chat room experiment
may 09, 2009 07:40am – in Korea
Japan, at last
april 28, 2009 10:46am – in Korea
You never thought I'd update this site again. That hurts, man. Have a little faith in me. There will be a few more of these as I catch up over the next week or so.
Shanghai
march 19, 2009 11:44am – in Korea
I've been in Shanghai for three solid days now. I think I get it. I'm going to go to Suzhou next, it looks like a place with much less to do, and that's what I'm looking for.
Yes, I got my big bag.
Lockout
march 16, 2009 01:05am – in Korea
Updating from Lotteria, a huge McDonald's-style fast food chain. It's 1:00 am, and the place is open 24 hours. My flight leaves in eight hours. And I don't have my big bag, which means I might be going to China for two weeks with only what I'm wearing. All my gadgets and documents are safe and sound next to me in my little bag.
The situation is that the friend I've been staying with is MIA. I have the key to his apartment, but the deadbolt is locked, and to my surprise, the deadbolt key is broken or wrong. I actually think he's in there because I can hear his cell phone ringing when I call, but he's in such a dead (possibly actually dead) sleep that he doesn't come to the door no matter how much I pound, yell, and call. My bag is in there.
I feel terrible for being several days a leech on three square meters of floor space, and several gigabytes of bandwidth a day. And for not arriving in time to be in bed at the same time as him, but all the same, my stuff is in there, and I need it.
So I'm waiting for something to happen. For the Ambien to work its way through his system, or to find out in two weeks that he died in there. I'll check back in a few hours, when he should be getting up to go to work.
A Dead Horse, Beaten
march 03, 2009 08:13am – in Korea
To be spoken to in English pains me. Invariably I ask directions/order food/apologize to a stranger for bumping into them in Korean, and invariably they chime back in English. For over a year this among the first in my battery of complaints. It's been tough going for person who, when he arrived here, would throttle you half to death if you told him who directed Jules et Jim rather than presuming that, naturally, he already knew. To address me in English after I'd already begun in Korean was like fetching me a children's menu when I'd asked for the wine list.
To say that I've changed meaningfully somehow would be overstating the case a little bit. When I left I hoped to return as some kind of enlightened soul, and never, ever again think about the mundane problems and petty frustrations that bothered me before. The reality is that when I come back, I'll be the same guy I was before except a year older. I'll have changed, but no more or less than anyone else I'll catch up with when I get back. Damned if I didn't TRY, at least, to make myself into some kind of Ubermensch. I learned to play the drums here; I learned as much as I could about the local culture; and I tried - God help me - to learn Korean. But if I really got anything out of this, it was the realization that sometimes I'm not nice enough to people, simply because they cross invisible barriers they had no reason to know were there.
I should mention that I also set out to constantly defy what I perceived to be the wrong-headed, hurtful assumptions about foreigners, and consequently I exhausted myself every day trying to look poised and coolheaded among a bunch of nonplussed strangers as I mounted one daring-do after another. "Behold! I can buy a train ticket." "Stand back! I'm going to put my possessions in a locker." "Look on, ye mighty, and despair as I check movie times, and I can do it BY MYSELF!" In the event that I furrow my brow, scan the same spot twice when looking for something, or stare blankly at something I've been running the risk of a stranger coming out of the woodwork to bark in - ahem - *English* at me in an effort to smooth out whatever difficulties I'm having. The NERVE! WHAT AM I, A CHILD?
Yes, the Koreans have very itchy good Samaritan triggers, God love them, and it makes me mad. I don't know why. I've tried to intellectualize this response I have, and I can't actually see a flaw in a cultural quirk where people leap up to help each other at the drop of a hat. "Can't get the money in that coffee machine, huh? Here's a crisp bill for that tattered one." "Hey, you're hiking without socks! You'll get a nasty blister. Lucky for you I brought an extra pair." These are real examples I've witnessed with the helper and helpee both Korean, and total strangers. But try and help me, and I'll put your lights out, pal. Best I can figure, in America we have an unwritten cultural law that says if you give unsolicited help to another person (Mike Pearl, specifically, but I don't think I'm completely alone) you are explicitly calling him stupid.
