digital zen: the sound of one camera breaking

that was a really dumb title. haha. ha. haaaay.

got back from the beach last saturday night with a lovely tan and no photos except those taken with my little lime green mobile phone. but it just isn't the same without the 6 megapixel clarity of my beautiful dearly departed casio exilim. sigh. so i locked myself in room 304 and started reading a really really bad book (gregory maguire's confessions of an ugly stepsister). it was one of those half-hearted purchases made in an attempt to acquire some light reading for when i want my brain to just zonk out. but dammit, the prose is just so hyper-duper panget. but! being the borderline ock-ock that i am, i know i will end up suppressing my gag reflex and just finish the damn thing. happily, it's just some used book i picked up at itaewon & can easily give away to someone i don't like very much. hmmm... kanino kaya?

much of sunday, after service at onnuri megachurch with chef tristan, was spent alone at hyehwa to buy international calling cards and to get ogled by hundreds of ilocano merchant marines and other random pinoy migrant workers. it was sunday and i figured it was my patriotic duty to give them someone gorgeous to look at for a change. (don't worry, am cringing as i type.) idiot that i am, i spent an hour looking for a hana eunheng (hana bank) atm. ended up walking several blocks to a hana bank building pointed out by a nice family mart cashier guy. only to find out from lawyer friend joan that (duh) you can use other banks' atms! they just charge you sixty pesos for it. attorney stiletto & i ended up talking for hours at a coffee bean and tea leaf sipping scarily expensive ice blended green tea thingies. i tried to ask the barista girl to make it No Sugar Added but apparently, they've never heard of such an animal in this country*. so i had no choice but to suck the sugar in.

apropos of nothing, so i'm back at good old crimson house where i had the biggest scare of my life a little over an hour ago. walked out into the night without wearing glasses or contacts and got ogled/heckled by a couple of drunk ajushees (old men, tanders, thundercats, ta-matands**, lolos) who wouldn't stop giggling hello's at me until i turned and smiled at them. they giggled some more. cute old buggers. i turned a corner and walked to the family mart*** for some much-needed salty while-working snackie-munchies. walked back to crimson with my loot (seasoned dried pollack, soft roasted squid & non-garbage-tasting soymilk) and noticed that the ajussis had gone home. or maybe i'd just imagined them?

anyway, as i approached crimson, i saw three chinese/japanese guys with wildly dyed hair in the smoking area. i'd never seen them before (and with my myopia, i still couldn't see them) and they were watching me weirdly (i think) as i did the whole security card-waving ritual that really is a ritual more than anything else. acting normal but quickly descending into panic, i scuttled into the building, waited jumpily for the elevator, got in and turned... to (sort of) see that the three vaguely threatening-looking guys had come into the lobby after me and were walking towards the slowly closing elevator doors. i panicked, hit the close button, hyperventilated within the elevator's small confines, scooted onto my floor, flat-out ran into my room, and slammed the bolt in place.

i thought i was going to get mugged and the crazy-haired freaks were in the building (!!!). so i fired off a message to siege on ym in an attempt to calm what was starting to sound like my heart about to explode from sheer terror. it took a full five minutes to realize that (uhm) maybe they're just new to the dorm and (uhm) i acted like a total jackass. i'd forgotten that this is bloody korea. people don't get mugged here. you can get spat at (accidentally) on the street or shoved (not/never an accident) in the subway by elderly women in pink Hello Kitty tracksuits and purple sunvisors. but the chances of you getting accosted in the subway between sindang and cheonggu by an indian PhD student whose pickup line is "are you from bolivia?" is waaaaay higher than actual physical assault. but psychic assault... that's a different blog entry altogether. tscha!


* the same way that the first time i went to a starbucks in seoul, when i asked for a pot of "pressed coffee, cafe verona please", the barista guy looked at me as if i had ordered some freshly squeezed iguana juice, crushed skull on the side please.

** horrible dated slang courtesy of siege

*** a.k.a. our favorite convenience store where they sell canned silkworm pupas, canned shellfish that look like blanched foreskins, meat popsicles and benetton brand condoms, salt that looks and tastes like laundry soap, laundry soap that smells like chalkdust, among other delectables. also features a guy behind the counter (the owner?) with a very monk-ish mien. really, he does! i've seen waaaay too many monks in waaaaay too many buddhist temples. i know the look. and he looks very meditative and zen while lugging huge boxes of frozen food into his little flourescent kingdom. will write more later about other characters that populate the family mart kingdom. really, i will! am just in the middle of a crazy translation project right now.