Another one bites the dust …

… another year, that is.

Having met Mary the day before, we’d made plans and I duly went to meet her at Ewha Women’s University, where she’s a student. We went to a cat café – the first time I’d been to one, which is pretty astonishing, given how much I love cats. We were the only customers there until four schoolgirls came in later. There were about fifteen cats in the moderately sized café, perhaps more, of lots of breeds – longhairs with and without squishy faces, some tabbies, including something like an ocicat, and a calm, assertive pair of Siamese or similar cats that sat on our table and let us adore them. I’m not really up on cat breeds, so I can only guess at their types.

The place looked very clean, but was a little smelly. The cats were mostly friendly and inquisitive, but some of them evidently didn’t like some of their fellow inmates. We got coffees for ourselves and a tiny cup of treats for the cats and mused on the kind of life the cats must have and must’ve had in the past.

Afterwards, Mary took me a museum on the nearby campus that contained lots of hanbok – traditional clothing – and furniture. We walked down the trench that is the main architectural feature of the university – as a building, it’s appropriately uterine rather than phallic – and had a look, and lunch, inside.

For much of the day, we’d been expecting Matthew to join us, but he turned out to be excessively busy with work. We even went to see a film (One Day; annoyingly will-they-won’t-they-ish at first, but it grew on me somewhat; Anne Hathaway was especially lovely as the freckly, bespectacled, northern British protagonist) to wait for him. He turned up as we were having dinner and we had drinks together afterwards.

The following day, I played Magic and a new (to me) game called Zombies!!! with Eric. I’ve not hung out with him that much, but he’s a very nice chap and it was good to chat with him.

The next day, I went on a hike near Anyang – for which I’d especially bought crampons the day before from one of a series of outdoors gear shops I’d seen lots of times when I lived in Cheongdam. The crampons worked extremely well; having slipped and slid on packed snow the last time I’d gone for a hike, the grip provided made me feel especially stable.

The hike was organised by a couple of groups: Indigo Hill and the unfortunately named SHITY – Sunday Hikers Interested in Trekking Yet-again. It lasted over five hours and the weather was very cold and very sunny. The snow wasn’t very thick on the ground, but thick enough to beatify the landscape in that way that only snow can; it clung to the limbs of pine trees in lumpy lines.

Afterwards, we went for a meal of chicken stew with lots of side dishes. The leaders of the group were very friendly – as, indeed, were all the hikers. There was an American guy who could apparently teach you anything – scuba diving, skiing, salsa dancing (but this latter only if you were of the opposite gender). I exchanged numbers with a few people. Later, a smaller group of us went to a singing room or noraebang in the nearby city, where I gave a rather unsteady rendition of ‘The Day That Never Comes’ by Metallica (and rather better performances of ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘Strange Kind of Woman’). A cute hiker with not much English and the unusual name of Ok (pronounced something like ‘oak’) dragged me to my feet to dance.

The next day, New Year’s Eve, I met one of the hikers I exchanged details with the previous day for coffee. After meeting her, I headed straight over to Gangnam for the first stage of the New Year’s Eve event I’d signed up for on Meetup.com. This consisted of dinner at one of the chains of western-ish-style buffet restaurants that are popular in Korea – Ashley’s. The food was mediocre at best, but there was a limitless supply of four wines (which I mostly liked, so they were probably crap, too). I said hello to various people and exchanged introductions, sat with three American girls for dinner and we were joined by a Korean and a South African couple.

Afterwards, we had to take the subway across the city to Hongdae for the other part of the package – Club Mansion. There’s really nothing mansion-like about this place, but it’s one of the more exclusive places, apparently costing ₩20,000 to get in. I danced with a couple of women that I liked; had a brief and fairly innocent romantic moment with one, but, alas, I don’t think anything will develop between me and any of the three women I met that day.

I did quite get into the dancing – which is surprising. Shocking, even. The very idea of dancing usually fills me with a vague sense of humiliation. But with five glasses of wine and a few beers in my belly as well as no one around that I knew (and therefore no expectations on me to behave in the way that I expect them to expect me to behave), I was able to enjoy the time in the way that one is supposed to enjoy it. Mary also turned up at the club (which is how I know how much it cost), but we didn’t spend much time together.

Later, I hung out at the Hongdae Tom N Toms, waiting for the subway to open, with a young guy I’d met in the group of people I’d tagged along with. He fell asleep as we sat at a table and I was deeply engrossed in my smart phone – and pretty sleepy myself. When I woke him up to leave, he didn’t have his phone – the upshot being that it had almost certainly been stolen. Someone might almost literally have snatched it from under my nose as it sat on the table. The fact that my own phone may have been taken from someone in similar circumstances made me feel extra crappy – although not nearly as crappy as my New Year’s acquaintance.

That morning, I got back to Zach’s place at maybe seven o’clock. I woke up at 10:30 and decided not to try to sleep more. Matthew and I played Magic later in the day and I headed back to Cheonan in the evening.

The following day, I met three people at an Indian restaurant near Cheonan Station for dinner. The food was great – I had a buttery chicken curry (can’t remember exactly what kind) – and the three women (Americans) were nice and friendly (as, too, was the chatty guy (American) who didn’t join us, but hung around for a while after he’d finished his own, separate meal). They’d all travelled varying distances for the meal – which someone had suggested on a Facebook group – and, with my hours of 2:00 to 9:30 and my determination to do lots of social stuff in Seoul and Daegu at weekends, I’m unlikely to see them again soon.

At some point in the day or two after the, dare I say, euphoria of New Year’s Eve, I had a kind of emotional crash. A small one. I don’t often spontaneously cry – by which I mean, not without reason, but without a trigger – but this was one of those times. I was feeling lonely and pitiful and kind of stupid. To some degree, I became someone else on New Year’s Eve and I was expecting him to be more successful at flirtation and romance than I’ve ever been. Naïve of me to think that kind of thing is ever easy.

Also, it was the first New Year’s Eve for three years that I’d been single, and, while I can’t honestly say that I miss my girlfriend (although I miss her friendship), I miss having a girlfriend.

Still, the year is yet young, and, in just a few days from now, I will have money to spare for trips and events and suchlike and we will see what happens.

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More weekend life

The last couple of weekends have been pretty busy and fun.

The weekend before last, I came up to Seoul, my small backpack heavy with my box of Magic cards and a few bits of clothing and toiletries – and my computer, which I probably didn’t really need. I’ve recently joined a bunch of groups on Meetup and my first order of business was to attend my first event with one of them. It was a beginners’ life drawing class at a studio in Itaewon. The instructor had us practise a few different drawing techniques – initially with one of the attendees with whom he was evidently familiar because the model was late, and then with a model once she arrived.

