EPTAgain short disclaimer : This chapter and maybe one other will still be focused on pro gaming. After that, for reasons I’ll maybe explain, my Korean experience changed a lot. I wasn’t involved with gaming anymore all of a sudden, I took another path, that I believe, I’m the only one over there to have ever taken at that time at least. I stayed I think, about 8 to 10 more months in Korea, living something, much, much, more crazy than pro gaming can ever be. I’m still very unsure I’m going to blog about that, for a variety of reasons, that range from the pure private side of one’s life, to things that I done (nothing really bad), but that with what I consider “the fucked up part of Korea”, could let some people I’m not really sure I want to ever talk to again, get to know how to contact me over the internet and bother me, I’m not sure. However, as there’s nothing too dramatic or bad I’ve really done over there, and because, the “after pro gaming” part is what I lived the hardest and strongest of my trip in Korea, part of me would really like to let it through and tell to, especially people that can imagine what I lived then, how this was.
So I woke up that morning with Jee-hae because of the phone ringing. MBC – not mbc game – pd called us asking if they could send a TV crew tomorrow to shoot us 3, elky, smuft and me, doing a documentary about our lifestyle in Seoul. I was really taking the “pro gamer manager” thing quite seriously and was really thrilled about that. I rushed down the stairs to their apartment and yelled at them to make it clean.
Later on that day the TV crew called me so we could set up a schedule for tomorrow and give them clues, about what to shoot. I told them I could try and set a meeting up with elky’s fan from the daum café that I hardly ever spoken to before. We agreed then that we’d shoot at their home, at the pc bang and then would go at seoul main train station for meeting that I would to arrange with the fans.
So I spent the day on bnet trying to get the leader of the fan club to bring people at Seoul train terminal. He agreed and said he’d do everything possible to get people to the station for tomorrow. I had a bad feeling about that :D.
Next day first thing in the morning I meet up with the TV crew in a coffee shop. A young chick and a cool guy showed up. They were actually extremely nice and spoke really well English. So here we are, with Jeehae we take them to our building and I’m hoping Elky and Smuft had cleaned the place for the TV because I didn’t have time to check before if they had.
We get there, ring at the door. No answer. Wait a bit. I ring again. No fucking answer. So I smash the door pissed off, yelling from outside “wake the fuck up you half-aped tards”. After some time a cigarette, some elky’s noises start to surface. It’s just some French slang at first and then at once we can all clearly hear from behind the door : “oh fuck Steven, it’s the TV they’re here, we didn’t clean”.
So I smash the door again and yell so he would open. He did and upon entering I go like “WTF ?”
It’s like they had misinterpreted my cleaning order from the day before and did the opposite. It looked like a battlefield of rotten dishes, dirty tissues, smelly, opaque and dark. Elky opened up half naked, Steven was right behind, looking his 16 skinny years old, like a fucking crack addict that just woke up from a coma hazard.
The cameraman just began to laugh with hysteria. I could’ve been angry, but I just laughed alike. They were the real deal : gamers, original.
So, while Smuft went showering, Elky without even putting on some clothes agreed to be shot in his environment, natural. Now there was this thing, they were at that time, drinking this very secret brew, that I had introduced to them : cold milk with chocolate. They would buy Hershley’s choco milk powder and mix it with a fresh gallon of milk and drink it non stop. So Elky, being a bit ashamed and clueless about what to do in front of the camera, beside showing off his silly messy bedroom, suddenly found something to actually tell them, about the brew. He goes like : “here’s the progamer’s secret to winning : cold chocolate milk !” and sizes the first opened bottle of milk that they mixed with chocolate inside and drink it in front of the camera. Problem was, the bottle was rotten to the core and was really old, cuz they had left it open around the kitchen. So he drank and felt instantly bad and threw up all over the floor. There’s no way to picture that. The TV crew was going from WTF to more WTF.
