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A rendering from memory of my fan-less, hot-box, second-floor shoe-box room. Masan City., Korea. No ventilation, a tv on the blink. Bought another, second hand for $30, also on the blink within a week. U-571 on the VHS was an excellent movie and Bon Jovi is a great actor, but with audio only and picture in dark blue and orange, I guess like being on a sub, it’s all about listening and not seeing. Ha-Ji Won’s ‘Oppa’ song played incessantly on every radio and k-pop tv channel on a daily basis. Her oppa music vid is up on YT. Hot as fire. A washing machine that looked good but didn’t work, so I found a dry-cleaner that spoke excellent English compliments of service in the US Navy. A walk-up flat roof with 360 degree views around the city that I could both sleep on on hot summer nights, and enjoy Soju. The dad of the ground floor house next door would stand there eye-balling me every day when I was up there while he was out in his courtyard doing his Kung-fu shadow-boxing shit. In summer on the roof I’d hear him smashing his missus nearly every night. No wonder the old girl was bow-legged. On that little analogue Tele I woke up to watch Korean news, which i didnt understand but the newsreader was eye-candy, to find a Special Emergency Broadcast of people jumping out the World Trade Centre to their deaths before it disintegrated. A surreal WTF moment. One work place I had to visit on the 11th in Jin-Hae was next to an American Naval Base. The gates no longer had a couple of sentry's at the post but a swarm of black-clad heavy-hitters with machine guns til they worked out what was going on.The old world ended on September 10, 2001. I spent that last day after work watching Bulworth while eating a bag of grapes on the floor because the only chair I had in my apartment was rickety. This New World Nightmare began that next day. A gazillion surveillance eyes seemed to go up overnight. Had a pretty good Christmas party in the old shoe-box, that in December had turned into the ice-box, a NZ buddy and I having collected an assortment of Canadian ESL teachers, some girls, a newly arrived Texan and a couple of US sailors from a Destroyer docked in the neighbouring port town of Jin-Hae to slosh the night away with Remy Martin, Plonk and friends. Waking up on New Year’s Day feeling sick as a dog hoping Hawkeye and his MASH unit would come and pick me up, staring out that little window in the icy cold, wondering why I dropped so much cash last night on pretty pole-dancing Russians. And I had a really old lady next door about 200 years old who spent a lot of time walking around on her adjacent roof with no shirt on sun-drying chillies on a towel. She never seemed to mind I was looking while I was roofside reading books. FFS. Luckily it’s a beautiful country with beautiful people, excellent seaside towns, mountain climbing and hiking pretty much wherever you go. That, Dr Pepper, kimbab, and $1.50 Soju for sale OTC at every corner store.
Korea. A nice place.