My grade three student Chang-heon wrote in his diary about a recent trip to a Japanese restaurant:
It restaurant vinegared fish and rice is revolution.
It conjured a picture of Che Guevera leading the rebels through the Sierra Maestra, bolstered not by rice and beans but by spicy tuna maki and California rolls. With wasabi.
I’ve embarked upon my third month of sick; after a brief respite near the end of November, the virus once again took hold. In order to combat my ills, Monday night I drank healthy teas, ate oranges, turned the floor heating up to eleven and went down for twelve hours of sleep.
Something happened to me during the night.
I woke up in the dead of it to find myself lying on the floor. There was an inexplicable feeling of awfulness. Like there had been a death. Like I had caused it to happen. I got back on my bed and lay paralysed with this insane knowledge. And then I logicked out that no one was dead, everything was all right, and I could go back to sleep.
Next day I had bruises along my left arm, back and gluteous. The worst of the lot was an enormous bump on my lower back. I have no idea how I sustained these injuries.
I think the North Koreans abducted me.
1985 - 2006
When I first aquired her at the age of five, I wanted to name her Fluffy Snuggles, but my older, more sophisticated sister put the pressure on for Snowball.
Snowball was friendly to most people but a hater of other cats. When she was young she would kill birds and bring live mice into the house. Later on she put up with a lot of abuse from my niece and nephew. She grew increasingly vocal and mildly senile in her last years, and always made her presence known to whomever I might be talking to on the phone. She left a furry white coating on all my black clothes. Had bad breath. Occasionaly deigned to sleep on my bed.
Bye-bye Snowball. Have a nice lazy nap.
Beijing yo!
Tear the roof of the mother sucker.
Some of the names my students call me:
The last one’s from Ju-yeon, who often wears a shirt with the word “Crayon” on it. I started calling her that, so she got me back by adding adjectives “big” and “white”. I have to wear a white lab coat when I teach, so I am indeed a shining beacon of paleness.
I’ve been a sickie of late; tomorrow will mark one month of varying degrees of illness. I’ve been stuck with some Asian cold-flu that keeps sticking around and morphing, preying on different body parts from one week to the next. Fortunately the worst is past and I’m at the hacking up phlegm stage (which I kind of enjoy, as it allows me to take advantage of a culture that smiles on hocking loogies in the street). I went to the clinic twice, and both times the doctor merely glanced perfunctorily down my throat and sent me for “injection”, which was administered ghetto-style in a dingy room with the nurse tying off my arm, telling me to make a fist, and jabbing me purple. Then they charged me 1,000 won (which is about a dollar) and sent me to the pharmacy with a prescription for a mix of mystery pills. None of which made me high. Disappointingly.
From CBC.ca:
South Korean condom sales, motel bookings surge after North’s nuclear test
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Condom sales and bookings at several of South Korea’s pay-by-the-hour “love motels” surged in the aftermath of North Korea’s nuclear test, according to statistics released Thursday.
South Koreans are used to living in the shadow of war, and life has continued as normal across the country in the wake of the Oct. 9 explosion. But statistics on the number condoms sold in recent weeks suggest that despite their apparently blase reaction to the North’s nuclear bluster, many South Koreans may be seeking solace in sex.
A leading chain of convenience stores reported Thursday that their condom sales rose to an average of 1,930 a day in the week after Oct. 9, compared to 1,508 a day for the year to Sept. 30.
Sales of the prophylactics dropped slightly to 1,772 in the week of Oct. 16-21, but remained well above previous norms.
Another national chain said it sold US$3,721 worth of condoms a day during the week after the test - a 14.8 per cent rise over last month’s sales figures, and a 12 per cent rise over the year to Sept. 30.
…
A popular online reservation site for South Korea’s ubiquitous “love motels” - the popular term for lodgings built for clandestine rendezvous - also reported a rise in bookings immediately after the heightened security threat, according to a report in the mass-circulation newspaper Chobun Ilbo.
The motels are a fixture across South Korea. In one of the world’s most densely populated countries, where extended families often live together, such accommodations provide a refuge for those seeking discreet intimate encounters.
