Jarasum Jazz Festival Epic Fail

You know how I ended the last post optimistic about the wondrous possibilities of the upcoming jazz festival after the disappointment that was the film festival? And how I just asked that it not rain? Well….it rained. Fucking hell. If I believed in God, I would have pinned this on his ass, but since I don’t, I’ve got no one to blame.

Anyways, the rain wasn’t the only fail of the evening, as many other factors contributed to keep me from heading out for the tunes. But lets start from the beginning. The Jarasum Jazz Festival is an annual music festival that runs from Friday through Sunday in the small town of Gapyeong, about 1.5 hours northeast of Seoul. I had originally planned to go and spend most, if not all the day there on Saturday, and perhaps come back on Sunday. Now the ideal situation would have been to go Friday night, get a hotel and stay all the way through Sunday. However (here’s fail #1) since I only found out about the existence of this festival 2 weeks ago, and Gapyeong is a pretty small town that doesn’t figure to have much for hotels (even of the sleazy love variety), and I have no idea how to find the contact numbers of said hotels without major assistance from the co-teacher (who I don’t like to bother with shit like this), I figured there was about a 0% chance of there still be hotels available. As a result, I decided to just spend most of the day there, then try and swing an expensive cab back to Seoul or to a relatively nearby town. Last minute other plans combined to form fail #2. First, I found out capoeira was having a demo at 2pm on Sunday and they really needed people, so there goes listening to jazz on Sunday. Then I found out that Chris would be leaving us to travel back home for at least 2 months, so naturally I had to stay and say goodbye to the fella, so Saturday was out. This left me with Friday night to work with, and given how tight of a schedule I was working with, I was just asking for epic failure.

The new plan called for me to leave Seoul immediately after work, which ends at 5pm, grab some shit from home, hop a bus to Gapyeong and hopefully arrive somewhere around 7:30-8pm, just in time for the main stage acts to start. Once the main stage acts ended at 11:30pm, I would then decide how and if I was gonna go home. Everything went accordingly to plan until I got to the bus station. Now, I chose bus over train, as it runs 3 times an hour instead of just 1, the bus station is about 30 minutes closer to home than the train station, and bus tickets are sold as first come first serve. Now, as the bus people knew that this festival is kind of a big deal, and there’s lots of traffic going there, etc, etc, I just figured that they would have a bunch more buses running to keep up with the excess demand (epic fail #3). Hahahahahahahahah. That would be logical, and the past year has already proven that Korea is anything but logical. Well, I showed up to the bus loading area and found out I was person #200 and something (just a guess) waiting for the bus to Gapyeong. Now, I waited for 40 minutes thinking that they were gonna get these buses rolling soon, right? Wrong. In that whole time I saw 3 buses leave, which was how many they normally have leave. Since the line didn’t seem to have moved at all in 40 minutes, I began entertaining the notion of just leaving and going home. Every minute I waited was one less at the concert. Already, I was looking at being able to make only the last half of the main stage acts, if I had left at that exact moment. I was waffling back and forth until finally the rain came (epic fail #4) and decided everything quite easily.

Now, I had checked the forecast early in the afternoon and it had said a 20% chance of rain for the evening, which was nothing like the super severe weather, pounding rain and nasty wind that suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Again, had I believed in God, I would have assumed that the big guy really, really didn’t want me to go to this festival. Sure I touch myself a bunch, but geez God, cut a guy a break. I’m lonely. Since I obviously don’t believe in a higher power, I’ll just have to assume I’m really, really unlucky.

The evening didn’t turn out so bad, as I met up with Chris and we enjoyed a few beers and the lovely views in the upscale Gangnam area. By the time we left, the weather had gotten really, really bad, so I didn’t feel as bad about my decision to quit on the festival. The rain was coming down so hard that I mistook it for hail at points. It was hitting the cab roof that hard. As for the wind? Well, in the 3 or 4 minutes I was outside between bar and cab, then cab and home, my umbrella was blown inside out 4 times. We’re talking 30 miles an hour or so. So I guess in the end I don’t feel that bad about not going to the OUTDOOR jazz festival.

Chris’s farewell fiesta was interesting, to say the least. We started in the “hub of historic tourism area” (or something…I can never keep up with absurd titles given to places in Korea…and they do love calling stuff “the hub of something”) Insadong. We found some rando little bar and settled in for a bunch of wine. Sure it was lousy, but when you only have to pay 4 bucks a glass and the lousy Korean beers cost you around 3 bucks, its not much of a choice. Also lousy wine doesn’t leave me with lingering bowel issues for days to come like lousy Korean beer (though lousy American beer wasn’t any better). Anyways, after 3 or 4 glasses each, we moved onto Apgujeong, one of the ritziest and priciest areas in Seoul. This also happens to be the area in which the blues bar and jazz club are located, but despite my persistent entreaties, I couldn’t get the group to move in that direction. They rarely, if ever, listen to me, so the failure wasn’t anything unexpected. Upon someone else’s suggestion, we found our way to the “Monkey Bench”, a supposedly very happening bar. The reality was less than advertised. Sure it was full of people, but those people all happened to be crew-cut, gel-haired, popped-collar military “bro” types out to get their drink on. Shudder. Not exactly my ideal scenario. At least with the Koreans, I rarely understand the idiotic bullshit they talk about, whereas here I understood it all. Let’s just say they weren’t talking about Proust. When the yelling, chest bumping and excessive high fives started raining down, we got the hell out. Now, at this point, Jamie had had quite a bit to drink, so we all delighted as he would just walk up to any ol Koreans and ask for directions. Now everyone else in the group knows at least twice as much Korean as Jamie and could have easily asked for directions without any difficulty, but it was just so much more entertaining to watch the loud Brit scare the hell out of this poor unsuspecting Koreans.

