Double-post day - demanding, I know! But actually the last post was from last Thursday, I just never got around to publishing it on the day. Once you read it, hopefully you'll understand why I had to post again.
First things first, this is not and never will be a dating blog. My parents and other family friends read this blog, so while there are a few dating blogs by foreigners in Korea that I enjoy reading, I don't intend to follow in their fairly candid footsteps. But there are some things that deserve a mention, and one of these things is the blind date. Upon meeting someone, the first thing a Korean person will ask you is your age and whether you are married or not. Sometimes if you're a foreigner, this aspect will excite more curiousity and they'll ask you where you're from first or second after enquiring about your age, but usually it cannot compete with the mystery of your relationship status. Now I don't know about anyone else but if someone at home was asking this question straight off the bat I'd assume that they were interested in the person that they were asking about, so it took me a while to become comfortable enough with this question to just answer it straight away without looking embarrassed and I still find it a weird question to open a conversation with.
So back to the story - I rocked up to school at 9 to find everyone standing outside in the yard for an assembly. Normally I start half an hour later twice a week to compensate for the extra half hour at the end of the day that I teach so that the time falls within my contractual 8 hour day/22 teaching hours and the school doesn't have to pay me extra (which I am fine with! I do love my sleep^^) If there's something important on of course I'll come at the regular time.. as long as I know about it. Which today I did not. As I'd have to walk past everyone to go inside I just waited it out and went up to one of the teachers standing near the entrance to ask what was going on. He very nicely explained that it was the welcoming ceremony for the new student teachers. There was a pause. Then came the age/marriage question. Now I haven't ever actually talked to this teacher before and I don't even know his name - he's one of the new ones this year and I'm not in the main office any more so I'm not as obvious as I was last year. But somehow I managed to make a good enough impression on him in the space of about three minutes (two of which we stood in silence) and with one sentence for him to offer to set me up on a blind date. And not only a blind date, but a blind date with his only son. As a dad and not his wingman friend it's pretty safe to say that this will be the kind of date where you suss each other out as potential husband/wife (the Korean approach to dating is another often discussed subject, but to summarise, it's basically with the goal of marriage very firmly in sight rather than the Western style where establishing the relationship comes before you consider where it might lead to). Apparently this boy is 31, 184cm tall and works at a company near Cheongju University. OK. However, when I asked if this marvelous son spoke any English, his dad laughed and said "Why would he need to speak English? You speak Korean." I answered that it can be hard to express myself in Korean because I'm still learning, but apparently this is something I'll grow out of, so I have a dinner date sometime with this son (whose name I also do not know).
So that was a funny start to the morning and it made me smile a little at the randomness of Korean life. I wondered if perhaps this had happened because the teacher couldn't think of anything else to say.
Apparently that wasn't it because another teacher, Ms Yu, also offered to set me up on a blind date with her friend's younger brother after lunch. But at least this was a more conventional occasion - we'd actually talked before and she waited until we were having tea in the office and were chatting about random things to ask me if I was married. And she also understood about the language barrier problem. Moral of the story: women are much better at these things than men. (DUHHHH!)
Anyway, the last funny marriage-related thing today is a message that one of the teachers sent through our school's messenger system. Apparently an ajumma put this ad in a newspaper offering her husband for sale. Here's a rough translation (trying to keep the sale tone).
남편 팝니다. [Husband for sale]
사정상 급매합니다. [Sale due to circumstances]
ㅇㅇㅇㅇ년 △월 □예식장에서 구입했습니다. [Was purchased in/Married since ㅇㅇㅇㅇ]
한때 아끼던 물건(♥) 이었으나 유지비도 많이 들고
성격장애가 와 급매합니다. [Was once a well-loved product, but now must sell due to high maintenance and personality incompatability]
구입 당시 A급인 줄 착각해서 구입했습니다. [Mistook the goods for A-grade quality at time of purchase]
마음이 바다 같은 줄 알았는데 잔소리가 심해서
사용시 만족감이 떨어집니다. [Thought his heart was as deep as the ocean but due to increasing nagging product has become less satisfying with use]
음식물 소비는 동급의 두 배입니다. [(Also) consumes twice the normal amount of food]
다행히 외관은 아직 쓸 만합니다. [Luckily his outer appearance is still quite impressive]
AS 안 되고, 변심에 의한 반품 또한 절대 안 됩니다. [No after service ofference, and will not take returns if you change your mind]
덤으로 시어머니도 드립니다. [Comes with mother-in-law add-on]
Haha ^_^
Showing posts with label advertisement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label advertisement. Show all posts
Monday, April 25, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Monkey business and capital punishment
Haha this ad made me laugh when I saw it on TV so I had to share it - a monkey doing sit ups! Did you ever see such a thing? Hehe ^^
Had my Ban Ki Moon speaking contest preparation class today, which is always fun because it's with the top scoring students from 2nd and 3rd grade with the best speaking skills, and they are all also my favourites ^^ As part of the class, they each have to do a short presentation on whatever topic they'd like, preferably with a PPT presentation to accompany it. In the past, this has included gaming addiction, soccer, going to New York (a trip there is the prize for the BKM contest this year to meet the man himself) and favourite movies. There are two people presenting each week, and this week was Seung-Ju and Seung-Ho who are also incidentally brother and sister. Seung-Ho's was pretty good but nothing revolutionary, just talking about arguments for and against school uniforms. Seung-Ju however got up and announced "My topic today is the death penalty or todesstrafe" ('death penalty' in German) O_O Seung-Ju, who is quite lovely and usually pretty quiet and meek then proceeded to argue for the maintenance and use of the death penalty, beginning her PPT with a graphic picture of someone with a sack over their head being publicly hung.
