Nothing in the past week was particularly noteworthy--reading, eating lots of food, a night of Halo 2 on legendary, and a renewed interest in studying Korean-- until Friday, when the CEO came down from Seoul. On such an occasion, a dinner for "morale" is in order. The majority of the staff and half of the teachers went to a samgyupsal restaurant (Korean barbecue) around 8:30p, but a few of us remained to teach the balance of the classes until 10p. When we finally closed up and arrived at the place to join the fifteen or so diners, it was evident that a fair amount of soju had already been spread around the room. Soju, for those that haven't been to Korea, is Korea's version of vodka and a standard accompaniment (for Koreans) when they eat barbecue. Several of my coworkers had red cheeks and were more giggly than usual--tell-tale signs of the soju exchanges. A few minutes after our arrival, dinner was served a second time for us, and I ate enough for about three Koreans as part of my campaign to increase my weight a few kilos. While I consumed a huge amount of barbecued pork, my coworkers poured one another shot glass after shot glass, and after two hours, they were tanked. Somehow in this time the CEO had come to my end of the table and sat next to me to chat about his business accomplishments, physical abilities, monetary prowess, and to offer drinks to me and those around me. He jovially put his arm around me and talked about the wonderful Daegu teachers that worked with such professionalism, care, and friendliness. In the midst of the reciprocal brown-nosing that we were obliged to indulge in, one of my fellow teachers loped his arm around the CEO and announced "Chingu! Chingu!" which is the Korean word for friend (a definite no-no in Korean culture, where younger people have to speak to elders exclusively in formal language) and they poured one another glass after glass of soju. This carried on for some time. As a person who prefers not to get drunk on soju in the midst of all of my coworkers (or at all, for that matter), I attempted to make conversation with colleagues that appeared to be merely in the latter stages of sobriety rather than the early to mid levels of serious inebriation. The conversations didn't go far, as every one minute we'd all have to turn and see the latest caper the CEO and co were instituting at the table and laugh about it. Nevertheless, one girl apparently garnered enough liquid courage to suggest that we see a movie together on the weekend, an action I could never have imagined a Korean girl doing otherwise. It was in such banter and amusements that we whiled away the hours, leaving around half past 1.
After thanking the generosity of the CEO and wishing him well, I set off down the street with a Korean worker, Chris, and a fellow teacher (who will remain nameless on the off-chance someone in this country reads this blog). The teacher, who in his hobnobbing had had quite a few more soju glasses than anyone else, insisted that we accompany him to a bar while he enjoyed one of his rare drunken moments (flashbacks to his college days, he said). I suggested otherwise, but as he was determined, I opted to follow him around to make sure he didn't end up in a fight or an alley in the next few hours. Thus began my vicarious first excursion into the world of late-night drunkeness. All the things you see portrayed in movies--threats and fights, solicitations, vomiting, broken glasses of beer, wads of money spent frivolously, ridiculously spoken profanities, stumbling, yelling, and eventual collapse--played out before my eyes in the next two hours. I shall relate these tales only to serve as a warning to those who think that such a life has any appeal at all, and because some of them struck me as remarkable.
Episode One began with my friend wanting to find a bar. Being in no state to do so in the labyrinthine streets of downtown Daegu, we followed Chris to a place he knew. On the way, two drunk girls holding one another up ambled across our path. One of them took a passing fancy to me, and escaped the grasp of her cohort to offer me a "Hello!" She then stared vacantly at me, being unable to recall any other English. I returned her salutation and watched with amusement to see what would happen. After a few seconds of staring at one another while I waited for her to say something that she was evidently working very hard to produce, the girl's friend called her and she went to rejoin her. We watched to pair go off again, but suddenly the girl left her friend for the second time and returned to say "Hello!" Again she seemed to be searching for more to say, but seeing that she could not do so, we encouraged her to leave with her friend. We then continued on down the streets, with my friend asking us to stop now and then so he could figure out where he wanted to go. We ended up down a side street where we passed some other quite smashed foreigners. One of the shouted out loud to his buddies, "Hey look! It's one of them Mormons comin' down here to...uh...." He said this because my friend was dressed with a tie on, and the rest of us, still in our work clothes, looked a bit classier than this guy and his pals. Much to my disappointment, the comment was not lost on my friend, and his pretended ignorance and subsequent replies to the guys only made the situation worse. We tried to walk off, but somehow came across the same guys two other times, each time seemingly on the cusp of throwing down. I was not confident in my abilities to keep the drunks apart or to hurry them along the street either, because the participants in both groups were unsteady on their feet. Finally we stopped in an alley to let the other group pass and we endured their comments and stares and threats without violence.
