Plastic Restaurants

I just came back from a walk that was as cold as it was beautiful. It temperature was apparently around five degrees and the sun was shinning brightly, but the wind was blowing hard and it was a cold wind. I walked down my street on my new favourite walking route, as I adjusted my headphones, playing Page Frances, I looked up and actually stopped and gasped (a sharp intake of air, because if they don’t understand gasp they will understand intake?). It was actually breathtaking, the view of the mountains. I don’t know why, but the air was totally clear and I could see the mountains in better focus, they were sharp and clear, no haze. They are always beautiful, when I can see them, but today they were amazing. I wasn’t really dressed for the wind and my long walk was cold. At one point it even started snowing a bit. At first I wasn’t sure what they were, the small white things floating in the air. It didn’t seem right that it could be snowing here, not yet. Even though the sun was still out, a dark cloud lingered near by and that dark cloud was snowing. It was almost nothing, but still lovely. I was near frozen by the time I arrived back at home. My arms were red and I could barely move my hands. I had difficulty working my key. It was worth it though, just looking at the mountains, every detail was perfect.

I also determined today that my washing machine is retarded. I thought it was all in my head, and then I thought it was the language barrier (all the buttons, and there are lots, are in Korean), and now I know that sometime is wrong. It gets stuck on the final cycle that it goes through and just rinse and spins over and over and over. There was about 8 minuets left on my load of whites, one hour later I finally paused it and had to just turn the thing off. However, because it is a front loader, it locks. It wouldn’t unlock even after I turned the machine off. So, I just ran them through another load, I had successfully washed a few things using the quick wash cycle (I had Julia translate the buttons for me) so I thought I would try that again. There were four minuets left when I went on my hour and half long walk, and there were four minuets left when I came home. Problematic. So I waited until it stopped spinning and had fully drained, and just before more water would be added I turned it off again. This time I had to jimmy open the door, I don’t think there was any damage, to get at my whites, all of which had to be wrung out by hand because they were still dripping wet. I find this aggravating and I am not sure with whom I should lodge a complaint.

Went out Friday night to mourn the loss of Mr. Park, he is being transferred to the Nowan branch. Now I have nobody on which to have a work crush. Sigh. We went out at night, came home in the morning. More distressing then the amount of soju I consumed is the amount of food I consumed, or devoured as if I were a starving animal. Drinking, which is already bad enough, must always be accompanied by copious amounts of food. Although there was a fruit plate, nothing goes better with weak beer than watermelon and persimmon, most of it was not good for me, but not necessarily bad either, but not in such amounts. I have no self-control when something is placed in front of me. There was an omelet like egg dish, some street bulgogi, Korean pancakes and this was at the second place.

A Korean night out usually has couple of stages. This one started at a hof with beer, fried chicken, the fruit platter, and some really disgusting looking hot dog type things that I did not touch (this required no self control, just looking at them was almost vomit inducing, never mind the smell). We moved to street level where we partook in soju and the Korean delicacies listed above in a plastic restaurant. In some places there are rows of plastic tent restaurants that serve surprisingly delicious food and are usually quite busy. After the street we went to a basement noraebang and sang a bit. I guess this night was the last Wednesday night madness it just happened to be on a Friday.

No more Park. It is distressing. Who knows what kind of person could replace him. I was just getting used to him and becoming more comfortable in asking for help. Now he is gone.

Friday night actually started with a movie: “Connected”. A Hong Kong version of the American made movie “Cellular”. It was really a terrible film, but because it was in Chinese with Korean subtitles the cheese factor was much less than it could have been or perhaps the cheese factor was increased, I’m not sure. Being a not-deep action movie, I was able to fully follow the plot. If they are going to remake American movies, they could at least remake good ones. Oh well, Kang Tae Woo paid for it, I’ll go see a free movie any day. He was there, Mr. Kang Tae Woo. Sally and I got into the elevator to go to the movie theater and Sally leans over and whispers at me, I think that guy is Mr. Kang Tae Woo, the one who looks like a Korean Conan O’Brian. He does look like a Korean Conan O’Brian. He didn’t talk to us. He seems important, got some schools named after him and whatnot. All of the teachers were invited to see the movie, only Julia, Sally, and I went. Julia bought popcorn. It was honey popcorn. It was delicious.

Today I also talked to my mom on Skype. It just short conversation, but it was nice to see her face and hear her voice.