obsessions of late

It's  spring, how-de-doo... 

hello wormy

I'm currently trying to make my box of an officetel a home.  What ever is an officetel you ask?    

An officetel is a  high rise with studio offices inside that are used as company offices, used as sleeping places by employees or sought out by people to live in as apartments.  

As an office, it's a great concept! There is somewhere to cook, eat, sleep, but as an apartment it's a bit on the suck side.  Made as quickly as possible and probably breaking all non-existent building codes in Korea, these "apartments" are crappy, fall apart easily and are either super hot or freezing depending on the season it shouldn't be (no heat retention in winter / no air flow in summer). 

But it's better than the all encompassing Korean housing style known as "villa".  A villa is a small walk up building with about 10 apartments inside, the shower comes on a handle beside your toilet.  So you can shit, brush your teeth AND wash your hair at the same time.    So yes, I'm happier living in my (slightly expensive) officetel, and am currently trying to make it a home (as you know if you read the first line of this diatribe!). 

How to make a space a home?  I'm guessing put some shit on the walls and buy some plants.  So this is what i've done and well hells bells, it worked.  I'm feeling so much more "homey" these days that all i've been doing is staying home and baking, maybe i should rethink this homey methodology.  

But I am obsessed (OBSESSED I SAY!) with my little plants.  Especially the tomato seedlings that are growing and that a worm came out of!  I feel like a worm in my plants is super good luck, so if they up and die, I might just jump out my window (but don't worry because i will put on the "safety harness" and attach it to the "hook" that comes with my officetel in case we ever need to jump out the window).   A cat is also a nice addition to make your space a home.  Too bad mine punches me in the face when I'm sleeping. 

Obsession #2 is good ol' Sufjan Stevens (and he better be good because he's a christian and it pains me that i love his music because of christianity) so if he turned out to be a "bad" guy that would kill me just a little bit more) and his new album.  Actually I'm not obsessed with his new album "The Age of Adz",  for some reason I'm semi NOT obsessed with the album.  But I am obsessed with the 25 minute song "Impossible soul" that comes last on the album.  It's like the bonus mini-album, and by gods (that sufjan happens to love) it's the best little mini-album EVER!  Why you ask, well I dunno, I'm not a music critic, i can't really express my feelings about it without using the adjectives - amazing, wonderful, awesome - which you don't really care about.  So musically it just has everything and it makes me tingle, so i love it.  

I am also obsessed with making cute photoshop icons for my hiking group (ninja poop image taken from cute ninja web site btw).  Said hiking group is also an ongoing obsession and every time I climb those mountain stairs I love it more and more.  You should go take a hike, because honestly it's the best feeling ever.  And maybe it will help me get rid of that too homey dont leave the home feeling. 

 

solo saturday

yes yes i love you too....

did i mention that i don't drink anymore?  well that changed last night.  i drank.  3 drinks (or maybe 6 because they were doubles).  loaded off my rocket.  and all the reasons why i stopped drinking presented themselves to my very haggled face this morning at 7am. 

binge drinking
hitting on cutie Korean boys
wanting to smoke more than anything
getting into a strangers car for a ride home instead of taking a taxi
eating everything in sight when i got home (which means binge eating an entire squash!)
drunkenly using my computer.

felt like shit all day.  it's funny, i have no problem not drinking, it has seriously been months now and I've been around alcohol and at parties where people are loaded - no problem!   but I've noticed that whenever i hang out with certain friends i INSTANTLY want to party!  WTF is that the only thing i can do with these friends?!  I've spent hundreds of hours with these girls NOT drinking, but maybe truthfully, most of the time we have spent together has been with a giant glass of gin in our drunk hands.  Is there a way to get over this?  because i do want to see these people, but i don't want another repeat of last night.

must have been on SUPER sale.

 so as the lord of alcohol punished me and made me feel like shit all day, i did not much of anything.  mini bike ride around the river, shopping at the hideous people filled e-mart (why WHY would i even attempt to go there on a saturday).  E-mart is koreas version of walmart.  horrid yellow giant E, i hardly ever go there, but i went there today.  like beating oneself with chains.  it's packed, saturday in korea is like christmas in canada.  you can't move for having your toes rolled over by a shopping cart that's being pushed by a 2 year old child while the parents are giving the ol' push and shove to a crowd of  people surrounding the free samples of the crappiest cheese known to man. 

I managed to get out alive with cans of things that i can't find at the korean market, the only place you should go to shop.  oh wait I forgot to mention that most (no no.. ALL) korean supermarkets are filled with salespeople who yell at you to buy whatever they are standing in front of. OR if you are going into the low budget supermarket they have a dude on a mic (or if you are REALLY lucky two or three) at deafening volumes, just letting you know that you should buy the lettuce.  oh and wait, those oranges are 5 for 4 chuns, and the cow meat is OH SO GOOD.  you learn how to get in and get out of there so fast that shopping is a breeze.

This is also what I've been doing lately.  Getting acupuncture treatment on my knee that I banged a few weeks ago hiking.  Don't know if it's working, because it's only a muscular treatment, and I might have knocked the bone BUT it sure does feel crazy good!  who wouldn't want to put tiny needles into their bodies?  I'm wondering what else i can stab? my wrinkles?!  oh wait, that's called botox.

tomorrow will be filled with hiking and i hope to heck i don't fall off any mountains.  I'm so frustrated with my clumsy self.  i have actually googled how not to be clumsy and will try to put into practice the "tips" i read. which included not taking and actually looking at what you are doing (ie watching where you put your feet).  this will not be an easy feat for me as i have been known to be a talker.  and a fool with my head in the clouds.  can i bring myself down?

spring in hagye-dong

spring sprung

April, how did you get here?!  famous Aprils???  the only one I can think of is April the news reporter from teenage mutant ninja turtles.

I wake up before my alarm now, wunderbar.  I used to lazily laze away in bed until 8am, but these days 6:30 seems to be the time my internal alarm clock goes off and wide awake i am.  Or maybe, 6:30 is the time the sun makes its way through the filth/yellow dust lining my windows and wakes me up.  either way i love it.  not hearing my alarm go off is honestly the BEST thing ever.  ugh to alarm clocks.  i think alarms are  like number  8 on my hate list. well going up to number 2 when they are fire alarms/car alarms/north korea is bombing us alarms, but maybe like number 50 (as in i don't care at all) when it's just the monthly "just in case we are bombed" practice alarms.

if you squint you can see the dirt

It's a new year (my year starts in March just so you know) and I have moved from Amsa-Dong to Hagye -Dong in Northern Seoul.  It's nearly exactly where I want to be, close to bukhansan, suraksan and dobongsan. and look!! what's that outside the window?? why it's the hill i climb up and over to get to baramsan.  Just in case you haven't noticed I'm still obsessed with hiking.

Moving was a giant pain in the ass, actually everything from Feb till tomorrow was a huge pain in the ass. I left my old job with my old company.  I had to find a new job with a new company. Pretty straightforward right?  well not if you are a picky picky person.  I don't want to work in the morning (this is the time when i want to do EVERYTHING - such as blogging at 7am - and I don't feel like using this awesome energy on such horrible things, like work.) AND I don't want to work in the evening.

So basically I want to work from 1-5.  And for the past 2 years that hasn't been a problem.   but this year, well, it WAS a problem.  finding a job that offered those hours, with the bonus of decent pay and the accepted extras (housing, flight, bonus, pension, medical) was next to impossible.  As the job search continued, it seemed that well well, I was being a bit too picky (hogwash dear readers!) so finally i settled for a job  from 1-6:30 (with a one hour break, but still, i would rather go home at 5:30) with 95% of the extras. That 5 percent being housing allowance instead of housing.

FML

Now this could lead me into a HUGE diatribe on housing - finding housing - and moving into said housing in Seoul, but I'll keep it short.  Acquiring shelter should be easy, just walk into a real estate agent, go look at places and choose one!  easy, not likely.  I spent days looking at shitty shit holes that were in my "budget" (basically 500,000 per month).  So then i upped the ante to 600,000 a month and found a wonderful little officetel in Hagye.  Done and done right?!  Fuck that shit... back to real estate office where they want to charge me nearly 700,000 for the real estate agent fee!? after bursting into tears (my #1 stress tactic) and watching a yelling match ensue between fraudulent real estate assholes and new company manager, we get the fee down to 300,000. 

hagye dong, here i am.  a million apartments mirror image of each other, looked down upon by a giant mountain and lined by a busy river.  I'm enjoying it and my new gym, and I'm getting used to my new school. I'm enjoying waking up with the sun, writing a blog while i clean the toilet and bake squash (yup no joke) while listening to the bbc all before the hour of 8.

tin woman

Today it's been decided, but, I guess it always was there. I am a person void of emotion, feeling, need for others, and well a bunch of other horrible adjectives that describe my insane ability to detach and remain emotionally separated from the people i should love. Do I have no heart? No, not 100% true, but a good % higher than your usual norae bang score. Val is leaving today, and as things go, I probably won't see her again, ever even maybe. but for some reason, this does not bother me. This doesn't make me cry, or feel sad that I won't see one of my good friends anymore in Korea, it doesn't phase me that I will miss her, her wonderful singing and guitar playing ways. Fall bike rides, eating tuna and other fun activities we do together will not take place anymore, but all my brain computes to my heart is "oh well, see ya later! have a good trip". How does this happen?! How does it not affect me in the least to see people go, one after another, basically completely out of my life (well crackbook keeps us all updated with each other doesn't it), and I don't give a shit. I don't want to be like this, an emotionless shell, but honestly, it's like I've been evolved for living in a country where you meet people and after a year or two they flee. OR for living a life where the 5 members of my family live in 5 different countries and we don't see each other more than once every few years. So I have no heart. But as i said before, no not true. The problem I realize is this, that when I do meet people who I hold super dear and don't ever want to let go (ie a boy/girlfriend) I decide that they get to have the 98% of my heart not used on anyone else and then they have to suffer that excess amount of love. Not a good system I say! Not a good system you echo! but that's how I roll, I don't want people to depend on me, so, in turn, I usually don't depend on others for much. Ohhhh the therapist in you is thinking now about my eggshell childhood and how this has molded me into who i am, and well you are right! I had to say "hello, goodbye" once every year or two to my dad, my brother, sister, mother etc etc etc. you just can't keep crying you know. So here I am in Korea, a shell of a person, who somewhere deep down has so much love. I guess I do put it out there but in a different way. I put into my smile, and love it in turn when it's contagious and people respond with toothy grins. I put it into my stride, the muffins i bake for hiking friends, texts i send out to wish a happy friday or a good monday. Into making people feel good, accepted and happy. I put it into my punch, that only the sand bag at boxing gets to feel the impact of. maybe I'm just way to self involved. I had my monthly bike ride from Bundang to Amsa today, a wonderful fall morning, the sun shining on my face as I rode and sang the 30 odd km back home. A perfect fall day to make you feel happy if you were feeling down from having your friends go home. or in my case to make you feel happy because you are alive. I'm taking a million pictures along the ride to make a video about the ride (because everyone must be interested in the bike ride from bundang to amsa!) and this makes me laugh because all the bikers going to the other way are just wondering what on earth I'm doing. and they are also wondering what on earth I'm all about in my shorty shorts and tights and blue bow in my hair. I'm taking a million pictures of this man sitting on a bench surrounded by yellow flowers on a brown fall day (because the light was so great and I really wanted to capture the moment, but then after uploading the photos they were nothing like I though they would be and instead I will have the perfect imagine of the man and the flowers, but only in my mind)

quitters never win

Welcome to day 32 of my new life. Come on in, take a seat but leave your booze, smokes and anything delicious to eat at the door. 32 days ago (that's nearly 5 weeks yo!) I decided I was done! Done with the hangovers, the smelly smokey clothing, the stupid beer belly that I have even though I don't drink beer (well, unless I'm already drunk and well fuck then I'll drink anything that has alcohol in it). the empty wallet after a night out that I DIDN'T EVEN REMEMBER! oh and there there is the guilt/shame feeling that I did something, I MUST have done something stupid, embarrassing, dangerous, or fucked up because well, I'm a crazy drunk! I'm not one to just have a few drinks and go home, no no no, not Andrea that's for sure! During the past few years I have tried to reign in this behaviour, and I am a sight better than i used to be (cut to the movie about my life -scene 39 perhaps- where a younger drunk andrea is lost, crying and surrounded by a pack of boys), so I've definitely gown up some about my drinking habits, but not enough to the point where I haven't had to stop sending out my fair share of those "Sunday morning apology texts" Drunk Andrea is FUN ANDREA and well I like to have fun! and people tend to LOVE drunk Andrea just watch her make a fool of herself maybe. So cya later booze! well for now away, because, well quitters never win do they. I plan to go 110 days without touching the devils poison. December 24th I will board a plane for Malaysia and once in my seat will order myself 10 gin and tonics. So why quit drinking if I'm just going to start again? Well i think that after 110 days of abstinence I will hopefully realize something about my drinking habits - OK so I already KNOW a thing or two. but maybe I will able to ADMIT something about my drinking habits and REALLY realize what I am doing to my mind and body. And If i can do it, last 110 days, I really think that I will feel differently about drinking. I never NEVER though I could actually go this long (only 32 days!) but every day makes the next one a little easier and reaching my goal more important. The worst part of my favourite activity is that it goes hand in hand with what just happens to be my second favourite activity, smoking. Wow doesn't that work out just perfect. So now it's been 32 days without having a cigarette, which is crazier than 32 days without a jig of vodka. But somehow, and really REALLY i have no idea how, I haven't given in. Last sunday was actually the hardest, after hiking (which is the other only time I drink beer, because for some reason beer after hiking is THE BEST EVER) I really, really REALLY wanted a cigarette, I even though of buying a pack, having one and throwing the rest away, because then I would only have had 1 right? but I didn't do it. I really want this, this time. So 32 days ago I decided I was finished with that life of debauchery and I went on a detox of sorts. I started taking some 한국 (Korean traditional medicine)which is made up of ginseng, tree bark and maybe dog shit (it tastes like dog shit that's for sure, not that I've ever eaten dog shit, but I used to own this big black lab and MY GOD sometimes when I had to bend over his droppings and poop n' scoop a big hot steaming - ok wait, you get the picture). The 한국 also promotes weight loss, and you are not supposed to have any sugar, and defiantly not have any sugar coming from ALCOHOL! So, I thought, if I'm going to give up the devils poison, why not the cancer sticks too. Because dear readers remember, best friends need to stick together. so they can stick together - outta my life beatch! So it's going super well in the sans booze et cigs department, and I have been sticking to the food regime more or less (less when i went to that wedding 2 weeks ago and there was an ice cream machine!!! like the one you get soft ice cream from, but hey you can control it YOURSELF!) and then there were the 3 days I spent in Busan during Chuseok (korean thanksgiving) where I was "on vacation" so I just ate whatever, but I still didn't drink/smoke! And how do i feel? My god I'm feeling pretty dang good! You know how bad you feel when you have a hangover, like that shitty, head pulsing, don't want to get out of bed soi'lljustlieherealldayandtheneatanentirepizzatomyself type of hangover? Well I basically feel 100% the opposite of that. Now that is a good reason to go 110 days.

