Progress Report 7.1
Amyong hasseyo,
How you doing? Yeah? Tell me about it.
Once again, I'm submitting this progress report from a mire of post-intoxication filthiness, having spent the day yesterday at a 'music festival' in Itaewon. As you'll no doubt recall, Itaewon is where Seoul's ex-pat community is based, and you'll also recall that, in concurrence with the long-standing tradition of ex-pat communities, it's vile.
This music festival was in actuality just three bars permitting their premises to be used to indulge the hopelessly misguided ambitions of various North American 'singer-songwriters', along with one or two 'comedians', and then selling lots of Korean beer to an audience that were desperate to try any method to make the pain go away. There were one or two acts that could have almost been justified in calling themselves amateur musicians, but I would hesitate to call the comedians as such, principally because they were about as funny as the Holocaust. There were two that I actually managed to sit through. One was an Irishman and was just plain unfunny, but the other was a Canadian and was abhorrent in a way that merits further comment.
No-one likes Canadians - this is scientific fact - but this so-called comic could make you hate Canadians so much that you would be spurred to political action against their country. 'Hold on', you're no doubt saying; 'if the lad had the guts to get up to the mic and have a go, then you can't fault him for that'. Not a word of it, I would have to respond. The fact that he has the confidence to believe himself a comedian is a terrible indictment against humanity. Too far? Here's a sample joke so you can judge for yourself: 'Having sex with a Korean chick is like putting a hotdog in a keyhole'. (Cue ape-like whooping and whoahing from the clodwitted audience.) 'It's okay to laugh at that', he generously reassured the audience. 'You're all thinking it, I'm just saying it'. Well isn't he just the perfect f*cking iconoclast?
You should know that this sharp-eyed social commentator was about six foot seven, easily twenty stone and had a stupid goatee beard - the only place his hotdog has ever been for free is his right fist. But still he felt he was placed to give his us off-kilter take on Korean-Western
relations; his unique (and sometimes risque!) views on the experiences of the white male in North East Asia. This is the sort of arrogance and blindness that makes the North American subcontinent hated throughout the world. And these are the sort of people to whom I have allied myself by coming to Korea. Take a moment to now to wonder at my bravery.
Sorry if I'm biling up your day, but I need an outlet to express the teeth-grinding rage I feel whenever I've been to Itaewon. If you'd cast a glance about the audience at this bar yesterday, you'd have been forgiven for thinking that it was a holding cell for the godless results of a secret experiment to splice the genes of a human with those of a hippo. Oversized, lumpy, clumsy trash to a man. In case you think it's unacceptable to dismiss people on the basis of appearance, let me also add that if you'd have listened to any snippet of their conversations, you'd be seriously weighing up the pros and cons of life within the Korean prison system that would no doubt be the result of the ensuing violent murderisation. Everything to them is 'fucken awesome' or 'totally brutal'. They're utter f*cking idiots. But still they're allowed to teach Koreans our language. At one point, this comedian proudly proclaimed that he didn't "know about fucken subject-verb agreement or adjevtives an' all that shit" - note that he was boasting about this, like it was something we should salute him for - but still he's allowed to teach English. The fat, disgusting lunatics have taken over the asylum.
Anyway, let's change the subject, as I'd hate for you catch me sounding like I care about teaching. I've had a complaint, as it happens, from one Janey 'The Cockney' Collings, claiming that I haven't spoken enough about my work (which, whilst it may be true, smacks distinctly of ingratitude), so in the absence of anything better to tell you about, I may as well expend a couple of paragraphs on the matter. For the most part, I teach adult advanced speakers in free conversation classes. This involves me choosing a subject (usually based around something photocopied from the Korean Times in the two minutes before the class begins), opening the discussion, then forcibly dominating it with my own viewpoint for an hour and a half. This happened for the first couple of weeks more than it does now, as I soon realised that tying Koreans up in rhetorical knots is just too dispiritingly easy. Now, I tend to sit back and let the students duke it out between themselves, only stepping in when the flow of conversation lulls. Depending on the class and their willingness to disagree with each other, this can happen once or twice a lesson or every twenty seconds. It's more often the latter - one realisation that I've come to in the past six weeks is that for the most part, Koreans are deeply boring people.
