Such Great Heights

As many of you know, our last hiking expedition didn't go exactly to plan so for our latest attempt, we took precautions; brought our own water, took regular rest stops and ate nothing that didn't come piping hot and served in a restaurant. As far as events go, our hike up Suraksan mountain was enjoyably devoid but from the experience I gathered another kind of impression: spectacle. South Korea is known for its visual greatness, be it the décor of a store, advertisements of new products or an updated menu for a kimbap place and the people happily buy into it. Personal hobbies and activities are too submitted to this treatment and it wasn't until I found myself face to face with local hikers that I understood the extent of their aesthetic pride. Just ask this man, he was on the trail guide at the entrance of the track.


I've never held any particular passion for fashion, nor found myself following trends that, very possibly, could have improved my appearance tenfold, but never in my life have I felt as under dressed and unprepared as my day on Suraksan. The Korean men and women around me, people who probably only went hiking once a year to celebrate the turning of the leaves, were so exquisitely dressed in the latest models of climbing gear that I thought I was walking through a North Face commercial. The climb was modestly challenging, if at all, yet I quickly lost count of the number of walking poles either clasped uselessly in one hand or tucked aside in backpacks almost empty for want of equipment. I wore my zip up Doc Martens (suspiciously appropriate for strenuous activity) and suffered a number of stares from climbers wearing thick-soled, double-laced, flexible, utterly professional boots in which they tripped, slipped and took off the second they were on flat ground. Despite being able to climb the mountain in bare feet, they wore unnecessary equipment to impress the surrounding climbers. And believe me, Koreans are vicious when it comes to criticism. I saw more than one mocking expression directed at hikers not using the latest climbing aids. Not even children were safe from this mindless display, despite being far too small to correctly use the tools. This is merely a product of society; children following their elders' examples, particularly if that example is directly correlated to how cool one may look by doing it. The effect though is damaging. If anything, children should be dis-encouraged from making physical activity easier. They are young, strong and generally hangover-free; shouldn't they lead the way when it comes to exertion? Not in Korea!


Which is nothing compared to the out-of-control precautions active ajummas take during their exertions. It's perfectly understandable that older women may find themselves less able to tackle the same journeys that we youthful members of society manage with barely a moment's hesitation but the appearance of their practices are startling. Forget the cloth face masks present on a multitude of faces in the marketplace and on trains, or the sun visors so large that a pigeon could roost and raise a family on its brim. Imagine reaching the peak of a quiet mountain, just as the mist starts clearing from the valleys and sunlight barges through leaves turned brown with encroaching cold, and coming face to face with this:


What I think it comes down to is an obsession with the spectacle of activity. Socially, the more you find yourself doing, the more important you must be. Anyone who has spent a substantial amount of time around Koreans already knows that they are in their best form when doing three or four things at once. In the middle of karaoke they are simultaneously emailing or messaging friends; after dinner they somehow manage to smoke and drink soju in the same mouthful; and on a mountain top they find it necessary to build and use exercise machines. These are scattered all over the country on bike tracks, in playing fields and by the side of rivers. This idea in itself is quite a brilliant dedication to health and the environment; instead of going to a hot, crowded gym, people can incorporate their weight lifting, stretching and bike cardio into their daily strolls. But on a mountain? When the very act of reaching the equipment is a workout in itself? Where exactly is the gain? I'm inclined to believe that the spectacle of exercise is what entices such ideas. An opinion further proven by the crafty placement of several badminton courts at the base of Suraksan, heavily populated with Koreans both playing and drinking beer. It's tempting to call this a complete contradiction but in reality it's just another form of business undertaken by an activity-hungry race. You could even call it multitasking. At a stretch.




Lara did not, no matter what you hear, steal a child's hiking pole.

A Song For The Batting Cage

Mute autumn smells. The
aster, unbent, passed
through your memory
between homeland and chasm.

