Riley Ray in Korea

2001-10-23T09:07:00.000-04:00

It has never taken me as long to write a story as this one.

Given the sloth I crank these tales out at I consider that noteworthy. And while I wish I could blame this paint-drying pace on the authorial laziness that’s dictated the pace of most of my work…I can’t. Hell I can’t even chalk it up to the alcohol-related detail fuzziness that slowed down "Tequila is Not a Vitamin."

Though I want to thank everyone who sent e-mails insinuating I should lay off the gin.

This one took awhile because of a process that went like this: I would crank out three, four paragraphs, then get up, rage building in my chest, and do something. Sometimes I would walk it off. Sometimes I would clench my fists for an hour. Sometimes I would just make deep-throated grumbles and yells at neighborhood trees.

Though I’d add, clearly, much of the flora was asking for it.

So, why all the anger management? Because I couldn’t separate myself from what happened and that damn outcome. I think it’s fair to say that that Korea has given me the most transforming segment of my life to date. But when the ending is as bad as the experience is good...well for me it’s just hard to hold on to perspective. It’s been almost a month and I’m still angry enough to start a bar fight. Okay so enough build up. Here’s what went wrong:

I was fired on my second to last day at the Wonderland School.

It sounds bad. It was much worse. While it’s hard, I can see the whole episode objectively. If I take a deep breath, stand back and lock my jaw I can non-emotionally tell you what it came down to. But, like I said, given my non-professional writer status and my level of rage it’s really hard for me to do.

Now, NON-objective, that’s cake.

On a personal perspective level, it’s all the fault of a wood-headed, ass-sensed, quarter of dunce that has as much right to own our school as an autistic rodeo clown. Unfortunately, if I tell you this tale non-objectively you get less out of it. That’s a nice way of saying that in less than five minutes the story segues to a death-threat rant with an ending involving armchairs going the wrong way up Mr. Kim’s colon.

Yeah. I figured slow and objective would be better.

So why did everything go bad with one day left on the clock? Three things: the Riley Ratio, a lack of lawyers and a series of events that culminated with one too many bad report cards.

We’ll start with that ratio.

When incidents come to their conclusion in my world, it’s always in a perfect ratio: inspiringly good outcomes or earth-flattening bad outcomes. Now consider an even more curious fact: the ratio of fantastic to failure is about even. On average, the outcomes are half positive affirmations of all that is good in the world and half General Custer getting an involuntary Indian haircut. The Riley Ratio is 50% very up and 50% very down. To my recollection, since age thirteen, no chain of events in my life has ever ended anti-climactically.

Frankly, if I’d known puberty was going to up the stakes so much I’d have just kept my voice high and watched more GI Joe to stretch out the calm.

Which brings us to the lack of lawyers in Korea. This one’s a little easier to tell. For all intents and purposes law exists here for three reasons: international corporate debt negotiations, bribery prosecution and wife-stabbings. If your case doesn’t fall into one of those three areas it’s pretty much deal with it on your own.

For those who assume I’m joking, think back to that time Rodney the teacher dropped Mark on his head. In any city in America, Mark’s mom would now own one badly run school. In Korea? Not even the inkling of a lawsuit. It was a nation of common sense, personal responsibility and a total dearth of ambulance chasers. And yet, there was a flip side.

No. Really.

The yin to the anti-lawyer yang was in labor law. Once, when all the teachers in the school wanted a day off that was promised to us in our contracts, we wrote a letter. We said, in professional and pleasant language, that we would like the day off that we were promised so that we could enjoy our vacations and be better teachers on our return. Then, at the principal’s urging, we all signed our names and gave it to him. In a US business this would be considered at best proactive and at worst standard. IN Korea however, Mr. Kim, our boss, saw a number of workers rallying together a little differently.

We were communists.

In fairness, there are a number of political movements that started with a number of shoemakers trying to get a longer lunch break and ended with someone setting a protest fire to themselves in a town square. Still, a tenuous labor history aside, the greater part of the problem comes in an association that is charming in hosts & guests but crappy in a work force.

Three words: extraordinarily deferential relationship.

It’s not feudal lord level but if Mr. Kim had started demanding mead and oversize drumsticks I wouldn’t have been surprised. It’s understood in Korea that all workers will stay later than the assigned hours despite contracted conditions. Additionally it’s almost nothing for workers here to give up their weekends for company projects – unpaid – and on little notice. Hell, even payday isn’t a given.

Once, Nami’s boss at her adult school told her and the other teachers they weren’t going to be paid for a month. No warning, no apologies and no money. The girls were upset and wanted to quit. I told them to just send an angry letter threatening action and then hold a sick out till they got their dough. They nodded. I asked if they knew what a “sick out” was. They said no. I explained it. Then I explained it again.

When they finally got it, it was like I was showing them a flying car.

While it worked eventually for the girls, most workers in Korea just take it like there are no other options. The said part is, with a legal system that doesn’t notice you till you’ve got bloody fingerprints and a bad alibi; there really aren’t any other options. Sure there are contracts, statutes and legal language but it’s all pretense. When the time comes that you’ve ticked off the top dog too much the authorities will be apathetic at best. The US favored recourses of lawsuit and appeal will be replaced by bitch and moan.

The scary part is that defiance is STILL more than the Koreans, culturally, allow themselves. Their response to unfair work practice is to drink too much and blame everything on themselves no matter what. I’ve given consideration to the chance that labor law practices here are dictated by the liquor industry. And on that rummed-up note we come to that series of events that ended with the bad report card.

It started with a bus trip.

The junket was the next of Mr. Kim’s bonding weekends. Our school owner felt these trips promoted team unity, management-teacher friendship and greater cultural understanding. I felt it was a chance to give up 48 hours, not be paid for it and spend the greater part of two days making small talk with the same supervisors who yelled at me for making photocopies.

Call it an honest difference of opinion.

The last "togetherness adventure" sponsored by our school that I went on involved a nine-hour bus trip, sleeping on a floor 4 to a room and forced mountain climbing. This one involved a 12-hour bus trip, sleeping on a floor 6 to a room and going on a boat trip. As an added bonus, we teachers had to pay 30 bucks each for the sea voyage. But, as our school told us, it was a chance to see the ocean, walk on a beach and join in Mr. Kim’s favorite pastime, eating raw fish. It was all one big package deal.

I assumed the “gouge us for plane fare and make us eat dog meat” trip was all booked up.

Once I heard the date I was already hesitating. It would take up one of my last weekends with Nami for the sake of bonding with teachers I was leaving soon anyway. And unlike Nami, I wasn’t kissing any of them. Then I read in the English language newspaper that Korea had recently suffered a large cholera outbreak. Close to a hundred people had become seriously ill. They had all been eating raw fish. It came as no surprise that this was the area we were going to.

By this point I recognized a clear-cut case of "kill the white guy" when I saw it.

Both for my relationship and the sake of my gastrointestinal well-being I passed on the trip. I was one of only two teachers in both Wonderland schools to skip out on the death-fish weekend. To my preservation credit, while none of the teachers caught cholera most did lose a good hunk of their exposed leg skin to the massive water-flies of the area. Our principal told me later that my absence wasn’t a big deal.

Still, afterwards, I noticed Mr. Kim didn’t say hi as much.

Which brings us to the next in the event chain and our Korean word for the day: Hanbok. A Hanbok is a Korean traditional outfit. It looks like a dress on women and a flowing two-piece simple suit on men. It’s very colorful, elaborate and appropriate for most holiday functions that I still don’t understand in Korea.

Heck it may be appropriate for all functions. I wouldn’t know.

The outfit figures in here because of a promise made by Mr. Kim during that previously mentioned first bonding trip to Maisan Mountain. Before the mountain climbing, the boss announced that any teacher who finished his contract would receive a hanbok to take home and look goofy in. I believe what he was thinking was that this was a good sales pitch.

Yes, company loyalty through archaic fashion. It’s a wonder the Korean business model isn’t beating the pants off GM right now.

Still, in spite of the clothing bribes, a surprisingly large number of teachers still opted for the "this sucks, I’m outta here" plan before their contract completion. During my time there close to half a dozen teachers and two principals all snuck off in the middle of the night. Before I got there they had enough exodus going on to apply for Moses-level status.

I can only assume their feelings of contempt for our schools were stronger than their taste for apparel bribes. Me? I had a kindergarten class I liked, a beautiful woman I loved and, from my many years as a temp, a high tolerance for management idiocy. That and I do have a slight predilection for goofy outfits.

And anyone who wants to badmouth my seven sharkskin suits at this point can just consider themselves off the Christmas card list.

Still, I did my time, taught my kids and finished my contract. Soon the appointed week came up. All teachers got their hanboks when they took their final publicity shots for the school. When my supervisor, Jean, told me I needed to go for my pics I got a little giddy.

From what I understood of the last two teachers who finished their contracts they let you pick out your outfit. I was hoping for something in orange and gold satin so I could look like a Korean Elvis.

Happily I asked Jean where I should go to get fitted for my hanbok. Jean said she would look into it. A day later she got back to me. The news was not good.

I would get no hanbok.

No explanations and no excuses just the tactless translated statement: no hanbok. The other teachers had finished their contracts and gotten theirs. I had finished my contract and I was getting squat. I was being denied the colorful shiny clothing I was entitled to. I wasn’t happy.

"Okay," I told Jean. "No hanbok, no pictures. Tell Mr. Kim I said that." She did. Seeing as how most Korean bosses usually never have to deal with anything less than total subservience you could say that he wasn’t pleased.

I got to make it worse.

In an ironic twist, later on that afternoon, the school cameraman came by. He had been pre-arranged to come take our group and individual photos for a new teacher advertising poster and circular to go up around Seoul. I saw the mock up of the poster. It wasn’t pretty. The translation went like this.

"Look! Lots of Western teachers! Smiling! No Koreans! Everyone is happy! Smiling! Give us money!" Seriously. That’s what it said.

Roughly.

At any rate, when Mr. Photo got there at 3PM I got in line like I was told and made the same grinning face the other teachers did. We’d done this once before and it wasn’t so bad. Of course this time Nami wasn’t there to secretly pinch my butt either. Still, I did what I could. I stared blankly, curved up my cheeks and waited to get out of there. That’s when the frantically cheerful cameraman pointed to me – and only me – and said, "Open mouth! Smile!"

Repeatedly.

It made me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. What followed, in both the school and single shots, is a photo that is hard to miss. In it, ten teachers pose with non-committal, non-emotional faces. One teacher, however, distinctly keeps his mouth open in something that could be a smile were the not teeth gritted so concretely. On that teacher is a face that is definitely committed to an emotion.

The emotion is "Hulk SMASH!"

I noticed afterward that, in reviewing the photo shoot, Mr. Kim made some of the same negative sounding noises that Screamy the landlord used when I started hammering my concrete walls. Going by the giggles the poster got from some of the parents who saw it, I think the “Everyone is happy! Smiling! Give us money!" aspect may have been compromised.

It was around this time, when Mr. Kim was in full spitting mode from my photo shenanigans, that one of the administrators finally got around to asking him a question I’d told her to ask a week ago. She asked the big kahuna what day I would be getting my goodbye dinner. It was something the other recent teacher departees received and I was due for mine. It was a fair question. It was also badly timed. Mr. Kim answered by knocking over something.

Apparently my free kimchee was out.

Which brings us, finally, to the report cards. As a lot of you know, in my time with the Peter Rabbit class I did a lot of advocating for my kids. I talked to moms constantly, wrote very long evaluations on their report cards and, in the case of Joan, pushed until she was in the right class for her genius. There was only one kid who didn’t get what he needed from my class: Jake.

This would be Mr. Kim’s son.

When I got Jake he just wasn’t as advanced as the rest of the kids. He had pronunciation problems, emotional problems and he couldn’t focus. Apparently the last teacher’s only assignment for him during her three months was "frighten Mark."

In fairness he was pretty good at it.

So with learning a secondary issue, I got to work. During Jake’s first few months, I did most of my work with him on his behavior control. It paid off and he became a world-class helper, sharer and leader. Plus he no longer screamed for three hours a day.

I was especially proud of that one.

Unfortunately, as I began to wrap up my class I saw that wasn’t enough. In my time with Peter Rabbit I think I did three big things: I made my kids basic English conversational. I showed them how to be unafraid to be themselves. And I taught them to read.

Except Jake still couldn’t do that last one.

I had thought that by giving Jake low reports on his report cards his mom would take some action. I got zip. So I sent home long evaluations. Nada. When she didn’t come to the second parent-teacher conference I detected a pattern. Either she didn’t care about the problems or she thought I was the problem.

In fairness to Mrs. Kim, it’s it was a valid viewpoint going by what she knew. I saw the report cards that Jake got from his previous teachers before I got there. They were all good, they were all non-descript and all the evaluations said the same thing: "Jake has energy. Jake is a good boy."

This was during his "I can impale Mark with a chair" period.

Still, in the here and now of six months later, things were getting bad…again. Due to Peter Rabbit class' advanced work, Jake was consistently being left further and further behind. His failure to keep up with class level been had been slowing down the class and recently he began acting out again…violently. Luckily due to sports room progress, Mark was much faster at dodging body blows.

That kid’s fat but he’s damn fast.

Still, it wasn’t easy to watch. Knowing that in two weeks I wouldn’t be able to do anything more for him made it harder. In those last days, as I watched Jake spiral down, I got more emotional. This was a smart kid. A funny kid. A kid who gave everything he could. Sure, he was a horrible dancer but it only detracted slightly from the overall: Jake was a good kid who didn’t deserve to be punished for being in the wrong class.

So I tried one more time.

I wrote a two-page memo. I outlined everything I was thinking: the issues, the current problem and what I felt was the best solution. There was a slightly lower class group called "Blues Clues" where the teacher was an expert at teaching pronunciation – Jake’s main problem. He could get the help he needed here and, if I was right, actually be the smartest kid in the class.

And dammit Jake deserved it.

I sent the memo to the Principal and Jean the Administrator and I told them in the memo to tell everything I said to Mr. Kim. As I would learn later, that compassion, that last bout of helpfulness, that desire to help a kid… it was a bad idea.

Which, preamble completed, brings us to 10:30 AM on Thursday Sept. 27. It was Science day. It was bony pork bits for lunch day. It was my second to last day. All that, I knew. It was also “things about to go badly” day.

And that I was about to find out.

I awoke tired that morning and mentally didn’t move much from that position. Like most New Yorkers, I hadn’t slept well since a date in mid-September. Added to that were the many late nights and early mornings that came from the dismantling of a life it had taken me six months to build.

Only half of it had to do with my suits.

Aside from the general disposition of household stuff there were also the farewell gifts to be ordered and picked up for the kids, the plans for my last weekend with Nami and, of course, the goodbye time for me and my tailor.

Look we had a close relationship, don’t demean it.

The teary tailor goodbye was followed first by one of the Peter Rabbit class moms having me over for a "Goodbye and thank you" dinner. Then came a moving out sale where I made 70 bucks from selling most of my belongings to the other teachers. Capping it off, Nami and I had one of our longest and best dates ever in one of Seoul’s biggest malls.

Look it was a hell of a mall. That’s all I’m saying.

In the midst of the frenzy, I realized saying goodbye to the kids was going to be hard. I knew that last touch of the hands with Nami was going to be harder. I was tired but I was prepared, fortified and ready to deal with the stuff in front of me. It was one of the first times in my life I could say that.

What I forgot was that, 50% of the time, this was usually where I got hit from behind with a shovel.

But, as I said, on that last morning I was tired. I arrived at school somewhere between “zombie” and “poor motor control.” It wasn’t the best way to attack my penultimate day in Wonderland but it was just enough for the hour and half till Nami got there to help. She was coming before lunch to videotape the class doing Phonics and hopefully capture, on tape, both our spirit of learning and Josh eating lunch. One was for me and the other was for the Guinness book.

That two whole apples in the mouth thing is really very impressive.

So we sang the songs of first period and I explained that they needed to be on “non-nose picking” behavior for Nami. Then, as usual, we went off to Sports Room. As both a bribe and a treat, instead of our regular exercise and action words recitation/routine, we did something we do rarely: ultimate dodgeball.

Let’s just say if it was in a US school there’d be a lawsuit. Probably two.

When we finished sports room we emerged like the sweaty six-year-old warriors we were and went for our daily trip to the water fountain. Ellie, one of the supervisors was on the phone, as was Trisha our receptionist.

In case I’ve never mentioned them, Trisha is a very easygoing, very pretty young Korean woman who seems to have fun in her job. From what I understand there isn’t a person in the school who doesn’t like Trisha including the kids.

In contrast, Ellie the supervisor is a brittle woman who seems more on edge with every pale pastel shirt she wears to work. When they worked on the phones out front, Trisha accepted she worked in a school and made the best of it. Ellie on the other hand, tried in vain to pretend that order and children went hand in hand. She became easily frustrated when they didn’t.

If she ever has kids she going to toilet train them at gunpoint. Watch.

Now, on our way to the water fountain, we passed Kipper class like we did every day. During that moment, as always, it was noisy. The math isn’t hard. There were close to 20 kids in the hall – some excited for exercise, some whining about injuries from exercise. Given their general level of indestructibility I mostly ignored the latter. But the important thing here is that the two classes both made noise. Both.

Now hold that thought.

At that moment of peak noise, Ellie, more brittle than usual, turned around to yell. Kipper class was no longer there, having gone to sports room as Peter Rabbit got to the water fountain. In a harpy-voice that would quail the dead, Ellie turned and yelled at Peter Rabbit.

My Peter Rabbit.

To be clear: She did not ask them to be quiet. She did not ask me to make them quiet. She yelled at them. Loudly. She believed them to be responsible for all the noise she had just heard and wanted to make them pay. It was enough to make even the tough as nails Jon recoil a bit. Sherry looked like she was about to cry.

And that was it.

If I had been less tired I’m sure my response would have been better thought out. I would have probably made some cutting remark that would have quieted her long enough for us to get away while she translated it for the fifth time in her head. But that was my non-tired, top-of-his-game self.

I was nowhere near that.

When Ellie yelled at my kids, without real justification, I yelled back. The fact is, that I was about to ask my kids to be quieter when Ellie yelled at them. All I could think was to yell at the woman yelling at my kids and they didn’t deserve crap like that. So I defended them. Loudly and bluntly. Ellie recoiled and we finished up at the fountain.

Now this was the part where the Korean staff usually huffed and puffed and mumbled curses in a language I didn’t understand. Usually. But this was one of those 50% hell-an-a-half days. So for probably the first time in her life, Ellie decided on plan B…action. Ellie went into the inner office to tell her boss Jean, in those harpy-like tones, what I’d done.

By sheer chance, the School Owner, Mr. Kim, happened to be there too. Ellie, an opportunist screecher, took her chance to make the most of it. She said, vocally, that I had yelled at her and that Peter Rabbit was yelling. He came out of the office towards me looking like a six-foot wall of fury.

I should say now that, in general, I encourage my class to talk. Largely as a result of that freedom to gab away, Peter Rabbit has one of the highest English conversational levels in Kindergarten.

Also, volume-wise, Peter Rabbit is a slightly loud class. There are two children in Peter Rabbit with voices that boom like theater veterans - Josh and Mark. When they whisper it’s often louder than when other children talk. For other kids in my class to be heard they often have to be louder than those two.

As result, our general level is a little above norm but, honestly, it’s not a Who concert. While I do tell them to keep it under control, I do not discipline them for having loud voices. There’s no point. It only stifles their participation, makes them talk in strained whispers and sound like Harvey Firestein.

And really, nobody wants that.

Still, overall, Peter Rabbit is MUCH better behaved and soft spoken than when I took over 6 months ago. No one was yelling war cries anymore, yelps of pain were way down and there was, again, that noticeable drop off in the daily screaming fits of Mr. Kim's son, Jake.

But, returning to Thursday Sept 27, when a flush faced Mr. Kim came out of the back office, it didn’t seem like any of that was being taken into account.

Peter Rabbit had gone, as a group to the bathroom when he descended in on me. I find that sending them all at once after drinking water cuts down on bathroom trips during the day. As they returned to our meeting point by the school mural, Mr. Kim was yelling angrily. In front of the Peter Rabbit class, including his own son, Mr. Kim began screaming epithets that must have translated worse in his head.

“Your class too loud!” said the ranting boss, “Control now! You control! Too loud! Class always no control loud! You! Control!”

Jean the supervisor came out at that point to try in vain to calm down the bellowing boss. We were still waiting for James, the two minute pee-er to come back from the restroom so, to get the kids’ minds off the irrational loud guy behind us, I pretended to ignore the boss. I focused them on the mural in front of us. They jumped at the chance to point and tell.

James pointed at the fall mural and mentioned what the season was.

“Teacher, it is fall!”

Josh, Mr. National Geographic, went with the flora and fauna.

“This is squirrel. And nut!”

That brought on the relative sizes debate, possibly a childhood argument with deeper lines of division than glue stick versus paste. Sherry pointed at a nut and said, “big nut!” Mark pointed at something that might have been a thumbprint and yelled, “Little nut!” Then Mr. Kim’s son, Jake, pointed at a nut of not-too-big and not-too-small size. For he first time ever, Jake correctly identified and pronounced "medium."

“Teach-uh…mee-dee-umm nut,” said Jake. He was clear as a bell and, of course, loud.

The ignoring and his son’s big, precise voice was enough of a cue. I think Mr. Kim had been waiting for my cowering to do what came next. When I didn’t, he gave up and, raging, just did what he came out to do.

“You! Okay! Fired! FIRED! Get out! Go Fired! Okay! GO FIRED! GO!” he shouted.

I’m not sure what all the “okay” stuff was about. If he was looking for agreement it seemed to be an odd time to do it. The funny thing is that I think I was still smiling at that point. People overuse surreal. This was. Mr. Kim was canning me and I was so tired that all I could think of was that Jake said medium.

And, for once, he didn’t pronounce it like “Mommy-m.”

Still, if Jake was making progress, Mr. Kim chose not to notice it then. The only thing he seemed to be aware of was his incoherence. For some reason it only seemed to egg on his blustered anger more.

“You! Fired! Out! Go! Good! Okay? Fired go!” he said, in front of the kids. He followed with the worst insult he could think of.

“You bad teacher! BAD TEACHER!"

He was an unimaginative dumbass but that was enough. Ignoring was over. They didn’t need to see this crap. I sent the kids back to class and for the first time Mr. Kim seemed to notice they were there. Maybe it was as a result of seeing his wide-eyed audience leave but, as they left, Mr. Kim tried to apply both sense and verbs to his “get out” rant.

“Your contract say control class,” he said, slowing down and simmering. “No control, contract no good. No pay this month and I’m no pay for ticket home. I’m goodbye!”

Well I said they were verbs. I didn’t say they were the right ones. He walked off. Jean the supervisor caught up soon after to try to talk some sense into him. It’s a futile hope for the senseless. I went back to my class and hoped that good sense might catch up to this man and beat the hell out of him for trying to fire a teacher on his second to last day.

Good sense lost the fight.

Mr. Kim had come out of that office to fire me, deny me the things he owed me and make me lose face. That was his plan and it was what he came out there to do. He was set, ready and a complete idiot. Because if he’d looked at a calendar he’d have stayed in there.

As Jean soon explained to him, his understanding of my contract was tenuous at best. In my contract I cannot be fired the way he was doing it. I am to receive 20 days notice, a warning and a probationary period. None of that apparently got through. Then she told him it was all moot: I had completed my contract the previous on Friday, Sept 22.

That got through.

I had only been staying to train my replacement who, by the way, still hadn’t shown up. It was a promise I made to the parents and I honored it. Once he realized this he got that the face loss was mostly going to be his. He had to pay me all the hours in my contract, my ticket and all the hours I’d worked so far. He could only deny me the rest of that day and tomorrow. He decided to go with that.

Plus the public rage.

When Mr. Kim saw me head back to the classroom stood outside the class and yelled at Jean. My translation was all subtext but the jist was, “I’m an idiot but get him out of there. Now! Goddamnit!”

Jean came in. She barked at my class. In English only half as good as we speak in my class, Jean blamed them for my firing and said I had to leave. She was angry at her powerlessness in this stupidity and decided to take it out on those under three feet tall. Jean finished her tirade and left. Jean was then replaced by one of the other Korean supervisors, Jennifer, who came in to take over my class. Jennifer had this smug look that said, “See they’ve broken your loud class.” I had planned two days of activities to say goodbye but now I had five minutes to clean out my class.

Frankly it didn’t look good.

The kids were stunned and on the verge of tears. I took a deep breath. Yelling at Jean was pointless. She was a powerless stooge in this anyway and there had been enough yelling. Nothing I was going to say was going to help these kids feel better.

I went with Peter Rabbit’s oldest tradition…prizes.

I threw each of the kids the custom-made black baseball caps I had designed for them. On the front was an angry, smiling, white bunny in a bullseye. On the back were their names. As I chucked the caps at the kids their faces brightened and anything Jean might have said was gone from their little heads. They turned back into the healthy, loud pre-school ogres I’d grown to know and love. I followed by giving them all the booty in my desk and whatever lesson plan Jennifer decided to try was replaced by my impromptu “Treasure hunt.”

But then, a desk of stuff later, it was actually time to say goodbye. All week my students and I had this running joke. I would say “How many days till teacher goes back to America?” Then someone would yell out the number and the class would mock cry and then break out laughing riotously. I told them to line up, give me a hug, and say goodbye.

This time they really did cry. I did too.

Then I told them to line up for their hugs. I wasn’t big on these when I was teaching but I made an exception for the goodbyes. Josh hugged me like I was his brother. Jon hugged me and tapped me on the back. Mark made a big emotional show like the mama’s boy king of drama he is. James pretended to hate it and gave me a goofy defiant face. From him that was still progress. Sherry, the biggest fake crier all week started bawling. Then Jake came over, hugged me, and cried and I knew having his father do what he just did must have been horrible.

I wiped the mist from the corner of my eyes and went to the blackboard with the hastily packed things that made up my six months in this class. I stood in front of the Peter Rabbit class one last time.

“This was not your fault okay?” I said. “You are okay. Okay. You are good. Teacher and Jake’s daddy had an argument and I am going home.” I looked over at Jake who was still tearing up. “Everyone be good. And don’t be mean to Jake. Everyone in Peter Rabbit class is friends. Jake’s daddy may be bad, but Jake is good. Okay?”

I walked to the door.

“Adios Peter Rabbit class.”

They all yelled “adios” back and I left. As I walked away I heard Mark yelling “Teacher! Teacher!” like a foghorn. Josh was singing something and Sherry started loudly demanding help with her new ballcap. If anything they were now twice as loud as the class that got yelled at by the water fountain. I heard Jennifer say something “Lose the stars?” and the class played with their prizes and ignored her. They already had the booty. All she was going to get was indifference and grief.

That was the Peter Rabbit class I was leaving behind. God bless em.

I went to wait by the reception area for Nami. She was still due to show up in 40 minutes and I couldn’t go anywhere till she got there. This vexed the Korean staff to no end. The Korean principle was that when you are fired you leave. They were just lucky I was too tired to be too angry. I don’t even think the idea of “disgruntled” occurred to them.

Then the bell rang for class break and my firing became a matter of public record.

The teachers came out to find out what was going on. I told them. As I did, Ellie and the other Korean staff kept yelling at me telling me this was none of their business. Again, more proof that, with enough Western business practices this country would flat out fall down. But, returning to the carnage, the teachers’ feeling ranged from “you must be joking” to “incredulous light anger.”

Except for one. Murrell Francis.

I’ve never mentioned Murrell before because as teachers go because, aside from a common love of cheesy English 80’s pop, we ran in different circles. Murrell is a six-foot tall, black teacher from Canada who is in training to be a minister. He actively preaches some weekends at his church here. He was principled, restrained and more than a little puritan. It was who he was and the circle he ran in. Mine involved drunkenly yelling “Freebird” from barroom floors.

Yeah so different circles.

But when he found out Murrell became something that was simply impossible for the Korean staff to understand: a motivated, booming reverend of righteous wrath on high. He yelled, he banged his fists and preached about the evils of what they were doing. Ellie, Murrell’s supervisor, tried to tell him to go back to class and “mind your business.”

Boy was that the wrong thing to say.

“What are you going to do? Fire me? Because I’m too loud? Because my kids make mistakes?” He leaned over the desk and banged it with the flat of his palm, “Because I’m black?” He clenched his fists. “My kids are fine and I’ll go back to class when I’m damn well ready!”

Frankly it was a thing to behold.

The imminent teacher riot was now looming. The only response most of the Korean staff seemed to be able to give was to stand next to Ellie as she yelled at me and tried to unsuccessfully convince me she’d been justified in doing what she’d done. After about ten minutes, Jean and Peggy the principal came out. Peggy had been mysteriously absent during most of this.

They told me, separately, that Mr. Kim had agreed to pay me for this day of my firing and tomorrow. They didn’t even pretend that it wasn’t due to trying to stave off an educational insurrection. Still, he promised Peggy that I would be paid my full month's salary. However I would be deducted the day of September 12th when I spent the day and night calling my family to make sure they were okay.

Yes. I know. But if Mr. Kim ever gets to Manhattan, I’ll let you know so you can stick dead fish in his luggage.

I nodded and said fine. Then they walked away. Jean looked back and had a face full of incomprehension. I was still there. Waiting. After a minute she walked off perplexed. Then Mr. Kim came out and saw me. And, not having any idea what to do, waved at me and left his own school.

Again, the surreal thing.

Nami finally showed up and I had to explain three times what had happened. She just didn’t believe me the first two times. She asked the Korean staff what happened and when Ellie heard me explain myself again she jumped in to defend her position to Nami.

To her credit, Nami wasn’t having it.

After Ellie finished her dissertation on why it was okay to tell on me to the bosses Nami, a Korean, said that she was dead wrong. There wasn’t any reason to rat on me to the superiors she was blown away. Ellie’d been taking my defiance for an hour and chalked it up to me being western. Getting no support from a Korean she’d worked with once…well it was enough to make her finally leave the room.

Nami started questioning one of the nicer staff, Sue, a middle-aged Korean woman whose main detail was prepping our Art and Science days. Apparently the Peter Rabbit moms including Joan’s mom – who was now a former student – were coming by to say goodbye today. Nami’s eyes brightened. I think she wanted to stay and translate and cause all kinds of hell. It’s one of the reasons I love her more than television.

Yes I said more than television. You heard me.

She was ready to fight and, frankly, on any other day, I would have started throwing down too. But then, Nami looked at me and saw how dead tired I was. I was already going to have a tough day just teaching. Then I was forced to fight half a school. At that moment my prospects of consciousness were 50-50.

And I’d already lost one of those coin flips by getting up today.

Nami grabbed my hand, told Sue to tell the parents I was sorry and led me down to her car. She drove me home, took off my clothes and put me in bed. She got in next to me on top of the covers, put her arm around me and told me to go to sleep and get some rest.

I love her with all my heart because, for the first time in weeks, I did.

2001-10-23T09:05:00.000-04:00

Later that night, Nami left for her job and I woke up with a fully rested head. I tried to make sense of the day’s events held my sleep-deprived head. I was fired on my second to last day because my kids were too loud. It just didn’t make sense no matter how many times I said it in my head.

I think I was saying it out loud to see if that worked better when Kierstie, one of the teachers, dropped by. She came to drop off a cake that one of my afternoon students, Lisa in my Tuesday-Thursday classes, brought in as a going away gift. Lisa had only been in my class a month and she wanted to do this. I had to tell her thanks.

Then it hit me. I wasn’t going to.

I wasn’t going to get to say goodbye or anything else to my afternoon classes. I was never going to get that tape of my kids doing phonics. I wasn’t going to get to take Kramer and his class bowling that last Friday as a farewell. No one was ever going to hear Peter Rabbit class sing the ‘witch doctor’ song. And they had matching dance moves and everything. They were like midget Stylistics.

I finally got how much Mr. Kim had hurt me.

Kierstie offered the cake and her condolences. I sat around with all the stuff that I was going to leave unfinished in my life and all the goodbyes I wasn’t going to say. Again. I did that a lot in my life. But here, for the first time, it wasn’t my fault. It still didn’t make it feel any better.

Around that time, Murrell dropped in, ostensibly to drop off my Izod Nation 80’s CD. Mainly though I think he wanted to check on me and see if I wanted to talk. Turns out I did.

