An Acute Case of KS

I’ve  had a roaring KS day like I haven’t had in a long time.  KS being a term some friends and I coined to be discreet when we complained; it’s short for ”Korea sucks.”  We used it as shorthand for “We are foreigners and sometimes this different place and different culture is frustrating.”  The important part is ‘sometimes.’

So you have a KS day once in a while.  But today was more like a FK day. I’m sure you can work that one out for yourself.

This acute case of KS was brought on by the poor infrastructure of my school.  The toilets and the heating are appalling.  These are basic facilities that a school must provide for its students and its staff!  Earlier today I was damn near foaming at the mouth because of the inconveniences, the incompetence and the want of hygienic practices. I would like to find whoever is in charge of these parts of the school, and I realize it may be a long, bureaucratic chain, and I want to clock them all on the nose.

First, the heating. It’s hovering at or below freezing today, and the hallways and the student bathrooms are not heated.  They’ve never been heated.  They just don’t heat them, much to my continuing disgust.  It’s colder inside the hallways than it is outside.  The teacher’s offices and the classrooms are heated, but I can’t imagine the temperature is above fifty-five.  Everyone, including myself, is wearing all of their outerwear in the offices and classrooms.  Any time a door is opened – or left open by teachers and students who are clearly too inconsiderate to justify their continued existence- the meager heat is overtaken by a bitter chill.  All of the surfaces are very cold to the touch, and my feet and hands couldn’t get warm.   School ends tomorrow, but I have three weeks of English winter camp where I and the students will suffer and shiver in these poorly heated rooms.

The toilets – can I  describe the many squalid conditions of the toilets without lapsing into a string of unenlightening, heartily meant swear words?  I will attempt fortitude. Ahem.  There is one teacher’s bathroom, and, bless the lord that I don’t believe in, it  is heated in the winter.  There are three toilets in the women’s: two squatters and one western style toilet. I always use the western style toilet for my convenience and because I would wreak havoc on the squatter toilets. My aim is not professional, and I don’t think my coworkers deserve to encounter such biological horrors.  The western style toilet in the women teacher’s bathroom has been clogged for two months.  I am outraged, and I can only rely on informing my coworkers about the problem who may or may not understand me and may or may not have the time to inform whomever the hell needs to be informed to get a fucking plunger and fix it.  Some of the teachers, lovely as they are, may not understand me though they think they do, or, much more insidiously, will nod emphatically to avoid speaking English or admitting that they haven’t understood me.  Out of necessity I have had to use the toilets in the student’s bathrooms.  I’ve always had a good opinion of these kids, but after seeing how they treat these bathrooms, I wonder if they are house broken.  Shit, blood, piss – it’s all over the squatters and the western style toilets.  Because the school does not have janitors, the students clean everything, including the bathrooms.  A bathroom needs real cleaning, real chemicals, someone professional.  Do you think middle school kids would thoroughly clean a bathroom? If so,  then I have some beach side property up my ass you may be interested in.  On the walls of the bathroom stalls are old, dried bodily fluids.  The plumbing in Seoul cannot handle toilet paper, so the paper is thrown away in trash cans, or on the floor.  Feces is on the floor, all over the toilets, on paper in trash cans or smeared on the walls.  Feces, and I know I shall wow you with my medical expertise, does not increase one’s  health when exposed to it.

So basic! Toilets and heating.  Without these properly mastered, how can a school stay open?  Korea, as I often invoke when I am appalled at something, is an OECD country. How is this permissable?

A KS day takes two: me and Korea.   Some days things here, like some days things anywhere, can overload my occasionally fragile circuits and turn me into something that snarls and snaps and stares glumly.  I admit culpability for having bad days, but not all disgust is misplaced.

