Arrigato Mr. Roboto (Part 1)

Ok, so my trip to Japan was freakin amazing and quite interesting. I have so much to tell that it requires a 2-part description. This will be my first installment of my journal dedicated to my trip. I call it: Part 1!

So I managed to wake up at 5:15 in the morning so that John and I could catch the 6am train to Incheon Airport just outside of Seoul. Our flight was at 9:50, but the bus takes 2 hours to get to the airport.

5:47am- We get our tickets and we're lining up to get on the bus. I realize that the bus has no washroom and I can't hold it for 2 hours. I told John I would be right back and I walked to the bathroom.

5:53am- I walk back to the bus and John looks like he's going to kill me. Apparantly they started boarding while I was in the washroom. They overbooked the bus and there were no seats left. We had to stand all the way to the airport.

8:03am- We arrive at Incheon Airport. John wants to kill me. Did I mention that he pulled an all-nighter with the intention of sleeping on the bus and plane?

9:50am- Our flight takes off to Kansai Airport in Osaka. Yeah baby!

10:22am- I ask for a beer. Not only do they not charge me for the beer but they give me 2 bags of salted peanuts to wash down the beer.

11:05am- The flight attendant brings me my 3rd beer and my 8th, 9th, and 10th bags of peanuts. Slightly better service than Air Canada.

11:45am- We land on a huge body of water. I hadn't realized that Kansai Airport was built in the middle of the Sea. At this point the trip is already worth it!

12:42pm- We hop on a train with hopes of getting to the Korean Consulate before 1:30pm when the Visa department closes. If we don't we're screwed!

1:27pm- We run out of the train station and hop in a cab. He has NO FREAKIN IDEA what we're saying. 2 minutes wasted.

1:29pm- We ask some dude on the sidewalk how to get to the Consulate. GOOD NEWS! It's only 5 blocks away and we have approximately 53 seconds to get there. We run like demons to get there.

1:34pm- We enter the Consulate sweating like fat kids. AWESOME NEWS! The Visa department opens at 1:30pm not closes. Frickin Hell!

1:35pm-4pm- We spent the next couple of hours chatting with all of the foreigners doing the exact same Visa run. We all walk to our hotel together and make plans to do it up Kawasaki style that night.

Here is where I end part 1 of this story. Part 2 is definitely the more exciting part of the story, but to fully appreciate it you require the background information from part 1. Stay tuned for more,

Ronnie-San

Weekend Update with Norm Macdonald

I have a difficult decision to make today. Do I give my adoring fans the direct, factual, Lloyd Robertson news of my weekend adventures or do I give you an interesting one with perhaps a dash of falsery. As an artist do I not have a responsibility to keep my audience amused? But as a public figure I also feel that I must not mislead my followers. Holy conundrum Batman! How about I just write you a quick synopsis of my weekend and then you can decide for yourselves? Good.

Friday night we had poker at our place. Friday night is almost always poker night and it gives us westerners a bit of the gambling fix we can't otherwise get here. Well, being the great host that I am, I decided to bow out early so that I could serve refreshments to my newly acquired mates (pocket aces and lost; F*#K). After about 2 hours and finally a black dude from Virginia named Bakki bowed out gracefully. So I says "Bakki, you wanna go get into some trouble"? I've never seen anybody finish their drink so fast. Bakki likey trouble! It just so happens there is a great club around the corner from my apartment called 102. Long story short; we grinded with beautiful Korean girls all night and not only did the Korean guys not get mad and kick our asses, they were loving it!

So I get back to my apartment at around 5:30am (Korean bars stop serving at 5am) and crap, I forgot my key and the door is locked. I figured John must be sleeping so I was banging on the door quite hard. What I didn't realize is that our door was covered with very thick glass. I say "was" because I put my hand through the glass and slices my hand up pretty good. It bled almost instantly and all over the place. Still no John so I was banging harder because now I require medical attention. All of a sudden the Pimp and one of his Hoes from the "Escort Parlour" 2 floors beneath us (they are super common in Korea) come screaming up the stairs. Then they saw all the blood on the floor and I swear the escort almost fainted. So the Pimp runs back downstairs and I'm thinking "crap he's going to call the police". Dude comes back with a first aid kit and right there and then that Pimp gave me some first-rate medical assistance. That Pimp really knows how to handle a gash!

