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.