Eco of a lovely day

Saturday was another gorgeous day in Icheon. I started it off with sleeping late, then leveling my Alchemist for an hour. Not wanting to completely waste a day like that, I took a shower and headed in to the glorious “outdoors” with a plan. On my way in to town I always pass a little pizza place. It is a chain that sells cheap, but quite edible pizzas for 5000won. It is serious value for money. It is a chain of pizza places, but even with chains you have differences in taste between shops and I thought I would head in to this particular one and get a pizza. Remember, when you order a standard cheese pizza at Pizza School tell them not to put CORN on the CHEESE pizza. The other reason I chose this particular shop was because it is much closer to the pond at Miranda Hotel, where I was planning on spending my lunch. 10-15 minutes after I ordered I was ready to head on. This shop had their preparation plan down pat man. On arrival at the pavilion at the centre of the pond I was greeted with the sight of almost every seat being taken up by Koreans. I said it before and I will say it again. Koreans take advantage of leisure time. Great as that is it also means that in a country as populated as Korea, free spaces like this fill up really fast on beautiful days like this was. Sitting there, with everyone enjoying feeling every breeze meandering through the pavilion, I ate my pizza slowly, enjoying every bite. As I was leaving the pond area I noticed a new coffee shop. Aah Yea! For a town as small as Icheon we have a huge number of coffee shops, and a very large percentage of private, one off shops. This particular place is one of the latter and it came with all the charm you would expect from people who take on this huge project. Café Eco’s (Google Map here) interior is meticulously designed. Various types of chairs are placed at tables with no two chairs at a table matching. Actually, there might have been two, just to stay in tune with the attention to detail. Stuff hangs from the ceiling, a little too much for my taste, but nice for some. Cups are stacked in “haphazard” ways in display windows. Tables are places at odd angles and each has a different feel to it. The music is at a perfect volume and the service is pleasant. At 4300 won for a cappuccino the coffee is not cheap, but if you want to sit and spend time with friends, then think of it as paying a smidge extra for the great atmosphere. Holly’s is where you run in and get a coffee, or sit down and look cool so that people can see just how. This is not Holly’s. This is out of the way, for the people who want to relax.

Christian music never suched

Christian music does not have to suck. Christian music does not suck. You are just listening to the wrong music.

I used to listen to a lot of Christian music when I was at university. I was introduces to it by the people I lived with. They were all very active Christians and would listen to it all the time. Before that I never knew there was so much decent music produced by Christians, for Christians.

Up until then Christian music, to my mind, was the drab recording of the five or so singers who lead the congregation. All they ever did was sing songs that al sound pretty much the same. It’s been years and that style has not change one bit. Even if I hear it on Korean I immediately know what I am listening to. I always have and always will dislike that style.

I also dislike the music that was all mushy about God. I just never “felt it”. A bit of Christian was never an issue, and there is a surprising amount of Christian songs that ARE Christian, but does not SOUND Christian. These are songs that anyone can listen to. The music is just as good as main stream music, the lyrics are nice and will not bother anyone and all in all they are worth a spot on main stream radio.

One of the first groups I liked was Jars of Clay. They are still around and still making decent music, but this was the song that I loved, and still like a lot.

Rebeca St James made good music, but her lyrics were generally to Christian for me. Again, I like the subtle lyrics when it comes to “Gospel”. Having said that, this song of hers will always be a favourite of mine. The original by John Farnham was the first song I ever loved and to this say I know the lyrics. Miss St James added a tad more rock, and that for me that is usually a winner.

Considering Lily was the lighter side of my listening list. I often wondered what exactly made them a Christian band. They rarely said much in the lyrics that would define them as such.

Some bands to make it in to the mainstream with some of their songs and more people are blissfully unaware that they are in fact listing to Christian music, with a quite obvious Christian message to boot. Newsboys was/is one of those bands.

I would love to get to know the new music a bit more, but since I don’t have anyone to give me pointers, and I am too lazy to find it myself…

The Slate This is the blank slate on to which we were going to draw out designs. We were given paper to work on ideas, a pencil and dry toilet paper. The toilet paper was the eraser. If you make a mistake all you have to do is rub at it with the toilet paper and it goes poof. To a lesser extent it also works on the paint. You would not believe how difficult it is to draw on a curved surface if you are not used to it.

