I'll be brief: 5 snippets from Korean life

I suppose that most people have quirky little happenings all around them.  So in that way, today's post is not exceptional or necessarily Korean.  But it's still funny.  So enjoy.

(1) While shopping online for a keyboard cover/skin for my laptop, I ran across this delightful description: "Dustproof and anti-dirty design may avoid the dust, the cigarette ash, the biscuit filings and so on falls into the keyboard to affect the keyboard life."  You have to love their specificity.  I received my cover/skin in the mail and was bemused at the product's motto:

(2) I happened to be invited to a meeting with an Important Person (IP) along with some foreign faculty and Korean staff regarding health/repair issues in our apartments.  The IP's staff presented each of us with a gorgeous gourmet-style fruit plate and tiny fruit fork.  We waited respectfully, of course, for the IP to begin eating before we could touch our own food.  He did not.  And, thus, we did not.  End of meeting: table dotted with 15+ pristine fruit plates.  I hope the staff got to enjoy them....

(3) From a conversation with a student discussing the aggravating sound of Chinese opera: he aptly noted that  "some traditional Korean songs also sound anal.  Um. I mean, nasal."  Yeah, that's an important distinction.

(4) A foreign faculty family built a great fort out of used pallets and a horde of children happily commenced to playing.  Within one day, the kids decided there needed to be a president of the fort, decided the basis for elections, held speeches, and the winner was judged by an older sibling.  A precocious 8-year-old won, solemnly telling my friend Tracey that "I am here to serve."   (P.S.: The president was summarily impeached by her mother and no formal government is allowed at the fort).

(5) And our last story for today.  Elisabeth and I were out walking on campus and she popped into the communal laundry room (the 2 dryers serve roughly 30 families and 25+ international graduate students) to see what was on the "free" rack.  To her great horror, the office door for the maintenance staff was wide open, and there stood three ajoshees (middle-aged Korean men), clad only in their tighty whiteys.  She fled, quite unwilling to wonder with me about these briefly clad men.