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.