Summertime and the living's easy?

So last week started the beginning of the summer vacation here in Korea, not that it's been any sort of real "vacation" for me.  Public schools and universities are out of school for 5 or 6 weeks, but hagwons don't have the same schedule.  Most of them actually extend their hours during the break and turn into an educational daycare of sorts.  Despite the longer hours, most of the private hagwons do take a week or so off, but I wasn't that lucky.  We were closed for Thursday and Friday.  It wasn't the reload that I was hoping to receive, but it was still alright.  I had friends over here that went to Thailand, friends that went to the Philippines, and Japan.  I had one friend that tried unsuccessfully to go to Shanghai (Visa issues when they actually landed in China).  I didn't have that opportunity due to the short break, but I did my best to make the most of it.

I spent Thursday with a friend and pretty much stayed at home on Friday, in preparation for a highly anticipated trip on Saturday and Sunday.  The Uljin Nature Trip (a river-trekking and windsurfing 2day excursion) was billed as being one of the tour guides "top three Shangra-La" spots in Korea... it didn't disappoint.  To get to the spot was not easy and was not fast, but it was worth it.  We started out early Saturday morning, a feat in itself when it comes to ESL teachers in Busan.  The drive was said to take around 4 hours, but traffic got pretty bad in one spot and we lost almost 2 hours.  Unfortunately, that lost time would limit us later on in the day.  There were twenty-four of us on the trip, but lunch and bathroom breaks were surprisingly well coordinated... otherwise more time would have been lost.  As far as "missing out" on some portion of the trip?  Luckily, none of us really know what we missed out on doing, so it didn't really affect us that much.  River-trekking was the main attraction on that first day.


In general, the only downside to nature trips in Korea is the sheer number of people on the trail.  Hiking is a very, very popular sport here, and you never seem to truly get away from large groups of people.  On last weeks trip, we saw probably 50 or 60 people while we were hiking.  That was not the case this week.  With the exception of some campers when we first entered the river, we were the only trekkers in the water.  After a long bus trip, it was good to get out and stretch out legs.  After a few hundred yards, it became increasingly obvious why a waterproof bag was required for the trip.  The banks were high and rocky and the spotty pools got deeper and deeper.  Eventually we were swimming against the light current attempting to hold camera bags and such above our heads.  While the trekking was fun, the diving was when the real fun started. 

After walking through the water for an hour or so, we came to the first spot where diving was available.  There was a small outcropping of rock that only rose a few meters above the water, but the pool itself was at least 5 meters deep... plenty deep enough to dive without any problems.  We spent a little time at this one, but soon continued down the river with promises of taller cliffs and deeper pools.  The next spot was twice as high with cliffs on two sides and a waterway shoot just upriver from it.  This is where we spend the largest amount of our time. 

I think that every member of our group jumped from this spot at least one time.  Took a while for some of them to work up the nerve, but I'm pretty sure that every one of them eventually made the jump.  While the height doesn't look too perilous in this pic, the view from above was a bit different.  You had to jump further out from this particular spot... only a few feet, but it looked a lot more daunting.  On my second jump, I got some sort of pressure headache from the way i was holding my breath.  The only obvious solution was to lounge languidly in the water and pull out the beer and soju that comprised everything that I had brought in my backpack... it's always good to plan ahead.  After last weeks trip, I learned my lesson and brought plenty of alcohol.  Or at least I brought enough to get us a through the first few hours of the trip, but don't worry, there was a fully stocked store just a few feet from the beginning of the trail.  I told you before, Korean's take their drinking and hiking very seriously and very vigorously.  I agree with at least half of this philosophy.

Entrance to the river... the only other people were in the tents in the background

The day was starting to get long and the next set of cliffs was another two hours up the river... this was when our driving delays started to catch up.  Knowing the trip back would not be safe as the sunlight began to wane, we started back down the river and began the next part of the trip... a limestone cave tour with lanterns.

