Progress Report 5.2

Kssseyo,

Here's some photos of me either touching or being close enough to smell various Koreans...

This is me with two Koreans, swearing.

Here's me swearing at a Canadian. Koreans occupy the other places at the table.

Here's me swearing at a Canadian out of shot.

Here's a tasty waitress. The pose affected is the result of medical condition that afflicts many, many Koreans. Symptoms are only exhibited when a camera is pointed at the sufferer.

This is fellow teacher Dave, a voracious sexual predator.

(For some reason, this photo won't align centrally - sorry. I'll use this extra space to tell you that Dave is Australian, 34 and a Leo. His hobbies include walking and swimming, and whenever he has the free time, he likes to attend dogfights. He recently bred a litter of American Pitbull Terriers, and has been training them against badgers and children for the past six months. He hopes to enter the best of the litter into the mid-price dogfighting circuit within the next year.)

Another girl tragically afflicted by the 'Korean disease'.

Here's Jamie, a sexual megalovore.

(this one won't align centrally either.)

That's your lot for now. There'll be some more soon, when I can be bothered. It's a bit of an arseache putting photos up, as all the instructions are in Korean. I hope you appreciate the efforts I'm going to...

Kasseyo,

S

Progress Report 5.1

Kasseyo,

What up? How's it going? Here's this week's report on my progress in Korea. Not too much to tell you about this week, but I'll try and keep it upbeat nonetheless. Perhaps by making some stuff up.

Food news: Well, after the cold, slimey fishyness of last week's hoe and sannakji, I was of a mind this week to eat something that wasn't akin to going down on an eskimo. (If you find this simile distateful, then you should know that the first version I just typed and deleted involved the word 'corpse'.) I responded to this need by using my kitchen for its intended purpose for the first - and quite possibly the last - time ever. I cooked up a batch of a Korean staple: ramen. This is actually a fancy name for what is essentially jumped-up Super Noodles. They're an insult the acheivements of humankind, but supermarkets here devote vast, expansive aisles to them - every flavour that you can think of, some that you can't and some that must have been conjured up from the depths of a fever. They exist to provide mulch and ballast for the stomachs of the socially inadequate from what I can gather, and so owing to my current low status in the Korean social system (unmarried, male, mid-twenties - yes, MID-twenties), they should be right up my street.

With this in mind, I swallowed my pride, forewent my dignity, cast aside my self-respect and went and bought a pack. It was quite a task to find a variety that wasn't obviously the result of a marriage of animal by-products and abbatoir sweepings, but eventually I chanced upon a line that, owing to the verdancy of its packet, I took to be vegetarian. On getting it home, I found that the noodles themselves were also green, and I still naively hope that this was due to the presence of spinach in the noodle recipe. The method of preparation would be obvious to even a newborn baby, but still the packaging deigned to go through the motions step-by-step, with detailed diagrams to explain (put in boiling water, go and have a wank, come back and eat). Well, I followed these instructions to the letter, added the packet of chilli sauce and poured the whole lot into a bowl. The result looked like something that a vet would remove from a very poorly dog's stomach. However, despite the lack of visual appeal, they didn't taste too bad (remember what I said about the eyes' lack of status in the Korean food chain?)

Unfortunately, ten minutes after eating them, I got indigestion for the first time since I've been here. My alimentary canal was clearly unused to such vicious and sustained chemical warfare. It's a shame that I wasn't equal to the challenge, as these packets of noodles work out at about 30p each, which would obviously allow me to give a lot more of my money to charity and barmen, but it's apparently not to be. Well, tentacles and more tentacles it is then.

What other questionable matter have I been tonguing this week? Well, keep it to yourself, but I'm going out on a date with one of my students this evening. This is inadvisable on so many levels that every time I think about it, I hear a spike of dramatic strings. Don't worry - it's one of my adult students, but her advancing years are just one of the many things that weigh against her. She very cleverly caught me off-guard by calling me at two o'clock this afternoon, knowing full well that I'd be in bed with a hangover, vulnerable, suggestible and partially ithyphallic. This condition meant that I responded affirmatively to her demands, rather than telling her that I'd have more interest in driving a railway spike through my chest than spending a whole evening with her. Actually, I'm being a little facetious - she's not that bad. She's pleasant, slim, attractive, vaguely desperate and definitely looks a bit mucky, but I still feel that I've been pressganged. If the next contact you get from me involves me informing of you my fondness for married life, you'll know that I've been rohypnolled.

It's odd that for all the amourous attention I'm getting here, I still can't find a girl whose disreputable intentions match mine. All the best ones are married, engaged or unwilling to devote several years of their life to learning conversational English. Take for example the receptionist from my school, whom I invited out on Friday (and not, you understand, with hopes of furthering the fluidity of our professional relationship). She's a peachy looker, her English is excellent, and I was very much looking forward to getting to know her better. It was a shame then, that after ten minutes or so of convivial conversing, she let it slip that she's engaged. And not only that, reader, but engaged to a Canadian. It's like God had done nothing else with his working week but calculate to seveal decimal points how to really, really brown me off. She then proceded to give him a call and invite him down so we could meet, in spite of my vigourous protestation. He was a perfectly decent chap, as it turned out, but that doesn't mean God is off the hook.

Even though it may not sound like it, though, I'm greatly enjoying my non-productive non-dalliances, as the alternative is much worse - Korean TV. I'd endure all manner of humiliation and regrettable misadventure on the social scene in preference to an evening in front of box. This is because Korean telly is off the chart in such a way that it makes even Australian televisual entertainment seem sophisticated and urbane. I currently receive around a dozen channels. Four of them are shopping channels devoted to peddling non-stick woks and nasty support bras. Another is devoted to fishing. Another shows nothing but magic shows, mostly of the American variety, where cloying hyperbole is the standard mode of speech. (This channel did take brief break from the non-stop barrage of dazzling illusion on Friday to show a programme in which a lithe young lady demonstrated various yoga positions, forcing me to turn my air con up a notch). Another channel shows nothing but a very tired man writing on a blackboard. (This actually makes for compulsive viewing, because you're sure that at any second, the chalk will slip from his fingers, his face will come to rest on the blackboard, and his mumbling Korean drone will be replaced with a sated, guttural snore.)

Korean TV then, is, you'll gather, shite. I don't know who is intended to watch it, and neither, it would seem, do the programme makers. Presenting here is done with a sort of resigned, no-one's-going-to-see-it-anyway air. They're happy to broadcast the news with only one story featured. The models on the shopping channel are distinctly un-modellic. The soap operas are made for the price of a newspaper. It simply isn't a viable proposition for a night in. At the moment, going out and getting apocalyptically drunk is the only alternative. Which brings me nicely on to my charity send-me-a-book appeal.

Well, the Stevie Bee Charity Totalizer is looking very healthy. I've had pledges from up and down the country, for which I thank you immeasurably, but we've still got a long way to go. If you haven't already, have a glance around the room - can you see a book? Is it in English? Are none of the pages stuck together? Then quickly pop it in an envelope, write my address on the envelope, run it down to the post office and breathlessly explain that you need to send it immediately to Stevie Bee in Korea. (If you don't have my address, email me and ask me for it.) Do it now. You'll feel wonderful. Plus, it will save me from staring at the walls.

Anyhoo, I'm off to get ready for my 'hot' 'date'. If you've missed previous updates (of which there are now four, all about as shit as this one), you'll find them here: http://tentaclesforbreakfast.blogspot.com/ If you'd rather not receive any more emails of this nature, email me back and tell me. I'm man enough to take it.

Right, take care. I shall bid you 'amyonghi kasseyo' (to which you respond 'kasseyo', in a stupid, sing-songy way).

Amyonghi kasseyo,

('kasseeyyoooooo')

S

Progress Report 4.1

Kaseyo,

What up?

Just a quick note to update you on some food news - I have now eaten hoe (pronounced as 'hweh', but as quick as you can) and sannakji (pronounced as 'you f*cking wot?!' - you'll understand shortly.)

Firstly, the hoe. It's the Korean version of sushi, but without the frills and kerfuffle of the stuff you get in Japan. Here, if you want raw fish, you get raw fish. A whole one. Accompanied by raw squid, raw sea urchin, raw shellfish, raw sea something-or-other and raw something-that-tastes-like-a-sponge. You know it's fresh because the luckless fish currently looking less than dignified on a bed of glass noodles in the middle of your table was just five minutes ago was swimming around in a tank at the front of the restaurant, wondering why it was getting so much attention and unaware that its muscle structure was about to be radically reconfigured. How does it taste? Like raw fish. It's soft, it's cold and it's mucusy. And really not too bad. Honestly, I don't know why we've been cooking our fish all these years. How much time and gas could have been saved if we'd only thought to eat it straight off the counter at the fishmongers!

