Some interesting incidents in Korea over the last few days.

Yesterday, I went off to the cinema to see the new Harry Potter movie. It was good but not great, rather badly paced as many of the Potter films can be. Anyway, I was there nice and early, and was one of the first people in the theatre. As the masses began to pour in another white guy sat next to me. “Must be the Westerner seats” I said. Then another white guy came in and sat down, and then another and then finally two girls. We sat there, a little Caucasian nucleus, in a cinema full of Koreans. I kept looking around to see if a firing squad was going to rush in during the trailers or if we were going to be gunged, Noel Edmonds style during the credits. Very bizarre. I don't think the cinema did deliberately, but it is still a very big coincidence.

Before I went to the cinema, I visited the hairdresser. Getting a haircut is usually a somewhat challenging experience. It involves miming a razor around my head and then pretending to cut the top. I have been before and it is usually a humorous and good natured sort of cultural mix up, with bashful smiling and nervous giggling. However, yesterday I got my hair cut by a woman who seemed to have a stone heart. She was not amused by my barbershop charades and generally seemed to view this corpulent and ignorant foreigner with contempt. Nevertheless, she got on with the job shifting around my head with such velocity that I suspect she may be a former Ultimate Fighting Champion. Mid cut, a little girl came in with her granny ready to have her locks chopped. Well actually she was not at all ready and proceeded to start a bit of a tantrum. Fair enough I suppose, I might have had a tantrum too if I was a four year old about to have my pig tails brutalised. During this, my hairdresser looks over with a gaze that carried about as much compassion as an Anaconda looking at a goat. The wee girl then starts crying which evidently triggered the mental part of my hairdresser who begins to savagely berate the little girl whose frustration very quickly turns to fear at this Hitler with curling tongs. I am not lying, she was a proper mad evil bitch. Even if she did speak English, I do not think she would have been asking where I was going for my holidays.

A nicer incident actually happened a couple of weeks back. I was travelling on the subway when the car rapidly began to fill up. A middle aged business woman was standing next to my seat looking bloody knackered frankly, so being the chivalours Gent that I am I gave her my seat. This prompted an Older Korean to come up and tell me what a nice thing I had done in broken English. As he left he then told me I was very handsome. The truth will out.