Lazy Sunday
So I still haven't gotten photos of Thailand from my lazy asshole friends. Wanna fight about it? I took some pictures yesterday, though. In the afternoon I had lunch with my friend So-Hee (I'd type her name in Korean, but my racist keyboard won't let me use Korean characters). We ate at an Italian restaurant. When we were almost finished our salad, which was actually quite good (unlike most gross, sweet, mayonnaise-saturated Korean "salads"), I noticed a cute little caterpillar of some kind hanging out on one of the leaves. I spat whatever I was chewing out and tried not to barf while So-Hee berated the chef. He apologized, but said that when your ingredients are "too fresh" this sort of thing is an inevitability. (Romaine lettuce that was too fresh, apparently, to be rinsed.) He said that we weren't to be charged for the salad. "Fuck that!" says I. So-Hee was surprised to learn that a decent restaurant in Canada would not only not charge you for the salad, but they'd also give you entrées at no cost and probably a bottle of wine too. The chef happily acquiesced, and we ate the rest of what appeared to be a bug-free meal. The pasta (al amatriciana) was quite good, but Koreans like to use way too much sauce. So-Hee said that when she and her parents went to Naples, they were very disappointed with the pasta. Strangely enough, chefs in Italy don't cook to Korean tastes. There's a picture below of So-Hee and I in a café. She lived at Yonge & Eglinton in Toronto for a year, and teaches English here now.
Oh, one thing I forgot to mention before--when Koreans travel abroad, they sometimes bring enough Korean ramen to last them the duration of their trip, because they don't like foreign food. Isn't that cool? Imagine traveling to Thailand with a suitcase full of Kraft Dinner and baked beans. Doesn't that just sound delicious?
Then I went to our company holiday party, which was compulsory. There was one bottle of "wine" (Riesling, 9% alc., sugary) per table of ten people, but we managed to scavenge another from some Korean managers who were too afraid to drink in front of the owners. There were probably about 700 people there, including all staff and teachers from all campuses. Some unlucky people from Busan got to enjoy a four hour bus or train ride in order to sit in a disgustingly hot banquet hall and not get drunk. (Enjoy your weekend, stupid Busan jerks!) Additional drinks were available at exorbitant prices--a bottle of Pepsi was seven bucks, and beer was ten. Smarter people than my friends and I smuggled liquor in. My friends Dylan, Jennifer Jean, and Sunny received teacher of the year merits for our branch, and I can't think of any other people more deserving of the cash prize and résumé padding. The ceremony involved lots of really fucking awful videos and slide shows that were painfully embarrassing to watch. One idiot from some other campus actually did a rap about how much she loves her job and the company. "Yo yo yo, check it out..." Seven hundred people's skin was audibly crawling throughout. She was also one of the MCs, and demonstrated herself to be perhaps the dumbest fucking person in Asia (assuming Douglas Feith or Neil Bush haven't recently moved here). Somebody was walking around dressed like a clown. Clowns are creepy. Fortunately, the buffet was really good. I had scallops, shrimp, octopus, sushi, roast beef, roast pork, and stuff I'm definitely forgetting. I can't believe I was a quasi-vegetarian for a year. Lunacy! My great-uncles didn't die fighting the Nazis so that tasty critters would go uneaten.
We left fifteen minutes before the bullshit was all wrapped up and went back to our neck of the woods. We had contemplated drinking and dancing in Seoul, but paying Toronto prices to have a Korea-riffic time doesn't sit well with most people who know better. We met at a bar called Atlanta, where they play Western music DVDs on a big screen and serve cheap beer. Then we went to a place called Techno Bar, which also goes by the name Black Music Club. No joke. I kinda wish they had a sign with a group of Africans wearing gold chains, holding spears, and dancing around a boom-box, as it would kind of fit the motif. Of course that would infringe on the trademark of the fried chicken restaurant that has a TV ad featuring Africans with spears dancing around a bucket of chicken. They play mostly top-40 hip-hop there, but it's better than K-Pop (which is like the Backstreet Boys but a hundred times worse). The DJ is actually pretty good, as the cuts between tracks are seamless. Every time we go there they play Jump by Kriss-Kross (sp?) at least once, sometimes more. The way Koreans embrace aspects of American culture is fucking hilarious. Check out the photo of the douche bag wearing a "Compton" hat. He's one hard gangsta. The two girls in the photo with me (posing like Koreans, with the peace sign that actually means "Kimchi!" here) are Sarah, from Toronto, whom I work with, and Drew, who works across the street, who is from Montana and is leaving in a few weeks. I'm wearing one of the shirts I got tailored in Thailand. I honestly had no idea what it felt like to wear a shirt that fits. We danced and got liquored up, and then went home and watched some Arrested Development. A solid day altogether, annoying corporate holiday "party" notwithstanding.
I've downloaded lots of music recently. If you haven't listened to the soundtrack from The Life Aquatic, specifically the half that consists of Spanish acoustic covers of David Bowie, you should. I got Nick Cave's discography. Real uplifting stuff, that. Music snobs all over teh internetz recommended that I get Boris' "Pink" album, and as usual, the music snobs were right about music. It's a really, really good hard rock album.