Well about the time that I am receiving this medical attention, John comes strolling up the stairs (6am at this point). I ask him where the hell he's been, he says playing Playstation at one of the PC bars. We clean up some of the glass and most of the blood and I call my boss to figure out what to do as I have no medical insurance yet. He says no matter because the hospitals don't open until 9am. So I go to sleep and have weird dreams all night. I woke up Saturday and I tell you my hand had improved 1000%. That Pimp really did do one hell of a job. I went downstairs to thank him and his employee. They loved it!

Saturday night I bowled. Scored 130ish. Didn't cut myself.

Sunday I skyped people all day. Talked to a few people. Didn't cut myself.

I will be flying to Japan tomorrow for a couple of days so that they can process my Visa. I will be back with what promises to be a super interesting blog on Thursday. Sianara,

Lloyd

Skype is all the hype!

Very rarely will I ever use this blog to shamelessly promote a product. On this occasion though, I will have to introduce you all to my new best friend. His name is skype and he lets me talk to all of my friends back home and all he wants from me is to introduce you guys to him.

If you havent heard of skype yet, then you need to go to skype.com and find out for yourself. Through the magic of the world wide web, 2 people who are both signed up with skype can talk as clear as if they were talking on phones, and it's all for free. As an added bonus, if you have a web cam you can have a video conference with the other person. You say you want to call someone's cell phone or house phone from your computer? Sounds crazy right? Well, for about 13 bucks you can purchase about 10 hours of long distance calling to ANY NUMBER IN THE WORLD! Just choose the SKYPE OUT option and just start dialing.

So stop reading this blog and get your butts onto skype.com so we can start chatting about how much you all miss me. My skype name is ron.atcheson. Skype you later,

Ronnie

Fantasy Blog

There is a price that one pays for being in the public eye. Celebrities complain all of the time about the cost of being famous. Like most of you, I thought their complaining to be petty and down-right insulting. Over the last few days I've come to empathize with these thespians. Not to say that I myself am famous, no no no. But this blog has taken on a life of its own and has become a target for the public's need for entertainment. This blog has been without an entry now for about the sum of 3 days and already I have people emailing me asking if I am alright, that they haven't seen a blog for a while and they need more. It seems you feel the need to be informed of my actions here in Korea on a daily basis. As telling you of yesterday's crazy affairs involving dishes and laundry might be too risque for the laymen's eye, I will tell a story of lust, greed and the search for endless adventure. It is up to you to judge the true verity of the story.

Yesterday started off just like any other day. I woke up, crawled up from out of my gold-embroidered coffin and set to making my usual breakfast of brontosauras eggs and wild bore sausages. I said goodbye to my wife, Kate Beckinsdale, and i was off to my job in the city. This job, of course, was just a cover for how I truly spent my hours during the day. You see, I am a superhero! Although I have no discernible superpowers I am constantly saving the world from our deadliest foe, the lack of English conversational skills. Without the ability to converse with one's fellow man in English we would all truly perish.

Now yesterday was exceptionally interesting as I had gotten wind that my despicable adversary Taka Korean was looming about in my fortress of ALL THINGS SUPER. When I entered into my combatant's square, there he was just inviting me to engage him in battle. I knew that his goal would be to suppress my super ability to impose my will on him in this heated war of attrition. I faked him with a copy of the Oxford dictionary and the idiot goes for it. Boom, pow, a fluurry of punches to the upper solar plexus. He's eating grammar and semantics and choking on a copy of Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes.

At once I was sallied forth to City Hall to receive yet another Key To The City for once again defeating the evil Taka Korean and his legion of non-Englishians. I then rushed home to share in my delight with my wife Kate who was in the midst of entertaining the Playboy Bunny All-Star cast. They were all so impressed that Kate suggested we all retire to our games parlour for a game of Twister. We played well into the night and as is custom in our householed, rather than send them off into the scary night tired and afraid, we asked if they would like to sleep in our King Sized bed. I'll admit, it was a little more personal than I was looking to get, but I bore down and had one of my best night's sleep in recent memory. The End!

