Gangnam Cross-walk Dangers

I’ve witnessed three people get hit by some form of transportation at an intersection near my house. I saw one girl get nailed by a bus and fly about five feet before going into shock while people walked around her trying to avoid the situation. I've also seen two men get hit by cars. One of them was seriously hurt and I honestly don't know if he recovered. They’ve all taken place at the main crosswalk near Gangnam Station which also happens to be on one of the busier streets in Seoul for both vehicles and pedestrians. Both my wife and I have to cross there several times a day and I, too, have gotten close to being hit there as well. The whole intersection is a potential deathtrap.

This is the basic layout of the crosswalk.

First, you’ll notice that the cross-walk is split into two parts with one side being much longer than the other. This becomes important when considering peoples’ perception that they can cross the entire road at once. I’ve seen so many people make it across the small section before trotting out onto the big one only to get caught in the middle by honking cars, threatening buses and impatient bikes. The same goes for crossing in the opposite direction. They cross the long one first and assume the short one will only take a second. Well, Korean drivers don’t have a second. They’ve already started running the light.


The middle section is the bus stop and, in my opinion, causes the most accidents.


As you can see, the buses are stopping on the opposite side of the road because of the door location. When people exit these buses, it’s normal to assume that traffic on that side would be going in the same direction as the bus that you just exited was. Even if they have gotten off at that stop everyday for a year, the sensation doesn’t change. Just look at that guy behind the bus in the front. He's asking for it. That's where I saw the girl get hit.

Apparently, officials have become aware of this danger zone and they have started to make a few adjustments. They added a timer at the cross-walk and a few more crossing guards for the evening rush.


The problem is the Korean approach to driving and life. Korean’s love to use the term “빨리, 빨리" (quickly, hurry, etc...) The peninsula is full of people who live by this. I’ll address this issue in detail in an upcoming post, but for the intent of this one, let’s just say that Korean drivers will do anything to get to their destination faster. Those of who live here see it all the time. They’re running lights, driving on sidewalks, pushing people in the subways, anything to get somewhere faster. (Oddly, I happen to think that a lot of Koreans are usually late and unproductive.)

The Republic of Korea even tops a few lists as being the most dangerous.

According to the 2007 OECD International Road Traffic and Accident Database
announced by Green City Research Institute, 5.28 per 100,000 Korean pedestrians
died in traffic accidents in 2005, placing the country in first place. Korea
also topped the category in 2004, with 6.0 pedestrians per 100,000. As for the
number of deaths in traffic accidents per 10,000 cars, Korea took second place
with 3.45 people, following Hungary with 3.79.

How far ahead (or behind) are they?

Considering that the OECD member countries' average number of pedestrians' death in traffic accidents marked 1.58 per 100,000 and the number of accidental deaths per 10,000 cars marked 1.68, South Korea has still a long way to go to become an advanced country in terms of traffic safety.

I totally agree that they have a long way to go, but sadly this issue gets thrown into the "You don't understand Korean culture / We're“빨리, 빨리 Koreans" excuse when questioned about this problem.

As I've said before, I'm counting down the days until I sell the motorcycle and hopefully, I'll survive the daily walk across the street so I can have that oppurtunity.

Korea Times Publishing

I wasn't informed by email (again), but Korea Times published my piece on the cycle of friends in Korea. Here's the link to the paper and here's the link to the post.

Father at 13?

I wonder what the Korean reaction would be to this?












And I don't think 제니,주노 (Jenny, Juno) can be used as evidence either.

Memories of Memory at Memory's

The title of my latest post, Memories of Memory at Memory's, is lifted from an ongoing joke that one of my great buds John Mecklenborg and I had during our days at The University of Tennessee. This is him. He dresses like this everyday.

It arose from when we noticed a new restaurant called Memory's had opened on the outskirts of an area of Knoxville called the "Old City". It was supposed to look like a 50's Diner type thing, but like the many previous failed business ventures that started in that building, Memory's met its fate. The restaurant is not important, but its name led the two of us into one of our numerous and sometimes month-long discussions about things that never actually took place. It was a dialogue without a base and certainly no direction, but it made us laugh.

The actual name, "Memories of Memory at Memories", was the result of multi-layered jokes. It started with just an innocent jab at why the restaurant would choose "Memory's" as a name. Then we layered it with the assumption that the owners had something in mind like "People will talk about their memories at Memory's." So, we laughed about our potential memories at Memory's. In its final formulation stage, John told me that one of our mutual friends, Evan Gower, had a little sister named Memory Gower. Awful name, but it served so well for our joke. The obvious next step was joking that we would possibly have memories of Memory at Memories, even though we never knew or had ever met Memory Gower and had no intention of going to the restaurant. We enjoyed that joke for several years, not because it was really that funny, but because it was absurd.

