So I suppose the April Fool's Day Prank Prank was fairly successful. The three of us had dinner at a rotisserie chicken and dish-pizza restaurant that was overly hip in the vein of polished concrete floors and tractors as decoration. I could only bring myself to act so gay before I started to feel weird. Anyway, at the restaurant we compared hand sizes and I talked about how big his muscles were and how he looked really strong when he had his shirt off after playing flag-football on Saturday mornings.
Also, I wore this really tight Korean shirt I bought awhile back. It's white, short-sleeved, and has a deep buttoned collar that is lined with something that looks like tuxedo ruffles. I was gonna go with nothing underneath, but that would've been overkill if my nipples were out in broad sight.
After the restaurant, I bought everyone cupcakes. Then we went to a teddy bear cafe. We sat at a table with teddy bears in a large room dominated by pinks, blues, and other pastels and various forms of lace. I fed Jonathan snacks and Miju had to excuse herself to the restroom to avoid cracking up in our faces over that move. Jonanthan and I both agreed we had to step up our act, because until that point I guess we hadn't been selling it too well. Jonathan had been questioning Miju about me, asking what was up with me, and if I was really a high school cheerleader like I claimed, but she didn't seem to think I was being gay enough.
As we were walking to the subway, I kept inviting Jonathan to a gay club I claimed to visit a lot, and also to the public baths where we would have to be naked together. Jonathan began talking to Miju separately, telling her he was reconsidering his position on me, and he had actually been involved with a bisexual dude in Texas. At first she didn't believe it, but she covertly sent me a text saying "He just told me he's bi!" and gave me a signal to cut the act out on the down-low.
As she went into the subway alone, Jonathan and I were cracking up, and decided he would text her saying to wait, that he has one more thing to tell her, and I would follow him down and we'd surprise her with a big "April Fool's!" He was talking to her at the ticket machine as I hid behind a dividing wall. I snuck up behind them as they were walking towards the gates and just before she went though, she turned around to see me with a super confused and worried look on her face. We had our laugh as she figured out what was going on. She was a bit angry, but not that angry I guess, because now she and I are dating.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
The April Fool's Prank Prank
I'm not really one for pranks. In school, I used to put chalk in the ribbed undersides of erasers, so when the teacher went to erase something on the blackboard, she actually just drew large arcing swaths across the board for a split second before realizing what was going on and removing the chalk. That's about all I was good for.
My friend Miju likes pranks much more than I do. She said in high school she and her friend pulled the old Saran Wrap over the toilet seat prank, much to the chagrin of the janitorial staff. She also did an April Fool's prank at a bake sale her school put on. She and a friend replaced the white cream in Oreo cookies with toothpaste and sold them. That prank didn't work as well, because when people ate them, they liked them, and thought it was just a new mint flavor. I think it still makes a good story though.
I suggested she pull a good prank on her middle school students, since she already toys with them by making them do ridiculous things like gaze into each others' eyes and do "cutesy" rock/paper/scissors. She obviously thought a prank would be a great idea, for the sake of teaching about a Western tradition, of course. The problem is, we couldn't think of anything, but the good news is that we came up with a prank to pull on one of her friends. However, I also came up with a prank to pull on her while she thinks she's pulling a prank.
Her friend Jonathan is a quiet black man whose hobbies seem to be working out twice a day, going to church, going to bed early, and not drinking alcohol. The original prank involves a short back-story. Let me elaborate:
Two weeks ago, there was a welcoming dinner for all the new foreign teachers in my program. These dinners are a great opportunity for us grizzled veterans to see if there are any new teachers who are attractive, and for us to meet one new person before just hanging out with our friends. I was hanging out with Miju when I briefly met Jonathan for the first time. Apparently, he and I are the only two people that Miju's met and liked since coming here to teach, so we know each other as Miju's "other 50%". At some point, Miju was bragging about the accuracy of her gaydar, which prompted a short discussion that Jonathan was absent for, if I recall correctly. Anywho, the next day, I met Miju at the Cheongdo Cow Fighting Festival. After we watched bulls wrestle around, we were standing outside of the arena when a pint-sized ajeoshi, skunked on soju, kept pestering us, wanting to get a picture with me even though he didn't have a camera because he was probably homeless. Eventually he came back enough for Miju to take a picture of him sidling up next to me with her phone. This wonderful photo she later modified to feature a lovely pink heart around me and the mini-ajeoshi as she and I were having drinks out on the town that night. She then added "Looks like my gaydar was wrong" to the photo and texted it to me as a souvenir. Except she really texted it to unsuspecting Jonathan, who responded with surprise at my gayness. Apparently he hadn't thought I was gay until she sent him that accidentally, which I suppose I should be grateful for.
So with this instance of mistaken text-messaging, Miju formulated the brilliant idea of not telling him it was a joke and inviting Jonathan out with me and her on April Fool's Day so I could act gay around him and we could giggle at how he reacted. I wasn't so sure about this, because I didn't want him to punch a hole through my head if he took it the wrong way, and because I don't really know the guy at all.
But I humored her idea, and a couple days later, came up with an even better idea. I play along with it BUT I let Jonathan in on the joke, and have him play along with it by receiving my questionably gay behavior and insinuations, and answering with his own. This way, Miju would think the prank is turning on me and her, and Jonathan is really gay, and she is the one who winds up being confused and uncomfortable, and Jonathan and I are laughing at her. I ran this by Jonathan the other day when I met him and a bunch of other guys to play flag football, and he is in, so the April Fool's Prank Prank is now afoot.
My friend Miju likes pranks much more than I do. She said in high school she and her friend pulled the old Saran Wrap over the toilet seat prank, much to the chagrin of the janitorial staff. She also did an April Fool's prank at a bake sale her school put on. She and a friend replaced the white cream in Oreo cookies with toothpaste and sold them. That prank didn't work as well, because when people ate them, they liked them, and thought it was just a new mint flavor. I think it still makes a good story though.
I suggested she pull a good prank on her middle school students, since she already toys with them by making them do ridiculous things like gaze into each others' eyes and do "cutesy" rock/paper/scissors. She obviously thought a prank would be a great idea, for the sake of teaching about a Western tradition, of course. The problem is, we couldn't think of anything, but the good news is that we came up with a prank to pull on one of her friends. However, I also came up with a prank to pull on her while she thinks she's pulling a prank.
