For all the bile I have been spewing* lately about consumerism, ecocide, the'Merica, or whatever, I generally do my best to refrain from saying anything derogatory about Korea. I feel like I owe so much to Korea - almost four years now of comfortable living, outstanding eating (this year more than ever), constant linguistic stimulation, good friends, and easy savings which allowed/will hopefully continue to allow long periods of carefree travelling. About the only thing Korea hasn't done for me is pay off my college loans. Thanks, mom and dad(s)!
In my time here I have only met 3 other foreigners [I am, for lack of better terminology, using this term only to refer to other native English teachers, and not to foreigners from other countries who are here for other reasons] who were capable of squeezing any joy out of the Korean language's sometimes infuriating properties; aside from that, though, almost every (English-teaching) foreigner here reaps all the same benefits as I do; and yet I'm more likely to hear someone fly off the handle and make completely unjustified generalizations about the country, people, or culture than I am to hear them thank someone for a meal or to see them offer up their seat to an elder on the subway.
One salient example: on a certain autumn evening back in 2008, I was downtown with some friends. They were drinking, but I was on antibiotics and under doctor's orders to abstain. At about 4AM, having vacated the club, we migrated to KFC, as foreigners here often do. Not being drunk, and thus not craving a break-of-dawn chicken sandwich, I stayed outside. After 10 minutes, my friends still hadn't come out, so I went in. I asked what was up and my friend said he didn't know. I asked the cashier when my friends' food would be ready and she said they hadn't ordered yet.
Of course, this was improbable, as my friends weren't quite that far gone. I told my friends they should just order again, but rather than simply doing so, and understanding that there are a few reasons why someone working the graveyard shift at KFC trying to take orders from drunk people speaking a different language might be liable to make a mistake from time to time, my friends decided to go off on a rant about how stupid and racist Koreans are. Unwisely, I tried to talk some sense, or maybe just some empathy, into them. The results were that 1) I was told that I "always take the Koreans' side" (an accusation so true it hurt) and 2) the argument continued for most of the cab ride home, until it reached a crescendo and my friends got out early, leaving me to pay the fare on my own.
I don't even want to begin to attempt to analyze exactly what sort of feelings and experiences lead to these sort of outbursts. I suppose being linguistically isolated, working a morally ambiguous and often frustrating job, and living a long way from home can be difficult to bear. Anyway, this post is actually not about any of that. The preceding was all meant as a disclaimer, to say that when I do decide to briefly highlight some silly or annoying things that Korean people do to or around me, it is because they stand out against the background of general pleasantness that I experience here. (As long as I'm not thinking about the environment or global justice etc.) Once again, it appears that the introduction has become the climax and now my main stories have been relegated to denouement.
Issue 1: One Korean Acquaintance has some Inductive Reasoning issues
I was at a friend's house the other day. My right elbow was a bit swollen, I believe from a nasty reaction to a mosquito bite, and her mom asked what had happened. I explained and said that it was fairly painful and that it was particularly uncomfortable to write on the board in class. (Oh, yeah, did I mention I started teaching again?)
"Aren't you left handed?" she asked me.
The daughter said "no, of course not, you've seen him using silverware and drinking with his right hand."
And the mom said, "Hrm, I thought all Americans were left-handed?"
My mind was blown. "Huh?"
In an atypically snide manner, I added "That may be the funniest thing I've ever heard," though I massacred the translation and it probably didn't make any sense to anyone but me. [Actually, I think what came out was 'That's the first time I've ever heard something funnier than that." The difference in the Korean for the two may be as small as one word.**}
"Chris" (a common friend) "was left-handed, wasn't he?" asked the mom.
"Yeah. He was. Some Americans are left-handed. Just like some Koreans," I informed her.
"Oh. Well, when a Korean is born left-handed, we usually punish them until they turn right-handed," she said.
"Sure, we used to do the same thing. Even so, not very many people are left-handed. It's probably the exact same percentage as here."
"Huh." (End of debate).
