I Like my Girls in Knickers
I hate girls in pink as much as I hate boys in blue. Much of my hatred probably stems from those pathetic toys like Barbie and My Little Pony. Parents who buy their daughters such toys are as irresponsible as those who hand their five-year old crotchless panties or a thong. Even though many women will defend their comfort, I would imagine thongs are as comfortable as high-heeled shoes in which you are forced to strut about like a chicken. You can’t run in them, you can’t stand up straight, they can be dangerous but you look so much more sexy now you’re two inches taller! As for thongs, I dread to think how they must look on a hot day after that gusset has been sawing about up a sweaty crack like a length of arse floss. Fashion and comfort do not go hand in hand and if something is deemed ‘fashionable,’ all pain and discomfort will be tolerated in its pointless pursuit. In UK schools, a high percentage of teenage girls wear such degrading lingerie and I have seen evidence of such when girls have bent down. Conversely, I doubt few Korean girls under 18 wear them. Personally, nothing looks more unattractive or more slutty than a thong or indeed a pair of men’s posing panties. In the bedroom before a session I can go with but at all other times, keep them hidden! I like my girls in knickers, even those baggy blue ones girls were forced to wear for PE in the 60-70’s; the ones that looked like shapeless nappies. And my boys? Boxers please! I recently wore a pair of boxers for too long and on one leg a sort of thong developed. It was quite uncomfortable sometimes strangling my thigh like a tourniquet and at other times being consumed between my bum cheeks so, I know how it feels, girls; believe me!
My Boxer-thong.
Marmite anyone?
Ever since a few celebrity men wore pink a couple of years ago, including Peckham Beckham, who wore a pink scarf, it’s become an acceptable colour for men. All praise the gurus of fashion! Even kids in my classes have told me, that pink is now ‘in,’ in the UK. Of course, it’s been ‘in’ for quite awhile and for some it never went ‘out.’ I’ve worn a number of pink Ben Sherman shirts over the years but then I am forced to buy from the small selection available that fits me. I doubt I’ll wear pink now as it seems to have become a laddy-chavvy colour. Until recently men could wear pink as a statement of individuality, which is of course, is exactly what Peckham Beckham did, probably on the orders of his wife who as a talented singer and musician is correspondingly an expert on fashion , design and perfume, except that once adopted by the hoi polloi, it becomes more of a uniform. Fashion is about conformity more than individuality. If Peckham Beckham sported a turd on his head, a substantial number of the population would follow suit. Which reminds me, back in 2003, when living in Daegu, I had a pink baseball hat!
A Motorbike and pink - definitely a statement. But is she wearing a thong?
I'm Pine! And you?
Are you an ESL teacher in Korea? Bored of teaching? Tired of asking the same questions day in and day out? Suicidal at hearing the same flat, dull and unemotional responses? Look no further! Simply download the PDF, copy and distribute to your students. Then sit back and enjoy the laugh.
I’M PINE is a mini dialogue for 3 characters designed to raise awareness of mispronunciation and provide some amusement for bored teachers. If you have the energy you can explain to your class the differences between, for example, ‘fine’ and ‘pine’ or you can simply hand out the script and let them get on with it.
I’M PINE
THE CHARACTERS SHOP KEEPER (SK) / MR FINE / MR FISH
FINE (Mr Fine walks into the Fish-shop)
SK Hello Mr Fine. How are you today?
FINE I’m pine and you?
SK I’m fine too. What would you like to buy? I have some lovely seafood this morning.
FINE Shi-pood! Ohh, Lovery! What have you got?
SK I have some nice fish, cod, and delicious mackerel.
FISH (suddenly Mr Fish walks in)
FINE I want some pish!
FISH Well, here I am Mr Pine. Good morning?
FINE Good morning Mr Pish, have you come for a pish.
FISH Well, Mr Pine you do look pine. Yes, I’ve come for a pish, I love a pish on a priday.
FINE Yes, pish is so tasty and lovery. I was going to have a presh pish but I think I might have a crap instead.
FISH What sort of crap do you like?
FINE I love big, fat brown ones, esperarry with big craws. A big crap boiled is best and better than a robster. Mmm, dericious. I like my pood presh. What sort of pish do you like Mr Pish?
FISH I love a long one. Long ones are more tasty. The longer the pish the better. Mmm, tasty. (MR FISH TURNS TO SK) Can I have a long pish please? Pish and pren-chee pry – dericious!