Mainly, Murrell and I just talked about my classes. I told him about the decibel kings of Peter Rabbit to my advanced class where we spent 90 minutes each week butchering English idioms. Then we talked about how it ended and I compared my slumbered recollections with his angry ones. They were pretty close. He headed out not too long after that and I thanked him speaking his mind that morning when I was too fog-headed to do the same. He said it was just how he felt and that it was “the right thing to do.” He left and I felt better.

For the record I think he’s probably going to be hell of a minister.

The next day Nami came over and she spent a good part of the morning making sure I ate something. I tell you, no matter what problems we ever had Nami always brought the two most important things you could to a relationship: affection and sandwiches. It’s a rare woman who knows to bring both.

Nami called Peggy the principal and found out that my money would be waiting for me at 6PM at the school. She once again confirmed that I’d be paid for the 19 days of September and there would be no problems. Also, according to Sue, the Peter Rabbit parents had left me a gift. We decided to go down to the school at that moment to get it and a few things I’d left in the Peter Rabbit class. If I were lucky I’d get to see Peter Rabbit one more time.

I felt better, well rested and defiant now. I wanted to show the Korean staff that nothing they’d done had taken away from my time there. In my mind nothing said that like sharkskin. Red sharkskin. I put on my “King Crimson” suit, a black shirt and the cowboy boots Nami had tailor made for me as a present. They were black with red leather flames stitched into the front and going backwards.

C’mon. A woman who gets fire-boots made for you as a going away present. That’s pretty amazing.

We got there as some assembly was finishing up. Jean the administrator was trying in vain to shut up Mark. I saw that Sherry and Josh were already sitting off to the side in the makeshift penalty box. For the rest of their lives my kids were ruined for repressive Korean teachers. And it was good.

I waved to Josh and his face lit up.

I went back to my class and got the pictures and things I’d left as the assembly broke up. The kids all came over and I explained sharkskin and they seemed impressed. Jean wrangled them away to take them downstairs but Mark lingered behind. I wasn’t sure why. Then he started singing.

“Goodbye teacher it’s time to go, bum bum bum bum.”
“Goodbye teacher it’s time to go, bum bum bum bum.”
“I hate to leave you but a really must say, goodbye teacher goodbye.”

Then he waved.

I was touched but pretended not to be. “You forgot the dating game kiss,” I reminded. It was followed shortly by an “mmmm-WAHHH” head-turn, blow kiss. I gave Mark a hug and he hugged me twice as hard back, as was his style.

Nami and I went to pick up the gift from the reception desk and all the teachers stopped by to pay their condolences. Most also said goodbye. They all said that they, as a group, had threatened to strike if I didn’t get paid for the two days I was fired. Murrell stopped by and I thanked him for stopping over again the previous night. He said it was okay and didn’t make a big deal about it.

Sue the art & science project woman finally brought out the gift the moms had gotten me. It was a 50 dollar gray Polo shirt, a button down. It even came in a Ralph Lauren bag so you knew it wasn’t a knockoff. I smiled and looked at my sharkskin and then the suit. I loved these moms. It was six months later and they still had no idea what I wore.

But they tried. That was plenty.

We went back to my house for a little while after that and soon it was time for Nami to go to work. I had asked her to drop me near a little shopping district by Wonderland. Before I got out, I asked her what a good Korean curse word was to call a man here. The only one I knew was “shipalyun” which is a fairly brutal word for “whore” in Korean. She had heard me tell the tale of my use of the word once on a mean waitress and refused to add to my dubious knowledge.

Nami told me to just go in there with a positive attitude and, if the need arose, to just use an American one curse word. I nodded and ruminated on the cross-gender use of “shipalyun.” It occurred to me that it might be doubly humiliating to use it on a man.

It also occurred to me that I’d prefer not to find out.

With that thought clear on my face as I got out of the car, Nami warned me to stay out of trouble and I kissed her goodbye as a non-response. I was too aware of the Riley ratio to make any such promises. I told her I’d meet her at her school after work and we’d go out and put this whole thing behind us and have a good weekend.

It almost convinced me.

I headed over to the little shopping area and checked my watch. I’d missed Kramer’s class but I could at least give a little going away gift to Sarah and Julie in my 4:30 class. I went and picked them up a pair of 18k earrings and a nice pen set for the lone boy in the class, Kevin, who’d only come on board a month ago. I realized that I was being excessively sentimental and letting my wallet take the brunt of it. A real teacher would be able to separate himself from this sort of thing. But I’d long ago made my peace with the fact that I was no real teacher.

So I sprang extra for the fancy gift-wrap.

I got to the school just before the end of the 4:30 class at 5:50. I stopped by the reception area and found Mr. Cho, the school accountant. He was transfixed my red suit. So much so that I had to remind him why I was there. He nodded and told me my money would be done shortly. I told him I’d be right back. Then I went class to looking for my girls.

I found two of my favorite afternoon students in the class of fellow teacher who was a friend, Jeremy. I loved these kids because they were smart, funny and we had an understanding: I sprang for soda and they brought snacks every class. It was good class.

Yet here they were, clearly just killing time. Apparently my kids were just getting shuttled around till the new teacher got there. I put my head in the class and told Jeremy I needed my kids for a minute. Jeremy wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be doing with them either so he sent them to me.

The girls came bounding out. I read the Korean phonetic stuff I’d written down. Nami told me how to say, “I got fired. Ellie did it,” in Korean. I said it just as Nami taught me. The kids didn’t get it.

I figured, the hell with it. It was better that they didn’t know. Let them learn when they enter the workforce. I just gave them the gifts.

If it was too extravagant they didn’t show it. They started screaming like I was a boy-band. Kevin even got giddy about his pen. I have no idea why. I tore off a piece of a nearby poster and gave them my e-mail address. Then I went back to the reception area for my money.

Which brings us to the final, sad chapter in my time teaching at Wonderland.

Mr. Cho gave me my money in an envelope and then showed me on my payroll receipt where I was supposed to sign. I looked at my pay amount. It was light. Very light. Many hundreds of US dollars light.

“You were paid…um,” Mr. Cho, who was actually a nice guy, didn’t speak great English and fumbled for his words, “…seventeen. Seventeen days.”

I paused for only a moment. The realization of what happened didn’t take long to sink in.

“You ARE paying me for yesterday and today like Mr. Kim said he would aren’t you?” I questioned.

Mr. Cho had to run the question in his head once before he could answer it. I think he knew what was coming afterwards.

“Yesterday…1 hour. Today. No hours,” he said somberly.

He had promised, the day before, in front of the whole school, to pay me for these two days. He had to. If he didn’t the teachers would have quit. Now, at 6PM, right before a Korean holiday, he wasn’t going to. The teachers were almost gone, the principal was on a bus to the airport and Nami had gone to work. This bastard knew exactly what he was doing.

I spent the next ten minutes getting livid at Mr. Cho, who was clearly nothing more than an unhappy Korean cog in this machination. I threatened this and that and yelled and demanded to see Mr. Kim. Mr. Cho went into the back office and came back shortly. Mr. Kim was in a meeting. I started yelling again. After a while I noticed that all Mr. Cho could do was nod and cast his eyes downward. I felt bad. This wasn’t his fault. He asked me to sign the paper. I told him I wasn’t going to.

You could see that thought had never occurred to him.

First I tried to call Nami. My better half usually knows what the deal is, translation-wise, when things go wrong in Korea. Unfortunately she was teaching and had turned off her phone. I thought about where Peggy the Principal was and then I asked Trisha if she knew. She just started dialing a number for me and handed me the phone.

Time for a quick Peggy the Principal segue.

Peggy was an American principal who had come over here chock full of plans and teaching methods and a professional attitude. I accepted on my second day that our school was a sham. Our owner had no clue, our supervisors couldn’t speak English and we taught in a ramshackle, made-up way that was changed on a whim.

Call it another difference of opinion.

The thing is, while I was right, Peggy had lived in Korea before. You think she’d know better. And yet she didn’t. She was even the one who suggested that first group letter that ticked off the owner. Still, I have to give her credit; at least till about a month before I left, Peggy stubbornly tried to hang on to those ideals of hers. Not an easy task in a school that seemed like it was created on a lost bet. But as you know, I’m kind of a stubborn person myself.

I think you can see where this is going.

I can’t say Peggy and I always got along. For one thing she had this affected over polite thing. She used to walk up to teachers and say “Could you please go do this for me please and thank you.” That drove me nuts. Plus I generally spoke my mind in our regular, pointless teachers meetings. Let’s just say I’m not great on committees. But I think the heart of our mutual dislike went to a time when my kids all boycotted her classes.

Peggy instituted a big curriculum change in our afternoon classes a month after she got here. All the smartest the students in the school were put into new advanced reading classes. The other rest got taught the regular stuff. Aside from one loggerhead who I’ll get to, at that time, three of my four afternoon classes were smart kids.

The week of the placement testing they all got anxious over the move. They all said they didn’t want to go. So I told them to do what they wanted. Again, I got the confused look I’d come to know by heart. I told them to just tell their parents they didn’t want to go. Then I told them to have their parents say they’d Wonderland quit if they moved them. As a result, none of those super smart kids went into the program.

I’m thinking that kind of cheesed off Peggy the Principal

Peggy tried to get back at me two months later. It happened when one of my most painful to teach students finally quit: Sam the doorknob. I enjoyed every one of my afternoon classes but one. This was the one. It was Sam and I, alone in a room together…4 hours a week.

For some students, that kind of intensive, one on one work helps. But Sam was a child who pursued his ignorance with zeal. It took me close to a month before he showed the slightest idea he understood what the word “log” meant. Ironically, I knew that if I could cut open his wood-head I could show him.

Frankly when he left I considered it a blessing. I went door to door singing the “Sam freakin’ QUIT!” song to the other teachers. Some, having known Sam, were tempted to join in on the chorus. Peggy let me enjoy my musical celebration for about 10 minutes.

Peggy smarmily promised to give me another class immediately. Before the period was even over, she gave me ANOTHER teacher’s class of kids. That teacher then did light typing for 6 hours a week till the month was up. I got her half a dozen five years olds who barely knew a word of English. This included one gap-toothed wonder that couldn’t remember his name

Was it effective management? I had 8 classes left in Korea and these kids were getting their third new teacher in two months. I’m gonna say no. But if Peggy thought these kids would be punishment she was out of her mind. For those 8 classes I just asked them questions. If they got them right, I threw candy at them. Some even made some progress. If they didn’t they weren’t doing any worse than they were before. That was our class time.

Though I did make a little time each period to thank the educational gods that they weren’t “Sam the loggerhead.”

But, still, that kind of grudging relationship was that nature of how I got along with Peggy. She’d been there a few months by now but the last month had become more distant. Anytime there were personal problems, or teacher management concerns or discipline issues she no longer asked to be involved. In fact, unless it had to do with her latest curriculum change or yelling about how weird her eyes looked in that last poster, she didn’t want to be bothered.

Was it single-minded dedication to the school curriculum? Given that the principal turned us into the singing school three months ago on a random thought, I didn’t think so. Nothing lasted at Wonderland. I’m thinking Peggy’s ideals didn’t either. Three months in and I think she’d given it all up for liberal vacation time, a quiet office and a regular paycheck from the idiot who owned the place.

But now back to the very bad day.

Peggy answered her cell phone on the bus to the Inchon airport. I explained what Mr. Kim had done. She didn’t seem to make a lot of upset sounds. I asked her to do something. I could hear her nodding in her authoritarian principal-like way on the other end of the line. She told me she would and that she’d call me right back. Two minutes later the phone rang and Peggy handed it to me.

She did. The news was not good.

“Mr. Kim isn’t picking up his cell phone. He must know I’m trying to call him,” she related powerlessly. I offered to have one of the Korean staff tell him she was on the phone. Right about then Peggy began distancing herself from the situation. “I’m not sure what that would do. Have you gone in and tried to talk to him?”

I got the feeling Principal Peggy was already on her vacation.

I explained that Mr. Kim didn’t want to see me. I made it plain: if she didn’t do something here, Mr. Kim was going to cheat me out of a good hunk of dough that he had promised to give me…in front of her. There was a pause. Then I could hear her sigh on the other end of the line.

It wasn’t one of those good kinds of sighs.

“Well Riley, what do you want me to do? I’m on a bus on my way to the airport. He obviously planned this. Riley what do you want me to do?” she whined.

And that was it. It all crystallized for me right in that moment. This whole labor system was a toilet and I was tired of all the plungers telling me otherwise. I got pissed and I got clear with her.

“Look Peggy, if I am a liability right now, and I’m on my way out of the country right now. If you don’t want to waste any more of your political capital on me, fine, I understand. But…”

She interrupted and protested that part a little bit. I let her for about ten seconds then interrupted and cut her off. I got to the chase.

“Here’s the deal Peggy. Tell me right now,” I said very deliberately, “if you say there’s NOTHING more you can do for me, fine. Then I hang up, I accept my losses, and I do something that gets me the moral victory. Then I go home happy that way.”

Now she was hesitating.

“Riley, what I’m saying is,” Peggy stammered, “that I…just don’t know…I don’t know what else to do…” She had no idea what I was going to do but she was in education. I’m sure she had an imagination. She was stalling, probably hoping to get me to calm down. Unfortunately, indecisive pretend authority figures were the last thing in the world that’d calm this situation.

“Peggy,” I barked, “Can you do something more here, yes or no?”

“No,” said Peggy, resigned, “I can’t do anything else right now.”

“Thanks for your honesty,” I said as I hung up the phone.

And that was it. Peggy was useless, Mr. Cho still had that pay voucher out for me to sign and Mr. Kim didn’t want to see me. I looked at the numbers I’d been cheated out of and thought of the final goodbye days I’d had taken away. As I did the math in my head it was simple the way the Koreans saw it. As far as Wonderland was concerned this was all done. The only thing left for me to do was leave with my short money, bad feelings and my tail between my legs.

“Well,” I said to myself, “fuck that.”

I walked to the back office. Mr. Kim was sitting in a couch opposite Jean the administrator. She was in one of the offices’ chairs holding some paperwork on student placement and the newest curriculum changes to go in on the day everyone got back from the Korean holidays. Apparently Mr. Kim wanted his finger in the pot on this stuff too. I wondered how many more kids were going to get screwed up by this guy’s active lack of knowledge. I imagined a bunch of 12 year olds doing finger-painting while the kindergarteners used advanced grammar books as hats. What a tool.

Then I opened the door.

“We are having a meeting here. You come back,” said Mr. Kim. I stifled a little grin on that one. Apparently Goober wasn’t up on the latest US work practices that only let you give orders to the employees who hadn’t been fired. I stood there in the doorway and addressed Jean.

“Tell him,” I said, “I have been waiting for 40 minutes to speak to him and I don’t plan on waiting all night.”

My voice was very even and precise. I sounded like the fuming voice of a filmstrip narrator and Mr. Kim was getting every syllable. He looked up at the angry short man in the very red suit and finally realized I wasn’t getting out of the doorway. After his initial surprise he focused on what I was saying and Jean translated.

Then we played my final round of the Korean telephone game.

“You told Peggy and the entire school I would be paid for yesterday and today,” I said. “Now, are you NOT paying it?”

Jean related it to Mr. Kim and he nodded and said something back like he was discussing insurance.

“Mr. Kim says, he has talked to Mr. Cho and he cannot pay you for days you didn’t work,” said Jean. Well they didn’t have a lot of devious American business techniques but they were trying their hand at “shift the blame.” Unfortunately they missed the section on subtlety and weren’t very good at it.

“So,” I insisted incredulously, “Mr. Cho made this decision? Mr. Cho makes these decisions in Mr. Kim’s school? So Mr. Cho is the boss?”

Jean made a small face and then passed it on emotionlessly. Frankly I’m not sure how much was getting to him through her. You could see, she’d long ago realized she’d picked the wrong horse in Mr. Kim but felt powerless to do anything else in her life. Either he understood me or, for once, she translated the jist because Mr. Kim got a little huffy.

“He says he will not pay you for days you didn’t work,” droned Jean.

“You’re saying you won’t pay me for days I didn’t work. Except I WOULD have worked them if you hadn’t fired me,” I said.

Mr. Kim got a little more animated and Jean passed it on. What came back was surprising even in the face of what happened before.

“Mr. Kim says you could not continue teaching because you were a bad teacher and hurting the kids. You have been buying too much candy, playing too many games and giving away too many prizes and free meals. Your students are not learning. You were a danger to them,” said Jean, finishing up.

I’ll be honest; my plan up till Jean said that was simply vandalism. I had planned to go in, ask for my money and, if I didn’t get it, to smash a few windows on the way out. It wasn’t a well-crafted plan but, from personal experience, it was a reliable one.

But once Jean translated that, translated what that over-stuffed simpleton said about my kids, like it or not, I was taking the high road.

First some facts: my dismissible activities were things that ALL the other teachers do regularly. They are not banned in any school policy – written or unwritten. Hell, everyone buys food and candy and plays games with their kids. It’s a given. If you want to keep your kids from killing you, you bribe them with stuff to make it to the end of the week.

Now my kids did get a little more pizza than most. It was because I was leaving soon and I wanted to do something nice for them. As for the games, my classes only played Candyland once a week on their last period of the week. That was strict compared to some of the teachers. And the prizes…well Peter Rabbit would still be mumbling in Korean and trying to kill each other with spoons if it wasn’t for those prizes.

I had paid to make my kids happier and better and the school had a ton of happy parents as the benefit of my expenses. Not ONCE had anyone said anything to me about this IF it was a problem. Now they were telling me that’s why I was getting fired. These weren’t real problems. This was after the fact justification. Mr. Kim was as dumb as a dead tooth but he did make that much clear.

If he had left it at that, there would probably be a number of window repairmen still on duty in Seoul. But there was something else. This idiot was now telling me that my students weren’t learning. That was something else.

Something else entirely.

My children had learned. That diminished the very real accomplishments of children who’ve tried their best for me for half a year. Children, in many cases, with no English skills when they started. Children I loved. Children who he had no goddamn right to talk like that about, even if he did fire me.

If I were a cartoon character this’d be the part where you see the little fireballs behind my eyes. That was also the part where Mr. Kim waved his hand at me. He didn’t bother with the translation.

“This meeting over,” said Mr. Kim.

“No it is not over,” I enunciated clearly. “Because you’re wrong.”

Jean made a pained face. She was hopelessly inept in most things she did at work but running interference for this moron was one of the few things she did passably. She got a vague idea of how much this was about to tax her skills and tried to get me to stop. “Please Riley, he is telling you to go.”

“Tough,” I said closing the door behind me and stepping in, “he’s not my boss anymore and he can goddamn well listen to what I have to say.” Mr. Kim’s surprise was as plain as his stupidity.

“My kids aren’t learning?” I started. The rage was building in my toes and moving north. “Peter Rabbit’s phonics level is twice where we were supposed to be. Most of my kids can read. READ. A hunk of Paddington class can’t even do that and they’re above us in level.”

“You told us to stop text learning and sing more everyday. It was dumb but we did it. My classes won FIRST prize, TWICE in your stupid singing competitions. TWICE.”

“Those games you hate and the prizes you fired me for giving? They helped build my classes skills. They are the reason that Jon doesn’t hit, that Josh is good at Phonics and that James talks now. What I have done, on my own in class, is why Peter Rabbit is where they are today. My kids have fun and they learn well. It's as simple as that.”

Mr. Kim was not used to being yelled at by an employee. I don’t think he had ever even contemplated the possibility. He began to do this weird Korean relaxation thing where you rub your temples and face while making weird movements with the neck.

I got louder to make sure it got through.

“You told me this morning that my kids were too loud. Well they are 10 times quieter than they were when I arrived,” I yelled at him. “When I got here Peter Rabbit went through three teachers in two months. Nobody wanted to teach that damn class. Nobody. When I got here, YOUR son, Jake, used to scream for 2 hours a morning. Just scream. Now he’s good too. Because of the work we did.”

That got through. At the mention of his son his eyes sparked out of the meditation. That’s when I knew that my memo about Jake had been one reminder too many about something he was trying hard to ignore. He became enraged.

“Tell him, OUT!” he shouted. “Get him out!” Jean got up to physically move me out of the room. She was gonna have to be a hell of a pusher. I outweighed her by 50 pounds and I wasn’t through.

“Because of me, Jake is now the biggest helper in class, “ I stated, “I am more proud of my work here than anything else I have done in my freakin life. My parents are all happy, my lessons worked and my kids have all learned, even your son!”

I leaned in. Jean was yanking on my shoulders now.

“You want to say I’m a bad teacher? Go nuts. You can take away my money too. Fine. But don’t you DARE tell me that my kids haven’t learned. They’ve worked too damn hard! Don’t you DARE! Don’t you goddamn DARE!”

Jean physically pushed me out of the room with her full body as Mr. Kim got up. I think he wanted to take a swing at me. At that point I didn’t care if he was six foot tall and knew Tai Kwon Do. That bastard demeaned my kids and I’d least make sure I took his scrotum out to the ambulance with me. But Jean pushed with the power of full denial, trying to stave off the confrontation of five minutes ago, and I went out the door. It was okay. I’d called him on his idiocy, I’d refused to nod and walk backwards like one of his regular employees and I had said what I’d had to say.

For possibly the first time in his life, that fucker had to listen to it.

I went out and signed the short pay voucher with a little protest written on the side. I took my money envelopes, one much lighter than it should be. I said goodbye to Mr. Cho and Trisha the receptionist and soon the final bell rang. I said my final goodbyes to what few teachers were left.

They walked out of the building with the last of our afternoon class children and the Wonderland school was pretty quiet. I looked up at the giant windows to the play area and looked at a sturdy bench next to it. It wasn’t bolted to the floor. I looked at it for a minute.

Taking the high road wasn’t easy.

I settled on a non-vandalizing substitute. I marched to the back office and again went into the room where Mr. Kim and Jean were sitting. They were in the same positions as before, in the meeting I’d already once interrupted. Jean’s eyes popped as the door swung open. I didn’t look angry. I think that worried her more.

It should have.

“I just wanted to say goodbye and say thank you Jean,” I said in best cheerful voice I could fake. “You were my supervisor and you didn’t always come through but I knew you always tried your best. I wanted to thank you for that Jean.” It was even mostly true.

Jean nodded, gratified for some recognition in her life and happy that I hadn’t come in to spit on anyone. “You’re welcome,” said Jean.

I turned to Mr. Kim. He looked up with, if you can believe it, a positive and hopeful anticipation. I think he assumed I was going to say, like I had to Jean, something equally touching to him. I think he almost smiled.

“And, Mr. Kim…adios shipalyun.” In Korean, shipalyun means, as I said before, a kind of whore. It is one of the strongest curses you can use in Korea and it is only applied to women. I wasn’t sure till that moment if it would be equally insulting to men.

From the expression hanging off his gob I think it was.

I saluted him smartly as I said it, winked and walked out of Wonderland forever. It wasn’t the glass-crashing goodbye I’d hoped for but, after Nami had warned me about the severity of the Korean penal system, I figured that was just as well. I’d defended my kids, called Mr. Kim the precise curse for what he was and gotten the last word in on one of the worst endings in my life. As I walked down the street to the train at least that felt satisfying.

I got to enjoy it for about 18 minutes.

I had gotten to the subway platform to head home, I looked around at the large crowds and I had a thought.

“I wonder,” I thought, “how long the trip to my apartment in Oujongbu is gonna take during rush-hour…my apartment that I’m not supposed to leave for another three days…my apartment that Mr. Kim paid for… my apartment with all my unpacked stuff in it…my apartment that the guy I just called a whore had keys to…”

The slow subway train lumbered in and interrupted my thought. I crowded on, shoved by pointy elbowed old Korean women. I looked at the crawling-paced subway train and it completed my thought

“…And,” I finished in my head, “the whore has a fast Korean car.”

On that inkling, the train, for no reason, slowed and stopped. To my left, A sleeping Korean businessman in one of the seats slumped forward, teetering on the edge of falling to the floor. As a cue, my head went into its natural default state: disaster math. I had another thought.

“So,” I thought feverishly, “I wonder how long it takes to pack a dozen sharkskin suits and throw them out the window with the door barricaded by a cheap kitchen set.”

Then I tried to remember whether I’d sold most of the kitchen set yet or not. I stamped my foot in frustration and the dreamland suit guy pitched forward, clearly heading to the floor and a chipped incisor.

Then some unnatural momentum and reflex kicked in and the man pitched back into his seat, still completely unawake. It was odd enough that even the sharp-armed elderly ladies took notice. He’d almost been in something very bad, had almost fallen, twice, and he had never known. The suit guy snored lightly and slumbered soundly. I stared the lucky idiot down with total envy as the train began rumbling again towards my soon to be hastily evacuated home.

“You know,” I thought, “I would kill for a ratio like that.”

2001-09-03T01:57:00.000-04:00

Hi all-

I know. I'm numb. Frankly I'm not sure what to say. Maybe I don't always see it that way, but in my heart I always know I'm a New Yorker. No matter where I go or how long I stay in another place, that city's home to me. And the people who make up the home of my city - some friendly, most gruff - who ones who live there and define it...they're the people who live with me. And something bad happened to my home and the people who live with me.

Separated by huge distances it is painful. Were I closer it would probably have progressed to shock.

In any case, aside from sharing feelings about this, I wanted to let everyone know I'll be headed home in two weeks. I was supposed to take a gig as a teacher at another school for three months - which is as long as I wanted to extend - but it fell through when the guy who recommended me was asked to move on by his bosses.

I don't know what my timetable is for getting back yet, what with the airports the way they are, but early October is the plan...if I can force myself to get on a 15 hour flight anytime soon.

That's pretty much it, but following is my latest Korea story. I finished it the night (day for you folks) of the attack and came home from the computer room to discover the news. I almost went back in and deleted it on principle. It just felt too trite, too small, too insignificant.

But one of you rightfully pointed out to me via e-mail that this has been a very bad week. At some point someone might need something funny to cheer up. If you do, save it for then. If you don't, just stop reading now, delete it and I'll tell you the story in person not too long from now.

Thanks and stay safe,

RR-

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Story: "I'll take poor idiot teachers for $200 Alex."
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You know I was supposed to be a multi-millionaire by now.

Given that it's 1300 Korean Won to the US dollar you'd think I'd be, at least in Won, the Korean equivalent of a Powerball winner. That WAS the plan anyway. Ah the plan. I remember the plan.

Come to Korea. Teach children. Save thousands of US dollars (AKA millions of Korean Won). Try not to die of heartburn from spicy Kimchee. Go home. Take over the world by writing simple and crude TV shows that are uncommonly mesmerizing. Buy beef jerky plant. Create expensive new product: Buttered Lobster Jerky

That WAS the plan.

Let me just say this...it started well. It began with a stoic looking Korean guy looking up at me from his portrait on this funny colored money. I saw him not too long after I got here. We met when I changed my money over and I got one hundred and thirty four thousand Won in my hands. Repeating, that's $134,000 Won.

Elated doesn't cover it.

I got that money and I was like the screaming fat woman on "The Price is Right" who wins Showcase Showdown then almost kills Bob Barker when she jumps on him. Don't get me wrong. I'm no Pythagoras in the math department but I knew enough to figure out the exchange rate. Sort of.

Okay so I used a currency web site. That takes some brains too.

Anyway what it told me is that I USED to have a hundred US bucks. But that was "poor American" Riley Ray. Now I was "expatriate man of luxury" Riley Ray. That US money translated into over 100,000 Korean Won. One hundred thousand. And it was all mine. MIIIIIIIIIIINE!

Till I got hungry.

I remember, that weekend, walking into a grocery store to get food. It was my first exposure to such places. The joint stocked Korean whipped cream sandwiches, local kimchee served from buckets and something that was either good clams or bad peaches. I decided to go with the only food I recognized: BBQ flavored Sun Chips.

Till I saw the price.

Two bags of Sun Chips cost 1100 Won. I looked at my purple Korean 1000 Won bills. I looked at the chips. Rage began to build up. This was unquestionably price gouging. I put back the chips. I would eat lint until school on Monday if necessary but they were not getting any of my 1000 won bills.

That righteous anger lasted all of 6 hours.

Soon I was back at the store buying four bags. As I think most of you know, I'm a weak, weak man. Once that initial hesitation broke I was done for. After I got past the "losing thousands of Korean dollars" hesitation, I tried again to do the currency math in my head. This time I succeeded.

And it was an epiphany.

I realized that EVERYTHING in this country was cheap. I could get a big meal for 2000 won. Sounds like a lot? It's like a buck fifty in the US. Sometimes said meals are even edible. A moot point really. At Korean prices, I could chuck the first meal and try again for less than the cost of a shoeshine.

Rationalizations came fast and furious.

"You're being paid a reasonable salary by Korean standards," I told myself. "Some would even say very reasonable." I was convincing. It's interesting. I'm both a persuasive speaker and, coincidentally, my own best audience. Go figure. I went on.

"Just open up the purse strings a little past the current Scrooge McDuck level and enjoy yourself a little. Seriously dude, what's a few bucks?"

And with that the plan was dead.

Why? For those who know what my credit report looks like, you know darn well why. For those who don't know, let me just say that if there is a Mr. Visa anywhere in this world, for what I've done to him, he wants to kick my ass repeatedly.

And with vigor.

Once I relaxed my fiscal prudence, it was all downhill from there. Now this is not to say that I started going to a bookie or invested in Internet stocks. I was really very responsible. I spent a few bucks decorating my place, some money on basic household necessities and I dropped a few measly shekels on gifts for all of you...no offense.

Total? Not a hell of a lot.

So what did I spend it on? It's pretty simple now that I think about it. My total exorbitance really falls into three categories.

1. Nami
2. The Korean Textile Industry
3. I'm a bad teacher

We'll start with that first one, the lowest total outlay. That's Nami. And that would be my girlfriend. For those who think I regret even a 10-won piece (Korean penny) I've spent with her, well, I suggest you go back and look at that picture I sent again. Seriously. Go get it.

Now look at the two of us.

There are two folks in the photo. On the left, see that goofy guy in the green shirt? That's me. On the right, look at the gorgeous woman who's not offended by the goofy guy in the green shirt. That's Nami. Smiling. Because she thinks I'm cute. Now look back and forth between the two of us a couple of times.

Yeah I think that's pretty much the case for extravagance right there.

And, as I said, of the three things I listed, Nami is at the bottom in terms of expenditures. Really. That woman tries to put the kibosh on every dollar I spend on her. Whether I spring for a meal out, a trip in Korea or a small gift for her she always gets me the same thing.

15 pounds of extra strength guilt.

Now matter what I get her or how much, she makes me feel like I just traded a cow for a handful of less than magic beans. I think some of it may be cultural. She doesn't agree. She says she's just frugal. I say she pinches a penny so hard, Lincoln gets a headache. Yes I say that.

Just not out loud.

Still, Nami's thrift aside, she always ends her "don't spend money" lectures with the same closing. It goes like this: she tells me she knows how I feel, that she loves me and says I don't need to spend a cent on her. I nod and apologize and promise not to do it again. Then she kisses me.

You couldn't ask for a more counter-productive close to a reprimand.

See the thing is, once Nami locks lips with me, I forget whatever it is she's said. Or what I said. Sometimes I even forget if I'm wearing shoes. I just start mentally buying her the left half of the Hyundai department store.

They're like Macy's here. Crappy cars and women's wear in one location

Luckily for me, instinct and location keep me from getting too carried away. The Hyundai store is over an hour away by subway and. as you may know, my urges are usually not well thought out. Normally, once the exuberance subsides, I just buy her a shirt, a CD or some funky piece of silver jewelry. Then I sit back and wait for the reprimand.

Smiling.

For the record, this is the least complicated relationship I've ever had.

But, as I stated earlier, Nami is the least expensive - and most worthwhile - of my three loss leaders. Let's move on to number two on the Riley wallet hitlist: the Korean Textile Industry.

This one involves a lot less explaining but almost as much passion.

It was a warm early summer day when I was walking towards Kim's Gift Shop near my house to buy more sheets. It was either buy more or try to do laundry. This was before Nami explained it. All I knew at that point was that it kept trying to escape from the bathroom on its spin cycles. Kim's price for satin sheets? 23 bucks a set.

The washer stayed put and off I went.

I'd been to Kim's once or twice but never stopped to check any of the adjoining shops. Today I did. There was a hardware store that also sold beach balls, a restaurant for hot wings and, as I noticed for the first time, three similar stores within 20 feet of each other. Tailors.

"Curious," I thought. "I should look into this."

All three were offering custom made suits. I went window to window comparing. The one on the left seemed to offer quality Versace knockoffs. Interesting. The one on the right, featured eggplant suits with Chinese collars. Promising.

Then I checked out the shop in the middle.

It's hard to believe I didn't see it sooner. There, in the front window, a gray sharkskin suit. Sharkskin, for those who don't know, is NOT made from the vicious water demons of the deep. It is the uber-shiny fabric appreciated by mobsters and 60's lounge singers alike. Maybe it's my Italian heritage but I love the stuff. The only problem? It's usually ridiculously hard to find.

But there it was.

Two button, single pleat, mother of pearl buttons and right in front of me. Stolen straight from The Rat Pack's closet. And made to ORDER. It hung there in the window center, sparkling, in all its iridescent glory.

I didn't notice my nose was pressing the glass for close to 10 seconds.

I count it a huge point in my favor that I didn't go right in. I sent in a fellow teacher to all three shops. She would scope prices; I'd make an informed choice. She came back: 200 bucks US from the Versace guy on the left, $150 American from the Chinese collar guy on the right.

"What about the guy in the middle?" I asked.

"He says he'll cut you a deal," she explained. "100."

"100 bucks US? That's a pretty good deal," I considered.

"No, 100,000 Won."

I am a short man with too wide shoulders, stubby appendages, little money and an eclectic taste in clothes. I have never had a suit in my life that both fit right and that I liked. This tailor's price was 100,000 won. That's $77.36 as of today's exchange rate. It was even better three months ago. Under 80 bucks for a sharkskin suit that fit.

I promised myself I would stop at two.

When I went into the store to pick up the first one I wasn't too sure what to expect. I'd gone in a week earlier and they'd been as friendly as Mormons. The tailors had done a competent fitting and taken down all my details but they hadn't had the fabric in the color I wanted for some reason. Okay that's not quite true. I knew the reason.

I'd asked for red. Very shiny red.

Look, it was my $77.36 and, what can I tell you? I always wanted a red sharkskin. It's appropriate for cocktail parties, karaoke and anything from bar mitzvahs to funerals...in Nevada. But, still, with no red sharkskin available I went with something comparable: satin.

If I couldn't look like Frank Sinatra I'd settle for Frankie the pimp.

When I arrived the entire staff of the suit shop was there, smiling. Clerks who hadn't been there a week ago turned out just to see who'd ordered the Devil's formal wear. I nodded at them all and asked for my suit. The head tailor whipped it out with a flourish from behind a rack.

I'm guessing he did that bit for greater effect. It worked. I was hypnotized by streetlights glinting off the shimmering fabric.

Then they put it on me.

Instead of tightness at my arm tops, the shoulders were just big enough. The sleeves stopped at the beginning of my thumb instead of the usual knuckle of my middle finger. And unlike every other "long suit made short" I've ever worn...the bottom of the jacket ended squarely in the middle of my butt. The tailor opened my jacket and showed me my inside breast pocket. It read: "Hand tailored for Riley Chiorando."

I was going to be buried in this suit.

It wasn't perfect but it was close. For one thing, it was satin instead of sharkskin. For another, he'd gotten the lapels a little wide and high. And, as long as we were being picky, I would rather have had "Riley Ray" in my inside pocket. Still, all totaled, this was the greatest suit I'd ever had and it was mine for $77.36 American.

The tailor interrupted my suit admiration. Something was in his hand.

"Mr. Riley," said the head tailor haltingly, "I know you're finished on red suit but, and I very sorry about this, but my wife found this at fabric market this morning." He pulled out a swatch of deep crimson sharkskin. It was exactly what I'd been looking for...a week too late. I paused. Could any man in this world, outside of a game show host, ever find a need for two red suits in his lifetime?

Screw it. At $77.36 a pop I'd find a need.

"Okay," I said taking a piece of paper and sketching, "on THIS red suit I want 1 and 1/2 inch lapels, the top button an inch over the belly button and SINGLE pleat pants this time." I went on, this time detailing the suit like a world-class haberdasher. If this was going to be my last sharkskin suit it was going to be world class.

That was a few months ago. It was not my last sharkskin suit.

In addition to the two red warriors, as of last week's count, I have sharkskin suits in black, navy blue, mocha and lemon yellow. Yes, lemon yellow. I saw the cover of that old Elvis albus and for ten seconds it seemed like a good idea.

Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there.

In addition to the iridescent collection, I have gabardine suits in olive, black, royal blue and cocoa. Then, last month, I got a custom made black leather blazer that's a double of the one DeNiro wore in "Midnight Run."

Yes, clearly I had a problem.

So it was time to end the tailor relationship. I went in to get the last of the suit collection I'd ordered. The plan was I would go in to thank my good man for a job well done. I'd shake his hand, smile and say goodbye to my tailor forever.

Unfortunately, as I walked in to do those things, he had the gabardine fabric book open by the door.

As a result, I did not make a break. I did not say goodbye. I did I end up ordering a three button narrow collar suit in mustard yellow. This was harder than I realized. So when I went back to pick up my new suit I determined to TRULY break off the relationship forever. I left my wallet at home.

He extended me a credit line.

I now have on order a two-button job in charcoal gray. I couldn't help it. When I tried to leave they offered to throw in a tie. For the record, yes I realize I have a problem. The next time I go in to pick up my LAST suit I'm bringing Nami to slap me around when I go for my wallet. Degrading sure, but it's either that or let my guy talk me into a custom-made "Blade Runner" trench coat for 100 bucks. As I said, I'm a weak man.

But a WELL-ATTIRED weak man.

Still, moneywise, we're talking about a well-tailored drop in the bucket compared to the largest of my three pocket-bleeders. This brings us to the number one cash killer on Riley's Korean rundown:

I'm probably a pretty bad teacher.

Now before you all jump down my throat for being too hard on myself let me clarify. There are those teachers who, through conventional methods, can get through to both the open and difficult students. There are those educators who can convey information and lessons in a fun way. There are even a few teachers out there who can inspire their students.

That was sooooo not me.

If a truly great teacher was like a world-class chef serving food for the mind I discovered I was the fry cook at Hardees. The guy who got canned for sticking his bologna sandwiches in the fryolator. So I quickly fell back on those skills I knew best.

Yelling, bribery and Candyland.

I only knew two things coming in.

A) These kids had scared off two western teachers and one Korean teacher in a span of five months.
B) The kid furthest behind was the owner's son.

I put on a brave face and tried to take the high road. It did not work. Why? Well it helps if you know what I started with when I got to Wonderland. i've talked about them often so you may know them. Still, they bear a recap. Here's what they handed me for kindygarteners:

-A mama's boy crier (Mark)
-A quiet sleeper (James)
-A quick-tempered bully (Josh)
-A princess who encouraged rivalry fights for her (Sherry)
-A kid who should have been left back (Jake)
-A kid who should have been skipped forward (Joan)
-A sociopath loner who knew Tai Kwon Do (Jon)

I remember that first week I tried to treat them as little humans, as individuals. Every problem with every kid, no matter what, I tried to get through to them. I tried to show compassion. I think I may have even hugged one.

And that's how I got my first Korean cold.

By week's end I knew that I was in over my head. At this rate I'd have gray hair by next Wednesday. So when, on my first Friday there, Jean, my supervisor, came by to ask me how I was doing...I told her. Explicitly.

Josh had anger management issues, Mark was more emotional than an Oprah audience, Joan was a genius who should be in a higher class, James had either narcolepsy or a mild learning disability and Jon was going to grow up with a Travis Bickle complex. I didn't know who was going to be Korea's president in 20 years but someone needed to give him a picture of Jon to look out for.

Worst of all, Jake.

Jake, the owner's son, was crying in class because he couldn't keep up. His pronunciation was between the adults on "Charlie Brown" and Mushmouth on "Fat Albert." That was when he was speaking Korean. With English he sounded like a dolphin with food in his mouth. Jake either needed a lot of special tutoring or a more basic class. Pronto.

Jean replied "Yeah. Okay. Good. You teach them now."

And she walked off.

That's when I figured out management wasn't big on noticing problems with kids. If one of them had an axe sticking out of his head I think my bosses would see it as a bactine or neosporin issue.

I took it more personally. With Jon, I put his "axe wielding" potential at one in four. With Mark, I put his "victim of axe wielding" potential at one in two. So, left to my own devices, I did what I knew how to do.

I turned it into the Korean Kindergarten Gameshow.

Some of you don't know this but I am a man who has now lost on, to date, four gameshows in his life. No I won't elaborate. But while I continue to claim that I was "totally robbed" each of the four times and that all gameshows "lick the sweat off a donkey" I like to think they've taught me something.

I mean other than living through a total loss of dignity.

What I learned is that no man, aside from Pat Sajak, was better acquainted with the gameshow's glitzy carrot and stick principles. Principles I just might be able to use to my advantage in class.

The key word is MIGHT.

It all boiled down to one seminal question: was a gameshow setup a legitimate teaching tool? Sadly, the more I considered it, the more I knew: no it was not. No, my kids deserved better. After some thought I reluctantly decided against it. I went in with new resolve.

Then Jon punched me in the kneecap. For someone three feet tall he hits really, really hard. I changed my mind. Gameshow was better than gimpy.

So I went for it.

The learning success of my kids was going to be based on how well they did in lightning round. I spent two days in planning. Once I did the math, I decided the application of the gameshow principle to class should be fairly simple. Too weird and the kids would get confused and develop a lifelong fear of "Jeopardy."

Besides, the more I thought about it, the more I realized any "Survivor"-like tweaks and Mark would get voted right out of the playroom.

I called it the "Star System." I put all of their names on the board. They got a star when they pushed in their chairs, remembered to put crayons back or gave a good answer to a question. Notice I didn't say "right" answer. Part of my goal structure was to get James to stop saying "elephant" everytime he woke up.

I mean it's only funny the first 10 times.

Now the flipside: losing stars. Lest you think I'm cruel, no one lost any stars for giving the wrong answer, only if they gave the SAME wrong answer someone just used. Additionally, the kids also lost stars for the following: picking their noses, hitting, talking in Korean, calling out, threatening, stealing, spilling, teasing, cursing at each other in Korean, tattling, touching, talking, crying, asking for food they couldn't eat, cursing ME in Korean, sleeping, putting their feet on the desk or, in the case of Mark, putting their nose on the water fountain spigot.

In fairness, I probably should have explained, "wash your face."

The class turnaround was immediate. General behavior became better, the class became quieter and the number of instances of class then stopping for crying went way down. All I needed to do to quell a class riot was to yell "lose stars?" really loudly. I once I did, they all settled down like puppies under a bucket of cold water, which was good.

Because if the stars hadn't worked the bucket was next.

It was like I'd had a magic wand and Cinderella was no longer a wolverine. At least that's what the parents said at the second parent-teacher conference...loosely translated of course. Mainly they said their kids were better behaved at home, they were more positive and I was most surely a saint. That and stuff like "would I please stay with their -insert kid's name- for another year? He loves you with all his heart." The first two times a mom said it the translator, Ellie, related the comment, every nuance, with tears in her own eyes.

By the sixth time she just rolled her eyes and mumbled "the mom's saying that thing about you staying and love and stuff."

I don't think it shortchanges my skills any to say it was the stars that really turned it around. In addition to all the moms noticing, all the supervisors were relieved and the other teachers with their fancy 'education' degrees were downright amazed.

I actually remember thinking, "Yeah. Education degree. That's helpful."

I started to consider myself an educational pioneer. I was right up there with the guys who invented show & tell, raising your hands and sweet flavored paste. Clearly I was a genius...right up till Josh asked, two weeks into the star system, that immortal question.

"Teacher," Josh said puzzled, "#1 stars...what?"

That's when I said, almost without thinking, "#1 stars? Um...prize."

The class went all goggle-eyed and started a mumble of "oh yeahs" as well as some Korean interjections (which they lost stars for). The ramifications just flat out didn't occur to me. Turns out I might still be a genius.

Only now I was now going to be a financially strapped genius.

It's kind of amazing the way the whole thing snowballed. I mean I knew you couldn't do a gameshow without prizes, I just hadn't considered that particular of the plan till Josh asked. So, after, each week on Friday, I would make a big show of presenting the #1 stars prize, usually some knockoff Digimon toy.

Mostly, it worked great.

For four and half days the Peter Rabbit class was well behaved. Then on Friday one student would enjoy the fruits of his good work and celebrate. For the rest? Huge amounts of crying. After a month of Friday meltdowns I introduced a second place prize.

The result was that now the #3 kid was asking why HE didn't get anything.

I decided to switch some stuff around. I changed the prize structure, the awards day, even the format. I now had a new respect for the gameshow guys at King World productions that keep "Wheel of Fortune" fresh. As I said, the program was mostly working. And yet...changes. Why?

Joan: Peter Rabbit's resident Einstein and gameshow problem #1.

Till I took over Peter Rabbit, the many-toothed little know-it-all Joan didn't participate. The problem was she was usually too bored out of her mind by the class level or too embarrassed by knowing the answer when everyone else didn't.

After star system?

Joan started participating. With a vengeance. From a kid's point of view it's pretty simple: In regular school, being a nerd stinks. In gameshow school? The hell with embarrassment, there are prizes at stake so stick your damn hand up.

For the rest of the class it was simple too. I had woken the genius giant. Once she joined in it was like I'd given them a gameshow more rigged than a Don King title fight. Once she got going, Joan won the star system four weeks in a row. She would have gone five for five but I started invented infractions for her to keep it fair. I actually deducted for "not enough feeling when you sing."

Yes, I swindled a 6 year old from her true award. I'm not proud of it.

But because of this little Edison I was hip deep in format tweaking. First I tried a team concept. For a few weeks the lesser students were paired with stronger ones. That plan fell apart when new teams were divvied up. Once the opposing team realized it wasn't getting Joan it just surrendered outright.

I tried to counter the defeatism. I began making small awards to the rest of the class and tagging random attributes to them.

"Jon, best penmanship. Sherry, best art. Mark...good energy."

It was pretty pathetic. The class picked up on it. So I tried something new. And then something else. The new format changes came weekly - special prize rounds, Friday eliminations, mystery prize.

At one point I stole the spinner wheel from Chutes & Ladders and introduced a star roulette round. I yanked it once it morphed into straight roulette with jelly beans instead of money. Gameshow with children? Debatable. Casino with children? Very bad.

Especially after you get caught the first two times.

Still, the constant in all changes was that every single one cost me money - a pretty big hunk of it. Finally the whole thing escalated to a battle royale on "New Team Mondays" for Joan. That's when I realized tweaking wasn't going to fix this problem. So I went to the administration.

I should've done a shot of tequila first.

I tried to convince the clueless school managers that Joan needed our more advanced class. I showed them her work, let them look at the 9-letter word that she spelled ("excellent") and told them I'd already cleared a spot with the advanced class teacher. Turns out one of the advanced kids was leaving so it was all just as simple as tomato soup and grilled cheese. They hesitated.

I made my points again. Only now I was a little worked up.

I was a child prodigy myself. I know what it's like to wait around for others to catch up. It sucks. Big time. Knowing what Joan's frustration was I like I wanted her out of it. Joan needed to work at her level and we needed to help her do it. That's what a school does dammit.

Plus, I would add, on a class level she was totally throwing off the gameshow.

Management did not see things as simply as I did. The principal and administrators made some vague comments about Joan's transitioning, how the school owner didn't want to move around the kindergarteners, about parents' concerns on overcrowding in the advanced "rainbow fish" class. The whole thing kind of confused me. I asked them to tell me what they were getting at.

Jean replied "Yeah. Okay. Good. You teach her now."

And she walked off. Again.

How that woman escaped a job in customer service is beyond me.

When I realized I wasn't going to be able to help Joan I had a little talk with her and, eventually, her parents. It was tough. Her mom said she was touched by my concern for Joan and loved that I wrote such long evaluations of her daughter. She said she knew I was doing my best and that was the most important thing to her. She said Joan knew it too and loved my class even if it was too slow. After Ellie the translator got that across I had to pause.

So, okay I got misty. Sue me. I'm not a freakin robot you know.

I told Joan's mom that I'd keep working with her daughter on the side, I'd try to keep her motivated and I'd keep on the administration to let Joan get the open slot in "Rainbow Fish" class. She deserved it and if it was the last thing I did at Wonderland I'd get her in there. Ellie translated it for me word for word.

Joan's mom got kind of a puzzled look on her face at that point.

She said something to Ellie the translator and Ellie screwed her face up. She had none of Jean's editing abilities and just figured out she may have said something she shouldn't have. She hesitated. Then Ellie said it anyway.

Ellie sputtered, "Joan's mom wants to know, 'what open slot?' because Jean told her there wasn't one."

I smiled. Then I told her about the conversation I'd had with the teacher Krista and everything Jean told me. Joan's mom, normally stone faced, showed just a little bit of grimness.

This was going to be a bad day to be Jean.

By the next week Jean was asking me to slowly transition Joan into "Rainbow Fish" and help her adjust and get up to speed. As I suspected Joan aced her first test in the new class. She moved into the new class where she is happy, successful and still below her level. She still remembers to make faces in the door window when she passes by. Peter Rabbit class is courteous enough to return the gesture.

Though I wish they'd keep their fingers out of their noses when they do it.

With Joan gone, the gameshow settled down and even got collaborative. Now the setup is when everyone in the class gets ten stars, EVERYONE gets a prize. Yes, everyone. In theory, should everyone get ten stars Monday thru Friday, I could have to shell out for gifts everyday.

Thank god they've been hellions this month.

And that's it. I'm a bad teacher and it's costing me an arm and a leg. Unquestionably, my kids and the star system I made to control them are the thing that has cost me the most money in Korea. Well that and ice cream Thursdays, props for special projects and pizza on those days the lunchroom serves us swill. All totalled, I'm taking a dagger to the wallet. The best definition I have for it is quality education at a very steep price. Still, you want to know what that price has gotten me?

Results.

And that's why I'm okay with the both the bad teacher label and the cost. I realize, paying cash money for improvements on my own class is not usually the mark of a good teacher. But, and this brings a tear to my Italian heritage to say this, bribery DID work here as a useful educational tool.

I'll even tell you how.

Let's start with speech. For one thing, five months ago you couldn't understand a word my kids said. Okay I take that back. I couldn't understand a word they said. With my guys it was alternately insults in another language and silence.

But that was before the insidious influence of "grab the brass ring" capitalism.

Now these kids all try to speak, every 3 seconds, largely so they can earn stars. Some serious debate skills were even created during the great gameshow format changes of June.

The administrators now complain that my kids won't shut up. They say whatever's in their heads, even if what's in their heads is "Principal is old" or "Mark is fat" or "Teacher is hairy like monkey."

Yes Josh got a star for that. Again, progress at a price.

Then there's our class phonics level. We're so far above our level for kindergarten we may need to get new books. Phonics was the one thing I knew how to teach.

No I don't know why. Maybe I watched too many "Hooked on Phonics" ads.

Anyway because I taught it well, it was the easiest way to earn stars. As a result, right now everybody but Jake can halfway read stuff on the board. Some can even read really difficult three syllable words.

FYI, at least two of them can read "boobie." So don't write that.

Then there's our energy. You can't earn stars by being lazy, ergo my kids bounce with Ritalin-like resiliency. In practice that translates into the fact that we, in the Peter Rabbit class, are feared for our class participation.

We do extra class projects, we answer with feeling and no one wants to be in the playroom with us. Most important, we now have a 2-0 undefeated record in school wide singing/chant competitions. Last time we even got medals. Though by "we" I should say I mean not "me."

Like giving the teacher a medal would've broken the school. Dammit.

Some of the other teachers attribute our success less to energy and determination than to their kids singing "Row your boat" while we're screaming "I Feel Good" by James Brown and bouncing to "Iko Iko" by the Dixie Cups. I say those teachers can go suck eggs. If they really wanted the medals they could have worn matching T-shirts and tried for synchronized dance moves too.

Though doing it to "Brown bear, Brown bear" would've been tough.

So that's the progress we made as a class. The wacky thing is that it pales to the changes we've made individually. On a one-to-one level my kids are, aside from the continued tendency to avoid hand washing, practically new children.

Really.

-Sherry no longer fosters gladiator bouts for her hand and is now the world's greatest helper. If it weren't for Sherry, it's doubtful Mark could have made it through an art period with all his pinkies. Especially during a project where we used scissors.

-Mark no longer cries, sniffles or wails. He's even invited over to the other kids' houses to play. Four words: Mark now has respect. This is due to his playing better with others because of Star System. Well that and it turns out he can decapitate a kid with his throw in dodgeball. That'll earn respect in a hurry.

-Josh curbed his bullying and realized he could actually make a few points by being good at phonics. He's now the class genius. His mother was surprised. I was surprised. When Josh read the word 'vacuum' today HE seemed surprised. Plus, ironically, it turns out the bully has a lovely singing voice.

-James woke up. He even realized, albeit groggily, that he usually knew the right answer in class. By speaking up he could even get a star for knowing it. After that first star system prize he started to be more assertive. Now he's defiant. And funny. Though that the humor in hanging noodles from his glasses thing is debatable.

-Jake continues to come up short academically. But when he realized he was never going to know many answers he found his own way. By cleaning up, pushing in chairs and shutting up when everyone else was talking he figured out how to sneak a second place finish in a bad class week. As of this week he's got more #2 finishes than the Buffalo Bills.

-Jon, as of last week, has gone an entire three weeks without hitting anyone. At least in our class. For Jon it's his personal pacifist best. Turns out Jon was just having problems with Phonics and was always frustrated when he didn't know the answer. I told his mom to work with him. She did. Now he's just frustrated when he KNOWS the answer and I don't call on him.

Then there's Joan. Because of Star System she eventually ended up learning the right things, at the right level in the right class for her. Even if it wasn't mine. Kinda makes you all choked up thinking about gameshows doesn't it?

Okay maybe I'm reaching.

So, to sum up, I'm not as rich as I thought I'd be. In fact I'd say I'm less well off than I am well intentioned. And that's fine by me. I've got love, memories and enough reflective sharkskin to build one fashionable lighthouse.

Besides, I know that I'll leave a legacy with my kids that will make them more clever, more talkative and better equipped to make the $250,000 level on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Teachers come and go. Getting past the fast finger round is something they'll remember for the rest of their lives. And they will associate their gameshow success with me and remember class fondly. Though, now that I think about it, hopefully they'll forget the part about me applying standards randomly, whacking them on the head with markers and yelling like a drill sergeant.

Still, they end up in front of Regis, they're gonna need to know that anyway.

Take care and stay away from the consolation prizes,

Riley Ray

2001-07-29T08:11:00.000-04:00

Looking out the window here in Seoul, I've been thinking lately about what defines a season.

Now every locality has their own variation on the four seasons of spring, summer, winter, fall. Some places substitute mud season for spring. Others stick "hay fever time" in for summer. Basically, the metaphorical and cyclical sound of weather passing by your window is as individual to every area as the ugliness of local Avon lady representation. So while the tone of your local weather cycle might be the tune of Vivaldi, another wind and rain might be humming Frankie Vallie and the Four Seasons.

And this brings us all to the weather and the seasons in Korea. Having given it a great deal of thought lately, I can tell you it's very hard to say exactly what the tune of Korea's seasons sound like.

But you can bet only dogs and the clinically insane can hear it.

I arrived in Korea during the season of "Bitter Cold Mountain Wind." Calling it winter would imply other weather patterns...which there weren't. According to the other teachers, aside from one freak snow occurrence that closed every school in the city, Seoul had no real inclement weather. No snow, sleet or ice storms to speak of, just an unstoppable and constant punch of air that came across the peninsula and froze the way that microwaves heat: from the bones outward. My first taste of it brought to mind the last thing I thought while packing: "Screw the sweaters," I said to myself, "they're heavy."

This concludes the 'Riley is an Idiot' segment for the week. We now resume our regular 'Riley is Completely Unprepared' programming.

Luckily I got to Korea just as the wind was winding down. It didn't get warmer so much as the wind stopped blowing so hard. It lessened and lessened, like a senator just getting to the end of his diaphragm during a political speech. Then, one day, the wind stopped.

And in that moment it was warm again. Gloriously, sunnily, un-blowingly warm. I took this to be a sign that a new season had come and spring had arrived. Well I was half right. A new season had come.

But it wasn't spring.

Mosquito season came a week to the day after the wind stopped. There were small amounts of water everywhere. They had been, formerly, iced over. When the wind stopped, the ice broke, the water turned green and seven days later it began to pump out mosquitoes.

First it gushed baby whining mosquitoes. Then it gushed with medium-sized, wobbly-flying mosquitoes. Finally mosquitoes sprang out that were so big that if you hit them you stood a good chance of staining 1/4 of your wall with blood.

For the record, a little bleach gets it out.

By nightfall swarms of mosquitoes took the air like small clouds of doom. They would darken any outdoor 100 watt light bulb to 30 watts. The restaurants I liked by the rivers became animal blood donation stations.

My kids, as a group, started coming in with welts and bumps and goiters. They began to look so lumpy that I assumed all of their parents had just crushed a mass rebellion by beating them with switches. But it was just the mosquitoes - making my kids look like they had a bad case of the mumps and making me hate the buggies all the more.

For god's sake they got to Kramer. KRAMER. The dirty bastards.

Little known fact: I HATE mosquitoes. On the Riley repulsion scale, they rank just above visibly disgusting vermin like maggots and just below the junkies of the insect world, cockroaches. So why the vitriol?

Mosquitoes are bloodthirsty, they fly erratically and, in a bit of bug irony, they whine like over privileged WASP's. While I grant you, that's not much to hang a hatred on, luckily I have more. Plus, for once that extra something makes my obsessive hatred justified...unlike my loathing of corn and smooth jazz. So here's a fun fact: In Korea, mosquitoes carry the disease Vivax Malaria.

That's right. MA-LA-RI-A.

Avoiding itches, swelling and lumps? Child's play. I was trying to avoid blindness. The more I thought about that the more army surplus DEET I applied. If I hadn't managed to put my eye out during the great rubber band wars of eighth grade I was damned if I was going to give my sight to these bugs.

For the month of April and half of May I fought the bastards. In the city, where I teach, the poisonous Korean air kept them mostly at bay. The noxious fumes of everyday Seoul Smoking might make my lungs do pushups, but I had to give it credit: the mosquitoes couldn't even come near it.

But then I went back to my house.

Getting from my bus drop off to my front door became a swarming gauntlet run. The skeeters did their deadly best to find skin. I did my spastic best to run sideways and flail my arms like a dying monkey. My key was already in hand as I came in the building entrance and headed up to my front door. I prayed every timethat the load of hallway mosquitoes would be light.

The lord consistently did not hear me.

This was my mosquito war at home. Armies of insects trying to kill me with Malaria. Worse, they were abetted by local agents. Human agents. Treacherous, traitorous, bug-lovers.

My downstairs neighbors.

The folks directly under my apartment like a light breeze more than they dislike bugs. Consequently, they leave their front doors open, the main front entrance door open AND leave the downstairs hall light on. In less time than it takes to order take out kimchee, the downstairs hallway became one black wall by the light fixture. A black, swarming wall made up entirely of mosquitoes.

For the record, it's as scary as it sounds.

Inevitably, my neighbors came to their senses. Once the legions of bugs coming into their open door became too much to bear they took action. If you think said action is going to involve something as sensible as closing doors or turning off lights...well then you clearly haven't been reading my stories close enough. My neighbors wanted a breeze, they wanted light in the hall and they wanted the bugs elsewhere.

Thus the war began.

The downstairs enemies turned off THEIR hallway light, went UPSTAIRS, and turned on MINE. As a result, they continued to get THEIR light and breeze BUT all the skeeters took a walk one flight up. In short, the swarming black wall moved. By the time I came home this translated into, roughly, four billion mosquitoes stationed in the hall RIGHT outside my door.

And dying to get a piece of me.

While I hate skeeters more than tax time I can tell you that I hate mosquito sympathizers more. As far as I was concerned, that's what my downstairs neighbors were. They were giving aid and comfort to the buggy enemy. They were not only giving them a place to stay but, with the help of strategically placed hallway lights, they were telling them who to bite, bleed and give blindness to.

This was clearly another case of "kill the white guy."

While I was prepared to accept that sort of thing from amusement park operators I wasn't going to take it from any mosquito loving neighbors. I turned off my hall lights, ran downstairs and turned on theirs. 10 minutes later, smiling, I would begin to hear the bug-bitten cries of the angry Korean bug sympathizers below. Victory. For two minutes.

Then they would come upstairs and turn on my lights again.

We continued our ritual for close to two weeks with the fast shuffling of our feet on the stairs providing a rhythmic counterpoint to the whining in the ears that the skeeters made as we did our dance. Finally I got sick of it.

It was time to up the stakes.

I had become well acquainted with the small mom and pop stores around me that sold everything there was to sell. And I mean everything. From tuna to back scrubbers to toilet seats to, for some reason, crab sauce...they sold it. I was sure somewhere in the back they had something that killed bugs. I went in to my favorite store to get a bunch of it.

I went up to the chubby middle-aged Korean woman running the show and pantomimed a bug massacre. I waved my arms, gritted my teeth and made whining death sounds to ask for something that would bring total mosquito genocide.

The smiling Korean woman pulled out a flyswatter.

I drew down deep into my heretofore unknown mime skills and tried again. What followed was something that, to the untrained eye, looked like a homicidal epileptic in the midst of a killing spree confession. To the Korean shopkeeper woman...well it wasn't pretty. By the time I was done she had a look on her face that said "You are determined to kill. I am not sure what you are going to be killing. I think I'll give you something and get you out of my store." That's when she warily handed me what I was looking for.

And quickly to boot.

I looked it over. It had promise. It was a can of a bug spray, rusted on the seams, that had been sitting on the shelf long enough for the poisons eat at the metal inside. One look at this spray can told you this was the kind of insect poison they stopped selling in the USA in the 70's when the birth defects got too high. Even here in Korea, a land with the safety sense of a cartoon character, you had to physically portray a buggy holocaust to get your hands on a can.

This would do nicely.

I waited for nightfall and, by now, the familiar "doors and lights" ritual. I peered out my door's peephole to make sure. The skeeters had achieved full army strength and the neighbors had led them up to my second floor. By my rough and paranoid estimate there 59 billion of them out there. And they were gunning for me. I grinned. Well, if they wanted a fight they were going to have it.

Showtime.

I flung open the door and started a'killing. Holding my breath and holding the can high above my head, I filled the hall with yards of the noxious gas. I sprayed in every direction at once. I was trying to build a shield around my body so I could kill without the buggies getting close enough to blind me. I hit the corners, the walls and the ceiling trying in a frenzy, fully coating anything with more legs than me.

Luckily, there were no dogs about.

The spray worked. A lot. Having been a bug phobic most of my life and having done bug bashing via this method before, I've seen the usual way insects die. First they thrash, then they flail and, in the end they fall to their backs and kick anywhere between 6 and 200 legs in the air. The process usually takes anywhere between 10 and 20 seconds.

This took two.

As soon as the spray hit the skeeters they dropped like the Nasdaq. The black mosquito wall turned the yellow of the hallway paint in a moment. And the paint seemed to be thinning. This wasn't poison, it was a hammer. After no more than 10 seconds of determined death dealing, the floor was a mosquito carpet and the hallway was still. I smiled and made a satisfied snort. That snort, by the way, involved breathing.

In the hallway.

I woke up a woozy 20 minutes later on my kitchen table. I made a note to chuck the can of "Rusty Death" the next day in one of Seoul's many abandoned lots and replace it with a can of Korean "Raid." "Raid" here was twice as deadly as the US brand and, unlike "Rusty Death", it didn't seem as likely to make further bug-killing into a murder-suicide pact with me and the insects.

I groggily checked the hallway. The mist of death still hung outside my door, the main front door was still open and it was still lighted on my second floor. But, amazingly, the area was still skeeter-free. The poison proved a temporary barrier that, light or no light, the buggies couldn't pass. Shortly after making that realization I heard angry shouts from downstairs as both the bits of drifting poison mist AND the replacement swarms found their way through the darkness and open doors downstairs. By my my groggy approximation they had mere moments before apocalypse. Then I heard it.

A slam.

It was the slam of triumph. I'd fought, distraught and out-thought my bug-loving Korean neighbors. And I had won. Sure I'd spent way too much time on this. Yes, it was mostly born of phobia. And okay, my children were bound to have birth defects now but, clearly, I was the winner.