This entry was created for the sole purpose of satiating your hunger for this blog. Any copying of this blog without the expressed written consent of me, blogspot.com, and the National Football Leaugue is strictly prohibited!

More Ronnie To Come

So it seems you like me... you really like me!

Therefore, I've decided to give you a sneak preview of upcoming events before the scheduled release date.

Item #1: Yes I will be getting a phone number here in Korea. The guy that I am taking over for is giving me his cell phone effective September 1st. As the number is back home in Cheonan I do not have it handy. I will release said number when the moon is full and the air is thick.

Item #2: Apparently people want to send me stuff here in Korea. Da Da DatDatDatDat Da Da DatDatDatDat DaDa DatDatDatDat Da (my happy song). I do have one of these so called "mailing addresses", but again it is at home in Cheonan. I will release this "mailing address" when the crows come to pass and the enemy is nigh.

Item #3: I will be setting up a flicker site where I will post my Korea pictures for you all to see and be insanely jealous of me. This item is dependent on me getting internet hooked up at my apartment where I will then use this "connection" to download the pictures directly from my laptop.

Item #4: Many people tell me they view this blog on a regular basis, yet only a select few are bold enough to retort these blogs with what can only be described as unintelligible garble. Come on people, we need more of this garble if we're going to make FAB Magazine's "Top Ten Blogs of 2006". It's up to you now!

Item #5: I'm pretty sure I am the coolest guy I know! Discuss!

Ronnie Does Daegu

Before I get into describing my latest adventures, I just want to air something out to all of my readers. I feel that you need to fully understand the lengths I go to in order to ensure that you are guaranteed a good read when you check out my blog. You see, since I've started documenting my days here in Korea, I've been putting my liver and my safety on the line on a regular basis. I do this to ensure that you won't be disappointed when you read said entries. Every day I am going out of my way to meet new and interesting people and subject myself to situations where there is no guaranteed outcome. There I said it, if I come home with a bunch of new names in my little black book and a head full of memories of totally random episodes, well then I say it is on your heads!

So last night there was a typhoon warning in most of Korea including Daegu. So before I leave work my director tells me to go straight home and make sure I close all of my windows. Apparently, many people get injured during typhoons because they are standing right next to an open window. As it turns out, we got nothing more than a crap load of rain and the first real gusts of wind that I have experienced in Korea to date.

I woke up this morning to more crap loads of rain, but it didn't break my resolve to take a bus downtown and wander around aimlessly. Seeing as this is my last weekend in Daegu, I wasn't going to let the opportunity pass me by. So I trudged the 4 blocks to the place where I suspected a bus might take me downtown and got on a bus that I suspected would take me downtown. By golly it worked! About a half an hour later we came to a great big place with great big buildings. As I didn't actually know where I was going, I decided to get off when more than 3 Koreans got off at a stop. Good call Atcheson! When I got off with the 5 other Koreans, I was smack dad in the middle of an intersection the size of Churchill Square ( for those of you readers who don't live in Edmonton, it was freakin' big). On the upside, no more than 3 blocs away was a group of buildings that looked like they belonged in the year 2112 (good phot-op).

Since I had been where all the cool shops and bars are last weekend, I decided to walk in a direction that i suspected the area to be. 2 for 2ish! I found the area (which is probably 30 blocks by 20 blocks) and dedcided the best plan would just be to wander around and hopefully run into someone who spoke English to find out exactly where I was. Well, I actually found the Cinema I had seen last weekend and the big department store I had seen last weekend before I saw another non-Korean individual or individuals. Alright, so I now knew where I was but still noone who I could openly share the experience with. Then just as I was giving up hope, I scoped a white dude in a shoe shop. I believe my exact first words to him were "please tell me you speak English". Turns out dude's name was Kenneth and he was wandering around with a bunch of GIs stationed in Daegu for a 3 week course. I politely asked him if I could be their mascot for as long as they'd have me. He agreed and he introduced me to the rest of the crew. There were 3 other guys (Renee, John, and I don't remember the 3rd guy's name) and a girl named Andrea. We hung out for 2 or 3 hours together and I have to say it was just what the doctor ordered. As they left to go back to their camp we made plans to meet up 2 weekends from now for their last weekend in Daegu. It felt really great to just hang out with really cool people who understood the words that were coming out of my mouth.

