RANTING/VENTING MEGATHREAD 3.0

I was all set to take my daughter back to America to start K3 at a Montessori school in Milwaukee before the pandemic washed over the country. A couple months back I had heard from them saying that they had planned to still have in-person sessions and I hadn’t heard from them since, so I sent an email saying I think I’m going to have to withdraw my kid. The administrator told me there would be a Zoom meeting for parents with the principal in a couple days.(why hadn’t I heard about this earlier??) Attended the meeting and now it sounds like things will be entirely remote, at least for that age group, so I’ll try keeping her enrolled after all.

Maybe had we closed the putt putt golf courses and arcades (and bars, for Christ’s sake) over the summer we could have something like a regular school year in the fall, but instead we tried not to let it ruin our summer and now we drank away our children’s future.

I was going to graduate with my BSN this fall but — though they toyed with the idea — they aren’t conducting clinicals online, so I’ll have to split my final semester’s courses, taking my online courses remotely over the fall and the clinical courses over the spring.

...monkeys.

...monkeys.

The monkey population has been able to keep their covid numbers remarkably low, thus avoiding the kind of societal level disruptions that we humans have forced ourselves into.

This guy coughs. Like. A real deep, throaty cough. Every minute. I can handle a sneeze. I can handle a cough. But I can't handle a deep, throaty cough every 60 seconds. Sorry. This guy was consistent as shit, too. I had to leave. I was halfway through my cocktail pitcher, too. Damn

I had to leave. There was no way I was staying there. I've heard a lot of coughs, A lot of sneezes. Nope!

Wait, you let him off the hook? Coffee shop girl wishes she was that lucky. You must be getting old!

I dropped into Lotte Dept store this morning and there were 16 (I counted them) shop assistants/sommeliers in the wine section, which I'd say is a little bigger than your average convenience store.

I dropped into Lotte Dept store this morning and there were 16 (I counted them) shop assistants/sommeliers in the wine section, which I'd say is a little bigger than your average convenience store.

Training?

Training?

Possibly but they were just hanging around. When I started looking at the wine, only one of them came over the pester me.  It didn't look like anyone was shadowing.

I'm so sick of talking with a Korean in English (teacher/friend etc....it could be anybody cause this has happened to me hundreds of times) and when another Korean person comes in to talk to them in Korean ...they immediately talk to them in Korean and I am left feeling like an idiot. 

I don't know if I should leave or not...I've waited for 20 minutes with my coteachers  and others (including sales people) for them to finish talking to the other person.   Nobody says excuse me,  nobody says I'll talk to you later, nobody says wait for a few, nobody says shit~ I'm left waiting, waiting, waiting.... I'm left waiting around like a neglected child...

This is my hugest pet peeve in Korea.  I've stop/started so many conversations...So many conversations (even intimate ones) are just chopped off once another Korean comes in and then the convo is over?  It's even humiliating to go over to the person and say "Hey....remember when we were talking about....blah blah"......(something important) and then Mr. Kim interrupted our conversation rudely and then you didn't say "Hey I'm talking to someone" can you "hang on" and you let him drone on for 20 minutes and knew I was waiting for the answer to my question....(i never said this to anyone....)...


It's rude as hell and pisses me the **** off more than anything in this country, (even more than the driving)....

I never know what to do...but I am sick and tired of waiting around....acting/feeling like a hurt-bag!

Do you have what they call, The Noonchi? Cuz if you did you would realize that everybody else is higher on the totem pole and you’re the last thing on their mind. Every other conversation is more important than the one they were having with you. It’s like a 6th sense. Takes a while to develop, but once you do, it all makes sense.

Obviously I don't have the nunchi!  Waiting for Godot for the other teachers to reciprocate...  I think waiting for a minimum of 1 hour shows your respect!  Obviously I failed......I bailed after 20-30 mins.  I was hangry.

Good. Best not to be ruled by The Noonchi, or it will destroy you.

That kind of stuff is super annoying tho. Hope it was a satisfying stress eat!

Great! My school is going back to online classes. **** these churches!

I'm so sick of talking with a Korean in English (teacher/friend etc....it could be anybody cause this has happened to me hundreds of times) and when another Korean person comes in to talk to them in Korean ...they immediately talk to them in Korean and I am left feeling like an idiot. 

I never know what to do...but I am sick and tired of waiting around....acting/feeling like a hurt-bag!

I've experienced this too and I feel your pain. I've heard of 'Nunchi' and interrupt as guidelines to follow social etiquette or protocol. Honestly, I think many people aren't particularly good at their own culture's etiquette, they've the social graces of a retarded baboon to Koreans as well. 

