Stuck in Korea

Well Summer's here in Sokcho. Monday morning, blazing sunshine. All the way through to Friday afternoon, then it's miserable drizzly-type rain till sunset on Sunday. Just like last Summer, except without the landslides and death.

Oh, if you don't read the news, lots of people died in Korea last year because of landslides... and death, which is the number one killer of people all over the world. I read it in a book.

So, what else can I say about life here in Sokcho? The tents by the beach are up (24 hours, beer on tap) so all is well here. Plus Lloyd and Matt are coming over next week. For those who don't know, they both used to work here and are fed up of being in Britain so they've decided to come back and party hearty for a few weeks. And they're bringing HP and pickled onions!!!

Yes, I know it seems pathetic that I get so excited about HP and pickled onions, but you haven't lived here. They have. They know what I long for...

Also, my family have been in touch. A half brother and half sister in South Africa. Complete with nieces and nephews. A 17 year old niece, no less.

HOW MESSED UP IS THAT?!?!?!?

Somewhere out there is a grown-up human being (yes, I consider 17 year olds as grown up - I would be a cool dad, face it) who could correctly address me as 'Uncle'. I'm only just in my 30's - I could handle my young cousins calling me Uncle, because I could correct them and then spew forth with profanities to prove it. But this ADULT actually is a niece.

Wrong wrong wrong. Not having it.

On the up side, they're currently in South Africa , soon to move to London apparently, neither of which I will be going to in the near future, so I've got the opportunity to become some kind of weird responsible person by the time I meet them. Not that I don't want to, just that I'm not ready to have grown-ups call me Uncle. Not by a long shot. Not unless it's preceded by 'The Man From...', which would be awesome.

And also...

My Dad's coming over in September. Been out of touch with the rentals for a while - personal reasons. Leave it at that. He may be shocked to find a country that still has booze this cheap. Or delighted. Probably the latter. Sadly he's shaved off the beard, which means that when he meets my students I'm going to have to have a cover story. I told them he's Santa, so without the beard it's not going to work. Thus far I've told them that he doesn't need the facial hair when it's not Christmas. The kindergarten kids have bought it, at least.

So that's it from me for now. I have to head out and meet pretty Korean ladies, which is way more fun than typing stuff in my blog, so ciao for now.

Bet you thought it would be another year, didn't you?

Here I am though. Still going strong. Saving money for the trip and hoping my Lotto ticket comes good in the meantime. Fat chance, but if you don't buy a ticket...

Anyhow, I've got a fan club! John (the guy I work with) stumbled across my sad and seldom updated blog before he came over, and his parents have seen it too. Well, slap my thigh and call me Nancy! Strangers reading my blog. I'll update this more often, but I'll edit John's exploits to protect his reputation. He does have a few though - challenging a bunch of Korean soldiers to a martial arts showdown, anyone? Not the wisest of moves.

Sadly, very little has taken place in the last month or so. Had my birthday (but on the quiet this time), went to Seoul to see some friends, and...er...that's it.

The Silk Road can't come quickly enough.

Oh, and I'll get a camera so I can spruce this page up with some piccies of life here rather than the solitary shot of Mr. T.

Well hello there!

Did you miss me? It's been a year or so since I last wrote anything here, but I have reasons. I'll explain, but it's not that interesting...

I was going to write something towards the end of April last year but my 30th birthday came up and, well, I got preoccupied with getting old(er), amongst other things. For those who were at my birthday, please don't comment! FYI I still consider the individuals in question to be socially unacceptable. Anyway in the wake of a birthday that would better be fogotten, I partied hard with some good hard party folk - a cap doffed at this point to Lloyd and Matt especially. Next thing I knew it was Summer, which was all about being outside and on the beach, not blogging.

By the time Summer was done, I'd been 6 months without an entry in the blog, and decided between that milestone and general socialising that I should try and go a whole year before another entry. Seemed like a good date to set.

Just because...


