I like going just to look at all the strange things in the open markets. Going to a regular grocery store or department store is old and busted. I could have done that back home. Here in the open markets, who knows what you’ll find. Most veggies I can’t identify, some I don’t want to. SaTang likes going because there are several food vendors that sell ready-to-eat things like stuffed fried peppers, fish ham sticks and myriad other things. There’s always scraps on the ground for her to scarf up. Women’s clothes, particularly the t-shirts cast out by western clothes vendors, can be found as can children’s clothes. Household goods, fresh fish, chicken and pork, fruit, live animals of the pet variety – almost anything is here.

Yesterday at the market, I bought SaTang a gut pile – a mess (literally) of steamed liver, intestines, esophagus and whatever else Koreans keep and eat from pigs and cattle. She didn’t waste time in picking through it.

But aside from all the things in the market, what amazes me most is that they’re always crowded with people. In the Seoul market of NamDaeMun, it was just a Thursday, not a holiday. A work day. But it was wall-to-wall. Or rather stall-to-stall.  The Busan market of NamPoDong we visited on a Sunday and it was just a crowded with people.

Below is a short clip of the Korean markets that seem to go on for blocks and blocks. They fascinate me.

On Sunday we went down to Busan to do a little shopping. We could have driven all the way, but instead decided to save some gas and take the subway from the northern end of the line down to the coast. We didn’t save any time or money, but we got some entertainment along the way.

Along with all the billboard ads in the stations and on the trains themselves, there were several roving sales people hawking their wares. They’d stop in a car, bark their sales pitches for a few minutes and then move to the next car. At least I can turn away from the billboards if I’m not interested but some of these guys were obnoxiously loud. I guess you’d have to be to be heard over the din of everyone’s conversations and the noise of the train. Several of them were annoying, making it difficult to even have a conversation with MyeongHee right beside me. At least one, though, put a smile on my face. He was selling veggie slicers. Not for the kitchen, but to place cucumber slices on your face. Nothing like demonstrations to make one understand.  Sliced very thinly, he could slap them right on his face. And he did.

We giggled, but didn’t buy. Neither did anyone else in our car.

One the way back home, a nearly toothless old man walked up and down the car screeching about something. MyeongHee couldn’t even understand him. He looked right at several people, including me, and rambled on and on. Some smiled at this obviously senile old dude (not to his face, of course) but no one told him to sit, no one told him to shut up. Annoying but harmless. Old people are held in respect in Asia, even crazy ones. I can’t help but think that in the west he might not have fared so well; someone would have forced him to move on, shut up or both.

Nothing like public transportation to bring out the fun ones.

We got our second air-conditioner (they call them air con here) installed late last week. We had one in the bedroom, which made for good sleeping, but the livingroom and kitchen gets pretty intolerable in the summer heat, especially if there’s any cooking going on. MyeongHee bought a small split unit a few weeks ago when it started to get hot and they just recently were able to schedule delivery and installation.

A split unit is one with the fan, controls and vents on the inside while the compressor and heat exchangers are somewhere else, usually on the balcony. Below is the wall unit, mounted just above the door to the bedroom.

The wall unit has to have a couple of hoses and a cable go to the outside compressor unit. Another hose from it is the condensation line which drips any water that forms. They ran the cold/return air hoses and control cable across the kitchen wall and over the cabinets to the back balcony.Clunky, but not too terrible. Yet.

I figured they would drill a hole and run the lines through the wall to the outside patio. Nope. That’s too hard. Instead, they went in behind the cabinet and ripped up the stove vent and stuffed it into that. Now the hoses come out nice and neat on the outside, but I need to wrap and reinsulate around the stove vent/aircon hoses. Come winter, that’s going to be a helluva draft. They boogered that up real well.

The condensation line is another story. Rather than properly plumb that line (like I really expected more at this point?) they slapped on some flex hose, dangled it behind the fridge and drilled a small hole in the door.Then they inserted a small bit of copper tubing through the door. Not sure what will happen to the water that pools around the cooper tubing, but I’m sure that electrical tape is waterproof, too. Uh huh.

Then to make it “official” they put more electrical tape around the flex hose and copper tubing. Another lame wrap job on the outside to snake more flex hose towards the drain and they’re done.

This one on the outside of the door is a real bang-up job. I’m sure that tape will last a lifetime. I guess I forgot to ask them what the warranty was on the install job.

