{ Mini Cultural Exchange }

Around the end of last year / start of dis year, we had some exchange students in our class. I only rlly rmb one of them, who was a girl from South Korea, mainly becos she was in a group wif some of us for an assignment. For dis story, let’s call her Karina (hehe).

I didn’t get to noe Karina much, but she was pretty chill so dat was great. As a result, there weren’t any problems while working together. While her English was limited, and none of us spoke Korean, the language barrier didn’t become much of an issue somehow, and we managed to do the required tasks well, while having fun along the way… ☺️

During those gd times, I rmb one specific thing she’d frequently do. Whenever one of us did smth stupid or silly, she’d always go “omo 😮”.

I rmb always being slightly amused whenever she said dat. Might have to do wif the fact dat nobody says dat here. Previously, I only ever heard it uttered in Running Man (the Korean variety show I used to watch, which we’ll get back to…)

Me being me, I’d find myself mouthing “omo” under my own breath every time I heard her say it. No other reason behind it besides out of pure glee. I just found dat word to be rlly interesting for some reason…

But I think I ended up saying it too much, dat it became part of my mouth’s muscle memory…

As of now, it’s been long since Karina left, but I’m still saying “omo“. In fact, I now find myself saying it in contextually correct situations: when I’m slightly amused, shocked by something, or catching my breath after a hard set of exercise.

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My favourite part abt dis whole thing was dat Karina oso picked up some Singlish along the way. So, it sorta went full circle, u noe? 👍

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During dat same period, I oso grew a sudden fondness for the song “챠우챠우 / chow chow” by Delispice. It’s a Korean rock song, and to me, one of those songs dats tradition to come back to every once in a while.

But my stay for listening to it lingered abit longer than usual during dat time…

I only noe abt dat song becos of Running Man (see, we got back to it 😉), where they played it excessively in one of the episodes I watched like, 10 yrs ago. I forgot wat they did in the episode, but I rmb Han Ji Min (hehe) was the guest. I oso rmb hearing the song and thinking “Ayo, dat song slaps”, and it embedded itself into my brain since.

Now, the song has gone back to “return-to-every-once-in-a-while” status. But it’s oso gained additional connotations. Becos now whenever I listen, I will oso rmb the mini “cultural exchange”, as well as just dat period of the year in general. And dat wld make me feel nice…. and perhaps a lil nostalgic enough to go “omo” sometimes…

24.12.2025