西洋오랑캐

There are many a way to celebrate a seemingly pointless event such as the passing of a year. Some people throw private parties with their friends or family which inevitably involves watching Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year on television. Other people trek to some pickpocket rich party at a public venue (ie. Times Square). Some people, realizing that a successful orbit around the sun by the earth is not a truly monumental achievement, elect to celebrate by doing nothing…aside from going to sleep at a reasonable hour. There are those that spend New Year’s Eve like they spend every other evening…trying to level up in (insert your online RPG here). Others spend the night alone, drinking, and cursing humanity. I’ve partaken in my share of those New Year’s celebrate styles, but one thing I’d never done was ring in the New Year doing what Dick Clark only claims to do. Rockin’!

This year, if you couldn’t tell by the title, Jinhui and I elected to say hello to 2007 by attending a rock show featuring Side-B and Veil with guests! The show began at 9:00 pm 12.31.2006 and was slated to go till 1:00 am 1.1.2007. That’s like 4 hours of rocking, which seemed like it would be totally awesome, and believe you me it was!

아마란스

I said that the show was totally awesome, though you wouldn’t have known that based on the first act of the night. To begin, I might have their name totally wrong, and for that I am sorry since you will not be properly warned to avoid them due to this mistake. Anyhow this group consisted of two women who apparently really loved Whitney Houston. Their set consisted of not one, but two songs made popular by Mrs. Bobby Brown: “I’m Every Woman” and “Greatest Love Of All” to be exact. Anyhow I thought that they were terrible if simply for the reason that one of the two women did that Mariah Carey style way too high singing, and she made my head feel like it was going to explode. The other lady wasn’t that bad, but I really don’t need Whitney Houston cover songs to complete my life. Also the lady that had a voice like a bomb was also sporting a pony tail that came out way too high in the back of her head…kind of like that really minor belly dancer character from the Simpsons. Thankfully they only did the two songs and then bid us a Happy New Year and exited stage left.

Funky Brown

I wanted to like Funky Brown. I really did. I mean they came out with guitars and a drummer and everything, but they were just so boring. Imagine if you will a band that’s approximate sound is a melenge of the following musical styles: “What A Fool Believes” era Doobie Brothers, Scatman style vocals, slap bass, and a bass player with a mullet. Somehow when put this all together it did not equal total awesomeness. They played three songs, one of which I liked until they decided to go into “jam band” territory and play the same riff for like 6 minutes while everyone solos and the singer “sings” stuff like, “Boo boo doop dee doo bop doo,” and the mulleted bassist summons the powers of Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and does some bass slapping. Somehow when they went into this territory I kind of changed my opinion of the song. It was like, “This song’s not that bad…” “Blap dee doop da doo dap dooo!” “Oh wait…yeah it is that bad.” It was during Funky Brown that I was glad this concert was being held in an auditorium and therefore had chairs. So I could sit down in passive resistance. “No Funky Brown…I will not dance! I am going to sit right here thank you very much.” Oh also everytime the guitarist played a guitar solo he also did the solo with his mouth. So it was like (insert smoking guitar solo here), “Blap bleep boo de boop doo!” I almost thought that he had one of those Frampton Comes Alive! talk box deals, but he was not…he was just scatting to his own solo, which was even lamer than if he had been using a talk box…

리아

Following the mediocracy that was Funky Brown was a woman named 리아 (Lia). She came out and did a quasi-ballad tune. During this song, my wife informed me that Lia had been popular in the late 90s due to the song she was singing at that very moment. Following her big hit, Lia launched into a cover of the Frankie Valli tune, “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” during which she ripped off her hair revealing a buzzcut. My jaw dropped. I was totally shocked, much like that dude from Hootie & The Blowfish claimed to be when he learned that Darth Vader was Luke’s father. My wife at this time turned to me and informed me, “Oh yeah, I was going to tell you in the 90’s she used to always have a buzzcut. I thought she grew it out. I guess I was wrong.”

Out of control hair removal and crew cuts aside, Lia was pretty awesome. Her voice kind of reminded me of Yoojin from Cherry Filter, and she had decent stage presence. So she was alright in my book. Plus “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” with quasi-industrial intro? Thank you, Lia. Thank you.

Side-B

I’d seen Side-B before. Hell, I got on television for doing so. Therefore the awesomeness of Side-B this night did not come as a shock. I knew that they were going to kick ass before they even hit the stage…and unlike trips into wine tunnels, which also should theoretically kick much ass, Side-B really delivered the goods.

The thing that made this particular Side-B show even better was the guy sitting in the row infront of us. To say he was a Side-B fan would not be doing him justice. Let’s put it this way: prior to Side-B taking the stage, he had been sitting next to my wife, but once Side-B hit the stage, he lept over a row of chairs to get a little bit closer. The dude was totally into it, which somehow made me more into it. I was screaming stuff and jumping, and basically telling Side-B how much they rocked. It was awesome! And I think Side-B knew that our section was all about them.

Anyhow the set was good. We got some awesome party jams, some of which featured break dancers and fire. Then there was the slow jam where they pulled a lady out of the audience ala that Bruce Springsteen video with Courtney Cox. There was also a short set by the groups DJs which was totally awesome. The dudes had crash helmets and sampled Mario Brothers, and Dig Dug and played cowbells and bongos. It was great, though not as great as when it was revealed that this night was not only New Year’s Eve, but one of the dude’s birthday.

Some people in the front row gave him a cake. The dude in front of me was going apeshit. He had some loot that he apparently wanted to give the birthday boy. It looked like a DVD and some photos, but I wasn’t really sure. He was jumping up and down, yelling, “Ohh OHH OHHH!!!” like that dude on Welcome Back Kotter attempting to give the dude his birthday present. He was not, to my knowledge, successful. Anyhow Side-B rocked it well, they gave us candy (we had gotten one piece, yet some how it doubled while in Jinhui’s coat), and the one dude had a huge Mickey Mouse hand of a glove on (see the photo at right). Awesome! And the Side-B superfan? He disappeared when they left the stage.

Veil

This was Veil’s show, so they were played the longest of anyone. Their set was pretty much perfect. They played some old tracks (stuff off their debut, and from vocalist Kim Won Jun’s days as a solo artist), new tracks (stuff from an EP to be released later this year), and of course some covers. The covers performed were out of control as well. I swear that I am not making this up, but they covered both, “You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Party” and “YMCA,” (these two tracks were played back to back if memory serves correctly). I think one of the reasons I like this band, aside from the fact that their tunes are alright, is the fact that they put on an entertaining show.

They had costume changes which included a singer dressed as a cowboy (maybe that cover of “YMCA” makes a little more sense now). The singer had some laser pointer shaped like a gat which he pointed into the audience. There were scantily clad females brought out during the song, “Girls, Girls, Girls” (which is not a cover of the Motley Crue song). The dude from Side-B made a cameo in some mask. There was pyro. The bass player’s mom and dad and younger sibling were in front of me…and his mom was totally rocking out which was pretty awesome. The entire thing was out of control.

And since it was New Year’s Eve, Veil also counted us down and rang in the New Year. In Korea, or at least at Veil concerts in Korea, New Year’s thankful doesn’t feature “Auld Lang Syne,” but rather some other song that every Korean person in the room seemed to know, but I had never heard before. So we rang in the New Year with hugs and kisses (as Veil commanded…and what Veil commands we must do), and they band played the afore mentioned not “Auld Lang Syne” and the vocalists handed out 복조리 (bokjori). I did not get one, but it was still pretty awesome.

The show was outstanding and they played past 1:00 am. Since we live far away, and the subways were scheduled to stop at 2:00 am we hurried out of there, but we unable to make it home, so we stopped in 잠실 and had dinner, and then went to a PC방 until 5:30 when the trains started running again. By 7:00 I was in bed and asleep. It was an awesome New Year. Pictures from this event can be seen here.

Happy New Year everyone!
여러분, 새해福 많이 받으세요.

So the other day Jinhui and I went on a road trip to visit some island and travel into a wine tunnel. The trip seemed like it was going to be awesome. I mean a wine tunnel?! The pictures on the website made it look like some dungeon meets elegant cafe…plus there was going to be wine. And the island? Islands are always cool. So we were both looking forward to this trip, which made the whole thing all the more disappointing.

Our journey began at 9:30pm when we rendez-voused (wow that was some elite conjugation there) with the rest of our tour group at city hall in Seoul. This trip featured a caravan of 5 tour buses packed with tourists. Maybe it was my cynical American upbringing, but there’s something about a busload of people clapping at lame jokes made by a tour guide that just gets under my skin…either that or it actually was annoying. I tend to think the later since my wife (who was not raised in America) was also annoyed by the clapping and rows of people basically yelling, “Right on!” when they learned they would get one Chocopie each…though I may have had a corupting influence on her during the nearly one year we’ve been married.

So anyhow the bus rolled out on this 5 plus hour ride south. “A five hour bus ride at night? That won’t be too bad, I can just sleep the whole way there…much like I did when we went to Busan,” I thought to myself, and perhaps actually verbalized to my wife prior to boarding the bus, but once I was secure in my seat I learned that I wouldn’t be doing much of anything even closely related to sleep. No cat nap. No shut eye. No 40 winks. Bupkiss! For you see, unlike the bus to Busan which was fairly deluxe, this bus was pretty much a school bus, meaning there wasn’t anything like comfort going on in the seats. That coupled with my legs (which are longer than the average Korean’s and therefore not taken into consideration in places like movie theaters or on buses) made for a pretty awful ride. The two or three times I did manage to doze off were interupted by the tour guide getting on the mic, which by the way had more reverb than the average 노래방 (noraebang aka karaoke) microphone, and making some stupid proclaimation.

After trucking for a good amount of time, it was 3:00 in the morning and the bus made a stop at a hot spring / sauna. Since this cost extra and neither my wife, nor I are particularly keen on being nude with members of the same sex complete strangers we elected to skip it…unfortunately we were in the middle of nowhere, so there wasn’t anything else to do but sit on the bus (which now had the engine turned off and was rapidly getting colder) and try to sleep. With the bus pretty much empty now, getting some sleep was a little easier since we could lay where we felt the urge to. Again, by the time I actually got to sleep, the tour guide was back on the horn telling us it was time to roll out.

It was 5:30 in the morning, and as the bus rolled down nauseatingly windy roads the tour guide kept on yapping. What was she yapping about? Not much, but she just kept talking and then people would clap. “No you fools! Don’t encourage her!” At 6:00 we arrived at our destination: breakfast. Now in the time I’ve been here I’ve pretty much overcome my western, “Ew…that’s weird!” reflex when it comes to food. I mean I’ve eaten whales, grasshoppers, fermented bean paste that pretty much smells like ass, the internal organs of a cow… The one thing I won’t eat is creatures that come from a shell: clams, oysters, etc. They just seem like snot. I’ve tried on several occassions to eat them, but in my humble opinion they’re nasty. So imagine how happy a sleep deprived Wyatt that had just spent seven hours on bus was when he discovered that breakfast was a pot of stew consisting entirely of shit in shells.

I decided that I would just eat rice and the side dishes that were at the table. Apparently in my time here I became a connoisseur of rice, since I found this particular bowl to be overcooked and dry. It was hardly the breakfast of champions. With breakfast out of the way, we and the rest of our tour group (which consisted primarily of girls trying way too hard to be cute and their boyfriends) waited around for 7:30 when we could ride a boat…actually it wasn’t a boat, it was a ferry, and it was small.

I saw a sunrise. It did not suck.

They boat ride on the other hand was pretty terrible. As I mentioned, the boat was kind of small, and the sea was angry that day my friend. For my readers that are not pirates, seamen, or sea captains, let me tell you that sailing in a small boat on choppy water is not very fun. I tried to sleep, but again guys on microphones, and sheer discomfort prevented me from doing so.

After 30 minutes or so we arrived at our destination, an island known as 외도 (外島 / Oedo) which means “Outside Island” (as opposed to all the inside islands). Anyhow there was a botanical garden there for us to examine and take pictures of, which we did. Somewhere around the time that I caressed a statue of Venus my anger and grumpiness faded for the most part. The island was pretty nice, except the guy that yelled at me for sitting in a Santa Claus sleigh because it was apparently too dangerous to get into and out of…that guy was an asshole, but I digress. We scoped an island, I handled the man-junk of a replica of Michelangelo’s David, and we took a lot of pictures. Then it was time to head back to the mainland.

We got back on the boat and drove back to land, and the buses. The drive back was a lot calmer, and almost pleasant. By the time we got to the bus, I was ready for lunch…it was 10:00 in the morning. Onto the bus we went and we drove for a few minutes before we stopped at a cliff overlooking the sea. Apparently some commercial was filmed there. I spit off the cliff, because that’s apparently an awesome thing to do. Then 10 minutes later it was back on the bus.

