Spring. When the nuts start to hatch.

It's been many months since my last post. For a variety of reasons I stopped posting back in August, which I'll explain briefly in a post tomorrow.

Hopefully I'll have something 'blogworthy' for you all shortly.

Shijangs

Here's a semi-random photo from the Oncheonjang shijang. I've been fascinated with the idea of the shijang since my arrival here; a very old street market tradition that still thrives alongside modern supermarket culture.



The shijang (street market) is a lively, human affair. Colourful, noisy, smelly, it fills all the senses with a riotous overload of experience. And bargaining, etc. an entirely human matter, is part and parcel of the experience. As a foreigner I've fallen on both sides of an imaginary fence. Some of the old ladies charge me much less for a basket of proffered goods, some of them charge me double the market value. When I first got here, it was a little confusing, to say the least.

I'm still no market veteran like the ajummas (elder aunts == middle-aged women) who rule the place. But at least I don't pay more than a reasonable price for veggies anymore. The shijang can be a bargain or a ripoff, depending on your research before heading into it.

I like it. Even if I sometimes pay a little more for things, I usually make out even in the end and have a fair bit of human experience into the bargain. A pretty good deal in my books.

June/July Wrap-up

So, I've been chastised (very mildly and justifiably) for not updating frequently enough. No surprises there! I only post when something interesting is going on; June and July brought us into the rainy season, so most of my time was just spent working and doing routine stuff.

I still haven't signed up for further surfing lessons, it took almost a month for my torn up ribs to heal up. I'm still planning to go back and do that, though.

I've taken a couple of trips in a rental kayak for three; once with my friends Keith and Karen and another trip with Se-yeong and 신채영 (Shin Chae-yeong) and 문원규 (Moon Won-kyu), two of her friends from the tourism society.

Satellite view of Songjeong Beach. You can see the submerged aquaculture gear in this photo, from the surface it's just a vast field of floats and lines going down. Click on the lines and pins to see descriptions. View Songjeong Beach in a larger map

The trip that Keith, Karen and I took was about one hour round trip and covered six kilometers: from Songjeong Beach to the Sea Dragon Palace Temple. It was a nice sunny day and the water was pretty smooth, although there was a stiff breeze that made navigating a straight line a bit of a pain in the butt.

We rented the kayak from a surf shop at Songjeong Beach (the same place that I took the surfing lesson from). It's a sit-on-top sea-kayak, a big hollow plastic thing with seats moulded into it. A giant pool-toy. Having given this thing a rigorous testing, I can say that in open water and heavy surf it is indestructible and easy to right (and easy to capsize if overloaded).

Above: a sit-on-top kayak similar to the one for rent at Songjeong Beach.
The DAG Tribal is probably a little more stable, though, from what I've read

The trip that Se-yeong, Chae-yeong, Won-kyu and I took last weekend was a little more 'exciting'. We got there late and had to wait for some Russian tourists to come back with the kayak. The wind was pretty strong and there were whitecaps and rollers in Songjeong Bay, we also had 4 people in a kayak designed for three (I didn't think this would be a big problem, I'm easily the heaviest and the flotation was fine). Keeping the kayak balanced was a bit of a nuisance but I didn't think too much of it.

We paddled out to an area where there are some sort of aquaculture pens (seaweed? shellfish? sea squirts? I have no idea). The wind and surf were cutting across the mouth of the bay, so as soon as we hit that spot we ran into some trouble. We capsized the kayak three or four times, righted it, got aboard again only to be swamped a few minutes later. There was a lot of panic every time a big wave came up (the swells were from 1 to 2 meters out in the open water) and the resulting movement would unbalance the boat and dump us in the water again.

We laughed the first couple of times, and then we were getting tired and a bit annoyed at repeatedly being dumped overboard. So, I decided I'd stay in the water at the bow and try to keep the kayak balanced from the water. This plan was pretty silly in hindsight, the kayak wasn't moving much, it just seemed to be drifting with the wind. I needed to get back into the boat and help Won-kyu with the paddling to get us back to the beach, he was paddling pretty hard while I was in the water but the extra drag was just too much. The girls would have been doing okay in calmer water, plus they were a bit nervous and unused to boat handling (a couple more trips and they'll be old hands at it, I'm sure.)

A guy came out on a jet ski and asked if we were okay, I was laughing and gesturing that we'd be fine. He said that he'd be keeping an eye on us (we never saw him again, I think he thought we were crazy. :p )

I finally managed to get back aboard and we kept the boat balanced by having the girls lie flat and stop panicking when they saw a big wave (they were getting pretty freaked-out, and I can't blame them, it was pretty rough). I started singing a few verses from The Ryans and the Pittmans and they began singing some Korean equivalent that I'm completely unfamiliar with, but the singing was all good. Once we managed to get back closer to shore, behind a headland, and out of the heavier swells, we made pretty good time back to the beach.

