oh sony, why do you toy with me so much?

EA Sports NHL 2010, called the best sports game ever by gamespot, not produced in Asia, and region locked in the West. Fuck you. So even if I buy an American version, it's one of the few PS3 games in existence that's actually region locked. Total and complete fucking bullshit. I hate EA. They fuck everyone. Has anyone ever tried that piece of shit hype-machine 'Spore' that was supposed to revolutionize sim gaming and turned out to be a mosquito smudge on my car window? Yeah, eat my nutsack EA, you fucking suck.

Anyways, I have lots to write about, but I'm just too busy. Intensives started this week so I just don't have any time for anything. Pretty much all my free time is spent preping classes, and the rest of my time is spent in class.

I'll try to update later this week and tell my tale 'o' Christmas. I met my girl's parents finally, and we set a date for the wedding, and a bunch of other shit happened, but I just don't have time now.

Don't worry though, I haven't abandoned the blog, I'm just too busy.

Plus, I finally got the PS3, so I've been spending a bit of time playing that too.

Later.

ASA!!!!!

Amazing.

I miscounted on the change. The actual number is 600,360. I thought I was going to have a heart attack carrying it all to the bank.

An adjumma who happened to be sitting near the change machine was amazed. "이 해" I told her. Two years it took me to collect all that change. I'm almost sorry to let it go.

My girlfriend can't complain about me buying the PS3 now.

I'm still shocked. I thought I did a pretty accurate count, but I was off by 25,000.

I can't believe I thought I only had about 250,000 before I counted it.

the things we do

Next weekend I'm meeting my girlfriend's parents for the first time. She is worried about the age difference, even though they know how old I am, and doesn't want them to notice that I'm older than her. So she insisted that I dye my hair. I am still only 34, but I've got quite a few gray hairs up there.

I was resistant. I don't really like the idea of dying my hair, it seems kind of fake. I just want her parents to like me for who I am and not care whether I have a few gray hairs. Is that too much to ask? Her parents actually seem like really nice people. They've given me gifts without even knowing me. Every few months they get me some fresh juice from a farmer they know. Their nice people. I don't think they would care that I have some gray hair.

My girlfriend cares though. So yesterday I went and got my hair dyed. It actually looks pretty good. I was worried, but it turned out okay. I can still smell the shit in my hair though. A constant reminder of what I'm willing to do to keep my girlfriend happy.

Other than that I've just been very busy with classes.

Yesterday morning I took some time and counted how much change I have. I've saved 575,000 won in change. Looks like the PS3 is coming earlier than previously expected. I think I'm going to order one this week. I've already ordered Dragon Age, so hopefully around Christmas I'll get the game, and maybe the day before I'll get the PS3.

I'm psyched because last week I bought Call of Duty 4 and I'm fucking seriously disappointed with it. After all the hype I thought it'd be great, and the graphics really are. However, if I spend $50 on a game I want to actually be able to play it for a while. It only took me 5 hours to finish all the missions. Fucking waste of money. Maybe it's just because I usually play RPG's, but I'm used to having 50-100 hours of gameplay, not fucking 5 hours.

Don't waste any money on that piece of shit.

The online part is supposed to be good, but I don't really feel like getting massacred by a bunch of fat 12 year old kids who play it 16 hours a day.

Listed

Well, I got my listing on the Korean Blog List. It's cool, I guess. I've already gotten some traffic from it. Although, I'm not even sure why I care. It's not like I'll ever put any ads on here or try to sell anything.

Nothing much has been happening lately. The new term started at my hagwon (academy), so I've just been busy with classes and getting to know my new students. It's too bad that we are only with each class for three months. I don't think that's really enough time to get to know the kids. I'm a much better teacher when I have kids who've been in my classes for a term or two. That way I know the methods that suit those particular kids the best.

Hagwons can be a little bit like fast food sometimes. Get them in and out quick, punch the little hamburger button on the cash register, and move them along to make way for the next customer. Sometimes I wonder if the average kid is learning as much as they could. The best students will always learn, but the average kids suffer. They get pushed through the levels to keep their parents happy, even though they should be staying at the same level.

We have to make it appear as though the kids are actually learning, even if they aren't. So we push them up a level if the parents bitch enough. It results in kids who are reading shit that's college level English, when they're barely high school level, sometimes even lower.

Anyways, I'll bitch about Korean education some other time.

This weekend my girlfriend was all pissed. For once she wasn't pissed off at me though. That was actually nice, to have her pissed off at someone other than me.

She's pissed off at her parents, and she's pissed off at her brother. Her brother is getting married in January. His fiance's parents want them to get a nice apartment after they get married. The way it works in Korea is that the guy has to pay for the apartment and the girl buys the furniture. It's all bullshit if you ask me, but hey, it's their traditions, who the hell am I to tell them the way they should live their lives.

The apartment the girls parents want them to get is like $80,000USD. A pretty fucking hefty chunk of change for a 29 year old Korean guy to come up with. I think he's only actually had a job for about a year. The 28 year prior to that he just lived off his parents.

This brings us to the reason why my girlfriend is pissed off. Her parents are giving them $50,000USD. Because of this, they have to move out of the apartment they now live in and move to a smaller place in Dongnae. My girlfriend loves her culture, but she understands how fucking stupid this is. She said to me "It's Korean tradition, but why the fuck do they have to give him the money?" Yeah, she even said 'fuck'.

So she's pissed. We'll get $0.00USD from her parents when we get married. And personally I don't give a shit. The last thing I want is to be indebted to her parents. I wouldn't want it even if they did offer anything like that. But it bothers her. She's upset with her parents, in part because it means that she has to move also, and because they're following the retarded tradition that the first born son is king of the shit heap. She wants her parents to treat her equally, and I don't blame her. And she's pissed off at her brother, because he's receiving this gift that causes his parents the hassle of having to sell their apartment and find a smaller one. And she hates his fiance because she thinks she's a greedy bitch.

Anyways, that's the conversation we had this weekend on our way to church. Then we left church early because the 4 year old kid in front of us kept getting up and down, and spinning around in the aisle. The little pain was so antsy that my girlfriend got so dizzy watching him that we had to leave because she thought she was going to get sick.

Sir, yes, sir!

Some funny shit here. A facebook friend posted this video of elves doing "Full Metal Jacket".



Anyways, I know it's been a few days since I've posted. I'll put up something soon. I've been busy.

Exactly what the FUCK is your JOB???

Hello. I work at the front counter of your apartment building. I know my job looks easy, but it really is very difficult. There are many parts of my job that you just don't understand. You may think I'm a lazy dick, but that's only because you fail to put yourself in my shoes.

First of all, I'm always tired when I get home. When you spend 90% of your time at work sleeping at your desk it really wears you out. My adjumma wife is always complaining. I get home from work, have a bottle of soju and go back to sleep. She also doesn't understand the severe physical and psychological toll that my job takes. It's really not easy.

I realize that every time you walk by me you see me sitting there watching Korean dramas on my cellphone TV, but I'm really doing work. You see, in my spare time I keep up a fan blog of The Kingdom of the Winds, so it might look like I'm just a jackass who spends all his time watching TV when I should be working, but I'm actually doing research. In fact, I was so emotionally drained when Boys Before Flowers ended, I had to take an entire week off from work. Of course, I didn't tell my employer that I was taking a week off, and I didn't actually stop coming to work or accepting my paycheck, I just slept a little bit more often at my desk.