I live next door to one of these lovely establishments. I’ve got a terrific view from the roof of my apartment building.
It has just today started to get cold. I had to put on a sweatshirt when I ventured out this morning.
How I dread my eventual return to Canada.
During the four-day Chuseok holiday, I visited Osaka and Kyoto. I experienced in Japan a sense of tranquility that I have since lost upon return to Korea. Where Gwangju is manic and squalid, Kyoto is calm and clean. The city felt more Eurpoean than Korean; walking down the streets of a residential neighbourhood, I felt like I was in Germany. The tiny gardens are tended so immaculately, and each house is so well kept up. While half the houses in Gwangju look like they might crumble sometime next week.
The Kyoto Imperial palace posseses a quirky architectural detail: the floors trill appealingly as one treads upon them. This is purposefully built-in, as a noisy floor prevented adversaries from sneaking up unannounced. These floors are called nightingale floors. I felt like I was in a samurai movie as I walked sock-footed upon them.
On the subways and on the streets of downtown Osaka, everyone was wearing black. Masses of black-suited men whooshed past me I roamed the street, and even the women seemed to prefer a monochromatic colour scheme. Japanese style is certainly more minimalist than that of Korea. I kind of prefer the crazy costumes of Korean young people.
I spent a pleasant hour eating sushi in a tiny hole-in-the wall restaurant; the entire bottom floor of a building near Osaka Station was made up of a labyrinth of these restaurants, possibly a hundred of them. Most are so small that they consist only of a bar and stools. I shared the counter with a middle-aged Japanese businessman sipping “sho-chu” (the Japanese version of Korean soju; eminently more drinkable). The sushi chef, the businessman and I chatted in halting English. The two seemed happy to have young Western women to talk to, and gave me free shots of sho-ju and sake. We discussed the difference between Japanese and Korean beer (Japanese beer = delicious; Korean beer = not delicious) and smoked cigarettes. Even the chef was smoking behind the bar – health violation!
I stayed in Japanese-style hotels for two out of three nights. I slept on floor mattresses and made use of the grrreat public shower and spa areas. There were also complimentary kimonos. You can’t imagine how much it killed my knees to sit like this for a whole five seconds:
People ride bikes in Japan! Koreans don’t (at least not in the city); they would likely die if they ventured into traffic on a mere pedal bike.
The obligatory snap of a pachinko parlour:
The booze vending machine. Sadly, I didn’t catch sight of any panty vending machines.
Three months in, finally made it up to Seoul, a four hour bus ride north from Gwangju. Early Saturday morning we made our way to the USO office for a guided tour of the demilitarised zone, a two kilometer wide ribbon of land, for fifty years separating the North and South from coast to coast. We loaded onto a bus full of waygooks and headed north to the Joint Security Area. On a USO tour you have to conform to certain rules of dress (such as no dressing “gangster” or “biker”; also no flip flops or military-esque items). We were also barred from photography for large sections of the tour. A young American military man with a sense of humour was our guide on the trip. We travelled around the heavily guarded area on a bus, on roads bound on either side by minefields and coils of barbed wire. We passed by the “most dangerous golf course in the world”, a one-hole putting green. Army boy told us how military personnel would all get blotto on a Saturday night and hit balls over the fence with the intention of setting off mines (doesn’t work though - golf balls are too light to cause detonation). South Korean soldiers stood at attention wherever we walked outside, still and inscrutable as rocks, faces rendered sphinx-like by mirrored sunglasses and arms held clenched and bent at the elbow. We were informed that the Republic of Korea soldiers take up this stance in order to intimidate the Korean People’s Army. We were allowed to take their pictures but told not to talk to or touch them, in case we may become “embarrassed” (i.e. taken down Tae Kwon Do-style). We all kept hoping for some hapless tourist to try, but sadly everyone obeyed the rules. My friend Natalie from Houston had her eye on one of the American solider boys during the tour; I was more interested in the ROK soldiers. They looked like tight wound springs, diciplined but ready to go off at the least provocation with some crazy fast Tae Kwon Do. That’s hot! It didn’t seem like a good idea to ask for a date, though.
Army boy was happy to regale us with the story of the Axe Murder Incident: in 1976, the prodigious foliage of a poplar tree, located on the North Korean side of the Military Demarcation Line, was blocking the view of a South Korean observation post. A group of civilian South Koreans and American soldiers ventured out to do some trimming. They were not armed but carried axes. Presently, a group of KPA soldiers showed up and told the tree trimmers to cease their activity. They did not; the KPA soldiers then commandeered the axes and hacked away at two of the Americans. Now the North and Southern contingents stick to their own sides of the MDL. Anyway that’s the American army’s version of the story; the Northern version of events is that the Americans used the axes to attack the KPA. Apparently there is a museum (the “Peace Museum”) in the North where they house the actual axes used in the incident.
After lunch we drove to the site of one of several incursion tunnels dug under the border by the North Koreans. The first was discovered in 1974 and the latest in 1990; four have been discovered so far. We visited the Third Tunnel. It is a mile long, and we got to walk through about a quarter of it. We donned helmets at the start, then decended for about 300 meters to where the actual KPA-dug tunnel begins. Without a helmet I would surely have sustained head wounds; I kept slamming up againts the rocks. Water condensed on and dripped from the walls, and strange molds grew in the corners. About halfway in, the walls turned from a light granite colour to black; they were painted as such by the KPA in order to give the appearance of coal. That way the North Koreans could maintain that the tunnel was dug for the purpose of mining, not invasion.
My 10,000 won haircut and a North Korean minefield:
10,000 won is about $10 by the way. Koreans are mullet crazy!
Seoul was a bit of change from my provincial “hometown”: it was filled with waygooks, international shops and restaurants, and 10 million Koreans. I assuaged my craving for Mexican food and bought some pirated DVDs. We also drank Long Island iced teas and sang Smiths songs in a western-themed bar, and spent a bit of cash on long cab rides. Seoul is Big. The subway system is labyrinthine, and the most common cityscape is miles of towering identical apartment blocks. The Han River is impressive; it’s massive and criss-crossed by bridge after huge cement bridge. After seeing the Korean monster movie “The Host”, I expected to see a heinous black creature emerge from its waters. I did not spend enough time in Seoul, however, to really get the city, just long enough to be glad I live where I do: a city of only 1.5 million, with a downtown within walking distance and cheap cab fares to anywhere else I want to go. Plus when I run into a fellow foreigner here, chances are I know her or him. A bit of that old Canadian small town feel.
Japan ho! on Thursday.
Today I brought a guitar to school and taught my one class how to sing “Home on the Range”. We also wrote a song about kimchi.
The Kimchi Song
Kimchi is red and hot,
I like to eat it a lot!
It’s healthy for me and you,
Would you like to eat it too?
Grrrrrr, Korean keyboards! I am not a terrible typer - I am beyond hunt-and-peck - but neither do I posess the skills of a professional typist. I can type fast but I have to look at the keyboard while I do it. Which gets me into trouble here: I’ll be happily typing along, genius thoughts flying rapid-fire from my synapses through my finger-tips, when I look up and behold! the last two paragraphs of my manifesto have been typed in Korean charaters. For some mystifying reason, typing can change spontaneously from Latin to Korean letters mid-type. It’s a real pain.
The below photo, by the way, is of some art I saw at the 6th Gwangju Biennale, on right now until November. The opposite wall proclaims “Foreigners, please don’t leave us alone with the Danes!” I am a Biennale volunteer, so I get to show people around, do internet research, and get in for free, of course. I also learned how to pronounce “Biennale”. It’s nice to see some modern art; I was pretty much starved for that kind of thing when I lived in northern BC.
Wednesday morning, my Korean co-worker Y-J lost her mother. All the English teachers (Korean and foreign) were invited to be a part of the gathering at the hospital. We left after work, so did not arrive until 11p.m., and descended two stories beneath the basement level, deep into the bowels of the building. We found a long, brightly-lit corridor of small rooms, each one containing a raised wooden floor upon which was placed a shrine of sorts to the deceased: a large photograph surrounded by memorial wreathes. Looking at the picture of her mother, I could see Y-J’s high cheekbones and smiling eyes. In front of the display was a woven mat, upon which our Korean co-workers prostrated themselves, first toward the photograph, then toward each other. We met Y-J, who wore a black hanbok, the traditional voluminously-skirted Korean dress. Her red eyes and make-up free face contrasted with the immaculately made-up visage that she presented at school each day; Korean women are meticulous when it comes to their make-up.
