Who knew Gold Fish could be so much trouble?

3 Wednesdays ago I left my local and decided to get my self a Big Mac on the way home, there is nothing unusual about that. In the same building as Mickey D's is a Supermarket, more of a big department store selling everything a Korean House wife needs, like live Octopus, Kimchi and stuff to make your flat smell good. I was wandering around in a tiny haze of drunken thought when I came across the Gold Fish section, as many people know I love fishing and have always kept Gold Fish as pets, so I decided to splash out and buy some. I got myself a plush looking tank, pumps, filters, gravel, the works and took it to my work and set it up. I thought I wouldn't buy the fish at this time but get it all set up at first. So I carried all this stuff to work and that time I successfully turned off the alarms. The next day when I woke up I saw written on my T.V screen in a white board marker (over here the white boards are actually green but that don't matter to much) a note to myself to go and buy 붕어방 , I was thinking W.T.F? So I have a coffee, a smoke and a shower before it dawns on me what this note to myself meant.

I should explain that this 붕어방 is pronounced Boung or Bann and is a snack you can buy on the street, it is kinda like a pikelet in the sense of taste but the shape is that of a fish that looks remarkably like Nemo of the Disney fame. It comes in two flavors, one is a red bean type of paste (tastes much better than it sounds) and the other is a sweet sugar like tasting thingy that is very similar to custard. It literally means fish bread. Any way there is a woman outside my work that sells it and it was the first Korean word I learnt to spell in Hanguel. I buy a lot of this in the evenings and usually end up with a net full for my students.

So after work the next day I go with some of my colleagues to the Supermarket and buy Six Gold Fish, I named the Fat one 붕어방, the small one Liz, the fish with a black tail Shana, with a black belly tail Kelly, Jenny has the smallest face and Ava has the white face. These 5 lovely names are the English nick names of my Korean colleagues.

Now you are all probably thinking get on with it you Dick. We don't care about your dammed fish so I'll tell you why they are so much trouble. Last Friday I was at the local drinking a new beer that has just been put on the market called Cass Red, it is being advertised as "The flavour of Passion" and as such as a strength of 6.9% The language on the bottle is in English and I can tell you that I have had a great time explaining it to the non English speaking Korean waitresses. Anyway, I was planning on going to a Noriban with everyone (Karaoke) and we thought it wouldn't be appropriate to sing sober so we also started on the Soju, which is the local spirit and is made out of Kumara and tastes like a weak vodka. We got so smashed that we never made the Noriban and instead spent most of the night outside drinking Soju as the local doesn't sell it, being a strictly Beer and Whisky pub so we had to buy it from the dairy on the corner and drink it outside.

Anyway, you can imagine the state I was in, stumbling around, talking a load of bollocks about the cricket and trying to work up a clan to go the races the next day. Around 4 in the morning I went home but on the way I remembered my 6 Leviathans and could not for the life of me remember if I had feed them or not. So I search around in my pockets for the keys to my work, got my bearings and headed off in the general direction. I find myself on the 8th floor of the building where I work and this is where those bloody fish turned into trouble.

I unlock the doors and promptly forgot about the alarm. I walked right on in when I was stopped by an ear shattering piercing squeal of an alarm. Normally this would not be a problem as you can just turn it off quickly and the Security company won't bother. But oh no, I wasn't thinking quite straight and absolutely ballsed it up, after a minute or so I get the alarm off and think here we go, security is on its way, even if I was sober I wouldn't have had enough Korean to explain this situation and really had no idea what to do, I knew I couldn't just reset the alarm, lock the door and scarper cause then it may make me look a tiny bit guilty when after all I was only thinking about the stomachs of my new fish, so I pulled up a pew, sparked a smoke and waited, I was in hysterics by the time the security guard turned up, I was just sitting there as pissed as Jangles laughing my head off about the whole situation when I spot this dude walking towards me wearing a flak jacket and with a not to shabby looking pistol in his side holster.

He looks at me, wearing his best tough guy face and in the gruffest Korean voice I have ever heard said something to me, god knows what it was so I say

"Hey, I 'm Dave and I work here. I've come to feed my fish."

He looks at me, I look at him, not one word of understanding between us so I leave him standing there and walk into my classroom, I motion for him to follow and very deliberately feed the fish. By now he has to be thinking that I'm straight out of the looney bin. He then walked over to the phone list on the wall and rings up my boss, it's about half 4 by now and I can see that maybe talking to the boss who can translate is not a bad idea. She gets on the phone in a groggy voice, hears this wanna be tough guy, then my drunken Kiwi accent explaining to her why the alarms were going off, talks to the security dude, he gives a little laugh, slaps me on the back and motions to the door which I then after resetting the alarm lock and walk on outta there.

Who would of thought Gold Fish could do that to a bloke?