and when it's your turn you don't even swing at the ball! It's ridiculous. Imagine a footballer taking a penalty and saying "no, I'm not going to kick it. I'm in a mood with you." What a joke. And the players are so lazy that they get about seven turns to try and hit the ball. This is actually just to maximise beer sales and advertising time.

When the ball does get hit, the fat man who did the deed will jog lethargically to the next bit of the square, all the time wheezing because he spends most of his time at barbecues and injecting himself with bull testosterone. Actually, the Korean players are a bit different. They are all nimble and quick, like Mr.Miyagi from the Karate Kid. But they are so small that when the ball hits them they have a big bruise and have to stop playing. Also every 6 or 7 minutes there's another North Korea scare and half of them have to go home to continue their military service.

Before you get your XXXXL bloomers in a twist, I'm not having a go at America. In fact I'm not even sure if the Americans are taking part in this tournament. Probably too busy watching another boring sport. It seems to just be America's colonies- Japan, Korea, and so on. No, I have a great fondness for the United States. I love the Dukes of Hazzard. I have eaten so much McDonalds that my colon is basically a cow. My computer came pre-installed with Windows. I know more about America than my own country. But baseball? Come on, it's rubbish. Admit it.

If one of the players manages to get all the way around the square then he scores a run. Usually he looks disappointed, as this means he has to carry on playing this awful game for another hour or two. While he's waiting for his turn he can stand there chewing gum and looking tough. He is probably wishing he had studied harder at school. He might get paid about $15,000,000 a game, but what is he selling? I'll tell you. His soul.

Baseball is supposedly the biggest sport in Korea, but I don't believe it. I have never seen people playing baseball in Korea. Ok, well I have seen a few drunk businessmen going to the batting cages in town. If you are from the rainy side of the Atlantic, you may not have come across a batting cage. A batting cage is basically a missile launcher designed by dentists who want to generate business. A baseball is fired from a cannon at varying speeds (from faast to very fast) at sporadic times, sometimes at one minute intervals and sometimes two at the same time. Apparently it sometimes fires as soon as you put the coin in the machine, leading to an amusing anal bruise which has to be explained to colleagues and loved ones. Your only defence against this D-Day-esque barrage is a baseball racquet, which can be held properly or upside down. Usually batting cage patrons slice the ball in such a way that it just goes behind them. The speedometer reads something like 140Km/h, but I spoke to some American guys here and they informed me that the ball is actually travelling more like 30Km/h. In fact it's so slow that sometimes it doesn't even reach the batty/batman. This is typical Korean behaviour- lying to themselves. It's the same as teachers filling in the kids' exam papers so they all get 100%, or making the questions so easy that it's impossible to fail. "In Korea everybody scores 100% all the time- we're so clever!!!"

Actually I think the most popular sport here (amongst young people at least) is basketball. They pretend to like football, but I know they're just paying me lip service. They don't really know about football, as they call it "soccer" (because Koreans try to copy America in everything) and they don't even know which country Manchester United are from (and every Korean is a Man U fan). Koreans like basketball as they believe they are black people. They call each other "black" whenever they get a sun tan, which they desperately try to avoid doing. This is because in the eyes of a Korean, having a sun tan is like having an ear where your nose should be. They now think they are black and can dance, so they want to play basketball all the time. Also they have heard rumours about there being some hoes in the 'hood, which is an attractive prospect in a country with more young men than young women.

Anyway I have to go now. Venezuela are playing Puerto Rico in the baseball, and this promises to be a belter. When the game finishes I will write again. So expect to hear from me in about three days.

Glad to be Back

2009-03-13T10:41:00.003+09:00

Hello you!

We are back in Korea now. Prior to this we spent four weeks back in England. While we were there we did the usual British stuff:
- spent money we don't have,
- went to the bank and asked for some more money,
- had a go at minorities and the poor,
- complained about the government,
- said sweeping things like "well those Poles are all the same",
- followed the lives of talentless celebrities as if they were our own family,
- got upset when the most talentless of all the celebrities found out her money and fame can't save her,
- realised you can't go shopping in England after about 6pm, ever, I think (unlike Asia where the staff basically have to do a lock-in),
- got angry at the fact that no shop staff say "thank you" anymore (especially the coloured ones),
- based our prejudices on the front cover of the Daily Mail,
- got angry at the incompetence of every call centre on Earth (or, India),
- tried in vain to find an NHS dentist (no wonder poor people have bad teeth. I thought it was from eating Chomp bars or sweeping chimneys),
- spent £15 on some soggy fish and chips in a grotty pub (fish and chips should cost about £3),
- moaned about the weather, (especially when there was beautiful snow which we normally pray for, but this time referred to as "The WORST snow in 20 years!")
- watched a lot of soap operas,
- and accumulated fatty tissue.

So in a lot of ways I was glad to be getting on the plane home. That was until I got to Heathrow Airport. At the check-in area there is no sensible way of alerting passengers that a desk has become free. Instead, the women working there simply shout a lot and wave their arms, as if signalling some distant lifeboat. One thing the people who run airports in the U.K. haven't realised is that most people from other countries don't speak much English, and they especially don't understand the shrill screechings of people who are too lazy to stand up. How about implementing some kind of system where passengers are called to counters by a sign which flashes a number? It bothers me that the world's busiest airport is less sophisticated than the Sainsburys cheese counter.

Since we are audacious enough to travel to other countries whilst carrying a rucksack (we must be the first or something like that), Elly and I ALWAYS have to go to "outsized luggage" when we check in at British airports. This never happens in other countries. British airports must have small doors or something. Maybe they were built in Tudor times. In any case, it doesn't make sense because people take far bigger things than backpacks on planes. I have seen people checking in all kinds of crazy stuff, like pianos and things like that.

So we were sent off to the dark, un-signposted corridor inside another corridor that constitutes the "Outsized Luggage Department". In there we found a jolly Indian man who even called me "sir" and said "good evening". Usually I'm told "good evening sir" as my cue to leave a place in disgrace. He took our bags but then asked us to wait a minute while he spoke to his supervisor. I realised the reason for this later. In a hilarious attempt to stem the relentless number of brave yound Middle Eastern fellows looking for a quick path to oblivion and 72 friendly virgins, bearded men are now treated like Guantanamo Bay inmates. Therefore his supervisor had to poke his head over the top of The Sun and check whether my skin was dark or I had sand in my hair. He waved me away, seeing that I was more likely to be an albino than a Muslim, and I was on my way to security.

Security was equally fun. As I was about to pass through that big door frame that beeps at you, I was told to take my shoes off by a security official. This was mildly irritating as the man in front of me had the same trainers (I swear they were identical) but he didn't have to take his off. Again, it was my beard. And then once I passed through the beeper without beeping, I was told to hold on as the diligent security folks decided they had to completely empty my highly packed bag all over the floor to "have a look at something which looks like a tube". They do this thing where they say "can you open the bag for me please". Why do they do that? Why can't they open the bag? Do they expect me to have planned some elaborate practical joke where I deliberately get stopped by security, only for them to open my bag to a greasy midget who jumps out and shouts "surprise!"?

The "tube" they were looking for was a rolled up book. But they didn't bother looking at that again. No, they took a big selection of things that couldn't possibly be a bomb, like bars of chocolate, my passport, and a photograph of my cat. They then x-rayed them again, as slowly as possible, then, finally satisfied that I hadn't stashed a samurai sword in my passport (I guess it could be an origami one), brought them back to me with a look of "and don't do it again!".

Heathrow Terminal 1 is mostly used for domestic flights, but a few random destinations around the world are also served, such as Seoul. Hence, the terminal was filled with Koreans who had just finished their three day tour of Europe and North America and were heading back to the Samsung office. Sensing their last chance to buy stuff they don't need, they were scattered all over the duty free shopping area. I decided to follow two of them into a bookshop. After a while of chatting to each other in Korean and mulling over which books to buy, one of them went to the counter and in a hilarious Korea-meets-Northern-England accent, asked if they could pay the total cost on two seperate cards. The till boy said it wouldn't be possible as the machine didn't have a button for it (this is typical of Britain, how I love such flexible systems) but he suggested that one of them pay and then be owed the money by the other friend. This was of course exactly what the Koreans should have thought of themselves, but as you might have sensed from reading this blog, thinking for themselves isn't quite the forte of Korean people.

The departure area we had to sit in was occupied by passengers for two planes: one for South Africa and the other for Korea. In typical British short-sightedness, the announcements were only made in English, even though the plane was 90% Korean people and there were air hostesses who could have made them in Korean. This resulted in a hilarious situation. As soon as a brief announcement was made saying the first class passengers for South Africa could now board, the Koreans (all of them) stood up and stormed towards the departure gate en masse. This resulted in chaos. Lazy airport staff tried in vain to control the tsunami without getting up from their chairs, and eventually had to call one of the Korean staff to actually make a proper announcement. The thing about Koreans (and I believe most people from the Far East) is that they don't really care about queueing. They still believe there is a war happening and they have to fight each other to get to the rice bowl first. Anyway, the staff didn't allow 250 Koreans onto a plane to Johannesburg (which is fortunate, based on the level of racial sensitivity there) and normal service was resumed (by which I mean the Koreans boarded the correct plane, but not without all 250 of them trying to go through the departure door at the same time).

The plane was alarmingly full. I had expected a similar situation to last year, which was three empty seats per passenger (because noone actually goes to Korea). Unfortunately I think the Korean tourist board must have lied about Korea and pretended there is stuff to do here, because the plane was so jam-packed I had to sit on Elly's lap and tie my bags to the roof. Plenty of the people on the plane were foreigners, probably bemused at the food being served (terrible, well it IS Korean airline food) and wondering why they were being told off for eating rice with chopsticks (it's a Korean snobbery thing- pretending they aren't a bunch of farmers).

After 11 and a half hours in the sky we eventually touched down at Incheon Airport, a beautiful modern airport which makes you want to burn down Heathrow. If you are the anti-terrorist police and are reading this, please face facts. I eat pork, can't read Arabic, and treat women with a little respect. Therefore I don't have the religion of choice for terrorists. But going to Heathrow airport makes me die a little bit every time, whereas touching down in Korea makes me feel like some of the good architects aren't dead.

An hour long bus ride, a taxi journey, a three hour wait and then a three and a half hour bus ride later, and we were back in Geochang. The total journey time from my family's home to our apartment in Geochang was 24 hours. It's such a long time. It really sucks. I've done a 24 train ride from Greece to Turkey, and it wasn't cool. And nor is the journey to Korea. I'm glad it's only twice a year. I actually chewed through my wrists with boredom. And yet it really seems worth it. I'm so happy to be back here. I can't tell you how much I like it in Korea these days. It's just fantastic.

I have a new co-teacher. The previous one was the world's laziest teacher (I was nominated for the award) but thankfully he has moved to another school. So we now have a team of three Koreans and one whitey (me) teaching the kids English, and all four of us are motivated and wanting to do the job. The third grade students of last year have left school and now empty bins for a living, which is a relief as the bins are never full and I don't have to scald those students for smoking in my lesson anymore. Actually that bin thing is a joke; there aren't any bins in Korea. Seriously. Just like there are no street signs. I mean it. The bin problem is solved by people just dumping their rubbish in a pile next to a lamppost and waiting for it to magically disappear. As for the street signs, this is solved by faxing location maps to each other and also never going anywhere, so you always know where you are. Another plus is that the new first grade students actually seem to not be retarded, so I feel like I can teach them something without them dribbling or biting me.

But generally just being in this place is so much fun. I never know what these people are going to do next. I don't even get mad at them anymore. They just make me smile. When they do something really Korean (which is all the time) I just chuckle and think "you're so Korean".

A Bit of Time At Home

2009-01-30T01:57:00.009+09:00

If you can believe it, and even if you can't, I am writing this in my mother's bedroom in England. Strange, you might think, since surely I should be in some filthy farmer's shack in South Korea eating rotten vegetables and trying not to catch SARS.

Well, yesterday I flew from Korea back to England, my England. Well maybe it's yours too, we can share. I haven't been home since the end of February 2008, when I got off the bus at Heathrow Airport and felt a sad empathy with Filipinos, Poles and all those other races destined to go to countries where they are abused and worked to the bone just for that bane and goal of man, money. Ok, so I have hardly been worked to the bone in Korea, but at times my wife and I have been shown little respect or understanding in a land that is so, so different to our own.

Am I home for good? Not at all. I will be here for a mere four weeks after which I will go back and begin a second year of trying to teach the people who believe they have nothing to learn about English, not even from the wonamin (native speakers).

I feel strange being back in the U.K. Actually, in all honesty I feel pretty unsettled being here. Firstly we travelled for 23 hours yesterday from our Seoul "love motel" (basically a fleapit to bring prostitutes back to) to my parents' place (where you aren't allowed to bring prostitutes). So we are now in that bastion of middle class life, South East England. Plus we are in a time zone 9 hours behind Korea, so 8pm is actually 5am if you ask my body. My head feels like it has been taken off, kicked about for a while and put back on, upside down.

But it's more than a physical unsettling. There's something missing. And amazingly, it's Korea. Each week I write about the disasters that have clattered into our lives and given me another grey hair (I need to quit my job and go travelling, yet again). But I like Korea so much, I like it more than I can describe. It's strange because I know full well that Elly doesn't, and I bury my head in the sand whenever she suggests that the childhood years of a marriage shouldn't be spent struggling to find milk which isn't from China. One of the bullet points on my hilariously long list of faults is that I am very selfish in very many ways. For example, don't ever buy me a drink, I will have a suspiciously obscure reason to go home before it's my round. But I can't help it. I want to be in Korea. There's something compelling, something addictive about a place so unsettling, so alien. I've been home for 24 hours but I feel like I'm on another planet to the one which has Korea. And I know that I could never settle here again. In Korea I've tasted (and smelt) a world so strange and curious that a sanitary land of plenty such as the United Kingdom suddenly seems bland and unsatisfying.

I'm not saying the grass is greener on the other side. In fact, in Korea the grass has died and been concreted over to make way for a karaoke bar. Even when there was grass it was brown, although I was still informed that "Korea grass number one in world!" by my couldn't-teach-English-to-Einstein fellow English teacher. Korea is so odd. Really. Words can't describe it. I try to when I write, but it's just my way of venting steam. It's like trying to describe love, or a sunset, or any of those other things that make us go "ahh"! But there's something very, very special about life there.

Despite spending a year there we have made just a handful of Korean friends. This is in large part due to two things. Firstly, Elly's health has been pretty bad for most of that period and so we haven't been going places as much as we would have liked. And secondly, most young people in Geochang leave the town when they finish high school and go to live in one of the monstrously large cities, where they can get a hamburger, a coffee and some clothes which aren't made of polyester or designed for golf. But the few people we have got to talk to are so great. It's not because they are the kindest, or best looking, or best story telling, or funniest people I've met. No, in fact they are probably less interesting than you, and they are certainly less attractive than me. Why do I like them? It's because they do such indescribably Korean things, like not saying goodbye when they hang up the phone, or talking about how much they enjoy eating dog soup, or consider a pit in the ground to be "a pretty good toilet", or openly telling you about their bowel actions, or never saying thank you to each other, or telling you that their country is the best and really believing it with all their hearts, or any of a hundred other things that could easily make you want to punch them and take their stuff. But here's the thing- I adore them. They fascinate me. It's just so amazing to experience people like this, and in an absolutely positive way. I probably come across as someone that hates Korea, but in truth I love it, and I am so excited about being back there, even though I've only just arrived home.

Various people, particularly philosophers and stoners, will talk about life being about a journey rather than a destination. I think this stems from the fact that as human beings we are never really satisfied in this world, no matter what peaks we reach or what depths we plunge to. We always strive further. Living in Korea is so much more of a journey than a destination. It can never be a destination, since the thing we ultimately went there to do, teach Korean people how to speak English, is impossible. It can't be done. So we will never, ever reach our destination. Not in a year, or two, or a hundred. It's futile to believe otherwise. But we can have an incredible experience doing the journey. The best journeys are the memorable ones, and that doesn't necessarily mean they are the smooth ones. Life in Korea isn't smooth. In fact it's a nightmare a lot of the time. Sometimes I feel like I'll go nuts. But I wouldn't change the place we live in (even though we could have gone to a bigger city where life would be more comfortable and familiar). We won't be in Geochang forever, it's too ridiculous to consider anything like raising a family there. But sitting at home in England, having had a full 24 hours without a stranger shouting "HI!!!!" and then openly mocking me, or a 108 year old woman stumbling past me and looking at me like I am a black man in the KKK, I find myself longing for that day soon when I will again experience such a life.

"Teaching at the Winter Camp", or, "Speed Dating for Child Catchers"

2009-01-05T15:14:00.014+09:00

This week my winter vacation has officially ended. It was a lovely two days.

So today I am back to what I now call "The Impossible Job", that is, trying to teach English to Koreans. For the next three weeks I won't be teaching at my school with its laughably inadequate teaching methods. Instead I am doing the "Winter Camp". This misnomer is an amusing example of how good Koreans are at English- not very. The winter camp has no tents (the kids go home to their warm apartments at 2pm), although it is definitely winter. I know this as I spent the last six hours feeling so cold that when I took my socks off at home, two of my toes stayed in there. The college we are working at has a special Korean heater that is powered by beansprouts and doesn't actually warm up the room. But thankfully we ate some cold kimchi at lunchtime, and as mouldy cabbage is a wonder dish (it prevents bird flu don't you know...), our bodies were able to fight the arctic conditions.

After just one day I can see that the camp is as well-organised as the summer version. The routine this time is we talk to a student for a bit, asking them questions about themselves and talking about ourselves, then we get up and go and talk to another student. A bit like speed dating, or so I gather. Today's routine made me think this would be ideal speed dating for child catchers. I use the term "child catcher" as in my mind it's not so sinister as the other words we use to describe people with such ideas. Actually "child catcher" is almost kind of humourous, like a clown. A clown who has isn't allowed to work in a school and has to have his address in the newspaper. And at least child catchers are honest about their intentions, rather than getting a job in Santa's grotto. I wish the term would come back into common usage.

Left: The good ol' days.

As usual, the college has given us a hilariously bad textbook. It was put together by the college (I think about an hour before the teachers arrived). Some of the material is obviously lifted from various English-learning websites, but the rest appears to have been taken from the medical notes of a scizophrenic. Let me show you some of the material I am expected to teach. Bear in mind that, not only do most of these kids not speak particularly good English, but equally crucially, I am talking to 11 year olds. Firstly, the conversation questions I am required to ask:

- Is your personality suited to your job?
- What do the colours of your home country represent?
- What personality traits do you consider important in a friend / a boss / a partner?
- Do you think you can change a major characteristic of your personality if you try?
- What difficulties do you think single parents face? What, if anthing, should society do to help single parents?
- How has your education prepared you for your career? (Once again, these kids are 11!)
- What accomplishments have given you the most satisfaction in your life? (Getting a good score on Tetris?)
- What do you see yourself doing five years from now? (Err, still going to these pointless English camps?)
- Why is your GPA not higher? (I don't know! Sorry!!!)
- What kind of salary are you looking for? (Enough to buy a choc-ice?)
- Does it bother you that people gamble on sporting events?
- If you could choose how you were going to die, what would you choose your death to be? (Is this really a suitable question?)
- If you could commit any crime and get away with it, what would you do?
- What do you know about Autralia's Aboriginal peoples?
- Do you know any Aussie vocabulary?
- If you were a loin (I think this is meant to say "lion"), would you like to eat a man? (What?!)
- If your spouse cheated on you, what would you do?
- Would you rather go to a bar or a nightclub?
- Do you often go drinking?
- How far in advance do you plan a vacation?
- If you got arrested for murder, whom would you call with your telephone call from prison?
- If your friend couldn't have a child, would you carry her child for her? (11 year olds don't generally think about surrogate motherhood. Especially not the boys)
- If you could be a crayon, what color would you be and why? (They were really scraping the questions barrel here)
- If the U.S. attacked North Korea, what would happen? (We'd all be killed of course, but don't talk about it to the children!!!)

Next, there are a series of pictures to mull over and discuss. They seem to be from the psychologist's report on a serial killer. I think the pictures are supposed to be shown to a murderer to see whether he was mentally sound when he butchered those postal workers. In any case, what would you talk about with an 11 year old upon seeing these pictures?

Don't talk to strangers, even if they offer you a balloon. If they have a dog it's ok to talk to them.

Showers forbidden, except during the day.
Or at nightime.

It's ok. The wizard's hat won't bite.

Most midgets are black. But sometimes you get a white one too.

or:

The white man will always be king in South Africa. So watch it, alright?

If you wear a bikini, don't wear one the same colour as your skin. Otherwise you will look naked.

If you have already trodden in white paint, for goodness sake don't walk in the black paint too!!!!

There are plenty of other gems in the textbook. I particularly like a page entitled "Scotland discussion". Bear in mind most of the kids I talk to haven't even heard of England, so they definitely don't know about England's ugly sister. But lo and behold! There is a whole page of questions with which to discuss Scotland. And there's no introductory information about Scotland. The knowledge is already assumed to be there in these kids' spongey brains. Let's enjoy some of the questions that even British people would have to think about for a few minutes, let alone 11 year olds from East Asia who have spent their entire lives watching Japanese cartoons:
- What are the good things and bad things about Scotland?
- What do you know about the geography of Scotland?
- What do you know about Scottish history?
- What has Scotland given to the world? (Haggis? Cholesterol?)
- Who are the most famous Scots you know? (Is Bono Scottish? How about Enya?)
- What do you think Scotland will be like 50 years from now?

I know what I will be like 50 years from now. Sitting in a chair, rocking back and forth, while a nurse puts pills under my tongue and tells people about my disturbing flashbacks from Korea.

