Today I went to a store to buy a drink. While I was waiting in line, with my one item and exact change, an old woman butt in front of me. Maybe I wasn't close enough to the person in front of me, or maybe she felt entitiled to my spot. This happens frequently, but I never say or do anything. First of all, it's not a big deal, just a small annoyance. Secondly, I never know if it comes from overt rudeness or some cultural thing I don't know about. At the risk of it being a cultural thing, and since I'm a guest here, I just let it go.
However, this time, the clerk ignored the old woman and took my drink instead and rang me up and checked me out in about 10 seconds. I gave a gracious "kamsamnida," and walked away with the woman having the most incredulous look on her face. Priceless.
PS since that happened, I'm guessing it's "not" a cultural thing..
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
I don't want to be one of those foreigners who comes to a country and tells the people there that everything they do is wrong. However, I do want to introduce a few aspects of my culture to this one:
First, the ability to walk in a straight line. It really is a struggle for people here. Several times I've been standing still, and someone approaching me has drifted into my space and bumped into me. Add to that the fact that everyone has cell phones, and they all spend all their walking time texting people, and it makes a bad situation worse. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be any rule regarding which side of the sidewalk to walk on. It's chaos!
Second, I want Korea to know that if a national holiday falls on a weekend, you take either the Friday or Monday off. Here, when a holiday falls on Saturday, there is no day off (except for the kids who have to go to school on Saturday). There's a wonderful world of consistent weekday holidays out there, I think Korea should grab it. Another weird thing: last year, Christmas fell on a Thursday. Guess what? Everyone took Thursday off, then came back to work Friday, then took their weekly holiday break the next week. I'm sorry, but that's stupid.
Third, I appreciate that Asians take their shoes off whenever they enter a house, or sometimes a restaurant. But that does not need to apply to gyms. It all originated from the fact that people ate on the floor, and shoes tend to be dirty, and they didn't want their eating area to get dirty with street junk. That's good, and I do that at home. But what reasonig do they give to apply it to the gym? Now, you don't workout barefoot, but you are expected to leave a separate pair of "indoor" shoes at the gym and change them when you arrive. That's just dumb, admit it...
Finally: coffee should be black, not yellow. Putting 2 tablespoons of grounds for 8 gallons of water does not make coffee, it makes brown-flavored water. It also makes you sleepy. Yes, coffee is much more expensive in Korea than it is in the US, but that's no excuse to ruin it like that!
That's all for now. I'm sure when I return home, I'll have a list of ideas to import to the US from Korea.
First, the ability to walk in a straight line. It really is a struggle for people here. Several times I've been standing still, and someone approaching me has drifted into my space and bumped into me. Add to that the fact that everyone has cell phones, and they all spend all their walking time texting people, and it makes a bad situation worse. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be any rule regarding which side of the sidewalk to walk on. It's chaos!
Second, I want Korea to know that if a national holiday falls on a weekend, you take either the Friday or Monday off. Here, when a holiday falls on Saturday, there is no day off (except for the kids who have to go to school on Saturday). There's a wonderful world of consistent weekday holidays out there, I think Korea should grab it. Another weird thing: last year, Christmas fell on a Thursday. Guess what? Everyone took Thursday off, then came back to work Friday, then took their weekly holiday break the next week. I'm sorry, but that's stupid.
Third, I appreciate that Asians take their shoes off whenever they enter a house, or sometimes a restaurant. But that does not need to apply to gyms. It all originated from the fact that people ate on the floor, and shoes tend to be dirty, and they didn't want their eating area to get dirty with street junk. That's good, and I do that at home. But what reasonig do they give to apply it to the gym? Now, you don't workout barefoot, but you are expected to leave a separate pair of "indoor" shoes at the gym and change them when you arrive. That's just dumb, admit it...
Finally: coffee should be black, not yellow. Putting 2 tablespoons of grounds for 8 gallons of water does not make coffee, it makes brown-flavored water. It also makes you sleepy. Yes, coffee is much more expensive in Korea than it is in the US, but that's no excuse to ruin it like that!
That's all for now. I'm sure when I return home, I'll have a list of ideas to import to the US from Korea.
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