Cultural immersion, failed attempt at

Last month, I had a class that was mostly comprised of young thirty-something chicks, who are desperate to marry since they are becoming, as they say in Korean, "old virgins" ("old maids"). This is only to say that we talked about relationships a ton, so the subject of blind dating - quite common in Korea - came up several times. One student - remember the one with the Pooh-fetish from a few weeks back? - insisted that I give this custom a try and she had a friend in mind: "She's English ees better than mine." I, very cautiously and half-jokingly consented, but hoped that it would never come up again. I'm, as a rule, skeptical of the judgments of people who lust for animated bears.

Then the student called me about it three times the next week. Then I tried to put it off: "Hmm, birthday weekend. Then I'm going to China the weekend after that. Then I work on Saturday the next weekend." "You can have your meeting on the Sunday?" "Yeah, that might work." Then I hoped she'd forget about it. Lo, when on Saturday, the night before, I get a call. And then two more after that... After I finally picked up, former student gave me the number again - I'd pretended to have lost it - and I called to arrange my first blind date ever. I'd vowed to find a way to call it off, but only if her English is not at a very decent conversational level. After speaking at an 8th grade level - at most - all day, having remedial conversations on my day off is kinda like teaching on my day off: "So, are you busy tomorrow, because..." "No, I don’t have any obligations." [fuck]

Koreans have quite lovely heads of hair, the best I've ever seen, collectively. Thirty-year-old Koreans are usually quite attractive, . Though Christianity is the major religion in this country, it's still less than half of the population. I thought I would play the odds and, at the very worst, have a decent chat with a (probably) attractive, (hopefully) non-Christian chick with a full head of hair. I was wrong on all accounts.

We met at a designated time at a certain subway stop. I approached someone who was clearly also on the lookout for a strange whitey: What I meant to say in Korean was "Do I have a blind date with you?" However, what actually came out was "Do I have a ‘speed violation’ with you?" "Speed violation" is Korean for a pregnancy out of wedlock, so I accidentally asked, in very broken Korean, "Are you knocked up by me?" or something to that effect. Then, since I had a good four inches in height on this chick, it took about 4.5 seconds to notice that she had gaping bald spots on her crown, as if a family of crows took out chunks of her shiny black hair to build a nest.

Then it took this chick maybe five minutes to make her first criticism. Apparently, I’d been a little too terse for her tastes, with a bombardment of "whatever," "it’s all cool," "no worries," and "sure" to questions/statements like "where do you want to go?," "do you like the drinking," and "I work for a pharmaceutical company." "Can you answer me with longer sentences? Everything you say is very short." "Oh, I’m sorry. What should I say? ‘My, that sounds like an interesting profession. Is it fulfilling in every way that you’d hoped? [Was there a chemical leak that resulted in your unfortunate state of she-baldness?]’"

Then it took another couple minutes for her to pronounce: "I have a bet with [Pooh-chick, the matchmaker]. She says that we will be, how do you say, separated in different ways before two hours. I say that we will be longer than five hours." "FIVE HOU--... Five hours is a long time. [forced yawn] I’m not positive that I’ll be able to stay awake..."

A few more vignettes. Before the meal, she excuses herself and has a quick 30 second prayer. Korean-Jebus is whiter than white, those sycophantic peninsula-dwellers, so I wondered if she talks to Him in Korean or English. I made her cry at one point, when I uttered "I trust you," as I put a mouthful of charred-whole fish into my gob: "Are these bones safe to eat or should I pick them out?" "Maybe the bones are very small and this fish is cooked well, so I think that you can be able to eat it with the bones." "Ok, I trust you." [long pause] "Nobody has ever said that to me before. ‘I trust you.’ That is a very good thing to say to some person. ‘I trust you.’" Then her eyes welled up with tears, which she neither tried to conceal nor play off.

We went to a sashimi restaurant. Though she offered to pay and makes a shitload more money than me, she proposed another bet. She’d watched this episode of Friends earlier in the day, where the characters gets together and tries to name all fifty states. She asked if I could, and I was pretty cocksure: "In five minutes." I named 49 in a frenetic whirl of penscratching, embarrassingly unable to come up with bordering state to my last US home, Pennsylvania: "Don’t feel bad. Ross is a very smart person. He forgot about one state, too. He had a really good SAT score and is a professor of... some kind of thing. So maybe you are a kind of genius." That was a $90 venture. We didn’t make it to the full five hours. I haven’t been answering my phone - two calls that night, one more the next day.

