You say "Earthquake", I say "Icebreaker"!

In my last post I waxed lyrical about being the world's worst correspondent.
This is not the most desirable trait for a girl who has many friends living Far, Far Away. And the longer I go without contacting someone, the guiltier I feel, and the harder it becomes to reach out.
I mean, mawkish apologies are just NOT a sexy way to start a conversation.

Happily, every now and then, the universe lends a hand!

Yesterday, in Gyeongju, South Korea, there were two earthquakes.
No, no! Stay with me! I'm not a total monster! For starters, no one was seriously injured.
The first  quake was a 5.1 and the second, less than an hour later, was a 5.8.
I can hardly stress enough how unusual this is. Korea is not in a traditional earthquake zone and in the five years that I lived there, there was nary a tremor.
Well, not strictly true. Three years ago there were two small quakes, but I missed those ones as well, as I was in Ireland at the time.

(Gasp!) Wait! Is that it?! - Is Korea having withdrawal symptoms whenever I leave the country?!

But I digress.
Gyeongju, the epicenter, is only an hour north of Ulsan, my old hometown, and two hours north of Busan, another city chock full of friends and acquaintances.
So when we got the news, Ms.Amused and I grabbed this golden opportunity with both hands and lit up Facebook Messenger and KakaoTalk with concerned enquiries.

Depending on our target audience, the messages ranged in sensitivity from:

"Honey are you ok? You're apartment is quite high up, I hope it wasn't too scary!"

to

"Hey bro, you still alive?"

Admittedly, we're not going to be nominated for a Booker Prize anytime soon, but we had been granted a conversational opening and we ran with it.

Contact initiated! All systems are go!

So the moral of today's story is: "Keep watching the news, kids! You never know when you'll be handed the perfect excuse to reach out and call someone!"

Memento Vitae

A few days ago, Ms. Amused and I were talking about one of the hardest parts of being an ex-pat, returned or otherwise - missing our friends who are scattered all over the globe.  I also took the opportunity to admit to being the world's worst correspondent. Honestly, if it wasn't for Facebook, most of my friends would be forgiven for thinking me deceased! Ms. Amused also copped to being a less than exemplary pen pal. (I do so love not being alone in the error of my ways!) However, we also acknowledged that part of the reason why we are so bad at contacting our distant friends is that we miss them so damn much that it hurts.
When I am not messaging you, it's pretty much because this Cowardly Lion is desperately trying to deny how much I miss you. And God forbid that I should find out that you are going through a hard time and I can't be there to hug you and bake you brownies!!

While all these thoughts were percolating through my brain, I re-read an old post by Starry Eyed Travels about her favourite travel souvenirs.
She has some lovely ones, which now decorate her home with memories of past adventures. After reading her post, I looked around my room with fresh eyes and realized that most of my mementos are not really of places themselves, but rather treasured keepsakes of the friends I made in those places.  I think this is a natural result of the fact that I was in Korea long term, rather than passing through. What I collected were the trappings of daily life, the more interesting ones were gifts from friends and students.
 
I have some pieces of jewelry which originally belonged to my favourite Diva and to Lush.
I find myself wearing them on the days when I am particularly missing them.
I have a pair of earrings that I bought at the Busan Foreigner Market from the talented Joshua Weaver.
I need to constantly remind myself of this fact, because whenever I catch sight of them, I think, "Aw! Those are the earrings that F.D.A bought me!"
Except that she didn't - but they are soooooo incredibly her style that I constantly and automatically give her the credit.
Hanging beside those earrings are a pair that African Queen actually did buy me, as a birthday present, for a birthday that we celebrated upstairs in the Golden Eagle Pub in Ulsan, followed, natch, by the obligatory and awesome noraebang session.  Good times.
(And just this morning I came across the birthday card too!)

