An Asshole Abroad

Ok, so before I begin, if you haven't already gathered...I'm kind of an asshole.

If we are to divide my emotional output, I would say I am about 65% Asshole, 20% Wicked nice, and 15% indifferent towards my general interactions. As you can see, being an asshole usually trumps most of my interactions (see previous posts).

Additionally, I have previously noted my irrational pet peeves, however, there is one particular thing that I have experienced specifically in my travels abroad, and in Korea is occurs with an overwhelming frequency.

You see, around the world, everyone wants to learn English. Regardless if they hate the western world or not, English is a desired skill to obtain purely for their own selfish benefits or for the benefit of potential business and income. In a homogeneous culture such as Korea, I am an easily identifiable English Speaker, and thus, people assume that I wish to engage in meaningless conversation with them.

This is not a problem for those I work with or interact with on a daily basis. For example, my pharmacist, "Danny," speaks a bit of English, and I happily speak with him as he gives me drugs. The coffee shop people try their hand at a few comments about the weather and give me a free waffle. Everyone is happy.

Yet, a large segment of the population of randos that I encounter on my daily walkabouts see me and must misread my "headphones on and shut off from the rest of the world" look to mean "Hey, I would love to hear about what you bought at the store the other day stranger!" look.

Let me further explain. Almost every day, people I DON'T know, or BARELY know, try and have full on conversations with me in broken English about things I don't give a flying fuck about.

Mom sorry for saying fuck, but just brace yourself for this post, because I am an asshole.

So say I am in the middle of the desert. In my pocket is a bunch of flying fucks. Don't ask me specifically what these look like, perhaps they are merely 3D words with wings attached...I don't know use your imagination. Anyways, I have these fucks packed to the rim in my pocket-full-o-fucks, and I am happily skipping about the desert with my fucks happy as a clam.

All of a sudden, I reach a Korean stranger. This stranger is starving, perhaps thirsty, in a rough way. The only thing that could feed them and restore their health is a conversation about how Kimchi is the best food in the world, and just one small flying fuck from my cornucopia of fucks. 

Here I am, in the desert, at a crossroads of life, wondering if I should give a fuck to this stranger. I mean, oh well, it's just one right?

Nope, I skip away, cackling my evil cackle, giving from my bag of fucks to puppies and kitties I see along my way, but none to the strangers with nothing to say.

"Annie you are an awful human, it can't be that bad, what is 3 minutes to someone who is just interested about you and your life? You should be nicer, just take some time to talk about the weather or the trees or something and let them enjoy their day."

No.

For those of you with this mentality, you are either in your first 3 months in a foreign land, or you are rolling on happy pills, because that is not the way this works.

Every day I deal with these nonsense conversations, and the Korean language is very different from English, both syntactically and grammatically, so all the while during these conversations I have to puzzle piece together what they are trying to say, and after all that effort of trying to figure out their message, I realize I STILL don't care about whatever it is they are talking about. AND usually these repeat offenders just tell me the same things over and over.

Take for example this nice woman who smiled at me on the street one day. I see her almost daily, because she works near me. Typically she spots me on my morning commute, when I have my headphones on and am still trying to wake up. Most people would be able to gauge that I am in no mood to entertain these pointless talks...but not her. Now don't get me wrong, she is very nice, but she will sit next to me on the bus or train and interrupt my morning song rotation. Here is an example of our daily interaction.

Korean Lady -Herro
Me- Hi
Korean Lady ::::rapid fire korean::::
Me :::blank stare:::
Korean Lady- My english no good.
Me- My Korean is not good either.
Korean Lady :::rapid fire korean and struggling to think of English words::::
Me :::blank stare:::
Korean Lady- Today rain.
Me- Yup, it's definitely raining.
Korean Lady- My english no good,
Me- Mmm hmm.
Korean lady- Yesterday Homeplus.
Me- You went to homeplus yesterday?
Korean lady- yes.
Me- cool
Korean lady- sale on underwear.
Me- cool
Korean lady :::rapid fire korea:::;
Me- Sorry I gotta go...do...something...bye


EVERY DAY. If only they could read my internal dialogue. "Stop speaking to me in Korean, you know I don't speak in Korean. Ya I know it's raining, it sucks because I am going to work in the rain, you don't have to rub it in. Ya I know your English isn't good, trust me, I was able to pick up on that. You went to homeplus to buy underwear? What would make you think that is a conversation I would like to continue with you. Do you want me to ask you what kind of underwear you got? What colors? Because none of these follow up questions I could potentially ask you would help me care about this interaction any more. why can't we just half-heartedly acknowledge each others presence and then let me continue to stare out the window."

The fact of the matter is, the people who typically have these conversations with me don't actually care for me or want to know about me, they just see me as a walking textbook, someone they can just blindly practice their skills with. They think that I enjoy educating people, and will do it freely for anyone. They think if they speak to me for 5 minutes everyday, that they will somehow gain fluency in a language. They look to me as a free on the street tutor.

Sometimes they even try and masquerade as wanting a new friendship to further their skills. One time I was out at a restaurant with Chelsea and a man comes and sits next to us, spouting off the same useless shit about not knowing English etc. Then he says (or tries to) "We can get coffee and you can help me with my English and I will help you with Korean."

They think if they "befriend" us that free English lessons will ensue.

Our response...

"Ok, well we typically charge 30,000 won for half hour lessons, 50,000 for hour long sessions."

Blank stares ensue

"But we are friends, I can help you with Korean and you can help me with English"

"Oh I don't care about learning Korean. We are teachers so ya."

Never heard from again.


It becomes less of a conversation, than someone just talking at me. And at this point, my time is my money, and unless you are going to pay me for this conversation, then stop talking. No principal, I don't the English name for that tree...because I am not a damn botanist. No coteacher, I don't care if you think that mountain looks like a man lying down. No person on the street, I don't give a shit about if your sister's ex neighbor now lives in Alaska. And hey, if you still want to tell me I am a bad person after all this? Ya I don't really care about that either.

LoVe YoU BiAtChEz!!!!!


Annie G

Being Unmarried in Asia

Korean stranger- "You beautiful! Big eyes, small face, high nose. Strong body. Married?"

Me- "Well thank you stranger. No I am not married."

Korean stranger- "WHY NOT? WHY NOT MARRIED"

my mind- "Well, after struggling with the idea of giving up my independence for many years, I entered into a series of disappointing relationships that ended in betrayal, verbal abuse, or all around disaster. This caused not only trust issues with members of the opposite sex, but also a strong fear of commitment. In my later years, I began to question the institution of marriage as a whole, seeing as how divorce rates are high, marriage opportunities are not universally equal, and the historic significance of marriage is typically misogynistic and objectifies women. Not only that, but to have a wedding in this day and age is extremely expensive, and due to the current economy and most people in my age bracket being unemployed or underemployed, it isn't a worthwhile expenditure at the time when most of my income goes towards paying off the crippling debt I incurred whilst earning a Bachelor's degree at one of the top universities in the nation. That degree, which I worked so hard for and will be paying off for at least the next 15 years, will be much better served in my ongoing quest for accomplishing my future career goals, as opposed to settling down with a boyfriend who's motives I doubt due to my aforementioned aversion to commitment, and then struggling to share finances during a time of economic depression. In fact, being only 25 years old, I feel as though I could work hard to ensure I am financially stable and independent before I need to tie the knot with someone."

Me- "Oh, I don't know. Maybe soon!"


DIRECTIONS: Listen and repeat at least 6 times a day.

Walking down the street...

So anyone who knows me personally, knows that I have my...ahem...quirks. Let me give you some examples:

I hate when my ankles are touched without my permission.
If I see spines I get very nauseous and pass out.
I hate saying goodbye to someone and then having to walk in the same direction.
I prefer if people don't rub my skin the "wrong" way.
DON'T point at me if I don't know you and ESPECIALLY don't point your finger in my face.
I am a short person, so if you use me as an armrest prepare to die. It's not cute, it's not original, it's just a blatant display of douchebaggery.
I don't like it when people grab on to me and don't let go.
In general, if people try to pop my personal space bubble I get fairly perturbed.
Face-talkers...are...awful.

As you can gather, many of these quirks are related to my personal space. As my previous posts have discussed, this has been a constant source of trouble in my life here in Korea. Now I won't go into my issues with people pushing or shoving again, but I would like to tell you about the most frustrating and angering thing that has happened to me in the past 3 months...

And it all started while I was walking down the street...

3 of the 5 days of the work week, I walk to and from the train station to get my connecting transportation to my school. This is about a 3km walk each way, and as someone who enjoys the meditative nature of long walks, I look forward to this alone time.

On Monday, May 6th, I was enjoying my daily walk home. The sun was shining, the air was comfortably warm, and I had my ipod pumping through my headphones on shuffle, which is always a fun twist on my daily soundtrack. Now, because I have taken to walking an average of 10km each night (there's not a lot to do in this town) I have mastered the "walk and change music" technique on my ipod.

So there I am, jauntily walking down the street, when I felt the presence of someone walking behind me. This is a fairly common occurrence when strolling in a public place, and also, I understand that people can walk at a variety of paces. During a pass by on a narrow sidewalk, there is usually a few seconds of overlapping awkwardness where two strangers walk side by side and attempt to not acknowledge each other, and then, usually the passer, continues on their slightly faster pace and gains enough ground ahead to no longer be within the same walking realm of discomfort.

This particular pedestrian, knew not of these rules.

He appeared to be in highschool, probably 16 years old (although being Korean he could have likely been 28 or 11) and old enough to know better. I felt him approach me, and while I had my headphones in, I could hear his steps grow faster. His pace would soon overpower mine, and I braced myself for the inevitable takeover. Sure enough, he came up on my left and quickly pulled ahead of me.

Fine, I was prepared to deal with this, but then a most interesting thing happened. When he reached a point about 5 feet ahead of me, he abruptly stopped, appearing to change a song on his MP3 player. As a seasoned music changer, I continued my path, and did the ever-so-rare reclaim of my walking lead.

It was then that a strange thing occurred. This young man, having now assumed a position several feet behind me, briskly walked forward to pass me again. It was at that point, once he passed me for the second time, that he slowed down in pace once more, at one point stopping immediately in front of my path.

Needless to say, I found this mildly irritating, and thus, I continued my constant pace and walked by him once again. Him, upon noticing my lead, repeated his brisk walk to pass me once more, and then repeated his following action of then slowing down once in front of me.

By the 3rd round of this cat and mouse game, I was visibly annoyed. "Move Bitch" by Ludacris conveniently came on my Ipod, which I interpreted as an obvious sign from God. It is at this point that I began to exhibit a behavior common to foreigners in other countries, which is the audible cussing in English that you assume others do not understand.

Not even joking, this continued for 15 minutes, at which point I was now invested, and began to up my pace just so that kid wouldn't try to pass me again. Back and forth we went, silently trying to one-up the other in the sidewalk death match of the ages. Finally, he took his chance, and set off in a full sprint ahead of me.

He had won the battle, but he had not won the war, for in the end, even though he far surpassed me in distance, he will still have to battle with his constant struggle of complete social awkwardness for his remaining teenage years, and likely the rest of his life.