Monday 30 August 2010

“I’d punch you. Punch you right in the mouth.”


Today’s difference isn’t strictly between Korea and England, rather America and England, although a night out in parts of Seoul often merges USA and Korea into one.
Show an American a room full of flowers and they’ll tell you how wonderful they look. They’ll tell you how much they love flowers, even if they don’t. You’ll end the meeting feeling good. Show somebody English the same room and they’ll ask where the coffin is.

One night in a bar in Chuncheon I had a conversation with two American guys on the topic ‘top five people you’d like to meet.’ It was full of positivity as we discussed our heroes and how they’ve shaped our lives.

On my first day back in my Oldham office a colleague asked me: “If you could punch 5 celebrities flush in the face, who would they be?”

In the spirit of national pride here is my punch list. The rules are that the punches are to the face, will not kill or leave permanent marks and they are also without repercussions, so if there’s a famous woman you dislike, fret not, punch away; it’s only a blog.

Shane Ritchie

My first answer and it was made immediately. I’m not entirely sure why I’ve always despised him. Maybe it was his smug smile as he replaced people’s stained shirts with new ones and claimed Daz did it(it takes a special kind of desperation to pick up Danny Baker’s rejected jobs). Perhaps it was the needless abuse he dished out to Peter Simon during his time as presenter of Run the Risk. More than likely though it’s because one of his boys is called Shane jnr, and another is called McKenzie Blue. Anybody who puts a colour in their child’s name is practically asking to be punched.

(Punch me, punch me right in the face)

Garth Crooks

Football is a world that’s easy to hate, and there’s plenty of punchable people. It could be Ashley Cole: “55k a week is taking the piss.”
Sepp Blatter: “Women should wear tighter shorts.”
John Terry: “I just had sex with your wife.” (lawyer’s note, this is not a genuine quote)

But all of these will feature on so many punch lists. I like to spread the wealth and so my football man is that ditherer of questions, that confuser of events that have just happened. A man whose fourth most searched for term on google involving his name is 'Garth Crooks Idiot.'

Garth Crooks (shouting): “That should never have been a red card, only ever a yellow card.”
Steve Claridge: “It was his second yellow card Garth.”
GC: “But still.”

His job started at the BBC as a post match interviewer, and it’s not hard to see why when he excels in that art with hard hitters like this:

“That was clearly the result you wanted wasn’t it?” (To a Dutch player after they’d won 3-0) or even this question made to Arsene Wenger:
“David Seaman made a phenomenal save today. Is he capable of saves like that?”

Such a poor performance in such an easy task as asking coherent questions would have most people fired, but sadly Garth has just moved further up the pecking order at the BBC and into that realm of football pundits that really shouldn’t be eating unassisted, never mind offering their insight into the game.

Imagine if a journalist was to interview a celebrity and just asked ‘You’re good, aren’t you?’ Or a doctor that asked ‘It hurts when you move your knee. Are you capable of moving your knee?’ A world full of Garth Crooks is a frightening prospect and for that reason he deserves a punch.

Chris Moyles

Chris Moyles is the peak of the Radio One Iceberg. That’s not to say I don’t want to punch him on his own merits, but in this case he’d be taking the punch for the whole of Radio One, especially the news desk.

I love the BBC. It makes me proud to be British. The website is magnificent, the shows are generally of high quality, and it shows why privatisation isn’t always the best way. Programmes get made by the BBC that don’t make money, but are quite clearly high points of our culture. Think of Blue Planet, The Thick Of It and Have I Got News For You. These are programmes that don’t insult the intelligence, that promote knowledge and are made by people at the top of their professions.

Sadly Chris Moyles and Radio One are the antitheses of these qualities. The breakfast show seems to consist entirely of Moyles talking about ‘funny things I said in the pub’ all of which have been written by producers. If there’s one thing worse than bombing, it’s bombing other people’s material. Such funny things include shouting down the microphone, referring to a ringtone as ‘gay’, introducing himself to Halle Berry as a ‘big black man,’ saying Polish people make great ‘prostitutes and ironers’, and having footballers on his show who say the word ‘faggot’ without reprimand.

Radio One news is no better. BBC news should be a bastion of impartiality and informed comment, and yet it allows Radio One to constantly follow up its new reports with opinions of the public disguised as intelligent statements, such as “James from Luton says ‘I think the floods in Pakistan are terrible.’” Really James? How informative; I may have struggled to have come to such a conclusion had I only been presented with the raw figures of 3,000 dead.

“Chelsea from Salford thinks ‘Them MPs aren’t right, they need to be sorted out.’” Fantastic Chelsea; would you like that to be implemented as a policy to tackle Government corruption? Just as simple as sort them out. If only such laws had passed but 5 years ago, think of the waste that could have been avoided.

For this and for only ever being Northern when it suits you, Chris Moyles, given the chance I would punch you full in the face.

(How has this man made money?)

Paris Hilton

To keep this blog from being accused of sexism I have decided to include a woman. Namely Paris Hilton. As a child I was well taught in the ways of the world by my father, and so I know never to trust anybody with a monobrow, anybody who wears a hat with no practical purpose and women who carry dogs in bags.

Through no fault of her own Paris sums up the worst in rich children who really don’t have a clue, and don’t really need to, because even if they flunk everything, they’ll always have money.

