For the past couple of weeks I've had the pleasure of a Korean wake up call.
Every morning, around 8 o'clock, a truck full of fruit under a canopy will park itself on the corner, beside my building. To sell their wares, it's equipped with a Blues Brothers megaphone and a looping recording of a very loud sales pitch. The seller needs only to drive the truck while the recording plays non-stop, the following message:
"Bwow-wa-wa-wow-wow, mmmph meya, wa-wa wow-wow...."
It sounds exactly like a Charlie Brown cartoon teacher operating a fast food drive-thru speaker. This truck will blast its message on the street corner for about five minutes, then do a drive by of my building looking for people who desire fruit at 8am in the morning. It still blasts it's "fruit or else!" message as it passes under my window.
I guess this fruit truck is the Korean version of the ice-cream truck back home, except there's no soft jingle of bells. Just a Charlie Brown teacher chastising me about not doing my homework. Instinctively, I always jerk awake replying "Yes Ma'am" sheepishly.
I'm faced with Peppermint Patty's nightmare: An angry, incoherent elder.
At my school, I work from 2pm-10pm and then usually go out for food and/or drinks afterwards. So I don't get to bed until two or sometimes even 4am. Despite this, the fruit truck insists I wake up at 8am. No rooster. No alarm clock. Just a deafening message offering fruit for breakfast.
I'm thinking of buying all the fruit he has to sell to put a stop to this. But, for the month of August, our school schedule will change to 9am-5pm. Given this, I'll definitely need this loud-speaker in August to provide me with an 8am wake up call. I'll thank him for the service.
And of course, have fruit for breakfast.
1 comment:
That reminds me of the "Chapati Mayai" woman in Tanzania. This infernal woman would shuffle through the halls of the university dorms at 5 in the morning, in a baratone voice that would say "Chapati Mayai" (flatbread and eggs) with a very slow delivery at first, then repeats at faster and faster intervals, like thus: "ChaaaaapatiChapatiChapatiChapati.." and then, when she hit the second word "mayai" she'd go up on the "ai" in a high falceto, "mayAIIIIIIIIII!" It was surreal.
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