 

 The silver ring in the photo is a thumb ring which I wear every single day, without fail. It is one of a pair of rings, the other is worn by the darling Ji Won, my Korean niece.  Every night when I take it off, it goes into this beautiful silver jewelry case, which was painted by Ji Won's mum, my Korean Unni (big sister).

Every few months in Korea, my Dinner Club crew would have a clothes swap night. (a necessary event when you are foreigners in a country with clothes shops for tiny people.)  The sweaters I have from those nights are like wearable hugs from my Dinner Club girls.

There is a photo collage which Doc Doolittle made for me, to wish me luck before O'GradyLady's first market.  And there is an incredibly adorable O'GradyLady poster which Cheong Soon also made for my markets.

 

On one of my bookshelves there sits a wooden framed, Japanese picture and a beautiful blue ceramic dish (where I stow my car keys), which Renee brought me back as a thank you for pet sitting her hamster. To the left of this hangs a ticket for a music festival that I went to with Judd.  The adorable squirrels are hand made felt creations from Cheong Soon, and the origami crab was given to me by the proprietor of a crab restaurant in Osaka, where Lush and I had an EPIC crab feast while on holiday there.  The yellow Domo Kun pencil case was a birthday present from Tonny, given while I was going through a short, yet intense, obsession with the Japanese cartoon character.

On the shelf above, the snake and the jolly pig are souvenirs of day trips with Lush and Ms.Amused, while the photo of Natalya and I is part of a photo album that Natalya made for me as my farewell gift.

I have come be deeply grateful to have such things strewn around my walls and shelves, but I also got to thinking about the marks that my friends have left, on me.

Every morning when I brush my teeth, I wait 15 minutes before eating my breakfast, because twenty odd years ago, my beloved Cled told me that was good for my enamel. I have had this habit for so long now that it has sunk into my bones.

When I indulge myself in a full on Korean skin care regime I remember learning this whole process at a slumber party with all the Dinner Club girls at Amanda's apartment - so now Amanda is with me whenever I apply three different kinds of moisturiser. (or drink craft beer - another of her many talents!)

When I make a cup of instant coffee, I splash cold water over the granules before adding the boiling water, to avoid burning the grounds and making the coffee taste bitter.  This was a tip that Goulash taught me, so now, every time I make a cup of instant coffee, I remember Goulash.

Whenever I drink Joheun Day Soju, (frankly, the best soju there is!) I remember eating samgyupsal at the best joint in Ulsan with Ellen and Alex.
[speaking of.... I'm down to my last bottle. Help! somebody send me some!!]

Last month I re-read the book 'Good Omens' and it brought Jessykat so strongly to mind, it was as if she was sitting and reading in the very next room.

Yesterday, while driving my car I heard 'Kiss from a Rose' on the radio, and I flashed back to dancing around a dining room with my friend Nuala.

I bought this memo board intending to go all 'The Secret' and create a vision board, but instead it quickly evolved into a 'Who Loves Ya Baby!' board. Much more fun.

This post is incredibly long and rambling, I know, and I'm sorry. I have mentioned as many people as I can, but it would be impossible to get everyone, though like a good Oscar speech I am trying to cram in as many names as possible.

What I am trying, so desperately, to convey, is the heartfelt message that I am genuinely sorry for being such a crap correspondent, but please know that you are always in my thoughts. 

I bring you with me through all my days. You have shaped the very person that I am.

To steal a line from 'Wicked', "Your hand prints are on my heart. You have changed me for the good."

Sky Lanterns and Polo Biscuits

I've been thinking a lot about death rituals recently.
I promise you, this is not remotely as EMO or morbid as it sounds - merely further proof that I have inherited Dad's insatiable curiosity about EVERYTHING.

We have been enjoying a delightful spell of most un-Irish weather (i.e dry), so Mum, Ms. Amused and I have spent the last several days out in the garden, doing a major spring clean.  The hours of manual labour have given me plenty of time for reflection, and as this week is the third anniversary of Dad's death, it's only natural I suppose, that I have been looking back on the anniversaries that I marked in Korea and comparing them to this year's experience.

