I hope no one thought that the letter I posted on Friday was MY letter. I stole it and the response from tomationation.com, and then wrote a commentary below both of them. So don't worry, I'm not being berated by irascible grandfathers.

Okay, extremely long entry below.
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Weekend

This weekend, my work friend Myung-soo and her younger sister had a nice trip back home to celebrate her grandmother's 91st birthday. On the train ride back, she and her sister were sleeping in their seats, when they were woken by an old man who wanted to sit in the space behind their seats. You see, he had a standing ticket (trains sell standing tickets and sitting tickets) and wanted to sit down, and their seats were the last in the compartment, and had a little space behind them that someone could squeeze into.

He was rather rude about it: instead of asking, "Do you mind moving your seat back up a little so I can sit down?" he pushed the seat back up on his own, causing Myung-soo's sister to awaken. Okay, annoying, but whatever.

But it's very uncomfortable to sleep sitting straight up, and so Myung-soo's sister eventually asked if she could ease the seat back slightly, in order to recline more comfortably. The old man began to berate them, asking, "What's the matter with you?! You're young, and you can't even take that little discomfort?" (all in the impolite, casual speech form used between close friends and to children).

This went on for a minute, after which Myung-soo got very angry and started screaming back. I think the conversation went something like this:

"What's wrong with you! Can't you be a little more polite?"

"What's with you young people today? How dare you use casual speech to me? Who are you that you can talk to me this way?"

"Who are YOU that YOU can talk to me this way?! Respect me and I'll respect you!"

And so on, attracting a fair amount of attention. It's not every day that a young Korean woman argues loudly with an older man.

A little later, after both parties decided to ignore each other, Myung-soo's sister got a call on her cell phone, and began complaining about the old man in English. When she got off the phone, the old man poked her and said, "I just have one more question."

"What?!" said Myung-soo's sister, ungraciously.

"Are you American?"

Myung-soo said her sister was so angry that she just said, "Yes! I am!"

To which the old man returned: "I thought so! You have American ways! No respect!"

I bewailed her sister's choice of answer to Myung-soo: "What -- she couldn't have said she was Canadian?" (Myung-soo's family lived in Canada for a few years.) Myung-soo laughed long and hard at this, and so did I, but I was truly a little upset -- Americans have enough stereotypes and past bad behavior to overcome without someone falsely shifting the blame to us. After all, the real answer would have had more drama and more irritation factor: "No, I'm not American, I'm Korean, and if you think I'm American because I don't like rude, uncouth people, then all the better for Americans!!"

Ironically, I am American, and I'm the last person who would have made a fuss like Myung-soo did. I even told her that I envied her fiery temper and instinct to stand up for herself and her sister, to tell someone flat out that they were wrong to behave the way they did, and to go fly a kite. I'm way too timid to do something like that. If someone is unpleasant or rude to me, I'm more likely to quietly seethe and then cry frustrated tears afterwards. Internalizing the anger? Dunno. All's I know is that I sometimes wish I could just reach out and smack someone.
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On Friday night I went over to Tex's apartment for a great night of American fun: pizza, Survivor, The Agency, and ice cream. I will bear witness that Domino's pizza here tastes just like pizza back in the States. Mmmm.

I had actually never seen a whole Survivor episode before Friday, and I admit it was pretty amusing. This time it's in the Amazon, and the teams are split by gender.

Tex was bummed by the voting off of the hot Asian guy, who was a slimy flirt and as dumb as rocks, but easy on the eyes. Still, you, me, and everyone else on the planet watching knew that he was a goner just as soon as he said, "X is my best friend here, I can totally trust him."

Cut to next scene: X scheming with someone else to toss Hot Asian Man off the show.

Just before the voting started, Hot Asian Man said something amazingly stupid, in terms of surviving: "Well, just look -- I'm the only Asian guy surrounded by all these white guys." Hey, excellent way to win "all these white guys" over to your side, Hot Asian Man! Immediately, one of the white guys jumped on that statement, declaring that neither he nor any of the other white guys had treated HAM differently because he was Asian.

When everyone's votes were counted, and everyone had voted to exile HAM (including HAM's "best friend"), Tex bemoaned the decrease in level of hottiness. And then, more seriously, she asked what I thought of HAM's ham-handed statement.

A tricky can of worms, to be sure. For I am sure that "all these white guys" completely believed that they did not treat HAM any differently because of his race. But there's a large field of study about implicit attitudes, the ones we have but may not be aware we have, and I'm pretty convinced that we have and sometimes act on these attitudes.

Check out http://implicit.harvard.edu for an interesting demo and study on it.

