The Dreams Of A Child.

Children are a decidedly odd bunch and their brains work in an unsual way. I suspected this for a long time having once been a child and having to work with the little clowns has confirmed my suspicions.

I arrived at school early after recently being told to arrive at school earlier. A simple instruction that I acted upon with great success and yet if proof were needed about the minds of children, I also told several of mine to not be late and they still arrived late. Idiots.

As I made myself a cup of tea, one of the younger students walked past with a cup. This in itself is not that unusual I admit, and if the story stopped there, you would probably feel it didn't warrant mentioning. Luckily for you the story doesn't stop there, because unlike children I'm not the sort to tell you pointless bits of information. Stupid children.

I looked at the cup to see what muck the boy was drinking and he was it appeared drinking some water with a small turtle in it. I turned back to put some milk in my tea; those kids always drinking weird stuff whether it's Aloe Vera juice, cold green tea or water with turtles....HANG ON.

I spun around. Nobody drinks water with a turtle in it. Not even here.

I had no idea who this particular student was so I addressed him as I do with all new children..."Oi you, come here".

He came here. Obviously a smart one.

Me: "Why do you have a turtle in your cup?"

Boy: "Is a turtle."

So much for him being a smart one.

Me: "Not 'is a turtle' you say 'it's a turtle'"

Boy: "Yes is a turtle"

For fucks sake, anyone would think I was speaking a foreign language.

Me: "I know, why do you have it in a cup and why is it here in school?"

Boy: "My pet. I bring him today."

Me: "I see. What is he called? What's his name?"

Boy: "Name is Obama."

Interesting; a communist, Muslim turtle from Kenya.

Me: "What do you feed him? What do you give Obama to eat?"

Boy: "Beef burger, teacher. Get him big."

Beef Burgers? You won't get him big, you will get him dead.

Who the hell in his family is going out and buying him beef burgers to feed to a tiny Turtle called Obama? What sort of person simply listens to the insane request of a little child and then thinks "Sure, let's run with that."? If he wants to feed his turtle burgers on the basis that it will make it big, who am I as a parent to say something crazy like "No, let's get him some turtle feed"?

I began to think what would have happened if my parents had agreed to my every whim as a child. The first thing is that I would be dead. As dead as Obama the turtle is going to be in about a weeks time.

The other thing that had me contemplating my wishes and desires as a child was a popular Facebook picture of John Lennon with a supposed quote from him about how when he was 5 years old his mother told him to aim to be happy and at school he was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up and he said "happy". Then the teacher said that he didn't understand the question and he replied "You don't understand life".

It is quite the quip and being a boring pedant I very nearly commented on the numerous postings of this quote to point out that Lennon didn't live with his mother when he was five. Moreover there is no evidence that he ever said what was being quoted.

Thankfully for everyone concerned I managed to reign in my insufferable, know it all smugness and instead thought about what I had dreamt of as a five year old and it would not make for a very deep and meaningful Facebook status.

If like my little friend with Obama I had also been allowed to try and follow my dreams at the age of five, I would have led one of the most fascinating and yet surreal lives imaginable.

I only had three pressing dreams as a young boy of five or six. The first was to change my name by deed poll to "Robin" and move into a forest with a group of friends. Being five or six years old I presume the group would have been largely made up of "merry kids" as opposed to "merry men" and the goal was basically to live in trees and shoot people with arrows.

A fairly noble goal for any child, but my desire to be involved in medieval conflicts as a chid outlaw was always going to be difficult given the era of my birth and my parents reluctance to set me loose into the nearest woodland.

But no sooner had one dream been crushed, than another was born in earnest.

Because I also had a strong desire to be changed into a Japanese boy. Being the worldly, educated man I am today, I refuse to buy into offensive stereotypes or wild generalisations. However, at the age of five I was a free thinker without the constraints of a politically correct world gone mad. I was of the firm belief that all Japanese people had an innate ability in Kung Fu and other martial arts.

I wanted to be a ninja and years of dedicated training seemed a lot more tiresome than simply becoming Japanese. To think that any old person can get a sex change these days and yet science is still months, maybe even years from being able to offer children a race change. How difficult could it have been for someone to just make me Japanese for God's sake?

My parents, Mr "not today" and Mrs "you can't do that" made absolutely no effort to make that dream become a reality either. Which brings me to my final yearning as a boy; a boy utterly devoid of a burger eating turtle or any sharp retorts for school teachers based on fictious life lessons. In other words, a boy in need of some excitement.

My final dream came about under unlikely circumstances. I was watching an extremely old episode of a black and white Flash Gordon serial film. I was born a long time after black and white left our screens and have no idea why a film serial from the late 1930's was ever shown on British television. But it was, and it changed my life. I had to do some google research just now to find out exactly which film it was and it was Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars.

In this episode there features an enemy called "The Clay People". They are people - and this may come as a surprise - made from clay. Only watching this atrocious pap on Youtube just now, they would surely have been better named "The Pyjama People".

How any five year old, especially one as sharp and discerning as myself, ever watched a group of dreadful actors running around in loose pyjamas with some mud on their faces and thought they were convincing aliens is quite beyond me. What is even more beyond me is why that same five year old decided that his goal in life was now to become a clay boy.

I wanted to become able to blend into rocky, clay walls and to live underground in a series of damp, dimly lit caves waiting to ambush unsuspecting explorers. I already knew my stupid parents would object and probably offer precious little support in this endeavour so I experimented alone. I tried sticking pebbles to my skin. I thought about making a suit with slate and mud stuck to it.

Sadly my attempts were as ineffective as my ghost catching machine made from a shoe box with a portable vacuum cleaner inside it was.

So I never got to live the dream life of being made from clay and rock. A dream that became so strong a desire that I all but forgot about any need to be Japanese or practice my archery skills for the inevitable stand off with whoever was the standing Sheriff of Nottingham at that time.

A quick Wikipedia search reveals the sheriff at that time was Thomas Ball Edward Hilton. The name of a money grabbing, oppressor of the people if ever I heard one. No doubt he slept easier at night once word had got to him that I was focusing on the bigger picture, and looking to become a clay based alien life form.

So while I look back at all the things I have failed to accomplish, I now get to see other young children telling me about their ridiculous dreams. It is almost like Karma. I'm being punished for my idiocy by smiling and nodding at the idiocy of the younger generations.

Speaking of the nonsense that is Karma, I was on a subway the other day when a man in an electronic wheelchair got on. Now calm down before you think I am about to say something vile. I know the wheelchair community and I had a recent run in, but that is all behind us now. What happened was that as he reversed I looked up and emblazoned across the back of his chair in yellow font was the word "KARMA".

It has to be the most inapproproate and ironic placement of a single word that I've ever seen.

Now either that man has a very self deprecating sense of humour or somewhere there is a wheelchair production company being run by a five year old whose parents indulge his or her every wish.

Grammar And A Magical Mouse.

Prepare to be disappointed. I am well aware that the title of this post is exciting, intriguing and full of promise. That was my plan though, draw you in and by the time you realise you've been duped it will be too late and you'll have already read half of my ramblings and decide to reluctantly finish. HA!

That's not to say that I will not be discussing grammar, of course I will. I always discuss grammar, at breakfast, in the pub and right here. Who doesn't love grammar? To be honest it is the magical mouse that I feel is a bit of con, somewhat of a deception even. There is no magical mouse you see, there never was really, he was just a normal mouse who died in the name of magic.

Oh I've definitely got you now...read on...

This tale came courtesy of a small boy called Alex. He is very young and very small, and in fairness to him those two things often go hand in hand. He is in a class with much older and taller students due to him being quite advanced for his age; the only thing is that his English is advanced but the rest of his personality is exactly as you would expect for a small boy of precious few years.

This leads to some bemused looks from the class when this highly confident kid launches into one of his excitable stories or begins to leap around the room as the teenage girls check their hair in their portable mirrors.

We were talking about animals. Again. If you have read my blog in the past you will know that animals and pets feature in class quite often and here I was getting tiny bits of information from my teenage students about what made a good pet. I thought I could wow them with my tale of how one student last year had a pet snail, yeah that would have these moody 14 year olds laughing; a snail as a pet...whatever next teacher?

Hailey just nods and says sagely "It's good idea".

Is it I asked. Why is a snail a good pet? What could possibly be a good idea about having a snail as a pet? To which she provided an answer so obvious I felt myself blush at my own stupidity.

Hailey: "The snail is not barking like a dog teacher. He always has the good behaviour."

Silly me. Of course! Snails don't bark, that's why they are great. But there are a lot of things snails don't do, in fact if we are going to praise snails for the things they don't do, then we could end up holding them in very high regard indeed.

I was and still am reluctant to give snails too much credit for their "good behaviour" as I don't feel it is down to discipline or resisting the temptation to run amock, smashing up local beauty spots. Call me cynical, but I think they are partly a bit lazy and partly a bit hampered by their lack of limbs.

To be honest if I ever found a snail that did bark then I think it would be a great pet. Arguably a barking snail would be one of the most brilliant things I can imagine.

So here you are, still none the wiser about the mouse, but with - and I think we can both agree on this - an unexpected bonus of a snail story.

