Boracay b'y...

I'm super slack writing here. So don't even know if anyone still checks this out, and well, not that concerned about it anyway.

I went to Boracay in January. It's an island in the Philippines that is pretty much paradise. Amazing beach, clear sea, coral reefs, cock fights, cheap rum...

I went with Matt, and we met Lana and Sam there, along with about 10 people from their school. So we had a good crew of East Coast Canadians, and an even better little crew of Newfs.

The only problem was Matt wouldn't stop greasing up his chest and it was kinda embarrassing for the rest of us...

So, what did I do there... Let me think.

Sat on the beach, day and night.



Ate lots of great burgers from a place called jammers.

Had some Chinese kid try to bury my sandals.

Drank a beer or two.

Didn't fuck around because there are security guys everywhere and they are serious.

Swam in the ocean.

Saw Bliss Jeffreys.

Got a retarded sunburn. Maybe one of the worst in the history of mankind.

Went on an afternoon bachelor party boat ride and drank and went scuba diving and visited another island with monkeys that a friend gave beer to and the monkey drank it and got angry when it was gone and threw the bottle back at us.

Went scuba diving for the first, and maybe last, time.

Saw lots of really funny beach kids.

Saw the future Wu-Tang Clan of the Philippines.


Went to the Witch Cafe on the end "other side" of the island. No one was there besides us and it was kinda cool. Some kids lead us there. The oldest kid was smooth. His little sister kept whispering "Ask for money" but he knew how to play his cards. I told him I could hear her and he said "Sir, you have very good ears." We gave them some money.

Watched some cock fights. Intense. The chicken fights weren't as intense as the people betting and yelling and making weird hand signals and throwing money around.

And then I came back to Seoul and went to work 8 hours after I got off the airplane...

Violence...

Here is an article from the English newspaper here in Korea.

The title is "Koreans don't rule out violence." Quite the awesome title.

The first line states "More than three out of every 10 Koreans regard violence as a more effective solution to problems than the law."

Maybe they think this because the Korean police are a joke. The culture of Korea is all about respecting your elders, so if the cop is younger than the offender, the offender doesn't feel he has to follow the police's orders.

But, that is not the point. There are some really crazy stats in the article.

"Most of the respondents (88 percent) had gone through physical punishment when growing up, and 50 percent had experienced beatings for no specific reason."

"Among those beaten for no reason during childhood, 69.1 percent said that their parents were violent toward each other."

Fifty percent were beaten for no reason? Um, seems a little high to me. Isn't that half!

There ain't much I can really say about this. I'd like to ask some Koreans if those numbers seem right, but dunno if I wanna go asking my friends or co-workers "Did you get beat up at home for no reason?"

If I do ask about it, I'll add what they say here.

Peace and Love.

Top gun...

Back from Shanghai.

Crazy tower, blimp with giant TV screen, TV boat...

Gonna post some pics on facebook soon.

It is a cool city because it's so new and modern, but so old as well. Beijing is the same, but the contrast between the old and new is much more pronounced in Shanghai.

Old Town... The harmonica: The instrument of choice for the Chinese youth.

The new is much flashier and exagerated. Pudong, the new built up business district, is kind of a crazy place. It's the new, built up part of the city that is trying to compete with Hong Kong's skyline. Although interesting, there are just a few too many tacky buildings, and the flat landscape can't really compete with the big hill/small mountain that the Hong Kong skyline is built upon.

Pudong skyline from our river boat tour.

But back to Shanghai and Beijing. I guess the older places are similar. I feel like I explored Shanghai more thoroughly because I was there about twice as long. And Matt and I were much more into checking out different parts of the city than shopping.

Beijing has the old Hutongs (sp?) but we didn't really see a lot of the older, more genuine Hutongs. Many are kind of refurbished for tourists, but in Shanghai we went to Old Town and although some of that area has been converted into a tourist shopping zone, we also spent a full afternoon cruising the back alleys.

