It's Cleo's birthday today! She shares her birthday with Hitler and George Takai, and the infamous anniversaries of the Branch Davidian assault, Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine High School shooting, and Deep Water Horizon explosion. Cleo loves her birthday because she gets to eat an Arby's Jr. Roast Beef Sandwich all by herself.
Eating should be one of the most exciting aspects in a foreign country. If you can't tell by now, I'm not having much fun at lunch these days. I had more fun eating with Cleo back home, even if she didn't have any manners and was trying to eat off my plate. An obvious solution to give people their freedom to choose was to go to a lunch buffet. My co-workers didn't hesitate to eat whatever they wanted, and I was pleased to watch people get up for seconds and thirds. Regrettably, this is not the whole picture. The CEO was out today for meetings, so the co-workers told me they go to the buffet when the CEO can't join them for lunch. If they didn't tell me that, I had this great idea for a book titled Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, et Smorgasbordé on whether free nations have more all-you-can-eat restaurants per capita than authoritarian countries. I might still write a book on that.
The other memorable part about lunch was riding the elevator to the buffet floor. We rode in a six-person wooden elevator from the lobby to the 7th floor. Yes, you read it correctly. A WOODEN elevator, made from the finest North Korean plywood. So scary that I heard the Oompa Loompas singing (in William Hung's voice):
Oompa Loompa Doompadee Doo
I've got a perfect story for you.
Oompa Loompa Doompadee Dee
If you're wise, you'll listen to me.
You can bet this elevator wasn't built by Otis
Nor inspected monthly by the government employee Curtis.
Up and down it takes people hourly
And in their habit they fill this space densely.
Beware the dude that just ate a lot;
He just significantly weakened this moving woodlot.
Relish the risk in this joyride
Since to the floor it might suddenly collide.
You'll end up living in happiness too
Just like the Oompa Loompa Doompadee Doo.
But I digress. Even if the co-workers were able to eat freely during lunch, I'm still stuck with awkward silence. My brother suggested some activities that I can lead to enhance the lunch experience:
Eating should be one of the most exciting aspects in a foreign country. If you can't tell by now, I'm not having much fun at lunch these days. I had more fun eating with Cleo back home, even if she didn't have any manners and was trying to eat off my plate. An obvious solution to give people their freedom to choose was to go to a lunch buffet. My co-workers didn't hesitate to eat whatever they wanted, and I was pleased to watch people get up for seconds and thirds. Regrettably, this is not the whole picture. The CEO was out today for meetings, so the co-workers told me they go to the buffet when the CEO can't join them for lunch. If they didn't tell me that, I had this great idea for a book titled Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, et Smorgasbordé on whether free nations have more all-you-can-eat restaurants per capita than authoritarian countries. I might still write a book on that.
The other memorable part about lunch was riding the elevator to the buffet floor. We rode in a six-person wooden elevator from the lobby to the 7th floor. Yes, you read it correctly. A WOODEN elevator, made from the finest North Korean plywood. So scary that I heard the Oompa Loompas singing (in William Hung's voice):
Oompa Loompa Doompadee Doo
I've got a perfect story for you.
Oompa Loompa Doompadee Dee
If you're wise, you'll listen to me.
You can bet this elevator wasn't built by Otis
Nor inspected monthly by the government employee Curtis.
Up and down it takes people hourly
And in their habit they fill this space densely.
Beware the dude that just ate a lot;
He just significantly weakened this moving woodlot.
Relish the risk in this joyride
Since to the floor it might suddenly collide.
You'll end up living in happiness too
Just like the Oompa Loompa Doompadee Doo.
But I digress. Even if the co-workers were able to eat freely during lunch, I'm still stuck with awkward silence. My brother suggested some activities that I can lead to enhance the lunch experience:
- Pick a name out of a hat to see who gets to decide where to eat
- Pick a word of the day and make sure everyone uses it once during lunch
- Tell them konglish jokes (e.g., Why don't lobsters share? Because they are shell-fish. You have to read it out loud to get it.)
- Incite anger in people
- Do an alternative of the Cinnamon Challenge, like daring people to eat a whole bowl of kimchi without rice and water
- Eat everything with a fork like a foreigner
- Start a food fight
- Buy people lunch even though its paid for by the company
- Make them feel awkward
- Eat a cookie quietly for lunch and listen to music
- Laugh violently over nothing like a crazy person
- Tell people that they can only use their non-dominant hand to eat during lunch
- Bet someone 20,000 won that they can't eat their entire lunch blindfolded
Do a lunch 'n learn slide show of Kim Jong Il Looking at Things. I'm sure you could all share a few laughs over Dear (Ghost) Leader and South Korean awesomeness. http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/
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