Not surprisingly, this isn’t very different from the way they build their hoses here. An American inspector would have a field day with Korean contractors.

Screw it. It’s cool in the house now.

One never knows what one might find at the open market.

The market happens about every 5th day and is just around the corner from my apartment. It’s amazing what’s there sometimes. SaTang wasn’t quite sure what to think of these chicks. They didn’t seem to care one way or the other. That’s the same reaction I usually got.

They don’t teach it. Period. Mirrors are all you need in your car, so you never need to check to see if there’s a car next to you before you change lanes.

That might explain why Korean drivers are so accident prone and I spend a good deal of driving time A) acting defensively and B) shouting at them when they encroach into my lane. It happens a lot. They drive as if they are shopping al Wal-Mart and go from one side of the aisle to another for whatever they’re interested in. A two-ton car isn’t nearly the same as a shopping cart. Actually, they’re worse at the store and you actually have to ram their cart to get them out of the way.

The past two days I’ve been driving with MyeongHee. We go to her shop in the morning and I drive back by myself. Next week, she wants to drive herself and just keep the car all day. Works for me, except I’m worried. She doesn’t look in her blind spot when she changes lanes. I gently tried to explain that mirrors don’t show all around your car, but she explained that her driving school doesn’t teach to look over your shoulder so it must be OK. When I explained further the field of view the mirrors provided and even drew a few diagrams, that wasn’t enough. I then had her drive up next to some parked cars and tell me when she could see them in her mirror. Ok, she finally acknowledged that mirrors don’t show it all, but explained she’s just a beginner and she’d learn to do that head-turn later, its too difficult now.

Maybe I’m being overprotective and overbearing, but I try to always look in my blind spot and am sometimes surprised that there really was someone there. I harangued her until she promised she would do the blind-spot check. Am I being a back-seat driver, or doing her (and I) a favor by trying to prevent an accident?

We’ve what? Got no Engrish? I’ve been all around this new construction site and I can’t figure out what it is “We’ve.”   Sometimes, the English employed by the Koreans is humorous, either in its misspellings or poor grammar. This one has neither of those maladies per se, but its puzzling. The Korean lettering next to the English is merely the construction company name, DooSan. They may as well have just written WTF. Any ideas what “We’ve?” Please clue me in.

After 23 years as an adult of driving age (19 is legal. You do the math), MyeongHee can now finally drive a car. Yesterday, she passed her final test and has obtained her license. Almost four weeks of getting up early and driving across town to the driving school is over. No small cost, either, as this little endeavor cost close to $1000 to achieve.

Rarely am I surprised anymore about how different things are done in Korea relative to America. Some are strange, some are, in my opinion, quite better here. Others, well, just different. A pattern has begun to emerge for me, though. It seems that when style matters, nothing is left to chance and no holds barred. When they go hiking here, they dress up in high-tech, fashionable sports wear as if heading out for a multi-day hike in the wilderness when really they’re walking up a well-worn wide path, usually a road or stairs. When they go road or mountain biking, all of their biking gear must match, from the shoes to the helmet.

Wedding photos follow the same rules. It’s all about how you look. The pictures are not of the wedding itself, but a modeling session on par with the best fashion mags of the day. Sometimes, they are done before the wedding day. In our case, we did ours nearly two months after. That was best we could schedule. It wasn’t until later I learned why.

Yesterday we were both subject and subjected to the wedding photo ordeal. We started at 10:30 a.m. and we were whisked into the dressing room to prepare. MyeongHee had two, sometimes three girls prepping her makeup and hair and clothes. I had a girl or two on me as well, although my makeup was significantly less.

I have to admit, it was a little fun to be pampered and taken care of. Being a guy, its rare to get the treatment most women get regularly when they go for the whole beauty treatment spa. MyeongHee doesn’t get that treatment herself much either. Being a hairsalon owner, she’s usually doing the hairdo rather than getting. It was fun and cute  – at first.

A little fun, however, turned into an interminable wait as more and more layers of makeup, touch-up and fine details were fixed on MyeongHee. The split mirrors made a nice frame for her face. I amused myself taking pictures of the transformation process. She was not amused. She’ll likely kick my ass when she sees I’ve posted this. I’ll calm her down when I tell her the other, worse pictures remained on my hard drive, to be kept in reserve for a rainy day when we need a laugh.

Part way through, she developed the Texas big hair style. Not knowing what the end result would be, I kept snapping away.

After my own, minimal coiffing and makeup, (Yes, I’m wearing lip-gloss) I emerged with a suave 007 look.

After what seemed like days later, MyeongHee emerged a queen. She was radiant. I think she’s a beautiful lady anyway – of course I do – I married her, for heaven’s sake. But I was completely stunned with the job those girls did with her makeup, hair and dresses. Yes, dresses. Plural. Multiple wedding gowns, multiple evening gowns, and multiple hair-dos.

Above is just my cheap (relatively speaking) Olympus camera photo. Its the best that I took, but I stopped trying to take photos of her or I. I focussed on the process and not the end result. The studio was complete with professional lighting, props and backdrops. None of that church background or occasional stray guest popping into the photos. Every one of the hundreds of shots was carefully lighted and choreographed.

MyeongHee’s friends came to the studio to help share the day. UnZung, dressed in a pink hanbok gown. They helped dispel the boredom of waiting out the set changes, new hair styles and dresses. But at various times throughout the day, they succumbed to the waiting and boredom. I likely would have napped as well, but in the set in the above picture I found some English-language books and contented myself with some light reading.

I can never remember this one’s name. It’s common in Korea for a woman MyeongHee’s age to just call a woman older than herself “Oni” which means “older sister.” I only know her as Oni. She crashed on the sofas a couple of times.

UnZung Oni had her own little nap in a chair

Half-way through the day, we stopped and had food delivered to the studio for lunch. It was a much needed break from the bright, hot lights and constant smiling. MyeongHee relaxes with a sample of poses in a dressing gown while the cameraman and his helpers setup for the next shots.

All told, it was a grueling NINE hours of dressing, makeup, photos and smiling for the camera. I was led to believe it was going to be closer to 3-4 hours. We finished at 7:30 p.m. Given that we took up the whole studio for a day, its no wonder the waiting list is so long. Nearly my entire Sunday was spent in a studio. Afterward, we all went out for some kalbi and beer. By the time we got home at 10pm, I was exhausted. I fell into bed and read a couple of pages of some books I’m reading and promptly fell asleep.

I have to admit there are some advantages to doing wedding photos this way. We weren’t limited to just the single tux and gown a couple might wear for their big day. MyeongHee was able to try many dresses and hairstyles and the pictures will be well lit, fabulously posed and, I’m sure, gorgeous! In addition, the stress of having all the pictures done on the “big day” was gone. Moreover, there was no making the guests wait while the bride and groom posed in all their finery. Of course, that still happens in a real Korean wedding, but to a far lesser extent, and includes all the family and friends not at the studio.

We likely won’t get the real photos for a couple of months, and I’ll post what I can when they do come.

Yesterday was a great birthday. After I went to school, I got a few cards and small gifts from the kids. They’re so sweet!  Then we had a nice steak dinner at home – a rarity with the prices for Korean beef.

Today, I got out and put some miles on the new bike. I let SaTang run alongside me for a while but she could only manage a mile or so. We went around the neighborhood  a few times and then she pooped out and wouldn’t budge from the park across the street. At least not until I said she could go home, and then she promptly got up and trotted off to the apartment. I merely let her inside the stairwell and then went off for a long hard ride. When I came back, all sweaty and deliciously tired, she was waiting faithfully at the bottom of the stairs for me. I went back upstairs to shower and gert ready for work and she crashed. She’s been been sacked out on the sofa ever since.

I rode quite a bit back in Texas the last year or so I was there. I haven’t ridden like that since. It might take a bit to work up to that level. Today was good, but it ain’t Texas – flat and lacking good hills. Here it’s just the opposite. Hopefully, it won’t be long before I work off some of this gut I’ve acquired eating the good food my wife makes for me. (It’s HER fault! Yeah, that’s it!)

My daughters called me early and started my birthday off before I even got out of bed. That’s a great way to wake up. Then after dropping MyeongHee off at work I decided to splurge on something I’ve been wanting for a while. I went and bought a new bike for myself today. The old one was way worn out when I found it but stolen (in broad daylight!) a few months back.  I’ve been wanting a new one just to keep the fat off. I’ve put on a few pounds of belly lard since winter and its time to get busy. And, since I wasn’t paying the health club anymore, I reappropriated the money bought the bike. I only took a short ride today, but SaTang was right along side me, running  like an Indy pace car. She’s a mixed breed, but has some terrier of some sort in her and I suspect she’ll do just fine on a long run. Antje’s dog, Jenna, was famous for making long runs right along side her, too. In some ways, SaTang reminds me of Jenna, and she has the same frisky stamina. Tomorrow, I hope to get out a get a few miles on the new hardware and check out the dog as well.

Tonight, its steak dinner. I can’t wait for the US beef to start getting shipped in. Despite the protests that still rock the capital, shipping of US beef has begun. I hope it comes soon. I paid $24 for a couple of small strips of Korean beef. I’ll cook them on my little portable charcoal grill. Yum!

I’m off to school now, where I know lots of the kids wil have cards and small gifts for me. Korean kids are very sweet when it comes to teachers birthdays and such.  More on that later after work.

Who cares if we had to wait until the 5th, a Saturday, to celebrate our holiday. We had one just the same. I joined a bunch of foreigner friends here for a beach picnic on the coast on Saturday. We had lots of bbq meats, including fish, ribs, steak, sausage and salad, and of course, lots of drinks.

From the left are Morgan (Maine), Nicola (UK) and Murray (Arkansas). We were the first to arrive and set up on the public tables at the beach. Notice the “table” style; no bench seats, just a flat surface. Koreans are used to sitting on the floor. So too, will they sit on these raised platforms around their grills. We put ours in the sand and ate standing up, foreigner-style. Sometimes, they don’t quite know what to think of us.

As usual, SaTang had a great time chasing the ball and making friends with everyone. Again, the Koreans broke out their cameras to take pictures of a dog that does more than yap. I had fun watching her try to shake the sand out of her mouth everytime she chased the tennis ball.

More friends, From left David (UK), Matty (UK), Ray in the red cap (South Africa), Dave (Canada) and Kim (Korea)

Caroline (Canada) and Jennifer and Leanne (Scotland).

Its always interesting to hang out with people from so many different places around the world. Hearing the different accents, stories as to why they came to Korea, what they like, don’t like and always, what we find funny about Korea.

At times throughout the day, the fog rolled in making the whole beach seem eerie.  I took this photo of the beach when visibility was down to just a couple hundred meters.

Being kind and generous foreigners in our host country doesn’t always net kind and generous in return. This old guy who came around to talk spoke no English at all and what few of us understand Korean could only grasp a little. We suspected most Koreans probably couldn’t understand him either and we learned that once we offered him some of our drinks his true nature emerged – that of beach lush. He hung on me for a while and I had to shake him loose onto one of the tables.  Shortly thereafter, he pounced on Caroline. After we wrestled him off, he tried to blame it on her, saying she was too beautiful. I’m not sure what his deal with me was.

We ran him off quick after that, earning a huge WTF from Nicola.

Despite the old drunk dude, we had a great time. We ate, we drank, we played soccer. I came home with a trophy, too. While playing around with the ball, my face collided with David’s foot and my lip bled for the better part of an hour. No problem – scars are just tattoos with better stories.

The only real bummer was that MyeongHee didn’t come; She wanted to go to work. Still, it was good to get out and speak English for a day.

Dammit! Yet a seventh speeding ticket arrived in the mail today.  Woo frickin’ hoo!  Happy damn 4th of July and hooray for technology.

The good news I recently learned is that multiple speeding tickets don’t do anything but cost money. Other things like running red lights and such will earn you points. Earn enough points, I suppose, and you win a trip on the Wheel of Torture, a grueling 5 km ride of being pulled through the backwoods chained to the rear bumber of a Korean mini-bubble car.

This one was photographed last week, before the big haul of 5 in one day (That was a banner day here in my house, let me tell you.) It just arrived in the mail today, so its not like I haven’t been electronically spanked enough and am still driving fast. I’ve been driving like a Grandma this past week. Enough, already! I give! Uncle!

Apparently, they’re just going to keep rolling in. I got another little love letter in the mail today from the Korean police in the form of a speeding ticket. That’s six in less than two weeks.

I’m going to quit driving. I’ll just let MyeongHee drive everywhere. She should be driving soon. Today she took her written test and passed with a score of 90% correct.