1) It’s not how much you know, it’s how much you can bullshit. Success in corporate America isn't about a solid product – it’s about a fake smile, an equally forced laugh during the dinner sale, and the never-ending barrage of how do you dos, pleasantly put in the direction of people about whom you literally could not care less. Add to this the daily task of taking in menial and obscenely repetitive semi-lectures from a boss who treats you the way a special ed teacher treats baby Rain Man, and by the end of any given workday you've both given and taken enough bullshit to fertilize a small farm. The great Winston Churchill once said that ‘success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.’ Well in the world of the office, where success is measured in pay grades, furthering oneself consists of nothing but going from proverbial ass-reaming to ass-reaming without loss of rectal fortitude or ambulatory hauteur.
2) Obesity breeds contempt. For the millions of cube-space-clad jobs across this fair land of ours, intrusively obscene obesity seems to be both a pre-requisite and a byproduct. When a person’s weight causes an unpleasant visceral reaction from all who are forced to see them, its not just a personal ‘thing’ anymore – it is an unwelcome intrusion on my liberty, and in the opinion of some, is as uncivil and criminal as walking around with your johnson out. And we’re not talking just a healthy embonpoint or a sturdy voluptuousness here – no, we’re talking bona fide fat-ass. It is truly unbelievable to watch human beings enter the workforce as Chris Farley-sized sea cows and then promptly and unabashedly balloon into John Candy-esque blimps. Well-meaning workplaces encourage and even sponsor dieting programs, only to watch their already overweight employees continue to dine daily on dirigible sized portions of McDonald’s, the gazillion calories of which they truly believe will be ‘walked off’ with a lap and a half around the company parking lot during break time!
3) There’s one in every office, and to the bewilderment of all, they’re usually the one in charge. In the steadily careening vicissitudes of the world workplace, there is a single fact upon which one may unflinchingly rely: if you have a boss, and particularly if you have more than one, you have an unequivocal guarantee that your superior – and one that you interact with daily – will be such a pain in your ass and thorn in your side that it will make the thought of rubbing poison ivy in your eyeballs while simultaneously having needles inserted into your genitalia seem like a pleasant escape from the reality this bastard will daily impose on you. There’s one in every office, and to the bewilderment of all, they’re usually the one in charge. Why? Because these kinds of people are born brown-nosing ass-faces. These are the people who live such worthlessly execrable existences both in and out of the workplace that the only form of flagitiously trivial happiness they can squeeze out of their otherwise languid day comes from treating their peers like steers, and then finding even the most banal excuse to reprimand these aforementioned folks in tones normally used only by the crazed teacher scolding the 5 year-old who just flung feces all over the pre-school wall. These are the kind of people who had only a single friend growing up – their imaginary one.
4) Killing trees is king, and paperwork rules the day. Listen, everyone knows that in any kind of working environment anywhere on earth, there are always going to be a certain number of papers that need filling out and maybe more than a few reports filed. That’s just the way it is. Fine - no complaints here. A few signatures at the bottom of documents and the occasional status report are certainly among the least of things to be expected of anyone earning any decent kind of wage. But note the keyword in the above sentence – occasional. Bingo, we have a problem. In today’s America, where taking responsibility for feeding the goldfish now seems to be an insurmountable chore, vast amounts of office paperwork have become a pure resident evil. And we’ve brought it on ourselves. No one trusts anyone’s word anymore, and why should they? In a culture where it’s more popular to slack off and then sue the co-worker that calls you out on it than to honor a handshake, we’ve suddenly found ourselves drowned in our own deluge of dishonesty. The once simple unspoken agreement to show up and do an honest job everyday now means about as much as Constitutional knowledge and political integrity mean to Nancy Pelosi. In other words – precisely jack shit.
5) Yes, you are surrounded by idiots. If you have graduated college, possess a social IQ above 2, and have even the slightest shred of dignity, self-respect, or good manners, chances are that you are one of the brightest bulbs in the building. This would be funny if it weren't so true. You graduate college ready to enter the workforce and conquer the world…only to find out that the chick who dropped out of high school to have three kids and spend her free time hitting on the local bowling alley attendant is now already rungs ahead of you on the company ladder - and may even be your boss! Huh? Well, while you were away for four long years furthering yourself (or so you thought) by taking tests, composing vast research theses, debating weighty tomes with doctors of philosophy, and learning how to be a well though-out and positively contributing member of society, this bimbo was back kissing corporate ass and gaining 'valuable work experience.' Now, you get to sit across the hall and listen to this same female fling crass monosyllabic clap trap into the phone as she spends the majority of the workday fighting with her tractor-pulling-Kevin Federline-wannabe of an ex-boyfriend over the custody of baby Cletus, pausing only to slap a shit-eating smile on the boss man as he saunters by. Annnnnnnd, we're back to square one. Welcome to hell.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Dennis Miller's Rant on Intelligence
These are a few excerpts from the show 'Dennis Miller Live' which aired on HBO back in the mid-90s. Miller makes weekly appearances on the O'Reilly Factor now, and is the perfect mix of California showbusiness and surprisingly rational political wit. Note: some material may not be suitable for children and/or the more prude-minded of you who may be reading, though I do love you.