A strange lostness was
bodily present, you came
near to
living. (Paul Celan)


There are many things I love about drinking and drinking is one of my formative loves. However, if I had to choose just one aspect of intoxication that I love above all else, it would be this:
there is a moment around that third or fourth beer; towards the end of the second glass of wine; at the start of the second glass of scotch – a great warm contentment settles on the mind and one will find oneself (on a porch at dusk or in a dim bar, in a crowd or in silence) staring into the middle distance aware of nothing more than I'm having that feeling again. The feeling is most like looking into a mirror – suddenly you are more present than you have been before. As if your days were spent like some great, blind vessel content with the humming and whirring of the mechanisms within. In this drunk transcendence you suddenly feel yourself aboard the bridge and see the ship's deck, witness to its progress over dark waters. A spiritual 'steady as she goes' shouted by a bearded homunculus. You may take a moment now to imagine this soul-sailing captain within yourself. Who is he played by? What is his attire? Is he smoking a pipe? You bet! Myself, I imagine him as Brian Blessed when he played the king of the Eagle people in Flash Gordon. To those reading, please post your own self-images in the comments below!

But this feeling I describe is not brought on by alcohol alone. Introspection, head trauma and hangovers also achieve this sensation (though if you think about it, all three are pretty much the same thing). So it was I had a sensation of this nature just yesterday and thought I would frame the pretty little thing for all you fine figments of my imagination.
To start, our setting.
Ten minutes walk from my apartment lies the district of Cheolsan. It is a lurid CBD glistening with high-rise restaurants, bars and PC bangs. At street level it is almost impossible to delineate one building from another – one will often enter a tiny elevator and ride it to the four floor only to realise the bar you have seen advertised on the street is in fact the next building over.
It has become Lara and I's close-by drinking destination for one reason above all others – the entertainment. Cheolsan boasts a lot for the drunken westerner to do, such as the 4-D movie cinema called MAX RIDER, novelty bars and BB gun galleries, cocktail joints and claw games and nearly every kind of Korean restaurant available. Bosam (steamed pork), dak galbi (grilled chicken stirfry), hoe (Korean sashimi without the rice) and samgyupsal (Korean BBQ) are everywhere. There's sushi and Vietnamese, middle eastern and Chinese, McDonalds, Burger King, pizza, fried chicken, fried fish, fried rice. There are bakeries on every corner and street vendors choke the footpath with corn dogs and boiled fish sticks. It's not exactly Hong Kong but it is ten minutes from my door.

And of course, there is the batting cage.
The scene of our tale is a bar we frequent called 'Beer Garten'. One may buy a yardglass of Korean “beer” (I use the term in the loosest sense) for 6, 500 Won (a bit under $6 Australian) and the shapely glass rests in a small refrigerated cup holder set into the table. Lara and I went with the neighbours to meet-and-greet some local teachers at said establishment at roughly nine o'clock. We were chatting amicably when our night took a turn for the worse – I received a text message from “Matt of the Hat”.
Matt of the Hat was a New Yorker myself and Scott (one of the neighbours) got talking to in the market maybe a fortnight before. He seemed nice enough, had a jaunty fedora and said he would like to hang out some time. Thinking nothing of it, we exchanged numbers and went on our ways.
So I invited this stranger into our midst.
My first hint that was something was amiss was when I asked him about his music.
“What sort of music do you play?” I politely enquired.
“Fusion,” he replied.
Not, “a sort of fusion...” or “rock and jazz fusion sorta”, no no. The word came out unmolested, as if it were a reasonable answer rather than the verbal equivalent of a turd dropped neatly in my drink.
My second clue was when he began to explain that he wanted to make music by getting his “band” (and yes, he used air quotes) to make music in a junkyard. Not record an album in a junkyard, not make instruments out of trash, no, he wanted to make music by slapping bits of shit together. And record it there.
Feeling like he had one more second to redeem himself I asked what is officially known as the hipster bullshit probe.
“Why?”
He could have said, “because it would be funny”. Or maybe, “because I make trash music”. Or perhaps even, “I'm into sound composition not really music”. These would have been acceptable answers that would have made me spare his life in one of those “first against the wall” scenarios. But not for Matt of the Hat, oh no. Instead he said:
“Every album has the same damn drum kit. You listen to it over and over. Tsh tsh tsh [miming a cymbal]. I want to make something that has a different texture.”
“So, what. Sixty minutes of people banging stuff?”
“No, sorta punk and rock-y songs.”
“But made with trash.”
“Right.”


