Episode 53: In Which DFM Gets A Rose And Koreans Start Dancing In The Street

It's been a long time since I last posted.  I've been terribly busy, so I'm sorry about the spotty updating, but faithful readers will be rewarded with what I hope is a good post today.

It turns out I had learned the name of the "mystery woman" from Episode 50.  Her name is April, I had just forgotten.  Today (Sunday) she invited me to her church with her and her family.  Her father was a former member of the Korean Navy and worked for many years as an Engineer for the Korean Air Force.  He spoke very good English, and is still an avid table tennis player.  DFM loves to hear of people remaining active after they retire.

April's father is one of the church's elders and, like April, seems to know just about everyone.  We had a long chat with the pastor, in his office, before the start of church and almost made him late.  The pastor was very friendly and asked many questions about me.  He also gave me some mushroom juice (it comes in a bottle here), which tastes a lot better than it sounds.

After the sermon, the pastor had me introduce myself to the congregation.  April came up to translate my introduction, but I surprised everyone by introducing myself entirely in Korean instead.  I got a large ovation from the entire congregation who then gave me a rose and sang a song of welcome to me.  (The congregation has at least 125 members I'd reckon.)

After church I was a mini celebrity and it seemed like everyone wanted to come and shake my hand.  I got a lot of practice saying "nice to meet you" in Korean.

After church April and I went to meet "One Piece," Pyeong-hwa, at Gyeongbokgung - another palace in Seoul.  However, it was quite busy when we got there, so we decided to walk around the outside of the wall and see the Blue House (where the President lives).  (To see a picture of the Blue House, click here.)  You're only allowed to view the Blue House from that one angle, so every shot any tourist has ever taken looks exactly the same.

At the Blue House site we ran into an interesting family from France.  From left to right is Sophie Cremezi, PR and Events Manager for the French Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry, her mother and father, and finally, her husband Guilhem Cremezi.  Guilhem works for a company that supplies parts to Hyundai/Kia.  He told me that he took the job so that he could travel.  Smart man.  Speaking of smart, the Cremezis know French, English, and a fair bit of Korean.

After the Cremezis departed to have lunch, April, Pyeong-hwa and I went to Insadong.

Budha's Birthday is not for another week or two, but since Budha's Birthday is on par with Christmas over in Korea, there were all sorts of opportunities to "catch the spirit."  Here we were taught how to properly drink tea, the Korean way.

I had to leave April and Pyeong-hwa for a while as I rushed over to Jamsil Stadium to watch a baseball game.  The Doosan Bears (Thom's favourite team) were hosting the Hanwa Eagles in their rather beautiful stadium.  Unfortunately, I showed up slightly late and so the tickets to the "good section" by the team's rabble rouser were all sold out.  Instead I found a seat in the equally packed right field bleachers for less than $4.  

Much like the soccer game I went to, if you want to cheer loudly you need to be sitting in the right spot.  There were pockets of cheering going on in my section, but it was nothing compared to where the "real fans," as I call them, were sitting.

I went to the game by myself, so I had no one to communicate with, but this boy in the Doosan hat and I would exchange smiles and fist pumps every time Doosan did something positive.

Sorry about the poor quality on the video.  The transfer from an .avi to .wmv file is less than perfect it must be said.

There were definitely a lot more people at this game than at my Woori Heroes game, but the cheering somehow  felt less passionate than when the Heroes fans and I screamed our lungs out for a rare base hit by our really bad team.  

To see real cheering though you have to witness Busan's Lotte Giants fans, who Yi Woojin assures me are the best fans in the league.  I'll let you judge for yourself though (click the earlier  link if you haven't already, and also try this one too).

After about two hours at the baseball game I left early and rushed back down town to catch the final hour and a half of the great Budha's Birthday Parade.  A parade is a parade is a parade, but this one lasted over four hours.  There's not much new I can really say since most people have seen a parade before, but never-the-less I have included a few of my favourite images for your viewing pleasure.