As for me, I think HAM was dumb and the dude who answered him was naive. But really, what else are you supposed to say to something like HAM's comment? Survivor: Amazon viewers aren't watching so they can get a treatise on implicit social cognition! They're watching so that they can see scenes like the one of three hot babes bathing (as a reward for winning one of the games) and deciding, very naturally, "Hey! Let's take our tops off!" They're watching so that they can hear a hot Asian man say, "I don't like him because he's really bossy. Plus, he smells"! They're watching so they can listen to the men discuss which woman was the hottest!

On the whole, I prefer Fear Factor. I admire the straightforward setup and simple lust for fame and fortune.
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Saturday night I went out with a bunch of people from school. I actually only knew the organizer, Yale Boy, who is got a fellowship to study in Korea for a year; I had dinner with him and the fellowship program people last term.

I was not in a good mood and didn't feel like going out, but brightened up when I saw that the only people waiting in front of the McDonald's so far were all guys. I'm sure I wouldn't have felt the same if it had been mostly girls. Believe me, I am SO not a flirt, but it soothed my prickly spirit to see guys there; there's something lovely and comforting about being the only girl among a group of nice guys -- reminds me of my year at Club DOJ, when I was the only girl among five guy's guys who were also inexpressibly sweet.

By way of introducing me to one of his friends, Another Yale Boy, original Yale Boy said: "Guess how old she is!" (Meaning me.)

I decried this as rude, so Yale Boy apologized and then said, "Okay, guess when she graduated college!"

Okay, and HOW is this different from asking my age? Oh, whatever, chalk it up to the immaturities of 20-year-olds. For that is how old the Yale Boys (plus Russian Boy, another member of the party) are.

Twenty!

Which explains, naturally, why Another Yale Boy got to talking about i-banking, and how he just wanted to make lots of money and not work when he grew up, and how everyone graduating was working like 60 hours a week, and how he was majoring in Bio because of his parents. Yale Boy responded by saying he was thinking about majoring in Religious Studies.

Whereupon I wandered off to look at the bowling.

Oh yeah! That's where we went. A bowling alley. On the eighth floor of a building in Shinchon (the area of Seoul where my school is located).

Bowling in Korea is the same as bowling in America. I suck at it. But I have a good time nonetheless.

You can't drink in Korean bowling alleys, which might actually be a blessing, seeing as how one of our party dropped the ball on his back swing 6 or 7 times without alcohol.

After bowling, our party, which grew to about 10 or so (mostly language school students), decided to go have sam gyup sal (fried pork wrapped in lettuce -- mmmmm) and soju -- ajyushi (older man) style, as Another Yale Boy put it.

I dislike soju, so I ordered a bottle of sweet wine (name of which is "100 Years Wine"), and was told by Another Yale Boy that it was expensive and didn't taste good. To which I replied, "Fine, then I'll drink the whole bottle myself!" Punk.

A few minutes into dinner, Russian Boy returned with his girlfriend, a Korean Russian who I've noticed in the hallways before because she is tiny, perfect, and speaks Russian, of course.

In fact, pretty much everyone at the table spoke two languages already, and were working on Korean as their third. The Japanese people, having been schooled in English since junior high, at least understood quite a lot, and the Russians both spoke English -- Russian Boy with a firm grasp of idioms and everything.

I felt keenly the inadequacies of American education.

After dinner, we moved onto the third part of the evening (all Korean outings must involve at least three places, and I'vee been told that the ideal evening consists of five or six!), which was the inevitable karaoke establishment. Chinese, Japanese, English and Korean songs were sung, and only two songs before I was about to inflict "Oops, I Did It Again" upon them, I realized that it was 12:20 and I had to catch the metro before it closed.

So Yale Boy's close friend Yokyo and I hurried to the metro, which is open until 1 am.

During the week.

Argh.

We considered crashing at Yale Boy's place, but Yokyo had done that the night before, and I -- well, it might have been fun, but now that I'm an old, old almost-27, I need to go home and sleep. So we considered taking a taxi, but before we had decided anything, I got a call from my dad.

And what did this old, old almost-27-year-old do? Why, accept an offer of a pick-up by Dad, of course, and request a ride for Yokyo as well.

Yokyo was amazed that my dad would do this. Her dad refused to pay for her college education, so she didn't go, instead going to a theological institute. Her dad almost stopped her from going to high school too, citing that lovely old reason that because she was a girl, she didn't need any more education, but Yokyo's teacher came to her house and talked with her father for two hours before convincing him to let her go to high school.

So when my dad insisted (in his mild way) on taking her home instead of dropping her off at her usual metro stop, she was very astonished, and I was very aware of being damn lucky.