Bottle up and Explode

(click, boom)

The week's been good, and this weekend Cahill (partially) recovered from air-poisoning and escaped from the dull-gray outskirts back into the neon heart of Seoul. After a few weeks of Ben's cursed phone burning a proverbial hole in my proverbial pocket, Saturday Night seemed like perfect time to return the favour and burn a few literal holes in the phone.

Armed with the fireworks I still had leftover from mudfest, we headed down for the ravine under the tracks to blow the fuck out of the self-deactivating phone that was the thorn in Ben's side (pocket). The results were predictably explosive and were videotaped for prosperity. If you're into bright lights and destruction, check it out here:

Rocketphone

The aftermath leaves me with mixed feelings. Sure, I've still got all my limbs and such, but the goddamn charred remain of a phone still works! As well as it did before, at least. This means my work is not done - I promised to deliver the coup de grace on this burnt hunk of Korean electronics, so I've gotta.

When the sulfur-smelly smoke settled, we headed to Hongdae, as foreigners are apt to do here. On the way, a man on the subway gave us oranges. He wasn't old or crazy; just nice, and maybe eager for any excuse to say hello to foreigners. They were handpicked and fresh and tasty and not poisoned.

Saturday was John's last night out in Seoul, as he left this week. Once again the ebb and flow of Korean contracts takes away a fun person, but I guess it goes with the territory, so you kind of get used to losing friends every month. But the same tide brings some old friends back, and few people I've met have left without at least a glimmer of intention of returning for another year.

The night itself was good and relatively uneventful past that. I did run into Ryan, someone I know from Mudfest, and whom I've run into a good few times here, and for some dumb reason I completely blanked out on how I knew him. I also showed Cahill the evil crane machines here, and how they're even more impossibly crooked than those in the western hemisphere. The things are everywhere here, too, and are packed with the most random assortment of junk.

Speaking of random junk, on Sunday we found grapefruit, and grapefruit juice. This has been a mission of mine since coming to Korea, as the fruit, and particularly the juice thereof, as I'm a bitter person who likes his flavours to match his persona. The things are fucking nearly impossible to get here in Korea. We looked pretty foolish at the checkout counter; two foreigners buying a couple large bags of grapefruit, several cartons of the juice and nothing else. If only there'd been some sort of grapefruit enthusiast magazine for us to toss-in the pile at the checkout.

The closing picture for week pretty much defies explanation. It says Tuck-In! Baby Banana Club.


Remember that there is about a 99.99% chance that the people who put up this sign don't fully get what it's implying. I mean, they obviously know it's something vaguely sexual - they're not stupid, and they're not that naive. But I'm not so sure they get the full effect of 'tucking-in'.