My old blog was too crusty

My old blog didn't allow for paragraph creation so I decided it was time to upgrade.

Today I'm mostly annoyed by my boss. Not that he's done anything really bad to me, but he's really just a pain in a paternalistic, authoritarian, insensitive, myopic, middle aged Korean businessman kind of way.

* He told one of our teachers that she should look for a good husband because she wasn't the working type!
* He also told her she shouldn't have got divorced, and that she was a silly woman. Despite the fact that he is divorced and has two kids himself!! Just lucky he has his mother to look after them. What a prick.
* He demanded that all the Korean teachers cook food for the BBQ last Saturday, telling them on Friday evening. Then, when they decided there was no time between getting off at 9:00 in the evening, and Saturday morning, so they would pitch in some of THEIR OWN MONEY and buy some stuff at Dong-A, he got really pissed and let them have it. Despite the fact that he lives with his mother and gets her to do that stuff for him.
* He is utterly and completely disorganized and never tells anybody about anything until the last minute, and then gets pO'd about it not working out. Or he is simply negligent, shows up late for pay day, and then calls people back to work, late in the evening because its not convenient for him to pay us the next day.
* He puts on this "kindly uncle" act with the kids which is really lame and phony. He wouldn't know how to play with a kid if he spent a year in a daycare.
* He constantly gives us inane and contradictory directions based on his careful research of looking into the classes for twenty random seconds every couple of days. "I want the kids to have more fun, and be engaged by the work. Oh, by the way I won't allow any more games, and you have to assign more homework." The man's obviously never taught for two seconds in his life. Oh, and he won't actually tell you himself, because then you might be able to defend yourself, but rather get his minions to come and tell you.
* One time he kicked a kid out of school, and was acting all tough, but then refused to do the hard part and actually phone the parents to tell them. The Korean teacher got that fun assignment.


Now he does have redeeming virtues, but they really should barely count as virtues except that so many other owners are ever bigger jackasses.

* He does actually pay us.
* He takes us out to dinner periodically.
* He usually doesn't insult us to our faces.

So all in all, despite the fact that I'm being culturally insensitive, I think I can safely say he is a capital porker.

A New Chapter

Well, Corie left. We went up to Seoul this weekend to drop her off at Incheon for the horrendously long trip back to Halifax, via Tokyo and Newark.

We had a good day visiting Mark and Jen at their awesome new digs in Seoul. Although their apartment is a bit smaller than their last, it is nice and has an vastly more excellent view. Their jobs sound enviable. Normal hours, and basically only a couple of classes a day. Mark apparently plays badminton all afternoon.



Obviously it was difficult to say goodbye at the airport. Its really wrenching, even for an insensitive and emotionally stunted clod such as myself. Especially after this year of living together and going through so much in such a strange environment together. I don't know what to expect living alone here. Its going to be a bit lonely... I'll be banging around in that apartment all on my own. Not that it won't have fringe benefits like having a whole single bed to myself. Too bad this couldn't have been in the summer ;-)



Anyway, Candace and Tammy were also up in Seoul for the weekend, so we all kind of travelled around together. We went up the tallest building in Korea (the 63 building) and drank vastly over priced cocktails at the top overlooking the conglomeration of Seoul at night. We even managed to get lost in the subway again, even with local guides, maintaining my perfect record.

We also fooolishly didn't reserve tickets on the KTX on Sunday night, meaning we had to wait for ages for a train. Makes me thank our lucky stars when Corie and I lucked out on Canada Day, squeaking in on the two last tickets.

Skip the Karaoke

Just head straight to the room salon.

Jeju-rama

Probably my last big trip has been to Jeju. The weather was kind of crummy, but apparently there was "heavy rain" in the Sea of Japan, so I guess we're lucky to have escaped with glumness rather than a rainy beach vacation. Jeju is pretty much the same as the rest of Korea, but with a slightly different landscape and slower pace. The trees were actually more similar to Canada even though its supposedly sub-tropical. There were palm trees, but I they were the minority among the other pine trees. Anyway, the beach was awesome. Excellent waves that beat us up. I have honest to goodness scrapes to prove it. Lots of weyguks around, and not all english teachers. The lack of traffic and people was great. I think this weekend has been almost the only time in Korea that the atmophere could honestly be described as "sleepy", but that might be Cheusok, and not Jeju. I'll have to ask Jeff.

It was so quiet that we were often the only ones in restaurants. Our first night there, Corie and I had a Korean ajuma spend her whole evening hovering over our table cooking our Galbi. In Daegu ours have begun to leave us alone, realizing that we at least know what to do. Its pretty uncomfortable after a while, but I'm defintely much more non-chalant about being waited on and laughed at than I used to be. She gave us hell about grilling kimchi, so i guess they're a bit more trad in Jeju.



We also visited Udo, which was just like a mini-Ireland but with Korean style roofs. I haven't seen so much rock, since, well, Ireland. We ate far too much galbi this weekend. And steak. And spicy chicken. Too much meat really, until the last two days when we ate too much Family Mart food, and realized far too late that we hadn't had a real meal or vegetables in the better part of three days. Anyway, on Udo we managed to catch the Ujuma olympics, as they all came tearing out of their tour bus, straight into the water for foot races, stockings and all.... Now that's entertainment.