My own obnoxious habits are especially to blame here. I'm a person who was told from a very early age that he was sharper than the other kids, and as a miserable failure at sports, my smarts were all I had to keep me going through school, snarky know-it-all that I may have been. When I emerged from my cocoon of adolescent bitterness (When this occurred is a matter of some dispute: as early as 17 by some estimates, and by others, later this year.) I had picked up a nasty habit of always always trying to sink the battleship of other people's ignorance with the red peg of my brilliance all day every day (often when I try it, I misfire and wind up losing my own aircraft carrier.) It's a habit I fight all the time.
To compound my litost (that's a Czech word I got from Milan Kundera that I'd really like to turn into a bona fide loan word [Dear Oxford English Dictionary...]) I have failed to learn Korean to any degree except what you'd call "survival." So while I've been kvetching about the Koreans harshing my intellectual buzz it would have been easy to destroy me with a simple quiz: "Alright smart guy. You don't want to be treated like a foreigner? Put up or shut up. Do it. Say something in Korean. Go." And I'd choke, and I'd have nothing. Sure, I can stumble through "What a lovely purse" or "Your child is excellent at soccer," but seeing as they'd sound about as eloquent as "Bag pretty!" and "Son soccer. Good job!" you can't entirely blame people for wanting to bail me out.
Here's where I differ with them though, and sometimes I think I really do have a case. I've come a long way to be able to cough out even the ugliest broken Korean. It's obvious I did more than memorize a page of useful phrases and to not acknowledge that achievement with so much as a response in kind is, well, at the very worst a little tactless. Yes, they all got tortured through a few years of English in school. That's their tool for communicating with foreigners. The resulting situation is that both parties assume this other person is not going to understand them in their language, and lucky for that person "I've learned a little of theirs." What happens next is a kind of fight, both people struggling to steer the conversation into the other person's native language.
BUT if their English clearly outshines my Korean, I'm beaten, and the conversation will be entirely in English. And hen you have a conversation with some helpful old lady, or a convenience store worker who's never had an English class in his life there's still going to be the odd "No" or "thank you" learned from television, and thrown in, I suppose, for fun. It's up to me to figure out how not to find that kind of crap annoying.
At the worst of times I've taken to a kind of schizophrenia. I've overheard the nastiest things said about my race by strangers in a restaurant who were probably talking about the weather. I've concluded that absent-minded shoves in my ribs, or loogies spat in my path were messages of cultural rejection. I've spent walks home from work just dying for someone to blurt out a drive-by "Where are from?" so I could start a shouting match or maybe even a fistfight.
On the other hand I've been driven to depression. I've come to conclude in no uncertain terms (until I rethought it, of course) that international travel by Americans does nothing but spur outrage, and feelings of intrusion that are completely justified, and that at the next opportunity I should get on a plane and go back to MY country with MY people, and leave THESE good people to THEIR own, well-deserved way of life, agitated no further by the burden of foreigners who don't understand their culture or least of all their language.
I've never felt a kind of ecstasy to balance out my misery. I've never been lost in my adoration for Korea, or written a letter to someone just to say "Wow! this place is GREAT." But all around me, even as I write this are people who are satisfied with the way things are here, who couldn't give a rip if this blog just said Koreans are a bunch of ignorant dog-munchers. But I've reached a point now that I wish I could have left behind a better impression.
If you could somehow aggregate the impressions I've given strangers during my time here into some kind of Matrix, I'd get a very high score in the categories of independence, apprehension of history, and eating spicy food (not to mention perfect marks in "looking dour and dutiful"). I'd get middling to poor marks in spacial reasoning and poise despite my attempts to look adroit at everyday tasks. But tragically, after a year of brushing off or barking at people who tried to help me, I'd fail general niceness. Color me ashamed.
Blog 22: The End of an Era
february 09, 2009 11:06pm – in Korea
Posting
january 18, 2009 09:54am – in Korea
PIcture Blog 2
january 07, 2009 03:07pm – in Korea
Today I feel the need to purge myself of some pictures that have been festering on my SD card.