It was interesting work, quite challenging – especially having not had much practice at sketching for a long time, other than the occasional map for a game or story. I think I did reasonably well, though. The model was a white, North American woman – she resembled a blond Natalie Portman. Most of the attendees were women too; I chatted to a few on the way out and back to the subway station, but the atmosphere in the class was quiet so I felt pretty self-conscious about talking to anyone in there. The one woman I did talk to in the class seemed quite uncomfortable.

Afterwards, I met those sterling gentlemen, Matthew and Zach. We had dinner together and I dropped my things at Zach’s place (which is conveniently nextdoor to Matt’s place; I knocked on their doors simultaneously) where I stayed the night. Later in the evening, Zach and I went to Hongdae where he had a gig to play with Damnear David, a David Bowie cover singer. Also on the bill was a Queen cover band, Queen Machine – which I really quite enjoyed.

The following day, the three of us went to Wangsimni to watch The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which we all agreed was very good, although it did have some silly bits like the hero not leaving home for the first hour of the film and Galadriel teleporting to avoid scuffing or tripping up over her long skirts.

We also played lots of Magic: The Gathering. Zach and I did, at any rate – Matthew had other duties that called him away.

During the week, I made a bunch of paper snowflakes with my students to decorate my class a little. There has been quite a bit of real snow of late and the weather has been very cold occasionally – making my classroom unpleasantly chilly; the single heater is not really up to the task of heating the whole room.

I also got my Alien Registration Card and set up a bank account with KEB – Korea Exchange Bank. Actually, I set up two accounts (no, I didn’t – the bank clerk did it for me); one is a regular current account, into which I’ll be paid, and the other automatically transfers any money put into it to my UK bank account. Once I got paid, I transferred some money into the second account; I’ve just checked and it has arrived in my British account. Now I can pay off the credit card debt I’ve built up in my first month back in Korea. Unfortunately, the advances on my salary that I’ve been given mean that I probably won’t have enough cash to see out this next month, so I’m going to have to withdraw more money on my credit card.

I had to go back to the hospital where I got my health check done. I went initially to an internal medicine clinic I’d noticed in order to get a week’s worth of my colitis medication. The doctor – a rather uninspiringly nervous and boyish middle-aged man – told me he couldn’t prescribe it but gave me a note to take to the hospital. Having seen one of the specialists at the hospital, I made my way down one of the staircases and passed this very pretty nurse who’d tested my sight and given me my sealed envelope with the results a couple of weeks afterwards. She had been very nice, trying to speak English and (kind of) remembering my name. She stopped to say hello and prove that she remembered my name again (with only a little prompting from me). I asked her hers.

I had to return once more to the hospital to get another copy of the health check statement – the last one had been for the Immigration Office; this one was for the police, with whom I was supposed to be registered. I was able to ask for Ji-yeong by name and she prepared another envelope for me.

There was a weird episode towards the end of the week when Julie, my boss, put it to me that she didn’t want to sign me up for the (legally required) national health insurance and pension schemes and instead wanted to get something private. Or maybe that wasn’t exactly what she was saying, but because of something the recruiter had told her she didn’t seem keen.

I’m very aware that Americans and Canadians can get the pension contributions back when they leave the country, but Britons can’t. This is because of differing reciprocal arrangements between governments; Koreans working in the UK also can’t get a refund of National Insurance contributions. Apparently, the recruiter had told her that she wouldn’t need to pay into the national system for a British employee and that had been a factor in her choosing me over someone else. After asking various people and reading about it, I told her I wanted to pay into the national systems – so that’s apparently what I’m now doing.

I say apparently because after getting confirmation that I was signed up from Julie, I went back to internal medicine clinic, the hospital and the pharmacy and got partial refunds on my payments because I was now retroactively covered. I’ve since been back to the hospital and pharmacy and my consultation and medication were a lot more expensive than I was expecting.

This past weekend was one of Magic and Burning Wheel gaming. Zach, Matthew and I played MTG on Saturday. That other sterling gentleman, Peter, met me on Sunday and we played more Magic, then Zach joined us and we got started on a roleplaying game run by Peter. I played a fisherman exiled from his village and Zach played a cleric with the character trait Overbearing Loony; we were united by a desire to stop colonists interfering with local culture – or at least with an old temple. It was a very promising game and seemed to go off on a tangent quite quickly – or maybe it was all planned. Hopefully, we’ll be able to continue the story soon.

The first thing I did on Saturday was head up to Itaewon to see a man about a phone. I was expecting a North American, but it turned out to be an Indian or Pakistani guy. I started to feel a bit suspicious, but checked the instinct. The phone he offered me was white instead of the black one shown in the photo on Craigslist. I bought it anyway – I’m far too polite to have refused. I came to the conclusion later that the phone was almost certainly stolen. The man didn’t have any idea how to change a setting I e-mailed him about later; the phone is a little bit scuffed on the back, while this chap provided brand new recharging and data cables; he spoke near-perfect English, but he changed the phone from Korean to English right in front of me.

Anyway, it works and I’ve been to the SK Telecom centre to get a new USIM card for it – thus registering an account with SK as well as getting an actual phone number. The clerk opened it up and typed some numbers from inside the phone into her computer. I can only assume that if someone had reported it stolen, some alert would have come up at this point. Maybe it was second-hand after all.

The really disappointing thing about the phone was that it was white and not black. Nevertheless, I’ve got a pretty fancy 4G smart phone with a big screen and I’m starting to get used to how it works and alter things to my taste.

Monday was the last day of teaching for me this year. I had one class with a four-year-old boy, then the next class was an amalgam of many of the elementary school kids and we watched Brave on my laptop. A couple of hours later, the middle- and high- schoolers did the same, but I had to leave halfway through to take a class with one of the girls; then I had one more class with one of the older boys and I was done. The kids will be back on Wednesday, but I have my contractual five days of holiday.

Today, Tuesday, I spent doing not very much – washing clothes, walking around the city, blogging. I had pepperoni pizza for dinner with chocolates and beer and Misfits and the Simpsons.

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The game begins again

Yesterday, I returned to Seoul for a day with friends. I had been planning to get up early and arrive early; at seven o’clock, I reset my alarm to 8:30, having not slept well or long enough. I got the slow bus up to Shinsegae and bought a ticket from the nearby Intercity Bus Station (for ₩5,000).

With some free time, I looked around for somewhere to buy hodugwaja – a walnut cake snack thing for which Cheonan is famous – and found a little shop inside the Shinsegae building at the Express Bus Terminal. The extremely close proximity of these two bus stations is a bit confusing; I’ll have to try getting a bus to Seoul from the express terminal next time.

