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Korean Job Discussion Forums
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JongnoGuru
Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep
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 Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 9:28 pm Post subject: |
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| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
Well generally when most people (including myself) say "foreigners" on this board, we mean foreign teachers as could be seen in the above posts. Come now Mr. JongnoGuru you should know this by now. But yes valid point. I'll try and say "teachers" if it makes you feel better.  |
Hey, but don't go leaving me out! I'm Grade-A Certified "Freak Club" material, I am!
Yeah, I knew who you were referring to. But this is a discussion of "the foreigner you see in the street"... Now that could be any of us here, not only teachers. How could anyone know for sure, assuming the person is a total stranger? (you people don't all wear badges or something, do you? ) Anyway, it was the "most foreigners are freaks" comments I felt I had to respond to. You see, I consider us freaks a highly select group, and I don't want any damn poseurs or wanna-bes masquerading as one of us proud few. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 11:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Does anyone else besides me think foreigners start to look kind of odd after you've gone a couple of months without seeing any live ones? You know, strangely long legs, funny-colored eyes. That sort of thing. |
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Manner of Speaking
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 11:08 pm Post subject: |
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| JongnoGuru wrote: |
MOS, you keep saying "the majority", and who's going to dispute that? Simple, blind statistics would agree with you. If a majority of foreigners in any country live in Region or City X, then Region or City X is going have the majority of every type of foreigner -- freak, wack-nut, mouth-breather, genius, legal, illegal, left-handed, saxophone-playing, you name it. You're not saying anything that we wouldn't have already guessed on our own, are you?  |
JongnoGuru: but I was just expressing my opinion, I wasn't saying something with or for the intention of creating something that someone needs to dispute. |
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JongnoGuru
Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep
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| Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2005 11:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Manner of Speaking wrote: |
| JongnoGuru wrote: |
| MOS, you keep saying "the majority", and who's going to dispute that? Simple, blind statistics would agree with you. If a majority of foreigners in any country live in Region or City X, then Region or City X is going have the majority of every type of foreigner -- freak, wack-nut, mouth-breather, genius, legal, illegal, left-handed, saxophone-playing, you name it. You're not saying anything that we wouldn't have already guessed on our own, are you? |
JongnoGuru: but I was just expressing my opinion, I wasn't saying something with or for the intention of creating something that someone needs to dispute. |
Gotcha.
Tell me, though, would you agree with this armchair assessment of mine? I haven't spent much of my time in Korea living outside of Seoul, but I've met a good many foreigners who have. My experience and observations in this regard, while not as vast as I imagine many English teachers' might be, are still not exactly meagre. And what I've found to be is, those from outside of Seoul are less likely to be freaks, low-lifes, scam artists, and jerks.
In other words, were I to meet an hypothetical group of 20 expats living in Gangwon-do, 18 would likely be your normal, decent, bright-eyed, good-natured types, maybe a few well-meaning freaks and oddballs amongst them, but all quite bearable save for two.
Now, let's bring on the 20 hypothetical and randomly picked (though in reality it's never random) expats in Seoul. Now I'd expect well over 20% of these expats to be one, some or all of the following: thuggish, mean, foul-mouthed, irate, cranky, druggy, wrong-side-of-the-trackish, MBC/SBS expose poster-boy material, and just plain creepy.
That may not be your experience, but it has been mine. Who cares though, right? But hey, isn't it more interesting that "do you wave/say hello? Why? Why not???" ?  |
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peppermint
Joined: 13 May 2003
Location: traversing the minefields of caddishness.
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| Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2005 12:06 am Post subject: |
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I agree with Guru, sort of. There might well be a higher proportion of freaks in Seoul, than in other places in Korea.
The thing is, I don't think it's a Korean phenomenon. Big cities and freaks go together like peanut butter and jelly, don't they? |
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JongnoGuru
Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep
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| Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2005 12:09 am Post subject: |
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| peppermint wrote: |
| I agree with Guru, sort of. There might well be a higher proportion of freaks in Seoul, than in other places in Korea. Isn't that true of any big city though? |
I was just about to append that very same thought to my post. This isn't a phenomenon unique to us foreigners at all, is it? Caring parents everywhere warn their sons and daughters to be wary of the evil temptations and slimeballs of the big city. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2005 4:44 am Post subject: |
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I'm going to have to disagree with the Guru. I've spent 90% of my Korean life outside Seoul. I didn't work with any living, breathing way-gookins in Seoul so my experience of Seouliste way-gooks is scewed and underfed. My personal experience OUTSIDE Seoul is that fully 1 in 3 way-gook sarams are certifiable.
I still have flash-backs of the Canadian chick who lived across the hall from me for a year. On the nights she wasn't stomping on the floor and chanting in some weird language, she was standing behind her door and praying to god in her loudest voice to forgive me because I knew not what I was doing to her.
Until I met her, I didn't bother to lock my door most of the time. Why would I? I'm from Iowa. I now can't sleep without double-checking to see that my door is locked...and she moved away 3 years ago. |
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JongnoGuru
Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep
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| Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2005 6:06 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
I'm going to have to disagree with the Guru. I've spent 90% of my Korean life outside Seoul. I didn't work with any living, breathing way-gookins in Seoul so my experience of Seouliste way-gooks is scewed and underfed. My personal experience OUTSIDE Seoul is that fully 1 in 3 way-gook sarams are certifiable.
I still have flash-backs of the Canadian chick who lived across the hall from me for a year. On the nights she wasn't stomping on the floor and chanting in some weird language, she was standing behind her door and praying to god in her loudest voice to forgive me because I knew not what I was doing to her.
