Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Ya-ta Boy]

You've been warned in the title--this is no rant---and if that isn't enough, consider this: Cheese Sandwich didn't like it. Stop now. Be warned. Scroll on to something else.

As you�re going out the door in the morning you see yet another restaurant ad stuck to your door, but oh happy day! this one is for a Chinese restaurant that delivers kan-poong-gi and must to be near where you live. You�ve been jonesin� for some GOOD kan-poong-ki ever since you left Jinhae in �04--the place in Bugok just didn't measure up, even though the Chinese couple there were kind of entertaining when they fought. You are long overdue. Maybe this one will be the place. You scrutinize the ad with the magnet on the back and find there is no address, so� you decide to give one of your morning classes the assignment of calling up the place and drawing a map�then giving you directions in English. (Hey, it�s a two minute review lesson!) Your supper menu has been solved.

The day has started off well, omens are with you; your class comes through with perfect directions. But along about 10:15 there are intimations that things aren�t going to go as planned when your glasses feel funny when you push them back up your nose during class-- there is something just not right. You choose to ignore the signs.

You get off at 2 and think you�re going to have the whole afternoon of a glorious fall day free before going out for a supper of scrumptious kan-poong-ki. The excitement is almost too much and might interfere with your nap.

You get home at 2:03, sit down on the couch ready to read yourself into a short nap before going out to enjoy the afternoon, take off your glasses to lay them on the coffee table and notice the sidebar seems loose. Maybe that�s why they were not feeling right in class. You wiggle the sidebar a bit, thinking you�ll need to stop in to a shop and have them tightened, but the nose bridge part snaps in two. Crapola! There goes the carefree afternoon.

You decide first things first--a nap is more important and the glasses can wait� Good snooze. You wake up at 3:30 and head out for a walk, feeling a little light-headed because everything is seriously out of focus. The orange cosmos are in full bloom down by the playground. Knowing this beforehand, you have brought your scissors with you. Snip off a few. (I am learning to paint with acrylics and need some models.) Continue with the walk. Fabulous afternoon, marred only by the fact that you have to squint to see it and keep an eye on the ground in front of you so you don�t trip over something.

Along about 6 you decide to risk driving down to the bus stop (you would too if you had a car) hoping you don�t run over an apt-tyke on the way, and off into Seong-Nam for supper. Wahoo.! Everything goes OK. No fender-benders. No flattened apt tykes.

Something like 30 feet from the bus stop, right where the students told you it would be, is the Chinese restaurant. Brown wood outside, white walls inside. A nice balcony in front with a couple of blue plastic chairs and some plastic ivy covering the windows. Attractive enough. Not dingy. Three scooters outside ready for delivery. You go in, and two delivery boys, an ajumma and an ajosshi jump up. You are the only customer. Hmmm. It�s 6:30. Why aren�t they busier?

You sit down, check the menu for kan-poong-gi, order and the ajumma gives you a fork, but you don�t mind. You know how to push it aside and get chopsticks out of the box without making an international event out of it. It doesn�t ruin your up-to-this-point good week (except for the broken glasses) just because she assumes you can�t eat without a fork�you are not a culture-shocked newbie or a disgruntled hate-the-world whiner. But then the all day long looked forward to kan-poong-gi arrives and disappointment! Oh, no! The crispy coating is not crispy. The sauce is spicy and garlicky enough, but the coating is soggy and squishy. It isn�t disgusting bad. Just not up to the quality you remember from that Chinese restaurant in Jinhae near where Mr. Kim took a tumble with his �girlfriend of the evening� off the bridge during the cherry blossom festival. There is good news to balance the bad. The ajumma tells you there is a big optometrist shop just up the street. Maybe even better, when it comes time to pay, you find they gave you a ban order, so instead of having to pay W24,000, you only have to pay W19,000 (kan-poong-gi, kong-gi-bap and a bottle of soju). (The 1948 Martha Gellhorn short story about a woman on a Miami-New York flight who runs into a navy lieutenant coming home from the War helped pass the time, as did the two ajosshis at the next table-the only other customers in the restaurant)

Off you go, up the street in search of the optometrist shop, squinting all the way, keeping an eye out for those stone column thingies they put in to block cars from driving on the sidewalk�and trip up blind waygookins who have broken their glasses. Why else would they be there?

Right where she said it was, next to the 7-11, is a nice shiny glasses shop with hundreds, maybe thousands of frames. You go in and the first thing the optometrist with the unfortunately bad complexion says is, �No English�. You notice right off that it isn�t as bad as it could be�there is no extra �y� sound added to �English�. You pull out your broken glasses and he just grins. He tells you prices for frames range from W30,000 to something and begins searching for some frames that match your lens shape. In the end, there is only one pair that will work. You feel lucky because they are black and not purple or orange, although you rather like the colors purple and orange, although not for glasses for you your ownself.


(You will have noticed that I chose to eat alone rather than eat with the Ice Queen, the guy who passes out by 9 every night, the twice-fired guy on the crutch, the guy with anger issues who broke another teacher�s nose at work for putting his feet on the table, the woman who only reads European lit-er-uh-chah� and the prince and the pea who can smell smoke from my cigarette coming in his window from 30 feet away when I�m not even smoking�oh, the myriad joys of working with waygookins.)

[CheeseSandwich]

Man i feel like i just listened to a story from some one who is unable to make a story interesting.


Only its all my fault for continuing to read.

[Ya-ta Boy]

Miss the point there much, Mr. Sandwich?

[CheeseSandwich]

Probably. I'm sure my eyes glazed over and I started thinking about steak or something.

[Hyeon Een]

I liked it but you probably should have paid 16,000 instead of 19,000.

Maybe that was the point.

Or maybe the point was you got new glasses. Or maybe Mr Kim shouldn't cross bridges with whores. I'm not sure. I still quite enjoyed it though. I think it's been a while since you posted one of these long stories though. Weren't you teaching Korean GI Joes? Why've you got so many foreign co-workers? And do they know who you are on this board? If so they may not like your mini-grotesques of them =)

I think I probably didn't get the point. But that's ok. I got some other - no, better points instead.

[Ya-ta Boy]

[soju pizza]

If the intention is to describe quotidian events in detail, then this accomplishes it.

I have to agree with the sandwich. It's pretty boring.

Don't mean to be a critic. No one here likes my computer generated poetry, but I don't take it to heart.

[Hyeon Een]

[soju pizza]

For sure. I was just talking about this one. But I'm talking more about expecting a punchline or a plot that never happens. I think that you're saying that's exactly what he's doing.

The detail is great but I find it boring.

I'm not saying that he doesn't do a good job at what he's trying to do. And I definitely wouldn't want him to stop.

[Masta_Don]

Was it 참이술? I mean, cuz there really isn't any other worth getting, especially not that Fresh crap.