Squeezing lemons in Seoul Part 1: Indonesia Dreaming

It all started months ago. Months ago, I downloaded a subway map because I like maps and they use less juice than an app working off of 3G. It had hongdae, gangnam the Express terminal, Cheongnyangni, all the places I needed. 

Yesterday, I consulted said trusty map for directions to Incheon Airport. I found Incheon on the map and started out! I was funneled onto a subway train so old it looked like it was salvaged from auschwitz, and so densely packed that no AC system in the world could ever hope to cut through the dense ether of heat that had formed inside. It was that hot muggy heat that you scooped up like ice cream and threw in a cooler to keep other things warm. After forever and a day, the slow but steady trickle of people started to surpass the number of people coming on and the AC proudly boasted that it was now cooler in there than the light side of the mercury. I sat back, relaxed, and dreamt of Indonesia. Forever and a week later I see we're almost to Incheon. Nothing looks right. I can't explain it, but I'm reasoning myself out of worry. Until we stop. I'm expecting Incheon to be the last stop, it always is. But this isn't Incheon Airport. Nothing looks, sounds, or feels like there's an airport for miles. What's worse, I see the words 'Chinatown' in English. Then I see the dragon arch (think LA Chinatown) and it hits me: I'm in Incheon the city!!!! The world simultaneously implodes and explodes. I have roughly an hour and a half before my flight!! For me, if I'm flying internationally, an hour and a half is late to the airport!!! I'm I don't know how far from the airport!!!!! Cursing, kicking, screaming, livid to the point of red inside, I turn around, mutter a few swears, and carry on back to the subway. I call the airline in a panick. I'm watching the clock between every subway stop. I pace the car. I'm doing what I can to remain positive hoping that the laws of attraction save me from a missed flight. When the doors open I'm off like a velociraptor is behind me and it wants Mexican for dinner. I get to the turnstyle and it blares an angry electronic "THOU SHAL NOT PAAASSSS!! at me. The attendant passes the ticket to the woman behind the glass, who tells me I owe two dollars and change. I only have one one. I lose it. I don't swear, but I yell all over the place that I'm late for a flight. She gives me a sour look that clearly translates to "They don't pay me enough to put up with shit like this" and buzzes me through. Thank you nice lady, I'm sorry I was an asshole and lost my shit. It's now 705 and I'm Usain Bolt's fat beaner half brother. I fly up stairs so fast that even I wonder if I'm levitating. Backpack, schmackpack, it's only 15 lbs. I get to the ticket counter so winded I almost puke, and hyperventilate my story to the lady checking bags. 

It was seven ten. My flight was at 725. We all know how this story ends. 

Fifteen minutes later I'm at the CU on the way to the subway entrance. I lay down an ice cream, then get an idea and come back again with a beer. She says to me "not inside" I ask why not. She says "just". I'm so angry, so frustrated, so downtrodden, I don't respond. I don't even look up. I hand her my card and continue to act like she's not there. A certain silence hangs. The wheels haven't started spinning yet, they're too seized with emotion. I take the ice cream, beer and go sit down. 

Things slowly move towards normal, but do so slowly. After the ice cream there was water, because I needed it. Then the calling card. A new ticket was to be had. This vacation was happening. At the end of the night, I'd managed to start the refund process and un-froze my debit card. No ticket was to be bought, that would happen in the morning. The important thing was getting back to Wonju so that I could drink myself blind and numb wih my friend Dan. 

An hour or so later, I arrived at the bus terminal it was around eleven, and the last bus was always midnight. I go to the ticket counter and ask for a ticket to Wonju. 

No. She said. 

I shouldn't have been surprised. I shouldn't have been mad. I should have recognized that this was just not going to be my day. At. All. A part of me did. It just accepted it, the way a battered wife accepts that her husband is going to demand sex, finish all too quickly, and fall asleep without even trying to cuddle. The other part of me was livid. Again. I was like the guy that walked into your place of business angry, and was just told that he couldn't be helped. I wondered if I should just start breaking things. Not to resolve anything, but just because I'd be able to do something and get it right.

