New Year

One of the best things by far about Korean New Year is that about three weeks after it they have another New Year, meaning that if it is shit (which let's face it, New Year often is) you can have another stab. My New Year was fucking brilliant. I was on a beach with more than 150,000 people, at least four of which were drunk, watching the sun come up while someone set of the equivalent of the Moldolvan GDP in fireworks and ten thousand Koreans formed an orderly queue to have their photo taken with yours truly before skipping off giggling.

I needless to say, was absolutely plastered. This is mostly the work of a beer that they sell in Korea and has become close to my heart: OB. You see, OB beer isn't like other beers, because it has 'Blue Technology' (see attached pic.). Most marketing strategies in Korea inadvertently serve as accidentally acute parodies of what we are subjected to in the west. Things are often marketed as having some colour technology or other. OB is the best example as it is written in english and is beer. The main role of the Blue Technology is that they can charge an absolutely piss-taking 25 pence a can instead of the normal 19 or 20 pence. Anyway it's difficult to translate how much I love this beer, which now anyone in Korea who has been drinking with me refers to lovingly as 'Technology'.

Now, i'm going to be a bit of a prick her but it has to be said. Korean's can't hold their drink. Considering that the national alcoholic beverage costs about ten pence a litre, tastes like water and gets you absolutely pissed they don't really go for it in the slightest. Most of my 'drinking' buddies (friends) out here are from the USA, and for all their loud mouthed, crude, over-enthusiastic, language-abusing, large-foam-finger waving intentions they fall firmly into the four beers and you're out category. So when on New Year's eve I found a bar that sells tequila for about thirty pence a shot I took it upon myself to get everybody in the bar absolutely brain-fucked in the most efficient execution of compulsory fun ever! I am so proud. These people were scared of me. If I saw someone attempting to sly out the exit they were immediately reprimanded through the medium of tequila. Failure to dance, match me stupid grin for stupid grin, help carry or distribute tequila or drink tequila were offences also punishable by tequila. As is said, absolute power corrupts absolutely and towards the end of the evening summary tequilaings were frequent to the point where even I didn't know what the unfortunate individual had done to deserve the tequila- eventually I was presented with a bottle of tequila and a bar-branded t-shirt and begged to leave by the one individual who had managed to escape my tequila wrath on the basis that it was actually his bar. I left with my head held high. The Americans I was drinking with now refer to me as 'The Terminator' and refuse to answer my Friday evening text-messages.

I now know why alcohol prices are so high in the UK. Once, a Korean asked me if we had Soju (the Korean national drink) in the UK and I began to laugh uncontrollably as my mind produced an image resembling a mix between that epic opening scene from Twenty-Eight Days Later and Begbie's bar fight in Trainspotting.

Christmas Crackers

I spent my first Christmas on my own last year. I am sure that many of you have done this, and I am sure that many of you were not bothered. I am not a religious man, but I am an ardent defender of all things Christmas. Nothing pisses me off more than the familiar jingle of overly-political and under-read party-poopers so enthusiastically announcing that they 'don't do christmas' because it is 'commercial'. I for one believe that too little time is set aside for us to truly celebrate anything with our friends and family, and have recently decided that far from shunning christmas we should in fact be campaigning with some gusto for a summer equivalent- 'Steakmas', 'Beachmas' and '2 Grams of Coke and and Three Hours of Wiimas' are early forerunners on my brainstorming chart.

Seriously though, I worked with this one guy who hated christmas so much that I am sure he obtained at least as much fun from the whole event as the MD of Clinton Cards and he made a point of 'not doing christmas' so much that he was to be heard objecting to it more loudly and more frequently as the advent proceeded, to a point where I am sure that he was so excited on Christmas Eve that he could not sleep and stayed up all night not opening the last square on his advent calender and not placing his stocking at the end of his bed and not watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Mind you, this was a guy who was easily the most contrary individual i've ever met and only ate meat. Yes- he only eats meat. He won't eat a fucking burger because it has bread in it! I mean I like meat, I love meat, but this guys parents failure to shove that spoonful of liquidised cabbage down his rebellious little throat twenty-five years ago started a chain-reaction leading to the development of a wholly morose and pallid (literally and figuratively) individual who I quickly learned to love hating. This is why I went on Christmas overdrive at work, the guy left on December 29th and deep down in my heart I like to think that I played some crucial part in this decision.

So it was the combination of missing my friends and family and all the Christmas fun we normally share combined with this man and his one man crusade to sound as above everyone else as he possibly could without ever thinking anything through or having a point that led me to transform myself into Captain Christmas. "Christmas" he waffled, "Is a Christian festival, and Christianity is illogical and a tool of state sponsored oppression". "Yeah, but sausages with bacon wrapped around them kick ass" I retorted. Little wonder that a man who had no experience of the roast potato should remain unconvinced, "it's just society telling you when to celebrate". "What about christmas crackers?" I asked, "christmas what?" he said. Now, i'm not a worldly man. I suppose I had never considered that other countries don't have crackers, but it was like all at once it all made sense. You see in Korea they have Christmas but it is not nearly as good and it is not conducted with nearly as much enthusiasm as it is back home. I had expected some support in raising the spirits of the teacher's room from this guy as he is an American but then it turns out that they don't have christmas crackers! I knew there was only one person who could resolve this issue for me, my mumsie.