Anyway, this talk of animals was too much for little Alex. He leapt from his chair and began to sort of jig in a circle, waving his hands about as he told us his story. Sometimes I will tell him to sit down, but this seemed like a time to let him jig, so jig he did.

Alex: "I had the mouse. For the pet teacher, the mouse. But he go away in the magic show. My brother do the magic show and mouse is gone ha ha ha."

Obviously he didn't actually say "ha ha ha" but he did laugh. He was breaking out into laughter constantly and kept repeating a sort of wooshing noise inbetween saying "magic show" and "mouse is gone".

I asked him to elaborate on how his magician of a brother made his pet mouse vanish and it wasn't the sort of magic I've grown accustomed to.

Alex gestured to the floor and outlined the mouse and then said "Mouse is here, and then the magic show..." and he leapt into the air and stamped down hard on the imaginary mouse made an explosion sound and then said "Woosh, mouse is gone, magic show".

I laughed. It's not even funny and it is certainly not magic. It is animal cruelty and if anything it was a murder show as opposed to a magic show, but everyone was laughing. Snail loving Hailey, the surly girls at the back who just comb their hair incessantly and me. United in mirth at a disgusting act of unprovoked cruelty and all because of how Alex told the tale. It was his mouse, and even he found it funny so cut me some slack.

I did however point out to the class that killing animals was wrong and that I expected Alex's brother to end up in jail when he was an adult, as these sorts of people usually do. Alex nodded and said "woosh".

For the rest of the lesson I could hear him sporadically mumbling "magic show" to himself and wooshing away with a deranged smile.

Perhaps he will end up in jail too, but how the time would fly if you were his cell mate. For tonights entertainment please welcome to the centre of the cell the famous magician Alex taught by his older brother who is on the secure wing for lifers. With Alex tonight we have his assistant for the evening a local cockroach who is in here for bad behaviour having ignored the standards set to him by Daegu's snail community.

All good animal based lessons must come to an end, that's just the way the world works, and I had to move on to serious subject matter.

The following lessons involved preparing students for their level up tests and a new section we are supposed to review with them on grammar. There is a problem here in that none of the English teachers really know anything about grammar. We never learn the rules in school and just pick it up, or don't pick it up and never have to worry about what infinitives are. I bet you think because I used infinitive as an example that I know what one is. Nope.

So I had to run them through some example questions which involved filling in a blank in a sentence with a word or a phrase from a choice of four options. Thankfully identifying which option was correct was very easy for me, what with being a native English speaker and all, but explaining why this was the case in terms of grammar rules was a little tricky. Luckily we had printed out explanations to give them

Here was one question. Fill in the blank with the correct term:

If you have ever stood next to a rushing river you___________ the water hammering away.

The correct choice was of course B) may have seen.

There were three incorrect options and an explanation for why they were wrong. One wrong answer was "saw" and another was "are seeing" and here is the explanation I was supposed to give for why these two were wrong...

"Since the present perfect tense in the dependent clause is used to express the subject's experience from the past to the present, the main verb in the main clause cannot be in the past tense or present progressive tense."

In the present perfect progressive tense of this independent clause; I haven't got a fucking clue what that means. Or is that present perfect with a gerund? What's a gerund again? I'm going to take this grammar sheet and woosh, magic show!

General Knowledge And The Profound Pencil Case.

Korean education does not appear to have much time for general knowledge or creativity. While the children leaving the system are certainly doing well in maths, science and often a dab hand on the piano, it is often a narrow range of topics that they seem to learn. There are stand out children who have a wide range of interests and understanding of the world, but they always seem to have learnt this at home due to travelled and well read parents.

I suppose the same could be said for kids back home, but everything seems magnified here.
Outside of hating Japan, viewing Africa as dirty and lauding Korea, many kids really have very little knowledge about the rest of the world. Which makes it very easy for me to appear far more well read and educated than I am.

I wowed a class of 12 year olds with my knowledge of capital cities. "Teacher what is the capital of Kenya?" why that would be "Nairobi". And gasps of amazement. Of course the best thing in such a quiz is that the people setting the questions do not know the answers. This means that even if I am stumped by an outlandishly obscure question such as "What is the capital of Wales?", I can say "Grimbinlop" and my audience are still stunned by my intellect and clap their hands with delight.

I was due to go to a pub quiz or "trivia night" as the American organisers called it and this quick fire question round in my class was honing my skills. I got home and decided I needed some more severe testing but then got a Skype call from Little Spoon who is of course back in LA. Well I figured it would be similar to the quiz in my class and even if it was not testing, I could once more pretend I was a genius.

But somehow I ended up asking her questions on capital cities and decided to throw her the curve ball classic of "What is the capital of Australia?".

Of course she fell for it and went with Sydney. The fool. I sniggered and offered her a second shot. At this point people either remember the answer (which is Canberra by the way you ignorant scum) or they say something like Melbourne....pfffttt...as if!

They don't however think outside the box like Little Spoon does and answer with "Madagascar".

So I went to quiz night a little unprepared. I was with my friend Tanya who recently told me that when she first met me with her fiance Steve she hated me so much that she told him if he wanted to spend time with me in the future he would have to do it alone. I was delighted to see that I have not lost the knack of providing people with an excellent first impression of myself.

Apparently she had thought I was sexist and ignorant! Bless her pretty little head, it had probably been that time of the month. But since then she had learnt how wide of the mark she had been and we were now a brilliant quiz duo.

We bumped into my friend Minix down there and with his degree in classics and ancient history we stormed through the history round. Tanya blitzed a music video round with two more team mates Ariella and Natalie and I was biding my time to unleash my plethora of wisdom.

Capital cities did not come up! Nor did my other areas of expertise which are hip-hop from 1993-1997 and the question "Who was the infamous son of Agripinna the Younger?".

What a stupid quiz. We came joint fifth.

There was a bonus round where one person answers a question for a big cash prize. It was something about Laotian mythology. I was in Laos not long ago, but only remember tubing, laughing at hippies and nearly being decapitated by a small masseuse. Why didn't I pay more attention to their mythology?

If only there had been a question like "What is the most surreal answer to the classic question, 'What is the capital of Australia'?" then perhaps I could have claimed the jackpot. More depressing was the fact that although I say capital cities did not come up, there was in fact one question on the subject. It asked what the capital city of Greenland was.

I didn't know. Apparently it is "Nuuk", which sounds suspiciously like the sort of answer I would give to my 12 year olds if I didn't know. I looked at the quiz master closely for signs of deceit, but he appeared to be playing straight.

So I will be back next week, this time with Dubs as another team mate. Until then I will make myself feel smarter by another question round with my kids later today. This particular class don't know shit! Ha ha. I'm the worlds most learned man in that classroom.

But although they don't know much about the world outside Korea and although they struggle to create stories in their projects or be imaginative, they do have a variety of pencil cases and t-shirts bearing almost poetic prose.

Because as anyone who has lived in Korea or many other parts of Asia will know, people have English words and phrases on all manner of clothing and more often than not it is a random stream of unconnected words that means nothing. For example "Flower, Happy The Sunshine Girls" I beg your pardon?

But I looked at one girl named "Hotdog" who always sits near the front and has so much energy that I feel like spiking her chocolate milk with Valium, and saw her pencil case was decorated with what appeared to be a poem.

It was written in fancy lettering within speech marks, so I picked it up to read, and it was not a random string of words.
It read well despite one grammatical error and it told a dark, haunting tale that gave me food thought.

You could say that this was a truly profound pencil case and this snippet of literature may well change your life. Enjoy...

"The rabbit trying to trick the cat into sitting on her broken chair, while the monkey is pedaling along on his squeaky bicycle."

A SQUEAKY Bicycle. The Bicycle was squeaky! Think about that for a moment.

Umbrellas And Korean Newborns.

I bet that was a sentence you never expected to see. Even as I typed it out I felt I might be on to something pretty unique. So I googled Umbrellas and Korean Newborns to see if was truly a pioneer; a sole voice on the world wide web who dared break conventions and place Asian infants alongside the worlds most popular instrument for keeping dry in rainy conditions.

I wasn't. But the first link sounded extremely promising. It was apparently a video of a "Happy Narcoleptic Baby". Narcolepsy is always good for a laugh and babies have their moments so this sounded exactly the sort of thing I needed on a Wednesday. I clicked on the link and scrolled down to read the following information above the video...

"Don't worry, this adorable Korean baby doesn't really have narcolepsy".

Well that was a fucking anticlimax.

I wasn't worried, I was looking forward to it you deceitful bastard. In fact the only reason I clicked your link was to see a baby with narcolepsy who had maintained a positive disposition and outlook on life. Now I was faced with a video of a baby who was just "very tired" and who "keeps waking up, smiling..." ahhh shut up.

All babies are very tired and they all wake up too. I should have known this video would be a con. Babies are some of the laziest people on the planet so you could never diagnose narcolepsy in the little, stunted, workshy layabouts.

I have digressed slightly and you may wonder why I was including Korean newborns in this title to begin with, and I can assure you it was not simply to have a go at infants.

Upon my return to work I was informed that one of the Korean teachers had just had his first child. His wife had given birth the day before and we were given a card to sign and then asked to put in some money for a gift but to just "give whatever you would like".

