a mighty boosh halloween feat. tiesto

This past weekend saw a great american holiday take place- Sluttoween. On Friday, Tyler and I went to check out DJ Tiesto perform at Epic. It was a blistery, rainy night and on the walk over we happened to run into half a baker's dozen of Oles and then later in the evening several more. Tyler dressed as a sort of holiday referee and I went as the futbol legend Johann Cruyff #14.

Needless to say, the night was filled with individuals with inquiries into "rolls" or more commonly known as ecstasy which produces feelings of self-confidence without arrogance, a sense of peace, loss of fear and states of euphoria. You might think it sounds perfect to pop before a first date to get over those butterflies in the stomach or to a job interview but the excessive feelings of intimacy, insomnia, anorexia, tachycardia and a need to touch and grope might not work out in your favor. There were definitely a few questionable characters on the dance floor. I couldn't tell whether they had an extra chromosome or if they were just really messed up on a cocktail of drinks and drugs.

The show was a blast with the standard lights, dancers, and a big screen which provided for some great visual enhancement to the music and Tiesto who ended up playing for a total of 3 hours. He included some older tracks like Tetris, Flight 643, Adagio for Strings and everyone's favorite, Zombie Nation. The only downside was the occasional asshole up in VIP spilling his drink but on the upside, some other guy was literally making it rain with dollars bills to the attendees below so I guess it evened out.

In comparison to the album Kaleidoscope, I think the show definitely outshone it. The album has a couple really good tracks and several featured artists like Jonsi Birgisson from Sigur Ros, Kele Okerkere of Bloc Party and Tegan and Sara. The opening track Kaleidoscope with Jonsi is especially good which sounds like an epic with mix of Sigur Ros, M83, Tiesto infused dance-tronica track which you can hold your ear to here. The Tegan and Sara featured song "I feel it in my Bones" is not bad either but overall, the other tracks don't really keep the ante.

On the topic of Sigur Ros, I recently stumbled upon Jonsi and his partner Alex's vimeo profile. It has a couple music videos from their recent instrumental Riceboy Sleeps album and a couple of funny recipe videos where they make a raw strawberry pie and a macadamia monster mash nom nom.

The second day of the Halloween celebration entailed some actual costume work. I went as The Spirit of Jazz and thankfully all parts of my costume were attainable thanks to my buddy Al who just so happened to have a white tuxedo and top hat. All I needed was a wig of dreadlocks, black gloves, dress shoes, some black and white face paint and a skilled hand. The costume turned out great and better than some others I've seen on the net (just to gloat a bit).

Though the reference was a bit obscure given its origins from the BBC comedy, The Mighty Boosh, it was pretty fun to walk about the CarFischDeMark house party and seeing who could recognize me under my face-painted facade.

A few people remarked on not being aware of the Tiesto show so here are a couple of upcoming shows worth to check out!

Ranked 4th overall by Ministry of Sound, Above and Beyond play at Epic on November 20th.

3rd ranked, David Guetta is playing at Spin on November the 24th.

Famous House DJ, Mark Farina is also coming shortly on December 11th to play at Epic as well and tickets are only 10 bucks. He's got a great low key series entitled Mushroom Jazz.

Escape from New Yong (wol)!

So I've decided to start writing again since my original intention was to keep my friends/family informed and entertained via my antics abroad but alas I also made friends whilst I was abroad so I feel they should know what my American antics are... I also heard a lot of great feedback from people reading my blog so I figure why not keep a good thing going? Thank you so much for reading!!

Escape from New Yong (wol)!

Our Korean Flee:

Basically we had about enough of the ass-backward Confucian rhetoric posing as modern business ethics. You know how a lot of businesses have all that equal opportunity employer stuff written on their applications? Yeah well Korea doesn't have that. So we decided to teach, Billy Madison, our boss a lesson not to screw with your foreign employees just like Kurt Russell in Escape from New York/ LA. We had recently been going to the dentist, a particularly nice clinic in Seoul, something that Doctor Christian Troy and Sean McNamara would have approved of, though our North Korean college president and our director displayed their distaste in. Apparently, we were all (the foreigners) were supposed to go to Mr Song in "downtown" Yeongwol who will do Buddha-knows-what to your teeth. Anyway, the reason the dentist is important was due to easing our secret getaway from our oppressors who caused not only physical but psychological stress, refused to pay my overtime and our plane tickets home (as per our contract) to say the least. The extra day at the "dentist" would allow ourselves and our bags over to an airport hotel in Seoul before we could finally escape our idiot employers but also Kim Jong Il's dong (missiles) from breathing down our necks. We planned on leaving on the 2nd because in private companies in Korea it can be quite standard to not pay you your last month's check if you give them a 60 day notice. So we decided to make sure we got paid and walk away into the night.

