THE ANSWER IS 12
#231 Still here...Welcome to the Show...
9/17/10The new semester didn't bring about any real surprises. Two of our people left, but we had the four hires our school ricetard-edly took on mid-semester this spring to bolster our numbers. I lost the one class of overtime I had last semester. The devil still works here. I still have Friday's off, so the world isn't too bad of a place, this part of it anyway.
My final semester of grad school kicked off on the same day as KNU's new semester. I'm off to a late start, because it took so long to navigate through the minefield of garbage on the course's website, I found myself mired in the second week with nothing to show for it. I'm just now getting caught up with it all. I can't wait to be done with this program!
The semester got underway the day after my 34th birthday. I have officially entered my mid-30s. I enjoyed a great weekend. Unfortunately, I can recall little of it. It kicked off two days earlier on Friday at the sixth running of the Not Quite Right Hash (NQRH3) down at a wild bar well outside of Pyeongtaek built in the shape of a giant helicopter. We had an on-after at an apartment. I slept on Timber and Lucky's floor. Lucky gave me a six-pack for the train ride north the next morning. Nobody wanted any, so I had breakfast to myself. The Yongsan Kimchi H3 and Seoul HHH blurred into one, long tear. I picked up a room at Sincheon Station (the good one next to Jamsil), got cleaned up and went to dinner at my favorite Chuncheon ttalkgalbi restaurant. An hour's nap after dinner set me straight for the remainder of the evening.
I managed to get out of bed the next morning in time to dead hare a truly sh*tty trail for Southside. I had vodka mudslides for breakfast as I walked and chalked. Tot and Shitonya introduced me to the magical world of White Dogs as the three of us and Ball Cock Dumper bag-sat for the pack. The police almost kicked us out of our down-down spot. I convinced half of the pack to steer away from Evilwon for an afternoon and ate at a nearby Chinese lamb restaurant. Timber took BCD, Brian and I on a Mr. Toad-style wild ride home in the magic Bongo, a great end for a great birthday.
By the Numbers...
1.42 : Number of movie tickets (in billions) sold in America in 2009. 4 : Number of movie tickets (in billions) sold in America in 1946. They didn't have movies on television, videos, DVDs, or evilnet.
63 : Price (in U.S. dollars) just for tickets for a family of four to see How to Train Your Dragon in 3-D at one AMC theater in New York last week. Imagine what they probably would have to blow on snacks in addition to that.
3 : South Korea's worldwide rank in rapes.
70 : Percentage increase of child rape in Korea over the past three years.
4,419 : Number of surveillance cameras installed at Korean schools.
10,000 : Additional number of surveillance cameras to be installed at Korean schools around the peninsula.
23,000 : Number of pager subscribers in Korea.
12,000 : Monthly price, in Korean won, paid by Korean pagers subscribers to the nation's last surviving beeper company, Seoul Mobile Telecom. Even it is expected to shut down next June when it has to reapply for its frequency license.
15 : Number, in millions, of pager subscribers at Korea's peak in 1997.
8282 : A popular pager code in Korea meaning "hurry up" if you know your Korean numbers.
1212 : Another popular Korean pager code meaning "buy me a drink."
On the Road Again...
6/10
I've got a few minutes between Manila and Kuala Lumpur to spit out a quick update. It has been one wild week. The wedding has kept me non-stop busy since Mom and I arrived Tuesday night and found an Ascott doorman who gave us an envelope with the details for a quick trail to the Outback. I had already gone through some wine in Incheon and a half-dozen San Mig Pales on the flight. That was to be par for the course until last night. Voice and I helped Cheeri prepare for the wedding for the next week between getting ripped.
The wedding was an experience. The Catholic church was hundreds of years old and not air-conditioned. I sweated like a Hasher in church throughout the ceremony in my special wedding barang. I was best man, but not having done a rehearsal, none of us knew what to do. I guess that Catholicism is popular enough and that time is short enough that they don't have to do rehearsals. Luckily, I just had to stand, sit or kneel when the rest of the crowd did. It was a beautiful ceremony, especially considering that I didn't have to wear a tux!
6/30/10
Cooter should be on the ground in Kuching if his flight arrived on time. I woke up with a fever. A two-hour walk with Mom and a couple of aspirin will hopefully fix whatever is wrong with me. My guess is rabies or scurvy.
Mom and I met with a lot of old and new friends yesterday. We found Voice, Countess, Jeffe, Thanx, and Silicone. We plowed through five cans of Tiger and 40 of Tsingtao at a street vendor's eatery. I'm loving Borneo!
9/15/10
This summer was amazing! I attended my first InterHash and added a new country's stamp to my passport, Indonesia, for the first time in several years. I saw so many old friends and made several new ones. I spent weeks with Mommagram and Cooter. I saw Cheeri get married. I married Cheeri and Tarsier at the InterHash Red Dress Run in front of more than a thousand Hashers.
Cooter went home. Mom and I relaxed for 12 days in Bangkok. She was worried about the Red Shirts, until I explained that all of that mess had ended in the spring. I Hashed. We Hashed. I got to do my second Nonthaburi H3. Mom got insanely lost on trail in the dark on a Monday night with Cowboy. I had to go out on a search mission and lucked out when I found them very near the on-in. Mom was happy to get massages and eat some great food. We returned to my place for a week. Mom flew back to Oklahoma, Dad and the animals the following Monday; I lit out for Bali later the same afternoon. Thanks to the devil I work with, my department lost the camp we've been doing for at least a decade. This gave me another two weeks of unexpected vacation.
Life has been fairly mellow since I returned. The exception being my third weekend back on the R.O.K. I made the short hop over to my favorite city, Qingdao, for the 10th China Nash Hash. It was a fast and furious weekend hosted by some of my old friends. I was the lone representative from Korea. We had the brewery to ourselves Friday night. Thanks to Cheeky for saving me from myself (which is no small task). I ran most of the 14.2km running trail the next day. Our hares had set up a beer stop for us at the TV Tower. The buses dropped us off at a German/Chinese buffet brew and grill restaurant. The hostesses and waitresses all wore cute, old-style German dresses. We jumped around the usual cracker haunts: LPG and Lennon. I got my fill of street food Saturday night. I was well on my way to getting plastered at the on-after lunch Sunday when I remembered that I needed to check out of my hotel and catch my plane. I grabbed a shower and a taxi and reserved the same room at the Ibis Hotel for my next visit this upcoming Monday. The taxi stopped off for fuel along the way; I stopped off for a cheap bottle of Chinese brandy to stuff in my checked bag.
