Back in the Saddle?

I’ve been a bad blogger. Between the end of the conference last Monday and the rush to get my second paper (for the World Cultural Tourism Association) off by last Wednesday night, I was in a haze of writing, reading, and re-writing. After that got done the 901 club turned into a norae-bang fest and as a consequence I was up until 2am Friday morning. This, or course, wrecked Friday.

Saturday was the “International Daejeon Bartender’s Chanpionship” in the Convention Center downtown. This was surprisingly entertaining, although the only international thing about it was that I was there (One miguk), the OAF was there (one little Indian) and BPUs business school bussed in a load of Chinese students. One of the judges was from somewhere in the UK and, true to his culture, spent most of his time acting drunken and over-familiar.

The contestants were all from Daejeon and all seemed to know each other. The competition was sloppy but fun. Every contestant dropped something at least once, and some were like the proverbial manna from the sky. There were a bunch of decent individual gags, but the flow was pretty bad. This was exacerbated by the fact that most contestants stayed behind the bar and the images of them that were projected onto the screens were from the same perspective as the crowd already had. Thus it was hard to see what was going on.

The one guy who was clearly the best (we didn’t stay around for the judging because they brought out dancers immediately after the competition – Korea loves its dancers at ALL public events) technically was also the best in showmanship, and was clearly also some kind of athlete as he, compared to the other contestants, bulged with muscle.

At halftime of the competition I went around and sampled the (sample-sized) samples of the vendors. BV wines was there, completely ignored by the Koreans, and it was nice to taste a semi-decent wine. The lowlight of the vendors was some awful hooch mixed from an energy drink and Jagermeister. Sure, I drank it, but man was it foul!

I’d like to see what a real “international” bartenders championship looks like, because even with the flaws, this was fun enough that the OAF (and therefore I) chose to skip the free bus back and watch the completion of the finals instead. We ended up walking back home, which took a couple of hours, and dining on French fries and fruit, with a dessert a few hours later of fried sogogi..