We travelled with Chelsea and Ian, which is good, they always come up with good stuff to do... plus its easier to do more stuff in a group of four, rather than as a couple.

More entertaining too. Mr. Kim was good to us, gave us one extra day at the end of Cheusok. I'm sorry about the paragraphs, but this stupid site won't allow them for some reason. At least, it won't allow me to do them, which is my pet peeve if you really want to know.



They provided a good ego boost, and plenty of derisive laughter. Apparently their rip off travel agency booked them into our "memories of shag" (in more ways than one) hotel for two nights, at a cost only 5000 won cheaper than our three night stay. AND they got the room with the post in front of the window. Chalk one up for my excellent contacts at Happy Tours. Unfortunately this kind of contributed to their already low estimation of Korean culture, which was at the 8 month low ebb.



We hussled our way briefly into the giant 5 star hotels on the southside of the island, and even bit the bullet and ate in one, which was a refreshing change from the ajuma husslers of the previous nights. Its funny when they think you're staying there and they really try to suck up to you and display their excellent English skills. We really should have taken more advantage of this misunderstanding, ordering drinks, massages, and so one, but we're just too bashful to get away with it before we've stammered away the advantage.

Soccer Hooliganism

Finally, our long awaited chance to improve our beating skills and make ethnic and racial slurs, all in the name of good fun.

It came this past Sunday as part of the East Asian Football Championships, or some other equally glamorously named event. We headed up to the World Cup Stadium for the clash of the Communist titans, as China beat the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in a pretty good game, that North Korea really should have crushed the Chinese, but somehow just couldn't connect. I guess that's the trend these days, the Chinese are on the up and up, today's Zeitgeist, and nobody's quite got them figured out... there's no stopping them. Oh the horror.

After that the local interest really kicked in as our own ROK heroes were matched up against the horrific Japanese. The fans were impressively decked out uniformly in red and making solemn declarations about the sanctity of East Sea rocks. Not that great a game, and Japan managed to score in the 84th minute.



In the end China seems to have "won" the tournament, and received copious medals and fireworks. Interestingly, the South Korean audience still has strong affinity for the North Korean team, and cheers them on vigorously. Other than that, this is a long weekend, and we may head down to Busan for the occasion to sample their excellent Indian cuisine, and marvel at the Sea of People that is Haeundae Beach in August. Apparently they jack up the prices around the board, and lines everywhere are even longer than usual, so it should make for a rollicking good time. We can marvel at the phenomenon of Koreans bathing fully attired. (Though in a quirk of fate, yet to be worked out, even polite Koreans have deemed it acceptable to swim in bathing suits at indoor pools and amusement parks, and completely naked in jinja-bongs (although I do realise that jinja-bongs are segregated).)

Japanese Shopping

Undoubtedly our favourite shops in Japan.

Kyoto and further

For a mid summer trip we picked Osaka/Kyoto.

Japan continues to astound me, as it did on my Visa run. Corie was also blown away. She's thinking about joining up! Anyway, Osaka was nice, in the way that Fukuoka was, but Kyoto brought things to a whole new level. Some parts of Kyoto are just a huge park pracitically with temples and shrines of all sorts just thrown in here and there.

One day we took a break from Kyoto and decided to take a train trip to the coast for some beach action and scenery at Takeno, which was described in our trusty little guidebook. Unfortunately the book didn't quite make it clear how crazily long the train trip from Kyoto was. We had no real idea which train to take, as it wasn't clear where on Earth Takeno station was. So to begin with we guessed, and then were forced out, fortunately in the right place. We gave in to asking, and though he didn't speak English a pleasant conductor made it pretty clear which train to get on next, but he seemed a bit agitated about it, and couldn't explain why. Fortunately we worked out that this involved yet another transfer at a specific point further down the line.



Around this point was when I really came to appreciate my halting and inadequate ability to read Korean as the massive advantage that it really is. Japanese is now just as impenetrable as Korean was when I first arrived, and I'd really forgotten how discombobulating it is to have absolutely no idea where to go. Anyway, we enlisted further help, and managed to get off at the second transfer, waiting for the final leg in a rickety little single track train. Unfortunately this was local, which only went every hour or so. So, by the time we actually got out to the coast we'd waited pretty much 4 hours. Needless to say we were quite famished. Again it was a bit of an ordeal to find an appropriate place to eat, but I've never appreciated Japanese food more.


The beach was nice, but really the best part was just the trip out to the Japanese country side which is beautiful. The trees are tall and not unlike some in BC. The farms are quiet and nice.

We also ran into a bunch of drunken Japanese businessmen and women on the train home, puking all over the place! The binge drinking seems real!





We wound up being in Osaka at the same time as Ian and Chelsea, completely at random. So we hooked up with them on our last night, and went out for some good Thai food and drinks with them. They'd spent most of their time in Osaka, and they were equally impressed with all things Japanese. I know that people who actually wind up living in Japan seem to lose this veneration, but it seems to come to almost all korean ESL teachers. Mostly because japan is so many things that korea is not, which is its strength, and its weakness. The people are quiet and generally leave you alone more than in Korea. Everything reeks of order and money, unlike Korea which reeks of speed and hard work.