Monday, July 15, 2013

Busan Famous

The past few weeks here have been pretty eventful. With the summer fully upon us that means that there is no shortage of things to do. Each and every weekend there is something going on leaving us all with a great sense of what Al likes to call FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) if we don't attend one of these blessed events.

July 4th fell on a Thursday which means that a lot of us didn't get to the beach until pretty late, as most teachers work until 9pm or after. This was, I believe, my fourth Independence Day celebrated outside of the United States. Apart from the one I spent in Canada, wherever I've been the Americans will gather together and let off fireworks and sing the national anthem and be obnoxious (just like at home) which is always nice when you're apart from the homeland. This one was no different. We gathered at Gwangalli on this very, very rainy July 4th and waited for downpour let up so we could play with the fireworks. There were a bunch of very drunk marines that came down from the base that seemed to be trying their hardest to be as annoying as possible and disrupt our very fun evening, but we carried on and had a blast despite them.




"Busan Famous" is a term I heard coined last summer by Al and some of the other guys in my group of friends. I read that in 2011 there were nearly 40,000 expats floating around here, which means that getting yourself known around town seems quite a feat. But there are always those people who manage to set themselves apart and get themselves known...that's Busan Famous.

Now, there is a big difference in being Busan Famous and say, Tokyo Famous. That takes some work and probably many years of being completely and totally awesome to get known within the Tokyo expats. I guess you take what you can get.

My husband, bless him, loves to be the center of attention and does anything and everything to get himself known wherever he is and usually succeeds in doing so. (I am the same way, I just usually let him go out and actually find the spotlight and reel it in himself.) In an unbiased opinion, people seem to like him. He's funny and fun and goes with the flow and I guess for all those reasons and more, people just seem to want to have him around. (I'm sure there are people who don't, but whatevs.) He and his friends were the Kings in college; they had the party house and everyone knew who they were...albeit in a town with one stoplight and a college population of 1,500. He had Big Fish In A Small Pond syndrome and has been chasing that feeling ever since. Being a big fish in a small pond is great, sure, but being a big fish in a big pond is even better.

The weekend after July 4th there was a new club opening in Haeundae called Tao. The guy who opened it owns one of the biggest clubs around here, FIX, so we figured it would be legit. He wanted a "foreign presence" that night so Al was asked if he wanted on the list to get in. (Some people we met outside said they wanted like $50 for them to get in.) He and I got two of the last few spots open and off we went. It wasn't all the pomp and circumstance hooplah that I had imagined for a club opening, but we did get in free and were introduced to the main outside guy in charge of letting people in and the owner. Al has a method when in places like this of keeping himself remembered: Talk to as many people that look important as possible and high-five all the bouncers and security guys. I'm not going to lie, this has gotten him into many VIP rooms and countless free drinks/bottles of liquor. The owner gave him his card that night and said whenever we wanted in, ever, contact him and we're in (and FIX also). This gives Al a high that no drug on earth could ever give him.

He has already expressed his worry over moving to Nashville next year because it is very unlikely he'll ever get anywhere close to being Nashville Famous. I mean, you can't compete with the people in that town. The Nashville Famous are the singers and bands and people in the music industry. That won't keep him from trying, guaranteed.





EDIT: Al has informed me that this somewhat makes him look like a fame-hungry douche. For those who don't know him personally, keep in mind that a lot of his shennanigans are done mostly jokingly or ironically. For example, he took his shirt off at the beach the other day all while announcing, "Contain your gasps, ladies". Yeah, it's that sort of thing. For those who do know him personally, none of this will come a a surprise to you. 


On a different note, all the air conditioning is finally on at school. In one of the classrooms I had it set on the lowest possible (18 degrees C) and that classroom teacher came in and very snottily told me to "keep it on 26 degrees". For all you American folk, 26 degrees Celsius is a cool and refreshing 78.8 degrees. (not.) That woman is now on my never-ending imaginary hit list.

Beach days are now many and we're back in the weekend routine of packing the cooler and heading to the coast every Saturday it seems. We went to Gwangalli this past weekend and the sand and water were surprisingly clean and clear. The boys bought a 90,000 inflatable boat so we all happily floated around in that all day. The Korean lifeguards ("lifeguards") are just power hungry 21 year old douche bags that ride around on jetskis and get an extreme rush feeling like they can tell the foreigners what to do. You get that a lot here, actually. Some Koreans get a huge boner from telling off foreigners for (usually) doing nothing, or very little, wrong. They just like to think they have a hand over us, I suppose. I don't know, but it's usually unfounded and always very annoying. For instance, there are buoys that indicate the swimming line and sure, I get it, you swim past them you might get your head knocked off by a Sea-doo or a wind surfer. Whatever. They generally start frantically blowing their whistles if you even get close to that line, as if you can't see where you're going. Our boat, which has not yet been christened with a name, is no exception. Will and I were rowing out there having a good old time and were floating along the buoy line. Not past it, mind you, just along the line. Those penises on jetskis came roaring over to us as fast as possible and in broken english told us that our plastic oars were dangerous (there isn't another person in the water around us for hundreds of yards) and kept pointing to me saying, "woman, woman". I sat up and yelled "WOMAN WHAT?" all while Will was getting somewhat irritated at their attempt to thwart our boating adventure for absolutely no reason other than that we aren't Korean. They then turned their jetski around and did a donut to splash water all over us and shot off. Like, seriously? Idiocy. Oh well, it won't stop us from bringing it back out next weekend.












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