Gyeongju, Crazy Children and Too Many People

Hello again!!! 

Look it didn't even take as long this time!

Things have settled down into a bit of a rhythm so I don't feel like I have as much to post about these days.

My typical week is as follows:

Monday: Urgh....fuuuukkkkk it's monday.....why am I working with kindergarten children this early on a monday....well good thing I have my Korean lesson tonight and can have a beer and some good dinner after!

Tuesday: Seriously, this week is too long. Tonight will be fun with my language exchange with Eric and having a nice pot of chamomile tea.

Wednesday: OOOHHHH!!! Hump day (giggle) and also Korean lesson again tonight! Busy day is a good day!!

Thursday: Hmmm....what am I doing this weekend... hey everybody who wants to go to that party in Seoul on Saturday? Only one more day until the weekend!!!

Friday: It's friday motherfuckers!!! Drinking time!!!

Saturday: Well I'm not too hungover, thats a good sign, better cure it with another beer!!! Ooohhh...it's sunrise? I guess I should go to bed...

Sunday: oh jesus....why did I agree to tequila slammers with the guy who bought and shared the WHOLE bottle of tequila...Home Time!!

AND repeat. Sometimes interspersed with shopping. At this point the only reason I haven't been doing that has been when I have gone places like Gyeongju.

Me and Tom striding up the mountain in Gyeongju!

Top of the mountain being all peaceful and shit.

Sneaky Jess and her awesome photography skills

This photo was taken at one of the famous temples in Gyeongju. I love going to temples and seeing all the different Buddhist things. I usually feel a sense of serenity there. Same goes for old churches etc. The people who are there are usually there to pray or be at peace and that is a beautiful feeling even if you are there to do it yourself. However, this was the first time I was really annoyed and frustrated by the enormous number of people there are in Korea. Honestly there must have been over 1000 people at the temple and this ruined any chance I had of feeling that serenity. I'm fine in the cities with the literally millions of other people, it's ok on the squishy trains and standing for a 45 minute bus ride because so many people are travelling to Seoul is bearable but when you are overwhelmed at the number of people at the temple and you can't experience the feelings that you usually go there to feel, it's frustrating.

Beautiful sunset from the mountain.

I'm about to tell you about the single most frustrating class I have ever experienced. See below at all the children lying on their desks. This is them giving absolutely no fucks about the class or the teacher. This is not usual however these children are a nightmare. Usually you can scare the living daylights out of them when you go and get a Korean teacher however they just didn't even care about that either.

Now that I have started making some korean friends, my fb wall often has occasional korean status updates. I do my best to translate them myself but sometimes i need a bit of help from the interwebs. This has by far been one of the funniest translations that has come up. In this case she's talking about her dog Ggamji not nigger cock. Why the word 'nigger' is even in a translation dictionary as an option baffles me.

Bus selfie with Hanneke on our way to Seoul!

This is me and Jae's Cousin Seyun, I had a lot of fun with her that night!

11/11 is Pepero day! these are all the pepero that came to school for everyone just from my kindergarten class

This is the handmade pepero that I got from one of my awesome elementary students :) Thats my name followed by 'ssaem' on top which is like an affectionate word for teacher.

My favourite kindergarten kid and his pepero haul.

This my friends is heaven on a plate in the form of Fried Chicken Tenders from Frypan. Super unhealthly but so god dam delicious.

This is the crazy that happens at school sometimes.

Now for some of you who don't know, Korea is weather extremes. It was already started snowing here. Literally two months ago, it was too hit for a jacket or closed in shoes and now its so cold that any skin you have showing the world is in pain. I was not equipped for this magnitude of cold. SO I got a new jacket and am stocking up on all things warm!

New jacket. I was only a little bit swayed by the fact that G Dragon was wearing the jacket in the ad also.

First snow!

I'm thinking about buying one of these....

So they are so advanced here that this is how they mix drinks. you just leave it sitting like this for a while and bam! mixed. I'm scared that i'm going to try and do this myself when I'm drunk and want to look cool...

So now is the time of year that everyone makes kimchi! We had a kimchi making day at school and fun times ensued...

Ingredients

Prior to the chilli sauce

Mess after chilli sauce..

SO MUCH MESS!!

