Sorry for the Delay

As some of you may have noticed I have not updated my blog for a while. You may have been wondering if this was due to my lack of interest in continuing to blog, or perhaps nothing interesting has happened to me, or maybe I was just dead. None of these are true. The problem has been, and continues to be, my lack of a computer. A few days after my last blog post I broke my computer by tripping over the power cable. I thought I would be getting it fixed soon so I didn't bother trying to find an alternate way to blog. Unfortunately my computer was not fixed soon, nor is it fixed now, and I have since moved to PC Bongs (internet cafes) for my computing needs, so I should be more faithful in my updates going forward.

Since I am writing this in a PC Bong I figured I would start by describing it. I have never really used an internet cafe in the States before so comparing them to the ones in Korea is a bit difficult, but I will do my best. First of all even though I compare them to internet cafes, that's not really a good picture for PC Bongs since PC Bongs are not about surfing the internet so much as gaming. All of the computers feature large screens (probably about 20 inch), a comfortable reclining chair and fast processing power. The room it self which houses the computer has dim lighting and lots of fans. There are few to no rules while in here it seems, you can eat (even having food delivered), drink, sleep (when I walked in this morning there was a guy snoring in one of the chairs while the computer was on), and even smoke. The smoking part may be a big surprise for my American readers, but in Korea you can smoke nearly everywhere, so it isn't surprising you can smoke here too. It should be noted though that the official position on smoking in this particular PC Bong is not clear. On the initial login screen there is a clear no smoking decal, indicating you can't smoke here. On the other hand the person at the register smokes and they provide ashtrays when you walk through the door, so they seem to be sending mixed signals. Speaking of the register, the best part of PC Bongs is the price. Despite all you get, you still only pay about $0.75 an hour. Also, for those of you wondering, yes Koreans seem to really enjoy Starcraft. Every computer here has Starcraft installed, and I have yet to come here where I didn't hear or see at least one person playing it, even if there were only a few people using computers.

Speaking of Starcraft leads me to the Television here. I recently got cable hooked up (I've been trying to get it hooked up for a while, and it eventually got done). I've only had it for a few days so I can't say too much, but from what I can tell there is a channel that seems devoted to showing people playing Starcraft all day and night. The all day and night might be an exageration, but everytime I've turned to it they have been showing Starcraft battles, although during the day when I am at work they may show something different, I can't say. Despite this being Korea, you can easily find some English programming. They seem fond of NCIS, CSI, Bones, the Mentalist, and other such shows. There's usually an English movie or two showing as well (although all of these have Korean subtitles). I also have CNN. They apparently also show the Simpsons regularly, but I haven't been able to find it yet.

On an unrelated note, I thought I would describe a night out with my coworkers to show why I like Korea, although it is a double edged sword. A couple of weeks ago we went out to celebrate two of my coworker's birthdays. We went after work, so we started about 9:30pm. We went to this place where you cooked oysters, clams, muscles (also pork and chicken) over coals at your table. There was also a soup with the same seafood in it. In the soup they also threw in a live octopus, which was rather shocking and a little disgusting. I can tell you that there is nothing apetizing about watching living tentacles flay around in your soup as it cooks. Anyway, there were about 20 of us. We all ate our fill, we ordered loads of drinks, and ended up being at the place for at least a few hours, eating and drinking to our hearts content. The price? Less than $20 a person. Most of us went on to "round two" at a soju bar. I honestly don't know how long we were there (but it was a while), we had some food and lots of drinks. The cost? About $10 a person. We then went to a Nuri Bong, which is Korea's version of karaoke. In Korea, instead of being in a bar with lots of strangers singing, you are given a room with just your friends to sing to their hearts content. We sang about an hour or so. After that I decided to go home, while most other people were going onto yet another bar. You are probably wondering how this is possible, since bars close at 2am, and surely it was past 2 at this point (it was). You see, in Korea apparently bars and such never actually close (or if they do it is sometime well after sunrise). After all of this I ended up getting home sometime after 4am (the record for me has been 5:30am). This is the bad part of Korea. In the state when you go out you know you'll be ending it around 2am, in Korea there is no set end point, so if you aren't watching the time closely the time can just fly. The good part is that even after such a long, funfilled evening, I spent less than $40 (that includes the cab ride home). Try going out to a nice dinner with fresh seafood and having a few drinks for just a couple of hours. You'll probably spend a lot more than this. Although you'll probably get home before 4am. I guess it's all tradeoffs.

I hope this post will satisfy your curiosity for a while. As I said I will hopefully be blogging more regularly again. I have lots of things I could be writing about (I didn't even talk about work in this post), but I have to be running off to teach impressionable young minds.