Ugignadl

Well although it would cause me much pain to regale you all with my tale of woe upon mistakenly entering the first class section of the Deutschebahn, I will refrain from doing that. Instead I have decided to impart some of my worldly cooking wisdom (if I may call it such) and give another installment of foodage.

So without further ado I present…

Meat with unknown Pasta

It is imperative to actually prepare somewhat for this meal. As I have been in the Fatherland for a month now, or close to a month, one would think that I have my act together in terms of cooking. This is mostly true. I am careful not to purchase things I will not use completely. As a result I am missing some things still. Unfortunately there is a second facet. Being in a foreign country I have as a basic principle the desire to purchase and consume things which are not to be found (easily) in my homeland. So when I went to the supermarket (for example) to purchase ingredients for a rather basic asian Chow Mein meal, I returned with a whole slew of random unknown pasta and sausage. Hmmm great start.

Regardless I did prepare for this meal. You’re going to need something healthy to eat (people from aussieland are telling me I need to eat non-meat items occasionally) and I have always wanted to eat some crazy cabbage meal so I decided to obtain a crazy cabbage. You’re going to need one crazy cabbage. OK other ingredients include (but are not limited to) garlic (shitloads) some spring onion or other random onion, some amazingly hot dried chillis (this is important to get the desired effect) and of course some lean port mince (good pork mince). You also need some oil and other garbage that I’m sure everyone has. OK and yes carrot (but that fits in the garbage category so whatever). Um OK and yes I did purchase about five different kinds of pasta but the one I ended up using what a lean *wheat* pasta, see if you can find that huh, I thought it was like some awesome asian fried soft noodle pasta but actually it is in fact wheat kernel pasta. Tastes awesome tough.

OK so get chopping. This is best done with some kind of interesting distraction around: for the real Ugi effect you should be watching some real video game players do their thing because you have no television. It is best to downlaod a video that you will be so impressed by that you do not act in a remotely safe manner while wielding one of the sharpest knives you have ever had the joy to handle. That way you have maximised the risk of personal injury (something very close to my heart).

So chop the garlic, onion, carrot, mushrooms and shit in that manner. While chopping the bloody huge amount of cabbage into tiny shredded strips realise you have more cabbage than will fit in your saucepan. Oh dear. OK only chop up 1/3 of the cabbage. Damn that’s a lot of cabbage.

OK step three is to first bandage yourself if injured and then construct some awesome oil (very important). Recall that this is done by making a pan amazingly hot putting in some oil and shit and spice and butter or whatever the fuck you want and then stirring and whatever. OK spice that baby up. Chuck in the garlic and onion and whatever, watch it go everywhere (due to how awesome the oil is, generally measured by how much mess you can make in the shortest period of time (like lebesgue density)).

Ah!! We have forgotten the meat. OK but we did prepare, and did defrost the meat beforehand. So that’s cool. Score and chuck in and mash around a bit. Open the bottle of wine you purchased for $1 and drink heaps. Mmmm wine. Shame it doesn’t really go with pork and shit.

Wish you had some beer too.

OK while feeling sorry for yourself the shit has cooked good and you can chuck in all that other random crap. But there is a problem, there isn’e enough fluid. The cabbage isn’t going anywhere. OK put in some water and some… WINE!! Ahhh wine. Need red wine BTW. I also chucked in some of my amazingly german soy sauce, which is like ketchup mannis (spelling? I know that’s wrong) but not as sweet. I also chucked in some chilli sauce. I also chucked in some unknown spice which I can’t translate but tastes something like oregano mixed with sage. Anyway, it should all be reducing.

Taste and realise it needs something. Therefore put dried chillis in. Do not chop, do not remove seeds, just fry those bastards. Oh yeah. You should be getting a really nice syrupy sauce coming out of this.

OK now chuck on the pasta.

Rest for a second, drink some more wine (pick out the pieces of disintegrated cork which you had to demolish because you forgot yet again to purchase a bottle opener and had to channel Conan and use a knife). Check out your creation. OH DEAR GOD IT IS MOSTLY CABBAGE.

It needs something, it is spicy yet too much cabbage. The pork is completely and utterly dominated by cabbage. OK check out the fridge. What have I got? About eight hundred different kinds of cheese and pasta but bugger all else. Ahhh the freezer. YES random sausage! Gaze in awe at your collection of random sausage you can’t translate. Beautiful. Choose random unknown sausage. Hmmm. Like salami but not cooked. Better not taste it. Looks good though. Slice random sausage into chunks and chuck into the pan, fry ‘im up. OK pasta taking forever to cook… why… oh yes ok it’s unknown pasta. Look at directions… errr OK look at ingredients…. OHHH it’s wheat kernel noodle random pasta. Wait wait wait.

OK drink more wine and think about how awesome the mystery sausage will be. Taste a cooked piece and indeed the mystery sausage is delicious. Spice and juicy but with some great fresh flavour as well. Highly recommended.

Check everything is cooked, combine and serve.

Eat while watching some other speed runs, or talking to Michel Thomas, whichever floats your boat.

Important note: about this time you will gag on the incredible amount of heat in this dish. Really, if you make it to correct proportions (did you see where I specified these?!??!) then you will almost die when eating the sauce, which you conveniently failed to taste (only pieces of things in the sauce). Now what you must do is create some yoghurt and eat it with yoghurt. Actually what I did was create some tatziki (or however you spell the stupid thing) but you can make whatever the hell you want, something with yoghurt. Combine and it will actually taste INCREDIBLE. And importantly, not deadly in the slightest.

Bon appetit!

Hey everybody. So I know, I haven’t updated in a while. This is due to 2 things. The first, nothing traumatic (well, not *too* traumatic) has happenned in the last week or so. The second is I have been ridiculously busy preparing my seminar. This, I could get around by posting about math. But to really be useful for my preparation I would have to be faithful to the spirit of the talk. And not only is the target audience professional mathematicians, and not only are they mathematicians working specifically in the same field that I work in, they comprise some of the absolute best in the world. That’s really why I am here in the first place… so I figured that perhaps writing in that way would be, um, how should I put this, boring enough to be fatal. Confusing enough to be insanity inducing. Perhaps in the future I will write one with a large disclaimer, but please, unless you really are interested, do not read it, lest it drive you from my blog for all eternity.

So with that said, reason number two is no longer a problem. The object of my recent dread, the seminar, has finished. Actually it did not go so bad. I was convinced and really still am that what I am doing is quite trivial compared to the stuff these guys do. In fact, it is a slight generalisation of what they have done already. However, despite this, there were many questions and many discussions generated by the talk. Also I received a lot of compliments so really I should be honest and say it didn’t go badly. Some people complained that my handwriting was hard to read and that I was a little too technical at times; I take the first one as given, yes my handwriting is suck (but I did use slides as well so that is OK) and the technical nature of the talk is the goal, with the top pros in the audience I just wanted to convince them I really knew what I was doing. So I’m happy. We went out to dinner and drank plenty of beer afterwards. In fact, that is what spurred me on to make the drunken posts in the poker forums.

