originally posted Sunday, November 19, 2006
i don't like things stuck in my teeth--be they pubic hairs, bits of severed limbs or pieces of octopus, it matters not. and if i wanted to eat octopus-flavored gum--that is, chewy nothing with an octopus aftertase--i'm sure i could buy it here in the korea. but i like gum that tastes like gum. the point is, octopus is too fucking chewy. that's all.
some days i like being social during my lunch break, some times i don't. today was one of the latter days. so before anyone could sucker me into eating lunch with them, i snuck out to a bakery near by. i had just finished my hotdog-laden pastry when my phone rang. so i answered and it was my co-worker wondering where i was. so i told her and said "we can eat lunch together on wednesday." so then we awkwardly said goodbye and i thought that would be the end of it. not so. 5 minutes later, i see another one of my co-workers peering in the window of tous les jous (huh? that ain't korean) looking for me. so i get my coffee to go and am told to follow him. so i walk around the corner and there are more of my co-workers sitting around a vat of something that was, quite honestly, terrifying. it looked like the ocean puked into a wok conveniently located right in front of my face. thanks, ocean! different sized shells, legs, little feeler like things, and a whole octopus bubbled in front of me. it's really difficult i've found, to escape the octopus here in the suncheon. i didn't have this problem so much in the chuncheon. but good gad. each time i try it i think "maybe these koreans are onto something" and each time, i'm alarmed by the fact that it still tastes like absolutely nothing. if you eat a piece of bread and it tastes like nothing, that's one thing. if you eat a piece of cheese and it tastes like nothing, no problem. if you eat octopus and it tastes like nothing, it's lack of taste is in itself fucking gross. i don't want to chew on the nothing taste--trying in vain to rip and tear with all the muscles and implements of my mouf--for 5 minutes. i just don't get the point. stop the senseless killing of the octopus and give me some swine or cow. mash-i-seyo! those are animals that taste like animals. and they probably scream in agony when you kill them. does an octopus do that? i don't think so.
enough about lunch i suppose. i went to seoul this weekend and it was just grand. i spent a lot of money, but i didn't buy a lot of things. hmmmm.
let's see. went directly to the bus station after work on friday, caught the 7:10 bus with mike and erica, whom i hung out with the whole weekend. a cool 4 hours and 20 minutes later we roll in to seoul, well-rested and thirsty. because the subway was going to close shortly, we decided to go get a room in itaweon as it was a cheap taxi ride away and erica was relatively familiar with the area. a lot different being in itaewon this time, as the people i was with weren't acting whorish and trying to sleep with whoever approached them, like last time. i also don't think either of them barfed and then immediately "necked" (heh heh) with a stranger in the back of a taxi after drinking until 7 am either (and no, i'm not talking about me. the chick i was with the first time i was in seoul and the last time i went to itaewon was a sloppy cunt. yup, i'm going to hell, and i haven't even dropped my retard anecdotes yet!). anyhoo, enough vague venting about a person whose life doesn't really matter to me anymore.
so we go to a bar nearby and there were lots o' foreigners. a few korean girls, but they were too busy making out with each other trying to get attention to really interact with anyone besides the people whose mouths their tongues were in. whew, long sentence! but the place had jameson, and just a small taste of it made me happy. as we were leaving the bar, two dudes asked us where we were going, so we made what could have turned out to be a bad decision and followed them to another bar. the second bar was cool. it was very small and there was hardly anyone in there. a guy behind the bar--korean--had real, live dreadlocks! and he played reggae, go figure. after some awkward dancing to reggae--aside: one doesn't "dance" to reggae, one "bops." that was the distinction i came up with--we went back to our love motel and had a hot threesome until the bed broke and my toes curled up. but not really.
next day we wake up and decide to be tourists. so we take the subway to erica's old univerisity--eewha (sp?). i believe it was somewhere along this subway endeavor that mike was punched in the back by the wee-tahd (should i say i'm going to hell each time i type that word or a variation of it? i dunno....). mike thought it would be funny to enter the subway car korean style where you stand about an inch away from the glass as it comes to a stop. our simpleton friend did not approve, so he lunged at mike and feebly, though emphatically, punched him in the back. there was a slight grunt. funny shit.
