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By Marty, July 30, 2010 6:12 pm

Nothing like playing in the mud. I haven’t done that since I was knee high to a grasshopper.  Or something like that…

Anyway, there’s an annual festival on the west coast of Korea – the Mud Festival!   The city is just a small thing tucked into a bay that has some serious mud flats. They decided a few years back to capitalize on their geology by making the festival around the mud – some of which is used in making makeup and skins creams.

A group of my friends here all decided to make it a group trip so 22 of us crowded into a small bus for a five hours trip to the west coast. We left at 6:45am and spent the ride drinking and telling off-color jokes.  It rained the whole way there and was still raining when we got to the beach. Not that rain was going to matter – we were planning on playing in the mud, so what’s a little rain? By the time we got settled in our resort, unpacked and headed out to the beach the rain was just a slight drizzle but the air was warm.

Although there were quite a few Koreans there, this is probably a 70% foreigner attended affair. Lots of young people – teachers, engineers and more than few military.  The event had lots of activities including colored mud body painting, mud slides, mud mosh-pits, mud slinging areas and mud slathering areas. We liked the slathering area as it was more of a love-fest, rubbing gooey sticky mud all over each other. It turned into a mud slinging area when the army boys got there and got rowdy.

I had my camera in a ziplock baggie to keep out the rain and the mud – it worked pretty well, but it was cumbersome and a couple of the pictures didn’t turn out well.   I thought about posting them here, but it’s just too easy to post to facebook. I hope this link to my facebook album works for those of you who don’t facebook.

My facebook MudFest photos

Our resort was really nice. It was about a 30 minute walk from the beach but that was fine – everything near the beach is a 24 hour party and those of us who aren’t into that were happy while the others could make a short trip to party ’til they puked. They did and they puked. A lot.  The resort was less than a  year old and still had that new building smell.  We had a hot tub that got some serious use, too.  Although my pictures of the hot tub are fuzzy (probably a good thing) there was a significant amount of nudity.

Across the parking lot, there was a pool for the whole place. Lots of little kids and families. When we got in to play on Sunday morning, the Koreans all moved to one end and left of us to our end. We did a couple of experiments and slowly eased our group off the center and into “their” side, each time crowding them further and further into the shallow end. Whether it was fear or loathing, we weren’t sure. But the Koreans in general could be herded into a rather small area by subtly expanding our little circle. Fun stuff – someone should write a paper on non-verbal communication about it someday.

We headed back around noon on Sunday and by then the rain had finished and Sunday was bright and sunny and humid. Just in time for a hot bus ride home.

It was a much needed getaway from Ulsan. This week, I started a short, two week course at Ulsan University. They have a group of students who are going to spend a semester in Canada so they’re prepping them for living in an English-speaking city with a 4-hour/day intensive speakign and writing class. I’m working 4 hours in the morning and then  another 7.5 in the afternoon/evening at my normal school. For two weeks, I’ll feel like I’m back in the real world again working long hours and having to wake up with an alarm clock. It’s been a few years since I used one – other than vacation buses or planes.   I’d actually like to turn this short time gig into a full time job – and I might have a good shot at it. The head of the English department at Ulsan Univ, a Korean man, studied in the US – at the University of North Texas – same as me. We traded some stories of bars and restaurants in Denton that we’d both been to.  He’s a nice guy and I’m hoping our shared past might help me get into the University. We’ll see.

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By Marty, July 10, 2010 6:25 pm

Well, indeed it is. As of this writing, I’m 50.  No one ever believes that. And in Korea, where age determines whether people tack on the honorifics for older people or leave them off for younger, asking someone’s age is not uncommon.  Still, I try to take decent care of myself, exercise often and eat well. I’m in better shape than a majority of the 50 year olds that I know.

Of course, when I grow what little scruffy beard I can grow it comes in a little white. I don’t have as much collateral when it comes to guessing my age.

So, when close shaven for my birthday party, I also shave a few years off my looks and again look far younger than my 50 years of age.

I’m off for a night of drinking and possibly singing.  Happy Birthday to me!

