Even for Korea, This is NUTS

Last night we went to dinner for our friend Kristin's birthday. We had had a really good day beforehand, having spent the day wandering Mt. Yudal with Abby and Jason. The flowers are all in bloom right now on the mountain, so it was quite nice. Dawn and Abby both filled their respective camera's memory cards, and it was nice to be out in the (not so) fresh air for a while. We then bought some fruit, went back to Abby and Jason's and played cards while the chickens pooped all over the floor. Joyous times!

Then came time for dinner. We went to a restaurant called Gran Piatto, which is a place that Dawn and I have been from time to time since we've been here. Their pizza is actually rather good, but their service has always been sketchy, and their menu is retarded. It's usually a little pricy for us, but it is a nice place. Yesterday made us change our minds about ever going back to that horrid hell hole.

They have introduced a salad bar since last we were there. This could be a good thing. However, they have also introduced a ridiculous rule that defies all logic, even Korean. Here it is:

If you buy an entree, you get a salad bar plate for free.

Sounds good, doesn't it? However, if you wanted to, say share a pizza, you don't get a salad bar plate for free. Because apparently what they really meant was:

If ONE PERSON at your table doesn't order an entree, NOBODY gets free salad bar plates.
(This is, of course, not exactly what was on the menu, but it was in such broken English that I can't remember what it actually said. Suffice to say it was NOT clear.)

So last night there were about 10 of us, and Dawn and I just wanted to split a pizza. We didn't want anything to do with the salad bar, we just wanted pizza. But we figured that this should get us one plate of salad bar, because we're buying an entree. Nope. Obviously they don't want people sharing their salad bar plates, and that is understandable. But there are much better ways to do that, like, oh I don't know, interacting with your customers, instead of placing them behind a wall and ignoring them while they eat their meal, and standing in front of the counter talking to the other servers who also don't have any common sense. Jason also decided to order some wine, and for some reason they couldn't put the wine on our bill, so he had to pay cash up front. Seriously, this place is a logic vortex. It goes in but gets swirled around so badly that nobody can get a grasp on it.

The funny thing is, the only way we were able to figure out this nonsense was because we had Kristin's boyfriend Jeff there. "Jeff" is not his real name, but an adopted "English name" because sometimes it's just easier to introduce yourself as Jeff, rather than Hyeoug Jun. He was able to tell the waitress what we wanted, and then tell us that we weren't able to have it. Even funnier, he said himself "it is illogical". Sometimes I wonder if even Koreans are able to fathom the weirdness...

Speakeasy Show #3

This past weekend was a blast, it was really cool to play different music with a different leader for a change, I get so tired of Jordan ;) Dawn and I travelled the morning of the show with Jason and Abby, who recently adopted a couple of baby chickens who were apparently abandoned in their hagwon. The chicks are named (aptly I'm sure) Avian and Flu. Anyway, as we were exiting the bus at the Gwangju terminal, I noticed the girl behind us attempt to wake the slumbering male behind her. However, he was apparently intent on remaining asleep, and she figured it was no longer her problem, and left the bus. At this point, I decided that someone had to wake this poor guy up, so I began shaking his shoulders, gently at first but gradually stronger. I also bent down to his ear and talked at a low-ish volume. No response. Abby told me to check for breathing, which I did, but this was normal. I decided to shake him a little more, and ended up slapping him a little, which still did nothing. So we figured we'd let the bus driver deal with it. As we were going into the terminal, we looked back into the bus, and watched the driver whack the kid hard enough to leave a mark and scream at him. This finally jolted him back to awareness. We were sure he was in a coma. Seriously, he was OUT! Koreans do love to sleep on the bus; as soon as the bus moves you can usually hear snoring. But this was one for the books. Or at least the blog.