On a side note, after they left me to go back to camp I got my first experience of some sort of anti-whitey feelings towards me. I really just wanted to sit down and have a beer after walking around all day, so I sauntered into a Beer Hof (sounds about right doesn't it). Well, I sat down and asked for a beer and pointed to a dish on the next table as I couldn't read the menu.About 10 minutes later and I still don't have my beer and some little troll who I assume was the manager does that whole kneel down garbage next to the table with all of his staff watching and mumbles some Korean to me. I tell him "Mula" which means I don't know and he gets all frustrated and says something to his staff and they laugh at me. Now I am not saying that all Koreans are rude, far from it, but I don't think I've ever been so pissed off in my life! I wanted to grab him by his litlle scrawny troll neck and drag him into the bathroom and give him a swirly (if you don't know what that is use your imagination). As it were, I just put my coat on and told him in plain English that I would never treat a foreigner that way and that I was disgusted with his behaviour. What do you know, it actually made me feel better! That's all I got to say about that.

Enter the Johnnie

We all know that Canadians can drink. What might surprise you is that our friends the Koreans can give us a run for our money in that department. I went out for a drink last night with one of my adult students. His name? Bruce Lee! Yeah that's right I went out for a drink with the master himself.

We started off at Beer Kaiser, a kind of Western restaurant. Had some suasage and 2 pitchers of beer. Good start! Then we went to his favorite bar. I don't know the name of it because it was in Korean. I do know however why it is his favorite bar. There was a waitress there that looked like an angel. I'm talking love at first sight. Her name is Se Jin and she is by far the loveliest creature I have ever seen.

So Bruce and I decide after a couple of beers that we are going to get a bottle of Johnnie Walker. It sounded like a good idea at the time. We drank the whole bottle (a little less than a 26 oz.) and had some great drunk talk. He was acting as my interpreter to the waitresses the whole night, but I don't think he did a very good job as I went home alone and very drunk.

You think the night ends there don't you? I wish that it did. As I got out of the cab I noticed some people drinking not too far from my place. Being the good samaratin that I am, I went over to make sure that they weren't abusing alcohol. They insisted on sharing their stash with me on account of my good deed. I don't know what time we finished or even how many people there were, but suffised to say that Ronnie don''t feel so good today. I struggled to get to work for 3 o'clock. Did someone slam a door? No that's just my head.

As for Se Jin, Bruce Lee and I are going back to his favorite bar on Friday to see if we can't find another bottle of Johnnie!

Crouching Beaver Hidden Drunk

Conjuction Junction What's Your Function?

So for those of you at home who are keeping score, it is officially; Korea 1 Ronnie 0. I woke up a couple of days ago with a slightly red left eye. I say slightly as if I used it in a sentence like: "Bill Gates is slightly rich". This eye of mine looked like it had been dipped in Strawberry sauce. No problem, it didn't hurt or itch. I'll just kill it with Visine and all will be good. So that's what I did all day, I used a whole bottle of Visine on it. I woke up the next day and... still frickin' red! So being that yesterday was a Korean National holiday, I went to the eye doctor (for you roadly scholars that's the opthomologist). He told me I have Conjuctivitis. That's right, Conjuct-A Damn-Vitis! Who the hell gets Conjunctivitis?

Now for those of you who are wondering what Conjunctivitis is, stop being lazy and google it. The doctor gave me 2 different eye drops to take every 3 hours and a whack of pills to take after meals. As to how I contracted the Conjunctivitis, your guess is as good as mine. I blame it on society and if you care about me you would too.

But don't worry about Ronnie, I've been through worse than this. So if this is all you got Korea, you don't stand a chance in hell against me. I've had so many nasty sicknesses that it would make your head spin. I've had bronchitis numerous times. I had tonsilitis so many times I had a tonsilectomy when I was 22 (almost unheard of nowadays). So go ahead, give me your crusty ol' Conjunctivitis. In fact, I'll have it with a side of the gout if you don't mind! You won't keep this Canadian down for long. And when you're not looking... Wham, that's when I strike!

