July 2003 Archives

Patrick talks about making a consious effort to notice and remember things that most people glaze over, an invaluable skill for a writer to have (though I am not a writer). Two little tidbits, and a joke, caught my memory on my drive to work this morning.

Around here we have a store called Video Only which has had the advertising scheme of a man and a woman talking back and forth, vaguely insulting eachother in my opinion, for about the last four years. Today's dialog went something like "It's almost summer you know what that means? a new wardrobe? nope, time for a high definition TV." It may just be me, but I'm not sure that many people have seasonal televisions. "the groundhog saw it's shadow, we have to use the winter tv for another 6 weeks".

There's a man on a mountainbike riding, presumably, to work. He's huffing and puffing along and I can't help but think his ride might be a bit easier if here weren't smoking as he rode.

Finall, a joke that I hadn't heard in a while and was resurrected thanks to the Bob Rivers morning show (thank's Spike).:

A guy walks out of a bar just steaming drunk and staggers off down the sidewalk. A nun approaches from the opposite direction and when she's about to pass him the drunk swings out wildly and punches her in the head, sending her to the ground. Shaken, the nun starts to get up and the drunk just lays into her, punch after punch after punch. "good lord", cries the nun, "why are you doing this?" to which the drunk slurs, "Not so tough today, are you Batman!"

There just aren't enough beating up nun jokes anymore.

I don't much care for spam, that should be fairly evident by my occasional rantings. I got another bit today offering really cheap domain registrations and, like always, I went and checked out the site. they didn't post an email address but they did have a contact form that didn't obscure how or what it submitted very well. So I did what any good natured, mild mannered web developer would do - I wrote a self calling page that submits a complaint from a random address every 3.5 seconds.

Even if twenty five thousand complaint emails a day doesn't change their marketing tactics, it's at least cathartic to send them.

I have come to the conclusion that I am currently someone's plaything. An item to be batted around and chuckle softly at. Not so much an item I suppose as a message in an inbox somewhere, flagged for importance than quickly deflagged. I'm referring to my job.

My boss came in today, says still no word on my extension. I have exactly 1 week until it really doesn't matter what they decide. I have a feeling the clock is just going to run out. Not a big deal really, I've braced for the 100 days sooner than later, but it's always nice to have a little more time to prepare - or at least know in advance. Still, given that the man responsible for holding things up is the owner of the car I once wanted to soap, I rather wish I had at this point. Anyway.

Foiled by the electrical inspection again. Miles was here (I had to get to work by noon) and said he was visibly upset at having to come back here again. He left more cryptic notes. I wonder if he realizes that "Remove GEC spacer from sewer" (or whatever his scrawl says) is counter productive. No matter, I'll call tomorrow.

For a little levity, a conversation which transpired before watching Adaptation:

Miles: So Aimee, what's this about a class?

Aimee: I'm going to take a vet class for 9 months so I can get a job which pays less money so I can go to vet school and get a job which pays more but be several hundred thousand dollars in debt.

Miles: And you're doing this because?

Aimee: I love animals. Or at least I hope I do.

Miles: Yeah, but at that point wouldn't it be cheaper just to buy a house and fill it with cats?

Aimee: ... I hate you.

My fate is decided in a little under 4 hours. My boss has a meeting with the person blocking my conversion to a vendor to see if this little impass can't be gotten through. There are two possible outcomes to this meeting. 1) I will be made a vendor, I won't have to take the 100 days off every year but still enjoy what I consider to be the benefits of being a contractor. 2) I don't get made a vendor, I have to take my 100 days off and then (hopefully) return to be a vendor after that. Thrilling I know.

Still, since my contract is up in just a hair over two weeks this is cutting things kind of close. I can deal with either outcome, I have managed to save some money despite pouring most of everything I earn into the house (and travel ;) ) and having the time to work on the house (and travel) would be nice, but on the flip side having roughly NO money coming in for 3.5 months can kind of suck for the ability to do things.

Just have to pick a project, focus, and not think about this until after the meeting. It's overly dramatic, but right now I imagine a voiceover somewhere saying, "...and Zack sits wearily as his life is decided in a smoke filled room somewhere...". Except, you know, without the smoke and whole life & death thing.

