::A Geek in Korea::

I had bought some running shoes for a brief hope at yearly "Resolution to do more exercise" that always fails me. Not long after I started wearing them daily, the sole of the shoe started separating from the heel. Lucky for me, shoe fix it shops are everywhere and are really cheap. Most of them are called Kudu Byeongwon (Literally) "Shoe Hospitals" and can be found on almost any side street.

"Hospitals" are extremely small steel cargo shipping containers, or perhaps converted metal barns of a kind with sliding glass doors and some seats inside. Usually they owner and operators are disabled, physically or mentally. You can always see the "Shoe doctors" sweating out the summers with their sliding doors open. In winter their doors are shut to keep the boxes warm with gas heaters. The fumes give me headaches because the places are poorly ventilated. I don’t know how they can stand it. My job isn’t burning rubber things and adhering things with strong adhesives in a small space all day, but perhaps those sorts of fumes kill your nose (or brain) fast enough that you don’t mind.

The shoe hospitals are usually located near apartments or near department stores. Since the service takes anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour, you drop off the shoes and tell them what you’d like to have done.  They repair the items while you shop, then when you are ready to go home you pick them back up and pay.

My wife dropped of my shoes at one of the closest Shoe Hospitals at a nearby apartment. It’s staffed by a man with an electric wheelchair. She had actually forgotten to bring money with her, and wanted to run back and get the 1000 won (~$1 USD) that it would cost to do the repair. The kind old man said, "Oh, it’s no big deal, just drop off the money the next time you come by. It’s okay! Just go home!"

Wow! Kindness from a complete stranger involving money?! This was entirely unexpected.

My wife had an obligation that prevented her from returning with the money right away. She wrote a note to the man, then sent me off with my newly repaired shoes, some mandarins, and the money. I came to the store, I popped my head in the sliding door, said, "Thank you!" and pointed to my shoes. I handed him the small bundle of items I had been for him, and he grinned and laughed a lot. He was a very cheery person. All of the people that I’ve met in these little shoe repair boxes are very honest hard working people. They’ll tell you when they can or can’t do something, and all the work they’ve done has been of exceptional quality, extremely cheap, and fast.

My wife had some high heels recut and lowered for 3,000 won (~3$ USD), and we’ve gotten all sorts of other minor repairs done. Some places will even shine your shoes, then deliver them to your office for you in the back of an autobike (scooter). "Shoe doctors" hopped up on glue fumes flying through the streets on fast moving autobikes . Now that’s service.

On Christmas day, we put in an order for Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin for my Nintendo DS. I’m a long time Castlevania fan, going way back to the original I had on my very old PC. I got back into the series for the launch of the Game Boy Advance. I nearly lost my eyesight due to the dark colors and the lack of a back light while playing Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. I stuck around playing the series on the GBA and later the SP, but got full on love for the titles when I could actually see them on my Nintendo DS. I beat Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow shortly after it’s release in English.

Since we had put an order in for the English copy, I had to wait a few days for my Christmas gift. I’m completely fine waiting for a game of such quality. I’ve actually have been waiting for a few weeks since it’s English release trying to potentially pick it up used, but decided I had waited long enough and wanted to get it for myself new even at a premium price. My wife gave her phone number to the importers, and they were going to call her when it arrived. That was on Monday.

Yesterday, I had planned on eating at the department store where my game would arrive. Even thought they hadn’t called my wife, I stopped in the game store. I didn’t think they had forgotten my order. I just simply had been "around" and decided to check. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself. The importers looked at me like, "Man, just WAIT for it to arrive, okay?"

Of all the times I’ve really shown restraint about picking up a game, this was it. The temptation to order it online before Christmas was rather high, yet I get a dirty look for stopping in without a call?  I was just stopping by on my way to the food court. Honest.

The call came today, so after work I returned to pick up the title. I’m just starting out, but so far, it’s so good. The two player mechanics throw a mix into the game, and I’m still trying to recall all the different combinations of attacks and magic I can use in combination as I defeat my enemies. It’s more complex than the last game I played, but looks to also be more rewarding. I’m enjoying my Christmas present.

Luck influence people’s lives in ways that can sometimes be surprising to foreigners. When moving, certain days are deemed "lucky" by fortune tellers, and these are given the highest priority by moving companies. The demand to move into an apartment on a lucky day is enough to drive up the price considerably compared to an unlucky day in the same month.

Another example are "lucky years". Next year,(2007) is the Year of the Pig in the Korean zodiac calendar. For whatever reason, it’s a special Year of the Pig as well. It’s a "Golden Pig" year. This means it’s a particularly lucky time to have children. Only the fortune tellers know why. Several of our married friends have considered the luckiness of the year in which to plan giving birth to their children. In-laws will call them and demand a "lucky" child to be born next year if possible.

