Unfortunately, my life isn’t filled with just things that are worth mentioning/writing down. There’s also a whole bunch of other stuff. But as this blog isn’t so much about me saying funny shit, getting a book deal and cruising to easy-town, and more about my life so I thought I’d mention some of the less mention-worthy stuff.

There’s Ultimate Frisbee. Now, it’s hard to combine a word like Frisbee, the plastic disc we’ve all chucked around as some part in our life with Ultimate. So to give you an idea of how much I run during these events here are a few videos.
Though I’d like to add I’m nowhere that fit and usually only run that fast during the first 2-3 points. But it’s a nice game and even though we play in the heat of Seoul summer I enjoy it. We play on the shore of the Han, which means we have a nice view while playing.

There’s my Thesis. You know . . .  the thing at the end of my academic career? The thing I’m here to finish? The thing that’ll guarantee me a fantastic job in Europe/America (though is as yet of no help getting me something here). I spend a large part of my waking moments thinking/writing/reading/theorizing about this thing. I’d say it’s quite an important part of my life here. Though . . . not something I can put in a humorous light easily. Or an interesting light for that matter. So . . . mentioning it here. Still working on that. Recently got the final go-ahead so unless I screw up royally I should be done by October.

I’m running a D&D game. OK, this is worthy of mention, but not yet. I am planning to do a bit of writing about it, but at the very least I’ll put a blogpost up about it pretty soon. I started the game with 1 fellow veteran (actually far more veteran than me) and 4 noobs. Of those 4, there are now 2 left. It just wasn’t for them. I actually lost one to Warhammer . After the summer break we’re getting reinforcements though. All people who have played it, though sparsely (And like 15 years ago. And boy have things changed since AD&DII) . This sunday we’re finishing the introduction chapter of the campaign and I can throw my little nooblets to the wolves/demons/beholders/ettercaps/devils. I won’t bore you with their adventures yet, but know that the murdering bastards have been in Jail since the last session. And I think it speaks well for my players that I’ve gotten them to the point where they murder ‘innocents’ so soon.

Raph has a language exchange partner. She teaches her partner French and in turn she gets tutored on Korean. Which is sorely needed as we’re very very lazy on our own studies. I wonder if I can find some Korean silly enough to want to learn Dutch. . . Why not, found a Japanese girl while living in Tokyo that wanted to do that.

We’re looking into getting a dog. This is proving to be tricky. First, dogs in Korea are small. Very small. There’s not really a lot of social acceptance of big dogs. People will cross the street if a golden retriever approaches them, big dogs can’t be transported in the city public transport system and their owners aren’t always treated nicely.
It’s tricky for other reasons as well, first is the language. We’ve been able to identify 2 shelters that handle adoptable dogs. There’s things like cafe.naver.kr/dogpalza(No, that’s no spelling error on my end) but we can’t really identify what we need from that.
The last bit of trickiness comes from the big dog popularity issue . . . We went to visit the shelter and were told there were 3 medium sized dogs. There were 2, the other one really was in a smaller size category. One was a cocker spaniel. Then there was 1 of interest left.
There were 13 small sized dogs in there, of which only some were available for adoption, the rest were there for veterinary procedures. And 2 medium size dogs. 0 big dogs. You’d think that with the problems regarding big dogs some people would try it and then dump the dog somewhere, but there’s just small dogs. We might be able to find something with breeders, but . . . something something principle of the thing something something. Besides, we don’t care one fig if we get a purebred. Mutts tend to have less genetic problems and gentler temperaments anyway.

We’ve got friends. Save 2, all of them are non-Korean(Yes, we have a token black guy. Though he’s really from the Dominican republic making him . . . latino??). All of them. We suck submerging ourselves in the local culture . I can’t even tell the Koreans at ultimate apart(Though in my defence 4 out of the 9 Korean players are Kims). The other two consist of the before mentioned language partner and the other is the partner of/neighbour. We have yet to make friends with a Korean we met through non-waeguk interaction. I’m pretty sure we need to do that some day. Maybe get back to that language course so we can actually talk to them . . . .

