“Todos los días me lavo el cerebro con la tele” = “Every day I wash my brain with the TV”. This is a quote from a photo of a piece of graffiti in Santiago, Chile, that I saw on a website covering street art called streetsy.com.
February grades are due today – I need to get some work done.
Day: March 9, 2008
Caveat: 한국말을 공부 안해요
I played hooky from my Korean Language school yesterday again – third weekend in a row. I think this means I have dropped the course, at least for now. I've been having a difficult time motivating to get into the south end of the city to the hagwon on a timely basis on Saturday mornings. I have a lead on a possible Korean language program that might offer some kind of classes more locally here in Ilsan, which I may try pursuing. Meanwhile, I try to keep studying my lists of vocabulary.
On Friday night, I had my first experience with a dishonest business transaction since coming to Korea. I took a taxi home, because I intended to overshoot my apartment building and run some errands at the Homever store. The taxi ride was 2700 won, and I gave the driver a 10000 won bill. I got three bills and some coins back, and because it was dark, I assumed I was getting back two 1000's and a 5000. But when I opened my wallet later, I had three 1000's. So, the cab driver shortchanged me. I hate it when stuff like that happens. I dwell on my stupidity on not catching it, all that. The fact is, it was about 5 bucks, I shouldn't worry about it. It's just annoying.
I spent part of yesterday evening poking around YouTube videos, looking up and listening to popular Korean girl-pop groups like Wonder Girls and 소녀시대 (so-nyeo-shi-dae: "Girls Generation"). These names have come up repeatedly in my classes when I ask topical questions such as "What is your favorite music?" and I was curious as to what the music was like. I also ended up checking out some Korean hip-hop (they write it phonetically: "힙합") and rap. And it caused me to ponder: if Korean pop genre is called KPOP, does that mean Korean rap genre is KRAP?