Odd that an intelligent, fully grown woman could harbor such a thought. But, then again, I believe I was 23 when I realized that I had eyelashes growing from my lower eyelids as well as my upper ones. Thus, unlike some friends here to whom I told this story, I am not comfortable drawing conclusions about Koreans, Korean education, Korean racism, or what have you. I'm happy just having been able to boggle someone's mind and unravel a (mostly harmless) stereotype.
Issue 2: One Korean Woman has some Spacial/Spatial Reasoning issues [OR DOES SHE???]
Just a few hours ago, despite my throbbing elbow, I biked down to this awesome new [to me] market I found next to the train station. It's called, in Korean, LIGHTNING MARKET. I even looked in the dictionary to make sure there's no other possible translation for the word "beon-gae." There isn't. The place is definitely called LIGHTNING MARKET. It's pretty much exactly the same as WEST GATE MARKET and SEVEN STARS MARKET, except that it makes sense to write its names in all CAPS, because, well, if you don't know already, nevermind. I go for the thrill, and also because sweet potatoes and lotus roots are 33% cheaper than at the markets with more pedestrian names.
Most people (Korean and not) think I am a bit weird for biking around with a bunch of ziploc bags inside a backpack which is inside one of two bike bags. There are good reasons, though. I bike around for exercise and because it's cleaner and faster and actually less exhausting than the bus. I put the backpack in the bike bag to have a more comfy ride and a less sweaty back, though I wear it if I run out of space. And I carry around (large) ziploc bags so that I don't have to use and dispose of new plastic bags every time I want to buy vegetables from some cute old wrinkly lady.***
So, first I got one lady to put some ginger in a ziploc for me, explaining that I didn't want to have to throw out any plastic. Then I got another lady to do the same with some garlic, and I likewise explained my motives to her. Then I passed another lady selling...you'll never believe this...mushrooms! I had never seen plastic-free mushrooms before and knew instantly that they had to be lightly steamed, then just dipped in a little sesame oil and salt solution. I asked for them and she reached for a plastic bag; I told her I brought my own and that I'd give it to her. She relayed the sentence to her friend ("Check it out, this foreigner knows how to speak with honorifics!") and chuckled. Then, to my amazement, she said "They won't fit in." I assured her they would, but despite my pleas and much to my woe, she threw them into a new black plastic bag.
So far, nothing too strange. It's true, the black bag was a bit more voluminous than my ziploc. Maybe I was wrong, though I was pretty sure that my z would have worked out fine. Until a moment later, when I was completely sure. Because she opened my ziploc bag, which she was still holding, and started to put the black plastic bag inside of it!!! Utterly confused, I told her not to bother, took my goods, and zipped off (to buy some eggplants, lotus roots, and cherry tomatoes.)
The question is, how could she have possibly believed that the mushrooms wouldn't fit in the z-bag if she simultaneously believed that the mushrooms AND the b-bag could BOTH fit into the z-bag? Did she realize her mistake only after filling the b-bag? Does she live in a universe where the axioms of logic don't hold? Has too much red pepper paste or soju or dog soup rattled her old Korean brain?
As much as I hate to admit it, though, honesty compels me to inform you that there is indeed one way to make sense of the fiasco. Actually, that doesn't go far enough. A proper understanding turns the so-called fiasco into a simple misunderstanding on my part. And, not surprisingly, language is to blame.
It hinges on the meaning of 안 들어가겠다 "an deu-reo kagetda." My first instinct was to translate it as "they won't all fit in." But, after replaying the scene in my mind, I realized that, as is often the case in Korean sentences, the subject wasn't specified. Maybe she wasn't talking about the mushrooms ("they"). More likely, she was talking about the basket they were in ("it"), and expressing the fact it was a pain in the ass to try to pour a bunch of mushrooms from a wide-rimmed basket into a z-bag with a (relatively) narrow mouth. The b-bag, being free from the z-parameter, is a fair bit easier to get stuff into. It still pisses me off that she would rather save herself 10 seconds of effort than save the world from one plastic bag, but this attitude is more or less understandable in the light of business as usual.
