I am settling into a routine now, but I probably need to
look at revising it. I work from 8am to 6pm with that lovely 90-minute lunch
break, then have a swim (every other night, I want to do it EVERY night) then
go and find something to eat. I really, really should get some proper food into
my apartment so I can cook for myself. There’s even the option of eating dinner
/ tea in the works canteen, but first of all, I wouldn’t be able to swim for at
least another hour, preferring to eat AFTER swimming, and secondly, I like
variety in my diet. Much as I am impressed by the culinary skills of the Korean
lady who cooks for us on site, I don’t know if I can stomach fish, kimshi and
rice twice a day, every day. I could go
swimming at lunch time, of course. I need to consider what the most efficient
and cheapest option is.
I have just about finished reading through the contract
documents for this job and have a good sense of what is going on. I get the
feeling my client wants me to get stuck in and start writing letters to their
client. The Project Manager invited me into his office for a cup of coffee and
we spend half an hour going through the main issues of the job and what he
thinks I should look at. His English is decent, but heavy-accented, so I
struggle to understand everything he tells me. I think I get the gist of it,
and will be able to double-check with the main guy I work with, who has very
good English and understands the Western mindset, having studied in Australia. He
has even given himself a Western name, which he uses when talking to use
round-eyed white folk. For the purposes of this blog, we’ll call him Arthur.
I often feel
embarrassed that we Brits have it so easy when it comes to language. We get
away with using our mother tongue in most cases, whilst other nationalities
make more effort to learn at least one other language. I know a bit of French,
a little German and a tiny bit of Arabic and Mandarin, but I wouldn’t say I’m
fluent in a foreign language at all.
At the end of the coffee meeting, the PM asks me if I want
to go for dinner tonight. Of course, say I. I won’t get to go swimming, but it
saves me having to worry about how I’m going to feed myself this evening. The
rest of the afternoon is spent starting a few drafts of letters, and before
long it’s nearly 6pm. I pop back to my apartment to slip into something more
comfortable (a more spacious pair of trousers is always useful when going to
dinner) and then we are off. Tonight we are joined by Arthur and another
department manager, who has one of the two very common names in Korean society,
but is known by his other initials. Let’s call him DC. We are driven in one of
the pool cars to the Phnom Penh hotel where I stayed my first night and make
our way through the lobby, past the bar and into a Japanese restaurant. There
are no little private booths here, but some of the tables are sunken into a
recess with the legless chairs to sit on again.
I let the PM do the ordering for us, although I get to
choose which kind of fish I want, so I plump for the fried salmon. Sake is
requested as well, and the waiters bring a huge brown bottle of the stuff to
show us. I hope we aren’t going to be drinking a full one.
So we eat and drink and the sake doesn’t take long to get us
all talking freely. DC is a very talkative man who talks slowly and
deliberately with some impressive knowledge of English vocabulary. We talk
about our families, our situations, the different cultures of the UK and Korea,
the Koreans’ love of golf, and of course the job we are working on. I realise
that the PM is making an effort to get me integrated with his team of managers
and engineers. I’m sure it’s useful for everyone involved.
The bento box-style meals aren’t as substantial as the meals
we had last week, but they do the job. There is definitely more sake flowing
tonight, however, and the chatty man DC startles me when he starts swearing
expansively and quite loudly. Apparently
he watches a lot of UK TV programmes and has learned some choice words and
phrases. There are a few “wankers”, “bastards” and “fuck offs” echoing round
the room and I am thankful that there aren’t many in the restaurant. I laugh
along with the other guys.
The meal is finished by just after 8pm, and there seems to
be desire to carry on with the socialising, so we head for a
Swiss/Austrian/German restaurant not far from where the project and my
apartment is. It is quite a pricey place, so any ideas I had of coming here on
a regular basis are soon discounted. We take a table on the covered patio area
at the front of the restaurant and bottles of German beer are ordered along
with a portion of snails and apple strudel.
DC, the man I am now calling the chatty man, now asks us all
what we think the best thing in the world is. I say my kids are to me, and even
manage not to choke up when I mention them. The other two guys don’t answer his
question. They seem to know what’s coming. DC stands up, raises his arms and
shouts, “Cunt! The best thing in the world!”
I don’t know where to put myself. I think I must at least be
blushing, but can’t help laughing. I try to tell DC that this word is the worst
in the English language for most people, but it doesn’t deter him. I am once
again thankful that there isn’t anyone else in our immediate vicinity to hear
this astonishing verbal assault.
We leave the Swiss restaurant after one or two drinks and
the PM says it is time for him to head home. The rest of us head back to my
apartment complex, where I assume I will be dropped off and that will be that.
I am wrong. Arthur says we could go and visit one of the other Korean chaps who
is staying in the complex and have a couple of drinks with them, and gets on
his mobile to arrange it. Who am I to argue?
Within a few minutes we are in one of the other apartments
(on the same floor as mine, as it happens), and I am invited to sit down and
given a can of beer. There are maybe three other Koreans and a Chinese man (I
think) in there with me, along with DC and Arthur. Some Nick Faldo Shiraz
appears as if by magic and DC proceeds to put it down his neck at an impressive
rate. Some very strange snack items appear on the table within a few more
moments, including what look like dried octopus tentacles. I try one out of
curiosity, and take about half an hour to finish it. Rubber is less rubbery
than this stuff. I stick to the more recognisable corn/potato-based snackage
from that point.
