Korean Job Discussion Forums

[John Henry]

Well there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth...Canada is STRANGE! he he...j/k of course.

[Tiger Beer]

I am in Michigan.. just arrived last night. Snow everywhere!

Listening to people complain about house repairs and car repairs is alarming! 1000s and 1000s of dollars going to those two things.. when it could be spent for a month or two in Southeast Asia!

[Pyongshin Sangja]

[brento1138]

[Derrek]

[Pyongshin Sangja]

Don't eat too much fruitcake or you'll end up that way, too man!

By the way, I'm 107 kilos. I still kinda doubt that my buddy's goes 130 kmh. He is, actually, a lot smaller than me.

[jajdude]

Nice post P.S.

Interesting what an angle one has after time away.

[Sage Monkey]

[Corporal]

[flutieflakes]

got er up to 125 on thursday............i guess my "black magic woman" is losing some juice...........or its just too cold.............

[captain kirk]

Back in Saskatoon, Canada, after four years out in Korea/Taiwan. Been here three days now.
1. I expected more fat people for some reason. Maybe because no-one's really 'fat' in K, but if one's a little 'fat' it's cause for commotion. Those that are 'fat' here in Can seem completely comfortable with it.

2. Lots of blondes. Of course, everyone in K has black hair. So these are natural blondes, also grounds for commotion in K. But here it's commonplace. Lots of trim women who 'look like Britney Spears'.

3. The traffic/cars move gracefully, space between cars. Not the bumper sniffing hurtling and veering that occurs in K.

4. People talk alot in a language I can understand about every little thing. Neighbourly/friendly, but also a kind of overload on the sensibilities at this point. They 'idyll' in emotional discourse, probably like Koreans do, if I could understand what they're talking about.

5. Vast distances between objects. -15 celsius temp. Seems a kind of 'gateway to the Arctic', admitedly 'only' a thousand miles north.

6. The women are friendly, confident, and dare I say 'liberated'. Casual. Not the 'shootin' for marriage' and buffed up to snare looks of it as in K. No 'princesses' putting their assets to best advantage terms of fashion and 'cooey' mannersisms.

7. Looking around I think of Breughel paintings. Ruddy faced Europeans revelling.

8. Faces are softer, less posed in the K style of held dignity. People here think I've 'got a problem', but I'm just holding the K standard facial pose of comporting about town, like some kind of stoic Indian chief.

9. No pcbangs. Nope, none. Zero, nada.

10. Ye olde taxe, provincial and federal, added to items, huh?

11. Amazing, old cars. Like Ford Fairlanes. Big old late sixties cars with chromed grilles, semi-fins, big engines. Truly grand, fantastic to see. To the drivers maybe not so special.

12. First noticed it in Vancouver, and it carries on to Saskatoon here. Sunsets/sunrises are more colourful and 'delineated'. Strict, brilliant bands of colour, like bright, applied paint. Clear, vivid atmospheric displays like this. Could be the humidity, could be the pall over K from nearby China and Japan.

13. Buying in the stores isn't the quick pay and go here. There is the 'hi, how are you?' to exchange, the taxes to add, the code number to enter, the tellers are languid in comparison to the taxless, bali bali of K.

There is a stack of National Geographics at my parents place, who have a subscription. I was reading how K has the longest workhour week in the world. Canada has a workhour week down there among the shortest.

I continue to burst around in the K way. Do, hurry, get done. Eat quickly, dash off, and so on. Slowing down to 'chew the fat'.

[TECO]

Captn. Kirk.

Your story sounds like mine.

I've been away for 4 years now without any trips back to B.C.

Have lived in Korea, Japan, Taiwan then a spent a while in Australia, stayed in Thailand a while and then back to Taiwan.

Flying out of Taipei to Vancouver on January 23rd.

I am not sure what to expect.
I'm not even sure I'm looking forward to it - especially at this time of year.

Reverse cutlure shock?

[Blind Willie]

[Tiger Beer]

[captain kirk]

Been back 5 days now, and the only person who's having an 'experience' ('reverse culture shock') is me. I know this because if I 'marvel' at misunderstandings/mishaps that result from 'culture gap' (me carrying on as if still in K, 'bumping into' the cultural norms of 'fellow Westerners) anyone I'm talking to (in same old, same old mode) just thinks, 'what, he grew up here for god's sake'.

Hey, I haven't been thinking about Canadian culture at all being immersed in some other culture, K and Taiwan, for four years.

I turn into a CD shop at the local mall. Looking for Tangerine Dream 'Stratosphere', their live album I've heard. Love and know T.D., and would like to hear this album (T.D., eighties, German, electonica band). Can't find it, but while I'm looking there's house/shop music and it's great, electronica. I ask one of the two shopguys, Uni age, looking cooler than Jap 'cool guys' I've seen on visa runs, what is it? Massive Attack. The band Kiwiboy highly recommends, starts threads about, like 'What's your favourite Massive Attack song?', or 'It's time to talk about Massive Attack'.
He recommends their best album, and will sell me what's playing, their latest, a movie soundtrack (more ambient than their usual stuff, he says, and good!). We amble to the check-out line together, talking about the music. I'm not paying much attention to the queue layout, since in K there are no lines. I don't make a point of doing so, but lines in K are more like loose funnels with jostling, and no confrontations or issues about queue order.

