who ... moi?

a social butterfly: scared of much, but not of many. never lets the truth get in the way of a good story. not a fan of acronyms, snakes and angelina jolie. a HUGE fan of Fathead.


this blog is black for ENERGY-SAVING reasons.

thanks for your understanding.
if it's too dark, put your glasses on old one.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

sum ting wong

okay so i know it's a little weird ... but the thing about going to an new country and all, is that you find weird shit to fascinate yourself with.

take, for example these little specimens:






exhibit a:  corn-on-the-cob ice cream.  purchased by a fellow teacher of ours, as a gift, we've yet to open and taste it (being 30cm deep in snow, i'm sure you can appreciate the delay!)







exhibit b:  a local beer which can only be described as a delicate taste, something close to a combination of half-water-half-cat's-piss, with just a splash of hops.  i fear that given time, and sheer desperation, we shall come to acquire a liking for said specimen.

please note the slogan "sound of vitality".  really people? really? your beer has a sound? and it's one of health?  really?

oh, and by the way, they also use the under 18 pop group (with a fan base of 16yr-olds and below) to be the promotional front for this noisy beverage.  that's right.  they use children, who are admired by other children, to sell an adult product to adults.  now that people, is marketing.

as i type, i'm attempting my first load of laundry.  there are washers and dryers, and they each take 2 x 500won coins.  I only had 4 coins in total, which is pure luck really.  knowing that the washers only take liquid detergent, i sent Fathead out on a reconnaissance mission to purchase such detergent.  (implied in this instruction, was naturally some kind of softening agent, as all of the female readers would have already assumed).

Fathead did no such assuming, and so instead of both washing liquid and softener, we are now the proud owners of two humongous bottles of detergent.  what's really rad is i have no idea what the detergent does (ie: it may be bleach, it may be carpet cleaner).   i also have no way of finding out - i present you with exhibit c:


luckily we have enough of it to do the laundry for the entire hostel until december, so eventually i'm bound to work out how to use it.

more NB to note at this point is that apparently, 85% of our clothing carries a "do not tumble dry" label.

it is -19.5 degrees.  do you think i wouldn't tumble dry? umm ... excuse me, but seriously: what choices are we presented with here?!

so i'm doing it. as i type.  that's right people.  4 flights down from where i sit, a big industrial-sized tumbler is shrinking most of Fathead's shirts.  if i don't post on this blog again, you know what happened, and you know who pulled the trigger. 


something else you probably didn't know about the craziness over here: nothing comes in singular quantities.  you want soap? 
here-  buy an enormous pack of 10 bars. 
looking for toothpaste? 
well today's your lucky day - take home this pack, and you'll not be back until 2012.

one thing i will give them - they've cracked something that the rest of the human race didn't know it always wanted.

check this out:


this, friends, is a toilet roll holder.  "pah, we have those too!" they cried.
wrong.  you see those two arms on the left and the right (instead of an annoying bar that jumps and pounces all over the bathroom floor)?

spring loaded, buddy.  you pull roll up, they flap up, they get to hole in middle of roll, they pop down. roll on poll. done. you want to change, you pull down, they flap down.  out with old roll, in with new roll.


it's a toilet roll holder designed so simply that even a man can now change the bog roll!
let's hear it for south korea's logical approach to an age old household dilemma.
can i get a hoot hoot?

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