<< Song 4 is Champion! | Main | Effrontery >> May 11, 2006 >> Now we're cooking with gas, on your trash On an ordinary Thursday night, return home from a lesson where you have just spent an hour assuring Korean children that 'spicy' is an adjective suitable for any purpose. Mission success: you were invited to "have a spicy time" as you left. Back at the apartment, discover that Belinda and Mike have been cooking up an ingenious, outlandish scheme. They are busily constructing a makeshift barbeque out of discarded furniture, a wire frame and an old satellite dish.
Spastically useless with most manual labour, you will use your walking skills to return to the dollar store to purchase a hack saw refill. The dollar store carries a wide variety of tools that all, unsurprisingly, cost a dollar... or chon-won, as the local lingo goes. The sweetness of the chon-won deal is called into question when the second blade breaks shortly after. Upon returning for yet more tools, the proprietor will try to teach you how to saw. "Push-ee GAH," he will say, thrusting your new saw downwards vigorously. "Pooool-ee NO!" He will also show you how to turn the blade so the teeth face outwards, taking the saw out of safety mode and actually rendering it useable. The shopkeeper clearly thinks you are retarded. Then he finally realizes that you were actually hanging around hoping to get a shopping bag so you don't have to walk through the busy Sanbon core waving two fucking murderous hack saws. You're already Western: that's bad enough. And you don't need to learn how to saw, which you've tried to tell him for five minutes (to no avail). This is kind of a lie, because you are pretty bad at sawing. Back at the homestead, pieces of debris and refuse are cut and assembled lovingly into a barbeque-esqe visage. Mike has destroyed most of the chon-won store toolbox with his bare hands, and all that's left to do is screw the chair appendage to the derelict desk, holding the charcoal-pit-satellite-dish in place. Mike and Belinda lovingly add final touches to the decor, fingertips brushing the barbeque's sleek contours with heartfelt zeal and affection. Their baby has been forged and it's ready and willing to turn hunks of raw meat into a steak sandwich, and maybe a light salad.
We lug the barbeque up onto the roof and fill it with cardboard and splintered wood for a trial run. The sweet, pungent smell of paint burning off the satellite is the harbinger of a glorious summer, and spirits are high. Then the desk catches fire and we have to rush to blow it out before the entire night goes up in flames. Perhaps some design adjustments will be made before our first rooftop cookout. But it's enough that a spontaneous dream was realized; more than enough. Makeshift BBQ total cost: $2 - wire frame (the 'grill')
Posted by Chris at 11:33 AM >> Commentations (2)
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"Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it."
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Almost two hours will be spent trying to hammer, kick and blow-torch a chair seat from its precious moorings. In the end, a hack saw purchased from the dollar store will painstakingly begin to cut the necessary framework out of its shackles. And when you say the hack saw is cutting, you really mean Belinda and Mike are cutting and the saw is merely an implement of freedom... until the blade breaks.
