Snippets of the Insane

My apologies for not having posted in a while. As I had somewhat anticipated, the daily routine of work and marking has quickly lost its novelty and my life here has become entirely naturalised. As such, I have not taken my camera out and about too often because not much seems all that crazy and special anymore. I feel kind of bad about posting long chunks of text without any visual reprieve so I promise I will make more of an effort to get some photos for future posts. In lieu of many pics today, then, I will just list a few easily-digestible non-sequiturial anecdotes that show just how zany life can get here in an eerily normal way.

1) We had to pinky-swear a police officer that we would be quiet
A few weeks back it was the birthday of one of my co-workers. She threw a party in her apartment which is a place very similar to my old apartment (the 3-story walk-up), only with a lot less stink. The tiny room soon became packed with about 20 waygus all drinking and generally making merry. We were just leaving for the bar around midnight when the cops showed up. (As is entirely logical, there is no legal closing time for licensed establishments here and bars in this country only close when there is nobody left to serve). The cops looked a little intimated to see so many large, well-dressed drunk whiteys but they made their best attempt to tell us to be quiet nonetheless (a finger to the lips is the international sign for ‘sush’). We nodded our acknowledgement and did our best body language for “we’re on our way out,” which the cops seemed to somewhat understand. My friend Matt and I were the first to get outside and were awkwardly waiting around for the rest of the crew in front of the building with the cops still standing there waiting for us. The one came up to Matt and said “I speakeee English; you quiet or jail.” Matt was like “OK sure no problem; WE LEAVE NOW, ” which the officer seemed to accept as a reasonable substitute for incarceration if we would be true to our word. He nodded and said “OK.” Then, just to throw some sand in our eyes, he held his fist up to Matt, pinky erect, and said “promise.” Matt chuckled and pinky-swore the cop, who solidified the deal by touching his thumb to Matt’s. Yessir, apparently the pinky-swear is an official, legally binding agreement here.
(N.B. I’m sure that’s not true but it sure was weird to pinky-swear a uniformed officer).

2) I ate chicken anuses – plenty of them
Street meat is one delectable treat that is ubiquitous around Asia but sadly lacking in Western culture. It’s great to be able to go up to a shack that has delicious smells wafting from it and consume some fantastic variant of mystery meat (usually on a stick) for less than a buck. Not long ago my friend Mike and I decided we’d try out something new – a bunch of identical pieces of a certain unidentifiable chicken part skewered onto a stick. The taste was a unique but not offensive brand of dark meat chicken and the texture was extremely rubbery and tough. I had no idea what part of the animal we were eating but something in the back of my head kept saying “you’ve seen this before and it’s hilarious.” After going home and re-watching the Hong Kong episode of my beloved travel show No Reservations it finally dawned on me where I’d seen this meat before. It is indeed chicken butt and is indeed a specialty dish here in Korea and around most of Southern Asia. I did not have my camera with me so I robbed this picture from the internet somewhere, but this is pretty much what a bunch of chicken anuses on a stick look like. I am a very adventurous eater and was not fazed in the least by having consumed this product, but many of the people to whom I relate this story retch or squirm or swear or some combination thereof. I must admit, it is a little weird when you can actually see into the rectum hole you are about to ingest. Dark meat indeed.

3) The Korean education system thinks it’s reasonable to try and explain biological evolution a 5-year-old child
A little over a month ago my kindergarten class got to go on every child’s favourite school-time adventure: a field trip! What’s even better is that it was an entire science museum exhibit dedicated to the life’s work of your favourite scientist and mine, Charlie Darwin. This is all well and good – evolution can never be taught too young lest crazy religious zealots try to hammer logic and rational though out of an impressionable young brain. Just how much new insight on humanity these kids took away from the exhibit, though, is debatable. This is especially true considering that some of the signs around the museum were offering the image seen here as a visual clarification of the process. I’m still not too certain why our species didn’t keep those dagger-hands when we had them (see stage 3). I am sure that we could at least have turned them into some sort of super cool mate-luring spandrel. Regardless of the educational value of the trip, one point that I again took away from this venture was that the Koreans really value a high-quality education from a very young age. Again, the debate over a lost childhood and overworking your 5-year-old ensues, but it is an admirable undertaking at the very least. If nothing else, the sojurn was a great day for me to get my own personal laughs out of the situation. Everybody repeat after me: “allopatric speciation!” Most children remain silent, blinking and confused, while the brave ones attempt it: “alo..prreee...sprrr(mumble)..."
(fade to silence).

4) This country is so sheltered from certain kinds of Western decadence that I often encounter hilariously inappropriate unwitting mistakes
Walking into class the other day I noticed one of my grade 3 students was wearing a polo shirt with the words “pleasant garden” emblazoned across the back. Nothing out of the ordinary here: there are all manner of nonsensical but innocuous sayings on t-shirts here that are always a little amusing if not overtly confusing. What made this shirt particularly hilarious was that directly beneath these words was a large reproduction of the image seen here. The craziest thing about the kid wearing this to school was not that he didn’t understand what it meant (he surely didn’t), but that his parents were so clueless that they purchased it for him in the first place. To top it all off, even the English-speaking, Western-familiar Korean staff at my school did not understand the faux-pas that had been made. It’s true that Korea is like 100% free of drugs, but it surprised me just how deeply this lack of exposure to the world of non-alcoholic intoxication permeates the culture. I mean, c’mon; even the crustiest, most conservative elderly folk back home know what a freakin’ pot leaf looks like.

A related incident involved me receiving a “thank you” card 2 weeks ago on what is called “Teacher’s Day” in Korea. (It seems to be another Hallmark type deal-y for which you’re supposed to purchase flowers and cards). I received all manner of funny sayings and odd translations of appreciation over the course of the day, but none was stranger than a specific store-bought one that read: “Always for You: I want to spend some time with you just the two of us.” I’m pretty sure no grade 2 teacher back home ever received a card from their students that said that. Again the level of inappropriateness here is staggering but I just find it so funny that simple mistakes like this are made completely unknowingly by both students and their parents alike.

It would seem as though knife-handed early hominids, pinky-swearing cops, anal cavities on sticks, and sexually suggestive teacher’s day cards are all just par for the course here. Comprehensively I think the weirdest thing about these varied crazy encounters is that they all seem so... well, normal. After only a few weeks here you truly don’t even bat an eye anymore when you see things like army guys walking hand-in-hand down the street or heterosexual couples dressed 100% exactly the same (right down to their ankle-bands). As my Asiaphilic friend Christian succinctly puts it: “white people in Korea are just like ghosts floating through the future.”

And we’re laughing the whole time.