Life and Limb before opening the bottle

A picture of the actual beer. Picture not taken by me btw..

Life and Limb

Also Kelsey sent Little YeYe a cute little drop of blood. It has now been added to YeYe’s collection of little things.

Little Drop of Blood

So when thinking about this party and all the people I wanted to invite, I started leafing through my old photos. One picture particularly stuck out was a picture Madeline took when I had a fireworks party at my old Gwangalli house.

Gwangalli Fireworks party 2009

What stuck out about this picture is that all of those friends are gone! Well almost all are gone, there are still a few floating around such as Ben-Straight, Choi-oni, and Mina. But everyone else has departed. Depressing to see when you’re planning a going away party. Although not to worry I have made some new great friends that will come to fill my house tonight. But it does make me miss all the people, some of which it is doubtful that I’ll ever see again (at least anytime in the near future), unless we are talking about the California kids then I’ll see them in 3 months.

Party on Garth…

To begin this little story we must first talk about Ernie. Ernie, like me, is another guy from my little town of of suburban sprawl in Northern California. He also happens, like me, to be living in Korea, although about 4 hours to the west of me in a city called Gwangju (which might just happen to have the most useless subway line ever). Well Ernie’s day of birth is right before Halloween and for her gift to Ernie, Laurelle (Ernie’s wonderful girlfriend) decided to give Ernie the best gift ever. Her gift was to fly his best friend, Sam, out from California. She even organized all of this in secret without Ernie ever finding out (although I’m sure, knowing Ernie he will say “I knew the whole time” and actually convince himself that this is true…he will deny this too). This in my opinion has to be one of the best gifts I have ever heard of a girlfriend giving her man. I mean secretly organizing with Sam (who is busy as hell with law school), funding the flights, and even planning the ground logistics once Sam landed…you go Laurelle!

So fast forward a month or so into the weekend of Halloween. I’m all stoked to finally get to see Sam after almost 2 years, during which we talked very little (Sam is busy and I’m terrible about keeping in contact), and I’m talking to a mutual friend Eddie, who is another guy from the same suburb but now living in Hong Kong, about Sam’s first visit to Asia. Which some how arises to “Eddie come to Korea” which Eddie currently being unemployed meant he had the time but not necessarily the funds…although credit cards helped with that situation.

Moving a little farther forward it’s the Friday before Halloween and I just had taken the KTX up to Seoul. After 2 or 3 hours having fascinating conversations with mid-western American girl, named Angela, on the train I get a phone call from Laurelle’s friend picking me up at the KTX station. She tells me, that she will meet me at the station, she doesn’t have a mobile phone, and that she will find me. This automatically makes me leery because of similar situations I have had with people saying don’t worry I’ll find you, prompting me to wait around for long periods of time where the other person never finds me. So I ask, “well, ughh, what do you look like so I can look for you?” and I get a description of “oh I’m short with short blonde hair” a little vague but apt if you ever meet Sarah.

After the train finally arrives at Seoul station, I say my goodbyes to my train buddy, Angela. She parts with wishing me luck finding the short blonde girl. So immediately when I walk into Seoul station I find 3-4 other short blonde girls waiting in the arrivals area which none of them was Sarah and all in widely different areas of the station. Not knowing if one was Sarah, I would slowly but with slight intent walk towards one hoping to see if they would recognize me (I gave Sarah my description as a big guy, with a beard, and a curly moustache…not to many look alikes with that description), which as you could guess would just result in a confused, uncomfortable gaze at me…which I would immediately flee from. So repeat this fun process several times until I run out of potential Sarahs. At this point a little blonde girl making a B-line towards me while scooting her boots on the floor (later I asked her why and it was out of fear of slipping) and says “Are you Ryan?” Which I naturally said “yes” too. She informed me that a another foreigner asked her if she was looking for a tall bearded guy with a mustache and pointed Sarah in the right direction (thanks Angela). Now it was off to meet up with Sam, Ernie, Laurelle, and their troupe at the bus station.

Sarah and I arrive at the bus station and blindly wander around until we finally find them and do the usually hugs, hellos, and other awkward PDAs. Eddie sadly did not join us that night because his last minute flight was delayed something like 9 hours…ridiculous, but then again everything with Eddie and meeting up usually goes that way (I haven’t wrote about trying to meet up with Eddie in Shanghai yet…oh man). Now skipping into list mode to save you the time of having to read more fluff (like this fluff describing reading fluff) about some things we did in Seoul:

• Party/lounge session in Sarah’s tiny hotbox of a house
  • including introducing Sam to soju…may they be friends forever, eating Ramyeon, and catching up till everyone passed out.
• Exploring Seoul:
  • Myeon-dong; where we met Eddie, ate Dak-galbi, and proceeded to drink some more…
  • Insa-dong for some mindless sight seeing and attempts to buy souvenirs
• Halloween in Hongdae (aka the best place to drink in Seoul…well at least that I know of)
  • Pre-partied at Sarah’s house, shaved down to just a mustache for my Mr. Pringles outfit (Yeye cried…she hates it when I lose my beard)
  • Went to some live music place…it blew so we left
  • Went to Go-Go’s it was great, packed, and really hot…so we went outside
  • Played Rock, Paper, Scissors for shots of soju in front of 7-11…left with Eddie into the darkness (well then the breaking of dawn)
  • Woke up face down on a bench in a subway going the wrong way, on the wrong subway line…arrived to Sarah’s 3 hours after everyone else.
  • Attempts at trying to recall how I ended up in the Subway…failed

After sleeping for roughly 2 hours and 45 minutes, I was awakened by everyone to send Sam off to the airport. So mastering myself despite being somewhere between drunk and hungover, we took Sam down to the bus station. From there we said our goodbyes and Sam and I briefly spoke about meeting in Nepal next year. After Sam parted I partook in some On The Border Mexican food (the gods were smiling on me by placing that restaurant in near proximity to me while in such dire hungover straits) which increased my functional capacities considerably. Then it was off to the KTX and back to Busan where the hangover lasted a whole day more.

Man I love Halloween!

If you know me at all, you will soon realize that my favorite cardinal sin is gluttony. I may not always be the most knowledgable or sophisticated foodie, but it is definitely something I do particularly enjoy in life. If I could battle Anthony Bourdain to the death for his position as host of No Reservation, I would begin filling my teeth and sharpening my  tridents this very moment, but I digress. Tonight was feasting at it’s finest, an honor to Bacchus, which I prefer to his Greek name, Dionysius, because I just like the way it sounds. Tonights feast included such delectable items as (in no particular order):

• Florentine Style Escargot
• Swordfish, Salmon, Tuna, etc… Sashimi and Sushi
  • In fact a slew of the best raw fish I have had in Korea (outside of Jagalchi Market)
• Spicy ribs to die for
• Lamb chops
• Duck meat served on a fig
• Desserts that would blow your mind
  • Caramelized sugar, on a square of Green Tea Sorbet, floating on a cloud of whip cream
  • Creme Brulee that made Jake drool
  • Jell-o that was actually wasn’t a wiggly mass of mediocrity but something really good with flakes of gold resting atop of it’s jiggly goodness
  • Also, the good sense to serve decent Hagen Daaz Ice Cream

Oh, and something that was very intergal to this dining experience, and to Bacchus, a never ending flow of wine refilling our goblets. For only 10,000krw, Jake and I were able to endlessly refill our glasses at a self-serve wine station with a selection of 4 different types of wines…decent wines in fact, out of a bottle and not a cask. Needless to say, after 7 plates, plus some minor ones, and two or three bottles of wine split between the two of us, we had our fill and waddled off into the night to attempt to find me a costume for this weekends Halloween shenanigans. I love being a glutton! Although my waist line does not…off to the gym to fight my horizontal growth, but first sleep.

As usual for my birthday, I terribly failed at planning anything in a timely manner! Originally, I was going to go to Tsushima but weather forbade it, but most of all my passport is in the Chinese Embassy getting it’s visa stamp (definitely precludes deporting from Korea then). Next, I thought about hiking Mt Jangsan…again weather (damn you rain! why must you always rain on the weekends and not on the weekdays when I don’t care). So it was down to last minute planning again.

This year on my birthday weekend, seems like it was THE weekend to do stuff: multiple birthdays, going away parties, live shows, etc…. So getting the crew together last minute was just not going to happen. Luckily YeYe pulled through with her usual grace and salvaged the day. Those of you that know me well know how much planning stuff will stress me out…which began to happen then YeYe stepped in and took over the drivers seat. THANK YOU!

So I went to a local comedy martial arts performance, called JUMP!, with YeYe and MingMing, which was a lot of fun (Ming-a-Ming Thank you for the ticket)! Damn the actors have some physical talent, flipping all over the stage, great martial arts skills, etc…! Really impressive! Then, YeYe knowing that I didn’t want to go hit the usual bars, decided to take me out to Maktum for a night full of some great booty shaking. After that, being exhausted from dancing and a night that was a little to long the day before we retired back home.

Now, I’m just looking forward to the impending China trip in under a week (so excited). Just borrowed a copy of Lonely Planet: China from my bud Murry and beginning to plan all the places and things I want to see. Although I bet this week at work is going to drag on just to tease me .

Oh man, and YeYe for my birthday, picked me up a ticket to go to Global Gathering. This year where Justice will be playing! It’s going to be an exciting month.

Photos stolen from MingMing

Sadly, since MingMing took the pictures she wasn’t in any of them…possible photo update/edit to come later.

http://thesavageorient.tumblr.com/

but luckily he has a return ticket back here…till then…

So naturally since my friends were aware of how close I live to the beach they took to liberty to plan being at my house before I announced that I was going to have a party. To paint them in the proper light though, they aren’t as indecent as that sounds, they waited for me to say it was a go until they made their plans…they were more just hoping (I did get cranky at Mina which was a mistake, 미안합니다 미나). I called the party on after some semi-sober rooftop inspections of the view with Mijin, noticing that it was not possible to lock the rooftop hatch for my building (the hatch cover isn’t even attacted to the building), and some temporary worries about the troll security guard that terrorize the foreign tenants of my complex. All that was left to do was to clean the apartment and wait for Saturday to roll around. Why is it that I also feel the compulsion to clean my apartment right before I have a house party that I know will result in my house being 10 times dirty than it was before I cleaned, just to have to clean it again…but I’ll save this for another time.

So the Saturday that the party was on was a normal Saturday on Gwangalli Beach until about 5pm, that’s when things changed. Literally looking out of my window I could see countless people jostling down the street with nearly ineffective traffic cops (dressed to the 9s in the most fancy traffic cop attire I have ever seen) attempting to control the herd. Then a little bit later the peoples started to arrive at my modestly small apartment with only two couches, two chairs, and my bed all in one room. As you can imagine my place rapidly ran out of room for people to sit which meant we went Korean style and sat on the floor. At some point there were upwards of 30 people in my studio apartment, just getting to the bathroom or the fridge meant hurdling multitudes of people while cautious trying not to step on hands or knock over drinks. Luckily, it wasn’t long before it was time to hit the roof for the big show.

So everyone made the trek up to the roof which involves a minorlly harrowing ladder climb to a very dangerous section of the roof top with a fifteen story drop. Also the fifteen story drop is only protected by a wall that is less effective as a protective barrier as it would be just ensuring someones death if they were ever to collide with it, because the wall is oh about 1.5 feet tall. Tall enough to ensure that if your leg should hit it that you would descend head first into the abyss on its far side. After dealing with that minor adrenaline rush it was off to join all my friends and Koreans from the building who congregated on the rooftop to enjoy the spectacle.

Calling this a spectacle is an understatement, I have never seen a fireworks show that could compare to the magnitude or quality that South Korea pulled off. First off the setting is phenomenal! The show takes place over the Gwangan bridge which is covered in lights that constantly change to different colors over time. The fireworks are shot from barges that are anchored in the middle of the bay which allows all the fireworks to reflect off the eerily still waters of the Gwangalli Bay almost doubling the effectiveness of the fireworks when viewed from a lofty vantage point such as the roof of my apartment building. The bay wasn’t the only natural landscape that added to the show, because I also particularly enjoyed how the mountains behind my apartment complex would reflect the percussive booms from the fireworks. All this coupled with the choreographing to music, the shear size, length, and unusual assortment of fireworks that were used definitely created a lasting memory of one the best fireworks shows I will ever see! By far the most impressive pyrotechnic delights I saw were the remote controlled flamming phoenix like fireworks that recalled memories of the Dragon firework from Lord of the Rings and the hanging lantern fireworks that would lazily drift through the sky for distended amounts of time.

The last memorable sight I saw was the flood of humanity that poured like a river down the streets in mass exodus from the beach after the show. I found out later the next week that there were an estimated 1.7 million people on the beach…1.7 MILLION!!!! That is such a crazy amount of people that it is almost unfathomable. Literally the streets were building to building, shoulder to shoulder, chest to back packed for over an hour in all directions. I have never seen so many people at once let alone attempting to vacate an area. Some of my friends and I just sat on that precarious fifteen story drop and watched people flow down the street like they were leaves in a rushing river. Very astounding but made me very glad that I wasn’t down there with the herd shoving along instead of sitting on my lofty perch looking down at so much activity. After that subsided it was down to the apartment for more partying then to go see Ben’s band One Drop East play.

Highlights

• Massive amount of good and fun peoples in my apartment partying
• Fantastic Fireworks show
• Not getting in trouble with my buildings management (and in effect my work)
• Mina doing semi-topless push-ups for breaking the rules of King’s Cup
• Seeing everyone have such a good time together…I love my friends!

There are loads more photos out there but I haven’t been able to collect them from friends yet so this may be updated from time to time. So if you are one of those friends with photos let me know so I can steal them from you!

Also this was Allie’s last night here in Korea for family reasons…we definitely miss her so…

Hafa dai, Zen!

P.S. you still owe me dinner hahahh!  Good luck in Guam!