Thus ended the great mosquito war of 2001. The decisive factor? Chemical weapons. Casualties? 14 trillion mosquitoes. The terms of surrender? The agent-provocateurs had shut their door.

Boom-SHAKA-laka!

In retrospect, I like to think my neighbors surrendered in response to my superior strategy, my clear persistence and my willingness to use chemical agents that even the Iraqi army would flinch from dispensing. But, like my belief that beef jerky will eventually replace popcorn, I like to think a lot of things that aren't true. The truth?

My neighbors knew about dragonfly season.

Most folks wouldn't believe that there'd be an entire season devoted to dragonflies...but then most folks wouldn't go buying into a season for mosquitoes either. But irrespective of my personal feelings the dragonflies came in early June anyway. And the connection between this new bigger bug and the smaller bloodthirsty one is pretty clear cut:

One eats the other. With abandon.

After seeing the first few days of the carnage I looked it up in a paper on dragonflies. Yes there are such things. This one came from McMaster university in California. The creepy entomologists who have nothing better do - god bless 'em - had this to say:

"Adult dragonflies are generalized predators and will feed on any flying insect that it can catch, providing it is small enough to fit between its jaws. Prey are generally consumed in flight and the bulk of the dragonfly diet is composed of mosquitoes and midges."

I don't know what a midge is but if he's anything like a Korean mosquito he's screwed. Watching the predators in action I was just glad I didn't fit between a dragonfly's jaws. The whole scene was like a combination nature special and snuff film.

Thousands of the wide green bugs, agile and graceful, pulled the skeeters from the air with the ease of of veteran fruit pickers. In less than a month 99% of the mosquito population was as dead as Elvis.

There's something to be said for the environmental attack. In hypothetical contrast, had I tried to accomplish the same with more cans of "Rusty Death," the unkilliable Korean cab drivers would be the only things left alive in Seoul.

Although, on a side note, my guess is that left to themselves they'd make short work of each other.

Thus went the rest of May and a little hunk of June - mild weather, somewhat warm temps and many more big dragonflies than you'd expect anywhere outside the Okiefinokee Swamp. Aside from a slight increase in the usual chewy air quality, it was more than pleasant. The skeeters were gone, it was just warm enough to go swimming and the sun shined all day. It was beautiful.

And it lasted two whole weeks and three days.

Then came monsoon season. To my credit, this season I didn't name. I believe local weathercasters came up with it when "rainy season" somehow didn't cover the angst of flooding the entire Korean road system in 20 minutes. You may have seen some of the pictures on CNN. I did. It took me 5 seconds to figure out that a restaurant I saw once by the Han River wasn't a boat.

Later it became a moot point when the diner set sail anyway.

It rained for the rest of June and a good hunk of August. I turned the TV to the Korean news often to check for upcoming storms. Dire-faced Korean newsmen spoke in low, somber voices and told me with their tones what I couldn't understand with the their words: another weekend trip with Nami cancelled. As I wallowed in postponed-plans pity, the TV then showed the inevitable follow-up videos of unlucky Koreans who now had wading pools in their living rooms. The cigarette puffing homeowners giving the water tours didn't seem as distraught as you'd expect.

For one thing most of them were still wearing socks.

I'm probably the only one who noticed that detail but it di make me think. And the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Seoul is a city singularly unprepared for flooding BUT said flooding happens EVERY year at the SAME time. IN the SAME places. So every year, in June, they lose the same roads, overflow the same flood controls and Socks the homeowner gives the same interview. But the next year the floods come again, and nothing changes.

Well maybe the socks.

Maybe this is a Korean mindset thing. Maybe it's due to a lack of quality water theme parks. Frankly it mystifies me. If this happened in most American cities there'd be enough "public outcry" to seriously consider outlawing water altogether. Here? Just another day in damp socks.

Going by this I can only come to the conclusion that Korean city planners are made of sugar and will surely melt if they address water problems.

Sorry. I'm just bitter about lost vacation time with Nami.

Actually, I should count myself lucky. Locally in Uijongbu, where I live, effects were fairly mild. We're north of the city on some of the smaller mountains - high ground - and so we escaped more or less unscathed. Oh sure a mountain's worth of water slid into the street outside my house but, living on the second floor, I considered that more of a first floor, mosquito-lover's problem.

By the way, there is some justice in the world.

Okay so Monsoon season, personally, wasn't too bad. The rain cut the temperature somewhat and broke the stickiness of the high humidity days. The light flooding was a biblical karmic payback for the locust loving neighbors. Plus, on the one day Nami and I did sneak off to a nearby resort town, the rain insured we had the whole village to ourselves. In fact, all in all, I can only think of one thing that went wrong.

The bridge to my house washed out.

Actually, it wasn't THE BRIDGE to my house. It was A BRIDGE to my house. But it was the safest one and it's gone now. Ironic isn't it? It was lost in the first round of flooding in early June but I had to wait the water to subside in August to see if it was gone for good.

And it was.

One last digression and I'll let you go: Of all the foreign teachers I am one of the few to live near a river. For most of the year it's a barely a trickle that does little but collect trash and mosquitoes. The river has, pardon me HAD, three crossing points.

I'll tell you first about the two that are still there.

One is a bus depot bridge barely wide enough for the big city buses that cross it like a Nascar speed trial. Pedestrians are an afterthought...if that much. The bus bridge was my main creek transit till one drunken night that I stumbled across toward home.

As I did my impression of Stagger Lee on the crossing I heard a faint whirring. With less warning than a jury duty summons, there was a substantial whoosh. Then I felt a big bug slap my ear. I looked to see the bug.

It was big.

Its antennae was shaped like a bus side mirror. And, judging by the license plate, it was attached to a very large bus shaped insect doing at least 40 mph. At the time I was little too tipsy to make the connection that the diesel spewing monster might not be a bug. The next day when my kids called me "Mr.. Red Ear" I put two and bus together.

Right then I resolved to find a new route.

The next way I picked was via a pedestrian bridge that seemed to only serve very small cars doing 20 miles an hour. It was practically a children's path. But crossing it only got me started to my house.

The little bridge led to a convoluted series of alleyways that, after a minute, either led to my house or a scrap pile depending on where I hung a left. The determination of where to take the left took three weeks. It was shorter than the bus station route and involved very little chance of vehicular manslaughter. Here there was only one problem.

Urchins.

Everyday I teach children. Are they a nightmare some days? Sure. But I like to think that I have some know-how in dealing with people under four feet and those skills are usually enough.

Till now.

Every time I took the back alley route I came face to face with shoeless, dirty Korean kids usually wearing no more than brown drawers, ripped t-shirts and toothless smiles. And BOY were they happy to see me. Like Christmas happy. Every single time.

I'm still not sure why.

Now don't get me wrong, aside from the Korean part, those kids were ME when I was ages 4 through 8. You're reading the tales of one of THE charter members of "The Dirty Underwear Gang." But having known what I was like, I knew enough to walk quickly. The urchins followed me everyday I took my new route, yelling "Hi," "Hello" and "Good" in no particular order.

It was disconcerting. Rain, shine, morning, night...screaming urchins tugging on my shirt and greeting me as I walked away. The more I said "hi" back the more it egged them on. I stopped. Then the less I said "hi" back, the more it egged them on.

Clearly it was time to find a new route.

Thus the rock bridge. Between the bridge of bus whacking and the urchin trespass there was a local step stone bridge that crossed the creek. It wasn't much but it led across the water and up an even more crudely piled collection of rocks that constituted stairs. It was mildly unsafe but it was the most direct route to the big main street by my house. More important there were no buses or urchins.

So for a few months I traversed the path with the most rustic charm and the least obstacles. Once I even found a 500 won (50 cent) piece in the water. One night as I carried my groceries across the rocks I stepped aside on a stone in the middle to allow a Korean grandma to go by. Not once did I teeter. In that moment, the old lady said "thank you" in Korean I felt like a local.

Of course if I was a local I'd have known the bridge was going bye bye in a week.

Which it did - right on schedule. The monsoon rains piled the creek up to raging river height. When it finally subsided enough to see the creek bottom I realized that the 30 pound mini-boulders had somehow become flotation devices in the flood. All that was left were two side stones and the ruins of what used to be the stairs.

Then it was back to buses and urchins.

So now I am again braving both the rocket buses and the scabby kneed midgets who hit me up for Skittles and dimes. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I run from the buses. Tuesdays and Thursdays I run from the dirty kids. I alternate to keep it interesting.

And that's pretty much wraps up the Korean seasons. Monsoon season is over and we are in the beginning of the month and a half that the locals seem to call "hot time." Not particularly evocative but apt. While it's not much hotter than New York in August, by the same token, the air in Manhattan isn't usually mustard yellow at 2PM.

4PM maybe but not 2.

Looking back I take some pride in the fact that, seasonally, I've managed to survive 5 months in weather cycles you usually read about in the Old Testament. Provided you don't count "drunk tank-amusement park" season I have to say I've come out pretty much unscathed. And in writing that I'm now fully aware that I have over a month to go and I'm about to get a taste of what constitutes Korean fall. I will say that Fall here may involve a beautiful changing of tree leaves, cool breezes and crisp blue skies.

Boy that would be nice.

But going by my experience, more probably, the new season is made up out of sinkholes, mass rioting and stuff falling from the trees that is alive and that my overseas brand "Raid" only ticks off. So as the leaves turn, the weather cools and you folks prepare for my return to the USA think a good thought for me and a bad thought for whatever's in the trees. If all goes well I'll see you in a little over a month. But, if it goes badly...well then I'm getting some more "Rusty Death" and taking Autumn's tree demons into the next world with me.

Either way wish me luck.

2001-07-15T18:06:00.000-04:00

Deathtrap thy name is Dreamland.

Now before I begin my bashing I want to state for both the record and the honor of Korean Tourism that not ALL amusement parks here are bad.

In fact, as an FYI, Korea has a grand amusement park many times bigger than Disneyland. This grand park is, by all accounts, super clean, well maintained and is ranked by those who know as one of the greater amusement parks in the world. The name of the grandest theme park in Asia is "Everland."

However, Korea also has a haunted amusement park with 30-year-old rides, a rusty tramway and a safety record like US Air. It is called "Dreamland."

And you can guess which one me and Nami went to.

Set against my recent history, (see "Tequila is not a Vitamin") any theme park might've been an issue. My stomach was flipping like a congressman's alibi and my head stuffed with still-humming temples. But I bet, at least on the milder rides, I would be more safe than sorry.

Sorry won that bet.

So how bad was Dreamland? Let me put it in perspective. The quality of all theme parks is based on a principle called "limited terror." If they didn't have this "limited terror" no one would go. Without it, all you've got is bland hot dogs, cheesy kiddie rides and the overwrought warbling of a college-sophomore-Snow-White every 30 minutes on the south stage.

Frankly, based on USA prices upward of 30 bucks a ticket, you need the shock of a truly good roller coaster simply to quell outright price rioting.

But, again, it's "limited terror." And that limit on the terror is, essentially, an implied promise. That promise is no matter how fast they throw you, how far they drop you or how much your stomach tries to make a break for it YOU WILL NOT DIE. It's simple but it's profound as promises go.

And the Dreamland Theme Park didn't make it.

In retrospect you'd think it would seem commonsense that Dreamland was the amusement park equivalent of a landmine - especially once you take into account the national mindset. Korea is a country that has air darker than the Charles River, encourages automotive pedestrian dodgeball and has a safety sense like Wile E. Coyote with an unlimited Acme credit line. Why did I think this theme park would be any different? A very nice tourism brochure.

Once again I make my public call to have all dishonest brochure writers shot until dead.

And then a few times afterwards.

As we went to get our Dreamland tickets we passed the large Wedding Hall and shop that stood at the entrance to the park. I thought it odd till I remembered reading about folks who get married at Disneyland in a kind of "fairytale-wonder" theme. This was obviously some Korean variation.

We paid our 10 bucks Korean each and went in. After some quick looking around I came to the conclusion that if this were the starting point for any marriages they'd never make it past the barely working bumper cars. If there weren't some very successful divorce lawyers by the park exits the spirit of entrepeneurism was dead.

Let me describe the dying funpark.

Everywhere I looked around there were rusty rides, broken amusements and boarded-up snack bars. This was coupled with the fact that NO ONE was there. I was stumped. It was warm, the sun was out and it was a Sunday. Here we were, standing in the middle of the largest amusement park reachable by subway in Seoul.

And Nami and me constituted a crowd.

I was now giving strong consideration to the chance this might be one of those "haunted amusement parks." The ones Scooby Doo's gang shows up at in the Mystery Machine to pull monster masks off evil owners' heads. Seeing Dreamland it was a wonder the pooch hadn't been by already. Then I remembered Korean dog soup.

Well you can hardly blame Scooby for staying stateside.

Nami related that this was Seoul's oldest amusement park and had been in constant operation since the 1960's. Most of the rides I could see looked twice that old and seemed to have a maintanence program of oil and rust. Part of me took the abandoned park as, instinctually, a bad sign. But the other part kept saying "hey! No long lines!"

As you may tell by previous adventures that side of me is consistently a moron.

My stomach, possibly in response to the inherent danger of this place, began churning like an Amish dairy farm at 4AM. I talked Nami into a tram ride of the park so that we could "survey our options." Was I stalling? Me? Stalling? Could I really be, in any sense, or any action, whatsoever, stalling?

Hell yes.

From first appearances this place might be a deathtrap. I was just trying to buy my belly enough time to settle down. Then I could get on one single ride and, after, I fake a neck injury. I pulled Nami towards the park tram - a decrepit operation that looked to have been smuggled from a ski resort piece by piece. This would give me some settling time. We got on the tram.

The view started my intestinal agita anyway.

Might died. This place definitely was a deathtrap. From this vantage point we could see how many of the rides in the park were closed for what they termed "maintenance." I termed it, "a greasy looking Korean teenager in coveralls smoking cigarettes on the engine and sitting with a tool in his hand."

This seemed a popular option. From what I could tell, fully 1/3 of the park was non-functional...on a sunny Sunday.

This was either a tremendously bad run of luck for the park or an indication that management was just treading water till the safety inspectors closed the place down for good. I asked Nami about that.

"Yeah, I think Korea has amusement park safety inspectors...I think.

She paused.

"Well, they definitely come by when a park is being made."

It was on that cue that we saw a gathering of folks around one ride. The ride looked like a big circular frying pan with a ring of well-worn foam padding and seats along the edge of the circle pointing in. A crowd covered the whole side of it.

Then we saw what the crowd was looking at.

There was an unconscious woman lying toward the edge of the machine, twitching and spasming with her leg caught between the ride and exit platform. An attendant stood over her, pointing and looking down.

The look on his face said "I've seen worse."

And yet, fifty or so Koreans and their kids gathered around this ride of doom. They pointed at the teenage accident victim, pushed for position and interrogated the attendant. The looks on their faces weren't of the "oh my god! Look at the accident" variety. Their tenor, as a group, was clearly one thought:

"We're next!"

I couldn't even wrap my mind around it. I had no idea what this ride did but it was old, shoddy, repaired in places with duct tape...and folks were clamoring to get on. It was scary. Then, Nami was scarier.

"Look at that ride. We HAVE to go on that!"

I took another look at the amusement carnage below. My manly man doggedness would give way to outright crying if we hopped on that torture circle right now. As we got off the tram. I took a body poll. My stomach just begged off for more time. I might be able to go on the hell ride in the foamed frying pan later but, at this point, my belly said he needed another hour. I went with a protect the belly plan.

We got off and I pointed to the easiest ride I could find: the always-benign monorail.

Passing the ambulances that drove toward the broken body at the frypan, Nami and I headed up to the small monorail. The track for the ride seemed to cover a quarter of the park. It wasn't much stalling time but I figured I could get 15 minutes out of it. Then we got on. And I realized this could be WAY more than 15 minutes.

The monorail car had pedals.

It was up to us to provide the physical movement for our two seater car. As a theme park ride this was right up there with seesaw. While I was appalled that my ride involved exercise I was thankful it gave me time to get my stomach straight. But then we started pedaling. At once, the seemingly benign monorail became as terror-filled as everything else in the park.

In short it became the monorail ride of doom.

Okay that's overplaying it...slightly. But it wasn't good. To start with, the grinding of the metal pedal system against the rusty single track made this harder exercise than a spinning class wearing iron Nikes. I don't know about you but I try not to combo cotton candy and calisthenics.

Then it got worse.

The track curved some and warped more. This made our cart lean like it was drunk on the turns. If we'd rocked more to the right our cart would've popped off like a postal worker at a gun show. We would have dropped forty feet, taken out some nearly dead trees and fallen right into the surprisingly pretty but shallow water section of the park.

Compared to some later rides such a fall would've been considered surprisingly humane.

Finally, we got to the best part of the ride: no breaks. I found out about that when I hurried to get Nami and me off this crazy thing. Given how bad the exercise was making my stomach, I figured to get it over with as soon as possible. I started pedaling like Lance Armstrong.

The 12-year-old Korean kid in front of us saw us coming and started pedaling faster. On his fright, Nami mentioned that the cart had no breaks. All we had for stopping was inertia, rust and the rubber bumper in front of and behind the cart.

I looked around the cart. She was right.

Then I said the hell with it. She might as well have told me to keep it above 50 or a bomb goes off. I kept pumping my crazy legs. I wanted off. I figured there had to be some sort of slowing system where the carts bunch up at the exit/entrance area anyway and that was good enough for me. Turned out I was right. There WAS a system there.

Unfortunately the system was "whiplash car wreck."

I was introduced to the system when our car struck the hapless adolescent in front of us, easily doing 15 miles an hour. We WHAMMED him so hard his glasses came off.

But the hits just kept on coming.

In short order a father daughter team rammed us. Then the hard pedaling talents one of the few fat women in all Korea rammed them. The combined momentum just moved to the front of the line.

It was enough to give the bespectacled 12 year old a life long fear of monorails and my stomach one more excuse to try to paint my shoes with breakfast. I held it back, barely, and got off. As I did I gave the monorail a dirty look.

"Bad monorail. Bad BAD monorail!"

On the upside, we'd killed twenty minutes. On the downside we'd used none for stomach recovery time. I needed something. Then, from a distance, I saw the cages of the petting zoo. Of course - feeding the animals. I didn't care what they were, they were gonna eat. I was gonna buy a few moments of belly stillness by filling theirs.

Seriously. At that point I woulda fed a basket of Chihuahuas to a Siamese cat.

"Hey animals! We can feed them and take pictures," I exclaimed to Nami with nary a trace of nausea coming out in my voice. She thought it was cute. So we bought some rice cakes to feed the animals. We headed over. We saw the exotic zoo animals.

We saw the exotic animals included a dog.

And this was not some special dog mind you. In fact, aside from a possible world record in matted fur, this wasn't a distinctive dog in any way. Not a Lassie stunt double, not a hero dog, just a mutt fighting two goats and three chickens in a cage for scraps.

And he was clearly number two on the scraps chain behind the fat goat.

Once the smell became too strong, we moved on. Next to the "mixed barnyard" cage were the monkeys, usually the highlight of any zoo. But not in Dreamland.

Let's say that a place like The Bronx Zoo is a primate Park Avenue. And the Cleveland City Zoo is like a small clean baboon apartment in a funky neighborhood. The Dreamland Monkey zoo was the six by six monkey shantytown of despair. The only way it could have been more depressing would've involved all the monkeys having long-term animal tranquilizer addictions.

Even then you'd suspect they'd get a nicer place when they went into monkey rehab.

The monkeys themselves seemed too forgone in their horrible fate to get too angry. When the mocking tourists offered non-nutritious food and openly banged the fencing to the cage they didn't respond. Just a half hearted bite and then back to lying in the fur covered water dish.

After about two minutes a teenage Korean girl stuck her tongue through the fence to mock the little primates. If the monkeys weren't angry I was. I began to root for bloody monkey retribution. It never came.

So we went to see the reindeer.

It was, at least, a big cage. There was one big male, two females and one baby in the setup. At least for the male you had to figure life wasn't bad. So we took out the rest of the rice cakes the fat goat hadn't gotten and fed them to the horned beasts.

Finally in the park something went well.

The big guy was friendly, the little guy was eager and, unlike the fat goat, the smell wasn't churning my stomach. Plus, if you fed them just right, rice cake would land on their heads. Then they'd do goofy stuff to eat off each other.

I call it making nature fun.

Most important, it killed a good 20 minutes. In fact I could've stretched it to a full 30 minutes if it hadn't been for the emotional blackmail of the sad eyed little midgets who came to the cage empty handed. I gave them rice cakes grudgingly. But I stuck part of my leg in all the "cute kidz with animalz" pictures the parents took.

See that knee you cheap parents? That's me. Buy your own food next time.

But then the rice cakes ran out. There were no more trams, no more monorails and Nami wasn't hungry for lunch. Stalling was done. We had to do a ride now. Luckily my stomach was a bit better. But not good enough for the frying pan of doom. I had to come up with something. And bumper cars weren¡¯t going to cut it.

I steered Nami towards the Korean version of a ride I remembered from my US riding days as fairly tame: The Rainbow.

The Rainbow is a platform of forward facing seats mounted on a mechanical arm that moves it up and down in a circle. You go up. Then you go down. And you go around doing it clockwise like 15 times. Then you do it counterclockwise 15 times. Then it's over. It's simple, it's fun and I thought my stomach could take it. And I maintain it could've.

But then they started playing "Kill the white guy."

We got on and enjoyed our first few leisurely drops. Nothing was bothering the belly much and the breeze even felt nice. I looked at my watch. Going by the ride time from before we got on, we were about halfway through. We went up and down and around and I was getting ready to start faking my injury so I could just take pics of Nami and avoid the bloody frypan ride of doom.

That's when the game commenced.

I noticed that the 16-year-old Korean kid running the ride was making frantic hand gestures to his 18-year-old supervisor. The older boy came into the ride booth. I saw the younger one point at me for a quick second. At a point when the ride would normally be winding down there were now two guys in the booth. Behind the controls. And they were smiling at me like chimps in a banana truck.

This was bad.

The ride went from leisurely rounds to NASA training mode. I began to scream like something was being amputated. This egged on the boys even more. As violent as they'd whipped us clockwise they began to whip us even more violently counterclockwise. Going by my watch, which was vibrating like a marital aid, we had now gone a full three minutes past the usual run of the ride. Any time they settled us down and were about to let us off they waited a full five seconds.

Then they started again.

Not only was the ride scaring me, but also so was the fact that two guys who'd never bought beer were now pushing a twenty-year-old ride well past its operating limits just to see how loud I'd scream. My terror obliged. Throughout the entire ride I continued emptying my lungs with the talent of a deranged carnival barker. Folks gathered around the front of the machine to marvel at my unadulterated horror. I was the official dreamland floorshow. I was a huge hit with the kids.

"Screaming white guy in the north park. Shows every five minutes till he yaks."

Which was close. Luckily my screams had brought out the few folks in the park to line up in front of the Rainbow. My terror was apparently a great sales pitch. They stopped the ride mere moments before I gave the 8 year old in front of me a flexible liquid hat.

We got off and, of course, Nami said it was the best ride ever. I worked hard to stand up straight and dragged her away towards what I said were "the good rides." In actuality, all I saw was a path towards the water park and through the trees. It was the direction I was staggering, I needed rest and I was too numb to turn. As far as I was concerned, the monorail had conclusively proven that momentum is often more important than intelligence. I went with it.

Literally.

As we went by the water park, which Nami passed on because she can't swim, we saw a tower with rope. As we came around a large wooden wall that sectioned off the waterpark we got a better look at the tower. We arrived just in time to see someone go off the side.

By proximity, I assumed it was the diving tower for the deep-water pool. I saw the figure go down fast, hard and right into the wooden wall. The only way this guy was going to make the pool was in pieces. He came within a half-foot of the wall.

Then he snapped up.

As Nami pointed to the sign and explained the Korean, she explained what I had now deduced. It was the bungee tower. But only by default. If he hadn't snapped back up I was definitely going with "gallows."

There were tree branches DIRECTLY in the bungee jump line. The cord looked as worn as a 40 year old boy band. And if that last jumper had been 10 pounds heavier he would have had a two-foot wall splinter in his eyebrow. Then Nami made a little half gasp and pointed to the pricing chart. I looked over. I wished I hadn't.

Adults: 10,000 won
Children: 8,000 won
Juniors: 5,000 won

Nami and I were mute and incredulous. Finally she spoke.

"What do you think a junior is?" she said hesitantly. I had no idea. I couldn't even get my mind around "children" bungee jumping let alone what was smaller than "children." We stood there a bit and pondered the question for a while. None of the answers we were mulling over were good. The only positive thought I gleaned was an insight into the ability of Koreans to toilet train their kids at two. It was in this short moment of reflection, as I looked at the entrance to the ride, that I noticed the final master touch of the killer tower.

It had a wheelchair ramp.

Clearly it was time to go. I just wanted to get out of there before the Fox people showed up and turned this into a regular Thursday night program. Nami and I walked quickly away from the bungee with no destination in mind. It came to us anyway. Nami saw the loop de loop coaster. That HAD to be next.

Of course it did.

I drank a bottle of water in one shot and hoped fate would be kind enough not to throw my stomach DIRECTLY at my face when I had to let it go. I remembered my coaster training and followed along, resolved and nauseous.

This brings us to a coaster segue and back to the principle of "limited terror."

Having been on many coasters in my life I can unequivocally state the scariest one: the Cyclone roller coaster in Brooklyn's Coney Island. The Cyclone is one of the fastest and oldest wooden coasters in the US. So what makes the Cyclone so scary? Brooklyn has some brutal winters and the cyclone is made of wood.

Consider for a moment: those decrepit wooden picnic tables at the local park - the ones that look ready to break any moment - they don't weather well do they? Well those things are, maybe, ten years old. The wooden monster ride of the Cyclone was built in the 1920's.

In this case, history is horror.

It's that history that makes the coaster challenge the "limited terror" principle. You climb the imposing stretch of track. You get to the top of the first drop. You hear buckles. You hear bends. You hear the octogenarian wooden supports make groans that would worry any honest contractor and most dishonest ones.

Then, in my opinion, comes the greatest thrill of the ride: a half a beat before you go over that first big drop, you hear something very clearly: The SNAP! of one single board breaking.

And over you go. Insert screams here.

"Limited terror" tells you that the Cyclone is inspected monthly by the most anal-retentive inspectors New York can produce (which, by nature, makes them some of the most anal in the world). "Limited terror" also tells you that you heard a board break the last time you were here. Finally it reminds you that you are imagining every single bit of this.

But history makes you wonder, even with "Limited terror", if this isn't the time the old girl finally gives way. On this day. On YOUR ride. And that, along with the SNAP, is your last coherent thought as you drop down the first hill. It was what made the Cyclone the scariest ride in the world to me.

Till now.

In comparison my Dreamland loop de loop coaster ride made the Cyclone look like a coin-operated kiddie-rocket at the local supermarket. I had been in the park a little over an hour and the only facts I knew were the things Nami had told me. Based on that history alone, this coaster was now on par with the Cyclone. What happened next pushed it over the top. It became something I never expected in any Theme Park

"Un-limited terror."

I hoped for a long line on the coaster but could see from where we were that it was not to be. We climbed the stairs and were the first and ONLY two folks on the coaster. It was a fact not designed to instill a lot of confidence. Even the non-plussed teenager running the ride was hoping to get even one more person on. So there we sat, ready to go at any moment. I wasn't sure how long we'd wait.

So I looked around.

It was at this point that I took note of the restraints designed to hold us in. The overhead brace was patched with duct tape like everything else in this park. I noted in this case it was, at least, color-coordinated. That was new. Then I noticed the leg bar in front of me. It was aged, it was squeaky and the padding was coming off. Then I noticed something else.

It wasn't locked.

So began the "unlimited terror." I told Nami this. My leg bar was loose. It was not locked. It was ajar. Then I told her again. Repeatedly. Then I did it again. Louder.

Nami giggled. Her boyfriend was clearly being a first-grade wuss. But out of deference to the voices in my head she gave it a check. She looked at it, moved it with her hand and compared it to her own leg bar. Which locked. Pause.

"It'll probably lock before the coaster starts."

This ride could start at any moment. It involved loops, I wasn't completely secured and I was in a park of doom that had already shown a pronounced ambivalence to screaming white guy safety. Hell this was a place that, for less than 3 bucks American, you could chuck your toddler on a rubber band from five stories up.

And Nami had just referred to a safety device here using "probably.¡±

Hysterical doesn't cover it.

Nami relented and called over the operator - a slack jawed, lanky mess of teenage angst - who had been about to start the ride. He only reluctantly stepped away from the controls to deal with the maniacal Caucasian who wouldn't shut up. She pointed at my leg bar, explained my concerns and asked him to help.

He was not amused.

He seemed ready to give her the standard "that's the way the ride is, now shut up" speech in Korean. Then for some reason he ACTUALLY looked at my leg bar. He cocked his head with some interest. Then he leaned in and jiggled it. Then he pushed it down.

It locked.

It surprised him. It scared me. I didn't even have time to give Nami my full "I was RIGHT" speech. I was too busy watching him to see if there were any other ways we could die. He gave our chest restraints a couple of hard shoves as a safety check. His indifferent confidence said we were fine. For some reason I didn't buy it.

He went back to the controls. Then he started the ride and the "unlimited terror" began. If there had been a porta-potty installed in my seat I woulda used it.

Actually I think I partly did anyway.

What followed was a full minute and a half of outright nightmare terror. It was speed, clunking and the active possibility in my head that my ride survival chances were 80 for/20 against. Those are the kind of odds that the Cyclone, with all its safety standards, could only ever hint at.

And, by the way, thank god.

When we pulled back into the loading area I just made sure to get me and Nami out of there quickly. As far as I was concerned, we had cheated death and I wasn't trying to bet twice. I was getting out of there before the gas tank blew.

Look it's a Korean theme park of Doom. Don't put it past them.

From there we rode some bumper cars that, as far as I can tell, had a maximum speed somewhere between "speedy slug" and "crippled mouse." That was fine by me but I faked indignation all the same. From there we hit a fun house full of moving stairs, floors and walls. Compared to the general level of Korean contracting it seemed just slightly below par. Then, as we exited, Nami spotted one of those buccaneer boats that swing back and forth.

There was no way in all creation I was boarding that death ship.

Rather than chance that "kill the white guy" on this ride involved the ship doing a loop de loop, I said I didn't want to go. Nami wanted to know why. I owned up to my stomach problems. But then, to save face, I came up with an addition.

"Plus, I really want to get your picture on the ride."

Yes I'm a quick thinker. Not only was it a good excuse, it kept both my manliness and stomach intact. The picture is another story. I have pictures of her too far away and going by at 60 miles an hour. I could have gotten a good shot if I'd leaned in just a little but I wasn't sure how homicidal the teenage operator was.

I just blamed the quality of cheap Funsaver cameras and let it go.

With a full forty minutes now of stomach stillness under my belt since The Rainbow I was nearly ready for the padded frypan of unpleasantness. Unfortunately the ride closest wasn't that one.

The ride closest was one of those octopus-type, spinning rides with the cars on the end of the arms as they go up and down. It wasn't going too fast, it wasn't jumping that much and it looked no worse than most kiddie rides. I really thought it was safe.

Then it was time for Riley Ray to be wrong again.

What followed was a ride that reduced my inner ear balance mechanism to pudding. Now unlike the guy at the Rainbow, who could torque up his ride to catapult speed, the octopus-ride guy's machine went at a steady rate the whole way and he couldn't mess with it. In fact, he only had one card to play in his round of "kill the white guy." And the card was duration.

He played it.

Nearly 12 minutes of time went by as the octopus arms flew round at their top speed. 12 minutes. If you forced that ride on a soldier you'd violate several articles of the Geneva Convention. Eventually I began praying for more up and down motion on the ride because at least it was a new kind of strain on my innards.

After several false slowdowns, the ride finally stopped. I fell out of the car like a 20-year drunk. Then, happily, so did Nami. My girlfriend was as sick as I was. Maybe even more.

I know what you're thinking. Don't.

I'm going to be really clear: I didn't want anything bad to happen to this woman. Truly. In case I haven't said this before I'll mention it now. I love Nami. Perhaps a deadly amusement park story isn't the best place to mention this but it's the truth and I'll say it anyway. Anybody who objects can soak his head in week-old Beefaroni. I'd have jumped naked in the war-torn monkey cage to spare my girlfriend physical discomfort.

