I Have Handsome Ears

Wouldn't that be great? The whole world could state categorically that you had a head like a sparrow-pecked pumpkin but you could happily stand in that ivory tower of having excellent ears and they would be stumped. I assigned a very easy topic for my students - write about yourself - and I got hilarious itemised lists including the above comment. Others included 'I have pretty eyes' (boy), 'I have got thin' (not referring to recent weight loss) and my personal favourite, 'I have got a small mouse'. This, of course, is not an affectionate description of a pet rodent - rather, it is the common mis-spelling of the word mouth. You wouldn't believe how much fun it is to teach the 'th' sound to kids where 'th' simply could never be replicated in their language.

I saw Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire last night (completely legally, not a pirated DVD in sight) and it was probably one of the most sexually charged things I have ever seen. I'm fully aware that 14 year olds are hormonally unhinged but when you've seen a ghost trying to peer down at Harry Potter's magic wand in a bath tub, you've quite possibly lost the will to ever have sex again, especially when it's legal.

There will be a staff party in my and Shaun's honour tomorrow night, so I shall probably be expected to do copious amounts of one-shots with my fellow teachers. As I'm sure you all know, this is merely practice for the shooters I shall be doing with you lot when I get home. There's one year of drinking to catch up on, baby!

Underfloor Heating and My Own Stupidity

Jeepers! It has been a long time since I blogged, but I actually have an excuse. All last week, when I would normally have had a piss-easy schedule, I had to take a whole ream of extra classes for an ill Korean teacher, with apparent kidney problems. Ha! A decent excuse indeed! Although this week, I am back to doing very little and I simply cannot let Laziness defeat me.

The weekend that passed was yet another birthday - Lorraine's - and needless to say, given that she is a cheerful Irish woman with a good capacity for alcohol, a lot of drinking took place. Saturday night was simply a mess. Tequila shots, spitting, lost mittens, illicit snogs, dancing, underwear cunning disguised as tops - this is generally par for the course on a Saturday night in Seoul. Mike and I made it home at the respectable time of 5am - others wandered the streets of Sinchon until 10am.

This leads to my stupidity - underfloor heating and my inability to actually adjust my life and actions to it. Basically, instead of radiators, we Seoul-lites have heating under the floor which is really nice on cold winter mornings when you can't reach your socks on time. But lesson number one - never leave chocolate on it! I bought Lorraine some Guylian truffles for her birthday but, being an idiot, I left them on the floor in a bag with the rest of her gift (the non-meltable part). She opened them today and found an indecipherable mess. A year has passed and I remain an imbecile.

Oh, I am a tae-kwon do red belt! Another thing to strike off the interminable to-do list before I leave Korea.

A music discovery - I have been listening to Minotaur Shock, a really nice little slice of eclectic electronica with an oceanic theme. This may not sound very appealing but if you miss out on track names like 'Muesli' and 'Six Foolish Fishermen' you will be the one spitefully removing your nose.

I shall be seeing you all soon! I send forth many hugs!

The Soundtrack of a Year

Hello!

I have been in a strange state of stasis recently, probably because I am in the weird middle ground of physically being somewhere but my heart being somewhere else. So, during events like this, the mind inevitably slips to music. They say that your sense of smell more readily fosters memory and this may be a biological fact. However, if I were to remember Korea by smell, then I would most likely have the pungent odour of unrecognizable herbs in my nose for months. Not to mention the unidentifiable smells that plague any big city. So, my memories of Korea will be inextricably related to music. I am rather out-of-date with any new releases this year so these could all sound rather dated.

1) Sweetbox - Don't Push Me. It took everyone here quite a while to realise that this was a popular Korean pop song - it sounded very like the kind of nonsensical pap you would hear Girls Aloud churning out.
2) Anything by Mariah Carey - it's always played loudly. I really didn't think that she could sound any more shrill but there you go.
3) Mylo - a really good summer album.
4) Basement Jaxx - The Singles. Lorraine, a fellow workmate of mine, insists on dancing in the subway whilst listening to Bingo Bango.
5) Four Tet - Rounds - I remember listening to this whilst walking around a crowded British museum exhibition and being suitably freaked out whilst looking at all the sarcophagi and mummified corpses.
6) The Buena Vista Social Club - a surprisingly popular bar soundtrack and I have been to two related gigs.
7) Blind Guardian - oh, the times I have been forced to listen to glimpses of this horrific Euro-metal, harping as they are about faeries and gnome-death.
8) MC Hammer - Can't Touch This - it's always a giggle to hear this as a Korean person's ringtone.
9) Muse - Time is Running Out - Annabelle and I have composed a cunning dance to this song, including actions to the lyrics 'won't let you muuuuurder it'.