Hmmmm. That might not work. If I were to give whatever I would like, I would give you absolutely nothing. In fact, if this baby has a savings account set up for him or her, I wouldn't mind borrowing from it to be honest. Provided whatever I borrow doesn't ever have to be paid back.

Some donations seemed very generous. Too generous to go towards someone who will be happy playing with a piece of wool for the next 12 months and then get immense joy from cardboard boxes for at least a couple of years after that.

But I have a reputation as a generous and thoughtful man to maintain so I wrote a heartfelt message and threw in a bundle of notes. After our meeting we clapped the new father into the room and were then shown a video from the hospital. For one ghastly moment I thought it might be a Korean tradition to share videos of the birth with co workers, but thankfully it was just a nurse holding up the baby after it had been cleaned and wrapped in a blanket.

And this is where Korea or perhaps just this one hospital takes things too far. The wrapping up. Because the blanket was wrapped in a tight square around the baby which meant it just looked like a small pillow with a human head attached. A cute little head belonging to a baby, but the body was just a pillow. No arms or legs could be seen. Not even the shape.

Which means that either his child had no limbs and he was delighted with this outcome or Korean hospitals wrap up babies like little pillows and just leave their heads poking out. I decided the second possibility was more likely. Why do they do that?

I didn't want to raise the question at that moment as everyone was cooing and clapping and shaking his hand, so to shout out "Hold on, excuse me, why have they wrapped your daughter up like a pillow? It looks like she doesn't have limbs" might dampen the atmosphere some what.

So I still don't know. If you are Korean and read this, please leave a message and tell me if this is the norm.

So to umbrellas. I tried to think of a clever link there, but umbrellas and babies just don't go together I'm afraid.

The problem I had was that it had not rained since I returned and I had no reason to believe it would. Rainy season is over and the weather has been great. So I have not concerned myself with getting an umbrella, and I was happy with this arrangement.

Until I woke up to hear the rain. Pouring rain. The type of rain that would make you quite wet indeed if you were to say walk a ten minute trip to work in it without so much as an umbrella for protection.

I began to ring co workers in my apartment block. No answer. They were probably outside with their umbrellas talking about how terrible it would be to be a person without one in this sort of weather. They were talking about me. I should resign...no, no, too drastic. I should just try and find an umbrella or accept going to work like a drowned rat.

My new apartment was previously lived in by a girl who I used to work with. She had very kindly emailed me about leaving useful things behind if I wanted them, and I had been lucky enough to get a fair bit of food, cleaning products and an iron etc. She had not mentioned an umbrella but she was the sort of person who might well have owned one. The more I thought about it, the more I seemed to remember her always being dry even during rainy weather.

I began to open every cupboard and draw in the place. Seeing as I live in a shoebox apartment that was not quite the epic search you might have envisaged, and in the last cupboard I opened....triumph. An umbrella!

Oh but the triumph was short lived. Because of course this was a girls old apartment. This umbrella had a brightly coloured handle, and huge turquoise polka dots all over it. It was a quite incredibly feminine umbrella. I am a man. A man who likes rare steak, films with gratutious violence and holds many outdated and offensive views.

I needed a man's umbrella. One in no more than two colours, and ideally one solid colour, which should be either white, black or navy blue. If there had to be some sort of emblem or picture on such an umbrella it should be something like a skull and crossbone or a lion punching a rhino.

Polka dots were a long way from brawling beasts and turquoise is several shades adrift from trusty, masculine navy blue.

So quite mortified with my appearance I began the walk to work; hunched under my garish, girls umbrella, not daring to look at passers by in the eye. Until I saw him. A young boy of no more than 8 years old.

He was stood outside a shop eating chocolate and holding an umbrella above his head. A Spiderman umbrella. Spiderman is a hero. In fact, he us a "super" hero and not afraid to use violence to resolve problems. A Spiderman umbrella whilst slightly childish was infinitely more acceptable for a man of my standing than the one I had now.

I could mug that boy.

I could walk up and make him take my umbrella in exchange for his. He might put up a fight, they learn Taekwondo here...but...I fancied my chances. He looked up and our eyes met. He couldn't be more than 4ft 1" tall, I could definitely take him.

Then he turned to the sound of a womans voice and I cursed under my breath. His mother had come out of the shop and was with him. She looked up at the rain and took out her umbrella. She opened it. It was navy blue. A single solid navy throughout its manly frame.

She looked up and our eyes met. She couldn't be more than 5ft 2", I could definitely....NO.

I dragged myself away and scurried to work under my parasol of shame and immediately switched it for a blue and white one I found in our staff kitchen.

But never again will I make such a mistake, although if this had never happened I would never have discovered the video of a narcoleptic baby that doesn't have narcoplepsy. A video which you are all no doubt watching right now.

So you owe me one.

To England and Back.

So here I am. Where is here you ask? A good question. In Korea. That puts an end to your pestering questions but it doesn't tell the full story. The full story is astonishingly dull, so I'll give you just a vague outline. I finished travelling with Little Spoon and I returned to England. Little Spoon returned to LA, my friends Chocolate Orange and Chess Champ went to travel the world and Rude Boy Yatesy moved to Seoul.

Then I came back to Korea after 3 months of doing nothing but entertain my family and friends with witty anecdotes about life in Korea and how cheap beer is in comparison to cheese. The hours must have flown by for my nearest and dearest who cheered in the streets upon my arrival in England and wailed and beat the ground upon my departure.

So what high jinks did I get up to over the summer months in glorious England? Very little. I embarked upon a new fitness regime that involved jumping across a rug in my living room and doing press ups on a kitchen chair. That lasted two weeks, which is two weeks better than not embarking on any fitness regime at all.

Other than that, I went to a friends wedding in Poland, gave a brilliant, erudite best man's speech, then got so pathetically inebriated that I almost knocked a giant speaker onto the brides sister. It would have killed her instantly had it fallen, and generally put a sour note to the days events.

Thankfully I was escorted out by embarrassed friends and the brides sister is alive to this day.

So that was England. Oh and Poland. It was early September that I returned to Korea, to the same school as before, for a nice pay rise but without many of the people who had made last year such fun. I still had good friends, but those that had left, had left Daegu for good and so it was with some sorrow that I waited to board my flight. I was to fly to Dubai, where I would change on to another flight that would whisk me to Korea, a long and stressful journey at the best of times.

So you can imagine my mood taking a turn for the worse when an official announcement rang out...

"Ladies and Gentleman there will be a slight delay to boarding, because we have several passengers in wheelchairs who need some assistance and will be given priority for boarding."

WHAT? I spun around and sure enough, there they were. The several passengers in wheelchairs who needed some assistance. Only there were not several, there was at least twenty of them and they all had matching tracksuits. They appeared to be some sort of sports team. Since when do sports teams "need assistance"? I walked over to have a closer look, and my anger began to rise.

They all had legs. All of them. Not only that, but full, strong looking legs in tracksuits no less. There was not a withered leg amongst them and they were smiling. I wasn't smiling, but then again I wasn't getting priority boarding with assistance whilst relaxing in a snazzy tracksuit was I?

As they wheeled away I fought to control my fury. If I walk onto this plane and find that they are in first class, someone else is going to be in a wheelchair by the end of this flight. As I began to walk towards the plane I became convinced they would be swanning about in first class, drinking champagne and laughing at the able bodied.

Surely I was not the only one annoyed by this discrimination? I looked about and everyone else seemed cheerful and calm. Where were the obnoxious and the arrogant? This flight was going to Dubai for Gods Sake. Surely it couldn't be hard to find someone vile on here, afterall 99% of people who holiday there are repugnant scum aren't they? I should be in my element.

Nothing. Just smiles and laughter. Probably looking forward to making fun of some Arab custom or spending their loose change on a sex slave from the third world whose been shipped into one of the 14 Star Hotels. Heartless Bastards.

Ah YES...no wheelchairs in First Class. In your face wheelchair team, get back into economy with the rest of us. It's not like you need the leg room anyway. Arrogant swines, I bet they tried to demand first class; with their new tracksuits and...I dropped my hand luggage. A friendly man in a wheelchair picked it up and handed it to me.

I thanked him and contemplated saying what a disgrace it was that his team hadn't been given First Class when it was not even full. But he might think that patronising and I wouldn't want anyone to get the idea that I was ignorant.

There were no more incidents of note on my journey and I arrived in Seoul to go and visit Rudeboy Yatesy for a few days of merriment, before I headed back down to Daegu to meet some new teachers, and to embark upon another year of pretending to be a teacher.

If you have missed the internets most asinine stories, then rejoice, I will be back once a week. If you were glad to see the back of them, then I hope you stub your toe whilst walking down a busy street. Until next time...

Halong Bay And Away.

After our ingenious method of tubing, Little Spoon and I had to make some moves. Moves back to Luang Prabang and then Hanoi where we had planned a trip to yet another UNESCO World Heritage site called Halong Bay. UNESCO owe me some sort of sponsorship given the dedication I have shown to visiting their various sites, and I may have to bring this to their attention.

