The Letter

Dear Bed,

I know I have not been able to spend time with you this week, the week before or the one before that but I promise you things will change. I miss cuddling you, talking to you on my sleep and snoring on top of you. I guess you miss that too.  

I hope that you will write me back. Just the thought that you sat down and put pen to paper will most certainly make my day. I know that inside that wooden framework of yours, there’s a soft spot so I will keep my hopes alive.

Yours,

Gore Sherpa.

P.S. I have attached a picture for old time’s sake. Hang on there.

Dont Ask, Dont Tell: Gay Korea

This will probably be my last post before the end of the semester and one that will talk about one hell of a taboo subject. The last month of the semester is always crazy, so if I want to improve on what has a been a slightly improved GPA (freshman year still haunts me), I will have to shut off all the shit I am involved in. That means blogging too. I will have one post right after china (I still have visa problems) so that should be about a month without writing. I think I will go completely insane by then. Hope the smell of momo will wake me up.

Korea isn’t as straight as one might perceive it to be. One of our junior writers is working on the topic of homosexuality and so in the process of getting her some sources to work with, I found out that there are a good number of gay students in our campus. Not that it means anything. That was expected, but the fact that the topic remains “a topic that should not be talked about” gives it that extra kick.  Of course, Nepal isn’t tolerant in this matter as well. But here, it’s more sshhhh!!ed word. It will require time for us to understand and accept for who they are and what they represent in the society. They are, after all, properly and highly functioning individuals.

I think it was in my sophomore year that I came across this exchange student who was fun to talk to. I had a good time annoying him and so forth, we forged a good relationship. I could see he was really a people person, going out there and talking and stuff and so I kind of appreciated that. Sometimes people here can get too shut down and immobile and here he was trying wash off that super glue off their asses.

So this one day, I think it was around the time he was about to leave, I was in his room trying to spill coffee over his brand new Macbook air.

“You didn’t notice?” 

“notice what?”
“seriously? 

You didn’t?”
“what?”
“I am gay”
“ok.”
“so its fine?”
“mann, the coffee has no effect on your laptop”

To be honest, it felt completely normal. Nothing changed after that either. He left and we still keep in touch. It could have come as shock. Mark my words, it could have. But it didn’t. Maybe it was because I had experienced it back in Nepal beforehand. Maybe not but I didn’t really care.

I am aware that it is still a very sensitive topic to talk about and many students here would not want to discuss or hear about it either but the reality is that there are people out there who are gay and it is who they are. Accepting or rejecting them is up to a person, however, denying that they exist is fundamentally flawed.

Here’s a short selected portion of an interview I conducted today with a gay guy in our college. I have to say, he was absolutely comfortable with himself and he did himself a world of favors by opening up properly. So without much delay, here’s what he had to say: (that rhymed!)

Interview with Mr.X:

Interviewers take on Mr. X: Calm, composed, open and very comfortable with who he was.

Regarding his “coming out”:

I needed to drink a bit to actually admit to one of my closet friends that I was gay *laughs*. Surprisingly, he was completely fine with it. He accepted me for who I was and it gave me courage to open up to few more of my friends. That being said, I have not yet opened up to majority of my friends. I have to suppress a part of me when I hang around them.

Regarding his future:

I want to have a normal life. By normal I mean getting married, having a family and all those kinds of stuff. I do see a future in Korea, and although it will be challenging, I wish to live here. However, if things do get tricky, I will possibly reside abroad where gay community is more open.

Regarding his personal life now:

I feel very comfortable now. Although I had already accepted myself as who I was a long time ago, my boyfriend has been able to help me out understand homosexuality a lot better. It is great to have people around you whom you can share your problems, get advice and most importantly, be who I am. 

Here’s a link to a popular gay blog based in seoul. The blogger is Mr. X’s boyfriend.
Here’s a link to of a famous gay director in Korea kissing his fiancé which is quite rare. Celebs don’t come out but things are changing.

