Buh Bye Kozilla

Wow ... watched Episode 5 of The Great Food Truck Race and the ending was a bit of a shocker. Yet not completely surprising. Why? The Korean team was disqualified for cheating. They added $2700 of their own money to their till. Strangely enough they DIDN'T NEED IT! They still would have finished in the top and not have been eliminated. Morons.

Sejong the Burgermeister

I was watching the 2nd season of The Great Food Truck Race and there is a Korean (by way of NYC) based truck in it. The guys are phenomenal! The food, I wish was available here.

In epsiode 4 they are are in Manhattan, Kansas taking part in a challenge. They have to make a dish based on a maximum of $5. They make a burger and have the hutzpahs to tell the celebrity taster that Sejong Taehwan was the first person to ever taste a burger. THAT is thinking outside the box! I wish they had won that challenge.

Living In Korea

Korean Adventure (June 7, 2002 Chautauqua)

A foreigner, coming to Korea to teach English, is a bit at sea on first arrival. It's a foreign country, where people speak a different language. If you don't know anyone, there's only the staff at your school (or "hagwon") to rely on. Sometimes this can be a blessing, as I have met some really good people over here.
I remember when I first got off the plane, I was met by my director and his assistant, who oversaw the teaching staff. They loaded my luggage into the car, and took me for a drive through the nighttime streets of Taegue. Korean cities at night remind me of Las Vegas somewhat. It's not quite that gaudy, but it's close. Koreans like a lot of signage on every available space. The neon lights and banners with the strange symbols are everywhere. It's pretty, but you don't know what they mean.

The street entrance to my second con-apt building.

Eventually, we arrived at the apartment I was to share with another teacher. I was so tired after travelling, I just hit the sack for a couple of days. Most hagwons provide their teachers with housing. Some of it is shared, and some teachers are provided with a place of their own. The apartment I was sharing had an entranceway, where all shoes are left. Koreans only walk around in special house slippers, and leave outside shoes by the door. It's very bad manners to wear your shoes in the house.

The courtyard inside the street entrance. The door into the building leads to a hallway. My door was the last on the left.

The common areas of the apartment were the bathroom, the TV room, and the kitchen. The bathroom had a sink, a toilet, and a shower attachment on the wall. There was no tub, and there was no shower curtain. There wasn't even a drainpipe attached to the sink. The water just emptied onto the floor, and down the same drain as the shower water. I had to get used to not keeping my feet well away from the sink when I returned to Canada.

The door to my con-apt from the inside. The "kitchen" is to the left.

In my last two apartments, I have not even had sinks, just a combination tap and shower sticking out of the wall. It's a bit odd at first, but you get used to it, and even enjoy the space that a whole "shower room" affords. There are even separate slippers that you wear in the bathroom, just to keep your feet out of the water that's there after your shower.

The door into my bathroom. Just a toilet and a tap/shower attachment.Note the fan in the lower right corner. This was just before they installed an air conditioner (my first in Korea).

Sometimes the washing machine is installed in the bathroom. I haven't lived in an apartment like that yet, but I know people who have. One girl even had an electrical outlet almost directly beneath her shower head. Yikes!

The door to the storage room at the rear of my con-apt.


Inside the storage room, with the washing machine in the foreground.


The modern Korean dryer, the latest in technology!

The television is an adventure, as well. There are about 70 channels. Most of them are Korean, naturally, but there are a few movie channels that show English films. There are also American sitcoms shown on various channels. "Friends," "Third Rock," "Seinfeld," and "Married, With Children" just to name a few.

The TV in my second con-apt. The bulge on the top is a VCR. This is before my first computer and the joys of downloading.

There is also the Armed Forces channel, which shows all the regular programming available back home. There are no paid commercials, just service announcements that the GIs film themselves. Some of them are fairly amusing in their amateurishness, and we all get a good laugh at the (unintentionally funny) antics of the American Army.
The kitchen area has a fridge, some counter and cupboard space, and a two-burner gas range for all of our cooking. One of the things I have missed over here is baking or roasting some of my favorite foods. But Korean cooking is very good, and I have no problem with the local delicacies.
Now, the school looks after the rent, but the teachers are responsible for their own utilities. This means TV, water, electricity, and gas for the cooker. There is also a fee for the oil heater. This heats up water for the underfloor heating system (called "ondol"), and the sinks and shower. Unless the school's troubleshooter instructs you on its proper use, you can have trouble getting enough hot water. I remember we had that problem until we figured out which buttons to push, and what dials to turn. Since then I have had no trouble with getting enough hot water.
The only rooms left in the apartment were the two bedrooms. My first roommate had the bigger of the two, which I got when he moved out after one month of our sharing the place. I got another roommate a few months later, and he was a good guy. We really got on well, shared the cooking, and hosted some good parties. Since then, I have had only single apartments for myself.
Next time I will talk about shopping, cinemas, and beer. Mmmmmmm, beer.
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I remember that first nighttime drive. It seemed everywhere I looked, there was a flourescent orange cross. I wondered just what I was getting into.

