The Bowling Times News

Lately it seems that bowling has become an alternative to going out drinking. We have good fun doing it and between the competitive ones a bit of cash exchanges hands. My friend Teddy owns bar Bliss (our local watering hole) and he has also started to join us for some games. Unfortunately for him his game is way behind the rest of us so he wanted some pointers to help him catch up to the rest of the crew. He called me this afternoon and I met him for a couple of hours. If you continue to read below he put a little write up about our afternoon on the facebook homepage for his bar. Here is what took place (according to Ted):

Breaking News
By Bull Shitter , AP sport writer

All time top Seed bowler, Cameron Metcalf, from Canada was beaten by a rookie, Ted Park, from Republic Of Korea in Hannam bowling center this afternoon. This is the biggest upset in Korean bowling history. The winner, Ted Park, tried to be humble but he could not conceal his glee meanwhile the loser, Cameron Metcalf, tried to be cool but he could not conceal his anger and decided not to play against him anymore. He knows very well he will only lose face whatever the result is. This is saddest year for Cameron. For him the year is still too long to end.

***What Ted fails to mention is that one game I bowled a score of 201 and this obviously tired my arm out. Not to mention the fact I skied all night the previous night getting home at 7 am and waking up at 11:30 this morning. yes I am making excuses. Had this been a three game series I would of been the winner. Had this been a 5 game series I would have been a winner. Sadly I agreed to a two hour window of games and in his old age he out foxed me for the victory. Now I have to put up with his bragging for the rest of my stay here or until I stop going to his bar. In my bitter mood boycotting Bliss is a possibility (obviously starting after New Year's Eve.)

Night Skiing

If I have a little drink in me I will agree to almost anything. This time on Christmas Eve I agreed to join ChanYoung for some midnight skiing. Thankfully I am on holiday because the bus leaves Sadang Station at nine o'clock, you arrive just before midnight to rent your skis and then you go crazy for a few hours of cold skiing before heading back to Seoul at 5 am. It should be a good time but my body will hate me tomorrow as I have a bunch of running around planned for the day.


Our Midnight arrival. You then go through all the credit cards you own and figure out which one gives you the biggest discount before using Saejin's who wasn't even there. What I love about Korea is that for a simple ten bucks you can rent a ski jacket and pants to use for the night which makes jean skiers even more of outcasts than the ones in Canada.


Ready to help the snowboarders tackle the baby hill.


Chan Young buckling up.


Heading up to the bigger baby hill. Vivaldi park had some tough trails but they weren't open at night. I'm crap at skiing but wanted off the beginner run so I had fun convincing beginner snowboarders they could handle the mid range slope. It was fun standing at the top and watching Chan Young fall every twenty metres before skiing down with a straight face to make sure he wasn't sporting a broken limb.


Chul Gyu picked up snowboarding quickly and next time we go I will make him try the harder runs with me.

We had a good night and I will look into doing it again during my week long vacation at the start of February.

Staff Christmas Party

Last night (December 23rd) the school went out for Christmas dinner. We started the afternoon off bowling. We were split into four teams of three where Mr. Oh made a rule that the three losing teams had to each buy a round of drinks later in the night. Trouble here is that in Korea "a round" of drinks is multiple drinks in one bar, the next round means more drinks but in a new location. My team was made up of the English department and we stunk. We lost bad.

Over a dinner of stuffed roasted duck I did my best to refute each and every drink offered to me. The rest of the staff drank way more than I have ever seen any of them drink. The principal never drinks and so when he got up to leave he echoed what MR Oh had been saying that nobody was to leave until all four rounds were done. There is an unwritten law that you should all stick together so once the principal was gone and I saw the other "non drinking" teachers start tipping back soju I knew I was stuck going out.

It turned into a good night predictably ending in lots of drink for some and some good dancing fun in a singing room. Today I feel alright just a tad sleepy but luckily I made up a story while out drinking about having to make a potato salad for our Christmas Eve party so the vice principal gave me permission to leave the school right after lunch.

Visa Issues

This latest contract has been a pain in the ass to get confirmed by immigration. After four months of waiting, a lot of bureaucratic door slamming, missing and wrong papers coming from the RCMP, it was the Winnipeg Police who came through with seeing my ID and printing out one simple paper from their computer. Thanks to my aunt and cousin in Winnipeg I can now almost 99.9 percent confirm I will be given my proper Visa instead of this four month long temporary one. Thankfully this is my last year here and I won't have to deal with this problem again. (This being said until I have the right stamp done I'm still leery.)

Don's Birthday

The last Friday of November we all got together for Don's birthday. We started the night off with a mountain of meat from platter choice at a Greek restaurant before heading to do some Karaoke at Bliss fueled by lake of beer. We finished the night off at Soho with a river of shots to make us dance. Don had fun but we all predictably felt like crap the next day. It had been a longtime since we went wild like that and I have now turned into one of those thirty somethings who complains about not being able to drink like I used to.

The miracle of floor heating

The problem with my latest apartment is that it doesn't have a dryer. I have to hang my clothes and it can take a full 24 hours for things to dry. When it comes to washing the bedding it can take longer but now that it's winter the drying times can be cut in half using the floors. As I type, almost every open inch of flooring has a wet blanket on it and hopefully by the time I head off for a friend's going away party things will be dry.

Long time no post.

For the last month I have been terrible at updating. No real reason and it's not that I haven't been up to much because I have. I just kind of let things get backed up and have been lazy about signing in. On Thursday night Heidi called me from Texas around 11:30 pm and she asked if I was alive because I have forgotten to reply to her emails. This reminder put in my head I should be posting more. Anyway, it was amazing hearing from her again and we ended up chatting for nearly two and a half hours about everything, nothing and covered every detail about her up coming wedding (the donkey and sombrero being the best wedding option ever.) She also sent me a picture of her wedding dress and she will look amazing walking out on the beach.

I badly want to go to the wedding but it is in Mexico and a package deal that you can only get from Canada or the States. For me it means paying nearly double the price because I have to first get to North America before heading off to Mexico. (If anyone knows the upcoming numbers on the lottery and feels like passing them on to me I think I can come up with the money.)

The only trouble with Heidi's phone call was that
1: It was late.
2: Heidi's hello had undertones to them that invited me to get up, open the fridge and start drinking.
3: Being a two and a half hour chat this led to too many late night beer on a school night.
4: I ended up sleeping in by twenty minutes and was a tad late for school.