Last week

Last week was a little boring. Nothing happened that hasn't already happened a few times, at least as I remember it. Went to the pool and gym, was still sick--I'm still blaming the yellow sand from china--had another random class sprung on me with two days notice, didn't drink any beer. This whole no beer thing is getting a little old. I don't even want to go to bars now that I'm limited to something vile--soju--or something absurdly expensive--whiskey and the like. Sunday is the final, and Sunday will be my first beer in a month. Saturday night in Busan, I was drinking KGB vodka drinks--those bottled beverages for people who don't like beer but want something that appears similar--because the only bar we could find that was showing the England-Portugal game served little else besides beer.

Jen and Sue got here late Friday night. Stayed late at Psycho and got a late start the next day because of it. Ate raw fish and sea slug and the like in Busan, went to yet another temple and looked for the fishermen unloading their wares at dawn. Unfortunately they weren't around.

Another week.

Defeat

It's midnight, and Will's overdue. He was supposed to call nearly an hour ago, to make sure we were all up and going to Psycho. There's a good chance he's asleep, like Traci beside me. It is late by some people's standards. Traci's not going anywhere, and with the game already on, me comfortably in bed, I see no reason to move at this point.

We watched last nights game at Gumi Stadium (the people's exercise arena) in the hopes of seeing some mass elation firsthand. We saw something like that when we arrived, but the mood was entirely different when we left. It was a late game, real late. We arrived at the stadium around 330am, and it was already teeming with vendors and fans all decked out in red. Many had the red balloon rods to bang together and chant. Greg suggested we sit on the railing right in front of the screen in the stands. An excellent idea. We couldn't find the way up at first, but Greg managed to get pulled up into the stands by two dudes, one with a Korean flag on his back and the other with a Swiss flag. Greg then helped them pull me up. I could've easily imagined myself in some perilous circumstances in a warzone, sulphur hanging in the air, flashes from fireworks and explosions all around. Struggling to make it over the wall, where a fall could mean my ankle. Traci and Alice found their way up the steps as did the other folks. Rory insisted on a swig of 'the crayture' to give luck to Korea. An overzealous Korean man managed to give himself a hell of a buzz with no visible effect on Korea's playing. Unfortunately, he was dumped on me. He'd lean into me and wobble as I gripped the balcony wall and leaned forward hoping he wouldn't push me off. The drum section was right next to us, in the beginning really banging out the chants. As the game went on, though, they dwindled and soon it was a few of the originals and us foreigners whose respective countries had already been eliminated. After the second goal was scored, the leader of the band was standing there virtually alone, waving the Korean flag. France up by two flashed across the bottom of the screen and people started leaving the stadium. It was light out now, a beautiful morning. Traci and I stayed to the end. We had to walk home because of it, everybody pouring out of the stadium looking for cabs. It was peaceful walk through fields we didn't know existed, Traci drunkenly yelling "I'm in a corn field" as she stood among less then 10 stalks. I tried take a shortcut, leading her through a rice paddy and concertina wire on the backside of a bank, but she wasn't having it.

I went to bed, she didn't. She went straight to the Waegook soccer tournament over at the technical college, and continued the steady diet of diluted ethanol. It's really painful to be at these sporting events and not drink beer. Especially today, hot and sunny, with ten kegs available and little else to do. The soju just wasn't doing it for me, so I remained sober the entire day. The rest of the scene though was something else. The Gumi team was more sloshed than all the other teams put together, and lost the only game I saw--the other team was taking it far too seriously--but I think they managed to make the final.

Around 8 I got a call saying the dive trip to the South Sea was canceled, and now that I was freed from having to wake at 5am, most of my friends were thoroughly torn down from the day and the night before.

Competitive Eating

A few years ago John Bonnauito--I'm hopeless when it comes to spelling that name--said something that will probably stick with me for the rest of my life: If your not eating competitively, you're wasting your time. Two nights ago we caught an eating competition on the Fox networks recent inroad into Korea. It was beautiful, so beautiful that at points I thought I was going to vomit. The competitors were introduced, then stood in a line as what they would soon consume at race-pace came tumbling out of a barrel suspended from the ceiling.

The butter was brilliant. We watched as Dan Moses Rather chowed 7 quarter pound sticks of butter. "He eats one meal a day, and he eats it competitively," the announcer said as Rather masticated away his competition's hopes of moving to the next round.

The next round put the Doginator in the same dish as Gaseous Maximus, some dude from Texas who ate 42 pickled eggs(I think he even called himself Cool Hand) and a bunch of others. Gaseous Maximus was decked out in Roman garb and not so competitely eating his whole cooked beef tongue. The "gluttoncam" gave us some great low angle shots of dude from Texas sweating and gnawing at his portion with difficulty. "You have to have the inner strength," said the announcer. The doginator had some competition in a man from Jersey, but with his inner strength put him in his place. One man was twitching, and the Doginator, well "he's saying hello to another beef tongue!" Afterwards, with his medal around his neck, the Doginator said "It feel great to be the tongue champion."



