2. While numerous students bombarded their exam papers with novel-like answers, some barely made a mark on their exam. Regardless, all will be marked by me and all exams will not be fun marking.
3. No sooner did my last class of the day finish their exam but I was rushing out of class. It was 2:45pm and I had a meeting at KBC for 4:30pm. I had asked them for extra time considering I’d be traveling in from Cheonan during rush hour. Due time bumped up to 4:50pm.
4. My new pet peeve with Koreans: Koreans who think speaking English at an inappropriate time is cute. English isn’t a cute language, if anything, it’s a silly, silly language filled with even sillier rules like “I before e, except after c”, or something like that. Moreover, I'm not cool with people trying to act all cute to get out of a situation. Students pull this all the time but today it was a cab driver who pulled this stunt.
5. In Korea it’s illegal for taxi drivers to pick up extra customers because what ends up happening is instead of the customers splitting the cab fair, like expected, they both end up having to pay the fair. This means that the cabbie gets twice the fair for the price of one, thus pocketing free cash. And this is exactly what happened to me after school when I had such limited time to get to the Cheonan Express Bus Terminal. The cabbie picked up some random student who wanted to go to the Cheonan Bus Terminal (down the street from the Express Terminal). I ended up getting into quite the stupid argument with him but when he started to act all cute by speaking English I was about to lose it. The more and more I have these silly run-ins with various people the more and more I’m thinking that Buff Boy the Original words are correct, maybe I am a bit of a trouble maker. I don’t really think so. I’d like to think it’s more of me sticking up for myself and not taking people’s trash like so many other people do. That’s fine if people want to accept and shovel up other people’s trash but not me thanks.
Cabbie: [in English] Do you speak Korean?
Me: [in Korean] I’ve been speaking to you in Korea for 5 minutes now, you didn’t hear me?
Cabbie: [in English] I know English.
Me: [in Korean] Good, then you should know the word “illegal”?
Cabbie: [in English] What?
6. The poor student who he had picked up sat in the front and knew to keep quiet, but when the cabbie stopped and told us to get out the student peeped up. “This isn’t her or my stop” he noted, and it wasn’t. He had dropped us in the middle of the two stops downtown. The student paid the full fare but I refused to pay, insisted that the fair was $4 and the student had just paid it, and moreover, he hadn’t even dropped me off where I had asked to be dropped off. “Illegal” I blurted out. “Look that up in your English dictionary sweetie” and on that note I gave $4 to the student, apologized for him having to be involved there, thanked him, and then I ran off to the Express Bus Terminal.
7. Seoul traffic always reminds me why I love Cheonan so much more than Seoul. It’s always so overly crowded and super polluted in Seoul. Sure it has a lot of places to go to and yes, I'll admit that it's definitely packed with plenty of places to go, things to do and people to see but oh the pollution! My health is more important to me than some trendy hot spot... so is my patience and sanity. Seoul is like the last hour of shopping on Christmas Eve in Toronto but all day, every day and so day trips out to Seoul always leave me with a sore throat, headache and yearning for Cheonan.
8. Made it to KBC by 4:55pm. At the meeting I was introduced to another fellow Canadian boxer, Joe, whom of which knows many of my boxing friends back in Canada and so that was awesome to chat with him about them. It made them seem so much closer to me, as supposed to miles upon miles away.
9. Talk continues about a possible upcoming fight for me on May 22nd. Turns out it’ll be in Osan, which is about 30 minutes away from Cheonan. Talks of signing me with a promoter were also discussed. Right now I have a couple of sponsors and a manager/coach but KBC Kim is convinced that I really need a promoter. I’ve been approached by a couple of people with regards to fights and whatnot but I really didn’t think too much of it. I was unaware of the whole needing a promoter issue. KBC Kim is hoping to introduce me to a promoter very soon.
10. Upon returning back in Cheonan after a very long day, I opened the door and what greeted me was two Korean cuties cooking me fish stew… Q and Mi Nam… hahaha.
QUESTION OF THE DAY...
Korea may have Seoul, but do you know what Cheonan has?
QUOTE OF THE DAY...
Patience is the ability to count down before you blast off.
-- Author Unknown
2 comments:
That was nice of you to pay the student back.
K-taxi drivers are by and large buttheads. Some of the MUCH older guys can be quite sweet but if they are between 20-60 they're, yeah, buttheads.
whenever my students start being stupid I tell them if they don't study harder they're going to end up driving cabs. that shuts them up pretty fast, hehe.
Hi Mrs. Kim,
Thanks and yes, K-taxi drivers are definitely in a league of their own. I guess that's a result of them not having tips though, they make their own tips.
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