You also don't know how my work is killing me. Literally, it's killing me. Because I can't just sit at my desk all day and do work. I have to take my fifteen cigarette breaks. This job is giving me cancer. I only wish I was doing it in the USA so I could sue my employer for polluting my lungs. I have worked so hard here that I really deserve to be able to retire.

And you also don't understand how difficult it is to send all these text messages about packages to tenants. Of course, I could take the packages up to your apartment, but why should I exert myself in even the slightest of ways. I'd rather just send you a text message. That way I won't miss any of my shows.

I realize that you also think I'm supposed to be a guard of sorts, but keeping tabs on who comes in and out of this building is really not my responsibility either. I'm not really sure whose responsibility it is, but I'm pretty sure it's not mine. So when I'm out smoking my fifteen cigarettes with the door open it's not my job to care about how anyone can come in and out of the building. My only responsibility is to make sure that when I'm at my desk I don't buzz in anyone who is delivering any kind of food. I really hate those delivery guys, so I try my hardest to keep them out of the building, they are the real threat.

So please, Mr. Waygookin Renter, keep all these things in mind if you ever need my assistance. If you ever have a complaint, like someone living above you pounding on the fucking floor from 2:00am until 7:00am every night, understand my position. I realize that it's not only you that's complaining, I know that both of your neighbors have also complained. But what you don't know is that if you live in 513, I have no way of figuring out what apartment number is directly above you, I mean it could be 613, or 612, or 614...that's a lot of apartments to check. Things like understanding the layout of a building are not part of my job description. And logical thinking, like reasoning out that 613 might be the apartment directly above 513, is just too much thinking for my job.

Because of this, if you ever hear those BOOM, BOOM, BOOM's again at 4:00am don't call me and ask me to do something about it. You need to come down to the front desk, wake me up, and hold my hand while you walk me up to 613. I can't find 613 on my own, I need your help getting there. I'm not even sure how to work the elevator, do I just say "613" out loud? What are all those buttons for? Why isn't there a 613 button? I understand that you don't speak enough Korean to actually do anything or explain anything when we get up to 613, but I think it'll be funny for the renter up there and myself to laugh at the silly foreigner who thinks his complaints matter.

Anyways, please, I'm just a tired old man who needs to watch his dramas and get 18 hours of sleep when I'm not outside smoking and criticizing you for not knowing which trash bucket is for colored plastic and which is for clear plastic. It's not my job to tell people to stop banging on the fucking floors constantly or to address the complaints of the people who live underneath said floor bangers.

Thank you for your time. Anyeongi gah sayo.

P.S. Fuck you, you silly, stupid, waygookin.

New PS3 on the horizon

It's definite. I'm getting a PS3 after the holidays. And I'm a sneaky bastard.

I planted the seed with my decision not to get the iphone. When I told my girlfriend that in the long run it would cost me less money to get a PS3 than an iphone she started warming up to the idea. She knows that sometimes I'm going to spend money on things like that, she just wants me to keep it under control. Of course, I haven't mentioned how much the games actually cost, but she's not my wife yet so she doesn't have to know that Final Fantasy XIII is going to cost me about a hundred bucks.

This weekend the decision was made. 100% certainty now. I will get a PS3. I was smart. What I did was I told her that first of all I would buy her engagement ring first. If I spend $1000-$2000 on a ring for her, she really can't complain if I spend $400 on a game for me. The next step was that I told her I would use change to pay for half of it. That's right, change. She laughed when I said this. She said, "Haha, okay, if you want to use change to pay for half of it, then you can buy a PS3 anytime." Little did she know that I've been holding onto my change since I moved here over two years ago. I already have like $200 in change. I am a sneaky bastard.

I said, "Great," and walked upstairs to the loft to get my gigantic load of change. It was great seeing the shock on her face when I came down the stairs with a bag that had so much change in it I could barely carry the damn thing. The bag was so full that I think my downstairs neighbors must have thought I dropped a bag of bricks on the floor when I put the bag down.

Now all I have to do is hit the gym a few times a week so I can actually carry all the change to the bank to exchange it for cash.

I can't wait. I predict I will have my PS3 by the end of February. Intensives are coming up in January so buying her ring will be easy. Then it's all PS3 all the time baby.

If you notice a big lapse in my blogging for a two month period after I buy it, you'll know why.

월요 병

월요 병 means "Monday disease".



Fortunately, I don't have Monday disease. Probably because I only have to work 3 hours on Mondays. That makes breaking the week in a little easier.

Today, I had my Korean class. It went well. I need to study more. Now there are a lot more students in the class though, so I don't feel like I'm at the lowest level anymore.

We learned some adjectives today, and how to conjugate them. It seems like it'll be easy to learn them. The conjugations are all the same as the verb conjugations, so I just need to learn the vocab. I think that's what I really need to focus on, learning as much vocab as possible. I should make some more flash cards and actually make an effort to study them for an hour or two everyday.

I had a really great weekend. On Saturday we finally got to Nampo-dong and we finished all of the Christmas shopping. I got t-shirts for almost everyone, at least all my nephews. I let my girlfriend pick out the present for my niece. That makes it a lot easier. I never really know what to buy my niece, being a dumb male, so having a girlfriend pick out her gifts is a load off my mind. Now that I'm done with the shopping all I have to do is actually mail the gifts to the States. That'll probably be the hardest part. Shopping is easy, but getting together the motivation to go to the post office and mail all that shit will be difficult. I'm so lazy sometimes. Anyways, I'll try to get them out within the next week or two. They might be a little late, but a little late is better than never.

Nampo-dong was nice. They had some Christmas decorations up. I would post some pictures, but I forgot to bring my camera. If I'm going to really make a run at this blogging thing I need to get better at remembering to bring my camera with me.

After Nampo we had Daegi-galbi. That's my favorite Korean meal. I used to love Samgyeopsal, but now I prefer the galbi. They're both BBQ'd pork, but galbi is marinated.

When dinner was finished we came home and relaxed. We watched something on TV but I can't remember what the hell it was. It wasn't anything exciting. Maybe 30 Rock or something? They've started playing American sit-coms on one of my Korean channels so we can watch something in English now without my girlfriend complaining or falling asleep. I just wish they would pick better shows.

The only other news I have is that my nephew tried to hoodwink me with a trade on fantasy hockey. He actually tried to trade me Daniel Alfredsson for Marc-Andre Fluery. Crazy. No way am I going to give up my number one goalie for Alfredsson. I really don't need another right wing. I have Doan, Kessel, and Semin at right wing, so I'm stacked as it is. I counter offered Kyle Quincey and Thomas Vokoun for Dan Boyle and Nittymaki. It's a fair deal. He gets the goaltending he needs, and I get the producing defenseman I need.

Anyways, time to put in my 3 hours of work...sigh...life is difficult.

Church day

It's Sunday morning, and all of you who read this know what that means. Church day. You also know that I'm not really a church guy. I told a friend of mine I went to church and the only reaction I got was "Wow, you go to church?" Yes, I go to church. It's the best hour of pure reading time I have all week. And I don't understand anything of what the Korean pastor is saying, so it's really more like an hour at the library than church. I don't mind. It keeps my girlfriend and her parents happy. That is enough of a reason for me.