Leaving in the middle of the night is so common with foreigners in Korea that a widely used term was developed called "Pulling a Midnight Runner". There is also a podcast with this name about helpful information for foreigners living in Korea.

So the plan was set. The next morning the bank accounts were cleared, money wired home to inevitably help stimulate the economy. Loose ends were needed to be tied up at the apartment. I left a box of all the good and random stuff to Steve which included chestnuts and a Darth Vader helmet. 1/4 of the balcony was left with our wine/beer/bailey's bottles. A pot full of broken glass and eaten chicken bones. Some stuff in the fridge, my old clothes, the intercom in the sealing is ripped out. Shoe marks on the ceiling ;-) (I blame it on the soju and neighbors). Burnt charcoal marks on the couch. We should have sold our couch and T.V. in retrospect.

This is where John Carpenter's film takes a twist. Rushing out of our apartments we take a cab to the train station just down the road from us. We take the train to the next city of Wonju (A) because we don't want to be spotted at the bus station downtown and (B) the National Pension Office is located there. The Pension Office is important because once you leave Korea "permanently" you can request the money you and your employer have been putting aside towards your pension and if you do it before you leave you'll get your money within a few weeks instead of months or up to a year.

So we're rushing to the train station and the train starts to leave so we think oh shit we're screwed but I quickly realize the taxi drives much faster than the train so we tell our cabbie to head to the next train stop in the nearby city of Jecheon. We made it out of the cab, bought a ticket and made on to the tracks in time to hop on the train over to Wonju. Once we arrived we headed over to the National Pension Office to apply for our money and this is when things take an unexpected turn. first off, this pension office has no employee that speaks decent English. We give them all our documents for processing. Blake and I are chatting away, not a care in the world when the office worker all of a sudden hands Blake the phone. We didn't realize he was making some phone calls while we were chatting. Guess who he calls? Our fucking boss! So we tell him there's no way we want to talk to him. We enter a state of panic. Our whole "secret" plan to leave the country is blown! The idiot chats up the office worker for a good 15 minutes and we don't know what he's saying we just think of the worst that could happen. Finally, he finishes and we ask him, "Well what did he say"?! The office worker replies in broke-ass English, "He says, no trip." The man was verifying with our boss that we indeed were leaving the country but in the backward mind of our boss, thought that he could still keep us here because of our contract and because Confucius says you must listen to your elders no matter what shit comes out of his mouth. Well the revolution hit Russia much earlier than it ever will in Korea so the joke was on him. You'll see what I mean later.

We booked ass and took a taxi to the bus station and hop on just in time for the next bus to Seoul. All the while there, we felt frantic and anxious. What if he calls immigration and makes some shit up that we stole from the school or what if he shows up tomorrow at our departure gate and causes a scene. Thankfully, our boss was a pussy and an idiot so he didn't do shit. We spent our last night downtown in Seoul with a couple of friends, had a decent meal and saw our last Seoul prostitute who suggestingly cleared her throat as we walked by her.

The next morning all went smoothly. We boarded our plane with our bags the proper weight, handed in our National ID cards and like Sodom and Gommorah we never looked back like Lot's dumb wife. As our plane took off, I looked over to Blake and said, "Hey Blake", "Uhh he says, no trip". And we both laughed comfortably knowing that we'd never have to see his dumb face or the pathetic, kimchi and sewage infested excuse for a town Yeongwol was ever again.

One last thing! This song goes out to my former moronic and complete incompetent waste of space boss, Mr. Choi. Yung Joc - Fuck You Pay Me!

Music Recommendations:

Mark Farina - Mushroom Jazz series

World News Recommendations: because CNN and BBC don't have it all.

Aljazeera - not just for Arabs anymore... seriously white people work there too.

Huffingtonpost - I get my daily dose of everything good here.

How I met a famous Russian artist in a worthless Korean town...

To my dear readers. I apologize for the hiatus to those of you who have enjoyed reading. I guess in some respects I just haven't had anything worth writing about which also has to do with my distaste and disdain with my job and its day-t0-day mismanagement. But back to an update with where we stand.

We found out the president of our college snuck out of North Korea before the DMZ was really established... that explains some of the crazy.

Grad Schools:

I got into the University of Jyväskylä in Finland for the Masters in Sport Psychology which is great. But financing has been troublesome. You can't get any financial from the government unless the university has applied for "Title IV" eligibility, nor can you get a private loan for a foreign university, Finland doesn't give any aid (loan/scholarship) to any Masters seeking students especially if you come from the USA and the main Grant for studies in Scandinavia can only be applied for the year before you begin and before you even know if you will be accepted or not. As you can see, it's a bit of a predicament at the moment. So my options are only if the university will grant me a deferment or to re-apply next year after finding a decent paying job at home, or if I need to, go back abroad for work.