I have been repeating ad nauseum for the last five years that the Irish and Korean cultures are ridiculously alike, and one of these endless points of intersection is how both countries deal with death and funerals. Now, while Koreans don't get comfy round the corpse the way we do, (then again, who does?) they match us point for point when it comes to eating, drinking and telling stories, and also in the fact that if you knew the deceased at all, or any of the family members, you go to the funeral - no invitations needed.

As Dad's first anniversary approached, I was feeling nervous about how I would handle it, so far from my family and everyone who knew him.
Two things helped me through:
One - my amazing, fantastic and simply heaven sent ex-pat family. They didn't know Dad, but they knew and loved me and they way they gathered round and nurtured me just blew me away.

Two - The Korean tradition of 'Jaesa'.  On the anniversary of the person's death, the family set up a table of food for a memorial ceremony. (More about this in a later post) Of course, not being a Korean, I wasn't going to set up a Jaesa table, but it was such a comfort to have a short hand for talking about my Dad's  anniversary.  With my Korean friends I only needed to say that "Sunday will be my Dad's first Jaesa." and they immediately understood that this weekend would be tough for me and that I wanted to take some time out to do something to remember Dad.

In Ireland, the whole family would go to a Mass offered in Dad's name, then we would visit the grave and go back to the house for food.
In Korea, I had to get a little creative and I hit on the idea of sending up Sky Lanterns.  My darling friend Dr. Doolittle met a guy outside McDonnells and bought a pack of ten.  Then I started to fret whether or not I needed an official permit.  Happily, that was sorted out in no time. I reached out to an Elder Lemon in the ex-pat community, who put me in touch with the Foreign Liaison Officer with Ulsan police.  Who not only gave me the necessary permission, but even offered the roof of the police station as a venue.
Part of me regrets that I didn't accept the invitation, as I know that Dad would have gotten a huge kick out of it, but it was the first anniversary and I was feeling vulnerable, so I wanted to keep it private.

So instead, Dr. Doolittle and her boyfriend, with FDA and I, drove out to Jinha Beach just after sunset to startle some seagulls.

 

   




It was different and intimate and exactly what I needed.  AND, thanks to the magic of time zones, I was sending up the lanterns at the same time that the family were gathering back in Ireland.

This year, for the first time, I was marking the anniversary at home, with the whole family.... in fact, with the whole village.  It was wonderful to fall back into the utterly familiar process. It started with Maura in the Post Office, who remembered that it was Dad's anniversary, then it was the folk group at Mass, who gave me the space to sing Dad's favourite hymn. It was all the aunts and uncles and cousins, who gathered to mark the day with us.
It was going home afterwards to a feed which included Dad's favourite biscuits, Jacob's Chocolate Polos.

         
 It was just so good to be home for it all.

Crack K-Drama Recommendations - These'll get you hooked! - Part 0

Over the last few years, several of my friends, (who well knew of my passion for Korean drama) have asked me to recommend a few shows to them.  These conversations usually took place over a bottle of soju (or 3) in a Samgyupsal restaurant, or while walking our dogs in the park. So I would give them a few names and tell them, "Whatever you watch, go to Dramabeans.com and read the recaps, they will explain everything." Far better than watching it with me and having to bear my constant twitching as I restrained myself from explaining every nuance of every scene!  The most recent request came this week, so I finally got organised to compile a proper blog post and do justice to the subject.

It is said that, 'Acknowledging that you have a problem is the first step in overcoming it'. By this logic, I am screwed, for the denial is strong in this one. I honestly believed that I would be able to cover all this material in one post!  Idiot.
I don't want to rattle off a quick 'Top 10' list, as both my friends and Korean dramas are varied enough to make a quick list impossible.

So instead, I am going to break this down by genre. And suddenly this simple post has hatched into a seven part series.  I'd say that I was a sucker for punishment, except that I'm going to utterly relish every bit of it!