Ronnie the Resilient

Many thanks

I will keep this entry short and sweet. The last couple of weeks have been pretty hard for me, what being in a strange new world and all. I went through a bit of a rough patch but I am feeling like I am out of the feel sorry for myself stage and ready to crank it up a notch Loud Ronnie Style. This enlightenment might not have been possible without certain friends telling me to "Shut the fuck up and enjor yourself damn it". I appreciate those people who had the balls to totally disregard my whining.

Specials shouts out to Iris, Shadi, Ido, Nath, and Michelle. You guys didn't take any of my bullshit!

Somthing Korean Other than Kimchi

Yesterday was Korean Culture Day for me. My director took me and his wife and his 81 year old Buddhist mother to Heinsa Temple outside of Daegu. This temple was built in the 5th century and has numerous National Treasures within. I have to say the experience was pretty damn awesome.

First of all, the mother is a member of the temple so everytime we came to a gate and they would tell us that we couldn't go further up the mountain, the mother would yell at the securtiy guard in Korean until he had no choice but to let us through. She yelled us all the way to right beside the main temple. For those of you at home, that is like parking onstage at the Oscars. So she gets out and runs, I mean runs, towards the temple. I've never seen an old broad move so fast. We get into the temple and the monks are in the middle of a chant. The mother grabs me and takes me right up to the front where we pray right next to the monks. I felt like royalty!

Next, we go for lunch. Wow, my first Korean buffet. Granted, it was just rice, kimchi, and other regular Korean dishes, but I am eating with monks. I don't know if it was commonplace, but noone talked during lunch. Not one of the 200 people in the hall. After lunch, we took the mother to one of the templings (I don't know what else to call them) and we took off to check out the lay of the land. Sooooo cool! There were 8-10 smaller teples and each one was super old and dedicated to a staple of Korean life. For example, there were the Mountain Temple and the Temple of the Sea.

The temples were really beautiful, but my favorite part of wlking around was the scenery. This temple was way up the mountain and you could see the valley below. It kind of felt like Jasper or Banff.

After we got enough of that, we said goodbye to his mother ( she would stay there for the night) and she thanked me so much for coming to the temple. I said: she thanked me! We took off to the bottom of the mountain and went and chilled in the river valley below. We three took off our socks and shoes and went walking through the river. Little swells and waterfalls everywhere. I'll tell you something about Koreans; they've got energy to burn. The director and his wife are like 55 years old and I could barely keep up with them. We found a good swell and dangled our legs off of some rocks. I almost felt like I was back in Edmonton's glorious river valley. Until I saw a bug that looked like it swallowed a small mammal!

Oh, and I went downtown to a club last night with the aforementioned Jerry and Jamie. Was Ok, but the place was small and packed and hot as hell. In other words, I went to O'Byrnes last night. Took a cab home and the cabbie dropped me off in the wrong spot. Had to take another cab after walking around for a half an hour. You won this round anonymous cabbie!

Take off eh. You Hosers!

Letterman Impersonation

As the events of my life last night were quite inconsequential, here are the top 10 things that I've had to adapt to since being in Korea:

10. The Humidity- If it wasn't for all the food and beer I've been cramming into my mouth I'd have sweated off 10 pounds by now.

9. Squat Crappers- Not reccommended if you have DADS (Day After Drinking Shits).

8. The lack of clear sunny days- We take that for granted in Edmonton.

7. Freaky-Ass Bugs- I saw a bug yesterday that looked like a mosquito that got into Barry Bonds' Clear & Cream stash.

6. Locusts- Similar to #7 but these things are everywhere and super loud and annoying.

5. Going for a nibble- I've resorted to pointing at an item on the menu and hoping for the best. One of these days I promise that I will start to learn what some of the stuff I am eating actually is. No wait, maybe I don't want to know.

4. Lack of English T.V. stations- Right now I am surviving on Korean baseball and the BBC (not too bad but they repeat their stories every hour).

3. The pointing and staring- Although it doesn't bother me now, I am sure that at some point this year I will snap and lose it on some poor fascinated Korean.