So I will finally make a blog post… and the subject of this post is to simply, briefly (ssshhh) explain the crap on my photobucket… so here goes.

Remember you can click on the photos and movies to see them more clearly. I tried to take larger shots this time but eeeevil photobucket resizes them automatically. Ho hum.

Here, my good sirs and madames, is our Ka. Well it’s actually Kate’s car, but yeah. These things are friggin’ everywhere so I took the photo to prove it.






These are two shots of a restuarant where I had lunch a few weeks ago, it’s in a building called the Europe Centre near the Berlin Zoo. It’s a pretty nice area. Actually most of these photos are from around there. I highly recommend the city of Berlin… it’s just awesome, I really love cruising around in there. Beautiful architecture (although the older style in the suburbs is still cool, I like the modern stuff in the city too) but also a lot of things to see and do.




This is supposed to be a high-res shot of the water feature in the front. But it’s too small to make out. You can see the crowd of people gathered around the street performers though, to the right.

Looking from the square with the funky cubey buildings towards a random direction, note the interesting building in the distance, these things can be seen from all angles. It’s like they have too much money to spend on nice buildings.








These are some shots of the cubey buildings. They were part of some exhibit, but I didn’t go in there. Actually I think it was about some guy who just died and they had like a biographical exhibit. Anyway, it was expensive to get in (the buildings are cool though) and I had my sights set on…

Sausage. Or generic imbiss. Yes, imbiss. Much imbiss!!! This is the German word for snack food, but really it is used for any kind of food that you can buy and eat on the move, and that does not always correlate to what us westerners think of as fast food. Regardless it is friggin’ awesome and I am like imbissing all the time. It’s the only way to eat when you’re out and about in the city, and these tent things are bloody everywhere, stocking all cuisines you can imagine. In the suburbs they have a preposition towards more meaty cuisines but in the city there really was everything. In fact, and I don’t think I have a photo of this, in the markets at Alexander-Platz (which I went to visit the following week) they had three tents which had photos of live animals, then a butcher giving what looked like a tutorial on how to chop up a dead animal, then somone preparing the meat and other ingredients and finally a swathe of cooks cooking everything. I had a crepe-type thing from that tent for like $2. It was awesome.




The entrance to a cubey building and a church on the left. All churches look bloody fantastic from what I have seen so far in Berlin.




So this is a view from the ground of the aforementioned church. It really doesn’t do it justice.

Finally, these are the short videos of street performers. I had longer videos but photobucket munched them off, and anyway it gives you an idea. Their act went for maybe 40 minutes, and it was pretty damn awesome, and I gave them 40c. Yes I am a tightass.

Wow OK actually I have more pics uploaded to photobucket but I think this is long enough. I hope this wasn’t too boring, but barring any other retarded situations this may set the tone for posts to come. Unless I decide to rant about something, like coffee.

Ah so yes indeed I was able to get inside last night. Now one of the things I like to do is cook… don’t laugh it’s true. So the question is, what do you do, when you like to cook and are faced with a miniscule completely unknown kitched, and food, where you have no idea what it actually is?

Well it’s not so tough. In case anyone else wants to rough it (ha ha) like me…

Generic Minced Meat Meal I
(what an awesome name eh)

OK so it is 11 pm and you need to cook some food. Whip out the saucepan, eh it’s way too small but who cares, and stick it on the stove. Full ball, don’t be a wimp. Slurp on some olive oil and get it warmed up. If it gets too hot and starts to spit you’re too slow, be a real man and speed up. You want some garlic, so pull that out and peel it. You need an onion too so grab one of those babies, peel that guy and set him aside. OK so the stove is ridiculously fast, take off the oil before you make a huge mess… yes, you can use this, get some pepper and salt and some other spice, yeah chilli powder is good. Put the saucepan somewhere, mix in the spice with the oil and it makes awesome oil. OK dice the garlic and onion into tiny bits (this should take a few seconds, otherwise the oil will get too cold) and oh shit the meat. OK get the minced meat (this is lean beef for me) from the fridge, shit it’s frozen, ok get your sharpest knife and slice it into tiny pieces. Sweet put the oil back on the furnace and chuck in the sliced beef. Sweet pay some nice attention to it and make sure it doesn’t all stick together, it’s got to seperate, this is not impossible if you smash it up with some implement (I used a spoon) into little pieces as it cooks. OK so it’s getting a little dry, sweet this is the plan, put maybe a cup or just some amount of water in there. Huzzah it is cooler and it will get sweet sweet sweet and moist. OK spice it again. Ah yes indeed the garlic and onion, chuck that in. Now you gotta keep stabbing the meat, you can’t let it all congeal together and become gross. Not an option. OK so now we got some meat getting nice and fried up after being sealed, need flavour, OK sweet sweet awesome chilli sauce, that will go, and some of this weird soy sauce, yes awesome idea. OK so this soy sauce, I’ve got no idea what it is, strong dark special soy sauce is as far as my translation takes it. Anyway slurp all that shit in there and keep stirring. You should still have a good amount of water or you’ve buggered it. Ah indeed we can’t just eat meat, shit, that’s right we need some rice. I would have used noodles but it seems nüdel is rare around these parts, but I do have these awesome rice packets, great quality rice. Right so bang, some water boiling (love this german stove) and chuck in the rice. Be done in ten minutes, or less. Sweet. OK keep stabbing the meat, onion and garlic nice and cooked now, mmm need flavour. OK more chilli. YES sweet dried preserved chillis, super hot, slice up a few of those, chuck ém in. yum. OK now need more flavour. OK I have these chilli con carne packets, why the hell not fill one with water and chuck it in. Hey check it out, tastes OK now. Ah indeed, a much better idea would be to let the rice absorb some of this sauce with the meat. OK drain rice, it’s boiled a little, who cares, and chuck it in with the meat. Stir stir stir. Wait. Stab meat. Taste a little. OK! Tastes good.

Now whip out a piece of this gross rye bread that you purchased because you’re an idiot, and serve stupidly hot because you are in fact so stupid you need to burn yourself whenever you cook. Eat with bread.

Mmmmm. Meaty. OK so there are plenty of better things you can cook, and I must admit, if I had any other ingredients I probably would have used them. But if you want to eat like me then…. go for it :D.

At least it was spicy!

Ahh so I figured my next post would be in one of the following categories:

- Ugi tries to do something, needs to speak German, hilarious consequences (I have plenty of candidate stories for this)
- Ugi explains the rest of the photos and videos on photobucket

I did not think I would ever have any other posts like the first few, about having something incredibly lame happen and somehow surviving. With weird people providing comedic relief…. at least to those who were not fortunate enough to have this happen to them.