Then we witnessed one of the greatest in sports today, the Tsunami, the Prince, a 23 year-old, 130 pound Japanese guy who puts all the big fat sweaty gluttonous dudes in their places. He ate something like 31 hotdogs in a few minutes, twice as much as the competition while they shook their heads and laughed. Kobayashi's mechanical style of wolfing down the dogs was clearly no laughing matter.

Last night after I was asleep, Traci saw Kobayashi once again chew and regurgitate his 'competition.' This time it was brains. The doginator just stared, Rather tried and failed. With one minute left, the Tsunami was asking for another plate. That, my friends, is beauty.

Tests

Tomorrow I'm going to take a scuba diving test. I haven't studied or taken any sort of a test in more years than I have fingers--so I can't count that far back--and don't how I'll do. If I pass I may go diving this weekend, somewhere in the South Sea maybe. Where exactly I probably won't know until I see a sign on the road as we exit the highway.

I almost inadvertantly ended up going this past weekend. A bag was packed for me and loaded into the van. I made sure that we would be coming back by 7 pm, the time I was meeting to go camping. He said, "no, tomorrow we'll return." Within minutes I wasn't going with them and we were both smarting from the miscommunication. But then I ran into an eccentric man on a motorcyle that likes to throw boomerangs--he sorta looked like he lived on his bike, a well worn suzuki 350 dr something or other with a blue tarp strapped across the back rack. He pulled up next to me at a stop light: I could hear his engine as he weaved through the cars. When he stopped he eyed my bike. I saw he was not Korean and raised my visor. "oh hey," he said. "you live here, you wanna pull off somewhere and chat?" Nice guy. He me a hot tip on a Kawasaki Vulcan 500cc in Busan for only 1.5 million. Seriously considering the upgrade, now that the 125cc is pulling two nonbeerdrinking fools up the hills around here--so it all turned out okay.

As for this test tomorrow . . . the 'test' on Sunday turned out poorly. I climbed up a real wimpy slope, most of which I would normally do without any sort of protection and acted all wussy about it. I blame it on the total confusion of not only strangers belaying me, but strangers whom I don't understand. Didn't know how to use a figure 8 descender so I could only do the wuss pitch of a multi pitch climb. I did learn the word for falling rocks though.

If that serves as a model for what to expect from previously shabby skills now atrophied from disuse, well then, tomorrow will be interesting. I do remember--now, at least--to dip my BCD into the water before strapping the tank into it. What else will I be tested on?

In other news Jangma--장마--starts today, the month long rainy, some call it it monsoon season. In other words I can expect to ride my bike in the rain or slowly bleed to death from cab fares. Or go back to taking the bus, turning a 15 minute commute into an hour each way.

The switch

The other night while swilling the normal few pitchers of Hite, the Korean Budweiser, Traci, Will and I decided to give up the beverage for a month. This has several implications. One, obviously, none of us can enjoy our favorite libation for an entire month. And this during a time of Soccer matches every day or nearly so, resulting in more time spent in bars in close proximity to the bubbly beverage we're come to love. Did I mention that it's getting hot, too? Two, our alternatives in this heavily taxed alcohol market are limited. Basically we can spend our entire paychecks on good tasting booze or we can save our money and jump into the soju diet. We have done the latter, embracing the rotgut as if it's our long lost relative. Soju generally comes in little green bottles for very little money. If you want to, you can get wasted on a few dollars. Traci did Friday night. She spent a grand total of 8 dollars on food and liquor. And the only reason she spent so much is that one of the bottles she bought was in a restaurant (where I was busily consumming far more swine than I needed to)where a bottle is three times the cost of a store's.

Soju is a clear alcohol, distilled from rice and other grains. For the last 35 years of the twentieth century, the S. Korean Government feared a rice shortage, so soju was made by diluting ethanol alcohol with water and flavoring. Yum. Most of the cheap brands are still produced in this fashion, though Traci and I are looking for brands that are actually distilled.

It doesn't exactly taste good, not the way beer tastes good, and I've never actually thought to myself 'man, I could go for a shot of soju right about now.' But it doesn't taste that bad. Certainly doesn't taste worse than turpentine or gasoline. It's somewhat like vodka, though usually weaker with it's own distintive difficult to describe taste. Traci says bad vodka, but something else is there . . . After the first few shots, they start to slide down, though those first few can wake you up.

And wake us up they did. Last night we went to Daegu with Daeyoung for his alpine club's 30 anniversary. We arrived to eating and drinking, becoming quickly bound in a bramble of soju and introductions. We met a man who climbed K2 back in the day. And drank several shots of soju with him. I met the first man who was a swimmer and could whoop me in 100m fly--he was jacked, and kept feeling my arms, probably wondering where the muscles were. We drank several shots of soju with him. We ate more, drank more, watched the ceremony where envelopes full of money were put into a pig's mouth--only the head was present--and at one point, ears. Towards the end of the night Traci was standing singing and we had to go to bed. We woke to dogs barking and all those still drinking when we went to bed, already up and beckoning us to breakfast. It was 740am. We were hiking within an hour.

