food, pool and beer (VIDEO-but not a good one)

Well Ken and I didn’t get up to too much mischief today, which he clearly had panned in his datebook written in glitter pen and underlined with highliters. I was so sorry to disappoint him, it’s like every time you have to kick a cute like squirrel. The common misconception is that every weekend here is like a mini-vacation in a foreign country. Well that doesn’t really work out when you’re a lazy tool. So we didn’t go to a buddist temple or make rice with ninjas or any cool shit like that. We did went to an all you can eat grill house near my place that turned out to be one of the most satisfying meals we’ve ever had here. It didn’t have as many side dishes as the other places we’ve been to and the meat was of lower quality by Korean standards (which meant that it was leaner, although we still trimmed it before throwing it on the grill, to the confused glances of the hosts) but we were both more than satisfied and will probably go back often enough to cancel out the relative healthiness of the spread with the pure quantity we will eat. Everything in moderation; especially moderation.

Afterwards we walked downtown and hit a pool hall. But not before we witnessed the tail end of a performance by three singers in the subway as we were crossing through it (something you always have to do to cross busy intersections here, they don’t even have cross walks at intersections with subway entrances). It seemed to be three girls that were local performers just doing karaoke style renditions of pop favorites to the mildy not disninterested adoration of onlookers. The singing was alright I guess but I don’t think much of the stage presence of performers here. That may b unwarranted and judgmental but I see the only useful thing to come out my degree is to be able to critique performances technically as a professional ( with all sorts of professional envy and unfulfilled dreams to boot!). The performers didn’t really entrance me quite as much as this old gentleman dancing along to the music. Tough to see on the sup-bar vantage point and the ‘cool that I have it but not really useful’ video feature on my digicam. But it was just funny to see everyone standing like statues and one old man just dancing away quite poorly but everyone seeming quite proud of him to do it. If my vantage point was better I would have gotten the singers in the shot too but alas it was not to be. I think I’ll have to be here a little longer before I can really decode what a cultural statement the whole dancing thing makes about the people here.

Anyway I tried to capture the moment forever in video but some guy got in my way and my digicam ain’t the best tool for the job in any case (kinda like using a toothpick as a flyswatter- it can get the job done… sort of... in theory)

I won two games of pool in a row against Ken and finally on the third game I thought it would be nice to let him win a game. I did this by letting him not scratch on sinking the eight ball like he had for the last two games. I’m such a big man sometimes.

Afterwards I insisted that he come down to Ol’55, the foreigner bar I’ve been to a few times. I figured it was a good place for him to check out already, as it is a staple in so many ESL teachers lives here. And I also figured I could introduce him to the few people I knew that frequent that place and help him feel a little more at home. Well it turns out that nobody I knew was there while we were (not that I know a lot, but every other time I’ve been there I’ve met at least one person who was familiar) so Ken assumes that I made all those people up. I just wish that I was sure he was wrong.

The foreign bar is a cool little experience if you are getting at all homesick because it can give you a reminder of how much you didn’t really like bars back home. Well that’s a mean statement if viewed across the board, but Ken and I are both guys that are trying to leave behind their pint mugs and do other stuff with our time so we got bored fairly quickly and like usual we were both home by midnight. I have the tragic vision of some teenager who hero-worships me reading this blog and finding out that my nights out are so short and throwing his hat down and screaming “you’ve changed man! I don’t believe in you anymore!” Luckily for me no one actually read this blog so that won’t happen.

We’ve mentioned how we want to make more solid plans for our weekends, like a temple retreat or a trip to Soeul, but that takes planning and effort and we’re neither of us good at that. But that last thing we want is to spend all night out at a bar just so we can convince ourselves that we’ve done something exciting with our night, and if that makes us losers than so be it.

Oh my god. We’re losers.

And you know who the real winners are?

Nope me neither. Well I’m getting a little too dopey to keep writing so I’ll see you all next week.