raw fish overdose

I knew Friday night was going to be exceptional right off the bat because that's how Fridays are. To begin with, I had two free periods, which allowed me to get some tests graded and also just let me unwind a little bit after a long week. My allergies have been kicking in something fierce these past couple of days, too, and I had been sniffling and sneezing and coughing the whole day. Things were extra-exceptional, however.

Debate class came off pretty well, for starters. Did I tell you about debate class? It's really neat. As a new thing this semester my hagwon saw fit to start up a debate class. Adam and I are teaching it jointly, there's about ten kids and they're all astoundingly fluent middle-schoolers. That's fine enough as it is, but we actually get to teach them the fine art of debate: how to construct an argument, put it forth decisively, listen attentively to the opposition's statements, and how to intelligently and coherently rebut them. It's tricky, and some of the kids aren't quite understanding what they're supposed to do yet, but they're getting it little by little, and it's really rewarding to see.

On Friday night we debated whether traditional buildings ought to be preserved or pulled down and replaced with modern ones. Sam, Tom and Sunny were particularly good at listening to the other side's arguments and putting together a cohesive counter-argument. That was neato-keen. What was also neato-keen was that I had ddeokbokki for dinner. There's a little food stand just across the road from Reading Town. The couple who own it are apparently famous: people have been coming from all around the island to taste their ddeokbokki and ojingeo since they set up shop a couple months back. They do serve some wicked snacks. Ddeokbokki is mashisseoyo (delicious). It's made with ddeok, which is rice smashed into paste, and then rolled into small cylindrical chunks. Mate that and some fish patties to some red, spicy, peppery sauce, and you have ddeokbokki. I didn't care much for it the first time I tried it, but like most Korean food (and every music CD I've ever bought, for example) it's grown on me.

Ojingeo (pronounced oh-jing-UH) is just the Korean word for squid. This squid that they serve at this food stand is deep-fried, so it's covered in a delicious Long-John-Silver-esque battered crust. Not only do you get squid, but also gimbap (sort of like sushi, but with ham and egg instead of raw fish), sweet potato cakes, and dumplings, similarly deep-fried. (These fried food snacks are called twigim.)

I got both ddeokbokki and twigim and chowed down after work. Better still, the place I chowed down wasn't my sometimes-lonely studio apartment! It was my good friends Adam and Elaine's apartment up by the P.O.W. camp. They invited me and our Canuck friend Jeff over for cards. Adam and I ate, we put on some tunes, set up the Tripoley board (their kitchen table, with slips of paper labels marking the pots) and played, sang and drank until four o'clock in the morning. That was completely awesome. The neighbors banged on the wall, we were so rambunctious. Good tunes, good food, good beer...what Adam calls "a crackin' night." We went through five pitchers and three bottles of soju, and tried something new: Jeff had heard somewhere about dropping some sour gummy worms into a shot of soju and shooting the lot. Adam and Jeff both stepped up to the plate. Man, I thought their faces were going to fold in on themselves. They puckered up the same way my brother's cat does when he smells the inside of my shoes.

We did all this in full understanding of the fact that we had to be in front of Top Mart, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, at 10:30 the following day, to arrive on time at the Geoje Spring Flower and Gray Mullet Festival. Drunk as I was when I arrived home that night, I remembered everything. I bought a bottle of water on the way home (to fill up my bota bag), set some batteries to charge (for my camera), and set my alarm for 9:00 the next morning (to give me enough time to recover from the inevitable hangover).

My alarm failed to wake me up. I rolled over, groaning like a beached whale, to look at my watch. Subsequently I observed, with some obfuscation, that it was 10:18. Somehow I managed to get out of bed in the next ten seconds, and get completely ready and arrive at the appointed rendezvous within the next seven-hundred and ten. I remembered everything except a handkerchief. Bilbo Baggins, eat your heart out. Temples should be erected in my honor. Managing to force my moldy mind and creaky body to put on clothes, assemble necessary equipment (a pot for cooking noodles, important documents, camera), pour a liter of water into my bota bag without the aid of a funnel, and slope down to the corner store, period, let alone in twelve measly minutes, is a feat that will live forever in the unwritten annals of the Hangover Hall of Fame.

Charles and his girlfriend Anne were waiting for me in Charles's green, three-cylinder Daewoo Matiz. This handy-dandy little driving machine seats five sardines and fits into any lady's purse without folding or bending. At least I wouldn't have to drive. Adam and Elaine waltzed sprightly down from their apartment a short while later. Well, Adam waltzed. He'd been up since nine-thirty; he had a louder alarm clock. He'd had to spend about forty-five minutes of his extra Hangover Recovery Time peeling Elaine off the bed, however. She and I commiserated while I sucked down some meat-on-a-stick (exactly what it sounds like; goes for the equivalent of sixty cents at any supermarket) and some sugary, creamy coffee from the vending machine. Adam got some cash, we loaded the equipment in the car, squeezed ourselves in and went.