after eewha, met a former mizzou chick and went to a palace/village in the middle of the city. it was quite relaxing, and for some reason, the weather was perfect. the leaves are just now starting to actually change and it was jacket weather (too bad i packed for parka weather, but no matter). inside the village/palace/temple area there just happened to be an art museum, so we went to that too. i'm not some pretentious person who likes to think that i "get" art, but i always find it interesting to see the progression an artist makes on the way to figuring out their style. people go through their still life phase, their portrait phase, their realism phase, then they end up all cubist and/or weird and/or modern and/or abstract. me likey.
post museum, we sort of just wandered around for a while. and it was great. there was some promotion for mandarin oranges from jeju island so we saw a house made of oranges, tasted some orange juice and ate oranges. i like that there always seems to be random shit like that going on here. then we walked by a waterway where lots of kids were running around. eventually ended up at the coex mall to meet another korean mizzou chick. looked at lots of expensive clothes and didn't buy anything.
parted ways with erica and mike to meet up with my friend clayton and his girlfriend sunghi. a big group of us got together to eat shabu shabu, but it was chinese shabu shabu (i guess just a hot pot) and not nearly as good as the shabu shabu i remembered. salty sauce and cow intestine=not as good as spicy sauce and some other part of the cow that actually looks like meat. some dude randomly grabbed my face in the bathroom and tried to force me to kiss him. add this to the list of transgressions by korean men--waking up to naked korean stranger on top of me in motel room (thanks to the whorish chick i referred to earlier), creepy supervisor asking me about kissing and sexual energy drinks, waking up to a good friend naked on top of me (maybe this is their method, i dunno. but it's not working), creepy guy in bathroom trying to make me kiss him--and i don't really like them too much. but what i like even less than korean men, is how willing everyone seems to be to pass this off as a cultural difference. well, then i don't like your culture? i certainly don't like this aspect of it. i'll punch an asian man in the face. i should have done that by now...don't fucking touch me.
kept drinking with some germans and other asians later (clayton has a very international entourage). a good time, but by this point i was exhausted. went back to the hotel and crashed.
next day, we go eat thai food and catch a glimpse of other suncheon foreigners out the window. apparently we all made an exodus to seoul this weekend. we probably could have coordinated or something. yo well. took a cable car up the side of namsan mountain and it was really nice. once again, the weather was quite kind to us. it would have been nice to actually see the views instead of trying to imagine what was there through the smog/fog, but it was just nice to be outside, at a high altitude, drinking makkali and beer in seoul, south korea overlooking one of the largest cities in the world. i like to try to imagine myself from space zooming in on my location--looking down, falling through the atmosphere, the whole earth spread out in front of me as i descend on asia, south korea, seoul and then this mountain in the middle (google earth style). it's times like that when i am quite pleased to consider where i've come from and where i am. and i don't even mean in some sort of metaphoric sense. i'm talking sheer geography. i'll save the metaphysical for my lisa frank journal...
descended the mountain via cable car again, made our way to the bus terminal and headed home. got back at 12:15 last night. all in all a pretty good weekend.
other news that i didn't get a chance to mention before. saw madame butterfly at the suncheon opera hall. erica and i were in the second row. one of the chicks in the orchestra fell asleep as she was playing. funny shit. but the women actually in the musical were amazing--both koreans with these huge voices. and a real live i-talian man was in it too. it was great. i didn't realize i missed things like that until i went to this production. korea is a very culturally rich country, steeped in tradition but also increasingly modern (just like the beanpole commercial says!), but as far as things like music and art that i'm into, there doesn't seem to be a lot of it. so the opera was good, and the art museum in seoul was good. i think i needed it.
my mentally handicapped story for the month...last tuesday at my country school, my second class didn't show up, but a bunch of random kids came in and wanted to play games. so we sat down to play uno and a special kid (who looked like he had a shrunken head and was remarkably and inexplicably tan) came in to play. he just kept saying "okay." good times. that's what teaching's all about--playing games with the special kids while kids who should be in your class instead just come in and take away all the chairs without speaking to you. fair enough.
i think being underutilized in the workplace is starting to get to me.
thanksgiving this week, my birthday on monday, christmas coming up...i forsee an emotional twin-missing crazy jamie in the forcast. sorry if you happen to associate with me in one of my "fits
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