I love this picture. This is the installation of a brand new bell that sits in what we westerners would call a "pagoda." There are bells just like these all over the country, usually built in the last five years, probably manufactured all in the same place. Note the plastic wrapping. Ringing them usually indicates to the listener that they should be mindful of "filial piety" or permanent duty to one's family.
River in Guryeh on the verge of freezing solid in the grip of Korea's cruel, dry winter.
There are three things over to the left, if you were wondering.
A healthy snowfall in Gwangju only stays on the ground for 12 hours or so.
Jeung Shim Sa around Mudeung Mountain on New Years day, after a New Years Eve whiteout.
Picture Blog 1
january 07, 2009 02:54pm – in Korea
A rocky beach in Mokpo riddled with flotsam and jetsam.
Me in and around Mudeung Mountain park near Gwangju.
A closeup of some Mudeung Mountain flora that looked better in full-size.
Damyang's famous bamboo forest.
Pretty steep for a free drink.
Essay on Futurism
january 04, 2009 06:10pm – in Korea
I haven't even re-read this yet. I already know I'm not going to like some things (mostly at the beginning) when I do.
Is it just me or is civilization arriving at a state of near perfection, and yet no one acknowledges it?
As we learn more and more about generating power efficiently, and about how to get work done automatically, people tend to get alarmed (and rightly so) that people will lose their livelihoods, or that humanity is becoming too reliant on machines and automation.
But step back. Using the example of an ancient civilization, you might say they had the same goal. The Spartans didn't want to to farm, or waste time on maintenance, and so by some stretch of the imagination, you might think that by enslaving an entire neighboring society called the Helots they were just trying to automate things. They would certainly have thought of the Helots as something other than human, undeserving of freedom, and therefore something like a robot. The Helots did all the labor the Spartans didn't enjoy, and the Spartans spent their time studying, and training as fighters. Not what I would have chosen, given all that free time, but it got them off.
Like the Helots, a peasant (or slave) class has been a reality for thousands of years. Over time we (humans) are beginning to prefer nicer ideas about all humans being equal, without concern for race. But it seems that without regard for a person's race, the rich use their money and power to make things just so that they devote their time to leisure, and most humans have to work every day of their life, doing something they hate if they want to eat.
And history has progressed marking the progress of the powerful. Reading history books means reading about who owned what, how they got it (generally by war). And it's all because having access to more resources means things become easier, and if you can get that resource, more people in your society will have more time for leisure.
It's hard to see it, but I think things are getting easier. In Hans Rosling's Ted Talks he makes a convincing case (using very clear statistics, and an earnest and humane delivery) that the globalized world, though there is still clearly poverty and war, is feeling the benefits of technology and civilization. It seems, from looking at his graphs, that violent death is being reduced on the whole. Violence is reported on the news constantly, sure, and it's unquestionably gruesome and unnecessary, but the numbers say people are living longer, and increasingly, not dying from violence and starvation.
And it will be easy for a person with a conservative outlook on life to read this and say "well, sure. That's because society is fine, and people everywhere should just hop on board." And I don't agree with that at all. I think the infrastructure of society is still terrible, and oppressive, and based around the leisure of the rich and powerful. And I think were society is going will result in a huge increase in leisure time for the peasant classes all over the world. But only if we look at the state of our species from a long way away, and really try to understand what our lives are supposed to be like.
I tried Googling (in quotes) "People are happiest when," and it overwhelmingly produces two results: people are happy when their loved ones live around them, and people are happy when they do work that is not beneath their dignity, especially work that is creative (Noam Chomsky also famously said something to that effect). You'll also see some cynical remarks, but people on the internet are surprisingly consistent about the secret of happiness.
So I'll get to my point. People, it seems to me, want to live in small, familiar communities, and spend their time doing something they like. So the idea of life, then, is to make it so that we can spend as much time as possible doing something we enjoy, and spend that time with our family and friends.
This seems painfully obvious. But the realities of humanity's past contribute to assumptions about culture that might soon be proven false.
