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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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 Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 7:27 am Post subject: It's official. I'm famous. |
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I recently added a couple of middle school classes in the little burg up the road from Swampville. The town's even smaller than this place. Only 29 kids in the whole middle school.
Last Thursday when I pulled off the highway onto the road leading to my school, there was a huge banner stretched across the road:
Welcome, Mr. Boy, (in hot pink/magenta? English) and then Graduate of ....; We will start to study English together with an American...Wide-Spot In the Road Middle School. (Nice green rice fields at the bottom fading into a nice sky blue across the top with my name in BIG LETTERS.)
Pretty nifty banner, if I say so myself. Every old gent in the neighborhood can see it when he hobbles down to the post office to meet his friends, drink makkoli and play Go-Stop or paduk.
I was pretty flattered. Decided to ask for it as a souvenir when they're finished with it. Did so. Finished class and dropped by the office to say goodbye. They handed me the banner, all folded up. They said it was a 'second banner'. (I'm a two banner event in this burg?) When I drove out, the banner was missing. It seems they took it down while I was teaching and will buy a second banner. I'm embarrassed.
But (locally) famous all over the village and who knows how far beyond! Wahoo! This is a higher level of fame than when every Kim, Lee and Park in the neighborhood came out into the alley to watch me move into my place in Hongdae. It's one thing to be the rock star of the neighborhood; it's entirely another thing to be advertised on a major (well, 2 lane) highway.
Even though I'm now an official Big Fish, I will try not to let it go to my head. You may kiss the hem of my jacket. |
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HapKi
Joined: 10 Dec 2004
Location: TALL BUILDING-SEOUL
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| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 8:31 am Post subject: |
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Gotta love small towns.
You're from Iowa, right? You should be used to it. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 5:21 pm Post subject: |
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| You're from Iowa, right? You should be used to it. |
Yes, to a degree. Shakespeare said it best: ��Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.��
Those of us from Iowa are born great, like Wyatt Earp, Buffalo Bill, John Wayne, Johnny Carson, Bill Bryson. It just comes with the territory. But fame is a heavy burden. As Emerson said, "To be great is to be misunderstood." That great intellectual, Marilyn Monroe, observed, "People feel fame gives them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you, of any kind of nature—and it won��t hurt your feelings—like it��s happening to your clothing." Those of us with the burden of fame know that "Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil." (Lycidas) Schopenhaur knew that "Honor ... means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost."
So yes, those of us from Iowa labor under special circumstances. The immortal Franz Grillparzer noted, "Let the famous not denounce fame. Far from being empty and meaningless, it fills those it touches with divine power."
I do try to stay humble in my divine power because, like the Chinese say, "As great trees attract the winds, so great fame attracts envy." Of course "Fame is fickle, but Obscurity is usually faithful to the end." I don't want to hurt the feelings of lesser and obscure mortals. They are fated: "To be occasionally quoted' in the Quotable Quotes From Dave's Posters thread, 'is the only fame I care for." I try to empathize with them.
Life at the top is lonely and "Heavy is the head that wears the crown". What worries me is that you have to be dead to be immortal. Somehow that misses the point. |
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inthewild
Joined: 28 Mar 2004
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 5:44 pm Post subject: |
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| A white guy was an event in Hongdae too...? |
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pet lover
Joined: 02 Jan 2004
Location: not in Seoul
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| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 5:58 pm Post subject: |
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| Could you send me a piece of the banner? |
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tomato
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: I get so little foreign language experience, I must be in Koreatown, Los Angeles.
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| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 6:21 pm Post subject: |
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I miss Hongseong in the Chungnam province.
It is the only place in Korea where I felt as if I was locally famous.
When I went out on the street, children I didn't even know teased me by calling me �丶��.
After I had a fight with the director there, I tried to get a job in another school there, but I couldn't.
The English school directors have an agreement not to hire teachers from each other. |
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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 6:52 pm Post subject: |
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My school got me a banner for winter break class. They put it up across the blackboard in one of my classes for a photo-op. All it acheived was making 80% of the board unuseable.
They sure love their banners. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 7:15 pm Post subject: |
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| A white guy was an event in Hongdae too...? |
An event? Let me tell you.
I moved in in late Sept. '99. You'd have thought they'd never seen another white boy. The moving van pulled into the alley and the ajumas and ajosshis came pouring out to watch the movers cart my boxes in. It (I) was the event of the month. It wasn't till New Year's Eve (millennium) that a bigger crowd was seen in the whole of Seoul.
For weeks, I was getting freebies from the ajuma up on the corner in her roast potato truck. It took days to get her to stop putting sugar on 'em. (Sugar on potatoes is the only thing worse than corn on a pizza!) There was an old halmoni who took her little grandson (2 years old?) out for a walk every evening at the same time I was on my way home from work--I called 'em the hobbler and the wobbler--She taught the tyke to bow to me. "We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!" One night on my way to the PC bang, I got hijacked into joining a salmonori (?) band. LOTS of free soju; got to bang the gong and spin the ribbon on the hat. I left my billfold in the Chinese restaurant. It was delivered to my door before I realized I had lost it.
No, I'm not a stranger to celebrity.
All this was just before Hongdae became Hongdae. I moved away just as Hapchong subway station re-opened and Hongdae took off. Us trend-setters do that, you know. Now the place is over-run with white boys. Hongdae's coolness factor isn't what it used to be. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 7:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Could you send me a piece of the banner? |
This isn't related in any way to a black magic ritual, is it?
My mom said she'll hang it on the front porch if I send it to her. She said I'll be famous all across Wapello County, too.
Conquering the world, one rural county at a time. |
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steroidmaximus
Joined: 27 Jan 2003
Location: GangWon-Do
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| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 7:48 pm Post subject: |
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| ah yes, I remember the excitement of my first banner . . .it gets a bit embarrassing after awhile. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 8:06 pm Post subject: |
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ah yes, I remember the excitement of my first banner . . .it gets a bit embarrassing after awhile.
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Mr. maximus,
Banners are those big colorful things they stretch across streets to announce upcoming events. Wanted posters are those things they post at the post office, bus station and gas station. They are not the same thing. (Steroids shrink not just reproductive organs.) |
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SarcasmKills
Joined: 07 Apr 2003
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 9:32 pm Post subject: |
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Some students popped over a few hours ago to buy me lunch and give me presents because I have a bit part on some cheesy-ass game show tonight.
They said I will be famous and they all wanted my autograph. At first I thought they were joking... 
And these are college students for frick's sake. |
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HapKi
Joined: 10 Dec 2004
Location: TALL BUILDING-SEOUL
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| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 9:54 pm Post subject: |
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Ya-Ta- I'm glad to see it hasn't all gone to your headi  |
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coolsage
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: The overcast afternoon of the soul
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| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 10:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy teacher: Congratulations on your new-found celebrity. You seem to be handling it well. By the way, I believe that Johnny Carson was from Nebraska. |
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HapKi
Joined: 10 Dec 2004
Location: TALL BUILDING-SEOUL
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| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 10:07 pm Post subject: |
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| Captain Kirk, of the Starship Enterprise, was from Iowa. Can't get no better than that. |
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