Countdown

(hard time gettin' past black)

If you've checked a calendar lately, you might've noticed that you need a new one. New Year's Eve and its closely-related but far more hungover cousin New Year's Day came this week. That's not quite the start of the story though - some things happened last year too.

Friday night I stayed around the Gwangmyeong area after work and after a few drinks I did something that was a long time coming: I went to a Noraebang. That's pronounced no-ray-bong, and literally translated it means 'singing room'. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but to the uninitiated, this is Korea's take on Kareoke. The main difference (read: advantage) is the bang (bong) part. You get your own private room to get drunk with friends in relative private and pick out songs and sing poorly to your favourite generically-recreated tunes.

The fact that it took me over six months in Korea before I did this is a crime against humanity. The fact that I was still recovering from an awful cold made my singing a crime against humanity too, though. I'm definitely heading to these far more often in the future. I've got to hand it to Korea on this one, it's a great idea; if there's one thing drunk people like to do it's sing. And drink more.

In honour of tried / true holiday tradition, drinking more is what happened for the second consecutive 'holiday' weekend. Ringing-in the new year was a worthy night. Me and Cahill started here with a few drinks and a plan to get to Tapgol Park by midnight.

Note that I say 'plan' and use the past tense though. See, on midnight on said eve, that place explodes with fireworks. Not in the typical state-sanctioned professional manner, though. Apparently, the street just fills with thousands of people, and everyone has bottle rockets. They fire them at the sky, at buildings, signs, people, and so on. I've seen videos, and it certainly looks like a madness to experience. However, given that we're celebratedly poor planners, by the time we left my apartment it was far too late to make it there on time. So instead, we set off a handful of Roman Candles in my neighbourhood.

It was a reasonable substitute, and given that I'm literally half a world (and 12 time zones) away from where I'm used to spending that evening, celebrating the passing of time seemed significantly less significant. After the explosive goodness, me Cahill and Bora headed off enjoy the surroundings of Sillim. We ended up at the Woodstock bar (hardly a dramatic departure from our typical Zeppelin haunt just down the road, but we know what we like).

We enjoyed our share of imported drink and music and request sheets with scattered chances of ever being played and magnetic darts that just couldn't stop being played. We stayed there until customers were no longer welcome, then we slinked over to Led Zepplin and stayed until pretty much daylight.

While the whole night sounds relatively unspectacular, and largely devoid of 'official' celebrations, I probably couldn't have asked for a nicer evening. I spent the night with two good friends and I can't imagine that a hectic trip across town to a mess of strangers firing rockets would have been more fulfilling.

But enough being sincere. Here are a couple of pictures that are Korean, if nothing else. Up first, there's an old rusty bucket whose original contents I could never care to guess. The side reads "He has lovely round face! Hello Big Boy". It was sitting outside of a tiny store that sells only cigarettes. Now you know as much as I do about the whole mystery.


Past that, I've got a banner with a picture of Soju Man. I'm sure I've mentioned this before too, but Soju is basically a cheap rice vodka sold relatively exclusively in Korea. By cheap, I mean it costs less than a dollar for a bottle. Which, of course, means that it packs the worst hangover-per-volume in all of history.

Sojuman is a bottle of the cursed cheap booze armed with a cape and a knack for extolling the virtues of Korea's official national beverage. The jury is still out on whether his ability to fly is an actual superpower or just a soju-induced hallucination.

Happy I-chun-chil.