Well… this post will be on this exact thing. I mayaswell put this here: LANGUAGE WARNING! (more…)

Well, I don’t have much time at the moment, some other things are happenning (obviously material for a future blog post!) but I will briefly write an epilogue to the night I had in the most recent post, on the adventure with the BVG.

Ann was there to meet me at the apartment. We talked, she gave me some water (carbonated, naturally, as all water in Germany is), a map, and then left. I knew she didn’t enjoy waiting so long for me, I apologised but really I tried as hard as I could to be there on time! I was still sorry though.

I felt hungry and tired as all hell, but also somewhat excited. I have to mention that as I was walking from the bus stop frantically searching the street for the apartment, even in that state I could appreciate the scenery. It really is very aesthetically pleasing. The roads are cobblestones, there are trees everywhere, no leaves at the moment because it is too cold, but they still add a nice presence. The houses, yes houses: not this crammed in block feel that you have in oh, prettz much every other city I’ve ever been to, all have yards and other quaint things you wouldn’t normally associate with city living. The houses all have classic architecture, some are friggin’ enormous too. There is one “house” on the corner of the street, and this is somewhat typical, which has one family living there and is essentially a mansion. I mean, it has what, 12 perhaps rooms, four levels, a friggin attic with observatory, the kids have their own playground, it’s like crazy land, or at least far away land. Which I guess is true anyway.

OKOKOK back to my supposedly short blog post. I took some photos after Ann had gone, and yes, they are shitty. Some have not enough light, some are out of focus. So kill me. I was running on empty. I will take more photos later and do the whole area some justice. But for now…

These are also out of order. I’m sorry, but I really can’t be bothered to order them right now :D.

The kitchen! It’s small, yes, but quite functional. The oven in particular is mental. On top of the cupboards out of shot are a bunch of appliances. I have done some cooking, and the stove top is so amayingly powerful than it almost exploded a mixture of sauce I was cooking. There is also a dishwasher, on the right, but I have just been washing up by hand… old habits, hard to break ;).


You can see the door to the kitchen where the above shot was taken. Some of my junk is already spread around the place. The two tables there are the only tables, on the left is a view to the garden.


Oh yes this is a great shot. See that “thing” on the left? My wonderful bed. Actually, it’s comfortable, but pretty small. The cupboard is good, I have things hung up in there now. On the left there is also a space where Oliver has his personal things which I am not to attack…. who do they think I am :).


OK so just pan right a little from the previous. You can see the bookcase, the dryer and microwave in the corner, and the table from the other shot again. There is also a chair in the shot. Note the decided absence of the following things: television, telephone, computer, INTERNET! ARGH! Anyone who knows me knows that this is going to be hard to get used to.


Yeah this shot sucks. It is of the previous room from the entryway, and to the right out of shot is the bathroom, and behind is the front door.


The bathroom in all its glory. You can see the washing machine, the basin, around to the right is the toilet, to the left a little heater and the shower in the corner. I must mention that I have been arguing with the shower for a long time. At night recently it has been about 4 degrees, sometimes colder (according to the thermometer inside, outside it is definitely colder still). Of course I like the cold but I’m not some kind of half breed lizard man with no blood at all. In short I still like a hot shower. Well for the first few days I didn’t get that… because, now I don’t know how I worked this out, perhaps trial and error, perhaps survival instinct because my body was about to hibernate if I had another ice cold shower, but there are four controls for the hot water. FOUR. To get hot water in the shower, you need to turn them all in a specific combination. It’s like a bank vault where having hot freaking water is the national treasure. There are two knobs in the bathroom, one in the living room and one in the kitchen. Actually there are two in the kitchen but it is my suspicion that one actually controls some other item in the apartment. The combination required for hot water in the shower is to turn the wall knowb in the bathroom to the right, the floor knob all the way to the left and the same with the living room and kitchen knobs. Note that if you want hot water in the other rooms they all have their own combination too. I dare say that you can only get hot water to one object at any one time, and these knobs control water flow. Still, for that efficiency, it’s a real pain in the ass.


Turn the previous shot ninety degrees right, you get the front door.


A really bad angle shot of the balcony. You step out the window onto a balcony. There is a beautiful garden here.


Ah. The garden. It’s really quite lovely. This shot of is sucks massively because it was night time and I used a flash. I will take a better shot later, in higher resolution.


Again, the balcony. Note the yards of the other places: these are supposedly apartment blocks. Don’t look it, right?

Well that’s it. I’ll wrap up this blog post with what I did after I took the shots. Yes, it can be said right here and now that I am a sucker for punishment. Having not eaten in literally days I decided to go for a walk. Yes it was late but I didn’t care. I don’t want to bore you with details, but essentially, I got lost looking for food, and managed to walk for perhaps three hours. I actually, now this is sick right, I actually enjoyed it though. There is a beautiful little river/creek nearby which I wlaked along. I did find my way back, albeit from the reverse direction, and of course that just went into the good old brain to hopefully build up some kind of cognitive map of the area.

I crashed at about 1:30 in the morning with the goal of getting to the Freie Universität by 11 am. Lofty perhaps but… well, I made it this far :D.

I promise to keep my blogs a more manageable size in future!

Thanks again for the comments all. And no Mikey, I didn’t sleep for 18 hours, jetlag does stupid things to your body, and for me it made me sleep much less. I only ended up sleeping for four hours :(.

Although I have made some amends with the BVG (Berlin Public Transport, Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe), on my first evening in Berlin we were not friends. Not friendly in the slightest in fact. But before I began that trip I had to somehow make my connection at Frankfurt in zero minutes… a mean feat ;).

I did have some things to calm me down initially. The baby panda and mother mentioned earlier here…

…the clouds, views of Frankfurt from the plane…

…and so on. Some of these are frozen lakes, not clouds, from over Russia, but I never managed to get a good shot of them. Oh well.

Regardless of these things, I was pretty much freaking out. Vomit woman returned just before we landed and I stared at her with the weight of 40+ hours of travel: attempting to communicate to her the question of, did you really have to vomit? Was it worth it? Do you feel better now?? NO! You don’t! I’m sure she understood my meaning with the look, eschewing all that messy wordiness of verbal communications.

OK so I leapt from the plane. Things going through my head. It’s 6:10. My plane leaves at 6:55. Boarding is to begin at 6:25. Checking closes at 6:10. Perhaps my only hope is to get to the check-in counter before 6:25. I must hold on to that hope! Now before I get any beratement over my choice of connecting flight here, let me put things into perspective for you. I was not being cheap or stupid in my choice of flight. I found out on the 21/01 this year that I was successful in obtaining the scholarship to study in Berlin for some time. Kate and I searched high and low for good airfares, since my travel subsidy was not infinite. Eventually, with a lot of work, Kate found a great deal but it only went as far as Frankfurt. We booked the flight. Kate leaves sometime in June, so there were still plenty of FRA->TXL flights remaining. I assume Kate has chosen a flight which leaves 2 hours or so after her plane lands in FRA. I however could find only this flight with seats remaining. It left an hour after the plane landed from Korea, and yes I figured it was possible that I could be buggered by it being late, or whatever. But I had to take it. I wasn’t going to stay overnight in FRA if I could help it. And, if I missed it, I only wasted 60E or somesuch. So it wasn’t hugely expensive.