And that intro brings me to why I'm writing this post and similar ones in the future. It has started to occur to me that I am getting older by the day and that so many of my formative memories could get pushed into the backwaters of my psyche. These memories are usually refreshing dashes of youthfulness and innocence. They have provided me with some wisdom, pride, humility and embarrassment, but most of all they put a smile on my face and perhaps some of you might be included.

I'll include links to some of the events or locations that I discuss here, but besides that, it will be a free form exploration into the perhaps shallow depths of my memory.

My Dance Style Revealed

After years of trying to describe my dancing style, I think I found the closest representation.



But throw some short shorts on him and BAM! it's me.

Hip Korean Housewife Hookers

A little late on this one, but apparently some bored Korean housewives have started their own little enterprise while the husband and kids are away.

"Seven housewives in Seoul were arrested for engaging in ‘pay-for-sex’ acts after meeting male clients through a phone chatting service, Hankyoreh reported Friday"

But they're not the traditional ladies of the night.

"According to the police, their “business hours” are normally from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. when their husbands and children are not home. They then called their male clients and met them in various motels in Goyang city or Paju city in Gyeonggi Province."

I'm not surprised really. When you see stats that claim nearly 79% of Korean men cheat on their wives, what do you expect? These women were just getting a little revenge and some extra spending money.

But the underlying meaning of this artcile is that it's a revelation. Finally, we have the answer as to why so many Korean mothers send their kids to dozens of hagwons. They need extra time for whoring. Between the sex and the drug dealing, it looks the housewives are the hippest cats on the peninsula.

Korean Students and Rain

I've had three classes so far today. The first one was about the Separation of Church and State in regards to the teaching of creationism in school and the second was on the rise of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Korea. Both totally interesting and both classes were essentially empty. My first class has about 11 people registered and only two showed up. The second class has 19 registered and only 5 showed up. These two classes usually hover around a 90% attendance rate. My third class, while not as interesting or as full, usually has 9 students enrolled. How many showed up today? Zero. Not a single fucking student showed up. I have another class that starts soon. There are 11 people registered and I am expecting about 3 to actually show up. Why? Rain.

Rain keeps students away from class more than any other type of weather. In fact, students skip classes more for rain than all other excuses combined. Snow is no problem. Seoul snow is weak and Korea does not have a “snow day” culture anyways. Blistering heat isn’t a problem because Korean’s thrive is unnaturally hot conditions as seen on buses, subways and offices all across the nation. Boozing until an hour before class doesn’t matter either. That just shows excellent time management skills that Koreans love to boast about. (“I sleep in the subway/bus/taxi because it’s efficient and gives me more time to work/drink/whore around later.”) Nothing can stop these cats unless, of course, a single drop of rain falls. Then, attendance drops with it.

If you remember (which you don’t) I wrote about the rain + exposed head=baldness myth that exists in Korea. Well, I don’t think this has anything to do with it. I also wrote about how dangerous Korean drivers can be and rain only makes them worse, but this isn’t it either. It’s more that rain just sucks, discourages enthusiasm and makes people feel lazy. That’s all -nothing particularly cultural to look into except for the fact that Korean’s don’t come to class if it’s raining.

It’s just a teacher’s observation.

Warm Weather Skiing?

Well, I was going to go skiing this weekend...



Beer?

"I'm Straight!": The Introduction of an In-the-Closet Korean Man's Battle Against Himself

Student introductions are always fun. I'd say that a very clear majority will offer up the same core tidbits: name, age, university/major, job/title and maybe the occasional marital status or reason for studying English. They offer those facts to establish the nature and structure of the relationship. For those of us who have been in Korea for awhile, there is nothing usual about this type of introduction. The other day, however, I got a new one.

I had had second thoughts about opening this particular course up as I didn't like the time and the subject. I had also heard that this student is a little unusual and, honestly, I didn't want to mess with it. However, he begged me to open the class for him, so I agreed. It's been a little over a week now and I'm not sure if it was good idea, especially because every class seems to get a little more odd as he feels more comfortable to reveal more personal stories to me.

