Happy Holidays

I can't remember how many times this week I have had conversations with students telling them to avoid shopping on the 23rd or 24th of December. Yet I have managed to leave all my shopping to the last minute. Tomorrow will be a busy day of classes first thing in the morning, a couple of hours off from lunch until I have to pick up Angela's nephews from their school for our class together. This leaves shopping for the last couple of hours before malls close and then a trip to Safeway to load up on food for Xmas Eve, Christmas day and Boxing day. Hopefully the years of fighting old ajumas on the Seoul subway will make the last minute shopping rush feel like a walk in the park (albeit a crowded Korean park.)

Where to start?

Things are almost all settled in here. Been away for some time moving apartments and waiting for the internet. (Who knew it took only 10 days to get a connection?) During this time we had to run down to the nearest coffee shop (it's Vancouver, we walked a block) to use the internet. But now the internet is up and with the TV playing the Flames game things are all good.

Here are some pictures from September (I'm way behind) and our first meeting with Rachel Lynn's patio and amazing home.


Rachel Lynn smiles.


Saejin relaxes.


Ross calculates the makeup of the chemical compounds in my camera.


Back in side for games. Here Saejin is before he learns the rules for the new game.


Here he is during the game wondering how having people yelling things at you can be considered a fun thing to do after drinking. It is.

Going to Rachel Lynn's house is great because we always have a chance to play some sort of game. This one has each person given a handful of papers where you write down any noun (really any...Rachel Lynn's dad plays and he gets dirty). We then are divided into two teams. Teams alternate going and one person has a minute to describe the noun they picked from the hat. When you guess it you get the point. After all the words have been played they go back in the hat and you then have to act them out. This is the hard part but it's good fun.

Friends in Town

This weekend is shaping up to be a busy one. My best friend Graham is flying in from Calgary for the weekend and he always has a list of things to do while in Vancouver. I've just finished my best rain dance so that we don't have to go to the pitch and putt in Stanley Park. Tomorrow Sam and Barclay arrive for their two week tour of the Vancouver area but their list of things to do will prove to be a lot harder to complete. They are stopping by on their way home to England and have visions of Moose steaks, ice hockey (not sure what that is) and a sampling of all the micro brew beers the area offers. Good times to follow I'm sure.

Gone to the Movies

This past week I've been to the movies a couple of times. The first go round was to get a horror movie fix with Paranormal Activity but sadly it didn't live up to the hype and it never once made me a)jump b)scream c)throw off my glasses in fear or d)all of the above even once. The second movie was Saejin's choice so that meant seeing the latest big budget movie pretending it has a convincing story line, so we went to see 2012. It too was crap.

The fun part for me was remembering how different theatres are here compared to my old stomping grounds on the ROK. They mostly surround pricing. Here the tickets are almost five dollars more for the same movie, released mostly on the same day and housed in the same quality of movie theatre but here you have to go a whole lot earlier to get a seat. In Korea your ticket gives you a seat number that you can choose when you buy it. I'd love this system to catch on here but it won't because the crazy people who camp out for tickets would then disappear. If they aren't there then the news cameras aren't there and the big studios are no longer getting free publicity so then people wouldn't know what crappy movie they should be wasting their money on.

Saejin had a few good laughs at the theatre. He ordered a small coke and found out it was bigger than the largest coke in Korea. When he pointed this out to the cashier she pointed back that this is why we're so fat here. What bothered Saejin even more was that he couldn't believe the price of a small popcorn, "$6.21 for popcorn? That's more than the price of a beer!" In a world of monthly budgets. he knows where his loyalties lie and declined the popcorn.

Tim Horton's

It's embarrassing to admit because it is way to Canadiana but I have been visiting Tim Horton's a bit too much lately. There is one a block from my school and it's not for the cheap price of coffees or their selection of donuts and timbits that I visit. Sadly, I've become addicted to their new French Onion soup. (Their advertisement has clearly worked on me.) The soup lacks the perfect amount of cheese and bread to soup ratio you'd expect in a good French onion soup but it's amazing none the less and like everything else there, it's cheap.

As for work, I'm scheduled to teach the conversation classes now which is better than just doing one on one classes because there are more students who talk. The school seems quite good and the people running it are organized and super nice. The only bad part about it, is that I never know my daily schedule until the night before work and my hours (while increasing) are also just over part time for now. They have Friday night parties which I will probably check out this Friday so that the staff and students know I want to be part of the team but hearing the stories of last Friday's tomfoolery, I need to be careful. Turns out Koreans drink the same way as they do back home and that means a lot. To quote another teacher from the school, "there were tears,a fight and destruction of property" not sure if that means a good party or something I think I'm too old for.