My First Korean Con-Apt

Jisan-dong in Daegu, where I lived for the first six months of my first teaching contract.
Following are pictures of the first con-apt I lived in while teaching English in South Korea. It was a two-bedroom apartment, the only one I ever had. The rest of my time there, I was by myself in a "one-room." I must say I preferred to be alone. I shared the apartment with two different room-mates. The second was okay. He was a good guy, friendly, and as eager to explore Korea as I was.
My first room-mate, on the other hand was... well, picture the saddest, angriest, most paranoid individual you have ever met. Then double it. Imagine a guy who walked around with his own private raincloud perpetually lowered over his countenance, ready and willing to spread doom and gloom wherever he went. That was my first room-mate. He was to make my introduction to Korea a very bad experience, and a definite low point in my career as an English teacher. I had to live with this mook for a month that proved to be one of the longest of my life.
Why I didn't kill him, I don't know. I still fantasize about a dark alley, a sharp knife, and...
Well, back to the apartment.
The school paid the rent, and I was responsible for the utilities (gas, electricity, TV, etc.). We were provided with a television, hooked up to a basic cable package. There were about 70-odd channels, most of them Korean. A few movie channels showed English language programs, and Arirang showed Korean programs with English subtitles so that you could get an idea of what Korean TV was like. If you were lucky enough to be in a city with an American military base (like Daegu) you had access to the Armed Forces Network, that had a variety of U.S. programming.
There was also provided furniture, of the cheapest value that could be gotten. Most bedrooms had a bed, chair, wardrobe (there were no built-in closets in any apt. I lived in) and a desk/table. The kitchen had a table and chairs, and there was a couch in the "living room."
As I had just arrived, I had the smaller of the two bedrooms. There was just enough room to make comfortable arrangement of the furniture completely impossible, but I coped as best I could.

This is the road in front of my apartment building. A very narrow street, as you can see. It's going downhill, towards the main part of the neighbourhood where my hagwon was situated. If you turned around, you could see at the end of a street a rather large hill, which took about an hour to climb, offering quite a view of the city.

This is the main entrance to the building. The larger door was so that a vehicle could drive in and park in the courtyard, but that never happened while I was living there. The smaller door was the security door, which could be buzzed open from the apt. It never worked, and everybody usually came and went through the gate.

This is the entrance to the apt. The door is on the right, and the shoe cupboard is on the left. This is the only apt. I lived in where the shoe cupboard was built-in. The one-rooms usually had a smaller one next to the door. The entranceway featured a tiled area where everyone entering the apt. was supposed to leave their shoes. Custom dictated that nobody should wear their shoes in the house because it was considered "dirty." A Korean would goggle and gasp like they were having a heart attack if they ever caught a foreigner wearing their shoes in the house.

This is the kitchen area, just to the right of the main door. The hagwon supplied the fridge. This one was about the average size, though I have had a few that were bigger. A couple of times I have had hagwons try to get away with supplying what I would call a "beer fridge." These usually didn't last any longer than it took to replace them. One of my directors was astonished that I would need a regular sized fridge.
Foreigners constantly surprise them by acting like regular human beings.
Just on the right of the picture is the plastic garbage pail that I bought for myself. Hagwon owners don't supply these, apparently, and my first romm-mate just had a big 100-litre bag sitting on the floor.
What a mook.

