Much ado about nothing

Greetings

As explorers reporting back to our mostly Canadian base we know that we must fulfill certain expectations about what we discuss on our blog. Certainly, you, our friends and family, are sitting on your chairs biting your nails eagerly waiting for us to talk to about Korea’s cuisines, peoples, culture, history, and art. And we will get to all that, but in good time. Today however, old friends, we will talk about something much much more important. Today I will be giving you a detailed report about the most significant subject of any country or continent, the available television channels.

The Korean television experience cannot be explained by mere words or by a solitary post but I will try my best. Conveniently the channel listings start at channel 2 just like in Canada. I’m not going to lie, I was expecting them to start with a channel Q or a channel !^ or even a channel 1. But nope, our tale begins with boring old channel 2.

From that point on the first 15 channels or so seem to exist only to carry soap operas, infomercials, and shows about samurais, rock stars, and frustrated married women. At least that’s what they appear to be focused on using my sophisticated knowledge of four Korean words and an almost equal base of English words.

Our tale gets interesting around channel 19. That’s the first one that covers English material and is also infamous for displaying really bad soft core porn at completely random times. The channel operators seem to have no issue running some lame porno after an episode of McGuiver or Murder She Wrote. I will say that nothing quite reminds you of the fact that you are in Korea than going from watching Jessica Fletcher solve a mystery in Cabbot Cove to watching the delivery man arrive unannounced at some poor woman’s house in “Lonely House Ladies 4 – The Return of the Washing Machine.” And all within the span of 3 or so minutes.

My lame jokes aside I cannot complain about the quality of television in South Korea. All and all they offer about 75 channels and at least 6 of them broadcast in English at any given time. They offer a wide selection of programs as well. Much of what I don’t remember being available back in Canada. For instance, I have gotten back into the Wonder Years, McGuiver, early seasons of ER and enough sports to make even me appreciate the finer points of Cricket.

The biggest highlight of Korean television is the sheer number of Mixed Martial Arts programs available. In Canada, I got a few fights every few months or so and if I wanted more than that I had to order pay-per-view. Or more appropriately I had to wander over to a friend’s house and leach off of their generosity. But here I not only get all the Asian matches that cost a fortune to order in Canada I also get the UFC pay-per-views for free as well. This fact I discovered today by accident and proceeded to scare the crap out of Jo as I pranced around the living room screeching and dancing happily as though I were a cast member of Beverly Hills 90210 who had been given a time machine back to 1993 where life wasn't so cold or lonely.

Anyway, I've become sidetracked, but the point is that overall the Korean television experience has been rather pleasant. The only thing else I will note right now is that the 5 or 6 Japanese channels we get seem to show only Samurais and nothing else. They have shows about classic samurais, married samurais, baseball playing samurais, samurais who work as greeters at Walmart and even a show about a samurai who works in an office. That one is my favorite because everything else is normal expect for the presence of the samurai and nobody seems to note the strangeness of the situation. In one episode he gets tired of the photocopier jamming up and decapitates the entire second floor. It definitely beats reruns of Friends or Seinfeld.

Another oddity is the fact that nothing seems to have a concrete schedule. What plays one day at 5:00PM will play the next day at 6:00PM or never again. But that’s a different story for a different blog. I can’t believe I have already wasted this much time rambling on about the television over here.

But now, like the career of the fat kid from Head of the Class, I’m done.

Cheers

Shayne

(Minutes after telling Jo that "Yes, I did indeed leave the cap off the toothpaste")

(I....have nothing funny to say about this pic. I just dig Chris Farley)