Enjoy :)
Miller on intelligence:
Now, I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but we live in an era and a time where calling someone an Einstein is considered to be somewhat of an insult. Morons are out there in force making left-hand turns from right-hand lanes, trying to pay for drive-thru tacos with a fucking check, calling 411 to get the number for information, and in most of our fine metropoli, the reposed "Fuck off!" will get you a seat at the local Algonquin round table. What happened? I’ll tell you what happened.
First and foremost, as a matter of fact, numbers 1, 2, and . . . what come after 2, we didn’t pay enough attention to our education system! We gotta stop paying teachers like the kid who delivers grit! For Christ’s sake, these are the people who will lead us and our children into the century and they can’t even afford real Yodels, okay? They have to get those 144 count price-club steamer trunk size of Little Debby’s, the equivalent.
High school kids are entering the job market with an education that barely qualifies them to run the Tilt-A-Whirl at the traveling carnival! Even those fortunate enough to graduate from Ivy-League schools, well, they go to write movie scripts about, guess what . . . stupid people!
And that brings us to our next reason. Let’s face facts, the TV beast ate us whole quicker than a dog on a Dreamsicle, all right?...
T.V. producers say Americans enjoy the stupid shit. But, hey, it’s the same reason Eskimos enjoy blubber; it’s the only fucking thing available at the Arctic buffet, okay? Pop culture has turned the brain into the body’s new appendix; no real function and it could quite possible blow up and kill you! As organs go, you just don’t need your brain anymore. As a matter of fact, I’m certain in the very near future people will go to the hospital, or should I say, turn on the hospital channel, and get their brain taken out just as a precaution.
Indeed, in the business of television brightness can often be taken from you and used as a scimitar to cleave your occupational head off…
America, we are at a fork in the road. To the left you’ve got books - and to the right, the never-ending horizon of the new technology. I myself, am taking a hard left because if they talk you into hanging that rico, the new technology is only gonna make it worse. Now they tell you it’s gonna make it better - but if you notice, the voice they tell you that in is always the computer generated one, and it’s digitally synthesized too. That means less expected from us, less striving, less brainwork, more stupid, and eventually the king will be the one who just doesn’t shit himself! You know, our reliance on technology is making us soft and if we’re not careful it will only get worse.
Miller on Civility:
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here but we've devolved over the last few decades from a Barry Lyndon gentility to a bunch of thunder domed mooks. Nowadays, thoughtless clods all across this once great land of ours do everything from clipping their fingernails at a funeral to checking themselves for polyps in the buffet line!
As a matter of fact you can't go anywhere without suffering intrusive, inconsiderate incivility. You go to the mall to pick up a smokey linked gouda combo gift set at Hickory Farms…you come out, your car's been keyed and some societal fringe player has left a flyer on you windshield for 10% off on all gay porn films at Dicks Video Shack. You go to the supermarket - you wind up in a line that's clearly marked 10 items or less cash only, and you're waiting behind some ninja drifter with no ID who's attempting to pay for 14 cartons of pudding pops with a personal check from the bank of Tehran!
People no longer understand the basic rules of courtesy.
Rule number 1: You must wait and let people get off the elevator before you can get on the elevator - O.K.!?
Rule number 2: If you call somebody at 3:15 in the morning and get the wrong number don't just say "oh this isn't Charlene" click. Say, "I'm very sorry to have pestered you, I am an assface.
And Rule number 3: Turn your god damn car stereo down! Did you ever think that maybe I don't want to hear the bass line to Baby Got Back resonating in the deepest part of my skull?!
And even when I try to escape the cold rude world and isolate myself in a darkened movie theater for 2 hours of unencumbered escapism, I get stuck behind some idiot faux Trufeau who's gonna cliffnote the entire fucking film for me! And then I miss the flick because I'm trying to decide whether to ignore him or bludgeon him to death with my Anna Nicole Smith size box of milk duds!
