Saving Face

It's Sunday evening, and the end of another slow weekend here in Bundang. My first 3 months in Korea have involved a good mixture of tourist-based activities and good old-fashioned bar hopping with with newfound friends. What can I say? You take your culture with you when you travel. Last night I spent a very relaxing time with Matt and West (both laid-back Oregonians) down by the Tancheon. It was a warm evening and there was just us and a large bottle of soju, along with our free flowing English conversations about work and expat life punctuating the sounds of the river.

I am going into my final week of semester at school. I finished teaching classes a week ago and have since been putting together a program for the unlucky few students who get handpicked by their homeroom teacher to join me for a further 2 weeks of schooling during summer. And at the end of this week I am joining the other teachers to go on "teacher camp." I will be bussed to the city of Cheongju (or Jeonju, I didn't hear Lucy properly) on Friday for an evening of God knows what with the rest of the Imae Elementary staff who weren't fast enough to think of a good excuse to avoid it. I am not exactly looking forward to this, but experience tells me these things are about attitude and if I attempt conversation with some staff members then the evening might whizz by quicker than I imagined. The problem is, I've been super grumpy for the last 4 weeks and it's obviously showing on my face: even the sandwich girl told me I need to smile. You make concessions away from home: if anyone ever told me that in Australia, I made a mental note to avoid them for the remainder of my life. However, Korea isn't the place to stage a little tanty. Expressing opinion equals making yourself look arrogant and is foolish. Lying in order to preserve the status quo and prevent disharmony, on the other hand, are values that Koreans regard very highly. Fortunately, I am just passing through the Hermit Kingdom on my way to cultures which came out of their metaphorical shell years ago.



A Doosan batter prepares to belt the Kia pitcher out of the park

Remember Stephen? You may remember him from earlier blog entries including that one where we went to Seoraksan National Park or the one where we watched Korea play Ecuador in Seoul just before the team left for South Africa. Well, we still hang out from time to time, but I think we've found our own groups of friends that are closer to our respective ages and with whom we have more in common in life. Anyway, it was his birthday on Thursday so a group of us went to Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Seoul to watch the Doosan Bears play against the Kia Tigers. The baseball teams here in Korea are all named after (and owned by, I think) the major conglomerates of the country. The conglomerates are the mega-businesses like LG, Samsung and Lotte who diversify time and time again and so often own all parts of the production and shipping and sale and maintenance of a product. Lotte are primarily a department store like David Jones. They also make a lot of foods which you can find in convenience stores, they run a chain of fast food stores called Lotteria, and they have their own amusement park called Lotte World. Doosan is a construction company but I'm not sure if they have their own fun park.



The author poses with the Doosan team mascot.

A Most Interesting Post About Air Conditioners

The humidity in Seoul today is at 84%. I've not experienced this before. There were days when I was younger, playing cricket near Penrith somewhere, where the mercury rose to somewhere beyond 40 celsius, and the coaches from each team agreed we would have a waterfight at lunch. In those days, in the dry heat of the southern half of Australia, cool water on our skin brought relief. Actually it washed away the sweat which also would have helped in time but I think you'll agree that it's far more enjoyable to dump an esky full of iced water on your wicket-keeper than to sit around keeping still and hoping to catch a breeze.

Here the relief is obtained primarily through air conditioners that draw the humidity from the air. In this country I tend towards sweating like the metaphorical blind lesbian at a fish market, then arrive at school after my morning walk along the Tancheon stream looking I've been swimming in it with my clothes on. So when they told me the other week that I now had permission to crank up the LG, I was making a beeline for it every morning without even the most perfunctory nod of the head to my fellow staff members and drying out underneath it for the first 5-10 minutes of my day. Early on in my residency, however, I have learned through anecdote and experience not to overuse them. Why? Primarily because the extremes of temperature and atmosphere one experiences between the air-conditioned room and the greater outdoors of Seoul are enough to cause respiratory problems. Maybe that's not a common thing and has only affected me because I am deeply sensitive by nature ;-) I don't know, but whatever the reason, I find it better to go a/c moderately and short term only. Koreans mostly set their a/c on 18 degrees celsius, the lowest they will go. That's too freakin' cold for me and I won't go that low.

And I never thought I'd use those particular words.