(it's too bad Marilyn makes it look so goooood)

and back i come

what happens that drags me away from the world of blog and narrating in my head, what happens to me that it takes me nearly a full year before I want to actually talk about myself again (my favourite subject no less) in a blog style way, therefore what we should say the personal therapist way. well i have no idea what happened, a million and one things, but nothing really. new hopes i have, new hobbies i enjoy, new legs i have acquired after an intensive going under surgery and now i am able to wear shorts and skirts for the first time in since, well i can remember. new friends, old friends I'm still loving. vacations had, new countries visited (Malaysia i loveeeee you!), boyfriends or boys should i say passed through the Andrea version of it's not going to work out dating regement... If i hang out my window I can steal the Internet, so maybe lack of having the Internet since I've moved to Amsa Dong has led me to not posting. but that's just crap. But here I am again, hanging out my window, with nakji the garbage cat trying to catch the bugs that fly by! Maybe I'm just a lazy asshole? I just checked the stats of this blog and it seems by FAR the most popular post i ever wrote (which was an incredibly crappy post too.. ) was the one about my GREY HAIR!!! so here is a picture that is going to be labeled by me

" THIS IS WHAT PREMATURE GREY HAIR LOOKS LIKE!!"

so as the hair on my head grows and grows (which hair tends to do) it looks more yellow, more and more blonde! I don't want to be a blonde! I love being the grey headed crazy that i am! So why this yellow? Pollution, yup Korea's got a bit of that and MORE, so maybe that is the reason? Maybe the length of my hair creates an illusion of yellow? ok what the heck am I talking about. Maybe it's because i don't wash my hair too frequently, this is NOT gross you freaks who think you are the authority on clean hair and how you should shampoo it every freaking day. so I only get around to using that blue shampoo invented for grannies once a week. What else should I ramble about now? how about my current obsessions since well, it's been awhile since I wrote about them. Since FOOD is my favourite subject let's start with that.

ADZUKI BEANS!!!

here is a photo of Japanese artist Takao Sakai wearing Adzuki beans as a beard on his face. I love you bean beard face man. So being a vegetarian (well ok fine I EAT FISH i'm not actually a vegetarian am I?) we need beans! And being a person who doesn't eat certain meats (is that better for all you vegetarian police out there), korea can sometimes be a hard and expensive place for "people who choose to fill their bellies with legumes instead of pig". Adzuki beans are super cheap here and they are super versatile making everything from sweat red bean pancakes with honey to potato, squash and adzuki bean stew! I really think the cabbage phase of my life maybe over (no no cabbage i love you too, you and the precious adzuki beans can be best friends in my I'M GOING TO BE PRETTY GASSY TONIGHT diet.... current EXERCISE obsession #2

HIKING AND BOXING

who would win??

Hiking I'm thinking because I'm way better at hiking than boxing, but i love em both. love hiking so much though that I started another blog about hiking (well when I get around to making posts I will have started a new blog about hiking) how i lost my toenails so you can read all about that obsession over there.. ok this is a lot of post to digest since it's been nothing but dead air over here since last November? and I could go on to list other obsessions ( Truman Capote, gmarket.com, superstar king2, face masks you sleep in, bad kpop, bad top 40!! the list doesn't end does it) swan song

and the sun breaks through

it's been a not so nice weekend, full of gloomy clouds and gray skies. but suddenly after a huge amount of rain this morning the sun just burst through showering me and my little apartment in golden rays. wonderful. I didn't do much this weekend, I think my lack of drinking is alienating me from my friends because, well, all we do is drink and since, i no longer drink as much, i don't see them as much. I have mixed feelings about this, it's not fun to go out to the bar and not get loaded, i 'm not able to handle that yet, so I just don't go out to the bar or I go for a short time and leave. I hate the fact that I'm really not having as much fun, because come on, getting drunk with your friends having good times, dancing your pants off and ending up at norae bang screaming your lungs out is what i call a good time. But here's what I love: I'm loving the wake up early without a hangover feeling, and I especially love the feeling of what not smoking 2 packs of cigarettes and drinking a bottle of gin does for my body. and this is also all tied to me trying to loose weight - because i can drink my daily allowance of calories in gin, in urm... about an hour. I love the fact that I'm not waking up with some random person beside me in my bed, because let's face it, alcohol and me being crazy has led me to making a few mistakes. I love not spending all my money on booze and instead saving it for gmarket haha. I'm definitely a fan of being able to go to the gym on Saturday morning instead of just lying hung over in my bed all day. so what to do? I'm not able to do things in moderation, which sucks, but it's true. I'm an all or nothing kind of gal. I watched the sun set the other day from the top of the mountain in our park. I haven't seen the sun set in ages, and right now I'm looking out the window for a rainbow, sun bursting through after the rain equals a rainbow right? well too bad for me, there's nothing but clouds in the sky. here are some fall in Korea pictures ^^

