Wex of Arabia

The arrival of a certain asshole in our offices today (we can call him Kim So Douche) reminded me of a story I’ve been meaning to tell you for some time.

Two months ago I went on a business trip with the Kims. (There was one other foreigner on board, but he doesn’t count. He’s such an obsequious kimchi-lover he might as well be a spokesman for the Fan Death Association). We went to the Middle East: Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

That’s right, I was in Saudi Arabia. Why has it taken me 3 months to write about what I did in “the Kingdom”? Clandestine services demands a three month post-op grace period these days.

Saudi was a rather depressing dump, at least the part of it I saw. No sign of the largesse of oil wealth – just a developing country in a desert with a lot of half-finished buildings and creepy unlit highways. I imagine Riyadh must be more impressive, but we were on a trip to the industrial coastline.
So, what’s a business trip like with the Kims? At times it’s like taking your grandparents to Times Square. My boss generally shuffles around blithely, without ever seeming to take much in. But once in a while he’s confronted with something foreign and needs to be shepherded, like how you have to drag grandpa away from the hookers on 8th Ave. Or when you have to convince Grandma that there’s nothing to fear from the pre-op trannies pouring out of “Don’t Tell Mamas” on 43rd.

In general the Kims prefer to stick with what they know. This is why we ate Italian food in Saudi Arabia, and Korean food in Abu Dhabi (after two whole days without pickled cabbage, the Kims were starting to wilt). They’re constantly seeking to compartmentalize the unknown or to break it down into manageable bits that can fit on a powerpoint slide. In preparation for this trip my boss asked me to read a little book on Saudi culture called “Don’t they know it’s Friday”? He wanted a powerpoint overview of how Saudis do business differently. I of course refused to waste my time in such a manner (I’m very popular around the office thanks to this attitude), but to mollify him I did agree to look at the book. I am now the Saudi expert, having read a book by some old British wanker about not shaking hands with Saudi women.

This is pretty typical of Korean business culture. Nobody is prepared to develop any real expertise but they’re quite happy to create pretend experts who can deliver sound bites of knowledge lacking any real depth… but I digress

The real reason I started writing this piece was to tell you about how this asshole I saw today conspired with my idiot boss to screw us all out of $1000. Here’s the situation: as the youngest and lowest ranking member of our business delegation I was given the task of making sure we had hotels booked in Saudi and Dubai (where we had some other meatings). I’m pretty sure there’s an office somewhere downstairs that’s supposed to deal with hotels, but I’m equally sure that it’s staffed with drooling imbeciles – so I thought it best to handle it myself. I told my boss that I’d take care of the hotels, in consultation with this asshole from a different team who lives in Dubai. I had not yet met the asshole – Kim So Douche – but he was meant to be a source of advice on which hotels to choose. I called him and he recommended two hotels.

I booked the hotel for Friday night in Dubai and had one in Saudi for Saturday night. We had to then come back to Dubai on Sunday and Monday, so I made a separate booking for those nights – at a Hotel recommended by Kim So Douche. I told my boss we had reservations and even offered to print him up his own copy. We stayed the first two nights of our trip without incident.

Upon arriving at the Dubai airport on Sunday I discovered that, without ever consulting me, Kim So Douche had booked a separate hotel for our final two nights in Dubai. He had done this the night before – while we were staying in a hotel that I had booked. I later learned that So Douche had consulted with my boss about whether or not I had already booked a room for Sunday. Even though they knew I had booked the first two nights of our trip, it somehow seemed possible to them that I had forgotten to book the final 2 nights. Instead of waiting to confirm this completely ridiculous possibility with me, they double booked the hotels – eventually forcing us to cancel one of the reservations. Since these were nice hotels, the last minute cancellation cost $1000.

Despite the fact that this was completely my boss and Kim So Douche’s fault, they somehow seemed to regard it as a mere miscommunication. I said no – it was clearly my job to take care of this, as evidenced by the fact that we spent the first two nights in the hotels I booked – not to mention the fact that my entire team was well aware that I had booked the hotels (including the useless American who was with us on the trip, and with whom the Kims also decided not to consult before double booking the hotels). Besides, what kind of idiot would only book hotels for half of the trip?

