After only a month and a half, I'm almost done with my first week of stories. Yay!

Alright, let's keep this semi-productive journalistic streak going!

If you'll recall, I had the weekend to myself before training started in full, and I decide to watch a video. My floor of the hotel has a shelf of vhs tapes in the hallway, and amidst random 80s action flicks and the occasional blockbuster is the bright orange case of eXistenZ (because things are never weird enough until you're watching a fuzzy Cronenberg tape in a foreign country). I bring it back to my room, pop it in, and chortle to myself about how Ian Holm's name is misspelled on the cover, and the tape itself has the astoundingly-translated title of Rogue Trader. But that's Korea, right? Well, I watch a good 10 minutes of this "Rogue Trader" and between the weird translations and the constant scan lines and the Samsung watermark bouncing around the screen, things are getting pretty weird. So fucking weird, in fact, that I finally look it up on AMG and realize that Rogue Trader is actually a different movie, and I've been mistaking Ewan MacGregor for Jude Law this entire time. So then I went and found the right eXistenZ tape on the shelf and watched it and things were so weird that I flipped out and killed myself.

After I stopped being dead, I replied to an email from my cousin Jen. You see, once my parents found out I was going to Korea they, being who they are, scoured the Earth for anyone remotely related or connected to us who was also in Korea. Because, uh, buddy system or some shit, I dunno. Well, turns out a third-cousin I had never heard about named Jen was living near Seoul, and we arranged to meet. I've never been super big on family, and the thought of meeting a relative my parents found had me monstrously apprehensive. I lined up a number of excuses I could use to hoof it out of there, at least one of which was true (there was a show a few hours later I was planning to go to, but I could be very flexible when telling her what time I had to be there). Joke's on me, though, because she turns out to be cool and I end up skipping the show and drinking heavily at a western-style pub called Big Rock. Here, I meet this guy Andy:



He owns the place, and apparently supplies malt to all the Korean beer manufacturers. Fun fact: even he admits that Korean beer is generally shit. His pub, however, has its own selection of microbrews that are delicious but made in Toronto or something. Jen and I drink their beer sampler and some cocktails and eventually a friend of hers shows up, who was to be Jen's way out if I turned out to be boring. Great minds!


Jen, and on the end there is Ms. Back Up Plan.

After finishing our drinks we grab hot dogs at some stand where Jen is able to score free drinks by the sheer act of speaking Korean with the guy, an occurrence I tuck away under my hat for future (ab)use. Jen goes clothes shopping and I tag along, only to discover this curious Korean style chart:



The moral of today's post: When your inner beauty isn't enough to land a good man, try some motherfucking jeans.

The (Month-Old) Story Continues

Before I get into it, I'd just like to mention this: remember from my last post, the Korean guy I told I was in a band? I got a call from him the other day, asking when my next show is so he can come and bring all his friends. So that's touching, and now all I need to do is start a band, write some songs, and then get a show. Stay...tuned for that, I guess.

Before I got distracted by, well, life, I was talking about my first week in Korea. Last I left off was my first night, when I hadn't met anyone yet, so let's move on to the next day: I actually meet people! Yay!

The morning starts off with meeting in the lobby of the hotel at some ungodly hour like 10am or something so a van can take myself and the other teachers-in-training to the hospital for physicals. It's in the van that I meet my cohorts for the week, who turn out to all be pretty cool, which is a relief. The physical goes well and I later find out my urine didn't test positive for anything, which is also a relief.

After the hospital we're dropped off back at the hotel and left the weekend to ourselves, so I take off with some of the other teachers to COEX Mall, which is supposed to be the biggest underground mall in all of Asia, which makes it pretty hot shit in the underground mall world. In fact, COEX is such hot shit that it has these:


Interactive digital mall maps! They have touch screens and can do shit like you choose a destination and it plots you a route there. COEX: 1, every other mall ever: Zero.

I get back to the hotel and have the rest of the night to myself, so I decide to get some beer. If you guessed that shit was about to "get real" then you sir are correct. For starters, check out what's written on the side of this bottle:


"EXTREME AND EXCLUSIVE BEER FOR THE EXPLOSIVE MINDS"
Jesus fuck. This beer means business. It'll be perfect for-wait, what's this...


