Thursday, January 20, 2005
Who's in charge here?
I ask because I keep noticing bizarre things. Take my class yesterday, for instance. I picked up a crayon that one of the kindy kids was using only to find a cartoon character that would have been considered racist in the Victorian era. A strong resemblance to the Robinson's golliwog, but clad only in a loincloth and in possesion of huge lips. You get the idea. Then underneath I saw the character's name - "Mr. Moody, the shaggy primitive man". I'm not joking. I know that Korea's pretty homogeneous and as a result any debate over race relations has never really arisen, but come on. This is the 21st century!!!
Second came my publicity visit to the hospital. I was asked to accompany one of the Korean teachers and look white in the background as she talked to some of the nurses and gave them the hard sell about our school. First stop, God's waiting room. The patients here seemed too sick to be in the intensive care unit. I saw one blanket covering what I hope was medical equipment or more blankets, but it could have easily been a still-warm corpse. Next to him a murse was in the midst of intubating a man who was rasping away while another nurse drained something horrid out from a tube that was sticking out from his ribs. I'm not squeamish, but I didn't exactly feel comfortable with us publicising the school in a room where people were about to be dispatched into the afterlife.
Next came our visit to the 5th floor, where people weren't in immediate danger of dying. On the big wall by the nurses' desk all the diagnoses were helpfully written in English. They decided to put the gentleman with "neurosis" next to the chap with "vertigo" (is it really wise to put this man on the 5th floor?). Next to him was a man with concussion, which I really want to believe had been caused by a fall from a great height.
I would love to hear thir conversation.
Second came my publicity visit to the hospital. I was asked to accompany one of the Korean teachers and look white in the background as she talked to some of the nurses and gave them the hard sell about our school. First stop, God's waiting room. The patients here seemed too sick to be in the intensive care unit. I saw one blanket covering what I hope was medical equipment or more blankets, but it could have easily been a still-warm corpse. Next to him a murse was in the midst of intubating a man who was rasping away while another nurse drained something horrid out from a tube that was sticking out from his ribs. I'm not squeamish, but I didn't exactly feel comfortable with us publicising the school in a room where people were about to be dispatched into the afterlife.
Next came our visit to the 5th floor, where people weren't in immediate danger of dying. On the big wall by the nurses' desk all the diagnoses were helpfully written in English. They decided to put the gentleman with "neurosis" next to the chap with "vertigo" (is it really wise to put this man on the 5th floor?). Next to him was a man with concussion, which I really want to believe had been caused by a fall from a great height.
I would love to hear thir conversation.
# posted by Stuart Reid @ 7:59 PM 
