holy s***

so ok...the date didn't happen. she called in sick...i feel like i got blown off. i saw her last night though and she was very apologetic etc., bought me a drink, said she would call me and we would go out...but i don't know, maybe she was sick...i am usually skeptical of convenient ailments though. however, one of the other bartenders (whom i also have a crush on) told me that she was jealous of the one girl...and so now that makes some more confusion...and then a girl at the bar came up to and struck up a conversation and asked for my number and asked me on a date...how is it that after 6 months that all the sudden this is happening? i still shower the same number of times per day (1...maybe 2) and i haven't done anything noteworthy to my appearance...either way, it's confusing as hell. why can't girls just go back to not liking me?

i shaved my head and tried to be a monk

so as last updated, i have a crush on a bartender and she likes me too. well, we are going on a date. hooray, i'm coming out of retirement. in korea, bartenders are allowed to drink on the job. go figure. but we did some shots and i tried out my korean.
me:namjachingu isseuyo? (do you have a boyfriend?)
her: ubseuyo (no).
me: namjachingu wanani? (do you want a boyfriend?)
so i asked her on a date and she said yes and gave me her number. i'm surprised that it was so easy...too easy...either way, i have no idea what we'll do or what we'll talk about. my korean is so limited and her english is as well. she told one of my friends that she's worried that she's too old (she's 29, 30 in korean age). then we danced (well, she danced and i kind of shuffled my feet because i can't dance). when i was leaving she walked down the stairs to say goodbye and i slipped on the stairs. it was embarrassing. i wasn't looking at the stairs because i was looking at her while walking. oh well, i'm trying to figure out what to do on a date. any suggestions?

no internet...again!

so a lot has happened recently and i haven't been able to really get on the internet because my new place doesn't have internet.

1. vacation- i went to jeju island for my vacation. jeju is often romanticized in korea. it's the honeymoon island. well, i figured out why: it's a great place to go if you want to stay in your hotel room for a week. that's not to say it wasn't pretty, but it is certainly boring. the first two days i had friends from seoul in town. they left. i was alone for a few days and then kakki and chad came and i spent the rest of my time with them. i saw lots of waterfalls and ate a lot of ramen. i went to some mountains. it was hot as the devil as well. one morning after i took a shower, my shirt was soaked with sweat after a 30 minute walk. i met some people from oregon who actually live in the next city over from me. we went to nore bang and the guy got a little destructive when he got drunk. it made it an uncomfortable experience. all i could think about was "this guy is going to break a t.v. and i'm going to have to pay for it." they were both nice otherwise though.

2. guitar pickup- i went to seoul yesterday to buy a guitar pickup for my classical guitar. i guess i never really thought about it, but classical guitars have smaller soundholes than steel string guitars; they're just smaller in general. so my pickup didn't fit. realizing that it wasn't worth the trouble to go back to seoul because of a cheap pickup, i decided to modify my guitar...i did this by using a butterknife to saw out two little squares in the soundhole. i'll post pictures, i'm proud of my butterknife skills...long story short, i put the pickup in and it doesn't work. i'm pretty sure the cable i was using was fine, but the pickup made not a noise. so i seriously hurt my guitar to install a non-working pickup. fml (for those of you less web savvy, that stands for "f*ck my life." all the kids are using it these days).

3. padraig's gone- my best friend in korea left. padraig was rather unhappy with various things about our school and other various things so when the opportunity to receive a scholarship for his phd back in the u.k. presented itself, he did the right thing. i got a call from him on wednesday during vacation and he was at the airport. he had kept it a secret, which i can understand. all the same, now i do things alone a lot more often. the school is very mad. they're filing charges which can't really do anything. he won't be able to work in korea again most likely, but he'll have a doctorate and so i can't imagine why he'd move back to a place that made him so unhappy. they're telling the parents that his father is sick and he has to go home for a while. in a few weeks, they're going to say his father died and so he's not coming back. that way they don't look bad. pretty sick, huh?

