The Five Most Stupid Things I Have Ever Done While Travelling
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- Category: Anecdotes
- Published on Tuesday, 05 February 2013 16:32
- Written by Doug
I have nothing to hide. It's all out there. Do what you will.
Number 5: Incheon Airport - Forgot my passport at the store.
Yep. I went to the store. Put my passport down on the table and walked off happily with a 2kg bag of Bounties. The clerk ran up to me about two (whole!) minutes later out of breath and put it directly into my bag.
Lesson "Learnt": Always put things away after you take them out.
Number 4: Taoyuan Airport - Forgot iPad inside of immigration.
I was lining up for the bus when I realized I was no longer carrying my iPad (work sensitive, one of a kind case that was a gift from a friend). Panicked, I ran around the airport looking for it, retracing my steps the best I could. I eventually made it to the arrival gates when I realized I left it on the counter at immigration. The agent had asked me to write an address on the form, and I had to make up one on the spot.
My iPad had to go through immigration in it's own. I actually had to sign immigration papers for it.
The quote from the guy at the counter who called immigration and got them to bring it over?
"Wow, No one has ever been stupid enough to leave an iPad lying around."
Lesson "Learnt": Always put things away after you take them out.
Number 3: Rural England - Gave a Muslim skull cap to a Catholic priest as a souvenir.
I have a friend who is a priest, and I visit him when I go to the UK. I had just visited Uzbekistan, and bought a whole bunch of skull caps as gifts. Did not think this one through.
He accepted it graciously, and never spoke of it again.
Lesson Learnt: Context, context, context.
Number 2: Paris - "Why are all of the cafe and restaurant signs in English?"
Perhaps I should rephrase this. The thought was more along the lines of "Why are they all cafes and restaurants? Why don't they use their own words?"
Yeah. This exact thought went through my head. It stopped me in my tracks. I felt really embarrassed, yet thankful I hadn't said it out loud.
I left Paris the next day. They were grateful.
Lesson Learnt: The French can smell idiocy 100m away upwind.
Number 1: Tripoli - I left my money belt at the hotel...before going on a 3 day tour...away from the city.
This was pre-revolution by a few weeks so things were calm and there were no worries. Our tour guide was like, "Meh, It's Libya. Your money is fine." And sure enough it was. I got everything back to the penny.
Lesson Learnt: Don't travel.
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anecdotesI Bought a Carpet
- Details
- Category: Anecdotes
- Published on Thursday, 31 January 2013 17:47
- Written by Chris
The incident in this story took place in February 2011.
If you get a Turkish carpet, your house will look like this. Photo from WikipediaPrologue: As a child, I was extraordinarily shy. I wasn't the shyest kid, but I was a semi-pro. So, I looked down a lot, rarely made eye contact.
Fast forward many years and, having discovered women, I forced myself to be more outgoing and engaged, mostly by taking jobs where I was training or teaching others. Because this was rather unnatural for me, I taught myself to look up rather than down, to fake eye contact.
Never terribly graceful, I started stumbling a lot.
The story: Walking back to my hotel on Tuesday, it was sprinkling rain and the steps around the Arasta Bazaar were slick. A woman walking a few feet ahead of me wiped out right into a column.
The next day, walking in the same place, I was thinking about her folly and thus watching my step. Then I noticed a flock of birds gliding through the minarets of the Blue Mosque. Where to take picture was all I was thinking about as I walk right into a step. I flew into the ground face first.
Dazed, an older Turkish man helped me up and offered me a chair. Stunned and confused and embarrassed, I refused but his insistence was stronger. A moment later he noticed that my knee was bleeding kind of a lot. He and some others began pushing up my jeans leg, washing and bandaging the wound. All the while I kept saying I'm okay, don't worry, really, it's fine.
The oldest of them insistedthat I need tea if I'm to recover. I'm ushered into the shop I fell in front of and sat down in a carpet gallery. 30 minutes later I emerged with a handwoven kilim from central Turkey, wrapped in a pleasantly small bundle and a less pleasantly small dent in my bank account.
I always knew looking up would get me in trouble.
Add a commentTravel Tidbit: 30 Days of Night
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- Category: Anecdotes
- Published on Thursday, 10 January 2013 14:47
- Written by Doug
I used to tell people about how shitty it was to live in Northern Canada until a friend from Kosovo put me in my place. (Northern Canada is still shitty, more later).
"Did you ever see the movie 30 Days of Night?" he asked.
"Yeah, it sucked ass." I declared between Korean barbeque and Chinese beer.
"That movie was really well thought out."
"What? It's about a bunch of vampires who take over a town that's cut off because apparently planes can't fly in the dark."
"When we were young, the police would firebomb houses thought to hold dissidents. If you think of the towns people, held up on the top floors of buildings as my family, and the vampires as the police, it's suprisingly accurate."
I now kinda like the movie.
