Many Manifestations of Sickness

It is a fact - Koreans are unfamiliar with the concept of vomiting as a stomach bug. Three members of staff went to our local doctor, all of them puking around every 20 minutes, and they were all deemed to have food poisoning, despite going separately over the period of a week and never having eaten the same food. I escaped with a mild case of mul-dong - I will leave you to work that one out - and have since recovered fully - yay!

I have a much more entertaining story of sickness though, and it was of the self-inflicted kind. My friend Annabelle, on her way to meet a group of us at COEX Mall, about an hour away on subway, was overcome with hungover nausea whilst standing on the subway platform. She was about five minutes and a few flights of stairs away from the nearest toilet so she, like many drunken soju-ed up Koreans before her, chose the bins. Then she was immediately faced with another dilemma - Korean bins are divided up into garbage and recycling and before being violently ill, the thought crossed her mind - 'which bin is more appropriate to be sick into?'. She wisely chose garbage. Parents then shepherded their children away from her and she had to suffer the indignity of the stares of all the Koreans whose low opinions of Westerners was finally fulfilled. And my, how it was. Annabelle then waited for all the people who witnessed her shame to leave before boarding the train that followed.

She told me this tale over a bowl of Red Mango frozen yoghurt.

I went to see a concert over the weekend - Lazy Bone and No Brain. They were touted as punk - they were more like ska, with a bit of frentic Korean rap thrown in. Of course, it was made much more surreal by the fact that the bands were all drinking water, as opposed to shooting themselves up Pete Doherty style, and were throwing bottles out to the audience, who only just avoided serious head injury. The moshing was controlled, at best, pedestrian at worst. Korean princesses stood around in high heels and pleated skirts, at times sedately waving their arms. There was a raffle in the middle of proceedings, held by the two bands - a raffle, just like one at a Christmas social in Ballybeg - and then both bands joined together to sing each other's songs. I imagined all this happening at a shared bill concert between some bands like Coldplay and, God forbid, Idlewild, and came to the conclusion that Chris Martin would inevitably raffle off holistically treated water.

Whew! That was my weekend, and I'm leaving out the mini motorbikes that Mike and I rode on a picnic in Ilsan and Mike's new job in Incheon - he's staying in Korea until December until I desert this fair peninsula.

Back Of The Net!

The title refers of course to what is the funniest showbiz rumour that anyone could ever have deigned to think up - that Alan Partridge - sorry, Steve Coogan - and Courtney Love are expecting a love child. I don't care if it's actually true - I'm just glad that I lived long enough to hear to it. I'm not possessed of the kind of imagination needed to conceive such a story so I'm delighted that somebody else did it for me. If it does prove to be true, will the child shout Aa-haa, whilst wearing miniature Pringle jumpers and shrieking some politically correct feminist rant? Such a thought fills me with far too much glee.

Aoife, Loz, Mike, Angela and I offered up our lives - our lives - to the merciless Shark God, Selacho, that resides in a murky cave in the purest of Arctic waters. On this day, however, Selacho chose to spare our lives and allow us 32 minutes of an experience that will probably prove to be one of the most amazing that I will ever get to sample. It was odd, and strangely moving to be so close to an animal that is unjustly feared - not to mention the giant grouper fish who is apparently fiercely territorial, sting rays, yellow fin tuna, snapper, mackeral and jewfish. There were many types of shark swimming with us - two kinds of nurse sharks, lemon sharks (so named because they are grey), leopard sharks...it was an absolutely extraordinary experience. There will be some photos posted up on the Interweb soon so I will publish the link as soon as I know about it. For all of you who were hoping that I would be fatally injured, I hope that you are in no way disappointed by my survival.

Aoife and Loz flew back to England on Sunday night...it was sad to see them go. It was so much fun having them here and although they may have knocked Koreans for six - most of them weren't sure what to do with two rather tall Irish girls wearing short shorts - it didn't diminish their experience - rather, it probably added to it!

I think I am going to do a diving course in Thailand as a kind of detour on my way home - is this advisable? As my father said, in his most calm fatalistic tone - 'What if you make it through the whole year only to bollocks yourself when you're finished?' A succinct point well made, me thinks.

Gynaecological Sand

The title is derived from one of Aoife and Loz's latest adventures. They were having a merry old time on Korea's only black sand beach yesterday, and Aoife decided that she wanted to be buried, an age old primal desire of sorts. However, what is usually an activity amongst sand desirous friends was made into a public affair when a Korean family came over to assist with proceedings. It got even messier when the father apparently got an industrial sized shovel and started to bury her Kill Bill 2 style. I would have killed to have seen it.

Loz got pestered by a drunken Korean on the beach, whose idea of seduction centred around knee squeezing and rambling Korean at her. Aoife, being the keen zoologist that she is, caught a small fish in the water. Hilariously, the fish objected to being plucked out of it's wave-y surroundings and immediately puffed up, causing her to squawk and drop it. As I was teaching small tenacious children all day yesterday, the thought of irate puffer fish puts me into a jealous frenzy.

Such is their adventures. My life is considerably more sedate. Island hopping was something of a technical term, as we stayed on only one island. The bus trip across the island was nothing short of terrifying - the bus driver dangerously overloaded the bus so that it tilted from side to side - it also meant that he drove on the wrong side of the road for most of the way. We stayed in a gorgeous room in a place called 'The Holy Land' - and the room had green and blue mood lighting, the Internet and its own water machine which was pretty sweet. Loz and Aoife lost a frisbee whilst being pestered by yet more over-amorous Koreans, who swept Aoife away on her large yellow inflatable ring. We drank and danced on the beach at night and I got hit on the arm with a firework. We witnessed a group of Koreans, seated girl-boy-girl-boy, who appeared to have chosen the beach at night as a site for a multiple blind date. I cannot emphasise enough how surreal Korea is at the best of times...you can maybe just about imagine the rest.

Tomorrow - shark diving. You can witness our antics at the rather ridiculous time of six in the morning if you wish at http://www.busanaquarium.com/onair/webcam.html.

Oh, I am going for my tae kwon do green belt test tonight, tae-guk sam jang so if you're reading this Ciaran, I am catching up with you, muh ha ha!

Friends, Typhoons and Penguin Bags

The title refers to three highlights of the past week and a half - 1) obviously refers to Aoife and Lorraine's sunny presence - despite heat, odd food and mosquitoes they are an absolute joy to spend time with and their sense of humour never dims even in the most oppressive of situations (including randy Koreans, being bitten on the eyelid and, God forbid, the lip - Aoife had a gammy eye for about three days, then she was bitten on the eyelid again last night!)

2) is the storm that is currently hovering over this part of Asia - there was some great lightning last night - the Korean is bong-gae, as we were helpfully informed by a friendly taxi driver with horrendous kimchi breath - and my mother told me about it as we were half way up a semi-mountain on a Sunday evening, and the sky suddenly looked ominously black.

3) was a special bag that Miss Bole happened across at about two o'clock in the morning as we night shopped in Dongdaemun Markets, a place for shopping-crazed insomniacs to bargain until normal people start to get up again. It was a bag - in the shape of a penguin! Her delighted squeals became even louder when we discovered giraffe and rabbit shaped bags - we went home not too long afterwards.

Other things we have gotten up to - we had a rowdy bowling match last Wednesday, during which some irate competitive Koreans, replete with Terminator style metal wrist supports, informed us that we had to move into the furthest lane, as we were distressing them. We went out on Friday night and got relatively hammered (again - the Saturday after they arrived, we went to Sinchon and Aoife and I crawled home at about six o'clock, after having had our photo taken by some odd long-haired bloke who tried to chat us up again the following week in Itaewon, as well as getting some other priceless chat-up lines) in Hongdae. There were ice cube and gin-and-tonic fights which nearly got us booted out. This was on top of the bamboo soju that we merrily drank with our galbi - I started repressing the night's events the moment that S Club 7 started to play.

We also saw a 'glam' 80's rock band (Billy Idol - sure. The Cure - maybe. The Police? Genesis? Argh!) , the same evening that my friend Shaun saw a Korean u2 tribute band. I was informed that they were actually quite good, which means that they would have sounded like U2, which means that I saved my eardrums an hour's worth of pestering.

This weekend - island hopping off the coast of Incheon. You should all pray for our safe return.