We ALL have something to talk about our Roommate(s)

I am making myself a hot chocolate as we speak. Not the old way of putting hot cocoa powder in the water and drinking. That’s too mainstream (cheers vodka).It’s a much easier technique of biting on a deformed, week old tobleron that I had with me for a whole week in my pocket, drink hot water, let the water melt out the chocolate for a while and eventually let the taste buds do its thing. I honestly wanted to share the swiss milk chocolate with the guy behind me, butt..resources are limited right now. Besides, he was notoriously conspicuous about what he was dreaming last night which made me want to not sleep on my soft, squishy, ever accommodating bed. I had to drag myself out to the couch in the common room to get a sip of hidden memory inside that brain of mine.

For last week and before that, in exception to the weekends, coming back from 301 to the dorms was often delayed to 2 am which obviously meant that the guy behind me was dozing off.  And by the time I woke up he was already gone. So basically what’s happening here is that even if we do live in the same room, we don’t see each other. I see halal more often these days, even if he is one annoying prick.(although he is developing superior sense of humor these days)

What I do know about my roommate, and what I tell you about him is that he is a nice guy. When I used to live with Halal, our room was divided into two portions: One side spotlessly clean, the other one looking like somebody just dropped a nuke. These days there’s more consistency in how it looks on both sides; meaning both sides are nuked as hell.  He understands me. He is nice to talk to and practice my never improving Korean, he shares the same love for food as me and he is the only Korean who prefers Fifa to League of Legends. I desperately need a gamepad although I can’t expect to compete with Koreans in anything.  I cant even beat my own clone on that game. Any game. Except league of legends if I play teemo.

Everything about him seemed fine. I lived in the dorms all my life and I have a high level of tolerance to what happens around my bed (on my bed as well), so I do get along with people well. I think they have more problems with me than I have problems with them. So its all chill. Untill one day…

I came back to my room sick and tired of 301, took a quick shower, got something to eat after all the brushing and quietly slipped inside my bed.  And then I hear something very strange. I cant really express it in words but I recall it being a mix of wild animal sounds. Imagine a penguin on an iceberg crying out for its..mm..mom lets say, and then juxtapose it to (change the scenario to the wild grass fields of Africa) a zebra crying out when an crocodile gets hold of it while it’s just trying to drink some f*&^ing water (not cool croc, not cool) and then remix it with a track of the worst possible sound on earth (could be your Prof voice, that angry lady at the book store who wouldn’t give you the book you want, halals voice, me speaking Korean..atleast I try) and wollahh! what you have in your mind is the sound that my roommate makes while he is sleeping. A truly talented specimen. Of all the people I have shared room with all these years, he makes the most absurd noise while on sleep. And trust me, I have heard horrible shit.  I thought he was drugged when he did that for the first time. I honestly would have preferred Maskey Senior’s “earthquake” snore to this.

To be fair, I do share my dads genes in that respect but man..making DJ’ed  animal sound while sleeping is a whole new level. Ideally, you are supposed to talk to your roommate and find a common solution to the given problem (which is huge), but I don’t think talking really solves the problem. If he does not do that, he is NOT him for christs sake.

But I like to see things in positive light. Suppose, lets just suppose he turns up to be a criminal. A big gangster guy although by judging the manner through which he expresses himself, this is highly unlikely but who knows? So suppose he becomes a criminal and he does this all horrible shit on people and then goes on to do the plastic surgery and the police have a hard time finding out exactly who they caught, they know just the right guy with the right technique to figure that out.

“Officer”..i will say, giving them that Tony Stark look… “give them all a sleeping pill.In the mean time, i want a glass of water and toblerone”

Everyday I'm Proffling!

Epic meal

Excuse me, but I had this epic sandwich today which is hindering my ability to think straight as I often have to keep finding out the washroom is packed like hell. It looks like I am not the only one who had heavy duty lunch.

Today’s blog post will touch on stupidity, like what I am doing right at this very moment as we talk. Instead of working on my aerodynamics project which needs urgent MATlab attention (which I need to learn first), I am here talking to you….Why you think it’s not stupid? Thank you.

I will give you a minute or two to think about the most stupid thing you have done. It is not that everyone had a splendid, amazing time throughout their lives. We ALL had our moments where our brain, our common sense, our will to act normal went on a cocktail drinking party in Hawaii. It is just that some people’s brain have higher air miles, some have few.

