My new hero stands on the edge of the street with a bottle of beer in his right hand, and a bottle of soju in his left....
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Rapture in the Hood
My new hero stands on the edge of the street with a bottle of beer in his right hand, and a bottle of soju in his left....
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Doctor, Doctor, Please.... Oh, the Mess I'm In... Part 1
Oh.. such a bad blogger and so much has gone on...
two nights ago I wandered into the local and ordered a beer. My friend, an army nurse/administrator was sitting there. He's a crew-cut and fit dude of roughly my age.. to the right of him were a group of younger men with the same look but a bit younger, some of them nearly out of swaddling clothes.
There was no room at the bar as they were drinking car-bombs, Jaeger-bombs, and beer. Much macho banter (which should be the name of a drink) filled the air. As the conversation at the bar continued these guys rotated in and out of the seats.
Until the point that the crippled one tried to get on a chair.
He was lanky and red-headed and had some kind of disease that hampered his ability to get up onto a bar stool. The bar stools at the local are particulary tall - the wife has to acquire the services of a sherpa to ... well enjoy sex... but also to get up on the bar stools.
I think I've said "stools" too many times?
But this dude had a right arm that was in some kind of curved rictus and I nearly got up to help him onto his barstool.
Which would have been wasted effort because the crippled lad bolted from the bar.. barely escaping the open glass doors to the right, to vomit profusely ... partly onto the shoes of his buddy
To the left of me one of this buddies said, "he shouldn't have had those two ambien."
Outside, the red-head vomited again.
His leaving had given me a chance to sneak up to the bar, rather quickish.
I asked my friend if these were his buddies, and he said, "no, but I know them."
Turns out they were the bomb squad (Hurt Locker, for you LA fucks)
For the rest of the evening (to be related next post) they played that macho game of dismissal/love/homoeroticism (in a thoroughly non-gay way)/brawl that all us boys love to play...
Ah.. yeah.. the wife and I also went to Hwaesong... google it.. or I may post...
It's totally cool..
the walls of a fortress include the cool full fortress part and a killer park. Then they lace through the community as well..
Come on over to Korea.... Yvonne and I will show you around!
all the wires are black! and tangled.
two nights ago I wandered into the local and ordered a beer. My friend, an army nurse/administrator was sitting there. He's a crew-cut and fit dude of roughly my age.. to the right of him were a group of younger men with the same look but a bit younger, some of them nearly out of swaddling clothes.
There was no room at the bar as they were drinking car-bombs, Jaeger-bombs, and beer. Much macho banter (which should be the name of a drink) filled the air. As the conversation at the bar continued these guys rotated in and out of the seats.
Until the point that the crippled one tried to get on a chair.
He was lanky and red-headed and had some kind of disease that hampered his ability to get up onto a bar stool. The bar stools at the local are particulary tall - the wife has to acquire the services of a sherpa to ... well enjoy sex... but also to get up on the bar stools.
I think I've said "stools" too many times?
But this dude had a right arm that was in some kind of curved rictus and I nearly got up to help him onto his barstool.
Which would have been wasted effort because the crippled lad bolted from the bar.. barely escaping the open glass doors to the right, to vomit profusely ... partly onto the shoes of his buddy
To the left of me one of this buddies said, "he shouldn't have had those two ambien."
Outside, the red-head vomited again.
His leaving had given me a chance to sneak up to the bar, rather quickish.
I asked my friend if these were his buddies, and he said, "no, but I know them."
Turns out they were the bomb squad (Hurt Locker, for you LA fucks)
For the rest of the evening (to be related next post) they played that macho game of dismissal/love/homoeroticism (in a thoroughly non-gay way)/brawl that all us boys love to play...
Ah.. yeah.. the wife and I also went to Hwaesong... google it.. or I may post...
It's totally cool..
the walls of a fortress include the cool full fortress part and a killer park. Then they lace through the community as well..
