one expat's life in Korea
Friday, January 11, 2008
Irony and uber-nationalism.
There's a movie called D-War or Dragon War that you might have heard about, but haven't seen (unless you're one of my readers who lives in Korea). I'll link to the preview here, but I won't put the clip up. The movie just hasn't earned it. Sorry. It's pretty terrible, and by sitting through it (I'd rather get a filling without anaesthesia), I've earned the right to criticize it if I wish. However, its maker made a play on Korea's nationalistic pride to try and sell it here in Korea, as he also tried to market it in America (it was even set in L.A.). Nationalistic pride or none, the movie's acting, direction, and most of all, writing, were just not good enough to attract an audience in the States: as Patroclus and Michelle Wie both learned, if you want to play with the big kids, you gotta have the chops! The grab for publicity, and the play on national pride, were perfectly encapsulated by the movie's closing credits in Korea, where he played Korea's greatest, favourite traditional folk song, while running a long description of the director's career and accomplishments (basically begging for approval), including pictures of himself in a director's chair and other film credits, and ending with his guarantee that his film will be successful around the world . . . "for Korea".
You can hear the sad, haunting melody of the Arirang if you skip to about the three minute mark of the video clip above. It's a wonderful song (when it's not being abused by film directors in cheap grabs for movie-approval-through-association-with-national-pride). Everybody joins in, and it gives me chills, and the melody is one of the best I know. I also love the performance leading up to the ending refrain, but if you need to skip to the end, go for it.
Anyway, it was crass but clever of Mr. Shin to tack National Pride onto what (from where I stand) looked more like a lurid act of blatant self-promotion, because just that easily, he placed his poorly-written, badly-directed, and horribly-acted movie/ego-trip above critical reproach. An attack on his movie was an attack on Korea, and Korea's entire culture, rather than just an honest review of a bad movie.
The silliness all came to a head when a single Korean film critic was brave enough to step out of line and tell the truth: "hey, everybody, did anyone else notice this was actually a terrible movie?"
Rather than a rush of other critics flying to his side and saying "THANK YOU! I thought so too, let's end this nationalistic silliness and call a spade a spade," that lone critic was attacked by many angry Korean netizens, it's not in the article, but one of my students told me the critic's life was even threatened.
It's sad and ironic to begin with that many Koreans bought into this guy's cheap play on national pride, and stood behind a movie that will more likely damage the Korean film industry's reputation abroad than promote it, but to shout down a critic trying to be honest is just too much. Not that netizens from ANY country are well known for being rational, sober-minded thinkers, but still. . .
And it's unfortunate that this train-wreck was the movie trying to break into the American market. There are a few great Korean movies out there. (Oldboy won second prize at the Cannes film festival a few years ago, and The Host was better than any Hollywood monster movie . . . probably since Jaws, hitting every note perfectly, and switching from satire to thriller to family drama on a dime,) so why offer this mess up as representative?
Here are some links that discuss D-Wars' awfulness,
and also netizens' blind nationalism causing them to defend the indefensible (the quote from the director at the end of this article is a hoot.)
At movies.yahoo.com, you can browse user reviews. . . notice the frequency of complete A+ reviews with broken English in the write-ups.
on IMDB.com Koreans have been logging on and giving D-Wars 10/10 ratings to balance out the 1/10s given by non-Koreans. (Note the high concentration of highest possible and lowest possible scores on the "who rated this movie" chart.)
but they couldn't save its abysmal score on rottentomatoes.com
In light of all that, to go with this incident, I had a funny moment in one of my classes last week. I brought up the knee-jerk nationalist netizen flaming of the movie critic, and asked a question about the way nationalism often goes so far in Korea that sometimes reason goes out the window, and when something starts sounding even a little critical, one runs into a lot of defensiveness, even in areas where it's generally acknowledged that Korea needs reform (for example, education, gender equality, or lookism). One of my students took umbrage, and told me, "You should be more positive. Why do you have to criticize Korea so much? Why can't you just accept it?" . . . if I wasn't taken aback at having my sincere and (I thought) neutrally-phrased questions answered with defensiveness, I might have been quick enough to snap back, "I rest my case."
I felt a bit stymied: I've lived in Korea for the greater part of my adult life now. I've read books about Korea, asked a lot of questions, studied the language and discussed Korean issues with a lot of different people. I try to have a generous, open-minded, non-judgmental, but well-informed view of what I see here, and being well-informed requires an honest look at both the positives and the negatives. If I criticize something, it is in hope of improvement, not for spite or mean-spiritedness, and certainly not because I think Korea should become exactly like Canada; I try not to talk about things I don't know about, or add qualifiers that "I might be wrong" and "please correct me if I'm wrong" or "this is just what I've observed personally". Basically, I've been here a long time, I've read the tourist brochures, and I wish I could dig a bit deeper without being accused of being a hater. . . but maybe conversation class isn't the time and place to do that (sigh). I like to think that if somebody came to me and, in the course of the conversation, we discussed Canada's social problems, with well-informed and thoughtful views, that I'd listen carefully, but maybe I'm just flattering myself.
Anyway, here's something I love about Korea:
Arirang is the unofficial national anthem, and holds a special place in Koreans' hearts, kind of like "Waltzing Matilda" to Australians, and the "Hockey Night In Canada" theme to Canadians.
(da da da dum dum deeeeeee, da da da dum dum de deeeeee, (everyone together now) da da da dah dah deee ba ba dum bee dah dah dum dee. . . )
(for the Aussies)
Here is a rough translation of the words to the first verse (the one sung most often) of the Arirang, adapted from a translation by Young-hae Chang:
Arirang, all alone
I am crossing arirang pass
if you leave me, my love,
your feet will fail you
before you even walk ten leagues.
It's a sweet, melancholy song, full of "han" (Korean word for a deep, sad longing for a better, but lost, time and/or place -- akin to the world-weary traveler's emotion when he thinks of a home he can never return to.) And it even turns up in soccer chants.
Man I love this culture.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Roboseyo saves the world. . .
I offered a solution for how to save the world earlier on this blog. Here's another. It was tagged on at the end of the previous post. . . but I don't think anybody read it, because I added it a day later.
In the new, global world, here's another thing I would do if I were king of the world:
I'd make an irrevokable law that, for the countries with the 30 largest populations, economies, and militaries in the world, the rest of the world gets to participate in their leaders' elections, with the Restoftheworld vote having a 10% say in the final election results -- 90% nationals, so that the home country gets most of the vote, but in a world where a world leader's decisions touch so many other countries, isn't it fair for the rest of the world to have a say in their leadership, too?
(I'd also cancel all veto powers in the UN: I'd change it so that unanimous minus one were enough to mobilize on security council decisions, so that rather than China vetoing UN action in Burma, unanimous minus one would have been enough to get peace-keepers in there. Same for the US vetoes on oil and Israel/Palestine related-type things.)
Any reactions?
and if you don't care for my world-saving solutions, how about this one:
Turns out, peeing on tourists is a BAD thing. Who knew?
In the new, global world, here's another thing I would do if I were king of the world:
I'd make an irrevokable law that, for the countries with the 30 largest populations, economies, and militaries in the world, the rest of the world gets to participate in their leaders' elections, with the Restoftheworld vote having a 10% say in the final election results -- 90% nationals, so that the home country gets most of the vote, but in a world where a world leader's decisions touch so many other countries, isn't it fair for the rest of the world to have a say in their leadership, too?
(I'd also cancel all veto powers in the UN: I'd change it so that unanimous minus one were enough to mobilize on security council decisions, so that rather than China vetoing UN action in Burma, unanimous minus one would have been enough to get peace-keepers in there. Same for the US vetoes on oil and Israel/Palestine related-type things.)
Any reactions?
and if you don't care for my world-saving solutions, how about this one:
Turns out, peeing on tourists is a BAD thing. Who knew?
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Korean Trot Music
Remember my post a long time ago about dancing with the crazy old ladies on the boat? I tried to describe the music then, eventually giving up and saying it's impossible.
Well, this is what it was like. . . except faster. This is what old people listen to here. You hear it in taxis, on the street, on outdoor stages for open-air shows, and (worst of all) on loudspeakers in otherwise nice parks. Really, the only thing to do when you hear music like this (not unlike disco and certain kinds of country music) is to get out your pointer fingers and dance. Listen in particularly to the slow vibrato and the quirks in vocalisation -- trot singers (that's what it's called) imitate this style right across the board.
The best thing about this musical style is that it's usually VERY easy to sing, which makes it a smash hit in the karaoke bars (noraebang here -- singing room). Sometimes you hear a song on the radio and you think the radio play is just a formality: this song was totally written to go straight to the karaoke bar and become a sing-along hit. Kind of like sometimes in N. America you hear a song and you go "wow. That song must have a GREAT video," or sports broadcasters justify a player with poor skills by saying, "He's GREAT in the clubhouse! A real glue guy!" Here we go. This is what we danced to on the boat that day, not the exact song, but this tempo, and EXACTLY this sound.
Here's a picture from that brilliant day.
This is Shiina Ringo, my favourite Japanese artist so far. She's fun as anything! She reminds me of Bjork with guitars.
and holy cow there's a lot going on in this video (spanish subtitles, fun as anything music, a japanese artist flaunting cultural stereotypes with MTV editing. . . interesting.)
Well, this is what it was like. . . except faster. This is what old people listen to here. You hear it in taxis, on the street, on outdoor stages for open-air shows, and (worst of all) on loudspeakers in otherwise nice parks. Really, the only thing to do when you hear music like this (not unlike disco and certain kinds of country music) is to get out your pointer fingers and dance. Listen in particularly to the slow vibrato and the quirks in vocalisation -- trot singers (that's what it's called) imitate this style right across the board.
The best thing about this musical style is that it's usually VERY easy to sing, which makes it a smash hit in the karaoke bars (noraebang here -- singing room). Sometimes you hear a song on the radio and you think the radio play is just a formality: this song was totally written to go straight to the karaoke bar and become a sing-along hit. Kind of like sometimes in N. America you hear a song and you go "wow. That song must have a GREAT video," or sports broadcasters justify a player with poor skills by saying, "He's GREAT in the clubhouse! A real glue guy!" Here we go. This is what we danced to on the boat that day, not the exact song, but this tempo, and EXACTLY this sound.
Here's a picture from that brilliant day.
This is Shiina Ringo, my favourite Japanese artist so far. She's fun as anything! She reminds me of Bjork with guitars.
and holy cow there's a lot going on in this video (spanish subtitles, fun as anything music, a japanese artist flaunting cultural stereotypes with MTV editing. . . interesting.)
heh heh heh
Two American institutions, together at last.
I'll put a proper post in here sometime, but I've been busy lately, and haven't had time to find the shiny spots in life. They're out there, and I'm still a happy cat. . . just bear with me until I can get some pictures downloaded or something.
-Roboseyo
Heh heh heh.
pointed satire. I've ranted about this before, here on my blog.
And in case you don't trust the Mass Media to help you choose how to vote (if you have a vote) in the 2008 election, here's an information-rich clip that will probably influence many voters more than a 4-page spread in a newspaper -- was it the 2004 election where I heard of a survey that said America's main source for information about the electio candidates was the opening monologues of the Letterman and Leno Late-Night Talk Shows?
