After getting settled into the hotel, I fired up my laptop to see if the wi-fi works, send Wifey-san an email, and check some of my favorite blogs. Did you know that a lot of sites, like YouTube (no big deal) and Blogger (kind of a problem) auto-detect your location and set language defaults accordingly? Here's what the top part of my Blogger dashboard looked like:
And the menus? Yeah, they were filled with nonsensical chicken scratchings too. I managed to find the place where you can select your language and got it switched back to English, so I can work my blog again. While surfing around, I come across lots of sites with no letters, just squiggly little characters all over the place.
My friend who's been here a while gave me a cell phone so I can keep in touch.
(In other words, I can call for help when I get hopelessly lost.) I decided to try it out, and guess what? It's a Korean phone. The dialing buttons have regular numbers and letters, plus the little squiggles, but the menu buttons and most of what appears on the screen are all Korean. How do they even read this stuff? I started experimenting, just pushing lots of buttons to see if I could make it do what I want. That didn't work. So my friend showed me what's what on it, and I remembered for about 5 minutes. That was Thursday. I'll probably never make a call with this thing.
We went out for dinner the other night, and it's a good thing I was with people who know how to order at the restaurant, find their way around the city, etc. When you travel to a foreign country, it's helpful to know a few phrases in the local language. Still difficult, but helpful. My Korean is limited to, let's see... exactly zero words. I can't even say, "I'm an American. Please don't hurt me. I'll give you all my money if you show me back to my hotel and leave my kidneys where they are." I sure hope I never get separated from the group.
1 - How does one take just "a little trip" to Korea?
ReplyDelete2 - Is it your fault I can't add Kim Jong Il ot the bozo list? (we don't do posthumous, do we?)
3 - Learn the phrase "The kim chi tastes just like the Japanese make" They'll love you for that and show you the time of your life!
Guapola:
ReplyDelete1- That's a topic for another conversation, but trust me, I did it.
2- We absolutely can do posthumous bozos. I'll add Kim Jong Il to the list. And his son too--Kim Jong Un, or Dos, or whatever. (Isn't it up to Tres now?)
3- Thanks for the tip. I'm glad I have someone giving me good, sound cultural advice. I tried some kim chi the other night, and I wasn't too impressed. I think next time I'll ask if they have something like it, but with less of a rotten cabbage flavor.
I need you to clarify. Is it a "little trip" or a "jaunt?" Inquiring minds want to know.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Guapo - No idea what a "little trip" to Korea is, either. I made a little trip to the gas station last week. But all of the menus/digital prompts AND my phone were still in english.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, though, I didn't have my laptop with me. Maybe that's when everything would get wonky.
But the question on everyone's mind is, "Whatcha doin' there on your little trip/jaunt to Korea?"
I study Arabic and there's a guy in my program who said once, after studying the language for over 5 years, "Doesn't it all just look spaghetti?"
ReplyDeleteIt will never make as much sense to me as Latin letters do.
I hear you, edrevets. I guess whatever kind of writing you grow up with and are exposed to all your life will seem right to you, and other kinds will never fully make sense, even if you take the effort to learn them.
ReplyDeleteDana and Flame, I'll explain in an upcoming post. Hopefully. (I'm not good at keeping promises like this, so you might have to hound me a little bit.)
ReplyDelete