I'm a Hypocrite (Part 2)

I'm back for part 2, but since I'm lazy and hella tired from today's half marathon, I think I'm only gonna cover a few weekends and leave the rest for part 3. I best get to the dirty details before I pass out....

We start 4 weekends ago (jesus, has it been that long since I wrote a post??? wow). On Friday of that week, I went with Carrie and Jenna to some foreigner's magazine party or something in Hongdae. I was spotty on the details, but the little information available seemed to indicate there would be music as well as a primarily foreign clientèle, meaning there would be people to talk to. Now, obviously the people who know me will realize that "people to interact with" is never something that I chalk up as a positive, but in this case, having had 2 straight incredibly boring and isolated weekends alone, I was willing to take the chance. I really was that desperate. Before we could find the place, we of course had to wander around lost for some considerable amount of time as the maps and directions and street names and navigation is always crap in this country. When we finally found the place, we were quite hungry from all the searching, so we settled on a faux-German beer haus in the hopes of actual drinkable beer. On that front, we were successful, as the beers were indeed drinkable. I took my chances on the sausages they were serving. And given that I'm writing this post some 4 weeks later, they turned out okay. Ms. Carrie, having had a bit to drink, felt the need to explain in detail, the damage and blockage I was doing to my colon by eating such filth. Thanks Carr, really needed that. Jenna was delighted to find that her french fry plate came on an actual silver platter. No joke, these guys were classy. Odd, but classy. You can't help but laugh at some of the weird stuff that goes down in this country.

Once dinner was over, we headed over to the party and were thoroughly disappointed. I don't know what we were expecting, but the party wasn't it. Beforehand Carrie had laid it out thusly: "This thing is either going to be really awesome or suck really bad". Sadly, it sucked really bad. They started out on the wrong foot by charging us 10 bucks to get in (okay, fine it was a fund raiser, so no big deal), but then our free drink ticket was only good for one really cheap and shitty drink. Boo. We immediately felt out of place as we sensed that we were the only folks in the place that weren't straddling the 30 year mark. Buzzkill. Also, it was swarming with hipsters. Fucking hate hipsters. One would think I would have something in common with these people given how elitist I am about music, but one must remember how much I despise myself. Thus, I'd prefer not to be within 50 miles of these folks. So we left.

At least the St. Patties Day thing turned it around. The basic premise was this: get yourself to the Irish Pub, pay around 40 something dollars, then gorge yourself on all the food you can eat and all the guinness you can drink. Plus there will be bands performing irish music and even some step dancers. With all that, it would have been pretty hard for it to suck. Anna and I arrived first, as Amy was coming later with some of her foodie friends. Well, because the directions were suspect (see a theme developing?), we headed to the one Irish pub we knew of. Clearly the Gangnam district couldn't have 2 Irish pubs, right? Wrong. We soon found out we were at the wrong one, and that the buffet was at the one we didn't even know existed. Not to worry, as the owners had clearly foreseen the foreigners being dumb and going to the wrong one, as we were politely lead to a car and driven to the actual party, completely free of charge. Pretty awesome I gotta say. Especially when we found out our Korean friends, who also went to the wrong bar, were simply given directions and told to walk. Hahah. Sometimes it pays to be dumb/foreign/beautiful.

Once we were at the pub, we had to wait in line, as they weren't allowing anybody in before 7pm and we arrived early in order to ensure we could get some beer and food before the lines shut down everything (we learned a thing or two from the monstrous lines at the thanksgiving buffet). Ms. Amy was dedicated to get there bright and early, meaning we were at the very front of the line. And given that it was 40 or 50 people deep by the time they let us in, that was a pretty big fucking deal to be at the front. Around 7 they let us in and it was bloodbath. Well, it would have been, had the Korean bartenders and waiters been stupid enough to get in our way. We immediately headed to the buffet and beer lines and filled our plates/gullets. Originally I was disappointed at the lack of Irish food in the buffet (there wasn't really anything Irish to be honest), but then I remembered Irish food kind of sucks, so win for us. And man were we glad to get in there fast, as at their peaks, the beer lines and food lines ran about an hour. Ridiculous to think they can't manage to pour beers fast enough to serve that many people in an hour, but it is what it is. With our stomachs filled (for the moment) with food and beer, things got interesting. It was at this point that Amy told me that her Korean co-worker, Hyemi, would be joining us, and then not so subtly told me that Hyemi found me attractive and that I should hit on her. It wasn't a request, so much as an order to hit on her friend. Now, normally in an instance like this, I would begin sweating profusely, shaking and stammering until I finally retreated to a isolated corner to hide from the women.

It would appear, however, that the Guinesses had loosened me up, as my only response was, “Okay, I’m in.” Surprised me too. Soon after, she arrived with her friend and it was time to step up. Looking back, I sure was feeling funny that evening. I mean, when Anna and I were waiting in line for beer and we spied the ladies staring at yours truly, I felt something strange in my chest. I believe this is generally referred to as “confidence”, but having zero experience with it in the past, I can’t be sure. Maybe it was just indigestion/gas from those tasty Guinesses. Either way, we struck up a conversation and it turned out she didn’t suck. I’m still pleasantly surprised whenever I met someone that doesn’t suck. Perhaps I’m too pessimistic? With the bar filled up, grabbing food and Guiness was out of the question, unless you were content to wait for an hour or so. After waiting for near 30 minutes for some wine and moving nowhere, we just settled for the tap of shite Korean beer. Anna and Amy made themselves scarce, leaving Hyemi and myself plenty of time to chat (coincidence? Perhaps). Most shocking of all was when she went to leave and I asked her out and she said yes. Obviously me not getting shut down is a big thing, but asking someone out after only 3 hours of knowing them? That’s about 4 months quicker than my previous best time. Go me.

