Things That Are Happening Here

We have been in Gimhae 2 months now. Life is good but I’m a bit worried about the crowd that Parky has started hanging with, dubious looking characters at best I reckon.



Please forgive me for this blog. It is haphazard, but it all comes together (I think).
Gimhae impresses me a lot. Regardless of how much I miss Gangneung and living by the sea, it is a nice city. One thing people comment on upon coming to Corea is the absence of disabled people. It isn’t that there aren’t any, you just never see them. There is also an absence of footpaths, access ramps, beeping walk signals and any and all facilities that enable people with various disabilities to live an independent life in most of the cities. Gimhae seems to have these things and there is an enormous amount of blind people and people in wheelchairs and such here. I guess that makes sense. There also seems to be an absence of the staring and pointing that usually follow people who are different in Corea. I guess that makes sense too. That rule doesn’t apply to foreigners though, I get as much or more ‘Hello-ing’ here as anywhere else. In fact I would say more than any similar sized city. I think the absence of heavy industry in Gimhae means that there are less engineers and less of the East European workers that are so prevalent in big industry. Also not being on the sea there are no foreign ships docking and the accompanying foreigners that come with them. Now I think about it, my Hello-Muscle has been working overtime since the moment I arrived. Anyhoo, the point was that even though Corea has gone from decimation, through 50 years of dictatorship and into the ‘first’ world at such a rapid pace that the absence of some of the things that developed over the last century in more modern countries are markedly missing. Gimhae seems to be a leader in a lot of these things. It doesn’t make up for the absence of beach in front of your house, but it makes me feel good regardless. Parky and I went to our normal badminton playing park today. We have decided that we need not only to be a little fitter, but all of the sporting ability which I has a little proud of a few years ago is leaving me. Our school teachers play volleyball every Wednesday, and the first time I tried to play I was just mental. No timing, no hand eye coordination, no nothing, just a mental case randomly swiping the air every time the ball came over the net. It was embarrassing. In my defence, volleyball is played by all of the teachers in every school in Corea (as far as I know) every Wednesday afternoon and has been played for quite some time. The teachers are very good at it and very, very competitive. Playing like a mental case didn’t exactly endear me to my new co-workers, especially the ones on my team (but being a weiguk gets you through a lot of these situations (IYHELY,YWKWIM)). The upshot was that Parky and I have taken to playing badminton in the park down the road every now and then. Today however there was a bit of a fair going on there. It was a fair for everyone to go and have fun interacting with intellectually handicapped people. There were loads of drumming bands, clay making, huge bubble thingys, throw water balloons at a guy’s head and things like ‘put on a blindfold grab a cane and try to get around’ ‘jump in a wheelchair and see how long your arms last’. Everything was free, including tucker, tea and coffee but people carried donation boxes about the place, so you could donate if you chose. It was really groovy. I know it doesn’t sound really groovy, but it was. I said to Parky that I should have opened a stand saying ‘Hello’ to people for a dollar. They could have earned a fortune. People were pretty excited about saying hello to us. It’s also amazing how many people speak English to Parky and get freaked out when she responds in Corean. I don’t know if it’s because she is tall, or with a foreigner or what it is, but one guy even commented ‘Wow, your Corean is really good!’ She didn’t bother to explain. It was a great day had by all and just a groovy atmosphere all round. And I like the banner most “being prepared for dealing with disabled people”. That’s Corean for “learn not to point and stare, you ignorant wanker”. It was fun and it was extremely worthwhile. As I miss Gangneung more and more, things like this make me quite happy to be living in city with a first world economy that is starting to realise that there is more to it than just being wealthy.

On the school front, I have been given 4 (from my 25) hours a week to use at my discretion (~ish, they don’t let me go to the pub). The only catch is that I must enter three students from grades 3,4,5 and 6 in a state-wide English speech competition in November. All previous teachers have used those 4 hours to prepare the 12 students with the best grades from the previous year for the prestigious competition. I have, over the past 2 months, convinced my school to allow me to take 2 hours per week and begin free lessons for underprivileged students from the 5th and 6th grades. This involves setting up an entire new curriculum, applying for and getting approval for a budget for it. We got approval on Wednesday, course starts on Monday! YAY! I have also tossed the 12 best students, who achieved the best results on a written, multiple choice test at the end of last year (easy to grade I guess) who should be entering the speech contest in November and orally interviewed any 5th or 6th grade students who were interested in applying for the 'Special Curriculum' class (70 students over 2 afternoons). I have broadened the class to accommodate 25 of the best speakers (in my opinion). Apparently I have chosen half a dozen 'c' grade students and about 10 'b' graders. I am still trying to convince the admin staff that 'a' grade students are not necessarily the best speakers (think of maxi for one example, best English and worst grades on the planet). I am loving work at this school, and I am really lucky to be working with such trusting and flexible people here. I shouldn’t write blogs on Saturday afternoon, I have warbled on for quite a while here, but I'm pretty proud of what’s going on. So there you are, I have put myself out on a limb, I'm out of my depth and I might end up with egg on my face. (I apologise for that sentence, I have been teaching idioms, metaphors and similes all week).