Several things happened on our journey back to Hanoi and I will summarise them briefly. A truck crashed in the mountains spilling fuel all down the dangerously narrow and high roads, meaning our cramped bus was stuck for several hours in choking humidity. That was excellent. Even better was that Little Spoon had obviously been so impressed with my ability to act as a human water tube, that she clearly felt I would also make a great pillow, so I spent the hours cramped against the window with a small baffoon lying across me completely unconcious.

Luckily I had her I Phone with the worlds greatest game on it. Angry Birds! I may be late to the Angry Birds party, but I'm glad I got there eventually, because slinging cartoon birds at rocks, monkeys and green cartoon faces is one of my favourite ever pastimes.

Outside of Angry Birds and truck crashes the following events stick out as note worthy...

Little Spoon screamed and nearly destroyed an entire table at a roadside cafe because a dogs tail brushed her leg.

That's it. That is the extent of the "events" that I remember from our journey back to Hanoi. Gripping travel tales at their best.

Once back in Hanoi we booked a trip to Halong Bay. Here is a picture of Halong Bay so I don't have to bother describing it using words. Afterall they say a picture says a thousand words, so without this it would a very long and tedious blog.



But before we got to the bay with it's rock islands, caves and floating fishing villages (you now know all the key points of the bay) we had to get on another bus with our cheeful guide. He was unsurprisingly Vietnamese and introduced himself with a name that was fairly incomprehensible but then added "But because Vietnamese is difficult I have chosen an English name that is easy for you to remember and say, so you can call me Nicky."

I already liked Nicky. He had recognised that his own language was frankly ludicrous and that the name his mother had bestowed upon him was somewhat of an embarrassment, so he had wisely chosen a slightly effeminate western name. But at least it was in English, which was undoubtebly a huge relief to the rest of our tour group who were from Russia, Slovakia, Singapore, Japan and Germany. In fact Little Spoon and I were the only fluent English speakers there, and that's being generous to Little Spoon.

And to think some people look back on English imperialism with shame. I nodded with smug satisfaction as I listened to various nationalities forced to ask questions in English to "Nicky".

So as the bus started off, I got settled in for the 3 hour trip to the bay. Water? Yep, nice and cold. Pringles? Yep, Little Spoon had got those for about $20 from a trinket salesman. Angry Birds? Definitely. I focused on the latest level and began to play...

"Okay guys so right now we are going past Hoan Kiem lake which is the centre of the old town in Hanoi and..."

What the hell was going on? Nicky was talking for some reason. I paused the game and looked up to see what he was babbling on about and learnt about the lake and a few facts about the old town. Fair enough Nicky, some interesting stuff there and it is a nice lake.

Ten minutes later and Nicky is getting on my nerves.

Nicky: "My city is called Hanoi, which means 'River in the city', because Ha means river, Noi means town or city so it is river in the city...and this is where I was born and I love my city. But this is not the Hanoi city tour so I will stop now and we can get on our way to Halong Bay."

Yeah, you're right Nicky this is not the Hanoi City Tour, so shut the fuck up because some of us are trying to complete Angry Birds and your incessant yapping about this ancient city and it's temples and lakes is hardly helping me concentrate.

Thankfully Nicky gave it a rest and I completed 10 new levels by the time we arrived at Halong Bay. I had forgiven him for his constant waffling earlier and put it down to the excitement of having a real Englishman in his home town. I was glad he had kindly chosen a name that was "easy to remember and easy to say" for English speakers, because I had to check a couple of things about the days events and when I got to go kayaking through some caves.

Little Spoon also had some questions that she needed answering.

Little Spoon: "Hey, can you ask Roger what time we have the seafood lunch I'm quite hungry."

Me: "I beg your pardon, what are you talking about?"

Little Spoon: "The lunch stupid. Ask Roger when we have it."

Me: "Who the HELL is Roger?"

Little Spoon frowned. She bit her lip and then enlightenment shone across her face and she rolled her eyes at me...

Little Spoon: "Okay okay, I don't know why I said Roger. Kenny. Ask Kenny when we have lunch."

Me: "Who the fuck is Kenny and how does he know when we get lunch?"

Little Spoon: "KENNY! The guide Kenny! Who do you think?"

Me: "Do you mean Nicky? Nicky the guide? Nicky who chose the name Nicky because it was easy to remember? That Nicky? The Nicky who is not called Kenny and has definitely never been named Roger?"

Little Spoon: "Oh. Yeah him, ask him please."

Me: "No. I'm playing Angry Birds, you ask him. Or ask one of the Russians they look like they've been paying attention."

As it happened the lunch was very soon served as we sailed through the peaceful waters of Halong Bay. The picture does not really do it justice, and when the clouds moved away it was truly beautiful. We kayaked, I got some customary sunburn and then Kenny oops sorry Nicky took us to a recently discovered island with some caves inside. Apparently there were many stalagmites and stalactites that looked like animals.

He carefully pointed out the one that looked like a dragon "if you use you imagination" as he put it. Indeed,if you also used a large dose of LSD it would probably be helpful too; as the stalagmite looked pretty much like a stalagmite, arguably you could say it looked like a a bunch of stalgmites.

The one that "looked like Buddah" looked like a blob of ice cream. Still they were quite nice caves and I also got to see an idiotic woman wearing high heels twist her ankle on the slippery rocks which was nice.

A relaxing day came to a close and after our journey back to Hanoi we headed out for Bia Hoi and prepared ourselves for the return to Korea. Little Spoon's mother was due to meet us in two days and then I had ten days of living with Chess Champ and Chocolate Orange before I would return to England.

A round up of Korea and back again will be with you when I can be bothered. Goodbye for now.

Tubing In Vang Vieng.

You may have noticed that I added some photographs to my last two blogs. One of the infamous Luang Prabang massage/decapitation centre and one of Little Spoon wielding her giant lollypop as a baseball bat. Due to the inane content of my blogs, I felt that it might help make them mildly more interesting if I included some uninspiring pictures of people you don't know and signs of places that mean nothing to you.

With that in mind, you can expect this blog to follow suit and there will be a photograph of a hippy I briefly spoke to and a water slide above a river. I can only imagine your excitement and I'm pretty sure some of you have already scrolled hastily down to soak up these images and have now lost your sentence. Back yet? Good, I hope they were all you had dreamed they would be.

Little Spoon and I were on a bus to Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng is a small town in the mountains of Laos that is famous for people getting in tubes (rubber rings in the UK) and sailing down a river whilst stopping off at river side shacks to drink beer and maybe smoke drugs. It is also incredibly beautiful and whilst it is certainly more spoilt than it was 7 years ago when I last visited, if you are in the off season I think it is still quite mellow and well worth a visit.

It is purely for backpackers. This was great news for me as I had a backpack. Little Spoon had a suitcase on wheels and looked as out of place as a person with a huge lollypop wearing a traditional Vietnamese hat might have looked.

As she dragged her suitcase across the uneven terrain it struck me that we should stay in the exact same guesthouse that I had stayed at with my friend Montgomery Burns seven years before. Montgomery Burns and I had travelled around for 3 months, slumming it in any old dump and we had both sported backpacks. I don't recall either of us wearing any hats or having oversized confectionary, so I felt duty bound to give Little Spoon a taste of real backpacking.

The only stumbling point was that the place was a bit of a hovel seven years ago and the only redeeming feature I could recall was a laminated picture of some horses hanging from the wall outside our room.

I booked us in. Little Spoon was appalled and terrified. The room was squalid and most rats would probably avoid the bathroom for fear of catching something. It was going to be difficult to win Spoon over, as she had already started ranting and had taken her hat off to show she was serious.

Little Spoon: "No. No I wont stay here. This is not funny. Uggghhhhhh....I wont shower in there. Why do you want to be here?"

Me: "I don't want to stay here, I just thought we should."

Little Spoon: "What? Why? If it was crap seven years ago, then why come back? Are you stupid?"

I resent being called stupid by someone with a wheely suitcase in a town clearly delineated as a "backpacker" destination. But the filth and dilapidation was hard to justify. And then as we stood arguing outside our room, I saw it. The one thing that would win her over. Incredibly after seven long years, it was still there. The laminated picture of some horses. Not a photograph, just a badly drawn piece of "art" encased in thin plastic and now curled at the edges but still taped onto the wall.

Me: "The HORSES! Spoon. Remember the horses I told you about. Look at them, come on, that's a piece of history right there. My God, when I email Montgomery Burns about this, he will be cockahoop."

She seemed stunned by my combination of misplaced enthusiasm and use of the antiquated term "cockahoop".

We agreed to stay there. I don't know if the horses won the day or if she was too tired to move on, but we left the room and made our way to eat but not before she had used her new favourite word. A word that she seemed to try and use at least once an hour. Shaking her head at me in disgust...

Little Spoon: "Erroneous. You're erroneous."

I feel her use of the word erroneous is quite often...well...erroneous, but I let this one slide.

To sum up Vang Vieng it is best to just explain that in the central point of town you sit on beds eating food and drinking while TV screens play episodes of Friends and you play Connect Four as you look at vast swathes of jungle covered mountains. It's a bizarre juxtaposition but very enjoyable.

