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.