Last night I had one of the most interesting Korean lessons I've had so far. Our usual teacher was away from class and one of the more advanced students was teaching us. It's actually really good to have someone who is also learning the language to teach you every now and then because they can explain the things that the native speakers can't. Anyway, one of the things that I have noticed with Korean is that you never really say 'I' or 'you' and this has been a hard adjustment for me because I feel like 'I' and 'you' give context to the situation. However as it was explained to me last night, it's part of the way the culture is here. The western hemisphere is very 'I' and 'you' focused whereas the eastern hemisphere is very 'us' focused and this is very evident in the way that people talk around you. We did an exercise where we spoke english in the same sentence structure as korean without saying 'I' or 'you' and the amount of effort that took was really surprising to me. 

I'm leaving you with the weirdest birthday card I have ever come across. I have no idea what the original Korean was supposed to be but lets all celebrate Happy Mind Control!

Much Love!

More work stuff & adventures

Work this week has been good. Much better and easier than the last. Either something just clicked in my head or it's the fact that I'm not constantly under someone's watchful eyes so I can be myself a little.

Speaking of being myself, I have come across one relatively question in particular that I found difficult to answer. 

'Where are you from?' 

If I say I'm from Korea, it is almost always followed by another question. 'Where does your accent come from?' Then I have to explain that I moved to NZ when I was younger and tell them my life story.

If I say I'm from NZ, it is usually followed by 'Were you born in NZ?' Then I go back to the first answer. Not winning here. 

It has made me feel somewhat like Erik.  For those who don't know him, he was a Dutch guy whom I worked with at WHR. He used to pull in tips because he was foreign and people were interested to talk to them, not because of his superb service. For which some of us resented. But now I am that guy. I don't know how much impact it has on tips at EMP but people seem to be very interested in my accent. At least 5 tables a night will ask me where my accent is from. It's fine and I'm happy to talk to them for now but according to Amba it get pretty old pretty quickly. 

Another thing about this country, when it comes to Koreans, especially the younger ones, I can't assume they will speak Korean. More than often they are second generation American Koreans who are basically Americans with Korean features. There are many Korean people at EMP and about 75% of them don't actually speak Korean. It makes for an interesting dynamics because between Koreans we would normally treat each other differently depending on age and rank etc. 

As I mentioned in the last post Samba are here in New York!! I got two days off in a row(!!!!) so we went on a little bit of an adventure (after ample sleep in of course).

On Tuesday we went to the famous Katz's Deli. One of the oldest deli's in New York and where the famous fake orgasm scene from when Harry met Sally was filmed. It was absolutely packed when we arrived with 4-5 deep lines to get a sandwich. Of course the crowd disappeared as soon as we got our food and sat down at a table.

He is clearly having such a great time

I got a Ruben with pastrami. It was like $18 but I didn't really need the whole thing. I read a lot of reviews saying it's over rated and over priced but I thought it was worth it for the atmosphere and and the GIGANTIC sandwich you get. While our guy was carving the meat another dude bumped him from behind running past him. 

'Ay yo! WTF!!!!' (With a big chef's knife in his hand) 

I was sure this would be the moment I experience the 'real' New York I've been seeing on TV shows and movies. My first stabbing. But (un)fortunately this did not eventuate. The Ruben sandwich was amazing though!

What else did we do..the photos tell me we went and had some delicious oysters in Williamsburg. They were massive! And they were a dollar each! A DOLLAR!!!! A dozen of fresh, giant oysters for all of $12. I was in heaven. After that we went to Duff's where they had a dollar PBR. A DOLLAR!!! As far as I know PBR is what all the poor hipster artistic type drink cuz it's 'cool' and cheap. Probably only cuz it's cheap. I wasn't complaining though. It was beer all the same.

Oysters!!

After that, got some more booze and carried on at home. I'm sure other exciting things happened in there somewhere but can't remember. Sorry!

Lame.. I had written another few paragraphs about what we did the next day but it's all gone!! (Rage face) I can't be bothered re-writing it so I'm just gonna put up the photos. Feel free to make your own story up. It involves walking, booze, Harlem, lots of meat, dogs, bone marrow poppers and monochrome photos (because I'm like all deep and artsy as fuck). 