I had obviously ignored the leaflets offering anything to do with elephants, but we were all set for tubing the next day. We took a Tuk Tuk up to the starting point at the top of the river and before we embarked we joined a gaggle of hippies in drinking buckets of cheap whisky with red bull. Amongst the hippies were some normal people who I was able to discuss normal topics with. Things like politics, beer, evolution and the use of horse based pictures in the hospitality industry.

But the hippies kept distracting me. They were spray painting words and pictures on peoples backs. Random words and shit pictures.

Hippy: "Hey man, I'll spray something on you, I've got all these templates."

I looked at his templates. They said "Ooo La La", "Sexy" and "Pimp". I wasn't sure that men who controlled sex workers really fell into the usual category of love and peace, but apparently it was ironic. Looking at most of them, I assumed that "Sexy" was also being used ironically.

Me: "No."

The Hippy looked forlorn. Good, maybe I would tell him that I didn't believe in global warming too and that I was only at the river to dump my old fridge. He looked at Little Spoon. Oh great.

Little Spoon and I wandered towards the river edge to begin tubing. She was just up ahead of me as I'd bought another bucket of whisky, but the bright red "Ooo La La" across her back meant I couldn't miss her. Oh and here is a hippy playing with a local child...



There was one problem with our plan to tube. We hadn't hired tubes. Somehow in our haste we had ignored the instructions to hire tubes in the town and thought we could get them at the river bars. Our assumption was quite definitely erroneous.

So we had to go tubing without a tube. Little Spoon was very worried as she is not much of a swimmer. However, I began to feel it might not be so bad. As a young boy at school I experienced a devestating school rule that banned footballs in the playground after a window was broken.

Unperturbed my friends and I organised football games without a ball. Twenty small six year old boys running around the pitch screaming and arguing about who had the imaginary ball. There were many contentious decisions and some heavily disputed results, but I scored some of my greatest ever goals with that non existent ball and put in more man of the match performances than I ever managed once a ball was re-introduced.

With this in mind, I felt that tubing without a tube might turn out to be brilliant. So Little Spoon clung to my back like a baby monkey and I played the role of a tube perfectly. Swimming down the river and stopping at bars to top up on alcohol and watch maniacs slide headfirst into the often shallow waters of the river.

Drinking and swimming down a river with no safety regulations in check is hugely enjoyable and hugely stupid. People drown every month apparently. Oh well, I'll assume they are all hippies with stupid slogans sprayed on their body, and shrug it off as a blessing to the gene pool.

I didn't drown and neither did Little Spoon. And apart from one moment in a strong current with rocks where I cut my knees to ribbons it was great being a human tube.
I could waffle on about Laos for many a blog to come, but it would only interest me, so I will spare you the details but leave you with a scintillating picture of a water slide from which a hippy knocked out all of his teeth the day before we arrived. Ooo La La!

I Will Not Train Your Elephant.

The title is self explanatory and I don't see my position changing anytime soon. Moreover this stance is not confined to elephants in Laos so any readers in Thailand, India or elsewhere need not get any ideas. But I will come back to this later.

Little Spoon and I had flown from Hanoi to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Luang Prabang in northern Laos for some relaxation from the moped madness of Vietnam's capital.

And it was certainly relaxing. Luang Prabang is beautiful, sedate and so relaxed that everything closes by 11.30pm. For a young go getter like myself this would usually be a major issue but I was happy to wander around looking at monks and drinking fresh fruit juice while Little Spoon took photographs of everything of any interest and everything else too.

We knew our visit was brief and that we would soon be moving on to Vang Vieng but it seemed worth investigating what activities Luang Prabang had to offer. Three things seemed popular and initially all were fairly appealing. First of all visit a waterfall in the jungle and swim around in the pool at the bottom. Granted this might not sound thrilling on the face of it, but everything closes at 11.30pm remember? If Britain was the same perhaps there would be less teenage pregnancy and more day trips to waterfalls.

But the trip looked a bit short, with too much traveling on a bus and not enough time waterfalling.

The second option is where the elephants come in. We had heard all about elephant trekking and although it is clearly a bit of a gimmick it looks interesting enough. Little Spoon collected the most professional looking leaflet with a huge amount of information about what we could expect for our money.

I opened it up wide eyed and expectant. I finished it furious and in the knowledge that I would have to take a firm stance on elephants from this day forwards.

Allow me to summarise the fun and frolics on offer for a fairly expensive package...

"Day 1: Learn how the elephant handlers train the elephants. Practice their techniques, collect the elephants food and feed it. Take the elephants to their enclosure in the jungle. Return to your cabin for the night."


Hmmm...my suspicions were already arising. This day one sounded worryingly similar to a day of work. I came to your jungle to relax and possibly galavant if the terrain permits it; I didn't come to learn techniques let alone practice them. I read on, perhaps day two would involve riding the elephant to a fun fair or watching them dance while enjoying a nice lie down in a hammock.

"Day 2: Rise at 6.00am"

I beg your pardon? I double checked, yes it definitely tells me to rise at 6.00am on my FUCKING HOLIDAY! Now I was angry, there had better be a very good reason for why I was expected to pay money to be woken up at 6am and it had better not involve practicing anything.

"...make your way from your cabin to the elephant enclosure and bring the elephants back to camp, clean them and give them their breakfast."

Right. That does it. Let me get this straight, I have come on holiday to one of the world's most beautiful towns to relax and soak up the tranquil and idyllic surroundings. I am now expected to pay money to train your elephants, feed your elephants and fetch them back and forth from their enclosure? Sure.

While we are it, perhaps I could enroll on a "Hotel Cleaners Camp" where I can pay for the privelage of learning the best techniques for scrubbing shit off a toilet, how to fold towels quickly and then I can get up at the crack of dawn to work for free.

If you elephant trainers didn't want your elephants you shouldn't have bought them from wherever you buy elephants from. You want the elephant to come back from its enclosure? You fetch it. You want it to have its breakfast? You feed it. I was half hoping the elephants might bring me breakfast not vice versa. Am I expected to put them on my back too and carry the lazy, long nosed swines up the mountain?

I hurled the leaflet away and told Little Spoon we were not going to be a part of such a swindle. But I could see she had been dazzled by the pictures of elephants and was still eager to embark on this madness. So I reminded her that it involved getting out of bed at 6am. Little Spoon is someone who finds getting out of bed at 1pm a trifle taxing and would probably be quite happy if she was reincarnated as a cat and could sleep for 18 hours a day.

That sealed it. She was now more opposed to elephant training than I was, and given that I now put elephant training courses on a moral par with racism, homophobia and kicking the elderly it was fair to say she felt strongly on the matter.

That left us with the last option. Massage. Several traditional massage venues were scattered along the picturesque streets and the prices were very reasonable. The only issue was that Little Spoon had become convinced that every massage available in Asia involved a "happy ending" if the client was male.

Little Spoon: "Oh so you think massage is a good idea? Yeah I bet you do."

Me: "Spoon, this is an UNESCO World Heritage Site, not the red light district of Bangkok. If anything we will probably get in there and have to learn how to give a massage, change the towels and sweep up."

Despite her reservations, she had been out of bed for a good three hours and the lure of being able to lie down again was too much for her to resist. We went inside the place that looked the most traditional. Having no idea what a traditional Laotian massage joint looks like, we based this on the amount of wooden carvings and plants they had.



We both chose a one hour massage with oils that was said to "Relax, Rejuvenate and Increase Blood Circulation".

The first 50 minutes were brilliant. It was the first time I had ever had a proper massage and it was indeed relaxing and rejuvenating. However, the final ten minutes were obviously where the tiny masseuse decided to increase my blood circulation. I have always been pro increased blood circulation, but ideally I would like it to circulate inside my body. But her techniques seemed focused on getting it to circulate all over the room and to splatter the white washed walls and fine wooden carvings.

She tried to pull my head off.

It was not a head rub. She took hold of my head and tried to pull it off. Off from my neck. Where my head has always been.

I grimaced and quickly thought through my options. I could punch her. She was very small afterall and I was feeling pretty rejuvenated so I could probably take her. Or I could bank on my neck being stronger than her arms and stick it out so as not to incur any fines for beating up the masseuse.

I chose option two. It was a fairly close call, but my head remained where it belonged and I hastily got dressed and came outside to find Little Spoon eyeing me like a detective might look at his chief murder suspect.

Little Spoon: "So...enjoy that did you?"

Me: "Well yeah, until the last ten minutes, because then she tried to do the old increased blood circulation thing and..."

Little Spoon: "I knew it! You got a happy ending didn't you? Didn't you, you filthy animal?!"

Me: "NO! Don't be stupid, she just tried to remove my head from my body and it hurt. Surely you had the same, didn't she try to decapitate you too?"

Little Spoon: "Erm...maybe, I'm not sure, I fell asleep after about 15 minutes and she woke me up at the end."

Brilliant. So I paid to have a generally enjoyable time that culminated in being assaulted by a tiny Laotian girl and Little Spoon paid to essentially go back to bed but in somebody elses house. Albeit a very traditional house with nice carvings and an outstanding array of plants.

Our time in Luang Prabang was drawing to a close and we booked our bus journey to Vang Vieng; home of the famous tubing, opium smoking hippies and drunken tourists drowning. It sounded great.

Until next time...