Many superstitious Koreans believe in a phenomenon dubbed "fan-death." They hold that if one is to fall asleep in a room with no windows open and a fan trained on their face, they will suffocate in their sleep. This conclusion was reached by scientists of this country who found that if there is no fresh supply of oxygen entering the room (through the open window), the blades of the fan will then chop up the existing supply and leave the slumberer with no oxygen to inhale. A friend of mine recently attempted a Buddhist temple stay. She did the harry during the night however, because the grandmothers of the group adhered to the notion of fan death and kept getting up to turn off her fan in the unreasonably hot dormitory. Koreans. I love them. I love this country. My cab driver watches tv. He does this while he does a u-turn across 8 lanes of traffic. That won't kill you. He has luck you see? But fans. Kill you? Yes, they will. Watch fans. Death traps. Korea knows. No luck there. It's science. Korean science. The same kind as this:

http://technology.newsplurk.com/2010/06/south-korea-rocket-explodes-in-blow-to.html

Now I'm not suggesting anything so calm down. So before you fill up my inbox with all kinds of accusations of hatred and opposing land rights for gay whales know that some of my best friends are gay Korean whales currently fighting for their government over the issue of - yep, you guessed it - land rights. Ha!

The Heat of Seoul

It's hot and humid here in Seoul, though the famed monsoon rains haven't started yet. Personally I am excited by the prospect of witnessing these heavy downpours but friends who have been here in previous summers say they are no fun at all. They say the force of the downpour is like an assault and that the back splash goes all the way up to your knees. So far this Summer we've had the one evening of heavy rain on the weekend of June 12 and 13 but nothing else to speak of: we must have some catching up to do once the rains actually do begin.

At school everyone in my staffroom is stressed out and cranky as they do the jobs of 3 people while attempting not to upset the demands of anyone higher up on the food chain. The kids have gone apeshit on cue as I was warned they do in Summer and I last saw my co-teacher a week ago while waiting in the queue for rice rations in the canteen. She's broken out with that skin irritation she gets when she's doing too much again and even the usually placid and calm and Christian Seon Ah is beginning to bring the kids back to the staffroom and snap at them in rapid-fire Korean. Paradoxically, it only adds to her allure. I must piss her off tomorrow.

Everyone needs a break. More to the point they need a better working culture; one that's more efficient and flexible, but I'm not about to start proselytising here because it's too hot. I have an analytical mind up until 30 degrees celsius after which the only thing I'm analysing is how best to avoid noisy and crowded places. Which perhaps makes a primary school in Seoul an odd place for an extended stopover.

Meanwhile I'm sitting around drinking Maxim and checking Facebook every hour. Lunch time was nice because I got to see some human people but now I'm back to the virtual kind again. I'm starting to consider Lady Gaga and the fat prick from Masterchef as my closest friends. Ninemsn has followed me here you see. For every part of your culture that you think is tremendously valuable and you don't want it ever to change, like ABC Classic FM, there is something like Ninemsn that has you claiming you are actually a Kiwi.

The big difference around here is that suddenly no one is interested in the World Cup due to South Korea's timely departure on Saturday night. I was interested to see how many football fans Korea has as opposed to the myriads who went out and bought Manchester United shirts, Spice Girls cds and gelled their hair like David "Pepsi" Beckham after the Korean team captain Park Jisung made headway at Old Trafford in the last few years. True, Koreans go kimchi for their national team, but now that they have been knocked out, the bubble has burst. The Korean media shall now return to doing what it does best. And I haven't got a clue what that is because I only ever look at the pictures. It's quite "CNN" in style, which I don't favour, but at least this isn't the North: this afternoon I saw a media clipping from North Korea which trumpeted their victory over Brazil in the World Cup. I can't believe how close this society is to me. Geographically, I mean.

Just a bit earlier today, I was revising the ideas in George Orwell's 1984. One of the memorable quotes was something like (I can't be exactly sure - my memory's not that great), "If everyone believes something to be true, does that make it real?" If, therefore, the mind is convinced - indeed if all minds are convinced - then does it follow that reality no longer matters? Being away from home has made me more keenly aware than ever before of the philosophical traditions of the west and its theoretical commitment to truth. I think it was Tolstoy who, when urged to convert back to the church shortly before his death paraphrased the Old Testament as follows: "even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six."