Until I met her, I didn't bother to lock my door most of the time. Why would I? I'm from Iowa. I now can't sleep without double-checking to see that my door is locked...and she moved away 3 years ago. |
Oh, don't take my percentages there as anything serious or more exact than a vague impression. But YOURS, now...one-third(!) of expats you met are that bad??? (I'm never leaving the city again --  )
The Canadian girl you mentioned, what did she tell God you were doing to her? (Yeah, yeah, you "knew not" what it was... but did you ever overhear that part?) |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2005 7:05 am Post subject: |
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(!) of expats you met are that bad??? (I'm never leaving the city again -- )
The Canadian girl you mentioned, what did she tell God you were doing to her? (Yeah, yeah, you "knew not" what it was... but did you ever overhear that part?) |
Yeah, they are THAT bad. My first Canadian got up from drinking an o-baek cc and announced, "I have to leave now. I'm on a strict 'self-abuse' schedule." I was informed by his roomie that he was serious. I'm reasonably liberal, but I don't see the necessity of announcing that kind of schedule in public. It's just too much information.
The Canadian female-type person in question was upset that I couldn't swap classes that day. (I had a dental appointment.) This was a different day than the day she stood on a chair in the teachers' office and gave a two hour lecture to all of us explaining why it was our fault that she had gone on an hysterical crying jag because she had misplaced her purse. (It was our fault that she blamed us for creating the atmosphere where she would blame us.) There was also the time that she chanted behind her door asking god to forgive me for her misreading the clock and going to class at the wrong time.
There is also the bearded lady, the empty Frosted Flakes box collector, the potato gun teacher and the Korean expert (because he had had a Japanese-American girlfriend) who made the hakwon janitor pay for his meal and drinks because he should have felt honored to eat with him. (A Korean should be honored to eat with a Canadian. They can learn real manners.) I won't mention the mom who left her kid to run the streets for 6 months and took him (9 years old) to drinking parties...and then abandoned her car at Kimpo (at last report, the cops wanted her to pay a W5 million parking ticket.) I won't go in to the dwarves who attacked our boss with umbrellas.
I honestly think that people short-change our collection of losers by underestimating the depths to which ESL teachers here in Korea can go.
I should mention that for more than half my time here I have not worked with way-gook sarams, so my personal exposure is limited. I can only dream of how many I could have met if I had ever worked where there was a crowd of them. There is a perfectly understandable reason why many of these people don't have jobs back home.
PS: I think I am being overly generous to say that only one in three are weird. I'm an optimistic guy.
Having said all that, I still say people ought to be polite enough to say 'hi' on the street. Just keep an opening to the exit in case the person turns out to be a psycho Canadian female. |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2005 7:51 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| My personal experience OUTSIDE Seoul is that fully 1 in 3 way-gook sarams are certifiable. |
I always suspected this was true.
My reasons were that professional standards - though often decried as being nonexistent for native speakers to teach english - are just a tad bit higher in the big city : out in the provinces, sometimes even a univerisity will take someone on who never taught before, even with no credentials, experience or Masters - but in Seoul, you seldom even get an interview at a uni without a post-grad degree, and even most kindie-hagwons want someone with some experience teaching and hopefully some experience in Korea.
I occasionally meet some first-timers in Korea here in Seoul, but I'm sure I would meet far more out in the provinces. A lot of the "freaky waygookin" that people talk about are fresh-out-of-college types who found an outdated Lonely Planet guide that said this is a good place to spend a little time and make some scratch to let you tour the rest of Asia ... been here a while and the freaks are a temprary annoyance, though they stick in your memory.
I'll second MOS's comment about the many I know here I would trust with a fat envelope - can I flatter myself I might be the "Bob" you mentioned? No matter, I'm sure there's another one out there ... and yeah, either of us would hand it back to you the next day. Why? Because you were careful when you declared us to be your friends. If they were not the kind of people who could be trusted they, then they would have been elsewhere rather than in some place where you could ask them to hold on to that envelope.
The friends I have here are true friends, people I know would help me in a second if they could and that I would do the same for them - but only one of them was a guy I met in a semi-drunken state on a subway. That was an accident, and we are both surprised that it happened, and the rest (he also) know that my friendship is not a casual thing, and that they are valued as being selected, and I usually tend to know the same about them.
To spend a moment on-topic, I don't introduce myself to people with round eyes just because we share the same complexion. I don't even wave at people I don't know, though if they are obviously foreigners staring at a subway map in confusion I'll tell them which route looks the best - half the time I do this, however, I quickly discover they are Iranian, German or Russian or Brasilian, and I'd have been just as well off trying to help a Korean ...
Haha, so why don't I offer to help Koreans who look confused?
Last edited by The Bobster on Wed Nov 30, 2005 10:20 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2005 7:58 am Post subject: |
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I always suspected this was true.
My reasons were that professional standards
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While I appreciate your discerning agreement, I did choke at your choice of the phrase 'professional standards'. |
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JongnoGuru
Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep
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| Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2005 8:23 am Post subject: |
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| The Bobster wrote: |
| Haha, so why don't I offer to help Koreans who look confused? |
I probably give directions to Koreans -- typically motorists or taekbae deliverymen -- about 2~3 times a month. It happens when I'm on the motorbike and wearing a helmet, so they don't know I'm not Korean until I lift the visor. Catches them by surprise, and they give me the "no, no -- sorry to bother you" little wave of the hand. They're more surprised when (if) I can give them directions. They're usually out-of-towners or Seoulites looking for a wedding hall or hospital in some unfamiliar part of the city. I was so proud of myself the first couple times I could help them. It's unremarkable anymore. |
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