Somehow I managed to fall asleep for about an hour and a half which really helped heal my eyes up. All morning long, the lack of sleep made my eyes feel like they belonged to a mummy. That’s how dry and itchy they were. But that hour and a half really hooked me up with eyes that were not painful. But I thought to myself, “Self, you were just asleep for an hour and a half. What did you miss?”

The answer was, “nothing.” In the hour and a half that I’d been asleep we’d just been on the road, and we continued driving for another hour and a half. A little after 1:00pm we arrived at some random town which was seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and unloaded for lunch. Lunch was slightly more awesome than breakfast had been, but still was nothing to write home about…so I’m not even going to tell you what we ate.

After lunch we got back on the bus and started driving again. “Why did we stop at that hick town? It seemed really pointless to have lunch there,” I said to my wife. “I know…”

So we drove for an hour or so before arriving at our destination, and the thing I’d been looking forward to all day: the wine tunnel! The wine tunnel had been the one thing that was keeping me going. I knew that if I could endure the shitty food, and uncomfortable seats just a little bit, there would be a trip into a wine tunnel. That promise alone helped me make it through…and now I was there.

If I learned one thing on this trip it was never expect anything to be good, because you’ll only get disappointed.

The pictures I had seen of the wine tunnel on the internet made it look awesome. It kind of looked like a dungeon meets romantic cafe meets wine being in there. The reality was far less awesome. There were no nice romatic tables with a candle on it. Hell no, there were rows and rows of white plastic lawn chairs. And somehow, when the romantic cafe part of the wine tunnel vanishes, the tunnel part starts to suck quickly. The floor was dirt, the walls were dirty, and the ceiling was covered some sort of green plastic…mesh, that had…water on it, and…I don’t know what it was for, but it was there, and not nice.

There was a concert there. A Christmas concert. I’ve been been to a lot concerts before. I’ve been to shows in stadiums, shows on the street, shows in basements, and everywhere in between. A tunnel is not a very good place for a concert. The reason is this: the shape of a tunnel makes it so that only the people closest to the stage (about 4 rows) could see anything. Everyone else could kind of hear it (since there was no P.A. system really this too was difficult), but all I could see was the back of some random dude’s head.

The trip at this point had a grade of about D or F, but then someone gave me wine. I knew we would be getting wine, but when I saw the lawn chairs, I half expected to get a paper cup of wine and maybe like 2 crackers. So imagine my surprise when the wine was given to me in an actual wine glass! Also we didn’t get 2 crackers, but plates of crackers and cheese and…DRIED PERSIMMON!!! Now Americans, to my knowledge, don’t really eat a lot of persimmons, but let me tell you: Countrymen! You are missing out! Persimmons are awesome! Go forth and eat them!!

So speaking of persimmons, not only did we get dried persimmons to snack on, but the wine itself was forged…built…brewed…made from persimmons! It tasted pretty good. My wife says that it was deep. It was different from the regular grape kind of wine in both taste and smell, but it was pretty alright…and just pretty. The color was nice.

So Jinhui and I decided to get our money’s worth and we got as many glasses of wine and plates of crackers as we could. Also as other people left, we moved forward to get a look at the stage. The concert was pretty weird. First there was a group that did some classical music, and had an opera singer. I don’t like opera ladies, their voices are too loud and high and make my head (which is made of glass) feel like it’s going to explode. Opera men are not that awesome either, because they try too hard to have a low voice. After the opera singers there was a poetry reading.

Jinhui and I both did not like poetry reading. I thought it was boring. She thought it was depressing. We both thought it was a pain in the ass. Following the poetry slam, a jazz band took the stage! The jazz band played a selection of Christmas tunes: Silver Bells, Jingle Bells, White Christmas, Blue Christmas…Desperado. You know, all the classics!

After the jazz group, the show was over. Jinhui and I bought some persimmon wine, and then it was back on the bus. The tour was over and it was time to go home. The trip home was just okay. We played Tetris…well, Jinhui played Tetris, and I watched some crappy movie about a retarded guy that likes to run. Some four hours later we were back at home. We heard some more pointless clapping and then the tour was over and I was glad.

We learned two important lessons on this tour, the first as I already mentioned was not to get ones hopes up about anything. The second, and perhaps more practical was not to go on group tours anymore. The past two group tours I’ve been on have wasted so much time jackassing around in bus and we ended up not seeing as much as we could have. Anyhow that’s about it. If you want to look at pictures check out my Flickr account.

On the third day of our trip to Jeju, I once again awoke at the asscrack of dawn. We showered, had a cup of coffee and watched some television while we waited for the tour bus to come and pick us up at our hotel. The television was slightly disappointing. Unlike America where a trip across state lines means exposure to some random regional television (commercials and local news stations in particular), a trip to different regions in Korea doesn’t really effect what one sees on television. TV is Jeju was exactly the same as TV in Busan which was exactly the same as TV in Seoul. It’s makes for bland domestic travel, but I seriously digress.

Around 8:30 in the morning, the bus picked us up and we headed off to adventure. The first stop was 용두암 (龍頭岩), which if the 漢字 were to be believed was a large rock shaped like a dragon’s head. As the bus roared along, Jinhui and I partook in some Jeju Milk, which in terms of taste was on par with Seoul Milk (and much better than Busan Milk).

While television might not be that different from place to place, brands of milk (to some extent), and the brands of soju avalible vary a great deal. The 진로 brand seems to be a brand avaliable from coast to coast, but each province seems to have it’s own local brand. In Seoul (and Gyeonggi province) we have 山소주. Busan has C1. In Jeonju I saw Hite brand soju, and in Jeju I saw 한라소주 (and some lower alcohol version which was in a clear bottle). Again I really went off on a tangent here. Back to the awesomeness at hand.

The bus picked up some other travelers and after a short ride we were at 용두암. I quickly learned that either people of yore had much better imaginations than I do, or the effects of weathering had taken their toll on the rock, because I could not for the life of me see a dragon’s head. Anyhow we saw a rock and then we were wisked off to a gift shop for an hour of shopping. At about this time I started to loathe the tour group. I didn’t know why we needed an hour of shopping in one store that had all the same stuff we’d seen everywhere else only like 20% more expensive.

So I was loathing the tour group, but my loathing ceased when we were taken to Elephant Land to see an elephant show. In my youth I had bore witness to an elephant show at the Catskill Game Farm (RIP homie) that featured twirling elephants. As these elephants twirled, they shat, and as they shat all the people in the first few rows screamed in terror. This event was so etched into the minds of my family and myself that it is still brought up in conversation to this day. That’s how awesome it was (we were not in the front row so it truly was awesome)! Anyhow this show was awesome too, though it did not feature a single shitting elephant. What it did feature were a bunch of elephants doing decidedly non-elephant like junk. They painted. They went bowling. They stood upon the asses of the audience members. They came into the audience to get bananas and cash…kind of like tusked strippers at a gentlemen’s club. And then there was the basketball game!

The b-ball game featured elephants slam dunkin’ the rock, drainin’ 3s, and (insert another early 90s basketball related slogan that probably appeared in the game NBA Jams here). So the elephants were basically being Jimmy Jump when suddenly one of the elephants went down to the ground. The music stopped and the announcer started talking to the boss of Elephant Land.

“What the shit’s going on here?” I thought to myself, “Is this for real?”

And then this happened…

After all that, we got our pictures taken with elephants, but that was not the end of our dealings with dirty animals…not by a long shot!

I read of a Korean saying that translated to something like, “If you have a son send him to Seoul. If you have a horse, send it to Jeju.” I don’t really know what that means, but a lot of dudes must have bought into the line since there were tons of horses in Jeju…and following the elephant show we were going to a dude ranch to ride some!

After a brief bus ride we were at the ranch, but we couldn’t just jump on some horses and start playing cowboys or Saratoga Race Course. No, first we had to but on some rediculous gear. The gear in question consisted of a hat that was more a Crocodile Dundee hat than a cowboy hat, a red vest, and some boots that looked a lot like the boots I had to wear during my wedding ceremony. Once geared up, it was time to ride.

I have some horseback riding experience from my teenage years, and the thing that stuck with me all this time was that horseback riding hurts one’s nuts. This second trip confirmed this preconcieved notion. That being said, aside from the painful nuts, horseback riding was really fun…oh except for when the horse Jinhui was riding decided that it would be totally awesome to have gas and then take a shit while my horse was right behind it. But other than that it was fun.

And then we had some lunch. Lunch was all you could eat 흑돼지 or black pig (aka “shit pig”) and 막걸리 (makkoli…a type of liquor). AWESOME!!! Free booze is always a plus. As for the 흑돼지 it didn’t taste all that different from regular pork. Though it did look like it could use a shave. Seriously that meat had a five o’clock shadow!

Following lunch we went to a cave. I had not been inside a cave or cavern or any manner of underground rock formation since my fourth grade class went on a field trip to Howe Caverns. This cave was about as intense as that (read as not very intense, but fairly awesome). Unlike Howe Caverns, this cave did not have any stalactites or stalagmites. Nor were there any bats. There was a Buddha statue. It was pretty okay. Also there was a park located around the cave that had cacti and palm trees. We took some pictures.

Then we went to a cliff where there was a lighthouse, a set from the television drama All In, the sea, and some seemingly ownerless horses. After some photos here and a quick stop at a seaside seafood restaurant it was back to the airport and farewell to Jeju.

The trip home was uneventful save for the fact that at security I got stopped and asked if I had a knife in my bag. I told them I didn’t and was asked to open a pocket in my bag where I was surprised to find that I did indeed have a knife in my bag. The knife, which had apparently been left in the bag the last time he went mountain climbing, had been in my bag the entire trip unknown to anyone (apparently including the security personel at Kimpo Airport). Anyhow the knife wasn’t a big issue. They took it away from me and I apologized and we continued on. The corkscrew in my wife’s bag was apparently less of a security threat than a knife with a three inch blade and was allowed through the baggage check without incident.

Otherwise the trip home was uneventful. We waited around for an hour or so before we got on the plane and went home. Oh wait! I forgot about the guy that was staggering drunk before boarding the plane. When he got on, I heard one of the stewardesses phone someone to alert then that “a seriously drunk man just got on,” and to “be advised.” Aside from reeking of booze as I walked past him the drunk guy caused no problems that I could see.

So an hour after take off we were back in Seoul, and then it was another hour before we were back home and in bed. In conclusion if you want to see pictures of day three of my trip to Jeju (complete with some captions), the check this link out. If you do not wish to see pictures than have a nice day, we’ll see you next time!

On the first full day in Jeju, I awoke at the crack of dawn…before even the alarm clock set for way too early in the morning was supposed to go off. I don’t know about all of you in TV land, but this is a normal thing for me both when traveling and on the eve of my travels. Once awake I got a shower going on and then prepared an outstanding breakfast of leftover Italian food and cup ramen…oh and coffee too, but actually Jinhui made the coffee, not me, and I guess technically I didn’t make the pizza either since I just heated it up, but I did so without an oven or microwave oven for that matter so that’s gotta count for something.

Moving on, starting on this day Jinhui and I were going to be traveling as part of a tour group. So at early o’clock in the morning the tour bus came to our hotel and picked us up. From this point on the entire trip became a lot like the Magical Mystery Tour, only I was the walrus and there were a lot more newlyweds. Once all these couples had been picked up we headed off on our adventure.

The first stop of the day was 신비의도로 (The Road of Mystery) or as my wife and countless other people on the tour referred to it, 도깨비도로 (Goblin Road). Technically we didn’t really even stop. The gimmick of this site is that it’s a hill that things roll up as opposed to down. So the bus driver turned off the engine, but the bus in neutral and we rolled up a hill. It was kind of weird, but not as awesome as if there had been actual goblins about. At the end of the Road of Mystery, the bus door opened and some middle aged lady jumped on and grabbed the microphone in the front.

At first this kind of freaked me out since I had no idea who she was, and up until this point the bus driver had been serving as the tour guide, but apparently this lady was the real guide and the other dude was just a driver who apparently was super knowledgeable about roads and goblins so he got to be the tour guide for that segment. With the real tour guide now on board we headed to some venue to see some kind of circus show at 10:00 in the morning. “A circus at 10? What the deuce?”

So anyhow we saw the most randomest circus ever. There were no animals, but a lot of acrobats and people swinging on stuff that was hanging from the ceiling. People swung on long red ribbons, and people swung on metal deals, and they swung on other people…it was out of control. There was also a lady that did hula hoop with many hula hoops! She had at least 8 hula hoops going at one time with various different parts of her body! It was a little bit amazing since I can barely do one hula hoop with my waist and here was this lady doing many hula hoops with various different parts of her body. The hula hoop lady and people swinging around and also the Chinese girls that should have been in school but instead were in Jeju doing tricks with paper lanterns were all pretty good, but the most excellent of excellent adventures were the motorcycle guys.

