Sunday, July 21, 2013

What the ... reason to live in Seoul?!?!?!?

It has been a while since I have had anything to post here. Today a friend pointed out a BuzzFeed post. A "Community Contributor" named Alex Reichert posted a list of 11 reasons to live in Seoul. Thanks to the likes of Chrissy Snowflake, I am pretty jaded when I see that a list like this has been posted about South Korea. Sadly, Alex proved to be about as bad as Chrissy.

There are only 4 items that really deserve to be on a list like that, and 2 could actually be lumped together. None of them are actually Seoul specific, ok plastic surgery capital is but plastic surgery isn't. From his list;

2. Fastest Internet in the World. That is pretty spot on. He could have added inexpensive in there somewhere as well. It is one of the things I miss about not living in South Korea any more.

4. and 10. could really have been lumped into one category. (A category that would ignore 7.) Amazing Food. Koreans do a great fried chicken, but the pizza, meh. (Ok, have to say that Potato Pizza did make me go Mmmm.) And of course Korean BBQ. How he could rank pizza and chicken above Korean BBQ I don't know. Probably because he is a bit of a fucktard. You can find some great food in South Korea, especially in Seoul.

5. Insanely cheap and quick public transportation. I would have called it inexpensive and reliable public transportation. Potato Potato.  I loved the inter-city bus system and from those I know who used it the city services were just as good. Taxis are pretty cheap too. This is a good one.

That is it. The rest of his list pretty much sucked hind tit and smacked of the ramblings of Chrissy Snowflake, although not as pedantic. Let's look at the rest of the list.

1. K-Pop. Really, the fuckwit listed K-Pop as the Number 1 reason to live in Seoul. The way he writes you would expect to see people randomly dancing Gangnam Style down every street in Seoul. What really made me shake my head was when he wrote;

"With cell phone shops on every corner blaring music, you’ll be in K-pop heaven."

He leaves out the fact that it isn't just cell phone shops blaring music. It is pretty much every shop. Or maybe every other shop. From my recollection on most bocks there were 4-6 shops with music on outside. Oh yeah, duelling speakers maxed out at 11 whether playing the same or different songs every 30 feet or so is heaven. What a fucking moron.

3. Plastic Surgery Capital of the World. Yeah, that makes a city great. Easy access to plastic surgery. Better yet, the following comment;

"You can’t walk a block in Gangnam without getting the feeling that you just saw the same girl walk by a half dozen times."

It could be because Koreans tend to dress the same and style their hair the same. It must be plastic surgery. Or maybe he is just a racist twat who wants to say most Koreans look alike to him without appearing to be a racist twat. Or he is just a fucktard.

6. Make an unreasonable amount of money teaching English. Up to this point I was thinking, nay hoping, that this was just a tongue in cheek attempt at satire. Then this anal nugget popped up including links to other stuff Alex wrote about teaching in Korea.  It included this gem;

"You can easily save $15k by the end of the year if you’re not trying to save, or $20k+ if you are."

Wow, did the bullshit alarm in the Flint Cave ever start blaring when that showed up on my screen. At first I thought the fuckwit was playing K-Pop on his page Then I realized it was just the BS alarm. It looks like I wasn't the only one to have such an alarm go off.

This was picked up in the comment section. Todd Parker wrote;

You're not going to get rich teaching English in Korea. I've looked at the rates pretty carefully when I was considering doing it myself. It's not poverty-wages - it beats the hell out of working minimum-wage in the States - but it's not going to make anybody wealthy.

Well said, Mr. Parker. Speaking as someone who worked there I saw people who did make oscene amounts of money. They were Ivy League graduates who worked insane hours at the most expensive hagwons in Seoul. NOT people who could just speak English fluently and had any old degree.

To which alex replied;

You won't get rich, but considering how "qualified" the teachers are and how much you can make tutoring, it's a pretty good gig. Teaching in Japan is much less lucrative. You can easily save $20k after a year in Korea.

Easily saving 20k a year isn't getting rich? Your stupidity is showing.

Matthew Cross pretty much finished swabbing the BS into the outhouse where it belonged when he posted;

no you really can't. Most people with effort can save on average about 1 million a month. That's only $882/month x12 + severance. Unless your severance is $10000 you aren't going to make $20k in one year, unless you are also working illegally. Face it, your list is awful.

Well said Mr. Cross. Well said.

I could go on and talk about numbers 7, 8, 9, and 11 but why bother. None of them are specific to Seoul. None of them are really things that would entice someone to live in a city let alone make it great. As I mentioned above, I had hoped this was an attempt at comedy. A pathetic one but still an attempt. However, when Alex tried to back Number 6 up with links to "serious" posts/pages he made off of BuzzFeed it made it seem less like comedy and just plain fucking stupid.

Alex also tried to defend himself later in the comment section when Mr. Cross posted what he thought of the post and Alex. He wrote;

I'm sorry, you're completely right. I just finished a teaching contract in Korea and thought it would be fun to throw together a list of quirky things I've come across there, but I'm far from being an expert. It's only purpose was to entertain, and I apologize if it offended you.

So, he did try to play the "comedy" card. It was just quirky things meant to entertain. It wasn't meant to offend. I highly doubt it offended anyone, it just made you, Alex, look like a fucktard. When you actually tried to defend your make unreasonable amount of money comment it kind of puts the lie to saying the list was just in jest. Regardless of your intent, it is a terrible list.

P.S. FYI Alex, it is NOT an article. You are not a journalist. It is a post about a list.

8 comments:

  1. I agree with him about the food. I miss Korean food a lot sometimes. Flint and I visited a Korean restaurant in Halifax that was fairly satisfying.
    The fast internet and the fast public transport were things I wish we had in Canada.
    But K-Pop?
    Ew.
    That crap made me want to puke every time I heard it. I did enjoy shamelessly ogling the girl groups, though. I would just turn the sound down and enjoy the view.

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  2. Snap! Well said sir! I agree 110%!

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  3. Stig:

    I do miss the food. Especially the rib place. :)

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  4. Burndog:

    Thanks. :)

    Seeing Alex refer to his post as an article was kind of funny. Bill Maher ranted a bit on the last episode of Real Time about internet twats mistaking their blog posts as actual journalistic articles.

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  5. Still waiting for my obscene amount of money. Wages have been stagnant for the past decade, and enough people are coming over to make getting a job actually competitive now. That said the most you can make in a year on straight wages aint going to top 30k U.S.

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  6. Oh, and don't forget the fact that after a few years teaching in Korea, you will probably need to go back to college to get a degree in something that will get you a job.

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  7. Also thanks to this post I checked out what Chris in Asia is up to. Apparently he is in Thailand writing about Thailand. I've never been to Thailand but the stories that I have heard have been intriguing. Somehow Chris In Somewhere has made even Thailand boring. That was my biggest problem with him when he was Chris in South Korea, the concept of his blog was awesome, but when he actually got around to posting something it became a self important hipster taking boring pictures of things that aren't actually that interesting in the first place. He became the foreign internet version of those information kiosks next to historical sites in Korea. "This is Cheongok temple. It was built in 1340. It is 7 meters wide and 5 meters high. On the inside you can see cultural artifact number 70 which is Buddha thinking about a salmon dinner. The carving took 5 years to complete and was restored in 1970." And I see over at Chris's new blog he visits a seashell museum.

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  8. Well said 3gyupsal. :)

    I will do my best to avoid his Thailand blog. :)I have been there are couple of times and it was interesting.

    I do have to thank Chrissy Snowflake though. I always wanted to use the word pedantic and he gave me the opportunity. :)

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