Señor Bong
There's this pool hall down the street. I played a couple weeks ago with a buddy. The only Western table, by which I mean a table with pockets, was next to a rail like at a crowded bar, so at one point we needed a short stick. The owner, an aged Korean man, brings out the stick, which he called a "chiquita." I thought that was odd, and I didn't figure out until we were on our way out the door that he spoke really good Spanish.
Last Sunday night, I spent much of the day negotiating the black market and trying to find some refried beans. It's a staple of my diet, and I've been known to pick up 20 cans at a time when they're at an especially good price. I picked up a can when I first got here, but $3 a can was a bit steep until my first paycheck came - which happened last Monday. There has to be a cheaper way to get my bean fix, especially when you can pick up Louisiana-made hot sauce for a dollar a bottle at most grocery stores. Koreans just aren't an especially beany people, which complicates things since this is among the more ethnically homogenous countries in the world. So, I thought, "oh yeah, the pool hall man. He might know where I can find a fuckin' tienda."
So, I go to the pool hall. And for some reason, he was having a hard time with "frijoles. " "Come on man, frijoles. You eat and you eat and then your ... ass smells bad. You have smelly ass ... sky ... nearby your ass. Frijoles." He still had no idea, but laughed, so I went to the fridge and showed him a can of coffee. I pointed to the coffee bean on the front. "Frijole." "Ah. Cape." "No, frijoles. Ass that smells bad." "Cape." There's no "f" in Korean, so that caused some problems for both "beans" and "coffee."
Anyway, he introduced himself as Señor Bong - the first time I've ever heard those words used together in unstoned earnest - and insisted that we play a game of pool together. We started on the 8 ball table. It wasn't the most competitive of games, and he seemed kinda bored with it. So, then we moved on to the Korean pool table, a game I've been pretty curious about. Then, I got a 90 minute tutorial on danggu from Señor Bong, who rules at it, in the weirdest fucking Spanish I've ever heard in my life. Spanish with a Korean accent is weird. Korean Spanish with an Argentinian accent is much, much weirder. For example, when teaching me how to more effectively hit with English, it was "acka" - which I've never heard before - instead of "aqui." But, he spent 13 years living in Buenos Aires (oh, "ass AIR"! Why didn't I think of that before!?), so his vocabulary is much better than mine even if the pronunciation was way wacky.
Korean pool, danggu, is played on a smaller pool table, with four balls and no pockets. Two of the balls are cue balls, one white for one person, and a yellow ball for the opponent. And then there are two red balls. You gain a point if you make the cue ball hit one red ball, and then the other. So, the cue ball has to cleanly hit each of the red balls (rather than a red ball into another red ball) for you to gain a point. You keep getting points until you miss. Also, your score goes back to zero should you cause the two cue balls to collide. The game ends and the points are tallied when you make the cue ball hit both red balls as well as three rails - or I think that's how you play it. So, basically, he just toyed with me for over an hour and then finally ended the game once I got the rules down. I'm a decent shooter, which puts me at something of a disadvantage when their are no pockets.
Señor Bong only charged me $2, and that was just for a couple coffees and a gatorate-ripoff. Since it was $10 for an hour the first time I went, and especially since I had a pretty lengthy tutorial - including pointers on how to work the rail, and how to keep the red balls roughly together - I felt indebted to Señor Bong. "Hey. For me, money is money." "And for me, money is money." "If you insist. ?Are you hungry?" "Always." So I rushed home and made Señor Bong a burrito, which sans refried beans requires mashing up a can of kidney beans and throwing that shit on the stove. I only fried that shit once, though. I think frying them again is a wasted step.
So, Señor Bong liked his burrito, I think, and I brought the can of frijoles so that maybe he can help me out. He's got "frijoles" down now, but "refritas" is another problem. It's hard to explain if one person sucks at Spanish and the other isn't familiar with the product. The burrito was hot and spicy. My Korean students hate how in English "hot" is "heat" and "spice." Señor Bong hates the same thing about Spanish. So the burrito wasn't caliente and caliente. "No. Caliente y picante. Y muy rico," which I think means he liked it, right? We chatted for over an hour this time. I was kind of curious about Koreans in South America. Apparently, he lived in Korea, but then took part in a mass exodus in the late 1980s, when the Korean population in Buenos Aires dropped dramatically. That one required pen and paper. There were a few tough years of discrimination all of a sudden, and they moved on to places like Australia and Canada, and the population of Koreans in Argentina supposedly was cut in half within just a couple years.