SK Pish and cherry pie? I wish you’d speak Engrish!
FINE And I want a big crap, a big brown crap that will fill my pot.
SK Ooooo! sorry gentlemen! You can’t pish here and you can’t crap! That’s tewibble, disgusting. If you want a pish or a crap go to the toilet!
FISH Pardon, I don’t understand. I only want a pish please.
FINE And I just want a crap, a big brown one.
SK You’re disgusting, nasty people. Go away!
FISH But, I don’t understand. This is a shi-pood shop.
FINE Yes, a pish shop is where you go for a crap.
FISH And a pish!
SK Go away! You’re very bad! Get out!
(Mr FISH and FINE walk down the road very confused why they could not buy fish or crab at a fish shop.)
FINE What a strange man Mr Pish. There are so many strange people. Last night I asked my neighbour if she’d like to see penus out of my window.
FISH How big was it? Was it ra-gee?
FINE Oooo! it was the big. Very big. I’ve never seen it so ra-gee.
FISH Was it shinny, too?
FINE Of course, Penus is always big and shiny.
FISH Was she excited? I would have been.
FINE No, she wasn’t excited at all. She was tewibbly frightened.
FISH What did you say?
FINE I said hurry, hurry Mrs Dick, you can see Penus out of my window and it is really big and shiny.
FISH What happened next?
FINE Her husband came to the door. ‘Puck you!’ He said, and hit me in the pace with his pist.
the end…
Coughing One Up
podcast 14
As I lay wallowing in the ‘ebente-tang,’ the ‘special event’ pool (이벤트 탕), today scented with jasmine (자스민) I was thinking, I’ve never heard anyone burp in Korea. In British schools burps are often heard and as a schoolboy, I can remember belching competitions as I was often the winner. In the army we were always burping. And while I have never heard a Korean burp, I am very acquainted with the sights and sounds accompanied with hoiching your lungs up, snorting your nose clear and even haenging the contents of your nose into the nearest gutter or down a wall. While such habits might not be rated high in terms of manners, in the bathhouse at least, they are clearly not taboo. When you have a cold or flu, nothing is worse than having to discreetly snort to keep your nose and throat clear and it has taken me a while to be able to utilise this habit without being too embarrassed. If I do snort, it is not as a habit as I am conscious of its performance and my snorts are still apologetic and reserved.
bathhouse interior
Koreans are far more guttural than we westerners, sighing loudly and mopping their forehead after finishing off a spicy meal and getting in to extremes of water in the bathhouse always elicits a large sigh, often accompanied with long and ecstatic, ‘shiwonhada!’ And the soju? That elicits sounds like ‘wa.’ Snorting, hoiching and ‘haenging’ are all fairly common sounds, at least for men. One occasionally sees older men bent over a sidewalk or on the grass, pressing one thumb against a nostril while ‘haenging’ the other one clear. Though I can recall very few occasions hearing a woman snort, I’ve never heard or seen one hoich or haeng though I’m told females hoich and haeng in a bathhouse, especially older women. I rarely hear my neighbours television or music but every morning, around 6.30am, I’ll hear a man’s strangulated and at times alarming hoichs.
After a spell in the steam room and quick dip in the cold pool, I sit down on one of those bucket seats next to an elderly man I haven’t seen for a while. I attempt to make conversation, telling him I’ve had a string of colds and asking how his health is but he can’t understand me. Of late, I have noted a marked improvement in my Korean but his inability to understand me isn’t doing my confidence any good. When I have to resort to spelling words on the palm of my hand, I conclude he must be hard of hearing! Unable to communicate, we both drift off into the relaxing mental blankness that accompanies scrubbing and cleaning your body and which can at times, especially with the world obliterated by the soothing sounds of water, be almost zen-like in its emptiness.
awesome
He’s scrubbing his foot, positioned on the ledge next to me, as I feel a need to snort. Though I have neither snorted in public or spat one out, along with haenging your nose into the palm of your hand, many seem to do it. The congestion irritates me so I snort and without any forethought, decide to spit it into the gutter. Now, as I was in the process of forming my lips and amassing the clot subsequent to its expulsion, it occurred to me that I’ve heard people snorting, and seen them spitting but wasn’t quite sure if what they were spitting was actually the contents of a snort. I mean, when someone snorts you don’t stand and watch and then inspect what’s been expelled. Right on the edge of expulsion, I realised I had assumed what comprised the spit was what had been snorted whereas it might simply be spit. Too late, I blew out large oyster. Instead of hitting the gutter to be carried off in a river of soapy suds, it landed on the black marble ledge next to the older man’s soap. I quickly doused it with the shower only to aqua plane it towards his toes which he was busy scrubbing. Luckily, I was able to divert it with another blast of water which sent it slinking over the edge of the ledge where it hung like a pendulum before slipping into the gutter. I’m not sure if he noticed but if his sight was as keen as his ears, I doubt he even knew who was sat next to him. I have decided to pay more attention to the expelling of such matter in the future. And then there’s the subject of pissing into the gutter as you’re showering…
© 林東哲 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
Kongrish!
