A personal goal upon moving to Asia has been to reexamine every priority and value I've carried around and mine them for clues about who I really am and want to be: my attitudes toward work and what I am willing to endure; my outlook on my future and whether or not the disjointed notions in my head are true-blue goals and aspirations that I am willing and able to realize; my approach toward love and relationships and why I've thought about them in the ways I have; on and on, and on.
Basically, the usual - the same crap most people go through but don't bother writing about unless they are Lena Dunham and can get paid by HBO to turn it into a hot new television series. Anyway, this was mostly a convoluted attempt to get to my main point: despite saying that I would be more committed to keeping Those Who Care within the loop and using this blog as an avatar for same, it has devolved into the standard Andrew blogging format of "infrequent posts peppered with overwrought apologies and lazy record keeping." Laziness - it is why I will never be anything cooler than jeans and a t-shirt.
I threw out some random morsels in the last post, so why don't I just expand upon them now? Whoops, now this is going to be an overlong post. Go pee.
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Suddenly, a stomach that is sensitive to alcohol. I could have put a little more thought into this line, as it makes me sound like a robotic drunk who wouldn't dare entertain the notion of slowing down, being responsible, doing what's best for me, taking the temperature of a room, et cetera. So let's back it up: obviously, my stomach is a human stomach that can only handle so much, and this has been the case since I imbibed my first social booze all those years ago. The recent trend, however, has been that four beers is "likely plenty," five starts getting into "are you sure you want breakfast tomorrow?" and six is "just go to bed now because you're likely going to get up in a few hours and hurl." It has been hard to nail down just what, exactly, lies behind this newfound physical aversion to cheap beer consumed in not dissimilar quantities to those back home. A pattern has not exposed itself. It does not seem to be related to food intake, mixing other liquors (a "soju at dinner" theory was eventually discarded), or any other physiological phenomena that I am able to discern. The best answer I have been able to land on, while highly unsatisfying, is that cheap Korean beer is somehow so chemically different from Pabst and Lone Star that my body rejects it. But only sometimes! I spent three days on the beach in Busan downing cans of Hite with nary a side effect more forceful than "moderate cottonmouth." Still, it seems beer-exclusive evenings cause more problems than liquor nights - especially if that liquor is good ol' red-blooded Jim Beam Bourbon - though at 5000 won per drink I'd certainly prefer to hang onto pints of Cass for as long as possible. Maybe it's simply that, as a clever older friend exclaimed, I'm "just not a young man anymore." Who can tell! In any case, I've been forced to drink with caution now, for better and worse.
Korean baseball is awesome. It's true that I was sick during and after the baseball game, and that I initially blamed the previous night's Cass for my station. In retrospect it appears more like food poisoning of some sort, with all of the classic symptoms. Still a mystery as to how I came down with it on that particular day as I had eaten breakfast and coffee at my apartment, but I suppose your theories are as good as mine and I won't get into particulars. The thrust of this graf is the quality of Korean baseball. It is quite a different experience than that of an American game - each team has its own dancing pep girls, an A&M-style yell leader who leads chants and songs for every player as they step into the batter's box, rowdy and raucous fans who hug after home runs, and a culinary experience that refrains detracting from one's enjoyment of being at the game. Whereas American parks in their wisdom forbid one from bringing in anything resembling a consumable, the Korean league allows fans to pack whole picnics for themselves so long as glass containers aren't used. This includes booze, with cases of beer tucked under every other arm and plastic bottles of soju pouring up everywhere. My friend Claire spent days preparing kimbap, hummus, vegetables, and homemade ginger beer that I enjoyed as much as I could.
Vendors outside of the stadium sold Korean snacking staples: dried sea creatures, dried seafood disks, hard-boiled eggs, fried chicken, and other assorted items that a typical American fan might find "backwards." Inside, American chains KFC, Burger King, Dunkin' Donuts, and Smoothie King had outlets all over the concourse, with lines of fans queued at each one. A great time that I hope to do again soon.
If you think American popular music is bad, you would be correct and you would also be unable to escape the worst of it in Korea. Every coffee shop, club, bar, "lounge" (virtually nonexistant), cell phone store, shoe store, clothing store, drug store, bakery, park bench, bus radio, dog, cash register, and salad fork in Korea plays the following songs on an infinite loop:
* "Moves Like Jagger"
* anything LMFAO has ever touched
* one or two Rihanna songs
* the same five or so K-pop ballads that are straight out of the American Idol-meets-Abercrombie & Fitch-but-even-dumber playbook.
There is apparently a decently lively music scene in and around the Hongdae section of Seoul, and if I liked commuting more I'd probably be there every weekend. Alas, I'm left wishing I could jam a musical salad fork in my ear every time I leave my apartment. "Why get so upset over music?" you're asking. Maybe because music here is less a cultural experience than a marketing ploy. It's everything the RIAA always wanted for America: total saturation and uniformity across the board. I can't wait to go to Japan. That reminds me,
I'm going to Japan for summer break. It will be for less than a week and getting around is likely to be expensive, but I'm going to frickin' Japan, y'all!
I quit smoking. For real. Smokes average about $2.50 per pack here, and for the first couple of months I took it as a sign that smoking isn't such a big deal and I'm gonna die at some point anyway so live in the moment, alright! As of this writing it has been seven weeks since my last cigarette. I can't tell if I feel better.
Neighborhood pickup basketball in Korea. We play on an extremely slippery court with the now-outdated trapezoid keys located behind the Aram Nuri Opera House here in Ilsan. The ample lights come on automatically far before sundown (attracting the bugs), everyone seems to enjoy themselves, and I'm finally putting these to use:
Hopefully it doesn't rain much this summer.
Busan. An incredible town full of beautiful, happy, nice people with sea-scented air and mountain views and a far more peaceful vibe than Seoul. It isn't nearly the size of Seoul and thus not the same sort of activity hub, but if I'm going to be considering more time on this peninsula I'd be doing myself a disservice by disregarding a potential move there. You'd all love visiting, I know it.
I hope this has been sufficient.
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