So I left for the batting cages. (Apparently this guy continued to wreak havoc on the assembly by going into detail about a two hundred year old conspiracy to blow up the twin towers and referring to women he had just met as a “stupid idiot” or an “argumentative bitch” when they disagreed with him).
So it was with a temper that I stepped into the cage and slapped the metal bat against the worn divot in the floor. I barely put a bat on my first twenty balls. I went back to the guy, got some more change and waited behind a couple of Koreans cheering on their friend. When he left I got back in, slapped the bat against the ground and missed the first two. Which was when it happened.
I loved playing cricket as a kid but it means that when I pick up another sport that uses some kind of hand-held implement I always act as if I'm playing cricket. When I took up tennis last year I would consistently play the ball down into the net. When I first got into the baseball nets I would start with the bat at my side and raise it up as the ball came, meaning I struggled to hit anything.
But it finally came together. I twisted my back knee and rotated my torso to face the ball and BAM. I hit four or five right in the middle of the bat and when I hit them the ball looked like a white comet as it streaked towards the netting. I put in another 500 won and sure enough, another four or five of them disappeared as if ordered by god to do so.

"FUCK YOU you goddamn ball!"











So what? I hit some balls around, big deal. But! It was with a savage irony that I recalled this moment in the shower the next day, bent double letting the blistering water run down my back. Staring at the hair in the drain I thought – that was a moment witnessed only by me with no hope of ever being appreciated. In what was for me a perfect triumph of physical display I was watched by no one. Surrounded by strangers and alone in a net I performed with a measure of grace and agility. And I will most surely forget this triumph, unseen and unnoted, for it was a minor and intangible moment lost to a world whose denizens are drunken boats drifting through rapids en route to a dark sea.
But I tell you now. If you could've seen me, seen the flat arc of the ball struck, heard the sure clenk of the impact, felt the wire and sweat, metal and canvas in your nose – you would have given a cheer. Not for the achievement (which was minor) but for the sheer rightness of the thing. But you didn't. And I only properly felt it twice – once in the cage and again in the shower as a strange lostness was bodily present.
So what is this song of the batting cage? I suppose it is of a triumph never discerned by any other than yourself. Of the aching tragedy that happens when we are happy and alone. So think of me next time you come to that self-sure plateau, when you look into the world with a certainty of your steerage and raise a glass to your own triumph – for you too have come dangerously near to living.


East, pictured in a batting cage. (Or a jedi rage?)

The Ajumma Equation

There is a word in Korea that strikes fear into the most accomplished women and makes grown men run screaming into the nearest alley. Connected to this word is a being, almost mythical in its force, who alone controls Korean society. To defy this creature is to stand in direct resistance of the country itself. To know the word is to feel terror. Beware the ajumma, known in English simply as 'older woman'. There are three distinct breeds of ajumma and while dealing with each type can be an exhausting process, putting a foot wrong could very well end in a barrage of yelling from which there is little to interpret and much to lose. No matter which ajumma you find yourself facing, one thing must be remembered; older women are the most respected members of Korean culture and no one, no matter education or experience or language skills, can upset this balance.

The Well-Placed Mask


This particular form of ajumma is like a get-out-of-jail-free card. To be approached by one of these women often leads (in my case) to a bewildering conversation wherein questions are asked in Korean and answers are guessed at in English. This is a common phenomenon in public places such as coffee shops or on the train. An older women, out of boredom or whimsy, asks where are you from; what do you do, do you like Korea? And I always answer the same: Australia, no not Austria, Hoju; I'm just here travelling I don't work; oh yes I love Korea it's very cheap. They find this endlessly entertaining and I can only assume I'm replying to completely different queries. Though their friendliness is based on amusement they are offering us a form of kinship. You are in our land? Then we shall welcome you. Irritating as it can be to have someone interrupt my reading or quiet contemplation I realise that this is a response I've seen in various countries and it comes from people of all ages. Why should we only receive interest from young Koreans? Why would we think that older generations have lost that natural sense of wonder that leads them to confront others and ask questions? The masked ajumma is an example of this older curio and it is affability that makes them such an unexpected pleasure to run into. There is, however, still the question of how to address these women. Korean youths have a system of speaking to ajummas in public, whether they be working at restaurants or shopping in the markets. A female would refer to an older woman as 'unni' while males use the word 'noona'. Both loosely translate to 'aunt' though there is obviously no relational denotation. Upon discovering this I decided to try it out myself and the next time I went to my local kimbap restaurant I called out for service from my unni. Can you guess what this earned me? An annoyed stare and no delicious dinner. I had discovered the way to a kind ajumma's disdain.

