Good Morning! Its 9:00 am Wednesday November 7th, which means ive officially been travelling for a week! The first week has been a whirlwind and has flown by, and my Spartan training is well under way. My days usually start with what the Koreans refer to as "compass" training, which is basically stenciling font sheets to build up the muscles in my hand and is crutial to achieving those crisp, perfect tattoo outlines. Although, having impressed my Master and the rest of the shop with my Old English skills, i have graduated to stenciling japanese Koi's and Dragons! Exciting? definately, but also much harder on the hand, im lookig forward to stenciling something that has no scales.
The mentality of the Artists here is, "work first, eat later", as food makes you sleepy, and a sleepy tattooist, is unfocused. So days 3 and 4 were very long, having started work at 11:00 am and finished around 8:30 pm not eating at all, a minor adjustment from my very Canadian, 3 square meals a day. The upside to this regiment is that you finish work with a burst of energy at the thought of your upcoming family-style korean meal. The next challange is trying to agree on a place to eat, as the guys ask me what i want to eat, and I can only reply "I dont know". We settled on fried chicken, Delicious (Mah-She-so in korean). At dinner we decide that a few drinks are in order in celebration of our hard days work. Im told I have to try a Korean favourite called Makori, which is basically a carbonated Sojo cooler, similar to Smirnoff Ice. One bottle turns into two, and two into three, and so on, the next thing I know, we are on our way to a club. Here is where being a foreigner come in handy. Usually, foreign travellers to Korea are granted entry discounts at such establishments, and after a little English/Korean haggling, we all get in at a fair price. Finally a familiar scene, the music is loud, the lights are low, and the drinks are flowing. I would breathe a sigh of relief but with the smoke machines on high and EVERYONE in the club smoking(oh yeah i forgot to tell you, in Korea, you can smoke anywhere) it was obviously a little difficult to breathe. The music was a good mix of K-Pop(Gangnam style-ish stuff) and American top 40. The club was extremely loud, what with the floor to ceiling speakers at either end and the confined space. So as a foreigner, having trouble enough as it is communicating with koreans in the quiet, it is only natural to gravitate to the more familiar, White faces in the crowd. I met Australians, French, Dutch, and American travellers. Anyone looking for some familiarity and to meet other travellers, hit the clubs.
Tomorrow, the Seoul shop crew is renting a car to travel south to Busan, for a big Tattoo People Korea party with both shops. From what ive read and been told, Busan is a very beautiful city and not quite as "commercial" as Seoul. Looking forward to the party and relaxation with the lads for a few days. I'll let you know how it goes...