Cheery thoughts for the morning. Time to stuff myself with protein to make up for the loss of muscle mass from eating "strange" food in korea.

The trip home went smoothly and was largely uneventful (save for cutting my first flight a little close). It did give me a chance to jot down a few last minute notes and remember a few I'd forgotten.

Ajumma is a term for a stooped older woman (also any older woman as well as a waitress or hotel proprieter) and you are taught to both respect and fear them. Because they are old and hold much respect they really don't care what they do to you if you get in your way, beware their canes. While I was in the fish market I finally discovered exactly WHY they're so stooped. It isn't from malnutrition or excessively heavy labor, it's from a generally obsessive compulsive desire to keep their shops clean and the fact that korean brooms are about a foot and a half tall. I see a younger woman bent over sweeping with one of these and just know that in 20 years she won't be able to right herself again. At least she'll be able to whack foreigners in the shins with her cane though.

"Koreans have no concept of the 'blind curve'" states one of my entries. This was from the taxi ride up to Beomeosa Temple. In retrospect I relized it was actually a two lane one way road up the mountain rather than a small windy two way road. Regardless the cabbie drove as Pat put it "like he was living in gran tourismo". Swinging wide just before a turn then cutting sharp across both lanes and onto the inside shoulder before arcing back out into his original lane. Passing cars on sharp turns, both inside and outside. It was more than a little exciting.

Also taxi related was trying to find a ride to the airport in the morning. Signalling high wouldn't get cars to stop, signalling low would get them to wave at you and carry on their merry way even if they were unoccupied, eventually one stopped and thankfully it didn't have an Angel of Death on the roof. The Angel of Death is actually an illuminated seagul which doesn't seem to correspond to any particular cab company or any particular style of cab. Pat's theory (and it seems sound to me) is that the bird represents the Angel of Death and that that cab has either recently mowed down a pedestrian or two - and is thus safe to be near - or has not hit anyone in a while and should be avoided at all cost. Regardless we don't go near many Angel of Death cabs. A standard cab takes me to the airport.

Every bag that is to be sent as checked baggage is searched in this airport. There are a total of 4 gates so this doesn't involve a lot of overhead. The baggage screeners are also extremely friendly and will happily let you assist them in the search. I point them to my area of dirty clothes and my stack of books, I even offer up the collection of no doubt illegitimate DVDs all the while steering them away from my foodstuffs (if Piciori sweat can be considered food) and other less than exportable items. Things go smoothly and we're off.

Korea has what ammounts to a "leaving korea" tax. They don't tell you this when you enter the country, nor when you you check in for your flight. You just get to the first security point and they say "where's your card?". "What card?" you ask and they sigh and point in the vague direction of about a dozen little booths. After a few attempts I find that there is a visitor tax, payable on exit of the country only, which must be paid at a currency exchange counter (the logical place). You pay your 15,000 won and get a little green hunk of plastic. You walk back to the security check point and they take the little green hunk of plastic away from you. All perfectly logical.

Once in Tokyo there are a whole lot more americans around - I guess it makes sense since I'm sitting in a boarding area for a state bound flight - but it's odd to be able to understand conversations around me. They begin boarding and everyone dutifully lines up in a queue stretching back beyond the duty free shop. As I slowly shuffle forward and past the counter I glance down and see a giant box of Pocky - technically a giant box of Giant Pocky. One more impulse buy can't hurt. 10,000 yen later and I'm on my way. I spend 8.5 of the 9 hour flight asleep.

Addie missed me and is wagging her tail furiously, I have a stack of interesting mail (not a bill among them), and the air is blissfully dry. I enjoyed Korea but it's good to be home.

Today was primarily about exploring the last few nooks and crannies of Busan that I could before packing up tonight and flying out tomorrow. I went with Pat to Taekwando this morning, took part in the stretching led by Sarah but elected to not join in with the sparring. I shot an entire roll of film there so hopefully some of the "action" shots will come out. After taekwando we finally sent off my post cards, Pat headed to to work and I finally headed to Nampo-dong.