Pleasure Doing Business With You


The second and most complicated ajumma is the business type. She may own your apartment block, a dry cleaning business, one of the many hole-in-the-wall restaurants or a garlic stall in the marketplace. She sits in her office, papers and calculator around her, and organises payments, shipping, stock control, tax and rental information. Her mind is always focused on the next commercial activity. She has a distracted air about her and generally speaks little English and so insists on explaining complicated facts to foreigners in Korean only. My landlady is one of these women and the frustration that crosses her face when I stand in my doorway, mouth slightly open and not a thought in my head, tends to undo me. One conversation went something like this:

Me: yes?
Her: you (insert Hangul here) nine oh five (shows me receipt) nae?
Me: sorry I don't know-
Her: (much more Hangul) you teacher (points down the hallway).
Me: no sorry.
Her: (nods and leaves).
Me: okay then, walking away is good.

I manage to maintain my cool in all of these exchanges but every time we speak she is convinced that I will have magically learned another language in a matter of days. It's not this deluded expectation I mind, it's her disappointment that I haven't fulfilled it. Perhaps the most disarming fact about her is that she is damn good at her job. We've never had any problems with our heat or security, whenever something is broken she's quick to send someone to fix it and every time I go downstairs with recycling she helps me organise it into their correct bins. Despite her insistence that we keep our picnics off the roof, I find myself liking her; especially when she writes up the receipts for our bills and scribbles her signature with a little star at the end.

Ajumma Spurned


Here we come to the ajumma who with one coma-inducing glare could take over the world. Simply put, there is no pleasing this creature. She's the woman who will push another human being under the wheels of the train she is waiting to board if she feels they are standing in her way. If you find yourself drawn in at an impressive market booth, she will shoulder you across the path because her route can not be altered for your humble interests. While eating a quiet dinner, don't be surprised if you feel the perpetually hostile eyes of this ajumma eating her own food, almost missing her mouth with misdirected attention. She doesn't offer friendly curiosity like our masked ajumma. There is threat in these eyes and her questions don't desire answers, the loudest being 'what are you doing here?'. I feel myself buck against this attitude because I can't understand how I've become such an insult. When I venture into the public sphere I generally mind my own business to the point of fading into a Westerner group or closeting myself in the corner of a coffee shop with a book. Despite this I never find myself particularly ostracised from the Korean people and their lifestyle. I speak a minute amount of Hangul which, pathetic as it is, marks me as willing to embrace the culture I am within. So what can I do when my humble attempts to both stay out of trouble and involve myself in society fall on aggressive recipients? I can pull myself together and realise that these women, while frustrating, make up a very small percentage of what is a welcoming and open-minded country. The easiest management technique is to greet the furious ajumma with humour. So she pushes you three feet into the road just to walk around you? Laugh and say 'those damn Koreans.' This response is a coping mechanism against culture displacement and alienation. In a similar way that laughing at yourself allows an embarrassing moment to pass with ease, laughing at an outside force that threatens or hurts is the best way to set aside the injury and maintain a sense of belonging. Although there are moments when I wonder, is pushing and staring really the best way to get your message across? If it's an ajumma we're talking about then it's foolish to even ask the question.

Lara looks a little like this when trying to deal with angry ajummas.

What the Job is – Part One

The Elephant in the Room

My plan to start teaching phonetics in my Korean English class actually germinated in Nepal. I began to notice signs toting the English language as a kind of educational panacea – that the whole world opened if you had this particular key. I found myself wondering if the whole world was at present engaged in a cultural war, an effort to arm itself with my mother tongue. A policy of Mutually Assured Comprehension. Aware of my role in this cultural siege I decided I would make better use of my classroom time to teach things the Korean syllabus was not imparting in regular class time – word pronunciation, aural recognition of key words and English inflection.
It began well. The first week I taught syllables and played a classroom game where students had to solve maths problems where the integers were the number of syllables in a sentence. The next week I tried to teach word stress but had greater problems as there are so many exceptions to English stress patterns. The third week I had gotten to sentence stress but was facing real resistance from the kids. One student asked me,
“Teacher? (pointing to sheet) Last week?”
“Pardon?”
“Syl-la-bles. Last week for syllables?”
If the kid had aced the sheet I would have understood his frustration. Problem was, he'd gotten half of the questions wrong.
The final straw came when walking back from one of these unsuccessful classes. My head was down, I was obviously frustrated and my co-teacher said to me,
“I think this class is too difficult for the students.”
“Yes, but I think it is good material. I just need to make the subject easier to understand.”
“I think maybe you should just entertain the students. This subject is too hard.”
In the hopes of representing myself as an anything-but-unbiased-reporter I will quote verbatim the facebook status update that immediately followed.