So we leave the place, hopefully, my Jeehae’s ashamed, explaining something like “we have no ajuma to clean up the place yet “ whatever, the guys are cool, they’re having fun and we go “okay, lets go pc bang, meet with Grrrr… and practice some”.
The pc room was almost right next to Kang nam yok. It was located at the second floor of a corner building, in the street behind the main one, opposite from the burger king side, I could draw a map to it, Giyom for some time, was renting a place nearby. Grrrr… didn’t know TV was with us, he didn’t want to play any game in front of the camera. But after having me cry and cry and cry some more, because whatever the situation, however annoying I could be, he would always do what I asked out of friendship, he agreed to play against Steven one game. They actually had a showmatch scheduled day after on OGN. So they go PVP on temple, Steven spawns 6, Giyom 9. Now, I knew Steven would win, he was such a fucking machine at that time. Upon starting the game I was feeling bad because Giyom was being nice like always and losing, even a single practice game on a documentary, wasn’t something he was really allowed by AMD and his contract. Now, as Steven once told me, on temple, in pvp, if you spawn at 6, there’s only one way to win. Go island fast, a with early carrier, rape ass. That’s exactly what happened. It seemed like for the first 10 minutes, Grrrr… would win, no matter what. Ground control. Dozens of dragoons roaming the map. Smuft contained on his main, 1 ilsand mining, second one about to mine and fighting off reaver harass. But within a few minutes, carriers to carriers, began to add. Soon enough it was a matter of time before Grrrr… had to alt-q-q in front of the camera.
I will always remember the look Giyom gave me after the game like : “I fucking told you that I didn’t want to play”. But on the same time his blue eyes were saying “okay, You, have the right”.
We agreed to go dinner, all of us at the end of the day. Then we rushed to Seoul train station where the meeting with Elky’s fan club was supposed to go down. So, on the way there, I kept trying to call Elky’s fan club leader, but with no answer. I knew what was about to come : no one.
We got there, waited about an hour, me making jokes about how elky’s was just not attractive enough to gather fans and running all around the station, which is huge by the way, to make sure we didn’t misunderstand the meeting point. No one showed, how great for a rising foreign sc star ?
But the Tv man perfectly understood, and told me that they didn’t show up, because Koreans are just dumb and shy – later at night, on bnet, the silly fan club leader would tell me exactly the same : they didn’t fucking show up, because “we have bad english and we’re so shy”. Fuck them really. Whatever.
We ended up around 7 pm in one of the very nicest calbi place of kang nam, next to the pc bang, in that street that keeps going up. Grrrr…, hae young (his most, bestest, beautifulest, greatest, firstest, girlfriend giyom ever had (and that I had deep secret fantasies anchored on) – me, elky and smuft, Daniel, his wife and the tv crew, all we were there. Grrrr… ordered right away dozens of plate of succulent meat, dozens of succulent soju bottles and we cheered for a good 3 hours, getting drunk and laughing non stop.
Dinner ended, everyone left, but I had an appointment with someone very special. I’m not sure I wrote already about him here. I’ll briefly explain.
He was a Korean freelance reporter for a French newspaper that I met at Coex when WCG was taking place. We had a good contact so we promised each other we’d go clubbing someday.
That evening, he was to pick me up at hotel intercontinental that was right on top of Coex. Upon leaving my place (Jee hae hdad took the plane for honk kong that night) I went to elky and asked him if he wanted to join.
So we ended up both in his car. Now, for people that are familiar with things in Korea, such as “the dark side” or, the “dark master”, well, here’s some news : He’s the origin of all this. He’s the master, the prototype.
I think I never laughed so much in Korea, but with the company of that guy. He was originally, some kind of economic freelance reporter in Korea for many mainstream journals here. He was also covering esports, don’t know why, but he had a crazy good French and that’s why I took elky on the ride.
We drove to the student district of Seoul, where you have all the cool techno clubs. I was happy, because it was one of the very first times where Elky could drive around Seoul at night, seeing all the variety you had there, from a district to another, like, you know that huge highway maze Seoul can look like.
