Socks, Charlatans and Cynicism...

It is cold. Very cold and now also quite snowy. I find this irritating back in England, but at least it is generally cold for about eleven and a half months of the year there; so you become numbed to the bleak reality of it all, like someone trapped in a loveless marriage with such an apathy towards life that they can't be bothered to leave.

That's what I like. A grinding existence that means no matter what annoying incident occurs on a given day, your general melancholy meant you half expected it anyway.

But here I was subjected to ludicrous heat and oppressive humidty. Ever the adaptive man I learnt to deal with this and embrace constant perspiration and sporadic sunburn. I have been locked in a private war with mosquitos from June until late November, and then one day they were gone. I had killed all the mosquitos in Daegu and I strutted around my apartment with my chest puffed out and the sneer of an all conquering hero.

But it turned out that it was not me and a magazine that had suddenly rid Daegu of the whining blood suckers, but the fact that in the space of a day it seemed to have gone from warm and muggy to freezing cold. It has been bitterly cold for weeks now and I am ill prepared.
I left many warm garments in England and came out here with sunglasses, flip-flops and a pair of shorts that are too big for my chicken legs.

They say Christmas is a time for giving, and on that note if anyone feels like donating to a good cause, I could do with socks. My socks invariably have holes in them because they are old and I wont buy new ones. Little Spoon made an unrequested suggestion that I buy new socks. She can be quite the revolutionary thinker, but I reminded her that if I wanted her opinion I would ask for it.

I will not buy new socks as that money can and should be spent on either beer or Makgeolli; the latter is Korean Rice Wine and my favourite thing about Korean culture.

My money is limited and it should be spent on me, and not on my feet. I already pushed the proverbial boat into deep waters by buying gloves and I lost those within a week.

So I am cold and in bad spirits, which is a slight downturn from the summer months when I was hot and in bad spirits. This general malaise is not helped when my students try to pull the wool over my eyes and make a fool of me.

Last week a class of the little reprobates was set a project to invent a potion or special cure for a problem in society.
They were to tell me the active ingredients, who they were marketing the product at and what problems it would solve.

I like a good magic potion as much as the next man and given that Korea is packed with magical produce I was expecting big things. Let's not forget that Kimchi (the fermented cabbage dish they all eat) stops people from getting HIV. I was delighted when I found this out and vowed to not only never purchase a condom again but to contemplate intravenous drug use.

When you live in a land of such wonders your expectations are raised and I was alive with the prospect of hearing about how Korean carrots could cure Ebola or the tap water extended life by two score years.

Imagine my anger when two boys lie not only to me but to the public who they are selling this potion to. An unreasonably large boy named Rocky delivers the so called facts...

Rocky: "Our potion is sold to anyone but mostly historians. Its ingredients is water, metal, fairy blood and dragons horn..."

WHOA WHOA...hold on a minute there "Rocky". Hairstyle aside, do I look like an idiot to you? Are the public idiots? Fair enough, most of the public are idiots, but are historians idiots? What sort of arrogance makes you think you can list a mythical ingredient in your potion and then claim it has healing properties?

Water, metal, fairy blood...fine. But Dragons Horn? You're a con man and what is worse a stupid con man; because if there is one group of people outside of zoologists who are not going to fall for the idea of there being dragon horn in this elixir it is historians.
Historians have studied everything there is to know about dragons and I am sure that they are as aware as I am that dragons did not and do not have horns.

Of all the animals to claim you have horn material from, you choose the dragon. You could have said a Rhino or a Unicorn, but no you chose to be deceitful. I don't know what it actually is that you have put in there Rocky, but whatever effect this quack remedy has is at best a placebo.

I was rightfully livid. Placebos make me even more angry than cold weather and threadbare socks. I noticed a friend of mine called Kelly had written on her Facebook about feeling a real improvement in her backpain since going for acupuncture. A lot of our mututal friends responded positively and asked how much it had cost out here.

It was nothing to do with me but I felt the need to pontificate, so I told them all it was a load of crap and the only effect was placebo. They respectfully disagreed, I disrespectfully informed them of peer reviewed studies that showed it to be as much of a sham as the dragon horn in Rocky's now discontinued magic potion.

Nothing briefly raises my spirits like pissing on someone elses parade.

Kelly told me that she read the stuff and went back anyway, but this time it didn't work. Effectively I had ruined acupuncture for her, removed the placebo effect with my facts and she is back to reality with a painful back.

As pleasing as it is to be proved right once again, even I don't wish painful backs on my friends, so I need to try and think of an alternative cure. Hmmm....I am pretty confident that Kelly is not a historian and so with that in mind, perhaps I should give the schools confidence trickster Rocky a call.

All socks can be sent to The Monkey Roberts Cold Foot Campaign, Daegu. Plain colours or striped patterns only please.

The Season Of Good Will And War...

Somehow another year of my pathetically short life has already passed and I find myself once again staring down the barrel of the gun that is Christmas. For the past few years I have suspected that Christmas is now held every six months as it definitely used to take a lot longer to get from one frantic, falsely festive holiday to the next.

I used to love Christmas. But that was when I was a child, and as we all know children are stupid. Babies don't know a damn thing and small children are only slightly more informed, which is why I decided to come and teach.
No matter how dreadful my lesson, no matter how little information I provide these little runts with, they will leave knowing a lot more than they did when the little idiots walked in at the beginning.

I have a small amount of good will and it has to stretch across a whole year (or possibly six months if my suspicions are correct) during which I am bombarded with cretinous behaviour, and forced to smile at people who I would like to set on fire.

I'm not a festive man. I feel for Scrooge and share his passion for delicious humbugs; Christmas would be more fun for me too if I could have my own Tiny Tim Cratchit to sneer at.
So it is with some joy that I have spent the build up to this saccharin sweet time of year in Korea, a nation with very little Christmas spirit and absolutely no Christmas music piping out of every shop and haunting my dreams with its vile tweeness.

Sure I'll miss my family, but they're not going anywhere and at least I haven't had to help decorate a tree. Trees belong outside, where trees live. Why kill one, hang shiny crap on it and prop it up in your front room, where it distracts you from watching the television properly? We could start killing other things that belong outside and dressing them up as a yule time jape.

What's that? Oh that's just a squirrel I ran over and put some sparkly trousers on, he looks good on the mantelpiece doesn't he?

In fact I would not even have known it was Christmas if it weren't for one of my youngest students presenting me with a handmade Christmas card yesterday. In fairness to her, it is pretty impressive and far better than I could have managed with my miserable lack of any artistic ability whatsoever. In fact if you were to look at any picture I have ever drawn, you would question whether the artist even had opposable thumbs.

Inside the card began "Dear. Hello! Teacher I'm Alison nice to meet you."

I know who you are Alison, I've been teaching you for 6 hours a week for the past month, but it appears that either you don't know my name or you are just calling me "Dear" which is a little patronising given that you are 8 years old and barely over 3 foot tall.

At the end it said "Bye Bye" and then "From Alison" but in brackets, almost as an afterthought that the teacher might be such an imbecile (an understandable concern in fairness) that he hadn't realised it was from Alison.

Still I like the card and because she started writing the word "Christmas" too close to the edge, she had to stop at "Christ" and then write "Mas" underneath which gives it a deeper, more religious tone that as an atheist gives me a perverse pleasure.

Afterall, Christmas has become far too commercialised of late and I like to see that the small Christmas spirit that is here is taking it back to basics. It was heartwarming to hear North Korea threaten the South with a "Holy War" yesterday. I read it, sighed and gave a wistful smile. Holy. That's more like it. Back home I would be reading about price wars. Not here where Christmas is given it's true meaning, no we can look forward to a Holy War.

No expense spared mind, apparently nuclear weapons are on the cards too and I said before I came here that I wanted new experiences. A nuclear war is definitely a new experience for me, as I have never even been bombed, let alone by a nuclear bomb. Obviously the downside to this experience would be that I will die. That said so will my boss, so ever cloud has a silver lining and all that.

But in seriousness, it would be typical of my luck if during my first Christmas without nauseating music, office parties of part time drinkers annoying me and all the other irritants of western life, I ended up having it all ruined by being blown up in a war.

Apparently the South Koreans made a small reconciliatory gesture after the monumental war maneuvers, by erecting a giant Christmas Tree on the border of North Korea.

Great, just what we needed. Now if only I had a direct line to Kim Jong Il, I could gleefully tune into CNN to see a baffled reporter announce that in breaking news, the North Koreas had just set up a huge dead squirrel in sparkling trousers on their side of the divide.

Oh yeah, for what it's worth Merry Christmas.

Children vs Old Men...

The title is a bit misleading as sadly I have no tale of a street fight between children and pensioners, although I would pay good money to see such an event. This is really just a comparison between my interaction with Korean children and my relationships with Korean pensioners. Both of which I have worked hard to foster.

Excluding Tiny Gangster who was discovered to have written a whole page in her notebook saying "Kill Monkey Roberts Teacher", I have so far got on well with most Korean children. And even Tiny Gangster seems to be softening her homicidal stance on me, as she actually smiled at me the other day and told me that her mother had told her to shut up when she was crying. I smiled too, it was a heart warming tale.

