The mango was pure delish and I had earned it after an early morning brutal wake-up call. Though I may be on a kind of mini holiday, Snickers is surely not so I got up early to encourage him and join him. I acted as a kind of training partner, so when Snickers trained so did I.Today’s schedule consisted of the following:
6am – 6km street side run
9am – go to the City Hall, meet the mayor and check weight
1pm – swimming laps in the hotel’s pool
3pm – boxing training at a local boxing club
7pm – shadow boxing, sprints and pad work (only Snickers)
9pm – bedtime
Getting the opportunity to step inside a boxing club in the Philippines was definitely the highlight of the day. It was actually ran by a Japanese man who spoke Filipino but he had Filipino staff and Filipino-only boxers. The club was situated at the back of the Japanese owner’s house and only a roof kept the sun from beating down on us.
They’ve never had a foreign boxer at their club so Snickers training there for the day caused quite a stir of interest among the locals passing by. Children stood fence side while others sat on their roof or stood by watching as Snickers and Big Yoo trained. And having a crowd of people watching only added to the already high energy of the club so it was awesome… just totally awesome.
One of their trainers and a couple of their boxers befriended Snickers and I, so we got asked to pose for a lot of pictures. Snickers ended up bonding with this one particular boxer whom he later gave his hand wraps to.
Definitely the low part of the whole trip was having to deal with Big Yoo’s coach. Name calling here, though it may be considered immature, and calling him an idiot and a half would definitely be the understatement of the year! I know about Korean culture and though I question the whole hierarchy of power and the nonsense that often accompanies it, I was so embarrassed having to translate for Big Yoo’s Korean coach. Every sentence I spoke on his behalf started off with “I’m sorry”, so I was certainly sorry for being sorry and for being so embarrassingly connected to this foolish man. In Korea age plays a huge factor in the amount of respect (and consequently the amount of power) a person is given. Big Yoo’s coach was the oldest among us, meaning that he was the top dog and boy did he try to use and abuse that position.
Poor Junior Mint and Snickers felt they couldn’t say anything but I, being the stubborn and proud-minded Polack that I am, I tried my hardest not to say anything but definitely dropped my two cents throughout the day.
Snickers and Junior Mint urged me to continue to bit my upper lip but when he insisted on stomping out of an Asian restaurant our driver had so carefully picked and insisting him find a “proper” Korean restaurant, I blurted out, “You do know we’re in the Philippines, right?”
He turned and gave me a dirty look, to which Snickers squeezed my hand and said “relax Amy”.
I get it… why doesn’t he? We’re not in Korea so you can’t go expecting this country to be Korea and you can’t go around expecting them to act like Koreans or cook you Korean food. I haven’t ate a single Polish cabbage roll in over 4 years but you don’t go see me insisting Koreans go Polish on me. Ahhh… it was so frustrating, you have NO idea!!! He was such a stereotypical old-minded Korean man practicing Korean manners that were practically as out of date in many countries as was the stupid hairdo he was sporting.
I’m not Korean, we weren’t in Korea, and I certainly wasn’t cool with him enforcing his crusty old-skool Korean manners on me or those around us. I was disgusted at how ill-mannered he treated those who were only trying to help us out. It was the first time I had ever felt incredibly embarrassed to be associated with Korea.
“If you ever become even remotely similar to this old-skool Korean man I’m going to break off your legs and beat the Korean out of you!” I told Snickers.
We ended going on quite a trek around town only to end up back at the hotel for dinner. My foot was twitching and I wanted nothing more than to give him a much deserved kick to the head. Listening to him complain about there being no Korean restaurants caused me to order room service and stay the heck away from him, for HIS own safety.
Can I just give him one good kick to the head?
QUOTE OF THE DAY..
Leave it to kharma.
-- me
2 comments:
Yikes. It's kind of nice that Korea is so respectful of the eldery, when in contrast to America, most old people get put in homes and then ignored. But even so, I can imagine how annoying it must be for someone to feel entitled to respect, just because they're old.
Can't wait for more entries from your trip! Hope we get to read that Snickers won his fight!!
Hey Becca,
I agree with you but bare in mind what was going on down here was a total abuse of such so-called respect and power. He was only a couple of years older too for that matter but holy cow did he ever milk that!!!
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