“Motorcycle guys?”

Yes, motorcycle guys. This event had not been introduced on the tour bus as a circus, but rather as a motorcycle show show show (the tour guide had repeated the word “show” three times when telling us about it), so when we arrived I half expected some guys on dirt bikes popping wheelies and doing things one might find in the game Excite Bike. Howdy was I wrong!

No wheelies were popped, but seven men on motorcycles got into a giant metal sphere and raced around like madmen…or maybe Mad Max. Anyhow the awesomeness is just too awesome for me to attempt to describe with either English or Korean or any language of the mortals. I guess it’s a lot like the concept of Tao in that there’s no way for normal people to talk about it. Or something…awesome! So instead of writing it was awesome a bunch of times, check it out yourself!

Now I’m well aware that there are fewer than seven mens inside the ball in the video, but the stunts they did when they were seven strong were not as amazing (though the fact that there were seven men and seven motorcycles in the ball was amazing on it’s own) as the moves they did when there were less than seven mens…so that’s the video I elected to post.

Anywho, after the motorcycle show we got on the bus again and drove again until we arrived at a park filled with minautre models of famous monuments. So in an hour I was able to take pictures infront of The Great Wall of China, The Effiel Tower, and the pyramids. It was kind of funny, but my wife said that there was a similar park in Seoul that had a better set up so it was easier to take more realistic looking photos. This park was good if you wanted to take pictures that made you look like some sort of Godzilla enemy, which is pretty much what I am! Also there were statues of cosmonauts and football players and the seven dwarves, so that was there too. At this park we were also given some manner of free lunch which was buffet style Korean food, meaning there was rice and kimchi and soup made of seaweed and some other stuff too.

Following lunch we boarded the bus and headed off to a tangerine farm. Jeju-do is pretty famous for citrus fruit, particularly tangerines, so apparently a trip to a tangerine farm is a must for every tour group to Jeju-do. I was a little less than enthralled since I don’t really care all that much about where fruit comes from and care about it even less when the tour becomes a sales pitch for some sort of oriental medicine. But this is life in a guided tour…so I held my tounge, ate free tangerines, and took some pictures in an orchard.

After the boring orchard we got back on a bus and drove to a park where we saw a waterfall. It was pretty nice, but I was more impressed with the presence of phonebooths shaped like 돌하르방. Actually I take that back the waterfall was more awesome than the phonebooths, but the phonebooths were pretty radical.

With our time at the waterfall behind us we got back on the bus and literally drove 300 meters before we were made to disembark and get on a boat. This boat was pretty similar to the boat that goes up and down the Han River in Seoul, only instead of going up and down a river it went out to sea. And instead of getting to see a lot of bridges and building we got to see a lot of small islands that were made out of volcanoes. The cruise was pretty decent, and the dude (he wasn’t a sea captain, but he had a sea captain uniform on) that told us what we were looking at was a hoot (and yes, I just used to phrase “a hoot” to describe a humorous person inspite of the fact that I was not born in the 1930s). So that happened.

Then we drove to some hotel where they filmed a scene in the movie 쉬리. There was also a beach there and some other junk like palm trees and an ice skating rink. Suddenly it was super dark so we couldn’t take good pictures anymore. At this point the tour was over for the day. We were planning on going to place called Love Land without the tour group, but it suddenly started raining like a mofo, so we went back to the hotel and ordered Chinese food and drank wine.

Here ends the adventures that transpired on the second day. If you want to see pictures, then click this link that is located here.

Korea has MTV. I’m not talking about M-net or KMTV…I’m talking straight up MTV, and the other day I went to their studios to see a concert. A concert that was filmed to be put on television. Also it was free and they gave me beer, but I’m really getting ahead of myself here now aren’t I? Let’s be backtracking…pistol packing and get it going on!

Last weekend I took Jinhui to her first rock concert which was kind of like My First Sony only not as red or as plastic. Inspite of the lack of red plastic, Jinhui really enjoyed the rock show and wanted to go rock out again. The group she most wanted to see? Jaurim! And as chance would have it, a meer five days later Jaurim was putting on a show at MTV Studio, and it was free, and since it was sponsored by Budweiser there was free beer as well. “Cool! Let’s rock it like a robot!” was pretty much my response.

And that’s just what we did! We got there early since it was free and there were a limited number of tickets. So we grabbed our tickets and then had dinner at Kimbab Nara (김밥나라) or Kimbab Cheonguk (김밥천국) and did word search puzzles. Finally it was time to go and rock out and get recorded doing so.

This was the first time I’d ever been to something being recorded for television save for that time that my journalism class in high school went to the local NBC station to see the news at noon get recorded, but that was very different. Before any rocking commenced a producer came out on the stage and gave us some rules. Photos were okay, but flashes were not since sometimes flashes cause people to make zombie faces which makes for poor television. We had to watch out for our personal belongs. And I think that was about it, but I wasn’t really paying attention since I just wanted to rock! Then it was time!

Heritage
This was a band that prior to this event I’d never heard of. When they first hit the stage I noticed that there was a lack of a singer. “Ah…this must be due to the fact that this is being taped for television. The singer’s probably going to come out when they start filming,” I thought to myself. And I was right…kind of. The singer did come out when the filming began, only they weren’t one singer there were seven of them. That’s right ladies and gentlemen a group with seven singers that were not a boy or girl group. This group instead hijacked soul, funk, gospel, and from time to time hip-hop in an effort to get the party started. I had a couple problems with them though. First of all the one dude sounded like he was trying to be James Brown except when he sounded like Heavy D from Heavy D and the Boys. Everyone else sang as though there were a member of MC Hammer’s posse on the song, “Don’t Pass Me By.” Heritage, you might have had a live band and a girl with a head shaped like a lion, but you can’t fool me into thinking shoddy covers of “What’s Goin’ On” make you a real soul group!

진희曰: They were too confusing. There were so many singers I didn’t know where to look. Also I couldn’t tell who was singing what so I didn’t know who was a good singer and who was bad.

Side-B
I thought that I’d never heard of this group either, but apparently in the spring of 2005 I included them in a rant about how bad braids look on white people and Asian people. At this point I would like to ammend said 2005 article by stating that Side-B may in fact have horrible hair but they sure know how to rock the party. Also I want to add that it’s really difficult to try and take pictures of rappers while they are performing. At least with a rock band they are attached to instruments that impede their ability to move quickly. These guys were like superballs…flying and jumping all over the place. Jesus God Damn it was difficult to take pictures! But that’s alright, I was rocking out anyway!

진희曰: They were out of control.

Veil
Veil was another group that I truly had never heard of, but apparently everyone else in attendance had since they were all weilding Veil hand towels (as a quick sidebar this seems to be a common item for Korean bands to sell. I have personally seen No Brain towels, Crying Nut towels, and now Veil towels, but never in my 23 years of dwelling in the US did I see any band selling towels. There are no Les Savy Fav or Pearl Jam towels). Anyhow I really rocked out on a tangent there. Veil were a pretty decent rock and roll combo. Basically there were the group Transfixion (aka pretty boy rockers) only they had a rapper also. It was the oddest form of rap-rock or rock-rap I’d ever heard in my life, but somehow it was a little bit awesome. Also during the show the singer that wasn’t a rapper attempted to explain what Veil stood for. It was apparently “Various Elements In Life,” or something akin to that which he said in English which sounded like he had marbles in his mouth. He than spotted me in the crowd and asked me if I could understand. I said I could…though in reality I couldn’t until the rapper (who I’m pretty sure either lived or studied) in an English speaking country explained it again. Luckily the cameramen all recorded this exchange increasing my chances of appearing on television about 48.2%. Radical!!!

We later discovered that the singers in Veil had a secret past which kind of explained their level of fame. The singing guy was apparently a former teen idol dance singing in the early 1990s (진희曰: 1992) and the rapper was a one time member of Koyote who apparently got into some drug related trouble and was sacked from the group. Anyhow that’s why they were famous, but we didn’t know it at the time.

진희曰: They are fun to watch. It was interesting: rap and rock…rap-rock! I’ve never seen that. I wish I got a stick or towel or something that they threw after the show. I almost got a sticker but someone took it. I was scared. (Wyatt 曰: There was some middle aged 아저씨 that was way to into Veil and would throw himself into the crowd of female fans to snag stickers. This was the guy that got the sticker 진희 attempted to grab.)

Jaurim
Apparently the members of Jaurim have rocking out gear, since they were all sporting the same gear that they had worn to the concert some 5 days before. Also I am now under the impression that Jaurim’s singer, Kim Yuna (김윤아) must be told that she is pretty before they can start rocking…at least that’s what the mens in the audience would leave me to believe. As soon as she come out it was all, “오~아! 예쁘다!” (Wo~ah! She’s beautiful!) In all honesty she’s good looking, but she doesn’t need to be told that. Pretty girls already know they’re pretty and telling them so only gives them a swelled head, like Peter Brady in that episode of the Brady Bunch where he saves some kid from getting crushed in a toy store and then gets a trampoline and assorted other junk…including a swelled head! What was I talking about? Oh yes, rock and roll!

So Jaurim played some rock and roll jams. Most of the tunes they played were off their latest album, which makes sense since this was a televised event and they probably wanted to use it to oh I dunno…promote the fact that they have a new album. Anyhow new songs sounded really good. That Kim Yuna sure knows how to sing and jump while wearing high heels! Also do you remember “Freebird?” Did you ever see Lyyard Skynyrd on VH1 behind the music? Remember the part where they talk about “Freebird” having a triple guitar attack? Yeah?! Well Jaurim at one point had a triple keyboard attack which was almost as bad ass.

진희曰: She had the same clothes and you (Wyatt) wanted to yell that, but I stopped you. That’s not a good move.

With Jaurim finished, so was the show. We exited the building and again were handed free Budweiser (thanks dudes!) and then headed home. Anyhow it was taped and will probably air sometime soon on MTV in Korea. If you happen upon the True Music Live show on MTV featuring any of the bands mentioned above, keep your eyes peeled. I’m the white guy in a yellow sweatshirt. And in the meantime if you want to look at pictures of rap rock and roll, check out these pictures here at this site. (link)

On Wednesday November 29, 2006in the year of our lord Jinhui and I went to the zoo and saw all kinds of totally awesome animals. Additionally we saw some not so awesome animals too, but I didn’t take any pictures of them…only the awesome ones. These are the pictures of the awesome animals.

Of all the totally radical animals that we saw on this day (and did we see some radical animals believe you me) the two animals which were the most of them awesome were two animals that I had never heard of prior to this trip to the zoo. These animals were called: binturong and caracal respectively. Basically the existance of these two animals proved that there is something to the entire 음 and 양 (yin and yang for the rest of the world) concept. The binturong (this link was selected simply because the site is called Lioncrusher…which pretty much is totally awesome) was the most chillax animal that I have ever seen in my life. Basically the thing looks rediculous and was chilling out on some jungle gym deal, when I pointed at it and laughed and pretty much yelled, “You look redankulous binturong!” What did the binturong do? Get all pissed off and try to throw down on me? Hell no! The binturong jumped off his jungle gym and came up to the bars and was all like, “Check me out…I’m the fuckin’ binturong!” That was cool as him. His face was rediculous and he was a chill dude. I would have liked to have a brew with him, but I didn’t. Anyhow binturong is cool and relaxed and apparently smells like popcorn…but I don’t really know about that since I didn’t sniff him. Anyhow…

If the binturong was the chillest animal ever, the caracal was the ragin’-est. This dude would get totally pissed off about nothing. I didn’t laugh at his face or anything and he started screaming at me and junk. You don’t believe me? Check out this out of control footage!

He was all like “Heeeeest! Heeeeeest!” Asshole! Nah, I take that back. He was cool too, but in a totally different way. I’d like to drink some brews with binturong, but if I was in a street fight with weapons I would totally want caracal to have my back.

Anyhow this writing is getting less than awesome because I still have a stupid cast on my right hand. So I’m calling it quits now. Look at the pictures if you want to look at other awesome animals like elephants and tigers and white tigers and ostriches and stuff like that.

On Sunday evening, Jinhui and I traveled to Seoul to witness the 8th annual Seoul Drum Festival. We had gone together last year, and had enjoyed ourselves greatly. We were therefore looking forward to seeing it again. So after a quick dinner at Lotteria, we hopped on a bus and head for Seoul.

Last year, the event was held on the grounds of City Hall, which was pretty decent. This year the event was held at Kyunghui Palace (경희궁), and I for one was not please with the change. The seating at Kyunghui Palace wasn’t as awesome, and in addition the stage seemed to be much lower than the stage from the year before. This made things like seeing what was happening or taking photographs a little bit difficult.

Anyhow, my gripes about venue changes aside, we had an awesome time. Jinhui and I had some beers and saw six percussion groups (or teams as they were refered to as in Korean). Now in the style of my rock show reports of old, I’ll give you a rundown of exactly what it was that we saw.

