Trying Desperately to Catch Up, Part 3

Well, the US is done. World cup dream over. I kept hoping they would stop playing like chumps and digging big holes for themselves to climb out of but, I guess that was just their style. Really, really unimpressed with that Ghana game. Ghana wasn't even very good and that was the best performance you could trot out. Sad. Korea is done too, which makes me sad cuz I really wanted Korea and America to play so Korea could get wiped out. I know nobody in this country would admit it, but the their national team just wasn't very good. The Argentina game proved just how far away from the elite squads they are. Now for more recapping.

Many, many, many weekends ago (May 15-16, I think) my Korean class ended for the semester and the classmates went out for dinner that Friday. Nothing too special to report except that when wondering around the area we stumbled on a foreign imports store that had, bless the Lord, A&W Root Beer. YUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. It had been 1.5 years since I had tasted that sacred elixir. Much, much too long. Korea drinks, with considerable frequency, Coca-Cola and most other Coke products, but no root beer. They even have Pepsi products now....but no root beer. I have just discovered that A&W's international headquarters are in Malaysia, not that far away, so perhaps a trip is in order. Not like I didn't already want to visit Malaysia. I struggle to understand why they wouldn't import such a tasty drink, but at present I have to chalk it up to Korea's weird (aka terrible) taste preferences. Any country that would willingly drink ginseng concoctions (gag) and actually like the taste of white rice (that's impossible since white rice has no taste...you simply can't like a flavor that doesn't exist) deserves to have its flavor palette questioned. As for the root beer, it was the highlight of my entire weekend. Not the marathon in a weird new city. Not the misadventures in the new weird city. It was definitely the root beer. I may have scared some passerby with the noises I was emitting. Sorry to scare you folks, but I promise I was not getting my rocks off in the middle of the street. Root beer is just really good.

That particular weekend was the Gunsan International Marathon (they can get away with saying "International" since they invited 3 legit black runners from Kenya or somewhere to wave, shake hands and then win the race easily...and they did). Carrie and Jenna had planned to run and I had planned to cheer, since the actual half marathon I ran a few weeks previous was anything but rainbows and kittens. However, Jenna hurt her ankle skateboarding (yeah, I laughed too) so she was stuck cheering just like me. Now we just had to get to Gunsan, and that turned out to be anything but easy. The "plan" (note the quotations) was for all of us to meet in Suwon and then catch a bus down to Gunsan. Sounds easy enough. However, as I am me, I f'ed it up. For starters, I got on the road late and horribly underestimated the time it would take on the subway from my apt to Suwon. As a result, I got into Suwon station 10 minutes before the bus was set to leave and I still had to get across town to the bus terminal. Boo. I accepted my failure and sat down for a tasty FAIL burger in the station, then set off for the terminal. Presumably I would just catch the next bus, departing an hour later, then catch up with the girls in Gunsan. Cept there was no bus an hour later. So 2 hours after the girls I finally was able to leave.

Shit didn't really get any better once I actually got to Gunsan. The ladies had obviously wandered off to find food and a hotel, but as we are in a new and terribly unremarkable town, there was little they could do to navigate me to their location. "Turn left at the store that smells like rotting cabbage." "Ahhhh, which store? They all smell like rotting cabbage!" They figured they had found a potential rendezvous point in the town's "fashion district", a small street closed to traffic that was lined with clothing stores and weirdly tacky lampposts with fish (or was it pelican?) statues on the top. I told my cabbie the name of the area and he didn't understand for a while but eventually seemed to get it, so I figured I was in the clear. When I told him I was meeting my friends, the yuckster responded by asking "Girlfriend?" and when I responded with a "no", he followed with "boyfriend?", to which I also responded "no". hah, very funny. Now just fuck off and drive the damn cab. Which was obviously too much for him to do, as he drove me all the way to the other side of town. Albeit the park he took me to was really pretty and they had a cool concert going on, but it wasn't exactly where I wanted to be. The girls called again and this time I just gave the phone to him and eventually he got it. He then followed that up with yelling at the girls for giving him bad directions. Which would have been warranted had we not been repeating the same name for the place the whole time. In the end, i met up with the girls. And it was only 3-4 hours late. Uggggg.

Now is the time I should probably discuss Gunsan itself. I know I've said this before, but Korea is basically 2 countries. You have the first world, metropolitan side, consisting of Seoul, Busan, Daejeon, Daegu and the other 6 or so towns with one million plus people. Then you have the rest, which is very much not metropolitan, sometimes not even first world. Think rural, rural, rural Wisconsin. Or Wyoming. Pretty and woodsy, sure, but fuck all to do, see, enjoy. Gunsan is one of the latter. The people in such towns are as you would expect from a rural, rural, rural Wisconsin town: quite insular, maybe a tad out of touch, and generally super curious about anything new that the town doesn't have (which is a hell of a lot). We as beautiful, sparkling, mysterious foreign creatures (kinda like Twilight, but much less shitty) count as one of those "new" things. We do not like this extra attention and interest from the locals. Not at all. All the staring. Makes you feel like you have 12 arms or wings or something really freakish to warrant all that attention. But no, we have 2 arms, 2 legs, no wings, hair, nose, mouth, and teeth, just like the locals. No big deal, right? Add to that that every taxi driving by assumed we were lost and made sure to slow down, get our attention or just honk at us, and you could see why the girls just got plain annoyed. Jenna has always lived in a 1 million plus town here, so she has little experience with the small town fascination with us, while Carrie got the hell out of the small town last august and hasn't looked back. I, with my elite skills at zoning out things around honed from years of zoning out the parents (sorry mom and dad....), fared much better.

But surely this town must have something to see or do? It's a coastal city, so there has to be a beach or something? Well, we really didn't find one. The girls did find a nautical theme park or museum or something, but that turned out to be just a couple of beached, old, rotting fishing boats. Charming. Sure it had your standard skyscraper apartments that fit together ohhh so nicely with the rest of the city's skyline, which is one or two stories at best. Yes, you have a flat, flat, flat skyline, then suddenly a handful of 20 story apartment buildings. Yeah, that looks really nice. It also had your typical fashion areas and Korean restaurants and PC rooms and red light districts, but we hate that shit. That park that the taxi guy took me to was quite nice, with the lake, lighted bridge and concert stage, but hardly worth the price of admission. In short, I shall not be returning to Gunsan.

But wait, they have built this massive sea-wall/bridge a bunch of miles outside of town to reclaim land from that dastardly ocean that keeps stealing all their land and rice and women! Ha, take that sea! You blue, wet bastard! Even better is that the land taken back from sea is going to be used for an international business free zone and possibly an amusement park, which is so much cooler than those egrets and cranes that used to just have sex there and make babies. Yuck, get a room birds! May I suggest one at the new Samsung Ocean View Resort, attached to the Hyundai Adventure Land amusement park?





Beautiful, no?

Yeah, they really did build this seawall to reclaim land from the sea. And it really was a breeding/nesting area for cranes and such, but will obviously be much better suited as a international business zone. Not sure what exactly is going to draw the international businesses to Gunsan, but I don't feel like raining on Gunsan's parade, so I'll keep that criticism to myself.

While doomed to fail as a business or tourism draw (seriously, there is not even a possible alternate reality where this would become a huge global attraction, let alone reality....its a goddamned wall that runs out into the ocean. That's it), the wall/bridge can work quite nicely for a marathon. Just run out onto the bridge for 13 miles, then turn around and come back. Done and done. So Sunday morning, our little group had to make it out to this wall. Again, sounds easy enough. We left in plenty of time, as we weren't sure how long it would take to get there. We contemplated walking, but just to be safe we settled on a taxi and damn were we glad we did. This wall ended up being 20-30 minutes outside of town, by car, driving at highway speeds. Upon arriving, we realized that this dream of a global tourism and business destination must be a newly formed one, as there still wasn't anything there yet. A bunch of storage facilities for the various shipping companies that operated out of the port sure, but not much else. But we had a half-marathon to prep for, so enough worrying about the dumpy environs.

I've never been involved with a marathon in the states, so I can't say if this is true for all marathons, but Korean marathons are ridiculous. However, given what I have seen in my time here, I would wager that its probably just Korean marathons that are ridiculous. For starters, when we went to pick up Carrie's number and timer, we discovered that she had been registered as a male. Nothing serious, but a FAIL nonetheless. From there we listened to the MCs on stage, getting everybody pumped for the run. They even had English (kudos for them for kinda carrying through with the "International" thing) announcements. Cept they were from a recording, so the MCs had to awkwardly stand around on stage, which I found humorous. Then for part of their inspirational warm-up they played recorded music. My favorite choice? The theme from the original Star Wars movies (see video below for clip). Then they trotted a few black, legit runner looking guys out on stage and everybody clapped. I didn't catch where the guys were from but they were legit runners, as they easily finished 1, 2, and 5. Again, nice effort on the "International" thing. Carrie kept getting harassed by this creepy old guy who was going around and spraying all the runners with a water bottle (GOD I HOPE IT WAS WATER......) on their back on or on their legs or something. Just weird. And then there was these guys (see below).



Maybe there are medics like that at American marathons too, but I don't know. What I do know is that men wearing roller blades and fluorescent medic shirts with bright yellow balloons attached to them is funny looking. Especially when they are stretching out in unison. I can't be the only one who finds that funny, can I?