So, in fact, this lady, who is most likely much better than I will ever be at pouring produce out of baskets and into bags, probably knew what she was talking about. My temporary condescension had its roots in confusing. Interestingly enough, had I been watching her more closely and listening to her less, maybe I would have understood immediately. As it was, my Korean skills were good enough to confuse me, but not good enough to help me understand.
Let this be a lesson to us all.
Please don't forget to read the footnotes.****
*meager compared to the amount I've been holding back, believe you me.
**Compare:
그것보다 웃긴 걸 못 들었어요. Keu-geot boda ootgin geot mot deureosseoyo. that thing more than funny thing couldn't hear / "I've never heard anything funnier than that."(Not a bad sentence!)
그것보다 웃긴 걸 처음 들었어요. Keu-geot boda ootgin geot ch'eo-eum deureosseoyo. that thing more than funny first heard / This is the first time I've heard something funnier than that."(Utter gibberish!)
***The one thing that doesn't make sense is that I'm willing to wash and re-use ziploc bags, but for some reason I don't want to wash and re-use normal black plastic bags.
****I just read Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time," which is told from the point of view of a 15 year old boy with an unnamed form of Autism or Apserger's or something in the vicinity. I liked it!
Friday, September 03, 2010
Thursday, September 02, 2010
Wisdom #4
"At the moment our only choices are personal ones. Though we may not be able to do anything whatever about genetic engineering or neutron bombs, individually we can say "no" to television. We can throw our sets in the garbage pail where they belong. But while this is an act that may be very satisfying and beneficial, in making this act we must never forget that, like choosing not to drive a car, it is no expression of democratic freedom. In democratic terms, this individual act is meaningless, as it has no effect at all upon the wider society, which continues as before. In fact, this act disconnects us from the system and leaves us less able to participate in and affect it than before. Like Huxley's "savage," or like today's young people who drop out to rural farms, we find ourselves even further removed from participation in the central processes that direct our society, our culture, our politics, and our economic organization. We are struggling in a classic double bind."
Jerry Mander, "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television," postscript.
Jerry Mander, "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television," postscript.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Reverse-Chronology Evaluvacation, Part 1
I have recently returned home after a few weeks of vagabondage, and only a few days are left before I have to start working to earn my paycheck again. I am assuming it is very important to squeeze in some sort of retrospective before the semester begins and I am caught up in whatever it is that will catch me up.
First of all, one summer dream never came true: I was hoping to bike all around the country, stopping at farms here and there, being a sort of affluent philosophical vagrant/migrant worker. See the country, sleep in a tent, learn about Earth stewardhip, clear my mind, etc. Whether fortunately or unfortunately, I was asked to work for a week in the middle of my vacation (training elementary school teachers), so I wasn't able to turn the whole summer into one massive bike trip.
And yet, Karmically enough, I did get to experience something like this vicariously! A few days before my final farmstay finished, a fellow named Pablo found me on couchsurfing. He needed somewhere to stay in Daegu, so I had my neighbor Andy let him into my vacant apartment. It was really nice to be both so lacking in possessions worth stealing (no TV, no DVD player, no stereo, no monitor, no fancy furniture) and so unattached to the few things I do have (laptop, netbook, projector) that I wasn't at all worried about letting this dude into my house (the only thing I worried about was my external hard drive, which has 10 or more years worth of pictures on it, but who would steal that, anyway?). Of course, I wouldn't let just anyone in. Pablo Garcia Gomez is a special individual:
He has been on his bike for 9 years. Korea is his 69th country, and he's nearing 85,000 kilometers. He carries 55 kilos of stuff around with him - clothes, toiletries, computer, video camera, repair kit - and bikes somewhere between 50 and 100 kilometers most days, resting every third or fourth, when it rains, or when he needs to. He supports himself by buying souvenirs cheap and selling them for a profit when he gets to big cities (I bought 3 little dolls from Argentina). He gets some sort of support from sponsors or something, and also sells interviews to local bicycle magazines whenever he can. And of course he camps and couchsurfs a lot to keep costs down.
