Every Day Should Be A Holiday

Since I last posted, I have been taking advantage of a bit of a lull in our summer teaching schedule by taking trips to Busan (midweek) and Gangneung (weekend) to take in FC Seoul's victories over Busan Kyotong and Gangwon FC. The midweek trip was probably a bit nuts because I was teaching on Tuesday and Thursday so didn't really have a lot of time to take in what was only a FA Cup last-16 encounter with a little-known team from the N-League. Still, I'm really glad I decided to head down, even if I was a teeny tiny bit late for my first kids' class on Thursday... Bad Brian!

I stayed in a pretty nice motel in Chinatown, right near the KTX station, knowing that I'd need to be up and out pretty promptly the next morning. It was only a few subway stops away

from Jagalchi fish market, so I decided to go for a nosey. The place is immense and it's great being able to see the process of catch, sort, sell and eat all within a feet of each other! I felt a bit funny about doing the old point-to-my-dinner routine, but I forced myself and was pretty happy with the result!

Busan Sport's Complex was only a few more stations along the same line, and I was sure to get there in plenty of time to catch the build-up. I wound up talking to a guy who works for the PR Department of the club, and I had a great chat with him about the team. He's really keen to get more foreigners coming along because he thinks that if we're popular with foreigners, the general public at large will follow. I'm not quite sure where he's got that from, but I enjoyed telling him some of the things we find different from football back home, and I think he got what I was saying. I'm really happy to have a good contact at the club who I can get team news from because, as I was telling him, a lot of the time you're pretty much in the dark unless you understand Korean well.

The match was a big disappointment. We started with a strong team, but Busan were lively, and we just couldn't get it together. They were denied what turned out to be a stone-wall penalty and, later in the first half, Djeparov curled home a great free-kick, which turned out to be the winner. The problem was that it should never have been a free in the first place. I was hoping that we would go on to maul them in the second half but, if anything, we were lucky not to concede. The players were pretty disgruntled after the match and didn't appear to have as much time for the fans as usual. When you consider the trek those 40-50 fans made, that's pretty unacceptable.

On Saturday, I headed east to Gangneung. We got in kind of late on Friday night (express bus from Express Bus Terminal took around 3 hours and cost W20,000), and took a taxi to Gyeongpodae beach, where we shacked up at a motel right on the beach for W40,000. Next day we had a bit of quality beach time, rented bikes to cycle round Gyeongpodea Lake, and got a taxi to Gangneung Sport's Complex in plenty of time for the 'big match'. There was a much bigger turn out of Seoul fans (maybe 300?), and Gangwon had a decent crowd as well. Seoul started with what I consider to be their strongest eleven with Kim Yong Dae - Lee Gyo Ro - Park Yong Ho - Adi - Hyun Young Min - Ko Yo Han - Ko Myung Jin - Ha Dae Sung - Djeparov - Molina - Dejan. We started out well (Molina probably should have scored after about 20 seconds) and deservedly went ahead through a wondrous Ha Dae Sung volley following a cleared corner. It really is one of the best goals I've ever seen, certainly live. Somehow we started making Gangwon look like a decent side after that, but Molina finished well on the stroke of half-time to put us 2-0 up, and the second half was a procession. That puts us up to ninth, and a win at home against Incheon this weekend could elevate us into the play-off positions!

Having sampled Gangneung's night-life (Warehouse - token foreign bar full of pissed up waegooks) and watched the sun rise over Gyeongpodea, we took the bus 40 minutes out of town to Unification Park, on Sunday. This place is NOT designed for visitors who don't have their own transport! When we finally got there, it was pretty impressive. There's a huge South Korean decommissioned warship, which was used in World War Two and up to as recently as 1999. You could go on deck and wander around the rooms inside. They also had some military displays, including one of the recent North Korean shelling of Yeonpyeong Island. It's easy to forget how current the threat really is. They also had a simple wooden boat on display that was built and used by 11 North Korean defectors only last year. Last but not least was a captured North Korean submarine. Apparently, 26 North Korean spies tried to infiltrate the country just off the coast from where the park now stands. We were able to walk through, and how they managed to get 26 people in there, I'll never know. It's a well put together (although very one-sided) display, and worth a look if you find yourself on the beautiful east coast of Korea!

I'm going to stick around Seoul this weekend. Saturday will (or should) involve some dissertation writing, FC Seoul V Incheon United, and probably a night out with the boys. The rest of the week will be pretty busy because we are teaching an intensive DDE course, but I much prefer teaching during the day than at night, so you won't hear me complaining for once!

