Not an easy person to shop for.
Teaching June 3rd. 2008, 10:00pmMy director returned from a vacation in China today. While we were all scribbling down paperwork before classes, she called us into the office. Actually, she called the Korean teachers into the office without qualifying what she was saying and I just went too, thinking she meant me but forgot to say it in English. When I got into the office, I saw a series of small bags from the duty free shop filled with makeup.
“Oh, nevermind. Thanks anyway.” I walked out of the meeting. I didn’t care in the slightest that Korean teachers were getting some makeup as a gift. It’s traditional to bring back gifts to friends and coworkers when you go on vacation, but I never expect anything unless I ask for it.
My foreign coworker returned to his desk and found a wrapped package. He opened it up to discover cigarettes. This is also a common gift for people to give to friends that smoke. The cigarettes are sold at a discount duty free, and also come in different packs according to my coworker. He said he even knew who he’d give the brands he didn’t like to.I don’t smoke, and I don’t have many friends that do, so that would have been another bad gift too.
Later, my director came in and slipped me some lip gloss she got duty free, for my wife. Ah! While I have no use for the stuff, my wife would like some. I thanked her for the gift and admitted I’m a pretty tough person to shop for. The only thing I could think of that I would like from a duty free shop would be a memory card or something electronics based. I’m not an easy person to shop for in the slightest.
4 Responses to “Not an easy person to shop for.”
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June 3rd, 2008 at 10:58 pm
In the office I worked in before this one, the boss had a tradition of purchasing stationery for everyone when she went on trips. The first time I found a random blank notecard with a picture of flowers on it in my mailbox, I was quite confused. I never really did find a use for them.
June 4th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
hello!
i randomly trampled upon your site as i was searching for.. god knows what. but i must say that i find your posts really entertaining. i’m really interested in the korean culture but all my perceptions are gained from watching dramas and variety shows which i doubt would give me an accurate reflection of how life in korea really is. i used to do relief teaching for awhile and i definitely can relate to some of your funny incidents, which makes your posts really enjoyable to read.
anyway, i was wondering; i’m attempting to practice my korean writing but i’m using a keyboard which doesn’t have any hangul characters on it, plus i’m running on windows xp, would you happen to know of any font thingy or whatever i can install to be able to type out in korean? (:
June 4th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
@2. Windows XP? (Winces) How awkward, I run Ubuntu Linux over here and avoid Windows XP at all costs. At work I use Korean Windows XP, but that’s kinda set up as easy to type Korean as default….I dunno, go play with the language settings or something.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
It is possible to enable Korean and it’s in the languages section of the control panel. You’ll probably have to tick a box to install East Asian languages before it will work. Just google it and you’ll get detailed instructions of how to make it work.