going merry

Korea is the most homogeneous place I have ever been. Aside from being one of the most genetically homogeneous places on Earth, it is also extremely culturally homogeneous. This means every one dresses the same, acts the same, generally just fits into the flow of things. If you're a dude over 20, you constantly have a cigarette hanging out of your mouth. If you're a lady, you are constantly decked out in the latest fashion trends. There is a saying that goes "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down". Apparently so, because I've seen very few nails sticking up, especially in Daejeon.

Imagine our excitement, then, when we stumbled upon a freshly minted punk club called "Going Merry" last November. We immediately went in to see what was going on, but it turned out they weren't open yet. The dudes we talked to invited us to their opening show the following Saturday. Of course we would be there, if for no other reason to see what exactly Korean punk looks like.

As it turned out, we were at "Santa Claus", a popular western bar about a block from Going Merry the next Saturday, and we tromped down around 11:00 pm to check out the show. What we found was a long table of Koreans eating dinner and listening to Meatloaf. It was slightly awkward. This was not a show. Luckily, one of the guys was Korean-American, and explained to us that shows in Korea start around 7:30, and that we had missed the action. We stayed for a beer anyway.

My third journey into Going Merry came about three weeks ago when Taylor and I had dinner at a restaurant down the street. After a couple of glasses of wine with dinner, the NOFX blaring out of the speakers on the street convinced us that we should step in for a beer or two. We were disappointed that Punk in Drublic was not playing inside, and the bar was almost completely empty. The only other party there was a middle aged businessman and his date sitting at table littered in Heineken bottles. We got a couple of beers, and the guy working asked us if there was anything we wanted to hear. Naturally, soon he had some nice NOFX blaring for us. Soon we couldn't help noticing that the businessman's date was passed out on the table while he was having a heated discussion with someone on his cell phone. This lasted for at least 20 minutes before they took off. On our way out, we ascertained two pieces of information: 1) NOFX is playing in Seoul in April; 2) there was a show at Going Merry the next Saturday at 7:30 sharp. We would be there on time.

We got to Going Merry about 8:24, and there was an all girl band raging on stage. Their main aspect going for them was sex appeal, not quality sound or song-writing. They were brash and strong in performance, as you would suspect, but off stage, they were as shy as the stereotypical young Korean woman. The next band was a standard punk band. The final band was definitely the best of the night. They were from Seoul (as I think all the bands we saw were), and interestingly enough, had one dude who was American. About half the songs and banter were in Korean, and the other half were in English. This was actually a pretty fair ratio, considering the audience was about 60-40 foreigners (which I didn't like at first, but learned to deal with).

At the end of the show, the American guy shouted "I don't drink anymore, who's got the chronic?" He was bummed that they were heading back to Seoul immediately so we couldn't bring him back to the apartment later for a little snack. But seriously, if you are lucky enough to sniff out any dope in this country, who's going to bring it out with them?

new zealand memo - vol. 3 - street booze and music

When you travel in a group of at least 10, plus extras, the only way to roll is in a giant blue van. That goes double when a number of your crew are also carrying musical instruments. Before coming to New Zealand, Jenine had joined a bike circus for the summer and fall, in which she had traveled through Mongolia, down China, and into Southeast Asia. In China, she picked up a bazoonie (some sort of large brass instrument), and she came to Auckland with this dented, metal monstrosity and a fiendish drive for street performance. She instilled this love of busking in several folks there, which was why we had bazoonies, guitars, harmonicas, tambourines and bucket drums booming, buzzing humming, clapping and strumming as we cruised downtown in Keiran's van. I decided driving around with a live band in your car is the only way to roll.

Our destination was the opening night of the Auckland Festival, in a downtown park, where we had heard there would be a pyrotechnics show. I had spent the previous days in the depths of an infatuation with readily available and comparably (to Korea at least) cheap New Zealand wines, so I came armed with a nice Pinot Noir and Merlot/Cab blend, which seem to be two staples of NZ wines. The event was a huge gathering in an amphitheater shaped grassy bowl, mostly a family event. The word from the stage was that there were 60,000 people there. As darkness was falling, there was terribly cheesy music coming from the main stage, our buskers went out to ease those 60,000 people of their burdensome pocket change, and we were doing our best to keep our doping unnoticed by the families surrounding us. I was pleasantly ripped when the fire show started. We had all expected the show to be a fireworks show, but it was basically just an extravaganza of leaping flames and fireballs. Unlike I anything I had ever seen. The whole demonstration was set to the same terrible live band, and my favorite part was when they chilled it down, and small flames were shooting up to a solo smooth jazz sax improv solo.