So here's what will be coming in the next few days:

Part 1: Saeguks - Historical Dramas: Swords, Silks and Subterfuge.

Part 2: Crime and Punishment in the Land of the Morning Calm.

Part 3: Time Travel: A Wibbly Wobbly......Timey Wimey......Ball of Stuff.

Part 4: Gender Bendy Shenanigans.

Part 5: Medical and Mental Mayhem.

Part 6: Drama, Drama, Drama - A Cornucopia of Tropes.

Part 7: I Took The Bullet, So You Don't Have To.


(rubs hands gleefully) This is gonna be fuuuuuun!!!!

A nice cup of tea and a sit down.

I have three more weeks in Korea before I begin a nice, meandering trip home via Australia, Amsterdam and the UK, and as the departure date draws closer I find myself remembering my last trip home.
There was a single activity which highlighted more clearly than anything else, just how long and how far I had been from home.
It was the humble cup of tea.

Irish people take our tea very seriously.  We are very fussy about the tea itself  and while the ritual of making the tea may lack the aesthetics of, say, a Japenese Tea Ceremony, make no mistake - it IS a ritual.

Irish people drink more tea per capita than any other country in the world. Think about that for a minute.  We drink more tea than the Chinese, the Japanese, even more than the English for crying out loud!
Though now that I am living in Asia, I think this is explained by the fact that in the U.K and Ireland when we say tea, what we really mean is black tea, whereas here in Asia you can make tea out of anything even vaguely botanical. So while we beat them out drinking black tea, they have the market cornered in consumption of say, Chrysanthemum or Quince teas.
The blends we drink in Ireland are mostly Indian and Kenyan teas which are very high in tannins. This makes for a very strong tea to which we add milk and often, sugar. A notion that would have most Asians turning green at the gills.

The ritual comes into the making of the tea itself. Now, most households in the Northern Europe know how to make a decent cup of tea, but my parents elevated it to an art form. A precise dance of intricate and measured steps.

First, boil the kettle and choose a teapot of a size appropriate for your party. My Dad, the Science teacher, drilled us that  while making tea the kettle should only be boiled once - as each successive boiling reduces the oxygen content of the water and oxygen is necessary to draw the tannins from the tea leaves. ( I DID say that my parents take tea seriously, right?!)

The very second the kettle boils, pour some of the water into your teapot and swirl it around - thus 'scalding the pot'. This must be done quickly and deftly (it's all in the wrist). You want to heat the pot while not taking so long that the water has gone fully off the boil.

Put one or two scoops of tea leaves into the pot. In our house, tea bags are for sad losers who drink alone.
Fill the teapot, place it on the pot stand, cover with the tea cosy and leave to 'brew'.

While the tea is brewing, gather the rest of the required paraphernalia; the cups, milk, sugar and of course something to eat.

In the words of my grandfather, "You can't ate tae without bread!"

To have a cup of tea in one hand and no cut of cake, no bit of brack, not  even a fig roll biscuit in the other hand..... well! That's simply unthinkable! Barbarous, even!

By now the tea is well brewed to the color of aged amber. The next step in the ritual is serving it up just how everyone likes it.
This is done with knowledge which has accreted though the thousands of tea ceremonies which have gone before.
Who likes the first cup out of the pot? Who insists on having the last and therefore strongest cup?
Who likes the milk to be poured in the cup first and who likes no milk at all - though I hesitate to even type that last option, as it happens so rarely.
We brew our tea so strong that drinking it without milk is hardly feasible.

Once that mysterious alchemy has been performed the cups must be handed around according to a subtle hierarchy. This might explain why the Irish, when we actually bother ourselves, are quite good at diplomacy. Years of figuring out who gets the good china cup and the first serving without starting a family feud makes more overt forms of negotiation a cake walk.

Once the tea has been dispensed, it's back to refill the kettle for round two: The Hot Sup.  Good hospitality dictates that when the cup is down to the last quarter, it must be refilled with fresh, hot tea, because in Ireland, no one ever drinks just one cup!

