Never mind I'll find Seomyeon like you - The unreleased/released

Okay so as promised in the last installment of 'Jordan's use of the internet to save money on counselling', better known as my blog, here is the entry from October/November I disliked so much I stopped writing.  Things all got a bit crappy around this time and I just wanted to hide under woolen things and eat the weight of Canada in things comprising mainly of sugar and/or bread.  As a result, it remained unfinished, but given it's quite a lot I feel bad resigning it to the fate of deletion.  So instead, here it is.  Unfinished traumatisation (new word).

That song is stuck in your head now.  One thousand apologies.  It's been a month of change in the Land of the Morning Calm  Construction Workers.  The building next door has been complete so the same noisy bastards that were ruining morning nap times from the side window have moved across the street and are now destroying sleeping patterns from across the road.  Despite this, I'm going to try and sound more cheery in this blog post.  I read the last one back and I sounded a little close to the edge.  I feel it relevant to state that whilst I do come across as somewhat of a Victor Meldrew, I'm quite a cheery chappy.  So my aim for this post is to be more positive.  Happy go lucky.  Whoop-de-fucking-do, as it were.

The angle at which our sleep patterns have been audibly assaulted is not the only big change of October thus far, no no no.  It's marked the change in seasons.  Gone are the days of sweating like a pig on fire, waking up with sweaty eye balls and putting underwear in the freezer.  Autumnal conditions have set in and it's now fiercely nippy out. There are a number of pros and cons to this:  On one hand, I don't leave for work in a pastel blue shirt and arrive at work wearing soggy navy.  Whilst on the other hand, my nipples are visible through any amount of layers and my students bully me.  One of the best things about it being quite cold here though is the underfloor heating.  It's absolutely immense.  It also provides an excellent excuse for when the Turtle gets cross when I leave my towel on the floor...

This month has also seen us cross the midway point in our year of 'Rea fun.  It doesn't feel like six months at all.  But then I did lose a month to a jet-lagged daze and sitting under bed covers eating Nutella with a spoon because I was too scared of everything.  Overall though it's been a cracking experience.  To commemorate the occasion of passing the midway point I thought I'd treat myself to a haircut.  First haircut in seven months.  I'd stopped looking like man of authority and began resembling man with a cardboard house.  We took one of our Korean co-workers along for protection to a hair salon on the high street entitled Paris Hair Story.  There was little sign of any French narratives once inside though, so I did feel a little lied to.  We went through the usual thing of choosing a picture from a book of hair styles.  The only issue was that they all looked EXACTLY the same:  Shaved sides, long on top and at the back.  A variation of this was the almighty mullet, which I've thankfully avoided.  The woman cutting my hair (or 'hair artist') asked three times if I wanted my side burns off.  I was going to tell her I was preparing them for Movember but given the fairly large language barrier it would've likely gone arse over tit.

We've also had the celebration of Halloween to introduce to the natives.  I've seen myself as less of an English teacher lately and more of a Crusader, coming to the Eastern lands, sharing our traditions and beliefs and making them join in out of fear we'll do writing exercises.  We stayed up until gone 2.30am a few nights making spiders and bats.  The Turtle did the majority of the conceptual work whilst I was restrained from running with scissors and was allowed to stick the googly eyes on paper bats.

For the big day we decided it would be a lot of fun to set ourselves the aim of making a child so scared they cried.  I don't know if the Turtle was necessarily privy to this goal, but I went all out for it; make up and all.  One of the bigger issues with this was that I decided my Dracula make up should be completed at home, before going to the shop for more art supplies, before going to get lunch, and before the fifteen minute walk from our apartment to any of these places, including passing a high school.  Needless to say I received a few looks and thoroughly terrified the man in Morning Glory.  No, I'm not being uncouth, I'm merely referring to the stationary shop which is EVERYWHERE in Korea.  Means you can have Morning Glory staples, post its, pencils and my all time favourite, the Morning Glory rubber.  For those times where you really need to rub something out (okay now I'm being sordid, apologies.)

I know what you're wondering though.  Did I make a child cry?  I'm sorry to inform you that I've let you all down.  I did make a child fall on his arse though, which is kind of a victory of sorts.  Either way, we had a lot of fun and the kids got a decent understanding of what Halloween is like in the West.  Although I did refrain from bringing in some fourteen year old parents who never pronounce their consonants and never spell with their vowels to come in and egg people for them to get a real feel of what Halloween in the UK is like.

We also had a Firework Festival on the beach in Busan at the end of October too.  The fireworks themselves were very bright, very loud, very synchronized to a music ranging from Jerusalem to Coldplay to the scratchy disk music of the Dubbing Steppers.  We got there a short while after it started which meant we didn't actually get a spot on the beach.  It also meant we didn't get a spot on the road along the waterfront either.  It did, however, mean we got a fantastic spot right between a fish restaurant and a coffee shop, one street back.  It sounds a bit grim but being 5"11 in a country of Asian hobbits made it much better than just about any gig I've ever been to.  I'm not fond of being in big congested crowds of people.  I always end up feeling uneasy that people are feeling uneasy about me looking awkward.  This was perfectly summed up at the subway station after the fireworks had all gone off and gone home.

The subway station was like a scene about five minutes into any end-of-the-world movie ever made:  There were babies crying, army people shouting at people who were too tightly packed into an already small space and the customary wanker who thinks it's a good idea to bring a seemingly frictionless glass bottle into the fray.  (I know I said at the beginning of this post I'd try to be more positive...  Unfortunately that's starting to erode somewhat).  We waited as train after train stopped, opened its doors to a sea of uncomfortable expressions looking back at us.  We ended up waiting a good five or six trains before we managed to get onto one.  During this time I had a most unfortunate incident which slightly refers to my earlier issue of uncomfortability: Myself and the Turtle stood side by side, priming ourselves for the great shove necessary to get a decent spot on the train.  There were a group of ladies in front of us and the one in front of me had particularly wispy hair.  So much so, a strand of hair had actually placed itself in my mouth.  I hadn't noticed because a result of being a human sinus and a poster boy for gawpishness, worldwide, is that the majority of the time, my mouth is open.  Whilst we were all a matter of inches apart there was no real problem.  The issue escalated when I wanted to turn around to see how many people were on the platform, thus essentially fish hooking myself on a Korean woman's 'do as she and her friends discussed what manner of spackery would lead someone to manage pulling that off in thoroughly disapproving tones.



All in all, it was definitely an experience.


And that's where it ends.  Hope it makes up for the months of abandoned bloggery.