How Korea impacts our lives #2
After our first installment the impact didn’t just stop.
#1, Sitting.
Sitting is hard. Most of us have been spoiled with chairs growing up and even those of us that have know of the uncomfortable chair and all the different forms and guises it comes in.
In Korea, luckily, we’ve not had any run-ins with these uncomfortable chairs. One comes to our place and will notice we have no chairs. No furniture of any kind actually*.
This is what makes sitting hard. We have no chairs, so we sit on the ground. But we work/play/lounge/watch with laptops. which we precariously balance on different parts of our anatomy.
There’s the knee-hop, which is comfortable, but not very stable
There’s the doggy style, which is very stable but results in significantly less screen time for the “dog”
There’s one leg out stretch, which isn’t stable but can easily be held in place with one hand and has a low maintenance threshold.
There’s . . . well, you get the pictures, a hundred different ways in which laptop operating can be accomplished.
When sitting in unusual positions it has happened to all of us that blood flow gets cut off. We’ve all stood up to the feeling of millions of little pins and needles shooting through our veins. If we were lucky we’ve never had to get up to a completely non-responsive leg followed swiftly by an amusing (hopefully) and not too painful (again, hopefully) crash to the ground.
So why do I mention this . . . well, it seems knee-hop is very comfortable . . .
But only until you try to get up.
You’ve had sleeping legs from sitting incorrectly?
You’ve had sleeping arms from your partner lying on your arm while hugging them?
Execute the knee-hop incorrectly and have a sleeping penis!**
Also, turns out that the knee-hop puts my belly in contact with the audio plug opening bits, putting me under constant low-voltage
#2, Jaded
We’re it.
I see people’s reaction to stuff here and it’s 7 kinds of awesome.
Look, look, look. They make plastic versions of their food so you can see what you get!!!!!!
Japan had that.
DAYUM, would you look at the way that girl is dressed??????
tbh, it’s just short. It’s not even any kind of crazy.
OHmahgad, the subway is so clean and it runs on TIME!!!!!
OK, admittedly, that is kinda nice. But they don’t run as often as the Tokyo network. And not as on time as the Swiss.
Fashion victim hikers
I’d be shocked, but only mild amusement fills me as Europe/America has its share of couples with matching bikes and *shiver* anoraks.
The food, it is so exotic
Really? I mean, we’ve lived in other places in SE asia, it’s just rice, little vegetables, meat/fish and hotsauce. Lotsa hotsauce.
None of the women here EVER go out in public without make-up
Yeah, but at least some of em don’t wear heels. You’d never see a Japanese woman without foundation either. In Korean faces it’s just easier to see as the heads don’t wobble so much.
Men here wear shiny suits
A friend of mine got married in one of those.
#3, The bread.
Korea, Korea. You’ve come from pretty basically a 3rd world country, earning less than €1,- per capita on average, to what you are now in only half a century. On your road here you’ve had help, you’ve had examples, you’ve had role-models.
You’ve learned so much from the Americans . . .
Including those thing you really should have asked to the French or the Dutch.
I have it on some good authority your cheeses are bad duplicates of American cheese . . . BAD duplicates of what are already considered bad cheeses.
And the bread . . . your staple for that is based on wonderbread . . . really?
What we won’t suffer for our lifestyle. Wonderbread . . . .
#4, We’re getting fit.
Well . . . fitter. I haven’t gotten all my sport moments planned in yet, but I went from living in Holland, with a verticle gradiant of some 0.004, to living some 100 metres vertical above our metro/bus station. We travel back and forth to this bus/subway station once a day, sometimes twice.
Raphaëlle also experiences this, but she refuses to write funny blogposts about it. Though she uses a few choice words with me to describe it.
#5, Our English, it is improving.
Which might be considered odd. In Japan we were surrounded by the Japanese and the Japanese fiercely adhere to Engrish.
The Koreans aren’t any better or worse than the Japanese in this, or at least, not that we can tell. Slightly different accent, maybe a bit better/worse at the language itself. The T-shirts are about as funny/comprehensible. Yet, here . . . our English improves.
You see, most of our friends are waeguks.
And it seems 80% of waeguks here are either GI or English teacher. For some reason we have yet to fraternize with any American General Infantry types (Though we met an Army wife) which makes ALL our friends English teachers.
They use big words too.
And can explain their proper usage.
Leery, wary with a negative connotation. New word learned.
Now, if we could only get around to doing that with Korean.
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* Written on the day we’re having a closet and a bookcase delivered
** Being of male gender helps with this fascinating new experience.
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Quote of the Day:
I am like a taxidermist, I’ll mount anything.
- T-shirt of woman on my commuter train in Japan
Deze post is ook te lezen in: Dutch