Outside of my students, I work hard to nurture my standing in the local community and each day sees me make a new and no doubt profound connection. Take yesterday for example, as I ambled down the street in the chill morning air, I had a fascinating conversation with a boy of about eight years old and it is these types of moments that show me I am reaching out and building a rapport between the alien worlds of east and west.

I was passing a school and noticed a cheerful little scamp staring at me. I stared back, two can play at that game you little short arse, let's see who blinks first. He did. But he also broke the tense silence of our stand off...

Stare Out Loser: "Hey!"

Me: "Hey!"

I'd thrown him a curve ball and he had to think for a moment...

Stare Out Loser: "Hi"

Me: "Hi"

Stare Out Loser: "Bye"

Me: "Bye"

Building Bridges.

Now compare that situation (which had gone from a hostile face off to a lifelong friendship) with my encounter later that day with Old Man Suit. Old Man Suit is an old man who wears a suit. The clues are in his name to be fair, but things are not always what they seem out here so I felt the need to clarify.

Old Man Suit goes to my gym and he either waits until he sees me walking in before appearing or he lives in the gym and never leaves. Because no matter what time I go, Old Man Suit is there. I'm a generous man and whilst it would be nice if the owners kicked out all Koreans during my workouts and gave me the place to myself, it is not something I expect and certainly not something I have demanded.

I can live with waiting for the odd machine, but I am rapidly growing tired of Old Man Suit. Firstly he "works out" in a suit. Why would anyone do that? That irks me almost as much as people in wheelchairs driving on the roads whilst the motorcyclists ride on the pavements.

Secondly Old Man Suit watches me with suspicion, as if I am the freak for coming to the gym in shorts and a t-shirt and carrying a water bottle. Old Man Suit drinks green tea in a transparent flask whilst "working out" and after each sip will shoot a mildly dissaproving look in my direction.

Now you may wonder why I have put speech marks around working out for the actitives that Old Man Suit conducts. Well I shall tell you, and in doing so explain my third and final reason for hating him.

He spends around 25 minutes on a single machine. "And why is that?" I hear you chime. Because he puts so little weight on the machine that it cannot reasonably constitute exercise anymore than putting on your socks in the morning classes as a workout. I'm no Arnold Schwarzenegger, (if anything I'm more Democrat than Republican) but Old Man Suit removes all the weights until he is just moving the pulley or the bar on the machine, over and over and over again.

He would get a more vigorous workout by making himself a large sandwich and repeatedly lifting it to his mouth to only take teenie, little bites and then returning it to the plate before another lift. If he used a heavy sandwich filling like cheddar it might double the mass that he currently lifts at the gym.

So I have to wait. I wait for a machine or I use one I don't want to, whilst this staring, suit clad weakling performs pointless tasks for what must be five thousand repetitions.

I hate you Old Man Suit and I shall not be building any bridges with you. Anyway, even if I tried he would probably spend a decade building his side of the bridge in miniscule steps, all whilst wearing a suit instead of workmen's overalls.

Talking of exercise, I have set a date for my race with Little Spoon. If your new to the blog, please do read all the back history it's really riveting stuff, but as a heads up, Little Spoon is small, says stupid things and runs about five miles a day. I have always opposed running and even walking is known to grate on me.

But in April we will run a half marathon. I might do it in a suit.

The topic of running leads me to my students once more and whilst not funny, this case once again just left me feeling that half of the time I teach it is just a little surreal.

The kids in one of my classes had to come up with a new sports team for a class project the other day; devise the name, choose the sport and design a uniform for them. One group actually chose a running club, and offered a good explanation for why they chose running and for why the club uniforms were red. But they offered not a single word on why the clubs name was "Passion of the Monkey".

As great a name as it was, I felt it needed some explanation and yet when asked for the reason for the name, they just shook their heads and said "just because".

I let it go, due to my fondness for monkeys and crowned them the winning group in a totally unbiased judgement.

Goodbye for now, this was Monkey Roberts.

Road Rules, Rip Offs And Pasta.

An eclectic bag of issues for you today, mainly gripes, no actually all gripes which might be surprising given my usually sunny disposition. None of these issues are a huge concern in reality, but I like to make mountains out of mole hills and feel that I have been far too culturally sensitive so far. It's time for a little sneering superiority and Brit abroad complaining.

The first issue is the way these people drive. Not just how they drive, but where they drive. Where? I hear ask. Well on the roads obviously. WRONG. If you ride a motorbike, you ride it wherever the hell you please, which means as much on the pavement (sidewalk) as the road.

As I saunter along the street, whistling and waving to the countless little scamps who shout hello at me as I pass, a motorbike will come tearing around the corner and veer out of the way at the last minute.
I look around, perhaps I'm drunk again and have been wandering down the middle of a busy highway. No. I am on the pavement. On the pavement and contemplating buying a large stick to ram into the wheel of passing motorbikes.

Because most of them don't wear helmets either. Let's see how many pavements you ride on when you have brain damage and two broken legs genius.

This is a constant irritant and yet I have not once used my stick, such is my good nature. Even more baffling is the fact that I keep seeing old people in electronic wheel chairs. And guess where they are wheeling about? Yeah on the road.

Perhaps the wheel chair bound road hogs were previously pavement riding motorcyclists who met with an angry western man and a large stick.

The second issue is not one that is often a problem here, given how everything is cheap. In fact rip offs are few and far between, but my school likes to stand out from the crowd and if we can do something on the cheap, you better believe we will.

A very brief introduction to our "system". Kids are awarded bonus tickets for doing their homework, winning class presentations etc and in the past these tickets could be used to buy a couple of marks on a class test to avoid retesting. However, that has been scrapped much to the horror of the overworked slave children who have to get 75% on any given test just to avoid staying behind after a three hour class to resit.

Instead we were told that at the end of the term there would be a market, with gifts, sumptious spreads of food and a veritable gold mine of activities and games for the kids to spend their tickets on. The mind boggled at what delights would await these lucky children.
Over the weeks as they worked their little fingers to the bone for more of these precious tickets they pressed me on what gifts there would be to buy. I had heard of other schools doing this system where Mp3 players, DVDs and even a Nintendo Wii were up for grabs.

I assured my kids this would be a day to remember.

So it was with much anticipation that our staff gathered to hear the details of this Saturdays market. It started off well, not only was there to be the market but in addition a flea market. I seemed to be the only one who didn't know what a flea market was, but there were signs all over the school. Apparently it would have second hand and novelty items for sale. Erm....right.

So what of the culinary delights in the food market? What cutting edge gifts would we be selling? Out with it, I cannot wait any longer.

Crisps (Chips to you Americans)
Gummi Bears
Coke

And not even the good sort of coke. The crappy black, fizzy liquid type.

Pathetic. Oh well at least they can buy gifts. What's on offer?

Even I was not expecting to hear what I heard. Such a range, such imagination. In all honesty I felt we might have gone too far, pushed the boat out a little too much, and were frankly spoiling these kids.

Pencils. But wait, that was not all. Pencil Cases. Stop, stop this is too much, a case for pencils? I don't know if the children will be able to handle all this. It is one thing to feel the surge of adrenaline that every child gets upon receiving a brand new pencil, but to then realise that it is within your grasp to buy a case that can hold multiple pencils....

We were risking a riot here. What if we ran out of pencil cases in the initial rush of ecstatic children? Sure we had notepads for sale too, and no doubt that would satisfy a good number of them, as afterall who is not calmed and euphoric by a good notepad? But I still felt uneasy about these pencil cases. Sometimes less is more and we had definitely gone for the more is more philosophy.

We were told that the one small problem with this otherwise outstanding market was that we had nothing for the flea market. Apparently the posters were printed and put up before the Korean staff contemplated what would actually be on sale. So we were asked to donate things. I explained that I had a broken, hand held vacuum cleaner that I could donate or there was an unused sponge and half bottle of bleach that were also possible gifts.

These didn't seem to be what they were after. Unbelievable. So I have to buy things for the flea market? Brilliant. Now I'm being ripped off and this seems quite unfair given that there is no way the kids will be feeling ripped off when they turn up on Saturday with 3 months of hard earned bonus tickets and go home with a pencil and a can of coke.

Games wise...well there had been nothing planned or organised by the school so it was all put upon Tiny or Tiny Teacher as she prefers to be known. And thankfully she came up with a host of good ideas, spent a lot of time working it all out and so there should be some enjoyable distractions for the children to avert their attention from the flea market and the pencil stand.

Seeing as I am on a bitter rant about employers, I will end with another quirk of Korea that has good intentions but is misplaced. It all stems from what seems to be a recent obsession with pasta. Western food is pretty popular here anyway, especially amongst the kids, but pasta in particular is viewed as exotic and special. A large number of teachers have told me of how their boss insisted on taking them out for a special treat and it would invariably be to a pasta restaurant.

Two friends Josh and Nat were dragged out on a Saturday off to be carted around Daegu by their boss and proudly taken to some generic pasta joint. Their boss beamed at them and took them in as if these poor English people had never seen the likes of spaghetti bolognese before.