OK now that that is sorted, back to the story. So I fly out of the plane, grab a complimentary chocolate (much needed sugar rush for my poor body, who by now thinks it is in fact 5AM, as it would be in Australia, or perhaps 3AM, which it would be in Korea) and run on down the hall following the baggage claim signs. A staff member is asking for people who have connecting flights. Problem solved! I make myself known and she is like, oh, I mean international connections. I tell her when my flight leaves. She looks at me like I am about to combust. Ehhh she says I need to hurry. No shit! Then she tells me I need to get to Gate Lounge E as soon as possible. Aye aye gate lounge E. I run off for my bags.

Eventually I find a huge room with the familiar (and loathed) conveyor belts of bags. Ehhh no bags yet. I see a bunch of desks, and some woman is there with a Lufthansa logo. I run on over and ask her if she thinks I’ll make the flight. She says, well, you need to check in. I say I haven’t got my bags yet. She says, it looks bad for me but maybe I will be lucky? Ugh. Thanks lady.

I go over to wait and after a painful 6 or 7 minutes my bag comes. I grab it and run off towards the stairs. Shit, I had forgotten how friggin’ heavy this thing is! With my satchel and the luggage, combined weight is about 31kg (and thanks to the maths fan at SYD I wasn’t charged for being over the allowed 20kg total). I figure best case scenario is I pay a bazillion Euro for the weight and somehow make the flight.

I get up the stairs and there are swarms of people everywhere, speaking der Deutsch. All my German comes flooding to my mind, but I can’t seem to vocalise it. I also can’t seem to understand what people are saying at all; it’s too fast, and I don’t know enough words to catch up after I miss something. In German, the focal point of a sentence is always the last word (unless it is a really simple sentence). So if you don’t know that word, you’re stuffed. Also, even if you know the word, but don’t hear it properly or don’t understand where the end of a sentence is and another one begins, you’re stuffed. Essentially I was in Korea again, but everyone looked a lot more like me.

I find an information counter. I ask about Air Berlin checkin. She looks at me again as if I am Shrek and points around the corner. I run around the corner. I am faced with another huge open space which is shaped like this:

+---------+
|         |
|         |
|         |
|  +-+    |
|  |  |   |
|  +-+    |
|         |
|         |

And I’m standing at the bottom (I hope that comes out properly). Anyway I go to the thing in the middle since there is an air berlin sign there and find a dude on the phone. I’m like, hey man, can’t you see I’m confused and in urgent need of assistance?? I bounce about a little and eventually someone else (the guy never gets off the phone) tells me this is TICKET SALES. Ugh. OK so I go around to the right of the thing in the middle, and find another air berlin counter. Huzzah. I run on over. I give the guy my passport, go through the normal steps…tell him my flight time and number. He looks at me again, like I am escaped from bloody Alcatraz or something. Then he asks me, do I mean 6:55 tomorrow night? No I don’t. Tomorrow morning? No I mean tonight! He then tells me that I am mistaken; this check-in counter is only for people who are checing in for flights greater than twelve hours away; it is called moonlight check-in.

What??!?! Random! Anyway I ask him, point me to the checkin counter! He points back to the ticket sales pillar. I’m like, dude, I seriously have already been over there and my flight leaves like super soon. He insists it is over there. FINE.

I storm off to the pillar, and notice that slightly to the right of the pillar, just to the left of where I was originally standing, there is exactly ONE check-in counter for air berlin. I run over to it, and an old woman is like, hello I am German or I am someone who can speak German unlike you. Aye, something I would learn to get used to. I tell her which flight I am on. She points to the checkin counter and I bone off to it. The dude takes my passport, listens to my sob story about how my flight was late and I was at ticket sales and then moonlight checkin and so in….he takes my passport, I put my fatassed luggage on the scales. I notice the weight has somehow increased (retarded scales) to 25kg. Oh beautiful. So if he weights my hand luggage like he is supposed to, it will now be over 32kg.

He looks at my passport, types something in the computer and then this red light flashes on the screen. I presumed this meant I was utterly boned and would not be able to get anywhere near Berlin tonight. He looked at me, gave me back the passport and said.

“I’m sorry sir, but we only have middle seats left.”

“Wah? You can check me in? Do it, goddamnit do it now man do it do it do it!!”

And I was checked in. I don’t know if this guy was just levelling me (there you go, poker content) or what, but then he said:

“Your flight will board at Gate E21, at 6:25. You can… you are probably going to have to head there now.”

Errr? DUHH! Of course right now with all the bunting around it was about 6:35. AAHHHH! At least I was checked in I kept telling myself.

I run off to the security area, and the line is friggin’ massive. I go to the little feeder area and wait for about a minute. (Hey, I remember these minutes :). ) A frumpy German woman takes my boarding pass. And yes, again with the look. I wish I had a huge black paintbrush and could paste to my forehead a big freaking sign which said “MY FLIGHT WAS LATE, I HAD NO CHOICE, STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE I’M SOME KIND OF FREAK.” Anyway, she rambles off something in German. Errr great. I look at her like a goldfish gazes at it’s favourite flourescent pebble. She says something else. I think of five billion phrases in German but can’t say any of them. She says again, do you speak German? (In German.) I start to say “No…” and then she just points and says “Come with me.” (again in German). She lets me skip the huge queue, and I only have four guys in front of me who are being checked by the security team. OK I just have to wait for these four guys.

Wait. Wait. Wait. WAIT! OMG PEOPLE LET ME THROUGH GODDAMNIT! Seriously I can’t convey how freaking freaked out I was becoming with every passing second. It got to 6:40 before I could get through the scanner. Also, I should mention that for the last five minutes an announcement had been running that boarding for my flight had begun. Actually, that’s not completely true. It changed halfway through to: boarding for the flight is finishing, this is the last call, etc. I essentially strip prior to going through the scanner, since I was watching everyone else and they were being caught up and delayed by very minor things, like belts and buttons and so on, so I just thought screw it, and took everythng off already. yeah yeah stare at the sideshow, bitches, stare! Go on! Yeah! Do what I tell you!!! Damn I really wanted Stuey there with me… although, in my state of near delirium, I probably would have seen him if I looked hard enough.

I got through security, put my clothes back on, and ran to the gate. I managed to get to the gate by 6:45. The ticket said the boarding finished at 6:45! I run into the gate lounge, psycho flustered, and there are like 8 billion Germans staring at me. Hey guys! I made it! No need to wait for me anymore!

Of course you know what happenned, right? They were all waiting to board the plane. The same plane. I have no idea why the AV system said it was the last call for boarding, or that boarding had begun. In the end I made it with a shitload of time to spare. We only took off at 7:10.