Two Things Koreans Hate- Planning Ahead, and Swimming

2009-01-01T18:10:00.007+09:00

Korean people don't like to plan ahead. Well, not by more than five minutes, anyway. In the summer, Elly's co-teachers were looking forward to spending some holiday time with their families. Maybe some of them had booked trips away. It didn't matter though. On the second last day of school before the holiday period began, a number of the teachers were helpfully informed that they wouldn't be seeing their neglected families each day. No, instead they would be coming in to school each day to do "extra classes" for the students. What this really means is the students are to be babysat for the whole summer, and this is to be done under the pretence of education.

Another example of people here really thinking things through was when Elly and I were approached by two people in a supermarket one Sunday evening. We didn't know them (Korean people all look the same to me) but they knew who we were, because they had friends at our church and had heard about us (the white couple). With the few words of common language we shared, they invited us for dinner. When? One evening next week? No. Now! Never mind that we were clearly in the middle of doing our weekly grocery shopping. "Come to our house now and have dinner!" We politely declined this ridiculous offer. I don't want to sound ungrateful. It was a kind gesture. But come on- we had bags of shopping with us and had plans to do something that evening, or at least be at home on the evening before going back to work. What's more, at that time we were being invited to things left, right and centre, and just needed time to settle in this crazy place. But in Korea there's no such thing as notice being too short. If you have an idea, let's do it now! So we told them we'd prefer to have dinner with them on a later date, and gave them my phone number. The following week we received a phone call from the couple, asking if we'd like to have dinner in half an hour. Again, lots of advance warning. We weren't at home and had already eaten, so declined again. So they suggested a date three weeks henceforth. We arranged the time and place and ended the call. Three weeks later we went to the arranged meeting place and waited for them. They never showed up! After trying to put off a dinner invitation we didn't really want, we were eventually stood up by the people who had invited us! I don't believe this is because decided they hated us. It's because they didn't have any kind of diary or planner system. Why would they? In Korea you don't plan ahead. Just go with whatever whim takes you!

Korean people also don't like to swim. At least traditionally they don't. Some middle aged Korean friends of mine tell me they are afraid of water. This includes all swimming, bathing and even drinking tea. I have mentioned before that Korean people don't tend to drink much, apart from tiny cups of sugary instant coffee and lots of cheap "Korean whisky", which was traditionally made from rice but these days is made from sweet potatoes and can also be used to clean paintbrushes. Such hydrophobia makes it no surprise that the idea of being almost completely submurged in water doesn't appeal. When Elly and I were travelling in Cambodia we met some other English people who told us they were visiting a Korean-owned hotel in Phnomh Penh which had a beautiful swimming pool, but none of the Korean guests bothered to use it! So these happy Brits would visit the hotel each day and have the whole pool to themselves. A town the size of Geochang (30,000 farmers, 300 mail order brides and 30 Western English teachers) certainly has no need for a swimming pool. In the summer months you can see plenty of kids swimming in the river (they probably saw swimming on MTV or something) but the water isn't deep enough to drown a rat, let alone a chubby Korean schoolboy. So they probably aren't really swimming, just standing in some murky water. A Korean friend of ours who spent some years living in Australia and hence learnt to swim (probably to escape from a murderer or maneating dingo) showed some of his friends back in Korea his new skills. They were amazed at his fish-like abilities. And the funny thing is, he wasn't doing an Olympic butterfly race or anything. No, he was doing backstroke! Anyone can do backstroke. You just take in a lung of air, lie on your back in the water and move your limbs about. Hey presto! You're swimming! But this didn't stop him getting called up for the Korean Olympic swimming team. Yes, I know the smart alecs amongst you will tell me that Korea won a swimming gold medal at the Olympics, courtesy of Park Tae-hwan (pictured). But Mr.Park is actually a white man who had plastic surgery to look Asian. Come on, you don't get as muscley as that guy by eating seaweed soup, beanshoots and Spam.

Park Tae-hwan of South Korea. Formerly Richard Jones of Hull. This man has never eaten kimchi.

The river in Geochang. Note two things- 1. The "no swimming" sign. 2. The depth of the water those kids are standing in.

So Korea might be a land of few swimming pools, but there are some to be found if you really look. We found one in Daegu, the ugly monster city which can be reached by bus from Geochang. I call it an ugly monster because for only the third biggest city in South Korea it is huge (about 2.7 million people) and is mostly filled with grey tower blocks. It has the feeling of a place which was built at night time. However, it has a Burger King so from time to time I put earplugs in my nose and make the trip. The swimming pool can also be visited, so long as you are happy to walk nine miles from the nearest subway station and stroll past crumbling crumbling sports stadia which must have been shipped brick by brick from the former East Germany.

Arriving at the pool we were pleased to be helped by an English speaker who explained the complex ticket machine to us. We were then guided to our respective changing rooms. That was when the pleasure ended and the feelings of "burn them" started. First, a helpful cleaner showed me how to get changed into my swimming shorts. He then insisted that I go and take my shoes outside, despite being in swimming stuff now. I returned and asked him where the toilet was. In English swimming pools the toilets are usually in the changing room area, which makes sense. But in Korea they are very amusingly outside. Well, not quite outside, but you have to walk through the reception area, dripping wet and barely clothed just to go. And of course, being white, I had everybody asking me what I was doing and trying to instruct me how to operate the soap dispenser (I'm surprised they knew how). I returned to the changing room, now semi-hypothermic since the front door of the reception area was wide open, and found my way to the pool area.

I was surprised to find that the pool was empty but about 200 swimmers were sitting on benches next to it. So I found Elly and sat with her next to the pool, shivering, for 20 or so minutes. What a big waste of time! Eventually a swimming instructor appeared who stood on one side of the pool, and did Mr.Motivator style exercises. All the Koreans by the pool followed suit. We didn't. Only once this 15 minute warm-up had been completed could anyone actually enter the pool. We shouldn't have bothered. Half of the pool was roped off. And not the sensible half, that is, some of the lanes. No, the pool was roped in half in such away that the length was halved! There was no apparent reason for this. Maybe they thought keeping people out of that half would keep it clean or something. So everyone was squeezed into half a pool, meaning you had to turn around lots if you wanted to do lengths. And helpfully, noone else was doing lengths, they were just standing at the end. The entire shallow end of the pool was crowded with locals who were discussing recipes for tasteless side dishes and congratulating each other on being Korean. This, coupled with the extremely steep gradient of the bottom of the pool, meant it was impossible to actually put your feet on the floor. So, like a shark or something, you had to keep swimming or you would die in the most peaceful way, that is, by drowning.

After about two minutes of enjoying this enforced exercise, we were told in the most Korean way possible (lots of people crowding round us and shouting) that we had to have swimming hats. Everyone else had them. How ridiculous. This is a country where people don't wash their hands after defecating, and yet they consider it a health requirement to cover one's hair whilst swimming! We said we didn't have them. "Why?" everyone asked us. They've obviously seen swimming on the Olympics and decided that if you are swimming you simply MUST have a hat. Koreans won't do any sport without the proper gear. No jumpers for goalposts in Korea. So we were hoiked out of the pool and made to go and find swimming hats. I pleaded that I didn't have one and it was unlikley anyone would have brought three with them in order to lend some to ignorant white people. So Elly and I were made to go through to the reception area again, this time dripping wet and freezing, and ask the greedy owner of the swimming shop if we could borrow some latex hats. She rubbed her fingers together in that universal symbol for "give me some money and we'll talk". A helpful pool attendant came through and translated for us that we had to pay 2000 won for the privelige of borrowing the hats. So I walked through to the changing room to my locker to get some money. As I was doing so, the angry cleaner swiped his broom at me and pointed at the changing room floor, which I had selfishly dripped water on. I hadn't realised, but in South Korea, swimming pool changing room floors actually explode if you get them wet. So I apologised and took my 2000 won back through to the greedy shop lady. However, upon arrival I was informed that the price was actually now 4000 won. I have no idea why. Maybe the value of the won had fallen by 50% in the 47 seconds I'd been gone. Or maybe she was actually a terrorist who was holding me to ransom. In any case, the equivalent of £2 to borrow a couple of rubber hats for 20 minutes seems a bit steep. Especially in a country where they are so rich they throw mobile phones away once they are 6 months old. So I had to go back to the changing room to get more money. By this point the water from my hair had run down my body to my feet, and I once again soaked the changing room floor. The cleaner had only just finished mopping up the area next to my locker when I jogged up to him and soaked the same spot. He mumbled something in Asian and then mopped all around me, even bashing my heels with the mop. I went back out to the shop and handed over my soaking wet money. I pulled the latex hat onto my head. As it was made for a Korean person it only covered the top of my skull and made me look I was visiting a synagogue. What's more, the shop lady hated me and had deliberately given me a child's hat. So it actually had little sanitary value but ticked the box in the simple minds of the other swimmers that I was now worthy of joining them in their pleasureless escapade.

I climbed back into the pool and started to warm my blue limbs. I swam for 7 or 8 minutes before a series of whistles and shouts made me think the North Koreans were coming. However, it was actually just the announcement that the pool had been open for 30 minutes and now had to be empty for 30 minutes. It wasn't like they were putting cleaning chemicals in or anything. And there was no school lesson or aqua aerobics about to happen. No, once again, everybody had to sit shivering on wooden benches while the pool remained empty. Maybe their great wise ancestors informed them that water gets tired so needs to rest every half an hour, otherwise it won't be able to support you. In any case, Elly and I had had quite enough of Korean swimming, thank you very much. So we returned to the changing rooms to get ready to go home, miserable.

I had forgotten to take my towel with me to the pool, and dripped water all over the newly dried changing room floor. For the third time the now furious cleaner picked up his mop, gave me a look of "lock your door tonight" and cleared up my mess for me. I went through to the shower area and washed the chlorine off my body. Nudity is compulsory in Korean showers and rigorously enforced. So being foreign and naked I was stared at even more than usual. Elly informs me that in the woman's changing area she was asked by various elderly women to scrub their backs for them. She politely declined. As I got changed into my clothes I was informed that I was putting my T-shirt on the wrong way, and told several times to stand in a different place, for no apparent reason.

This half day of swimming was supposed to be a relaxing, healthy experience. As it was it was so stressful and free of enjoyment that I actually considered having counselling.

Some News / A Romantic Dinner, Korean Style / Reader's Questions

2008-12-23T08:58:00.006+09:00

Hello you!

I have recently added my blog to a website which lists blogs about life in South Korea. As such the number of people reading this has increased. This is exciting as it opens up the prospect of me deleting all the writing and just turning this into a page of ads for viagra companies and speed dating services.

I have also changed the comments sections at the end of every post. You can now write a comment without any kind of account. Just click "Leave a comment" and say what you want. I recommend you leave your real name as it means I can spam you back. And your date of birth would also be helpful, as it ensures I can identity fraud you, fake your death and watch Sky TV at your house for free.

So let me say that again: you can leave a comment at the end of any of my posts. Actually it's a great idea as it gives me a chance to respond to some of your comments on this blog, as I will do later in today's post.

I am now aware that this blog is followed on at least three continents, and thankfully two of them are the good continents (i.e. Europe and North America). I know this as a charming lady named Yolondo, a black American lady who arrived in November to teach in Geochang, informed me that she read my blog back in the States and decided Geochang was the place for her. Actually she's come to the right place, because Geochang locals are very open-minded and welcoming to outsiders, especially people who look different. I know this as two days before I met Yolondo my co-teacher was telling me his views on people of different ethnicities. "I'm very prejudiced against black people", he told me with a knowing look. "Especially black womans" he said, his excellent use of English underlining just why Korea needs lots of foreign people to come and teach them that there are more than four countries in the world.

All this said, Yolondo told me that her students are actually very well behaved, mainly because they are scared of black people (her words as well as my secret opinion). This is good news for her and makes me consider getting an all-over tan, if only to stop my students giving me a look of "I'd kill you in a fight, in fact I'd drive over you in my mule-cart then pelt you with the apples which are the basis of my local economy."

Onto other things. There's no relaxing to be done in Korea. Everybody's in far too much of a hurry and too badly organised to have time to put their feet up or lower their blood pressure. People drive like they've just spilt a chip pan on their laps. They push you out of the way in the street or in shops. And on the slightest whim they will completely change their plans, never mind that they are so poor at planning that their original plans were made five minutes ago. I often feel Koreans are like the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass". Except Koreans aren't just running to keep in the same place. They are actually running around with their hair on fire, screaming into a megaphone. Earlier in the year there was some trivial local election. I know this because every morning for nine weeks I was woken on Saturday mornings at 7am by a clown with a megaphone, who was announcing something like "I may be a corrupt wealthy mafia boss who made his money by buying land off ignorant farmers for a few pigs and then selling it to property developers, but you can trust me with your kids' future" And you needn't think that this was just one guy. No, there were at least 137 candidates in that election to decide the new governor of strawberry plants, and every one had a group of middle aged redundant librarians standing on the back of a truck shouting into megaphones about how this man may have sold his grandmother to a Chinese pet food company but he deserves your vote.

So if you want a bit of peace and quiet I don't recommend living in a small farming community in the Southern half of the Korean peninsula. I can't imagine what Seoul must be like to live in. I don't know, maybe it's not as bad. Geochang locals haven't realised that a microphone actually makes your voice louder, so they shout into them to make sure you can hear them. What's more, every microphone in Korea is connected to a karaoke machine, which has a compulsory echo effect. Even when you are on a bus, any announcement made by the driver will be repeated three times in a romantic, ballad-esque style. They think it sounds good but it actually sounds like when some joker rings the local radio station to answer a quiz question, but has his radio next to his phone and treats the whole town to a bit of deafening feedback. Beautiful stuff.

Elly and I had a pretty busy Saturday. We had to clean our apartment, since the whole place had turned into a large industrial mould factory. Mould everywhere. I don't know why. Maybe it's a by-product of all the fermented cabbages. I wrapped a scarf round my head in the style of a terrorist and got to work scrubbing several new antibiotics off the back of a wardrobe. I can't be certain of the medicinal benefits but Elly no longer has a limp and my rabies has really cleared up.

By the end of the day we were pretty exhausted so we decided to treat ourselves to dinner at one of the only restaurants in the province where you can order something with cheese on and have a reasonable chance of receiving a non-rubber-based product. We were quite enjoying our dinner but a delightful young Korean child decided to walk past our table every 7-8 seconds and say "hi" in English, for most of the evening. As if this wasn't enough to make you think twice about not feeding him British beef, we were then asked to move table because the rowdy group of men on a nearby table were about to start singing karaoke. Let me put this in context. We weren't in "TGI Friday" or anything. This was a classy restaurant inside a beautiful wooden building, furnished with wonderful comfortable sofas and serving with excellent, international food. But as this is Korea, the evening's not complete until you have drunk half your body weight in alcohol made from sweet potatoes and belted out a rendition of the theme from "Titanic" that would make a dead squirrel cry. So we sat in the corner of the room trying to finish our desserts as quickly as possible before the inevitable happened. And it did happen. "Song sing!" said the fluent English speaker of the group. I'm not sure of the Korean for "I'd rather take my sick Grandmother to see Harold Shipman than sing 'My Heart Will Go On' for you". So we gently refused then bolted for the door, politely knocking over the "hi" child on the way.

Reader's questions now. This morning I checked my email and read that "A Korean" (this must be a pseudonym, either that or his parents weren't very creative) had written a comment on one of my early posts. His comments are in italics (I italicised that word for those of you from Southampton) and mine are, well, not in italics:

"Pleasantly offensive." Why thank you kind Asian.

"I wonder why you limeys are better at being cocky than most?" This is for several reasons. One is that we had the largest empire in human history, and gave it all away because we didn't like the food. Another is that we have an overcast, expensive, overcrowded and disappointing country and making jokes is the only thing that keeps us from committing suicide en masse in the style of the Swedes. Plus we have English football which I understand is the third most important thing to Korean people, hot on the heels of international ignorance and karaoke.

"5. (the claim that Korean people believe the physically disabled are being punished for sins in a former life) Mixed us up with India, didn't you?" No, I could never confuse Korea with India. Indian food is wonderful, varied, delicate, exhilarating, flavoursome, rich, and enjoyed across the globe. Korean food is, well, for the most part, cold vegetables in a soggy paste. The most popular meats in Korea are pork and Spam. Even Korean people gleefully chow down on foreign food (though would never admit they like pizza more than cow intestine soup). As for the disability belief, have you ever been to Geochang? This is a community where superstition and hearsay are gospel. In fact have you ever been to Korea? Have you heard of people dying because they left a fan on in a room with the doors and windows closed? As you know, this is well documented in Korea. I mean, come on.

"Orientalism indeed." I don't know what you mean by this comment. It must be some Oriental reference. By the way, "Oriental" just means "Eastern", in the same way that "negro" is just the Spanish word for black. Therefore, neither term is offensive. I know this because Korean people all refer to black people as "negroes", and Koreans certainly have their finger on the nub of international affairs.

"Btw., South Korea is in some ways more class-conscious than the U.K. But I guess you will never find that out in a year..." I can imagine there being a bit of a class divide in Geochang. In fact you can tell which class group people fall into. The farmers are the working class, and the farmers in suits are the middle class.

Thanks for your comments "A Korean". Please come back again! I'm really glad for Korean people to read this blog. I think countries need to know how they are viewed by outsiders. In Britain we are so used to the whole world knowing our business (and lending a helpful hand, like all the slaves we employed in the past). However, Korea is actually a geographical cul-de-sac, and noone knows anything about it (except a few Americans with Korean friends at school, who they are only friends with so they can copy their maths homework).

Incidentally I'll be in Korea for two years. I've decided to stay as I love it here, believe it or not. My sheer Britishness means I have to be sarcastic and negative, even about things which are wonderful. That said, I'll be coming home to the UK for the whole of February to have a fight with some teenagers, listen to some people worrying about the economy as they pay £35 for a pub lunch, and drink some English beer (which, unlike Korean beer, didn't come out of the back of a cat).

Elly's Trip to the Library

2008-12-19T21:44:00.003+09:00

A while ago Elly said she would be interested in writing on my blog. "Great idea" I thought, for two reasons. First, it gives her a chance to share her experiences with you, and you can hear a little less from me. Second, it gives me more time to watch Korean people on YouTube playing two guitars at the same time:

Actually, that guy isn't unusual for a Korean. In true East Asian style he spends all his time perfecting a useless skill (like playing computer games or folding paper into swans). One of my students pretends to be rubbish at Rubicks Cubes and sits there idly with one in his hand. He then suddenly springs into action and solves the cube in a blur of coloured squares.

Anyway, here's Elly's blog entry:

"I know that my title looks like a childrens story book! I'm feeling a little reflective today and decided to post an honest account about today. I want to share a little bit about what it is like to live in South Korea.

So today I have the afternoon off work. I walked out of the staff room at just after 11.30, past all the students that are sweeping and cleaning the school before they can leave. They look pretty tired after 4 days of exams. I saw one of my first years (14 years old) and asked, 'How's it going?' he screwed up his face and said 'Ah, very difficult!'. For a moment I remembered that post-exam feeling. When you really have no idea if you did okay or really messed up. 'Don't worry, be happy', was my reply. After 10 months living here I find it easiest to communicate with either song lyrics, old English proverbs (like "Better the devil you know") or American English that is really unnatural to a British person (Good Job! or rather 'well done' in British English).

For those of you that don't know, I am currently living in South Korea. I live in a remote city that's really quiet and inhabited by only teachers and farmers. In the 10 months I have been here I have never really felt 'home sick', but there are things that I miss. For example the last few days I have really missed chocolate, English cheese and girls' shoes that are in my size (8). But today I just feel a little quiet and unsure. Perhaps because I have never really had nothing to do before now. Jon and I are always busy here, I think that Korean people don't realise that free time is actually really nice. But today, I finally have some free time and I really don't know how to entertain myself.

I walk pretty slowly down the drive out of the school grounds. Today, like most days this winter, the sky is blue and the air is crisp. Before I know it I have walked to the local park. The mountians that surround this small city look really wonderful today. I am still in awe of them even though they are really familiar to me now. I sit on a park bench. Although I have the afternoon off Jon is working all afternoon today as his students don't have exams. In Korea I feel a little hopeless without Jon, especially doing anything new. Not only can he speak Korean much better than me but he can also read and write Korean now. Nobody really speaks English here. Actually, not even the English teachers at my school.

Today I am trying not to think about how disappointing December is in Korea. No Christmas decorations, no Christmas songs, no turkeys in the supermarket (of course) and no overpriced Boots gift sets either. For someone that actually loves Christmas and once insisted that the Christmas decorations stay up until early July (in my first student house), no Christmas spirit is a really sad reality.

I find myself sitting on the park bench staring at a tree. So many crazy things have happened since I arrived in Korea and most days I am rushing around at school giving lessons. By the end of each week I have taught 600+ students, plus one class for the teachers. Discouragingly the students have been mostly sleeping, listening to their Ipods or hitting their friends. That said, when I am not at school, life is a little slower. But there is always something to do or a problem to solve. This is to be expected with moving home to a different place. But Jon and I are living on the other side of the world. A place where the food, language, cultural etiquette and even common sence are completely foreign. But fortunatelly I know that my overriding memory of living here (for what will be two years) is sharing stories with Jon, laughing about what a funny a place Korea can be. And, without coming over as too soppy, also reaffirming that my husband is my best friend.

In English culture, when you are by yourself you worry that people are looking at you. But as one of the only white people in this small city, I am constantly stared at. It is a daily occurance. Actually some people have in fact never seen a white person before. Today, every driver and pedestrian that passes me sitting there looks in my direction. Usually I really dislike it. Especially when their jaws drop, or they stop still to say to their friend ' megooksarram' which means 'American person'. But today I'm not bothered by it.

