Deep Sea Fishing Debacle

A couple of weekends back, my Korean girlfriend asked me if I'd like to go fishing with her boss. I'd never been deep sea fishing before (it sounded like it might be a pretty good time; out on the open ocean, the wind in my hair, a cold beer in my hand), so I agreed.
 
That was my first mistake.

We set out Sunday around noon, picking up a young, attractive co-worker along the way, and made the hour drive to the launch. The first hiccup came the moment we arrived and were introduced to the rest of our fishing crew, the boss's brother-in-law, his mother, his father, his aunts, and his two young children; all of them Korean and speaking little or no English.

Being here for eight months, I was pretty used to this type of thing, but immediately after meeting this pack of people my girlfriend turned to me and said, “I'm very uncomfortable.” (I understood what she meant, there are many deeply rooted codes of conduct embedded into Korean society, as well as a hyper-awareness of age and where everyone stands in relation to everyone else around them...but thankfully I was just a dumb foreigner, so didn't have to worry about any of this.)

We made our way down to the docks, where some nut was blasting god-awful Korean pop music from a set of loudspeakers mounted on his mast, the sound bouncing off the rocks and utterly destroying the tranquility of the bay. As we got closer to the wretched noise-polluter, it soon became clear; this was our captain.

The ship turned out to be a 40 foot fishing vessel, with seating for four, and a bucket of shrimp for bait. As we motored out of the bay, past lush green islets over gently bobbing waves I thought, 'this is pretty nice, it may be a little cloudy and I'd prefer more quiet, but this is real.' Shortly after that, I accepted a can of beer that was offered to me.
 
This was my second mistake.

We soon came to a stop, a couple of kilometres from shore, and the captain gave a demonstration of how to fish, pulling up three decent-sized ones on his first cast. He distributed the rods, and we started fishing. Within minutes, my girlfriend caught two nice ones, her boss—a woman in her fifties—caught four; I, on the other hand, hadn't felt a bite. Patience, I told myself. After awhile, there was a commotion at the back of the boat, a cry, some shouting, and then cheers; the boy had caught a big one. Meanwhile, I reeled in a set of empty hooks.

After baiting my line for another try, I couldn't help but notice that, since the boat had stopped, the movement of the waves had become more pronounced, that that gentle bob had become an unceasing undulation, and that beer that had tasted so refreshing just half an hour ago, now wasn't sitting so well. I tried to concentrate on the fishing (even reeling in a bite-sized beauty after a battle I was certain would end in the capture of some prehistoric beast, or, at the very least, a small shark), but soon resigned myself to reality; I was going to hurl.

And hurl I did. I leaned my rod against something and asked my girlfriend to watch it for me before staggering to the front of the ship, in the vain hope of avoiding detection, and heaved over the railing. I have little doubt that the arc of vomit that left my mouth then went the furthest and fell the farthest I have ever witnessed in my entire life; a magnificent regurgitated omelette rainbow that had some real air time before splashing violently into the sea.
Maybe no one had seen it.
I turned unsteadily towards the rear of the ship, and, to my dismay, saw who standing not twenty feet away but the young, attractive co-worker, snapping pictures.

I spent the next fifty minutes crouched next to my rod in a near-fetal position on the port side of the ship. After puking a second time, this time next to my girlfriend, she went inside to lay down with the other sea-sick souls. Me, I was fine exactly where I was. As long as I didn't have to move. Ever. Of course, I did have to move eventually, mostly because I was sitting on the anchor line, but also because we were heading back to shore. Thank God.

But my ordeal wasn't over yet. Apparently, the seven steps to the back of the boat were enough to upset my stomach anew, and within seconds I was again spewing over the side, only this time the boat was moving at a good clip, and one of the elderly Korean women had taken it upon herself to start slapping me on the back with the force of a 10-kiloton bomb. I wanted to tell her to stop, to tell her that it really wasn't doing me any good, but I was too busy dry-heaving into the waves, and she wouldn't have understood me anyway.