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By Marty, June 26, 2010 6:31 pm

A clean half a dozen of them, ghostly pale yellow parallel marks on the ugly green sofa in our apartment.  The first, when it arrived, was a mystery. The 2nd more so. The 3rd became a damn full-fledged investigation with no one owning up to it.  By the time the 4th and subsequent ones showed up I had begun to suspect a problem.

It’s a cultural thing. Specifically a Korean thing.

Despite the fact the MyeongHee’s son is 18 and in his senior year of high school, MyeongHee gets up early every morning to fix his breakfast, prepare his clothes and style his hair. If she’s late, he’ll open our door and rattle it ’til she wakes. Then he’ll sit on the sofa watching TV while she prepares his breakfast.

After he eats and gets his school uniform on she style his hair. He sits on the floor while she blows his hair dry and using the straight iron.  All this extreme mothering for a boy about to be in college and/or the army is strange to me. But that’s another story for another time.

The pale yellow marks are burns from when she puts down the iron to brush or spray his hair. Asian hair is thick and can be unruly so she’s gotta get both hands in there.  I fussed at her for burning the sofa. The apartment is free and is part of the contract for teaching here. A good chunk of the furniture is not ours, and is furnished by the school including the ugly green sofa. When one day we depart, we’ll have to make amends for this poor old thing and its burns.

MyeongHee is a wonderful wife and mother.  She never once bitched, talked-back or gave me grief about the fussing I did over the old ugly green sofa. It’s not that expensive and we’ll have little trouble repairing or replacing it. And I never considered how she was managing the daily styling sessions – that happens early in the morning while I’m still in the sack. But the pale yellow marks increased no more. The six already there stand as silent sentinels to a bygone era. I was happy.

This week I learned how she was managing to style with just two hands a brush, comb, blow drier and a hot straightening iron.

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By Marty, June 15, 2010 12:45 pm

This past Sunday we went to Busan to celebrate our niece’s 1st birthday. That’s a big occasion in  Korea and dates back to an era when infant mortality was relatively high. It used to be the 100 day marker, but times have improved greatly in the past few decades.

This birthday was for GaEun, MyeongHee’s younger brother’s baby.  He’s nearly 40 and he and wife tried for years to have one of their own. They gave up and adopted her last year.  She’s a sweet baby.

The event calls for transitional Korean clothes, a “hanbok” which both the mother and GaEun wore. They matched, actually.

Part of the ceremony is for the baby to pick one of several items on a tray. Tradition says that when the baby grows up her choice will determine her career, wealth, health, etc.  I haven’t been her long enough to see if  that holds true, but its a cute tradition to watch.  GaEun grabbed with both hands and picked up a golf ball and a toy stethoscope, meaning she’ll be a doctor and will play golf – which sounds like a reasonable match.

During the ceremony, DuHong, the father, got a little choked up on his speech. Just a short sentence or two about the joys of being a parent, and given their history of trying for over 12 years nearly the whole room full of folks leaked a little around the eyes.

The other tradition about 1st birthday’s is the food. They’re nearly always held at a buffet restaurant and the amount of food is staggering.  All good stuff. The one thing I passed on was the ultra fresh octopus – those little guys were still wriggling on the platter. I saw a couple of people take a few wrigglers and pile them on their plate to be eaten still squirming.

Take a gander at the video:

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By Marty, June 10, 2010 11:53 am

Just a smattering of photos from last week’s Scooter Inferno.

Me and my partner, Sam, with our Grand Prize winnings - a couple of helmets and goggles

The Bonus shot - Dancing Girls. Almost every store grand opening or big sale event has a pair out front

At Tohamsan Garden restaurant deep in the mountains between Ulsan and GyeongJu

At the monument to Canada nuclear engineers near the Wolsong Nuclear Power Plant. I think the radiation made me get a little crazy

The Sea Penis. I swear they look just like dicks in their tubs. Pick one up and it will pee

From left, Sam, Nikki, me, Scott, Dee and Wolfie. Two teams working together until the last 15 minutes

Lots more pictures, but some aren’t fit for publication. And here, also is a the video created for the awards banquet.  Check it out.