Soon enough it was time to race and we said goodbye to Carrie and found ourselves a spot along the starting line and tried to pick Carrie out of the crowd. It shouldn't have been hard, seeing how she was probably the only super curly haired white girl in the whole race, but sadly we failed to find her until the race had started and people spaced out. Maybe you guys will have better luck.



Did you see her?

Well, with the race started and Carrie gone for around 2 hours, we had to do something. Unfortunately there was so little to do, so after wandering around for a bit and grabbing some food, we wandered out on the amazing seawall. And boy, was it amazing. There was the road and then more road and then even more road.



There was a so called "Dolphin Park" out some ways on the sea wall, but no dolphins. But we were able to do a decent amount of people watching and there were some interesting ones. Hell, there was a Buddhist guy running the full marathon in complete Buddhist gear, which is impressive since those clothes don't breathe super well. Love Buddhists. Just love em. There was also a group of onlookers banging away on drums to create some awful racket that is affectionately referred to as "traditional Korean music". I thought it was cruel punishment for the people coming down the final stretch of the run. Those courageous souls have already run 12, maybe 26 miles, so their legs and chests and bodies must ache something fierce and you folks are gonna add bleeding eardrums and massive brain hemorrhaging to that? I call that cruel.

When Carrie finished up, she told us how incredibly boring the whole race had been, looking at the same damn straight road in front of you and the nothingness of the open ocean on your sides. That and how a Korean runner had taken her under his wing and run with her at a pace much faster than she wanted to go, leading to her almost not making it back. Thought we could get a little peace and anonymity when running? Wrong. I've heard stories of people being creeped on by older fellows or hit up for English conversation...during the damn race. I do not kid.

After some quick food and water, we got the hell back to the bus terminal and got the hell out of town. It's not you Gunsan, it's me. Well, actually it's you. Sorry. I'll call you (no I won't).

Pics: See album "A little bit of Everything", pics 1-13

Videos:

Trying Desperately to Catch up, Part 2

Bleg. I'm not making nearly enough progress in catching up as I would like. Having a home computer would really help with that. But a week after I dropped it off and no word. I guess I did understand him when he said it would be a month. Go me and my Korean! Still doesn't make up for the fact that I have no PC. To fill the massive void left by the PC, I've taken to watching way, way too much TV. So much for actually being productive. The World Cup is going on currently and that's wonderful, despite the first round of games being terribly uninteresting for the most part. I'll have to devote some serious time to that in the future, but for the time being, I really, really, really need to get this story back to the present.

Way, way, way back on May 5, the Koreans celebrated "Children's Day", which obviously is a completely unnecessary holiday since, according to parents (mine included), every freakin' day of the year is a holiday for kids. I tend to agree, although not many kids in the world could use a break from work and school more than the Koreans. But really, its a holiday that I get off from work, so proceed Korea. This year's holiday fell on a Wednesday, thereby shooting any chance of a long weekend, but nonetheless our little group got out and about to enjoy themselves. The group, through some friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, latched itself onto a big gathering of white people at the Han River Park. The plan was for the 15 or so us to rent bikes and roll around for a while, stopping to rough up kids for the lunch money and other gang-ish activities. Don't get much more terrifying than 15 young white people running (well...biking) amok through a park filled with children. Mothers, lock up your sons and daughters. Our own little subgroup proceeded more slowly then the others and were quickly left behind. Which was okay as we got to witness somebody wiping out over the handlebars of their bike...sans helmet. They were okay, amazingly, but the whole thing was just so damn horrifying yet compelling. Ohhh and if you were wondering if Koreans ride bikes like they drive cars, grocery carts, and themeselves on sidewalks....they do. Many a near accident when riders ahead of us would stop for no reason in the pathway or when pedestrians would abruptly walk in front of us, forcing us off the path and towards certain doom. In retrospect, going to a major kiddy hangout spot on a holiday dedicated to kids having fun probably was a poor choice if we were looking for minimal crowds, peace and quiet, etc.

After an hour, the entire group reconvened for intense relaxing and snacking in the grass. That's kind of my specialty, so naturally I rocked it. Sadly, everyone had to go home to prep for school the next day, so most of the group broke up, but our little posse headed downtown for some faux-Mexican. And margaritas. With bellies filled again, most of the crew headed home, while Jenna and I wandered around the stream. Here we saw something that actually shocked us. And given the amount of bat shit crazy stuff we've seen over here, that is saying something. Along the stream, which, mind you, is in the center of Seoul and has hundreds, if no thousands of visitors every day, we saw a young boy peeing in the bushes with his mother watching/coaching him on. Yup, pants around his ankles and going to town on the vegetation. If this stream in the middle of the woods, no big deal. No bathroom around, I get it. I do it all the time. However, we happen to be in the middle of a town of 15 million people. There is bound to be a toilet somewhere nearby. Really all you have to do is walk up the 10 or 12 steps to road level, then cross the street and find a coffee shop. Hell, the hardest part would be choosing which coffee shop's bathroom to use, as there are several hundred in a few block radius. In the end, after the shock wore off, I have nothing but respect for the little guy. Since the sidewalk is quite narrow from side to side, we literally walked inched behind him. No flinching, no freaking out, no nothing with all those strangers walking by. And for not whirling around and peeing on my shoes, I salute you young man. Keep fighting.

