I am crap at blogging!

Ok, so well over a month has gone by. I sometimes think of blogs as a twinge of conscience rather than a forum through which to express your experiences and thoughts. You know it's bad when your blog makes you feel guilty. You are sitting at your computer thinking 'Hey! When was the last time I blogged? Shouldn't I do one now?' Then you get distracted by a pointless news article about people dressing up as vending machines in Japan, and you forget (but it was bloody hysterical, my personal favourite being the kid dressed as the World's Most Unconvincing Postbox':

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/10/20/world/20071020_JAPAN_SLIDESHOW_index.html

Korea plods along at a non-plodding pace. Six months, more, have passed. I look back in astonishment and wonder where they went.

Last weekend brought early Halloween celebrations. I dressed up as Leela from Futurama. People asked me how on earth I was going to manage the Cyclops problems. The short answer to that is I didn't. However, I did have purple hair and an attitude problem so that made things a little easier to work out.

I also made the serious error of going hiking with Dave, my fellow co-worker and ex professional climber. We took the 'scenic' route to the top of Baekundae Mountain which involved amongst other things, climbing through a tiny gap in a cave UPWARDS, hauling my sorry butt up a huge slippy granite rock on a rope and me managing to get cut several times as I sweated in a truly inelegant fashion. It was all worth it at the top though, particularly when Dave made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and it was quite possibly the thickest layer of peanut butter I have ever seen on a surface. The thought of it now scares me.

Sunday = a five hour Beethoven concert. FIVE HOURS! Maybe my sad pretense at being cultured will be quickly exposed when someone shakes me awake and tells me that I was drooling.

Five days off...and no concrete plans

Chuseok, Korean Thanksgiving, has reared its delightful head and I have nothing planned. Initially, the mountains called but a delightful typhoon has rendered that slightly undo-able. As much as the thought of eating kimchi pancakes on a dangerously slick slope whilst Korean families in their entirety skip carelessly past appeals, I think I will give it a miss in favour of water parks and sleep catch up.

I saw Koop, a nu-jazz band consisting of two unconvincing cross dressers and a fantastic back up band on Saturday night at the very plush Sheraton Grande Walker Hill Hotel (farrrr too many words in that one) and they kicked ass. What didn't kick ass were the five Korean bands that proceeded them. I have never seen such terrible music before. Really. The first act consisted of a reedy female vocalist and a Korean rapper. It went progressively downhill from there but fortunately Koop didn't reflect the quality of their support acts.

Sunday brought the National Museum of Korea. Museums in Korea, like everywhere, are a mixed bag. The Seoul History Museum sounded promising, for example; however, it ended up being a museum based entirely around the history of Seoul. There are only so many papyrus-drawn civic maps that you can take in one afternoon. The Kimchi museum (which I haven't been fortunate enough to visit) is dedicated solely to the wonderous pickled vegetable that few Korean meals are complete without. Seodaemun Prison is so anti-Japanese that if you happened to walk through its gate with even a small manga book in your pocket, you might spontaneously combust. The National Museum of Korea, however, was spacious, absolutely huge, bedecked with a huge pagoda in the centre and there was a wealth of water droppers. I was there with my friend Alex and the American and we all puzzled over what exactly these could be for. Turns out that calligraphists required the specific measurements of water given out by said dropper to keep the consistency of their ink correct. I personally was envisaging torture techniques similar to those of the Chinese so the reality was somewhat more...pleasant.

Mourning The Loss of Seoul's Most Eligible Bachelor

My good friend and ex-co-worker (that's a lot of dashes) Brandon married the love of his life this weekend, Hannah. I was lucky enough to be one of the few invited (I took a bemused Shaun and unfortunately we didn't call each other and co-ordinate out outfits beforehands as we both showed up in head-to-toe black) and even luckier to be able to witness something that turned out to be really sweet and special.

That doesn't mean, of course, that it wasn't a completely surreal experience. There were three main parties at the wedding and this is a undeservedly brief summary:

1) On the groom's side, there was the cream of Korea's ultimate fighting...fighters. They came in a variety of shapes, sizes and questionable outfits and were quite afraid of the open bar which Brandon quickly rectified by getting a round of Long Island Ice teas in.
2) On the bride's side (Hannah works in Queen, one of Seoul's few gay nightclubs), was most of Seoul's gay and lesbian population. I heard some bitching good naturedly behind me during the ceremony; after proceedings, cake fights began in earnest.
3) Also on the bride's side was Hannah's traditional Korean family, with her mother dressed in hanbok.

Shaun and I were highly entertained by the whole event, compounded by the groom getting stocious before the ceremony even begun not to mention the shot that he had when it did begin. But somehow, all these hijinks didn't take away from the inherent sweetness of the whole event. I got (unashamedly) teary when Brandon declared his wife, 'The most beautiful woman that I have ever met'.

Sunday was spent beating the American in Scrabble. Truly, I am looking forward to playing a worthy challenger (although my friend Annabelle is throwing a Scrabble party this Sunday which I will be more than likely annihilated at). Speaking of the child-handed one, she made her TV debut on KBS2 this week, on a kind of Korean chatshow where 16 foreign girls are put through various interviews and questions on Korean culture...all in Korean. Once the novelty of seeing Annabelle (who was remarkably composed) in a Snow White costume wore off, Shaun and I scratched out heads and tried to work out what the heck was going on. Failing, of course.

Shameful lack of blogging...

I apologise to anyone who is sweet enough to read (or attempt to read) this blog on any kind of a regular basis - I used to be fairly good with updates but that has since tailed out with my brand new busy school schedule not to mention an unhealthy amount of time spent on the Hell Socialising Device also known as Facebook.

