Gwangali Fire Flower Festival

In case you haven't noticed, Korea is a very food-orientated society. While I was eating out maybe twice a week or so in Australia, over here I eat out pretty much everyday. The food in simple diners like Kim-bap Cheon-guk (that literally translates to 'seaweed-rice heaven') is about the same price you'd pay if you were to buy the ingredients yourself and cook it at home. They'll deliver it to your house for free and then come back later and collect your dirty dishes. You can even ask them to pick up some beer from a convenience store along the way.

Street vendors are also a prominent part of the food system. Ajummas will set up stalls on the side of the road selling things like dried squid, sausages and skewered meat. At places like these when it's busy, you take and eat what you want. Then it's up to you to tell the ajumma what you ate and pay for it at the end. Middle school kids have a reputation for paying suspiciously small amounts of money. Takgatchi (teriyaki chicken on a stick) is my favourite thing to eat.

Meet Heather. She's previously been on the blog in subtle ways, but now we've been dating for a year so that deserves a proper introduction. Congratulations hunni.

I used to work with her in the old branch and we somehow gravitated towards each other. In this photo she's standing outside an auditorium in central Busan, where we went to see a cultural performance involving her private music instructor.

Across from the auditorium is the UN memorial park. Living in Korea now, it's sometimes easy to forget that around 50 years ago this country was at war with itself. The memorial park is well-kept and a nice escape from the surrounding suburbia.

Then the performance started. It was a mixture of traditional Korean music and dance including pansori (acapella story-telling), samulnori (drums) and a lady dancing with a handkerchief. I liked the drums most. Because Heather is a student of one of the performers, we got our tickets for free.

The Busan International Film Festival also came and went over the course of a week. Its primary focus is on giving publicity and support to new directors. We went to see two movies, a Dutch and a German one. The Dutch one was about divorce and the German one was about a disturbed wife who abuses her cop husband. Both of them were mildly depressing. I like independent films, but even more so when they are about happy topics. I don't want to point any fingers, but somebody in this photo chose both movies. Heehee.

We found a new chimchilbang (bath house) in Jung-dong. It has all the usual things like saunas, hot tubs and massage chairs. One of the chairs is called the O2 Zone. You pull down a large visor when it starts and it releases peppermint oxygenated air while playing sounds of the rainforest. Upstairs are these little heated cubby-holes, where you can just crawl in and take a nap.

And then you go outside to these wading pools and get puzzled because everyone has their legs stuck in the water like this.

The wading pool has Doctor Fish in it. You put your feet in the water and these fish will come and eat the dead skin off your feet. They have rough lips and just scrape away gently. Sometimes they fight each other over who gets to nibble which part of the foot. Now that's something worth fighting for.

It's really ticklish the first time, but then becomes quite enjoyable. I would highly recommend it.



Here's a video of the Doctor Fish in action, when we went back the following week during the rain. They were a little more timid this time around.

Every year at Gwangali beach they hold a 'Fire Flower' festival which consists of a laser show and a lot of fireworks. I heard that they set off 80,000 fireworks on the night, for a cost of one million dollars, and a million people crowd the beach area to watch them. In the background there is Gwangali bridge, which is one of the most prominent landmarks in Busan.

We were lucky enough to find a rooftop that we weren't supposed to be on. It was on the 20th floor of an apartment building but a sign at the entrance prohibited us from using it. But funnily enough the door wasn't locked. So we hid in this utility room until the time was right. That's Mi-Kyong on the right talking to Heather. Mi-Kyong is one of my classmates from Korean school who we've been hanging out with recently. She has lived in China for most of her life and now an avid reader of this blog. In this photo she's explaining a story she just wrote while we were waiting in the room, to Heather who is also fluent in Chinese. Funny stuff.

When the time was right we went out into the cold air and enjoyed the view. The fireworks were launched from the bridge and on a floating pontoon in the water. They could be seen from vantage points all over the city.

