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Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Word of warning

Just so you're aware, if you're ever in Korea and you order food and get it delivered, DO NOT THROW OUT YOUR DISHES!!!

The styrofoam ones are okay, and the cutlery consists of wooden chopsticks, so those can go too, but make sure you do not toss the plastic dishes. I thought they were a bit thick to be disposable, but everything here is wasteful like that, so I only hesitated for a second before throwing out my bowl. I was a little surprised, therefore, when the delivery guy showed up at the school (yeah. I was at work at the time) looking for the bowl. I had to get another teacher to explain what had happened and offered to pay for it, but he was new so he went rooting through the garbage can to look for it, and he must have either found it, or been told by his boss that it wasn't that big a deal, cause he never came back looking for it.

Anyway, so that's stupid westerner moment #1. I'm sure there will be more.

No wait, that was number 2. Number one was when I tried to tip the cab driver, only to find out later that here in Korea tipping is almost considered an insult. The idea behind this is that a tip implies that the receiver is so poor, they *must* need the extra money on top of what they're making in salary. The practical and benefitial upshot of this, of course, is that it's really easy to calculate who pays what in a restaurant. No cents, all even numbers, tax included in the menu list price, and no tip to consider. Awesome.

1 Comments:

At 1:45 p.m., Anonymous Anonymous said...

I would so shocked if anyone came back to collect the plates/bowls I just used to eat off of for a delivery order. Craziness, at least your two "westerner" moments were relatively minor and though kinda embarrassing, don't have horrible consequences like jail or anything like that. Still missing you guys!

 

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