Anyway, that combined with all of the other stuff you read in these two blogs should give you all the basics you need to imagine what a day for us is like.

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Quote of the day:

Nobody reads these anymore.

- Springfield Elementary Blackboard

Important in finding our way is the Seoul Public Transportation system.
This consists of a number of different parts

• The subway
• The buses
• The trains
• Taxis

Taxis aren’t really something you’d put under the header of public transport, but you will see how it has it’s place when I get to it.

The subway is an extensive network of different lines (10 in total I think) that twist and turn and dig their way through Seoul soil. Looking something like this:

Or, if you will, something like this:

The system is vast and will take you close to pretty much anywhere you want to go. It comes with websites which will tell you how long your trip will take and the quickest/easiest route. Also available in English.

But, as we found out soon enough when we moved into our apartment, just taking the subway isn’t always the fastest way to get around. With the Han (the big river) running through Seoul choices had to be made where lines cross. With the hills and mountains detours had to be chosen.

Enter the bus system. I can’t show you a map with the buslines, as it would simply be stringy confetti. There isn’t a part of Seoul that isn’t serviced by at least one bus. The bus system is complicated, but I’ll give a stab at it.

There are 4 color buses. Blue, Green, Red and Yellow. Then there’s express buses for airport duty and stuff

Blue buses are the major arteries of bus transport. They go from one zone of Seoul to another. The zones of Seoul look like this:

The blue bus numbers consist of 3 numbers. The zone it comes from, the zone it goes to, and the route serial number. For instance, the bus we take in the morning is the 143 or the 401. We get on in 0 (which is one of the start/stop, because of course buses go both ways, zones of the 401. But is also between 1 and 4) and get off in 4. It’s the #1 bus for the 4-0 and the 3rd bus for the 1-4 zone. To give you an indicator of how many buses there are. These are the bus numbers starting in zone 1: 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105,   106,107, 108(1), 108(2), 109, 110A, 110B, 120, 130, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151 ,152, 153, 154, 160, 162, ,163, 171, 172.

Green buses connect subway lines and blue bus routes. They can cross zones, but only ever one. Their numbers operate the same way as the blue buses except that the serial number is a 2 digit number. Because there’s more of them. Want a list of zone 1 green buses? Go here.

Red buses connect the center with the sub-suburbs. That’s the gray bit which still have numbers in them. There’s not so many of them, and with good reason. This is a metropolitan, which in today’s world doesn’t just mean lots of people but most definitely means heavy congestion on the roads. Seriously, take a subway.

Yellow buses. Funny thing, our yellow bus is a green bus. Someone got confused I think. Yellow buses travel within a zone and connect useful points. The number is based on 2 numbers. The zone number and the serial number.  Except those called ‘city center circulating bus’ and the like.

The trains. To be honest some of the subways run above ground, which make the difference a bit hard to spot. But the KTX system stops in a couple of major hubs (Seoul station, Yeongsan and Gwangmyeong) and connects them with Busan, Mokpo, Incheon and the like. There’s also some express subway lines which may be worth mentioning*.

Example time.

We live in Itaewon-dong, a dong in Yongsan-gu.
Our office is in Garak Market-dong, a dong in Songpa-gu.

Please keep in mind that Seoul is a a BIG city. That’s about 12 km as the crow flies. The way the subway runs is this:

Birds fly more efficiently than that

Add a bus to it and you have this:

Now, I named this post ‘Public transportation in Seoul’ because it’s mostly an integrated system (Damn you, line 9). That means that while we use 2 different systems we pay one price.
By subway alone, a ride roughly 18 km, 1 hours long, costs us ₩ 1100. This translates to a whopping 72 cents (07-07-2010 conversion rate)
Bus and subway combined, 15 km and 40 minutes long, costs us ₩ 1100. Again, 72 cents

No matter where you live, that’s a deal. Japan comes close, Singapore will too. Nationale Spoorwegen (Dutch National Railways) . . . .  no. Not close. Not nearly close. You may spot it on the horizon, but you certainly won’t believe what you see.

It gets better. We live on a hill, you might’ve heard me say it’s 100 meters vertical from the subway/bus station to our house. When we get off the bus, we just wait for our green yellow bus #03 to take us up to the Hyatt hotel, and walk down to our house for no extra charge. That’s 2 transfers, 2 buses and a subway ride. Totaling 45 minutes, for 72 cents.

If you’ve been paying attention, I’ve not mentioned taxis yet.
Taxi culture here is quite different from Western Europe. Somewhere there’s a flip over point where you go from ‘very few, but expensive cab rides’, like the Netherlands, to ‘lots of readily available cheap cabrides’ and have it make economical sense. Korea isn’t the only country which has this. As Raph is quick to point out, other countries in S.E. Asia are cheaper still, but that’s probably because everything is cheaper in those countries.

When we moved from our office to our apartment I got a taxi. During rush hour, with extra costs for delay time and everything leading up to over an hour travel time, I rode a taxi across all of Seoul, for ₩ 14000. That’s €9.13. It used to costs me 6-7 euros to get a taxi from Delft station to my house. And while that is also all the way across a city, it really means 2.5 km and 5-10 minutes. During the night (High rate), coming back from Hongdae, some 11 km away as the crow flies, costs us ₩ 7000 (€4.50).

Can’t say much good about the national food identity yet, I still prefer a kroket to kimchi, but the public transportation in Seoul certainly beats what I was used to in the Netherlands.

* but I’m not going to

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I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be

- Douglas Adams

As a member of the press, well, at some point I had been, it was of course my duty to report on this event.

To be honest it started out on a low note. A low note for the festival, but a high note for us. It has been 30+ degrees in Seoul for a while now and it’s annoying the crap out of me. I am having problems sleeping, concentrating and moving for periods of time longer than 2 minutes (I have a LOT of sweatglands it turns out). The morning of the Festival was marked by rain. Lots of rain. The temperature in our bedroom went from 31 degrees the night before to having to find a blanket at 06:00, evening out at 22 degrees. Heaven-sent. Though it would prove to be annoying later on.

Rain ruins a gay festival as fast as tears ruin a drag-queen’s makeup, as a friend said. And indeed the turnout had been a lot smaller than the organizers had imagined.

There were some snags getting you these pictures as I was filling out the details on my press pass. If EUROAVIA gets any gay propaganda btw . . .  sorry. Korea isn’t a place where you can freely step forward as gay. And a lot of people don’t take kindly to having their pictures put on the internet in relation to homosexuality as it may impact their lives (Getting fired for this is still commonplace apparently). There’s someone who wrote a little something about the ethics of blogging a while ago, and this may be a good point to refer to that post. Blatantly posting the pictures I took could harm these people’s lives, even if we think the reasons for that are silly/outdated/whatever.  If you are currently blogging from some place where freedom of expression isn’t guaranteed and you post pictures of someone painting an anti-government banner a lot worse can happen to them than getting fired.

Before you take pictures, please ask if it is OK for the people on the pictures.
Blur out people’s faces if you do post them.
You are not free to sell your pictures to other media (newspapers etc)

The blurring out does not apply to those stars that are known to be gay. Though I only thought to look up who these people were after I’d pixelated Seok-Cheon Hong’s face already.

The opening wasn’t terribly exiting though we got to see the afore mentioned Seok-Cheon Hong dancing without his shirt in the rain. I’ve seen far, far less attractive men dance . In the mirror, for instance.
It was hard to see though, through the umbrellas.

I won’t post any pictures of the floats and the parade as there’s too much blurring to be done and you end up with a picture-soup. Some debate regarding the feminist implications of the two (supposed) lesbian dancers. Though it might just have been a ploy to lure in straight men. We’ll need to look into the porn culture here (Hoozah, cultural relevance to porn found!!!!) before we can judge on that.

After the parade we ended up back at the stage and we thought we’d seen pretty much all there was to see. We were about to leave to have dinner when these guys took the stage.

We thought they were just the cutest thing we’d ever seen. Hopping about and doing little cat/rabbit paw things on the rhythm of some K-pop.

Little did we know they were about to be followed by these adorable little guys grooving away to Oh Mickey – Toni Basil and Girls Generation

I’m sure there are heaps and heaps of things to say on why this is . . . homosexually immature. Compared to the Netherlands where the vast majority of homosexuals hold 9-5 jobs and watch Lingo at the end of the evening it was terribly interesting to see this kind of energy released at showing you’re gay. Good for you.

But all good things come to an end. Especially when your stomach is growling and food will be served at your local watering hole showing Korea’s first World Cup game vs Greece.

I won’t tell you who won. These are the photos from the bar:

Really, do I even have to tell you?
Poor Greeks, after that economic disaster they’re going through to be thrashed like this.

Had it not rained I’d've taken in the game at City Hall which looks something like this in good weather with a match on. Maybe thursday.

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As the more perceptive amongst you may have noticed there’s been an addition to my pages. That’s at the top right corner, if you’re wondering. Next to the photo archive, which will continue to show the pictures of my life until Seoul, there is now also “Pictures of Now” which will be showing the pictures I put online now.
I split the photo pages for 2 reasons:

1. The size of the photo archive has surpassed several hundred megabytes (The actual pictures of Japan alone need 2 DVDs, and my camera is only a 3.2 megapixel one) and the program I use needs to ascertain if things have changed since the last upload. This is good, as it fixes errors automatically and allows for easy changes to be made. However, it is currently spending some 20 minutes scanning for these changes before uploading the new content, which was getting annoying.
2. I lost some of the original photos. I made 2 backups. 1 on a mobile HD and 1 on DVDs and I was sloppy in doing the latter. The mobile HD didn’t survive the trip here (though I’m taking it to a store to see what can be salvaged) so I’m short 3 trips worth of original photos. As I no longer have them, the program doesn’t recognize the need for them to be online anymore. Had I added Seoul to the old archive it would have removed those trips.

Next to the photos of this last weekend some of the pictures of earlier weekends and random forays, including the very visual but completely not blogged about Buddha’s Birthday parade. As I likely won’t blog about it either I’ll give you this little description of it and then you’ll have to decide for yourselves if you want to click that link. It took 2.5 hours from the first people in the parade to the last to pass our vantage point. 2.5 hours of parade in that folder. Well . . . 2.5 hours and 4 sturdy AA batteries worth of parade at least.

This is Wally, signing off, leaving you with a picture of the moon that shone down on us that day

For most of us, that’s answered by a full mouthed ‘Right’. For the right is the only right side of the street.
Or is it? The side of the street on which you walk is a matter of place and time.

When I was a kid I learned basic road safety in the Netherlands. Meaning, you walk on the right side of the road, cars move on the right side of the road and bicycles move on the right side of the road. From the outside in: Pedestrians, Bicyclists, Motorists.
It was on a bike I first broke this rule. I was fast and sleek, neigh unstoppable was I, on my bike, and the traffic rules certainly didn’t apply to I.
I don’t specifically recall whether I got an earful for that behaviour, but I suppose I should have. And it’s strange therefor that the likely culprit of that earful was the man who introduced me to walking on the left side of the road.

You see, when everyone transports themselves on the same side of the road, the slowest transporter (the walker) will have everything coming from behind him at, in some cases, frightening speeds quite close to oneself. At that time (6-9 years old) I wasn’t well known for walking in a straight line, or keeping my attention focused on relevant things (like speeding cars) and would often, unexpectedly, move sideways into the path of an oncoming bike/car. I have never been like this, but there’s a few instances of word-use not fit for my virginal ears done by heavily swerving bicyclists that stand out in my memory.
If, on the other hand, as a pedestrian you walk on the left side of the street you are still in a spot reserved for pedestrians (the side of the road) and you can see things hurtling towards you prompting you to pay attention, where, had they come from behind, they might’ve caused me a nasty little surprise.

In England and Japan (India, South Africa, Indonesia etc), walking on the left hand side of the street, or, as we call it, the wrong side of the street, is normal. The rule even. Well, mostly. I think I’ve mentioned once or twice in conversation (looking back through my posts I see I haven’t really blogged about it.) You see, in Japan you walk on the left side of the street. Cars go on the left side of the street. Bicyclists go . . .  well, there’s not really a set place for them.
Osaka is the big exception. In Osaka they walk on the right side of the street, cars still go on the left hand side of the street though. Can you imagine what that would be like, changing sides halfway through a country? I think there’s a half-British Island which does this somewhere. This causes a bit of a problem, because Osaka isn’t a really clearly defined concept. It just sorta edges out, like so many other metropoli/metropolae/metropoliseses? I lived about an hour outside of what can regularly be considered Osaka, but most of the people I lived with did work in Osaka. Meaning that half the people would walk on the right (those that visited Osaka regularly) and half would walk on the left (regular Japanese). It also meant that when I was hurtling down the hill I would never be sure what instinct would be most prominent in my dodgee. Would it move to the right or left. All in all, people just sorta walked . . . wherever.

Korea now, Korea is an interesting case. Korea drives on the right hand side of the road. But trains drive on the left, as this system was built when the Japanese ruled here. The metro system though, was built with French help, so that’s on the right hand side. Except on those stations where they connect to the railway where it’s left again. So . . . . that’s kinda confusing. The walking though. Walking is done wherever and that struck me as kind of strange. The only place you’ll see indicators which side to walk on is in the subway and it’s on the right. There’s actually a campaign about it now

You see, the Koreans used to walk on the left in the subway and on the street. But then a few years ago the government said that right was the way they’d now walk. So right is the side people now walk on. Except the ajoshi and ajoma (Old man, Old woman) who will damn well walk where they’ve always walked, even if that way was initially beat into them by the Japanese oppressors.
This means though, that as a weiguk (foreigner) you will now, no matter what side of the street you walk on, be walking on the wrong side of the street for someone.

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Quote of the Day:

Work is the refuge of those that don’t have anything better to do

- Oscar Wilde

It was a particularly nice day so the walk took them all the way to Hongdae. Which is a very long way indeed.

It was in Hongdae that they found many happy people, for Hongdae is a place where many happy people go

And it wasn’t long ’till Raphaëlle found out why people were so happy.

It was the Hello Kitty Café. And it made Raphaëlle very happy too. Hello Kitty Café was home to many kittys, proud kitties.

Sleepy Kitties

Active Kitties

And then there were the kitties Raphaëlle played with. But these kitties didn’t seem very interested

Poor Raphaëlle

Wherever she went the kitties just didn’t want to play with so many other people to play with

Other people went to great length to play with the kitties. Perhaps if Raphaëlle did the same?

SUCCES!!!

And there was much cuddling and playing to be had by all.

Hongdae sure is a swell place. At the end of the night Raphaëlle went to sleep happy with kitty dreams waiting for her.

THE END

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P.S.

Before getting home we had some nice flaming drinks

And saw what happens with people who can’t hold their flaming drinks and the effect that has on busy trains

P.P.S. a different perspective of Hongdae is given here

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Life is hard, then you nap.

- Cat law #6

First of all the Vegetarianism/Veganism.
It’s not a title we claim anymore. Let’s face it, we don’t speak the language and our ordering tactic pretty much consists of looking at the wall

and picking the third one from the left. (Or right, got to mix it up a little every now and again.)

This is how we ended up with the fish head stew*.

It was part of our cultural growth, which we have now passed and will never visit on again.
The term most accurate in describing our dietary disposition now is: I’m-annoyed-by-this-but-will-eat-it-lest-we-starve-itarians.

Charades

We rock at it.
No, seriously. We have absolutely no idea what people around us are saying and vice versa. Fully submerge yourself in a country like that and your charades skills will skyrocket. I have even made charade inquisitions which lasted shorter than had I asked it in a language I’m familiar with.
Then again, it’s taken us maybe 7 hours in total spread out over 3 weeks to figure out how to get garbage bags.

You see, in Seoul, apparently, you are not allowed to put your trash outside in any old plastic bag. Nor in a generic black garbage bag. Even if the translation on the bag is “galbage bage”. No, the garbage bag you use is issued by your local gu’s office (where a gu is a part of the city, so in our case: Songpa-gu) and is clearly marked (we guess) with marking indicating that you can put this outside in your own gu.
These garbage bags, according to the guidebook, are sold by pretty much any local conbini (They have little convenience stores on every corner here, much as in Japan) except that they’re not on the shelves. The generic garbage bags, however, ARE on the shelves. But after two weeks the cleaning lady started delivering back our garbage. This indicated we were running out of time figuring this out as that stuff doesn’t stay fresh for long usually. Try charading garbage bags, I dare you. It wasn’t till one I got my hands on an actual (used) garbage bag that I was able to get my point across and I was sent to  . . . the conbini.

Armed with my used garbage bag (smelling slightly of ashes) I made my way back to the big combini. Yes, she had garbage bags. Under the counter, obviously for her own use. WHERE (어디) DO YOU BUY (wallet tapping) THOSE (point at garbage bag).

-nothing-

She kept grasping the bags desperately going for the good old “My engrish bad” option after a strained silence.
OK, luckily for us there is a guy around here who does speak very passable English (He’s modest about it, but he’s also far superior in English skill than any Korean I’ve accidentally met) who took me by the hand to a different combini and yes . . . . you have to buy your garbage bags here from under the counter. Propped away so the casual shopper won’t see it.
There’s a couple of things which spring to mind being sold from under the counter.
Garbage bags isn’t one of them

Epilogue, noone can really tell me what the things are called, so we have 4 garbage bags now and before we use the last one we will take it to the combini, wave it in the teller’s face and say MORE

Also, it would be nice if we could figure out why the old Korean ladies who take away our trash keep returning our bottles.

Being comfortable around naked Koreans

Ok, this wasn’t really a biggy, a year in Japan prepared us for this quite well. Besides, we’re both blind as a bat. I just do my business in a foggy room filled with slowly moving Korean coloured blobs.
Thing is though . . .

You feel sensitive about certain things. When I came to Korea I had a massive headcold and you know what happens when you have a massive headcold and you take a shower (or eat hot food). Stuff comes out. So you’re sitting there, in the mist, with all these Koreans and you blow like a foghorn. And again. And again. Aaaaaaand you’re starting to feel the eyes of the others on your back as your nosedrippings slowly make their way to the sink and you hope it doesn’t have to pass other people’s feet on the way.

There’s other things though. Both Raph and myself preen certain areas for euhm . . . hygiene purposes.
I’m OK walking into a room with naked Koreans.
I’m OK with them scrubbing each other’s back, and it’s been done to us, perfectly natural.
I’m OK with the genitalia flopping around
I’m OK with the little naked kids running around
I’m OK with the nose blowing
I’m OK with the deep buttcrack towel sawing

Shaving my balls in front of other people?
No, not OK with that.

Living together

We used to spend about 42 hours every two weeks together. We’d long for when we’d see/touch/taste each other again. It was torture (sweet, but torture non the less) to be apart.

Now we’re together pretty much all the time outside of when we go to the communal baths (which are segregated)

We haven’t broken up.
Yet

Spreading Happiness

We do this a lot
At random things we do we make people laugh
Haven’t quite worked out where our comedic talents spring from

But people like us a lot. Or at least, there’s the laughing.

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P.S. Ik heb m’n blog tweetalig gemaakt voor diegene die dit liever int nederlands lezen. Bovenaan rechts vind je een keuzemenu voor English/Nederlands. Ook onderaan tweetalige posts kan je de opmerking “Deze post is ook te lezen in: Dutch” vinden.

* Picture does not represent the reality of the food we were served.

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Even a fish wouldn’t get into trouble if it kept its mouth shut

- Korean proverb