Homeless Signs

The homeless in Vancouver are among the best marketers I have come across in a long time. Here is a collection of cardboard signs I have seen held up asking for help this week:

Too lazy to work, too ugly for prostitution. An approach that makes people look at their faces and sees they aren't ugly so they'd better give money so the person doesn't get caught in the sex trade.
Battle of the sexes, who gives more? He then had two boxes set up and gave a running today of who was in the lead. When I walked past I was surprised to learn the men were up by $1.45.
If you feel like giving, make a second lunch to pass along. This one plays off knowing you have too much food and it wouldn't cost too much to put together a second meal.
Smile if you masturbate. Gets people's attention.
Spare change for weed and beer. Weed and beer are a Vancouver staple that locals wouldn't want anyone to be without.

Work

I started to work today after a very long, long vacation. It's not exactly what I want to be doing but it is money with a lot of flexibility in the future. I'm teaching conversation classes at a small school downtown with...surprise surprise mostly Korean students. I can't escape Korea.

TV Bye Bye

Once upon a time an old Korean ajuma went into my friend Heidi's place when her son (the ajumas son, not Heidi's) was moving out and knowing no English the ajuma said, "TV Bye Bye*." For me being back in Canada I wouldn't miss the TV one bit if it were gone. Back in Korea, it was a different story. I downloaded all the big hit TV shows from the US and the UK to watch back on the computer and felt I needed to watch. Here it's a different story. I don't even know what shows are on what night and really other than Sunday nights (aka Amazing race and Brothers and Sisters night) I hardly watch it. The only thing I will admit to watching more of is hockey and that's just because it's on when I'm at home whereas in Korea it was on while I was teaching morning classes. This being said, V is premiering tonight and I plan to watch just to say it's not as good as the original series.

* The ajuma knew very little English and meant to say, "He is my son and he will never marry you. You don't even know how to clean out the left over rice in the rice cooker."

English Bay and Stanley Park

Time to get some Vancouver sights on here. The apartment is a three minute walk from False Creek.


Posing on the beach one morning after we arrived in September.


SJ being a both a good and bad Vancouverite. He is proudly drinking coffee on the beach but he didn't bring his own reusable cup. The tree hugging hippies will not like him.


Kimchi!


Taking a break in Stanley Park. I was so happy to see a garbage can again that I had to get my picture taken next to it. (Korea is a garbage can free zone and if there is one it will definitely be overflowing with garbage.)


SJ acting as if he is used to being surrounded by nature. He did a good job of not jumping each time he heard trees playing in the wind but did panic when a nursery of raccoon met us on the trail.


The Lost Lagoon


More wildlife not to be eaten.

All in all Vancouver is a great place to live. The only thing that would make it amazing is if the city can somehow convince Calgary to swap hockey organizations.

Canadian Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving kind of snuck up on me without much warning. Living in Korea you remember when Korean thanksgiving is (nobody forgets to notice at least three days off in a row) and the American thanksgiving is celebrated at lots of the pubs in Itaewon (nobody forgets the places that serve turkey.) It wasn't until I looked at the Safeway flyer and noticed a special thanksgiving section that I knew Monday was a holiday. I'm still not brave enough to cook turkey and unlike Korea nobody gave me any holiday Spam gift sets to eat, so Saejin and I bought monster sized steaks. We made sure we plated at least two vegetables and by drinking the meal with wine it was a holiday meal.

For the day off on Monday(aren't all days off when you're unemployed?) Rachel Lynn woke me up with a text message saying her boyfriend Ross was about to roast up some ham. She invited us over for an early dinner and it was amazing. She made up a salad that was so good I didn't even notice I was eating beets. So I'm not so out of the loop on holidays I think I'd better fill in my day planner with the Canadian ones. I think Halloween might be coming up sometime soon.

I'm Australian

Turns out that no matter how long I worked in Korea as a Canadian they think I'm Australian. I was supposed to get my pension from Korea mid September (and after working there for so long it's a big chunk of change) but it didn't arrive until a couple of days ago. After calling Korea a few weeks ago to find out what the problem was it turned out that the records between the pension office and immigration didn't match up. Immigration had me down as an Australian. The lady working in the pension office had been working there for three years and she said this was the first time she had ever seen this kind of problem. She was glad I'd called and she explained it was just a shuffling of paper work that was delaying the money being sent. When I passed the phone onto Saejin she was even more apologetic and said she would personally send the money from the local office's account and speed things up. She also mentioned to Saejin that my school has yet to make the last payment and once (and if) that happens (it won't) I'll get another hundred and thirty bucks in my account. I'm not holding my breath but with the job search still on going it gives me a lot more time to find exactly what I'm looking for. Happy Thanksgiving.

It's on fire

Saejin is convinced that the bathroom is constantly about to burst into flames. No matter how many times I explain it's just a heated light that warms the bathroom he gets worried. Back in Korea he had no problem with the shower shooting water inches from the electrical socket or the fact the light bulb was unexposed and also within reach of the arcs of water. Cultural differences are fun.

UBC Museum of Anthropology

Old post here from the first week in Vancouver. Rachel-Lynn's mother works at the museum and they were having (in Vancouver like hippie ways) a dance performance at the museum. With nothing better to do and the first chance to see RL we agreed to head over to UBC.


RL and her boyfriend Ross grooving to the music.


Saejin adopting Mrs. Baird as his Vancouver mom.


RL and Saejin touching one of the "touchable" pieces of art.


Posing for a picture after being led through the museum by a troupe of dancers who stopped every so often to hippie dance.


Everyone hippie dancing. The thunderclap is now a new favorite dance move. Can't wait to show it off to my Korean friends.

Quick upload of some fun we had on Santosa Island in Singapore. I'll try to get around to uploading the rest of the trip soon but reume work and looking for a job is taking most of my time lately. Any job hints or resume tips passed on would be appreciated. As for tonight, it's 15 cent wing night, I can't wait to pig out.

First Impressions...one week in

While I am missing Korea I am so happy to be back. Here are some reasons:

Milk comes in four litre bottles.
Sandwiches are for sale everywhere.
Hockey highlights are shown even for preseason games.
Fruit is cheap, plentiful and fresh.
Dog the Bounty Hunter is on TV every four hours.
Fresh air.
I get asked for ID going into bars.
When ordering food or drinks you never ever need to order anything larger than the small size.
15 cent wing nights.
Draft beer.
Salads come with the dressing on the side and not swimming in dressing.

The only thing I have noticed that I'm not happy with is eveything is SOOOOOOOOOOOO salty. It's disgusting. Other than that things are good.

In Vancouver

Finally settled in Vancouver which was difficult after two weeks of swimming, a lot of sun and a final wild goodbye night in Seoul. I will post a lot of updates later this week.

Updates coming

There has been so much going on the past two weeks (mostly drinking and meeting friends) that I haven't had anytime to post. Two more weeks of holidays and then there will be lots to see and read about.

Day Trip with Ted

Open wide

I'm loving Korean dentists at the moment. I had scaling (deep cleaning) done and had two cavities filled all for 30 dollars. It does help the dentist is a friend of a friend but what helps more is that I didn't go to the poorly named S&M Dental clinic just down the street.

Kangaroos

Had a great little dinner at Nic and Rob's place on Saturday night. They basically live in a mansion with the best patio to take in the views of the city. I should have brought out my camera out but didn't want to appear as if I hadn't been in a nice house before so I acted cool. We ate a lot and chilled the whole night outside on the patio. Nic was not shy about refilling drinks and never once let my sparkling wine dip below half a glass.

At one point near the end of the night the topic moved from Rob's nurse stories (always disgustingly fun) onto Leonie's fostering of kangaroos as a child. Saejin and I refused to believe this story thinking the majority of Australians present were taking the piss out of us. When you start a story out about a baby kangaroo jumping on your head and you are Australian it's like a Canadian saying they have lived in an igloo. After five minutes of refusing to believe the details about these kangaroo stories started to sound real and I will now say they are true although I am waiting for the pictures as solid proof.

Yummy

Living with Joone has been going alright. I'm slowly getting used to a new sleep schedual but when I only work half days I shouldn't complain if I get to bed later than I want. The worst thing in this place is Joone's ashtray. I know what he's getting for his next birthday.

Dinner and drinks

A couple of weeks ago my former student's family asked me to go out for dinner. We had agreed to sushi a few weeks before but I was thinking sushi meant the Japanese variety with salmon and tuna as my options. Instead we went to a Korean restaurant where the first floors holds the fish for you to pick and upstairs we eat it. Luckily they had 도미 in Korean which my phone tells me is a sea bream. Neither word means anything to me but it is tasty when paired with soju.


SeChan giving his normal look when asked to do anything.


The family finding out the weight and price of dinner.


After dinner we went to the pub for more drinks and fun.


Around the time the soju and beer started to kick in so did the sugar from Sechan's multiple coke's and ice cream. Being a good Korean kid he started showing off the latest dance craze every Korean knows.


SaeBin took a break from hanging off my neck to pose for her picture.


Good times.

Tony's Birthday

Hard to believe this man is an actual professor travelling the world going to conferences and earning a living molding the minds of MBA students. No wonder businesses the world over are all failing.

Tony had his birthday a couple of Friday's ago. We went to a Thai fusion restaurant with the obvious name of Berlin, where Tony treated us to a set menu he had specially made for the group (the starter was a Korean dumpling but it was wrapped in rice paper, a chicken salad was next, followed by the best sliced steak and some chicken dish, we then had some fries and a green curry served with noodles). The food was amazing and I will definitely have to make it back there before leaving Seoul.


It was the usual gang and things started off quietly.


The late comers.


Raidar was also there for his last night in Seoul before he headed back to Norway early the next morning.


Things got a little louder after this when we all started in on the helium balloons that Chan Young brought along. Not wanting to be banned from the restaurant we headed off to Bliss where we could be louder and later in the night up to Soho. Here things turned dramatic when a pick pocket stole Tony's wallet from his bag but the bar staff saw it all and they caught the guy. Other than the wallet fiasco it was a great night out.

Homeless

When you get news you have to be moved out in one week's time and your house is full of crap it leaves you with no time to post. We had the option of not taking the offer on the house but in Korea when you rent you deposit key money and you get it back when the next people take over your place. We had 10 million won tied up in the place and didn't want to risk having the place sit empty and then trying to get the money back while in Canada so we it took it. We also took being homeless for the last month we are here but thankfully Joone offered up a place in his house to keep us sheltered. He lives in Pucheon (the city between Seoul and Incheon) so it takes just over an hour to commute to Seoul but for my work it is relatively close and is about the same commute time I was doing before. Thankfully I'm on holiday for two of the last four weeks here so it isn't too bad.

The move itself was simple but the sorting of stuff the week before sucked. I threw out ten, twenty litre bags of garbage. Gave away another five boxes of stuff and then chucked the "maybe will keep stuff" into boxes we stored in Saejin's office that I have to sort through. The rest of the stuff all belonged to my school and we hired a moving crew to come pack it up and take away. (If you are looking for a job where you can smoke and ash on apartment floors, be rude and you like carrying sofas on your back the mover gig is worth checking out.)

Just in Time

When I got to Korea my first job was working for a shady, shady man who used to pay me in little white envelopes full of 10 000 won ($10) bills. It took two of them to pay me (envelopes not bills) and then I would rush back to my apartment and make tiny hidden piles of money in case I got robbed. Just a few weeks ago the newest, biggest bill came out, a 50 000 won. They have been talking about it for some time and had hardcore debates over who should be on it and then once decided they had a usual Korea argument over the size of Shin Saimdang's head (thanks Don). Anyway yesterday a student showed me the first real one I have seen. They are still in limited circulation.

Wet Feet

My socks have been wet all day long. My pants from mid thigh down have been soaked and dried four times today. My shirt on the side I wear my purse (I don't need to label it a man bag, it's a purse) has been rung out only twice. Since seven this morning until three in the afternoon it has been pouring rain with winds to make an umbrella a useless accessory. It wouldn't have been too bad but today I went down to the Canadian Embassy before work to get a new passport made. So I was drenched walking to the subway, drenched again walking to the embassy, drenched a third time coming to work and to add insult to pickled skin just walking twenty meters to lunch today ended up with me and all the kids drenched again. It's just drizzling now and I can't wait to get home to change my clothes.

On the Market

Seeing as we are moving out in just over a month our apartment is on the market for new renters. We had to get an extra key made and dropped it off with a real estate agent. They can now show the place whenever a client drops by looking for a place fitting the size and budget they want. Yesterday a young couple came by to see the place and because the agent is an ajuma she didn't even bother knocking on the door to see if we were home. Instead she jammed the key into the lock then started trying to open the door with all here might. Luckily, we had the security lock on because had they wanted to see the bathroom they would have gotten a sight of Saejin lathering up. I often forget to lock the door (a huge annoyance to Saejin) but will now have to remember to not only lock the door but to set the tiny security bolt.