Her friend Jonathan is a quiet black man whose hobbies seem to be working out twice a day, going to church, going to bed early, and not drinking alcohol. The original prank involves a short back-story. Let me elaborate:
Two weeks ago, there was a welcoming dinner for all the new foreign teachers in my program. These dinners are a great opportunity for us grizzled veterans to see if there are any new teachers who are attractive, and for us to meet one new person before just hanging out with our friends. I was hanging out with Miju when I briefly met Jonathan for the first time. Apparently, he and I are the only two people that Miju's met and liked since coming here to teach, so we know each other as Miju's "other 50%". At some point, Miju was bragging about the accuracy of her gaydar, which prompted a short discussion that Jonathan was absent for, if I recall correctly. Anywho, the next day, I met Miju at the Cheongdo Cow Fighting Festival. After we watched bulls wrestle around, we were standing outside of the arena when a pint-sized ajeoshi, skunked on soju, kept pestering us, wanting to get a picture with me even though he didn't have a camera because he was probably homeless. Eventually he came back enough for Miju to take a picture of him sidling up next to me with her phone. This wonderful photo she later modified to feature a lovely pink heart around me and the mini-ajeoshi as she and I were having drinks out on the town that night. She then added "Looks like my gaydar was wrong" to the photo and texted it to me as a souvenir. Except she really texted it to unsuspecting Jonathan, who responded with surprise at my gayness. Apparently he hadn't thought I was gay until she sent him that accidentally, which I suppose I should be grateful for.
So with this instance of mistaken text-messaging, Miju formulated the brilliant idea of not telling him it was a joke and inviting Jonathan out with me and her on April Fool's Day so I could act gay around him and we could giggle at how he reacted. I wasn't so sure about this, because I didn't want him to punch a hole through my head if he took it the wrong way, and because I don't really know the guy at all.
But I humored her idea, and a couple days later, came up with an even better idea. I play along with it BUT I let Jonathan in on the joke, and have him play along with it by receiving my questionably gay behavior and insinuations, and answering with his own. This way, Miju would think the prank is turning on me and her, and Jonathan is really gay, and she is the one who winds up being confused and uncomfortable, and Jonathan and I are laughing at her. I ran this by Jonathan the other day when I met him and a bunch of other guys to play flag football, and he is in, so the April Fool's Prank Prank is now afoot.
Monday, March 22, 2010
FOOD
A couple of my friends went back to the states over winter break. Paul finished his contract and was taking his extra 2 weeks vacation before starting his new one, and Jen had to go home for some special surgery 'cause she got in a bus accident in Peru a few years ago, or something like that. Anyway, I wanted some mac and cheese, because you can't get that here. Not even at Costco. I know, it's a disgrace. I told Paul to get me some first because I knew he was going home first, and then I told Jen to get me some later as a back-up plan, because I couldn't entirely count on Paul not blowing all his money on booze and forgeting to get me my mac and cheese.
Jen gave me the goods first, one regular box of Annie's "mild" style - this is basically Annie's version of Kraft Mac and Cheese for all the 8 year-old sissies that think their classic purple-box cheddar is too "intense" - and a box of "family size" mac and cheese that was different from the other box, but still not the white cheddar that is so good. Not that I'm complaining, they were both delicious. I ate the regular box that evening after Jen gave them to me, and I ate the "family size" the following night. "Family size" is a huge overestimation, by the way. I ate the whole thing with no problem, and man was it good. If I had a family, they would've been hungry that night, because there was absolutely nothing left.
I got Paul's shipment a week later. Five boxes of Annie's. It's obvious who loves me more, even though these boxes were all the "mild" Kraft imitation styles. I ate one box the other day, and decided I would be the man at an upcoming pot luck/language exchange meeting by making three boxes and bringing that. It was a sure-fire champion move, except that when I started eating it at the meeting, it was terrible. It had cooled in transit, but even still, it was dry and not that cheesy. I must not have had the right proportions of milk and butter, even though I thought I tripled the right amounts correctly. Hey, even pros make mistakes sometimes. Just ask Tiger Woods. Anyway, maybe a quarter of it got eaten, and I don't blame anyone for not liking it, it was a total let down for me too. But that's OK! I brought the leftovers home and I put a bunch in the frying pan today with more butter, olive oil, Tabasco, two slices of cheese, the crumbs from a nearly-empty bag of frozen tortillas, and some Parmesan. I fried that shit right up and it wound up being okay. I had to use the frying pan because I don't have a microwave. Or an oven.
But that's not all! Jen also gave me a nearly full jar of pesto. She all of a sudden came out as being lactose-intolerant, and there are traces of cheese in the Trader Joe's pesto, so I scored a free one there. I tried to make chicken pesto pasta like my girlfriend did once, but mine came out dry and not really that good at all. I readjusted my battle plan against this pesto, and really nailed it. I've been making these fucking awesome sandwiches. I chop up chicken breast and onions and pan-fry that shit with a bunch of pesto and a little Tabasco, and then I put it on white bread, because you can't find whole grain bread here, with sliced cheddar cheese and tomatoes and lettuce and then I put the sandwich on the frying pan for a bit. I butter the outsides of the bread in advance, so by the time the cheese melts and the bread browns, these sandwiches are out of the god-damn world! I don't know what I'm going to do when I run out of the pesto. I'll probably just replace it with Tabasco sauce.
Jen gave me the goods first, one regular box of Annie's "mild" style - this is basically Annie's version of Kraft Mac and Cheese for all the 8 year-old sissies that think their classic purple-box cheddar is too "intense" - and a box of "family size" mac and cheese that was different from the other box, but still not the white cheddar that is so good. Not that I'm complaining, they were both delicious. I ate the regular box that evening after Jen gave them to me, and I ate the "family size" the following night. "Family size" is a huge overestimation, by the way. I ate the whole thing with no problem, and man was it good. If I had a family, they would've been hungry that night, because there was absolutely nothing left.