My bus from the intercity terminal left on time and arrived at the Express Bus Terminal in Seoul an hour and five minutes later. Through the magic of Facebook, while phoneless, I was able contact Jeff, the gaming host, from a café in Noksapyeong and got directions to his place.

There, with Jeff, his friend John, Matthew and Zach, I played Magic: The Gathering with the decks I’d brought. I beat Matthew – the only other person with Magic experience – in a demonstration game; then John, the gaming newbie, held on to the end of a four-handed multiplayer game, using an Izzet Guildmage to burn Matthew and Zach (I’d already fallen). Then we played Zach’s Munchkin with all five people; I almost won at one point, but was thwarted. I lost concentration towards the end because I was in danger of being late for my dinner date, but it was great to be back amongst friends and gaming again.

Matthew and I shared a taxi to Sinsa, where I met Gemma, my old colleague from my last job in Korea. We had Mexican food and later sake and later still coffee and/or hot chocolate. It was really nice to see her again and we talked about life and stuff and things.

I got a five to midnight bus back to Cheonan. When I arrived back, seemingly everyone else on the bus had headed to the main street to get a taxi – of which there were few around. I decided to walk some or all of the way home. There was a frozen drizzle falling and the ground was pretty slippery – I fell once. I got a taxi home from Cheonan Station, where there were several taxis waiting and few people around.

I slept late today. Did some laundry after breakfast and found that no water poured into the top-loader machine as usual. After examining the piping, I realised that the tap was frozen. I boiled a pan of water and poured it over said tap and the water eventually started flowing.

Later, I went for a walk up a mountain just to the north of where I live. I say ‘mountain’, but really it’s just a forested hilly area. With all the recent snow, it was a pleasant walk – the snow had prettified the landscape and the trees. Without it, it would have been a very easy trek, but the paths were covered in more or less compacted snow, so you had to take care. I fell on my arse at one point, just behind a pair of women – who exclaimed and looked around, but, of course, didn’t stop to help or ask if I was OK. No damage done, though.

So far, I’ve made contact with old friends in Seoul and Daegu, but have made no new friends (outside work) in Cheonan. I’m thinking about doing something about that.

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Last days in the Orient

Last Saturday, I went in for my final day at my now legendary once a month Saturday job. The previous month, the owners of the hagwon had prepared cheese and crackers and wine for Eric and me thinking January was my last month. This month there were no special events to mark the occasion.

Then I had to hotfoot it to Hongdae to hang out with Habiba and a bunch of friends for her leaving party. The drinking part of the night was at a couple of clubs that were far too noisy for my taste and I was too late for dinner. Noraebang was fun, though, and Habiba, Zach and I kind of dominated the microphones. Somehow, the karaoke machine go switched on to a harsh judging mode and, whereas these things usually give scores as integers in the 80 to 100% range, it kept handing out scores like 32.47.

On Wednesday and Thursday, I ran what may be the last two sessions ever played of my roleplaying game, Tales of Tolvenia, which uses the system I created: the 2d6 RPG. The story moved a long a fair bit, and I end up making some stuff up on the fly, such as an ancient dwarf who called himself the Ancient and helped the party obtain a couple of artefacts that I planned for them to use to defeat the threat to the world. Without time constraints, I would have had made getting hold of each artefact an adventure in itself. In the end, we didn’t finish the campaign – the world is still threatened by ‘demons’ from the sea. We talked about continuing the game on the blog I set up to document the campain and system.

On Friday, it was my last day at my main job – also many of the kindergarteners’ last day. It wasn’t a regular school day, but instead we had a graduation ceremony – of which I was the presenter. I had written a script, but when it finally came to starting at around eleven o’clock, I pretty much winged it. I’m sure I came across as my normal exuberant, extroverted self. The awkwardest part was when I had to say a little something about each student as they received their diplomas from the church’s pastor. There followed a variety of combinations of comments on each kid’s good looks and intelligence.

I saw my assistant teacher, Jenny, wipe away a tear at one point, but it wasn’t too weepy; everyone enjoyed the event – even me. Once it was over, we milled for maybe an hour so we could say goodbye to individual children and parents and have our pictures taken. One of my favourite students is Jun – he’s a big boy with a crew cut, very smart, very talkative, a bit boisterous. I joked that I would take him with me to Europe and he clamped his arms around my waist and was like, Teacher, go to Europe!

A very sweet boy in my class, Luigi – also very smart and talkative, but much slighter in build and handsome in a cute way – gave me a red rose. I gave my homeroom class some chocolate and some sweet sesame seed mix (which latter was made by Habiba) and also a little card each that I made the previous day.

After that, all the staff went to a buffet place called Vikings for lunch. It’s supposedly a seafood restaurant, but I didn’t have any, favouring instead, pizza, taco (Jenny at one point asked if taco was ‘our country’s food’, ie, Korean) and other tasty stuff. After lunch, my colleague Gemma went with me to a bank to help me transfer my savings to my British bank account. I had thought that not being official – no E2 visa, no pay statements etc – it would be impossible for me to do in my own name. Not so, apparently.

I’d also brought to work my large packpack filled with various possessions. I left work early amid lots of awkward and maybe not fully sincere goodbyes … OK – it wasn’t that bad – the people who work there are very sweet, and it’s been one of my best working experiences in Korea. It’s just that, me being me, I don’t make friends very readily, especially at work. I took my massive backpack to the post and put all the stuff – and even the coat I was wearing – in a box and sent it to my sister.

Then on Saturday, I had my own leaving party. I had lots of stuff to do that day, first of which was buying tickets for the film-going part of the evening’s events. I was somewhat annoyed to learn that, contrary to what it said on their website, CGV was not showing The Artist at 4:40 at our local cinema. Instead – after some sweating about what to do: there was nothing else showing at a convenient time at Cheongdam Cinecity – I was able to get information from the staff about films screening at the nearby Apgujeong CGV and decided on The Descendants. Unfortunately, I had to go to the other place to buy the tickets.

I did this, but it took a bit out of the time available to me to perform my next task: to go to the hospital I’d previously attended with my colitis to get a prescription and letter about my illness and medication, because – as Eric helpfully pointed out and I confirmed by researching on-line – some countries may not allow you to bring in large amounts of medicine without documentation. I have six months’ worth of pills and suppositories. It wasn’t too late when I got there and was seen fairly rapidly. Unfortunately, I was told I’d have to come back later to pick up the letter.