My favourite line: "many say that death penalty is against human rights, but I say murderers already broken human rights by killing someone, and also by indirectly killing victim's family with grief. So we must give them death penalty to make justice."
We always have a quick discussion afterwards so I suggested that in that case, doesn't that mean you are indirectly murdering the murderer's family? Seung-Ho promptly disagreed, arguing that murderers always come from bad families, and anyway, usually they have no family or they kill their family. I tried not to laugh and asked then what they considered to be the most humane method of execution - these days it's usually lethal injection, the electric chair or gassing. Another student, Juri shouted "Death by gun! You should shoot them. Or kill them like they kill other people! That is justice." I pointed out that this was probably didn't count as execution and count as representing a public decision because only one person would do it, and Seung-Ho agreed... only to suggest that instead we should hang them like in the picture with the bag over their head but with everyone watching so that they would feel like they were being executed by them all.
At this point I decided we were done with discussion and changed the subject.
For the rest of the lesson, I gave them some lateral thinking puzzles. There were some interesting and logical (if not actually correct) answers. These were my favourite responses to a few questions (I gave them 10).
1. A man who lives on the 12th floor of an apartment block catches the lift down every day to work. On the way home, he gets in the lift, and if it's raining, or if there is someone else in the lift, he goes straight home. If not, he gets out on the 6th floor and walks the rest of the way. Why?
Best answer: Because it's a very slow lift, but he can kill the other people and then it will go faster. Or maybe he just likes to kill people.
2. There is a man living in a small town who marries 20 women in one day. No-one thinks this is a problem and all the women are happy. Why?
Answers: Because he is a polygamist/ Because there are only 21 people in the whole town/ Because he is a very lucky man.
3. A man wearing a backpack lies dead facedown in the desert. There are no footprints nearby or signs of other people. How did he die?
Answers: Because he is a Muslim. He went out to pray and suddenly died./ He is thirsty.
4. A woman gives birth to two boys at the same time on the same day in the same year, but the boys aren't twins. Why?
Best answer: Because they were one boy with two faces.
Oh and in great news, the 5 students from my school that were entered in a different essay/speaking contest last week (who are also all from this class) ALL made it through the essay stage to the speech stage which is tomorrow. Frankly that's a relief since I had to edit (i.e. write/decode/heavily re-write) ALL of their essay speeches in between my normal work and marking writing homework for four classes (about 120 students) in only three days last week so I would have probably been rather upset if none of them had made it through. They all came up with their own ideas though so I'm really proud of them and although I can't go with them tomorrow (unfortunately I have class), I'm sure they'll kick butt! My co-teacher Paige who is going with them has promised to keep me updated so I'll have my phone in hand all afternoon. Good luck guys! 화이팅! ("Fighting!") ^_^
P.S. To everyone in Korea, hope you guys stayed in and out of the radiation rain today! I heard about it on Tuesday, and asked the students in one of my 1st year classes yesterday what they thought of it (we happened to be talking about the weather). One of the boys gravely told me that I should not go outside because it would make my baby deformed and another told me that it would make my skin peel off. Great stuff!