We made our way from the private room to a large shared eating area, where several mourning parties gathered around low tables covered with food. So, we got an extra-late meal that day, snacking on rice and spicy soup and taking with chopsticks from the various small dishes of kimchi, fish, peanuts and sliced peaches that crowded the table. Conversations took place in Korean and English; we foreigners chatted about upcoming Chusok plans, the best honeymoon destinations, the identity of the strange unchewable raw fish on the table. My two foreign co-workers and I were the only non-Koreans in the place, but for once I did not feel stared at; the observance of death seems to be one of the few things in this country that supercede gawking at foreigners.
Something I wouldn’t see at a Canadian hospital: smoking, boozing and gambling. Though the air conditioning masked its scent, vertical trails of smoke hovered over surrounding tables, and clusters of spent soju and maekju bottles stood out on tabletops. As it was going on midnight, few women remained in the room; the mourners at that hour were represented mostly by black and grey-suited Korean men in various degrees of inebriation. Not far from our table, we observed a tight circle of men clutching thickish wads of won as they played cards. Fellow Calgarian Afzal even spied one fellow passed out on the wooden floor, and another trying to instigate some clumsy roughhousing with another man.
We stayed with Y-J until about half past one. She seemed to brighten as the evening wore on, sharing animated conversation and drinking Coke and green tea with her friends. I have participated in so few rituals of death; this one seems as good a way as any to mark the passing of a loved one, sitting together in a hospital sub-sub basement, surrounded by grief, laughter, food, drunken gambling, and the unseen dead.
I am sitting in the PC bang, the room filled with the muffled booms of Korean children blowing up their digital enemies; I am writing email, inhaling second-hand cigarette smoke and listening to KEXP radio from Seattle. The song currently playing? Ian Tyson’s “Four Strong Winds”, as sung by Johnny Cash.
Oh Alberta…your politics suck but you are a fine province. I miss your vast empty spaces.
Now my students are doing it. Little Korean boys saying “H-WHAT? H-WHAT?” during class. It’s really quite disconcerting. I am sure they have no idea who Dave Chapelle is.
One thing I love about Korea is that, though they over-package EVERYTHING, much of that packaging is resealable. For example, the clear pastic envelopes that stickers come in have a sticky tab that you can pull up and re-adhere. So I can keep on using the plastic instead of throwing it away. It makes me feel like I am raping the earth just a little bit less.
So…I saw the Korean Lil’ John skit again, this time at 1:30a.m. on a TV in the all-night gim bap restaurant. Immediately preceding that skit, the three white-suited comics performed a choreographed routine to “Baby Got Back”. Now, I don’t know what it is about this song, but I keep hearing it all over town. It’s Kor-azy. It blasts from the speakers almost everytime I go to the gym; I have heard it blare from a storefront on the other side of the city. I hear the song downtown, inside stores, on the street. I don’t understand the phenomenon. I mean, I like big butts and I cannot lie, but what can be the reason behind the local popularity of this fourteen-year-old ode to the booty? The svelte profile of the average Korean lady does not match the body ideal proffered by this song. I suppose Korean brothers can’t deny the universal appeal of the junk in the trunk, whether the trunk be that of a Chevy or a Hyundai.
Can some kind soul in Canada send me the new Chad Van Gaalen album?
Pretty please?
Back from Thailand three days. I’ve finally recovered from the brutalising Thai massage I received on Monday.
Left Bangkok Friday night with Jeff and a gaggle of his friends for the beaches of Koh Samet, a two-hour bus ride and ten-minute speedboat trip from the city. We approached the island at night, stepping from the boat into the warm water and emerging barefoot onto the dark shore. We dropped off our stuff in cheap rented huts; no 5-star resorts these, the floor was cement and the water was cold. I also experienced bed bugs my second night. None of this mattered much, however, as we used our rooms only for sleeping.
