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.

Last night both of Dolce Vita’s “B” Division teams were playing home games. Not a problem as the bar has 3 boards (although only two are “legal” for league play). My guys all arrived between 6 and 6:30 and encamped on our preferred board. The guys from Sliders arrived around 7:15 and it turns out they preferred the same dart board. It looked like it might get ugly because my first inclination was to be an asshole about it (squatters rights and all that), but after consulting with my teammate Jim (who also owns the bar) we decided keeping the peace was more important than any given board. So, when I relented they said that since our whole team was there already (they only had two at that point) we should keep the board we had warmed up on. So, a conflict was avoided and good will prevailed.

We had M&M from Blue Frog. One of those teams that can bite you in the ass when they bring their best game. They didn’t last night and we took the match 15-4. I wasn’t on my game, but played well enough to go 6-0, but I only threw one ton and one 5-mark. I am currently ranked first in our division, but that kind of darts won’t be enough to hold on to that lofty spot. It’s nice to see your name up there, but I know I’m far from being the best player. I am both inconsistent and lucky, but as long as Take it Easy keeps playing well as a team I am happy.

Sliders is really coming on strong and took down the first place team from 3 Alley Pub (Alley Rats) 11-8. That was big for us because it should be enough to put us back into the division lead by one leg.

We are looking forward to our head-to-head match with Sliders in three weeks.

Still too cold for my taste. Even got a nice dusting of snow this evening. Good night to stay home a practice my Korean. Yep, I am finally resolved to learn to speak the language of the natives. More or less. There is no excuse for being here over two years and having a vocabulary of 50 words. Pathetic really. Anyway, I am back to taking classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays on post. Real basic at this point, just relearning the alphabet and writing in Hangul. The instructor won’t allow using the left hand since it apparently is disrespectful. Seeing as how I write the characters equally bad with either hand (does that make me ambidexterous?) it is no problem for me. Apparently I will actually be able to read after 4 weeks, although I won’t know what the hell I’m reading.

I’ve also got access to the Rosetta Stone program through Army Learning Online. I did the first lesson on there tonight. I actually did pretty well at recognition, but my pronunciation is an embarassment. Ah well, got lots of time on my hands, and it feels good to do something relatively productive with it.

Spent last night recovering from my Monday night over indulgence and I’m thinking I will reserve my Tuesday and Wednesday nights for hanging out at the villa. Monday, Thursday, and Sunday I have darts. And Friday and Saturday are Friday and Saturday…although I hope to spend at least one of those out of Itaewon.

Best laid plans and all that.

Maybe my best night overall in darts yesterday. Threw my first Ton-80 in competition and had several 5-marks and tons. We took Cake Mix from Wolfhound Pub 12-7 in a hard fought match. They are the first place team in their division and gave us all we could handle.

It was a rather bizarre match. They took the first singles game 3-0, we won the second and third game 3-0, and they won the last singles game 3-0. So heading into doubles we were tied at 6 legs each. Jim and I were paired up for the 701 game. As good as I threw in singles I was just a tad off in doubles, hitting triple one’s and triple five’s instead of the 20. And I threw back to back 7’s. Luckily, my partner was on his game. Still, we were sitting on 140 and our opponents were shooting for a 16 out. I finally hit a ton and on his next turn Jim hit the double 20 out for the win. We took the second leg too thanks to Jim hitting another double out, which put us up 9-6.

Cuatro and Mario lost a tough first leg in cricket doubles, but took the next two to secure the match victory. Jim hit yet another out to win the team game for us.

Afterwards there were many, many congratulatory shots. Tequila, Jagermeister, blow jobs. Potent mix that had me staggering home and spending time hugging the toilet. Well, it was just one of those nights.

In other news it turned damn cold here literally overnight. We had an incredible February, almost spring-like. Even the gaenalee is in bloom. Yesterday we had some light snow flurries along with a biting breeze. Today is sunny but in the 20s.

What else, I have a new cell phone that I can actually hear and be heard with (a Motorola Razr if that matters). And I finally went to see a movie in a Korean theatre (it was next door to the phone store). I saw Music and Lyrics which was pretty lame, but the moviegoing experience was very good. Unlike the States, you get to pick your seat in advance. The other big difference was there was no price gouging on concessions. Large popcorn and coke for less than W5000. Now that I’ve gotten over my phobia I will definitely be seeing more movies.

And that my friends is all I have to say for now.

Last night we got back in the winning mode in dart league defeating our neighbor bar, Bless U Pub.

I accepted a challenge from Craig, the Blessed Bulls top ranked player, and we went mano a mano in the first match. His version of events is already posted on his blog, but this is how it REALLY went down:

I won the opening diddle and chose cricket. We played it tight until the 17s, then I failed to close. We had talked about darts strategy before, so I was not surprised that he took full advantage and chalked up 34 points. I answered with a 5-mark on 16s, good to close plus 32 points. He hit a bunch of 15s to close and point but was a little off on his bulls. I threw two bulls then went to take care of my open 15s. Hit two and had a 3rd bounce out. That was the opening that killed me. Craig then pounded in 4 more 15s, and had me down by 72 points. I hit two more bulls, but by then had my opponent found his bulls and took the first leg.