By the time, we had gotten to the hostel, the sun was already down and it was time for the cave tour.  We joked around a lot when we were required to wear the hardhats into the caves, but the ceilings were low, the cave was black except for our lanterns, and the majority of us were on the far side of a good drunk.  (One opted to sleep it off in the bus and skip out on the cave all together.)  All that considered, the hard hats were probably a good idea.  I don't know if they truly saved us from being accosted by low flying bats, but I think they helped.  (Despite all the written warnings, I still jumped a bit when one flew at my face.)  The cave was interesting, but I grew up just a few hours from Meramec Caverns so this one didn't have a huge impact on me.  The hand carved marital aids sold in a small corner store outside the cave, however, immediately grabbed my attention.  As you can see from the picture, someone must've been practicing their technique. 

After the lantern tour, we came back to the hostel to a huge dinner with boiled chicken and pork dumplings.  I'd tell you that after dinner we all retired for the evening, but I assume that you'd smell the lie and know that we ended up playing drinking games on the beach until the early morning.  After an eventful night of "I never", "3 truths" and several other games, our host woke us with Naengmyeon and soju.  The next day would prove to be as fun as the first.

Sunday morning was overcast with very little wind.  Luckily, it didn't stop us from trying to windsurf.  The convenient store beneath our hostel was strangely run out of beer and soju the night before, but luckily, the alcohol truck must've arrived before we woke at 8am.  At least it was lucky for me, I was hurting in a way that only a full-fledged continuation could fix... hair of the dog and such.  Windsurfing was now on the plate.

I'll start off by saying that the day would've been a lot more interesting if we had been granted at least a modicum amount of wind, but it wasn't in the cards for this Sunday.  Despite a severe lack of airflow, windsurfing turned out to be a lot of fun.  The staff that hosted our training session were really the reason for the good times.  They fully understood that it wasn't the best day for windsurfing and the "training" reflected that knowledge.  We all made our attempts, some of us were more determined for success and a few of us were more hellbent for a full on training session.  There were trainers there to meet those demands.  Thankfully for the rest of us, the whole day was very laid back and when the wind gods didn't cooperate, they brought out a motorized skid and several 2man rafts to extend our fun.  Considering that gravity has not been my biggest fan for the previous decade or so, the rafts were a welcome alternative.  Through it all, of course, there was an ample supply of beer and soju.  (I hope that you, the reader, are beginning to realize that the drinks are just part of the experience over here.)  I spent the highpoint of the day lounging in a raft (as evidenced by the strange "life-jacket-sunburn" that I've been sporting since returning from the trip.)  A little frisbee tossing and some catch with an American football and our weekend came to an end. 

.... except of course for the 4 hour bus drive back to Busan. 

Hiking trip in Cheong-do 07-24-2011

Charles Jeong... the guide and event planner

This past weekend, I went on a hiking trip as a little prequel to the big river trekking trip mentioned here.  I knew that I needed at least a little warm up to give me an idea of what I had gotten myself into.  I realized at some point that maybe it wasn't the best idea to jump in feet first to a lengthy hike when I don't really like walking to the mailbox, but the things that I'm capable of accomplishing always seem to be a bit more extensive in my mind than they tend to be in real life.

My preferred mode of transportation

Emerson or someone like that said that the journey is often better than the destination.  I say fuck that guy.  Sometimes the journey hurts and the destination is freakin' awesome.  We met up around 8am on Sunday morning, a true feat in itself.  There were a total of five us in the expat portion of the group; one girl had been up drinking since Saturday.  She got less than an hour of sleep on the bus ride over and she still managed to embarrass me on the trail.  Truth be told: everyone managed to embarrass me on the trail.  The biggest issue for me was that it seemed to be never ending.  Every time I'd glance up, I'd see more hill to climb.  It wasn't steep enough to require us to tie off or anything, but the incline was still pretty rough in places.  I had a small tie string bag to hold a few bottles of water, a change of clothes and a towel.  The fifty-year-old Korean men that comprised the other half of our party looked like Frodo and Samwise with their 200 lb bags.  Lucky for the rest of us, their bags were full of many, many essentials.

Korean hiking is an entirely different beast from what I was expecting.  The trails tend to be a lot busier; hiking's very popular here.  There also tends to be a lot of drinking; drinking is very popular too.  We started the first leg of the trip with a quick Soju and rice wine toast.  Then we had some beer that they had frozen from the night before.  (Learned a valuable lesson regarding frozen beer... plastic bottles don't explode in the freezer.  They expand with the ice.)  Then, we had another quick shot and started up the hill.  I don't know for sure how far we traveled, but it was a 2 km minimum (2 km was the lowest distance on the marker, but we might have gone further.)  The twelve of us got spread out due to the difficulty of the slope.  I had to stop several times to catch my breath.  Another older Korean couple stopped at one point to make sure I was okay.  They offered me Makgeoli from their personal supply to help me up the hill.  So, everyone on the trail brings a little alcohol for the hike... always good to know.  At this point, I was completely split off from the group.  Most were in front of me and a few were behind me, but no one was within my eyesight.  Luckily, the trail only went up.  I came around a curve and saw another large group kind of forming a gauntlet on the trail while they caught their breath.  All of them had passed me at one point in the last hour while I was sucking air.  As I walked up, they started clapping and giving me high fives as I walked through their makeshift tunnel... very gratifying.  Of course, as soon as I went around another bend and they couldn't see me anymore, I went back to hoping there would be a defibrillator at the top.  I caught up with the group at a small open space and the drinks came out again.

After the that little breather, the terrain got much easier.  We went a little further up the trail, but then we started down the other side to where we would ultimately have lunch by a cold mountain spring.  Considering I was dripping wet with sweat, the cold spring was a welcome sight.  Once we actually got to the stream, I also felt a lot more comfortable.  Something about using my hands to help climb over the rocks makes me feel a lot more balanced... gravity can be a bitch when you're a guy my size.  Four points of support are just safer for me.  The water felt great and there was also a light breeze coming along the stream.  Nice little change from the stagnant, claustrophobic air on the first part of the journey.  (I'm sure that the air was not that stagnant at all, I'm just out of shape.)  Regardless, the stream was a welcome change, in my opinion.  We set up a small camp and that's when we discovered what else the Korean's had hidden in their backpacks.  They pulled out a bunch of cooking utensils, food, alcohol, propane tanks, burners, more alcohol, snacks, and finally, a little alcohol.  They had spicy chicken gizzards that I hadn't ate in a very, very long time.  They're not for everyone, but I've loved them since I was little.  The other expats and I asked to help, but we were quickly shooed away and the Korean's went to work.  The main food ended up being cold noodles that they made fresh with some pork cutlets, hard boiled eggs.  They had carried all of this stuff up the mountain while I was silently crying about my clean underwear being too heavy in my bag.  Here's a few more pics of the spot were we camped.

Grilling pork cutlets

Ever- present beer

Our lunch

The food was delicious.  I'm still impressed with the little things that they thought to bring to add to the meal: fresh cucumbers, onions, garlic cloves, spices.  They've obviously done this many times before. 

After lunch and a quick downpour, we started back on the the trail.  It basically wrapped around the valley and ended up at Unmunsa Temple.  It is the largest female monastery in Korea, housing over 300 female monks (nuns?).  The large evergreen tree in the following pictures is believed to be over five hundred years old.  The stilts that you see have been put there to help the branches from slagging too much and breaking off.  I'm running out of steam for this blog, so I'll let the other pictures below speak for themselves.

All in all, it was one helluva trip.  I was pretty beat up when it was all said and done, but I wouldn't pass it up if the trip was offered again.  It had been a long day, so we made our way back to the bus and started our drive back to Pusan, but not before stopping off at the local market to replenish our beer supply for the road....

The day of medicinal mud

I survived the Boryeong Mud Festival.  As I was looking for some pics to publish for this blog I saw that KMOV in St. Louis published some pics... kinda strange to see it referenced on a St. Louis station when I'm so far from home.  Kinda strange, but kinda nice at the same time.

This event had been on my radar since the first week or so of me getting to South Korea.  The little bit of research I had done billed it as one of the biggest events for foreigners in Korea and I decided early on that I didn't want to miss out on it.  I'd mentioned it to several friends, but only two decided to join up in the end.  One was really the first person I'd met when arriving in Korea.  We met at the ferry from Japan to Korea after I finished my visa run and had stayed in touch through FB since then.  The other that joined up was his roommate, an Irishman with a pension for drunken debauchery... we were immediate friends, obviously.  (We actually lost him for 7 or 8 hours on Saturday, but more on that later.)  The bus itself left at midnight from Pusan and took about 4 hours or so to get to Daecheon Beach in Boryeong.  We went to the hotel and got some much needed sleep in preparation for the next day.  No sleep would really be enough to offset the sheer hedonism that would follow on Saturday. 

