Last Saturday I lost my glasses. I looked all over the house for the damn things to no avail. I figured if they were at the house the cleaning ajumma would find them. Alas, it was not to be. I even went back to the last bar I had visited that night but no luck (they didn’t speak English there so I had to do that whole hilarious pantomime routine). Anyway, this morning they appeared out of the blue in the gap between my nightstand and the bed. A place I know I had looked for them at least twice. That’s the thing about losing your glasses, you need them to find them.

Yeah, I know this is without a doubt the most lame post I have ever written. Don’t hate me because my life is full of such wonder and excitement.

Actually, I have been wearing my three year old glasses all week. Other than having no depth perception and barely being able to read typeface on the computer monitor they still work fine.

Funny thing is I went 11-1 in dart legs this week and threw enough marks to move back into the top spot in my division. Hopefully I am out of my slump as we have the stretch run coming up and our team is 8 legs out of first. Now I just have to decide which glasses to wear Monday night.

On a topic that is more interesting than my eyewear (to me at least) I am hosting a small dinner party tonight. I am having the Korean friends who took me to the soju hut a couple of weeks ago over. Menu includes tossed salad with all the fixin’s, sweet taters, and grilled rib eye steak. Appetizers will be polish sausage (also cooked on the grill) and boiled shrimp. For dessert I am baking a carrot cake which I will serve with vanilla ice cream. My plan is that they will leave knowing why Americans are so fat.

Well, today it is raining some but it has been pretty damn pleasant these days. Springtime in the land of the morning calm is definitely the prettiest time of the year. Jendalay and gaenalee are in bloom and the cherry blossoms are at their peak. Here’s a picture taken near my office on the Yongsan military base:

Ok, so I actually took this photo last spring, but they look the same this year, trust me. Now, with the yellow dust blowing in from Mongolia the sky is not usually that blue, but we do have our days.

There really is a lot to love about this country.

Sunday we played our makeup match with Jeckles from Gecko’s. Everyone played well and that resulted in us giving them a 15-4 spanking.

Last night we hooked up with the team from Hollywood Grill, FFOD. These guys have gotten to be our nemesis–not in a bad way–they are good sports and all, just they always seem to find what it takes to beat us. We came out of singles down 9-3 and wound up losing 11-8. I was proud of the guys for not going down without a fight, but we just couldn’t get the winning darts going last night.

On a personal note, I am starting to work out of my slump. I know I’m throwing better when the 5-marks and tons start coming, and I had a couple of each last night and several more on Sunday. I’m still way to inconsistent though and can’t quite figure out why that is. Nothing to do but keep on keeping on.

We probably had the most fun when the Bless U Blessed Bulls guys showed up after their match and we just threw some games for the hell of it. League games are very intense for me. I love the competition but I do tend to get wound up a little bit. Just relaxing and throwing for sport (and rounds of beer) is a nice way to relax and remember why we love the game. Now, I will admit that in my games with the Goat I am playing for pride as well, but still. The Goat and I teamed up in doubles later and we were unstoppable (ok, I only played the one game in doubles, but we done good).

So, it is coming down to crunch time. Take it Easy is clinging to second place and after next week we have three tough match-ups to finish the season: Alley Rats, Eberhardt, and Blessed Bulls. Then a single elimination tournament where the pressure is really on.

Yeah, its all good.

Today was my first day back in the office after a four day weekend. No, it was not a mini-vacation, it was sick leave to deal with a minor medical issue. No worries, all is well.

So I had the normal chore of catching up with email and the like, but thankfully nothing real stressful to deal with. I knew going in that I had to be at work for a teleconference with the Office of Personnel Management in DC at 2100. What I didn’t expect was a Video Teleconference from 2200-0100 with the Pentagon. Around midnight I figured out that what they were talking about didn’t affect our function, so I skated on out of there. Now I am home trying to unwind. The good thing is my boss said I could stay home till noon tomorrow. Woo Hoo!

In between I had my first level two Korean lesson. I am going to like this a lot more because I am getting one-on-one tutoring, which is what I need. Tonight we worked on double vowels and double consonants. There is apparently a distinction between many of these sounds, but damn, I am struggling to hear it. I don’t have Hangul software (yet) so I can’t show you the symbols, but let’s just say that we and wei sound the same coming out of my mouth at this point. Anyway, my tutor (a nice high school lad) thought my pronunciation was generally good and he didn’t seem as frustrated as I was at my inability to replicate the nuances in articulating those combinations.

Kevin from Hairy Chasms left a helpful comment on things I can do to work on my reading. Things like reading maps and menus Korean. A useful tip that I will incorporate into my learning activities. I have also started reading random signs and the Hangul versions of the subway stops. It does help with the pronunciation and builds confidence. I’m probably too hard on myself, but language acquisition doesn’t come easy for me. At least Spanish was familiar, but Korean is totally outside my realm of experience (yeah, yeah, I have been here two years, but mostly in Itaewon which is of course nothing like Korea).

I have been resisting writing in Hangul, prefering to Romanize my translations. I know, I know. But honestly, I can’t read my own writing and I think it helps me pronounce when I can visually see what I am trying to say. We’ll see.

Sliders took us down tonight 15-4. We played better than the score, one dart here or there would have made a big difference in the outcome. But we didn’t throw them and I am more than a little disgusted.

Ah well.

Maybe. Finished up this months Challenge League last night with Grant and I taking 4 of 6 legs, good enough to clinch the championship. Still not where I want to be, but I did have a 7-mark, several 5-marks, and two ton-40s. Don’t know where those darts were Monday (or last Sunday when Grant and I went 0-6). Its a funny game.

