Thursday, June 30, 2011

The hair up there

Not your everyday barbershop...
I've been living in Korea for almost two months now and my hair was starting to get a bit out of hand.  I've been keeping it pretty short for several years now and anytime I wait more than a month or so, it looks unkempt.  Finding a barbershop in South Korea poses a whole new set of issues, though.  First of all, most places to get your hair cut only cater to men or women, there are not any unisex shops that I have heard about since getting here.  As you could guess, there are many, many more female hair salons than male barbershops, so finding a spot for guy's can be difficult.  Once you find a spot that's specifically for men, you run into another potential problem.  Many of the places that have a barbershop pole outside the establishment aren't actually barbershops, they are a kind of mini-bordello.  These places employee fifty year old women that previously worked in the red light districts before they got too old.  Not exactly what I'm looking for in my life.  Supposedly, they write the names of these types of establishment in a different way (first and last words switched or something), but I don't read or write Hangul (Korean alphabet) so this isn't easy for me to figure out.  Knowing all of this information, I decided it was best if I just asked my director where to go to get a haircut.  Probably shouldn't have done that.

Over the years, I've been a bit of a fad chaser when it comes to haircuts.  Growing up in the eighties and early nineties makes this especially painful when looking at old photo albums.  I've had a full spike, half spike, mini-mullet, rat tail, bowl cut, side part, center skater part, buzz cut, straight razor shave... I've had it all at one point in time or another.  In my opinion, the absolute worst of my many bad cuts over the years occurred when I was in third grade.  (To give you some quick info here, my hair is very soft and very straight.)  For about 3 days in the late eighties, a strange half perm haircut came into style (I did a quick search to try to find a picture of this, but obviously the interwebs wanna forget about this dark page in our history, too.)  Basically you got tight curls in the back third of your head or so and the rest of the hair was left alone.  It was pretty hideous, but I my eight or nine year old mind was convinced that I had to have it.  So, with a little convincing, I talked my mom in to taking me to have this ridiculousness done to my head.... or at least I thought I had convinced her.  Little did I know, she had already spoken with her friend and they had decided that it wouldn't look right to have just a portion of my head permed, so they decided the whole head needed to be curled to add wave.
This is what I ended up with.....
Now, I'm not saying that my cut would have been better, but at least I wouldn't be able to blame my dear well-intentioned mother for this assault on my dome.  I would've had no one to blame but myself.  The only reason I bring up this miscarriage of authority, is because I'm dealing with it again, over twenty years later. 

After letting my director know that I was looking for a barber, he was very eager to show me to his favorite.  He took me to a place with white washed windows and a seedy exterior... immediately, I thought he had confused the "needs" that I was trying to meet.  Thankfully, there was not a fifty year old scantily clad lady waiting inside.  The director spoke a few words to the man behind the chair and left me to get the cut.  Luckily I had my driver's license to give him an idea of how short I wanted my hair because, like everyone else, he spoke no English.  He went to work with a speed and skill set that I hadn't seen in a long time.  He didn't use clippers at all, and while I admittedly know nothing about giving haircuts, his technique was very impressive.  Then he spun me around to see his work.  It was very clean and there was no noticeable issues, except that it was too long for my taste.  We are coming into the summer months and I haven't really had hair longer than an inch or so for several years, so I wanted to cool off by shearing the locks that had grown since I got here.  I tried to convey this fact:  I made hand signals to show shorter hair, I showed him the picture again, but he just waved his hand and shook his head no.  I gave him the 8000 won (a little less than 8 dollars) and I left the little shop.  It wasn't until the next day that I found out my director had told him to absolutely not cut it too short.  He said it would make me look too much like a gangster.  I'm thirty-two years old and I now have a new Mom to tell the hairdresser how to cut my hair..... FML.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

More waste

(Disclaimer:  This blog is going to be a little different than my previous ones.  I read an article on npr.org that I originally linked on my Facebook page.  The story just sprawled on me after that and I figured there was enough material to blog about it.  I promise I'll get back to the norm on the next go around.)

