Elyse Sewell (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} elysesewell) wrote,@ 2008-05-02 04:07:00 |
|
rubbish mate
So, "I think you don't understand our culture" is a line that our agency uses frequently to placate disgruntled models. There are situations in which a girl genuinely doesn't understand the culture; for example, ex-roomie Kvetchka once heard it after she walked out of a job crying and demanded to be taken home to wash her overlacquered hair. Kvetchka, dear, we could totally get away with a shampoo break in Paris, but I think you don't understand our culture. Here in Korea, we must ignore discomfort and work diligently until the job is done, and the boss, not the pretty girl, is in control of the schedule.
I, arrogant prick that I am, fancy that I do understand the culture and have only heard this refrain after protesting true wacknesses. When I refused to get drunk at the agency's mandatory soju party: "I think you don't understand our culture." When two managers went rummaging through my and The Canuck's bedroom, periodically emerging with stuff like quilts and pillows to ask, "Where did you get this?" and I finally snapped, "Why don't you get out of our room?": "I think you don't understand our culture." (On second thought, maybe I really don't understand the culture because I still have no idea what they were looking for or why they were inquiring after the origin of our bedclothes. It is a testament to our ultimate passivity that The Canuck and I, sitting on the couch, just glanced up at each other, rolled our eyes, and turned back to our laptops as two women trotted through the front door, into our room, and started doing god knows what in there. Trying to ask about it would've just prolonged their presence in our hovel. Trying to protest resulted in, "I think you don't understand our culture." And shooing them away with brooms wouldn't work: they know our schedule and could come back to rummage at leisure when they knew we would be out. This zero-privacy situation is ungood. Doubleplus. I know this. But if you think there is any way for us to rectify it, you don't understand our culture).
Sometimes I omit seemingly-irrelevant minutiae from my Livejournal entries in the interest of streamlinin' my narrative. But plots thicken. So here's a previously unrevealed fun fact about my encounter with the tied-up bags of vomit in the trash can yesterday: in addition to the bulimia effluvia, I found two tied-up bags full of fecal matter and shitsmeared bath towels. These I discarded in the waste can next to the puke (one shitbag had been heedlessly flung onto the FLOOR next to the trash cans; ew).
Oh, if only I'd been home when the shit hit the bag, but I wasn't, so I must rely on The Canuck's description of what happened when some agency-dispatched rummager noticed all the bags of excreta newly excavated and sitting on the upper stratum of the waste can. Apparently, the agency owner stormed into the apartment shrieking, "GIRLS! GIRLS! WHO PUT THE DEE-DEE IN THE BAG? WHO DID IT? WHO DID IT? I THINK YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND OUR CULTURE! IN KOREA WE DO NOT DO THIS!"
Wait, they don't shit onto bath towels or in grocery bags here? This country is like so weird.
So, "I think you don't understand our culture" is a line that our agency uses frequently to placate disgruntled models. There are situations in which a girl genuinely doesn't understand the culture; for example, ex-roomie Kvetchka once heard it after she walked out of a job crying and demanded to be taken home to wash her overlacquered hair. Kvetchka, dear, we could totally get away with a shampoo break in Paris, but I think you don't understand our culture. Here in Korea, we must ignore discomfort and work diligently until the job is done, and the boss, not the pretty girl, is in control of the schedule.
I, arrogant prick that I am, fancy that I do understand the culture and have only heard this refrain after protesting true wacknesses. When I refused to get drunk at the agency's mandatory soju party: "I think you don't understand our culture." When two managers went rummaging through my and The Canuck's bedroom, periodically emerging with stuff like quilts and pillows to ask, "Where did you get this?" and I finally snapped, "Why don't you get out of our room?": "I think you don't understand our culture." (On second thought, maybe I really don't understand the culture because I still have no idea what they were looking for or why they were inquiring after the origin of our bedclothes. It is a testament to our ultimate passivity that The Canuck and I, sitting on the couch, just glanced up at each other, rolled our eyes, and turned back to our laptops as two women trotted through the front door, into our room, and started doing god knows what in there. Trying to ask about it would've just prolonged their presence in our hovel. Trying to protest resulted in, "I think you don't understand our culture." And shooing them away with brooms wouldn't work: they know our schedule and could come back to rummage at leisure when they knew we would be out. This zero-privacy situation is ungood. Doubleplus. I know this. But if you think there is any way for us to rectify it, you don't understand our culture).
Sometimes I omit seemingly-irrelevant minutiae from my Livejournal entries in the interest of streamlinin' my narrative. But plots thicken. So here's a previously unrevealed fun fact about my encounter with the tied-up bags of vomit in the trash can yesterday: in addition to the bulimia effluvia, I found two tied-up bags full of fecal matter and shitsmeared bath towels. These I discarded in the waste can next to the puke (one shitbag had been heedlessly flung onto the FLOOR next to the trash cans; ew).
Oh, if only I'd been home when the shit hit the bag, but I wasn't, so I must rely on The Canuck's description of what happened when some agency-dispatched rummager noticed all the bags of excreta newly excavated and sitting on the upper stratum of the waste can. Apparently, the agency owner stormed into the apartment shrieking, "GIRLS! GIRLS! WHO PUT THE DEE-DEE IN THE BAG? WHO DID IT? WHO DID IT? I THINK YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND OUR CULTURE! IN KOREA WE DO NOT DO THIS!"
Wait, they don't shit onto bath towels or in grocery bags here? This country is like so weird.