Almost all cultures mercilessly hammer home the idea that hard, bruising work is the daily duty of a virtuous person (Protestants, for example, or Koreans) and for thousands of years of human development, that was certainly true. An ethical person did his part to contribute to the acquisition of food, the building of shelter, and the maintenance of the infrastructure of the community. An unethical person just has a slave do it.
And it seems like inevitably, we scatter ourselves around the world, or all over our cities. We move to be close to work (or choose some awful work just to be in a convenient location), rather than concern ourselves with something that seems frivolous if I say it: living next door to our friends.
I'll try not to sound hysterical, but in the next hundred years it seems like we're edging in on the technologies we need to make food production automatic, or nearly automatic. Maybe not The Singularity, but little things like Toyota's solar powered car project, and Honda's Asimo, despite their pie-in-the-sky, 1938 World's Fair vibe, are talked about with a straight face. Whether these are clear examples of the kind of efficiency our future has in store remains to be seen.
On the other hand, less hysterical, more practical technological marvels to consider, thanks to simple ingenuity. There are huge shifts going on. As our world's agricultural system reels from the decline of cheap fossil fuels, it is beginning to consider efficiency in a much more direct way, like this example where the interaction of multiple species on the same farm result in less work for the farmers themselves. Enough ideas like this, shared worldwide result in efficiency of a different kind.
I'm saying that in the next couple of centuries, through a combination of technology, and the free exchange of ideas, we as a species, might figure out a way to eliminate labor, or at least wind up with everyone working a few hours a week.
There are still clashes of ideologies to consider. Technology certainly won't be what finally brings us world peace. Most likely the opposite is the case. And sorting out our notions of what makes a community or a society if the nuts and bolts of the economy suddenly shifted like I'm suggesting it might won't be nearly as simple as I might seem to be saying.
But I must know, am I crazy to think that if we allow ourselves to reconsider what we as a species want out of life, it's possible that the concept of work might someday become outdated?
The Year in Media
december 29, 2008 02:23pm – in Korea
I think David Letterman effectively hammered home the irrelevance of "Top 10" lists when he started doing his "Top Ten" segments however many million years ago that was. A list of top ten non-sequiters really goes a long way in showing that these numbers are arbitrary.
Then Nick Hornby swung things around with High Fidelity, in which he splattered every event in a person's life onto neat little top 5's. That sort of had me organizing things into lists for a while.
This year I saw a "Top 10 Top 10 lists" post on a news aggregator site that I use. Also Roger Ebert's streak of reliable top 10 lists of movies ended this year, when he couldn't help but post a top 15.
Generally I like to break down my top ten lists of movies and albums at the end of the year just for my own personal satisfaction, but I'm not going to do that. It's a tidy way of wrapping up a dull year in an interesting way, but It's been a really wild year, and I'm just going to post my thoughts, disorganized, sure, but at least not forced into an artificial shape.
Deaths Of Famous People:
As I get older, I notice more and more famous people dying. Naturally this is because as I get older, I become aware of more people. This year, Heath Ledger died, which was strange, and started off the year in death with a huge bang. Then a bunch of other people died, but the one that really effected me has been George Carlin.
Carlin was getting old, but he didn't seem close to death. Elizabeth Taylor seems close to death. George Carlin was, to me, heading into his slow decline away from dignity and relevance, but certainly due for another decade of tribute shows, and lifetime achievement awards. He died though, and maybe it was for the best. Hunter Thompson killed himself long after he felt embarrassed to still be alive. Carlin was still performing, still relevant, and dying now saved him a lot of time in tuxedoes, smiling politely as Larry the Cable Guy dedicates a fart-themed song to him. Still, two days after I found out he died, I quietly cried about it.
I also cried after Paul Newman died, and I watched this:
Movies:
This year was full of movies I know I'm going to remember. Possibly because seeing them in Korea gave them a strange context, but also because there were just a lot of great movies.