As I sit there I look at the building across the park that holds the town Library on one of its floors. I have heard that they have some English books in the English section. In my mind I imagine novels and magazines and feel really hopeful after being starved of English writing for 10 months. I know that there's the internet but its just not the same as flicking through something on the sofa. There's a chance opportunity as I notice one of my students cycling up to the library entrance. I run over and comunicate that I want him to take me to the library. As we enter together it is clear that he has friends waiting for him inside and frankly teachers belong at school. I notice one of the boys who is one of the better English speakers at my school and ask him to help me. Before I know it however, something very Korean happens......

An oldish man and woman that I have never met before guesture that I should come and sit in a room with them. I smile at my student and his expression reveals that he doesn't know these people or why they want to speak to me. I enter the room and they shut the door behind me. I sit down and before I have even introduced myself I have a cup of sickly sweet instant coffee and three tangerines infront of me. In Korea this means that I am now their guest. By custom, I must at least finish the steaming hot coffee before I can have any hope of leaving the room.

It is apparent from the first few moments that they speak no English so I have to use the little Korean I know. I deduce that the art pictures displayed in the entrance are theirs. I am not sure if they are selling them. He announces proudly something that I do recognise...'Pho-to-shop-uh'. Knowing that they won't understand me anyway I say ' Oh, yes I love his work'. Actually Koreans seem to love photoshop and a lot of the art lessons at my school are photoshop classes. Eventually a library worker enters the room and saves me. I quickly finish the coffee and burn my mouth. The woman grabs at my handbag, opens it and puts the three tangerines in there and zips it shut again. This kind of behaviour doesn't phase me nowadays. Before now I have had strangers let themselves into my apartment to see if I require the lift that has stopped on my floor!

Eventually, after some form filling and a tour of the facilities, the library worker shows me the English section. It's a bit disappointing. No, actually it is really disappointing. There aren't really any novels, none that I want to read anyway. Just random English study books with surprising titles like 'No English. No Future'. But most surprising of all was a book titled 'F@cking English Speaking'. This study book claims to make studying English more enjoyable. But I'm thinking that it might explain why most of my students don't realise that the F word is actually really rude. Anyhow, after browsing the novels I'm faced with a difficult choice between the latest Harry Potter (oh joy) and Great Expectations (which I studied for my GCSE's). As testiment to how little I desire to read Harry Potter I take a copy of Great Expectations and start for home to clean the apartment.

Maybe tonight Jon and I will order a Hawaiian pizza again from the only pizza delivery in town. Though last time, I don't know what they were thinking, but they replaced the pineapple with peaches and really it just wasn't the same. Thank you Korea!

Wishing that you were all here,

Elly xxx"

A view of our city from the mountains.

The rice fields next to our apartment.

A path leading to the mountain trail.

It's Really Not Such a Big Economic Crisis

2008-12-15T20:50:00.005+09:00

Ok, I know that, unless you booked a bad route for your trip to Spain and ended up in Mongolia, I am at least 5,000 miles from you. But from where I'm standing, this economic "crisis" the media are shoving down our throats isn't quite a bad as they make out.

Let's face it- if you read the news you will be familiar with the terminology used by reporters to shock you and draw you in. Especially if you are foolish like me and read the BBC news website. I used to love the BBC website, mainly for its coverage of football, but I liked the idea of reading news from all over the globe which was from a "reliable" source. But actually these days I find the main news section of bbc.co.uk is drivel, apparently written by work experience kids or the guy with a hidden agenda. In any case, none of the stories have been written by anyone who knows the subject they're reporting on. A recent gem was a story which basically informed me that cigarettes are bad for you, which is a relief because all the other evidence (like magazine adverts from the 1940s) made me want to start smoking. But words like "blaze" to describe a fire, or "plunge" to describe anything descending, trigger emotions and worries. So a good news filler is of course the economy.

Sure, things do look bleak. But have we all forgotten that economies fluctuate, that things will always get better, then worse, then better, then worse, at least as far as money is concerned?

I am going to make a bold statement. This is no economic crisis. At least, in terms of what "economic crisis" really means. In North Korea this evening people will die in cold hospitals which have no heating. Children will scour barren fields tomorrow, desperately searching for insects and rats to eat. Many of these children will die of starvation before they are even 7 years old. The same is true in dozens of countries. I'm not saying all this to be Bono, or Lenny Henry, or even to make you feel guilty about eating that KFC mega bucket all by yourself. I'm saying it because we need to keep perspective and remember how good things are for us in the West. Do you go to sleep hungry every night? Do you shiver in the dark in a freezing house? Ok, if you are at university you probably do ("I should've bought another Pot Noodle"), but for the rest of us, these aren't big issues. And yet, aren't being warm and having enough to eat basically the main things we need to feel comfortable?

Sure the line on the graph might be low right now, and your house might've lost 30% of its value. But come on- it still has a roof, right? And just a year ago weren't we talking about how insanely high house prices were? What's more, aren't we still much richer than our parents were at our age, or ridiculously more so than our grandparents were, and they were probably more worried about Stalin or Hitler (or maybe Kaiser Willhelm, I don't know how old you are) than how much interest they were earning on their savings?

I'm no economist. If I was I wouldn't need to be teaching Korean teenagers what a noun is. But even I know that a warm home and a full belly point to the fact that we aren't in as much financial trouble as the newspaper editors would have us believe.

We All Do Stupid Things

2008-12-11T01:00:00.005+09:00

Hello you!

This week I've been ever so fortunate. No, I didn't win the kimchi hamper at the All You Can Eat Fermented Cabbage Raffle, nor did I get to eat the colon of the pig which was last week's lunch (for five days). No, I've been ever so fortunate because I'm currently enjoying a week off work! Huzzah! "Why?" I hear you ask. Well, you have every right to ask. This is a democracy. Unless you live in Saudi Arabia. In which case, I hope for your sake you're not Jewish or a woman.

The reason I am sitting on my lazy hind writing this at home, rather than sitting on my lazy hind writing this at work, is that the students currently have their last set of exams this year. So my kind and wise superiors realised it's not like I would be doing any work if I was at school, so they decided to send me home and let me pay for all the tea I'm drinking.

So this has given me time to try and improve my Korean. I've managed to find an excellent website on which you write things in the language you're studying, after which a native speaker of that language will correct it for you. All for free. In return you just correct someone else's work in your native language. Amazing. So simple and yet so effective. Of course, this great idea wasn't invented by a Korean, it was invented by a Jap (or "Japanese person" in the politically correct West, or "demon" in the still-haven't-forgotten-400-years-of-occupation-rape-and-torture Korean peninsula).

Ergo, each day I am able to ramble on in Korean about all the important issues in my life, like "what T-shirt shall I wear?", "can I get away with putting off flossing for another couple of weeks?" and "can you take the water you used to boil an egg and make tea with it?" After that Korean people (who really don't have time for this trivia) will check your work with a fine-toothed comb and point out how bad a person you are for not already knowing their wonderful (albeit limited and written by farmers) language. Actually all the people on the website are really helpful. I gather all the jerks in Korea live in Geochang. Probably why I ended up here. And they are all too busy driving coffee-delivery mopeds (seriously) along the pavement at 40 miles an hour. The vast continent of Asia is yet to realise the difference between a road and a pavement.

Reading the work of others is a real joy. Especially when they are Korean people who are having a hard time in English speaking countries. Now, I don't want to be gleeful, but even simple things can be a struggle when you are a whitey living in the Far East, so it's comforting to realise that kimchi-lovers are actually doing stupid embarassing things in countries where I can actually order food and receive what I asked for. For example, read the following story which was written by a Korean using the website I mentioned. The English isn't all that well written (maybe he's actually from Southampton, not Korea). But it's not the writing that's funny- it's the story itself. Have a read:

"My terrible miss - Dec 04th 2008 22:15
When I just arrived at Australia, I had been going to shopping so many times in a day. I was just cranky on every meals all day long.
Oneday, I had went to the big market and was looking around to find out a cornflake. Oh, it's good stuff for having a breakfast simply.
Well, I found out one thing which had a pic of a cat on the box.
It was no problem, there were other kids playing with the cat and I thought 'I got it, it looked having a good taste! I have to buy it!'
When I came back to home and opened it, I went just insain..
That junk was for a real cat. How stupid on me!
I never been saying that foolish story to my friends and will take it to my grave. I wish my friends never get to this website at least!"

What a wonderful story! Even now I read that and laugh out loud. Actually there's quite an insight to be made there- that Koreans who go overseas realise that fermented cabbage, cold soggy sesame leaves in oil and rice isn't the only breakfast option available to Homo Sapiens. But I love the fact that he bought a box of Go Cat or something. I mean, the guy's probably been eating Whiskas pouches and thinking "what a tasty ready meal"! To be fair the Koreans eat a lot of Spam, and we all know that Spam is made from the testicles which weren't good enough for Pedigree Chum. I also love the line "I just went insane"! I can imagine him getting up for work, hungry and tired, and pouring himself a tasty bowl of crunchy fish-shaped biscuits. Didn't he notice the box was in the same part of the supermarket which sold dog leads and worming tablets? I just hope he didn't try to buy any vitamins that day.

I do feel sympathy for this poor ex-pat Korean though, because I know what it's like to feel completely lost in another country and not know which way is up. Simple trips to the supermarket take three hours and two vists because I accidentally buy some kind of growth hormone instead of milk. And many of the food products here have a big badge saying "MSG"! I don't know if the label actually says "MSG free" or "now with extra MSG"! It's impossible to tell. Elly and I refer to our favourite breakfast cereal as MSG flakes because that seems to be the chief ingredient.

The fact is it's really hard being overseas, and the deeper you go into foreigner-ville, the more difficulties you will face. When Elly and I were applying for jobs in Korea we were offered one in Seoul and one in Geochang. Seoul is a monster of a city. Twenty-three million people live in the greater Seoul metropolitan area. Twenty-three million! That's nuts. And they all work for Samsung and LG. The thing is, there are plenty of Western folks in Seoul, and plenty of opportunities to do most of the things you did at home.

Geochang on the other hand, is a small farming community. The economy is based on rice production and tourism which revolves around the town's famous apples. There are about 30 Westerners living here. If you want a pizza you'd better accept that the cheese is made from old tyres. They have never heard of Indian curry (and let's face it- Indians are EVERYWHERE in the world!) But there are no Indians in Geochang. There are also no Muslims, which is refreshing because you can have restaurants with pictures of pigs on them and if you see a child with something under her jacket she's probably carrying a teddy bear rather than a bomb. But the main attraction of Geochang was that I knew the city would be a culture shock and it would be essential to really get into Korean culture and learn some of the language. Really, even the English teachers can't speak English. So it's very much the deep end of Korea.

This wish to experience a foreign country in as pure a way as possible was granted in a big way. But the flipside is that life can be pretty hard sometimes. Aside from not knowing what to do or how to do things, people often treat you like a monkey in the zoo and generally don't understand that you're a person too.

So please, next time you're in the queue at the pub and there's a man from Latvia in front of you who is trying to buy a Jack Daniels but keeps saying "Visky", be patient and treat him with respect. He might speak funnily and have a very square head, but he's also a person and has behind left his family, friends and all that's familiar and comfortable. Buy him a pint. Or at least another visky.

I Still Have No Idea What's Going On

2008-11-25T09:10:00.003+09:00

Really, this country baffles me at times. But for a brief hop across the border to North Korea (and I didn't even stay the night there), I've been in South Korea for 274 days. The wonder of the internet informs me that this is 39 weeks; or 6,576 hours; or twenty-three million seconds (but who's counting?) This is quite a while. I know it's hardly Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, and Terry Waite would be only too happy to point out how easy a sentence this is, but at times it seems like a while. Especially when I don't know what's going on, which is always.

Seriously. I mean, I don't know what people are saying, or doing, or thinking, or planning, or anything. I study the Korean language for about two hours most days and yet due to me being in Gyeongnam Province, the Korean linguistic equivalent of Newcastle (well that's too harsh, maybe Wales is a better comparison), I mostly just sit there politely and smile when people are talking about me, which might be always or maybe never, I don't know. In a lot of ways I'm like a very young toddler. I kind of know what I'm supposed to do, and where to go to eat, and where the toilet is and how to use it, and I only spill some of my food down my front, and I know a lot of Korean words, but in the rush of Korean life I am a spectator rather than a participant. Learning this crazy language is like being a young child all over again. I have to move my mouth in new ways, trying to immitate consonants and putting them in the right order. I listen to conversations people have and I can pick out lots of individual words, but they are surrounded by a messy bunch of noises that make no sense to me. It's actually a really interesting sociological experience, like being 23 years younger (which would make me 3). Forget any miracle anti-ageing creams on the back of an expensive magazines, come to South Korea and you will feel like you were just born. In fact the feeling of being a baby in a pushchair is extended when people react to you speaking their language by clapping, or laughing, or being shocked, or just talking back at you really quickly. All of these happen regularly, though thankfully not all the time.

Sometimes I think the people who are really confused may be the Koreans themselves. Through living in a geographical cul-de-sac, South Koreans have become completely alienated from the world beyond their borders.

A few months back I was in the lift in our apartment block. A Korean guy said something to me in Korean at breakneck speed, which of course sounded to me like scat singing. The conversation went something like this:
Korean: "Ski-bi dibby dib yo da dub dub, yo dab dub dub"
Jon: "Pardon?"
Korean: "B-B-B-Be Bop a Bodda Bop; Bop a Bodda Bop; Be Bop a Bodda Bop"
Jon: "Chunchun-hee mal haseyo" (Korean for "please speak slowly in a non scat-singing-fashion")
Korean: (speaking slowly for my benefit) "Which.............floor...............do................you...............live.......
.......on?"
Brilliant! It's not English I have trouble with! I wasn't asking him to speak slowly because I'm some sort of dribbling cabbage who can't process the words fast enough, I was asking because I'm foreign and don't speak his language.

Elly had a similar experience in a public toilet. A girl followed her around the washroom area, helping her with everything. She was shown how to wash her hands (surprising as most people here don't bother), how to dry them on a paper towel, even how a door works. Yes, we have doors in England.

Another one: Elly was taken to an ATM in Geochang with her co-teacher. In a surprisingly helpful move by a country which is so isolated and non-international, the ATMs here all have English instructions, negating the need for assistance. However, this didn't stop Elly's co-teacher showing her how to go through each step. Did she think the rest of the world has really long queues outside all the banks, and longs for the miraculous Korean ATMs? She even showed Elly how to fold your money when you finish using the machine.

And then there's my experience when I went to Seoul with a Korean teacher: he showed me the miracle of ticket barriers in subway stations and asked if we have them in England. I know I currently live in a small town, but did he really think I had travelled all the way from Western Europe to Eastern Asia without coming across some sort of ticket machine?

It's all evidence that not only is this country isolated and out of touch with the outside, but many Koreans don't even realise or understand that actually people all over the world do most things in pretty much the same way. And not just the complicated stuff like ticket barriers or cash machines. The best story comes from a restaurant in Daegu, a city close to Geochang. Upon our arrival, a waiter saw we were foreign and helpfully pointed to plates of food, then gestured in a very childlike fashion that you put food in your mouth and chew, then smile and rub your belly. Brilliant stuff!

Remembering I'm British

2008-11-18T13:04:00.004+09:00

For better or worse (better for me, worse for her) Elly and I don't spend much time in the U.K. these days. In fact if I do a quick sum I can tell you that of the last 18 months, we have spent 14 of them outside of the U.K. (9 months in Korea, 4 months in various bits of South East Asia and a month in Budapest). This is mostly exciting and rewarding, but on occasions I long for certain aspects of British culture. Aside from curry (ironically now that most British of things), the thing I really miss here is the British sense of humour.

By the British sense of humour I don't mean untalented "comedians" failing to think of a good joke and instead dropping a four-letter word or sexual innuendo to get a cheap laugh from people who can't read without looking at the pictures. What I mean is the way that we Brits can take the rubbish situations that land on our laps every day (like a spilt cup of scalding hot coffee) and make a dry, ironic joke out of it. I remember reading that you have to experience driving on roundabouts to understand the British sense of humour. Think about roundabouts. They're haphazard, they're stressful, they're downright dangerous. Many countries don't bother using them because they're based on human error and statistically more likely to have flower memorials placed next to them than an equivalent junction with traffic lights. But will we dispense with them? Heck no! In a lot of ways we are used to things being a bit stressful, a bit grey, a bit disappointing in Britain. Think about the first warm day each year, in about April. Everybody who has ever watched an episode of Neighbours puts on a pair of beach shorts, rushes to Sainsburys and buys all the barbecue gear they can get their hands on (most of it has already sold out because the sun is shining). You go to the park with all your marinated pork and chicken, only to find about nine times the population of your town is also barbecuing meat from Sainsburys, and the only spot you can find is actually in the middle of the dual carriageway next to the park. You try playing frisbee with your friends (what is it about barbecues and frisbees? Do you play frisbee on the other days?) but your frisbee crosses the central reservation of the road and you are too scared to fetch it. While you were playing frisbee a dog has licked the marinade off your chicken wings and some friendly youths have relieved you of your pesky possessions. Then those grey clouds which were making you cold (but you didn't want to admit it) open up and it starts raining heavily. You start driving home, only to break down and wait three hours for the AA to come and rescue you. They relieve you of £160, more than the cost of a taxi to and from the park where you had such larks. What a rubbish day! Then what do we do? We go home to our cold houses, drink lukewarm milky tea and laugh about the whole disappointing episode. If this was America everyone would have to go to their counsellors. At least three teenagers would go on killing sprees at their schools. If it was Sweden most people would have committed suicide. In France there would certainly be some kind of rally filled with angry students, half of them in the worng rally (they were there to protest for the right to wear headscarves in school). But there's something about the British that allows us to handle such inevitable rubbishness and mediocrity, and even make a joke out of it.

Think how many of the best comedies in the world are British. If we had a reliable climate and traffic wardens who weren't out to upset everyone we probably wouldn't have had the drive to produce such masterpieces. Think of Fawlty Towers, Only Fools and Horses and the rest. They are based on people who aren't very attractive, live life flying by the seat of their pants and have a mediocre level of enjoyment in everything they do. And yet they are hilarious. Remember Basil Fawlty telling a man from California that he actually enjoyed the Torquay weather, that he found the rain and cold "bracing"? Of course, he secretly hated it too (Cybil pointed this out to Basil's embarrassment) but his sheer bloody minded Britishness made him determined to see the jovial side of a very uninspiring situation.

The U.K. has plenty of problems. We don't need to read the Daily Mail to realise this, we only need to walk to the shops and through the park to see some of what's going on. I don't agree with a country which preaches ethnic integration but actually produces ethnic tension. I'm not talking about asylum seeking refugees who need to escape a country where they will be killed. We should help these people 100%, as if it were we who were scared for our lives. I also don't mean Eastern European workers who can make ten times the salary they earned in their concrete former Eastern-Bloc slum. Eastern European workers are generally harder working and more reliable than their British counterparts, as most people who have actually taken the time to get to know one will testify. I am talking about a general policy of encouraging as many people as possible to come into an already extremely overcrowded country, all for the benefit of making more money which isn't needed anyway. Yes I know, at present I am a foreigner living in a foreign country and treating the local economy like a cash cow, so I shouldn't really call the kettle black. I can see from the point of view of the Geochang locals that they wouldn't want their town of 30,000 suddenly filled with 6,000 English workers. However, immigration hasn't got out of hand in Korea, hence people still being surprised to see a white face here. But in the U.K. it's gone a bit crazy. Britain is such a small country. It's already far too crowded. I especially don't like the underground censorship which is happening due to the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. Why don't the supermarkets advertise cheap bacon anymore? We have every right to protect our sovereignty as a Western nation and to preserve OUR traditional ways. We have invited all the problems of the Middle East into our own back yard, and by then invading a sovereign nation of Muslim people we have ensured there will be fireworks for years to come, whether they are in planes, airports, trains or wherever next someone presses that button on their shoe. And I don't like what's happened to communities, in terms of kids being allowed to go crazy and hurt people, making everyone scared to leave their homes. Where are their parents? Why aren't they at home? And if they only have a mother, what happened to our country to make it so common for teenage girls to be living on their own in a scary tower block with their young children? How did this cycle of problems start? When did all of this become a good idea?

So yes, the U.K. has more than its share of problems, social and otherwise. But at the same time the British strength of spirit is something precious and something we risk losing if we try to be Americans or Australians. We are British and our country is small, overcrowded, overcast and rainy. Everything is expensive. We will always be disappointed if we think it will be barbecues on the beach and shopping trips with Jennifer Aniston. My grandmother tells me a story (always the same one, about four million times so far) about when she lived in London during the Blitz. A shop she visited regularly had been bombed in the night, and the glass at the front was blown out. The sign which usually read "open" or "closed" had been changed to say "more open than usual!" This two-fingered salute to Hitler was a prime example of the ability of British people to not only endure the worst life can throw at you, but even make a joke out of it.

So don't try to live your life like you are on an episode of Friends. You're not that good-looking (especially these days), you don't live in a trendy New York apartment (which is good because you probably won't be killed by a man from Saudi Arabia wearing a red bandana) and you don't have friends who set you up with such tired, predictable jokes. What you do have (at least if you live in the United Kingdom) is a series of hilariously disappointing experiences, and an unending number of hilariously disappointed people (who are making a joke about how rubbish everything is), all of which can give you the strength and sense of humour to endure and enjoy the rich tapestry of life.