Yesterday morning we woke up and my girlfriend was mad at me. I never did find out why she was mad. My suspicion is that she was mad because I woke up an hour earlier than she did. Not only that, but I'm actually in a good mood when I wake up in the morning. I told her my theory and she neither confirmed nor denied. I'm pretty sure that's the reason. She just won't admit it because she knows how crazy it is for her to get mad at me for that.

We didn't have this conversation until later. She stormed out at 8:30am yesterday without saying a word. She just had an angry look on her face and refused to talk. I can tell when she's mad. It's not that difficult.

After she left I watched the Bruins get their asses kicked by Montreal. That's why I posted the old PJ Stock fights, it was better than watching the game. It was Montreal's big 100th anniversary, so I expected it to be a tough game for the Bruins. They came back today and destroyed Toronto, so all is right in the world. Savard got a hat-trick and Kessel ended the game a -3. Hockey justice.

When the game was finished I had to go to the bank and withdraw some cash from my US account. I'm still a little broke because of my vacation, so I had to dip into my funds back home. My phone rang when I was getting back to my building. It was a friend of mine. He told me he just saw me outside the building. He called me an ignorant bastard. I asked him why.

"Why? Because you're wearing the stupid fucking White Sox hat." He's from Chicago...guess he's a Cubbies fan.

"I know. I have to wear it once in a while," I said, "_____ bought it for me. She gets pissed off if I don't at least wear it once a month." My girlfriend heard me say I'm a Sox fan, so she went out and bought me a White Sox hat. It's the thought that matters. She told me later she knows I'm a Red Sox fan, but she thinks the color of the White Sox hat is better.

I don't really care. She later bought me a Red Sox hat, which I wear constantly when I'm not at work, but I have no problem wearing the White Sox hat. It's the least I can do to keep her happy. If I was back in the States it'd be different, but it's not like anyone here knows the difference anyways, so I'm fine with it.

The only place I refuse to wear the White Sox hat is poker night. I've taken enough shit for wearing it there already. Now it's Red Sox on poker night. That is if I ever have enough money to go back again. Like I said, I'm broke because of vacation. I'm also trying to save enough cash to buy a PS3, so poker night will have to be put off for another couple of months.

Anyways, we did manage to go to Nampo-dong for Christmas shopping yesterday. This blog's getting a little long though, and I have to get ready for church, so I'll fill you in on the Christmas shopping details a little later.

Pj Stock on the Habs broadcast???

Apparently little big-man PJ Stock is part of the Montreal broadcast team now. I thought I'd put up a little post of some of his best fights back when he was wearing the spoked B.

This first one was back in 2002 against Stephen Peat. The funny thing is that it looked like he wanted to take on Chris Simon before this.



Here's a long one between Stock and Barnaby.



Here's the little trooper taking some serious damage from a guy who is about 4 inches taller and outweighs him by about 30-40 pounds.

Stock Vs. Boulton



And finally Stock and Vandermeer. At about :42 you can see Vandermeer break Stocks nose, then Stock gets a good shot in. The best part comes after though when Stock uses Vandermeer's jersey to wipe his nose.

Stock Vs. Vandermeer

Chicken Licker!!

Normally I don't delve into international news. I tend to stick to stuff in country. I'm not saying I don't keep up on news outside Korea. It's just not that relevant to my daily life. Also, I don't post my thoughts on news in general, and politics specifically, because I don't feel like getting schooled by a bunch of people who are much more intelligent than I am. Hell, on most days I have a hard time spelling intelligent. Is it an 'e' or an 'i' that goes in the middle? I don't fucking know.

Anyways, I couldn't resist posting this little gem out of the UK.

Chicken Licker

Maybe he just really liked the chicken? I don't know.

Anyways, time to put in my 3 hours of work. I'll be pretty busy this weekend. I'm going to Nampo-dong tomorrow, so long as the lady and I don't get in a fight. I'll drop a post sometime Saturday or Sunday and let you know how my Christmas shopping adventure goes.

Have a good day.

Gatsby

Don't forget to sign up for a page of the English-Korean-English translation of The Great Gatsby over here Deo Geureat Kechupi Project

I've been assigned page 8.

Here it is:

Across courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans.

See bay well-mannered? There Caucasian big house to trendily East (not Japan) Egg sparkling with water. The summer history start on evening drive there to many eat evening with the Tom Pukecannon.

Daisy was my second cousin once removed and I’d known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago. Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven-a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax.

Daijy my cousin was removed one time, I knew Tom removed Daijy, it was college. Two days he removed her and war them in town Chicago. Daijies husband, with many bodily finishing’s, had one powerful end. Modern Haven football he play. He nation’s person. One reaching a cute limit. He excellent twenty-one years old and after he saves and will not climax.

His family were enormously wealthy-even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach-but now he’d left Chicago and come east in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.

His family was many money. He money free college and many approach. Now he leave town Chicago, come east like fashion, and breathing. He buy tiny rope horse from water trees. It was hard to see man age money like that.

Why they came east I don’t know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe it-I had no sight into Daisy’s heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.

Why they come east? They no like west? They spend French year for reason none specific. They drift, rest no, and play rich polo with people other many money. The move solid. Daijy told me. She call me on phone. I don’t believe. In Daijy heart I can’t see Tom float. He like dramas on airplane shaking and football game that he not find.

-----------

It'll be published here after page 7 goes up. Don't forget to sign up for a page of your own and join in the fun.

I'll probably try to do one or two more pages myself, if I have enough time.

another plug

Just stopping in for a moment. There is this blog that I read. I read a post on it this weekend, I revisited it again today and between then and now he sneaked in a plug for my blog. This is his blog Here and There and it's a good read. I hope he will continue to write. He is another expat living in Korea and has some interesting insights. I won't mention where he's from, because he's chosen more anonymity, but I will say that I feel a certain kindred because of where the large majority of my ancestors come from. We certainly both have the cynical nature that is common among our people. You should read his blog.

Speaking of cynics. It reminds me of a story that my philosophy teacher told me a while back about the genealogy of the word cynic. It's probably bullshit, but I'll relate it to you regardless. According to my professor when Aristotle first opened his university there was a certain group of philosophers who would rabble rouse outside the gates. If they heard something they thought was pure rhetoric they would throw chickens over the walls. Because of this they became known as chicken throwers.

Now, according to wikipedia the word cynic actually is derived from 'dog-like', so all I can hope of my cynical brethren was that they weren't actually throwing dogs over the walls. Unless they were ankle-biters...I hate those fucking rats.

Anyways. Yeah, read his blog.

i need a 30 hour day

I wasn't going to post this because it's just a rant. But it's my blog, I'll rant if I want to. If you don't like it you can just read some other blog.

24 hours just isn't enough. I have too much to do. Too many things I want to accomplish. It isn't helping that one of the people I'm taking the Korean class with is now obsessed with learning. I wish I would have never asked him to take the fucking class. There was only four of us at the beginning. We've lost one already because of his bullshit. We're in danger of losing another, and I'm barely hanging on as it is.

