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