Let's take the first class and first introduction. I welcomed him into the classroom as usual and he took a seat. Since he had begged for this class to be opened in the first place and the 9am class start time doesn't appeal to business people (too late) or students (too early), he had a choice of thirty empty seats. Oddly enough, he sat right in the middle causing me to have to raise my voice. I eventually coaxed him to the front, but like many Korean students, there is an inborn fear of teachers. I asked him to give an brief introduction. I didn't want much, but something to get him thinking in English.

He started, "Well, I'm straight."

It didn't really sink in at first. I was only half listening since I rarely listen to intro anyways. I guess my perceived indifference to his statement jolted him a bit, so he repeated it. This time I heard it loud and clear. My first thought was, of course, that this guy was totally gay. I gave him a quick look over and decided that it must be true. He was wearing a multi-colored polka-dot shirt under a brown suede vest covered with a black velvet sports coat. I stopped there and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt since acceptable Korean male fashion sometimes gives off the air of homosexuality, as written about here.

Still, I couldn't get past his unprovoked declaration of heterosexuality. No matter how you slice it, there's something odd about that. As class continued, this guy seemed to go out of his way to talk about absurdly straight things. He talked about visiting hookers at massage parlors; dancing with girls all night long at the clubs and visiting a certain area of Seoul where all the girls wear "hot pants". Now I'm not qualified much in this area, but I do think that using the word "hot pants" reduces ones manliness significantly. As an added bonus, he gave me the oddest answer when I asked him if he had ever been to Cold Mountain (a popular ice cream parlor in Korea). His response? "I'm not gay." To top off his heterosexual conquests, he added that he has a girlfriend. I guess he thought that I would be thinking of him as some sex-crazed bad boy. I'm pretty sure he thinks he's a bad boy, but more like this kind of bad boy.



Class continued that way for the rest of the day. Over the next few days, he showed no interest in learning English at all and chose to continue dispelling his self-inflicted gay rumors by telling more and more stories confirming his sexuality. To him, he was making a strong case for heterosexuality. To me, he was cementing my suspicions. Yesterday, he was off on one of his rants about hookers and started steering the conversation towards his performance. In most cases, I'll let students just flow as long as they are using proper English, but I really tried to derail this one. He didn't care, ignored my pressure and continued on to his next prove-to-everyone-how-NOT-gay-I-am rant and thought it was time to talk about Viagra. He pushed on past his story quickly and let me know that he could get me Viagra anytime. I started laughing. Besides the fact that I might need just the opposite of that, he had gone from weird closet homosexual to pusherman. I've been offered what I thought was just about everything under the sun in my younger days, but this was new. AND it was from a Korean gay guy.

Yesterday was by far the most blatant example of what was becoming his glaring preference in men. He was in the middle of another seemingly endless tirade of how popular he is in nightclubs and decided to fill me in on how he picks up his countless hot panted women. He does this.


(Check out that website by the way. It's a real find.)

Like Richard Gere's Gerbil, most American's know this to be a gay gesture. While not anything close to an official source, Urban Dictionary's definition of "Gay Handshake" is as follows:

"A social faux pas in which you stroke the other party's palm with your index finger during a normal handshake. Can be seen as a sexual advance and it just feels really creepy. Go ahead, try it on someone."

So, I wasn't alone in my thinking that this guy just revealed something, but as I've said before, there is a lot of straight Korean behavior that would be viewed as gay Western behavior. I needed to ask some other Koreans though and who better than one of my classes with mostly Korean women aged 19-31. They would know if this was normal flirting or as UD said just "really creepy."

Turns out that this is not normal behavior in the least. In fact, when I told the class about this, all of the girls --in typical Korean fashion-- screamed "어떻게" and the men laughed. The female response did not surprise me since that's what I hear them say 90% of time while on the street. The men, however, were all shocked. They had never heard of such an approach.

Is this fellow gay? It doesn't matter, but I wonder why he's going to such lengths to prove he is straight.

"I heard the jury was out on science."

Wow...

"Recent public opinion polls indicate that challenges to Darwinian evolution have substantial support among the American people. According to an August 2006 survey by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 63 percent of Americans believe that humans and other animals have either always existed in their present form or have evolved over time under the guidance of a supreme being. Only 26 percent say that life evolved solely through processes such as natural selection. A similar Pew Research Center poll, released in August 2005, found that 64 percent of Americans support teaching creationism alongside evolution in the classroom."

Why am I not surprised? For the past 20 years, all we have heard from the Right is that science is not fact and that we need to teach Creationism in school. It looks like it worked. Wow...

A-11 Offense is for Girls

Eleven eligible receivers? Plus, this looks like two quarterbacks to me.


I don't like this idea one bit.