Monkey Roberts Hits Hanoi.

Do not be alarmed. Hanoi is not another abstract name for one of my students, so I have not resorted to beating any of them into a bloody pulp of bones, skin and Hello Kitty clothing. Anyway if I was to thrash one of my students it would have been 'Fred Flintstone' or a massive oaf called John who claims to be 14 but appears to be 36.

No, Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam you ill informed oiks and Little Spoon and I decided to travel there and beyond now that our contract was finished. We woke up at 5am to get a bus journey to Incheon airport, bristling with excitement at the prospect of visiting a country where a glass of beer is about 15 pence and where there are also some bits of history, culture and other afterthoughts to soak up too.

We were pushed for time because we booked an early flight and because we are miserly beggars who opted for a cheap bus rather than a rapid, expensive train to the airport. But when your destination sells beer for 15 pence, every penny counts.

The bus breaks down.

Of course it does. God couldn't possibly let me have a nice holiday just because I'm an atheist and refuse to acknowledge him. Little Spoon seemed fairly unperturbed as she had bought a stupidly expensive new camera for the trip and was now able to get some stunning shots of us stood on the side of the road with a broken bus.

So at least when we missed our flight, never went on holiday and returned to Daegu, hot, tired and forlorn we would have crystal clear images of Korea's motorways to dazzle our friends with.

Stupid Korean transport system. Yeah so every bus and train is always on time, there are never delays, it's good service and there are multiple journeys to every destination all the time. But now look at you with your broken bus, having me stand on the road for no good reason.

Three minutes later and the replacement bus arrives and we're off again. Okay Korean transport system you win this battle, but I'm keeping a close eye on you. As for you God...HA! Nice try pal, but I've been tempting fate and refusing to knock on wood my whole life, so you're going to have to do better than this if you want me to accept you.

The next few hours are about as dull as life gets, so I will save you the details of my sandwich in China during a 5 hour stop over to change planes, and spare you the hilarious problem with Little Spoon's shampoo at customs.

We got to Hanoi and it's mental. I'd been to Vietnam years ago and remembered the local people's love of courting death on the roads, but I never made it as far north as Hanoi and clearly up here they take suicidial driving very seriously indeed. Everyone rides motorbikes and nobody drives on a set side of the road.

We were in a people carrier so I was confident that any of the almost certain crashes we would have on the way to the hotel would at least only result in maiming or death to the unfortunate families of 4 on their mopeds and leave me happily protected in my first world transport.

So comforted, I chose to warn Little Spoon of the various scams and rip offs we would encounter. I carefully explained to her that people would hassle us constantly to buy badly made trinkets, pose for pictures for money, push unwanted snacks and tours upon on us and generally try to get us to part with our cash.

She nodded sternly and practiced her "No Thank You" line carefully. We worked on the stern shake of the head and dismissive wave of the hand.

Two hours later as we walked along Hoan Kiem lake in Hanoi, I looked at Little Spoon in her traditional Vietnamese hat, wearing two locally made bracelets as she carried two bags of pineapple and a giant Chupa Chups lollypop and wondered when she would first get to use her hand carved ink stamp of an elephant.

A picture of Little Spoon using her lolly as a baseball bat. Well of course.



I was not best pleased with my own efforts at haggling and avoiding rip offs either. I had been reliably informed that a beer from a Bia Hoi venue would be about 15p and sometimes cheaper and yet so far today I had paid 25p and 45p!! I'm not Bill Gates for fucks sake.

But fueled by our extortionately priced beers we went out into the manic Hanoi streets to find a restaurant and to my delight I found a place serving a delicacy I had to try.

Me: "Spoon, let's go here"

Little Spoon: "Stop calling me Spoon. Why?"

Me: "I've been calling you it for 12 months, it's not going to stop now is it? Because look it sells baked tortoise."

Little Spoon: "You're an idiot. Oh my God, that's horrible, I'm not eating a turtle I used to have one as a pet, my Mom calls them 'tootles'"

I stopped her at this point and explained the difference between a tortoise and a turtle, as clearly only a savage, uncouth degenerate would eat a turtle (or a tootle for that matter) but dining out on a tortoise baked in its shell is every Englishman's dream.

I could be overstating the passion for tortoise based dishes in England, but I have grown to hate the lazy little leaf chewers over the years. And I'll have you know this is not an irrational hatred. Far from it. In fact it is a hatred born of a love that was not allowed to flourish. Allow me to explain.

As a young boy, fresh of face and yet dour of character I had a few things in life that I yearned for with a growing intensity as each month passed without them in my life. Each of these things would make my Christmas and Birthday request lists for many years until it became clear that my heartless parents would never indulge me.

These things were a Giant Tortoise, A Rifle, A Dog and a metal platform that you could screw to the side of your house and access via a rope ladder. I am sure that most readers would agree that aside from the dog, none of these requests was particularly unreasonable or outlandish for a small boy.

But my stick in the mud parents clearly didn't realise we were in the 20th Century and that their straight laced, killjoy attitudes were an embarrassment to them both. So never did a young Monkey Roberts get to sit 30 feet in the air on a steel ledge on the side of his house, taking pot shots at the local kids as his dog played cheerfully with a huge tortoise.

And for this reason, I came to resent tortoises. I don't like the fact that they live a long time and I don't like their work ethic. I would like to bake one and eat it on the streets of Hanoi however.

But once again I was to be denied. Little Spoon would not eat it and instead I had to settle for a delicious meal of marinated beef with local dips and vegetables. I bet if I wanted to buy a rifle she would say no to that too! But it's alright for her with her hat, stamp, bracelets, fruit and impossibly large lollypop.

We walked through the bustling streets to find a bar and I fumed at the injustice of it all, especially as Little Spoon had everything she wanted from here and more besides...

Little Spoon: "Oooo look, that man has balloons. Can I get a balloon?"

Ah ha! Justice.

Me: "Erm...no. No you can't have a balloon."

Never let it be said that I am a petty man. Because if it's said I will find a way to get you back, no matter how small the vengeance is.

As the first leg of Hanoi came to a close, it was time to look forward to the delights of the World Unesco Heritage site that is Luang Prabang in Laos...

Until next time.

Say Hello And Wave Goodbye.

Well here I am. My year in Korea has somehow come to a conclusion in the blink of an eye and as I approach the end of my contract so does Little Spoon, Tiny and Justice. Little Spoon and I are off to Vietnam and Laos for a holiday, while Tiny and Justice are travelling the world. But before we depart this coming weekend, I felt it proper to fill in the blanks of the last few weeks.

A new teacher Huckleberry arrived. A man with experience in teaching for this company before. A man who has travelled half the globe and worked in orphanages in Africa and South America. A man who has to replace me.

I smirked at the idea that a worldly wise, orphan helping, experienced teacher could possibly fill the void left behind by someone best known for eating around 24 eggs a week and smelling of alcohol up until about 2.30pm on any given day.

This year he spent time in the Middle East meeting people in Yemen, Oman and elsewhere to discuss issues around American foreign policy and to talk about the recent killing of Bin Laden with a diverse group of individuals.

Fair play I guess. Earlier this year I completed a gigantic burger challenge in a new bar record of 23 minutes! Four half pound burgers, eight rashers of bacon, eight slices of cheese and side orders of fries and chilli. A NEW RECORD! My picture was taken by the bar and put on their facebook page. I'd like to see an orphan try and beat that sort of time.

But as it happens Huck (a clever abbreviation of Huckleberry I'm sure you'll agree) is actually a very good replacement for me. Because as it happens he also likes to drink, is mildly misanthropic at times and doesn't actually have any real qualifications that should allow him to teach.
He also stood on his head on a table in a bar on the first night.

Give the man my job.

The only real concern was breaking the tragic news to my kids. How would they take it? Badly I was guessing. I explained to one class of 10-11 year olds that I would be leaving as I marked their homework. This work consists of them being given a word which they must use in an original sentence and then a phrase or short sentence which they must use in a longer, original sentence.

I took 11 year old Lilly's book and gave her a reassuring smile, I felt that she might take the news harder than most, such was her affection for me and my quirky take on education. Let's see, she had to use the word "possibility" here...

"There is possibility I kick Monkey Roberts Teacher"

Interesting. So how did she use the word "imagining"?

"I imagining I'm rich and Monkey Roberts teacher is the beggar"

Clearly my zany sense of humour had rubbed off a little, but it was all light hearted fun. I read on "Use the phrase 'A long way to go'"...

"Monkey Roberts teacher still had a long way to go after the operation for his terrible accident of losing the legs."

I look up at her now. She is smiling and nodding "Funny teacher?" I nod slowly, yes they're fucking hilarious Lilly. Okay what's the last phrase? Ah she must use "Full Tilt" in a sentence. I'd like to see you get in some cruel jibe at me here.

"Monkey Roberts teacher came full tilt against the electrical fence and went to dead."

But Lilly was so proud of her work she showed the rest of the class, and now 50% of them write their sentences based upon my demise. Well, I'll show them. I'm coming back. That's right, I will ramble around Vietnam and Laos with Little Spoon and then I will have a couple of months in England, but then I shall return!

