The Hi Mart Dancing Girls Are My Enemies

I live not far from a busy road in Okdong. All day and almost all night, you can hear traffic rolling along down it, but this has become white noise to me by this point, and therefore, I am not annoyed by it. People have to get from one place to another.

On the other side of this road, there is a Hi Mart, which an electronics store. It's like Best Buy sans the media; the LG and Samsung stores come in roughly similar formats. On some days, there will be a mini stage set up with sound equipment. On the stage will be two dancing girls. They will be dressed alike in impractical sexy/cute outfits and they will be holdings mics. They will be dancing and making the occasional announcement using those mics.

Leaving aside gender issues for the time being (can't they at least having dancing boys now and again? for me?), I am convinced that the dancing girls want to see me destroyed.

The problem is that sound spits on the difference in distance between my apartment and the Hi Mart. "Oh, Kelsey, you think shutting the window will help you?" the sound seems to say. "You're so adorable, I could just pinch your cheeks." So the sound leaks through and I'm treated to an endless stream of muffled K-pop and indecipherable speech all the live-long day.

This is particularly bad, because I'm one of those people who cannot deal with any sort of music or talking if I want to get any work done. My concentration shatters. Headphones don't work - even listening to music of my own choosing has that effect. Earplugs hurt my ears. Do I try to soldier through the assault? Do I say 'fuck it' and go to Tous les Jours and hope that their radio is all quiet-like today? I've not yet found an adequate solution.

Are the dancing girls aware of the torment they inflict upon me? Common sense would suggest 'no'. My soul after being treated to the billionth repetition of Big Bang's 'Tonight' while struggling to churn out words in the right order would say 'yes'. To what purpose? That, I can't say. Maybe it's the only way they can entertain themselves on the job. Maybe it's part of a sinister master plan, the likes of which you'd have to have the mind of a Medici and the heart of a Borgia to discern. Probably the latter.

And that is why the Hi Mart dancing girls are my enemies. At least the yowling of stray cats is limited to the summer months.

I saw something horrible in Indis last night.

No, I did not see anyone shanked in a barfight or streakers or anything like that. I saw something worse.

Indis is a western bar that takes itself seriously enough that it has western-style toilets. (And a random hodge podge of Americana and a sizable, high insensitive statue of a Native American in front of the patio.) Inevitably, while I did not drink much that yesterday, I eventually had to travel to them in order to heed the call of nature. This I did. I opened the door of the first stall.

The seat was splattered with pee. This in itself is gross, but not worthy of comment on the internet.

Nay, the curious bit was the question of how exactly did pee splatter out in a one-foot radius on the floor around the bowl. How? Just how? If you mess up the bathroom procedure that badly, shouldn't you just go home? Shouldn't you have gone home well before that point? Or at least covered up your terrible crime through thorough application of toilet paper.

It was worse than anything I've seen with the squat toilets and people's aims tend to be... less than precise with those in bars. Vomit sprinkles, lovely.

This is why I used the second stall.

The dating situation in Andong sucks and I will tell you about it.

Not just for me, but for every westerner in town.

It comes down to simple mathematics. The fewer English speakers in town, the smaller the dating pool, the lower the chance that you will find someone with the right sort of chemistry. Thus, the power of science is against us.

So the vast majority of us wind up being frustrated pandas, bitching about our prospects while quaffing a beer in Indis. And nothing, in a manner of speaking, gets done.

Basically what I'm saying is, while I quite like where I am, there are times - there are times - where I wish I was in the big city. But on the plus side, I'm reading a shit load of books!

Ten Things I Like About Korea

It's been a long time since I last posted, has it not? Anyway, in case you weren't aware, I am staying here for at least another year, so why not review some of the reasons why?

Here you are, then, in no particular order and leaving out any mention of how much I'm paid:

1) The ease and cheapness of travel. Back in western Canada, if you don't have a vehicle, you have but three options: begging a ride off of someone, air travel, and the Greyhound. The first is unreliable. The second is expensive (if fast), and will only take you so many places. As for the third... Pricy, smelly, cramped, possessing of an extremely limited schedule, and regretably the only consistent way to get to the rural areas. Here in Korea, we've got trains, we've got buses, and it costs less than twenty bucks to get to Seoul. For a Canadian, this is magical.

2) The landscape. I grew up with very certain idea what a proper landscape possesses, namely, the more trees and the more mountains, the better. Does Korea have these things? Why, yes. Yes, it does.

3) The food. Oh, how I miss western food! I'll probably gorge myself on the stuff when I visit home. But if you tell me jjimdak isn't amazingly delicious, I will pity you, sir.

4) Pantyhose in convenience stores. Getting dressed in a snazzy fashion for work or a night on the town and find yourself faced with a run? 7-Eleven has your back. You can also get socks!

5) The internet. Do you think I ever managed to get 10 Mbs / second download speeds on my home network back in Canada? You're cute. You make me laugh.

6) The students. They're not perfect - heavens know that I wasn't at their age - but generally speaking, they're a good bunch. When they're enthusiastic, it's infectious.

7) Clothes shopping. It doesn't cost a lot to look good here and as a consequence, I have learned how to dress myself accordingly. Some articles are hard or impossible to shop for given my figure, but you win some, you lose some. Starsha, Ashley, you would be proud.

8) The extreme amount of museums. I've got a history degree, guys. This stuff is like catnip to me.

9) Noraebang. The setup is just so much nicer than karaoke generally has back home. Instead of getting to sing on average two songs over the course of several hours in a crowded bar, you get to sing until your lungs give out in a cozy room with your pals. The only problem is that a lot of my foreign friends are less apt to appreciate the beauty of the thing.

10) My coteachers. I lucked out. Big time. Two of them are in stiff competition for the title of "Nicest Lady Ever", two more I count among my friends and I greatly enjoy hanging out with them in and out of school, another one has been very helpful indeed in matters regarding transportation, getting set up, etc., despite his busy schedule, and the last, while I don't know her too well, generally strikes me as a sweetheart. In short, they rock.

That is all for now, but there are other reasons. If I wasn't writing this on a cellphone, I'd tell you about them.