I just finished reading another ridiculous example of bureaucracy at work.  The main body of the story is the congressional mandate to force the production of 1 dollar coins through the year 2016.  I guess they did this for because of the overwhelming support they received from the public the first few times they've been introduced to the populace.  To be honest, they haven't been accepted at any point in our nation's history.  The only place that they've found prominence, according to the article, has been in early casinos and as an occasional Christmas stocking stuffer. The only real advocates for dollar coins seem to be the vending machine markets, and of course, whoever is actually profiting from selling the metals to be used in the coins production.  (The zinc industry is almost entirely responsible for keeping the penny in rotation despite the government's loss of money every time one is produced.)

I don't know about you, but any dollar coin I've received in the past would go in a jar with all my other overbearing change; or on my dresser, or in the ashtray of my car, or in my couch cushions.  It just doesn't make since to create another item that so many Americans disregard, and some downright loathe.  Creating less pocket money instead of more is an easy answer, but it gets a little more complicated than that quick and easy one.  I think the most straightforward would be to get rid of money all together and go to paperless (and metal-less) currency, but I'm also not a big fan of lists available to track my spending records and trends. I'm not sure what the answer truly is, unless there was an affordable and easy way to xfer cash onto a card without it being linked to your name or statistic. Unfortunately, the companies that have developed or purchased that technology will only allow it to be used if they get there personal cut.  In my opinion, that's the main reason that the Amex gift card hasn't become more popular:  you can't use it in many, many places.  American Express is too pricey for many small businesses to use as an acceptable form of currency.  I'd like to see another option, but no one's going to develop or further the technology without some sort of financial upside.  A government subsidy could possible work... especially if it was still a fraction of the cost of mint production. 

Unfortunately, at the end of the day, you could manage to develop a picture perfect alternative to the wasteful spending in coin and paper production.  You could avoid all of the pitfalls associated with big brother knowing everything you spend your money to purchase.  You could also avoid the loss of jobs that come with automating any industry.  Even if you manage to come up with this ideal and perfect answer, you'd have to get Congress to sign off on it, the public to accept it, and the rest of the world to embrace it.... good luck with that, I guess.  And after all of that, you'd get to deal with large scale fraud as the hackers will continue to stay several leaps in front of any technological government program.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

With the beginning of summer on the afternoon of June 21st, the dreaded monsoon season (jangma in Korean)  starts here in eastern Asia.  Not exactly my ideal summer, but it only lasts for a couple weeks from what I understand.  Good luck getting anything to dry with this humidity.  That's alright, though, I haven't really gotten used to this hanging-your-clothes-to-dry thing anyway.  At least, now, I have an excuse. 

The depressing nature of this rain has me thinking about what I really like about summer, what it's supposed to be.  I don't know if there's anything in the world that affects the collective quite like the advent of summer.  It causes a level of hysteria in a 10 year old that a lethal dose of candy could never touch.  The promise of days at the pool, or days at the beach, or just days playing in the sprinkler in the front yard:  this is the beginning of summer for me.  Barbeques and beers and baseball and, in the background, the music.... always the music.

Music has been piggybacked on to my life's party since I was still wearing underoos.  I was about seven when I first got cable piped into my home and that's when I discovered MTV.  At that point, Twisted Sister was the band calling my name and summing up my summer.  Ya, I know what you're thinking, "a 7-year-old listening to Twisted Sister"... kinda says a lot about my life, actually.  In a lot of ways, this was really the beginning of my summer.  Frankie and Annette didn't have shit on "I wanna Rock" when it came to my own personal Beach Party. ("What are you gonna do with your life!?!")  It really started a life's infatuation with the sound, and more importantly, the words.  I'm not saying that this album is quintessential or that it'd end up on any all time lists, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit to a closed-eye-fist-pump every time that "The Price" comes up on my random.  Next up for me was Guns and Roses (Paradise City anyone) and Motley Crue.  Then we move on down the line with a solid couple of months trying to play Poison covers with Curt Gibbs, Aaron Woodrome, Jeff Klein, and the occasional Nick Hoffman... these were my early summers.  Innocence and music to get us through. 

