Bad day in Gimhae.

The air pollution in this place is starting to get to me, that along with spending all day talking and participating in all night kareoke benders has reduced my throat to mince meat. The plus side is my voice sounds more like a grunge God but fuck I gotta cut back on the ciggies. Those little bastards are so cheap over here it is not funny. And I can't get rollies anywhere. The water is just as bad, no tap water for me, bottled all the way. You can get 1500mls for about 90c Kiwi. Having rice everyday is also pissing me off, I WANT A SCOOP OF CHIPS. Tomorrow will be better.

W.T.F?

What is all this emo crap everyone is talking about, I figure it is some sort of music style. Have I been away from home that much? I miss one B.D.O and I'm behind the times? Fuck that LET THERE BE ROCK.

R.A.T.M

I wanna be Jackie Onassis I wanna wear a pair of dark sunglasses I wanna be Jackie O Oh Oh Oh please don't die WE ARE ALREADY DEAD. http://www.stuff.co.nz/3938932a1860.html

Good ole Ridgey

Every day I look at www.stuff.co.nz to keep up with the news back home, I always liked to watch game of two halves to see what Ellis and Ridgey were up to and what I found at stuff cracks me up. No wonder he was a crappy All Black...Beckhams sloppy seconds http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/story_pages/showbiz/showbiz1.shtml#

Star Face, not quite the C&F but up there.

I think I may have found one of the coolest bars in Korea, it's called Star Face, it's in Hyundai which is in Busan and on Saturday nights it serves foreigners all they can drink for $N.Z15. For some reason your not allowed rum or Jack Daniels but as I'm neither a Pirate or a god dam fake whisky drinker I couldn't have cared less. I was a wee bit wobbly when I got there and ended up on G&T's all night, Man did they go down. The place had a pool table (very rare in Korea) where I'm proud to announce not one Australian beat me, a few Canadians did but no Ockers, a dart board (almost unheard of), where everyone at the Cat & Fiddle knows I'm an easy beat but that didn't stop me 1 iota and one of the best pub vibes I have ever come across. It has a reputation as a foreigners hang out which is kinda cool cause it means that the locals realise this and those that can and want to talk to Wiguks (That's me) go in and get boozed. It's really interesting talking to Koreans who are fluent in English there lives are so different from a Kiwi's, they are all about beating the competition (By that I mean competing hard out for jobs, apartments and education) they are all curious about westerners and want to know the most personal stuff, I tell em whatever they want to know cause I figure I'm not gonna see them again in a city of 4million that I don't even live in. Believe me, New Zealand is coming out as all good! I stayed the night in a Motel in Hyundai, around here some motels have a reputation and are known locally as Love Motels, as you can imagine they are cheap as chips and discreet! So no one blinked an eye when a Kiwi bloke, an English chick and an Irish chick wanted to share the same room for the night. I know what your all thinking and no. $40 between three ain't bad. It was a traditional Korean room which meant no beds! over here alot of people sleep on padded mattress, kind of like a thick heavy quilt. When your boozed you don't care! The locals I was talking to said it is not uncommon for Husbands and Wives to saunter there way through the doors as generations of families live not only under the same roof but in the same rooms(Bugger all space over here) and want a shag in private! The Friday before I did the usual, went to the local, got drunk, shot the shit, went to another bar with a live band from Thailand of all places, then off to a Noriban where I pulled out some atrocious but highly entertaining (Yeah Right) Oasis, Queen and The Killers. Home by 7 up by 2 and in Hyundai by 4 to start all over again. As Pa Beagle would say "It was very pleasant" This week so far has been uneventful, work, home, sleep, work etc, got some of the schools Big Wigs coming on Friday and got told to wear a suit. I'll keep you posted.

Gambling is life.

Can somebody please put a half box on Darci B, Gee I Jane and The Silence Sir in the Telegraph at Trentham on Sat. Chur.

Crazy aspects of Korea: The Rooster's View.

I've been here a wee while now and I have seen some weird shit that just would not happen in New Zealand.

1) The cops here put up with a lot of shit. I know Kiwi cops do as well but last week I saw a cop car pull up a scooter, the guy on the scooter was obviously drunk (as was I) so I thought I would sift on over and investigate. I wish I could of understood the words being said but I definitely knew the body language. The Copper got him off the bike, the derro started yelling, stuck his fingers down his throat and threw up on the cops shoes, as the cop bent over he got a knee to his kisser, the derro leapt on his bike and scooted off!

