{"id":11,"date":"2010-07-04T04:13:37","date_gmt":"2010-07-04T04:13:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmcement.org\/dawestside\/?p=11"},"modified":"2010-07-04T04:13:37","modified_gmt":"2010-07-04T04:13:37","slug":"blanche-du-bois-ive-always-depended-on-the-kindness-of-strangers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.filmcement.org\/dawestside\/?p=11","title":{"rendered":"Blanche Du Bois: I’ve Always Depended On The Kindness Of Strangers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>To be honest, I haven’t. I expect most human beings to be self-obsessed and too rigidly locked into their own brand of treadmill to bother looking outside the window – let alone help out a stranger. But before those of you with whiter-than-white teeth and patchouli scented sweat go labeling me ‘jaded’ or ‘misanthropic’, l should point out that I do believe in an individual’s capacity to be kind to strangers and I love seeing it in action. And I’ve got to say, Seoul has been nothing short of extraordinary in this regard. My heart’s been warmed on numerous occasions and I’ve only been here 3 days. The city of 9.8 million seems to be filled with some of the nicest people a clueless, English-speaking tourist could meet.<\/p>\n

When we arrived here it was raining. We were carting around cheap-arse luggage and trying to find an apartment we’d booked in an area without English-language street signs. My bladder was full and the frustration was starting to set in. I entered a chemist, exhausted my handful of poorly pronounced Korean phrases and the sales girl fetched me the pharmacist. She was in her late 40’s and extremely sophisticated. She wore the white coat and designer specs with a confident Parisian chic. And although she didn’t speak a word of English, she went to the trouble of looking up the apartment online, ringing them and drawing me a map. As I bowed repeatedly and used my two different phrases for thank you, she disappeared out the back and returned with a pink frilly umbrella for me.<\/p>\n

Having been here a few days, I’ve realised that this is the rule rather than the exception. And although I haven’t taken to spotting my clothes with sandalwood oil just yet, I feel fairly confident that in this city, kindness is something that a tourist like me can generally depend on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To be honest, I haven’t. I expect most human beings to be self-obsessed and too rigidly locked into their own brand of treadmill to bother looking outside the window – let alone help out a stranger. But before those of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[9,23,33,58,73,74,166,145],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.filmcement.org\/dawestside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.filmcement.org\/dawestside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.filmcement.org\/dawestside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.filmcement.org\/dawestside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.filmcement.org\/dawestside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.filmcement.org\/dawestside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.filmcement.org\/dawestside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.filmcement.org\/dawestside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.filmcement.org\/dawestside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}