Shadow Over 양주

I was in a funk this morning. On Friday night I couldn't go out with Bob the deranged Texan because I had to pick up something on Sat and I knew if I was to venture out I would destroy myself and not wake up in time. So I went out Sat night with my Korean mate Dwayne and Fabian the German. We went to the standard place near Konkuk university where we hang out but it was boring so we went to a place in Sincheon and I kept trying to pull but it was looking grim. At some point I was dancing with some girl but then I accidentally stabbed her friend in the face with a lit cigarette so that put a rapid end to that. There was some moar business involving some guy trying to intimidate me for spilling his drink by accident while his girlfriend giggled and kept touching me and I danced him away, and something involving brandishing a broom. But I ended up passing out an a motel in some unknown part of the city, as usual, and in the morning I was like "Damn cigarette"

But I ended up meeting Dwayne and Fabian again and trying to find something to do, and I looked on my phone for the number of the girl who I had grabbed by the hair and made out with at the club, and then spat vegetables at her friend. I decided to message her after getting moar intelligence from Dwayne about how her friend was yelling at her for making out with me so brazenly but how she kept saying she liked me, so I kicked myself for not messaging earlier. But, it turned out when I messaged her she was all like "Yeah I remember, let's meet up now" and we went to meet up with her and her friends in a hof in Kondae.

On the way through Jongro we encountered a ridiculous protest against American beef imports, which the Korean media has been claiming is infected with mad cow disease. There was serious police presence, with the police buses with the wire mesh on the windows, and police standing or squatting in formation at strategic spots, and police motorbikes zipping to and fro everywhere. We were waiting for Fabian to get out of the toilet and some students wearing t-shirts walked by.

On the front of the t-shirt was a picture of a crazed cow with a flower behind its ear (which apparentally means crazy in Korean culture) looming over a map of Korea and some slogans in Korean about mad cow, and on the back it was a picture of the President Lee Myeong Bak, also looking deranged with a flower behind his ear. So Dwayne asked them where they got them and that I wanted one and the girl, who looked like serious business, sent this weedy looking guy on an errand to get them for us. Now Dwayne was getting worried because he works for Hyundai and Lee Myeong Bak used to be Hyundai chairman so he was afraid of people taking pictures of us walking in these bizarre political shirts with him with us. But it was cool, and we went to meet the girls, while people on the train were confused by the foreigners wearing the political t shirts.

Anyway, we get there and I get stressed cause my memory was clouded by alcohol so I was unsure of what she actually looked like and we didn't know Kondae that well so we kept getting lost. But we found them and lo and behold in the harsh light of day she was actually still pretty cute and she seemed moar out going and interesting than my last girlfriend. Didn't speak a lick of English though, but thats cool. So we had some good food with them and I told her I'd contact her later and thus, all in all, I am a happy cunt after this weekend.

I was taught a song yesterday by Tom, one of my fifth graders (a smart but lazy little git). It goes to the tune of "Happy Birthday".

왜 타어 났니
왜 타어 났니
어차피 죽을 꺼
왜 타어 났니

Which translates to:
Why were you born?
Why were you born?
After all, you'll die.
Why were you born?

Truly charming.

Just when I think Korea can't surprise me any more, it throws me a curveball like ice cream and pringles in a pita pocket.

I came up with this idea with the creative input of James while I was watching a whole bunch of Cronenberg movies and generally getting into a body horror sort of mindset, while also reading a whole mess of comics. I got an idea for combining the superhero motif with body horror sensibilities.

The basic premise is simple, that super powers exist, but they are innately tied with cancer. One out of every million or so cancerous growths confers supernatural powers and abilities to whoever has contracted the cancer. These abilities are clearly biological and based on the type of cancer that the person has. A person with thyroid cancer might have access to bizarre hormones that allow super speed. Most of the powers would be biological, graphic and not pretty, definately of a body horror bent. Whats more, as the cancer grows and becomes stronger so do the powers, until of course the person dies.