A few minutes later, my girlfriend emerged from the sleeping quarters to find me nursing a bottle of water, (a gift from the ajima that had almost flogged me over the side) but was intercepted by her attractive co-worker, “Where have you been? Your boyfriend was throwing up. A lot.”
 
We motored back into the bay, K-pop blaring as if to announce our victory over nature; we had our fish, we had our lives, we had no fucking intention of ever doing this again.

The Spearfisherman

 
By spacing my drinks out over the past four hours, I had managed to maintain both an entirely lucid state of mind, and an annoyingly sober disposition.
The bar was remarkably empty, remarkable because it was a peak hour on what was normally a busy night, remarkable because it was normally frequented by locals and foreigners alike, and because this was a country without a last call, where bottles of booze could be bought at 4am for pocket change. (Then again, I was a foreigner myself, fairly new to the island, so did my notions of “remarkable” and “normal” even apply?)
It wasn't 4am yet, but I was already thinking about the relative comfort my stiff mattress and meagre bedding could provide compared to this smokestale room.
I was talking with a couple of female acquaintance's about the apparent voices in a madman's head, (voices that had told him to stab, kill, and decapitate a stranger sitting next to him on the bus, then proceed to cut off parts of his face and eat them), when a man in a ski mask stumbled in. This was strange, if not slightly off-putting, considering that this was a semitropical island, and the guy was huge. He lumbered towards us, pausing a moment to perform a sort of drunken dance, before continuing on to the bar.
He returned a minute later, mask pulled up and draft in hand. We were all slightly wary of this, but considering that we were virtually the only other people in the bar, we figured he had little choice. Within seconds, he managed to offend both girls to the point where they walked off, never to return. He had been ranting about the debaucherous lifestyle of foreigners on Jeju, the drinking, the fucking, “you gotta' break out of this cycle, get out and experience the island, the people, something real, this world, this here, is never ending...foreigners get caught up in it and they never get out.”
I had heard the same argument before, two months ago, (in some other foreigner bar across town), where this brute had told me that he frequently dove 20 meters to spear fish, without oxygen. (I remember poking him in the chest when he told me this, and saying, “20 meters?” He hadn't hurt me then, so I figured I'd be okay now.

“You're the spearfisherman, right?”
“Yeah. Mick. Have we met?”
“Once, a while back, at Blue Laguna.”
“Oh yeah, that was probably the last time I was out.”
“Yeah?” (I failed to point out the hypocrisy of the fact that he was ragingly drunk then, and even more so now, raving about the shallowness of foreigner life on the island on both occasions).
“Those girls didn't like what I had to say. Those chicks. I love offending people, it's so easy.”
I imagined it would be, if you really wanted to.
“Well, I'm not that easily offended.”
“Good. You know, I've been all over this island, all over. Been here seven years now, and I was like you once, like them. The girls are there if you want them, foreigners are dying for a lay, and locals are happy to get a guy that lasts more than one pump. They'll be banging on your door for it at all hours...and then there's the hookers, girls that'll lay you down, soap you up, and jerk you off. All you gotta' do is lay there and be a man. But I got away from all that, started fishing, started diving. Seen some crazy shit. Saw an octopus kill a shark. Saw a dolphin give birth. Swam under a school of jellyfish, thousands of animals, for over seven minutes.”
“Wow,” I said, taking a sip from my beer, noticing that he held his with three fingers, like a teacup, because his pinkie couldn't fit.
“Yeah, once spent twelve days living in a cave, totally isolated, fished for my meal every day, and cooked it on the beach...you know, if you go down to the docks, act real nice, you can get aboard a squid fishing ship, go out with the local fisherman, it's quite a fucking experience...”

During the course of our conversation, the spearfisherman told me that he could kill me--could kill me very easily--twice. Said he had been trained in some martial art or another and used to be a bodyguard. I wondered why anyone so big would need to know a martial art at all in order to defend themselves (or someone else); who would fuck with a 6”6 guy in a ski mask?
I finished my beer and left, walked the still-noisy streets past exposed legs and flicking cell phones, pausing a moment to watch a cat eat some vomit off the pavement, and turned towards home.