Well, I've pretty much decided who I'd choose now (if I had a vote). (remember back when policies and ideas were the thing -- thank goodness that fad has finally passed. SO much THINKING!--isn't there something very intrinsically wrong with the very fact people are bandying about the word "electability", rather than looking at the actual quality of the candidates?)
I'll put a proper post in here sometime, but I've been busy lately, and haven't had time to find the shiny spots in life. They're out there, and I'm still a happy cat. . . just bear with me until I can get some pictures downloaded or something.
-Roboseyo
Heh heh heh.
pointed satire. I've ranted about this before, here on my blog.
And in case you don't trust the Mass Media to help you choose how to vote (if you have a vote) in the 2008 election, here's an information-rich clip that will probably influence many voters more than a 4-page spread in a newspaper -- was it the 2004 election where I heard of a survey that said America's main source for information about the electio candidates was the opening monologues of the Letterman and Leno Late-Night Talk Shows?
Well, I've pretty much decided who I'd choose now (if I had a vote). (remember back when policies and ideas were the thing -- thank goodness that fad has finally passed. SO much THINKING!--isn't there something very intrinsically wrong with the very fact people are bandying about the word "electability", rather than looking at the actual quality of the candidates?)
Sunday, January 06, 2008
It's been a while since we've had a survey on here. . .
So I drank the Heroes kool-aid after all.
I don't have a TV at my house, and don't really miss it, but after seeing a few episodes of the TV series Heroes (which EVERYONE is talking about here in Korea these days) at my friend's house, I bought season one on DVD for cheap.
And, like the X-Men movies, The Bourne Identity, and Jim Carrey's The Mask, the best part of watching a show where people suddenly discover they have superpowers is entertaining the wish-fulfillment fantasy of what would happen if you discovered YOU had superpowers --
A good third of the fun of watching The Bourne Identity series is the daydream that, one day, when somebody threatens YOU, YOU'LL suddenly bust out deadly martial arts and super-spy skills, too; in the movie "The Mask", where the green mask brings out the side of your character that you hide in public, and gives it cartoonish super-powers, and it gives me a ninety-minute-long daydream about what side of ME would come out if I put on that silly mask. Ditto for x-men -- you can fantasize all day about which x-men power would be most fun, most useful, most frightening, and so on.
So in tribute to the TV series Heroes, the survey question is: which superhero power do YOU wish you had?
(and don't say x-ray vision, because then everybody will know you're a perv)
Two rules/qualifiers (just because everybody always says these ones -- like in Korea, you have to say "AFTER your parents, who is your hero?", because otherwise that's all you'll hear):
Don't say Superman's powers, because that's like going to a restaurant and ordering one of everything on the menu. Ditto for saying "Peter Petrelli's [from Heroes] power: the ability to absorb other people's superpowers": that's like saying "If I found a magic lamp I'd wish for a hundred more wishes." -- and kind of defeats the purpose of choosing. EVERYBODY would prefer to have ALL the superpowers, but if you had to pick one, which would it be?
I don't have a TV at my house, and don't really miss it, but after seeing a few episodes of the TV series Heroes (which EVERYONE is talking about here in Korea these days) at my friend's house, I bought season one on DVD for cheap.
And, like the X-Men movies, The Bourne Identity, and Jim Carrey's The Mask, the best part of watching a show where people suddenly discover they have superpowers is entertaining the wish-fulfillment fantasy of what would happen if you discovered YOU had superpowers --
A good third of the fun of watching The Bourne Identity series is the daydream that, one day, when somebody threatens YOU, YOU'LL suddenly bust out deadly martial arts and super-spy skills, too; in the movie "The Mask", where the green mask brings out the side of your character that you hide in public, and gives it cartoonish super-powers, and it gives me a ninety-minute-long daydream about what side of ME would come out if I put on that silly mask. Ditto for x-men -- you can fantasize all day about which x-men power would be most fun, most useful, most frightening, and so on.
So in tribute to the TV series Heroes, the survey question is: which superhero power do YOU wish you had?
(and don't say x-ray vision, because then everybody will know you're a perv)
Two rules/qualifiers (just because everybody always says these ones -- like in Korea, you have to say "AFTER your parents, who is your hero?", because otherwise that's all you'll hear):
Don't say Superman's powers, because that's like going to a restaurant and ordering one of everything on the menu. Ditto for saying "Peter Petrelli's [from Heroes] power: the ability to absorb other people's superpowers": that's like saying "If I found a magic lamp I'd wish for a hundred more wishes." -- and kind of defeats the purpose of choosing. EVERYBODY would prefer to have ALL the superpowers, but if you had to pick one, which would it be?
Friday, January 04, 2008
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
This is where I rang in the new year.
from a professional.
my own pictures.
It was fun. If you see a clown in a bright orange hat in these videos, it's me. 11 auspicious people rang the bell in Boshingak gate 33 times to ring in the new year. It was great being part of the ridonkulous crowd.
The white buses you see are full of riot police. You know, just in case.
Technically, you weren't allowed to sell or shoot fireworks, because people were injured last year (alcohol and explosives don't mix, friends. Don't try this at home.) But I guess the riot police decided it wasn't worth getting out the truncheons to stop people from shooting them in the air.
Either that, or they were busy sipping instant coffee in paper cups, 'cos it was FRIGGIN COLD!
I don't know if you can read the English on this can, but the prose always gave me a kick. I was so disappointed when they redesigned the can without silly words on it.
Even nice places have Konglish on the menus.
The lips stuff again. Not many teeth there.
Painting stripes on the road.
Poorly.
Happy new year and stuff.
my own pictures.
It was fun. If you see a clown in a bright orange hat in these videos, it's me. 11 auspicious people rang the bell in Boshingak gate 33 times to ring in the new year. It was great being part of the ridonkulous crowd.
The white buses you see are full of riot police. You know, just in case.
Technically, you weren't allowed to sell or shoot fireworks, because people were injured last year (alcohol and explosives don't mix, friends. Don't try this at home.) But I guess the riot police decided it wasn't worth getting out the truncheons to stop people from shooting them in the air.
Either that, or they were busy sipping instant coffee in paper cups, 'cos it was FRIGGIN COLD!
I don't know if you can read the English on this can, but the prose always gave me a kick. I was so disappointed when they redesigned the can without silly words on it.
Even nice places have Konglish on the menus.
The lips stuff again. Not many teeth there.
Painting stripes on the road.
Poorly.
Happy new year and stuff.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
I guess everybody's doing one of these.
For me, in the words of my old Creative Writing bud, Sparkey, 2007 has been kickdonkey awesomepants, friends.
A rundown of reasons for the spring in my step:
1. Girlfriendoseyo: we met in April, we hit it off almost right away, and it just keeps getting better and better. You've heard guarded hints roundabout allusions about her on the blog, but friends, I'm crazy about this woman. We like all the same things, and (______________ insert your own mushy cliche here__________________). It's pretty great.
2. Teaching adults. No more pee fights, tattle-tales, crocodile tears, or insane mothers. Instead, I learn from my students: there are areas where they actually know MORE than me. A lot of areas! I'm actually kind of dumb, except in a few fields.
3. Words - I've written more in this year than probably any three years previously. Seeing as writing professionally is my stated life goal, that's pretty significant.
4. Living downtown - every day living in the downtown is like a people-watcher's festival. And I get to be a tour-guide when my friends come into the downtown.
5. My Colleague/Friends -- I have some friends here who are really cool, including one gentleman who has invited me to his family's house, and who's opened up, despite big differences in age and culture, and really made me feel welcomed and appreciated as a westerner living in Korea.
6. Rosetta Stone - an amazing language study program that's building my vocabulary, my spoken Korean, and (most importantly) my confidence in speaking Korean. It's been a real boon, and I'm really enjoying the noticeable improvement in my Korean ability.
7. Moving into an apartment with no TV. TV sucks.
8. Downtownucopia: the variety and quality of restaurants in the downtown make eating a joyous practice over here in downtown Seoul. discovering that good food is one of my main pleasures in my life was also good -- putting one's finger on the things that makes one happy, sure helps one REMAIN happy. In no particular order, I really love:
-Indian in Jonggak -Blood and Cow Stomach Soup -the Oktoberfest microbrewery -spicy beef-bone stew -california rolls and sushi -beef bone soup (with AMAZING kimchi) -world class dumplings -okonomiyaki -the Moroccan place I just discovered -the funny old lady who's been making pickled garnishes and organic side dishes her entire life -the fat, old Chinese ladies who make dumplings and never smile
(If any of you readers lives in Korea and wants to know where to find these places. . . let me know in the comments section. We'll figure something out.)
9. Living closer to Matt, hiking more often, and generally getting healthier, in large part because of his influence.
10. Blogging as a new, more enlightened, more frequent way of keeping in touch with my loved ones in Canada (and elsewhere), and being able to share a little more detail than you can fit into a bi-monthly, text-only e-mail update.
11. Almost all of the friends I've kept close tabs on back in Canada are doing better now than they were last year -- you know who you are. Yay for you! I'm all squirming with happy for you.
12. Going to Canada in July to see my Dad's wedding, Matt's brother (and my surrogate older brother) Joely's wedding, and all the other people I saw then, too.
13. A MILLION BABIES -- like, everybody I know is having a baby. Except me. It's awesome, and overwhelming, and awesome, and exciting, and awesome.
14. Is a luckier number than thirteen.
the bummers:
Myspace, Facebook, Internet, Blog, Youtube, Collegehumor.com et. al = New Years resolution 1: waste less time on the internet.
With all that good eatin', it's easy to get fat, fast.
I didn't call home enough: I have no landline anymore, so all phones home must be cellulexpensive, plus, I'm a bad son/brother/friend/uncle/grandson/stalker. I just don't do my duty enough.
Thanks God, and everybody else involved, for a fantastic year. I'm glad to be alive, and really happy with my situation these days.
I love you all!
Take care.
Love:
roboseyo
A rundown of reasons for the spring in my step:
1. Girlfriendoseyo: we met in April, we hit it off almost right away, and it just keeps getting better and better. You've heard guarded hints roundabout allusions about her on the blog, but friends, I'm crazy about this woman. We like all the same things, and (______________ insert your own mushy cliche here__________________). It's pretty great.
2. Teaching adults. No more pee fights, tattle-tales, crocodile tears, or insane mothers. Instead, I learn from my students: there are areas where they actually know MORE than me. A lot of areas! I'm actually kind of dumb, except in a few fields.
3. Words - I've written more in this year than probably any three years previously. Seeing as writing professionally is my stated life goal, that's pretty significant.
4. Living downtown - every day living in the downtown is like a people-watcher's festival. And I get to be a tour-guide when my friends come into the downtown.
5. My Colleague/Friends -- I have some friends here who are really cool, including one gentleman who has invited me to his family's house, and who's opened up, despite big differences in age and culture, and really made me feel welcomed and appreciated as a westerner living in Korea.
6. Rosetta Stone - an amazing language study program that's building my vocabulary, my spoken Korean, and (most importantly) my confidence in speaking Korean. It's been a real boon, and I'm really enjoying the noticeable improvement in my Korean ability.