fall down

my week off has been spent doing much of nothing, lazing around, cleaning, organizing and antagonizing my crazy street cat. but I did however decide that i would take this week to visit every doctor possible. Korea has a really good cheap medical system that works well, if you have insurance. Most teachers here do have insurance which we usually pay about 40 bucks a month for and your employer pays the other half. and boy let me tell ya, there are a lot of doctors here! Koreans go to the doctor for EVERYTHING, a sniffle, a cold, vagina rejuvenation etc. and paying for prescriptions (as long as it's covered by insurance) is next to nothing (i love my 5 bux bag of xanax.) So Monday was dermatologist day. I'm actually getting laser hair removal done on some special places of my body (ok fine since you asked, my armpits and my vjj) and this costs next to nothing compared to how much it would cost at home. Tuesday i went to see my obgyn to get a pap which is NOT covered by insurance here - ummm retardo!? Wednesday was dentist day, the dentist and I certainly have a killer memorable relationship, my mouth is full of fillings (thank god they are white or i would be embarrassed to open my mouth) and I've had 2 root canals. after the exam the dentist looks at me and asks, "so do you have insurance?" never something you want to hear after your dentist pokes around your mouth with that cold scrapey thingie. gritting my rotting teeth i say "yes" and ask "why?". well low and behold one of my root canals isn't properly done and is causing inflammation (and yes some pain, but they pain isn't always there so really i can deal with it so let's not talk about this horrible idea of REDOING my root canal), well I nearly burst into tears. but then she takes about 5 more xrays and taps my tooth a million times and sticks some ice stick on it and my gums, and then decides that the procedure would be really expensive, has a high failure rate and maybe since my tooth doesn't really hurt right now, we can wait and see. YES, i love this wait and see attitude. don't try to fix it until my name is gummy. I then convinced her that she AND her 4 year old daughter should get some English lessons from me. and i got some gum work done as service! ohh service, it's the Korean word for when you get something for free when you buy something. like sometimes you buy a bag of oranges and the fruit guy will throw in a rotten apple as service. or if you buy something really expensive (like a 300 dollar tent) they will throw in something that cost a dollar (we got a pair of socks i think) for service.

here is a picture of all the meds i was on for my not-swine-flu-flu last week. Oh and my domo-kun slipper.

street invasiveness

how am i just finding out about google street view now! whatever, I've just wasted 2 hours researched google street view for a good 2 hours. and you can find pictures of places you know which feels nice. and sometimes there are people without heads or funny signs

95 Harrison St.

I used to live above this abc variety store (wow my future as an ESL teacher was totally chosen for me when I moved into this place) That's my old bedroom window on the left, good times were had at this place, (wait I don't mean that in the hey there's my bedroom window, good times, nudge nudge way) family dinner was invented here, I finally finished university when I lived here and I only had one bike stolen from this place. I lived with a guy named Adam Pearson here above the abc, he smelled like pencil crayon sharpenings and boy. Adam liked to collect everything under the sun and attach it somehow to his walls. He also always did all my dishes (and well, all the dishes of my extended family who would could over once a week to be fed) and never ate my food. All in all he was probably one of the best room mates I ever had. One of my most remembered memories about Adam is this one time (at abc camp) we got really really high and watched pet cemetery and totally scared the shit out of ourselves. We had to leave all the lights on when we went to bed. Adam dated this crazy girl who woke me up at 4 in the morning one time, she was screaming and pounding on the door. I didn't like her so much AND she borrowed and lost this awesome black 1920's style had of mine that I had found at the value village for like a dollar. hate her.

My market bakery

I worked at this bakery (cleverly named "my market bakery") in Kensington Market for about 2 years. This was the last place I worked before starting my new exciting career as a babysitter in south korea. This bakery is pretty popular in the market, but not nearly as popular as the cheese store next store that my boss also owned. the cheese store being insanely popular for all the hot cheese boys who worked there. glad i never dated any of them. oh wait i did. I gained a few pounds to say the least working at this bread and brownie filled emporium. I really enjoyed working here, my co-workers were also as bitter and hateful of customers (especially those suburban yuppies who lined up for hours on the weekend) as I was, so we always got along famously. Elle magazine also approached my boss to do an interview about me working here, but I was gone to Korea before I even knew about it. too sad, i would have been totally famous.

The Royal

The Royal was most favourite place of employment ever. We totally used to use the fountain machine pop to mix our bevies (when we weren't on duty of course) My boss was this guy named Tim whom I loved and adored, he was this rail thin guy who was kind of sad and broken like the theater, but he always wanted to make things better and could out-eat anyone in an all-you-can-eat sushi competition (thank god there were at least 10 all you can eat sushi places right across the street). The theater is beautiful on the inside (yes this picture does not show it justice!). It is a one screen theater all in art deco style and it has comfy reclining chairs. And it's totally awesome playing playstation on the big screen. Sometime in 2006 the owner (who had bought the theater in the 70's i think when the city was going to turn it into a parking lot) died, his kids took over and decided that this toronto historical landmark didn't deserve a chance and they sold it as soon as they could. leaving us all out of a job as well - thanks guys! But the community came together and got it deemed a historical building so they couldn't sell it to the condo developers and a post production film company bought it and kept it going. See there are happy endings.

the infamous 437 Bathurst

This is the last house I lived at before moving to kimchi land. The house of 437 was an over the top explosion of love and debauchery, a yard full of squash and tomatoes and halls full of cats and craziness. I loved living here with the 5 others who knew how to have a drunk kitchen dance party any time of the day. I could write many stories about us but I'm out of time now so you will just have to wait.