Furry Rememberings

Last night I dreamt of browsing in an open-air market full of redheads, then sprinting off and performing an amazing parkour run at top speed. Actually, this isn't true. I dreamt this about a month ago, but it sounds a lot better to begin something with "last night" than "about a month ago."

I recently removed a great deal of mold from my apartment. It was growing out of control, secretly festering behind furniture all along my rear wall. My initial discovery of it was slightly terrifying, a glimpse of green...a closer look...and the nightmarish discovery. The removal of it was no better, like peeling diseased skin from the flanks of a rotting beast.

This shit was growing inches from my head, could it have affected my dreams? And, if so, was it for better or worse? I must say, of late my dreams have not been nearly as pleasant. I would much rather be dreaming of open-air markets full of redheads.

Redheaded women have always held a particular fascination with me. I've no doubt this began in elementary school, when I tried to win the affections of one Katie Locke. Naturally, she wanted nothing to do with me--I was all about climbing trees and drawing dinosaurs, (I do remember offending her once, when complimenting her on her red hair, she blew up, shouting, "It's not red! It's strawberry blond!") But the seed was planted.

Years later, Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully and Milla Jonovich as Leelo would go some way to magnify my fiery thirst.

I think part of the appeal lies in the rarity of these women, it's as if they're from another era, or an island destroyed long ago, like some kind of redheaded Atlantis...then again, brunettes, blonde's and Asians are pretty hot too. Hell, I'm practically living on an Asian Atlantis right now...what the fuck am I doing blogging!?

That Flower Has Phlgem On It

I light another stick of nag champa, lie down, and watch the wisps of smoke unfurl around my apartment like ghostly dragons. I get up, mix myself some soju (my first today), and sit down at my computer--I have no intention of going out tonight, it's too late, wet, and cold. It's odd out anyway (not the foreignness, I learned to accept even the strangest of sights as merely Korean long ago), but the weather itself, the vegetation, is fucked. There are flowers in full bloom growing out of snowy pots, tropical palms of vibrant green whose trunks are blanketed in white. The snow here doesn't even fall in flakes, but tiny spheres that slush instantly underfoot but ball perfectly for snow fights. There is no grass (at least, not that I've seen), just uneven concrete, volcanic rocks, flowerpots, and trees that, while healthy, look like they require a great deal of effort to keep upright.
I didn't realize that there is a massive mountain within view of the city until two months after I got here, and I haven't seen it since. Everyone is sick. Everyone. I have been sick for so long that the degree to which I am sick now may as well be perfect health, because it is nothing compared to previous degrees of sickness, and the sickness of others.
One of my students gave me a Pikachu head made out of beads. It is fucking awesome.

Korean Medical Experiences

My second week here, I had to undergo a medical exam at the local hospital. This exam was the closest thing I've ever experienced to being abducted by aliens and experimented on.
First, I was transported against my will to a highly advanced medical facility; everything there was bright and sterile, and nobody looked even remotely like me. These beings seemed harmless enough, all going about their business as if I weren't even there.
Next came the tests, a barrage of medical probing the likes of which I have never experienced in my entire life: blood pressure, heart rate, height/weight, vision test, hearing test, blood sample, urine sample, chest scan, electrocardiogram, breathing test, question period. After I had been sufficiently violated, I was picked up and dropped straight back into the mix. A strange thing, being intensively tested in a foreign hospital.

- - -

After being sick for almost a month, I went to a local clinic to see what the deal was. It was pretty standard--waiting room, doctor, prescription, return visit, (my boss translated). However, on my second visit, I had to get a shot “here” as my boss said, pointing to her backside. “Oh” this would be a new one, I thought. It sure was. I was led into a room by a young Korean nurse and instructed to lay down on a bed behind a curtain and pull my pants down, I did. Next, a little prick, and, (whoa!) the nurse was giving me a spanking—slap, slapslap, slapslapslapslapslapslap. This was entirely unexpected...but not entirely unwelcome. I wasn't sure if this was normal, but I didn't really care, I figured this type of thing probably cost 100,000 won in Seoul, and I just got it for free. I felt better already.