That weekend I did one thing and one thing only: capoeira. The capoeira workshops was finally here, and the Contra Mestre had flown in from Australia just for the weekend, so everything else was off. And I mean everything. I was terribly curious to see how it would turn out for several reasons: 1) I've never seen another group's mestre, so I had no idea how they would measure up or what they would be like to train with and 2) As any observer can see, the group here in Korea is very weak in several key areas of capoeira and we wondered if the mestre would throw a fit about that. Generally speaking, the group here is good at floreio (acrobatics) and thats it. Music, takedowns, ground game, maculele, flow, etc? Not so good. The music is the biggest one, as most of our (referring to the foreign members) teachers from home stress that music is the absolute most important thing.

As for the actual workshop, it went south quickly. The mestre immediately focused on ground game combinations and movements and our output was terribly lacking, in his eyes. So he stopped the drill, lectured us about he was gonna have to go back to the basics with us, and then he did. The korean students struggled the most, as they had major difficulties with the instruction. As the mestre is a Brazilian who has lived in Australia for the past 6 years, he speaks zero Korean, making it hard for the students who are pretty weak at English to follow along. They are so used to being able to understand every single word the instructor says and then ask questions that they understandably don't pay as much attention to the actual demonstration as they probably should. On the flip side, the non-Korean speaking members of the group generally ignore the English/Konglish/Korean instructions of a normal class, as it tends to just muddle and confuse things, and instead focus solely on the physical demonstration of the movements.

The other major point of focus for the workshops? Music. Ouch, 0 for 2. And it got kind of ugly from there. When we moved to the music section, rather than just jump into the songs and go, we were forced to spend considerable time on making sure everybody could play the instruments at all. Part of the way through I felt like we were wasting the mestre's time and he probably felt the same way.

Contra-Mestre Nei was a cool bastard though. Even with all the disappointment and sadness in his eyes. For starters, he is a short, short man, maybe 5'7" or so, but built. He probably weighs the same as me. Couldn't push him off his center of gravity no matter what. Very sociable guy too. Hell, I was never afraid he would randomly kick me for fucking up, which is a nice change of pace from previous mestres. Although, he never had any speeches about leaving your mom at the bus stop, which is a huge letdown. Overall, cool guy, great teacher.

The weirdest moment was after the final class ended and we were all heading out for dinner as a group. Generally, the mestre, because he is the mestre, gets to decide where we go to eat and everybody else has to suck it up. That's just how it is. Koreans clearly understand this principle as they do it for their grandparents, bosses, parents, hell anybody older than them. Just shut up and do exactly what the senior says. The idea is ingrained in their cultural consciousness. I hate it so so much but that's because I have problems respecting or following authority figures. The American in me, I guess. So it stands to reason that when the contra-mestre wanted to go to the Brazilian BBQ restaurant, we would fucking go, no questions. Hell, I was 130% in as Brazilian BBQ is delicious and not at all Korean food, so double win. The Korean students started whining about the price, saying they don't have the money. After contemplating having the group break up (Koreans to cheapy fried chicken place, contra-mestre and foreign folk to Brazilian), the contra-mestre decided, in the interest of keeping the group together, to just eat at the lousy fried chicken place. So yeah, we had the big group dinner at a KFC, basically. The really asinine thing? The bill per person at the fried chicken place was only 7 or 8 bucks less than the all you can eat Brazilian BBQ. WTF. I really don't think the guys are so poor they can't afford 8 dollars for a better meal. Although, they did shoot down the only other attempt to go for Brazilian after a previous demo, so perhaps they are just terrified of or unable to eat any food that doesn't feature white rice and kimchi. If that's so, the world might be a scary and difficult place for you guys.

Complaints aside, the workshop was good. We got to try new movements (YEAH!), train under a different instructor (YEAH!) and actually practice music in class (DOUBLE YEAH!!!). All in all, a very good, but tiring weekend.

Photos: sorry, none

Videos: Bike Trip of the Han












OMG I FINALLY FIGURED OUT HOW TO IMBED VIDEO. GO ME!!

