Sheep Shagging

I heard a good joke, it appeals to me cause it is a little bit of self depreciating Kiwi humour followed by taking the piss of the Aussies.

An Aussie farmer came over to New Zealand to buy some ewes of his Kiwi farming mate, they were walking the boundary of the farm, checking out the lie of the land, talking about crop rotation, water supplies and reminiscing about driving their tractors up Parliaments steps when they spot a ewe with her head well and truly stuck in the fence.

The Kiwi walks up to it first (after all it is his farm) drops his mole skins, to be absolutely sure she won't run away he carefully lifts up her hind legs and places them in his gum boots and shags the ewe like his life depended on it.

After he is finished he asks his Aussie mate

"Wanna piece of this?"

In that laconic Aussie way he replies

"Sure, why not?"

So he walks over, drops his mole skins, bends over and puts his head in the fence.

Korean Derby.

I went to the Korean Derby, run at The Seoul Race Park, the horse that won absolutely annihilated the others, in a Derby where the best 3 year old horses run it was amazing to see such a good horse. He was boxed in on the rails, about 400 out the jockey actually stood up, looked around him, slowed downed to get a gap pushed his way through to the outside, shot to the lead with about 200 to go, another horse tried to keep up but no one had to the class to even come close and waltzed away by 5 lenghts.

The race track, or park as they are called over here was huge, There was easily 80,000 people there, the noise was tremendous! You have to buy betting vouchers which you then place in an automatic betting machine along with your picks, it was very quick and efficient as you had to have written down on the betting slip exactly what you wanted before you got there so no body was pissing around talking to the TAB operator.

I was sitting in the foreigners lounge, it was very comfortable and classy but there is no drinking at any Korean tracks and they don't have any chips and hot dogs but that is the only complaint that I have about it. They even had two waterfalls there!

I made a couple of bucks as well.

The whole trip to Seoul was pretty cool, I finally got to Itaewon which is renown for
being full of foreigners, I gotta tell you It was like I was in a film made in New York, I have never seen so many black people in my life, people were gambling on street corners, blokes doing their best to look tough on other street corners and sluts tryin to look their best to everyone!
And it was in Itaewon where I struck gold, I went to the Aussie Shop and for the first time since December I ate 2 Sausage Rolls, 2 Steak Pies and some Fish and Chips! Those Aussies aren't that bad!

Of course I got blind drunk and apparently I was carried home but I dispute that..if only I could remember.

He Ain't Dead

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4072617a1860.html

I refuse to drink any more Bacardi 151

I've just had another great weekend, Friday I went to a bar I have never been to before, it is called the Wa Bar and I started drinking XXXX before moving on to the Long Island Ice tea's. I think it was the first time a large group of Whities have ever turned up en masse, I thought the bar staff coped remarkably well, a few funny incidents took place which will be talked about for a while!

The first was our Aussie Ajuma( A polite term of endearment for an older married woman). She normally has a bottle of Soju in her bag and buys coke to mix it with. Well, we were sitting around a bar that had about a hundred beers sitting on ice in the middle of it and you just grab whatever one you want, drink it and pay at the end. Unfortunately for her a bottle of Soju looks remarkably like a bottle of beer and when the bar staff saw her putting her Soju back in her bag they thought she was pinching some beer (Some stories came out later of a crazy foreigner who made a habit of paying for his beer with his five finger discount card). So they confronted her, she has got a wee bit of a wild streak to her, after all she is from Tasmania! so she told them all to @#$% off until she realised what had actually happened so she pulled out the Soju and showed them and they were most apologetic and offered her a free drink, which she refused!

That had us all in hysterics but the other incident went too far and in my opinion was out of line. A mistake got made somewhere along the line with a chicks change. I've worked in bars and know that these things happen and who really cares about $9 anyway? I don't know if the mistake was made by the bar tender giving the wrong change or the chick not giving enough money in the first place but she thought she was owed nine bucks and became very irate and belligerent, charging up and down the bar yelling and screaming and giving all of us foreigners a bad name. Stage 2 culture shock my arse.

I had a good time on Saturday arvo, I went and watch some of my mates do a Kok Sol Won demonstration, this a form of Martial arts and was pretty cool. Then I discovered a new Vietnamese restaurant which is amazing, just around the corner from my house and I even had lunch there a few hours ago. That night I went to another mates house to watch the F.A Cup final, I 'm not really that interested in it and most finals in all sports are pretty boring to watch but we did have many litres of beer, 4 bottles of Scotch and that bloody Bicardi 151. That shit is 70% proof and it was the Gimhae Hat Committee's punishment bottle. I can't even remember what my mistake was but down the hatch it went. No more. I thought Manchester United won the game but it turns out I was wrong.

On Sunday I got woken up to go walking around the old town, it was pretty cool just wandering around buying stupid pointless stuff and weaning away the hang over, I got my self a camouflage floppy hat, a C.D Muse: Origins of Symmetry and some Vanilla Custard from Pakistan. I found an Asian Food mart and a Foreign food mart where to my delight I discovered that you can buy a leg of lamb. Now I just need to find an oven to cook it in. Another good feed and home for an early night.