My Knees Hurt / More Educational Gems

2008-11-05T01:00:00.002+09:00

The Korean Autumn is pretty beautiful. There are colourful maple trees on the mountains, the air is crisp and the sky is clear. It's cold in the morning and evening but I'm enjoying being able to wear clothes without sweating blood. When you're not being harrassed by kids shouting "American" and "HI!!! HI!!! WHAT'S YOUR NAME?" every couple of seconds, Geochang can be a very peaceful place to live. However, one problem with the cold weather is it makes my knees hurt. I used to do a lot of long-distance running on hard ground, and I now have the knees of a 70-year-old. Before you suggest it, I already take glucosamine sulphate, cod liver oil and omega-3 fish oil supplements every day in an attempt to not click when I walk. Anytime I crouch down my knees both emit an earth-shaking "CRACK", which not only takes people by surprise but has been known to frighten away wildlife I am trying to photograph. Generally I take pretty good care of my knees these days, and I manage to nurse them through activities like football and chasing burglars, but in cold weather they sometimes ache like I am an arthritic war veteran. And unfortunately the mornings in Korea are currently pretty chilly, so chilly that if I drop my keys I will just go home to England rather than try to crouch down and retrieve them.

The textbooks I am advised to refer to for lesson ideas contain so many useful phrases for everyday life. I have shared some of them with you before on this blog, but they are so good I am keen to tell you some more. They are so versatile and realistic that you may find yourself using them in your daily business:
"Someday I'd like to take a vacation." This says a lot about how married to their jobs Korean people are. Also due to the government conspiracy, it is far too expensive to leave the country.
"I've lived overseas all my life." What??!! This is indicative of the Korean idea that the world begins and ends at the Korean coast. We don't call the place where you live "overseas", we call it "home"!
"What colour is your hat? Can you remember?" This one can only be used by people smoking marijuana.
"How much do you think that computer weighs?" See above.
"What size ring do you own?" Does anyone ever ask what size ring you own?
"I'm still single and my cousin is too." This one must be taken from a Middle Eastern textbook.

"As a matter of fact, I love you!" Very useful for that first English language interview.

"His friend was injured in an airplane crash." What are the chances of your friend ever (a) being in a plane crash, and (b) surviving to use this expression?
"What is the correct time please?" This is for those people who have compulsive liars for friends.
"The physician said smoking is harmful to my health." That crazy physician! What does he know? As I said before, most Korean men love to smoke. Foreign cigarettes might be harmful, but Korean ones certainly aren't!
"It was so warm and clean yesterday." Pardon?

"How about I set you up ith my sister?" Erm, does anyone need to use this expression? On top of the sheer inappropriateness of such a remark, the ironic thing is that it is more and more common for Korean families to have just one child, and do everything they can to ensure it is a boy, such as adoption or (shockingly) aborting female babies. The problem is leading to a shortage of women of marriageable age, and so more and more foreign brides are being imported from Vietnam, the Phillipines, Uzbekistan and a number of other financially lacking countries. So it is unlikely that anyone will be setting you up with their sister, I'm afraid.

More gems:
"Now tell me what you did at 10pm last night." I suppose this is for people who are going to work as detectives.
"Have you listened to both sides of the question?" I don't need to comment on this one.
"What are you planning to wear to the banquet?" My medieval suit of armour!
"If you work in a factory, you usually have to punch a clock." What? In the face?
"There is nothing more interesting than playing tennis." That's a rather subjective remark!
"Do you have any special interests other than your job?" If this is asked to a Korean, then yes- playing computer games, drinking cheap rice wine and smoking.
"Learning foreign languages is just an avocation with me." An avocation? What, one of those oily green fruits that has a big stone in the middle?
"He plays the piano for his own enjoyment." This is a kind way of saying he's rubbish at the piano!
"The hardest thing to learn is to be a good loser." Or a big loser?
"Honestly, I'm not a teacher. I'm just a student like you." Oh come on, that's so obscure and will never be used!

As a further bit of humour about the country I love living in and love to poke with a stick, you may be interested to hear that today the school had photos taken of all the third grade students, and many of the boys had made an effort to look their best- they were wearing foundation, eyeliner and lipgloss. I kid you not. Amazing.

"Korea is Famous For Having Four Seasons"!

2008-10-29T13:07:00.004+09:00

Autumn is here. I know because everybody I see says to me "it's cold" or "are you cold?". I think they assume I must be as I am still walking around without a jacket. During the day the temperature is mild, even warm, at least 18°C around noon. But at night it gets pretty chilly, though no colder than about 8°C. The summer here is very hot so I can see why people here would feel the drop in temperature. Actually I was really glad when I first noticed the cooler weather. Playing football (mostly on my own) and feeling the chilly air on my skin is like a little piece of home. It's not November yet but I have this strange Christmassy feeling. And it's not because I have been to Woolworths and heard them playing Christmas songs already. Actually I've heard Christmas is very low key here, and even for the large Christian community (40% of the population or thereabouts) it's more celebrated for its significance than as a big excuse to get deeper into debt.

Korean people take great pride in, well, everything. One thing they love to boast about is how many seasons they have. Whenever a conversation about weather comes up, I am informed knowingly that "Korea has four seasons!" As if it's unusual for a country to have four seasons. Seriously, I have been told this fifty or sixty times. I used to politely act surprised, but now I have heard this every couple of days I tell them that not only does the country I come from experience four, but most temperate countries have four! They look slightly surprised, but then inform me "Korea is famous for having the largest difference between the summer temperature and the winter temperature!" I question this. They say the temperature ranges from 35°C in the summer to -15°C in the winter. Well this isn't the biggest difference of any country. Parts of Russia, Canada, the U.S. and plenty of other countries experience baking hot summers and winters which are cold enough to rearrange the anatomy of a brass monkey. In a lot of countries in the Northern hemisphere (because most of the world's land is in the Northern hemisphere) the mercury goes between +35°C and -35°C in the space of six months. When I provide this information I am met with more surprise, but then informed (or should I say "corrected") that the geography textbooks here explicitly state that Korea is famous for having the biggest difference in temperatures. I ask them who wrote the textbook. Then the penny drops! Ahh, Korean people wrote the textbook. And Koreans are generally, as my Korean co-teacher himself admitted in a bizarre Koren proverb, "like frog in the well". In other words they are so isolated from the rest of the world that they don't really have any idea about what's going on elsewhere. The fact is, in most other countries, noone really knows anything about Korea. The main thing South Korea is famous for is, well, North Korea, ironically.

This ignorance to what lies beyond the water is not necessarily the fault of the everyday Joe Bloggs Korean. The whole setup here is such that people are taught that the best things in the world are Korean, that other countries are a bit backwards and evil, and that if you go abroad you won't be able to eat Kimchi and you'll probably die a painful death. People take pride in buying Korean products here and warn me against buying anything that's been imported. Travel to another country is incredibly expensive for an age when people from European countries and most Asian countries can fly from one side of their continent to another for half a day's wages. I was researching flights from Korea to neighbouring countries and found that none were available for less than US$1,000 (return) for one person. Typically the flights cost about US$1400 for flights to destinations less than 500 miles away, such as Japan, China or the Phillipines, a mere stone's throw away. This is more than the price of a flight from Korea to the U.K.!

It's almost certainly a big conspiracy of course. The government wants Korean people to take their holidays in Korea so that the money stays in Korea. In the last couple of years a Singaporean company was planning on setting up a budget airline (unheard of in Korea) called Tiger Incheon that would fly from the country's main international airport to domestic destinations and also cities in East and South East Asia. I was looking forward to this happening as it would allow for a bit of travel in my abundant time off. So I checked the web every month or so to see what the latest news was. Eventually I found the airline's launch had been postponed "indefinitely" since Korean "budget" (read "expensive") airlines (which charge ten times the price of those planned for flights by the foreign airline) had complained that it would encroach on their (swindling) business. In other words, it would provide competition and low fares, meaning the airlines in Korea would have to lower their fares as well. Everyone in Korea would be offered air travel at a fraction of the current price, which (apart from the carbon emissions issue) is a good thing. But the plug was pulled. I told some of the teachers at my school and they were shocked. They had no idea that this had all happened, and they also had no idea that air travel elsewhere in the world is so cheap. But then how would they? They are "like frog in the well".

So count your blessings that you can fly to Paris for £50, get mugged at the airport by an illegal Algerian immigrant who will end up in the U.K. (and probably mug you again), be insulted by a taxi driver on the way to your hotel (which turns out to be in an industrial estate 70Km from Paris), eat a microwave ready meal costing €17 (famous French cuisine), have your bag stolen by a Tunisian while taking pictures of the Eiffel Tower, get run over on the Champs-Élysées, be spat at by the man drawing caricatures, and probably have your poorly maintained Ryan Air plane spin off the runway at Stansted onto a motorway which will then be closed, delaying your drive home.

On second thoughts, best to follow the lead of the Koreans and stay at home.

Unless the Garlic is Already Peeled, We Throw It Away

2008-10-09T21:56:00.002+09:00

I realise that sometimes I treat this blog as a fun place to have a bit of a comical go at the country which has taken me in, paid me lots of money and given me somewhere to live for free. The thing is, it's easy to make jocular remarks about South Korean society as so much of it is completely bizarre when viewed through Western eyes. Yes, I know, I'm a foreigner, and I should respect the local culture. But come on- this place is hilarious. However, I'd like to publish one post where the underlying theme is actually presenting things in the very positive light they deserve.

So let's start with garlic. Elly and I try to cook at home as much as possible, but the problem is the ingredients we naturally use a lot of (for example butter, cheese, savoury bread, curry spices, beef mince, chicken, wine, anythng that doesn't taste of fish) are either completely unavailable, prohibitively expensive (like 400g of butter costing nine pounds), or terrible Asian attempts at the real thing (Korean cheese is like melted rubber and the wine here is like a sweet alcopop). One thing we can find is garlic. We always try to buy bulbs of it as it's the best way to keep it fresh. Many elderly Korean ladies sit on the street peeling garlic cloves with their bare hands from early morning until the evening, and all this so a couple of people will buy a bag of them for about 50 pence. So there's no shortage of freshly peeled garlic. However- what do you do if you want garlic that doesn't taste like old people? You can usually find unpeeled garlic bulbs at the local market here. But on our most recent visit we couldn't find them anywhere. After much searching and stepping over people sleeping on the floor, we found one sack of them outside a small booth. We asked for one pound's worth (in Korean money of course), and the lady just laughed at us. She started telling her friend what we were asking for, who in turn started laughing at us and pointing out that she had peeled garlic in a bag which we could buy. I told her that we prefer the unpeeled variety, to which she seemed amazed and confused. She handed us a few bulbs. I went to hand her the money, and she shook her head, then gave us a few more. I assumed this was because she felt the amount of garlic we were receiving was too little for the money we were paying. Once our hands were full of garlic bulbs, I tried to hand her the money but she laughed at us and refused to take the money. Smiling, she then gestured for us to go. As we walked away we could see her laughing at us with her friend. Now, I realise in one way this is just another example of the daily mockery we receive from local people for not being Korean enough. But in another way it is actually a great demonstration of the generosity many people have here. I know it's only some garlic, but you go to Waitrose or Tesco and see if they give you some for free. I assure you a fat man in a uniform will tap you on the shoulder and suggest you come with him to a private room and wait for the police to arrive.

I don't really understand why it happened. I guess maybe they don't really see the point in peeling it yourself. I suppose they just throw it away if a decrepit Korean war widow hasn't spent hours slaving away, removing every trace of skin with her withered, arthritic fingers.

Some interesting things happened to me this week. I've become sick of the cowardly Korean students who will only play football if the temperature is between 22 and 23 degrees, the humidity is 40-45% and Jupiter is in Saturn (or some other superstitious belief). I tell them that in the U.K. we play football whatever the weather, time of day or indeed intergalactic movements, but they don't want to know. So I've taken to going to one of the local schools and practising on my own. Elly says I look like a madman playing football against myself, trying to outsmart the other personality in my autistic brain. Or maybe I resemble a dog chasing a ball that he can't quite fit in his mouth, so it keeps rolling. Either way, I'm very happy doing it, and it's better than waiting another 47 days until those athletic Korean kids finish their Snickers, put down their Gameboys, open the curtains and venture outside rubbing their eyes. On Monday I was playing when I noticed a middle aged man cycling away on my bike. I was a little taken aback, as generally bicycle theft isn't as common here as in England. In Southampton I had two bikes stolen which were locked to lampposts. In Geochang bike theft is so rare that a lot of people don't even bother locking their bikes. Really. But it seemed unusual for a man with a flock of white hair to pilfer my cycle without the decency to ask. He even had the audacity to wave as he rode away. Of course, I knew he wasn't stealing it. He was just borrowing it. In fact he cycled into the school next door and I saw him park it. When he came back 20 minutes later (which I knew he would) he made a few hand gestures signalling that he couldn't be bothered to walk. Fair enough. I guess if people in England just borrowed stuff they needed and then gave it back it wouldn't be a problem. After parking my bike he came and joined me in a football game. He was a really good player. He told me he plays every day and is a teacher at that school. After a while he went inside and brought me some apple juice and chestnuts. The chestnuts weren't much use as they weren't cooked and I hadn't brought a stove with me. I don't know, maybe he expected me to bury them. Nonetheless, a kind gesture. I found out he is an elder at one of the churches in town. He said he knows the church I attend and also that I am a teacher at the school next door. You don't have much private business in Geochang. This was confirmed the next day when the history teacher in my school started telling me about the man I had been playing football with the day before (how did he even know?) He told me the man was a professional player in the '70s and used to play for South Korea. That explains why he had so much ability. Of course, in the 1970s, football in Korea wasn't particularly popular. A country which has spent decades trying to copy America was unlikely to adopt a game which the Americans think is a sport for women. Nonetheless, it occurred to me that what had happened was the equivalent of Kevin Keegan stealing your bike, then bringing it back and giving you some conkers and a Capri Sun. Brilliant stuff.

That wasn't the end of it. The next afternoon I was playing at the school again and the man arrived on his bike (not mine) and held up a paper bag. I wondered what might be in there, maybe a severed head or some goldfish or something. He opened it up and handed me a football kit. I was pretty surprised and asked if it was for me. He said it was and insisted that I start wearing it when I play football. Up until then I had been wearing a big pair of surfing shorts and a heavy cotton T-shirt. Not because I don't own a football kit (I do), but because it is ingrained in Western culture that if you wear the proper gear for any sport you had better be very good at it, or you are a big ponce and you probably shave your chest and stick your head on catalogue models to pretend it's you. Like those fat guys you see in cycling shorts and conical helmets riding their two thousand pound bikes on the dual carriageway. You know they are actually accountants with high blood pressure medication, but they dress like Lance Armstrong. For this reason, when I play football I prefer to wear clothes that I could also wear to a hobo reunion. However, Koreans are the opposite. They can't get enough of expensive, fancy kit for amateur sports. I suspect this kind, ex-South Korea international footballer probably thought "that homeless guy is a long way from home" and decided to treat me to a proper kit.

Part 3 of My Agonisingly Pointless Time Teaching at a Korean Summer Camp / Shh!!!! I'm Sleeping!!!!

2008-09-25T16:04:00.002+09:00

Today I'll finish telling you all about the joys of summer school, Korean-style, and also how much sleeping is a part of Korean work culture....

So the summer camp classroom lessons were a big waste of time. How about the one-to-one lessons? They weren't so bad, at least when teaching the kids who have spoken English before or have vocal chords installed. But about half of the kids were so unused to speaking that the one-to-ones became ones, i.e. me talking and them listening. This is actually quite tiring. It's like trying to have a conversation with a dead body. I tried a different approach, writing on some paper "what are your favourite animals?" and putting a list of numbers down the side. They responded well to this, listing all the animals they could name in English. I then did the same with their favourite foods, favourite hobbies and so on. This sufficiently ran down the clock of our painful time together. A few of the students actually spoke incredibly good English, which bemused me. I asked them why they were such good speakers; did their families speak English with them or had they lived overseas? No to both answers was the reply. They just didn't know why they spoke good English. Of course, this makes no sense. One evening I bumped into one of these students with his mother and grandmother. And they each spoke to me in excellent English. So inexplicably the student claimed he had no input of English, even though he clearly had. I have a few students at my high school who are the same. I'm sure they must have people speaking to them in English, or go to a private school or study lots at home. But again, they claim none of these to be true. Strange.

The biggest farce at this farce-ridden "English course" was the performance we had to give on the final day. The point of this was public relations. The parents were to be shown how well the students had been taught, thus ensuring they would hand over their money again the next time there is a "camp", Christmas/new year time. Every day of the three week camp we had to make the students practise singing the cheesiest song available, "I Have a Dream" by ABBA. But to make it even more cringe-worthy, it was a cover by Westlife, those iffeminate millionaires from Ireland. It's a horrible song. Imagine having to listen to it sixty times over a few weeks. We also had to help each student prepare a "speech" of a few lines, saying what a wonderful time they'd had and that their parents should definitely send them there again. Ridiculously we spent more time getting the kids to sing and prepare speeches about how good the teaching was than we actually spent teaching them.

The performance day was a joke. The two managers at the college turned up hilariously over-dressed; in full university professor robes, mortar boards and all. Now this wasn't a university, or even a "college" in the American sense of the word. It was a language college with very few credentials, and clearly no idea about teaching. Actually it is just a money-making operation which provides no benefits to the students aside from keeping them off the streets and making sure their families have no money to spend on anything useful. These clowns without makeup made long speeches filled with drivel, and were audacious enough to say in English that they promised the camp would be better organised next time. If that's the case then I hope they have contacted the chimpanzeee job agency because they'll need the finest staff to improve on their magnificent show. We then had to sit through sixty nervous kids standing on a stage saying in a foreign tongue all the lies we'd been forced to write for them. This was followed by an X-Factor style (how I despise such packaged human emotion) montage show of the kids being taught, eating junk food, laughing together and generally looking happy and stimulated (which they rarely were in the full three weeks). They should have shown a montage of all the times the kids were scowling, puking, fighting and complaining. At least it would have been honest. Whilst this power-point show designed by Walt Disney was being played, the kids and (enfuriatingly) the teachers, stood on stage and sung along to the terrible Westlife cover version. I wanted to be sick at the whole hypocrisy. Gratifyingly though, of the twenty or so parents who had bothered to come, most of them were scowling for the whole thing (now I know where their kids get their positive attitudes from).

I really had issues with so much of the morality of this camp, from the lying about how much one-to-one teaching the students would receive and the fake money which made them into beggars, to the idea of spending teaching time brainwashing the students into saying they had learnt new things. But without sounding like a supervisor at Auschwitz, I didn't have any choice; I was made to work there. And like most people and politicians, my righteous anger was tempered by being paid lots of money for a fairly easy job. So I felt ok in the end.

Yesterday I slept at school for the first time. Not that kind of sleep we all do at work, staring at the same email for 45 minutes and pretending to be studying it but really dozing. No, I mean I had full "eyes closed, head tilted back, mouth open, dribbling, dreaming about World War II Germans chasing me in a disused factory" sleep. It was quite nice actually. Why didn't I get fired? Well, two reasons. Firstly I was cunning enough to do it when all the other teachers were attending a meeting about sexual harrassment (I don't know whether it was showing them how to do it or how to not do it, they didn't say). So noone heard me mumbling or spontaneously waking up and shouting something about the garden being on fire. But secondly, and crucially, Korean people love sleeping at work. They positively live for it. Let me start by saying there is a bed in my school. I will say that again. A bed! What?! Is this a school or a hotel? It's actually quite a comfortable looking bed. I've not brought my pyjamas and hot water bottle to work yet, but I think I will soon. For now I have to make do sleeping at my desk. Thankfully my chair is like a first class aeroplane seat and reclines pretty nicely.

I needed the 30 minute nap I took yesterday as I had eaten about a kilogram of rice at lunchtime (if you didn't know already, rice makes you sleep like you are recovering from an operation). I was also tired from teaching evening classes for the previous two days. I hear no sympathy from you, you sorry individuals who work a full week, and rightly so. I don't deserve any. But I am blessed to be in Korea, a land where even the bosses sleep at their desks in full view of employees. Everyone claims they are just resting their eyes, but I can tell it's not true. When they open their eyes they are all bloodshot. If they are resting them they're not doing it very well. And their hair is all messed up, like they have just been camping. The reason is supposedly that Koreans work the longest hours of all developed nations. in a way this might be true, they certainly stay at work much later than they probably should, and some of them do mad things like sleep at the office because they were up so late working. But I have to laugh in the proverbial face of this big lie, because Elly and I have seen that Korean people being at work does not mean they are actually working. Mostly they are doing online shopping, playing computer games, watching football videos, playing online poker, or ay one of a host of non-work-related activities. They certainly aren't contributing to the robust Asian economy that keeps George Dubbya up at night. But also Korean people don't really believe in the whole "sleep at night and be awake during the day" thing. They are obsessed with computer gaming. It is contributing to a generation of fat pale spotty kids who squint when you open the curtains. If they aren't trying to kill an online dragon they are in karaoke bars drinking as much badly produced rice wine as they can manage before stumbling home, being sick in a river and getting to sleep around 3am. High school students in Korea sleep so frequently at their desks that many of them bring very comfy pillows to class. Really. If you tap them they don't awaken with a start, feeling embarrassed that their teacher has caught them sleeping at school. Sometimes they don't wake up at all. The ones who do wake up glare at you through bleary eyes and indignantly ask you why you woke them. I sometimes ask them how much sleep they get each night. They say three to four hours. I tell them that teenagers need at least eight hours. They seem bemused by this. Of course they don't need eight hours of sleep every night, since they supplement their rest with plenty of catnaps at school.