You know, Seoul is crazy traffic. Even at night, it can take forever to drive to somewhere – whatever. We got stuck in the traffic couple of times and our driver, because he was such the coolest Korean ever, each time, would entertain us the way no one ever had. This newspaper guy felt in the category of the very stereotyped Asian perv. It’s like what you can read in mangas, but for real, an x100. Here’s a few pieces of what he sounded like and that I’ll try to carry the best I can :
So basically, the guy looked like shit. He was small, had glasses, looked like a fucking perv. That was fucken written upfront. But he was convinced Brad Pitt had no take on him. He was the fucken MAN. So, anytime we would get stuck up in the jam, he would go on about how he was a sex magnet, and that no woman in Korea, not because he was handsome, smart nor charming, but because HE WAS HE IS, could resist him. To prove us, young Korean pussy newbies, that he was what he was claiming to be, he would explain us, while going at women, the proper way to act.
First off, he explained us how it was all about the car. How his father when he was young, lent him the very extraordinary, pussy magnet, old benz we were riding that night. How with his friends, he would not go night clubs but rather, drive around their exit at the end of night and drag in, telling them he would get them to their home, the must drunken girls, they would there find. He went on, basically explaining to us, the most lame and disgusting tactics to draw pussy out in Korea, and such, with no shame whatsoever, but actually, with a class even James Sean Connery would worship as divine.
He also instructed us about how highways (yes fucking highway lanes) were to him the most casual way to hook up “tiger girls” at night. Now allow me to explain what this actually meant, by telling you what this demi god told us that night :
“I was riding, windows opened, to the fresh air of night, on the highway lane through the city. There was a girl in a car that I drove by, that, upon a quick glance through my window, seeing my face, I knew would fall right away if I could make her stop by. So once, passing by her, I nodded at her with perfect charm. We then stopped both of our cars, a little far ahead and we made love in this car. Guys I’m telling you, this is how you get chicks on the highway. One single glance is enough if you know how. I can’t really explain it to you though, it’s just a skill I have and perfected to the upmost through the years. It only works if you’re a master of that kind of thing. I’m telling you, it’s only about the pure strength contained in my eye. No woman, even driving, even on the highway can resist. It’s like, mathematical, it’s pure logics. I’m not sure even one day you could understand.”
All this he was saying, while showing to me and elky the mimic of that glance. Elky was just rolling on the seats behind, couldn’t stop laughing, so was I. The man had instantly turned into a living god.
So we finally got the techno club. These places aren’t actual night clubs, they’re not Korean styled clubs, it’s a small dark underground, packed up, they’re really nice.
I remember, elky didn’t really wanna dance and that, some really fat ugly girl kept bugging him, asking he was a model. He couldn’t get rid of her.
So I find a prey, somewhat, a very nice girl, really. We make out whatever and, I take elky to go up for a piss because I was already drunk. Now we’re in the toilets, joking around, and then a chick enters fucking drunk, sick to the point she throws up before getting to the toilets. We make some more fun of her, saying how some Korean chicks shouldn’t go down so hard on the alcohol. She leaves after throwing up everything she had drank. She was really in bad state. We both get down to the club and right when we enter, the dark master comes up to us and goes like, pointing directly at that very girl :
“god, she’s exactly the type I like”
We instantly spur our drunken laughs, he doesn’t quite understands and goes :
“She’s exactly my type, because she’s weak and has no way to fight, my charm on her, will surely be unstoppable”. The guy was basically a woman predator : the worst and ugliest kind. Elky and I couldn’t stop laughing.
I have confused memories of that night. I just remember me and the girl I made out with rushing in a cab, her saying this was the only night she could do it, she had to leave the day after, and me telling her I wanted to find a hotel not so far. She wasn’t from Seoul, I guess we found a place. I woke the day after, on Elky’s call :
“hey Mark, are you alright ?”
“I don’t know where the fuck I am, what happened last night ?”
“Don’t know you left with that girl.”
I looked around, there was no one nearby.
