Friday, October 26, 2012

In EDUCATION we trust!

And let me tell you that I do not mean my homeland - Slovak Republic, but the country where I actually am - South Korea.

It's not secret that people (and I mean young and kids) spend unhealthy time at school: from morning to evening. It's not anything unusual to see kids and youngsters go from school at 9-10-11 pm. Crazy, ha?

Well, this seems unhealthy to me, because in beautiful lands of Slovakia, I've been used to came back from school 11-12am-1-2pm depending whether it was primary or secondary (high) school.

And University? Well, you know, one does not simply have so much free time as while being at University. (Slovak ones)

Kids in here have normal school, I guess, and then do some random-whatever-after-school shit. Study or that kind of things, you proly know it. They parents are probably still at work, so need to be home-alone (judging by what I've seen while working for Korean company in Slovakia).

Not a single idea, what does those youngsters think about spending all time at school (even Saturdays in some cases!)...

But few ideas what older kids (18-30y) think about it - as I am in college (seems like something between University and secondary school, kinda more practically oriented, taking like 2 years of ones life).

They like it. They believe education is the most important for them. They wanna study and be successful. Once we asked one student: "What do you thing is the best thing you got from your parents?". And answer? "Study hard!".

I really can't understand that kind of thinking (one should not just accept whatever society puts into ones head, but do critical overview of general ideas and then decide whether wanna follow mass-population principles. I say it because they seems to me they ain't got idea why they say so), but I see sense in there: teach your kids to have no free time, and they wont know what to do in case they have some, so they will do whatever they been doing just a second ago, in this case some school stuff. You won't need to worry about good workers later, they will be used to the fact, they they never spend they time home, they parents don't spend time home, they don't need either, let's just work some more hours.

It's nicely closed circle. I see similar situation with elder people in Slovakia: they are used to always do something and they can't just do nothing (watch TV, read book, or some random philosophy-thinking-wasting-of-time). Kids will spend all time in school, when they grow up at work, when dead in cemetery. Eventually.

Good for economy, ha?

Will you try to abuse our Slovak shitty social welfare system, if you can't just stay home and do nothing? Nope, you will go and find job, make some business or do some volunteering.

Don't believe? Change the following charts to be able to see more years and believe.


Source: tradingeconomics.com

Source: tradingeconomics.com

They (Koreans) know what are they doing. And they do it well.

I am not gonna make analysis of how much are we (in Slovakia) investing into education and research and compare it to Korea, because everyone know how it would end up. The Korean education system is one of the best in the world.

But back to business: poor kids (and adults). From my point of view I can't imagine my kids having this way of studying. And in general, people in here are expected to be the best in everything. Sometimes they want them to be perfect too much, and some can't work it out. Korea leads the suicide rates worldwide.

Difficult topic, not so simple as I presented. but anyway, life is not that easy in Korea.

From my point of view, not for Koreans thought, they have never seen any other way of living (at least the most of them).



Saturday, October 13, 2012

Man, we are all famous!

For a minute....

Okay, not minute, not 15 minutes, but 14 minutes for sure. Because we decided to use one more minute for future needs. And we gonna need it, right?

So, week ago (?), Saturday, I mean, we went for one event - making of 1km long GimBap - some kind Korean food I am not really eating. It's not bad food, but you know, I am picky with food (and with a lot of another stuff).

Why we went there? 

I saw some post on facebook, that they need some internationals for this event, to make that food with locals. So I thought I am gonna ask my friends whether they wanna join. YES, they said. I have to admit, I was not expecting yes answer, but why not, right? So we went.

There's a street in Daegu, with a loooot of restaurants. I guess this event is to promote the street. We ain't got a lot of troubles with finding the place, but we got some with finding the girl I talked before, kinda organizer for us  to be there (Kate).

So we got some fancy clothes and did the food. 








Then we ate it. Not bad actually.

Interesting part was media. All over place.. And all the Koreans making pictures of us. For all my life I never had that amount of pictures as I had that day. God. Hundreds of pictures when eating, making, whatever-ing gimbap. Zoo, that's the word one needs to use. I felt like in zoo. Animal showing his stuff. Our stuff was being different.

But I felt good, thought. It was funny and all.



And more pictures with mayor and local authorities.

You don't need a lot to make it to news in here, maybe.  We been on TV also, but I haven't seen it. And we won some ticket (not ticket, but i don't know the word),  200000 won to spend in restaurant.

We did yesterday.  God that food was good. Pics in my phone, lazy to take them out. They all might appear on facebook one day.

And writing too, so see ya, thanks for reading ;]