7. Moving into an apartment with no TV. TV sucks.
8. Downtownucopia: the variety and quality of restaurants in the downtown make eating a joyous practice over here in downtown Seoul. discovering that good food is one of my main pleasures in my life was also good -- putting one's finger on the things that makes one happy, sure helps one REMAIN happy. In no particular order, I really love:
-Indian in Jonggak -Blood and Cow Stomach Soup -the Oktoberfest microbrewery -spicy beef-bone stew -california rolls and sushi -beef bone soup (with AMAZING kimchi) -world class dumplings -okonomiyaki -the Moroccan place I just discovered -the funny old lady who's been making pickled garnishes and organic side dishes her entire life -the fat, old Chinese ladies who make dumplings and never smile
(If any of you readers lives in Korea and wants to know where to find these places. . . let me know in the comments section. We'll figure something out.)
9. Living closer to Matt, hiking more often, and generally getting healthier, in large part because of his influence.
10. Blogging as a new, more enlightened, more frequent way of keeping in touch with my loved ones in Canada (and elsewhere), and being able to share a little more detail than you can fit into a bi-monthly, text-only e-mail update.
11. Almost all of the friends I've kept close tabs on back in Canada are doing better now than they were last year -- you know who you are. Yay for you! I'm all squirming with happy for you.
12. Going to Canada in July to see my Dad's wedding, Matt's brother (and my surrogate older brother) Joely's wedding, and all the other people I saw then, too.
13. A MILLION BABIES -- like, everybody I know is having a baby. Except me. It's awesome, and overwhelming, and awesome, and exciting, and awesome.
14. Is a luckier number than thirteen.
the bummers:
Myspace, Facebook, Internet, Blog, Youtube, Collegehumor.com et. al = New Years resolution 1: waste less time on the internet.
With all that good eatin', it's easy to get fat, fast.
I didn't call home enough: I have no landline anymore, so all phones home must be cellulexpensive, plus, I'm a bad son/brother/friend/uncle/grandson/stalker. I just don't do my duty enough.
Thanks God, and everybody else involved, for a fantastic year. I'm glad to be alive, and really happy with my situation these days.
I love you all!
Take care.
Love:
roboseyo
My friend's thinking about coming to Korea. Here's what I wrote to him.
Lists and point form are dead giveaway signs of sloppy, lazy writers. Though they'd say it's just that they're very organized thinkers, or maybe accustomed to making presentations, in truth, top ten lists and bullet-points are sure-fire signs a writer has a weak idea, or doesn't have the time or inclination to write proper transitions, the way a professional would. So I'm lazy. It's a blog. Your refund is in the mail.
My bud is about to graduate university, and he told me he struggles with indecision and a kind of lack of direction; I've taken out personal details, but basically, here is what I said to him about how travel can help one get a better idea of what one wants out of life. I kinda liked what I wrote, I think it lays out my feelings about traveling (especially when you're young) as a means for personal growth.
--kindly substitute the world "travel" any place where it says "come to Korea" -- our conversation specifically concerned coming to Korea, but traveling anywhere can have the same effects I describe here, if you travel for long enough, and especially if you spend a longer period of time in one place.
--
Whether Korea will help you be more decisive depends on why you come here, and what you do once you're here.
Here's how coming to a foreign country will help you:
1. you'll get out of the circle where you grew up, and see a totally different way of living, thinking, acting. Suddenly you'll see that things you thought were "the way things are" are actually just "the way things are in my family" or "the way things are in small-town western Canada". There are things I thought of as “Right” that were actually just “how we do things in Canada” That can be a bit of a mind-f*ck. However, once you get THROUGH the culture-shock, you'll have a much better picture of what is essentially you, and what is actually just your culture talking, or your upbringing, and you'll have a chance to measure those things against another way of living, and decide if you want to hold onto them or start bending your idea of what it means to be you/Canadian/human.
2. Because a small percentage of people speak English, the pool from which you choose your friends is smaller than in Canada, and you end up hanging out with people you wouldn't hang out with in CA. My best friend now is a guy who, if we'd met in Canada, I'd have just about run the opposite way to huddle with my bible-study friends -but when we started getting to know each other (because there was noone else to talk to), it turned out we were pretty much soulmates.
3. Because your family's way back in Canada, you can know for damn sure that you can stand on your own two feet if you make it here, and the confidence of knowing that you MADE it without a safety net, will stay with you always.
4. It'll change the way you think (if you actually engage with the differences here, rather than just reacting defensively to them).
5. By making the ballsy decision to hop an ocean to get a job, you'll see, and know, that you CAN make a big decision. That might (probably will) empower you to make decisions more boldly.
6. If part of the reason you often feel indecisive is because certain people in your life are smothering you with their opinions of what you should do, this will give you a time-out, so that you can start looking in the mirror and seeing your OWN face, instead of theirs projected onto you.
Here are the things it won't help you do:
1. It won't help you find that thing you're really passionate about (unless it just happens to be studying Korean). The reason I usually know where I stand on something [he had commented on that as a trait he admired in me] is because I know what's important to me, and I measure most of the other decisions I make against that. It keeps the small stuff in perspective and simplifies my choices. The process of finding out what you're passionate about is a deeply personal one, and a change of setting can submerge those questions for a while as you adjust to changes, it can give you a space where you can examine them without distractions, too, but it won't make them go away, nor will it automatically answer them -- they'll never go away until you face them and answer them yourself. If the surroundings you're in now are making it easy for you to coast instead of grabbing the steering wheel and finding the answers, maybe travel will help, but there's no guarantee it will, unless you travel with the goal of using the travel time to go through that exploratory process, and then DO it.
2. It won't make you a stronger, more independent person just by the mere virtue of being here. If you come with the aim of learning about yourself and stretching your boundaries, you still have to put yourself out there once you're here -- some people come to Korea, form a comfort zone as rigid as they had back home, hang out only with westerners, eat ONLY western food, and complain that Korea's weird and everybody talks funny. They leave after a year and they haven't learned anything about Korea, or themselves. They’re still just as narrow-minded, ignorant, and insular, as they were when they came. Others come to extend their irresponsible, fun college life for another year before they have to start being responsible, and basically live fast and hard, drink a lot, party and chase Asian girls (or guys), and (again) don’t learn a single thing about themselves or the world.
Once you're here, you gotta be intentional. Meet people, travel around, learn about Korea, maybe learn some Korean, make some friends that are very different from yourself, try to understand how they think, maybe read some books, and see what comes of it. All these things can be done right where you are now, but you're kinda FORCED to do them if you come to Korea, because your old comfort zone is in Canada, so you can’t fall back on it when things get tough.
If you’re looking for a new direction, Korea’s a good way to make a clean break between your New self and your Old self, but you still have to do the work. Wherever you live, and whatever your situation, the onus still falls upon YOU to find out what (in Good Will Hunting's words,) "blows your hair back" and then pursue those things above all else. Korea can help with that, and odds are you’ll probably become stronger, more flexible, more confident, and more independent, but the meaning of life won't drop into your lap when you step off the plane, or on the third Tuesday of your eleventh month here, or something. You still need to dive into situations you’ve never experienced before, get in right up to your elbows, and see what happens.
Knowing what you want out of coming to Korea is at least half the battle, I'd say, and personally, I think Korea would blow your mind and change your life, in a lot of good ways, but of all decisions, you have to make this one yourself, and not because anybody else is telling you what you ought to do.
My bud is about to graduate university, and he told me he struggles with indecision and a kind of lack of direction; I've taken out personal details, but basically, here is what I said to him about how travel can help one get a better idea of what one wants out of life. I kinda liked what I wrote, I think it lays out my feelings about traveling (especially when you're young) as a means for personal growth.
--kindly substitute the world "travel" any place where it says "come to Korea" -- our conversation specifically concerned coming to Korea, but traveling anywhere can have the same effects I describe here, if you travel for long enough, and especially if you spend a longer period of time in one place.
--
Whether Korea will help you be more decisive depends on why you come here, and what you do once you're here.
Here's how coming to a foreign country will help you:
1. you'll get out of the circle where you grew up, and see a totally different way of living, thinking, acting. Suddenly you'll see that things you thought were "the way things are" are actually just "the way things are in my family" or "the way things are in small-town western Canada". There are things I thought of as “Right” that were actually just “how we do things in Canada” That can be a bit of a mind-f*ck. However, once you get THROUGH the culture-shock, you'll have a much better picture of what is essentially you, and what is actually just your culture talking, or your upbringing, and you'll have a chance to measure those things against another way of living, and decide if you want to hold onto them or start bending your idea of what it means to be you/Canadian/human.
2. Because a small percentage of people speak English, the pool from which you choose your friends is smaller than in Canada, and you end up hanging out with people you wouldn't hang out with in CA. My best friend now is a guy who, if we'd met in Canada, I'd have just about run the opposite way to huddle with my bible-study friends -but when we started getting to know each other (because there was noone else to talk to), it turned out we were pretty much soulmates.
3. Because your family's way back in Canada, you can know for damn sure that you can stand on your own two feet if you make it here, and the confidence of knowing that you MADE it without a safety net, will stay with you always.
4. It'll change the way you think (if you actually engage with the differences here, rather than just reacting defensively to them).
5. By making the ballsy decision to hop an ocean to get a job, you'll see, and know, that you CAN make a big decision. That might (probably will) empower you to make decisions more boldly.
6. If part of the reason you often feel indecisive is because certain people in your life are smothering you with their opinions of what you should do, this will give you a time-out, so that you can start looking in the mirror and seeing your OWN face, instead of theirs projected onto you.
Here are the things it won't help you do:
1. It won't help you find that thing you're really passionate about (unless it just happens to be studying Korean). The reason I usually know where I stand on something [he had commented on that as a trait he admired in me] is because I know what's important to me, and I measure most of the other decisions I make against that. It keeps the small stuff in perspective and simplifies my choices. The process of finding out what you're passionate about is a deeply personal one, and a change of setting can submerge those questions for a while as you adjust to changes, it can give you a space where you can examine them without distractions, too, but it won't make them go away, nor will it automatically answer them -- they'll never go away until you face them and answer them yourself. If the surroundings you're in now are making it easy for you to coast instead of grabbing the steering wheel and finding the answers, maybe travel will help, but there's no guarantee it will, unless you travel with the goal of using the travel time to go through that exploratory process, and then DO it.
2. It won't make you a stronger, more independent person just by the mere virtue of being here. If you come with the aim of learning about yourself and stretching your boundaries, you still have to put yourself out there once you're here -- some people come to Korea, form a comfort zone as rigid as they had back home, hang out only with westerners, eat ONLY western food, and complain that Korea's weird and everybody talks funny. They leave after a year and they haven't learned anything about Korea, or themselves. They’re still just as narrow-minded, ignorant, and insular, as they were when they came. Others come to extend their irresponsible, fun college life for another year before they have to start being responsible, and basically live fast and hard, drink a lot, party and chase Asian girls (or guys), and (again) don’t learn a single thing about themselves or the world.
Once you're here, you gotta be intentional. Meet people, travel around, learn about Korea, maybe learn some Korean, make some friends that are very different from yourself, try to understand how they think, maybe read some books, and see what comes of it. All these things can be done right where you are now, but you're kinda FORCED to do them if you come to Korea, because your old comfort zone is in Canada, so you can’t fall back on it when things get tough.
