Thursday 28 July 2011

A cat

Mee iz kween.
Cobain's borrowed apartment comes with a cat.  It's a laid-back beast, almost lazier than I am.  It meows every now and then.  I'm headed for the hammock.  Meow.

An afternoon

  Being lazy, this is how I spent my afternoon yesterday - sitting in a hammock on Cobain's borrowed balcony-in-a-valley, eating tuna kimbap and watching Game of Thrones (decent) in the sun.  Life is harder than ever.
  Seoul got a bit of rain the other day, and almost washed into the sea.  I'll see what's left in a week.

Towards Yeosu, Towards the Sea of Future!

Jeju-Nokdong Ferry


My life on my back

Ghetto ferry

I was sent here to try your patience, sinner! (check the hat)

The moment I broke the umbilical



A strange glitch, I like
Jeju - I'll see you a bit further on down the road.

The A bombs are comin'?




  I'm in sultry Yeosu, the cicadas are defeaning.  A couple of days ago I jumped on a ferry with all of my worldly possessions weighing me down, slipped the surly bonds of Jeju, and headed for Nokdong on a rustbucket.  The interior of the ship was jammed full of 400 noisy, glaring Koreans, so I found a quiet spot on some stairs-to-nowhere topside, and hunkered down for the four-hour trip.
  Before we had even left the dock, the old religious Korean guy that loves to tell you about how he went to Vancouver in 1989 found me.  This guy is everywhere in Korea, you can't escape him, and there are thousands of him.  He also has relatives in L.A.  So after asking me about my praying habits, he grabbed my mandolin and tried to play Amazing Grace.  I tried to explain to him that the strings on a mandolin are set up a bit more eccentrically than those of a guitar, but I was talking to the smokestack.  He kept plugging bravely away, until he handed it back to me and asked me if I knew any BeeGees or Beatles.  I didn't.
  He left, but kept returning every 20 minutes asking me when I was going back inside.  I told him I was enjoying the quiet.  Hint hint.  Anyways, on his last visit to me, he was comically drunk.  He grabbed the mandolin and tried to play Amazing Grace again, while I yawned.  Mercifully, at one point he strummed extra-hard, causing the pick to fly from his hands and go fluttering over the rail in slow motion, into the deep deep ocean.  We looked at each other with raised eyebrows for a minute, before he handed me back my mandolin and scuttled off without a word, never to return again.  Amen.

Monday 25 July 2011

Iris Dement & Emmylou Harris - Our Town

Peace out, Seogwipo, it's been funner'n a barrel of monkeys.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v7dXA-LWVk&feature=related

Signing the brick






When a Geck's regular leaves the island, they sign a brick.  It was a hard thing to do.  Good night though, but my liver hates me, I'm never drinking again.

Skittles


Is this what you want?

Let's play some DAAHHTS!



  Apparently this stickless bastard of a pool game was concocted by Canadian pilots during WWII.  We play it at Geck's whenever we can, and it always degrades into mayhem pretty quickly.  Something else to miss.
  I've been living out of a bag for a few days, I smell.  Taking the ferry off Jeju (sigh) tomorrow, to rip it up on the south coast of the mainland for a bit with Cobain.  Tired, excited, maudlin, tired.

(very) Mean Girls

Meow! (You beat, we'll discuss...)

Hairball
A few of us were up on my roof pre-gaming the other day, when a posse of five middle school girls and one boy came up and chilled on the opposite side of the roof.  They don't live in the apartment, but I guess they just needed a place to drink, smoke, and gang-beat their friend.  Holy crap.  All of a sudden four girls started beating the living shit out of one of the girls.  It was an old-fashioned beating, with an emphasis on hair-pulling and punches to the face.  Being foreigners, and therefore not qualified to understand such a complex Korean cultural event, we watched in horror for a bit, and it looked like the beating stopped after a few minutes.  But, no, they kept at it after a break, and the only one not getting her hands dirty (hairy), was the bitchy little ring-leader in the white t-shirt and the black shorts, who was barking out beat-down orders to her minions.
  I had soon had enough of the gratuitous brutality, so I went up to them and took a flash picture of the beating.  That stopped them.  Then, the ring-leader walked up to me, flunkies in tow, and tried to intimidate me into deleting the picture.  That wasn't gonna happen.  I gave them one chance to leave without being yelled at, but queen-bitch stood her ground.  So, I unleashed a satanic and barbaric stream of Korean profanity so shocking that even my friends were initially scared.  The first one to run away was the guy, soon followed by the pathetic group of very mean girls.  The next day, I found several piles of hair drifting around on the roof.  Oh, Korea.

Wednesday 20 July 2011

Life is hard






Yeah it is.

Drivin' to Jungmun

Halla, sexy as ever

Tiny Seogwipo

The Classic

Yakcheonsa Temple

You can walk to this spider-infested islet at low-tide

Mini-falls in Jungmun

Valley in Jungmun

Decent
The south coast of Jeju is scenic.  That's what they say.  Sigh.  Hard time to leave the island.  :(

Owl eyes!




Said dinner

"That's when I pulled my pants down on the dance floor."
It was ok, but I'm definitely over Korean BBQ meat places.  There's so much better Korean food out there, seems dumb to eat meat until your eyes glaze over.  Good to see my youthful friends before I shove off.

Everyone, please sit on my scooter

I bet you're only gonna get more annoying as you age, you ajosshi larva

Fuck off straight to hell

One from the vaults
  So we're sitting there eating dinner tonight, and two little kids start crawling all over my scooter, with a playful emphasis on dry-humping the seat.  Then, a hideous man-o-lantern kicked the kids off and plopped his sagging garlic, smoke, and misery-smelling ass on my scooter, leaning and putting his little claws all over the 'dash' and handles.  I went right up to him and said 'Party's over, fella', and he reluctantly staggered off.  I will stay irie, I will stay irie, I will stay irie...