Ajumi

Ajumi is the plural for an ajuma. An Ajuma is Korean for a married woman but it's in your best interest to avoid being hit to not to use this term for anyone younger than forty. Ajumi can be the nicest or evilest of people you will meet in Korea and tend to have many similar characteristics.

The look of an ajuma is easy to spot. They tend to have tight curly perms and their uniform is a floral shirt matched with a pair of comfortable pants. They are easy to spot because they travel in packs and will never stand behind you in line. If you are waiting for the next subway they have the sharpest elbows in the world and will sneak past you no matter how hard you try to keep them at bay. They also have impeccable aim and will throw their purses to lay claim to any empty seat available in the rare case they are behind you when entering a train or bus.

Once seated they will then quickly get a sense of the environment by staring (and I mean full on staring) at everyone around them. If there happens to be a drunk, or a crazy person, near them who is disrupting the atmosphere on the train they have magic powers that puts that person in check. It's an awesome sight to see.

If there is a toddler nearby, ajumi will volunteer to hold the kid and if the kid is unwilling out comes candy from their all important purse. (I've also been given candy from ajumi multiple times.) Because they have given everyone around a once over any flaw they see they will go about fixing the problem. On two separate occasions yesterday I saw ajumi pick stray hairs off the backs of unsuspecting strangers without their knowledge.

The scary side of the ajumi comes out when they go shopping. Give them a shopping cart and you will be run down if you are unlucky enough to be in the way of a sale. If no sale exists they will bargain to get the cheapest deal available. They are also scary when they are out drinking for the night. This usually only happens on rare occasions and they make the best of it. They love to eat, sing and dance.

When they head out to eat they make sure to hand feed anyone else looking hungry. They sing oldies but goodies and have a special dance where their thumbs, bums and heads to most of the work. Don't worry about them getting drunk though. They will drink anyone under the table and are often seen carrying their husbands home on their backs while yelling at them.

Sadly, I believe they are a dying breed. The next generation of ajumi are very conscious of their appearances and with plastic surgery being more of a right of passage than a trend new ajumi will stay young forever. Long live the ajumi.

Test Day

Normally test days fall on a Wednesday a few weeks before the end of the term. According to the yearly schedual it was supposed to be next Wednesday but when I showed up to work today the kids were all last minute cramming with worried little looks on their faces.

Had I known it was today I would have asked for the morning off to run down to the Embassy to apply for my new passport. Instead I brought in nothing extra do to to kill time. I guess it's a day of YouTubeing (is it a verb yet? Do you drop the e? Add a b?) and reading for me. I may need a drink tonight to kill this boredom.

Air Con Time

Yesterday morning it suddenly started raining so hard and heavy that it woke me up. It stopped minutes before I left the house but then the temperatures started to climb making the afternoon a muggy mess. Luckily we finally got an instant message on our computers saying we could now use the air conditioners (air con in Korean) in our classrooms. It was a welcomed relief seeing as I have been using the air con at home now for the last couple of weeks. Saturday it came in particularly handy.

After a late night out on Friday I didn't want my Saturday to be a complete waste of a day so I planned on making a trip down to Yongsan to load up on DVDs. From my place to the subway station is a quick ten minute walk but on Saturday afternoon it was enough of a jaunt to get me sweating like crazy. If dripping in sweat wasn't bad enough I was sure my drippings were pure booze from the night before and having experienced sweating Korean businessmen on morning commutes I decided I wouldn't torture anyone else this way. So I re climbed the stairs back out into the furnace. I was never so relieved to get back home where I sat beneath the air con for the next two hours while drinking loads of water.

Carbon Copy Weekends.

The past two Saturdays have been almost carbon copies of one another. Both Joon and Ted have aged like Kimchi over the year and we all met up to celebrate. To sum up the two parties: they both started with meat and drinks, more drinks followed, then cakes made an appearance but were never eaten. The usual tom foolery happened and it was all good.

First up Joone's birthday:

We went to a great little restaurant near Tony's place and had three different kinds of meat for dinner to match the three different kinds of alcohol Joon picked out.


Thinly sliced pork that you then soak it a sweet sauce.


Disgusting seafood.


Raw beef mixed with a raw egg and tiny bits of Korean pears in it. My favourite Korean dish by far.

Teddy's Birthday:

Ted had us all in to his bar where he had the BBQ going for Hamburgers and chicken wings goodness. I got wrangled into prepping the salad and veggies where only after slicing up five or six onions and crying I learnt that to avoid tears you should chew gum.


Leoni and Don posing.


Joel and Wells chilaxing.


Ted with Jes and his new best friend Anthony.