Come on over to Korea.... Yvonne and I will show you around!
all the wires are black! and tangled.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Fridazzled...
Didn't even see a berry flashing those high beams
Got to work and it was presentation day, which is always an easy one. I just sit there and grade them, and the grading is done by the time I leave the classroom. After that it was sitting around for 45 minutes waiting for the “teacher’s day” celebration of the English Interpretation and Translation Department.
This even is always super-fun as the students enjoy anything communal, and it involves cake. I was able to bust out about this much Korean when it was my turn to speak
Everyone, students and professors, welcome. That student (pointing to a guy who had spoken earlier) has good English. I have bad Korean. I will practice it (I botched that sentence badly!). I love teaching my students. Now, I will speak in English.
It was pretty ragged language, but students always like the fact that I even try – in fact Koreans in general will treat foreigners who know a little Korean better than non-speaking foreigners.
Once all speeches were done, the cake-candles blown out, and the pictures taken, it was time to call it a day. The video of the episode of the cake is here:
The day was too nice to go back home and after calling Yvonne without results, I headed down to City Hall Underground Shopping Center and bought a book I had been looking for and that seems to be out of print even though Amazon offers ‘new’ ones; Everlasting Empire.
Then it was up to City Hall Square where some enormous festival was setting up. On the side was the “adoption day” (입양 달) booth, and they had some cute kids drumming. So I took a lovely home movie which I have reproduced here.
It was still too nice to head home, so I headed for a Starbucks, relatively deserted by Seoul standards, and grabbed an Americano and typed all this.
My weekly three-day weekend begins tomorrow!
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Yesterday's Rain
The lovely wife came home for lunch (Monday is my day off), and after I hurriedly despatched my rentboy out the bedroom window, we headed over to Yongsan to get ink for our printer, and then took advantage of an empty restaurant with a wide open front, to snarffle down some tueji galbi....
A nice mid-day surprise!
Sunday, May 08, 2011
Some Marriage Thing..
The sun struggles up, another beautiful day
And I felt glad in my own suspicious way.
Despite the contradiction and confusion,
Felt tragic without reason,
There's malice and there's magic in every season
So yesterday our friend got married and with all the best signs - free booze, barbeque, and the rain dissapearing into the ether. This last thing important for a wedding conducted on the roof of the Somerset Hotel (up there by Angguk Station). It all went well and it was free booze for nearly 5 hours, which has left me nearly unmanned today. ;-)
Still, a super event and I believe the picture below suggests a happy marriage will ensue. They are already ignoring each other, and he has a bottle of beer tucked into his elbow...
Nice-uh, as we say..
Friday, May 06, 2011
Seonyudos and Seonyudonts! Being part uno...
Last weekend the lovely wife and I both had Friday off as a result of a class-switching (I became toff) binge with another foreign instructor who wanted to go visit China to attempt to procure a mail-order husband.
So we decided we'd head down to the Gunsan and then catch a ferry to Seonyudo, which is one of three very small linked islands off the southwest coast of Korea. It's sort of an expat "todo" and by getting there on Friday we'd be in advance of any other tourists, which was likely to be a small number as this is not "island visiting time of year" (Koreans work to internal and unknown clocks that would be the envy of the Borg).
Consequently, we got up early on a day off and headed to Yongsan station to catch the Saemaul to Gunsan. This was good for me as I love the Saemaul ("New Village") and had work to do. The Saemaul has a totally cool club-car and I went in, grabbed a delicious sammich and coffee and worked on sound edits for www.kcreport.net all the way down. Yvonne, as is her wont, napped. As we crossed the river to the north of Gunsan I noticed a sign that said "Ch'ae Manshik Literary Museum" (Except, like the cool dude I am, I noticed it in Korean). Manshik is one of my favorite short-story writers and I put this away in my head in case I ever got back to Gunsan.
At Gunsan sation, while waiting for the bus, got bored and grabbed a taxi to the wharf. Probably a good move as it turned out, since it was a pretty long haul and the bus would have been even more boring.
