Soju, Visas, Bad Boys and Foreign Companies

What goes around comes around. After decades of Western (read: American) culture being adopted by Korea, now Korean culture (or at least drinking tastes) are starting to be taken on my Californians. In this article we see how Soju Bars are getting popular in the Schwarzenegger State. A friend of mine also has a similar bar in Toronto called 달끼고/dal-ggi-ko (strawberry nose...or the red nose people get from drinking). It's quite popular with the Koreans there, but about 20% of his clientele are 'foreigners' (non-Koreans) too.

Then there is Paris Baguette. This article tells how this French-themes cake house and bakery is making inroads into China. At the same time, Korean kimchi makers are cutting production costs by 90% by making the sidedish in China and shipping it to Korea! Korea is now a net importer of kimchi, if you can believe it.

With all this international news, you might be thinking of your next trip abroad. Minaz, bless his little heart, left me a job to do while he's in the Philippines: check if he needs a visa for his recently-planned 1 week trip to Beijing. I called the number, thinking it was a Canadian Embassy or something, but it was actually Visa Connection, a firm that specializes in getting all the paperwork together for whatever visas that Canadian or American citizens might need. Very cool.

And if you do fly, and have a few drinks, and berate the staff and generally get ugly: watch out. KAL and Asiana have a blacklist of those soju/beer/whiskey/wine-downing passengers that get ornery in the air. Judging from the amount of stumbling, loud talking/yelling, pissing (and puke) I see in the street it was only a matter of time.

Finally: there seem to be a few misconceptions about foreign firms' offices in Korea. I've known people at all kinds of firms here and I can say that if you are in Korea you're going to work hard (at least if you're a Korean--as a foreigner you're kinda in another category). I know one gal at SH&C (which is a joint venture life insurance firm between Shinhan Bank, and BNP Paribas' CARDIF) and she has lunch from 11:30-1:30! 2 full hours. But she also regularly works until 10 at night and on weekends, so the extra hour for lunch ends up translating to 20 more hours a week. Others I know at foreign firms work their butts off too...as do those at local firms. It's more which country you work in that counts more than which firm, perhaps.