Nampo-dong is basically yet another shopping district, however because it is situated right next to the sea port it is THE place for all manner of aquatic life. I was told to visit the dried fish area so dutifully headed there first. After you finally get over the smell of billions of tiny dried fish sitting in open boxes on the sidewalk you notice that there are, well, billions of these little inch long shrivled sardines that clearly must be in high demand as they don't look all that old. I got a few pictures and moved on to the more interesting live and recently deceased fish section.

Having been tempered by the tub-o-squid exposure in Home Plus the giant vats of live eels and fishtanks overflowing with octopii didn't phase me much. There were quite a few older women sitting in little circles chucking oysters and clams content in their conversation. They didn't tend to smile a lot, though they didn't seem to really notice me as I snapped pictures from beneath my floppy leather hat (it had, of course, begun to rain). A dozen or so photos and I ventured out into the non fish streets of Nampo-dong.

Strictly speaking there wasn't a whole lot different between here and Saemyeon, mostly the same shops and odd assortment of street carts, but the streets did have names and I was finally able to track down the souvineer I'd saught. Mashmashiro is a dog/rabit/cat/ghost/whatever that seems to be popular on stationary and candy and who's general appearance I find quite amusing. He's also the only character besides the popcorn sheep (which just annoys me) that I've seen only in korea so I figured he'd make an ideal mascot. Using my extrordinarily limited korean I managed to ask how much the little figure was, understand the answer, pay and say thank you. Overjoyed with this accomplishment I stuffed mashmashiro into my backpack and headed back up to Saemyeon to spend a few hours before meeting pat after work.

Back in the heart of the area I was actualy familair with I bumped into Claire, another english teacher who was at taekwando this morning. The odds of this happening struck me as somewhat low, even counting the fact that if you see a caucasian person here chances are you know them by now, but no matter. After an enjoyable bout of dodge the homicidal buses we parted ways and I set about finding lunch - and that brings us to the subject line.

I settled on a tempura style hut tended by a disarmingly friendly old lady who liked to stab the food she was recommending with a wooden skewer. In total I tried some firey hot chilly sauce I had mistaken for something akin to sweet and sour sause, a deep fried boiled egg, some deep fried crab (I think it was crab) and what can only be described as fried white. It wasn't exactly meat or vegetable. not really any form of seafood that I was aware of. kind of chewy but not extremely flavorful. I finished the log, paid my 2000 won (about $1.70) got a picture and left.

Checking my list of things to do I appear to only have one thing left, to aquire another can of Picori Sweat (however it's spelled) as the last of my souvineers. I figure it will fit well next to the vegimite in the "dear lord how can people consume this stuff" wing of my collection. And I'm off...

It's raining again, not that it has ever really stopped, however it was helpful for keeping the tourists down at Beomeosa, the largest buddhist temple here in Busan. After an early morning time killing bout of Chocobo Hot & Cold we left for the subway ride got to the temple around 9:30, a whole lot earlier than Pat had originally planned for sunday but ultimately a much better experience. As mentioned before, few tourists because of the rain, but even more spectacular was that all of the monks were busy with morning prayer. Of the dozen or so individual shrines I got to see only one wasn't occupied with at least one monk and a handful of devoted followers. We went into the unnocupied shrine to get a better look at the buddha statues and various paintings, the scent of incense was both overpowering and relaxing at the same time. I was chastised for leaving my shoes on the front stoop instead of all the way on the ground. After the shrine we wander around for a little while passing some of the lesser restored buildings - Pat says the Japanese would regularly invade Korea and destroy most of the temples for no obvious reason beyond habit. Eventually we pass a small sign with mostly black words and two red ones that neither of us can read, a short time later it becomes pretty apparent the red words mean "do not enter"; we've just entered the monks living area. It's not without a touch of amusment that we spot a stack of toothpast tubes on the edge of a 1200 year old stone watering bowl. After finding a different way out we hit the only shop and make our way down the path to try and find a taxi.