Anyway, that’s all for now.

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By Marty, June 8, 2010 12:26 pm

This past Saturday was the 2010 Scooter Inferno.  Of course it had changed significantly from the last Inferno – of 2004.  This one allowed bicycles to play in the event. Essentially, it was a timed scavenger hunt, with the goal of taking pictures of your team at each of several scenic, historic or just relevant places around the province. Bicycles being the slowest, got more points per site and more for farther out sites than scooters and motorcycles. Motorcycles, being the fastest, got the least points but were able to get to more sites.  I was in the scooter class and me and my partner, Sam, won the event.

We rode almost 160km in 4 hours, stopping to take pictures at temples, restaurants, ports and statues. Extra points were awarded for photos of traffic accidents, nudity (yes, I bared my ass) and creativity.

The rules were:

1. Do not break any Korean traffic laws. Speed limits and traffic lights must be obeyed. If you are seen in violation of the rules, you will be deducted 10 points for each infraction.
2. Sidewalks are for pedestrians and bicycles. Do not drive on them. It is only acceptable if you are parking.
3. All riders must wear helmets on their bikes. A moving bike with a rider without a helmet (driver or passenger) is immediate team disqualification.
4. This is a fun rally, no tampering or fooling around with other teams bikes.
5. The race begins at 11 am and finishes at 4pm. Camera memory cards must be submitted by 4pm. Every 5 minutes late will be a 15 point deduction.
6. The same number of bikes must begin and end the race. If 3 bikes begin the race, the same 3 bikes must finish the race. If there is a mechanical problem, the bike must at least have been picked up by our emergency truck.
7, All team members, except the photographer, must be in the photo.
8. One ‘team’ camera per team. Please don’t put ‘point photos’ on different cameras.
9. One photo per site.
10. At least one cell phone per bike.

Scoring system

Bicycles:

• Nudity Multiplier: Any photo taken with responsible nudity will give double the regular points. This is a PG event, please nothing disgusting.

And the locations and map:

Teams didn’t get the maps and list of sites until the night before the rally. We had to plan out our list of sites to ride to carefully in order to maximize points and minimize time. With only 4 hours of ride time set aside, hitting all or even most was impossible.

I had helped with the publicity by posting the event on Ulsanonline.com and creating the registration pages, but the real organizers did a great job setting things up. The created T-shirts for the participants, collected cash donations from the motorcycle shops in town and setup a banquet following the race to award prizes (also donated from the motorcycle shops) with all-you-can-drink micro-brew beer and a buffet.

Sam and I stayed with another team for most of the day, as its more fun in groups than not. We only split up in the last few minutes of the race and capitalized on some dancing girl points and a nearby stadium nudity shot (I opened my shirt) to streak ahead and win the event. We pulled into the ending rally point at exactly 4:00pm the cut-off time.

Since the goal was taking pictures of you and your team at each site, the best part was watching the slide show of everyone’s pictures on the big screen at the banquet. There were some very artful pictures, funny pictures and just plain crazy pictures.

Having been here a few years, I had been to most of these places. But not all – there were a few sites that were new. My partner was a relative newcomer to Korea and she was wowed by most since she hadn’t had time to visit many places. Overall, it was a great event to meet new friends and get out and see parts of Korea that otherwise would stay hidden. The weather was awesome, no one had mechanical problems, no injuries (other than a little sunburn) and lots of beer at the end.

I might get some pictures up later, but my partner had the “official” team camera I’ll have to get them from her.

I’m looking forward to next year’s Inferno.

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By Marty, May 20, 2010 12:58 pm

I had planned to be doing a lot of writing over the past few weeks. I did get some writing in on my newest novel, but that’s taken a back seat. I got a few dozen pages written before being sidelined by other things going on here. What things you might ask? A plethora. All good.