After the show, 60,000 people were let loose on the streets of Auckland, with the predictable consequence that the sidewalks were packed, and your only hope was to swim with the flow of bodies, as if you were caught in a human avalanche. Luckily, Jenine was tooting away on her bazoonie the whole time, so we could all hear and rally around her when we got separated or had to dip into the bushes to water them. At one point, the crowd bottlenecked onto a bridge, and the people took over the road, blocking both lanes of traffic. The crowds persisted for what seemed like unnecessary distances.

Somehow, we reached K Road, a popular bar/porn store area just on the edge of downtown. Our plan was to get a drink at the Wine Cellar, but pretty soon an impromptu busk had self-organized itself at the intersection of the sidewalk and a covered pedestrian shopping mall. Jenine put out her sign from the circus that reads "We come from different countries. We travel the world by bicycle. Any money or food you can give us would be greatly appreciated...". Most of this was only marginally true; luckily no one pushed us on how we had gotten to NZ on our bikes. Our "busk" was more like a get together of drunken Appalachian hillbilly children than any sort of organized performance, but people stopped to watch and seemed to enjoy it anyway. Looking back, I'm slightly surprised we didn't encounter any sort of legal problems, considering we were openly drinking, and somehow my 3/4 full bottle of pinot ended up smashed on the concrete, leaving what looked like a pool of blood. Jenine's bazoonie boomed low, Jake's guitar was missing both the A and B strings, and several of us had only our clapping hands and stomping feet as instruments. Nonetheless, we had a small crowd of fans, and our hat soon filled with roughly $35, a bottle of wine, several bags of salty snack foods, and a full cooked chicken. The act may have been saved by Jenine's magic tricks.

After a good run of it, after the guitar was totally banged out of tune, and the chicken had been picked to the bones (mostly by me), we slipped into the bar right next to where we had caused the scene in order to count our loot. After splitting up the pot, we moved slowly along K Road in the direction of home, stopping at the place with the "strongest coffee in Auckland" (their espresso machine looked like something out of a steel mill), a Cuban dance club, and a gay karaoke bar. On the walk home, our guitar was out of commission, so we had to settle for singing an a capella rendition of the entire Graceland album.

new zealand memo - vol. 2 - weddingness

Possibly one of my favorite things about New Zealand is that you don't have to wear shoes to many places that you would have to in most other countries. Grocery stores, chill restaurants, it's even normal to see people tramping about on glass shard infested city streets without any sort of foot covering. So of course, when Keiran and Mayana went to get registered to marry, we all clambered into Keiran's big blue van, and he jumped in the driver's seat sans shoes. Why all 9 of us were needed to go fill out paperwork for 4 of us to marry (Hana and Jake also registered at this time) was unknown, but those of not filling out the forms to wed were eventually told to remove ourselves from our loitering spot in the lobby. Keiran's shoelessness, on the other hand, was not a problem at all.

Not that Mayana and Keiran were getting married that day; the day was Monday, and they had to wait at least three days before they could marry (some sort of "cooling off period"?). So the wedding was set for Friday morning, to be done at the legal minimum, right there in the Office of Internal Affairs.

Keiran, Sondre and I returned from our manly house building excursion on Thursday night, dusty, muddy, smelly, bloody in some places, and exhausted. Keiran and Mayana went home, but Sondre and I were dragged to a kiwi indie rock show. In retrospect, the show was totally worth going to, despite near delirium levels of exhaustion. We boozed hard and late on strong kiwi beers, watching "The Mint Chicks" play their super loud and fast brand of art rock. By the time we stumbled home, we had about four hours before we had to be up and ready for the wedding festivities. Who gets married at 9:30 in the morning, anyway?

There was a celebratory breakfast downtown before we formed a small procession to the Internal Affairs Office. The bridesmaids were all in impromptu costumes of short skirts and/or shorts, with knee high striped colorful socks. Keiran was barefoot in his best black shorts and a nice black button up shirt. Mayana had a long black dress accentuated by a bright orange netting veil. Sondre and I were the boring ones, dressed in nearly normal attire. We paraded in a line two-by-two through the morning downtown Auckland buzz, singing "Going to chapel, and we're gonna get married" at high volumes.