 Not having eaten anything since just after lunch, I sat down at the lunch counter nearby. The express terminal is littered with them. I ordered the most decadent thing I could think of. Ramen with cheese and dumplings. It wasn't on the menu, but I didn't care. The nice lady looked at me with a smirk in her eye and repeated what I said to confirm it. The guy next to me was poring himself shots of soju, and that's when I remembered the unfinished beer. I needed it *NEEDED* it right now of all times. Nothing was going right. I contemplated canceling my trip. I contemplated going home after this contract. I thought about how single I was (I an currently a little too single for comfort). I listened to see of the fates were trying to tell me something. After I finished eating I got up, contplated my next move; thought agains partying til dawn and crashed at a jimjaebang. 

The DJ kicks ass

I'm at Turn, a salsa club in Seoul, and the DJ here is 5'2", 5'4" max. But. He. Is. GOD. Este hombre tiene SABOR y TUMBAO! He's out there KILLING IT on the floor, with his bald patch, goofy tie, big nerdy Emporer Tokyo glasses and technicolor Hawaiian shirt. Fuck all that. He is GOD. He moves, he roars as he pleases, when he pleases (ino, really, on the floor) and his partner never stops smiling. Ever. He's just got it. 

Indonesia, Mr Mike Teacher, News

So, let's start with news. 

I'm resigning. Applied for an Australia visa (and paid the $400 application fee), but the lack of response wore me down. That in conjunction with my renewal deadline creeping up finally got me to say yes to another year. It's a really sweet gig, and I want to grow as a teacher, so it seems like a good idea. More on the ins and outs of how I really feel in another post. 

This weekend I went to Gumi to see my old co workers, Mike and Jim. I decided to take the bus instead of ride, which was good because it's given me time to do some research for Indonesia, and write out this blog. I fly from Incheon to Jakarta the 30th and land just after midnight. Ideally I'd like to spend the next day in Jakarta and take an overnight train to my next destination, Yogyakarta. Might not work out like that. Then the idea is to spend the next few days in Yogyakarta checking out the city and the nearby temples that are supposed to be some of the biggest tourist attractions in Indonesia. Then, fly to Bali and dive!! It's the beach life for a solid five days. I'm really excited to dive Tumbalin (I think that's right), the old WWII wreckage. It's finally gonna happen!! Now I have to shore up what I'm doing in Bali when I'm not diving. Probably not drinking, diving isn't something you want to do hung over. Need to hop on couchsurfing and see if I can land a few couches! I can't believe it's only a fortnight away!!

I'm currently on the bus now sailing past seas of green rice with islands of white plastic wrapped greenhouses. It's been a great weekend. The Wonj (Wonju) was out in force on Friday, which is a rare treat. We have a good crew, but they don't seem to come out at the same time. I'm guilty of it myself. I'm always in another city on the weekends, the. I bitch about how much the community sucks. Friday was great. I'd definitely stick around more if it were like that all the time. 

Last night was a crazy return to some piece of the past but in a parallel dimension. Gumi, hell Korea, seems to have changed so much in such a short time. But there we were, the three co workers back together in the restaurant on the corner. The corner was different. My old corner. It was a brand new 한우 (hanuu - Korean beef, ridiculously expensive because Korea is as conducive to cattle grazing as Alaska is to vineyards) restaurant. The grease and grime that had built up over the years had been ripped out with the old drywall and replaced by shiny new quasi-pseudo-industrial design. We all ate $50 in beef between the three of us - 400 grams, roughly a pound total - and drank  백세주 (bekseju). Mike had been diving deeper and deeper into the culture and was teaching me a few things, mixing the bekseju with soju in a gold/bronze looking kettle. Even though it's twice the price of a bottle of soju, bekseju is still only six bucks a bottle. The locals looked at us like we were popping Dom, in spite of the fact that they were all eating the same ridiculously overpriced beef. 

We were stereotypical Americans, we three. We were obnoxiously loud, belligerent, joke cracking, high-fiving, cackling, unapologetic brutes. It was fun. 

