Badoo Badoooooo!

My new Android phone is empty and needs to be fed. To feed it with a nice collection of apps I was reading up on best/most popular apps for Android. Badoo was mentioned as a dating app. I knew more nothing about the app, which turns out to be a site as well, but it was recommended and I thought I might as well download it and see what it does. Last night I finally got around to opening the app. I filled in the very bare essentials uploaded a photo.

When I woke up this morning I had a view visits, mostly men. Two clicked the “show interest” button, wherever that is, and a further two sent me messages. The one message read:

“Hi, there^^
What u looking for? mean girl or boy?”

Say what? Why would a straight guy be looking for a boy, and why a “mean” boy? My profile clearly stated that I am straight. I changed that after a guy showed interest in me within the first 5 minutes of signing up. (Edit: After proofreading this post I realised that maybe he was trying to say “I mean, boy or girl?”)

Today I spend a few minutes on the site, quickly filling out my profile and changing setting so that I will not be bothered on my phone all the time. Turn out that one of my settings said I was interested in meeting both men and women. No wonder! I’m not opposed to meeting men, but considering that this is a dating site, the men I will be meeting will not just be interested in having someone to occasionally go watch sport with.

Even before the men, with even less information on my profile, I had a message from a woman saying how much we have in common, calling me dear and such nonsense. These things are amazing. No matter what you say the next message will be more romantic and within 5 messages or so you will somehow be madly in love with each other, her parents know all about you and she wants to come visit. Then the request for money starts. Did I mention the model photos? If you ever get a message like that give some nonsensical answer and see how the cut and paste replies come back.

Now that I know what this site/app is about, I’m going to be having some fun. F***ing with idiots who can’t be bothered to read a profile can be very entertaining.

******

After finishing my profile I had a quick look at who visited my page. 75% of the visitors were men. It is interesting how online dating has made it easier for men to meet each other without the fear of being punched in the face by some idiot who thinks it is his business what two people do in their private lives.

Cellulite

I stumbled on to an article about cellulite and, shall we say, “the truth of how to get rid of it.” (Read that in a booming echoing voice)

I had to read it more than once just to understand what the article was trying to say. The formatting of this page is terrible. Full, long sentences are underlined and located directly after full, long sentences in bold. What are we suppose to look at? Which part is the point? Bad use of words like “critical” and “proven” do not help with the credibility of the article either. Whatever, I was able to get the gist of the article and it was this.

1. Cellulite is a marketing term made up by the beauty industry.
2. The lotions and gels that the industry try to sell you do nothing useful.
3. Spas and massages are equally ineffective.
4. Cellulite is not genetic and you can, in fact, get rid of it.
5. The only proven way to get rid of cellulite is to exercise, because cellulite is a visual effect of out of shape muscles.

I did a tiny bit of reading and found this:

1. The term “cellulite” was first used in the 1920s and became common because of it’s use by fashion magazines in the 1960.
2. After an evidence based review at Harvard medical School the conclusion was that all treatments are not really worth the effort. Basically there is no cure.
3. See number two
4. Not only is genetics part of the cause, but research actually points to specific, named genes that help determine if someone will have cellulite.
5. Other causes of cellulite include changes in metabolism, physiology, dieting too hard or too much, sex-specific dimorphic skin architecture, hormonal factors, the microcirculatory system, the extracellular matrix, subtle inflammatory alterations, and alteration of connective tissue structure. So, your muscle tone MAY have an influence, but that is only one cause, and a dubious one at that. Toning your muscles does not equate to changing the structure of the connective tissue, which is the only possible direct link between the muscles and the covering skin.

Why do I care about all this? I don’t really. The link to the article just looked interesting.

Weekend in review

This weekend started off slow and was filled with a lot of wasted time, but the non wasted times were quality. (Jo was involved and wanted to be mentioned at the start of this post, but I'm not sure how to fit her in.)

We saw the cat dressed guy for a cat cafe act like it was the worst job in the world. It worked though because everyone was looking at him.

I found the Lomography store and placed an order for a Konstructor set. They were out of stock.

I went to take photos of Sungnyemun, but my plans were foiled by the fire brigade practicing there. At least I got some good scouting shots for angles and best time to shoot.