Unfortunately for me, after two years of drinking delicate infusions of hibiscus blossom or chrysanthemum tea and various other blooms - whom I had previously only encountered in the titles of the more artsy kind of martial arts films - my ability to appreciate (i.e. cope with) tannins in all their glory, has been almost entirely eroded.
One Lyons teabag, which for any other Irish person will make one cup of tea, will do me for four!

Last Sunday I was at my sisters place and when she offered me a cup of Irish tea I asked her to simply dip the bag in my cup and then use it to make her own cup.
She physically recoiled in horror and the look of revulsion on her face was priceless - her nose wrinkles so adorably!

And this is why, for the three weeks I am home in Ireland, I will be making every pot of tea in EVERY house I set foot in - all the better to avoid lengthly explanations and the look of uncomprehending horror at my drinking tea which my Grandmother would delicately dismiss as 'maiden's water'!
Or as my father would say, "It's too weak to climb out of the pot!".

Or maybe I'll just stick to coffee!

Fear Factor

Fear. It's a curious beast. 
An action which may seem mundane and positively ho hum to one person will give the next person a serious case of the heebie jeebies.

Take my friend Martha* for example.  Martha is intelligent, vivacious and awesomely confindent.
When she finishes her time in Korea she will return home to set up TWO new businesses.
And yet, this powerful, independent go-getter would rather gnaw off her own foot than speak in public.

For myself, speaking in public is no problem at all. At school, on stage, in church, anywhere at all - I'll start declaming at the drop of a hat.
(if that hat could have small denominations dropped into it, well, so much the better!)
On the other hand, ask me to approach a stranger on the street to ask for directions in a foreign language, and you'll find me in the corner with Martha.....gnawing on my own foot.

For years I dreamed of moving to France, particularly to the south east, the Langue D'Oc region. 
It is a country where I speak the language (functionally), where I know the food and the history, the legends and the customs. It is a simple two hour flight from home - and yet, I kept back pedalling and postponing, telling myself, "Next year in Carcassone!"
I was afraid that my french wasn't good enough, that I wouldn't, simply couldn't, make it on my own.
"What?! Stand in front of a classroom and teach english?! And demand payment for these paltry services?! Are you mad??" 
"Rent an apartment and pay bills in another country!" That is something that grown ups can do.
I am not a grown up!  My fraud would be discovered in no time.

So I dickered about the British Isles for a few years instead, doing nonsense jobs that I wasn't particularly interested in, because I was too scared to risk following my dream and failing.

Time passed, plans fell apart, and this contrary pilgrim who is too scared to move to France, where does she end up?

Korea!!

A country where I didn't read the alphabet, much less speak the language. 
I didn't know the food or the history, the legends or the customs. And this patch of ground is a two DAY flight from home. 
In fact, so vast was my ignorance of this country that I can tell you precisely what I knew about it before coming here.
Four things.
That's it.
I knew four things about a country the size of the United Kingdom and with a history spanning thousands of years.  (hangs head in shame)
"And which four gems were these?" I hear you ask. Which four nuggets of wisdom had I garnerd on my way?

1. Korea is a country divided by war into North and South.
2. Korea hosted the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.
3. Korean high school students place very high in mathematics in international league tables. (Honestly, the flotsam and jetsom that sticks in your head from talk radio!)
4. My Dad's Korean student told him that the Koreans were the Irish of Asia - but didn't explain why.  (Then I got here and discovered, oh boy! Was she ever on the money!)

How on earth I found the courage to do this, when I spent years bottling out of the easier option, is a mystery I am still trying to unravel.
Though I suspect it has a lot to do with the fact that when I my original plans fell apart and I found myself applying for jobs absolutely everywhere in the world, I was simply too worn down to be scared.

When I tell people how I ended up in Korea, and that I could never have guessed in a million years how I would fall head over heels in love with the place, I often finish by remarking how much I relish that life can surprise me like this.