For Christmas Santa Claus brought me a bladder infection, so I had to go to the hospital to get some antibiotics this afternoon.  I usually go to a hospital across the street from me.  Because of the language barrier I cannot even call to make an appointment, or insure that they have a urology department, and I definitely need my coworker Ms. Choi along to translate and shuffle me around to the various stations.  I was not thrilled about having to tell her about my problem (despite trumpeting it on the internet) because I’m afraid of the judgement of my Korean coworkers.  It’s a very different society here.  What one does is under a microscope, especially as a foreigner, and (as my friend Matt said about living in Japan) though you are excused from the rules of polite society, you may also be excused from being treated politely. I’m afraid they’ll gossip about me, and as this is something women get often, and often because of sex, and Korea is very rigid about what women can and cannot do, I felt all the inconvenience of explaining my symptoms to a coworker and being chaperoned.  In the waiting room Ms. Choi asked me if I got a bladder infection because I drank too much on Christmas.  With what delight did I hear that!  Not only does one not get a bladder infection from drinking, but I was also being accused of unsavory behavior (for a woman) which induced the sickness!  Misinformation about health and shame for suppossed immoral behavior - her question validated my concerns.  Though mostly I was just thankful she helped me, and helped me graciously.  It was what I saw before we went into the hospital that took my KS day to a FK day.

It was snowing and a man, a patient of the hospital, exchanged a few angry words with a woman. Perhaps she was his daughter or his wife.  She moved away from him, back toward the hospital doors, and quick as can be he grabbed her hair at the roots, twisted her head, and pulled her along with him.  She yelled and he pulled her and she tried to get away from him.  Vaguely restrained by Ms. Choi, I tried to give him the evilest teacher glare that I could muster, shocked as I was.  He let her go before I could decide what I would do if it went any further.  He was in the hospital for a broken arm.   He deserved another.  Ms. Choi studiously avoided looking at the scene; I looked in hopes to shame and dissuade him.  That poor woman.

And thats how a KS day becomes an FK day.

(But, to illustrate that I’m able to appreciate the good when there is good, I’d like to brag that my doctor’s visit -with tests- and my week’s worth of antibiotics cost under twelve dollars. Suck that, America.)

A Crazy Night for Seoul

Oh, the things I saw last night.  There must have been a full moon, or something in the water.  The Koreans were crazy last night.

Something I think I know about Korea, but can’t actually know, is this: Though Korea has a homicide rate less than half that of the United States, they tolerate far more domestic violence and aggressive behavior.  I’ve seen more fights in Korea than I ever saw in the United States. And they just fucking drink way too damn much.

As you can see, last night was a bad Korea night for me.

It started innocently enough.  Molly and I went to the movies.  We saw Toy Story 3. Pixar is, of course, the animation studio responsible for it, as well as Up, Finding Nemo, Wall-E, Ratatouille,  The Incredibles, etc.  I love Pixar so much.  Their stories are excellent and the animation is always breath-taking.  Even when their movies don’t match my expectations, and to be fair they’ve done a lot to make my expectations pretty high, still that movie is better than most.  The shorts before the movies are also always excellent.  Basically what I’m saying is I’d be happy to take a minimum wage job sweeping their holy floors.  (PS: Dreamworks Animation, you haven’t got shit on Pixar.)

I love you. Show me where the broom is and I'll get started.

Afterwards we played a few games of pool.  I haven’t played in years.  We were appropriately terrible, but it was a lot of fun.  I’m itching to get Molly out of the house to play again tonight.

Molly, bless her heart, had to work Saturday morning, but such inconveniences as teaching children don’t stop us.  It was one in the morning and she suggested we get a drink.  We were in Sungshin, and you can find about five bars on each side of one short street.  We went to a basement bar.  Their were albums on the shelves and a fancy speaker system.  There was also a group of Koreans and Korean Americans who were quite drunk.  One dude had his head on the table, asleep, and there were plenty of beer bottles on the table.  We ordered two Long Island Iced Teas, a cocktail that the menu listed as “for men.”

Molly was sitting with her back to the table, but I wasn’t so I was getting an eye full of the table’s antics.  One girl offered to take her drunker friend home, but it seemed like that should have happened a while ago.  The bartenders were taking what seemed an inordinate amount of time to make our drinks as we were the only ordering customers in the bar.  Then two girls nearly toppled over Molly because they were in a wobbly, inebriated embrace.  The girls apologized and Molly moved chairs so she wasn’t in the crossfire.  One of the guys from the table leaned over to us and said, “Can you do me a favor?”  I said, “Maybe not.”  He laughed, which seemed like a good sign, and then his friend who was asleep somehow launched himself from the otherside of the room and fell into the bar, knocked over a couple of stools and a lamp, then hit the floor.  A ragged, drunk mess.  It looked like he was in a rollicking bar fight with himself.  This table was too much trouble, so we grabbed our bags and ran out of there.  It didn’t look the bartenders even finished making our drinks anyway.