2) It is considered very normal and natural behaviour for guys to show friendship by holding hands.

3) Males can smoke any where they want, it is very frowned upon for a women to smoke in public. When the Korean chicks are on the juice in a bar they will smoke in the toilet, just like school girls. This leads to massive queues outside the ladies. Foreign chicks hate this, the number of times I have stood guard outside the men's while my chick mates are doing their thing, well I need more fingers and toes. It is hilarious trying to bounce Korean men out of the men's when they are drunk with a full bladder!

4) They have got a Korean fast food chain over here called Lotteria. Last week I had an Octopus burger, if you think thats not cricket the bun was made out of rice glued together!

5) It is nearly impossible to buy a drink of spirits without having to purchase the whole bottle. I don't really have a problem with this one, Johnnie Black bottles go for around 40 pesos.

6) Korean men do not have arm hair, my students have finally gotten over the fact that I do and no longer pull it. Maybe it was the clips around the ears that did it, I'm not exactly sure...

7) Say a bad word about a certain English soccer player with a very similar christian name to me and the girls here start crying. Ugly fucker is not in the Korean vocabulary.

8) Do not let the kids drink coffee in your classroom. Green Tea is fine.

9) Korean food is not called Korean food, it is just food.

10) Spitting is everywhere, and not just the spit out ya saliva but hoiking out your lungs, any where or everywhere, anytime is acceptable. I decided to try this one out for myself. Korean men with a little bit of English will often come up and talk to you. I have discovered a common bonding ritual is a good old lurgy, followed by a smoke.

11) Only one person pays the bill, this is a huge matter of honour to them. It always falls on the oldest male. So Dad please feel free to visit. If you invite someone out for a meal this line can be a bit blurred depending on how well you know each other, or in my case how big the tab is. When I go out with foreigners we don't participate in this charade, if we leave we put money on the table and walk out. Twice I have been the last guy there and both times I have made a profit, free drinks all night and a couple of bucks in the skyrocket. Karma will one day get me and I will lose out big time. Earl taught me that.

I'm sure I'll think of more and I will write another post on this subject.

I just got Paid!

I just got my first pay check! I'm a millionaire! I'm off to the pub, I may be some time.

I spent the weekend in Jinju with an Irish chick and an English chick. Jinju is about and hour and a half away by bus. I didn't do any tourist shit, just got there, walked around the market then headed straight to a German pub where we played cards for hours, I learnt some cool new games, in particular a gambling one called New Market, after the race course. It involves two bets, a dummy hand, gambling and the obligatory drinking. It's pure luck with no skill involved, you can only lose out if the cards you need are in the dummy hand. Dad, before you say anything I lost about 90 cents.

While we were there a bunch of Koreans at the next table bought us food! It seems everywhere I go I get looked after. I can bowl on up to any local and with a lot of miming, pointing, smiling and my very few Korean words get what I need. They bend over backwards to help you. On Saturday we were trying to find a bar we got told about called Devil, we stopped a guy, he did not know but went into the nearest shop, they didn't know so they checked out the Internet for us. This all took about 10 minutes and I was thinking to myself would I do that for A Korean back home? I kind of doubt it but now I definitely would take the time to help out foreigners.

We only got kicked out of one bar this weekend, it was because we were too loud! Loud in a bar I hear you say, picture a drunk Irish chick, a smashed English chick and this Kiwi who likes a few too many, gambling over cards, everyone yelling, drinking and taking the piss out of each others accents and you might get the idea. After that place we eventually got to The Devil Bar which was much more amenable to our antics. We all walked in, spied some Wiguks (Foreigners) promptly became mates and taught them how to play New Market and started gambling again. The bar tenders at this place, two Koreans around 20ish started talking to us and it turned out that they were magicians! For hours they showed us tricks, some of them were totally brilliant. They were putting one ball in my hand clicking their fingers and there were two sitting in my hand. I know I was drunk but I was flabbergasted.

I didn't get up till three in the arvo on Sunday, this place is crazy and I'm loving it.

Race of the Century.

Check this out

http://www.bonecrusher.co.nz/modules.php?name=MultiMedia&d_op=viewdownload&cid=2

Click on the 1986 Cox Plate.

And don't forget that The Filbert ran third for a Kiwi trifecta.

Cobaining in the Noriban.

I have just had a monster weekend, it all started around $12.95 and as my taste grew cheaper down till $6.95 I can absolutely promise you I was on the wine (metaphorically) and definitely not the water all weekend.