Powerful searchlights, lasers and music accompany the show, producing a variety of effects. My favourite parts were the 'smiley-face' fireworks and the biggest one they set-off, right in the middle of the show. The sky went dark and then a single flare climbed high into the sky and exploded. Its diameter was larger than the width of the two highest points of the bridge. Pretty impressive when you consider that the bridge is the longest in Korea and 7.5 kilometres long.

Photographs of fireworks never seem to do them justice. Here's a video I shot of the night. By the time they started, a few other people had found out about our viewing area

We took the subway home which was chaotic. Rivers of people were continuously streaming into the station, but luckily enough we were earlier than most. Even still, at the turnstiles everyone was so jammed in together that it was really difficult for me to put my hand in my jacket pocket to get my transit card.

Because Mi-Kyong is relatively new to Korea, we had her birthday at our place. Jef made her a jug of rather complicated Bloody Mary that had V8 juice, tobasco, celery seed and garlic in it. Sitting in the couch there is also Julayne, who came down from Seoul to see the film festival. Julayne was the captain of the soccer team that I volunteered to be a linesman for back at the IKAA Gathering. Anybody coming down from Seoul is welcome to have a beer at my place, as long as you're relatively nice.

See you soon!

A new year, a new place

A year of living in Korea passed a couple of months ago, but I had spent some of that time in Seoul before I came to the nicer city. Because of that, my one year working contract with the school down here only just expired. Having not had my 'fill' of the country yet, I signed on for another year.

The company I've been working for, the Chungdahm Institute in Busan has been excellent in most areas. I'm glad I signed on with them from the beginning, and I'm happy to be working for them another year. And I'm not just saying that because I know some of the staff read this blog. Ha.
For the new contract, I got a chance to find new accommodation which we found in Seomyeon. The photo above is of my old room in Gaya-dong, with everything in a moderate state of disarray, ready for the big move the following day. The move itself went pretty smoothly.

Here's the living room of my new place in the middle of the city. I'm living with a flatmate now, Canadian John from the old branch and things are going as well as I could ask for. We have two bedrooms, a double loft (that could fit another person really) and an intelligent refrigerator that complains if you leave the door open too long. On the table there is my pet plant, Beeblebrox, who I've managed to look after for quite a while now. Usually my plants die inexplicably after a couple of months, but Beeblebrox is a survivor. He's watching me blog right now.

This is the bathroom, with bidet toilet and body shower. Using a bidet seems to make more hygienic sense, but call me old fashioned when I say that nothing's as good as some nice folded toilet paper. The shower is cool as well, it has multiple functions on it including a body shower where it sprays these directed nozzles all over the showeree. Much different from my old one, which sometimes had hot water for more than 3 minutes if I was lucky.

This is my new bedroom, which I've slowly been filling up with stuff. The view at night is quite nice and the windows are soundproofed fairly well. How much are we paying for this place you wonder? It's about AU$700 per month, split with my flatmate. So less than $100 dollars per week each. That's the good thing about living in Busan vs Seoul, accommodation and things in general are cheaper. The downside was that there was a heavy key-money (similar to bond money back home) of about AU$23,000. Our company paid half of it for us.

This is the view from the living room. Seomyeon is probably the busiest area of Busan, because it's a shopping district centered on a subway interchange point. And yes, right next door to us is the 7-luck casino. Most casinos in Korea are only open to foreigners, and all food and alcohol is free. If you use the freebies without playing too much though, you do get politely asked to leave and never come back.

Soon after moving into our new place, we played hosts for Eric's birthday party. There were lots of people drinking and talking and then we went down to the beach. It went pretty well.

Then, because the timing went a bit funny, our housewarming party was the following weekend. We invited some staff members and I cooked some food. Typical conversations at events like these will be half in Korean and half in English.

Looking back at us there, in the hat, is Paul. He often drinks a lot and forgets what happened the next day. Sometimes I forget too. It's all a part of living in Korea.

Living downstairs are our co-workers, Jef and Elissa. They have the identical apartment to us, just seven floors down. This photo is from the aftermath of their housewarming.

And this is the aftermath of Eric's birthday in our place. You may note distinct similarities and differences between the two.

