Wow, lots to cover this month: Christmas, New Year's, "Return of the King", even a bar fight. So let's just get right into it...
Another time, I went with Rob and Sean to the Three Alley Pub, which is our favorite bar in the foreigner neighborhood (Itaewon) and has surely been mentioned many times before. When I arrived, Rob and Sean were at a table with two American girls. They were pretty big girls and I figured they must be soldiers. They claimed that they were in the military but not actually soldiers: they said they were interpreters. But their Korean was horrible, if I do say so myself. One of them didn't know how to get someone's attention (which is pretty basic, especially in a bar), they mispronounced the word for "ice" repeatedly, and the guy serving our table just spoke English to them whenever they tried to speak Korean. We also speculated that they were just a couple of English teachers who were pretending to be in the military. But they were pretty funny, at least.
Since I was going back to Connecticut for Christmas, Vivi and I decided to celebrate before I left. We were also celebrating the end of Vivi's senior year in college, specifically the fact that she had finished her grueling senior art exhibit. In addition, we never had a proper celebration of our one-year anniversary (which was in October!), so we planned on going to the French restaurant at the top of the hotel where we had met so long ago.
Unfortunately the restaurant was booked so we decided to go to the Chinese restaurant instead. It was majorly disappointing. The food was good (as one might expect, since hotel restaurants are usually the best ones), but the service was horrible. We had to ask repeatedly for ice water, they brought out the main dish but didn't bring the rice, and then didn't clean our table after we were done. After about 10 minutes, I said to Vivi that we should probably complain. Well, Vivi has no qualms about that, and she really let the manager have it. He was really apologetic and gave us dessert for free, but I don't think I would ever go back there. Usually the service at these restaurants is great, but this was really disappointing.
I was very happy to see everyone, but I think that I really tried to do too much while I was back. I was only in America for eight days but it felt like I needed another week to do all the things I wanted to do. Plus, I never really got over jetlag, so I was tired at weird times and wide awake at others.
We did, of course, get in a trip to Hooters. The girl who was serving us wasn't very nice to us (I think she may have overheard my brother call her "stupid ugly") but the food was as good as I remembered. Then we went to a bar where they had yummy Harpoon on tap; this is a big deal for me, you know. That was a lot of fun. At the end of the night, when they were closing, I noticed two plates of Christmas cookies on a table. They were covered but I thought I could grab one without being noticed; I was wrong. I totally got caught stealing a cookie, but I pointed out that I had already touched it so I might as well eat it. My brother and his friends were pissing themselves. =)
I did get some good Christmas presents. My dad got me a portable MP3 player, which was high on my list. It's not very fancy but it does the job. My brother got me a portable DVD player. For some reason, some DVDs skip when I try to watch them on the little monitor. That sucks. But the cool thing is that I can hook up the portable player to my TV (even the one in Korea), and the same DVDs work perfectly. So now I can watch DVDs on my TV, which is great. I got some sweaters and socks and underwear, but those two gadgets were the highlights.
I went to Manhattan with my brother and his wife to meet my mom the day after Christmas. We went to Rockefeller Center to see the tree, and then went to Tavern on the Green. It's pretty posh. But my mom shelled out for it, so I can't complain. Then we went to Macy's (which was a zoo) and headed home.
The next day I went up to Malden to visit my aunt, and then watched the Patriots-Bills game with my friends Eric and Sheryl. She is eight months pregnant and is pretty huge. I had considered not going to Boston but am very glad that I did.
Aside from being too busy and too tired, though, I had a really good time. It was good to see everyone and be home for the holidays. I also had a lot of Wendy's, Pop Tarts, Vanilla Coke, and Hostess goodies, so that was good, too. =)
I flew direct from JFK to Seoul, which is a 14-hour flight but is completely preferable to flying through LA or SF. I actually slept for a few hours and it was a totally bearable experience. Vivi met me at the airport and then we came back to my apartment and had Domino's for dinner. How Korean. I went to bed at 1am and slept until 10, so I really had no trouble readjusting to Korean time. I think what really killed me was the drinking the first few nights I was in Milford.
