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.

What the ... bras?!?!?

I was listening to the latest podcast on Morning Calm Chaos when they started discussing bras. It harkened me back to my time at Ivy Hell in YongAm-Dong.

One of the other teachers, a Canadian woman by the name of C, and I were showing the new teacher, G from Ireland, around the downtown area. We ended up at Carrefore to do some shopping.

C had asked about bras before and I had told her that most Korean bras are padded or push up. How I know ... well ... a gentleman never tells. ;) I don't think she believed me because she HAD to take G to the clothing section to look at bras. Maybe G didn't pack enough bras. I don't know, they didn't tell. Regardless we ended up in the bra section.

Both C and G were amazed. MOST of the bras had padding of some sort. C was laughing at the sizes because even her training bra was bigger. (C had ... an ample chest. G's wasn't bad either. ) It was kind of amusing to see the women giggling over bras.

Thanks for the mammaries. :)

And thanks to the Morning Calm Chaos crew for another great podcast.

What the ... delusion?!?!?

Some Koreans are denying the North sank the Cheonan. Instead they say either it was an accident and the South Korean government is using it to blame the North OR the South Korean government (or the US) BLEW UP THE SHIP themselves to frame the North. What the kimchi?!?!?

Talk about having your head in the ground, or up your arse. I know Koreans are always making excuses for North Koreas bad behaviour or just ignoring it but this takes it to a new level of stupidity. Having Korean friends drone on about how they are brothers and North Korea wouldn't attack because they are one blood while ignoring the facts of history is hard to swallow without telling them they are ricetards. A couple of my friends, and many adult students, were bleeting that days AFTER North Korean ships crossed into south Korean waters and attacked South Korean naval ships in 2002! When you point out incidents like that they either poo-poo it, try to diminish it (or blame it on the US), or ignore it. What the kimchi?!?!?

I know I have mentioned a Korean friend and the nuke issue before but it bears repeating. After North Korea admitted it had nukes one of my friends thought it was great. He actually said that. He went on to say that now the US couldn't push North Korea around. I asked if he wasn't worried that Little Kim up north wouldn't use them on the south. He parroted the party line about one blood one people. Then went on to say he was more concerned with the US having nukes than North Korea having them. Afterall the only country to ever use nukes was the US. I pointed out instances where the North did attack Korea but nothing got through. Now this friend isn't usually an idiot. He is well educated (PHD in Engineering) and well traveled which is why his attitude suprised me. If I was in Korea I would ask him what he thinks about the Cheonan. It wouldn't surprise me to hear him say it was the US or SK government framing the NorKs.

Korea Beat asked the question "Are your friends shrugging?" Most of my friends, when shown what some Koreans are saying, tend to ask "Are they fucking insane?"

I have a question now. What would the Korean response be if a US ship accidently rammed the Cheonan and sank it? Or a Japanese ship? There would be RIOTING in the streets. As Meyers mentions in his article, look at the response to the accidental death of the 2 middle school girls in 2002. Hell, look at the US Beef riots last year.

Where are the rallies? The riots? The indignation? Oh yeah, it ISN'T the US or Japan so why bother. Chinese fisherman illegally in Korean waters kill coastguard officers ... no problem. Mustn't anger China. North Korea sinks a ship murdering many of the crew ... no problem. We are one blood. They wouldn't attack us. Mustn't anger North Korea. Just keep burying your heads deeper in your collective arses.

I wonder how they will reason away the next incident.

What the ... driving?!?!?

I was going to post this on my other blog but it makes more sense to put it here.

One of the things that always irks me is when the apologists and Koreanphiles make excuses for bad behaviour or try to diminish what others say and experience. One way they do that is by making comments about other countries. Case in point is when I (Stig, and others) have complained about the way Koreans drive and park. The idiots retort `There are bad drivers in Canada (or their country) too.` This is apologist bull shit for two reasons.

First, while it could be true I am talking about Korea and my experiences too. If, at the time, I was living in Canada I wouldn`t be talking about Korea. The fact bad behaviour happens in other countries DOESN`T excuse it in Korea.