No big deal, u might be thinking. I mean, there’s no way my boss, a Vice President, would ever ask a lowly underpaid assistant manager to help pay for such a mistake…right? Plus, isn’t it part of Asian culture that the older, richer guy has to shell out for the poor young guy? Not this time. The bastard made me and the other American guy cough up $250 a piece to pay for this error. He paid for $500. My boss refused to ask HR to compensate us for the Hotel, which they certainly would have done. He also refused to even ask Kim So Douche to chip in, even though it was his hotel hubris that caused the problem. His reasoning was that it would make us look bad if other people in the company found out about the gaffe. As for justifying taking my money – he claimed that it wasn’t really my money anyway, since we all had a per diem for the trip and I hadn’t spent all of mine on food. Apparently my unspent compensation is up for grabs. Next time he goes on a business trip I’m going to drive his company car off a bridge – it’s not like it was really his car after all.

Pheasant Executioners

Korea is unique in its ability to – as a friend of mine here put it the other day – make you want to root for the other guy, even when it seems that Korea is actually in the right for once.

Case in point – Have you heard of Dokdo? Or Takeshima? If so, you’ll know that they’re both the same place, and the name you use depends on where you’re from, or maybe simply on whether you prefer Japanese (Takeshima) or Korean (Dokdo) food. I’m not going to get into details, but suffice it to say this is a land-dispute between Korea and Japan that has been on-going since Japan annexed the peninsula in 1905, over an island so small that one of the other names it goes by is the Liancourt “Rocks”. Korea, still flaming pissed over having been occupied by Japan for the first half of the 20^th century, has made Japan-bashing a national pastime - so when it comes to Dokdo, winning the dispute with the Japanese is a matter of national pride.

Anger over the issue dies down periodically, but every once in a while Japan does something to bring it back to the forefront, either by driving a coast guard ship a little too close to the rocks for Korean comfort, or by denoting the island as officially Japanese in school textbooks, as they recently did. Wexford insisted that I pin some of the blame for the continuous nature of this dispute on the Japanese, for obnoxious yet subtle actions such as these. And when it comes down to it, it does seem as though Dokdo truly is Korean territory. But the vehemence with which Koreans insist Dokdo is theirs, the disgusting actions they resort to in protest of Japanese claims, and the in-your-face nationalism that emerges in support this meaningless pile of rocks, makes me want nothing more than to see it officially recognized as Japanese.

A friend of mine in Washington DC described to me how Korean lobbyists are gaining a name for themselves as enormously unsophisticated, so intent on pushing the “Dokdo is Korean” cause that US Congressmen and women are forced to remind them that there are more pressing issues to deal with – for example, their unruly neighbor up North. The Kims whine about it so much that on his recent trip to Seoul President Bush was obliged to rename the Rocks Dokdo in official US documents so the that air would be clear to calm them down over one of the other irrational obsessions here – American beef.

Part of the reason I’m so incensed with this stupid affair stems from my own recent run-in with the issue. I had been scheduled to speak at a “world” conference in Japan this month, organized by a consortium of Korean universities and think tanks, and held in a different country every year, where speakers discuss various issues surrounding Korea. Unfortunately, this was right around the time Japan started bragging again that Takeshima was a Japanese territory. A few weeks later I got an email from the organizers informing me the conference would no longer be held in Japan, but would be moved to Korea - all because the bitchy Korean academics were upset about their precious rocks. It’s like a couple of kids on the playground fighting over marbles, except all the kids have PhDs and still believe in fan-death.

The most despicable reaction, however, came a couple weeks ago, when a group of Koreans staged a protest outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul by decapitating pheasants, the Japanese national bird. It was a small group of bird murderers, but the overwhelming feeling of anger demonstrated at the protest permeates the entire country and is emblematic of how seriously folks around here take a bunch of useless rocks.

Korea may be right, Dokdo might really be Korean territory, and Japan may just be rubbing salt in a decades-old wound. But until I can have a conversation about international relations in this country without someone bringing up Dokdo, until I can watch the news without seeing some nationalist head-case beating an innocent creature to death, and until Korean citizens start paying as much attention to their starving and persecuted brethren up North as they do to this insignificant group of rocks seven hours off the cost of the peninsula, I’m with Japan on this one.

The Good, the Bad, the Douchey

Dearest Readers,

Long has it been since my dulcet odes to Korea graced your browser. You may have imagined that I finally became accustomed to this miserable country and no longer felt the need to lambast its shortcomings through the magic of the internets. Sadly this is not the case. I have either been busy trying to get myself the hell out of here, or too depressed to do anything other than watch old Guns and Roses videos on Youtube. But never fear, there are many absurd episodes to recount.