And can I just rather arrogantly claim that it was a similar sentiment that I felt when deciding whether or not to leave Sweden earlier this year. I mean, I'm no Tolstoy, but I can't accept convenience over what I believe to be true.

And I don't really know how that started. If my Dad is still reading then I'm Kim Jong-Il.

It is predicted to cool down a little tomorrow.

In Which Lachlan Begins to Dump on His Host Culture

I'm losing him. That Korean "pulse" I referred to a few weeks ago has grown faint and I am left to make and move to my own rhythm. I won't bother with metaphorical CPR - Korea hasn't changed of course. I'm not that egocentric, after all. But life here suddenly appears dull, conservative, rigid, patriarchal. There are ways to do things in Korea and you do the same or you are criticised or ostracised. It is a nation struggling to make the decision of what to accept from "the West" and what to discourage, or flat out deny the existence of. The posing and the gestures and the manufactured cool from the pop musicians are all identical to those at home for instance, but there is no way these performers could ever corrupt the youth, whereas at home, however uncool it may be, it has briefly crossed my mind that they might. Here, they just have the images.


The path beside the Tancheon River which I take to school every morning. this was a particularly clear day. (I have seen two since my arrival.)

The change is within me. I go along with the suggestion that personality is a fluid thing, no matter how frequently I strive to appear consistent. The part of me that felt a strong Korean pulse two weeks ago is on leave. Consequently I am dreaming of other places that have a soul that speaks straight back to mine, whilst living in a land of proud, rigid citizens, who make for truly awful pedestrians. Yes, as my friend West has stated, "for a nation of people whose primary mode of transportation is walking, they're not very good at it!!!" It's the old people, mostly. They get on a line on the path down by the river, and they are not moving. You are. Or you will land in the river and get carried away to the Hangang and Seoul itself.


The school yard and school building. Each lunchtime, this yard fills with 700 screaming Korean kiddies.

I can excuse this behaviour to an extent: space is a luxury here, and Koreans are so used to being shoulder to shoulder with each other that minor bumps on public transport or in markets (or by the river) doesn't even warrant an apology. Consequently they're not used to moving for you. Trains during peak hour are like those images you've seen of Tokyo. No one talks yet they communicate somehow. The old shuffle and nod. Men fall asleep and dribble on you. Women hold their handbags against their arses as they exit the subway so their meagre skirts don't treat the younger men, also dribbling, to a free show of Korean panties. There is no chewing gum and absolutely no graffiti. Trains always stop at precisely the same spot and run every 3 minutes apart during peak hour. I've never run for a train over here. The government combats the growing problem of youth suicide at subway stations by constructing massive transparent screens with sliding doors that correspond exactly to the doors of the arriving train. If you want to kill yourself, you'll have to go elsewhere.

My eye was just captured by vision of a young couple fighting in an apartment across from my window. She got so worked up that her loose-fitting shirt nearly fell down. Talking about free shows... Regardless, I cannot look indiscreetly now: my blinds are open and lights are on. Ah, now they've closed their blinds and will conduct their Korean imperfections the usual way: out of sight of the foreigner. I have heard stories of guys fighting like polecats in an alleyway, only to stop and grin as the foreigner suddenly comes into view. Everything is perfect here you see. Divorce happens though. Or people don't get married. Or God forbid, they are homosexual. There are just a number of standardised fictions to explain these situations without having to face them. I wonder how many Koreans know that it is futile to try to set my Korean co-teacher up with anyone because she is already in a relationship with a man 15 years her senior? She keeps it silent because she doesn't want to marry him. I wonder if he knows that? I hope so.


The view from my staffroom.

