how to not impress your co-workers in korea

this past wednesday the entire school staff left work around 1 in the afternoon to head to uslan, a decent sized town on south korea's eastern coast. the trip was presented as a "workshop" to wrap up the school year, but the only real item on our agenda was to eat sushi and throw back some bottles of soju. they're clever, these koreans, calling things one thing but meaning something totally different.

ulsan is about 2 hours away from daegu by bus which isn't terribly far. that's driving from inner-korea to a nice beach in the time it takes to get from cincinnati to columbus. see how easily you disappointment columbus? see how grandly you fall short of what two hours could be? you make me sick, columbus! sick! anyways, 2 hours isn't so bad, but the first thing i noticed when boarding the bus was the obvious lack of any sort of restroom. could be foreshadowing!

our first stop on our tour of ulsan was to visit the ulsan onggi museum. onggi is a traditional style of clay pot typically used to hold grains or other types of foodstuffs (although there was a particularly large example that was meant to be used as a toilet - i believe the placard said it was for the containment of human excrement to be exact). after a quick tour we headed to our second stop, a lighthouse on the eastern sea. although the korean teacher at my school taught me the name of the place about twenty times i can't recall it now for the life of me. it's apparently famous for watching the sun rise on new years because its one of the eastern most points of korea.

then onto the main event - fresh sushi and soju. korean sushi isn't really the same as the rolled style that most americans (myself included) are used to. chunks of cut up raw fish are brought out to you on giant leaves and you eat them with various dipping sauces. i'm a pretty big fan of sushi but for some reason korean style sushi just rubs me the wrong way. it's a little bland so it tends to be a mush of texture in your mouth unless you use one of the sauces (which im not a huge fan of). it might also be a subconscious aversion. the last time i had this style sushi was with the principal, vp, head teacher and p.e. teacher from my school. they fed me so much soju i had the worst hangover the next day - a pile of raw fish sitting in my stomach, sloshing around with korean rubbing alcohol. anyways, i still ate my share but i tried sticking mainly to beer as i thought it would help curb the uncomfortable memory of soju and sushi. try as i might though the principal would just not let me have my way and so soon enough we were slugging back shots of soju and slamming down glasses of poktanju, a bomb style drink with soju and beer. still, i don't think i drank that much and was relatively sober for the bus ride back. and yet, a bit of drunkeness was the least of my worries for that 2 hour voyage back to daegu.

rewind back to my first impression of our tour bus - no toilet. no toilet for two hours. admittedly, i am my father's son (which is a nice way of saying i have to pee a lot when i drink), but i've never had many problems when it comes to powering through a strong desire to take a leak. even now, im pretty sure i had some kind of bladder or kidney infection brought about by the potent mix of soju and fresh fish direct from the ocean. whatever the cause - infection or just too much to drink - i was soon bent over on the bus from the worst pain ever caused by the need to pee. it felt as if the whole of my insides would burst open and spray all over the other teachers. i begged my teacher to ask the driver to stop at a rest stop. this was about 30 minutes into the drive back.

we stopped but curiously, perhaps out of defiance for treating it with such neglect over these past few months and especially this night, my bladder would not cooperate. i knew i had to pee and yet so little was actually produced. disappointed and afraid, i headed back to the bus. after the rest the teachers decided it was my turn to sing a song (there was a built in noraebang in the bus, it was a noraebus). i wanted to go with something simple and quick that the teachers might be familiar with. i chose the song 'girl' by the beatles because i think its beautiful and i know the words. apparently i chose poorly. although i didn't find out until the next day, most of the teachers though the song was pretty flat and a little boring. my bad korea! i'm sorry i don't meet your karaoke expectations! did i mention my bladder had almost burst? did i mention my failure to properly address this problem?

fast-forward about an hour, through an excellent version of some k-pop song by my co-teacher ji won (apparently an accomplished and much admired singer), and here i am again, doubled over in my seat with terrible pains in my lower half. ashamed but helpless, i once again beg my co-teacher to ask the driver to stop. unfortunately we were only 20 minutes or so away from our destination and she doesn't see it fit to stop. i try to muster a bit of the british steel i've heard so much about but alas, i am american, not british at all, and it does not work. i am at my wits end. desperate things are about to transpire. if you have any pride in america i beg you not to read this next part. turn away. spare yourself the shame of one of your fellow citizens so that it might not also become your own.