So somehow our korean-redneck-village got to host this international symposium for cultural exchange recently. It turns out it was mostly Russian artists, teachers, and students from Moscow. And that's how I ran into one of Russia's and even the world's highes regarded painters, Nikas Safronov. At the moment I ran into him and his friends at this restaurant I didn't know what he was really known for, but it turns out he's made many works for people like David Bowie, DeNiro, Putin, and Pierre Cardin. Apparently, he's just rollin' in the rubles at the moment. He told me stories about Stallone's mother was looking for their relatives via Gorbachev, a couple of his illegitimate children, and how I need to get an orthodox cross necklace.

I met them one more night at the local Hotel/Casino resort and had a drink with them and also ended up meeting Yuri Rozum who is apparently Mikhail Gorbachev's favorite pianist. The best part is I got all their contact information and was invited to come to Moscow and even offered a job at a social sciences academy. Who knew that from such boredom, unthinkable lack of social order, etiquette and manners in this town that I could meet a prominent group of cultured and artistic individuals from Russia.

We had Katie Dobie and David Hardnett visit recently as well. We had an awesome time, seeing the DMZ where I took photos past the line where you're not allowed to Jason Bourne-style... hung out in Seoul, went to some of the beaches on the east coast and we ended up skipping two days of work effectively sticking it to the man...

Live from Yonsei University Hospital and sans my appendix... may it rest in peace T_T or the "How I Could Have Died in South Korea Story"

Alright so I'm bored as shit and coming at you with a missing organ which I did give my consensus in losing but funky fresh from Wonju, South Korea at Yonsei University Hospital. I'm typing this on a special and dirty Internet PC which lets me use it for an hour by only putting in 1,000 Won which right now is like putting in 2 quarters... I almost forgot what a quarter looks like... It's dirty because it's physically filthy...

So you're probably wondering how I lost an organ in South Korea. F my life right? Well Wednesday night I came home from Hapkido... ( I joined hapkido recently, it's a martial art) and after grubbing on some pasta, I felt a stomach pain. I thought not too much of it. Some occasional bloating is not uncommon. But I had trouble sleeping that night. In the morning, I still felt shitty and asked my director to take me to the local hospital, thinking that maybe my abs were bruised from all the hapkido jokingly remarking that I want to make sure it's not appendicitis or a hernia. Well joke was on me I guess because our 3rd world hospital's doctor told me there was a pretty good chance that it was my appendix. Blake and my director came by but wanted me to get a second opinion and a much more suitable hospitable to be operated in. I had to agree, our hospital looks like it belongs in Burkina Faso.

So we head to Wonju to the presitigious Yonsei University while along the way our director makes two wrong turns, find out the Universities hospital is downtown and not on campus. Thankfully, I made it to the emergency room alive. I was stuck in a room with about 20 other sickos for about three hours after they performed another blood test, X-Ray, and CT scan. My white blood cell count was twice the normal rate so something was up and the doctor said I probably had acute apendicitis. The CT scan revealed that I had a mischievous appendix tucked away in my pelvis. It was joking around long enough. The doctor's took me soon after to the operating room. But first I had to strip, then my treasure trail and pubes were shaved by a man, his simple razor and some baby powder.

To be honest, I was a bit nervous. I never had surgery and my first experience was going to be in South Korea no less. I was hoping not to be one of the rare cases where the anesthesia goes wrong and you wake up in the middle of surgery only to be completely paralyzed from expressing all emotion and physical action while having to bare all the pain... Thankfully, this was not so. The docs strapped me up Jesus style on the operating table and before I could say kimchi, I was passed out from the gas...

Next thing I remember waking in a daze coming face to face with Blake and my director. I felt all the symptoms of a drunkeness without the fun indulgence hours before. The operation took less than 2 hours and apparently my mischievious appendix was larger than normal but the doctors found it almost immediately via laproscopic surgery. Currently I have three scars on my lower abdomen and I'm hooked up to a portable IV stand thingy.

The first couple days were spent in and out of sleep in a room with 7 other old Korean dudes. Now there are only three ages, 58, 69 and like 80 probably. I spend my daylight hours watching Korean dramas, comedies, lifetime channel and old school Korean ballads being sung on TV. Good thing English is a priority to some Koreans as my nurses and doctors could communicate with me. On the third day, I was finally allowed to drink water but only after performing flatulence and then food on the 4th day but only after performing defacation. I don't think other people and myself were ever so excited upon the arrival of my bowel movements before...