While it is luck that dominates some people’s thinking, education is also on the mind of others. The ever present and ever dreadful college entrance examinations are so important that people plan their children’s lives around them. Literally. My wife was talking to some of her friends. Her friend recently called to tell us she is pregnant and will be having a child in the New Year. While we had congratulated her, she was worried. She said that people were telling her next year was a bad year to have children despite all of the "Golden Pig" claims.

What is the reason?

In 20 years, the crop of "Golden Pigs" being born next year will be taking their college entrance examinations. In theory, the "Golden year" will spur more babies to be born. The competition for college applications will be more fierce and will be even more difficult when the "Golden Pigs" must take their test due to the additional applicants. Thus, while the fortune tellers claim they’ll have good luck, this very proclamation hurts their chances of making such a statement true.

I thought it was depressing to plan out a child’s life based on a test before they were even born. I also thought it was rather pessimistic to think that in twenty years the hope of educational reform in Korea is so unlikely. Twenty years is a lot of time for change, so if you were worried about where your child might end up you could work to change the system or improve their lives in other ways.

It’s amazing the deep effect the college entrance examinations have on many aspects of Korean life.

Test days are trying times for teachers. Despite what my students think, I give tests to be fair evaluations of students level and skill in a particular area of English. All my tests, bar one, was a multifaceted approach to testing. All of  my students had listening, whether it was dictation or simply "circle the correct answer" was dependent on the level of the students. Most of my students had writing. as well as a speaking portion to their testing as well.

Consider the dilemma I was in, testing the day after Christmas, when a majority of my students are either on vacation, or soon will be on vacation by the end of the week. While they still attend the English school regardless of their elementary schools being open or not, if Korean elementary school hasn’t beaten them down with an oppressive amount of work earlier in the day, no amount of nagging or yelling will suppress them once they enter our halls. It’s like pissing on a wild fire, once freedom is discovered it burns the students minds up completely.

Given this fact, I designed my tests in advanced, and disclosed the entire test to my students. I told them exactly what pages to study in their books. I told them no more than ten pages to study, and included parts from five of those exact pages, unaltered, on the test. Entire pages would be given verbatim as they appeared in their own text books. Short of doing the material for them and filing out the paper, I couldn’t have told them any more than what they knew going into the tests and still have called it a test in any sense of the word.

When the final tests results were in, it was blatantly clear who had studied, and who hadn’t. Anyone that scored in the 50% range was a raging idiot, and anyone that did better had at least been smart enough to look at the book during the long weekend. If I tell you exactly what is on the test, and you have three or more days to prepare, and you still can’t get more than 50% of what we studied together correct, that’s pathetic.

My older students in upper level classes have terrible books to test from. In one class I had a dictation test that would have been hard for even me had I not prepared the materials. I had to read the dialog once for them to bring the difficulty down to more "sane" levels. One group of students had to write an essay on their favorite seasons. Several students, even when provided a dictionary could not spell "favorite" or "season" correctly, despite it being on the top of the paper in the question. (Sigh)

My favorite incorrect answer was one of the speaking questions. They had to follow a model dialog and simply replace the vocabulary words with what was in the picture. The model dialog went like this:

(Picture of rabbit in a yard.)
A: "Do you want to see my rabbit?"
B: "Sure, where is it?"
A: "In the yard."

When given a picture of a dog in a kitchen next to an oven, several students answered:
Student: "Do you want to see my dog?"
To which I would answer, "Sure, where is it?"
Student: "In the chicken. Oh, wait…er…kitchen."

If they weren’t comically mistaking kitchen for chicken (A warning I gave them about 100 times since we studied that unit), they were saying something even worse:
Student: "Do you want to see my dog?"
Which I would to respond to by saying, "Sure, where is it?"
Student: "It’s in the oven."
To which I would simply laugh hysterically.

Christmas this year was very different that the usual affair. We set up the tree a few days ago, and Yoshi has yet to destroy it. That alone is beyond strange. We had our wedding anniversary last week, so we’ve had an excessive number of opportunities to spoil ourselves in the past few days. Instead, both of us were struggling to thinking of a single thing we actually needed for the holidays.

Up until a few days ago, I was thinking about buying an ultra-expensive personal media player. After weighing in on different options, visiting electronics stores, and shopping around online, I ended up getting…nothing. It was decided that if we ever end up getting a car, we could get a Navigation/GPS/Digital Television/Movie player combination device. They are very popular here, and there would be no reason to get two devices with roughly the same abilities. We’d get a car to let us travel around Korea with our dog more easily, and get navigation device to get from point A to point B without a map. We’ve put off that decision until sometime in the upcoming New Year.

I told my wife that we needed to do something for the holiday. Gift giving is more for children or couples here. It’s not typically what married adults do. Since we hadn’t gotten anything to put under the tree, we went shopping today on our day off. This alone was a huge gift from me. Shopping? On Christmas? Are you kidding me?