Of course, this goes without saying that I too, have had a fair share of stupid bakery pie. Many people who have known me enough will have stories about me being completely and utterly absent minded, doing stuff that normal people will call abnormal, but I think this trend basically runs on my family. So it’s ok. When your family is absent minded as mine, you feel normal. Let’s not get into too much detailed stuff, the blog will never end.

But there was this time, not too long into the past, that I was walking inside this subway station. I was walking like everyone else. Everything looked fine. I noticed people looking at me. That was fine too. A brown guy among Koreans might be..mm..how do I put this, interesting. But when the whole mass looks at you, you go “wait a minute, is it because I shaved today?” Well that’s an optimistic thought. The pessimist would say…”hmmm, is my zipper open again?”

I wish it was.

Wifi? no thanks

Because it so happens, when I was about to enter the subway( I mean the actual train), something blocked my way. I looked up to see an open umbrella. An umbrella which was open throughout my way down the stairs, into that thing where you stick the transportation card, more stairs and finally, the waiting place. I would have laughed so hard if somebody else did that, but unfortunately, it was me that day.  I mean, it was raining outside for sure but how my right hand got into auto pilot mode, is still, after much thought, beyond me.

Well it’s not that I am the only one, my professors are pretty fantastic as well. In their own way. ( I am not listening to the age counter argument, no)

Prof Forgetful.

Our Micro Nano Mechanics class is one class that prof makes sure that nobody, NOBODY sleeps.  I think the fact that we are only 6 makes it much more easier to spot anyone dozing off but still he has this innate ability to keep asking questions, even if they have the most obvious of answers but then you get confused because if it was so obvious, why would he ask it anyways.

Questions will be like, “Why is the cell structure here shown rectangular?”, then adds, “Abass?”

“mmm prof, mm…” thinks, “ its in..a..rectangular structure?”
“that’s right”

I know.

The funny thing is…..that was not the first time he asked it.

I mean no disrespect, don’t get me wrong, he is one of the leading Prof in his field, published a whole lotta paper shit that we have to go through (most make no sense), makes us prepare well for presentations but then you have moments where you go, come on. Like the one where you open the window when arsenal lets in a stupid goal in the last minute and you go “Commmeee onnn!” with a big sigh.  The one when you just miss the last subway and you shout “coommee onn”, yeah that one.

Last week the class started out like this:

Prof: “So what was the homework again?”…”Abass?”
Me: “mm..page 41-51 professor”
Prof: “Has everyone read it? Ok..so what else?”…”Abass”
Me: “Prof, you asked me to remind you to ask me about the difference between Physisorption and Chemisorption.”
Prof: “So?”

I open my mouth to answer.

The Samba Bro Next Door

I am really not sure what I am doing here at the middle of the night. I really don’t know.

There might have been a “small” tiny, bitsy case where I got caught speaking to myself in Korean on the washroom mirror by my Brazilian exchange dorm mate (yes, 6 people share the same washroom) and then got stared upon like some retard for the next few seconds which felt like eternity. I admit it’s quite stressful when somebody does that to you. Although, to be fair to him, you don’t usually expect someone to be talking to the mirror at 4 am. How about knocking the door for a change? Clearly, I am not that crazy to turn the lights off when I talk to the mirror (even though i have experimented it once, you know the "closing all the senses" thing)

I wish sometimes that I had this awesome talent to change awkward moments into something more…harmonious..if that’s the right word.  Like when you get caught doing something stupid and go laugh about it together. Unfortunately, with our Brazilian, world cup host bro, that period of “lets laugh together” was long gone.

It had all started off well. I helped him once open his room door when got he locked out just when his kidneys were about to slaughter him. Since I was the superhero for the day, we sparked up a few amiable sentences here and there, asking him where he was from and after finding out he was from Samba land, lying about how brazil is the best football team in the world. *moves his head from left to right* And explain further that I was planning on going there on 2014, do some samba with the Brazilian girls, eat whatever food they had and watch Germany win the world cup..oh.,woops...brazil win the world cup, yeah. *coughs*. We had Nepali rum after that, a good talk about his table tennis club, all was going good but then we hit a solid brick wall of awkwardness.

