Friday 31 December 2010

Weather

So there's nothing much to report.  It's currently -14 degrees in Seoul, which means about -8 here.  I'm making some burgers for a midnight snack.

It's the New Year.

Happy New Year everyone.

...

That's just about it.

I found a picture that sums Korea up nicely.

Wednesday 29 December 2010

The Reasons Why I Haven't Posted

My boss made me do some bullcrap pointless work that's now, not five days after being implemented (that took two months to finish), been taken down.  This is reason number one as to why I've not been posting.

This then gave way to a fierce sickness.  That's reason number two.

My laptop mysteriously stopped accessing the internet, but still allowed me access to skype.  Reason number three.

These three reasons cover the past three weeks of zero posting.

Now, for the past few days I've slept terribly.  In normal human beings, being insanely tired would lead to a good nights sleep somewhere along the line.  Obviously, being the human freakshow that I am, I'm not allowed to sleep.  It's Christ knows when in the Christ knows when, and I can't sleep.  So the photos I uploaded Christ knows when go another few days without being illustrated.  Obviously illustrated is the wrong word, but I don't know what the correct word is.

When you have a picture and you write words to describe the picture, or what's happening within the picture.  Like illustrating a narrative, but in reverse.  I don't know what it's called.

The particularly frustrating thing is, I obviously do know what the word is, I just can't access it.  Being stupid is one thing, forcibly becoming stupid due to inherent genetic deficiency is quite another.  Ignorance is only bliss when it's not optional.

Another fantastic thing is that I went to the gym today.  I'm physically exhausted, and due to crappy sleep for the past few days, mentally exhausted.  The good news is that because I went to the gym I ache.  I ache really badly.  The fantastic news is that my exhaustion and fatigue have left me with no apetite, so my body has nothing to repair itself with.  This will lead to me aching for the next few days instead of hours, as it should be.

This physical and mental self-destruction is a generally fantastic way to go about life, and I  recommend everyone deprive themselves of sleep and food as I have.  I foresee it becoming the next fad diet.  It's all the more beneficial if a third party forces it upon an unwitting subject without knowledge or consent.  I find it all the more effective this way.

I can't wait to relapse into illness again, because the system shock of zero food and sleep makes my body shut down.  Yay, a solid month of undoing all the gym-work, fitness and health I've cultivated up to now.  Woo hoo.

This is one of the few times I will say this.  This post will have spelling mistakes, punctuation errors and grammatical anomalies.  I do not care.  I defy anyone to write in this condition and make sense.

Sunday 26 December 2010

The Wedding

So we had to get up extremely early in order to go to this wedding.

We were up at around 10 AM!

Unbelievable right?
When we arrived the bride was waiting in a small room.  She was already doled up and looking rather nervous.

On a side-note, the venue we were in consisted of four separate wedding areas.  Are they chapels?  I don't know.

Each area had two weddings, totaling eight.  I don't know how much each wedding cost, but I think it's a fair assumption that they make an awful lot of money!
On a personal note, I rather like this picture.  This is the groom (is that how you spell it?  I've never read about, willingly listened to or thought  about a wedding before, so I've not a single clue about wedding terminologies.) amid the sea of chaos that is his wedding.

I'd never met either of them before, but they're awesome.  (I went with Amanda, who knew the bride from her previous job.)
I don't know what the groom is looking at *ahem*.

The man in the picture is the official photographer.

I was the unofficial photographer.

I wanted to show you the camera he was holding, and at some stage link the camera I was using.  Serious penis envy.
I wanted to get in close for this picture, but then you miss the psychadelic background and their literally perfect attire.

I know people go to all kinds of trouble to get the perfect look for their wedding, but jees, this must have taken hours to put on.

Not the hair though, Koreans love making their hair look like this every day.  (It's the same with the Japanese!)
There were some obligatory cutesy photographs.

Interestingly they both work with foreigners, I believe teaching English (don't quote me on that) so their views are quite progressive.

Therefore this display of Asian cute was rather embarrassing for all involved, but I guess the real photographers picture was good enough.
If I had access to a computer with some kahoonas I would edit the following orange images, levelling the colour balance and making them substantially less orange.

On the flip side, I enjoy these pictures because of the way in which their standing, and general composition.
I took a few different shots at different zoom levels to try and find what worked best.