When we got there, Yvonne talked to the ticket office which immediately put her on a cell-phone with an English speaker.
Drats and confounderation! Bad weather had stopped the ferries from running.
About 15 minutes later we headed out of the terminal and to the exact same cabbie who had brought us from the train station. He asked if the time had been bad ("shigan" something or other that was clear enough to me to answer in my shit Korea.... I answered the weather was bad and then sat sulking in the cab as I realized I should have said the sea was bad. I suck at Korean).
This time, since we had nought all else to do, we headed over to the Ch'ae Manshik Literary Museum where I got that treatment I sometimes get - Korean docent going mad that foreigner gives a crap at all about Korean literature.
The man, the legend!
This was wildly exacerbated by the fact that I accidentally had "My Innocent Uncle" (A work by Manshik) in my backpack. I spoke what little Korean I have and the docent went mad, chattering at me like a chihuahua with an amphetamine suppository in its ass. All, good... I got a bit of it and she was super happy to lecture, particularly about the museum's kind of cool map of Korea and regional authors.
The joint (on the river, so kind of nice)
Finally, we went out to catch a cab, but as we were in the middle of nowhere, had to hike back into town. Probably only an hour overall, but because we had supposed to have been at a beautiful island, I was dragging my laptop and all my camera gear in a backpack with only one strap. Then there was the shitty weather - which had halted our amphibious assault on Seonyudo. It sprinkled ever so lightly, but threatened consistently. I loudly, repetitively, and without much imagination, blamed Yvonne!
Once in town, we caught a cab from a cabdriver who couldn't understand anything I said in Korean or read a map (In Korean!). He left us on the bayline of Gunsan which is, to be fair, an absolute asshole of an area.
It is slated for urban renewal (apparently) and walking around it was spooky as all the stores are closed.. the houses broken. We could see no restaurants, and it took us a very long time to find a yeogwan. This was partly because when we were in an area with restaurants, Yvonne insisted we keep walking until we find a galbi joint.
Said "find" never happened.
Walking into the yeogwan the proprietors were on the stoop (all of a sudden this area is reminding me of bombed out areas of New York...well, you know.. minus crime, vandalism, or graffiti) and immediately ask me, in Korean, "do you speak Korean well?"
I laughed and said I spoke very little, but wondered what would have happened if I couldn't respond in Korean? What a weird question to ask in Korean.
Didn't matter.. for 30,000 won we got a very simple (large) but adequate room with a big TV and no computer. Also, it didn't have the usual "love pack" of condoms, lube, and whatnot, although we did get toothbrushes and a razor I wouldn't use on the corpse of Osama bin-Laden. Shortly, Yvonne got on the iPhone and hassled the help enough so we got directions to a galbi restaurant that was only about 10 minutes cab drive away.
To cool down we went to a "coffee/drinks" place across the street that was probably nice once. It was spacious and had big booths with couches, but also had no customers, plenty of flies, a weird smell, and a staff consisting of a completely bombed (but quite understandable?) Korean man and his wife who, once we were served, went back to their business of fighting with each other. One drink and we were out.
So we headed up to the galbi place, ate well, and came back for sleep.
Big slabs o' Tuegi Galbi
During the morning the promised storms came through.. rattling the metal rooftops of the surrounding buildings and with thunder crashing....
Yvonne, of course, slept through all that bit.^^
So we decided we'd head down to the Gunsan and then catch a ferry to Seonyudo, which is one of three very small linked islands off the southwest coast of Korea. It's sort of an expat "todo" and by getting there on Friday we'd be in advance of any other tourists, which was likely to be a small number as this is not "island visiting time of year" (Koreans work to internal and unknown clocks that would be the envy of the Borg).
