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| Korea Part 4 by Quétinbec 06/28/2009, 7:25pm PDT | ||||
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| Karen O, lead singer of the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, wears a fringe that comes all the way to her pupils. She'd like people to think that's her thing, but I'm not fooled. Why would someone so flighty with every other aspect of her look keep that one part constant?
She's half Korean and was born in Korea, and, like Chosen and most Asians, she's ashamed to be Asian and wants to hide it as much as she can. The biggest giveaway that someone is from East Asia is the missing double eyelid. Many have this altered via surgery. Karen isn't willing to go this far, so instead she hides her single eyelid under a massive fringe. This way, because she's got her Father's nose, she looks white. Good for her. 
At many restaurants, they employ characters like this to entertain diners. These are restaurants for adults, BTW. The characters basically run around being a cocksucker - making fun of people, forcing drinks on people, starting songs... They'd single me out because I was white and try to have dumb conversations with me over the loudspeaker. It's fine if you're drunk and prepared to be a dick along with them, but if you're, say, trying to eat your meal, they're a massive pain in the ass. I avoided those restaurants after a while, but I regret not getting trashed and attacking one like I saw a girl do. They're pushing drinks on you so they totally deserve it and it's not like they'd do anything but throw you out for it. Imagine punching one of those bastards in the face. Regrets. The Korean government, doctors, industry, and general population believe that if you leave a fan on at night it will kill you. All fans in Korea are required to have built in shutdown timers to prevent accidental death. Maybe it was a big conspiracy started by Samsung, LG, and Hyundai to sell air conditioners that then became accepted as the truth. I don't know. There's lots of stupid bullshit like this in every country and who really gives a fuck at the end of the day, but when you've got 8 guys sharing one tiny room in 40*C heats and no one will let you turn the fan on because THEY DON'T WANT TO DIE!!!! How about that for some frustrating shit? They looked at me like I was a fucking idiot for wanting to leave a fan on at night in 40*C heat. Try accepting that! All I could do 6 months later was get another room with people who didn't believe that stupid shit and lock the fucking door. But, the most annoying Korean thing is their age based status hierarchy. If you're older than a guy, and that guy is connected to you in some way, you CONTROL that guy. Perhaps because of the importance of age in their society, Koreans give their age from the date of conception to appear a year older. So a Korean girl who looks younger than her given age is ALWAYS at least one year younger than she claims to be. Some Koreans totally abuse their age power. One of the guys I first lived with was the oldest and most important guy on our floor and when he got drunk, he'd barge into bedrooms and spray Coke over people in bed and pull out guys' drawers and empty them on the floor. Typical asshole behaviour, but the interesting thing was no one tried to stop him or even talk him out of it. Grown men with two year's military service would just bow their heads as he sprayed Coke over them and their blankets! I didn't realize it at the time, but that first group of Koreans thought I was a total cocksucker because this guy would be fucking with them and they weren't in a position to stop him because of their stupid beliefs, and I'd be there laughing like it was the funniest thing because I thought they were just being pussies. Fuck them, though, because it was really amazing watch a guy fuck with a bunch of totally submissive grown men! One night he was walking down the corridor kicking over water coolers and rolling the drums into peoples rooms and they were leaking everywhere. He was like a spoilt little child! There were a couple of guys his age on our floor and they'd both spent time overseas. They were trying to talk him out of it, but they wouldn't raise their voice and no one would touch him. It only stopped because one of the water coolers slammed on the floor so hard someone downstairs called security. Stupid rules or not, how can you not be impressed by a man doing shit like that? He used to work as one of the guys who scooters whores around so he'd tell me lots of stories. Here's him and me. Notice his single eyelid vs my more fashionable double eyelid: 
One night, we were drinking with this man in the English Cafe. Normally, as a foreigner, I'm exempt from the bullshit rules of a foreign culture. But the closer you get to a person, the more they start to think their rules apply to you. It was fucking annoying because it created situations where someone you were with became responsible and accountable for your behaviour, or, even worse, like with the condom-shame guy, you were responsible for someone else's behaviour. Anyway, on this night, the homo was talking some shit about something, and the the important Korean told me I shouldn't let him speak that way about whatever it was. I thought this was my chance to make it very clear that those bullshit rules don't apply to us, so I told him as much and asked the homo to slap me to prove he wasn't under my control. My plan was that after the homo slapped me, I'd say something like, "See. We're our own people! No one here is in charge of anyone else." The homo was from a rich traditional Malaysian family who'd never accept him as a gay, so his plan was to marry some lesbian and fuck guys on the side. It wasn't working for him and he was a pretty unhappy person. He slapped me harder than I've ever been slapped before. It was pretty much a punch and it fucked me up and fucked me off. My priority turned from educating the important Korean about Western ways to making the homo feel guilty for hurting me. I fell off my chair and was grabbing my face and screaming "Ahhhh! What the fuck?!". Important Korean pushed the table onto the homo and attacked him. The important Korean's friend just left the room like an asshole. I was watching this from the floor and not really sure how I felt about what was happening so I did nothing. The homo managed to push the important Korean away and hide behind some chairs. The important Korean left him there and ripped open a locked cupboard and started throwing what I thought were phone books at us (they turned out to be 2KG bags of sugar and coffee). We were hiding behind the fallen table or chairs or something. I heard him smash the printer and saw something smash against the AC. I thought this time he'd caused so much damage that someone would have to hold him accountable and punish him. 
The next day one of the high status Koreans knocked on the door and said they'd heard us drinking with Dong Kiu last night so we had to clean up for him now. So we did. He never learnt his lesson and now works for Hynix as a special engineer. |
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