If you’re looking for a new direction, Korea’s a good way to make a clean break between your New self and your Old self, but you still have to do the work. Wherever you live, and whatever your situation, the onus still falls upon YOU to find out what (in Good Will Hunting's words,) "blows your hair back" and then pursue those things above all else. Korea can help with that, and odds are you’ll probably become stronger, more flexible, more confident, and more independent, but the meaning of life won't drop into your lap when you step off the plane, or on the third Tuesday of your eleventh month here, or something. You still need to dive into situations you’ve never experienced before, get in right up to your elbows, and see what happens.
Knowing what you want out of coming to Korea is at least half the battle, I'd say, and personally, I think Korea would blow your mind and change your life, in a lot of good ways, but of all decisions, you have to make this one yourself, and not because anybody else is telling you what you ought to do.
Roboseyos year-end music list.
This is what's been rocking my speakers this year:
Old friends:
Tom Waits (especially Rain Dogs and Alice)
White Stripes (especially White Blood Cells, Elephant, and their newest, Icky Thump, ROCKS)
Nick Drake (especially Pink Moon)
Modest Mouse (sorry, Matt)
Prince
Old standbys:
Shut Up, I Am Dreaming by Sunset Rubdown
You Forgot it In People by Broken Social Scene
Return To The Sea by The Islands
New friends that are becoming old friends (and released new material this year):
Do Make Say Think
Andrew Bird
The Arcade Fire
Growers (these are the ones that grow on you, the more you listen to it)
Jens Lekman
Roots and Crowns by Califone
Not For Everyone, but Growers All The Same:
Person Pitch by Panda Bear - gave it another listen when my favourite music website named them best of 2007; growing on me.
Fur and Gold by Bat For Lashes
Ys by Joanna Newsom
From Here We Go To Sublime The Fields
Old friends:
Tom Waits (especially Rain Dogs and Alice)
White Stripes (especially White Blood Cells, Elephant, and their newest, Icky Thump, ROCKS)
Nick Drake (especially Pink Moon)
Modest Mouse (sorry, Matt)
Prince
Old standbys:
Shut Up, I Am Dreaming by Sunset Rubdown
You Forgot it In People by Broken Social Scene
Return To The Sea by The Islands
New friends that are becoming old friends (and released new material this year):
Do Make Say Think
Andrew Bird
The Arcade Fire
Growers (these are the ones that grow on you, the more you listen to it)
Jens Lekman
Roots and Crowns by Califone
Not For Everyone, but Growers All The Same:
Person Pitch by Panda Bear - gave it another listen when my favourite music website named them best of 2007; growing on me.
Fur and Gold by Bat For Lashes
Ys by Joanna Newsom
From Here We Go To Sublime The Fields
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Wizard People, Dear Readers. I laughed for about an hour straight last night.
A guy named Brad Neely, from Austin, has recorded a voice-over for the entire first Harry Potter movie. It is sometimes overwrought, sometimes a little crass, and mostly absolutely hilarious.
It's available on youtube, divided into chapters, here, from beginning to end.
This thing made me laugh out loud a lot. If you love Harry Potter, or if you love overwrought prose, or people talking in silly voices, or somebody taking the piss out of the silliness of Hollywood fantasy movies, this is SOOO worth seeing, and funnier than all but two or three of the comedy movies I've seen in the last five years.
The prose is wildly uneven, going from phrases like:
"yuckers" and "holy BALLS!"
"her voice is chilling, and like a piano made of frozen windex"
"snooozers. All the kids are too tired to listen."
to
"a disturbingly meaningful fog hangs cataracts all over Hogwarts."
"Gathered around the fire, four or five cognacs down, our threesome unwinds and works out the details. Neckties loosened, robes unbuckled, they are relaxing. Yes, they are wrong about Snake."
"Harry is like a demon long dead, with nothing else to lose. . . like a leopard, Harry used his voracious mouth as his catcher! He's got the snitch in his animal belly!. . . the crowd goes absolutely BAZONKERS! . . . Harry is spent! The crowd is destroying its throats, calling Harry's name. Harry feels right with himself he's down there, a new God, who has found his calling. He holds up the snitch, and bellows, "I am a beautiful animal! I am a destroyer of worlds! I am Harry f*cking Potter! And dear reader, the world, at last, was quiet." (the end of the Cribbage match)
"That crazy, sick-ass face is burning everything. He wants that stone bad. He wants to paddle Harry so hard. He starts telling Harry all sorts of fake sh*t like that Harry killed his own parents, and that Dumbledore eats babies."
Dude, just watch it (unless you don't like f*ck-words, as he calls them.) Here's one of my favourite parts, just to get you started.
And here's Chapter one.
It's available on youtube, divided into chapters, here, from beginning to end.
This thing made me laugh out loud a lot. If you love Harry Potter, or if you love overwrought prose, or people talking in silly voices, or somebody taking the piss out of the silliness of Hollywood fantasy movies, this is SOOO worth seeing, and funnier than all but two or three of the comedy movies I've seen in the last five years.
The prose is wildly uneven, going from phrases like:
"yuckers" and "holy BALLS!"
"her voice is chilling, and like a piano made of frozen windex"
"snooozers. All the kids are too tired to listen."
to
"a disturbingly meaningful fog hangs cataracts all over Hogwarts."
"Gathered around the fire, four or five cognacs down, our threesome unwinds and works out the details. Neckties loosened, robes unbuckled, they are relaxing. Yes, they are wrong about Snake."
"Harry is like a demon long dead, with nothing else to lose. . . like a leopard, Harry used his voracious mouth as his catcher! He's got the snitch in his animal belly!. . . the crowd goes absolutely BAZONKERS! . . . Harry is spent! The crowd is destroying its throats, calling Harry's name. Harry feels right with himself he's down there, a new God, who has found his calling. He holds up the snitch, and bellows, "I am a beautiful animal! I am a destroyer of worlds! I am Harry f*cking Potter! And dear reader, the world, at last, was quiet." (the end of the Cribbage match)
"That crazy, sick-ass face is burning everything. He wants that stone bad. He wants to paddle Harry so hard. He starts telling Harry all sorts of fake sh*t like that Harry killed his own parents, and that Dumbledore eats babies."
Dude, just watch it (unless you don't like f*ck-words, as he calls them.) Here's one of my favourite parts, just to get you started.
And here's Chapter one.
Friday, December 28, 2007
The full text of the article, plus my letter to the editor.
I claim no copyright for Mr. Kim's article; I'm simply reprinting it here for my personal use, in order to show my friends and family the full context of my letter to the editor. Normally, I really enjoy his column, but this one required a response.
[Kaleidoscope]An end to naivety: No more dark ages
by Kim Seong-kon
2007.12.26
My response:
[A READER'S VIEW] The pot calls the kettle black
by Robert Ouwehand
Normally, I look forward to Kim Seong-kon's "Kaleidoscope" column on The Korea Herald's opinion page. As an adult English conversation teacher, I have often used his ideas and insights in class. He usually looks seriously at relevant topics, and clearly communicates fresh thoughts, instead of offering the same, stale party lines.
[Kaleidoscope]An end to naivety: No more dark ages
by Kim Seong-kon
The medieval Dark Ages was a period of tumultuous conflict between Christianity and Islam, or Catholics and "heresy." It was also a time of Catholic corruption, witch trials, and the Inquisition. Unfortunately, our age is no less dark, and the age-old struggle between two adversaries still continues. South Korea, too, has been devastated lately by the struggle between two radically different, antagonistic groups, deliberately instigated by our belligerent leftist politicians.
During the military dictatorship, Koreans lived in a "Dark Age." Generals wearing black shades ruthlessly ruled the country with bayonets and iron boots for nearly three decades. During that Dark Age, people suffered in a grim, relentless reality, while weak intellectuals had to combat a sense of futility and impotence. Due to the military fashion of the time, South Korea was hopelessly degenerated into a country of uniformity. Oftentimes, however, the dictators felt a sense of guilt and illegitimacy as they usurped the throne, and realized that they were nothing but amateurs, especially in economics and diplomacy. As a result, they respected public opinion and listened to professional advice, when necessary. They also tried their best to boost the nation's economy, thereby achieving the so-called miracle of the Han River.
A decade ago, the Korean people witnessed the advent of the age of democracy at last. As the generals retreated backstage and permanently disappeared behind the curtain, the monochromatic military culture was replaced by colorful diversity. Soon after, however, leftist politicians and activists seized political power, calling for a socialist paradise on the Korean Peninsula. We naively believed in them; after all, they were the dissidents who valiantly fought against the military dictatorship. Unfortunately, that is what clouded our judgment. Few people realized at that time that we were marching into another type of Dark Age.
Soon, people began to be disillusioned by the leftist politicians' unbearable amateurism, intolerable vulgarity, and impudent self-righteousness. Enraged with personal grudges, they were hostile, resentful, and revengeful. These pseudo-Marxists, who never shared their fortunes with the poor, but fully enjoyed the benefits of a capitalist society, rapidly began tearing the serene country apart with their crude leftist ideology. In their eyes, bourgeois intellectual labor such as writing or lecturing was nothing but a luxury that deserved a heavy tax. Owning real estate was another unpardonable sin to be punished. So they dropped tax bombs indiscriminately upon home owners, and wasted astronomical amounts of tax money on numerous failed projects such as building the administrative capital city in a local province. Instead of creating jobs, they extorted the middle class, and constantly blamed big business corporations such as Samsung as the root of social evil.
To make matters worse, the radical politicians mocked intellectuals by dubbing manual laborers such as Chinese food delivery boys as the "New Intellectuals." Once again, intellectuals in our society had to fight a sense of defeat and despair. Our leftist politicians were not good at diplomacy, either. Seriously lacking diplomatic skills and international sensibility, they frequently jeopardized Korea's diplomatic relationships with allies and other countries with their rude, sloppy, and amateurish approaches. Consequently, they seriously degraded the image of Korea in the international community by garrulous, vulgar language and embarrassingly unrefined expressions.
Meanwhile, the Korean economy stagnated, while other countries enjoyed economic prosperity. South Korea could have truly advanced, if only we had elected the right person as our leader. Alas! We have wasted 10 precious years, and it seems too late to catch up now. Yet our self-righteous politicians did not listen to anybody, for they thought they were always right, while all others were invariably wrong. The so-called social reform they futilely attempted, which mostly stemmed from their personal grudges and resentments, turned out to be a complete failure, only turning the nation upside down, making it into a planet of the apes. Equally corrupt and ruthless as their predecessors, they even placed a gag on the press. As a result, we have been through another Dark Age for the past ten years, and there seems to be no way to restore the lost time.
Some people say that it was an inevitable process we had to go through in order to achieve democracy. Nevertheless, the price we have to pay is much too high. It will take many years to heal the psychological wounds of the people, and restore the damaged relationships with our allies. We once made an irrevocable mistake by foolishly voting for the Leftist politicians who ruined the economy and tore the peaceful nation apart. From now on, we cannot afford to make another mistake, for it will be fatal to the future of Korea.
