Murderer!!@#!@#!

So last week was Busan's annual International film festival. Was a pretty cool experience with each of Busan's movie theaters showing films strictly for the festival all week and offering a midnight screening for 3 movies at the price of 1. I caught one of these screenings last Saturday and it sure didn't disappoint. First 2 movies were eh, Chinese and Spanish movies about something or other. That all leads me to why this post was born. It was out of necessity. MURDERER!!@#!@ is a Hong Kong psychological thriller that everyone needs to watch. Not only do you need to watch it, you need to watch it with all your friends because you will definitely want to talk about this movie once it has finished. It has a slick opening scene that pulls you in, though for those who are squeamish, probably not so much. SEriously though, this movie must be watched by everyone who has eyes. That is all.

Hong Kong and stuff

Picture in one of our books at work. Sadly, he's losing a lot of blood.


Gotta respect Hong Kong, one of the coolest, funniest, awesomest places ever.


Avenue of the Stars in Hong Kong with this AWESOME statue of Bruce Lee. Though, the Avenue of the Stars walkway was more like Alley of the Stars in terms of length.


MGM Grand in Macau. Macau has a decent number of casinos ranging from the smaller mom and pop spots to the more ritzy upscale places. It's nothing at all like Vegas, has a crappy vibe, very serious, very enclosed, just weird. It's a cool place to check out though if your in Hong Kong for a few days because its only a 1 hour ferry there. It's worth checking out but I was not impressed at all.


Ruins of St. Paul's Church/Ruinas de Sao Paulo. In Macau.


Back in Hong Kong. Giant Buddha, slickness.


Me and Buddha. This is where I learned the Buddha Palm and was able to defeat the Axe Gang.


Monastery right next to the Giant Buddha.


Sweet double decker buses that Hong Kong's known for. Traffic is a sonofa... there though, too many people on that little island full of funness.

First accident in Ulsan.

Well, it took my 1 year anniversary but I finally saw a car accident and this one involved a motorcycle as well, which makes it 1000 times more awesomer. As I've mentioned before, people here just drive like retards, cutting people off left and right and always ready to drop kick the brakes at every opportunity because they love going from 0 to 25 back to 0 in a matter of 5 seconds all the time. As well, the idiots on motorcycles and scooters use the sidewalks as their own personal roads and get in the way of pedestrians and at times have the nerve to get angry at us for being in their way. Well, here's payback assholes.

Both F-tards are retarded here but more so for the douchebag on the motorcycle. This occurs at about 11pm at night and the retard on the bike goes too far into the intersection while his light is still red because he's a dumbass and he was about to run the red light as they all do in this country. The guy in the car had the right of way and a green light and smacks right into this retard and you can see the results. I was nice enough to turn off retard's scooter and took it too the sidewalk. After making sure he wasnt dead and was just injured, I walked away with a smile on my face and feeling of great satisfaction. Shit like this needs to happen much more often before these people stop driving and riding their scooters the way they do.


Ah oh, spaghettios!


Oh, wha hapen?


That pizza will not be delivered in 30 minutes or less, I know that for sure.

Couple wear

So they do couple wear here, which is just so weird. There I am in the back right with a look of disgust and complete hatred. Photo courtesy of Ryan T. Appreciate that.

Whistle, Hanboks and fun.

This is Joe, 10 years of age. Shirt reads 'WHISTLE If you'd like to see my instrument' Korea is the best.


Visited an Art Gallery at a man's home during a field trip with a few students, I think the man's name is Kim Beok So? he makes Hanji paintings - Three dimensional hanji is similar to paper mache, in that it attempts to make sculpture type objects which may stand unsupported. What's unique about his paintings is that the pictures have double meanings as they also represent letters and words of the Korean Alphabet.



The artist was gracious enough to offer me this small frame of my favorite piece of his for free. In Korean, the word written is 'Sound'. Thought it was pretty cool.


Front gate into Park Je Seong's Memorial. Created to keep the bad spirits away. Didn't work, the Japs took him out. Some king or another from the Silla Period, find it on Wiki if you're so inclined.


Ted, with AMAZINGLY awesome hair. It's like he's in space.


This is tard Tony, with his dirty dirty mustache wearing a Hanbok, traditional Korean clothing.


Trey, (I wish I was the one who had given him that name)


Uber cute Mary


Sharing is caring.

Randoms

Kimchi anyone?


Fall into the CAP.


Pareso Waterfalls in Ulsan.


At the waterfall with some kids during a field trip, took a while to hike to the site and they were pretty hungry so some of them were not all that happy.


Festival at the Taehwa River, I've assimilated.

Back to Seoul and the DMZ

Went back to Seoul, one of my favorite cities, this time it was just a brief respite before heading to the DMZ at the 38th parallel for a tour. A tour of the 3rd Infilitration Tunnel that the North dug to reach the South, the Dorasan Observatory (where you can take pictures of the landscape of North Korea though on this day it was muggy, though you had to take pictures behind a yellow line). I did all this the day before the North set off their underground test for nukes.



Dorasan station. Nice subway station facility, state of the art but with only 3-4 trains going to and from it every day, its barely used, a shame. Food and supplies are taken from here to the North since they don't do much to feed their own people. The South's ultimate goal is to persuade the North into allowing it access into the North's territory to create a train transportation system that cuts right into China and save the South millions of dollars on transportation fees since it is essentially functioning as an island as of this point. However, the North just won't allow for it. North Koreans are crazy.


Best picture I could take of the North from behind the yellow line as the rules insist.


Look, its the north and the south trying to put their humpty dumpty culture back together again. Too bad it's so incredibly naive. But gotta give hope a chance I guess.


My fat self next to a real active mine, one of 1 million mines in the DMZ, I think...


Who needs a hotel when you have a whole subway car.


It's kind of endearing.


My hero.

Ace the Sailor man, he's Ace the sailor man...


Worse than waterboarding?


A gift for a few lucky friends. It literally translates phonetically 'I'm so Sso-Ri'

Children's Day
We had a little fun on children's day making gimbap and sandwiches with the kids.
These two are sisters, the cutest pair, Elaine and Betty.


This is Kane enjoying taking a bite out of that hot dog.


Zoe (though everyone calls her Joey b/c they can't pronounce the Z), Sally, Grace and the real Joey.


Allison (who hates her name for some reason) and Kelly


In Seoul, cleaning up a trash can.


Outside Seoul Station, riot police are there to prevent a group of union workers on strike from creating a clusterF.


Beckham and Leo (pronounced Lay-o) being the little punks that they are.


Busan Stadium, where my new favorite baseball team, the Lotte Giants play.


Bus driver working hard. I'm not sure if Koreans were the first to wear socks and sandals but they've perfected it.

One more year.

I've decided to stay in Ulsan another year. Nothing really prompted the decision just the fact that I've grown comfortable here even though this isn't the most lively place to live. Myriad of factors go into it, not being ready to go home, indecision about job prospects back home right now, wanting to know more about this distant land and its surroundings, especially Japan and China which are both only 2 hours away by plane. Hopefully it's a good decision, I'll find out soon enough.