Week13&14 Oral Interview Final

201001450 Hyun Ju Park 박현주

Intermediate English Writing

Interview Final Draft

 

My Uncle

 

I believe listening to someone’s life story is efficient way to know someone deeply and furthermore build the relationship, because sharing the life story is not just letting someone know my personal information and experiences but can be showing his everything; mindset, background, values ,etc. And this is what I experienced when I heard the story of my uncle. My aunt got married again last year after with my uncle now who had been a boyfriend of my aunt for several years after my aunt got divorced. So I have a new uncle. But though he is very easy-going person so he had always tried to make me feel comfortable when he’s with me, I had often felt like he was a stranger in my family until I got to know more about his life through the interview. And I feel much closer to him now. What I felt when I first saw him was that he lives young. Even though he is 39 years old now, not only the fact he is wearing many piercings on his ears like defiant early 20s friend but also the way he thinks and speaks make him very approachable person for my age because he talks to me as if he was my friend.

 

Like his unusual looking, he told me his life also has a lot of ups and downs. He had suffered from unexpected accident twice in his life all of which changed his attitude to his life. But, it caused totally different results. First one is when his father passed away. By the first, he started becoming rebellious and getting crooked.

 

He said, “I started smoking when I entered to middle school. And throughout my schooldays, I did many bad things escaping from my mom’s eyes.”

 

 Firstly, He paused for a few seconds before he started to tell me this story. And I’ve got the feeling that he was a bit hesitating to tell the story. But he was honest to tell me that he had been too defiant at that time towards his mother and many things after his father’s death. His father had run stable business related to boiler but his mother had to take over the business of her husband. My uncle added that he learned art in high school and he hardly entered to an Art College. But because it was not his willing to study in college but it was his mother’s desire, he soon quit studying in the college. After then, he changed his major to mechanical engineering and continued studying several times in different colleges, but he kept failing to continue studying in one college. He mentioned some universities he entered. The number of them is more than three, but he just graduated one of them. I was quite surprised by that story because I couldn’t understand why he did that. He remembered that these days he enjoyed affluent life and didn’t get any hint of having desperate incident which was coming closer to his near future. 

 

Second unexpected accident happened in his life is when his older brother died from the car accident, leaving his wife and two children. All of a sudden, he became only guy in the family who had to run the business of his family and who was in charge of his mother and the family of his older brother. He said that he thought a lot about his future life and his situation in his brother’s funeral and decided to help the business of his mother and brother right there. So, he had his hair cut very short which he remained pretty long until then. Firstly, he ran a Japanese restaurant in Hongdae and his sister-in-law ran a bar downstairs for a certain time.

 

He said, “Our restaurant was kind of famous place in Hongdae and first, business went well. But things changed in IMF, Korea.”

 

He sighed and kept saying but I could feel how hard it was for him because his voice became smaller when he started to tell me this story “Almost all the businesses we had bankrupted and we suffered from the huge loss. So it meant that we lost even our economic capacity after my brother’s death. Things got tougher and I had to find my job by myself after then.” I imagine that it would have been pretty hard for him to start from the beginning. He also mentioned that he met my aunt at that time. Actually, they were neighbors at that time and they had known each other for 10 years by the time they got married.

 

 After all, as my aunt also became his family, now my uncle is trying harder to support his family. He said he got to understand cherishing his family is the best and most important thing to do in life. Besides, he told me that his sister-in-law passed away as well by the unexpected accident because she fell backward in slippery ground a few days ago. So, what he was telling me today was his honest feeling and love about his family, I believe. Lastly, he also recommended me not to take it for granted having a beloved family near me, but try to treat them with respect and love. It was a lesson by listening to the life of my uncle.