Oh pasta? WOW. I don't know what to say. I mean we haven't eaten pasta since...I don't know, last night at home. But before that it must have been...well at least 24 hours, because oh yeah we don't have a cooker, so by the time we get home from work at 10.30pm to use our little two hob stove, what do we cook? Pasta. Five times a fucking week and now here we are on our day off with the heart pounding excitement of eating pasta. Again.

Luckily for me, my boss despite thinking children love pencils, does know that western people love drinking and thus all our staff nights out have involved large amounts of beer and soju. Both things that the kids would probably prefer to what they will find at their school market tomorrow.

Dissed by Tiny Gangster!

It's been a busy few days and if you are perched on the edge of your seat wondering what on earth has been going on to classify my days as "busy" then never fear I intend to inform you.
However, I am not going to go into any real detail and so the explanation will probably leave you sorely dissapointed and moving back from the edge of your seat to the more comfortable middle area, maybe even the luxurious back of your seat.

A new term began on Monday. That's my explanation. New classes and new kids.

I was generally delighted to see the back of most of my kids and no doubt they were fairly jubilant at being freed from my idea of education. In fact I was recently shown a British advert aiming to cut CO2 emissions that was withdrawn after huge complaints because it showed a teacher blowing numerous children into bits with the push of a red button if they said they were not interested in some poxy school project to cut CO2.

After watching it, my immediate thought was "I'd love one of those buttons". Half of my kids would already be unidentifiable bloody chunks strewn across the walls.

That said there were quite a few kids who have been great and it's a shame I wont have them around. One of my favourites was of course the star of last weeks blog, the miniature little girl with huge attitude known to me as "Tiny Gangster". I'd long considered Tiny Gangster as good a friend as a small, aggressive child with broken English could ever be. Until our last class together.

It is still painful to drag up these memories but I think I need to open up and move on. It was a Thursday 4pm class like any other. The class idiot (who I renamed Humpty Dumpty) was putting on his usual show of cretinous behaviour to the amusement of a couple of fellow idiots who escaped from whichever village formerly employed them and the teachers pets were waving their homework at me as if they had a winning lottery ticket.

I made my way around this collection of midgets checking their homework and offering feeble reprimands to those who had done nothing. And then I got to Tiny Gangster. She was busy scribbling in a notebook.

Hmmmm...what was this? It could be a hit list of some sort, perhaps she was doing some sums on whether her latest cocaine shipment was well priced. I decided to take it off her and look at it. Big mistake. She shot me a look of cold hatred and sneered at me, but 3 months of seeing her act like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas had hardened me to such visual barbs.

But when I opened the book my self esteem was in tatters. Inside was a fairly good sketch of Justice Teacher. If you have only just started reading, Justice is a friend and co worker who used to have the honour of teaching Tiny Gangster. The caption to this picture read "Justice Teacher, Small Handsome."

Picky little bitch. But whatever, I turned the page, there was another sketch and again it was pretty good, but the caption sent shock waves pulsing through my frame. "Monkey Roberts Teacher, Very Ugly".

WHAT?! Very ugly? I put the book down with trembling hands and walked back to my desk. How long that journey took I couldn't say, I was dazed, confused and terrified of catching a glimpse of my reflection in the computer monitor.
Very ugly? Surely I could have at least qualified for "Distinctly Average"? In fact at that moment I'd have settled for "Moderately Ugly", but VERY UGLY?

Tiny Gangster we were supposed to be friends. But then again, she was the girl who last week told me she wanted to punch her mother in the face for being ugly. I wonder if her mother has also stumbled unwittingly across sketches of herself that have been so cruelly labelled?

As the class ended I needed to consider my options. Plastic surgery is popular and quite cheap here in Korea. If I stopped wasting all of my expendable income on alcohol then I could perhaps save up and sort my Elephant Man face out. But before I made such a rash decision I was given a boost of confidence from one of the older students who is in one of the highest levels.

I briefly taught Anna who some may remember told me it was a scientific fact that men were better drivers than women. I had warmed to her for her healthy realism and now she was to save my shattered ego.

Tiny Teacher (Justices wife) has Anna for her high level listening class. During this class, Tiny informed me that Anna had asked the class if they knew Monkey Roberts Teacher. She then proceded to tell them that I was incredibly handsome and brilliant. Tiny then played a game with the class where they pick a card with an adjective on it and have to choose something that reflects this term.

Anna picked a card with the word refined on it. And in a heartbeat said "Monkey Roberts Teacher". And according to Tiny the conversation went like this...

Tiny: "What? Monkey Roberts Teacher is refined?"

Anna: "Yes teacher, so refined, so handsome and he is the perfect height."

Tiny: "The perfect height? Really? No?"

Anna: "Yes Teacher, the perfect height and so so handsome."

At this point in the story I stopped Tiny and scolded her for playing Devils Advocate with a girl who clearly knew her heights and had a strong sense of what constitutes refinement.

But Anna stuck to her guns and whilst her attempting to hug me in the corridors and telling me that she had a dream about me is about as unnerving and inappropriate as it gets, I do admire her excellent taste. My confidence is back to its best, brimming with arrogance I felt like tracking down Tiny Gangster and giving her a brief talking to...

"Well well well, Tiny Gangster you must be feeling pretty stupid right now. Because Anna says I am perfect and very handsome and as you may note she is the highest level, thus very intelligent...

Need I remind you that you are the lowest level and in the same class as Humpty Dumpty, so I think we can both agree that you are wrong and Anna is right. I'd be pretty embarrassed to show my face around these parts again if I was you, now off you trot and don't kiss your teeth at me."

So with my ego back to form I embarked on my new classes with a fairly positive attitude and have immediately found a group who clearly share my sense of humour.

On Wednesday in a lesson about Regenerative Medicine we had to hear a tale about a 69 year old man who was working on a model aeroplane when his finger got sliced off by the propellor. As the MP3 lecture told us that the old man got too close and had his finger torn off, the class erupted with laughter.

I was delighted. We all found a pensioner being disfigured for playing with toy planes funny. It's going to be a good term.

Apostrophes, Lanterns And Two More Kids.

It has been more than two weeks since I wrote a blog, and what a two weeks it has been. I have managed to do a great deal and yet not one bit of it is probably of much interest to anyone reading this. In fact a good deal of it wasn't even interesting to me and I was there doing these things by choice.

As I was writing my last blog about being invited to numerous festivals including a lantern festival, my mobile phone bleeped at me. Just as I finished writing that I would never change my shallow existence, I checked the text message, it was from my friend Yatesy:

"Lantern Festival in Seoul this weekend, what do you reckon?"

I looked at my blog. To stay true to my words I would have to refuse this invitiation, or I could totally backtrack and agree to go. As always I stuck to none of my guns and cheerfully agreed to see some lanterns.
Little Spoon, Dubs and Zucchini completed our group and it was off to Seoul.

The first stop was for traditional tea in a Korean Tea Shop. I love my tea, but I like Tetleys or to my American readers "English Breakfast Tea" and this ramshackle little joint had a menu of teas and not one option for a mug of Tetleys with milk. I curled my lip and glared at the waitress, but being the gentleman that I am agreed to order one of their traditional teas and not cause a scene.

I ordered "Dew Tea" which upon its arrival appeared to actually be dew collected from the ground in the morning, heated in a small pot and sold to gullible tourists for seven thousand won (Seven US dollars). It tasted of nothing. Which was preferable to the pot that Zucchini ordered which tasted like a cross between treacle and mud.

Dubs was happy with his pine nut tea, that had two pine nuts in it, and Yatesy drank some bizarre dishwater with dried flowers floating in it. Little Spoon was at this point already in a bar with friends drinking Bourbon. I'd missed a trick, but at least I was being cultural.

Lantern Festival next, and it was interesting to begin with. Sort of a glorified Blackpool Lights and if you are not British and don't know what Blackpool Lights is like, imagine a much tackier, smaller scaled version of the Seoul Lantern Festival.

The river was nice and some of the lanterns were decent, but some of them were just odd and there appeared to be half of the city in attendance which meant it took me two hours to walk about half a mile. Here are some of the lanterns from the good to the odd...





I was generally happy I went to the Lantern Festival but I wouldn't rush back, it was too busy and there were too many lanterns for my liking. That said Seoul was brilliant and I returned to Daegu full of optimism about a new blog.

But my chirpy state of mind was brutally crushed by some stinging criticism of my blog from a good friend back home. This little upstart works in publishing and is reading this now. She lambasted me for my lack of apostrophes. Well let me explain myself.

I am what is called in some circles a maverick. I don't teach English in the way you people deem it proper and I laugh in the face of grammatical rules. I embrace apostrophes for contractions like a long lost friend, but I spit in the eye of apostrophes for possessives like a long lost enemy.

You might not like my renegade spirit, but one day we will live in a world where writing "Donalds pencil case" is the norm and the old bigots from the past will have to hide behind closed doors and bemoan this exciting and dangerous new era.

Rest assured my kids are taught from the pages of my own book of rules and as they flourish under my assinine tutorage, I get the joy of having yet more surreal conversations.

The first exchange was with a tiny girl of about eight years old in my lowest level class who struts around the school like she is a rap star, kisses her teeth at students and will shake her fist at me if she dislikes something I've said. On this day she wanted to ask about my parents and how tall they were. I explained and she nodded gravely and then filled me in on her own situation.

Tiny Gangster: "Ah good teacher. My mother she is a very tall and a very fat"

Me: "Oh I see, and how about your father is he tall too?"

Tiny Gangster: "No teacher is a crazy. Mother is crazy tall and fat, but my father he is a very small and a very fat."

Me: "Oh...I see. Well..."

Tiny Gangster (interrupting and shaking her fist): "My mother...I want to her a punching."

Me: "You want to punch your mother? Why?"

Tiny Gangster: "Because she has the ugly face."

Fair enough.

And although not violent or aggressive, one of my more lively classes brought up a shock result in a discussion of their favourite stars and celebrities. I asked them to give me names and reasons...and a fairly unsurprising list unfolded for the first minute.
David Beckham because he is good at football. Leonardo Di Caprio because he is handsome. Girls Generation (Korean pop band) because they are very pretty. Ji Sung Park because he is a famous Korean and plays for Manchester Utd.

As the board filled up with actors, singers and sports stars, one boy suddenly shouts out "David Cameron".
The rest of the class erupt with screams of "Who, who is he?"

I think I must have misheard.

Me: "Did you say your favourite star is David Cameron?"

Young Tory: "Yes, David Cameron"

Me: "The joint Prime Minister of Britain?"

Young Tory: "Yes, David Cameron, Prime Minister."

I stand quietly for a minute and look at this boy. He is grinning at me in a disconcerting fashion.

Me: "Okay, so erm...why David Cameron."

Now this boy is laughing and shaking his head, "No no just joking teacher."

I'm lost. Is this some subtle Korean humour that I haven't grasped yet? What's the joke? Really he likes Nick Clegg? Or maybe it was a joke about the very notion of liking a politician because he is an eleven year old anarchist. I'll never know, as he wouldn't expand upon it any more and I became distracted by one of the other students pushing crayons into his ears.

Right, I'm off to drink some tea and not the type that is made from rain water and costs me more than two beers.

Am I The Most Shallow Man In Daegu?

I am facing another personal crisis. In only five months I have dealt with numerous traumas with a heroism and ingenuity that few could match. From the disaster of my Small Off competition I rose like a Phoenix from the flames to win back my friends with a dynamic almost virtuoso vocal performance in a Korean karaoke aka Norebang.

I was then shamed into addressing my feeble physical fitness and two months on I'm still at the gym, righting eight years of wrongs. But now it is my very person that is being exposed for the shallow, juvenile shambles that it is.

Initially I put my concerns down to having too many American friends.
They are enthusiastic about everything and my quiet apathy towards planet earth and human existence doesn't always look so great when alongside a people who use words like "awesome" to describe a warm drink.

But as the weeks have drifted by, it has become painfully apparent that they are simply more rounded people than me. All of them. And not just the Americans, every single friend I have here loves all manner of things and is passionate about numerous hobbies or natural wonders.

They all like hiking for a start. This is anathema to me as the only reason I walk at all is because I wasn't born able to teleport from one space to the next and thus far none of my friends have agreed to push me from spot to spot in a wheelchair or work as a team to carry me in a sedan chair.

Enthusiastic Friend:"Hey we're going for a hike just outside Daegu, fancy coming along?"

Me: "What? Oh a friendly invitiation, well I was planning on watching re-runs of old British comedies and eating yogurt today, but as you've asked, what's at this hike? Anything to do when it ends?"

Still Enthusiastic Friend: "Well sure, it ends in a little town, we'll probably get something to eat and have a drink or two, but the walk is going to be aweso..."

Me (rudely butting in): "Ah okay, and how long will this hike take?"

Fairly Enthusiastic Friend: "About three hours."

Me: "Right well you guys set off and in about two hours and fourty-five minutes I'll get a taxi and meet you in the town."

Herein lies the problem. I'm becoming known as a man who only likes to drink beer and eat food. That's not fair, I like at least three other things and by God I want credit for them.
But everywhere I turn there are new opportunities to prove to my friends that I am a man with the depth of a paddling pool.

There is a festival of some sort every bloody week in Korea. I had probably been to one festival in my entire life before coming here and I've been to three in five months. Sandcastles, Fireworks and one based on Mud! Who the hell has a festival about Mud? Koreans. And sure I had a good time, but I still complained, it was too muddy.

Now I'm being invited to lantern festivals, foreign film festivals, Kimchi festivals...and when I don't go they look at me, and they know I wont be watching adults making lanterns out of coloured paper, because I will be in a bar. I'm losing a little bit of them,day by day.
Soon they will grow weary of the sardonic Brit with a drinking problem routine and cast me aside like a badly made lantern at a festival celebrating well made lanterns.

My problem is that a lot of what I like is either surreal or puerile. So the Monkeys racing Greyhounds that I love or a debate on who would win in a fight out of a Rhinoceros and a Hippopotamus. In case you're wondering, my research suggests it comes down to the fight venue. On land, the Rhino wins in brutal fashion, but in the water the Hippo takes his man down...anyway...

If I don't want to be alone in my room cursing these people for their well rounded personalities and broad range of interests, I need to do something and do it fast. I have two options. Firstly I could open my mind to new experiences, try new things and expand my horizons or alternatively I could become a compulsive liar.

Liar it is then.

I can picture it now...

Friend with many interests: "Hey man, here's something you will like, we're going to a bar in about an hour, I'm sure you'll come right?"

Me: "Don't be so sure my friend, whilst I will join you later for a mineral water, I'm actually downloading Irish Gypsy Bareknuckle...erm...I mean...I've just downloaded a documentary on Nietzsche and his influence on existentialism. So once I've made notes on that, I'll see you there. Good day."

But what about when I get to the bar? I will need to continue to dupe my friends with a carefully crafted web of deceit...

Another friend with a myriad interests: "So good documentary?"

Me: "Yes although I got distracted as my new book on Renaissance Art was delivered yesterday and I've been dying to dive in."

Now Excited Friend: "Oh dude AWESOME, I love the Renaissance Era, who is your favourite?"

Me: "Oh...erm...well...I think to choose a favourite would do a disservice to the impact of a plethora of great works...anyway just a tick, I must urinate..."

This is going to be tough. Very very tough. And now it is getting worse, because my interesting friends are adding hobbies and classes to their already multifaceted characters. Dubs wants to start Yoga! Zucchini (formerly known as Emily, but everyone wants a nickname now) has taken up meditation and Rude Boy Yatesy, Tiny and several others take Korean classes.

Damn them all. I will need to hide indoors and lie about being at a class. Where am I? Oh I'm just starting my basket weaving class, and will meet them in a couple of hours. Yes yes basket weaving, I've always liked to er weave things and baskets...represent the...human spirit??

FUCK THIS.

It won't work. I have to embrace my miserable array of interests and my awful personality and use it to drag the others down to my level. I cannot change, I will not change and I refuse to be made to feel guilty about it any longer. I am who I am, and as a great man once said "I will not apologise, I'm sorry but that's just the way I am."

A Firework Festival Not To Be Missed...

Another week of outstanding teaching had drawn to a close. In my last lesson I had been teaching the kids about Egyptians and the process of creating mummies, and the fact that Egyptians dried and preserved the heart but discarded the brain came to light.

One girl frowned and asked me why they thought the brain was useless and I pointed out that thousands of years ago they had no idea that the brain controlled all the things in the body and so they didn't see it as important for the afterlife but the heart was seen as vital. She frowned some more...

Little Frown Face: "So they didn't know the brain was important...that's stupid. But they knew the heart was important, that's clever."

I nodded sagely and said that the fact you can hear and feel the heart would have drawn them in part to its importance. And she then offered a beautiful summation of one of the worlds most incredible ancient civilisations.

Little Frown Face: "I think Egpytians was part genius, part idiots"

I couldn't agree more. I mean wrapping your wizened corpse in bandages...genius. Building big houses for them in the shape of a pyramid...idiotic. Fuck Ancient Egypt and their dismissal of the importance of neural pathways.

But the frowing little wench had cheered me up and I was off to meet Dubs, Yatesy and Emily for a trip back to Busan. I had not been to Busan since my first weekend here and that excursion had resulted in a new admiration for sandcastle carvings and an unforgettable encounter with a psychotic Korean girl. Could this venture possibly live up to the last?

Well we were going to see a mammoth firework festival. Busan always seems to have festivals, last time it was the sandcastles and now fireworks. I don't much care for fireworks, but then I'm not exactly a sandcastle enthusiast and the last trip worked out great, so I was brimming with unusual optimism.

We got on the train, rang our friends Miss Dreads and Mountain to arrange a meeting spot and I tucked into a bottle of Soju and some beer as is customary on my journeys on public transport.

One hour later and we arrive and leap into a taxi "To the fireworks good man and let's not waste a moment more."

Hmmm...our good man looked puzzled. We did some firework impressions which in hindsight may have seemed just like a group of drunk white people making random noises and waving their arms in the arm whilst nodding. It's not easy being a human and trying to impersonate a small explosive projectile.

But he began to drive. This is not good. Where the hell is he driving to? What if he takes us to some weird new age club where people wave their hands in the air and make random noises whilst nodding? And then he turns on a little TV that is in his cab, and by a wonderful coincidence it was showing a firework display on it. And what a display. We point eagerly at the TV and wave some more. He understands and we race off at around 12mph through heavy traffic.

Fourty-Five minutes later and we watch the finale to the Busan firework festival on a 7 inch television monitor in a taxi. It was a great display and I don't feel we missed out at all by watching it on a tiny TV in a cramped taxi, but we are still stuck in traffic. So we decide to walk.

We meet Mountain and Miss Dreads, they wax lyrical about the display and suggest drinking on the beach and playing some drinking games. I'm already drunk and already on the way to being belligerent about their choice of games.

Dubs decides to distract me with his own firework display, by purchasing ten Roman Candles and setting them off on the beach. The display could best be described as impotent, but it's the thought that counts and cheered up I agree to play their games but in a cynical and some what spoil sport of a manner.

At about 4am I've had enough of drinking and I'd imagine everyone has had enough of me, and it's time to find a warm shelter for the night. At which point Emily takes us to something called a Jimjibong. Technically a bathhouse but with saunas and you can sleep there for $10 a night.
Without a doubt this is the most surreal, non artifically induced experience of my life. The place was six floors high and looked like a 5 star hotel.

A huge water slide ran down the centre of the building into a pool and everywhere is marble. But it is as if the hotel owners thought "We could book out rooms or we could just charge people to sleep anywhere and everywhere. Yeah let's go with the latter."

You get changed into what seemed like prison or concentration camp style pyjamas. Then you have a little mat and a small brick like pillow and sleep anywhere there is space. But there wasn't. Any room that is. The Fireworks had clearly dragged in hundreds.
God knows why, when they could have just watched it in a taxi, but it meant there were people everywhere. All sleeping. I am stepping over bodies strewn across every corridor, in every corner and on the stairwells. There is a childrens play area with kids asleep on the climbing frames.

I am creeping about like some action film hero who has put sleeping gas into the enemy headquarters. But what action hero ever wore beige pyjamas?

We wander for what seems like hours, floor to floor, room to room and then Emily finds a metal shutter, presses a button, a flashing light goes off and the shutter slowly raises up to reveal a restaurant closed down for the night. Ha, jackpot. Nobody is in there, presumably because it was locked up and nobody is supposed to go in there.

I find a fantastic spot near a buffet cart and settle down, dreaming of fireworks and drinking games. And then awake at 6.30am being shaken by an irate restaurant manager. Apparently he doesn't want me sleeping in here when customers start arriving for breakfast. The cheek of the man. I was livid, gave him a dressing down for his impudence and decided it was time to leave this bizarre, beige bath house.

As we headed back to Daegu I thought about the Egyptians and realised that Korean Jimjibongs have much in common. Huge hotels with water slides and restaurants you can break into? Genius. Hundreds of people in identical pyjamas sleeping everywhere and insolent restaurant managers interrupting your sleep? Idiotic.

At Last A Kindred Spirit In Class...

I realise my blogs are becoming a little bogged down in my lessons (I almost went for a pun of "blogged down" but realised it didn't work at all)and very little else, but I promise that soon I will return to riveting tales of me behaving like a cretin at nighttime or blathering on about what I had for lunch.

So cut me some slack and use some empathy when I tell you of my latest predicament.

It was a chilly Saturday afternoon and I was on my way to teach. "On a Saturday?!", I hear you shout in rage...well quite. This semester I have had Saturdays off, but Blancquita went back to the USA for three weeks and I was lumbered with her higher level class on a Saturday afternoon.
Ever the professional, I altered nothing of my Friday night schedule and decided that preparation was uncalled for, as I would wing it based on my quick wits and charming persona.

So bleary eyed and having yet to so much as glance at the subject for the day, I staggered into my class and found a small group of some of the schools best English speakers. These kids probably have a better vocabulary than half of my friends back home and they expect and want a high quality lesson. Well here is one of lifes lessons kids, you don't always get what you want.

I didn't want to be here, but here I am and now you will share my pain for the next three hours.

I handed out their tests and decided that I would use this time to work out what I was going to say about the days topic. I open the book. I begin to read. Oh God no...please no. I feel my hands shaking and bile rising up into my throat and bile shouldn't be there, it should be in the small intestine.

Todays topic was a pro feminist discussion on why women make superior police officers. Now some of you don't know me that well but some of you sadly do and those who do can only imagine the horror that this posed to an antiquated, boorish chauvinist like myself.

I could already envisage myself three hours from now, sat gently sobbing under a hot shower as I scrubbed at my red raw skin with a brillo pad and bleach.

I am not paid anywhere near enough for this. But I am a professional and I did do Drama at high school. Hey, if I could play the role of an alcoholic father and a mere two minutes later switch seamlessly into character as a detective, surely I could pull off this lesson with some level of believability?

And so it began...but then I saw a glimmer of hope. There was a section where I was to ask the kids which jobs were male dominated and how we could change this. Instead I asked them to tell me which jobs were dominated by each gender and why they thought this was. And here it was that Koreas ingrained sexist culture began to rear it's beautiful head.

The first male dominated job they came up with was a Taxi Driver. Good, and what else? From here I was given Bus Driver, Train Driver, Subway Driver, Pilot and The Captain of a Ship. Right yes lots of drivers. One boy pipes up with "Garbage collector" and I asked him if that was because they have to drive a Garbage Truck. They were all very amused...easy crowd.

So I asked why were driving jobs dominated by men...and a girl named Anna decided to explain it...

Anna: "Because men are better drivers"

Oh I could kiss you Anna, but I wont because it would result in instant dismissal and possible jail time. Instead I will play Devils Advocate despite the glaring truth of your astute observation...

Me: "Okay so that might be the attitude in society and maybe that's putting women off these jobs, so do you think it is the idea that men are better drivers that stops women, or do you really think men are actually better drivers?"

Anna: "No teacher it is real, men are better drivers"

Me: "Okay interesting, maybe that is true..."

Anna: "Not maybe teacher, it is a scientific fact"

Well, I'm not going to be the one to argue with science, so that settled it.

But this once terrifying lesson continued to get better. It came to their class presentations, two groups of girls and one group of boys, all in pairs and they had to present their views on gender bias and whether gender roles in jobs should be changed.

At this point they all asked various questions about which examples they could use, how much fact to opinion was acceptable etc and it was looking good. Then I hear one of the boys say to the other "We should just explain why men are better" and his team mate said "No, we will lose, teacher will not like it."

Ah...my poor deluded child, how little you know me. I said "You can do whatever you like, I wont grade you on whether I agree with you, but whether or not you support your argument with good vocabulary terms and relevant examples"

And so the three groups presented. The first girls group was excellent, they spoke for five minutes with a multitutde of examples and a truly objective and fair stance. The second girls group was shorter but even better, the scientist Anna argued that outside of spatial awareness in driving, most biological differences had no bearing on the gender roles in jobs. I was impressed.

Finally the boys. Don't let me down lads.

Jack: "Gender bias is good, because men are better than women."

Strong start.

Harry: "Women can only do two jobs well, babysitting and cooking Dukbokki"

At this point I should point out that Dukbokki is a very nice but fairly simple dish often sold by street vendors or for fairly cheap in Korean cafes etc.

Jack: "Yes women cook Dukbokki well, but men cook luxurious foods from across the world and they drive a lot better. Women cannot drive very well, they are good at babysitting"

By this point I am laughing. They then list all the things that men can drive and believe me if you know of a vehicle it was probably included in their list. The girls are going crazy "No teacher why are you laughing, stop it's bad"

I explained it was very funny but that didn't mean I agreed. And to be honest their presentation was by far and away the worst. Listing a long line of things men drive and saying women babysit doesn't quite stand up to the in depth discussion of human biology and social influences on jobs that the winning girls group did.

If anything by the end I felt that Jack and Harry might have set the mens movement back a little and given some credence to the outrageous claims of the days lesson.

Still at least I could go home and shower without the need for bleach or scouring utensils.

Demons in Daegu...Beware the Red Mask!

Since promising to update this ramshackle blog twice a week, I have in fact managed to leave it almost two weeks before this latest collection of irrelevant and random information. But if you hear the chilling tale I am about to unveil, I feel you will understand why my mind has been in turmoil and rather than typing out segments of my mundane existence I have been peering through cracks in the curtains and securing my windows and doors.

The living nightmare I know inhabit is down to my local Korean information board, also known as fourteen year olds Sera and Amy who I teach twice a week and who have so far taught me about rabbits living on the moon and of course the famous Dinosore (sic) "Clecle".

Our lessons are becoming a form of cultural exchange, where I teach them something of a little use that improves their English and they teach me something of absolutely no value whatsoever that makes me look at the map of Korea, frown and shake my head in a condescending fashion.

