Rugby, Doctors, and Torture Racks

I recently started playing for an expat rugby team here in Korea. Rugby is not a popular sport in this country, so I was very lucky to find a club within a “reasonable” distance. I put that in quotes because some of my teammates make rather epic journeys to get to practice. I have a relatively simple commute consisting of a 20 minute cab ride followed by a 40 minute bus ride followed by another 10 minute cab ride. I have talked to people who have bus rides over 3 hours long. Practice is on Saturday afternoons, and to make sure I get there on time I have to leave my school by noon. Keep in mind that rugby players are fairly well known for their drinking (in the same way that male figure skaters are fairly well known for their fabulousness) so getting up any time before sundown on Saturday can often be an act of extreme physical exertion. I love rugby, but I simply would not even entertain the idea of making a nearly 4 hour commute so I could then get my head bashed around, no matter how fun that sounds.

Playing rugby anywhere in the world has its benefits, chief among them the sense of camaraderie and similarity to rugby everywhere else in the world. Some things about rugby teams are the same everywhere: teammates are very fond of tall players; cleats are called boots and your uniform is called your kit; everybody has a worst injury story; lunchtime conversations would cause nuns to go into spontaneous cardiac arrest from shock; oh, and drinking culture. Everybody knows that rugby players drink. For some people, that’s why they started playing rugby. It’s my opinion that risking great bodily harm just for some beer is probably the most inefficient way to go about getting drunk, but I’m not one to turn down somebody interested in the team. But even though the act of alcohol consumption is widely known the methods are not. The most important thing about rugby drinking is when both teams join up after a game for an event known universally as a “drinkup.” I’d put money down that even in France they call it “le drinkup.” This is where most rugby traditions take place. When a person scores for the first time they are made to “shoot the boot,” meaning that they have to drink beer out of the cleat of the largest, smelliest, dirtiest player on the team. While many people would find behavior such as this an indication of severe mental disorder, in the rugby world it is a great honor. While shooting the boot is a major piece of rugby culture, nothing compares to the drinking songs. The songs are without a doubt some of the most offensive things ever put to music. I believe that if The Vatican ever caught wind of the song “Jesus Can’t Play Rugby” half of Ireland would be instantly excommunicated. The songs are so offensive that they even make me uncomfortable. This is no small feat, as I’m fairly sure that my dinner conversations have deeply offended no less than half of my school, and most of the rest just have a different eating schedule. Despite how awful most of this sounds, the fact that all of it is a universal constant is incredibly comforting. It is nice to know that no matter where in the world you go, if you find a rugby team you can be offending people of all races and religions within an hour of the end of your first game.

One of the other nice things about playing with a sports team abroad is that it brings in people who are truly committed to playing the sport. This is not like a college intramural softball team. Many of my teammates are people from countries where little children who are barely able to stumble about are carted off to mercilessly wail on one another in a contest that even the most frilly of girls would never be able to call cute. Several of the people on my team have been playing rugby for over twice the time I have. There is at least one guy who has been playing longer than I have been alive. This brings me to one of the major downsides of playing with people who are this good. I fear for my life. A good portion of rugby is about knowing the game. It’s a sport in which intelligence, although severely underrepresented, is of major import. Being smart allows you to place yourself in positions which prevent you from getting demolished, and allow you to fairly easily pick off the morons who stand around with blank looks on their face. The problem with people from countries such as Australia and South Africa is that they don’t do stupid things. They are the ones who make you look stupid. All of a sudden, you’re the dumbest player on the field. And that’s not a good place to be.

Another downside to playing rugby here, or really anywhere, is that it begins to take its toll after a while. After 8 years of playing this game I have become an old man. I already had many of the qualities, including bad posture, grumpy temperament, and a tendency to make loud and inappropriate exclamations in the dining hall (in my case the difference being that this occurs at college rather than a nursing home). I’m one step away from sitting on my porch with a shotgun and yelling at kids to get off my lawn. Now with rugby, I also have the gift of a body that is prematurely falling apart. My knee clicks like the stopwatch at the beginning of 60 minutes (see, even my metaphors are for old people) and my back is in near constant pain. Just running for an hour or two puts me in pain for the next week. This is a particular problem when you have weekly practice. Recently though, I decided to try to get my back fixed. I had heard about a famous doctor that works on campus from my Korean friends, so I decided to go check him out.