And when I do, I will be coming into class "full tilt" you little rat, and "imagining" how I can make my lessons even more monotonous; oh and there's a "possibility" I will spill hot tea over your face. You've "got a long way to go" with me yet Lilly.

And it is that type of creative writing that landed me this position in the first place, a position I feel forced to return to on the basis that I have no other options other than perhaps becoming a human guinea pig for pharmaceutical companies or an armed robber. Both options I will mull over this time next year.

It has overall been a great year mind you and I will be sad to see Little Spoon, Tiny and Justice not here when I return. But they have to go and have new drugs tested on them and hold up banks so I wish them the best.

You will be relieved to know that I intend to blog about Vietnam and Laos and even about my return to England, so there's a light at the end of the permanently long dark tunnel that is your collective lives.

So before I go and eat some eggs, I will leave you with as always some fantastic free thinking from the students of Daegu. The first was a speech in response to my question of how we could help people with disabilities and why we should. After listing the various conditions such as blindness, paralysis and so on, there was a heartfelt plea from twelve year old Julia for everyone to care for each other and then this succinct conclusion.

"So look after disabled or you get the punishment. Perhaps chop off the arms."

Have you been reading the Old Testament again Julia? Yahweh would be so proud.

And finally in a class of younger students, we somehow taught them about conditioning responses in animals. I thought them a little young for Pavlov's Dogs, but they got the idea and then had to choose an animal for a pet and one trick they would like to train or condition it to do.

Lena chose a mouse but not without reservations.

"I want to pets the mouse. Because I think it is very cute, genius personality and smart with the tricks. Also it eats the cheese. However, mouse is small and very dirty so I sure to cleaning the mouse and want to condition it and say 'Don't be eating the cheese everyday and you just wait!'"

Yeah mouse, always eating the cheese, learn to wait you dirty, small genius.

A Week Of Royalty And Retro.

Well what an exciting week it has been. Two complete strangers engaged in the highly rare and unique ceremony known as a wedding last Friday and I for one was beside myself with delight. When your life is interminably dull, there is nothing more soothing than living it vicariously through others, and if those others happen to be very rich for no good reason then even better.

It was a crying shame that being stuck out here in Korea I missed the hype and frenzy that apparently built up throughout Britain and many other countries in the build up to the big day. I was told that one lady interviewed on British television had flown in from the USA solely for the wedding and had camped out for four days to get a prime spot for watching the procession. What determination, what enthusiasm, what a woman.

Just before the procession came fully into view she caught a glimpse of Prince Williams red jacket sleeve and fainted, was put into an ambulance and missed the entire wedding. What tragedy, what misfortune, what a cretin.

And that was a moment I would have paid to see and treasured for always. In years to come I could sit my grandchildren down and tell them where I was on the day an American half-wit feinted and ruined her entire holiday. Being a huge fan of schadenfreude, this heart warming tale lit up my rather stale week and I told anyone who would listen about the "best moment of the Royal Wedding".

As it happened, during the actual ceremony I was teaching a group of 14 year old students in my usual jovial fashion. One of them asked me if I was sad that I "cannot see the Prince's wedding" and I had to gently explain that I was not sad because I was a republican who would like to see the Queen beheaded in a violent, bloody uprising. He nodded solemnly and continued to work on his presentation about creating a movie; a movie which his team gave the tag line:

"If you see this movie, you will piss your pants".

It sounds like the sort of movie experience that the fainting American tourist might enjoy. Night out at the cinema? Well sure, but only if something extremely embarrassing will happen, you know how I like to spend my leisure time.

Talking of Princes, I was accused of having a syndrome carrying this very title only a few weeks ago. One of my female students complimented me on being "very handsome today teacher" and I of course replied "Yes I know".

Given that this rather regular false compliment is given out by students almost every lesson in the futile hope that it will result in you letting them play games rather than work, you would think my reply would be brushed aside. But it was not. A group of four girls erupted in high pitched screeches of amazement and fury...

"No no, Prince syndrome. Teacher you Prince Syndrome."

Prince Syndrome? I immediately thought of the singer and stopped in my tracks fixing this gaggle of shrieking adolescents with a steely, yet intellectual stare. I have Prince Syndrome do I? Are you trying to insinuate that I am a short, scrawny, weasel of a man who enjoys wearing velvet suits?! HOW DARE YOU! I am not short.

I demanded an explanation and it turned out that Prince Syndrome basically translates to arrogance. A boy or man with this affliction thinks of himself as a Prince and is hugely conceited. I assured my class that I did not have Prince Syndrome, as frankly it sounds like a weakness in someones character, and I simply don't have any weaknesses in mine. Moreover, of my numerous virtues, modesty is one of my strongest points.

But I did think of Prince Syndrome last Friday when the students asked me about the Royal Wedding. Can a Prince have Prince Syndrome? There's a deep, philisophical question for you to ponder.

Despite the wedding not getting huge coverage here, it was certainly covered and it made the front pages of the newspapers. But then archaic institutes like the Royal Family should be popular here, as despite their love of technology, many Korean children in particular seem obsessed by objects that are at best quite retro and at worst outdated.

I see some cheerful young teen wandering the corridors of the school with his Rubiks Cube in hand and give him an approving nod. But in the classroom their obsession with pencils and pens is even more bizarre. Every child seems to pride their reloadable pencil; the type where you put flimsy lead sticks into it and can then press a button to make a nib appear, only for it to break as soon as you start writing and then press the button again.

They love a good pencil these kids. But the other day one of my students 'Homer Simpson' upstaged the entire class with his prize possession. A Parker Fountain Pen.

Now, I have no idea if Parker pens were popular in the USA, but back in about 1992 when I was at school, Parker pens were very much sought after. But this was in 1992. It's now 2011. I felt that perhaps I should let Homer Simpson know that we now lived in a world of DVDs and the Internet, but he was too busy holding court to an amazed mob of small children who were fawning over his pen.
A pen that leaks. A pen that makes a blotchy mess everytime you use it even slightly carelessy. A pen that can break very easily and needs to be refilled all the time.

Now I know how much retro attractions carry weight in the classroom, I am thinking of ways to impress my students. Perhaps I could leave my I-Pod at home and swagger into work with a Walkman. The kids were go mental. I could show them the old cup and ball on a string game, throw away your Wii kids, all you need is this and a spinning top to be the pride of Daegu.

Imagine if I rode to school on a Penny Farthing! I can imagine the scenes of jubilation now. Crowds of children cheering, Korean parents awe struck at my British extravagance, and fellow teachers lining the roads to take a picture of me gliding to work in style. I would just have to hope than none of my American co-workers fainted before they even got to see the little wheel at the back.

Korean Manners And The Meaning Of Dreams.

Many westerners who have spent some time in Korea would tell you that Korean manners is an oxymoron. Koreans don't queue in shops, they push in. The older Koreans spit on the street openly and push you out of their way if they are trying to get somewhere.

But there are in fact many rules of etiquette that are just different to our own. Obviously I ensured that I was well acquainted with most of these as soon as I arrived so that I knew the best possible ways in which to be obnoxious and offensive to people around me.

For example it is a huge faux paus to write someones name in red. Red means death and only the name of a dead person should be written in red ink. I found this out in my first week by the screams of protest from my students when I wrote their names in red marker, and I have heard it every day since then, when I cheerfully select a big red marker anytime that I have to write one of their names.

This may seem unnecessarily cruel, but it is actually necessarily cruel. The only time I have to write their names on the board is when they are misbehaving, and as I'm not allowed to thrash them with sticks in the manner of a Korean teacher, a small death threat seems quite fair.

But despite my deep knowledge on Korean culture and manners, I was shocked to learn of one of the necessities of good manners a couple of weeks ago. My students had to create a poster guide on Korean Manners to inform foreign people of how to behave. The usual by-products of Confucianism were all there...

Bow
Older People Eat First
No Shoes In The Home

And then a rule that stunned me and reeked of horrendous prejudice.

TWO HANDS.

I looked closely at the poster, and sure enough there was a drawing of exactly two human hands next to the rule. How did this physical norm become so important to being seen as well mannered? Was there a dark time in Korea's past, when a rabble of vile, one handed bastards tore through the cities and towns with repulsive behaviour?

I began to imagine this mob of one handed scum and the disgusting acts they must have carried out. But they are long gone, surely Koreans must move on and recognise that you can be courteous and well behaved and yet only have one hand.

What if a one handed person wished to visit Korea to do good deeds or spread their wisdom? Imagine someone like Britain's own Abu Hamza, fresh from prison and simply looking to visit South Korea to speak politely about global jihad and to respectfully rant about his hatred of Jews? Why, he would be seen as rude and abhorrent simply because he has only a single hand.

It made me wonder how many iconic and great one handed figures of literature and history may be reviled in Korean culture. Captain Hook, Luke Skywalker...perhaps even Jeremy Beadle?!

The explanation for this two hands demand was that it actually meant you should always hold a bowl or cup with both hands when passing it to someone or when a person is filling up your drink etc. That's the official line, but I'm not sure I buy it. Afterall I have not seen a single person with one hand or less since I have been here, and that seems somewhat suspicious if you ask me.

I wondered whether I had stumbled across a hidden, dark secret of 21st Century Korea.