Now, how do you go one better than raw? How can you take a concept like raw fish and regress it further? Well, for the times when raw isn't quite enough, there's sannakji. What is it? Well let's look at the Korean: 'Nakji' means octopus. Can you guess what 'san' means? Yes, that's right - alive. Ladies and gentlemen, sannakji: live octopus, chopped up with scissors.

There's really no greater emphasis that can be put on the fact that you're no longer in a Western country than being presented with squirming, baffled tentacles on a bed of lettuce. Octopodes are meant to be quite intelligent for a sea-dwelling creature, but this one clearly wasn't too bright. Its suckers still worked though, so removing a length of tentacle from the plate with chopsticks can be a bit tricky at first. Its suckers tenaciously hold onto the china like it knows what's coming. I don't know why it was bothering - it's not like it was going to make a spirited recovery from a once-over with the kitchen scissors. Better for it to give in gracefully, rather than squirming and struggling until you've finally chewed the fight out of it. It's quite an experience to eat a food that might not fully expire until it meets your stomach acid. If you're wondering how it tastes, it's a bit like chewing a squirmy, slimy, fishy rubber band - not at all disagreeable. And if you think it's cruel, then take some comfort in the fact that the octopus can sometimes have the last laugh - lots of people have choked on sannakji when the still-functioning suckers get some purchase on the back of their throat. (Please note that a video of me eating live octopus should be available soon, once it's been transferred from phone to PC to interweb.)

I have my students to thank for the live octopodes. I wouldn't have been able to decipher the menu with sufficient skill to locate them. They offered to take me out after we'd been discussing the more traditional of Korea's foodstuffs (for 'traditional', read 'unacceptably sick'). The subject had come up after we'd been talking about how hot and humid it gets in August. I'd asked for some tips on surviving the high temperatures, knowing full well what is 'traditionally' thought as the best way - bosintang. They looked at each other nervously as I prodded, suggesting to them that there might be a particular foodstuff I could eat to give me stamina to survive the soaring temperatures. Maybe there's a certain type of soup, I conjectured. A certain type of soup renowned for its stamina-giving qualities, perhaps. Nervous looks all round, until one brave student suggested, 'bosintang?'

'That's the one!' I told her. Bosintang. Dogmeat soup. Traditionally eaten on certain days of the year (decided by the lunar calendar) to maximize its stamina- and virility-enhancing properties. That's what the name means - stamina soup. It's not widely available, thanks to the interference of non-medieval thinking, but there are still one or two restaurants that serve it. The next dog day is in around a month's time, and, almost as if it had been scripted by the stars above, we found a dog restaurant within ten seconds of starting looking, on the back doorstep of the school. So there we have it: we've got a time and we've got a place, so in around four weeks, I'm going to be sitting down to a bowl of bow-wow. Watch this space.

I wouldn't have noticed the dog restaurant without assistance because despite my best efforts, my skills at hangul aren't quite yet up to snuff. Hangul is the Korean writing system, and compared to other Asiatic languages, it's a piece of urine, but it still takes some time to learn. Knowing how to read hangul is a valuable skill - if you want irrefutable proof of this, try visiting a Korean supermarket. All the products are totally free from roman script so you don't know what you're buying. (For instance, for dinner last night, I sat down to a steaming bowl of TenaLady.) I'm now at the stage where I can just about read some of the items on a restaurant menu, but not much else. A little time and patience though and I'll be ordering live cephalopods and canine stew without assistance and with spritely aplomb.

Anyway, that just about does her for now. I should have some photos to show you soon, along with a video of me doing battle with a tentacle armed only with chopsticks and a hinged lower mandible. There's just time now to give you details of my charity appeal, which this year is the 'For the Love of God, Please Somebody Send Me A Book In English To Read' Appeal. The situation is currently desperate, with only the remaining half of a history of the Medici family left to read. Despite a take-away menu with pictures being airdropped into my postbox, if the situation fails to improve in the near future, the outlook for my brain and bowel movements looks irretrievably bleak. If you wish to donate, please email me and ask me for my postal address. All donations will be received with the utmost gratitude. No Dan Brown though. Or anything written by a woman. Thank you.

Right, I'm off to taunt the squids at the fish restaurant round the corner.

Amyonghi kasseyo.

