Strange how these things can dawn on me. Everything I have said here is true, about the nature of creativity, thought processes and existence in a culture like Korea. And it NAGGED me about why. Then, after watching BBC news on cable, and hearing about how Koreans are creating their own online domains, and I mean domains in a very real way, beyond home pages, etc; these are chat rooms and meeting places online that you can not only call your own, but furnish and decorate in your own style. Never mind the channels on cable dedicated to video games, there's at least three that I can count, and the fact that you can indeed become a superstar among young people in Korea, playing video games. The bottom line? I'm an arts and language geek in a math and science culture. No freakin WONDER I feel so out of place! But the reality remains, I am a necessity, if Korea is to successfully deal with the rest of the free world. And by I, I mean anyone who teaches English as a Second Language here the way I do. There are quite a number of us, ever here where I'm at, we know each other, for the most part, and we all live in the same neighborhood and hang out together, and face the same problems, many revolving around the fact that your boss is also your landlord. So indeed, I do have my place in the universe, although any of these students, from the very youngest, almost, could sine and cosine perfectly drawn circles around me. I know what I know about engineers and their capacity for proper sentence construction, which as a general rule falls somewhere in the area of your typical fourth-grader. I can recall when I was a technician, a car came in for me from Nissan Technical Center, and the complaint on the repair order, verbatim, was, "when someone is in the back seat, they rattle." I looked at the service writer and told him it sounded more like a personal problem to me, but that's irrelevant. The other thing that struck me as I was channel surfing this morning, was, to turn the tables, how in the HELL would you explain Professional Bull Riding to a Korean?! I can see it now:
"Well, Mr. Chun, you see, it's like this; you get up on the back of this angry animal, that weighs about a ton (maybe 900 kg or so,) and, well, it really doesn't WANT you up there, so it's trying to buck you off. And then, in it's state, it may very well either step on you, or circle the ring and come back for another pass at trying to kill you. Eight seconds is considered a long ride, and they take points off if you lose your hat."
"And people do this for MONEY?!" says a stunned Mr. Chun.
"Well, yes, actually," you say, "a LOT of money."
"And you're going to stand there and tell me I'm nuts, because I serve bugs as an appetizer?!" he shouts, muttering something in Korean as he leaves.
Maybe it is all the same, in its own odd way.