Plane ride nothing special. Took a bus to the plane with peoples, got on super cramped plane, watched someone hurt themselves with crazy large hand luggage (i.e. a suitcase!) and bowl over a million other people. Asked for water from the flight attendent instead of carrot juice (yeah I know, WTF) and I get mineral water. No big deal, just something weird eh? I have later realised that here in Germany people are madly in love with mineral water. Mineral water = water = life healing fluid = all that anyone drinks. Odd eh.

Anyway, plane goes fly fly fly oh look, we are late, how did that happen?? UHHHH maybe because you took off LATE! Ugh. Am in Tegel. Get off plane. Go to customs. Errr there is only an EU line? Walk around for a bit. Grab my luggage. Decide to go through the EU line anyway. Nobody checks my passport and I am through!

Well, now it is 8:25 and I have 35 minutes before I need to be at the apartment where Klaus’ secretary Ann Bjoerner is waiting for me. I don’t want to piss her off, so I message her to tell her that I will be a few minutes late. Now anyone who has spoken to me about my phone recently knows it is pretty much broken. As in totally amazingly broken. Well, it wouldn’t turn on for more than a few seconds but I wrote a message and managed to send it, or so I thought, before it completely failed and wouldn’t turn on.

OK so I was in Tegel, Berlin, and needed to get to Goethestrasse, Lichterfelde. The instructions I had were

Airport Tegel (Berlin) Bus X9 direction: S+U Zoologischer Garten
Jakob-Kaiser-Platz U7 (underground number 7) direction Rudow Berliner Strae
U9 (underground number 9) direction S+U Rathaus Steglitz
S+U Rathaus Steglitz Bus 186 direction S Lichterfelde Sd
Bogenstrae: walk to Goethestr. 29, 12207 Berlin

Yeah. I asked Ann, who wrote them, to explain a little better and she said instead, if I can’t use buses and trains then would I like her to pick me up from the airport instead? I wish I had said yes but I didn’t want to inconvenience her so I said no, I’ll be OK. Idiot!

I have to admit, the next while is a little hazy in my mind. I was in such a state of panic and confusion it was incredible. I somehow went into autopilot mode and found the stand for the X9 bus. Everything being in German isn’t helping, and it’s like I am a complete n00b in German because in my current frame of mind I couldn’t read anything, not even simple words which I knew instantly just a week earlier. I found the ticket dude and purchased a ticket. Which was difficult. Since they pay using this tray thing, oddly enough, and I didn’t have any Euros. WHOOPS. Off to exchange money. I exchanged $400 AUD for ãbout 195E, which I knew was a complete rip off, but took it anyway; I just needed to get some cash. I went back and purchased a ticket. As I purchased the ticket, an X9 bus came and left. Oh sweet, thankyou luck. I waner over to the bus stand dragging my retardedly heavy luggage along with me.

Now is when I almost cracked, it saddens me to recall. I waited about 9 minutes for the next bus (yes yes BVG is good, but I had a very unique perspective that night and couldn’t see the good points…) and as it arrived I waited for everyone to get on, and then I got on last with my friggin’ baggage. I step up to the bus. I hold the extended handle to my bag, roll it over. Handle snaps off. Forgive the language, but the handle snaps the fuck off! OH MY GOD is this really happenning? Bag falls UNDER the bus. ARGH I say something in English to the bus driver who looks at me like, why are you wasting my time with your idiotic ramblings? Sigh you just wait bus driver, you will get what’s coming to you… anyway elaborate plotting comes later, I bend down and recover my bag. Now I have to carry the fatassed thing everywhere. ARGH. Did I mention I was carrying half a bookcase of mathematics texts?

By some miracle, I was then possessed by the hippie God of travellers, and somehow managed to make it to the apartment. You think I am skimming, right, but not really. I somehow realised we were at the right spot on the bus, lugged the luggage and satchel off there. Somehow I found the right platform to change to the right line. I got on the train, the correct train, then somehow worked out that I needed to change at a certain station. The instructions were not helpful, from Ann, since there was trackwork. I have to admit, I don’t know how I worked my way around that. I finally got to Rathaus-Steglitz station and had to catch the final bus. It was about 9:45 and I was already 45 minutes late for Ann. I felt awful but being so close to my final destination, and feeling like it was 7 am and I had been awake for 48 hours, I didn’t care enough to break down at that point.

I then did something really odd and somewhat special. I am completely disoriented in the middle of a large city. I have no idea how to read, completely illiterate. I exit an underground station. I know that I need a certain numbered bus, bus 186. I go to the nearest bus station, still on autopilot, somehow navigating my way around. I look at the sign on the stand, and indeed bus 186 stops here. I look on over, around the place, find a seat and sit down. I’m not thinking much. I look toward the direction the cars are coming from, which is the opposite to what I am used to (not helping) and see a bus coming this way. It’s bus 186. That’s fortunate. Then, for some inexplicable reason, I think, what if the buses that go both north and south are numbered the same, and they run on a loop? Isn’t it possible that this bus is in fact going North? How can I work this out? I panic a little. I look around, assess my surroundings using some inexplicable heuristic. I get the feeling, from somewhere, that this bus MAY be heading north. There is a map, of the train and surface rail tracks, that I can see the station to my left on. Unfortunately there are 8 exits from the station spaced equally and I don’t know which one I am on. For some reason though I felt as though the bus was heading North. The buildings in the direction the bus was heading were larger, somehow, and it just felt wrong to get on the bus. I let it pass me.

Then, feeling instantly like I had done something intensely stupid, I started to cross the 8-lane road. Well, highway, whatever. I lug my ungodly luggage across the road, tripping over exactly one and a half times (don’t ask) in the process, and look around for another bus stop. I find one. I go on over to it and check the times and so on… it was 10:00 at about this time and I figured I just missed a bus. I thought, how the hell can I work out if this bus is going the right way? I checked the maps again. No help, damn spartan useless parchment! Feel my wrath! (No, I didn’t break it, I merely cursed at it. Verbal abuse.)

There was a timetable and a list of stops on the top. But, they are all German street names, and none looked familiar. Ugh. I figured, perhaps I should have gotten on that last bus, and gone against my instincts? Well… hmmm. There was another bus stop a bit further down the road. I shuffled along to that one. (I say shuffled, because all I was capable of doing without dislocating my shoulder was a ridiculous geriatric shuffle down the road, due to the structure of my bag it was the only way to move it without tripping over…) I examined the timetable with a hateful eye, and was somewhat shocked to see a single stop, some twenty stops down the line, which I recognised. Also, this was a stand for the 186 bus. So perhaps I had made the right decision after all?

It did turn out to be correct. I managed to find the apartment (some further navigating weirdness occured after getting off the bus, I had a choice of four directions and no map, and somehow I went the right way to find the street). Even though it was quite late, I could tell that the surroundings were quite beautiful. The whole area is picturesque. If you have ever watched le Tour on TV, think of the French cobblestone villages, this is the area of Lichterfelde that I am staying in, it is like something out of a history book….amazing really.

