The 20 night wait, Part III
Trip Start
Aug 14, 2007
1
39
114
Trip End
May 23, 2008
Seoul,
Korea Rep.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
· GMT +8:00 hours
Unnecessary?
This is probably as unnecessary an entry as I've ever typed. There's not much to report today, especially considering the ink has barely dried on the last entry, metaphorically speaking of course. Today is presidential election day in Korea and it's an official holiday, something I doubt many work-obsessed Koreans will take advantage of. It's also our last day being unemployed, the last day we'll be imposing on Jay and his family and the last day, we hope, that we'll be wondering what to do. So with a bit of time on my hands I've been rambling on the keyboard while Meg sits on the floor in front of me playing hangman with Elia (God bless her patience). If not for the holiday Elia would be in school right now and Meg would be where she'd prefer to be - lost in the pages of her latest book, one she bought in Tirana, Albania, back in September and has only just started to read.
Day 128 Observations (December 19th 2007)
· No Cinderella
Jay's wife, Meyong, wanted to thank Meg for being ... well, being Meg I guess and this morning she presented her with a real nice pair of khaki boots. The only problem is that they were too small, a few sizes too small in fact. They were a mail-order and seemingly in Korea mail-order purchases can't be returned. It's a pity because they were nice, classy looking boots, boots Meyong herself now owns.
Getting it out
Let me take this opportunity to make a few observations on Korea, observations I've been meaning to make for a while now.
· It's "eao" this, "mi-da" that
The Korean language and its Hangul alphabet, along with the cuisine, are probably the most unique aspects of the oh-so unique Korean culture. Even though I'm on my 5th visit to the country I've never made much of an effort to learn any of the language, beyond the essentials of 'hello', 'goodbye', 'thank you', 'how much' and 'beer', all of which I had down within a few days of my first visit exactly 4 years ago. It has always struck me as a strange language and to the untrained ear every sentence seems to end in "eao" or, more commonly, "mi-da". You'll hear......
"blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah eao", and
"blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah mi-da"......
... sentence after sentence, time after time. Seen as we may be spending a bit more time over here in the future I'm toying with the idea of maybe putting a bit of effort into learning a bit of the language. Of course I probably won't. After all, I'm a linguistic disaster and let's be honest: outside of Korean waters the language isn't worth a whole lot (but it's still way more marketable than say Irish). But I might, at the very least, try to learn what "mi-da" and "eao" mean.
· Labelling/sign madness
Another aspect of Korea that strikes me as strange is their difficulty in putting grammatically accurate English on products. Take Exfeel-s for example. It's a new beer on the market over here and the new expensive looking, mass-produced label reads as follows -
'Exfeel-s - The Stylish Beer with Fibre.
Smooth and light premium beer exclusively designed for well-being of young generation'.
Another culprit on the beer shelf is a beer called Prime Max. It markets itself as being a ...
'Delicious idea',
going on to explain that it's a ....
'Rich and full-bodied taste beer made from all malt and fine cascade hop'.
It also claims that ....
'Delicious beer Max gives rich taste and citrus flavour with all malt and Cascade hop'.
Finally, it makes the bold statement that ...
'It'll please your taste and drinking atmosphere'
Now, what's not to like about those two products, apart from the English used to market them. Stuff like this is common on all products sold in Korea and I'm always left wondering why these large companies simply don't just pull some English speaker, any English speaker who knows a verb from an adjective, off the street and give them an hours work casting their eye over the stuff their are about to print.
It's not just products on sale in Korea that butcher the English language. Signs outside restaurants will advertise them as a being a 'Nice Restaurant', or 'A Good Restaurant, while bars will advertise themselves as being a 'Good Time Bar', one that sells 'Beer, Whiskey, Coffee & Soju'. While the English here isn't technically incorrect it does still bring a smile to my face.
· Stares
It's always fun walking the streets of Seoul with Meg. It's as if she has a large neon arrow above her head, one that says 'look at me'. She gets attention from both males and females and sometimes I like to walk a little behind her, especially in markets or in the subway, just so I see the reaction she gets as she walks by. Men stare at her for obvious reasons - because they think she is beautiful. Women, especially secondary/high school going females, stare for similar but slightly different reasons - because they all covet her eyes. It's no secret that Korean women spend a lot of money on cosmetic surgery, most of that money going on operations to enhance the appearance of their eyes (they hate the closed nature of their eyes) and they would pay a fortune to have Meg's features. Not a day goes by that we don't get a "oh.... beautiful" comment on the street or hear a wolf whistle. We've had teenage girls actually gasp in astonishment at the sight of her (obviously girls of the unreserved ilk), had more than one ajumma (old women) try to physically touch her and we were practically waved through Korean customs coming back from Japan by the lady customs officer who was more interested in Meg's features than her bags.
