As I've noted in earlier posts, many Koreans know at least a handful of English words and phrases, even if they're usually too self-conscience to say them aloud. But when they do expound one of these manufactured, tourist-friendly idioms, it's usually either endearing or uncomfortable. My most recent encounter was the latter.

I was using the urinal at my school when another young male teacher entered the bathroom. In typical westerner fashion, I kept my eyes down and made no acknowledgment of another human being in the room.

But my newly arrived companion for this bladder-evacuation expedition wasn't familiar with these unwritten public bathroom rules. Standing two stalls away from me he unzipped, began his business and then turned to me with a smile.

"How is the weather today?" he asked.
Since he was actually closer to the window than I was and therefore in a better position to judge the weather, I assumed he meant something closer to, 'isn't the weather nice today,' so I replied, "It's very nice," and again diverted my eyes away.

But I could feel his gaze burning a hole in the side of my head. So I eventually turned to look at him again hoping I could give him a smile and a nod and he'd turn back to his own affairs.

Smiling again, although now with a devilish curl at the corners of his mouth he said, "You must be careful." Having finished what he set out to do, he turned and walked out of the bathroom without another word.

Was this a clairvoyance's helpful fortune telling? Or a local crime syndicate warning me to play ball or face the consequences? Needless to say, I washed my hands thoroughly before returning to work.

I've always been sensitive about my weight and in that sense coming to Korea was a huge mistake. Koreans are small people in all sorts of ways -- particularly their waistlines.

Case-in-point, the film "200 Pound Beauty" which we were required to watch as part of our Korean educational training. It was an extraordinarily popular romantic comedy about a large young woman with an amazing singing voice. Because she was fat, the record producer (who she was secretly in love with) has a slimmer woman lip sync the large one's songs. Eventually, the large girl has all kinds of plastic surgery making her just as skinny and beautiful as the lip syncer. Great story, eh? Did I mention that the fat girl is a phone sex worker in her spare time?

But the comedy in the movie is almost completely surrounds this 200-pound girl; a weight unimaginable for most Koreans, especially for a woman. While 200-pounds is heavy, the physical comedy in this film would make you think the character was played by the mother in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape." There are your standard jokes like a chair breaking under the girl's weight, and some really extraordinary moments such as four men failing to jointly lift this woman on a stretcher.

And it's not relegated to the movie screen. Nearly every day my students, the people at my gym or some Korean I know looks at or pats my stomach and either sighs with disgust or asks me, "Why?"

What I want to tell them is that any extra weight around my middle is a product of Korean culture, not despite of it. Koreans gorge at meals, eating what I'd assume are 1000-2000 calories in a single sitting. And they aren't even particularly healthy calories; mostly things like white rice, grilled meat, fried bread and lots and lots of sugary alcohol.

One man suggested that Koreans have a longer intestinal track than Westerners and can therefore process food better. But I know I've read that Koreans also suffer more ulcers than most because of all the spice they consume.

Long story short, one of these days I'm going to deck someone who pats my belly.

I am not the Buddha!

... yet.

Today I was invited to have lunch in what is usually the 'Women Only' room at my school. They had a TV on, turned to what seemed to be a MTV or VH1 knock-off. Here's a recap of what they were watching during the 15 minutes I was there:

1. Ten minutes of footage of a male Korean swimmer taking off and putting back on various shirts.
2. A segment about two pop-music groups bowing before and putting envelopes into a severed pig's head.
3. A scene of children in Africa with a Korean.
4. Back to the pop singers with the pig head.
5. A commercial featuring a beautiful woman with two small children at her side, sexily sucking the juice out of a plastic container of tofu.

I've taken to correcting my students' posture in class. They hunch over their papers like child-laborers picking through coal. I have a thick wooden rod, a coffee table leg I believe, that I'll lightly poke into the curvature of their spines. Then I'll pull back on their shoulders, forcing them to sit up straight or be jabbed.

The amazing thing is that they all sigh in relief afterwords and thank me. Considering how long some of these kids are in school chairs in a day, all that hunching over is likely to shrink their size by age 30.

One strange repercussion though, I've found that the more students' postures I correct in a day, the more pain I feel in my own back.

Konglish vocabulary for the day: When using English to express how one holds his/her body, Koreans replace the word "posture," with "attitude."