I was catching up with Gary Pot last night and realised it has been a while since I spoke to some of my best old buddy old pals. If that's you, drop me a line! I booked my flight to Barcelona on August 5th and to Dublin on the 10th. I'm hoping to catch a Derry match that weekend and will be in Sligo for Roisin's wedding on Saturday, 13th. I don't fly to Nanjing until the 19th, so fingers crossed I'll get to see most of you. Hope everyone is doing well!

Round Round Get Around

The summer is here! Light teaching schedule (aside from eight crazy days, but that's not now, so I'm not going to think about it), warm weather, events left, right and centre, and something like a puny seven weeks left of my life in Korea. I actually had my medical for my Chinese working visa yesterday and I wasn't nearly as much of a baby about giving blood (or having blood taken!) as I usually am. Perhaps I might even be considered a 'man' by my 29th birthday, although I wouldn't count on it. Anyway, the Chinese authorities are pretty nuts with the old health requirements. I had to be tested for AIDS, syphilis and something else I hadn't even heard of. Fair enough, I guess. However, there's also a questionnaire where I have to own up if I've had such extreme disorders as 'mental confusion' (who hasn't?), 'plague' or 'leprosy'. The doctor then has to sign off that I haven't shown any signs of 'yellow fever', 'cholera' or 'polio'. Ah no lads, you're safe enough on those fronts. I think I need to tell them that I'm going there to teach, not live out the final few weeks of my rapidly diminishing life! Results back on Friday. Fingers crossed I'm all clear and that I can get on with the rest of the laborious visa process.

I'm trying to make the most of my remaining time on the ROK. I wouldn't bet much money on getting another gig on the go. Jeff is out of the country for the rest of the month and that would only give us a few weeks to train up a new drummer and get the show back on the road, only for me to up sticks in early-August anyhow. More likely is that I'll front a couple of shows as a Muse cover with Cheon's Korean band. I'd love the buzz of a show at FF one more time, but with so many other things to fit in before I hit the road, I'm not going to push it or lose much sleep over the issue either way.

This weekend I'm going to go over to Gangneung to enjoy the weather (not TOO hot... yet...), get a bit of beach time in, and (you've guessed it), watch Gangwon FC entertain the not-so-mighty-these-days FC Seoul. We earned a valuable point at home last weekend against high-flying Pohang Steelers, but appear to have lost the head of steam that came with the arrival of caretaker boss, Choi Young Soo. It was a very entertaining match with a HUGE attendance (the sponsors put on some sort of feeble promotion and the families lapped it up), but we have lost the air of invincibility we once had at home. We're still just four-points off the play-off positions, but it's getting pretty congested in there and we need to get a bit of a run together soon. Thank the good-but-non-existent lord for Dejan and Adi, who really do look out of place at times, such is the performance gap between them on their good days, and some of their team-mates on their bad days.

Some have used the word 'obsessive' to describe my relationship with the 'Soul of Seoul - FC Seoul' of late, and I guess I'm not helping my cause by planning to travel the 330km to Busan tomorrow to watch a last-16 FA Cup encounter with Busan Kyotang of the Korean National League. The way I see it is that I only have kids' classes this week (Tuesday and Thursday), that the weather is lovely, that it's something completely different, and that Adi promised to give me his shirt!! I'm going to go down by KTX early in the morning, check out the fish markets, bring a book to the beach for a few hours, take in the match, celebrate a thumping victory (tempting fate there...), love motel it up like the classy gent I am, and catch an early train back for my Thursday kids' class. Hopefully it all goes smoothly and I'll have a nice blog to write up about it all on Friday.

Random snippet from the match last Saturday: my ex-girlfriend's best friend was there totally unexpectedly doing interviews for Reuters about the recent match-fixing scandal in Korean football. Obviously it was nice giving an interview, but it was a really weird feeling too. Personally, you never know what the friends of your ex now think of you, right? Way more importantly, it's an issue that at least one player has chosen to take his own life over, and who knows how big or far-reaching it'll turn out to be? As I said in the interview, it's sad that people around the world may now only associate the K-League with cheating, as opposed to the standard of football and the quality of players that it has exported. For example, Jung Jo Gook and Park Ju Young were both at Sangam last weekend, paying tribute to their former employers and admirers during the Ligue 1 closed-season. As a fan of Korea and Korean football, I hope the authorities deal with the issue thoroughly and professionally and put measures in place to prevent a repeat.

I hope you're getting on well, whoever you are, wherever you are, and in whatever it is that you're doing.