Strathclyde Residence

So i can't exactly find my old place of residence in Glasgow on google street view, but it had to be around here somewhere.

spin your brains out

It's Monday! I'm feeling better (pleaseeeeeee no swiney relapse this week for the love of g-d) and I went back to the gym this morning. The gym has become a more serious obsession as of late . A few reasons for this but the main reason being that I'm single and I have all this time on my hands that I choose to spend sweating my little butt off - and yes, i do have a little butt, (stacey stands behind me in boxing class and that other class were we have to do a million jumping jack thingies off of the step box, and she always tells me what a small butt i have but really now, compared to the pocket-sized butts of the korean ladies I don't feel like I have a small butt at all) urm.. where was I.. oh little butt, gym... YES ok.. Anyway, so I spend a lot of time at the gym, which suits me just fine since I actually love going there and it makes me feel great. So this morning after waking up (before my alarm as usual... why do i even turn that thing on?) I went to my favouritest spinning class and felt a million times better, goodbye feelings of crappyness from lying in bed for an entire week - they should have gym therapy or something. a shrink/trainer combo or something. amazing. my new future job. i will train you and listen to all your crappy life stories and fix your life. Because of swine flu mania I don't have any classes this week. I'm pretty sure most public schools are closing down for 2 weeks or something like that, but our school has decided to stay open and just have shortened days. Yes, sending the children to school for a shorter period of time means that they won't get / give the swine flu because they aren't there as long. hrm... let's see if this works as well as the last plan they had, don't close down at all when 12 kids are infected. But I teach the after school program, the program that has some logic and decides that when the teacher is infected not to have any classes. Except i don't get paid for the week... Ohhhhhhhhhh there is always a catch isn't there. I've decided to bite the bullet and not fight this because 1. i love my job and 2. i love the company i work for (which actually owns wonderland THE worst hogwan franchise in korea) and 3. I want to resign with them and I plan on asking for a lot when I do so. This blog is amazing http://missedconnectionsny.blogspot.com/ . This blogger extraordinaire has created these wonderful pictures representing someones missed connection message. And I'm not going to write about my longing for a missed connection about me (cuz we totally know there have already been DOZENS) I want to make up a milliondy missed connections of amazingness and hopefully one gets turned into a beautiful pastel pictorial of sensational-ness.

i was sleeping on the train and you waved at me when i woke up - m4w - 22 (suwon/osan)

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Date: 2009-10-25, 9:46PM KT

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i was sleeping on the 1 train back from seoul, and as the train pulled into suwon station sometime after 8:00PM i woke up, and you waved at me, and smiled. i waved back, and then you got off the train, and as you were walking away you waved at me through the window. I've never seen anyone do that before today (wave at me, a stranger, in a black tshirt, jeans, and I had a bunch of stuff with me ). you were so pretty. i wish i hadn't slept all that way, and had been able to talk to you or meet you somehow. please, get in touch with me? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- fin.

no no nooooo november

November. what are you? You are like this in between month of no holidays and usually a good intro into winter (blahhhh). Now who doesn't love a good holiday?! I'm a teacher, holidays equal time off AND holidays mean hours and hours of useless worksheets for students based on said holiday. I guess there is American thanksgiving, but hells I'm not American and we don't get the day off for that. remembrance day, but that took that day away from us and gave it to remembering soldiers. So november what are you good for? 4 long weeks before December (which equals CHRISTMAS 10 days off work!) No swine test results yet, for some reason my results are taking 2 days longer, doesn't matter, i'm like 90% better, could even go to the gym tomorrow I think! I'm scared though about having another crazy relapse. Last night I went to S. apartment and drank a few glasses of wine with my friends who didn't object to swine flu face being there, which was nice. I was wondering if someone was going to tell me not to come. I really can't believe I missed halloween gay chrstimas! I guess I haven't written here in ages, I didn't even check when was the last time I made a post, but I'm assuming it must have been last spring!? What happened since then, all the regular stuff, got a new job (LOVE IT), got a new cat (he's the devil), went through a BF or 2. Read the book After Dark by my most favourite Haruki Murakami last night, and it was just ok. which made me sad. and then i woke up and it was november. which made me sad. and then my cat punched me in the face. and i'm laughing at typing this now, so guess it didn't make me so sad. life is good.