After Hyemi left, the group ate a bit more, drank quite a bit more, danced along to and listened to the Irish music before calling it a night at midnight. Early, I admit, but we started drinking and eating at 7, so it was a respectable outing, nonetheless. Before leaving, I managed to run into the other foreign teacher at my elementary school as well one of the Badgers who came to Korea with us. Small world. Ohhh, and then there was the rando guy who wanted to know where Anna was from (his buddies had a bet on it), but Anna wouldn’t tell him, so he was for a time speaking in Spanish to the other Badger trying to find out the dish on Anna. Weird, weird, weird.

Sunday was considerably less dramatic, as Jamie, Amy and I met for lunch in my area, then wandered around the nearby universities, while marveling at the impressive, albeit gaudy architecture. That kind of Greek style of architecture looked just a little out of place in the middle of a relatively dumpy and unimpressive area of Seoul, but I can’t fault them for trying.

The next weekend saw the group taking in multiple sporting events. In the US, that would have probably cost us our entire paychecks, but not so here. On Saturday night, Amy, Anna and I headed out for a FC Seoul game vs. Pohang. Both teams are rather respectable, normally, but the game was anything but exciting. That was okay, as we bought ourselves a family’s worth of cheap beer each, and armed with those annoying long plastic horns (well, Anna and Amy were), we were determined to enjoy ourselves and perhaps make the people sitting around us miserable while doing so. While it pains me to see so many empty seats at the gorgeous Seoul Olympic Stadium (seats 60,000 and attendance hovers around 3 or 4 thousand, max), I do enjoy the freedom to sit pretty much anywhere I want, with nobody too close to me and the ability to stretch out. I appreciated this even more after the following day’s baseball game. Sure, the soccer game was cold, and there were a bunch of annoying high school kids behind us, but FC Seoul won, we got to drink some brews and we only paid like 10 bucks for the tickets. That’s a win in my book.

On Sunday, I met with Hyemi for lunch. I must say it felt very strange not being the super nervous and anxious one of the two, but a very good time was had. That is all I’ll say. Basically I wowed her with my combination of intimidating yet approachable badassitude, sex appeal and overall awesomeness. Actually, it was exactly like that.

With that finished, we headed over to the ballpark to meet with Jamie, Amy and Carrie for some baseball. Now this turned out to be much less fun than we had hoped. For starters, we got lousy tickets. I had gone to the ballpark the day before, to buy tickets in person at the gate, only to find out that they don’t presell tix even a day in advance. What???? How much sense does that make? Maybe that is standard procedure, but it seemed silly to me. Instead they want massive crowds to swarm the gates on the morning of, rather than space it out and have it work more effectively with presales days in advance. Whatever. I arrived 3 hours before the first pitch, assuming I could grab some decent seats. Wrong. Already all the decent seats were taken, leaving only the general admission outfield seats. No biggie I figured. We’d still get seats. Wrong again. As soon as we got into to the park, we realized 1) that the stadium is much too small for the fans of Korea’s most popular sport in a city of 15 million and 2) That they had way oversold the tix in the outfield area. We got there an hour before the game started but there were no seats. Anywhere. All the aisles and steps were taken by people sitting or camping out there, making movement through the park slow, difficult and fucking dangerous. I mean, it was silly of me to think anything in Korea wouldn’t be crowded. Looks like I’ll have to go to soccer games if I want some peace and quiet and alone time. The game was fine, well outside of the first inning, where our team gave up 5 runs and looked like there were gonna get run out of the park. Thankfully, the other teams pitching was just as bad, as they gave up 6 runs in an inning to make the whole thing interesting again. Sadly, the whole sitting in a freaking aisle, with people constantly moving past, and all the group sitting 5 rows away from each other, took away from the enjoyment of the game. Ultimately, we ended up leaving early with the promise that next time we return, we will buy our tickets in advance on line. Man, did that suck.

Ooops, I just realized I’ve now written several pages of this extended post and have yet to cover the reason why I’m a hypocrite. I mean, there’s about a hundred different ways I’m a hypocrite, but in this particular sense it refers to Korean women. Some of you may remember that in the past I talked about Korean women being super superficial, vain, boring, self-absorbed, and immature and that I would/could never get involved with one. Sure, this judgment holds true for the most part, hell it holds true for a lot of women, not just Korean women, but it really was only a matter of time before a cool girl came along and shut me the fuck up. Well, consider me adequately shut up on that subject. The moment I realized I was full of shit was when, while talking in the subway, she told me “I would never have my boyfriend carry my purse. Why? I can carry it myself.” Bam, right there she dispelled one of the biggest examples of some ladies’ vanity or helplessness or whatever. It is completely common to see the boyfriends carrying the girlfriend’s purse, while she carries nothing, so presumably she could carry it herself. Is it because she is playing up how helpless and childish she is, that she needs somebody to carry her things for her? Is it because she is so self-absorbed that she thinks that she is entitled to having a slave/servant to wait on her hand and foot? Does she really believe that she is deserving of such servitude? I don’t know and frankly, I don’t really care to know. What I do know is this: Foot, meet mouth. I think you guys should get acquainted, as you figure to be spending a lot of time together.

Part 3 soon

For Pics, see Amy’s albums “Korean Taste Tour” and “All in V4! Hustle-doo 2010!”