But nothing could have prepared me for the shock of learning about the band of marauding demonic spirits that stalk the Daegu streets at night. How this came up I can't quite remember, but I'd imagine that it was a successful attempt by one of them to veer me off topic and thus give themselves a break from my interminably dull style of teaching.

One of the girls began to tell me about "The Red Mask". This was apparently a woman who would knock on your door at night or approach you on a quiet street and ask if you thought she was beautiful. If you answered her in any fashion she would then slash your mouth open to give you the appearance of The Joker from Batman.

Apparently the Red Mask had herself got this distinctive scar, and she has been adding people to her exclusive club of facially mutilated Koreans for several years. I was fairly displeased with this news and told my students so.

Me: "She sounds very unreasonable and I think someone should put a stop to this. Have any of you called the police? This is exactly the sort of thing the police can help with."

Amy: "No teacher, police can no help..."

Me: "Woah there Amy, I understand your cynicism, but you cannot lose all faith in the police. They can help. Let's call them, tell them all about this awful Red Mask lady and get her put where she belongs: Behind Bars."

Sera and Amy: "NO TEACHER! Is no lady, is ghost spirit. Police can no stop Red Mask"

Ah. This was trickier than I thought. So the Red Mask was a "ghost spirit", which in my experience is possibly the worst type of spirit you can find. I put the English books back on the shelf and told them to put away their work, this was no time for learning.
I needed to know more and to find a way to rid Daegu of this peril. I am afterall a superficial man and the last thing I want is to end up teaching a group of teenagers who are not only utterly bored with me, but also horrendously scarred and difficult to look at.

Me: "I'll sort this out girls. Other than the sliced open mouth what does she look like? Does she actually have a red mask?"

Sera: "Red Mask is her a name. She very tall teacher, maybe taller than you and long hair."

Taller than me? She was taller than my towering height of 6ft? Preposterous. Who was this Red Mask? The demonic reincarnation of Robert Wadlow in drag? I had had my doubts to the validity of this ghost-spirit at the outset but now the realms of believabilty were being truly tested.

I was about to dismiss this whole thing and return to my monotone, subdued lesson on the rainforests when Amy dropped another bombshell.

Amy: "She is worst mask. More bad than Blue Mask"

What in the name of Vishnu? It turned out there was a Blue Mask who pulled your eyes out. But it didn't stop there, Daegu was home to a veritable A-Team of demons. A Black Mask who removes the top of your head and eats your brain, a White Mask who does something they can't remember and last of all a Yellow Mask who gives you....wait for it....A BIG NOSE!

They seemed fairly concerned about the Yellow Mask, but I felt and still do feel that he or she is letting down the team. Whilst the rest of the Masks clearly take their work seriously and vary from tearing your face open to leaving you dead with an empty skull, the Yellow Mask gives you a larger than average nose. Pathetic attempt. I'm happy with my nose in its current form, but if the Yellow Mask brutally gave me a larger one, I'm sure I could cope.

To be honest if I was one of the other Masks I would be suggesting that Yellow goes home and works on a new routine.

But the other three Masks had me shook. What a fool I had been this past 4 or so months, strolling home at 5am in the morning with the strut and swagger of a man confident that he is safe and in no danger. Yes there is no real crime here, but all along I could have been moments from having my brain consumed, my eyes torn from my skull or God help me a more imposing nose.

Before we left class, I wanted to thank them for their warning and ask how to avoid the perils of the other Masks. They had helpfully informed me that if I said nothing to the Red Mask and simply turned and walked away, she would probably not reach down to maul me from her colossal height of 6ft 1", but rather slink off into the shadows.

My biggest concern was obviously the Black Mask and I can assure you that this is not due to any racial prejudice. I don't profile Masks and although I never found out what the White Mask does, I'm sure it's pretty bad. Equality for all demonic Mask creatures is a must, but at the end of the day the Black Mask would open up my skull, and leave me quite literally brainless and no longer alive, which seemed a worse fate than the rest.

And it was here that I got another fascinating insight into the "logic" of a Korean girl.

Me: "Well the Black Mask is obviously the worst, how do I avoid him?"

Amy and Sera: "No! Red Mask is worst"

Me: "What? How can the Red Mask be worse? She leaves you with a scar on your face, but you're alive. The Black Mask murders you. How can the Red Mask possibly be worse?"

Amy and Sera: "She only ghost who talk to you. Black Mask not speak. Red Mask talk to you, is the worst teacher, very bad."

Well of course.

Teaching in Daegu: An Example Of The Work I Must Grade...

Don't worry, this is not some rambling essay, just a quick word for word transcript of a presentation by two 14 year old girls in my class yesterday. Let me set the scene. I have 8 students, all with no more interest in being in class than me.

During the time I gave them to prepare for a test, two of the girls spent the first ten minutes drawing elephants until I confiscated their pads of paper, but in fairness they were very good elephants and I did congratulate them on their excellent artwork.

Now to the presentation. The task was clearly set out. In groups of two they devise an interview; the reporter has travelled back in time to any period of history they like to interview someone about their life. I start brainstorming ideas with them, but it seems that the weather inside their brains is rather tranquil with at best a cool, refreshing breeze. So I storm it alone.

I give examples of questions they can ask, what do you eat, what is life like, is it dangerous? I give periods of history they could go to, from the Second World War to thousands of years back when nobody had electricity and people fought wars with swords.

Three of the groups got it. The elephant artists produced a fairly surreal interview, that didn't quite cover the ideas discussed. My first doubts about this historical glimpse into past human lives were raised when they asked me how many years ago dinosaurs lived.

I said "About 200 million years, but you are interviewing a person remember, people did not live with dinosaurs". They nodded and said "Yes teacher" about fifteen times and I left them to it. Mistake.

Now due to pronunciation, I sometimes miss little details, so the kids hand in the transcripts of their work so I can take into account additional details that I maybe missed whilst watching them present. So here is the full transcript (spellings left as they were) of a news reporters interview with a person from a different period of history...

Reporter: "Hello! I'm in the two hundred million years ago earth."

Interviewee: "I'm King's daughter dinosore. I'm name is clecle."

Reporter: "Oh! Your name is very pretty."

Interviewee: "Oh thank. I love you!"

Reporter: "Ok. Let's question. How did you bone?" (I think they meant born. Or at least I hope they did)

Interviewee: "God makes me pretty. I thank you for God."

Reporter: "And what do you eat" (Ah good, so my teaching wasn't a total waste, they threw in one of the examples from the board, genius.)

Interviewee: "I don't eat person. Don't worry."

Reporter: "Oh that's good. Are you have a boyfriend?"

Interviewee: "Emmm, I have two boyfriend."

Reporter: "Oh, you're bad girl."

Interviewee: "Do you want to die?

Reporter: "Thank you very much!"

So Clecle the Slut Dinosaur gave me a fascinating insight into human experiences in the past and there was even a drawing of a dinosaur breathing fire. Although this dinosaur/dragon picture was frankly not as good as the one of a cartoon elephant, that took so much of their time that they failed their test.

I gave them a B+.

The same two girls told me indepth about some Korean ghosts I should be wary of and were responsible for the previous argument about mice living on the moon. Don't worry about my safety though, their ghost survival guide has me fully prepared for any supernatural attacks and you too can learn of the perils of living amongst demonic Korean spirits in my next blog.

Korean Pets And The Tragedy Of Mr Crab.

There are some quite ludicrous beliefs in Korea, in fact so many that they are worth a blog entry of their own, but for now I will just briefly mention one that two girls in a class a few weeks ago told me about.

I realise that this might fall under the same type of fun for the kids bullshit as Father Christmas and The Easter Bunny, but they seemed worryingly convinced that it was real.

Rabbits live on the moon.

Yes. Apparently quite large rabbits who make rice cakes have been plying their trade in some lunar warren for many years now. I objected to this claim with some vigour but the two highschool girls refused to budge ground and our lesson descended into me laughing at them and them loudly insisting that the moon has rabbits on it.

In fairness to South Korean culture, it could just be that I have two retarded students who drop acid before class, but during a break I googled it and sure enough there is an old folklore about a giant rabbit making rice cakes on the moon. The problem is that my students seem to have adapted it to more than one rabbit and seem far too defensive about the probability of this being true.

It was thinking about rabbits that led to a conversation about pets with a few fellow teachers. I informed them that my first pet as a child was a rabbit, that I cleverly named "Bunny". Yes, Bunny the rabbit, and yet I still have the nerve to question the cognitive function of some of my students.

But pets here just seem odd. All the pet dogs are tiny. A while back, we were eating out near a beach resort and a man with a tray of puppies came around to see if we wanted to play with them for a bit. We did. I hope we were not part of some pre- cooking ritual that aims to relax them and soften the meat, but regardless I've seen tiny dogs and once tiny cats whilst out drinking and eating and that can't be normal.

But the main pet that seems weird is the hedgehog. Who the hell has a hedgehog as a pet? It seems quite a lot of people, including one of our former teachers Stacy who has one called Conrad.
During our frank and fascinating discussion of pets I asked what Conrad did, as everytime I saw him he was curled up in a motionless ball. She insisted that he often hangs from the cage by his teeth. Right...no disrespect to him or any of his prickly colleagues but I'm not sold.