"In the A-11, players do not wear the traditional jersey numbers for linemen: they use 1-49, and 80 through 99, which is legal. This means that all 11 players on offense can be eligible for a pass. In essence, the offense creates an island for 11 players, spreading the defense out, and looking for one-on-one matchups."

It pretty much makes for chaos.


Maybe I'm out of the loop on this, but I wasn't aware of the tension between "traditional" eligible receiver rules and this A-11 business. Coach Bryan is very aware though.

"There is a demonstrative benefit of using the A-11 offense, and there is room in America for more than one style of football," Bryan said. "There is a loud, ugly minority out there that is against this offense. "This is standing up for the little guy in football, the schools without the numbers of kids or the big linemen. There is a huge disconnect between the players on the ground, the kids that play in this offense and the National Federation."

So, he's claiming that he opted for this because his school didn't have enough players or enough linemen. Am I too assume the if his school does get enough players, then he'll return to the standard receiver rules or is it more that he couldn't hack it as a coach without these cheap rules? Regardless, this...

If a player gets set on the line, and another player lines up outside that player, the inside player is ineligible to catch a pass. What the A-11 can do is have offensive players wait until the final seconds of the play clock and then take positions on the line making it difficult for the defense to know, until the last moment, which receivers are eligible.

...equates to pandemonium on the field.

Will Smith in Duel?

I wish.

I saw Seven Pounds the other day. It was good, but totally unclear until the scene where he met his friend, Dan, in the hotel room. It also became pretty predictable after awhile, but it never got boring. I’ve got to admit that Will Smith has really come a long way and he has been pulling off some totally convincing roles lately. I can’t believe how far he’s come since Independence Day, Bad Boyz and MIB. He still employs some of his more cavalier qualities that got him where he is today, but the roles that he’s been cast into recently give me the impression that he could become one of the greats. He’s got a long way to go, but if the writing is good enough, I think he’ll be fine.

I think that if he nails Oh Dae-su in the upcoming Old Boy remake, then I’ll be totally convinced. It’s up to Spielberg now though. If it’s as good as Duel then I’ll be a success no matter you look at it.

Co-workers of Past and Present

Just like so many other moderately irresponsible teenagers and university students, I managed to have more jobs than I can count. Seriously, I just tried to count them and couldn’t. Every time I land on a number, another job comes to mind. I’ve ranged from donut places, dorm halls, golf courses and toy stores to some higher class gigs like call centers, drive-thru’s, deli’s and dish rooms. Honestly, I think the longest I stayed at a job of that caliber was six months. My modus operandi was the classic no-call-no-show or call-in-and-quit. I loved doing it. It was swift and easy. The word callous comes to mind, but I’d say lazy might be more appropriate or perhaps a combo of both. While I didn’t gain much of a work ethic from those brief stints of employment, I did get to meet a lot of different and totally interesting people.

Let me introduce you to four of them.

From the US days:

I’ll start with Don. He was my boss at an upscale neighborhood diner for a few months one summer in college. He had inherited money from his father which he had been living on for years. He claimed to be the best chef in the area among other equally unimpressive and uncontestable feats. Don is memorable for a few reasons though: he constantly smoked joints in and around the kitchen, spoke ill of his wife’s reproductive organs (who was also a boss), openly insulted customers using derogatory phrases and terms and threw the word “f*ck” into nearly every sentence. I worked there with a couple friends for a solid two months, but after realizing that we were being paid from the tip jar which we had worked to fill up, we opted for the bailout. We knocked it up a notch by quitting on the same day. Bam! Two of us pulled the no-show, while the third decided to call and address his frustrations with an offensive message that basically repeated all of Don’s catch phrases. We would always joke “I’m f*cking Don. My wife’s ****** smells like lasagna.” What a class act.

Another summer a few friends and I were feeling particularly charitable (and desperate) decided we would work in a Shriners call center. Life in a call center is a dark world full of guilt, depression, social ineptness, self-loathing and fear that someone will actually answer the telephone. Of course, I didn’t experience any of those things because I quit after three weeks, but one man did: Kurk. The first thing you might notice is that he spells his name with a “U” rather than the traditional “I”. If you met this short, stocky fellow, you would totally understand that the “I” is inappropriate and borderline illegal. I was lucky enough to train under Kurk. He taught me all I needed to know about being a telemarketer and a man. Kurk was a heavy set fellow in his early thirties who claimed to have been somewhat of an accomplished body builder. Sadly by the time we met him, it looked like his years of Shrining had caused his muscles to slowly atrophy. Regardless of his physical condition, Kurk was a world class smoker. In fact, all call center people are. We were given a five minute break every hour and the beeline to the door was astonishing. The office would clear out in less than three seconds. Kurk was always the first or second out for the cig and usually was the last to finish, but oddly, he never actually had any cigarettes. He always bummed them. It never failed. He would sometimes come up with elaborate intros before the request in hopes of throwing us off. I remember he told me that he had started bodybuilding because he wanted to quit smoking, but once he hit his peak, there was no reason not to smoke anymore, and therefore, I should bum him a cigarette. His tagline was “Can I get a cig?” Well, we changed it to “Can I get a Kurk?”