I got Paul's shipment a week later. Five boxes of Annie's. It's obvious who loves me more, even though these boxes were all the "mild" Kraft imitation styles. I ate one box the other day, and decided I would be the man at an upcoming pot luck/language exchange meeting by making three boxes and bringing that. It was a sure-fire champion move, except that when I started eating it at the meeting, it was terrible. It had cooled in transit, but even still, it was dry and not that cheesy. I must not have had the right proportions of milk and butter, even though I thought I tripled the right amounts correctly. Hey, even pros make mistakes sometimes. Just ask Tiger Woods. Anyway, maybe a quarter of it got eaten, and I don't blame anyone for not liking it, it was a total let down for me too. But that's OK! I brought the leftovers home and I put a bunch in the frying pan today with more butter, olive oil, Tabasco, two slices of cheese, the crumbs from a nearly-empty bag of frozen tortillas, and some Parmesan. I fried that shit right up and it wound up being okay. I had to use the frying pan because I don't have a microwave. Or an oven.
But that's not all! Jen also gave me a nearly full jar of pesto. She all of a sudden came out as being lactose-intolerant, and there are traces of cheese in the Trader Joe's pesto, so I scored a free one there. I tried to make chicken pesto pasta like my girlfriend did once, but mine came out dry and not really that good at all. I readjusted my battle plan against this pesto, and really nailed it. I've been making these fucking awesome sandwiches. I chop up chicken breast and onions and pan-fry that shit with a bunch of pesto and a little Tabasco, and then I put it on white bread, because you can't find whole grain bread here, with sliced cheddar cheese and tomatoes and lettuce and then I put the sandwich on the frying pan for a bit. I butter the outsides of the bread in advance, so by the time the cheese melts and the bread browns, these sandwiches are out of the god-damn world! I don't know what I'm going to do when I run out of the pesto. I'll probably just replace it with Tabasco sauce.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
태극기 Mosaic
After more than a year of completely ignoring it, I have finally begun my flag-mosaic project. The Korean flag is known as taegeukgi (태극기). I started the actual pasting last Sunday evening, following the design I had previously measured and lined out. After two evenings and fours albums, this is the current status of the flag.
I finally started this project after disgusting myself with how much free time I spent doing absolutely nothing of note or production. I plan to work on this two or three times per week until it's finished. Clearly, the massive white background will take the most time to finish. I'm nearly done with the red section of the taegeuk, and one trigram is finished. The blue section of the taegeuk will be difficult to finish because of a lack of acceptable blue pieces of delivery menu. Apparently, blue is not a color often used to sell food, although red is quite abundant. It will also be difficult to finish the white section, not only because it is massive, as I mentioned above, but because it will take a long time to dig out enough acceptable white pieces, and I will probably have to cut more.
Check out the symbolism of South Korea's flag here.
With all the time I plant to put into it, this thing better be totally awesome by the time it's done, in a month or so if I keep up this pace.
I finally started this project after disgusting myself with how much free time I spent doing absolutely nothing of note or production. I plan to work on this two or three times per week until it's finished. Clearly, the massive white background will take the most time to finish. I'm nearly done with the red section of the taegeuk, and one trigram is finished. The blue section of the taegeuk will be difficult to finish because of a lack of acceptable blue pieces of delivery menu. Apparently, blue is not a color often used to sell food, although red is quite abundant. It will also be difficult to finish the white section, not only because it is massive, as I mentioned above, but because it will take a long time to dig out enough acceptable white pieces, and I will probably have to cut more.
Check out the symbolism of South Korea's flag here.
With all the time I plant to put into it, this thing better be totally awesome by the time it's done, in a month or so if I keep up this pace.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Australia
It's been cold and, presently, rainy here in Korea. This weather sucks, and it sucks a lot more than it normally would since I went on vacation to Australia. I was planning on getting off the plane in the morning, checking into my hostel, and going directly to the beach to lie in the sun, but it was cloudy and gray in Sydney, so I wandered around downtown instead. The sun came out in the afternoon, but I had already decided I was too lazy to get to the beach that day. I still got a sunburn, lying in the shade in front of the ANZAC war memorial in Hyde Park, which had until then been just a memory and a few photos from my first trip. I had just finished reading "Anxious Pleasures" which is a thoroughly worthless book. It is a sophomoric retelling of Kafka's "Metamorphosis" via the perspectives of Gregor Samsa's family and others around him. It is lauded by some unknown clown as "the book Lance Olsen was put on this planet to write", which, if true, is a very disappointing motive for existence.
Fortunately, I had found "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket", by Edgar Allen Poe, in a used bookstore. This was a happy coincidence, as it's one of the few major things of his I hadn't read, and because Paul Theroux wrote so much about it in "The Old Patagonian Express", which I had recently finished reading. This was the book I spent the next few days staring at as I spent hours on Bondi Beach in the sun and heat. In fact, by the third day of laying out on the sand, I had almost finished it and picked up another book since I knew Andy and I would be moving around a lot when he got here.
I was glad to get out of Sydney the day after Andy arrived, since we were staying in a hovel of a hostel, a massive place aptly named Maze. It was in an old building and it looked the the carpets were original. There were no outlets in the rooms which smelled liked wet towels at all times. The showers' pressure range ran between a constant leak to a rapid dribble. Maybe I had just forgotten what it was like traveling cheap, or at least trying to, since a lot of things were ridiculously expensive in Australia. Eighteen dollar six-packs of domestic beer is what first comes to mind.
Our place in Adelaide was much nicer. More expensive at $30 per night, or something like that, but the rooms were new and orderly. Unfortunately, there was still an element of incompetence in the employment pool, as we found out on our return trip to Adelaide that someone had deleted our reservation and the hostel was booked full. But on our first stay in Adelaide, we ate cheap pizza in a beer garden while some Aussie whined along with his acoustic guitar, rode bikes to the sea where the wind was pelting us with sand, and then back, at least until Andy popped his tire trying to get some air. Later, on the balcony, a French girl was gushing about how amazing Alice Springs and the Red Center were, which was good, apart from how she wouldn't shut up, since Andy and I were driving up there.
I brought my MP3 player's car pack specifically for the drive up to Alice Springs and back. It was two days through the desert, each way. By the time we had cleared the congestion of the city alive, with Andy and I both focusing all our attention on making sure he stayed to the left, I put my music on. Because I was so looking forward to listening to my own music for two days straight, it was only fitting that my fucking Zune broke as soon as we cleared the range of all radio signals. Even though Andy and I are both masters of conversation, two days with no music, not even pop, blows. I hit the scan button and it didn't stop searching until we were about 30 minutes outside of Alice Springs.
