Tall Tales From A Short Canadian

Anyong!

Long time I no speekee the engerishee to you.  Here it is… Since last chatting with you, Nicole and I have gone through a few changes, mostly positive ones. We moved into a swell new apartment in the same building we have been living in. It’s at least twice the size of our last one, but newer, cleaner, with nary a cockroach (so far), a better smell, and an incredible view. See below:

We are both happier, and seem to be getting along even better than before. Honestly, for the amount of time we spend together, we get along amazingly well most of the time. We quarrel from time to time, but she’s always in the wrong of course! Below are some pictures of a balmy Saturday on Songjeong beach, my favorite beach in Busan. It’s a mere 4 dollar taxi ride from our apartment. Here it is seen without the blanket of summer tourists that will soon cover it. Summertime offically hits the beach in four days. I tremble.

Below, from right to left, is Sujeong, Tim, Joe, and, uh, what’s her face…

Seksheehan! That’s konglish for sexy… SEE BELOW!

And after Songjoeng, we headed to a place called Bexco where they had a little international festival going on. Here are a couple random photographs taken at Bexco…

Below: Equadorian Natives taking a set break while we ate BBQ’d pig.

It is worldcup soccer time, and Korea has just lost its fever and some of its daily redness. Switzerland beat them out. I was there to watch the game in Seoul Plaza with about 800,000 Korean soccer fans. See, I had an appointment to see a specialist in Seoul on Saturday regarding a long-term and enigmatic condition I have suffered for many years. We had a few road-pops on the train-ride up (3 hours to traverse the country, the long way!) thinking when we arrived in Seoul we would casually roam around, find an inexpensive hotel room, and get a decent night sleep before my AM appointment. Silly boys! We underestimated Korean patriotism, and found when we arrived that all the hotels were either full or the prices were jacked to accommodate all the fans who would stay downtown to watch the game at one of the many venues. Somehow, we found ourselves in Itaewon (international shopping/partying district), and then Seoul Plaza. The game started at 4 AM. It was pretty incredible to see that many people, all dressed in red with glowing devil horns (strange that they’ve made a national mascot of Satan) yelling “Dae Han Min Gook!” in unison. It ended up being incredibly depressing when the Swiss scored their second goal. It was kind of like being at a funeral with nearly a million mourners. To further the depression, we found ourselves at 7 AM sobering up all too quickly and wandering the sunny, somber streets of Seoul without a place to sleep. After much brainstorming (okay… I slept on the curb while Joe poured over his Lonely Planet), we found a little unpopular motel where I squeezed out two hours of desperately needed zeez before hopping on the subway for my appointment.

This photo, taken at roughly 3:33 AM is all I managed to score at Seoul Plaza that night/morning, my low-light photography incompetence all too obvious.

Leading up to the game earlier that day, kindergarten was ALL about the worldcup. Here’s a shot of my kidlets and I.

It was upsetting to see Korea lose, but on  the other hand, I’ll sleep better at night… for four more nights, that is. Go Germany! Tootaloo.

Suteebun

Jambo!

Greetings from Korea. The world cup has begun, as many of you know, and Korea is on fire with patriotic fanaticism! Korea made it to the semifinals last time, upsetting some pretty big teams… and this after never having even made the cut to play in the world cup at all. It’s pretty exciting. The Penninsula is all abuzz. Go Japan! Just kidding. We paid a visit to a traditional style market today in the heart of downtown Busan. Got some pics to show. Now the following few are pretty general, but don’t stop there. You have to check out some of the fare being sold at some of the stands… it’ll make your mouth water. Move on!

I like the composition of the above picture. Speaking of me, here I am below standing in front of a random alleyway with my freshly shaved (and now undyed) hair and my Korean hippy shirt that reads: “PEACE NO WAR - EXCL urban comport maximum application double steal”. English ambiguity, vulgarity, and outright incorrectness is all the rage here. Everyone wears English shirts here. No one wears Korean shirts, except for soccer shirts (with words mostly in English). This weekend I have seen the following on shirts: “Hard Cock”, “Fuckn Pure Canada”, “Fucking Design TShirt Company”, and “I will swell with the beer until morning time”. Usually, they don’t have a clue what they’re wearing, methinks. I digress.

Yeah, what hair I have left is white. Gimme a break. I’m getting pretty fucking old. The lady below is a fortune teller. They’re everywhere here. She seemed flattered that I wanted her photograph.

Now for some food close-ups. I’ll start with some fairly innocuous looking beans.

I think the following are baby eels. Thrashing, they were.

And a kid playing with ‘em. Why not?

The following pics are all of living specimens… all edible ones, apparently.

I imagine you’re licking your lips now. I’m not sure if the dog below is being sold for food, or if he’s just watching shop, but the poor little guy really wanted to be in a picture.

That’s all. You can go eat now. Go Oilers! Go Deutschland! Go Reds!

Suteebun

Anyong,

My recent silence online could be indicitive of several things: my riveting rockstar lifestyle, my religious vow of silence, my fasting from all forms of media, or my business doing things of great importance… but it isn’t. In fact, I have had nothing of interest to write about, or when I occasionally have thought of something worthy of publication, I have been too lazy to write about it online. Traveling? None. Adventure? Not really. Teaching and going out for food and drinks pretty much sums it up. I have been seeing a doctor of Oriental medicine. He pokes me full of pins twice a week for three dollars a pop. Not bad, considering how much an uninsured visit to the hospital in Canada cost me before I came here. I shaved my head a month ago, and am about to reshave it today. My hair will be completely grey later today, as I have decided to quit dying it and am now down to the last tips of yellow. It is Saturday, early afternoon. I have quit drinking again. It has been 8 hours now. Check out these pics from a day trip we took with our friends two weeks ago.

Above: Tim the kiwi and his Korean wife, Sujeong. Tim is the head teacher at our Hagwon. It was a blustery day on Jinha beach, an hour or so drive north of Busan. It was quiet following the departure of about 20 rowdy middle-agers who moshed to some obscenely loud traditional celebratory songs. They brought us chicken soup and watermelon before they left.

We made kimchi chiggae on the beach, and cooked up some bulgogi (marinated meat), sipped red wine and played frisbee until it started to rain. With a couple bottles of soju for the drive, we went back to Busan. As they sometimes do when we find ourselves in the company of this fun but dangerous couple, things got kind of carried away. We ended up (how, I’m not sure!) at a little soju hof where we broke out my guitar and had a big singalong with an older couple that were pretty stoked to hear live renditions–albiet messy renditions–of Niel Diamond and Elvis songs. Here they are below.

And below, myself with the ajuma of the house, wearing the Nederlands soccer jersey I stole from Nicole.

My camera takes awful night and indoor pictures, for some reason. However, the effect of the long exposure of these pictures actually matches my recollections of the night with great accuracy… yellow, smeared, dizzy… soju is evil. I have recently learned that soju is made by mixing cheap vodka with nail polish remover, water, and dog urin, and then leaving a heavy, rusty chain in it for four days.

And this was a Sunday night. Honestly, we’re very good and sober during the week! What else is new? We are saving money. We are getting another apartment in the same building because the one we currently inhabit is very small and has recently become infested with Pakweebolles… that’s Korean for cockroaches!  The beach is getting busier and busier, my hair is getting whiter and my skin darker, we’re both getting fatter (because the food here is just so damn good), and our bank account balances are getting fatter, too. That’s about it. Friends and family back home, we send our love in your direction.

Cheers from the tip of a congested penninsula,

Suteebun