Revisiting

(everything seems to be up in the air at this time)

It was t-shirt warm at night this weekend. I'm sure in no time it'll be uncomfortable warm and humid, and the air will turn a fraction shy of sweat like it was when I got here.

Friday Ben and Bora came over and we played Wii. Playing imaginary sports while drinking is definitely a conversation starter, at the very least. Plus boxing, I mean, who doesn't wanna kick the shit out of their friends when they're get a few drinks in, right?

Then the hungry bunch went and got some galbi (amazing Korean barbeque marinated meat stuff) and started kicking the shit out of ourselves with copious amounts of imbibery. We drank car bombs, which involves dropping a shotglass full of the infamous soju into a small glass of beer. It also involves getting hit by a freight train, as far as I can recollect. I took some series shots of the shots, and they work so well as an animation that I made them into a very short video, which you can check out here, of course.

From there, we went to the Woodstock bar. That place was a bit of trip. The assimilation of 'popular' 'alternative' North American culture into a room of drunk Koreans is the kind of strangeness you've got to see to fully comprehend.

I really tried to get a video of the guys headbanging to Rage's Killing in the Name, but the batteries on my other camera were dead. Just look at the blurry picture and picture them (clearly unable to speak English) screaming "and they do what they told ya" and having it come out like "an' 'ney tu ruat tey tocha!"

Drinks were more varied here. We drank North Korean beer (dictatorship is delicious!) and then we got a few mixed drinks. They had quite a few advertised, many of which they'd long forgotten how to make. After a few failed requests, I settled on a Cannabis (yes, it was green), and Ben got a Fucking Metallica. They were both wicked strong, but Ben's drink was so unspeakably awful it should have been called a Fucking U2.

The music requests were far more successful. They just downloaded anything we wrote on a piece of paper. More on music and success and Iggy Pop and all that in a moment, though.

Cahill came by on Saturday and we went to Hongdae and met up with some of his workmates from out in butt-fuck nowhere (aka Suji) and went to the ever-awful foreigner bar Tinpan. This place has handlebars bolted to the ceiling to assist drunk girls in dancing on the tables. That's entertaining in the same way as watching a snake swallow a live mouse; it's one of those horrific things that you watch out of morbid curiousity, but don't ever actually want to see.

Mike came by and really, I can never go to Tinpan without running into a few people I know anyway. But enough was enough, so me, Cahill, and his coworkers Simon and Helen went in search of a better venue. We eventually made our way to the underground reggae bar that a few of us went to on my birthday last year.

It's really an amazing place that's located under a bridge, in a basement behind an unmarked door. Somewhere among the many wall scrawlings there are birthday wishes from our last visit, but I never looked hard enough to find them.

I'm not one who minds retracing his steps, especially if there's good music involved. That's why I'm planning on going back to Japan at the end of my Asian travels in July. The Fuji Rock Festival is being held from the 27th to the 29th and the bookends quite nicely with the tail of my post-contract travels. I really want to see Japan again, then there's Mount Fuji and music and good dozen birds to kill with a single plane ticket.

Then it's home. Canada in early August.

That's about it this week. Well, I did get a new lighter, and really it's easily the best damn non-pig lighter I've won to date. The damn thing is a gun, for starters. Pull the trigger and a teeny flashlight shines out of the barrel. Click it again and a lazer - a frickin' lazer - shines out of the goddamn thing. Oh, and there's the flame, which can be used to burn stuff - that's always a bonus.

Of course I had to make a video of it in action.
You can check that out right here.

Korea's got a lot of high tech shit going on lately, but what about good ol' simple function? Well, check out a bag of Jolly Pong (it's actually Sugar Crisp cereal sold in bags as a snack food. Curiously, it's not marketed here as a cereal). See, the prize in this stuff is a simple card. But follow the perforations and pictures on the back and that card is a kickass food shovel!


I love origami and all, but if you can find a better use for folding then to literally shovel food into your mouth... you're clearly thinking too hard, and need to fold less fucking paper.