I was cursed with bad luck with my pets as a child. Bunny was killed by some local pranksters on Halloween and my pet gerbil Arthur accidentally got his head stamped on by my friend from next door after I had only owned him for an hour.

But I was not the only one with a sorry tale to tell. Little Spoon had a story that was almost a Shakespearean tragedy and it involved two pets that are even more bizarre than hedgehogs.

Sit down and have some tissues to hand as I tell you the tale of Froggy the Frog and Mr Crab.

Froggy the Frog lived in a tank with all the mod cons that a happy go lucky frog in the late 80s could desire. Mr Crab lived in his own tank and led an equally productive and well rounded life. Their paths had never crossed and life was good.

Then one fateful day, a young Little Spoon decided that they might become good friends and she put Mr Crab into the tank with Froggy the Frog. There is a reason that the term "being crabby" means irritable and Mr Crab was evidently the embodiment of cantankerous.
No sooner had Little Spoon left them to become acquainted, than Mr Crab attacked Froggy and upon her return was half way through eating his head.

Clearly distressed that the friendship had turned sour so quickly, Little Spoon decided that she needed to relax and felt that a spot of sun bathing would do the trick. She also decided that Mr Crab (who let me remind you is a crab) might also like to sunbathe.
So they lay out in the scorching hot LA sun until Little Spoon went back inside for a while and forgot that Mr Crab was still soaking up the rays.

And as she finished this tale it went something like this...

Little Spoon: "So I came back a few hours later and he was dead."

Me: "Really? What a shock, how on earth could an aquatic based animal like a crab have died sunbathing?"

Little Spoon: "I don't know, we never found out, maybe it was old age. How long do crabs live for?"

At this point I somehow became the first person in over 20 years to point out that if you put a crab on a dry rock directly under the sun for almost a day with no water it will die. For fucks sake, you could try that trick with all manner of things and they probably wouldn't do too well; a puppy, a newborn baby, an amputee victim and absolutely definitely a crab.

The conversation drifted towards ideal pets, to which I proposed a monkey. No surprises there and I stunned Dubs, Little Spoon and Justice by telling them about monkey greyhound racing. An old sport that I read about and one that surely needs a major revival. Dubs loved the idea and Justice was amused.

Little Spoon said "Why a monkey racing a greyhound, wouldn't some other animals work better?"

When asked for an example of a superior animal combination for a racer and it's jockey, she said "I don't know, maybe a tortoise and a hamster".

I was and still am, utterly and totally lost for words. But please enjoy this picture of a monkey greyhound racer...

Downtown Daegu: Teaching Americans A Real Sport...

I missed my glove.

I never expected it to be this hard, but little had I realised how much I enjoyed wearing a solitary glove. Korea had opened my heart to a new experience and I was now faced with the dilemma of spending every day in the local seafood restaurant repeatedly ordering shrimp in order to get the customary white shrimping glove or go cold turkey.

Even the thought of removing gloves totally from my life sent a cold shiver down my spine. I had taken a glimpse into a new world and I liked it. But what to do? I could of course order some shrimp and then flee the restaurant laughing manically and take the glove with me. I could wear it to school. Would the school have an issue with a man who likes to wear a glove? Hmmm....our dress code says "Professional". Surely a sparkly glove was not intrinsically linked to being an "Amateur".

The children might be a little confused. But then by the end of most of my lessons they look fairly confused anyway. If there were awkward questions I could just say I had suffered third degree burns in a horrendous weekend mishap and now had the hand of a charred corpse.

No, this was ridiculous. I needed to put it out of my mind and so I did.

And then the invitation arrived...

"Pub Golf this Saturday in Downtown Daegu, golfing attire is a must, create a team and see you there".

A thrill of excitement coursed through my veins and for once it wasn't at the prospect of drinking myself into a drooling wreck. Oh I would indeed be in golfing attire, I already owned trousers, a polo shirt and trainers so now all I needed was a sun visor and.....

A FUCKING GLOVE.

Who said there was no God?

I skipped towards the shops, briefly passing a pudgy faced Korean lady with hair down to her knees! Down to her KNEES! She looked like the illegitimate love child of Chairman Mao and Cousin Itt. But I wouldn't let her preposterous appearance distract me a moment longer. I found two gloves and two visors at Daegu's reasonably priced supermarket "Home Plus". That was me and Dubs kitted out.

Dubs being American had no idea what pub golf was and neither did most of my fellow team mates who were also mainly American. I explained quickly that every bar is a hole and every drink has a par. A pint is par four; neck it in one and you are one under par, do it in five gulps and you are one over etc.

They got it. They liked it and they thanked me for my concise yet accurate description.

And we were off. The glove gripped a glass of alcohol perfectly, and due to my wildly unhealthy lifestyle over the past decade I was in perfect fighting condition for this type of "sport".

I had two American girls on our team, Miss Dreads (cunningly named after her hairstyle) and Emily. They put in a valiant effort but struggled on some holes.
I wanted to go with a xenophobic slant and blame it on their nationality, but then Miss Dreads' fiance Mountain (he wanted a nickname and chose this for no reason) and Dubs were having no such troubles, so I had to reject the xenephobia and embrace my long lost friend misogyny.

Stupid women, having trouble downing entire pints in one go? And to think we gave you the vote.

I was flying, me and the glove felt untouchable, no wonder Tiger Woods thought he could get away with anything. I could barely blame the man with my new insights into his world. He has to dress like this for a living! It's enough to drag anyone from the straight and narrow.

As the final drinks were drained, the score cards were added, a ripple of anticipation spread across the fifty or so assembled golfers and the results came in. Our team had won. We celebrated with a round of drinks and myself and the only other Brit on our team (a cheerful chap named Yatesy) roared with pride at our respective perfect scores of 18 Under Par.

I wandered home in a warm glow of contentment. For the first time in my life, I had tasted real success and it tasted like booze. I had found my calling and began to incessantly harrass the event organiser to hasten forward another Pub Golf night.

I folded up the glove and thanked it for the part it had played. And as I slipped off into a blissful sleep, I thought once more of the pudgy faced woman and her stupidly long hair...I bet she wished she could have seen me drinking tonight.

Until next time, this was Monkey Roberts.

Eating in Korea...

I have decided to write about various things I have eaten, mainly because I have done nothing of interest or note in the past two weeks that warrants a blog. I am supposed to be updating this pesky thing twice a week, but such is my laziness that I barely manage to produce a paragraphs worth of activity in a seven day period.

A few things. Never bother ordering a steak in Korea. Koreans are pretty good at cooking Korean food, but the majority of the western style places are woeful. I went to a steak house in my first week here and got a meal that would barely pass the grade as a Red Cross handout in a war torn, third world nation.

However, Korean food is pretty cheap and generally I like it. The main side dish that comes with everything is Kimchi. Fermented cabbage that everyone I know loves. I don't love it. In fact I'd say I rather dislike it. It tastes like...erm...cabbage that has fermented a bit.

Now feast your eyes upon this local dish...



The soup looks like something that has just been pumped out of the local sewage works, but surprisingly it does not taste bad at all. In fact it doesn't really taste. But it is cheap and it does have bits of unidentifable, chewy meat floating in it, so I'm a regular buyer.

The bulk of eating out involves ordering meat and cooking it on a grill that sits in the middle of the table. Galbi is pork, and my current favourite is Galmagi which means seagull. Some Koreans have told me it is actually seagull and others tell me it is actually pork or beef (they don't seem to know). But I prefer to think that it is seagull as I hate seagulls and feel that I am getting a long overdue revenge on their kind.

My complete lack of Korean can be interesting in restaurants with no pictures and obviously no English. I ordered a starter that turned out to be raspberry wine. Best starter I've ever had.

I went to a seafood restaurant with Little Spoon and the waiter brought us each one white glove. I've never been told to dress like Michael Jackson to eat, but I'm open to new experiences so the glove went on. We had apparently ordered shrimp and apparently you wear one white glove to eat shrimp. The food was good and the glove was outstanding. In fact I am tempted to take a glove with me to all restaurants from this day on.

I have yet to eat dog, but I have eaten pigs intestines, fish head soup and of course those bastard seagulls.
Now despite not being a fan of Kimchi, it is not the most unusual side dish. That honour goes to Beondegi, which are silk worm larvae that are deep fried. And here they are...



It is difficult to describe their flavour, but I will try. Fucking vile. They taste exactly as I imagined a silk worm larvae to taste and believe me that has been something I have thought about many a time over the years.



I would have spat the rancid little things into my hand, but I didn't want to stain my glove.

In summary; seagull, raspberry wine and gloves are good. Larvae, Steaks and Kimchi are bad. Most westerners disagree with my views about Kimchi but then again most of those people don't like to wear a single, sparkly glove when eating, so their opinion is not to be trusted.

Teaching in Korea: New Teachers, Same Old Kids...