Ricky (fake name) from Wales was an interesting person. First of all, he might still in Korea or coming back soon, so I don’t want to be too rude or anything, but he knows he’s “interesting”. I taught with Ricky at my first school in Korea. He was slightly older and from the start, I noticed that he seemed to be a little into…well…men. But he wasn’t just a plain old gay guy. That wouldn’t be interesting. This guy acted pretty straight most of the time. He had girlfriends (he once claimed to have slept with over 200 woman…while sleeping…in an airplane…bathroom…from Wales to…London.) He worked out at the gym, drank loads of beer and smoked tons of cigarettes. He was a normal dude. Without having to go into details; I’ll just say that on many occasions he asked various male co-workers to go back to his place for drinks. In fact, he asked me that question my first night in Korea. I omitted that bit of info three years ago when I was detailing the arrival. Maybe I’m flattering myself though. Perhaps, that doesn’t sound that gay, but if you consider that he would usually make the suggestion to one person at 4am as everyone was walking home, then you might get a different idea.

One night, five of us were at an old favorite dive called Beverage Lab. We were drinking at a table and amidst the joking; Ben decided to ask a question: “Raise your hand if you didn’t **** a man’s **** in college.” It was quite a show stopper to say the least. I remember trying to collect my thoughts and form some sort of answer, but I was so stunned by the question that I too was only getting crickets. Pat, one of the more blunt members of the group, fired back with an “Uhhh…No!” Ben tried to cover himself with a few “Come on, guys”/“You were never curious” combinations, but they just didn’t stick. I wish I could say that was all, but I would be lying. Towards the end of his tenure at our old school, he started to develop a strange penchant for man-kisses. He would ask for kisses or if he could kiss a man. From that was born, “Do you want to kiss me? Do you?”

Terry from Korea is one of my favorites. This guy had breath that could peel the paint off a car and a job that would make a gimp feel lucky. Terry’s job was the “ass” of my old director. He had to do every horrible task that was asked of him. The highlights included brushing the directors hair, unlocking doors for drunk locked-out teachers, lining children up, dealing with every detail and problem that teachers had with their apartment and, of course, saying the word “Hey!”.

You see, Terry was born with only one eye and where the other should be, is nothing more than an oversized marble. Some speculate that it’s actually gobstobber. Since he can’t see very well and has candy in his eye socket, his ability to learn English has been seriously hindered. The director has gotten away with everything from locking him in a closet and force-feeding him to just spanking him when he doesn’t do as told.

One weekend, the school had a retreat to the mountains. We stayed in a pretty sweet cabin-type thing and cooked food and drank beer and soju. On the way up to the cabin, all the teachers AND Terry rode in a van together. I knew this was a perfect time to teach him some English. You know, a little time away from the boss. Well, I started with the basics and soon we moved to the more advanced stuff. I wanted to teach him another way to say “Let’s go!” His pronunciation was pretty rough, but he got through it and pretty soon he was yelling, “I have an erection!” for all the teachers to hear. He was my favorite student and certainly one of my favorite co-workers.

The Chinese Heart Fireworks

Well, what did they expect?

Old traditions may have clashed with the latest addition to Beijing's increasingly modern skyline, as the nearly finished Mandarin Oriental hotel caught fire Monday night after being showered with a burst of fireworks.

While I was in Beijing this past month, I couldn't believe the amount of fireworks being set off and the seemingly blatant disregard for personal safety.

"The cause of the high-rise blaze was unclear...Preliminary reports said the fire was caused by the illegal use of fireworks, and an investigation is underway, chinanews.com said. While Beijing authorities permitted the use of fireworks downtown this year, fireworks are not allowed inside buildings or on roofs or balconies."

I'd say it's time to review the fireworks law. I know that the Chinese are very proud that they invented fireworks and their New Years celebration is impressive, but this was totally avoidable.

Just Weird

I want to apologize in advance for this, but a friend posted this on facebook and I just had to post it here.