I found the apartment, and rang the bell. Ann came down the stairs. We had a conversation, and she took me up to the apartment…

Oh dear this is turning into quite a tale. With my broken body, deprived of all food, thinking it is 8 am, I don’t think I was the best conversationalist. But I was there. I was there, damnit, and nobody managed to keep me away! Ha! I shake my fist at thee!!

Unfortunately I’m not sure Ann understood this behaviour…

Well! More on the apartment, including the obligatory pictures, in the next blog post. Auf wiederschreiben!

So in fact I am at my office in the FU Berlin, and of course there are plenty of stories about my adventures getting to this place… including how the handle of my luggage snapped off while navigating the dangers of the Berlin public transport system, which are few, but when lugging around 40kg of luggage with a broken handle, and having to take 2 buses and 2 trains, without being able to read anything, the dangers become much more apparent.

OK so briefly, after I last updated everyone I was pretty damn hungry. I walked around for a bit, and found some shops open, but really everything was in Korean and I was pretty much lost. I went to the place with the most people in it in the end, which happenned to be a very traditional Korean restuarant. Hmmm whoops. Well, in short nobody spoke English. Highlights: trying to explain the notion of takeaway, ordering ox tail, watching people next to me cook their food from scratch at the table, being stared at for being a nub. Eating this food is hard, damnit. I was served 9 dishes of whatever the hell and had no clue what to do with any of them. Seriously. I asked the waitresses but as I said, no English, not even Engrish. The actual ox-tail is starshaped and slippery on the bone, with little pieces of meat in between the spikes. So it’s hard to get at. But oh so tasty. Regardless, I thought fuck it and just ate all the stuff, I was so damn hungry. It was actually really nice. And cheap, only $12 for the lot, enough to feed anyone really. Most of their meals were in fact only $7 so it was pretty cheap overall…. yet I saw a lot of highly paid people eat there, so it must be a good place to eat.

I went back to my room after eating and walking around a bit more. I returned to my room, just as I left it. I had put the tv on to watch some live starcraft (oh hell YES) and had just started to relax when I heard the psycho doorbell (that thing is loud) and thought, oh right here we go I’m screwed now. As I walked over to the doorway I noticed that there is actually a monitor near the door which shows who is standing at your doorway. Well, it was Mr Hon Choo and a buddy. I was like hello, he said something odd and I noticed they were drunk, he had a huge bottle of *something* (looked like cordial, smelt like vodka, probably a kind of ricewine) and some snacks. I’m like, errr, what’s up? He bounced about a bit and was like “poarty? snacks???”" and I said I was tired, sorry. He looked shocked! I felt bad for about half a second then thought, no way man back in Australia it is 2 am and I feel buggered. So I made some charades and then said goodnight and went back inside. Poor guy, although, who knows what the hell was going through his head.

I gathered my things, cuddled up around them and watched pro video gamers battle it out in the world of starcraft (ah what might have been, ex Aus. champion goes to Korea, centre of SC world, to test his mettle… ah cest la vie…).

The next day was significantly less exciting. I woke up, showered and wotnot, prepared to check out, watched a few more starcraft matches (it’s 24H, each match worth $100,000 and the play is just incredible if you know what you are watching, the commentary would have been nice to understand but even without it… oh man, it was awesome) and finally pulled myself away. I went over to a nearby “cafe” and ordered a coffee and a bacon sandwich. The sandwich was great. The coffee….ugh it was like instant coffee with sugarcream on top. Bleh. Oh Newtown coffee, I miss thee.

Anywho I took again the FREE bus to the airport (along with the all-Korean group, no westerners anywhere near where I was staying) and did the airport thing. Highlights: setting off the security guards at the airport because I was sick with a cold (the irish dude next to me on the way over was coughing, I guess he gave me some virus and my temperature was too high) and their infrared scan (yes they scan you in all kinds of ways there) buzzed at me. I was questioned about why I was sick, how I was sick, was I near any farms blah blah blah. Eventually I managed to convey that I became sick on the way over here, on the plane, not on a farm, and I did not have any sexual relations with that donkey, and my fever is no threat to national security. Eventually they let me go. Naturally I also set off the other security peoples with my massive amounts of metal inside me. Actually, of course that’s not true, what it was in the end was the plastic money, apparently the watermark of the $50 notes I was carrying around in Australian set off their so-called metal detector. Wackos. Anyway, eventually they too let me through.

They fought for nothing, I was never going to miss that flight; I got to the gate lounge two hours before the flight was due to leave. I set to finding a coffee. Again I found one and again it was GOD AWFUL. I’m talking worse than instant coffee. In fact I would have rather taken instant coffee granules and snorted them with chilli powder than drank that stuff. But drink it I did, because I was feeling like shit and you know it might behave similarly to real coffee. (Aside: it didn’t.)

Regardless I opened up my laptop to happily discover free (piggyback actually) wireless at the airport. I used it to chat with Kate a little (hey little ol sis) and Lewis (wassup). It was good to chat but after a little while I had to get on the plane.

The flight was significantly more enjoyable than the flight over to Incheon. This is in fact a non-trivial dedution, for the following two reasons. First and foremost we had the free in flight entertainment system which was for some reason absent on the flight to Incheon. I watched 4 movies, 2 documentaries (one being the cutest thing I have ever seen) and a special from Penn & Teller. I also played plenty of games like mini gold and tetris against other passengers. Good times. Along with that are all the regular aeroplane things: shitty food and impossible-to-sleep-ness were getting to me. But really, the second factor was… vomit. Oh yes I said vomit. I was on the window, next to me were two girls. The girl furthest away was on the corridor. At some point during the flight I realised that she had vomited everywhere. The smell was horrific. The poor staff tried really hard to clean it up but hey, what can you do? IT’S VOMIT. The vomit girl went somewhere and the other girl next to me left as well but oh no, it was too far from me so I’m not allowed to be moved to wherever the hell these other people went.

So there it was. Anyway, eventually we got to Frankfurt and a new problem reared it’s head: we were late. Only fifteen minutes, but you have to understand. My connecting flight to Tegel (Berlin) left exactly an hour after I landed. Check-in closed 45 minutes before the flight leaves. So that left exactly 0 minutes to get off the plane, go through immigration, go through customs, go through baggage claim, go through security, find check-in counter, check-in (?), find security, go through security (??), find gate, go through gate and board (???). Needless to say I was pretty much freaking out.

Anyway that story is for another blog post. I will update on the resolution to that dilemma as well as some of the other things that have been happenning (I hope everyone realises that I can’t possibly convey everything that has been going on… I just do my best) later. For now, the promised pictures.

I did not have a real window seat, but this is us leaving Sydney.

I’m not really super happy about being next to this sick dude.

Oh look we’re in Korea! Yes I know it is shitty, so sue me.