This is most telling when you've only got a small class to teach, and most telling of all when you've only one student. This is currently the case for my 6.30am class, where I have to talk til eight o'clock with a Korean dentist whose family live in Canada and thus uses English lessons in a surrogate capacity. You may know that rising early has always made me murderously misanthropic, and when this hatred for earlybird humanity is married to forced pidgin conversation, it makes me cry blood. The one time that he didn't show up for class and I got to state quietly at the whiteboard for an hour and a half was more wonderful than I'd dared dream. It's not really that there's anything wrong with the chap, but there's nobody reading this now whose ever been privileged enough to get an hour and half's conversation out of me before lunchtime, and I consider you all to be enlightened and fantastically interesting people. Can you imagine the strain on my highly-forced niceness a dull Korean dentist puts me to at 7am? If it wasn't for black coffee, he'd be a dead man.
He's not my most hated student though. That honour goes to the young Christian lad I told you about last week. There's something about him that really makes me want to smash his face in. I don't know if it's his pointy features, or unstyled hair, or shit clothes, or skinny frame, but something really makes me want to slam his head in a door. He tried to steal from me last week, you know. His conversation class starts at half nine. Last Monday, he strolls in at nine twenty-five, whilst I was desperately preparing my kindergarten class, and starts asking me about my weekend. He wants five minutes of extra conversation that he's not paid for. That's theft in my book. Eighth commandment, son - 'Thou shall NOT STEAL'. After dismissing his first question with a grunt, I responded to his second by telling him straight: "Look, mate - this class doesn't start for another five minutes. Either shut up or f*ck off."
Don't get me wrong though - for the most part, I like my students. Heck, I'd even stick my fingers in a couple of them. It's very rewarding to be treated with deference and respect just because you can speak your own native tongue, but this is what my students give me and it makes me even fonder for them. But I like none so much as the kindergarten class. If you don't like wild lurches away from hard-nosed cynicism look away now, because I'm about to confess that I love my kindergarten class to bits and can't wait to get there every day. I go off-campus to the kindergarten, and it's a nice, private Catholic school, which means the children are clean and well turned out and not malnourished and lifting with lice like they would be back home. I get a rockstar's welcome on a daily basis, uproarious adulation for the lamest of jokes, and I occasionally get the Korean teacher giggly. What's there not to like? It certainly puts the crack-of-dawn pain-versation in the shade.
However, no matter how much I enjoy discussing my favourite colour with five year olds (the strawberry blush of the westering sun, in case you're wondering), the kindergarteners aren't much use when it comes to garnering information about the practicalities of life in Korea. My adults, though, are ideal. It's come gradually to their attention that at some point in every lesson, I manage to steer the topic of conversation onto food. No matter that we've made an uncomfortable semantic leap from abortion to live baby octopus, I just love drilling them on the vagaries and extremities of Korean cuisine, pumping them for info on where, when and what I should eat next and how I should eat it. It's a result of these question and answer sessions that I am able to present you with a fascinating pamphlet of delicious doggy facts on the Korean delight that is dogmeat. This report will be submitted within the next few days.
I shall leave you now, but not before I'm done with two additional points of order. Firstly, I'd like to thank my new favourite Welshman (and funnily enough, the first ever holder of that title), Mr Rob 'Llanelli Boy' James, who guaranteed himself a place in heaven by sending me three books: Child Of God, by Cormac McCarthy (which I greedily wolfed in two sittings); Tietam Brown by Mick Foley (which I've also greedily wolfed and I highly recommend), and The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon, which I've not started yet, but no doubt will greedily wolf as well. Rob is no doubt experiencing a more fulfilling life as a result of responding to my appeal and you can join him by sending me any book in English at your earliest convenience. Not got my address? Email me and ask me for it. If you've already sent me something and it's on its way, thank you very much.
Secondly, on Friday 7th July, during a brief but consequential episode of drunken misadventure, I swallowed a 100 won coin. The coin completed its digestive transit at 5pm on Sunday 9th July. I've retrieved it and rinsed it off and now I'd like to make you all an offer. I'm willing to give this coin that has known me so intimately away to the person who can best explain in less than one hundred words why they want it and what they're going to do with it. If I remain unconvinced by all entries, it's going on eBay. Thank you.
That's all for now,
Amyong hasseyo,
PS A message to the doubterz and the haterz - despite what you thought about my maths, I can now inform you that I've just finished my first toilet roll a full FIVE WEEKS after starting it. Have that, Benny Blanco!