So, I was quite happy to finish my vacation by becoming one of perhaps thousands of enabling hosts. We had a nice chat, he told me about some of his adventures, I got some advice about bike travel, I bought him lunch at one of my favorite restaurants, and then we took a ride together for about 45 minutes as I showed him the way out of the city. Quite a friendly, inspiring, crazy fellow. Check out his website. And if you live in China or Mongolia, or on the Pacific coast between Seattle and Chile, host him when he comes through your neighborhood.
First of all, one summer dream never came true: I was hoping to bike all around the country, stopping at farms here and there, being a sort of affluent philosophical vagrant/migrant worker. See the country, sleep in a tent, learn about Earth stewardhip, clear my mind, etc. Whether fortunately or unfortunately, I was asked to work for a week in the middle of my vacation (training elementary school teachers), so I wasn't able to turn the whole summer into one massive bike trip.
And yet, Karmically enough, I did get to experience something like this vicariously! A few days before my final farmstay finished, a fellow named Pablo found me on couchsurfing. He needed somewhere to stay in Daegu, so I had my neighbor Andy let him into my vacant apartment. It was really nice to be both so lacking in possessions worth stealing (no TV, no DVD player, no stereo, no monitor, no fancy furniture) and so unattached to the few things I do have (laptop, netbook, projector) that I wasn't at all worried about letting this dude into my house (the only thing I worried about was my external hard drive, which has 10 or more years worth of pictures on it, but who would steal that, anyway?). Of course, I wouldn't let just anyone in. Pablo Garcia Gomez is a special individual:
He has been on his bike for 9 years. Korea is his 69th country, and he's nearing 85,000 kilometers. He carries 55 kilos of stuff around with him - clothes, toiletries, computer, video camera, repair kit - and bikes somewhere between 50 and 100 kilometers most days, resting every third or fourth, when it rains, or when he needs to. He supports himself by buying souvenirs cheap and selling them for a profit when he gets to big cities (I bought 3 little dolls from Argentina). He gets some sort of support from sponsors or something, and also sells interviews to local bicycle magazines whenever he can. And of course he camps and couchsurfs a lot to keep costs down.
So, I was quite happy to finish my vacation by becoming one of perhaps thousands of enabling hosts. We had a nice chat, he told me about some of his adventures, I got some advice about bike travel, I bought him lunch at one of my favorite restaurants, and then we took a ride together for about 45 minutes as I showed him the way out of the city. Quite a friendly, inspiring, crazy fellow. Check out his website. And if you live in China or Mongolia, or on the Pacific coast between Seattle and Chile, host him when he comes through your neighborhood.
Summer Reading
At the beginning of the semester I found myself in a reading rut; between when I left the States with a load of linguistics-type books in July '09 and when I returned to Korea from India/Sadhana in late February, my interests had apparently changed dramatically. I could no longer concentrate on reading spiffy things about verbs and syntax and performatives, etc. I tried in vain to get through Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations and Austen's How to Do Things with Words, but I was nagged by the feeling that, no matter how interesting, linguistics was a somewhat selfish pursuit. What will it matter to anyone anywhere if I can parse a sentence a bit better? I'm not trying to write off an entire discipline, since I of course still find it all very interesting. I just couldn't quite match up the selflessness to which I was aspiring in my diet and actions and the seemingly reclusive, technical, interesting-intellectual-puzzle-but-is-it-really-much-more? aspects of linguistics. So I got frustrated and mostly stopped reading.
But then I bought some used books on Amazon and had my mom mail me a package. I couldn't have known then that Derrick Jensen's Endgame, about which I posted exactly 4 months ago, would send me off on a sort of book-odyssey (made possible by my obliging, library-card possessing friend Daeju Kim AKA Julio at Seoul National Unversity), leading me to question and reformulate my ideas about...education, the environment and man's relation to it, how to live almost-sustainably in Vermont, the nature of schizophrenia, the shortfalls of veganism, the complexity of plants and the dangers of pharmeceuticals, the relationship between the pervasiveness of competition and dissemblance in the industrial economy and the mental health of the individuals and families who participate in it; and the possibility of TV being turned into a healthy, useful medium. I have apparently become obsessed with thinking about how to eat, how to consume, how to medicate, how to relate to the planet, how to teach, and how to entertain myself in ways that are, for lack of a more exact word, nice.