Those small back streets made me feel like I was in China and not just any major city in any country. There is so much life and energy there and it's a shame that the whole area will likely be swallowed up by towering apartment buildings.

A shame for me anyway, but I'm curious how the people who live there feel? They'd probably prefer to move into a nice, new apartment building with their own bathrooms and sink, etc. But who really knows besides them.

We also went to Xitang. Tom Cruise was there not so long ago.

The nice, touristy area of Xitang. The old guys cell phone is better than mine...

It's a small canal town outside of Shanghai that has turned into a tourist destination. An old Japanese man I met at the bus station put it best. "It's basically a kilometer of souveneir shops." He was kind of right. Way too many shops selling the same junk, but once you get off the beaten path, it's worth the trip.

The town is well maintained because of the number of tourists that pass through, but outside of the main area of the canal town is the real canal town. Much more rundown and much less vibrant. We also left the canal town and went throught the regular town adjacent to the canal town. Again, this felt like real China.

"Real China"

I'm not even sure what I mean by saying "real China" but it's just the feeling I had. Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong are not representative of the average Chinese lifestyle. Outside of the three richest, most powerful cities people have a different standard of living and it was interesting to see that.

It's not total poverty or anything resembling that. It's just more rugged and tough than the major cities. Even Beijing is much tougher than Shanghai and Hong Kong.

But Xitang keeps it the reallest. Site of a Tom Cruise running scene in Mission Impossible:III, this place gets big props from me.

And walking the same streets as Tom Cruise was definitely the highlight of the trip.

If not the highlight of my life...

Shanghaied

Going to Shanghai next week for another Chinese Christmas...

Then back to Korea for three weeks to teach English camps...

Next stop after that is the Philipines for about a week...

Me and Matt are gonna meet Sam and Lana there...

Ju ga lay?????

Here's something that happened a few weeks ago... Below is an email I wrote to my mom about it... Rather than write about it again, I'll just post that email...

So, last week I'm teaching my last afterschool class of the day.

It's 4:30 and I'm about to start class when this crazy woman and her ajumma friend bust into my classroom. The woman starts yelling at the boys and then slaps 1 boys in the face REALLY hard. I run back to try to stop her but before I get there she slaps another boy just as hard. These boys are only in grade 4.

I really just didn't know what to do. I don't know the rules in Korea. I dont' know if I can push this lady out of the room, etc... So I just room to find the Mrs Park (my Korean co-teacher was still in the classroom but she was stunned).

So, the Mrs Park and a few other teachers run back to my classroom and take control. It was unbelievable! She was an expert. She was telling the crazy mom to shut up and she just commanded everyones respect.

By now, 5 or 6 kids are crying because they are so afraid of this mother of this girl Angela. Angela is also in this class. Her mom said the boys tease her daughter and sometimes steal her shoes after class. But, Angela never told any teachers about this she just told her mom. So her mom came to school to kick some ass or something.

Mrs Park tells her to apologize to everyone and if she leaves right now, it will all be over. So, she apologizes to the boys, to my co-teacher, and to me. But I didn't really want her apology and I just ignored her when she was speaking to me.

Anyway, Angela quit that class so that shouldn't happen again....

The only thing I heard from the mom that I understood was Jew-ga-lay...

It means "Do you want to die?"...

Told you so...

Here's some clips of some financial guy. They are from a year or two ago and he pretty much predicted what was gonna happen to the US economy, but all the other "experts" just mock the guy.



Not that I know anything about any of this, but interesting video none the less...

Rocktigers...

I went to Club DGBD (AKA Club Drug) with a friend and we watched a Korean rockabilly band called the Rocktigers.

Not really my style, but they are a really fun band to watch live, and the singer is super sexy. There were a lot of foreign guys at the show and I think half of them were there just to watch her. Definitely not a bad idea.

Thankfully my friend is a cute Korean girl so I didn't feel like a big loser there just to watch that girl singing!