The ongoing theme with Hugh! He either gets annoyed at people speaking banmal (informal language) with him because they think he is young, or he is happy about it… because they think he is young. This time the guy spoke banmal to Hugh because he thought he was his friend, and that’s fine between friends of the same age. By the way, Hongdae is a cool area where all the university kids hang out. (Great food there too).

He also spends half his time in Hongdae enjoying that he fits in fashion wise with his youthful looks and the other half of the time being annoyed at young people. Anyone who frequents Hongdae knows the Hongdae ‘uniform’ at the moment: those Timberland type shoes, a bomber jacket and hair either styled up in the 2 block cut or down in the ‘lego’ hair.

Being in your 30’s is a strange time. Not a young person but not yet an ahjussi.

(This happened on the weekend and Hugh couldn’t wait to tell me that someone mistook him for a friend that is a decade younger).

The problem with getting old: you want to look young, but you don’t want people to speak down to you.

Hugh gets really annoyed because of course all the old people use informal language with him in the village, and while that’s not rude in itself, some of the old men are quite rude when they come into the mini store his parents have on the farm. So when he goes to the next town for errands and it’s people a similar age to him, he wants to hear respectful language.

He does sometimes look like a student though….

(Don’t smoke people! All his smoker friends look way older now).