The Father of All Buns

After my long and beautiful walk on Saturday, I went home and wrote about it, then I ate a supper of instant noodles and YouTubed Big Bang music videos. At 7:30 I thought about how I was supposed to meet Sally at 7:30 and figured I could watch one more video. At ten to eight, Sally banged on my door, worried that I had alcohol poisoning from the night before or was lying dead somewhere. I let her in and apologized profusely. Luckily, she was not upset. I ran around my apartment for a few more minuets, trying to get the perfect balance of babe and I-so-don’t-care-about-how-look and probably failing. We headed out to Hongdae once again.

Sally is part of social networking site called Seoul Stuff, it is a group of people who live in Seoul like Koreans, English teachers, computer programmers, military people, etc. It is just a place to meet people, make friends, and provide Koreans with a chance to practice their English with native speakers. I went along because I do everything that Sally does and some of the people she described sounded interesting.

There was not a huge turnout and I already knew most of the people: Mike, Amber, and Sarah. However, I did meet Bobby, an military guy who has lived in Seoul for a very long time. He has been in the military for like 20 years, recently became engaged to a Korean women who came late, and is going to retire next year and stay in Seoul. I think he was like fortyish, maybe. Very interesting fellow. I actually liked him a lot, he was cool and not really what you might expect from a career military dude. His fiancé, whose name I never actually got, was also really cool. A lot more talkative and out going then Korean women generally are at first.

We started the night at a hof, eating crappy nachos and a strange potato pizza thing that was actually quite delicious and rice snacks that come are on the table at every bar and hof in the country and they are delicious. Well, they actually have no flavour, but they have a very satisfying crunch, highly additive, which is ok, because they also probably have no calories or fat. They are mostly air. We drank some beer, I took it easy on the soju this night.

After the hof, we went to Club FF and paid 13,000 won cover! That’s like $13.00ish, that’s stupid. Anyway, there were some live playing. After not hearing live music since I left Canada, I was little excited. I was quickly brought back to the reality of live music though. Most of it sucks and these bands sucked. They were all white dudes, I talked to one later who was from London. Not good. Not good at all. We tried to make them feel good by dancing a bit and trying to be excited. But both the bands we heard really sucked.

We didn’t stay out too late; everybody was pretty tired, except for Bobby who probably could have partied until noon the next day. And Sean, another guy who came late, a computer programmer from India. Apparently there are a lot of computer programmers in Korea from India. I don’t know why Korea needs to bring in programmers from other countries, I would think there were be enough here to choose from, but what do I know? Anyway, he also seemed nice and super funny. Good night.

On Sunday, I went to Hyeway for coffee and to buy a new zip up hoodie, success for both. I met Sally at two and we headed over to Nowan to celebrate American thanksgiving with the Americans. We ate at Outback steakhouse. I ordered the most Korean thing I could find on the menu: Kimchi fried rice with grilled chicken and shrimp. It also happened to be the cheapest thing on the menu. Eating at these American restaurants is ok, but usually they are way more expensive then eating at a Korean restaurant and they food is not nearly as good.

Before we could eat (there was a two hour wait at Outback) we wandered around the Lotte department store in Nowan. In the basement they have this grocery store and food court. We were walking through the bakery part and Mike suddenly stopped us because he had to buy this one thing. It was called Pappa Rottie. It is just a bun, a sugary white bun, covered in a sugary coffee flavoured powder. The inside is filled with butter, just straight plain butter. They are served warm and they are among the most disgusting delicious things I have eaten here so far. Pappa Rotie, the father of all buns.

After our early supper we headed over to Amber’s place to colour and gorge ourselves on deserts. Everybody contributed something and there was a lot of choice. Sally and I brought ice cream. Mike made a pumpkin pie and three small Oreo cookie pie like things. He had to make the crusts in the microwave; they turned out surprisingly well. Feo brought a cheesecake, just plain but so good. There was an apple pie. Someone brought Reeces Pieces. Ryan and Carolyn brought real Starbucks coffee and some wine. It was a feast of deliciousness. We made snowflakes, watched National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, and picked secret Santa names. It was a very nice evening. I am very lucky to have made these friends who were so willing to include me in their group.

I got home and discovered that I no longer had an Internet connection to steal, crap. So I watched part of Interview with the Vampire and went to bed. No more YouTubing of Big Bang music videos. I really must get my own, legal, Internet. This week. Maybe. And a cell phone.