A Guy Called Harold

A cleaning lady that doesn't like to clean up after other people: one of life's great contradictions.

Anyway I'm not here to write about her, she clearly has issues that needs solving, and I'm not the person to help. Mainly because I am a foreigner in his mid-twenties who can't speak Korean, and she is a middle aged Korean housewife who can't speak English. Ha! Look at me, writing about her and everything. One would suspect me of harbouring some Harold and Maude-ish love for her. I think about it sometimes, but she has a high pitched whining voice, a piggish nose suiting her flat face, and a stoop accentuating her humpback. It just wouldn't work out, we're too different, from backgrounds too far apart. We would walk down the street hand in hand, and people would stare back at us, horrified by how far modern times has come, society would just laugh at us, throw our love back in our faces, turning something of joy into pain and misery. And if our personal trials of cultural disparity would not be our undoing, then the pressures of social conformity would surely break our backs. Pioneers we will not be, doomed to spend our days apart, bowed by the weakness of our wills, the strength of social appeasement forever haunting our mourning thoughts, as we watch others hand in hand, walk past, free from such torments. And we will say to ourselves, "why us?"

And you will say to yourselves, "what's this?"

And then next week will be the G20 in Seoul. "The first summit to be held in Asia", so the slogan reads. It will be quite exciting to see what happens. I'll try and head to the centre of town when it's on. A very clever place to hold the summit though, the level of political naivety here reducing the risk of large protests. Such things if they ever did happen would happen in countries where there's a sizable population of liberal youth with time on there hands to consider global injustices, and less of a money-orientated career drive. And if such out of control protesting never does happen, much to the chagrine of the media, they will no doubt find a way to make a bloody riot out of a peaceful march. Police waiting at the lines, ready to follow suit. Then the grand act it filmed, photographed, written about for the whole world to see. The images that will fall on the eyes of all will be spoken about from the mouths of few. And to these people we listen? One can only hope that the cycle is regurgitated with a touch of derision.

And we will say to ourselves, "it's all shit!"

There's too much fun to be had I suppose. Last weekend was a face-fuck in good times, a little too in your face. I mean I enjoyed myself, but no matter how much you enjoy yourself, when you're surrounded by drunk North Americans dressed in costumes ranging from Lego men to more topical bloodied-up Mexican Cartel gangsters and Federales (it seems that no social or national tragedy is out of bounds during Halloween), no matter how much you enjoy yourself there is always a relative diminishment when bombarded with such debauched revelry. By the way, since when was it acceptable to dress as the KKK now? One shouldn't have double standards, as people can dress up as Nazi officers, serial killers, terrorists and other such orchestrators of horror, but there is something still not quite right about the KKK (not "right" in the obvious sense, there was never much "right" about them to begin with), something still not quite safe about the comedy the KKK uniform can quite emit.

There's a great level of fulfilment a gaming geek can sometimes get from Halloween. Occasionally I found myself exclaiming, "you're Ling Xiaoyu!" (Tekken), "hey, you're Squall Leonhart!" (Final Fantasy VIII). Whether it was the fact that I stated the characters first names, the titles of the games, and their release dates, but the people never stuck around for too long. Still I was smiling, "I'm off home to listen to the Final Fantasy VI soundtrack now." So I got to thinking how I would dress up next year, how esoteric or mundane you can be? "Fuck Nico Bellic, I'll be his cousin Roman", or eschewing the distinctive shaggy-haired, bearded features of Peter Sutcliffe I'd adopt the inconspicious facade of a friendly country doctor. Harold Shipman certainly didn't look the part. I suppose that's what helped him be so successful.

And then I'll say to myself "can I say that?"

And then when all the protesting and partying is over we can go back to our routine again, whether that routine is part of the big machine or a wholly independent cog, we're all good. That is to say, if you believe it... and you're not Harold Shipman.

Falling Rocks and Mountain Tops

In Korea there is little sense of personal space. Your bubble of security, zone of safety is a construct of inconvenience, a crock of shit. It has no space here, being too packed for you to be feeling annoyed if a person walks right next to you, leering upon your person, maintaining the same walking pace as you, never leaving, always there, a Korean shadow that masks your own. When I was first here I was frustrated at this, always complaining that it was I that always had to move out of the way, but then I realised I was the only one that moved out of the way because I was the only one that gave a shit. Now I mind less having an elbow thrust right in front of my face or a lady knock my arms about like limp strands of spaghetti.

Even in Seoraksan National Park, a place of such natural beauty, like Yosemite or the Lake District, that when you reach the summit you dont want to leave, and when you do pull yourself away, you regret the decision a bit, because you know that you may never be there again - even here there was no chance of solitude or serenity, as the trails were full of people. Old people keeping fit and familys dragging their small children along, yanking them up steep mountain staircases, instilling into them from an early age the popular Korean tradition of hiking.

When you enter the park you are presented with the child friendly images of a cartoon papa and baby bear, exited with the adventurous prospect of ascending the mountains. I am assuming they left the country to seek fortune in the city, then missing their roots decided to make the trip back. See once again the steep granite rock faces, burning faint gold in the evening twilight, or a straight grey in the flat morning light. The forests deep with impenetrable mystery, when flashes of light shine off the glittering streams flowing down the centuries old carved waterways. I can see why they returned.

Things take a turn for the worse though. The papa and baby bears smiles soon fade as warning signs show impressionable Korean kids the disasters of such hikes. One image portrays rocks falling on top of papa bear as he desperately attempts to protect his child from crushing. The large rock is moments above papa bears head, just before it is caved into oblivion. One can only surmise that papa bear falls back on baby bear, smothering him with a slower more traumatising death.

Another image shows baby bear perilously close to a cliff edge losing his balance. You can see the terror in his eyes as he realises that he has reached past that point in counterbalance where there is nothing for it but submission to the fates. I assume that he fell to his death. Maybe he landed on other hiking bears, who knows. However I cant help but thinking where papa bear was, leaving his baby to roam free around the mountain tops. Negligent parenting, that's what I call it. He only has himself to blame. Live with that papa bear, live with THAT! There should be another warning sign later showing papa bear drinking himself into an alcoholic stupor years later in a gas filled room back at home. Bear that in mind. Hikes can be dangerous, you see.

A Brief History of Happiness

"Hello! How are you?"
"Happy!"
Happy? Are you really? I look at the kids. Are you genuinely content with the world, because I dont believe you actually are. I think you're just saying it. It's alright if you aren't. You can tell me if your mum packed you a shit carton of milk, the standard range, and not a flavoured one, because I know that can fuck up your day. Maybe your best friend is spending too much time with another person, not fulfilling the duties of a BFF. Is it a girlfriend/boyfriend that you want? There is a couple in one of my classes, 7 year olds. I found out in class when the girl sat next to her boyfriend and said to me:
"Ameen teacher! Eric, I, together." I was shocked at first but then I realised it was normal. Kids are not idiots, they do know what more there is than friendship. I think the surprise came primarily from my distance from that age, but coming to think of it, I remembered that I had girlfriends at that age. Kisses on the cheek, holding hands, pointless walks around the school field. Then I began to remember a few girlfriends, oh my! I think I was a bit of a player when I was eight.

I remembered giving away my Stuart Pearce football coin to a girl because I liked her. What a fool. Never saw that again. And she never gave me a kiss! I've been a lot more guarded since.

What else is supposed to be ideals of happiness?
That magnificent career,
Educations purpose or consequence?
Maybe it's a partner,
As two may do what one cannot.
How about benefits,
Dependence can be comforting.
Anonymity,
No face, no place, some bliss?
What about friendship,
It seems to provide all the fun.
Some think the thought and search,
Eliots ennobling intellectual purpose.
Failing that, getting fucked,
A problem that solves a lot, given money.
Do you like recognition,
Fames fortunes finds no fault, yeah?

