I swear, there’s a punchline to this post, but it comes right at the end. The other day at work, some people were complaining about how some Korean taxi drivers sometimes have nudie pictures (sometimes attached to a calendar) up in their cab. This is an extremely rare phenomenon, though. What I encounter far more often is the evangelical cabbie. The taxi driver who has sticks of gum set out, on a donation basis, with the cash going to charity. With laminated religious tracts attached to the backs of the front seats in the cab. With an electronically lit-up picture …

Gord: Good morning! Class: Good morning! Gord: How are you? Class: Fine, thank you, and you? Gord: I’m good. It’s a nice day! One Student: Yes, it is! It’s a warm! Gord: Yes, it’s warm. Hey, everybody! Look out the window. Class: (looking out the window) Gord: Do you know what those flowers are called? Another Student: The butt flower? Heh heh. Class: (laughs) Gord: (gesturing at his butt) The butt flower? No, no. It’s called a cherry flower. Class (scatteredly): Cher-ry flower. Gord: Those flowers are beautiful, aren’t they? Majority of the Class: Yes! One Student: No! It’s ugly. …

Peter from Oranckay recently commented, over at Marmot’s blog, about his approval of the now increasingly common term “unqualified foreign [English] teachers”. It’s a term that’s bandied about whenever troublesome foreign English teachers get arrested, advertise their sexual adventures with Korean girls online, and so on. Oranckay’s (er, Peter’s) interpretation of the term is that “the implication is that there are those who are qualified,” he says, and I am not sure whether I’m in any position to disagree, not having the ability to read the articles using the term in the original Korean. However, I would like to ask …

A while back at The Marmot I remember some fellow who, in some kind of weird show of Korean nationalism, decided he would use Hangeul Romanization to represent the English name of Korea, ie. writing Gorea. I thought, at least at the time when I saw his comments in a meandering thread, that was what he was up to. Now, thanks to a totally random link from The Random Eclectic I know the truth. From the BDSM – Art of living webpage, no less! Heh.