::A Geek in Korea::

Loving in order to love knows loves you because only it will not be able to love.

What?

What’s this pencil case I saw on a student’s desk all about? In Konglish, when you phonetically try to rearrange the English characters into words in Korean, “Da Viche Coat” sounds very similar to what “Da Vinci Code” would be mangled in Korean. I guess this went English to Korean back to English again, if the mistranslation wasn’t intentional to prevent people from suing.

What would Da Vinci’s coat LOOK like? Would it have the secrets of the universe hidden in it’s inner lining or something? I smell sequel!

 

How perfect is this? That’s her teacher’s name too! As previously mentioned here. If any of my students started wearing customized shirts with my name, I might be much more kind too. I don’t want to change my name to “Levi” to imply ownership over a large number of them either.

Previously.

I ended up downtown again with my wife, and I had to reject several shirts for insane Engrish today. These happen to be the best of the worst.

The front of this shirt had something about “Grape Flavor Candy: Delicious Taste!” which makes the whole “Spreads Out in the Mouth” a little more sane.

I think there was a series of prints with the word “Candy Stripper” on them. It must have been from some sort of brand name I’ve never heard of before. I thought this shirt had said, “candy striper”, as in “Hospital Volunteer Deep Under Ground” until I looked at this picture more carefully.

So close! “It flies about”? What are they talking about? This is rather mild compared to the other two shirts. No implied sex or anything!

There were several other shirts that were picture worthy, but I was annoying my wife and holding up the process of getting a cheap shirt too much. We got something with a picture on it instead of strange text

Koreans have a penchant for wearing shirts emblazoned with gibberish:

This sort of thing is common in a store selling cheap clothing. It’s got a load of English. Who cares if it makes no sense as long as it has a bootleg Mickey Mouse?

This is also common. My students wearing a shirt that makes absolutely no sense, but is funny at the same time. I asked her if she knew what “foppery” was. Of course she had no clue. I really do try my best with the foppery, but I guess I wasn’t bringing enough for her satisfaction.
My personal best sighting for stupid T-shirts will probably always be the couple wearing matching shirts that say “He (She) loves the cock”. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to beat that, unless I actually get a picture next time. Damn my lack of a telephoto lens on my camera phone. (LG, Samsung, are you listening?)

My coworker, who happens to be named Paul, had a very strange T-shirt experience in class. A girl was wearing a shirt that said, “I’m sorry Paul, I’ll never make that mistake again” in large bold letters. It’s the only thing on the entire shirt.

He asked her if she was wearing that shirt for him. The girl had no clue what it meant. She said her mother had bought it for her as a gift. Paul, of course, wanted to know where to get another one…for his girlfriend. I wanted to know if they could be personalized so I could get another one for myself. I’d say the coincidence of a girl wearing that shirt in his class is astronomical.

My wife was walking with a coworker after she left her school. My wife mentioned she wanted to buy some clothes for summer, and her coworker wondered why she didn’t just do it then, since she was downtown in the cheapest area to shop for fashion. My wife declined the chance to go shopping, since her proof reader wasn’t available. My wife explained to her coworker about the strange things that people have on their shirts. Her coworker was amazed to hear about the bad shirts. Slowly the message is getting out.