Happiness was invented in the early 18th Century in England. As the growth of coffee houses, prostitution, drinking and opium dens, reached an all new height, scientists at the time realised that a new emotion had to be manufactured to fit in with the hedonism of the time. A prototype was first created and tested on the willing participant, poet Alexander Pope. It failed miserably; after a half hour burst of ecstasy where he ran down Fleet Street proclaiming "I see the light!" he fell into a deep coma. Upon awakening he developed a humpback and shortened in height, and generally got a little bit more ugly. Doctors also recorded another side-effect - witty satire. It was the last thing they wanted to happen. It is believed today that Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye, has contracted a similar strain. This strain is commonly referred to as The Pope (aka Dunciad, Lockrape and Cock-Curll). The Pope is highly dangerous and is a big priority in modern policing.

After the Popotype Affair, scientists re-assessed the compound structure of Happiness, adding more Joy (a French invention) and a reduction of Erratic Behaviour (a disputed invention between Latvia and Estonia). The result was an overnight sensation. Revellers could now feel the correct feelings for their times. It was such a huge success that the initial pill form of Happiness had to be changed. It was pumped into all the country's water supplies, feeding the nation with an emotion that has been going strong to this day. So strong was its success that the French modified their Joy, and the rest of the world followed suit with their own version of Happiness. The German version, Glaubiestenfranggebotstung, is a particularly potent form of Happiness, one where the effects are not externally visible on the face, but doubly powerful inside.

Today with a recorded decline of fun and hedonism since the 18th century, due to growing trends of health consciousness and the invention of Reservation in 1813 and Prudishness in 1821, the strain of Happiness has been diluted to accommodate our more considerate times. However there have been anomalous peaks of Happiness, via illegal sources, in the late 19th Century symbolised by the Aesthetes, and the late 20th century represented by the Madchester scene, pioneered by New Order's seminal album Technique.

Human Aquarium

I think it's called a Fish-eye camera lens because it looks like a fish-eye. I'm not sure whether the picture of the world you get when you look through it is an actual representation of a fish's vision. If so, then fish should rule the earth. They would pretty much see everything, as the the image is a hemispherical one that warps the view/image into a circular one that draws eveything in, capturing everything on the horizon. Of course these super fish, should they exist, would be a vengeful power, enslaving the human race, using them to build the new empires of the future. These empires would consist of large domes filled with water I'm guessing. Inside these domes would be airtight human aquariums where humans are free to dance, roller-skate and eat twix bars. Human markets there will be too, with people left flapping about (yes, they will still be flapping like fish) with nothing to do but being stared at by newly evolved human-flesh hungry fish.

I speak like this because lately I have been eating a lot of freshly executed fish. I point at an eel, and minutes later it is thwoked on the head with a knife. With half its head hanging off and its body writhing in what must surely be a mixture of terror and pain, its head is imapaled on a spike, where the fish-monger proceeds to slice it open, gut it, and chop it into chunks for my culinary pleasure. The sea-life sometimes strikes back though. One day when in the sea with Joe, Luigi and Murphy, a crab pinched at Murphy's big toe.
"Aaah!" he screamed out. Turning around expecting to see a drowning girl with a speech impediment making her voice abnormally high-pitched, we were instead confronted with his shocked face, "a crab just bit me!" Immediately we were all scared, and for the next half an hour in the sea, we four grown Englishmen were panicing and hopping around like terrified children daring not to put our feet on the sea-bed, whilst metres away four Korean children were busy having too much fun to care about such problems. Murphy later claimed that the crab was "as big as a cup", but the tiny red dot on his toe proved otherwise.

Sometimes I think Seoul is like being in a huge human fish tank, a strange example of how far humans can go, whilst being observed by something much bigger or important than us. Whether that be giant fish or some God like entity, is for the reader to ponder. Seoul and its surrounding area is the second largest populous in the world and such heights cannot to reached without its strange side-effects. Despite being nothing but another bobbing head packed like humans in a steel tube, with nothing much to show for yourself but that incurable and infuriating sense of self-consciousness and a new set of mosquito bites, one still feels a part of something. The more packed in I am the less I am known, but the more defined I actually feel, as one who is fighting a losing battle between recognition and reduction to oblivion. Still we carry on to be recognised, because it is the effort that provides that important sense of fulfillment, not the target. And like a fish in that big blue, one way to be made felt is to be part of that school so large that it scares off the biggest shark.