After the parade ended at 9:30 PM, a concert started.  It seemed to be a blend of Korean folk music and Korean pop music.  One of the singers was a big celebrity in Korea, and this seemed to get a great many cheers from the younger members of the audience.  

The concert carried on until at least 11 PM, and at one point a mass group dance broke out in the middle of the street.  Some rather drunk old men started getting a little too vigorous in their dancing, so I decided that it was best for my safety to head home at this time and go to bed.

Episode 38: In Which DFM Sees A Flying DeLorean And Dances On TV For Over 3000 Koreans.

It just so happened that my stay here in Seoul coincided with the 2009 Seoul Motor Show.  MandDFM and I are big fans of motor shows (as regular readers will know) and so he was sure to remind me about this one.  It's not every day you get to see a major International Motor Show, in the second largest urban agglomerate in the World no less.

I had convinced Yoo Sung Bok to come along with me, and he said it was his first time to visit a Motor Show so he was very excited.  Here he tests out an A/C motor for me and later suggested I get one for my new gosiwon since it is always boiling hot in my room.

Sung Bok later admitted that he was really interested in seeing the models and trying to get pictures with them.  It was win-win though, because while I rushed around trying to get the perfect pictures of the cars, I always knew where to find him afterwards (I just had to find the nearest booth with a model).

The best exhibit of the Show by far!  This is a revolutionary new plastic, electric window mechanism and casing that will be on the new Sonata.  A woman working the booth, who spoke quite good English, tried to ask me if I was interested in door technology but I had already responded "YES!!!" before she could finish her question.

Hyundai and KIA dominated this year's Seoul Motor Show.  Together they had about 25% of the display space, and they had the largest number of cars and concept cars (each) of any company there.  It took me over an hour just to explore all of the Hyundai and KIA cars on display.  That's not a complaint, mind you, just an observation.

  

KIA and Hyundai also introduced some very neat concept cars (the first time I've had a chance to see a concept car at a Motor Show) including the World's first LPG-hybrid car (the yellow-green one).  The best part about the Hyundai/KIA hybrid cars is that they don't look like a Prius.

Being a big fan of public transport I was ecstatic to see this Hydrogen Fuel Cell powered city bus,  by who else but Hyundai?  Better yet for Hyundai, the line-up to get in on the other side was longer than the bus.

This is a Korean pick-up truck.  These things are everywhere making deliveries, and they get quite annoying when they try to go down narrow back-alleys full of people (which is often).

These guys, with their giant DSLR cameras and zoom lenses, were everywhere.  They looked ridiculous and kept getting in the way of important amateur bloggers, and I'm pretty sure they weren't professionals either since the media day was last week.

There were a lot of models at the show trying to attract attention to the cars, but only two of them were males.  It's especially fitting though that both male models were working the Audi booth.

  

At least I finally got to see my boyhood dream car in the sheet metal: the Audi S8.

I should say this about the models standing by the cars, though.  Many people will object to their presence at the show for religious, sociological, or any number of other reasons, but they were consummate professionals.

I came here on the second last day of the roughly 10 day long Motor Show, but this model still took time to give me a smile and a thumbs up even though she had been standing there in those high heels all day and must have been absolutely exhausted.

My favourite model was this girl who gave me an exclusive.  That's right, you won't find this shot anywhere else!  Look at how happy she is too, and now some pesky labour law is going to prevent her from having "fun" for ten hours a day, ten days straight.  What a shame.

 

The Seoul Motor Show also featured an Automotive History Museum section with such classics as the Model T, whatever the white car is, and...

A flying DeLorean!  (I haven't seen one of those in... thirty years!)

By this time I had taken over 400 pictures and was starting to run out of battery, not to mention we were starting to get tired.  Sung Bok and I decided to leave because Yi Woojin (Sung Bok's friend) had invited me out to a baseball game and we needed to go get something to eat first.   Sung Bok originally had a date with his girlfriend, but figured that since he and his girlfriend had been in a fight recently that gave him a good reason to skip their date and come to the game instead.

