C.H.A.V - A.O.K

So I've held off writing this post for a long time now, because I assumed it was a premature observation; but goddamn Koreans are chavs.  Off the bat I'll say I don't know what the dictionary definition of a chav is, but here goes my attempt at describing one:

They like to wear gold.  Lots of gold.  They hang around in same-sex groups on street corners in the middle of the night, doing very little except drinking.  They raise their children in their own image, that is to say in a terribly unhygienic manner, while making them wear horrific amounts of gold nonsense of a value roughly equal to their shoelaces, to the weight of several kilogrammes.  They like to be extremely loud and spit a lot.

(Although all Asians spit, bizarre right?  If someone said name an attribute of civilised Asia (Japan and Korea being the only first world countries, would fit this description) you would (at least I would) say they're sticklers for etiquette and manners, but they all spit.  As mentioned before - bizarre)

If this sounds like a chav, then Koreans love the whole chav lifestyle.  When I first saw this phenomenon I assumed it must simply be indicative of the island I live on, but it happens in Seoul too.  Half of the children I teach are spoiled rotten, and the spoiled ones are clad in gold.  In an interesting experiment, it is possible to see a direct correlation between killogrammes of gold attached to the child, and how obnoxious that child is.

I wouldn't be surprised if they invented that whole lifestyle, because, frankly, they have it down to an art.

So in other news, I got my grubbies on another camera.

A friend said something along the lines of, 'I love seeing how places [accommodation] evolve once you started living in them.'

To prove a point, I took a picture now, two months on from the last one, to show how drastically my room has changed.

These are the 'after,' shots, which, apart from a ton of bog roll, are entirely indistinguishable from the earlier shot:

Maybe when I get round to unpacking it'll become a house rather than a box with some stuff in.

Then again, if I've not unpacked after two months, I don't see any reason to suspect I'll unpack after ten.

The lack of 'homeliness,' is an endearing feature in itself.

Upside-down orientation, and particularly uninspiring camera angle aside, this picture adequately demonstrates the aeronautical nature of the cake I purchased on Friday.  It was to celebrate hitting 87kg and 14% body fat, which is only 3kg shy of my desirable weight and under my perfect body fat percentage.

And this is the cool artsy shout out to Paris Baguette who made this particularly delicious cake.  It cost twelve pounds, but damn, it was a tasty twelve pounds.

On a side-note, if I ever purchase my own camera, expect to see a lot more pictures of cakes.





A side-effect of insane humidity is that nothing dries.  I have had days where a cool breeze has blown through my apartment for nigh on twelve hours straight, and my clothes end up wetter than when they came out of the washing machine.  Couple this with a severe laundromat shortage, and the result is one crowded clothes rack.  Things then dry more slowly because they've not enough room to dry, and the cycle becomes self-sustaining.  If anyone knows any tips for combating this, please let me know.

This is the view from the top of my street.  My building is the tall one on  the left.  Immediately behind that is a tall hill, and behind that is the sea.  You can climb over the hill to the sea (twenty minutes) or you can walk five minutes to the ocean front.  For the first time this weekend I chose the first option, and boy, it's peaceful up there.  At a guess I would say it's two hundred metres high (the hill in the picture just keep getting steeper if you look to the left) and at the top, to my amazement, was a...  Well, keep reading and you'll find out.

A month or so ago I commented that you can see mountains (or big hills, I'm not sure what exactly differentiates mountains and hill technically speaking) from any angle, anywhere in any of the towns on the island.  This is a fact lost on all my colleagues, as they simply ignore them, or when forced to acknowledge their amazing existence, just grunt.  This being the rainy season, these mountains can often be seen disappearing behind cloud cover, wisps of which lick up the side.  Again, it's fantastic to watch, and no one acknowledges it.

To illustrate my point, the following pictures are taken around my town of Okpo, from  many different angles and vantage points, to highlight the hillbound nature of the island.

This picture is taken from the back of my block of flats.  I'm not sure what they grow on the terraces, but there is a path up to them, and I will find out one day.

It would be easy enough to ask someone I suppose...

(Oh and see what I mean by the obsession with overly large cars here?  The island is tiny, but they think they're american.  All the women also think they're on desperate housewives, but more on that in a later article.)

If anyone ever says keeping chickens is difficult, you can rest assured, it isn't.  All you need is a lot of string, the ability to play cats cradle, and the windscreen from an old pre-winding window car, of any description.  Those items and skills coupled with an old desk, and you're sorted.

There's no way of really judging scale, but those are container ships.  They're big.  That crane is also big.  Everything is big here.