Things That Make Me Happy

hej all and sundry. We had the most fantastic Friday in a very long time. I have met a couple of doctor dudes who are interested in learning English and we meet a couple times a week for that purpose. Straight to the good gear, one of them owns a micro-brewery. We went there on Friday and it was fantastic. It has a restaurant where they make all of their own food and condiments (obviously including beer). It is the most fantastic food I have eaten in Corea, and the most fantastic beer I have drank in Corea also. We had a sausage platter. Homemade sausages, you can’t do them justice with words, but I will try to describe them anyway. Big fat barstards three quarters of an inch thick, stacked full of pork or beef, jammed with herbs and spices which I didn’t even know existed in Corea, generously peppered. We had enchiladas and fajitas, with homemade sour cream. It has to be homemade because it doesn’t exist in any other form. Cajun chicken salad, it just keeps going, going and going. It was magnificent. Best of all for me was what I consider to be the quality of the character of the doctor blokes. Usually men in Corea have a very bad habit of indulging in ‘boys nights’ every time they go out. These guys asked my wife to come as well. I must admit (even though they seem like really nice blokes) that it occurred to me that they might have had the ulterior motive of bringing a free interpreter with. But not only was I wrong, I was very wrong. This is the first time I have been invited out by men in Corea and they have invited my wife with, also brought their wives and their children came with the package, two little girls aged 7 and 3. It was such a great night. We had a blast. It was so refreshing to go out with guys that want their families to go out with them. This makes me happy.

Things That Piss Me Off

I hate Home Plus, I hate E-Mart, I hate department stores, I hate shopping centres, I hate crowds, I hate stupid old women in department stores and crowds and I hate stupid young people that park in disabled parking spaces. I went to home plus yesterday to buy bacon and there was a selection of two. A 100g package for $5 and a 400g package for $8, both with a used by date 6 days hence. I can’t believe that I am writing this but I stood there for about 5 minutes swapping packages. I don’t want 400g and I won’t eat it in 6 days, but I can’t justify buying 100g because of the comparative expense. But I should just buy the 100g because I will throw it out anyway, so save the $3. But I could buy the 400g and give some to my mates so it didn’t get thrown out. (Here’s where I get paranoid). But that’s what they want me to do, they want me to buy the bigger package and they price up the smaller one to make it unjustifiable. At the risk of sounding like a whacko conspiracy theorist I will attempt to justify that comment. I used to work for woolworths (major supermarket chain in Australia) and as obvious as it sounds, getting people to leave more money behind in the store is the aim of the game. That is to say, for example when I worked for shell oil we would sell petrol at a loss of half or even 1 cent per litre just to get them in the store. Hopefully when they were there they would buy a can of coke, which is marked up 150% and if they bought less than 300 litres of petrol the station would make a profit. Convenience stores and petrol stations work on the principal that one product is (very) profitable, another is there to get customers in the door, even at a (minor) loss. Normally (certainly the ones I have worked for) big supermarket and department store chains work on a different system, they mark up as a percentage of the dollar spent. Regardless of what you buy, in general terms, if you spend $5 they make X profit. If you spend $25 they make 5X profit. If you spend $50 they make 10X and so on. Two things shit me off. One is that supermarkets are very good at what they do. If I walk into a petrol station of any type I can buy the petrol and a newspaper, see that coke is $2.20 for a 375ml can and not buy it. I cannot walk into a supermarket and walk out without spending $50. I can’t do it. This is my own fault. The other is thing that pisses me off is that having worked in both environments I am aware of the way they work, and I still can’t do it in the supermarkets. I spend, on average, a days wages every time I enter one of the fecking things, and it fucks me off. I have made a decision and I am sticking to it. I am not going into a supermarket or department store ever again. I am going to shop for food at the markets, buy wine from a wine store, buy my clothes in a clothing store and so on and so on. This fits in very well with my “support the ‘mom and pop’ store” theory that I have been putting into practice for the better part of 6 or 7 years. The difference is now it is a firm rule.And please allow me to reitterate, i fucking hate able young people who park in disabled car parks to save themselves a 20 metre walk and i doubly hate them when they do it because it is raining and only the disabled parks are undercover. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING!!!! IT WOULD TAKE YOU 10 SECONDS TO RUN THAT. NOW SOME DODGEY OLD GRANDMA WILL BE SOAKING WET IN THE MINUTE OR SO IT WILL TAKE HER!!!aaaarrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhh! (yes, it was also the very last disabled park available)
this is me not in a department store