I told my mum the bare, unadulterated truth. Working on Christmas Day I can handle. Not eating half my body weight in Roses/Quality street whilst watching war films with my Dad, this can wait till I get back I suppose. I mean I can even handle not getting excited about the fact that Return of the Jedi is on real TV instead of the extended DVD box set sitting beneath the TV, but if I don't get to wear the paper hat and read the shitty joke well i'm sorry but then Christmas is officially fucking cancelled! Five days later, and in ample time for Christmas my mother's parcel arrived, and with it the institution of Christmas Crackers had blessed the lands of the Korean peninsular for the first time.

It turns out that crackers couldn't be more British. I mean they were invented by a guy called Tom Smith, in London, and have the curious power whereby no matter how cool and/or expensive your gifts are, you still feel the need to have an argument with your sister about who gets the miniatured pack of playing cards. While all the other western teacher's issued wordsearches and distributed candy (sweets) to bemused students I had a lesson based entirely around the history and special function of the glorious cracker including a role-play exercise where students would have to reenact the classic 1989 Robert v Caroline 'Thrilla at Christmas Dinna' bout where my sister got the snakes & ladders set I only got the nail clippers (it was in the pipeline).

Anyway, after this we had a 'staff party', which involves the owner of the school issuing an hour long lecture on our responsibilities whilst refusing to let us eat an entirely non festive cake after which I made everyone pull a cracker and have their photo taken with the hat on. Here's some of the better photos:

Christmas

Have you ever wondered why at the end of Super Mario Kart some characters always seem to pull off the 'V for Victory' backwards-up-yours two fingered thing? Perhaps, like me you always assumed that it was in fact a reference to 'victory'. Well it's not. There's this asian phenomenon whereby individuals become very, very excited when they are being photographed and in Korea this always seems to manifest itself in the 'V' sign coupled with an especially stupid grin. Anyway, this is not an especially important thing- I just wanted to explain this prior to a few photos i'll be posting up once I tell you what happened when I introduced christmas crackers to Korea.

Back again...

Hi Guys! I'm back. Again, I am very sorry for the long delay but it takes time to gather your thoughts, especially when you're immersed in Lego Star Wars 1 and 2 and can download a film quicker than the time it takes to watch the one you just downloaded! Anyway more important is the fact that I have lots of things to report, ranging from mildly sarcastic to very very sarcastic, with the Christmas and New year period providing especially rich pickings for the sarcastically orientated gentleman.

This is priceless!

Halloween

Korea doesn't really celebrate Halloween but at my Hagwon we try to celebrate all western festivals to teach the kids English in a fun context. To be honest i'm not sure that most of the kids rally grasped the concept. However, it would be a shame if I didn't show you what one of my kids turned up wearing, take a look at this.

It's a good opportunity to bring up an aspect of Korean culture that has to be seen to be beleived. Basically, they both despise and worship the west. As a general rule the older someone is the more they hate you. Many Koreans think that I both smell and look disgusting. When I hand out things to my students they flinch or hold their nose. At first I found this a bit upsetting but now I am used to it. If you get on a bus or train, people will get up and move as far away from you as they can. Sometimes, bars or restaurants that are bustling will be 'closed' when you try to sit down.

On the other hand the younger people think you are fantastic. Men stop their cars to wind down their windows and tell me how handsome I am on a regular basis. Koreans, with the exception of their excessively bushy privates, have no body hair. This means they find the hair on my frearms fascinating and it is by no means uncommon for a fully grown adult to start stroking my forearm mid conversation!

Funniest of all is their obession with the English words on clothing. On the whole they don't understand the language so well so they just print stuffon T-Shirts that they must have found on the internet or something. I saw a kid with 'A golden shower' written on the back of his shirt and 'Mark who?' written on the front. It was fantastic. Swear words are frequently to be seen on the clothing of very young children at school, it is a good laugh every time.

I prefer the subtle mistakes. The local sports shop is called 'Athlete's Foot', you can buy Nike's in there for £15 it's awesome. Best so far though is this boutique:

Soccer

So anyway I should probably fill you all in on what i've been up to this past few weeks. You won't be surprised to discover that I have found out how to bet on premierhip football in Korea. Technically, gambling is illegal in Korea, but you can particpate in the 'Soccer Lottery' whereby you select results instead of numbers and then choose your stake.

There is this one bar where I have a beer alone and watch sports after work to avoid going straight home and there are these three Korean students from the university who work there almost every night. So I go in there wearing my Arsenal shirt one night and one of them clocks it and comes running towards me grinning like we were long lost pals. I learnt early on that the name of a football team pretty much passes as a greeting out here so this guy is wagging his finger at my chest like van Persie on a hat trick and saing 'Arseenal' over and over. So these guys end up sitting at my table and we're all looking at the weekend fitures and after a while I realise they want me to tell them what to bet on. The problem is that everthing is written in Korean. It turns out that this was exactly the motivation that I needed to start learning Hangul (Korean alphabet). Anyway, the first words I could speak in Korean were 'annyong haseyo' which means hello. The first thing I learnt to write was 'Aston Villa'. Incidentally, 'Sunderland' must sound like the Korean for 'knobcheese' or something because every time I say it they crack right up.

Anyway, in a strange kind of way I think these three dudes are probably my best friends out here. Our conversations involve saying the names of teams to each other but I get free beers and snacks now so i'm happy.