Nostalgia

I bought a can of Coke the other day. It tasted stale. Then I noticed the can was decorated with an ad for the upcoming FIFA World Cup in Germany. The World Cup in Germany was in 2006. It had been sitting on the shelf for nearly two years.

Sunday

I spent a couple of hours on Sunday walking around Seomun Market. The weather has been beautiful in Daegu and what could be better than taking the camera out on a sunny afternoon?

I read an interesting comment recently about South Korean society; if it weren't for all the cellphones and neon lights, you'd think it were the 1950s. Obviously that's a bit of stretch, but it's not as far from the truth as you might think. This is the largest market in Daegu and there are no signs of modern business.
This man worked on a mobile stand. I'm not exactly sure what he was selling - it looks like little minnows - but he never stopped filling those little wooden boxes and people never stopped buying them.
I didn't expect to see this. The puppies in the foreground are the lucky ones. There were several others jammed into cages, along with rabbits, ducks and hundreds of chickens - both dead and alive. The chickens I understand, the ducks - maybe, but puppies? I don't want to think about what they might be used for. Ben Harper's Paris Sunrise #7 was playing on my iPod as I walked past this mess. It was one of the more disturbing things I've experienced.


The area surrounding Seomun is packed with villas, which are connected by these dingy alleyways. They're clean for the most part, but haven't seen any development in at least a few decades. It's amazing how efficient people are with transporting their goods through all of these climbing streets, usually using bicycles like this:

We've been here for over eight months, but I never get used to seeing a lot of these things. As strange or old as it may seem, I'm going to miss it when we leave. The people who work in these markets look out for each other. There's no sense of competition and everyone works together. On top of all that, no one's getting ripped off. The produce and seafood are dirt cheap. So everyone wins. Seems simple, doesn't it?

Hhhhhhhhhh

That's the sound you make when you realize how different your surroundings are from what you're used to, and from how you would like things to be.

Last week Carmen discovered a bit of mold on the wall behind our bed. Yeah, we know, that's sick. The summer humidity is still lingering in our apartment and now that it's cooling down, we can't have the windows open much. Seeing as our bathroom is our shower, it's difficult to air the place out, hence the mold growing just outside the bathroom door. We cleaned the wall and hoped we'd taken care of the problem.

Today as we were cleaning Cate's room/laundry room/storage room, we noticed it on the walls in there as well. Probably the worst case scenario. Our daughter is being exposed to some contaminable growth 12 hours a day, and we don't even realize it. We've cleaned it off and will be getting a bunch of Thirsty Hippos, which are little dehumidifiers, to put around the house. We'll also need to buy some spray to clean the walls. After doing a bit of research, I've learned this is a very common problem in Korea. There are a couple of obvious contributing factors.

First of all, pretty much no one uses dryers here. Clothes are all hang-dried. Not only does this make your underwear and towels stiff and crusty, it makes it difficult to get things completely dry when the air is so humid - and usually takes a couple of days for an entire load to dry. A lot of people complain of mold growing on their clothes. The second problem is that most villas, including ours, don't have a lot of natural ventilation because the buildings are so close together. Thirdly, our villa has at least a few layers of wallpaper that have been slabbed onto the concrete walls over the years. In short, we live in a bloody breeding ground for mold. Luckily, the problem has just come up after more than eight months, and the humidity will only disappear now. It seems manageable, but it also seems like an unnecessary issue. I suppose it's just an example of taking the bad with the good. Hopefully we've seen the worst.

Also, if anyone would like to send me a Slingbox so I can follow the NFL this season, send me an email and I'll give you my address.

November 6

I was in a terrible car accident in a taxi last night. Not in real life - just in my imagination. Every time I'm in a cab I picture the car being T-boned as we run red lights or struck head-on as we veer into oncoming traffic. So far I've escaped each ride unscathed (physically), but I'm not sure how long I can hold out.

Today is a special day in Korea. My birthday. So in honour of what should be a national holiday, I'm going to go off topic and share a few of my favourite things, via YouTube:

1. This is, in my opinion, the funniest moment ever shown on television. Thank you Mr. Brent . . . and Gareth:



2. Exchanging vows with my wife and the birth of my beautiful daughter are the two most incredible moments of my life. Being at a Pearl Jam show is (a distant) third. If you look closely enough, you can see Carmen and me about 30 feet from the stage:



3. Sheer, utter genius:

A bit of Cate to brighten your day

Corn chowder, in case you're wondering.

I love bicycles

Fall back

We still live in Korea. I have pictures to prove it. Really.

We're sort of on the other side of the mountain now. Not an actual mountain. A figurative one. We've been here for eight months and almost three seasons, and now it's like a countdown. We're coming down the mountain. Not that it's been some sort of mountainous obstacle - quite the opposite. And there's no threat of Grizzly Bears. But I'm guessing when you climb a mountain there are easy parts and hard parts, but once you start your descent things seem less challenging. That's how we feel now. All the challenges we've faced being in a foreign country seemed exacerbated by the idea that we'll be here - away from family and friends, and people who speak English - for a long time. But time flies, man.

October has been a good month. One of the things I miss most is Fall in Lethbridge. But the weather has been beautiful here in Daegu and the colors have lasted all month. Nothing beats a brisk walk through a concrete jungle.

I bought a membership to a gym. For the last eight months I've been relying on the exercise equipment in local parks and schoolyards, but as fun as endless pull-ups and chin-ups on cold metal bars sounds, it's not very motivating. So I decided to take my game indoors. I found a nice fitness centre in Seongseo and I'm trying it out for a month. But the experience has been a bit different from the YMCA at home. At my first visit, I bought my membership and the friendly assistant behind the desk showed me around. She brought me to a table outside the men's changeroom and gave me a towel, as well as a shirt and shorts. I looked at the tiny outfit and said, "Oh, you want me to wear this?" She nodded. I looked around and noticed everyone was wearing the same thing - and everyone was three to ten inches shorter than me. I convinced her it wouldn't work and she said it'd be fine if I wore my own clothes. So I did. I put on my iPod and stepped on a treadmill. JT was pumpin' and I was pumped. Ready to run. Just as I took my first step, a guy taps me on the back and says, "Come this way." I followed over him to the front desk. He pointed at the scale, which looked like it was made in 2050, and told me to get on. There were two handles on the front and he told me to squeeze. The little computer did some computing and then printed off a couple sheets of paper. So we headed over to a table to discuss my fitness level and the state of my life in general. With what little English he knew and what little Korean I know, we talked about what this computer said about me. Not only did this scale measure my weight, it measured my strength, my body mass index, my body fat percentage and, apparently, it knew where most of the fat on my body is and what I should do about it. Huh? Well that was fun. But I just wanted a treadmill, really.

Other than all that, it's business as usual in the Guenther home. I've stopped updating my Flickr account because I've reached my limit on uploads, so now if I want to add more, my earlier photos won't be displayed. Of course I can get a larger account for $20 or something like that. But come on, this is the internet. Do people actually pay to display their photogs? So you can expect to see more here, along with more frequent posts. Seriously.

My brush with fame and how I lived to tell about it

What do you get when you take a famous Korean actor, thousands of screaming fans and utterly unprepared security, and put them all in one place? This:


This was Yoo Ji-Tae arriving at a public press conference in downtown Busan on Saturday, as part of the PIFF (as mentioned previously). We had no idea what was going on, but it seemed like word was spreading that he'd be arriving, and the crowd grew quickly behind the massive stage set up in the middle of a small intersection of the city's biggest shopping district. We rushed Cate away from the scene and made sure everyone was safe. Then . . . I headed back in.

With camera in hand, I braved the mass of school uniforms and trendy haircuts, determined to get a glimpse of whichever massive, important star was about to arrive. As two black vans rounded the corner about a block away, all hell broke loose. Elbows, kicks, screams. It was all fair game. As Yoo fought his way through the crowd I thought, "Okay, who is that? Seriously guys, where's Gwyneth? Or Brad? Or even Pauly Shore . . . don't tell me that's the guy we've been waiting for." I panned frantically, waiting for something more - but - to no avail. That was it.

In the video, notice the guy with the baby in the middle of the crowd. He's clearly thinking, "how the bloody hell did I get myself into the situation?!" For the record, he made it out alive - with his son.

Screaming School Girls and Ladies of the Night - 'All in a day'

Busan, Busan, Busan. Where do I start?

The only words I can think of to describe our day in the coastal city are high octane. We went to Gukje Market, the main shopping district of Busan, straight from Busan Station, and realized when we got there that we were in the middle of the Busan International Film Festival (contrary to what the website says, in English it's Busan). In case you haven't heard of it, it's a pretty big deal, which means all the big Korean film stars were there. I don't know any of their names or what movies they're in, but they draw a big crowd. And I was in the middle of it. Thousands of screaming girls awaiting the arrival of one (apparently) sexy male movie star. Who was he? I don't know. But he was nearly the cause of my death. I captured the whole experience on video which will be posted to this very blog shortly, along with more details.

We went from downtown to Taejongdae, an area along the coast consisting of islands and some monuments. We spent most of the time searching for a beach, only to find a dumpy little waterfront road behind some old shacks. An amusement park popped up out of nowhere and we ate some cold sweet potato fries. Not a bad afternoon.


We headed back to Busan Station where there was an annual Chinese Festival. While checking this out, we stumbled upon the Russian Red Light District of Busan. Did you follow all that? Let me sum it up: A Chinese festival in Busan which is home to Russian prostitutes. There was enough culture to last a lifetime.

After a long, high octane day, we headed back to Daegu in the comfort of a bullet train.

Dangwhassa on a cool day