Nancying in the Powder Room. Bathhouse Ballads
A Bathhouse Ballad
In this particular bathhouse (목욕탕) you can sit in the ebente-tang (이벤트탕) and watch the men and boys nancying about in the little ‘powder room’ that are provided in all bathing establishments. This particular ebente-tang doesn’t have any added aromas or coloured water and you might be forgiven for wondering why indeed it is even called an ‘ebente-tang,’ until the pool starts frothing and chomping quite crazily. The jets of water from inside the pool, should you be unfortunate enough to be sat over one as it starts and you fart, are powerful enough to administer a surprise enema. As I’m being buffeted by the jacuzzi jets, I’m busily watching three middle-aged men in the ‘powder room.’ All are stood, independent of each other and two are in straddle stances, or in what martial artists would recognise as a ‘horse stance.’
A 'wushu' version of the 'horse stance'
Traditionally, this stance is used to strengthen the legs and as a position from which to practice various blocks and strikes. As a combat stance it is redundant as it renders a male a potential gelding should a strike to the groin be forthcoming. Don’t forget, the men in the ‘powder room’ are totally naked. Rather than blocking and striking, feet rigidly anchored to the ground, both men are drying their sack and crack with hairdryers. I’m thinking they must have studied at the same school because despite all the variations of horse stance, both are in identical style, technique and positions. Most likely it’s a taekwondo derived stance as it is much higher than in the Chinese version above yet not as high as the one featuring Bruce Lee (이소룡), below. This version is in-between.
이소룡 (Bruce Lee) practicing the sack 'n' crack stance.
The accompanying arm movements are identical: first the dryer is held pointing at the sack ‘n’ tackle before being swung between the legs to windy the crack area. The latest event in the tub, an eruption, has quelled and I’m chuckling to myself as a third man in the ‘powder room’ demonstrates his technique. Clearly, he has been trained in a totally different school. After fiddling with one of the big fans on the long dressing table, angling it into the required position, he turns, get into a straddle and bends over, parking his exposed butt in the fan’s stream. The technique is very different but the stance is identical to that of the other two men and with head almost touching the floor, the fan is probably capable of drying his sack ‘n’ crack all at the same time.
Jeez, Korean men are such ponces! That’s why I like them. Back in the UK, a room such as this would terrify most westerners not just because you nancy about in it naked, but because the purpose of the room involves preening oneself. Actually, I much prefer the safety of the ebente-tang to watch how different men occupy themselves in this task. I never stay long in the ‘powder room,’ not because I don’t like being naked in front of other men, but because I don’t like being naked in front of myself, and like most ‘powder rooms,’ the walls are covered in mirrors.
All the flaws of being western are magnified in the array of mirrors and bright lights. Our skin tone tends to be more varied; my face is slightly ruddy, my buttocks lily white, my forearms as tanned as any Koreans and my neck brown. The rest of my body is whitey- pink, like a giant maggot. Then there’s the hair; back hair, chest hair, arm hair and leg hair and it’s all different in colour, texture and shape. My arm hair is smooth, my chest hair a little coarser and the hair on my back is somewhat like the hair on the backs of my arms, long and straggly and the sort of hair a neanderthal might have. I can’t stand looking at myself in those mirrors and always find the ‘powder room’ a little stressful.
All that hair. Yuk!
I touched on the subject of body hair several months ago, in relation to living in an environment free of carpets. It’s only in this type of environment that you realise just how much hair we shed. I am not especially hairy and I sweep my floor everyday with one of those magical wipes to which hair and fluff adhere. Despite this, I find hair everywhere. I’ve found them in the fridge, freezer and only a few days ago I was eating a slice of water melon when what I thought was a little crack on my plate, was in fact a pubic hair. I’m 54 and have a full head of hair non of which I see anywhere, but pubic hair, chest hair and those unsightly, straggly back of arm and back hairs, get everywhere. Korean bodies are so much nicer, more alike in proportions, colour and apart from having pubes that are long enough to perm and which often seemed to be straight rather than curly, are usually pretty hairless. Hair, its antediluvian and barbaric! As I get older I notice my eyebrows becoming wilder and if I don’t trim them I start to develop antennae. Nasal hair is a bugger but is kept at bay with regular burst from a cigarette lighter. And I dread getting ear hair as that looks especially alien.
No hairs in his fridge!
In the ‘powder room’ a couple of men and a boy are preening; an old man is methodically combing his hair with a brush from the selection of brushes and combs which are always available. I’ve never seen any hairs on brushes and assume they are cleaned regularly and in many ‘power rooms’ are small steam boxes similar to those used in doctors surgeries and dentist, to sanitize such items. A boy is cleaning out his ears with cotton buds (q-tips), an item as standard as towels and soap. On the long dressing tables, there is always a collection of face creams, hair gel and skin brace. As with everything in bathhouse and jjimjilbang culture, no two places are exactly alike.
Have Stick Will User It
Discipline Korean style
Has anyone teaching in high schools noticed that if a student is rude or disrespectful, they are generally the ones who have had a sojourn studying in the west – usually in the USA and much less frequently the UK? Now, before I get started, I am not saying that all Korean students who have studied outside Korea are tainted or that Koreans who have never studied abroad are never rude or disrespectful. With considerable experience teaching in the UK as well as experience in Korea, I am making comparisons based on my own experiences in addition to an awareness of the general standards of behaviour both in the UK and Korea.
First of all, I have never been fouled mouthed or insulted by Korean students. No Korean student has ever sworn or shouted at me and the only time I can recall when I was shown disrespect was on an isolated incident when a student addressed me in intimate level speech (반말). As my Korean is rudimentary, students may have been taking the piss and insulting all along but I have never been led to believe they were and even if this were the case it pales into insignificance in comparison to my experiences in the UK.
Before getting defensive about Britain or the USA, there are numerous blogs, and indeed books written by teachers appalled at the conditions under which they have to teach. I too have an extensive blog dedicated to teaching in the UK. There is a small but significant number of professional teachers working in Korea, all who have abandoned teaching in their home countries because of poor discipline, low standards, anti-intellectualism, dumbing down, violence and so forth. So, while there might be bad apples in Korea, they are not likely to attack you or call you a ‘fucking wanker,’ or indeed a ‘cunt.’ These are my experiences but I know many other teachers have had similar experiences and worse. No Korean student has never attempted to hit or spit at me. Indeed, when I was spat at in the UK, the headteacher didn’t even bother asking to see the boy and simply asked to see my planner. That was in Southborough Boys School, in Hook, Surbiton, where I quickly deduced that it was acceptable for a student to spit at a teacher if the lesson wasn’t deemed enjoyable. If I had been a more seasoned teacher at the time, I would have used the attack to claim psychological or physical injury and earned myself several months paid sick leave. Clacton County High School (CCHS) is another school where I’ve had students call me a ‘cunt’ or ‘a ”wanker’ and they were never reprimanded by management. Given the abysmal examples of leadership and staff support, I am not surprised standards are so low in the UK. Outing shit schools and shit practice is something all citizens should do especially when management in those establishments prefer to pretend nothing is amiss.
Korean teacher with stick
In Korea, I carry a stick, affectionately called ‘Billy.’ And occasionally, perhaps once a week, I will use it. I have never hurt a student with it though if I wanted to, this would be acceptable. My boss actually encourages me to hit students and I’m sure she sees it as a weakness on my part that I don’t do so more often. When students are being naughty, I’ll call for the stick. ‘Billy? Billy? Where are you?’ Then, I’ll poke around in my draw. Within seconds there is silence. ‘Billy, come on out! Someone’s arse needs a clout!’ Then, like un-sheathing Excalibur, I draw Billy from his lair and brandish him. Even with older students, this pantomime elicits a sigh of awe as if I really have drawn a sword or sparked-up a light saber.
Billy is pretty pathetic! Thirteen inches of stick not much thicker than a pencil and not very springy. Being six-foot six and large, I find him the perfect companion and actually traded him for real stick designed for pointing and striking which I’d bought for 5000 Won (£2.50). We have now been together for two years and at Christmas I took him back to the UK in order to treat him to a lick of linseed oil that I keep in my garage, for use on my front room floor. Ironically, I traded my real stick, which resembled the narrower end of a snooker cue, and which many high school teachers posses, with that of the smallest female teacher in a boys high school. Both of us preferred each others tool. Despite a recent oiling, Billy’s arthritic state spares the kids a real whacking as I am conscious of not snapping him in two.
