Got my camera!

Got my camera last Sunday, July 16th. It was the middle of rainy season, but I did manage to run up to my roof and get some pics from my roof. I'm posting them for you all to enjoy, and to give you a view of a typical Seoul skyline. I counted one day, the number of 20+ floors I can see from my roof... 60! Also, I counted the number of neon crosses on top of churches that I can count, and there are 20! From one roof! Note the color arrangement on the buildings too, there is one main base color, then two or more accent colors. This is the basic design of ALL the apartment buildings here (that I've seen-tall buildings that is). It's Friday night, I'm staying in doing some work and saving up. Oh, I got a pizza for dinner. They've been telling me since I got here that the pizza here is not great, not so good, pretty crap. The pie I got was beautiful in color, texture and mouth-feel, but the flavor... Pizza made by people who have never eaten pizza is what came to mind. That is, it's really well made, perfectly colored and sauced etc, but, there is no taste to it. I've had this experience with other western foods (baked goods are terrible - the ones I've tried) here. I'm not sure if it's a rule, but I am taking notes... The spaghetti they sent was the same. (note: but, they DID include parmesan and hot sauce packs!)

Lotte World!

This last weekend, I met up with an old friend that I had met through Flood back in TO. Her name is Suah, and in the nature of friendship, she invited 2 other friends and Flood (so much for the one-on-one I had imagined). Good times though, she and her friends showed me Lotte world, an indoor and outdoor amusement park that's as much Canada's Wonderland as Excalibur in Vegas (minus the smell). We met Flood a little later in BangPe (?), and had some DELICIOUS bbq pork - basically like bacon but thicker and more meat, and not really bacon flavor. Pics up top.
BA
ps I don't know if I've mentioned this, but a cellphone is basically essential here. Since (as I did mention) no one knows any street names here, the only meeting points are landmarks, with further adjustment by celly. So you'll arrange to meet someone by ShinChon station, then call me. Then you work it oue like 'okay, see the 711? Walk towards there, when you see the 'Smiling Phallice' bar go left. Meanwhile, one of your group has to go out and meet him/her part way. It's is chaos, but it seems to work.
pps Suah is now in Russia! She is taking the Trans-Siberia express from Vladivostok to Moscow. Also, the pretty girl in the black shirt 'Ginni' is going to fuckin Israel at the end of this month! Egypt, Israel and Jordan on a missionary trip (yeah, no drawers for the kid - too bad).

Kollision with KTF

Okay, so here's the deal. Middle of last week Mike's girl asks me if I want to do a photo shoot and get a free lunch and a haircut out of it. (Actually Mike had originally said I might get a celly, but hey) Turns out one of her good friends is an intern at KTF cellphone company, and her intern team had a mission to run a shoot with a Westerner. The idea being that the team would shot the Westerner how easy it is to navigate Seoul using KTF's cell phone navigating program (which is pretty fuckin sick). So, always up for some shit, I said yeah. What I didn't know is that this would be a Sunday. Wake up hungover Sunday, head to Ide station (line 2, circle line) and meet 8 of the most upbeat, peppy, engergetic young Koreans ever. I'm putting some pics, maybe you can see my energy wane as the pics progress. One of these motherfuckers kept walking with me following my EVERY move. Wouldn't be so bad, except apparently he had been eating shit earlier (maybe in the bathroom at Bennigans?), and reeked. Another funny thing, while we were looking at pics of sample haircuts, one of the models was this fat dude who looked just like this same dude with the group! I saw the pic and was holding in a thunderous laugh, when one of the girls was like 'that guy looks like you!' to the dude! It was awesome.
Actually that was 2 sundays ago.

Post for last weekend, 3 Korea pics.

Damn!! Been a minute since last update. I think once I get a camera I will be back in the mood.
So last weekend on Friday I hung out around my area SangDoDong. I did some design work after getting home from work, and as it got later, Mike's words started to ring louder and louder in my ears; 'call me if you wanna grab some beers'. So I did and we did kind of a SangDo bar hop WITH a twist. See, the idea here is that they cater to foreigners alot, maybe too much (for them). IE foreigners can get away with too much. So, we decided to test out that theory. There is a rule here whereby in non-bottle bars (ie bars where you can buy pints) you have to buy some sort of snack/food. It doesn't matter if you just want to drink, if you want to SIT in one of these establishments (the vast majority of bars are this way), you have to get food. Food can be as cheap as 3-4$, or, if you want some smoked chicken (tastes like ham!) it can go up to 13-14 even higher. Our test consisted of us playing down the line, at various bars, that we would only order pints (actually o-beks ie 500 cc's tap beer). If hassled we would push as hard as possible without getting ugly.
Bar after bar, and every other table had food on it. We got away with all three bars NO FOOD!
The next night, Saturday, I made plans with Joon to meet up downtown and walk around the whole area. Turns out, he made plans with some other people, and we ended up meeting across town at KonDaeIpGu (Kon U. neighborhood). Cool thing: I took the bus instead of the train. I got a wicked tour of south-central Seoul, and all for a buck! Took a fuckin hour and a half though. I met a girl at the Ttukseom station. She had visited TO for half a year. I may give her lessons. We may do some sort of language exchange too.
Met up with Joon, and met some cool people. We ate at a VIPS(!) and had the buffet (I had been thinking about spaghetti all day). Then, we headed to Walker Hill which is a foreigner-only casino. Turns out that of all the casinos here, only one is open to Koreans. I think it's even out of town (maybe like Rama?). Well, since we were with Koreans, we didn't go to the casino, but we walked around a bit outside. It's on a mountain - first time smelling nature since getting here.
Then we headed to the north bank of the Han River. Maaad people meet up there. There are families eating, youth hanging out, couples strolling, groups of drunks drinking. Good relaxed vibe. They have a few boat restaurants (think Captain John's with neon, lots of neon) that sell coffees for $10. We stayed by the water a lil minute and then headed on to the next spot.
Joon and I left off and met up with Flood and a couple of friends that I know from when they lived in TO. One of them has a new boyfriend named, I'm not making this up, Ginsu! (like the knives for the younger readers) We had pleny a bottle of Soju and Soju-like drinks. They taught me wicked drinking games I'll bring back!
I'm attaching some pics. One is from the last bar, and one is from the night I went to Seoul City Hall to watch the Korea-Togo match (look at the people behind us - about 800,000). You may notice the peace sign alot. They throw it up, but I don't think they know it means peace here. They tell me it means victory when I ask them.
Gone,
BA
ps Oh shit! I forgot last Sat was Canada Day. I'll put my and Flood's pic. Check the shirts. We all did a toast and sang as far as we could into the anthem.