DC is now quite, quite drunk. He is knocking things over as
he waves his arms around and lolling his head about. He keeps butting in on
conversations when I ask questions or other people ask me something, so he
keeps getting told to be quiet and he shuts up for ten seconds before launching
into another tirade or playing some loud music in his i-Phone. Some of the
other guys are shier than the ones I went for dinner with, and sit away from
the table, observing the bizarre group dynamics that are developing.
With the wine, beer and a last dreg of vodka vanquished, our
host claps his hands, indicating it’s time to break up the party. I am just
starting to get into it as well. Again I assume that the night is over and it’s
time to head for bed. Well, it is around 10.30pm, so it makes sense. Ah, sense.
Where did you go when I needed you?
As we leave, the host hands me a carrier bag with a few cans
of locally-brewed beer in. I feel slightly awkward, since this is completely the
opposite of what I’d expect. I’m used to bringing drinks to a social occasion at
someone else’s place, not taking them away when I leave. Anyway, DC is pretty
much carried to the lifts and presumably to the waiting car outside and, just
as I start to make my way towards my apartment, Arthur asks me if I fancy one
more drink. I agree, on the proviso that it’s just the one drink, and we are
joined by one of the other quieter Korean chaps called LC who was in the apartment
with us and head off in a company car to add another new experience to my
catalogue.
We arrive at a K-TV club. It’s basically a Karaoke club,
with small rooms for private parties. I have seen similar before when I was in
Taiwan, but there was something different this time. This time we all sat down
in our allotted room on the bench sofas along three sides of the room, facing
the TV and Karaoke machine at the front. I wait for drinks orders to be taken
and start looking at the song lists that are placed on the coffee tables in
front of us, but then the door opens and a long line of about 12 young ladies
snakes into the room. They’re all dressed up to the nines, some smiling and
some looking distinctly nervous, and my stomach lurches as my mind takes me to
scary places. Where is this all leading?
Arthur smiles and nods and tells me I have to choose. Choose
what now? For what? I tell him to go first, and he points at one of the ladies
in the line. She smiles before moving forward and taking a seat next to Arthur.
I blush and look as confused as I can.
“Choose a lady, Chris,” says Arthur.
“Er...OK. What is she going to do?” say I.
“She just sit with you and pour your drink, if that’s what
you want,” he smiles.
“Oh. Right,” I reply. I feel slightly better. I’m hoping
that this is true and that she won’t do anything else I don’t want. I am in
control of what I do, and that’s comforting.
I look at the line and try and pick out the least frightened-looking
girl. When I choose, the other girls all laugh and smile at each other. Who
knows what that means. She meanders over to sit next to me, smiling all the
while, obviously aware of my own nervousness. She sits close, but not
uncomfortably so, opens a can of beer and pours it into a waiting glass with
ice cubes in it.
LC chooses his lady companion and the other ladies file back
out. For an awkward moment we all look at each other, and then I take a gulp of
iced beer and proclaim that it must be time to sing. Arthur takes the honour of
going first, choosing some awful dirge of a ballad I’ve never heard in my life.
It is in English at least, and he gives it a good lusty go, warbling in that
well-established drunken Karaoke way. When he finishes we all clap, our lady companions
clapping as enthusiastically as they can. I start to relax some more. They’re
just here to keep us company and applaud our terrible singing, that’s all.
LC goes next, signing a Korean pop song in a slightly
under-powered but in-tune voice. He gets an even bigger round of applause. Now
it’s my turn. I choose U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”,
hoping it’s tuned to be in my range (always a gamble at Karaoke) and as the
music starts, I wait to deliver my customary Karaoke surprise. When I start to
sing, the Koreans look at each other and whoop with delight. The girls look
impressed as well. I’m not going to play it down here; I can sing. It’s one of
the few things I’ve always been good at. That and eating.
It is sometimes a quandary for me, though. Karaoke isn’t
always the place for good singing. It’s more about the tacky music, the
sing-alongs and even the tuneless warbling. When someone who can hold a tune
and who has a good set of lungs (I had the best lung capacity in my class at
school - we measured it in a science lesson) lets rip it can sometimes kill a Karaoke
session. It puts the less proficient people off having a go. I try to mitigate
this by never going first, hamming it up and by singing well-known songs others
can sing along to. Of course, if the mood is right, as it is tonight, and you’re
in a small group, you can get away with a bit of self-indulgence. It’s nice to
see the surprise on people’s faces when they realise you can sing.
Arthur joins me for a brotherly, shouty duet of “Bohemian
Rhapsody” (I know my limits and don’t even try and hit the notes properly) and
then I sing one or two classics by the Beatles and such like. I impress myself
with a passable Louis Armstrong impression, and then get a bit melancholy when
I sing U2’s “One”. The song is one my favourites and gets me emotional at the
best of times, but in this situation it brings my life into sharp focus and I
think of my family back home, completely unaware of the shenanigans I’m
indulging in, and I feel my throat closing up with the emotion. I feel that I’ve
sang enough now, and after we finish our beers, Arthur tells us it’s nearly 1am
and time to get home. We have work in the morning.
As we leave one of the front desk ladies says something to
Arthur that I don’t quite catch about the girls who were with us, and he shakes
his head. As we get into the car he confirms my suspicions: she asked if we
wanted to take the girls home. I feel myself blushing again. I’m not naive, I
know what can be on offer in this part of the world, but I assumed that this particular
K-TV was just for entertainment and not offering that kind of “service”. I guess that ultimately the choice is the
individual's, but I’m glad I wasn’t exposed to what could have been a more
awkward situation.
I finally get to bed at 1.30am. I think tomorrow could be a bit
of a struggle. What a curious night this was...
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