Hellboy II was one of my favorites of the year. Guillermo Del Toro consistently makes brilliant movies, but this one took everything I loved about Hellboy and then added everything I loved about Pan's Labyrinth (and nothing I hated), and mashed them together to make something equal parts awesome, blow-em-up spectacle, and feast of the imagination. These are platitudes, so I'll be specific.
This scene in particular gives the hero of a movie (a totally muscle-ripped demon with a huge gun) a huge moral dilemma (no spoilers here), he makes his choice, and the result is the coolest and most beautiful visual from any movie this year. There's also this part:
The Angel of Death was just so cool. And then the part where they go into that underground world that is what Diagon Alley from the Harry Potter movies should look like, but doesn't.
By not relying completely on CGI, Del Toro lets his characters and the monsters seem to inhabit the same world, and that gives them a palpability that's lacking from most other fantasy movies.
There was also Wall-E, which WAS my favorite movie of the year.
I would work 9-5 at a desk for the rest of my life and be okay with it if the desk were at Pixar.
Music:
Keeping up with music for me means seeing live shows, and I have not been able to do that this year for the most part. There have been a few concerts of derivative local punk that made me miss crowding into tiny rooms and feeling the buzz in the air as everyone prepared to b serenaded by a person they really admire. The most fun I've had at live shows this year has been playing the drums at a few of them, with one exception.
In music, for me, this was the year of Jens Lekman. He has practically been the soundtrack for my trip to Korea (and literally the soundtrack to one of my video blogs), even though he released his most recent album last year. To make matters more perfect, I was in Seoul when I unexpectedly happened upon a Jens Lekman concert. For one fantastic hour (in a room mostly full of foreigners) I was transported back to the musical environment where I felt at home.
I also caught up with the music of Cat Power, Built to Spill, and Broken Social Scene. I don't know what my life was before these artists. In particular, Cat Power. Without this song:
...I couldn't have made it through the year.
Most of my favorite NEW stuff from 2008 was the new stuff by artists I already loved: David Byrne (and Brian Eno), Bonnie "Prince" Billy, and Sun Kil Moon.
I also loved Fleet Foxes, just like everyone else. I have lost my enthusiasm for music videos, frankly, but this Fleet Foxes video is just wonderful. Modest in ambition, perfect in concept, and solidly executed. I'm jealous.
Also, I'm announcing here that I am NOT, in fact, staying the extra six months. I expect to be back in California (after some backpacking) in April.
Korea Music
december 14, 2008 11:32am – in Korea
There's a ringing in my ears when the test commences, but it does nothing to hinder my listening. The robotic instructor tells me in the clearest, loudest English possible to read a text aloud. He says the same thing at the same time to the other test takers in the other blue cubicles. Before our voices are recorded we're allowed thirty seconds for a dry run through the passage, some boring blurb from the lifestyle section of a local paper with no context. I opt out, but the others, in their nervous, jittery voices all have a go at the same time. It's like a Greek chorus at first, pronouncing in austere unison that "Boating enthusiasts will be delighted this Sunday when America's Cup winner Brad Janelly will be visiting Mason county." Sensing the awkwardness of their deliveries, after the first sentence, the volume of their voices dies down and the timing breaks apart.
Two weeks ago I said yes when my boss asked me if I wanted to take the TOEIC speaking and listening test intended for ESL students. I meant that at that exact time and place, taking a test of my ability to speak my mother language sounded like a laugh. I did not say that two weeks later I wanted to brave an unforgiving December morning with a hangover nagging me to please lie down and place my hands over my ears. But it cost about seventy five dollars of someone else's money, and there'll be questions about it later at work, so here I am.
After the test I get my phone back from the phone box. None of the people who work at the English language testing center speak English at a functioning level, but I don't have to ask any questions; Mine is the only confiscated phone that has a name sticker on it that says "Mike" instead of "이남준" or something.
In the lobby is a coffee vending machine. One of the questions on the test was about vending machines. I had to discuss whether or not I liked them. I found out during the test that yes, I do apparently. Everyone else who took the test must have just learned the same thing about themselves and now they're all lined up, dying for that cup of freeze dried coffee that they value so much. Out the window I see a chilly breeze blowing people's scarves against their faces outside, and my headache is on the run, but it's not going down without a fight, so all indications are that I'll be having a hot cup of powdered "Maxim" brand coffee too.