The next bar we went to was on the second floor one street over.  There weren’t any customers there, and all of the staff was young and dressed all in black.  We ordered two Long Island Iced Teas again and this time we stayed long enough to get  them.  We were sitting in a booth by a bank of windows.  Sitting near a window is like a lava lamp for me.  I get lost in people watching.  Below us two men and a woman were having a heated argument.  It was great fun to watch.  Molly and I couldn’t tell if the woman, wearing a beige one piece, was the nut ball, or if it was the guys.  She kept stepping between them, and touching and pulling them away from each other affectionately.   She probably fancied herself in her favorite drama.  She seemed to be more panicked than what the situation called for.  We sat up in our seats and pressed ourselves against the window.  I was chanting fight fight fight, urging them from above to throw a punch.  Entertain us!  The girl went back inside, and the guys ran off to the corner, which we could barely see, holding hands.  I could just see one throw a punch, some headlocks, a serious head butt that sent the other one falling backward.  That was a bit more entertainment that I wanted.  The man in the blue button down shirt left first and walked back toward the bar and  gave us a perfect view as the other guy ran up behind him and launched himself at his back, knocked him on the ground, kicked him in the stomach and back, squatted over him and punched him in the face one time, two times, so many times, and then kicked him in the head, slammed his foot into his face over and over  and over again.  I became shrill, probably yelled some incoherent things.  I ran downstairs because even though I don’t know what on Earth I could have, God damn if I’m going to watch somebody beat the shit out of another person and not, I don’t know, yell at him not to kill him.  Neither Molly and I speak Korean.  We couldn’t call the cops.  Being downstairs I saw one man’s foot stomp another man’s head over and over, still.  How many head injuries does it take to get to the center of a coffin?

Downstairs there was a small crowd of passersby and wait staff watching.  The girl was involved somehow too, crying and pleading with people near her to stop them.  YOU stop them, honey.  I couldn’t pity her.  She seemed to enjoy it.  Maybe I’m being unfair.  They’re all crazy, though.  Crazy crazy crazy.  I was shaking.  No one else ever seems to get as upset as I do.

Some of the staff from our bar ran down and broke it up.  The guys in the brawl kept trying to fight.  I left because I didn’t want to get injured, and what could I do, anyway?

I’ve never seen violence like that.  I’ve never seen someone smash another person’s head to the ground repeatedly.  I was appalled and not eager to go back downstairs.  That was not the kind of entertainment I wanted.  Answered prayers cause more tears than unanswered ones.  Not that I cried, but it was shocking, so shocking.  Molly and I didn’t talk much after that, and I realized a few minutes later that the bar was playing Christmas music in August.  No police ever came to the street.  Maybe they were never called.  I don’t understand these people sometimes.

When I got home it was three in the morning.  I got ready for bed and I heard voices shouting outside.  Of course!  Why should the insanity stop?  Let’s just all get hammered and let out all of our pent up aggression!  The voices got louder, and I realized they were in my building, in the hallway above me.  The argument increased and they were both shouting at the top of their lungs.  It echoed through the whole building.  I went halfway up the stairs in my bathrobe and yelled at them in English, because nothing helps aggression than more aggression.  ”Shut the fuck up, it’s fucking three in the morning. SHUT UP!”  I yelled “Be quiet!” in Korean.  They didn’t.  I stomped back to my room and angrily slammed my metal door.  There were a few seconds of quite after that.  The yelling ended and the woman, who I saw coming down the stairs, was an older woman.  She left the building.

Fucking crazy bastards.  What the hell is wrong with people? Stop being crazy people, stop it now.  Before you make me as crazy as you.

How to Get Robbed in the Philippines: Step by Step Instructions

1- Fly to Manila.

2- Check in at your hotel.  Accuse the woman at the front desk of charging you too much for your key deposit because you aren’t familiar with the value of the Filipino peso.  (This part is important.  You should accuse the only person not looking to take advantage of you.  Later you will buy the friendly people at the front desk a bag of expensive gummy candies for helping you so much the next day.)

3- Be eager and overwhelmed by the beauty and poverty and chaos.  Pack your guide book, sunscreen and all of your pesos into your bookbag.  Important tip: Don’t forget to forget that it’s always a bad idea to carry a large sum of money on your person.