First, let me run down these fellows who I've been so rude asto not introduce until just now. Mr Mike Teacher is Cuban. If you met him, you'd look at me and say, "Really? I don't see it." He's about half a head shorter than myself, but about as wide as he is tall, but only in the shoulders. The man is built in a way that gives brick shithouses inferiority complexes. He's also bald as a baby's ass after laser hair removal, with a jaw so square it's used by engineering departments at research universities to calibrate important scientific equipment. This is augmented by a mean streets facade, with eyes that never stop scanning the room. In short, he's a Man. And he acts as such. He can be loud, blunt, obnoxious, intentionally maliciously direct, confrontational, and generally not give any fucks at all. Sometimes I don't know how we do, but we get along. He is a solid individual though. Salt of the earth, hardworking, genuine, honest (even when you'd rather not hear it), outgoing, personable, energetic, fun, and loyal. Other times I'm really glad to know the guy. 

It's kind of like that line in that one movie about the different kinda of people in every actor...

Mr Jim Teacher is much like Mike. Also enviable in his looks, even though he's knocking on 40, he's still built better than most 20 year olds I know. Also a Man, but He's kind of the opposite of Mike in a way. When I met the guy, he was fresh outta Miami and had a twang of the whole Miami superficial. Something about him was too nice, too inviting, it seemed almost fake. Like a used car salesman. But it turns out that Jim is just Mike without so much edge. Where Mike is reserved, Jim is sincere, where Mike is suspicious, Jim is understanding, where Mike is outraged, Jim is also outraged, but more patient about things. They're a fun pair when paired together. We rained terror on the ears if the patrons across from us as we came up with creative ways to complain about work. I swear the wait staff hated us. The table behind us was filled by some acquaintances of Mike. For all his hardass-ness he's really good with making Korean friends. His secret: sit outside 711 and drink alone. Oh yea, and be extremely ripped. Works for him. It was an older guy and his wife. We chatted with them, and their son came by eventually. I tried my best to keep up in Korean, which to my surprise was pretty good. While Mike and Jim went on, I hit the switch and tried to come down to their level. The mom (who spoke no English) complimented me something along the lines of her liking my vibe. I think. Vibe or disposition. They were good people. I kept going back and forth between the two groups (even when they were together, there were definitely two distinct levels within the same conversation). I was quite proud of my ability to fit into both. 

At one point I looked over and saw Mike do what Mike is famous for doing in the sneakiness of ways: pay the whole bill by himself. Mind you, we just ate $50 in meat and probably drank $20 worth of alcohol (alcohol is ridiculously cheap in Korea). We wrap up conversations and head over to the train station. Jim Teacher had had enough, and had to hop the train back to Daejon. We stop into Corona and have a round there. I ran into a few choice frisbee peeps which was cool. A few hours later, I'm chuckling to myself as I swim over a ridiculous wall of vegetation. Literally, swim. It was like crawling up a pile of grass at a 45 degree angle, except crawling required contact with a hard surface. This was swimming. Jim had made his train, Mike had bought two tickets to Daegu leaving in an hour, and he decided we should kill that hour in a bar near the bus terminal. We get there, and we don't go into the bar. Mike Teacher has decided he has needs, and those needs will be met. Thing is, typically in Korea, the areas near bus and or train stations often have houses of ill repute near them. Daegu is out the window. And I'm along for the ride. Now I've never paid for it, but the two times I've come close to have been with Mike. This was #2. We end up at a massage parlor where a pretty Korean greets us in disarmingly decent English. She opens a menu and we see packages ranging from $40 for a foot massage to over $250 for the "VIP Special Package A," two and a half hours of everything massage, plus a facial. Yea, we made that joke too. I knew I was low on funds, so I went for something cheap enough to plausibly be just a massage. Card came back declined. I went cheaper, declined again. I chuckled nervously and said I'd go visit the ATM. I was three bucks why of the second option, which meant it was time for me to go home and crash. I was in no place to spend any money frivolously. I come back, and Mike has chosen to go with the second most expensive option, and was in his private room waiting for the masseuse to arrive. He hands me his key and I'm off. I sit outside at a food stall pondering how bad the female situation is in Wonju while enjoying delicious steamed mandu (dumplings) for a minute before walking home. I hit the Great Wall of grass, and am just drunk enough to not want to go around. The Great Wall of grass is a barrier on both sides of the train tracks. The street I was on was about ten feet lower than the street on the other side of the tracks. On my side there was a low groomed hedge, a ditch, the Wall, then the train tracks, another wall, another ditch, and an incline up to a chain link fence. Suddenly, nothing else matters other than traversing the Wall. Not the rampant spiders, insects, falling, cleanliness or even dignity. I'm getting to the other side if it kills me!! So, I realize that nothing less than swimming up this grassw will do and, TA-DAAAA!! I swear I felt like I could do anything! Of course, that was just the beer talking me up, but it was a great feeling. 

