Is 'didn't used to' good English?

I have been thinking about this question as I have been reluctantly teaching it. It doesn't just sound horrendously American - it sounds incredibly trite and convoluted - try asking this question in an oral test 'what didn't you used to do?'. The kids just look perplexed, in between shrugging and glaring bitterly at me.

I have been watching Little Britain (my favourite parts being either Kelsey Grammar School or Dafydd's incredibly revealing PVC costumes). Annabelle, a quintessential English rose until she opens her mouth, has elevated the recitation of this 'riddle' to an art form...see if you can work it out:

'I am hard, but soft
I am clear, but coloured,
I am jelly....
What am I?'

It really is a puzzler - after hearing it, much chin-scratching ensued. I have also been listening to Mogwai, the manic-depressive's music of choice. Even Radiohead begin to sound like joyous preaching in a backwater American chapel (with obligatory chubby gospel singers) after Mogwai have wrung the last drop of desire to live out of you. For all that, though, they really are rather good. Can anyone suggest good music to download? I feel completely cut off from the world of new and strange music and may be forced to listen to saccharine Korean boybands should the situation not improve.

I have realised that in only two entries, this blog has been decided anti-American. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for insulting the bigoted, blind-sided, inbecilic, moronic lot - I fear that should I continue in a similar vein, then they will force me to listen to the prolonged version of their life stories, such as what university fraternity was witless enough to take their personality-free asses on board. Ok, I am now working with an American so from now on, I shall use a near indecipherable, complex code with which to discuss them:

American - Fluff
America - Fluffy
Stupid (as regards Americans) - Furry.

So it will be something like this - Today I met a Fluff all the way from the United States of Fluffy who was decidedly and unambiguously furry...

Should anyone else come up with a more cunning code, please let me know. Oh, did anyone read about the South Korean professor who claims to have created the potential for robots to experience sexual pleasure, and eventually breed? Would it be like the destructive sex-bot in Futurama who sapped a person's ability to do anything but make out with the robot until a presumably sex-related death? Yooooo, I really am a nerd....!

A virgin blog journey

I am still in awe of how nerdy this feels...an all accessible on-line diary in which I spill out my transcontinental heart to those who are perhaps vaguely interested....or not.

It also feels a little wrong, in view of the BBC guy who had one of these but he used it to chart his physical demise due to incurable cancer as opposed to what I'll be doing - which will be comparing different kinds of Korean soups and bitching about my children. Ok, I promise that this will be a bitter-free zone, predominantly because I have very little to be bitter about...!

I am tempting fate by going skiing again this weekend. I barely survived the last attempt, and my fellow skiiers had similar problems. We yoooo-ed at one until he fell over, which is cruel on our part, but remains hysterically funny. I also went to a place called Jeonju at the weekend, and drank copious amounts of soju before going to a bonkers Korean club called 'Music Bank'. There are actual classes that Koreans enthusiastically attend, that teach you all the dance moves to the latest hits...which means that if a certain song comes on, they break into dancing that is scarily synchronised - a little like a movie that unexpectedly bursts into dance, with props on cue. An Irish companion, Aine, did us all proud by dancing/swaying on stage, only to be told, in Korean, to 'get the fuck off'. I was told that she also got kicked out a bar previously by drunkenly trying to check her e-mails on a computer used for downloading music. Hee, you have to love the Irish.

Speaking of all things Irish, a new teacher from Kerry, Angela, started today and just to compound the feeling that there is only half a degree of seperation amongst we inbreds, she is good friends with my cousin from Smithborough. There are also an unhealthy amount of Monaghan-ites, Belfast-ians and - best of all - I met a bloke from Ballymena, languishing here in Seoul. There is also a terrifying amount of Canucks and Americans bolshing about the place...I only joke, I have met some genuinely nice ones, even if you have to cringe whenever the word 'tomato' is braced in conversation.

Just wondering - does writing this blog drag me over the nerd threshold? If so, then bring on the Robot Wars and Japanese porn-comic crossovers...