But here I am again. And what can I say about the past year? Has much happened? Yes and no would be the easiest answer. Basically I have plunged even further into life here (sadly without being 100% fluent in Korean. Yet!), to the point where my day-to-day life has been more about small town gossip than about anything else. I am far too settled here for my own good.

Thankfully I have a target to aim for. Lloyd had to get back to Britain last month to jump through a few hoops so he can do a teacher training course, so we've decided that next March is Silk Road time. So the next year is about laying low and putting a bit of cash away. After that, Asia, horses, Kalashnikovs, bandits, wolves, Istanbul and all sorts of shenanigans. I'm not sure how useful the fishing rod is going to be in the Gobi Desert though, Lloyd. Haven't thrown it away though. You could use it there - the fish'll never see it coming...

Which leaves me to today. A salute must be made to Tom, Jean-Charles and Aaron for getting married. Whipped, the lot of you. Oh well, it happens to the best of us.

And, believe it or not, that's all I have to say about the last year. The specifics are a case of either you were there or you weren't (please don't say too much if you were!).

Damn, I need to do something interesting with my life.

Fool 

I've been thinking a lot about the A-Team recently and come to the conclusion that Sgt. Bosco "B.A." Baracus is an idiot. Hear me out...

As we all know, he's afraid of flying. So how the hell did he get to Vietnam in the first place? I don't think there were any troop ships, so either he swam or they drugged him. Also remember that he was part of a crack commando unit, which I assume did lots of special forces stuff behind enemy lines and all that. You notice that everyone got transported around by helicopter?

"I ain't flyin' on no chopper, fool!"

Right there, refusal to obey orders. And they say he didn't commit a crime. Of course there could have been the drugging option just before take-off...

"I told you I ain't flyin...milk? Yeah, I like milk. I drink milk."

But this way you're going to have a very groggy soldier on your hands - a bloody liability to a crack commando unit deep in the jungles of Vietnam. You would have thought after the first 20 or 30 times he'd catch on. Or develop a fear of milk rather than flying. A quick note - the unit consisted of Colonel Smith, Lieutenant Peck, Captain Murdock and Sergeant Baracus. Does anyone else think the command structure here is a tad top heavy? Also they never killed anyone when they worked as soldiers of fortune, so what do you think their kill count was in South-East Asia? I'm beginning to understand how America lost the Vietnam War.

Either way B.A. couldn't have been a very good soldier. Or Face for that matter. Can you picture that smarmy lounge lizard fighting in Vietnam? Yeah, right. And Hannibal reached retirement age during World War 2. Which leaves Murdock, who's a nutter. This is your crack commando unit then. The cream of the U.S. military.

Anyhow, back to B.A. and his brainlessness. How many bloody times did he fall for the drugged sandwich/milk thing? The fact that the next mission is in Columbia and the team have all stopped for a picnic at an airstrip would be a pretty good indicator that something's rotten in Denmark. But no. Plus he still considers them his friends! All the druggings and abductions in Vietnam and America and he still trusts them.

B.A.'s a fool. We should all pity him.

Everywhere you go in Korea you are assaulted by a saccharine-sweet obsession of puppies, kittens and little chicks. Pencil cases, notebooks, t-shirts, bags, mobile phones - it's inescapable and nauseating. Women sport small dogs as accessories. Little rat-sized ones (nothing that can't fit in a stylish handbag) which are strategically trimmed and then dyed. Yes, you read that right. Dyed. All the colours of the rainbow.

And as spring arrives and the land is reborn once again, this is marked by women standing outside school playground selling chicks to the children. Live chicks. In cups. This sounds sort of cute and adorable but for the fact that children, flush with the joy and energy of just having finished another school day, are a tad careless.

"Look! I've bought a little baby chick!"

"Aaaaawww. So cute! Hey, do you want to play football?"

"Wait a minute, I'll just put the chick in my pocket and then we'll kick off..."

Cue one dead bird.