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Travel Tidbit: Leftovers
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- Category: Anecdotes
- Published on Saturday, 15 September 2012 14:44
- Written by Doug
An English student and I are having a discussion in Korean. She is around 8.
Her: "You're from Canada, right?"
Me: "Yeah, that's right."
Her: "A friend of mine said that Canada was just the leftover parts that the US didn't want because it was too cold."
I tried to argue, but when you're right, you're right.
Add a commentOf Kittens and Hagwons
- Details
- Category: Anecdotes
- Published on Sunday, 09 September 2012 16:36
- Written by Sabrina
- Frankie the Cat, by Shauna Smith
Turning my iPod up as loud as I can stand, I'm ignoring everyone else in the staffroom. Realizing that both of my coworkers are staring at me with wide eyes and raised eyebrows, I start in surprise.
“Sabrina,” Kyung-Ha says, “is there a cat?”
Looking from my co-teachers to the cardboard box under Shauna's desk and back again, I realize that the jig is up.
* * *
“No, Sabrina,” my mom says on the phone. “Don't do this to me. No. No. No.”
Watching me make my overseas phone call, Shauna's eyes are round and worried. Not wanting to be involved, Maria and Clare have gone home early. It's just Shauna, Asia, Emile and me shifting and pacing in a loose huddle. Strangers are barely looking at us as they run up and down the stairs, going in and out of the batting cages.
- She was so little!
Just under the steps, someone has laid out a newspaper. There's a carton of milk and a spoon with just a dribble in it. Not paying the least bit of attention to the spoon or the milk is a tiny orange kitten, no bigger than a ball of yarn, meowing as loud as it can. With distorted K-pop music blaring at each carnival ride, glaring lights flashing and cheap fireworks going off the side of the pier, most people find it easy to ignore.
Before leaving Canada, I promised my mom I wouldn't acquire any pets. She already has two cats and a dog and she heard a story about a girl who spent hundreds of dollars bringing a dog home from China. Under no circumstances am I to bring this cat home.
“Mom, it's so small,” I say. “And I'm not bringing it home to you. Shauna's bringing it home to her mom.”
My mom once nurtured a kitten back from near-death when the mother abandoned it, so I'm sure she can recommend a strategy for saving this one. She says that if we absolutely can't find the mother, we should check out a pet store and find something called “kitten milk” and feed it slowly with an eye-dropper.
A girl working at the 7-11 generously donates an empty box to our cause and we find a taxi to take us to HomePlus: it's after nine on a Tuesday and most pet stores are already closed. The kitten mews all through the ride and Emile tries to cover the sound with his own mewing.
Wondering briefly what the taxi driver thinks of foreigners who meow, I remember that my friend Yuri once told me that many Koreans don't want pet cats because they are considered bad luck. This makes me worry that we won't be able to find what we want, so I call Chris to see if he can do a Google search on what to feed unweaned kittens. He gives us a short list of ingredients and we head inside.
- Feeding Frankie
We quickly learn that HomePlus is not equipped to deal with the rescue of abandoned street cats: there is no kitten milk. Buying the ingredients Chris suggests, Shauna and I wish our friends goodnight and head back to our apartment building. The kitten's mews are frantic now, but this time neither of us bothers to try and cover the sound for the driver.
It turns out that taking care of a kitten this young isn't that different from caring for a newborn baby. She needs to be fed every few hours and this presents both the challenge of uninterrupted sleep and going to work. We've never explicitly been told we can't bring pets to school, but it doesn't seem likely that the kitten, newly named Frankie, will be welcome.
Our office is a narrow room with desks lining the walls. Serving as an irritating obstacle course, a “craft” table and ten chairs fill the rest of the room, forcing seven teachers and the occasional student to navigate with flexibility and gentle pushing. Shauna brings Frankie in a cardboard box and tucks her under her desk without anyone noticing.
For the first part of the day, Shauna manages to time her feedings so that Frankie is asleep while she's teaching. Once the kindergarteners go home though, she starts teaching her six hour stretch with no real break.
She tries to feed her in the short interval between classes, but it must not be enough because some time after I put my headphones on, Frankie wakes up hungry and probably unimpressed by her cardboard prison. When my coworkers ask if there's a cat and I hear her mewing, I don't see how I can deny it.
- Asia with Frankie
Kyung-Ha and Helena take turns holding and petting Frankie, who fits comfortably in one hand. When Shauna walks in between classes, she stops, but everyone else coos over the kitten: it's hard to dislike something so adorable.
For all the problems I have with my hagwon, this is probably the moment when I most appreciate our lack of clear communication. They comment that there is a cat, but no one tells Shauna to take Frankie home. They simply accept Shauna as a working cat-mother, bringing her baby to work when she can't get a sitter and we simply accept their weirdly progressive views on cat-mother workplace policy.
- Frankie in Canada
If you're wondering how Frankie is doing, she's all grown up and lives in Canada with Shauna!
Previously published at MouseCrackers
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