I got home from work. Feeling very gloomy. LBridge made me pay for my visa “revision” (including 40 bucks for the medical checkup, the 30 bucks to the U.S. embassy, 10 bucks for the online “no criminal background” paper, 60 bucks for Korean immigration office). The last time we had to submit a revision, when LinguaForum took over my contract, they paid for it. Which is logical – after all, it was the fact of the take-over that meant the revision had to be done at all. If there had been no take-over, there would have been no visa revision fees and expenses, right? Why should I be paying these expenses that have arisen solely because of the corporate comings and goings of my employers? Well… the simple answer is, there’s nothing in the contract that says they have to pay for it, of course.
And when I said I needed some supplies for my desk, Sarah, my “team” supervisor, said, oh, I needed to go buy them. Again – supplies at the last two hagwon were something that the office managers would offer to buy.
It’s not that I’m being in the least parsimonious… I have spent hundreds of dollars of my own money to supplement my teaching work: I have bought supplementary books, supplies that I didn’t feel justified asking for from my bosses, treats, food and gifts for my students, etc. And I begrudge absolutely none of it. Because in all those instances, what my bosses would say is… oh, you shouldn’t spend your own money. Now, it’s the opposite – they’re saying to me, up front: you should spend your own money. They’re being cheap and miserly. Maybe that’s why they’re big and successful. But it makes them unpleasant to work for.
I screwed up today, too. I had miscopied my schedule from Sarah, and the consequence was that an odd quirk in the Friday schedule didn’t get transfered to my version of it. And so I failed to show up for a class I was supposed to teach, because I had it written down for a later hour. It was entirely my own fault, and I feel guilty about it – the kids sat for 20 minutes with no teacher, while the front desk tried to figure out who was supposed to be in there. I can’t even blame the problem on the “lack of communication” issue that has been so bothering me. Sucks.
I came home and made some pasta with curried vegetables for myself, and I have been watching my drama. In episode 16 of 쾌걸춘향, 이몽룡 says to 성춘향, “Boy, time flew by as if you were in some TV drama.” I listened to this quote over and over trying to parse the Korean, but finally I broke down and found the transcript for the episode online, and the line is: “인생이 참, 믿기 힘들 게 드라마 같이 흘렀다.”
I will swear, that Mong-ryong is very much eliding the fourth-from-last syllable of the phrase (which should be 티=ti, based on liaison rules), essentially eliminating it, but then palatalizing the /tʰ/ into /ʧʰ/ as a sort of a trace of the elided /i/, so that instead of 같이 흘렀다 he’s saying 가츨렀다. This makes perfect sense, phonologically, but I’d be willing to bet that Koreans will swear to you up and down that they never do such a thing in their language. Psychologically, internal representations of language are heavily influenced what we are told is “correct” in school and social settings, of course. And it makes it damn hard to parse, aurally, since that word that’s getting mangled, 같이=”as if” (roughly – it’s a verbish thing that means “like that”), is critical to making sense of the phrase.
Anyway, apparently, according to some things I found online, there are all kinds of clever intertextual things going on in this scene. 성춘향 is making up a story about her past several years (which have elapsed since the last episode), and the made-up scenes are showing in flashback form as she tells them – but they’re all references and recapitulations of important plot points and scenes from other popular Korean television dramas. So at this point, when 이몽룡 says this above quote as a reaction, the typical Korean drama watcher is going to burst out laughing – at least if they have any capicity for Cervantine irony whatsoever.
-Notes for Korean-
흘렀다=[time] elapsed<=흐르다=elapse, trickle, run down + [PAST marker]
드라마=drama
Later in the same episode, repeatedly: 잘가라=”take care” lit. go well, farewell… the ending -라 (as such) isn’t in my reference grammar, which is kind of annoying, but I’m assuming it’s some kind of intimate imperative
제-(第)=number, [ordinalizing ending, as in -th in English]
회=installment, episode… hence 제16회=episode 16
context: surfing the korean dictionary
푸르다=blue
풀다=solve, work out, answer
설명=explanation, illustration (說明)
설명하다=explain, illustrate
-도(圖)=a chart, a plan, a picture
-공(工)=worker, mechanic
context: surfing the internet in Korean
연결=connection, linking
생산=production
활발하다=lively, brisk, vivacious
아름답다=beautiful, lovely (irregular, cf 아름다운 with that adnominal ending thingy)
푸른=blue
자연=nature
여러=diverse, many
-분=esteemed person
so 여러분=ladies and gentlemen
초대=invitation
so 초대하다=invite
제로=zero
context: surfing the dictionary
북부=southern part
남부=northern part
-부=part (cf also 1부, 2부 as part of the school’s published class schedule)
the confusing word 주:
주(州)=a state(미국의);a county(영국의);a province(캐나다의)
주(株)=stock, share (this is how Koreans write “inc.”, too)
주(主)=owner; proprietor; master, lord
주(洲)=river delta; continent
주(朱)=vermilion;Chinese red color
주(週)=a week
주(註·注)=annotation, footnote
주(駐)=resident, stationed in
주(酒)=liquor, wine, alcoholic drink
이에=hereupon, hence, accordingly
그이의 딸=that man’s daughter
용어(用語)=terminology (hanja lit. use-language)