Perhaps though, what I really mean is that I love that I can surprise myself.

For here I am, on the other side of the world.

Without fear.

Flourishing.


* names have been changed to protect the innocent.

You know when..... List Mania #1

To lighten to mood after my previous maudlin offering, allow me to attempt something more entertaining.

Here is a list of occurrances which cause an ex pat to pause and exclaim, "Wow! I have been here waaaay too long!"

• You don't even realise you've bowed until you are on the way back UP!
• You and your friend belatedly realise that ye've spent the last five minutes eating your french fries with chopsticks.
• You drink Brown Rice Tea.   Deliberately.
• I see a picture like this :

and think "Yum!!" rather thank "Eeeewwww!"

• We're watching a K drama where the hero dashes into the apartment to rescue his fair heroine  and we all sigh happily and exclaim, "Look! He's really worried about her! He didn't stop to take off his shoes!!"
• All the coffee shops within a two block radius of my school (and trust me, that's a lot more than you'd think!) they all know that I take my  Cafe Mocha with no whipping cream.
• I find myself in a taxi cab which DOESN'T have Wi-Fi and this is such a rare occurrance that I'm more than a little discombobulated. "What? You mean I CAN'T watch YouTube on my mobile phone right now?  I don't understand!"
• I can bellow 'Chug i oh!" across a restuarant to get the waiters attention with only the smallest twinge of embarrassment.
• All my exclamations of surprise, shock, frustration etc are now in deliciously onomotopoeic Korean.
• You see a news announcement about an actor coming out of his two year military service and realise that you were around to see him go IN!  (Hyun Bin Ah! I'm gazing at you!!)

• You know and recognise the specific sound of the wind soughing through a bamboo thicket (and I wonder if I'll ever be here long enough to not immediately think of 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon')
• After two years of drinking light and delicate green tea, rice tea, chrysanthemum tea and the like, the robust and boisterous Irish tea is to be approached with extreme caution.
• Triple parking barely even registers with you.
• You handle the commute on Korean buses with all the balance and grace of a seasoned snowboarder.
• You find yourself going to Indian and Vietnamese restuarants in the forlorn hope of encountering a pea.
• You find yourself going to Indian and Moroccan restaurants for a taste of 'Home'.

Worthless Witterings

When last I posted, I was gearing up to spending Lunar New Year with my friend and her extended family.  I had been warned that only two members of the clan spoke english and so had been preparing accordingly.
I started meeting a language exchange partner, initially once a week and then amping it up to twice a week in January.
I even learned a Trot song in case we had a session!
(More on the weirdness of Trot music in a later post.)

I practised whole chunks of imaginary conversations, trying to squirrel away snippets of dialogue for every possible scenario.
It was like being back in school and cramming for my final French Orals! (whole body shudder)
Despite all the prep and study, the k dramas and k pop, I was still feeling deeply inadequate for the task ahead.

This was largely because at some level I am still comparing my language aquisition in Korea to what it would have been had I moved anywhere in Western Europe.
This is a ridiculously unfair comparison, like asking someone who has spent ten years playing drums why they can't master the piano in eighteen months.
Yet it's a comparison I still have to consciously shake off.

Happily, while I was comparing myself to a mythical might~have~been, my host family were busy comparing ME to the only other foreigner to have spent time with them.
Sunny's brother had done his military service with the 'US Forces in Korea' and had brought one of his American friends home for the holiday a few years ago.
On Saturday afternoon during a lull in the cookathon, Sunny and I were in the sitting room when she suddenly burst out laughing. She told me she had just overheard her uncle exclaim in the kitchen, "Well this foreigner is much better than the last one. Her Korean is great, she can take a joke and she even uses chopsticks! That other one just sat there, blinking."

I did feel sorry for the Unknown Soldier, it must have been a very strange two days for him, but I must admit that what I primarily felt was relief.
I was a hit!
All my worrying was for nothing.