4. new place- one of my coworkers had a place that was about a 20 minute walk from school and i have a scooter, so he just said he wanted to move to the school and i said i'd consider trading with him. the boss heard this and immediately said "oh, so you're trading with michael?" and i said "well, we haven't talked about it." the next day, this same conversation took place again. he then told michael to go ahead and pack his things and did not tell me this. i packed up everything in my room on a day's notice. talk about being filled with hate. well, i moved in a day before vacation. i love it in my new place. padraig left during vacation. 3 days into the next week i was told that i would have to move back into the school. i had not lived in the apartment for even a week. i told him i'd really not like that. it would be the 4th time i've changed locations in the last 5 1/2 months. this has made me really pissed off. the location of the school is not great. there is no privacy. you cannot have guests. there are cctv cameras in the hall and we've been told before "oh, you came in late last night." if i live at the school i have to do pickups, which means that every couple weeks i have to go to work an hour early for no money. the bosses work sometimes till 10 at night and want to chat it up if they see you. the bills are insanely expensive, our electric bills basically pay the electricity for the whole school. so i've decided that i will move back to the school under a few conditions: the ad for the school said the job paid 100,000w more a month than the actual contract i signed in korea. i would ask for backpay and a raise of another 100,000 on top of that. i would also ignore any pesky rules about having guests. if they do not want to do this and still force me to move back into the school, i will give them my notice because i could easily find another job in korea...and since they just lost a teacher, they cannot afford to lose another, it would sink them. if they don't want to give me a release, i'll just tell them that i'll report them to the labor board if they don't. they have engaged in various illegal activities such as not providing us with health insurance until after 5 months, still not giving us pension, and breaking all sorts of general labor laws associated with how many hours we have to work a day. of course, they could just let me stay and everything would be fine.

5. darts- i play darts now. i bought my own set. everyone here loves to play darts at the bar. there are people who can pretty much get bull's eyes every time. it's amazing.

6. the ladies- it turns out that the waitress i have a crush on at the bar also has a crush on me. this was related to me by my korean friends last night. she's 29 and doesn't speak english very well, which is her concern. i can't say i don't understand. not speaking the same language is sort of a big deal when you want to know someone. she came to our table and put her arm around me. she said in english that i was "her man," which is funny on many different levels. she then explained to my korean friends that she likes me but is afraid because she can't speak english. oh well.

7. books- i finished "hocus pocus" and "bluebeard" by vonnegut. bluebeard was maybe better. hocus pocus was maybe my least favorite vonnegut book so far. i went to the book store to find something more heavy to read. i got "critique on pure reason" by kant. i've trudged through the massive introduction and i understand about 30% of it. i consider this a huge accomplishment, the 30% that is. i think i'm going to start on pynchon's "vineland" again. i started it a while ago and then moved to something else. my friend kakki also has "the crying of lot 49" which i might borrow.

that is all. i've been here for nearly 6 months. i think my big plan is to come back and study for my master's degree. i met a guy who did that. with a 2.7 gpa, he got a 75% scholarship on tuition and a 50% scholarship for the dorms. why? because korean universities love white people going to their schools...or foreigners in general, it's just that most of those foreigners are white folks like myself. so that puts me here for 2 more years. hopefully i will speak a lot of korean when i come back for good. it would be a shame not to.

counting out time...

i have to get off of this island. i just want to go to my apartment and cook dinner and see my friends. i want to go to the crazy duck and have the waitress fawn over me. i want a rotibun. maybe there's a movie playing. i don't know, anything is better than this.

jeju is a really beautiful place, but there isn't anything to do. it's ridiculously boring. in the town i'm staying in, there are no people in the streets. it's really odd. it feels oddly deserted. there's nothing to eat except sashimi and pork (which, i've discovered i hate pork, except when it comes in breakfast form). it takes like an hour to see a waterfall. you get there, you look at the waterfall and think about how similar it looks to the last waterfall you saw an hour ago. i think it would be fun if i had people with me, but i'm alone on a honeymoon getaway because all my friends had their holidays already.

my best friend in korea ditched out yesterday in a "midnight run." this is where you don't tell anyone you're leaving and you just go home to get out of teaching at your horrible school without honoring the full contract. he called me yesterday around lunch asking me to give his contact info out. he said he had received funding for a phd back in scotland so he had to go back. i had to call our boss and tell him what had happened. he was very angry...but the truth of it is that we are treated like garbage by our school. i hate it very much. i'm currently job searching myself. i think my letter of release will be easy to come by. i'm going to tell them that if they don't sign it then i'll turn them into the labor board for all of their shady dealings. we'll see. oh well, enough of this, going to the beach i guess...