Back at Mike's place, aka my old apartment, I run into a snag...I can't remember the door code!! After living there for 14 months, I can't for the life of me remember what it is! I remember it involves two sevens and an eight, but I can't get it!! I get so desperate I go buy some wet wipes and scrounge a hanger. My idea is to try and trip the motion sensor by waving something wet around inside the building. No luck. I sit down, and like a holy of lightning, BAM!! It hits me! I head upstairs, go inside and pass out. 

Next morning, it's off to Dunkin Donuts for horrible-for-you-hangover-cures. Come to find out, the most action Mike got was when he shook it after taking a wizz! He dropped over 150 on a fancy ass massage. Even I felt sorry for him. 

Eleven hours in the saddle

Started writing this a few weeks ago, didn't get back to finishing it, just did.

I made it.
I'm home.
Before midnight.

I left this morning at 7am. My destination: Pohang. Google Maps it (you have to eyeball it, Google and the Govt of SK are at odds so it wont give you directions), They're not close, but I was eager to go for a long ride. Maybe too eager. I checked the time when I finally stepped into the elevator of my building: 11:18pm. I spent two hours in Pohang (intentionally that is; another hour was spent running in circles trying to follow a byway that was shown on a series of signs up to a point, after which it dissappeared). Subtracting my three hours in Pohang, we have a travel time of eleven hours. Here's what I have learned in that time:

• If it looks fucking far, then its fucking farther than you think it is.
• Riding for fun is fun. Riding to get somewhere on time sucks ass. 
• Riding down windy roads is fun. Riding down windy roads when you're late sucks ass.
• Its always a bad idea to take the scenic route when you need to be somewhere. Unless you literally have all day, you don't have enough time.
• Estimating travel times by eyeballing as-the-crow-flies approximations is a horrible idea. Punch yourself in the face if you ever find yourself doing it. 
• If you are trying to estimate time for a route you've never taken, especially if its one that's impossible to estimate because of language and/or technological barriers, do the following - Grossly overestimate the time you think it will take to get there, then add two hours. This will be much closer than your initial estimate.
• A motorcyclist with true vision knows no limits; keep adding layers until you hear stitches popping.
• My shoulder gets sore after I ride for a while. It seems to understand that we're not going up the road to the store to get milk, and its like its trying to remind me why I never drove a motorbike in Saigon. 
• Koreans are marvelous engineers and very smart people. But they suck at roads. For instance, all the important lines, like the median, are painted with government surplus paint. Its about as bright and brilliant as a reality TV superstar. Also, the layout of the roads is kinda like you set a five year old in front of sim city and told them to 'make mommy something special!'
• Another thing Koreans suck at is signs. Actually, they do signs very very well. They're clearly illustrated, marked, and in both Korean and English. Until they're not. In Pohang, I was following a very impressive set of signs to my destination. Suddenly, the trail of bread crumbs ended. I drove around for an hour. All the signs pointed at one street. A side street or two pointed at the street. No signs on or after that one even mentioned the byway I wanted to take. In the end, the byway I wanted was in the same direction as the interchange. NONE OF THE SIGNS SAID THAT, NOT EVEN IN KOREAN. Happened at least twice more, once because of construction that didn't have a posted detour.
• Koreans also sucks at laws. Its illegal to ride a motorcycle on the highway. Too dangerous. Compared to what??!! A country full of smartphones, and nobody's thought to videotape the way they drive...
• Riding after dark can be fun. Riding after dark when you're hours away from home and its past your bedtime sucks ass.
• When it gets dark outside, you face a certain dilemma: if you ride faster, you get there sooner, but the faster you go, the colder you get. If you ride slower, it gets later, and the temperature drops.
• In spite of all the bullshit, even when it blows really really bad, riding is fun, at least for the stories.