By now, whatever the problem was has vanished or, if it is an issue of homework, the offender will be awaiting punishment. I always make lack of homework punishments quick and will strike without any prior warning. Sometimes, the offender actually thinks they’ve been spared. I usually hit them on the head. Yes, I know I shouldn’t, but for the PC brigade, anywhere is liable to cause injury and the safest place, on the bum or back of legs demand a sort of procedure, like bending over, which almost serves to ritualise the punishment and which I personally find a little pervy. And of course, Billy is too much of a light weight to have much effect in that area without the risk of being broken. So, the head it is! One short snap, never very hard and certainly much less damaging than the game Korean boys play where they do ‘rock, scissor, paper’ and the winner gets to ‘flick’ a finger on his opponents forehead.
A Gurkha kukri, supposedly never sheathed without drawing blood
I usually treat Billy like a kukri, the Gurkha traditional knife, supposedly, never sheathed without first drawing blood. Last year, I threw a crazy with a class, probably the one and only crazy I’ve thrown in Korea. For a minute or so I shouted and screamed and smacked Billy on the desk. Two children started crying and the rest were terrified. That was a year ago, but one the odd occasion I need to call for Billy’s help, those students still in the class, and who remember that day, put their head in their hands in trepidation.
I actually find it difficult to hit a student and after striking them feel very bad if they start crying . As in the UK, if you are not careful kids make excuses for lack of homework on a weekly basis but Billy cures this problem instantly; no lectures, no debates, no pleading, no detentions or phoning parents, not wasting valuable time, just a thwack of Billy on the head and you can guarantee the issue will be resolved and a homework subsequently forth coming. Western teachers, fooled by the PC claptrap that corporeal punishment is barbaric, are misguided. If I make a joke and strike my stick on the head of a kid they will laugh but should I use the same force when angry, and the child’s ‘kibun’ is damaged, they will often have tears in their eyes. This should tell you how minuscule my punishment is! It is not the force of my stick hitting them that castigates and punishes them, but the loss of face within the class. Joking aside however, I witnessed some brutal punishments in my former High School.
In a Korean class, there is absolutely no mistaking who is the boss and this difference creates a chasm in standards between British and Korean schools. In Korea, the teacher is always boss and ultimately students know this. Korean kids will push their chances and intimidate you in their own Korean way but they know that they can be physically punished. British kids however, are equally aware that teachers can do nothing about bad behaviour. In many British schools, it is children who rule the class room and permit or hinder a lesson as they see fit. Bad management structures, of which students are unwittingly aware and will use to their advantage, have created schools where classroom teachers are powerless while managers can saunter into lesson and demand compliance because students know they have direct access to contacting their parents – a power usually denied non managers.
My stick, 'Billy.'
Ah, Korea. A different world where for most cases, even the most horrible student is an angel by comparison. And instead of being shunned like a leper when out shopping, Korean students want to introduce their parents to you or simply say hello. Today, a student’s mum bought me a large cake, last week I received a bag of six homemade soaps, and so forth. Anyone who has taught in Korea will have been presented gifts such as these. In the UK, I didn’t even get a fucking apple from the class creep! So, when I have been confronted by ‘disrespect’ from Korean students who have studied abroad, it’s more like ‘indifference’ and familiarity than lack of respect. I have frequently had to interview high school students and a substantial number of those who have studied abroad will slouch in front of you, talk to you in a familiar way and are the quickest to tut or talk back. On a few rare occasions, I’ve even heard them mutter expletives under their breath.
Experience of the west must have a profound effect on them as it exposes them to a range of experiences, not all of which are bad, which are denied them in Korea. Most will have been exposed to drugs, anti-intellectual attitudes, educational mores that encourage and prompt them to be sexually active, homosexuality, trans-gender, a society that empowers students well in advance of them being able to yield that power responsibly, and a system that often polarizes teachers and students and charges that relationship with antagonism and distrust most pertinent the notion that every adult is a potential perv. In the UK, Billy would have been assassinated! There is no doubt students would have sought him out when not in my company and snapped him in half. More disturbing, they would have done so with glee.
The Times Newspaper (UK), conducted a survey in 2008 which revealed a fifth of all teachers support the use of corporeal punishment. This week in New Zealand (May 15 2020), it was revealed half the population support the return of the cane especially in the light of figures highlighting the corresponding rise in crimes within school that has occurred since corporeal punishments was banned.
Ministry of Justice statistics for pre-teen violence released just last month also showed a disturbing trend. From 1998-2008, the number of police apprehensions for grievous/serious assaults by 10-13 year olds increased by more than 70%. For each of the most recent two years, there has been almost 1,000 apprehensions for 10-13 year olds for all violent offences, which include aggravated robbery, sexual violation, indecent assault, and serious assaults – an increase of a third since 1998. (link to NZNEWSUK)
High School discipline: harsh but less severe than two years compulsory military service!
If you care for the development of children, the occasional smack is absolutely necessary. If my son or daughter were caught sticking their fingers in the electric socket, I would administer them a good clout as failure to instill in them the danger of doing this, puts their lives at risk. It is widely believed in Korea, that corporeal punishment reflects caring for youngsters’ development and the stick is often referred to as the ‘stick of love’. Personally, reflecting on some of the hideous scum I have had the misfortune to teach in the UK, it is clear we neither respect them, ourselves or other members of society – most notably other students. Of course British teachers can’t say they ‘love kids,’ not without having to spout a diatribe to explain themselves, which is just as well as judging by the scum we have allowed to pollute wider society, we clearly don’t. You will hear the phrase ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ far more in Korea than you do in Britain. The politically correct lobby has compelled us to obsess about the rights of bad children and generally bad people in a plethora of contexts, has helped facilitate a society where all of us, including children, in one way or another, are now victims of, or held ransom by, the very scum we molly-coddled and subsequently empowered.
Postscripts
This is true, a few weeks ago my boss gave her class a vocabulary test. One of the words requiring translation into English was, ‘몽둥이.’ (stick). Two students answered, ‘Billy.’
I don’t know how long this link will remain on Daum, but here is a brief recording of a very disturbing, and brutal corporeal punishment.
http://tvpot.daum.net/clip/ClipView.do?clipid=13660273&lu=m_rc_main_recentcommentlist_10
Fat is Here
A Bathhouse Ballad
In the ebente-tang, the aroma of the day is lavender (라벤더). I’m wallowing while I see some guy stood in the cold pool snot-up into his hand and casually just wash it off – into the pool water. Filthy twat! I occasionally take in a mouthful of that water, I guess most people do and, I open my eyes underwater! Pissing in the baths is one thing, at least you are unaware of people doing it, but if you’re going to snot up, be discrete! The snotting incident made me wonder if the water is filtered. It is certainly changed on a regular basis and probably filtered. Neither is it chlorinated but as most people shower before entering the baths this doesn’t bother me. I can remember seeing a few turds in British swimming pools but despite the chlorinated water, I wasn’t going to swim anywhere near them! Often I notice children, usually unaccompanied, get straight into a bath without showering. Last Thursday, which was the eve of Buddha’s birthday, and a public holiday, there were about 10 teenagers running around. Usually, adults get irritated by raucous behaviour but the atmosphere was jovial and I noticed several men lounging in surrounding pools watching them and smiling. There was a definite holiday spirit; they held the door shut to the ice room door trapping friends inside and threw bowls of freezing cold water at each other. For almost an hour the bathhouse, the noisiest I have ever heard it, despite it not being very busy, resonated with their laughter. Then a fat guy walked in and I started thinking…
At one time, when there were few other wayguks around, I used to be the fattest man in Song-So and one of my companions, a woman from Australia, was probably the fattest woman. Though she was excellent company, I hated walking around with her. A fat person, especially one who is 1.95 cm tall, attracts attention but two fat people together, well, the assumption is they are a couple and that all western wayguks are fat. Two fat wayguks together loose their identity in the conflation that reduces them to, ‘they’ and ‘fat.’ If you’re sweating, unable to buy clothes that fit, if you’re seen eating, if you don’t like walking up four floors to your place of work, well, it’s all because you’re fat! And eating an ice-cream in public! No wonder you’re fat! I happen to take size 14 (UK) shoes. You can’t buy them in Korea, apart from perhaps in Seoul. And the reason my feet are so big, despite being the leanest parts of my body? I’m fat, of course! When Koreans see a fatty or a fatty couple, this is how they probably think, and I assume this, as in the west, it is how we think. Even if I see a fat person eating an ice cream on a hot summer’s day, even if I am eating one myself, my immediate thought is, ‘go on a diet, fat arse!’ Two fat people with backsides like hippopotami, holding hands on the beach front promenade, and wobbling like jelly… ‘gross! The contradictory nature of my thought, doesn’t even sully the flavour of my ice-cream.