- At school, if it's a student interrupting my conversation with a teacher, they're getting a scolding.
- If it's a teacher interrupting my conversation with another teacher, I'll wait a maximum of 30sec, say excuse me, and then walk away.  Oftentimes, they'll ask where I'm going and I'll say I've got work to do. Typically, the hint is received that they were being rude.
- Sometimes, even if it's an adult, I will tell them to wait a moment. The way I see it, I'm not embarrassing them, they're embarrassing themselves by interrupting a conversation. I pick my battles though and usually just walk away if it's not worth the trouble. 

The onus is on us as well for not being particularly good at Korean and not being able to join in on the conversation, but when my CT and I are talking about the lesson plan and the gym teacher bursts in, without knocking obviously, to spend 20min bitching about her husband, that's a different story.

My reference to Noonchi was a bit tongue in cheek. People say it means something like “social awareness” but the only time I’ve been praised for it is when I seemed to pick up on the power dynamic of a social situation. It only really matters if used to discern the vagaries of mood of someone higher than you in the pecking order and to act in a way to appease them.

My reference to Noonchi was a bit tongue in cheek. People say it means something like “social awareness” but the only time I’ve been praised for it is when I seemed to pick up on the power dynamic of a social situation. It only really matters if used to discern the vagaries of mood of someone higher than you in the pecking order and to act in a way to appease them.

Yup, me too! 

I've experienced this too and I feel your pain. I've heard of 'Nunchi' and interrupt as guidelines to follow social etiquette or protocol. Honestly, I think many people aren't particularly good at their own culture's etiquette, they've the social graces of a retarded baboon to Koreans as well. 

- At school, if it's a student interrupting my conversation with a teacher, they're getting a scolding.
- If it's a teacher interrupting my conversation with another teacher, I'll wait a maximum of 30sec, say excuse me, and then walk away.  Oftentimes, they'll ask where I'm going and I'll say I've got work to do. Typically, the hint is received that they were being rude.
- Sometimes, even if it's an adult, I will tell them to wait a moment. The way I see it, I'm not embarrassing them, they're embarrassing themselves by interrupting a conversation. I pick my battles though and usually just walk away if it's not worth the trouble. 

The onus is on us as well for not being particularly good at Korean and not being able to join in on the conversation, but when my CT and I are talking about the lesson plan and the gym teacher bursts in, without knocking obviously, to spend 20min bitching about her husband, that's a different story.

I thought it must be the fact that I don't know Korean proficiently....but I know Korean sufficiently, so that is not the case.  It's that we are foreigners, that's it.

I've also been asked or told  "Why did you leave?"( after waiting 20 mins), "You shouldn't have left, that was rude" (happened 3 days ago, hence my RANT post). 

I have a good sense of awareness and I wouldn't let someone wait for over 3 minutes, let alone 20 without explaining why (in any language). That is so rude. 

Koreans: get some manners about this shit!  Fix it!

My reference to Noonchi was a bit tongue in cheek. People say it means something like “social awareness” but the only time I’ve been praised for it is when I seemed to pick up on the power dynamic of a social situation. It only really matters if used to discern the vagaries of mood of someone higher than you in the pecking order and to act in a way to appease them.

Yup, me too!

I should amend that to say a person can be noonchi 없다 in virtually any context, particularly a domestic one!

my noons are so dap-dap hey-yo, for the night .... 
they are either ...iso or eopso!  They can't decide!   

my noons are so dap-dap hey-yo, for the night .... 
they are either ...iso or eopso!  They can't decide!   

Yur noons r gucci

i stopped going to those dinners when i worked at public school for the same reason. in fact, i stopped taking part in any of the events, including paying the monthly fee. no one talked to me anyway

the only time i've heard people say 눈치없다 about me is when they complain i didn't do something they were trying to pressure me into. f it

Yur noons r gucci

Too many noons being spoken about, and not enough moms, eums, parks, gils.  They deserve a mention.

Too many noons being spoken about, and not enough moms, eums, parks, gils.  They deserve a mention.

Yeah, we all know you have a thing for moms, but I’m still high on noon.

A more interesting concept to me than noonchi is noon-ssulmi and kwi-ssulmi, but funny enough ssulmi itself isn’t a word, or at least I haven’t been able to locate a definition. A term so untranslatable, even the Korean dictionaries are stumped! I like it enough that I thought Solmi (the aspirated SS might be a bit strong) would make a good name for my child, but my wife nixed it because “mi” is more typical of girl names. In fact most of the names I make up and think have a nice ring to them, when I perform a google image search of them (“김XX”), female faces are typically populated. I guess Bum-suk it is...