2.9% Alcohol?! Who's this beer for, Korean 10-year olds? That are girls? And drink extremely weak beers? This disappointment helps to cushion the blow of what would happen next, and evolve to define my night: I spilled the beer.


OH NOOO!!!!
Man, that bottle just busted to shit the second it hit that floor. Extreme and exclusive beer for the explosive minds, indeed. Well, I got straight to wiping up the mess with hotel kleenex and flushed them all down the toilet.

Wait, I can't hear you. I shouldn't have flushed a huge mass of wet kleenex down that toilet, is that what you're trying to tell me? WELL GEE, INTERNET PERSON I'M IMAGINING RIGHT NOW, SURE WOULD'VE HELPED IF YOU TOLD ME BEFORE I GOT BEER-DRUNK AND DID JUST THAT.

Remember that fancy toilet from a few posts ago? Oh yeah, it got backed up real good. Now, here was my dilemma: I had no plunger (or indeed any other solution for fixing a backed-up toilet). I could try asking the people at the front desk, but it was already very clear they spoke no English, and my guide book didn't have any handy phrases for a situation like this. I could try miming the action, but this being a love hotel I was a little worried miming a plunger action would have them confused at best, turned on at worst.

Yes, it was a tough situation. So I finally bit the bullet, and...went to sleep. Surely housekeeping in the morning would fix it.

Morning comes, housekeeping didn't fix it. Well played, Hotel Major. With the ball in my court, I marched straight down to that front desk and made a fool of myself through the art of symbolic gesture, but it did get the guy up in my room with a plunger. Crisis solved, I fuck around with Korean Rosetta Stone and drink more beer by myself in my hotel room.

In conclusion, it is now 6am and I would rather go to sleep than continue talking about me backing up a toilet. So, I will leave you with this mystifying piece of Engrish found on a restaurant wall:


Fuck you, I'll life my life however I damn well please.

Holy fuck.

Last night I went to Club Heavy for this Round Robin-type show, where 5 or so bands were set up around the audience and they would all switch off playing one song at a time. It was a great show, but that is not what I want to talk to you about today. Nope. Instead, I'm going to tell you about my morning. My morning after.

I woke up on the floor of a strange apartment. Strange for a couple reasons, actually. First, because I couldn't remember how I had gotten there, and I seemed to be alone. Second, because the place seemed to be condemned or abandoned. There was no running water or electricity, and the floor was littered with hard hats and heavy work clothes. I notice I have monstrous dry mouth, and assess the situation thusly:

-I have no idea where I am, and hope I'm in the same city.
-I don't have my coat, which has 500 dollars worth of MP3 player and camera in the pocket. I do however have my cell phone and wallet.
-The bridge of my nose and my wrist hurt mysteriously, so either I fell down in a weird way or I got in a drunken fight.
-Apart from my missing coat, the rest of my clothes are on me and look the same, so it would seem I didn't have any black-out sex, which is probably for the best.
-The amount of drinking it took to get this black-out drunk was probably not good for my cold, and indeed one my nostrils is encrusted with a wonderful layer of dried snot.
-I don't appear to have been stabbed, so, you know, optimism.

I finally gather my battered self enough to walk outside, and sure enough I really don't know where I am. The apartment building is in a back street that I have a small deal of trouble finding my way out of, but I get to a main street and hail a cab. It's in the cab I realize I've lost my ring, but I have no idea how to get back to the apartment I just left so it's gone forever. Hopefully the only casualty of the night, metaphorical OR real.

On the ride back to my place, I collect my thoughts and try to put them in some sort of sane, linear order. The last thing I remember is...doing my second shot at the complimentary tequila table set up outside some club called G2. I was with some GIs and a girl I had met at Club Heavy. Ah yes, I had put my coat into a locker with hers at the club...so how to reach her? I check my phone for any new entries and I find the name "Eddie", but I believe he was a Korean guy I had met who liked Oasis and I convinced him I wasn't a teacher but some sort of rock singer. He's probably not going to be of use. I do have some calls between 1 and 3 AM to a number with no name...that's a decent lead. Unfortunately, even if it is her I don't remember her name, and there's the possibility that she doesn't have my coat, or that I insulted her somehow in my blackout state and she won't help me. The room I woke up in definitely wasn't hers (who lives there?! how did I get there?!), but I'll have to try.

