Korean Unmasks

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I noticed something when I first moved to Korea back in 1998. For some unknown reason, I felt lighter. I felt like I didn’t need to hide who I was so much. Like many things from that era of my life, it took me a long time to figure it out.

My time in Korea was amazing. I want to share some of the things that made it so great for me. I will also share some of the things that were not so great.

No need to hide.

First of all, hiding as a Caucasian man in Korea 1998 would have been impossible. I was different. People used to run across the street to say “Hello” before booting away giggling. It was an interesting time of my life.

Subconsciously, I realized that since there was going to be understanding issues. There was going to be communication and cultural differences. I used that. If there was going to be communication difficulties, I should simplify.

I started asking questions. I started acting silly. I started making observations out loud. I noticed, the more I did this, the more people seemed to accept me. I was a stranger in a strange land. They had already accepted that I would be different.

Music

While I lived in Korea, I heard foreigners complain about the Music non-stop. Obviously this was before the K-Pop Craze went world-wide. Every foreigner I talked to hated the Korean music. It was too different. The boys wore make-up. They couldn’t understand the words.

I enjoyed most of the Korean music I heard. I collected many albums of H.O.T (High Five Of Teenagers), a popular boy band that reformed later as J.T.L. (with most of the same members). I enjoyed the K-Rap (Not Crap) that was the amazing Yoo Seung Joon. I have never found a musician of similar style. I did ask at every music store I went to though. I enjoyed Drunken Tiger, other artists of many different Genres of Music.

They were different. They were unique. They showed me that Korea was a modern country that didn’t depend on America for its popular media.

But interestingly enough, I also heard a lot of Western music for the first time while there. Many songs and artists I had never heard of were popular there. Michael Learns to Rock, from Denmark is a prime example of this. It was awesome to have this connection tot he world, that just seemed to be missing back in Canada. (Even though we like to pretend we are international)

Work

Everyone I talk to who taught in Korea has some complaint about the country. Hagwons (Cram Schools) not paying on time, Bosses treating them unfairly, or long hours.

I could not relate. Yes, I had a couple of bad bosses, but most of the people I worked with were great people. I had a great relationship with them. I believe it was because I came in knowing that we would have communication problems. If you expect them, you can be open minded, and you can clarify.

If I thought there might be a problem, I would ask. If extra hours were likely, or a strange location, were expected, I would inquire. Most bosses liked that I was upfront with them about my concerns. It helped them understand what I needed, and helped me understand what they needed.

At the time I was there, Korea was used as a “Backpacker’s Bank.” Anyone who spoke English could show up, find a job for a couple of months, and then continue their travels. And this was often the case. Many of the teachers I met were just there to make money, party a lot, and meet girls. Which is fine for the 20 somethings. When you see teachers in their 40s and older doing this, it bugs me. I see this in China still, but not as much due to the drinking culture difference.

Anyways, bosses liked to know that their teachers were not just there to make a quick Won and run away. So communication was the key, even if it was wonky. The effort was very much appreciated.

Language, Innuendo, and odd expressions

When you don’t understand innuendo in Canada, people look at you like your crazy. And some people get so embarrassed that they now have to explain it. Especially if it was a racist, or sexist comment. Often they gave up, or get angry.

When your in a foreign country, and you don’t understand, the people accept it as a regular communication difficulty. They wave it off, and skip it.

This made it easier for me to spend my time with Korean people. The more time I spent with them, the less I felt dumb for not understanding.

As I started learning the language, I started asking questions about the Korean Idioms and expressions. I still don’t understand why one might say “Fun does not exist” instead of “not-fun.” Or what does a Carrot have to do with “of course.” But I accept them.

Just like in English, I cannot understand why someone would want to “Hide a Bed” (A Canadian expression for a sofa bed).

I know now that some of these expressions were misunderstood by me, to my friends amusement. We would go out to do something and be discussing what to do, or where to eat. I would express that something wasn’t interesting to me that day, for whatever reason. My friends would throw out an expression, like “Ok, we won’t do that, Chad hates it.”

I would always feel compelled to explain that no, I did not hate it. If they all wanted that, it was fine, but that TODAY, I was not interested in it. This would always make them smile, and they would rephrase it to “Today Chad doesn’t want this.”

Nobody was offended, they just took it as it was. Chad misunderstood, something, and we needed to be clearer.

Back in Canada, I had friends and people I know get into arguments with me over these same things. And sometimes, i wouldn’t even realize that they were getting angry until someone else pointed it out. My nibling and I had that once. I am sorry I didn’t realize it at the time, until my sister-in-law pointed it out.

My life was great, as long as I could avoid the foreign crowd. Some of them were really nice people, but not all of them understood me.