It's not just the students of course. They had to learn it from their parents. Most of the lessons I teach are done with a co-teacher, that is a Korean English teacher. The involvement of them varies from leading the lesson and asking me to explain stuff in English, right through to sitting at the back watching me teach the entire lesson. One of my co-teachers is particularly lazy and sleep-deprived, since he is addicted to playing online poker. Recently he was nowhere to be found, even though the school bell had just rung. I searched everywhere for him, but to no avail. I went to the classroom to see if he was there, but the students hadn't seen him. "Where is he?!" I said to myself, as if it would help me find him. I eventually went into one of the teachers' lounges (equipped with tv and bed) and found him fast asleep. I had to shake him just to get him to wake up. "We have a class!" I said. So he slowly picked himself up, and stumbled up the stairs at a snail's pace to the class. During the lesson I was walking from student to student checking their pronunciation of some sentences. I looked up and saw he was asleep again, this time at the teacher's desk at the front of the classroom! Amazing.

Installment 2 of THE BIG WASTE OF TIME (or "How Was That Summer Camp?")

2008-09-17T14:20:00.002+09:00

A fortnight since the last one, I am posting my weekly update.

Ok, so I know I said I would update every week, but two factors have interevened to stop me doing so. The first is I am very lazy and it takes me a long time to do anything. The second is I've had the last five days off work as the Koreans have been celebrating Chuseok, their thanksgiving holiday (unlike the American version, it has nothing to do with European pilgrims giving syphallis to the natives and taking all their land). This seems a very special time for Koreans. In fact it's so special that the supermarkets here fill up with the kind of rubbish boxed gift sets we only see in England at Christmas and Ramadan. Ok so we don't see them at Ramadan, but we probably will soon. Koreans like to buy gift sets of the finest produce available and give it to their loved ones. What kind of produce? Well, you wouldn't give something cheap and made of entrails to the people you love, would you? So that's why Koreans like to buy boxed sets of Spam, the finest pigs' ears in jelly known to man. Ok, so I know we won the war eating this stuff, but if you can afford to buy a new car every three years you can probably eat better meat than pig's rectum in a tin. I've read that its made of pork shoulder. But if that's true it's certainly the shoulder of the rear legs. However, the Koreans love the stuff. Love it. Hence the Spam gift sets that proudly adorn the shelves of supermarkets and department stores, like some kind of "mystery meat" version of a Christmas chocolate box:

Oh, how I wish this wasn't true. "Give your loved ones the bits of the pig carcas the crows wouldn't eat!"

Korean thanksgiving (Chuseok) is very special for me too, as rather than going to work I went to an all-you-can-eat pizza restaurant with Elly and tried to ensure the restaurant made a loss on the five pounds I paid. The fact that I didn't eat for 20 hours afterwards shows it was value for money. However i had to buy new trousers halfway through before coming back to the restaurant for some more food (it was good as the walk helped my food go down and I could stuff twice as much down my gullet).

Back to the pressing issue- why was "summer camp" such a hilarious, ridiculous, pointless waste of life?

The three weeks involved three main focuses: teaching classes, teaching "one to one" lessons and preparing for a music and speaking performance for the students' parents.

Teaching the classes was generally a struggle. Mainly because the students didn't want to be there and the college provided virtually no guidelines as to what they wanted us to teach. My first lesson was surprising. I arrived in my class to see the students gathered around a cardboard shoebox, screaming and kicking it. I asked them what was in the box. They replied "a snake". I thought this had to be a joke, so I asked them again. But they insisted the box contained a snake. I gently lifted the lid off the box to see curled up in the corner what resembled a snake, but might just be a toy. But then the snake turmed its head towards me and I realised it was a real snake. So I took the box out of the classroom, desperately trying to hold the lid on (there were convenient holes at the side for the snake to slip out at any point and bite me). I took it to a field on the other side of the road and set it free. It probably bit a farmer or something, I don't know. Not my problem. When I got back to the school I scalded the kids, telling them to never approach a snake. Those of them who were listening (about 10% of the group of 10) didn't seem very bothered. If you ask a Korean person they will probably tell you that eating kimchi (sour fermented cabbage) makes you immune to snake bites. They already tell me it stops them getting bird flu.

After that most lessons consisted of me trying to get the attention of a group of ten of the most spoilt, overweight, moaning, attention-deficit-disorder-suffering kids in Geochang. They were something else. Half their time was spent moaning that they were bored, or cold, or hot, or hungry, or sick. The rest of the time they were fighting with each other and crying about it. The main goal for all of them was to have a long breaktime so they could play Nintendo. Nintendo is of course from Japan. Koreans hate "the the land of the rising sun". They really despise it. I decided to play a hilarious (if you are bored with people hating other people) trick on the kids. I asked them if they like Nintendo. Of course they LOVE Nintendo. It is the only thing that keeps their attention for more than eight nanoseconds, and distracts them from their pursuit of more sugary snacks. I then asked them if they like Japan. "No, we hate Japan!!!" they said in unison. "Ah ha!" I said; "Nintendo is from Japan!". I smugly enjoyed their "rabbit in the headlights" looks for a moment, then sighed as their attention once again returned to their Nintendos. It was fun to point out the error of their ways, even if they could only process this thought for the time it takes to point their double chins back at their video games.

The college seemed to think that the best ways to keep hyperactive kids under control were to regularly ply them with sugary fatty snacks, and bribe them to behave by giving them photocopied money everytime they did something good (which was rare). The snacks were a bad idea. Halfway through the morning's classes, someone would bring a box full of chocolate cakes and strawberry or chocolate milk and place it on my desk. This was for the students to have about an hour later. Of course, having this in the room meant that their 10% concentration turned into 0% concentration, and they sat there with rumbling chubby bellies, salivating down their rubbery chins. Once they had their cakes (or "bread" as Koreans call it) and their glow-in-the-dark strawberry milk, they turned into monkeys and started behaving as such. Inevitably this ended in one of the kids hitting another, the other child crying and screaming, and me having to take them outside and threaten to take them to another teacher to be beaten (having a teacher childmind your kids and occasionally beat them is Korea's alternative to spending time with them).

At one point I wanted the children to calm down a bit so I set them a writing task. Nothing strenuous. A 50 word passage on their hobby. I thought this would work as they could write about something they enjoy. But you should've heard the moaning! My goodness. It was like I had taken their Nintendos and snacks and replaced them with a book and a bike ride. The thing about Korean students is they are taught in lecture style from birth, and never have to interact or think. Also, all their exams are multiple choice questions, so they never learn to be creative or think for themselves. So this massive essay (about seven sentences) seemed like a mountain to climb (which, in their state of fitness would seem like ten mountains to climb). The students were completely bogged down in the word count and din't even try to make any sentences. They would write something like their name, and then do a word count. One student decided to write a series of questions like "What is your favourite colour? I like red. What is your favourite animal? I like cows." and try to pass this off as their essay. I told them that was the kind of thing I would ask a 5 year old to do (bear in mind these kids were 12). The moaning continued so I told them they moan too much, and explained the word "moaning". I also told them that life isn't easy, but they didn't seem to appreciate this. The biggest obstacle they've had to overcome so far in life is getting into the family pack of biscuits. These kids really were spoilt.

This brings me onto the other "great idea" for controlling the children: photocopied money. We (the teachers) were instructed to hand out these fake Canadian $10 bills to each student who did something good. At the end of each week we were to count how many dollars each student had received, and they would receive incrementally less rubbish prizes the more they had earned. In an ideal world this might have served to make the kids behave, and at times I was able to bribe them to actually do a bit of work, but mostly it turned them from wealthy Korean kids into begging Cambodian street children. Really. Groups of them would grab me by the arm and scream "Money money! Give me dollar! Money! Dollar!" and not let me go. It was just like walking through the streets of Phnomh Penh or Hanoi. In fact I found it pretty horrible. I tended to not give the kids any money. Not because I'm cheap or wanted to spend it myself (unfortunately it was only photocopied so I couldn't). But because of the way it made them act, and also taught them that the quality of person they are is proportional to how much money they receive. I don't want to get all preachy here (actually I do) but they were really being taught a bad lesson at a young age. And they were a pain in the neck. I told them they didn't need money because they were children, and that money doesn't make you happy. But rather than ponder my lesson they ran off to the next teacher and tugged at his pockets like a pack of wolves attacking a man with a hamburger in his pocket.

How about the end of week prizes for the kids with the most money? They were a joke too. The prizes themselves were nice (sets of brightly coloured stationery with cartoon characters on), but the way the kids acted made the whole exercise pointless. I would ask the students to write how many dollars they had received that week on a board. They all lied of course. So I asked to see their money. Half of them didn't have any and said it was at home. This is actually quite likely as they failed to remember to bring even a pen to school each day. But as each kid wrote his total, the next one would make up an amount one more than the previous total. I accused one student of lying about his total (he had said an amount, then hesitated, then "corrected himself" saying a total that would have made him number one). So I changed his total back to the original number he said. When he recived his prize for coming third, he threw it across the room and sat with his arms crossed, furious at me. I was really shocked. I didn't bother getting all "there are kids in other parts of Asia who wouldn't get a present like that in their whole lives, let alone every Friday" as he wouldn't understand, believe me, or listen. But it was an example of how spoilt the kids are that he was happy to chuck it across the room.

I will finish telling this marvellous tale next week. Unless I can get any more time off work, in which case I will put it off like everything else in my life.

Summer Camp, Korean-Style! (Part 1 in a saga)

2008-09-05T06:01:00.001+09:00

I have just finished teaching at a three week "summer camp" in Geochang. I put "summer camp" in inverted commas as it wasn't actually a camp. In true Korean misuse-of-English-style, the camp was in fact just a summer school where everybody went home at 2pm! And was it taught in a field, a mountain, a lake area? No. There wasn't a tent in sight either. This is because it was taught at a college! Koreans love to take English (usually American) terms and use them to their own effect. A few months back, Elly and I bought a bag of cheese, labelled "cheddar". Although it cost about five pounds for 200g, we were delighted to be able to eat something familiar. Now, I didn't expect it to actually be from Somerset or anything like that, but at the very least I thought it might resemble cheddar cheese. However, imagine my surprise when we opened the packet to find a very tasteless mozzarella! It seems that, so far as Koreans are concerned, "cheddar" is a word which means "anything resembling cheese". Imagine the field day trading standards would have if this happened in England.

I found out that I was to teach at summer "camp" about four weeks before it was to begin. This was short notice in my opinion, but I later found out some of the teachers were told they were to teach there three days before the start! And the college even expected one teacher to show up who had resigned three months before the start of the camp! Bear in mind that the camp was run during the school vacation, which meant many teachers who had made plans to do things during this time had to cancel them. Holiday time in Korea isn't sacred like it is in the West. Many teachers come to school every day even when they don't have anything to do, like during the vacation period. So it's no big deal for them to cancel the holiday of Western staff. Elly and I had been looking forward to spending a week together at the end of the summer vacation period. Unfortunately I was "called up" to the summer camp and that plan was scuppered.

I tried to get out of teaching at the camp. I had been informed it was teaching 10-12 year olds, so was likely to be babysitting (and so it proved). I have experience of shirking my responsibilities. I received a letter in 2005 telling me I had to do jury duty. This would have meant travelling four hours a day by train and losing wages from my new job at Ahmad Tea. As an aside, don't believe the hearsay that you get your wages reimbursed if you do jury duty. You receive about twenty five pounds per day. So unless you are an illegal immigrant picking apples in exchange for, well, some apples, you won't get all your money back. I did some research on the web into how to get out of jury duty. I learned that you have to attend an initial day in which you are assessed as to whether you are suitable. Basically this means they check whether you have any prejudices of any kind. They also make sure you are of stable mind and not a member of any terrorist organisations or right wing political parties. So I signed up for the BNP and Al Qaeda. In fact one website informed me that informing the jury selectors I am a racist is guaranteed to get me out of jury duty ("I have the right to remain racist"). I don't know how you can bring that up in conversation, maybe tattoos would help. Other ways to get out of it include turning up drunk or after taking drugs (paracetamol?), or saying things that clearly mark you as unsuitable. I prepared my line: "I can tell just by looking whether someone is guilty or not". Apparently you're also unlikely to progress to the courtroom if you tell them "I have a friend who was a victim of a similar crime and I want to punish these people". Apparently it's possible to ask to have your jury duty postponed, and if you hit jackpot you might die before the later date comes around, thus beating the system.

Anyway, I managed to get out of jury duty. How? The form I had to fill in had a section saying "Are there any dates on which you would be unable to attend?" So in my biggest, spideriest writing, I scrawled in capital letters "ANY DAY WHEN IT'S IN WORTHING! I DON'T LIVE NEAR WORTHING. NOT IN WORTHING PLEASE." A week or so later I received a short letter along the lines of "Your name has been removed from the jury selection list". Clearly the scribblings of a mad man were enough to convince them "this probably isn't the best guy to decide whether others should be locked away".

All of this is a long-winded way of saying I tried to get out of working at summer camp (by asking if I could skip it) but it seems too many teachers were needed, and I had no choice. I was surprised to receive no information about the camp in advance (other than the start date, time and place). I arrived on the first day with eight other Western teachers to a college which had made no plans about what we were to teach the students. Another organisation (in Canada, strangely) had provided some textbooks and a couple of staff to help, but these cleared off on day two. The first two days were mostly arguments between the college and the Western teachers. These were all caused by the college's complete lack of planning or forethought (very Korean), and choice of making promises to the students' parents which we (the teachers) were expected to deliver on. Our agreed hours had not, it seemed, included time to prepare lessons. The college informed us we were expected to stay an extra two hours per day to plan classes. For no extra pay of course. Now, I don't want to sound like a spoilt white man (which I admit freely that I am), but what's no good is promising people certain working conditions and then expecting to squeeze more hours out of them for free. Also, the college had promised their customers (the parents) that each child would receive one hour per day of one-to-one teaching. This was mathematically impossible to fit into the working day. So the college then changed their "hour" into 35 minutes. So everyone was happy, including the parents who they'd taken money from under false pretences.

The thing that was apparent from day one of this "camp" was that it was a money making operation, and education didn't matter at all. This is somewhat disheartening when you have travelled halfway round the world with a wish to help people improve their English, and you are stopped by a group of chain-smoking, mucus-spitting Korean businessmen who trick people into paying a fortnight's salary so their beloved only children (extra-beloved if they are boys) can improve their English, make money and someday pay for their nursing home and diabetes medicine.

Part 2 very soon!

All Quiet on the Eastern Front

2008-09-02T10:28:00.001+09:00

Ok, so I know it's been about a month since I updated my blog. The last thing I was talking about was North Korea, and I know you are dying to know about the trivial minutiae that make up my life. Especially if your name is Remco, you live in Southampton and you have nothing to do at work (or at least don't do anything) and reading this blog is another way to waste away the minutes until you go home.

So what's new? I worked at a "summer camp" for three weeks. More on this in a few days or so. We are both back at work now the summer vacation has ended, so I have lots of free time to write my blog. Yes, it's that kind of job!

I have loads of different things to write about, so much so that I have enough to post a blog update every week for about the next two months. So many ridiculous and humourous things happen here that I can barely keep track of them all.

In the meantime you might be interested to know that we've just ticked over six months in Korea. So we are halfway through our contract. So am I like a Korean now? Let's look at the evidence:
1. Korean people hate the Japanese. I don't. I love Nintendo and sushi is surprisingly tasty.
2. Korean people don't wash their hands after going to the toilet. I try to make a habit of it.
3. Korean people try to be at work as much as possible, even if they aren't doing any actual work. I try to be at work as little as possible, even if I'm not doing any work.
4. Korean people, as a general rule, don't know anything about the outside world. I sometimes read the international pages of the BBC site (especially if there's something about a hot air balloon or a badger).
5. Korean people base their medical knowledge on superstition and old wives' tales. I just cross my fingers and hope I get better.
6. Korean people like their food cold, fermented and sour. I like hot pizza and strawberry yoghurts.
7. Korean people believe that your blood type dictates what you are good at, what you are like as a person and what you will do in the future. They also believe in star signs. I find it more useful to ask drunken hobos for advice.
8. Koreans will stand at a road crossing for up to five minutes waiting for a green man to tell them they can cross. Even if the road is completely empty. Such super-safety is probably a good idea as Korean people, in fact Asian people in general, aren't very good drivers (this is a subject I will discuss another day). However I enjoy jay-walking, or as we call it in England, "crossing the road before you die of old age".

So as you can see I'm not really very Koreanized. However I am enjoying this noble profession, known in the trade as "teaching English to kids who don't listen, don't want to learn and aren't even educated enough to hold a biro".

All for now. Will update in a few days, I daresay! Incidentally, if you look over to the right of this blog (near the top) you will see a couple of fun things I've added. One is a population of the world counter. It can only be so accurate of course as it would take ages to ask everyone in the world how many people have been born or died and then update it.... but gives a pretty good indication and updates every time you re-open the page (what a great way to pass the time). Another is a map of the world showing where in the world the sun is currently hining and where is currently night. You can click on it to see it full-size. Well, not full-size of course, as the Earth would not fit on a computer screen. But big enough to see it in more detail. The clouds on that map are updated every three hours, so if you're angry about the rain at least you can see that the French are also having to eat their cheese indoors today.

North Korea: Part 3 of 3

2008-08-05T18:07:00.001+09:00

Next on the tour was a bizarre diversion into the car park of the only hotel for foreigners in Kaesong. I think it was to impress us but it was hardly worth it. The outside needs a good lick of paint and I dare say the whole place was built when concrete was considered beautiful. Maybe they wanted to impress us with the air-conditioning outlets. Although they probably don't work, they're probably just for show, like so much in this country.

Next on the itinerary was the Sonjuk Bridge, a small stone construction dating back to 1216. Jong Mong Ju, a rival to the king of Korea, was executed here in 1392. There is a streak of red paint on the bridge. The tour guides tell me this is the slain man's blood. Many of the people there seem to believe this. Maybe it hasn't rained for six centuries.

The North Korean government has been guilty of hundreds of kidnappings of civilians from other countries. There was a need to train spies to speak Japanese in the second half of the 20th century, so rather than employ teachers, the government simply arranged to have Japanese people kidnapped and brought to the DPRK to do the job. In 2002 the government admitted kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens, including couples walking together on beaches in Japan and even tourists who were visiting Europe. Five have been returned safely after a quarter of a century in captivity, but the other eight died while in North Korea. One 13 year old girl was kidnapped by frogmen at her beach home in Japan (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/oct/16/northkorea.japan). 400 South Korean civilians, mostly fishermen, have also been kidnapped and remain unaccounted for.

The most incredible kidnapping of all was that of a South Korean film director. Kim Jong Il, a huge movie buff, was appalled by the state of North Korean cinema, so in 1978 he had Shin Sang Ok, a famous South Korean director, and his filmstar wife, kidnapped and brought to the North. There they were kept for eight years, directing numerous films and eventually escaping captivity when they were allowed to visit Vienna on holiday (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2821221.stm). Kim Jong Il allegedly has a collection of over 20,000 movies in his collection. In fact you could say he watches too movies. As with the Tokyo Disneyland Caribbean passport, North Korea's truth is stranger than any fiction.

By this point on the sightseeing tour my enthusiasm and interest in the tourist sites has wained, and I am far more interested in seeing North Korean citizens who are strolling past, watching me watching them. I wonder what they think of these foreigners strolling around their city? Are we as bad as their "Dear Leader" makes out? I am probably particularly intriguing, as one of three white people in the group of 450; the rest are South Koreans.

I speak to the nun some more. She tells me she has spoken to some of the North Korean women who sell food to tourists: "It's very strange. They look the same as us and speak the same language with the same accent, but it's like their ideas and thoughts are completely different." It's hardly surprising. Growing up in such an isolated place and having your entire education based on the self-glorifying writings of two despots is bound to influence your opinions.

Whilst waiting for the buses to take us home to the South, I get talking to one of the other two Westerners, an Australian who is about my age. He is on his way home from London and has made a three day stop in Korea. He tells me his feelings on what he has seen- he's also not particularly interested in what the North Korean Tourist Office wants to show us and is keenly observing life across the road from the gift shops. One of the North's tour guides comes and speaks to us. He asks where the Australian is from. I tell him and he looks confused, then says "America?" "No, Australia. South of Korea, South of Malaysia and Indonesia." I symbolise a big island. He shrugs. Geography lessons aren't part of the national curriculum here. Some of the tour guides have heard of the bigger South Korean cities, mainly from talking to tourists it seems. But our friend doesn't know Daegu, the third biggest city in South Korea. It's ridiculous. It's like a professional tour guide in England who's never heard of Aberdeen.

The buses take us back towards the border. I see some more depressing sites but my minder ensures I can't take any photos of them. As the bus pulls up at the border post I turn around to him and ask in Korean if I can take a photo of him. He inevitably tells me "no". Actually he looks genuinely sorry that I can't. Despite being my government-appointed minder for the day he seems to like me, and makes a big effort to say goodbye to me before we leave the country.

As we get off the bus to clear North Korean customs, we are told to take our cameras out of our bags. "This is strange", I think, but as I join the huge queues of tourists who are being scanned and searched, I see why. Remember what I said about only digital cameras being allowed? Well, if you can believe it, military policemen are taking people's cameras from them and looking at every single photo they have taken. Every single photo! There are 450 tourists and some have taken 100, 200, 300 pictures. This process takes a full hour. It wasn't enough to tell us not to take photos or supervise us all day. Now we are having our holiday snaps examined for anything which might make the Democratic People's Republic look bad. Unbelievable. The girl in front of me seems to have half her memory card deleted by a gun-carrying official. There's a brief moment of hilarity when mine are checked. Elly and I have a lot of spiders in our apartment and I've been taking pictures of one which is about the size of my hand. In the background you can see the apartment buildings adjacent to ours. The North Korean policeman looks at this photo and angrily starts pointing at the picture and pointing North towards his country. I laugh, and in my now customary bad Korean I point South and say "Apartment! My apartment! South Korea!" This seems to satisfy him. I'm surprised that he might have thought that I had somehow gotten into a tower block in the North and taken pictures of a spider while I was there. I'm also surprised that he doesn't recognise that the apartment blocks in the photo are modern, clean buildings, nothing like the Soviet-bloc monsters scattered around Kaesong.