Nov.29th - Korean Lesson

I had some people over Saturday night in order to pre-drink before a dance party down the street (it was sextacular) During this time, a Korean friend (part-time teacher and full-time babe) took it upon herself to write me a number of useful Korean phrases. They were too good to keep to myself, so I post them here, for all to enjoy. Use them wisely.

Oct 27-Nov 23 - Fast Forward

[I've decided to skip through the next three weeks in order to catch this blog up to the present, the past is past and I'm living in the future now.]

My first week of teaching was a trip, I had zero experience coming into this and it definitely showed my first day. It didn't help that I was given virtually no advice (at first) but was instead thrown into a classroom and observed the entire time by one of my Korean co-workers. But, after some much appreciated tips and personal adaptation, I improved rapidly. Now, three weeks in, I almost know what I'm doing.

Halloween was a crazy day. First, there was the school Halloween party, which was in itself pretty hilarious--dozens of costumed kids running around drunk on the idea that they'd be getting heaps of candy because...does it matter?
Halloween night was excellent. About forty foreigners (and a few locals) gathered at a bar called the Blue Agave and ripped it up. Everyone consumed an appalling amount of alcohol and was rendered totally senseless. A ripe nasty boozefest. Some great costumes. I was a zombie DJ.

[special note: bars have no last call in Korea, so leaving around 5am is "standard" and 2am is "early"]

Food - I've been to some great restaurants in the past few weeks: Indian, Chinese, Japanese and, of course, all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ (usually pork). It generally costs about 10 000won ($10) to eat somewhere nice, though cheaper is not unheard of. My main problem with food here is that I cannot find the ingredients I need to cook anything decent at home, nor can I go to most restaurants alone and order something myself, so, unless I go out with friends, I'm usually left hungry. Thankfully, my school provides free lunches, and they are okay.

Friday nights are the big party nights in Korea, while Saturdays are a mere echo--everyone's a bit hungover and tired from the previous nights romp, so Saturday night usually winds down around 2 or 3, if it gets started at all. Sundays are big activity days (or so I've heard, I've been too hungover to take advantage of Sundays potential thus far).

Friday November 14th was a pretty magical night. A crew of 15 people met down at Iho Beach for a bonfire in the sand under a full moon. With the squid fishing season coming to a close, there was a thin string of boats visible in the distance, their ring of bright lights (used to draw the creatures into their nets) encircling the entire island. There were walks on the beach, drunken expeditions to find firewood, and a (failed) attempt to break into a lighthouse. It was hard to believe that it was November.

School snippets:
I work for a hogwan (private school) teaching kindergarten in the morning and elementary in the afternoon. I'm one of two foreign teachers, (the other, also Canadian) and it is pretty laid back. We are free to wear pretty much whatever we want and introduce just about any game or activity to the class, as long as we get the assigned work done on time. This usually means about 2 pages of work, covering basic reading, listening and comprehension of English.

The students abilities vary greatly, from beginner to brilliant. One of the most interesting younger students is a boy who will sit and draw in his book the entire time and appear not to be paying attention at all, but when I ask him to do the work, he is able to complete it flawlessly in a matter of seconds, then he goes right back to drawing.

One of the kindergartners favorite games is to climb onto furniture and then leap off onto me. "Poo" is also a big hit.

It's not all fun and games though; one of the harshest realities I've ever witnessed is seeing a six year old girl breakdown because her parent's divorced and she "doesn't have a mom anymore."

On a brighter note, one of my "prodigy" students asked me on Friday, "there's History, but why no Herstory?" Wow!

I found a piece of paper folded up and stuffed in my back pocket the other day--I didn't put it there. When I opened it up I found it was a note from one of my students with a drawing of a smiling face that read, "NO sad. Happy time!"

On that note, I think I'll cut this post off right here and add random bits as they come to me. Until next time.