I saw a lone woman literally JUMP into the carriage as if she was in a race. Look around for a seat, and then relax because there were only 5 people around.

I finally had food at one of the late night vendors at Namdaemun Market. It was nice with great weather, but it was expensive and I will not do it again.

Afterwards we had to many ciders at Reilly's Taphouse. Pfffft!

We had bubble tea at the best bubble tea place in Seoul. Turns out it is exactly the same chain as the one not so far from my apartment.

We joined the Western Contingent of Seoul FC for the match against Busan. More of them are on the cards

We got lost in a single building, trying to find the art gallery. We were followed by a guy and his girlfriend, looking for a toilet and asking expectantly asking out help by saying “Me...shit” and pointing to his stomach.

We were followed out of that building by the same guy and his girlfriend, again being looked at expectantly with “urm...toilet... where... please”. Dude, I just look Korean, I don’t know this place.

Waiting in the station at World Cup Stadium, I was amused by a middle school boy taking photos on his phone of the condoms in the vending machine. Done with the photos, he inserted money and bought his little brother a roll of sweets.

And lastly we were followed by a girl. She sat next to us at Bubble Pong, somehow managed to sit next to us in Hongdae station and then passed us inside world cup stadium. Amazingly, as we left the stadium, we passed her in the station one more time.

To top of this nice weekend, I didn’t get lost on the subway on my way home. No small feat for  me when traveling on Line 1

Never mind the Foreighners

Yesterday evening, on my way home, there were a bunch of people in the next carriage on making noise. I wasn’t really listening and just assumed it was a bunch of older drunk Koreans.

Every now and then people in my carriage would lean over and glance into the next carriage to find out what the raucous was about. Very often you will find yourself on the train and every person around you is alone, but this evening the three people next to me were together. One leaned over to look at that was going on, came back and said in Korean: “Foreign people.” For them that seemed to settle the matter.

Usually when I hear the the word “Waegook”, it is associated with a white or black person being somewhere in sight, so I was a bit confused over why they would call these noisy Koreans foreign. As I was waiting to get of the train and transfer I got a better look at these foreigners and indeed, they didn’t look Korean. I’m guessing they were Chinese, but I can’t be sure. They did have all the tourist gear with them though.

What I found interesting about the comment of my fellow passengers that being foreign was somehow an explanation for why they were being noisy when, like I mentioned right at the start of the post, it is so common for Koreans to do this that I didn’t even think twice about it.

I also found it amazing that ‘Foreigner’ is used in such a broad sense. it would seem that in their minds, these 5 people are representative of the four billion people who live outside of Korea. Apparently it is just expected that only the fifty million Koreans who live here know how to behave in public. Somehow I, standing quietly next to them as annoyed and any of the other passengers, was included in that broad group.

While all this was happening the guy sitting across from me spend about 15 minutes openly staring at me. Yes, only foreigners have no manners.

I have to admit that all to too often I say things like this as well, and I will do so again,  but more and more I prefer to just say “People” without qualifying their behaviour with their nationality or race. (I refuse to give up stereotypes. They are completely wrong, but they are very useful for getting a point across.) There are times when people of a nation do tend to do things in a particular way, but fact is that maybe half the world  will subscribe to the particular behaviour that you feel is oh so strange.

Sometimes, however, we are just straight out offensive.

Veëls geluk liewe maatjie…

Whenever someone on my Facebook list has a birthday, I write something on their wall:

"Veëls geluk liewe maatjie,
Omdat jy verjaar.
Mag die Here jou seën,
En nog baie jare spaar."

Time and again, and I would put it as high as 75%, people reply with a comment saying something like "What is that?" or "I don't understand :("

Come one people. It is not hard to find out what it means. I know this because I did it. I didn't even copy and paste the text into one of the well known and easy to ding translators. No, I just copied and pasted that straight into Google Search, and without even opening any of the links I already had 90% of the answer.

For what it’s worth, most translators do not support Afrikaans because nearly 100% of Afrikaans speaking people can also speak English fairly well. For that reason I include my translation as well as a video or two women singing the the song followed by the extended add-ons.

Happy Birthday dear friend (closest translation)
Because it’s your birthday.
May the Lord bless you
With many more years

Here is a clip of two girls singing the song. They do follow it up with other song that are traditionally done, but for our purposes we only need to listen to the first part