This is what the road looked like for two days:
We stayed two nights in Coober Pedy, opal capital of the world. With just about 3500 people living in this "town", they produce about 60% of the world's supply. That's pretty good, and I guess it's the only reason people live in the middle of nowhere in dugout homes in the dry, red earth. We slept underground, too. It was cooler for sure, but hard to wake up when there is absolutely no light and we were never fully confident as to what time it was, due to the fact that some states in Australia are on daylight savings time, some are not, some have one hour differences, and some have 30 minute differences. One full day is about fine for Coober Pedy. We took our Yaris for some off-roading to check out the sights of the outback, which turned out to be some small, ancient, well-eroded, breakaway mountain range called The Breakaways, and the world's longest fence which keeps dingoes from the north from fucking shit up in the south. We met a German girl working in one of the opal museums/shops, and she said she had been living and working there for four months. I felt awful for her.
We didn't spend much time in Alice Springs beyond starting and finishing a three-day tour to Uluru and Kata-tjuta. And that tour didn't go too well for Andy who was a bit too hung over at 5AM in the morning when we left in the van. We walked around Uluru in the baking sun that first day, which is risk enough of dehydration and heat exhaustion for someone who is feeling healthy and hydrated, but just kicked Andy's ass since he was already dehydrated and feeling bad from drinking. Our van held about 15 of us, and a bunch of the others were German. My whole time in Australia, I met more Germans than Australians. It's ridiculous. We also had 4 French, 4 British, a Canadian, and a Spaniard. We camped out in swags - canvas sleeping bags with a thin, built-in mattress - both nights, and our guide, apart from being really knowledgeable about the local aboriginal culture and history, cooked us some amazing food. The meal we had the second night - boiled vegetables, bush bread, and rice with chilli - cooked over a campfire and among coals, was by far the most delicious meal I had in as long as I can remember. We did a fair amount of hiking beyond the loop of Uluru. We hiked through King's Canyon to a swimming hole bordered by vertical red cliffs after watching the sun rise over the rim, hiked through the Valley of the Winds and among the domes of Kata-tjuta, and gathered our own firewood, careful not to get splintered with the poisonous wood. Andy slept in the van mostly, with only the small consolation of seeing the immediate aftermath of a goanna that had killed some venomous snake down by the parking lot.
For the drive back to Adelaide, I bought a five-disc compilation of "101 Beer Songs". It turned out that the songs had nothing to do with beer at all, it apparently just seemed like a good name for a mix-album spanning the last 40 years. We stayed again in Coober Pedy, ate at the same pizza place, getting a satay chicken pie instead of the spinach and feta we got the first time. We watched some preliminary matches in the Australian open and talked with an elderly British woman who was quite out of place in a dirt-hole motel in the Australia desert and an Irish guy who was far more pleasant than his countrymen we had the misfortune of riding with on a day-tour of wineries outside of Adelaide.
From Adelaide again, it was a couple of hops on Australian budget airlines to Hervey bay, via Sydney again. If you think Southwest is budget, wait until you try Tiger Air or Virgin Blue. Seven kilo maximum weight for your carry-on luggage, all checked luggage will cost you an extra $25. There is no complimentary juice and snack, you have to pay for everything, including water. They don't even provide you with a magazine.
In Hervey Bay, Andy and I checked into the hostel/tour company that we booked our Fraser Island safari with. We were told to be at the bar at 3PM for an information briefing, and then went to the beach, which was long, and mostly empty, and shallow and warm. Later, on the porch of the bar, everyone that was going on the trip was divided into two groups. We were in the truck with only 7 people in it, the other truck had eight. Our truck had the two cutest girls, the other truck had the Irish girl who was a little too friendly, and the 18 year-old English kid - "the Baby", according to one of the 19 year-old German girls in our truck - that talked too much. That night everyone bought their groceries and booze together, and I went for a nighttime swim in the warm water.
The next morning we were given a final briefing on the island and how and when to use the various four-wheel and two-wheel gears in the trucks. This part, in particular, was a disaster. Our "instructor" was a fat guy named Naru whose first, maybe even second, language was definitely not English, and whose comprehension thereof was highly in question. Someone would ask a question and he would answer with a disorganized circumlocution, leaving everyone who listened to him thoroughly confused and even more unsure of what to do and how to do it. At one point, the English Baby asked him about a contradiction between our printed, recommended itineraries and what he was saying we should do. He answered by asking, "Where are you from?" and then ridiculing him for being so young with insinuations that his balls hadn't dropped yet.
Naru's incompetence was overwhelming. It was exactly what two truckloads of kids who have never driven a four-wheel drive truck didn't need just before they spent three days on a sand island driving themselves around. I knew what he should've said because I had been on the same trip before, and I am not a complete moron. It could've been this simple: "Drive to the ferry in 2-high. Once on the ferry, lock your hubs and put the truck in 4-high. Use 4-high the entire time you are on the island, unless you get stuck in the sand. Then, use 4-low until you are unstuck. Once that happens go back to 4-high. When you are back on the ferry to return to the mainland, return the truck to 2-high and unlock your hubs."
The trip was mostly fine once we were under way. I drove to the ferry and did the first leg on the trip on the island, barely making it up an incline that bogged down the truck behind us, and making everyone behind them wait. Unfortunately, the truck that was bogged down was the other truck from our tour company, and one of the Canadian guys in our truck had made the bright suggestion that we travel and camp together the previous night. That seems like a nice, sociable idea until you realize that everyone will be getting stuck on their own schedule, and waiting for other people to dig themselves out, or stopping to help every time it happens, is supremely annoying, especially when each truck is capable of fending for themselves and may want to pursue a different itinerary or just simply prefer laying on the white sand in front of a crystal clear lake with the sun overhead to sitting in a truck on a sand track while looking back around the corner with everyone saying, do you think they made it up? they're probably OK, right? should we wait longer? maybe we should go back.
This method didn't hold out too long as, after spending hours at Lake McKenzie, we stopped to try to find ice at Central Station, and the other group just drove past us. The Canadians were worrying about them and wondering what we should do, when I finally suggested that we not worry about them and do our own thing or else we'll be waiting the entire trip. This met with some sharp, "Fine, if that's what you want to do"'s, but no one actually said anything otherwise, which was fine by me.
