Arrival in Korea - Nov-28-2009

Random Korean Trivia

1 - 1000 won (Korean currency) is roughly a Canadian dollar
2 - Korea is 14 hours ahead of Canada

The ride was 13 hours on the plane alone, along with 5 more hours of going through customs, baggage checking, baggage pickup and walking through the airport. To avoid suffering jetlag, I had a contest with my dad to see who can stay awake the longest and simply put I just creamed him. As the plane sped up and took off from Canadian soil, it started to hit me that: wow, I'm really gone for a few years aren't I? Thankfully Facebook will make sure that I'm somewhat up to date on you guys. =S

The food was ass served on plastic = sandwiches, bananas, wine/coffee/tea and juice for snacks and refreshments. The two meals they gave us were ham omelette and bibimbap (bad ones). Some of the stewardesses were damn hot and they gave exceptional service. I spent all my time watching movies on the personal screen everyone has attached to the seat of the person in front of them. I finally got to see Transformers 2, Ice Age 3, Up and Back to the Future. The stupid bitch in front of me kept changing her seat posture while I was watching my movies. It especially got annoying during the fast paced parts of the movie and I was getting a little irritated. Thankfully I was watching Up (which turned out to be a shitty movie contrary to what I've been told) so I wasn't bothered that much. Despite that the most irritating part was the descending part of the trip, my ears were killing me.

We landed and Incheon International Airport around 3:15AM and managed to collect our roughly 100KGs of bags. The plan was to go take the 5:30AM one-way coach bus to my hometown of Mokpo. We had about an hour and half to kill so I walked around the airport and found what was apparently the '7/11' of Korea called MINI-STOP. I took a look inside and holy crap it's the best convenience store I've ever seen. I bought a lunchbox for 2000 won (2 bucks) and it was so damn good. The plastic box had bulgogi meat, kimchi, spicy squid, pickled radish and rice all in decent portions. In Canada that shit would've cost me over 10 bucks or 10 000 won. >_>

It's also interesting to note that there's no visible tax in Korea. Aside from the taxes we pay being much less than Canada's, it's all included into the base price. So that 2000 won lunch I bought was probably 1600-1700 won. I also love how the prices always end in zeros. If you don't know what I mean, go watch www.youtube.com/watch?v=FffTJk-gFKc and you'll see. Pennies are bullshit.

For some reason unexplained we ended up waiting til 6:30AM and headed over to the bus stop (with 100KGs mind you). Just when we got there, we saw the bus leave the stop and move on. Unlike Canada where sometimes the bus driver will sympathize with you and stop, Korean buses run on a tight schedule and are always moving fast. Thanks to that dickface, we waited until 8AM for the next one. We ended up just taking the bus to Seoul then transferring from there to go to Mokpo (roughly 5 hours on the road). For some reason we ended up transferring a few more times and had a resting point at Muan (a town outside of the main city).

Well finally after like 6 hours we arrived at the bus terminal where my uncle was waiting to pick us up. When we got home, we said hello to my aunt and had a huge ass lunch at their place. Afterwards we headed out to get our cellphones registered. Mine is a white LG LH5000 and it's a pretty slick phone. I gotta say, Koreans own the world in the cellphone industry, almost everyone here has a really nice phone with them. I'm also learning to text in Korean and it takes a bit of practice. Consanants on the left and vowels on the right, the star button to double letter and the pound button to change between letters.

In the evening we visited my grandmother at the care center she's staying in. She's had Alzheimers for a while and I already prepared myself for the fact that she wouldn't remember me. It wasn't until I saw her in person that I realized how bad it was. All my life I had the memories of her being healthy and fairly active, it was her who took care of me as a baby so it has a more lasting impression. To see her like this really killed me and we were all in tears over her condition. She seemed very sad herself that she can't remember her own relatives. I'm going to be visiting her on a weekly basis to spend some time with her. Hopefully her memory will somewhat improve, but it doesn't seem likely at this point. But I do hope that even if it's a small improvement, it would mean the world to me.

My uncle/aunt train themselves at 4:30AM and are forcing me to go along with them. (Seriously? 4:30AM training at this stadium?) There's also a gym located conveniently in front of our condos so I'll be going there regularly to carve myself back in shape... after our 4:30AM workout of course.. >_>

As for my martial arts plan, it turns out Kyokushin only exists in Seoul and Busan. There's a place called the K-1 Fighting Gym, where aspiring fighters go to train. I've also been told that it's the favoured training ground for the Mokpo gangsters who are apparently well known in Korea for their savage fighting skills and criminal activities. o_O Oh well, I guess training will have to wait until I move to another city later on.

For those of you who are wondering, yea it's true, the guys are fairly tall (or at least taller than me) and a lot of the girls I've seen so far are above average in looks and are all well dressed. I guess it's true, Koreans are one of the most metro sexual races around. I also decided to test my pick-up game for fun with a hot girl working at the store where I got my phone. Knowing fluent English really does get your stats up and I'm sure it sounds much better than the wannabe sexy English guys over here try to use.