But you know the fountain head of all this bad behavior has got to be the day time talk shows. What an intergalactic fucking freak show these are! You tell me what Rusty the Bailiff fan club meeting did they go to to harvest these losers huh? Ricki Lake, Richard Bey, Jerry Springer - these people shouldn't be allowed to own a TV for Christ sake much less be on it! And you know their guests not only aren't ashamed of their asinine antics they positively revel in their own grand-mal-shit-headedness. Screaming in peoples faces, screaming at the audience, the audience screaming back…you know, it's enough to make me want to bag this whole scene, pack up some jerky and go time share with Jeremiah Johnson.
Look, I'm not some tie dyed carma maitre'd trying to seat everybody in the no conflict section. As far as I'm concerned the new age goal of perpetual smiling bliss would be a far worse hell than anything imagined by Quentin Tarantino on window pane. I don't want some vacant headed defanged Quaker land - that's not civility, that's banality. And I'm not talking Amy Vanderbilt civility either, where there's nine god damned forks arranged around your dinner plate like some cutlery stone henge…But you know, I am saying that when civility breaks down the fall of civilization is close behind. Is it surprising to anyone that the least courteous of all countries has 222 million guns. The fact is that it's gotten so weird out there that we've all turned inward, and in the process we seem to have forgotten there are other human beings schlepping around this pebble. That's where civility comes in. Civility is acknowledging that we don't live in a solipsistic universe. We do share this planet with each other and we should strive to coexist in some civilized respectful manner. And so to all of you out there who don't cover your mouth, who don't have the money ready when you get to the toll booth, who do burp so loudly in public that others wonder where the epicenter was; to all of you dwelling out there on the grassy knoll - if you don't want to come and join the rest of us in this noble pursuit of good manners, we all cordially invite you to please…go fuck yourself!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEu1uOVUBnE
Enjoy :)
Miller on intelligence:
Now, I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but we live in an era and a time where calling someone an Einstein is considered to be somewhat of an insult. Morons are out there in force making left-hand turns from right-hand lanes, trying to pay for drive-thru tacos with a fucking check, calling 411 to get the number for information, and in most of our fine metropoli, the reposed "Fuck off!" will get you a seat at the local Algonquin round table. What happened? I’ll tell you what happened.
First and foremost, as a matter of fact, numbers 1, 2, and . . . what come after 2, we didn’t pay enough attention to our education system! We gotta stop paying teachers like the kid who delivers grit! For Christ’s sake, these are the people who will lead us and our children into the century and they can’t even afford real Yodels, okay? They have to get those 144 count price-club steamer trunk size of Little Debby’s, the equivalent.
High school kids are entering the job market with an education that barely qualifies them to run the Tilt-A-Whirl at the traveling carnival! Even those fortunate enough to graduate from Ivy-League schools, well, they go to write movie scripts about, guess what . . . stupid people!
And that brings us to our next reason. Let’s face facts, the TV beast ate us whole quicker than a dog on a Dreamsicle, all right?...
T.V. producers say Americans enjoy the stupid shit. But, hey, it’s the same reason Eskimos enjoy blubber; it’s the only fucking thing available at the Arctic buffet, okay? Pop culture has turned the brain into the body’s new appendix; no real function and it could quite possible blow up and kill you! As organs go, you just don’t need your brain anymore. As a matter of fact, I’m certain in the very near future people will go to the hospital, or should I say, turn on the hospital channel, and get their brain taken out just as a precaution.
Indeed, in the business of television brightness can often be taken from you and used as a scimitar to cleave your occupational head off…
America, we are at a fork in the road. To the left you’ve got books - and to the right, the never-ending horizon of the new technology. I myself, am taking a hard left because if they talk you into hanging that rico, the new technology is only gonna make it worse. Now they tell you it’s gonna make it better - but if you notice, the voice they tell you that in is always the computer generated one, and it’s digitally synthesized too. That means less expected from us, less striving, less brainwork, more stupid, and eventually the king will be the one who just doesn’t shit himself! You know, our reliance on technology is making us soft and if we’re not careful it will only get worse.
Miller on Civility:
Now I don't want to get off on a rant here but we've devolved over the last few decades from a Barry Lyndon gentility to a bunch of thunder domed mooks. Nowadays, thoughtless clods all across this once great land of ours do everything from clipping their fingernails at a funeral to checking themselves for polyps in the buffet line!