One of the Canadian guys, the Italian guy, and myself did the majority of the driving. Andy drove briefly, but didn't put much interest in it. We camped both nights on the eastern beach, behind dunes. I was the first one up both days, and got to see the latter parts of some beautiful sunrises, and be the first to be assaulted by monster horse flies, which came out in the morning and evenings. Despite the early annoyances of trying to stick with the other truck, and undercurrents of people thinking they were more capable drivers than everyone else, the trip was great. We visited the rusty skeleton of the luxury liner Maheno half-buried in sand since the '30's, spotted a small shark and some rays from the top of Indian Head, floated down shady Eli Creek, and hiked across dunes to Lake Wabby where we whipped the giant catfish into a frenzy by tossing them the horseflies we killed and were nibbled by little fish that ate the dead skin off of us.
On our final day, we were making to visit Lake McKenzie again before we had to get back on the ferry. I suggested a shortcut which looked obvious on the map, and was behind the wheel when, on that route, I got us stuck at the foot of an incline that was beyond the capabilities of our truck. We couldn't go forward, even in 4-low with deflated tires, and we couldn't really go back because our reverse was fucked and had a nasty and extremely reliable habit of popping out of gear, regardless of how badly we ground the bastard. Everyone was in a tizzy saying we were fucked, and would have to call a tow truck, and the old couple that was in a small truck off to the side watching all of this because they couldn't get up the hill either said that they'd only seen locals make it in the last hour by absolutely flooring it from way back, and we thought we were in the worst possible spot and so on and so on. After sweating and swearing and digging for maybe an hour, we finally got ourselves out by listening to the Italian guy and making tracks with logs and branches instead of just jamming them under the tires to give us a quick jolt of leverage, and by reversing slowly, at low RPMs so the gear wouldn't jump out. Unfortunately, after all the time spent doing this, and having to backtrack, we missed out on our second visit to Lake McKenzie, but we did have plenty of time to cook and eat the rest of the pesto pasta while waiting at the ferry ramp.
That was basically the end. I had arranged to get a ride to Brisbane the next day from the Italian guy in our truck. After waiting for him to run around town and register his newly acquired van, we drove down, stopping to eat lunch in Gympie, where I devoured an entire large thick-crust pizza. There were some cool people at the hostel that night, but there was also an supremely annoying Canadian guy whose company I could suffer only so long. I went to the airport the next morning with a Korean kid who was heading back to join the army, and another trip that I had looked forward to for so long was over and now here I am in Daegu again, and it's chilly and gray, and it's been drizzling for about three days.
Fortunately, I had found "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket", by Edgar Allen Poe, in a used bookstore. This was a happy coincidence, as it's one of the few major things of his I hadn't read, and because Paul Theroux wrote so much about it in "The Old Patagonian Express", which I had recently finished reading. This was the book I spent the next few days staring at as I spent hours on Bondi Beach in the sun and heat. In fact, by the third day of laying out on the sand, I had almost finished it and picked up another book since I knew Andy and I would be moving around a lot when he got here.
I was glad to get out of Sydney the day after Andy arrived, since we were staying in a hovel of a hostel, a massive place aptly named Maze. It was in an old building and it looked the the carpets were original. There were no outlets in the rooms which smelled liked wet towels at all times. The showers' pressure range ran between a constant leak to a rapid dribble. Maybe I had just forgotten what it was like traveling cheap, or at least trying to, since a lot of things were ridiculously expensive in Australia. Eighteen dollar six-packs of domestic beer is what first comes to mind.
Our place in Adelaide was much nicer. More expensive at $30 per night, or something like that, but the rooms were new and orderly. Unfortunately, there was still an element of incompetence in the employment pool, as we found out on our return trip to Adelaide that someone had deleted our reservation and the hostel was booked full. But on our first stay in Adelaide, we ate cheap pizza in a beer garden while some Aussie whined along with his acoustic guitar, rode bikes to the sea where the wind was pelting us with sand, and then back, at least until Andy popped his tire trying to get some air. Later, on the balcony, a French girl was gushing about how amazing Alice Springs and the Red Center were, which was good, apart from how she wouldn't shut up, since Andy and I were driving up there.
I brought my MP3 player's car pack specifically for the drive up to Alice Springs and back. It was two days through the desert, each way. By the time we had cleared the congestion of the city alive, with Andy and I both focusing all our attention on making sure he stayed to the left, I put my music on. Because I was so looking forward to listening to my own music for two days straight, it was only fitting that my fucking Zune broke as soon as we cleared the range of all radio signals. Even though Andy and I are both masters of conversation, two days with no music, not even pop, blows. I hit the scan button and it didn't stop searching until we were about 30 minutes outside of Alice Springs.
This is what the road looked like for two days:
We stayed two nights in Coober Pedy, opal capital of the world. With just about 3500 people living in this "town", they produce about 60% of the world's supply. That's pretty good, and I guess it's the only reason people live in the middle of nowhere in dugout homes in the dry, red earth. We slept underground, too. It was cooler for sure, but hard to wake up when there is absolutely no light and we were never fully confident as to what time it was, due to the fact that some states in Australia are on daylight savings time, some are not, some have one hour differences, and some have 30 minute differences. One full day is about fine for Coober Pedy. We took our Yaris for some off-roading to check out the sights of the outback, which turned out to be some small, ancient, well-eroded, breakaway mountain range called The Breakaways, and the world's longest fence which keeps dingoes from the north from fucking shit up in the south. We met a German girl working in one of the opal museums/shops, and she said she had been living and working there for four months. I felt awful for her.
We didn't spend much time in Alice Springs beyond starting and finishing a three-day tour to Uluru and Kata-tjuta. And that tour didn't go too well for Andy who was a bit too hung over at 5AM in the morning when we left in the van. We walked around Uluru in the baking sun that first day, which is risk enough of dehydration and heat exhaustion for someone who is feeling healthy and hydrated, but just kicked Andy's ass since he was already dehydrated and feeling bad from drinking. Our van held about 15 of us, and a bunch of the others were German. My whole time in Australia, I met more Germans than Australians. It's ridiculous. We also had 4 French, 4 British, a Canadian, and a Spaniard. We camped out in swags - canvas sleeping bags with a thin, built-in mattress - both nights, and our guide, apart from being really knowledgeable about the local aboriginal culture and history, cooked us some amazing food. The meal we had the second night - boiled vegetables, bush bread, and rice with chilli - cooked over a campfire and among coals, was by far the most delicious meal I had in as long as I can remember. We did a fair amount of hiking beyond the loop of Uluru. We hiked through King's Canyon to a swimming hole bordered by vertical red cliffs after watching the sun rise over the rim, hiked through the Valley of the Winds and among the domes of Kata-tjuta, and gathered our own firewood, careful not to get splintered with the poisonous wood. Andy slept in the van mostly, with only the small consolation of seeing the immediate aftermath of a goanna that had killed some venomous snake down by the parking lot.