My favorite quotes...

"I'd rather have lots of breast milk than a million melons."

"In the morning, when I'm getting dressed, the girls talk to my breasts; they touch them...they don't like it when I put a bra on. They think I'm trapping the breasts and they should be free to float about."

"They won't breastfeed forever. It's just that simple. They will not breastfed when they go to college or get married."

I don't think I need to add any commentary on this one beyond saying this is just weird.

Sissy Korean Prisoners

Apparently, life in American prison is not too fun for 40 Korean citizens who are prisoners in the US and they want out.

The prisoners are among 40 South Korean citizens held in U.S. prisons who say they wish to be relocated to South Korea, citing language, food and cultural differences, the diplomat said.

I know that Cullen Thomas would have liked to leave Korean prison many times while serving in Korea, but he couldn't. Prison is not designed to be comfortable. Get over it. I'd say that if they are turned over to Korea then they should be banned from the US for life. Maybe a little extreme, but they're pathetic complaints just don't get any sympathy from me.

Fat Lazy Korean Mom

I'm pretty sure that I'm usually the rude neighbor. I can't think of a time when I have been the quiet one and I'm certain that I am quick to react when a neighbor, regardless of my past behavior, acts in a way that I percieve as rude.

My last year and a half of college I decided it was time to live solo, so I moved into a house that was divided into four apartments. It was decent place. I was upstairs, had a back deck and huge windows throughout the place. It was great except for my big fat neighbor who called herself "Trish the Dish." She was far from a "dish". I remember her voice. It was deep, man-ish and southern. It sounded like she was always talking into a hallowed out pumpkin or some other gourd-like squash.

She claimed she to have graduated years before, although you wouldn't know it if you spoke to her (which was one of my least favorite things to do). I remember going to great lenths to avoid suffering through a conversation with her about the next Widespread Panic show. Nearly every night, she would be up to something and it usually involved lots of people in her apartment doing various illegal activties BLARING Panic. When I entered college I was a pretty heavy sleeper, but as time progressed I became less and less so. Therefore, this behavior really pissed me off. She would be doing this at like 4am on Tuesday night. I mean, shit, come on. Of course, in Korea, fat American women from the south do exist, but luckily, I don't have to live below them. I do, however, live below a fat Korean woman.

As far as neighbors go, most of them here seem to be pretty polite. I've manged to continue my loud behavior this whole time with zero complaints. Well, for the past six months, 고 and I have had to deal with this fat Korean woman with a three year old son living above us. At first, they didn't really seem to make too much noise, but the last three months have been brutal. Both 고 and I start work very early in the morning, so we try to be in bed by 10:30 or 11:00pm every night and even then we're only getting 6-7 hours. This wouldn't be that bad really, except for the piss poor mother above us decides that 11:00pm is an appropriate time for her child to start playing. And by playing, I mean run back and forth throughout the entire apartment. We have the same layout, so I can hear everything and can visualize him running from the bedroom to the kitchen, back to the bedroom and then to the living room before returning to the bedroom where he does what guess to be a huge belly flop on to his little floor mattress.

When it first started happening, we sucked it up and gave her the benefit of the doubt. Her husband lives in Canada, she has no job and stays in her pajama's all day, so maybe she was having a few problems or her son was adjusting poorly to something. But as time went on, it became clear that she was a lazy mother who didn't enforce any rules. Luckily, she speaks English, so I went up there after a particularly noisy evening. I knocked on the door and she immediatley knew who I was and why I was there. The tried to apologize while smiling, but I cut her off and told her what needs to happen: no running around after 10pm. She panicked a bit and then played victim. She told me she couldn't control him and called him over to the door where we were talking.

"Can you tell him to be quiet?" she asked.

Are you kidding me? You want me to tell your three year old son who doesn't speak English to shut up. Sure, I could have told him in Korean, but why the hell is it my responsibilty?

I left feeling like I was just taken by a salesman. Nothing was accomplished and she managed to make me feel somewhat responsible for the noise that I assumed would continue. It did. It got worse and worse and one night at midnight they were stomping around. I stormed up there with the ire of Zeus (but probably more like Hera) and told her that this is not going to happen anymore. She tried all sorts of manuevers, but I was blocking them left and right. She was defeated and stayed quiet for a month.

But it slowly started again about two weeks ago. One night, it sounded like she was letting her son bounce a ball in the bedroom, which is of course, over our bedroom. I was too pissed to go up there and yell again, so I decided there was only one option. I had to take action.