The Idea I like cow. Not sure why, but I think it has something to do with them being funnyly stupid and delicious at the same time. I have Facebook profile pictures of them, I have photos of them. And now I am going to have a cup with one. This was my design. 멍멍 (Meong Meong) is supposed to be the sound gods make in Korea. Go figure. Pigs go “Cool Cool”. Because drawing the cup was difficult, I deiced to make a dark drawing and press it on to the cup. Interesting thing is that if you do that you reverse the image, and the writing. Who would have thought? I also forgot to print the tail one. Boooo.

The Product You think it is hard drawing on a cup? Try painting, when you are not even used to painting. Notice the missing tail? You know you’ve been in Korea to long when you draw something cute for your cup and our manliness is not threatened one bit.

Meong-Meong goes my cup

As part of the culture class at our Friday Korean lessons we made our own cups. I suppose it is because Icheon I Korea’s ceramics capital and studios offering classes are all over. Although I don’t really see the point of doing this, I do appreciate the effort and money they put in to letting ups do this. It was kind of fun as well.

The Slate This is the blank slate on to which we were going to draw out designs. We were given paper to work on ideas, a pencil and dry toilet paper. The toilet paper was the eraser. If you make a mistake all you have to do is rub at it with the toilet paper and it goes poof. To a lesser extent it also works on the paint. You would not believe how difficult it is to draw on a curved surface if you are not used to it.

The Idea I like cow. Not sure why, but I think it has something to do with them being funnyly stupid and delicious at the same time. I have Facebook profile pictures of them, I have photos of them. And now I am going to have a cup with one. This was my design. 멍멍 (Meong Meong) is supposed to be the sound gods make in Korea. Go figure. Pigs go “Cool Cool”. Because drawing the cup was difficult, I deiced to make a dark drawing and press it on to the cup. Interesting thing is that if you do that you reverse the image, and the writing. Who would have thought? I also forgot to print the tail one. Boooo.

The Product You think it is hard drawing on a cup? Try painting, when you are not even used to painting. Notice the missing tail? You know you’ve been in Korea to long when you draw something cute for your cup and our manliness is not threatened one bit.

I appologise for the bad page layout. My normal editor is not working and I havent coded pure HTML for quite a while now. I'm just not going to put hours in to just making a table work with pure coding.

Booze Please.

This is not exactly a common sight in Korea. It is, in fact, so uncommon that every Korean at the table was “Oo-a”-ing at the sight of it. Despite that it is one of the most Koreans things I have ever seen.

This is a service call button on a restaurant tables. The top button just says “호출” which you can use for regular calls. The Koreaness of the things comes with the next two. One button calls for Soju and the other for beer. Why waste time going to the table to find out what they want if they just want booze again?

Your life has stopped now. Time to die.

Ever had me post this to you?

Veels geluk liewe maatjie,
Omdat jy verjaar.
Mag die here jou seen,
En nog baie jare spaar.

That is the traditional Afrikaans birthday song. "Maatjie" is the word for friend, one of the words, and can be replaced by someone's name but I tend to post this as is on people's Facebook walls on their birthdays. Today someone put it in to Google Translate and got this:

Happy birthday to you,
Because you're stale.
May the Lord bless you,
And many years of savings.

It is not a bad translation over all, except for the second line. It is supposed to read “Because it’s your birthday” but you have to admit that “because you’re stale” is so much better.

We were playing Scrabble. As we were finishing up and two students had to place their last words. The second last student put down her word and tied with the student who still had to place the last blocks. Obviously the last student just had to score one single point to win. She responded with “Ha”. I’m not even sure if that is a real word and if it should be allowed, but who cares. It was classic.

Jesus does not love me

I'm slowly leveling a World of Warcraft Mage and yesterday morning I ran a few dungeons. At certain levels you tend to run the same Dungeons over and over, and some of them are just horrible. We entered one of these dungeons and the short player conversation went like this.

Tank: I hate this place
Healer: But it loves you, just like Jesus.
Tank: Apparently he doesn't
Damage Dealer A: LOL
Damage Dealer B: LOL
Me, about 30 seconds later: *lightbulb* Oh, yea, I missed the rapture.

On a more useful note, I finally managed to get all my photos on to my Mac. It will take a while to sort them out and delete the junk, but as always happens, there will be photos that "needs immediate editing and publishing."

Let me hear you say "Yea!"
Nothing? Anything?