But first, I brushed my teeth and showered and discovered that I have a large 2-inch gash on the small of my back. I take back what I said about probably not having been stabbed. I try to play an Orpheus game I had scheduled with friends, but I quickly lose the struggle to stay coherent and conscious and pass out on my couch.

So that's my story. Will I get my coat back, with electronic goodies intact? Did I kill a man last night? Hopefully these questions will be answered by the next time I write in here, BUT UNTIL THEN I bid my fair readers a mysterious and terrifying good night.

Scary Korean Fuck FOUND

Remember terrifying black metal Korean man with the metal face? I found him! His band's name is Axcutor, and he calls himself Brutal-Lee. This is he:



I think my MSpaint likeness was pretty accurate, what do you think? Oh, and here's their myspace hereish.

Heavy Korea

I know I've been trying to catch up on stories from my first week of training and all that nonsense, but I had quite a night tonight, and I don't want to forget the details on account of being kind of drunk, so. My night:

These past few weekends I've been telling people I was planning to go to shows, and it never happened, either because I couldn't find the place, or I decided I had better things to do (omg Dragon Age). However, tonight I finally bit that bullet and not only went out, but was able to find the place I had previously been looking for, Club Heavy. It helped that this time I just took a taxi instead of obviously flawed subway directions, but seriously fuck paying six times as much to get to the same place. One day I'll figure out how to walk there. Anyways.

I get there a little late, so I catch the first band as their set ends. They're a pretty generic but adequate punk band, lots of power chords and shouted sing-along choruses. The club is mostly Korean punks/metalheads, with a sprinkling of American GIs and maybe a couple teachers. The next band comes on stage, and my goodness. I tried to get a picture, but my camera in its insolence told me its battery was exhausted, so I'll just have to describe their frontman for you. Take a 250-pound Korean, and wrap him in a black butcher's apron. Paint the apron liberally with fake blood, and give his head a giant (albeit lying-down) mohawk. Now cover his face in 2-inch steel spikes. Seriously, his lower jaw looked like Pinhead if he decided to up his gauges to compete with rivetheads. Oh, and he has a bunch of (very real-looking) scars around his left eye, and John Lennon sunglasses. If you guessed the next band played a little death metal, call yourself Mr. Champion because you just won the game. An artist's rendition:


RAWRRRR!!!
(This is what my art degree has come to)

After listening to Scariest Korean I Have Ever Seen and his more-than-adequate death growls, I have a small conversation with one of the GIs, and am then approached by a tall acid-blonde white chick I've seen hanging around. Her name is Jen, she's Canadian, and apparently I look like I'm a big part of the music scene because she starts into a speech about how she's in the next band (but not playing because of some bullshit about how her and the bassist take turns) and we should get each others' info to network and she can help my band out in Seoul or some shit. I should mention that I did buy an acoustic guitar a few days ago, and I do plan to start playing in the area once I have a few songs written, so this is definitely not unappreciated, if a little unexpected. I'll spoil the ending for you though and say I never did get her info, and later saw her getting chummy with her Korean lead singer when I went into a nearby alley to pee.

After peeing (and moving onto my 3rd or 4th beer, despite having only eaten 2 cookies all day) Canadian Jen's band is up, and they're a decent hardcore band I guess. The lead singer is wearing a Straight Edge shirt that I drunkenly wonder about its legitimacy, and mostly wait for the next band to play. I wasn't disappointed.

The final band I saw was another metal band, a little lighter than Scary Fuck's band but still very dark and heavy. They must've been pretty big in the Korean metal scene, because the crowd starts going crazy for them, especially their singer who does some antics like pour beer in his hair and head bang towards the crowd. Interestingly, he also incorporates a lot of "Oi!" chanting into their black metal, and would occasionally exchange the devil's horns for the thumbs-up sign.