This would have a variety of effects, such as that most supers would be from developed countries, and would be older people. It would mean that to remove the thing which is killing you would remove your newfound powers, and for some people that would be too much. Most people would agree to be registered and treated in special facilities. Others, however, would go rogue, often becoming increasingly dangerous and desperate. Some of them would become violent, and as they neared death would manifest extreme behaviour and shocking abilities, placing people at risk. These would be known as the Malign. Oe example of a malign I was going to have was going to be a young man from India who was born in Bhopal and contracted stomach cancer, who would become involved with a naive group of environmental activists, only to turn on them when they discovered his main interest was spitting stomach acid at people and absorbing them.

Standing against them would be an organisation known as the Benign, an international organisation policing supers all over the world. The main character would have unique powers, deemed vital to the cause. He would be wracked by fear, guilt and conscience as one hand he was often the only one able to stop the rampaging Maligns, and on the other by continuing to use his powers and forgoing treatment he's risking his own life. Eventually it would turn out that some people within the Benign weren't quite so benign, but I never really got that far.

I remember there was a lot of other details that I can't remember, some half-baked history I developed. Something about a Cold War era agreement about Benigns and Maligns breaking down spectacularly in the Kosovo conflict as the children of Chernobyl turn Malign. I can't recall. It doesn't really matter. It's just another idea.

Liv almost smacks him good toward the end.

I blame this on sleeping in the daytime. There were a lot of typical random dream things, but the main thrust of it was me, Davis, Snave and a group of other people that kept changing (but variously included Tim Reinholz, Rowan, Sandra, my brother, people I knew from New Zealand, and others) managed to stumble across the mutilated corpse of Antzpantz, which had been chopped into four pieces and shoved in a hole. For some reason it was Boxing Day and we were in Mandurah.

We spent a lot of time arguing over what to do, and people kept touching the corpse and moving it and fucking off while me and Davis yelled at them. I kept trying to call the police but my phone just kept giving me these bizarre messages. Eventually Snave took the corpse back to a nameless sharehouse that never existed, using a wooden wagon he appeared to have made out of pieces of lumber, and dumped Antz in the bin.

I then took a closer look and decided what we thought was Antz was in fact just lamp chop bones, cold steak and boxes of cold chips. The dream ended with me and my brother watching Larry King, who was talking about how Snave was going to prison.

I'm going to a rock festival in Incheon this weekend, and since its just a satellite city to Seoul I assumed it would be relatively easy to navigate. Thinking satellite city = small. Fun to realise that the Incheon actually has more people than Perth, so it might be more challenging than I anticipated. But thats ok.

Me: Aight, we gotsta practice this pronounciation. Repeat after me. Nose.

Students: Nose.

Me: Mouth

Students: Mouth

Me: Face

Students: Face

Me: Wayyyyyyyohhhhh!

Students: Wayyyyyyohhhhh!

Me: Ok, when I say Hey, you say ho. Hey!

Students: Ho!

Me: Hey!

Students: Ho!

Of addition amusement is doing things like sitting on random pieces of furniture while reading out test questions, and turning my eyelids inside out which I don't think that Asian kids can do (though I think Peter Chan can do it, so I'm probably wrong there.)

Mickey Mouse delivered a series of amazing speeches to Congress, many of which have found their way into lesson plans in numerous Social Studies, American History and Civil Rights classes in schools ranging from kindergarten to college. However, it was obvious that these speeches, though brilliant, would more than likely not be enough to get Congress to ratify Carter's proposed amendment. Therefore, Bugs Bunny again came to the rescue of toons everywhere, by convincing both the House and the Senate to vote for toon rights by getting into arguements with them. He burst onto the floor of Capitol Hill while the voting was taking place (illegal as all get out), and shouted at them to vote "yes", and the Congressmen shouted back that they would vote "no". This continued for several minutes until Bugs shouted for them to vote "no". They, of course, screamed back that they would vote "yes". Bugs then said "fine", and they did. It is probably at this point that elements within the American government first began to consider taking Bugs out.