As a matter of fact you can't go anywhere without suffering intrusive, inconsiderate incivility. You go to the mall to pick up a smokey linked gouda combo gift set at Hickory Farms…you come out, your car's been keyed and some societal fringe player has left a flyer on you windshield for 10% off on all gay porn films at Dicks Video Shack. You go to the supermarket - you wind up in a line that's clearly marked 10 items or less cash only, and you're waiting behind some ninja drifter with no ID who's attempting to pay for 14 cartons of pudding pops with a personal check from the bank of Tehran!
People no longer understand the basic rules of courtesy.
Rule number 1: You must wait and let people get off the elevator before you can get on the elevator - O.K.!?
Rule number 2: If you call somebody at 3:15 in the morning and get the wrong number don't just say "oh this isn't Charlene" click. Say, "I'm very sorry to have pestered you, I am an assface.
And Rule number 3: Turn your god damn car stereo down! Did you ever think that maybe I don't want to hear the bass line to Baby Got Back resonating in the deepest part of my skull?!
And even when I try to escape the cold rude world and isolate myself in a darkened movie theater for 2 hours of unencumbered escapism, I get stuck behind some idiot faux Trufeau who's gonna cliffnote the entire fucking film for me! And then I miss the flick because I'm trying to decide whether to ignore him or bludgeon him to death with my Anna Nicole Smith size box of milk duds!
But you know the fountain head of all this bad behavior has got to be the day time talk shows. What an intergalactic fucking freak show these are! You tell me what Rusty the Bailiff fan club meeting did they go to to harvest these losers huh? Ricki Lake, Richard Bey, Jerry Springer - these people shouldn't be allowed to own a TV for Christ sake much less be on it! And you know their guests not only aren't ashamed of their asinine antics they positively revel in their own grand-mal-shit-headedness. Screaming in peoples faces, screaming at the audience, the audience screaming back…you know, it's enough to make me want to bag this whole scene, pack up some jerky and go time share with Jeremiah Johnson.
Look, I'm not some tie dyed carma maitre'd trying to seat everybody in the no conflict section. As far as I'm concerned the new age goal of perpetual smiling bliss would be a far worse hell than anything imagined by Quentin Tarantino on window pane. I don't want some vacant headed defanged Quaker land - that's not civility, that's banality. And I'm not talking Amy Vanderbilt civility either, where there's nine god damned forks arranged around your dinner plate like some cutlery stone henge…But you know, I am saying that when civility breaks down the fall of civilization is close behind. Is it surprising to anyone that the least courteous of all countries has 222 million guns. The fact is that it's gotten so weird out there that we've all turned inward, and in the process we seem to have forgotten there are other human beings schlepping around this pebble. That's where civility comes in. Civility is acknowledging that we don't live in a solipsistic universe. We do share this planet with each other and we should strive to coexist in some civilized respectful manner. And so to all of you out there who don't cover your mouth, who don't have the money ready when you get to the toll booth, who do burp so loudly in public that others wonder where the epicenter was; to all of you dwelling out there on the grassy knoll - if you don't want to come and join the rest of us in this noble pursuit of good manners, we all cordially invite you to please…go fuck yourself!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEu1uOVUBnE
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
casualties of society
My church here in the big K is currently trying to do the same thing as just about every other nominal Christian organization in the world at this particular time of year - throw together a Christmas gala. And in the midst of usual preparations, I received a group email from a lady at the church, rejoicing that the venue had been finally reserved. She, being a good woman of the faith, of course thanked the LORD for providing the venue...or wait...did she? It took me a minute to figure it out as I looked at the bottom of the email which read 'PTL.'
PTL?...PTL? I sat for a minute trying to figure out yet another email abbreviation...the first thing that popped into my head was PTI - Pardon the Interruption - the rapid-fire ESPN show that we all know and love. I honestly wondered for a split second:"Why is this lady talking about PTI???" And then it hit me. PTL - Praise The Lord.
Really?
Giving a punched-on-the-keyboard-half-sentence thanks to the God of the universe is now apparently too much work for even Christians. But I'm not trying to rip on the email lady here - really. She of course did it with a good heart, but therein lies both the point and the question: is that an excuse to go along with all this, quite frankly, shit (PTF - pardon the french) that the vast sea of non-thinkers in our world so unquestioningly accept as 'progressive'? Let's think for a minute...those of us who still can - or rather, who still care to.