Their set ends, and I go outside to pee again. On the way back I notice the lead singer hanging out outside, so I chat him up for a bit. I find out he's from Seoul, he's 35, and he says I should have a Korean girlfriend because I'm very handsome. We exchange numbers, because for the second time tonight he thinks I already have a band, and insists I call him when I have a gig. I agree, and after talking to a couple of white guys next to us who bought his album, he leaves and then comes back with some posters for us signed by all the band members. Turns out his band's name is Method, and you can check out their myspace here (the guy I was talking to is Ryu Min, if you're curious).

So blah blah blah I follow the white guys to get sandwiches and then the train station but it's the wrong one, so I walk around more, get lost, and hail a cab home. I'll take a picture of my new poster when my camera's battery is done charging, but for now just know it says "Struggling LIFE 4 METAL" in sharpe and is hanging above my bed and is awesome.

The End.

Night 1: Jamie Drinks By Himself

Two posts?! I'm actually sticking with this blog (at 4am on a work night)?! You bet your ass. Let's get to it:

So it's my first night in Seoul, and I decide to go out on the town. I'll just take the elevator down and...



"F"?! F isn't a floor, crazy Koreans! You guys! You're almost as bad as the Japanese! Oh wait your fear of the number 4 is EXACTLY THE SAME. Not impressed.



Yup, my love hotel for the week. Hotel Major. I got to see plenty of middle aged men go through its doors with embarrassed/nervous teenage girls. Occasionally one of them would have a soul-dead middle aged woman with them, but mostly just the young girls.



After walking around for a little while, I promise myself to only drink at bars with the funniest of names. Although, really, BAR for LONER is just honest. Already making good on my promise, I eat dinner at a chain restaurant called Beer Factory. I figure chances are good I can get a drink there.



I also get a big skillet of delicious okonomiyaki. Or at least the menu said it was okonomiyaki, but I've never actually had it before, so I have no clue if the Korean-based European-style pub take on it is accurate. I also have Korean beer and officially start learning that Korean beer is pretty shitty.

I leave, and some stuff happens that I didn't get pictures of:
-A young guy in a suit on a street corner stops me and asks if I want a young girl. I say no thanks, and he just gives up. Just like that. It was kind of depressing to see a pimp with so little work ethic.
-The phone thing. Okay, I'm walking along that same street, and next to a Gentleman's Massage Club I hear ringing. I look around, and there's a cell phone lying on the curb. I keep thinking one of the other drunk people walking around will do something about it, but no one seems to notice. I walk past a few more times, and finally I pick it up. Which is about where my plan ends. It hits me I can hit redial, and just see what happens. I do so. A guy picks up, and I use some phrase in my guidebook asking if he speaks English. He claims he does, but I have my doubts since the only words I could sort of make out sounded like he kept saying he was a bus driver over and over. Eventually I just hang up and walk around, confused and even more anxious. A few blocks down I see a cop car, so I tap on the window and pretty much force the phone on them. As cool as it would have been to keep my curb-phone, getting mistakenly accused of theft is not the way I want to go to Korean prison.
-I'd also like to point out that these guys are fucking apeshit for billiards. There are billiard halls in every building complex around here. Just nuts.
-I try to go into what looks like a fairly classy bar, and have my first encounter with a Whiskey Bar. In these establishments, you pay 100-300 bucks for a bottle of the stuff and they also give you snacks and pop or something. I exit.

Dodging all the drunken stumblers out (and noting the awesome atmosphere towards public drunkenness for future use) I go into a convenience store and buy some necessities.



2 Korean beers, a Korean bitch drink (with something like a 4% alcohol content, KGB Vodka was making promises with its name that its contents could not back up) and some ice cream. Just the way God intended. Until, however:



Tragedy strikes. I have no spoon. FUCK YOUUUUUUUUUU KOREAN ICE CREAM



These PC Bangs are everywhere, and I guess is where all the StarCraft is played. This is certainly the most forlorn PC Bang I've seen. That, or maybe there's just nothing inside. If only.

Finally, we must end this post on a bittersweet note.



Ah, Sexy Luxury Music Room. You promised to combine so many of my interests like no establishment before. I will tell you now, dear reader, lest you wait in vain for stories of euphoria and joy inside those walls, that it was not to be. I and others with me tried to go in, but there was a gate barring the door, locked and chained. It would be fair to imagine that every song about a broken heart is really about me never getting to go inside the Sexy Luxury Music Room.