It’s a little hazy eh? Remind you of anywhere??

The weird wacked out television castle making screwed up noises that I wrote about in the previous blog.

More of it. It was seriously something that even the locals were like, wtf. WTF WTF WTF!!!

The room, looking from the hallway toward the main room.

The room, looking from the small table at the back next to the cot toward the entrance.

The walk-in wardrobe near the entrance was huge.

Bathroom was huge and modern. toilet…well, yes it was.

The weird intercom/telephone/internet terminal.

This doorlock IS skynet.

The building from the outside. Notice the huge glowing happy face. These things are everywhere.

The street the big building is on. There are like six or seven of these huge buildings and nothing else. There are a zillion little shops cramped into each building however, and they are all linked by underground as well. It is really quite interesting…

Some of Mr Hon Choos mania must have been rubbing off in this picture.

The place where I ate my ox tail.

The little table in the back corner.

Complimentary hair gel. A typical example on Engrish at work.

Me looking bemused after Mr Hon Choo invaded again.

Huzzah another aeroplane.

I wonder if I will be screwed today?

This documentary, OMG these friggin’ pandas, I tell you what, they are awesome.

Closeup of a panda.

A view from above Russia. I like clouds. All kinds.

OK, I promised and so it shall be. I have forgotten my forum password for some reason and the system is blocking my login attempts so this is going to be even more random than originally intended.

I have left for Germany. For those who aren’t me, I’m going to Germany to absorb and meet as much of the information and as many of the people I can who are world leaders in my field of research. It is a privilege but also scary as hell. I may be asked to give a seminar series, I have already been asked to give just one seminar on my recent work; but since it is quite long, Klaus may see fit to decree a seminar series instead of just one seminar. So this weighs on my mind. But, onto the meaningless detail! With photos!

I am in Incheon, Korea, at an underground internet cafe, beneath the building which has my 5 bedroom hotel room. It is a 17-gazillion story megaplex with all manner of odd things in it. So how did I end up here? Let me spin you the tale…. it all started with this morning, well, last night, when I decided to finally do some reading about Korea. I read that the book I was reading was printed in 2002, and the airport I was flying into didn’t exist back then. OK, no worries, I’ll just wing it when I’m there. It will be like the amazing race, but with accomodation and not getting screwed as the challenges and no prize for winning. Sounds exciting.

So with that in mind I went to sleep and then arose, along with Kate who was awesome enough to get up with me (helloooo 5 am) and drive me to the airport in Sydney. This all went off without a hitch, modulo some tears, non-closed boots of cars, and of course me hearing my name in every announcement. I went through, exchanged some AUD for some Won, and that was my first suprise: I didn’t get a good deal! Hmmm. Korea isn’t like Japan is it?? Naaaahhhh…. can’t be. OK anyway I exchanged $70 and was on my way. I chose this arbitrary number because in my guidebook it said the cheapest livable hostel was about 30k W, which came to about $40 AUD, and I needed two or three meals on my stopover… so it seemed like a nice round figure.

Flight was eh, eleven hours of bonertude. What are you going to write about that? I mean, we had no entertainment, I was stuck with no room to move, the food made me feel like vomiting… oh but at least it was free. The coffee was ironically the best thing there (plunger). Anyway, I struck up some kind of repore with the irish guy next to me, but that quickly faded once I realised that he was staying in some fancy hotel paid for by his work. Hmmm. Where will I sleep tonight? This needed to be sorted out.

Oh by the way expect a collage of photos to evidence my little adventure… just not right now, when I have to write and then eat. Mmmm food. OK, focus! Collage later, now, story.

So I fill out the immigration form (we’ve landed by the way, and it’s hazy like Ho Chi Minh city hazy, anyone who has been there knows what I mean) and head on over to customs. Hey, nice and quick (apart from this mammoth woman who, I mean, I have no clue how she even came over in the plane, but anyway… she didn’t fit in the little aisle you had to squeeze down to get to the counter, which caused some sad delay…) and the dude I spoke to was nice, didn’t ask any questions about where I was going to stay tonight, huzzah (they can refuse your application if you don’t have anywhere to stay on your first night). OK sweet. So, we are in an airport, if I was Korean and in Sydney, what would be the best thing to do?? Answer: go to the centre of the city. So! Step 1: work out what the centre of Seoul was. So I go to a bookshop, oh man I so have this under control. Nope, books all in korean. Whoops. OK walk around for a bit. Find another map! Yes, alternate engrish transmations, oh hallelujah. OK so I see that there are three centres to Seoul. Hmmm. And no way to get there except by a combination of bus and taxi. And nowhere to buy the ticket…. since all the ticket booths are closed. HMMMM problem. OK don’t panic, go find an information counter. So the first information counter sucked major ass and didn’t even speak english. No worries, go to the other one… yes sweet, they tell me about the dedicated hotel counter! Huzzah, hotel counter!! Ok speed off to the hotel counter…. get a bad feeling… see hotel names, look fancy…. hmmm. Nicht sehr gut, ja? Ja. JA. I speak to the woman, she seems nice and has good engrish. I ask her if she can get me a room for the night. She says, yes. I add that it should not be too expensive. Anyway, she gets on the phone, talks for a bit, puts it down and then asks me: 100? I’m like… are you talking to me? 100 what? She’s like, USD. Errr no lovey no not 100 USD. I said: TOO EXPENSIVE very slowly because I felt like she didn’t hear me before. She nods and says ok… 65 USD? I’m like, eh, that’s still way more than I know you can get a friggin room for!! Goddamnit! Don’t screw me! But what I said was no, too much. She laughs and says, well, that is the cheapest you will get a hotel room for! I’m like, whatever, I’ll prove you wrong… biatch. Then I saw this American couple from the plane who were like, fuck it, let’s get the 65USD room. I’m like, no way bitches, I’m not buying into this broken scheme!

OK so abandon the help plan. Let’s go back to the get-to-the-city plan. OK find signs for train station. Start walking. Follow escalators. HOLY SHIT there are five hundred fucking televisions all piled in a heap playing psycho crazy musi\ak with matrix-esque lightshows flying around them (yes around them). I’m like, have I finally lost it? What did that food DO to me??? Then I took a photo (yes yes see the collage) and decided that Koreans are odd, very odd, and continued on to the train station.

OK so pretty soon I notice there is nobody around anymore. You know how you push through throngs to get somewhere, are focused on getting there, and then before you know it you’re all alone on a travelator trying to read Korean in a huge white tiled hall? Yes? OK fine just go with me. I am unphased and continue to walk toward the train station. OK … find the train station. Errr need a ticket. SHIT ticket! OK fine….fine…. go back, there was another information desk. I approach the information desk. They tell me that they can’t sell tickets. Crap. But there is a bus to the city. OK cool. But it takes 1.5 hours. Oh shit! I’ll never get a room that late. Not a cheap one. 65USD isn’t looking so bad….

