Progress Report 15.1
Annyongh hasseyo, twunts.
How's it going? Sorry it's been so long but I've been busy with work and drinking and personal matters. I've also been devoting a considerable amount of time to planning how best to commemorate my 30th birthday, which, in case you don't know, is next Wednesday. As far as I'm concerned, it's an occasion that scarce warrants celebration, as I feeling nothing remotely close to jubilation as I watch the last dregs of my youth drain from the broken cup of my life and my head drops ahead of the slow uphill grind of approaching middle age. In spite of such expansive and indulgent melancholy though, I still expect a great deal of attention. Make sure you deliver, or instead of spending my future Sunday afternoons doing DIY and washing the car, I shall undertake a letter-writing campaign that could make things very uncomfortable for you indeed...
Though until such B&Q-and-woollen-jumper pusilanimosity has become my bread and butter, there's still the thorny issue of South Korea to put to bed. Now, where were we up to with that? Ah yes, I'd been back to the UK and was hoping that once I'd dipped my head in that particular pool of friendly homeliness, the scales of novelty would fall from my eyes and I'd be able to offer you a more neutral and studied view on this cryptic crossword clue of a country. Well unfortunately, it's not been that simple. My UK experience was more like a post-three-day-bender's-night's-sleep - a somnambulant, sweaty stagger through vaguely famaliar scenes - and so when I got back here, it was actually like I'd never been away. I didn't leave for long enough to figure out what I missed, but returned with the same lack of patience for the things that I hadn't. And it is with this aphorism in mind that I present for your consideration a brief rundown of the Top Five Things That Koreans Do That Annoy Me.
Before we start, I would like to state clearly that there is no malice intended in this. Even our closest loved ones do many, many things that get right on our tits, and it is with this thought brandished high aloft that I approach this exercise. It is not racial antipathy but a pressure-release bout of frustration-easing, whispered conspiratorially and guiltily to a trusted friend (ie you). So before we start, please give me a second to look over both shoulders and over to the other side of the room and then summon you a little closer so that no Koreans hear us... Ok, ready? You know what Koreans do what really annoys me? Well:
1) They clear the canals and passages of their head and throat free of mucus in public.
Honestly, they make noises with such force that it would cause you or me to lose an organ. Wherever they please, they'll hawk and snort and bark and fleg and leave whatever comes up on the pavement. Get in a crowd first thing in the morning and it can be like farmer's convention. It's remarkably uncouth. It's almost like whoever wrote the rules of social etiquette just plum forgot about sputum. You can be minding your own business in convivial and civilised surroundings and suddenly you'll be stunned into maiden-aunt outrage as a passing ajoshi clears a fist of phlegm from his chest at yelling volume. And no-one bats an eyelid! You want to slap the nearest stranger on the arm and share your astonishment, but no-one even seems to notice it. They're usually too busy sucking back an oyster of mucus from their sinuses themselves.
I know that this repulsive habit isn't the preserve of the Koreans, but it's the first time I've been exposed to it for any length of time. When it doesn't make you want to hoy up, it can be almost amusing. No matter how civilised the country thinks it's getting, it only takes one messy snort-and-hock issued publicly to rocketblast it back to rurality. Until they realise this, the Koreans are going to be stuck with one foot distinctly in the past. Fortunately, it seems to be mainly the preserve of the mature. Young people seem to have cottoned on where their progenitors haven't and realised that expectoration should be saved for your bathroom or the restaurant kitchen, and not, to take one example evident from where I am sitting, for the wall of the PC bang. I would make one exception to this rule, mind. That would be for the case of my next-door neighbour, who clears his sinuses at half six every morning with such a jarring bugle that I don't need to set an alarm clock. The only solution I can offer in his case would be a violent and bloody death.
2) They respect the old.
This needn't be annoying in and of itself, but the problem is that old people in Korea are so resolutely unrespectable. Aside from the criticisms laid out in the first point, the elderly Korean behaves in such a vulgar fashion that a sailor on shore leave wouldn't know where to put his face. They walk into restaurants and sit themselves where they like, yell out their order to the harried ajumma, receive their food without a scintilla of gratitude, and after noisily shovelling it back, let out a rocky belch and shuffle on their way, offhandedly tossing a couple of notes on the counter as they leave. And that's the women. The men do similar, but more drunkenly and lairily. And both genders won't think twice about shoving you aside, shouting in your face and dismissing your entire being with a moany grunt and an insouciant flick of the hand.
Whilst there's undoubted pleasure to be had from behaving so disgracefully, until I'm allowed to do it myself, I shan't be able to condone it. And of course, I never shall be allowed, as aged Koreans have the prerogative to act out in such a fashion precisely because they are aged and Korean and so according to Confucian philosophy, can do precisely whatever they like and have to be respected for it too. I could live to be be one hundred and fifty and I still wouldn't have the same licence to offend, as I'm pale of face and blue of eye. Confucius didn't make mention of where English teachers fit into the system of respect, so the elderly tend to warily leave us alone. Good job for them. Though to be fair, most of the seniors currently enjoying their spell at the top will have spent their formative years as playthings of the Japanese (who did like to play rough), so their rage at the humanity that now has it so easy can be understood if not forgiven.
3) They let salespeople get away with murder.
This is a particularly annoying point. For some reason, if someone has something to sell, Koreans are happy to tolerate any method they use to raise awareness of their enterprise, no matter what a noise nuisance it constitutes. It seems there's none so garrulous as a Korean hawker with a microphone and a cheap speaker. They have a particular love of attaching such devices to the top of vans so that they can irritate everyone over a wide area over the course of a morning. Or they'll pull up outside your apartment during the afternoon when you're trying to sleep (I start work at half six, remember) and broadcast the same monotonous, tinny patter for a number of hours, causing you to bleed out of your eyeballs with ire. Last week, someone was peddling pressed seaweed outside my school at such an apocalyptic volume that I had to move my junior class to another room. And no-one seems to mind!
No-one seems to mind when your subway journey is clatteringly interrupted by the shouts of the penknife peddlar stamping into the carriage, and no-one seems to mind when a whole street is taken over by the opening of another new shop and the occasion marked with noisy Korean dance music and a couple of scantily-clad dancing girls shouting into a microphone and disporting themselves like a couple of dyspraxic prostitutes. (This is always the MO for a shop opening, by the way. I don't know why.) And no-one seems to mind when every aisle in the supermarket is occupied by a least two noisy women imploring you to try their product, and actively interfering with your choice of noodle. It's all very, very uncouth indeed.
Worst of all are the infomercials. The one channel I can actually watch on Korean telly is called Series TV, which shows old American dramas from the 80's and 90's (the A-Team is the unironic highlight of my week), but in order to watch a full episode of any one serial, it's necessary to put up with a fifteen minute advert. These are severely exercising affairs. They're all shouty fat men, tintinabulating graphics and swooshing astons as they mobilise every weapon in their low-budget arsenal in their mission to convince you that the utter tat that they're flogging offers anything other than highly dubious benefits. And no-one seems to mind! (Also, did nobody notice at the time that America's entire drama output for the whole of the 70's, 80's and 90's was Very Camp Indeed?)
4) No matter what the quackery, call it 'traditional' and they'll lap it up.
Question: You're had a bit of a cold and you're having trouble shaking off the last of it, perhaps because you've been working too hard or you haven't been getting enough sleep. What would you do? Would you:
a) Have a quiet weekend, relaxing and looking after yourself and return to work on Monday refreshed and revitalized?
b) Join a queue of seventy or so other under-the-weathers in a farmer's field and wait for him to cut the antlers off a stag, so that you can all drink a small cup of the increasingly gelatinous blood that weeps out of the resulting wound?
If you said (b), then the chances are you're Korean. The details above where related to me by one of my students - a student whom I considered to be one of the more intelligent and independently-minded of my charges - and it serves to illustrate my point that so proud are my host nation of their history and heritage that they will abandon all common sense if they think something is 'traditional'. All the more so in the field of medicine.
Last week, for reasons that escape me now, I went along to an oriental medicine clinic. I was under the impression that I was to be given some accupuncture, but instead, an oriental medicine doctor thoroughly questioned me on all aspects of my existence (consistency of poo, travelling habits, bedwetting history), and after a lengthy period of cogitation, told me my body type. It was 'normal'. There's no foods I need to avoid, and no changes to my lifestyle necessary. Well, thanks. And my health insurance covered this consultation!