Now to the rest of the day! We cabbed our way to the Windmill Motel, our usual stay in Gwangju, and met up with Crystal and Neal who had spent the night before there. On the way to lunch we met up with a gaggle of waegukins including (but not limited to) Stu, Brent and Steph, Nicola and Virginia. There might have been a few more, but I'm really bad with the whole memory thing, and this was almost a week ago now! After lunch we did some shopping, Neal and Jason went to see a movie and I went to practice. We went over the songs we'd be playing with the younger Emmans brother, Nathan, and also quickly ran through a few of our own. I knew this would be a good show! The only problem was that Nathan's voice was trying to leave him, so we weren't sure how much he would want to sing.

So I met up with the gang and we hit The Outback for supper, then I had soundcheck at 9, and the show started at about 10:30. Nathan played a few songs on his own, then invited his older brother Jordan to bring his band up for a couple songs. We had a lot of fun, lots of jamming and solos, I got to 'trade fours' with Dan, that was fun. I haven't traded fours with a drummer since college! Anyway, so after that we got up there and played the first of our two sets. During I'm Glad You're Happy Jordan suddenly decided that I should play a solo, so I ripped one out. Dawn says everybody was quite impressed, so it must have been good. But it was kind of a blur for me, as I wasn't expecting it and just kinda reacted. Really well thought out, I know. The set lists were as such:

1. Ode to the Moon, Ocean Eyes, Tightrope, I'm Glad You're Happy, Mr. Card Watching Meteors, All I Want, Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, G-Jam, Tidal Wave, Ice Princess
2. Feathers, One Headlight, Two Princes, Deep, Brightest and Best, Learning to Fly, Death by Water, With or Without You, Hope

Overall everybody seemed to be very impressed with the evening. The hightlight however, came when, as promised, Abby through panties at me during our first set. Now I can truly call myself a rockstar. Thanks Abby!

Well that's all for now, more updates soon I'm sure.

Happy Birthday, Dawn

Tuesday the 27th was Dawn's birthday, and was also our friend Janice's birthday. So in case she reads this, happy birthday Janice! We decided to celebrate both birthdays last Saturday, with a dinner with friends, and with some quality time at P-Club.

We started by meeting at BigMart, and proceeded to a nice little Sarangbang (literally "love room", though I have no idea why it's called that... basically it's just a place for cheap barbecued meat) where we ate Kalbi and drank beer and Coke, and just basically had ourselves a nice little dinner. After that was through we picked up some cakes (yes, plural), and headed over to P-Club. Unfortunately by this time it was only about 9 pm, so the bar was, naturally, empty. We ate the cake, drank some more beer (well some of us did), played some foosball, lost all our "money" at the blackjack table and just had some good times. Nothing really crazy happened, in fact the birthday girl and I left by about 11:30. But it was worth it nonetheless.


I'm getting surprisingly excited about playing this weekend! It's been a while since I was on stage, so it will be good to be back. After this weekend I won't be playing with the band for a while, as Jordan will be in China with his brothers for a month. Speaking of his brothers, Nathan Emmans, front man of Soapbox Symphony will be opening for us, and we're gonna join him for a few songs. So I suppose we're gonna open for ourselves... Hopefully I'll get the whole thing recorded, and post some clips on here. And we'll continue working on the CD when Jordan gets back, so it should be done by June or July.

Also, the car wash (in case you're not sick of hearing about it) is nearing completion. This morning they put in the new car wash itself, though it's not quite ready to go yet. I am hoping this takes a long, silent while. But I doubt it will.

Update on the carwash!

Well, it looks like they are indeed going to be putting in a new car wash, and it looks to be a lot bigger than its predecessor. I hope it will be a little quieter than the last one, but somehow I doubt it will be worth the distress it has caused us. They started the construction of the new car wash with a bang (literally) at 7:15 am on Wednesday. They began by destroying the concrete that was there with what looked like a front end loader with no bucket on it, but a large drill-like protrusion that they simply use to bash the concrete until it breaks. This, of course, woke us up with a start, as it shook the entire building every time they did it. It took them until the late afternoon. They then proceeded to make more cuts in the concrete with a jackhammer, and cut rebar and welded things all day yesterday, and today they are just about to pour concrete. This time they actually have a drain in the car wash, too. That should be an improvement to the lake that usually forms on warm days. Ah the life at a gas station.