Outside I take big sips to finish it before a taxi stops. The hot liquid hits my stomach and the warm feeling is like someone telling me good news every time I swallow. It reminds me of being a kid, drinking hot chocolate after a day of playing in the snow. I usually drink coffee slowly and savor the taste, but this feeling in my stomach is too good. I'll have to do this every time I drink coffee. I feel stupid, like this is how everyone but me drinks coffee, and I've been missing the point. Then I think it over. I'm just cold right now. I'm not cold every time I drink coffee. Sometimes this is the way to drink coffee, and sometimes the other way is better. Crisis averted, and just in time to catch a taxi. There aren't trash cans in public here, so I put the paper cup in my pocket.
The driver is an affable-looking man with rosy cheeks and an argyle sweater. I instantly want to talk to him, but I know it's pointless. I say the line of Korean I always say to taxi drivers when I want to go home. "Take me to Dong Myong church please." He says "Dong Myong Church. I understand," and we start moving. Then, curiously, he blurts out a long string of words phrased as a question, but as usual, most of it is meaningless to me. Usually taxi drivers smile in bemusement, and ask me in a patronizing tone if I speak Korean. He didn't say anything about that, and now I'm really curious.
We're stopped at a stoplight now. "My Korean is not very good," I say in Korean, and the driver nods, forlorn, as they always do. Then I go on"...but please say that one more time." He doesn't, but he thinks for a second, then presses his hands together as in prayer, and bows his head.
"Ahhh." I say. "No." He wants to know, obviously, If I'll be attending church today. It's Sunday after all. I take a moment. "My home is near the church," I manage. The driver nods, and repeats my words back to me with slightly better phrasing and pronunciation, a technique I use when teaching English. We both nod, happy to have communicated.
He switches on the radio and changes the station. Taxi drivers in Korea largely listen to the news. Others listen to music by sorted genre, like anyone else. Most of the taxi drivers that listen to music choose "trot," a highly tolerable, up tempo polka type music meant to be danced to. Some listen to "popsong" which means oldies in English, and a significant minority listen to the insufferable downtempo love song genre called "ballad" which is populated by boy bands, and is what you usually hear in restaurants, and blasting at concert volumes when you walk past certain stores downtown.
This driver isn't listening to any of these. This is is some kind of flute playing a haunting, repetitive melody, over an irregular, nervous beat tapped out on what sounds like a paper drum. I have a thought when I hear it, that some music, newer music, rock for instance, is played on instruments adapted for a different purpose than their inventors intended. This music, on the other hand, sounds like it's being played by the inventor himself.
The driver taps the face of his radio, and says in English "Korea music."
Kickin' It in Geumchon; Beer
december 08, 2008 12:06pm – in Korea
The EV Boyz' "Kickin' it in Geumchon" overflows with such toxic fail(ure), that I wondered if I should even post it here. Time has passed and I realize must.
These gentlemen get a D for musical ability, an F for lyrical inventiveness (Does absolutely nothing else fit in that rhyme scheme than "Ohh Ohhh!"? What about "Here we go!"?) and an F for sense of humor. But unfortunately, like "Scary Movie" and its countless offspring, it gets an A+ in "listing and depicting a bunch of familiar things," which does make it of interest to anyone involved in this Korean ESL business.
"Drinkin' Cass-uh. Drinkin' Hite-uh. Feelin' alright." Hoho, it's true. They do pronounce Cass, and Hite that way. I can relate. The EV Boyz are talking about two of the most popular domestic beers. The other is O.B. Do you ever wonder why you can't buy Korean beer in most American groceries? Because the quality is shockingly (Sorry, Korea) poor. Spoofing the names of the local brews breaks down thusly:
Hite: Shite
Cass: c-Ass
OB: B.O.
No one broke their back coming up with those.
Stay tuned to see me actually say something nice about this country.