A final, strangely poignant, clumsy event occurs before I leave the DPRK. A tour guide from the South and a military policeman from the North are arguing which aisle I can walk through to exit the building. Of course, it makes absolutely no difference. But it's another opportunity for citizens of the two countries to be belligerent to one another.

Starvation and oppression force thousands of North Koreans to try to escape to China. There may be as many as 300,000 North Korean refugees in China (http://www.ocregister.com/articles/north-korea-china-2091623-human-refugees). These people risk execution if they are caught trying to cross the border from North Korea to China. South Korea has offered citizenship to any North Korean who can make it to the South. Unfortunately for these people, China is refusing to release them and is in fact sending many of them back to North Korea where they face torture and imprisonment, with a possible death sentence to follow. Good old China, always interested in the value of freedom and human life. A quarter of the refugees are women, 80-90% of whom are captured by people traffickers and forced into prostitution and sexual slavery (http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200207/200207210015.html).

I've deliberately not talked about North Korea's "do they, don't they?" nuclear program. Not because I don't think it's important, but because too much media attention is focused on it and hardly any is on the humanitarian disaster that constitutes the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. I knew very little about all of this before I read up on it prior to my trip.

If you're interested in finding out more about North Korea I implore you to check out the Chosun Journal (http://chosunjournal.com/index.php), a site which brings together information and reports regarding human rights in the country.

North Korea: Part 2 of 3

2008-07-31T18:05:00.001+09:00

Back to the tour. City soon turned into countryside. North Korea has some beautiful scenery. In places it looks like a postcard from rural China (which borders the country to the North). We passed many tiny villages, each one a handful of houses surrounded by fields. Every road into a village has a soldier standing at the entrance. Why are they there? Because North Koreans are forbidden from travelling. Not just that they can't go overseas. They aren't even allowed to leave their village without special permission. Their whole lives will be spent in and around the same few acres of land, knowing only the same handful of people. The gun strapped to the soldier's waist shows the seriousness of this law. Imagine being shot for walking to another village. That's the reality in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

After an hour we reached the Pagyon Falls, a beautiful 37m high waterfall surrounded by forest and scattered Buddhist temples. Of course, being North Korea, these temples are not used. Religion is strictly forbidden. The only "God" recognised by the government is Kim Jong Il, the ruler of the country, who is treated as such by law. A man dressed as a Buddhist monk poses for photos outside one of the temples, then leaves the area in a Hyundai once us tourists are leaving.

Anyone daring to practice religion faces persecution. Before the division of Korea, the North's capital, Pyongyang, was known as the "Jerusalem of Korea" and had the largest Christian following in all of Asia. The current regime will have none of this. North Korea's constitution states that everyone has the right to religious freedom, but refugees report that in practice this is not the case. Official churches exist but these are simply for show. As such, huge numbers of underground church groups exist. Unfortunately these people run the risk of torture, imprisonment, hanging, or being burned if they are discovered . Mass executions of these believers are common (http://www.chosunjournal.com/chasing.html).

The waterfall and temples are some of the things I am allowed to photograph. The government is so concerned that the outside world will see what a disgrace and humanitarian disaster the country is that they won't let you take pictures of anything which doesn't make the place look good. Close to the waterfall are a couple of drink and food stands. They are manned by two North Korean women dressed in traditional Korean clothes. Several of the tour guides stand next to them whilst the tourists are around. This is to ensure we don't talk to them except to order something. It would be terrible if they were to hear anything negative about their wonderful country, or anything that suggests the outside world is in fact better than the situation they are in. At each of the tourist sites we go to, the drinks and food stalls and gift shops are supervised by North Korean tour guides for this same reason.

I find myself walking back to the bus with one of these tour guides. He speaks no English and I speak very broken Korean so it's difficult to hold any sort of meaningful dialogue. Nonetheless, we find out we are the same age, he is from (and has never left) the area we are in, and he has no wife. I imagine this may have something to do with the long military service every North Korean (male and female) has to do- at least six years. 20% of North Korean men aged 17-54 are in the armed forces.

Next it is time to head back into the city. We drive first to a restaurant where we are served a banquet of Korean dishes, 15 per person. Each one is meticulously prepared and beautifully flavoured. In fact, the best Korean food I've had is that lunch in North Korea. This is typical of the tourist experience. Millions of people in the country are starving, but if the tourists are well fed surely they will believe things aren't that bad. After such a wonderful feast we are invited to peruse the gift shop. It is a fine collection of North Korean ginseng, locally produced alcoholic beverages and propaganda books written by the country's two "Great Leaders". These books (all 40 or so volumes) are the textbooks for the entire nation. They describe thousands of incidents in which the previous leader and his son visited people who were struggling, such as farmers who couldn't grow anything or fishermen whose nets were always empty and told them just how to sort themselves out. The stories say that these two men visited every single village in North Korea and solved everyone's problems. It's impossible of course; you would have to live a hundred lifetimes to have time to help everyone in a country that size. Also, nobody is an expert in everything. But this Stalinist personality cult teaches the populace that these two ordinary men are superhuman. I am browsing through these volumes with great interest, considering how many to buy, when my South Korean tour guide informs me I will be unable to bring any of these books back into South Korea. This is because they are considered propaganda for the North (the official website of North Korea is also blocked in South Korea) and it is also a fun way for the South to say "whatever you do we will do back"- referring to the fact that South Korean publications are illegal in the North. I consider buying them anyway and putting them at the bottom of my bag when I go through customs again when I am approached by a South Korean Catholic nun who is on the tour.

She speaks excellent English having spent time in the Philippines as a missionary. She asks me what I think of North Korea. I tell her (quietly) that I think the North Korean people are very poor and unhappy. Instantly (almost uncannily) one of the North Korean tour guides comes and stands next to us with a stern face. It is obvious why so we change the subject. Nonetheless he stays standing next to us for the duration of our ten minute conversation, scowling the whole time. Eventually I take my leave and go and buy a bottle of North Korean blueberry wine for Elly. It's not until I get home that I realise the "wine" has an alcohol content of 40%. Not a wine then but a strong spirit which is probably mostly nail varnish remover. Also, the more I have thought about it the more I think drinks made in North Korea for tourists may well be poisonous. It's not like they need to worry about return customers (I can't exactly take it back to the shop) and North Korea really is that crazy a place (see terrorism, kidnappings, etc. later on). So it's now sitting on out kitchen table, unopened. If you want it let me know.

I find out later that, as soon as I walked away from the nun, the tour guide aggressively demanded "what were you talking about?" She replied vaguely that it was nothing. We certainly weren't pointing out what an oppressed, broken, starving people the North Koreans are. After leaving the gift shop I get back on the bus and am surprised to have the tour guide follow me and sit behind me. He pretends to be my friend but I know exactly what is going on. I've overstepped the line and I am to be allocated a minder for the rest of the day. Clearly, my white skin points out my allegiance to George Bush. He spends the rest of the day watching me like a hawk, whether sitting behind me or observing me from a distance at tourist sites, making sure I don't take any photos or express any opinions about anything. The whole situation seems humourous and ridiculous, but also incredibly frustrating and reminds me of being at school, not being an adult who has paid to come to this awful country. It doesn't matter to me; in the evening I will go home and be free again. But every North Korean citizen has to live with this treatment (and a thousand other things which are a million times worse) their entire lives.

North Korea has gulags and concentration camps in the style of the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Refugees from the country tell of the horrific conditions there, and that there may be 200,000 North Koreans held (about 1% of the entire population). People are imprisoned there for even the most simple political statements. Men, women and children of all ages are held there, from grandparents to babies. Kim Jong Il's law dictates that three generations of a "dissident's" family may be held. No trials or appeals are allowed. People are simply taken from their homes and imprisoned. Gas chambers are used to kill large numbers of prisoners (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/feb/01/northkorea). Executions, working people to death, torture and starvation are routine. Abortions are inflicted upon pregnant women in the gulags, although a lack of surgical equipment or staff usually results in forced abortion through injecting women with salt water. Babies which are born are suffocated or kicked to death. Testing of biochemical weapons on people results in horrific, painful deaths reminiscent of Nazi-treatment of Jewish prisoners. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3071466/). In fact, many things about North Korea draw comparisons to Nazi Germany. The Holocaust may have ended but people are still being tortured and murdered in the same way, in North Korea and other countries. And Stalin may have died decades ago but his spirit lives on in Kim Jong Il's rule.

The final installment will be here in a few days...

North Korea: Part 1 of 3

2008-07-27T02:40:00.001+09:00

North Korea is one of those countries that you only have to mention and people think of impending nuclear war and "The Axis of Evil". The thing about North Korea is that it is such a crazy place that it's easy to think the things you hear are myths. Furthermore, the media concentrates mainly on the country's nuclear program while mostly ignoring the real issue- the plight of North Korean citizens. Starvation, imprisonment, torture, murder and oppression are daily occurrences in the country. I've included web addresses as sources for some of the things I've talked about. This isn't to prove I'm not lying, it's because I hope I can stimulate you to read more on the subject. I hope this isn't too depressing a post compared to my usual informative, unbiased cultural commentaries (!). But I visited the country this week and have been so appalled by what I've seen and read that I feel more people need to know what's going on there.

North Korea's official name (according to the North Korean government) is "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea" (DPRK). As with every country which includes "democratic" as part of its title, it is anything but. There is zero democracy in North Korea. The country has been ruled by the same two men (Kim Il Sung and then his son Kim Jong Il, the current leader) for 63 years.

Kim Jong Il has ruled North Korea since 1994 when his father, Kim Il Sung, died having been in charge since 1948. After his death, Kim Il Sung was appointed "Eternal President" of the DPRK. Therefore North Korea's current head of state has been dead for 14 years. Amazing stuff. Kim Jong Il is the actual leader (since he is alive), but does not hold elections and never will. A cult of personality exists for both leaders. North Koreans are taught in school that the two leaders are not mere mortals, in fact they have God-like qualities. It is a criminal offence to speak against the leaders or the regime. Concentration camps exist for those who dare to do so. Whenever in the next few decades Kim Jong Il spins off this mortal coil, control will have to be passed to someone, possibly one of his sons. His eldest son is likely to be out of the running as he has fallen out of favour. This is because he was arrested in Tokyo while travelling on a forged Dominican passport, trying to visit Tokyo Disneyland (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1310374.stm). So a pale North Korean man tried to convince customs that he was a black Caribbean man. The son of one of the world's most despicable dictators wanting to meet Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. You couldn't make this stuff up.

My trip to North Korea begins in Seoul, the capital of the South. A 90 minute bus journey takes me from the skyscrapers, multi-million-dollar business premises and Olympic stadia of Seoul to the border with the North, a deserted rural area with just a few innocuous buildings. For much of the journey we drive next to the Han River- significant as its estuary separates South Korea from North Korea, before the river runs through Seoul. As you can imagine this is a hugely important strategic feature, confirmed by the 10-foot high barbed wire fences running its entire length, and the military towers manned by pairs of South Korean soldiers every half mile or so. At one point you can see North Korea on the other side of the river, so the security is worthwhile.

How did North Korea come about? Korea was one country from the 7th Century until the end of World War II. In 1945 the surrender of Japan allowed the Soviet Union to control the Northern portion of the country and the USA the Southern part (the country was divided at the 38th parallel and more or less has been so since then). Of course, whenever those two got involved in the same projects there was bound to be trouble, and so it panned out. The Soviets and Americans disagreed on how to run the country, and helped establish two opposing governments in 1948. They then withdrew their forces and hoped for the best. Unfortunately on 25th June 1950, the North Korean People's Army crossed the border with a view to reuniting the country under their ideologies. Thus the Korean War began. It had a lot in common with World War I- a bloody mess which saw land change hands between the two sides for years, descending into trench warfare for most of its duration and resulting in millions of civilian deaths. By the end of the war on July 27th 1953, the border between the two countries was in approximately the same place, underlining the futility of the conflict.

The South Korean border office is a large, modern, air-conditioned building you'd be glad to work in. 450 tourists were in my group, twelve coaches full. Apparently there are normally fifteen coaches but two weeks ago a South Korean tourist was killed by soldiers in the North after she strolled along a military-controlled beach at 5:00am. My school was originally taking a group of 27 teachers; after this incident there were just three of us willing to go.

We are each allocated press-style ID cards on string that we are to wear around our necks for the duration of our time in the North. We are repeatedly told NOT to take them off or lose them. I decide to heed this advice. Wearing the cards is the difference between being arrested and thrown in jail or going home for dinner tonight. We are also told all the rules we must strictly adhere to whilst in North Korea. These are:
1. NO PHOTOGRAPHS (this is written in red capitals) except at designated tourist sites. I don't realise at the time how strictly this will be enforced.
2. No negative comments about North Korea's government, people, politics, or most importantly leaders (I find out later what happens if you open your mouth).
3. Absolutely no attempts to speak to or interact with North Korean civilians. Don't under any circumstances attempt to approach any citizens.

Furthermore, there are certain items we are forbidden from bringing into North Korea. These are:
- Mobile phones. Mobile phones are banned in North Korea. Well, they aren't so much banned as noone has ever had one.
- Laptop computers. There is no access to the internet for North Korean people. Only the government can go online. 99.99% of people don't even know what the internet is.
- GPS devices or maps with South Korea on. Just in case North Korean citizens learn about the outside world.
- Binoculars. In case you can see even more of what is going on in this terrible country.
- Printed material of any kind, but in particular newspapers or magazines from South Korea. Again, this is to keep the North Korean people from knowing about the outside world.
- "Film cameras". At the time I believe this to be movie cameras. I later realise it does in fact mean cameras with traditional, pre-digital-camera rolls of film in them. Like you used to take to the chemist to have developed. Can you guess why you can't take these into North Korea? I will tell you the answer later.

Next we climb aboard our tour buses and drive 2Km North to the North Korean border post. The building is filled with the blaring racket of a traditional North Korean song ("Bang-gap soop-nee-dah"- nice to see you) being played on loop. We are directed where to walk and stand by what at first glance appear to be school boys in uniforms that are too big for them. Then I realise these are no boys- they are fully grown North Korean men, all of 5 foot 4 inches in military uniform. The complete lack of nutrition in the North has played its part. But these are the lucky ones. Soldiers here will never starve to death, unlike millions of other North Koreans. Almost a quarter of the North's budget goes into the military, a sickening amount given the country's complete lack of food or medical supplies.

After being searched again for anything which might corrupt this "socialist paradise" (or "Stalinist nightmare") we are on our way. The first mile or so into North Korea the place seems decent enough. New buildings are scattered around. However, these are owned by South Korean companies which employ North Koreans to produce goods for the South. These North Korean workers receive about 5% of the South Korean wage for a factory worker. So if they lived 10 miles to the South they would be earning twenty times as much, and probably not going to bed hungry every night. They also have to pay 30% "state tax" to help keep the military going. The area where South Korean companies are allowed to have factories only covers about a square mile. After this you know you are in North Korea as you are suddenly surrounded by buildings which were surely built before the Korean war. Five-storey concrete monstrosities covered with faded enamel paint provide the landscape of Kaesong City. Many of them have broken windows, some have their sides missing. North Koreans wander around or cycle. It is clear that they are smaller than their South Korean relatives. Noone in North Korea is allowed to own a car except for the political elite. So the wide roads are empty but for tour buses and a few military vehicles. Of course, even if car ownership was allowed, noone could afford to run a car. This is a place where, to survive, children have to eat snakes and rats and whatever else they can find in the fields.

Malnutrition and starvation are huge issues in the North. It is thought that 3.5 million people may have died during Kim Jong Il's 14 year reign. Surveys by aid agencies suggest 40% of children under the age of 6 show chronic malnutrition (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6069606.stm). You only have to look at the size of North Koreans compared to their South Korean cousins to see how little food is available. The rest of the world recognises this and sends food and money, but as feared by anyone giving charitably to a dictatorship, needy people are not receiving any of the benefits (http://www.msf.org/msfinternational/invoke.cfm?objectid=335007FE-29B7-4E69-B88BBDF
0379FFE1A&component=toolkit.article&method=full_html&CFID=5632571&CFTOKEN=5282
9030). Instead the money is going to the government and political elite, who drive around in Mercedes while people dig up roots to eat. Where is the food aid going? That's anyone's guess. Maybe it's going to the favoured few. Or maybe, and equally as likely, it's being repackaged and re-exported as "produce of North Korea".

I have split what I've written into three to give you a chance to read it all without falling asleep. The next installment will be here in a few days. In the meantime, you can see the photos I WAS allowed to take at the following link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=25343&l=0065a&id=515139243

What it is to be a Foreigner / Dream Jobs for Koreans / YouTube Users are Funny

2008-07-15T16:06:00.001+09:00

We've been in Korea for four and a half months now. It's gone quickly for sure. One of the things about being in a small, traditionally farming-based city like Geochang is that you really feel like a foreigner. This is actually an amazing, enlightening experience at times. At other times you despair at how ignorant and closed-minded people can be about the outside world. One thing about this place is that the younger generation, say people of about 30 or below, are very clued-up on the world, and seem quite aware that the rest of the world might not eat fermented cabbage and pigs' intestine for a treat. Most people older than that don't realise, and this can make for some humourous, and some mind-numbing experiences. For better or worse, people under about 30 seem interested in Western culture and embracing its values. This is a mixed blessing I know. The older generations in this country (and certainly their parents and grandparents), fought the Japanese and then the new "enemy", the North Koreans (who of course were their compatriots until the 1950s), had to fight off starvation and generally struggle in every way imaginable. So it's easy to see how the under-30s would find the idea of having more food than you can possibly eat and more money than you should be able to spend (although we manage it) very appealing. However, I fear that Western culture is often seen through MTV-tinted spectacles. I often try to inform Koreans that in the U.K. people are, on the whole, fairly miserable. Think about it. We spend our whole lives driving to jobs we hate, work with people we complain about, working in concrete monstrosities, occassionally glancing out of the window at the rain and traffic which we will have to face again when we go home to our tiny, million pound flats, and watch the news which tells us foreigners are stealing the jobs we don't want to do anyway, and somebody you've never met will steal your identity, eat all your yoghurts and generally give you a bad credit rating. Then we can watch TV for the rest of the evening, enviously complaining about the talentless celebrities we've elevated to a pedestal of royalty, then take our blood pressure medicine and go to sleep, dreading another lousy day. Ok, so some of what I've just described may be a generalisation but there's certainly some truth in it, and ultimately in the United Kingdom a large proportion of people are a lot less happy than the poorer parts of the world would believe. I have told many people on our Asian adventures that just because we are rich in the West doesn't mean we have happy lives, but sometimes the ears these words fall upon are deaf.

Korean people in their 40s or above seem very set in their traditional ways, and that includes informing you that their culture is much better than yours, everything was invented in Korea, the Japanese are the devil, the English language is useful but not as good as Korean, fermented food is much tastier than fresh food, praying to stars will make your life better, leaving a fan turned on in a room with the doors and windows closed will kill you, I could go on.....
And (I love starting sentences with the word "and", I never understood why teachers get so mad about this) it's the over 40s who really make us feel foreign. Elderly Koreans look at us like we are from another planet (understandably- we may be among the first 20 non-Koreans they have ever seen). In fact the last foreigner they saw may've been a Japanese man with a bayonette and a samurai sword. Some people don't seem to understand that we might speak another language. Amazingly they do that thing I thought the British invented- if someone foreign doesn't understand you, speak slower and louder! I speak a good few Korean words now, something like 700 I would estimate, but of course I'm very slow and have to hear things phrased in a certain way (I've only been learning Korean for less than half a year). However, many people assume that if you can speak some Korean that you can speak the entire Korean language! So imagine a tourist in London quoting from his phrasebook "where is the station?" and you replying to him"well, that's an interesting question, it'd take more information on your part for me to gather which particular transportation terminal you are referring to". That's the kind of thing people do to us. Elly has generally been put off learning Korean altogether by the sheer ignorance of her colleagues. On the few occassions that she does speak some Korean, her co-teachers, even the English teachers, start repeating it to each other and laughing. Saying something like "Listen to that idiot! She can't even pronounce Korean words properly!" This of course isn't the best way to encourage people to try to speak your language. I suppose in the U.K. we are so used to hearing different accents and people from other countries murdering our language, that we almost always understand and don't find it hilarious. But as South Korea never found its way onto the tourist trail, we are a bit of a novelty to the people around us. Many of my co-teachers, including two of the three English teachers, had never spoken to a foreigner before. In other words, they hadn't even met someone from China or Japan, let alone England. So to have us whiteys attempting to speak Korean must be fairly strange for them, almost like if you got hold of one of those voice-box-computers Steven Hawking has, and made it say really funny things like "I enjoy chasing squirrels" in a Steven Hawking voice. Because of this realisation it's easy to forgive them, but it's obvious that many people here are fairly closed-minded about the idea of outsiders.

