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Cheezels

2012/11/26 / Nic / 11 Comments

This also happened on the weekend at the memorial service for my grandmother. I mentioned that all my little second cousins were scared of my husband because he looks different, but there was one time he was scared of one of them.

Some of the children were playing outside and one of my very young cousins dropped her packet of cheezels on the ground and ran back inside. My husband picked up the packet but she was not impressed.

So cute but so scary at the same time! Not only a redhead but a twin too! She stood there for quite a long time glaring at my husband.

The twins’ father mentioned later that it was the first time they’d had cheezels so perhaps the artificial cheese goodness was too addictive and caused them to creepily glare at people they thought were stealing them. My husband wasn’t stealing the cheezels though, just picking them off the ground for when she came back but she not happy. It was funny, adorable and creepy all at the same time.

Oops. My husband has just pointed out that this twin was wearing blue and it was the other twin who was wearing pink but too late now.

ALSO: I have a tumblr now. http://mykoreanhusband.tumblr.com/

While it may still have some comics on it it won’t just be a replica of this main blog but it will also be for more random stuff. What do you think about allowing submissions? Would you want to contribute things to it?

Little Cousins

2012/11/25 / Nic / 9 Comments

There was a memorial service for my grandmother yesterday. It was a really nice celebration of her life and a chance to see extended family again. I have many second cousins who are very very cute and my husband thought they were adorable. UNFORTUNATELY, they all were scared of him! Possibly because they had never met him before but also because he looks a bit different. Most of my cousins live in towns that are predominately white and haven’t interacted with Asian people before. My poor husband, every time he tried to talk to them, they ran away or just stared back, stunned, at him. It didn’t help that my husband was like, “Hello little children!” and came across kinda weird in his enthusiasm. They are all very young too so they didn’t really understand that my husband is part of the family now… even though he looks a bit different. My husband gets slightly upset at that, but eventually some of them interacted with him a bit. The little boy in particular found enough courage to run up to my husband say “G’day mate!” And we taught one of the older girls how to say “Annyong”.

Hopefully next time we see them they’ll be used to him and talk to him instead of just staring back haha.

New Books

2012/11/23 / Nic / 22 Comments

Sometimes he doesn’t get my movie references. Also his family lives on a farm in Korea, which was why he was insisting they don’t have a cow. Also I love (the Disney movie) Mulan.

So I bought 2 new books.The Korean Mind by Boyé Lafayette De Mente and Korean Thought and Culture by Chai-Shin Yu. I have a bunch of other books on Korean culture and Korean Thought but I like learning more and seeing how books on it differ. I’ve found reading these types of books helps me immensely as they just make things so much clearer. Learning about Korean culture from the average Korean only gets you so far, as they are not usually able to articulate certain aspects of Korean culture or even realise how something differs to another culture. It is actually quite hard to explain your own culture and it usually takes an either an outsider or someone who has studied extensively to adequately explain well to others. Which is why I really appreciate these types of books. They explain things that my husband can never explain to me. Sometimes things are explained that I was wondering about, but other times it’s something I hadn’t even consciously realised but once it’s explained it gives a much bigger picture of Korean culture. Which of course, benefits our relationship as my husband’s ‘Koreaness’ is a vital part of who he is and it’s not something that can just be separated from him.

Unfortunately there just aren’t enough books on modern Korean culture. South Korea has changed rapidly in the past few decades and I don’t think literature has really caught up properly yet. Even in the past 5 years Korea has changed a lot. I feel like I’m still waiting for a really good comprehensive book on the subject. That’s not to say there are no good books – there are – but I think they could be better. For example, The Korean Mind by Boyé Lafayette De Mente, this author is widely regarded as an expert on Asian culture and has published so many books. But when you open the book there are very obvious spelling mistakes in the Hangul. The idea of the book is to look at many different words in Korean and show how they relate to Korean thinking and culture. But with such big mistakes quite obvious as soon as you open the book, it makes you wonder what else is wrong in it. That is disappointing.

The big question is: Why is did he throw the books on the floor? Because he wanted to have a nap and was lazy and tossed everything off the bed. I think that’s just him and not anything to do with Korean culture.

Manner Man #2

2012/11/22 / Nic / 28 Comments

Finally a new Manner Man!

This is a pretty basic one. No shoes inside. Sometimes when you visit people you’ll be given house slippers, but not necessarily. Not only that, but when you go to the bathroom you have to use the bathroom slippers (I don’t like bathroom slippers).

In our apartment in Sydney, because we share with a Korean couple it’s strictly no shoes inside but when we go to my parent’s house we can wear shoes inside. The first time I went to Korea with my husband back before we were married, we went from the airport to a motel. My husband went with the receptionist to check what the room was like and walked in with his shoes on! He was so used to being in Australia he forgot to take them off. The receptionist was like “No no! You can’t do that!” He had to apologise and explain he’d been in Australia.

For those that don’t know Manner Man a super hero that helps with Korean etiquette. Actually the idea was formed when we were in Korea and eating dinner and drinking with Korean friends and one of the guys was concerned that some of the other Korean friends weren’t using proper etiquette and made sure they were being polite. Trying to explain the situation to me in broken English he said “I’m…. manner man.” Which sounded like a super hero to me…. though as you can see, a super hero is does the exact thing he is trying to stop.

Beast Giveaway Winner

2012/11/22 / Nic / 6 Comments

The winner for this giveaway: http://www.mykoreanhusband.com/beast-giveaway/

So the winner was drawn randomly:

Congratulations Harsha Pamnani!

Send me an email at [email protected] to claim your prize.

Remember how my sister-in-law sent me a huge box full of Kpop stuff for prizes for giveaways? It’s running low now… but there may be a few GD socks left if anyone is interested.

Ants

2012/11/21 / Nic / 15 Comments

Ugh I hate ants inside. I’m not scared of them, they are just annoying. I’m not really scared of creepy crawlies and usually just take them outside, but my husband is petrified of them. So I’m the one that deals with them ^_^

I hate mice and rats though, I’ll deal with all the spiders if he deals with any small feral mammals. Things like mice just gross me out, because they could be carrying disease and are not easy to catch. One time we came back to my parent’s house after being away for a few days and a mouse had somehow got inside and into the bath tub. So gross. My husband just put on some gardening gloves picked it up and disposed of it outside. So he can be so strong and manly in that situation but if it was a spider he’d be screaming and running away.

Ants though, just make me a psychopathic killer.

Hungry

2012/11/20 / Nic / 17 Comments

So I thought we could go swimming before lunch… that was a bad idea. Some people just completely change when they are too hungry… I might get a bit irritated when I’m really hungry but I don’t turn into a completely different person! He doesn’t even realise, like even now, after I just showed him this comic he is swearing he wasn’t like that at all. But he was! He was like a grumpy robot that doesn’t talk.

The quickest thing I could make was a toasted cheese sandwich, so he was happy after that. I always do the cooking because his cooking skills are… somewhat limited… but he does most of the cleaning (because I hate cleaning). Perhaps people who don’t cook much get even grumpier when hungry because they have to rely on someone else and feel out of control?

Do you get grumpy when hungry? Do you turn into a different person?

My Korean Husband