Left foot

Right foot

Very subtle guys.... 

Employees Only

I also had other rant ready about how unreliable NY train system is and how it will end up getting me fired but I might leave that to the next time. Hopefully Ally will put up a post about all of her adventures too soon!! I do have a couple of different thing I want to write about re: work and life so stay tuned peeps :) 

First week at the three star restaurant

Whoa...it has been a tough week! Physically, yes, but much more so mentally.

WARNING. THIS MIGHT BE A TL;DR TYPE POST.

When I came here for an observational trial 6 months ago I felt super confident and looked like it was going to be very easy for me. After all, I had worked in fine dining for a few years now. Well, I was wrong and now am very humbled. It feels like I'm trying to learn to walk again. 

Serve from the left and clear from the right, sauce from the right, learn 16 courses in intimate detail, learn every little detail about anything and everything from what the flowers are on display today, who hand crafts the plates, trays, who painted the paintings on the wall etc etc. 

Yellow chicken WTF?? Asian chickens?

I will dare say it has been the most challenging week of my working life. New country, new people, new everything. I guess this is what I wanted. To be the small fish again in a massive pond. I do work with some incredibly talented, passionate and hard working people though. The knowledge and the care that they put into this place is simply admirable. 

So this is how my week went. 

Day 1. Mostly observing. I was to learn the food and table & position numbers. Never really thought about it but when table numbers start with 0's (30,40,50 etc) it is confusing!! Start to learn people's names. There are like 150 employees. 

Intermission 1. Freedom tower. 

Day 2. I was allowed to 'sauce or tray follow'. As the name suggests, I got to follow someone to the tables with sauce and other items on a tray. Turns out there is little bit of an art to it too. Who would've thought. 

Day 3. All the days are starting to blend together by this point. I think I got to maybe even drop and spiel some food. Everything I do something I got a feedback on what I did wrong. This is starting to take a toll on my ego but I stay humble and try to learn from my mistakes. 

Intermission 2. The Empire States Building. 

Day 4. Kitchen trail. Basically got to be a commis chef for the day. Also the last day for James Kent, chef de cuisine. Also the day I was late. Of all days to be late, it had to be my kitchen trail day. FFS. Train schedule here seem to change every other day which can really fuck you up. I got fucked up that day. I basically got to peel like 200 carrots and scrub lots of stuff. Found out there are lots of Koreans working at the restaurant. This was a tough day too but it allowed me to see the other side. Must say though, I'm happy to be in the dining room. 

As it was the chef's last day all the staff went out for a drink. I wasn't reeeeaaallllyyy invited apparently because I'm 'too new' but I tagged along anyways and had a great night getting to know everyone. I got dubbed as 'beautiful unicorn' by Pam, I have no idea why lol 

Day 5. I can't remember. 

Intermission 3. Bacon & Egg McGriddle. Weird sweet & savoury combo. 

Had a day off yesterday. Turns out having two days in a row is a rarity. I miss my Sunday & Mondays off every week!! 

Day 6 was today. I felt much much better. I got to run and clear lots of dishes. Finally got my head around dropping food in certain order etc. I felt much more confident and could be myself with the guests little more. 

Also had a little surprise, Samba (Sam & Amba) are in New York!! I hadn't seen Amba since she left NZ so it's been a little while and was so good seeing them again. They are just such good people and I missed them a lot. 

Samba & Jae

Food adventure of the week was the famed Mission Chinese NY. Started in SF in Mission district and they do sort of a Chinese fusion type dishes. 

Dragon lamp at Mission Chinese. Pretty cool. 

I was originally going to go to Katz's Deli but I walked past this place and decided to leave that for another time. 

I ordered mapo tofu ramen and pig's tail dish.

Mapo Ramen

Pig's Tail

I felt like the ramen had too much spices. It made my mouth numb and it was unpleasant. When I got over the numbness though, it was tasty with rich pork broth. Pig tail was pretty good. Nice flavour, crunchiness. Although I felt like it was little too salty but then everything here seems to be too salty for my liking. 

So that's been my first week in NY. Sorry if it was too long and not enough photos - I've been working a lot ok?? I will keep you updated with more photos in days to come. 

Bye for now!