Progress Report 8.1
Amyongh hasseyo, chaps.
Ooh, you're looking well. Have you started working out or something? No? Well something's giving you a particularly healthy glow. Whatever it is, keep it up. You look great.
Anyway, it's that time of the week again. I'm happy to be here hiding out at the 'PC bang' as at home, my phone's been ringing out every twenty minutes or so since lunchtime. I know who it is calling (which is why I haven't been answering it) - it's someone who wants to show me how to make kimchi (as I'd previously arranged with her early in the week), which is a lesson I most certainly do want to learn but I just can't face it today. The thought of massaging the fleshy folds of a Chinese cabbage with a thin, blood-red chilli paste is something I just can't stomach in my hungover state.
With kimchi, as with most Korean food, that first taste with the eyes that presages mastication is not particularly delightful. If I could eat my meals blindfolded without being thought peculiar, then I happily would. Kimchi is a particularly good case-in-point. In the bowl, it looks like newspaper that's been used to clean up after a stabbing. Once you're munching it, it's delicious, but prior to this, it's necessary to forego the serious doubts that a visual appraisal impart. The typical meal becomes a test of your mettle; an exercise in extending the mental list of what you'll dare put in your mouth. Nine times out of ten, you'll be most pleasantly surprised - the vile titbit that you'd gingerly pronged and poked with your chopsticks turns out to be a real oral pleasure - but the other ten percent will have you beating the waitress: vegetable matter that won't give no matter how hard you tooth it; mushrooms that taste like spraypaint; insect larvae - these are the Korean foods that make you regret that the Japanese weren't more brutal in their colonial programme.
I've now become used to thrice-daily ordeal of eating, but there's certain differences in the Korean way of life that I shall never tolerate silently nor forgive. Heading up the pack and a cause of much chagrin to your ambassador of English civility is the amount of time one is made to wait a pedestrian crossings on the Korean peninsular. The perambulatory traveller is treated with scant regard by the town planners of Seoul, and as such given such low priority that it is not unusual to be made to wait several minutes to cross. Several minutes may not sonund like an especially long time, but try holding a lighter to your eyeball for that amount of time or stand staring at eight lanes of traffic and it suddenly seems like an epoch. Reader, I'm not exaggerating when I say that I have heard myself age whilst waiting for the green man. Mis-timing your approach to a pelican crossing can not just cause you inconvenince - it can alter the course of your life.
But Koreans will stand and wait patiently and not register the slightest protest. I can be on to my third aneurysm, but my yellow friends will refuse to be ruffled or riled by the geological timeframe of the lights. I put this down to the complex system of seniority that is an essential part of Korean society. Pedestrians are happy to accept the contempt with which they are treated because they see themselves as inferior to the motor vehicle. Whilst this may not be inaccurate for most Koreans, my own value system does not permit me to think in such terms. I may regularly coruscate my body with the agri-chemical products of the Korean brewing industry and voluntarily swallow coins, but in the hazy system of existential ascendancy, I place myself somewhat higher than a Daewoo.
I also rank myself above the elderly. This thinking leaves me painfully foreign over here. Since Korea dumped rationality and reorganized their society in Confucian terms, the old have been afforded a rank that they scarcely deserve. This means that they must be treated with deference and given special linguistic consideration. (You have to alter your verb forms when addressing someone older than yourself.) It also leaves them at liberty to wander into your path, to move you out of their way and to otherwise interfere with your day. This enrages me in ways that are supernatural. I'm happy to respect anyone who I consider to have acheived more with their life than I have, but to automatically give the elderly respect without first seeing their CV is an utter nonsense to me. Am I meant to respect the stupid, the boring, the ugly, Capricorns, just because they've been here longer than I have? It's ludicrous. According to this system, I might have to bow to an ageing Canadian, which is flawed in so many ways that it could almost warrant a blog all to itself.
