Bomb English! 폭탄영어!, Bomb English #3 – Foreign Perspectives on Korea - Part 1

Some Key Words and Phrases “Say it ain't so!” = 설마! or an expression of disbelief a “shout out” = a greeting over the radio “The mother of all XXX” = the biggest of XXX to “toot one's own horn” = to talk or brag about oneself to “let off steam” = to release negative energy or anger, like releasing steam pressure in a machine “there's a lot of testosterone…” = to be very manly or masculine (English often uses scientific expressions idiomatically) “blogosphere” = a new word meaning the “world of blogs” to “have an ax to grind” = to have a “chip on one's shoulder” or some issue that one always talks about “That's a whole other story!” = “that's an entire, long separate conversation” to “think with one's stomach” = to always be thinking about food, making plans around food “schlep” = to make a difficult journey “hand-fed” = sometimes used literally, to mean that somebody puts food directly in another person's mouth by hand (or chopsticks, or fork, or spoon, or whatever), and sometimes figuratively to mean that somebody makes something very, very easy for somebody else to do. 폭탄영어#3 – Foreign Perspectives on Korea (TRANSCRIPT) Michael: Welcome to ‘Bomb English.' (We da bomb!) With hosts Michael and Jennifer podcasting direct from Seoul. Jennifer: Real people, real topics, real English. Hello and welcome to episode 3 of ‘Bomb English.' I'm Jennifer. Michael: And I'm Michael – and Yunji is not with us today. Jennifer: Where is she? Michael: She ran away. Jennifer: Huh! I'm not surprised. Michael: She went to 부산. Jennifer: Smart girl. Michael: Um…. Jennifer: Why is she in 부산? Michael: She is in 부산 because of 설날, the big New Year's holiday called ‘Lunar New Years' but a lot of people call it ‘Chinese New Years' in America. Jennifer: It's…yeah, most Americans know it as ‘Chinese New Year.' Michael: Yes, and since the official holiday comes on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday; and Monday and Tuesday are workdays, some places, in fact many places, just cancelled the sandwich days so you can leave on…(Meow) That's my cat! He he. Shut up. So, the sandwich days some places, they got rid of those days so you could have left on Friday to go on some vacation. Jennifer: Sandwich days? Michael: Yeah, so basically when the work-week ended last Friday, some people already went on vacation because their work cancelled Monday and Tuesday to hook up with the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off. Jennifer: So lucky. Michael: I know! So it's a week's vacation for some people. Jennifer: I had to go to school yesterday and today. Michael: Ha ha. I worked… So we're going to keep it light this week, but um… You know, many Koreans asked me “What the hell do you do during national holidays like 추석, which is the national Thanksgiving day, or 설날, which is ‘Lunar New Years'?” And foreigners just don't disappear. Jennifer: I do. (Poof!) Michael: He he. Or we don't just go to our “foreigner storage box” and shut down. Jennifer: Shhhhh. You're revealing trade secrets, Michael! Michael: Trade secrets, ohhh! I will be killed. But, umm, I love Korean holidays. Jennifer: Any particular reason? Michael: Um, because… Jennifer: You like 떡국? Michael: No. Ha ha ha ha. Jennifer: You like 제삿밥? Michael: I don't like, I don't like doing anything with Korean people. Jennifer: That's um… Wow! Friendly, aren't we? Michael: No, but those holidays are perfect if you don't have to go do, you know, visiting the relatives, traditional stuff, and you know, if there's many foreigners, you know, don't have family connections, we're, you know, thankfully saved from all that stuff. Jennifer: That's kind of weird ‘cause I like going and getting 인사 and doing traditional stuff, and… Michael: And cooking? Jennifer: Well, I'm not considered competent to cook. So I sit on the… Michael: You're la~zy. Jennifer: Yeah, I sit in the kitchen and get hand-fed bits of whatever they're cooking. Michael: Just like a man. Jennifer: No! I'm better than a man ‘cause I keep them company. Michael: Ah, you actually sit in the kitchen! Jennifer: I sit in the kitchen. Michael: And watch them cook! Jennifer: I am the official taste-tester and occasionally I get promoted to putting things on toothpicks. Michael: Oh good! I'm glad your skills are so advanced. Jennifer: Um, I have a Korean host family that I used to live with back in the day when I lived in 안동. And I got to be really close with my host family, so most major holidays I try and go visit them. So I go all the way down to 안동 so that I can get in the car and we go to 대구 to visit 큰아버지's 집. Michael: No thanks. What I do is, I don't have anything to do. I go to the many restaurants that are open, many things are open… Jennifer: Are they? Michael: Yeah, these days. In places where there are lots of people. I use my home theater, I have little parties, and enjoy not doing anything! Jennifer: Who comes to your parties if everybody's busy giving 인사? Michael: Actually, foreign friends but also Korean friends who sneak out of their houses. Jennifer: Huh! Say it ain't so! Michael: Well you know, depending on your family you may do everything on one day and nothing on the other two days. And, um, depending on what you do, yes. Jennifer: The only people who have time to do nothing during major holidays in Korea are men. Michael: No no no no. So outside of the actual day of celebrating, many young people just escape. So this podcast wants to insert a