High-speed internet...webcams...text messages...ABBREVIATIONS. And I use them all...even the acrimoniously execrable mode of abbreviating the most simple words. G2G...PTL...TTYL...and then of course there's my personal favorite - LOL. Lol, or 'laugh out loud,' to the as yet unadulterated hearts of the world. LOL - I've actually heard human beings who claim to be people use it in verbal conversation. And no, I don't mean the full expression - I mean that I have actually heard the letters L-O-L escape the lips of person - as if it were meant to be a word.
Are you kidding me?!? A text-message abbreviation taking the place of actual words in verbal communication?!? Fifty years ago, it would have taken a coma patient suffering from a combination of down syndrome and Alzheimer's to consider this modern banter 'conversation'! In fact, as a tribute to the men who fought and died for the very freedom of the speech we now seem so incapable of properly practicing; the next time I hear some oblivious, Burberry-clad, ex-high-school-cheerleader-turned-corporate-VP walking down the street, lopping thoughtless 'LOLs' into her cell phone, I will unabashedly snatch it and hurl it into the nearest brick wall, leaving her with nothing to do but...COL - Cry Out Loud.
Am I exaggerating? Yes - barely. Am I making too big a deal out of three letters? Maybe - but I truly think there's more at steak here.
Technocracy. We all joke about it, we all cutely criticize the abbreviations and instant messages...and yet we all indulge...excessively. We're all just swimming along in a sea of pseudo-communication without a care in the world as to how long we can keep treading water.
Let's get serious.
It doesn't take a Martin Luther or a Malcolm X to point out this flaw and warn that if we take this path to its end, we will find it bitter indeed. Our great-grandchildren will be left with the resources of 'Star Wars' but the intelligence of cavemen. Follow the line of logic - that's where it eventually ends. When you find out that your MP3 player has a larger vocabulary than you, its time to raise an eyebrow. There are a few people who should already be raising theirs. Seriously.
In his first novel, Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut prophecies of the fatal day when humans suddenly but apathetically find themselves invented out of usefulness; a day when we have advanced so far that life becomes meaningless. After all, what's the point of a high school diploma - we've got GOOGLE.
Now I'm not sitting here listening to Peter, Paul, and Mary and telling everyone to throw away their iPods and retreat to the days of vinyl records - in fact you'd have to pry my Pod from my cold dead hands before I gave up that tiny bastion of musical might. Now what I am sitting here listening to is the good old nineties rock of Matchbox 20, pleading along with the band to: 'let's see how far we've come.' Come on now - if the ex pop-rock prince Rob Thomas is mourning the state of the union, I think its sufficient to say that we ought to take a look around, and maybe, just maybe, face the fact that simply riding the rapid wave of the world-wide-web might not be the best way to live. In fact it might not be living at all.
PTL?...PTL? I sat for a minute trying to figure out yet another email abbreviation...the first thing that popped into my head was PTI - Pardon the Interruption - the rapid-fire ESPN show that we all know and love. I honestly wondered for a split second:"Why is this lady talking about PTI???" And then it hit me. PTL - Praise The Lord.
Really?
Giving a punched-on-the-keyboard-half-sentence thanks to the God of the universe is now apparently too much work for even Christians. But I'm not trying to rip on the email lady here - really. She of course did it with a good heart, but therein lies both the point and the question: is that an excuse to go along with all this, quite frankly, shit (PTF - pardon the french) that the vast sea of non-thinkers in our world so unquestioningly accept as 'progressive'? Let's think for a minute...those of us who still can - or rather, who still care to.
High-speed internet...webcams...text messages...ABBREVIATIONS. And I use them all...even the acrimoniously execrable mode of abbreviating the most simple words. G2G...PTL...TTYL...and then of course there's my personal favorite - LOL. Lol, or 'laugh out loud,' to the as yet unadulterated hearts of the world. LOL - I've actually heard human beings who claim to be people use it in verbal conversation. And no, I don't mean the full expression - I mean that I have actually heard the letters L-O-L escape the lips of person - as if it were meant to be a word.
Are you kidding me?!? A text-message abbreviation taking the place of actual words in verbal communication?!? Fifty years ago, it would have taken a coma patient suffering from a combination of down syndrome and Alzheimer's to consider this modern banter 'conversation'! In fact, as a tribute to the men who fought and died for the very freedom of the speech we now seem so incapable of properly practicing; the next time I hear some oblivious, Burberry-clad, ex-high-school-cheerleader-turned-corporate-VP walking down the street, lopping thoughtless 'LOLs' into her cell phone, I will unabashedly snatch it and hurl it into the nearest brick wall, leaving her with nothing to do but...COL - Cry Out Loud.