4-Go to a three hundred year old Catholic church and garden across the street.  Take at least one photo of every tropical plant.  Fall in love with the tropical plants.

I love you

5- Over-confident in your sense of direction, set out to find another tourist attraction in a city and country which you’ve never been to before.  Walk for a mile on a dirty street, feel guilty for your affluence and pay a pubescent boy to drive you to your destination in an ancient moped while you ride in the side car, sincerely scared for your life.  Think about hubris.

6- Pay too much (but really not enough) for the ride and get accosted by the hustlers hanging out in the park.  Important tip: Make sure that as you paid for your ride that you showed off your thick wallet full of cash.  Shake off the one girl who is following you around and smiling.  Continue nervousness.

7- As you walk around the man made lake at your destination, fall into a short conversation with a middle aged man and woman.  Trust them more than the others as they seemed casual, but still shake them off and sit in the shade.  It’s quite hot, after all.

8- When the middle-age man and woman follow you to your not-so-secret hiding place, continue conversing with them, but with the utmost caution.  Their friends meet them.  Three more women.  They will tell you they are from the northern region of the Philippines and are tourists in Manila themselves.  The prettyish one with short hair tells you she is a history teacher.  With a total of five people, make certain that they don’t have enough teeth between them for three.

9- Gradually get more comfortable.  Eat the fruit they give you with salt.  Delicious.  Think that these people are more fun to talk to and be with than anyone you’ve met in Korea.

10 -Continue walking with them around the lake. Understand about seventy percent of what they say.

11- Let them graciously take you to on a jeepney, walk through a filthy market place (outdoor karaoke, people sleeping in carts, sex toys for sale, vomit in your path) and to an old Spanish church made out of metal.

You fuckers took me to a Church before you robbed me? Is that ironic or appropriate?

12- Agree to another trip to another tourist destination.  Remember, you still only understand seventy percent of what is said.  Ride in a rickety side car on another scary moped, this time crammed in with another woman.  Wonder if you will die.

13- Arrive at someone’s relative’s home, a home which is in poverty the likes of which you’ve never seen.  Enter the doorway with the greatest apprehension and see two young, shirtless men drinking and beckoning you to come inside.

14-Run away.  Fear for your life and wonder if you paranoid and incomparably rude.  You are very conflicted. Either way, you jet.

15- Get coddled and petted by one of the women.  They try and convince you, you remain firm.  You are not going inside.  You are going to your hotel.  Then make sure you don’t go to your hotel.  They then take you to the place you thought you were going to in the first place.  Wonder what a panic attack feels like, and if this could be it.

16- While in route to said destination, get stopped by a torrential tropical rain.  A beautiful rainstorm.  Somehow that rainstorm makes everything much better.  What a great vacation!

17- They suggest going to a bar across the street.  It’s just one room and a bank of windows without glass.  There aren’t any lights, but there is karaoke.  They are extra cautious of not frightening you.  They do not pressure you.  Take this as a sign that you were in the wrong to distrust them.

18-Drink several beers poured over ice.  How come we don’t drink beer poured over ice?  It’s the best idea.

19- Have a sincerely good time singing with them and sharing your cigarettes.  The history teacher corrects, under her breath to you, the way her friend said “Nice.”  The friend said “Nice” like “Nice to meet you.”  The history teacher says “Nice” like “niece.”  Take this as another sign that you were wrong to distrust them.

20- Eat some chicken on a stick.

21- They suggest going to another person’s home for dinner.  You go.  Why do you go?  Oh my God!  Don’t you have sense?  Of course you have sense!  Make sure that they drug you while at the bar to decrease said sense.

22-  Go to the house.  Eat delicious food, drink beer.  Next thing you remember is being taken to a bed to lie down and one of your preservers is putting a damp cloth to your head.  They make sure you get your camera as they put you in a taxi back to your hotel with only one thousand and two hundred pesos to your name.  They’d stolen several hundred.

23- The door man laughs at you when you stumble out of the cab.

24-Wake up woozy and mad.  Call mom and dad for a money order.

25- Let your anger be replaced, a little, by thankfulness.  If you were going to get robbed by anybody, these are the people you want to get robbed by.  You weren’t hurt, you were brought back to your hotel, and they didn’t take your camera.