It's been a rather hectic couple of months. I don't mean that in the bad way though, we have spent Christmas in the tropics and in two days' time we leave for Seoul for the Lunar new year. The reason for this post is primarily to briefly recap on what's gone on between my last post and now before doing more thorough posts on Malaysia.
I've also realised people are 94% more likely to actually read something if it's in a listed format, as opposed to bricked paragraphs of waffle. So here we go,
Jordan's top five things he didn't blog about between October and January, excluding his trip to Malaysia which will be blogged about at a later date!!
1. Foreigner seminars! We've had two. Equal in their depression inducing tedium, but different in their content. The first came in mid November. It was a compulsory seminar amongst all Hagwons in the area, being held in the nearby city of Changwon. We were given two days notice that we'd have to go to it, but with little information of what to expect. It was horrific. We had a minibus (our hagwon's minibus) herd us up and take 10,000 won off each of us (including the Turtle and I, bastards) before chugging us along to the seminar room. We got some free sweets on arrival. I filled two pockets worth, just to sweeten my troubles and because, at heart, I'm an anti-establishment rebel. I told myself that as I slipped an empty cola sweet wrapper back into the bowl and walked into the hall, knowing I was bringing the system down at a grass roots level, at the very least. The talk was two hours long. The first hour comprised of a man who couldn't really speak English very well and very clearly didn't understand the physics behind how a microphone worked. He told us all about how we could go about getting the visas we all already have (the ones necessary to pass immigration on arrival to Korea...) and what visas US generals use. After dragging out this talk for fifty minutes, he had ten minutes of free time. What should he do? He looked into the wings, muttered something in parseltongue, a muted response was returned, he shrugged. At this point, it could've gone either way: we could've had a ten minute intermission, we could've seen sunlight, stolen more sweets, destroyed the system some more, but no! He wasn't going to let us go without. We came for speeches and he wasn't going to let us down. Like a true hero, he started 'riffing', as I believe it's known in the entertainment world. He opened his improv act with "I used to live in LA you know..." we were hooked! He told us all that sometimes people in LA were rude. Then I think he started talking about his wife. By this stage he'd got so excited the microphone was here, there and everywhere. People in the front rows laughed a few times whilst I tried to work out if they were sweat patches coming through his suit. Something not seen since the dampened Lee Evans. The latter hour took an even more macabre feel as a man, a professor no less, came onto the stage and told us all about how we definitely shouldn't
A - touch children
B - not even if the children don't mind
C - make sure you're not having a relationship with a child
D - NOT EVEN IF the child seems up for it
E - smile at natives, they might think you're being sexually suggestive
F - complain too much if you're the victim of domestic violence, you must simply ask the perpetrator to stop and come to a compromise. (Yes, you must ask the person punching you in the face to stop doing so and COMPROMISE with them. Maybe suggest they just give you a Chinese burn instead? Compromise.)
G - talk about sex. (It's a taboo subject here, despite seemingly everyone thinking about it every time you smile at them...)
We then got some fantastic advice on how to pronounce the 'L' sound in two different ways. That was immensely helpful. It turns out for 22 years I'd been using a G by accident and no one had ever bothered to correct me. As a short footnote, this whole seminar began with a montage of songs being danced to by a group comprising of 15 year old middle school girls, all with either short shorts on and/or bellybutton revealingly small t-shirts. One of the songs involved, by the way, was Sistar's popular K-pop hit, Give It To Me. I'm only presuming it was something of a test: those who seemed to applaud too rigorously were taken out the back and executed.
The second foreigner seminar wasn't a foreigner seminar. We were very bluntly lied to by our directors as a way of forcing us to go to Seoul with them on the Saturday before Christmas just so we could be shown how to conduct an internationally franchised reading and spelling test. To save money we drove there. Four hours there, five and a half back. The demonstrations/explanations lasted twenty minutes. It made me hate everything for a good while, also because I was intending on attending the orphanage with the other volunteers to play Christmas games and such with all the children. Instead I spent my day in the back the sole banger in Korea either listening to Mr and Mrs Kim having domestics or watching Mrs Kim get far too comfortable for a person to be whilst driving.
2. The pre-Christmas Christmas! Knowing we'd be in Malaysia for Christmas we decided to have our present-opening/Christmas dinner day a few days earlier. We'd been sent beef Bisto by my charitable parents. We used it to drown away my meat faux pars. The Turtle left me in charge of the pork. I thought a nice honey roasted pork would be lovely. Except the recipe ended up being for a Chinese style pork dish. She spotted things were afoot when the whole apartment began to smell like soy sauce. Unfortunately I'd also ruined the carrots a bit also. Thankfully, with enough gravy to wipe out Kiribati, all was well. Post dinner we exchanged gifts. I'd gotten the Turtle a Polaroid digital camera with some printer paper and I got a brand new iPodding device, complete with headphones. I also got a book of maps, because sometimes I imagine I'm quite cool and can be quite intimidating to be around, so if I spout geographical facts like an utter virgin, people might think I'm alright. At least, I think that's her logic...
3. Our jobs changed! We still work at the same hagwon, but rather than being speaking teachers, we're now listening teachers. At first it was a bit weird, but it's got easier. It's just so unbelievably boring though. The amount of times in a day I have to say "All finished?" before pressing rewind, and listen to the same USAish adults putting on nasal children's voices and making weird innuendos. "Nooo, we're going to have to find my pencil harder. Find it, have you found it? Yes, that feels good! I can use my pencil now!" is sometimes off putting when you're busy trying to do a Rubik's cube sat in the corner.
4. New Years! We're not the most sociable people at the best of times. This evening consisted of caramel Bailey's and kilo of Cadbury's taken from Malaysia.
5. The Great Shanghai debacle. So the plan was that we'd spend the LNY over in Shanghai, pretending to be Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson, roaming around and shooting stuff. We were going to live the dream. Unfortunately, for reasons I cannot go into too much, our visa applications to the People's Republic were denied instantly. I can go into it quite a lot actually, I just wanted to say I couldn't to make myself seem more mysterious and interesting. Alas, it was because our current Korean visas were within 6 months of expiry at the time of the Chinese application submissions. For this reason, we were told no. Instead, we're jetting up to Seoul, which is, if anything, a more pun-friendly city anyways, so I'll remain upbeat. The best of it all though was we managed to get a full refund!! I could've kissed Ravinda, the man who worked at the 24 hour Expedia call centre. Such beautiful words he uttered at ten past three, his local time.
At this point, I've just realised I actually have a blog entry from October/November that I never bothered finishing entirely, so I'll post this now before editing that and posting it. It'll be something of a bootleg. Something of an unreleased B-side for you all to enjoy.
Again, I feel I must apologise for the delays.
