Korean Job Discussion Forums

[captain kirk]

I was walking home from work last night at 10pm and a mousquito/bug zapper had been installed onto a lampost on a bridge next to the shore of 'dong river', a kind of creek which meanders through this part of town and contains alot of sewage/effluent by the looks of it (waving green water plants, like hair, rejoicing in the 'nutrients' ). I've never seen a bug zapper installed by the public works. Korea has a strange attitude towards mousquitos. I think Koreans have as much of an aversion to mousquitoes as they do towards 'foreigners' . Today I passed a village to the side of the highway and it was being fogged with that horrendous mousquito killing gas. Why? Convenience. Malaria and Japanese encephalitis just aren't a risk. Given the lack of concern for wildlife and the environment there is no opposition to gassing the place. I don't know, I'm just blabbing here.
About mosquitoes here being robust and clever; what? I know mousquitoes from treeplanting in Canada for seven seasons and being up in the bush at my Grandad's place up in the Northern boreal forest. I've been bitten hordes of times and don't bother about them, just let them bite and their bite doesn't raise a bump. Yeah, hooray for me. But the mousquitoes don't seem to be worth gassing the place with toxic chemicals. It's an industry, maybe. A lot of people are getting paid to provide the chemical, spray it, and so on. A money chain that has been established (?).

[Kwangjuchicken]

All myths have some truth. Why are vampires afraid of garlic.?

Because mousquitos are.


6 years ago when I first got here they were trying to kill me. The appartment was always full and the ceiling was covered with them. I was actually afraid I would die from loosing too much blood. I was very close to quitting my job and going back to the USA.

Then an old lady on the sidewalk who was selling fresh garlic told me, in Korean, but her body language was great. And, after 6 years here I know that Koreans are terrible at body language, but this lady, who also wrote in the air her age, 97, was great at it.

Anyway, she was telling me to eat raw garlic to keep the mousquitos away. Well, she reminded me so much of my grandmother that I went along with her and ate a raw garlic clove right there. Then I went home.

As usual the appartment was full of them. I sat down. Then they started buzzing around me, but did not land. After an hour the place was empty.

The next day I went back to the store. The old lady on the sidewalk was no longer there. Never saw her again. But I went into the store and bought some garlic.

Ever since then I have had raw garlic on a regular basis and have not had one more bite in almost 5 years.

.

[osangrl]

Last september I counted 38 bites on my right arm.....it was gross.

[mog]

Why do I have a lot of itches when I open this particular thread?

[jazblanc77]

[desultude]

[jazblanc77]

I helped a friend of the family put up a tee-pee for the Haines Junction music festival once (do you know it?), and it was exactly the opposite situation. The mosquitoes were completely disinterested in him and a cloud of those fast, little, smart beasts made a feast of me! Yikes!

[desultude]

[jazblanc77]

Yep, did the muskeg thing as well for two years in Fox Creek in Northern Alberta. Maybe you'll remember this backwater town if you ever drove down into Canada a bit further, it's at the very beginning the Alaska highway - before mile 0. There were lots of mosquitoes but they were pretty slow and dumb.

Wow, I never thought that I would run into a fellow Northerner on this forum!

[desultude]

[baldrick]

The worst assult I have experienced was in northern Oz - anywhere north of Townsville. Put it this way, if you ever go on a croc cruise on the Daintree River, and the boaty pulls you into the jungle undergrowth pretending a log is actually a sleeping croc, DON'T wear shorts. In fact, don't even leave the car. Every night camping we spent about 20 mins with the torch killing as many as we could in the tent. Next morning there would be hundreds cueing up on the inner layer of the tent. Kind of freaky, as in they can smell you but they can't get to you........!

[jazblanc77]

[Buff]

The skeeters aren't horrible, but I slept with the window open last night and I've got about 10 bites, seven of them on my right hand... owwww. Back home skeeter bites are annoying but in foreign countries my skin always reacts more severely and gets all puffed up...ick. Just use the air conditioner and leave the window closed at night.

[Zed]

[sillywilly]

I read today in The Bug Encyclopedia that the mosquito is the most dangerous bug, because of its involvment with Malaria