Next, it was my friend Ji-hyeon’s wedding. Korean weddings are generally pretty swift affairs: 20 minutes in a wedding hall followed by a big buffet meal. Ji-hyeon’s husband is a trainee Anglican vicar, however, and their wedding was at the Anglican Cathedral of Seoul and was what many Westerners would think of as a ‘real’ wedding, complete with a mass. Ji-hyeon seemed very happy when I went to ‘view’ her before the ceremony and I also briefly talked to her fiancé and he seemed very nice. In addition, I bumped into Ally or Yu-jeong, who originally introduced me to Ji-hyeon (or Lucy … or Lucia) nearly three years ago for the purposes of language exchange. Ally is also getting married this year; we had lunch together at the buffet down in the depths beneath the cathedral.

Then I went back to the hospital to get my letter. Then I rushed home to meet Matthew, who was due to buy some of our stuff. Then Habiba and I went to Apgujeong to meet Zach, and later Matt, to play Axe Cop Munchkin. Fun was had – especially by Habiba, who won. With a card as great as ‘Dinosaur Head on a Stick with Bombs in It’, I think I should have won.

Despite the changes to the plan, everyone (the four Munchkins, Josh and his date, Julie, Eric, Mary and Demond) made it to the right place at the right time and we watched The Descendants. Everyone (apart from Eric, who is only cineastically satisfied by guns, explosions, fights etc) enjoyed it.

Then it was dinner at an Indian restaurant very close by called Ganga. My former colleague, Jinny, and Mike and Ksan and Jun Hong, and eventually Peter, also joined us for this. The food was very good; Habiba and I shared an aloo gobi and a chicken vindaloo (the latter, of course, being traditional British food). We spent lots of time chatting in the restaurant afterwards. When I tried to make announcement to the effect that it was time to move on, people thought I wanted to make a speech, so I made Habiba play a bit of impromptu Cheddar Gorge with me:

‘Thank.’

‘You.’

‘For.’

‘Coming.’

‘Out.’

‘Tonight.’

Etc.

I was planning to go bowling afterwards, but when we got to the alley, there was a long list of people waiting for lanes. Instead, we went to a board game café called Monopoly. The men played Monopoly, appropriately enough; Mike and the ladies played Tumbling Monkeys and other animal-related games. Monopoly was fun – if strange. Doubly strange for me. It was an updated American version, so all the places were Times Square instead of Mayfair or Mall of America instead on The Angel, Islington. In addition, the game was played with dominations of $10,000 to $5,000,000, the utilities were internet and cellphone services and all the Chance and Community Chest cards were updated with similarly contemporary events.

We all had fun playing it, though. At least until Eric put a fly in the lubricant by taking his turn very quickly after Peter declared his intent to put a house on Las Vegas Boulevard, landing on Las Vegas Boulevard and refusing to pay the full rent because the little plastic house wasn’t yet on the board. Eric was fiercely adamant in his refusal and wouldn’t even countenance comprimising, even when he was left in a minority of one. The scene was pretty awkward and unpleasant, I ended up asking him to leave – which he did, wishing me farewell and goodnight to everyone else.

We had no stomach for further play after that, and the womenfolk had already stopped playing, so we counted up our net worths and declared that Matthew was the winner with $26,000,000 – up from starting assets of $15,000,000.

We said more goodbyes, Peter and Matt came back to our place to grab even more stuff, said more goodbyes and finally we could return to packing.

Specifically, pack a couple of boxes, which, the following day, we took to Ksan and Jun Hong’s house for them to store for us for a year. We packed our bags on that last Sunday, did some more cleaning, sent some of my important documents by Fedex (Habiba gave me a couple of coffee shop free drink cards to the Fedex guy who spoke English – there was nothing for his less linguistic colleage) and finally set off for the airport at about eight o’clock – catching an airport bus by the skin of our teeth.

And so begins our adventure in Europe.

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Year-ending

New Year’s Eve saw Habiba and me meet some friends at British-style pub in Itaewon for dinner – most of us had fish and chips (I also had one beer). We then repaired to a cocktail bar for a couple of quite tasty drinks – a Green Fantasy and a Chocolate Martini, for me. And finally, we headed to a party at someone’s home nearby. Whilst there I had one shot of something fruity, two or three cups of wine and a few of beer.

My roleplaying buddy Matthew joined us towards midnight – and he discovered an area of of common interest with the host Moira – international peace and development. I chatted to a trio of Canadian guys – one who could pass for Korean, but is actually Vietnamese and Chinese (but Canadian) and his white visiting friends.

At midnight, we counted down and were happy.

On the way home I started feeling what I like to think of as ‘nauseous’ – although some authorities state that the correct adjective is ‘nauseated’. When we got out of the taxi, I was sick into a drain. I slept well enough, but in the morning I felt wretched. During the course of the day, I vomited maybe another seven times – usually with nothing coming up other than a bit of thick, orangey stomach juice. Habiba and I just watched TV all day; eventually, I started to feel better and managed to eat a good meal for dinner (one of Habiba’s soups).

The previous day, before meeting for dinner, I’d gone to Itaewon early and spent a bit of money at What the Book. I bought – finally – the tenth and last book in Steven Erikson’s The Malazan Book of the Fallen, The Crippled God. I’m a bit wary of reading it, as the series has declined since the early books – or at least, my interest in it has declined. I also got an issue each of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Realms of Fantasy. I did some writing, too.

If I have a New Year’s Resolution, it’s to concentrate on creative writing again. It’s a project that I’ve neglected over the past year in favour of working on my roleplaying game and running a campaign. The RPG has been a challenging project, and one that I feel I’ve struggled to do justice to – although it’s also been lots of fun. It’s with a certain amount of relief that I’ve decided – once the current scene and its aftermath have been played through – to stop running the game. I’m going to suggest a weekly gaming night of Scrabble, Munchkin and whatever other things people want to play – maybe even a different RPG. I’ll only be able to participate in this for a few weeks until Habiba and I leave the country at the end of February.

The time that I’ll save not working on the game will be ploughed into working on stories. The last time I was writing, I was working on a piece about hunting fairy-like creatures. I will return to that, but right now I’m working on a new one. And when I say ‘right now’, I mean it almost literally: I paused work on it here at the local Starbucks because I was feeling tired and I thought writing this blog post would wake me up. The coffee has probably helped, too.

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Life moves slowly on

I’m nearly two months into my new job and it’s going OK. Sleep and getting up in the morning hasn’t been too much of a problem. I usually try to sleep a little on the express bus down to Bundang, but it’s not easy. The drivers often have the radio on, sometimes at annoying high volumes. They also often have a beep that sounds when the engine revs too high – presumably to let them know when to change gear (unlike the UK, where people drive real cars, the vast majority of Korean cars are automatics (not that I’ve ever driven a car, manual or automatic)).