The summer before my junior year was really the next big soundtrack change.  There are certain albums and certain songs that immediately take me back to that time.  While Twisted Sister, GnR, and Poison summed up many summers over the course of my childhood, these next few are more of a snapshot over that one summer... and that summer was anything but innocent.  Evil Empire was really the big one for me, but some old Grateful Dead, the soundtrack to Hair, and, of course, Korn rounded out the shortlist.  Hell Tupac was still alive and putting out albums at that time.  Life was good.  This music is like a wormhole to '96 for me... albeit that time is still a bit hazy for me, though. 


One year later, it was Cake's Fashion Nugget and When I Woke by Rusted Root that accompanied us when Jeff Ward, Luke Crawford, my brother, and I conquered the river that broke Burt Reynold's leg and made Ned Beatty "squeal like a pig".  Those two CD's were the only ones we had for the entire trip.... they were literally beat into our minds over that drive.  They will always be summer... just like the rest.

I've read a dozen books about "the greatest summer of my life."  The authors always seem to focus on some trivial event that happened when they were 10 or 12.  It just doesn't fly for me.  Summer just is.  It's not one specific moment or one specific event.  It's the culmination of everything good in the world.  It's all my smiles and all of my emotion.  It's everything.  It gets harder to separate the songs into the years, but the music is always there to send me back.  It usually catches me off guard (thank you Random Play), but it never fails to make me smile.... even on a shitty, rainy day on the other side of the world.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Western sensibilities (oxymoron?)

I had two completely different experiences this past Friday night.  The night started off with a small birthday celebration for another foreign teacher here in Pusan. Festivities got going a little after 10pm (about the time that everyone gets off work).  Being a newbie in South Korea, directions can be a bit taxing at times.  The public transportation here is better than anywhere I've ever lived: subways are well dispersed and cover most of the city (they do close at midnight and that can be a pain, though) and the taxi's are extremely cheap compared to what I'm used to having back home.  Most trips are less than ten dollars, two bucks or so for the subway.  If you're on foot, however, it's a helluva lot more confusing... getting to Dragon's Dream was no exception.

Dragon's Dream is a subterranean bomb shelter that's carved into a system of caves on the side of a mountain.  From what I understand, it's mostly known for the quality of their onion pancakes called pajeon, but we mostly just took advantage of the bamboo soju and ridiculous amounts of dongdongju, a milky rice wine that's served in a large kettle.  The bar/restaurant felt like a ride at Disneyland.  The cave itself has drippings coming down the wall and there's a constant soothing sound of water trickling through the cave.  I had to duck a bit as I walked to our table, so claustrophobic peeps should find another spot.  I wish I would've brought a camera, but I've stolen a few pics from the interwebs for you kiddies to enjoy.



That was the beginning of the night.  Very cool, but not exactly an assault on my cultural upbringing.  We left Dragon's Dream and went to a small outdoor area and drank until around the time the sun came up.  "Well, hell, that sounds like every high school summer in southern Illinois.  So why the title on the blog, Tapp?" you ask.  After a long night of drinks, my courage had been sufficiently bolstered enough to check out an aspect of Korea that's piqued my curiosity since I got here.  I went to my first jjimjilbang.

It's been on my nervous-radar since I first started looking into Korean customs and culture.  Essentially, it's a large public bathhouse that's split up by gender.  Many of them have a sleeping area you can go to afterwards.  In general, South Korea is a very conservative society that shy's away from everything sexual.  In American culture, nudity is sexual.  No matter how enlightened you consider yourself to be, being naked in America has sexual connotations.  So much so, that by me writing the word 'bathhouse', many of you immediately conjured a picture of San Francisco in your head.  It might have been a bit different in previous generations, but we didn't even shower after gym class back in school.  It was a bit too much of a taboo.  That's the part that was confusing me and sparking my curiosity, I guess.  A society that tends to blush if a woman's shoulder's are bare, is perfectly comfortable being surrounded by a bunch of other naked people.  It just didn't compute for me.  I had to see it for myself.