And on anon to the next idiosyncrasy of life here - the widespread, muted acceptance of Canadians. Do you recall the Canadian who so enraged me two weeks ago? The one with the encyclopaedic knowledge of Czechoslovakian zymurgy? We bumped into him on Saturday night, and in a sainted turn of events, he blanked us. He was sitting drinking alone in a bar with a look of thunder and misery and he thorooughly refused to talk to us. Take a moment to picture the scene and his emotional discomfort and have a little chuckle to yourself. I've no idea what was the matter with him, but I can only pray it was (and continues to be) something truly awful.
Another aspect of life here that exercises me beyond belief is the fact that if you order drinks in bar here, you're also expected to order food. Ne'ermind that you're not hungry - if you want a beer, you've got to get some tentacles to go with it. I'm quite happy more than I'm entitled to as a human being, but a long session on the Hite can cost you an arm, a leg and your slender figure. As a good-looking and pleasantly-scented whitey, I'm afforded some leeway by waiting staff, but if you're out with Koreans and you don't order food, waitresses will be mystified and insulted. You could write a thesis on the stark illogicality of the practice, but it would fall on deaf ears. Ask a Korean why it goes on and they'll simply tell you that that's the way it is. As is the case with most injustices and irrationalities, It doesn't occur to them to question or rebel. To a battler as myself, it leaves me speechless.
Anyway, I'm going to have cut my discourse short today as I need a poo. There's just time to proffer a messy faceful of gratitude to my new favourite Hullite, Ms Emma Vine, who celebrated the momentous event of turning thirty by sending me a book - Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell. It's arrival on Friday was delightfully timely as I'd almost finished the last contribution to my cause (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, which I recommend without reservation), and was about to be left high, dry and bored shitless.
And speaking of intestinal expulsions, I'm sorry to report that not a single solitary one of you has made a request for me to send you the coin I swallowed. As a result, I've sweetened the deal a little by swallowing it again. I'm sure there are many of you who can say that you've passed currency before, but how about the same coin twice? If any of you would like this piece of monetary history, frame your reasons in a hundred words or less. Should any of you display willingness to also allow it to pass through your digestive system, you shall be given automatic priority.
Right, I'll have to rush off - I think my arse is about to pay out.
Amyongh hasseyo for now,
S
Ooh, you're looking well. Have you started working out or something? No? Well something's giving you a particularly healthy glow. Whatever it is, keep it up. You look great.
Anyway, it's that time of the week again. I'm happy to be here hiding out at the 'PC bang' as at home, my phone's been ringing out every twenty minutes or so since lunchtime. I know who it is calling (which is why I haven't been answering it) - it's someone who wants to show me how to make kimchi (as I'd previously arranged with her early in the week), which is a lesson I most certainly do want to learn but I just can't face it today. The thought of massaging the fleshy folds of a Chinese cabbage with a thin, blood-red chilli paste is something I just can't stomach in my hungover state.
With kimchi, as with most Korean food, that first taste with the eyes that presages mastication is not particularly delightful. If I could eat my meals blindfolded without being thought peculiar, then I happily would. Kimchi is a particularly good case-in-point. In the bowl, it looks like newspaper that's been used to clean up after a stabbing. Once you're munching it, it's delicious, but prior to this, it's necessary to forego the serious doubts that a visual appraisal impart. The typical meal becomes a test of your mettle; an exercise in extending the mental list of what you'll dare put in your mouth. Nine times out of ten, you'll be most pleasantly surprised - the vile titbit that you'd gingerly pronged and poked with your chopsticks turns out to be a real oral pleasure - but the other ten percent will have you beating the waitress: vegetable matter that won't give no matter how hard you tooth it; mushrooms that taste like spraypaint; insect larvae - these are the Korean foods that make you regret that the Japanese weren't more brutal in their colonial programme.
I've now become used to thrice-daily ordeal of eating, but there's certain differences in the Korean way of life that I shall never tolerate silently nor forgive. Heading up the pack and a cause of much chagrin to your ambassador of English civility is the amount of time one is made to wait a pedestrian crossings on the Korean peninsular. The perambulatory traveller is treated with scant regard by the town planners of Seoul, and as such given such low priority that it is not unusual to be made to wait several minutes to cross. Several minutes may not sonund like an especially long time, but try holding a lighter to your eyeball for that amount of time or stand staring at eight lanes of traffic and it suddenly seems like an epoch. Reader, I'm not exaggerating when I say that I have heard myself age whilst waiting for the green man. Mis-timing your approach to a pelican crossing can not just cause you inconvenince - it can alter the course of your life.
