VCDs and shopping list

In my free time (when I'm not reading or walking around my neighborhood) I've been watching tons of VCD movies. It started because my friend loaned me an old laptop with a lot of movies, and then I noticed new ones at the local 24-hour VCD shop are very cheap, and soon I had watched a billion trillion movies. I was going to review them all here, but I forget, so I'll just mention a few I remember at the moment. (Randomly not in any order of significance or anything.) Escape From Hong Kong was an interesting movie, that ended a bit too much like an "after school morality special" or something. The review I link says it was filmed "cheaply" but I disagree, found the filming style refreshing for the most part. The script was just a bit boring after awhile, but very watchable. One of the favorite Japanese movies I saw was Nobody Knows which although not an unknown movie, I would guess its still less than major? None the less, wonderful filming, script, acting, the whole package. Nice movie, although with the fear of sounding snobby, the subtitles dont do the film justice and horribly translate some key phrases. Another Japanese movie I saw was Bounce Ko gals which although interesting view into the "paid dates" of some crazy high school girls, the movie sucks when it tries too hard to be a traditional movie, its best when it goes with the slurry camera work and the unscripted "blah blah" style conversations between costars, and the ending didn't hit me enough... although there are some good points about Japanese culture and world war 2 crimes in the script, interesting. Saw a few trippy Japanese low budget movies about escalators and strange animated plastic dolls, but regretfully forget titles at the moment. I also rewatched "2001: A Space Odyssey" Some people hate this movie, but I am a rabid fan. If you haven't seen it go out and rent it, uncut version. Any movie that starts out with a single held note with a blank black screen for about 1 minute is almost sure to be good. This movie is good because of its out dated classic 1960s future-tech, but also good for its philosophical elements, beautiful filming, awesome sound track and cool trippy psychedelic ending. So go watch it, or wait to watch it with me if you want a cheerleader for the movie! Anyway, I'll post more reviews later, this is getting too long.

In other events, I noticed yesterday I shop like an alcoholic 5 year old. My bag contained chips (crisps if you are one who enjoys British Englishi), cookies, chrysanthemum tea and rum. Yummy, the basic food groups. Anyway, time to wrap this up...

8th vlog - double decker buses

I find a kind of zen in my pointless boring vlogs. This one has no narration; it is simply a whole lot of double decker buses streaming past (also a tram is visible) ... near Fortress Hill station, in Hong Kong.

7th vlog - hong kong hills

This is more of a clip than a video blog. A few seconds of me looking out a bus window in the twilight, over the back hills of Hong Kong island.

lazy days

Today I woke up late, ate some crackers and drank some lemon tea. I went to Kowloon Bay and walked around. I saw cute turtles swimming in a dirty artifical pond. I watched them, swimming and I wondered what a space turtle would look like. I came home, cooked some dimsum, and listened to music. Rewrote "Jonny B Goode"... in Japanese.
Ahh, the life of a jobless freeform being. I'm loving it.

first thoughts

Well, I have only been living here in Hong Kong for a few days I guess. (A week?) But here are a few of my first thoughts... it's interesting how I can instantly read signs quicker than in Korea. Korea had the hangul alphabet which made ANYTHING readable, but the meaning was lost unless I knew the word. Here I can't read the sound of anything, but because of chinese characters that cantonese is written in, I know the meaning of some of the signs.. (of course my Chinese character skills are still quite low, but still, an interesting difference...)
My day to day life has been wonderful. Wake up late (2 or 3) listen to music, read some books while making brunch, and then out for a walk around the neighborhood, write a poem or two, and then back to the house for dinner, and later maybe a jump to the internet room. It's like I'm an old retired dude, but I'm not quite super old yet. It's perfect! Although I should get out and see more of Hong Kong while I'm here. I've made some connections with a tutor or two and hope to learn some more Cantonese also...

In Hong Kong

Something like Yesterday I came to Hong Kong again. I had too many bags, but somehow I managed to get to my new place with the help of my Hong Kong friend Polly. I will be staying in a small apartment by myself for the next two months. The room is on the second floor of a small apartment, behind a big library building. A fairly big window opens up on an artificial hill, with old leaves, and trees growing. The floor is cold tile, and I am sleeping on it (actually thin mat, sleeping bag, and then me), which I guess is good for my back. Polly loaned me a rice cooker and a few plates, and so I'm basically ready to kickback, read books and explore Hong Kong for the next two months. I'm excited. The weather is wonderful, it's winter here which means its about 65 or 70 degrees fahrenheit with a soft wind blowing. The air is alive, with some sort of "city spice" or something, I can't explain it but I always feel like the air is different in each country I visit, and for some reason Hong Kong feels "spicy" to me this time. So I'm here, I'm alive, and thats all I feel like writing today, I must sleep because I plan to meet my New Zealand pen pal tomorrow (who happens to be in Hong Kong at the same time)...! The days curl up, fall into the grip of tomorrow's wind and blow into yesterday.

6th vlog - korean new years

I went downtown to meet other people at a certain station or something, but the huge mass of people made that impossible. I got out of the train where I could and walked to the action. It was insane, hundreds of thousands of people all shooting roman candle fireworks in the air non-stop. Talk about a safety hazard. It was surreal, watching the endless rainbow sparks shoot into the air, like a tunnel of fire welcoming the new year.