When we had arrived the night before, we really didn't know how close we were to the beach.  It was 4am and the festival didn't officially start until Saturday, anyway.  Now, I've been going to the beaches in Pusan since I first arrived in Korea.  For the most part they are pretty, but they are very, very small.  They are surrounded by development and the beaches feel a bit claustrophobic because of the tall buildings and cove-style of the more popular ones.  As you can see in the picture, that's not the case in Boryeong.  Daecheon Beach is much more massive than anything that I've seen in Pusan.  It feels like more of a beach community, too.  The sand was incredible, the water was warm, most of the people on the beach were actually wearing swim suits, as opposed to the regular clothing that Pusan residents mostly wear when they swim.  (You have to see this to believe it, thousands of people swimming in jeans and long sleeve shirts in Pusan.... ridiculous.)  In short, it was what I was expecting an actual beach to be.  We bought some beer and soju and walked along the beach until we finally came to the main area for the festival.  Supposedly, there were almost 400,000 people on the beach for this first day... a quarter of them were foreigners.  This was by far the biggest number of non-Asian faces that I'd seen since landing in Korea.  There was a pretty large military contingent on the beach, but the overwhelming majority of foreigners seemed to be ESL teachers and expats.  It was great to have a 'we're all in this together' sort of vibe going on... at least from my perspective. 

For those of you who don't know, I am the only native speaker in my small hagwon (i.e. academy).  Most of the people that I've met over here work with at least one other native speaker.  It'd be nice to have at least one other person that's going through my situation, one other person to talk to about life at this school.  Instead, I've been typing away in our teacher's office and haven't heard a word of English in the last 2 hours.  I get told to come to meetings that are entirely in Korean with no explanation before or after as to what was being said.  It can be a bit unnerving at times.  I've started to grown used to being the invisible token in the back of the room, but it still weighs heavy at times.  Being on a bus with 25 other native English speakers was refreshing... being on a beach with almost 100k native English speakers was a fucking godsend. 

This is where I found myself around 10am on Saturday morning; surrounded by (mostly) friendly faces and heading to the epicenter of the Boryeong Mud Festival 2011.  When we finally arrived, we of course immediately headed to Club FM (Family Mart) and reloaded our recently depleted supply.  It was about this time that we first noticed an overwhelming lack of mud at the Boryeong Mud Festival.  We had been promised large pools and pits of the skin-rejuvenating mud, massive areas of mud wrestling and body painting.  We instead got a few bins loaded with 4 inch brushes and a limited supply of said mud.  Luckily.... we didn't give a shit.  We meticulously covered ourselves from head to toe with the brush:  "When in Rome" and all that.  It was about that time that the skies opened up and buckets of rain erased any evidence of this attempt.  It was an obvious sign that this party didn't have anything to do with the Mud... the mud was just the vessel.  (Anyone that has been to the "Sweet Corn and Watermelon Festival" or the "Murphysboro Apple Festival" or "Cajun Fest" should know exactly what I mean.) 

The short downpour did nothing to shake our resolve.  In fact, that's about the time the gloves came off.  (That's also about the time that whiskey became the preferred catalyst for the day, but I'm not pointing any fingers.)  The hours that followed embodied a level of depravity that should probably never be put to paper.  (Of course, taking my own advice has never been one of my strong suits.)  Large amounts of life were consumed; dignity was trampled on and then ignored entirely; the living was good, but for future reference, when you remove the waves that were previously helping to keep you aloft, gravity becomes the unfaithful ex that you had always known her to be.  That's when your face becomes a makeshift airbag and your arms cease to help in the endeavor. 