The further out you go with the zoom, the more distorted things look.  This is obvious (look at the crazy toppling buildings you see with small numbers on your own cameras!) in theory, but leads to some complicated effects in practice.  I guess the difficulty comes in knowing when to use these different properties and when not to.
Another shot with Amanda and the bride.

I probably should have placed them both central - something I could do in post using any photo editing software.

If only I had a computer!
Now this is the real reason I agreed to take photographs!

Korean hanbok (sp?) is the traditional clothing in Korea.  Unlike Japan however, you rarely, if at all, see people wearing them.  Just like Japan they're extremely expensive; unlike Japan they're somewhat plainer albeit more frilly.  To clarify, I mean plainer colour wise.)
After talking to the bride for a few minutes, I realised what this recessed cave actually was.

It's a picture frame!

This would work a little better if your eye wasn't immediately pulled through the illusion to whomever is sitting inside; as the frame requires a wider perspective.

Nice idea though!
Being forced to sit for hours on end must be tedious; but there were no shortage of people on hand to ensure not a single strand of hair was misplaced.

I'm serious.  It was immaculate.  Perfect.  Whenever a hair fell out of place, three people jumped up to correct it.
Having never been to a wedding myself, this was the first time I'd seen the procession.  (Is it called that?  I honestly don't know)

I'm not entirely sure what was happening, but someone (presumably her dad?) walked with the bride to the altar, a lot of talking was done, and then everyone left.  (There were a number of photographs taken not including the man and wife.)  (I assume they're man and wife at this point, and not simply bride and groom?)
This was the best part!

The food was pretty nice, but I was forbidden from taking the free beer that was on offer home.  It was three PM, and I simply couldn't stomach the thought of drinking then; so I wanted to take a few bottles (that no one else was drinking either) home.  I was told off.

I wasn't told off by staff or bouncers or anyone official - but by my date.  How very galling.
In a random segway, here is a woman on the wii fit.

We went Christmas shopping after the wedding, and they were advertising the wii fit.

I've seen this thing in four different countries now, and the buxom wenches always wear the same thing.

I wonder if they ship the clothes around the world to save buying new ones for all the people who do displays for them.
She wasn't exactly enthralled by her positions as head performer of monotonous tasks, but she was good.

Really good.
How good?

See if you can do the 'stand on one leg while bringing your other leg up to your chest and holding it there for five seconds,' routine and get a score this good.

I defy anyone to.




Above:  A random building that looked cool, lit up like that.

This is a random picture I took of Amanda looking out of the window on the bus.  The  bus ride was looooooooong, so there was tons of time to mess around taking pictures and generally annoying the Koreans - who think it's a national crime for a Korean person to date a foreigner.

Interestingly, she's not Korean.  The dumbass Korean folk can't see outside of their little country though, and assume everyone who looks asian is Korean.  Statistically speaking, they're more likely to be chinese.

Learn some maths please, Korea.
This is the disfigured cake that was eaten afterwards.

There should be an extra ear and paw, but I got hungry and started eating.

I was rather enamored with this particular cake, hence the multitude of pictures.
The pink tasted like strawberries!
And finally a picture of the happy couple and an intruding presence.  They changed from their wedding garb to these matching, traditional  hanbok in record time.  I'm told that some weddings can necessitate four or five clothing changes, depending on which religion(s) they're choosing to observe.  I suppose your best bet is to always appease as many gods as possible; especially with divorce rates being what they are now.


Tuesday 21 December 2010

Latest

So I've not been able to update my blog for the last week or so, because  I've been incredibly busy.  I've also missed going to the gym.  I'm also sick.  I've busted my ass off doing my boss favours, like building a basic website for the english department, and making videos of the kids so we actually look like more than a ragtag bunch of chancers.

Being the only idiot willing to do this hasn't paid off, as she cancelled a half day (a week ago) tomorrow.  When asking her why she promised us a half day that she had no intention of keeping (it turned out that this full day seminar was planned three months ago) I was labelled ungrateful and told that many other teachers don't get breaks over Christmas.

I should, apparently, be grateful that I now have to sit in a crowded minibus with five people I loathe for two hours on the way to some god-forsaken place in the ass-end of nowhere, to look at a couple of books.  Then spend an hour travelling to the outer recesses of the ass end of nowhere to watch a half an hour class demonstration, to then travel three hours back to the literal arse-hole of nowhere (Geoje).  It turns out, the one nice Korean person; the person who I'd assumed everyone that I hadn't met in Korea was like, is actually abhorrent too.

