this midsummer night's not so bad

it's the last friday of the month, and it's all access club night at the hondae district. my buddies (joan, pax, tristan, that geisha boy i like to call damon, and that tyler guy whose real name i forget) and i had been planning this since last month. alas, i was struck down by the flu. so while they're partying and boozing it up, i'm here in my room with a clogged nose and not much else.

but i did have a small measure of fun today, despite this cold and cough and headache. i skipped class again and slept until way past noon. was too weak to do much else. around 2:00 pm, i loaded my laundry into the washer and went out for some real food at hemaru. the new crimson manager noticed my miserable sniffling so she wrote out in korean the name of some cough+cold yak (medicine) for me. i didn't know where the yakkuk (drugstore) was but i found it eventually. nice surprise: the ajussi at the yakkuk gave me the right dosage in english! hooray for the kindness of strangers!

at 5:30 pm, tenzin & i made our way through the rain to the ifls building, where our teachers herded us into classrooms and made us eat a lot of sesame-flavored chapchae noodles, round ttok ricecakes with some sweet liquid inside, something that looks exactly like puto with black sesame and dried jujube on top, foil-wrapped kimbap, battered zucchini, some fried seafood roll of sorts, and chicken. there was also a big pan of watermelon wedges, which i liked. like everything here, they're insanely expensive at 500+ pesos per watermelon. a free dinner is always good.

then we stepped back into the rain and walked to inchon memorial hall to watch a mildly amusing talent show of sorts, with the different levels and classes putting on these performances. our favorite teacher, the kooky kang young ah, joined other eminent phd's onstage who danced in formation wearing huge afro wigs and male drag (suits?). there were also some very good hiphop dancing, as well as what we used to call 'breakdancing' back in grade school.

the highlight for me was this malaysian guy (a famous dancer who also teaches at korea university) who azri said went through some traditional dance. our first sight of him, he was airborne. and he kept leaping and moving like...like blazing white fire. the way he moved and danced, at that speed, leaping and turning with that power and grace, he was several steps beyond merely human. and boneless too. heh heh. super impressive.

but most of the time, especially with the occasional off-key synth pop and some desultory rapping that went on forever, the show was so chemi opsoyo (hellishly boring) that our scarily tall american friend john dewey kept falling asleep. or at least pretended to. mercifully, after a while, the show finally ended.

maybe bad entertainment induces hunger. we ended up at a chicken and beer place across the street from crimson house where the owner kept telling us exactly how to eat our food (e.g., eat the chicken with chopsticks, the fiery tofu-kimchi-tuna combo with chopsticks, the sausages with knives and forks). i like how with john and tenzin, we can have a really good time even with the crappy weather and lukewarm beer, telling vomit stories and whatnot.

tsk. john leaves for tokyo in less than 2 weeks. we gotta throw that boy a party. we'll party like we're in a city of 11 million, party like it's 2006. have no idea what that means, but it'll be great. yes, it will.

NOTA BENE: any mention of beer and ingestion of meat applies only to my companions. which is to say i've been behaving myself, as promised. owing to the fact that i'm still suffering from vestigial flu symptoms, i didn't drink any beer (not even the ones our teachers gave us) tonight. will commence partying maybe next week when i'm all better. hee.