In this case I am part of that big school, not the school I teach in, but the metaphorical group-of-fish one, however this is a human version of it. The external threat is still a giant fish however, which you could wish to use as a symbol of the threat of non-recognition, but I choose to regard it as an actual giant fish. And if you are still following me and have any idea what I am going on about, please let me know.

Photo by Luigi Marinelli

An Aside to Sir Henry Wotton

How happy he in freedom's fall
Falls flat, unchecked with common chains
Of desire's unrelenting call
Thought harmless in its restless claims.

Maybe work's so timetabled bores
Unfolds those two unpracticed wings,
Denied, now tried it gladly soars
With freedom's flight, it sadly sings.

The Fashion and The Expense

Sleep can be an inconvenient necessity sometimes, like monitoring dietary habits or looking before you cross the road. Generally things that assist in self-preservation, I find a nuisance. Could it be that I am not long for this world? If so, that only increases my desire to by-pass sleep to make the most of everything. Certainly this feeling had no more arresting quality than it did in Japan. Both nights there involved a club so small and frequented by ex-pats that by the second night I felt I was already a seasoned attendee there, downing cup after cup of rum and coke whilst mesmerised by a middle aged Japanese mans dancing, akin to the writhing motion of a snake suffering from irritable bowl syndrome.

We got to Fukuoka by high speed ferry, a "hovercraft" like machine resting on three pin like poles penetrating the sea, cutting three fine lines, directing an inevitable course to the clean streets of Japan. The city was ordered and tidy, full of hidden codes and rules ordinary to the natives, alien to us, so eager to break thorugh to it. The city-scape from afar possessed the same order as street level views. Buildings were lego blocks in construction and placement, but lego blocks with unique modern character. Yellow, beige, pink, peach paintwork. Large panels of squares seemed to be a design of appreciation here; one curved building, a yellow edifice of pale yellow panels, outlined with black lines, something straight out of Blade Runner. All very cool. Then there are the people.

It is Japan, and with Japan came this sense of confidence and pride, a notion of being able to do what it wants, and no where does this make itself felt more than in the easily visbile form of fashion. Everything is extremely individualistic here. Yes, there are always fashion trends, but here trends are also viewed with a pinch of derision. They will wear jeans sown together from different materials, with one leg rolled up and the other down, clothes appearing where you think no cloth has the right to appear. Hair too has as large amount of stage space for their experimentaion to play with. It's hard not to keep on staring at the unique combinations of otherwise incongruous fashion elements. You can understand why so many art shops around the world have books on Japanese fashion. It's all so fresh and inventive.

There was this shop, a veritable forbidden planet of Japanese oddities, a shop selling games, comics, manga, models, anything that can host the label of some animation or film, from steam-punk to japanese animation porn (hentai). It's five story maze of cramped aisles and silver stairs, smacked of the universal law of these kind of shops all over the world; a cheap attempt at sci-fi futurism, or retro-futurism, I'm not sure entirely, read Rob's blog. However here there were things you may not necessarily see all over the world. One floor was dedicated entirely to hentai, suitably pink with men either anxious for anonimity or confidently browsing, head held high. One traditional style of Japanese porn involves monster like tentacles penetrating every orifice of a girl who, of course, is having a whale of a time. I mean who wouldn't if they were being molested by a tentacled beast.

Of course the next day was hard to get going, having just got a couple of hours sleep, waking up in time for the hotel breakfast. It was so expensive that such an opportunity for food must not be overlooked. When discussing it the night before - watching insane Japanese TV with overly enthusiastic presenters, cut by adverts where everything is sung (I mean why say things when you can sing it?) - as I was saying, as we were talking the night before it at all never occured to us that we could sleep through the breakfast period, it was given that we would have to wake up at 9am. I mean Japan is so fucking expensive! One day, before I realised fully the value of the Yen and the exchange rate, I was just about to buy a wicked hat, feather in brim and all, when just before I got to the counter my friend felt obliged to point out my folly.
"Do you realise how much 7000 yen is?"
"Yeah, that's alright. Its a nice hat." I casually responded.
"It converts to about 100 dollars."
I looked at my friend, a newly introduced tilt to my head, acknowledged the sales assistant politely, nodded softly, "mmmm, right, OK", u-turned as casually as possible with the air of someone who just realised that the hat was not quite to his liking (too much feather) and gently placed it back. Nodded again in grave appreciation and slowly backed out of the shop.
"What the fuck! 55 pounds!" At that point I realised I had to be very careful. Nowhere outside of England have I encountered a place as expensive as Japan. We were getting nailed.