But here she was, holding her head and belly all the same. And now that she was in this condition, I was giddy...as well as the usual nauseous. For the first time since I we got here I thought maybe we could avoid the deadly frypan after all.

I took comfort in that as I tried to hold my digestive tract in place.

We recuperated under a shady bench structure and I rubbed her neck, trying to soothe her now throbbing headache as she tried to get her own twisted tummy back into a non-fighting mode.

We talked, we hugged, and we bonded.

I think in that moment we spent some of our best quality time, thus far, as a couple together. When we held hands, it was the first time the derisive stares of withered, old, local women didn't make her flinch from the physical contact. And I noticed.

Along with the few moments when I thought the monkey was gonna get a foolish girl's tongue it was the high point of my day. We enjoyed the shade for a while and then walked back towards the park entrance, sure that we'd had enough for one day.

Almost.

Then somehow - and by somehow I mean I was stupid enough to bring it up - the human-filleting frypan became a subject for conversation. It jogged Nami's memory and her resolve. We had to go back and go on that ride. I thought of claiming I couldn't find it. Then I heard the screams, equal parts panic and pain.

Apparently it was to the left.

We got there moments too late to get on and had to watch a group go through an entire ride. If I'd been uneasy before, now, upon closer inspection, I was just appalled.

There was no way this qualified as a ride. This had to be some industrial sorting machine they'd gotten at a bankruptcy sale and had padded. If this thing had a yearly death count lower than lightning strike then Korea had some unusually nice weather.

Let me tell you how it worked.

Folks got on and sat on the ripped, beaten and barely stuffed bench that ran the outside of the circle. It had no seat belts, no leg bar and no restraints of any kind. The only way to keep your self in place was the metal bar, broken in places, which ran in a circle around the pan and above the seat. Folks tried their best to hold on - some with two hands, some with one.

It was pointless either way.

The ride then started spinning. First in one direction then another but in both ways rotating at least thirty miles an hour. At this point, while spinning, the ride began to tilt. First, just a bit. Then it went all the way to a 50-degree angle.

This was a spinning ride with barely any way to hold on that tilted more steeply than most mountains. That alone qualified this thing as the most dangerous amusement since Sit-N-Spin with schnapps.

But then it got worse.

The pan came to a stop, while tilted. Deprived of centrifugal force the folks at the upper ridge were holding on...but barely. There was a moment of pause as the ride music stopped. The sadistic Korean ride operator said something in a low rumble through the ride microphone. Nami was about to translate for me. I didn't need it. From his low Marquis De Sade rumble I knew the jist.

Those folks on top were screwed.

That's when the flipping started. De Sade hopped the ride while it was tilted. It bounced violently. This entire assemblage was hopping like a low rider at a stoplight. De Sade was merciless. The riders on the top edge tried in vain not to fall but some dropped immediately. They sloshed like broken eggs down the 30-foot diameter of the ride. Then they fell into the feet of the folks at the bottom of the pan causing additional injury.

The riders still holding on to the top seemed to be challenging De Sade. He took it personally. Now he slowly half spun and hopped the ride so that, even if they didn't fall, their legs and bodies were being whipped against the seats and the riders foolish enough to still be occupying them. Eventually De Sade picked another quarter of the pan.

Then he repeated the process.

The ride stopped. The exit aligned with the ramp, De Sade mumbled something about the ride being over and folks got up from their seats to walk off. Then, surprise, he hit the spin button again.

It wasn't pretty.

Bodies painfully rolled to the edges like quarters in a washing machine and the riders cried out in surprise and pain. Feet hit heads; hands clutched for anything solid and anyone under four feet bounced like a pinball. The torture lasted 5 minutes. Then the ride finally slowed to a stop. For real this time.

That's when I got confused.

The Koreans on board, most scraped and some bloody, did the unexpected: they cheered as they got off. De Sade obviously caused more monthly damage than a Firestone tire designer and the riders were saluting him for it. The only thing I could guess at was that this was some cathartic way for younger generations to experience the physical trauma of their parents' war torn lives. Whatever it was I didn't understand it. But I did understand one thing very clearly.

If De Sade decided to play an aggressive game of "kill the white guy" he might get a real W on the board.

I got on and sat next to Nami. She was excited and cheery. I bluffed some confidence and studied De Sade. He was a dark looking young Korean man in his twenties who, in the US, probably would have let his instincts drive his avocation towards either Law or the S&M industry. But here De Sade was the king of his mechanical castle and he knew it.

De Sade regarded me as well. He could see me clearly and the Caucasian that I was. He didn't smile vindictively at me like the teens at the Rainbow. He didn't have to. We both knew what was about to happen. I almost motioned Nami to sit somewhere else to avoid my collateral damage.

But then De Sade started the ride.

Going into self-preservation mode, I realized hands weren't gonna cut it. I wrapped both my arms around the bars in a way that would either break them or save me a nasty fall. I didn't have to wait long to find out which. Unlike the previous ride, which had built the terror, this trip seemed to be in a hurry to get to the hard stuff.

We were zooming around, at least in feel, much faster than the previous riders. Then, 20 seconds in, the tilt started. The hopping wasn't far behind. De Sade started by keeping Nami and me in the bottom, presumably so I could watch the terror in other riders¡¯ faces as they dropped to my feet.

The first to fall was a thin girl in her late twenties who dropped on the second hop like a wet grocery bag. She whacked her rib along a metal floor joist as she rolled to the bottom. She managed to crawl into an empty space a good bit to the right from Nami and I. She held her side with one arm and held on with the other.

Then we were next at the top.

De Sade hopped and jumped and rolled us. It was like being a crash test dummy without the job security or seatbelts. My arms held tight as my lower body kept trying to involuntarily audition for Riverdance. Nami, to my left, had found a two handed position that, while not as sturdy as mine, wasn't dropping her. Occasionally my legs hit hers with a painful shock but, so far, no blood. I took that as I good sign and held on through 30 seconds of hard jostling.

The operator took it with patience.

De Sade went on to other prey, and gave them the deadly blender treatment. Most hung on bravely but some still took their turn as human bowling balls crashing into the pins of rider shoes. As I looked around at the folks still clinging to the outside rail I could tell from their expressions that this was more active than a normal run.

From the wincing I caught that it wasn't in a good way.

The pondering was cut short by our next run at the top. It was clear, even as rough as the amusement was, that less folks were falling down on this run. Some were using my double arm-lock handhold, some were just benefiting from De Sade¡¯s preoccupation with us. Whatever the case, I can only guess from De Sade's diligence in the next few minutes that he held me personally responsible for this defiance.

So he tried to get even.

He rotated us to the top and started a new action that he hadn't used on the last group of riders. My guess was that he saved it for special occasions. Turns out we qualified. The ride began its "special" motion. Spin a tenth clockwise. Stop. Spin a tenth counterclockwise. Stop. Repeat till screams are deafening. Stop. Triple speed. Repeat till someone loses a tooth.

Now our hanging on wasn't defiance. It was survival. De Sade was trying to shake us off like water on a wet dog. If Nami or I let go on one of these jerky mini spins we wouldn't tumble down, we'd get thrown clear through the railing and into the loafing mechanic who claimed to be fixing the kiddie cars 20 feet over.

Previously our lower bodies had only been bouncing into one another. Now everything below the bellybutton was whipping around like a Kansas trailerpark during storm season. I caught one of Nami's shoes in the side, hard. Then even with all my attempted restraint, she caught part of my knee just below the boob. At one point I was on her leg, then, a moment later, she was sitting whole on my lower body.

If there hadn't been a threat of death it would've even been fun.

Unfortunately the double arm lock seemed like it was about to break one of my elbows. I shifted; hung on any way I could and tried to hook one of my feet on the rail. De Sade never let me get close. I tried to copy my instinctive girlfriend and hoped for bruises and not fractures.

But we held on.

The ride went on for four minutes, most of it spent on us. It stopped, the exit lined up with the ramp and the door opened. People got up anxiously to leave. I looked at De Sade and for one split second I could read his mind. And he was thinking, "those rubes."

Nami stayed seated. I tightened my grip.

On cue De Sade fired up the spin cycle, even tilting the ride as he did it. If he couldn't trick us he was going to damn sure try to roll someone into us. Bodies fell all around and the girl with the bruised rib further injured her sore midsection and missed my leg by inches.

I felt bad for her. But I felt good for my foot.

He fired up the ride again but the moment was gone. Now I could see the crowd building outside. They were forming an anxious line. I decided to make them moreso with the only weapon at my disposal. I screamed my sales pitch of terror and soon they were jumping for the chance to get on. I knew from the way they were shoving towards the ride De Sade was going to have to let them on sooner than later.

De Sade knew it too.

He stopped the ride. The gate lined up, the ramp opened and the people stood cautiously to get off. A second attendant came to the exit to encourage the exodus and prove that this wasn't Lucy pulling out Charlie Brown's football again. Finally a 14 year old girl decided this might be an actual exit and took the first step. It worked. Folks quickly followed to step out of the ride.

Nami and I didn't wait.

We hustled and got into the middle of the pack of exiting riders. I looked to the booth and could tell that De Sade was giving strong consideration to kicking on the spin just as I took my step. He didn't. Possibly because of the accident with the stumpy footed girl from earlier in the day, possibly out of respect. I just made sure to move quickly and get Nami off first.

We immediately took a short walk to recover.

We wound our way down a wooded trail to the right side of the park. The idea was to enjoy the trees, the time and the twilight. Then, dazed, somehow we ended up near some park waste disposal site. The frypan had left us stunned, numb and with nearly no sense of direction.

I kissed her and we called it a day.

We exited the park and crossed through the main gates. As we left I looked around at the night park. With its antique neon, its older amusements and simple early 60's design it was...dreamlike. I could finally see the innocent, quaint, beautiful Dreamland Park that the brochure writer had seen. I forgave him some of his falseness.

If I saw him now I was only going to wound him.

We went out in the park area by the wedding center as Nami, now the more nauseous of us two, sat in the grass and tried to recover for the long subway ride home. The surreal scene did nothing to allay her headache.

Children in full traditional Korean dress, tuxedos and elaborate little gowns played nearby on skateboards and bikes. They had come fresh from wedding attire fittings and were not slowed in their play even slightly. Their hands-off mothers watched nearby as the kids did things to formal wear that would make most quality tailors cry.

I sat down with her and held her hand. Maybe there was something to be said for this manufactured terror thing without limits. I know I felt closer to Nami now. As she rubbed my fingers I knew she felt the same towards me.

"The hell with it," I said as I stood up. "Screw the train. We're taking a taxi home. I don't care what it costs."

Nami asked if I was sure and made some commotion about prices and how close we were to the subway. Underneath I could tell she wanted the taxi even more than me. We slowly walked out to the street. Several taxi drivers went by. Going by my own experience, I assumed the majority had episodes with white men throwing up in their cabs and knew that Dreamland was not high on the safe stomach list.

So Nami mustered herself up and got out front

A minute later she got us a cab. We piled in; the driver gave me a wary look. Nami ordered him back to my house with the strength in her voice that her body no longer had. It was a strength that reminded me why I fell in love with her. He did what she said and I concluded the hack was hesitant but smart. Then, her deed done, Nami collapsed on my chest. The park was done, the windows were down and she would finally get a chance to recover. I settled in next to her. So would I

Riley Ray's total taxi recovery time: 14 seconds.

A second after that, as I watched, the driver cut off a bus, ran a red and took a corner with his back wheel on the sidewalk. Starting to doze lightly, Nami never flinched. I, on the other hand, drew a sharp breath. This guy was edgy, we were still a half hour from home and I was sure the highway was coming up. I squeezed Nami's hand as she lay there, not stirring at the new "unlimited terror." I sighed. At least we were going to have the chance to get closer. Then I looked out the windshield.

Provided we didn't get too close to that bus first.

2001-06-26T02:01:00.000-04:00

Before I get to my tale, lemme explain why it's late. Two reasons: personal publishing principles and the tooth-pulling pace of drunken recall. While that latter one pretty much explains itself, albeit slowly, the former one needs some setup.

Buckle in.

For the most part these little notes started as just a way to say hi to all the folks I knew at once. I know 70 people with e-mail addresses. I consider all but two of them good friends (you know who you are and how much money you owe me).

When you've got those kind of numbers, writing that many individual e-mails will kill a hunt and peck typist like me right through my index fingers. Really. Gangrene. I read it once. But my main point is that mass communication was basically the reason I was doing this.

That's changed.

At some point these things became mostly therapy. Not that "hug-a-sweaty-stranger-and-blame-it-all-on-your-grandpa" stuff but useful therapy. If Korea treats me oddly, ugly or otherwise I put it down in one of these notes and, for the most part, I feel a little better. The whole honesty and catharsis aspect kind of snuck up on me.

I finally had to confront that with this note.

Something fairly humbling happened to me and I debated for two weeks whether I wanted to share it. Consider, I've been public so far with a foot and mouth disease from my fungal Korean shower, teaching methods that should garner someone a lawsuit and, till recently, a complete lucklessness with Korean chicks that could make a priest feel superior.

Yet, this was a little bit more.

So what it came down to is this: I had to decide whether the loss of dignity with 70 close friends was worth the perspective to be gained. For the record, you guys were thiiiiis close to getting a short essay about how ugly the national leaders are on Korean money. Instead... honesty and catharsis. I may as well get to it.

I woke up in a military drunk tank.

Now I realize I'm about to say what most folks who've been to drunk tanks say. In fact it may be on some alcoholic syllabus right after "Examine throwup, try to remember when you ate corn." Nonetheless it bears stating.

I had no idea where I was or how I got there.

Not profound but apt. As I looked around the drunk tank, my first ever visit to such a facility, I tried to take note of the surroundings and figure out how I'd gotten here. I say tried because, at that moment, I had an alcohol-related weight behind my ears that was encouraging my nose to closely smell the bench where I'd woken up. At the time, getting a hold of any facts was like trying to grab a live catfish with a greasy catcher's mitt.

But, days later, the details began coming back. Bit by bit, piece by piece and inevitably shot by shot. The more I remembered, the more I began to blame 5000 years of local tradition for where I was and the still undetermined "how I got there" part. This was some ancient Korean to blame and he would pay someday. I know, that makes no sense.

It will.

Like the all great "very bad night" stories it started with three bad things. My three were black markets, a bar and a tattoo. To my credit, somehow I missed adding a racetrack, a hooker and a dead postman to the evening. But then this was my first "very bad night" and I'm neither a professional nor a Kennedy.

For now, I'll start with part one: the black markets.

I had spent two entire Saturdays, including this one, tiredly going from one run down shopping area to the next in Seoul. I had seen enough chotchkes, dead ducks and imitation Polo merchandise to make me seriously consider whether anti-capitalist Karl might have been the really funny Marx brother. My goal in the hunt was to find the much rumored "American Markets" or "Black Markets of Seoul."

I know. "A black market hunt." Sounds cool doesn't it?

Well the noir charm was totally gone by my fifth hour of prize-finding failure. I was searching for a piece of booty that, one plane trip east, was available in any drugstore, gas station or bait shop. Here? A mythic griffin. And, imaginary or not, at this point my griffin-hunt had become priority number one. My reason was simple and pungent.

I stunk.

I had one Speed Stick left and it was patchy in spots. By my math I had a week till I started scaring my girlfriend. Some of you, by now, are doubtlessly saying, "just go buy more you odiferous dolt."

This would be a much shorter story were that possible.

Time for a segue and a fun and funky fact about Koreans: their society doesn't use deodorant. Cologne? Maybe. Perfume? Certainly. But deodorant doesn't exist once you cross the Pacific. Maybe it's because Korean folks have less underarm hair than us American Sasquatch types and thus less stink. Maybe with kimchee sweat they've just given up on the smelling aspect of their personal hygiene. Maybe they're just ticklish. Frankly I didn't care. They could get away without it. I couldn't.

Those who know me well are nodding right now. Stop it.

For those less knowledgeable, I am willing to admit that, for some folks, a lack of deodorant might be passable. Maybe for the less ripe, more than okay. It might even be liberating in an earth-mother-get-back-to-nature-kind of way.

Well I'm not them.

With strong deodorant, I'm sort of okay. With regular deodorant I'm musky on humid days. Without any deodorant my B.O. can kill a profession fragrance tester outright at 50 feet. I thank god for its invention. If this was 200 years ago I'd be a hermit from May to September.

Hey, I said I was gonna be honest.

Thus my black market fact finding mission. Unfortunately, most black markets are nothing more than the regular assortment of street merchants. The only thing different is a few bootleg Army rations along with the usual Tommy Hilfiger shirts with four L's.

After that it became less a search and more a quest.

Over the next two Saturdays I got to know every place in Seoul that sells the stuff that falls off an Army jeep. I found decent black markets for cereal, soup, over the counter remedies, giant cans of pork and beans, vitamins (but no Metabolife), army fatigues and porn.

But nothing to rub under your arms.

Okay well there may have been something at the porn stall but it was next to an inflatable doll. I didn't want to take a chance on some Korean merchant extolling the virtues of of latex for 30 minutes in broken English.

I judiciously decided to pass.

By 6PM on the second Saturday was ready to go back to the guy with Betty Blowup. I was tired, luckless and I stunk. I was even starting to generate space around me wherever I walked. Korea's a society that prides itself on sidewalk pedestrian body checks that would get you kicked out of the NHL. For me, that Seoul Red Sea of bodies parting was proof enough I needed to find this stuff...quick.

Then Gloria, a fellow teacher, gave me a tip about Dongdaemun, a very trendy shopping area in mid-Seoul that I knew I had gone to at least once. I was angrily in the process of telling her I'd already been there when she cut me off.

"But did you go under the arch, hang a right, through the alley, down the stairs and past the guy selling cameras?"

Clearly I did not. It also pointed to the principal problem with black markets: they are rarely marked well and are almost never featured in guidebooks or brochures. But, by the same token, no genius Korean marketing exec is advertising them as "happy refreshing black markets."

I'd call that a push.

I went back and gave it a shot. After some reversals, missteps and an accidental 5 minute detour into the back of an eyeglass shop I found it...the black markets of Dongdaemun. For the basement of a building it was expansive. It seemed like there must have been close to 200 merchants in their 3 meter stalls scattered about down here. Considering that I entered through a staircase the size of a phone booth it was even more impressive.

But then I saw the products.

For all intents and purposes, this was Wal-Mart with jacked up prices, surely stolen merchandise and everything you could think of propped up on boxes that looked like they were gonna fall over any moment.

Okay so more K-Mart than Wal-Mart.

But there, on every table, among the quality cameras, jumbo canned goods and illegal western spices like thyme was my treasure: Right Guard. True, I was a Speed Stick man, but I didn't see any and I figured it for the anti-perspirant version of the holy grail.

I settled.

I grabbed the smell-stopper, paid the equivalent of 8 bucks American and headed for the exit. But, this being a big market, I got a little turned about in the area they were selling bedsheets for 60 bucks. Finally finding the path to my way out, I noticed a stall I'd missed and stopped to check the goods. It was the biggest liquor stand I'd ever seen. "No harm in looking," I said to myself.

You're gonna want to remember that one for later.

A little side hobby of mine here has been to amass a quality liquor cabinet for entertaining. It's a little trickier than you'd think. Gin is really available only in supermarkets. Whiskey and scotch seem be found exclusively in mom and pop places and rest stops. And for a country so close to Russia, ironically, vodka distribution is spotty at best. But my big liquor holdout was Mexican. If there was Tequila by the bottle anyplace in this country I couldn't find it.

Till now.

In addition to racks upon racks of various booze and one bottle of bourbon the size of Mark the Crier, the little woman behind the table had five different kinds of Tequila. The tab was only 14 bucks a bottle American for the rotgut stuff. It was well priced compared to the pillowcases they were selling for 20 clams apiece a few yards back.

This was a bargain in bottle and I was tempted to take two. Still, it was late in the day and I was going out right after this. My common sense told me that carrying clinking bottles into a club was probably a lot less clever than it sounded. I settled on one.

It was the last time I'd listen to common sense for the night. I headed out.

Which brings us to part two of the troika of trouble that landed me in the drunk tank: the bar. It's a dive with cheap korean beer on tap in Itaewon called "JR Blue." It's right down the street from that infamous stretch you might remember, "Hooker Hill." All in all, it's both affordable and convenient for the fallen man on the go.

And based on the fact that I've now been banned for life, I recommend it highly.

My fellow teacher Krista - the one who likes to wear "trouble dresses" to Itaewon - invited me to join some of her friends at JR Blue to say goodbye to her favorite band, "Night Shift." The group, a funk and jazz outfit, was wholly comprised of servicemen and some were being shipped home in two weeks. We were all supposed to come support them at this farewell gig and thank them for their music, their energy and their commitment to this bar off Hooker Hill.

And Krista was thanking the keyboard player for something else...but that's really her business.

I walked through the door at 10PM - early in the Itaewon night. 10PM is the time when Marines just start their barhopping, hoping to meet, greet and get lucky with the Korean girl of their dreams for free. 10PM's also the time in Itaewon that the brothels begin prepping for the midnight rush of disappointed and unlucky Marines.

Ah the great circle of life. Or sin. Dealer's choice.

The important thing is I got there as the band was getting ready to start, promptly...as is my custom. I didn't see Krista or her "trouble dress" wearing companions. I did a quick circle of the tables, checked the bar and screamed "Krista!" by the door to the ladies room...as is also my custom.

Nothing.

I sighed and made my peace with the fact that Krista has a internal clock like a 72 Plymouth Duster. I took a seat at the lonely end of the bar, ordered a 7&7 and settled in to kill the hour or so till she wandered in with a bad excuse and a burly lieutenant.

I was wearing a tank top at the time. It was hot, it was laundry day and, most important, I have a hot girlfriend now so I'm not killing myself to dress for chicks. Frankly I was proud that I was even wearing clean pants. But the important thing to know here is that my shoulder was showing.

Enter part three, the final ingredient in the drunk tank recipe, the tattoo.

Relax. It's a tattoo I already had. I thank the powers that be for not waking up with a cursive "Gretchen" on my chest in the shape of a rose. Or for that matter George. For those who don't know, I have one on my shoulder. It's a heart with a ribbon around it and on the ribbon it says "Truth and Soul." It's poetic, well-drawn and was only 65 bucks at Venus Body Arts on 3rd Street in NYC back in 1993. What does it mean? I knew when I got it but I'd been up for two days at the time. As a result, when I went to sleep later...I forgot.

Yes, I'm a freaking genius. Thanks for pointing it out.

The lesson is take more notes in a book and less on your arm. But now when people ask about it I tell them one of three things:

a) "I was drunk."
b) "I'm not sure, but here's what I THINK it meant."
c) I make something up.

I mention it now because of the tap on the shoulder.

"Excuse me," I heard from behind me in a thickly accented English, "what does your tattoo mean?"

I turned to see a group of six cheerful Korean twentysomethings - boy, girl, boy, girl, boy, girl - sitting at the elbow of the bar behind me. I hadn't heard or seen them come in. That surprised me less when I glanced down and noticed I had three empty scotch highball glasses in front of me and was working on a fourth.

This is the part in Korea where I usually say something friendly but distancing, give some variation on the "I was drunk" story and move on. I do it, at least in part, so I don't have to speak in half sentences for an hour to folks who don't speak english well just to come to a punchline that says "I do stupid things sometimes."

But now...

I paused. The band was middling at best, Krista was now thirty minutes late and drinking alone is for misanthropes and the Irish. Besides, and it was mostly the scotch, but tonight I think I KNEW what my tattoo meant. I figured the hell with it.

I elaborated.

The specifics aren't important...plus I couldn't remember them anyway. But the jist of my "Truth and Soul" tattoo explanation, at least this time, was a slowly spoken rant about balance. I talked about the balance of wisdom and faith, the balance of the real and the unreal and the balance of what we can know and what we can never know.

I left out the insomnia part. It doesn't translate well.

When I started, I had been speaking to one guy, the leader of the group. He was a thin, amiable guy in a baseball cap who seemed interested but a little slow in his mental English to Korean translation. So I slowed down, I added emphasis and I started using my hands like a motivational speaker. I'm no Tony Robbins but I have some skills.

I just didn't know how much.

Apparently my uninhibited, drunken hyperbole translates well. When I finished, this guy and his five friends were giving me the kind of attention Texans give to the grave of Tom Landry. One girl spilled her drink in her rapt concentration and another guy's mouth was open. Even still, I wasn't prepared for what this guy said next.

"You are the coolest guy we have ever met."

You wouldn't think that would be followed by the applause of six young Koreans too, but well, life is surprising. The girls were all tittering and covering their mouths like I was some rockstar. Was it surreal? Sure. Did I care?

Till now my tittering groupie record was 0 and 314. Think about it.

I was totally bathing in the unforeseen adulation when, suddenly, in front of me, there was a shot glass. It made a potent thud when it hit the bar by my hand. I only then noticed the 3/4 full bottle of premium tequila that was standing in front of one of the guys.

"You must drink with us."

Let me say here that I'm usually aware of my drunkenness, at least to a common sense degree. Common sense now was telling me I'd had a few scotches, I hadn't had much to eat and I should probably start easing it off about now. Plus, as the Mexican Army military record clearly shows, tequila is always a bad idea in dicey situations.

But on the other hand...an omen.

Okay it wasn't the EXACT tequila I'd bought just two hours earlier. That would make it a miracle. Still, I'd been looking for this stuff for two months and now, in one day - BAM - here it is again. Close enough for an omen. Besides, what difference, really, are a few shots going to make?

That's when common sense realized he was going to be outvoted. He hung up his "gone fishing" sign and waited to meet me facedown in a toilet four hours from now to say his "I told you so's."

On the upside, I was now able to drink guilt free.

I smiled, offered my glass and one of the girlfriends filled it dutifully. I was about to raise it in a "salute and shoot" it when one of the young men put a hand on my wrist.

"No. It is a custom. If her glass is empty you must fill it or offend her. If you don't fill it you must drink her drink for her."

This is the part where I begin to rail on blame 5000 years of Korean tradition for customs that make little sense and more trouble. I think I respect local cultures better than some and more than most. But in this case I think some old fashioned American intolerance might have helped.

Consider: you're in a bar with folks you just met practicing a custom you don't understand or know and, wait for it, said tradition may involve you doing multiple shots out of politeness.

Raise hands if you think this is the part where the night takes a horrible turn.

If the details from this point out until I wake up in the drunk tank seem, well...less defined, forgive me. I'm basing most of it on foggy memories, accounts from friends and officially written military reports. Bear with me.

First I drank with them each individually. They all told me about themselves: One of the couples was getting married in a few months. One of the guys was about to go off to Cornell in NY state to get his PhD in city planning. Four of the folks there were civil planning and engineering students. One of the girls had dated a white guy once before and the guys all kept winking as she was filling my glass.

Don't worry. I knew I had a girlfriend named Nami. And now that this has gone out she knows too. Hi baby. Still, it was flattering.

In fact, I was having a hell of a time. These guys were THE most amiable native Koreans I'd met since I'd been here. We laughed, we sang and we were doing what I never seemed to be able to do with disparate folks who made up the Wonderland staff...we hung out. They wanted to know about me, I wanted to know about them.

Plus, coincidentally, my liquor-slurred pace of speech exactly matched the cadence they needed someone to speak English so they could understand it.

It was about then I came to a realization, an epiphany and, with all respect to alcoholics who might take offense, a moment of clarity. My profound wisdom? "this was the happiest country in the world dammit" and we should toast. Upon reflection I'm no Coleridge but it's better than my dancing theory.

That I'll get to later.

But toasting was tricky. The more shots I had now, the more I had to keep having. Try to understand, I'd fill a glass correctly and we'd toast and I'd do one shot. I'd screw it up and somehow I'd end up apologizing, shaking someone's hand and doing TWO shots: one for me and one for them. Possibly one for Korea too. Then we all drank as a group.

Toasting got trickier.

I remember a moment after that when one of the guys insisted I take his girlfriend up to the small place in front of the band with no chairs and dance with her. It didn't take much arm twisting. I was already cool. Time to show I was also jiggy. I moved, I grooved and I funked like a James Brown backup dancer. It might have helped though if the music at the time wasn't a slow song.

I think this is about the time the band first started taking notice of me.

I went back to "OUR side of the bar" as I was now calling it and was greeted by my fan club with cheers and, surprise, more shots. There was more drinking, more dancing and I think I made a promise to the guy going to Cornell to "have all my people keep an eye on him and look out for him."

Like I have "my people."

But still, do me a favor. If you see a skinny lost Korean guy in a baseball cap in Ithaca...I dunno. Buy him an ice cream cone or something. Thanks.

Continuing with my sad tale, somewhere along the way the first bottle of tequila met its Mexican maker. On cue, I tried to whip out the bottle of "Agave Special 100" I'd bought just a few short hours earlier. I now had a crazed need to tell my new long lost pals about the liquor omen that brought us together.

While I would never realize it at the time, doing so would surely have affronted the bartender and probably have made me a 180 pound shot-put to the bouncer. Fortunately, my motor skills being somewhere between "cripple" and "spastic" I couldn't work the velcro closure on my messenger bag.

But I tried. Lord I tried.

For a bag where the flap could only go up and down this thing was an enigma. The next day, sober and looking at the seams on the bag, I realized I had it on backwards and been trying to open the part without a flap. If it had been a can of beans and an opener I'd be short a thumb now. But there in the bar, I cursed my bag, threw it down and just bought another bottle of tequila from the barkeep.

For those keeping score at home that's two bottles of tequila for six people in two hours - most of it is going to the white guy. I'm no expert but math more deadly than that usually involves a spinning chamber and a .38 cartridge.

Not surprisingly this is where it gets VERY hazy.

A full two hours late, at about midnight, Krista came in with very few soldiers in tow. Mainly it was just Krista and her English teacher girl gang. They stared at me like I had a circle of baby heads around my neck. It was the first sober appraisal of me of the night.

It was not a good one.

Krista tried to get me to come over and sit with their group - to sober up and get a hold of myself - possibly at the band's request and very probably at the manager's request. Unfortunately my new best friends fought her on it and tried to keep their drunken Dionysus god for themselves...or at least for the girl who once went out with a guy from Boston. I recall some tug of war, declarations of eternal friendship and, out of nowhere, a desire to dance.

"Dancing," I told myself, "is the only true way to settle conflict."

If you can believe it, that part I remember clearly. I really wish I didn't. Then I could just chalk it up to the spastic thing again. But acting on my new Nobel Peace Prize theory, I believe I headed back out to the makeshift dance floor to a round of applause from my Korean buds. I think I may have also took out a few chairs on the way.

After that...well I don't think I lasted long.

It seems I began to enthusiastically request some songs from the Funk/Jazz band. As I recalled it, I asked that "the band open up its narrow set list and include some Southern Rock favorites including, perhaps, some Lynyrd Skynrd. If it wasn't too much trouble."

Well that's how I remembered it.

The rest of the bar just recalled me screaming "Freebird!" And throwing my arms up in victory. Repeatedly. Till I knocked over a table. After which I did the same thing while laying on the floor.

Though now it sounded like I was moaning "Fee-v-ber." Loudly.

Clearly it was time for me to leave. From what I was told there was a round of applause from the bar and the band actually "played me out" as I left. Sure I earned a "banned for life" status but it really wasn't a bad way to go.

What follows is an "as told to" story cause I sure as hell don't remember it.

Somehow Krista and her pal Kim got me up the stairs to the street in Itaewon at around the same time that the first line of unlucky Marines started trudging unhappily towards brothel row. I'm pretty sure Krista and Kim let collect myself and take a few breaths and possibly held me upright. After that, nothing. It's a completely wet and sweaty blank...till I woke up alone in the drunk tank.

That last line's got country hit written all over it doesn't it?

At the time, with my head attached by only the slimmest of margins and stuck to a bench, I consider it a miracle I could come to any conclusions. While I still didn't know how I got here or where exactly "here" was, I did come up with three things.

1) At night I had been drinking with young Koreans
2) There was tequila
3) It was morning and I was in a MILITARY drunk tank.

That much I could figure out from the recruiting posters and complete lack of Korean cops with well-worn riot sticks. I was not only thankful, but the concept stuck with me. For some reason I had woken up on an American military base in the drunk tank. In its own pathetic way it was kind of impressive. I had totally skipped the world of civilian drunk tanks and the sadist police who eat pork sandwiches in front of the rummies.

Not me. I had gone a whole level higher.