First, we (my Ulsanonline.com partner, Fin, and I) have been approached by a multi-faceted group in Seoul. They had seen our site and the great stuff we’d produced for the foreigners in Ulsan.  The owner, a Korean-born, Brazil- and US-raised guy named Fabio sees a potential for us in a vastly underserved portion of Korea – the Gyeongsangnam-do province to the south and west of Ulsan. We’ll do a website, complete with lifestyle, travel and how-to information for the area. But we won’t stop at just a website. Fabio and his team are fired up about creating a magazine. A magazine that caters to both foreigners and english-speaking Koreans, complete with fabulous photos and glossy goodness.  I admit, I wasn’t keen on the idea as print seems to be going the way of the buggy whip, but they’ve got me wrapped into it. I’ll be co-editor of the magazine and Chief geek on the website.  The catch is that the local city and provincial governments all have foreign populations – teachers like me, engineers, factory workers – and they all have a budget to provide support in one form or another.

I started work as editor of the Korea Sun back in the summer of 2008. That was another glossy lifestyle magazine, but it went under before any of my writing or editing was published – costs were just too high to produce and revenue from Korean businesses for ads were just too low.  I’m somewhat wary of this being the same, printing and ads sales will be Fabio’s role and his other companies are already established. We might have a shot here. We’ll see. Faboi’s team includes several English-speaking foreigners, all of whom are counting on this to free them from teaching to focus on this full time.  I’m keeping my teaching job for now – until the $$ roll in regularly.

Here in Ulsan, with spring firmly ensconced and summer nearing, the outdoor season is upon us. We’re planning a “scooter rally” – a race/scavenger hunt to visit several places around the city and take creative pictures. I’ve been involved in the planning of this event as well.

With both the new magazine/website and scooter rally, I’ve been doing lots of programming. I’m chief geek here in Ulsan and forced myself to learn some new tricks.  Although I doubt most reading will understand what it is, Flash is a tool that is very prevalent on websites where animation, flashy, eye-catching graphics are required. You may not know what it is, but I guarantee you’ve visited and seen a website with flash.  It would be a shame if you didn’t see mine.

So here’s the programming/artwork I’ve been doing lately. These are likely transient and won’t stay up in these places forever, but for now these links work. I may, at a later date, pull them into a portfolio of sorts should I wish to build a resume for becoming a geek back in the USA someday. The website for the new magazine is still on ulsanonline.com – we’ll eventually buy a site expressly for that, but we can dovetail it off there for now. Check out the fancy lead-in here.  That cool map thingy – all Flash.  Then I made a banner for the scooter rally. It sits on the front page for now, but will certainly be gone after the rally. The cute little scooters drive across the page with links to the race site – all Flash programming. For the race site and registration, I made another fancy-pants banner on this page. The original “inferno” as they’ve called it started several years ago. They’ve skipped a few years, but its back with some flashy Flash.

Anywho, that’s why I haven’t written too much on here lately. I’ve been a busy boy.  More news later as it happens.

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By Marty, May 12, 2010 4:03 am

I still wonder how they do things so cheaply here. People here have to make a living, but somehow, they’re able to do things so much cheaper than in the U.S.

I took my bike into the bike shop a few miles away today. The shop nearest my house, although very close and owned by a childhood friend of my school director, has poor quality bikes and even worse service and repair.  Instead I go to OMK, a shop about 7km that has much better service.  They also advertise on my ulsanonline.com website, so giving them money is a reciprocal thing.  Even if they didn’t buy ad space I’d still go there.But, I digress.

I went in to their shop today to get a back brake adjusted or replaced. I’d lost braking power over the past week or two and not having worked on bicycle disc brakes before figured I’d just get them to fix it. They ended up giving me the full service. They replaced the disc pad, replaced a broken spoke on the rear wheel, realigned the wheel with some precision equipment, adjusted the front and rear  derailers, adjusted the front spokes, and the front brake.  They spent about 45 minutes pawing over the bike, plenty of time for me to browse the many accessories, while still wandering back occasionally to watch their progress.

Total price – 10k won. About $10. Of course, a few accessories caught my eye and I spent 36K total, but that doesn’t count. I didn’t have to buy those.