After another ten minutes of walking, the other teacher and Chris found a bar suitable to accomplish whatever mysterious purposes they thought they could achieve with further alcohol. The teacher called the bartender over and ordered beers for all three of us, against our combined protests. And this is the Episode when things got ugly. No sooner had my friend had a good amount of his beer in his belly did the two alcoholic drinks now there residing brawled and tumbled in a way that made my friend quite sick and irritable. He began to answer any queries with obnoxious language, and, evidently and suddenly quite sick, he hurried towards the toilets and ended up opening the door to the ladies' room before being caught by a worker who redirected him to the men's room. He returned on the phone with his girlfriend, and he was telling here that he was at home, obviously a fallacious claim. When this strategem failed to appease her, he asked Chris to pretend he was the CEO to soothe his angered girl. She didn't accept this either, and so the teacher went downstairs (the bar was on the third floor of the building) to explain things to her. When he hadn't returned after fifteen minutes, I took the elevator downstairs and found him against a building shouting angrily into the phone. He was upset by the whole turn of events that had gotten him sick and angry, and he returned to the bar to grow sicker. By this time another Korean had joined us, and he began chatting with the cute bartender. She was giving me and my friend a friendly smile, which I took only to be a professional skill to get customers to buy more drinks. It worked, for soon my friend ordered more drinks for everyone. As soon as they were poured, he clanked glasses, and he did so with one so forcibly that it broke the glass and scattered sharp miniscule shards onto the bar. One beer wasted, plus the glass. The cute bartender stayed around to chat some, and the two Korean guys with us asked her if she'd go on a date with me. She said she would like to, but because she couldn't speak much English (her major was Chinese), she was nervous. They finally convinced her that going on a lunch date with me in a few days would be a good chance for her to learn more English. I hope my readers would know that it goes without saying that she is not my type, and the possibility of having lunch with someone who cannot speak more than ten words of my language nor I hers does not exactly thrill me. Anyhow, it was an event that happened, so I have here recorded it as it was.
This brings me near the close of this entry. While the Koreans were convincing the girl that a wordless date wouldn't be so bad, my now significantly drunker and sicker friend had disappeared. Having now tallied a $55 tab for the drinks he'd purchased, I thought it was best to again attempt him to go home. I took the elevator downstairs again and found him slumped on the stairs on the first floor. He didn't look well. I told him about the finances and asked him to come back upstairs to settle the bill and to get his coat, and then I realized how drunk a drunk can get. He couldn't walk or speak intelligibly, and his listening comprehension now equated the bartender's. I got him into the elevator when he told me he was going to be sick. So I told him to stay put and to give me the money and I'd get his belongings and take care of it. He handed me his wallet, and I was thumbing through it for the necessary bills when the elevator opened on the third floor to a group of Koreans attempting to get inside. I can well imagine the scene they saw before them: one guy slumped drunkenly against a wall, and another guy thumbing through an unfamiliar wallet to take out cash. It made things worse that I was leaving without him towards the bar, so I did my best to let the suspicious crowd know that I was his friend. I hurriedly went to the bar, handed over the cash, and grabbed my friend's coat, but when I returned to the elevator foyer, I found that my friend had escaped the secure elevator and was now in a corner where there was a large, ornamental Chinese pot. He sat atop it brokenly, and then I noticed the slime around his legs and the walls and the floor. It was not a pretty scene. We got into the elevator but he refused to put his jacket on until we were outside. In his attempts to put on his jacket in the street, his iPod headphones slipped from a pocket, and, quite astonishingly, he tripped over them and crashed onto the pavement. I helped him up in the midst of a furious spitting furor. He was trying to get the remnants of the vomit out of his mouth, and in the process he landed a large amount of spit on my supporting arm. The disgusting stream of liquid on my jacket sleeve created a stronger empathy for him than I realized I was capable of, and we laughed it off as he searched for something to clean it with. I got my arm around his and headed off towards my home, and after about fifteen or twenty slow-going minutes, we arrived. He went immediately to the bathroom because he felt he would be sick again, and so I prepared my couch for his eventual slumber. He was still in the bathroom five minutes later, and as I called to him, he said he was okay. I waited another five minutes, and when I slowly opened to door, I saw him snoring soundly on the cold tiles. I went to my room, and about an hour later I heard him get up and make it over to the couch. Throughout the night I heard crashes and the sound of moving furniture, but when he awoke around 1p Saturday, he was feeling better. After making sure he was fine, I saw him off to his home.
I tell this tale to share a strange night in my life and to further elucidate some reasons why I stedfastly refuse to get drunk. I just can't understand the fun in spending tons of money for an experience that leaves me totally sick and without any memories of the previous eight or ten hours, but it does give me sympathy for those who do choose such things.
