Thursday, November 19, 2009

The brutal mass murder of prawns

As usual, I was not informed before hand about dinner at the prawn breeding place. Mr. Lee Mani came to me to ask if I was going to be able to go out for dinner with the other teachers. I had no plans, so I accepted the invite. After school we made a convoy to the prawn restaurant. The prawn restaurant is a very nice place, they even have a mini-lake where they breed prawns. I still do not know how they do it, but the ones that are ready to be murdered are kept in small tanks. Customers go and see them live before they eat them. Viewing the prawns made me think of the aquarium. We were viewing water creatures happy in water. The only difference between the creatures in the small tanks and the creatures at the aquarium was that the ones at the aquarium were preserved – safe from any torture that the brutal human race could potentially take them through. The ones that were in front of me were about to say good-bye to the peaceful life in water. The ones in the tank were about to undergo a brutal murder. They were going to be burnt alive. When we arrived we did what every customer does, we watched the prawns dancing around in their tanks. When we had had enough of watching our victims, we went and sat down inside the restaurant. Looking at the prawns in their little tanks psyched us up for what we were about to do. We were about to commit a mass murder of the prawns. The owners of the restaurant went to the tanks, caught the prawns with nets and threw them in black plastic bags. The prawns waited for a couple of minutes in the strange environment; the plastic bags, for their lives to be terminated. While the prawns were jumping up and down in the black bags, one of the restaurant owners threw a generous amount of coarse salt in pots and switched on the gas stoves in front of us. When the salt was hot enough to kill the prawns, we threw a few prawns into the pots and watched as the prawns were painfully jumping up and down in the pots. As they were jumping up and down in the pots, their color changed from clear-colorless to reddish-pink. The reddish-pink color was a sign of success for us - the brutal murderers. We successfully got away with murder and were ready to celebrate our success, we were about to bury our victims in our stomachs. In turn, the prawns were ready to be eaten. As much as it was a symbol for the murders, the prawns' reddish-pink color was a symbol for them too. It symbolised their brave death. They did not die cowardly, they did not give up on their lives, they had hope, they fought for their lives, they fought to the bitter end. They raged until they could rage no more. In their rage, one of the prawns fell out of the pot, it was still alive. One of my companions saw this as an opportunity to eat a fresh prawn straight from the water. He grabbed it, ripped its head off and stuffed it into his mouth. He did all this with a very sweet smile on his face. Killing has never been so pleasant! When the deed was done, we washed away the memories while they were still fresh. We could not keep such bad memories after all, we had to get rid of them. At that point soju was all we needed. Ten bottles of soju were not going to be enough – not after a brutal mass murder. We had no choice but to down more than three dozens of the lethal substance. We had to clear our consciouses. Very unfortunate for me, the memories still linger on. I gave up getting Soju'ed after a total loss of memory and a visit to the hospital. All I could do after the murder was wash my hands and live to tell. It was clear to me that some of us, including me, were still entertaining feelings of guilt. More cleansing had to be done. Nothing could do a better job than singing our worries away and washing them down with mekju – Korean beer. So off we went to the norebang – the singing room, popularly know as the karaoke in Japan and the rest of the world.

No comments: