A new semester has begun at my school, and my class schedule is exactly the same as before. I have five classes on Monday, seven on Tuesday, six on Wednesday, eight on Thursday and four on Friday, though in different distributions. My Friday classes are in one long block instead of being broken up throughout the day; but my Wednesday classes, instead of being one miserable slog, are now punctuated by 45-minute breaks. All in all, I'd say the new schedule is an improvement.
The weekend before last (the first weekend of September), Miss H and I took a trip down to Busan to see my buddies Adam and Jeff, whom I'd worked with on Geoje Island. It'd been a few months since we'd seen each other. Moreover a weekend spent lying on Haeundae Beach, sipping beer and dunking our toes, was just what the doctor ordered. Frustratingly, we couldn't leave Bucheon until after 3:30 p.m. We had missed classes on Tuesday (the 28th of August) due to Typhoon Bolaven, and had to make the classes up on Saturday the 1st. So we did that. The students hated it and so did we. But our precious freedom was gained at half past three, and I hurried home, packed, grabbed Miss H's hand, and rushed off to the bus terminal.
...only to learn that we had missed the outbound bus to the Haeundae neighborhood of Busan by ten lousy minutes.
So we sat around for two hours, reading books in a coffeehouse in the upscale NewCore shopping center. Miss H perused The Help while I delved into Around the World in Eighty Days. At the appointed time (5:50 p.m.) we packed up our books and went through the glass doors to the bus platform.
There we waited a further 15 minutes until the bus and its frazzled driver screeched to a halt in front of us, bid us board, and then hauled ass away from the terminal.
The ride was miserable. Both of us were bone-tired. The lurching and jarring of the vehicle, driven by a dilatory madman and jouncing through lanes of traffic and across uneven ground, precluded any effort to sleep or read. The best we could manage was a sort of tenuous doze, aided by soothing music from our iPods and each other's presence. The ride was a beastly five and a half hours. Cramped, sweaty, bleary-eyed and annoyed, Miss H and I stumbled off the bus at Haeundae Beach and set out to find a hotel. After an abortive attempt at a 40,000-won love motel, whose rooms included a mini-bar, a microwave, and a cockroach on the ceiling, we were finally installed in a much cleaner and nicer joint for ₩70,000. Miss H collapsed into unconsciousness while I hunted up Adam, Jeff, Jeff's girlfriend Jenn and their friends. We partied first at a noisy club on the 14th floor of a beach-side skyscraper, watching the waves wash ashore far below us; then we adjourned to a convenience store for beer and Roman candles. We walked down to the sand and planted our tushes on the beach itself, drinking until the wee hours of the morning, launching fireworks over the surf, watching them fizzle into nothingness as they struck the water. It was just like old times; Adam, Jeff and I had practiced this very ritual many a night in Busan in 2008 and 2009.
After the walk down Memory Lane had concluded, it was time to stagger home. Arriving, as I had, at eleven o'clock, I hadn't even managed to catch up to everybody. The most I'd achieved was a sort of pleasant buzz. I wasn't even weaving. I made a short stop at a seafood restaurant to inquire about the price of king crab stew; upon being informed that it was fifty grand (for four people), I politely took my leave. I woke up Miss H to let me in, as this motel did not give out more than one key card, and went to sleep.
I awoke the next morning with an attenuated hangover. Miss H and I leisurely arranged our things and checked out precisely at noon. Then we went to meet Adam, Jeff, and Jenn and have some breakfast. We dined in style at the Wolfhound, an Irish pub just off Gunam Street. I had shepherd's pie for breakfast (don't judge), and Adam helped himself to a tremendous king-size breakfast of eggs, sausage, bacon and beans. Then it was down to the beach have a splodge. We waded and swam in the chilly water (September is quite advanced in Haeundae's beach season); sufficiently awake, we pulled up a chair and an umbrella at a bar called Gecko's and ordered calamari and daiquiris. Here we sat for some time, whiling away the golden afternoon, chatting and laughing. It was absolute magic. I felt the stress of seven months melting away in the sunshine. Seven months I had been penned up in the Seoul metropolitan area, getting honked at by cars, standing in stuffy subway trains, holding on for dear life in careening buses. Now I was free. I was gazing over the bluish-grey waters of the East China Sea, listening to the seagulls cry, watching cargo ships scudding over the waves as they departed the ports. A sweating lime daiquiri was in my hand, greasy calamari in my teeth, and dear friends smiling at me from across the table. Things couldn't have been much better.
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| Adam, Miss H, and me...geombae! |
All too soon, it was time to part. Miss H and I, shepherded by Adam, got on the subway and headed for Busan Station. We had had enough of buses; expense or no expense, we were taking the KTX home. The Korean bullet train, of which I've written before, would whisk us back to Seoul in only two hours, at the blinding speed of 300 kilometers. Adam bid us farewell on the subway car: he was continuing on for a few stops. I was feeling more sozzled than I had the night before. I had drunk the leftover beer in the fridge that morning; at breakfast I had downed several bottles of Strongbow cider with Adam; and after two daiquiris at Gecko's, I was feeling mighty fine. I weaved my way off the subway train and up to the ticket counter with Miss H. Our luck did not hold; the special weekend rates and the foreigner's discount were not in effect. We paid ₩90,000 apiece for our tickets. Incensed, but glad we would be getting home in short order (for it was already past four o'clock), we adjourned to the station platform and seated ourselves inside Car No. 6, painted a sleek grey-and-blue. The KTX pulled away from the platform and soon we were zooming north and homeward. The ride was divine. I had my darling by my side, a good book in my lap, a bottle of water to help me sober up (for I was still rather tipsy) and a gorgeous pink-and-blue sunset outside the windows. The green hills of Korea flashed by, slow enough to take in but fast enough not to bore the eye. After two quick halts at Daegu and Daejeon, we were pulling into Seoul Station, barely two hours after departing Busan. Two hundred miles down, just like that.
And now, just to leave you with some cheerful news (for I'm now back at work and into the grind, and can't wait to get back to Busan again), I HAVE FINISHED MY NOVEL. The tremendous rewrite which I embarked upon all those long months ago has concluded. The second draft has been completed. The manuscript stands at 118,838 words and 598 double-spaced pages. I'm feeling confident enough about this second version to actually want other people to read it. First, however, I'm doing the Stephen King thing and letting the monster sit inert for a few weeks. This'll give me time to pull away from it, mentally and physically, recharge the creative batteries, and be able to approach the thing in a new light when rewriting time comes. For the nonce, however, I am on-track for publication by the end of 2012.
Wish me luck, and stay tuned.
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