I've got some cool stuff lined up this week, a trip to a Water Fall on Thursday (A day of work cause it's Buddha's Birthday) and a trip to Seoul on the weekend for the Korean Derby.

Buddha's Birthday

Not much has been happening in my life for awhile, the usual antics are still going strong but nothing out of the ordinary. I did find out that it is not recommended to go swimming in the local park and last night went to the local University called Inje for their O week, the same stuff happens as at Massey.

Tomorrow I'm off to the races again, and the following Sunday going to Seoul to watch the Korean Derby, they got a Foreigners Club there so it will be cool to wear my suit and pick many winners.

Going to a Dinner Party on Saturday, I'll turn it into a party without the dinner.

Next Thursday is a day off, Thank's Buddha, it's his birthday. I suppose it's a bit like Christmas with a birthday party and all but Koreans also have a day off for Christmas so I will write to Helen Clark and explain that N.Z should also have 25th May off cause Buddha never did any harm to us Kiwi's.

It's a good thing that we have Thursday off as on Wednesday night the Champions League Soccer Final is on so we can make a party out of it. Not that I understand too much about it but my Pommie mates are into it so I'll tag along.

See Ya.

Weird Korean Experience

Last night I had yet another weird Korean experience, I was in the supermarket and I saw this foreigner staring at me, I checked her out and she wasn't just staring at me she was looking at me with an almost longing for something. I was a wee bit creeped out about it so walked away to the alcohol section. After browsing through the specials out of the corner of my eye I again caught a glimpse of her. It was as though she was penetrating right through me. By now I was a little bit worried I had never experienced this before so I graped a dozen and headed to the check out.

I had to get out of there and away from her.

So I was in the queue and she came right up to me. This woman was in her 50's and as she was right in front of me I could see that she was actually quite upset and sad. She said to me

"I'm sorry for staring at you like that , I didn't mean to offend you, it's just that you look a hell of a lot like my dead son."

By now I didn't know quite what to think and I just stood there feeling sorry for her. She pulled out a photo of him and I didn't look a thing like him, well apart from the ginger hair. as I was speechless she just continued talking and eventually I realised that she really had something to say but was beating around the bush. After a few minutes, (by now we had left the queue and were back inside the shop) she asks me a favour

"I know this will sound weird but I would really appreciate it if when I leave you could say Bye Mom to me"

She was Nth American so that's why I wrote Mom and not the correct Mum.

I just wanted the situation to be over so I agreed. I was in two minds as to whether or not do it so pretended to read the Korean labels on the shelf nearby. I looked up and she was just about leaving, she looked at me, smiled in a depressed kind of way so I did it for her.

She walked away with her bags and I went back into the queue with my beers, the check out chick says to me Chil Man Won. I'm thinking did I hear her right? she just asked for 70,000 won (About N.Z$90) for my dozen beers. I point to my beers, shrug, she says something in Korean, I catch the words omma (Mother) adul (Son) and ton (money).

The bitch had told her that her son would pay!

I throw down 10,000 won for my beers and charge out in the direction I saw her go. I was valiantly looking around when I see her get into a cab, I raced over, yanked open the door, scared the shit out of the driver and started to pull her out of the taxi by her leg.

Just like I'm pulling yours now.

Fireworks and Coconuts.

I've just finished work, so I cleaned out my troublesome fish tank and thought I would write and say what's up. Got a new teacher at school today, she seems pretty cool, got a nice smile. My weekend was very similar to the last couple. Friday got drunk and went to a Nori bann, got home in time for a few hours sleep before heading off to the races, where I won $30, came home, slept some more, went to Jang Yu for a bit of a house party followed by a trip to Changwon to see a band play at O'Briens, followed by again getting home in the sunshine, sleeping till 5pm then getting up and being constructive.

On Sunday the opening ceremony of the Gaya Festival was held. Gaya is the name of one of the Korean dynasties that was in power in the area where I live, basically the bottom third of the Korean Peninsula. It was pretty cool, there was traditional dancing and costumes and the normal boring speaches which are even worse when you can not understand them and an awesome Fireworks display. I also bought a nasty sling shot, an evil looking knife and a coconut. I drank the milk from the coconut and then remembered that I am particularly partial to the odd dose of Malibu. Went to the movies to see Double Target, over here t is called shooter for some reason, don't ask me why, I just live here. On the way to the movies I bought a litre of Malibu, my mate who also bought a slingshot and knife bought some Johhnie Red to fill his hip flask that he bought and off we went.

Drinking Malibu out off a coconut that you had bought off a Korean shark outside the movie theatre while wearing jandals with my jeans was quite a surreal experience. As if I don't get enough looks from the locals any way, but throw a coconut into the mix and your just asking for trouble. I just told the curious people that I was American.