Tiger in a cage

For some time I dated a guy from a rich influential Korean family. As you would expect from a son of rich parents he was an excellent golfer and rather popular with girls. He treated everybody with great respect, especially his mother. Yet he lived in a shadow.

He did not know his father well, he feared his father, even hated. He seemed overwhelmed by this grey eminency, never able to rise to the expectations. He told me, that when he was a child the weekends were the worst - with his father home the hours would drag endlessly. Yet at the same time he lived in awe of his father and he knew that he would become the same father figure some day.

Of course not all families in Korea are alike, but from my observations a lot of pressure is put on Korean sons. At an early age Korean boys become aware of their obligation: enter a good university, go to military, graduate, find work, marry. I have met few that had the courage, or means, to stand up to that model. They have obligations to their parents, grandparents, the society, which are not easily broken. In no other nation I know, young men have a greater sense of responsibility. That is one of the reasons why Korea was able to rise from utter poverty within of few decades. But when you look at all those broken dreams and backs crooked under social pressure, you ask yourself: was it worth becoming a Tiger, if you have to live in captivity?

Cultural indigestion

It happened a long time ago, when I was a novice in Korean culture. A bunch of Korean friends took me out to a good korean restaurant, famous for it's spicy potato soup with chicken. I was as happy as a little child with a bar of chocolate, munching on the white mushrooms and sweet potatoes, that I fished out of the big pot of boiling red stew.

During dinner a friend asked: “you don't like the food, do you?”. The question surprised me - I could not imagine why he would think that. I answered, that the food was delicious and to prove my point I put a new portion of chicken on the plate. With chopsticks I divided the chicken in smaller peaces, put a bite into my mouth and chewed slowly enjoying the taste. “You really don't seem to like the food...” my friend sighted disappointed.

Still surprised I looked around. Next to me a tiny girl, half my size, was shoveling rice with a spoon so eagerly, that her cheeks looked like little red balloons at the point of bursting. Suddenly I became aware of all the slurping, and chomping, and gulping that filled the air.

I asked my friend, why he thought, that I did not like the food.

“Well, you eat small bites, and chew on them endlessly, as if you had no appetite... maybe you have a bad stomach?”

But it was not a bad stomach, I just had cultural indigestion.

Anecdotes of a flight attendant

A while ago I flew AirFrance from Seoul to Paris. AirFrance is by far my least favorite aviation company, thus I was dreading that flight very much. In the end it was half as bad, since my steward was not French but German.
The nice steward, of the plump cheery German sort, was very chatty and amused my neighbor (who also turned out to be German) with little steward-anecdotes. You might have noticed, for example, that shortly before take-off, flight attendants are spraying something in the cabin: it is a bug-spray that kills all the bugs instantly (I wonder what effects it might have on humans...). According to WHO requirements this bug-spray has to be used on all long-distance flights since recently. The only aviation company that is exempted from this rule is Lufthansa since, as my cheery steward noted, “you might imagine how people would react, if they saw a German dispersing gas in the cabin”.

Are there polar-bears in Poland?

I had a friend, he was American. I once mentioned to him, that when I was in Canada, I was asked if there were polar-bears in Poland (since it is called PoleLand - it must be on the North Pole, and since it is on the North Pole - there must be polar-bears). He teased me ever since: “So in Poland you have polar-bears instead of puppies”, or “So when I come to visit, you will pick me up from the airport riding a big white sledge pulled by polar-bears?”.
All was meant as a joke, of course, but I really believe that the way he pictured Poland was not very far from the polar-bears-version: lot's of snow, cold, no heating, no electricity, rrrrred cheeked girls and sturrrdy boys all speaking wiz fani akcent, and - of course – lot's of vodka... But, seriously, there is nothing like that in Poland - we are no Russia ;)