'Homemade riceball and beef on the ricel.'
I don’t know if a term has already been coined or if indeed there is a name, for the blending of Konglish with bad English. I am going to call it ‘Kongrish’ and below are some of the examples I’ve collected. I wish I’d had a camera for some of the ‘classics,’ just to have substantiated their validity.
Kongrish Around Song-So, Daegu
‘Hair Deciener Shop’
‘Twin Twon Coffee Shop.’ I assume this is meant to read, ‘Twin Town.’
‘Shitty Pizza.’ This has to be one of my favourites!
There was also a boy in one of my classes who wore a t-shirt on which there was a large ‘20’ under which was written, ‘Sporty, Young and Milky.’
‘Kolon Sports’ – on a hakkwon bus.
‘I’ve got a loaf of strawberries’ – This was on scratch and sniff notebook.
‘Every morning of sun shine glowing warm shafts upon us’ – I wish something ‘sporty, young and milky’ would ‘shaft’ upon me some morning!
The following was from a packet of smoked salmon bought in E Mart:
‘Around June to September, in a something sun, 3-5 year old well-grown salmon that have brilliant gesture and swim through sea and river along the blue and dear coast of the Pacific Ocean have very good quality of flesh and taste so good and have got praised as food of low-calorie. More than one century salmon has got praise of epicures all over the world. Salmon taste from soft to strong with many nutrients and special pink colour flesh create fantastic mood and taste.’ Classic!
And though there’s no errors with this one, it appeals to my childish humour:
'Hotel Venus,' except 'Venus' is pronounced 'Penus--uh'. Also the name of a popular lingerie shop.
This one was taken this year
A bar, not too far from Lotte Cinema, Song-So. 'Skewer is a Speciality?'
This one is from Cheonan – just amusing!
A pork restaurant
Want to see my Boxers?
My former boxers. If young and lithe they might be sexy but on me they pose a scary sight!
podcast 13
I have a fat arse and in the UK, unlike the USA or places like North or Southern Germany, if you are tall (over 6’3), and bulky (waist over 40 inches), you can say goodbye to ever dressing decently. I’m certainly no fashion guru but then I have an excuse! Britain is so backward in so many ways and probably the worst dressed nation in the developed world. If I had to rank them, it would be marginally above the naff fashions of Poland and those from the former East Germany. Shortly after arriving home last Christmas, I was confronted on tubes and buses by a sea of black, browns and depressing drabby colours.
For years I’ve had to cut sleeves off my shirts. If I can buy a shirt that fits, it hasn’t been made for a tall person who is big, but a short guy who is mega fat. Most shirts and jackets I buy in the UK have cuffs that end just below my elbows which if I recall correctly, is reminiscent of both 80’s fashion, where men’s short sleeves were accompanied with a handbag, and the character Nik Nak from Man with a Golden Gun. Trousers are never over 34 inches in the inside leg unless you’re atrophied and like a chopstick and conversely, if you have the girth of an elephant but legs not much longer than those of a chair, the choice is unlimited. Meanwhile, if you’re fat and tall, you’re fucked!
Britain has a knack for giving outsize clothing shops bad names. I’m not surprised most establishments are internet based as the shame of entering them forces you never to leave home. Who wants to shop for fashion at a shop called ‘Mr Big,’ or ‘Fat Man?’ I usually refer to such shops as ‘freak shops,’ because in terms of store name , quality, and actually design, Alla Poland, only a freak in desperation would wear such products.
My British made (off the peg) bag blazer, costing 477.000Won (£280) Pure shite quality!
