This Happen Again and Again.

Lately there have been tiny little snails walking across my path when I walk to school and back. This week however, I have seen more of them than usual. I was playing "Dodge the tiny moving shells with tentacles" every morning. This makes me wonder if it is snail season now. Is there even such a thing as snail season?

Speaking of things that are becoming more common, I would like to mention the flies. It would seem to me that summer here coincides with an invasion of flies. At first it was just a lost fly here and there, but now I suddenly see them everywhere. They are sitting on everything, fighting for their private space and basically just annoying the hell out of everyone.

Maybe I'll have my camera with me some day and get a picture of this. Small white dogs over here can’t be left to be just be small white dogs. They need to be small multicoloured dogs. The people are forever colouring the ears and tails of the little ones. Sometimes it is just one colour and other times they make it multicolour. At first I thought it was just someone trying to be weird, but now I am sure it is just them being Korean.

I have noticed something interesting about the way a lot of Koreans write some of their letters. Most notable I have seen them write d, t & i in a strange way. It is not that it looks differently, but that action they use. For instanced the "t", many of them cross the "t" first and then draw the line down. With the "d" they draw the down line first and then make the circle, so I am sure by know you can guess what they do with the "i". They dot the "i" and only then draw the line. I think this has a lot to do with the way the Korean writing system works.

You can basically do it any way you please and it makes no difference to your writing speed, but us in South Africa are taught to do it in a certain order and when you start writing cursive it makes sense, even though you don't know it. Try it. Write cursive doing these strange things that I mentioned, and I assure you it will just not work. Korean does not have cursive scripts, not even in capital letters. The letters are always the same.

You can pick your prize if you can figure out what this t-shirt means. If I find any other interesting pictures then I will post them to you. in a similar vain you can have a look at an advert at Paris Baguette, a bakery.

Needing an exercise book so that I can practice my Korean, I went to buy one from the stationer. On the back of the book there is a link to the company who makes it, Morning Glory. I know not everyone knows what this saying is about, but maybe you have heard it before. if you don’t know it yet, then let me tell you about it. Very often men will, when they wake up in the morning, have a penile erection. This erection is called morning glory. I have since found out that this is one of the biggest stationary companies in the country. Now that is what I call a Michael Jackson name for children’s stationary.

Let's talk about doors for a bit. Most doors here are swing or sliding doors. The swing doors swing both ways more often than not. Koreans being Korean, they don’t really consider other people around them as worthy of their attention. This leads to them always pushing the swinging doors. You can be in the middle of Seoul with the rush hour “walking” traffic passing, but you will still push the door outwards without thinking twice about who might be crashing into it. And EVERYONE pushes. The exception is when the door says pull on your side. No, wait, then they still push if it can be pushed.

The only thing of significance I did this weekend was to go to the Tea Festival at COEX. COEX is a rather big western style mall with great shopping to be done. The festival was nice, but it would have been better if I was able to speak Korean so that I can talk to the exhibitors. Many of the exhibitors were dressed in traditional Korean hanbok and we got two ladies to pose for us. I also manages to get a picture there of the Korean version of "Buy one, get one free". They say "1+1".

My last thing for this week is my scientific investigation in to the ratio of Soju, a strong rice wine like Sake, to beer. A bottle of Soju is about the same size as a bottle of Beer, 500 ml. The fridges of restaurants very often have four different bottles of drinks. Coke, Sprite (called cider here), one kind of Korean beer and Soju. Normally there are more bottles of Soju than beer, and often with a ratio of about to 1. Korean like to drink. Koreans REALLY like to drink.

Almost forgot. The yellow fruit I have in my hand id a Korean Mellon as well as a lady who stands outside the parking for, I think, COEX. At most shopping places where there is parking they have someone who stands there and seems to do nothing more than greet the people. This lady was, however, in a nice uniform and did this slow, formal bow to everyone who came in wit a car. What a job to have, but I suppose it is better than the board man on the street corner (for the SA people).

Go well

Otto