In-Action

(at the right place at the right time, it'll be worth it)

It's a few degrees warmer in Seoul these days - approaching teeshirt warm. The petals have dropped off virtually all of the cherry blossom trees, leaving boring leafy green instead of Asian whites and pinks. It's a wonderful, colourful phenomenon - made all the more special by lasting just a little over a week.

But enough about fucking dead flowers. Friday Ben and Mike came over, and together with me and Claire, we finally managed to have the Wii party I've been meaning to have (in order to justify the purchase as a social one, as opposed to another excuse to sit around the house).

I also got to play with my camera, taking 'burst' series photos of people as they played imaginary sports. I liked the way it captured the event - somewhere between photos and video. A chunk of time, but a silent one where you get to put the words and details into what went on. Mike's great at illustrating moment in either defeat (lower right corner) or insanity (left centre, et al.)

Of course, this is a simple story that's been played out all too many times: Play Wii, loose, look like an ass. Win, still look like an ass. Either way, you're having fun doing it.

Saturday we went out to see some more of Seoul. During daylight, we saw Gangnam and bought stuff and ate sushi and bought more stuff. I actually bought my first shirt with Konglish nonsense on it. It's some garbled nonsense about Transformer robots and '3D glasses inside'. Inside of where? Me? Like, metaphorically? Spiritually? Literally, as the result of some surgery gone horribly wrong?

Regardless, it's got Optimus Prime on it, so it's cool in my books. The store also had a great comic-book graffiti-shower motif in the changeroom.

We were also surrounded by various people dressed as various things. All of them strange. The oddest actually wasn't the Master Shake lookalike - the kinder-aged kid from Jangu (awful Japanese cartoon) toting a bottle of soju was really more creepy. And more eager to make friends, but that tends to happen to folk who carry around soju in the middle of the day.

Later in the day, we headed to Dongdaemun, the largest market district in Seoul. I've never been around there at night, and man is it ever colourful there.

What they did in the area is actually kind of neat. They had this big elevated highway going though, but there was this old river underneath it all. So they kinda said "Fuck it, a river would look pretty badass here, right?" and they tore-up the road. Now it's this nice walk past fountains and lights and hopping across big stones to cross from one side to the other.

It matches pretty well with the feel of Dongdaemun. This isn't the kind of high tech futuredistrict like Yongsan, but nor is it strictly traditional. It's got all manner of smatterings of everything. Live chickens and used car parts. And clothes clothes clothes.

We also stumbled across this strange store that basically just sold statues. Most of them were Korean traditional and various religious stuff, but they also had jade guitars and big stone penises and such. I'm not sure how Buddha would take to being placed next to a big ol' Phallus, but he strikes me as a pretty laid-back guy, so I'm sure he wouldn't mind too much.

And in other matters of Korean culture colliding with consumerism, I got a great Golden Pig accessory tonight. This amazing stretchy, bouncy, sticky magical splatter pig.

But that's not all. My battle with Korea's crooked claw contraptions continues. I'm actually getting better at this supposed game of skill, and I hardly pass one of them without taking a stab at getting a tacky lighter. And tacky lighters are what I've got. I've even compiled a video showcasing the strangest of my lighter collection in action.

So another week comes to close in a fiery blaze. But to ensure that you don't meet a similar demise, the kindly people at the Hyundai mall have prepared an informative sticker on the potentially horrible ways you can be maimed by misuse of their escalators.


While not as useful as advice that could save you from becoming a real-life Itchy and Scratchy cartoon, a thoughtful shop in Gangnam saw fit to provide some dietary advice on their sign.

How about a sandwich once a week, eh? Well, I'm sure that couldn't harm me that badly. I do have reservations, however, about buying any sort of food from a place called "Sand House". Not that I don't like the beach, I just don't want to ingest it.