At the presidential election last week, we have chosen wisely. It was judgment day for the Roh administration. No longer will we be deceived by the anachronistic leftists who still cling to obsolete Marxist ideology. We should put an end to naivety, and open our eyes to the new world and new era. Then we can transcend the gravity of all the dogmatic ideologies, and reach the gorgeous rainbow coalition. O Lord: please no more ideological warfare in this land! No more Dark Ages! We need illumination!
2007.12.26
My response:
[A READER'S VIEW] The pot calls the kettle black
by Robert Ouwehand
Normally, I look forward to Kim Seong-kon's "Kaleidoscope" column on The Korea Herald's opinion page. As an adult English conversation teacher, I have often used his ideas and insights in class. He usually looks seriously at relevant topics, and clearly communicates fresh thoughts, instead of offering the same, stale party lines.
Because of my high expectations, I was especially disappointed with his Dec. 26 article "An end to naivety: No more dark ages". His closing words: "We need to put an end to naivety. . . [and] transcend the gravity of all the dogmatic ideologies," call out for a "rainbow coalition" free of polarized ideologies, yet the eight hundred words preceding it completely undermine his conclusion by viciously attacking the left.
Whether his claims about the last two socialist governments are correct is beside the point, when Kim's rightist polemic, loaded with inflammatory language, shows all the one-sidedness and self-righteousness for which he attacks Presidents Roh and Kim.
Many of the last two administrations' shortcomings had nothing to do with ideology: Kim himself often blames their failures in diplomacy and policy on a lack of experience, vision, or political savvy. Yet in his summary, Kim seems to imply that the new Lee Myung-Bak government will solve the country's woes, not because of his group's superior political ability, but by the mere fact they are conservatives. Such a simplistic, and, yes, naive, view, simply rehashes the blindly partisan ideological dogmatism which Kim speaks against in his own article's conclusion.
Models of moral life have come from a rainbow of religious and philosophical backgrounds. Likewise, excellent leaders have come from every point on the political spectrum. If President Lee solves Korea's problems, it will be because he is conscientious, focused, and sensitive to Korea's needs in a rapidly changing world; it will be because he judiciously places the best people, instead of his own allies, in key positions; it will be because he puts the needs of his country above the needs of his party's biggest contributors and old business associates.
Though Kim calls for an end to ideological dogmatism in his conclusion, his rhetoric gives the impression that the only way to achieve the "rainbow coalition" he wishes for, is for everyone to become conservatives like himself, and join in attacking socialists in a rainbow of diverse ways. Whether he is right or wrong, such inflammatory language is further polarizing, and, for a widely read columnist seeking a more enlightened dialogue, it is unhelpful and even irresponsible, betraying his stated ideal.
If nothing else, such simpleminded, black-and-white, left-and-right ideology-stumping is far below Kim's usually high standard of thought and expression.
Robert Ouwehand, Seoul
2007.12.28
Roboseyo lays a verbal smack-down!
There's this columnist in the Korea Herald (the English newspaper my school subscribes to.) I don't always agree with him, but he usually expresses himself very well and brings up worthwhile conversation topics. However, on Wednesday, he let all his conservative prejudices fly, clouding his normally sound expression. Here's a link to his column from Korea Herald online. He contradicts his own conclusion, and comes off as the same kind of knee-jerk ideologue that he criticizes in other of his articles.
Not that I'm personally invested too deeply in Korea's new president elect, nor the previous two administrations, but I was bothered by the hypocrisy of slagging the opposing party, and then calling for a more open dialogue in the conclusion. So I fired off a letter to the editor, basically calling him out for his self-contradiction. . . and they printed my response in today's Herald.
I'm pleased as punch. I bought an extra copy of the paper for posterity, and it's sure fun seeing my name in print!
I rock.
By the way: this is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
Not that I'm personally invested too deeply in Korea's new president elect, nor the previous two administrations, but I was bothered by the hypocrisy of slagging the opposing party, and then calling for a more open dialogue in the conclusion. So I fired off a letter to the editor, basically calling him out for his self-contradiction. . . and they printed my response in today's Herald.
I'm pleased as punch. I bought an extra copy of the paper for posterity, and it's sure fun seeing my name in print!
I rock.
By the way: this is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Merry Christmas, all! A little more about Christmas in Korea
A few more thoughts on Christmas in Korea, interspersed with pictures I took downtown on Sunday afternoon and night. Plus a mini-story or two at the end.
A few basic rules of forfeiture, AKA the Having vs. Eating Cake corollaries:
1. If you don't vote, you forfeit your right to complain about the government in power. If you won't even participate in the system, where do you get off complaining about it? I'm not listening. (Hee hee. I'm such a cranky old codger.)
(what's wrong with this picture? absolutely nothing, in Korea. You get used to old ladies mopping around you as you do your business in men's rooms all around South Korea. Took a while, though.)
2. If you wear a low-cut v-neck blouse with a push-up bra, or a short skirt with mid-thigh-high stockings and high heels, you forfeit your right to complain about men staring at you. You know what men are like, and while I'm not excusing our male piggishness, it's a little naive to expect more from us.
3. If you're a country with the 13th largest economy in the world, a world leader in broadband penetration and telecommunication connectivity, and the world's largest microchip exporter, you forfeit the right to say, "don't critique our social issues: we're still a developing country."
Christmas in downtown seoul is shiny. There's an ice rink behind the castle wall.
4. If you don't dress properly for the cold, if you don't zip up your jacket and keep your ears warm and wear some gloves, you forfeit your right to complain that it's cold. You may say "I should have dressed more appropriately for the cold, that was bad planning on my part" and that's all. Or I will take it as tacit permission for me to mock your illogical position.
Yet everywhere I go in Korea, I see girls dressed in spring jackets with short skirts and thick stockings, no hats or gloves, and jackets that aren't even zipped up, stamping their feet and making pitiful puppy-dog faces and complaining "I'm so cold" in Korean: "Chu-aa~".
According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, one must take care of basic needs (food, sleep) before one can worry about higher level needs (acceptance by the community, belonging, love, meaning) -- nobody ponders "what ARE my life goals?" when they're hungry; they mostly only ponder, "where can I scratch up some grub?" AFTER you've eaten, you might have time to wonder about the Grand Scheme.
According to Roboseyo's hierarchy of fashion, you only really ought to worry about style once your clothing has adequately protected you from the elements. If you put fashion above function, you won't get ANY sympathy from me when you complain about being cold or wet. Yet there's this disconnect between two, two, and four, here in Korea: as the winter's gotten colder, I'm told that short-shorts and miniskirt sales have actually gone UP! Some of the results are shocking.
I'd say we're looking at somewhere between 35-45% of the fashion-conscious-aged women at the mall on Sunday wearing springwear (at best) in the winter.
I mean, come on! How could that POSSIBLY keep her warm unless she has an emergency thermal blanket tucked into that bag? And it wasn't THAT warm on Sunday -- five celsius in the afternoon, tops.
The receptionists at my school got a kick out of my imitation of Korean girls who leave their jackets unzipped and then complain about being cold. One said, "Robert. Fashion is important." I answered, "Spring, summer, fall, fashion is important. Winter: WARM is important. Fashion is second." They got a good laugh out of it, but I doubt they're convinced.
(Cheonggye stream in downtown seoul puts up christmas lights every year. The poor-quality camera almost makes the light fixtures MORE impressive, because it looks like one big roman candle, instead of structures strung with lights.)
I'm developing a theory that the fashionistas and style-makers are using ridiculous styles like miniskirts in winter basically as a way of flaunting their power over the poor fashion slaves who feel compelled to follow trends. In 2001, every time Avril Lavigne saw some poor teeny-bop fashion victim wearing a tie over a tank-top, she probably secretly high-fived herself and thought, "YEAH! I'm awesome! She's wearing that awful getup because of ME! Poor chump!"
I imagine those contrarian stylemakers like the Wicked Witch of the West, staring at Dorothy's image in the crystal ball, laughing maniacally and cackling, "Shiver, my pretty! Shiver! Mwahahahahahaaaa!" We'll know for sure it's nothing but a power trip of theirs if they make heavy wool sweaters or scarves the stylish thing to wear next July, just as a final "Eff You" to their poor fashion slaves, rubbing in the skirts in winter trend by refusing those poor ladies a single season of clothing comfort. That's my prediction. Put it on the books. See if I'm wrong. I probably will be, but windbags like myself like to speculate. Fills up the hours.
What the heck? I don't know. This inflatable whatonearth was in the window of an art gallery in Insa-dong, the culture/tourist heritage area. Lots of galleries, and this one ALWAYS has something weird in the window.
On the Christmas Music front:
Dire news: it happened. It ACTUALLY happened. I was sitting in an ice cream shop eating a sorbet, and after a shabby Korean cover of Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" (why why why do they love Mariah so much here?), that asinine song you've heard me complain about here before, came on:
"Last Christmas, I gave you my heart. . . "
FOUR TIMES IN A ROW! The George Michael version, then the Bi version (Korean star) then a techno/discopop + children's choir mix, and finally it was the first song (and its chord progression was the foundation) in a medley of, seriously, FOUR of the ten tackiest Christmas songs in existence. I actually stayed in the ice cream shop after I finished my ice cream, in utter disbelief, as one slowing his car down to gawk at the car wreck and see if that's blood or oil, just daring that damn medley to top itself and actually get worse, and each new song in the medley WAS! From "Last Christmas," it went to "Happy Christmas, War Is Over" to "Do They Know It's Christmas" to "Feliz Nevidad" and then I really did have to go, before I felt the urge to injure myself with a plastic ice cream spoon. I'm disappointed to tell you that I was wrong: every Starbucks in Korea DIDN'T spontaneously implode in response to that awful lineup. Good thing, too. The Peppermint Mochas this December are quite nice.
I like blue lights best.
This is cute: the Korean language doesn't have a character for the "V" sound, so the "V" sound is usually substituted with the Korean character bieup, which sounds about halfway between a "B" and a "P". This leads to the cute pun on this brand: Viewty, when pronounced by most Koreans, sounds exactly like the word "Beauty".
As always, the station was attended by some Viewtiful girls in short skirts, but I've ranted enough about the latent (and totally accepted) sexism in Korea for one post (it seems protesting would be immodest I guess -- I asked Girlfriendoseyo about the state of feminism in Korea and she described what English speakers call lip-service).
(But did you know the OECD released statistics stating that Korean women work more hours for less pay than any other country in the OECD, and unlike in the Netherlands, where college educated women have a 20% higher employment rate than women without, Korean college educated women's employment rate is actually 2% LOWER than women without! I'll leave the comment board open for theories as to why that might be.)
Back to light stuff:
Santa and Rudolph's freaky love-child.
Sometimes, the lack of a "V" is a little funnier: one day, my best friend Matt was walking through a riverside park and came upon an outdoor concert of five hundred middle-aged women. When the performer finished a song, they chanted, "ANCHOR!" (which is how Koreans call for an encore) and the singer shouted, "PAPSONG!" (popsong). The singer started singing, and the old ladies sang along. Problem was, because of the V-B/P substitution, as they sang along to the old '80s song, the end result was 500 middle-aged women jumping up and down with their hands in the air, not able to pronounce "I'm your Venus," and hollering "I'm Your Penis" instead.