When you visit a chemist here, they more or less ask you whether you want a Chinese cure or something that will actually work. The various charlatan cures of the oriental medicine industry are utterly bereft of scientific merit but no-one seems to dare say so, lest they're accused of being unpatriotic. It really is very silly indeed.
And last one:
5) They go 'tsshhht' when they're thinking about what to say.
Let me make that a little clearer: hold the sides of your tongue against the side of your teeth with your jaw slightly open. Tense your cheeks. Suck in air sharply over the sides of your tongue. That noise is the noise that Koreans make when they're thinking about what to say next. Why? I don't know, but they all do it. When they're composing an English sentence in their head, they'll get a thoughtful look, and open their mouth to speak, and just when you think they're about to say something, you get a 'tssshht!' instead.
Actually, this one's only annoying at half six in the morning. At other times, it's actually quite endearing. I don't suppose it really belongs on this list, and I was going to have 'So many of them are Christian' instead, but if I got started on that one, we'd be here for the rest of the week.
So there you have it. The Top 5. Don't tell any Koreans what I've said - this is just between me and you, right? Oh, gosh, I feel awful saying all that, but they just get on my nerves sometimes, you know? Anyway, thanks for listening.
Just time for a quick update: Last Monday, on the 15th week anniversary of my arrival, I hung up my fourth toilet roll. This certainly augurs well for my annual plan, doesn't it? I'm actually coming in UNDER budget. Or at least I was. Uortunately, due to unforeseen meddling and runaway paper consumption by a pesky jewish houseguest, we are now looking at being OVER. How? Well, first of all, the said houseguest somehow contrived to finish roll four on Saturday, and then - THEN - acted completely outside of her jurisdiction by taking roll five from the pack a FULL FOUR WEEKS AHEAD OF SCHEDULE. Needless to say that her position is currently under review. (By the way, I promise I'll introduce her properly very soon, and I promise I shall stop referring to her as 'the jew'.)
Okay, I'm off now. I'll do my darndest to keep things regular after the brief interruption to normal service that this month has brought. Don't forget my birthday, by the way. It's next Wednesday. The 27th. I'll be 30. How are things with you, by the way? Let me know and I'll pass the information on in the next report.
Annyonghi kasseyo for now,
S
PS Isn't it getting dark early these days!
How's it going? Sorry it's been so long but I've been busy with work and drinking and personal matters. I've also been devoting a considerable amount of time to planning how best to commemorate my 30th birthday, which, in case you don't know, is next Wednesday. As far as I'm concerned, it's an occasion that scarce warrants celebration, as I feeling nothing remotely close to jubilation as I watch the last dregs of my youth drain from the broken cup of my life and my head drops ahead of the slow uphill grind of approaching middle age. In spite of such expansive and indulgent melancholy though, I still expect a great deal of attention. Make sure you deliver, or instead of spending my future Sunday afternoons doing DIY and washing the car, I shall undertake a letter-writing campaign that could make things very uncomfortable for you indeed...
Though until such B&Q-and-woollen-jumper pusilanimosity has become my bread and butter, there's still the thorny issue of South Korea to put to bed. Now, where were we up to with that? Ah yes, I'd been back to the UK and was hoping that once I'd dipped my head in that particular pool of friendly homeliness, the scales of novelty would fall from my eyes and I'd be able to offer you a more neutral and studied view on this cryptic crossword clue of a country. Well unfortunately, it's not been that simple. My UK experience was more like a post-three-day-bender's-night's-sleep - a somnambulant, sweaty stagger through vaguely famaliar scenes - and so when I got back here, it was actually like I'd never been away. I didn't leave for long enough to figure out what I missed, but returned with the same lack of patience for the things that I hadn't. And it is with this aphorism in mind that I present for your consideration a brief rundown of the Top Five Things That Koreans Do That Annoy Me.
Before we start, I would like to state clearly that there is no malice intended in this. Even our closest loved ones do many, many things that get right on our tits, and it is with this thought brandished high aloft that I approach this exercise. It is not racial antipathy but a pressure-release bout of frustration-easing, whispered conspiratorially and guiltily to a trusted friend (ie you). So before we start, please give me a second to look over both shoulders and over to the other side of the room and then summon you a little closer so that no Koreans hear us... Ok, ready? You know what Koreans do what really annoys me? Well:
1) They clear the canals and passages of their head and throat free of mucus in public.