Luckily, the Internal Affairs Office was nearly empty at this hour, so the scene we caused there didn't upset too many innocent bystanders. We were all invited to "the chapel", which was basically a conference room in the corner of the office. A very nice woman came in to officiate the service. The vows went something like this: "I, Keiran Donnely, see no legal impediment to this marriage taking place...". I was getting a bit cynical about the dryness of the whole proceedings, until I saw the look in Keiran and Mayana's eyes, and realized that as silly and goofy as this spectacle was, it really was a representation of their love. And that's cool. If you are a goofy person, you absolutely should have a goofy (or at least unorthodox) wedding. What would have been truly ridiculous would have been for these two to get married in some kind of super planned, formal, traditional wedding in a large church, with a long white dress, mountains of flowers, long church service, etc. No, no, no, for this kind of love, only a 9:30 am, barefoot, striped stocking, conference room wedding would do.

After the verbal service was completed, there was the all-important and romantic signing of the documents, which we all watched with the same fascination as the service. There was even some audience participation on this one, as two witnesses were needed to sign the documents. After this was completed, our marriage officiate congratulated the couple, and left the room. Seeing as we were apparently free to use the room for some period of time longer, we did the only reasonable activity we could, and had an extensive photo shoot with all the fun props in the room.
After leaving the Internal Affairs office, we climbed back into the blue van, which had been haphazardly covered in "just married" regalia, and drove off into the sunset.

new zealand memo - vol. 1 - moving to the bush

If you would have asked me four years ago about my life goals, I probably would have talked your ear off about building a simple home somewhere in New Zealand, and sustaining my own life, isolated from the destructive systems of contemporary society. Lofty goal, indeed, and one that I have since tweaked, reconsidered, bordered on abandoning, etc. Not that I don't still in principle agree with the idea that I should play no supporting role in current agricultural, social, and political practices, I'm just not as sure that moving to the bush and ignoring it all is the proper way to solve our problems as I used to be. I still believe the most important practice to pursue in life is relying more on yourself and less on destructive practices, but I now think that you need to do this in a city, not isolated in the wilderness.

But this memo is not about my beliefs on the topic, rather it is about my experiences with someone who holds my former beliefs, and is actually pursuing them. Keiran is the real deal. He is currently building his simple home in the bush, where he will live with minimal impact on the earth, and for the most part not contributing to the trouble the rest of us are causing.
Keiran picked up a 47 acre parcel of land about two hours north of Auckland for the astonishing price of NZ$65,000. The property is surrounded by cleared pasture land, but has itself been left for about 30 years, and has subsequently returned to bush (causing the government to put a ban on clearing it for sheep pasture, and the reason it was so affordable.)

I had the pleasure of accompanying Keiran out to work on his home for a couple of days. He, Sondre (sp?) and I clambered into his big blue van on a wet early morning and made the trek north through horrendous morning rush hour Auckland traffic. The land we traveled through was once covered by massive Kauri forests, only small pockets of which still remain. (For the record, Kauri trees are probably the most amazing trees I have ever seen.) Keiran's land was once covered in Kauri's but now sustains more modest recently regrown forest. Even so, it's amazing how much the forest can return in roughly 30 years.


We passed through the nearby town of Paparoa, and then traveled about 12 km down gravel road to a small driveway off to the side. From here, Keiran's property spills down the hillside, fills in a boggy marsh at the bottom, and then climbs up the opposite ridge. The surrounding terrain consists of nice rolling hills. The house site sits about about a three minute scramble down from the road. The building is completely un-permitted, but by far the lowest impact building site I have ever been to. All the materials and tools are carried in by hand, all digging is done by hand, and the house lies tucked right into the surrounding trees. If you get more than 10 m away from the house, it totally disappears into the forest.

It's amazing to see a house actually being built the way I have imagined doing it so many times. I am usually skeptical of people with high-minded talk of just going out and building a house in the wo0ds (including myself), but Keiran is extremely serious and definitely knows what he's doing. In two months of working by himself one or two days a week, he has framed the entire house, and almost completed the second story flooring. The house is modest size, one big room downstairs, with a kitchen coming off the side, and then a large room upstairs. It looks fantastic; Keiran is using whatever building materials (recycled or otherwise) he can easily come across, but the house doesn't have the hodge-podge look that projects like that tend to take on. All the water will be collected from the roof of the house and nearby shed, and the gray water will be used for the garden. Cooking will be done on a wood burning stove, and solar panels will provide small amounts of electricity. This is going to be bush living in its pure form.

