so here's an update.
people have been griping about how since i left andong my blog has been rather dull. well i've settled in here in seoul, and there's little to tell...
i work
i go home
i rent movies
i go out with my coworkers and my other friends
that's about it. we went out for messican food today and michelle was saying "it's (living/working in korea) like a holiday, only we babysit".
the weather has gotten EXTREMELY hot and though yesterday was rather breezy, the humidity here makes it so that walking in downtown seoul is like slicing your way through flaming jell-o. it's seriously harsh. most of my coworkers are from the eastern seaboard... michelle, alex and kimmy are from New York/Jersey, RD and austin are from ohio, and cynthia's from florida and north carolina. charles is from a suburb of freakin' new orleans.
needless to say the vancouverites on staff (4) don't get much sympathy in the crotch rot department. i've considered buying maxipads or depends and placing them under my sweat glands. i fluff up the ol' niagaras (inside joke) with baby powder, i shower three times a day... but i still chafe like a fucking idiot.
for those of you portland staffers reading this... imagine being at the washington, right at the end of the 7th floor hallway near the hot water pipe... ALL THE TIME. it sucks, and it's a pretty close approximation of the smells here too.
so it's going to be a long, hot summer. i got through my first week of intensive, which means i have an extra 3 hour class at 9:30. i then break for 2 hours, returning at 2 to start my normal schedule of 2-3 classes depending on the day. it's been tolerable for the most part, but friday was insane due to many little office screwups that i don't care to mention... just mishaps.
it was a bad day for everyone i think because it culminated in austin's "chicken and beer" plan. all week he'd been saying "i just want chicken and beer". and so we went to the chicken hof (hof is beer garden/bar). on the way, these dudes -
- were staggering around outside. i took a photo and the one who wasn't puking in the photo started yammering, staggering and saying "ship-pal" to me, which, translated literally, is "eighteen" but for some reason it also means "fuck you". kinda like how "deelui lo mo" in cantonese is translated literally as "go fall down in the street" but for some reason it also means "go shag your mom" or something like that.
korea is screwed. marijuana is seen as the potential fall of korean society, yet these jackass drunk dudes are such a common sight that it's hard to take koreans seriously when they talk about a society's collapse. walking around apkujeong - the most affluent neighborhood in korea - you see puddles of dried puke every 20 feet.
the rationale behind this is, of course, confucianism. again. if your senior (i'll explain more later) is drinking and you're not drinking, you're letting him/her down. if he drinks, you drink or you lose face. saving face is the key to korean society. therefore, you drink and drink and drink and then you puke and fall asleep on the street:
the seniority thing is weird. i have a class of kids who are about 11, and of course boys hate girls... but i'll say "ok, hand the sheet to your friend" and they all look at me "ohh, teacher... he's not my FRIEND, i'm 11, he's 10" or "she's not my friend, she's a GIRL". which is understandable, but the stressed looks on these kids faces... so if someone's your senior, you pour their drinks, you bow lower... and most importantly, you do NOT criticize them. they're older, therefore wiser. always a great idea, especially when the people older than you are perenially full of muleshit.
if my family was korean i probably would have beat at least one of my uncles to death with a shovel before i turned 19. "we're older, therefore we're right". same shit, different pile of lowest-common-denominator trash. it was fun being younger AND RIGHTER than them but had i been in korea it would have been intolerable. plus, that punk bitch chris richard would have got away with beating his girlfriends alot more than he has in canada. not that anyone ever did anything significant about that in canada though.
(i am officially digressing and talking shit here, but i'll back it up. for those uninformed - uncle chris is a drunk fool whose coping mechanism for dealing with the silent desperation of being a loser with nothing to offer the world... is beating on people smaller than him... usually his girlfriend/spouse. people rarely do shit about it. he's never done time, nobody's kicked the living shit out of him... a strange set of circumstances).
so we finish at the chicken restaurant, we all smell like barbecue, and we decide to get a bottle of scotch (it's cheap as shit here) and go down to the river, drinkin' ghettostyle.
on the way down, however, we saw soju rebel number one, the 'shippal' guy. it was about an hour later and he was sleeping on the sidewalk, like 6 inches from the road, on the busiest street in the neighborhood, with his suit jacket as a pillow. it was funny. some christian fag got all testy with me like i was going to piss off god by taking this poor wanker's photo but i told him that jesus is a drunk and a whoremaster... all that shit in the bible about mary magdelene? geez.
the river... it was tons of fun. (sean o'leary to korean girl with tiny white dog) "hey can i get your number?" (girl with dog)"no" (sean)"HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAHAHAHHA" as he runs away shrieking and swinging his arms.
but here's solid, irrefutable proof that drinking scotch is a good idea:
yeah. it's good. roger david (RD) copas...
...he felt worse than me. i was surprisingly okay. dodged a bullet saturday morn.
um... not much else. i'm studying french a lot. met a french dude last night, we're going to talk lots. trying to meet this quebecoise who said she'd be my language partner. hey mom - wouldn't it be great if i got my french up to a conversational level... in KOREA?
yeah. this weekend was like the lancing of a carbuncle. it'll probably mellow out, but intensive has started and we needed to blow off some freakin' steam. maybe the drunk dudes in seoul thing will turn into a coffee table book at some point.
oh and everyone read "round ireland with a fridge" by tony hawks.
