Grinds my Gears

Yes I ripped it off of Family Guy, but whatever. Koreans are rather interesting sometimes so I figured that I'd list a few more interesting differences and similarities that I've found.

1. You have to have an outfit for whatever activity you're doing. In the US if you're going fishing, or running, or playing sports, or hiking, you can wear pretty much the exact same thing for each activity. In Korea you need to have hiking clothes, fishing clothes, running clothes (including the really short shorts...), etc. I continue to find this odd and wasteful and I also end up standing out every time that I go running.

2. I have yet to figure out Korean Style and I don't think that I ever will. I've tried, I've seen a lot of people, and I still just don't get how it works, why they wear what they do, or anything.

3. Driving in Korea has been interesting to say the least. Many things are different from the US such as:

• You cannot make a left turn on a green light, you must have a green arrow.
• Speed is enforced by speed camera in most places. However there are signs telling you where the camera's are at. Police do not sit in their cars with radar guns.
• Turn signals are usually used, however they indicate that someone is moving not that they are looking to move.
• Pedestrians do not always have the right of way and will jay-walk at a random times. I've seen people walking through a tunnel in a car lane instead of walking over or around it... You just have to know where they are going to do it.
• The easiest way to explain driving is that you need to be an offensive driver as opposed to a defensive one. You have to decide where you're going to go, point your car in that direction, and go, don't hesitate, don't think, and let the other drivers worry about themselves. This works surprisingly well and there are far fewer accidents than you'd think that there would be. It could be because you know that everyone's going to be aggressive as opposed to the US where it's 50/50 aggressive/passive drivers.
  
• Ecobox Speeders. Many Koreans buy very small fuel efficient cars yet drive them like maniacs. They will drive up to an intersection and then most likely shut the car off (to save gas), however when the light turns green they'll fire it back up and then jam the gas and race to the next intersection. Effectively wasting any fuel that they saved by shutting the car off at the last light

4. Basketball. I was able to catch the season opener for the local Changwon team (one of 10 pro teams in Korea) and I have to say that I was throughly unimpressed by the "game". Each team is allowed to have two foreign players so they usually go for some 6'10" American who could play in the NBA Developmental League (D-League). So I was watching the game and I'd estimate that about 90% of the points were scored by the 4 foreign players between the two teams. It was really sad actually. Are Koreans just that bad or do they just want the Americans to carry their team?

• Sidenote: The refs were apaulingly awful in the game too. In the two quarters that I watched I saw probably 20 or more traveling, over the back, charging, blocking, and double dribble fouls that were either not called or called incorrectly. There weren't hardly any fouls called on the offensive player ... ever. I think that I saw one traveling called and that was it.
• Sidenote II: I also saw the biggest flop of my life. Two guys chase a rebound into the corner and both stop the one by the paint with the ball. Both are clearly standing, no movement for half a second at least. The guy with the ball then dives out of bounds (untouched) and gets a foul called on the defensive player ... who hadn't moved an inch. Seriously one of the worst calls I've ever seen in my life.
• Sidenote III: I'd rate the talent level at about Division II or Division III basketball (Pitt is Division I). Something that if I worked at it, I could probably make the team (on the bench, but still). Sorry Korea, not impressed, at all.
  

5. While out running Sunday I saw several groups of kids playing organized soccer on one of the fields. I thought that this was pretty cool and it was neat to see that it was set up and run almost the same as it is in the US.

6. They like to eat pickles with their pizza. No it's not in one restaurant, it's all of them. Still don't understand this one, they're not in the pizza, but on the side. It makes for an interesting flavor combination in your mouth.

• They also like some really odd flavor combinations on their pizza. I tend to stick to the "New York Style" which is basically a supreme pizza. Some of the others include: Sweet Potato, Several Curry based pizzas, various seafood pizza's, and many use mushrooms as the feature and not meat... yea. I would kill for a good pepperoni pizza like I can get 2 blocks from my apartment in the US.

7. Value Meals, Combination Platters/Meals, and anything else like that is called a Set. That took a while to figure out actually. "Hi, I'd like the Big Mac Set, please" Usually comes with a Coke, even if you don't ask for it.

Well I think that I hit a good number of things in this one. I'll try to think of some more interesting topics as my time here is coming to a close. As always if you have any questions, comments, etc, post a comment/send me an email and I'll try to get to it as soon as possible.