Which begs the question: Will I learn from this experience and worry less before trying new things?


Nah.


Probably not.

Spring has sprung and gone.

 

Spring has sprung!  The sap is rising, the weather is getting warmer and yours truly, dear readers, is high on life!

I'm also running around the place as busy as a blue-arsed fly - as we so eloquently put it back in the Auld Sod!
So while I have enough witty remarks and profound insights to fill six blog posts, God alone knows when I'll find the time to sit and type it.

So this following offering will be short, but hopefully sweet?

                                 ********************************************

What fascinates and delights me about the change in the seasons is that the transistion happens so quickly and decisively.  As if even Mother Nature follows the Korean mantra of 'Bali, bali!!' (Quickly, quickly!)
You can almost.........almost set your watch by it.
Four weeks ago it was still cold enough that going anywhere without gloves was the height of folly.
Two days ago Ms.Amused came over to my place brandishing THREE mosquito bites.
(It's a little bit insane how irresistible they find her.)

This is an unending source of wonder to a girl from a country whose seasons bleed into each other like a red sock in a white wash!

It's very bemusing to us foreigners that one of the first topics of conversation with many Koreans is:
 "Korea has four seasons. Does your country have four seasons?"

Like most other mysteries we stumble across over here, once you start to scratch the surface, you quickly find the internal logic.

• Unlike us Westerners, Korea is neighbourly with several countries which DON'T have four seasons. 
• The change of seasons is still marked by large, important festivals here in Korea - in much the same way that the Celtic fire festivals of Lughnasa, Samhain and Bealtaine used to mark the seasons for us in Ireland.
•  Most Koreans learn this phrase as a rote piece in English class.

And while I mention the rote learning - it may seem a tad random, but it's a damn sight more useful than some of the stuff I learnt in French class!
Exhibit A: "The hat of my aunt is on the table."

Now, I have an above average number of aunts, but this is still not a sentence I'mma gonna need a whole lot!!

And you know something else?

After being here for a full cycle of seasons, I'm getting pretty psyched about it myself.

Last Fall was the most perfect I have ever experienced anywhere - a textbook autumn it was- with crisp fresh mornings and warm sunny days filled with a glorious palette of colour.

Now we've just had our 'blink and you miss it' Spring. 
This is a season which I particularly adore because my earliest images of Asia came from novels and movies set in Japan - so naturally enough, cherry blossoms falling like snow flash me right back to my adolesence and my plans to conquer the world - only to snap back to reality and find, yep, I'm actually in Asia!

Tis heady stuff, I tell ya!!

So here we are, a scant few weeks later and already heading into summer.  The winter clothes have been packed away in vaccuum packed bags.  (This is essential, not just for saving space but to protect them from the killer humidity we're going to get in a few months.)
I have dug up the air con remote control and any day now I'll be buying my first watermelon popsicle!


This of course, is why Spring is such a cherished season here in Korea.  It is an astonishingly beautiful and gentle season, which doesn't last long, so it never gets taken for granted.

Why some Waygook women are blind.... or ..... The emasculation of the Asian male.

I haven't blogged for almost a month now, and not for lack of material, but rather lack of internet connection and then simple inclination.
But something happened this week which had my fingers itching for the keyboard, though it took me a day or two to get my thoughts in order.

I was out for the evening with four American girls and the conversation somehow meandered over to the topic of driving - and who were the worst:  Italians, Koreans or Vietnamese?
I said that having seen Korean drivers in action, I was in no hurry to buy a car.  One of the girls agreed with me, saying "..anyway, it's too big an investment when we're here for such a short time,"  To which I replied with a cheerfully emphatic, "Oh, I'll be here for years!"

Sweet momma - the shock on their faces!

It was as if I had just confessed that I was going to become a nun - they could see it was a worthy endeavour but it wasn't something they could ever do themselves!
"Why?!" they chorused in mystification.

