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PatrickGHBusan
Joined: 24 Jun 2008
Location: Busan (1997-2008) Canada 2008 -
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 Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 4:33 am Post subject: |
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| lorenchristopher wrote: |
OP, I can really empathize with you. I used to feel stuck between being a complete loner or hanging out with other foreigners that always got on my nerves.
I joined a Korean language program and made some great friends, then I bought a scooter, joined some naver cafes for photography and travel where I was the only foreigner....I started feeling a lot better about living in Korea.
I don't want to "fit in" and I know that I never will, but I've had amazing experiences and have been lucky enough to have made some very deep friendships. Friends come and go, foreigner or Korean, and there are people that I don't particularly like to spend my time with, foreigner or Korean.
If you find outlets to put yourself out there and socialize then you are bound to meet people that you connect with on more than that superficial level. I would have to agree that the foreigner scene here in general is very "cheesy", but it tends to have that ring to it no matter where you live. |
Well said and good advice! |
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tideout
Joined: 12 Dec 2010
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 5:30 am Post subject: |
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| Malislamusrex wrote: |
To the OP you are not going to a part of Korean society like the immigrants in New York, it's a different culture and you are an outsider.
What I would suggest is you join a club. If you join a club you make new friends and you are doing something you enjoy. There is nothing more socially awkward than sitting with a group of people you have nothing in common with for the sake of mixing. If you are a part of a sports team you always have something to talk about and people to hang out with and the most important this is you are all having fun. |
I think getting involved with others is good advice for the most basic social needs we have though I also agree with another previous poster here that hanging out with a bunch just to say you're being social will wear off pretty soon.
I don't know what your reason is for being in Korea but if you're not happy here or tied here I'd encourage you to consider other greener pastures.
I've lived in Japan, Latin America and I've spent some time in SE Asia and Europe. Korea is the least enticing place I've ever lived socially. I would say that the ex-pats here are also different than I've seen elsewhere. That's not a criticism but different places draw different people IMHO.
It's a big world. No need to tie yourself here unless you're committed for some financial payoff? |
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The Sultan of Seoul
Joined: 17 Apr 2012
Location: right... behind.. YOU
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 5:33 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| It's a big world. No need to tie yourself here unless you're committed for some financial payoff? |
Too true. Sadly a lot of us without specific education qualifications are limited. A lot of us also need too earn as much as we can.
If it weren't for money, I'd be teaching ten hours a week in Spain soemwhere. |
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myenglishisno
Joined: 08 Mar 2011
Location: Geumchon
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 8:10 am Post subject: |
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My life is a lot better since I decided to stop going out of my way to hang out with foreigners and start hanging out with a lot more Koreans.
I've been here for a number of years, most foreigners are under 25 and 90% leave after a year or two. That means that I usually feel like I have more in common with my 30-something Korean friends than I do with 20-something foreigners (I'm 27).
The foreigners I do meet, I meet through the groups I'm in (veggie club and a volunteer group). I avoid the bar scene like the plague as I'm not a drinker and that helps me avoid the more undesirable foreigners.
You can't meet just any foreigners, more often then not they'll be just heavy drinkers with a superficial understanding of the country their in and an "anything goes" lifestyle full of drama and trying to please themselves (drink and bone everything). If you want to avoid this majority, I strongly suggest meeting foreigners and Koreans via interest groups. |
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PatrickGHBusan
Joined: 24 Jun 2008
Location: Busan (1997-2008) Canada 2008 -
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 8:19 am Post subject: |
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| I don't know what your reason is for being in Korea but if you're not happy here or tied here I'd encourage you to consider other greener pastures. |
Quite true. Life is too short to stay in a place that makes you unhappy. |
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edwardcatflap
Joined: 22 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 3:40 pm Post subject: |
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Personally when I hang out with friends I don't want to have to
1) moderate my language all the time
2) repeat myself more than once
3) ask someone else to repeat themselves more than once
4) answer dumb questions I've been asked many times before
5) think about cultural sensitivity
6) think about whether someone's going to understand a joke before I tell it
7) dumb down my humour
 go over all arrangements and future plans several times before everyone gets them
9) spend much longer deciding to go somewhere new or where to go in the first place
10) pretend to laugh at things that aren't funny
11) explain things in very simple terms I've explained many times before
12) spend a long time saying goodbye to people before I get to go home
Most of these are things I do in the class room and things I used to not mind doing on my nights off as well. Nowadays I have less tolerance for them in my free time I guess. |
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Privateer
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Location: Easy Street.
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 7:38 pm Post subject: |
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| Lunar Groove Gardener wrote: |
Friends of convenience are a bit less than a perfect fit often times...
Being a loner is certainly a skill one can cultivate here.
Does it make one weirder? I think so.
