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.