You need some background here.\u00a0 Our nextdoor\u00a0neighbors are wonderful and delightful, largely because they speak almost no English whatsoever and never bother anyone except to wave and smile.\u00a0 They have two boys, grown and married, and since the boys don’t live there any more, and\u00a0my command of Korean is limited to basic menu items, we don’t talk much. \u00a0(There are only so many social situations where it would be acceptable to greet someone with “Bibimbop!\u00a0 Bulgogi jap-cha!\u00a0 And a Coke!”)\u00a0<\/p>\n
But we do see them, because they garden – beautifully, I should add.\u00a0 This year, Mrs. Kim planted some kind of pumpkin-like vine next to our fence, and trained it\u00a0along the fence\u00a0from the middle of the yard all the way to the gate, probably 40 feet.\u00a0 Despite all her work, it grew exactly one item –\u00a0a large, long green and yellow thing that looks like a cross between a goose-neck pumpkin and a cricket bat – on my side of the fence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, there’ve been cucumbers and a few peppers that have grown through the fence, and I’ve made sure not to pick them; it’s easy enough for her to reach over for them, and they’re in plain sight.\u00a0 This monster, despite its size, is hidden in the vines and undergrowth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I pointed it out to her a few weeks ago, making sure she knew that the Squash of Ages was growing there, and got some good smiles and head nods.\u00a0 Yesterday I decided that I would remind her about it, since I have no idea when it should be cut and harvested – nor indeed what it is.\u00a0 Putting thought to action, I grabbed SOBUMD’s iThingy,\u00a0dialed up an English to Korean translator, and walked out the back door.\u00a0 SOBUMD looked on in horror.<\/p>\n
What???\u00a0 This works on those ads on TV all the time!<\/p>\n
I looked up a phrase in Korean that would adequately express the idea of “Don’t forget to harvest this large zucchini\/pumpkin\/thingy before we get a frost.”\u00a0 It\u00a0spit out something that to my untrained ear sounded suspiciously like “bibimbop with kimchi,\u00a0bulgogi jap-cha, and\u00a0a Coke.”\u00a0\u00a0It then occurred to me just how many ways talking to my 60-something-yr-old Korean neighbor through an automated translator could go wrong.\u00a0 Did I really want to risk\u00a0telling her to grab her long thing and pull it, or worse?<\/p>\n
I chickened out.\u00a0 After pointing and waving and smiling some more, I came back inside and ran my would-be message of International Vegitable Cooperation back through a Korean to English app.\u00a0\u00a0I would eventually have managed to tell her:\u00a0 “Grasp the big Earl before\u00a0he cuts you, then\u00a0remember to\u00a0seize the day! You are a very cold woman!”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Probably best to just keep smiling and nodding.\u00a0 Still, I hope she takes it home before it eats my fence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It spit out something that to my untrained ear sounded suspiciously like “bibimbop with kimchi, bulgogi jap-cha, and a Coke.” It then occurred to me just how many ways talking to my 60-something-yr-old Korean neighbor through an automated translator could go wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4,7],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3251"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3251"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3254,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3251\/revisions\/3254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biguglymandoll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}