The more you acclimate to the lonely life, the less you seek out the comfort of
community and friendship.
The less you seek the comfort of friendship the more you live in your own head.
The more you live in your own head, the less you see fit to relate to what frankly begins to look like a cacophony of circus freaks and displaced frat daddios soaking themselves and loudly interrupting nothingness all night long.
Don't get me wrong, drunk is fun, but it comes at a price once you're too old to look good with a shot balanced on your head, a cigarette and a platinum barbell pierced through your zygomatic arch .
Finally, you begin to wonder if you'll ever find true friendship and not just this placebo style of concocted connection which seems to service the social urges of anyone who still has a strong beverage on every page of their rolliodex.
You think about volunteering at orphanages, you climb mountains alone, you ride the subway to places that lead to other places that lead to other subway rides to other places that you walk around and then you get back onto the subway, or take a taxi, or simply sit on a burial mound and wish for what is not.
You start to wax esoterically about the taste of gun oil or the allure that harkens you towards the back wheels of speeding cement trucks and the view off high bridges.
You start skyping with complete strangers and take up a few musical instruments, writing lonely cowboy hymns and ballads which always end with you having to burn down your house to start a signal fire.
In the end, no greater joy can be imagined than the escape from this particular place, even though you love the scenery and the feeling that you are good at teaching , and learning to teach.
You wander for years this way and you never really get an answer to your quest. You simply linger in between caring about everything and not knowing who it is you've become.
The songs of birds begin to piss you off and you refuse to kill bees, though mosquitoes do not earn a reprieve..
You become a better son, daughter, man, woman, teacher, human, or quite the opposite, you become a dissipated reprobate with no direction and no desire to find one.
On the flight back home you tell yourself that it was all worth it, that this is what you were meant to become. Once home, you get a job as a greeter at Wally's Discount Balloon Factory Clearance Emporium. You move up the ladder to chief in charge of balloon infusion. You marry well and retire with a dog, but no children. It works for you, or so you tell yourself, but really, you sit up at night, on the roof of your rented home, full of Wild Turkey and prescription Robitussin, monkey f$#%ing cowboy killers and hoping that the freaking Mayans were right.
Or you join Facebook and make friends with EVERYBODY that pokes you.
One of those, for most of us, I hate to say.
Lots of love.
LGG |
Awesome.
Your handle - and now this post - makes me think of you as Luna Lovegood. |
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pegasus64128
Joined: 20 Aug 2011
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 8:06 pm Post subject: |
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| edwardcatflap wrote: |
Personally when I hang out with friends I don't want to have to
1) moderate my language all the time
2) repeat myself more than once
3) ask someone else to repeat themselves more than once
4) answer dumb questions I've been asked many times before
5) think about cultural sensitivity
6) think about whether someone's going to understand a joke before I tell it
7) dumb down my humour
go over all arrangements and future plans several times before everyone gets them
9) spend much longer deciding to go somewhere new or where to go in the first place
10) pretend to laugh at things that aren't funny
11) explain things in very simple terms I've explained many times before
12) spend a long time saying goodbye to people before I get to go home
Most of these are things I do in the class room and things I used to not mind doing on my nights off as well. Nowadays I have less tolerance for them in my free time I guess. |
+1 |
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Buddah's Slipper
Joined: 12 Mar 2012
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 8:42 pm Post subject: |
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| edwardcatflap wrote: |
Personally when I hang out with friends I don't want to have to
1) moderate my language all the time
2) repeat myself more than once
3) ask someone else to repeat themselves more than once
4) answer dumb questions I've been asked many times before
5) think about cultural sensitivity
6) think about whether someone's going to understand a joke before I tell it
7) dumb down my humour
8) go over all arrangements and future plans several times before everyone gets them
9) spend much longer deciding to go somewhere new or where to go in the first place
10) pretend to laugh at things that aren't funny
11) explain things in very simple terms I've explained many times before
12) spend a long time saying goodbye to people before I get to go home
Most of these are things I do in the class room and things I used to not mind doing on my nights off as well. Nowadays I have less tolerance for them in my free time I guess. |
Just to add a couple more specifics:
13) be forced to "cheers" every 5 god damn minutes
14) have to endure dudes touching my inner thigh when talking to me
15) being around a group of people who have no understanding of casual, light drinking. It's about getting completely shit bombed or nothing. |
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LAtoSeoul
Joined: 06 Sep 2011
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 10:32 pm Post subject: |
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Honestly you sound really pretentious and boring. There are plenty and smart and creative people here, doing cool things. If you are such a high achiever and the teachers in Korea are such low achievers, then what are you doing here.
Get over yourself and enjoy the experience. It sounds more like people don't want to be your friend, then you don't want to be their friend. And I will go back to the boring part of your personality.