Consequently, we got up early on a day off and headed to Yongsan station to catch the Saemaul to Gunsan. This was good for me as I love the Saemaul ("New Village") and had work to do. The Saemaul has a totally cool club-car and I went in, grabbed a delicious sammich and coffee and worked on sound edits for www.kcreport.net all the way down. Yvonne, as is her wont, napped. As we crossed the river to the north of Gunsan I noticed a sign that said "Ch'ae Manshik Literary Museum" (Except, like the cool dude I am, I noticed it in Korean). Manshik is one of my favorite short-story writers and I put this away in my head in case I ever got back to Gunsan.
At Gunsan sation, while waiting for the bus, got bored and grabbed a taxi to the wharf. Probably a good move as it turned out, since it was a pretty long haul and the bus would have been even more boring.
When we got there, Yvonne talked to the ticket office which immediately put her on a cell-phone with an English speaker.
Drats and confounderation! Bad weather had stopped the ferries from running.
About 15 minutes later we headed out of the terminal and to the exact same cabbie who had brought us from the train station. He asked if the time had been bad ("shigan" something or other that was clear enough to me to answer in my shit Korea.... I answered the weather was bad and then sat sulking in the cab as I realized I should have said the sea was bad. I suck at Korean).
This time, since we had nought all else to do, we headed over to the Ch'ae Manshik Literary Museum where I got that treatment I sometimes get - Korean docent going mad that foreigner gives a crap at all about Korean literature.
The man, the legend!This was wildly exacerbated by the fact that I accidentally had "My Innocent Uncle" (A work by Manshik) in my backpack. I spoke what little Korean I have and the docent went mad, chattering at me like a chihuahua with an amphetamine suppository in its ass. All, good... I got a bit of it and she was super happy to lecture, particularly about the museum's kind of cool map of Korea and regional authors.
The joint (on the river, so kind of nice)Finally, we went out to catch a cab, but as we were in the middle of nowhere, had to hike back into town. Probably only an hour overall, but because we had supposed to have been at a beautiful island, I was dragging my laptop and all my camera gear in a backpack with only one strap. Then there was the shitty weather - which had halted our amphibious assault on Seonyudo. It sprinkled ever so lightly, but threatened consistently. I loudly, repetitively, and without much imagination, blamed Yvonne!
Once in town, we caught a cab from a cabdriver who couldn't understand anything I said in Korean or read a map (In Korean!). He left us on the bayline of Gunsan which is, to be fair, an absolute asshole of an area.
It is slated for urban renewal (apparently) and walking around it was spooky as all the stores are closed.. the houses broken. We could see no restaurants, and it took us a very long time to find a yeogwan. This was partly because when we were in an area with restaurants, Yvonne insisted we keep walking until we find a galbi joint.
Said "find" never happened.
Walking into the yeogwan the proprietors were on the stoop (all of a sudden this area is reminding me of bombed out areas of New York...well, you know.. minus crime, vandalism, or graffiti) and immediately ask me, in Korean, "do you speak Korean well?"
I laughed and said I spoke very little, but wondered what would have happened if I couldn't respond in Korean? What a weird question to ask in Korean.
Didn't matter.. for 30,000 won we got a very simple (large) but adequate room with a big TV and no computer. Also, it didn't have the usual "love pack" of condoms, lube, and whatnot, although we did get toothbrushes and a razor I wouldn't use on the corpse of Osama bin-Laden. Shortly, Yvonne got on the iPhone and hassled the help enough so we got directions to a galbi restaurant that was only about 10 minutes cab drive away.
To cool down we went to a "coffee/drinks" place across the street that was probably nice once. It was spacious and had big booths with couches, but also had no customers, plenty of flies, a weird smell, and a staff consisting of a completely bombed (but quite understandable?) Korean man and his wife who, once we were served, went back to their business of fighting with each other. One drink and we were out.
So we headed up to the galbi place, ate well, and came back for sleep.
Big slabs o' Tuegi GalbiDuring the morning the promised storms came through.. rattling the metal rooftops of the surrounding buildings and with thunder crashing....
