So Call Me Maybe! (Gyeongju Day 2)

I am currently sitting in the living room of Tavo House with Joaquin, and Gun Hee, the B&B host is playing Carly Rae Jepsen on the computer. That song, as I just explained to them, makes me think of a particular student I taught once, a J-He who burst into my class like an explosion of trolls. He kept looking at me and singing that song, but apparently that's his trade mark. Looking into the eyes of people, and singing that song to try and creep them out. Lol. Funny memory.

Today Joaquin and I cycled around Gyeongju, and saw Cheomseongdae Observatory, along with Anapji Pond, Gyerim Forest, plus the Wolseong Fortress (nothing remains of it anymore, except a veritable hump) and the seokbinggo. After that we took a well deserved break at a nearby restaurant, where we had ssambap. Then, we went to a coffee shop called Rain and Coffee for more than an hour. There, I had a hot chocolate and finished Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture. The book was not bad, but not quite something I'd recommend. Barry's style of writing was not quite to my liking, but I stayed on for the plot. It reminded me somewhat of Anne Enright's The Gathering (what is it with depressing Irish writers?), but was far more enjoyable. Plus I liked the (slightly predictable) twist, which gave it a much less sombre tone.

After that, Joaquin and I cycled to the Gyeongju National Museum to look at the sights. Then, on our way back he bought Gyeongju bread, which reminded me of Japanese dorayaki. When we finally arrived back at Tavo House, I was overjoyed. I kept expecting to meet some horrid accident while on the bike, if not explode from sheer I-can't-do-this-because-I-haven't-exercised-in-yonks. So I was relieved when we finally arrived back. The house was initially empty, but Gun Hee came back soon after, followed by his adorable Grandmother. The grandmother even plodded over and gave each of us a yakult, which was really sweet of her! I drank it, even though that stuff gives me a tummy ache from lactose intolerance. Fingers crossed nothing bad happens!

Dinner now, woo hoo.

Seoul Day 2

Today, I went to the National Museum of Korea to find it closed. What struck me however, as I was walking towards it, was that it was rather ugly in appearance. That is, it looked grey and modern, but in a '90s Convention Centre way. As I couldn't even go in to see the exhibits, no comment on that bit.

After that I went to Myeongdong to look for a pair of boots. I was amused to see that there were multiple shops of the same brands, sometimes just a mere 20 metres away from each other. It seemed rather pointless. I ended walking in circles, and had small moments of thinking 'Oh my God, where am I?'. Still, I somehow managed to find my way to the City Hall side, and wandered into the Lottle Department Store, where I was blown away by the steep prices. Then I found Lotte Young Plaza across the road, which had far better prices. There, I finally found a nice pair of boots for a reasonable 99,000 won. I wore the boots out of the shop, wandered around a little more longer, and then found my way back to Myeongdong station to head back to the hotel.

The language barrier is frankly, rather intimidating. I've never felt so intimidated before somehow, when I was traveling in Spain or Austria/Germany. Adding to the problem is that everyone here seems to think I'm Korean, so when they speak to me all I can do is stare at them dumbly. I thought about it, and I even know more Japanese than Korean :/ Plus I recognise little to nothing about the food here.

Oh well, tomorrow Joaquin and I are headed to Gyeongju. I'm looking forward to it!

Air Ticket Woes

Today, I spent my entire day rushing about doing work, and working my ass off. I had almost no time to myself at all, once I got to work. This, coupled with how hard I've been working for the past few days trying to finish marking scripts before leaving for South Korea, has left me feeling extremely tense and strained. Ooof. I am so looking forward to my trip tomorrow!

On another note, I just printed my E-Ticket, and was extremely aggravated to find that the daft thing printed 2 (TWO!!!) whole sheets of nothing but terms and conditions as well. What a horrid waste of printer ink (which is one of the dearest-priced liquids known to mankind) and paper ): I felt like I had just gone and wasted about fifty cents worth of material.

Yesterday evening I went out with Shu and Tiif, to celebrate Tiff's birthday. We went to McDonald's (Tiff's idea) and we all ate the Chicken Prosperity burger. I must say, I thought it'd be tastier :/ Then, we had dessert at a nice place. Ironically, our desserts cost more than the actual main meal at McDonald's itself, ahaha. I bought Tiff a flower from a random street vendor, as it was also Valentine's Day.

Pre-South Korea Trip

I just started packing, and realised that I have utterly forgotten what clothes I used to wear during Winter. How quickly I seem to have forgotten things. I also realised how much I relied on my lovely old Clarks boots to make me look not-like-a-slob during those Wintery years. Fingers crossed that I'll managed to avoid looking like an unfashionable blob, while keeping adequately warm at the same time!

CNY Day 3

I originally set out to mark tonight, but on the last script I marked, I realised my wet hair was dripping water all over my student's paper. Erp. At least I didn't accidentally tear the weak, wet spots. So, I decided to write instead.

This is a photo of my Guo Mah's head, taken at the 3rd House.

Yesterday was El Grande Visiting Family Day. My family and I visited a total of 7 houses. First house was my Guo Mah's, followed by my mum's 5th eldest sibling, her sister's house. Then we went to visit my mum's 6th eldest sibling's house, although she had passed away two years ago. It was kinda sad being in that house because I remembered that the last time I was there was when I had attended the funeral. My Guo Mah saw the many photos of her departed daughter and started speaking to herself in a sad voice. I understood nothing because she was speaking on Hokkien, but mutely patted her on the back. My Uncle looked sad too, although he had a new girlfriend now. After that house, we went off to visit my mother's 2nd eldest brother (number 3 of 8 siblings) where we had lunch and finished watching Ah Boys to Men.

After that came the boring houses, because they belonged to my mum's eldest siblings. We visited her eldest sister (number 2 of 8), near Aljunied, and when we got there it started to pour like crazy. I also noted that the new lifts were up and running, which was excellent because my Guo Mah has a lot of trouble walking up stairs. Then, it was off to visit my Mum's eldest brother who lives in Tampines. We had a semi-sort of dinner there. Last house was my mum's 4th eldest brother (number 4 of 8) in Pasir Ris. My memory of that house is bringing one of my cousin's playstations there to play some X-Men fighting game when we were younger.

I have no idea how else to describe that day except tiring and confusing. As we went from house to house, more and more family members would join in. At the first house we acquired my Guo Mah and my mum's youngest brother (number 8 of 8), and after the second house we acquired another 3 more families. And so on so forth :/ It took me ages before I figured who I was directly related to, and who I wasn't, especially with regards to my mum's 3 eldest siblings. OK mystery finally solved after 22 Chinese New Years.

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Today, I woke up late. I throughly enjoyed my chance to sleep in, after almost 4 days straight of needing to get up early. I went off to met Jia, and only at the bus stop realised that my phone wasn't working. At Standard Charted Bank, when I was depositing some money, I managed to borrow a phone from a couple using the AXS machine to call Jia. PHEW. Thank goodness they lent me a phone. Jia and I then met up, and we had lunch at El Patio. Sadly, the burritos were nowhere nearly as awesome as London ): I felt slightly put off. I crave nothing more than a good burrito from Daddy Donkey now.

After lunch, we walked about Holland Village for a bit, before going to get a quick 30 minute massage at Quick Massage. It was great, and worth every bit of the $20 we paid, especially since my back hurt yesterday from contorting in strange positions in the back of the car, squished with my Guo Mah, Uncle (the youngest one) and Ryan. Then, we went to Starbucks where I started marking. Jia looked at some of the scripts, and went off after a while. I left Starbucks around 5:45pm, after finishing marking for my Friday 5pm class.

It's back to work tomorrow, and I'm not quite looking forward to it, namely because I have no idea what other things I can incorporate into my lessons. Hmm.

CNY Day 1

Today was the first day of Chinese New Year, and I was dog tired. I had a headache for most of the day. Last night I felt very restless, and had trouble sleeping. Looking at the time it is now, I think I'll have another night of inadequate sleep. Regardless, it was a nice day. We went to the grandparent's in the morning to have brunch, along with my Uncle. Then afterwards my Grandma wanted to go out, so she and my Grandpa, plus my family (Uncle's family went off to visit the other Grandma) went to the Science centre to watch an IMAX movie. It was To The Arctic. The movie was pleasant enough, but honestly all I wanted to do was go home and sleep. Ryan was well behaved during the movie, so that was awesome.

Evening I was awoken by my Uncle and his family coming to visit. He and my cousin marched into my room, switched on the lights, and stole my Archie comics before leaving. WTF. We later went off to get dinner at Owen together, along with Grandma and Grandpa. And thus marked my CNY Day 1. Tomorrow will be visiting my Mum's side of the family, and will occupy pretty much the entire day. Oof feel tired thinking about it.

Anyway CNY is a jolly time, sadly, because of Hong Baos. I don't care much for the traditional dishes, except for Yu Sheng. Plus I'm so close to my family, I see them often anyway, so CNY really isn't that particularly different for me. Except maybe wearing more red things. So anyway HONG BAOS. I must say now as a working (semi) adult, the thrill of receiving red packets is much, much more. Perhaps because you realise the value of money more than before, and getting money for doing absolutely nothing except existing is great.

Thus, I decided to finally go get some books I was eyeing off Book Depository. Ohoho. I just bought David Lodge's Campus Trilogy, Graham Greene's End of the Affair and Somerset Maugham's Collected Short Stories Vol. 1. Hooray, books!

On another note, prompted by M/s L's recent assignment on a short story by Roald Dahl, I have taken to reading his books from my collection. I finished Switch Bitch earlier in the week, and am now making my way through Tales of the Unexpected. 

Panthera Panthera

I had a dismally unproductive marking day at work today. I suppose that's because I was marking compositions, and each one took me almost 40 minutes to get through. In the end, of my Wednesday class' lot, there were two scripts left. Tomorrow and Saturday however, 4 more class' lots will come in. I expect I'll be spending some bit of Chinese New Year marking stuff :/ Perhaps I should try marking with a timer next time, to limit the amount of time I spend tearing through each script. After all, there's only so much the students can absorb from intrusive marking.

Anyway tonight, after work, I met up with Shu and Tiffany for dinner. The rainy weather made us change our plans, and we ended up eating at Ootoya. I was disappointed to find that the menu had changed since the last time I was there some 3 years ago. Hahaha I'm terrible with change. The food was OK. Naturally, the company was much better.

After Ootoya, we wandered downstairs and saw the Matcha House, and decided to have Matcha ice cream for dessert. However when we tried to order, the girl at the counter told us there was no matcha ice cream left, and we immediately fell into a bout of giggles. The whole thing was so absurd, how could a matcha store specialising in desserts be out of matcha ice cream? We left, slightly disappointed, but amused.

In the end we had ice cream from Seventh Heaven. Having the ice cream in store cost more, so we ordered it to go, and wandered just a few metres away to sit in a hidden walkway and eat our ice cream.   Lovely, lovely evening.

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On an utterly random note, I just realised that Alex Salmond, who I always thought of as Alex Salmon, is incredibly fat. Google also has auto-complete suggestions of 'Alex Salmond fat bastard', with his face superimposed on the Austin Powers' character's body. Sadly it seems, it's not much of a stretch of imagination to think they're the one and the same, oho.

Sodium Chloride

Peskily, ever since I started going to the gym last Friday, my personal trainer's words have stuck in my head. To be precise, his words on eating healthy in general. When he asked me what I was going to have for lunch on Friday, I replied that I was thinking about Novena Fish Soup. I thought he'd be all 'VERY GOOD MELODIE!' and etc when he heard that, but instead to my dismay he said 'eh, you can't drink the soup!'

Ever since I was brought to that place by LUG, and the repeated times after with Jean and etc, we have always, always polished off the soup. The best part of the soup was that when you'd finished eating all the ingredients inside, you could drink the soup while munching on the slightly soft fried shallots. OK, I'm getting hungry again just thinking about it. So anyway yeah, I love the fish soup from that stall.

Flash back to Friday morning, and distressed, I asked him why I couldn't have fish soup. After all it was FISH and SOUP, I mean, it sounded like one of the healthiest, yet tasty things to be had. Sodium, he answered solemnly, there's a lot of salt in soups. And then he went on the list the others things I shouldn't eat: white rice, potatoes, beef, pork...

And then when I fell to the ground and screamed NOOOOOOO. Yeah I wish. What happened instead was that I just frowned at him, and the more he spoke the deeper my frown became. U(N@*$UMX*( DAMNIT.

So in the end on Friday I had curry chicken from Toast Box, cause a colleague, P, wanted to go there instead. I'm quite certain the curry chicken was more unhealthy than any possible sodium filled soup, but OH WELL. Throughout the weekend, whenever I ate less rice than usual, I was incredibly proud of myself. Which brings me to today: gym session number two.

This session was quite different from the last, mainly cause it seemed to be more focused on upper body strength rather than lower body. I guess that'll come on Friday again. However again as the session was about to end, he brought up the horrible S word, and reminded me of all those horrid things Salt does to your body and blah blah blah ):

So, I had fish soup for lunch today, and I managed to leave 1/4 of the soup behind. It seemed an awful, awful waste of good food. So this post is dedicated, in mourning, to that wasted 1/4 bowl of extremely tasty, but salty, fish soup.

The Quiet American

Today, I finished reading Graham Greene's The Quiet American. I must say it's quite a nice read, and I liked Greene's writing style. It was very understated and not over-flowingly flowery. It was simple and straight to the point. Plus the characters were interesting, in that they were all shades of grey. I liked the setting too, of a pre-American invasion Vietnam. All in all, it was a good read. Before that I read Jamrach's Menagerie, which I didn't quite enjoy. It was too Life of Pi - but with more suffering and cannibalism. I'm not a fan of reading about people suffering :/

On Friday morning, I went to the gym for my first training sessions. As I wobbled about down the stairs of the gym upon leaving, I felt like my thighs were made of jelly, unsteady on my feet. After about an hour though, the feeling went away and I felt fine the rest of the day. Saturday however I woke up and my thighs were aching, as expecting. Today however, I woke up, and somehow the aching got worse. I didn't even think that was possible :/ 

It's been about 4 and half months since I've started working for M/s L, and on Tuesday, Week 20 begins for me. Oho.