The Order of the Crutch

This blog post is a rant. It’s sad, it’s depressing and it’s an angry note. If you are not in the mood to listen, you have the liberty to browse a page with better quality content. Please, save yourself the trouble.

If you are still here and decided not to leave, hear hear…

Preface:

The last time I read from a text book was sometime in 2007 and attended a class. This was for the Cisco certification. Of course, all of that was familiar territory. Computers are my forte. My bread and butter come from my nerd quotient. Cisco was of course an excuse to make a commitment. If I did not pay Rs. 10000 and join those classes I would have given up and not cleared that certification. Of course, there was this colleague or rather one of my closest friends back in those days, vidya who pushed me a lot to make that commitment.

So if I had to critically analyze and claim learning something new it would have really been graduation back in 2002. Post that, much of my education or learning new things have been via self-study. Download PDF from internet, study, clear certification exams. That’s how it went, pretty much.

The Story:

Fast Forward back to 2011…

I enroll in Korean Class. This is the most exciting thing ever, since 2002. I’ve never touched a text book never learnt something fundamentally new since college days. I paid my fees 3 weeks ago. I know I will hardly get 15% of attendance amidst all the travel I have and the minimum requirement is 85% to give the exam post the course. Why do I care? I have to start somewhere. Korea and Korean I find too intriguing and beautiful to miss out on for silly reasons such as exams and certifications. I think the certificate can go to hell. Nothing can compare to how it made me quiver with excitement when I learnt to correctly pronounce “Anyong Ha Se Yo” and “Gamsahamnida” today from my teacher. Like a neat shot of Grey Goose down the throat it felt, honest.

So I go to class and I’m just in time and folks are already seated. From what I was told and expecting I was very glad I was not in a class of 15 year old school kids. Nothing is more embarrassing than making an ass out of yourself, in front of school kids. I was glad. There were three Indian folks in class and a very elderly Japanese woman, probably in her late sixties or fifties. I was excited, I was ecstatic. Who don’t like to make new friends?

Just when life is beautiful scenery like a Windows XP Wallpaper things go wrong and you find bird droppings rain on you. I don’t understand, seriously. The coordinator of the program welcomed everyone. Our teacher was in class already. She introduced our teacher to us and was discussing books and material. The person sitting next to me talks to another participant in the class in Tamil. On top of this, there is chatter in Tamil about course material with the coordinator leaving the faculty completely clueless about what’s going on. I fail to arrive at a logic, to justify the use of a language when someone on the class clearly does not understand. Clearly, English was something we all can speak and understand including the Japanese participant.

This chatter turns into me somehow and I respond to everything in English. They still don’t seem to get it. I think by the 4^th answer one should have guessed but well, I guess not.

We watch a beautiful promo video on Korea and its culture on DVD on a large screen TV. I found it fascinating. Teacher asks how we found it. Everyone is pleased. It’s not necessary everyone should be though but still, same dude says when teacher asks “what do you think?”

“It’s all very boring to me. All this Buddhist stuff is very boring”. I immediately know where this is headed. I patiently wait for the teacher to come to me while this dude rants on about how Koreans follow Zen Buddhism and stuff he know so much about Korea. Teacher says it’s just to give people an idea and nothing about religion. He rants off about how Japanese people are so religious. By this time it’s my turn and I tell everyone what I feel. I said I’m fascinated to observe the differences in Buddhism in Korea compared to Thailand where I go to every now and then. Guy interrupts to mock Buddhism, I say Asia is very liberal and secular and irreligious compared to India and divert the topic away. We move on to pottery and rice cakes.

We learn to say “My name is <name>” in Korean. Our teacher is learning all of our names. One of the participants name is a complicated & long Tamil name with “Zha” on it. Teacher finds it difficult to pronounce. Dude jumps forward and says “You cannot say it. It’s tough. Forget it!” Teacher ignores thrice, fourth time hits back “Yes, I realize that but please give me a chance. I’m trying very hard to learn. Please?”

Enakku Naakka pudungindu saaganum pola irundhudhu, period.

Since today was just an orientation day, our teacher offers to teach us how to greet in Korean. We learn to pronounce greetings correctly. We greet in Korean going forward in class. I’m thinking “aaw man, this is killer awesome” and dude jumps and interrupts teacher and asks when is alphabets going to be taught and what’s the use of learning greetings without knowing alphabets. Technically right dude but you missed the bus by a mile. More Tamil chatter in the class.

Questions:

Where did we go wrong? What is wrong with us? I find someone like this everywhere I go to amongst Indian people. As an instructor that travels every week across Asia, I find this problem only with Indian and to some extent with Chinese folks. I can’t speak about Chinese folks because I simply don’t care. It’s not my country nor are they my people.

Where did we miss that civilization part?

1. Communicating in a language that people do not understand in a room, how does this even happen? As an educated young person who has a college degree and knows other foreign languages how can one not know this fundamental etiquette?
2. Interrupting people in a conversation.
3. Passing judgmental comments on things when you meet someone for the first time in your life
4. Telling someone is incapable of something out-rightly on their face while they put effort on doing/learning something.

My teacher left the class building while I was starting my bike. I really felt compelled to apologize on behalf of the dude but I refrained. I was uncertain if I would be over reacting and I did not have enough time to think it through. After all, I was going to see this person for the rest of the course. Of course, depending on how lucky I get to be in attending classes amidst my travel.

I feel very hurt today. The pain is so very real. It’s agonizing.

I won’t let this put my spirits down. I have something awesome to do. Something I have never done before. New things to learn and do. New turfs to invade and conquer. I’m not happy I resumed writing the blog today with a sad note but I’m not going to ends this sadly.

I think I’m totally in love with the Korean language. My teacher told us to look at the text book with love. Unless we look at it with love the language is not an easy one to master. I think I already am. If the Korean language was a woman, we’d be married and we’d have many kids and it would be one big happy family, I think.

Thanks for listening.

Gamsahamnida, Annyeonghi Gyeseyo.

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