You may have noticed a new gadget in the sidebar of this blog, though you probably didn't. Anyway, there's a new player for my music and other things. You can simply click on the file you want to hear, and it will play it for you. It may take a little time to buffer itself though, so be patient. I'll keep adding things as I make them. The version of Jordan Emmans' Tightrope that's there feature's me playing lead guitar. I just finished it last night, so it's not perfect, but I like it. We'll see what Jordan thinks...

Update: The new gadget isn't working, hopefully it will soon though. Sorry about that!

Update: Okay, seems to be good now, no worries!

Goodbye Carwash

I was surprised by a loud clanging yesterday morning, and Dawn and I discovered that two guys were taking apart the gas station's carwash. This thing was old and derelict, and held together with duct tape I think. I thought they were just fixing it again, but by early afternoon they were cutting the cement with what looked like a gas powered table saw on wheels, and they had the entire circuit board from the inside of the carwash laying on the ground. Then finally, at about 7 pm or so, I heard a loud bang from outside. I was laying some bass tracks at the time, but even with my headphones on and music playing, the noise was loud. I quickly looked outside fearing for my life, and it turned out to be a crane with a grabber pulling the carwash off the ground and onto its side. They then proceeded to cut the carwash a bit, and finish it off by letting the crane rip it apart and load it into the back of a truck. I got a few photos and some good audio. Hopefully the carwash will stay gone, though I seriously doubt that it won't be replaced by a new, louder one. And they're still cutting cement around where it was, which is louder than the carwash could ever have been. Aah life at a gas station.

Recordings continue, though today I forgot to take the power cord for the laptop that makes up the core of my recording gear, so we didn't get much of that done today. So Jordan and I had ourselves a lengthy practice, going over vocals and such. Pretty productive actually. Though I'm still fairly mad at myself for forgetting the damn thing. Oh well.

Still Recording...

So the recording of Jordan Emmans' first solo record is progressing nicely. I should have some samples to share soon enough, with Jordan's permission of course. He will be over on Saturday and I may be going to Gwangju on Sunday to continue. The only thing is, we were hoping to have the entire thing done for the end of the month, but that is definitely not going to happen now. Unless of course the vocal fairies come and lay down our vocal tracks for us. That would be great. Or even if the room fairies come and make this room a little more suitable for recording said vocals. That would also be great. As it is, I'm gonna have to find a way to make this room a little less reverberant, or a different shape, whichever seems easier. But the songs are sounding good so far, and soon we'll be ready to do vocals. Hopefully before Jordan goes to China in April.

Other than that, things are going slowly as always. I've been playing hockey once in a while with the guys. The last time we played I even got to go in goal! I hadn't played in net for 7 years or so, but I think I did okay. Let in some soft ones, but I made quite a few stops. We also celebrated Abby's birthday last weekend, and it was an interesting night. Somebody decided that it would be fun to play games with toilet paper, so people wrapped themselves in it, wrapped other people in it and wrapped cars in it. Got a little crazy. Got some good pictures though. Apparently some other people got some better ones... I'll explain that if you ask me!

Anyway, gotta go back to mixing, this whole recording thing is getting to be like a full time job!

Seoul with the Sauchuks

Hello everybody! We are finally back from a visit to Seoul with our good friends, Jason and Abby. We left on Thursday morning, as it was a holiday. We didn't know what holiday until we actually got to Seoul. Our companions had bought the tickets for the 4 of us beforehand, so we met at McDonald's for a quick breakfast before heading to the station and boarding. When we arrived at Yongsan station (after teaching the Sauchuks to play Euchre) we took a short look around the electronics market. Jason and Abby's friend Chris was waiting for us at the station, and soon the 5 of us took the subway to downtown Seoul. Chris lives in Sanbon, which is just south of Seoul, but connected by the subway, so Jason and Abby stayed with him, and Dawn and I stayed in our favourite 'love motel', The Ritz. Unfortunately, since it was both the weekend and a holiday, and because the motel had recently been upgraded, it was double the price we usually paid. I'm hoping that the next time we go to Seoul, it will be back to the old prices, or we'll have to find somewhere else to stay.

I had a bit of a mission while I was in Seoul: I was to record as many subway sounds as I could. I wanted to get lines 1, 4, 5 and 8 if possible, trains arriving, trains departing and interior sounds also. Unfortunately, we hardly took the subway, and I didn't have time to hang around on the trains, so I didn't get what I wanted. But that's okay. After getting our room at The Ritz, the 5 of us walked around the Jongno area a bit and went to Subway for lunch. We talked to a man at Tapgol Park for a bit, cause he asked Dawn if she spoke French. They had some French language books about King Joseon and some other stuff, and wanted to make sure they got out to people who could read them. We also got them in English. We then proceeded to get souvenirs of every kind in Insadong. We never got into Tapgol park though, because of the proceedings for the holiday, Korean Independence Day. That night we walked along the banks of Cheonggyecheon and had supper at Burger King, before turning in. Our room at The Ritz had a 42" tv, which was kinda cool. Unfortunately there was rarely anything good on, and I ended up watching volleyball whenever we had some downtime.

Friday was the worst weather of the trip, with rain all day, and some very wet feet at the end of it. We had a leisurely morning with coffee and donuts for breakfast (I had to borrow the desk lady's umbrella, as we had forgotten ours) before meeting Jason and Abby at about noon (Chris had to work, poor sucker). We decided to take a cab to Gwanghwamun, which is one of the palaces in Seoul. Dawn and I had already seen it, and it was pouring rain, so after we saw a small part that we hadn't seen yet, we hung out in the cafe at the National Folk Museum, conveniently located on the same grounds. We also got to look around the Museum. By this time it was early evening and though Abby still had yet to get to the War Memorial, we decided that we were wet and tired. So we went shopping! Dawn had to get new shoes as her's were soaked through, and Abby ended up buying some also. We then got Jason and Abby and Chris rooms at the motel to make it easier for the next day's activities, and then met Chris at the Outback for supper. Then we headed back and went to bed early, as we had to be up at 5:30 for our tour of the DMZ the next day.

We were indeed up in time for the tour. I was unsure of where we were to meet, but we found the address with plenty of time to spare. We even had time for McDonald's breakfast (during the eating of which we decided that the coffee tasted like burnt water). We arrived at the USO building with plenty of time to spare, and soon we were on a bus bound for the DMZ. Our tour guide was a well-meaning man who was volunteering, so I don't want to complain, but his English was FAR from good. At times he would as a question and nobody really had an answer because we had no idea what he had asked. But it wasn't so bad, as many things were self-explanatory anyway. When we got to the DMZ, we were no longer allowed to take pictures, so you can't see where we went. But after we were at Camp Bonifas, we switched buses to an offical UN bus, and we had the services of two US MPs to guide us through the cool stuff. They took us first to Ballinger Hall, where they briefed us on the history of the area and what we were going to do. The guides were really funny, and pretty cool. Apparently we were a really good group, and therefore got to do cool things that other groups don't. For example, I got a couple copies of the waiver that we had to sign before we could go through the DMZ. Anyway, so then we were loaded back on the buses and drove to the Joint Security Area, which is the major part of the tour. It is an area where both North and South have buildings and soldiers, and where the Demarcation Line is (the border within the DMZ). We were split into two groups, the other group going into the Military Armistice Commision building first, which is right on the border, and the only place where you can actually go into the Communist North. So we were allowed to take pictures of the other side of the line and of the buildings and the one soldier who was on the North Korean building's steps. When we got into the MAC building, we got a special treat, as North Korean soldiers came down to the building's sides. This was unusual as they usually don't come down until later in the day. However, as we were leaving the area, we found out why they were there. A tour group from the North was waiting on the steps taking pictures of US! Abby was able to turn around and snap a few pics of them while we were herded back into the South's large building. After that we were herded back into the buses, and headed off to CP 5, which is surrounded on three sides by North Korean territory. It also has the best view of the North side of the DMZ, and the best view of Propaganda Village, which is mirrored in the south by Daesoungdong, or Freedom Village. We also got a good view of the Bridge of No Return and the area of the axe murder of 1976, when two American soldiers were killed by North Koreans while cutting down a tree on the South's side of the JSA. Very cool stuff to see.

At all times in the DMZ, we weren't allowed to point or gesture at the North side in any way, as we were under surveillance the entire time we were there. Apparently they can somehow turn that into propaganda against the south. So it was hard to ask questions. The last stop with our Army tour guide was Dora Observatory, which is usually a great place to look into the Northern side. However, it was really foggy, so we couldn't see a whole lot. After that we returned to Camp Boniface, said goodbye to our guides, and got back on the USO bus for our last stop, the Third Tunnel. Apparently the North wasn't ready to quit trying back in the 70's and they spent at least 5 years trying to tunnel their way into South Korea. The first tunnel was discovered 42 km from Seoul, but wasn't a very big tunnel. The third tunnel was discovered 56 km from Seoul, but was large enough that 10000 North Korean troops could have popped up that close to Seoul within an hour. They didn't have any technology for tunneling, so they simply used explosives. Makes you wonder how many lives were lost making that tunnel. It was cool to see, but kinda hot and wet, and sort of a let down when you get to the dead end. But there's a window in the door, so you can see a little further into the tunnel, and the end of the tunnel is just 200m from North Korea, so that's cool. Unfortunately, you aren't allowed to take pictures. Why, I have no idea. Oh, and the North still claims that the tunnel was made from the south, even though the blast patterns suggest a southerly route, and the North painted the walls to make it look like a mining operation (in granite, where there is no chance of coal). Smart people.

Overall, the tour just reaffirms that North Korea is a big joke, full of propaganda and misguided people. It must be hard for the soldiers who serve in the JSA on the North side to keep from running across the line everyday. There isn't enough food to keep them fit, so they are smaller and much weaker than their Southern counterparts. The south has been sending aid for years, but it only goes to the military and government. One thing, though, about the tour: at Dora, they showed us a video about the DMZ which, while educational, was a little too much like propaganda for me. They painted a picture in which the most dangerous border in the world was "no longer a symbol of oppression, but a symbol of unification" because, due to the fact that no one's walked freely there for 50-odd years, there are lots of rare and (according to the video) extinct animals there (not sure how there could be extinct animals there...). I have a problem with the fact that it seems that these people are so willing to embrace their "brothers" to the north, that they overlook the fact that, given the chance, the North Korean soldiers would kill them without a thought.

After the tour on Saturday, Jason and Abby decided to tour the War Memorial, but again we'd already seen it. So we went across town to Central City mall to shop for Dawn's makeup. We were going to shop for other stuff, but we were so tired, we just went to the hotel and rested. That night we met up with Jason and Abby again for supper, this time at Popeye's. It was pretty good, Dawn and I got free fries and a couple free pieces of chicken, as I apparently confused them by ordering mild chicken (as opposed to spicy). That night we slept really well...

Finally today we got up early enough to get to Yongsan station and look around a while before getting on the train at about noon. Dawn decided that it would be a good idea to buy a new camera, the 10 megapixel version of the one we already have, which is ONLY 6.3. If I could roll my eyes I would. Anyway, now we are at home after an uneventful train ride home. Though it is raining pretty hard. Okay, time to get some supper. I will update this with pictures tonight or tomorrow.