First up, let me tell you about my run in with the law. Today I’m heading down to the Yongsan police department to sign a statement that will officially put an end to what was a bizarre, frustrating, occasionally amusing and once even inspiring affair.

It would take too long to get into all the details, but the story does demand some explanation. My band did a photo shoot for an incredibly pathetic local magazine called Rokon. This sorry rag is so phony that despite claiming on its cover to be an “indie source magazine”, it often featured Maroon 5 stories and ran a glowing review of the new Mariah Carrey record next to our Indie band article. Thus, when the editor of this lame excuse for a rock magazine refused to give me the photos from our hilariously overwrought shoot, I was rather incensed. After I politely but firmly told him that he had no reason to withhold our photos, he started acting like a bitchy prima donna, and eventually sent me a rude email.

Now, you may imagine that Wexford Sunshine is capable of responding to rude emails with abusive diatribes that will offend your average poser magazine editor. But this douchebag was more than offended by my scathing response, in which I referenced both his lame mag’s Mariah Carrey piece and his own ridiculous myspace page - which I claimed was clear evidence of his problems with a diminutively apportioned penis. Cut n paste this (blognazis at google don't seem to want me to link it), I think you'll agree with my assessment:
http://www.myspace.com/konghaus

Douchebag proceeded to loose what feeble control he had over his tiny mind and sent me approximately 30 text messages in a 24 hour period, which got increasingly more violent and threatening. I wasn’t terribly worried about it until he showed up outside my house the following day and threatened to sick his thug friends on me. At this point Wake me, my lawyer pal Alfonso Izquierda Esquire and I decided it would be best to bring the matter to the police. Before you go calling me a pussy, bear in mind that in Korea I would most certainly be blamed for any fights I got into – regardless of who started them. The Douchebag was apparently born in America, but he’s Korean American and I had to assume his posse would include Koreans who could lie to the cops about the whole thing. As you’ll see in a moment, I was right to be suspicious of the Korean justice system.

So we went down to the police station with a Korean friend of mine named David, prepared to get the whole thing on record. We knew the Douche wouldn’t get tossed in jail or anything, but I figured filing a complaint against him would at least give me the authority to beat his ass with a crowbar with legal impunity – in self defense of course.

Let me pause here to give props to my man David, and all the other people involved in this silly episode, including Alfonso Esq. and his attorney pal Kil-ho Esq., as well as my main man Jun and my boy Dennis (who provided the crowbar, and some damned fine whiskey). David spent 4 hours with me in the police station, translating, explaining and even getting finger printed for me. The rest of the crew was behind me the whole way, whether it meant translating, giving legal counsel or promising to bring the ruckus if anybody had to get thrown a beating. I often criticize the Kims but one thing’s for sure – a Korean friend will stand by you no matter how crazy shit gets.

Sadly, we never did get to kick any poser magazine editing ass. Shortly after we finished filing the report at the police station we discovered that some of the threatening texts I’d been getting from people I thought were Douchebag's violent posse were actually all sent by him alone. Apparently in Korea you can change the phone number that accompanies your text message, so it looks like it was sent by somebody else. Turns out Douche was not only short in the pants, but short on friends too. Furthermore, after the detective called Douche to tell him to come to the station, he proceeded to desperately phone me and my band mates, claiming he couldn’t afford to pay any fines and that the whole thing was just a big misunderstanding.

At this point I thought the whole thing was over and was ready to move on, although part of me had been hoping for a fight (with the law on my side). But the fighting left to be done was not to be physical. It turned out that the asshole detective was too lazy to do his job and file the report on Douche. He wanted the two of us to reach some kind of agreement, so that his office wouldn’t have to press charges. From what I’d seen there wasn’t much else for them to do at the Yongsan police department, but I guess my detective needed as much time as possible for cigarette and kimchi consumption.

Thus he trumped up some bullshit about how he believed that I had threatened the Douchebag in the same way as he had threatened me. At first I laughed at this. Clearly one could not equate making fun of someone’s magazine and calling him out for having a small wang with repeated threats of physical violence and stalking someone at their home. The cop himself had told me that only repeated threats were actually considered a crime. Douche had repeatedly harassed me; I sent two emails. My man Kil-ho called the detective and explained this to him, even translating my emails for him so as to demonstrate their non-threatening nature.