So I figured, 'I'm comfortable with myself.  I've been skinny dipping more than a few times, hell, I was once depants'd in front of a couple thousand people at Rehab at the Hard Rock (thanks for that Tom) I can do this.... maybe just one more shot.'  It helped immensely to have a friend that was familiar with the custom and had even been to that particular jjiljimbang in the past.  It also helped that I was still in some serious back pain that I mentioned in the last blog.  I'm not entirely sure, since the site's in Korean, but I think this is where we were.  We walked in the door and, after paying a massive 9000 won (about 9 dollars... and that price included the sleeping area, too) we were given a locker key on an elastic band to wear on the wrist or ankle and proceeded to the changing room.  Or unchanging room, I guess.  After a quick shower, I headed towards the first pool and realized about that time that the naked just didn't matter anymore.


That's when I first really enjoyed it.  Butterflies were gone and nothing but 6 or 7 hot tubs, sauna's, and such to look forward to.  The water had a saltwater base and the temperatures ranged from almost scalding hot to just above ice cold.  Basically, it was awesome.  They even had 3 or so sauna's with different temperatures... one dry sauna was registering at 85C or 185F or so, ridiculous.  Once leaving the hot tub/sauna area, the jjimjilbang goes back to a gender mixed area.  You're given a set of pajamas and there's more hot rooms to sleep inside.  There was one room that was similar to an igloo that was relaxing as hell after sweating out in the saunas.  If sleeping in an oven isn't your thing, you can go into a bunk bed area with floor mats.  The whole experience was incredible and it's been one of the best things that I've done since getting to Pusan.  We crashed for 4 or 5 hours (our pass was good for 24, btw) and then woke up to spend the day on the beach.  Beaches are another beast all together in Korea, but I'll have to talk about that next time....

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Time to face the strange....

No idea how to use the buckets...
I knew that when I moved to Korea, I'd have some pretty big cultural differences to overcome.  I came here fully understanding that some things would just be different than what I was used to back home.  I had been warned of a few of these things and some of them took me totally by surprise.  One example is that there is no basin for my shower area.  The only time that I've seen this type of set up is in a mass public shower inside a gym or campground.  Basically means you have to bring two towels to shower... one for you and one for the entire floor.  I can live with that.  Other differences have not been as easy.

  



Where the magic happens!!
I think the most painful has been the style of the Korean bed.  The best way for me to convey what a Korean bed feels like is to have you start by removing the mattress from your current bed. 
Now put a large, cushion-less heating pad over your box springs, a thin sheet and you have a Korean bed.  So, it basically feels like a set of box springs with no mattress.  I believe the floor would be more comfortable.  But considering I don't have enough floor space to actually lie down, I can't really be sure.



Working on the construction of yet another Korean bed



That brings me to Major Cultural Difference Number Two.  My room makes my dorm room from Boomer III look immaculate.  I'm currently living in a studio apartment that is smaller than the bathroom in some homes.  I have an armoire-style closet, a small oven top (no stove), a sink and a bathroom with shower.  I also have a washing machine for clothes, but nowhere to hang them to dry.  (Notice the random wet clothes hanging throughout my room?)  And, of course, I also have the aforementioned twin-sized bed.  Unfortunately, this means that I don't really have room for an actual chair (forget a couch).  The apartment did come with a small desk that I equate to the one I used in Mrs. Karcher's 2nd grade class.... minus the gum.  I think the small wooden chair is closer to the one from 5th or 6th grade, though.  Unfortunately, this leaves that damnable bed as the only real lounging area in the apartment.  My back is twisted in more knots than I can count.  I keep hoping that its hurting in the same way that my hamstring hurt after that first drunken night of Wii bowling... like a muscle that doesn't get used enough.  I'm not really holding my breath on this hope, though.

One huge aspect of teaching English in Korea is the agreement that the employer will pay for the apartment of native speakers.  It's in all of the contracts.  Perhaps the worst part of this particular situation: this is an apartment that my boss built onto his home specifically for the native teacher in his school.  I am the first to live here and everything is brand new.  To complain would be a direct insult to him.  This is a Confucian society; complaining is a lot more tricky than it is back home.  To make matters worse, you can see in his eyes that he's very proud of his decision to add this on to his home.  I'm sure it was a huge investment up front that he figures to make back in saved rent payments over several years.  Creates a bit of a conundrum for me as both a tenant and an employee.