Maybe I’m paranoid, but when my fat female friend and I took a taxi, along with two petit Koreans, and her and I ended up sitting on the same side of the cab, it was clear what caused the problem, and it wasn’t paranoia! The window on our side of the taxi looked directly onto the tarmac while the opposite window framed the full moon. After a hundred meters and a few grating sounds from some part of the vehicle now in contact with the road, the taxi driver evicted us.
In 2000, and probably until fairly recently, I was the fattest person I ever saw in a bathhouse. Even proportionately, no Korean ever came close to my dimensions. This isn’t because I have the girth of Jabba the Hutte, but because Koreans were, and to some extent still are, smaller than westerners. My diary pages from that period provide several references to there being a distinct lack of fat people. In the school at which I taught there was one fat boy, I even remember his name, Jack; a photo of him hangs in my bedroom bathroom, back in the UK. In my taekwondo school was another chubby. Neither boys were particularly fat and today, just ten years later, would be classified as fairly normal.
I need no helpers for this size portion!
In the last few months, I have noticed that on almost every visit to a bathhouse there are one or two Koreans proportionately the same size and sometimes fatter than I. Very often, other fatties are kiddies. Burger bars, fried chicken, Baskin Robbins, Dunkin Donut and plenty of other western style fast food outlets have proliferated, and the price Korea is paying, especially their youth, is the bulging waistline. Ten years ago I went into a Baskin Robbins in downtown Daegu. I was with a Korean friend and her daughter and when I arrived at their table with a tray containing three, what I considered ‘normal’ size ice creams, they starred in amazement. One tub, they told me, would have been enough for all three of us but to me, they were the sort of size you would buy yourself back home. In the ten years interim, I now have two Baskin Robbins within a 7 minutes walk of my home and occasionally I will treat myself to an 11.000Won (£5.50), pot of ice cream. I think it holds about 5 scoops. I can easily eat this and could also finish off one of their larger buckets. Even if I buy the smaller pot, smaller than a Macdonald milkshake cup, staff will ask how many spoons I want. Shame prevents me from replying’ ‘one’ so, pondering in thought for a moment, as if counting the number of people back home waiting for me to deliver, I reply, ‘four.’
Along with the western fast food diet, fat has finally arrived in Korea
Korean proportions are always piddly and I’m not really into the act of sharing my food, especially ice cream. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a Korean meal, even at a buffet restaurant, and left feeling properly stuffed, stuffed western style where you can’t breathe properly and feel you’ve mutated into an enormous maggot. In the west, there are countless times I’ve gone for a meal and reached the point where Mr Creosote, in Monty Python’s, The Meaning of Life, cannot eat another chocolate wafer. But in the midst of a Korean public, usually much skinnier than I, being a fatty fills me with guilt and curbs my glutenous instincts. The fatties I now see around me at the bathhouse, and who attract more attention than I because, they are Korean and fat, which is novel, and not wayguk western and fat, which is common, certainly know what it feels to be ‘stuffed’ and all I am left pondering, as I wallow in my scented bath, feeling more like a warthog than large bottomed hippopotamus, is how do you pig out on Korean food? Fat has finally arrived and the blubberier it becomes, the slimmer I feel.
Link to Crazy Fat Korean Video
Laura (1) Korean Teenagers
Not suitable for pumpkin people
If there’s one thing I love about Korean teenage girls, it’s that you rarely meet one who is a slag. No doubt slags exist in Korea and no doubt there are examples of Korean 15-year-old girls who trowel on make-up, wear Satan’s panties and are promiscuous, but I haven’t met any. In the UK, unless you teach in a top girls school, and I was fortunate enough to have taught stints in two of the top schools, notably Colchester Royal Grammar School (a boys school) and Colchester Girls’ High School, a large percentage of the girls are strumpets. Many of them were good students and decent kids but they still dressed and behaved in a way I didn’t think appropriate: obsessed with their bodies, with looking sexy, obsessed with sex, with behaving in a sexual manner and in flaunting their undeveloped bodies all of which comprised to denude them of personality. From childhood recollections to my more recent experiences as a teacher, being a slapper, in the UK at least, drastically improves a girls popularity among both other girls, and naturally, among the boys. My sister is convinced that had she been in those elite ranks, she’d have had a more interesting life. Amusing though this comment is, I’m glad she wasn’t.
High school students in the 2nd grade. ( aged around 16-17) Absolutely no make-up at all was permitted in this particular school.
Laura, one of my Korean students, is 15 and totally adorable and like many Korean teenagers, a country with the lowest rate of teen pregnancy in the world, she is, in the cute Korean way, ‘innocent.’ Laura definitely has an interest in boys and one of our regular conversation topics centers on which boy band she is currently into and which boys she finds attractive. Recently, she has started using perfume which I would imagine she applies after leaving her school and before she comes to the haggwon in which I teach. The ‘safest’ place for her to do this is probably on the elevator up to the third floor, where the school is located. Her perfume predilection started about 2 months ago and in the initial stages of pioneering application, I think she doused herself in it. The smell was ‘in your face’ and strong enough to remain in class and around the school, long after she had left.
To compliment the perfume, she has also started wearing the faintest traces of make-up, basically lipstick and some mascara. The make up isn’t applied in the manner many English strumpet’s apply it, which is by slapping it on in the manner a plasterer might plaster a wall. I’ve seen plenty of young teenage girls with such thick mascara it looks more like cladding and usually little pebbles of it will be stuck to their eyelashes or face and will occasionally flake off like little pieces of a crusty, albino scab. The art of teenage make-up, like their interest in sex, is uniquely British, which is to say, is an overstatement and hence pots of mascara and eyeliner and all the other accouterments of teen tartery are used with as much subtlety as that of a circus clown. For the most part, Korean teenage girls, certainly under the age of 18, are discouraged and often forbidden from make-up and so when a little is used, forced into subtlety of application, it often enhances their features. You probably wouldn’t notice Laura’s make-up if it weren’t for the fact that when applied, she’s incredibly sheepish and self-conscious. As for her lipstick, it is so faint I imagine it’s simply lip balm with the slightest trace of added colour.
One particularly common style of British teen make-up
Discerning how much make up Korean girls do wear, is difficult as girls, like children everywhere, will ‘push the limits’ and hence I hear stories of girls wearing ‘short’ skirts to school or who wear make up but in Korea a ‘lot’ of make-up is actually very little and a ‘short’ skirt doesn’t mean you can see their knickers.
In British schools, I often saw tell-tale signs that girls were wearing a pair of Satan’s panties and it wasn’t unusual to see that flimsy bit of ‘string’ riding above a girl’s waistband. This is a sight I’ve never seen in Korea and Korean adults are often mortified to know that western girls, often not yet teenagers, are permitted to wear, or even want to wear, such sexualised clothing. Indeed, in Korea, I’ve never caught glimpse of a girls knickers. While it is solely an opinion based on my observations, and which doesn’t include routing through the children’s underwear section in my local E-Marte, I would imagine that Laura’s knickers, like those of her friends, are void of the translucent panels, little bows and lacy frill edges that are used to sexualise the bodies of little kids. Her knickers probably reach to her navel and are styled like the baggy blue things, British girls were compelled to wear for PE in the 60’s and 70’s.
I mention knickers, panties and thongs, not for any perverse reason but to highlight the divergence of social values between Korean and western societies. How children ‘choose’ to adorn their bodies, the extent to which this adornment is encouraged or tolerated, how it is subsequently received by societies both at home and abroad, expresses and exposes important attitudes and values. In Britain at least, there is a difference between ‘knickers’ and ‘panties;’ ‘knickers’ are functional whereas the purpose of ‘panties’ is two-fold, to induce arousal in the observer and a sense of sexiness in the wearer. Satin’s panties take this to a totally different level. In Britain, many girls, will tart up their twat with ‘sexy’ panties or a thong while still children and often before using make up. In Korea, while a little experimentation with make-up might occur whilst still at school, the transition from knickers to panties, from innocence to awareness, probably occurs at about the same time a girl becomes an adult.
