Socks, Charlatans and Cynicism...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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