unerasable

i could write a lot about Christmas day, but i can't really be bothered. i'd rather write that for the first time in years, i feel alive again. i don't mean merely breathing and interested. i mean i'm feeling everything i know i've been for years but denied them and disabled the feeling mechanism.

today, i feel vulnerable, excited, lonely, anxious and scared, and it feels great (mostly). i met someone at a friend's foriegn teacher's Christmas party and chatted to her for practically the whole day. from what i can tell, she's very intelligent and she dishes up her heart and passion on a plate. yup, the 2 things i hate seeing in people the most cos that's when i like them unwaveringly.

i haven't 'liked' anyone for a long time. i've liked the idea of some, and the looks of others, but this person i actually talked to for hours is . . . unerasable. that's what i've mastered for some time - erasing personalities quickly. hers isn't going away. a part of me wants it to, but it's the chicken shit part.

i haven't met anyone since moving to Korea, and it's been maybe a year since anyone else has caught my undivided attention. i know i've got good taste in women, evident if you know my ratio for actually getting dates (i don't ask out just anyone). so i can only call and find out if she want's to meet for a drink or something to eat. wish me luck, humility, confidence, divine intervention, . . . . .

so much for being a Christmas grinch, ay? i think i'll happily eat the humbug crap of the last post. the delete button is too much like erasure.

i coulda been Santa

Korean Christmas seems pretty low-key, and i like it that way. i think i became a Christmas grinch when i stopped getting lots of presents at around the age of 14 or 15, or more precisely, when i started spending my own money to buy gifts.

i get caught up thinking a sell, sell, sell machine hi-jacks a month of the year instead of enjoying that month for what it could be, such as an excuse to buy the stuff i want and spending time with people i love. instead, i find myself moaning, buying stuff i DON'T want and sapping energy from parties i go to.

i enjoy seeking out presents for people, and this year was especially cool, doing so in markets of Seoul. it's when i buy something that ads say are perfect for my great-uncle Joe that i get disappointed in myself. that sense of effort and thought makes gift hunting a much more enjoyable endeavour.

i do like Christmas songs, but when i hear them everywhere i go for a month, continuously, it drives me insane. they're often associated with shopping rather than good cheer. a gratuitous display of this when i was in Dandong (China) in August, 2004. a big screen and speakers by the train station played 'Holy Night' (in English) as a backdrop to an ad for vacuum cleaners.

Koreans seem to think loop-playing Christmas songs in department stores and restaurants inspires holiday cheer. one restaurant i ate at had a collection of covers of 'Feliz Navidad (I wanna wish you a merry Christmas)', and played them back-to-back for 20 minutes! it was a favourite of mine until that very night, you may not be surprised to know.

on thursday, i was told that due to my weight, height and overall overallness, i'd be Santa at school on the friday. i spent thursday night fretting as i'm no fan of Santa crap. surely it's more magical to tell kids the toys they're recieving are due to people (parents or whoever) wanting them to play and enjoy life. using a mystical being, whom they'll never meet, to let kids know they're great and being themselves is awesome seems to reduce the importance of those they see every day.

when my Santa suit didn't arrive on friday, i was a little gutted. no Santa for the kids this year. that night, Fish (a teacher at another school) said he'd been Santa at his school and it was incredible. a little girl who didn't know him was mesmirised and wouldn't let go of his hand while she stared up at him with wide eyes and a gaping smile from ear to ear. when i heard that, i was pissed off the Santa suit HADN'T arrived and our school hadn't done anything special for the kids at Christmas!

so there you go, i really haven't got a clue what i think. i'd say it's a dualism. there's positives and negatives of offering kids a magical/mythical view of the world. having spent time with kids, i think they'd be able to apply that mesmirised condition to someone/thing real quite easily. they were mesmerised by me when i first arrived, so it doesn't take much (unless they know something i don't).

jeez, use a public toilet in a central Chinese city with a blonde mohawk on your head and you'll see grown men, women, or both, mesmerised in a similar way. maybe it's just that kids are allowed to be mesmerised and adults aren't.

mesmirised

the big thaw

well, it's taken 5 days, but the snow has mostly gone. according to reports, it was a huge dump of the white plague for this region of Korea. all that's left now is icey roads and footpaths and white ice piled in gardens and gutters that has thus far circumvented winter sunlight.

in class, i have been caught in power struggles in two classes: my 8 year olds class is like the UN security council, where power shifts daily as supporters change sides depending on the politics of the day (ie. who has the best food etc). it's becoming increasingly irritating, as the kids are all sweethearts to me, but to each other, well . . . i'm not going to leave any sharp instruments within their four walls.

my kindergarten class has two girls engaged in a struggle of their own. i have no idea what it's about, but for some reason, every day i go into class, one out of the 5 girls in the class is being bullied. lately, it's been mainly one girl, R, bullying another, K. i don't know why. so, amidst the lessons i'm helping them through, they're all chipping away in Korean and, one day, R said something that made K clam up and cry. she didn't cry loud, nor did she whine. she pretended to read while tears rolled down her cheeks. she looked like the loneliest soul in the world. R, on the other hand, smiled away to herself, showing pride in her work.

