A few questions occurred to me today. I don’t know whether anyone who reads this blog will know the answer, but I’m going to post them anyway.If nobody seems to know, I’ll go ahead and Ask a Korean, and see if that guy can come up with any sensible answer… but first, I’ll post here. The first thing I’m wondering about is the cat name “나비.” (For those of you not living here in Korea, the stereotype name for a cat is 나비. The Korean word for butterfly is the same.) I’m wondering: Is the name actually butterfly, or just …
Tag: Korean culture
I’m’na Teach Yo Ass, and Yeah, You Welcome…
Friday last week was Teacher’s Day, but the day always takes me by surprise. Actually, it would have taken me by surprise anyway — my students sprung the biggest ambush on Thursday. We were in my office, setting up for a video shoot for that class of mine that’s making a mockumentary about an English cult operating in Korea (yes, a metaphor for the hakwon system and English-mania in general) and suddenly a pack of students I’d never met — freshmen, I guess — burst into the room with a chocolate cake and exploded into song. If you don’t teach …
Trolls, Net Morality, and Types of Societies
So I just finished writing the latest installment for my column XY for the current issue of Cahoots magazine — it’s not up yet, but I’ll link it when it is. The column is a kind of amateur explanation of the implications of sociobiology, by a non-specialist, which means, er, well, thin ice and all that. Yet surely nobody would disagree with this month’s premise, inspired (if the word can be used) by a recent nasty experience here on my own site, which is basically that when it comes to dysfunctional behaviour online, men run amok digitally in very different …
Oriental Medical Pseudoscience Medicine, Sympathetic Magic, and the Consumption of… What?
I mentioned recently that Lime and I are thinking about picking up a second cat to give Peanut/Buffy/Undecided a playmate. She’s been looking at the adopt-a-cat webpages online, and was explaining to me the procedure in Korea for adopting cats. Not an official procedure, mind, just a common one. It goes like this: you adopt the cat. You pay a flat fee of, say, the equivalent of $20, or $30, or even $50. (Sometimes more.) Then the person who gave you the cat will come a few months later and check out how the cat is doing, as well as …
Speechmakers of Korea, beware!
Immediately on arriving in Korea, I noticed how (a) so many people seem to think that speechmaking is absolutely necessary for any function, gathering, or context, and (b) so many people seem to be bad public speakers, not making any attempt to deliver speeches that interest, involve, or relate to the audience except as something to be endured. Foreigners routinely comment on how rock bands will stop in the middle of a show and start talking… and talking… and talking… They’ll report on whole rooms of Koreans sitting in dazed, half-attentive states while some guy in a suit prattles on …