Yvonne, of course, slept through all that bit.^^
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Yvonne will have to drag me out of Seoul in various leak-free bags
Ship to ship, in and out,
I give and they take.
I punch that clock,
And punch it hard enough to break
So join the rank
This is the rank
We are the rank
Oh rank and file and there is no denial
Rank and file
Join the rank and file
This is the Rank and File
And there is no denial!
After a day like today I fear returning to that shite in the US^^...
Switched my evening class and tomorrow morning's class away to my co-prof who will need me to cover her classes next week.
Took the "best class EVAR!!!!" down to the park for pizza.. these guys are super-duper-stars and the weather cooperated. This picture was taken at a critical part of our little party as you can see there is only one ("1"!) piece of pizza out there. It lay there forever, with no one wanting to take the last piece (after a nearly magical disappearing act on the previous 5 pizzas) until one of my male students grabbed it so quickly that part of the topping slipped off.
It was funny to watch what got eaten.... the pepperoni pizzas were gone first (Yay Globalization!), but my students being Korean, the potato pizza was the next to go (Yay Korean Exceptionalism!), with the bulgogi (beef) pizza coming in a sad, but eventually digested, last.
The woman giving the peace sign and pulling the horrible face is probably my best student, and that is NOT what her face really looks like. The woman behind her is a crazy dynamo... all these students rock.
I should note that the class switching noted above will allow the Lovely Wife and I to head south tomorrow and check out Seonyudo.. three linked islands of Gunsan.
Then it was off to gwangwhamun to visit the Ilmin Art Museum and take in the Black, White & Pink ( A decent title for a porno movie, now that I look at it) exhibit and the Urban Depth (Holy cow, two porno titles in a row?) exhibit.
Both really great.. but you'll have to wait and go over to www.kcreport.net to hear about that.
Then back home to put the "Rank and File" music I've downloaded into Itunes. And, yeah, I paid for that shit when it was vinyl so I don't give a rat's ass that I downloaded it.
Cause I'm a rebel like that.
The song "Rank and File" may be the loveliest (and countriest) song of desperation ever. Well.. no.. of course Johnny Cash did that one. So let's just say it's the best country-punk song of the country-punk genre, with horse-gallop drumming, some of the coolest lead treble-chorded guitar ever, and the best melding of vocals Rank and File ever did.
Now chilling at a home that the Lovely Yvonne cleaned in expectation of the podcast boys tonite.. That will entail having a drink, and cavorting brain-wise.
Outside the window the sky turns increasingly blue and clouds from a finger-painting hang, merge and reform.
I may just take a nap..... ;-)
Thanks, thanks a lot
I got a broken heart
that's all I got
You made me cry
And i cried a lot
Honey, thanks
Thanks a lot
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Weekend Wrapup
Spent Friday and Saturday morning prepping for my presentation at KATS (Korean Association of Trans.... something something) at Ewha. Hopped up on Saturday morning and ran to work, printed various things out, caught a cab and was at Edae in time for lunch.
Presentation went well.. I'm a bit off in the field, because I'm interested in data, marketing, and then there's that language I speak.^^ After I headed back on the subway and met my newish friend Paul, with whom I'm working on a new podcast project, The Korean Culture Report.
The rest of the day was spent chilling with him, then the lovely wife, and watching the Korean movie, Peppermint Candy (which will be reviewed shortly on the blog I just linked).
Today was spent working on the website, bookshopping with the wife, and relapsing on the cold front.
Anyway.. also looting the camera.. some pics of how beautiful the Uni is right now with the flowers blooming and the Buddha's birthday about to happen. The Uni ajusshi ring the Uni with lanterns, and as night fall it's something like Disneyland.
On the way to my office....
During the day...
As evening descends (like a SCYTHE!!! REAPING US ALL!.. ahem)
Presentation went well.. I'm a bit off in the field, because I'm interested in data, marketing, and then there's that language I speak.^^ After I headed back on the subway and met my newish friend Paul, with whom I'm working on a new podcast project, The Korean Culture Report.