The fiction I particularly can't stand is the one about Korean students being amongst the most respectful young learners in the world. We were told this before we arrived here and I can only assume it was made up to encourage us to sign up. I don't think a Korean student will call me names or hit me or challenge me unless it is about the material, but the endless talking amongst each other, the fighting and the general unruliness of my little mites is highly disrespectful in the classroom. I am currently struggling with the question of how much control I want to exercise over them. I know I can introduce routines and act like the successful Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop, once he'd imposed the self-regulating system on his class, but my instinct, which was to go with treating the students as if they had maturity and to use persuasion, is still the one I use now. My instincts were wrong. Individually, I've got some great kids in my classes, but put together they become a herd, and I am forever herding cats. I approach a table to put out a fire and 6 more break out behind me, Then I've lost the class and I'm telling them to put their hands on their heads. Then I'm explaining how their behaviour is unacceptable. I'm thinking of making this routine into a powerpoint presentation. They love the slideshows, and they rightly assume that computers have greater authority than teachers from strange, non-American countries. In fact there is grumbling in the ranks that my accent is too difficult for the little mites to understand. So it seems as if semester 2 is going to involve:

a) Me using fewer words (bloody words - they interfere with the audio/visual output anyway, who needs them?);
b) More powerpoint slideshows (I didn't actually think this were possible);
c) Less learning (research shows that when students are learning their teachers aren't perceived as being cool);
d) Less English (the students already know it anyway: they just pick out the keyword and shout it over and over. And over.

Anyway, this is my view, from the pulpit:



The classes I take usually have 35 students each. Capturing the attention of these little mites for 40 minutes at a stretch is a struggle and if I get 2 or 3 more students talking other than the "hagwon" kids (private academies) then I consider it a decent class.

If on the other hand, Audrey Tautou, suspended on angel wings, flies through the window halfway through class and says to me, "Will you follow me?" then I consider all of my lesson objectives to have been met at once.

I go to Thailand in 39 days. Yes. Then it's just a hop skip and jump until the Chuseok holiday. I rather think I can do this.

Creatus Hiatus

I haven't forgotten about my blog. In fact I wrote for 2 hours on Wednesday afternoon and decided I didn't want to publish after I'd finished ranting and raving. I was having a bad day you see...

In part though the reason for not posting anything new is that I don't have any good photos to put up. How it is that I go to watch the first Korean match of the World Cup in Seoul Plaza in which 100 000 people show up in the pouring rain and don't get a single noteworthy photograph I can't explain, except to say it might have been hazardous to get my camera out amidst dodging all of that traffic while perched on the median strip in the middle of the 6 lane road halfway to heading back to the Family Mart for the third time to get more beer. Yeah - Family Mart - I know. They sell soju by the truckload! Perhaps this is how many of the families begin? "Darling, it might be the soju talking, or the way your eyes are reflecting the moonlight..." Maybe they should give away free prophylactics with every bottle sold? Then it would be the Family Planning Mart I suppose? So many questions...

That's your blooming lot. You are not getting any gossip out of me in this brief installment (I'd have to make it up anyway). I leave for Thailand in 41 days and am finally getting excited about it, particularly now that my first semester classes are finishing. But, I'm most excited about the trip to China in the Winter which I have just started to plan with my new friend Kristin. I work in Korea in order to get out of it in my time off. I suppose this reflects my biggest shift of heart since I last wrote: the effort has gone out of trying to like the culture here so I'm not really concerned about fitting in either. I'll probably pack my bags after 12months here as well, and it is exciting once more to plan where I will go next!

Olympus Camera Rocks!

Hi.

A milestone: last night I ordered my first meal using Korean words and not gestures. At the end of the meal however, I was sure to give the cook the thumbs up. I have learnt the various words for "good" but I have also forgotten them as well. These new pieces of information in my mind keep getting nudged sideways by the discovery of more important things, like ABC Radio livestreaming, or the travel agent in Itaewon who just sold me a ticket to Koh Samui.

That's right, I've applied for a week off in early August, and will travel with my new pal West (another Oregonian), staying in a bungalow on Big Buddha Beach for a week. English Camp finishes on the Friday afternoon (July 30), after which I'll shoot straight on over to Incheon airport for an evening flight to Thailand, then a connection to Koh. The plan, at this stage: lie on the beach for a week. We're gonna hire mopeds at one point. There may be the sampling of cocktails as well. Have a holiday basically. Get out of Korea.

I've divvied up my holidays into one 1-week period in summer and one 3-week period in winter. Now that I have my multiple re-entry visa, I'm free to travel to and from Korea as I see fit (and as I can afford) until April next year, when I must renew for another year or skedaddle. The plan, still, is to backpack through China and see some of its highlights during the 3-week winter holiday period, taking advantage of cheap trains to travel the vast distances of the middle kingdom. I am also toying with the idea of spending a weekend in Japan (flights are cheap, and quick), and there are certainly plenty of things in Korea that I still want to see, many of them in the south. The southern city of Gyeongju was once the capital during the Silla Dynasty (which stretches back to the BC period) and was thankfully spared the ravages of bombings during the Korean war. Therefore, the city is known these days as an open-air museum and you can walk amongst Silla temples and burial mounds.