I jumped straight to the forced isolationist sobriety of a tank surrounded by men in camouflage with automatic weapons: the army drunk tank. It smelled like war and gin. And knew I was NOT supposed to be here. The fact that I was in NO way a US serviceman was not lost on me. Neither was it lost on the door sized black Sergeant that woke me up.

"Had a good time last night huh?"

He said it with the practiced understatement that implied he did not like his job but was well-versed at doing it. More important, his tone told me he had enough crap on his plate without ordinary civilians filling the dish too. Right now I was the poop on his platter.

This was not gonna be pretty.

To the large black sergeant's right stood a skinny, corn-fed private who was clearly not jaded yet by the crap of his detail to miss the fun in the best part: the wake up. He stood silent aside the large Sarge, smiling, and waiting for the floorshow to begin. It happened a minute later when I tried to stand and couldn't figure out how my knees worked.

Apparently they bend.

The private barely stifled his giggle in time. After I got the walking thing worked out, I made my way to them and leaned on their check in counter. Obviously these two men wouldn't have all the explanations for the night - some of that was going to require cultural research on my part - but he could start with the big two: where and how. Sarge went with "where" first.

"You are in the Camp Red Cloud Military Base holding area," he said with a practiced terseness. That was the military base closest to my home in Ouijambo and only a short walk home. I was almost SURE when I woke up that I was at a base in Inchon - 25 miles away. I wasn't sure why.

The reason came to me later when I realized that I'd spent twenty minutes the night before trying to convince the Koreans that "Inchon" rhymed with "bitchin."

Nonetheless I was close to home. That wasn't so bad.

"Last night you threw up," he said humorlessly.

Now that WAS bad. I can tell you I am not a "throw-up" drunk. I might be a "dancing, yelling, hook up with a scary chick" drunk but I try my damndest to keep the breakfast inside. I was about to argue the point, having no memory of it and figuring it against my basic nature. Sarge pointed at my blotchy brown shirt. I finally caught a whiff of myself. Yikes.

Advantage big black sergeant.

"More important, you threw up in a cab," said the Sarge.

Well that finally explained the "how" of how I got home. I was gonna have to get Krista and her pal Kim some nice thank you gifts. The Sarge waited for me now to recall what I had done next. He was in for a long wait. I was still a blank slate. Clearly though, going by the broad grin on Skinny the private, there was more to this tale. Sarge decided I was still clueless and went on.

"The Korean cab driver tried to throw you out of his cab but you were passed out. When he tried to move you," said the humorless Sarge, "you threw up on him."

Korean humiliation: 308, Riley Ray: 0.

"The cab driver wanted to press charges but instead took you here. We convinced him not to call the cops and brought you in here so you could sleep it off."

These guys had saved me from cops, carried my 180 pound dead weight - smelly and drunk - and put me somewhere safe. Even though I wasn't a soldier. Right then I told myself the next guy who badmouthed the US Army was going to hear this drunken story. Twice.

Later I thought better about retelling the "humiliated Riley" angle of it and just resolved to say disparaging things about the Army hater's mother. The Sarge took out my wallet from behind the counter and opened it for me to look.

"We paid him what was on the meter out of your wallet, 39,000 Won. You can check it. It's all there along with your cash voucher slip."

I gave it a cursory look and nodded glumly. I just wanted to get out of there, get home and put a bottle of aspirin between my ears. But Sarge wasn't done.

"We also have your bag," he said as he pulled that too from behind the counter. I tried to take it from him but Sarge held it just out of arms length. I had no idea where this was going.

"Just so you know that nothing's missing we vouchered everything. Army procedure." He checked items off a clipboard list as he took them out and put them on the counter. "One book about Kennedy's assassination. One harmonica. Two pens. One notepad. One half pack of tissues and 20 Wonderland English School business cards. Yes. And one more thing."

Skinny had been waiting for this all night. From behind, and with the flourish of a stage magician Sarge made the bottle appear. Then he slammed the black market tequila on the counter. This was the punchline and he made sure to punch it through the pain of my hangover.

"Your little friend," Sarge smiled. Barely. He held out a pen. "Sign here."

I signed the clipboard, collected my stuff, and noticed, for the first time that some of the black market tequila was gone. I'd been going on the assumption the debauchery ended with the cab. Apparently not.

Not much was gone, but for some reason, somehow, that bottle had gotten cracked last night. Maybe I made the cabbie do shots with me. Maybe I poured some out the window for my dead homies. Or mayb¤§, as my shirt seemed to indicate, I thought it was cologne. I'm pretty sure I will never find out. Like Atlantis, it will remain a mystery for the ages.

Till then I'm blaming it on Skinny.

I said some mumbled but earnest thank you's to the Sarge and the tequila thief Skinny and wandered out into the 6AM sunrise of Korea. As the Korean Army guy at the guard gate gave me a knowing half salute - he'd obviously seen me come in - I waved and crossed the main street towards home.

A "very bad night." All because of some Asian custom that was invented when it took you 50 ales to feel tipsy. I say with complete seriousness that 5000 years of Korean drinking tradition has given me only the second blackout night of my life and my first since I left college. But, in considering it, I also had to take into account that, perhaps in retalliation, I'd thrown up on a Korean cab driver.

I'm calling that a push.

When I got to my house, I took many, many aspirin and crawled into bed, making sure to set my alarm for three hours later. I had a Sunday date with Nami and, hangover or not, I was gonna make it.

Nami arrived promptly at 11AM and I greeted her with a kiss, daisy fresh from the shower. I felt pretty good. Actually, very good. As our lips locked I came to realize that, along with very little memory, I also had surprisingly few after-effects from one of the few "very bad" nights of my life.

The more I thought about it, the more amazing that seemed. Anywhere along the way a lot worse things could have happened: I could have ended up in a Korean jail, a bar fight with a band of funky Marines or under a fishing boat by the shores of Inchon. As I smooched Nami that good morning peck I realized, even after last night, I had a full day with a pretty girl with my only pennance for my troubles being, really, a bad stomach. Mild Nausea.

That's a victory.

Finally I got one on the board. The record was now Korean Humiliation: 308, Riley Ray: 1. I grant you, not the best bragging E.R.A. but I'd finally gotten ONE W on the board in this country. I was the champion and I was gonna run with it.

"Okay, Nami soon said sweetly, "so you said you either wanted to go to an amusement park or go horseback riding today. I think we should go to the Amusement park. What do you think?"

I really only had one thought: "Undefeated, and STILL champion, Korean Humiliation 309, Riley Ray: 0.

Thanks for playing.

2001-06-11T06:27:00.000-04:00

A number of folks have asked me what I need from the Western World. Well, up till recently, all I asked for was women. Now I've got a great one of those so you can stop trying to Fed-Ex me high school sophmores. They'd probably get lost in customs anyway.

But now that I've given the question some thoughtful thought, in case any of you still want to send me anything, here's what I'd like: I could use some books, some Kraft mac and cheese and any recent magazines that DON'T feature the words "Ladies Home" or "Crochet" in the title.

In fact, any form of reading material at all would be welcome. The only thing I can read over here is the small print on ingredient labels and I've learned it's probably for the best if I don't. Anything interesting, anything engaging and anything written in ENGLISH.

Yeah I saw that coming you jokers.

Here's my mailing address at the school:

Riley Ray Chiorando
c/o Wonderland School
4F, 715-1, Changdong,
Dobonggu, Seoul, Korea 132-040

For those who think this is the end of the "mail-me-a-care-pack" story...think again. And get comfy.

While Korea is indeed a land with few safety controls built into it, the tiny amount that did make it to the national level somehow all got put into the Customs department. There are restrictions, there are regulations and there are duties if you send me anything too expensive. So let the bureaucratics begin.

Let's start with the banned stuff. When sending me something through the US postal system, you CANNOT send me, under any circumstances, the following things:

-Counterfeit postage stamps.
-Documents, books, printed papers, engravings or other articles contrary to public security.
-Firearms, sabres, and swords for military use.
-Firing caps and loaded metal cartridges for portable firearms.
-Textile fabrics.
-Weights and measures.
-Machines and paper for making cigarettes.
-Salt

Most of it's no big deal. I didn't plan on challenging national security here, mounting any military campaigns or opening a shirt factory. Still, I'm disappointed that I won't be able to teach these kids the illegal "pounds and feet" system. And so much for my plan to home manufacture the cigarette brand "Riley's Charcoal Dawgs."

As for that salt thing, I know you think I just added that. I didn't. Seriously. Look it up. I asked a Korean about it and they said these local salt guys don't fool around. This country's got a domestic salt trust that makes those HMO lobbyists look like a bunch of pikers. Maybe it's our idodizing, maybe they just hate Mr. Morton. I don't know. Whatever. Just keep it. And don't say anything. You even joke about that stuff and they'll cut you off at the knees and leave you bleeding.

Plus, I think they got that "putting salt in a wound" thing down to a science.

Anyhow, those are the absolute prohibitions. If you had that stuff in your basement, keep it there as far as South Korea is concerned. Now, let's get to the RESTRICTED things that you can SEND me, but only in limited amounts. They are the following:

-Tobacco and ginseng may only be imported by the Korean government.
-Coins; paper currency; banknotes; currency notes; securities payable to bearer; jewelry; manufactured and unmanufactured platinum, gold and silver; precious stones; and other valuable articles are admitted only if sent in registered letter packages.
-Monthly or weekly journals are admitted to the extent of three copies per person and per issue; they are subject to a permit from the government if they exceed the limit of three copies.

Okay I figure that first one is so "Marlboro" cigarettetes don't take out "Simple" cigarettes (seriously, that's the name) as the top dog in Korea's smoking circles. The second is so I don't topple any economies. As I'm nearly destitute in the US (but ironically a Millionaire here), no big deal. That last one is a little goofy though. I can get 3000 copies of the NY Post but only 3 copies of the Journal of The American Medical Association. So "Cancer Update" can be stopped at the border but "Headless Body in Topless Bar" makes it through.

Apparently it's not so much content as style.

Now, aside from those restrictions and prohibitions, you can pretty much send me anything else. Really. For more info, you can go to: http://ircalc.usps.gov/ Where it asks for countries, use South Korea. It'll tell you about restrictions here, calculate shipping costs and even tell you what forms to fill out. So if your local mail guy gives you any grief, you can just tell him to put down his AK 47 for a minute while you quote him chapter and verse from the Postal Service's official web site.

But I would duck at that point.

But, back to those forms. All kidding aside, when you DO mail me stuff, according to the USPS, you must at least use a "Sender's Declaration (green label)", no matter what you send. Basically this just tells what's in the box or bag. So what do you need besides that? Well it depends on what you send. But if you send something OVER 1 pound and valued at less than 400 bucks then it looks like, in nearly all cases, you need to fill out form 2976. If it's less than a pound and non-dutiable, then it's just that green label. What's dutiable? I think liquor. And cigarettes. And possibly porno.

Okay that last one is a guess.

Finally, should you send me anything by Fed-ex, UPS or any of the other other courier services it is important that you NOT specify value of the item as OVER 45 bucks US. If you do, I will have to pay some really large amount of this worthless Korean money to get my package. Also, for values larger than that amount, I MAY have to explain to Customs, in a written format, the exact nature and use I will apply to any of my shipments. This means put DOWN the 50 dollar blow-up love doll and DON'T send me 60 dollars worth of hemmoroid ointment. Though that would be funny.

But don't. I'd like to avoid Korean prison this month.

Anyhow, that's the deal. Paperwork, packaging and a trip to a pasty, petty man who thinks he looks cool in navy shorts and dress shoes. I know. It's a hassle and a half. But if you do send me mail, it WILL be appreciated. Truly. And for those less altruistic...you will get one heck of a gift back. Why? Because, near as I can tell, the regulations for sending stuff INTO the US are nearly nil. I can send anything, just so as long as it's not a plant, a plan for a nuke or a bootleg copy of "Gladiator" on DVD.

And they're kinda flexible on the nuke thing I think.

So if you've been planning on a little parcel, go ahead and fill out the form. In less than a month, you'll be getting a sweet taste of Seoul in one form or another. Dolls, art, even soldier-shaped sugar and pepper shakers. Yes, it's the wrong spice, but no sense taking chances. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I don't want to wind up in a rocky field somewhere, ending my days as a South Korean Deer lick.

And any of you guys starts calling me "Salty" you're off the mailing list.

2001-06-06T19:05:00.000-04:00

Well this week's note WAS going to be about the dangers of crossing the bridge by my house and how cool it is to date a Korean woman who can tell me when I'm buying flour instead of laundry soap. I say WAS because an event here at school has been so surreal that it...well it's jumped to the top of the list.

I have a new kid in my class named "Kramer."

First, his hair is normal. Second, and this is gonna take some setup, his parents were NOT influenced by the local cable system so this ISN'T a cultural phenomenon. There is no "yadda yadda yadda" in kim-chee country. Period. That would involve a whole lot more TV programmming in Korea than I get now. Said TV is, in the language I speak anyway, five channels. In the Korean language I don't speak? 32.

In case you think I'm being an American TV snob about the other 32, you're wrong. I'll watch damn near anything so long as it comes in on that glass faced box in the corner. In NYC where I grew up they used to show a picture of a fireplace on Christmas day for 8 hours straight. They called it "The Yule Log" show. This was my favorite holiday program from ages 4 through 8 when it was replaced by that Rudolph special with the Heat Miser and the Snow Miser. So bearing in mind that I am as democratic a TV watcher as has EVER been born, lemme tell you what unwatchable nonsense is on here.

First, there's a ton of kids channels where they show cartoons where nearly nothing happens. Really. Cartoon Character appears. He smiles. He meets other cartoon characters. The End. It's like Bugs Bunny minus the Acme company. If this was the alternative, I think I can finally see how Pokemon became so popular here. It still doesn't explain why 12 year old boys where "Mickey Mouse" jumpers but it's a start.

Then there's also at least three channels where they teach business English. Korean people are put into various situations - work, after work and, my favorite, personal situations with members of the opposite sex. From what I've seen, apparently the most important thing you can say in English in any of these situations is "Do you like baseball?" These Korean guys are never gonna get much Canadian business with that attitude.

Or Canadian women either.

Then, there are the 10 shopping channels. From what I can tell, they sell, for the most part, khaki pants, rice cookers and floor mats. Basically it's a complete lifestyle plan...minus shirts and shoes.

Now, there's also four or five soap opera channels. Fun right? Not exactly. In said daytime dramas, the men and women rarely kiss but men and OTHER men bathe together frequently to talk about the lack of no kissing. I'm not making it up. Most plots go like this:

-Man and Woman love each other from afar.
-Man goes to bath house to talk to Best Buddy about girl.
-Man passes soap and finds out that she is from the wrong family.
-Man and Woman see each other again.
-Man and Woman touch hands in some angsty commiseration of their denied love.
-Man returns to bath house.
-Man gets more encouragement, advice and loofah scrubbing from Best Buddy.
-Rinse and repeat.

I've watched hours of this. The only deviation seems to be the bath house of choice and how angsty the hand touch is. Personally, there's only two ways I can figure it. A) The "soap opera" genre here is ACTUALLY underwritten by the Korean Soap Industry and they go nuts on product placement. Or B) the washing is cultural and this is clearly the dirtiest country in the world.

But not in the fun way. If it were they'd show the women bathing too.

Moving on, there's also a karaoke channel where you can sing along to mellow Korean tunes in your house. This for the guy who can't wait to make it to the nine different karaoke rooms near any given place in Seoul. Six in the bad parts of town.

Finally, there's my favorite network: the GO channel. There's a channel where two guys, usually old and serious, play the board game "GO." That is the bulk of the programming. The rest is comprised of analysis. Following the games, serious korean men do expert arm-chair quarterbacking of the GO games. The main jist of the analysis is to restate where "black went wrong and completely dishonored himself" and where "white made a masterstroke bordering on complete genius. I wish to have his babies."

Black. White. Winner. Loser. 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The GO channel. That's it. It's engrossing in a way that only devotees of C-Span could truly appreciate. Although, I watched it for an hour one night when I was too lazy to change the channel. After either 4 games or one really long one - I'm not sure which - I had a programming epiphany.

Those Monopoly guys are sitting on the next Korean "Survivor".

But back to what I can watch...five channels. Five. As some of you know I have had a longer relationship with television than with any single person in my life. Several romantic relationships in my life have ended with questions about TV. Usually when I'm asked by a girl, half-joking, which one - TV or them - I would take to a desert island.

For those scoring at home, the correct answer is not "Do I get HBO?"

But now I'm in a five channel land. Which really wouldn't be so bad. Honestly. If these were five great channels I'd be fine. Hell if they were three good channels and two bad ones it wouldn't be so bad. Unfortunately my five channels, in English, that I can understand, are...educational. Yes. Feel my pain.

-CNN-Financial
-Armed Forces Television
-BBC World
-The National Geographic Channel
-Fashion TV

Yes, quite a lineup huh? It's like it was picked by a military banker from England who loves animals and knows way too much about Prada to like women.

Now, whether I planned to or not, I'm learning from my TV and it's got nothing to do with programming my VCR. Let's be clear: would I PREFER mindless reruns of "Cheers" and "Friends?" Yes. Would I mug an elderly priest for a satellite dish if I thought he could get "West Wing?" I'd hit him so hard his collar'd catch a DC-10. But, until said TV Padre comes around, with those five channels I know a lot.

I know how far the Nasdaq is dropping (a lot), what to do with unexploded ordinance (call my C.O.), what the British take on the world is (America is a big dumb galoot with tanks), how often Marmosets have babies (two every five months) and what Givenchy is doing for spring (dark and short. FYI, they did it for fall too).

Along with my daily exercising, the books I am voraciously reading, the Korean I am being forced to learn and the paintings I have been doing, I have a reasonably good chance of coming back to America a truly well rounded individual. Uplifting isn't it? And yet I'd trade it all for Direct TV right now.

Call it American well rounded.

However, and this bears restating, NO "Seinfeld." None. I am as far away from the sitcom universe as you can possibly be without being an over-sudsy, back scrubbing, Korean soap star. So how did I come to have a 9 year old Korean boy named "Kramer" in my class?

Well I named him. And he didn't want to be called Waylon.

It's time for part five in our series on "wacky Korean educational concepts." In the Korean Hogwons here (english schools), the schools like to emphasize not only American language but American culture. Thus, when any student signs up, he discards his honorable Korean name at the door and begins using his new "American" name.

Which brings me to Kramer.

Now remember those fairly advanced afternoon classes I was so happy I had? I always guessed I was pretty lucky in that department. All my kids knew at least a modicum of English, all were well motivated and there wasn't a sociopath in the bunch.

Today my luck ran out like a roll of singles in a strip bar.

"Re-organizing" they called it. The more apt definition was "we can get another 40 kids in here till the fire marshall gets antsy." In exchange for the bright motvated kids who too often picked their noses, our school administrator, Jean, gave me a new class of total non-English speakers...who too often picked their noses.

When I say non-English speakers I mean total. When I said "sit" they gave me a dumb look. When I said "hello" they were mute. In fact if it wasn't for some word I said that reminded them of the Korean word for "poop" I don't think I would've gotten much of a response from any of them.

As Jean was about to leave me with my non-English-speaking charges she reminded me to call them by their American names. I told Jean I didn't know what those names were and, judging by how much English they knew, I had less chance of getting that info than of saying "poop" again.

So Jean asked them, in Korean, if anyone had American names. Three kids piped up and rolled off the heavily accented names that they and their parents had given strong thought to: Eric, Erin and Mark.

I smiled at the lone girl in the class. She said "hi." I said, "I have a sister named Erin." She smiled and said "hi" again. I figured I should teach "sister" and "brother" at some point in the future and then mention it again.

It was then I noticed that four kids had not mentioned their English names - all boys. I asked Jean, again, what their English names were. She paused. "Okay, you name them," said Jean. And she left. Boom. Just like that. I was now in charge of naming four kids.

I always thought in this position I'd have a wife for backup.

Now some of you are going to think my naming that kid "Kramer" was Riley being cruel and funny to some Korean kid. Well if you turn it around to where the Korean kids are being cruel and funny to Riley you'd be about right. The next 40 minutes of class was spent with me rattling off every single name I could think of and these kids mutely shaking their heads "no."

It was like some painful indian naming ceremony where "stands with a fist" kept punching me.

The normal names rejected included Rob, Bob, Ted, Ed, Jack, John, Jonah, Jeff and close to a hundred others. After 20 minutes I finally got one kid to settle on Dave and another to settle on Nick. I was pretty happy but that still left two. And I was running out of normal names. So I dove into the less than normal names. Being 20 minutes into it at this point, the names became largely TV and movie related. This was more desperation that inspiration. More important...they still rejected them.

They turned down Ernest, Elwood, Garth, Wayne, Spanky, Alfalfa (okay I was on a roll), Sam, Josh, Toby, Josiah (my homage to the West Wing...man I miss that show), Louie, Alex, Bobby, Jim (my Taxi tribute), Humphrey, Clark, Cary, Randolph (a classic movie showcase) as well as random selections from the world of Country Music, Star Wars, and the TV shows NYPD Blue, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Benson (I was very tired.)

Now I was just rattling off whatever came to my head. Realizing that I could really use a Gray's Papaya hot dog I said Gray, which they passed on. Then I thought of NY. Then the upper west side and, eventually, Seinfeld. Hey it was worth a shot.

"Jerry."
They shook their heads.
"George."
They shook their heads.
"Elaine...no wait, don't say yes. That¡¯s a girl's name. (a pause) Unless you really like Elaine."
They shook their heads.
"Damn." I kept going.
"Kramer." At this point, one of the nameless two, a menace in shortpants who fell out of his chair repeatedly, shook his head "no."

Then he fell out of his chair again.

But the other kid didn't. That tall lanky 10 year old with a smile like he was smuggling 8 extra teeth...paused. A pause. He didn't say no. And, as I did the math, there's a good chance that was because he didn't know how to say yes. At this point that was close enough for me.

"You are Kramer."

He furrowed his brow and nodded in almost a Krameresqe fashion. And that's how I got a "Kramer" in my class. Unfortunately, that still left the no-name terror to his left who was now actively kicking anything he could get his Digimon sandals close to. That's where any and all of the inspiration in this thing hit me. He was obviously a troublemaker, an imp and, judging by his strength at kicking out chairs, a possible bully. I figured out his name. And he was getting it whether he liked it or not.

"You are Butch."

He actively resisted the name, as most given that moniker will. Possibly because it was similar to some Korean word for frog or girl. Mainly I think it was because Butch is a resister. Butches usually are. But popular opinion was against Butch in this case.

I let the class decide.

"Class? Butch?" I pointed to the spquirming future sociopath, "This Butch? Butch?" They nodded, they cheered and those who could assent in broken English mumbled "Yes." This was indeed Butch. All his squirming wasn't gonna get him out of it now.

I spent the last 40 minutes of class introducing "hello" "goodbye" the letters A, B, C and R as well as the colors Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue and Purple. It seemed natural to try and get them to put these skills together to draw a rainbow - a symbol which has no lifestyle connotation in Korea and was thus a useful teaching tool. I also got some leftover candy from the refirgerator and used it as a bribe for good behavior. It worked beautifully for behavior control.

I realized, with this class, candy was going to be another useful teaching tool.

Then they all drew rainbows and, as they did, they named all named the colors. At the end, they all tried to write the letters for the word "Rainbow." Frankly I think it was a pretty good first day lesson seeing as how only two of the kids had the textbook.

Kramer's was, by far, the best in the class. He did his talented, hipster-doofus namesake proud. Eric, Mark, Erin and Dave all drew passable pictures with fine penmanship. Nick drew a rainbow with a tail. Nick's an odd little egg.

Then I came to Butch's work.

Butch's penmanship was solid aside from the backwards lowercase B which, I would add, most Korean kids seem to get wrong. It's cute in a Little Rascals kind of way, though it makes me worry when I go out and order from a menu with the word "beer." Now Butch's rainbow, while rough, was big and bright and he had gotten all the colors in the right order. For me, day one? A miracle. I told him "good job." Then I gave him his reward candy and he smiled at me with all six of the teeth he had in his mouth.

Then, for the rest of the class, Butch proceeded to add the rest of his red crayon to his rainbow enterprise right up until the bell rang. An entire red crayon. Sure, it was a good rainbow but it was a very RED rainbow. For some reason this kid REALLY liked the color red. Now I paused.

I was sure I'd named him right with Butch, but it also made me worry what new depths this name might prod him on to. I looked at this kid with the red crayon kicking Eric under the table. Then I started calculating the minutes till someone said "Butch get him" or "Butch, I bet you can't eat a live frog" or "Think you used enough dynamite there Butch?" Then I thought, maybe I should have named him Lawrence.

I'm sure this is how Ghengis Khan's mother felt.

2001-06-06T01:57:00.000-04:00

I realize I haven't written for a bit but I've been waiting for a picture to attach at the end of this letter. And I have. It's cute and cuddly and if one of you guys says a single bad word about my blond hair you're off the mailing list.

Anyhow things are afoot here at the Wonderland English school. Mainly just toddlers I step on and blame the heavier little kids for, but other things too. For one thing, on the topic of accidents, we are setting a Wonderland School record for most children injured in a week. And it's only Wednesday. Here's the blood tally:

-A 5 year old boy ran full on into a door handle as another kid opened the door.

-A little girl named Joy sprained her arm when three of her friends tried to hug her. At once. Said arm was re-injured when Joy came back from resting and aforementioned friends tried to hug the arm to make it feel better. Judging by Joy's screams, it didn't work as well as the girls had hoped.

-A little 4 year old girl named Rusia watched the Disney film "Dinosaur." It's a film filled with beautiful visuals, a smart kids storyline and theme that emphasizes the fragile balance of life. What Rusia took away from it was "scratching with claws looks pretty cool." Her assault tally stands at three in her class alone.

-Jon, one of mine, was upset at having lost at dodgeball. Joan (pronounced Jo-Ann), the most intelligent and sensitive girl in my class, tried to cheer Jon up by tickling him. The response to her cheer was deadly swift. With Bruce Lee speed, Jon whacked her - full Tae Kwon Do - in the belly, neatly doubling Joan over. Before she could even lose her breath, Jon took advantage of her prone positioning to then whack her in the back. The incident required two ice packs, a dessert bribe for Joan and one long trip to the principal's office for Jon. The principal explained to Jon why Joan needs her body and why it would be bad to break it. Judging from Jon's followup bout, a shot to Josh's head the next day, I'm not sure the speech took. But his aim seems to be improving.

Still, my favorite injury of the week involves my stocky kindergartener, Mark. Remember him? The crier? Well he played with Rodney-teacher this week. Rodney is a big bearlike teacher from Newfoundland who's a big fan of the WWF. More important he likes to roughhouse with the kids.

Yeah so you see where this is going.

He picked up several students, held them above his head and twirled them, threw them or tickled them. The kids loved it. They squealed, they shouted, they even formed a line. And these kids HATE to form a line. Inevitably, the front of the line came to Mark the crier.

It's helpful to note here that, while he appears normal, Mark MAY be the single densest child I have ever met. I'm not kidding. He's almost in danger of impoding. This kid is so heavy it feels like he's eating chrome blocks for fun. You laugh, but given how much of a picky eater he is, I gotta figure he's getting his sustenance from somewhere. My bet is there's a metal yard somewhere in Seoul that's a few pounds shy.

In any case it all lead to "the incident."

What happened is, unlike the other kids who simply waited for Rodney to toss them, Mark decided to add a little momentum. He ran at the empty armed Canadian teacher. Rodney, catching the porky Korean on a hop that some competent shortstops would miss, put his hands on Mark and up he went. Unfortunately, by that point, Mark had become a squirming, sweaty, unbelievably heavy child-monster. Rodney simply wasn't prepared for something like that on a running leap. It's possible a forklift wouldn't have been. So the elements were all there: momentum, mass. kid-sweat.

Something had to give.

Mark went up, arced in the air ungracefully - like some skydiving baby hippo - and then slipped. He slid through Rodney's giant hands like a greasy porkchop. Then he fell the five and a half feet to the ground.

On his head.

Apparently, to everyone who saw the incident, they pretty much assumed Rodney broke Mark. I mean really. He made a sound like a sack of marbles dropping when he hit the floor. There was, in that split second of quiet, the very real possiblity that maybe he even did something to his neck.

Of course then Mark started crying, which was a relief. Then he kept crying for a good three hours...which was less of a relief. Mark's a crier. However, and this event is likely to remain singularly unmatched for the rest of Mark's life, for ONCE...he had something to cry about.

In the fall, Mark's head was left completely undamaged and unblemished in any way - all of which supports my "Mark the chrome-eater" theory. But, hours later, still crying AND holding his arm I thought something might actually be wrong. I convinced the school administrator, Jean, to take him to the doctor. Turns out he lightly fractured his wrist. Still, in the greater scheme of things, it was pretty impressive. This fall would've crippled an olympic athlete. This kid practically bounced away with nothing. But in the end, Mark learned the same lesson all kids do from such events.

Casts are cool.

Upon his return to the classroom, Mark was greeted like a Medal of Honor winner. For his bravery, his body bounce and, most important, his cool cast, the class gave Mark a hero's welcome. For the normally unpopular Mark this was a whole new world. He was confident. He was secure, He was even well liked.

It lasted 12 and half minutes.

It ended abruptly when he started crying about getting that crappy purple crayon. Shortly thereafter he became his usual social outcast self again. Mark's a crier. But,writing with his left hand, he's a much more legible crier.

All in all though, I think the most remarkable thing in the whole episode is what the mother did. At this point back home, school workers would be starting on their world championship alibis and find a way to blame some part-time janitor. Here? Mark's mom was truthfully informed of the whole incident. What happened after was theo most astonishing thing. Point blank: if this was a US school a 6 year old would be looking at a hefty settlement offer, a school would be remorsefully calling its insurance agent and the local paper would be gleefully running Rodney out of town on a rail with the headline "Child Dropper! Is it Wrestling's fault?"

But this is Korea.

Mark was back the next day, happily I would add. The only action Mom took was to ask me, in broken English, if I could please help Mark with eating his lunch...if it wasn't too much trouble. No lawsuit, no angry words, no scarred-for-life child afraid to come back. Just Mark, saying "Mista Kee-o-ran-do-ko" too loud and racking his brain figuring out what to do when we sang the song for the day: "Clap your hands."

No repercussions. None. Not even a reprimand for Rodney. In fact, later that day, given how much trouble Mark is, someone asked if I had paid him to drop Mark. I said with all earnestness, I would never have Mark dropped. Gagged like a circus monkey yes, but dropped no.

But I did spend a good hour after that trying to figure a way to accidentally drop Jake to see if it would help his pronunciation. For those who care, the details of dropping the school owner's son proved too difficult to finagle. Still, it's nice to know it's a backup plan for my king of the lightning jab, Jon.

Although if I use it my backup story is self defense.

In other school news, the curriculum for my kindergarteners has now changed. My old coursework? Teaching the kids concepts and linking those concepts to new subjects through repetition. My new role?

Karaoke host.

Here's the deal. Most Korean parents trot out their kids like parlor games when friends come over. This is to show off the child's new skills, how much they've grown and possibly to show that no Kia trucks are using them as bumper art at the moment.

The main thing the folks like their kids to do for show and tell is English songs. Preferably upbeat ones that involve some sort of physical movement. Like "I'm a little teapot," "London Bridge" or my personal favorite "What's the Matter." In that one a forlorn kid says he's hot, sick, tired and thirsty.

It came in handy one day when I explained "hangover."

Anyhow the edict came down: Our kids' parents all think their younguns are well-taught, happy and fulfilling their potential but, unless these kids start singing every word in "Row Row your Boat" clearly, mommy and daddy are taking their kids elsewhere.

So we're the school from Fame now.

Unfortunately, most of our kids will now SING "Row, Row, Row your Boat" but have no idea what a boat is. For my kids, who can practically talk to strangers in English, but have little muscial talent, it's especially worrisome. We are going to get hung up on "ten little monkey jumping on the bed" for two months minimum. And that's only if Jon doesn't decide to pantomime the part where "one fell off and broke his head." Basically, that whole "we are here to teach" mantra in the Wonderland Instructor's Manual has officially been replaced by "We are here to make sure the tuition checks keep rolling in."