I don't know if I'm just trying to show off, or if I'm making a list for posterity, or whatever else, but in any case, I feel compelled to share the list of the books I've been devouring since spring rolled around. If I had a little more time, a bit more confidence in my newfound (somewhat) radical mentality, and a slightly smaller sense of ever-increasing estrangement, I might write some synopses or reviews or at least provide some quotations. But I'm not quite there yet. In the meantime, check them out on wikipedia or Amazon. That is, if estrangement is something you're looking for.
Derrick Jensen - Walking on Water
Derrick Jensen - A Language Older than Words
Neill Everndren - The Natural Alien
Helen and Scott Nearing - The Good Life
R.D. Laing - The Politics of Experience
Lierre Kieth - The Vegetarian Myth
Stephen Harold Buhner - The Lost Language of Plants
Jules Henry - Culture Against Man
Jerry Mander - Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
I am pretty sure this list is missing a book or two. I think I need to order some awesome not-so-new Undeployed(TM) bookmarks!
(Of course, throughout all of this, I have been consulting my Handbook of Korean Vocabulary: A Resource for Word Recognition and Comprehension and my Korean Grammar for International Learners along with the accompanying Workbook. Not to mention Seoul National University Language Education Institute Korean Level 4 and its own Workbook. But I don't expect these to interest you all so much.)
But then I bought some used books on Amazon and had my mom mail me a package. I couldn't have known then that Derrick Jensen's Endgame, about which I posted exactly 4 months ago, would send me off on a sort of book-odyssey (made possible by my obliging, library-card possessing friend Daeju Kim AKA Julio at Seoul National Unversity), leading me to question and reformulate my ideas about...education, the environment and man's relation to it, how to live almost-sustainably in Vermont, the nature of schizophrenia, the shortfalls of veganism, the complexity of plants and the dangers of pharmeceuticals, the relationship between the pervasiveness of competition and dissemblance in the industrial economy and the mental health of the individuals and families who participate in it; and the possibility of TV being turned into a healthy, useful medium. I have apparently become obsessed with thinking about how to eat, how to consume, how to medicate, how to relate to the planet, how to teach, and how to entertain myself in ways that are, for lack of a more exact word, nice.
I don't know if I'm just trying to show off, or if I'm making a list for posterity, or whatever else, but in any case, I feel compelled to share the list of the books I've been devouring since spring rolled around. If I had a little more time, a bit more confidence in my newfound (somewhat) radical mentality, and a slightly smaller sense of ever-increasing estrangement, I might write some synopses or reviews or at least provide some quotations. But I'm not quite there yet. In the meantime, check them out on wikipedia or Amazon. That is, if estrangement is something you're looking for.
Derrick Jensen - Walking on Water
Derrick Jensen - A Language Older than Words
Neill Everndren - The Natural Alien
Helen and Scott Nearing - The Good Life
R.D. Laing - The Politics of Experience
Lierre Kieth - The Vegetarian Myth
Stephen Harold Buhner - The Lost Language of Plants
Jules Henry - Culture Against Man
Jerry Mander - Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
I am pretty sure this list is missing a book or two. I think I need to order some awesome not-so-new Undeployed(TM) bookmarks!
(Of course, throughout all of this, I have been consulting my Handbook of Korean Vocabulary: A Resource for Word Recognition and Comprehension and my Korean Grammar for International Learners along with the accompanying Workbook. Not to mention Seoul National University Language Education Institute Korean Level 4 and its own Workbook. But I don't expect these to interest you all so much.)
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Linguistic Pinnacle Of My Existence
Back in my emo days, there were a few lines I really liked from a song I kind of liked from a CD I totally liked from a band I mostly liked. Reverse-respectively, I am referring to the band Moneen, the CD Are We Really Happy with Who We Are Right Now, the song "The Last Song I Will Ever Want to Sing," and the lyrics
Think of one moment you can call
the happiest moment of your life.
It's gone.
There's also a line from Flaubert's Madame Bovary that goes something like
Never touch your idols, lest some of the gold rub off on your fingers.