I can't believe how fast 2003 went by. I guess it's because I had a routine every single month. And really not much has changed. I did change apartments, but I still have basically the same friends, the same job, the same girlfriend. Odd-numbered years have tended to be boring and/or bad for me recently, and 2003 really was nothing special.
I have high expectations for 2004. I suspect that I will not be updating my "Korean adventure" site after the summer, because I don't plan on living here then. Hopefully, I will get accepted to one of the four graduate programs I applied to (I got my GRE scores and they were all as high as expected) and will be living in Berkeley, Seattle, New York, or New Haven this time next year. Of course that has implications on my relationship with Vivi, and I cannot overlook those, but we're trying not to worry about that now. Vivi also wants to go to school in New York next fall, and so we're crossing our fingers that things will somehow work out.
Before the movie, Vivi and I went to dinner and I had a Sprite. I joked "I shouldn't have drunk that; I'll never make it through a three-hour movie", but I went to the bathroom before the movie, and I figured I'd be okay.
I was wrong. About 20 minutes into the movie, I felt like I had to go, and I just figured it would pass. But after a while it got to be pretty bad, and I was squirming so much that Vivi asked if I was okay. I looked at my watch and we had only been there an hour!! Uh oh.
I made through the second hour (still squirming and not enjoying the movie much at all) but after the Battle of Gondor was over, and I had a feeling they were going to deal with Frodo being caught by the orcs, I thought, "it's now or never."
I managed to trip over just about everyone in my row, and finally made it to the bathroom. It was a fairly amazing piss, I don't mind telling you.
I did make it back in time to see the human army arrive at the gates of Mordor and then for all the Frodo-Gollum stuff at the end. I enjoyed the movie MUCH more after that point!
However, I thought the ending was pretty lame. I kept thinking "okay, this must be the end". But it wasn't. Then I thought, "okay, THIS is the end." But no. Then I thought "is he going to hug EVERYONE goodbye?" Thank God I had already gone to the bathroom by this point.
Anyway, Vivi tells me it was a really great movie (though the beginning part with Gollum really freaked her out). And I'll probably go see it again just so I can be more focused. But no Sprite at dinner next time...
On Saturday night I was out with my old roommate Rob. We were with our friend Caroline (who is Korean) and a bunch of her co-workers. About 10 white guys, 7-8 Korean girls, and 3-4 Korean guys.
It was a pretty small place and Rob, Caroline, and I were sitting at the bar with our backs to the rest of the room. It occurred to me that, aside from one table of three Korean guys (in their 20s, I'd guess), everyone there was part of our group.
After a while, those three Korean guys were getting really drunk and making a lot of noise, but that's pretty common, so we didn't think much of it. But then they were yelling something about the music, and they seemed pretty pissed off. Then I felt something hit my foot, and it really hurt. I looked down to see a piece of ice on the ground, and thought "maybe it just fell off the table."
But, no, it wasn't a piece of ice. It was a shot glass. And I said to Rob "I think those guys just threw a shot glass at me". No sooner did those words leave my mouth than all of the bottles on the bar SMASHED and glass flew everywhere. We were definitely under attack!
Two of the three guys by this time were standing up in the "yeah, I just threw that, what are you going to do about it?" position. I recall yelling something to the effect of "f*cking a$$holes!" but before I could even get off my seat (I'm not sure what I would have done anyway), a bunch of the white guys in our group were all over these dudes.
Caroline immediately pulled Rob out of the bar and the bartender ran over and jumped in as well. It was hard to tell who was fighting and who was trying to break it up, and (this sounds horrible but it's true) I wasn't sure which Korean guys were part of our group and which ones had thrown the shot glass.
One of the Korean girls grabbed my sweater and started yelling at me to stay out of it, but honestly I probably wasn't going to do anything anyway. I was holding a bottle, though, just in case I was in a desperate situation. I have always dreamed of clocking someone with a beer bottle (it was Sam Adams, too, which would have been very fitting).
Well, as most bar fights do, this one ended with a lot of swearing and shoving but no real damage done. The three guys left (one of them actually apologized to us) and the evening continued right along. Of course, Caroline and Rob were at another bar by now, so they missed the entire thing...