Korean Job Discussion Forums

mysteriousdeltarays · Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2004 7:39 am Post subject: Fifteen Years here

I don't know what to think after all these years here.
I have met some some nice people. I have never made any real money or if I did went off into expensive weekends trying to talk to somebody.
You should have seen this place when there was no electricity, no heat, no water, you buy it botles now.
Immagine when water was illegal.
Immagine that some of us are still here.
A world with no electricity.
To Bill, you remember those days? Joe, Penn,Greg.
Remember when it was "difficult" at best.
We remain friends because we remember.

jazblanc77 · Joined: 22 Feb 2004

Yours is an interesting and fresh post!

Out of curiousity, what would you say kept you coming back year after year? I know that my reasons have definitely changed since I first arrived here several years ago. Just wondering what your perceptions are after such a long period as I am sure that someday I will be in your boots since I am starting a family here now.

Real Reality · Joined: 10 Jan 2003 Location: Seoul

Congratulations.

mysteriousdeltarays wrote,
You should have seen this place when there was no electricity, no heat, no water, you buy it botles now.
Shocked

It must have been hard to host the 88 Olympics without electricity.

jajdude · Joined: 18 Jan 2003

Hey Mysterious...

Well you know me...

catch you later

Your friend.

jajdude · Joined: 18 Jan 2003

Hi all

very interesting guy is the mysteriousdeltarays.... if yr lucky you may meet him sometime...

doubtful you will ever meet a more interesting person....

at least that is my belief

I'm 34 years old

I have never met anybody half as interesting....

really... and I am not joking Wink

jaebea · Joined: 21 Sep 2003 Location: SYD

I'm pretty sure the water/electricity thing was a figure of speech. :D

I can appreciate the changes that MDR must have gone through. The country has changed in an almost unbelievable way in the last 20 years. I remember how much I noticed during my last trip, and compared it my previous experiences in Korea.

The greatest changes have occured in the last 15, and I think MDR has one of the most unique perspectives as a foreign national who has lived through it all.

Congrats on the milestone.

jae.

just because · Joined: 01 Aug 2003 Location: Changwon - 4964

geezzz...15 years. i want to hear about some of your adventures.

Let us hear the stories, I'll go and get the marshmellows and start the campfire. Wink

Tiger Beer · Joined: 07 Feb 2003

MysteriousDeltaRays!

Many good times with him.. drank many a brew in Shinchon and even a couple in Sillim and Itaewon.. and even HongDae as well now that I think about it..

Always full of stories..

jajdude · Joined: 18 Jan 2003

Well sorry MDR himself doesn't seem to post much and hasn't replied. But I have been his friend a good while and can tell you a little without seeming improper I guess Wink

MDR arrived in Korea in 1988, around Olympics time. He lived in Taejon for about 5-6 years. A lot of that time he was pretty much the only white guy around. He remembers when the locals there freaked out at seeing vending machines and did not know that their cars needed oil changes, and that oil didn't mean gas.

MDR has been in the boonies a good bit. Has lived in places where inbreeding is routine and has seen mongoloid Koreans. Has been awoken by chickens and cows, where the animals outpopulate the people.

MDR has had trouble not only with the Korean language but with locals who cannot read their own language and locals who cannot even read numbers... if you can comprehend this! When showing a hangul-written address to a taxi driver once, the driver held it upside-down and pretended to understand it. Of course MDR could say the Korean perfectly well but as a white guy got ignored.

MDR is unlike anyone I have ever know. He has been my friend since I met him in 1998.

Bulsajo · Joined: 16 Jan 2003

Well, in spite of that short bio he still sounds somewhat myterious.

shawner88 · Joined: 01 Feb 2003

Was then back when you had to walk 10 miles to the hagwon through blizzards and survive each day on a single can of beans? My Dad used to tell me those kinds of things back in the states heheheh.

kangnamdragon · Joined: 17 Jan 2003 Location: Kangnam, Seoul, Korea

I used to walk to the school I taught at in the snow uphill. And, we put coal in the stove, no central heating or electric heaters.

jajdude · Joined: 18 Jan 2003

OK. hey just what I thought of as he had told me....

By the way in my day, we didn't have video games... we had games like BITE THE TREE and we liked it!

MDR also told me once he remembers when Itaewon was classy Wink

Alias · Joined: 24 Jan 2003

Itaewan was classy once? Wow.

waggo · Joined: 18 May 2003 Location: pusan baby!

His English is mysterious.