We’ve got some catching up to do

And I ain’t kidding. If my math is correct (and it rarely is), I’ve got 7 weekends of adventures to write about. Yikes. What the hell have I been doing for the last 2 months?....I have no idea. No volleyball anymore, so no more excuses. As for the broken PC, well that is a legitimate excuse. I took it to the shop yesterday and from what I gathered (given the explanation was solely in Korean), something is wonky with the motherboard but because my computer is from America they don’t have the particular model of motherboard in stock. What this means is that I have to wait a month to have it functioning again, they say. I might have caught something about it being ready in a week if they can get the part from China, but maybe not. The whole “it will take a month, probably” was very clear. No failure of translation there. While the whole encounter makes one feel pretty good about his Korean skills, the same giddiness cannot be shared for the fate of the pc. I kinda need that thing for anything outside of school. More than the internet and its various goodies, the void formerly filled by music has been the worst. This country can make me crazy enough, but without music of any kind in my apartment, you are just asking for a psychotic break.

I believe our first stop on the journey is the last weekend in April, but I can’t really be sure. Sure feels like a lot more than 7 weekends ago. During that week I had tried to set up something with the group, having not seen many of them for several weeks, but unsurprisingly, nobody responded. I mean, its just me. As desperation started to set in Saturday morning, I pulled out my last hope: straight up whining. Yup, I sunk to sending out a particularly emo and whiny text about how bored I am and how I have nothing to do. And 2 suckers….er…friends responded! First was an Indian dinner with Jenna. Sure the food was nothing special, but never underestimate just how wonderful average Indian food can taste to someone who has been eating Korean food all week. And if you are curious, I rank Korean food as my least favorite ethnic food ever (at least of the ones I’ve eaten). Indian, Mexican, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai all blow it out of the water.

With dinner over, it was over to the capoeira demo at a bar in the foreigner district. Which easily qualifies as the weirdest demo I’ve ever done. The premise for performing in a bar was that a friend of the group was putting together a “Stop the Violence in Africa” fundraiser and was getting different performers to come in and ply their trade. We were followed by house dancers and a group of belly dancers, so it was all over the place. And it was interesting, to put it mildly. Originally I was worried about the floor being sticky or slippery, due to it being a bar floor and the multitudes of substances that get spilled on those things, but that turned out to be fine. Our real obstacles were the low ceiling and the mini stage. The ceiling was a threat for any manner of high flying stuff, as I could nearly reach it from a standing position, but the stage, yikes. Sure it was only a few inches tall at best, but it spread around about half of our performing area, meaning that if you aren’t careful when you are moving about, you can easily trip on/over it. And one guy actually did. Cartwheeled out, landed, stepped back, tripped over the edge of the stage and just about took his head off on a chair and table. Otherwise, the performance went smoothly. Well, for everybody else. I still looked like the awkward uncoordinated bastard I am, most notably during the closing. The had planned that the group was all to break up into little 1vs1 games and then when the music stopped everybody would freeze in some sort of cool floreio pose or something (handstand, headstand, etc). Which is pretty cool when you have even numbers. We had an odd number. Guess who got to ginga by himself? Yup. Question: How does one not look like a doofus when everybody around you is playing games and you are the playing with yourself? Answer: Sorry, you are fucked. Unless you decided to actually start “playing with yourself”, then you’d just be a disgusting ingrate, rather than a doofus.

On Sunday, the second sucker came into town to play some soccer. Course, the field was being occupied by some teams scrimmaging. Jamie and I stuck around for a bit, talked trash about how we could play with these chumps (we really could have), kicked the ball around for a bit, then headed for lunch. Not much besides talk of “drinking a woman’s bathwater” and other equally disturbing topics. Which frankly I can never get enough of.

The following weekend (the first for May, methinks) was Hyemi’s birthday. Birthdays are kind of a big thing, so I actually dressed up for it. Yup, you heard right, I dressed up. Nice shoes and everything. Don’t believe me? Well, I didn’t take any pictures (proving how un-Korean I am), so I guess you’ll just have to trust me. First up, we headed off to dinner in the French Village. Why I continue to call it the French village, I have no idea. I’ve seen the same number of French in the empty Korean countryside (zero) as I have there, but they do have French flags lining the road. Ohhhh, and some of the store’s signs are in French too. Guess that counts for something. Anyway, after some wandering about looking for a suitable restaurant, Hyemi settled on Eric’s New York Steak House. And no, I did not suggest that particular restaurant for the terribly blatant sexual innuendo about Hyemi wanting to eat Eric’s meat, etc, etc. It just so happens that restaurant is damn good. But I guess I can blame you guys. I have been known to enjoy a good innuendo or two in my day. The restaurant, however, being terribly small and Koreans really enjoying Eric’s meat (tehehehehehe), was full up, so we had to wait. To keep us occupied, the karaoke bar next door allowed us to wait in a room and watch some TV. That allowed us to catch up on one of the most popular Korean soap operas playing right now, My Older Sister Cinderella. When I watch the show, I get the sinking feeling that I’m watching the same episode over and over and over. Probably because every episode consists solely of a combination of the following scenes: Character F1 (Female 1) cries alone, F2 (Female 2) cries alone, F1 cries while M1 (Male 1) looks on dramatically, F2 cries while M1 looks on dramatically, F1 cries while M2 looks on dramatically, F2 cries while M2 looks on dramatically, F1 stares emotively (pensively? Dramatically?) off in the distance while alone, F2 stares emotively off in the distance while alone, F1 stares emotively off in the distance while either M1 or M2 look on, and F2 stares emotively off in the distance while either M1 or M2 look on. And then to really spice things up, the girls cry or stare emotively together. Seriously, everytime I flip past the show on tv (and that’s about 3 to 4 times a day…its on a lot), one or both of the girls is crying or about 2 seconds from crying. I just can’t understand what would motivate people to watch such junk.