new cat new hat (love you gmarket - that's the website, not the cat, the cat is nakji)

swine time

I've been sick now with (enter type of flu here) flu for about a week. But it's officially day three of stay at home and don't leave and spread your nasty germs to the general populace - oh and try to get better while you at it. Day one - was Wednesday, I had gone to bed on Tuesday night feeling like a bag of shit. Basically shaking so hard because i was so cold, and sweating so hard because i had a fever. This is the same crap I had gone through the week before when i came down with the flu, the only difference being that on Tuesday night my body hurt SO MUCH and it hurt to breathe (hey and guess what it still does). So Wednesday morning rolls around and what do i do? well try to shower. i can't stay upright, and then i get a taxi to school (yes my mission IS to infect all the little children!) I get to school, I tell my co-teacher that I'm going to the hospital and then Lauren one of my adorable students gives me a cookie, which I eat for breakfast. I get to Seoul National hospital (and why exactly is it called that when it's located on the tancheon in Jungja-Dong?) and of course being the only foreigner around everyone rushes to help me! actually no that does not happen. i wait for 20 minutes with the stupid number machine paper in my hand at reregistration while everyone and their grandmother ignores the ticket machine and just goes up to the window. Finally my number is called and I give a smug look of "well there we go, see, the good people wait their turn" but there is no one there to see it because they have all been helped already. blah. Anyway, register, get ushered to the side of the hospital where the H1N1 festival is underway! Woo hoo! H1N1 party! If you didn't come here with it you sure as hell are going to leave with it! About 100 people are milling around wearing masks, not wearing masks, coughing up something, sleeping, yelling etc etc it really is a party! I get in a long line and finally my turn (well of course my turn is taken by some business man who clearly looks NOT SICK AT ALL - which is strange because now I notice that many people don't look sick at all, while i'm all feverish and sketchy-mc-flu face, so I'm wondering what are these not sick people doing here?!?!? question totally answered after) I see the doctor, doctor confirms i have the flu (which type?!?!) She tells me i have the new flu, wtf?! The new flu? isn't that just the name which they have now given to the regular flu?! Well who knows, they do the tests for swine flu, and the results for that come back on Saturday. I go home, with my bag of meds, that cost 110,000! yikes! guess tamiflu is NOT covered by insurance. then sleep. sleep and sleep. Day 2 - Thursday - i wake up and my bed is covered in blood! AUGHGHGHGH!!! I check myself and realize no my flu didn't turn into a deadly flesh eating disease or anything like that. my cat, who was neutered last week, has somehow managed to cut open his little ball sack. (sorry boy for the visuals) He now has a bloody raw ball sack. So i take my (wtf type of flu do i have?) butt over to the vet and really i have NO idea how to explain this. the balls were healing just fine, there was just a tiny little incision hole that was doing just fine, i really have no idea what the cat did, but now he has to pay the price and wear the cone around his head, which he still manages to torture me through - did i mention my cat is not very nice. The rest of the day was quite uneventful, I felt less sick and a lot less sore (yaahooo) but the pain when i breathe is still ever present and I watched nearly the entire first season of scrubs. Day 3- Friday - It's still quite early so I'm sure I can write more on today's most exciting stuck in my house events later. I woke up feeling crappy because I had coughed my way through sleep town, waking myself up every 30 minutes. Also I have no appetite at all, but god dang am I a thirsty camel - I drank about 6 - 8 liters of water yesterday which also woke up me every hour during the night. So I'm sure I'll spend most of today sleeping - or cleaning my bathroom and doing laundry while standing on my head making a sock monkey. I'm definitely not the type of person that is able to lie down and get better, that's my problem I guess

the Korean call to prayer....

A few things wake me up early in the morning, my cat using me as a scratching post/spring board/ something to yell at, my insane inability to sleep in or go back to sleep and of course the Korean Loudspeaker.  

The Korean Loudspeaker comes in 2 formats.  The mechanical kind - an actual loudspeaker attached to a truck, wall, parking garage, store - or the human kind - a person chanting/screaming at the top of their lungs.

Today the mechanical kind gently shook me from my drunken slumber (god dang you soju cocktail!).  The parking garage outside my window, for some reasons, has a loudspeaker attached to the front entrance and some dudes voice drones the same sentence over and over.  What is he saying? you ask... What they all say!! ORANGES FOR SALE! GIVE ME YOUR OLD COMPUTERS! PARK HERE! LAUNDRY SERVICE! DESSERT! 

I think I've posted about this before, because, well it's definitely part of life here in Korea.  Living where I do now, we don't have many trucks with loudspeakers patrolling this neighbourhood.  I think the days of the loudspeaker truck/person may actually be coming to a close.  

When I lived in Meigum we had the laundry man.  Every morning at 9 am a man would walk every floor of our building screaming something out, I've forgotten now, maybe it sounded like SEOULTAKKKKKK , i have no idea what laundry is in Korean.   I don't remember how we figured out that this dude was a laundry guy, my first guess was that he was a chanting monk blessing our special building every day.  

Then there was the ddok Seller (yummy Korean rice cakes). Every night at 7pm we heard this guy just screaming the same thing out over and over, and for the life of me it DID NOT sound like DDOK, which is what he was selling.  We could hear him out of our window as he walked around screaming, so we ran outside one night and followed the yelling and found him.  And then we ate some delicious ddok... 

Then there is the computer truck (bring me your old computers), the orange trucks (which I currently frequent), the other random fruit trucks....  these I don't mind, but the parking lot loudspeaker has GOT TO GO!  

yoga for t-tards

today is wonderful.  amazing. and a lot of other adjectives that mean the former ones.  I didn't have to work being the main reasons for this wonderful wonderfulness and the fact that I now never have to work mornings again is the other reasons for bliss.  

