kung kung tong

One year ago I had an argument with a Korean guy who was praising Korean's working habits. I just laughed at him because he was implying that abnormally  long working hours are equal to hard working hours. He was just pissed off when I told him that Korea is really at the top of the OECD's list by working hours, but it' also ranked number 20 (or somewhere like that) by productivity - being surpassed by countries where workers spend almost half of the time at work compared to Koreans. So don't tell me about hard working people. He just flipped. Then how do you explain our economical success? The so-called Korean miracle that happened in the 90's? That we have many leading industries and the largest corporations in the world? Here he had a point. How? I have no idea how that is possible. I can only guess that this is the reason why it was called "miracle" - definition by dictionary: noun 1. an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.
This is a sort of an answer to the comment on my last post. And it's not only about cars. Think about all the electronics. I really really wonder how do they make all such stuff.
I had lots of funny things to write about the house we're building... but take a look now, I bet you'll find it quite nice...

Just.. just don't try to find a square angle in it. Mission impossible. But it looks good, doesn't it? Oh yes, I really don't know where I found that there was eight of us carrying that large bastard of a bookshelf because all the time there was only six of us working... My bad. But, anyway, here's a picture of it, made from 8cm boards.

And Friday we were off. A nice long weekend. So on Friday I went to my first class of 장고, the slim waist drum, in an unused school. I played this one:

 Some of my classmates:
 
To play it you use two different beating sticks, one for the high pitch (right hand) and for the low pitch in the left. And we started. Ta (high pitch, kung (low pitch) and tong (both simultaneously) then tong tong kung ta-tong kung kung tong kung-ta and so on. I was out of rhythm almost all of the time but nobody yelled at me or called me stupid because mostly everyone was there for fun. And at times it really was fun, when all 16 of us managed to catch the rhythm and the teacher started to speed it up it felt really great. Here's our teacher, on the left:
  On his right is the hapkido master. When we finished our beating session h asked me if I would like to join the next class, his class. Um well I'm not really sure... Don't worry, we'll go easy on you. I survived. The only thing that still troubles me is a big wooden board in his dojo (actually another classroom in the same school), full of small holes. Near it a box of chopsticks. First thing, like a monkey on an IQ test, I checked if the size and shape of the holes match the chopsticks. Perfectly. I told you I wouldn't mess with that guy. But I love drinking with him. After lessons we had along drive somewhere in the middle of Mt. Jiri, where people try to live in the traditional way, but it seems that the place is now quite popular with tourists.
But if you just turn your back to the bus parking and the neon signs, the place is amazingly beautiful.
In this same place we had dinner and lots of homemade makkoli, later lots of mulberry wine. They served us a pile of meat to roast, crap, I stopped complaining about that long ago, be it, I'm their guest and they are doing their best. It took me two bottles of makkoli to remember that the hapkido master is a vegetarian. Hey, how come you eat it?It's dog, I can eat that. Urgh. OK, at least they weren't silkworms. Now I know, I can eat dogs, but not silkworms.