We eventually got to sit down to enjoy some steaks and forget about how lame that K-drama is. Nothing else to report there, cept that steaks are delicious. But then, you already knew that. Unless you’re a vegetarian. In which case, I pity you. From there we moved to the jazz club for some jazz music, obviously. The music was good as always, but my favorite oddball foreigner pianist (of which I know only one) wasn’t playing that night. The dude can play, but what I really enjoy is his conversations with the crowd between songs because he speaks solely in rapid English, so everything feels like some sort of inside joke between he and I that the other patrons can’t understand. This time we got a seat right up front. Not really noteworthy in it of itself, but the next time I came they shoved me up on the second floor in the corner. But maybe that was because we came in t-shirts, shorts, sneakers and I was carrying my berimbau. Hell, I didn’t even think they would let us in.

Upon leaving the establishment, Hyemi made it known that she was hungry and needed a snack. Even though we had a large steak dinner a few hours before. And I wasn’t even hungry yet (and I’m always hungry). And she hadn’t been able to finish all of her meal anyways. Confusing, no? She was a hankering for burger, but we were in one of the richest and ritziest neighborhoods in Seoul, so we have a problem, right? I can’t imagine finding a low class burger joint in the middle of Beverly Hills, but Korea is so not America, so we found several in no time. Soon after, I found myself seated at McDonalds, eating a Big Mac in my nicest suit (alright, my only suit), while looking at the Lamborghini and Ferrari dealerships across the street. I figure if you asked high school graduate Eric to make a list of all the things he’ll do in his life, this one would have been dead last, right after finding Jesus and becoming a born again Christian. Ohhh the places we shall go… What was a McDonalds in a multimillion dollar area like, you ask? Did they get their beef from extremely endangered animals? Nah, it was pretty much the same as before, cept all the clientele wore very expensive suits and looked like they made six figures.

From there, we wandered around the area trying to find a jimjilbang for Hyemi to sleep at for the night (since she missed her train), only to discover it was across the street from the jazz club. At least we got to stretch our legs for an hour or so. The ride home didn’t cease to entertain either. After waiting much too long for a cab (why so few cabs for a club/nightlife area? Is everybody so rich they just have their own chauffeur?), I managed to snag a cabbie that made the wait worth it. He started with some idle chit chat, nothing special, perhaps to size me up to see if I was cool. Eventually he must have decided that I was, so he quickly asked if I was okay with some music. He hastily threw in a CD of his and from there, shit got ridiculous pretty quickly. Now, I’ve met a few people here, so I’ve developed expectations and understandings of what music Koreans generally like. For the most part, Koreans really seem to like cheesy and corny pop/ballads. This guy’s music was not that. The CD went in and immediately the cab was booming with techno and trance music set many, many volume levels too high. Not unusual for a person my age to listen to, but the cabbie was my age plus another 20 years or so. And then he started dancing. Yup, flying down the highway at 70mph or so and dancing like it was going out of style. Sure, you dance move repertoire is severely limited when buckled into a car seat, but he was busting a move nonetheless. Looked a lot like the guys from the “Night at the Roxbury” skit dancing, to be honest. Now that I think about it, I’m not even sure his hands were on the steering wheel. Bad-ass. A couple of ridiculous minutes later, he abruptly turned off the music, saying “That was a little loud”, and the spectacle was over. When he asked what I thought of the music, I responded, “I liked it”. What else could I have said?

The next day, after brunch with Hyemi, I headed back to the soccer pitch and was finally able to get on that nice groomed field. And I even got invited to play in some pick up games. And I represented. Didn’t hurt that most of my teammates had about 10-15 years (or more) on me, so I looked pretty damn good in comparison. My favorite part was when the guy I was matched up against tried to muscle me off the ball. It didn’t exactly work as he is about as tall as my elementary school students (came up to my chest), and he was the one who ended up on the ground. Ohhh how I miss soccer. And while we are on the subject of football/soccer/the greatest game around……THE WORLD CUP IS HERE!!!!!!!!! I’m just a little excited. Korea takes the World Cup really seriously and that makes me so happy. I don’t really care that much about how Korea does, but I’m still going out to cheer with a few thousand fans downtown for the Greece game cuz….well, its gonna be nuts. And one doesn’t really need a better reason than that.