Over the duration of a week or so, Laura’s perfume gradually mellowed until it was actually quite pleasant and on a few occasions, when it hung faintly in the air, I was reminded of my mother who always wore floral type perfume. It has become a regular habit of hers to hold her wrist under my nose and ask for my opinion on her latest scent. I then discovered, from her brother, that the various perfumes she parades, are her mother’s and are sneaked on when no one is at home.
'Psychedelic' Exercises (이벤트탕) E-Bente-Tang
A Bathhouse Ballad
The e-bente-tang (이벤트탕) today was scented with ginseng (인삼). For some reason the bathhouse has been incredibly busy this week . The steam room has varied between 51-54 degrees and I made my first venture into the ice room (어름굴) since last summer. The ice room is simply a large freezer with some chairs around the edges and as the weather becomes hotter and more humid, it is usually a good place to finish off a session as it both dries your body and stops you sweating.
I have thought about several things this week as I wallowed: I am interested to know whether people dry themselves in a random fashion in which one might use a towel just a moment before used to dry their arse, on their face, or whether, in a sequence such as, head to toe. Yes, there’s so much going on in the world that I consider this pointless trivia! I don’t particularly care! In the west I was always moaning and ranting about the nastier aspects of life but in Korea I don’t even bother reading about world news and I’m a lot happier. Ignorance is quite a pleasant state of mind especially as the more I have studied, the more exams I have taken, the un-happier it has made me. It seems that once the clutter of mans’ inhumanity to man is removed, which is usually the contents of most world and national news, and the tools encouraged to analyze that world decommissioned or at least limited, pondering the sound of one hand clapping, or the manner in which a towel is used, is wonderfully liberating. Thinking has never done me any favours and often quite the contrary. Thinking can actually be harmful to your health and in retrospect has probably ruined my life, it certainly hasn’t made me happier. I would say an insect has more propensity to happiness than a human with a working brain especially if that brain is influenced by ethical issues. Despite what we are told, thinking is both anti-social and disliked and most bosses, even in education, dislike either thinkers or those who are ‘educated.’ Most of the thoughts I have had in the last twenty years, basically since going to university, have set me in opposition against other people.
I think a lot wallowing in the e-bente tang but have to cast much of it aside as people don’t like to be remind of their impotency especially within a democracy. But what you do with your bath towel, where you put it and in what order, apart from being a totally inane topic, is vastly more original in concept than the impending destruction of our environment and is far less likely to raise any hackles. Pondering the pointless is a new therapeutic philosophy I am pursuing. At the moment, my concerns about how towels are used is a subject in a state of infancy. Moving on…
Have you ever noticed that when Koreans do little exercise routines, especially in the bathhouses, they look like they have mad cow disease? Privates on Parade, a British black comedy movie (1982), contains a hilarious scene where John Cleese, a mad army officer, performs a very strange exercise routine. So complex and awkward is this routine that mastering it entails highly developed muscle coordination. Being a taekwondo instructor at the time I first watched this movie, I bought the video and set about learning the routine in the privacy of my bedroom. It was far too ridiculous to practice in a gym. At the same time as instructing taekwondo, I was also a military musician and my musical skills were beneficial in analyzing the rhythmical structures that were used. Basically, the legs started off in a wide ‘lunge’ position, in many martial arts known as a ‘front stance’ and this stance changed from right to left, at approx 1-2 changes per second.
A typical, left front stance
Independent of the legs (moving in musical terminology of 2/4 or 4/4 time), the arms performed a routine in 3/4 time but with each arm separated by one beat. The left arm began the sequence which consisted three parts, each synchronised with the changing stance of the legs: (1) slapping the thigh, (2) ‘pointing’ to the ceiling, (3) ‘pointing’ horizontally to the left. As the left arm ‘pointed’ to the ceiling, the right arm slapped the right thigh and so at all times the right arm was one movement behind the left arm Now, I describe the arm movement as slapping and ‘pointing’ except the pointing was limp-wristed and the elbows never straightened. The arms were more thrown out as if casting something unpleasant off the hand or waving something away. What makes the routine so amusing is the rhythmic asymmetry caused by the lower half of the body moving in 2/4 time and the top half of the body, both in 3/4 but with a displacement between the right and left arms. I never really persevered with the sequence to perfect it and to have done so would have been a small accomplishment requiring considerable focus. Apart from its merits as an exercise it was also highly comical, even more so performed by John Cleese and for me, it is the most memorable part of the film, even more so than the fact the entertainment troop Cleese commands, all get killed.
John Cleese and the famous Ministry of Silly Walks
If you performed this sequence in a British gym, you would undoubtedly attract some attention but in Korea psychedelic exercise routines are quite common. indeed, if you were to walk around the pools in a Ministry of Silly Walks fashion, I don’t think anyone would pay much attention.
This week, I have seen several people performing exercises that at first suggested some mental incapacity. I have seen two men standing in a corner performing an exercise in which alternating arms are shaken as if flicking a turd off of the fingers. In this exercises, after approximately 10 flicks, the cheeks are vigorously slapped. Standing in the cold pool, holding onto the side and water jogging is also a common sight. Stretching is also very common especially in a steam room or sauna though this form of exercise is identical to those practiced in the west. Laying supine and raising the knees to the chest or swinging the legs over the head until your knees are by yours ears isn’t unusual, unless of course, your naked. However, more amusing, is laying on ones back, pointing the knees to the ceiling with a 90 degree angle between the back of the calf and thigh and in this position doing small rapid steps in the air with the feet while concurrently tapping the scalp and face with the hands. Perhaps the most common psychedelic exercise, more common around apartment complexes and in fitness centers, but which may be seen in bathhouse with treadmills in rest areas, is walking in a brisk manner, palms open, and hands raised to face level pictured below. Even though I know it provides a better workout than conventional western style walking/jogging, I find adopting this custom as alien as wearing a face mask.
The typical Korean walking style
Penis Paradise. Palgongsan National Park
Highly recommended
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about life in Korea, it’s that cocks can turn up in the oddest places and at the most unexpected times. Of course, if you’re a westerner you might be surprised as we so often perceive Korea as conservative in its values. Well of course it’s freaking conservative! If you’ve been socialised and educated in one of those degenerate moral and ethical cesspits, such as the UK or USA, you cannot fail to perceive Korea as naive and innocent. Most westerners, myself included, are so used to cesspit values we hardly notice the toilet paper and bits of turd clinging to our bodies as we travel the globe. Being British and from the land where teenage pregnancy and STI’s are at ‘epidemic proportions,’ in Korea, with one of the lowest teen pregnancy rates in the world, 2.1 per thousand, it is quite natural to perceive the country as conservative and even innocent. Ironically, despite Korea’s low rate of STI’s and teenage pregnancy, the existing figures are a current social and political concern! I am neither religious nor particularly moralistic but, I prefer my students, especially ones under 14, to be innocent as opposed promiscuous, predatory, precocious, tarty and cheap.
純 순수한 - 'Innocent '
In Autumn last year, I visited Palgongsan National Park, on the edge of Daegu. After a very delicious smoked duck barbecue, I took a little troll around the restaurant grounds only to discover 42 penises, (yes, I actually counted them!), all poking skywards and congregated in an area about the size of a large living room. This little patch of cock I endearingly referred to as Penis Paradise. On my initial trip, I’d forgotten to take my camera and all year I’d been planning to go back and capture, albeit it on a digital, the only cocks I am probably likely to get close enough to touch between now and the grave. You can imagine how gutted I was when I enthusiastically arrived at my little paradise, tucked away in some obscure corner of the mountains, only to discover all but one cock remained. The adjoining restaurant had made some alterations but even after trolling around the building and snooping in tucked away corners, it became apparent I’d missed my one and only opportunity.
