Sunday, February 08, 2009

Snapshots Without Cameras - Seoul’s Unphotographable Faces

okay you voracious blogsuckers, you’ve seen all the photos I’m going to post - but I have a few images left to share.  Images to share, you wonder, without photos?  Is he MAD?  Well yes but not in any way relevant to this conversation.  I did keep a notebook with me, and I jotted down my experiences as I experienced them in journal format.  That is not for you, my friends and other internet strangers - but once I’d written all that out, I still had a nice collection of little recollections that hadn’t made it into the main entries.  They’re the written equivalent of the last set of photos I posted - the stuff that made Korea so wonderfully Korean.  I don’t want to forget any of them, and now you won’t either:

* Hundreds - THOUSANDS - of beautiful young women walking around in miniskirts or short-short, wearing black tights on their long legs against the siberian winds
* The dude on Insadong who served Zach ice cream with an awesome slight-of-hand street-theater show
* The way that we had to put the room key-card into a special slot on the wall of the hotel room to make the lights work
* The condom shoppe near the University that proudly advertised (in english) “small pecker condoms”
* The chirping sound on the subways that preceded the announcements of the upcoming stops
* The group of serious old men in red baseball caps who came together to tour the big palace when we were there, and the group of laughing American missionary-types who were there too with nametags in cyrillic lettering
* The little fish-shaped fried cakes being sold on so many streetcorners
* Zach knowing that the subway was called the “M” (for Metro) even when we didn’t
* Beautiful traditional kites on display at the mid-river design center
* The streets going from quiet at dusk to completely filled with people walking around and partying all night
* The computer at the business center in the hotel that suddenly switched to hangeul lettering when I hit the wrong function key by mistake
* The classic christmas music being played everywhere - Ella, Bing, and all those folks
* The Abraham Lincoln-stencil graffiti that read “Lincoln Failed 11 Times”
* Lots of waffle places but none of them open for breakfast
* The Lotte-Ria hamburger place where they gave us free ice cream with my Paprika Burger, and where the ceiling was covered with bars that lit up in different changing colors
* The amazing profusion of potato-based snax
* The “Hybrid Fashion Style Outlet” Mall
* Bars named “Little Porky Beer,” “Bikini Virgin Bar,” “Ho Bar Deluxe,” “Les Bos,” “Kinky Robot,” and “Cafe Brown Sound” - among many others
* The “Street of Try to Walk” which would have been a nightmare to drive
* The best thing on TV on the airplane being the GPS flight-tracking screen
* The recycling stations at most every fast food place that broke everything down into about seven or eight different receptacles
* A city so complicated that business cards have maps on them, and delivery scooters with big map books between the handlebars
* Tile sidewalks that are more easily removed and replaced for electrical or plumbing work
* The exercise paths climbing the big mountain in the center of town, with pavilions near the top with weightlifting, chin-up bars, and little twisty-platforms for rotational workouts
* “Jack Daniels” flavored Sun Chips
* The restaurant with the “Smart Lady Combo” lunch - probably because the “dumb bitch” lunch didn’t sell so well

So that was Seoul; I’m all Seouled out.  Up next: more traditional Chucklehut nonsense.  I know you missed it, and I’ve got a whole chuckle-load stored up for you to enjoy, or, you know, whatever.  Kamsei Hamnida!