전봇대, at your service (for the non-Korean speakers, that’s “john boat day”)

Yup, that’s me. Or at least my new Korean name. I’ve never been given one before, so one of my students decided she would make one for me. It means “telephone pole” or “utility pole” or “light pole”. Basically a exceedingly tall and skinny shaft, made of wood or metal or concrete/stone/etc, that lights sidewalks or carries electrical wires. Sounds like me to a T. Sure its not a real name, as I doubt the first syllable “전” is a viable family name and the given/first name of “봇대” don’t mean anything in Chinese characters, which is how most names are chosen. Well, “대” does mean something, but “line, generation” isn’t really a great name. However, the name does have 3 syllables like 99.99999999999999999% of all Korean names, so its good enough for me. Plus the sizeable amount of phallic imagery and sexual innuendo that comes out of the name amuses me. So it can stay.


At this point, though it breaks my heart to admit it, I must recount our elimination from the volleyball tourney. Yes, my foreign juju and magic could only carry us for so far. The final day’s games started out so well too. The first team we played was so clearly overmatched that I was shocked they had even made it that far. Before getting their shit thoroughly handed to them by us, they lost to the other team 15-21, 9-21. Then we beat up on them 21-10, 21-9 or something near that. Just wasn’t even close. In the first game alone, I was able to lay down near 10 spikes and I’m not even the primary spiker. I also got to lay down my best hit of the entire tourney, aka I finally hit some dude. And man did it feel good. Set was perfect, spike was clean, right at the guy. But he wasn’t able to move fast enough to adjust and get his hands around and cracked him square in the chest, followed by him getting knocked to the floor. The best part: the viewing audience’s shocked gasps and ohhhs. So, so, so satisfying. And pretty damn tasty.


However, the tastiness didn’t stick around long. After the warm-up match it was on to the deciding match with the other team remaining with a shot at the finals at stake. And this team could play. They had 2 youngish players near my height with plenty of volleyball skill. And we could not stop them. Not even a little. It didn’t help that we suddenly weren’t as perfect as we were the previous match. Not much to say for the final match. Their big guys went other directions for their spiking, taking me out of the equation and leaving me a spectator on defense. These guys were good enough that the rest of the team couldn’t block any of their spikes and nobody could dig them out in the back line either, meaning they were scoring every time we served to them. For us to have kept pace, we would have had to be perfect on their serves. And we weren’t. The microcosm of the whole thing was when the other team went to spike, put it down cleanly and easily, and somehow managed to shatter our blocker’s glasses and cut up his face while doing so. I still don’t even know how it happened, but those glasses were fucked. Lenses popped out, possibly broken themselves, while the frame was broken at the nose piece and the segment that rests on the ears was snapped off. In a word (or two), utterly fucked. As soon as I saw that I thought, “well, that’s not foreboding at all…” In the end, we played pretty well, but not perfect and thusly was defeated, 14-21, 13-21. Not a pretty way to end it, but so it goes.


There was little reason for everybody to feel down afterwards, as we had a party planned win or lose. And this time it was actually at school, instead of a lame restaurant. In about as close as you can come to a backyard cookout here in Korea, the teachers broke out little portable burners in the science lab, threw some pork on the grill, cut up some watermelons, and started eating. Sure we were inside, but with all the windows open and the breeze blowing through, it felt damn good. The drinking was minimal this time, but it made its way to me soon enough. The soju ran out before I was to drink, so they had to get creative. The vice-principal ran off and came back with a bottle of Johnnie Walker whiskey, perhaps from a secret personal stash. The most exuberant of the drinkers at the school then poured me a shot. Except he used a regular sized Dixie cup, instead of a mouthwash sized cup. And he poured it to the top. Also remember that Mr. Walker is about 35% alcohol (I imagine), while soju is 17%. That’s a big difference. Can’t really take pulls of that at the same speed and expect to live. In the end I got some help and only had to take 3 shots out of the cup. And I didn’t die. Kinda anti-climatic I know. But then I won a watermelon. The teachers raffled off all the left over food and I won a watermelon, along with some lettuce. But its just a watermelon Eric, you say. Well, watermelons here are usually around 15 bucks for a good sized one, meaning I never eat them. Hell, there’s even a picnic this weekend to take advantage of said watermelon. Watermelon + summer + lovely weather + weekend + picnic = Happy. Write that equation down.


