Went out to dinner last night with three coworkers, who are taking a jazz dance class at the local YMCA. Jazz dance classes are all the rage right now among the ladies (ages ranging from 20s to 40s, it looked like). After dinner I went with them and watched the preceding class for a little while. There were two men also dancing -- bravo to them, though their presence caused one of my coworkers to slink out because she wasn't wearing a bra.

I wasn't sure what "jazz dance" meant; here it means sort of hip-hop style, like the stuff Julia Stiles does for 30 seconds in Save the Last Dance. (Okay, 45 seconds.) The instructor had pink hair tucked under a black and white bandanna, and several piercings, including one in her chin. Finally, an alterna-girl! They exist in Korea! She played a bunch of American hip-hop, stuff that you just have to dance to, even if you don't want to.

My coworkers suggested taking the class with them. It would be fun. But I really want to take taekwondo, and I'm sort of holding out for that. Of course, you hold out for something long enough and you wind up doing nothing at all...

My coworker Myungsoo recently met a man she's excited about. At the ripe old age of 26, her parents took things into their own hands, and set up a meeting with Myungsoo's mother's sister-in-law's ... brother? I don't know, it's complicated. Anyway, after a business trip to the southern city of Gyungju (where he lives), Myungsoo met up with her mother, who bought her a new suit, shoes, purse, and shelled out for a makeup job too. 'Cause you know, 26 is gettin' up there, and there's no time to be lost in finding a mate before everything slides downhill.

I know, the last sentence was unnecessarily snide, especially for a believer in cultural relativism, which I purport to be. At times. In Korean society, the parents (well, more the mother) feel that their parenting duties include finding you a good mate. Just last night I was watching a TV show called Mermaid (or, literally translated, Human Fish Girl), and the mother said, "Oh, now that my son is married, if I can only find someone for my younger daughter, then I'll consider myself as having done a good job parenting." So you see, finding a mate isn't just your job, it's a maternal/parental/familial duty.

Actually, while this view is still prevalent, the use of a formal matchmaker (one who'd take down vital info about you and find you a mate from the next village) is kind of dying out, and being replaced by families taking things into their own hands, not to mention dating companies.

Which is all fine and good, but I still say phooey.

On the other hand, Myungsoo and this guy were really miffed about the forced meeting, but ended up hitting it off and have been talking every night for hours.

So who's saying phooey now?