Somewhat shaky, exhausted and glad to be off the water we hauled our craft up on the beach and headed back to the surf shop to change and shower. We celebrated our successful non-drowning with fried chicken and pitchers of beer at one of the beachside bars.

Se-yeong, Chae-yeong and Won-kyu at the beachside tavern.
Mmm, beer, fried chicken and soondae!

An awesome day of adventure overall! Everyone was exhausted but in good spirits.

I told Se-yeong that our next adventure will be something indoors with shopping, but I think that I want to go rock-climbing. As long as my friends aren't afraid that I'm only trying to get them killed, that is. ;) (I should note here that Koreans, on the whole, are very hardy people. They remind me quite a bit of the folks from home. Used to rough living (by modern western standards), and newly accommodated to urban life.)

NB: I forgot to mention that three of us were stung by jellyfish during the adventure, but the rash was minimal and the plentiful exposure to seawater seemed to ease the suffering. The rashes and burns were pretty much gone by the time we finished our beer and snacks at the tavern.

David Carradine Dead in Thailand

Strange and sad.

Police said the 72-year-old actor's body was discovered Thursday in the closet of his hotel room at the luxury Swissotel Nai Lert Park Hotel. Police were investigating and suspected suicide, though one of Carradine's managers questioned that theory.
"All we can say is, we know David would never have committed suicide," said Tiffany Smith, of Binder & Associates, his management company. "We're just waiting for them to finish the investigation and find out what really happened. He really appreciated everything life has to give ... and that's not something David would ever do to himself."
Dr. Nanthana Sirisap, director of Chulalongkorn Hospital's Autopsy Center, told reporters that the autopsy was being conducted because of "unusual circumstances surrounding Carradine's death." He did not elaborate on the circumstances, and could not say when results would be released.

I think that suicide at this stage of his life/career is a little strange. He was a great B movie actor and one of the most recognizable celebrities to my generation. He had a long career and was just getting to where he wanted to be, in the limelight of mainstream films. If I have a life half as interesting as his was I'd count myself as blessed.

More Hotpot!

Here are a few more photos from the hotpot dinner. Tae-jeong took these, she's the smiling girl across the table in my own (terribly blurry) photo in the previous post.

I'm not sure where she was when we took the other 'people pictures' at the beach. Maybe trying to put on one of those wetsuits that made us all "look like starship captains", as Se-yeong put it. :D

I really like these people, as I said before, and I'm sure we'll have some more adventures in the future!

My rib muscles are still torn up and I haven't been getting much sleep because I wake up whenever I roll onto my side. They're starting to settle down though. I'll take this as a lesson in stopping an activity when I know I've injured something. I was just having too damn much fun to want to stop though. Bah! It'll be all healed up and forgotten by next week anyway.

Dak: my new favourite chicken restaurant

Here's a picture of the chicken restaurant Dak (dak, is Korean for chicken) which I mentioned a few posts ago. It's not much to look at inside but the chicken is divine and the place has a lot of character. There's a thirty-something chick who runs it. (at right in the photo) I think she's really damned sexy. She's always outside chopping wood and keeping the rotisserie fire going. A woman who smells like wood smoke and roast chicken all the time sounds like the kind of girl I'd wanna marry!

Their chicken is stuffed with steamed rice, roast chestnuts and chinese dates and then roasted over a pine fire in a big smoky oven out front. The chicken is really fragrant and super moist and the skin is crisp and smoky. It's really worth going out of the way to go to this place if you haven't been there before. Even if it takes a twelve hour flight to get there.

They also make an awesome dakdoritang (extremely spicy chicken and potato stew) that has cured a couple of colds I've had in the past.

Gaming, Drinking and Surfing

It's been a busy, busy weekend. I find that since I started this new job and I'm in a more central neighbourhood, my weekends are pretty full. Almost to the point where going back to work on Monday is a sort of a rest for the next weekend. It makes me happy to be this busy, my health has been improving, I'm gaining back some weight, and I'm getting a lot of fresh air and exercise.
This weekend satisfied both mind and body. Some gaming, some drinking and random nighttime weirdness, and some strenuous physical activity to tear the hell out of me. On Saturday my buddy Frank came down from Pohang, a city up the coast an hour or so by bus. In case I haven't mentioned it before I met Frank via a board game website/forum that I frequent. They have thousands (hundreds of thousands actually) of members and people can contact other gamers in their area to meet and play games. He sent me a "Howdy Neighbour" message when he got to Korea and we arranged to get together for an afternoon of gaming when he was down from Pohang last year. We've gotten together a few times now when he comes down and it's always a good time.

I've been fascinated by all kinds of games since I was a little kid. The artwork, the mental gymnastics and the social interaction involved combine to make gaming one of the most worthwhile hobbies I can think of. If you want to find out more about a game then BoardGameGeek has the information you need. They also have alternative rules, printable rulebooks (for many, not all, games) and other goodies.

