2011년 3월 31일 목요일

The Ultimate TV Drama - Skins

The Ultimate TV Drama - Skins
                 
                Today, as I enjoyed it so much, I want to introduce you this epic Tv show - Skins . I know quite many people may know and have watched it already, but the latest season 5 finished a few weeks ago and I'd love to share this drama with you guys.

                Simply, Skins is mixed up with teenage vandalism, drugs, booze, sex and swearing. Ironically, it's about teenage life but it's not for the underage, it's weird, but for any reason I reckon most of the kids in the world already have watched it and got influenced a lot.
               
               The undeniable charm of Skins must be the twisted and gloomy atmosphere of actors appeared in it. Their life is very aggressive. They're hammered almost every single day, take hard drugs and get laid everything moving. I know it does sound very not classical, but the point is that it is the reflex of real British kids' day life. As I'm seeing Skins, at some point I understand their broken mind, even though they've been shown very ununderstandable behaviour. They've got some very typical issues of British teenager, such as bad relationship with parent, alcohol/drug addiction or very hard love life ,etc. And Who are we to condemn them?

               Plus, the tunes of Skins make it more charming. Someone has very good taste of music! You can hear amazing back ground music from almost every scene which is awesome.

               Anyway if you're into having a look very realistic portrait of English kids, you can experience it by watching Skins. But I swear you have to be careful not to be immersed in it, even if it's very addictive.

2011년 3월 23일 수요일

2nd posting! I love "Trainspotting"!

             I'm writing this to share the shock I had. Yesterday I saw a very sensational film called "Trainspotting". It's about a boy named Renton (Ewan Mcgregor) from Edinburgh. He's deeply immersed in various drugs, from marijuana to heroine. But he does the best to get out of it, despite the attractiveness of the drugs and peer pressure.

            Personally I really enjoyed the darkness of this film. They were absolutely mental and never scared of something, which is impossible to do in Korea. It was kind of vicarious satisfaction and something like an escape from the routine. I don't mean I want to take some pills. I mean I want to be lunatic as badly as I can sometime.

            The shock was not because of the drugs scene, well it was rather interesting lol, but because of the accent they have. I know it sounds a bit weird. I thought I was quite good at understanding British accent, however the strong Scottish accent was a "Big Wow".
There is a very distinctive difference between English accent and Scottish accent. Of course I'm not a native speaker, so it may sound unreal. But it's just my personal opinion. I reckon talking about 100times is unnecessary, you'd better have a listen.

            Plus, in the film I could hear a lot of English slangs. For example, they said "loo" instead of "toilet" and "banger" instead of sausage, actually it's London Cockney slang. Anyway the film was very weird and twisted in a interesting way, so I recommend you having a look. Prepare a bottle of Scotch and fish and chips and prepare to be shocked! I guarantee you it will be very tempting.

2011년 3월 16일 수요일

1st blog posting! How to survive in the UK.

How to survive in the UK.

               I'm writing this to give some advice to someone who wants to stay in the UK more than a month. I've stayed in London for about a year and I've traveled 10 cities in the UK and 5 European countries. During that time I made about really good 30 friends from very colourful back ground. I'd like to help you settle down in a very easy way.

                
               As soon as you take the first step at Heathrow, the first thing you have to sort out is accommodation. Most of Korean people want to stick to their own nationality, so they're usually sharing a flat with Korean. But I mean, there is no point of speaking in Korean in the UK, isn't it? You'd better surrounded by very exotic environment.

               There are some really useful web-sites, such as gumtree.com and 04uk.com. Personally I wouldn't recommend you to use gumtree.com even though it's very popular web-site in England. I've used it a couple of times before, but there were so many peverts who were looking for a girl in a very disgusting way and there were also so many con men too. However, if you are quite confident in speaking in English, you can give it a try. But please be extra careful and choosy.

               I reckon, in someway 04uk.com is much better than gumtree.com. It's a Korean web-site which is for Korean people staying in London. There are a lot of flat sharing with foreign people and I've found a really good flat from here. Even better thing is that normally the landlord is Korean, so you can handle all the tricky problems in Korean.

            
               Secondly, I guess the reason you want to leave your county and stay far away from your family is not just about to learn English, it's more likely to experience another culture. The best way to understand different culture is having foreign friends. We have to remember our culture is very different to European's, so we should try hard to understand them. But it doesn't mean that we have to throw away all the crucial things for us and be huge fan of European custom's.

               I've seen heaps of Korean in London just went straight back to their flats right after the class and were stuck with their laptop. They never tried to hang out with foreigner. I've asked them why they were doing this. And they answered me "I'm so scared to talk to someone who doesn't look like me and I think my English is not enough to communicate with them". That's all nonsense! Most of European students can't speak English perfectly and they just speak as much as we do. I understand they were worried about severe racism and I have to admit that it still exists in Europe and it happened to me a few times. Although they had heard of the racism like an urban myth, they should have went out to make it better.


               Finally, I concluded personality is the key point in surviving in the UK and I strongly suggest that you must go out with people from other countries and have some drinks with them and 6months later, you will find out your English is much better than before.