Time, Time, Time

Although I'm now in London, I feel as if I should write a bit about life in Seoul. I arrived in South Korea on the 27 of August and departed three weeks later on September 17. For me it was three great weeks to live in Seoul, three bad weeks to work in Seoul. But, more on that later.

Now that I'm out of the country, I feel that I can talk more freely. And I have the energy and will to do so.

Seoul is a city that still shows signs of its recent and ongoing industrialization. Called the miracle on the han river, it's truly and incredible city, massive yet densely populated with. It does a good job of holding all these people and tall apartment buildings dot the often hazy sky—which I'm not sure is pollution or fog, though I suspect it is a mix. The subway runs frequently and quickly, following a neurotic timetable. Indeed, timeliness is godliness in this country. And this neuroticism knows little bounds.

I remember my first week at Evan English School. I had 20 minute classes. 15 of them. Yes, I counted, 15 classes a day. It was utterly exhausting, darting from room to room with a little basket full of a boatload of books, my only instructions being to do “review” with the kids with books they had already finished that I had no time to look over.

Suffice to say, I got very adept at introducing myself to a bunch of kids. Who am I, What's my name, where do I come from. That, and playing games with them. Until, of course, I was instructed by my supervisor that I was no longer permitted to play games with them. Which left me with.... a whole bunch of finished textbooks I had never seen before.

Point of this description is to say that once every 20 minutes were over, if I did not stop my instruction at exactly 20 minutes past once I entered, my supervisor would hurriedly march down the hall, enter the room, and inform me that I was late to the next class! I was late! It was more of an oddity than anything; timeliness taken to a rigid and stressful extreme.

At the British Library in London

I will tell the tale of how I went from London to Korea in a few hours but, for now, I pour over old books at the British Library. I am amazed at the wealth of material here. (I'll also tell more about my scholarship in a bit).

It's incredible how the Cape of Good Hope (Modern South Africa) and British India were so interconnected. The correspondence from Fort William (Modern Calcutta/Kolkata) to London is replete with references to the British Cape of Good Hope. In 1799, the British had just conquered South Africa. So that year marks the first year of their colonial rule there. That's when my study of South African newspapers for my thesis commenced. The Governor of General of Fort William wrote to London of his reception from the governor of the Cape of Good Hope a letter that the new colony "was in great want of proper timber."

The Governor-General of India sent timber as well as rice, which was "very scare and very dear" and other goods to the fledgling colony with his own initiative, separate from London.

Since every boat that went to British India made a stopover in Cape Town, these colonies were intimately connected. South Africa was an eminently strategic acquistion as it straddled all shipping lanes to and from the spice rich East Indies.

A happy and prosperous British India required a happy and prosperous British South Africa.