moody meanderings

I remember my first impressions of Seoul from my first trip some years ago - crass, uncouth and loud. From the moment, I stepped onto the plane, I was was in culture shock. I was travelling from Tokyo, from a culture reknowned to be extremely polite, to Seoul, known as "Ireland of the East". On the plane, people shouted across the aisles to friends or family sitting on the other side. They pushed and shoved indiscriminately. At the airport, a men pushed me off the step to the limousine bus as he forced his way past me.  Along the street of Itaewon, a man bumped my colleague, causing her to lose her balance. He didn't miss a beat. This past week, I had a completely different experience. It was as if my first Seoul impressions were from another world or some bad dream. People stood in lines. No mobile phones went off in the subways, nor was there any loud telephone monologue. Commuters are encouraged to refrain from using their mobile phones on the train. At our event, guests stepped out of the function room to take calls from phones set to "silent" mode. There was no drunken rowdiness during our dinner function though Koreans are known to drink excessively. The only time I was pushed was by a little old lady in the Namdaemun street market. And the only drunken-ness I witnessed was in the streets late at night. One man lay unconscious in a flower bed outside my hotel. Another sat on the sidewalk by his car, brushing off two policeman who were persuading him off the sidewalk. A group of men staggered out of a bar, stopping a taxi in the middle of the street and causing a minor traffic bottleneck. And another was being held up by his friend, or colleague or business partner. Most of them wore suits. 

My Korean colleagues were fantastic. They were helpful, playful and open. And full of compliments. There was a man we engaged to manage our public relations and the event. Lee was polite, timid and self-conscious about his poor command of English. When he spoke to me, he preferred to do it through an interpretor if one of my Korean colleagues was close by. One time, during the event setup, I asked him about a rubber stamp sitting on our reception table. What was it for? He replied matter-of-factly, "confirmed f**king". I was not prepared for that response and wasn't sure if he was attempting a joke. A very bad one. "WHAT???", I exclaimed. "Confirmed f**king", he repeated a little louder. My colleagues around us heard it this time and burst out laughing as I asked again, unable to control my own hysteria, "WHAT??" Then one of my colleagues interjected, "PARKING" and then proceeded to explain to Lee what he had said. "Parking", he repeated, beet red. I blushed in sympathy.