But Koreans will stand and wait patiently and not register the slightest protest. I can be on to my third aneurysm, but my yellow friends will refuse to be ruffled or riled by the geological timeframe of the lights. I put this down to the complex system of seniority that is an essential part of Korean society. Pedestrians are happy to accept the contempt with which they are treated because they see themselves as inferior to the motor vehicle. Whilst this may not be inaccurate for most Koreans, my own value system does not permit me to think in such terms. I may regularly coruscate my body with the agri-chemical products of the Korean brewing industry and voluntarily swallow coins, but in the hazy system of existential ascendancy, I place myself somewhat higher than a Daewoo.
I also rank myself above the elderly. This thinking leaves me painfully foreign over here. Since Korea dumped rationality and reorganized their society in Confucian terms, the old have been afforded a rank that they scarcely deserve. This means that they must be treated with deference and given special linguistic consideration. (You have to alter your verb forms when addressing someone older than yourself.) It also leaves them at liberty to wander into your path, to move you out of their way and to otherwise interfere with your day. This enrages me in ways that are supernatural. I'm happy to respect anyone who I consider to have acheived more with their life than I have, but to automatically give the elderly respect without first seeing their CV is an utter nonsense to me. Am I meant to respect the stupid, the boring, the ugly, Capricorns, just because they've been here longer than I have? It's ludicrous. According to this system, I might have to bow to an ageing Canadian, which is flawed in so many ways that it could almost warrant a blog all to itself.
And on anon to the next idiosyncrasy of life here - the widespread, muted acceptance of Canadians. Do you recall the Canadian who so enraged me two weeks ago? The one with the encyclopaedic knowledge of Czechoslovakian zymurgy? We bumped into him on Saturday night, and in a sainted turn of events, he blanked us. He was sitting drinking alone in a bar with a look of thunder and misery and he thorooughly refused to talk to us. Take a moment to picture the scene and his emotional discomfort and have a little chuckle to yourself. I've no idea what was the matter with him, but I can only pray it was (and continues to be) something truly awful.
Another aspect of life here that exercises me beyond belief is the fact that if you order drinks in bar here, you're also expected to order food. Ne'ermind that you're not hungry - if you want a beer, you've got to get some tentacles to go with it. I'm quite happy more than I'm entitled to as a human being, but a long session on the Hite can cost you an arm, a leg and your slender figure. As a good-looking and pleasantly-scented whitey, I'm afforded some leeway by waiting staff, but if you're out with Koreans and you don't order food, waitresses will be mystified and insulted. You could write a thesis on the stark illogicality of the practice, but it would fall on deaf ears. Ask a Korean why it goes on and they'll simply tell you that that's the way it is. As is the case with most injustices and irrationalities, It doesn't occur to them to question or rebel. To a battler as myself, it leaves me speechless.
Anyway, I'm going to have cut my discourse short today as I need a poo. There's just time to proffer a messy faceful of gratitude to my new favourite Hullite, Ms Emma Vine, who celebrated the momentous event of turning thirty by sending me a book - Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell. It's arrival on Friday was delightfully timely as I'd almost finished the last contribution to my cause (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, which I recommend without reservation), and was about to be left high, dry and bored shitless.
And speaking of intestinal expulsions, I'm sorry to report that not a single solitary one of you has made a request for me to send you the coin I swallowed. As a result, I've sweetened the deal a little by swallowing it again. I'm sure there are many of you who can say that you've passed currency before, but how about the same coin twice? If any of you would like this piece of monetary history, frame your reasons in a hundred words or less. Should any of you display willingness to also allow it to pass through your digestive system, you shall be given automatic priority.
Right, I'll have to rush off - I think my arse is about to pay out.
Amyongh hasseyo for now,
S
posted by Stephen Beckett at 6:08 PM
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