It wasn’t even all that crowded today at the department stores visited. It’s rather weird. The holiday "crush" must have been leading up to the holidays, because it was a fairly average day in the mall. Due to the mild weather we’ve been having, all the winter items were being sold at steep discounts.My wife picked up a skirt and coat at a 70% discount. Holiday savings galore!

I didn’t have anything in mind for a gift since my expensive toy got shot down, so I ordered a DS game from my local retail connection. They’ll have an English version of the latest Castlevania title I’ve been looking forward to within the week for me. They even offered to import a Nintendo Wii for me, but I declined because being in a "forced to import English games at twice the price" situation sucks. I’ll wait until someone else figures out the details of how to play different region games on the cheap. Region locks = bad for my potential business.

We ate a cheap meal, went grocery shopping, then came back to the apartment to walk Yoshi. After his walk, my parents called on Skype and we chatted for an hour or longer. They’ve got a webcam now too, so we have video calls from time to time. We got caught up on their last trip, and filled them in on what we had been doing for the holiday. Usually my parents spend a fortune to ship gifts to me, but this year we opted for a simple transfer of funds. It makes more sense, but knowing I’ll be getting my IRS statements in the mail instead of, say, a cool gift, isn’t really something you look forward to.

 All and all, it was just another typical laid back lazy holiday. I don’t miss the stress and pressure of finding the perfect gift for people, but I do miss tearing into a package in anticipation of something new and great.

Morning Yard: Family Singing Contest (Achim Madang: Kajok Norea Charang) is an interesting show on television. During the week, it’s a family interest show, showing how people live and work in Korea. They have real families on television, not celebrities, and how they live their lives. On Saturdays it turns into a sort of American Idol for the most pitiful, or Star Search for the Saddest people ever. The only reason I know about it is because one of my wife’s coworkers quit her job over the show. What happened was this:

This show allows people to write in with stories about their families. Then the show choose a story to follow up on their show. Other people write to be allowed to come on the show and sing for their family. It’s a way for families to honor and show pride in their relatives and thank them for whatever they need. There is also a competition for air line tickets to a resort in Jeju island. People that are on the show have to talk about their families, why they wrote in, why they wanted to thank their families. Then they have to perform a song on stage. While they sing, people call in to vote for their favorite act. Usually the quality is low grade Karaoke quality.

The reason my wife’s coworker almost quit was because she was going to be on the show. Her father was paralyzed in a stroke a seven years ago. Her mother that took care of him was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The daughters wrote in, explaining their story and were chosen to come and sing. They had to arrive at the show at 4:30 am for the pre-taping. The coworker asked to go home early to memorize the script and sleep. She needed to rest her voice so that she could do her best. Her boss got angry. She threw the script at him, and she told him she had a lot to memorize before the taping, and needed to leave early. She said that the show was much more important for her job, so she would be resigning at the end of the month because of how the boss reacted.

The next morning, we got to see the show when it aired on television. The two daughters, the challengers, explained their sad tale. They even had a banner set up in the audience declaring their love for their family. They sang their song and did well enough to make it out of the first round. Then they had to go up against the current pity champions, who were returning from a previous week’s showing. This duet was a blind brother and the sister that took care of him. They sang moderately well. The coworker and her sister did their same song for a second time, and even messed up some of the lyrics. However, they garnered more of the pity vote and pulled out a victory.

The coworker and her sister won the trip for their parents. It’s a nice story. The fans of the show weren’t happy about the decision, and some left angry comments on the website about how the other group deserved to win. They basically boiled down to the fact that the show was all about the most pitiable group always advancing to the next show despite their talent, and that people shouldn’t be voting for people for that reason.

The next round, the coworker was up against some tough competition. Their challenger had a mother that had terminal lung cancer and was diagnosed with only months, if not weeks, to live. Unsurprisingly, the coworker’s family didn’t survive the cut.

My wife’s coworker later admitted, "I knew we were going to lose that round. Our mom was too healthy."

You don’t know Jack is back. Back in college, I used to play the netshow version of You don’t know Jack, otherwise known as YDKJ with my friends in college, as well as with my family when I came home for the holidays. The proclivity of the game to include sexual or "adult" themes made it awkward to play with the folks, but my friends at college and I had a blast.

After a long disappearance, the game has returned in yet another form. It’s a single player game with daily questions done by the host Cookie in the "DisorDat" format. None of the "Flickerpiss Nosesum" (Gibberish Questions) or "Screws" (You have to answer an impossible question) which made it a fantastic party game. Even without multiplayer, the questions are still amusing and funny, and now that it’s daily, it’s another time waster online worth checking out. Embed a game and share the goodness to remind people that good web trivia games never die! (Sadly, embedding on my site breaks my format. Check the website!)