Married Life

hej all and sundry. Parky and I have been married for 2 years and 1 day as of this morning. And they said it would never last! Actually nobody said that (at least to our faces) but it sounds more dramatic to say “And they said it would never last!” we are in love more than ever. I mean that in all sincerity. We nearly killed each other in our first year of marriage. With Parky’s study, and living in a strange country, my making such little money (even though I loved my job, TSW guys) and all of the other hassles I’m surprised we got married at all let alone lived through the first year. Second year, moving back to Corea starting a new job in a new city had it’s ‘special’ moments, but life was great, working together was great, living by the beach was great, Gangneung was just superb, second year of marriage was pretty good by my slide rule. Now we are entering the third year, in our third city, in our second country and life has never been better. It reminds me of sage words of advice, given to us be our good mate Stacey. More a realistic appraisal of life as we know it. She stated that even though her and Steven had been dating more than 5 years before they were married, their first year of marriage was hell. (Parky and I were dating for 2 years before marriage). She further stated that everybody she knew, regardless of how long they had known each other had had a rough first married year. The only way around it apparently was to get married as soon as you meet and then your rough year might be postponed for a year or two. These were welcome words that immediately struck a chord with us, as we had been going in leaps and bounds from our first anniversary onwards (after having not killed each other after all within the first year). They were welcome and comforting, and amongst other things like the fact that Parky and I loved Steve and Stacey from day dot, brought us very close together.
I have now had a chance to relay those exact words to a mate of mine who has been married exactly 5 weeks, saying that his wife was going mad at the slightest provocation, threatening to throw him out on his arse, he was resisting temptation to replace her chocolate biscuits with hash cookies just to make her mellow out somewhat, all the while admitting that he was not entirely blameless for the current circumstances, but just couldn’t help himself but to be a bit of an arse sometimes. “we loved each other 5 weeks ago”
I can’t forget the look of passivity overcome his face when we related our story to him. It was exactly the same look that we must have had on ours when Stacey was relating her story to us. He was so relieved to realise that he wasn’t the first person to have a major crisis in his first year, or month even, of marriage I didn’t know if he was going to cry or kiss me. I felt the same one year ago, so did Parky, and I reckon if I asked around I would find a lot of people who didn’t disagree.
(If a certain person is reading, who was married 364 days after us, and runs a gleeb titled “Being Korean” @ www.calmlyhungover.blogspot.com please opine away, as you have been married 2 days longer than your paper anniversary and may be in a position to comment).
Okay, now I’m going to talk about stereotypes and your first year of marriage should be the most romantic, most sexual, most exciting year, when you learn about each other and encounter each other in ways previously unimaginable. That might have been true 30 years ago when people married within months (or even weeks) of knowing each other. (not my parents though, they dated 5 years before marriage IN THE 60’S. five long wonderful years. I’ll leave it to them as to whether they post a comment and tell about their first year or so of marriage.) But it’s not true today. Marriage is wonderful, amazing, it’s a whole new world of whiz-bang. In essence it has a completely different feel about it to anything else I have ever experienced in life. But in today’s world it (the first year of marriage) isn’t what you are told it is going to be. It doesn’t carry the same connotation for people who have lived together for years as it did for people who moved out of their parent’s homes and into married life. It is a pain in the arse (somewhat). It interrupts an otherwise stable life of co-habitation. It puts pressure on both of you, and your families, to conform to the “first year of marriage” bullshit. It costs you (and your parents) an awful lot of money, time and stress. It makes you feel as if, after being really very, very happy for the preceding period, you should now feel some kind of fake ecstasy in order to conform to what is expected of you in your “first year of marriage” phase.
I love being married. I would do the first year again and again and again to have what I have now. But after it having been passed to me, and the relief I felt, and having passed it forward, and seeing the relief it brought, I have decided that it is time to get it out there. The wedding, the ceremony, the crying, the kisses, the presents, they are wonderful! But if you have lived together for a while and you decide to marry, just understand that in this day and age it will put you in debt, it will put expectations of conformity on you, it imposes on your time and your sanity. In the long run it may change what you feel for each other, but I doubt it somehow. I am sure that I would love Parky as much today whether we were married or not.
After all of this ranting and raving, I encourage marriage if you feel it is right for you. It gives me a sense of fulfilment everyday to wake up everyday and ask my WIFE what she would like for breakfast. I get the same from her coming home at night and greeting my WIFE at the door with something I have cooked on the table. Personally I wouldn’t change a thing, I would do it over and over again with my beautiful wife of 2 years and 1 day. I am more in love today than I was even yesterday or the day before.
But know what is coming, know what you are in for, and know that which is coming is expected of you by all around you, except Parky and I, Stacey and Steve, and with some luck the couple we have shared our experience with. Know that the pressure of the ‘first year of marriage’ is only there if you choose to take it on board. Know also that it is all worth it, but be prepared, if the ceremony and the ensuing debt and the societal pressure and the pressure you place upon each other and the pressure you place upon yourselves becomes a little too much, STICK WITH IT! It’s an enormous deal! The after effects hang on for a while!
I would not change anything given the opportunity, neither would Steve and Stacey, and with a little patience, neither will our mates, given time.
I dedicate this blog to my wife. I dedicate it to her fun nature, to her forgiving nature, to her hard working nature, her compassionate nature, to her love of life, to the love I feel from her everyday, to the love I feel for her everyday, (and to her boobies, ha ha).
My wife gave me a cocktail cooler for our 2nd anniversary, to remind me of tudari in gangneung. I gave her a haircut (i.e. had a haircut for her), to remind her how much i love her. (and how much i hate having my hair cut)

