Top Start To The Lunar New Year

Well I just re-read my last blog from the 28th of January. I did say that part two would come when I am sober. It has been just over a week now and finally I am sober again, so here it is. The one problem I am having is that I can’t remember what part two was about. I should really learn to take notes when I am planning a later blog whilst under the influence. I think I should also learn to ‘save as draft’ at these times and post my blog the next day. This would spare an awful lot of bollocks appearing on this site.

Now, I have made a couple of changes to the links column, you will see on the right of screen as you scroll down. First of all is the dilbert blog, this you must read. It is as silly as a wheel. Enough said. Second is “Calmly Hungover”. It is my mate Dave’s blog. It is an interesting perspective on life in Corea and on the planet in general. It is distinctly Dave and not recommended for anyone who dislikes being out of his or her comfort zone. Thirdly is a link to a site called “Stupid Videos”. One can whittle away hours at this site if one chooses. If you do chose to visit it, Parky’s favourite is “Happy Doughboy”. Just plonk that in the search bar and you should find it. Nathan, my yankee mate from down the road, highly recommends “Why men don’t ask for directions”. They both display a taste for refined, intellectual humour and I think this is reflected in their choices. (every fifth video is automatically a commercial for something not related to the video, so if you find that you haven’t wet your nappy after viewing either of these two, press play again.)

Well Al (egg) has been here to visit for the last week. We had a great time. He arrived in Gangneung on Thursday. It has been a very mild winter with temperatures hovering between –3° and 3° with clear blue skies. On Thursday the weather continued as normal, in fact it was rather nice. We had a top of about 6° and it was very nice until eventide when it became bitterly cold. We awoke in the morning on Friday to find that it was the coldest in Gangneung that it had been for 12 months. We had our first below zero maximum since last march. The official temperature was -3° max for the day, if it made that I’ll eat my hat. It was bitter, bitter, bitter cold with quite a wind whipping up off of the freezing ocean and perfect weather Al and I decided to go for a bit of a ride on the bike. Of course we were still inside the heated apartment when we made this decision, but we didn’t back out. When we got outside and our frozen bollocks broke clear away from our bodies we figured we had nothing left to lose and rode straight to the beach of all places. Al’s hands had gone a peculiar shade of pink and had grown ridges the size of the zugspitz by the time we got there, and after a quick cuppa we decided to ride back into town and buy gloves for the poor fella. About a third of the way back into town we spotted a store that may have had gloves so we pulled up there, bought gloves and proceeded down to Gyeongpo, the other beach in town. One might have thought that we would have learned our lesson by then and not ridden to the beach, but we did. I guess the highlight was pulling up at one of the public dunnies at Gyeongpo at Al’s request. I stayed outside and smoked a ciggie while Al ventured forth. After about 10 minutes I see Al leaning out of the dunny door and beckoning me inside, I followed and realised what he had been doing in there all this time, there was not only a hand dryer blasting gusts of hot hot hot air but also a radiator about the size of a computer screen mounted on one of the walls, radiating, as they are wont to do. This was the happiest I had seen Al for an hour or so now, we stayed in there for about 10 more minutes laughing at how ridiculous the situation was and ventured straight home upon exit.

We had a cracking time over the weekend while Al was here, it was freezing cold so we hired a car as opposed to venturing out on the bike again and went up into the mountains and stuffed about. I will write more later when I get the pics to go with the story. One thing that does stand out in the memory though was that after dinner on Saturday Al was coming down with a cold so I gave him my keys and he went home and Parky and I went out for a couple of drinks with our mates. Upon getting home at about 11:00pm, Al had locked the door to the apartment and Parky realised that she had forgotten her keys. My first thought was “we are never going to wake him” and I was right. We stood there for About 15 minutes, me ringing the doorbell and ringing the house phone from my mobile, Parky knocking on the door and yelling “AL!” (and giggling like a schoolgirl). After that we went upstairs and woke the landlord and got the spare key to the house. I put my ear to the door to make sure Al was still in fact alive to hear the dulcet tone of his light snoring. Satisfied, but bewildered as to how he had slept through that, Parky and I went to bed.

Many things that had puzzled me the previous night were explained to me in the morning. One was when Al woke up he was feeling much better but insisted it was beyond him how we could ever sleep with the heating turned up so high. He said that he had awoken at about 3ish covered in sweat and the whole room was so hot that he could hardly handle it. We figured that he must have had a hell of a fever because we had run out of heating oil and the apartment was actually quite cold. So that explained the dead sleep, but what about Parky’s giggling. She explained that after yelling “AL!” at the door a few times she realised what it must sound like to the neighbours. “Al” in Corean means “Egg”. So she had this vision of somebody hearing from another apartment, her at the door yelling “Egg! Egg!” and had broken into a giggle fit, one of those giggly moments when you can’t even explain yourself without breaking out again. I must admit, the image is quite amusing.

That is about the end of it for the moment. I have now remembered what part two was about but that must be saved for later. It is a whole new level of silly.

Benjamin