This is the bathroom. Toilet, sink, and shower head attached to the wall. I've never had an apt. with a tub or separate bathing area. The water from the shower splashed on the floor and went down the drain in the middle. The bathroom had a raised threshold so the water didn't flow into the apt. After I'd been there a while, I purchased plastic slippers so I could walk on the floor without getting my feet wet, and a bathmat, so I could wipe my feet after coming out of the bathroom.
My first room-mate hadn't thought to supply these basic necessities even for himself.
What a mook.
If you look closely to the left of the sink, you can see two shower heads and a water heater attached to the wall. This was because that fucking mook hadn't figured out how to heat the water for his shower, and the hagwon hadn't seen fit to instruct him in its proper use. They did spring for this extra water heater, which kept the water hot enough for you to get wet, and then turned cold.
Very bracing!
I must say that I wasn't smart enough to figure out something was wrong until I got my second room-mate. He figured out how to get the regular shower working properly.
Why the hagwon couldn't have figured that out before paying for the extra heater is beyond me. Laying out any more money than they have to is anathema to them.
The way it was set up was pretty fucked up, too. The gas line came in through the bathroom window (Heh. In-joke for Beatles fans), which consequently could not close all the way during one of the coldest winters in Korean history. Nice engineering, eh? Typical of the makeshift that characterized all Korean engineering.
So that was the basic arrangement that I was introduced to when I first met my first room-mate and co-worker in Korea.
More about that fucking idiot soon.

What the... Rabbit Ears?!

I just wrote about having my car inspected last Thursday, but one detail I forgot to mention was about the television in the office at the inspection station.
While waiting for the inspection to conclude, I idly watched the usual gang of giggling idiots on some Korean game show go through the usual antics.
They'd dress up in weird costumes like men in skirts (nothing gay there), hanbok, etc.
Each humourous occurence would be run and rerun a half-dozen times, sometimes in slow motion, with accompanying sound effects, canned laughter, and subtitles, just so everybody watching understood that something funny had just happened.
The door to the office was swinging open, and every time it would close, the TV picture would go all fuzzy and the sound would turn to static.
What the kimchi?
I noticed the TV had... rabbit ears.
If you don't know what rabbit ears are, you're too young to be up this late. Go to bed!
Rabbit ears are aerials that you can adjust in order to pick up a signal that any station is broadcasting. I remember many times trying to make the picture clearer by waving them back and forth, shifting the TV around, and so on.
Nowadays, TVs usually have cables attached, and I had thought rabbit ears had gone the way of the dinosaurs. I had no idea that a person could still pick up TV signals the old way.
A lot of the TVs I've had in Korea have been pretty old fossilized pieces of shit, but none of them had rabbit ears.
I remember one con-apt I had there was no VCR. I was going to ask for one, and a friend suggested I get with the times and ask for a DVD player. I could rent Korean movies and watch them with English subtitles.
Well, I got the player, enraging the teacher who'd been there for months with a broken VCR that the wanjungnim kept forgetting to replace.
After a couple of years, I left that school and ended up in The Junkpile, with one of those fossilized pieces of shit I was talking about. It had no connections for the DVD player!
Checking on the Internet, I learned about a device called an RF modulator, which allows for a DVD player to be hooked up to one of those old style TVs.
I picked it up in a shop in Daegu with very little explanation to the guy needed. I just sort of pointed and grunted and showed him a diagram of what I wanted. He made a phone call and a deliveryman dropped it off 20 minutes later.
Nowadays I have a computer with which I download and watch all the TV a man could want or need. The screen on the 'puter is as big as most of the screens on the TVs I've had, so I'm not missing anything other than Korean Komedy Klassics with canned laughter, sound effects, subtitles, and jokes run and rerun a half dozen times just so everybody who's watching knows something funny has occured.

Comfort TV

People talk about their comfort food and how it harkens back to mom's cooking. Well, there is also comfort TV.

Ice Road Truckers is one of my guilty pleasures. It seems like an insane premise for a show. Yet ... I watch it and like it. It reminds me of a lot of good times I had with my dad. I can see my dad in some of the truckers.

As you may have guessed my father was a truck driver. Among many things he did in life, including serving in the Army as a mechanical engineer during World War 2.

He wasn't home as much as he would have liked to be over the years. But he was earning money so we could have a home, eat, and have clothes. He made sure we were provided for. He made me promise him I would never become a truck driver. A promise I will always keep but kind of regret. I would have loved it.

I spent a lot of my life in a truck. Helping load and unload them. They were some of the best times of my life. Dad would pull me out of school sometimes and take me on trips. I learned more about life and people on those trips. I was lucky enough to travel the eastern half of Canada

and a lot of the eastern US.

Hugh "Polar Bear" Rowland reminds me a lot of dad. The attitude. The cockiness. The skill set. About the only difference is dad rarely swore and smoked a cigar. Mind you when the old man swore ... the air would turn blue. :) You have to be a jack-of-all trades in Ice Trucking and that was dad. Little schooling but if it had an engine he could fix it.

I could see the old man doing the ice runs just so he could brag about

it. :)