Daniel East is sick of DANCING LIKE A FUCKING MONKEY! Dance monkey DANCE! Speak your goddamn monkey tongue. Play for our children. Ornament our school. Caper, smile, be our fucking fool.


Playing the Race Card

I thought I knew what racism was. I had by turns been indoctrinated (by a grandfather who had fought against the Japanese in WW2), warned of its dangers and ugliness (after an embarrassing display in the classroom with an exchange teacher), learnt about the critical discourse surrounding it (a modest amount of Frantz Fanon at university) and finally thought I understood its pervasive, alien character (when I witnessed the extreme racial segregation of Australian aboriginals in Broome).
But these were abstract, intellectual definitions – nothing prepared me for being treated differently due to my race and more importantly, reacting against this racial identification by generalising the reaction of individuals as indicative of a racial group.
The more I have thought about this event the more ashamed I have grown of the facebook outburst above. The “R” word shimmers like a leviathan of the shimmering deep beneath the drunken exchanges of the ex-pat community. Many other teachers have expressed similar feelings to the one I expressed above – feelings of being ostracised, undervalued and demeaned by our staff and students. But are racially specific complaints racist if they are partially justified by typified behaviour?

What the Job is

In Korea the job of the foreign teacher is simply to be a foreigner. Every school is different but most waeguk teachers (waeguk literally translated means “not Korean”) will be required to formulate their own learning strategies and exercises – and their efforts will be supported in class by a Korean co-teacher whose job is limited to translating directions and enforcing discipline. When school events come along (carnivals, festivals, excursions) the foreign teacher will remain behind his desk when the school may be almost completely empty.
He or she will be asked to prepare for open classes that other schools from the district will attend. These schools will bring their own foreign teacher along. Far from being an opportunity for teachers to share advice or ideas, the lesson is prepared in uncharacteristic detail and often delivered in expensive-looking rooms the students and teachers rarely see – effectively rendering any feedback irrelevant because the class itself is uncharacteristic of any regular teaching practice. Even the students do not benefit from these forums as the host classes chosen are generally removed from their regular syllabus to drill the lesson over and over. It is not uncommon to see students answer questions before the teacher asks them.

Dissent in the Community

Amongst ex-pat teachers these outlandish open classes are the tip of the iceberg. Twice a semester Korean schools undergo a radical shift as students prepare for their exams. Teachers stay late drafting papers, students begin to wear their blazers and vests to school (even in the middle of summer) and the foreign teacher finds all his/her lessons cancelled, at the last minute, for days or weeks before. Patrick, a friend of mine who lives one subway stop from Lara and I, has had no work for almost a fortnight.
Well, almost no work. His major role is to arrive in the mornings and deliver the 'English Address' (he will say English phrases over the intercom that the entire school will repeat) and the after-school English class. This after school class is a rotation of the entire school's Korean teachers who are encouraged by the principal to teach all their subjects (science, maths, art) in English. Patrick delivers English lessons to overworked Korean teachers many, many years his senior in a country where age difference is so far engrained it forms a linguistically complex part of the grammar (only a few years ago it was almost unheard of for Koreans to make friends with anyone more than a year older or younger than them). Yet Patrick's Korean co-teacher (the person in charge of handling his paperwork) told him that if the principal was not present in the class to let the teachers go. They are 'too busy' to spend time in his class. Patrick said to me the class behaved like his lower level students: they were hard to control, talked to each other when he was speaking and paid no attention to his lesson.
“I tried to teach them Yesterday by The Beatles. I mean, it's Paul McCartney man. Paul McCartney.”