Shortly before coming out to Korea in 2007, I bought a sports jacket at a freak shop outside London. To be honest, it is probably the most decent and respectable outsize clothing shop I have seen in the UK. The round trip tallied 2oo miles and I paid the price for the privilege of being large. The last pair of trousers I bought here, prior to my first visit to Korea, cost £80 sterling (137.000W) and lasted a year. The quality was shit and they were shapeless and style-less and wearing them was one step up from dressing in a cloth bag. That year I had three pairs of trousers made by a friend in Daegu, each cost me 80.000Won, which then amounted to around £40 (about £46 today). Indeed, I am about to wear one of the pairs this very moment – nine years later. My jacket, cost £280 sterling which as of today is a staggering 477.000 Won. I’ve only worn it in Spring and Autumn and then, only to go to and from work, so it hasn’t had a lot of use. However, I’ve just had to have repairs made to the lining which has come apart (cost 8000W or £4.70). A few years ago, when in the UK, I inquired about having a pair of trouser made by a ‘bespoke tailor,’ probably not the cheapest place to go, he quoted me £300 (512.000Won).
Here in Korea, there is no way any shop will stock clothes or shoes that would fit me but with Daegu as one of the world’s leading textiles centers and an abundance of reasonably priced tailors, getting something made to measure is easy. As a fat arse in Britain you’re treated to limited range of choices when you buy boxer shorts. The only option for purchase is via an online freak shop and the choices of colours, usually black, gray, white or blue with a little variation in terms of check, stripes or plain. So it was an amazing experience for me to shop at Daegu’s main textile market and chose patterns for my new boxers.
Silk boxer shorts? Cotton? Linen? Even plastic, the choice was mine!
I eventually had a tailor make me a few pairs and have since built my collection to twenty. The overall cost of each, including the material, works out at about 22.000Won (£12.50). While this is expensive for a pair of boxers, it is substantially cheaper than ordering a pair from hand-made boxer companies in the US and of course, I’ve selected the material. Needless to say, on my visits to the bathhouse, I now strut about proudly in my lovely array of boxers. But I haven’t discarded my threadbare old ones. Loathe to wear my new ones in which to exercise, I wear them on the treadmill where the worn material and disintegrated gussets provide ample ventilation for my nether regions.
Luxury
Luxury that only a fatty would appreciate
© 林東哲 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
Quintisentially Korean – Mugwort (artemisia asiatica) 쑥
Mugwort (artemesia asiatica) 쑥
In the ebente-tang (이벤트 탕) last Thursday, the essence of the day was mugwort (쑥) which is a coincidence. This plant has a long and extensive history in both the east and west and being Spring, it is currently readily available in street markets and from the elderly women who sit on pavements with a small selection of vegetables.
I bought a very large bagful for 2000Won (£1 sterling) which I washed, drained and put straight in the freezer. Now, to be honest, I’m not sure how it is used but a quick search revealed one use is in soups. Immediately, I added some to my bean paste soup (된장 찌개) which I was making for breakfast. Don’t be fooled into think I’m a health freak, I had a BHC fried chicken last night, with a complimentary bottle of cola! My initial reactions to the mugwort were good but I’ll need to try it again.
Mugwort is also known as Felon Herb, Chrysanthemum Weed, Wild Wormwood, Old uncle Henry, Sailor’s Tobacco, Naughty Man, Old Man or St. John’s Plant. Korean uses it to colour some types of rice cake green and it is known as a blood cleanser. It is also used in the production of the small cigar shaped burners used in the oriental medical practice of moxibustion. The genus, artemisia, is extensive and one type, artemisia absinthiumm, is used in the production of absinthe, the oil of the plant giving this powerful drink, among other things, its rich green colour.
Absinthe
Mugwort pillows, also known as dream pillows, basically a pillow slip filled with mugwort, can apparently induce vivid and even prophetic dreams. I’m skeptical when it comes to ‘crystal crap’ so in my trawling for information on various aspects of mugwort, I fell upon a youtube video by ‘New Age Goddess, Djuna Wojton,’ which was too good to ignore. Djuana is a typical Earth Mother eccentric who is both entertaining and somewhat charismatic, so you can try the link and learn how to make yourself a mugwort pillow – which I intend to do when the market is next in town.
Interesting links for Mugwort:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisia_vulgaris
http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/m/mugwor61.html
http://www.herbs2000.com/herbs/herbs_mugwort.htm
Absinthe – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absinthe
Monday Morning Market – Tofu (두부)
Monday morning market. Steaming tofu (두부)
Back home, some of my friends don’t particularly like tofu and it’s hardly surprising as its crap; its expensive and sold in amounts not much bigger than a bar of soap. It’s never fresh, totally tasteless and apart from being packaged in cartons that don’t require storage in a refrigerator, I suspect it contains chemical preservatives. In Britain, tofu is about as oriental as a pizza in Korea, is Italian. This is quite natural of course, it is not a particularly popular food.
