Another hellish morning at Club Korea. A dense layer of smoke shrouds everything this morning, scraping your throat with every breath, reeking of burning plastic. Coal smoke, quite possibly. I imagine this is what London must have been like in the middle days of the Industrial Revolution, when the air and water was foul, life was cheap, and no-one gave a rat’s ass about anyone else, particularly if they were perceived to be lower on the pecking order.
I’m grumpy today.
Had a new and potentially useful idea (in understanding this place) late last night on the way to the subway stop. It seems unlikely, despite the repeated avowals of pissed-off waeguk here, that Koreans, Korean men in particular, are all stupid. Look what they’ve managed to do in 50 years…(but don’t look too closely). But the Korean imperative : work work work may have something to do with the fact that if anything needs doing here it gets done badly, at the last moment, or not at all. Everyone’s too f–king tired! Sixteen and eighteen-hour days, 6 days a week, has drained the ability of the vast majority of people here to think ahead, think clearly, think at all. Thinking of people as stumbling in a blind, sleep-deprived haze makes many things about the disorder and seeming lack of will to address that disorder much clearer.
Just a thought.
Category:
Korea-related