Where a patch of proud penises had majestically stood there remained one solitary cock which poked up pathetically from a surrounding pile of junk robbing it of any remaining grandeur. Up closer it retained an air of pride despite probably being the poorest specimen with a shaft looking hacked, holed and even split as if old or simply unfinished. The other ones had been smooth, perfected and each imbued with particular qualities suggested by both the nature of their wood as well as their individual design; qualities that only someone who likes natural wood and cock could appreciate.
Surrounded by junk - Sacrilege!
A badly hacked shaft in need of some oil!
Penis Paradise had originally stood outside a carpenter’s workshop/gallery and inside I found another penis. It was a big fat number, somewhat interesting but with a face carved on one side which I didn’t particularly like but it had the bonus of and added appendage ….yet another cock.
Two for the price of one
The epitomisation of Korea
Knotted and gnarled were the qualities that had enamored me when I first encountered that patch of penises. Korean wood is invested with a strange quality probably induced by struggling into life in quite difficult surroundings. Back in England, near where I live, are some examples of the most enormous oak trees and in a five-minute cycle I can be stood under trees that Constable himself painted. Korean mountain forests exude a sense of gargantuan Bonsai and walking in one, especially when daylight is ebbing, is like wandering through a Mahler symphony, most especially, his fourth. It’s a dark, warped, and knotted world, with craggy imposing crops of rock, mossy and lichened, the perfect background for goblins, ghosts and other imaginary forest creatures. There are no immense oaks on those rugged rocky slopes where every tree has had to fight its way into existence with roots seeking out and voraciously burrowing into nutritious gaps and fissures in that dense, granite-like base. Tress are wind swept, stunted, knotted, gnarled and twisted in manners which betray both pain and tenacity.
In my last high school, the top class of first, second and third year students, were called, ‘so-namu’ (소나무), ‘pine tree, classes,’ and the boys affectionately called, ‘so-namu.’ ‘He’s ‘so-namu’ would be used to describe and explain a boy’s exam success or identify the fact he was in the top class. That pained-tenacious existence, evident in Korean forests where life has been fought for, exists on other plains: you see it in the bodies of old men and women, bodies muscled and knotted, damaged and strengthened by an arduous life, yet supple enough to sit cross-legged, all a rarity in the west. I have seen old grannies who cannot stand up straight and are forced to walk with a right angle between their spine and legs, bodies damaged by a lifetime of carrying children or heavy loads on their backs, sit into a cross-legged position, and rise, without using their hands or moving their feet. Even at forty, I had to get on all fours to escape this position. Sometimes you see it in the bodies of younger children, but this is without doubt rapidly disappearing. I have several nine-year olds, usually ones whose hobbies are taekwondo, hapkido, or komdo, with six packs and thighs looking like they regularly squat. You see it in the faces of students as they trudge, bleary eyed from school to haggwon and on to another haggwon and then to the reading room, life a constant round of tests and assignments. Pain and tenacity are features of Korea which are engraved into the education system, their martial arts, encapsulated by the popular phrase ‘fighting!’ and also a reflection of their history. Penis Paradise was intriguing because wrought in the bodies of each penis, in both the nature of the wood and their design, was a sense of that pain-and tenacity – the struggle for life and triumph at its persistence.
'Tenacity' is often a key concept in Taekwondo, Hapkido and Komdo tenets
A reflection of Korea on many levels
Only one cock stood, an epitaph to its vanished members. Where had they gone? In fact, they’d been sold for exhibition at the Haeshindang Folk Village, Samcheok, also known as Penis Park.
Family Fun at Penis Park
Penis Park, Samcheok, A Collection of colossal Cocks
With only one cock standing, the juicy aroma of barbecued smoked duck, attracted my attention. Putting my camera away, I went and enjoyed a wholesome meal. It’s no substitute for the real thing, but here is the menu:
Smoked barbecued duck a specialty
Wanted: A Plastic Professorship
Have you noticed its predominantly university teachers who hand you business cards? Fingering the little stash I’ve collected over the years, not one is from a Haggwon teacher. I’ve never owned business cards, but then as I’ve never sent a text message and only used an ATM machine once in the UK. I’m slightly odd.
I pine, you pine, he pine, she pine!
I wouldn’t mind handing out a name card from a university, even a crap one but like most teachers, I would probably feel a little ashamed handing out something from an institution one notch up from a kindergarten or the kids’ party entertainer at Mac Donald’s. Even though haggwon and university pay are now fairly similar, in status there’s a world of difference between Coco the Clown’s English Academy and a University.
No matter how hard a haggwon tries to give itself credibility, names like ‘academy’ or ‘colleges’ don’t hide what most really are, factories (공장). ‘TOSS English‘ reads the bright neon strip over a college near where I live. Despite the amusing name, it must be successful as it has a fleet of mini buses and has been in situ for at least 8 years. However, back in the UK, ”Toss’ is slang for ‘shit’ or ‘masturbation.’ And then there’s ‘Kolon English Academy;’ Colon is the destination of the doctor’s digit when you have an extremely bad gut. Then there are the logos, the cap and mortar board, the pillars of some classical order column. Sometimes they use letters of the Greek alphabet which in the UK would be unrecognized to all but the students of British grammar schools.
In Britain, any awareness of the roots of western civilization is relegated to 5 or 6 year-olds and hence denuded of its significance as the cradle of western civilization. The invasion of ‘ ‘Greece” by Darius in 490BC and Xerxes, 480BC, had they succeeded, would have radically altered the face of western history possibly resulting in an Islamic Europe. Mention Thermopylae to most British people and it is now associated predominantly with a comic or a partly animated, fantastical movie. Many Korean kids can recite or narrate the Battle of Thermopylae or Marathon and some have even ‘explained to me how Socrates came to commit suicide. As a history teacher in the UK, I can put my hand on my heart and tell you I have never seen or heard any mention of Thermopylae , Marathon or Socrates in a British school. For various reasons, the most significant aspects of our history, often due to political imperatives, are demnatio memoriae. Koreans students certainly have more awareness of classical history than do their western peers and so the column, pediments, alpha and omega, and other little symbols of academia and learning are common but ironically, the ‘colleges’ they represent are as genuine as the Phrontesterion in Aristophanes’ The Clouds; the silly little ‘Thinkery’ where students bend over, bum holes gazing intently at the heavens in the quest for knowledge.
Much as I love Korea, their method of teaching English needs a total overhaul and the dependence on memorizing phrases, a number of which are clumsy and strange, needs scraping. Koreans have a similar attitude to teaching English as they do cooking bean paste soup. I’ve told several friends I add a dash of black pepper powder to my dwaen-jang. They were shocked and repeated ‘pepper’ several times as though I’d said I piss in it. Then they told me that black pepper wasn’t part of ‘the recipe,’ as if there is only one recipe, only one way to do it. Korean education is very successful, but their standard of English, despite the haggwons and schools, is dire. Perhaps if they treated English education more like ‘pushion pood (fusion food), squirting jam over pizzas, replacing mozarella with that stretchy, play cheese, or sweet potato and dipping bistro hotdogs in a concoction of syrup, mustard and red pepper paste, standards might improve. ”I’m pine,’ ‘Have a nice day,’ ‘pleased to meet you,’ ‘ drive you to suicide. And then there’s the constant American twang but that can wait until a future post!
Currently, I’m waiting for my business cards to arrive and they will probably carry my school’s logo, a cartoony character but I’m not particularly bothered. I’ve worked in enough language factories and a high school, to know that my boss has genuine intentions and besides, my loyalty is won because my conditions are probably superior to those of most university teachers whose pay is no longer way in advance of a haggwon teacher and whose holidays, at one time a guaranteed four months have been whittled down and interpolated with various obligations. My boss and her family have been close friends of mine for over ten years and have even vacationed with me in England. Though I would love to become a professor, albeit a plastic one, working in a university, for me at least, would be a step down.
A teacher from the Coco the Clown Phrontesterion of English. (I'm Pine and You)
Of course, most university teachers, instructors, give you a name card not because they teach in a university, but to impress on you the fact they are ‘professors.’ Professors are the officer class of Korean teachers with haggwon teachers relegated to ‘rank and file.’ Yes, I would probably do exactly the same but it is non the less amusing in its snobbery. Name cards of the highest status carry ‘professor’ in both Korean (교수) and hanja (敎授) in order to separate them from ones simply in English. I’d probably have mine embossed in gold. In reality however, it’s the knowledge and skills of a ‘professor’ I would like and not merely a hollow title. By English standards, I’m not too clear how it works in the USA, a ‘professorship’ is a position, ‘a chair,’ awarded to top academics and not a title conferred merely by teaching in a university. Despite the demise of standards in the UK and the ascendancy of ape values, you still read or hear of academics being ‘invited’ to a professorship.