Lee Hyori is one of the hottest Korean stars these days (has been for a while.) For all the fanboys, here's a new way to get close to her (if you don't mind endorsing soju at the same time).
More lip/smile/teeth related stuff:
Hyori again (from above) -- showing surprisingly few teeth for a photo spread.
Ad for lip gloss.
There are creepy santa statues everywhere. Some are lifesize enough that they startle me as I walk around, making me go, "Bwah! Somebody's standing there! Oh wait. Nevermind."
On Friday, my face froze this way. I guess that'll be it for the rest of my life. Better hold on to the friends I already have.
This is my favourite picture from the city hall pictures. You're not supposed to climb up inside the rainbow seashell monument, but the security personnel were too busy, I guess, stopping people from leaning on bridge railings (see story below). I'm really proud of the composition and the light/dark contrast of this picture: this is about as good a picture as you can get on the cruddy cameraphone I have. This, or the layered coloured leaves picture from my Kyunghee university post.
EVERYBODY had a camera -- it was like nametags at a convention. I was afraid that if I put my cameraphone in my pocket, somebody'd ask me to show it to them or they'd have to escort me off the premises.
Every direction you moved, you were walking through somebody's picture.
At COEX mall, there are 3-D movie posters where you can interact with the movie ad, and take pictures in it, or sit in the chair, or stand behind Hannibal Lecter's mask so that it looks like YOU're the one in restraints. Cool, especially for a shutterbug-mad population like downtown Korea's.
I was gonna play a game of count the cameras, walking around on Sunday night, but I ran out of fingers and toes in five seconds.
My second favourite picture from right at the head of Cheonggye stream.
Mini-story 1: my girlfriend is funny.
We were walking across one of the bridges over Cheonggye stream (pictured above) and we leaned against the bridge. Some dude came up to tell us we couldn't lean on the bridge for safety, but he told us in Korean. Girlfriendoseyo (normally a very sweet not-making-waves type of person) decided she wanted to lean, dammit! So she turned to the Korean safety guy and said to him, "Whaaaat?" EXACTLY the way some Californian tourist might say it. He repeated himself in Korean and (emboldened by being with me, clearly an outsider, and thus able to get away with pretending to be a tourist,) she kept going, "I'm sorry. What's wrong? What is it? Why?" she asked as he stammered, "No lean. Umm. . . sorry. . . no. . . lean. . . safe. . . lean no!" she said, with a perfect, vacant intonation, "Why noOOoooot?" and, completely out of English words, the poor guy made a funny half-smile and said, "Secret".
We howled. . . as soon as we were out of earshot from the guy.
Christmas is more fun if you're with kids. . . or at least in a public place where you get to watch them.
Mini-story 2: my most unexpected smile this Christmas day (I had all the expected ones from spending it with Girlfriendoseyo [we cooked spaghetti together], but this one was the bonus.)
I was walking around with Girlfriendoseyo outside Sookmyung Women's University, and she asked me to carry the bag of stuff she bought from the stationery store. I pretended it was so heavy I couldn't walk in a straight line (it was a very light bag), and got some grins from a group of people walking by. True to Roboseyo form, I hammed it up a bit more once I had a reaction, and so I curled around and started hobbling in a circle, as if I couldn't walk in a straight line at all. The people who'd smiled at me before were gone, walking away with their backs to me, so I thought I was doing it solely for Girlfriendoseyo's benefit, but suddenly I heard this rattle-rasp and wheezy laugh of this wonderful old woman with a raisin-wrinked twenty-five-years-in-the-rice-paddy face, just hooting with laughter at my silliness, swinging her hand to slap the table where she sat, and rollicking side to side with her eyes grinned right shut.
I'm still smiling about that old lady: I love old people. They don't give a flying rat's ass who sees them laugh at the things they like anymore: they're old, they've paid their dues. They don't bother doing a "modest" twitter behind a shielding hand, either. If they think something's funny, they let it rip, and I love that. Old people who don't care anymore, and little kids, who don't care yet are far and away the most fun for people-watching.
Merry Christmas, everyone. I love you all a lot, and I hope your holidays are full of revelations and observations and crammed with tiny details of joy.
A few basic rules of forfeiture, AKA the Having vs. Eating Cake corollaries:
1. If you don't vote, you forfeit your right to complain about the government in power. If you won't even participate in the system, where do you get off complaining about it? I'm not listening. (Hee hee. I'm such a cranky old codger.)
(what's wrong with this picture? absolutely nothing, in Korea. You get used to old ladies mopping around you as you do your business in men's rooms all around South Korea. Took a while, though.)
2. If you wear a low-cut v-neck blouse with a push-up bra, or a short skirt with mid-thigh-high stockings and high heels, you forfeit your right to complain about men staring at you. You know what men are like, and while I'm not excusing our male piggishness, it's a little naive to expect more from us.
3. If you're a country with the 13th largest economy in the world, a world leader in broadband penetration and telecommunication connectivity, and the world's largest microchip exporter, you forfeit the right to say, "don't critique our social issues: we're still a developing country."
Christmas in downtown seoul is shiny. There's an ice rink behind the castle wall.
4. If you don't dress properly for the cold, if you don't zip up your jacket and keep your ears warm and wear some gloves, you forfeit your right to complain that it's cold. You may say "I should have dressed more appropriately for the cold, that was bad planning on my part" and that's all. Or I will take it as tacit permission for me to mock your illogical position.
Yet everywhere I go in Korea, I see girls dressed in spring jackets with short skirts and thick stockings, no hats or gloves, and jackets that aren't even zipped up, stamping their feet and making pitiful puppy-dog faces and complaining "I'm so cold" in Korean: "Chu-aa~".
According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, one must take care of basic needs (food, sleep) before one can worry about higher level needs (acceptance by the community, belonging, love, meaning) -- nobody ponders "what ARE my life goals?" when they're hungry; they mostly only ponder, "where can I scratch up some grub?" AFTER you've eaten, you might have time to wonder about the Grand Scheme.
According to Roboseyo's hierarchy of fashion, you only really ought to worry about style once your clothing has adequately protected you from the elements. If you put fashion above function, you won't get ANY sympathy from me when you complain about being cold or wet. Yet there's this disconnect between two, two, and four, here in Korea: as the winter's gotten colder, I'm told that short-shorts and miniskirt sales have actually gone UP! Some of the results are shocking.
I'd say we're looking at somewhere between 35-45% of the fashion-conscious-aged women at the mall on Sunday wearing springwear (at best) in the winter.
I mean, come on! How could that POSSIBLY keep her warm unless she has an emergency thermal blanket tucked into that bag? And it wasn't THAT warm on Sunday -- five celsius in the afternoon, tops.
The receptionists at my school got a kick out of my imitation of Korean girls who leave their jackets unzipped and then complain about being cold. One said, "Robert. Fashion is important." I answered, "Spring, summer, fall, fashion is important. Winter: WARM is important. Fashion is second." They got a good laugh out of it, but I doubt they're convinced.
(Cheonggye stream in downtown seoul puts up christmas lights every year. The poor-quality camera almost makes the light fixtures MORE impressive, because it looks like one big roman candle, instead of structures strung with lights.)
I'm developing a theory that the fashionistas and style-makers are using ridiculous styles like miniskirts in winter basically as a way of flaunting their power over the poor fashion slaves who feel compelled to follow trends. In 2001, every time Avril Lavigne saw some poor teeny-bop fashion victim wearing a tie over a tank-top, she probably secretly high-fived herself and thought, "YEAH! I'm awesome! She's wearing that awful getup because of ME! Poor chump!"
I imagine those contrarian stylemakers like the Wicked Witch of the West, staring at Dorothy's image in the crystal ball, laughing maniacally and cackling, "Shiver, my pretty! Shiver! Mwahahahahahaaaa!" We'll know for sure it's nothing but a power trip of theirs if they make heavy wool sweaters or scarves the stylish thing to wear next July, just as a final "Eff You" to their poor fashion slaves, rubbing in the skirts in winter trend by refusing those poor ladies a single season of clothing comfort. That's my prediction. Put it on the books. See if I'm wrong. I probably will be, but windbags like myself like to speculate. Fills up the hours.
What the heck? I don't know. This inflatable whatonearth was in the window of an art gallery in Insa-dong, the culture/tourist heritage area. Lots of galleries, and this one ALWAYS has something weird in the window.
On the Christmas Music front:
Dire news: it happened. It ACTUALLY happened. I was sitting in an ice cream shop eating a sorbet, and after a shabby Korean cover of Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" (why why why do they love Mariah so much here?), that asinine song you've heard me complain about here before, came on:
"Last Christmas, I gave you my heart. . . "
FOUR TIMES IN A ROW! The George Michael version, then the Bi version (Korean star) then a techno/discopop + children's choir mix, and finally it was the first song (and its chord progression was the foundation) in a medley of, seriously, FOUR of the ten tackiest Christmas songs in existence. I actually stayed in the ice cream shop after I finished my ice cream, in utter disbelief, as one slowing his car down to gawk at the car wreck and see if that's blood or oil, just daring that damn medley to top itself and actually get worse, and each new song in the medley WAS! From "Last Christmas," it went to "Happy Christmas, War Is Over" to "Do They Know It's Christmas" to "Feliz Nevidad" and then I really did have to go, before I felt the urge to injure myself with a plastic ice cream spoon. I'm disappointed to tell you that I was wrong: every Starbucks in Korea DIDN'T spontaneously implode in response to that awful lineup. Good thing, too. The Peppermint Mochas this December are quite nice.
I like blue lights best.
This is cute: the Korean language doesn't have a character for the "V" sound, so the "V" sound is usually substituted with the Korean character bieup, which sounds about halfway between a "B" and a "P". This leads to the cute pun on this brand: Viewty, when pronounced by most Koreans, sounds exactly like the word "Beauty".
As always, the station was attended by some Viewtiful girls in short skirts, but I've ranted enough about the latent (and totally accepted) sexism in Korea for one post (it seems protesting would be immodest I guess -- I asked Girlfriendoseyo about the state of feminism in Korea and she described what English speakers call lip-service).
(But did you know the OECD released statistics stating that Korean women work more hours for less pay than any other country in the OECD, and unlike in the Netherlands, where college educated women have a 20% higher employment rate than women without, Korean college educated women's employment rate is actually 2% LOWER than women without! I'll leave the comment board open for theories as to why that might be.)
Back to light stuff:
Santa and Rudolph's freaky love-child.
Sometimes, the lack of a "V" is a little funnier: one day, my best friend Matt was walking through a riverside park and came upon an outdoor concert of five hundred middle-aged women. When the performer finished a song, they chanted, "ANCHOR!" (which is how Koreans call for an encore) and the singer shouted, "PAPSONG!" (popsong). The singer started singing, and the old ladies sang along. Problem was, because of the V-B/P substitution, as they sang along to the old '80s song, the end result was 500 middle-aged women jumping up and down with their hands in the air, not able to pronounce "I'm your Venus," and hollering "I'm Your Penis" instead.
Lee Hyori is one of the hottest Korean stars these days (has been for a while.) For all the fanboys, here's a new way to get close to her (if you don't mind endorsing soju at the same time).