For the drive back to Adelaide, I bought a five-disc compilation of "101 Beer Songs". It turned out that the songs had nothing to do with beer at all, it apparently just seemed like a good name for a mix-album spanning the last 40 years. We stayed again in Coober Pedy, ate at the same pizza place, getting a satay chicken pie instead of the spinach and feta we got the first time. We watched some preliminary matches in the Australian open and talked with an elderly British woman who was quite out of place in a dirt-hole motel in the Australia desert and an Irish guy who was far more pleasant than his countrymen we had the misfortune of riding with on a day-tour of wineries outside of Adelaide.
From Adelaide again, it was a couple of hops on Australian budget airlines to Hervey bay, via Sydney again. If you think Southwest is budget, wait until you try Tiger Air or Virgin Blue. Seven kilo maximum weight for your carry-on luggage, all checked luggage will cost you an extra $25. There is no complimentary juice and snack, you have to pay for everything, including water. They don't even provide you with a magazine.
In Hervey Bay, Andy and I checked into the hostel/tour company that we booked our Fraser Island safari with. We were told to be at the bar at 3PM for an information briefing, and then went to the beach, which was long, and mostly empty, and shallow and warm. Later, on the porch of the bar, everyone that was going on the trip was divided into two groups. We were in the truck with only 7 people in it, the other truck had eight. Our truck had the two cutest girls, the other truck had the Irish girl who was a little too friendly, and the 18 year-old English kid - "the Baby", according to one of the 19 year-old German girls in our truck - that talked too much. That night everyone bought their groceries and booze together, and I went for a nighttime swim in the warm water.
The next morning we were given a final briefing on the island and how and when to use the various four-wheel and two-wheel gears in the trucks. This part, in particular, was a disaster. Our "instructor" was a fat guy named Naru whose first, maybe even second, language was definitely not English, and whose comprehension thereof was highly in question. Someone would ask a question and he would answer with a disorganized circumlocution, leaving everyone who listened to him thoroughly confused and even more unsure of what to do and how to do it. At one point, the English Baby asked him about a contradiction between our printed, recommended itineraries and what he was saying we should do. He answered by asking, "Where are you from?" and then ridiculing him for being so young with insinuations that his balls hadn't dropped yet.
Naru's incompetence was overwhelming. It was exactly what two truckloads of kids who have never driven a four-wheel drive truck didn't need just before they spent three days on a sand island driving themselves around. I knew what he should've said because I had been on the same trip before, and I am not a complete moron. It could've been this simple: "Drive to the ferry in 2-high. Once on the ferry, lock your hubs and put the truck in 4-high. Use 4-high the entire time you are on the island, unless you get stuck in the sand. Then, use 4-low until you are unstuck. Once that happens go back to 4-high. When you are back on the ferry to return to the mainland, return the truck to 2-high and unlock your hubs."
The trip was mostly fine once we were under way. I drove to the ferry and did the first leg on the trip on the island, barely making it up an incline that bogged down the truck behind us, and making everyone behind them wait. Unfortunately, the truck that was bogged down was the other truck from our tour company, and one of the Canadian guys in our truck had made the bright suggestion that we travel and camp together the previous night. That seems like a nice, sociable idea until you realize that everyone will be getting stuck on their own schedule, and waiting for other people to dig themselves out, or stopping to help every time it happens, is supremely annoying, especially when each truck is capable of fending for themselves and may want to pursue a different itinerary or just simply prefer laying on the white sand in front of a crystal clear lake with the sun overhead to sitting in a truck on a sand track while looking back around the corner with everyone saying, do you think they made it up? they're probably OK, right? should we wait longer? maybe we should go back.
This method didn't hold out too long as, after spending hours at Lake McKenzie, we stopped to try to find ice at Central Station, and the other group just drove past us. The Canadians were worrying about them and wondering what we should do, when I finally suggested that we not worry about them and do our own thing or else we'll be waiting the entire trip. This met with some sharp, "Fine, if that's what you want to do"'s, but no one actually said anything otherwise, which was fine by me.
One of the Canadian guys, the Italian guy, and myself did the majority of the driving. Andy drove briefly, but didn't put much interest in it. We camped both nights on the eastern beach, behind dunes. I was the first one up both days, and got to see the latter parts of some beautiful sunrises, and be the first to be assaulted by monster horse flies, which came out in the morning and evenings. Despite the early annoyances of trying to stick with the other truck, and undercurrents of people thinking they were more capable drivers than everyone else, the trip was great. We visited the rusty skeleton of the luxury liner Maheno half-buried in sand since the '30's, spotted a small shark and some rays from the top of Indian Head, floated down shady Eli Creek, and hiked across dunes to Lake Wabby where we whipped the giant catfish into a frenzy by tossing them the horseflies we killed and were nibbled by little fish that ate the dead skin off of us.
On our final day, we were making to visit Lake McKenzie again before we had to get back on the ferry. I suggested a shortcut which looked obvious on the map, and was behind the wheel when, on that route, I got us stuck at the foot of an incline that was beyond the capabilities of our truck. We couldn't go forward, even in 4-low with deflated tires, and we couldn't really go back because our reverse was fucked and had a nasty and extremely reliable habit of popping out of gear, regardless of how badly we ground the bastard. Everyone was in a tizzy saying we were fucked, and would have to call a tow truck, and the old couple that was in a small truck off to the side watching all of this because they couldn't get up the hill either said that they'd only seen locals make it in the last hour by absolutely flooring it from way back, and we thought we were in the worst possible spot and so on and so on. After sweating and swearing and digging for maybe an hour, we finally got ourselves out by listening to the Italian guy and making tracks with logs and branches instead of just jamming them under the tires to give us a quick jolt of leverage, and by reversing slowly, at low RPMs so the gear wouldn't jump out. Unfortunately, after all the time spent doing this, and having to backtrack, we missed out on our second visit to Lake McKenzie, but we did have plenty of time to cook and eat the rest of the pesto pasta while waiting at the ferry ramp.
