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
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
posted by Stephen Beckett at 5:45 PM
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