One perfect example of this came from when I was living in Ulsan. I was a regular at a bar with 1 friend. And there was a Russian lady working there. One night she made the comment that she wanted to see where I lived. So I took her after the bar closed. I showed her the building. She asked to come in. I took her inside. She said she wanted to know me better. I took out a photo album and began to explain what interested me to her. When she told me she was tired, and needed sleep, I gave her the bed, and slept on the floor.

It wasn’t until almost 5 years later that I realized what she was expecting.

After that she seemed to open up and tell me more about her family and friends back in Russia. So That ended positively anyways.

The times this backfired for me.

Another instance of me not understanding people’s intentions lead to a “friend” of mine using me. He figured he could leverage my Language skills for booze and girls.

I had a local friend that found my ability to speak Korean fascinating, and marketable. Let’s call him Ricky. Near the end of our friendship, Ricky would call me up to meet him at some obscure place. I would go and meet him, and we would then be joined by his boss or other older people. They would buy us drinks all night and have a conversation with the Korean speaking foreigner.

Ricky did this at least 5 times before I realized what he was doing. Each time I would offer to pay for my drinks and food, and be told that no. The older gentlemen were paying for everything. Ricky even used this trick to get girls interested in him.

He would call me up, and meet me, and there would be a couple of girls with him. He would drink, and buy for everyone. How he got the money I don’t know. While drinking, the girls would be trying to talk with the two of us, and he would grope them. I left both times he did this. It disturbed me.

Once he dropped by my house drunk, asking to crash. Then offered to call some prostitutes for us. I paid for his taxi back to Incheon.

Ricky is probably the thing I least enjoyed, when I look back at my time there. But I felt bad for him. I honestly thought I could help him become better. And I hope he did become a better person, but I was not able to change him.

Another instance of my ignorance was a girl that I was interested in. We had met in Canada when she studied there, and met again in Seoul. I felt that we were gaining traction and getting closer. She would only call me when she needed something. Homework help, which I didn’t do, or fixing her family computer, or buying her hygiene products.

See to me, asking a guy to buy you hygiene products insinuates that there is a connection there. In Canada that’s not something you trust a stranger, or a guy-friend with.

But the relationship never progressed. Shortly after she returned to North America to continue University, she sent me an email from Texas. The email was asking me to go to her family home and fix her family computer that her brother had broken.

That’s when I realized that I was only a tool to her. I tried to be a good friend and pursued her romantically for a couple of years. There was much more that I did to help her, but that email from Texas convinced me. I was never going to progress past the tool, the minion, the employee. So I relied that I would not, and have not spoken to her since.

Memories vs Reality

Autism, Daily Life, Family, Musings, , , , , One comment

Throughout my life I have done and seen many things. I have some great memories. I have amazing memories of going places. I have wonderful memories of meeting people. I have memories that are not accurate. I have memories that nobody else has.

This always baffled me growing up. I remember experiencing a lot of things, or being told things. I remember seeing things happening. I remember things happening to me. But when I asked people about them. nobody else remembers, or they remember it extremely different.

Tire Swing

Probably the most prominent one is the Tire Swing incident. When I was very young we moved around town a lot. My Mom and Dad had separated when I was still in diapers. So Mom moved to the City nearby. One of the places we lived at was a white condominium. There were 4 buildings all arranged in a rectangle, leaving a kind of paved courtyard in the middle. The courtyard had space at two corners for cars to enter and drive around inside. This happened before My Mom married my step father.

The other 2 corners had space for people to walk through. I remember one corner had a tire swing set up. The tire swing was one where the tire was laying horizontal. It was attached by 4 chains to a central pivot in the frame. The tire could spin or swing.

I don’t remember how old I was exactly when we moved here. But I was lower elementary age. probably 6 or 7 years old. I do remember clear as a bell that one day I was on the swing. I think two of my brothers were, there. Some older boys came in through the corner path, and saw me on the swing. I can still see the face of one of the boys. He had curly light brown hair. They grabbed the swing and spun it as fast as they could go.

I flew off the swing at top speed because I could not hold on. I tried my hardest, but it was just not in the cards for me. As I flew off, I hit the speckled wall. These buildings had little bits of quartz or white rock as a weather proofing sticking out of them.

I hit the wall. and most of the boys ran off. I blacked out. Somebody carried me home.

This did not happen, according to my family.

Apparently, I did have an incident on a tire swing like this, while in upper elementary. I was across the street at the school. This was after we had finally managed to buy a house. My mom and stepfather had been married a number of years at this point.

In the version everyone else remembers, but I do not. I was at the school across the street, (I should have been 11 or 12 at this point). Some bigger boys, probably High School students came through the school grounds. They spun the tire swing really fast as before and I flew off of the swing. But instead of hitting the gravel-ridden building wall, I hit the metal frame of the tire swing.

huh.

