Tall Tales From A Short Canadian

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It is Sunday afternoon, and quickly becoming evening. At this point in the week, I usually have that heavy, foreboding feeling in my belly, warning of Monday’s approach and another marathon week of teaching. Instead, I feel something altogether different… excitement, anxiety, and more excitement. My work-week will last one day, and then Nicole and I are off for our big trip to Thailand and Cambodia. We will leave on Tuesday night, spend one shitty night at the airport, and then take a connecting flight to Ko Pha Ngan for some serious R and R… 8 days worth, to be precise. Following that, we will probably head up to Bangkok to connect to Cambodia where we will see Angkor Wat, the Killing Fields, the capital, and a few other sights, leaving us with about 2 extra weeks to check out Northern Thailand and perhaps another island or two. I know, I know. We’re meant to be saving money for school, paying back loans, etc, but we have covered some tremendous ground in those respects during our year in Busan, and frankly, we deserve a bloody good  holiday. I really think that trips like this kind of come with the territory. Essentially, we live in exile from our own country out of necessity more than mere cultural interest, and so we will reap the rewards while we serve our time.

Recently, two or three entries ago in fact, I sort of bitched and moaned about the Koreans, their rudeness and superficiality, but let me say that I trust Korean people in general more than I do westerners, and Korean rudeness actually doesn’t come close to the behavior of some of the expats I’ve witnessed here. And here’s an example: Friday night Nic and I had a very rare night out on the town with some friends, and following a few beers at the nearby popular expat haunt, U2, we went to McDonald’s (another rare occasion) for some therapeutic greazies. First thing we saw as we approached was a guy we know pissing in a paper cup right at his table, in front of the cash register and in plain view from the windows. Then, when we stepped inside, we heard this huge commotion. Some drunk Brits were screaming obscenities at the two shaken girls behind the cash register. Nic and I stepped in right away and defended the staff, but there would have been a brawl had we not eventually walked away. “I’m talking to my bitch! My Bitch!” the one bloak kept saying, buzzing around me like a wasp. There were four of them. I figured Nic could take one or two of them, I could maybe take one if I got a lucky punch in, but there’d still be one more who could run around and knife us in the back or something, so, our words failing to diffuse the situation, we wisely abandoned our hamburger-eating endeavor for the night.

There really is no excuse for this kind of behavior. What they were doing in Korea at all, I have no idea. I have witnessed expats abusing the natives before, and it sickens me. It’s like these people, many of whom are Canadians from my experience, come here and think they own the bloody world. Some of them assume that the Koreans can’t understand English, so why not be as rude as possible? “Hurry up, you old c–t!” I heard once in Seoul as some mouthy Canuck waited for a little old Korean lady to cook him a fried egg sandwich in a back alley at 5 in the morning. The Koreans, while not without their faults, don’t deserve this kind of abuse. No one does, of course. Seeing it makes me have dreams of learning Aikido so I can fight for justice and break arms.

Ah, but back to better things. I haven’t been taking many photos lately, but have recently learned of a new technique called HDR (high dynamic range) which involves taking 3 or more shots of the same scene, and then using a computer program like Photoshop to fuse them together, allowing for a far greater range of highs, lows and colors than a normal photograph allows for. I decided to try it out today, and so the following three are my first attempts. After playing with the images a bit, I found that you can keep them really simple, but just have a bit punchier, livelier photo, or you can tweak them to your heart’s content. With the following, I may be leaning a bit into the over-tweaked side of things (well.. not compared to some that I’ve seen), but am pleased with the results all the same. I will leave you with these, and both Nicole and I send our family and friends back home a sincere and heartfelt HELLO, we miss you, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and hugs all around.

Expect the odd update from Thailand…

love,

suteebun and nico

PS check out my new, slowly expanding “best of” photo compilation at http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevenhorr .