white and nerdy

Weird Al can still kick it. How does he do it?

individuality

Singing in school all but stopped once I hit intermediate school, but until then the spectacle of thirty-odd kids sitting on a mat belting out "Bright Eyes" or "The Saints Go Marching In" was at least a weekly one. I can remember clearly ritual from my standard one days. The teachers would merge two classes together and chose one of the children to stand on a chair and hold up the song sheet, a big brown piece of paper with the songwords and occasionally the chords for the teacher's guitar on. Holding this sheet of paper was a coveted position, and not just because the child holding was released from singing duty for the duration of that song. I think even at that young age every kid among us wanted to make some statement to express their individuality and difference from the rest, if only for four minutes. It's funny to remember the spectable as a song would come to a close, suddenly the room would sit up straight, arms folded, hoping to picked for the noble duty of songsheet holding. Of course the teachers knew the power of this little ritual and awarded it to the good kids (as a reward for being good in general) and the naughty kids (a positive reinforcement for sitting up straight and being good this one time). As such, the times I was chosen were pretty few. In fact, I can remember only one. The thought-recording goes like this: "Ow my arms! Get it right you dicks my arms are getting sore. This is horrible, who wants to do this? Shit."
I was too lazy to stand out after that.

from there to here

i decide to take the back entrance out of the building, avoiding the main street. i head left into the warm evening air. the back street is almost empty. far off to my right over the carparks and houses are the eastern hills. the girl in front of me spies her boyfriend across the intersection and as they embrace i walk past and spy a guy in his car watching soccer on a dash-mounted TV. as i reach the river i remember the golden string reaching from my crown to heaven and it lifts my neck and shoulders from their natural slouch. as i enter the downtown area, i realise that my feet are carrying me towards the baseball cages just as "Boys light up" comes on my iPod. I smack baseballs listening to it, checking out the hottie in the orange dress waiting in the street below. the streets are crowded and i move through like an invisible man to this PCroom. It is 7pm and i am not hungry. Later i will go to the club section of town and see if there are friends to be made. For now, goodnight

back in the ROK

The flight from Auckland to Seoul was pretty empty, so my window seat companion elected to spread himself out across four seats in the centre aisle, leaving me enviously scrunched against the window. Still, having two seats to myself is certainly more than twice as good as having one, even if sleeping is still fraught with difficulties. The flight itself was quite pleasant and the views of the Pacific as I flew over were... good.
Anyway, now here I am in Busan. Yesterday I moved into my apartment in the centre of town. It still has the smell of new about it. I'll put up some pics later but here are some features:

• the doorbell activates a camera that shows who's ringing to the person inside
• it's got aircon yay!
• 9th floor of 14, facing north up a big main street. noise comes up but not much smell and no mosquitos!
• 14ft ceiling. the bedroom is a mezzanine (whatchucallit split-level?) with maybe 5ft of head space, so i have to duck up there
• washer/dryer in the kitchenette which is discretely hidden by a pair of cupboard doors
• shiny bathroom with an extractor fan (didn't have one last time)

I suppose I could say more, but as usual, all the stuff i want to say i thought on the plane or lying in bed and i can't remember it. This seems to be a pretty cool place nonetheless.