Not that I can really blame anyone. This is a business and we're here to help it. I guess what really gets me is that, unlike the US, there isn't even the PRETENSE that we're doing something educational here. The truth is, if the parents all said tomorrow "You know, our kids really like eating paste" we'd be serving it in four flavors. So now they say "the kids must sing" and we turn into a broadway touring company. For me this means in the hour where it's not lunch, bathroom breaks or playtime I teach my kids to sing...and throw the phonics book out the window. Which Josh was gonna do anyway.

Luckily they were vague about SPECIFIC singing requirements. Last week I taught them "The lion sleeps tonight." All they got right was the "wimbaweh" part. Frankly, with my mispronouncers I gotta keep it simple. This week I taught them "Ma-na-ma-nah."

You know it. This one: "doo doooo doo doo doo...Ma-na-ma-nah...doo doooo doo doo doo...Ma-na-ma-nah...doo doooo doo doo doo, doo doo doo, doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doooo...Ma-na-ma-nah..." And so on. Repeat till the kids are hypnotized or till someone throws up.

Okay so there are no real words. With my kids? Simplicity. That's the key. And band aids. And hiding the markers so no one gets "medium" with three Ms tattooed on their head. It's only funny the first time. Besides, next week I'm teaching them "Great Balls of Fire." That's cool, complicated and there's almost nothing wrong with it. I mean unless the kids all start saying "Kiss me baby...feels good..." to cops. Hmmm.

Hell, what do I care. That's a curriculum issue.

Anyhow I'm ending this by attaching a pic of me and my kindergarten class - "The Peter Rabbit Class."

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1694563&a=13011870&p=49023624

In the photo we are all saying "Peter Rabbit number 1!" Or most of us. I think Jake is saying "potato." Who are they? Clockwise, starting with the kid in the green shirt, they are Jake, Mark, Jon, Sherry, Josh, Joan and James. They're good kids. All of em. Even Jake, who's as dumb as a houseplant and mispronounces "cat." To be completely, honest, even with the hitting, the nose-picking and the way they mangle my name I love em. I do.

But if you see one missing in the next picture I've gone to plan B.

2001-06-04T23:28:00.000-04:00

Well I guess I have to stop whining about my love life.

Not that it hasn't been fun. The dating dearth has given me time to write and paint, even try my had at some carpentry. Really. I'm no Bob Villa, but I can recondition a desk, modify a picture frame, I can even tell you when a wall is poured concrete as opposed to wood. Of course that did take me six nails to figure out. And two hammers.

But, given my improved building skills, another month of no-love life and I woulda built a fine looking deck. I think maple. Maybe with a light varnish. And a month after that I would've thrown myself off it out of sexual frustration.

Luckily, all decks aside, this came in the nick of time.

In the last two weeks I have been on five dates with a beautiful woman here in Korea. She works with me at the Wonderland School as a Curriculum Researcher. Before I made my move, first I carefully considered all the possible pitfalls of workplace romance. Then I took into account that I was now ready to order an ugly mail order bride so she'd get here quicker. The tiebreaker came when someone told that this particular woman thought I was cute.

I made my move while she was still loopy.

Now lemme tell you about the lady. Her name is Nami Cho. She's thirty-two, she's beautiful and she's Korean. That's right, Korean. Now I realize I postulated the chances of me getting a shot with a Korean woman here were slim. Actually I put them somewhere between the Red Sox winning the World Series and George W. winning the Nobel prize for Physics. Well I stand by my previous assertions.

Nami is what you'd call a special exception.

For one thing she speaks near perfect english. She majored in it during her Education degree and even got her Masters at Temple U. in Philadelphia. That's practiaclly my neighborhood. Okay, it's not NYC, but it's close enough. By the way, all Philly folks who wish to take exception at that point can, respectfully, stuff it. I'm 8000 miles away, I'll figure geography however I want.

Moving on to Nami's other fine qualities, there's the fact that she is western-minded, funny as an Irishman and, quite possibly, the funkiest native Korean woman I have ever met. She dresses like she knocked over an Urban Outfitters, she dances really well and she can sing all the words to "Brick House" by the Commodores. "Brick House." I would assert these are deep and meaningful qualities in any woman, regardless of global location. Speaking of "Brick House," well...how to put this? The hell with it: Nami IS one.

Truly. She's mighty mighty, she's letting it all hang out.

While this is no slam on the Korean female physique, the majority of the women here, for better or worse are a size three and look like asian versions of Kate Moss. Nami? Marilyn Monroe. Whatever you're thinking, make it prettier, funkier and friendlier and you'll get Nami.

All told, the math here isn't hard: there is, near as I can count it, ONE young Korean woman with a western type figure in the entire city of Seoul. I've looked. Often. And with vigor. There's only one. Nami. And she's dating me. It the sort of thing that can make a guy very religious. Or make him wait for lightning to eventually strike him in the loins.

"But Riley," you might ask, "aren't you the least bit intimidated? She is after all a 32 year old, hourglass-figured, incredibly funny, very intelligent, world-traveled BILINGUAL woman. Not a girl. A woman. In every sense of the word. Do you not feel unprepared? Unqualified? Not the least bit insecure?" The fact is, under most circumstances like this, well I might. But then I just think of one thing:

She's got a curfew.

That's right. A curfew. Nami is a thirty two year old woman, who in any other city in the Western World, would be leading life around by the nose, painting the town red, taking it to the next level, insert next cliche here. But here? In Korea? If she doesn't call in by 10 PM her mommy gets mad. If she wants to stay over she has to send her mom on a two day vacation. And if she doesn't get home by midnight? She gets grounded. Say it with me. Grounded.

Remember when our parents used to say "You don't like it? Then move out!" Kinda makes you see it in a whole new light huh?

In fact, from what I understand of Korean culture, the whole "treat you like a teenager" thing is the norm. Women here, and a lot of men, if unmarried, may end up living with their parents until they're forty. You heard me, forty. Sometimes even longer.

But until those wedding bells ring, children, and women especially, are considered as immature as 12 year olds. They live at home, they keep their rooms and the parents treat the kids with the fantasy that they're still growing teeth...as opposed the fact that they're getting closer to dentures everyday.

On the upside, I think when you hit menopause you get an extra hour added to your curfew.

Nonetheless, the whole immature regard for women thing...well I won't lie, it's working out for me. Not only does it add a cool teenage vibe to all possible 'makeout on the couch' sessions, it also levels the playing field. Here in Korea I'm a single guy with my own apartment, a job and I don't live with my parents. Plus I didn't have to turn 50 to get any of it. I guess it's true. No matter where you are, every woman just wants to hear three little words.

I just didn't know in Korea the words were "Location, location, location."

Thus my status equalization and confidence with Nami. I do, however, realize said status equalization ends with a plane ticket west. But, till then, I've got charm, romance and a stack of articles about airline safety problems I'm thinking about leaving on her desk.

So lemme tell you about the first date.

Now with a girl like Nami, you really have to consider all aspects of that first outing. This is an important first impression, so I gave it some thought. I wanted something exciting, something unusual and something that would get her blood pumping while she was next to me. I decided to take her to one Seoul's great amusement parks. Thrill rides, skill games and the universally agreed upon aphrodisiac, cotton candy. It was a lock...right up till the sky turned gray and wet its pants.

So I took her to the track.

Now for all you doubters out there, Harvard once did a study showing that roller coasters and winning at gambling were two things guaranteed to produce the same endorphins that we make when we think we're in love. Do either of the above when you're on a date with someone - BAM - instant connection. Of course the catch in said statement is "winning at gambling."

And if you think I'm going somewhere financially painful with this, you're psychic. That, and I could have used you two weeks ago to pick me a horse in the 7th race.

Don't get me wrong. The basic idea behind the track thing, it actually worked out. Nami was game, even excited about the whole idea of going there. She'd never been there and she'd lived in Seoul most of her life. Score one for Riley Ray and originality. Once we got there, the atmosphere was half the fun: the smoke-filled betting area, the lounge that smelled like beer and 50 years of loss, the lines of bettors - filled with the desperate and semi-desperate alike. It was all even romantic in a kind of noir way. We were there and we were in the moment. We playing the ponies, we were hanging with Korea's underworld, we were eating corn dogs and coke.

Okay so it wasn't all noir. Sue me.

At first, everything went to schedule. We got to the Seoul Racecourse during Saturday's sixth race. While it was still raining, I figured the weather gave me a chance to expound about the concept of "mudders" in horseracing. I went on for about five minutes saying stuff like "These babies can ride the mud. Oh yeah. Mudders. Mud."

Then I realized this was nowhere near romantic first date conversation.

So we bought a racing book. This was a stroke of genius, I had her translate the horses and the stats while I explained, from memories of my Aunt Kitty and Off Track Betting when I was 9, what the each term meant. The upside is we got to stand close while she pointed at stuff. The downside is so did the guys who followed for the next hour.

In hindsight, this one was pretty easy to figure. There are a lot of places in Seoul where you'll see a few white guys. The racetrack is not one of them. Now I know what I'd think if I saw me and Nami out together. "This guy is either rich or he knows who killed Kennedy."

This, however is not what the chronic racetrack loser makes of the situation. He sees a fairly well heeled white guy show up with a beautiful Korean woman on his arm. To said track-hound this can mean only one thing.

"That white bastard's got a tip."

And so we began the first of our few rounds of unprofitable betting with an entourage. They weren't even subtle about it. At one point a guy actually leaned in and moved Nami's hand so he could see the horse I'd half circled. Then he ran to the betting window and dropped 10 bucks Korean on it. If I'd known any Korean I might have told him that circle was where I was testing my pen.

On the upside, after that bet he stopped following us. The downside is I think I lost 10 times what he did. If I ever figure out the exchange rate I'll let you know for sure. Then I'll cry like my name is Mary.

It wasn't so much that we lost. It wasn't even that "we" lost with "my" money. This was a date after all. With a beautiful woman. Along with comfortable socks and beef jerky in bulk, that's the SORT of thing you're supposed to spend money on. No, what miffed me was the ways we lost.

We lost betting on favorites. We lost betting on odds. We lost betting on race reports. No sooner did I propose some system for betting or postulate some cyclic certainty than fate would throw it in my face like destiny's cream pie. The best horse didn't win, the old horse could run and the number 7 horse CAN come in first.

Three times in a row.

We even lost betting on that old superstitious standby: horse names. Of course I will concede the main problem with that approach was that nearly all horse names here are taken from Korean Mountains. I'm thinking it might have helped to know elevations. Or not.

So we bet. We pounded on the rail. We yelled. We lost. We repeated. And we slowly lost our entourage. When the greasy smoking guy gave up on us...well I knew the magic had gone.

In the last race, we placed the rest of my betting dough on three horses: a longshot, a semi-longshot and a safe bet. It started well enough, our longshot came out of the gate strong. He was ahead by enough lengths to send postcards. If this beauty came in we'd make enough to cover all the losses for the day and pay for a nice dinner. This was definitely the "make up for the day" horse. Then, around halfway through the first turn, Nami looked at our book and translated, out loud, the race report on our longshot for me. It said, simply, "Bad horse. A bad bet." Simple but profound.

I think my longshot horse heard it.

The confidence loss was immediate. Though it remains hard to prove, and some would say it was simply a jockey error, I insist that nag actually tried to break for the exit in stage fright. Whatever the reason, his sharp move to the right gave the rest of the pack a chance to sail by and make him the tail-looker that destiny, bad breeding and the Korean odds guys made him out to be.

Now it was simply a wait. A wait for the end of the race. A wait for Nami to offer comfort after she stifled her giggling. A wait for that age old ritual of tearing of bad tickets and cursing whoever invented the saddle.

I've done this once or twice before.

Then.

Then it happened. Right around the final bend our semi-longshot remembered he was a horse. It's possible he had thought he was a burro, or a donkey or an Estonian track and field olympian who couldn't afford used sneakers. Whatever. He knew he was a horse now and he flew like a Hyundai with no breaks and an impatient driver. Having seen more than few of those bearing down on me I was quick to recognize it.

He came from the pack back and grabbed the lead by two lengths. He had momentum. He had energy. He had a chance to win us 72 bucks Korean. I wasn't taking chances. He was leading...but I wished anyway: "Let us go out on a good note. Let our horse come in."

No sooner had I said it in my head than I realized...I should have been more exact. We had bet on THREE horses in that last race. A useless longshot who had faded like a Deadhead bumper sticker, a heroic semi-longshot who had tried to save our day and...a safe bet. The safe bet heard my prayer. He decided to make me eat it.

With the steady resolve of a Jesuit nun, that horse came out of wherever they keep nowhere on a track. It passed the horses we hadn't bet on. It passed the horse we shouldn't have bet on. And it passed the horse we did bet on.

And our horse came in. The rotten goddamn bastard.

As he spoiled our semi-longshot, he snorted and turned away from the grandstand, crossing the finish line with the good sense to look away from me. In the larger scheme of things I knew this was just another day at the track. But, at that moment, if that nag made contact with my evil eye, he was going to end up a riding pony at a fat kids summer camp.

He didn't. He showed his horse's ass to me and headed out to the winners circle. On that poignant note, Nami, smiling, held up our "winning" ticket and showed me, at two to one odds, on a two dollar bet, our substantial haul.

We won four bucks. Korean.

It was enough to cover the train fare...as long as we didn't transfer. And as the sky finally began to clear up, we took that train ride and continued the date. I was determined to end this thing on a good note. First we went to one of the city's many videogame parlors and tried our hands at two games. One was virtual motorcycle racing on actual cycles. The other was one of Korea's popular dancing games, where the goal is to emulate, physically, the moves given to you by the game on a video screen.

Had the motorcycle game been real we would have broken our legs several times over. Had the virtual dancing game been real, we SHOULD have broken our legs at least once to end the humiliation. We each got a 15 out of 100. We both agreed the dancing game was broken. Then some pimply faced Korean teen got on. He began to channel 3 decades of "Soul Train" while yawning. The skinny goofus got a 95.

I almost kneecapped him on general principle.

We followed with an American movie, "The Mexican." In the states I would avoid this movie like a footrash. In Korea however, where my language is as marginalized as a gay black guy at the Rebulican convention, I'd pay 10 bucks to watch two folks read the phone book on the big screen, just so long as it was in English.

Yeah, turns out that was more or less the plot.

From the bad movie, we segued to a cheap dinner at a noodle place in Insadong, an arts district in Korean, and went to a little wooden restaurant off a small side street. Nami ordered some cold noodle dish with a paste sauce and translated it as "moderately spicy." I ate five huge mouthfuls.

When my lips finally stopped swelling from the spices and the flames on my tongue died down, we figured we should order something else to drink besides the two pitchers of water I was downing. Nami ordered some kind of ginseng liquor. It came when she was in the bathroom. The waitress dropped a giant bowl in the middle of the table. I figured it was some sort of soup that they had forgotten to give us. I ladled some into my bowl. It was cold. Great. Then I tasted it. I decided it was the worst soup I had ever had. Then I drank it all. Then I ordered another giant bowl.

Then the soup took away my legs.

Once the bad soup had worn off enough to give me back my legs above the knee, we took a lightly stumbled ride on Seoul's efficient subway home. Being on the same line we had time to make small talk, review the day and take in the very expansive date that had happened somewhere along the way.

We'd lost a lot of money, seen a crappy movie, proven neither of us was destined as dance kings or pro cycle racers and my lips were not expected to regain sensation for at least another week. As her stop arrived, Nami stood up and got ready to get off the train. She squeezed my hand and smiled. She said five words.

"I had a great time."

And she was gone. I looked at my hand and I started getting a glow, only half of it from the bad soup the locals claimed was ginseng liquor. The rest came from one simple fact: she had squeezed my hand. THAT was something. That was...a start. And that's when I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to have to spend so much time fighting the concrete in my home anymore. That I was going to stop reading and painting so much. That I would probably not be as well rounded.

And that I was going to be a lot happier as a result of it.

At that moment I made a specific wish. "Please let me get a chance to keep dating this woman. Give me that opportunity and I'll never ask for horse help again. Also, finally, if you could, let me get the chance to kiss her. Preferably more than once."

Then I thought about it. I decided to be more exact.

"And if you could heal my lips up by that time, that'd be dandy."

2001-06-02T07:56:00.000-04:00

Today is Budda's birthday. Or, as my Korean students say "Butanem." Or "Buchanem." Or "Butchanem." According to my kids, I haven't said it right yet. I think the last time I called him "Buchanan" and they only giggled "some" as opposed to "alot." I say the name of a right wing idiot and they hear the name of a fat holy man.

You can take from that what you will.

In any case, today, in honor of the spiritual master, I've decided to walk the middle path. In this post I'll tell you a little about a lot of different things here in Korea. I figure I'd start with something I've noticed about Korean kids here, and the South Korean people in general: I'm not sure they can die by conventional means.

Yeah. I know. I'll explain.

Let's start with the near fatal collisions that the kids here call "crossing the street." As I've previously stated, the chances of ending up a traffic fatality here are just a little bit lower than getting regular mail delivery. To my thinking, the effect on every Korean mother with small kids should be obvious. You get a tube of Krazy Glue the size of a pepperoni stick and physically attach your kids to your apron till age 14. If you can also instill a deep-seeded fear of crosswalks, it would probably help.

And yet that's the reason I'm not a Korean mother...aside from the lack of Asian ethnicity, children and a uterus.

It seems the plan for local moms here is not only to let their kids run into traffic, but encourage them to take along their little brother. Then, combine this quaint tradition with the U.N. officially recognized third worst drivers in the world. What's that give you?

A nation full of seven year olds creating their own daily X-Game event.

Now, have I seen any hits? Any accidents? Any Hyundai bumpers wearing Garanimals? No I have not. I've seen so many close calls I could make a Fox Special out of it, but not one injury. Against all odds, these kids not only grow up, they grow up fast. They live like stuntmen, fight like Irishmen and pick their noses with joyful abandon.

Yeah, charming mental image. But I actually have to see it everyday.

While I find it daunting to understand this Darwinian mothering process, I can't blame the kids themselves. I mean an eight year old is bound to be a little edgy if he's been smoking half a pack of cigs a day since he was born. And growing up fast? Well that'll happen if you come out two years old.

Oh, believe me, there's an explanation.

Let's start with the age thing. Now, as I always saw it, the whole age and birthday thing, aside from those unlucky enough to get Feb 29th birthdays, was a relatively simple affair. You come out on a day. 365 days pass. You turn a year older. End of story. The world doesn't turn faster in one part than another so everyone, short of the leap year pariahs, goes through the same thing at the same rate. On the upside, it's all democratic and equal. On the downside, I turn 30 in February. All in all though, that's the process and everybody does it the same way everywhere.

Right?

Except in Korea.

In a move that will surely delight the pro-life factions of the world, when a child is born in Korea, he comes out and is...wait for it...1 YEAR OLD. That's right. Upon his introduction to cold air, circumcision and ass slapping doctors, a child comes into Korea with a full year under his belt. Now according to the copy of "Our Bodies, Ourselves" that I read at age 9 the Korean 1 year math is obviously off by three months. I would also like to add I read that book for insight and NOT naked pictures.

Hey that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

Anyhow, despite the awkward medical figuring, you still have to appreciate the sentiment. A kid comes out 1 year old because he had life from the moment his father said "Was it good for you too?" It's odd but it makes sense in a philosophical kind of way. It's also practical, given how close most of these kids are to danger. You wanna give the tykes credit for every possible year before you turn them loose on the streets. I put the odds 1 in 4 they don't come back.

So, to recap, this aging aspect is weird, but medically, at least it has some basis.

The next part is just cracked.

When a kid in Korea is born he gets a year. Okay. But, when the Chinese New Year comes, he gets...are you ready?... ANOTHER year. In fact, let's say a child is born the day before Chinese New Year. He comes out 1 year old. The next day? BAM! Two. Two days old and two years old. It's the sort of thing that could make Mr. Rogers drop dead right on the spot. So to finish this age-math thing, ALL children will get those two full years I mentioned before added to their total age. As a result they will turn, on their first birthday...three years old.

Bring on the toilet training.

Why do they do this? There's some speculation it was to boost the ranks of the the army by getting around age barriers and just making everyone older. One guy I asked said it was something ceremonial having roots in a certain holiday...though he couldn't remember the ceremony...or the holiday...or his exact age. Still he was an excellent taxi driver and he didn't hit any kids.

Me? I think the whole thing was concocted by the Korean tobacco industry. There's a huge social taboo for women to smoke in public here and I think the whole thing was a ruse to get more men going on coffin nails younger. Makes me think the whole deal was concocted by some guy in marketing. A guy with his head up his pipe. It's nearly pointless. Thing is, as I was mentioning before, kids here already have smokers coughs by the time they hit pre-school. How?

Well let me hork up a lung and I'll tell you.

FYI: Not only does Seoul have one of the highest fatality rates by auto in the world, they also have, by city, one of the highest concentrations of cars. High polluting cars that nearly all run on diesel.

Then there's the US military. They use facilities, equipment and vehicles that are all, highly polluting. And there's a lot of them. How many? Enough to keep me from getting lucky with any woman in Korea. That's a mind numbing number right there.

Additionally, even for Asian cities, Seoul has an incredibly high industrial component in the form of unregulated factories, coal and oil burning power plants and local gift shops. Yes I said gift shops. Look there's something going on there okay? Gift shops don't need four chimmney's to sell jewelry boxes.

Anyway, combine all the above with the world's highest country-wide rate of tobacco use. In Korea cheap cigs abound and the smoking laws here are so lax that you can light up in a daycare center if you want. Then throw in a Korean EPA that aggressively responds to litter in the street, but only seems to care about air quality if something is actively on fire.

Smoldering is a judgement call.

All totaled, what you get is an environment where day to day living for non-smokers, according to some estimates, is like puffing 8 smokes a day. More in the summer when the air quality goes from "bad" to "I can't see my feet." That goes for old people, adults, kids and even those newly born 2 year old babies.

I call it Seoul smoking. I set on that name somewhere between the time I discovered that Seoul's air was making me hork loogies 10 times a day and the time I decided my spit tasted like All Tempertature Cheer. Yes, cheery image. And once again, I'm the gomer who has to live it every day.

So, how bad is the pollution? Enough to risk fashion ridicule. For the conservative female element, that's a big deal. Many folks here, girls included, wear surgical masks during the day to filter out some of the toxins in the air. I think, mathwise, it makes you cut down to three Seoul Smokes a day. You still have trouble with stairs but your teeth are less yellow.

It's odd looking I'll grant you, but it's odder still to see the brownish black residue in the middle of the mask where their noses are at the end of the day. When I first saw the masks, then saw the residue, then figured out what it meant...well it really struck me. Of course that's also because I though for the first month the masks were a tribute to the TV show "M.A.S.H."

I gotta stop listening to taxi drivers.

But back to Seoul Smoking. Here's where it gets fun: if you do something strenuous your breathing becomes more intense and you Seoul Smoke MORE. Just running for the bus is like one extra cigarette. Those kids playing soccer? Two pack a dayers. That idiot jogging? He'll be dead by the time he's forty.

So remember those kids running across the streets into dangerous traffic? They're not only risking death by Daewoo truck they're also lighting up two extra Seoul Smokes while they do it. Finally, that nose picking thing? It isn't a hygiene issue, it's respiration. They're just trying to clear a breathing line.

Yet through all of this, the kids, and the folks here in general, remain as optimistic and energetic as a bunch of baptists in the bathtub. Even with the cars, the smoke and the masks, the total life-span isn't too far off from our much vaunted one in the USA. You gotta appreciate that. This nation is filled with a lot of resillient people. Or aliens with superpowers masking as Koreans.

I'm still on the fence.

Now I realize that's a stretch but bear with me. Last weekend, our Boss, Mr Kim, took us all on a bonding weekend. Companies here in Korea do them all the time. The idea is that if you take a bunch of your employees on a retreat to get them to form connections with one another, they'll be less likely to quit. Given a retention rate here at the Wonderland School slightly less a George W Bush "grammar advisor," one could say our bonding weekend was overdue. Plus, with payday just a week and a half off - the prime day for escape from Wonderland - we set off for the Mountains. It was in a beautiful place in the south in a province I could not name or pronounce now if I had a gun to my head.

So don't ask.

The first thing I noticed? The well appointed highway rest stops. These things are like palaces with noodle stalls. There were clean amenities, there were affordable souveniers, there was even this thing that shined your shoes and rubbed your ankles. Though I may have been using it wrong. But still, even the men's bathroom in one had a gian and beautiful mural on its arched ceiling. I'm no expert but I say that artwork easily rivals Europe's finest men's bathrooms. Especiall France.

The second thing I noticed? I could breathe. Having been in something of a lethargic state since I got to Korea, it was slowly dawning on me that maybe air quality had something to do with it. For the past month and a half I have had insomnia, a bad cold and something on my feet that is either not serious or is hoof and mouth disease. I'll keep you posted. Unless I get culled.

But here, in the fresh air of the countryside...here I was REBORN. It was amazing. I had the energy of ten men. All because I could breathe. I would never make fun of one of those Aftrin commercials again. After a seven hour bus ride, when we got to Maisan mountain...I was ready.

Someone mentioned that the translation for Maisan was, literally, "My Mountain." Indeed. That's what I would make it. MY Mountain. Of course that meant that the phrase "Maisan Mountain" meant "My Mountain...Mountain."

I didn't dwell on it. Translation wasn't my strong point.

When time came to head up and climb the mountain, I got right in front. I took off eagerly up the path. And then the stairs. And then another path and then up a steep embankment where I worked up a sweat.

And then past a pond where you could ride duck boats. Very pretty.

But then it was back up the mountain. Finally, I arrived at the top of a long flight of narrow stairs by teetering rock mounds assembled in spiritual towers. I went past the temple of a dead yogi who was considered one of Korea's great Mountain Buddhas. Then, behind the temple, I went up a short path that was barely there.

And there I stood.

I was on top of the mountain. The top! I let out a roar. I had a woman take my picture with my arms raised in victory. The woman had three children and they had all made it up here in a faster time than me...but they didn't get here first. I did. That was MY victory on MY mountain. About five minutes later, someone else from MY group pointed out this was the temple at the base of MY mountain.

MY mountain was up the steep slope to my left.

Soon after, I was bearing up THAT trail. Victory would be mine yet. First, up a steep slope. Then, around a rocky bend. Then past a few more temples. And around a guy selling soft serve ice cream.

Okay, but these concession guys were everywhere. Seriously. I'm not sure who was handing out the cotton candy concessions in Korea, but when someone offered "rocky half trail #2 on Maisan" these guys jumped at the chance. Plus it was good cotton candy.

Anyhow, past trails, over rocks and up stairs I climbed. Higher and higher across increasingly less developed paths. Finally I arrived at the top. A place with a view of southern Korea that went on for miles. And a guy selling fried squid. I savored. I enjoyed. I looked left.

Another freaking staircase.

Now I was ticked. This was MY mountain. If I had to beat it like the Buffalo Bills in a Championship Game, dammit I would. I headed up the stairs, remarkably new in condition. I thought, "Finally. Maybe these trails are getting better." When the metal stairs gave way to sparse stone steps I thought I might be mistaken. When the steps gave way to steep loose trails of dirt I knew I was mistaken.

And then I saw the rope.

All at once the trail stopped and was replaced by thick gauge rope. The line was tied from tree to tree up the mountain with large handhold knots every three feet. This was the trail to the top of the mountain. An unsupervised, unmanaged thick twine. A twine, I would add, that was barely tied to half buried shrubs. Twine that hung over dirt that slid if you breathed on it.

A US National Park Service tramway this was not.

On cue, some of my fellow Wonderland teachers, who had gotten ahead of me by not stopping for the smoked chestnuts, came falling down the rope. Jono, a UK teacher, remarked it was like "the subway with rope burns." Danya, an Israeli neo-hippie type came half tumbling as fast as her open toed sandals could take her. Rodney our Newfoundland Canada teacher, came last. Rodney's a fairly brave bear of man who once almost lost his leg riding his motorcycle. The jist is that he's no coward. His take on the half hike?

"Hey boy. It's a fookin dethtrap. Fook's sake."

Poetic...but not enough to stop me. They didn't make it. I would. I started up the rope and, quite eagerly, charged up the mountain. Hand over hand, I pulled. From tree to tree I jumped and swayed. At one point a stray rock absently kicked from above missed my head by half a meter. My hands were red, my clothes were dirty, I was even passing Native Koreans on my way up. Inxeperienced female natives in inappropriate mountain climbing shoes but natives all the same. Here I was. I was climbing MY Mountain.

After about an hour, that whole My Mountain charm had worn off.

From pinky to thumb I had a big welt at the end of each arm where my hands used to be. I was sweating like a sheep in a room full of Scotsmen. And somehow I had rope burns on my ass. I was all but ready to snap a "I was here" pic with my fun-saver disposable camera and head back down.

And then I saw Mr. Kim coming up the rope.

Well NOW, my boss was coming, with Mr. Jun, a school administrator AND Gloria, a fellow teacher in tow. A Canadian teacher. I couldn't be shown up by a Moulson swilling Canadian. I was going up the mountain. And I was gonna beat all of them.

A second wind now in me, I flew up the hill. I even started singing Sam Cooke's "Chain Gang" for a little bit. At least until I realize the half hearted "ooh..ahh" parts were winding me. Better to conserve energy and climb I thought. And so I did. Everytime I got tired I'd look behind me and see the boss and just keep going. This guy might be able to drink me under the table, eat peppers that could take the paint off your car and sing a better karaoke version of "My Way" but I was gonna be FIRST up that mountain.

Petty? Sure. But "petty" is s a better motivator than you'd imagine.

Finally, an hour later, we reached the summit. With the last of my energy I bounded up the well worn trail and I saw the giant pile of rocks that stood as a monument to all who ascended the peak. I gingerly took a stone from the ground, placed it on the mound and looked around, marvelling at what I had accomplished. Mr. Kim followed. Then Gloria. Then the stone faced school administrator Mr. Jun. He shook my hand and I knew that even HE respected the enormous physical undertaking we'd, oh hell, I'D just done. Mr. Kim came over, clapped me on the back and pointed. He smiled and said, warmly: "You want a coke?"

That's when I noticed the Korean guy with the cooler.

I was panting, sweating, DYING to get up the side of this mountain. I had rope burns, welts and a pebble in my pants that would not come out till I ate some fiber. But there THIS guy sat: the coca-cola cooler guy. He lounged, he sunned and he lay there relaxing uninterestedly. He was mocking everything thing I thought I had done. And he was doing it in a freakin lawn chair. Sure, I had climbed up the mountain. But he had done the same thing and had managed to get a cooler, ice and 50 cans of Coke up the same rock strewn, dirt-sliding, overly steep hill.

Plus that freaking lawn chair.

Frankly, I didn't think it could get any worse till Mr. Kim came over with our cold cokes. That's when I found out that the cooler guy was only charging 50% more for sodas than the guys at the bottom of the hill. Only 50%. That's it. This layabout had a cooler of cold soda - Cokes - on a remote mountaintop an hour from any competition with the fried squid guy below. And he wasn't even price gouging.

The New Yorker in me cried a little that day.

As we headed down the mountain, I gained a newfound respect for the already established resillience of the South Korean people here. Whether they are simply an amazing nation or invulnerable aliens masking as Asians, I may never know for sure. Although I will say the latter explanation goes a long way to explain why the women won't mate with me.

Still, what I do know, and what I did learn that day, is that in Korea they have plenty of park concessions, the Korean Park Rangers don't seem to pick up many native dead bodies on the trails and what seems difficult to us is just a walk in the park to the folks who live here. I took some comfort in that as I stumbled my way down the trail once more and took one last look at the Coca-Cola cooler guy. In his own way, this guy was a hero and he deserved respect. I would give it to him

Then I saw him take out his beach umbrella. Son of a bitch.

2001-05-31T21:45:00.000-04:00

Before I can tell you about kindergarten parent-teacher day here at the Wonderland School, it helps to understand what my teaching day is like.

From 3 to 7:30 PM I teach various levels of conversational english. I work with kids ranging from 8 to 14 in small classes and fun coursework. There, I help them understand grammar, subtext and why "PH" and "F," for no good reason, make the same sound.

For fun, I occasionally explain that phrases like "letting the cat out of the bag" doesn't necessarily involve prior animal cruelty.

Overall, from 3-7:30 PM, I'd say it's challenging, interesting and, ABC afterschool Specials be damned, occasionally rewarding. Honestly? I think I even like it. For better or worse, and it's mostly better, that's my afternoon. But in the mornings...in the mornings I teach kindergarten. At least that's what the school calls it.

I call it my daily 4 hour hostage crisis.