More lip/smile/teeth related stuff:
Hyori again (from above) -- showing surprisingly few teeth for a photo spread.
Ad for lip gloss.
There are creepy santa statues everywhere. Some are lifesize enough that they startle me as I walk around, making me go, "Bwah! Somebody's standing there! Oh wait. Nevermind."
On Friday, my face froze this way. I guess that'll be it for the rest of my life. Better hold on to the friends I already have.
This is my favourite picture from the city hall pictures. You're not supposed to climb up inside the rainbow seashell monument, but the security personnel were too busy, I guess, stopping people from leaning on bridge railings (see story below). I'm really proud of the composition and the light/dark contrast of this picture: this is about as good a picture as you can get on the cruddy cameraphone I have. This, or the layered coloured leaves picture from my Kyunghee university post.
EVERYBODY had a camera -- it was like nametags at a convention. I was afraid that if I put my cameraphone in my pocket, somebody'd ask me to show it to them or they'd have to escort me off the premises.
Every direction you moved, you were walking through somebody's picture.
At COEX mall, there are 3-D movie posters where you can interact with the movie ad, and take pictures in it, or sit in the chair, or stand behind Hannibal Lecter's mask so that it looks like YOU're the one in restraints. Cool, especially for a shutterbug-mad population like downtown Korea's.
I was gonna play a game of count the cameras, walking around on Sunday night, but I ran out of fingers and toes in five seconds.
My second favourite picture from right at the head of Cheonggye stream.
Mini-story 1: my girlfriend is funny.
We were walking across one of the bridges over Cheonggye stream (pictured above) and we leaned against the bridge. Some dude came up to tell us we couldn't lean on the bridge for safety, but he told us in Korean. Girlfriendoseyo (normally a very sweet not-making-waves type of person) decided she wanted to lean, dammit! So she turned to the Korean safety guy and said to him, "Whaaaat?" EXACTLY the way some Californian tourist might say it. He repeated himself in Korean and (emboldened by being with me, clearly an outsider, and thus able to get away with pretending to be a tourist,) she kept going, "I'm sorry. What's wrong? What is it? Why?" she asked as he stammered, "No lean. Umm. . . sorry. . . no. . . lean. . . safe. . . lean no!" she said, with a perfect, vacant intonation, "Why noOOoooot?" and, completely out of English words, the poor guy made a funny half-smile and said, "Secret".
We howled. . . as soon as we were out of earshot from the guy.
Christmas is more fun if you're with kids. . . or at least in a public place where you get to watch them.
Mini-story 2: my most unexpected smile this Christmas day (I had all the expected ones from spending it with Girlfriendoseyo [we cooked spaghetti together], but this one was the bonus.)I was walking around with Girlfriendoseyo outside Sookmyung Women's University, and she asked me to carry the bag of stuff she bought from the stationery store. I pretended it was so heavy I couldn't walk in a straight line (it was a very light bag), and got some grins from a group of people walking by. True to Roboseyo form, I hammed it up a bit more once I had a reaction, and so I curled around and started hobbling in a circle, as if I couldn't walk in a straight line at all. The people who'd smiled at me before were gone, walking away with their backs to me, so I thought I was doing it solely for Girlfriendoseyo's benefit, but suddenly I heard this rattle-rasp and wheezy laugh of this wonderful old woman with a raisin-wrinked twenty-five-years-in-the-rice-paddy face, just hooting with laughter at my silliness, swinging her hand to slap the table where she sat, and rollicking side to side with her eyes grinned right shut.
I'm still smiling about that old lady: I love old people. They don't give a flying rat's ass who sees them laugh at the things they like anymore: they're old, they've paid their dues. They don't bother doing a "modest" twitter behind a shielding hand, either. If they think something's funny, they let it rip, and I love that. Old people who don't care anymore, and little kids, who don't care yet are far and away the most fun for people-watching.
Merry Christmas, everyone. I love you all a lot, and I hope your holidays are full of revelations and observations and crammed with tiny details of joy.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Christmas in the Rye
It's a common writing exercise to rewrite a story you've written in the style of some other author. It's actually good practice and a good discipline. Here's something that happened to me yesterday, told in the style of Holden Caulfield, the protagonist from The Catcher In The Rye (one of the best, funniest, most heart-breaking, and most often misunderstood books I've ever read). If you don't like words like hell and damn, maybe skip this one and read another post instead.
Christmas in Korea
by Holden Caulfieldoseyo
I guess if you ask me I'd say I didn't sleep enough or something like that. Sometimes you get some guy who says he needs like ten hours of sleep every night and it just makes you depressed as hell, as sad as when you hear lousy Christmas music in shops before Thanksgiving is even finished. I think about that guy sleeping ten hours a night, like he hates being awake or something, but I'm exactly the opposite. I'm the kind of guy who hates sleeping sometimes, so instead of laying in bed, I just do useless stuff like reading phony articles on the internet from some guy who uses the word "delineate" instead of "explain" to show off his hot-shot writing style, and you just know he makes quotation marks with his fingers during conversations. But, it's better than staring up at the ceiling when you can't sleep, because when you turn on the humidifier your mom sent you last November, that little hum gets you thinking about your mother and it just makes you lonely as hell.
So maybe it's on account of I don't always sleep enough, but sometimes it seems like the whole world is full of phonies. They're all over, but for example, today I stood next to this girl at the crosswalk who smelled like some kind of boutique shop green tea and avocado shampoo, and she talked on the phone like something special, and when I looked over at her, her scarf was messy but perfect as if she spent half an hour by the mirror tossing her scarf over her shoulder so it looked like she didn't care how it looked. Even when she knew I was looking at her, she didn't look over at me, even to smile or say "hi," so I looked at her perfect phony hair, thought some other girl in her office probably feels ugly or fat because this girl spends thirty phony minutes tossing her goddamn scarf over her shoulder in the morning, and the other girl has to wash her hair at night because her family's poor and maybe her mother has cancer and her dad lost his job in the economic crisis and they sleep on the floor and fold up the mattresses and put them in the goddamn closet every morning. Sometimes it makes you depressed as hell, these girls with perfect scarves and perfect smelling green-tea herbal scented hair and stuff.
So I crossed the street like a madman when the light changed, but everywhere I looked there was some other phony girl with perfect hair, or some hot-shot guy with the same haircut as his friends, wearing a sweater-vest or a zipper tie or something, and saying things like, "a little contrived, but well-meant, to be sure." And every shop played some lousy Christmas music that was all drippy and slow, or cheery and chippy, and it didn't feel like Christmas, more like some sweaty red-faced old man smiling so you'd buy more stuff from his deli, asking you to pay an extra quarter for "festive wrapping" instead of the usual pink butcher paper.
So I went into the subway station trying not to look at the hot-shots and phonies in the street, and looked up and down the platform for something that'd make Allie grin if he was with me, like a couple who really loved each other but they were just holding hands and looking at something together instead of making baby talk and poking each other's dimples, or some kids playing some kind of game, and their mom saying "quiet, boys, everybody can hear you" and them not caring anyway, with their hair messy instead of licked and stuck down with cruddy kids' hair gel. I get a kick out of watching kids playing on subway platforms like that, when they act like kids, and not just little adults trained by their moms to shake your hand and say, "charmed". Kids who are too quiet on subway platforms, with expensive coats and stuck down gelly hair make me feel depressed as a madman.
But there weren't any kids with messy hair playing on the subway platform. They just had their hands in their pockets waiting for the train. You take a kid, and you put her hands in her pockets and make her wait for a train, and I can't decide if I should go talk to her like she's a grown up and say "pleasure to meet you, little miss," or stick out my tongue and try to make her laugh so that she looks like a kid again. I'm quite childish that way, especially around kids much younger than me. Sometimes I make faces at little kids and I don't even care if their moms get upset. I'm not kidding.
Everybody at the subway station just walked up and down the platform like their spot on the platform was extremely important to find, and no other door or car would be right, and not even looking at other people, or only checking to see whose coat and scarf looked more expensive, and then I saw this old man leaning on the wall outside the elevator, with a cane stuck out at the floor so far away from his body he couldn't lean on it. Sometimes an old guy like that will just make you sad as hell, leaning against the wall like he can't stand, looking around, especially if he has a scarf that isn't tied up right, so that he looks cold, or if he has bifocals and you can see his big eyes looking around, or if his coat's open and his adam's apple jumps up and down like a madman when he swallows. But believe me, this guy was a great old man. He wasn't looking around for somebody to feel sorry for him at all. He had an okay coat and no scarf or sad bifocals, and he just needed to get over to the platform to get on the subway, but everybody was walking too fast to notice him wave his cane at them. He shuffled along the wall to the corner and waited all quiet for some help, without shouting or anything. Nobody noticed him except me, and finally I went over to him before I could start to feel sorry for him, and I put my arm out and said, "Do you need an elbow?" and he looked up at my face, but not into my eyes, like that might be too much.
I don't care about school or tests so much, but I can be pretty smart sometimes when I want to, and I knew right away that he didn't know any English, so he couldn't understand what I said. Instead of asking if he wanted help again, I just put my arm out so he could grab my forearm and get over to the subway platform. That old guy never even looked at my face, but he put his hand up like he'd been expecting me, and I swear instead of grabbing my forearm and putting his hand on my coat, he went along and grabbed right onto my hand. Then quick as hell, once his hand was on mine he started shuffling his cane and feet along the ground toward the spot where the subway door would open. I moved along with him and we got to the spot, but the subway was slow, so we stood there for about three minutes, me holding hands with this old guy who seemed proud, not in a phony way, like "I'll let you help me here because I'm a great old guy," but in an old, strong way, like a city tree that doesn't even know it's smaller than trees in the forest, because it's never been out there, and it's the best tree on the street.
He moved his fingers around a few times to get a better grip, and I lowered my hand so it was easier for him to hold on to it, and I felt kind of sorry for him, but at the same time I felt happy that he had somebody to help him keep his balance while he got on the subway. You take a guy who's feeling sad because there aren't any kids playing on the subway platform, and sometimes all he really needs is some nice old guy who'll hold his hand and wait for a train together, and that'll make him feel better more than some book or a song or a gift set of green tea herbal essence shampoo.
When the subway came, we shuffled into the subway and the old guy let go after he was in one of the special seats for seniors, and he gave me a crazy old Korean bow to say thanks, like I was a government official or something, and he finally looked at my face just the one time. Then I had to get off at the next stop, but I still think about him, like maybe he would have waited for twenty minutes and three trains before somebody else came to help him. Or, sometimes I think about all the other people on the platform saying, "charmed" and trading business cards, or not talking to each other at all, and how they didn't get to stand by an old guy who still took the subway, even though he couldn't even lift his feet off the ground very much, and he only had a lousy cane, not even a walker. For a minute, waiting for the train, I wondered what he was thinking, but now I hope he was just thinking something like, "the train'll come soon" and not something phony like "what a nice young man." I don't want to be a nice young man; sometimes it's just good to stand by some old guy and wait for a train together, that's all.