The arguments themselves are of course flawed, since you could just as well say that the worst moment you can remember is gone, or that you might be pleasantly surprised by helping a leper. Nevertheless, for a while, I was a sucker for such trivially true pessimistic observations. Maybe I still am, a bit. Anyhow, I thought of them again recently after the long-awaited impossible finally happened.
Most everybody has some special skill, and lots of people have two or three. And nothing makes you (me) feel awesomer than being able to whip out the skill when nobody expects it, particularly if this leads to you saving the day in some fashion. We are all beaten and devalued and made replaceable by an insanely competitive economy (trying to link in my next book review here, Jules Henry's Culture Against Man) and need ways to imagine ourselves as selves, as heroes, as characters of some worth. Thus we hope to wow others, to win their approval and our own existence, by opening beer bottles with our eye sockets, lighting matches on our flies, or solving Rubik's cubes.
Simple situations that can be rescued by the above skills are manifold; but what about situations where two or more are necessary? Sure, it happens from time to time that there are no bottle openers. But it's almost inconceivable that, let's say, you're at a party, and then suddenly there's a time bomb that can only be defused by pouring beer onto a sensor through a solved-Rubik's-cube sieve. Would not any (wo)man who accomplished this task on his/her own become an instant folk hero, object of praise and subject of lore for weeks/generations to come? Who hasn't imagined themselves and their skills at the center of some such crazy fiasco?
Background: On Sunday, I brought my Polish friend Andzrej, whom I met at the Persimmon farm in Miryang (future post), to a meeting of the Daegu Language Exchange to help him find a conversation partner. The DLE meets at different places each time, and this time we met (in the afternoon) in an empty salsa/chacha/whatever kind of dance bar. We did our language exchange thing, chatting for a few hours about this and that, playing some simple language games, and then left for dinner. Out on the street, we met the bar's owner (Korean), who introduced us to two visitors, saying they were the European Salsa champions and were visiting for a few days, giving a class or something. Then he asked, in Korean, hey....does anyone here speak Italian?
Luckily (in this specific case, though probably not in general), it seems that all my skills are concentrated in the language department. Or maybe it's not even fair to consider them different skills; maybe it's just one skill, manifested in a few ways. In any case, having studied Italian from 2002-2006 and Korean from 2006-2010, I always (vaguely) sort of dreamed about or imagined or wondered what would happen if I were finally presented with an opportunity to humbly bust out my insane, if random, interpretation skills.
Well, here's what happened. I listened to the Italians saying that they wanted to find a place in Daegu to buy fake designer bags, explained it to the Koreans, who explained where they were to be found, how to get there, and when, and then relayed that back to the Italians. They thanked me for the help and complimented me on my nigh-proficiency. Sirens went off, the sky started flashing, and prop planes started zooming around spraying my name into the air. A bunch of fireworks exploded, standers-by applauded, Michael Phelps came out and gave me two of his medals, and the Princess Peach came out and gave me a peck on the cheek and I realized I had conquered life.
Or, as it actually happened, most of the people from the language exchange were a few steps away discussing whether to have Mexican or Italian to dinner, completely oblivious to my exploits. The people passing by on the street had no idea how cool I was being at that moment. And the bar owner was mostly happy to have the awkwardness remedied, if just for a bit. Nobody gave a crap and I felt instantly naive for even having less-than-half expected anyone to care. It turns out the world is mostly as portrayed in Okkervil River's "Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe."
"No fade in begins on a kid in the big city
no cut to a costly parade that's for him only
no dissolve to a sliver of gray that's his new lady
where she glows just like grain on the flickering pane
of some great movie."
What a harsh world!
*In case anyone is wondering, I experienced a particular and new and physical sensation of confusion somewhere above my left eye while trying to translate! Though the word order of Italian is mostly similar to English (and both are the inverse of Korean), for some reason, I had great difficulty in swapping the subjects and verbs into different positions when I went back and forth between Italian and Korean. It felt like there was a traffic jam. In my eyebrow. Merits further investigation.
Think of one moment you can call
the happiest moment of your life.
It's gone.