I finished work at 9pm on Friday, meet up with a mate at 9.30 and had finished my first by a quarter to. I was at my local Beer and Girls (It's still not what you think) with about 20 other foreigners drinking jugs of Hite, (tastes a hell of a lot like Lion Ice) working on my beer belly generally shooting the shit with everybody and playing darts when the next thing I know it's around 2am and time to move on. And move on we did. We all decided to go to a bar called Muse Me and my mate were the first to leave, we finally found the place, it was shut so we asked them where the nearest beer was and they pointed up stairs. Every where is up stairs over here so many tall bloody buildings (Yeah I know small town Hastings born and bred) We texted out where we were and headed on up. The dam place turned out to be a Noriban, which you all know as a Karaoke bar. Normally I wouldn't have a bar of this type of place but as I'm the newby here I've been up to all sorts of malarkey. I can truthfully say that I absolutely butchered Bon Jovi's Livin on a Prayer, fucked up It's my life (also J.B.J) and mutilated the best song in the world Smells like Teen Spirit! I'm pretty sure I did a pretty good Don't look back in Anger but who really knows these things?

We got kicked outta there around 4am, When the dude came in to ask if we wanted more jugs he saw me standing on the table and swinging the mic in huge circles, he immediately changed moods on us and we were out!

We walked along the main road looking for food when the best part of the night occurred. We were practising our Korean on strangers when a Korean man of about 50, very well dressed and as pissed as we were came up to us and started talking English to use. We got to chatting, said we were hungry and he took us to a restaurant in some huge building somewhere. He bought us a meal each and then ordered Soju, which is a local spirit. I learnt all the customs associated with it and was still knocking it back at half 7, by this point I had to stop as I remembered I had a 10.30 Staff Meeting in three hours. What a mission that one was!

On Saturday evening I get a phone call asking if I wanted to meet some Irish people, hell yeah I said and found my self bloody cold looking for a bar called Indigo in a place I had never been to called JeoungJu. It took us hours to find it, I did on the way manage to have a conversation about cricket with a guy from Pakistan! After meeting up with everyone we jumped in a taxi and headed to a place called Gaya in Busan to an Irish pub called O'Briens. I was there last weekend and I remembered the Genius as tasting good but this time what I was served was absolutely criminal. I stayed in that place all night, playing pool, darts and meeting foreigners, they even served cheese toasties and plates of chips! Got to bed around 5 and was useless on Sunday.

I'm at work now and just sorted out buses to Jinju for this upcoming weekend. Bring it on.

New Years Part 2.

Well, I was going to go to this place called Geoungju for New Years but my plans drastically changed after bumping into some very cool people in a pub in Gimhae. I bumped into a crowd of Welsh, Aussies and Poms who all made me feel very welcome and got me pissed. I was invited to go into Busan with them so I figured it would be better to go with them rather than by myself to Geoungju. We decided to make a two day party so went a day early.

The first pub I went to was an Irish one called O'Briens. I had been told that if I wanted a Guinness there would be fuck all around but that place had some. So I dragged them off in that direction and had my Pint's. The place was small but had a few more Kiwi's in it so I was settling in when I was rudely dragged away from the keg of Genius and off to P.N.U which was apparently a place to be as it is near the University and had heaps of pubs and people my age there. It was pretty cool, went to a pub called Soul Trane which was selling Johnnie Black for $4 a pop and played some decent music then off to a hotel in Seomyeon.

The next day was New Years Eve, for breakfast I had two Long Island Ice Teas, my day was looking good! I checked out a few sights then met up with two very cool chicks who showed me a great time. We all started in a flat, played games, talked a lot of bollocks and went out. We had to take three different taxis to fit us all in. After we had all met up again I had already been to a few more bars, lost a few pool games and discovered some great new drinking buddies.

The actual New years was spent in another place that I forget what was called but was crowded with ex pats and had good music. After that back to Soul Trane for some serious partying. I'm a wee bit hazy on what came next but I do remember moshing to Killing in the name off, more Iced teas, a tiny blue car, a chick from Blackpool convincing a Korean Taxi driver that she was Princess' Diana's sister and a Big Mac.

What did all you guys get up to?

New years is not a big deal over here, they have there own one in Febuary that celebrates the first new Moon of the lunar cycle. Many people call it Chinese New Year but they got a different name for it over here! That little puppy runs for 3 days so I get a second New Year in two months time!