At some point about this time, we lost our drunken Irishman in a wave of saltwater and whiskey.  We found him 8 hours later walking aimlessly in front of that same Family Mart, hoping that we would venture back to the scene of the crime.  Coincidentally, our third amigo and my constant compatriot for the day had been convinced that we'd find him in that exact spot.  Sure enough, there he was stumbling around in a shade of pink that should never exist on a human body.  We had his wallet, his phone, and all of his money, but he'd still managed to get the most out of the party.... except sunscreen of course.  Sunscreen was not very high on the list of goals, obviously.  Shortly after finding the wayward son, an impressive display of fireworks started over the beach.  I took a few pics, but my camera did not do the display any justice.  Then it was back to the beach to lounge around under the full moon and people watch.  When the sun went down, inhibitions seemed  to come down, too.  The drink Sex on the Beach started to become the beverage of choice.  That and a strange cocktail called Forty Naked Korean Men Screaming and Running into the Crashing Waves.  Don't know what inspired the second concoction, but it was met with many cheers and shouts of encouragement.  This country had previously been in great need of random public acts of nudity.... it's good to go for awhile. 

I won't go into too many of the other sordid details... mostly out of embarrassment, somewhat out of confusion and general haziness.  I will say this, though:  this was one of the funnest times I've had since stepping on this shore.  I didn't even really mention the friends I made on the bus, or the people I met in the sea.  The whole weekend was exactly what I was looking to find.  If I decide to turn this one year into two, Boryeong won't necessarily be a factor, but it will be on the shortlist of can't-miss-weekends.  Fresh faces, good times, and a few new friends made up for any lack of mud.  I hope to see many of those faces again.  And to the random girl in the middle of the ocean... my name is Chris.  I'm not sure if I mentioned that. 

The night before Payday, and all through the house...

I don't know if there is a consistently more shitty day than the one that comes up right before payday.  I know, I know, the day the rent is due sucks, too, so does car payment day and student loan day and electric bill day.  I get it.  The "Day before Payday" day is just a little closer to home for me, right now. 

As of tomorrow, I will have been in Pusan, South Korea for two solid months.  My first week or so was considered training, though, and you don't get paid for training here.  I only get paid once a month, so this will actually be my first full paycheck.  In a word, I'm broke.  People are always talking about all of these things you can do without cash, but I've found that in most cases in life, people are stupid.  I'm sure there's some huge treasure trove of "free" activities to do, but I've never seen it.  The truth is:  I love to spend money.  I like to buy shit that I'll only use once; I like to blow money on a night out on the town... or a week out on the town if it's a particularly good week.  I'm a deacon in the Church of the Holy Consumer.  Sex, drugs and rock n roll.  I love it all.  Money defines me and my life.  Ya, I know, "That's sad", right?.... not to me.  Sad to me is pinching every penny and saving for that "rainy day".  I save for a "make it rain" day.... and I blow the fund every week.  I'm just not good at doing things that do not cost money.  It's the server/ bartender mentality that I've had since I was sixteen.  Unfortunately, the lack of money is currently "defining me and my life".  The good news is that Korea is relatively cheap, my rent is paid for by my employer and my paychecks will be more than enough to get me through a month, leaving me with a little extra for trips and mini-vaca's.  I just have to get through the next day or so and everything will be fine. 

The one thing that makes up for this weekend of no cash is the fact that I have several of those mini-vaca's planned for this month.  The first big trip is next weekend.  It's the first weekend in the Boryeong Mud Festival.  Basically, the Mud Festival is a huge gathering south of Seoul.  ESL teachers from all over the country have turned it into a kind of foreigner's spring break.  The mud itself is used for a bunch of beauty products here in Korea and it's trucked in from the surrounding Boryeong mudflats for the party.  It's one of those "can't miss" events for many expats here and I've been told that I have to go at least once.  I have no idea if I'll decide to stay here for another year, so better to go now.  (See quote at the bottom of the blog).  I'm meeting up with a few others from a small city north of Pusan and we're taking a party bus there after work Friday night... heading back on Sunday.  Gonna be a long weekend.

The next big plan for July is a river trekking and windsurfing trip on July 30th.  It's an overnight trip that's split into two major sections:  river trekking and cliff diving on day 1, windsurfing and party at the beach on day two.  The guide keeps the info on this trip close to his breast, but the first day description sounds very similar to Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park in Missouri, one of my all time favorite vacations as a kid.  I hope it's everything I'm expecting it to be.  I don't know anyone else that's going, but there are about 30 people signed up for the trip... max of 33.  It should be a pretty good time and I'll write about it a little more in depth when I get back. 