I don't have time to study Korean for two hours a day. I'm also trying to study Korean history, study writing, keep up with my blog, prep for upper level classes, and keep my girlfriend happy (which is a full time job itself). I wanted to read one chapter of "The Elements of Style" everyday. When I finish the book, I want to go back and read it again, and again, and again, and again. I want to memorize that book.

I'd also like to continue studying Korean history. I've found some interesting books on Korean traditions and I'd like to be able to really put some quality study time in. Not just a once through novel read. I want to study them. Take notes, do some research, even go to some of the places mentioned in the books.

It's also important to me that I continue to keep up with my blog. I haven't written consistently in a long time. So far I'm doing great. They might not all be great posts, but at least I'm working at it and putting in the effort that lacked earlier in my life.

On top of that I also want to continue the Korean classes. I just don't want to be crazy about it. It'd be nice to be conversational in a year, but who the fuck am I kidding? I took Russian for a year at uni and I wasn't really conversational. Unless you count being able to say "Hello, my name is Michael, I love Rock 'n' Roll," conversational. I could say some phrases, and understand a bit, but it's pretty fucking tough to be conversational in a language in one year. Besides, I'm most likely a lifer in Korea, why should I hurry? Do I really want to understand everything Koreans say about me? Do I really want to have political conversations with my girlfriends father? But, one guy in the class is fucking it up for the rest of us. He wants to pick up hot Korean girls. Fuck him, I already have my hot Korean girl.

As if that isn't enough, I asked for all low-level classes this term so I wouldn't have to do any prep work. What do they give me? They give me all fucking high-level shit, so that adds about another 10-15 hours a week of work just prepping the fucking things. Yes, I get paid 15% more for those classes, but I just wanted to have a relaxing term in which I could focus on myself for once. Apparently, that's not an option.

The only time I really get for relaxation is in the morning. In the morning, I like to watch hockey. I prefer the Bruins, but it really doesn't matter, I'll watch anything. I'll watch Toronto and hope they lose. I'll watch Washington to root for Ovechkin for my fantasy team, even though he's a punk who does pussy shit like today's knee shot on Tim Gleason. I don't care. I'll even watch the west coast games just to see if Joe Thornton is still playing half as hard as he could be, or if Vancouver can continue to be pseudo-contenders.

Now, even my hockey watching is tainted. I can't just relax and watch hockey. I have to prep. I have to study Korean. I have to do one of fifteen different things on any given morning. Fuck.

Anyways. This was a bit of a rant. I feel better. I need a macjew and some hot chicken. Hope everyone is having a good week.

spam, spam, spam, spam

I love that song. That's what I was listening to when I got home from work tonight. I only have "The Escorts" version. This version is a little better.

I skipped my Korean class today. I only studied about 5 minutes all week. There just wasn't enough time. Hopefully my teacher will not be too upset. Unfortunately, the other two guys in class skipped too, so she won't be making any money from us this week.

I needed a break. She goes so fast that it's impossible to keep up with her. It's good for me that the others skipped the class, because now I won't be even further behind than I already am. Right now, I'm about a week behind. I'll try to get some studying done this week if I have time.

Last night I was supposed to go to a Thanksgiving dinner with some people from work. My girlfriend and I were both supposed to go. At first I thought it was just going to be work people, but I later found out there was around 50 people coming. I would have been more likely to have gone if it would have been only work people. I didn't realize half the foreigners in Haeundae were invited. My girl didn't feel like going either. That's good for me because I just blamed it on her. I told the guy who organized the party that I had no choice. If she doesn't go I can't go.

We decided to just stay in. We had pizza for dinner. It was pretty good. Pizza Etang. It's the same shit we order for the kids at school. It's not my favorite, but it's hard to get decent pizza in Korea. The sauce is too sweet at half the places. It just doesn't taste like pizza sauce. At the remaining half it's difficult to get a pizza that just has sauce, cheese, and pepperoni. They all want to serve it "Korean style". Korean pizza has corn on it.

Pizza Etang's sauce is the best I've had in Korea, but they never cook it enough. They also put the pepperoni under the cheese. Any jackass who's spent five minutes in a kitchen knows that if you under cook the pizza, and the pepperoni is under the cheese (instead of on top of it) the pepperoni is going to be fucking raw. So I ate my under-cooked pizza, with raw pepperoni, with a smile on my face. I pissed off my girlfriend Saturday morning when I woke up at 2:00am to watch the Bruins game, and I wanted to keep things civil last night. Pizza Etang is her favorite and criticizing it elicits the same response I would get if I called her mother a bitch. Pizza Etang is famous, it's famous so it has to be the best. Korean logic always amazes me. So I didn't complain in order to keep the peace.

The thing that really pisses me off about Korean pizza is the corn though. Who the fuck puts corn on a pizza? I really don't understand this countries fascination with corn. It's not like corn is really that healthy. Of all the veggies that you could put on a pizza, corn is probably the least healthy. They put corn on everything. I love corn with a little butter as a side veggie, but I don't want corn on my fucking pizza.

They also put corn in all their salads. Who puts corn in a salad? I like my corn hot, with melted butter, some salt, on or off the cob. I don't like it cold, uncooked, and mixed in with my blue cheese dressing. I used to love eating salads, now I won't eat a salad unless I make it myself. I don't need corn on my salad. I'm sorry, but corn and salad dressing are not a delicious combination.

The other food anomaly in Korea is Spam. I will never understand why they love Spam so much.




























Why are they so amazed by Spam? In the US I remember Spam as being something that people who couldn't afford to buy real ham would eat. It always brings back memories of the "Hamburger Helper" scene from Vacation.



Koreans love their Spam. It's like white-trash paradise.

I like this article that equates Koreans love for Spam with the French's love for Jerry Lewis. I predict a future thesis for an anthropology major in there somewhere.

What meat's a treat? In Korea it's Spam.

Here's a generic article from the Korea Times on the subject:

More Spam.

I'll just never understand. It certainly seems to draw a parallel to other cultural selections of Koreans. Instead of copying American Rock 'n' Roll, Jazz, Blues, Punk, or any other unmentioned, interesting, type of music; they choose to copy pop.

Anyways, I think that's it for today. Time to eat some food...without corn or Spam.

It's Sunday night...pg-13 for the family

I haven't posted for a couple days so I thought I should at least get something down. On Friday morning I got up at about 5:30am and spent about an hour talking to my family on Skype. They were all together for Thanksgiving. It was nice talking to everyone. I wish my oldest nephew would have been there, but I guess he's busy with his girlfriend now.

That's something that makes me feel old. My nephew is 20 years old. I still remember changing his diapers.

Anyways, I am being a bit lazy and don't feel that much like writing today, but I promised my sister-in-law that I would write a pg-13 blog; so today I'll write that one and try not to cuss or talk about lady parts or anything like that. Today even my youngest nephew can read the blog, if he actually wanted to. I'll be good.

One thing I would like to say is that I've finally gotten HD for my TV. It took me a while and HelloTV kept giving me the runaround. They tried to tell me that I already had HD, but I told them they didn't know what they were talking about...or I told my girlfriend they didn't know what they were talking about, and she relayed the message-probably in a much more polite way than I had originally stated it.

Now I'm addicted to HD. I wish I could see the real world in HD. Seriously. Stuff looks so good on my TV that I'm wondering if I can buy HD glasses that intensify the real world. After watching things in HD I realize how dull the real world is. I just want to stay home and watch Star Trek in HD again.