One day after class I decided to go see Dr. Lyu. Dr. Lyu is easily the most famous and successful doctor in all of Korea. He is a very nice looking old man, who always wears old tweed jackets with a ruby rose-shaped pin on the lapel. The walls of the office are adorned with pictures of astronauts he helped prepare for space missions as well as old texts and models dealing with acupuncture. There is an area for the distribution of traditional herbs that strangely has a couple stuffed turtles lying on the floor. In addition, there are about a half dozen beds that people lie down on while they are being worked on. Upon first look these are clearly not normal beds, but some kind of special design. I noticed at first that there were two big electrical motors strapped to the bottom of each one, and that instead of the standard flat cushioned top each platform was made up of a series of cushioned rollers. The entire structure of the beds is made of steel tubes painted a seafoam green that is the color I imagine they paint bed frames in mental hospitals. Finally, the examination tables are trimmed with what looks like red floral pattern wallpaper and gold painted wood accents. At the end there are what appears to be some adjustment handles that are topped with what are obviously golf balls, once again painted that slightly uneasy green color. I took all this in as I was asked to lie down and point to where my back pain was located. With this, the doctor began inserting very fine needles into my back, the backs of my knees, and the backs of my ankles. In the coming weeks I would also get poked in the side of my elbow, the back of my hand between my thumb and pointer finger, the side of my hand near my pinky, and even on the ridge of my ear, not to mention some extra ones in my back. While all of the acupuncture would seem to many to be the weird aspect of my treatment, it wasn’t even close.

After my acupuncture, I was instructed to turn around and lie down on my back. With this, Dr. Lyu’s assistant strapped my feet into some foot holding devices that are much like leather shoes with the toes cut off. These shoes were then tied to the end of the machine while I was left in a state of utter bewilderment. Next, some straps were pulled over the other side of the machine and I was told to grab hold. At this point, the assistant flipped some switches and the machine began to tilt back, moving my head closer to the ground and my feet towards the ceiling. For a while I just looked at the patterns in drop ceiling tiles that are only interesting to somebody with ADD. When the tilting stopped I was told “It will start moving now” which was certainly a phrase I was not expecting. With that my feet were pulled up and the straps in my hands pulled down. The tension was quickly released but the next second the pulling began again. I quickly realized a few things. First was that the golf ball handle things were not levers but switches. Second was that only somebody pursuing an engineering degree would give a shit about the golf balls while they are being jerked around on some bizarre contraption without so much as an explanation of what was going on. Third, I thought that given the opportunity, the leaders of The Inquisition would have given an arm and a leg for a device like this (likely from one of their victims, but I imagine somebody who deals in extremities is not liable to be a particularly picky customer). This machine was clearly some sort of motorized torture rack device that had been slightly adjusted to alleviate back pain rather than elicit confessions of heresy and witchcraft. As the machine was tugging me back and forth Dr. Lyu came over and explained that this was a device of his own invention, with only 10 in the entire world. At that moment I was wondering why there was 1 of these things, much less 10 in existence. Soon, however, the thrashing stopped and the machine tilted back to horizontal. I got off and to my astonishment felt amazingly better. Clearly, the doctor knew what he was doing. Now, getting on the seafoam green and floral red patterned torture rack is part of my weekly routine. What a bizarre invention. Only in Korea.

