Shopping for Engrish T Shirts part 2

Man I love doing this...

Being Treated Korean Styles

We had Nickies 'Mums' class, and played a young game of headbandz. They liked playing, and treated us to lunch afterwards. We went to an interesting place, an out of it mix of Korean and western fancy dining. They had some of the traditional Korean kai, and also stuff like caviar and hamburger steaks! All this while Mozart was playing in the background, kinda surreal…

The Mums were cool to have a yarn with, and taught me how to say 'my girlfriend is very beautiful' in Korean (meyo iputa de aiaiyin). They laughed every time I said it, I think it might have been my hard case pronounciation?

After lunch we went to look at some showrooms they had set up for a new apartment complex being built in Wonju called I-Park. The show rooms looked like the Hamptons of high-rise apartments, with macked out whares. One of the Mums' husbands is a doctor, so she was looking for a nice place for them. Apparently you have to be loaded as to afford an I-Park whare.

I got a call from John, the husband of one of mumsys University class students. He's Canadian, and for some reason he couldn't understand most of what I was saying on the phone? It was kinda like talking to a Korean person, I had to talk reeeeaaaalllly slooooooow. Mumsy said that Jills ex-boyfriend, an American, couldn't understand what she was saying when she first met him either. I thought they speak English in North America? We agreed to hook up the next night, I'm not sure how that's gonna go, maybe I'll have to bring a Canadian translator…

His wife said he is bored, and can't find anyone to talk to in English in Wonju while she's in class. Maybe he should have gone roaming like I have been doing? He's probably all roamed out…

I got a call from Lee Soo Won, the friend I made on the bus from Seoul to Wonju. My phone was off the heezy that day! He set up dinner, and came and picked me up with a friend of his. We went to a traditional restaurant, where you sit on the ground and they jam some hot coals into a hole in the middle of your table. You get given the raw meat & cook it yourself. As usual there was about 20 different side dishes.

Lee Soo Won is a dentist at Severance Dental Clinic, and was saying he had no website. I asked him how much a filling was, and he said with insurance it costs W5,000 (~NZ$9.00), without insurance W30,000 (~NZ$55.00), and if you are a kind foreigner, free of charge! His friend was a salesman and worked for ING.

He opened the soju & we started doing shots traditional Korean styles. We got to talking, and he said his family was arriving when his children finished schooling. That's 8.30pm Monday to Saturday! When his family arrived, and Nickie knocked off mahi we told them how school children finish school at around 3pm, Monday to Friday in Aotearoa. His son and daughter both said they wanted to study there. His son told me that one of his friends has classes until 2am in the morning. 2am! Unbelievable…

It was great to meet up with a Korean family, and share some stories and experiences.

A night in Wonju

We had a couple of drinks at Nickies flat last Saturday, something she says nobody does here? We met Jill at U2 Bar, a little underground bar full with US soldiers. This is apparently the teachers 'local'. I wasn't feeling it, so we moved on to a Hip Hop dance bar called Overdrive for a bit of a kani kani. We had a great night, dancing with heaps of Wonju girls and guys. I was spinning girls, picking them up and stuff like that. This little Korean guy was determined not to be outdone and picked his partner up and tried to spin her around. He looked like his legs were about to buckle, and he didn't try that move again!

I tried many times to show Nickie and Jill how to 'run it', do the 'B-Step', and heaps of other kani kani moves. Hmmm, maybe I'll have better luck next time…

I saw this American guy and a Korean girl getting quite friendly, and thought I'd try be nice and have a chat with the girl. I don't really know any Korean at all, but luckily she knew heaps of English. I noticed she had a ring on, and asked if she was married. She looked a bit upset at that question and said 'yes'. I figured the American must be her husband, and asked her if he was. She looked kind of pissed off, and said 'no'. Then she asked me to keep quiet! I said 'no way', and then she put her face real close to mine, and threw a sloppy as straight right punch at my eye! It took me a little while to realise she punched me, because it was so soft. Once it sunk in I couldn't stop laughing, I had just been assaulted Korean styles! Nickie was stunned, Jill didn't see it, and I still couldn't stop laughing. It just goes to show, drunken fools are drunk fools in any language...

It's a shame there are so many soldiers here. The locals I talk to don't seem to like them at all, and after you see one lot of them drunk you will understand why. Think of the dumbest rugby heads back home in Aotearoa at the Outback. Ah well... Of course it will just be a minority giving the rest a bad name, but you can't help but want to avoid them at all costs.