First up was a group called New Dimension from Belgium. New Dimension were one of those percussion groups that rocked out on trash cans and chairs as opposed to actual drums. While they put on a decent show, I’m kind of over the trash as a percussion instrument gimmic…I saw STOMP and Skeleton Key do the same kind of junk like 10 plus years ago. Do we really still need to be doing to garbage can thing? Anyhow New Dimension, if you want to rock out on trash at least rock out on some unique trash that others haven’t already done to death. Oh and one other thing, while I was watching this group perform, I couldn’t help but wonder if they brought their trash cans and chairs with them or if they picked them up when they got here.

Following New Dimension was the group Jamstick from Korea. Jamstick rocked out on all sorts of drums, xylophones, and at one point crash helmets. They also had a keyboardist that accompanied their drumming. I kind of liked Jamstick mainly due to the fact that they made outstanding use of xylophones and / or glockenspiels, both of which are excellent instruments.

Unfortunately Jamstick fell into the trap so many Korean musicians (indie rock bands, pop stars, rappers) seem prone to fall into: incredibly longwinded explanations between songs. Maybe this is because I grew up with anti-showmen like Kurt Cobain and that dude from Stone Temple Pilots, but I find these verbose monologues to be tedious and pretty much ruin the flow of the entire set. But enough ranting, they played “Devil In A Blue Dress” as a marching band so they were pretty alright in my book.

Next up was the band, Safara, from Senegal. These dudes (and ladies) were awesome in all kinds of ways. For starters everyone in the group was sporting face paint and robes, which made them look way more awesome then guys that took the stage in black t-shirts. Secondly they had these two ladies who busted out the most insane dance moves the entire time. These women were rocking the kind of moves you’d see in a film featuring “witchdoctors,” and it was totally awesome! And as a quick aside, one of the dancing women from Senegal was white, which at first struck me as odd, but in reality isn’t any weirder than Seo Taiji’s white drummer…or me for that matter. Safara were also the only group of the evening to feature singing which was pretty awesome. But the thing that was the most awesome about Safara was the fact that they had the most phallic looking instrument I’ve ever seen in my life. Awesome!

Following Safara was a Korean group known as Drumcat. Drumcat were pretty decent, but they probably would have been better if I weren’t a married man that had to feign complete and utter disinterest in the fact that Drumcat consisted of six sexy ladies in tight pants pounding drums and rocking out. And oh how they rocked out! I mean they did a cover of “Du Hast” for crying out loud (here by cover I mean that the song played over the PA and the ladies smashed big ass drums during it)…and they had pyro! If I had to complain about something I guess it would have to be the fact that they all had really bad 1970’s shag haircuts. Yet even with that massive disadvantage they still managed to look hot.

Next up was the Korean group 하타 (Hata). These people took traditional Korean percussion instruments (including that huge ass drum) and mixed them with silver jumpsuits and big plastic hazardous waste drums. I guess they were pretty ok, if only for the silver jumpsuits and the use of that huge drum (see the photo at right). As a quick aside, when they hit that thing you can feel it in your guts…it’s that deep! Anyhow, like New Dimension, I found their choice in garbage to hit kind of boring. Dudes, there’s other garbage in the world!

The final group of the evening was 풍장21 (Poongjang 21). v 풍장21 was your standard issue 농악 (nogak…aka farmer’s music) group. I’ve seen this kind of group so many times in my three plus years of living here that I’m kind of bored of it. I mean the first time I saw this kind of band I thought they were awesome, and I still think that it is awesome, but it’s got to be totally awesome for me to get into it. These guy were alright, but they weren’t awesome to the point that I wanted to get up and do some ass-shaking dance moves. However for some reason the only thing I am able to take decent pictures of is 농악, so of the pictures I took that evening, 70% of the good ones were of this group.

Anyhow with the drumming done for the evening, we got on the bus and headed home again. It was a nice event, even if we were stuck sitting behind some dirty hippies.

Click here for photos (if you care about crap like that).

This is the Chuseok Redux, you’re sitting in a jazz club wearing a beret. Oh wait, that’s the Slow Jam Redux…the Chuseok holiday wrap up looks more like this:

Wednesday, the day before Chuseok, was spent making songpyeon (송편). The early stages of songpyeon construction are a lot like the early stages of bread making, only like 100 times stickier. That dough has the consistance of gum, and I now understand why people from the times of yore used a big ass hammer to make this shit. Anyhow we made an assortment of songpyeon in both green and white. I was personally in charge of the chestnut filled ones. We made the green ones first, and man were mine ugly. They were huge, cancerous behemoth looking pieces of crap, but I leveled up quickly, and by the time we made the white ones, mine were indistinguishable from the ones the seasoned veterans were making.

Other junk that happened on Wednesday involved me riding a bike around my immediate area attempting to score some sort of paper that was needed for ancestral memorial rites to no avail. Also my wife (along with my sister-in-law, and mother-in-law) cooked a lot of other non-songpyeon type food stuffs.

The following morning at way too early o’clock, I was roused from my slumber to clean up the house, and set the table so that Chuseok could commence. With such things taken care of, it was time for Chuseok related festivities, which were pretty much the same as Lunar New Year related festivities, only instead of eating rice cake soup we ate taro soup. Guests came to our house, chowed down on some food and drank some brews, and then they headed back from wence they came.

After quickly cleaning up our homestead we headed out to Jinhui’s grandfather’s house (her mother’s father), where since she was technically no longer part of the clan didn’t have to do any work. Me, being a man, only had to drink soju and eat food, so I did that. We then went with a totally awesome posse that included three random kindergarten students, some old Korean mens, me and my in-laws, and one of Jinhui’s cousins who totally looked like he could kick some ass (the dude was huge…like Hulk Hogan sized arms and junk). There we offered dried fish and poured one out for our dead homies our deceased ancestors.

With that out of the way we headed home, where I promptly fell asleep. It was 5:00 in the evening. At 10:00 Jinhui (who apparently had fallen asleep in the living room), and I both woke up and for the next 4 hours watched a ton of really random junk on TV and ate some ice cream. All in all it was a decent day, but I’m glad for Jinhui’s sake that this was probably her last Chuseok. I really feel bad for women on these holidays. All day long they cook and clean, with few chances to rest. Quelle domage! Anyhow that’s pretty much the end of my poorly written Chuseok related rant. There’s not really much else to say. Oh, I wore a hanbok (한복) because I own one and figured Chuseok would be a good excuse to take it out of the closet. Really now, this is the end. There is nothing else for me to say that I can think of at this time. But probably if someone leaves a comment I will remember more anecdotes of the events of the day. So…I’m finished now.

I once heard that an army travels on its stomach. This apparently holds true for me as well. As yesterday Jinhui and I traveled to Jeonju for the sole purpose of eating Jeonju bibimbab (전주비빔밥). “Wyatt, can’t you get bibimbab anywhere?” Think of it like this, can you get Korean food in New York? Yes. On the average is it going to be as good as the Korean food you can get in Korea? Probably not. It’s the same theory at work here. Jeonju invented bibimbab, and therefore in theory can do it better than anyone else in the game. So anyhow we went to Jeonju because we were hungry.

Like most of our trips it began on bus. This time instead of heading to the airport, the bus headed south quite uneventfully and roughly two and a half hours later we were in Jeonju. Jeonju actually reminded me a lot of Albany, NY (from which I hail). There weren’t a lot of extremely tall building, limited public transportation, and it was possible for one to get most places on foot, but Jeonju had a lot of stuff that does not exist in Albany…namely bibimbab.

From the bus terminal we headed downtown (or possibly uptown I’m not really sure) in order to get our eat on. We ended up doing lunch at a restaurant named 가족회관 (and as a quick aside there are a lot more restaurants in Jeonju that use the word 회관 than exist in Seoul). Lunch was amazing! For starters while most restaurants in Seoul will hook you up with a side dish or three, the restaurant we chowed down in nearly broke the table they placed so much food on it. And then there was the main course. I have probably consumed over a hundred bowls of bibimbab during my stay in Korea, and this was hands down the best bowl of bibimbab I’ve ever had. The gochujang tasted a little different than the standard issue gochujang one might pick up in the supermarket, and that made a lot of difference. Guts full, we decided instead of simply heading back to Seoul…or Gyeonggido more exactly, we would make the most of our time in Jeonju and act like tourists.

So we decided to head to the 한옥마을 (Hanok Village). This place is a village of approximately 700 houses built in the traditional Korean style. Sounded like a decent place to visit, but the road to the Hanok village was paved with outstanding historical monuments and tourist photo opportunities. For starters we had 전동교회 (Jeondong Church), a Catholic church built on the grounds of some martyr inducing executions.

Following or inspection of the grounds, we went across the street and checked out Gyeonggijeon Shrine. This shrine contains pictures of various Chosun kings, and holds a special place for King Taejo, the founder of the Chosun dynasty. Taejo, wasn’t always called Taejo and he wasn’t always the king. There was a time period when he was known as Lee Song-gye. Now as you may or may not know, there are countless Lees, Yis, Rhees, Ris, 이s, and 李s in Korea. They do not all share a common ancestry however, and people trace their families to different clans.

My wife is a member of the Jeonju Lee clan…which happens to be the same one that begot Taejo. So there you go, my wife is related to the kings of the Chosun period. I know in reality she is probably about as related to them as John Goodman was to the King of England in the movie King Ralph, but it was still kind of odd. In addition to checking out Gyeonggijeon, we visited the adjacent grounds (the name of which escapes me at the moment). This area had a lot of buildings there were apparently used to house visiting dignitaries and supplies for various rituals.

After paying our respects to our ancestors we headed out towards the Hanok Village, but we were briefly waylaid by the fact that there was some sort of festival going on. So we checked out some performances, watched some kids ride a cow, and saw a photo exposition about life in North Korea…you know all the normal festival stuff.

Finally we made it to the Hanok Village. The Hanok Village as I mentioned before contained 700 houses all in the traditional style. The area itself was kind of odd, since some of the houses were actual homes, and others were clearly for tourists. So I felt a little weird when we would walk into random yards. “This one’s for tourists right?” “Yeah.” “Alright, just checking.”

Among the sites we visited were place were paper was made (Jeonju has a long history of paper making…a fact I learned at a paper museum) and an alcohol museum…that gave out free alcohol. HELL YEAH! That’s my kind of museum. Seriously the museum was awesome. It was not too big: just a couple rooms with alcohol related historical artifacts, and then out in the yard a couple ladies with free alcohol. The brews I sampled were as follows: 모주 (some regional brew I’d never had before that tasted like cinnamon), 국화주 ([菊花 not 國花] a brew made from flowers…this brew I had consumed once before and it tastes like 백세주 a little bit), and 송화주 (another flower based alcohol that had a really hot aftertaste). The brews were decent…made all the more awesome due to the fact that they were free.

We also visited a house that depicted life in traditional house during the Chosun period. Apparently I was supposed to be allowed to play traditional percussion instruments there, but no one was about to instruct us. There were goats though. Oh I’m sorry, they weren’t goats, they were 산양 (mountain sheep), but they looked just like goats to me.

After our time in the Hanok Village, we headed up a hill to an area named 오목교, which as far as I could tell was a place were a historical figure once hung out so the powers that be decided it was important. Anyhow from there we were able to take decent pictures of the village below. And then we went to 풍남문, which was the only surviving gate from original city walls. With that stuff all check off our touristy stuff to do check list we decided to grab some dinner.

Dinner was 돌솥밥. The food wasn’t that bad, but the service was pretty lousy, and you know how that can taint one’s dining experience. The only other thing worth mentioning about dinner was the fact that I purchased a 청국장 ice cream sandwich there. For those of you that don’t know what 청국장 is, it’s a kind of fermented bean paste that stinks to high hell. A lot of Koreans even think it’s too gross to consume. I enjoy it myself, but the stuff does stink, and it’s one of those things that doesn’t really lend itself to ice cream. It’s like pizza and ice cream. I like both of those items as well, but I don’t want to eat them together. The ice cream didn’t really smell or taste anything like 청국장, but it didn’t really taste good either.

Our time was running out (we had 9:00 bus tickets), so we decided to check out 객사 and then head back to the bus terminal. At 객사 we caught the tail end of some women’s rights group having a demonstration to put an end to prostitution, and from there it was back to the bus station. Some two and a half hours later we were back in Gyeonggido and our adventures in Jeonju were over.

Additional photos can be seen here if you’re into pictures of food and junk like that.

Yesterday was Saturday and like all good Korean residents I kicked off the day by working. After a brief period of educating people, I met up with my wife and we headed to 신촌 to grab some lunch. Sometime during the summer we saw a restaurant that offered 냉까스 (cold donkatsu) on one of those cooking shows on television…only they never explicitly told which restaurant it was. After much internet searching we discovered that it was a restaurant known as 家門의 우동 in 신촌. So yesterday we headed out there to check it out.