NIRVANA (UK)

nirvana (uk) people! listen to it. love it. live it. seriously, my favorite new band.

jeju, day 1 (and a little of 2)

well, i got into jeju last night and got on the bus going to my place, not knowing if i'd have a place to stay or not. after i found the hotel i talked to the guy and he gave me a room. it's the size of a cardboard box, maybe, but this trip has only cost me 288$ for the flight and for a week's lodging. so i'm pretty happy with it. i went out around 11 to find out what was going on in town. the answer was surprising: NOTHING. i'm not in a really hopping part of town and need to figure out where to go.

i went to the roof this morning to read some and a british guy and his sister started talking to me and then we were joined by their parents. they were friendly and gave me a beer at 10:30 in the morning. me and the guy got along and so we made our way out and tried to find some sunglasses for him and went to the batting cages. again, batting cages are everywhere.

i called my friend padraig to ask him something and he told me he had bad news. apparently, one of the students at school died yesterday. his name was james and he was 5 years old. he was being watched by his cousin and he fell off of a balcony. it's really sad...sorry to be depressing. here is a picture to cheer you up. irene! my favorite!

a clock that sings...

today, i went to seoul to see all those experimental music crazies bang out some noise. it was fun as usual. i will post the video soon, but i saw a pretty amazing performance from a guy who used bowls to make music. they were "singing" bowls, if you've ever heard of those. they're just bowls that resonate tones very well and sound almost like tubular bells. before that though, i had a really phenomenal experience: a chicken quesadilla.

let's just say that it's the second time i've had mexican food in 5 months...and the first time doesn't really count because it was horrible mexican food...like "i will spew you forth from my mouth" mexican food. but this, this was a legitimate quesadilla and it had nacho chips with salsa on the side. i normally don't clean my plate, but i threw caution to the wind and didn't care if i was being an american stereotype. i'm very conscious of being an american and so there are things i do and don't do over here to hopefully reflect well upon myself/my country:
1)i attempt to use korean as much as possible, even if they speak english.
2)i do not go to mcdonald's
3)i hold open doors for people and offer my seat on buses/trains to elderly folk (this is just a holdover from georgia i think, most of the times people are surprised because this is not something that's done here) it's almost like they can't conceive of a stranger being polite. more often than not, if you're a stranger, you might as well be dead to everyone you don't know. strangers do not talk and people do not mingle. it makes the social aspect of this country perplexing. it's also ironic that one of the main t-shirt slogans pushed by polham (clothing company that EVERYONE wears) is "world without strangers."
so i guess you could say that i am ultimately the greatest person to ever live and that i am worthy of your praise and respect......just checking if you were still reading. if you've gotten this far, i will tell you now that i'm none of those things.

recently, i've had a fascination with darts. electronic dart boards are at every bar in korea. you can see how high you can get your accuracy and what not. there are some really amazing players. i saw a woman last night who can hit anything on the board as many times as she wants. she was playing someone who wasn't as good as her and she would begin each turn by missing a shot, etc. people buy their own darts. i need to buy my own darts. the game of cricket is pretty amazing. padraig beats me most of the time. for some reason he's really good at bar games. oh that's right, he worked at a "fecking" bar for years.

glenfidditch is only 5,000w a finger at the crazy duck. easily the best scotch i've found in korea. everything else is johnnie walker or some bizarre ones i've never even heard (which padraig, the scot, hasn't heard of either). the staff at the crazy duck (loud,obnoxious,militarily occupied bar) are really nice. i only go there once a week or so, but they remember my name and talk to me. victor shows me card tricks (i've learned how to do magic tricks with cards, so sue me), bonnie works on her english (her electronic name tag says "hi, i'm bonnie. i'm cute and sexy! do you think? haha! i love u. have fun!" and jessica holds my hands for inordinate amounts of time when greeting me before going in for the hug (which is fine, because i have a fantasy crush on her).

for some reason or other, i'm talkative tonight. i think i said last night i want to come back for a master's degree here. my school really sucks still and i'm thinking that i might need to get them to release me due to their severe breaches of contract.

in other news, the song "wings of love" by nirvana (uk) is really one of the best psych rock songs around. if you go to http://bizarre-garden.blogspot.com/ you can download a bunch of nirvana (uk) stuff. i have most of their stuff, but if you just want a best of then the third entry should be what you're looking for. if you like the zombies, the left banke, the kinks, kaleidoscope, etc. then i suggest you get it. the bizarre garden guy really has some excellent albums on his site, you just have to search around sometimes. he'll get on a kick about a band and post everything they have for a month. go check it out.