EPTWritten on October 4th 5:18pm from the IeSF Venue at the eSports Culture Fair, Cheonan Province.
PICS: Relevant photo album: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.322516557847656.71813.130791517020162&type=3
It's currently 3.22pm and I am very happy. This is for several reasons. Firstly was yesterday I won my last game, even though we both played not so good and neither of us made it through
I'm also happy cos last night we ate proper food rather than the free crap they provide here . (it's not so bad, but free food for mass people, never gunna be very good).Myself, Zanubis (Israeli), sortof (swede) Makouney (Belgium roommate) and Dayshi (French) went across the road from our hotel to the lone restaraunt in our Hotel Resort area. We got such a huge variety of awesome free entrees even thin slices of some vegetable floating in pink liquid lol! Really cool stuff. They couldn't speak english other then "pork" and "beef" so i just ordered us 5 porks, beer and 1 each of the 3 noodle dishes and it came out as awesomee pork ribs and a variety of crazy noodle soups including a cold one which was just weird! Anyway we ate good food, had some beer then watched proleague in our rooms as DRG stomped Oz. Then slept pretty early as were all tired. Not a bad day!
This morning we decided to sleep in but I was still up ~8.30am. Went and had 2 boiled eggs and a tiny bowl of sultana bran for brekky (couldnt be bothered refilling the tiny bowls lol). We then got the korean iesf organising helper guy to write down the names of the venue, the cheonan city, and the hotel (in Korean) so we could get around by taxi and then caught a cheap taxi into the city with Dayshi and Makouney.
We went to the main street of Cheonan city and went for a wander. Our first order of business was finding an adaptor for me to charge my phone/camera/notebook. I got off the bus and was like hmmm... I have no fucking clue where to find one or what it's called in Korean. Luckily I remembered I'd brought the camera cord to show them what I needed lol. Unfortunately everyone kept looking at the non power end and wouldnt understand what an adaptor was. Finally after walking past 5000 phone stores (LITERALLY THERE ARE 200 on every street it's retarded lol) we walked into one that looked like an electronics store... only to realise it was....dum dum dum... Another fucking PHONE STORE. This guy spoke a little english though and understood what I wanted but explained "You need to buy adaptor" im like OMG THATS WHAT IM SAYING THIS WHOLE TIMEE!! Haha anyway he drew us a map (so niceee!) and we went a few blocks away down some alley and found a store and got one and BAM I was so happy, also it cost like 1500 won or $1.30! So cheap here hehe!
Then we wandered around taking photos of all the weird shit. Whacky-waving signs everywhere, 500000 GIANT COLOURED SIGNS on the side of every crappy building. Backyards overflowing into alleys with garbage heaps, Matts laying out-front garages covered in bright red chillies etc etc! So weird! We also came across a big anglican church that was cool and had a nice fountain n stuff. Took some good photos. Quite a lot of baseball and basketball courts/fields everywhere too. There was this EPIC pillared building too beyond the church but it was down a hill and fenced off so we couldn't get a close look but I hope I get to go past it again before I leave these pillars were seriously like 30m tall and looked like 5m across from a distance! Maybe just my imagination though
So then we looped back to the main street, some schoolboys yelled out "hello!" to us and we yelled back "hi" to them lol. We got stared at a lot as this is a somewhat regional city and so very few foreigners. When we got back I found a Citibank and was like w00t!!! It had the Maestro and Cirrus symbols which I needed so I withdrew money and not too bad fee. Hoping this lasts me my whole time in Korea!
NOW I CAN CHARGE MY SHIT AND HAVE MONEY. FUCK YEAH. Then we tried a few Korean small restaraunts but they didn't have anything in english and couldn't speak so I saw a sign that said "All that Barbeque" or something so we went there and ran into the most AWESOME PIG STATUE IT WAS FUCKN huge and hilarious I got so many photos already
. We went in and it was quite expensive, we ended up spending almost $25aud each (thought it would only be like $10-15 but some mystery charges) but it was unlimited buffet of all this stuff + we ordered these two meat platters with sooo much food the 3 of us struggled so hard. There was beautiful tender raw steak, High quality burger patties, Lamb pieces, different beef steak, thin beef wrapped around asapargus, Bigass racks of pork ribs with the most tender meatt hmmm! And potatoes + cherry tomatoes and broccoli. Oh AND bigass prawns coated in coconut! The salads were done really well too mashed potato, cous-cous etc! And to top it off I had some frozen fruit + youghurt and berries. All washed down with a half-liter golden Ale. Fucking amazinggg!So yeah, I have everything I need, I'm well fed. I've seen so much cool stuff. Experienced some amazing and new foods. No anxiety, no pressure! Just about to practice some
Also figuring out if I can get lift straight to the prime house. Hopefully can just meet Jesse (the foreigner who lived in the prime house previously and still lives nearby) there or at the station next to his house and save him the trouble of going around to meet me!Oh and after lunch we saw this gallery with a park bench suspended next to the wall out front lol like 5m off the ground. There's actually shitloads of public art here that's quite cool! So anyway we went up to the gallery and walked up like 10 flights of stairs to a blank locked door with a numpad next to it and were confused as fuck. Also we were all battling meat comas and so ffelt horrible after climbing so far lol!
On the way back down we realised we walked straight past the entrance like retards and so entered. For 3000won ($2.50) we went in and saw this japanese guys sculptures (Kohei Nawa is the scultpor). They were pretty surreal and weirdass. Lot's of commentary between digital and organic lifeforms and awesome sculptures. It was cool, I felt something and didn't really try to understand or explain it so it was a cool experience. Also part of the gallery had a skeleton with air pipes shootin up two ping pong balls above it's eye sockets looking like its eyes bouncing around. Gave us a good laugh
Then we taxi'd back here to find out top 4 all protoss so many upsets lol! Oh also GANGNAM STYLE IS EVERYWHERE. omfg there's cardboard cut outs of him everywhere, the song is on 24/7 lol. b4 me and dayshi played, some kid was dancing infront of his parents doing it lol. It's crazzzzyyyyy. Haha also that "wild and young" clip with that blond freak and the tiger and shit came on on the bus :s. It's cool they have video games on TV all day here though. Also in our hotel room we came back and found a box of "walnut premium cakes - from the mayor of Cheonan City" haha! I quite liked them but every1 else didn't. It seemed like just walnut cake ball filled with redbean goop, wasn't bad!
Korean people are so kind and helpful, beer is so cheap and not bad, food is fantastic! Very hard to get a bad impression of this country. I know things will be harder when I move into the Prime house but this is damn good transition period haha. All I know how to say is AnnyeoungHoseo! for both hello and goodbye, and the rest is just masterful sign language
. I'm happy to be a FOB (fresh off the boat).<3 Korea!