Talking of wondering, a day dream is also a type of wondering and a day dream is in many ways closely linked to dreams, which brings me smoothly onto the topic of dreaming and dreams. That sort of seamless, literary segue is the type of talent that most writers can only dream of.

But whilst by day I am a blurring whirl of activity, educating, quipping and pondering; by night my brain evidently takes some time off, because my dreams appear to fall into two categories. Needlessly violent or mind numbingly mundane.

The violent dreams have seen me punch walls and wake up flat mates or neighbours with my expletive riddled rants. Until recently I had never been able to remember what these evidently terrifying and brutal dreams consisted of and then I swore so loudly in one of them that I woke myself up. I remembered the dream and what had caused me to become violent, and I'm not sure if I should now feel relieved at the content or more concerned.

To cut a medium sized story short, I met a girl and agreed to add her on Facebook. I should point out that this is what happened in the dream, obviously in real life I don't meet girls and certainly don't add them on Facebook.
Anyway, as I was adding her, the ghost of her deceased father entered the room and told me not to add his daughter.

Now she had not even told me that she had a dead Dad, let alone that he would start interferring in our blossoming friendship. I ignored him. So he began to pull my foot and insist I stop adding his daughter, which I found quite rude. In fact he could not have been ruder if he had had one hand.

So I kicked him in his ghost head and screamed "Fuck off".

I fully understand if at this point you decide it is probably best to never read one of my blogs again, but please rest assured that my more vivid dreams are not so unusual. In fact there have been times when I have had a dream and not realised that it was not something that really happened until days later. The most recent example being so dull that even my own brain must have been kicking itself for coming up with such a dreadful dream.

I dreamt that someone I knew couldn't wink. They would try, but it always resulted in a blink. That's it. I got to work and couldn't remember which teacher couldn't wink, so I asked around and sure enough everyone could wink. It gradually dawned on me that I had actually dreamt the entire cannot wink episode complete with the identity of the poor individual being forgotten.

What sort of person dreams that someone they know but cannot quite remember, can only blink? Apparently the same sort of person who dreams of overly protective, dead fathers and dreams that kicking their spirit will resolve a conflict.

In contrast, both Little Spoon and one of my students known as "Hotdog" have had far more interesting dreams of late. In the past week, Little Spoon dreamt that she was a detective on a murder case, the local mayor and in an upgrade from the mayor, also that she was running as the next US President.

Ambitious? Or delusions of grandeur? Neither could apply to a man who dreams about winking.

But the dream of the week must go to 10 year old Hotdog. One of the most energetic and talkative students that I have, she interrupted the opening gambit of Tuesday's lesson to tell me about her dream and she even managed to insult my general knowledge with her initial question.

Hotdog: "Teacher, you know Hitler?"

Me: "Yes Hotdog I know who Hitler is."

Hotdog: "I have the dream of Hitler teacher."

Me: "Really? What happened?"

At this point, Hotdog leaps from her chair and proceeds to act out the rest of her dream to the classes delight.

Hotdog: "I see the Hitler, kick him, kick his leg, and kick the hand. He says 'No no, sorry, I am sorry', but I kick him again. Then computer...you know computer? Computer to crash on the Hitler's head. So dead."

So even a ten year old ADHD sufferer has better dreams than me. She got an apology from one of the 20th Centuries most evil men simply by kicking him, and then killed him with a computer over the head.

I didn't know what to say, so I just said "Well done" and decided that when I had to write her name on the board, I would use green instead of red. She deserved that much at least.

Food Poisoning, Rules and Korean Salt.

Well it has been a month since I last blogged. After such a triumphant return you would think that I would have leapt back into the hustle and bustle of my teaching life and been eager to share it with the handful of people following my exploits. You would have been wrong to think such a thing.

I have been so busy that I felt sick at the mere thought of sharing anything with you. In the mood I was in, I would have spat in your face if you asked to share a light snack with me, nevermind my innermost thoughts and feelings.

My school gave me a horribe schedule. No surprises there and then I got food poisoning. It is difficult to explain why getting food poisoning is worse for me than for other humans, but I will attempt to enlighten you. Up until September 2009, I had never had food poisoning in my life and I had certainly tried. I ate from squalid road side huts in Cambodia, I ate old yogurts at home that were 2 months past their use by date and I even ate a sausage from a barbecue that had been left on a plate in my backgarden over night.

And not a hint of food poisoning. This led me to announce to anyone who would listen that I was "immune to food poisoning". A number of people tried to reason with me and suggest I had been fortunate. I mocked them and ridiculed their way of life.

Then one fateful night in September 2009 I bought a chicken (yes a whole chicken) from my local kebab shop. I ate it, as one tends to do with chickens. I got salmonella. I was obviously very ill, but more importantly I was psychologically damaged. My world view had been rocked and I was not the man who sneered at salmonella and scoffed at E-Coli; I was a normal man, a man who could get food poisoning.

My critics crawled out from under the rocks they had been hiding under and told me that they had tried to explain to me that my boasting was foolish. You would think that I would be humbled and begrudgingly accept my folly. You would be wrong to think such a thing. That is the second time in one blog that you have thought something and be quite wrong about it, but I shall not hold it against you.

So disgusted was I at my bodies weakness to salmonella that I masked my insecurity with more bravado and proclaimed that I would "never again get food poisoning". My friends and family shook their heads and sighed. I laughed, waved my finger and told them that I was indeed tempting fate but that I would never get my comeuppance.

My comeuppance took less than two years to arrive and it arrived promptly on Sunday March 20th after I had just been to Seoul to watch Little Spoon, Rudeboy Yatesy and Chocolate Orange put in an outstanding effort to complete the Seoul International Marathon.

The Friday night before this, our two faced, money grabbing employer had tried to sweeten us up with a meal out. A meal of seafood. A meal that involved watching a slug like, shell fish being cooked alive on a grill. If you are prejudiced against slug like, shell fish you would love this. As a man who has long admired slug like, shell fish I felt slightly uncomfortable watching it spin and writhe on its shell and attempt to crawl off, only to feel the even greater heat of the grill and jerk back onto its increasingly hot shell.

Some of the teachers chose not to eat this poor little blighter. I however, decided that his suffering should not be in vain and I ate a good deal. It tasted nice, and Little Spoon and Blancquita tucked in too.

But the tortured slug was to have the final laugh. Because moments after Little Spoon finished her marathon, she began to feel ill. Being a general know it all and self proclaimed medical expert, I informed her that it was simply dehydration. She began to vomit violently. I nodded. Definitely dehydration. Then Blancquita began to be sick. I raised my eyebrows, because she had not run a marathon. Just a coincidence then.

Then I was sick. And as it turned out so was everybody who ate the little slug like, shell fish. When I find out the correct name, I will inform you, but I also intend to return and eat one again. Because we are now mortal enemies. You might be thinking that I would stay clear of something that gave me food poisoning, but let's be honest you have not been very accurate with your thoughts so far have you? As it happens you would be wrong for a third time, because I am not in the least concerned about getting food poisoning again, for a simple reason.

I will never get food poisoning again. Ever. That is a bold claim, but one I make, confident in the knowledge that I will never get my comeuppance.

Talking of unusual Korean foods, I should warn anyone planning on coming here about Korean Salt. I'll be honest, I had not encountered any problems with Korean salt myself, but a major one was drawn to my attention by Little Spoon.

As you may recall she likes to eat limes with salt. As you may also recall I had smuggled a bag of limes into the country at the risk of five years imprisonment, and Little Spoon had bought herself a large bag of salt for the occasion.

I watched her prepare her ludicrous snack in the way you might watch a beetle on its back struggle to get back onto its feet. But I did not envisage the problem that was to emerge...

Little Spoon: "Mmmmm....hmmmm...strange."

Me: "What's strange, other than this entire snack?"

Little Spoon: "It tastes different than at home. It's not horrible, but...it tastes not right."

She frowns a little and then dips her hand into the bag of salt and tastes it.

Little Spoon: "Yep, it's the salt. Korean salt is weird."

Me: "It can't be, salt is just salt."

Little Spoon: "NO, Korean salt is weird, come here and taste it if you don't believe me."

So I did.

Me: "You're right. Korean salt is weird. Korean salt is sugar."

As you can imagine this issue with Korean salt is quite inconvenient. It could ruin an entire trip and certainly would ruin many meals. But thankfully I have found a solution. If you fancy something with salt on it, then don't use Korean salt (because it's sugar remember), just use Korean sugar. Because Korean sugar is salt. Strange eh? Well either that or Little Spoon just picked up the wrong bag, but I doubt that could have happened.

So as another week began at work on Monday, it was time for another staff meeting and a quick reminder from our employers about what was expected of us. The usual things were mentioned, such as make sure you are on time. Finish student reports by the deadline and a few guidelines on grading.

But then a bombshell. A totally unreasonable and outlandish demand.

"Remember not to touch your kids".

WHAT? Don't touch the kids? You will be telling me I have to wear trousers during lessons next. Everyone seemed a bit surprised to hear that we shouldn't fondle the children, but if that's what the Koreans want then fair enough, when in Rome and all that...

Anyway I am off to have a cup of Korean coffee. That's tea to you and me.