2. Cold showers- Apparently a hot shower here is the equivalent to winning an all-expenses paid trip to Vegas.

1. KOREANS AREN'T NEARLY AS COOL AS CANADIANS. NUFF SAID!

Ronnie over and out.

Random Korean Night #3

Damn it's hot in Korea. It has been over 30 every day I've been here. I am not complaining though. I am merely trying to give you an insight into my need for a cold one during the day...and several cold ones at night.

Take last night for example. I have been desperately hinting to the part-time teacher I work with (also the only other white guy I've seen in Daegu) that I would care to go for a drink sometime. So last night he indulges me. Oh and this super tiny Korean teacher named Jamie comes along for the ride. We started off at a restaurant, the kind you have to take your shoes off to enter and you have to sit on the floor. If you can't find one of these in Korea, take two steps to the left and you will. Anyways, we're drinking SoJu and beer and eating. SoJu is a Korean's best friend, it is cheap and it tastes awful but it will get you drunk.

After the restaurant we went to a Hoff (like a beer Hoff in Germany). We get beer and SoJu and 3 more dishes. Notice a trend here? After a while we got really smart and started dropping SoJu shots into the beer. Good idea right? If by good you mean reckless, then yes. Jamie got soooo drunk (remember she is tiny) and Jerry and I started talking about what life is REALLY about. I can tell you there was some awesome drunk talk going on. At one point Jamie went to say something and I think her face froze for about 10 seconds. Everybody knows that really drunk blank stare.

So we drank until 2ish and then I sent them home in a cab while I threw on my Ipod and went for a stroll. I ran into this Korean dude that was stumbling all over the place. HOORAY, I found somebody else to drink with. We grabbed a couple of beers and went and sat in front of the store to drink them (perfectly acceptable here). Then along come 2 other dudes and they want in on the action. So I says, why not? We grab a couple few more beers and we drink until the first dude passes out. I say goodbye to my new friends and somehow fin my way home.

Whew! Thank you for joining us on Air Randomville. We hope you enjoyed the flight.

P.S. For those of you who have tried to leave a comment but cannot, I will fix that as soon as I can.

P.P.S. Iris and Paul, any ideas how I allow random comments?

Is that Brad Pitt?

Ok, so I have a lot of time on my hands these days considering I only work from 3-9pm. Therefore, I might over blog the next couple of weeks. Rest assured that when I start my real job you guys will be held in suspense yearning for a look at Ronnie's latest blog.

True to my promise, after work last night I went to the store and got a bottle of Korea's finest Rice Wine. I'm telling you this stuff is a couple of steps below Baby Duck.Oh well, it only cost 3 bucks. I went back to my park and it was crazy. You think Hawrelak is great? It was close to 10pm at night and there were about 200 Korean kid splaying soccer, baseball, badminton, you name it. And the parents were all drinking and eating picnic style. It's all about the food and booze here. All of this in a park the size of 1/2 a city block.

So I was sitting on some steps taking pictures, drinking my fantastic wine, and thinking why doesn't anyone take notice of the one white face in this crowd? All of a sudden 3 little girls came up to talk to me. Once other kids saw that I wasn't going to eat them I was absolutely swarmed with kids. It was like being a movie star, except that.... well except that I have no discernable talents. Then, when I got back to my apartment, I opened my door at the same time as the lady beside me opened hers and her hand got caught between the two. She looked as if she was going to yell and then she looked up and saw that I was white and just smiled and bowed her head (everyone bows for EVERYTHING here). Does this mean that I am above the law here? Discuss!

Thinking of you in Daegu

Ok, so I was able to find a computer with an english program at my part-time job in Daegu. It is weird teaching here where there is little to no structure and I just teach whatever and however I want.

So, I am starting to get a little more accustomed to life in Korea but I haven't seen a white person or a non-Korean for the last 3 days. I got drunk in a park by my apartment by myself last night. So nothing has changed from back home!

I am homesick as hell though and something Iris said in her blog about missing the little things rang pretty true for me. I also missed getting drunk with people who know me though, or just other people for that matter.

I will try my hardest to have many crazy adventures in Korea so that you may all live vicariously through me. I will start by getting drunk again by myself tonight and we will see what happens.

Ronnie