What, by gad! No dickie?
Last year I spent several days adjudicating a speaking competition with three professors all of whom gave me name cards. Two wore little silk dickie bow ties and the other a complete set of plus fours and matching walking cane. When I first saw him, from a distance, I thought it was Sherlock Holmes until I heard his American accent. He didn’t have a pipe but his plus fours were real and actually made of tweed. Ironically, I’d met this chap before, some 6 years previously when we worked together in an academy ‘factory.’ Before the plus fours and business card, and of course, ‘professorship,’ he used to turn up for work looking like a backpacker, his hair never combed and his clothes disheveled and scruffy. One day, I recall my old boss consulting me as to whether it was acceptable to offer to buy him some new clothes. If I’d known at the time what I now know I’d have simply suggested conferring a professorship upon him and buying him some appropriate name cards. The rest would have taken care of itself.
Even when I’ve known teachers who for one reason or another moved from university to hagwon, from the status of ‘plastic professor’ to that of a boring ‘teacher,’ they’ve initially introduced themselves, or been introduced to me as, ‘professor.’ Further, not only have they continued wearing the dicky bow, but they’ve insisted students call them by title.
I’m a snob, academia, the classics, the entire gamut from music, art literature to history, Oxford, Cambridge, public schools, grammar schools, dickie bows, waist coats and plus fours, professors, even plastic professors, I adore them all. When I was a boy, this was what constituted education and refinement and through out my twenties I aspired to it. Sadly, by the time I got to university, in my early thirties, the gown, mortar board and anything ‘classical,’ if not already on a heap in the college quad, were on their way! And now, well, every Tom, Dick and Harry have a degree – usually in hair dressing or business studies. As much as I mock plastic professors, tongue in cheek, a least the title sets you apart from the herd. Sadly, of all my university friends, some of whom are university lecturers, professors, some even renowned in academic circles, few embraced ‘the classical’ with any passion in little other than their individual subjects. I don’t want to leave my current occupation, that would be foolish, but secretly, I would love one of those business cards and the snobbery of calling myself a ‘professor.’ Is it possible to teach a lesson or two a week in a university, even a poxy one, and ‘earn’ the title ‘professor,’ or even ‘associate professor?’ If so, pathetic as it is, I want the job!”
Fart Pants (방귀 바지) 코딱지
rubus coreanus (복분자) 'wildberry'
In the E-bente Tang (이벤트 탕) today was a an aroma I’d not encountered before, black raspberry, or wild berry (복분자). Translating is always a problem. First of all, the ‘information board’ advertising the aroma had a picture of black and red berries and so too did a bottle of berry ‘wine (more like liquor) I subsequently bought (복분자 주). To compound the problem, I suspect in the UK we call these berries blackberries and raspberries and these are quite different in taste. When I looked up this berry on the internet, I noticed the red and black berries were growing on the same stem. So, I discover that the Korean berry, bokbunja (복분자), is actually a member of rose family and of the genus rubus of which there are hundreds of species divided into 13 sub-genera, one of which contains 12 sections. (more rubus info) Indeed, if you want to be pedantic, bokbunja is rubus coreanus. Interesting, but all academic as from the scent emanating from the pool I couldn’t tell whether I was wallowing in blackberry, blackcurrant, or indeed, rubus coreanus.
I’ve been meticulous in bathhouse ablutions today as I am feeling particularly dirty. The source of this dirt is both mental and physical; increasingly I come to realise that by socialization westerners are dirty species both mentally and physically but also, short of being showered in shit, I was fouled upon. Not having used a bathhouse for 4 days, and yet despite showering twice a day, I was amazed at the scum that washed off my body into the gutter. As I was on the end of a row of sit down showers, I could see it collecting in the drainage grill and it was gray and creamy, more like sludge than scum. Neither was my ablution particularly stringent and was made using the normal, mildly abrasive bathhouse towel than by the rasp of one of those little green ‘Italy towels.’
Once lovely and clean, and basquing in my favourite patch in the hot pool, I got thinking…
I’ve recently had a new pupil called Fart Pants (방귀 바지) who is currently sitting on the fence between the kids who have a brain and the ones, and there are not many, who I deem ‘hobaks’ (호박). Hobaks are pumpkin head kids who are just incredibly slow and tiring to teach. Most professional teachers, back home at least, will castigate the practice of pigeonholing kids in such a derogatory manner and will certainly condemn me for printing her name except of course, it is not Fart Pants. But let’s not get holy, holy, most teachers pigeonhole kids in one form or another but usually deny they do so and as is the case in Korea, you can still call one kid intelligent and another a mong without offending the silly sensibilities of political correctness that demand all kids are equal.
definitely worth licking
I’ve always maintained that if ever I had to lick a bum hole, if I was forced on pain of death, if I couldn’t choose a baby to lick upon, it would be a Korean. Of course there’s a ranking system: all babies first, followed by males (preferably younger) females (preferably younger), old men, old women. I would think this ranking would be a fairly common for anyone forced to comply but given some preferences. Personally, I think a hierarchy much different from this, for example, preferring to lick ancient butt to baby butt, a truly rank preference, would be suggestive of some sexual perversion.
Although I wouldn’t want to lick any bum, not even for pleasure, if I had to my first choice would be that of a baby. Anyone other than a baby I could probably never look in the face again ether from a sense of guilt or revulsion. A baby would no more remember the act than having its nappy changed. As a baby has no personality it’s not like licking the arse of a real person, and once out of its nappy it’s not much more than a dirty doll. Denied a baby, I’d select a Korean. Perhaps some Koreans don’t scrub their butts out but I know lots do because I’ve seen them. On the other-hand, I’ve never seen a westerner clean out their arse.
Koreans must have the cleanest arse holes in the world. I doubt you’ve ever seen a westerner scrub out their bum hole so you don’t really know if they do. I suspect most westerners just flush their butts with a blast from the shower which isn’t very hygienic considering its a deep, dark, dank, dirt dump which we sit on all day and despite its catalogue of offenses is subject to significantly less scrutiny than our mouths and teeth. There is a veritable arsenal of mouth wash and gargle to both freshen and kill oral bacteria but nothing of a similar nature with which to douche your arse.
Like most arses, Pluto has been exiled
With an arse hole as distant as Pluto, the first time I saw a bide abroad, I assumed it was either for bathing a baby or washing your feet. And even though its design should have announced its purpose, the idea was repugnant. A device for washing your arse! A filthy idea! To have deduced the purpose of that alien bide would have required a morally degenerate mind and the inclinations of a pervert. You dump out of a bum and after mopping up you forget the filthy offence. Poohing is a sin and a sin of such gargantuan proportions that even though ‘cleanliness is next to Godliness,’ the Bible avoids any mention of that dirty orifice. You don’t talk about poohing, you don’t share the experience and you certainly don’t make devices to clean it. If there’s one reason, why westerners are so distrustful of Islamic culture it’s because their poohing customs, ie. mopping up with a hand wetted with water from an old baked bean can, force infidels to confront the one place we hate to go. For the westerner forced to muck-out a la Mohammad, having to touch that unspeakable place, especially when adopting the most undignified of postures, is a significant form of first contact. Touching down in that dark and alien cavity and being compelled to blindly explore it contours without the comfort of a wad of tissue, is something you never forget. It is a first contact not just in that you are forced to acknowledge that there is life on Pluto and that is not as nearly as far away as you thought, but that in all the years leading up that significant event, you staunchly upheld the prime directive of non-interference (and if you were interfering with one, even your own, you never talked about it!) A working definition of a seasoned traveler? Someone who has had first contact with their own arse hole. Hence, I imagine most arses, especially non Korean arses, have permanent bad breath and while you can have the pseudo medical condition ‘halitosis,’ there is no corresponding medical term for a smelly bum. Unfortunately, considering their propensity for filth, bum holes are sorely neglected.
