A good long time ago, James at The Grand Narrative urged me to write about the things I discuss below. I thought it was a good idea, but relented at first, thinking that maybe I might get fired the way Gerry Bevers was for posting about Dokdo. Then I got busy, and stayed busy. Then I left Korea. And here we are. But this video came up again, where I live now, as part of a discussion about sexism and racism in Korea, and I realized that I’d never gotten around to it, and that I should. Because I learned …
Tag: the expat experience
New Term: “White Endorsement Monkey” and “White Defamation Monkey”
Well, I’ve googled it and don’t see it out there, so I’m going to call dibs and coin this term: White Endorsement Monkey. What is a White Endorsement Monkey? Well, if you’re a white person living abroad, you might experience this. I certainly have experienced it in Korea. Don’t get me wrong: as stomach turning and ass-kissing as this book cover looks to me: … I’m not calling this author a White Endorsement Monkey, because I’m not actually talking about what foreigners themselves do — but rather to a pressure that is sometimes imposed on non-Koreans by some Koreans. That …
Debito Arudou’s “Micro-Aggressions”: What Really Drives the Highly Sensitive Expat Crazy
UPDATE: I’ve been thinking about this post, and I think the HSP concept may be just as flaky as the notion of “microaggressions” (at least as Debito Arudou presents it); it seems to me there’s a simpler explanation possible, which is this: many, many of the people whom I’ve known in Korea who were constantly dogged by the drive to understand why certain kinds of behaviour were so common here, were humanities majors. Humanities majors, when they actually are properly trained, tend to be analysis machines, and just as nature only punishes the most extreme of extravangances in phenotype (the Irish …
Project Online Grocery Ordering: Success! (#1?)
Well, I promised an update when I finally managed to make an online grocery order all on my own, and today, that was my biggest achievement. The lucky site was…. Emart. As I related a while back (first here, then here), Homeplus rapidly fixed one text field on its website when Lime ranted about how I wasn’t able to register, and then was told, “Oh, sorry, nothing can be done!” and then emailed the Korean Head Office. (Suddenly a software change was possible… but it was sloppy, and while foreigners now can register at Homeplus/Tesco, they can’t actually buy anything, …
Got a Call from Starbucks Korea… :)
Right, so after my message the other day to Starbucks Seattle, I got a very courteous, polite, apologetic, and professional call this afternoon from someone at Starbucks Korea, who works in marketing and who gave me the lowdown on this story, after getting a call from Seattle sometime today. She told me that the Alien Registration Numbers weren’t usable for Starbucks wifi access at first, but that this was fixed in early February. (I think she said the 6th, but I’m not 100% sure of it.) She said that it should be working now. I told her that it had …