Happy Nice Day Butterfly

Hurrah for Konglish! I remember Cara complaining endlessly about how Koreans, when devising clever slogans for t-shirts, should actually consult someone who speaks English before going ahead with the printing. Instead, however, you end up with a variety of lovely t-shirts, notebooks, pencils - in fact pretty much everything! - stating that 'Love is good happy flower soft'. Stunningly meaningful.

I am enjoying being back in Korea - it's spring time so the weather is gorgeous, the children are as plump and cute as ever and I also got a free trip to Japan. Fukuoka was a pretty cool city - loads of funky clothes stores, excellent food and even a bar where Matthew Bellamy had been only a few weeks previously. I was tempted to try and find old fingerprints on glasses, like a true obsessive. My friend Dave showed me the sights and refused to take me up Fukuoka Tower on the premise that all tall looky-outey buildings are exactly the same. However, he showed me freaky manga porn instead which more than made up for it - a woman being forcibly penetrated by a giant robot type thing is my kind of entertainment!

I also successfully got my visa but whilst standing in the queue, a middle aged hippie American man walked in and immediately started bitching about how his Korean employers messed up his entire trip, how the embassy staff weren't efficient enough etc etc. I was tempted to mobilize my rusty tae-kwon do skills then remembered that the last time I tried to kick someone I missed and hit a wall.

Possible Spontaneous Combustion

Ha, I considered writing a powerful blog about Cho Seung-Hui and the Virginia Tech massacre and realised that not only would I be adding to the miles of cyberspace already dedicated to this topic but I would only come up with something as meaningful as 'Guns bad. Shooting people bad.' Such poor language, of course, would somewhat undermine a terrible tragedy.

I am back off to Korea on Saturday and apart from lots more traumatising packing (I'm using the backpack that I travelled the world with and have rediscovered the joys of rolling and stuffing things down into dark cobwebby corners), all is going surprisingly smoothly. I say that and right now my passport has probably spontaneously combusted.

Speaking of passports, I finally received my Aussie one. Huzzah for dual citizenship!

My friend Wiggy, in a fit of benevolence, allowed me to drive his car this evening. I haven't driven since at least three years ago and during that short time, I became well acquainted with ditches, hedges and suspicious looking plastic bags which somehow puff up and become formidable on a dark country road. There was no damage done apart from Wiggy running after the car in a panic, opening the back door whilst it was still moving and shouting 'Do you actually know how to stop it?' The benevolence ended there, especially with my wobbly clutch action.

Away Again!

Ah to perpetual bum-dom. I only just recently returned to Ireland and am now in the process of buggering off to Korea again for yet more teaching. Before, such a prospect filled me with unmitigated joy but strangely, despite the fact that I have been there before, I feel like I am stepping off into the unknown. Again. It's odd - I know exactly what to expect but am still assaulted with a strange kind of fear / elation.

It may have something to do with the fact that I may not be back to Ireland for a few years with is a little bit terrifying. I had forgotten that I actually liked Ireland - I like the way that you can chat to someone you kind of know through your mother in the credit union for at least an hour (and half of that conversation will be weather based). I like Irish bread. I like the way that as soon as the temperature hits double figures, people are wearing flip-flops, ridiculously large sunglasses and flashing as much flesh as the next generation of a formerly conservative Catholic state can.

That said, I am returning to the country where people swim in the sea fully clothed.

I have become something of a reluctant rugby groupie (curse you Stephen Wiggins!) and I was present to see Clogher Valley 1st XV beat Enniskillen (or the Skins as they are better known). The rugby wasn't exactly formidable but the last ten minutes were ridiculously tense. Grown men were clenching their plastic cups of beer with a little too much gusto. And when the final whistle was blown and CV were the victors 13-9, grown men actually cried.

Then we got drunk. A foregone conclusion, I should expect.

Yet Another Sad Day Time TV Capitulation

Oh, Deal or No Deal. How I didn't want to like you, mainly because of the fact that your entire premise is built around luck and yet you try bravely to pass it off as 'skill' and 'tactics'. I tried to resist...and failed miserably. I blame it on Noel Edmond's tucked in shirts. I blame it on the antics of the Banker and the fact that he is delightfully evil. And most of all, I blame it for being at the comfortable time slot of 4:15pm, when I have a cup of tea and biscuits and oh my God I have no life!

Well, that's not strictly true. I am currently in the process of trying to be a real Australian again. To get my passport, I need to do an interview so I am trying to prep myself up on all things Australian, much like Apu tried to learn to be 'American' in his pursuit of citizenship. So I know;

- what way a boomerang goes (never where you expect it)
- what's on the Australian flag (the Southern Cross and a cross of another, slightly more colonial design)
- how to save water when there's a drought (drink less, wash less and neglect your garden no matter how nice your neighbour's chrysanthemums are)

I'm a shoo in!

I just read that John Travolta had to make an emergency landing in Shannon Airport. I can only hope that he didn't distress too many sheep. Nobody ever thinks about the sheep!

1I Dial and No One is Home

I curse my computer! Due to my parents' reluctance to get broadband, I am still on a dial up connection…and this means that I can’t access my blog page. So I am getting my lovely personal assistant, Mr Mike Freeman, to put up the information for me.

It is still good to be home but the good is most certainly wearing off. The provisional plan is to go back to Korea and teach English for a year then probably go and do my masters in Australia. I have narrowed it down to two states - Queensland and Victoria but that is as definite as my plans can be at this moment. I am traumatisingly indecisive.

Mike wandered back across the Atlantic last Friday after a whirlwind trip of shamrocks, wheaten bread, non-blossoming hedges and Donegal interrogations - ‘Was Clones where you were reared?’ ‘Reared’ of course, being pronounced as rared. Confusingly, I had a conversation with my friend Derek recently and he pronounced the words ‘mail’ and ‘meal’ the same (as ‘may-el’) I became particularly confused when he spoke about shredding the ‘may-el’ and feeding the cows the ‘may-el’ and what kind of ‘may-el’ would a vegetarian eat at his meat loving house? Vastly entertaining stuff.

My little brother went to see DJ Tiesto last night. Who is this puzzlingly named fellow?

Other highlights of the past few weeks include more Rent-A-Date obligations to fulfil, this time for a rugby formal. It was good fun and there were lots of ‘tackle’ innuendoes as could only be expected. And, being typically Fermanagh, a game was played where the dance floor was cleared and two bottles of alcohol were set down. The person to get their pound coin closest to the bottle won it. Men were cashing in £10 notes and rolling away pound coins like they were euros. I know it was all for a good cause (the rugby club) but winning a bottle through a dubious combination of luck and luck would probably not be entirely satisfying if you had rolled away the equivalent of six bottles of whiskey.