And now, a lazy afternoon before five straight days of work from 8:30-8:00. That schedule continues until the end of the month. It's a different schedule because kids are on "holiday" now, so their parents can send them to academies all day and all night. The days actually seem to go faster, even though I'm working 50% overtime (my choice--gonna be a fat paycheck); I don't like mornings, though, and I sure as shit don't like going to bed at 1 a.m. instead of 4. (Harder to get things done when I'm asleep. Not that I ever do anything.)
The pleasant-looking woman seated on the left side of the table with some of my co-workers is Greg's mom, who spent the winter break with Greg and Jennifer in Beijing and Hong Kong and last week here at their place. She had fun, I think. She is a retired principal, so I think she enjoyed observing how we educate the children.
Oh, one thing I forgot to mention before--when Koreans travel abroad, they sometimes bring enough Korean ramen to last them the duration of their trip, because they don't like foreign food. Isn't that cool? Imagine traveling to Thailand with a suitcase full of Kraft Dinner and baked beans. Doesn't that just sound delicious?
Then I went to our company holiday party, which was compulsory. There was one bottle of "wine" (Riesling, 9% alc., sugary) per table of ten people, but we managed to scavenge another from some Korean managers who were too afraid to drink in front of the owners. There were probably about 700 people there, including all staff and teachers from all campuses. Some unlucky people from Busan got to enjoy a four hour bus or train ride in order to sit in a disgustingly hot banquet hall and not get drunk. (Enjoy your weekend, stupid Busan jerks!) Additional drinks were available at exorbitant prices--a bottle of Pepsi was seven bucks, and beer was ten. Smarter people than my friends and I smuggled liquor in. My friends Dylan, Jennifer Jean, and Sunny received teacher of the year merits for our branch, and I can't think of any other people more deserving of the cash prize and résumé padding. The ceremony involved lots of really fucking awful videos and slide shows that were painfully embarrassing to watch. One idiot from some other campus actually did a rap about how much she loves her job and the company. "Yo yo yo, check it out..." Seven hundred people's skin was audibly crawling throughout. She was also one of the MCs, and demonstrated herself to be perhaps the dumbest fucking person in Asia (assuming Douglas Feith or Neil Bush haven't recently moved here). Somebody was walking around dressed like a clown. Clowns are creepy. Fortunately, the buffet was really good. I had scallops, shrimp, octopus, sushi, roast beef, roast pork, and stuff I'm definitely forgetting. I can't believe I was a quasi-vegetarian for a year. Lunacy! My great-uncles didn't die fighting the Nazis so that tasty critters would go uneaten.
We left fifteen minutes before the bullshit was all wrapped up and went back to our neck of the woods. We had contemplated drinking and dancing in Seoul, but paying Toronto prices to have a Korea-riffic time doesn't sit well with most people who know better. We met at a bar called Atlanta, where they play Western music DVDs on a big screen and serve cheap beer. Then we went to a place called Techno Bar, which also goes by the name Black Music Club. No joke. I kinda wish they had a sign with a group of Africans wearing gold chains, holding spears, and dancing around a boom-box, as it would kind of fit the motif. Of course that would infringe on the trademark of the fried chicken restaurant that has a TV ad featuring Africans with spears dancing around a bucket of chicken. They play mostly top-40 hip-hop there, but it's better than K-Pop (which is like the Backstreet Boys but a hundred times worse). The DJ is actually pretty good, as the cuts between tracks are seamless. Every time we go there they play Jump by Kriss-Kross (sp?) at least once, sometimes more. The way Koreans embrace aspects of American culture is fucking hilarious. Check out the photo of the douche bag wearing a "Compton" hat. He's one hard gangsta. The two girls in the photo with me (posing like Koreans, with the peace sign that actually means "Kimchi!" here) are Sarah, from Toronto, whom I work with, and Drew, who works across the street, who is from Montana and is leaving in a few weeks. I'm wearing one of the shirts I got tailored in Thailand. I honestly had no idea what it felt like to wear a shirt that fits. We danced and got liquored up, and then went home and watched some Arrested Development. A solid day altogether, annoying corporate holiday "party" notwithstanding.
I've downloaded lots of music recently. If you haven't listened to the soundtrack from The Life Aquatic, specifically the half that consists of Spanish acoustic covers of David Bowie, you should. I got Nick Cave's discography. Real uplifting stuff, that. Music snobs all over teh internetz recommended that I get Boris' "Pink" album, and as usual, the music snobs were right about music. It's a really, really good hard rock album.
And now, a lazy afternoon before five straight days of work from 8:30-8:00. That schedule continues until the end of the month. It's a different schedule because kids are on "holiday" now, so their parents can send them to academies all day and all night. The days actually seem to go faster, even though I'm working 50% overtime (my choice--gonna be a fat paycheck); I don't like mornings, though, and I sure as shit don't like going to bed at 1 a.m. instead of 4. (Harder to get things done when I'm asleep. Not that I ever do anything.)
The pleasant-looking woman seated on the left side of the table with some of my co-workers is Greg's mom, who spent the winter break with Greg and Jennifer in Beijing and Hong Kong and last week here at their place. She had fun, I think. She is a retired principal, so I think she enjoyed observing how we educate the children.
posted by Matthew at 2:02 PM
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