In hindsight, it seems what I might have done, unconsciously, and I'm not admitting my transgression until proven guilty, is entered the line before two people. But the line curled for some reason. And was patiently strung out. In K you have more of a swarm/jostling/funnel movement, more dynamic/impatient/active. And languid, patient, linear waiting is rarely, if ever seen. So, I guess, with my peripheral vision I naturally, K-style, relegated those at the end as 'not being in line', bystanders.

So I'm in line, five people ahead. It's 'Boxing Day' (hehe), Walmart, mall shops, are full of people, the snowy parking lot outside is fuller than any other time of the year. The tellers are slow. Checking prices, dealing with gift certificates. I dunno it's just slow, like a bank line. Behind me, sort of beside me, looking at me rather intently, is a blonde, fourteen year old girl. She's looking me over, hmm, I think. Looking at me. I 'conclude' she thinks I look 'interesting', but that she's too young for me , and look away over to the left, at some album posters.

Suddenly, and I mean suddenly, her mother is there. I guess it's her mother. She's blonde, about my age (43) and the most pinch-faced, angry looking, hawk-on-attack faced, confrontational, tense and going off person I've EVER seen/met unexpectedly, in 4 years (when I was in K/Taiwan).

She says, I think it was, 'YOU butted in line!'. It was like I was about to be/was being arrested. I looked at her and laughed, like who is this shrill hag, is this for real? And said something like, 'woah, you've got to relax'. And she said, for all to hear, since she was practically yelling, 'I'm just letting you know for in future' (about butting in line, big crime here). And, fired up and jangly to catch up with her vibe, since this is totally unexpected, and 'standing my ground', since this is, apparently, an attack, I said, 'I didn't butt in line, I walked up, there was an end of the line, and I got in line'. Well she kept firing off, as if to summon mob assistance, and I got as loud and said, 'get this woman away from me!', because it was really freaking me out. Looking towards the cool, Uni age, CD shop clerks, who didn't ever intervene. But this was a 'firefight', apparently, and only took, this ambush, about ten seconds. She then retreated, really simmerng, at a distance, a pinched, hawk face with talons, glaring, seething.

I'm ennervated now, got a surprise jump start from nowhere. I mean, this is a CD shop, laid back, ambient music playing. And this ruccus is over what, a 'place in line'. Hmm, apparently this is a 'confrontational culture'. And this is a woman attacking. Hmm, not a patriarchy. And I think about how K'reans wouldn't get this upset over a car accident where someone's injured.

Mom returns to her daughter's side when daughter pays for her CD. I think there's some venemous, outraged muttering from Mom re; my crime, if there was a transgression. It turns out that the other teller opened up the other till, to 'relieve the potential hysteria in the line-up'. When I meet him I'm calm. He says, 'have a good night'. This has been said a few times by shopclerks, as if liesure is appreciated here in Canada. Maybe Korean clerks say the same thing. Probably they're thinking about their OWN time off work, and expressing how they have an individual life, are individuals, and not identifying with the MOMENT at work, more allied with the store, or company. Maybe K shopclerks say, 'have a good night', implying idylls of liesure at home, dunno.

As in K, I drop any thought of negative misunderstandings as soon as they come. I'd dropped it about a minute after it happened, before I reached the till in the CD shop. Walking to the parents place, chill out, big wide open spaces, two feet of snow, suburbs, -20 celsius, sort of a winter wonderland, big prairie sky.

And get home and start to recount what happened to my brother, not angry, not heated, not complaining, just 'in wonderment'. About this tempest over a teapot and this apparently more 'confrontational' culture. He jumps in, before I'm 30% finished, ie. about three lines into my account, and looks fierce and says, with a sort of 'exasperated sigh', 'man, you grew up here'. And I get taken aback, and say, 'yeah, but I've been somewhere else for four years'. Then I call him on this sort of 'correcting'/'give your head a shake' thing he seems to do (haven't seen him in 4yrs). Been soaking it up until now. Sibling rivalry? Envious I'm unattached (he's married a year, with a daughter in the 'terrible two's')? Envious I've been/lived 'abroad'? Like Blind Willie said, 'returning home you can realize why you left in the first place'.

This last year's contract in a haggie was smooth. K'reans don't get confrontational about little things. And may disrespect but don't put it on the 'snowplow' of their intent, talking. Like interupt and contradict, I think of the Western/English habit of 'taking the piss out of someone', like a sort of 'pissing contest'/wrestling. In K people listen until you're finished talking. They may be thinking differently, not agree, but they listen. I've heard it said, 'the best of times and the worst times are with people'. Particularly family, I'd say. Everybody's so 'similar', a lot of 'projection', 'issues' close to being with the self, but projected. I sat down with my Mom for lunch and she said, 'Christmas is nuts, no time to really talk', she was implying the emotions are high. People/family getting together to do so many things in a charged atmosphere, quip, joke, celebrate, squabble, make up, relax, show status, accomplishments, gain favour, be a more favoured son/daughter, celebrate, etc. It's all balled up like a sort of 'critical mass', potential to fire off every which way (was that a festive grin or an engraged grimace? ) There is no Christmas in K, so this phenomena isn't unknown to me, but it's been awhile.

Been a long post, but I've got some positive experiences to recount, the above just stands out as a particularly needless/highly confrontational jolt 'over nothing, really'. Gotta watch my step, it's a jungle out there. I heard a poster say, re; 'reverse culture shock' and re; a trip back home, the West 'has become' like 'ME (self-centeredness) on steroids'.

Hmmmm, that's it, hmmmmm.