I wondered if maybe they give me a good deal because of the business we give each other on the website. Nope. I watched other customers come and go with equal care and attention paid to their rides with similar prices.  Korea is just cheap.

No small wonder then, that when I considered coming here years ago I remember thinking about the extreme change in salary from the USA to here. I wondered how I’d make do. I make only a fraction of what I made back home. An even more minute fraction of when I was at SGI making the big bucks. But here, I pay only 5% in taxes, the government subsidized health care is amazingly cheap, food is cheaper and I pay no rent.  Life’s good.

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By Marty, April 17, 2010 10:53 am

Since having bought the scooter, it’s gotten much easier to get up to the mountain to do some rock climbing. I’ve been up there the last several Saturdays and gotten some great climbing in.  I haven’t taken many pictures – seems like I have lots of pictures of people who asses from down below I can no longer recognize.

Getting there, however, is half the fun. In the car, SaTang just sat and watched the world go by, sometimes even sleeping as I drove. No more. Those days are over, baby.  She still likes going to the mountain and running around, chasing ground squirrels, barking at birds and begging for handouts from the Koreans who bring their entire kitchen when they climb.  If you want to get out and play, you’ve gotta make an effort. And she does extremely well sitting on the floorboard of the scooter.

SaTang rides in style up to Munsu Mountain

In case anyone is worried about safety, she’s wearing a harness and is attached to the bike via leash. If she falls off, I can yank her right back on without choking her. No worries about that, as she’s content just to sit between my feet and lean against my calves.

Sparky, one pup we decided to keep is too little (and too jumpy) to go up on Munsu. She’s cute as hell, but so far hasn’t proven quite as smart as her mama. Our climbing areas have a few meters of walking area between the cliff faces and the next drop-off, but I’m afraid she would just be too curious.  We might wait until she’s a little less puppy before taking her out and turning her into a full blown crag dog. In the meanwhile, she goes to MyeongHee’s hairshop where she’s fawned over by MH and her customers.

Sparky, still mostly furball, models her scarf

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By Marty, April 8, 2010 3:41 am

After what has seemed like a very long winter, Spring has finally decided to make its way here to the Korean Peninsula. And in short order. We only got a few dustings of snow this year, but most people here say it was the most since 2004/2005, the first year I came here. And indeed we had a couple of large snowstorms then, dropping 3-5 inches each time. This year, while no large snow storms hit, it has instead been one long cold front, interrupted only briefly by chilly rains.

Despite the lack of large snowstorms, it’s been chilly for months, near freezing each morning when I woke up and only getting reasonable during the afternoon. Just reasonable. One still needed a jacket even in the warmest part of the day, and while riding my bike I was still wearing heavy gloves and wool socks.

All that was just until this week. With the advent of April, spring has come to Korea, and it seems the plants were only waiting for a few days of warmth to burst forth from their wintery sleep. And burst forth they have. From what was just last week a bleak, grey ride along the river has now been turned into an explosion of pinks, whites and greens.

Just across the street from my apartment are a couple of cherry trees and magnolias. While they are pretty, they’re just a single instance of the multitude of blooms around the city. I don’t have the artistic ability to capture with my camera the glory of miles of river front park lined in delicate pink cherry blossoms and green bamboo, dappled with white magnolia.  You’ll have to take my word for it.  Entire playgrounds  nearly hidden and surrounded by armies of pink blossoms, swarm with young mothers whose colorfully clothed children were too small to walk the last time it was warm enough to play outside. Hillsides that were green in spots only from the evergreen trees are now carpeted in bright green new leaves.

I enjoy the spring, for there are phases of beauty here in Korea, each with it’s own grandeur. While the cherry blossoms rule this week and perhaps next, they’ll soon fall off, creating a blizzard of pink snowflakes and later, lush carpets of petals that have been gently pushed by the wind into drifts. Shortly thereafter, the azaleas will bloom, creating their own rivers of bright reds, pinks and purples along the thoroughfares.