Other than that not a lot has happened. Not really up for writing that much tonight. A new term at school starts tomorrow and I have a lot of work to do. I'll try to get a couple posts up this week.

For my family--this will probably be the only pg-13 blog for a while. I need to swear.

Ice hockey...and noise...in Korea!!

Thanks to a post from Brian I know where to go to find some hockey. It's a long way up to Anyang, but certainly worth a once-a-year trip to see a little live hockey. Hopefully my girlfriend will buy me some tickets for my birthday for the weekend after my intensives. I'm looking forward to it.

The Bruins managed to win their fourth consecutive game this morning. They played great the first period, but fell apart after that. Still, they pulled it off in the shootout and beat Minnesota 2-1.

Wideman sucks. They need to get some better tape for his stick because he's about as reliable as a girl with 공주 병. He coughs up the puck more often than I cough up junk on a Sunday morning after drinking and smoking all night. Wow, my metaphors are bad. Mark that down on things Man-boy needs to work on.

Noise is really starting to drive me crazy. This morning there was some dog outside that wouldn't shut up. Not a deep-voiced, big, lab-type dog bark. A whiny, tire-squealing, nut-squeeze, bark. I really hate ankle-biters. I hate the girls who carry them around dressed in their little ankle-biter tweed outfits. I hate seeing the little fucking rats pissing and shitting on the subway, while their owners watch, pretend nothing happened, and go about their business without cleaning it up.

I'm glad my girlfriend doesn't like animals. If she ever asked me to get a rat dog I think I'd disown her. I just can't take those stupid little things. I think the smallest I would ever go with a dog would be a beagle. At least a beagle has some self-respect.

In a perfect world boshingtang (dog soup) would be made only with dogs that are the same size as, or smaller than, cats. I might even eat it if I knew it was made of one of those little bastards whose shit I had to step around to get off at my subway stop. Mmmm, delicious. Now that would be mashi-fucking-sawyeo.

In other noise, the asshole living above me continues to pound on the floor. There's no sense to it. I'm beginning to think that he found out a foreigner lived below him. He maybe lost a girlfriend to a waygookin and decided to annoy every other foreigner he comes across. It just so happens that I'm his next target.

Every few hours I hear "BOOM, BOOM, BOOM" upstairs. There's no discernible pattern to it. At first, I thought maybe it was a working girl living up there, but it just can't be. Only three BOOM's? Come on, I think the last time I only had three BOOM's was when I was a teenager. It can't be that.

My next conclusion was that they are doing some kind of construction work up there. But even that doesn't make sense. Three swings of the hammer, and then rest for four hours? What the fuck? It happens at the strangest times too. I'll hear it at 8:00am, then at 3:00pm, then at 2:00am. I don't fucking get it. What the hell is going on up there? It's not from people just walking around, it's too loud, it's too deliberate. "BOOM, BOOM, BOOM." It's fucking killing me.

I called the front desk and they said they'd find out what was going up there. That was two weeks ago. It's still going on. Two months it's been going on. "BOOM, BOOM, BOOM." Pretty soon I'm going to take my hockey stick and just start pounding the ceiling with it. Brush up on my Korean insults and start screaming in my deepest, pissed off, adjoshi voice.

Anyway, thanks again to the "Idiot". I got about 150 extra hits yesterday thanks to his plug. I hope I don't disappoint.

now i'm pissed

As I may have mentioned, I often play video games.

Originally, my next gadget was going to be an Iphone. They go on sale in Korea this weekend. Then, my friend, cunt that he is, planted an idea in my brain. Playstation 3. I hadn't considered it before, but I have games from PS2 and PSX, so if I buy a new console it might as well be a PS3.

The hard part is convincing my girlfriend to let me buy it. I've mentioned it a couple times and it has started a fight both times. I think she's softening up a bit though. Now, I have to be careful about my timing. I can't mention it when I'm broke. I have to wait until after intensives, because then I'll have plenty of money, and I can make sure that I buy her engagement ring first.

My best approach will be to mention it in conjunction with the Iphone. She was okay with my buying the Iphone. Having a great cellphone is a status thing in Korea. However, I really don't need a new phone. Of course, I don't really need a PS3 either, but the game would be much more fun.

If I make it clear to her that it'll actually cost me less money to get the PS3 than it would be to get an Iphone I might be able to convince her. The Iphone would cost me about $250, plus at least another $50/month for the plan. I currently have a pre-pay phone and I use it for text-messaging more than anything. Because of that, my current phone only costs me about $50 every two or three months. I don't want to switch phones, because I will never be able to get one for that cheap again.

The problem right now is that Korea is about 6 months behind the rest of the world in PS3 prices. I made the mistake of looking at how much a new PS3 would cost me back in the States, and compared it to Korea. I have to pay close to an extra $100 here. It's fucking stupid. Nobody in Korea buys PS3's, yet they refuse to lower the prices.

This is the best buy price in the US:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Sony+-+PlayStation+3+%28120GB%29/9476952.p?id=1218115837227&skuId=9476952

This is the best price I could find here in Korea:

http://english.gmarket.co.kr/challenge/neo_goods/goods.asp?goodscode=172924349

That's a fucking $80USD difference. Bullshit.

I just don't understand Korean business practices. It reminds me of the bullshit housing costs.

My girl and I have started looking into what we'll have to do to get our own place when we're married. There is an apartment complex near my school that we were considering looking at. They charge around $700 a month for a two-bedroom apartment. The problem is that half of the building is fucking empty. Nobody is willing to pay $700/month for a two-bedroom in that place. Instead of lowering the prices so they can at least make some money, the owners just prefer to have the apartments empty until the market catches up with their prices. It's retarded. They just don't seem to understand the laws of supply and demand. They end up making $0.00 in a 12 month period, when they could make $7800.00 if they just lowered their prices to $650.

Anyways, the damn PS3 prices better fucking catch up with the rest of the world soon. This is really pissing me off.

returning the favor

If anyone wants to read a seriously funny, and honest, blog. You should check this out: http://yankeenom.blogspot.com/

His blog is great. It's not pretentious at all. Very creative and funny.

"An Idiot's Tale" is what inspired me to start writing again. If you like simple, easy to read, material from someone who doesn't take himself too seriously, then you will love his blog.

It's a great read and I recommend going all the way back to the beginning and reading about his trials and tribulations with his "Mongol" wife. You might even get a glimpse into what awaits me in my future here in Kimchiland.

"It's got a great title"

"The Recliner" was a short story I wrote when I was in college. I thought it was good. I was proud of it. All my insecurities about writing stem from that story. It was a love story. It was philosophy. It was clever.

It was about the attachments that we form with inanimate objects. A man's attachment with his reclining chair eventually led to the downfall of his relationship. It was absurd, it was unrealistic, but there was something about it that was real.

I got an A on the story.

It was well written.

Was it interesting? I don't know. I don't have it anymore so I can't go back and check. Was the structure readable? Probably not. I wrote it a long time ago and I had no clue about form. Was it as clever as I thought at the time? Of course not, but I didn't know any better. Was it original? Definitely.

After I got the grade back I wanted to discuss it with my professor and pick his brain to see if there was room for improvement. When I asked, "So what is your honest opinion of the story?" I got a one sentence answer.