The matchmaker rang me today, sounding like a car salesperson: "You are very talkative and have a good appearance. And you make funny conversation for her. Maybe I think she has a good feeling about you." "Uh..."

My high school class voted me "least likely to abuse superlatives," so I cautiously say that this is the weirdest first date I’ve ever had. And the second weirdest last date I’ve ever had.

Ringing in the year of the golden pig

I arrived in Beijing last Saturday, and it was immediately obvious that things would be a bit chaotic. My three other buddies and I piled into a cab, and heard the occasional thundering boom that kept increasing in loudness and intensity as we inched closer to the center of the city. As we got out of our cab, it sounded like a war zone due to all the fireworks, and it was still four hours until sunset.
We checked into our 5 star hotel ($60 a night per room) and did the Tiananmen Square bit, and watched the changing of the guard and retiring of the flag at sunset. Then, it was time to go for a feed and blow shit up ourselves.

Rather than an official government display of fireworks, people get together and blow shit up - wherever the hell they want, as you'll see in the picture. Firecrackers are torched in units of a thousand, and it is good luck to set them off near the front of your house since it wards off evil spirits and whatnot.

Hanging out between Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City was especially surreal at midnight, when there was all kinda of colorful shit exploding in every direction.

What is usually the year of the pig is the year of the "golden pig" in 2007, with the year for gold and pig coinciding as it does every sixty years. This is an especially lucky thing, fortuitous even more for babies born in this year, since, as a student explained to me, "peegs have many babies."

For New Year's Day proper, we went to the Wall, where I had a "Holy shit, I'm on the Great Wall of (fucking) China" moment.

Give me some throat love

I had a student who remembered that I was complaining of a sore throat in the previous class. She was kind enough to bring me a roll of lozenges. After a few minutes, I bothered to sound out the Korean while the students were yammering on about this and that. " 'mok sarang...' Does this mean 'throat love'?" "Yes." "Cool, thanks for the throat love." And then I realized what I'd said. And then I giggled, like a tubby bitch.

It was also Valentine's Day, and the student had given me chocolate. I have piles of chocolate from this week, since on Valentine's Day it is traditional for only the men to receive gifts. The women get their turn in a month, which is called "White Day". On April 14th, people who didn't exchange gifts with S.O.'s on V-Day or White Day get together and celebrate "Black Day," an anti-Valentine's Day of sorts whereby miserable singles get together and eat black noodles with black bean sauce, and presumably exchange dark clouds of flatulence afterwards.

The 14th of every month is a "couple day" of some kind or another in Korea. May 14th is "rose day," when you point at a chick who looks interesting/desperate and offer a rose to them. 14 June is "kiss day," but I'm not yet sure of the logistics behind that one. This is a ridiculously "couply" country: Korean couples frequently can be seen wearing matching outfits - usually zebra stripes - which needs to be a regular feature of this blog, once I have the balls to start photographing smoochy couples on the street; also, the tandem bicycle is known in Konglish as a "couple bike," and so on...

It was a great birthday weekend, as well... culminating in quite the bender and about 25 tequila shots over the course of a couple days. Alaska chick sang "happy birthday" to me on night midnight of night three of the bender, which made my vestigial tail wag.

This week is Lunar/Chinese New Year. I'll be celebrating it properly, by going to the only man-made object that is visible from space.

A final Oriental-fun-fact of the week: Koreans add a year to their age on Lunar New Year, meaning the whole country gets older at one time. Some, especially chicks with bdays in October, will hold off until then, but it seems like the majority of the country opts to add the additional year en masse, which is kinda cute. Also, a baby born in December is one at birth, and becomes two years old on Lunar New Year, whenn it is actually just a couple months old by Western standards. Also also, the baby's 100th day is a big deal, since it's roughly a year anniversary of the conception.

