Sleeze...

A couple weekends ago I met some friends near the foreign language university. The area is called Waedae and it's not far from my home. There were people from China, Poland, Belarus, Uraguay, America, Canada, Germany, and maybe a few more countries but I can't remember...

So, when the party was over we walked around looking for a good bar. We walked for a good while and didn't really find an interesting bar, but we did find something interesting.

We came to Cheongnyangni Station and thought we saw a place that may have some bars, but what we found was a giant red light district. I looked it up online and it's called "Cheongnyangni 588." Prostitution used to be legal here, but supposedly it's illegal now. Well, you would never guess it's illegal if you came across this place.

This place has five or six intersecting roads and on both sides of the streets are buildings with windowed walls, pink lights, and scantily clad girls sitting inside the windows.

The crazy thing is that this is so wide open, right next to a subway station. We walked around there and even found a police station right next to it. Apparently it's ok for Koreans to get service there, but not foreigners (and that is backed up by the link above).

I really wanted to take some pictures, but I was too chicken. So I took this picture for a sketchy alley in between the main streets. You can see the pink glow.

I went to Google and this was the best picture I could find. That's it right there I think. And if it isn't, it's exactly like that anyway.

I like this picture. That guy looks so sad. Shouldn't it be the girl who looks sad?

Scammin'

Neither of us were overly excited about seeing that band and then we found out the tickets we 60,000 Won (about $60 give or take). That was a bit much to see a band we didn't really care to see.

So as we were walking away from the ticket counter with no tickets some old Korean man came up to us and said "I can get you in 30,000 Won." After a little consideration you said no and walked around outside the festival grounds.

The concert was in Olympic Park so there was a nice hill where it was possible to see the stage (without going in to pay the 60 bucks). We went to get something to eat and planned on watching the show from the hill. $60 was just too much.

As we walked around we decided to go check out that $30 old man again. We were kind of afraid of getting ripped off so we made a plan. We would bargain with him and get him down to $20. Then, one of us would go with him and if the scam didn't work, we'd split the loss. I could deal with losing ten bucks.

So, we approached the man and got him down to $20 each. He reaches in his pocket and takes out some plastic armbands. Once we knew how he planned on getting us in, we just went for it. He put the plastic button on armbands on our wrists and then put one on himself. He said "inside you give back."

This guy had a pretty decent scam. Although the real armbands were just paper, the people at the door aren't gonna look that hard to notice the fakes.

We walked in with the guy with zero problems, gave his fake armabands back, then met our friends who all paid 60 each to get in.

Suckers...

Don't mess around...

Somehow I ended up watching videos of the LA Riots and came across these... Don't mess with the Koreans...

The economist...

1000 Won versus The Canadian Dollar

Not only is the Canadian dollar doing really well, but the Korean Won is the worst performing currency in Asia this year.

This shit shouldn't matter to me.

But it does.

It really really really really does...

Ouch...

Wow... This is harsh...

I can't even really understand how it is possible...

And, who knew Slovakia were so good?

I see the nuns are gay...

Rolling Stone Magazine's website had a feature of the 25 funniest videos on the internet. Some of them aren't that funny, but this one is pretty good.

For your new lifestyle...

I changed apartments and moved to a new part of the city. I'm now North of the river and pretty central. The area is called Wangsimni, or at least that's the name of the subway station. It has three lines passing through so it's really convenient to get to school (just take the purple line) and go just about anywhere because the green line also passes through here (the green line is the main line that makes a loop through the city).

The big circle is where I live now. The other ones are where I used to live (Munjeong) and where my school is (Geoyeo - pronounced guh-yuh). Yeah, my school is still in the same place and it looks far because it kind of is, but I only gotta leave my place about 20 minutes earlier to get to school on time. The subway is like lightning or something. You can click the pic to blow it up.

This is the view from my window. I'm only on the fifth floor and wish I was a little higher, but at at least I have a bit of a view. I don't have a picture of the outside of the building yet because I never take my camera with me. I'll probably take a crappy cell phone picture someday soon.
The living room/den/recreation room/bedroom. The hardwood is real. For real.
Here's the alternate angle.
The kitchen/laundry room.
Bathroom. Check out that toilet!! It's got a computer on it.
Oh yeah. It sprays water up your ass. But... I got the it unplugged from the socket... I swear.
Now I just gotta figure out how to use it.

The only thing I know how to do is heat up the seat...

Which is pretty damn awesome!