There's also a line from Flaubert's Madame Bovary that goes something like
Never touch your idols, lest some of the gold rub off on your fingers.
The arguments themselves are of course flawed, since you could just as well say that the worst moment you can remember is gone, or that you might be pleasantly surprised by helping a leper. Nevertheless, for a while, I was a sucker for such trivially true pessimistic observations. Maybe I still am, a bit. Anyhow, I thought of them again recently after the long-awaited impossible finally happened.
Most everybody has some special skill, and lots of people have two or three. And nothing makes you (me) feel awesomer than being able to whip out the skill when nobody expects it, particularly if this leads to you saving the day in some fashion. We are all beaten and devalued and made replaceable by an insanely competitive economy (trying to link in my next book review here, Jules Henry's Culture Against Man) and need ways to imagine ourselves as selves, as heroes, as characters of some worth. Thus we hope to wow others, to win their approval and our own existence, by opening beer bottles with our eye sockets, lighting matches on our flies, or solving Rubik's cubes.
Simple situations that can be rescued by the above skills are manifold; but what about situations where two or more are necessary? Sure, it happens from time to time that there are no bottle openers. But it's almost inconceivable that, let's say, you're at a party, and then suddenly there's a time bomb that can only be defused by pouring beer onto a sensor through a solved-Rubik's-cube sieve. Would not any (wo)man who accomplished this task on his/her own become an instant folk hero, object of praise and subject of lore for weeks/generations to come? Who hasn't imagined themselves and their skills at the center of some such crazy fiasco?
Background: On Sunday, I brought my Polish friend Andzrej, whom I met at the Persimmon farm in Miryang (future post), to a meeting of the Daegu Language Exchange to help him find a conversation partner. The DLE meets at different places each time, and this time we met (in the afternoon) in an empty salsa/chacha/whatever kind of dance bar. We did our language exchange thing, chatting for a few hours about this and that, playing some simple language games, and then left for dinner. Out on the street, we met the bar's owner (Korean), who introduced us to two visitors, saying they were the European Salsa champions and were visiting for a few days, giving a class or something. Then he asked, in Korean, hey....does anyone here speak Italian?
!!!WOW!!!
Luckily (in this specific case, though probably not in general), it seems that all my skills are concentrated in the language department. Or maybe it's not even fair to consider them different skills; maybe it's just one skill, manifested in a few ways. In any case, having studied Italian from 2002-2006 and Korean from 2006-2010, I always (vaguely) sort of dreamed about or imagined or wondered what would happen if I were finally presented with an opportunity to humbly bust out my insane, if random, interpretation skills.
Well, here's what happened. I listened to the Italians saying that they wanted to find a place in Daegu to buy fake designer bags, explained it to the Koreans, who explained where they were to be found, how to get there, and when, and then relayed that back to the Italians. They thanked me for the help and complimented me on my nigh-proficiency. Sirens went off, the sky started flashing, and prop planes started zooming around spraying my name into the air. A bunch of fireworks exploded, standers-by applauded, Michael Phelps came out and gave me two of his medals, and the Princess Peach came out and gave me a peck on the cheek and I realized I had conquered life.
Or, as it actually happened, most of the people from the language exchange were a few steps away discussing whether to have Mexican or Italian to dinner, completely oblivious to my exploits. The people passing by on the street had no idea how cool I was being at that moment. And the bar owner was mostly happy to have the awkwardness remedied, if just for a bit. Nobody gave a crap and I felt instantly naive for even having less-than-half expected anyone to care. It turns out the world is mostly as portrayed in Okkervil River's "Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe."
"No fade in begins on a kid in the big city
no cut to a costly parade that's for him only
no dissolve to a sliver of gray that's his new lady
where she glows just like grain on the flickering pane
of some great movie."
What a harsh world!
*In case anyone is wondering, I experienced a particular and new and physical sensation of confusion somewhere above my left eye while trying to translate! Though the word order of Italian is mostly similar to English (and both are the inverse of Korean), for some reason, I had great difficulty in swapping the subjects and verbs into different positions when I went back and forth between Italian and Korean. It felt like there was a traffic jam. In my eyebrow. Merits further investigation.
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