Complainin' 'Bout Korea part II
november 19, 2008 03:35pm – in Korea
Late, but one of my finest, I'm sure.
Complainin' 'bout Korea
november 05, 2008 11:58am – in Korea
What people should know before moving to Korea.
It's my duty to complain about my life in Korea. I might have mistakenly used this time to complain about Koreans if I hadn't taken a month to consider how to go about it responsibly.
Before I complain about my life, I want to spell out in prose a few things about Korean life in general. And I hope I can do it in a spirit of informativeness, not complaint.
Korean culture will be disturbing for a foreigner. We tend to want to change people's minds because they are living under what we perceive to be misapprehensions and we want to shake them free.
They don't want to be shaken free.
What's disturbing is that Korean daily life is centers on the privilege of being Korean, how to benefit from it, and how to honor the privilege properly. Koreans seem enslaved by societal expectations, and sometimes doomed to lives of duty and unhappiness. On the other hand their government gives them the freedom to choose a different life, and they don't take it. It's deeply frustrating to accept that many of these people don't have any interest in the admittedly flimsy concept we call "freedom," that ties our culture together.
The flimsy concept that ties Korean culture together is called Hyo (효), a concept springing from Confucius meaning "filial piety". There are statues and bells all over the country to remind people about it. Essentially, one must honor one's parents and ancestors in all that one does. Violating the wishes of your parents makes you a disgrace (and many Koreans are exiled to English speaking countries by their parents for this reason). What's more, the Korean language categorizes all people as family. People call their older friends by the word meaning "older brother" and "older sister." Unfamiliar, middle aged people are addressed using the words meaning "aunt," and "uncle." Girls even call their boyfriends by another word meaning "older brother" (one that can only be used by girls).
So in the interest of maintaining proper filial piety, one must honor the wishes of others - often strangers - in almost every aspect of life. This explains many of the facts we Americans find so endlessly frustrating:
-You don't choose your spouse, your parents do. This is fine.
-An aptitude test will determine your career path. You might hate it. This is also fine.
-You must revere your friends who are older than you and do whatever they say. You may not become enraged with them if they abuse you.
-The music on the radio is what Koreans listen to. It's good music because it is Korean.
-Holidays are times to gather the family and display honor to your elders. The young will take great personal pains in looking after the cooking, childcare, cleaning and other chores. It's not a time for enjoyment.
-The concept of a favorite food is irrelevant. Kimchi is the best food. Nothing else compares.
-Korean corporations will preserve the best interests of Korea. It's unpatriotic to question what they do.
And on the subject of foreigners who are beings from outside of a closed, complete, nearly perfect system, someone might say:
-Foreigners are welcome in our cities. They will witness our unity and hospitality with wonderment.
-They don't understand our way of life, and they are endlessly confounded by everything they see here. We must help them.
-Korean food is shocking to foreigners. They are probably not ready for most of the foods we enjoy.
-Foreigners might look upon some of the things we do with consternation. This is due to a lack of fundamental understanding. It's pointless to explain, and best to change the subject.
I'm perilously close to outright complaint here, so I'll cut the list off. Obviously don't take all of this at my word. And it absolutely goes without saying that not all Koreans feel this way.
I really wish I'd read something that had clarified these concept before I got here. Before moving, I thought "I'll diligently study the language, maintain a low profile, and although it's not entirely possible I'll do my best to fit in." Now I know that the last two notions are not just impossible; they're laughable.
Flattering E-mail
october 28, 2008 09:26pm – in Korea
Here's something I didn't expect:
Stephen Fry is a famous comedian I greatly admire, and one of the most, if not THE most beloved person in England.
He is currently in Africa doing a documentary series about conservation, and he's made his daily life there very public over the internet. He makes video blogs comparable in style to mine, and twitters about ten times as often as I do.
I'd imagine he just goes through at the end of the day and clicks the people who've signed up to follow his Twitter, and adds them back, but it's very reassuring to read the words "Stephen Fry is now following your updates on Twitter."
Andrew: Fire Season
october 27, 2008 12:53pm – in Korea
Scary Salad part 2
october 27, 2008 12:47pm – in Korea
More on the topic I wrote about last night.