Due to my strange sleeping schedule, I was up real early from midnight to 4 am watching Sunderland / Tottenham and then watching Man Utd spank Fulham 4-0! While watching the first match, a body was taken outside followed by the grieving family/friends.

Some interesting things though, the beds here have little roll-away beds underneat so family can actually stay in the room throughout the night with their illen-ones. Also, the cost of my surgery and 4 day stay in the hospital after insurance will also cost me about 1,380,000 Won which is about 840 US dollars. Pretty sweet huh?

Anyway, my goal is to finish the book Layer Cake, which is also a movie staring Daniel Craig and get ready to go home tomorrow! Take care from So Ko!

Not so Useful Security Guards, Courtesy/Clog Award, & I'd Rather be Paid in Rubles

So nearly fourt months have passed and while a few things have changed, a lot of shit is still the same. Still live in a extremely, backward and conservative village where age trumps rationality, innovation and progress but we are finally finished with dealing with Korean children in our Winter Camps and their perplexed teachers as to our crazy, western methods. 

To be honest, there were some great students but I'm never dealing with the ridiculousness of this situation again. Only two forms of weaponry were recovered during the two months (airsoft gun, and butterfly knife).  I did introduce some good jazz and reggae to our last group. They had quite the bubble over Louis Armstrong's voice and appearance.

We were able to visit the city of Busan a bit. It has beautiful beaches and many more options for eating and inebriation. Our initial taxi driver sped to speeds of about 140km/h through the highway feeling completely safe in the embrace of the leather seats in his Hyundae. 

My birthday was a couple weeks ago and I received a nice package from my parents with FourFourTwo magazines, gummy bears, cool glasses, and a set of David Beckham cologne and body wash so that I can now not just look like him but also smell like him. I got a couple bottles of wine from Blake and our co-worker Pam. One of which was consumed at the bar.  We went out in our quaint but sewagey town to a couple bars. 

The first bar started out slow and steady with a few harmless games of "G'day Scott" (australian based) and famous names.  Upon leaving the bar, we hurried into a taxi but not without some incessant honking from an unruly motorist behind us. Being a bit unnerved, one of us extended a finger of gratitude and shouted a cry of appreciation in the form of a two words, eight letters...

After getting out of the taxi near the next bar stop, we were met with a few other Korean teachers of our buddy's. We didn't initialy realize that the driver who was honking like an asshole also followed us and began to well... attempt to speak to us via our friend's coworkers asking us if we said "bad words" to him and showed him the finger of appreciation. We were a bit perplexed at first so we shrugged him off but it was ridiculous to think that he was justified in being an asshole and we were out of our minds to respond. Koreans are cute when they're angry; just wanna pinch those cheeks.

The last bar was marred with new encounters, more pouring, a walk home and a personal altercation with a road sign and a late night chat with Madness of which both incidents having no record in the annals of my mind.

The following weekend was another birthday of a friend of ours but this time taking place in the area of Sinchon in Seoul. We met some more foreign teachers from Pennsylvania and the UK and enjoyed a nice Pale Ale from Alberta at London Bar, my first Pale Ale in at least 4 months. Good beer is a bit harder to come by, you'd understand the state of my depravity. Further altercation ensued on the streets as another dousche bumped into us and telling us not to mess with him because he lived in LA. Our new friend confronted him and told him, "Well I'm from Hampshire", a small town in southern England. A rather intriguing man who left with kind words of our mothers. Later we went to the strangest western bar. I felt like I was in an episode of Fear and Loathing in a bar full of weirdest looking entities. It seems like a good majority of westerners, especially Americans, that come here have some strange skeletons in their closets and/or are outcasts of society. Of course this is not the case, with yours truly. One of the monsters grabbed our buddy and almost got a beating and the same for our birthday girl. Needless to say, I did not fancy staying too long even if the music was a nice change.

The Courtesy/Clog Award goes to Blake Wergeland. Before this past weekend Blake was finally successful in clogging our toilet but also was courteous enough to call me before I came home to inform me that I should probably by a plunger from the 1,000 Won (Dollar) Store. 

On a last note, Korea has a lot of security guards at schools and apartment buildings. Though what their job is, is another matter. Same thing goes for our local police force. We have these two guys whose job is to move a plastic barrier everytime anyone drives up the hill towards the school every day.  Extremely redundant and a waste of funds.

In Korean news, North Korea has taken a rather aggressive stance with the South challenging them even with the arrival of Hillary Clinton and planning on satellite launch very soon. It will be interesting to see how this all works out. That's it for now, take care!