Alas, I Have Finally Joined Cyper space!

I have seen true beauty and it comes in the form of my new Compaq Presario V2000 with a Pentium M processor, 1.86 GHz, and 504 MB RAM. It's also a pretty silver colour.

It's been a long time coming, but Karen and I once again travelled to the electronics market in Seoul Saturday, braving the unbelievably numbing cold. This time I left my apartment swearing I would come back with a laptop come hell or high water and, for once, I actually came though.

When we first arrived at Yongsan market, I was completely overwhelmed - 100's of laptops lay before me. With the tiny knowledge I actually hold about computers, I walked in there looking as confident as I possibly could (yet feeling about as confident as a cow would walking into a McDonalds). After about a half hour of browsing, I nice guy told Karen and I that the only laptops that I can get with English windows installed on them is HP. Well, that settled it.

Next we looked for a seller who spoke some English. We ended up settling with the second best: a seller who spoke Spanish. We asked this one Korean guy if he spoke English, he said no, but do we speak Spanish? Well, it just so happens that Karen's fluent and I can, well, follow along. So, we did our transaction in the language you'd always expect to use in Korea: Espanol. It was one of those unexpected and strange moments that always occur when you travel. (Like when I was on safari in Africa, sitting around a campfire with some random young people talking about why we were in Tanzania, and a Chinese girl who barely spoke English asked me if I could teach her how to use a condom. Wasn't I supposed to be teaching that to Africans?).

So, after the laptop success, it was time to celebrate and off Karen, Jonathan, Partrick and I went to Itaewan in Seoul. This is the area of the city where most of the American military are stationed so you can imagine what it's like. We began at a bar named Gecko's, where I had the most succulent and delicious cheeseburger EVER. After having a few beers, I dragged my friends to a bar called "The Grand Ol' Opry" where, you guessed it, they play only country music. Though it's not really Patrick and Karen's scene, they were persuaded to stay when they found out the bar offered $1 shots. Can you say drinks all around? We did - 6 times! Patrick and I attempted to get our two-steppin and line dancin' moves out on the dance floor, but it was fairly unsuccessful. Finally, we had no chance but to leave after (1) a man with a thick Southern accent told me "Honey, this ain't no line dancin' music" and (2) they began singing "Proud to be an American" and saluting the Confederate flag. Yep, that's right, the Confederate flag. It was time to move on. Next on the journey were 2 dance clubs where we got our grooves on to gangsta rap and Korean pop music. Two types of music you always want to hear together.