I went into our kitchen, flipped over our table and started unscrewing one of the legs. 고 was telling me to stop, but there was no other option. This selfish woman did not care about anyone and was only going to understand direct action.

After collecting myself a bit, I told 고 what I was about to do and she okayed it. She thought it might be a little extreme, but we needed to sleep. Maybe we weren't thinking straight because of the deprevation, but it made sense at the time. As you might imagine, it takes a lot of courage and strength (both physical and mental) to use the table leg in such a forceful way. I kissed 고 and closed the bedroom door so she wouldn't hear anything.

Moments later I was ready. I took the table leg in hand and swung it hard. Nothing happened. They were still moving around. I did it again and again. They continued shuffling about. Finally, summoning all my strength, I banged the ceiling as hard as I could.

Silence. It worked. They got the message. I returned to bed and never spoke of that day again...until the next night and the next one and the next one. Apparently, Fat Lazy Korean Mom decided to use the banging as a timer, telling her when playtime is over for her son. It was okay. When we went to bed, we gave a couple bangs and then she would shut up.

Well, yesterday, we put the table leg away because they moved out. Now, we're waiting to see who moves in next and what piece of furiture I have to bang with. And to tell the truth, the table leg is about all we got.

Expat Instability Part 2: Clarity

Feeling accepted is something that we all strive for. It allows for growth, offers a feeling of importance and even gives you a sense of permanency. This simple fact is true with everything from school and sports teams to colleagues and family members. For the expat community in Korea, it’s especially true when discussing stability. I don’t have to explain the whole “You don’t understand Korean culture because Korea’s unique and homogeneous.” spiel. Everyone knows that’s a common Korean belief. It’s this alienating mentality that shapes the lives of expats greatly. There is a subtle (and sometimes overt) exclusionary atmosphere that radiates in Korea. This Us vs. Them temperament is quite far-reaching and directly affects the behavior, attitude, appreciation, respect and involvement of expats in Korea.

It’s no secret that expats here endure a lot of criticism –both deserved and undeserved. Excessive drinking, crude behavior, public displays of affection with –gasp!- Korean women and daily breaches of cultural boundaries all contribute to the rift. While there is no real excuse for some of this over-the-top behavior, there could be a cause. In an expats’ home nation, they adhere to their own widely known and essentially defined norms because they are aware of them. That’s what being a part of society requires. On the other hand, when one’s on vacation in another country, sometimes the local norms are blurred, but that’s to be expected when you visit a nation for a short time. You’re not really expected to observe every custom. In the Hermit Kingdom, however, there is a much more complex relationship between expectations and reality.

When an expat arrives in Korea, he or she is introduced to a few things: Korean-style binge drinking, communal eating and, let’s face it, freedom from responsibility.

Drinking, like usual, seems to be the most prevalent and like everywhere, it also causes the most problems. My first night in Korea was an excellent crash course in Korean drinking culture. A group of us went to dinner and, in true expat form, we drank literally everything we could. I remember being oblivious as to what soju was and was shocked when seeing how many shots my new cohorts were downing without hesitation. I wondered to myself if they had a drinking problem. As one friend put it, “I don’t have a drinking problem. I’m just a drinker in Korea.” After hours of lighthearted exchanges (and a few arm wrestling matches) we left and, as Koreans call it, we went to “the second place”. There we drank for a few more hours and before we knew it, it was light outside. As we walked home in the early morning light, we passed a man laying face-down in the road. He was in a suit, soaked from the pouring rain and waving his phone back and forth above the back of his head. I asked my friend if this was a normal sight and he said “Yeah, it happens all the time.” For me, as a new expat, I thought this was tolerable behavior. In my first night alone, I had been given two clear examples that excess is acceptable in Korea.

The next day, a couple friends and I headed to the Han River for some river floating. While trying to find a good place to launch, my new friends cracked their beers right there on the street. I was shocked to find out that it was “totally okay” to drink alcohol on the streets. Over the next few weeks, I discovered that drinking at convenience stores was acceptable as well.

When I say “discovered” that just means a fellow expat told me so. Does that mean it’s true? Of course it does. Well, not really. Drinking alcohol on the streets is actually not allowed, but the police usually overlook it, especially when certain elements of the Korean population partake (older men). This doesn’t mean the police harass us expats when we do it. I’ve drunk beer everywhere imaginable: subways, taxis, stores, rivers, parks, bathrooms, gas stations… you name it, I’ve boozed there. Even though we’re not getting harassed for drinking on the streets; we are creating an image or perpetuating a certain expat stereotype. -That being, the foreigner. Drinking at the Family Mart is actually okay, but even then, if taken to the excessive levels that I’ve seen, it becomes another wedge between the communities.