There are more, of course, and I have beein frantically trying to listen to Radio 1 online to catch up with all things music-y. Who the hell are the Arctic Monkeys?

Bread and Jam

Lorraine, currently the most Irish of my Irish workmates, just provided me with bread and jam. This may sound odd but food as simple and yet as nourishing as bread and jam are infinitely rare in Korea. Garlic bread - covered in sugar. A white loaf - half sugar. Chocolate - not enough sugar. A fry up - not enough beans. Don't get me wrong - I am going to miss Korean food simply because even though it is highly unpresentable, it is both delicious and spicy as hell, a combination which I never really relished before. Spice tolerance levels - at a record high. But after a year, it is the simple things which you long for. Here is my list, in no order of importance:

1) Sausages that aren't frankfurters
2) Butter that in all likelihood comes from a cow
3) Milk that doesn't stay 'fresh' for a month
4) Chocolate
5) Potatoes that aren't of the sweet variety
6) Hummus
7) bread - from wheaten to soda, the craving just gets worse
8) Crisps

There are others, of course. It is a weird social anomaly that whenever a group of Irish people get together in Korea, they will begin to talk - and for a lengthy period of time - about what foods they miss the most. People come back to Korea with the strangest things in their hand luggage - squished Denny's sausages, salt and vinegar Tayto crisps - these are things that you will never lose the taste for. Just thought I'd warn you.

I am writing this and am suddenly aware that I feel quite giddy. I have a bad cold and 'injected' tonsils, as my doctor told me. I assume he meant 'infected'. Anyway, a visit to a Korean doctor means that you usually get a vitamin shot. In the ass. I was quite disappointed not to get one today. I even lingered around the counter when they gave me my prescription, looking anxiously at them in case they had forgotten. And Korean medication leaves you with, as Shaun says, a 'floaty' feeling. Teaching suddenly doesn't seem important anymore.

Speaking of Shaun, he has just said an amusing anecdote about how he has been teaching a kid for two months, under the impression that the long-haired child in question was a girl. It turns out that he is a she-male. He has already used the pronoun 'she' on his report card. Phew, wouldn't like to have to handle that one when the gender issue psychiatrist is called in.

The Omara Portuondo concert was amazing. She is yet another grandmother who is still kicking it, and doing it well. I also met a guy, Chris, who was six foot eight tall and had hands the size of small American states. He could pick up a pitcher of beer like it was a pint glass. I spent a large part of the night staring rudely at him.

Halloween....Over.....Synapses.....Burnt.....Out

The final group of children just left the designated Halloween room, and I can only sigh continually with relief. Halloween was seriously good fun, and I even got to be a dead Grecian goddess, the best kind. As Franz Ferdinand have said recently, What's wrong with a little destruction? Well, tell that to the teachers that now have to clean up endless yards of toilet paper used in dressing-up-as-mummy games. Everything was tiring and many children attempted to set their hands on fire by poking their digits through the holes of a jack'o'lantern.

If I get the chance, I will Flickr some of the photos but I most probably won't. So ha! You will have to wait until I return home and then sit through endless photo showing sessions that will most likely make you want to remove my tongue. For those that would quite happily do that without the provocation, just remember that I can be just as annoying silently. I'm very good at poking and pinching.

I am reading a stupidly scary book at the moment, and the fear stems not just from the horror of the tale, but from the literarily critical tone of everything and the form of the book - think labyrinth. It's The House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, and it is a mammoth of a book. Everytime the word house is featured, it is in blue print. It drags you off into all kinds of vaguely impenetrable critical analogies, confuses and contorts the very concept of a linear narrative and is just generally exasperating. But did I mention that it is SCARY AS FUCK? The book is based on the seemingly simple idea of a house that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. But the house grows, and a labyrinth appears, and your terror will increase accordingly. I have to stop reading it on my own in my apartment.

We now have to clean up the dregs of gutted pumpkins and fake blood shed over the hardwood floors. I volunteer myself for the blowing out of the jack'o'lantern candles.