Christmas in Korea
by Holden Caulfieldoseyo
I guess if you ask me I'd say I didn't sleep enough or something like that. Sometimes you get some guy who says he needs like ten hours of sleep every night and it just makes you depressed as hell, as sad as when you hear lousy Christmas music in shops before Thanksgiving is even finished. I think about that guy sleeping ten hours a night, like he hates being awake or something, but I'm exactly the opposite. I'm the kind of guy who hates sleeping sometimes, so instead of laying in bed, I just do useless stuff like reading phony articles on the internet from some guy who uses the word "delineate" instead of "explain" to show off his hot-shot writing style, and you just know he makes quotation marks with his fingers during conversations. But, it's better than staring up at the ceiling when you can't sleep, because when you turn on the humidifier your mom sent you last November, that little hum gets you thinking about your mother and it just makes you lonely as hell.
So maybe it's on account of I don't always sleep enough, but sometimes it seems like the whole world is full of phonies. They're all over, but for example, today I stood next to this girl at the crosswalk who smelled like some kind of boutique shop green tea and avocado shampoo, and she talked on the phone like something special, and when I looked over at her, her scarf was messy but perfect as if she spent half an hour by the mirror tossing her scarf over her shoulder so it looked like she didn't care how it looked. Even when she knew I was looking at her, she didn't look over at me, even to smile or say "hi," so I looked at her perfect phony hair, thought some other girl in her office probably feels ugly or fat because this girl spends thirty phony minutes tossing her goddamn scarf over her shoulder in the morning, and the other girl has to wash her hair at night because her family's poor and maybe her mother has cancer and her dad lost his job in the economic crisis and they sleep on the floor and fold up the mattresses and put them in the goddamn closet every morning. Sometimes it makes you depressed as hell, these girls with perfect scarves and perfect smelling green-tea herbal scented hair and stuff.
So I crossed the street like a madman when the light changed, but everywhere I looked there was some other phony girl with perfect hair, or some hot-shot guy with the same haircut as his friends, wearing a sweater-vest or a zipper tie or something, and saying things like, "a little contrived, but well-meant, to be sure." And every shop played some lousy Christmas music that was all drippy and slow, or cheery and chippy, and it didn't feel like Christmas, more like some sweaty red-faced old man smiling so you'd buy more stuff from his deli, asking you to pay an extra quarter for "festive wrapping" instead of the usual pink butcher paper.
So I went into the subway station trying not to look at the hot-shots and phonies in the street, and looked up and down the platform for something that'd make Allie grin if he was with me, like a couple who really loved each other but they were just holding hands and looking at something together instead of making baby talk and poking each other's dimples, or some kids playing some kind of game, and their mom saying "quiet, boys, everybody can hear you" and them not caring anyway, with their hair messy instead of licked and stuck down with cruddy kids' hair gel. I get a kick out of watching kids playing on subway platforms like that, when they act like kids, and not just little adults trained by their moms to shake your hand and say, "charmed". Kids who are too quiet on subway platforms, with expensive coats and stuck down gelly hair make me feel depressed as a madman.
But there weren't any kids with messy hair playing on the subway platform. They just had their hands in their pockets waiting for the train. You take a kid, and you put her hands in her pockets and make her wait for a train, and I can't decide if I should go talk to her like she's a grown up and say "pleasure to meet you, little miss," or stick out my tongue and try to make her laugh so that she looks like a kid again. I'm quite childish that way, especially around kids much younger than me. Sometimes I make faces at little kids and I don't even care if their moms get upset. I'm not kidding.
Everybody at the subway station just walked up and down the platform like their spot on the platform was extremely important to find, and no other door or car would be right, and not even looking at other people, or only checking to see whose coat and scarf looked more expensive, and then I saw this old man leaning on the wall outside the elevator, with a cane stuck out at the floor so far away from his body he couldn't lean on it. Sometimes an old guy like that will just make you sad as hell, leaning against the wall like he can't stand, looking around, especially if he has a scarf that isn't tied up right, so that he looks cold, or if he has bifocals and you can see his big eyes looking around, or if his coat's open and his adam's apple jumps up and down like a madman when he swallows. But believe me, this guy was a great old man. He wasn't looking around for somebody to feel sorry for him at all. He had an okay coat and no scarf or sad bifocals, and he just needed to get over to the platform to get on the subway, but everybody was walking too fast to notice him wave his cane at them. He shuffled along the wall to the corner and waited all quiet for some help, without shouting or anything. Nobody noticed him except me, and finally I went over to him before I could start to feel sorry for him, and I put my arm out and said, "Do you need an elbow?" and he looked up at my face, but not into my eyes, like that might be too much.
I don't care about school or tests so much, but I can be pretty smart sometimes when I want to, and I knew right away that he didn't know any English, so he couldn't understand what I said. Instead of asking if he wanted help again, I just put my arm out so he could grab my forearm and get over to the subway platform. That old guy never even looked at my face, but he put his hand up like he'd been expecting me, and I swear instead of grabbing my forearm and putting his hand on my coat, he went along and grabbed right onto my hand. Then quick as hell, once his hand was on mine he started shuffling his cane and feet along the ground toward the spot where the subway door would open. I moved along with him and we got to the spot, but the subway was slow, so we stood there for about three minutes, me holding hands with this old guy who seemed proud, not in a phony way, like "I'll let you help me here because I'm a great old guy," but in an old, strong way, like a city tree that doesn't even know it's smaller than trees in the forest, because it's never been out there, and it's the best tree on the street.
He moved his fingers around a few times to get a better grip, and I lowered my hand so it was easier for him to hold on to it, and I felt kind of sorry for him, but at the same time I felt happy that he had somebody to help him keep his balance while he got on the subway. You take a guy who's feeling sad because there aren't any kids playing on the subway platform, and sometimes all he really needs is some nice old guy who'll hold his hand and wait for a train together, and that'll make him feel better more than some book or a song or a gift set of green tea herbal essence shampoo.
When the subway came, we shuffled into the subway and the old guy let go after he was in one of the special seats for seniors, and he gave me a crazy old Korean bow to say thanks, like I was a government official or something, and he finally looked at my face just the one time. Then I had to get off at the next stop, but I still think about him, like maybe he would have waited for twenty minutes and three trains before somebody else came to help him. Or, sometimes I think about all the other people on the platform saying, "charmed" and trading business cards, or not talking to each other at all, and how they didn't get to stand by an old guy who still took the subway, even though he couldn't even lift his feet off the ground very much, and he only had a lousy cane, not even a walker. For a minute, waiting for the train, I wondered what he was thinking, but now I hope he was just thinking something like, "the train'll come soon" and not something phony like "what a nice young man." I don't want to be a nice young man; sometimes it's just good to stand by some old guy and wait for a train together, that's all.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
from a comedy website. . .
from Dan Gurewich, a writer for Collegehumor.com, a website full of humor suitable for college students (bum jokes, supernintendo, videos of people doing AWESOME stuff, parodies, satires, pretty good update on the state of North American pop culture and internet memes), and links about human absurdity from around the world.
"I have an idea that will solve everything"
With the presidential elections looming just a horse pregnancy away, the candidates are ignoring the real problems and instead focusing on the same old divisive issues, from gun control to which Back to the Future film is the best (“3, and f*ck all of you.” –Mitt Romney, 9/21/07).
It’s clear that having to consider multiple issues at once causes voter brain freeze (a fact that led Friedrich Nietzsche to famously deem politics “the Slurpee of the masses,” adding “and Blue Raspberry is always broken”). One candidate can’t satisfy everybody, and that’s why I’m proposing that we elect four presidents: The President of Abortions, The President of Guns, The President of Gays, and The President of Everything Else.
The President of Abortions will wield full power over America’s fetuses. When he says “Jump,” they’ll say “But we’re fetuses.” His responsibility will be to either uphold or overturn Roe v. Wade in his first week in office, then spend a 1,453-day “lame duck” period acting righteous about his choice at meetings and dinner parties.
The President of Guns’ first act in office will be to shoot the runner-up candidate in the back of the head at point-blank range with a Steyr Mannlicher M1894 semi-automatic rifle with 6.5mm ammunition. If liberal, the President will use this act as an example of preventable bloodshed, tighten gun control laws, and then put himself in jail. If conservative, the President will say he was aiming for an elk over there and thank the Founders for preserving his right to do so.
The President of Gays will have the largest shoe collection of any president since Taft, who bought a new pair every day simply because they would collapse under the weight of his legs. More importantly, he will determine whether or not the federal government will recognize gay marriages. If so, the burden will be on him to propose a solution for the fact that every time two men kiss, a wholesome Midwestern American family collapses into itself like a dying neutron star.
The President of Everything Else, unencumbered by these other vote-swinging policies, will be free to take informed, responsible action on more complex, less knee-jerk issues such as the war, healthcare, education, social security, and which Star Wars film is the best (“Attack of the Clones, and seriously, f*ck all of you.” –Mitt Romney, 10/8/07).
Four Beatles, four Pac-Man ghosts, four cow stomachs… four Presidents. If we want to rise above the talking points and oversimplifications, the path is clear: Hail to the Chiefs.
In case you think they're too political, here's another English lesson video from Japan, recently featured on Collegehumor.com -- wait it out. The last third is the funniest.
"I have an idea that will solve everything"
With the presidential elections looming just a horse pregnancy away, the candidates are ignoring the real problems and instead focusing on the same old divisive issues, from gun control to which Back to the Future film is the best (“3, and f*ck all of you.” –Mitt Romney, 9/21/07).
It’s clear that having to consider multiple issues at once causes voter brain freeze (a fact that led Friedrich Nietzsche to famously deem politics “the Slurpee of the masses,” adding “and Blue Raspberry is always broken”). One candidate can’t satisfy everybody, and that’s why I’m proposing that we elect four presidents: The President of Abortions, The President of Guns, The President of Gays, and The President of Everything Else.
The President of Abortions will wield full power over America’s fetuses. When he says “Jump,” they’ll say “But we’re fetuses.” His responsibility will be to either uphold or overturn Roe v. Wade in his first week in office, then spend a 1,453-day “lame duck” period acting righteous about his choice at meetings and dinner parties.
The President of Guns’ first act in office will be to shoot the runner-up candidate in the back of the head at point-blank range with a Steyr Mannlicher M1894 semi-automatic rifle with 6.5mm ammunition. If liberal, the President will use this act as an example of preventable bloodshed, tighten gun control laws, and then put himself in jail. If conservative, the President will say he was aiming for an elk over there and thank the Founders for preserving his right to do so.
The President of Gays will have the largest shoe collection of any president since Taft, who bought a new pair every day simply because they would collapse under the weight of his legs. More importantly, he will determine whether or not the federal government will recognize gay marriages. If so, the burden will be on him to propose a solution for the fact that every time two men kiss, a wholesome Midwestern American family collapses into itself like a dying neutron star.
The President of Everything Else, unencumbered by these other vote-swinging policies, will be free to take informed, responsible action on more complex, less knee-jerk issues such as the war, healthcare, education, social security, and which Star Wars film is the best (“Attack of the Clones, and seriously, f*ck all of you.” –Mitt Romney, 10/8/07).
Four Beatles, four Pac-Man ghosts, four cow stomachs… four Presidents. If we want to rise above the talking points and oversimplifications, the path is clear: Hail to the Chiefs.
In case you think they're too political, here's another English lesson video from Japan, recently featured on Collegehumor.com -- wait it out. The last third is the funniest.
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