i don’t know what it was like in old baghdad, but our whole economy is built on people working
why must people work, master?
well, to make a living.
and then?
and then, well, one day they hope to work long enough so they can save up enough money to retire.
and then?
and then they can stop working.
–from “i dream of jeannie”, season 2 ep. 2
i asked myself if i were wiling to give up travelling for, say, 2 years, to build a “career”, would i still stay with my current company?
and so the travelling issue aside, i realized that the OTHER major push factor is the lack of challenges. and no challenge = no satisfaction. so if this carries on, i’m not sure i would want to stay here, even if i allowed myself time off from travelling.
unless of course the situation changes and i am shown that there would be opportunities for growth (both personal and professional), i could give up travelling for a while i guess. i really do love my job, and i love what i am doing, but i just feel… bored and restless… because i have not been learning anything new recently! and this adds to my frustration because there are NO challenges and it’s just so blah..
boss said to me on msn today:
(5:15:21 PM): 신기해
(5:15:27 PM): 내가 쓰는 말을 케이가 다 알아듣는것이..
(5:15:34 PM): ㅎㅎ
(5:15:51 PM): 내가 사용하는 글이..거의 다 구어체 잖어
(5:16:01 PM): 흠..가끔..나도 모르는 띄어쓰기도 하고 있고..
(5:16:04 PM): ㅋㅋ
(5:16:15 PM): 한국말 다 배웠다~~ 케이
(5:16:18 PM): 더 배울 것이 없어
(5:16:26 PM): 싱가폴 가서~ 한국어 학원 해도 되겠다
(5:16:33 PM): 축하!!!
which reminds me of a convo i had with the housemate a few nights ago when she brought home some red wine and i had a drink with her.
on the first day i moved in, i was watching big bang theory on my laptop in my room and she heard the sound coming out from my room, so she asked me about it as we were drinking.
“were you watching an english show that day?”
“ahh.. yeah.”
“i’m jealous of you [i think she meant 'envious of'], because you can understand all english and you can watch american drama.”
this is not the first time that i have been told by some korean that they envy my ability to speak and understand english, but i have never managed to find an appropriate response to that.
what do i say? um, thanks, and i too envy your ability to speak and understand korean completely, but i wonder if they would actually get the irony, given that sarcasm is not commonly used as a means of communication around here. this is something that i have problems getting my head around because while i do feel envious of non-koreans who can speak good korean, i do not feel any envy towards koreans who speak good korean?? does this even make sense at all?
i think singaporeans are lucky in that we get good enough doses of both american and british media so we can get not only most of the cultural subtexts and references, but also, as a sort of side-effect, understand most north-american- or british-derived accents. and then you add in the english accents of the chinese, malay and indian population and we have got most of the more commonly-heard accents of the english-speaking world down pat.
however, this much-envied (only in korea) “skill” that i have was acquired at the expense of fluency in the mother tongue. i am not ashamed that i speak horrible mandarin, but neither am i proud of it. in fact, in korea, i get comments of “oh your huayu is very good!” from the PRCs and taiwanese–though of course it is highly possible that they were just being patronizing. it’s funny how back home i would get criticized for butchering the mother language, and yet i come to korea and receive praises for speaking it “well”. it’s interesting how, ceteris paribus, one’s location can change one’s perceived value.
in terms of language ability, though, i would think that my korean is actually on par with, if not better than, my chinese? i don’t mean it in a literal sense, of course, but in a one-and-a-half-years-of-korean-language-learning-as-an-adult vs 12-years-of-formal-mandarin-lessons-during-my-formative-years sense. aside from actually learning korean here in korea, i guess it helps big time that the nature of the language itself is quite scientific. i actually feel more comfortable speaking in korean than in mandarin, although i am very much handicapped by my limited vocabulary.
i didn’t realize when it began, but i have caught myself thinking in korean, AND i have also dreamt in korean. although sometimes i do think in mandarin (very rarely nowadays though), i have never once dreamt in mandarin.
and while we are on the topic, i have been rather slack in my korean studies of late. even though i still don’t speak it well, i guess being able to understand about 80-90% of what is going on around me, and being able to understand enough to do my work has kind of put me in a comfort zone. it’s no longer a question of survival–which was a huge motivation–it’s now more a question of how good at korean i want to be.