“All British people have plain names, and that works pretty well over there.”

No Paris they don’t, just ask Shane Ritchie.



Number 5

I do my best to make the blogging experience as interactive as possible, and because of this, and in no way due to my laziness I have left the 5th option open to public discussion. Who would you punch in the face? You get to leave a comment at the bottom and I get more dwell time on my website; it's a win win situation.

Blog away reader, blog away.

Friday 27 August 2010

Scroats




Scroat - [scrote]
-noun
Difficult to define, but people who aren’t scroats can generally tell if somebody else is. A scroat often be seen stealing from old people, shouting at their partner when pissed or generally just doing scroaty things. Scroats often congregate into groups with other scroats. They can be indentified by a constant need to massage their testicles. They’re often seen being walked by dogs that seem intent on killing anything that crosses their paths.

My neighbour is a scroat. I know he is because when he’s drunk at weekend he calls his girlfriend a slag. I can tell she’s a scroat too because she stays with him. For all their faults scroats tend to be fairly loyal, perhaps because nobody else will hang out with them.

On my return to England I was amazed by the sheer quantity of scroats, I counted 42 outside one shop alone. Korea is mercifully free of them. There’s no sense of cool if you’re stupid in school or any sense of ‘well done’ if you’re somebody who cheats or steals.

Much like honesty and decency spreads through all walks of life in Korea, so Scroats infest English culture like rats. Footballers dive and go on strike to top up their millions, led by big time Scroat Ashley Cole. Celebrity TV shows are made to cater for them, and even political parties like the BNP exist, should they ever become inspired to vote.

One day soon they’ll be a Scroat religion with a leader who wears all white and ridiculous quantities of gold. He’ll lie, cover up crimes and blame everybody else when he’s caught.

Wait a minute ...



Thursday 26 August 2010

Neighbours

Apartment living has its benefits: Heating bills are kept lower, there’s no garden up keep and you don’t have to negotiate any tricky steps when you’re drunk. However, it does mean your access to neighbours is limited to looking into their living rooms across the carpark.

During my time away in Korea our house was rented out. For the most part the tenant left it in one piece, however, a gardener he was not, and so my first job on returning was to tidy the garden as best I could. The first two priorities were cutting the grass and removing a vine plant that had gotten out of control. To do both jobs I borrowed a pair of blunt shears.

After hacking at the grass for some minutes I finally removed two blades. Exasperated I moved onto the vine plant. When I left England it was growing, but was a manageable size. Now it was a beast of epic proportions. As I removed leaves I saw the remnants of eaten plants, scores of crushed snails and the bones of next door’s cat that went missing. It seemed impenetrable, especially so since my tools had developed a layer of rust that chipped off only to reveal older rust. A Russian doll of rust lay beneath.

After an hour of squeezing leaves between the ‘blades’ my neighbour, whom I have never spoken to, offered to lend me her secateurs. The offending plant was massacred in minutes. My gloveless hands bled as it went down fighting, but I kept on. It went deeper than I thought possible. The inside was a graveyard of bugs, plants, snails, Russian spies. As I went under the leaves to cut the plant at its main stem I felt the branches closing in on me, but despite its best efforts I cut it down to the roots. All thanks to the kindness of neighbours, neighbours I never would have spoken to had I lived in an apartment.

Having said all that my other neighbour is a twat.

Wednesday 25 August 2010

Going home

Korea was an easy place to live. 27 hours make a full time week, a meal out costs a fiver, beer is plentiful and work starts late. However, because of this, it isn’t the healthiest place. Like a tree’s age can be counted by its rings, generally you can tell how long a teacher has been in Korea by how many extra inches they have around their waist since they arrived.

Despite having an incredible year full of new experiences and new friends, leaving Korea, for my health’s sake at least, wasn’t all sorrow. Nobody wants to be the last to leave a party, but it’s hard to be the first.

(Perhaps the best ever song about going home, apart from Driving Home for Christmas by Chris Rea obviously)

Different people have different responses when it comes to the time to go. Some count down the days on their facebook walls as if the whole thing was a prison sentence. Some people cry, some people just stay. For the most part people are mixed like I was. Heading home my first feeling was joy at seeing my family. Actually my first reaction going home was ‘Finn Air – £500 for excess baggage – robbing bastards!!!,’ but after stealing a cushion and headphones from the flight, my sense of justice was restored and I went back to being happy at seeing my family. That was followed by sadness. Not at the end of the highlife, Korea is as close as one can be to being back at university, but without the need to eat baked beans for 42 days straight. I was sad at the fact that due to their homes being in USA, Ireland, Australia and Canada, I probably wouldn’t see my new found friends again.

With regular travelling people come and people go, and that’s part of the deal. You know you’re probably not going to see them again, so moving on isn’t hard. However to live in another country for a year means to put down roots. Friends are made and plans are made with them. Your life is a normal life, but in another country. When the time comes to leave that means not just leaving a country, but your friends, groups, plans, local bars, favourite restaurants, colleagues and hardest of all in my case, students.

The culture shock I experienced going to Korea was only eclipsed by the culture shock going back to England. In the spirit of easy reading, starting tomorrow, each day I’ll be posting the main differences between the two countries.

Tune in tomorrow for the first difference: neighbours.