S

Progress Report 3.1

Amyong Kasseyo,

How's things? Yeah? Good to hear.

Question for you: How many toilet rolls do you think you get through in a year? Assuming that your lifestyle remains stable, your diet consistent and you don't contract amoebic dysentry, how many individual leaves of bumwad do you think you foul, moisten or otherwise render non-reusable in a twelve month period? The figure could be expressed in a simple equation in which N (the number of rolls consumed, multiplied by an average number of 240 leaves per roll) is the product of the mean number of movements taken per day (M), from whcih we shall subtract a percentage value Q to show the quality of diet, and we shall add a fixed 5% to account for any other emissions whose flow toilet tissue might be called upon to stem. This gives us the following expression:

N=(MQ x 0.05) x 240

From this, we can determine the projected number of rolls required for a year with a clinical margin of error. But why should we care? Well the point is that I've just been out to buy enough toilet roll to last me until next June. So? Well that means that I've decided I'm definitely going to be staying in Korea for a year (which rhymes, by the way). I've committed myself. For a whole year. To leave early now would be a criminal waste of bog roll.

And I've decided to stay for a year in spite of several factors.

Firstly, I've decided to stay in spite of Korean fashion. I'm not exaggerating in any way when I say that your average Korean's fashion sense is so utterly derelict that even Russian peasants would point and laugh. I've never seen so many fine looking women so appallingly dressed. I'm not talking about being badly dressed in the sense that they could maybe do to accessorize with greater fluency - I mean they look like they've climbed out of the bins round the back of Primark. Korean clothes look cheap. If you were to judge the economy on the attire of its citizens, you'd assume that Korea was undergoing a Leonard Cohen-strength depression. And Korean clothes look nasty. They're always embellished with some tasteless detail or unnecessary faff which renders them irretrievably beyond acceptable limits of taste - even Welsh taste. And the blokes are no better - the look for men is either Ciro Citterio-at-Netto or 'you-call-THAT-gay?-check-THIS-out'.

Unfortunately, I've been a little shortsighted in my projections for how many items of clothing I'm going to need for the year, so it's inevitable that I'm going to have to, at some point, join the Korean anti-fashion revolution. I may be rallying you all to hold bring-and-buy sales and sponsored walks at some point over the next few months so that you can invest in clothes to send me and help me avoid this fate. Be ready.

I'm also staying despite a difficult personal quandary connected with the oppposite sex. Let me explain: If you want to take care of certain psychological and physical needs here, you have two choices - you can hold out for a Western girl and take what you're given but enjoy the free exchange of opinions, hopes and desires that a common language system permits, or, alternatively, you can bag yourself a Korean girl, and have what is essentially an ambulant vagina. Don't get me wrong - some men may enjoy conducting their conversations in sub-pidgin Engrish to an accompaniment of animated mime, but I would find it limiting. It's hard to convey complex irony with your fingers.

There is a but - Korean girls seem to have taken to me like they took to polyester. I've had more girls give me their phone number in the past two weeks than I have in the past 29 years. I keep getting told that I'm 'handsome' and 'cute'. I know, I know - I think they must have organised a nationwide practical joke the week before I arrived, and I realise that the Korean Jeremy Beadle is likely to appear at my side with a microphone at any moment, but for now, I'm playing along. The problem is that once they've conveyed their opening compliments, the conversation becomes a little one-sided - my dry Northern wit versus can-maybe-count-to-ten-in-English. I know I could probably manipulate the situation to a win-win if I had the patience and the time, but I didn't spend the past 29 years developing this obnoxious-but-tolerable-in-small-doses personality so that I could regress to primary school level for the sake of a Korean with questionable taste.

Also, whitey walking down the street with a Korean girl on his arm is an undeniably tragic tableau. There but for the grace of God go I, I tell myself. But what's the alternative? We went to Itaewon (Seoul's ex-pat district) on Saturday to watch the England game, and I was quickly reminded what English girls are blighted with, and to which Korean girls are apparently innured - attitude. On Saturday night, I felt myself being looked down upon, dismissed, and even argued against. One girl even questioned my knowledge of English by insisting to me, despite my reasoned and obviously-correct counter-argument, that there is such a word as 'uninspirational'. (Her head and hands are currently in a bin liner underneath my kitchen sink.) It was frustrating and it was unnecessary. Why do they need to be so combative? Who do they think they are, eh? So Western girls, the ultimatum is issued: When you're pulling down Korean averages in the looks stakes, then and only then shall you be entitled to have the attitude. Until then, you have a lot of work to do. (Please take a moment to look up from your monitor and remind yourself that I'm probably joking.)