I am also gonna put my name down for a tour of the DMZ - something that didn't interest me much before I arrived but which now seems like an opportunity not to be missed. Of particular interest to me is the Third Infiltration Tunnel: the north's attempt to dig their way into the south and mount a surprise invasion. They had already attempted this one twice before (hence the name), this time painting the rocks of the wall black in order to support their claim that they were innocently mining for coal. Of course! And I went to a chess club with Kim Jong-Il!

On a side note, I frequently have to stop myself from singing his "I'm Ronery" lament out loud: in the office, on the streets, in my house. Seriously, the walls are so thin. While shaving this morning the guy next door echoed my tap-tap-tapping of the razor on the sink. Strange to live so crose and yet both be so ronery...



Moving right along. I seized the opportunity to complete my walking tour of Seoul on Wednesday when public servants all over Gyeonggi province enjoyed the day off due to to the council elections. Teaming up with the delightful Kristin, I finished the second half of the tour at a leisurely pace, while the old Olympus didn't miss a beat. We saw a number of things that have been on my list since I arrived. Sejongno, the "main street" of Seoul's Gwanghwamun area and home to the statues of Admiral Yi Sun-Shin (above) and of King Sejong (below) is worth a second visit as there are museums in the vicinity which we didn't have time to enter. I've also befriended a restaurant owner in the area who serves up a pretty good bibimbap and who repeatedly asked if I wanted a "pocko." "Pocko? Pocko? Pocko pocko?" She meant fork. I told her not to patronise me. You should see me with a pair of chopsticks now: I'm amazing, if I don't say so myself. If I go home with nothing but excellent chopstickery then I'll consider this trip, well, a complete waste of time.



Moving on again. Yi Sun-Shin was the admiral who back in the late 16th century commanded Korea's naval victories over the Japanese. Using tactics reminiscent of the Battle of Salamis some 2000 years earlier, he lured the numerically superior Japanese into the straits of Mokpo and blasted them out of the water with his fleet of "turtle ships" - which he designed, the clever bugger!

Now Sejong on the other hand was the fourth king of the Joseon dynasty, which got underway in 1392 and crumbled with the surrender to the Japanese in 1910. He was the King who developed the Hangeul alphabet - the written language of Korea still in use today. Until Sejong, the Confucian elite of Korea had shoe-horned Korean sounds into written form using Chinese characters, which are far more difficult to learn than an alphabet with a finite number of components, like ours. In this way they kept the uneducated peasants in their place as nobody without an extensive grasp of the classics and a lengthy education (i.e. a lot of money) was able to become literate, and therefore qualify for the best jobs (like teaching English in Bundang). China has always been venerated in Korean history and I don't think the development of Hangeul meant that Chinese was suppressed, as you would expect from one of our more dynamic Western societies. You still see a lot of official documents and even buildings with Chinese script on them now.















Kristin was accosted by some locals wanting to ask her questions about English, after which we strolled along and stumbled upon the changing of the guards at one of the temples in Gwanghwamun (although I like to think of this as the Sejongno Dunkin' Donuts Grand Opening.) This was the band that went with the guards. As well as drums and cymbals and bells, the bands consist largely of these bugle-like instruments which make a very piercing sound. The music has a middle eastern flavour to it (mmmm....souvlaki...) and this marked the first time I was able to listen to it without wincing. I heard the melody of the bells underneath for the first time and was able to place the wailing bugley thing more appropriately in the overall presentation.

After a stroll through the 24 hr Namdaemun markets, adjacent to the site where the great southern gate of Sungnyemun once stood (some nutter burnt it down 2 years ago: it had marked the southern extreme of Seoul since the 14th century), we went searching for the old Seoul station, which took forever to find, mostly because it was hidden beneath a giant potato sack. The old station isn't exactly a beloved structure of Seoul: it was constructed by the Japanese colonial administration, and definitely appears more "western" than anything else of the time in Seoul (the Japanese generally embraced western architecture and clothing more than the Koreans, who didn't embrace them at all). So when we walked around the site where it should have stood yet couldn't find it, I thought it may have been pulled down. It's still there but undergoing renovations. Currently it attracts the homeless of Seoul. Compared to Sydney, there aren't many of them. And according to Kristin, it wasn't anything like the US either.