before i go on, i don't like R, and i do like K. the main reason for hating R could be that she seems to disregard people, and that includes me (i hate that). now, as i sat watching tears drip from K's chin, i had to fight off the urge to dropkick R out the f***ing window as i was trying to concentrate on getting K to un-clam herself. i don't know if i perpetuated any great intervention, but she had a smile on her face after a while.

it broke my heart seeing K like that. i don't know why. i've walked past fights in NZ and not battered an eyelid, i've had friends and family bawling their eyes out to me, but it didn't hit me as hard as that. two reason's i assume are: one, i got bullied as a kid and i empathise with K quite easily; two, i've been spending time with these kids every day for a few months so my life is wrapped up in theirs. there may be more to it.

in another class, an 11 year old dropped a packet of chips on the floor (i let kids eat in class, if they do their work). she instantly asked me to pick it up, to which i said no, and she responded with a short, sharp Korean verbal. i asked what she said and two others both translated for me:

'You're fat, your face is ugly and you wear ugly pants.'

so, how do i reply to that? my first inclination was to say something biting back to her, but why would i do it?

i like the pants, she doesn't, let's move on. i don't think i'm butt ugly and don't care what her particular opinion is, so let's move on (beauty's subjective). she thinks i'm fat, and so do i.

i was pissed off about the fat call. but i'm not really pissed at her, i'm pissed at myself for being fat. i've been struggling to keep the weight off for a few years, and winter in Shiwa is maybe my biggest challenge so far. still, it's a boring subject and really, i have no excuse for eating like a pig. so, let's move on.

i didn't say anything to her, choosing instead to check students work and pretend to cry :)

blizzard

went shopping in Seoul this weekend amongst a massive throng of human consumption (i was a part of it, i know). was incredible, the number of people. i've been to some shopping places and events around the traps, but every different area i went to had streams of people continuously flowing past. i had my first ever experience of being in a foot traffic flow pushing me out of a subway train. i've had pushes and shoves before, but i've never been part of a single energy surge manifested by a collective. so yeah, there were lotsa people.


on our way home, we saw some snow from the train, and when we finally arrived in Shiwa, it was a full-blown blizzard.

from our living room the next morning.

we were in Seoul shopping for a few things for our Christmas party. the boys now have a tree (hideously expensive here) with lights (hideously cheap) and a couple of posters to cover up marks on our wall. here's my fave.


don't know his name, but he looks pretty cool. judging by his expression, he's either famous or modelling aftershave, or both.

Royal Shiwa Golf Links

Brian, Andy and I have been playing a few rounds at the local country club. Brian and i are both former rugrat swingers, so are hitting the ball well, while Andy's a novice. but it's been a little difficult.


golf is a very honest game, what you score is literally what you score, but at the Royal Shiwa, our score is a reflection of what the computer thinks we score. it's give and take though, as we're never hitting out of true long grass or a bunker.


the people that play at the Royal Shiwa have probably never been on a real course, or may have flown toNZ or Australia just for the privilege. funny, as it'd probably cost more to play on one of these computers in NZ than playing a real course, while it's vice versa here.

today i shot a 79 (+7), so i'm pretty happy with that. need to work on my putting. let's not mention Brian (whoops, just did). it was close until the last few holes.

in Christmas news, our boss asked the girls to have a party at their place on the friday before Chrissy, but as one of them is working on saturday, they thought they'd outsource it to subcontracters. we agreed to the terms, then realised our apartment is a disaster. we need to buy a few beautifying agents eg. black drapes, a few new mats to cover up the floor, and maybe Christmas decorations to cover the holes in walls and Brian's door. looking around our living room right now, it's basically a big white room. we need to get a couple of paintings or a sculpture - we'll inform the faculty we need to commission a new piece. wonder how much is in the coffers.

smoking men only

NZ culture surely has plenty of oddly contrasting aspects that i wouldn't spot, but here's a few dualistic things i reckon are part of the culture here in Korea.

1. princesses and sexism.

basically, Korea is a very sexist society. example: female foreign teachers are told to not smoke cigarettes in public, as it will give a poor image of the school. males, however, can chimney-choke away. i know a few women who've all basically said **** off and kept smoking, however after maybe a week, all the dirty looks from Koreans drive them into dark alleys for privacy.

a teacher who left not long ago was approached by the cops, yelled at and had her lit cigarette plucked from her mouth!!!

same rules apply for public intoxication.

also, during some drinks at an apartment (all foreigners), our music was too loud, so the neighbours called the cops. the boys in blue demanded to speak to a men, even though a woman was the only one who could speak some Korean. the first thing they asked her was if she was Russian (ie. if she was a prostitute), then she had to translate for us, even though it was as easy as telling us to turn the music down.

the flip side is that girls expect to be treated like princesses. in many ways, girls get things handed to them on a plate whereas boys are expected to fend for themselves. some directives at school are that hitting boys is fine, not girls. yelling at boys is fine, not girls. help girls with classwork before the boys. all sexism still, i suppose. girls learn to rely on others and not themselves? going back to the loud music and the cops, guess who would be held responsible? NOT the women, i'm assuming.

flip again, and the prostitution ratios in Korea are extreme for an OECD country. 1 in 6 women have worked in the sex industry. that's gotta be indicative of SOMETHING!

