Author: Brand Smit

Tuesday, 14 January 1997

Okay, this is how it is. It’s the 14th, and my payday for December was on the third. They still owe me over half of my salary for December. From all the bits of information I’ve read between the lines, my salary is not a priority.

This morning I asked [the owner of the school’s son] whether I will receive my salary for January on February 3rd. His answer was, and I quote: “Sure, maybe …”

“Sure, maybe”? What the fuck does that mean?! Sure, maybe I’m doing a job that’s so boring I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and when I ask about the payment for the work I do, I’m told that maybe I’ll get paid on time for it!

I’ll tell you what I’ll do with this information: Within a few days of getting my money for February, I’ll fly back to Johannesburg. That’s what I’ll do with this information!

Wednesday, 15 January 1997

The fact is, even if I get paid late for a specific month, I still need that money. It annoys me endlessly that my salary is seemingly not a priority, but it will be part of just another chapter of my life within the foreseeable future, and I’ll be on a flight to somewhere with a gin and tonic in my hand – made possible with money I had earned here. Even if I only get paid two weeks after I was supposed to.

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Sunday, 12 January 1997

Okay, I’m getting the impression … Hey, you’re not allowed to read this entry yet – I’m still writing it! Jeez, give me a break!

Note: A time travel experience – what I’m writing now, and what I’m going to write in the next few minutes are destined to become part of the past. But there’s a time for everything, so I have to go through the formality first to make the entry, even though I know this note, like all the others, will be revisited by myself in the future.

As I was saying before I was visited by myself, I suspect I’m getting bored with Korea. Which is really just a nice way of saying I’m so fucking tired of the place that I’m going to have a nervous breakdown or something.

Actually, that’s not at all what I wanted to say. I just thought it’s time for an entry, and then I had the time travel idea for an introduction.

* * *

It’s the twelfth day of the first month of another year.

The weekend has been too long. I want to work. I want to sit in my classroom at that Mother of Boredom and see how time S-L-O-W-L-Y but surely goes by.

I’m bored, and a bit discouraged about the fact that it’s still so many months before I can go home. (From reliable sources that have left Korea, I’ve learned that there’s truth behind the myth – there is indeed a world on the other side of Kimpo Airport!)

I mean, it’s almost the middle of January, but I so badly just want to hear another language other than Korean in public! I so badly want to watch European movies with English subtitles. I so badly want to eat barbeque and mieliepap, and potato salad. I so badly want to crack open some Black Labels with friends, watch TV with my parents, and watch rugby on a Saturday afternoon.

I’m craving the excitement of getting on a plane and going somewhere. I’m craving the experience of having a beer in Stellenbosch while speaking Afrikaans, and hearing Afrikaans and Xhosa and Zulu and … English around me. I want to get excited again about discovering a second-hand bookstore or a street book sale.

I so badly don’t want to be stared at anymore when I walk down the street. I so badly don’t want to try and teach English anymore to Korean twelve-year-olds who call me a “pabo” in class without realising I know they’re calling me an idiot.

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Thursday, 19 December 1996

Well, it’s the week before Christmas. The 19th of December … didn’t think I’d even see it in Korea. I feel somewhat strange at the moment. Everything is coming together – almost the end of the year, two and a half months away from the end of February …

Tuesday, 31 December 1996

And so on and so on, last year this time … another year, and so forth.

What a strange, but also in a way, neat, year. Six months of soul searching, sitting around in my sister’s living room, being broke (again/still), and then – voila! – my own little refuge in Wu-A-Dong, Duk-Jin-Gu, Chonju City, South Korea!

I’m not going to give an overview of the entire 1996 here. Nearly all the important things have already been recorded. I didn’t get to my day-to-day journal, and I still have some newspapers from August to read …

So much can be said about last year: Christmas Day 1995 was, in fact, more enjoyable than this Christmas – proof that you can indeed make good memories on your own.

Advice for 1997? Avoid poverty, and avoid boredom. Think twice before you do something. Impulsivity and so on has its place, but I don’t need to tell myself that certain things like avoidance of poverty and avoidance of boredom should never be taken for granted.

On December 31st, 1997!

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Tuesday, 10 December 1996

I’m developing a huge complex – it’s basically related to the massive baggage I always carry with me. Every time I compare myself to people, I come second. There’s always so much I want to do, but how much of that actually ever gets done? I keep talking and talking and talking.

I think I’m too scared to try anything. I’m afraid of losing the little bit of security I manage to scrape together every day. I’m unsure of myself. I talk and talk and half of the time nothing gets done.

And there’s so much still to learn about life …

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Friday, 29 November 1996

A whole new experience! [My one Canadian friend] and I went to a video store to watch videos. We left the store just after three o’clock this morning. It was raining, I thought, and immediately remembered that I didn’t put the basin under the leak in my room. Then [the Canadian] said it was snowing. I said I wouldn’t know. Then he said, “Look at the cars …”

Then I saw it – snow that covered the cars like blankets, and the “rain” falling softly to the ground.

After a snowball fight that lasted half an hour, we bought coffee at a vending machine next to the road and smoked some Omar Sharifs. I couldn’t stop looking at the single car in a parking area covered in snow.

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