Many don't even survive the hundred metre walk from school to my academy, but there are still enough chirping birds to make a lesson unteachable. Any chicks that make it longer than 2 or 3 days would be considered a miracle, especially considering that most of the kids haven't understood that the prerequisites for life are warmth and food. There are stories about someone having raised one successfully where it laid lots of eggs and so on, but I think they're the Korean equivalent of "There was a kid at my school called Richard Head. Seriously."

So essentially every year there is the mass negligent slaughter of baby birds in order to entertain the children for a day or two. I'm guessing there isn't a Korean SPCA. Or maybe it's an attempt to educate children about the value of life - a lesson they annually fail to learn, evidently.

There's a fish season in the summer as well.

So Monday was the Kindergarten graduation ceremony. Everything in Korea seems to have a big graduation ceremony at the end. Kindergarten, every single year of school, successful consumption of a picnic etc. They really are obsessed about it.

Anyhow we had to get the children to perform a few skits, songs, plays etc. All in English of course, so the parents can get a glimpse of what they've been paying for. After all, it's not as if the nippers voluntarily speak English outside of the school, so it's one of the few opportunities they have to see their kids in anglophonic action. This being the showpiece of the school year and a big promotional opportunity, the vast majority of schools tend to put in a huge amount of effort and preparation into this potentially make-or-break event.

We had two weeks notice.

With sweeping changes made with a week to go.

Everyone was left completely bemused as to why the kids looked like they weren't ready. It was almost as if they hadn't had enough practice or something...

And so it was yesterday that we all prepared for this ceremony with heavy hearts, acutely aware of the disaster that was about to ensue. Also we were aware of the fact that we teachers were probably going to get it in the neck for not being able to produce a polished performance at such short notice, or paint the sun green for that matter (such is the nature of the unrealistic demands made here - no-one says no to the boss in this culture, no matter how detached from reality he or she is). What could possibly avert the impending catastrophe?

Step forward the attention defecit kid to save the day. Lo and behold, he breaks ranks during a routine and proceeds to get his dick out and loudly point out the fact to the audience saying something along the lines of "Look at me Mummy, I've got my willy out!"

No-one, including the boss, remembers anything else about the ceremony. Which is definitely for the best).

We were saved by a four-year-old idiot waggling his knob about on stage!

Funny old world, eh?

The kid's going to die a slow and horrible death, by the way.

Miss me?

I thought as much.

So here I remain in Sokcho, plodding away. The days are tiresome, the nights drowning in soju. In answer to your question, Zane, soju hangovers are random and have bugger all to do with how much you drink. 3 bottles causes memory loss though. To the uninitiated, soju has a completely different effect on you from other booze. You can have whole chunks of your previous evening's partying missing but still conduct yourself pretty reasonably (this obviously is less true if you drink more or mix it), merely appearing slightly merry to the untrained eye. If your memory is blanked due to soju consumption, you can safely assume you went to a karaoke bar and then went and ate some kamjatang (spicy pork and potato soup - yummy) before going home in a reasonably civilised manner. Any bizarre new Korean contacts mysteriously added to your mobile can be attributed to one's stumbling attempts to communicate with random Koreans while under the influence of soju. Great stuff if you get used to it.

I hope that answers your question Zane. I have been very inquisitive about it on your behalf.

A quick note about work. My students are getting dumber. My new kindergarten class has a child in genuine need of ritalin (he's currently immune to education and/or discipline) and a 5 year old who wears a bib all day because of his constant uncontrollable drooling. They say a bad artist blames his materials, but really, people are actually expecting these two to be speaking English in a few months. I'll post up photos at a later date. Another class I have is even younger. Incapable of going to the toilet unsupervised as they have trouble with buttons (and even velcro). That's provided they remember to tell you they need to go. Waaaaaaaaay beyond my job description. I want toilet-trained students. If they're not housebroken, I don't want to teach them.

Not doing it.

No way Pedro.

Good thing the Korean teachers take care of it. Maybe that doesn't make me a "New Man" but they're not my kids, so wiping, zipping, and changing soiled clothes are not my job. Didn't sign up for that.