philistinism

There's a new guy at my work. I say new, but in fact he's quite old. He's been in this country longer than I have. 11 years, to be exact. I like to have coworkers who are older than me and have been in Korea longer than I have, because, well, I've been here over 4 1/2 years now, and I haven't really improved my station in life. I'm pretty much in the same situation I was when I first got here, albeit making slightly more money. Nevertheless, 4 years of lateral movement. But when I meet people like this new guy, I can tell myself at least you aren't him. 



Plus, there's a definite time limit of feeling proud of how long you've been here. I remember when I came back for my second year here, I felt really proud when I'd meet people in their first year and I could say, "Year this is my second year. No big deal." Then when I hit my third year, and I'd run into those smug second year people bragging about their experience, I could hit them with a "Slow down there young fella. This is year three for yours truly." But after that third year it doesn't really feel like a point of pride anymore. It's more like, "Wow, so you're still here doing this, huh?" It's now quite obvious that one or both of the following is true: 1) Nothing better has come along in your life, and/or 2) You have some serious demons back home you're running from.

Anyway, having a coworker in year 11 helps stave off the existential panic.

I bring this guy up because today I wanted to smack the hell out of him. It wasn't due to any insult, I wasn't slighted by him personally. Rather, I was offended by his ignorance. You see, eleven years, eleven years this guy has been living here, and I find out today that not only is his Korean language ability pretty much nonexistent, the dumb son of a bitch can't even read Korean.

Now, you should know something: reading Korean is simple. It's 100% phonetic, and unlike English, with our silent letters and flimsy pronunciation rules among other things, each letter has its sound and for the most part only that sound. I learned how to read it within my first month of being here. My then manager taught it to me in 30 minutes while we were drinking beers at a bar. And I could teach it to you right now the same way. When you first see it, it looks like a bunch of symbols or pictures, but once you can identify the individual letters, it's easy to put them together to form syllables.

There are 24 basic letters, and a handful of diphthongs, meaning that if this guy had merely committed to memory 1 letter every 4 months or so that he's been here, he would know them all by now. Honestly, I don't know how it's even possible to be here that long and not have accidentally learned to read it by now. Really, you'd have to deliberately try not to learn it, or be a complete stooge.

What angers me about his ignorance is that this means for 11 years now he's been a pain in the ass of Korean people. This level of- I'm getting tired of using the word "ignorance" so I'm going to get a thesaurus now - this level of philistinism makes every Korean person who you happen to interact with's day more difficult. You're saying, I'll live in your country and earn money and eat your delicious food and meet your beautiful people, but fuck you if you think I'm putting even a modicum of effort into not making it a chore for you to deal with me.

It's late. I'm tired. Goodnight.