Wednesday was election day and that was wonderful for several reasons. 1) We got a day off so as to encourage people to vote. Sure most people still don’t vote, instead doing something fun (how absurd) with their families. Makes no difference to me, as I can’t vote anyways. Reason 2 is that now the insufferable election nonsense can go away. I don’t really wanna talk about, as it just pisses me off, but in a nutshell it is trucks driving around blaring music way too loudly at all hours, and its supporters dancing and yelling anywhere and everywhere in public. There is no escape from it. If you wish to be more informed, watch the following video.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX4l2O8t-lg


Well, for the actual holiday, Jamie and I went and walked around Children’s Grand Park. As you might expect, there were lots of children. But we came to see the zoo and get the hell out of our houses, so we didn’t care that there were so many anklebiters everywhere. What I did care about was the sad state of the zoo. The cages are too small, with too many animals per cages. People throw all manner of garbage and food in for the animals. Bleg. Zoos here just make me sad. But the weather and the animals were just too awesome to spoil the whole thing. Plus, we got to walk around and talk about all manner of inappropriate subjects mere feet away from impressionable youth, which is always fun. And we made some babies cry on the subway with our terrifying foreign faces. Toughen up baby, its not like you have to look at this face every day of your freakin’ life.


Ahhh, I’m out of time here at work and I still haven’t gotten to cover all the past weekends…boooo. Not having a computer at home sucks. Maybe next time.

Volleyball: The Quest to the Top

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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.

Why I love volleyball

Now, first let me say that volleyball is by no means my favorite sport. Far from it in fact. Hell, most aspects of the game I couldn’t really give two shits about. But spiking???? SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD. I’m still trying to figure out just why the act of spiking fills me with such joy and I shall try to extrapolate the answers below.

My thinking at present goes something like this: I like to win. At anything. I believe the word is “competitive”. And I always want to win and win big at that. Close, hard fought games are fun to watch, but I imagine most (if not all) competitors want to win convincingly, to definitively show that they are far and away better than their opponents. For me, I’m not talking just winning big, I’m talking embarrassingly big. I want to embarrass whoever I’m up against. Does that mean I have no honor? Probably, but that’s a strange, somewhat antiquated concept anyways.

Now outside of winning by some huge lopsided margin like 60-0 for football or 5-0 for soccer, etc, etc, how can one go about embarrassing their adversary? How can you do it in game, rather than just on the final stat sheet? Every sport has them. Soccer has the nutmeg, basketball has crossing somebody up, and football has where you run somebody over. Volleyball has spiking it at someone.

Why is that so embarrassing to the opponent? Cuz you are basically saying to the other team, “I’m going to hit this right at you because I have so little respect for your ability and you still won’t be able to return it”. Demeaning in itself, but add to that the physical pain suffered by having a rapidly moving volleyball hit you in the head, face, junk, and other soft tissue areas and then you have a deadly combo. The other sports are lacking in this physical pain aspect. The nutmeg? No physical pain unless you can manage to bounce the ball off the players groin before hitting through the legs. If so, then you are a god among men. Crossing somebody up? Unless you literally broke their ankles, no physical pain. And running somebody over in football? Probably leads to a fair bit of pain for yourself, as colliding bodies always hurts. With spiking, its all give and no take in regards to pain. What can I say? I’ve got a big heart. I love giving.

Another advantage is the frequency in which you get to attempt this maneuver. The nutmeg is humiliating, but it can be very easily defended and rarely works after the first time, as the other team will be expecting it. Not to mention that you can give the ball away really easily this way. Times per game: 2 or 3. With crossing someone up, it is entirely dependent on your defender. If they are decent, they won’t follow the ball and thus won’t be faked out, even the first time. Even a bad defender could wise up and just play further away from you, thus rendering the move useless. Times per game: 3-5 (bad defender) or 0 (good defender). With football, you are naturally going to want to avoid contact rather than inviting it. That’s basic rules of the game as you are not going to break tackles every time you are hit by somebody. Plus getting hit by somebody hurts. Times per game: a couple. But volleyball? Ideally, the spike is your goal every single point. As the primary spike guy, the idea is for me to smash the ball at the other team every single point of every single game. That’s a lot of points. We play 3 sets, with 21 pts per game. So realistically, we are looking around 10 smashes per game, maybe more, maybe less. 30 > 3. Sure my arm is tired by the end, but its so worth it.

But can’t they return the ball if you hit it at them, you say. True they can, but hopefully they get a little “deer in the headlights” syndrome and freeze up just enough to mess up the return. Plus, actually controlling a spike is hard enough when its not aimed at your head. Then once you’ve got them flinching every time you wind up, you can pretty much hit it anywhere and they won’t be able to return it.

Now we just need to actually play the real game and quit having it postponed. My teammates are tired of my bloodlust.

And that was my treatise on why spiking is wonderful. My name is Eric, and yes, I’m a bad person.