Not a very clear picture I know, but I'm afraid you don't have much of a choice in Seoul. Even though this started as a clear day (the second since my arrival!), by the time we had reached the top of Namsan tower the dust and the smog had rolled in, somewhat obscuring our vision of the general sprawl of Seoul. But I assure you that even on a clear day all you can see is buildings in every direction! Making me all the more homesick for this place of fine sands, clear skies, fresh air and quite nice people:





















And I took note of that homesickness. And I paused. And then I saw this:

Olympus Camera Blues

It's the end of May, 2010, and the big news in Korea is the tragic death of Different Strokes star Gary Coleman. The pint-sized hell-raiser was believed to have been reaching for another implement with which to bludgeon his wife when he fell from the chair he was standing on. All those years ago, Willis may well have been talkin' 'bout occupational health and safety, but Coleman clearly wasn't taking notes. And it's clearly too late now.

Yesterday I found myself seated next to a Korean-American who hated Germans: only in Itaewon! Perhaps I should have done the right thing and probed to find out where this random irrationality came from, maybe encouraged him to see something exceptionally prosaic and twee, yet true, like "not all Germans are the same." But it was hot, and I was tired, and he was a dickhead, so I just told him that I hated them too. Dickhead.

Then, later, while lost in the hills around Itaewon, some Australian girls I ran into pointed the way back to the main strip, where I had a beer with them and talked about vegemite and Steve Waugh. The twins also wouldn't stop banging on about their celiac disease, wedging it into every topic we covered (seriously, this is a skill I'd overlooked until then, and no I didn't know Steve Waugh had multiple dietary intolerances) but it was okay when delivered in that long neglected husky nasal accent that has you sounding like a cross Tom Waits and Jeannie Little. Oh, dahhhling...

I DID NOT WATCH THE BERT NEWTON SHOW ON SICK DAYS!!!!

The plan was to do the tourist icons of Seoul on foot, take the pictures, and later blog about it instead of spending the weekend in the pub. Conveniently (ahem!) - I mean alas - the battery of my camera ran out of juice within half an hour. Woof! So after the major palace complex at Gyeongbokgung, I glimpsed the statue of Admiral Yi Sun-Shin and the Statue of the Hammering Man, ordered a cheap bowl of bibimbap and whopped out the old Lonely Planet, resolving to go searching for a pair of cheap sunglasses in Itaewon, the foreigner's enclave.

Oh yeah, and I could always cool off with an cold imported beer in a pub if the desire took me.



This is the main palace of Geunjeongjeon at Gyeongbokgung. It was the major seat of power during the Joseon dynasty, which stood from 1392 and ended with the Japanese invasion of 1910. It was rebuilt in 1865, after lying in ruins for nearly 300 years after the Japanese occupiers burnt it down. (Relations between Japan and Korea are still sketchy). Further to the north in the palace complex lies the structure Gyeonghoeru, a raised pavilion set on an artificial lake. Kings went boating on this lake, which strikes me as being a bit poxy, mostly because it is smaller than Lake Alexandra in Mittagong. Nonetheless, this pavilion looks remarkable at night. I know. I've seen postcards of it.



I aim to search for a retailer that will sell me another battery for my camera. My intention is to go back one sunny day and take pictures of these landmarks of Seoul. There really is some cool stuff here which is worth recording. The subway during peak hour is also something to behold.

Last weekend I took off with my friends Joelle and West (who I'm going to Thailand with - bring on August!!!) and checked out some of the more famous temples in Seoul. I think Bong-Eun-Sa was the best because of its tranquility amongst the madness of the rest of Seoul. The picture below is of the 3 giant Buddhas at Jog-ye-sa temple, right in the middle of Seoul, near Insadong. It was "Buddha's Birthday" on Friday the 21st so the temples were decked out in their finest.



See you next week! We have a day off for the council elections (known locally as the "erections") on Wednesday. I aim to do something constructive. Like go and take pictures of stuff.