Frank and I checked out a neighbourhood board game cafe called Chess. There was a board game craze here a few years ago and there are still a few board game cafes around. You pay an hourly fee of about 1500 won at Chess (which includes a free beverage) and you can play any game in their assortment of games. We played a few that we could easily find English instructions for. Some of the games were European and only had instructions in languages we didn't know. The boxes all have Korean rulebooks (printed from the web) in them. One of the girls working there offered to show us how to play something despite being unable to speak English, which I thought was really sweet but likely to be ultimately frustrating for both groups. So, we stuck to games for which they had English rulebooks. My new co-worker Greg came by after his lunch and played a couple of games with us, it's hard to find many board game nuts in Korea, so it's always nice to get someone new in on the fun.

* * *

Saturday night my friend Lynn and I went out for a night on the town. We ended up in a "Chinese Bar" and drank the better part of a 3 liter pitcher of beer. We were joined by a trio of Korean girls who said they were taking part in some kind of contest. Apparently the contest was "drink the foreigner's beer" because they drank what was left of our pitcher and descended on our hors d'oeuvres like a flock of seagulls. Then they told us they were in high school (students here are in high school 'til they're 19 or so, but it's still illegal for them to drink) and held us hostage for an exhausting hour of "Who Do You Think is Prettiest?". After they left we ran to a little cocktail bar down the road that Lynn liked because it had nice-looking chairs. It was an alright place, I guess, and at least there were no high-school seagull girls to drink our beer and eat our snacks. Had a beer and a few snacky bit and we called it a night.

* * *

Sunday, bloody Sunday. I was hung over a bit from the late night of drinking and hadn't had much sleep. Se-yeong had signed me up for a 'surfing for beginners' thing that the Korea Surfing Federation was sponsoring at Haeundae Beach. Learning to surf is something I've wanted to try for many, many years. I've never bothered to try it before, it just hadn't come up, even though people do surf here.

We hopped on the bus to Haeundae and met up with some of her friends from a college tourism club. I had met some of these folks before, last year when I volunteered to be a Guinea pig for their club trials, although I didn't remember all of them at first. They were probably some of the most laid back, friendly people I've ever met. I hope that I get the chance to hang out with them again soon.

The lesson registration included the wetsuit and board rental: total cost for 2 hours was 5000 won (~ $4CDN). When I get paid again I'm planning to go take a full two day course (100 000 won.) We were given a brief method lesson on the beach and then sent out into the water to paddle around on our boards. I think that I tore a bunch of abdominal muscles during the first half-hour of paddling the board around in the surf, I could actually feel them crunching and popping (I've gotta start going to a gym or something.) but I'm just kinda sore today, nothing too bad, and I won't be doing any surfing for a couple of weeks.

After the first half-hour, one of the instructors called me over to a part of the beach where there was heavier surf, gave me a few instructions, yelled "PADDLE!!" and set me towards the beach on a small wave. After a few runs of this he got me to attempt to stand up, which was moderately successful. I managed to get as far as standing before imstantly wiping out. I asked him a few questions about how long he'd been surfing and stuff. He said it only took him a day or two to learn the basics, which are pretty simple. Balance on a floating thing the size of a big ironing board as it slides ahead of a wave. Easy. Not. I asked him if he had any tips or how I should learn more after having some lessons, he just pointed at the waves said "The ocean will teach you how to surf." I know it sounds corny, like a master to student moment out of a martial arts movie, but he was completely serious and I believe him.

What a hoot it was! I think I probably swallowed a few liters of the Pacific but I haven't done anything that's made me feel quite so alive (and sore) in a while now. Se-yeong took me snowboarding a year and a half ago, which I also found to be quite a rush, but falling on my ass wasn't as much fun as nearly drowning. So, I'm going to go take some more lessons and see how it goes. My instructor told my friends that I was good, and they told me what he said. I didn't really get why but I also realized that they'd only picked a couple of us out for the "paddling down a wave" part. Maybe it's because I was paddling way out into the waves while the others stuck closer to the beach, maybe 'cause I looked like I was having the time of my life (I was, torn rib muscles and all). Some guys like golf, but golf seems more like a really big, really dull board game to me. Now surfing, that's something physical to make you know you're alive (unless you actually drown, I guess.)

After surfing, one of the guys treated us to a hotpot dinner at a Chinese place. Great stuff! They all went drinking after that but I bailed and headed up to my neighbourhood on the bus with Se-yeong, who was headed up there to meet a blind date. I think that if I had gone out I would have had a lot of fun but would have been more busted up today than I am. As it was I fell in bed really early and, aside from waking up from time to time with aching ribs, slept sound as a baby.

Update: Frank said in his last e-mail that he's interested in taking the surfing class, too. I'll keep you posted as to our progress from English teachers to professional beach bums.