So why would we give up beer and submit ourselves to the temptation of cold beers on hot days after hungover hikes?

Dae Han Min Guk clap clap clap clap clap

So Korea won eh. A little tired and not wanting to deal with a massive soju swilling crowd, I went to Bryan and Greg's rather than the stadium. It was rather subdued and private, though Greg and I were in a pizza place, picking up yet another pizza, two actually, when the tides turned in the second half. All those present on the second level dropped their pizza and threw up their hands. The guys did at least. The woman were excited, rather than the soccer hating figures of Mr Kim's joke--Korean women hate soccer and Korean women hate stories about the military. What they really hate is stories about soccer in the military. Alice (I've heard her real name once, and can't remember it) was getting really into the game, screaming each time the ball neared either goal. We went outside after the game, Traci insisting that there would be parties and general jubilation. Christa insisted that Koreans had mastered the art of dispersal much better than N. Americans had. Ch was right; there was nothing happening in Bonggok dong. It was as quiet as a normal weeknight.

In about an hour my first Korean class will start. I'm excited to actually have some instruction rather than asking the other teachers questions as I come to them.

Fun riding

Today's ride home through Indong and Gongdan was no commute, it was a rousing game of which fucker is going to kill me. There were many, and though a few idiots stopped in intersections, parked in obscene places, and pulled buses into oncoming traffic without looking, none killed me. I can tell the non-listening world about it.

The rest of the Funeral day

So I went to the funeral the other day. It was nice in a funereal way. In the bottom of the hospital, it was in a room, seperated into two chambers. In the back chamber, Mr. Oh stood by an alter with sacrifices and a picture of his mother. We entered and bowed twice (full bow to the floor bow) to the alter and once to him. One of the Korean teachers lit a stick of incense and we went to the first room. We sat at one of the tables and ate ddeok (traditional rice cake) and some sort of pork and other side dishes. Mr Oh walked around and made some small talk. He seemed happy, maybe that we came, maybe that the ordeal was over and he knew his mother was not suffering. Envelopes came around with some characters I didn't recognize on them. Everybody stuffed some money into them and passed them on. Then they came back to us, people telling us to put out names on them. I was tempted to stuff another ten thousand in mine to show up everybody else, but something held me back. Parsimony?

Then the motorcyle called. Greg, Will and I took off through country roads at breakneck speeds, breaking the thin pavement while taking turns like animals, frightening the locals and running over animals. Well not so breakneck, but my motorcycle wouldn't go any faster so it felt like I was really tearing the roads down. We ran across a real nice set of roads northeast of here, some of the most pristine countryside I've seen outside national parks in Korea. We even went swimming in the Wicheon (위천) river. After a particularly nice stretch, after "blazing" across a bridge, Greg pulled over and looked at us, "The locals were swimming." We intended to swim someplace, though we didn't know if we would run across a river or lake clean enough. With the locals in the water, we figured it was a sure thing: some were wading, kids were swimming and some had nets possibly pulling food from the water.

There was a little film on top. And the eddies trapped some dark dirty looking foam. But by that time I'd been in up to my neck--self dunked, it wasn't deeper then my belly-button--and discovered a small cut on my foot. So I was the first to jump off the small cliff and slam my ass into the sandy bottom. Will and Greg followed suit. Afterwards, Will put on his change of clothes, a Batman suit complete fake muscles, but unfortunately we headed home before riding at slow speeds through sleepy towns. He did, though, pass a few cars at 110 km/h fist thrust forward as if about to save the day.

We ended the holiday with a barbeque in our apartment complex's back quad. We left the cheap little grills out there, too hot to bring inside, and they ran off by morning.

Funeral

Here I am, an air raid siren has just sounded and I'm wondering what I'm still doing in Gumi. Was suppposed to be on the road by 9 this morning, riding east to the coast, but my partner's upsa, maybe went back to sleep, and now it's nearing the time of a possibly important event, that maybe I shouldn't miss. Yesterday afternoon my bosses mother died. She's been unwell, (in a coma for 8 months) for some time, and her time has finally come. Tradition here is all those concerned give money 20,000w or so, and bow twice to someone, the bereaved, the deceased, I don't really know. I'm thinking that I should go, maybe even shave before I do so, which gives me 35 minutes till we meet at one of the several hospitals in Gumi . . .

Nothing new

Sunny Saturday and a looming barbecue in Hyeongok. Spent what was left of the morning running errands, one of which was shopping at Lotte Mart. I needed meat for the grill, and have been unable to solve the problem of getting video from my computer to the TV. No store yet searched has a cable converting s-video to rf(?). The problem is still unsolved.

As is the swelling in my jaw. One side receded somewhat and the other side blew up right around the time I went to see another doctor. He said the same thing--swollen saliva glands, that it wasn't serious, then gave me another script for antibiotics etc. Not so swollen, but aching. Add to that the pressure in my sinuses that never seems to subsibe and I'm constantly annoyed. Might be making another trip to the hospital when this set of meds runs out and the situation remains the same. Maybe this time they can just lance my sinuses with a vacuum cleaner.