Honestly, they make noises with such force that it would cause you or me to lose an organ. Wherever they please, they'll hawk and snort and bark and fleg and leave whatever comes up on the pavement. Get in a crowd first thing in the morning and it can be like farmer's convention. It's remarkably uncouth. It's almost like whoever wrote the rules of social etiquette just plum forgot about sputum. You can be minding your own business in convivial and civilised surroundings and suddenly you'll be stunned into maiden-aunt outrage as a passing ajoshi clears a fist of phlegm from his chest at yelling volume. And no-one bats an eyelid! You want to slap the nearest stranger on the arm and share your astonishment, but no-one even seems to notice it. They're usually too busy sucking back an oyster of mucus from their sinuses themselves.
I know that this repulsive habit isn't the preserve of the Koreans, but it's the first time I've been exposed to it for any length of time. When it doesn't make you want to hoy up, it can be almost amusing. No matter how civilised the country thinks it's getting, it only takes one messy snort-and-hock issued publicly to rocketblast it back to rurality. Until they realise this, the Koreans are going to be stuck with one foot distinctly in the past. Fortunately, it seems to be mainly the preserve of the mature. Young people seem to have cottoned on where their progenitors haven't and realised that expectoration should be saved for your bathroom or the restaurant kitchen, and not, to take one example evident from where I am sitting, for the wall of the PC bang. I would make one exception to this rule, mind. That would be for the case of my next-door neighbour, who clears his sinuses at half six every morning with such a jarring bugle that I don't need to set an alarm clock. The only solution I can offer in his case would be a violent and bloody death.
2) They respect the old.
This needn't be annoying in and of itself, but the problem is that old people in Korea are so resolutely unrespectable. Aside from the criticisms laid out in the first point, the elderly Korean behaves in such a vulgar fashion that a sailor on shore leave wouldn't know where to put his face. They walk into restaurants and sit themselves where they like, yell out their order to the harried ajumma, receive their food without a scintilla of gratitude, and after noisily shovelling it back, let out a rocky belch and shuffle on their way, offhandedly tossing a couple of notes on the counter as they leave. And that's the women. The men do similar, but more drunkenly and lairily. And both genders won't think twice about shoving you aside, shouting in your face and dismissing your entire being with a moany grunt and an insouciant flick of the hand.
Whilst there's undoubted pleasure to be had from behaving so disgracefully, until I'm allowed to do it myself, I shan't be able to condone it. And of course, I never shall be allowed, as aged Koreans have the prerogative to act out in such a fashion precisely because they are aged and Korean and so according to Confucian philosophy, can do precisely whatever they like and have to be respected for it too. I could live to be be one hundred and fifty and I still wouldn't have the same licence to offend, as I'm pale of face and blue of eye. Confucius didn't make mention of where English teachers fit into the system of respect, so the elderly tend to warily leave us alone. Good job for them. Though to be fair, most of the seniors currently enjoying their spell at the top will have spent their formative years as playthings of the Japanese (who did like to play rough), so their rage at the humanity that now has it so easy can be understood if not forgiven.
3) They let salespeople get away with murder.
This is a particularly annoying point. For some reason, if someone has something to sell, Koreans are happy to tolerate any method they use to raise awareness of their enterprise, no matter what a noise nuisance it constitutes. It seems there's none so garrulous as a Korean hawker with a microphone and a cheap speaker. They have a particular love of attaching such devices to the top of vans so that they can irritate everyone over a wide area over the course of a morning. Or they'll pull up outside your apartment during the afternoon when you're trying to sleep (I start work at half six, remember) and broadcast the same monotonous, tinny patter for a number of hours, causing you to bleed out of your eyeballs with ire. Last week, someone was peddling pressed seaweed outside my school at such an apocalyptic volume that I had to move my junior class to another room. And no-one seems to mind!
No-one seems to mind when your subway journey is clatteringly interrupted by the shouts of the penknife peddlar stamping into the carriage, and no-one seems to mind when a whole street is taken over by the opening of another new shop and the occasion marked with noisy Korean dance music and a couple of scantily-clad dancing girls shouting into a microphone and disporting themselves like a couple of dyspraxic prostitutes. (This is always the MO for a shop opening, by the way. I don't know why.) And no-one seems to mind when every aisle in the supermarket is occupied by a least two noisy women imploring you to try their product, and actively interfering with your choice of noodle. It's all very, very uncouth indeed.
Worst of all are the infomercials. The one channel I can actually watch on Korean telly is called Series TV, which shows old American dramas from the 80's and 90's (the A-Team is the unironic highlight of my week), but in order to watch a full episode of any one serial, it's necessary to put up with a fifteen minute advert. These are severely exercising affairs. They're all shouty fat men, tintinabulating graphics and swooshing astons as they mobilise every weapon in their low-budget arsenal in their mission to convince you that the utter tat that they're flogging offers anything other than highly dubious benefits. And no-one seems to mind! (Also, did nobody notice at the time that America's entire drama output for the whole of the 70's, 80's and 90's was Very Camp Indeed?)
4) No matter what the quackery, call it 'traditional' and they'll lap it up.
Question: You're had a bit of a cold and you're having trouble shaking off the last of it, perhaps because you've been working too hard or you haven't been getting enough sleep. What would you do? Would you:
a) Have a quiet weekend, relaxing and looking after yourself and return to work on Monday refreshed and revitalized?
b) Join a queue of seventy or so other under-the-weathers in a farmer's field and wait for him to cut the antlers off a stag, so that you can all drink a small cup of the increasingly gelatinous blood that weeps out of the resulting wound?
If you said (b), then the chances are you're Korean. The details above where related to me by one of my students - a student whom I considered to be one of the more intelligent and independently-minded of my charges - and it serves to illustrate my point that so proud are my host nation of their history and heritage that they will abandon all common sense if they think something is 'traditional'. All the more so in the field of medicine.
Last week, for reasons that escape me now, I went along to an oriental medicine clinic. I was under the impression that I was to be given some accupuncture, but instead, an oriental medicine doctor thoroughly questioned me on all aspects of my existence (consistency of poo, travelling habits, bedwetting history), and after a lengthy period of cogitation, told me my body type. It was 'normal'. There's no foods I need to avoid, and no changes to my lifestyle necessary. Well, thanks. And my health insurance covered this consultation!
When you visit a chemist here, they more or less ask you whether you want a Chinese cure or something that will actually work. The various charlatan cures of the oriental medicine industry are utterly bereft of scientific merit but no-one seems to dare say so, lest they're accused of being unpatriotic. It really is very silly indeed.
And last one:
5) They go 'tsshhht' when they're thinking about what to say.
Let me make that a little clearer: hold the sides of your tongue against the side of your teeth with your jaw slightly open. Tense your cheeks. Suck in air sharply over the sides of your tongue. That noise is the noise that Koreans make when they're thinking about what to say next. Why? I don't know, but they all do it. When they're composing an English sentence in their head, they'll get a thoughtful look, and open their mouth to speak, and just when you think they're about to say something, you get a 'tssshht!' instead.
Actually, this one's only annoying at half six in the morning. At other times, it's actually quite endearing. I don't suppose it really belongs on this list, and I was going to have 'So many of them are Christian' instead, but if I got started on that one, we'd be here for the rest of the week.
So there you have it. The Top 5. Don't tell any Koreans what I've said - this is just between me and you, right? Oh, gosh, I feel awful saying all that, but they just get on my nerves sometimes, you know? Anyway, thanks for listening.
Just time for a quick update: Last Monday, on the 15th week anniversary of my arrival, I hung up my fourth toilet roll. This certainly augurs well for my annual plan, doesn't it? I'm actually coming in UNDER budget. Or at least I was. Uortunately, due to unforeseen meddling and runaway paper consumption by a pesky jewish houseguest, we are now looking at being OVER. How? Well, first of all, the said houseguest somehow contrived to finish roll four on Saturday, and then - THEN - acted completely outside of her jurisdiction by taking roll five from the pack a FULL FOUR WEEKS AHEAD OF SCHEDULE. Needless to say that her position is currently under review. (By the way, I promise I'll introduce her properly very soon, and I promise I shall stop referring to her as 'the jew'.)
Okay, I'm off now. I'll do my darndest to keep things regular after the brief interruption to normal service that this month has brought. Don't forget my birthday, by the way. It's next Wednesday. The 27th. I'll be 30. How are things with you, by the way? Let me know and I'll pass the information on in the next report.
Annyonghi kasseyo for now,
S
PS Isn't it getting dark early these days!
posted by Stephen Beckett at 7:34 PM
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