It's Ben a Blast

(there's a fancy new gallery button on the right you can click, too)

I remember bragging last week that it still felt like late summer would back home. The first week in Novermber would not arrive unnoticed, though. Somewhere between Sunday night and Monday morning late fall came and kicked the shit out of Seoul. As I left my house that morning I was wearing a thick trenchcoat and scarf, watching my breath where just a day before I'd contemplated whether my light sweater was even neccesary. I heard it snowed a little in parts of town that night (not mine). The cool syberian airstreams have calmed down now, and it's a lot warmer, but Monday was an icy reminder that it's a good thing I brought my trusty scarf. It's still warmer than home, though.

Cool air's not the only in the atmosphere, though. This week I lost another friend and co-worker to harsh nature of the one-year contract. Ben was actually the first foriegner I met in Korea, as he showed me the city on my second day here (Mike joined that night, thereby forming the Canadian trifecta). I remember walking to meet Ben that day, thinking "How am I supposed to pick him out in this crowd? Oh wait, he'll be the only white person."

Saturday night the boy had a proper sendoff, with a few folk congregating at a nice restaurant, which actually closed its doors for our private party. It was a great eve, and we sat and ate and drank and were merry around our long table. Last Supper references are obvious. We also played this funny little Korean game involing guessing how many thumbs people will stick up and ultimately getting your forearm severely bruised. Check out the close-up action shot of Trevor making a crater in some poor Korea girl's arm. Thank lucky shot timing for the high-speed-photography effect of the ripples going through her arm.

Later into the night, we spilled out into the street and it rained and we huddled under some little roof and ate greasy street foods and climbed around and maybe even sang. We even managed to get all who remained into a groupshot (note John in the obligatory Thriller pose). Overall, it was a good sendoff, at least from where I sat. Or leaned awkwardly, as per the photo.

Much like Mike, who left me a veritable assload of stuff when he left, Ben did not leave me empty-handed. I managed to score a microwave from Ben's apartment. That officially means that I've got an actual place to live now; a real grown-up apartment. Microwave, bed, sofa, small fridge - it's all here. Of course my initial reaction to the nuke box was to cook something in it as quickly as possible.

For reasons that are still at least a partial mysetery to me, I left Canada with a stockpile of Easy Mac packages. Now I can finaly use them. I wasted no time in whipping up a bowl of my favourite fake-cheese-potentially-cancer-inducing pasta. Three minutes later and was I home.

Ben also left me his cell phone. Not to use, though. It was left to me with specific instructions: destroy it and take pictures. See, it's a crappy cellphone that malfuntions and shuts itself off quite frequently, so Ben wants to see bad things done to it. I don't want to let him down. Stay tuned to see what becomes of the poor thing in coming weeks.

This week I've got the quirky sign outside of the Police Station near the school. It's pretty much self explanatory. Or rather, the confusing image explains itself at least as well as I could...
Which is to say not very well.



Curiously, little wooden beating sticks seem to be the weapon of choice for the police in Korea. Bank guards carry handguns. Security at the airport carry machine guns. Police carry sticks.