Along the way we pass a few pillars like the ones I saw people praying at in Seoul. These are a lot less worn down and I can finally make out what they are; A turtle with a column of words about 3 meters tall on its back and what appears to be a writhing pile of dragons on top. Some of the turtles are nice looking while others have fangs and strange mustaches. I get a picture with my arm around an evil turtle and fight the urge to get one of me riding it like a bull. We head to Seomyeon.

Part of today's goals was to find a place for me to exchange money since the ATMs in korea seemed to like to take my card and PIN number and spit out either "error 401" or "error 403" depending on the machine. Because of this we didn't head straight for the shopping warren and instead wandered around above ground. Before finding a bank with an exchange counter we came across the motor parts district, the giant bolt district and the tiny dog breeding district. Pat explains to me that koreans haven't yet done away with the concept of districts for various needs but that each one has become so specialized that if you need a new piston for an engine, the only people out of Busan's 3.8 million residence capable of selling you that piston have congregated in two tiny city blocks and it's up to you to find them.

After finally finding a bank and replenishing my wallet we set about finding more screamingly cheap korean stuff for my random stuff collection. Three random stores, a book shop and another trip to Home Plus later my haul includes:

• two plastic pigs - I think they're meant to be piggy banks. They probably won't make the trip home.
• A wooden Katana - one of a pair actually - largely the reason the pigs won't survive until the trip home. A note I've jotted down reads, "the tall white man is far less amusing when wielding two swords" - the children who like to laugh and point hello at me seem to shy away as I carry this home.
• The Fifth Element in korean on DVD. I already own it on tape and DVD, but this was $7 and has "funny writing" on it - I'm a sucker.
• A Gameboy game of questionable authenticity. It contains 88 games, none in english, and came out of a baggie of loose cartridges. It also only cost about $20.

The end of the excursion was punctuated with another reminder of America's ever present cultural creep. I've traveled 6000 miles to be bombarded by Starbucks, McDonalds and Columbia sportswear ads. Of course there are also ads for misculaneous white liquid in a carton being far superiour to misculaneous white liquid in a can so it's not completely homogenized yet.

One other note I wanted to touch on but have not better seguae than this sentance was that of monopolies. In the states, Microsoft is a monopoly, an evil empire that dominates the software industry. Bad. Here there are basically 8 companies total. Picking one at random - LG - you could be talking about the LG electronics that are for sale in most of the stores (also owned by LG). Or you could mean the LG grocery chains, both large and small, conveniently located next to the LG appartment buildings built, no doubt, with financing from the LG securities exchange. No real conclusions to draw from that, just sort of interesting.

The 4 hour ride back from seoul was uneventful except for discovering that the screaming toddler stigma does not appear to apply on trains - at least korean trains. The nuns were helpful in calming them down though.

Dinner was an event, Sarah took us to a... meat hut I guess would be an appropriate term. It was like a do-it-yourself mongolian grill and featured various slabs of beef, pork or octopus for your consumption. One of the more interesting variations was that you cut the cooked meat into bite size chunks with scissors; this worked well for everything for the octopus which was rather "squirty".

Fun with the korean grocery store on the way home. Patrick's advice regarding the clerk, "Just say 'ya' to everything she says unless you hear the word 'Bonus Card' then say 'epssoyo'". Pathetic little banannas and tiny dried fish so salted they last longer than twinkies.

Today we aught to actually make it to the temple but at this point I don't think I'm going to bother developing pictures while here, this will be a text only journal.

First off, lets state zack's rule for experiencing more of a city than you could ever hope to if you planned things out - lose something. Past cases: venice, Aimee and I lost, well, ourselves and spent 8 hours wandering around getting to see the little back streets and odd shops where people actually lived rather than where they funneled the tourists through. Cairns I arguably lost control of my faculties and had a ton of fun in the clubs I might not have otherwise gone to. And now Seoul - lost my prescription.

I get off of the train, take a taxi (boring) to a random hotel in the middle of the city and discover I've left my scrip on the train. A quick ransack of my bag to make sure then it's subway ride to city hall, to the train station, to the university, to the palace, back to the university and finally to a hidden cluster of pottery and woodworking shops that I could never have hoped to have found if I'd tried. Note, I actually did try to find it again, so far no luck. Anyway, it was 5 exhaustive hours of riding and walking and baking in the sun (seoul doesn't appear to be affected by the monsoon season) and I had more fun and got to see more things doing that than what I had planned.