For my new contract I got a promotion to a more supervisory role, where I watch CCTV videos of newer teachers. These are the first two new teachers at the Saha branch, John and Logan. As you can see they are quite happy chaps. Are they like that 24 hours a day?
Well, yes.

Here's another shot of them I had to include because Logan's face is rather entertaining. He belongs in a beer commercial.

And here are the other staff from the new branch on a night out in the neighbourhood. From left to right is Ken, Logan, Michelle, John, Christine, Me, Yang-min and squatting is Jordan. Just like it was at the old branch, we are all fairly easy-going and get along rather splendidly.

So anyway I decided that this new contract year would be a more productive one. I enrolled in Pusan National University for Korean language classes in the mornings. Right now they're running at 3 hours per day, 6 days per week and I haven't missed a class since I started 3 weeks ago. My Korean is fairly shoddy really, when I consider the time I've spent here. It's difficult to pick up a language if most of your co-workers and friends are English speakers and your job is an English teacher.

I took this photo at the beginning of the first day of class. The teacher is really nice and every lesson is taught in Korean. I'm actually the only westerner in my class, the others are Chinese, Japanese, Kazhakistani, Sri Lankan and Russian students.

Pusan National University is supposedly the best institution outside of Seoul. It's a nice campus with the mountains in the background and cheap food. Lunch is AU$1.50. It's nice to get back into uni life again too.

Between the subway and the campus is the PNU area, which is typical of the surroundings of any large Korean university. There are a lot of bars, karaoke rooms and restaurants tailored for a younger market. I walk through the area most days but don't have much time to enjoy it. Typically I'll wake up at 8:30am, eat brekky, travel to uni, take classes from 10am until 1pm, eat lunch and travel to work which I start around 2:30pm and finish at 10:30pm. Between uni and work there are 26 subway stops. So there's not much time for anything else during the week. But I like busy schedules, the same way I did in Australia. They keep me occupied.

Last Friday the Korean school took us for an excursion to see a Taekwondo instructor. We stretched, ran around, kicked the air and had some fun. The instructor was really friendly too, he told us that if we're learning Korean, we can come to his classes for free. Unfortuneately I don't have the time.

That's a picture of him there on the right. He's an 8th dan black belt instructor, which is quite high. On the left is his old teacher. Imagine if that guy was your father-in-law. Yikes.

And here's a picture of a fire we started at the last beach party of the summer. A bunch of us gathered at Gwangan beach to bid farewell to the warmer nights. Robyn Schultz, my fellow panelist from Seoul came down that night. Unfortunately we didn't take a picture together though. A big hello to everyone up in Seoul, you guys should come down here more often.

Anyway that's it for me! This weekend is Chuseok, which is kinda like Korean thanksgiving. So we get a nice four day weekend and time to relax.

Seeya!

2007 IKAA Gathering Part 2

The next gathering is going to be in Vegas in January. Due to the intensive period at work during that time I doubt I'll be able to get time off. But that's not going to stop me trying. Ha.

This is the 3 storey high banner that was attached to the wall of the Sofitel throughout our stay. It looked really pretty, but I always wonder what they do with the material after such an event. I reckon it would be good to cut up and make into t-shirts for everybody.

Here are 5 of the 6 Australians in the lobby of the hotel. Another one, Stephanie, was with us at the beginning but had to leave early. I'm in my typical photo posture as usual.

I'd never actually been to a horse race before so I took the opportunity when it arose. On the last Sunday arrangements were made to head down to the racepark as a group, but most people were tired. Only 6 of us ended up making the trek down to the track but it was a good time.

I know very little about horse racing in general, other than that it's an excuse to flog a helpless animal towards a finish line. But that didn't stop me wagering a bet. I picked the best looking horse, which ended up losing. Then I picked the ugliest looking one and that lost as well. Evidently beauty or a lack thereof is not a factor in racing. After that I went back to the hotel.

Here we are in Club Air, a place that ended up getting so full of adoptees that the locals ended up leaving and we had it to ourselves. I took this photo early on in the night. I guess some people are just very happy to have their photo taken.

