(Day 226) Seoul Nambu Correctional Facility-day 131 D-25

sit-ups	push-ups	chair-lifts
100	0	40

Breakfast	bread & strawberry jam, flavoured  milk
Lunch	kimchi spicy pork with kimchi fish cake & turnip soup
Rather plain and missing a side dish, but better than slimy seaweed soup or slimy seaweed kimchi, or slimy seaweed anything... Like dinner on Friday (menu day 1), but without the lettuce.
Dinner	cubed radish soybean, potato & tofu soup dried seaweed & soy sauce breaded fish fillet with ketchup
The dried seaweed is kind of pointless if you don't eat the rice. The soup had lots of potatoes and tofu, and at least the server didn't dump a cup of ketchup on the fish this time.

8 months later and I still hear the song Gangnam Style at least once a day. Since the day it came out, I've been behind bars. I have never seen the video and I've generally avoided the whole phenomena, but I still am still sick of it as much as any free person.

When I first heard it, I thought, “Wow. Someone is actually making fun of the superficial nature of Gangnam and the people who hang out there.”

I thought Koreans would be offended, but they embraced it-- even more so when it became a craze. 6 billion people laughing at a K-pop song and Koreans are proud of just being recognized—maybe never realizing we're laughing at them not with them.

Personally, if such buffoonery was representative of my country and culture I'd be embarrassed. As a Canadian, I'm still hit with “Take off, you hoser” and “eh” or “aboot” jokes every so often by Americans and it’s been 30 years since Bob and Doug Mackenzie. Any Canadian under 30 probably has no idea who those two are, but it's still an embarrassing stereotype. I've never heard a Canadian talk in the kind of accent Americans make fun of, unless they're from some remote eastern part of the country where people speak a mix of French and English. It’s like me talking in an accent more akin to some redneck hillbilly from the southern states and speaking like that to every American I meet. And “eh” is not any dumber sounding than the American “huh.”

30 years from now a young Korean will say “I'm from Korea” and everybody will break out into the horse dance because that's all anybody will remember about Korea and its culture. The poor kid from Korea will have no idea why everybody does this funny dance whenever he identifies where he's from.

There are no words to describe how bored I am. I really dislike Sundays. Thankfully, I only have to suffer through three more of them...