"The police have been called, they are on their way. Seriously, you should get out of here before they show up! They don't appreciate people acting like you are acting in Korea." I said to the blonde haired saffer I had just met in the bar. "Dancing is not allowed here and I have notified the authorities." She didn't seem that scared. Maybe it was because we shared the same circle of friends somehow. Graham, Justin and myself had found ourselves yet again at "The Goldfish." A fine establishment where you could go for a few pitchers and Jaeger bombs. In almost a repeat of two weeks ago we had gone from "Geckos Terrace" to "The Wolfhound" to "The Goldfish" in Itaewon. I had needed to buy shoes for about a month or two now, and with the weather turning nice all of a sudden, I felt that this was the weekend to do it. I went to Itaewon at about noon on Saturday and had to walk around the market there looking for bigger sizes. My shoe size is 13 American, so I had to go in, get a staffer and say "What do you have in size 13?" then weigh my options. I found one that I liked, but the guy said "97K won." "Can you give me a discount?" "I already did man, 30 percent off." Knowing the art of the deal I said, "That's too much, I need to think about it, hold these shoes for about thirty minutes and if I don't find anything better I will come back." "Why even go? You won't find anything better." I wish he hadn't been so right. I found nothing. I was back within twenty and paying the price he asked. "Hey man! Back so soon?" he said, rubbing it in a bit. I did get a nice pair of size thirteen Nikes. The only problem is that they were ghost white, so of course I almost immediately scuffed them.
After the shoe purchase I made my way to Gecko's terrace where I waited for Justin. He had wanted to try the food there, and I hadn't had western food in... I don't even know. We sat around drinking some Red Rock beer and eventually met up with Graham, who had just the previous night been in Cheongju, but is famous for going to sleep in one town and waking up in another. While I was sitting at the bar alone, this foreigner (American I'm assuming, mostly because he was an asshat) came up to the bar. "Hey! Yogyo! Can I get some darts from you?" "Yes. Ten thousand." "I don't have any cash, just my card." "I'm sorry, it's a rule." "Dude, I'm not gonna steal your darts. Just charge my tab." "I'm sorry, cash. It's rule." "Yeah, just mark it on my tab." "Nono. Sorry." "This is ridiculous. Let me speak to your boss." (Girl comes over) "Yeah, can I get the darts, and just pay for them on my tab." "I'm sorry, the rule is cash for darts." "Yo. I'm not gonna steal your fucking darts. I'm gonna stay right here and use them. This is ridiculous. What do you want something for them? Here let me give you this. (I didn't see what it was because I didn't want to make eye contact with that ass.) This is very important to me and I wont leave without it." "Let me ask." "Yeah, go ask your boss." (Guy comes over) "Hey, look. You have my Visa. That's all I have. I don't have cash. I'm going to spend lots of money here. Just let me borrow the darts. I'll buy them. You can charge me for the darts on my card. I'm not gonna leave without the Visa. Bring me over a slip of paper and I'll sign something saying that you can charge me for the darts." It was stupid. Eventually they let him have them as an exception and he goes to play, loudly saying how ridiculous it was that he had to pay for the darts. Justin and Graham show up and we order some food. The food was good. I had not had chicken fingers in forever, and they were quite delicious. The darts guy from earlier comes over and starts talking to us about basketball and how awesome he is. Says something about how I look sad (it was because I shut down conversationally around people that I want to tell to go F themselves) and about how it is so hard to understand Graham with his Scottish accent. This dude has some conversations with other people (which make them get up and leave the bar altogether) and comes back to us before asking for darts again and getting turned down due to a "shift change" that was about to happen. Luckily this makes him so upset that he leaves. We had already settled up to leave because he was there, so we head to the Wolfhound.
The Wolfhound was pretty uneventful and after that we headed to the Goldfish. That's where we met up with a whole mess of saffers. They were really nice, and one of them lived out in the boonies just like me. I had them teach me how to say sweet things in Afrikaans to you know who. Surprisingly that didn't go over very well. Not really sure why, but I'm not exactly sweating it. It was someones birthday, and we bantered and partied for a couple of hours. I like that bar because they play a lot of the same music I listened to back home. It's almost like a top 40 hip hop station. I was able to sing and rap along with most of the stuff being played. Later on in the night they usually get that girl to sing open mic style, but this time she had a guitarist. I remember him playing a version of "Hotel California" and even an acoustic version of "Stairway to heaven." He even rocked my world with "Oye como va." It was a good night and I was in a good social mood. Eventually Chico showed up and we hung out a bit more. Chico was telling me about his friend who had really good grades in school, but through talking to Graham and other foreigners how much better Chicos English had gotten than his friends. Justin and myself left after a bit, because we were given the promise of noraebang in Bundang.