"Well...It's got a great title."

A great title.

Fuck.

I was expecting more than that. I was expecting my professor to bow down to my greatness. I was expecting him to tell me how fucking great it was, and how he never had to read another short story again, because nothing could ever be better than "The Recliner". Instead, I heard, "It's got a great title".

Disappointment.

Honestly. It was probably one of the most profound moments of my life. I needed, and need, a lot of work. Writing is not easy. Especially when you take a ten year hiatus. Writing can be fun, but it's also a lot of work; a lot of dedication. But here I am. My prose has improved exponentially in the elapsed time.

It's still pretty fucking far from perfect. However, it's better.

The thing about writing is that I always have to be thinking about writing. I have to think about what's interesting, and what is not interesting. I have to think about style. Think about what makes a bunch of words on a page appealing to the eyes. Think about what's appealing to my own eyes. Think.

This brings me to my real point. I've learned more about writing after reading three chapters of "The Elements of Style", than I learned in four years of university. I'm sad that this was not part of my curriculum. It should have been. It should be part of every freshman writing class. It's truly sad that it is not.

Anyways. This was a bit of a personal ramble. I'll have more tomorrow or the next day about some other shit.

the end is near...or is it??

The weekend is over. In the morning I have to get up and make it down to Haeundae for my Korean class. I'm having a hard time keeping three people going. If the attendance drops below three the teacher will cancel the class. There's only two at the moment. One of my friends is being moody. I thought I was abnormal until I moved to Korea and began to meet all the other expats. A thirty-three year old man, too moody to go to Korean class at 12:30pm. He got turned down by a girl at a bar on Friday night, it ruined his entire weekend. No joke. Another friend is just getting drunk again, so I don't know if he'll be able to make it for the 12:30pm class, but at least I can understand hungover.

This weekend was pretty good. No fights. I was even pushing it a little bit. In the middle of church today I turned to my girlfriend and said "자고 싶어요," or, "I want to sleep". Surprisingly, that didn't start a fight. I even accidentally dropped an empty coffee cup on the woman sitting in front of us. Normally, that would be grounds for 24 hours of the silent treatment.

After church we went to see the movie "2012". It sucked. After an hour and a half I just wanted them to fucking die already. Seriously, just live or die, don't make me sit through almost two and a half hours of boring, non-suspenseful, crap just to let me down at the end with two-hundred thousand people on a boat. Even "The Day After Tomorrow" was a better disaster movie.

One good thing did come from the movie though. My girlfriend is worried about the world ending in 2012 now, so she says she has to love me even more. Maybe that means more sex? Maybe an occasional blow job? Maybe she'll even cook? Who knows what it means, but I'm not going to burst her bubble and tell her it's all bullshit.

On the lighter side, I have one student in my Monday/Friday class who is an idiot. He pulled the fire alarm on Friday. This was probably not the smartest thing to do one week after this:

A total of 10 people, including eight Japanese tourists, were killed, and six others were injured Saturday afternoon (Nov 14) in a fire at an indoor shooting range in Busan, a southern port city of South Korea, local media quoted police as saying.

The fire broke out at about 02:26 p.m. local time at the second-floor indoor shooting range which was located in a five-story building in the second largest city of South Korea, and was quelled at around 03:04 p.m., police said.

Preliminary investigation showed that the fire started in a lounge adjacent to the shooting range, where seven bodies have been found later, and eight bodies believed to be Japanese tourists who were visiting the shooting range as part of the tour program, with the two others South Koreans, the police said.

http://www.newsgd.com/news/world1/content/2009-11/16/content_6333397.htm

I told him that pulling the fire alarm is always wrong when there is no fire, but if you pull it one week after a bunch of people died in a fire than you could really cause serious panic. I warned him that people could actually get hurt if they panic in a situation like that, but I don't think it got through to him. I sent him to a Korean staffer who yelled at him in Korean for ten minutes, but he returned to class with a smile on his face, so I don't think that made him realize the seriousness of pulling the alarm either.

I'm also a little worried about swine flu. I feel okay, but on Friday one of the teachers forgot to take his kids temperatures. Of course, that would be the day that one of his students would get violently ill in the middle of class. During the fire alarm fiasco one of the Korean staffers was walking the sick kid out of his class. I happened to be in the hall at the time and saw him. He was sweating and coughing. Kids here are not taught to cover their mouths when they cough. As luck would have it this little fucker coughed on me as he was being walked past me.

I really hope I don't get the fucking swine flu.

Anyways, that's it for now.

my first movie review

Orphan

Let me just preface this by pointing out some of the most joyous times of my life. My girlfriend agreed to marry me: awesome, even though we were in a fight at the time it was still one of the happiest days of my life. My last class when I graduated from the university: it was a long road, but I was proud to have finally made it through my philo degree. Getting my license: finally I felt like an adult for the first time, and I could do what I wanted without needing my parents to cart me around. The first time I had sex: I was a bit of a late bloomer, having to wait 18 years when everyone around me was doing it was tough, but I finally got the virgin monkey off my back.

I now have a new one I can add to the list. Watching that fucking crazy bitch drown at the end of this movie almost brought tears to my eyes I was so happy.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I will say that this was actually a pretty impressive movie. At the beginning I wasn't sure what to expect, and thought that it might be another run of the mill thriller or "Children of the Corn" type movie with a crazy kid who goes on a killing spree, but this was far more interesting than that.

When the movie opens and you meet a small family. They seem quite nice, but you realize that they're all getting over the tragedy of a still-born child. In an attempt to get their life back to normal, they decide it would be a good idea to adopt a kid. They go to an orphanage run by some nuns to meet and talk to some kids. That's when they first meet the "Orphan".

Upon first meeting the kid you think she's a little strange, but is nevertheless a good kid. She's quiet, intelligent, thoughtful, and a remarkable artist for a child of about 12. Her abnormalities are seen as nothing more than quirks at the beginning.

Then, she has her first day at the new school. A little girl in one of her classes makes fun of the way she dresses and that's when all hell begins to break loose. Slowly, you begin to see that this innocent little girl is one scary little bitch. Aside from her throwing a tantrum in the middle of school, the first big clue comes at a playground.

She sees the girl who made fun of the way she dresses. Then she to sneaks up behind her and pushes her off the top of a slide, breaking her leg in the fall.

After that everything goes downhill. She kills someone in front of her sister, so the sister is so scared of her that she won't tell the parents. Then, she threatens to cut her brothers balls off with a utility knife like the mini-terrorist she is.

If that's not bad enough, she then proceeds to turn every one of the retarded adults against the mother. The mother is the only one smart enough to see the girl as the psycho-bitch she is, but the rest of the adults in the movie think that the mother's past alcohol abuse has resurfaced and is clouding her judgment.

Finally, you begin to realize that this sweet little girl may not be a sad little orphan after all. I won't give away the ending completely, but I will say that the last couple scenes were pretty fucking disturbing in a few different ways.

Overall, I would recommend this movie. When I downloaded it I really didn't think it was going to be very good, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was really much better than I expected.

Too much to do

Don't really have a lot to say today. I just got some books in the mail. I'm quite excited about them. My copy of "The Elements of Style" has finally arrived, as well as Stephen King's book "On Writing".