I'm also staying despite the Americans and Canadians. (I promise that this will be the last time that I use the C-word). I'm staying despite the baseball caps and facial hair. I'm even staying despite the backwards baseball caps. (When will these people learn that the baseball cap is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE in any form? Do they honestly think that their moronic faces are improved by the ridiculous peak of a baseball cap sitting on their head like some sort of theatrical punctuation?) I'm staying despite the fact that they call you 'my friend', even when you're clearly trying to start a fight with them. And I'm staying despite the fact that they're all oversized, overfed, underschooled clods.

And despite my gripes, I've been out and bought enough toilet roll to last me a year (18 rolls, in case you're wondering - if you can't make a bog roll last you three weeks, then you need to eat more fibre. Perhaps you could start by buying some Weetabix off eBay). So there's definitely something outweighing these numerous cons that makes the prospect of staying here for a year quite palatable. However, I've rather enjoyed the negative tone of this email so I'm not going to spoil it by getting all flowery. Maybe next time. Besides, being nice isn't funny.

Food news: I have now eaten silkworm larvae, quail egg and acorn jelly. They were insecty, eggy and nothing-special respectively. The silkworm larvae in particular were exactly what you'd expect a fat little maggot to taste like. Not entirely disagreeable, but not exactly more-ish. I also went to a pasta restaurant yesterday (not my choice) and had a spaghetti con vognole that was so garlicky that it made my face hurt. Someone had obviously told the chef that Italian food features garlic quite prominently, so he'd taken the idea and run with it. Don't expect to see him on Masterchef anytime soon.

At some point over the next couple of months, I'm going to eat dog soup. I promise it. And when I do, you shall be first with the news.

Right, I have to go and teach my dreadful junior class. If I hadn't had this opportunity to express some bile, then there would have been a good chance that I might have pushed one of them out of the window, so thank you.

Amyonghi kasseyo,

S

Progres Report 2.2 (pun on Seoul not included)

Amyong kasseyo (that's Korean for ayup),

How you doing? I've been in Korea over a week now so I thought I'd better let you know my findings thus far. It's been an eventful week-or-so, full of new experiences and slightly novel types of hangover. I've met lots of new people, kept a grip on my frustration that they can't speak English, and heavens, I've even tried to teach a few of them. Korea is a suprising place in lots of ways. Like what? Let me tell you.

My initial impression of the country was that it was a work-orientated sweathouse with an inferiority complex about its standing on the international scene, and this impression, even if I do say so myself, was uncommonly prescient. However, it's also a very friendly place and the people are more than happy to go out of their way to help out a foreigner, to engage you in a chat or even just to try and get seen on CCTV with you. I tell you, I'm used to being popular wherever I go, but the Koreans have upped it a notch. They're all keen to know why you've chosen to come to Korea and what you think of the place (in a way that almost broaches neediness). They always seem a little put out when you tell them that you came here purely because it was the path of least resistance, but they perk up a bit when you tell them about Korea's virtues.

These virtues are quite hard to put your finger on, to be honest. It's clean, it's efficient, it's friendly. There's no in-your-face poverty. There's lots of tasty females. The food's good. However, all these virtues are tempered with a 'but', that I wouldn't normally share with a Korean, but I'm going to tell you now whilst none of them are listening.

Firstly, the efficacy of the Korean urban set-up: Everyone lives in big apartment blocks, each one with its assigned number painted large on its side. Let's just say that they're not exactly architectural wonders. A lot of them are owned by corporations as well (the logo usually appears above the number), so that you can still live according to the company ethos even when you're tucked up in your jimjams. My own apartment is positively soviet. It's clean, it's convenient, and it's characterless (though hopefully, without the distraction of interior design, I can become a more productive individual - I swear down that this year I'm going to learn Spanish). I live on the 13th floor, which seems somehow fitting, though I can't quite think why. It means I've got a good view of the surrounding blocks, and a distant mountain when the pollution isn't too bad.