He did things like mix up "before" and "after," and I did things like forget how to conjugate verbs in the past tense, so that was a problem. Especially since I used "before" and "after" as often as possible to get around the tenses. Then there was the occasional Korean for words I have forgotten from Spanish but know in Korean, like "ball" - learned in the kindergarten basement funhouse, also the word for "zero." I understood about 40-50% of what was going on at any moment. For example, he told me to hit the [Korean] ball "acka con finito" more than a few times. I didn't know "finito" (anyway, more like "pinito" with his accent") and wasn't paying attention to the suffix, and so I smacked the shit out of the ball when I should've used finess." Ah, con finito. (smack)" He owned some kind of costume jewelry store in Buenos Aires, and then somehow $50,000 is involved, though I'm not sure how. My horrible Korean has made me feel much more confident about my less-horrible Spanish, so that's helped a lot.
Spanish is a real emotional language for me, so needless to say that a few hours of speaking Spanish - without the option of English - is the most epic Spanish conversation I've ever had. On his last weekend alive, I was lucky enough to spend a day playing dominoes with my grandfather and cousin. One of the last things my grandfather ever said to me in Spanish was "pierdo mi alma." "?Grandpa, que quiere decir 'alma'?" "Soul." "I lose my soul" stands as the saddest thing I've ever heard, and it's always on my mind whenever I speak Spanish with old people. Of course, switching up "before" and "after," it was quite morbid for me to explain to Señor Bong why I was un poco triste.
Last Sunday night, I spent much of the day negotiating the black market and trying to find some refried beans. It's a staple of my diet, and I've been known to pick up 20 cans at a time when they're at an especially good price. I picked up a can when I first got here, but $3 a can was a bit steep until my first paycheck came - which happened last Monday. There has to be a cheaper way to get my bean fix, especially when you can pick up Louisiana-made hot sauce for a dollar a bottle at most grocery stores. Koreans just aren't an especially beany people, which complicates things since this is among the more ethnically homogenous countries in the world. So, I thought, "oh yeah, the pool hall man. He might know where I can find a fuckin' tienda."
So, I go to the pool hall. And for some reason, he was having a hard time with "frijoles. " "Come on man, frijoles. You eat and you eat and then your ... ass smells bad. You have smelly ass ... sky ... nearby your ass. Frijoles." He still had no idea, but laughed, so I went to the fridge and showed him a can of coffee. I pointed to the coffee bean on the front. "Frijole." "Ah. Cape." "No, frijoles. Ass that smells bad." "Cape." There's no "f" in Korean, so that caused some problems for both "beans" and "coffee."
Anyway, he introduced himself as Señor Bong - the first time I've ever heard those words used together in unstoned earnest - and insisted that we play a game of pool together. We started on the 8 ball table. It wasn't the most competitive of games, and he seemed kinda bored with it. So, then we moved on to the Korean pool table, a game I've been pretty curious about. Then, I got a 90 minute tutorial on danggu from Señor Bong, who rules at it, in the weirdest fucking Spanish I've ever heard in my life. Spanish with a Korean accent is weird. Korean Spanish with an Argentinian accent is much, much weirder. For example, when teaching me how to more effectively hit with English, it was "acka" - which I've never heard before - instead of "aqui." But, he spent 13 years living in Buenos Aires (oh, "ass AIR"! Why didn't I think of that before!?), so his vocabulary is much better than mine even if the pronunciation was way wacky.
Korean pool, danggu, is played on a smaller pool table, with four balls and no pockets. Two of the balls are cue balls, one white for one person, and a yellow ball for the opponent. And then there are two red balls. You gain a point if you make the cue ball hit one red ball, and then the other. So, the cue ball has to cleanly hit each of the red balls (rather than a red ball into another red ball) for you to gain a point. You keep getting points until you miss. Also, your score goes back to zero should you cause the two cue balls to collide. The game ends and the points are tallied when you make the cue ball hit both red balls as well as three rails - or I think that's how you play it. So, basically, he just toyed with me for over an hour and then finally ended the game once I got the rules down. I'm a decent shooter, which puts me at something of a disadvantage when their are no pockets.