Its a bit macabre, but I like it. Someone said something that got me to thinking, which got me to writing.

The steady silent juggernaut
Drones on
Stony indifferent scowl
Oblivious
To the ropes tied to it

Pulling it forward, dragging it back
All the little ants
With their
Heels firmly dug in
Feet kicking
Mouths open in agony

Those ants
Whose
frustrated
cries and pleas,
For haste or hesitance
combined will,
Oaths to God Himself
Cannot amount to so much
As a tickle or prick
The ears
The skin
Never reach the heart
Or change the pace

And day after day it methodically barrels on
So fast or slow it goes unnoticed, so slow or fast it causes panic
Crushing lives and empires
Wearing away everything

And the ants below
Continue to push and pull
Begging for something to change
For one minute more or less
Spending their days tugging it in this direction or that
Constantly switching
Until finally
They themselves succumb
Under its weight

Ground to dust

In time.

"How my current plans have affirmed my mortality" or "Goddamn. I'm leaving my job in two days and and turning 30 in two months"

It's a common plot theme. Someone always begs for a few more minutes of life. It happens, one way or another. The young cancer victim, the rich old man that squandered it all, the villain trying to cut a deal, the immortal who thought they wanted nothing more. Most normal, healthy people don't realize it. usually. Or maybe they do. Maybe after enough goodbyes, or enough chapters close, or enough opportunities are realized they realize that, yes Virginia, they too will die. Probably not today, odds are not tomorrow, but nobody makes it outta here alive.
So, there I was, cleaning my room...
Cleaning has a meditative effect like few other things. It gives you something to focus on, which keeps your mind from wandering too much, while not challenging it enough to keep it fully occupied. The one thing that kept coming to mind was the end of this current volume in my life, and how I wish I can't stop it from happening. Can't even slow it down. Not one bit. I was thinking about this earlier this month. I know this because I penned a poem spontaneously about it. If I had access to it here at work, I'd share a piece. I realized, before I know it, I'll be wrapping up my next adventure. Not the one I'm about to embark on, but the following one. The one I haven't paid for or planned yet. And I'll be at my desk again, doing FKnows. It'll be about the next trip, the next adventure, and life will continue on some other sub par level, hesitantly awaiting with baited breath the next adventure.
And it's all grinding to a halt. Slowly. So slowly all we can do is look back on it and mistake it for a blur rather than a smear.

I'm not going to stop getting older
Life isn't going to slow down
If it did, I'd probably only get more bored by my little life.

Interesting.

Skipping a beat

So, I'm staring down the barrel of the next two years of my life (will explain that in a second), reflecting over the last and doing what I can to make everything happen the way I want it to.

Okay, so, I FINALLY received my EPIK interview (to teach English in Korean public school). I've been working and slaving just to get to this step. It was a little nerve racking completing the application, with its lesson plan and personal statement, which seemed to consume entire weeks of my life. I was constantly revising and second guessing myself. I'd like to thank Alexander and Ashley Guererro for tearing it apart and torching the shreds over and over again. My final submission wasn't perfect, but it was definitely much improved. 

Then came the waiting. That part was worse. It's like writing a girl a letter, asking her flat out if she wants to go to the prom with you, and having to wait for a letter back. After about a week, you start buggin out. I emailed my recruiter to see how many days it takes for the average response. She said 7-10 days later. Eleven (may have been more like nine) days later, I email her again asking if I might have been rejected. She quite tactfully tells me to sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up, and be fucking patient. I email her a week later to check in, she tells me the same thing again. 

Yesterday, I got her email. It said that I have an interview Monday, 1140. At first I was ecstatic. Then my day happened. Then I read the sample questions for the interview. Then my heart sank into my shoes.

