Back to Life

Random pictures throughout this post.

The lookout point over Playa Entrega and Santa Cruz.


Because of the tsunami warning, I chose to bail on the camping expedition at Playa Organo this Saturday past. Other people decided the risk was small and went anyways. They were right. I was wrong. I had my backpack sitting by the door filled with essentials for an impromptu race up the mountains and the locks off the Italika so nothing would slow me down. I was ready to roar out of this town with a moment's notice. So I missed out this time. There will be other opportunities.

So the weekend wouldn't be a complete write-off, I rode the Italika to Zipolite for a day trip. That's always fun. I enjoy the road. If any cars or trucks get behind me, I pull over to let them by as soon as possible and take all the sharp turns at the appropriate speed. It's a lot less nerve-wracking with a helmet. I don't miss the wind in my hair at all.



Playa Entrega


There was so much sand at Zipolite, more than I can remember ever before. The Shambhala cove and the tiny one beyond were accessible without even getting your feet wet. Read a novel. Splashed in the waves. I might have had too much sun but I'll recover.

I wanted to be back in Crucecita before nightfall so I headed out around 4:30, shook the sand out of my towel, found an invite to a party on a text message - that was nice - and revved up the scoot. That's when the day went from pleasant to incredible and amazing.



Beautiful Barra de la Cruz


I ran into Marguerite on the main street so I had to stop and "Hola. Como esta?"

"Edward, Lee is here" Or was it "... esta aqui." I understood even if I couldn't believe my ears.

"Donde?!"

"Nice Place on the Beach."

Not that anyone would lie about something like that but I had to see for myself. What are headlights for anyway if not for night driving?

You see, I and several others have thought Lee was probably dead for a year and a half now. Towards the end of my teaching stint in Korea, I was getting emails from people I'd never met because Lee had essentially disappeared. He sent out a brief good-bye message to everyone on his email list and then canceled his account. Messages to him bounced back. Everyone was left wondering what happened and no one found out until recently.

Lee is this great guy I met years ago on vacation. Conversations were always interesting with Lee. We met again and again on later vacations down in Mexico. He's an interesting and genuinely cool guy, respected by everyone who knows him so his disappearance was not shrugged off lightly. The Lee hotline continued for a while. By the time I left Korea, I was convinced the last time I saw him really was the last and I raised my farewell toast to him one night in Zipolite. I was premature.



A giant pencil from one of last semester's students. Cool


Sure enough. There he was, working away on some bamboo for stairway railings. It felt like a UFO sighting. I took his picture right away in case he disappeared.

Surprise.

Look who I found.

Here's the scoop. Lee decided he didn't like his email service anymore and shut it down to switch, first writing down all of his friends' addresses. Well, things happen, days go by or, as in this case, six months, by which time all of those addresses had been lost. The craziest thing of all is that Lee found out, when somebody looked up his social security number for a job, he has actually been declared legally dead by relatives he lost touch with. Wow. It's a strange and wonderful world sometimes.

It was just so good to see him. I wish I could have stayed for a longer chat with beer and tacos and the works but the road beckoned and the work week was beginning early in the morning. I'll see him again before he heads north. Excellent excellent ending to a great day.

Grubby and tired, I arrived home just before sundown, gassed up the Italika and stopped in at Theresa's to ask what time the party started. I was already late. Some people had gone home to bed but there was a warm welcome and food and drink, typical of Theresa's legendary hospitality.

What a great life.

It's alive

By sheer stubborn will, the little Canon works again. I had given up on it after more than a week with no sign of life and was just off to a place that recycles these things when I pressed the power button on impulse and saw the dimmest glimmer of life. The screen read E-something error. I took my shoes off and hit the internet.

On the advice of some website, I took out the battery and tapped the camera on my desk. White powder, mineral deposits from Cheonggye Stream, fell out like dandruff and we were back in business. If only I had stopped there, I could have saved myself another week and a half of experimental tinkering.

I wanted to make it better than new so I took it apart with a mini-screwdriver set. I was careful, just not careful enough. It all became more complicated when a tiny part below the power button, apparently an important one, tinkled out of place. A lot of trial and error to figure out where it fit and how to get it to stay put while putting everything else back, besides taking the entire apartment apart to find a tiny screw I only thought had rolled off the table, and it was fixed for the second time. If only I had stopped there.

I went to Seolbong Park early next morning for some exercise before the heat wave drove me back to the air conditioning. A lot of people had the same idea. 7 in the morning and people were already working out and descending from the trail. I brought the camera along for a shot of the compressed air hose people use to blow dust and sweat from their shoes after a hike. The laptop gets this treatment once a month and it does wonders for performance. A good blast should have taken care of any deposits the desk taps had missed. It probably did but another essential part, apparently attached by just a microscopic dab of solder, fell off. I could still focus the lens but the shutter button wouldn't move.

There was no sense in quitting now even though I had two loose parts to finesse into place and hold still while reassembling the casing. I was in over my head but there was no stopping. I sat on one of three benches under a sun shelter and got to work.

I had been experimenting for almost an hour with the new broken piece when a random scary guy came by with his wife to hassle me. He didn't speak English. I don't speak Korean. Normal people just let it go with friendly smiles and move along. This guy kept talking away in a tone I didn't like while his horrible wife threw back her head and laughed at everything he said. I was not getting a good vibe from them at all. I would have loved to just ignore them but the man had no intention of allowing that to happen.

He pulled the hair on my arms and compared it with his smooth one. Children do that at school. They find it pretty fascinating. It's not something they see too often. But this guy was at least approaching my age and it was a total violation of personal space. There was nothing lacking in his non verbal skills as he offered several times to take my camera and smash it under his foot. His loud wife found that so funny. He reached through the buttons of my shirt, pulled my chest hair, grimaced and fanned his nose in disgust. The second grab for my arm hair confirmed I might be in for serious trouble when he showed me the gang tattoos, some kind of Asian characters, on his left arm.

I've been warned that if you get in a fight in Korea, all parties are arrested, even if you only acted in self-defense and that it is unheard of for the court to decide in a foreigner's favour. If you manage to gain the upper hand, you still owe the other guy blood money. It's a lose lose situation for everyone involved and besides all of this, I'm not a fighter at all while every man in this country has at least had a few years of military training. Of course, even with all these good reasons to play nice, fights still happen. Too much rage, alcohol, stupidity or plain meanness is all it takes for reason to vanish. The best advice is to get away from the situation. Run. And that goes double if you encounter a gang member.

Outside of the gangs, no one wears real tattoos in Korea. It isn't considered cool or attractive. I would have loved to get off the bench and walk away from this guy right then or run if he started to follow me. He was menacing and there was no telling how far he might go. But my camera was in pieces. Eventually he got up and left me alone after pulling my chest hair one more time and raising his shirt to show me his belly. I got lucky. Either by design or out of boredom, the woman walked away down the hill and he decided to follow, leaving me with a hand not quite steady enough to tinker with tiny camera parts so I packed it in and left soon after, once he was well out of sight.

Days later, I finally figured out that shutter button piece. In the right place, it looks upside down so it took a while. The camera works.

Here are some of the pictures taken on that fateful day at Bukhansan and Cheonggye Stream. The Youtube video from that day stops about 15 seconds before the Canon slipped out of my pocket.

Nobody needs two cameras and I found a great home for my personally refurbished Canon. From now on, I'll be playing with the water proof Olympus. It all ends well.