Dead End Friends, Ulsan, Week Off & Korean F1 Grand Prix

Last Friday night we got together for another band practice to help edge us that little bit closer to being ready for our first 'big gig'. We had to settle for a bit of a dodgy rehearsal room which had a pretty bad echo and the mics kept cutting out so it wasn't easy to work on anything especially detailed, but it was another step. Afterward, we sorted out a few dates for gigs, rehearsals and even a few band name suggestions. We're going to be playing at Woodstock, Itaewon, this Friday night (October 22nd) at 11pm. If you're in the area, come support us and we'll love you forever. We're that easy. It'll just be an hour set but the idea is to limber us up for our first full gig at Rocky Mountain Tavern, Itaewon, on November 6th. I'll get a facebook group set up to start pestering you all to attend once we have decided on a name. At the moment I'm favoring 'Dead End Friends' but we're not sure yet as a whole. Time is running out for your brilliant suggestions...

On Saturday, Jimbo and I did the 4-hour trek by train to Ulsan. Unfortunately, there's no KTX route from Seoul to Ulsan until next month, so we took a KTX to Daegu then a slow train East to Ulsan. We made a night of it on Saturday. Some of it was probably a bit too odd to mention here but I would recommend Ulsan as a fun night out. I even managed to get Jim, who has been very sensible of late, on the soju. Successful night all round. Weird, but successful.

I wasn't feeling the freshest on Sunday morning but we got ourselves out for the game nonetheless. As we were standing along the road waiting for a taxi in our FC Seoul shirts, some Ulsan fans picked us up to give us a lift to the stadium! Just like home, eh? Pretty damn friendly of them. Especially as we then went on to win 2-1, which was a MASSIVE result. There were probably around 300 FC Seoul fans at the game, which is pretty impressive. They were in fine voice for the full 90 minutes, even though a fair portion appeared to be missing the action in doing so... The goals came from Ha Dae Sung and Choi Tae Wook as part of a battling performance all round. Ulsan looked pretty good, but we had two goals ruled out for very marginal looking offside decisions and were good value for the win overall. With Jeju only drawing at Jeonbuk and us having a game in hand, our away match against them next week is now absolutely huge in deciding who finishes top and goes straight into the play-off final. It looks as though we'll be without Adi (fractured cheekbone), while Lee Seung Ryeol and Kim Chi Woo were also absent on Sunday, but we have to be quietly confident of our chances at this stage.

-2010 RANKING TEAM POINTS W D L F A GD 1 JEJU 54 16 6 3 50 24 26 2 SEOUL 52 17 1 6 50 22 28 3 SEONGNAM 43 12 7 5 38 20 18 4 GYEONGNAM 43 12 7 5 36 25 11 5 JEONBUK 42 12 6 6 45 33 12 6 ULSAN 41 12 5 8 37 29 8 7 SUWON 34 10 4 10 34 38 -4 8 BUSAN 30 7 9 9 34 33 1 9 INCHEON 29 8 5 11 39 43 -4 10 POHANG 27 6 9 9 35 44 -9 11 CHUNNAM 26 6 8 10 36 42 -6 12 GANGWON 21 5 6 14 30 49 -19 13 DAEJEON 21 5 6 13 25 45 -20 14 DAEGU 19 5 4 15 27 46 -19 15 GWANGJU 18 3 9 12 14 37 -23

After the match we were again having problems finding a taxi (the stadium was pretty much in the middle of nowhere) and kind of cheekily asked a couple in a car for 'directions' in the hope that they'd just offer us a lift. They took the bait... They turned out to be really nice and Jimbo and I had a further chance to practice our Korean. It's nice having Jim along for that because his Korean is so much better than mine so I pick up a fair bit from him. The couple spoke some English too. Apparently the man is planning to, "make a baby this year". How romantic.

I'm off work this week so I SHOULD be working on my dissertation and learning song lyrics for Friday night. However, so far I've just been getting up kind of late and doing a lot of reading and generally time has just been flying by. I did go cycling by the Han with Stephanie last night, which was fun and looked beautiful. The Han River at night always reminds you what a nice city we actually live in. I'm having dinner with Ji and her parents tonight. They're in the country for a family wedding and the fact that I 'can't' go has left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. However, I do understand it to an extent and will just have to pretend I don't mind, which I seem to be doing a lot of recently.

This weekend, Korea will host it's first F1 Grand Prix. It has always been an ambition of mine to go see one (if that can be called an ambition) and this seems like as good an opportunity as I'll get for a while. There's some facebook group that I, apparently, have a free ticket through but I remain skeptical. It looks as though there's a bus going down on Sunday morning and back after the race so that'd be perfect. The 'free tickets' are only for foreigners (controversial) so I'd just go 50-50 with Ji if that were the case. There are a few people who seem interested in going but I'm not sure how many of those are 100%. Anyway, if you're thinking of going and you want to book a place on a bus from Seoul to Yeongam (site of the Grand Prix) and back on Sunday, let me know and I'll give you the relevant email address. That's me over and out for today.