Honkies A Go-Go

Is the plural of "honky" spelled "honkies"? I'm tempted to implement "honki" and "honkus". I lost the battle to stay up last night and have been vaguely to completely awake since four-something in the morning. I've spent the last half hour poking to get my MacBook to play NPR stories with WMV. I have to admit it's easier on a PC but worth the battle to avoid the virus and security problems that plague that other OS.

It occurred to me that I should report to you that the saturation of Westerners is significant in Seoul and particularly in my neighborhood because there are a lot of hagwons (English language schools). In my apartment there are Western style plugs! Right there in the wall! This is most excellent since I did not get around to acquiring a converter[1] but a little disturbing. I am torn between being pleased with the ease of life here and being horrified that Western influence is so significant. One can't help but ponder if this aspect of globalization is a bad thing. What wonders and mysteries of Korean culture are being forgotten, mutilated or buried by the force of unchecked capitalist aggression?

I do not mean to imply that the losses from globalization and/or Westernization are intentional. I think that modernization, technical advances, and development tends to take place in a vacuum for its proponents. It seems that little time is spent evaluating the consequences of changes (culturally, psychologically,environmentally) and that technical advances and industrialization brought on so many positive changes that we forget the negatives[2], especially since the costs are often diffuse and the consequences, like global warming, delayed.

I do not yet know enough of Korea's history and culture to do justice to a treatment of how the culture has been altered or influenced by it's rapid growth in the past few decades but I hope to learn. I am spending a lot of time comparing and contrasting Korea and Japan. One of the other instructors apparently feels that Japan is much cleaner (the implication was one of superiority on this point). I suppose it is true to the extent that I don't recall ever smelling garbage in Tokyo but have on my outings here. Perhaps it has been too long but I see a great deal of similarity between Tokyo and Seoul - maybe it's just the big city of Asia feel.

[1]I could have. Sort of. In the Pittsburgh International Airport I wandered into the Brookstone knowing that there was something I had forgotten but after floating lost for a few minutes I could not remember what I needed and left.
[2]After all, the price isn't being paid by the proponents. Yet.