From 9:30 to 1:30 I act as warden to seven 6-year-olds who drool, hit and eat clay. For fun they try to pick their noses so deeply it looks like they've lost a knuckle. What do I teach them? How close to homicide they can push a grown man who once said "I love kids." Now it didn't start like this. I was gonna be the FUN guy.

Really.

On day one, I was uber-teacher. I was full of energy, jokes and unconventional teaching methods out the wazoo...and I got a huge wazoo. My goal was to be the complete OPPOSITE of my former 1st grade nemesis, Mrs. Strauchler. She was a bitter educator who smelled of witch hazel and, legend had it, strangled cats for fun. No, I was Captain Cool Teacher, vanquishing ignorance with zeal, zest and James Brown songs.

And then my kids killed the Godfather of Soul.

The ironic part is I did better than most and much better than Mrs. Strauchler ever could. My crew would've eaten her like a Nutter Butter. Kindergarteners, and my hellions especially, are cunning, have no fear and can sense weakness like jungle cats. They would have taken a bookbag to Mrs. Straucher's gimpy knee in 20 minutes flat.

No, Captain Cool Teacher was defeated by deaf, Korean midgets who all know Tae Kwon Do.

When it comes down to it, I was overmatched. I clearly had no idea who I was dealing with. I was going to be "full of energy?" These kids have fusion reactors under their yellow sweatsuits. I knew jokes? Funny to them was yanking out my arm hair to understand "fuzzy."

As I said, even my lone James Brown tape snapped under the Digimon sneakers of a stocky boy named Josh. Seriously, when the hardest Working Man in Showbizness gives up, that's a bad sign.

Still, the fact is, while 5 year olds are a handful in any land, these kids ARE different. I'm not whining. Seriously. It comes down to discipline and culture.

Apparently, in Korean society, the disciplinary standard is to let kids run wild as rabid Red Sox fans until they hit elementary school. The parents here impose no punishments, no rules and - from what I can tell from the 2 inches of rice on the floor after lunch - nearly no table manners on their offspring. The spoiling is so profound, you'd think there was a nation of grandparents raising these twerps.

But, as with all things Asian, you know there's got to be a catch. A strict yin to this hang-loose yang. And there is. The reason these kids get so spoiled early is because the day they reach upper school...the party's over. Big time. According to my afternoon classes, from mid-Elementary School on, these kids are in the educational equivalent of a chain gang.

You think I'm kidding? I'm not. Kids usually go to TWO schools a day. They get home at 8PM on a weeknights and have anywhere from 4-6 hours of homework. Weekends? Weekends are Saturday classes and a Sunday of studying. Finally, completing the learning smackdown, when kids get vacations, their parents make them take either study prep seminars or "intensive subject day courses". A kid in my 5:15 is trying to work up enthusiasm for a weeklong "MS Office Computer Skills" tutorial. For his spring break. All told, from age 6 to 18, these kids are sleep deprived, overworked and pathologically afraid of textbooks.

But, till then, I got my kindygarten killers.

On an ideological level I do appreciate that this is their last year of freedom in the Korean Educational Lockdown. On a practical level though, I spend most of my morning screaming, cleaning and wishing the kids who know martial arts would stop trying to kill the kids who don't. If I'm lucky, somewhere in-between, I get them to say "big" "small" and "bathroom" instead of pointing at their crotches and yelling "PEE PEE PEE!"

Which brings me to the Parent Teacher conference.

I was put into a small room with six of the seven women who took credit for these three foot tall sociopaths. With me came the school's administrator, Jean, who would serve as my interpreter, and her two aides, Sunny and Nami. The mothers, as a goodwill gesture, brought me some flowers.

Well goodwill or they were being early for my funeral. Either or.

On that note, I started by talking about my teaching methods. I talked about connecting kids to concepts and reinforcing those concepts through repetiton and recitation. I talked about our songs and I talked about our games. In fact the only things I excluded from my teaching method chat were all references to whacking children on the head with magic markers and yelling "WILL YOU SHADDUP?!" at the top of my lungs. All in all, that part went fairly well.

Then we played the telephone game, Korean style.

The way I recall it now, I had a total misunderstanding of the Parent-Teacher conference concept here. I was just going by my childhood experience, but I thought the aspect that mattered the most was criticism. I mean it was most important when I was growing up. Parents go to school, hear teachers whine about you, listen intently and then come home and spank you for an hour. Afterwards they "ooh" and "ahh" about that ashtray you made in art class.

But not in Wonderland.

All teachers recieved a short note before the week of the conferences. It was a general note that said a number of general things in general terms. In fact it had only one phrase bolded: "do not tell the parent anything negative about their child." I took this to mean: "put all criticism into constructive terms and don't tell a mother her child is a murderer outright."

Ooooh, was I wrong.

After putting considerable effort into writing long critical evaluations of each child I discovered at the conference they weren't given to the mothers. A mistake. Or so I figured. When it came time to talk to each mom about their child, I just looked at my copies of the evaluations and gave them the jist. The jist was then translated by the school administrator, Jean.

About five minutes into the first kid's mom, I began to suspect there was some censoring going on. As it went on, I began to figure out how much. The first kid I talked about was a good kid. When the mother smiled I figured she'd just chosent to focus on the good things instead of the few problems. Then we moved on. Now, the kids I was talking about were some of the bad ones. I mean like misdemeanor bad. Yet, as I talked, the mothers kept smiling. In fact, when I really criticized, they just smiled more.

That's when I got that this was as rigged as a New Jersey garbage hauling contract.

Administrator Jean's aide Sunny, who was observing, later related the "interpretive theater" I'd missed out on. It went something like this:

-------------

Riley: "Your son has a lot of energy. If he can just find an outlet for it that doesn't involve hitting Mark with a book I think he'll be okay"

Jean (translating and editing into Korean): "Your son has a lot of energy. He'll be okay."

Mother (sensing something more and questioning): "Does he have discipline problems at school? What should I do to control him at home?"

Jean (translating and editing into English): "She wants to know what she should do with him at home."

Riley (sensing nothing and trying to get at the free refreshments): "Teach him that hugging is better than biting."

Jean (Translating into Korean): "Make him read his storybook."

--------------

Picture 1 hour of that and you get the idea. Around halfway through, once I realized that none of this was being conveyed to the parents I said the hell with it. With Jean the censor cutting it all off anyway, I dispensed with any couching terms and just started to tell the mothers plainly what was wrong with their kids.

---------------

"Your son Mark? He's a crier. I mean a big crier. If I ever showed Charlottes Web this kid would die of heartbreak."

"Sherry is very pretty and she knows it. She's been using that to make the boys fight over her. She really seems to like that."

"James is very quiet but I don't think he's asleep."

"Josh has perfect pronunciation but he says his words very slow. With a drawl. Your son sounds like he's from Texas."

-----------------

Jean really shot me a look over that one. I think the mothers started to get a little wise when I would say forty words and then Jean would say five. Frankly, Jean's being underused here. She's clearly destined for important work writing press releases for the NRA.

If they did notice my censor at work, they didn't say anything. In fact, after it was over, I got a nice round of applause and all the mothers went over to the cashier. In a move not seen at any of the other parent teacher conferences, they all immediately paid their tutition for the next two months.

According to all involved, my little confab concluded the most successful Parent-Teacher conference they've had yet. In fact, later that night, the school's owner, Mr. Kim, took all the teachers out for dinner to celebrate. Afterwards we adjourned to a Noribong - a Korean singing room - so that Mr. Kim could regale us with several chrouses of a heavily accented "My Way." If that's not a celebration of success, I don't know what is.

All things considered, after it was over, I got the feeling I might have been too hard on myself. For a while there, in that brief window, I was even suspecting I must be a pretty good teacher after all. Hell, those kindygarteners were going to learn English after all, even if they couldn't make the "th" sound.

Of course, then I went back to work.

Today I resumed whacking the kids with magic markers, separating them from eating what they spilled on their shoes and unsuccessfully teaching the concepts of "front" and "behind." This morning, holding up a picture of a dog in front of a horse, I asked James about the dog and made him pick from only two choices - front or behind. He got it wrong. I asked him twice more. Twice more he got it wrong. That he got it wrong three times with the same answer isn't suprising.

Surprising was that in each case he answered "left."

Then I reminded him of the answer. I wrote it on the board. WITH arrows. I then asked James if he might like to change his answer. He nodded. He did.

He said "up."

On the up side, he didn't say "right." Or better still, "elephant." That's what Mark was convinced it was. Elephant. I said it wasn't and then recanted when he started crying. I'm not sure which is worse - that someday that kid is going to think hear the word "behind" and think there's an elephant chasing him or that he's can't tell a horse from an elephant. Or a dog.

Either way I'm betting he'll cry. Mark's a crier.

In any case, the lesson to be learned here is that, in Hollywood or Korea, one should never believe their own reviews - good or bad. If you do, reality will inevitably remind you of the opposite by "accidentally" putting kim-chee in your pocket with a bad alibi.

And if that isn't something to live by, I don't know what is.

2001-05-28T19:15:00.000-04:00

I have been to the top of Seoul's infamous Hooker Hill and I have seen its secrets. And its dance clubs. And its bars. And the outside of its brothels. Yes, only the OUTSIDE. But to make extra sure that it was the right hill, I went three times.

I am nothing if not dedicated.

So what are the chief mysteries of Hooker Hill? This bastion of bawdiness? This small mountain of Korean excess? This island of sin in a city of reserve? They are four-fold. I'll share them.

1. I have discovered where Korean women - who do not dress modestly but who are not hookers - hang out.

2. I have discovered where the military chicks and non-korean women - who are not-hookers and dress even less modestly - hang out.

3. I have have discovered where the hookers - who are modestly dressed - hang out.

4. I have discovered that taxi drivers in Seoul hate folk songs. (more on that later)

The first observation was probably the one I was most looking forward to. I have spent the last few weeks in an environment where no woman, as far as the eye could see, dressed any racier than a librarian. Once I hit Hooker Hill, modesty took a holiday. Put succinctly, there was enough fishnet here to catch a whale. As for the reserve most Korean women seemed to apply to their makeup, well that went elsewhere too. You could've made an Albino red - head to toe - with that much blush. Basically it proved what I long suspected: Korean women looked as good when they gave themselves the permission to cut loose. And these girls were doing with a vengance.

Not to be outdone, the ex-patriate women, the female members of the military and all the foriegn girls just on holiday were trying to better their Korean counterparts. Given that the competition was in "see em from 200 yards" attractiveness, it was a hell of spectator sport. Even my fellow english teacher and "hooker hill" tour guide, Krista, wore her "making trouble" dress.

And trouble it was. Yowza.

The whole thing, boiled to its essence was a neighborhood full of women trying to prove that THEY could catch your eye, half-drunk, across a crowded room full of smoke, flashing lights and Marines. When you came right down to it, it was like some trashy arms race of sexual display. I nearly cried.

It was like a beautiful wedding. In a trailer park.

But, as with nearly everything here in the east, there is a saddening yin to whatever kickass yang you can come up with. This was no exception. And the other shoe to drop in this case was the devil in the details: the numbers.

Here's the math: all counted, for a city the size of Seoul, once you include the military girls, the ex-pat girls, the drunken German Heidi vacationers and the Korean women willing to buck an entire society's tradition...well you come up with a fairly sizable but normal number.

To be more exact, in any given club in Seoul, the number of women looking to get funky on the dance floor is about the same as in any American club. And, just so you don't think we're dealing with a bunch of Presbyterians, so is the amount of booze they drink. And for those scoring at home, so is the number of times in a night some overtired DJ can be shamed into playing "Paradise by the Dashboard Light." (Which, FYI, is two times)

So what's the magic X-factor number that turns the equation sour?

The the number of men.

Yes, that's where the love math takes a header into a dating pool with little water. By my accounting, the hungry men outnumber the funky women here 8 to 1. And that's on a good night. On a bad one? The lone woman in the club might well be hiding in the bathroom waiting for the testosterone to descend to merely "hazardous" levels. Plus, remember, this isn't just regular guys outnumbering women on the dance floor. This is an alpha male heavy, well trained army. Literally. Your average regular Joe English Teacher is competing with at least one or two deadly forward batallions.

Patton would've had a hard time with that much resistance.

All in all, for you women getting this little travelogue, Seoul is a seller's market...so to speak. You girls can have any well-employed, clean cut, athletic man of your choosing. All it takes is one good come on line. I hear "hello" works pretty well. Actually coughing is close enough for most of these guys.

So what are these men searching for looks-wise? That'd be boobs. If you're a woman, the verdict is that you're gorgeous. Period. You could be a serial killer with a third eye and hair over 2/3'ds of your body and some soldier would bring roses. Twice. Hell, if you've got more than just the basic plumbing aspect going for you - say literacy, a love of music besides polka, and both of your legs - you're likely to get a marriage proposal before you make it to the ladies room.

On the upside, it does cut down on those long lines for the can.

Now me, I'm a sensible enough guy. I know that to try and compete on physical terms with a guy who exercises for a living is sheer madness. That's why I, when competing for the attention of the ladies, go in the other way: conversation. Yes, my assets are a rapier wit, a charming line and a raft full of the most perfect comebacks known to man. Those are my secret weapons in the battle for women on a Saturday night.

In Korea I was Don Quixote.

Aforementioned weapons are as useless here as the French Army. Especially when they're shouted over Madonna songs to a Korean women who can barely understand the lyrics they're lip-syncing. The first night I went, I figured it was bad luck. The second night, a fluke. The third night was the epiphany: I'm going to be a lonely man here in Korea.

Which brings me to the hookers.

No, I haven't sunken that low yet. At least not in a town with a military STD rate almost as high as the Nasdaq is low. Still, when you're getting blown off by foriegn women faster than you can hit on them, you get the time you need to walk the area.

So rather than fight my way through the nine sergeants clustered at each of the only English speaking women in the club, I decided to take in the sights on Hooker Hill. Aside from the "priced to move" imitation Tommy Hilfiger underwear, the sights are mainly - surprise - more servicement. Turns out I was not alone. Scores of my brothers in Arms were facing the same insurmountable odds I encountered in the clubs. They however made a different choice. Their decision? To opt for a quick, legal and...less heavily defended position.

The Korean Brothel.

The brothels are named, near as I can tell, by pulling random phrases from the newspaper. A sample? "Endeavor" "Calypso" and Device." So named, even though, as near as I could tell, none of the ladies were Shuttle Pilots, Carribean or Engineers. Possibly device operators yes, but engineers no.

The only brothel whose name made any sense was the one at the very apex of "Hooker Hlll." Its name? "Last Chance for Love." And for the drunken soldier who'd ascended Hooker Hill's very steep procession, who'd entered into each club along the way, who'd been rejected by local and foreigner alike, who'd gotten to the very top of the hill with no chance for romance in sight...well it was truth in advertising. The first I'd seen since I got here.

Though that's mainly because they sell blenders here as "happy refreshing blenders."

In any case, I did not partake in the "sin by the hour service" available in the storefronts that outnumbered convenience stores here two to one. I simply waited for the soju to subside, for my friend Krista to emerge from the hordes of servicemen and for dawn to break. When it did, she, me, and two of her girlfirends caught a taxi for our home of Ouijambo.

Which is how we found out about the folk songs thing (see I didn't forget).

On our way back, a soju laden Krista begged our Korean cab driver, a cranky old guy who was more eyeglasses than man, to put on "English radio." He refused. She, being drunk, asked several more times. He said no, even louder, each time. Requests for Korean radio were similarly declined.

Now I'm not sure who started in the back seat, but someone, improbably, decided to start singing the folks song, "You Are My Sunshine." To date, no one has taken responsibility for this folk explosion. Likely no one ever will. Folk songs almost always come out of nowhere. This was no exception. But, in grand camplike tradition, we all quickly joined in. We even added drunken counterpoint and harmony to the diddy. I think I did both. We were almost up to "The other night dear, while I was sleeping..." part.

That's when the old guy stopped the cab.

Now I've known a folk song to engender a certain degree of hostiitity before. It's been warranted in most cases. But this guy? Near as I can tell, Joan Baez beat his children to death and set fire to his house while singing "he's got the whole world in his hands." Either that or this guy never got over Dylan going electric.

In any case, the screaming started and didn't stop until we were out of the cab - halfway to our destination and in the middle of nowhere at 6AM. Then Glasses The Cab Driver demanded what was on the meter. Krista responded by calling him a number of provincial Canadian epithets and general North American swears.

It was a very inclusive diatribe.

It all left the driver so flustered and angry he leaned out the window, screamed something Korean, flipped the bird, THEN pointed and shouted the only English curse he seemed to know. As he drove off he pointed and yelled "WHORE!" Amazingly, we all agreed he was mostly pointing at me. Given my track record at the clubs, I think he misunderstood the actual definintion of the swear.

That or it means something different here.

In any case, from now on I will no longer engage in drinking and womanizing and will now confine my efforts solely to drinking. Dangerous? Possibly. But I hear it's a good way to pick up nurses here. Provided I lay off the folk songs during courtin'. As the Koreans seem to understand it, I don't wanna be a whore no more.

2001-05-28T05:01:00.000-04:00

I have been to the promised land my friends. Her name is Japan.

Or J-Lo for short.

Now this is kinda wacky, so bear with me. In order to obtain a teaching visa for Korea you must FIRST send a number of documents TO Korea. THEN you have to come to Korea to obtain the proper documentation and fill out a stack of forms the size of a short baby. Here it helps to have a translator. Why? English they ain't.

THEN, when all the right forms have been dotted and checked and stamped with official looking stamps in Korean that look like modern art...that's when you go to Japan. Yes Japan. See, you have to COME to Korea to fill out the forms. BUT you have to LEAVE Korea and go to a foriegn country where there is a Korean Consulate to FILE them.

I will never complain about the Department of Motor Vehicles again.

That's why this bureaucratic boondoggle involved a trip to Japan. As my Korean employers explained to me, with a map no less, Osaka Japan, an hour and half away, is the closest foriegn nation to ours. That's where I would have to go to submit my pudgy pile of paperwork.

Half-laughing, I pointed up to North Korea and commented that communists are usually pretty good with forms. Then I asked if anyone had a bus schedule for the DMZ. Dead Silence. And I mean DEAD. The kind usually reserved for cops who walk into crime scenes so they can ask, "what smells?" Anyway, North Korean humor isn't traditionally well recieved here.

If you're planning a trip, you might wanna jot that down.

So off to Japan I went to get my teaching visa. From start to finish, Japan is just a great place. I arrived at an uber-modern aiport that seemed like it could land space craft. I met an information desk person who never broke eye contact while drawing a detailed and perfect map. And I rode a subway so clean and plush that seemed like it came from IKEA. Of course you should bear in mind I'm from a city that lets you use the F train as a toilet after 11PM.

But I digress.

Now this is NO slam on Korea or Seoul, but Osaka was the most refined, amazing metropolis I have ever gotten lost in. Really. And I'm not even saying that because all the women wear outfits like they're on Ally Mc Beal.

Okay maybe that's HALF the reason I'm saying it.

But really, to see it is mind boggling - even for a man who's lived in LA. In fact that's what it reminded me of - all the sexiness of the way women in Los Angeles dress but combined with all the style of the women in New York. That and I think the entire nation is a size four.

With these women, some comparisons became pretty clear. The Korean women I've seen so far, even the prettiest women in Seoul, seem to dress for economy not allure. Thankfully there are some exceptional exceptions (which I'll get to in a my next update) but, in general, the theme is "girl next door...who works for Samsung."

Now I appreciate, given a history of nation-to-nation domestic violence, there's no love lost between the Japanese and Koreans. It's practically Jerry Springer with embassies. Maybe it's all a determined differentiation that makes Korean women here approach day to day fashion in a Wal-mart sense and not an Ann Taylor one. Still, the total effect is that women in Korea dress modest, wear minimal makeup and don't even shyly smile at Riley Ray.

Okay I may be reaching on that last one.

Still...Japan.

It's night and day. And it's a nice day. Like South Beach with less skin. Like NY with less diversity. Like LA with less silicone. Like Europe with less attitude. And more baths. The whole of it was simply remarkable to look at.

And I'm guessing that goes a long way toward explaining why I got lost three times in two hours and almost missed my slot at the Korean Consulate.

Once there with my Visa fee money I awoke to harsh reality once more and found out Japan's one crucial flaw: prices. With the Yen in the toilet, Japan has decided to monetarily bitch-slap the Korea's dollar, the Won. Translation? In exchange rate terms my employers had barely given me enough to buy gum. More important, they had not given me nearly enough for my visa. As it was almost closing time, I only had 10 minutes to find a place that changed Won to Yen. Turns out there's one in the city. And it was close to a mile away.

Ugly American coming through.

I shed my jacket, grabbed my passport and trucked off, full tilt, in the general direction the visa clerk pointed me in. The natives of Osaka were gracious enough to step to the left - pretty much all at once - and give this sweaty USA track and field star a wide berth. When I reached the bank with the help of - count em' - four helpful construction workers, I changed over the last of my OWN meager money and prayed it would cover the shortfall. It did. And it turned out I had just enough extra to buy gum after all.

But not spearmint. I'm guessing that's for millionaires.

So, my teaching visa approved and in hand, I headed back to the airport by an effective and charming light rail system. This time I only got lost once due to the fashionable and attractive denziens in short skirts. And even THEN it was only because one of them was wearing an honest to god black garter belt. With a mini.

Seriously, that's like seeing ball lightning. Or a white buffalo. Or a congressman with a conscience.

An hour and half later I was on my way back to a teaching gig with screaming five year olds, a humble flat where the shower is the ENTIRE bathroom and a country full of women with restraint. Damn them.

I'll leave you all with two fun facts. Did you know Korea is known as "The Land of the Morning Calm" ? It's true. I learned it from an airline magazine and those things are practically almanacs. According to their crack staff it's the offical motto of Korea.

Land of the Morning Calm. That's the motto. Really.

Now, here's the other fun fact. Korea has the third worst driving conditions in the world. Their auto accident rate is 26 times the rate of the USA. And apparently that includes both New Year's Eve and New Jersey.

Having SEEN 7AM traffic in Seoul, I tried reconciling those two things. Know what I came up with? Korea's motto writer must be a profound liar who probably works for the Tobacco industry now. Or I could be wrong. Maybe he's an honest writer with good intentions who sees the TRUE Korea.

That and he got hit by a 7AM bus before he could write the motto "Land of the Careening Hyundai."

I'd like to care more but a motto writer is probably dead and I've been early twice this week. If we can somehow get around the stop signs AND the red lights this week, I'm gonna have time for an extra morning coffee. And it's pretty good coffee. Think about it: dead motto writers, strong java and the fastest roadway system ever built...even if it does lack safety controls. Frankly, as I do the math, that makes for a pretty good country after all.

I mean, provided you're not paying the car insurance premiums.

2001-05-24T18:57:00.000-04:00

Well I just had my first round of drinking in Seoul. It was illuminating, interesting and has brought me to the following conclusion:

It's a wonder there are sober people anywhere in South Korea.

This weekend, at a fellow teacher's house, I was introduced to a drink called "soju." It comes in a little green bottle, it's roughly the size of a 16 oz Coke and costs about 65 cents American. Quite a bargain really. It's affordable, available and nearly tasteless when introduced into a pitcher of lemonade or soda.

Coincidentally it also makes the drinker tasteless after four or five drinks.

Apparently on soju, I think I'm not only Irish, with full accent, but I can sing multiple choruses of Hank Williams tunes. Loudly. Or so the neighbors told me later.

While cost-effective, the total cost of soju also needs to include a hangover that could cripple an elephant. I was sure the North Korean army was invading when I woke up with a tongue that tasted like brillo. When I got up, I was fully prepared to surrender in return for some silence. Turns out it was just someone knocking at my door.

It was my neighbor, the one who saved me from death at the hands of Screamy the Landlord. Turns out Screamy had delivered her MORE heating oil than she needed so she was replacing the stores he stole from me. Things in Korea are more circular than I figured. I'm guessing to get groceries I'm going to have to buy fruit for a stranger and then wait for someone to deliver apples.

Speaking of which, this weekend I saw a guy fall off an apple truck. Now it's not everyday you see a metaphor brought to life like that. Usually for that you gotta buy a grindstone and get someone with a big nose to look closely at it.

But it IS every day you see these trucks. Peanut trucks, apple trucks, potato trucks. They park wherever there's no traffic ACTIVELY being driven through and start selling whatever's in the back of the truck. The entrepenurial spirit is amazing to watch. Apparently a sales license in Korea is just gas, an engine and brake lines.

Actually I take that back. Just gas and an engine. I've been here four days and I haven't seen anyone use their brakes yet. They slow, they gear down and they swerve...but they do not stop. Ever. This is a land in perpetual motion. My guess is that it's all just a daily dress rehearsal for the 60 mile an hour exodus the entire country will do south if the North ever runs out of food and starts looking their way. Frankly, having seen some of the food here, those folks are not only taking their chances, the're getting gipped on portions.

Here's a fun fact: when you go to McDonald's here, what WE think of medium is THEIR super-size. I had a Big Mac that was smaller than a US cheeseburger. And the meat was debatable at best. Debatable but not scary. The scary part came after. You know when you go to throw away your tray and trash after eating? You know the disposable cups?

They get recycled.

I thought about it for a minute. Then I thought about the coke I just drank. Then I got more nauseous than the time I went on Magic Mountain on six shots of Peach Schnapps. I was about to ask my friend about our straws and then thought better of it. My constitution couldn't handle any more environmentalism today.

I will say this though, for a country that treats food conservation like religion, when it comes to furniture these folks are practically regal in their waste. You have never SEEN such nice furniture thrown out on the street. Coming from a man who's only ever done his furniture shopping on heavy trash pickup day, it's high praise indeed. I mean someone threw out an entire art deco living room set made of oak & leather. You'd pay 2 grand easy for this new, at least 500 used. Here? It's not even the nicest thing I've seen on the street today. I would take it back to my apartment but, aside from the double bed that's made me the envy of the entire Wonderland teaching staff, I've only got enough room for a table and three chairs in the rest of my house. I ever play bridge, someone's gonna have to sit in the shower.

Finally, speaking of my house, one other tidbit about my place I discovered this weekend. After I put in some of my heating oil I decided I had enough to splurge and actually heat my house. Anticipating a toasty home, I got under the covers (with no sheets) and took a nice long nap. When I woke up my house was indeed toasty. In fact it almost felt, too toasty. I sat up and put my feet on the floor.

The floor was hot. And I mean HOT.

Having excelled in fire safety from grades four through six I knew this could only mean one thing. Fire. Clutching my CDs, the only thing I truly love, I ran to the hall. Two seconds later I had a realization. The hall floor was cool. Very cool.

Risking certain death, I walked back into my house. Hot floor.

Then I went into the Hall. Cool Floor.

In. Hot floor.

Out. Cool floor.

I did this a few more times till I realized I was dangerously close to becoming a Sesame Street sketch about temperature. I decided to brave the dangers of certain firey doom again and went back in to phone a fellow teacher, Kierstie. I told her about the hot floor inside, the cool floor outside and asked her how soon I could expect the flames of doom to lick upon my home.

If fire is no laughing matter someone didn't tell Kierstie.

After her giggles subsided she explained another quaint Korean standard: floor heating. Seems that, unlike Western civilization, Korean contractors totally ignore the concepts of vents, ducts and central heating and instead melt their shoes by heating their homes through the floor. I pointed out to Kierstie that this MIMICKED exactly the way one knows their house is on fire. I think I even quoted my fire safety training from Mr. Auerbach's class in 1982. She said not to worry. Given that my building was made before sprinkers, fire codes and had wiring 20 years old, if there was a real fire...well I was a goner anyway.

In some strange way I took comfort in that and went back to my nap. I might die in a firetrap inferno, but at least I would be well rested.

2001-05-24T04:11:00.000-04:00

I am in Korea.

That fact dawned on me about halfway out from the airport. It didn't hit me on the plane where I got no sleep but watched a subtitled "Meet the Parents." It didn't hit me when I touched down and got some sort of drink from a machine that included rice bits and some other non-recognizable...bits. It didn't even hit me when the taxi guy shoved me and my bags into a car slightly larger than a golf cart.

It hit me when we were doing 60 on a highway with mountains out every window...and skyscrapers right on top of the mountains. Aside from the terrain it kinda looked like parts of Long Island. But that difference, along with the copius amounts of street signs that looked like unfinished Picassos, well that's when it hit me.

I was in Korea.

I started giggling and sorta got giddy. This might even be exciting. I looked over at the stoic guide who picked me up at the airport and the even more stone faced taxi driver who couldn't figure out what I thought was so funny. I decided I should probably laugh on the inside.

On the ride to school I discovered many things. One, in Seoul, barbers and their psychedelic poles are located anywhere they can stuff a man and his scissors - including the middle of a food court. Two, "nostalgia" and "happy fun" are the preferred advertising prefixes for food, cars and household appliances. Three, green and red lights are less standards for driving here than rough outlines. Pedestrians in this country are doomed. It was shortly afterward I realized I was going to be one of them.

Incidentally, you'll all be recieving copies of my last will and testament soon.

The school - the Wonderland Academy - is filled with different classrooms patterned after different cartoon characters. I have been assigned the "Peter Rabbit" class. It's only 7 kids but one of them is a crier named Mark. This kid cries if he hurts himself. He cries if comes in second place in games. He cries if the lunch is the wrong color.

This would be a good time to mention that the only thing I've recognized in my lunch so far is the rice. Today I went to the receptionist of the school and told her that, judging by smell, one of the kids had decided to poop in the sink. Turns out the lunchlady just made a really strong batch of kimchee. By strong I mean it smelled like the mop at a porno theater.

And these kids asked for seconds.

Actually, for that matter, so did I. Weird smelling or not, until I can figure out how to determine which is a food store and which is an appliance shop, all I have in the fridge is ice and altoids. Right now I'm working on recipe for mint water. I'll let you know how it works out.

In staff news, the other teachers here are all extraordinarily friendly and helpful. This is apparently because the four teachers who weren't snuck out in the middle of the night two weeks ago. I got one of their apartments. It is, by all acounts, a villa compared to the places the rest of the teachers have. I don't even have a roommate. In fact, I've only had three small problems so far. First, my bed has no sheets - but strangely, five blankets. Second, the lights from the nearby bus terminal are on all night. Third, my landlord broke in yesterday, nearly killed me and ruined my door.

Okay two small problems and one not-small problem.

Apparently the school didn't tell my non-english speaking landlord that I was moving in. Given that my predecessor snuck off for parts unknown without telling anyone, that small breakdown in communication was a bit of an issue. A banging, cursing, hell-bent on killing me bit.

Last night, when I finally got home, I collapsed on my bed. I locked my door (with door chain) and passed out. I awoke to a screaming Korean man with a hammer in his hand and a wife behind him demanding to know who I was. At that point, half-asleep and waking to terror, I would've admitted to being Idi Amin. What I later found out was that apparently this guy, the landlord, had tried to get in to take the heating oil left behind by Mr. Night Flight. He was stopped by my door chain and had to break down the door. With a hammer.

At that moment, I was pretty sure I was next.

Because, I realized sleepily, with my complete lack of language skills I had no chance of making Screamy the Landlord understand I hadn't broken in to take a nap. I tried to remember my New York pantomime for "don't kill me. Just take my valuables." Luckily, at that moment, my neighbor, a fellow english teacher, came along. She explained what happened to Screamy and told him who I was in broken Korean. It seemed to go over because he nodded, his wife apologized and they left.

He still stole all my heating oil though.

Anyhow my first exposure to the middle school kids I teach in the second half of the day is only 20 minutes off. With any luck these kids will know a little more english than my morning preschoolers. And with more luck still, it will be more than curse words and American phrases like "oh my god!"

I am not too hopeful on that latter one.

Tonight I'm off to the bars. I'll write again on Monday and let you folks know if there is indeed more to this great country besides badly phrased english slogans written on satin jackets. With any luck there will be taverns with affordably priced local hooch, music that doesn't sound like Asian Celine Dion and girls who think I'm the best thing since sliced bread. Again, I am not too hopeful on that latter one.

Especially since I don't even know how to buy sliced bread.

Take care everybody. If I don't write back, then the Hyundais have gotten me and I am buried next to some old kimchee. I put my pedestrian odds at 70/30 against. So everyone remember me fondly, tell my creditors to suck an egg and play Eric Clapton at my Memorial service.

But if I live, I need someone to mail me sheets.