This topic is by the request of Lara, may she live for a thousand years.
I hold
a great deal of affection for Korea. I can truly say that if I hadn’t have come
to Korea, I’d have missed out on many wonderful friendships and experiences and
I’d certainly be much more poor. Nevertheless, Korea, we must have some words
regarding certain topics.
Your
taxi drivers, for one.
The
majority of Korean taxi drivers I interact with on a day to day basis are
tolerable to deal with – sometimes, even a joy. (Sometimes, the offer of a
Juicy Fruit on a bad day is all that is needed to turn it around.) But
sometimes, sometimes…
There
are those that will do their level best to misunderstand you if you
mispronounce a word in the slightest way.
There are those whose cabs have a suspicious scent and who refuse to
roll down their windows. Then there are Seoul taxi drivers, who will take you
to the exact place you don’t want to be, take you halfway to your destination
only to pretend that they no longer know where to ferry you to and demand pay
for the privilege to abandon you in the middle of nowhere, and speed so fast
down the freeway that you’re debating whether you should text your friends to
tell them what happened to you.
I must
also voice a complaint about the lack of proper ovens in your apartments. I have never been much of a cook. My skills
on that count amount to “let’s stick it in a frying pan and see what happens.” But I do like to bake. Cookies, cakes,
muffins, pies… These are things I like to concoct and stick in an oven until
they are edible and delicious. And yet, you persist in equipping your
apartments with little stovetops instead, leaving me to purchase an inadequate
toaster oven.
How am
I to treat your workers and students with delicious cookies if I am only able
to bake six cookies at a time, I ask you? How? Korea, I only want to make your
people happy.
Your
urban planning needs work. Roads should be at least two lanes, no matter if
there’s cars parked on the side or not. You need proper addresses that can be
punched into a GPS in order that I have one less charge to lay against your
taxi drivers and everyone’s lives can be made that much easier. A deliveryman
should not have to phone me for directions to my home. My parents don’t have to
– the street and the house number is all that is needed.
Then
there is the matter of your bread. Garlic bread, in particular, was never meant
to be sweet. It is meant to taste of garlic and butter and salt. Yet I have
learned to fear your offerings at the Paris Baguette and the school cafeteria.
I know if I sample them, my hopes will only be dashed again.
Korea,
you provide for me a cheap drinking experience, but not a quality one. Soju costs
a buck a bottle, beer at ten bucks a pitcher. Is it good beer? No. Not by a
quarter. There is a reason why your foreigner population makes silly rhymes
about ‘Hite and shite’ and ‘Cass and ass’. There is a reason why I have gone so far as to
brew my own beer. It’s a time-consuming process and the result is much more
drinkable and delightful than your domestic mass-produced varieties.
I don’t
hold much love for many of the mass-produced Canadian beers. I’d sooner live
off of Molson Canadian and Kokanee for the rest of my life than Max. May my
father forgive me.
‘Maybe’
does not mean ‘no’. I appreciate your
need to save face, but ‘maybe’ actually does mean ‘maybe’. If you answer my
question with a ‘maybe’, you give me false hope. Depending on the question, it’s
crueller or at the very least, more annoying than giving me a simple ‘no’. ‘No’
will not offend me. ‘No’ will leave me nodding and moving on to the next thing.
I give you permission – nay, my blessing! – to say ‘no’.
Many
Koreans – although, to be fair, the same charge can be laid against citizens of
many nations – are all too ignorant about the rest of the world. One of my
principals was amazed to learn that honey was not strictly a Korean product,
but is, in fact, produced in Canada too. He didn’t try to argue against the
point, which was good, but why should it have been so surprising? If they’re
spending thousands upon thousands of dollars on every English teacher to come
here, why should the most basic facts about Canada, America, the UK, Ireland,
South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, be incredible revelations to them?
Growing up, I was at least expected to learn a Cliff Notes version of the
history of the US and Europe. (And also, how Canada fucked up in regards to
Asians and the Jews and Africans and Eastern Europeans and Natives. Or maybe BC
was singular in this? I know not.)
Advance
notice is a welcome thing. As strangers in a strange land, our kind often
become friends with other strangers. As friends, we often make plans with each
other – to meet at a restaurant, to go watch a movie, to share a drink at a
bar. Sometimes, we simply plan to enjoy our evenings alone and in peace. You
can imagine, then, why we don’t particularly like being told at the last moment
that actually, we have a staff dinner that we simply must attend. So please, a
day of warning. Even two. It would make things so much easier and leave us so
much less disgruntled. (Also, please, at these staff dinners, the occasional
word in English would do much to diminish the awkwardness we feel.)
When I
venture into your stores, I am not a creature to be stalked. If I need your
help, I’ll get your attention some way. If you follow my every step, I feel
like in turns a circus freak or a suspected shoplifter. Just let me be. Give me
some space. The personal bubble needs to
be respected.
Lastly,
there is the matter of your students. I teach high school girls. From 8:30 AM
until 4:00 PM, they have regular classes. They have two afterschool periods
after their cleaning time. Many, if not most of them study until 10:00 PM,
until they’re finally let off. Many others must attend sessions at a hagwon.
Many of them get by on six or less hours of sleep per night. They fall asleep in my class. Can you blame
them? I want to give them a love of learning and a genuine interest in English,
but so many of them have been burnt out so thoroughly that it takes a herculean
effort to get them to lift their heads from their arms and speak.
They
are afraid of exercising any creativity in class, for they’re so afraid that
they’ll be ‘wrong’. I keep straining my brain on how to give them confidence in
their own abilities and they’ll not have any of my ideas.
This is
my rant for this evening. Next week, I will rave about just the opposite, just
you wait.