Mom’s had Enough.

Another situation that I can remember is different. I believe we were at the condominiums that I mentioned before. Mom was still trying to put her life back together. She was preparing for a date, and of course us boys were being crazy. There were four of us, so we were loud. But I don’t remember being loud or bad. I remember being in the living room.

I remember clearly Mom getting so frustrated. Eventually she had enough and threatened to leave us there, never to return. She stepped outside when she said this. She had not even gone to the curb when she came back to apologize.

This memory is carved in my mind. To this day, I get anxious seeing children take advantage of their parents. The feeling is worse when I see parents losing their temper at their kids.

Never happened, according to my family.

I love my mom. As a father I can sympathize as to how stressed she would have had to have been to say that. But apparently, my Grandmother had done this very same thing. Mom had never told us about it until I brought up my memory. She had promised herself to never pull that on her own kids because grandma had done it.

Head Full of Tubes.

As a child I remember mom telling me clearly about when I was a baby. Mom told me about how when I was born there was something wrong. I remember being told that I had a swelling on my brain or something on the day I was born. Mom told me that the doctors had rushed me off to intensive unit. I was told that they had to put tubes into my head. These tubes were to relieve pressure on my brain. If they had not relieved the pressure, I would have died.

Not only did this conversation never happen, but I did not have tubes in my head as a baby.

I have more memories that are seemingly false too. To this day, I am not 100% sure of my long term memory. There are a lot of things from my childhood that might still turn out to be false. I don’t know. I will hold onto these memories tightly even if they are not real. They are part of me. These memories that I have helped shape me into who I am, even if they are not true.

What makes me worried the most is that I do have family that has difficulty with the same issues. Memories of things that didn’t happen. But their memories are much more recent, and they are not always convinced that the memory is false. I worry about them. I also have fears that this could be my future.

Haircuts: an adventure.

Autism, Daily Life, Musings Leave a comment

I don’t cut my hair often. I do it once, maybe twice a year. I have been told this is odd, and my friends and coworkers are usually shocked when I do it. There are a few reasons for this, which I will go over here.

Location

I live in China. I do not speak Chinese well. I know this is a terrible reason. I take photos of the haircut I like, and show them to the stylist. This is most often successful, but not always. I have had stylists over the years not know how to handle naturally wavy hair, and this caused them difficulty.

I can’t use this reason as a main reason for waiting as long as I do. There are some amazing hair dressers in China, and ones that speak English. I also ran into this issue when I lived in Korea. And I could speak Korean well enough to explain what I need. I often use this as an excuse for not cutting my hair often. Nonetheless, it is actually a lie I use to mask.

Sensitivities:

The reality is not that I don’t like getting my hair cut. I love having a nice short hair style. I do not like hair salons. One of my autistic traits is Hyper Sensitivity.

Any good hair stylist is trained to talk, and calm down their customers. Even in other countries, the hair stylists try to engage in conversation when possible. Then there is music playing in the salon, and hair dryers, and other tools. Too many types of sound make me antsy. I could focus on the music, or I could focus on the conversation with the stylist. But not both. Whichever one I choose will be suddenly interrupted by the sound of hair dryers and other devices. Which can be jarring.

I Really Do Not Like things touching my face. I get anxious about it. I shower away from the shower head, and wash my face with a cloth. I can control the cloth, and it is not as hard. So when they lay me down to shampoo my hair, it bothers me if it gets on my face. Even a little contact irritates me greatly. Or they are drying my hair and the towel rubs onto my temples, or forehead. It gives me the willies. Or when they are cutting my hair, a little bit falls on my nose. Hair also falls on my cheek or anywhere on my face. I need to quickly brush it off. but that leads me to the next problem.

It is not natural for me to be sitting still with sharp objects anywhere near my body. I have visions of losing an ear, or being sliced by razors. This is not just related to haircuts. In the kitchen, if anyone else has a knife or scissors, I need to be far away from them. I am afraid of losing a finger, or other appendage. And so I put a lot of mental energy into making sure I am extremely still. It is not natural for someone to allow sharp objects so close to their body, let alone their head. It terrifies me. Under that cape, I am holding my hands tightly. When I get up, you might see my ring impression on my other hand.

I used to get baffled by people who would put themselves through this torture on a monthly basis. Or worse, weekly. These people are weird.

Oddly enough, I believe my wife has these same hesitations as I do. Yet, she has a choice that I do not. Me. My wife actively avoids hair salons. For the last 2 decades, when she feels her hair is getting too long, she asks me to cut it. I am not a trained stylist. But she refuses to go to a salon. So I do my best every year.

One of many reasons why I feel my wife and I are amazing. We understand each other and do not force each other into things we can’t handle ourselves.