5th vlog, in a train

Pushing the limits of true boring blogging, I present the inside of a train in Seoul. The train is moving. I was not. A moment captured!
Watch the various people in the train. I think its fascinating. Each has a destination. Each has a story. Each has something in their mind. Thats a lot of thoughts traveling together.
(Nothing to do with the other blog entry of today, this was taken awhile ago.)

Drinking too much

My Japanese friend Takeya (who I call Bubu) inviting me to go drinking with some of his drinking freinds. Takeya speaks great Korean and many of his freinds can speak good Japanese, so even though my Korean is still quite bad, I was able to communicate by having him translate or using Japanese. We started out with yummy Korean BBQ (bulgulgi) and freindly conversation. Then we decided to start drinking shoju, a very strong (for me) traditional Korean drink. And like any irresposnible young people, we drank with drinking games. I was drinking with pro drinkers, people who have a lot of practice (and frankly since they were all older than me, a lot of years more practice) drinking. But I kept loosing the games. I ended up having something like 9 quick shots of shoju in less than an hour. Bubu was nice, and took me to the train station where I promptly fell flat on my face, swearing up a storm in Japanese. Waiting for the train I took the liberty of puking big chunks of the BBQ dinner down a drain, and on the station floor. The booze began to creep into my mind and fuzz my memories, and the next clear moment I can capture I'm feeling sick again waiting for Bubu's friends outside of a starbucks and he hands me a bag and I puke more wonderful chunks of goodness into the bag and then stumble after him as he goes into starbucks to meet his friends. I deposit my bag of puke on the counter (delivery service!) and follow him out the door once again. Then I'm in a train again. At my station. I tell Bubu I can get home, but him and his friend don't belive me after they find me wandering into the elevator for disabled people, leading to the train platform. They lead me to to my exit, number 8, get a taxi, I give drunken instructions, I'm dropped off to the relief of Bubu who was probably about to kill drunken and annoying me. That is a night of too much drinking, to bring in the new year I suppose.

Going to Hong Kong, not yet

So here I am again. Kim's Guest House. A youth hostel in Hapjeong, Northwest Seoul. I was here last year while waiting for a job, and I'm back here again waiting to go to Hong Kong. I find some sort of unity in that. I can't go to Hong Kong until I go to my friend's wedding. And she wont get married until January 7th. Oddly I decided to move to Hong Kong on the 15th.. Not sure why I have an extra buffer week in there. Maybe it's because I cant count. Same reason why I ended up having a ticket for 2 months in Hong Kong instead of my desired 3 months, because I cant count. Oops. Oh well. I'm sad to not see my students every day, but life moves on. I'm excited to head off into the unknown once again. Woosh. Thats the sound of me taking off. (for those of you who don't know but want to know: I plan to go to Japan via ferry from bottom of Korea, after my stay in Hong Kong.) DAAG!

4th vlog - nakayama visits

Strange drunk people run around and introduce themselves. My Japanese friends (The Nakayama sisters) came to visit me in Korea. We were at an urban river. At night. Odd Japanese beatnicks rocking the night. Woo!

taxis & faces

Well, first I want to say a word about Korean Taxis. Scary! I was coming home from hanging out with the Nakayama sisters (which was really fun, by the way, they are cool women!) and I get in a Taxi with an old man. He asks me (in Korean) where I wanted to go, and I say (also in Korean of course) "Guri please." (Guri is the city I live in) and he says "Huh? Wheres that?" So I tekk him Walker Hill Hotel, which is close to me. He takes off, having a hard time accelerating smoothly. Like speeding up, slowing down, speeding up, a classic sign of an old person driver I guess. We get to Walker Hill Hotel and I say "Oh, not this. Go that way." in my bad Korean. He starts getting mad, saying I said the hotel and he doesn't want to go so far away or something. (Not sure why he was worried, he was making money from me! Further we go, the more money he makes!) And now he starts driving aggressively because he's angry. He pulls into a one-lane road, with an arrow pointing the opposite way. I think "Uh oh" and ahead we can see cars driving towards us! (It wasn't like the movies with thousands of cars on a highway though, just two cars stopped and honking at us in front of us.) He swears and drives over the median and into the correct lane of traffic. He's really mad now. Nonstop swearing, angry aggressive driving. We turn onto a bigger three lane road. Finally I think it's too dangerous to be in his car, so I decide to walk the rest of the way home, and I tell him (in Korean) "Here [stop]." He pulls sharply from the middle lane towards the side of the road. I instinctively look behind us, and see the headlights of a car and think "Oh sh--" but can't finish my thought as he SLAMS into the car and my head snaps to the left. Screeching sound of metal against metal and both cars stop. And in an instant both drivers (the other car was a taxi too) jump out and start yelling at each other. I get out, hand the money to the driver. I let the crazy old man keep the change. For a long way, I can hear their voices echo in the cold night air.

I was watching a show on CNN about the new face transplant surgery. And one of the reporters asked if they really needed to do the operation on the woman who had lost her lower face when a dog attacked her. And the answer was "Imagine a life where if you tried to talk to anyone they wouldn't be able to understand you. Imagine a life where whenever you went out, people would turn their heads and stare at you." And although I don't want to reduce her suffering, I was surprised how much that seems like my life in Korea. Most of the time people don't understand my English or Korean, and Koreans staring at me when I walk anywhere is quite common.