A better Defence for Future Outbursts

In the replies to the facebook status mentioned in the first section above, one friend commented:
“You're not a person anymore, you are just a useful interactive book”
The stages of culture shock are well documented throughout the web, so I feel no need to dwell on it here. But generally they form a three step model consisting of a 'Honeymoon', followed by a period of 'Adjustment' that (sometimes) culminates in 'Integration'. I had hit that second stage and begun to exhibit frustration and anger – but it was the nature of my anger, and that damned elephant in the room that I began to dwell on. Was it Korea that had gotten to me, or the job?
After all, was it all that surprising that I was given no responsibility during the important exam period – my position is entirely transitory and my presence limited to the twelve months of my contract. Is it surprising, given the language barrier between the staff and myself (even the English teachers are not particularly confident or fluent) that they encourage me to teach easier lessons so I don't get so agitated? (I noticed many of my teachers were consistently getting the stress and syllable questions wrong). And was it really that odd that my lack of responsibilities engendered a little hostility among my co-workers – that it bugged them when they were busily preparing tests and dealing with rowdy students that I was watching season after season of The Wire – and getting paid to do it?
In my opinion, it comes to this: Racism is not making cultural generalisations but believing them to be the root cause of all problems. During the “Syllable stress teaching nightmare” period I had one student that openly mocked me in class by laughing at what I said and repeating my instructions in a high, bitter falsetto. But instead of thinking, “Fucking middle schoolers” I thought, “Fucking Koreans.” When I had a class that wouldn't behave because my co-teacher didn't show up for a lesson I didn't think “Motherfucking fourteen year olds” I thought, “Motherfucking Koreans.” The frustrations I felt were more indicative of general human jerkishness and not culturally engendered disrespect.
Although I've had moments of being treated differently due to my race (Older Koreans not wanting to sit next to me, teenagers giving sarcastic high fives, a co-teacher laughing at a student who mocked me behind my back) it was not a balanced response to blame the culture as a whole. I've had kids who've practically gawped with excitement to see me on the street, who rush into the staff room to say hello, teachers who have sat with me at lunch and laughed with me as I struggle with Korean pronunciation. The cultural divide exists, it causes anxiety and anger but it is not the reason entire for my problems. In my own culture faced with a difficult workplace I would pick an individual and hate on them with all my might. Over here, shrouded by the inscrutable bureaucracy I turned my anger on the Koreans I was educating and working with. Understandable, but deplorable.
So what to do? Personally I've decided on a course of whimsical education by embracing my lack of responsibility within the school system. I'm going to teach extensive, eccentric vocabulary alongside movies and simple games. Until I get told I'm not doing my job correctly – and then I'll have to adapt all over again.
That, or just pay top dollar for decent coffee to get me through the day. Cos seriously. The coffee over here fucking sucks.


Post-script: The Korean for 'Burden'

As so often happens with this type of article the perfect closing moment came after the article itself had been finished. Never one to temper with chronology I relate it here.
Our school recently lost the head of its English department, a very kind and co-operative teacher I knew as Susan (when speaking of her to another co-teacher she didn't understand who I was talking about until I pointed her out). She was replaced with another kind woman whose name, you must forgive me, I have forgotten and been too shy to ask for again. Seeing no one else in the staff room I asked her to lunch and she came with apologies for not asking me earlier.
Our conversation was making a good clip on subjects of immediate interest and her time abroad made her more comfortable and fluent with her English. So it was we were discussing the recent kimchi price hike (an article for another day) when two older Korea teachers came and sat a few seats down from us. One of the ladies leaned over and said something to my co-teacher and she smiled a little awkwardly and nodded in return. Knowing I usually don't get a translation of what is said I didn't ask – but she offered immediately.
“They say the English teacher is a burden.”
“Oh.” Pause. “For you?”
“For them. I think they are very scared of you. They have only elementary English.”
When I pressed her on this fear she outlined her experience in university where she saw a foreigner for the first time and could not understand anything he (the lecturer) said.
“I think many Koreans have a fear of foreigners.”
Connecting this in my head to the article, I began to ask what sort of material I could teach to help students overcome this fear of speaking.
“That is a very fundamental question.” She leaned back a little and began to cover her mouth as she spoke. “I think it is good for you to just teach anything to the students.”
“Anything at all?”
“Yes. It is good for them.”
“For them just to see and listen to me?”
“Yes. I think it will help them to listen. You are doing a very good job. I think you are a very good teacher.”
The conversation continued on its path as I ate my bap and bulgogi. Out of interest, I asked her what the Korean word for Sesame leaf is – she told me and now, less than fifteen minutes later, I have already forgotten it.

Daniel East - windswept.