Inwards: Part II

So, today at work, a former student gave a presentation. He'd been practicing the speech - pasted below - with the owner of my school. This student had been practicing public speaking with the owner, a former acting student somewhere in Cali, for the previous month. There were maybe twenty of us huddled in a room, it was during our dinner break, and the owner had him single me out and direct the entire monologue on me: "[Mark] has some Sicilian blood. Remember, these are you're last words to him. He's about to kill you." From "True Romance," written by Tarantino:

You know I read a lot. Especially things that have to do with history. I find that shit fascinating. In fact, I don't know if you know this or not, Sicilians were spawned by niggers... It's a fact. Sicilians have nigger blood pumpin' through their hearts. If you don't believe me, look it up. You see, hundreds and hundreds of years ago the Moors conquered Sicily. And Moors are niggers. Way back then, Sicilians were like the wops in northern Italy. Blond hair, blue eyes. But, once the Moors moved in there, they changed the whole country. They did so much fuckin' with the Sicilian women, they changed the blood-line for ever, from blond hair and blue eyes to black hair and dark skin. I find it absolutely amazing to think that to this day, hundreds of years later, Sicilians still carry that nigger gene. I'm just quotin' history. It's a fact. It's written. Your ancestors were niggers. Your great, great, great, great, great-grandmother was fucked by a nigger, and had a half-nigger kid. That is a fact. Now tell me, am I lyin'?

The kid apologized to me profusely afterwards, and all the Western teachers were sitting there, aghast. I chomped on ice the whole time, trying, desperately, to keep a straight face. I'm positive that he understood everything he said, because last month I told a joke when "leprosy" appeared as a vocabulary word: "What did the leper say to the prostitute? You can keep the tip." The kid responded with, "Uh... you know I just graduated from the high school, right?" "Good, then you're now a man. Here's another joke..."

A parfit, gentil nyght

Tonight, I played a fun game with the dyke friend. Imagine that you are able to throw a dinner party, inviting six other people - dead or alive, from any point in history. The person sitting opposite you will be the guest of honor, at the head of the table.

I selected Woody Allen as the guest of honor, wanting someone whose honored presence will no doubt cause all other attendees to exclaim "so, what the fuck is this man doing at the head of the table?" And then compare curricula vitae. The other attendees are: bell hooks, Mr. and Mrs. Bill Clinton, Joan of Arc, Chaucer, and a Girl I'm Trying To Shag. Given the company, I was pressured into picking at least one radical lesbian feminist, and thus a lovechild between Kim Jong Il and Fidel Castro got the boot.

Seating arrangements are crucial.

Since the budget is limited, Joan of Arc will not be provided with a translator. But really, Joan of Arc is only on the list because she's sure to prompt "Joan of the fucking Arc? What are you all about?" from everyone at the table. The complete inability to understand her will further frustrate the guests, and especially bell hooks, who will spark someone, wielding a three-pronged fork, to say "jam this up your cunt, you uppity bitch!" before the evening is over - probably Hillary.

Bill Clinton will fume the whole night because Chaucer is cock-blocking him, but will no doubt offer to perform tireless cunnilingus on bell hooks, as suggested when he makes an ill-timed joke about reparations.

I'm sure that Woody Allen's French is good enough to mumble a few awkward one-liners - something about the "maidenhood of Orleans" - and maybe Chaucerian English is somewhat mutually intelligible with the French of around the same time.

Chaucer will be provided with a translator, an expert of Chaucerian literature, but the translator will only chime in when absolutely necessary. And if he goes into windy diatribes about ME etymology, I reserve the right to throw fruit at him. Chaucer is sitting across from Girl I'm Trying To Shag. He's really just there to get her in the mood, but at a safe distance - across rather than beside GITTS - because he's also got the designation of most-likely-to-whip-his-cock-out.

The question: Would God tell JoA to hook up with the twitchy Jew or the bawdy 14th century lush. Most likely Woody Allen, who will slyly convince JOA that he is G-d, utilizing a few theater techniques that weren't available in the 1420s.

And, the meal served will be like traditional Jewish passover, for the guest of honor - and the Girl I'm Trying To Shag, who's probably a lovely Jewess. And since most women tend to do the opposite of what bell hooks suggests, I'm almost certain to get a shag out of all this.

What does your table look like?