Hotel unBeach

Technically accurate, as there is no beach anywhere near this hotel. I got get a wicked unburn the other day. Haha.
I've taken to falling sleep in public places. Long week. Listen to Fleet Foxes, they will hover you around town on a shimmering bubble made out of happy dirty hippies.

Randoms lately

Wee truck

For several days after being weaned, the baby truck still tries to return to the mother truck's teat to feed.
Animal Planet rules. There are no cuter animals than meercats, caracals, and serville cats.
Watched Resident Evil 3 last night. In Korea, sometimes you have to settle for whatever is on in English. I have to say, it wasn't bad. The gore was satisfying, and Milla Jovovitch is ever so foxy. She was great in 'The Messenger'. She has some kind of wacky mumble/lisp that I enjoy.
My other TV girlfriend, Kristie Lu Stout, has been looking very shiny and sparkly lately. I'm not sure if she ever received the shoebox of mummified squirrels I sent her. I haven't heard anything one way or the other, so hard to say what's going on there.

Mara-do III

Riding around on a golf cart for 90 minutes is exhausting work. Take a nap, ferry-load, you've earned it.

Mara-do II

This is a picture of my foot as far south as it can get in Korea. One more step, and I'm back in Taiwan.
I guess I should have read the "...they are unwilling to climb on the rock in awe of its sanctity" part before I climbed up and did the 'Heineken Man' pose. Oh well.

Mara-do

Mara-do is an island south of Jeju, and Korea's southernmost territory. I went there on Sunday with some co-workers. I would have loved to have stayed for the whole day, but one ferry was broken, and another was canceled due to high seas, so we had an hour and half to see everything Mara-do had to offer. Even though you can walk around the island in 45 minutes, most Koreans chose to see the island from the comfort of an enclosed golf cart with opaque windows. Whatever, Koreans are known for their strange decisions.
For such a small place, with a permanent population of 40, there was an unusually high number of holy houses. Three churches and a Buddhist temple I think. There was also a baffling number of Jajangmyun restaurants. Jajangmyun is a mess of noodles in greasy brown sauce. I didn't want any, yet there were 5 identical little restaurants dishing it out.
Marado is windy and grassy. We plan to go back in the summer to drink, fish, camp, and maybe look for a bird or two. I'm too tired to be funny these days.

More coast ghosts

Across the bay from Songaksan Mountain there are cliffs riddled with caves. These were built by the Japanese, using local forced labor. They were intended to house naval kamikaze units that were to attack American battleships with human torpedoes. In one cave, there were candles and offerings of food, I'm assuming in honor of locals who died building them.

Kamikaze ghosts

Spent the weekend on the southwest coast of the island. This place just gets gorgeouser and gorgeouser(sic). I spent part of Saturday wandering around an old Japanese airfield that is now a series of potato fields. This was an airfield that Kamikaze attacks were apparently launched from, so it felt creepy to walk around the hangars, which are now used by farmers to store stuff. Plowshares perhaps. Reminded me of the end of Empire of the Sun (watch it today). Can you spot the Blue Rock Thrush perched on a hangar? His name is Waldo. For those in the UK, his name is Wally. Also went to Mara-do. I'm sunburned. Nose.

Just for tyrann-E-saurus

Hey LADY!

If you're looking for the circus, it's on the back of that motorcycle, one blog entry down.

A very small circus

I love incongruous Korean vehicles. I'm jonesing for a scooter. My co-worker got a little yellow 50cc job today, and I snatched the keys out of his hand and told him I needed to test drive it. Had a sweet 30 minute meander round the hilly farms south of Halla, eyes watering, corners of my mouth lifting, comforted by the knowledge that life is short. I almost bought a 'chopper' last week (the bike in this picture minus the circus tent), but I'll probably end up buying a more sensible scooter. I will feel like less of a man with a scooter though. I think it's all about how you sit on the bike. With a chopper, your legs are slung on either side, confidently raked forward. Modern cowboy. On a steel horse I ride. The chrome and steel she rides, colliding with the very air she breathes. On a scooter, it looks like you're sitting on the toilet, reading the newspaper, feet primly together. Maybe I'll wear a bathrobe when I ride my scooter, and drive around with with my underwear around my ankles, a cup of tea in one hand, hurling obscenites at innocent strangers.