Sorry but the funny thing is that this is somewhat a highly educated community. Every foreign teacher has a BA at least. Can you say that about the community you have back at home? Stop being so close-minded... That is all |
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tideout
Joined: 12 Dec 2010
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 10:59 pm Post subject: |
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| LAtoSeoul wrote: |
Honestly you sound really pretentious and boring. There are plenty and smart and creative people here, doing cool things. If you are such a high achiever and the teachers in Korea are such low achievers, then what are you doing here.
Get over yourself and enjoy the experience. It sounds more like people don't want to be your friend, then you don't want to be their friend. And I will go back to the boring part of your personality.
Sorry but the funny thing is that this is somewhat a highly educated community. Every foreign teacher has a BA at least. Can you say that about the community you have back at home? Stop being so close-minded... That is all |
And gosh - with people this friendly around, why wouldn't you want to put yourself out there socially!!
Why wouldn't you want to open up with people who think that demanding you just get over yourself is friendly advice? F that empathy crap!
See, the funny thing is - having a piece of paper that says you attended some institution somewhere doesn't make you wise, deep, authentic or any of the other things that make human relations meaningful......maybe this is exactly the problem the OP is running into here?
Food for thought (in general).
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=college-students-are-less-empathic-10-05-29 |
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Buddah's Slipper
Joined: 12 Mar 2012
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 11:18 pm Post subject: |
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| tideout wrote: |
| LAtoSeoul wrote: |
Honestly you sound really pretentious and boring. There are plenty and smart and creative people here, doing cool things. If you are such a high achiever and the teachers in Korea are such low achievers, then what are you doing here.
Get over yourself and enjoy the experience. It sounds more like people don't want to be your friend, then you don't want to be their friend. And I will go back to the boring part of your personality.
Sorry but the funny thing is that this is somewhat a highly educated community. Every foreign teacher has a BA at least. Can you say that about the community you have back at home? Stop being so close-minded... That is all |
And gosh - with people this friendly around, why wouldn't you want to put yourself out there socially!!
Why wouldn't you want to open up with people who think that demanding you just get over yourself is friendly advice? F that empathy crap!
See, the funny thing is - having a piece of paper that says you attended some institution somewhere doesn't make you wise, deep, authentic or any of the other things that make human relations meaningful......maybe this is exactly the problem the OP is running into here? |
What?? This doesn't even make sense.
We should be empathetic about what exactly? We're all, more or less, in the same boat here. The real problem is that the OP wants to be special. He wants to be Tom Cruise in the Last Samurai; Daniel-son in Karate Kid II. But when the wet fish of reality slaps him across his face; when he realizes that coming to Korea really isn't some huge, wonderous adventure with him in the leading role, he lashes out at the most obvious targets. He sees himself in these other "foreigners" and the projected self loathing commences.
LAtoSeoul gave excellent advice. Get the f over yourself. Or better yet, come to the realization, as quick as humanly possible, that Koreans don't hold some secret mystical key to happiness, nature, the universe or whatever the hell else you think they possess.. In fact the complete opposite is true. Most live in an endless, laborious, social hell completely cut-off from the rest of planet Earth. Embrace that? No thanks. |
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Steelrails
Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 11:24 pm Post subject: |
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| edwardcatflap wrote: |
Personally when I hang out with friends I don't want to have to
1) moderate my language all the time
2) repeat myself more than once
3) ask someone else to repeat themselves more than once
4) answer dumb questions I've been asked many times before
5) think about cultural sensitivity
6) think about whether someone's going to understand a joke before I tell it
7) dumb down my humour
go over all arrangements and future plans several times before everyone gets them
9) spend much longer deciding to go somewhere new or where to go in the first place
10) pretend to laugh at things that aren't funny
11) explain things in very simple terms I've explained many times before
12) spend a long time saying goodbye to people before I get to go home
Most of these are things I do in the class room and things I used to not mind doing on my nights off as well. Nowadays I have less tolerance for them in my free time I guess. |
Too true.
It's fine in small doses.
Usually my casual Korean friends are sports-based so there's plenty of time where no one's talking, just either watching or playing sports and eating. Sure there's some broken English stuff, but its a lot better when you're arguing over who the best 2nd baseman in baseball is or who whether Ewing or Robinson was the better center or whether you'd start Ashley Young or Valencia. |
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Steelrails
Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 11:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Buddah's Slipper wrote: |
| tideout wrote: |
| LAtoSeoul wrote: |
Honestly you sound really pretentious and boring. There are plenty and smart and creative people here, doing cool things. If you are such a high achiever and the teachers in Korea are such low achievers, then what are you doing here.
Get over yourself and enjoy the experience. It sounds more like people don't want to be your friend, then you don't want to be their friend. And I will go back to the boring part of your personality.