How you doing? Yeah? Tell me about it.
Once again, I'm submitting this progress report from a mire of post-intoxication filthiness, having spent the day yesterday at a 'music festival' in Itaewon. As you'll no doubt recall, Itaewon is where Seoul's ex-pat community is based, and you'll also recall that, in concurrence with the long-standing tradition of ex-pat communities, it's vile.
This music festival was in actuality just three bars permitting their premises to be used to indulge the hopelessly misguided ambitions of various North American 'singer-songwriters', along with one or two 'comedians', and then selling lots of Korean beer to an audience that were desperate to try any method to make the pain go away. There were one or two acts that could have almost been justified in calling themselves amateur musicians, but I would hesitate to call the comedians as such, principally because they were about as funny as the Holocaust. There were two that I actually managed to sit through. One was an Irishman and was just plain unfunny, but the other was a Canadian and was abhorrent in a way that merits further comment.
No-one likes Canadians - this is scientific fact - but this so-called comic could make you hate Canadians so much that you would be spurred to political action against their country. 'Hold on', you're no doubt saying; 'if the lad had the guts to get up to the mic and have a go, then you can't fault him for that'. Not a word of it, I would have to respond. The fact that he has the confidence to believe himself a comedian is a terrible indictment against humanity. Too far? Here's a sample joke so you can judge for yourself: 'Having sex with a Korean chick is like putting a hotdog in a keyhole'. (Cue ape-like whooping and whoahing from the clodwitted audience.) 'It's okay to laugh at that', he generously reassured the audience. 'You're all thinking it, I'm just saying it'. Well isn't he just the perfect f*cking iconoclast?
You should know that this sharp-eyed social commentator was about six foot seven, easily twenty stone and had a stupid goatee beard - the only place his hotdog has ever been for free is his right fist. But still he felt he was placed to give his us off-kilter take on Korean-Western
relations; his unique (and sometimes risque!) views on the experiences of the white male in North East Asia. This is the sort of arrogance and blindness that makes the North American subcontinent hated throughout the world. And these are the sort of people to whom I have allied myself by coming to Korea. Take a moment to now to wonder at my bravery.
Sorry if I'm biling up your day, but I need an outlet to express the teeth-grinding rage I feel whenever I've been to Itaewon. If you'd cast a glance about the audience at this bar yesterday, you'd have been forgiven for thinking that it was a holding cell for the godless results of a secret experiment to splice the genes of a human with those of a hippo. Oversized, lumpy, clumsy trash to a man. In case you think it's unacceptable to dismiss people on the basis of appearance, let me also add that if you'd have listened to any snippet of their conversations, you'd be seriously weighing up the pros and cons of life within the Korean prison system that would no doubt be the result of the ensuing violent murderisation. Everything to them is 'fucken awesome' or 'totally brutal'. They're utter f*cking idiots. But still they're allowed to teach Koreans our language. At one point, this comedian proudly proclaimed that he didn't "know about fucken subject-verb agreement or adjevtives an' all that shit" - note that he was boasting about this, like it was something we should salute him for - but still he's allowed to teach English. The fat, disgusting lunatics have taken over the asylum.
Anyway, let's change the subject, as I'd hate for you catch me sounding like I care about teaching. I've had a complaint, as it happens, from one Janey 'The Cockney' Collings, claiming that I haven't spoken enough about my work (which, whilst it may be true, smacks distinctly of ingratitude), so in the absence of anything better to tell you about, I may as well expend a couple of paragraphs on the matter. For the most part, I teach adult advanced speakers in free conversation classes. This involves me choosing a subject (usually based around something photocopied from the Korean Times in the two minutes before the class begins), opening the discussion, then forcibly dominating it with my own viewpoint for an hour and a half. This happened for the first couple of weeks more than it does now, as I soon realised that tying Koreans up in rhetorical knots is just too dispiritingly easy. Now, I tend to sit back and let the students duke it out between themselves, only stepping in when the flow of conversation lulls. Depending on the class and their willingness to disagree with each other, this can happen once or twice a lesson or every twenty seconds. It's more often the latter - one realisation that I've come to in the past six weeks is that for the most part, Koreans are deeply boring people.
