Forty-cent Fiasco

Okay, now for something you will find a little more of in my blog: things that bug me about Korea. Now for those of you who don't know me, I don't hate Koreans; I have been here a long time and understand why the people are sometimes VERY annoying; I believe that for the most part it is not really their fault that they can be so annoying; I know it's no use trying to change Korea, but, for therapeutic reasons I just gotta complain! Besides, it makes for a more interesting blog, n'est pas? Yesterday I went to a local drug store. I like to buy stuff from the small stores in Korea because they need my business more than E-Mart or Lotte Mart. I found what I was looking for and on the bottom of the box the price was 5800 won. I took two boxes and put them on the counter and waited for the pharmacist, who was talking on the phone and doing his best to ignore me. He ended the call with only a hint of don't-rush-me-cuz-I'm-the-bossiness. He picked up one of the boxes, scratched the price tag off it, pressed some buttons on a till that had no display and looked at me but said nothing. I gave him 20,000 won. He gave me 8,000 won change. Now to quickly convert won to U.S. change the , to a . and remove a zero. I gave him 20 bucks for an $11.60 purchase and he gave me 8 bucks change. So it was an on the spot mark-up of 20 cents a box. Not enough to jump over the counter and throttle the pharmacist about. In fact I said and did nothing because I have become almost desensitized to things like this. Imagine it's 3 am. You are awakened by a loudly barking dog. It goes on and on and on. 4 am rolls around. You still can't sleep. You could go downstairs and kick the dog, duct tape its snout shut, feed it a poisoned pork chop, but none of them would do any good. Well, I guess the last one might allow you to sleep but you'd be out a perfectly good pork chop, some poison and you'd be a caninocidal lunatic. But none of these actions would help. Why not? Because most likely the problem is with the master and/or the trainer, not with the dog. This pharmacist was the dog. The Korean education system, (and I use that term VERY loosely), was his trainer, and in Korean society he has many masters. I can't do anything about the trainer or masters so I leave the store without incident. But let's look at the incident more closely. What has the pharmacist accomplished here? Maybe he feels pesonally responsible for collecting foreign taxes he feels his country isn't collecting. Maybe he has been wronged in the past by foreigners and isn't particularly concerned with whom he exacts his revenge upon as long as they are not Korean. Remember, this guy is a member of the medical profession. In most countries these people are supposed to represent the academic and intellectual elite. What is his action saying about Korea? Anyway, I feel vindicated. This blog represents my 40 cents worth of payback on this pharmacist. It made me feel better to write about it. Who knows, I may shop at his store again in the future. But not today.

Ahhh Korean Baseball

Since this is my first blog entry in my first blog, I thought I'd do something out of the ordinary: talk about something I really like about Korea. Baseball! The Korean Baseball Organization. KBO if you're into the whole brevity thing. Just in time to get a few games in under the beige, Chinese sand obscured moon, the KBO season is underway. Actually, on weekends they play under the Chinese sand obscured sun. I was told never to look directly at the sun during the Sinosand eclipses we have had for almost a month now so I have yet to verify the exact colour of one. Maybe it's red. I've noticed over my years of working with Korean kids and resorting to artwork when an hour-long lesson ends at the twenty minute mark, that they always make the sun red. When I was a kid, I made it yellow. In fact, if the occasion should arise, I think I still would. Then again, I always made snot green. Here, well it depends on whether or not you've been in traffic I suppose. However, before I get into the other artistic skills of Korean kids, anatomic and excremental amongst them, I'll get back to baseball. I've been to a few ball games already this season and they have all been great. Most recently I took in a night game at Chamshil stadium in Seoul which pitted the Doosan Bears against the Lotte Giants. It was a very well pitched game. Rios went 5 and a third innings with a 3-hit shutout. The Bears were up 1-0 at that point but the coach went to the bullpen and then the fireworks started. Poor Rios didn't get the win. However the Bears managed a dramatic come-from-behind 4-3 victory. Hooray for the Bears, my old team. I was in the expensive seats, (6000 won!), drinking Cass and feeling a bit of a traitor. You see for the past two seasons I've been cheering on the Kia Tigers. But I have moved to Yangju and the closest teams to me are the Seoul teams, (LG Twins and Doosan Bears). I also met the number two pitcher on the Bears recently in my favourite watering hole in Seoul, I Tae Won Woodstock. His name is Matt Randall. We grew up just across the border from each other so we had some common experiences that we shared over a few pops. He said he's going to try to bring me back to the Bears who were my favourite team when I lived in Seoul 5 years ago. But then they were the OB Bears. I just liked them because of the beer. So it was a little odd consuming mass quantities of Cass while watching the Bears play. Oh well, at least they won. The best game I've seen this year so far was in Suwon. I went to see my Kia Tigers give Suwon's Hyundai Unicorns a thorough thrashing. It was April 14th. Korean Black Day and my birthday. Black Day is when people who were snubbed on Feb. 14th and March 14th, (when girls give guys chocolate and guys give girls candy respectively), eat Jajang Myun or black noodles as a kind of mourning. I actually ordered jajang myun with my beer but they didn't have any at Suwon Stadium, so I went with the fried chicken. I was proudly sporting my Kia Tigers away jersey and sitting behind third base, which I thought was the custom in Korea. It wasn't long before I was surrounded by several Koreans wearing Kia colours so I knew I was in the right section. As the game wore on and Kia built a huge lead, high-fives were generously dispersed throughout my section and soon I was celebrating with these total strangers. Then around the 4th or 5th inning, (that's about the 7th or 8th beer in birthday beverage measurement), these fans pulled out a birthday cake, lit the candles and were about ready to launch into "Seng Il Chuka Hamnida", (Happy Birthday), when I told them it was my birthday too. I whipped out my identification so as not to make them think I was honing in on their cake action. They believed me ID or no ID. So we blew out the candles, me and the other birthday boy, posed for pictures and even smushed cake in each other's faces. Then they poured me a few cups of Makkoli, (Korean rice wine I don't really care for), from a 10-gallon jerry can for the love of God! The things you can bring to ball games in Korea! And they weren't even in their home stadium! I had to drink the makkoli in "ONE SHOT" of course but I didn't mind. I was happy to be having a good time on my birthday. I even met one kid who spoke English really well. It turned out that I knew one of his father's best friends. So I call my friend up and let him talk to the kid. He was surprised that my friend recognized him. Imagine that, meeting someone at a ball game and having a mutual acquaintance. I'd say "What a small country Korea is!", but that just doesn't have much zing since Korea IS quite a small country. But at the end of the game the score was something like 11-4 for Kia, we were all a little too happy, and despite the absence of any of my friends I invited to share the game with me, (on my birthday(boo-hoo-hoo)), I had a blast! And I DID spend a few hours after the game with friends singing silly songs at a Seoul singing room anyway. Ahh Korean baseball. It's my favourite thing to do in this crazy country.