A few things I noticed along the way;

• The police never make eye contact. Their eyes may be pointed in your general direction but they don't really seem to notice you, it's kind of disturbing.
• More with the police, half of the palace guards carry billy clubs, the other half carry what can only be described as billy katanas. Big sleak black plastic swords. I want one.
• You haggle for everything. If you don't the shopkeep will haggle on your behalf (with himself) and actually not screw you over too badly. Sort of surreal.
• A night in a luxurious hotel - too lazy to find a cheap one for just one night. I actually feel uncomfortable - out of my element - it's been a while since I stayed anywhere that didn't have a communal bath.

A meal of fried rice, some bad TV and a restless night of sleep...

Day 2

I woke up at 4:00 again, fine, plenty of time to see stuff before the noon train. I make my way to the royal shrine to find out it's closed on tuesdays, so instead I stroll around the outer walls on small residential side streets. I debate scaling the wall as I pass a low point but the sudden sound of chainsaws quickly settles that. There's an odd sort of poverty this close to a major tourist attraction - the streets are pristine but the homes just off the road are not - I guess they figure no one will notice.

Finally rounding the edge of the shrine I come to the second of two royal palaces, this one will open eventually so I take a seat at a gas station market across the road and wait for it to open. There isn't much to look at so I take the time to jot down some notes:

"while I appreciate the infrastructure of a larger city I far prefer the environment of a smaller town with rare exception."

"Old mixes with new - slatted metal roof abuts a gabled tiled hut"

"A rare cat dining on old tuna flees as I approach, the sleeping homeless man makes no move, my relative wealth embarases me."

I guess I was feeling philosophical. The palace shows signs of opening, I make my way over only to find that access is on a strict tour basis only. Cursing my luck I wander around the side where a gardener at another entrance lets me snap a few pictures just inside the gate before sending me on my way, a plesant old man.

And that leaves me here in a smokey little internet gaming cafe trying to figure out what I want to do for the next two hours. I think i'm close to those shops. Maybe my luck will be better this time.

Our early morning stroll proves less exciting than initially hoped for since it turns out nothing in korea really opens before 10:00am. Note that this doesn't appear to be sunday hours, that's just when everything opens. Still we walk for a while and eventually wind our way to Patrick's school; along the way I learn the symbols for "Room", "Bar", "Pharmacy" and "walk-in neurosurgery clinic" - I'll be heading back for a picture of that one. After it becomes blindingly apparent that nothing is open and nothing will be open for a very long time we head back via residential streets. We find a couple of abandoned but still working mechanical style arcade machines. One is a crane/prize device with such prizes as a lighter, a deck of cards, and two bottles of alcohol. Another is a punching game. You drop in your whatever coin and take a swing at a padded face. I don't follow through very well and get a score of 2061. Pat lands a devastating blow and gets a score of 2218. I'm pretty sure the scale isn't linear. After a few more blocks we do run across a small convenience store that's open where I can get something to drink. Fool that I am I let Pat talk me into trying an energy drink named Pocari Sweat - the name is an accurate description of the taste. As we make our way home Pat tells me about the general nature of garbage and homeless people in Busan, I find a few good shots on small shanty villages and we come across a tiny park just off of the main sidewalk that's strewn with entire bags of garbage - Pat said unfortunately that's pretty much the official image for korea.

A few hours later we meet up with Sarah to do some random wandering now that things are open and perhaps head to the Buddhist temple. At this point it begins to rain harder than I've seen it rain in seattle for quite some time - this doesn't let up for the next 5 hours. My trusty australian leather hat does nothing but deflect more water onto my shoulders and with no coat I reluctantly buy a $3 umbrella (having left the $10 umbrella I had to buy in italy for a similar situation at home). We head to Home Plus, a fairly generic department and grocery store where I can sample some of the random "engrish" found on stationary here: "Coffee always make you feel happy. You can be in the world of good taste When you bit it once" proclaims the coffee scented notebook. Sarah and Pat take me through the fresh seafood area of the store and delight in my reaction to the tubs of octopus; they assure me this is high quality food since it's actually on ice rather than just random slabs of wood. Finally before leaving Home Plus I get to learn about Soju - cheap rice vodka. By cheap I mean really cheap - there is what can only be described as a 5 liter paint bucket of vodka for $7 - perhaps a replacement for when the $6 gallon jug of tequila finally gets finished off. We take the subway to the Seomyeon district.