I'd been having a normal day at work. That is to say, nothing special or different had happened that day. I'd walked in, taken between 15 and 40 minutes to prepare for my whole day, remembering to put my torn, dog eared, tattered half of a fuck in my back pocket, so it'd be there for me to give it in case of emergency. ('Emergency' is a technical term defined the way an insurance company defines a 'valid claim.' For something to be deemed a 'emergency' it must first be run through a flowchart involving the amount of urgency or importance my director places on the even, the actual objective absolute value of urgency or importance the event has [usually there's a great discrepancy there], the amount of inconvenience the suggested remedies place on me, the amount of blatantly tactless or disrespectful conduct that occurred when informing me there was an emergency, and finally, how feasible/effective the proposed solutions are). I rolled through my classes like a gunslinger, living recklessly and shooting from the hip. It seems that every day my objective is to try and plough through the seemingly pointless and ineffective material in the book so that we can play a game, which is fine by the students. It gets them rehearsing the same English small talk over and over again, and in a way works, considering they never would use this much English if it were left up to the design of the books. It all was capped off by a resentment for having to do anything more at all other than sit there and stare at my newest desktop: a wide angle shot of Ha Long Bay with a beautiful cherry red stained wooden 'junk' (I'm guessing its the name for such a design of boat) floating across it.

The funny thing is I had read the questions, which included ones like 'Tell me about your passion for teaching,' and 'why do you want to teach public school in Korea' juxtaposed against dire fire-and-brimstone sounding warnings that surmounted to 'don't go looking like a shitbag' and 'EPIK wants teachers, not some foreigner looking for a working holiday!!!' After my day at work (which, if you recall, was nothing special or different) I was feeling lackluster, ineffective, useless, void of any passion, resenting my job, and wishing I was on a beach anywhere else in the world. I think I'm officially burned out at my current job. 

The rest of my night was spent pulling myself out of this tailspin. In fact, it was quite effortless. A good friend offered me some good advice, "Don't let short term burnout get in the way of long term goals." Well said. It also helped that I practiced a bit, and when I practiced I found myself diving into the few wellsprings of passion I do have. My answers to some of the questions were genuine, and I found that bit of myself that really loves doing what I do. Because I do. I love teaching. I love helping little kids learn. I love getting them to get it. Once I started talking out my responses, I found I had a lot more to offer than my current job inspired me to do. I am still a little concerned about the amount of prep I have to do, but for now I know I'm better than I thought I was when I started the whole interview review process. 

So, Monday's the big day. This will pave my way into the second year of my Korean life. Really, I'm more here to travel than anything. Screw saving money long term. Now  is the time to see everything. In fact, I've been wondering why I'd want to come back to Korea at all. Maybe I don't.Its not that I dislike it, but there are other things out there. There's always Vietnam, with its dirty dirt cheap cost of living, kingly salary, lax laws, and...who knows what else? The only real thing I have keeping me here is a barely ridden motorcycle. Seriously. I mean, I love all my friends and such, but I'm effectively leaving them all in 36 days (shudder!). Even if I end up in Daegu, only 30 min by train, this is it. It's spaghetti against the wall time. Whoever sticks, sticks, and the rest of them all will just slide off into the depths of my facebook friends as memories and former good times. Its reality. It's the way it happens. Why stay? I guess because what's comfortable is comfortable. I guess, unless Vietnam steals my heart in the meantime, I'll be back.

Speaking of Vietnam, I only have THIRTY SIX DAYS UNTIL MY UUUBER EPIC TRIP AROUND SE ASIA!!! AASSSSAAAAAA!!!! So excited. In fact, I think its part of the reason for my burnout. I mean, you have a month left at some mickey mouse operation school, and you're staring at over seven weeks of history and big cities and jungles and white sandy beaches and...well...paradise! Two dollars will get you a beer, a sandwich, another beer and another sandwich!! I MISS SANDWICHES!! Ohhhhh man! It's gonna be INSANE!! I already have my gopro and my kindle (memory maker and time passer), plus my backpack and such, now all I need to do is get myself a snorkel and some fins and I'm set!! I'm so excited it keeps me up at night!