If you click on the picture and view it full size, you can see a latticework of white girders onboard both ships.  Those are the guides into which the containers slide.  I don't know how many containers stack on top of each other, but from a casual observation they hold roughly seventy-five in length.  I can't begin to imagine how many that ship will hold in total.  Seventy-five times the depth, times the number it can hold in width.  That's a lot.  Each container is the size of a lorry trailer, and you see them motoring all over Europe.  That's probably not a big ship as container vessels go.  Mind explosion...

At this top of this deceptively steep hill is my gym, and another mountain.

Everyone lives in flats here, there are no houses.

This was taken from the middle of the street, but I sensibly waited until the light had turned red before stepping out.   I normally cross when the coast is clear regardless of traffic light colour, but just like Japan, the locals only cross on green.  It could be four in the morning, all the petrol on the island could have run out, and the whole place could have two people on it and both of them would still wait for the green light.

Bizarre.

The sea is a millpond here, even in bad weather.  The harbour is massive and so well protected that I'm sure it would take something monumentally devastating to get the sea level to rise here.  This is lucky, because the front door to my block of flats is probably three metres above sea level.

Local fishing boat: Check.  Massive container ship: Check.  Mountains shrouded in cloud. Check.

This pretty much sums up Okpo in one picture.

So the pictures are in no particular order now, but I wanted to (yet again) demonstrate that you're no more than a glance away from a big, cool looking hill on this island.

Ok so somehow we're back to this little fishing vessel.  Much like the chicken coop, this thing is made from bits of old house and rope that the man found lying around.

Congratulations are due for making it seaworthy.

This is one of the tall-ships on display in the harbour.

I didn't get a chance to go on-board but

Ok I kid, this is actually a zoomed in version of:

I felt compelled to take a number of pictures of this model as a particularly horrible child was playing with it.  As we all know, toys are not meant for playing with as they will inevitably break; alas no one told this kid, so I'm sure it's been turned into kindling.

A final picture of the pretty-cool-looking boat not-in-a-bottle.

It really was well made.

Another insanely steep hill that looks like nothing from the bottom, especially with a wide-angle lense.  Trust me, this hill is a demon, and it's the only way to reach the biggest town on the island, as the bus-stop is at the top of the hill.

This is a view of Okpo, from across the bay area.  yes, I know, the horizon is insanely wonky; it's surprisingly difficult to take a picture with a level horizon when you're as stupid as me.

The problem is that I always frame the picture thinking 'oh that looks cool,' with no thought as to the horizon, then when I get it back on the computer, the horizon is completely skewed.

One day I will learn... Maybe.

I like this picture because I think it gives a representative view of how much space the bay takes up, and what the town is all about.  Shipping and ship building are the primary employers of the area, and all other services are built around catering for that very industry.

This is looking out to sea.  Past the oil derricks being constructed, past the two prongs of land, is the big, wide, scary open sea.

There is a fun little walkway that takes you around the outside of the mountain I described earlier.  It's a bit rickety, but it's fun nonetheless.

The rickety walkway leads you to blown highlights and this manky little pebble beach.

This is a picture of a rock.  I don't know why I took it, but I did, so here it is.

Also notice the severe lack of a level horizon once again.

This tug was moving something big and heavy looking.  I don't know what it is, but the centre of gravity must be pretty high, let's hope he doesn't try any hand-brake turns with that badboy.

This is the view from the top of the hill behind my flat.

This is (obviously) looking out across the water, the other side was somewhat more spectacular however...

It really was this colour too.  I haven't edited any of the pictures, and this is what I saw as I poked my head over the top of the ridge.

At the top were a group of plaques dedicated to a number of different countries.  I can only imagine they're the countries either Okpo or Geoje have had dealings with in the past.

They have a similar setup along the main high-street in Gohyun, only this flag is attributed to England.  Someone took offence to this and scribbled out England with a marker pen.

This gazebo thing had a warning attached saying: Please do not use this building when severe weather warnings have been issued.

I promised myself that, should a severe weather warning be issued, I will make my way to that very spot.  If I have a camera with me, all the better.

This is my favourite picture of the top of this hill.

Interestingly, there is a free outdoor gym type place with a number of interesting machines, just underneath the ledge.  I will head back up there when I'm bored and try out some of the machines.  It's probably a twenty minutes run up the hill, and a fifteen minute run downhill, so it will be decent, free exercise.

And this is the main street into Okpo, from the very top of a large hill.  It was taken in the twilight, which is why the colours are all strange.

Here, more than ever, you can really appreciate the hilly nature of this island.  The towns are nestled among the hills, and when seen from above, are really dwarfed by the greenery.

Of course when you're inside the towns, everything is very tall, and the greenery can feel somewhat distant.  Now you've seen this picture, you know differently.

That's all for this bumper edition 151st post.

I've not had much free time to add entries lately, so hopefully this bonanza edition will make up for some lost time.