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This weekend we took the subway into Yongsan to check out the electronics market. It was a seething mass of florescent displays and arcane gadgetry, "I want I need" desperation and pressurized haggling. Eight floors of All Things Electronic invited power-browsing: two floors were exclusively cameras and MP3 players of miniaturized stature, three floors were computer geekery and the rest... well, the signs said "Small-Large Electronics". Figure that one out.

If you kindly look to your right, you will see a very expensive toilet seat that will: (blue button) spray water right up your anus and (pink button) spray girls - and only girls - in the privates so hard that their skirts will fly heavenward with ecstacy. This Pleasure Toilet appears to be well worth it.

You will also see Jen and Matt warily caressing what appear to be back massage devices of some kind, although their phallus-like design leaves me suspicious.

The very steps leading up to this circuitry heaven were electronic: lights shimmered into patterns and symbols and screamed "Here Be Consumerism and Pirates!" After marveling at the relative cheapness of everything - hi-def TVs of gargantuan girth for under 3000 dollars, for example - I sauntered from booth to booth on the computer level with a very distinct purpose. "Hard drive?" I would ask. "USB connect? USB ONLY??"

Most vendors looked at me like I was retarded and, instead of trying to fleece my wallet, sent me away with a shrug. I finally found a shop of computer nerds who spoke bare-bones English and were willing and able to provide me with a very snazzy portable USB hard drive of the 80 GB variety for 155 dollars. I am proud to tell you that I haggled them down to 130 with false pleas of poverty, and the salesman even put a free movie on it to demonstrate transfer speed! I am now the proud owner of an illegitimate Korean copy of Mona Lisa Smile. Gah.

I very much want to purchase all kinds of neato cameras and tiny MP3 players and blank DVDs and a monolithic television before I return to Canada. The price is right, my friends. The price is right, but the luggage space is limited and the instruction manuals are in Korean. An inherent conflict indeed.

Other highlights from this week:

-Being solicited by a Korean Jehovah's Witness. That's right... they're everywhere. We talked a bit but then she wanted me to commit myself to "learning to love the Bible correctly", so I casually mentioned my previous involvement with the Church of Satan: 2 years, alter boy. She immediately freaked out and coughed violently from that moment onwards. "The air... eees so bad!" she said, her eyes streaming with tears. There would be no Bible study that day.

PS: I was never actually a Satanist but it's quickly becoming my favourite lie.

-Irish girls are, quite possibly, more nationalist and egotistical than Americans and Canadians combined. That kind of superiority complex is quite an achievement.

-Never buy beer for sad-looking underaged Korean kids who are supposed to be studying at 1 am, because they'll get shmammered and they'll like it. Then they'll come back time after time until you say "No more beer or soju, you fuckers!" and they trash your lounge in a non-alcoholic show of rebellion. Give them an inch and they take a mile. THEN you'll have to angrily choke them against the elevator wall the next time you see them (MIKE).

-Marking tests. Lots of them.

-Watching Sam try to buy some shoes while under intense pressure from an abusive sales donkey. He talked shit about us to the other Korean customers until Sam called him on it - he was calling us retarded and that's a word that every foreigner should know. I can't remember it right now though. Anyways, the sales donkey's grasp of English was pathetic at best:

Sam: "Are these real leather?"

Sales Donkey: "Yessss! Oooookay!" *sounding rather like a Korean Lil Jon*

Me: "Are they fake leather?"

Sales Donkey: "Oooookay!" *flashes thumbs up*

I can't ever stop laughing in this country.

Posted by Chris at 05:27 AM >> Commentations (6)