These are some Korean boy-band members competing against each other in a quiz. They’re answering elementary school-level questions, so if they answer wrong they’re up for some Koran “face-loss”! People, that’s the part we like!
The questions were ranging from spelling (Korean spelling!) mathematics, Korean mannerism and Korean traditional values. Sort of.
I hate to brag but I handled every question well except for one – the math question. Which means I’m better at Korean traditional values and language than at the all-universal language math? And as you can see from the headline(?) I’m getting better at Konglish and apparently worse at English. Konglish has that effect on you.
But math has been my arch-nemesis since my elementary school days. I wanted to graduate solely in order to never have to solve another damn math problem again. And while I don’t remember studying much during my school years, I suppose I did the necessary homework and that was it.
But I do remember sitting over my math book for at least 3 hours every evening. And now will come a long post about my childhood, so be prepared or just scroll down until you find the youtube-video.
The reason for the length it took me to finish my homework is pretty simple: my mum is the pedagogical hero in our family but my dad was the one who studied economy in school.
Too bad my mum was never as good at math as she is at her job, she’s a pre-school teacher. So as per agreement made a long time before they even had kids, my mum would take care of our scholastic upbringing during pre-school and after that it was dad’s turn to help us with the homework.
So every evening, mum would cook dinner and after we ate my dad would wash the dishes. After that mum would go watch television, while me and dad usually sat in the kitchen where he tried to explain how to solve my much hated homework.
Out of those three hours approximately two of them were usually spent screaming at each other. Yes, I’m sorry to tell you that there was not much love between us during that time – at least not from me. And notice how it took me one whole hour to solve the homework. But I did graduate and I never failed a math test in my life so I guess all that time was good for something. Unfortunately it also made me hate doing homework. The Koreans call it “슬럼프” or “having a slump”. I’m about to cure it, just as I got rid of my fear of giant prawns and shrimps – but more on that in another post.

