This is what happens every day when we see each other. I come out and if he comes out from his room at the same time, we both raise our hands and then say “hey, man” at the SAME TIME. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, we become so conscious about not letting the awkwardness creep in that we deliberately again say “what’s up,” try to act cool, AT THE SAME TIME. Any third person sitting and observing this would have his hand on his head, trying to figure out what’s wrong with the world.

That was nottttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttakkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

(falls off flat on the computer keyboard and dozes off into momo land)

Saturday mornings you go *boilk*! + Food ver 2.1

The Intro:

Saturday mornings are funny aren’t they?

You wake up with a sore head and then wish your roommate morning only to wonder whether if it’s really morning. And then you realize that it’s not morning at all. You drag yourself to the washroom, take a cold shower and while doing so, slowly come to terms on what actually happened the night before. And then you go down to the shop to get yourself some liquid only to find yourself amongst half zombie, half Korean guys speaking half zombie, Half Korean language. Everyone’s having a difficult afternoon it seems. Drinking is not a luxury here, it’s a lifestyle. I am not sure if I am a big fan.

The blackout:

Blacking out was never an option before. Nope. When people claimed that they couldn’t remember what happened the night before, I usually used to go.. “what is wrong with you”, “how can you even lose sense of what’s going on”, but lately due to some misfortunate incidents, I find myself in similar circumstances.  Not knowing what you did kind of sucks. Listening to stories from people who had their brains at the right place at the wrong time sucks even more.

The Norebang: Karaoke means business

“Crystal Clear”: Friday night’s outing though, was an exception. Everything is as crystal clear as it can be. Except for few minor details where I don’t have single clue as to why the guy in front of me was pissed as hell and wanted a soju/mehwasu bottle on my head (I know I am a nice guy and I mean harm to no one which makes this even more confusing), I have everything recorded up in blue-ray format up there somewhere.

But before I can go on to tell what actually happened, I need to first explain how the drinking structure in Korea works. Yes, there is a proper structure which finally ends up in a Karaoke place but not necessarily so. Sometimes, Koreans seem content on having a massive “lets hug the road till late morning” contest.

The structure goes something like this:

• 1.   You get cozy on a couch, people are sober, drinks start pouring in, you eat some really really spicy chicken, some soup (there’s always soup), some kimchi, some more drinks, more drinks. And then you leave the place.

• 2.  You get to the next place. Preferably a place nearby, order the drinks, some soup again and drink. And talk. You notice the talk starts getting louder and the laughter harder. Some just tend to keep quite. They like it that way. And then you leave the place. Some people leave

• 3.  You get to the next place again. Order Makali (similar to Nepali Chyang) because you had enough of So-Mek (Mixture of Soju and Mekju (Beer in Korean) or Panda drink (depends if you are in Panda, cheers boss for locating the place.), order the weirdest thing on the menu, eat, frequent the bathroom, get confused while opening the bathroom (brain plays tricks on you sometimes), play some Korean drinking games which you don’t seem to do well and then you leave the place. Some more people leave.

Tintin in Tibet: Chyang gets a mention

• 4. You go to the next place. Yeah again.  This time it’s a place away from the busy road..you know a place more peaceful, or so you think. Order, eat, drink, talk, laugh, repeat. And you leave the place. The concept of “home” has not come to you yet.  Now you are left with a handful of people.

• 5.  You go to the next place (again?), talk talk talk and annoy people and drink more. Leave the place and somehow get home.

And so I end up summarizing the whole night. If the fact that we ended up go drink hopping (called a “Chha”, 1 Chha, 2 Chha, 3 Chha…and some on..in our case: 5 Chha)  to 5 places was crazy enough (usually ends up with 3 and then the Karaoke), the bill that came out redefined craziness. Our magazine was responsible for it, so it kind of seems ok…but what if we don’t have enough to get the next issue out?..nah we always seem to find a way. Even if it means cutting down MT.