Maybe I'll go blow some money on a waterproof camera.... and it so it begins again.

In the last few weeks or so, I've alluded to a few of the cultural differences here in Korea.  I've mostly mentioned them in passing on my FB account, but I think it might be a good time to group some of them up and try to make a little sense out of it; or at least it will allow me to kind of sum up a set of pros and cons on the subject.

There is an overly developed sense of honor in Korea.  It stems from the Confucianism traditions of the country that basically state you should never insult someone, especially if they are an elder.  The age thing gets to taken to ridiculous levels, in my opinion.  If someone is older than me, I am supposed to turn away from them when I drink alcohol.  Now, I'm not talking about a 60 year old being my elder.  I'm 32 and I completely agree that a level of respect is owed to my elders, but a 33 year old is not my elder, they are my equal.  Not in Korea.  Any minor difference in age here changes how I'm supposed to act around them, even down to how I'm supposed to address them in a conversation.  It's a small part of why speaking Korean can be difficult. 


That same sense of honor can cause some interesting confrontations when one person feels slighted.  On FB last weekend, I mentioned that there was a yelling match in front of my apartment around midnight Saturday night, a yelling match that would've come to some sort of blows in the US.  It ended with my landlord and boss being led away by the police.  I found out later that there had been some sort of dispute between him and our neighbor.  Apparently, my neighbor's AC is also too loud and my boss wrote him a letter saying that it needed to be fixed.  (Never mind that I don't even have an AC yet).  The neighbor also runs a small restaurant downstairs that was mentioned due to the smell coming from the kitchen.  (This entire country is full of questionable aromas; you can smell the sewage running just below your feet, but the shabu-shabu is an issue for him.)  The response to this letter was for the owner and his wife to scream at my boss from across a small four foot wall.  This happened around midnight.  My boss, his wife, and another neighbor of course screamed back.  When I say "screamed", I mean there was venom dripping from their words.  I'm honestly surprised that the police did not show up quicker.  Of course, when they actually did arrive, the only thing they did was scream back at both parties... it was weird.  The yelling was okay with everyone involved, I think; the owner next door took offense to my boss insinuating his restaurant was in disrepair.  His honor had been challenged in some way, by my boss writing a letter.  I don't get it.  No handcuffs ever came out from the cops, everyone just yelled at each other and then my boss was lead away by the police, not in cuffs, but as if they were having a casual stroll to the pokie.  Korea....


In cops defense, though, crime does not exist in Korea, not in the way that we are used to hearing about in the United States.  On top of that, most of the police are 18 year old boys.  They're given the choice of police or military for two years when they hit eighteen.  You can probably guess what type of kids the police side ends up with receiving... not exactly Dirty Harry's.  There isn't any real danger for these kindercops, though, because gun ownership is illegal in here.  American's can say what they want about our right to bear arms, but the truth is, many of us kill people with those "arms".  Before writing this blog, I asked one of my coworkers to make sure that I understood the law, and their reaction was surprising to me.  She got an almost surprised look on her face and asked if I had ever actually fired a gun.  It caught me off guard.  It was almost a nervous question, like she was embarrassed to say it out loud.  I guess when you live through a civil war that killed an estimated two million people, you might change your opinion a bit on guns.  By comparison, the American Civil War killed 650,000 and no one's alive anymore to remember it... we lost 58k in Vietnam.  The other side to that argument is that Korea's been the whipping boy for most of history in this part of the world.  A few firearms in the hands of citizens might have helped discourage those occupations in the past, but who knows?  Gun violence isn't the only thing missing her, though.  Stealing, at least in my part of the country, is also non existent. 

The city I live in is larger than Chicago.  How long would a bike with no lock last anywhere in Cook County?  Not long.  I had someone chase me down the street because they saw 1000 won fall out of my pocket  (about one dollar).  It's mind boggling to me.  At this stage, you have to lock your door to run inside and pay for your gas in the US.  And forget about not locking up when you go to sleep or leave the house.  It's just a lot different here.  Not all places are safe, I'm sure, but most are.  There are still issues in some areas, but those aren't the norm.  And I think I'm pretty safe from the targets in this article. 

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.

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.