When we finally got out there, it was pretty late. I don't really remember what time, but it must have been closer to 1 or 2. Perhaps even later, because we basically took a taxi across the entire city of Seoul. We went to the bar Dublin's that our friend Aureum owns. We had maybe two beers. Most of the time we were there I was talking to Aureums father, Monticello. What a nice guy! She speaks pretty much perfect English, and taught herself. He speaks English very very well, and I think he was saying he taught himself also. We had a conversation about Korean dialects and he taught me a little bit of Korean, but by that point I wasn't going to be learning a whole lot. He told me all about how Aureums sister wanted to pursue ballet, and how Aureum fought for her to be able to pursue her dream. It sounded like he has a real soft spot for both of his daughters. I liked that guy. We stayed until closing time at five and helped her move all the people out of the bar.
It is here that the story starts to get interesting. We went for a little late night snack at a Kimbap place on the other side of the station from her bar. I need to get some money and a bottle of water, so I walked across the street. I see a random Korean depart from his group and move towards me and shout something back to them. I am half defensive at this point, because it is about six in the morning, and I am walking alone. "Hello. I am June Gunn and I am going to America in a couple of months. Can I practice speaking English with you?" Crazy. I feel like I am going to be mugged and it turns out it's just a kid who wants to speak English. After exchanging numbers we part ways and I am sitting outside the kimbap place drinking my water. I go inside, and as I do I pass this Korean college kid. I sit down at the table, and right as I do, that same college kid kicks the window on the side of the store. He pout a hole in it about the size of a baseball. It turns out while I was outside he had come in to get kimbap and had thought my friends were laughing at him. He went up to them and was like "You got a problem?" then was escorted out by his friend. As he walked by I guess he saw us laughing and just got mad and kicked the window. There was glass all over the place. The poor lady who owned the store called 112 and the police came out to see what happened. They went in the direction of the guy but soon returned as he was probably long gone.
As we are sitting there talking to the police, explaining what happened, this random drunk college kid in a white hat comes across and sits down next to me. He mentions something about girls and about facebook and tries to talk to me, but he can't really hold much of a conversation. When we are done talking to the police, we get up to leave, and he gets up also. At first it is kind of funny, like "hey look at the drunk guy" kind of funny. We go towards the noraebang and he keeps trying to hold on to peoples arms. Every time he does we have to push his hand away and then he goes to someone else. It is apparent by the time we get to the noraebang that he is not going to leave us alone, so we don't go into the noraebang, we change directions. He changes directions also and follows us. We tell him in no uncertain terms that he needs to stay there, and he doesn't listen. The girls, who are fluent in Korean, tell him that he needs to leave us alone and he doesn't. We head towards the taxis, saying that we are going to call it a night, and he heads towards the taxis also. We get one, and a couple of people get in, and he tries to get in also. We argue with him and eventually I get out my phone and start shooting video. The point of this was two fold. First, if the cops did come, which they might the way this was going, they would need video evidence that we never touched him and that he wouldn't leave us alone. Second, people who know they are being video-taped seem to act like jack asses a lot less. Once he realized I was filming him, he tried to snatch my phone, tried to cover his face, tried to take pictures of us, but what he stopped doing was focusing on the girls, and he stopped trying to be all arm in arm with people. I have a good ten minutes of him in an argument with us (none of which I can even understand) until some guys around our age showed up and talked to him. They basically kept him there while we walked away. The cops had already been called by that point, so when they showed up we met them. One of them spoke perfect English and mentioned that he had spent time in America. Upon talking to the drunk guy it was revealed that his story was "They hit me" and ours was "This creep won't stop following us." The other group of guys vouched for us and the cops took his phone so that they could delete the pictures. There was a very surreal moment when the older of the two cops had his phone, where he tried to take it back, and the cop had to run away from him while the drunk guy chased after him. He was putting hands all over the cop and I just couldn't help but think "If this were America, he would have been pepper sprayed, tazed, slammed on the ground and handcuffed." This guy wasn't even arrested. He was pretty much just given a ride home by the officers and we all got in our respective cabs and left. It was quite a shitty end to an evening that was supposed to involve my favorite of Korean activities. That guy really deserved to have his ass kicked, but I don't need to get deported, and don't really enjoy fighting in the first place. The only time I did come close to swinging was when he literally grabbed my arm, pinching with his fingers as I tried to pull away. There were some really nice Korean girls there to help the guys keep a level head though, and we managed to get away.
The only other thing that really happened this weekend was a little party at Laurens place. We got some people together in Daeso and drank some wine and some soju and got some pizza. We played a game or two of charades and just had an all around good time. The new couple from Busan, made up of a South African and a Texan (sound familiar?) came out and we just generally had a lot of laughs. It is really funny trying to see someone act out "French Kiss" or "Toy Story." The weather seems to be getting more pleasant, and pretty soon I won't be wearing a sweater at all. To end the post, I will leave you with a philosophical question by a K-pop group called "Fat Cat." Is being pretty everything?