As usual I have gone off on a tirade and now have to defend the very things I was just mocking. So here goes: Many many Korean people really go out of their way to make life easier for us when they see how incredibly foreign we are. And they are as proactive as bees, so if something needs to be done they'll do it there and then. You know what a pain it is when you have to get a new bank card? What a nightmare. I was once cursed with a job at Specsavers in Southampton. Honestly, it was a terrible job. Don't say all that rubbish Elly says about counting my blessings. There weren't any. I'd rather have worked in an Indonesian sweatshop sewing Umbro clothes. To top it off, my wallet was stolen by a homeless man. Of course all my cards were in the wallet. I used to bank with Natwest and HSBC at the same time, which made life extra difficult. Actually, I could have just banked with Natwest and life would've been difficult. They insisted on waiting two weeks before dispatching my new card. Once they did this they would only send it to the branch closest to my parents' house. They wouldn't forward it to the branch in Southampton. So I didn't get home to Sussex to get that card for about six weeks, by which time they had destroyed the card "for security reasons" (what does that mean?). So I closed the account. HSBC on the other hand just sent it to the branch of my choosing, and took just five days. Much more reasonable. But when I got to Korea I realised something- the banks can just make the cards in the branches. They do it here. Five minutes after requesting your new card it's in your hand. Why can't U.K. banks do this? No wonder everyone's on drugs. They probably had to borrow cash from a drug dealer as they were waiting for their new card, and things went from there.

I recently did a class activity with my first grade (16 year old) students. They had to think of as many occupations as possible and write them on the board. As you'd expect from a load of kids who spend most of their time playing video games and the rest of the time avoiding sunlight, there were some crazy answers. Here are the best:

Headhunter
Mafia
Japanese Mafia
Not have job
Murderer
Killer
Exorcist
Food stylist
Octopus
Santa
Snowman
Grand master
Trickster

What? Octopus? Is that a job? And snowman? There's quite a morbid theme as well, what with exorcist, murderer AND killer, headhunter and two types of mafia (Japanese and non-descript). I'm interested to see what these kids grow up to be.

I'm currently looking into using some English language learning videos from YouTube to make learning more interesting for students. Isn't the internet incredible? Incredible at stopping me from working, anyway. YouTube is a fun site if you read the comments people write under the videos. I guess everyone uses the internet these days, so you have the opinions of intellectuals and also crazies, in all their glory. Some of the comments I found about the English lesson videos were:

"whats a computer? i never heard of such a thing, my cousin leighton used to think it was a chicken. "

"The interweb eh? I heard about this, I don't think its going to take off."

"Hahaha! Those two dont have any talent whatsoever 4 acting. They act like all polish movie actors and actresses, very artificially. Yet in poland they would surely get some roles in a movie."

"at the beginning, it shows a black table. that table is from IKEA. lol. and as you can clearly see it was poorly assembled, just like this video. "

"This was gay"

"How sterile is this conversation...YOU WILL NOT LEARN ENGLISH THROUGH THESE VIDEOS!!!"

"I am not an English man, but I really hate the British accent."

"It's very interesty."

And my favourite:
"I have self taught myself English through this marvellous video. I didn't speak a lick of English before seeing this video."

Ha ha ha ha! "I didn't speak a lick of English before seeing this video." Bear in mind that the video was a four minute conversation about baking bread, and you will realise this is surely written by a bored English person, probably in South Korea, killing time till they can go home. There are quite a few of us here, each clinging to those Monty Python-esque moments of humour which keep us close enough to home without having to be there.

It's Picture Time / Pointless Exams / Why English Textbooks Should be Written by English Speakers

2008-07-07T17:00:00.001+09:00

You might notice that I don't put many pictures on this blog. However, I have loads to show you. Here are some links to click on if you aren't on Facebook (i.e. you don't really use the internet that much, are the sort of person who goes to a library to find information, or looks in the yellow pages for things). After you have looked at them, don't go and walk the dog or talk to your neighbours, stay indoors on the computer and read the rest of my blog entry (I promise it's as bitter and racially insensitive as ever). Here are the links:
March 2008: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=15545&l=3d0bf&id=515139243

April 2008: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=18504&l=4db16&id=515139243

May 2008: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=23369&l=d01e0&id=515139243

I will upload pictures from June soon. Probably in August.

The school exam period has just finished. In two weeks it will be the summer vacation (or holiday as we speakers of the Queen's English call it). A lot of the students in my school don't seem to realise this is a good thing. Maybe it's because they all had lobotomies when they were younger. One of my co-teachers asked me to examine an exam paper he was going to set for his students. As I was perusing it I noticed the hard questions were worth one or two points each, but the easy questions were worth five points each. And these easy questions were REALLY easy. For example, read a paragraph, then do a question where you have to fill in the gap with the answer from a, b, c, or d. The correct answer is the same as the paragraph, word for word. In other words, only a blind person would fail to get the five marks. On the other hand, the questions that were difficult and required a modicum of English ability, only scored the students one or two marks. If you are lazy and don't want to think this through, I will explain it for you. It means students who are excellent at English will potentially score only a tiny bit more than students who are terrible at English. This is the best case scenario. The worst case (and actual) scenario is that students who couldn't order a Big Mac in English might score more than students who can hold a detailed conversation in English. I questioned him about the logic of this. he told me "I want the students to feel encouraged and that they can do well in English". This is a nice idea, but it's also completely naive. It creates a situation where students who have spent most of their English lessons asleep or carving soap statues receive a mark of about 92% and think they don't have any work to do. It is a completely useless gauge of a student's actual English ability. I suspected this before the exams, but today it was confirmed to me when my best student in that grade came to me and told me he received a mark of 86% in his English exam. "Fantastic!" I told him. But he was actually really upset, because most of the other students had received marks of 90% and above. In the last set of exams there was a similar situation. This situation is a big joke. In that particular grade, noone wants to learn English. I teach an evening class for them every Tuesday, and I have two regular attendees. Two. And, you'll like this- one of those is another teacher! So in a year group of 150 students, one comes to my evening class. This is in a country which is (supposedly) desperate to learn English. The one student who comes is the student I mentioned before, and his English ability is excellent. We have conversations everyday and he can talk fluently on a number of topics. But according to this ridiculous exam he is worse than the other students, the ones who stare at me like a cow in the headlights when I say "how are you?". I asked my co-teacher if the marks from these tests go to the universities, and he confirmed that they do. I also asked if other teachers set such ridiculously easy questions, and he said that on the whole they don't. This underlines a huge problem in Korea. Having each school set their own exams is of course immensely unfair, and will result in students who had to draw a line to pass their English exam receiving a place at university at the cost of someone who can actually pronounce "fried rice".

I am currently perusing the textbook which I have been instructed to teach to my first grade students. It contains a number of sentences which at best seem a little awkward, and at worst are plain bizarre. The magical world of Korea never fails to light up my day! See for yourself what my students are expected to learn:
"It doesn't smell fishy"
"This soup tastes like dish water"
"This doesn't taste as good as it looks"
"The secret to Korean food is experience cooking"
"I know a place that will knock you out"
"The bangs need to be a little shorter"
"How long do you want the bangs?"
"I'm afraid of bleaching my hair"
"I'd like a magic perm"
"Medication for diarrhea, please"
"I want some tranquilisers"
"Check under the hood? Open your hood please"
"He's a sly old fox"
"He's so capricious"
"I can't carry a tune"
"Why do you exchange the cups of wine?"
"My brother's family visited my family"
"I had a splendid holiday"
"I am a big-time movie buff"
"Movies are fun and entertaining"
"Most programmes are completely a waste of time"
"What is your fastest dish?"
"I accept your invitation with great pleasure"
"I'm hanging up now"
"The food was yummy"
"I can't find the escalator to take me downstairs"
"I see double"
"I have keratitis"
"I have xerophthalmia"
"I have chronic rhinitis"
"Don't blow your nose too hard"

You will be pleased to know I have to explain the meaning of every one of these sentences. Some will be possible with a bit of acting, like "I can't find the escalator to take me downstairs". Others will require a bit of medical improvisation, such as "Don't blow your nose too hard", "I have chronic rhinitis" and "Medication for diarrhea please". But a handful are plain impossible. How do you explain to 30 kids who barely speak any English the meaning of "Make the bangs a little shorter", or "I know a place that will knock you out"? In fact, what do they even mean?! As for the escalator question, I can just picture a load of Korean people walking into a wall repeatedly, like some kind of broken robot, wishing they'd learnt the English for "I can't find the escalator".

2008-06-18T22:07:00.001+09:00

I suppose it's time to update my blog. It's like brushing my teeth; I mean to do it for days but keep putting it off, and then days become weeks. Still, like a burst of oral hygiene, here are my latest observations on the magical world of Geochang, South Korea:

Our Korean hosts have many interesting theories. Actually, "interesting" is a diplomatic term. "Insane" or perhaps "based on something a parrot told them while they were smoking opium" would be more appropriate terms. I will give you an example. Korean people (and half the world) are concerned about the threat of bird flu. However, Koreans inform me with great confidence that if I eat kimchi (the fermented cabbage I like so little) I am immune to bird flu. This seems a little unlikely. I am experimenting by not cooking my eggs and making sure all the chicken I eat is a little green, but as yet I have experienced few respiratory problems. But if I manage to steer clear of avian influenza, I don't think it will be thanks to a dish people only eat because their ancestors did. Another wonderful (crackpot) theory I have heard is that, because teachers inhale a lot of chalk dust (at least in my developing world school), they should eat pork. No explanation. Just that pork helps your lungs. Erm, pardon?

Elly was the recipient of some wonderful poppy-fuelled wisdom today (disclaimer- Korean people don't actually take opium. They don't need to). The rainy season has just begun in Korea, and just by chance the photocopier in her school is on the blink. Now, most people who don't take guidance from fortune cookies would deduce that you need to contact a photocopier repairman. Not the Koreans. No, they inform her confidently that "the photocopier doesn't work in bad weather". What?! The photocopier isn't outside or anything like that. There's no reason why a bit of rain should stop you copying some worksheets. But infuriatingly (well, actually, it's pretty funny from where I'm standing. In another school that is) the photocopier will remain broken for the next five or six weeks. When the rain stops, maybe it will work again.

It's funny that such old-wives-tale-esque thoughts are prevalent in Korean culture. If you haven't realised already, South Korea is a very developed nation where people can buy a new mobile phone every year, a new car every three and a new apartment every decade or so. And a lot of their technology makes the U.K. look about as advanced as a lassoe. They are so developed and technologically advanced because they are chasing the Japanese and Americans. This isn't Cambodia. People here are educated and productive. But sometimes I get the feeling that they are clinging to ideas and "knowledge" that was held by their great grandparents who didn't even go to school and were too busy fending off the Japanese with pitchforks to ever learn anything anyway. They don't want to let go, even though perhaps fermented cabbage isn't as appealing when you have a pizza restaurant next door, and can have spaghetti carbonara which was never kept underground in a clay pot for two years (unlike the "delicious" kimchi).

One of my fellow teachers told me today that Korea is famous throughout the world as having the best kimchi . Now, it seems a funny thing to say that Korea is the best at making a Korean dish. It's like saying England has the best fish and chips, Japan and Iceland have the best whale meat or Japan has the best tiger penis. Also, even though I haven't been everywhere in the world (nowadays my sensible wife ensures I stay in one place for more than 72 hours), I have never experienced kimchi anywhere except in Korea. So it seems likely they would be the best at making it. Our Korean hosts are wonderful people but sometimes their proud statements and stoic wisdom leave us scratching our heads somewhat.

I am very fortunate to be able to play a lot of football in Korea. It's one of the highlights of my day. As Elly points out, when I watch people play football I am like a dog in the park watching other dogs chase a ball. All I want is to be let off my lead and allowed to chase the football mindlessly. So each day I eat my lunch as fast as possible (whilst feigning interest in the conversations of co-teachers) and run outside to join the third years in a kickabout. Actually, I make a diversion and change out of my suit before I play. This is a step forward; until last week I was playing in my suit trousers. The problem is, I fall over every day when I am playing, and the "pitch" is actually a sandy gravelly piece of wasteland, ideal for tearing a hole in the trousers I had tailored in Thailand and should really take better care of. Elly seems to think you can't just stick a patch over a torn suit trouser leg. I don't plan to. People wear ripped jeans, why not a ripped suit?

Football with Korean students is a wonderful ritual. Firstly, the teams are decide by a game resembling paper-scissors-stone, but with no paper. What happens is everyone spontaneously shows scissors or stone, and keeps doing this until there are an equal number of each. Once the football game ends (one team scores enough goals), the winners are allowed to (no, made to) go to each losing player and flick him on the forehead. It's fairly humiliating actually.

In a class I taught today I caught a glimpse of a society desperate to rid itself of smoking. Halfway through the lesson, five teachers came in unannounced and made all the students stand against the wall. Then they searched everyone's bags and lockers and did that thing airport security guards do of patting you everywhere to see if you have a knife or copy of the Koran in your turban. The whole classroom storming experience was kind of scary. It wasn't like Hitler's SS or anything, and there were no cattle trains to haul the kids away to a "work project", but it had my heart racing. I can imagine if they tried the same thing in England. All those angry parents ringing the school, threatening teachers and swearing in a vain attempt to understand the situation. Phrases like "invasion of privacy" and "why shouldn't he smoke? He's 13, he can make his own decisions" would certainly be thrown around. I was hoping they were going to do some kind of cigarette-breathalyser test, but alas, no. Of course, all of this is a very good idea. There's not really much debate now about whether or not smoking is bad for you, and those amusing 1950's black and white adverts saying "9 out of 10 doctors recommend smoking Camels to fend off throat infections" probably aren't to be trusted. However, it's also quite funny, as in Korea every man smokes. Well, it seems that way anyway. Even the teachers who play tennis for two hours after school and run up mountains to pass the time until their next tennis match enjoy a fag (a cigarette, not a gay person) from time to time. I guess they are very keen for the next generation to spend less time smoking and more time having a go at the Japanese and claiming everything was invented in Korea.

I should point out that, even though a few of them smoke, Korean kids are actually extremely well-behaved by the standards we have set in the West. None of them punch teachers in the face, beat up strangers, steal cars or smash up the possessions of people they believe to be "posh". Probably the closest they get to really being "bad" is sleeping in class. There certainly aren't any metal detectors in the schools, at least not in Geochang. And even if the kids do have a knife, they will only use it to engrave their name on a desk or cut some plants off a verge to eat. They won't stab someone for "looking at me funny". It seems to me that all Korean kids really want to do is go home from school (which is usually at 9 or 10pm) and play computer games.

All this said, a number of the students at my school (which is the worst or second worst in Geochang) do incredible things in class to avoid actually learning anything. The following is a list of activities which I regularly see students doing in my lessons. Every one of these is true, amazingly:
1. Revising for an exam in another subject
2. Maths homework
3. Reading a novel
4. Writing a letter
5. Rolling up a textbook and looking through it into the distance like a telescope
6. Watching a film on a mobile phone
7. Drawing Japanese-style (though they will claim it's Korean style!) anime cartoons
And my personal favourite:
8. Carving a sculpture out of a large soap block, and sweeping the debris onto the floor.

That last one is particularly amusing, as the same day as that student was doing the carving, I had to go to dinner with her father who was so pleased with her progress at school that he wanted to treat me to a meal. Of course, I had to say "I'm very pleased with her progress, she is a very hard working student". In truth what I should've said is "she spends most of her time carving Romanesque statues with a craft knife , and the rest of the time she is saying she wants to go home". To add insult to injury, the meal wasn't a pleasurable experience. The student in question didn't even bother to come, the student's father spent most of his time ignoring me and speaking Korean to his friend, and the meal gave me the runs which kept me awake all night. Next time I'll tell him the truth about his daughter.

Volleyball, Raw Fish and Karaoke / A Happy Westerner / The Spirit of Hillary Clinton Comes to Korea

2008-05-27T17:08:00.002+09:00

Contemporary Korean culture seems to have a number of contrasts with what we are used to in the West. One thing that keeps sneaking up on us is something I like to call the “Zero Notice Compulsory Attendance Work Evening”. I experienced this phenomenon last week. It goes something like this: you are at work, happily counting down the last five minutes before you can go home, relax, do your own thing and spend time with your spouse. But then your supervisor comes to your desk.....

Miss Lee: Jon, we are having a staff volleyball match, can you play?

Jon: Err, ok, great, I'd love to. Which day?

Miss Lee: Today. In five minutes.

Jon: Oh, err... (thinking along the lines of “I will have to play in a suit and might have liked to have had a drink and something to eat”)

Miss Lee: We are a player short, you need to play.

Jon: Erm, ok, I haven't played much volleyball but it'll be fun I suppose. Thanks.

Miss Lee: We're having dinner afterwards.

Jon: Erm, ok, I suppose so.

Miss Lee: We're having raw fish. I know you don't eat fish but raw fish is very expensive.

Jon: I really don't like fish.

Miss Lee: Raw fish is very good for a baby's brain. Pregnant women in Korea eat it.

Jon: That's good, but I really don't like cooked fish. Raw fish will probably make me have convulsions.

Miss Lee: This raw fish is extra delicious. Will you try it?

Jon: Erm, maybe. (Lying) Ok I'll try it.

So I played the volleyball match, which was great fun, and was just thinking how much I'd like to go home, change out of my sweaty clothes, wash, and generally prepare for a meal that in all likelihood would put me off food forever. But I was hurried to a room of the school where bottles of soju (Korean rice wine) were being taken from the fridge and presented to us for immediate consumption. I expressed that I was really quite thirsty after an hour of volleyball in 28 degree sunshine, and would quite like some water, but none was available. Only soju. So I reluctantly sat down with a drink that might quench my thirst, and waited for our uncooked banquet to arrive. Sure enough, a minute later some plates of raw white fish were presented before us. The other teachers started munching in the style of “Gollum” from The Lord of the Rings, while I just chewed on a stick of cucumber. People tried to get me to eat some of the fish but it just looked so wrong. You know when you are preparing for a barbecue and you have plates of raw meat or fish, waiting to be grilled? Imagine just eating them without barbecuing them. That's what this seemed like. And then imagine you hate the taste even when it's cooked. That was my situation. Seeing my reluctance to join in their orgy of food poisoning, the other teachers offered me food from another of the plates. I've no idea what it was, but if you imagine the scene in “The Blair Witch Project” where what appear to be two human eyes and a tongue are found, that gives you some idea of the delicacies I was presented with. I politely declined. All this said, I've had a very easy ride compared to Elly. She has been expected to eat live (yes, live) baby octopus. She recently went to a restaurant with her work and was brought a plate of squirming tentacles. The restaurant takes a live baby octopus, cuts it up while it is moving around, and quickly presents it to the diners. The happy Koreans then proceed to pick up wriggling tentacles with their chopsticks and swallow them down. Apparently many people have died when the tentacle grabs onto the top of the windpipe, especially since this delicacy is usually enjoyed with copious amounts of soju.

I have often tried to explain to Koreans some of the differences in food attitudes that exist between our two cultures. Generally, Korean food is much healthier, fresher, and frankly better tasting than most Western fare. However, there are a few things which might be addressed if Korean people would like to live longer. For one, the standard meat here is fatty, fatty, cheap tasteless pork. I love pig products, and there are few things which will bring a vegetarian back from the dark side than the smell of bacon frying. But the pork consumed here must always be from the rear end of the pig, since it is a thick slice of fat with a very narrow slice of muscle. Korean people are currently up in arms that American beef is to imported to Korea. The idea is of course that all the city folk who become more Western every year can feast on steaks and burgers rather than raw sea cucumbers. But a number of years ago there was a case of BSE in the States, and this has panicked the whole of Korea. “We will get crazy cow disease” my students tell me. I point out that “crazy cow” sounds like a Disney character, but I don't think they understand my great joke. I then tell them that every five years or so we have to slaughter all the cows in the U.K. since a farmer's brain has just become extra soft and spongy, but even with such regular BSE scares we don't really need to worry. I also tell them that I have eaten an extraordinary amount of McDonalds in my lifetime. We're talking American quantities here. So much so in fact that, if I ever wanted one, I couldn't have a colonic irrigation since the insurance company wouldn't cover me. Still I don't have crazy cow disease. Throwing numbers around like “1 in one hundred million” don't convince them that American beef will be safe. So I try another tact. I point out that in Britain we are advised to avoid eating pork whenever possible. Not because we are fast becoming a Muslim country and it will soon be illegal to eat bacon without someone being offended and blowing up your bus, but because pork is proven to be linked to heart disease and cancer, and you should probably order the Chicken McNuggets rather than the Pork McRib. But this doesn't convince my students.

I tried to tell my co-teachers that generally we like to cook seafood at home, since this results in fewer emergency sprints to a bathroom (or bush if you are unfortunate enough to be at a wedding service at a traditional church). But they are too busy tucking into delicacies that a few minutes ago were enjoying a peaceful life in a fish tank.

After this inadequate meal I was looking forward to going home and letting Elly cook for me. But I was then told the teachers would be going to a karaoke bar, in about ten minutes, and I was expected to come. I was actually quite looking forward to going home, but of course it is Korean culture to not tell anyone about nights out until they are about to start. I was wondering if it is just Elly and me who receive such treatment, but Elly's co-teacher informed her that it is the same for everyone. In fact what generally happens is, a teacher will have a thought like “there's nothing in the fridge at home and I don't want to go shopping”, and so will organise a staff evening at a restaurant. Usually starting eight minutes after this whimsical feeling. Everyone has to attend.

So I reluctantly trudged off to the karaoke (or noraebang - “singing room”- everything Japanese has to be purged from Korean culture). Koreans love singing. Actually, everyone East of Burma (because the people living there aren't allowed to enjoy their lives without being kicked in by soldiers) loves karaoke. It's an unstoppable tsunami (pardon the expression) which is washing away traditional forms of celebration and socialising and replacing them with cheesy pop songs sung by drunken businessmen. East Asian people love karaoke. They also love English football, clearing their throats noisily and having rice eleven times a day. Because of the last three reasons, I am very happy living here. But as for karaoke, well, to say I can't sing is like saying you shouldn't leave George Bush in charge of your oil. When I told my fellow teachers that in England we don't have karaoke, they asked me “where do you English people go to sing a song?” I told him that, generally, aside from people in church or the navy, we don't.