We started working as soon as we got there. Keiran was working on framing the kitchen off to the side of the main room, and Sondre started putting weather boarding (walls) on the frame. Due to limited tools, we couldn't all work on carpentry projects, so I was given tasks working on the land, which was quite suiting to me. My first job was to survey and cut out a new, less steep trail to the building site. The existing trail is quite steep in spots, and not suitable for carrying down some of the larger items that will come later. It took basically the entire first day for me to scope out a suitably graded path and the cut it out from the bush using the machete. The end result then required a serious amount of hand digging to level it out. I had leveled about a 2 m patch when darkness fell and we had to quit for the day. Dinner consisted of a delicious salad , complete with venison sausage, washed down with about half a bottle of cheap red wine. We were in bed before 10 pm. Due to tent problems, "bed" consisted of the three of us curling up in the back of the van. I had been extremely skeptical of the feasibility of this project, but was happily surprised by how miraculously it ended up working out.

Day two consisted of the guys continuing their respective projects, while I worked on a new drainage ditch for the freshly cut driveway. My entire body was burning when Keiran announced that we'd be quitting early (5 pm), taking a walk, and then heading home. Even so, I was severely disappointed that I had not been able to fully complete the ditch. Keiran took us for a tour of the property, including the original house site, which was across the valley on the far hill, and would have been a disaster to get materials to. Keiran has eventual plans of building a community in those trees, with other families moving in, a community building, and even an internet cafe at the top of the hill where you can get cellular reception. I hope to return to NZ to see how his dreams shape up.

korean health care

First of all, I have now completed my sentence of doom in the Veritas Winter Intensive Program. By the time it was all said and done, I was actually sad to say goodbye to my kids on Wednesday. Most of them I will see in a week and a half, so that's no big deal, but many of them are moving on to high school and will no longer be attending my classes. Those were the hard goodbyes, especially one of my favorite, hard working students, Gaigurina. (Only her nickname, it roughly means "frog princess".) She was crying for about twenty minutes at the front desk, and when I tried to cheer her up, I only started crying too. Working like a machine for two months really sucks, but it also really makes you form strong bonds with those you share the experience with.

Anyway, the point of my story involves the fact that my last day of intensives coincided with the resurgence of a strange and powerful disease that I have been battling for the past 40 days. The symptoms come and go, and I am never full-blown ill, but I often wake up in the night not being able to breath. But just as this entry is not about my crying students, it's also not about me trying to get sympathy, so I will leave the description of my illness where it stands.

The point of this entry, if you are wondering at this point, is the excellency of the Korean health care system. In Korea, you don't need health insurance, because the government subsidized health care is astoundingly affordable. They are even happy to extend the gift to foreigners who are legally living and working in the country. I trucked down to the medical clinic about two blocks from my house today, and was greeted by smiling nurses. I handed over my Alien Registration Card, and there weren't even any forms to fill out. Before I had read half a page in my book, I was whisked in to see a doctor who spoke close to perfect English. He was not particularly impressed with my symptoms, and mostly was concerned about whether I had anything "coming up from the throat". After explaining that I was also experiencing nausea, he wanted to know if I had anything "coming up from the stomach". I didn't have to strip down and put on a gown, he just listened to my heart and breathing by lifting up my shirt (actually, the nurse lurking around unnecessarily assisted me in holding my shirt up). We just had a chat, as makes sense, without any of the bullshit you get in an American doctor's office.

He ended up writing me a hefty regiment of drugs (no antibiotics), and I was sent on my way less than 20 minutes after I arrived. My bill for the visit came out to less than $7, and I was able to pick up my prescription in the basement of the same building for about $11 (for three days worth of six different pills). Even with health insurance in the U.S., my bill would have been at triple what I paid here. The woman in the pharmacy spoke a little English, and said she felt bad that my prescription was "very expensive". I told her it was no big deal.

At this point, you're probably wondering how much of my teaching salary is being deducted to pay for this incredible system. The answer is: I pay 5% income tax, and that is the rate for everyone in my income bracket, not just foreigners. There's no sales tax in Korea. I suspect that property taxes must be high, but I have no evidence to back this up. I have absolutely no idea how the government affords to ensure everyone gets reasonable health care at reasonable prices, but I think it's wonderful. I think this is worth looking into, especially because today's New York Times reports a majority of Americans are demanding a solution to the dismal state of medical services in "the most prosperous nation".

My next entry will probably be from the summer climate of New Zealand. I can't fucking wait.