It was always going to happen. Three of our teachers left our school. I knew it was going to happen since the day I was told that in a couple of months time the twelve month contract for three of our teachers ended and that they would be leaving.

So Stacy, Stanley and Eddie departed and we were assured that three new teachers would be joining our dwindling band to ensure we were not overloaded with work.

I have come to be a little skeptical of assurances at our school and sure enough on the day two new teachers arrived there was something amiss. There was only one. Nobody would tell us what had happened to the guy who passed training and was due to arrive, but he was taken to one side and sent home. I discussed this with the other teachers and agreed that he probably had HIV.

We then heard that a third teacher would arrive in a few weeks. A few days later it was confirmed that he had actually failed his Criminal Background Check and would not be coming. Great. Nobody told us what his crime was, but I'm going to presume it had something to do with HIV.

So we are short of two teachers, and I have a host of new classes, who make last semesters seem fantastic. Sullen fifteen year olds everywhere who neither speak nor have any desire to be there. And then at the other extreme I have a bunch of hyperactive midgets who cry if they drop their pencil, cry if I don't pick them to read first and cry if I say "Well done" with too much volume.

I do have one good student though, she is attentive, works hard and speaks well. However her idea of what a teacher/student conversation should be is a little out of the ordinary.

Good Student: "Teacher do you have a girlfriend?"

Me: "Not at the moment, now look at your book..."

Good Student: "How many girlfriends you had?"

Me: "I'm not answering that."

Good Student: "Oh ten? You've had ten?"

Me: "What? I never said a number, I'm not answering."

Good Student: "Oh wow, more than ten I think. Teacher what did you do before you were teacher?"

Me: "I worked in wine"

Good Student: "Oh wow, I love wine!"

Eventually I managed to drag her away from the fascinating topic of ex girlfriends and wine, but at the end of the lesson she has an interesting business proposal for me.

Good Student: "Teacher, we go to shop and you buy me wine, yes?"

Me: "No, I'm not buying you wine".

Good Student: "Why? Come on we can go now, you know the good wines, pick for me and buy for present."

Me: "No, you are fourteen and I would lose my job, wait until you are older to have wine."

She purses her lips and looks at me as if I am a disobedient child.

Good Student: "Teacher...I can wear different clothes."

Well why didn't you say so? Here I was saying I wouldn't buy you alcohol like a miserable old twat, and all along you were prepared to wear different clothes? That changes everything. You nip home and change out of that Mickey Mouse T-Shirt and into, I don't know a Donald Duck dress and I'll meet you at the supermarket. A bottle of Chateau Margaux okay for you? Perhaps you'd like a cigar and some cognac to finish off the evening?

The next lesson she presented me with a book mark she had bought me. Hardly covered the cost of all the champagne and cocaine I had bought her, but to be fair she's probably not made of money being fourteen and all.

Korean Training: The Mind and The Body.

A few days had passed since my intense, intensive training and my mind felt as sharp as a wooden spoon. But it began to dawn on me that for all the cognitive workouts I was getting, I had neglected by body for too long. My body! That thing which my worldy wise brain relied upon to get from place to place spreading knowledge to all and illuminating the darkest corners of ignorance with the light of my insights.

In fact it had been eight long years since I did any regular exercise or set foot in a gym. I knew this feeling of shame well. I had had the same thoughts at the seven year mark, but pushed the concerns deep into the corners of my psyche and then drowned them with fine wine and Guatemalan rum.

Only this time there was no fine wine to hand and the Korean corner shops selection of South American aged rums was frankly a disgrace.

More worryingly I was surrounded by teachers who worked out. Eddie was and is a gym addict. He is named Eddie due to a love of Iron Maiden who you might not (but probably should) know have a massive monster called Eddie as a mascot.
Eddie was leaving soon, but I had been subjected to seeing his dedication for nearly three months and he was not the only one.

Blancquita was often to be found in the gym. Dubs had just joined Eddies gym and fucking Little Spoon had only last week run a half marathon with Korean soldiers! I have long prided myself on my lethargy and general disdain for anything that hints at hard work, but enough was enough.

I was going to join the gym. Soon my body would reflect my mind; a hulking powerhouse of super human agility and speed. But before I had even put pen to paper at the gym, I made an important phone call.

Little Spoon: "Hello"

Me: "Ah hello Little Spoon what do you want?"

Little Spoon: "You called me idiot, and stop calling me Little Spoon."

Me: "Ah yes...so I did, and no I wont stop. I rang you to challenge you to a race. I'm going to race you Little Spoon and I'm going to defeat you."

Laughter was coming out of my phone. How odd, perhaps it was a crossed line or maybe she was watching a particularly amusing episode of a Korean soap opera.

Little Spoon: "You don't do any exercise, you probably can't even run, I run 7 or 8 miles a day, sure come running with me."

Unbelievably she had been laughing at me! I didn't like the cut of her jib and I told her so...

Me: "I don't like the cut of your jib Little Spoon, but I will buy some new trainers or 'sneakers' as you barbarians call them and I will do a quick fitness test at the gym and then I'll prepare to race you and destroy you"

The challenge was set. On the face of it a person who runs daily, just ran a half marathon with apparent ease and a man who hasn't jogged in eight years and drinks far too much would not be much of a contest. But I was confident my body had simply kept itself honed and ready for action over these recent indolent times.

I hit the gym hard. I was going to run first to see how many miles I would speed through in twenty-five minutes and then pump some serious iron to make sure the guns were still firing.

Fourty minutes later and the results were in.

I had the upper body strength of an unusually scrawny toddler and the aerobic fitness of a morbidly obese asthmatic. I was both perplexed by my bodies inability to perform physical acts of almost any description and feeling marginally less confident about my race.

As I write this I am aching slightly, from my fourth "gym day" and there has been improvement; I am perhaps less scrawny toddler and now into the realms of distinctly average five year old.

But I will buy those new trainers and I will defeat Little Spoon.

Teaching in Korea: Intensive Training for an Intense Mind.

My Summer Intensives were announced to me half way through July. You might wonder why all my blogs are so far behind the actual date, but I promise to catch up and begin to update more often with more dull and yet informative posts that actually give some semblance of an insight into teaching. But this is not the time.

The new manager has told me I need to see him for training on my summer intensive classes and for a guide to the syllabus. I have been given two classes per week extra, teaching "Newspaper Writing" for three hours per class.

So my manger (the one with the face of a young boy playing pranks on his school mates) comes wandering into my class room to prepare me and give me the materials for this nightmarish new schedule. Apparently I teach them the subject for an hour or so, for 45 minutes they read the materials and in the final hour they make a newspaper article on the subject.

He hands me a piece of paper and says "Here is your syllabus".
I see. The "syllabus" consists of literally one or two words per lesson.
Lesson One: History.
I look up at him. Ah I see, this little whipper snapper is playing one of his pranks. The cheeky little rascal; any minute now he will shake my hand with one of those joke shop buzzers that gives you a shock, or offer me chewing gum that turns my lips blue. I smile at him. "Ah good, so where is the material?"

My manager pauses and says "That's it, we want you to make up the class, find the materials, use your own teaching style, not company ones, your own style"

I wait for the punchline. Oh right it's not a joke.

Well here is the problem boss, I'm not a qualified teacher remember? That's why you can pay me a pittance compared to the other teachers who have taught before or even expressed an interest in nurturing the minds of children.
Remember me? No experience, no teaching qualifications, not even an enthusiastic interview.

What the fuck do you mean use my "style"? My "style" is lounging around my apartment in boxer shorts drinking beer and watching football. Shall I teach the kids in my underwear and get them wasted? My "style" is illegally downloading copyrighted material and listening to violent, misogynistic rap music. How's that for lesson two?

I shake my head and skim through this bulimic syllabus. Lesson Six: Ivy Leagues.

Me: "Erm...I don't know much about Ivy Leagues, what do you want me to talk about for over an hour?"

Foetus/Manager: "Just talk about how big they are in American culture, how much we hear about their importance in the US media, about parents hopes for their kids etc, anything."

Right, there appears to have been a misunderstanding. You want me to talk about a range of experiences and attitudes prevalent in America? That's lovely. Except I'm not from America am I, you infant faced imbecile?

I'm BRITISH. Do you see a cowboy hat perched upon my noble brow? Is there a star spangled banner tie around my cultured neck? NO. Because I'm fucking British.
I know nothing of your Ivy Leagues you oik. Do I sound American? Do I look American? Well? Look at me! I'm wearing a top hat and a monocle. Damn your eyes man, you're sat only 3 feet away from me. As you walked through the door I was pouring myself a cup of tea and as I sit here now I'm preparing crumpets.
What the hell is wrong with you?

He seems perplexed by my issues surrounding Ivy Leagues, but tells me to do my best. I will. Only my best is going to be some of the worst teaching that the continent of Asia has ever been subjected to.

I might make up a pretend league table of different types of Ivy and get the kids to rate them in a series of match ups. So Common Ivy or Himalayan Ivy which is the best? No Kim Jae Yong, Boston Ivy is actually a member of the grape family and not a true Ivy, that's an F for you.

I make my way home to sulk, strip to my underwear and download a film in my own special teaching style.