Me and Ed

Me and Ed
Originally uploaded by anninator

Me and Ed eating awesome quantities of awesome grilled duck.Yum!

Lunch overkill

Went to find something light and refreshing for lunch today and my mind was set on 'hwoe-deop-bap' 회덮밥 (rice basically topped with salad and raw fish that's mixed up with hot sauce). Since my favourite place for that dish disappeared I've not yet found an adequate replacement. So today I went to an actual raw-fish restaurant that advertised they had it. Much to my delight and awe I was served up an incredible amount of food of pretty good quality for the ridiculous price of 6000 won (about $6 CAD).
That's a fairly big fried fish on the upper left with a few other random side dishes and that pot of orangy goodness is 'mae-un-tang' (매운탕), a delightful spicy fish soup. The actual hwoe-doep-bap is in the lower right. Yum!

Old Timers R Us

Recently I passed the five year mark here in South Korea. 'How time flies!' I said to myself. Feeling celebratory I invited others who'd made Busan their home for five years or more (plus two honorary invitees who've been here perhaps five years combined) to get together for an evening of gaiety and frivolity. We started off with a solid foundation of grilled pork and apparently quite a bit of soju:
After dinner, we headed to our second destination for further libations. On the way we passed a place that had recently opened for business which in Korea often means the presence of 'dancing girls'. We decided to be obnoxious foreigners and have our photo taken with them.
The two Korean girls in the middle are the dancing girls. That's me in the front trying to reject the passage of time by looking twelve years old. Hee hee~~

There are no photos of our subsequent drinking place which is probably a good thing. Likely fueled in part by a bottle each of vodka and scotch as well as plenty of Tsing Tao poor YongSuk's bar was practically destroyed. The highlint was the round of major wrassling that erupted amongst my otherwise staid friends (Cuttlefish boys I'm talking 'bout you!), followed by a spontaneous face-stickering event - hands down one of the most hilarious things I've seen recenlty.

The stickers were in fact issued as part of a voting system. You see throughout the evening people had been trying their hand at composing haikus on the subject of 'ajumma', a somewhat affectionate term for the tough-as-nails local middle aged women. Colin was the winner as four stars went to his poem as opposed to everyone else's face. For his poetic labour he was awarde a bottle of Busan C1 soju (which he drank on the spot) and a can of 'beondegi' (that's silk worm larvae to the rest of you). His oeuvre in its entirety is reproduced here:

Purple curly hair
Sexy leopard print pants wow
I want your rude love

Wow Colin! Perhaps it shows that you've lived in the ajoshi/ ajumma love hotel district for the past few years!!

In music news: an 80's synth pop front is moving in from the west.... previous - Alphaville; current - Erasure; next - Depeche Mode

Little update

Though you poor Canadians are still probably buried under snow, spring has sprung in Busan with the cherry blossoms starting to bloom their delicate pale pink blossoms. School is busy but good. My students are amazing - it is a real treat to teach English majors.

The earlier post about a laptop, monitor and burger was very brief as at the time Colin and I were near starvation. Having already made one failed attempt to get a burger on the tenth floor of the ridiculously busy Lotte Department store we were forced to forge our way through the Saturday throngs to get to a second T.G.I.F. which did finally have the burgers we so desired. We had to wait a while for our burgers to arrive so the post was basically to distract myself from my hunger. What I ended up buying that day was a simple laptop to use for work as well as a lovely 22" LCD widescreen monitor which I didn't really need but was so cheap I figured why not. It sure takes up less space on my desk than the 19" CRT I had previously.

In other news, I continue to listen to music obsessively. I've decided to trade in my iPod Nano that I've had for a year and replace it with an iRiver Clix. It'll take a while to get used to the new design as well as the minor annoyance that I have to keep it on hold while in my pocket to prevent track stopping/skippage, but the sound quality is stellar and no more annoying iTunes. I listen to all sorts of stuff but for the past several monthes I've been under the growingly firm impression that Queens of the Stone Age are possibly the greatest rock band of our time (no disrespect to Led Zepplin). All five of their albums are so frikkin good.

In other hobby related news I'm looking forward to April 4th and I know many of you out there don't even need me to say why. I'll tell you this though, I am midly concerned the internet will explode that day due to the insane frenzy that will result from the beginning of BSG Season 4. Woo!!!

Ribs!!!

Ribs!!!
Originally uploaded by anninator

Ribs!!!Yummy BBQ ribs where you need a Micheal Jackson glove to get into tha flava...Bam!!!

Kickass

Kickass
Originally uploaded by anninator

Kickassmonitor + sweetass laptop + fatass burger = success! It's been an eventful day~~

Vietnam - Part I: Ho Chi Min City

In February I took a two week trip to Vietnam where I hooked up with my mate Jon. We had a super good time, time which was mainly characterized by eating but did involve some travelling and sightseeing.

Jon lives in Ho Chi Min City, which used to be Saigon. It's a big bustling city with literally millions of motorbikes, lots of awesome places to eat and very visible remnants of the French colonial period.

Check out the photos here.

What's new in Anne's world

Well, back to work so posts have obviously slowed down a tad :) I've got a lot of prep to do for my new classes; people are coming out of the woodwork to ask me to do more stuff, and I've been suffocating a little with super intense yellow dust but other than that things are good. Being all English majors, my new students are wikkid fluent which is really cool. I've so far really enjoyed exercising my teacher chops in the higher level atmosphere.