Sunday morning I drove my new/old car to Yongsan Garrison with Jee Yeun as my navigator.  The purpose was to make sure I was prepared for my Monday morning commute.  The GPS that came with the car has proven to be essentially worthless, which may be due to the fact that we have no instructions and we haven’t manged to fully grasp the intricacies of its operation.  Plus, the previous owner did not give me the equipment to mount the sucker on the dashboard.

Anyway, the way I get to work is to turn right on the main drag outside my apartment building, turn right again at the first main intersection, turn right at Korea University, turn right onto highway 6, drive a fair piece until I can make a left turn on the road that goes past Seoul station, then turn left towards Yongsan High School, another right, and then enter the base through the Camp Coiner gate.  Easy as pie.

We did a little shopping at the PX, had lunch at the food court, and then headed home.

I brought home this fine crock pot from the PX. So sometime in the coming days I’ll be doing up some pulled pork barbecue. I also dropped twenty bucks on a “universal” mount for the GPS. I guess my GPS is from another universe because there was no way to make it fit. I played with it some more today using velcro strips, but those have proven not strong enough to hold it in place. Maybe I’ll go with superglue…

Took a different route going home.  Out the MP gate, past City Hall and the American Embassy, turn right at the Blue House, drive until I see the sign for the Hyehwa rotary, first right in the rotary, then a straight shot on home.  Who needs GPS?

I made it in Monday morning on my own with no getting lost, no accidents, and only blowing through one red light (that I know of).  And that was at a crosswalk, so no big deal, right?  35 minutes door to door.

My chariot. Ain’t she a beaut?

With a fine ass to boot. Ahem.

I’ll be driving in every Monday and driving home on Wednesdays with a boot full of groceries.  And hopefully we will do some weekend road trips now and again.

I took the subway back into Itaewon Sunday afternoon for my Singles League match.

The 15-1 victory took some of the sting out of last week’s 14-2 shellacking. My opponent wasn’t pleased, but hey, I was on my game and he wasn’t. It happens.

Monday night we faced off with our sister team from Dillinger’s (the Dill’s Pickles), the strongest team in the league and one we’ve never managed to beat.  I was full of confidence but drew their top Korean player in every fucking match.  He whipped 6-0 in singles, but with a partner we went 3-3 in doubles.  Despite my lackluster performance, we somehow found ourselves tied at 19 going into the final leg.  I came to the board facing a 60 out, and threw a double 20, double 10 for the victory.  It was an exciting finish and I felt at least partially redeemed.  And then the bar picked up my tab as a birthday gift.  I’d call that a good night!  Even made it to bed by 11:30 which gave me 5 hours sleep, my bare minimum it seems as I made it through today without my usual Tuesday blahs.

Speaking of my birthday, here’s some of the guys responsible for my sorry state of inebriation on Friday night.

At the two extremes are co-workers. The guy next to me is my old friend Howard who was my sponsor when I first came to Korea in 2005. He’s been in Japan all these years since so it was great to see him again.

Damn, I’m fat.