A view from the VIP area looking down on the dancefloor. Pretty much everyone you can see is a friend of a friend. The level of adoptee networking promoted by the various organizations has been very successful.

My fellow panelist Robyn, with Dae-won having a good time. I left the place pretty late, and they were still dancing it up.

The closing ceremony was held in the Shilla Hotel, probably the most classy venue in Seoul. We dressed up nicely and were pleasantly surprised by the err... classiness of the place.

We all took our seats and heard speeches. The vice-president of Samsung, Kwang Sup-Han, was eating with us and footed the bill. At our table we took a few guesses at the price and generally agreed that it would run into the high tens of thousands. It was a very impressive setup.

The service was amazing. Wine was unlimited and all the plates were warm at the right time. Most impressively, they had a workforce of about 50 waiters who would stream out quickly and quietly carrying all the dishes at the right time, so nobody was left waiting for their food. Here's one of the waiters that was looking after our table. They came out so quickly they looked like a swarm of bees.

This was the appetizer. It was a seafood salad with wine dressing, but the prawns were some special kind of super tasty prawn that I'd never eaten before. This came after soup and was followed by steak and dessert. Man it was good.

Pia, Steve, Gennai and me. I hadn't worn a tie in so long I'd forgotten how to make the knot.

Some of the old characters from Koroot, the lodging house I stayed in last year. I still can't believe it's been a year already. Then again it seems like ages since I left Australia.

More happy faces. I have no idea when I'll meet up with these people again. Probably at some gathering way in the distant future.

The microphone host for the night was Ahn Jung-hyun, a television personality on Korean TV. She's a managing director of a media firm and hosts a talk show that I watch sometimes. So this was my small brush with fame.


Here's a video of one of the entertainment acts for the night, traditional Korean drummers. There was also other Korean traditional music and a b-boy performance, all of which were top quality.

The entertainment was interactive too, with the audience invited to play small drums that were handed out to everyone. In this photo we're singing 'Arirang' together, a traditional Korean folk song. Photo: Courtesy of Her Royal Loveliness, Pia Claire Meehan.

For the final night in Seoul, we had a club booked out for a while. Club circle is one of the more prominent and upmarket watering holes available. This is their animated LED front door sign, a couple of stories tall.

The interior design was original and aesthetically pleasing. White couches lined the outside, with a lot of mingling areas and televisions everywhere. On the couches were monitors displaying slideshows from other events.

In the middle of Club Circle is the bar area which is a large circle, would you believe. But the coolest thing about it is that the whole outer rim, with tables and all, rotates slowly like a revolving restaurant. So if you sit there, you eventually get to see the whole place from the comfort of your couch.

Later that night Mayda came back and gave us another performance. She's a very friendly and down to earth person. I bought one of her CDs afterwards, but it got lost somewhere in the blurry haze that was the rest of the night.

The drinks were a little bit pricey, as could be expected. We all pitched in at our table and those three bottles of JW set us back a mere KW600,000. But it was the last night, after all. Go hard and go home, as we used to say back in Australia.

The dress code of the event was all white, to match with the decor of the interior. Halfway through the night one of my very good friends in Korea and an organiser of the gathering, Tae-yang, showed up. He was wearing one of the bedsheets from the hotel, wrapped up into a toga. Awesome.



In the photos above are some old friends I caught up with and some friends I have since made. All good people.
The night was a perfect way to wrap up the gathering and I ended up meandering back to my apartment with a glow and a belly full of imported spirits.

The next day I woke up, checked out and took the KTX train back to good ol' Busan. At Seoul station I found a diner selling this hangover soup, which I promptly ordered. It had some sort of brown jelly stuff in it and tasted alright. On the day I arrived back, I had to teach that afternoon and it went pretty well.

Well that was the gathering! If you're adopted and thinking of coming back to Korea, I would highly recommend it. A shout-out to all the people who have. And if you're not adopted and thinking of coming to Korea, I would recommend it anyway.

Seeya!