OK so I wander off thinking I’m pretty mega fucked right now and am almost prepared to give that stupid woman 65USD. Then I see this security guard and I’m like, he will help (yes I think I was a little delirious). I go up to him, he looks confused before I even say anything, I’m like, dude, can you tell me how I can get a hostel? He’s like, I’m Korean and I don’t speak english. Or engrish. Errr OK well …. I stand there and look at him for a while. Then I notice there is a sign behind him, with a map! But not in english…. but there is a symbol that has a house on it, so I just ask him to tell me how to get there. He’s like, that way… so I just walk that way. Yes yes this is going somewhere. I walk around, and then I’m like, on the freeway. Wow, that guy didn’t tell me the right way to go, or I misread that map in a language I don’t know any phonemes for. Nah that couldn’t be it…..

OK. So I stand around and look. I see a few doors. One door just has Korean on it and an unmanned desk. Errr OK. But, I do see a URL: www.travelhappymalltours.com. Oooh tours, tours! Tours mean accommodation! OK so I go in there and yes the desk is indeed unmanned. I start wandering around and there is one guy there: a young guy who I later learned to call Mr Hon Choo. I explained to him my problem, and he nodded and said something like “okokokprobok” (best approximation). Then he walked off. I have to explain that Mr Hon Choo is a little manic. Like someone who has caffeine for plasma and speed for h2o. Anyway, he seemed harmless… and he gestured for me to follow him. So I do. He says something like: “you need htl?” I’m like “YES” he’s like “errr ten min?” I’m like sounds fine. So I sit there at someone elses desk (we are in the back) and he types away. I hear about ten different ringtones all at the same time and immediately he is on ten mobile phones talking about random shit (I presume). Anyway, I really can’t recount this except to provide an indication of my own confusion. When the dust had settled, he asked me, “one per?” I say yes. He says “the pri is 4″ and holds up four fingers. I’m like, forty? Four thousand? Forty thousand? And he says sorry, his english is bad. I’m like, my Korean I can guarantee you is worse. But I don’t think he understood my response, which was kinda nice really :). Anyway he wrote down 40,000 W. Now having the knowledge that I was completely fucked about getting into town, and knew that according to my 2002 guidebook 30,000 W was a good price, I basically said yes. Well of course I said something like “so much?” and he just kinda looked at me, I don’t think he understood me really. So I agreed, 40,000. But what was I getting? I asked but I don’t think he understood me. I tried to ask him where it was, and he said “yes” which wasn’t very helpful.

Anyway so Mr Hon Choo is flibbiting about like a crazy man and then starts turning off all the lights and runs out the door. I’m like wtf, am I part of some sick joke. Then he runs back in and makes some hand motion which I calculate must approximate “follow me”. I leave the office and he locks up. I’m like, errr weird. He conveys to me in some unfathomable manner that the hostel is near where he lives. Hmmm. Not sounding good. But I figure, bugger it. I follow him around the airport and we end up at a bus terminal. Now it really is hard to give a good description of exactly how manic Mr Hon Choo was. For example. He starts walking to the bus terminal. I’m following him. Then, he leaps into the air and spins compeletely around, and points to a desk. Manically. Then we go over to the desk. I figure we are asking about when the next bus will be. Then, he leaps into the air, spins and runs out the glass doors. Then, he runs back in. And stands still. I say something, he says “mmmhmmm yes okokokprobok” which is pretty much all he seemed to be able to say. He stands for about three seconds and then leap-spins out the glass doors again and shouts something as he does it. I follow him and see two buses. He vanishes on the first bus. I run onto it too and it immediately exits. No ticket? He says “see, is see” oh it’s free? I ask him again. He says his standard line and I’m like, whatever. The bus fills immediately with 800 million Koreans in suits. No seats, just standing room. I’m the ONLY westerner there. Hmmmm. Not feeling too good. Mr Hon Choo’s armada of mobile phones starts ringing at about this time and he starts fifty conversations while almost flying into the glass walls of the bus due to the extreme driving being practised. I’ve got next to no idea what is going on. Soon enough the bus stops and we get off. He asks me a few things but I can’t understand him; still I answer as best I can. He leads me into a massive building. I’m like, seriously, am I going to be raped/killed/drugged/what the hell is going on. We get into an elevator. He points to the number seven and says, you are 707. OK. We get to the seventh floor and then we walk down the corridor (walk is used quite liberally here, Mr Hon Choo does not walk, he more leaps about and then runs back to the elevator to check *something* and then runs back down the corridor). We stop at a hotel room door in this quite fancy building. He says, your room. I’m like, but I haven’t paid anything yet?? Anyway, he rings the doorbell. Nothing happens. Errr is this someone elses room?!?! Well soon enough the proprietor shows up (actually just some other dude with the room key who spoke only Korean who I later learned was the proprietor). He lets me in. He shows me how the room works… it’s 5 beds, a cot and two bunk beds, pay tv, air conditioning, huge bathroom, crazy weird lock on the door… massive view. Photos of all these things coming. Now he gets me to fill out this little form, and then he asks me to pay. I’m like, here comes the pain. Now he tells me it is 100,000 Won. But… no, he says 40,000. OK. Done. I pay the Won. He tells me how to check out. He has an extended conversation with Hon Choo (possibly about his commission…) and then he tells me some other admin things and leaves. I say my thanks to Mr Hon Choo and he says something incomprehensible about ids or something, and then he’s off too. He tells me he lives in 853, upstairs. OK so that explains some things. Anyway, he’s off.

I sit on the bed. One of the beds. Take it all in. Am grateful that I only have hand luggage on me. Propose not to leave anything unattended in the room. Anyway, I get a drink of water (oh yes there is a fridge) and then the doorbell rings. I argue with the door lock for a time and then finally it is Mr Hon Choo again. We exchange some words, and I ask his name. He gives me his card. He is a travel agent in training. Well, there you go. He asks me to call him if I need any other accomodation. Sure, I guess. He was nice, in a crazy odd kind of way. He also gives me the business card of the place I am staying in: Airport Guest House, www.icnhostel.com. OK.

So how am I on the internet…well it is Korea. Gaming mad. I just exited the room, with all my belongings of course, and there is a sign in Korean with an orc face. OK, sure, sounds like internet. I go in and there is a cigarette smoke filled den of weird gaming effects and people partying. OK internet! I sit down and start using the computer. A guy comes over and gives me a card and I get out of him that it is 500Won per hour. Eh that is pretty friggin sweet! So, use use use.

And here I am.

Will I get robbed? Will I be raped in the middle of the night? Who knows??!?! Who cares! Right now, I’m happy to assume that Mr Hon Choo is naturally wacked out of his mind, and thought that his landlord would give him some cash if he had a free room with noone in it, since it was rather late it is somewhat like money for nothing.

OK I’m going to go get some food. When I get my login details back, or find some wireless internet (should be easy) I’ll update the forum… including the all-important leaderboard. Ugi out!