The food was decent. The 냉까스 in particular was really refreshing. The prices weren’t that bad either, though the portions were a little small. If you’re a big eater, you probably wouldn’t be satified ordering just one dish. Since it was lunch time, and neither of us are people who could pound a Hungry Man dinner and still want more, we were good to go.

After lunch we decided to go check out the sex museum in 신촌, but it either closed, moved, or we had horrible sense of direction and could not locate it. We did locate the Ralph Lauren tour bus where some girl with way too much eye makeup took our photo in exchange for my wife trying on some sort of Ralph Lauren perfume (see the picture to the right). With the sex museum a bust we decided to go ride in a plastic duck on the Han River.

The Han River was nice, but not nearly as action packed as the Han River depicted in the film 괴물. Anyhow Jinhui and I forked over 10,000 won and jumped into a boat shaped like a duck and paddled around in the Han River. The duck boat was actually really fun. There was a cool breeze and the river didn’t stink too badly so it was kind of awesome. Though it would have been more awesome if we could have traveled outside of the little fenced off duck boat area. Anyway we took some pictures, so if you want to see some pictures of me inside a plastic duck riding down a river, check this link.

Following the insanity that was riding around in a boat shaped like a duck we met Jinhui’s friend in 강남 and had some dinner and then some brews. The dinner was standard issue (삼겹살), but the brews were awesome. Since I never really hung out at all in 강남, I am probably like the last person in Korea to know about this place, but the venue known as The Beer Factory is awesome! They have all manner of microbrewed beers. I partook in a brew known as Morphine 8.4, which boasted 8.4% alcohol content. This was slightly less impressive than it sounds because it was served in a cup about half the size of the normal 4 point something brews. Anyhow brews were consumed and it was awesome.

That’s all I’ve got to say. Please go about your business.

On the morning of June 14th, after some three and a half hours of sleep I awoke and after a quick shower, headed off with my father-in-law to meet up with my family, as today was the day they were returning from wence they came. Since Jinhui had to return to work on this day, she did not accompany us, and instead got to stay home and sleep. I was totally jealous.

So after a fairly quick ride to the hotel we met up with the rest of my family. I assisted them in checking out, and luggage with chucked into a van, and off we went! Again after a short ride we were at the airport. My father-in-law parked the car, my family members got boarding passes, and I wandered around drank a coffee and attempted to guess the nationality of various white people at the airport.

Eventually boarding passes were issued, my father-in-law returned, and Jinhui phoned in an apology and her good-bye. Hugs and thanks were given and then my family went through some gates and were gone. In a way I was glad, because I had nothing left to do that day and could spend the afternoon sleeping…something I longed to do.

But it was not yet time to sleep. Instead of going directly home my father-in-law and I headed over to Jinhui’s uncle’s house (my uncle-in-law) to return a borrowed van, which of course turned into eating lunch, which turned into coffee and conversations. Some three hours later I was finally back home, and in bed. It had been a long week.

Check out photos of my family departing if such things pique your interest.

On the 13th of June, we kicked off the day with a trip to the Korean Folk Village (aka 민속촌). The event was fairly decent and we saw a lot of awesome stuff like traditional drummers, acrobats, poop, and donkeys getting it on…your basic trip to the Korean Folk Village. After an afternoon of traditional stuff we headed into the city which took at least 100,000 hours. This was because of the fact that today was Korea’s first offical World Cup match, so the entire country was on high alert.

Since my family had to depart the next morning, the parents stayed at the hotel to pack up their loot and the books about poop I was making them take back to the United States. The younger people in the party headed out to City Hall for a little soccer madness. So we rendez-voused with Sunhee and after a quick dinner, and a brief stop at the local 7-11 for brews and chips we headed over to the soccer viewing area and watched some soccer.

The soccer match was pretty decent, but the party! Holy Crap! My brother, not much of a sports fan, had a blast. Brews & Interviews! Woot! Woot! Anyhow Korea ended up winning which was outstanding, but on the way home I told Jinhui that we would be watching all future games at home. My siblings under the orders of my sister Rhiannon, left before the game actually ended and were able to get back to their hotel in about 13 minutes or so.

Jinhui, Sunhee, and I stayed until the end (which happened a little before 12), and ended up getting home at something like 3:30 in the morning. I’m not really sure how we got home, and I’m even less certain about how all three of us were able to snag seats on the bus, but we all did.

Anyhow if you want to see pictures of donkeys having sex, or traditional drummers, or an army of Koreans in red t-shirts drinking beers in the street check the photos located right here! And for those of you who are sick and tired of reading about me being a tour guide, fear not, the next post will be the last of this sort!

On this particular day we tried to go to the DMZ with my family, but apparently it’s closed on Monday, so we went to Imjingak and then the Unification Observatory. Imjingak was decent save for the elementary school kids that assaulted my clan with shouts of “Hello! How old are you?” (As a quick aside at least one of the kids knew that “How old are you?” is an inappropriate question to ask a middle aged woman and chided her classmates).

So Imjingak…we saw North Korea, I got yelled at by some dude with a machine gun for going to close to some fence, and I bought some awesomely kitchy North Korean stamps from the 1970s featuring North Korea’s 1970 vision of a space program. The stamps were utterly insane and in reality warrant a post of their own…perhaps such things will come to pass.

Following Imjingak we headed to the Unification Observatory and observed some unification…or looked at some North Korean television, played school in a mock North Korean classroom, looked across a river, and then purchased North Korean alcohol. Oh also I made my brother have a hard time because I busted out all manner of Korean while I was purchasing some sort of North Korean wine. My brother, being throughly unable to speak Korean (I believe at last count he knew the words for “beer,” “hello,” “thanks,” “Attention!” “Bow!” and “bulgogi”) went up to purchase something from a woman that now mistakenly believed all in my party could speak Korean.

Following our trip to as close to North Korea as one can go on a Monday we grabbed some dinner at a Taiwanese restaurant. The dinner was outstanding and enjoyed by all. Following dinner we headed to Namsan Tower to get a view of the entire city under cover of dark. From there we parted way and headed back to our respective domiciles.

Link to photos is here.

The 11th was the big day…again since I already was married back in January, but today was the day in which I had to go through all the pomp and circumstance.

Basically the day began when I woke up at 4 am, took a shower, and then went and got my hair done. Also I wore makeup, which I rationalized as being okay due to the fact that ancient Korean warriors known as 화랑 also wore makeup. I made the girl performing my ablutions aware of this little piece of historical fact as well. Also I told the lady doing my hair to do my hair in the fashion of King Sejong…only slightly more cute.

With hair and make-up all in check, much like that Busta Rhymes song, we arrived at the wedding hall. From here I don’t really remember much since the actual wedding basically consisted of various people dragging me around and telling me to hurry up. What I do remember is that prior to the actual ceremony we had to go get some photos taken in which my wife wore some gigantic wig that was several pounds in weight and wrecked her neck’s shit. I do know that my brother also had to sport some sort of wig that was a fake topknot of black hair…which matched so well with his natural hair color. And the third thing I remember is that prior to my grand entry I was worried that I was going to mess stuff up.

As for the wedding ceremony itself, it was a lot like the time I had a bit part in the Shaker Junior High School production of Hello Dolly. “Wyatt, I don’t understand.” Oh, I never told you, I once played a court stenographer and a cop in junior high. “No. No…how was it like middle school theater?” Ah! It was kind of like a middle school play in that I was wearing makeup, worried about messing up my part, and there were insanely hot spot lights on me…and there were song and dance numbers.

Also it was further like a middle school musical in that I knew there were a ton of people in the audience, but I could not make out the faces of any of them…nor could my wife. At one point in the ceremony, Jinhui leaned over to me and proclaimed, “The only person I can see is Nathan because his mustache is so outstanding.”

Following the wedding the family (families) were lead into a small ante-room (everyone else got to eat), where Jinhui and I had to bow to my parents again, and then they threw nuts at us…also I had to give my parents booze. Then I had to drink brew with my wife, and then carry her on my back and walk around a table. If you think I’m making any of this up, check out the pictures I have posted at Flickr.

After the wedding we had to greet everyone and thank them for coming, I kind of felt bad because I had to rush around at this point (since there were a lot of people) and didn’t really get to spend enough time with the people that I wanted to thank / take pictures with. So to my friends, if I didn’t give you a “Thanks for attending dude!” or a high five or a “와 주셔서 대단히 감사합니다,” I am truly sorry, but thank you for attending. HIGH FIVE!!!

After the wedding, we hung out and were lazy and then I went to Myeong-dong with my siblings for shopping, dinner (만두 and 칼국수), and then had some beers. The photos are here. Due to the fact that Korea has no such thing as an open container law, my brother consumed brew in the street in front of a cop car. Then we stuck them on a bus and we headed home.

On the Saturday prior to my wedding, the plan was to have my clan attend a dinner held at the home of my in-laws…so 진희 was made to stay home and cook all day. I headed out to meet up with my family and do some brief sight-seeing. The only problem with this was the fact that it started pouring. So we went shopping instead. During the shopping trip, Ailinn got herself hooked up with a decent Korean-English / English-Korean dictionary, my brother got himself hooked up with a pair of odd Converse sneakers, the likes of which he had never seen Stateside, and I got my aunt hooked up with some ginseng for a friend.

In addition to this we ate the item known in Korean as 토스트 (”toast”) which in reality is more like a toasted egg sandwhich than the item westerners know as toast. It was pretty decent, and the guy at the toast stand was macking it to Ailinn…or maybe just making polite conversation in Korean. Either way it was good for her.

Around 4:00 my father-in-law arrived in a van and took us away to the hanbok shop. The hanbok were all ready, so we picked them up and then carried on to his home. Due to the rain, the commute was a real pain in the keister, and after an hour and a half or two hours, we arrived at the homestead.

When we arrived, I saw that far too much food had been prepared: 불고기, 잡채, 갈지탕, salad, brews, chicken…and I could go on and on. So we sat down and got to work eating. Everything was awesome! Following dinner, there was a hanbok fashion show during which members of my family tried on their hanbok, were shown how to tie it together, and too many photographs were taken.

Some gifts were given and then my family got taken back to the hotel, since tomorrow was the big day and there was a lot of things to do.

So ends this part of my wedding adventure. If you like pictures and such, check this out yo!

On the morning of the ninth, 진희 had to get a massage, so I headed off to meet my family and spend the morning with them. After getting a quick bite to eat together, the family and I head back to Insadong, since we had cut our previous visit short due to having to pick my sister up at the airport. Insadong was all about shopping on this day, and I was seriously playing translator due to the fact that aside from my sister and myself, no one in my family can speak a word of Korean.

Basically anytime a member of my family had a question beyond “How much is this?” I was summoned into action like I was some sort of Pocket Monster. “FAMILY MEMBER WITH KOREAN LANGUAGE ABILITY…I CHOOSE YOU!!!” My family seemed to enjoy the shopping and picked up a fairly random assortment of loot. Also Ailinn bought some meat on a stick.

At roughly 1:30, 진희 appeared and we all headed back towards the area in which I now reside. The women were going to go with 진희 and get some sort of spa treatment…the men were left with me, and I intended to do something “manly.” So after a way too lengthy bus ride we were at the beauty salon dropping the ladies off. I then headed off with the men.

We first stopped off to get our eat on. The menu du jour: “New York” style pizza, which my brother rated as “Pretty alright,” and my aunt’s fiance (a current NYC resident) rated, “amazingly cheap.” With something lining our stomaches, we headed to a bar / cafe called Goodfellas, but since it was decided that “What happens in Good Fellas stays in Good Fellas,” I’m not really at liberty to discuss what happened there.

At the appointed time we ran through a sudden rain storm to meet up with the ladies. They were all throughly refreshed, as were the fellas, so from there we headed off to Jamshil to ride a boat on the Han River. By the time we arrived, the rain had stopped, which was totally awesome. We got on the boat and got our cruise on, learning all about the various bridges along the river, as well as some King that wanted to live with seagulls and built a pavillion in order to do so…though perhaps I heard that tale wrong.

At the end of the cruise, we headed to the 63 Building for some dinner (돈까스), and then we intended to view the city from the observation deck. Unfortunately the observation deck was broken, or under repair, or just closed for the evening, so a viewing of the city was scratched and we all headed back to our homes.

So concludes part 3 of my wedding. If you want to see some of the photos from the days activities, be sure to check out my Flickr account, and tune in next time for even more tales from my wedding!

The day of the 8th began with a drive to the hotel to meet up with my clan. After a quick, disgusting, and way too expensive breakfast at the hotel, we all piled into a van and headed off to the hanbok shop to get my family fitted with some traditional Korean outfits to sport during my wedding ceremony.

