Sun Aug 24, 2003
The rain has become unrelentless and I find myself being awoken by thunderstorms and accompanied by the constant drumming of monsoon rain throughout the day. I love this kind of rain, it cools everything down and cleanses the city. And rainy Sundays are awesome.
Last night I headed into Seoul to meet up with Nardus, his Korean friend Faye and a Canadian guy from Saskatoon called Art. Art kept making quips about the rain being like living in Vancouver and priding himself on wearing shorts in the -40 hellish Saskatchewan winters. You don’t get more Canadian than that.
Anyways, we settled into this cozy basement cafe for a few minutes before we realized nobody was tending the place! Somebody managed to get the owner on the phone, who was very surprised to learn he had customers because he thought he’d locked the door for the night. Faye offered to go to the 7-11 and bring some drinks back so we could park off in the abandoned cafe but that seemed ludicrous so we left. We then hoofed it to Nardus’ favourite Jazz cafe where we spent a quiet evening talking.
Nardus was drinking coffee out of a mug that had this logo written on it: “ALCOHOLISM. When a man loves a Woman.” This is a classic example of a bizarre kind of nonsensical English widely used on signs, menus, T-shirts and other such printed media in Korea. Here are some more examples I’ve seen: A take out pizza place by my house: “Pizza to Oll” An American style bar: “Hadrak Cafe” On one of my T-shirts: “We can make you feel relax life” Another T-shirt: “Me no love you very long time” I’m going to have to start writing them down, then I can provide a more comprehensive list.