Shopping for Engrish T Shirts

We headed to the markets on Sunday and found some of these beauties...

Riiiiight...

Who doesn't?

So energy...

Good on her!

What to say about this one?

Random Photos...

They rip off heaps of stuff here hard out, and get most of it wrong. Check out Blue Spongebob socks.

Dancing girls outside a shop having a sale. Go the leg-warmers!

Dog with dyed hair wearing a shirt and a nappy. That's how they roll round these ways...

PFC. Straight up, no Colonel here.

Saw these cats rolling down the street in the trunk of this car. Apparently they had just gotten married, so their mates were parading them around town making him do heaps of hard case stuff. Here he is dancing a jig at the markets.

A Bit More Cultured...

This is a shot of the Buddhist temple at Chiaksan. Awesome.

You really gotta see it in real life. We felt really calm afterwards.

I minged in on a game of Korean kick ball, like volleyball but you only use your head and feet.

Me and mumsy when we went to lunch with the Mums in her class.

Chillin with my homies.

Mrs Stapletons Classes

Nickie is an excellent teacher. She takes mostly children, but some mornings and every everning she takes classes with adults learning english. I minged my way into some of her classes to try and get an experience of what it's like. She got me to talk about Māori to her adults, so I spoke about our similar customs we held to them, our carving, weapons, and told heaps of lies about Nickie too!

As always, Koros heitiki I've been wearing was a topic of discussion. I explained one of the theories that Māori originated from parts of Asia, and potentially Korea. They seemed to like the sound of that idea.

I got on really well with the adults in one evening class I went to, and a student Mr. Lee invited us all to dinner. The famous Hunia charm worked again ;) He treated the 6 of us to a mean as kai, this funky octopus and mountain vegetable mixture with a chilli sauce that gets cooked on your table on 2 gas burners. It was spicy as, and mumsy couldn't handle it. Mr Lee ordered beer and soju, a drink you do in shot glasses that tastes a lot like vodka. A bottle of soju the same size as a beer bottle costs around NZ$1. We ate, drank, and I told more lies about Nickie and myself (She really wanted me, I was a big sports star at varsity, she partied all the time while I studied...).

The next morning I went to Nickies class that all the Mums attend. Again I seemed to charm the pants off of them, and we were invited to lunch at a traditional Korean restaurant. This time we sat on the floor, and the food was already cooked and presented on a hot plate with rice wine. It was a fish in chilli sauce, mountain vegetables, a sort of egg foo yong and this out of it salad with big jelly things? I don't know how I'm going to go back to Aotearoa and eat pies again...

Seoul Searching

I slept pretty much the whole flight from Osaka to Seoul. I was woken up when the pilot announced that it was forbidden to take photos when landing, or on the tarmac. Must be worried about North Korean spies or terrorists or something?

I got a chance to use my Korean I had been practising when I got some kai, rented a phone, and scored a bus ticket to Wonju. I think I messed up pretty much everything I said, but the locals are so polite they probably wouldn't have told me anyway. I scored all my stuff sweet as, with the help of lots of hand gestures and nodding. You'll be surprised how far a smile can get you too.

I was about to learn about driving on the roads in Korea. For starters they use the right hand side of the road, so it felt uncomfortable straight away. But the really hard part for me to get over was the complete disregard for safety, and the absence of any sort of road code. The amount of red lights my bus ignored, and random as lane changes was making me feel like getting out and walking. Thats how they roll over these ways, and it gets even worse when you jump a taxi (they call them 'tuck-shee'). Think lots of tooting the horn, and using the hazard lights instead of indicators (if anything at all).

On the bus I got to chatting with this Korean chap named Soo Wan. He is a dentist, and could speak quite a bit of english. I explained why I was in Wonju, and showed him the directions I was given to get to Nickies whare. Once we had reached the end of our bus trip he took me over to the taxis, gave my directions to what appeared to be the head taxi guy, and ensured the driver knew where to take me. He took my phone number & said he would ring to make sure I got there OK. As if that wasn't enough, he invited me and Nickie out to dinner with him and his wife! (In Korea, if you invite someone to dinner it means you wlll pay for everything). The Korean people are so amazingly generous.

