5 posts tagged “life is hard”
I'm teaching two kids, both from the same family and it's turning out to be quite nice.
One's in primary school and the other is in first year of middle school (read year 10).
The nice thing about it is the pay (not top dollar, but still nice) and the conditions (I get picked up, dropped off , I get fed dinner - I teach in the evening, and the parents are nice and I also get free reign over the lessons - not available if I'm teaching in a college).
And of course, the kids are pretty cool.
The one in primary school is really promising, she hasn't been taught much yet but she has so there's not going to be any of those set-in-stone attitudes about English and I can unleash the Sue Spinks and Rhondda Fahy brand of systemic grammar upon her without worrying that it clashes with anything she's learnt already.
I'm just gonna come right out and say it.
They have a bidet.
Not just a bidet either. An electronic bidet.
I sat down on the thing and it immediately started making noises and splashes without me doing anything., and that's just plain creepy. The seat started to heat up, there was this panel of buttons and flashing lights threatening to do... something...
Imagine yourself in a scenario where you are trying to sleep on an electric blanket (I had performance issues) and you have this vague but unsettling fear, that any moment, someone is going to yank the blanket from under you, roll it up, pour water over it and shove it where the sun don't shine.
It's exactly like that if you've ever had that exact fear.
I got paid today.
Goodbye.
GROW THE HELL UP AND STOP BEING AFRAID OF THE DARK! TURN OFF THE FREAKING LIGHTS AT NIGHT DAMN IT!
I can't stand the night being not dark. I wanna see some freaking stars, man.
Anyway, here's a hilarious video of "Commander in Chief", dubbed in Korean.
Creepy cuddles,
Daisung.
Well, that kinda describes the entirety of it, but not really.
There are these bathouses in Korea, where in exchange for wons, you too can get your kit off and bathe in full view of many other people (including kids with parents). Not that there's any hint of sexuality (there are no lwas against homosexuality in Korea because, apparently, there are no gays or lesbians in Korea), or any kind of shame or 'wrongness' about it, but, to a relative outsider, it does feel odd. I was 'tricked' into going, I didn't really know where I was being guided to by the guys I work with at the labs, but seen em' naked now! OK.
You get over it, and on one makes a fuss about anything so no biggie.
I'VE SEEN MORE NAKED BODIES THAN I HAVE IN MY ENTIRE LIFE INCLUDING WHEN I STRAYED INTO THE WRONG PART OF BYRON!
No biggie.
<berryvision>
To hang my clothes. There was some flimsy plastic parcel wrapping tape (non-adhesive) stretching across my room that I tied clothes hangers to, but "more bling" says I and cash come overflowing from the machine with screen next to the bank. Took the said cash to a 1000 won store and paid 10,000 for a pole for my clothes.
There's always someone constantly talking behind me...
</berryvision>
Man, those berries berries, like, um LSD, take a while to wear off. Anyway, there's a copy of the napoleon dynamite dance for anyone looking to learn it, and I haven't posted in a while because I'm so damn busy. There's still an embargo on me speaking Korean so it's kinda frustrating (I'm "learning" more every day though).
2 weird things I saw this week were: a catholic pharmacy (huh?) and people betting on cycling races at a velodrome. That just blows my mind. People were BETTING ON CYCLING RACES!
Anyway, on to pseudocast #2.
On the topic of eating meat.
I miss eating meat like I used to...
Over here, people wat with chopsticks and spoons, which means you can't cut someting like a steak. The consequence of eating with chopsticks is that all meat and vegetables have to be processed in the kitchen to the point where you can pick it up with either a spoon or a chopstick, or its uneatable (as opposed to inedible).
So what?
Well, if meat is processed to a small size, and you cook it, it almost always cooks all the way through, leading to either dry, or heavily sauced meat. And being a true carnivore, I like my steaks blue and I've dabbled more than a few times in eating raw meat. It's the blood. Pure and simple, the tastiest part of meat is in its juices and the juice is blood. In medium-cooked steaks, the blood is cooked to the point where the red blood cells go brown and is indistinguishable from the cooked meat, but the juice is just blood. Goes without saying, the less you cook it, the more blood there is in the meat and that's something you can't get in a lot in chopstick food. Because the pieces are small, you don't have to cook it long before all of it gets cooked through.
*Sigh*
ps. I was getting some confirmation of my grades and I apparently topped the class in "Advanced issues in personality and social psychology". Interesting because, 1. I don't have any and 2. don't have any skills there either, because it's somewhat ironic.
That's what my blog would have said before it was shut down by the evil team at phpnet.us.
Yes, I got linked by some top 1000 websites and it did eat up a huge amount of traffic, but they shut down the account and deleted everything (including the mySQL database) and didn't tell me about it until after everything I posted had gone.
So, update your bookmarks people {I've got a picture of that Nelson kid from the Simpsons pointing and laughing at me, but that's a cartoon. You real people wouldn't do that would you? [Yeah, but who am I kidding (So you probably are laughing. Boo.)]} !
I'll re-upload all the photos when I have the time, probably this weekend, in the meantime, I've found a job as a teaching assistant in a business communications course. I think it's going to be fun despite the fact that I'm going to be paid peanuts (like, really, less than $300 per month - everything is possible in Korea I've been told).
I've also done quite a few other things here too. I've got a little bucket in the corner of my room where I keep my berries and tadpoles. 47 berries and 31 tadpoles. Sometimes I'm so poor and desperate that I have to eat them. Them tadpoles die on you though, and disappear without a trace.
Creepy cuddles.
Daisung.