Señor Bong only charged me $2, and that was just for a couple coffees and a gatorate-ripoff. Since it was $10 for an hour the first time I went, and especially since I had a pretty lengthy tutorial - including pointers on how to work the rail, and how to keep the red balls roughly together - I felt indebted to Señor Bong. "Hey. For me, money is money." "And for me, money is money." "If you insist. ?Are you hungry?" "Always." So I rushed home and made Señor Bong a burrito, which sans refried beans requires mashing up a can of kidney beans and throwing that shit on the stove. I only fried that shit once, though. I think frying them again is a wasted step.
So, Señor Bong liked his burrito, I think, and I brought the can of frijoles so that maybe he can help me out. He's got "frijoles" down now, but "refritas" is another problem. It's hard to explain if one person sucks at Spanish and the other isn't familiar with the product. The burrito was hot and spicy. My Korean students hate how in English "hot" is "heat" and "spice." Señor Bong hates the same thing about Spanish. So the burrito wasn't caliente and caliente. "No. Caliente y picante. Y muy rico," which I think means he liked it, right? We chatted for over an hour this time. I was kind of curious about Koreans in South America. Apparently, he lived in Korea, but then took part in a mass exodus in the late 1980s, when the Korean population in Buenos Aires dropped dramatically. That one required pen and paper. There were a few tough years of discrimination all of a sudden, and they moved on to places like Australia and Canada, and the population of Koreans in Argentina supposedly was cut in half within just a couple years.
He did things like mix up "before" and "after," and I did things like forget how to conjugate verbs in the past tense, so that was a problem. Especially since I used "before" and "after" as often as possible to get around the tenses. Then there was the occasional Korean for words I have forgotten from Spanish but know in Korean, like "ball" - learned in the kindergarten basement funhouse, also the word for "zero." I understood about 40-50% of what was going on at any moment. For example, he told me to hit the [Korean] ball "acka con finito" more than a few times. I didn't know "finito" (anyway, more like "pinito" with his accent") and wasn't paying attention to the suffix, and so I smacked the shit out of the ball when I should've used finess." Ah, con finito. (smack)" He owned some kind of costume jewelry store in Buenos Aires, and then somehow $50,000 is involved, though I'm not sure how. My horrible Korean has made me feel much more confident about my less-horrible Spanish, so that's helped a lot.
Spanish is a real emotional language for me, so needless to say that a few hours of speaking Spanish - without the option of English - is the most epic Spanish conversation I've ever had. On his last weekend alive, I was lucky enough to spend a day playing dominoes with my grandfather and cousin. One of the last things my grandfather ever said to me in Spanish was "pierdo mi alma." "?Grandpa, que quiere decir 'alma'?" "Soul." "I lose my soul" stands as the saddest thing I've ever heard, and it's always on my mind whenever I speak Spanish with old people. Of course, switching up "before" and "after," it was quite morbid for me to explain to Señor Bong why I was un poco triste.
posted by Mark Hernandef at 11:02 PM
5 Comments:
Pobrecito! Es una sorpresa que no comes Kim Chee! Refritos estan hechos con manteca! (Lard, honey!) Mi querido…you’ve taught me how to laugh again. Pardon the awful word play, but you could open shop in Korea and sell “perritos” instead of “burritos.”
My maternal grandmother, whose maiden name is my first, says that hearing her four grandchildren (all of us 'half-breed Hispanics', to use that lovely phrase coined an epoch ago) speak Spanish is the only thing that makes her feel as if these blonde-hair, blue-eyed children actually, in some way, belong to her. Doloroso.
When frijoles refritos are on the line, you have more patience than I thought you had.
G.D.H.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
GDH, I'm a stranger to you, then. :( Let's rectify that shit. When you coming up? Come on, man, I'm stoic as hell these days - in comparison. You can't teach kindergarteners without a healthy amount of patience, anyway.
But anyway, it was more that I was hungover all day, and was well rested and energetic by nighttime.
old dude with the hat: Yeah, I once threw down on the tastiest refritos ever, and a vegan friend - the aformentioned - pointed to the ingredients and totally called me out on being a fatass for enjoying the shit out of the manteca. Enjoyed the wordplay, perrito.
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