On the way, we drove through a little campsite located halfway up an unknown mountain halfway between us and the beach. Judging from my tourist map it was either Seonjasan or Nojasan. It was pretty, however. Charles mentioned that he had come there before and camped, and that the sounds of rushing water were very relaxing. There was indeed a waterfall and a stream, trickling over large rocks and tumbling down the mountainside. There were some wooden platforms for tents, but also bungalows! You get your choice of camping styles in Korea. We made a note to go back there.

Somewhere along our route (and I missed it because I was too hung over to care) was the Geoje Natural Forest of Recreation, which is on my list of things to see on this island. I'm gratified to know it's so close and on the main road.

Then we were at the beach. I unfolded myself in gratitude. We left the gear in the car as we made our way to the tent to sign in. The meat-on-a-stick and coffee were having a minimal effect on my system: my brain and body still felt like they were in separate countries. After signing in we went back to the car, got our gear, set it up on a picnic table, and cooked up some noodles. They were a Chinese variety I'd never heard of before, jjajangmyeon. They were indistinguishable from ordinary ramen to my eyes, but coated in a thick black sauce made from soybeans. The end result was delicious and satisfying.

It was just the thing for a hangover, standing on a pebble beach on a 55-degree spring day in your shorts eating hot noodles. (Indeed, I later found out that it was Charles's preferred hangover cure.) I was reviving slowly. Then Adam and I went and had a look at the opposition as we waited for Jeff to arrive. We'd clued him in about the festival two days previously, but he would have to take the bus, as it was impossible to get another sardine into Charles's car. The opposition looked fierce, even if not to great in number. A shallow trench had been hacked into the beach, and layered with some blue tarps. Soon after we arrived men had climbed out of a tanker truck and begun ferrying fish to this temporary pond. Here's how it looked:

That thing there in the last picture is a seungeo (SOONG-uh), Korean for grey mullet. Some of those suckers were huge. I was looking forward to this.

Presently Jeff arrived. He'd taken a taxi due to the bus for Hakdong leaving only every three hours. We assembled down by the pond. The administrators let us go in in groups of 30; probably around 200 people had signed up. None of us were in the first group. Jeff, number 87, was in the third; myself, Elaine, Adam, Charles, and Anne (numbers 117-121 respectively) would all be in the one after him. The first group went and caught their fill. There were some real bare-handed experts down there. One particular burly Korean teen was snatching them right and left. Good thing the limit was three or else he might've gotten 'em all. Jeff's group went in. Competition was fierce. Try as he might, Jeff got occluded from a few catches in the mad rush that followed the start of the round. Soon, however, his eye and arm poised, he made a few precise lunges and nabbed two mullet.

He was modest in his glory. I was waiting on the edge of the trench, camera poised, for him to raise a huge, flailing fish-monster triumphantly above his head, his teeth reflecting the golden sunlight in a grin of self-satisfaction. No such luck. He bagged his catch and waded to the side, and we got to inspect them up-close.

Then, good man that he is, Jeff toweled off as quickly as possible and took charge of our belongings, including my camera, as we rushed to get into line to receive our own equipment. Having three foreigners in this round the announcer, a man in a suit who spoke some English, decided it was time for some fun. He had us go into the water first. That was fine and dandy. But then he asked us to dance. With a tremendous shout of "Goooooooooo WHITEY!!!"

Well, we were embarrassed and all, but who gave a turkey? It was a party. That wasn't all, though. After that was over he let some other people in after us and asked them to dance with us.

Here are our reactions:

And here's the result:


I got my revenge, however. I have hearing like a charging rhinoceros. I thought I heard the signal to go, so I went. Turns out I jumped the gun. But the announcer didn't know how to say "STOP!" in English, so he just went ahead and let everybody else in. Ha!

It was bedlam. People were rushing here and there, herding the fish that way and this way, but in reality the fish were pretty easy to catch. The smaller ones were spry, but the bigger ones were sluggish. Whether gray mullet are naturally so, or whether they were lethargic from all that time in the tank in the back of the truck, or whether they'd had their fins clipped...I wasn't sure. All I know is that Adam was shark-like in his ferocity. He was everywhere at once, leaping, snatching, diving, parrying, dodging and ducking. Elaine was right after him. They'd devised a system: she held the bag and he did the fishing, and with two hands free he was a dynamo. He nabbed his limit pretty quickly, despite my interfering with his quarries a few times. For that I can only apologize. My mind was gone. I saw a big fish and I went after it, heedless of anyone around me. I got three almost instantaneously...

...and then the bag ripped.

ARGH! Only one of my precious seungeo remained captive. The other two had gotten away. Quickly I snatched one up, one of the sluggish large ones, before he could make good his escape. The other was lost to me forever. I could only hope he'd be writhing in someone's stomach acid before the day was out.