So I woke up early, went to the gym for spinning class and then for the FIRST time in over a year I got to go to yoga class.  ohhhOHHHhhhh.. I love yoga, I love the pain and the stretch and the rewards.  I love lying on that stupid stinky blue yoga mat for 5 minutes at the end of class when I feel more relaxed and sane than I have ever felt before.  I can't believe how long it's been, and thank god for my first class back into flexibility world,  we were practicing easy yoga poses and breathing instead of that hard core Korean power yoga (that i also love - but didn't want today).   

The gym makes me sane and happy. It rarely makes me feel bad - except for the one time that stupid pushy girl stole my bike in spinning class and I had to try to explain this to her and everyone else who was watching (STARING) and i felt like such an idiot/total bitch for fighting over a bike and because I was just frustrated. Not a good day for me....

My other issue with the gym is that I absolutely hate being the fattest person there.  Which I am.  Sucks ass.  Even the fatty Koreans don't seem to be as fat as me because they are so darn short and let's face it, I'm a giant.  So I go to all these classes - also I'm the only 외국인  in any of these classes - and feel like I'm 10x bigger than I am.  Should make me work out harder, but somehow it doesn't.  

I hate even thinking about this subject, the size of my body, when I work out, which I'm usually somewhat of a champion at, I feel great, healthy and fit, I don't care about the fat.

so according to this piece of crap I am not going to have a good year.  If you are also a 1979 baby, year of the Ram (or goat),  you too are not going to have a good year.  In fact you are going to have 7 unfavourable months, and 5 neutral months.  And how about a good month.. no, not possible. 

January is definitely one of my 7 unfavourable months, my bike was stolen yesterday.  too sad.  Who would steal my piece of crap bike!?  It really is a piece of crap, and actually I was getting a little scared because the pedals felt kind of funny when i pushed them (and how often do you push a pedal like 100 times a minute?)  and  before I left Toronto I had an accident where my pedal fell off mid push and I fell to the pavement getting more than a bruise (you know my Indonesia sized bruise from falling down the stairs didn't even compare to this pedal-fall-off-Andrea-fall-down bruise.)  

So anyway, get ready to have a shitty year - or you can ignore your horoscope completely which is basically the norm for me, I have NO idea the last time I read a horoscope, but somehow being the fake Asian wanna be I am, I just had to look didn't I.

So speaking about being a fake Asian wanna be, I have to admit that I am completely obsessed with K-pop and K-pop run off culture.  Shameful as it sounds I actually like Big Bang.

and I like this song too.... shame shame... 

I don't know when the obsession started, I used to have a TV and one day I  started to realize that the bands I heard were appearing on most of the TV shows.  Nearly all Korean singers/ bands appear in 3 or 4 different shows on TV, ranging from being an actor on a Korean drama, or being a host on some terrible reality show or being a participant on a love-connection type show or also being a judge on a talent type show.  example...

This is star king (or stocking as most Koreans call it) and appearing on this show are people from all over Korea and sometimes other countries displaying their talents and trying to win some prize. The panel is made up of 15 different people who are all in different bands or in other comedy shows or are actors. They also appear in maybe 3 other shows each! I think this is nuts! Imagine in Canada if ever time you turned on the TV, Avril Lavine or Celine Dion or the Feist were on commercial for baskin robbins or Fido and then on about 5 programs a day, and oh btw they also appear on a soap opera! When do these people sleep?

but secretly I love it.  

new years eve....again!설날

Yay Asia, and your lunar new year!  Having an extra holiday because of the moon is fine by me!  And since I didn't make any resolutions or change my life on January 1st, I can do it all tonight!  

So here goes... 

  

urm...  wait.  I KNOW there are many things with my life I SHOULD change, but would I, will I?  

Now i don't feel like listing all these things here and making myself sound like an ass.  You and I already know the downfalls I have and don't need to make a list anyway (yes mostly related to drinking and stupidity...) And there are many things I don't want to tell you because writing it would be admitting a lot of failures and things about myself that I hate.  

So what to do...  

leave some thinking space for us all to think about our shortcomings 

(here is some space)           

and some more space for us to think about the changes.

(maybe extra space here because i would rather think about change than about the shortcomings....)

and what about some space to appreciate what I have or what I have done over the past year..

wait, better yet I could list these things, because it will make me feel better about all former mentions of the things I need to change... YES!

- I really appreciate my cat - sounds lame I know, but she really does make me happy and I am so glad that I found her.

- I'm happy that I went to India this year, because that was a

  looooooong time dream of mine.

- I'm really happy about what I did in India (working with the kids and writing articles about it, AND having the kids photos put in a gallery show)

- I'm also happy and really grateful that my sister came to visit me, and not to mention the fact that she gave birth to my amazing little niece that I also got to see for the first time this year.

-I REALLY appreciate the fact that I have enough money to travel (urm... paying off those student loans needs to go on the "to do" list) and am able to see amazing cities, countries and experience new cultures.

-my friends and family.  Especially my friends from toronto that I keep in touch with because it's sad to loose friends just because you move away.  Especially my friends in korea because they keep me happy living far away from the friends and family I left.  

-my bed that I'm about to crawl into at 1:32 in the morning

Happy 설날!

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