I spent my beachy days in lazy languor, prostrate on the white sand, reading, staying in the shade, getting foot massage, staring up at palm trees, floating in the warm salt water, eating banana-chocolate rotis. Nights found us gorging on Thai and Indian food and wandering from outdoor bar to outdoor bar, inevitably joining up with all the other farangs and Thais at the Silver Sand. It’s a marvelous thing to be able to wander from an open dance floor on to the beach, into the night surf and back. A speciality of the bars on the island is buckets of booze: vodka/red bull, rum/coke, gin/tonic, mai tai, sex on the beach (what is in that anyway?) - whatever your concoction of choice may be, you can have it by the bucketful for 300 baht a pop. Jeff sucked back a number of these over the weekend but I wisely stuck to sampling Chang beer and chugging bottled water. Jeff and I discovered the reason for the smiling elephants’ mirth on the beer bottle label: they have discovered the eternally gushing font of Chang.
Back in Bangkok Monday, I elected to try some muscle rubbing at Jeff’s favorite Thai massage place. Not the blissed-out experience I’d anticipated; my massage lady may have had some pent up rage issues that she decided to vent upon my back. I cringed and clawed my hands into the mattress as she inflicted her attentions upon me, focusing her entire body weight onto thumbs dug deep. Aside from the pain, I understand why Thai massage is famous, particularly with the men; my girl didn’t just use her hands and her arms – she got in there with her elbows, knees, and feet. As I lay on my front, she trod fully on my derriere, and for one maneuver she even wrapped her legs around me from behind. In the end I was trashed. I could barely lift my arms when required to for the security scan at the airport the next day.
Monday night, my last in Bangkok, I made it out to the open market, fake Louis Vuitton bag heaven, which turned out to be very expensive. Apparently, because the king was born on a Monday, vendors are not allowed to sell on this day of the week, so only those who pay off the authorities get to do so, perhaps accounting for the prices. I did pick up some pirated DVD’s, including a bunch of Miyazaki animation and the complete season five of Six Feet Under. I also experienced the infamous Bangkok go-go bar, a whole street of which is adjacent to the market. Bikini-clad ladies line up on the stage, bopping to music and smiling down at the men on the floor. The “girls” wear numbers so that interested parties can request personal attention. As I sat ogling the display of flesh, my companion leant across and asked me, “So, which ones do you think are women?” Turns out, according to my friend’s highly-trained eyes, that the stageful of booty was comprised ENTIRELY of post-op transsexuals. Very pretty men! No wonder most farangs get fooled.
After experiencing the very touristy and relatively tame go-go bar, I made a mistake and asked, innocently, “Where can we see the go-go boys?” because, after all, if women (or women look-alikes) can shake theirs on a stage, certainly men can do so similarly in a Speedo. Bad move on my part. Our quest for go-go guys led us down a street of establishments with signs proclaiming “Fresh Beach Boys!” and the like. We had to brave a sea of Thai men employed by the clubs to entice clientele inside; we were constantly groped and grabbed at. We finally made it inside one of the clubs. After stepping beyond the black curtain and seeing some things I have NEVER SEEN BEFORE we quickly left. Our next quest was to find a place where the male models actually wore something. Ultimately though, we were disappointed; all the bars in the street felt uncomfortably creepy, quite a different vibe from that experienced in the go-go bar. I guess that for some things, there really is no equivalent for both men and women. Especially when it comes to sex.
My last night in BKK was marred by the sight of a young elephant on the sidewalk, paraded about the city streets by it owner to elicit cash from tourists. Seeing a lovely creature in such an obviously wrong environment – dirty city instead of jungle or open plain – was sad enough, but learning from Jeff that elephant owners will dope their animals with speed to keep them working all the time was a heart breaker. This was not one of the eternally happy Chang beer elephants, but instead an example of a modern reality.
On a lighter note, I realised that Bangkok Jeff possesses an uncanny rememblance to Hugh Laurie! So future blog posts may turn up references to Dr. House/the Prince Regent.