I will leave you with some pictures for now (not related to what was said above) as my belly needs urgent attention.

Nepali Aloo + Halal Cheese Special

Momo: Di's soup 

Chicken curry, the way you love it

Momo: in the making

Raw Beef

Halal's special omelette. He's starting
cook these days

Makalli place: The owner came to drink with us later.
guess he was bored.

Iranian Pasta + Nepali Chicken Curry+
Mongolian cocktail

The Last Supper

A Meeting With Your Korean Prof.

12:25 pm

I looked up at the clock as the clock ticked ever so slowly.

Silence.tick.silence.tick.silence.tick.silence.

I looked around me to find five other teammates equally impatient about the whole ordeal. We were asked to be present in front of the Prof for our first design review. (its one of the classes I am taking in Korean). The office door was wide open but could hardly see half of the room. It was pretty big I have to say. And pretty posh too.

I tried to peek through, heard some noises coming from the right hand side, saw some blurred images of people sitting down and then quickly removed my head out of view. I didn’t want to be even more conspicuous. Imagine a koala looking guy having a go at your office.

12:26 pm

Showed the clock. God damn clock. Why does it always have to go slow mo? I just want this done and dusted.

Just then, a group of gloomy looking faces appeared in sight and out of the room. All of their faces seemed to say one thing in unison: your next minutes will be much longer.

Our team leader nodded and we all went in. Three splendidly black looking couches emerged, 2 facing each other crowding out a glass table. The prof sat on the third, you know like how kings sit in the middle, yeah like that. We were asked to seat on a couch that could just fit in 2, but we managed to buddle our asses together to make ourselves comfortable in a not-so-comfortable-couch. Half of my ass hanged in midair. Why does it always have to be me?

We first had to say out our names. The prof worked his way with the names like knife on butter, duck on water, oil on fire, a Nepali on momo, a Korean on kimchi, what else?...nah.. until he had to write my name down. I know Korean names are a huge pain to remember but what I didn’t know was, for some, the vice versa applied. First, he had trouble spelling it out and then when all the other 5 members decided to join in and help the professor out, it got even more confusing for him.  Everyone had their own opinion about the name; Aphass, abbas, appbhas, koala and this went on for a few minutes. The fact that I really didn’t care meant nothing to no one. Professional people always need to be accurate. Finally, he got it through, made a joke about something to do with “Aphaass” (아팠어) meaning “pain” in past tense in Korean (which I didn’t get AT ALL but just had to laugh to go with the flow. You don’t want to look like a jackass) and he finished up quickly with the remaining people. All seemed to have gone well so far. I started looking around the office. I would really die to have an office like that. There was even the automatic cleaning robot thingi.

He started out by looking at our progress file which had a “English Literature and something” written in front instead of “Design and something” and professor did not look at all pleased. We completely forgot to change the file name when one of us decided to go green and recycle the file. God dammit. For a person who expects us to be professional even at this age, this was very very annoying indeed.

After that, I started losing touch of what was going on. Strange voices, some understandable Korean, strange voices, loud strange voices, even louder angrier stranger voices…until I saw the file pushed away to the very end of the table. Not good, I thought. I could see the prof rage with controlled anger as all of my friends put their hands on their heads in frustration. Usually, I feel pretty shit about not been able to speak and understand Korean properly, but my, was I so glad at this point. The words made no sense whatsoever.

Silence.

He was now making frantic circles after pulling back the file, possibly pointing out errors as he was still loud enough for the windows to vibrate. The more pages he turned, the worse it got..until I heard something that nearly made me laugh out loud. While the prof was trying hard to explain how much we sucked (possibly), one of my teammates conspicuously announced that he had skipped lunch by launching a huge belly growl. GRrrrrLLRRRRRRRRR….. I just had to put my hand in my mouth to avoid getting a huge beating.

That pretty much took the edge off for me. And it was just pure fun when the prof was desperate to show our wrong doings, the belly would periodically release the growl and my teammate would just slap on his belly (hahahahaha, need a breather here), and act all innocent.

I really don’t know where I am going with this story but…..for this one day, I am glad that my Korean sucks. Honestly.