Kevin of IA went shopping, and he didn’t enjoy the attention, apparently:
Dear Ajumma in Costco,
What the fuck did you expect to see? Did you think my shopping cart would be filled with the heads of Iraqi children? Maybe a bakers dozen of double-ended dildos?
I realize that whitey with a shopping cart is a novel concept, but seriously…what the fuck is so interesting about what I’m buying? Is my pasty white skin really enough to justify you sticking your goddamn nosey head halfway into my cart? Are you so fascinated with the waygook saram that you’ll endure severe whiplash just to get a peek at his food selection?
Sorry if I seem a little harsh aji, but it aint just you. If it were, I’d let you slide. Fact is, the entire batallion of ajumma I face off with every time I go to the grocery store pull the exact same bullshit, and I’m done fed up wivit.
It gets even better after that — go read it on your own. Now, let me state for the record that I have never noticed people staring at my groceries, although my wife says they do. In fact, the only really odd food shopping experience I had took place in a supermarket (American usage) in Mun-gyoung, and that was only because the store had that stupid friggin’ “Horny, Horny, Horny” song going in the background, and listening to that while watching throngs of ajumma push around their shopping carts was just a tad surreal.
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What a coincidence. My wife requested that song this weekend. We listened to it on Bugsmusic.co.kr. (No, there was no special reason. She just likes the song.)
This shopping cart story, and others on other Korean blogs, reminds me of the experiences I had when I first came to this small Japanese town 20 years ago. The same sort of thing happened to me. In spades. 24/7
It is precisely because I have lived through it that I feel presumptious enough to offer the following comments:
Have you ever considered just rolling with it for a change?
What does the behavior of an ajumma or oba-san in a grocery store have to do with YOU, personally?
Absolutely *nothing*. It has to do with her, exclusively.
So why take it personally? Why cede control of your emotional state to strangers? There is no reason why you should care in the slightest.
Unless you somehow *enjoy* your own emotional reaction, even using it to feel a little superior to these nerds whose lives are so boring they have to look in a stranger’s shopping cart.
She wants to look in the shopping basket of the man from Mars? Let her look, as long as she doesn’t snatch anything.
I found that giving these people a friendly but distant greeting and continuing on about my business resolved the situation wonderfully. They get their little frisson and usually move on.
It also tends to make their day and spread good relations in general with little effort. Such a trivial thing makes their day? So what’s it to you? They might well think the things that make your day are trivial, too.
Besides, she’s been checking out the baskets of all the other ajummas ever since she started to come to the store. It’s not as if you’re the only one. And it’s not as if she gets to see what a lot of *Korean men* put in their shopping baskets, is it? So that makes you a double novelty.
And besides–and let’s come clean now–some of you have no compunction about reaping the *benefits* that come your way because of your novelty factor. Getting paid well–with free apartments–as an English teacher despite not knowing an adverb if it walked up and bit you. Getting taken to interesting places and doing interesting things on someone else’s tab. Sex with women who wouldn’t give you the time of day if you were an equivalent Korean male.
I’d say it’s a two-way street. And besides, you’re playing an away game in their ballpark, with their rules, even if they did invite you. No one said you had to go.
It works out so much better by going with the flow than by trying to swim upstream. And you’re not going to get very far, anyway.
- Been there, done that
Koreans are a nosey lot. i’ve have many similar instances ranging from a landlord that was in my apartment 20 mins after i left for work every day to a guy that always tried to get a look at my “extra largeee” pecker when i went to the bathroom at a bar (club hollywood) in itaewaon.
Yes, I had one ajumma squeeze my avocados in line at Costco. Had to ask where what the F*%k? Take for instance why Korean envelopes have no adhesive? If you don’t think your desk is getting riffled through while you are away on business trips, think again. It’s in the DNA God bless em.