Thursday, April 3, 2008

Jumping the Broom - Um, I'll wait, thank you...

This is an interesting article I saw on MSN Money. The title caught my eye, "Too successful for a mate?"

Let's just say that socially I was out recently and someone said something about "finding a wife." The problem is 1) I don't think I was supposed to hear it and 2) to be completely honest, this guy was as dumb as the day is long. So, in my book, he was not husband material 'cause I do want peace of mind, a happy marriage and somewhat clever children if I have any.

I thought it was funny in a way because I've seen some men with standards so low it's laughable. I've seen the same in some women, but men tend to be worse, I think. However, I'm no expert in this area, so I could be wrong.

Like other single women writing on this topic, I've found that men and some women can sometimes really get smug. I won't highlight all the experiences I've had with such smugness 'cause a lot of them involve personal situations and stories. However, I find it really funny to deal with single men here in Korea sometimes.

It's an interesting twist of the women's rights era. I honestly don't think it's a bad one. Now people in my family who are bemoaning the fact that I'm still not married probably don't agree. However, I decided awhile back I'd rather be single and happy than married and miserable. After seeing friends suffer through divorce, that hasn't changed and I don't think it will. So when I get that smugness from someone who clearly hasn't spent much time thinking about relationships and marriage, I really do want to laugh. I don't laugh because making fun of the stupid isn't nice.

Plus, there is this which I see constantly:

Experts say that highly accomplished men tend to marry women who are lower on the professional and educational food chain than they are, traditionally choosing women over whom they can exert control.
However, it's not just highly accomplished men because a lot of the men here...well, no comment.

If you listen to my Being Black in Korea podcast, you know I'm pretty picky. I honestly don't think the expat community in Korea is the best source for a mate unless you're a Korean woman looking for a green card. Without chewing into what's on the market here any further, I like some of the issues and the reasons this article gives about why very educated and successful women wait because it echoes exactly why I'll continue to wait.
For lots of these highly successful women, when given the choice between marriage and their current life, single wins, hands down.

Wendy Simmons -- a 39-year-old Brooklynite, founder and president of PR firm Vendeloo, a former club owner and a current world traveler -- loves being single. She was married for one year at age 25, but felt so trapped that she is having a hard time putting a positive spin on the idea of doing it again.

"The longer you go without marriage, the more complete you make your life, the more difficult the idea of a compromise in marriage becomes," she says. "I may be ready to try again, but every day I feel more and more like a confirmed bachelor. I see so many people struggling in relationships that it scares me."

Simmons rejects outright the notion of dumbing herself down to make herself more marketable to all those executives looking for a "wifey".

"For a lot of guys, the simple girl is easier because the man's role is clearer: They make the decisions," she says. "It's those things that I'm afraid of -- a life of compromise every single day."
I can't say I agree that I'm afraid of compromise. Marriage is compromise and I saw it with my parents who stayed married until their deaths. However, for me, it really is being quite happy here and now and knowing that the grass isn't necessarily going to be greener when and if I ever jump the broom. I hope it will and that's why I'm holding out.

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Seoul Podcast; Episode 2 and April Fool's K-Blog Style



I'm on another podcast. This time it's with Joe, aka ZenKimchi, and Jen who have taken over the Seoul Podcast website.

It was fun doing a more news style/talk show podcast where it wasn't just one subject. I'm on it to talk about my opinions of Seoul Fashion Week. However, we hit a list of various subjects.

Click over and listen for all of the fun: Episode 2: Seoul Fashion Week — Regina Walton, EV Boyz

Oh and note Joe's April Fool's post at my expense: Not Again, ExPat Jane

He did a few of them. I'm not the only K-blogger that got hit.

Here is another good one he got from the JoshingGnome: Government to Fund Pouting as National Treasure.

The initiative comes as no surprise to long time residents of both South and North Korea. Korean culture places a great emphasis on the power of Bbijim, an untranslatable native Korean concept that represents the sense of injustice one feels when something that never should have happened, happens.
I think this is hilarious because Korea is a nation where pouting and other forms of baby-ass behavior in adults is thought of as cute. Women do it to excess, but I've seen men pout and whine too. It irritates me quite a bit because instead of taking action, accepting responsibility or just moving the hell on it ends up becoming the problem of every person surrounding the selfish person who is acting out for attention.

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Tuesday, April 1, 2008

April Fool's South Korea Style


Wonder why your college or university students are running around in their high school uniforms today?

It's April Fool's Day, so they dusted them off.

That's bad for me since I avoid Korean students in uniform like the plague. However, now that I realize it's not my worst nightmare and that my job isn't being overrun by high school students sitting for a test, I'm okay.

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Thursday, March 27, 2008

Repost - GalleyCat: Peggy Seltzer: Fourteen Minutes and Counting

Well, the discussion still goes on about Love and Consequences. I've stopped talking about it just because I haven't read any new perspectives. However, when I trip over them, I'll keep you up on the new commentaries on it.

Peggy Seltzer: Fourteen Minutes and Counting

margaret-jones-fakememoir.jpgThe op-ed section of Eugene, Oregon's Register-Guard squeezes a few more inches of copy out of the scandal surrounding their local literary fraudster, Peggy Seltzer, with one more op-ed about Love and Consequences. Veteran journalist John Hurst takes a couple whacks at the handful of university professors who, in his characterization, "have been circling their academic wagons around her... with spirited public defenses of Seltzer’s moral right to lie." In addition to Gordon Sayre, who defended Sayre's lies as valid self-expression, there's been the but-it-was-so-beautifully-written defense and the at-least-it-wasn't-boring defense... all of which leads Hurst to suggest facetiously that maybe journalists should embrace a more freewheeling attitude towards the truth.

Meanwhile, at The Nation, Chris Lehmann catches up to the debate, echoing my comments during the first few days after "Margaret B. Jones" was exposed as a fraud that Seltzer delivered exactly what the industry wanted: "Here was a wrenching narrative of personal triumph over adversity," he summarizes, "pitching a tough but sentimental ingenue against the lurid doings of a cruel, dangerous world." Then there's the usual stuff about James Frey and Holocaust hoaxers, before Lehmann sinks his teeth into a really sharp analysis of just how heavily Seltzer's narrative played the victim card, and how "actively offensive" the portrait of inner-city society she crafted to resonate with liberal guilt fantasies really is.

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