2. community and elitism

elitism is probably in every society in the world (even Antarctic penguins are snobs), and Korean hierarchy is irritatingly predictable. if you're the eldest, you're the most respected, end of story. university grants aren't dished out on merit. instead the most money gets dished out to the longest serving professors.

bosses, whom also are elders, react terribly when they don't get the respect from foreign teachers they automatically expect (for those who know me, you won't be surprised to read that i have a tough time respecting anyone automatically).

a friend of mine was drinking with a girl (20 years old) in a bar and an older gentleman (maybe 55) interrupted and invited her to drink with him. she didn't flinch, wished my friend a good night and sat with this guy for an hour while he chatted to her. it wasn't about sex, someone explained, rather she respected the fact that an elder had requested her presence. when the guy left, she went to her own home out of respect for the older man, as his night was over, hence hers should be too (sounds dodge to me, but apparently this is quite normal).

i organise to phone my students from time to time. we have a set appointment, yet when i call, sometimes no-ones home. they tell me that Mum or Dad came home and said they were going out for dinner. a parent's seniority automatically overrides the teachers, so the kids don't even mention that they've organised a chat with me. of course, they expect me to understand that 'Dad said . . ', and why wouldn't they. Mum and Dad are boss. the kids wouldn't think to say 'i told teacher i'd be home tonight.'

despite this, it's a communal culture. NZ is very individualistic, but Koreans refer to themselves as 'we', and see themselves certainly as members of a collective. everyone seems to consider Korea as an entity of which they are a part of. so, in some ways, they're all equal, but in others, absolutely not equal at all. maybe they all adhere to the hierarchy systems due to their own impending hierarchical ladder climbing. as they get older, they gain more power (not from those older than them though).

3. violence and innocence

i see kids hit each other every day at school. i also walk past hundreds of kids a day either going to, or coming home from Taekwon Do, Hapkido or Gumdo - all places where kids learn how to hurt each other. men are conscripted into the national services and HAVE to do TKD. from a young age, a lot of Koreans learn how to fight (they learn more, i'm sure, but fighting's one of the basic things).

the flip is that, incredibly, i've seen next to no violence whatsoever from adults (apart from one slight skirmish i had with a very drunk dude who wouldn't let go of my arm, which was resolved peacefully). i've seen some very intoxicated men having very loud arguments that just wouldn't happen in NZ, mainly because someone would turn the argument into a fight. here, i've seen men argue for 15 minutes, then one of them snaps, sees the pink mist, and slaps the other guy across the face. of course, the other guy reacts by looking absolutely shocked, hurt, violated, nearly cries and his eyes ask 'Why did you hit me?'

could this be a product of their Martial Arts classes, or the military, and having learnt to NOT strike someone? is this dualism i see not at all dualism, but rather just a group of contexts i fail to grasp as-yet, hence i shouldn't have posted this in the first place?

chill baby

there's 2 kids academies and 1 Tae Kwon Do school in our building, so when kids are finished (hourly), all the teachers lead the kids from the 5th and 3rd floors to ground level. there's lots of kids all bent on getting outta there asap. i tend to run downstairs when i can, which the kids love.

on Wednesday, Grace (a 7 year old student of mine) was walking downstairs holding hands with her sister, Emily, who is in the kindergarten program. at a guess, i think Emily's either 3 or 4 years old. the general practice is for the kindy kids to use the elevator (the stairs are like Chinese motorways), but Grace obviously hasn't been told to. so, in the middle of this big wave of kids rushing downstairs, i picked up Emily and carried her to the ground floor. my class was yelling at me to run, but i ignored them and walked on down talking to Emily, who seemed like a young Buddha, at one with the universe. 'Yup, this big dude's carrying me. cool. why is the sky blue? hope mum doesn't try to feed me mashed pumpkin and tell me it's carrots again.' she wasn't fazed at all. she's been called the 'chill baby' at work.

Grace, Emily and my class all went on their merry way and i went back to my desk having a damned good think, as i really enjoyed carrying Emily down the stairs. i'm guessing it was the responsiblity i'd placed on myself. so, i wondered why I'm not a father.

i often tell myself the world's full of starved resources and is overpopulated, and there's no freedom to do what i want to do while being a parent. i sometimes wonder how people can handle being a parent, as what i see of it, there's a lot of not-fun times. but they pale in comparison to what i think is the real reason: i'm the most important person to myself and don't want to change that. explains, to a certain degree, why i'm single too.

picking up Emily wasn't really an option, it was what had to be done. for 3 minutes, Emily was the most important person to me. all of a sudden, there's a capacity for me to forget my self-importance, place it onto others. yes, Jebby, i'm shocked too.

i'm not saying i'm 'cured', but maybe a little more self-aware than i was on tuesday.