We soon found a bar suitable to our needs and settled in. It was much more our style. No GI/bro foreign types, quiet clientele, cute waitresses, and darts. The true highlight was our run-in with a B-list Korean celebrity at the bar. Now, as soon as we sat down, I caught a glimpse of a guy at another table that I could have sworn I had seen on TV many times before. What he did for a living and what his name was I wasn’t sure. I had seen him several times on a absurd comedy show, where he and several comedians would perform ridiculous sports related stunts (I saw one where they basically had to give themselves atomic wedgies and whoever could get the underwear the highest above their head won….intellectually stimulating, I know), but I was also positive I had seen a music video of his a while back. I talked with the rest of the group to confer, and yes, he certainly was the celebrity I was thinking of. He must have been a regular here, as he had his own set of darts that he kept behind the bar. The girls eventually summoned up the liquid courage to ask for his autograph and some pictures with him. Though they may have upset him a bit when they called him a “comedian” (he’s actually a singer), but when you hang around with a bunch of other knuckle head “comedians” (if you can call them that) all the time on the tele, one could assume you are, in fact, a comedian. I was a little bitter when he didn’t wanna play darts with us. Personally I think he was afraid of playing me, as I had already taken down the waitress in Cricket and had been watching him play for a while. Or perhaps he thought I was a creeper (wouldn’t be the first time) with all the time I spent observing him. Guess I can’t really blame him, though. Our exit got a bit dicey, as Jamie was sauced enough to actually lie down in the middle of the road in an attempt to hail a cab. Effective I must say. Also, I finally understand why it was so damn funny when I threw up in my wallet. Somebody, while in the cab, mind you, threw up all over her hands, purse, and shoes, and let me tell you, it was fucking hilarious. Might make me a bad person for laughing at her difficulties, but so be it. Vomit on someone’s possessions (provided they aren’t yours) is hilarious. That is all.

Sunday saw me heading to Olympic Park for a capoeira demo. It was not so good. The music was lousy, there wasn’t enough people, and everybody played like crap (especially me). Compound that with the fact that its Batizado time back in Madison, and it just makes me miss the group back home that much more. Somewhere during the photo session (yeah, after every performance the group ends up taking pictures of itself doing floreio and stuff….), I wished Carlos would just walk in and kick everyone in the head for being so lame.

The school week offered a few unique moments. First, the 6th grade English teacher showed again just how nice, yet strange of a woman she is. On Friday, I had received a text message, in English, asking if I was okay, which made no sense at the time, cuz I had no idea who is was from. Turns out it was from this particular teacher. She, I guess, heard me coughing and got worried about me, so she inquired as to my health in the text, and when she couldn’t get a hold of me, called the other co-teacher to inquire about my health. She, I’m told, got angry at my primary co-teacher for not being more concerned about my supposed failing health and told the co-teacher to let me know of a particular hospital to go to, if I’m not feeling well. Trust me, the primary co-teacher didn’t understand it either. When I showed up to work on Monday I heard about all the drama and was given a brand new, very warm looking long sleeve dress shirt, compliments of the concerned co-teach. Wow, what a nice lady. Then just yesterday, she sent me a text apologizing for her poor English during our casual conversation over office snacks with the other teachers. Why she feels the need to apologize for not having great English, I have no idea. An interesting woman, to say the least.

The students supplied the rest of the moments. One of my favorite students, the little 3rd grade girl who spent some time abroad and as a result has really good English, gave me a note after class one day that read, “Bye bye teacher and maybe I’ll you miss you a little!!” Now, I know she meant for it to be sincere, but when I read it I couldn’t help laughing. “Maybe I’ll miss you a little”? Ouch, that’s really harsh. But maybe she does understand sarcasm and just wanted to burn me without my knowing it. I’ll probably never know.

Yesterday also saw me serving as judge for the school wide English speech contest. Not surprising, the previously mentioned 3rd grade girl won with a really good speech about her dog. The other older students had some good speeches, but something about her inflection and natural flow made it sound like something from a native English speaker of her age. We also had a boy break down in tears when he forgot his speech, not funny, and we had a boy speak super fast and loud because he was nervous, which was very funny. Overall, I was very impressed with the kids and their really well prepared speeches. Several of the kids did speeches about swine flu. I didn’t know that you can help prevent swine flu by brushing your teeth 3 times a day (rolls eyes). Ya learn something every day. Still, these speeches were well beyond what I was writing in my own language at that age. I don’t remember what my writing was like at that age, but I assume they were about very through treatises on why the Green Ranger was the best Power Ranger of all, even better than his alter-ego/doppelganger of sorts, the White Ranger. Compelling stuff, I can assure you.

The Wikipedia page on our celebrity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jun_Jin

For pics, just google image "Jun Jin"