Chris-Linfoot.net

This piece is a development of notes I begun to take on noticing the humorous side of my relationship with my Korean colleagues. To save embarrassment, I have changed their names for this piece.

Being set down largely from memory and occasionally distant from the events being described, these notes may not consistently be true - but believe me, they feel true.

Christopher W Linfoot; February 24th 1999

1. Law Pishey - Or when to say no to Korean hospitality; part 1

On a recent business trip to Korea with my colleague Bob, looking at production automation systems, we had come to the end of the first day's work.

"You riker law pishey?" - the question was asked by our Korean host, Mr Yang, who was done with work and was now planning a memorable evening's entertainment for his honoured, western guests.

"Excuse me?" I said, "Oh. Raw fish. Sushi." The answer was no.

"Yes," I said.

If you read no further, I give you the moral of the story now: If the answer is "no", say "no".

And so it was that we entered a Japanese restaurant at around 7:30 on the evening of the first day. I would rather have been in bed as my ageing constitution was having more than the usual difficulty dealing with nine hours' worth of jet lag. I noted with some sadness that this Japanese restaurant was one of those which did not confine itself to a single style, but offered tempura and tepanyaki in addition to sushi. Either of the others would have been preferable.

We took off our shoes and sat at a low table. The first dish, a house specialty, was brought in. On two large platters, atop a huge bed of what appeared to be shredded styrofoam, was the best part of a whole sea bass, cut into manageable, bite sized and chopstick friendly pieces. It was, of course raw. Mr Yang told me proudly that the fish had been swimming about in one of the restaurant's capacious tanks until a couple of minutes after we arrived. At least we knew it was fresh.

"This Japanese food," beamed Mr Yang. "Most Koreans don't like!" He clearly found such discernment an amusing aberration.

Throughout the evening, and every time we thought we had finished, some new and slightly less appealing food was set before us. I smiled, ate and comforted myself with the thought that the next evening; we would have a Big Mac.

We planned to go to Chang Won the next day. Mr Jeng, one of our hosts was coming with us.

"You like Chang Won," he said, "very good sea food". He had clearly seen our discomfort with the evening's meal, despite our valiant efforts to disguise it, and so we assumed that he was joking.

The next evening, in Chang Won, Mr Jeng arrived to take us to the restaurant he had selected. As we walked in my heart sank. In front of us was a very familiar vista - almost identical to the sight that had greeted us in the previous evening's restaurant, but without the option to retreat to tempura or tepanyaki.

So the ritual began again, this time accompanied by bottles of a liquid optimistically described by the Koreans as "Korean whisky", though it seemed to be no more than a mixture of water, grain alcohol and sugar.

If you are familiar with Star Trek: The Next Generation, you may have seen Riker forcing himself to learn how to appreciate Klingon food. Klingon food is generally raw, often alive and still moving and has appetising names like "bloodworm" and "klag". If you think this is pure invention on the part of the Star Trek writers, you are mistaken. The Star Trek writer who first incorporated Klingon food in a Trek plot line had clearly visited Korea.

I already knew this having seen and tasted kimch'i, a stomach turningly gory looking concoction (like something recently scraped off the road) usually comprised, despite every appearance to the contrary, entirely of vegetable matter. Kimch'i is popular at Korean breakfast tables (and every other mealtime table as it happens). This is clear evidence to me that Kellogg was on the right track.

Kimch'i was like double choc chip ice cream compared to what faced us now.

Mr Jeng, evidently having decided to have some fun at our expense, had ordered a dish made of octopus to be delivered in the middle of the meal. It was about now that it turned up. The octopus was clearly somewhat surprised to find itself in two dishes on our table, but had not had the good grace to expire quietly and lay there, a mass of severed octopus limbs, moving about as if trying to reconstruct itself. It had evidently been dispatched only moments before and its octopus nervous system, being a tad slow on the uptake, was dutifully still swimming. This was not the final twitching of, say, a decapitated chicken that we were seeing. It was the extravagant gallop of a prey animal, driven by adrenaline and attempting to escape from a predator - blissfully unaware, it seemed, that it had already failed.

Jeng regarded us with joy.

"You try", he said. "With hot sauce. Is good!"

The cold, wet, slithering and generally unappealing comestibles that I had thus far managed to let slip down my throat, having devised a method of doing so which avoided most contact with the taste buds, were now forming an orderly, if boisterous queue to make the return journey.

I looked at the octopus with resignation and decided that, just as soon as the squid, conch and sea cucumber, which were currently making their escape plans, had been brought under control, I would have to try some. This might also give the late octopus's autonomic nervous system a chance to wind up its still considerable activity. Or so I thought. Some fifteen minutes later, the octopus (or what remained of it - the Koreans evidently found its squirming irresistible) was still gamely attempting its escape. I gave in and ate a piece. Just the one. Honour was satisfied.

I sat for a while, picturing myself as Homer Simpson on being told he had twenty-four hours to live, having eaten a badly prepared, poisonous Japanese fish. How would I break it to Marge? And what would she say?

"It's your own fault - you didn't have to eat it."

I was not alone with these thoughts for long.

"Do you eat dog?" - Mr Hong was now venturing some small talk.

We said that no, we didn't, but had heard of this quaint Korean custom. I looked at the many dishes laid out on the table, wondering which was the dog, and comforted myself thus: While this restaurant's claim to offer sea food seemed a little overstated - there was little on offer that would pass muster as food in most other countries - that it had been obtained from the sea was beyond doubt. We were probably not eating dog.

"In India, they eat mice!" continued Mr Hong, as if eating vermin somehow showed the human consumption of domestic pets in a more acceptable light.

"Try this. It's performance poodle." Mr Jeng had rejoined the conversation. So there was dog somewhere on the table! I had visions of a circus dog, no longer useful as it was too old or infirm and being offered instead as an alternative delicacy in a sea food restaurant. Waste not, want not.

"Performance poodle?" Bob and I both sought clarification.

"Performance fudel!" came the reply. "Fuder, fude. Food!"

Perhaps unwisely, we enquired how the disturbing brown morsel being pointed out by Mr Jeng's chopstick could have acquired the handle "performance food".

"Performance! See! Riker, riker peeny. Your peeny, yes." Jeng clearly knew his subject matter. I was still baffled but I could see something dawning on Bob.

Jeng drew a picture of a penis on the table cloth.

By now, I was ready for anything - nothing could have surprised me. So, it was the penis of a retired circus dog, yes?

"No! Your peeny!" Mr Jeng made as if to unbutton his flies. Bob explained it to me. The still anonymous performance food was a natural alternative to Viagra, but without any unpleasant side-effects; insomnia, priapism, heart failure, for example.

We were still no closer to any understanding of the nature or origin of the performance poodle and, as I seemed to be under no further pressure to eat any, I demurred. Mr Hong finally found the word to describe it the following day, making me rejoice in my decision not to eat it. It was a worm, we were told, of the type you might find on digging a sufficiently deep hole in the sand at the sea side.

And so, after far too long, our meal seemed to be coming to an end. We got up, put on our coats and headed for the door, all the while the last remaining octopus tentacle waving a cheery farewell.

"You like to sing, yes?" said Mr Jeng.

Singing. As in karaoke.

"Yes," we said. "We don't mind some of that."

Next instalment, see how two wrongs most certainly do not make a right.

Copyright notice. This piece is copyright © 1999-2004 by Christopher W Linfoot. All rights reserved.