foreigner's point-of-view, and that's something, I think, Koreans, many Koreans are interested in. And we wanted to talk about some good resources to get a taste of what many foreigners are talking about. Jennifer: What are foreigners talking about? Michael: In, um… Just the same things that Koreans are often talking about. The overseas foreign community is very active on their blogs. Jennifer: Expats love to talk about being expats. Michael: Yeah, but they also want to talk about the same things that Koreans talk about. Which is the new president, policies, um, things going in society, you know, good places to party. The same things, you know, many Koreans want to know about or talk about a lot. So, in our show links we want to give the links to some of the places we'll mention today. Jennifer: Some “shout outs.” Michael: Some shout outs. So the first place we'd like to mention is ‘The Marmot's Hole.' (http://www.rjkoehler.com/) Jennifer: Isn't a marmot a small Midwestern animal that lives in… Michael: Holes? Jennifer: Yeah, basically. On the prairie. Michael: Yeah, but there's a man who calls himself the Marmot. Jennifer: Does he live in a hole? Michael: He does not. He lives in a house. But his blog is the biggest and most influential site for foreign people, I think here. Jennifer: Oh, it's definitely the biggest. When CNN and other major news networks are tracking stories on Korea often times, they look… Michael: They read the Marmot. Jennifer: They read the Marmot! Michael: In fact the Korean media reads the Marmot and watches, you know, what are foreigners talking about, what are some stories? And, um, there are several, I think what, almost 15, 20 writers who…It's almost like a newspaper. So basically… Jennifer: I didn't realize there were that many. Michael: Yes, there are…Some post more than others but these are foreigners who have lived in Korea, generally for a long time, they speak Korean, and they read the Korean newspapers, they watch Korean television, and they keep up with the culture. So these foreigners are like translating for many of the other foreigners who don't read Korean or can't read the newspaper or understand the television news. They translate the information so that, you know, a lot of foreigners do keep up with what's going on in Korean society and know very much about it and have opinions about it. And the Korean English language newspapers are good enough, they do have information… But often they're not as quickly updated and the information is a little bit censored, or monitored for the foreign community. So the ‘Marmot's Hole' is a very raw and direct and frank… Jennifer: And big resource. Michael: Big resource. Jennifer: Pretty much the big blog to end all blogs about Korea in English. Michael: The mother of all blogs! Jennifer: ‘The Marmot's Hole!' Michael: Yes… (딴딴딴) And then, another interesting point-of-view which we will talk about later in another podcast, the ‘ROK Drop.' (http://rokdrop.com/) Jennifer: ‘Rock Drop?' Michael: ‘ROK Drop!' Jennifer: Do they drop rocks on people? Michael: They drop rocks! Jennifer: That sounds fun, but painful and possibly illegal. Michael: Sort of like dropped into the ROK, Republic Of Korea. So this is what's known as a mil-blogger, this is a mil-blog. Jennifer: Mil blog? Michael: Military blog. Jennifer: Ah~ M-I-L. Mil? Military? Michael: Yes. And frankly, I'm a civilian – I don't know what's going on and I find his point-of-view very interesting. I don't agree with all of his politics, but I read his blog everyday. Yeah, he has interesting things to say and you will find many interesting things at ‘ROK Drop' if you want to go there. Jennifer: I'm going to toot Michael's horn for him (뚜뚜뚜뚜!) not because I don't think that he won't toot his own horn… Michael: She hates~ me. Jennifer: You're pushing it man, you're pushing it! Michael: OK, I'm going to shut up now. Jennifer: Not because Michael won't toot his own horn, but because I want to beat him to the punch. Mike runs what's another one of the biggest blogs on Korea, ‘Metropolitician!' Michael: Yeah! That's me! If you read my blog, you'll see that my blogging point-of-view and style is very different from my podcasting style. It's very critical, and sometimes very angry, sometimes silly, but it's a social criticism blog. Jennifer: It's how Michael lets off steam. Michael: Yes, I also de-stress. I let out my stress about certain things. Jennifer: The other thing about Mike's blog is that many of the other blogs in English tend to lean a bit right, politically, and Mike's leans a bit left, which is… Michael: Very left. A lot of the blogs tend to be a little bit, I guess, from the American point-of-view, kind of male. Jennifer: That's the other thing I wanted to talk about. Another good blog is called ‘Where The Hell Am I?' (http://expatjane.blogspot.com/) Michael: Where the hell am I? Jennifer: That's a question I constantly ask myself. This blog is great too because there's a lot of testosterone in the Korea blogosphere. Michael: Testosterone, a male hormone. Jennifer: Yes, and if you're female you're going to choke on it (Ew!) because nearly all the bloggers out there are male. But one of the very good female bloggers runs ‘Where The Hell Am I?' Michael: Yes. Jennifer: And it has some really unique perspectives. Not only is she female but she's African American, too. Michael: She offers a point-of-view that in a mostly white male, or Korean-American male, expat blogosphere, it's pretty rare. Continued in Part 2