Miscellany

In Korea:

Envelopes aren't self-sealing. You have to glue them shut, or tape them. There are bottles of clear, liquid squeeze-glue at every customer station in the post offices.

Automatic doors require your nose to be about two inches away before they open for you. I used to feel like I was going to run into the stupid things before I got through. It's kind of like all those moments in the movies, like Independence Day, when the doors are closing and the ship has to turn sideways or something to get through the tiny hole. Then the pursuing ships all crash into the finally closed doors.

Many automatic doors require a button to be pushed before the open. I guess they no longer qualify as automatic doors, just futuristic easy doors.

Most doors have handles, not doorknobs. Bathroom doors seem to be the major exception, but not a consistent one.

Door locks can never be locked from the outside, that I've noticed. It's impossible to lock yourself out. The posh apartment buildings don't even give you keys. You get a high tech security-coded door with video surveillance on the doorbell. Shmancy.

People constantly spit on the sidewalk. Like loogey-hacking, too. A lot of foreigners find this annoying.

Loud eating is totally okay. Slurping and smacking are a normal part of the Korean meal practice. I read in a guidebook that it's understandable, because Korean food is spicier than our food, so that's just a way of cooling off the mouth.

Korean food is not spicy. THEY all think it is. They always warn foreigners about all this spicy food that is on the plate, and then we eat it and just laugh at them. The only food that I've had here so far that has challenged me was from an Indian fusion restaurant. I just want to shake this whole country of damn pansies. I'm sure there is spicy food out there, but it doesn't seem very common.

I've said this before, but most Korean food is either red, because it's soaked in that atrocious red pepper, or green, because it's seaweed or leaves. I haaaate that.

Koreans think EVERYTHING they do is good for your health, and everything WE do causes cancer. Leon told me today that a kid told him that bread causes cancer.

Koreans hold a grudge, communally. They haaaate China and Japan and most of them hate the US. All they ever talk about is melamine, imperialism (not their words), and mad cow disease. But they don't hesitate to use the products, play the video games, and follow that fashion. I guess that happens everywhere.

There are tons of old people permanently bent at a 90 degree angle from so many decades of strenuous field work.

Pedestrian traffic lights turn green for about two seconds, then start blinking, and the continue blinking for 20 or 30 seconds, or even a minute, then they turn red. So you never know, unless you understand the traffic patterns, if it's okay to cross, and people often hold up traffic or almost get hit, because they took a chance and were wrong.

Scooters don't have to follow traffic laws. Half the cars don't follow them, either, unless in high-traffic areas.

Public restrooms don't have hot water. I really wish that weren't so.

Small faces are extremely attractive, due to the novelty, I guess. Koreans often have wide faces. Everywhere I go, I'm told about my small face. Even Heather's four-year-old nephew remarked on it.

ANY body fat is entirely unacceptable, and many people are relentlessly cruel about it.

There are no cookie sheets.

They've never heard of pudding.

Music is piped out of loudspeakers in places it shouldn't be, like parks and parking lots. Some parks even have massive tv screens.

Cell phones come with two batteries, but no charger.

People's hips and groins are much more flexible, due to sitting cross-legged on the floor so much.

There are no napkins, only toilet paper and tissues.

Ceilings are wallpapered.

Sun exposure is practically forbidden to women over the age of 45 or so.

Doorbells play a mutilated Muzak version of Fur Elise.

You cannot write people's names in red, because that is only done for the dead.

Hospitals and some other buildings don't have a correctly labeled fourth floor. The word for "four" and "death" are the same, so superstition dictates that it's an unlucky number. Buildings that follow this supersition either go from three to five when labeling the floors, or call the fourth floor "F Floor."

There are two flower shops on every block.

Mailboxes in apartment buildings are not always locked, and in smaller buildings, each floor shares one mailbox.

Most of the websites that show tv programs that I want to watch are not supported.

More than half of Korean children wear corrective lenses, because they spend about twelve hours a day in class or doing homework, and in their free time they play video games.