I blinked back at them, equally confused by their incomprehension....."because I love it here.  I've never been happier anywhere else, and trust me, I thought nothing would ever beat living in Edinburgh!"

I was then asked to explain myself.

Seriously.
They asked me to list the things I love about Korea.  Now if you give me a few minutes to gather my thoughts I could spend all weekend praising this place.
In fact when I visited my friends, Goulash and Mrs. Goulash, in Yeosu a few months ago I did just that.
They were very kind to this poor, blithering idiot!


Put on the spot as I was my reply was a little uncoordinated.
"Well, for starters, I'm working at what is indisputably the cutest school in the whole country!"
I described the school, the kids and my incredible colleagues.
I gestured to the table, (we were in a Korean restaurant) "I love the food."
"I find Korean men very attractive."
I was moving on to the next item on my mental checklist when I noticed the return of 'The Shock!'
That last sentence really put the cat among the pigeons!
"You do??!!  But they're so girly!!"

I heroically choked back my gut reaction which was a loud, "are you feckin' kiddin' me?!" and attempted a more concilliatory response.

"Ok" I said "In the six months I've been here I've heard this from alot of American girls and it makes me wonder if it is because of the way Asian men were represented on American TV until recently.  You know, either Uber Geeks or Marital Arts superheroes, neither of whom get the girl."
This got a mixed response.  One girl demurred, "there aren't many Asian guys on TV" while the rest said, that's not it, they find American Asians to be very attractive.

Ok, now we were getting somewhere.  So we reached the conclusion that it wan't the men themselves they disliked, but rather the trappings, the hair and the clothes.

That's fair enough as far as it goes.  If.  And this is an important 'if'.  If you are in , not even a Western context, but a specifically Anglo-Saxon, 'we used to be in the British Empire' context.  Yes, I'm looking at you North America and Australia!
In any of these countries, if I saw a man dressed like this:

  then yes, I too would probably class him as gay - once I had checked that he wasn't Italian!

That's because once you step outside the ghost of the British Empire you find men all over the world who are well groomed, fashionably dressed and very, very straight.
I've grown up seeing and in fact teaching, French, Italian and Swiss men who dress like this one minute and tear up the rugby field the next.

So when I came to Korea it never once, not for a nano second, occurred to me to categorise Korean Flower Boys (the local term for 'Metrosexual') as effeminate.
And one need watch only one Bollywood movie to realise that there are Indian men who could make our Flower Boys look like Undertakers!

This was my mindset when I arrived.  Then I got here and actually started learning about the culture.  I learned how hard the kids work in school. Years and years of long days, wearing uniforms and regulation haircuts and working their asses off to get into top universities.
Then, either before or after university they have two years of military service.
Once again in uniform and with regulation haircuts, in a country - though in a long term ceasefire - is nonetheless still technically at war with a communist nuclear power.
This stuff is not for sissies!

So if, while they are in university and before they settle down to a steady job with wife and kids, these guys like to wear bright fashionable clothes and try 'interesting' hairstyles - well, quite frankly, I'd be more worried if they didn't!

  And while I'm comfortably mid-rant here, I'm going to go a little deeper and say that my criteria for masculinity has never been based on how a man dresses but on how he behaves.
To me real man is one who shows compassion to those around him, from his family down to the guy on the street.
He is someone who shoulders responsibility gracefully.
He understands that what he wants to do and what he has to do are not always the same thing, and even when they are, you must be prepared to work hard for it.

I have been blessed to know many men like this, both back home and in my travels around Europe.
I am utterly delighted to find them in absolute abundance here. 

But I have kept ye captive for long enough my lovelies, so I'll leave the cultural aspects of Korean masculinity for another day (week, month?).

So in a nutshell, what's the moral of the story? :

The next person to ask me why I like Korean guys is probably going to be told:

"Because I'm not an ignorant twit!"


*Sigh* I probably won't say it.  I'm too flippin polite.  But you know I'll be thinking it!!