I hate self-righteous pricks who give me a hard time about not having achieved fluency in Korean.
How far one should go with their hangul and Korean studies is a conversation every waeguk should have…with themselves.
Am I becoming part of the culture? No, not really. But am I detracting from Jeju society?Am I setting a poor example, reinforcing xenophobia? Am I being a rude houseguest?
Sometimes, but that doesn’t have much to do with learning or not learning Korean. If native-born people can fall down drunk on the sidewalk, why can’t waeguken?
Teaching friends should probably encourage each other to move beyond the ‘tourist’ lifestyle, but encouraging is not the same as judging.
Anyway, I have friends who are Korean. Not a lot, but a few. We converse in English. They same okay with that.
Some foreigners perhaps resent the idea of living among ‘tourists.’ They’re afraid of having an inauthentic experience, or perhaps just resent other foreigners who do so.
You think you’re a better person than I for knowing more Korean, but I think I’m a better person than you for knowing more about baseball and outer space. Let’s agree to disagree.
I hate teething puppies. Onya likes to bite. Everything. But mostly me. She tries to bite my legs. She tries to bite my fingers. She tries to bit my face. She even tried to bite my throat.
And then when I get mad she looks very confused, she has no idea she’s being vicious and unruly.
Imagine if in Jurassic Park, the T-Rex didn’t chase the jeeps, and just looked at them sadly and was like “why does nobody like meeeee?”
That’s Onya right now.
So far I’m trying a steady dose of bone giving and water gun. Onya hates the water gun but has not yet associated it with the biting.
I hate my landlord’s husband. The drunk fool has never said anything to me and now he’s claiming Onya is HIS dog.
Now, this sort of makes sense, since I found Onya in the yard, but if this is the case, it means:
*he’s badly mistreated her/doesn’t understand what a dog is
*he’s let me take care of her and do all the hard work, until…who knows when
There is no way he isn’t aware how I’ve been taking care of the dog, especially now. She walks around with a collar. Where does he think Onya got her collar? Does he think puppies grow them at a certain stage in their development?
His idea of taking care of a dog is to leave her outside and throw a piece of watermelon out the window every day. If he wants to control the dog, he can pay for the vet bills, food, bones, crate, toys, and collar (treats are on me).
Otherwise, he should continue not speaking to me and allow me to continue my foster parenting as I search for a good and permanent home over the next month or so.
I hate my old boss right now. He’d probably tsk tsk me and say this is a matter of “cultural differences.” Like if I had a pet turtle and somebody thought that I was mistreating the turtle or not giving it enough love. Like if I had a pet chicken and somebody thought they had a right to it because they were going to buy it a house and a chicken suit or something like that.
There are two things wrong with this. First of all, if that is the case, then he needed to assert himself as the rightful owner of the dog the FIRST time he saw her with me, not two and a half weeks later. Once he saw the collar especially he needed to address the issue.
Second, and more importantly, I’m okay with saying that a lot of people here treat their dogs like shit.
I don’t know enough about animal rights and Korean culture to write a treatise on the subject. You should not trust anything I say.
Cultural bias and ethnocentrism plays a strong role in how we see things.
Right now I’m a hater.
Other things I hate (but not EVERYTHING I hate): blood clots (get well soon Dillon Gee), the Home Run Derby, gamma ray bursts, standing around confused and bored at Island Stone, rain, shifting into neutral, lumps in my Irish car bomb, other people at the gym, and giant lizard men who terrorize Manhattan.
Culture Time 