Entering the hanbok shop with a platoon of non-Korean people was pretty odd, and there was a lot of stares being thrown in our direction. That being said, the hanbok shop was pretty outstanding, or at least my mother thought so. I lost track of how many times she uttered, “I love this!” or “It’s so beautiful!” The other members of my family all seemed to enjoy it as well, but were far less vocal in what they thought of it. With everyone suited up in hanbok, we headed over to Gyeongbok Palace (경복궁), for some tourism and site-seeing.

As luck would have it, upon our arrival it began to pour. Real cats and dogs nonsense. Fortunately there was a new museum that had appeared right outside the palace grounds and was included in the admission price. So we totally checked it out and stuff. I had to pretend to be a tour guide as I explained various historical artifacts to my family. By the time we had finished with the museum (it was very small and didn’t take that long) the rain had finished as well, so out we went to check out the best example of a Korean palace in Seoul.

I think I’ve been to Gyeongbok Palace like five times now (you could go back and count for me if you really wanted to), but each time I still enjoy myself. Around we went, I explained some stuff, random kids there on field trips asked my dad for his autograph…because he is so famous, my brother scowled so no one asked him for his autograph, and some Chinese tourists asked me to take a photo for them. When we had had enough of palace life, we headed off to get some eats.

After a short walk we ended up in Insadong (인사동) and we grabbed some bibimbab (비빔밥), which wasn’t a huge hit: aside from Jinhui and myself, only my father was able to finish his bowl. While the bibimbab wasn’t a hit, the plum tea (매실차) served after dinner was. With lunch finished some people headed back to the hotel while others among us went to the airport to pick up my other sister.

We gave ourselves enough time to make it to the airport, so that there was not a repeat performance of the previous day, but it didn’t really matter, since her plane was delayed an hour. I was a tad nervous at this point. For those of you that don’t know my sister, she doesn’t really have what one might call an easy-going personality, so I thought this hour delay coupled with an insanely long flight would have rendered her a surly beast (think the Incredible Hulk with a rage disorder).

Man was I wrong! When she got off the plane, she was the most cheerful, amiable person I’d ever encountered! I am under the impression that this was at least in part due to the fact that as she was coming through the gate I threw Jinhui (a person she’d never met before) at her. From the airport we headed to the hanbok shop to get her fitted. I thought this was going to be trouble as well, but again I was surprised. She was once more totally game for it. “Sure! Let’s go! What color can I get?” My jaw was on the floor.

My sister’s hanbok fitting was fairly uneventful, though she thought the women there were talking about the size of her chest. They were not. From there we took her back to the hotel and then we headed home for the night. On the way home we stopped off for some kimchi chigae which was so nuclear hot that I burnt a good chunk of my lip off, but it was so delicious!

Anyhow, this concludes part 2 of my wedding. Don’t forget to tune in next time for more madness, and if you like pictures, have I got a treat for you! Follow the above link for pictures of the day’s events.

Sunday afternoon after I got a quick haircut, Jinhui suggested that we should ride our bikes to the area known as Moran in order to check out the Moran Market. Moran Market is a traditional market that is only open on days ending with a 4 or a 9, so with Sunday being the 14th they were totally open and junk.

The bike ride was pretty awesome. The weather was decent and for some reason there were not that many people on the bike path so we were able to really power jam it on down to (up to?) Moran. The only problem we encountered were the countless tiny little bugs that were all about flying around in a swarm and totally getting in our eyes, up our noses, and in our mouths and junk. They were totally nasty.

After an hour or so of hard biking we arrived at the market. We parked the bikes and then entered the market place along with the rest of the masses. There was a sea of humanity wandering around the market place. As we entered I knew that right away I’d be in for a rare treat when I noticed that next to the table selling Buddhist religious items was a table selling porn and horror DVDs…and someone the two people running the booths were related to each other since the dude at the Buddhist table had to price check something with the lady selling porn.

Anyhow we made our way through the market and I saw a lot of really odd stuff. I think the most strange thing I saw, as an American, was the area where people could buy, have slaughtered, and chow down on various animals. I mean I eat meat, I am totally aware of where meat comes from, but there’s something about seeing animals pulled from a cage and dragged around back while crying that is kind of off puting. In America, that kind of stuff is throughly out of the view of the public (so long as you don’t watch videos released by PETA). Still it was not enough t0 make me become a vegetarian, just very different from where I come from.

The other thing that was kind of strange, and I don’t want to perpetuate any stereotypes, but the most common animal to be sold for consumption seemed to be dog. There were cages of them all just chilling out, waiting for their turn. Additionally I saw a sign proclaiming 고양이탕 (cat stew), which is something I had never seen in all my years here. I mean everyone knows that dog is consumed (though not with great frequency), but I’d never heard of cat meat stew.

Additionally right next to the area where one could buy, have killed, have cooked, and chow down on various animals, was the area where one could buy pets. This was pretty odd since chances are if they various rabbits, puppies, and chicks were not sold when they were small and cute, they would move over one row and be able to be eaten.

After checking out various animals we snagged some Coolatas at Dunkin’ Donuts, and then got on our bikes and power jammed it back towards our homestead.

The weekend rolled around again, and once more I was up to my eyeballs in wedding related adventures. Saturday morning began with a trip into the city with my wife, sister-in-law, and father-in-law. The crux of the trip was a visit to the hanbok shop. For you see, several weeks back the wife and I had ordered some hanboks and they were allegedly ready to be worn as was my sister-in-law’s. My father-in-law had to place an order and had the wheels so he came with us.

The trip into Seoul was fairly unremarkable, though I did learn that my sister-in-law hates the saxophone, though no reason was ever given as for why exactly she loathed it. Anyhow after the drive in we met up at the shop and after selecting some colors for my father-in-law’s hanbok, the rest of us went into another building to try on the hanbok.

For those of you that have never worn a hanbok, the pictures don’t really do justice to just how roomy the pants are (I can only speak for the male hanbok, since I didn’t wear the female one). I could seriously gain 150 pounds and still be able to wear the same hanbok I have now. Anyhow the hanboks were all in order, and my sister-in-law’s boyfriend snapped a couple pictures for us (I particularly enjoy the fact that I’m sporting sneakers in the pictures), and then we went back to the first building to pay and get some bonus gifts…at least the women did. They were given handbags, shoes, hanbok underwear, and so on. I got nothing.

From there we all parted ways. The wife and I headed to 인사동 because she had to meet a friend and give said friend a wedding invitation. I had to kill some time alone so I grabbed some lunch, bought a couple CDs, and then checked out the 농악 (or whatever version of Korean traditional percussion I actually saw) in 인사동. If you have no idea of what I speak, check the short film I shot located below.

Now if rockin’ traditional drumming is not awesome enough, there was that made this event even more awesome. At the end of the drum performance, a woman got on the microphone and declared that now there would be free 떡 (ddeok / rice cakes) and 막걸리 (makkoli / rice wine). Free food, as everyone knows, is just about the most awesome thing ever, but free alcohol?! That’s like awesomeness to the nth degree. So I sat on some bench and drank alcohol with old men and homeless guys…it was pretty awesome. At about that time the wife called me to let me know that her meeting was over and we could carry on with our wedding shopping.

So we walked from Insadong over to Myeong-dong to go shopping for shoes…for me. While shopping the wife confessed to me, “Shopping must be so boring for men…look at these shoes you have two choices: black and brown…they all look the same.” Yet somehow we still couldn’t find any decent footwear. A big part of this was the fact that very few stores carry shoes large than the size 275 (which is not really a size that fits me well). Eventually we scored a pair of shoes, and then did some non-wedding related shopping before calling it a night and heading home. So for those of you keeping track at home: hanboks and complete and shoes are complete. Next Week: studio wedding photos!

So after a day spent in the rain, and riding buses 진희 and I were back home, and oddly enough the weather was fantastic! The morning was spent relaxing and resting after the long weekend of being road warriors, but after we had lunch we decided to take advantage of the outstanding weather and do exactly what mothers across America were always bellowing at children spending a spring afternoon playing Nintendo: we went outside and got some fresh air.

진희 and I grabbed a camera, a tripod, and our bikes and headed out for a relaxing bike ride. Near our home is a stream known as 탄천 that has a decent bike / foot path and a series of small parks along the banks. This is the place we usually go when we ride, so it wasn’t really anything special, but a stream in the spring is a far different creature from a stream in the dead of winter. Grasses and trees which had previously been barren, were now an explosion of green. Cranes and ducks landed in the stream, and large fish splashed about in the water.

After riding a distance I measure as three subway stations, we stopped to take some photographs. Suprisingly a lot of them turned out really well. With adequate photos taken for my wife to update her cyworld page, we decided it was time to move on. With Monday being 어버이날 (Parent’s Day) here in Korea we (and by we I mean 진희) decided that it would be in our best interest to pick up some gifts for her parents. 진희 informed me that we would be going to a department store which was a distance of two subway stations from the place which we stood.

“Let’s ride!”

We took off down the bicycle path, avoiding children and small dogs. Finally we were close to our destination, so we headed off the path and onto the real street. Now we had to not only avoid children and small dogs, but also motorcycles and buses. As we headed toward the department store, something caught 진희’s eye.

“Have you ever been to 중앙공원 (Central Park)?” she asked.

“I have in New York.”

“Have you been to Central Park here?”

“No. Is it nearby?”

“It’s right over there.”

“Then let’s check it out.”

So we took a quick detour and headed to 분당 중앙공원. The park was beautiful. There was a large pond in the center of the park with elegant stone bridges crossing it. There was a pavilion decorated with 단청. And everywhere around us people we skating, biking, or having picnics.

KOREA FUN FACT: Apparently one can get pizza, fried chicken, and Chinese food delivered to large parks in order to have picnics. I’m not really sure how the delivery men find the people that ordered the food though.

Since we had both a camera and a tripod it should be more than obvious that copious photographs were taken in the park (see the example to the right). If you wish to see more photographs taken over the course of this day, kindly form a single file line and walk quietly to this site.

Following the photo session we headed over to the department store to pick up some gifts. Apparently things such as socks and hair dye are appropriate gifts, since that is what was purchased. Also we bought the materials needed to make 마파두부. From there we headed back home. The end.

This past Friday (May 5th, 2006), in South Korea, there were not one, but two national holidays: Children’s Day (어린이날) and Buddha’s Birthday (부처님 오신날). Due to these holidays, neither 진희 nor I had any work to do. Therefore, we reserved some bus tickets to the southern reaches of the Korean Peninsula.

The day started for us at the crack of dawn. The bus we were taking to Busan left the bus terminal at 6:30 in the morning, so we were up at 5:00. Showers were taken, final packing was done, and then we were on our way to Busan. We walked to a bus stop. We took a bus from the stop to the subway station. We took the subway to the express bus terminal, and from the terminal we were off to Busan. The trip from Bundang to Busan was completely uneventful. The wife and I slept most of the way there, save for the short period during which the bus pulled into a rest area for a quick potty / eat stuff on a stick break.

Approximately five hours later we were at the bus terminal in Busan. It wasn’t long before my ears were assaulted with the local regional dialect. I am still amazed that a country as geographically small as Korea can have such diverse and different dialects from region to region. I suppose that the different regional dialects can be attributed to the mountainous geography of the country. Anyhow back to Busan’s dialect…I personally found it extremely difficult to understand and had to really focus to understand what people were saying. It’s really difficult to explain it, so I’ll turn your attention to this here website explaining the dialect of the area.

From the terminal we got on a subway train and headed towards Haeundae (해운대), a beach area. The subway system in Seoul is much easier to use than its counterpart in Busan. The Busan system seemed to have only three different lines, with very few stations at which one could transfer. Additionally the subway trains seemed to be much more narrow and definately shorter than those in Seoul. None of this was really a problem, since we got from point A to point B (b is for beach) with no problems what-so-ever.

Haeundae was simply amazing. The entire area had a very laid back and relaxing vibe (good God I sound like such a hippie). Due to the fact that the beach area was surrounded by large buildings and such, Haeundae and the surrounding area kind of reminded me of Repulse Bay in Hong Kong. 진희 said she was reminded of San Fransisco for the same reason.

After a walk on the beach and a quick snack of the regional delicacy, 어묵 / 오뎅(ohmook / odeng) we decided to head to the nearby area known as 달맞이길 (Moon Viewing Road).

Inspite of the fact that we visited the Moon Viewing Road in the middle of the afternoon, the place was still quite nice. Basically it was a walkway up a hill, and at the top of the hill there was a pavilion overlooking the ocean. All in all it was really quite pretty. After seeing the lack of a moon at the summit of the Moon Viewing Road, we decided to head back into the city proper and then onward to an island in the south where there were ferry rides. So we jumped on a bus and took off for further adventure.