I also got three books on Korean history that look pretty interesting. It's unfortunate that I'm unable to get any books on Korean history written in English in country, but at least I will always have Amazon.com.

The term at my school is almost over, next week is the final week. Because of that it's been virtually impossible to control the students. They all know that nothing they do makes any difference at this point. Whether they level-up or not has already been decided so they realize that any work they put into their studies now will not have any effect on the final outcome.

The test scores have been so bad that I've made a game of it. Most of the test scores this week have been below 5, the vocab tests have 25 questions, so I'm having them predict the collective class scores. Whomever gets closest without going over gets 5 pieces of candy. Last night the winning guess was 5. That's in a class of 8 students. So the class average was less than 1. It's good to know that their parents are really pressing them to finish the term strong.

Anyways, I'm working on my first movie review. I'll be posting a review of this:



It'll be done at some point this weekend. I just want to watch it a second time and take some notes before I finish it up and publish the post.

Have a good weekend.

Korean Music

Just the thought of what is about to come makes me cringe. Someone asked me about Korean music though, so it's my duty to bring to you the wonderful world of K-Pop...opps, I just threw up a little in my mouth.

Our first group is a boy-band that goes by the name of Big Bang. In my class we're doing lessons on the history of Rock 'n' Roll. I asked my students what music they listen to and a 12 year old boy told me that his favorite band is Big Bang. I asked him why, to which he replied "Because they're handsome." Yes. In a nutshell, that is the Korean music scene. 12 year old boys and girls listening to the most horrible shit in the world because the singers are handsome.



Sigh...generic beats rule all here. And forget about any Rock 'n' Roll.

This next one is not so popular anymore. However, for about a six month period I had to endure every kid in my class singing this song 20 times a day. It got to the point where I had to tell them that singing the "Tell me" song would result in an automatic F for the day.



I can understand why the record labels put these groups together. It's simple marketing. But, back home we at least had other options. I have to hear this crap everywhere I go. There's zero indie rock in Busan save for a few groups that occasionally play something like Radiohead covers in the foreigner bars.

The next group no longer really exists, at least not as far as I know. As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the singers was kicked out of the band, and pretty much exiled from Korea back to America, because he wrote that "Korea is gay" on his myspace page when he was 17. While Korea itself may not be gay, this band certainly is. I present 2pm:



This next one fucking drives me nuts. I have to hear this shit a thousand times a day on the television now. Bullshit song was basically created to market a shitty cellphone. Of course, the girls are pretty hot, but dammit if I hear this one more time I'm going to throw my cellphone at the fucking TV.



Yet, another shitty boy-band called "Super Junior".



And finally one more monstrosity from some of the finest pieces of ass on the peninsula. Hell, if I was 16 I might listen to Girl's Generation. That way if I was ever lucky enough to meet one of them, I'd have some material to work with.




If you turn the volume all the way down it's actually great.



Indeed...

the wonder of korean language books

Everything is back to okay. When I got to work it was like the weekend never happened. She can never stay mad at me. It's great.

I had Korean class today. I feel like I'm really learning a lot. The thing that makes this class so great is that the teacher actually spends time teaching us how to form our own sentences. I'm so tired of the Korean language books I've bought. Every book has some dialogue in it that you will only use once or twice in your life. You're supposed to learn vocab through these dialogues, but when you think about it they're really retarded. How can I use the vocab if the books don't actually teach me how to make my own sentences using said vocab?

A couple shining examples of this: one book has a great conversation between a FOTB (fresh off the boat) and a Korean stewardess on an airplane. How often will I have that conversation? Maybe 3 or 4 times in my life?

Another example is an amazing dialogue about how spring will come soon. Yes, I can use that gem once every single year!!

Another awesome one is talking to a travel agent about going to Jeju-do. I'm so happy that now I know how to make reservations. Of course, I hope she doesn't throw me any curve-balls, like asking me if I want to go in any month that isn't March.

Here's another good one: I can say that the food I'm eating is too spicy. This one is awesome, because Koreans invented spicy food, so they know that no foreigner could possible enjoy Korean food, because it's so spicy. As we all know, chili peppers only grow on the Korean peninsula. I think it would be much better to change this dialogue to the foreigner saying "This food is too salty, did you just empty the entire salt shaker in this chigae?"

And now, I know how to write a classified ad if I'm ever looking for a roommate as well. That'll really come in handy. I really wish I would have known how to do that years ago, because the first thing I needed when I got off the plane was the ability to use Korean to look for a roommate. Awesome.

I love this teacher. I can now say what I want to do. When I want to do it. I can ask questions about things. I can actually conjugate verbs. Of all the books I've looked through, not one of them actually has detailed descriptions on how to conjugate verbs. You'd think that might be something important when you're learning a language.

I actually wrote 8 sentences for homework. I studied about 5 different books before going to this teacher and the only sentences I knew where "I can't speak much Korean" and "Can you give me a discount." Cute maybe, but still pretty worthless if you're actually trying to communicate.

That's it for today. Tomorrow morning I'll be watching the B's play the Islanders. Hope they keep putting the puck in the net.

wild weekend

Uhhgg, where to start.

Well, Friday was relatively uneventful. My girlfriends mother was a little sick, so my girl had to stay home and take care of her the whole day. I think that put her in a bad mood for the rest of the weekend, because I just couldn't do anything right this weekend.

On Saturday I cleaned my apartment. In the process I found some gold necklace that I had given to an ex-girlfriend. She returned it to me when we broke up and I just didn't know what to do with it. I asked my girlfriend what she thought we should do with it. Bad idea. I should have just kept my fucking mouth shut. I asked her if I should sell it, and buy something nice for her with it. I asked her if she wanted it, I didn't think that was a big deal since she still wears a necklace her ex-boyfriend gave her about 4 times a week. Or if she thought I should just throw it away, it's gold, but it's really not worth that much money.

She refused to speak to me for about an hour at the mere question of "Do you want it?" I opted with the third choice, just throw it away. I figured that was what she wanted anyways. So, I put it in a trash bag and returned to cleaning. I cleaned almost my entire fucking apartment while she sat there on the couch watching awful Korean tv shows.

After about an hour, she finally offered to actually help. Then she spent ten minutes sweeping the floor, five minutes washing dishes, complained about how tired she was and took a nap on the couch, while I got on my hands and knees and scrubbed the shit out of the floor. When I was finally finished she was in a better mood, so we went out for daegi-galbi. Daegi-galbi is about the greatest meal in the world. It's basically just marinated pork that you cook yourself on a grill right at the table.

We had a good meal and talked about going to the beach or something, but decided it was too cold, so we just went home. On the way home, she decided that maybe I should sell that necklace instead of throwing it away. So, when we got back to my building I had to sift through all the disgusting garbage in the big trash bin looking for the bag that had the necklace in it. After about ten minutes of clawing through fucking old kimchi, cigarette butts, and thrown away toilet paper, (they're all afraid to flush it down the toilet in this country because of bad plumbing) I finally found the necklace.

We finally got back to my apartment and I decided that after climbing through all that shit I deserved a cigarette. This was a big problem, I'd already had my allotted one cigarette of the day, so this was the ultimate betrayal of her trust. I promised I would try to only smoke one cigarette a day when we are together. I usually do great with only one, it's not a big deal. But after climbing through that shit to retrieve a necklace that should have never been in the trash, and was only thrown in there because it was the only thing that would make her happy, I made an executive decision to up my limit on this day to two cigarettes.

When I got back in the apartment after smoking she was pissed off of course. I took a shower to get rid of the smell and clean off the shit from climbing through the garbage, but she was still pissed off.

Finally, after about an hour more of the silent treatment I went upstairs and tickled her. Seriously, if we're fighting and I tickle her she forgives me. I love her, but she's like a four year old sometimes. The tickle strategy worked and we were friends again. We talked about marriage and I asked her to marry me. She said yes. End of story.

Saturday turned out well in the end. But, here I am on Monday and she's not talking to me, why is that you ask? Well, I haven't told you about Sunday yet.

Sunday started off well enough. I got up and watched the Bruins game in the morning. They lost to Pittsburgh, but they played well and it was a hell of an entertaining game, so it's okay.

After the game I waited for her to show up for church. She's always late. Church starts at 2:00pm and she showed up at my building at 1:58pm. I got downstairs at 2:00pm. She was mad at me for being two minutes later than her getting downstairs. She called me before and told me be ready in three minutes. I assumed that meant she was leaving her house in three minutes, that's what it usually means. However, this time she was actually on her way here when she called. I didn't know this, she didn't tell me. So, she was mad because I assumed that she was going to be late like she always is. We got to church at around 2:20, which is about ten minutes earlier than usual, so she was at least happy about that, and was back in a good mood.

When church was over we went to Sfunz (pronounced spungee) and walked around a little bit looking at some stuff. She likes to look at boots, so we looked at boots. She has "Ugz", I guess they're pretty popular boots. She likes to look at "Ugz" imitation boots and tell me how they're not as good as the ones she's wearing.

After looking at imitation boots we went to the bookstore, because I want to get a new bible. Mine is falling apart. Like I said before, I just sit there reading the bible in church because I can't understand a fucking thing anyways. I might as well have a decent bible that doesn't kill my eyes to read. I didn't buy one though, because I wasn't sure if any of them were the King James version. They have a lot of the books for foreigners wrapped in plastic so we can't actually inspect them before we buy them. Instead, I just ordered one from amazon today. We also looked at lonely planet guides and decided that we'd like to go to Prague for our honeymoon. Assuming we're still going to have a honeymoon.

We got home after that and everything was hunky fucking dorey. I started making some spaghetti and meatballs, she watched shitty Korean TV shows, we were the fucking picture of domestic bliss. Then, we started talking about apartments. I mistakenly asked her about some coworkers and what they pay for their two bedroom apartment. I should know better by now, we just can't talk about money yet, it ends up in a fight every time we discuss it.

At one point, she told me that she wants to have a two bedroom apartment. It'd be nice to have an extra room for our extra stuff. I'll just call it her tantrum room (not to her). She can use it to go and have her tantrums when I say something she doesn't like, and I can use it for my music stuff if I ever feel like playing.

The standard in this area for a two bedroom is about 700,000 won, or about $650USD. Sounds great to me. Sounds like a steal to be able to live in a two bedroom for that amount. However, me saying that sounds like something we can afford infuriated her. She wants to buy an apartment, and so do I, so she doesn't want to pay that much. Fine with me. I want to buy a place too, but I'm actually realistic about our abilities financially. She wants everything and she wants it now.

Therein lies the problem. She wants everything and wants it now, but she expects me to do all the fucking work. I don't speak Korean. I can't look at apartment listings to find out how much they cost and where we should be looking. I just can't fucking do it. They don't list that shit in English. However, I'm expected to know everything, regardless of the fact that I can't speak the fucking language.

So, here I am today, wondering what the fuck is going on. She stormed out last night saying, "I have my standards, and you have yours, and they're different." I don't have any fucking standards, I don't give a shit. I just wanted a two bedroom apartment because she told me that was what she wanted. I just want her to be comfortable. That's all I care about.

Now, I have no fucking clue what's going on. I'm sure she'll be over it by the time I get to work today, at least I hope so. I don't want to have to tickle her in the middle of school.

Anyways, that's about it. I just finished Korean class and still haven't heard from her. This post might be a bit disjointed, because I started it before my class and finished it after, but I'll re-read it later and maybe edit it a bit and add some details. Right now, I have to get ready for work.

So, long story short. I'm engaged...I think???

Comments

Comments are really good. I like it when people leave comments. I'm also aware that some people reading this know me. That's good too. But when you're leaving a comment please be aware that my name on here is Man-boy for a reason. There might be times when I say some negative things about Korea. If I think there's something about this country that is retarded I'm going to say something about it. So, if you leave comments call me Man-boy, MB, or Jack-ass, Dick head, Loser, or anything else you want, just don't use my real name. If I happen to say that Korea is gay or Kimchi doesn't cure cancer (it might actually cause it). I don't want to have the netizens starting a "Man-boy should commit suicide" website or something like that. They actually did that to this guy:

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/10/113_51713.html

One day Koreans loved him, then within 24 hours they were starting a petition on the net trying to get signatures of people who think he should kill himself. I heard they got like 2000 people to sign it in one day. The K-netizens can be crazy.

According to this guy, they're so scary even Japanese netizens are afraid of them:

The online Japanese community "Ni Chan" (2ch.net), has made comments such as, "Is it because of the netizens again?", "It's a scary country", and "Didn't someone commit suicide before (because of netizens)?"

http://www.allkpop.com/index.php/full_story/japanese_netizens_afraid_of_korean_netizens/

Here's a list of famous Koreans who may have been driven to suicide by netizens:

Choi Jin-sil (December 24, 1968 – October 2, 2008) was a South Korean actress and model. She was considered as one of the best actresses in South Korea, nicknamed "The Nation's Actress".^[1] On October 2, 2008, Choi was found dead at her home, and the police chief stated that it was "a clear case of suicide".^[1] It has been speculated that negative comments by Korean netizens^[2][3] and rumors regarding her lending money to Ahn Jae-hwan^[1] contributed to Choi's depressed state.

Ahn Jae-hwan (April 25, 1972 – September 8, 2008) was a South Korean actor.Ahn was found dead in his car on September 8, but the exact time of his death has not been revealed. It is considered to be a case of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.^[1] He was 36 years old.^[2]

Woo Seung-yeon (24 May 1983 – 27 April 2009) was a South Korean model and actress.On 28 April 2009, Woo was found hanged at her home in Jamsil-dong, Seoul, in an apparent suicide.^[3] Her body was discovered at 7:40 pm by her roommate. Prior to her death, Woo sent a text message to her sister saying "I'm sorry", and left a note in her diary that read, "I love my family. I am so sorry to leave early."^[1][2] Police believe that depression over her situation and fear of the future led to her suicide.^[3]

Jeong Da-bin (March 4, 1980 – February 10, 2007) was a Korean actress who committed suicide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeong_Da-bin

Lee Eun-ju (Hangul: 이은주; 16 November 1980 – 22 February 2005) was a South Korean actress. She committed suicide at 24 years of age.

All those were found on Wikipedia.

Needless to say, I don't need the netizens trying to track me down because I say they smell like garlic or something equally as innocuous. So, please, leave comments, but don't use my real name.

Have a great weekend. I'll be cleaning my apartment all day. Fun stuff.