Eric Vs. The Machines, Part 3

Yup, that’s right folks. I have somehow managed to cause another catastrophic failure with my personal PC. My batting average is currently 3 for 3. 3 PCs, 3 breakdowns/crashes within the first 2 years of acquisition. While every major league baseball player would kill for a 1.000 average, I’d prefer to knock down the average a few points. Im weird like that. At present I still have no idea what’s wrong with it. Came home last Thursday to find that the PC would still whistle, hum and pop when I turned it on, but nothing would display on the screen. Thinking it was just a failed monitor, I tried to run the video through my little TV, but that failed. Course, I may have been doing it wrong. I just prefer to think that machines hate me. Feelings mutual you metallic pieces of shit. Being in Korea has only complicated matters, as if I need to send it back to the manufacturer (who presumably is in the US), that would take forever. Also not being able to speak the language will complicate any discourse with the local repairmen.

No computer at home has left me with a little bit of time on my hands. No PC means no internet (what with all the time I spend websurfing…and stuff….), no music (as most of my music is of the electronic variety and also the PC is my sole CD player), and no movies (again, no CD player). All this extra time would be great for allowing me to finally catch up with the blog posts….cept that also requires a computer to type out. Crap. I guess I could write the posts at the internet cafes, but no thanks. Ewwww. You ever been in one of those places??? While being internet-less really stinks, it’s the lack of music that’s killing me. All I have is silence and drunken yelling from outside my window. Eventually I’m gonna wear out all the CD’s in my mental library and I’ll probably go insane once the music stops. Or does the fact that I already hear music in my head mean I’m already insane? Tough to say.

Now to get to some actual exploits. If my numbers are correct, I have 6 weekends to talk about, including but not limited to, the volleyball tourney, capoeira workshop, marathon, children’s day fun, and A&W Root Beer. And I know you know which one Im most excited about. You’re damn right it’s the A&W Root Beer. Its been a long time. Korea can’t make a good beer to save their souls, so obviously they have no idea what root beer is. But hey, they got that kimchi thing down and that’s working pretty well for them. As you might have guessed, I’m not gonna try and cram all that into one post. Volleyball will be sure to get its own post, and the rest will probably get chopped up into 2 or 3 posts, basically however much I can crap out before I have to go home for the day.

The story starts way back in Mid April (the weekend of 16th-18th, I think). For lack of ideas, Hyemi and I ended up in Hongdae for dinner. She was really craving a hamburger so we looked and we looked and we looked for a burger place and we eventually ended up…….at a Vietnamese Pho restaurant. Huh??? Yeah, I didn’t understand the jump either, but I wasn’t making the decisions, so I kept my mouth shut. After dinner and a brief stop at one of those “Jazz club in name only” Jazz club (one of these days I’m gonna realize that just because the sign says “Jazz club” doesn’t mean its any less likely to play Korean shit pop on the stereo), we settled into the fancy noraebang establishment. Hyemi had previously suggested we go, but when the time came, she was surprisingly hesitant. Methinks she had finally begun to realize that I wasn’t lying when I said I was a terrible singer.

Once there our hero was faced with a dicey situation, namely what to sing. Personal faves such as anything by Tenacious D (but mostly “Fuck Her Gently”) haven’t managed to make the jump over the pond, so already I’m working with a greatly depleted deck. Add to that that I’m on a date and such favs while in Korea, such as “Dick in a Box”, might not go over so well. Gotta know your audience and my usual hits just weren’t gonna cut it here. Hell, my usual songs probably would have had her fleeing the building screaming or in tears, with a call to the police mixed in there somewhere.

Since I didn’t want to a Beatles song or a pop song pre 1970 (trust me, they have every single one of those), I had to dig deep. Thank god they’ve heard of Eric Clapton and Carlos Santana. Although the Santana one boggles the mind. The dude is Latino and plays the guitar, neither of those things being especially popular or well-received here. But sure enough, when I did Santana’s “Smooth” off the Supernatural album, Hyemi knew all the words. Somehow, somewhere, that song made it through the cultural wall around Korea that allows only things of questionable quality in from foreign lands. My thinking: Korea did its research on Santana and found out that he did a song with Chad Kroeger of Nickelback. Well, its common world-wide knowledge that Nickelback is utter wank, so the Koreans probably just assumed that anyone that associated with musicians such as those must also be utter wank. Thanks Nickelback. Thanks to you guys, I didn’t have to sing just Michael Buble or Josh Groban or Frank Sinatra.

Well, that’s one weekend down, 5 to go. More soon, I promise. Really.