두부
Every Monday morning, I buy my tofu at the street market in Song-So. The block, which is about a third smaller than a house brick, costs 1000 Won (5o pence sterling), and it will last me a week used predominantly in soups. It is aslo very nice fried with sesame oil, sprinkled with sesame seeds and accompanied with a little soy sauce.
The tofu is always warm when bought and indeed, when I sliced this cake to put in the fridge, it was still steaming. What I like most is the smell when warm, somewhat like steamed milk, but this is lost the moment it cools. Eaten warm it is pleasant though it’s hardly bursting with flavour. Like a number of other Korean foods, oak curd for example, (도투리 묵), I think the appeal lies in the texture and their combination with other textures and flavours.
Tofu deteriorates very quickly if kept in the plastic bag in which it was bought. The best way to keep it is to place it in a plastic container filled with cold water. You can store this in the fridge and if you change the water every few days, it will easily last a week.
I Saw a Snood
Alleged Korean mafia member
podcast 12
I was laying in the hot pool (열탕) this evening. I never hang around in there too long as this one is quite hot and fifteen minutes is my maximum. As it was empty, I could wedge myself in my favourite corner and watch the television. Then this man with a large dragon tattooed on his thigh stepped into the pool. People often tell me that a tattoo is a sign of mafia membership but that might be prejudice. Last week I saw the first person I have ever seen in Korea with a tattoo on a part of the body not easily covered. It was a large cross which extended from the base of his neck right up until just under his ear. It wasn’t a good design and looked like he’d done it himself. A tattoo on the neck! That’s a bad sign and I heard myself mutter, ‘wanker,’ exactly as I do when I see those silly kids on hairdryer motorcycles zig-zaging from one side of the road to the other with an enormous speaker, masking-taped to the petrol tank and blaring at full volume over the whinnying strains of the engine. Yea, I know, those kids are probably harmless, but I had enough anti-social behaviour in the UK to last a life time. A tattoo on the neck in Korea, will definitely impede life to the max!
The guy stands in front of me so his buttocks and are facing me, and for a few moments he stands watching the TV. I’ve seen plenty of guys with this sort of tattoo as well as the one cascading down the back and they’re never unfriendly or aggressive – not as you might expect a gang member to be. I’ve also noticed how many of them have the same stocky, slightly pot-bellied physiques. The water was starting to get uncomfortable but as I was going to change pools, the ‘ice room’ was calling me, Mafia Man turns about and I get a glimpse of the first snood I’ve seen in several months. Snoods are not common in bathhouses, but on non-western adults at least, they are about as common as a foreskin.
Anyone who has ventured into a bathhouse will have noticed, especially if they come from Europe, that all Korean men are circumcised. Indeed Korea has the highest rate of non-religious circumcision in the world – thanks to the influence of the USA in the 1950’s. Meanwhile, N. Koreans remain intact. Finding data and statistics or indeed any information on the phenomenon of Korean circumcision is as difficult as finding information on frenulectomy / frenoplasty; the additional operation which the majority of American boys are subject to and which chops away even more of their dicks than their circumcision. When health ‘care’ secretly removes parts of the body and the victims don’t even know whats been removed, let alone their parents, it ceases to be ‘care.’
Korean circumcisions are usually performed shortly before the boy is about to go to middle school, the average age being around 13, though for some it may be performed earlier and it is certainly not uncommon to see uncircumcised high school or even first year university students. However, it is probably safe to assume 99.9% of males have been circumcised by the time they are conscripted into the forces. That this operation is not performed in infancy may be explained by the fact that until fairly recently, infant mortality rates were high and circumcision placed an added risk on a boy’s life. Unlike the USA, Korea has not exploited the clandestine removal of the frenulum. Clinics for circumcising boys, most popular during the winter vacation, are as common as supermarkets and indeed, my local E-Mart has a clinic opposite so you can have your dick mutated and be sat in E-Mart McDonald’s in less time than a scale and polish. Operations taking about thirty minutes, are performed under local anesthetic and cost between 60.000 – 100.000 won (30-50 UK pounds).
And this is exactly what it looks like!
