Pics and Chicks (as in chicken)

Last night got a little decadent. After 6 straight days of working out and then inlining/blading on Sunday I had dinner with my 장인어른/jang-in-eo-reun (father-in-law). We usually go to a pretty posh place but I think he was a little bagged from his 5 hour drive from 대전/Taejeon so we hit a chicken place. There are tons of them here...seems Korean like fried chicken about as much as Filipinos (which is a lot). The place was called 오마이치킨/oh-mai(may)-chicken, so when the served us the bird I said, "Oh my chicken!" but it was lost on them...maybe it was my pronunciation: should have said "Oh Ma I Chi-ken!" probably. Anyways, it was quite a feed, had a pint (or 500 mili, as they call them here) of beer too. Wow, been a long time. Basically haven't had boozer but for some soju with dinner for the last 2 weeks. Here's another chicken place in Insa-Dong (right near the exit to Jongno-3-ga Line 5 subway station):


Born...to be...Chi-cken!

Here's another funny name...it's a moving company. I have to assume they do more than one-way trips to the gulags of Siberia.


Oh my God! It's the KGB!

Sunday morning I took a morning walk (to get my daily dose of 김밥/gimbab (seaweed and rice treat) from 7-11 and was almost incapacitated by this billowing cloud of smoke. I like these fans, as they spew warm air in the winter and cool air in the summer, but I guess something was happening underground (smelled like burning plastic) that lead to noxious gases escaping that morning. It wasn't so amazing there were toxic fumes (much of Seoul is enveloped in smog on a daily basis) but that no one was doing anything about it...remember, it smelled like burning plastic. I saw this guy surveying it when I returned so I figured he'd take care of it (so much for my do-gooder country-boy mentality).


Where there's smoke...

I know everyone has been waiting on the edge of their seats for more bathroom pics. Well, here they are. I have no idea why I like to point out the differences in these things; maybe I had a traumatic experience the first time I ended up having to use a squat-toilet.

Here's a pic of a 'no smoking' sign on one loo's door. As you can read, the English is not quite as verbose as the Korean. Maybe the Korean says something like, "Those caught smoking in this bathroom will be required to post sentry at the DMZ for the period of one year, or pay a fine of 40,000 won". Anyone know? Reminds me of in Lost in Translation the director is giving Bob Harris (Bill Murray) extremely lengthy direction in Japanese and then the translator simply says: "Look to your left; look with intensity and speak slowly", Bob: "Is that all he said? Cuz it seems like he said a lot more." (Oh ya, and Lost in Translation when translated to Korean becomes something like "Is Love Lost in the Translation"...thereby proving that, not surprisingly, something was lost/added in translation.)


Um, is that all it says?

And nothing really beats the view of the men's john, right ladies? Yup, this was taken right from the (entirely public) hallway...so if you got the right angle you can know a lot more about some 아저씨/ajeosshi/men then you'd care to.


What a view!

And of course nothing beats a shower after a stint in the loo...this tap is just nuts. If you just turn on the water (which, thankfully, I did not) you'd get a lovely cascade of water all over your shirt and pants. Fantastic.


Ready! Aim! ... aw crap!

And, as you may have seen, there are sometimes pictures over the urinals here. Sometimes they are Picasso knock-offs, like in the KITMC building (they're Korea's #2 mutual fund firm) and sometimes they're by a local (and entirely unknown) artist, like in our facilities.


Picasso to pee by.


Jung who??

And, on another topic, if you're thinking of stocking up on kimchi, better do it soon: prices will jump next month.

Ok, I think that's enough for now.