The rest of the day was spent chilling with him, then the lovely wife, and watching the Korean movie, Peppermint Candy (which will be reviewed shortly on the blog I just linked).
Today was spent working on the website, bookshopping with the wife, and relapsing on the cold front.
Anyway.. also looting the camera.. some pics of how beautiful the Uni is right now with the flowers blooming and the Buddha's birthday about to happen. The Uni ajusshi ring the Uni with lanterns, and as night fall it's something like Disneyland.
On the way to my office....
During the day...
As evening descends (like a SCYTHE!!! REAPING US ALL!.. ahem)Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Catching up on a busy weekend
It was a very full weekend. After two years of talking about it, we finally booked a tour and headed up to see the DMZ. This was not a USO tour, so we didn't get to Panmumjon, but in some ways that was better as we didn't have to catch the bus until 9:30 AM and we were back in downtown Seoul by 5:30.
The DMZ focuses on trains a lot - because it is still one of the ways that the countries are connected: This lovely train below is the "peace train" and I could almost hear Cat Stevens singing as it left the station.
Then there was the somewhat confusing "suicide statue" which apparently shows two intrepid explorers about to hurtle to their death.
There was also the requisite commercialism:
And two idiots who went about acting fools. I got back to work on Tuesday and one of my colleagues asked, "were you on the tour with the Russian idiots?" I initially said no, because these guys were on the other tour bus, but as soon as my colleague said a tour-guide had yelled at someone on our tour for inappropriate behavior I knew it was these guys. I hadn't got close enough to them to hear their language, but have to confess I was pleased to hear they weren't from the US.
Here is the lovely wife posing:
And a detail from a somewhat poignant piece of art (The cities are Seoul and Pyongyang) at Dorasan Station:
Sunday, based on a similar premise as Saturday's trip - that is that we had never made it to see the cherry blossoms in our 3 years here, we headed to Yeouido to check out the last day of the Cherry Blossom Festival. It was quite crowded, but also quite pretty.
We got us some food -
I ate this terrifying thing, which I will never try again. It's a corndog deep-fried in an additional layer of something nasty that seemed to feature coconut. It was greasier than a horny Italian.
Some of the park was lovely
And we ended up walking down to Hangang Park and watching families play and kites fly.
This is that time of year when everything is ridiculously beautiful... Namsan is girdled in various flowering trees.. and I'm glad its midterm week so I don't have to ruin it with any work.
The DMZ focuses on trains a lot - because it is still one of the ways that the countries are connected: This lovely train below is the "peace train" and I could almost hear Cat Stevens singing as it left the station.
Then there was the somewhat confusing "suicide statue" which apparently shows two intrepid explorers about to hurtle to their death.
There was also the requisite commercialism:
And two idiots who went about acting fools. I got back to work on Tuesday and one of my colleagues asked, "were you on the tour with the Russian idiots?" I initially said no, because these guys were on the other tour bus, but as soon as my colleague said a tour-guide had yelled at someone on our tour for inappropriate behavior I knew it was these guys. I hadn't got close enough to them to hear their language, but have to confess I was pleased to hear they weren't from the US.
Here is the lovely wife posing:
And a detail from a somewhat poignant piece of art (The cities are Seoul and Pyongyang) at Dorasan Station:
Sunday, based on a similar premise as Saturday's trip - that is that we had never made it to see the cherry blossoms in our 3 years here, we headed to Yeouido to check out the last day of the Cherry Blossom Festival. It was quite crowded, but also quite pretty.
We got us some food -
I ate this terrifying thing, which I will never try again. It's a corndog deep-fried in an additional layer of something nasty that seemed to feature coconut. It was greasier than a horny Italian.
Some of the park was lovely
And we ended up walking down to Hangang Park and watching families play and kites fly.
This is that time of year when everything is ridiculously beautiful... Namsan is girdled in various flowering trees.. and I'm glad its midterm week so I don't have to ruin it with any work.
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