not knowing what else to do, i suggested to my co-teacher, a small south korean mother of one, to-be of two, if it would be okay (as if its ever okay) to pee in a bottle in the back of the bus. yes! i did! and i did! everyone knew. there were no secrets on the bus that night. and although they all looked away, i feel it was not out of respect of my privacy, but in shame of what another human being had come to. only one teacher did not move. the same head teacher i had sushi with before. he was asleep in the back row from having had too much to drink. and as i peed in a bottle, he woke up, looked at me, gave me a knowing smile and said, "i understand." and went back to sleep. i feel that maybe he did understand. and in those few words, i felt the other teachers might also. either that or im just the freakish american now. what are you going to do aside from shrug it off and make a post about it so all the internet can read about your shameful korean experiences?

here are some pictures (none of me peeing in a bottle though):

the largest post box in south korea - i guess they have these sort of things too.

if you look into the distance you can see the beautiful smoke stacks of ulsan's industry centers

휘 (pronounced 'hwey') is the korean word for sushi. 게 (pronounced 'gae') is the korean word for crab. i was getting a korean lesson with fish sauce.

this is the first grade teacher who teaches me korean. her name is chun young-su. she's doing her best to introduce me to jesus although i keep trying to tell her i went to catholic school for 12 years. unfortunately she speaks about as much english as i do korean.

the p.e. teacher at my school and all-around good guy, kim hwan sun. we're drinking buddies. noraebus in the background.

*new* k-pop compendium: DJ DOC - i'm a guy like this

i dont know if im going to keep that entire title. its already annoying and this is post one. anyways, the idea of this segment is to introduce to some of my reading (and yes, neglected as of late) audience a taste of what is blasted at you every second of the day from every corner as you're walking through south korea. you could be walking through a farm in the country-side and i bet you would still hear the same five songs over and over blasting out of some hidden speaker in a corn husk.

first: a general thought on the current state of korean pop music. i don't want to sound like an asshole but its pretty obvious that most popular music being produced in asia is heavily motivated by what's been done in the states and other western countries. japan, for example, seems to have gone in the direction of synthesizers and electronic based pop music. korea, on the other hand, has latched aggressively onto the american hip-hop scene. so, as i go through some of these selections, you'll probably start to notice a lot of nods to the likes of missy elliot, gwen stafani, and 90's rap - especially the style/fashion.

okay! so my first selection here is in memory of the fantastic weekend i just had in seoul (shoutouts: connie, annie, kailey, joanne, andrew, lawrence, carolein, tony, miran, canadian dude, frenchman, makgeolli man, das rascists, etc.). this song is often played in tandem with LMFAO's shots (they have a really similar section that culminates in 'everybody' being shouted), but whereas shots is a really (really) stupid anthem to uh..shots, i'm a guy like this escalates into pure pop awesomeness. sure, you're watching the video and you're thinking, "this could be the worst thing i've ever seen. why would you even put this on a blog?" and i'll admit that the first 40 or 50 thousand times i heard it i was in the same boat. but right at number 50,001 something just clicks.

and it clicks right when they go into the "나 이런 사람이야" (it's the part that sounds like: na! ileon saram-iya!) section. it's an earworm. i don't even know what it means (although now that i know the title i'm thinking it means "i'm a guy like this" as the na part refers to "i" and "saram" means person - ie. miguk-saram means "america person" or "american" - whoa, long parenthetical) [rewind] i don't even know what it means but i find myself singing it all the time. it usually goes something like, "na! ileon saram-iya! arrest a kido! i need a shit-a! a centipede-a! (fading out...)something somethin somethin somethin somethin somethin ocho olay! (triumphant return!) na! ileon saram-iya!" etc. etc. also that beat is something straight out of a timbaland track.

apparently dj doc has been around since the 90's, which sort of explains how cornbread that dude looks with the curly hair and glasses (seriously, is he the other guys lame cousin who went to conservatory so they had to invite him), but the whole image is a big wtf? its like daddy yankee meets barenaked ladies. figure it out fellas! you can't be hip hop when half of your group belongs on the set of 'that thing you do' (maybe outkast would disagree). anyways, this was just an introduction. for the next installment i plan on taking a look at 2ne1, a real freakshow on this side of the pacific pond. but for now, here's dj doc doing i'm a guy like this:

♫: dolly parton - jolene (1974)

train keeps on a'rollin. its like kinetic energy on a frictionless plain. i can't stop this thing. content is just spewing from my fingertips like strained peas from a babies mouth (or bottom if we want to get really graphic, but let's not).

this is another music post long-time-coming. i fell in love with this song a little out of nowhere. shortly after it found a way into my karaoke rotation and for a few weeks in new york i think i drove my roommates insane listening to it and its various covers. i think i have a knack for attaching myself to songs whose protagonists are pitiful sad-sacks longing for something just out reach. and i guess this is the point where i wonder - "perhaps this suggests something about my own fragile place in this world? am i really the sad-sack? am i pitiful? am i always wanting what i can't have?" well i'm not going to give you the satisfaction of answering those questions. instead, i'm going to talk about this song.

the song's marching rhythm lends it something close to aggression towards the titular character, although you get the feeling that its a ferocity built out of fear rather than strength, like a cat backed into a corner. it's a far cry from the independent-woman-feminism of 9 to 5 parton. what i respond to most in "jolene" is the simplicity of the song's composition - a guitar, some drums and parton's vocals attached to a really fantastic melody. and the lyrics. again, nothing fancy, just a plea given in simple language ("and i can easily understand how you could easily take my man, but you don't know what he means to me, jolene").

do i get weird looks as i sing about losing my man to a more beautiful woman in the karaoke room? yes, obviously. but i don't care because i know there's at least one other person in the room who feels the same way i do when i hear this song. one person who can feel happiness slipping through their fingers as it crawls into someone else's. we all know that feeling. besides, i just really like singing it.

let's play with english

as i alluded to in my last post, all last week we had an english language experience (entitled, "let's play with english"), which meant all the classes had to try and introduce english into their lessons and we threw a big halloween party for every grade. i was responsible for helping the teachers create halloween themed games and activities for their classrooms and hosting the halloween party (with its own set of games and activities). this would have been fine if it was just for a day or two, but 5 straight days of halloween parties (1 party for each class in each grade, so 6 grades...that makes around...20 parties!) turned me into a teaching zombie. if there's an up-side at least it was appropriate for the lesson topic.

the main activity was a trick-or-treat game which loaded the kids up on candy (really it was only around 5 pieces each, but to them that's a lot), so regardless of whether they actually learned anything i think they had fun. but there were a few other games as well, such as a mummy wrap, a spider-web word game, and a zombie rock, paper, scissors game. most of the pictures are from the mummy wrap which involved only the first and second graders. they're the most photogenic of the bunch anyways.

and boom goes the dynamite

and once again i'm playing catch-up. where does the time go? well i'll tell you where the time goes - it goes into planning week long english learning experiences with a halloween theme, it goes into hours and hours of volunteer freelance design work for local foreigner publications, it goes into taking little cat naps here and there because i'm up until 2am working on things. and of course all that shit hits the fan at once, which as i'm sure you can imagine (imagine it! imagine that shit hitting the fan!), causes a real mess.

but that's all in the past now and i finally have a little time to fill you, my loyal readership whom i adore, whom i've neglected so cruelly, in on the various comings and goings in southern korea. i think calling it southern korea gives it a little more charm, like its a little folksy all the sudden. and thats the feeling i get from south (i mean southern) korea: folksy charm. moving right along...

two weekends ago i went to the busan international fireworks festival in...wow, you guessed it! busan! busan is on the southern tip of the country and in addition to being the second largest city it is the major shipping port of south korea. and now you know a little more about the friendlier korea. the busan international fireworks festival is supposedly the largest fireworks show in all of asia, which is boasting a lot since fireworks were pretty much conceived over here in the far east. the show lasts three days and is shot off the coast of gwangalli beach; a pretty unimpressive beach as far as beach standards go, but the neon city lights that surround the sandy coast and the large bridge that cuts through the bay make for a surreal coastal experience. it's pretty in the way that blade runner is.