BUSAN FUN FACT: Just as there is a brand of milk known as Seoul Milk which can be purchased in Seoul, Busan has a similarly named milk. Dubbed Busan Milk (or 부산우유 in Korean) it is virtually identical to all other milk. As a quick aside, Seoul Milk is also sold in Busan.

After a quick bus ride we disembarked near Busan station and began making our way towards Taejongdae (태종대), the afore mentioned island with ferry rides. As we walked we asked various citizens of Busan for directions, all of them responding with vague, “It’s that way. No, it’s not too far,” type directions. So we walked and walked. We went past the area dubbed 상해문 (上海門 / Shanghai Gate), which inspite having a Chinese theme going on with the street lights was extremely Russian (all manner of Cyrillic signs were there). We walked past the dry fish market with a sign with a giant cartoon character squid statue attached to it. Oh what smells rose from that area! We crossed a bridge. On and on we walked. “That way! Not more than 10 minutes!”

Apparently Busan residents have some sort of The Flash-esque speed going on since after walking a good five kilometers or so, we gave up and got on a bus. The bus to the island took approximately 15 minutes. Anyhow we unfortunately arrived a little to late to ride the ferry since the stop running at 6:00 in the evening. Therefore instead of riding on a ship, we sat on a dock and took some more photos. After a short period of looking at waves, we decided to head back towards the city and stop in and have dinner at a fish market.

Vegetarians, animal rights activists, and those of you that can not stand the thought of consuming sea creatures, please skip this next Busan Fun Fact.

BUSAN FUN FACT: In Busan (and perhaps other coastal areas in Korea) it is possible, and fully legal to eat whale meat (which is exactly what the picture to the right is a picture of). That’s right, while in Busan I chowed down upon Shamu. So how does whale taste? Great! It doesn’t have a real fishy taste to it, and it’s not quite a meat taste. It’s kind of hard to explain. The blubber is kind of buttery tasting, and the skin is really chewy. The only draw back to whale meat is the cost. The small plate shown in the picture cost 20,000 won (roughly $20US).

Ok…it’s safe to come back now! In addition to the above, we also had some extremely fresh 회 (raw fish). Submitted for your approval is the following video of our dinner plate.

That pink, moving stuff on the plate is 해삼 (海蔘 / haesam) also known as a sea cucumber.

With dinner out of the way we decided to check out the area known as 용두산공원 (龍頭山公園 / Dragon Head Mountain Park). This park is the home of the Busan Tower and is very similar to 남산 (南山 / South Mountain) in Seoul…only there were palm trees, a statue of 이순신, and a statue of a dragon with a light in its mouth. On the mountain, 진희 and I had a soft drink and looked out over the night skyline of Busan. When we decided that we had had enough, we got on a subway train and headed back towards the bus terminal to get a room for the night. Since we had to be on a bus out of the city early the next morning, we thought it would be best to stay near the bus terminal.

We ended up staying in a fairly sleazy place. It was the kind of hotel where the only things on the television were Japanese porno films (and to the person that left a comment about 현영 voice, I know now what you were talking about when you brought up porn from the land of the rising sun). Anyhow we drank some brews and then headed off to sleep. Thus concludes day one of our southern pilgrimage.

The complete photo set can be located here, in the event that you wish to examine other photographs of my wife and I in the city of 부산.

Sometime last week 진희 and I acquired, through fairly dubious means, tortillas and assorted other materials required to play the eat tacos home edition. Sunday being the first day in a long time that I’ve had any time, tacos were totally prepared and junk by yours truly.

Since beef is like gold here, or perhaps gold is cheaper…I’ll have to check with my sister-in-law, we opted for chicken tacos. So this morning we had a quick trip to Carrefore to pick up chicken and assorted vegetables that we were lacking. Of course a shopping list that included four items ended up being about 10 items, but it’s all good.

Back at the homestead I hit the kitchen like I was Jamie Oliver…or at least a fry cook at Burger King. I got to work chopping up some meat and then got my pan fry going on. 진희 was assigned the tasks of chopping a tomato, chopping a cucumber, and washing some lettuce. Things were going extremely well, until I realized we had nothing remotely close to taco cheese. Playing the part of taco cheese were three ripped up slices of processed American cheese, and honestly it didn’t fair too poorly.

So we served up my taco creations to her parents. Neither of them had ever encountered a taco before, but went to town on them. It was kind of funny to watch their reactions to a kind of food I have consumed countless times, and I’m sure it is how various people here feel when subjecting me to various food items. Food items that are common and throughly unremarkable to them seems unique and exotic to me. This time I got to be on the other end of the table.

Anyhow the tacos turned out fairly well…except for the fact that taco type cheeses do not exist here in Korea and we had to substitute ripped up pieces of processed cheese slices for more appropriate cheeses. Anyhow it turned out well, and everyone was please. The end.

I remember reading somewhere (most likely an ESL textbook that I was teaching from) about the how pizza differs from country to country, and how each country puts their own unique spin on pizza toppings. So I decided that I would do some sort of investigative reporting expose on some of the more unusual (from an America perspective) pizza toppings that I have seen here in Korea.

We kick things off with this advertisement I found taped to my door many moons ago. The pizza on top is not really that special…your standard issue, cheese crust heart attack pan pizza. I wish to bring the lower pizza to your attention. That’s right, “Chili Dog” pizza. And here I was thinking that America had the most heart attack inducing pizza toppings in the world. Hot dogs and hot chili sauce on a pizza. Where do I sign up?

Next up we have cute as hell 문근영 (Moon Geun-Young) in a television for Mister Pizza. This particular ad features Miss Moon playing the role of a reporter discussing Mister Pizza’s latest offering Shrimp Nude Pizza. The commercial itself shows that someone in the company (or at least the ad company that created the ad) realized the name of this pizza is slightly rediculous. The pizza itself is also fairly rediculous as it features cream cheese and shrimp as toppings.

Here we have a pizza menu (again taped to my door many moons ago) showing some of the more popular pizza toppings here in South Korea. In addition to things such as cheese and pepperoni there are offerings such as 마요감자 (mayo and potato), 가지 (eggplant), 콘 (corn), 포테이토 (”potato” actual steak fries), and 고구마 (sweet potato).

And last but certainly not least there was this advertisement (again taken off my front door long ago in a galaxy far, far away). While this ad does not offer up any other unusually pizza toppings, it does confirm that both potato and sweet potato are a common enough topping to be offered by several different delivery services. In addition, I personally like this menu due to the fact they each pizza was given it’s own cute mascot. Oh they are so cute!

Related Posts:
Bulgogi Pizza
Sweety Pizza
Spainish Hot Pizza

A friendly reminder from the good folks at the Department of Gender Equality and the Police Department, not to be buying or selling sex.

I carefully considered how to go about presenting the text to accompany this horrible photographed sign I witnessed on the subway. At first I thought about combining the photo with some sort of news article about the sex trade in Korea obtained from The Chosun Ilbo, countless character assassinations in the comments section, and some sort of headline proclaiming “MUST READ!!!” I quickly realized that this is not The Marmot’s Hole, and decided to do something else.

My next option was to simply make a crude joke about it. Something like, “Is renting sex ok?” or “What about buying porn?” Since I’ve just presented pretty much all the jokes one could make about that sign, and it didn’t make a very interesting read, I decided to go all educational on you and hit you with some completely useless 漢字 knowledge.

性 (성품 성) among its several other uses is used in words dealing with sex. So let’s get it on, with a partial vocabulary list most sexy (partial because it will end the second I get bored with this…작심삼일 baby!)

성 (性) - a sex, a gender
성감 (性感) - sexual feeling
성감대 (性感帶) - an erogenous zone
성과학 (性科學) - sexology (is that even really a word?)
성교하다 (性交하다) - to have sexual intercourse
성교육 (性敎育) - sex education
성기 (性器) - sexual organs
성도덕 (性道德) - sexual morality
성도착증 (性倒錯症) - sexual perversion
성범죄 (性犯罪) - a sex crime (ala Law & Order: SVU)
성병 (性病) - an STD
성본능 (性本能) - sexual urges
성생활 (性生活) - sex life
성선 (性腺) - a sex gland, gonad
성애 (性愛) - sexual love, eros
성욕 (性慾) - carnal desire
성용품 (性用品) - sexual supplies (things like condoms, vibrators, ect.)
성적 (性的) - sexual
성전 (性典) - a book on sex, an encyclopedia of sex
성전환 (性轉換) - a sex change
성지식 (性知識) - knowledge of sex
성추행 (性醜行) - sexual molestation
성행위를 하다 (性行爲를 하다) - to perform a sexual act

That about does it kids. Feel free to print it out for easy use on the subway. I’m sure the 아줌마 looking over your shoulder to see what you are doing will enjoy it a lot.

Yesterday was a nonstop party during which the wife and I rocked it to the break of dawn! The day began with a trip to 창덕궁. Since spring has sprung we decided to head off with a tripod and take some pictures while standing infront of the natural beauty…or man made beauty that is 비원 (the Secret Garden).

So there was a bus ride and we disembarked in 종로. Before we headed to the palace we grabbed ourselves some lunch. The day’s menu was 오무라이스 that was simply outstanding. I had a unit of 오무라이스 with a carbona sauce, and the wife chowed down on one topped with fried bananas / sweet potatoes. Both were top notch, and apparently we were extremely hungry since we were in the restaurant for about 15 minutes (from ordering to paying the bill).

From there it was off to 창덕궁 in order to snap some pictures. Somehow between the last time I visited this venue, and this time, the powers that be became a lot more strict. After buying our tickets we had to wait 30 minutes or so for the next guided tour to begin before we were allowed in. After that, armed guards (armed in the sense that they all had two arms) were stationed around the area to prevent people from wandering off and examining the grounds at their own pace.

So the first 20 minutes or so of the tour was spent trying to evade capture so we could go at our own pace, see things we wanted to see, take pictures, skip the stuff we had no interest in, and so on. I’m not saying that the guided tour is pointless, far from it. It was quite informative the first time I listened to it, and I’m pretty sure that in the past six or seven months, the history of the palace hasn’t changed much.

Finally sneaking off, we made our way to 비원 (aka the Secret Garden) which in all honesty was the reason we made the pilgrimage to that venue. “Let’s go to 비원 with a tripod and take some pictures with decent scenic backdrops.” Which is just what we did. The photo evidence is avalible here for those who care to see it.

After throughly wandering about the venue and seeing all that we cared to see, 진희 and I headed over to the bookstore known as English Plus so that she could pick up some sort of book about testing English vocabulary. We we’re then planning to take a bus home, but some farmers from out in the provinces and college students had another idea. Their idea was to get pissed off about the government’s plan to import some food stuffs at much cheaper prices (therefore making it harder for farmers to make money), come to Seoul, march in the street, set fire to stuff, and have the police block off the streets to allow this behavior (instead of busting farmers in the skull). I snapped a couple of low quality photos mostly because I thought their protest wagon was rediculous (see photo to the right).

The flow of traffic was seriously messed up, so instead of taking the bus home, which on a normal day takes about 40 minutes, we had to take the subway (which takes roughly an hour and a half). So I was a tad pissed off, and took this annoyance out the random middle aged women who attempted to push their way onto the subway as the wife and I were attempting to get off to make the first of the transfers we had to make. I seriously close-lined one of them and she got all indignant, but I felt no remorse what so ever.

Jerkass farmers aside the afternoon was outstanding, but the day was far from over. Once back in our home area, we decided to go check out a film at the movie theater. 진희 wanted to see 뻔뻔한 딕 & 제인 (Fun With Dick & Jane), so we went to go check out some tickets. There was a showing at 9:00, but we would have had to sit in seats away from each other, and where’s the fun in that?

There was another showing at midnight, so we purchased tickets which (due to being for a showing at midnight) were 50% off. We headed home to kill some time before the showing, and to pick up some snacks to bring to the theater with us. In a clear sign that I have been in Korea far, far too long, the snack I personally selected to bring with me was not chips, or popcorn, or a candy bar of anysort, but dried squid. That’s right, I brought the very same snack I once loathed to encounter in the movie theater.

Anyhow, 11:15 rolled around and we headed back to the theater, and took in the film. Our seats were outstanding. We had “couple seats” (which is basically one big seat for two people) up on a balcony away from everyone else in the theater. So we sat there, ate our squid, drank our beers and enjoyed the movie. Personally, I thought the film was not that bad. Jim Carrey often annoys the hell out of me with his manic behavior in other films, but here he was more subdued and therefore a lot funnier. All in all the film was pretty decent: a comedy that required very little work to enjoy, which is the right kind of movie to watch at midnight I suppose.

The film ended and 진희 and I walked back home. Sometime between 11:15 and 1:30 or so, a cold wind had picked up and the air was crisp and a tad chilly. We returned home, had a cup of tea and a chat, and then headed off to bed. When all was said and done, it was a fantastic day.

