Thrills and Spills

This weekend was a crazy good time. Rob, Jen, Yoon-Soo and I went to Sinchon this weekend for some "live Jazz music, dinner and maybe a couple drinks". Well as is commonplace with this crowd of usual suspects, jazz and dinner turned into classic rock and long island's. We danced, we sang, we met some people. Jen and I started talking to a group of Canadian boys. The cutest introduced himself as Seamus. I thought I was playing along with what must surely be a joke when I told him my pseudonym Colleen. This doesn't seem particularly funny to those who know me since my middle name is in fact Colleen but to Jennifer it was hilarious seeing as our most loathed enemy, (our boss) is named Colleen. The guys looked perplexed at Jennifer's laughing and spitting and asked what the deal was. I immediately said well it's my fake name, ya know since you gave me a fake name too. After calling him a blatant liar he eventually pulled out his driver's license to prove that his given name definitely was Seamus. I felt like an ass but they didn't seem to be too offended since they let us tag along to Hongdae.

Hongdae and Sinchon are both college towns. On the weekends the wary students of Ewha Women's University and Yonsei University take over the nightlife. It's a good place to go as a lonely foreigner because you have a good chance of meeting people your own age (as opposed to the crones I work with at school), and a lot of them generally have a decent grasp of English.

Anyway the bad news about that night is that Jennifer and I got separated from Rob and Yoon-Soo and then Jennifer and I got separated from each other. Consequently we took three separate cabs home which is way more expensive than if we had been able to split it. I accidetally left my jacket in the bar so I didn't have a key to my apartment. I crashed on Rob and Yoon-Soo's couch, woke up with a stiff neck and asked Yoon-Soo to call a lock smith. Twas a good night.

I was in a pretty good mood when I started this entry earlier today but I've since gotten all gloomy and depursed. I came home and watched "Crazy Beautiful" and fell totally madly and deeply in love with Jay Hernandez. Check out his picture if you're unfamiliar. http://membres.lycos.fr/celebritespourtoi/jay hernandez.htm
Anyway watching it just made me feel lonely.

I cut my hand this morning on a broken piece of mirror glued to my wall. I use the wall to propel myself into a chair in my laundry/get ready room. I overshot the door jam and caught the glass. It took a dime-sized chunk of meat off. I realized almost right away that the skin was no longer attached to my hand so I started to look for it on the floor and on the wall. I found it clinging by a colorless string of flesh to the corner of a particularly big piece of mirror. I was squishing the chunk of skin in my hand trying to figure out how I felt about the whole thing when I noticed the blood. It started off as three totally perfect and beautiful circles on the floor. Then the deluge ensued. The blood drowned what I thought was a chunk of flesh in the sink. I was only slightly disappointed and more grossed out to discover this evening that it was a discarded piece of a ramen noodle instead.

Bonus
Counting games. I suppose these aren't exactly games that are unique to Seoul but they're a favorite pastime of mine. The counting games vary depending on location and who is accompanying me wherever I'm going. With Rob the game is "count the foreigners". This one is best played in Sinchon or Hongdae because there is a pretty good sprinkling of foreigners. It is totally lame in Hwajeong because you could go for hours without seeing one and in Itaewon it's just not fair. We should really be playing "count the Koreans" in Itaewon. If I'm with Jennifer and we're on the subway it's usually "count the man purses", "count the number of visible cell phones", or "count the number of items with a Louis Vuitton logo". If we're feeling adventurous we might do a combination of all four.

Anyway as I said these games don't have to solely be played in Seoul, so if you want to try to play here are a couple of rules. 1)When in Korea a foreigner is usually only counted if it is perceived that they are English speaking. Unfortunately black people are often excluded from the tally because they're most likely Nigerian unless they are clearly dressed in a military uniform. 2)Man purses count as any bag carried by a man that are too small to contain a laptap or books. 3)Knock off Louis Vuitton logos are also counted including but not limited to Louis' close cousin with the initials JM. 4)It counts for two points if you see a man carrying a Louis Vuitton man purse and ten points if it's a man carrying a Louis Vuitton dog carrier with a hideous little mongrel inside.

Anyway so give it a whirl in your town and see how much fun it is. Feel free to post a comment if you've discovered a variation in the game.

Drawback
The "shink". It's a cross breed creation of a sink and a shower doing the nasty and it's how I get clean. There is no separation between the shower and the rest of the bathroom. There isn't even a slight slant in the floor to direct the water towards the drain and my toilet seat is always wet. The toilet paper holder is thankfully installed high enough to avoid the stream but the shower rack isn't. The shower head comes out of the top of the sink faucet and attaches high on the wall. It's so high that by the time the water reaches my skin it has had time to cool significantly so I have to keep the temperature up pretty high to stay warm. It is also so high that it shoots water out of the tiny window. The window has to stay open to allow the bathroom to dry out during the day while I'm at work so my place gets pretty cold while I'm away. Another drawback of "the shink" is that it's positioned right in front of the mirror and you HAVE to face it while you shower which just seems weird.