generally speaking i'm not much for fireworks. maybe its the webn labor day crowds that rub me the wrong way (literally if i'm really unlucky), or maybe its the repetition of seeing the same arrangements and hearing the same songs every year? so i guess i went in with low expectations. we arrived at the beach around 4pm to get a good seat (the show didnt start until 9 but the crowds are pretty infamous) which turned out to be front row right in the sand. we had a little picnic and waited out the day as the people slowly but surely trickled in. and then piled in. and then crammed in. and then it was a massive ocean of bodies, impossible to move anywhere, our 3 spread out blankets were our home. the theme of the fireworks (maybe it changes every year or maybe it stays the same, i'm not sure) was continents of the world. the show was divided into segments, each segment representing a different continent. long story short, the fireworks were amazing. breath-taking even. i may be prone to hyperbole now and then but i actually had goosebumps. i felt choked up at times. the european section was particularly beautiful. golden explosions filled the sky in unison with the "1812 overture." darts of light sprayed out in perfect harmony with the strings of violins. the finale, an ode to busan itself, had the entire night sky so full of phosphorescent light that it completely blocked out the darkness. i took a video on my phone of the first 5 minutes or so - obviously not the best part but it shows the bridge over the bay and the lights and the fireworks and how they all worked together. enjoy. (next up: pictures from the halloween party aka. adorable kids wrapped in toilet paper and a not so adorable me)

what's buggin me about south korea

too many koreans! haha! just kidding, the koreans are great. if anything i want more of them. no, you see, the title of this blog post wasn't simply meant to invoke curiosity in the minds of my readers ("i can't wait to find out what it is! i'm going to read this right now!"), rather, it was also a clever pun as to what is actually the source of my frustration. my enemy has a name and it is drosophila melanogaster. or, as it's more commonly known: the fruit fly.


fruit flies are one of the most commonly used insects in the study of biology, genetics and physiology because they have short life spans, breed quickly, and lay more eggs than china has people. for these same reasons they are the worst house pest ever. i feel like my tiny little hole in the korean wall is especially suited for their reproduction - it's tiny so they can cover the entire area quickly, it's full of condensation for mysterious reasons i've yet to figure out (my jeans never get dry. i have to take an iron to them to finish them off and then they smell like stale water afterwards), and the lid to my food waste is an easy-to-penetrate swing top.

i guess it's my own fault. unaware of the looming fruit fly menace, i left some rotting fruit in my food waste bin maybe a few days too long. when i went to fetch the bag to put it in (the appropriate green colored) container outside, imagine my shock and horror to find the inside crawling with little uninvited guests that immediately shot out at me for invading their feeding/breeding grounds. i spent the rest of the night in bloody combat trying to rid my room of every last one of them. and when i did i was so happy. i thought i could rest. i thought i was done with it. lesson learned.

no! at the slightest sign of weakness they strike back with a vengeance! it's like they're storming the beaches of normandy, wave after wave, throwing themselves at me. and for what? so they can poop out a bunch of babies before their 10 day life span ends? 10 days! what is the point of anything that lives 10 days with the sole purpose of breeding?

if there is a silver lining to this whole experience, and there usually always is, it's that i've become extremely proficient at using this blue inflatable tube to eliminate the never-ending hordes of fruit fries. imagine, if you will, me pacing about the room with striking similarity to the lightsaber kid of youtube fame, swinging and stabbing and thrusting a blue tube through the air at invisible pests. it is as sad as it sounds.

anyways, for anyone else who has or is worried about having the same problem, here's an easy and effective fix to the fruit fry problem (god, i sound like some sort of nazi conspirator when i put it like that):

1) drink a bottle of beer/wine/coke - something with a long neck and small opening

2) put about an inch of coke/apple juice/vinegar/some kind of sweet liquid into the bottle

3) add about 3 drops of dish soap to break up the surface tension

4) leave the bottle in a "problem area"

5) wait a few days and then look inside the bottle, which should now be a mass grave for fruit flies.

6) repeat as necessary

♫: otis redding - these arms of mine (1964)

i can't believe i haven't made an otis redding post yet. have i? i'm pretty sure "i've been loving you too long" was meant to be the inaugural music post on here but i guess it slipped through the cracks. and now look what happens! i go and choose a completely different song. how i came about chosing this song is actually kind of funny. i decided to take a nap after returning home from the lantern festival yesterday and left the tv on. when i woke up a korean movie was playing. in the particular scene, a korean man was making love to a disinterested woman who was staring blankly at the ceiling. the music that happened to be playing during this awkward love making was this song, "these arms of mine." which is weird, because this song is not at all about awkward love. it's love is passionate, a little desperate even. my favorite part is the addition of the surfer/garage rock guitar that shows up in little teases throughout. (okay so i guess thats not really ha-ha funny...)