But of all Korean butts in Korea, there’s one exception, Fart Pants! Fart Pants (방귀 바지) is the dirtiest Korean to date I have met. And though her parents aren’t poor, her dirtiness has more to do with her habits than being physically dirty. Admittedly, her favourite coat, salmon pink, looks like it has been used to clean the floor but this didn’t bother me until she started farting in class. The pink coat, being padded, has insulating properties and a fart is always more unpleasant when heated. I don’t know how universal it is in Korea, but I’m told that teachers rarely say anything to a kid who farts because it draws attention to them which of course, they don’t like. In common with the rule of vile farts, hers are silent but I know they’re hers because her eyes will be sparkling and she will be salivating heavily in a manner that suggests she’s either been fingering her own butt or sucking a turd up and down her back passage. Either way, there is an intense look of pleasure and glee on her face.
The smell, still warm, then looms up from under the desk around which we sit and it’s truly hideous. As the foetid guff engulfs me, I sit up, then press my neck as far back in my collar as possible, before moving my chair back after which there is no escape. A few days ago, after trying to hold my breath I knew was going to retch and had to leave the classroom. Betty, who is sat right next to her, must have had her nasal passages cauterized as she doesn’t seem to notice a thing. Fart Pants lets one-off in most lessons. When she first started classes, nerves probably clenched her butt shut but now she’s in the swing of things and relaxed, she blows off with as much ease as someone with a prolapsed rectum. I find her farts incredibly intense and personal and being subject to them is a form of abuse. Apparently, she farts in other teacher’s classes but no one has heard her which makes me suspect she might have a punctured colostomy bag. If she moves about too much, even a considerable time after issue, a residual smell, loitering under the lagging of that pink coat, will waft up.
If this hasn’t been bad enough, there have now been a number of occasions when I have noticed her toying with a bogey (코딱지) between the tips of her index finger and thumb. She seems to keep a bogey in play for several minutes, massaging it around like a piece of sticky glue or a grain of cooked rice. Then her hand goes under the table and I anticipate it being dropped. Moments later however, it re-emerges only this time its on another hand. It’s magical! Not in the sense she can keep amusing herself with one bogey for so long or that it seems to matter transport from one digital location to another, but because the things are so moisture retentive. A few days ago, she must have forgotten about one of her nasal playthings: it had been rolled, stretched, palpitated, passed between various fingers and hands. Suddenly she went still which was quite noticeable because she is always fiddling and tears welled in her eyes. Another fart was being primed! The intense pleasure its production provided distracted her enough to evaporate that offensive entity being entertained predominantly between her fingers. When I asked a question which necessitated pointing in a book, her hand reappeared from under the table. From this stage on it’s a guessing game; which hand? which finger? When she pointed to the page, on the end of her right index finger, perched a pale green bogey still looking fairly fresh despite the copious palpitations. Next moment, her hot fart smacked me in the face.
Over the weekend I bought some anti-bacterial hand cream, the choice was amazing as this item is currently very fashionable. I also bought a bottle of Febreeze as I noticed that the farts clung to my clothing like fried food or tobacco smells.
Monday afternoon! First class of the week and Betty is on her own. Fart Pants has left the school and I shalln’t miss her!
Faherenheit 84 (29 °C)
In the last few days, whenever I leave my relatively cool ‘one room,’ and step into the stairway, I can both feel the rising humidity and smell it. The smell, difficult to describe, is not unpleasant and if you can ‘smell ‘humidity, that is how I would characterise it. Then, when you step outside you instantly get zapped by both the sun and its heat reflected off of the pavement. With a little breeze in the air, and cool mornings and evenings, it’s not unpleasant but soon, venturing outside will become a torturous experience reminiscent of being stuck in a sauna-like microwave in which life is reduced to seeking sanctuary wherever there is air conditioning. As the middle English song goes; ‘Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu! Rivulets of sweat trickling down your back and amassing in little crescents under your man-boobs, if you’re unfortunate to have them, as I do, all necessitate keeping a towel in your bag and one of those bright coloured handkerchiefs in your pocket. As a winter baby, I’ve always hated summers but maybe my dislike of Korean summer is shaded by life in a one room before an air-conditioner was a normal part of an employment contract. Sitting around a small fan, clad only in underpants, as it gyrated from you to your flat-mate, granting you intermittent coolness, or spending the evening freezing in MacDonald’s, were the only reprieve from summer’s muggy heat.
A memi (매미), cicada
Spring, which this year seems to have been skipped, as beautiful as it is, is an unpleasant reminder of what is to follow. And then there are the memi (매미). I have never heard cicadas in Northern Europe and associate them with hotter climates and in Korea, as summer’s leitmotiv, whose chirping, an incessant white noise, will dominant. Memi are bizarre looking things especially if you come from a climate with much smaller insects. I remember, before I’d seen one, you would pass a tree in mid-day and a chorus of memi would be ‘screaming’ at you. I could never see them and if you stopped and walked back to investigate, the ‘screaming’ would diminish, as if they were watching your approach. The sound is so intense, a crazy-crispy buzzing that it would suggest one tree is host to many memi. How many make that intensity of sound? A handful? Thousands? I am no memi expert but I think when the temperature falls a little, in the evenings of early summer, emerging memi migrate from the ground, either by flight, climbing the trunks, or a combination of both, to find a perch in branches. This is the time when, if you look carefully, you can sometimes see them on tree trunks. At other times, I have seen them in-flight as their bright colours, hidden when resting, flash vividly, probably to warn off predators. If you’ve never seen one, they certainly look ugly, fascinating and definitely prehistoric.
Not on my pillow!
I don’t know if I like memi or not, that screaming symphony is at its peak at the hottest time of day, usually as I am on my way to work, scuttling between one air-conditioned sanctuary and another. I don’t know if I like them because they are a harbinger of summer’s heat. My bollocks positively dislike like them! When you hear the first memi you can assume the temperature is approaching 29 degrees and at the same time you will probably notice sweat trickling down your back . Once their chirping is symphonic, amassed and intense you can assume the temperature is in the 30’s and if you’re male, your balls, dangling in what has now become an E-Mart carrier bag, are probably stuck to you leg.
Here are some facts to remember when you hear your first memi this summer:
Desert cicadas are the only insects known to sweat in order to lower body temperature!
While Koreans often translate ‘cicadas,’ and many Americans term them, ‘locust,’ they are not! Cicadas belong to an entirely different family of insect.
One species of cicada is native to the UK. (Melampsalta montana)
Cicadas lay eggs in tree bark from which hatched nymphs fall to the ground where they live, burrowing, throughout this stage. Many cicada species emerge from the ground annually, but some, with much greater life spans, emerge at 13 or 17 year periods.(eg: magicicada).
Should a memi park on you’re pillow and sing in your ear-hole, with a capacity of 120dB, you can expect permanent damage to your sense of hearing.
However, here is the most important fact: Fahrenheit 84, (29 °C), the approximate temperature from which both the memi will begin to sing and a pair of bollocks will start to stick to an inner thigh!
If your bollocks were stuck to your leg when you heard the memi screaming, I’d like to know! It’s a sort of survey!
(Link: for more comprehensive memi facts and the source of most information here)
I Touch Kiddies and I'm Proud of it! (Eulogy for Children's Day)
podcast 16
In the Ebente-tang (이벤트탕) the aroma of the day is jasmine. I now play this game where I try to guess the scent before looking at the information board. I got it wrong today but then I have a slight cold. For the second time in 2 weeks I saw an older guy with a snood. Anyway, I was thinking…
Not suitable for pumpkin people! (click)
Betty and Becky are two small kids I teach three times a week. Betty is the most adorable little girl you could ever meet. She is always impeccably dressed, usually in her little school uniform of matching gray skirt, jumper and blue blazer and her hair is usually decorated with some form of hair clip, a sequined butterfly or a flower. Around her neck hangs the customary mobile phone, stark pink with a little teddy bear suspended from it, as is the fashion. She is always laughing and skipping and incredibly happy.
Recently she has been playing the ‘ddong chip game’ (‘똥 injection’) which a few weeks ago I thought must have gone out of fashion until I noticed a couple of boys playing it. This ‘game,’ more of a gesture than a game, consists of clasping the hands together and extending the index fingers. The custom is to adopt a sort of James Bond stance, holding the clasped hands like a gun, and then poke your index fingers up your victim’s arse. It’s common for kids to do this to teachers. This week however, Betty has struck me twice in the testicles. The problem is, she has a habit of jumping out from a doorway so that she is under my belly and I can’t see her, at which point she strikes and runs away, giggling. Obsessed with my hairiness, she constantly strokes my arms, or feels the stubble on my chin and today after a hair cut, she wanted to stroke my head. Sometimes she sits on my knee or hugs my leg, her face almost in my crotch… Beginning to think I’m a paedophile? If so, that’s actually quite a sad indictment of our society.
