Drift Reality > South Korea > January 2001

Today is the 24th of January, the solar New Year. It is a Wednesday and Gordon, Justin, Yumi(Gordon's girlfriend), and I will head to the coastal city of Inchon which is only about one hour South of Seoul. It is so close that you can actually take the subway there.

Although I've spent quite a few hours at the PC bang, this vacation has not been an absolute waste of time. Yesterday I purchased a compilation of short stories by Chekhov and I've managed to read one of them. That isn't much of an accomplishment actually.

Anyway, I went to Insa-dong, in central-northern Seoul on Monday with Dong-Mi. It was very nice and to my amusement, there was a lady with a monkey seated outside of the subway station. The monkey was wearing sweat pants and a cheap looking shirt. He was seated in a chair with his hands on his knees. The lady was wearing some type of large black boots. Later on, Dong-Mi commented that she got a bad feeling from the lady and I must concur. The lady hit the monkey on several occasions but otherwise remained seated with the exact same look on her face the whole time like she was a robot or something like that. I mentioned to Dong-Mi that another weird thing about the lady, besides the uncomfortable aura that she exuded, was the fact that her profession included working a monkey co-worker. Anyway, the lady banged on a makeshift percussion instrument(an old cymbal set and some damaged steel drums). But the monkey refused to imitate her action, instead making gestures with its hands, waving them up and down in front of the collection box. The action was amusing at first, but the damn critter kept making them after six or seven people had deposited money in the box.

Although we left without hearing the monkey play the instrument, we did get to watch the lady hand it a cigarette and it proceed to stick the cigarette in its mouth and pretend to smoke. Only in Korea.

There was a main walkthrough which was probably about twenty feet wide. It was also one of the few walkways in which cars were prohibited, to my delight. On either side there were an assortment of art shops, furniture store, and authentic Korean apparel stores.

Another teacher at ECC named Mike is dating a girl named Jin Young. The two of them have a rather strange relationship. Mike once told me that even after she ate some spicy Korean dish, he remembers kissing her and detecting no odor, which is almost impossible considering the content in most Korean dishes.

He told me that, "She was like an angle." He is always holding her bag for her and offering to do little things for her like buying tapoki for her at the corner stand if she is ever hungry.

He is also constantly getting angry with her and blaming her for all sorts of things. To his defense, I'm not sure she is as much of an angel as he claims she is, but I think he knows this also.

She is very flirtatious and she often downplays the importance of their relationship, making claims like, "She doesn't care about him and she doesn't mind if he leaves her."

It's just strange.