While we were waiting for Woojin to meet us, I introduced Sung Bok to the wonderful world of body weight conditioning drills at the park where we stopped to rest.  Soon though, Woojin showed up and it was off to get some snacks to sneak in to the ball park with us.

I admit that I have not been a big baseball fan since the Blue Jays won the World Series (that's not entirely true, I watched every game during their fall from grace from 1994-1996 before I finally got fed up and quit) .  That being said, watching Korean baseball is an amazing experience and I'm now hooked!

Unlike normal baseball, where the fans are left to decide amongst themselves the best time to cheer, Korean baseball requires fans of one team to sit on one side of the stadium, while an equal number of fans from the visiting team occupy the seats on the other (the furthest trip away is only 3 hours on the KTX, so most of the fans come along to support their team on road games).  Each team has its own cheer leader who is an energetic guy with a whistle that stands on the dugout and whoops the fans up in a frenzy, with a well-timed series of unique cheers that everyone seems to know (I think each team has its own unique set of cheers).  There are also some massive Korean drums that are thumped during the cheers to make even more noise.

I soon ran out of battery, so I was not able to take many pictures at the game, but in this picture you can see the dancers who would come out between innings, our cheer leader (in the white, 08 uniform), and the inflatable plastic whacking sticks we received.

The team I was cheering for was called the Woori Heroes.  The team they were playing against were one of the best in the league, from Incheon.  I was told that one of the fans from the Woori team yelled "Incheon rubbish" after another of their numerous home runs, but this statement was rather ironic since the Woori Heroes were originally located in Incheon.  

The Incheon team clobbered the Woori Heroes, but that didn't matter.  Every time our team went up to bat the Woori faithful would rise up to cheer as loudly as possible.  My favourite cheer was "Home Run, Boo-room-ba!"  We would chant this whenever the DH, Cliff Brumbaugh (the Korean language doesn't always have all of the letter combinations/sounds to make Western names), came up to bat.

Originally Sung Bok, Woojin and I were down low, but beyond third base.  It gave us a great view, but put us away from the main cheering section.  That didn't stop me from dancing and cheering and whacking my sticks along with everyone else though, and soon Woojin said I was in the wrong section - everyone around me was sitting down and silent.

I asked if we could move closer to the main crowd, but I was told I had to go first for it to work.  Apparently if Woojin or Sung Bok went first, they would be told any open seats were already taken, but since I was a foreigner I could just act like I didn't understand and go sit down anyways.  I thought it seemed a bit silly, but I wanted to cheer, so off I went.  With our new seats secured I was able to really get going on my cheering.

I used to be a former professional sports mascot, and so once I got myself dancing and cheering I drew so much attention that my antics earned me 20 seconds on the big screen monitor on the main scoreboard.  Everyone around me recognized me and there were many laughs.  Eventually though I was able to raise the spirits of everyone around me (who, up until this point had been relatively reserved) and soon we were all standing up and cheering.

After the game the president of the Woori fan club came over and he was so impressed with my cheering that he asked me to join his crew.  If I ever come back to Korea I will go to every Korean baseball game I can.  It's probably the best version of something American that the Koreans have modified yet, and I love it.

I enjoyed myself so much at this game that I'm going to another game on the 26th.  Woojin said that the best team in the league were hosting a team from Busan, and that it was sure to be a good match.  More importantly, people from Busan are very intense people, and I was told that they have the best cheering section in the league.  I'll be there sitting in the Busan section on the 26th, losing my voice, come hell or high water.

After the game, Sung Bok marvelled at my energy since I was still going strong and humming the songs and cheers while he was exhausted.  He made a comment on how much benefit my frequent exercising and consequent fitness levels must be for my quality of life.  I have to agree.  (... The More You Know.)