This guy, despite being creepy, is doing interesting work by documenting and "reviewing" (he loves all of them) these haunted attractions.
I watched several of these, and they highlight a few points I was making. Look at the budget that's gone into this "Labyrinth" maze. Very impressive, but walking through it doesn't really scare the visitors, as far as I can tell. It's more like briefly visiting a community of characters from fantasy movies. Some of them just seem to walk by, while others suddenly lash out and go "blargh!" to make people jump.
It's the mean spiritedness of the whole affair that turns me off. If they catch you in the right frame of mind, then they know they can go "blargh!" and startle you. If not, then forget you. You're useless. A narrative haunted house would be an equal opportunity event.
I wouldn't just let people wander through like cattle. I'd separate them into small groups and put them through a thoughtfully prepared experience. The Tower of Terror ride from Disney World in Florida is a good example of what I mean, minus the ride part:
You're well prepared. Given a story, and you come loaded with a set of expectations. The whole ride uses the power of anticipation to its advantage. There's a drop coming, and you know it, but it makes you wait.
An amusement park should hire me to conceptualize and execute an attraction like this. I have ideas.
Scary Salad
october 26, 2008 08:49pm – in Korea
The total lack of Halloween here makes me miss it more than I ever thought I would. This week I'm doing a few Halloween-themed lessons, and it's got me looking up all sorts of fun facts about the Halloween history and modern tradition.
One article I'm going to give my freetalking students is going to be about "haunted attractions," (to keep things clear, I have to define these separately from "haunted houses"). It's got me thinking about my relatives' annual haunted front lawn, and about the mazes at Knott's Scary Farm.
I've always hated those haunted attractions I refer to as "scary salad," where an assortment of ostensibly scary material as roughly lumped into a big bowl of scary, and served all at once. You can't respond emotionally to a ghost, followed by a zombie pirate, followed by a killer clown. At best you will be momentarily startled, and yet the best minds in the business, those concerned with special effects and makeup seem to be focused on these sorts of things.
Naturally the limitless possibilities of Scary Salad give experts the opportunity to flex their professional muscles, and there's plenty of skill on display at Knott's every year. Just look at my friend allison's Myspace Resume. And you can't deny the epic ambition of my uncle Mike's haunted front lawn (visible on Google Street View).
But to my mind, skill and ambition won't reach people's souls. I envision a haunted house that really engrosses the visitor. It could terrify slowly, escalate from mild creepiness to all-out screaming terror at its conclusion (and, like any good Gothic horror, finish on a note of pitch-black humor). The missing ingredient, in my opinion, is narrative.
I envision a haunted house, where fake news reports shown in line give the visitor some background information, characters, and themes to follow. A missing girl, a serial killer on the loose. As they traverse the haunted house, they'll not only be terrified, but they'll follow a story to its conclusion. Including a mind-bending story twist right before the ending. Sure this sounds ambitious, but so do the prosthetics and animatronics that routinely get budgeted.
But it would also be important for those same craftspeople to rope-in, if not tone-down their displays of ability. On their night out, people will see so many severed limbs, and so much fake blood that those things lose their meaning. They key to capturing people's imaginations is to create an unbroken illusion.
With care taken to defy expectations, and create aesthetic unity these "haunted attractions" could be, if not a work of art, then at least something something worth taking seriously.
Seoul/Suwon pictures
october 21, 2008 02:01pm – in Korea
Here are some pictures as a precursor to the coming video blog:
8-bit knight. A tile mosaic in a subways station.
And speaking of Mosaics, this restaurant in Suwon was all done up in irregularly shaped stones. I was impressed, but my standards might be low. Modern Korean architecture ordinarily ranges from rough approximation of classic Korean architecture, or dystopian nightmare of uniformity.
Suwon features another famous example of great Korean architecture that I will feature in the video blog.
Horrifying bird statue in a cafe in Insadong, Seoul.
Stranger taking my photograph. Technically in Gwangju not Seoul. This is one of the annoying things I will talk about in my upcoming video blog.