Korean Job Discussion Forums

[denz]

[captain kirk]

first time in korea i arrived in kwangju. i'd never seen a roach in my life. it's too cold in parts of canada. my roomate in kwangju was hilarious, and teetering on the edge towards leaving, which he finally did with a midnight run at month seven. he did everything but maintain a fetal position while sucking his thumb. so when i arrived in korea for the first time i had to wonder if it was as bad as all that. by coincidence, he was from my home town, and had also never seen a roach. did you ever see 'the odd couple'. i'm oscar, he was felix. finicky, homesick, when i got there he looked like he was on watch at a weather station in antarctica, yet had forgotten why he was 'there'. one night i found a giant mother-of-all-roaches, a bull/tom roach, which had apparently died a natural death, perhaps from over-eating. it lay on it's back and it happened to expire two feet from his closed bedroom door behind which my roomate had retired for the evening. it was one of those huge flying units, about as big as a mouse. had it been shot? how could such a husky monstrosity stop in its tracks? i left the roach in place. the next day, though still in his mid-twenties, his hair had gone completely grey. strangely, he then began to read Edgar Allen Poe and Lovecraft, with darting eyes listening to the wind moan about the apartment, seeming to have been visibly tipped towards the hair of the dog, the macabre. true story!

[strangelove]

i had a teacher, mr. keating, back in high school, some personal finance class i think... 1st period i think, that was telling us about his 1st house which had a fierce roach problem. him and the family go out one evening, but before leaving he throws some leftovers in the sink as bait and coats the sides of the sink w/oil. family comes home, and the sink is loaded w/roaches; they can't escape the sink. mr. keating keeps a chicken for fresh eggs. at this point, he is starting to get this huge grin and is getting rather excited about his story. mr. keating then grabs the chicken and sets it loose on the sink of roaches... the thing goes mad gobbling them all up; the bird had trouble finishing them all there were so many. mr. keating thought the whole thing was good fun. as he is recounting the end of the story, the guy is literally crying because he is laughing so hard; it took him like 5min to stop. needless to say, everyone thought he was a little weird... if they hadn't come to that conclusion already. however, not nearly as strange as my math teacher who professed to be an alien and would sing the martian national anthem to his classes. amazing that florida public schools always rank near the bottom among the 50 states.