That was basically the end. I had arranged to get a ride to Brisbane the next day from the Italian guy in our truck. After waiting for him to run around town and register his newly acquired van, we drove down, stopping to eat lunch in Gympie, where I devoured an entire large thick-crust pizza. There were some cool people at the hostel that night, but there was also an supremely annoying Canadian guy whose company I could suffer only so long. I went to the airport the next morning with a Korean kid who was heading back to join the army, and another trip that I had looked forward to for so long was over and now here I am in Daegu again, and it's chilly and gray, and it's been drizzling for about three days.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Points of Resolution
All Points of Bullshit have been resolved positively, thank god. I am going to Australia tomorrow morning for the full length of my original ticket.
Point of Resolution the first is that the DMOE got our schedule out finally. It was not a favorable schedule for me in the least. I had 11 days of camp, the second most of everyone in EPIK in Daegu. That's 135 people. And I had a camp during my intended first week in Australia. This snag in my schedule was rectified through my persistence in bothering my coordinator. I finally convinced him to let me find a substitute for the camp by asking him why the hell I couldn't find a substitute repeatedly, and asking why exactly it was so hard for his office to change my name on some paper work to another teacher's name, which is all that actually had to be done. The fortuitous result of this badgering leads to Point of Resolution the Second.
Point of Resolution the second is that I will not have to fake swine flu in order to receive my refund via my cancellation insurance. Because I was able to find a kind-hearted soul to cover my camp for me (one of the 45 EPIK teachers in Daegu with four or less days of camp), I will be using my original ticket.
Point of Resolution the Third is a simple one. My school won't pay me for the seven extra working days that I will be on vacation. This is an entirely negligible penalty as my vacation is far more important than a couple hundred dollars, or whatever measly sum that loss of payment works out to.
Point of Resolution the first is that the DMOE got our schedule out finally. It was not a favorable schedule for me in the least. I had 11 days of camp, the second most of everyone in EPIK in Daegu. That's 135 people. And I had a camp during my intended first week in Australia. This snag in my schedule was rectified through my persistence in bothering my coordinator. I finally convinced him to let me find a substitute for the camp by asking him why the hell I couldn't find a substitute repeatedly, and asking why exactly it was so hard for his office to change my name on some paper work to another teacher's name, which is all that actually had to be done. The fortuitous result of this badgering leads to Point of Resolution the Second.
Point of Resolution the second is that I will not have to fake swine flu in order to receive my refund via my cancellation insurance. Because I was able to find a kind-hearted soul to cover my camp for me (one of the 45 EPIK teachers in Daegu with four or less days of camp), I will be using my original ticket.
Point of Resolution the Third is a simple one. My school won't pay me for the seven extra working days that I will be on vacation. This is an entirely negligible penalty as my vacation is far more important than a couple hundred dollars, or whatever measly sum that loss of payment works out to.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Points of Bullshit
Winter vacation for English teachers in Korea means two weeks of getting the hell out. We teachers get our free time during the window of our school's break which is the entire month of January, plus a week on either side, usually. Last year, I went to the Philippines. Friends of mine went to Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, China, and Japan, among other places. This year, some of my friend are going to Nepal and Spain, among other places. Needless to say, this is a period of time that is much looked-forward to.
My plans are to spend three weeks in Australia with my brother who has never been out of the country before (Canada doesn't count). Three weeks in an English-speaking country in the middle of summer in January - very nice. However, as things often go here in Korea, my plans have been fucked up real good by some dumbass ticket insurance policy and the great Korean bureaucracy.
I must admit I made the initial mistake in buying my plane ticket early, before my winter camp schedule was finalized. English camps are what occupies us English teachers during the school breaks when we are not on our vacations. I figured that since my school finishes on December 18th, I would have the rest of December and the first part of January to work my allotment of camps before I leave the country on January 7th. I also contacted my coodinator at the Daegu Metropolitan Office of Education pretty early to let him know I want to buy my tickets and request camps as early as possible so that I could get them over with. He said it was still far too early to say when camps would be, but I figured I would be okay requesting early camps based on previous winter and summer camps. This leads to Point of Bullshit the First:
Point of Bullshit the First is that the DMOE takes FOREVER to get even the most basic of scheduling done for these winter camps. Teachers are understandably looking to get the hell out of the country to somewhere exotic, and want to make plans as early as possible to save money and hassle. It wasn't until November 24th that we were officially informed of the window of time in which our camps would fall (the first and second weeks of January - precisely when my $1100 ticket says I'm going to be in Australia). And it's not going to be until December 15th that we will know our exact dates and locations - three weeks away from when our camps will likely start. Fortunately I anticipated this terrible delay of vital information and bought cancellation insurance on my ticket in case I had to change my ticket or just scrap it and buy a new one. This leads to Point of Bullshit the Second.
Point of Bullshit the Second is that when I called up Orbitz to figure out exactly how to go about the cancellation refund process, I was informed of the troublesome news that I am only protected from cancellation fees and penalties if there is a serious medical emergency inflicted upon myself, and that simply wanting to cancel because of scheduling difficulties doesn't get me any money back. In fact, the Orbitz representative actually told me if I cancelled my ticket, I would not only lose the money I paid for it, I would actually have to pay an ADDITIONAL $857 worth of penalties to Japan Air. I nearly punched my fucking laptop. I asked what would happen if I just didn't show up. I would lose my money for the ticket and that's it. I don't get how pulling a no-show puts you in a better situation than kindly informing the airline that you won't be able to make the flight so they can sell the seat to someone else, but apparently that's how things work. I think the guy mentioned something about how canceling gives me credit toward other fights in the amount of the difference in penalties or some bullshit like that, but I don't really know because I was busy not punching my computer. At this point, I don't know if I am going to be able to spend my three weeks in the sun. And those three weeks bring me to Point of Bullshit the Third.