This Sunday we will have the ending tournament and we will probably start the next round of Challenge League in a week. Craig, VJ, and Colin: I hope you guys can find the time to play. We have a lot of fun and it is a great way to get some really focused practice against a variety of players. Yeah, I know you are all busy and have family obligations, but even if you play all your games on Thursday we’d love to have you. That goes for any other dart players out there.

Leave a comment here if you are interested.

I’m in a bit of a mid-season slump with the dart game these days. Sunday Grant and I lost six straight legs in Challenge League play cricket doubles. To their credit, Jim and Lonnie and then Mario and Jin took care of business, but still, losing sucks.

Last night in SIDL action we were playing the team from Shooters Bar. Mario and Cuatro are both military and because of the exercise they weren’t available for the match. We had 3 players, but it takes 4 to make a team. You can play with three, but in the vacant spot you play a “ghost” which is an automatic loss.

So we get to the bar (Friends, because Shooters is in an off limits area) and I ask a random guy sitting there if he wanted to throw some darts. He agreed, so we had our four. You know, at my age there are not many firsts left in life, but that was my first time picking up a guy in a bar. Hopefully my last as well.

Anyway, I’m up first and their guy takes the diddle, calls cricket and proceeds to throw a 5 mark on 20s. I answered with two pathetic 19s. Fortunately, the guy couldn’t hit a 19 to save his life, and I hit two four marks to get the points back. The point war was on, and we were both over 100 by the time we finished the 20s and 19s. So we played it tight after that, until he pointed the shit out of me on 15s. I was lucky enough to throw a 3BS (three single bulls) and then hit two more for the win.

The 01 game went down to the wire, but he hit the double out first. I took the diddle and called cricket and we had another nail biter that came down to me hitting enough bulls to close and make up the points to take the game and finish 2-1.

Jim dominated his opponent for a 3-0 win, and Lonnie followed up with a 2-1 victory. Vins, the guy I picked up played all right, but his opponent played better and got all three legs.

So, it was on to doubles. We were feeling pretty confident going in with a 7-5 lead. But Jim and Vins went down 0-3. I was teamed up with Lonnie for the cricket doubles and we really believed we would go 3-0 and win the match. Alas, it was not to be. We were both just enough off our games to lose. Kinda got snake bit, because one of the opponents couldn’t hit anything, except triples for points and double bulls for the win. Weird how that happens. So, we took a 0-3 drubbing and were pretty disgusted with ourselves.

Ah well, going in we thought we would be satisfied getting 5 legs with only 3 players. Vins lost all his games so it didn’t make a difference having him (although we really appreciated his willingness to fill the void). And we were in a position to take the match and failed to play up to our capabilities, so that’s how it goes. We just have to play better the rest of the way.

Next week we have our sister team from Dolce, the Sliders. Looking forward to that match. I just need to find my game between now and then.

In other news, I saw a movie Saturday: The Breakup. It was not as funny as the previews made it look to be, but Jennifer Anniston is easy on the eyes and the ending wasn’t typical Hollywood. I went with another Korean couple and afterwards they took me to a traditional Korean soju hut and got me drunk on my ass. Still, it was fun because it was different. I was the only foriegner in the joint and got a few stares, but what’s the fun in hanging out with westerners all the time anyway?

So that’s the story.

I dropped into Debut the other night on my way home. Just one guy sitting at the bar. Before I could take my coat off, he bought me a beer. I thanked him and he said “how’s it going, John”.

I asked if we had met, and he said “no, but I have been reading your blog from day one”. That always trips me out when it happens. But it got weirder. He also worked at the U.S. Department of Education before he came to Korea. He got here a few months before I did. I don’t think we ever met at ED, but he worked with a guy I spent a lot of time with. Anyway, he knew my whole story, all the ups and downs of my experience here almost as well as I did.

I didn’t have much time to chat, but I left him an open invite to email me (or comment here) if he wants to get togehter sometime for a few drinks and talk of the old days.

It was a real cool experience though.

The other day I was talking to a Korean woman about something or other on the military base. She responded in Korean “wie” (why?), but I was hearing the English “where”, so I said Yongsan. So, she kept saying wie and I kept repeating Yongsan. Not quite as funny as this famous Abbott and Costello routine, but my ignorance of basic Korean is so astounding you just gotta laugh sometimes.

No darts tonight, Jeckles from Gecko’s asked for a postponement because they were short players this week. Will have to schedule a make-up match, but it will be in a couple of weeks. One of our players is a soldier involved in the annual RSOI exercise.

Saturday night I wanted to avoid the St. Paddy’s day crowd in Itaewon so I went to a Sojo house in Hannam-dong with a friend. Had a couple of bottles of soju and and a shell soup (little crabs in broth). Tasty enough, but my limited chopsticks skills were severly taxed trying to pull those little suckers from the shell. Then we did the norebang and later wound up closing Dolce at 0330.

Yesterday I finally did the pedicure thing on post. My heals were severely callused, with these huge fissures, cracks, and chasms that sometimes bleed and make walking difficult. The poor girl assigned to me was quite shocked at the condition of my feet but her limited English skills prevented her from fully articulating her obvious disgust. She did say “you should pay double”. I guess she was kidding because I just paid the regular price ($20). An hour later my feet looked much better and I was amazed at the pile of dead skin on the floor. They told me I need to come back next week for further work, and then come on a regular basis thereafter. I felt so ashamed that I gave the pedicure girl a W20,000 tip.

And that was the extent of my exciting weekend.