Today is primitive – learn to appreciate it

Sunday, 16 March 1997

Thought for the day: Appreciate the primitiveness of the world you live in now.

Instead of stepping into the past and appreciating how things were at an earlier time, consider the future and imagine how things will be fifteen, twenty, or a hundred years from now. Then step back into the present and appreciate how “old” everything is – from toilets to computers, and telephones, newspapers, books, matches, lighters, cigarettes, screw caps, writing utensils, cars, buses, bicycles, toilet paper, clothes, refrigerators, radios, doors with locks and keys, clocks with hands, beds, bedding, movies in theatres, TVs, wine, beer, steaks and chips, dishes, laundry, razors and shaving cream, tapes, CDs, 14-hour flight overseas, letters with stamps (“people would buy small pictures that were worth a certain amount of money, then the picture was lightly pressed on the tongue to activate the adhesive, and then pasted in the corner of something called an envelope), journals in which a person makes entries at 02:30 in the morning …

I mean, just look at how much things have changed in the last hundred years! Can you imagine how things will change in the next hundred years with the tools of technological advancement created in this century!

Question: Where do so-called social revolutionaries fit in the future?

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I feel home, hear the seconds tick by, but think long-term

Thursday, 16 January 1997

It’s very strange. I think the effect of 25 hot Januaries in South Africa is beginning to take its toll. I’m here in the northern hemisphere where the temperature ranges between minus five and five degrees Celsius, but my spirit isn’t here. It’s eating garlic pizza and drinking Black Label somewhere in Stellenbosch. It’s sitting in, of all places, Pongola’s Wimpy Bar with [my younger sister]. I am everywhere in the warm Cape, despite the fact that I am freezing in Korea at the moment.

The funny thing is, I really feel those places – I experience them!

I think the positive association with summer has to do with the fact that I will be leaving Korea and will return to South Africa when the weather starts heating up here.

Conclusion? The warmer it gets in Chonju, the closer I am to going home.


Saturday, 15 February 1997

(Six o’clock in the morning, Seoul train station)

This is how it is: Wednesday evening it transpired after a discussion with [my boss’s son] that there was a misunderstanding about the airplane ticket. He had asked his mother if she would be willing to buy me a ticket to go home after a year … for a holiday. At that time she was still considering it.

It was only after the conversation that I started thinking. I have never actually thought of the possibility of going home on vacation after a year and then returning to Chonju. I had talked with [the South African guy whom I had met in Seoul on the day I arrived] earlier the evening, and he mentioned that he was planning to take home about R50,000.

That put me in the mood to play around with the idea. What would I do if I were to stay another year after all?

I thought of subscriptions to newspapers and magazines, of joining an Internet café, even of getting a telephone. Then, against my better judgment, I reached for my calculator. A quick calculation brought me to the same amount mentioned before: about R50,000 in savings. That’s an obscene amount! A real possibility to start paying off my debt!

Then I thought, there’s no way I can hold out for another year in this place. And what about my plans to go to Cape Town, and to spend a few weeks at home, and going to Europe?

That brought me to another tender matter. A day or three ago I thought whatever I was going to do after Korea should be considered in the context of the bigger picture: What am I planning to do with my life over the next few years?


Thursday, 6 March 1997

To think of the long-term – of staying here another ten months – is an abstract thought. September … August, are just flashing images. I don’t find it hard to motivate myself for it, especially when I think of what would come next.

The short-term – like the next two classes – is a challenge for me as far as motivation is concerned. It’s concrete. It’s look up, look here, look there, look down, say something, give someone a dirty look, get up, walk around, and feel how the seconds … tick … by. Then I think, okay, only two more classes … and then … basically, nothing.

I need something to motivate myself – concrete motivation for the here-and-now.

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Okay, the latrine hits the air conditioner

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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I so badly want to … not be here

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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A long year is nearing its end

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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