I don’t recall either of us playing poorly in the ’01 game, lots of 60+ throws but there were no marks. We both came down to a shot at the out, but I got the double 12 to win.

Craig took the diddle for the third leg and chose cricket. He left 20s open after his first throw and I was fortunate enough to get the five mark and take an early lead on points. Craig had a slow start with a couple of rounds of one marks, but he came back strong at the end and made a game of it, but I held on for the victory. Great match, very intense.

We finished the night with a 13-6 victory, but it was closer than the score. You know, some teams are just fun to play win or lose. The Blessed Bulls (mostly Canadians) is one of those teams. Most of us hang out in both bars so we have played each other in a lot of friendly games. Last night was a good example of hard fought competition that does not trump good sportsmanship. Hats of to those guys and I know they will be looking for their revenge when we play on their turf, er, cork in a few weeks.

Happy Lunar New Year and welcome to the year of the pig. I don’t know what that foretells, but I guess its all about the ride anyway.

Happy, happy, joy, joy.

Duke is on his way home, so the long goodbye is over. We went out with a bang though. Wild night at the new Hooters Apujeong. Beer and shots and decent enough food. And oh yeah, Hooters girls. Ironically, I hadn’t been to a Hooters in the States for many years, just never saw the attraction. And seeing as how they don’t even have hooters in Korea, what’s the point. Well, boys will be boys and all that, so it was a Hooters going away dinner.

Our kind waitress, Jen. She was a good sport about putting up with all our shit.

How may I serve you?

What are you looking at Duke?

Some of our merry group…

Duke receiving one of his gifts, an autographed Hooters T-shirt. Well, not really autographed, more like a bunch of insults from the people who actually like him. God only knows what his enemies would have written…

I know we were getting ripped by now because the “quality” of my photography is rapidly diminishing…

Dukey got a nice baloon from the Hooters staff…

…and they did a little dance for him…

…and we joined in. Duke was standing on a stool and I cut his damn head off…

There he is.

Methinks Duke is going to miss the Korean ladies…

Those girls sure do work hard. Big crowd, people waiting to get in. We got there early to caputre two large tables… I think they made some money on us, but I don’t know how much because Jim generously picked up the tab. He would brook no argument about it.

Ahem. I can’t believe I took this picture. I was drunk, ok? Anyway, what the wait staff lacked in breasts they made up for with other, er, ass-ets. I apologize in advance to any reader who is offended by my objectifying females. But really, isn’t that the point of Hooters?

Party on!

Bill and Joon, soon to be married. She is a sweetheart and Bill is a great guy. I’m very happy for them…

Joon and her friend whose name I don’t recall. I do remember she had braces and wouldn’t give me a big toothy smile. Alas.

Oh yeah, the other gift we gave Duke was a day calendar chock full of raunchy-ass pictures and rude and crude comments. Poor Jen had her tender sensibilities rocked by what she saw. Probably emotionally scarred for life…

Time to go, and the girls graciously posed for a goodbye photo.

Duke had so much fun he decided he wanted to be a Hooters girl.

So, after the party we took taxis back to Itaewon and continued drinking at Dolce Vita. I would say we threw darts as well, but it was more like trying to hit the dart board as much as anything else.

For some reason we thought it would be a good idea to draw on Duke’s body:

Duke’s sexual orientation was called into question several times during the night’s events. Something about him kissing Nolan. Nolan, you never told me that story!

So, after closing down Dolce Vita someone had the idea of going out to Don Valley for a Korean dinner (or an early breakfast since it was 2 a.m.):

Yeah guys, flip off the photographer, all the cool kids are doing it…

“Fuck you”, “No, FUCK YOU!”

Me and Grant at the end of a long night. Good thing we were sitting down.

And so the evening ended with some tears and fond farewells. Duke is one of a kind and he is going to be missed by many. Especially Ji Young.

Today I was not worth a crap. Big surprise. I did go out and pay my car insurance. Last year is was $350. This year it was $420. I asked why the increase and was told that the Korean government now charges extra fees for those with SOFA license tags. Which really pisses me off, not because of the money but on principle. We are here to defend their asses, why rip us off in the process?

I decided to take a “short cut” home. Took a wrong turn and wound up going through the Namsan tunnel and paid a 2000W toll. Got turned around bass ackwards and wound up going through the other tunnel and paid the toll going in that direction too. Well, if that’s the worst that happens to me I guess I’m lucky. Because I did accidently run a red light and almost got creamed to boot.

I came home around noon and haven’t left the house. Yeah, me at home on a Friday night. Go figure.