Sports, Sports, and More Sports

The Winter Olympics just ended, and I got a chance to watch a bit of it. Watching the Olympics in Korea is a whole different ballgame than in America, you know, assuming they played ball-sports in the winter. To begin with, I am pretty sure that every single Korean athlete got a television appearance. One day I was lucky enough to catch the women’s slalom on the TV in the dining hall. Nobody seemed to be very interested in the action, seeing as it was not a sport that South Korea does particularly well in. As if to emphasize the point, they showed the entire run of a Korean skier who crossed the finish line in 51st place. I was as surprised by a few things about this. Firstly was that at least 51 people competed in the women’s slalom competition. Secondly was that they bothered to show her entire boring run. It was like watching it in slow motion. Easily the most surprising thing of all however, was that as soon as her time was in the TV crew cut away from the event, and in fact their Olympics coverage entirely. It was as if nobody else mattered at all. Imagine watching track and field, seeing some American fall down halfway into the 5k, and NBC cutting away with Bob Costas saying “well, a valiant effort from the American, but unfortunately luck wasn’t on his side today. Now, onto Days of Our Lives!” Well, needless to say I was some mixture of confused and pissed off. We give many of our athletes no respect. We treat winning a silver medal like some sort of disfiguring scar. It’s something that at best we ignore, and at worst we are disdainful of. I can imagine people meeting Olympic athletes on the street and saying “Oh, I’m so sorry about how things turned out. I mean, it must be really rough. Well hang in there. Chin up. You probably won’t suck so bad next time.” Seriously, a silver medal means that there is only 1 person in the entire world better than them at something. If I was that good at anything I would be ridiculously proud of myself. I’d walk around with a sash and have billboards put up with my face, and below them in enormous bold letters it would say something like “SECOND BEST PAPER COLATER IN THE ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD!!!” And these people do something that actually requires skill and that they be in peak physical condition. Well, except for curling. Here however, I’m pretty sure they would welcome back an 11th place curling team with some sort of parade. They are inordinately proud of their athletes.

This pride in their athletes was shown in many other examples. For instance, I got to see Shani Davis win gold in the 1000 meters about 10 times. This is not because the Koreans have some strange cultural fetish for large, Black, American speed skaters. It is because a Korean won silver. As I said before, winning silver might get somebody a mention in their hometown newspaper in America. Here it is deserving of multiple replays from all possible angles with lots of very exciting yelling. From all the commotion you’d think the Mexican national soccer team had just scored a goal. Another time, one of my professors broke the entire flow of a lecture to announce the “Wonderful, wonderful… marvelous” news that some girl won the gold in the speed skating 500 meters. As an aside, it is also probably worth noting that speed skating is one of the most bizarre sports that any country could possibly dominate in. It’s like dominating ice dancing; it just doesn’t really make much sense why any country would invest that much interest in it. At any rate, the Koreans do really care for some unknown reason. The most vivid example of the Korean investment in its athletes, though, is clearly Kim Yu-Na.

I don’t know if people in America care, or are even aware that Kim Yu-Na dominated figure skating. In America it isn’t considered manly to even be aware that figure skating is a recognized sport. In South Korea I am pretty sure that every single person watched the competition. Kim Yu-Na was already quite popular here before the Olympics, but they brought it to a whole new level. The free skating portion of the competition, which is also the final portion, was on a Friday at 1 PM. This also happened to be graduation for many of the seniors (I don’t understand why they graduate halfway through the second semester, but they do). Because of this, there were a number of parents and grandparents carrying bouquets of flowers. I once again watched in the dining hall. Normally around 1 o’clock the place is pretty empty, as people run off to class, but that day it was absolutely packed. Everybody sat transfixed as the people before her went out on the ice. As soon as it was her turn to skate every person in the building became totally silent. The food preparation stopped, and even the dishwashers came out to watch. Every jump Kim Yu-Na landed was greeted with great applause and cheers. You could feel how tense people were. I think if she had fallen many of the grandparents wouldn’t have survived to watch their grandchildren graduate an hour later. Heart attacks and aneurisms would have swept through the crowd like a grotesque wave. Luckily, this never came to pass. With one final enormous cheer she finished her routine and left the ice to get her score. As soon as it was posted the crowd broke into applause even louder than before. I thought for sure people were about to start throwing flowers at the screen. Even though Kim Yu-Na had just pretty much locked up a gold medal with the world record score she received people stuck around to watch the next skater, a Japanese woman, take her turn on the ice. I was pretty sure that they were all sticking around in the hope that she would fall and they could all take a bit of symbolic revenge on the Japanese for all the invasions and systematic destruction of Korean culture, but instead they let out a long, heartfelt “oooohhh” when she messed up on a jump. I think they would have been much less pleasant and much more riotous had she won, but now they could be nice as it was sure that their skater had won. As soon as the Japanese woman finished everybody immediately poured out of the cafeteria, almost as if they had some place nearly as important to be.