Back to the snood! When I first started going to bathhouses, I quite often saw a couple of guys with these very weird-looking things hanging from the underside of their dicks. At first, I thought they must have had botched circumcisions but I now know they were either Filipino or had been ‘circumcised,’ Filipino style, which is known as pagtutuli. The traditional Filipino version, which simply cleaves the foreskin in two, and then lets it hang off the underside like a chunk of fat, hence the ‘snood,’ qualifies as a circumcision about as much as rasping your face with the cheese grater qualifies as a face-lift. Meanwhile, if you want to know what happens to all those foreskins in the US – it’s a mega-buck industry with neonatal foreskins the most lucrative. Want to buy a batch? Apparently, they make very good anti-aging cream! Personally, I’ll stick with Nivea. http://ccr.coriell.org/Sections/BrowseCatalog/?SId=3
© Nick Elwood 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
All or Nothing – on Mid Term Exams
Being the time of mid-term exams, the school was quite strange today as some classes watched videos and generally relaxed, while for others, the pressure is still on. The majority of British kids don’t know what pressure is and would find student life in Korea very strange most especially as Korean kids identify with, and respond to, the term ‘student,’ (학생 – haksaeng). Even this week, in the bathhouse, a boy was making too much noise and a man close by addressed him as ‘haksaeng!’ Trying to get an English kid’s attention by calling them ‘student,’ would be pretty redundant and a great many would simply tell you to ‘fuck off!’
The one and only!
I have great admiration for the Korean Education system, recently cited by Obama as a model the US should emulate, but one of its major downsides is the incredible pressure it puts on young people to perform. While it’s laudable that Korean students mostly want the best marks, it is somewhat sad that there is only one best mark, notably 100%. Earlier this week I found some old photos of me taken almost 30 years ago and I was not only incredible fit, but very handsome; in fact so handsome that I could actually fancy myself. At the time however, and at every point of my life, I’ve been too fat, too unfit or too ugly and yet there I am in a fading photo with a waistline and looking very good. It’s bit of a knock when you realise that at one time you possessed something you’ve spent your life looking for, and you never knew it! The same scenario is probably true for many people who struggle with their weight, especially women, always feeling fat no matter how thin, and it’s similar for Korean educational achievement.
Ben
Asking kids yesterday, how they got on in their National English-speaking tests, even the ones who got 100% generally said, ‘okay,’ or ‘so,so;’ their modesty masking their intense happiness. And those who got scores of 99, 98, 97 etc, were equally as modest except the chances are they’ were bitterly disappointed. There were several words that confused a number of my students, ‘sea animal’ and ‘sick animal’ was one, the other was ‘ hobby’ and habit.’ I could imagine a native English speaker making an error but for those who answered incorrectly, this is no consolation and neither is the fact that many of their friends made the same mistake. A score in the 90’s is respectable and worth celebrating unless of course, you’re Korean.
So, as I left school yesterday, Ben who is 15, is sat on his own, forehead on the table, and crying. I’ve never had a British boy of his age crying because they didn’t do well but here it is not uncommon. And of course, you cannot console a Korean whose ‘kibun’ (기분) is in the gutter. As a western teacher there is something incredible about a student intensely upset as it reflects they care as much about their performance, as you do. When kids don’t care or have slight regard, you can guarantee your job is about child minding and behaviour control rather than teaching. However, it’s a travesty that the celebration of success is pivoted exclusively on 100%. Ben is a fantastic student: intelligent, witty, and in the Korean way, innocent, he’s a teacher’s dream, yet despite all his efforts and best intentions the loss of 2 marks effectively makes him a failure. Today was his first of a string of mid-term exams!
I have noticed that when students get their exam results, school becomes a refuge for those kids castigated and even physically punished by their parents. Last year, Ben lost one point in an exam and his father scolded him and I recall him being afraid to go home. And so my boss will spend half her time plying them with tissues trying to console them and the other half explaining herself to agitated parents. Somewhere in the space between 90-99, maybe even 80-99, should be room for celebration and self-congratulation but as with weight-loss, in Korea it’s all or nothing and so a moment of self-appreciation, a pat on the back from a parent, is lost.
© 林東哲 2010 Creative Commons Licence.
Strawberries and Musk Melon – Monday Market
딸기
Ahh, the smell of these strawberries was delicious. A common sight now spring is here as is the musk melon. The strawberries can be fairly large, some the size of golf balls.
Syrupy sweet
Musk melon is okay but personally, I don’t find it as delicious as the much larger, and sweeter, honeydew melon.
참외
Elwood 5566 
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