Last week I was asked by a team leader to proofread an essay by her professor (she's getting a master's degree in linguistics). What am I gonna say, no? So I do a few representative pages last week and today she asks if I'd like to go to lunch. Well, sure, why not?

So we go to lunch with someone else on my team, at a rather upscale restaurant. Toward the end of the meal, she tells me that the fulltime editor usually gets paid 10,000 won per page for doing outside work, and shouldn't she do the same for me? But she freakin' phrases it as a question, and what am I gonna do, say, "yo, homegirl don't be doing work for free, you feelin' me"? This is just after I've finished a nice meal which is going to be on her, PLUS, she's the team leader for the Cultural Affairs team, and has been inviting me to all the wonderful cultural events for free.

So I say, "No, no, this one's a freebie. If it gets to be a regular thing, then we can talk about it."

"It may become a regular thing," the team leader replies sepulchrally.

"Um," I say. "Well, it's okay."

And the person from my team says, "I thought you would say that, Helen!"

Yeah, 'cause I'm a sucker. I'm also not sure what I agreed to. Free editing for the rest of my time here? Or a renegotiation of terms the next time an outside document comes my way?

Yeesh. Anyone know where I can buy a backbone?
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I saw my second Korean movie here on Saturday night, a light comedy called "The Piano-Playing President." It's about a rather unusual president who falls for the teacher of his rebellious daughter.

I meant to see the second Harry Potter installment, but Aya and I arrived at the theatre 10 minutes too late to see it. So we saw the president movie instead, which is rather timely, as elections are this week. (Elections: all around the city, at street corners and subway stations, are campaign volunteers bowing to passersby and repeating campaign slogans.)

At the end of the movie (warning: spoiler), the president and teacher get caught by the media while kissing (though the photo, naturally, is taken just AFTER they stop their embrace, which, by the way, is just about the most unromantic and wooden kiss I've every seen), and a scandal is born, complete with opposing politicos demanding his step-down. After a few movie minutes of picturesque anguished wandering around the Blue House (the Korean equivalent to the White House), the intimation of a reconciliation between father and daughter, and the teacher resigning and moving far away from Seoul, the president announces to the nation that darn it, he loves the teacher, receives adoring applause from the press corps, and tracks down the teacher, who strangely enough, punches him in the stomach (not kidding, and the meaning of this gesture was lost on me). The movie ends with both of them exiting the presidential limo into the Blue House, presumably to rule the nation happily ever after.

Boy, scandals just aren't the same here. No marriage to dissolve, no silent supportive spouses, no illegitimate children, no suspect political motives of the lover (a la the American film "The American President" from the 1990s), no Oval Office dalliances -- jeepers, where's the fun?

All right, in all fairness, American movies don't exactly call a spade a spade all the time (although there is the example of "Primary Colors"), but there was a bit of purposeful ostrich-head-in-sand quality about the movie.

After the movie, as Aya and I walked to the elevators, we witnessed a fight! Between two 40-year-old women, no less! One of the movie theatre staff walked up to a patron, and yelled, "Why did you hit that person over there?" and proceeded to hit her in the head. Whereupon the patron naturally struck out, and there was a bit of a tussle, which an older gentleman tried to stop.

Three people who got in the elevator with us murmured, "Should a movie theatre employee be hitting a patron like that?" Apparently, the patron had been drinking and had splattered some of her beverage onto some other patron... or some such nonsense.

It was pretty funny.

Later, over tea, Aya, who is Japanese, said that one of the things she likes about Korean society is that people are much more quick to express their emotions. Heh heh.