Saturday Night Blogging

Hobo wife, spending my hard earned money in 'Home Plus'(actually buying me some wine)if you click the photo it looks much better
hej all and sundry
it is Saturday night. We ended up in a singing room last night for the first time since moving to Gimhae. It was great. We relived the old classics, it’s been months now. We got home AFTER MIDNIGHT, also for the first time since moving to Gimhae.
On the motorcycle front, nothing much is going on, apart from me wanting to make unnatural romantic situations with my magna come true, but that is also not new.
Parky is doing really well. She has been a 백조 for a month now. That roughly translates into English as ‘chick hobo’. She has been relaxing herself, chillin' with her homies and basically busy as all hell (if you know Parky it won’t surprise you at all) all at the same time.
This is what I don’t understand. If an Australian takes a month off, they go fishing, camping, laze about the place and rest and recuperate. If Parky takes a month off she starts learning yoga, going to the gym, studying, decorating the apartment and more…………….
One of the things she did was setting up her new business venture. I’m quite proud. She is now earning 60% of what I make for teaching only 9 hours per week. (I work 40 and teach 20ish hours per week) I don’t mind admitting that I’m a little jealous, but good luck to her.
This is wifey-o being a hobo cuuuuuuuuuuuute
Parky had business cards made up for “English with Ellen” (Ellen is the name she has always used as an English teacher). We found out, before they were printed, that it was nothing extra to have the back printed as well. She showed me the template and I had my own little spiel printed on the back. I’m quite happy with the result. More than happy in fact, I’m extremely happy, ecstatic to have my first ever business card.

Almost as happy as I would have been if she had told me that they were to be “printed on pink business cards” and I had said “F*#^ that, us bikers don’t have pink business cards, let’s have them printed on something much more manly, like pastel blue, or puce or mauve or something”. And if we had decided to print them on non-pink business cards then imagine how happy I would have been. I’m nearly that happy, but that conversation never happened, so…………………well fuck it…….lets be honest………now I have my first ever business card AND a story to go with it, so maybe I’m even happier with a pink business card than without. Alas I will never know, because not only will I never have another first business card, but we have 500 of the fecking things so it will be some considerable time before I have a second business card. I promise to update you on my feelings in this regard if and when we ever get another lot of business cards made.

I have put Mr Phweep on the card. Some might say it’s not professional. I say “neither am I for the most part, so bollocks to you". And as muck as I would like to ride bikes for money, it's not a business.
The thing that I am most disappointed with though is that I have proven myself correct. I have often said that when one is happy and all is going well, one has bugger all to write about. I am most disappointed about this, from a blogging perspective, because I am, and it’s true.

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