Watch Me Crank It

May 21st, 2008

So it finally happened. After nearly a year of flaunting my unyielding dominance over the extremist bacterial militias of the world, a recent security breach, that was the direct result of my liberal foreign policy of excessive drinking, smoking, general merriment, and temporary hiatus in my daily routine of taking 1000mg of vitamin C, led to a cough, sore throat, and a sinus cavity full of mucus. Truthfully, I'm relieved because its given me a solid excuse for lounging around Daniel's apartment and eating pizza, ramen, and french fries. Well maybe not a "solid" excuse for eating pizza, ramen, and french fries, but melted cheese and fried potatoes have been dangerously absent from my diet for the last couple of months and although I can't be certain of the correlation, my illness in the wake of two difficult months sans pizza and french fries is very suspicious.

However the main culprit contributing to my illness is most likely the two nights that I spent in Seoul this weekend with Daniel. It was sweeeet! We took the train from Cheonan to Seoul after Daniel got back from work on Friday and made it to the city around 11pm. A short subway ride and stroll later and we ended up in a small park in a sweet neighborhood called Hongdae.

Hongdae is a typical Seoul college neighborhood that caters to the students of Hongdae University, which apparently is a school popular among art students. But as far as I'm concerned Hongdae is where we stumbled upon an awesome jam band backing up a group of break and tap dancers surrounded by about a hundred spectators. And its a fact that Korean b-boys can kick it with the best of them. The highlights were a smallish looking dude with red beanie pulled low - who seemed to fancy himself quite the dancer by the way he posed with his arms crossed around his chest and a tough expression on his face, although I'm pretty sure he was just moving his feet in random directions really quick - and this badass, totally cute, b-girl who could fuckin' dance! She stole the show for me.

But alas, the fun ended before long, and we followed Daniel's friend B.A. and proceeded to make our way to Tin Pan II (it's common for there to be multiple locations for many bars in the same neighborhood - hence the numbering), an American popular music themed bar covered with tons of pretty sweet vinyl covers. B.A. is a english-speaking Korean who just recently left for China to try his hand at the import/export business. Anyways, he's definitely a cool cat and an all-around nice guy who knows how to have fun. Daniel warned me beforehand that a night out with B.A. usually meant a sleepless night and even though partying all-night is usually not my thing - when in Seoul... So my night at Tin Pan was all-around awesome with the usual feeble attempts at picking up on girls to no avail (at least in Korea I can blame it on the inability to talk to anyone), regular refills of Johnny Walker, smoking some traditional Miao cigars to feed my newfound social smoking habit, and the obligatory Crank That (dude, i love this song). Added to that was trading drinks with a member of the predominantly black American army squadron stationed in Seoul partying past their curfew (as they should be, damn it!) and meeting another dude from Toronto who gave me some important drunken life advice - that I can't remember right now, but I'm sure its up there somewhere.

When we emerged from the underground club I discovered that it was fully daylight and patted myself on the back for making it through my first whole night out without the aid of illicit drugs and without breaking a sweat. Turns out its a lot easier when I have no idea what time it is and I'm in a club with no windows. I had one issue - Daniel and I were planning on attended a three hour intensive meditation and I was feeling a little hungover. Fortunately, Korea has jimjilbangs!

To preface, I think that these 24 hour saunas are the greatest idea ever; although, they may not fly in the United States for several reasons. They are essentially public indoor bathhouses that, as far as I can tell, can be found everywhere. All the ones that Daniel has taken me to have been underground or in tall discreet buildings; the only defining characteristic being a pictograph that looks like the top of a hottub with steam lines rising from it. Oh, and probably something to the effect of 24 hour sauna written in Korean, but I can't read Korean unless I'm really high. The other less conspicuous defining characteristic of jimjilbangs is the fact that no more than ten minutes after entering a sauna you'll be butt-naked with a grip of other Koreans (either male or female, depending on whether you went into the male or female section) walking around without a care in the world. Fortunately for me, living three years at Castro stripped me of all traces of Puritan shame about nudity. And besides, it would be a much bigger shame if I felt uncomfortable because these places are awesome!

First of all, they're huge and usually occupy several large floors. They usually have hot, hotter, and cold tubs, wet and dry saunas, public showers with all the neccessary accessories to get yourself clean, and most importantly for this specific morning large, dimly lit rooms for napping on the floor. The saunas provide you with a comfy top and shorts for lounging around and napping. Best of all, they cost about five bucks!

So Daniel and I got in about three hours of sleep before we grabbed a bite at a fine Korean sandwich establishment called Quizno's across the street (mmm...toasty) and then made our way to the place where we were going to take part in a guided Aum meditation with four of Daniel's many foreign friends in Korea. Now you may be asking yourself, why do dogs sometimes eat grass? The answer to that is that dogs eat grass in order to induce vomitting to mitigate an upset stomach. After that, you may ask yourself, what is Aum meditation? The answer to that is almost as interesting...

According to the Humaniversity(where our teachers trained) located in "The Netherlands", "The Aum Meditation has been designed by Veeresh. It is a social meditation in which you learn to master your emotions by expressing different states of mind, moving from one polarity to the other". I don't know who Veeresh is, but he goes by one name; and if I know anything about people with one name (Seal, Bono, Liberace) they're awesome!

To summarize the experience, the meditation consists of 12 stages each lasting 15 uninterupted minutes with no breaks between stages. Each stage consists of throwing one's entire being intensely into one specific emotion . The 12 stages are essentially: hate, love, physical exhaustion, physical relaxation, insanity, freedom, sadness, joy, sexual arousal, solidarity of the universe, slience, and lastly recognition of the enlightenment within each of us. To emphasize the intensity, I'll say that I lost my voice (which I didn't get back for four days) after the first stage and was drenched in sweat by the conclusion of the third stage. A more thorough explaination can be found here: http://www.humaniversity.nl/aummed.htm. The meditation was one of the most holistically exhausting experiences I have had; and yet paradoxically, despite my sleep deprivation and hangover, I felt a very real surge of energy that sustained me until that night. We followed the meditation by going out to dinner and drinks with a large group of our new friends and regulars of the meditation center. They were all totally cool and having dinner with them gave me flashbacks of having dinner at Loth - minus the whole vegetarian/vegan thing. Among one of the more interesting things I've had on this whole trip, I tried a bit of Gessy's (an awesome french canadian that we kicked it with a couple times) soup, comprised of what appeared to be several spongy, veiny organs of a few undetermined sea creatures.

When Daniel, Gessy, and I retired to another jimjilbong that night, I thought to myself that I've never had an easier time falling asleep on a hard floor in a, slightly too warm, heated room with several loudly snoring Koreans passed out around me. I could definitely get used to this...