So right, I was hanging around home all day on Sat, nursing a mild hangover from my evening of drunken wiki-editing on Friday. And I didnt have much to do until I went into Seoul to meet up with this American guy cause Im joining his DnD campaign here for lulz. Since he lived in this place called Ori which was on the complete other end of the fucking subway system we met up in this middle station called Guui near where they play. It was pretty cool, he was some laidback guy from the American midwest who'd been living in Taiwan for 5 years until he and his wife were deported for some tax related bullshit lol. So we just talked about the game and had some beer and galbi and then went our separate ways.

Now, it had been such a mission for me to get to this damn place, cause when I went across the Han river I fucked up at the transfer station and ended up going back across the Han River again, which wasted so much time that it ended up taking me 2 hours to get to this place. So the idea of going back to Samsoong in some huge trip to sit around and not do much again didn't appeal. So I got off the train at the transfer station that should have taken me back to my line but I went to a PCbang instead to see if I could search for anything worth doing online.

After a while of searching, I found some gold, I discovered sites for the local drum and bass scene, which could be interesting, as well as discovering this fucking hilarious cover of Joy Division by some Tuvan throat singer. Then just as I was about to go I found some reference to something called a 'Hana international party' that was being held nearby. It was like 15000 won for all the draught beer who can drink and a whole mess of Korean food. So I thought that sounded good so I headed there.

Lol so hilarious. Such a good party. The place was a cool mix of white guys, Japanese girls and all these Korean university students trying to practice their Jap and English. Some of the white guys were pretty bad though. There was this one guy who was this tall gangly Virginian guy who had this glum guss face that always seemed vaguely sad and pissed off about something, I talked to him but I dunno, there was something fail there. The Koreans were pretty awesome, all these funny Korean guys and most of the girls were of the "hey I hate my traditional culture, I want to drink and hang out with foreigners and go to mad parties" school of thought. There was also Korean freestyle rapping, which is always fun.

I met this guy named Suwan, who's English was really good. He had an almost-American accent even though he'd never been outside of Korea. There were a couple of kyopo's (Korean-Americans) there and he sounded more yank than they did. He was a pretty hard lad. I forgot his name the first time and then when he told me again I said I'd remember it by calling him after the name of the city in Korea Suwon. But then he started to introduce me to people as David Beckham so I started calling him by the names of other Korean cities, like Busan and Pyongyang.

We ended up with this serious posse of people that decided to migrate on when we got kicked out of the party place, and so we kept going from soju place to soju place. Really fun, lots of cool people. Some quotes from the evening:

Me: "Yeah Im from Australia".
Some girl: "Ah, are you from Sydney or Melbourne."
Me: "We do have other cities."
Suwan: "No they don't."

Me:"Yeah I'm from Australia."
Some other girl: "Oh, what city? Vancouver?"

Me: "So what are you doing here man?"
Some kyopo guy: Yeah the choice was either coming here or going to jail for the felonies.

I met a few awesome people, like Mellisa this girl from Toronto who found out about teaching in Korea by searching for "free airfares" on Google and then was in Seoul two weeks later. Met some hot Korean girls too, including one who seemed to enjoy fighting so that might be promising. So I'll probably go back to their meeting thing on Friday just cause she was cute and she said I should. Me and this Austrian guy spent ages trying to explain to this other girl how we weren't from the same country.

So eventually the sun came up. So much easier to stay up all night when you're out with people rather than clubbing alone. Plus the Korean drinking way is pretty good, the style is that you go from soju bar to soju bar over the course of an evening and at each place order some awesome drinking food to eat. It's really good for maintaining a really pleasant and cool level of drunkeness. It was like 7 when I eventually got on the subway and headed back to my own parts, sleeping on the train most of the way.

So yeah, fun. My local and foreign friends quotient has gone up heaps, and now I have a group to nerd it up with and a crew to drink heavily with. A successful Saturday.