Had my Ban Ki Moon speaking contest preparation class today, which is always fun because it's with the top scoring students from 2nd and 3rd grade with the best speaking skills, and they are all also my favourites ^^ As part of the class, they each have to do a short presentation on whatever topic they'd like, preferably with a PPT presentation to accompany it. In the past, this has included gaming addiction, soccer, going to New York (a trip there is the prize for the BKM contest this year to meet the man himself) and favourite movies. There are two people presenting each week, and this week was Seung-Ju and Seung-Ho who are also incidentally brother and sister. Seung-Ho's was pretty good but nothing revolutionary, just talking about arguments for and against school uniforms. Seung-Ju however got up and announced "My topic today is the death penalty or todesstrafe" ('death penalty' in German) O_O Seung-Ju, who is quite lovely and usually pretty quiet and meek then proceeded to argue for the maintenance and use of the death penalty, beginning her PPT with a graphic picture of someone with a sack over their head being publicly hung.
My favourite line: "many say that death penalty is against human rights, but I say murderers already broken human rights by killing someone, and also by indirectly killing victim's family with grief. So we must give them death penalty to make justice."
We always have a quick discussion afterwards so I suggested that in that case, doesn't that mean you are indirectly murdering the murderer's family? Seung-Ho promptly disagreed, arguing that murderers always come from bad families, and anyway, usually they have no family or they kill their family. I tried not to laugh and asked then what they considered to be the most humane method of execution - these days it's usually lethal injection, the electric chair or gassing. Another student, Juri shouted "Death by gun! You should shoot them. Or kill them like they kill other people! That is justice." I pointed out that this was probably didn't count as execution and count as representing a public decision because only one person would do it, and Seung-Ho agreed... only to suggest that instead we should hang them like in the picture with the bag over their head but with everyone watching so that they would feel like they were being executed by them all.
At this point I decided we were done with discussion and changed the subject.
For the rest of the lesson, I gave them some lateral thinking puzzles. There were some interesting and logical (if not actually correct) answers. These were my favourite responses to a few questions (I gave them 10).
1. A man who lives on the 12th floor of an apartment block catches the lift down every day to work. On the way home, he gets in the lift, and if it's raining, or if there is someone else in the lift, he goes straight home. If not, he gets out on the 6th floor and walks the rest of the way. Why?
Best answer: Because it's a very slow lift, but he can kill the other people and then it will go faster. Or maybe he just likes to kill people.
2. There is a man living in a small town who marries 20 women in one day. No-one thinks this is a problem and all the women are happy. Why?
Answers: Because he is a polygamist/ Because there are only 21 people in the whole town/ Because he is a very lucky man.
3. A man wearing a backpack lies dead facedown in the desert. There are no footprints nearby or signs of other people. How did he die?
Answers: Because he is a Muslim. He went out to pray and suddenly died./ He is thirsty.
4. A woman gives birth to two boys at the same time on the same day in the same year, but the boys aren't twins. Why?
Best answer: Because they were one boy with two faces.
Oh and in great news, the 5 students from my school that were entered in a different essay/speaking contest last week (who are also all from this class) ALL made it through the essay stage to the speech stage which is tomorrow. Frankly that's a relief since I had to edit (i.e. write/decode/heavily re-write) ALL of their essay speeches in between my normal work and marking writing homework for four classes (about 120 students) in only three days last week so I would have probably been rather upset if none of them had made it through. They all came up with their own ideas though so I'm really proud of them and although I can't go with them tomorrow (unfortunately I have class), I'm sure they'll kick butt! My co-teacher Paige who is going with them has promised to keep me updated so I'll have my phone in hand all afternoon. Good luck guys! 화이팅! ("Fighting!") ^_^
P.S. To everyone in Korea, hope you guys stayed in and out of the radiation rain today! I heard about it on Tuesday, and asked the students in one of my 1st year classes yesterday what they thought of it (we happened to be talking about the weather). One of the boys gravely told me that I should not go outside because it would make my baby deformed and another told me that it would make my skin peel off. Great stuff!
Friday, December 3, 2010
세상 누구도 혼자가 되지않는 날, 크리스마스
"Christmas, a day when no-one in the world should be alone"
Saw this ad for Christmas cakes at Paris Baguette (a Korean bakery) on tv. A mix of funny, slightly weird and hopefully not prophetic for those of us away from home for Christmas this year :)
Saw this ad for Christmas cakes at Paris Baguette (a Korean bakery) on tv. A mix of funny, slightly weird and hopefully not prophetic for those of us away from home for Christmas this year :)
Monday, November 15, 2010
Hilarious Ad
I find the "Want Cash?" ads hilarious. It took me ages to figure out what they were for as initially, whenever they came on TV I would be concentrating on the funny little dances they do rather than the product. And really, who cares? This is the latest "want cash? ad" by the Want Cash? Girls, and in my opinion, the funniest :)
(unfortunately I can't find a video that I can embed here so you'll have to go to another website to have a loook)
(unfortunately I can't find a video that I can embed here so you'll have to go to another website to have a loook)
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