Sorry but the funny thing is that this is somewhat a highly educated community. Every foreign teacher has a BA at least. Can you say that about the community you have back at home? Stop being so close-minded... That is all |
And gosh - with people this friendly around, why wouldn't you want to put yourself out there socially!!
Why wouldn't you want to open up with people who think that demanding you just get over yourself is friendly advice? F that empathy crap!
See, the funny thing is - having a piece of paper that says you attended some institution somewhere doesn't make you wise, deep, authentic or any of the other things that make human relations meaningful......maybe this is exactly the problem the OP is running into here? |
What?? This doesn't even make sense.
We should be empathetic about what exactly? We're all, more or less, in the same boat here. The real problem is that the OP wants to be special. He wants to be Tom Cruise in the Last Samurai; Daniel-son in Karate Kid II. But when the wet fish of reality slaps him across his face; when he realizes that coming to Korea really isn't some huge, wonderous adventure with him in the leading role, he lashes out at the most obvious targets. He sees himself in these other "foreigners" and the projected self loathing commences.
LAtoSeoul gave excellent advice. Get the f over yourself. Or better yet, come to the realization, as quick as humanly possible, that Koreans don't hold some secret mystical key to happiness, nature, the universe or whatever the hell else you think they possess.. In fact the complete opposite is true. Most live in an endless, laborious, social hell completely cut-off from the rest of planet Earth. Embrace that? No thanks. |
The flip side is that he'd lash out at Koreans for not making him the star of their lives...
To the OP- People are just people...they aren't there to entertain you. The foreign population here isn't here for your amusement. It's not their job to do things you find interesting. It's your job to find interesting things for yourself to do. No one here is under any obligation to become your good friend. In fact if you are only here for a short time its a bit silly to treat things other than fairly superficially. If you do find a good crowd, enjoy it for all its worth, because it will only last a year or so. |
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The Sultan of Seoul
Joined: 17 Apr 2012
Location: right... behind.. YOU
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 1:14 am Post subject: |
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| Buddah's Slipper wrote: |
| tideout wrote: |
| LAtoSeoul wrote: |
Honestly you sound really pretentious and boring. There are plenty and smart and creative people here, doing cool things. If you are such a high achiever and the teachers in Korea are such low achievers, then what are you doing here.
Get over yourself and enjoy the experience. It sounds more like people don't want to be your friend, then you don't want to be their friend. And I will go back to the boring part of your personality.
Sorry but the funny thing is that this is somewhat a highly educated community. Every foreign teacher has a BA at least. Can you say that about the community you have back at home? Stop being so close-minded... That is all |
And gosh - with people this friendly around, why wouldn't you want to put yourself out there socially!!
Why wouldn't you want to open up with people who think that demanding you just get over yourself is friendly advice? F that empathy crap!
See, the funny thing is - having a piece of paper that says you attended some institution somewhere doesn't make you wise, deep, authentic or any of the other things that make human relations meaningful......maybe this is exactly the problem the OP is running into here? |
What?? This doesn't even make sense.
We should be empathetic about what exactly? We're all, more or less, in the same boat here. The real problem is that the OP wants to be special. He wants to be Tom Cruise in the Last Samurai; Daniel-son in Karate Kid II. But when the wet fish of reality slaps him across his face; when he realizes that coming to Korea really isn't some huge, wonderous adventure with him in the leading role, he lashes out at the most obvious targets. He sees himself in these other "foreigners" and the projected self loathing commences.
LAtoSeoul gave excellent advice. Get the f over yourself. Or better yet, come to the realization, as quick as humanly possible, that Koreans don't hold some secret mystical key to happiness, nature, the universe or whatever the hell else you think they possess.. In fact the complete opposite is true. Most live in an endless, laborious, social hell completely cut-off from the rest of planet Earth. Embrace that? No thanks. |
Too true. Stop judging people and get on with it. Don't make everything a big dramatic issue, just accept people's flaws if they are not glaringly majorly pathological, who knows you might find they (gasp) have good parts to their characters too... To be frank I have HAD TO do this and to my surprise made friends with people I mnight not otherwise have done and made good friends through them too..
And don't become one of those 'Korea is a mystical fantasy land adventure full of wise, inscrutible wizards' type of people. I've never met such a bunch of out of touch with reality people as those folks and the sad thing is the Koreans think the same about them too (yet don't say it to their face as it would be emabrrassing.) Don't get me wrong, I don't mean it's bad to like Korea or hang with Koreans or expect other expats to at least try to follow some customs or speak some lingo - but don't go to extremes, is all.
You can't expect every minute of your social life to be like Owen Wilson's character in Woody Allen's 'Midnight in Paris' when he first goes through the time porthole or whatever it is... |
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