The spartan nature of the accomodation reflects in the Korean's attitude to work. The idea is that you're not going to be spending too much time at home, so why bother making it fancy? For this reason, I'm required to start work at 6.30am so that students can improve their conversational English skills with a hideously tired native speaker before starting work. I also teach them after they finish work. And some of them sneak in a class on their lunchbreak. However, I don't suppose you get such a dynamic economy as Korea's unless you banish the feckless and make sure everyone rolls up their sleeves. It helps that Koreans have no choice but to work - there's no social welfare system, so if the bottom falls out of your fortunes, you're on your own, son. And the people really do go for the corporate mentality. Koreans don't like anything that's bad for business, so if you're looking for an opinion or sex with a co-worker, you're better off in a more sluggish, shiftless nation.

It's quite hard to teach conversational English to people who refuse to express a viewpoint. I had four guys on Saturday whom, over the course of the whole torturous three hours, failed to demonstrate the power of independent thinking in any way. There was more chance of them expressing breastmilk than an opinion. Not a hint of backbone between them. Honestly, Korean men must have testicles the size of peanuts.

But that's what Korean society is like - it's all about respect (but not the good 'gangsta' kind - it's more about giving than demanding). It's a bit different with the younger generation (my kindergarten class is positively a hotbed of willful disobedience), but for the main, holding an opinion in Korea is a waste of time - you're not going to find anyone to argue it with. Saying that though, whilst they may be strangers to controversial thought, they are perhaps one of the friendliest peoples I've met. As a for instance, the other morning, after a heavy session on the Korean beer, we asked a group of lads in the street where we could get something to eat. They not only showed us somewhere, but insisted on us all dining together, and then insisted on paying for it. Now, I've not tested this scientifically, but I would hypothesise that two drunken Koreans addressing strangers on the street in London at 5am would not come away with a free meal unless their injuries warranted a stay in hospital.

Which brings us conveniently onto the food. Being a big fan of my stomach, the food was one of the things to which I was most looking forward. Unfortunate then that Korean food in its home environment really makes you work for its love. It's not that it's not tasty, but it's certainly not pretty. Your average meal will consist of a main dish (in my case, usually tentacles), rice, soup and then side dishes. These vary but will always include kimchi (spicy preserved cabbage), and have in the past week been known to include bits of greenery in vinegar, a funny-coloured egg, a whole fish (complete with head and bones, which were far more trouble than it was worth to pick out with chopsticks), some sort of pickled yellow radish, pickled garlic, preserved chillis, seaweed, and anything else that happens to wander past the kitchen door. Every meal brings a new surprise that requires you (like so many things in life) to override what your eyes are telling you and just stick it in your mouth. Yesterday, we were presented - as a bar snack - with a plate containg three whole dried squid. The next time it happens, I promise I'll take a photo, because it has to be seen to be believed.

The restaurants here though, like the people, are numerous, cheap and efficient. There's even a 24-hour tofu restaurant in the locale. If anyone told you back home that they were planning on opening a 24-hour tofu restaurant, even in the centre of London, you'd just assume that they were recovering from invasive cranial surgery. Here, they've not only got it, but it's always busy. And pretty damn good, too.

It strikes me now that posting is getting a bit long, so I'm going to wind it up without getting to tell you about how much I hate Canadians and how fit the women here are.

Oh, okay then - most other English teachers here are either American or Canadian and let me state something for the record just to show that there's no lack clarity in my view on the subject: Canadians are fucking idiots. They are bland, juvenile, self-regarding morons. You can spot them a mile off - they all walk around with the same expectant, bovine, humourless look on their faces (which are, in the men's cases, invariably embellished with a ludicrous signature of facial hair). Listen in on their conversations, and you'll simply bristle. If it's a controversial subject, they'll be passionately on-the-fence, and regard their contribution as conlcusively putting a thorny issue to bed. I'll say no more, as it's obviously an emotive issue, but if you don't hear from me for a while, it will no doubt be because I've snapped and as a result, my head will have been used to butter the pavement by a bullnecked Canadian f*ckwit.

The girls - perhaps it's just the thrill of the new but the ratio of stunners is disarming. Not many of them speak English, which is a shame, but some do, and some of them even have Western names, which saves you the effort of trying to remember whatever two-syllable variation on 'ding-dong' they think passes for a handle. A girl invited me to think up a Western name for her the other night. I spent the next half hour trying to convince her that 'Kingsmill' is genuinely a popular girl's name in Britain.

Anyway, that's more than enough from me (and in case you're wondering, no, I don't have anything better to do. I finished at lunchtime today, but it's still to early for a drink.)

Amyonghi kasseyo, fella.

S