Some countries have no redeeming qualities.  I give up.

I hate Koreans.  I hate Korea.

There I said it.  War is probably the best thing these morons can hope for.

Just start it when I'm not here, please.

Wow that actually makes me feel a lot better.  Maybe I can make it through the thirteen hour day tomorrow by repeating that phrase over and over to myself.  Or maybe I can play table tennis halfway through the day, to give me some energy?

Thursday 9 December 2010

You Son of a Bitch

So let me regail you with a short story.

This happened not long ago, in a land far away.  (This land happens to begin with a k and rhymes with diarrhoea).

I was playing table tennis, when a Korean arrived.  I suggested we play together, and he beat me two full sets.  The first was decided, 21-19.  The second 26-24 (roughly speaking; a number of extra points were played).  I decided I'd had enough, so proceeded to annihilate him, 21-10.  Having agreed to play five games/sets, he valiantly decided to call it a day, and left the table.  He didn't say a word, put his bat back or the ball.  He just left.

Asshole.

Although he won more games, I completely destroyed him mentally - and, afterall; isn't making new friends what internationalisation is all about?

(He was good at table tennis though, I'll give him that.)

(And he took about five forehand smashes to the face, so fair play to him for lasting that long.)

Wednesday 8 December 2010

When People Mention Room Temperature

So I was reading an article about one of the attributes of quartz crystals being their relative indifference to room temperature; i.e they don't change shape much when room temperature changes.  I looked over to my thermostat and it's currently 11 degrees celsius in my room.

I didn't even realise that I'd forgotten to take my coat off after work.  Whoops.

Tuesday 7 December 2010

So Much Table Tennis

So we met a Korean down the gym today.  He plays amazing table tennis.

Essentially he kicked the two Korean guys (who we were playing) off the table and started kicking us all over the table.  I played him to eleven twice, the first time I got two points, the second time I got seven.

This isn't a fair indication of our relative abilities, he was infinitely better than us.

He then proceeded to berate us, throwing all kinds of shots at us, telling us to forehand topspin everything back to him.  At first I thought it was arrogance, simply showing that he was better than us.  After half an hour of beating the orange from the ball though, I realised he was just training us.  My partner left, leaving me to continue battering the ball for another forty minutes.

As a result, I now have an extremely competent (and powerful) forehand topspin.  There's also an extremely discoloured matte part of my bat, on the forehand side.

If I can work on my backhand topspin, I think I'll be a force to be reckoned with.

The way my colleagues play is short and finicky, so we don't get much chance to practice the long game; so this was a refreshing change of pace.

A nice Korean! (Kind of)

Sunday 5 December 2010

Never Before Seen

So here are a few never before seen pictures that I've taken on the island.  They're all random ones taken with a colleagues phone.  Until now they've been unaccesible.

 This is from my ill-fated attempt at american football.

The particularly frustrating thing is that it wasn't ill-fated because of me; but because Koreans are Koreans, and there's no helping that.
 This is me in the gym the other day.  There's a video to go with this picture, but it's temporarily unavailable.

That's 280Kg's on the machine, in case you're wondering.

(7*20Kg weights on either side.)
 And this is on the extension phase of the above exercise.

My aim is for 300 Kg's.  By next week.
The local cake shop had this in their store.  I was a little bit too large to fit behind it, to properly fit my head inside (a small child came up afterwards and showed me that it was certainly intended for tiny people) but the effect is equally ridiculous, either way.












I love how all the Christmas stuff in that particular shop says, 'you are not alone.'

They're either fearing alien attack, or loneliness.

Saturday 4 December 2010

5Km Run, Cancelled

It turns out the deadline for the 5Km run application was at the beginning of the week.  Due to some crazy stuff that happened in the office, my boss wasn't able to spare the time to complete the application.

I was up to 4.25 Km at 13 Km/h.  This equates to a substantially lower speed when not on a treadmill.

I was sad that I couldn't participate, so I bought myself a gingerbread man shaped cake.  Alas, I have no camera on hand to take the picture, so you'll have to imagine it.  It's Christmas themed, with a bread cane, earmuffs  and a little present (also some kind of bread product) underneath.  It has a delirious smile.

In other news, it's rather cold now.  No snow, as of yet (I think England wins on the cold and snow front right now) but I'm hopeful.