nite is calling
SOUTH KOREA | Sunday, 26 October 2008 | Views [362]
i can't hear much for the din of boisterous people around us. every table has a group of friends, mostly young university students, and almost everyone is basking in a soju glow. the girl on the other end of my cell is barely audible. and what i can make out, i can't understand. my listening skills in korean have always been my achilles heel. listening on a cell is even worse, as i have none of the valuable cues that body language can provide. and what with this noise. by the time i end the call, i have no idea if kyeong mi has agreed to come meet us or if she's given up and decided to go home. i'm indifferent. andy looks at me questioningly. i shrug my shoulders.
"i have no idea what that was about."
andy, one of marissa's coworkers at taekyeong university and a neighbour in our apartment building, is an amiable brit with a brit's typical penchant for quick wit and an unassailable thirst for alcohol. he reminds me of the andy i know from tsuyama who shares, beyond humour and booze, a very similar appreciation for swaggering rock and roll music. andy (the present, daegu living, neighbour) and i have ventured out into yeongnam district for the second nite in a row to enjoy a beer or three and the palpable energy of a street full of youths relishing in their new found freedom of being away from home for the first time. the yeongnamdae district is a concentrated intersection of bars, norae bongs, shops and restaurants across the street from yeongnam university and a mere five minute walk from our apartment. we engage in a ritualistic hopping from one bar to another in search of an agreeable ambiance or a chance encounter with some friendly natives. calling these places 'bars' as most westerners know the word, is a bit of a misnomer. korean 'sul chips' (lit: alcohol houses), range from restaurant tabled rooms in which waitresses dart like nimble squirrels from one table to the next amidst a haze of smoke and noise, to more relaxed settings with comfy couches in lieu of chairs, and music to drown out the cryptic conversations of the tables adjacent. common fare at any of these establishments is the ubiquitous 'anju', the korean answer to beer nuts. actually, beer nuts are one of the common kinds of anju, along with dried squid, quail eggs, popcorn, fruit platters, styrofoam ringlets (which may in fact be some form of corn chip, though without the flavour and with a distinct styrofoam like crunch), and of course piles of dried anchovies. there is often a menu to accompany the typical anju servings that could lead me to classify these places as bona fide restaurants, yet the bottles of beer and soju far outweigh the chopsticks on any given table.
after hopping through a few more bars, andy and i end up sitting comfortable in couches across from one another with beers on the table between. midway through one of andy's humourous antic-dotes, a young, shy looking korean comes and asks some questions. he looks to be about 19 and fairly nervous. after struggling through some of the basic english niceties that most koreans know ('where are you from?', 'how old are you?', etc, etc) we glean that the kid had lost a game of kawi, bawi, bo (scissors, rock, paper) and was thus obliged to go talk with the foreigners. we offer him to sit with us and we order a bottle of soju to compliment his courage and to show his friends that he hadn't really 'lost' their game. we do a shot of the vile stuff with him and send him on his way with the half full (i am a hopeless optimist) bottle of korean courage.
while sitting at the table, a cute korean girl comes up to introduce herself. she had seen andy and i walk in and had recognized andy as one of the teachers at taekyeong. she, a student. jinju. her shoulder cropped hair frames her round pretty face, one of the few koreans i've met with a dash of freckles on her high cheekbones. sharp doe eyes look deliberately when asking or answering a question. none of that curt korean princess in this one. i learn she is studying to be a body guard. one of those courses that i no longer find strange to hear that taekyeong is offering. like animal training. though i do find it odd that this lean girl in a baggy sweater, no taller than 5'7", is studying to be someone's body guard. it isn't until later when jinju drags me by an arm along the street against my will that i am able to picture her tossing someone out some door.
after finishing our pints sitting in our sofas, andy and i move on again, restless in our quest to explore as many of the bars on the strip as possible. so why we end up at a bar we'd come from before is a bit of a mystery. i suppose it was the best of the bunch. or because andy fancied the darting waitress. this, the same bustling bar where i failed to understand a phone call hours earlier. i guess kyeong mi ventured home.
over another pint and more conversation, i'm surprised to get a message from jinju. before i'd left the last bar, i'd given her my number and offered to meet up for coffee sometime if she was interested. through her broken english texting and my limited korea, we make something of a plan to meet up in the next week. into another beer i get a call from her, asking where andy and i are. i tell her the bar name and ask her and her friends to come join us. i get another call and once again i am having trouble understanding the little korean i'm able to hear. then she hangs up on me. i look at andy a little dumbfounded.
"she just hung up on me."
andy grins mischievously. then i notice that jinju is sitting right at my side, smiling. will wonders never cease.
the night stretches well into the morning and we all make our way home once the yawns start making their contagious rounds and the beer trickles to a drip. jinju and i make plans to meet up on sunday after she gets back from a trip to pohang.
not that meeting a girl at this point will matter much i suppose. i head off to sokcho at the end of this week. though i am applying to work at taekyeong starting in march, i have no guarantees that a job will come through. time will tell if i end up back in daegu or not. time, as always, will tell.
