In Korea, it's called 서비스, which is pronounced (seo-bee-su), which is Konglish for the word "service" in English. When you are either buying food, or eating out somewhere, and the person says 서비스, it means they are giving you FREE FOOD! And it happens more regularly here than you might think.
Just tonight, I was with my friend in 구로 시장 (the Guro Markets), and she was buying 삼겹살(think of it as really really thick huge peices of bacon) for her family, and one of the butcher shop guys started talking to us. And because I was a foreigner, he gave us free meet. And just the other night, I was at a food court, and a guy who works at the Chinese restaurant gave me free shrimp. I've gotten service a fair amount since I've been here, and I joked to my friend that now I know what it feels like to be a really hot girl in the United States.
It's kind of a weird sensation being treated differently as a foreigner and minority. Sometimes I really enjoy it, other times I just wish I blended in. Never in my entire life combined, have I been called handsome so many times, or been told that I have a really small face. Also never before have children so blatently pointed at me and whispered to their mom that they see a 외국인 (foreigner).
It's funny, because it doesn't even really phase me anymore. I used to be very self-conscious of all of the eyes, but now I don't even notice them. I used to think that everyone either loved me or hated me for being different, now it just doesn't seem like most people care. Overall, it's definitely an experience like no other, and I can't complain with free food!
And recently I've been watching a lot of John Haskell's youtube videos. He's a friend that I used to go to high school with. He's got a sense of humor like no other. Just recently he's put up this episode series, and it's really awkward and funny. He puts clips from his real standup routines in the series, and at first I didn't know they were real routines. It's a really funny series. Here's the first episode, you can see more on his site:
1 comment:
glad to hear your hot&handsome self is doing well :)
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