The main problem, though, is the buses themselves. They’re coaches, really, but living in such an American-oriented society I inevitably think of them as buses. Korea has a great public transport (not transportation) system – there are lots of bus routes and buses, subway lines and trains. The buses are all pretty rickety, though: they jolt and judder and jump up and down every time the driver changes gear or applies the brakes. The drivers also don’t drive too well: they tend to accelerate as fast as possible and then brake as hard as possible.

I’m back into reading as a result. If I can’t sleep on the bus in the morning, I might as well make a little more progess on The Three Musketeers (a novel about four soldiers who rarely use muskets). I can only manage a couple of pages in the evening, though, before exhaustion overtakes me.

My roleplaying game system continues to progress. I’ve been working on a new version that is taking longer than the first version to complete – I don’t have any full days to dedicate to it, now, though. From a high point of six players, the group has shunk a little to three regulars. The campaign that I’m running has taken a lot longer than I imagined to get to the point it’s currently at. The players are at a turning point, however, and I think I need to change my approach for the coming episodes – cutting out extraneous combat, maybe dealing with longer periods in condensed form. We have fun, though, which is the important thing.

Habiba and I are planning our trip to Europe, which will start early in the spring. I learnt from the internet that all international train services in Greece were cancelled earlier this year because of the financial crisis there, also it’s a very chancy business getting inter-island ferries at that time of year. This changes some of our plans – we’ll have to bus it (that word again) from Istanbul to Athens, or maybe Thessaloniki. The next stop will be Albania – transport links there and in the former Yugoslavia also look a bit ad hoc, so that’ll be interesting times.

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Elf and sickness

I’m now coming to the end of my course of steroids for my colitis and things are well on bowel front. I’m back to full health – one bowel movement per day, no more bowel pain, probably back up to normal weight (although I haven’t weighed myself lately). In fact, my belly is getting a bit round – not from fat, just from food inside it, I suppose. The steroids have probably given me a bad bout of acne on my face, neck and especially scalp – which is beginning to clear up now, as well.

I had a mild cold all the time I was in America with Habiba, and I’ve only just got over it. For a while towards the end, it seemed to have cause my ears to get blocked – not so much as with water, but as the effect caused by the change in pressure when going up or down in an aeroplane. That’s cleared up now.

One side effect of the trip to the States is that I’ve had a flare-up of sciatica, due to carring heavy backpacks a lot and not keeping up with my core muscle exercises. I’m going back to the gym now (at Habiba’s insistence) and hopefully lots of crunches and the like will help. I just spent half an hour or so playing my guitar (something I don’t do very often, sadly); it made the pain in my left hip/buttock/upper thigh area worse.

Summer is fast approaching, unfortunately. Summer is too hot – and far too humid. It’s already pretty warm (and it’s been raining a lot the past week, which is a little unusual for Korea for this time of year).

The increasing warmth brings increased levels of sweat. When I went back to Britain the year before last I brought back half a dozen Lynx Africa deodorant sticks. I finished the last one a while ago, and I won’t be getting Lynx again (or Axe as it’s called in the rest of the world): the aluminium content causes staining – a lot of my tops have white stains on the underams. I’ve been using Old Spice lately, but it doesn’t work as well as Lynx – by the latter part of the day I end up being a bit whiffy, even if I haven’t been doing anything strenuous.

After some research, I’ve shaved my armpits (again – I tried that for a while back in 2006 or 7) and have started using white vinegar. That wouldn’t seem to the be best idea to reduce bad smells, but it seems to work well. The idea is that the vinegar changes the ph level of the skin, preventing the bacteria that cause odour from doing whatever it is they do.

I’m happy to be back home – it means I can get back to work on my various projects (there still doesn’t seem to be time enough to do justice to all of them). I’ve been continuing to prepare the ground for my novel (actually, it’s a trilogy, as far as I can tell) – and have now started writing the first chapter (again).

My blog (Elements of Fantasy) has been taking up all my writing time on Monday. On Mondays, my aim is to produce an analysis of one aspect of fantasy. There are various reasons for this. It’s good practice to write to a deadline. It’s also a form of autodidacticism – writing about this subject involves a lot of research, and the more I learn about fantasy, the better I can write it. It also seems to be a good idea to have an online presence that is more than just a diary (like this blog) to support my career as a writer (this comes from reading Kristen Lamb’s blog on the social media for writers).

I’m also running my roleplaying game. The first adventure is pretty much over, but now I may have given the player characters too much wealth and too much knowledge. However, this could work well if I can use this to catapult them into the main campaign story (which is still pretty nebulous at the moment). I also have a deadline motivating me to get the main story underway – if I get a job later in the year, as I plan, I will have much less time for writing, and running the game will have to go (I’ve already neglected my short story work for lack of time).

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Looking up

My last post about life was pretty depressing, but there was at least a hint of hope towards the end. I’ve now been taking steroids for my ulcerative colitis flare-up for a little over two weeks, and the improvement, while it’s been slow, is also marked. I’m still getting the bowel pains, but much less frequently and at a much lower intensity. Bathroom trips are required only about four times a day.

Most importantly, perhaps, I’m eating again and have the energy to pretty much function normally. I’m still a bit weak, though: walking up steps is harder than it used to be, my knees feel ancient if I squat or kneel and my voice is quiet(er than usual).

I have steroid pills for another four weeks, slowly tapering off in quantity; the previous fortnight I was taking eight a day, this week it’s seven, next week, six, and so on. The doctor recommended not having a colonoscopy at the moment, as sticking a camera up your guts can aggravate symptoms (I’m paraphrasing).

If, after this current prescription runs out, things are still abnormal, he suggested a sigmoidoscopy (which is a colonoscopy of only the last part of the large intestine). He also gave the names of a probiotic treatment – VSL#3 – and an immune suppressant – infliximab – to look into as promising additional UC treatments.

Habiba and I passed our two-year milestone a week ago. Celebrations were muted because of my health – and hers, for that matter; she’s been sick with a bad cold – but we had a nice day, buying a shelving unit for our kitchen area, walking along the Han River Park and disagreeing fundamentally about philosophy and the nature of the world.

However, this latter interlude concluded with the exchange: me: ‘Would you still love me if I stayed a rationalist atheist for the rest of my life?’ she: ‘It’ll be tiring, but, yes, I suppose so.’ That was possibly the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me and it made me feel a swell of happiness and love for Habiba.

Last week – having started it a couple of months earlier – I felt able to resume running my roleplaying game using the 2d6-based system I’ve designed. Although the system is a little on the complex side, it’s been working fairly well so far – better than one might expect for the inaugural run of a homebrew system.

I’m constantly changing it as we go along, though. I’m particularly proud of the magic system – but at first it turned out to be overly powerful as well as uneven. In about the third session, one character, with the aid of a couple of other casters, managed to resurrect three dead villagers. That’s no longer possible – at least until the character gains the very expensive Healing Magic Perfection feat.

The world and story are also of my own making, and things are progressing well – although I have only the vaguest idea where things are headed as yet.

I’ve started work on finding a new job, probably for September, which means going through the whole rigmarole of getting a subject access check from the police, getting it notarised and apostilled – possibly getting a copy of my degree similarly authenticated (I already have some copies from 2006 that I never used) – getting more sealed transcripts of my degree results, transferring money to my sister so she can coordinate all that, getting it all sent back to me in Korea, actually finding a job and finally making a visa run to another country to pick up my visa. Tedious. I also need to get out of the country briefly by the 7th of May when my current tourist visa runs out.

In the meantime, I need to get back on track with my writing. I’ve had some Critters feedback, recently, on the last story I finished – I’ve been so lacking in energy that for a long time I didn’t even read or respond to the e-mails. Most of the comments have been constructive, and even positive; the problems that have been highlighted make sense, and there are some I need to think hard about how to fix, but I don’t think they’re irremediable.

And then there’s my novel. I feel that there’s still a lot of work to be done before I can even begin on the actual text. Before I got sick, I was coming up with ideas for characters, plot points and world-building; none of which has solidified into something I’m 100% satisfied with.

I started going to a free Korean class provided by the Korean Foundation Cultural Center near City Hall in February. It was hard work. The teacher didn’t make too many concessions to the students’ lack of ability, practice or confidence (there were about half a dozen of us). However, I was able to pick what was being taught and passed the test at the end of the month easily. Then I was sick for a month.

Last week I went back for the next level and found my self part of a much larger class (maybe twelve or more people); the teacher this time went much more slowly – too slowly, even – and, by the end of two hours, we’d covered a fair amount of material. I even learnt a Korean idiom – dwaeji ggumeul gguda – to dream a pig dream. If Koreans have a pig dream, they should go out and buy a lottery ticket because it’s considered good luck financially.

The other day, I permitted Habiba to give me a haircut. I’d already shaved ealier in the day, removing a couple of months’ worth of bushy, homeless-person beard growth. My hair was getting a bit floppy, a bit mulletty in the back – and, with spring here and my health returning, I thought it was time for a change. Habiba had been pestering me to either get it cut or to let her do it for a while. She literally rolled on the floor in joy when I gave her the news.

She set to with her scissors for about an hour, periodically stepping back to look at my shrinking barnet in worry. Apparently, she hadn’t been doing a very good job. When I suggested she try using a comb, she said, Oh, yeah – that’s what they do. It got better after that, but in order to even things up she needed to take off a lot more hair. The result is pretty much a crewcut – perhaps the shortest haircut I’ve ever had. I’m quite happy with it, actually – it makes me look younger and it’s totally practical.

A week before we moved into our new place in Cheongdam-dong, we received a cat from one of Habiba’s colleagues who was leaving the country. Billie is a brown tabby with white paws and breast. After lots of changes in her life – moving to our old place, moving to our new place, putting up with lots of furniture rearrangement – she’s settled into her new life and seems happy.

Unfortunately, Habiba is convinced that Billie doesn’t like her. The cat, on the other hand, is quite attached to me – she’ll curl up in my lap and sleep at my feet at night. She also likes to dash about randomly and leap up the bathroom doorpost. We finally have a use for the fish-and-feathers-on-a-string-on-a-stick cat toy we bought in Thailand over a year ago.

In short, then, normal service is resuming. About time, too.

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Free at last

My last day at work was Friday. I had thought it was going to be today, which is the day I agreed to finish working, but I was told that I didn’t need to work on the Monday – which I forgot and had to be retold on Friday. Min-seon, the office manager, who I used to give lessons to, took me out for lunch and said that she’d miss me – not sure I believe that.

The previous night was supposed to be a leaving meal for me and Andrew, the Korean guy who also taught at EducaKorea and managed the Learning Center. Having very little work to do I was ready to go at the official finishing time of 6 o’clock, but Andrew told me people would be leaving at 7. So I left anyway and went to roleplaying. Probably not a very nice gesture to my colleagues, but the prospect didn’t fill me with much joy. Besides which, the night’s roleplaying session was an important one and it overran by an hour.

It was also my last roleplaying session for a while, as I’m heading to China on Thursday for a couple of weeks.

I haven’t blogged about my life recently, so here’s an update of the last few weeks.

Korean drivers aren’t held in high esteem by foreigners. I think Koreans just take them for granted. In some ways, though, Korean drivers are very tolerant of pedestrians. If there’s a small road joining a main road and there are no traffic lights, I’ve found that drivers, while they will certainly try to squeeze between people crossing the small road, they will also wait patiently if there are no gaps in the flow of pedestrians.

A while ago, walking back to the office from my Starbucks writing lunch, while crossing one such road an Audi saloon came towards me too fast. Already halfway across the road, I was confident that it was stop, but it came close to hitting me. I was holding my travel cup at my side, so I accidentally on purpose let it clunk against the car’s bonnet. The man inside honked his horn and shouted something at me as I walked away. I took no notice. From the amount of time it too the car to drive past me up the road, I’m sure he got out to check his paintwork. I wonder what would have happened if he’d seen some damage.

I’ve been wanting to get into hiking again – especially since I bought a new pair of hiking boots over the summer – they cost 150,000 won – about £75. A few weeks ago I went to Namhansanseong by myself on Sunday – it was a location that had been suggested by my friend and avid hiker, Botond.

There was a scary moment on the subway train. I was sitting there reading and there was a loud cry – pretty much a scream – from somewhere on my right. A young chubby guy ran down the carriage shouting wordlessly, holding something in his hand, apparently nothing wrong with him. When he got to the next car he stopped. Completely random and very unnerving. I had felt the adrenaline fountain inside me in a split second, and it took a while for my system to settle down.

The hike was pretty pleasant. After a bit of trek through the town, past all the hiking gear shops, you get to the foot of the hills and trudge up the hillside past a few small temples and plots of short towers made of piled rocks – many of them improbably slender. Then you reach the South Gate of the fortress.

It started raining pretty heavily while I was having a break there, so I put on my newly purchased rain jacket and headed off into the downpour while Koreans huddled under the gate’s roof. Not too long afterwards the rain stopped and the clouds cleared away leaving bright sunshine and good visibility. This latter was important because from some parts of the walls you can see all of Seoul to the northwest.

As I got to the west side of the fortress, having gone anti-clockwise around the perimiter (apart from one shortcut), it got more crowded with non-hikers – people there just for a short jaunt out to some historic buildings and who lack all the expensive clothing and gear that marks the serious hiker (and there are lots of these in Korea). As I headed wearily back to the South Gate, going downhill much of the way, my boots began to feel uncomfortable, my toes pressing againt the fronts.

Two weeks later I went back with Habiba and her colleagues June and Aiden.

In between these two hikes (if memory serves) Habiba, her friend Jessica and I went to the Busan International Film Festival (known as PIFF because it was established back when people used the older McCune-Reischauer system of transliterating Hangul into Roman letters). We saw three films on the Saturday but none on the Sunday.

The three we saw were all interesting in various ways – Honey was an understated Turkish film about a boy whose father has an accident while out collecting honey from his hives up in trees in the forest; Portraits in a Sea of Lies – the best of the three – was a moving Colombian film about a withdrawn young woman who goes on a roadtrip with her cocky cousin to find the deeds to a plot of land; and Viridiana was a strange 1950s drama by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel, about a young woman whose uncle tries to seduce and then commits suicide, apparently forcing her to live on in his mansion and take in a load of troubled homeless people.

The blurb about this last film promised cannibalism, so we were all disappointed when it didn’t materialise – blame Korean translators. Actually, no – blame Korean managers: some PIFF bigwig probably just went to someone in their office and said, ‘Here, you speak English: translate all this by next week.’

Some time ago I went had some problems with my shoulder. I first went to what I think was a Korean acupuncture clinic and when this didn’t do much I went to an orthopaedic hospital that seemed to do the job. I went back there more recently with pain in my left hip. It’s a feeling I get from time to time, especially after playing guitar. This time, however, it was completely random and about the sharpest it’s ever been.

I had more physiotherapy of the heat, ultrasound and electric kind, plus some medication, and that helped a lot. I also had a few X-rays (you can’t go to the doctor in Korea without getting a handful of X-rays done), which showed that there’s a slight problem with my L4 vertebra, near the base of my spine. There’s a little extra space where the disc is, implying, I think, some inflammation. The doctor said it wasn’t anything serious, just a sign of getting older, and he recommended that I strengthen my back muscles and don’t sit at a desk too much. I should get on that – at least the first part: you can’t be a writer without applying the seat of the trousers to the seat of a chair.

I’ve been working on my writing and trying to set things up to help my writing goals. I started a new blog, for instance – this one to be a ‘public’ one, while I think Infinite Probability should be a private record of my personal life. To this end, I think I’m going to transfer some things from here to there – namely my book reviews and Lexicon. I also rejoined Critters – and have found that it’s recently been renovated and looks like a fairly contemporary web site (the old one was very basic). I’ve already had some feedback on one of my stories (‘The Green Marble’) that all makes good sense and that I want to incorporate into the next version of the piece. I just need to get down to the hard work of rewriting. I’m also intending to take part in National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo) in November and see if I can’t write 50,000 in 30 days.

I’ve also been putting a lot of work into a roleplaying game system. It’s very hard work, though. Every decision you make for how things should work have repercussions pretty much throughout the system. Even my goals in creating the game are difficult to balance – part of me wants simplicity, part of me wants realism. Still a fair way to go with this project, but I think a lot of the fundamentals are in place now.

Now that I’m not working, I should have more time to work on the things that are important to me. Sightseeing in China might get in the way for a bit. Natural laziness might get in the way full stop.

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December the 24th and 25th

I’ve been on a couple of work-related nights out in the past week or so, both rather underwhelming.

The first was for Todd’s leaving do. This began with a meal at the samgyeopsal (a kind of barbecue pork-type thing) place on the ground floor of our hagwon building. Then we went to what I assume was Todd’s favourite place to hang out, a bar called No Block. I didn’t have a single drink while I was there, and mostly just stood or sat around feeling awkward. I had a game of darts (computerised, with plastic-tipped darts and a plastic board) with Bo, and then again with Bo and Travis; I was crap. I chatted with Todd a little about his plans (although I’d already asked him about much the same stuff in the previous couple of weeks). He asked for my e-mail address, which thought was kind of strange as we’d never really become that friendly. Nevertheless, I keyed it into his iThingy (with some difficulty – the keys on the touchscreen are quite fiddly).

That was also the last time I saw Bo, who, as Todd was flying back to the US, was flying back to Hungary for the holidays.

On Tuesday, one of the Korean teachers told me that there were plans afoot to go out on Wednesday night and to have a ‘Secret Santa’ gift exhange thing. Therefore, on Wednesday afternoon I went to the bookshop that’s just along the basement from my taekwondo dojang. It has a decent selection of English-language books (about a bookcase full) for its size and location. I chose a book I’d read whilst at university and had enjoyed and been moved by – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon.

That evening I dropped by the dojang to see what was going on. I knew there was no class, but was expecting a party of some sort. Once again my master’s lack of English skills was our undoing. When I spoke to her the previous and told her I finished at 8:30 she invited to come along; evidently, she’d thought I meant 7:30. There were four or five young kids still there waiting for pick-ups or for their parents to speak to the staff.

I offered everyone some chocolate – as I’d been doing for all my classes during the day (I’m not a complete Scrooge, after all). Kim Sabeomnim (my male teacher) told me Lee Sabeomnim (my female teacher) was busy in the toilets – washing dishes, it turned out. He gave me a present that she’d bought for me – a diary. I made the joke to both of them in turn that pretty much the only thing I had to write in there was ‘taekwondo, taekwondo, taekwondo …’. Anyway, I said it was very nice (whilst thinking it was completely useless – although, maybe if I get a few private classes on the go, it might come in handy).

Then Lee Sabeomnim invited me into the office to have some pizza. I accepted – even though it was sweet potato pizza. Blech. I almost invited them to come and see The Day the Earth Stood Still with me the following day. But I didn’t.

I went back home to drop off my bag (which contained, apart from bread, chocolate, Jejudo oranges and my taekwondo dobok (just in case), my laptop and speakers. My last class had been Speaking Novel, which means Othello, and we’d watched a little more of Laurence Fishburn and Kenneth Brannagh. I’d watched the film in full a couple of nights earlier, so I now knew that there was, indeed, a little sex and nudity – and I would have to carefully prepare what to show) and play a bit of Hammerfall, an addictive RPG on Facebook.

Then it was back to work, and then to Itaewon. There were four of the Korean teachers, Jon (husband of our senior teacher, Sunny), Donny (Jon’s friend), Travis (the new guy), and, after a while, the boyfriend of one of the Korean girls. We went to a Chinese restaurant at the Hamilton Hotel. As usual, we automatically ghettoised ourselves and ordered separate food. At this point Travis, who wasn’t hungry, said he’d leave for a while to go and phone his wife in Canada.

We three Westerners talked about film and TV mostly (on Donny’s recommendation, I’ve made a mental note (and now a written one) to download Frost/Nixon). Then, with the meal out of the way, it was decided (by Sunny, naturally) to commence the Secret Santa process. Miraculously, awkwardly, I won the group rock-scissors-paper game and the right to choose, quasi-randomly, a present.

Someone had drawn a kind of brick wall-pattern grid on a piece of paper with numbers at the top and names at the bottom, one of each for each person taking part. I said number one. One of the Koreans to a zig-zagging line from the number one, following the lines of the grid, to a name at the bottom. I received Sunny’s gift which was wrapped in newspaper, in a box about the size and thickness of a small tabletop. Just then, we had to leave because the restaurant was closing, so I didn’t have chance to open it straight away.

Travis hadn’t rejoined us, so the Koreans went to a bar, while the rest of us looked for him. He wasn’t at the telephones in the hotel lobby, and we weren’t at all sure where he would be. After about twenty minutes of looking for him (which mostly consisted of standing around wondering where he was) we decided to leave a message at the hotel reception (my idea) and go to the bar. (Travis doesn’t have a phone at this point, so we couldn’t just call him.)

The bar was BricX, which the others pronounced ‘Bricks’ (so that’s what I wrote on the message to Travis). Once seated (which didn’t happen quickly), we continued with the Secret Santa gift giving. I opened my present: it was a large box of pens and pencils. I said I already had some.

My contribution was taken by Ally, or Eun-yeong, a woman with a very distinctive appearance. For a start she’s built like a man – I don’t mean that to be derogatory, she’s quite sexy, in fact, but she is – with a bit of a Lou Ferringo jaw, even. She’s also dyed her hair to a kind of ginger/auburn colour. She looks like a Valkyrie. She professed to be quite pleased with the book. Other gifts included wine (x2), an aromatherapy candle, and a bumbag. This latter was probably the worst of the lot – I can at least imagine myself using some of the pens and pencils, and candles are quite pretty.

With awful music blasting out of the speakers conversation wasn’t the easiest. Some entertainment was provided by Jon and Sunny arguing about what time they should leave. Jon wanted to go at 2:30 so he could be up early in the morning to call his parents. Sunny, meanwhile, maybe with a little help from the alcohol, kept protesting in the manner of a cute but obnoxious, spoilt little girl – putting her forefinger to her cheek and rocking her head side to side, that kind of thing.

We left BricX to go to Helios, but that was too expensive, so we ended up in The Loft. Our table was covered with old graffiti carved into the surface and grey with dirt; however, there was some newer graffiti etched on top of this – witty epigrams such as, ‘SHIT CUNT’, ‘FUCK BITCHES’, and ‘KILL ALL NIGGERS’. Nice.

I’d had a headache all evening and it was getting pretty bad, so I spent about an hour staring out of the window, while Ally got into an informal dance-off with a short black woman. I left at about half two to find a toilet that wasn’t jam-packed. I ended up in McDonald’s and let guilt (over using the facilities without buying anything; stupid, I know) talk me into buying a cheeseburger. I didn’t finish it. When I returned, Jon and Sunny and Donny were just leaving. Donny was planning to kill time until the subway reopened, and I didn’t want to invite myself into Jon and Sunny’s ride home. I gave my number to Yun-hye (pronounced ‘Yoonheh’) Teacher for her to call me when the rest of them left.

I went to a PC room and felt awful. My head was killing me, my stomach was in revolt and I could barely keep my eyes open. I played a little Hammerfall, went to the bathroom to be sick (it was all thick and dry, and bits kept getting stuck behind my epiglottis – blech), and napped in my seat.

When the call came to meet the girls, one of them was virtually unconscious and was being held up by Yun-hye’s boyfriend. Ally had snagged herself a tall black guy. The taxi driver wouldn’t let us all in the taxi together, so we left Ally behind.

I went straight to bed, and slept reasonably well for the condition I was in. I still had my headache when I got up at one thirty, but some cornflakes and a couple of mugs of tea put that right. After showering, I put some music on and did some more photo-editing – and have now finished off the shots I took one snowy morning in February in Whaley Bridge.

When I left home, I knocked on Travis’s door, but there was no answer. I texted this information to Yun-hye – who had asked me to do so. Shortly afterwards Jon called me to ask me to leave a message on his door. I said OK, but I’m sure there’s no big problem and we’ll see Travis at work tomorrow.

Then I went to Lotte Cinema in Nowon to buy a ticket for the 11:45 screening of The Day the Earth Stood Still and headed into central Seoul. It’s pretty crazy here – far more crowded than the average Saturday or Sunday. My favourite Starbucks was completely packed, so I went to the Quiznos across the road – where they apparently couldn’t serve me any coffee to go with my sub. I lost my temper a bit in Myeongdong and started pushing bursquely past people. But I managed to grab a seat in the Starbucks next to Uniqlo – where I’ve written this post.

And now I’m going to go back to Nowon.

And now I’ve seen The Day the Earth Stood Still, and – theme of the hour – am underwhelmed. The best part of the movie is near the beginning when Jennifer Connelly’s character, Helen Benson, has been taken by Federal agents to a secret briefing on an object heading for the Earth. On entry, all the gathered specialists are deprived of the mobile phones, but Helen puts hers down her top. After the briefing – which suggests that the object is going to collide with the Earth with catastrophic effects – she calls her stepson from the restroom. She tearfully tells him to go into the basement, and tells him she loves him. He answers words to the effect of, ‘OK, bye.’ She hangs up. There’s a banging on the cubicle door. When she opens it she sees a female soldier, who demands to know if she has a cellphone. Helen nods apprehensively. With a catch in her voice, the soldier says, ‘Can I borrow it?’

It was downhill from there, really. All through the film one expected Gort, the big (huge, in this case) robot to totally kick arse in the climax – which, I suppose he did, but only by turning into a cloud of nanobots. I want to watch the original again. The only part of which I recognised in the new version was when Klaatu goes to the home of a scientist and re-does his calculations on his blackboard. The scientist here was played by John Cleese, which was nice, but he was only on-screen for about a minute.

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