Mixed Media on wood, ready to hang.

Signed on the front.

…
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. A washing machine that 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 exercises and stretches. . I always thought he was a North Korean spy with a thing against whitey. Had a pretty good Christmas party in the old shoe-box, that in December had turned into the ice-box, an 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 my old mate Remy Martin. Waking up on New Year’s Day feeling sick as a dog, staring out that little window in the icy cold, wondering where all my money went last night on the Russian dancers. And I had a really old lady next door 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 up on my roof 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.