Alighting from the train in Seomyeon we come to a vast underground shopping complex. It isn't particularly well laid out, doesn't offer much by way of variety (you'll find the same shop you were just at 3 doors down on the other side of the hallway) and could be quite claustrophobia inducing. It's still early so the walls aren't yet sticky with perspiration but the air is getting there. The odd thing about this shopping warren is that it lies directly beneath a vast above ground shopping district; I get the impression that they just sort of ran out of room for shops above and started tunneling. Pat buys a couple of PC games and Sarah comments that I'm a good influence on him, making him actually spend money - a long debate on the nature and virtue of frugality ensues.

We head to the top of one of the buildings that is a transition point between the shopping underworld and the land of they sky to have lunch. It's at this point that jetlag really starts to hit me and coupled with everyone else being tired we decide to blow off the buddhist temple until wednesday when I return from Seoul. Instead we wander around above ground for a while, I find and purchase "One Night at McCool's" on VCD for $2.90, Pat tries and fails to get a winged dominatrix toy from a vending machine. We stop by the local english hangout (still closed) and get to pass through Pork Soup street and Fried Chicken street on the way. Those aren't the actual street names because most streets don't actually have names, but when you find 7 fried chicken vendors in the space of a hundred feet the name kind of comes on it's own. Running down the center of both streets are identical stainless steel food mobiles (street meat) and I ask how it is that so many people selling the exact same thing right next to each other can stay in business. Pat shrugs and Sarah says she doesn't know but that everyone wonders that at some point.

Bone weary and somewhat soaked we had back to the apartment where I can nap for a bit. Sarah is an interesting character, funny and not too jaded so she makes a good counterpart for Pat here, I'm sure I'll get to know her more over the week since she's one of the close knit group of teachers who do everything together.

A few hours of fitful sleep with indistinct dreams and here I am. I hope to make it to 10:00 and force adjust my clock. No pictures yet and probably fewer than I initially anticipated, we'll see once I hit Seoul.

I seem to have picked up the habit of starting a travel journal with a selection of the notes I've made to myself. It's probably because at this point I haven't actually DONE anything so I don't have much else to write about, but it's still enjoyable for me.

Northwest is an inferior airline to Qantas - in more respects than just the quality of their equipment. Food is not optional on Northwest flights. As I drift in and out of a semi-unconsious state trying to get some rest on the flight I hear the flight attendant comming down the isle proclaiming "chicken or beef?". Now this same situation occured on Qantas and they passed me by, waited until i awoke and then returned to see if I was hungry at all. Northwest, by contrast, smacked my leg and shouted "chicken or beef?!" louder when I didn't respond. We have ways of making you eat.

I have a brief layover in Tokyo's new international airport, it's nice but I'm too tired to really appreciate it. I start to notice how... lyrical is the best word I guess... how lyrical the japanese language sounds when spoken so i sit and listen to conversations. I pick out the occasional word, "American", "German", "Shannon Daugherty" - though I'm not sure about that last one.

The overly friendly man by me in the customs line wants everyone to be awed by his linguistic abilities. He tries to teach everyone some korean even though everyone is very tired and no one is particularly interested. He understands quite a few dialects but apparently body language isn't one of them.

I am a giant among men in this country, I could get into this. Standing on the bus I tower over a sea of short black hair. In the bathroom the sink comes up to just above my knees and I can't see the top of my head in the mirror. This must be what Scott feels like every day.

Hmm, two of those four were quite pessimistic, I guess I was tired when I wrote them. No matter, today brings new experiences. Patrick and I are off to the grocery store today where I'm promised my fill of Engrish and sample vendors in skimpy out fits, then it's off to see the temple and fortress.