This is most telling when you've only got a small class to teach, and most telling of all when you've only one student. This is currently the case for my 6.30am class, where I have to talk til eight o'clock with a Korean dentist whose family live in Canada and thus uses English lessons in a surrogate capacity. You may know that rising early has always made me murderously misanthropic, and when this hatred for earlybird humanity is married to forced pidgin conversation, it makes me cry blood. The one time that he didn't show up for class and I got to state quietly at the whiteboard for an hour and a half was more wonderful than I'd dared dream. It's not really that there's anything wrong with the chap, but there's nobody reading this now whose ever been privileged enough to get an hour and half's conversation out of me before lunchtime, and I consider you all to be enlightened and fantastically interesting people. Can you imagine the strain on my highly-forced niceness a dull Korean dentist puts me to at 7am? If it wasn't for black coffee, he'd be a dead man.
He's not my most hated student though. That honour goes to the young Christian lad I told you about last week. There's something about him that really makes me want to smash his face in. I don't know if it's his pointy features, or unstyled hair, or shit clothes, or skinny frame, but something really makes me want to slam his head in a door. He tried to steal from me last week, you know. His conversation class starts at half nine. Last Monday, he strolls in at nine twenty-five, whilst I was desperately preparing my kindergarten class, and starts asking me about my weekend. He wants five minutes of extra conversation that he's not paid for. That's theft in my book. Eighth commandment, son - 'Thou shall NOT STEAL'. After dismissing his first question with a grunt, I responded to his second by telling him straight: "Look, mate - this class doesn't start for another five minutes. Either shut up or f*ck off."
Don't get me wrong though - for the most part, I like my students. Heck, I'd even stick my fingers in a couple of them. It's very rewarding to be treated with deference and respect just because you can speak your own native tongue, but this is what my students give me and it makes me even fonder for them. But I like none so much as the kindergarten class. If you don't like wild lurches away from hard-nosed cynicism look away now, because I'm about to confess that I love my kindergarten class to bits and can't wait to get there every day. I go off-campus to the kindergarten, and it's a nice, private Catholic school, which means the children are clean and well turned out and not malnourished and lifting with lice like they would be back home. I get a rockstar's welcome on a daily basis, uproarious adulation for the lamest of jokes, and I occasionally get the Korean teacher giggly. What's there not to like? It certainly puts the crack-of-dawn pain-versation in the shade.
However, no matter how much I enjoy discussing my favourite colour with five year olds (the strawberry blush of the westering sun, in case you're wondering), the kindergarteners aren't much use when it comes to garnering information about the practicalities of life in Korea. My adults, though, are ideal. It's come gradually to their attention that at some point in every lesson, I manage to steer the topic of conversation onto food. No matter that we've made an uncomfortable semantic leap from abortion to live baby octopus, I just love drilling them on the vagaries and extremities of Korean cuisine, pumping them for info on where, when and what I should eat next and how I should eat it. It's a result of these question and answer sessions that I am able to present you with a fascinating pamphlet of delicious doggy facts on the Korean delight that is dogmeat. This report will be submitted within the next few days.
I shall leave you now, but not before I'm done with two additional points of order. Firstly, I'd like to thank my new favourite Welshman (and funnily enough, the first ever holder of that title), Mr Rob 'Llanelli Boy' James, who guaranteed himself a place in heaven by sending me three books: Child Of God, by Cormac McCarthy (which I greedily wolfed in two sittings); Tietam Brown by Mick Foley (which I've also greedily wolfed and I highly recommend), and The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon, which I've not started yet, but no doubt will greedily wolf as well. Rob is no doubt experiencing a more fulfilling life as a result of responding to my appeal and you can join him by sending me any book in English at your earliest convenience. Not got my address? Email me and ask me for it. If you've already sent me something and it's on its way, thank you very much.
Secondly, on Friday 7th July, during a brief but consequential episode of drunken misadventure, I swallowed a 100 won coin. The coin completed its digestive transit at 5pm on Sunday 9th July. I've retrieved it and rinsed it off and now I'd like to make you all an offer. I'm willing to give this coin that has known me so intimately away to the person who can best explain in less than one hundred words why they want it and what they're going to do with it. If I remain unconvinced by all entries, it's going on eBay. Thank you.
That's all for now,
Amyong hasseyo,
PS A message to the doubterz and the haterz - despite what you thought about my maths, I can now inform you that I've just finished my first toilet roll a full FIVE WEEKS after starting it. Have that, Benny Blanco!
posted by Stephen Beckett at 3:05 PM
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