After five seconds, the five minutes were up and we were climbing out of the trench. Soaked and thrilled, we got some pictures with our catch, turned them in at the appropriate tent to be made into hoe (pronounced "hweh"), or raw fish, served with sauce and vegetables. Then spread our towels on the round pebbles of the beach, warmed from the sun, and rested from our labors. Soon the hoe arrived, and it was delicious:


In the big tub there is a thin, almost sweet sauce; there was also ssamjang, which is a thick, spicy, multi-purpose meat sauce. In the bag are lettuce and mustard leaves, as well as peppers and garlic slices. Wrap that and the fish all up together and you have one delightful taste sensation. The green bottle, of course, is the ubiquitous soju.

Thus fortified, we rested contentedly once again. By and by, Charles mentioned the need to return home. He and his girlfriend Anne, visible in some of these pictures, were moving to a new apartment and I had volunteered to help them out. Adam, Elaine and Jeff caught a cab home while I rode with Charles in his Matiz. I had an hour to freshen up (I was grateful for this; I had fish blood on my shorts from trying to end a poor mullet's suffering by braining him on the pebbles of the beach, and was still nursing a sense of guilt, not to mention being dog-tired into the bargain). I changed clothes and sacked out on my bed in a half-doze.

At the appointed time, I helped Charles move his things in two trips from his apartment (a stone's throw from mine) into a new and bigger three-bedroom one-bath on the northern side of Gohyeon. No two people were more surprised than he and I when we managed to fit his titanic Samsung washing machine into his Matiz without doing anything more than folding the seats down. We were even able to close the rear hatch!

After moving, Charles and Anne generously took me out to eat. We went for gamjatang, which is a spicy soup with pig vertebrae in it. Don't give me that look. It's superb. The vertebrae still have bits of rib stuck to them, and also lots of meat and fat. The dish itself is a lot of work. You have to pull the bones out of the soup onto a plate to work with them there, so you can avoid splashing your dinner-mates. But then you can dig and suck and rip and tear to your heart's content. I'm glad; some of the bits of meat were darned hard to get off.

The real disappointment came after I had finished the meat. All that was left was spicy broth. I'll grant you it was delicious, but there just wasn't that much to it. Moreover there was nothing to temper it with but cold water. Our side dishes (banchan) were all spicy too: kimchi and green peppers and spicy ssamjang. Nonetheless I enjoyed myself and thanked Charles heartily at the end (he's a good man; he thanked me for helping him move). So, I strolled home and had a restful night...after I consumed the last box of hoe. If you want to know the reason why I named this entry raw fish overdose, you are answered. I must've easily eaten a pound of the stuff that day. Lucky it wasn't too filling or I might've ruptured something.

I'll be brief with Sunday. At three o'clock I journeyed to Adam and Elaine's place, clutching a plastic pitcher of Black Beer Stout, to keep our appointment for movie night. This is how it works: we each pick a movie and then we draw straws for sequence (or play rock, scissors, paper, which is insanely popular in Korea...even the policemen make decisions with it). Then we watch 'em back-to-back.

We drank some beer, then we sat down and watched Adam's pick, Trainspotting. It's a film based on a book of the same name by Irvine Welsh. I'll have to read that one. The movie version's got Ewan MacGregor in it and is a...how do I put this...rather graphic delving into the filthy, desperate, soul-mangling world of heroin addiction in bleak urban Scotland. There are a lot of dark social themes being covered in that film. It ain't for the faint of heart.

After that we broke for dinner. I left off trying to cut up an onion with Adam's infuriatingly dull kitchen knives and boorishly went down to Top Mart to buy a whetstone for 15,000 won. I left poor Adam hanging there with uncut onions and food on the stove. I get rather shortsighted and obsessive like that sometimes...like when I'm trying to catch gray mullet with my bare hands, for example. I apologize a second time.

While the food cooked I worked at it, sharpening those damn knives. I got two done and was about to start on the smaller paring knife when dinner was ready and it was time for the second movie. Dinner was a delectable mixture of chicken, corn, onions, peppers, and other vegetables all fried up together with sauce. (Adam is a master at taking whatever ingredients are on hand, chopping them all up and cooking them with some kind of improvised sauce and turning out a comestible masterpiece. Must've come of living in Spain.)

The second movie was The Warriors, the 1979 cult classic about a gang in New York that finds itself stranded far from home and has to fight its way back to its turf. One of my favorites and my pick for the evening.

The third movie was Elaine's choice, a movie I had never seen but had been rather anxious to, given that everybody else on the planet and their brother had: The Godfather. The hype was through the roof. Overall, I was pleased, even though there was so much to absorb that I still can't formulate an opinion on it one way or the other. Good film, graphic deaths, excellent casting and acting...and the thing just sucks you in somehow. You get really involved. That's about as eloquent as I can be on the subject at the moment.

The last film ended about eleven o'clock, and I strolled home, wrote a bit, read a bit, then hit the hay. The next day was Monday. That was the only bad thing about that weekend.