Grub

People often ask me what I eat in Korea. Answer: sandwiches. 75% of all meals consumed in this dude's life have been sandos. Sad? Not if I love sandos it isn't.
That being said, Korean food is pretty damn good. Unfortunately, it seems like fewer younger Koreans are eating real Korean food these days. Pizza and fried chicken are pretty popular here, as is most other crappy western junk (not as bad here, compared to Seoul). I think the next generation of Koreans will be a lot more corpulently Buddha-like than the current one. That what happens when you literally consume America.
Real Korean food seems to be based on a simple peasant diet of root vegetables, and endless varieties of kimchi (Don't I sound like a travel documentary?). Kimchi is similar to sauerkraut, but a lot hotter. It will unfortunately make your posterior resemble a Japanese flag if you eat a lot of it and your body isn't used to it. Gruesome.
There are tons of sidedishes that come with a Korean meal - some good, some catfood. As I live in a harbor town, I've been dragged to a few seafood restaurants. Seafood isn't really my bag. I can't handle the texture. The little crabs you eat whole are good though, and eating live octopus was neat(haven't done it lately). My favorite these days is kimchi jiggae, the last pic. A super spicy soup that wakes me up and upgrades my well-being, then downgrades my bitchiness, and finally whispers things in my ear that make me smile. I must be slowly turning into a Korean, what with all the taking of pictures of meals.
No, I haven't eaten dog yet.

Food & ba

One of several things will happen to you when walking towards a Korean on the sidewalk. If the Korean is a man aged 30-50, he will stare you down mercilessly, and not budge an inch, preferring to crash into you. If the Korean is older than that, they will also crash into you, but they will give you a quick 'who farted?' look and then look away, instead of the stare-down. If the Korean is a young woman, she will clumsily pretend to be on the phone, or nervously look around for another Korean to reassuringly lock eyes with, to guide her through the ordeal of walking past a waygook. As she walks past, she will walk as far away from you as she can, and flinch, waiting for you to lunge at her with your hooks, stunned when you don't. If the Korean is a kid, their jaw will hit the floor, and they will walk into a wall as they stare at you like you have two heads. They will desperately try to remember how to say 'Where are you from?', but they will forget, and if they say anything at all, it will be a quizzical 'Uhhn?!'.

Rawk

Aside from all that cheese, I also brought my geet back from Ilsan. It's a sweet geet, but I have to admit I haven't touched it much in the few years I've owned it. Had a band back home for years, but we played an average of a show a year, and we definitely spent more time working on our costumes than the 'music'. We changed our name often, partly to fool clubs that had banned us for life for various irrational reasons. We re-united before x-mas and played our first show in 5 years. We didn't sound too bad, and we made one hell of a giant lobster. I've gotten into mandolining lately, but I'm not sure if I wanna pay 250,000w for a crappy one here. Trying to get a band started up here, should be fun times. The band I was involved with in Taiwan never really worked. We were called "The Binlang Boys", and we played classic rock, poorly sung in Chinese. It was bad.
I am officially tired. Played some darts last night. No dust today, levels low. Went to a birdwatchers conference thing on Saturday. I really did. Bed now.

Dust? Dust? Anyone? Dust?

I was feeling fine on Friday, it having been Friday and all. Then, I checked the dust levels. Red!! Ahhhh! Danger! Danger! Ahhhh! I ran to the Plus Mart and bought a mask. Ahhhh! Dust! It was gross, yellow, and hazy. This was definitely not thermal inversion or farmers burning stuff. This was pure, uncut, Chinese heavy metal thunder. My throat is all sore today. Ahhhh!

Wow

This is the most impressive assault on the English language I've ever seen, and likely ever will. Read it several times, you'll keep discovering wonderful new anomalies, such as the mysterious 'grudge', and the word 're-is'. My favorite passage: 'Specially the forest abusive language market'. Hee hee!

Chippendale 18th Century Furniture

Classy.

REGGAE!!

A lot of the cabs 'round here have a paint job that makes me think of only one thing: sweet sweet reggae. Speaking of reggae, here's a pic of the world's best Doritos flavor (from Taiwan). Irie!
I think people that don't like reggae might have something wrong with them. If you could get a rastafarian alchemist to isolate and bottle the energy in "Sweet and Dandy" by Toots and the Maytals and feed it to the leaders of the world, world peace would occur overnight. If there's anyone who can listen to the last 58 seconds of "Legalize it" by Peter Tosh (where the animals are getting high) without smiling, I haven't met them, and I don't want to.