Secondly, from what I have seen since returning home, it doesn`t happen here anywhere near the degree it does in Korea. I have been home 3 weeks and have done quite a bit of driving. I have spent a lot of time as a passenger too. I haven`t seen ANYTHING that comes close to the idiocy of drivers I saw daily in Cheongju. The WORST parking job I saw was someone who was partly in another spot, at the end of the parking lot, where there were a LOT of empty parking spaces. That`s it. What the kimchi?!?!? Where are all the bad drivers that the assholes swore were here?

Unlike many of the apologists I am still willing to concede there are a lot of bad drivers here even though I am not seeing them or hearing about them. I don`t delude myself into believing they aren`t around just because I am not encountering them. And when I see them I WILL complain about them.

What the... Asking Permission?!

I had kind of an up and down day on Thursday.
It was beautiful in Korea, a real sunshiney kind of day, clear and bright.
I was up early, because I had to get my car inspected and passed to drive on Korean streets.
The inspection went okay. There were a couple of things the mechanic pointed out as possibly needing attention further on down the road, but generally the car was in good running condition. I stopped in at my regular mechanic because James, my director's husband thought one of the tires was a little low. It turned out it wasn't that necessary a job, but it gave me the opportunity to get a photo of a typical Korean mechanic's garage.

Not much to look at, is it?
Anyway, the inspection was the 'up' part of the day. The 'down' part occurred when I was on my way home, and got clipped by some mook trying to cut me off. He started coming into my lane while I was still alongside of him. I sped up to get out of his way, but his right front slammed into my left rear.
I hate it when mooks try to slam into my rear!
I heard (via James) that the mook claimed I was trying to merge into his lane when the accident occurred.
Fucking mook.
The next day, James asked for my car key. He was going to look at my car. I wondered why he needed the key just to look at a scrape down the side of the vehicle, but I figured he wanted to see if it could still drive okay. It seemed all right to me, but another opinion is always welcome.
I was just about to go into my first class when he took my key, and it was about five hours later (just before my last class) that I was informed that my car was in the shop being repaired, and wouldn't be ready until Monday!
What the kimchi?!
I was kind of surprised, and I may have let my anger show at the presumption.
When James and his wife Sun (my director) told me I had to take a cab home, I asked ( a little tensely), "Who's going to pay for that?"
I mean, the insurance is going to pay for the paint job, and it'll help the resale value, but what the fuck ever happened to courtesy. Did it even occur to James that he might want to ask my permission before just going ahead and commiting my vehicle to four days in the shop?
James and Sun are a pretty good couple, and I enjoy working for them. I'm going to be sorry to leave theur employ. Good hagwons in Korea are rarer than hen's teeth. Just ask Flint.
But... jeez... can you ask first next time? Please?

Oksan Views

It was a beautiful day on Thursday. One of those days when you can see forever. These days aren't that rare, but I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to go up on the roof of the kindergarten and take some pictures of the surrounding countryside.


The Hosanna Kindergarten where I work one day a week, is set on a hill, so it's commands quite a view.





Cheongju is off to the east, and some hills and countryside are to the west.
North and south is a kind of vally between mountain ranges. It's pretty from up there, and not too bad when you're down in it.




There're a lot of rice paddies around the town, and they're being flooded at this point in time, as the Kim Kadiddlehoppers get ready for planting.


Here's an aerial view of Oksan's main drag, leading off east to Cheongju.







As I've said in previous posts, it's not much more than a wide spot on the road, but it does have a few highlights.

Mook Of The Week

There are so many candidates that go unrecorded, because I see them while driving.

But here's one I saw on Thursday while taking some pictures around Oksan. It was a beautiful day, so I was on the roof of the kindergarten, which offers a good view of the srrounding countryside.

It's an ajumma, wheeling a baby carriage complete with baby down the main street in Oksan. This street gets pretty busy. Oksan is only a wide spot on the road, but as the road leads from here to there, a lot of traffic goes through.

Of course, there are sidewalks on both sides of the street, but why would she want to keep the kid safe from being run over? Does she have to get the kid used to being a mook as soon as possible? What's the training program a mook undergoes, anyway?

I bet this stupid bitch could tell us.

You, ma'am, are a mook.