Point of Bullshit the Third has to do with just how much time I get for vacation. Officially, we are allowed only ten working days. My ticket includes 17 working days. Before I bought the ticket, I checked, double-checked, and triple-checked with my school that it was okay that I spend extra time out of the country. I wanted to be sure that they were sure that they weren't going to decide to put me to work somehow during my non-camp, non-official vacation days, as schools often do. This would have been no problem, since it's provided for in our contract even though lots of whiney-ass foreign teachers like to complain about how they should be able to do whatever they want just because they don't have classes. Anyway, they said it was fine, I could take the extra time. But all of a sudden, two days ago - at least a month after I bought my ticket - my co-teacher tells me that the principal wants me to teach conversation classes and that I am only supposed to have 10 days of vacation. I pointed out that I asked repeatedly about this very situation a long time ago, and was pretty annoyed about the whole thing, but I was too pissed about possibly losing all the money I spent on my ticket in the first place, and the possibility of me not being able to get to Australia at all to worry about this unwelcome point of bullshit. And here in Korea, what the principal SAID doesn't matter so much as what she now SAYS. The conversation bout this little point of conflict went something like this:
"The principal says you are only supposed to have 10 days vacation."
"But I asked you several times if taking all the time off was okay."
"Yes, but the principal says you are only supposed to have 10 days."
"I made sure to be very clear about this before I bought my ticket. This was a month ago."
"But the principal found out about the vacation yesterday."
"I asked last month."
That's pretty much how it went. I didn't pursue the argument because, as I said, I was trying to ignore the terrible news of possibly losing a lot of money and a trip to somewhere warm.
This has been a summary of the main Points of Bullshit concerning my (possible) upcoming vacation. Please understand that there are many smaller Points of Bullshit that would have been very irritating to explain. However, there is hope for each Point of Bullshit mentioned. Please check back soon for what I hope will be a happy ending to this story of shattered dreams.
My plans are to spend three weeks in Australia with my brother who has never been out of the country before (Canada doesn't count). Three weeks in an English-speaking country in the middle of summer in January - very nice. However, as things often go here in Korea, my plans have been fucked up real good by some dumbass ticket insurance policy and the great Korean bureaucracy.
I must admit I made the initial mistake in buying my plane ticket early, before my winter camp schedule was finalized. English camps are what occupies us English teachers during the school breaks when we are not on our vacations. I figured that since my school finishes on December 18th, I would have the rest of December and the first part of January to work my allotment of camps before I leave the country on January 7th. I also contacted my coodinator at the Daegu Metropolitan Office of Education pretty early to let him know I want to buy my tickets and request camps as early as possible so that I could get them over with. He said it was still far too early to say when camps would be, but I figured I would be okay requesting early camps based on previous winter and summer camps. This leads to Point of Bullshit the First:
Point of Bullshit the First is that the DMOE takes FOREVER to get even the most basic of scheduling done for these winter camps. Teachers are understandably looking to get the hell out of the country to somewhere exotic, and want to make plans as early as possible to save money and hassle. It wasn't until November 24th that we were officially informed of the window of time in which our camps would fall (the first and second weeks of January - precisely when my $1100 ticket says I'm going to be in Australia). And it's not going to be until December 15th that we will know our exact dates and locations - three weeks away from when our camps will likely start. Fortunately I anticipated this terrible delay of vital information and bought cancellation insurance on my ticket in case I had to change my ticket or just scrap it and buy a new one. This leads to Point of Bullshit the Second.
Point of Bullshit the Second is that when I called up Orbitz to figure out exactly how to go about the cancellation refund process, I was informed of the troublesome news that I am only protected from cancellation fees and penalties if there is a serious medical emergency inflicted upon myself, and that simply wanting to cancel because of scheduling difficulties doesn't get me any money back. In fact, the Orbitz representative actually told me if I cancelled my ticket, I would not only lose the money I paid for it, I would actually have to pay an ADDITIONAL $857 worth of penalties to Japan Air. I nearly punched my fucking laptop. I asked what would happen if I just didn't show up. I would lose my money for the ticket and that's it. I don't get how pulling a no-show puts you in a better situation than kindly informing the airline that you won't be able to make the flight so they can sell the seat to someone else, but apparently that's how things work. I think the guy mentioned something about how canceling gives me credit toward other fights in the amount of the difference in penalties or some bullshit like that, but I don't really know because I was busy not punching my computer. At this point, I don't know if I am going to be able to spend my three weeks in the sun. And those three weeks bring me to Point of Bullshit the Third.
Point of Bullshit the Third has to do with just how much time I get for vacation. Officially, we are allowed only ten working days. My ticket includes 17 working days. Before I bought the ticket, I checked, double-checked, and triple-checked with my school that it was okay that I spend extra time out of the country. I wanted to be sure that they were sure that they weren't going to decide to put me to work somehow during my non-camp, non-official vacation days, as schools often do. This would have been no problem, since it's provided for in our contract even though lots of whiney-ass foreign teachers like to complain about how they should be able to do whatever they want just because they don't have classes. Anyway, they said it was fine, I could take the extra time. But all of a sudden, two days ago - at least a month after I bought my ticket - my co-teacher tells me that the principal wants me to teach conversation classes and that I am only supposed to have 10 days of vacation. I pointed out that I asked repeatedly about this very situation a long time ago, and was pretty annoyed about the whole thing, but I was too pissed about possibly losing all the money I spent on my ticket in the first place, and the possibility of me not being able to get to Australia at all to worry about this unwelcome point of bullshit. And here in Korea, what the principal SAID doesn't matter so much as what she now SAYS. The conversation bout this little point of conflict went something like this:
"The principal says you are only supposed to have 10 days vacation."
"But I asked you several times if taking all the time off was okay."
"Yes, but the principal says you are only supposed to have 10 days."
"I made sure to be very clear about this before I bought my ticket. This was a month ago."
"But the principal found out about the vacation yesterday."
"I asked last month."
That's pretty much how it went. I didn't pursue the argument because, as I said, I was trying to ignore the terrible news of possibly losing a lot of money and a trip to somewhere warm.
This has been a summary of the main Points of Bullshit concerning my (possible) upcoming vacation. Please understand that there are many smaller Points of Bullshit that would have been very irritating to explain. However, there is hope for each Point of Bullshit mentioned. Please check back soon for what I hope will be a happy ending to this story of shattered dreams.
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