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Korean Job Discussion Forums
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davidoxenbridge
Joined: 12 Jul 2010
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 Posted: Thu Oct 07, 2010 5:05 am Post subject: Where are the sidewalks? |
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I am trying to get together a bunch of first-time-in-Korea stories. We all have them and tend to sit around and retell them again and again. I know that I have many stories too but to be honest, I have been here for so long I have forgotten most of them.
They could be about: your first encounter with transport, going out with Koreans (eating, drinking and night life), your first love relationship with a Korean (we all have these), your first encounter with your school or a bad, good story you have about your job here. It could also be about the A typical communication faux pas and misunderstandings that we have all had here. It also could be something as small the first time you saw something or experienced something you now think is normal. I remember being perplexed by the old guys wheeling carts of cardboard as high as 63 building and the ajoshies who watered their concrete in summer. Or it could be something dramatic and big like the English teacher I heard about who was fired and on the same day arrived back at his house to find the locks changed.
I do feel that their is rich story telling gold to be mined. I have no idea what I will do with these stories, or how detailed they will be told. However, I am sick of hearing people (I have been guilty too) sit around and suggest that their first experience in Korea stories should be turned into a film or the like.
Please help me out and send me an email or, better yet leave a comment on this site for others to read and share. You can write a sentence, a paragraph or a page. I will be grateful for anything.
Please contact me, Email: [email protected] |
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BoholDiver
Joined: 03 Oct 2009
Location: Canada
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| Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 4:39 pm Post subject: |
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So you're saying you're sick of others trying to turn their stories into a flim, but you want other people's stories so you can make money?
No thanks. I will decline. |
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redaxe
Joined: 01 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 5:58 pm Post subject: |
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| Can you stop spamming the forum now please? |
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Hotwire
Joined: 29 Aug 2010
Location: Multiverse
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| Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 6:21 pm Post subject: |
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I think he meant to imply he is sick of them saying that and then never doing anything about it. Well, maybe...
If he thinks I'd hand over any of my stories to anyone who would write the following
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| or a bad, good story you have about your job here |
A bad, good story you say?
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| I do feel that their is rich story telling gold to be mined. |
I'm sure THEIR is!
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| I have no idea what I will do with these stories, or how detailed they will be told. |
Oh, I think we have an idea...
Now some posters will know I litter my posts with typos. Getting the message accross is what's important on a forum.
But advertising to use / comission other people's stories / experiences - well you would want to come across as someone at least capable if not even authorative, no?
And really, I've said it a million times - no one is going to find stories about being bewildered by cutting up meat with scissors or using the subway fascinating.
My friend of a friend who did a 2 day drunk and then went in to his hakwan in puke stained clothes and went for a number 2 on the way and squatted over the wrong end of the bowl and got backsplash all up his clothes and still walked into school smelling of shite and with it all over his pants and then passed out in the classroom and woke up with 8 yr old kids kicking him and calling him 'ddong seonsengnim.'
That kind of stuff might be readable in a gross, juvenile kind of away but I really think if there were legs for an archive of 'Esl / Korea stories' then it would have been done by now and it would have certainly have been done by teachers / JETS in Japan by now.
Former ESL teacher David Mitchel did use his experiences in Japan and Asia to form his debut 'Ghostwritten' but you'll notice there isn't a mention of teaching ESL in there. Anyone want to take a stab at why that might be?
It's kinda not that interesting a proffession. A pissant recent 20 something grad goes and deals with a bunch of screaming kids all day and is fascinated by old men carrying cardboard, the subway and rice wine 'wow.'
'Fear and Trembling' by Amelie Nothomb was a tight and funny take on the whole culture clash when a young Belgian woman goes to work for a year in a Japanese office and has to deal with the strange office politics, hierachy etc.
And she pulled it off I think mostly due to the young protagonist having emotional ties to Japan (spent her first 5 years there) that add resonance to the story and the pure crazy, quirky kafkauesque bearocracy meets Office Space kind of comedy she bought to it.
I think a Korean novelle roman, a kind of modern day 'Tropic of Cancer' could work but as where Miller's oddessy was about so much more than Paris, said book would have to be about so much more than Korea and esl / cultural differances.
There was that book where the writer transposed Korea for an alien planet. But the bulk of the story was - American goes to other planet and discovers the quirks of teachig ESL.' Plus it wasn't very well written and the comedy was of very low wit. More of a high school library kind of book.
Then there was the vanity published 'I woke up in ________.' Guy teaches ESL, meets girl, acts like drunk jerk, realises what he has. Basically an unimaginatively narrated, over aching 2nd yr lit student's diary.
I've said it a million times (oh the hyperbole!)
If you want to use your diary / memoirs as material you must
A. Be a person of note
B. Have had extraordinary experiences
C. In leui of the above be an extraordinarily witty and imaginative narrator.
And if you want to use your diary / experiences and are not A or B then you must have a lot of C and also - take license with your experiences, invent.
Otherwise your everyday humdrum life is just that. |
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Hotwire
Joined: 29 Aug 2010
Location: Multiverse
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Jane
Joined: 01 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2010 8:15 am Post subject: |
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Does anyone know if there is a non-torrent version of this movie on the Web and at what site I can find it? |
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