::A Geek in Korea::

My students have  a series of rigorous mandated mid-term tests beginning next week. These tests are standardized, so all my elementary students will be taking tests in at least the following subjects:

Korean (국어) (gook-oh),

Math (수학)(su-hak),

History (사학)(sa-hak),

and Science (과학) (kwa-hak).

This is also abbreviated as: ( 국,수,사,과) (gook, su, sa, kwa). Students always recite the abbreviations while subtracting on their fingers, as if each finger represented one of the subjects.

I find the coincidence of how they list of the tests amusing, because 국수 (gook-su) in Korean means “noodles“, and “사과” (sa-kwa) in Korean means “apple”. I’m not sure if it’s the order of the tests as they are given, or sheer coincidence.

At the end of the class today, as the students were getting ready to leave, I would wish the students luck on their “Noodle Apple Test”. Students looked at me for a minute, then would do their hand subtraction routine. Some would grin, but others would scowl in annoyance. “NO! TEACHER! NOT NOODLE APPLE! 국,수,사,과!”

“Yeah, Noodle, gook-su, Apple, sa-kwa! Score a 100% on your Noodle Apple Test! Bye Bye!”

I realize my humor in Korean is exactly like that lame uncle you would run into at your family’s Christmas party. You know the one that always gave you a noogie, or stole your nose when you met them, and then tortured you with bad puns until they needed to get up to get a beer.

I’ve got that lame, barely funny quality to all my Korean jokes. I really relish telling my bad jokes to students. It’s not because I know they will laugh, it’s because I know they won’t, and I enjoy their efforts in trying to tell me why I am so lame or wrong.  Their frustration at my poor jokes is my satisfaction. I guess this is what Yakov Smirnoff felt like.

Right as I was sitting down to type this post, an alarm rang out in the night from outside our apartment. My wife went to the door to poke her head out while I grabbed Yoshi, and a rain coat. She grabbed the umbrellas, and we were gone. I was pushing her down the steps a minute after it started ringing.

Go, go, go! We saw a lot of people poking their heads out to see what was going on, but they were dressed in their house clothes. Not many had any intention of stepping out in tonights rain. It’s a FIRE alarm people. BRIGHT RED ALARM, BUZZING? HELLO? GO DOWN STEPS. EXIT APARTMENT. AVOID IMMOLATION. SAVE LOVED ONES? HELLO?  (Oddly enough, I had no desire to yell “PORK CHOP SANDWICHES!” even if it was what I was thinking.)

People were casually going down the elevator to see what was happening. Even small children know better than that. It didn’t seem like it was a warning that carried much weight. By the time we had descended the stairs from our apartment, only ten other men had bothered to check what was going on with the security guard. This is in a building with 60 apartments. Pathetic.

The guard was in his office, frantically poking at a control panel. It wouldn’t matter much, as it didn’t appear that there was any fire. We had descended from the 10th floor and hadn’t smelled any smoke or seen anything that would lead us to believe there was a fire. I took and umbrella and walked around the apartment. No signs of smoke or fire. It seems it was a false alarm.

It would hardly have mattered. The firefighters that arrived had to park at the end of the block. Our apartment is surrounded by cars so densely packed that they couldn’t approach any closer. Every call legally parked in a space was blocked by a second car that parked it in. These cars are left in neutral so you can roll them out of the way, but in the case of an emergency, no one would have the time. With fire engines blocking the only path away from the apartment parking spaces, it’s ridiculously dangerous to think of people rolling cars out of the way for fire trucks. There are too many cars in this country!

Anyway, the firemen arrived and checked with the security guard. No fire! They rode up the elevator to check the malfunctioning alarm. They commented it was their sixth false alarm of the day. Poor guys. After they gave it the all clear, we rode up to our apartment. Ironically, the only smell of smoke we could detect were from the firemen.

There was no fire, but if there was, there would be excessive casualties by the lack of simple safety preparation. Typical Korean disaster response.