A Godzilla model in the shop cost over 600 pounds. It would appear that the only thing Godzilla destroys now is your bank balance. The post-war nuclear fallout has now metamorphised into a commercial goldmine. Never did get to see the beast. I think he lives off the coast of Tokyo.

Something Like a Work-out

This city finds new ways to fascinate, not each passing day, for that would be an exaggeration, seeing as some days, especially during my two week holiday I have only left my room to get some bread and ice-cream. But each passing week shall we say. A couple of days ago I went on a hike through some glorious mountainous country, a place where after a few minutes walk you feel truly in the middle of nowhere, but know that the moment you descend and exit the park perimeter you are immediately struck by the massive apartment blocks, white and delightfully dystopian. The utilisation of space is staggering, nothing is spared when housing is in consideration. There is no need to gradually grade the change from country to city, the city is far too important to bother with that. Don't worry there are plenty of parks, nice ones too, for they also value the need for green open spaces, but there is no sense of needing to pander to aesthetic tastes. You will note that if you see the apartment blocks. They all look the same and have large numbers painted on the white painted sides. "I live in room 3, floor 16, block 104" would, I imagine, be a very reasonable response to the question "Where do you live?"

The hiking trail took us under temerous canopies of evergreen trees, past solitary temples, over smooth plateaus of rock where you can catch a hazy view of south Seoul, and past Korean war bunkers sharing the same hazy view, although with markedly destructive leanings, as their barbed-wired entrances embody an historic dispute with current repercussions. The war is ongoing. At certain idyllic points there are watering holes where ladels are laid all over the place for resters dousing themselves with water. All sense of civilised decorum are atavistically eschewed as everyone guzzles water and tips it over themselves. We were particularly careless with the water, paying no heed to the need for dry clothing, cynically mocking colds' armies, as we chucked water all over our already sweat-soaked t-shirts. As we walked on we came to realise that the line between where the water ended and the sweat began was as diffused as the moisture on our clothes.

At the top of mountains, hills or parks in Korea there is always what you would call an outside gym, a very Korean thing seen in all parks. An array of weights, bars, walking devices (why would you need them after an epic hike? It shares a similar logic to Jack Bauer feeling the need to have a go at Metal Gear Solid) and stretching devices. You also have big wooden poles stuck in the ground which serves the specific purpose of hitting yourself against it. Yeah, I've seen it, it's the done thing, no fuss, men boldly striking their arms out at the poles, thumping their backs against it, generally bruising themselves all in the name of fitness. I think it's the idea of resilience and toughening up your frame that is the underlying purpose behind it. It also explains another painful exercise in these gyms; that of hoola-hoops with studs running on the inside. I've tried it and for a brief moment as the pain made me yell out in comic bewilderment, I tried to think "why?" Why would someone do this to themselves? The idea that it is good for you in the long run, possibly making you live even longer, is no way near a good enough reason for doing it. It helps circulation apparently, that and bruising. It also helps you feel a little bit wrong.

Another aspect of this typical Korean workout, that I try and do every once in a while, is the humiliation I feel when a seventy year old man is pushing 40kg weights while I struggle with 10kg. I try and act nonplussed by it, but it troubles me as I am sure it would you too. Such a reversal of strength serves only to remind me of my greatly limited mortality in comparison, and when I finish my set of exercises I don't get that sense of self-satisfaction that should accompany physical exertion, instead I just get a sense of personal shame and embarrassment. Maybe I should just stick to the star-jumps in my bedroom.