As a westerner configured and attuned to sickening sexual predilections, as all westerners are, at this point I feel compelled to offer some defence. You know the kind of crap: ‘I’m not a perv but…..’. In Britain you can no longer make ‘statements’ such as: ‘I love children….’ ‘I touch children…’ I like the affection of children…’ without having to subsequently proffer some heavy mitigation to annihilate any suspicions. It’s a crazy situation which has been allowed to develop because electorates are poorly educated in subjects that matter to civilization and easily coaxed and coached to hysteric proportions. As with all the witch-hunts of the past, professionals have done little or nothing to challenge proceedings until a point is reached where a profession actually emerges to ensure the paranoia remains; a sort of official ‘Witch-Finder General Body’, which will poke and inflame fears and very successfully accuse, or suggest all opposition, especially professional opposition, as a manifestation of the problem itself. Hence, to defend a witch is to be a witch, and to critique paedo-paranoia suggests one is themselves a paedophile. ‘I love animals…,’ ‘ I love the affection of animals…,’ ‘I touch animals…’ needs no mitigation! Paedo-paranoia, as an ideology and profession which seeks perversion in everything, is as offensive, anti-social and unnatural as the abuse it seeks to prevent.
Betty’s behaviour is totally normal and no Korean would see anything amiss in her physical intimacy with adults. Earlier this week, in a class with two older boys, probably about 10 and 11, I had to lift up my shirt to let them scrutinize the scar across my navel where I had an umbilical hernia repair. Neither did they wait for me to consent before starting to tug my shirt out of my trousers. On another occasion an older boy who had an allergic reaction to something, pulled off his shirt and asked me to scratch his back and a few weeks later, the same boy asked me to put drops in his sore eye. Patting your stomach, stroking your arms, and playing with your fingers or hand are all regular, natural occurrences which should, in a predominantly healthy society, be associated with our being human and mammalian. Older kids will give you massages and play with you in a manner I have never witnessed in a British school and which would certainly lead to an interview with management. As for my Korean boss, I’ve seen her on the floor wrestling both girls and boys and I’ve seen a boy give her husband a massage on his thigh, very close to his groin, after he pulled a muscle. All totally natural ! Those whose minds have been poisoned with all that western crap, and from which I am not excluded, supposedly premised on love but in practice totally the opposite and in which everyone, especially men, are potential molesters, are likely to see such behaviour as suspect. Of course , child abuse goes on in Korea, probably more than we are aware off. But thankfully, during my life time, social relationships in Korea will not be perversified and terrorized to an extent where every adult is a demon and every touch between adult and child a potential case of abuse, to the same obsessive level it currently enjoys back home. I like contact with kids and see it as a part of natural, human relationships. If indeed the sexual abuse of kids is so high in the west, it is perhaps time we reevaluated either western human sexuality or human sexuality itself. Let’s face it, compared to Korean society, many facets of western life are fucking messed! Teenage pregnancy, sex diseases, anti-intellectualism, gross male machoism, rampant crime and violence.
In the UK in August 2007, a company launched Kevlar padded school uniforms to protect children from knife attacks. Perhaps our sexualities are fucked, too? The way we dress our daughters would suggest paedophilia is a prevalent predilection much closer to home rather than an offbeat obsession of strangers. What Daddy wants to see their daughter dressed like a tart? Clearly, many! Currently, in the UK, much debate is raging about Primark’s marketing of a padded bra / bikini for 8 year old’s! This joins similar promiscuous products of tweeny-hood such as thongs for six-year old’s emblazoned with two cherries and the caption ‘Eat Me!‘ (Argos) Marks and Spencer’s, ‘Angel ‘ range of thongs for 7 year old’s and the pole dancing kit for kiddies.
Of course, when you try to explain to Koreans about the sicker side of western society, the crime, teenage pregnancy, anti-intellectualism, the high rates of teenage infection by sexually transmitted diseases, the promiscuity, our obsession with sex etc, etc, it is rarely really comprehended. Several years ago I was in a bathhouse with my Korean friend, David. It was a hot and sticky afternoon in August and we’d gone to a mogyotang (목요탕) to cool off in the cold pool. As it was the summer vacation there were a number of children present including a 12-year-old American boy who was on his own. A 12-year-old boy naked and alone in a public place! In the UK, paedo-paranoia is so great kids can’t even go to school alone let loiter in a bathhouse unaccompanied and nude. For a while we played with a couple of small boys, flipping them into the air with clasped hands in which they put a foot. The American boy, whom we’d chatted with for a little, sat on the edge of the activity and at one point, David tried to encourage him to join in. When David touched the boy’s shoulder I noticed him tense up and I had to explain that for westerners, such physical intimacy is uncomfortable. It was a miracle the boy was in a bathhouse in the first place.
Childrens Day
Physical intimacy for westerners is now predominantly perceived as a sexual act which means that innocent intimacy, especially between adult and child, is branded suspect and a potential grooming process which could lead to sexual abuse. And if professionals such as social workers, teachers, the police, etc, aren’t enforcing paedo-paranoia, they are mute in any criticism of it. Indeed many teachers and other professionals will encourage paedo-paranoia.
Occasionally, though perhaps more so in the past, grandparents or relatives tweaked small kids between the legs, more so boys than girls, sometimes as a game and other times if checking the gender of a baby, and when this was witnessed by a foreign teacher in a school in which I taught several years ago, I found her crying hysterically in an adjoining office. She was adamant this was sexual abuse and wanted to know where she could report the incident. That this was a foreign country with different values and that it was not a sexual act, fell on deaf ears. One only has to talk to a professional involved in ‘child protection’ to sense their sickened mind-set, that everyone is suspect, that every intimate gesture must be scrutinized and that it is a perversion which is rife throughout society. In such discussions one always feels judged, that you too must be ‘one’ and hence the intense need to mitigate yourself. Krystalnacht, the Salem Witch Trials, the persecution of women in the middle ages, the Spanish Inquisition, McCarthyism, all were spurned and inspired by the babble, conflation and hyperbole of ‘professional’ witch-finders.
Physical intimacy with students or Koreans doesn’t phase me and if you think it’s just kids that are so lax about bodies, body proxemics and touching, it’s not. Several years ago a friend of mine who is totally heterosexual, asked to see my dick. There was a reason, non sexual, which I will save for a later post, but I had to take it out for him to inspect. He had just delivered my lunch and the steaming mandu were on the table between the two of us as I unzipped. Then, almost as if returning a favour, he nonchalantly showed me his vasectomy. Tackle zipped away, we sat down and tucked into the mandu which, made by his wife, happen to be the best I have eaten.
So, ‘I touch kiddies’ and I don’t mind when they ‘touch me!’ Indeed I’m proud to say, ‘I touch kiddies.’ And if you think this is perverse you can throw me in water and if I float, I’m guilty. Matthew Hopkins, Witch-Finder General, a medieval ‘professional babbler,’ was paid a pound for every witch he discovered and the water test was one of his prime methods of exposing them. Needless to say, with a livelihood premised on the existence of witches, and so, so many of them, he found them everywhere. Until that was, so legend says, it was discovered he too floated and he was promptly executed.
We have foisted a range of fears onto children and youngsters that lead them to perceive potential danger in innocent interactions, have taught them to distrust intimacy, to seek perversion in others and most perverse of all, taught them that intimacy is solely sexual. It is future generations that will have to endure the anti-social, anti-human damage wrought by those perverted ‘professional babblers’ and a society who kept silent!
But that is back in the perverted West. Meanwhile, here in Korea it is Children’s Day and my school is taking some students to the park. We’re going to play!
© 林東哲 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
Links to the ‘padded bra for 8 year old’s debate in the UK:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/apr/14/primark-padded-bikini
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/15/primark-padded-bikinis-mumsnet-sexuality
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/14/primark-children-padded-bikini-tops
Related Articles
- Mary Ann Sieghart: Good riddance to the society of suspects (independent.co.uk)
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