Snowfall in Korea

Since it snowed today for the first time this year, i thought it might be a good idea to tell you about the snow in Korea.
Last year, an unfortunate coincidence resulted in me coming back from Europe to Seoul on the very same day that the whole city got paralyzed by a heavy snowfall. There were no people in the streets, and absolutely no traffic, everything was swamped under piles of snow. The bus from the airport, the only moving object out there, was slowly elbowing its way through the empty streets. It wasn't the end of the world, but it seemed damn close.
To me, the snowfall wasn't worse than any other snowfall one experiences each winter in the northern parts of Germany or Poland, but in Korea it seemed like the end of the world. Admittedly, if an equal amount of snow fell on Rome, the reaction would be probably similar to the Korean one. In fact, the really bizarre part comes now:
In the days after the snowfall no snowploughs cleared the streets, no floods of saltwater poisoned the ground, nothing. People used brooms and shovels to sweep some parts of the sidewalks, but not all, so that bruises and broken bones became a part of everyday life. Cars crawled through the white streets pushing the snow to the sides. In result, brown snow was piling along the sidewalks, and when the sun came out people started to throw the snow back on the streets, so that cars would crush it and the warm sunlight melt it. This process lasted for days: people would shovel the snow on the streets, cars would crush it, and the sun would melt it. There was water everywhere, water that in the night turned to ice...
I was once told by a Korean, that Koreans make the best shoes in the whole world; I would add to that, that they also make the very finest ice-skating-rings for cars I have ever seen.

Memories of a boy

When I was eight years old my family moved for a few years to Germany. At that time I couldn't speak any German, but I was to enter right away into a regular German primary school. Before my first day of school I memorized just one sentence: “Entschuldigung, wo ist die Toilette?”, which means: “sorry, where is the toilet?”.
I do not remember much from that time, but I remember distinctly one incident: one day after school, when I was on my way home, a little boy from another class followed me, and when nobody could see us he pushed me so that I fell. I turned to face him and for a brief second I looked in his eyes, and then he run away.
I told my parents about what happened, my parents told the teacher, and the teacher scolded the little boy. The boy approached me never again, but during breake-time he would always glare at me.
My parents explained to me that the little boy was in love with me, and that all little boys are a bit awkward about expressing their affections and so he pushed me - you know, something like pulling a girl's hair. Of course I didn't believe them - I was eight, but not dumb. There has never been any love in his eyes. I was sure that the boy pushed me because I was different, because whenever I tried to speak German strange sounds would come out of my mouth.
We were too young to understand what racism means, however, isn't racism exactly this – hating somebody because he or she is different and we cannot completely understand them?

So, what language do you speak?

When I am abroad one of the first questions people usually ask is: “where are you from?”. The follow up question is often: “so what language do you speak in Poland?”. Many people are surprised to learn that we do not speak English in Poland and instead have our own language – Polish. I used to be a little annoyed by that, but now I don't mind.
Today I met a girl from Equator and one of the first questions I asked her was: “so what language do you speak in Equator?”.

'Everybody's a Little Racist'

To round up the previous post, a little video from the superb musical "Avenue Q":



Now that's what I call a healthy approach to racism :)

Funny thing: in the British version of the musical they do not mention Polish people, instead they joke about French. I guess there are too many Poles in the UK now and they would become very very upset about such a comment.

White Robinson and black Friday

Today in microeconomics we were talking about a two-men economy, with Friday and Robinson Crusoe as examples. On the wall was a picture of a white Robinson and a black Friday. Some of the examples given by the lecturer were a bit drastic, for example starving a person, which started a wave of semi-racial jokes. When the lecturer asked: "so, who in our economy should get no food", a voice from the crowd answered: "of course the black". This caused an interesting division: we were no longer students, we were white and black students.
You rarely hear Germans speaking about color, race (oops, pardon me using such a naughty word), or similar topics - a stigma from the WWII. The lecturer broke an unspoken taboo and it was interesting to watch the reactions. Some people were embarrassed, some laughed nervously, of course there were also those, who didn't react in any way (but only few of them were sitting in my corner of the lecture hall). I was wondering, how it was possible, that mature twenty-something students would make such a fuss after seeing a picture of a white and a black man.
I come to the conclusion that in Germany race (oops, I did it again) is still a very heated topic and despite the efforts of the '68-movement the past was not cut off completely. It is socially inappropriate to vent on race-issues (eg. through comedy, satire, jokes etc...) and many people seem not to know how to react when a race-related topic is brought up. A lot of fuss is made when somebody says something "inappropriate" and I am not sure if that's the best reaction.
From what I have noticed, in America race seems also a big issue. One of my black-American friends was often saying that there are only two races in America: blacks and whites, and all the rest is siding either with one or the other. I think it a bit of an exaggeration, but he made it quite clear, that America is not as color-blind as it would like to be.
In Poland we hate other Poles, or gypsies, or Jews, but there are probably too few blacks to collectively hate them.
Interesting enough, when you travel through Chinese villages, people do not care whether you are white, or black, or brown, or purple, or green, or silver - sure, they will be curious, but they will welcome you no matter what color you are. I guess they have seen to few green people to hate them.

On men and women

I have been once asked by a man if I liked to be a woman. It was the middle of the night, and I couldn't sleep tossing from side to side, and he woke up and asked me: Tash, tell me, do you like to be a woman? He took me by surprise, after all it is not a question you expect at 4am in the morning.

Yes, I like to be a woman. I said.

Really? He asked.

Really, I answered. So he turned and went back to sleep, but I kept awake till the morning.

I think it is a great privilege to be a woman. Anti-conception gave us the liberty to live the lives we want, yet we kept the right to be weak and protected, at least in the societies that I know.

PC Bang

One time after dinner my Korean friends were debating where to go next. After short deliberation they decided to go to a PC Bang, which means internet cafe in Korean. Since I didn't feel like checking my emails, I said I would go home. My friends tried to convince me to stay, but a stiff dark room full with computers wasn't exactly my idea of a nice evening and so I left.
They seemed really surprised that I would not go, and I was really surprised that they came up with something like PC Bang. Yet back then we all lived in dorms, which we shared with room-mates, thus I explained to myself, that they wanted to chat on skype or enjoy a few minutes of semi-privacy while surfing the web. How wrong I was I learned only much much later.
Time and again my Korean friends, all together, would go to a PC Bang - to them going to a PC Bang was just another form of group activity, just like playing pool, or drinking, or coffee.
Despite having lived in Asia for two years I have never been to a PC Bang, I just cannot understand what is so fun about collective web-surfing. Whenever my friends tried to tag me along, I would just say, that it's a cultural difference, that I just cannot overcome.

On people and culture

When you meet somebody from a different, unknown culture you are bound to ask yourself at some point: where does the person end and the culture begin?

Maybe from beginning to end, from head to toe, from the capital letter to the dot at the end of the sentence it is not the person that is speaking, but a new and fascinating culture?

Maybe it is not the other person that becomes your world, but the other persons world that becomes your own?