But the asshole detective was determined not to do his job and sadly, this country’s joke of a justice system was on his side. I was informed by my lawyer friends that even though technically I had committed no crime, the prosecutor and judge would generally take the detectives word on such a small case. The detective would claim he thought I threatened Douche, no one would ever consider whether or not he had the authority (or even jurisdiction, considering the emails were in English from US based accounts) to make such a claim. The Judge would rubber stamp some kind of fine for me and I would have to go to court to fight it. Kil-ho and Alfonso both thought that defending my white ass in a Korean court was not worth the trouble. I didn’t want to drag them down with me for such a petty thing, so I eventually agreed to acquiesce to the detective’s plan. I would drop my complaint if Douche would drop his, and give me the photos.

Eventually some of the photos were secured, and I was told that Douche had to embarrass himself considerably to get them. I reluctantly went down to the police station with Jun to sign a statement retracting my complaint. But when I got there, we discovered that the Korean legal system did not have a provision for a conditional withdrawal of a complaint. That means I could not withdraw it solely on the condition that Douche was never allowed to file a complaint against me for my “threatening” emails. On top of that, the stupid cop hadn’t actually gotten the Douchebag to sign anything yet, so once I signed my withdrawal I would have no recourse if Douche decided to press forward with his own ludicrous claim. I yelled at the asshole cop, who once again was simply trying to get rid of me, and walked out the door – dragging Jun behind me and trying to tell him not to apologize for me.

In the end Douche was made to sign his unconditional withdrawal first, and I was prepared to never sign mine. But for complicated reasons Alfonso felt he would be compromised as a lawyer if I gave the finger to the system – so today, I will end the silly affair, which has now dragged on for a month. Now of course I am frustrated by the absurdity of this situation – this could only happen in Korea. But I’m also proud of my friends, who truly went beyond the call of duty to keep this asshole foreigner out of court and out of the hospital. Nice work guys.

The Korean Government Is Trying to Kill Me

It was another miserable day in Seoul when I woke up this morning – cloudy with a hint of 90% humidity in the air – and I headed out the door mentally preparing myself for the 10 minute walk to the bus stop and the subsequent commute (see earlier post for all the gory details). I was unaware, however, what Seoul had in store for me this morning, and wasn’t quite prepared as I set off down the street towards the bus. I was about two minutes into the walk, fiddling with my ipod trying to find a song suitable for the dreary morning, when I first heard it; a loud buzzing, that initially resembled a helicopter or something airborne, though it became quickly apparent that it was much closer. The next thing I noticed as I looked down the street ahead of me was the huge, white cloud expanding quickly and moving up the street towards me at speed that I was unaware clouds of any sort could move. It was still early, so it wasn’t until then that I made the connection – the noise, the cloud – and shouted at no one in particular, “FUCK! ITS THE DEET TRUCK!”

The Deet Truck is the Korean answer to the admittedly absurd amount of mosquitoes that somehow manage to survive here for nearly ten months out of the year, and it is exactly what it sounds like – a truck with a large pipe extending off the back that emits deet into the air in a thick white cloud. I had only seen the Deet Truck once before, but luckily I was in my house and able to shut all the windows before it drove by. This time, unfortunately, I wasn’t so lucky.

From the behavior of the Koreans around me – those outside sweeping the street in front of their homes, walking their dogs, etc – you’d have thought that this huge cloud of toxic chemicals posed absolutely no threat whatsoever. Luckily, another foreigner walking behind me and I knew better, and dove for the first taxi that drove by. We had to force the cab driver to roll up the windows – even with the deet cloud coming ever closer he was completely clueless as to why these two foreigners were in his cab acting like lunatics, banging on the windows and gesturing with flailing arms – but we managed to barricade ourselves inside before the cloud engulfed the car. Our cab driver has no idea that picking us up this morning probably added five years to his life.

Once safely in the cab, the other person who doesn’t want to die inhaling toxic fumes and I acquainted ourselves, and commiserated over the obliviousness of the people around us, who were still making no move to get inside and away from the airborne deet. “They used to do this in the small town that I grew up in in the States”, he said (didn’t elaborate on which town that was though), “But they outlawed it”. Well of course they did! It’s DEET for christs sake! On the other hand, this may just be the Korean government’s way of driving the foreigners out, since I’ve only seen the truck around my apartment, which is where the majority of the foreigners in Seoul live. Hmmm…

So my new foreign friend and I made it safely to the station and I headed off to the bus where I would spend the next thirty minutes inhaling kimchi fumes off the breath of whatever passenger was smushed up against me for the duration of my commute. For the first time since arriving in Korea, I didn’t complain.