Am I exaggerating? Yes - barely. Am I making too big a deal out of three letters? Maybe - but I truly think there's more at steak here.
Technocracy. We all joke about it, we all cutely criticize the abbreviations and instant messages...and yet we all indulge...excessively. We're all just swimming along in a sea of pseudo-communication without a care in the world as to how long we can keep treading water.
Let's get serious.
It doesn't take a Martin Luther or a Malcolm X to point out this flaw and warn that if we take this path to its end, we will find it bitter indeed. Our great-grandchildren will be left with the resources of 'Star Wars' but the intelligence of cavemen. Follow the line of logic - that's where it eventually ends. When you find out that your MP3 player has a larger vocabulary than you, its time to raise an eyebrow. There are a few people who should already be raising theirs. Seriously.
In his first novel, Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut prophecies of the fatal day when humans suddenly but apathetically find themselves invented out of usefulness; a day when we have advanced so far that life becomes meaningless. After all, what's the point of a high school diploma - we've got GOOGLE.
Now I'm not sitting here listening to Peter, Paul, and Mary and telling everyone to throw away their iPods and retreat to the days of vinyl records - in fact you'd have to pry my Pod from my cold dead hands before I gave up that tiny bastion of musical might. Now what I am sitting here listening to is the good old nineties rock of Matchbox 20, pleading along with the band to: 'let's see how far we've come.' Come on now - if the ex pop-rock prince Rob Thomas is mourning the state of the union, I think its sufficient to say that we ought to take a look around, and maybe, just maybe, face the fact that simply riding the rapid wave of the world-wide-web might not be the best way to live. In fact it might not be living at all.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Seoul Top 5
After 3 months...the top 5 things I love, hate, and have learned about Seoul :)
Top 5 - Loves
1) The people:
Koreans are kind of the Western rebels of the east. They have a chip on their shoulder towards China, and they downright hate Japan...and I mean hate. In the University District here (called Hongdae), you can find some interesting graffiti regarding the not-so-loved country of Japan :) They also have much more of a vibrant culture than I would have ever guessed and their national pride rivals anyone's...I guess in a way I'd call them the England of the East - a tiny little pennisula, but proud and powerful. Also, they generally love Americans...
2) The Internationality:
Seoul is one of the biggest cities in the world, and according to some - the biggest, so the international culture is huge...especially compared to Cincinnati :)
Weekends and nights out for me have involved: shooting pool with everyone from Brits to Ethiopians, talking music with an Australian rocker, trying to speak French in a 3-way conversation with a Parisien and Tunisian, and a few South Africans trying to talk me into using my vacation to go visit Cape Town with them. Mix all that with the fact that you're already surrounded by 23 million Koreans, and it makes for a pretty broadening view of the world!
3) The Rockstar status:
I do not exaggerate here, and I don't even know why I'm trying to explain it, because you wouldn't believe it until you see it. A few examples: I've seen busloads of kids hanging out the window screaming and taking pictures of me (literally, hands-to-face screaming here), free drinks and even free food are not uncommon, and people feel no shame in coming up and staring at me right in the face (even touching sometimes), as if...they've heard of white people before, but were never really convinced they existed until now.
4) The City itself:
Seoul is a monster of a city and you could spend 3 years here never running out of things to eat, drink, or buy. Everything is no more than a block away. The subway is easy, the taxis are everywhere, and if you're driving your own car on the weekend, its because you wanna show it off and are willing to sacrifice literally hours to do so. Overall, Seoul is a pretty upscale city, and the people here pay big to keep up appearances...makes it all pretty nice to look at...and be glad you're removed from.
5) God's People, Jubilee Church:
Maybe this should've been #1, but regardless...maybe the greatest find for me here has been my church, Jubilee. Its an English-speaking church made up mostly of Korean-Americans and foreigners -- and therefore has an unbelievable international quality to it. The Pastor of the church is a passionate man of God, and his desire transfers to the people, most of whom are roughly my age and in similar situations here in Seoul. It makes for easy automatic bonds, made even stronger by the shared faith. Sunday is usually the day I look forward to most in the week...uniting with all these people from every different kind of background to worship...seeing the true catholicity of The Church. I don't think it can be put into words, so I'll stop here by just saying that...God is good, all the time.
I'll post the other Top 5's later :) much love to all!
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