You Dirty Pig....

That's the phrase my fellow co-worker Shaun is currently learning in Korean class. I can imagine it must have its benefits - for the irritating times that you get shushed on the subway as the Koreans frantically try to defend their right to sleep ON A CROWDED, NOISY, STOPS-EVERY-TWO-MINUTES-ON-AVERAGE train. That's right - you may have detected a note of bitterness in my typing. I am well aware that I am not the quietest of individuals - indeed, my voice tends to carry, airborne, and often through solid surfaces. Generally the waggling fingers and vitriolic rants punctuated by occasional words of English don't annoy me - in fact, my voice modulating skills are at an all time high. But sometimes, when you feel that you are being no louder than anyone else on a train full of children and university students, you can only shake a helpless fist at the cultural difference of it all....!

I have begun Korean classes, at long last. Working Saturdays and being inherently lazy prevented me up until this point, but I can now read sketchy pieces of Korean and identify most characters in the alphabet - yooooo! It's a pretty rewarding thing to do but, as with all languages, it needs quite a bit of work. Our teacher, a suave looking character called Stephen, switched randomly from the Korean seasons to verb structures whilst we followed wildly with our shaky character reading and writing skills. To add to the distraction, he has the highest waistband that a pair of trousers will feasibly allow before you get into dungaree and overall territory. To get a better picture, imagine the cat burglar in the Simpsons - he wears sneakers. For sneaking...! Only make him Asian. And the jumper a little tighter.

What are everyone's plans for Paddy's day? Who remembers the carnage of last year? And, more importantly, how can you successfully celebrate St P's day abroad? With lots of unnecessary green and swearing? Are there any suggestions on how to make it memorable? Needless to say, I wish I was back in Ireland for it, and that I had given up something for Lent...just so that I could break it on Thursday. After all (and the person this is aimed at shall remain anonymous - let's name her Ms Eela Dole), St Patrick most certainly has precedence over that secondary New Testament character, Jesus....!