No TV, no books, a spotty internet signal, and no other form of entertainment keeps me bored to tears if I stay in the room for too long.  If I have nothing loaded up media-wise on my laptop, I'll go to one of the many Wifi hotspots around the city and leech a few torrents or dl a podcast or two.  At that point, I'll go home to fill in some of the boredom with some good old fashion stolen entertainment.  That's when I realize that, because my walls are made up of little more than papier-mâché, I can hear every conversation that my next door neighbors have with each other.  (I've thought I had thin walls in previous homes; turns out I just had loud neighbors.  Now, I can honestly hear the sizzle from the skillet when the neighbors make a meal.)  So, at this point, I just self-consciously don my earphones, lay back on the slab of concrete called a bed and catch up on all the shitty American TV that I've missed in the last few years.



No, that's not my fridge
Or I drink.  And, luckily, there's plenty to drink.....

Sunday, June 5, 2011

How'd I end up here?

So, I decided to join the 21st century and finally start a blog.  A tweet's just too short and I'm too wordy.  I seem to always be a cup of cappuccino or bottle of booze away from these ridiculous diatribes anyway.... might as well start putting them to paper.

I moved to Busan, South Korea almost one month ago now.  I moved out here mainly because my life needed a reboot.  I had been living in Tulsa, OK and that had served as a nice baby step, but I really needed a larger change than what I was ever going to get there.  I love my family.  I love my friends.  But I needed to make this leap; maybe just to say that "I still can".  I didn't have a cliched midlife crisis or anything... I'm not quite that old.  I think it was more of an awareness that I would hit that age in no time at all. 

The "I wish I woulda's" had started almost immediately after moving back to Illinois.  I had moved to Las Vegas about a year after graduating from SIU-C in 2001.  I was there for five years and change. Las Vegas was one of the best time's of my life, but the time had come for that chapter to end.  The bad part was that I had brought it all on myself.  A sense of entitlement had started to creep into my life.  I started to think that I was more valuable and irreplaceable than I ever had actually been.  I traded my passion for glory (queue "Eye of the Tiger" montage, maestro).


The manager that hired me at Wolfgang Puck's Cafe (my first job in Las Vegas) used to call me "Poolside Chris" because I spent all day by the pool in paradise... not a care in the world.  After nights that I made it home before sunup, I'd stumble out of bed just long enough to move to the pool and go back to sleep.  I'd wake back up and go to work, spend every dime I made that night on women and booze and do the same thing the next night.  I was barely in my mid-twenties and was having the time of my life.  Pretty soon, I wanted more.  I learned a few parlor tricks, got a new job, and called myself a fine dining server.  I liked to drink and I liked to learn about those drinks so I passed a small test and then I called myself a wine sommelier.  I could smile and never had an issue getting a laugh.  It got me into jobs, got me into parties, got me into trouble (mostly just the good kind of all three).  Then, I think I just got a little bored.  Or I was starting to head down the road. 

The point is... something changed.  That's when I pulled a Rocky 3 and forgot to "go with what got us here".  I thought I was entitled to something more.  'These were my friends, this is my party.  I can do whatever I want to do.'  I tried to push my weight around and it was the beginning of the end.  When you spend your life as a jester, it's hard to drop on a dime and switch to a more forceful personality.  Looking back on it now, I think that all of my problems boiled down to that change.  Vegas still calls my name, at times.  I might go back there if the economy ever fixes itself, but I don't think it'll ever be quite the way it was when I was 25.  Then again, nothing ever is.


That's the short and skinny of "How I Ended Up Here".  When I got back to Illinois, I was just looking for another way to escape again.  Tulsa worked for a while, but I think I needed something bigger.  That's been five years and 2 homes ago, but everything goes back to that point.  The other years were just a filler of sorts.  I made a lot of really close friends when I moved back to Illinois, but my heart was still "Away".  It wasn't in a particular place, per se, just on that proverbial road.  Now I'm on the other side of the world, just one cup short of..... everything.