Overcast

I remarked on the interesting weather we’d been having to a friend this afternoon (written on Friday, published on Saturday). After some days of unbearable humidity earlier in the week, Wednesday saw a major downpour. Thursday was magnificent with the first blue skies I’d seen while in a Korean city (residence: 3 days shy of 3 months). Today the sky is gray. I was wondering whether this was a prevailing weather pattern I could look forward to in a bid to anticipate after how many wearings I would have to wash my shirts. “Yellow dust“, was his cryptic response (cryptic because the sky was grey, though a sodden, sickly yellow hallow capped sunset). For those of you who share my life under the stone of media ignorance, “yellow dust” (황사 or Hwangsa in Korean) is whipped up by the storms sweeping across the Asian Steppes. China’s desertification, and increased industrial productivity, has led to an increase in the amount of dust as well as its level of toxicity. Luckily for me, the year I chose to come to Korea is being heralded as having amongst the worst “yellow dust” storms to date. It is interesting to note that the Korean Broadcast Service reports people calling the latest bout tantamount to “yellow dust terrorism.” China, in a way that can only be surprising to someone with his head down a rabbit hole, denies its culpability. Korea remains helpless in the face of their larger neighbour’s deliberate ignorance, intimidated into silent protest. In fact, when Korea supplied trees to China in 2007 in an effort to mitigate the problem, the Chinese government accepted the trees on the condition that Korea ceded all rights to their dispersal. They then proceeded to plant the trees only along major highways, in accordance with their so-called Green Wall of China policy. It seems to me (and my qualifications match those of Brian Fellows in this regard) that a government erecting a gigantic windbreak in response to ongoing desertification is the ecological equivalent of Canute commanding the waves to retreat. Unfortunately it is the people, rather than the republic, that continue to get their feet wet.

Everland, Never Land, Whatever Land

N, T, N2 and I went to Everland this weekend. For the uninitiated, Everland is a Wonderland of roller coasters, junk food, faux architecture and shady looking characters in dress up. Small children run rampant and, on a Saturday at least, the crowds are somewhat daunting, but the general tenor is that of what an amusement park should be: kitsch plastik that, in attempting to construct the magnificent, is characterized by all the imperfections of a Gulliver in Lilliput. Everland, like almost everything else in Korea, is owned by a subsidiary of Samsung, which, as it happens, doesn’t just provide ideas for life. Imagine. And so, while the children laugh and shriek with delight, one can’t help but think of the corruption charges that brought the CEO of this conglomerate to his knees recently. But there are more than just slush fund issues to perplex one in the “land of festival for 365 days!” (sic)…

Having blue eyes and being just shy of 6 foot is enough to turn one into a celebrity in the “Everland Resort”. And it is fun being that popular. But after the 16th scout troop has saluted you, and the 20th couple has asked to take your picture, one begins to tire of the attention. What is disturbing, however, is that this attention has not gone unnoticed. For, on looking at many of the passing floats during the so-called flower festival, one will be rewarded with the sight of similarly endowed individuals, smiles strained across their faces, crammed into ridiculous costumes and made to strut their stuff across for the amusement of the general populace. No doubt this humiliation has ample remuneration; what is interesting is the way in which foreigners can be turned into walking pogo sticks if you pay them enough.

This objectification of foreigners has its sinister, and unspeakable, counterpart in the recent attacks by my fellow countrymen on my fellow countrymen in my country. That the countrymen who are committing the attacks were born in South Africa and the countrymen who are being attacked were not is, nominally at least, the issue. However, with only the slightest of scratching, the resentment that precipitated these acts are directed at the reified foreigner: the foreigner as representative of that which the government has failed to do. It is, however, the foreigner that is “necklaced”. The condemnation of these attacks, by Government and Opposition to Government, usually with the appendation ”senseless”, seem to be similarly dismissive of the lives of the actual people affected. Perhaps, if, instead of bandying the word “senseless” around, the ANC and the DA, which seems so fond of disparaging it, would acknowledge and respond to the “sense” of what is happening, the rationale behind the apparent irrationality, something could be salvaged from the wreckage of our national dignity. It is, however, outside of the precepts of the non-resident to criticize: how may the man who has shaken the dust of his country from his heels make any damning remark and keep his own dignity intact?

It bears mentioning, however, that Lee Kun Hee said, on resigning from Samsung, “I have regrets. But I think this is time for me to leave, taking all the mistakes of the past with me.” It is a pity that certain political figures in South Africa choose to defer their culpability, seeing in the consequences of their actions the justification for their continued exculpation.

Curiouser and Curiouser

The rabbit hole of my life opens for the moment on a small city in the mid-south of South Korea. I have been here for a little short of three months, and am only beginning to become aware of the ridiculous nature of my situation. Fortunately I am well prepared.

A white, English-speaking South African has to face up to their own ridiculousness pretty early on. Most blind-side it, choosing to obviate the tenuous nature of their position as “white Africans” with a combination of arthritis-inducing contact sports and a relentless belief in their own abilities, but when you can’t catch a rugby ball and tend to trip over your laces you get to enjoy this moment of unveiling in all its madcap glory. When one realizes the disavowal that goes on, a Wonderland opens up that puts even a smoking caterpillar to shame. And all this without having to travel to a small peninsula in North East Asia… The fact is that, although the “Net blankes” signs have been turned into home-bar novelties, benches can be sat on by bottoms of all colours (so long as they’re covered), and the beaches can be mowed down by 4×4′s driven by maniacs of all creeds and affiliations, the average white South African still regards him or herself as something special. The difference is that this average white South African (apart from the rugby ball, and the shoe laces) does it by being a freak in foreign climes.

If its a mad enough situation that you live at the toe end of Africa because a couple of ancestors plugged into gold rush fever, try engaging with a pseudo-African identity on Asia’s pinkie. The problem, of course, is that you end up just disavowing what you ran away to avoid in the first place. So much for the implicit connection to the naive narration of Christopher Boone of my first post: maybe if I’d paid more attention I’d have realized that he doesn’t use the Fibonacci sequence at all. Like Prime Numbers make ANY sense as chapter titles.

Only 4.5 billion years to go…

Jean-Francois Lyotard says, as the sun is likely to explode in about 4.5 billion years, there’s not much point in phrasing unanswerable questions: they’ll just end up meaningless when the human race goes up in smoke with the rest of life as we know it.  So lets discard some unanswerable (ergo useless) questions, right from the get-go.

1) What is the point of this Blog?

1) Why is it that a writer as boring and sedentary as this one chooses to claim (s)he is ‘running rampant’?

2) Who reads this, aside from people the writer has commissioned through guilt, loyalty, or reciprocity?

3) Where will this go?

5) Why does (s)he use the Fibonacci Sequence? Is it some pretentious inter-textual reference to The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Nighttime? Was that really a commercial link on his/her first page? Why has (s)he stopped numbering these questions? Can it be (s)he doesn’t know any of the Fibonacci’s after 5?!?

Do not expect following posts, should they occur, to answer any of the above questions.

In the words of Mark Twain, “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

I was going to go with the whole epigraph of Huckleberry Finn, but that had been done to death by a hundred blogs funnier than this one.