The point is that nothing is clear, so everything is game. The intoxicated business man on the street and public beer consumption are just two quick examples of the blurred norms that expats experience when introduced to Korea. There is a difference though. In Korea, acceptability is based on age. The older guy will get away with being a total ass in public. Well, in the West we don’t have the same age-based biases. A young guy would be scrutinized just the same as the old man. While expats are aware of this ageist system, they tend to underestimate its reaches.

It’s safe to say that most expats here don’t feel included and, in many ways, the Korean population prefers it that way. It appears to be the way they cope with the forces of globalization. (Phase One: Denial) As with interracial relationships on the peninsula, issues important to foreigners are taken lightly since they’re not actual Korean concerns. Why would they be? To the average citizen, that Korean girl with the foreigner is “just playing” or “learning English” and the foreigner who was just assaulted “doesn’t understand Korean culture” and is at fault. This concept is not lost on the expat community either. We know that we are viewed as outsiders or miscreants and our acceptance of this, however latent, creates an environment where taking responsibility for your actions is rare. I can think of several instances just from my circle here.

** Getting nude in a bar and placing ones boxers on a passed out friend who happens to be holding an open umbrella

** Passing out on an elementary school playground

** Fake fighting to the point of being ejected from a favorite bar

** Spending a month’s salary in one night knowing that the school will spot you for the rest of the month

** Refusing to stop drinking, attacking an entire bar full of people (and winning) and ultimately getting banned

** Punching each other in the face until -well, that’s all. That’s the game in its entirety.

** Pulling ones pants down all the way at the urinal while other people are around.

** Denting a taxi with an umbrella, lying about it and then bribing the police WITHOUT money while you have marker covering your face because you passed out in a Noraebang with cruel friends.

** Resting your manhood on another man’s face who just happened to be passed out on the floor of the bar

To tell the truth, those moments happen to be some of the funnier memories I have here and to be fair, two people committed six of those acts. Still, they are not in any way atypical of expats here. Honestly, none of us are “atypical” because we have all witnessed what is perceived as acceptable expat behavior. Would we act the same way at home? Maybe, but many of the items listed above would result in ramifications (legal and social) that just don’t exist here. Expats know what proper behavior is, but without definable limitations people can behave poorly. Korea barely has boundaries set for its own citizens and even then, many people can cross them whenever they please without consequences.

As I mentioned above, there is not a great sense of permanency among the majority of expats. Time here is brief --a stop-over-- so adherence to common mores seems useless. Just like the widespread apathy towards learning the Korean language, people often prefer not spend the time trying to define the indefinable. There is plenty of blame to go around for inappropriate expat behavior in Korea and for too long, I believed it was totally the fault of some “ foreigners”, but it’s just not that simple. A host nation that refuses to appropriately acknowledge a community made up of over 1,000,000 people (which includes nearly 50,000 teachers), opens a door to where proper social conduct is so grayed that when an expat mimics the behavior of an normal Korean citizen, he or she is the one who is chastised for not understanding the “complexities” of Korean culture.

Driving Miss Cha

A 68-year-old Korean woman has failed her driving test over 770 times. She's spent close to 4K on the writing test which she has managed to continuously fail since 2005. It's a little odd though. Wouldn't some of the questions repeat themselves? I would think that she would have most of them memorized by now as well. Maybe Choi Yong-Cheol, the Giver of Tests, likes to write his own questions to mix it up.

"Choi said that Cha cannot pass the preliminary written section of the test, averaging scores of 30-50 whereas the pass mark is 60 out of 100. Local media said that Cha sells food and household items door to door at apartment complexes, carrying the items in a handcart, but wants to get a car for her business."

What a dick. This old woman wants to get a car for her business so she doesn't have to walk everywhere and he still won't pass her. Instead, Choi has his top henchman throw out this cheap little line to make himself look slightly better than a huge asshole.

"I feel sorry every time I see Cha fail. When she passes, I'll make a commemorative tablet myself and give it to her."

I'm sure it'll a nice moment for both of them. I've lived here for three years and have been driving for nearly a year. None of these drivers have any idea what traffic laws are. The written test will have no affect on Cha's driving ability. Ridiculous.

Bale vs. O'Reilly

I'm just not sure which one I like more. I mean, the music in the Bale remix is better, but then again, you can actually see O'Reilly losing it. Tough...

Here's Bale:



And here's O'Reilly: