The House that L.G Built

This is a shot taken around the apartments where I live in Nowon. Everything in the apartment seems to be made by L.G, even somewhat bizarrely - my couch. Hyundai's and Daewoo's are almost the only cars on the road. Funny, but they seem less ugly when there's nothing to compare them to, I think it's how dinosaurs got laid. The area is built up and very nocturnal, however for me it has changed my perceptions on high density living. Firstly I never feel like I'm in the middle of a huge press of people, there are many parks, and playgrounds surrounding the area and a group of mini-mountains behind the apartments. Pretty much everywhere you walk off the main drag has trees forming a canopy, which prevents it from feeling like a concrete jungle.

When I say nocturnal, there are people around all hours, however for all that it remains very quiet at night. It also demonstrates that row upon row of apartment blocks doesn't have to equate to a loss of sense of community or personal safety. I think sometimes we're conned into accepting or believing in an inevitable decline of those values as a population grows. Here, kids routinely run around playing unsupervised towards midnight and old couples go out walking without fear. There are no police patrols on foot and although it is an affluent area, no gated communities and no surveillance cameras, yet people walk around safely at all hours.

No doubt some nasty stuff goes down, there's crap in every society, but they seem to have avoided (at least in this area) some of the modern malaise that we are at times resigned to. I do wonder whether the politics and economics that use fear, especially to drive consumerism, has a degree of responsibility.

This is looking down towards work, which is about a 2 minute walk from the apartment. Korean's are serious about overtaking Japan as asian numero uno. They spend $8 billion a year on after hours tuition. Many of their kids do their regular school, plus additional hours at english school along with the extra homework. Some parents complain to the school if they don't feel enough homework is being set.

The academy I teach at it is one of the largest in Korea with around 70 teachers, 30 of them foreign, which makes for a pretty smooth ride from a logistics point of view. The kids (poor wee bairns) go to Korean school during the day and when that has finished they come to us for a few classes between 1530-2200, covering anything from basic reading to science and maths. They even still come for english lessons during their school holidays.

On the teaching front I'm improving, a big part is building a relationship with the kids so that they actually want to speak English to you. Most the kids are pretty well behaved. One class in particular stands out, this group of kids are funny (even more so because they're doing it in a foreign language) but what's funnier is how much they're aware that they're funny. It's really hard trying to quieten them down when I'm cracking up laughing.

I've joined a gym, which is about a 90 second walk from the apartment, double that after training legs. It's a little bit different. I had to buy a pair of shoes just for the gym as they prefer you not to wear the same shoes on the street and in the gym. Being on short notice and somewhat budget restrained (due to having my wallet stolen coming out of Honolulu) finding a Korean shoe store near here that carried my size mean my fashion choices were for once limited by more than just my own poor taste.

As I result I ended up with a very silly shiny silver pair of velcro gym shoes that would look at home on a 100m sprinter in the Olympics or trying to attract votes for the Brownlow. I'm smiling just thinking of them, you guys would no doubt physically burst something laughing. Actually, there's something about being in a gym where there's happy hardcore slamming out of the speakers at 200bpm and some woman in the corner keeping time with a hula-hoop that makes my sneakers seem just about right.

I recently had cable connected at home, which means I've gone from 40 channels which I know nothing about to 80 channels I know even less about. All I've learnt is that every single Korean game show involves throwing or falling into water and dancing, I think it's a law or something. I do get the American Armed Forces Network channel, conveniently this means I can get my bullshit straight from the source.

A couple of weeks a go group of teachers from the academy headed to Boryeong for the annual mud festival. Children have got the right idea, mud is fun. Good clean dirty fun. Basically tens of thousands of people flock to this little town to drink and get muddy, cerebral it wasn't, but good for laughs.

This kid couldn't remember where he'd buried his sister. Mud + fireworks + bad punk bands = good weekend.

I'm yet to be convinced that it's not a scam the Korean's thought up over a few rounds of soju one night.

"Hey, you reckon if we pretend it's a festival that we can make foreigners travel for 10 hours just to roll around in some mud?".

"Nah, surely they wouldn't be dumb enough to fall for that..."

Friendship. Keeps you vertical.

Actually, it's kind of inevitable when you can buy a 1.6 litre bottle of beer for a few bucks at any 7/11.

The weekend just gone, we headed out to Itaewon which is where foriegners go to fall down.

Vodka 1, Jacob 0.

Lunacy. Contagious.

Random.

This blog is bought to you by... Be well.

Hawaii

Hawaii, sort of the US of A. Don't mention the annexation and they won't mention the doctrine of Terra Nullius...Beauty and the Beast. The human side of the equation is itself on Oahu very bland. The American automobile industry should be shot for crimes against automotive design and I think they must have gotten their cousins jobs designing the buildings on Oahu. Just big cracker boxes really. Oahu, where Honolulu is located, is in my mind the least interesting of all the Hawaiian islands. This is looking down at Waikiki from the Diamond Head Crater, which the locals tell me was created when Rosanne Barr tripped and fell over her ego.
Two days here to soak some sun and people watch is ample, then maybe a day on the North Shore, then if you can, head outer island. Due to run around with my visa and needing to be available on Oahu I was only able to get out to Big Island. One of my room mates showed me some pictures of Kauai, which looked like one of the most beautiful places on the planet. I hear Maui is nice, but there may just be to many South California's who have moved there to make it worth visiting...

Near one of the bases on Oahu, the American Navy proudly displays captured Iraqi weapons of mass destruction such as this one.
Yep, the water really is that Jay's Bloo kind of blue...
Waikiki beach at sunset. I've never seen so many stunning women in one place as on this small stretch of beach. I suffered whiplash and detached retina's about every 10 seconds on average and I've had to rethink some of my admittedly ill-conceived idea's on genetics.

Waikiki beach in the rain. It was very gentle rain and the scotch was helping me stay dry - don't ask me how that works.

The story of Pearl Harbor is well known, the Japanese were desperate and "pre-emptive", the outcome of the war could have been very different had they succeeded in sinking the American carrier fleet which had gotten out of dodge just before they arrived. They did however, manage to nail quite a few other naval ships in the attack. One of the biggest casualties was the battleship Arizona which is now a memorial site. You catch a ferry out to a white pontoon jobby which sits above the hull of the Arizona which remains rusting where it was sank with a couple of thousand sailors on board. The photo's don't come out to clearly but imagine the hull of a warship - minus the gun turrets and superstructure - lying a few feet below the surface; running towards the top of the photo.
Below is looking down the deck of the now defunct USS Missouri, famous for being the place where the Japanese signed the treaty to join the American baseball league. They would never have signed had they realised it was actually just a wind-up boat.
This battleship Missouri (just like the one we met in Queenstown, NZ) was an absolute monster. This black and white shot from a distance gives you an idea of the size, now redundant due to further "advances" in military technology. Apparently the budget just for keeping the behemoth afloat and stocked with hotdogs as a museum is equivalent to that of the entire active Australian navy.

There are persistent rumours that the Australian military will be taking delivery of the Missouri and some Sopwith Camels for frontline service sometime in 2010. The sunken Arizona in the photo's above, was not quite as big as the Missouri, but gives you some idea of the size of the hull lying below the water.
Gratuitous nature shot.
Also at Pearl Harbour is a WWII era sub, the Bowfin, that you can climb on board and explore most of the decks. Those sailors must have been real bored and kinky at sea 'cos for some reason the toilets and showers have clear perspex doors.

It really is a cramped and uncomfortable environment, and that's as a tourist with only a few people around. It's amazing that the sailors were able to tolerate it, by comparison the quarters on the Missouri were luxurious and spacious - plus they would have often had the luxury of walking around in the open air. Using the same trick photography techniques as used to make Marlon Brando look thin in his later years I've made it look like the sub is sailing out to sea, captained by the Griswald's.
This is the aft torpedo room of the sub, the missiles in the foreground were fired out of the tubes at the back of the photo. Shortly after I took this photo, I fired that woman out of the same tubes for giving me a look that made the milk in my bosom curdle.
Big Island was much more picturesque, laid back and sparsely habitated. Fellas, the locals (at least the women anyway) are pretty much all in agreement that there is a real shortage of quality men-folk on Big Island, so now you know where all the single women are - start paddling. The countryside varied from black lava beaches to high cliffs, rain forests, volcanic fields and arid areas.
This is my re-enactment at the site of Cook's last landing on the Big Island of Hawaii.
We both shed blood at this place, I slipped on rocks, he landed on a spear, guess who went home smiling?
While on the Big Island I took a helicopter flight of the Volcano Park, as some hikes were cancelled due to recent tremors in the area.

If you fall out, grab here.
Most my photo's were crap due to shake and exposure issues, but here's one of a volcanic vent. It was very interesting to see a site where land mass is actually being created, there is one guy, well known as a nutter to the locals, whose house is only a few meters from some recent flows. Houses on the Big Island can no longer get insurance coverage in the event of volcano damage.

Back on Oahu I went in a cage to pay a house call to some sharks, the biggest of which was around 2-2.5 metres. This was the cage.

Unfortunately the sea was very choppy...and I'd been out on the town the night before...and I had to get up at 0430 for the shuttle...andIthrewupinthecagethreetimesbutnoonenoticedsoIgotawaywithit. I didn't hear the sharks complaining.

Lots of famous people call the islands of Hawaii home. Oprah has a home on one of the islands as does Pierce Brosnan. Here's a picture of Angela Lansbury without make-up.