Considering suicide? Let Samsung talk you out of it!

Apparently I’m not the only one who would rather not live in this country – so many others are in agreement that life here sucks, that Korea has the highest suicide rate in the world (25 deaths per 100,000). Don’t worry about me - I know that finding happiness is as simple as boarding an international flight – but others here might need a little more convincing. Thank god then for Samsung and Hyundai, two of the biggest companies in Korea, that have begun a new campaign to keep their employees from flinging themselves off the roof on a bad day. They now offer courses encouraging employees to “assess their priorities in life”, which include fun events such as writing your will, posing for a funeral portrait, and being buried in one of the many coffins in the “death experience” room and then covered with dirt.

Don’t believe me? Click on this link and check out the slide show from a recent Financial Times article (Notice the detail – they even give you a flower to hold before they bury you!).

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2e29bbb6-574b-11dd-916c-000077b07658.html

Don’t get me wrong, I do not find any humor in suicide, but if someone is going to seal me in a coffin and ask me to pretend I’m dead, I’m certainly going to have a lot of trouble not laughing my ass off.

Germy, but Toasty Warm

So, it was suggested by one of our dedicated readers that we try to lighten the mood somewhat. I agree that we tend to get bogged down by negativity, but hopefully you understand that we’re just trying to share our impressions and experiences with you, and unfortunately, they don’t happen to be the most positive ever. With that in mind, I’ve spent the past month or so trying to think of something good to say about this place, and I think I’ve finally thought of something. Yes, there IS one thing here that is able to, without fail, bring a smile to my face and temporarily steady my heart rate.

I am cooped up all day in an over-air conditioned office building, where I keep two scarves handy with which to insulate myself, and a pair of fake UGGs (yup, those cheesy wool boots) that I bought for $20 at a stall in the subway, and that wear around the office everyday, no matter if they do look a little silly with my business suit. You get the point – it’s cold. So there is nothing more satisfying than settling down on, you guessed it, the heated toilet seat. I don’t know who invented these things, or why they have them here, where the majority of people’s daily lives are significantly lacking in luxury (or even comfort), but I’m glad that they do. Now, whenever I have to pee, my mood brightens significantly.

Sure, electric toilets can be a little intimidating at first – they tend to have more buttons than most washing machines I’ve seen, some with Korean words I can’t decipher. Others just have pictures that look more like ancient hieroglyphics than anything else, and that you couldn’t pay me to push. I’ve heard stories of people approaching electric toilets the way that I tend to approach my Korean TV when I’m trying to switch to DVD mode – just push all the buttons until something happens – but those don’t tend to end well when the toilet is involved.

But once you’ve figured out which one turns the heat on, you’re really all set. You can bring in a good book, your PSP, or settle down for a quick nap – as Wexford suspects many of his co-workers do during lunch. I usually just like to lock myself in and focus on feeling warm for a few fabulous minutes, before I head back to my cube and chug another couple glasses of water. The only thing left to do now is convince Westerners that this is something we need in our homes and offices, so by the time I move back, there will be a nice, warm toilet seat waiting for me.

burn baby bird

Everybody knows the Kims have no love for dogs - unless they come in a pot covered in spicy sauce. In fact, some of the abuse of animals I've witnessed here could probably convince the PETA to sell yellowcake to Pyonyang (and you Know PETA is hoarding yellow cake). But did you know about their secret vendetta against doves? It's true, check this out: the picture above is from the 1988 summer Olympics. If you look carefully you can see a dove on the left about to meat its doom in that monster-truck-sized torch. Apparently it was traditional to release a flock of doves into the air to start the Olympics, as a symbol of international peace. The practice was discontinued after 68 years when the Kims built a torch so friggin huge it roasted some of the poor buggers before they could think to fly away.
Hmmm, I wonder what that giant torch could be compensating for?
Actually the entire 1988 Olympics was one flaming ironic Ferrari for South Korean dictator Chun Doo Hwan, who attempted to use the games to placate his people's demands for democracy.

"No votes for you, but check out this monster torch"!
Care for some crispy dove with that?