Clearly, being in Korea made following many of the American athletes and teams a very difficult task. Apparently everybody back home was very invested in the American hockey team’s quest for the gold. I hear that the final between the USA and Canada was a fantastic game. I didn’t get to watch of course, because of the time difference and the never-ending hatred NBC has for streaming video outside of the country. I must say, though, that I was much less invested than other people in the outcome of the game. I really only wanted the US to win so I could make fun of the Canadians on my rugby team and down at the pub. I mean more than I normally do. I would honestly have felt a little bad if we had won. What do they have beside hockey, trapping, and occasional sex with moose? It would have been unfair to take away by far the second best of those three things. Plus, it’s not like we’re going to stop making fun of them. They still have French-Canadians, and they aren’t going anywhere.

While watching the Olympics in Korea was strange, so was watching the Super Bowl. While the Super Bowl was a while ago at this point, it was a very strange introduction to Korea. I was around my second week in the country, but like any good American anywhere in the world I had to find a place to watch what is essentially a second Christmas for most people. My local ex-pat pub, Santa Claus Bar, was open for the early morning start of the game. I don’t have any classes that start before 1 PM here, so waking up for the 8:30 start time was a bit of a pain. After a cursory shave and shower I stumbled my way over to the pub. That morning they were luckily serving a nice American breakfast. I decided to have mine with an orange juice to help wake me up. Many other people there had theirs with a pint of beer. Or a rum and coke. Or a couple of rum and cokes. Well, what’s a little drinking on a Monday morning? Honestly, probably alcoholism, but who am I to judge? There were a few fairly bizarre things about the whole situation, along with the all too common aspects. The first and most obvious different thing was the Korean family in Colts jerseys who had camped themselves directly in front of the TV screen. Luckily, with their being Korean, I was able to see over them fairly easily, but it was annoying nonetheless. The next strange thing was the breakfast. I mean, it’s just not Super Bowl food. I wish I could have dug into a huge pizza and a plateful of chicken wings. Unfortunately, these are not foods that Koreans make well, or even palatable. The Korean pizza I have had the displeasure of tasting is one of the more awful things I have been tricked into believing is food in this country. It should be noted for all eternity in some large stone monument that ketchup does not equal tomato sauce, and that large sweet potato wedges are not an acceptable topping on any pizza. While these things were different, some things weren’t. There were still the people who were more interested in the commercials than the game. Hell, next to me I had people discussing the merits of J.D. Salinger’s literary works. I was kind enough to tell them that upon his death some new manuscripts had been found, that I suspected would be published in the not too distant future, and even more kindly refrained from informing them that “The Catcher in the Rye” is a horrible book about some boring over-privileged pain-in-the-ass who needed a handful of Prozac and not a narrator telling the reader what he wasn’t interested in doing. If books were judged on what their protagonist wasn’t interested in doing I should just write my autobiography now and accept all of the literary prizes and royalty checks that come flooding through my door. Back in the world of football, things went quite well, as I like the rest of the US, outside of the unfortunate state of Indiana, was cheering for the winning team. How could anybody possibly cheer for Payton “I’ll shill any product you bring me” Manning over the city of New Orleans? It’s the least we could do after Katrina, other than helping save people or rebuild their city or something. So with that great schadenfreude feeling of watching a team you hate lose the biggest game of the season I walked into the strange afternoon sun and back to school to go study my Korean.