Elly and I have been in Korea for three months now. It seems like it's gone quite quickly. We miss our families, we miss our friends, and we also miss Western junk food. 90 days without a hamburger or fries/chips is a bitter pill to swallow. Furthermore, we miss good coffee. People in our town don't drink any coffee but granulated muck. You can't buy real coffee in the supermarkets. And there's no McDonalds, Burger King or Starbucks in Geochang, so we have no access to proper coffee or burgers. This kind of deprivation makes Japanese prisoners of war look jolly fortunate, so we decided it was time to visit a big city and get our fill of American franchises. So yesterday we went to Daegu, a city of 2.45 million people. We had a great time, thanks. We had McDonalds (a Big Mac and Fries), Burger King (a Whopper and fries) and Starbucks. All in the same day. It was wonderful.

Fig.1: A Happy Westerner. Like all white people, I can bury my head in the sand about how many Peruvian farmers had to sell their daughters because Starbucks paid such a poor price for their coffee crop. I just like the comfy sofas.

Some doctors might tell you this amount of fat, sugar, salt and support for America's economy might be bad for you, but they are just superstitious. However, as I feared, it wasn't enough for me. I wanted a second Big Mac, but Elly refused to let me. I know some of you Middle Eastern types might say I should never listen to my wife, but I knew she had my best interests at heart. She also stopped me having a second Whopper. The thing about fast food is it never really satisfies you. It's like a really tasty drug which gives you high blood pressure and lots of spots. When I dine on rice, vegetables, fruit and fermented cabbage at lunchtime, I feel really full, but no amount of fried “potato” and grilled “beef” was going to be enough. Shame really.

Fig. 2: There are happy Westerners in here. Notice that McDonalds in Korea can stay open 24 hours. unlike in England. The reason is, in Korea there is no danger of drunk people coming in, stealing Ronald McDonald's charity box and beating up the cleaning lady, or stoned teenagers eating all the McNuggets. Unlike in England.

At the moment there are local elections in Korea. You can tell because there are lots of pairs of identically dressed middle aged women in baseball caps handing out business cards with pictures of smiling men in ties.

Fig. 3: My paparazzi-stalking-cam picked up a perfect shot of these two identically-dressed campaign ladies. If they saw me they would have bowed and given me a business card of some guy I won't vote for. But they did give out free bars of soap at my school, so they're OK I guess.

Politicians here will do anything for votes, just like in the West. On Saturday night, Elly and I were walking home and saw a picture of one of the candidates on a large billboard. The next morning in church, guess who we saw? Our friendly local counsellor-to-be had decided to join the congregation. Truly it was in the style of all those American politicians last year who suddenly all “became” Christians to keep up with each other in the race for the American public's affection (and votes). Elly and I were in Asia watching BBC World when they showed the clip of dear old Hillary (the one who won't be running for president) saying “Today is the day the Lord has made!” to rapturous applause. I don't know if this guy will win any more votes but I certainly won't vote for him. Not just because I'm a foreigner and probably can't, and even if I could I can't be bothered. But because it was only yesterday he'd gone to the temple and converted to Buddhism to impress another 40% of Geochang's population. Today he's sharing bread and wine. How can someone who is so fickle in his spirituality decide which colour to paint the lamp posts?

How American Are We?/Learning Korean/Cleaning My Ears

2008-05-17T15:12:00.001+09:00

A thought occurs: With each decade that passes, those of us with British passports become more like our cousins across the Atlantic Ocean. This is apparent even in Korea. I prepared a lesson about “movies”. What is American about this? Well I can remember a time when I would have said “films”. What else? Well, I've noticed the term “real estate” is becoming more common. I remember first hearing the term years ago and thinking it was a term devised by a simpleton, since all estate is “real”. Surely “property” or “land” are more appropriate terms? And what about the plague of coffee shops? Starbucks isn't necessarily to blame. Someone else would have filled the coffee shop vacuum. But what made the chain so popular in a tea-drinking country? Surely coffee drinking is the passion of hotter, darker countries, where people read newspapers called “Gazetta Dello Sport” while smoking Camel cigarettes, rather than doing any actual work? I saw an amusing TV program (I have to be careful not to say “show”, another Americanism) a while back, entitled “The Darkest Secrets of the Nineties”. It claimed, perhaps correctly, that the TV program “Friends” popularised the Starbucks-style coffee shop, and after twelve years of watching three episodes a week, we all wanted to sit on comfy sofas sipping lattes from mugs the size of buckets, rather than a cup of Tetley from a polystyrene cup. The program bemoaned the loss of the traditional English cafe (or “caff”), in which we could all enjoy a full English breakfast and three cups of swilly tea, all for £1.50. These days a coffee in Starucks costs over £9, and we are all more than happy to shell out for it. Don't get me wrong, I love coffee, and I love Starbucks. One of the fun things about travelling rather than working for a living (even now I have a job) is collecting pint-sized mugs from Starbucks in each country we go to. However, I have to feel that maybe we have fallen for something which isn't as good as maybe we'd like to believe. A while before we came to Korea, we went to a Starbucks in Chichester and ordered a litre of caramel machiato (basically coffee with a packet of Rolos dissolved in it). Halfway through, I realised the drink didn't contain any coffee, only milk. I took it the counter and they apologised, saying “sorry, the coffe machine was playing up”. They gave me a new one of course, but I can't help but feel that a cup of coffee costing more than the year's salary of the poor South American guy who harvested the beans in the first place should actually contain some coffee. Another thing: I notice now that Starbucks is always full of families, nursing mothers, hyperactive kids, homeless people etc. There's no problem with this of course. What is surprising though is that these people are happy to hang out in Starbucks when they used to hang out in McDonalds. For the money that once bought a big greasy meal and an ice cream cone, they now get just a cup of sugary coffee. I read recently that Starbucks' share price has been falling sharply. This might be surprising. However, there are reasons. Plenty of other companies are now opening coffee shops. McDonalds and Burger King have spent a couple of years turning their coffee from a cup of lukewarm puddle water into a drink you'd happily pay for in more expensive establishments. It's true. I implore you the next time you fancy a coffee when you are out shopping, to stroll into Ronald McDonald's place and order a coffee. It'll cost about a pound and taste as good as the coffee-free coffees in Starbucks. You'll be pleasantly surprised, I assure you. Put your snobbery away for five minutes! Also, Starbucks was originally the domain of business people with laptops who wanted to get out of the office, and the kids of wealthy, yuppy parents with money to burn. These days noone with a laptop will go in there as someone's toddler will probably come and be sick on it. What else is American about us British? Well, we are becoming more and more married to our houses and cars, and avoiding venturing out on foot. In fact, there will probably come a time when town centres don't have pavements, so there'll be no choice but to drive. We drive around in petrol-guzzling 4x4s when we live in a town and work in a town. There are hundreds of other examples, but you needn't think I'm thorough enough to think of them.

So that brings me neatly (well, sort of) onto the American English language. In Korea, American English is the standard. Kids find it strange when I pronounce the double “t” in “better”; so much so that I have to pronounce it as a “d” for all of them to really grasp it. One of Elly's co-teachers was complaining that “British English” (or “English” as it perhaps should be known) is difficult to understand. This seemed a little silly of her to say, as it is of course a language from Britain. Well, sort of. Whether we like it or not, one of the main reasons our beautiful language (it is a wonderful language, as I will argue soon) is the international language is that the United States uses it as its main language. It has been the case there since the beginning of the American nation. Don't listen to anyone who says Spanish is as common as English there, it isn't (at least not in the population as a whole); and furthermore everyone in the States will learn English, regardless of whether they speak Spanish at home. And some people believe a myth that German nearly became the national language at the end of the 18^th Century. This was never true. The vast majority (90% or more) of American citizens at the time were of British (and not Irish) descent, so it would have been madness to adopt an unfamiliar tongue, least of all one spoken by people who have moustache growing contests (I am saying this to praise the Germans) or yodel on the side of mountains just to discuss the weather. Since throughout the 20^th Century most people were sucking up to the Americans, and the Americans ultimately made most of the decisions (apart from the ones about invading Poland), it was inevitable that English would become the language the whole world needed to learn.

I think it's fantastic that the world has been, and continues to be, learning English. Not just because it is the language of my country. It is because English has a range of expression unavailable in any other language. We have far more words, far more beautiful ways of expressing things, and far more interesting ways to describe things. Take the word “home” for example. We can say “home” about a house, tent, cave, hotel, whatever. However, in every other language I have come across so far (French, Spanish, Portuguese and Korean at least), there is one word for “home” and “house”. Or think about when we name a road. We can call it ”street”, “way”, alley”, “close”, “lane”, “avenue”, “road” or any of a number of other words. There are countless other example of this kind of thing. This point is being brought home to me now I am learning to speak Korean. The Korean language is, as far as I can tell, a language devised by farmers centuries ago which hasn't really changed. They have “Hangulised” (Korean-ised) countless English words, to the point that 5 or 10% of the Korean language is an Asian pronunciation of an English word. But the rest of the language is things like “foot fingers” for toes; “head fingers” for hair, “eye water” for tears, “nose water”for when your nose is running, “mouth water” for saliva.... how about this one: I am informed that the word for “zebra” translates as “dirty stripe horse”. It is brought home to me that speakers of the English language are extremely fortunate that (a) we have had such geniuses as Shakespeare to vastly increase the number of words, and therefore ways of expressing ourselves in English; and (b) our language is fluid, living, able to adapt and grow to incorporate whatever its speakers want to say. I don't care if people say French is a romantic or beautiful language, or Italian is sexy. I don't agree. French is a series of mumbles, and Italian is the language of our unwelcome Roman conquerors. An Englishman speaking Italian is like an Afghan goat shepherd eating a lamb burger at McDonalds. I love Spanish as I think words like “amigo” are fun to say, and frankly tacos are delicious and donkeys are hilarious. But generally English is the best language. Sure, we sometimes take on words from other languages, like cafe, and many of our words are in some way from Latin or German, but generally we have far, far more words than any other language, and we can say the same thing in twenty different ways if we want to. As the head of Samsung, Korea's most successful (and corrupt) company recently said, “English is the global language of opportunity and the universal language of the internet”. People in Korea have to learn English so they can continue to become richer and someday make us Westerners feel sorry for ourselves. Maybe you think you aren't any good at English. However, the fact that you can order your Whopper with extra cheese means you are able to express yourself in a language half the world is desperate to learn and finds far more challenging than their native tongue, be it Korean, Chinese, Russian or Swahili.

All this said, I am thoroughly enjoying learning Korean. I am relying mostly on two sources: a small book I bought at the airport in Hong Kong, and internet podcasts. I only found out what a podcast is a few months back, but I have to say I'm hooked. For those of you even more unfamiliar with the internet's many facets than me, a podcast is a recording of anything, absolutely anything, whether it is a Bible study, rant about the government, or language lesson. They are usually written by people who live in dark rooms with the curtains drawn and lots of flies buzzing around old KFC buckets. But they are extremely useful, and often free. I listen to Korean lessons every day using my laptop (and also at work when I should be lesson planning). You can put them on your MP3 player if you like and listen to them while you drive a car (but only once, after that you have to listen in hospital). I know what you're probably thinking: “Jon, you live in Korea, get Korean people to teach you to speak Korean!”. Yes yes, very nice idea. But the fact of the matter is, I work with English teachers who aren't very good at English, and they aeren't very good at teaching half the time (the same can be said of me). When I have tried to learn from them, they confuse me, or each person tells me something different, or they don't understand what I'm asking. The other day I asked one of my fellow English teachers - who has been teaching English in Korea for 30 years – how you say some food is “spicy”. He didn't understand. I elaborated, trying to use the word “hot”, pointing to spicy food, listing other examples, but he just looked at the floor shamefully. Other teachers tell me something obscure in passing (like telling me a flower has a magic number) and expect me to remember it six weeks later. On the other hand, using recordings of Korean lessons by a competent teacher allows me to go over points again, look things up etc. I don't know how much Korean I know so far, but it's hundereds of words, and I'm getting a good feeling for the grammar (which is completely different to English). The written language is a bit tricky as they have an alphabet which looks a bit like Chinese characters, but I can read it now, albeit slowly. I'm focusing most of all on spoken Korean as that's what I actually use, and it's much easier to tag the sounds of Korean words on to English words (making memorising easy). Amusingly my principal (or “headmaster” as we would say at home) has told me I'm not to speak Korean to the students, as if they realise I can speak Korean (even just a bit) they won't bother learning English. I can speak to the other teachers in Korean though, and frankly there are times when it's so much quicker just to translate something than describe it with English words the students don't even know, or drawing using my “parrot with a paintbrush” art skills. For example, can you imagine explaining the word “cave” to students who stare blankly at you when you say “pleased to meet you”? My fellow English teachers all insist on speaking English to me, mainly because they aren't used to foreigners. In fact, two of them have been English teachers for decades and I'm the first native English speaker they've spoken to for more than a sentence. This explains why the kids all pronounce everything wrong and ask me questions like “how is toy?” and say “you made good effort” after an enjoyable lesson. Actually it's a huge privelege to be helping people to learn a language, and I really hope I'm making the English language more enjoyable and accessible for the students. A lot of them are really shocked to be expected to actually speak, as they're so used to lecture-style lessons which they sleep through anyway. My supervisor told me she had been worried the kids weren't understanding my lessons (too complex, like my brain), but the most recent exam results were very good and now they think I'm improving the students' ability. Actually the truth is the students all listen to Beyonce and watch American films, but if my employers want to kid themselves that it's down to me then I'm happy to receive a salary every month. I'm so fortunate to be doing a job like this and living in this part of Korea, especially as these days my hobbies are learning languages, playing football (which I do at lunchtime with the students and on Friday afternoons instead of teaching) and hiking (which I do on the mountains I can see from my sofa).

Finally, and most importantly, last week I reached the time of year when I couldn't hear the fire alarm or trucks coming down the road and decided it was time to clean out my ears. Also my neck was getting sore from carrying three kilograms of solid wax. So I took four of Elly's precious, rationed cotton buds and got down to business. I was shocked at how much wax had built up since the last time I cleaned my ears (I'm not sure when it was exactly but I was still living in Southampton). By the time I finished, three hours later, I had extracted three candles, a bee hive, and what appeared to be a model of Tina Turner from Madame Tussauds. Makes you think.

Preparing a Lesson About Music / Look What I Bought

2008-04-28T21:18:00.001+09:00

Friday 25th April 2008

So I am busily (as you can see) preparing a lesson which will enable students to hold conversations about the type of music they like. It is very hard to narrow down which genres of music to teach them the names of, but I have narrowed it down to the following essential list:

Fulia- Afro-Venezuelan percussion music;

Surf ballads;

Bamboo band - originally from the Solomon Islands, music played by hitting bamboo tubes with sandals;

Scrumpy and Western - folk music from the West Country;

Aleatoric music - music in which the composition is partially left to chance (like the lessons I teach);

Funeral doom - an extremely slow version of doom metal, most commonly made at the "pace of a funeral march";

Villanella - 16th century Neapolitan songs;

Gamelan selunding - this genre of music is only played in the village of Tenganan in Bali;

Hajnali - Hungarian-Transylvanian wedding songs;

Hillbilly music – lots of banjos

Video game music – especially from the Commodore 64/Amstrad era (the “golden age of video game music”- 6 different notes were utilised)

Kattajjaq - competitive Inuit throat singing (if you aren’t sure, Inuit is the correct term for what you probably call an “Eskimo”. “Eskimo” is now as racist as “honkie” (white folks) or “Ching Chong Chinaman” for anyone from Asia. So don’t say it. The following terms are also outlawed in today’s society: “Eskimo kiss”, “Eskimo roll”, “black as the ace of spades”, "spades", “coloured”, “English”;

Novokomponovana narodna muzika - modernized Serbian folk music;

Orovela - eastern Georgian work songs;

TV advert music;

With these genres in their vocabulary they will be ready to go to HMV and ask “please direct me to the 'Scrumpy and Western' section”. You can’t say I’m not preparing the students for the English speaking world.

Recently I have been exploring the wonders of Korean shopping. Firstly, they have that convenience enjoyed by the entire planet - with the exception of the U.K.- that is shops staying open past 5:30pm. In fact a lot of the shops are open till 10pm, which is great for us but not so nice if you sell t-shirts.

A couple of items were so good that I opened up the envelope my original Korean money came in when I collected it from Heathrow Airport and decided to actually spend some (Elly wanted to know if I was OK). The first item was a pack of boxer shorts. Now what' so interesting about that, I hear you ask? Well, look at the brand name:

Pretty awesome hey? Of course, the picture of the guy on the front's all wrong; everyone knows gay people hate being muscular, which is why everyone who goes to the gym is so manly (and don't those chaps know it?).

The second (and final) purchase I have made in Korea (while I think of it, note that I never say “South Korea”- people here only say “Korea”) is something I only dreamed could exist, and even then it would be on a rerun of Thunderbirds or in a Bond film. Have a look at this:

It may look like a hearing aid from the 1980s but this thing would be no use to Beethoven (because he's dead, not deaf). It's actually a fantastic contraction you put on your ear, and when you tilt your head forward it beeps unmelodiously; in fact it sounds as pleasant as a nagging woman. The idea is you will wake up from whatever slumber you have fallen into. What is it for? Let the instructions tell the story:

If you can't read my shaky picture (I was bowling when I took it) I'll quote directly:

“Functions: To ensure driving safely and to avoid traffic accidents caused by sleepiness.

Time for use: Long-distance driving, drunk driving, night driving”.

And made in China! Those rice-loving geniuses have given the world a device which can make drink driving laws obsolete. All we need to do is issue everyone with one of these, and the roads will be safe again, no matter how blind drunk you are. Even if you are too drunk to flick the small switch that turns the device on. Even if you are too drunk to respond to people prodding you, let alone respond to a small beeping device.

I decided to put this magical device to the test. I cooked an egg at night. As I have a pretty stressful job with a lot of responsibility (ahem), I'm usually pretty tired. So I went to the fridge and picked up one of my little bird-flu ridden eggs, popped him in a frying pan and got to work.

Figure 1: This guy sure knows how to cook an egg. I just hope he's not tired, lest disaster should ensue.

Figure 2: Oh no! Wake up! If only there were some ear-mounted device that could alert him to the danger, before his face melts and he ends up looking like the elephant man's ugly cousin.

Figure 3: Hurrah! The beepy Chinese ear thing has saved the day! Now he can proceed to running around aimlessly, wondering what number to dial for the Korean fire service and wishing he'd spent the money on a fire extinguisher rather than a driving safety device for someone who doesn't even own a car.

Sports Day

2008-04-24T22:11:00.001+09:00

Hello you!

I haven’t written for a while, so firstly let me apologise to those of you who work with computers and use reading my blog as a way to kill 10 minutes of work time each week. I trust you have filled the time wisely by running that programme which looks like you are installing something important, whilst really playing online poker with people from Puerta Rica.

Time passes quickly in Korea, or so it seems. Already we are over seven weeks into our contract, and that routine which everyone falls into in order to age quicker has taken shape nicely. Weeks seem like days at the moment. It doesn’t seem more than a few days since we were being served intestine soup upon meeting our new colleagues. Oh for those days again.

A couple of weeks ago my school had its Sports Day. This is something of a misnomer as it was in fact two days long; two glorious, work-free days of sunshine, ice cream and tug-o-war contests. The students participated in volleyball, football, running, dodgeball (very funny to see aggression in schoolgirls) and tug-o-war. I had a jolly nice time, thanks for asking.

As I write this I am enjoying a four day period in which the students have mid-term exams. I have to come in to work at 11am, “lesson plan” (write this blog and check my Fantasy Football team) and go home at, wait for it, 1pm. So two hours of fun and then go home, with a day’s full salary. It’s like being George W. Bush. The exams are bad news for the students but thankfully I benefit from them, and that’s the main thing.

Elly’s school experience has gradually been improving, thankfully. For the first six weeks her co-teacher had been giving her abuse and writing her letters that she wasn’t fitting into Korean culture. Basically what she meant by this is Elly doesn’t do the following things typical of Korean culture:
1. Get to work three hours before you need to be there.
2. Spend your entire day asleep at your desk (I promise this true).
3. Stay at work till 10pm.
4. Don’t spend any time with your spouse/children/family. Your job is your family.
5. Any time you are awake at work, don’t do any lesson planning or teaching. Just kill time on the Korean version of eBay, bidding for a new car as your current vehicle is already six months old.

So you may have realised from the above that there is something perverse about Korean working culture. On the one hand people spend their lives at work, which in a sense (at least in a money making sense) is quite admirable. But the flipside to this is that they aren’t being productive when they are at work. They’re just doing a sentence. Strange really. I have told people here that if you are caught sleeping at work in the U.K. you’d better know your way to the job centre, but they can’t believe it! Many of the students sleep at their desks too. Many of my afternoon lessons are to a class of thirty students, but only six or eight of them are awake. The others are asleep when I arrive and asleep when I leave. You can wake them up briefly to answer a question, but they look at you like you have just abrubtly ended a wonderful dream (probably one where they are not Korean students anymore). You can’t blame them for sleeping at school. Not only is the standard school day 8am to 5pm, with an extra two hours on Saturday morning, but many kids have to attend evening schools to improve their English, Maths, Science etc. For the kids whose parents can’t afford these private schools, they have the option of staying at this (public) school and having the likes of me try to teach them the difference between a forest and a jungle (OK so maybe I bring my geeky love of science/nature/travelling to work with me). Discussions of latitude and the tropics - spoken in English - will be very useful to them when they are selling lottery scratchcards for a living. Actually I shouldn’t joke. Despite all the sleeping at work, Korea’s economy is booming and half of these kids will end up being CEOs of multinational corporations which decide whether I live or die.