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.
Monday
october 20, 2008 09:33pm – in Korea
Back to the old daily grind today. Pictures of Seoul tomorrow.
In Seoul for the weekend
october 18, 2008 10:29am – in Korea
I've forgotten to keep daily updates going very shortly after making them.
Matt and I are in Seoul right now. I'm updating from the computer of a couchsurfer named Danny.
Obligatory Blog
october 15, 2008 06:20pm – in Korea
John Hodgman has a new book on the way.
My mind is on traveling to China lately.
Sports
october 14, 2008 04:46pm – in Korea
I can't talk to students about sports. I'm paid to make conversation, but any sport is off limits.
I'm convinced you could generate all the same sort of semi-predictable data by watching a colony of fruit flies. If I were a grad student in statistics this would be my thesis. All the colony of fruit flies would lack would be the highlight reels.
Manila Ranch
october 13, 2008 06:30pm – in Korea
I'm going to write something here every day now. Why shouldn't I? Even if just a few sentences.
Today Daniel and I went to the local Philippine supply chain outlet. Only half a block from the western equivalent (The Underground Grocer, which I've mentioned before) is a tiny Philippine market and restaurant. We ate some fried fish, which was forgettable, but also some chicken-and-vegetable dish that tasted, frankly, incredible.
I'd been there before to shop, and on the way there I told Daniel that it felt like I had barged into someone's family room. I wasn't comfortable with that at the time, but that casual feeling would turn out to be the best thing about the experience, apart from the flavors.
In Korea everything is flavored with gochu-chang, a red pepper sauce, and I can see where the instinct came from. The flavor is delicious and unique, but tiresome after a steady eight months of the stuff. There's "American" and "Italian" food to be found, but those are always shallow, lazy Korean interpretations made to match a picture, not a flavor.
This place was being run by a late-middle-aged Filipina lady. Her whole demeanor was much warmer than the dutiful, "let me show you do it" attitude of the late-middle-aged Korean ladies.
Maybe it's because Philippine food doesn't defy Westerners to acquire a taste for it. At any rate, the mild, lightly sweet flavor of the hearty chicken dish was familiar, like a fresher, more austere ancestor of what we call Chinese "sweet and sour chicken." Both Daniel and I stopped, surprised after a couple of bites to point out that it was delicious.
But what made the whole experience something like the perfect breakfast (It was midday, but the meal felt like breakfast) was the atmosphere. So casual. Such a welcome change. Most tellingly, the woman walked up to our table right before bringing out our food, and handed us the remote to the TV.
On the way out she asked us if the food was good. We told her quite honestly that we'd be back.
Video Blog: Let's Birthday!
october 10, 2008 08:16am – in Korea
Make that two unfulfilled homework assignments. Don't worry. I'm keeping track.
Birthday video from Andrew
october 01, 2008 01:52pm – in Korea
Confused?
This is a video version of an infuriating game we made up where...
You take the name of a band of musician.
"The Bad Plus" for instance.
Then you use the last syllable of that band name as the first syllable of another band name.
"The Bad Plus" and "Plus/Minus" become "The Bad Plus/Minus."
Then you add another:
"The Bad Plus/Minus the Bear"
And sometimes shift the spelling, or remove articles like "the," or the a plural s. Which allows you to make:
"The Bad Plus/Minus the Barenaked ladytron..."
And on... and on...
The most frustrating part is that until you come up with a really esoteric syllable, it never ends. And even then you feel compelled to change the last one or else feel like you're dodging some kind of honest challenge.
But it's not an honest challenge. It's a worthless mind game. It's worse than Sudoku, and it's worse than a drill to the brain.
Say It Ain't the Broes
september 25, 2008 05:12pm – in Korea
For the second time, Andrew serves up a heavy, high-calorie cocktail of people I miss. And just like before, it gives me heartburn.
Even with the economy how it is, I'm really looking forward to getting back home and seeing these folks:
This assignment has been a long time in coming. As kind as this country is to me, a few complaints have still been creeping up. Time to bite the hand that feeds me... not too hard. Just enough to show that I mean it.
mosquitoes
september 17, 2008 06:28pm – in Korea
There's a heat wave on, and that's why the mosquitoes are thriving into Autumn. It's 6:00 or so, and today I've killed eight. They come out at night, so it's inevitable that I'll kill more. Eight in one day doesn't phase me, but today is excessive. I expect to have done in fifteen or so by the time I go to sleep.
If every sentient human in Gwangju kills one mosquito every day (That's very conservative) then that means a million die in a day in this one city. Stretched out over the hot part of the year, that's a hundred million (100,000,000) mosquitoes killed every year by a very reasonable estimate. For what it's worth.
Here's another illustration with numbers:
It's day 231, or 7 months and 18 days.
136 days remain.
or:
|---------------|--------|
start now end
For what it's worth.
Mantis
september 16, 2008 01:34am – in Korea
I just came back from a late-night errand. At a closed metro station we stopped to gawk at this five-or-so inch praying mantis because it was just going about its business while being awesome.
I'm back home now, and since I opened my windows earlier to clear out some smoke, the place is infested with insects of another sort. As I type this, I periodically smack my hands together with 50% or so of the clapping sounds reporting the death of a mosquito. Once I peel the "mogi" off my palm, tonight I've been gingerly dropping the corpse into flame at the center of my apparently useless citronella candle. Despite its failure to drive away the pests, I like how the ersatz cremation produces a satisfying crackling sound, and I can watch their hairlike legs glow red like pine needles on fire.
One of these species was born to move like a chameleon, and remind me of the Queen from Aliens, and the other was born to annoy me and give me extraordinary welts. So I photograph one, and delight in mutilating the other.
-----
In order to light my candle I went out to find a lighter in the windowsill by my front door where my across-the-way neighbor smokes cigarettes. For the first time, he was out there. I pantomimed my request for the use of the lighter, but I introduced myself in perfect Korean. He obviously didn't want to make small talk. Maybe he was busy.
Video Blog 19: Eun-Mi
september 11, 2008 09:27pm – in Korea
This is a special edition blog. As an apology for tardiness it is double-length.
It also rewards those who pay attention. Several parts are more interesting if you watch closely, or play the video more than once.
Share and enjoy.
New Blog Absent
september 11, 2008 03:25pm – in Korea
I just haven't had any fun at all making my newest blog. It's coming, sure enough, but I only hope it'll be more enjoyable to watch than to make.
Here is Andrew's most recent entry, in which he most assuredly fills the criteria I laid out for him (in fact this is one of the best in the series).
photos
september 09, 2008 03:13pm – in Korea
I said there would be more updates, then there was the longest time gap ever instead. Sorry.
It continues. I'm still working on the new video. Here instead are some photos:
The whiteboard after a class. This is pretty normal.
Good old Engrish
Some more Gwang-fitti. I found some very some very interesting graffiti in Seoul too. That'll be in the video.