Awhile back at the bus stop, while waiting for the bus, I encountered this signage while waiting for the bus at the bus stop. I stared at it, completely perplexed by the seriously god-awful font before me. Was it some foreign language for mail order brides (since I have seen signs advertising for them as well)? Was I just really drunk? Before I code decode it, my chariot arrived and I headed off to adventure.

The next day I returned to the bus stop with my wife (born, raised, and educated in Korea) and the pair of us examined the sign in great detail. After much research we were finally able to determine the sign was in fact writen in Korean, and we were able to finally decipher what was written. Now I pass the torch to you. Can you figure it out? Check the answer by highlighting the brackets that follow: (광고문의).

I enjoy Korean food, and eating here is great, but I had one big gripe when it came to eating out in Korea. That complaint was the lack of variety especially in regards to foreign food. I mean things like Chinese food, sushi, Thai and Vietnamese food is fairly easy to come by in Seoul, but when it comes to regions outside of Asia (or lousy American chain restaurants) the foreign cuisine choices can be found to be lacking. The thing I missed the most was the lowly taco and his companions: refried beans, the burrito, and the nacho. Fearing that I would not be able to consume such foodstuffs again (until my next trip home), this past summer I gourged myself on all manner of Tex-Mex cooking. Apparently it was not needed, since Seoul does have a Mexican restaurant, and it’s not half bad. And since I feel a sense of duty to you people I’ll let you know where it is and junk.

Getting There: In Seoul, take line number 6 (the tan line) to녹사평 (綠沙坪 / Noksapyeong) and go out exit number 1. From here, cross the street using the overpass. On the otherside go down the hill. You’ll pass a Lexus dealer, a used foreign bookstore (which in and of itself is worth the trip to Noksapyeong), a hamburger place called ThunderBuger, and a couple real estate agents (부동산). The restaurant has a yellow sign which simply proclaims “TACO” on it (I believe in red letters, but I could be mistaken).

The Food: The menu has nearly everything you’d expect to find at a Mexican restaurant: tacos, burritos, nachos, and so on, but lacks the deep fried offerings (no chimchangas) and no enchiladas). Prices are fairly reasonable: ￦3,500 for a standard taco, ￦6,000 for Nacho Sumpreme, and the taste is spot on. Second hand information informs me that the owner spent an extended period of time in Tex-Mexico and during that time there learned the secrets of the taco.

The Atmosphere: The restaurant has a vibe very similar to any in and out restaurant located near a college campus in the United States (or at least any college campus in New England or New York). It’s a small place with a couple tables, and a counter. Additional seating can be found on a second floor, which is completely invisible from the outside of the building.

Additionally the staff all speak English, and the menus are in English as well so langauge should not be a problem, making ordering a snap. Food can be eaten at the restaurant of order to go (”take away” for the British people that happen to be reading this).

So if you have a hankering for some tacos head over to “TACO” in Noksapyeong.

My goodness am I a lazy, lazy man…

Several months back 진희 and I ordered her sister to forge us a set of “couple rings.” These rings were the end result. The cost?

A dinner of 보쌈, and some rounds at the local 호프…such prices cannot be beat!

And for those of you out of the loop, “couple rings” (커플링) are rings that men and women exchange when they are dating. I suppose these rings serve to mark a man or woman as “taken,” or maybe they are a symbol of love.

Crapaud: 21st Century Apartment Life In South Korea
Carlos McSuede
KOR 421

You know where you are
You’re in the jungle baby
You’re gonna die
In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Watch it bring you to your knees, knees
In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Feel my, my serpentine

- Guns n’ Roses, “Welcome To The Jungle.”

Throughout history there have been both advantages and disadvantages to every aspect of human existance. These advantages and disadvantages shape human life in both a positive and negative fashion. That is to say that they are good and bad. Nowhere is this battle of good verses evil more obvious than in the case of dwelling in an apartment complex in South Korea in the 21st century.

Wyatt Dunn first moved into a South Korean apartment complex in January of 2006. This move is perhaps best explained by Sir Reginald Alister in his 1867 manuscript titled, 21st Century Housing In South Korea: A Treatise, when he wrote, “In January 2006, Wyatt Dunn moved into an apartment complex located outside of Seoul, South Korea,” (Alister 222).

Once throughly relocated in this new environment, Wyatt Dunn came to realize that there were many advantages to living here. The first, and foremost, was the fact that no longer did he have to deal with shoddy furnaces that did not seem to enjoy cold weather. Nor did he have to let the shower run for hours on end before something closely related to warm water came from the faucet. Upon his arrival, shower time was no longer an ordeal.

“The shower situation has become nearly bearable again. I have warm water that springs from the faucet as soon as I turn the water on. There is one problem though, and that is the fact that I have a tub again. I never thought that I would long for the day when my drain in the middle of the bathroom floor and hose to wash myself down was replaced with an actual tub with a shower curtain, but there is something enduring (and easy to clean) about such a bathroom configuration,” (Dunn, 5477).

The preceeding quote touches briefly upon some of the negative aspects (disadvantages) of apartment life. Among the other various disadvantages of apartment dwelling, perhaps the most obvious is the garbage collection system.

The phrase garbage collection system refers to a system by which garbage (waste materials) are removed from the living area to a region away from the living area where it can decompose or be recycled into new materials. While the residents of “one rooms” or other personal housing are allowed to dispose of their rubbish whenever they see fit, residents residing in an apartment complex are required to depose of waste on “trash day,” (Boggs 1986).

The institution of trash day is of greater concern due to the sheer ammount of seperation required of recycleable goods. Little Jimmy Hoffman claims that, “Glass, plastic, paper, and metal are the four types of recycleable materials,” (Hoffman 1), but the apartment dweller in South Korea is required to seperate clear plastic from white plastic, wrapping plastic from other clear plastic, soju (소주) bottles from beer bottles, and so on. “It’s far more trouble than it’s worth,” (Dunn 49203).

In conclusion without apartment dwelling in South Korea at the dawn of the twenty-first century, apartment dwellers would be without any apartments to dwell in, thus making them homeless. And for all the disadvantages of apartment dwelling, none can outweight the disadvantage that is being an apartment dweller without an apartment.

Works Cited

Alister, Reginald, 21st Century Housing In South Korea: A Treatise. Avet Publishing, 1867.

Boggs, Wade, Baseball Made Easy. Oxford, 1986.

Dunn, Wyatt, Kimchi & Me: The Book. Random House, 2005.

Hoffman, Little Jimmy, “Recycling.” Mrs. Green’s Class Press, 1998.

The first day of March is a national holiday in Korea. Known simply as 3-1절 (3-1 Holiday), the holiday is a day of rememberence for an event that took place in 1919. On that day a group of Koreans gathered in Pagoda Park to protest Japanese rule and demand their independence, and independence which was achieved some 26 years later in 1945.

At present, Koreans for the most part celebrate this holiday the same way the celebrate most holidays, meaning they don’t really do anything special. I for my part had kept with this tradition until a chance encounter with an announcement while riding an exercise bike changed my 삼일절 plans for the year of 2006.

The wife and I belong to a gym located in our apartment complex. The gym is not that large, but it has running machines, exercise bikes, and more weight equipment than we have at home, and the price is decent since we enrolled in the husband and wife membership plan. So each and every day (or at least four times a week) we head over to the gym to exercise for an hour or two. About a week ago, while we were riding the stationary bikes, I was rocking out with some jams on my ipod (I believe it was Archers of Loaf or Hot Rod Circuit) and Jinhui was reading the newspaper.

She tapped my shoulder as she often does while reading the newspaper. Usually it is to show me some random 漢字 and attempt to stump me, sometimes it’s to show me a bizarre news story (usually about a celebrity or idiots in America), and sometimes it’s just to do Korean sign language for, “I love you.” This time it was none of the above. What she showed me was an advertisement for some memorial walk to comemorate the March 1st Movement. I quickly scanned the ad.

“3.1 kilometer walk, snacks and beverages provided, free jacket…call 02-XXX-XXXX or send and e-mail to insertemail@dress.here”

“Free jacket?! Let’s do it!”

So we called them up and made reservations for jackets for four. The big day arrived, and after a morning spent making 김밥 and 유부초밥, the wife, her sister, her sister’s boyfriend, and I headed off to 남산 for a 3.1 kilometer walk. We arrived at the meeting point to find that we were the only people under the age of 50 in attendance. I also learned (though the others in my party already knew) that this particular walk was sponsored by (or supporting) an organization against Kim Jong-Il and his way of doing business.

So we hiked up the mountain among aged Korean marines (who still looked tough as hell), middle aged women with signs depicting cartoon Kim Jong-Il getting crushed with hammers, and old men and women who have hometowns and family members living north of the boarder. The hike itself was a pretty easy affair, though highly enjoyable. As we power-walked up the mountain, he conversed about random nonsense such as cartoons of the 1980s.

After 30 or 40 minutes we arrived at the final destination. We were given some bread and milk and took a seat as some men delivered some speeches and the crowd partook in 만세운동 (萬世運動), which basically means everyone in attendance yelled, “만세!” (a phrase similar to “Hooray!”) three times and threw their arms in the air (they did not “wave ‘em like they just don’t care” however). During the speeches we all proceeded to chow down upon or 김밥, and then it was time to go.

After our march, my sister-in-law and her boyfriend took us to a jewlery shop in order for 진희 and I to get some wedding rings made. Since both her sister and her sister’s boyfriend are jewlers we were able to get rings made for extremely low prices. Which is decent, since I am quickly learning that wedding ceremonies are fairly costly affairs, so anywhere we can save some cash works for me. What’s more, the rings we are getting are handmade, so not only are they cheaper, but they are of a higher quality.

Following the designing of our rings, we traveled to a department store to get 진희’s father a birthday gift and I encountered a Korean celebrity, but he was shopping, with his wife and kid, and looked extremely stoned, so I didn’t bother him. Instead, I stared in awe at the fashion sense (or lack there of) of the Japanese tourists that were hanging around.

With a brithday present purchased, we headed back home to close out our 삼일절 celebrations. 만세!

Check out random other photos from the day here.

Oh ho! It’s 2006 buddies! The new year was rung in as it should always be rung in: brews and card games!!!!!

Earlier in the day yesterday 진희, Mr. Lee, a character dubbed “Navigation,” my sister and I traveled to the northern most edge of South Korea and looked across the boarder with telescopes. Also I bought 평양소주 (Pyeongyang soju), which is for show, not for go. After checking out what the commies were rockin’ the posse went out to dinner at some crazy fancy Chinese restaurant.

And then HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!?!!?! It’s 2006!!!! WOOHOO!!!! AHHHHWOOOOGA!!!

Because it is totally the year of the dog in the event that you didn’t know such things.

Also if you like to look at pictures and junk, then you will definately want to check out this crap.

I debated long and hard as to weather or not to post this. There was a steel cage death match between my better judgement and my inner (mule)hole, and unfortunately after some interference from King Kong Bundy, the inner (mule)hole came out victorious. In addition to capturing the championship belt from my better judgement, the inner (mule)hole’s victory made me contractually obligated to post this.

I’m pretty sure that if there is such a place as hell I will be flying straight there upon my demise. But it’s not going to be those lower levels of hell that Dante’s Inferno waxed poetic about…no, I’ll end up in whatever circle of hell masturbators and used car salesmen end up in. Damn you inner (mule)hole!!! Damn you!!!

Anyhow, moving on…A few days back while waiting for someone at a subway station, I discovered this poster about the horrors of child abuse. Let’s take a closer look at some of the more ridiculous illustrations and mock them. In the process we’ll secure you your own spot in the inferno with me! Enjoy!

Here we see the horror of physical abuse. The question I have is if the guy has a baseball bat, why is he hitting the girl with his elbow? Wouldn’t a baseball bat be far more effective in laying the smack down?

Wait a second…that girl looks to be about 9 or 10 years old. What kind of dad needs a baseball bat to take a 9 year old girl out? That dude is seriously weak. It’s not like that little girl is magical, or a rhino, or on steroids. What the crap does he need the bat for?

Here we see a girl being molested by a large purple hand which looks surprisingly like the enemy from Zelda known asWallmaster.

Actually how rad would it be if that is what those scumbags actually looked like? Imagine an episode of Law and Order: SVU where the character Elliot is totally going nuts on a giant purple hand. Or if that dude on America’s Most Wanted was giving information on some sick pervert. “Witnesses described the pervert as a giant purple hand. If you have any information please call 1-800-America’s-Most-Wanted. Let’s get this big purple dirt bag off the streets before he can hurt any other kids!”

Anyhow to show that I am not totally a heartless bastard, I’ll provide a link to the National Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse here in Korea. There is a page in English for those of you with no knowledge of Korean. So if you or anyone you know is being abused, get help…man I feel like such a Public Service Announcement.