(I)
Kyo-min is the type of person who makes you feel good at first sight. Gentle but firm, serious and funny at the same time. Most importantly: who wouldn't like to talk to someone who travels all over the world to make documentaries? And who wouldn't like to talk to someone who travels all over the world to make documentaries, not to mention quietly slicing ginger and buying honey to make tea for you?
Once you're out of the country, you're related to every country that borders your territory, just as you're related to people from the eastern provinces of Guangdong. The two of us are very close to each other as soon as we meet, and it's an icebreaker after we say "Smirnoff" and "Hello" to each other. To me, as a foreigner who had just arrived in India for a few days, kyo-min seemed like a godlike local. In order to make a documentary for Drishtee, he has traveled to more than fifty villages in ten provinces in India in the past three months, interviewing the organization's projects in various places. Even J, who is in charge of HR for the organization, said, "Kyo-Min! I've never met anyone who can run like you!" . When I saw his galaxy of stars on Google Maps, I probably knew how much he could do.
Things like getting malaria in a village and sleeping in the open air in the desert are things I would have been gushing about as soon as I met him, but his experiences came naturally over the course of a few days of conversation. While I don't think I'll ever be able to remember the names of the places, I do remember each story, and they shaped him as a person.
Kyo-Min is about to become a father.
When I first found out that he was 35 and his wife was expecting a baby in Korea I was calm on the outside and had literally a million horses in my heart. When I think of the way I've been talking to him in the same way that I talk to people my own age, I think it's amazing. From the Serengeti steppe to Sichuan cuisine, from stargazing in the desert to square-dancing moms in Singapore, we both watch Wong Kar Wai movies. We both watch Wong Kar Wai's movies, both have been to the same brisket store in Hong Kong to eat noodles. There is no pressure to transfer between these messy topics, and even the silence doesn't seem awkward. Let's define him this way: after experiencing many things, he can make accidents just right and keep his freshness to the world. In the face of me, a girl 11 years younger than him, he did not have the posture of a person who wants to guide life, but is always teaching "survival skills".
India's mass transportation is an electric car called a Tuktuk, which is available in two modes: **** and private, with a tenfold price difference between the two. The streets are filled with these yellow and green Tuktuks that weave in and out of cars, rickshaws, bicycles, pedestrians, cows, and dogs, so the drivers have full stop-and-dodge skills.
On the first day home from work in a Tuktuk with Kyo-Min, he talked to the owner about 40 rupees, however the owner insisted on 50. later he stopped a passing Tuktuk on the side of the road, and had all but agreed on 40 rupees, when the driver, who had not picked us up before, went to strike up a conversation with this driver instead. I didn't react at all, but Kyo-Min scolded the 50 rupee driver with a serious face, "Why are you interfering with us, why do you care about us, you're not picking us up?!" It was like a mixed-up aura. On the sidelines watching the battle, I not only did not give him momentum, but puffed out a laugh ...... Knowing that it is 50 drivers do not let people 40 ride us, but Kyo-Min's contrast is simply too much into India.
"You get used to it, you have to face these challenges every moment here." In the days that followed, he always "led by example" and "adapted" to show me how to deal with everything, from the right price in rupees per kilometer, to double-checking every retrieved money, and one day even cheating the miscreant who was trying to rip us off right in front of me. the miscreant who was supposed to cheat us.
But he wasn't always calculating, and sometimes we didn't even care about the potholes. When we took the Tuktuk from the last spot to the metro station on our day trip to Delhi, the driver asked for 50 rupees as usual. This time we didn't even haggle, instead we taught the driver Korean on the bus. Unfortunately, the driver only wanted to learn two phrases: "welcome" and "10, 20, 30 .... Rupee". In the car **** with the learning I said: "Kyo-min, you know what? The next time some Korean tourists come to Delhi, they'll be ranting and raving just after they've been welcomed, and it'll be all your fault." The two rolled over laughing in the bumpy car afterward.
The fight with the first Rs 50 driver was because he was too blatantly bullying foreigners, and the conversation with the second was because we were willing that 10 rupees could matter or not. He also whispered to me, "I actually don't even take rickshaws here because I feel like a capitalist exploiting the people, so I pay more when I have to."
Since they were both interning at NGOs, it was only natural to talk about each other's experiences and future directions on this "road of no return": Kyo-Min originally studied materials engineering in Korea, and then worked for five years at a related company, but felt that her school emphasized too much on market appeal rather than pure research.
"I'm not sure what I'm talking about," said Kyo-Min.
"I don't know if this is the right way to put it, but at the time I was trying to do something to protect the environment, and when I thought about how many problems there are in the world, I wanted to do something about it."
Documentary filmmaking was one of the suggestions given to him by the consultancy, and I still find it peculiar that it was given a clear direction. Having already had a love of photography, he then went to the UK for two years of graduate school. At the time he made this decision, he already had a stable job, and his colleagues and friends around him were basically stable, but some things are not so difficult when you really want to do them. It was also because of this change in career that he met his current wife, a social worker who helps immigrants in Singapore. To rephrase, "My wife and I both want to save the world, and that's why we're attracted to each other." During their internship Kyo-Min and his wife also specialized in meeting in the Maldives, halfway between India and Singapore. It is said that both of them were asked, "Are you here alone?" when they crossed the border, and both of them replied, "I'm here alone. Both of them replied, "My husband/wife is on the other side of the border". The two of them replied, "My husband/wife is on the other side of the border." Please imagine the psychological shadow of the customs officers.
"I think I'm going to have to find a job with a stable income, after all, my son is coming," said Kyo. Kyo-Min said of her future plans.
Kyo-Min's three-month internship is coming to an end, and the two of us have only a week's worth of overlap. I don't know if he'll ever be tired enough to stop, and I don't know if I'll ever see him again, but I've always thought that it's probably impossible not to become friends after a half-hour ride on a Tuktuk full of nine people so bumpy you don't even know who your mom is.