I have somehow inherited my hagwon's smartest kids which is both a blessing and a curse - blessing because you can talk at a perfectly normal, non patronizing speed. Bad, because it requires lot of extra work and the kids are more than capable of outsmarting you, particularly on any day where you have possibly missed out on a couple of hours sleep, or are hungover or pretty much anything that can undermine your already questionable intellect. They are ready to pounce.

I spent my last weekend in Sokcho, a pretty seaside town which is also the gateway to Seoraksan National Park, home of some magnificent mountains. I went with who I shall refer to as The American, a sweet guy that I met a few months ago and am now 'dating'. I use the word dating advisedly even though, as in true Irish tradition, I shy from the word much like an Irish person would shy from a pub with no alcohol. I am desperately trying to stop his Southern inflected lexicon from affecting mine but I am prone to the occasional, horrible slip. I cannot wait for an irate Irish person to give me a well deserved slap.

A friend of mine, Brandon, is getting married tomorrow so I get to attend my first Korean wedding, which I am very excited about. Out of politeness, I asked him what I should know/bring/wear. This was the response I received:

know: you missed your chance
wear: something low cut, skimpy. all my fighter friends will be there, and will be impressed with your foreign/not-so-foreigness
bring: lots of money, not my custom, Korean tradition, when in Rome, don't act like an American.

Am really looking forward to it. Really!

Tales of A Drunken Co-Worker

One of my favourite co-workers, James, never fails to be entertaining. If he isn't slapping someone on the head with his...appendage, or listening to the most depressing Smiths song he can find (and that's pretty tough competition), or drinking makele (Korean alcoholic milky drink, truly revolting) then he's telling Korean pastors that he is a Satanist.

My favourite moment came on Tuesday night. Myself, Shaun, Colum, Janice and James went to see Mat the Alien and Cut Chemist (former J5 and Ozomatli DJ). We all got pretty wrecked on poju, which is a heady combination of Powerade - with most of the bottle emptied out - an entire bottle of soju and one Vitamin 500 energy drink which makes it turn a nuclear green colour. James also hit the vodka before warning us that vodka can send him quite mad.

We dismissed this comment out of hand and then later, really wished we hadn't. James got stocious, climbed up on stage when Cut Chemist came on, and performed a series of karate chop dance moves. I was out in the drinking area when I saw him, followed by Colum and then a rather large Korean bouncer who knew only two English words - 'Get out'.

The night ended with Colum physically throwing James into a taxi and James saying delightful things like 'You are dead to me' whilst all the while staring into my eyes much as Damien from the Omen might.

One of the DJs from the night, Mat the Alien, actually witnessed James' dramatic stage leap and took a photo which I would dearly love to get my mitts on. Oh, I would like to say that my life is not entirely based around drinking and partying, despite the slightly biased slant of my blog topics. Occasionally other things like shopping and sightseeing are done also.

Cambodia

I am suffering post holiday blues, which I find is always the best time to write about a place as your descriptions become even more glowing than they would be normally.

I had a fantastic holiday - I got to meet up with Conor, saw the Temples of Angkor which mere words would serve a vast injustice, particularly mine; in fact, it was one of the most impressive manmade structures I have ever seen, right up there with Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu felt like a pleasure deserved after four days of hiking, vomiting and llama cheese. Angkor Wat wasn't a reward for hard work (sitting in the back of a tuk-tuk talking about The Girl From Tomorrow was hardly taxing) but the sheer majesty of each temple and the air of individuality about them was breathtaking. The sculpture and carvings were almost painfully intricate.

Of course, Cambodia isn't all about Angkor, even though they are strongly and justifiably proud of their past achievements. The fresh memories of genocide became apparently to me almost immediately - my taxi driver from the airport asked me my profession and I said I taught English - 'Ah, the Khmer Rouge killed all English speakers'. The estimations on the number of victims vacillates almost as wildly as the estimates for Tiananmen Square - some say 750,000, others 3 million. Regardless of the numbers, the horror was hard to stomach. Conor and I were discussing about how in our blase youth, tragedy rarely moved us; I actually felt physically sick in the S21 prison. There were rooms full of black and white pictures of some of the 20,000 prisoners that 'passed through'. Most of the dead were emaciated. Some had faces frozen in fear, even in death. Others had half their faces missing. Some were curled up on skeletal metal beds, shackled and twisted into impossible positions with congealing blood pooled beneath them.

It was difficult to accept that this had happened to a people that smiled and were truly, genuinely friendly, every single one that I met.

Coming back to Korea was extremely difficult to do as I felt that I hadn't seen anywhere near enough of Cambodia. But, I battle on. And the rain continues to pish down (although it is not as bad as Ireland where apparently it rained for 46 days straight. Ark building, commence.

The Kappa

Now I know that the word 'Kappa' for a certain generation implies fluorescent green tracksuits nay shellsuits, high tight ponytails (the Essex facelift) and oversized gold hoop earrings. I had no idea of the secret other meaning of the word 'Kappa'.

Until now. My workmate James, who has a perfectly healthy interest in all things macabre, discovered the Kappa one random Saturday. It is a mythical water based sprite which the Japanese still to this day fear. It has a taste for children and will, if you let your kids too near waterways where there may be a mirage of a hair clip, get them with its scaly webbed hands. When I say taste, I mean they suck out the children's entrails through their anus. And apparently, the only thing that tastes better to a kappa, inexplicably, is cucumber. Yes, cucumber. You would think that it would at least be some alternative form of flesh but maybe I was just giving the Japanese too much credit towards sanity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kappa_%28folklore%29