The taxi dropped me off, and sure enough 5 minutes later Soo Wan was calling my phone.

Nippon Gaijin

Wes was trying to show me as many of the funky Japanese sights and sounds in Osaka as he could in one night. One thing he showed me was the amount of "love hotels" around, for couples who need the extra privacy that sliding paper doors between rooms don't offer. They're not considered dirty or anything, it's just something couples need to do. Wes said apparently the rooms are really tacky, like with heart shaped beds and the like. Of course they have Hello Kitty rooms and stuff too...

I had my first experience of the friendliness and honesty of people in Asia. It was quite humbling, I got the feeling someone would give you their right arm if you asked nicely enough.

It's fun to stand in the crowded subway bus and say things in English that nobody can understand. We subwayed around and met up at a restaurant with a couple of Wes' teacher buddies. Wes was trying to order all the funkiest kai, luckily they had pictures of everything on the menu! Paying for stuff felt weird too, almost like you're using monopoly money? We met up at a bar with some more of his crew, and I noticed how they all smoked like chimneys. In fact, I think Wes and me were the only people who didn't smoke out of everyone the whole night!

Japan seemed like a pretty cool place, I wish I had more time to explore and meet some locals.

Te Haerenga Tuarua - Haere ki Nippon

My flight from Tamaki Makaura to Osaka was packed to the nines with non-English speaking people. Just as I was anticipating a long flight staring at my toes, a nice Japanese girl who had studied English in Christchurch sat next to me. Her name was Yugi, and she was sad because she had to leave her boyfriend behind in Aotearoa. Hard man eh Winston Peters...

Was good to have someone to chat to, we even had some Lindauer. I was doing some drawings for my whaiaipo and Wes, and the flight attendants were getting interested. Particularly in the whale bone heitiki of Koros I was drawing. This one flight attendant fulla got chatting with me about the Derek Lardelli designed uniforms they were wearing. He went and scored this book explaining the designs, and in particular the panel on their shirts:

“Tini whetu ki te rangi,
tini ika ki te moana,
tini tangata ki te whenua...”

I can't remember the rest, but it's good stuff.

The first country I got to see outside of Aotearoa was Noumea. That was a bit of a buzz for me. The first country I stepped foot on was Japan. When I got to Osaka Kansai airport Wes was there waiting to pick me up. Fulla was fretting cos he got there a bit late, and my plane was nowhere to be seen. An internal affairs officer even hit him up for ID!

Te Haerenga Tuatahi - Haere ki Tamaki Makaurau

Even though I had specifically asked her not to, Mum rung me just after 3am to make sure I was awake for my flight... Cheers Mum. Being the kind of obsessive compulsive person I am I had already set 3 separate alarms, even 2 on different phones in case there was a power cut! I got to the airport just before 4am, and was the first in the international line. My plan worked, and I scored the exit seats with all the legroom! Had to sit around and wait for a couple of hours, then finally boarded the plane clutching my Koros whale bone heitiki.

The fulla at Karori House Of Travel who sussed out my flights for me reckoned one hour was enough to get from Auckland Domestic to International and check in and stuff. Sure enough, the flight from Wellington to Auckland got delayed 10 minutes on the tarmac while they got a fuel truck that worked. Of course we also had strong winds slowing us down. As if that wasn’t enough, we had to circle around the airport for 20 minutes because we missed our window to land… All of a sudden I had about 20 minutes to get myself over to the International terminal and check myself in! I was running around like a headless chicken, sweating because I tried to wear heaps of clothes and keep my luggage weight down. I got through customs and got to my gate with a couple of minutes to spare. Or at least I thought it was my gate, the way my morning was going I should have known it had been changed. I ran over to the new gate and was the last person to get checked in. I looked like I had just got out of the shower, and smelt like I really needed one!

Finally some luck went my way, and it was announced boarding would be delayed for 5 minutes while they cleaned the craft. I left my bags in the departure lounge (that’s a big big no-no!) and ran back up to the duty-free shop ;) Moments later I was running back down to my flight, 2 x 42 Below feijoas in tow! The Northern Eagles, who had smashed the Warriors the day before, were sitting in the airport. They had watched me running to the wrong gate, then the right gate, then duty free. When they saw me cruising back to my gate with the booze they started cracking up. Kiwis and our priorities ay..?

He manu hou ahau he pi ka rere
I am a new bird that has just taken flight.