A Night Out and a Minor Revelation

I just realized something. I can eat just as well with chopsticks as I can with a fork. I just ate some ramen noodles, and I was really hungry, so I opted to use a fork to shovel them into my face faster than I may have been able to with chopsticks, but it really didn't make a difference. I use chopsticks to eat most anything here and I guess my skills finally caught up with my use of western cutlery. Just thought that was a interesting little benchmark along this path of culture immersion I am traveling.

Anyways, let me tell you about how I spent last night dancing like a maniac and winning ₩3,000,000.

Saturday started kind of bad. I accidentally broke a promise to a friend and was mulling over whether to immediately inform her so she may mitigate the potential complications, or wait until she got back from vacation so as not to ruin her fun. I chose the latter. So let's hope that works out.

So, I spent the afternoon pretty much feeling like a deadbeat and eating leftover fried chicken.

Thankfully around 5pm I was snapped out of my malaise by an invitation from Frank to attend a gathering of friends at his place. This was the perfect situation as I needed to get out but my liquid assets were reduced to uncomfortably low levels. The night promised cheap beer with friends and nothing could have sounded greater.

I got to Frank and Lauren's around 10pm with drinks and snack in tow. I mixed up a few drinks consisting of soju and aloe beverage (pretty good mix) and settled in as others started showing up. Something unexpected happened though. Of all those invited to this little shindig, the only ones to attend were all girls. I enjoy the company of the ladies, but the situation was me, Frank, and a dozen girls playing a drinking game that was all too quickly devolving into a rather gender specific gab session.

No big deal. Let the ladies have a night, I figured. I was just drinking my beers and adding what I could to the discussion. Thankfully though the decision was made to set out upon the bars of Busan. I shared a cab with some of the girls to Kyungsung, a pretty happening part of town fed by the youth of the nearby universities and a dearth of fellow native English teachers.

We hit a bar called "The Vinyl Underground". It's a good music bar, popular with the foreigners and we were treated to a live performance by a pretty competent rock band. I actually ran into an old acquaintance from college, which was immensely improbably, as he lives in another city and just happened to be in town, heading to the same bar we were. We caught up, had some beers, and then I rejoined the party of girls I arrived with.

In the right situation, the right amount of alcohol, the right company, the right atmosphere, I sometimes get the dancing bug. I caught it bad last night and spent a good portion of the night moving to the music. I don't claim to be a good dancer, but others seem to appreciate it when I do. I didn't see a lot of people rocking out before I got in front of the stage and started shaking it, but soon enough half the room was bouncing pretty heavy.

I guess everybody loves the guy dancing around like he doesn't care who's watching. I got random folks to get off their seats and join the party. People were trying to copy my moves and make their way up to where the action was. These girls I arrived with, who I hardly knew before, got pretty enthusiastic and were pretty disappointed when I needed to sit out a song to drink a beer and catch my breath.

A pretty girl even asked me to get coffee with her sometime. I had hardly spoken to her and the only impression she has of me is I'm a guy who dances around like there's no tomorrow. I told her I would, but not having a cell phone yet all I could give her was my email address. I'm not really expecting to hear back about that, since not having a cell phone is like not having a drivers license in high school and telling a girl your mom is going to have to come along on your date. Maybe it's not that bad, but not having a cell phone seems pretty lame none the less.

At some point in the early hours we headed away from "The Vinyl Underground" and went to "The Ole 55", another foreigner bar with a little more relaxed atmosphere. I had a beer there, played a game of pool with one of the girls, but it was starting to look like the night was winding down.

I seemed to be blessed (or cursed) with a frightful endurance. Here I was after a night of drinking games, barhopping, hours of frenetic dancing, and I'm not ready to call it a night. Thankfully there's at least one place in Busan where the action never stops; the casino. Objectively, this was a terrible idea. It was around 5am, I was drunk, I didn't have much cash in my pocket, and no one would agree to go with me. But, I had a good feeling.

I got to Seomyeon via taxi as the first glimmer of daybreak began to light up the streets. I made my way to the Lotte Hotel and straight on to the ATM. Like I said, I didn't have a lot of liquid assets, so a cash advance from a credit card seemed reasonable, as I'm getting payed this week and would be able to soon after reimburse myself.

It took a couple withdraws before I hit my stride at the blackjack table, but I hit it. I gave up the happy ending already. ₩3,000,000 is a very happy ending, but I want to talk about what it takes to get there.

I love blackjack. You can sit in a chair for hours but your pulse rate will rise and fall as if your in a boxing match. You can fall in love and have your heart broken a hundred times in an hour. You can gamble your future on the flip of a card and wipe away the sins of your past on a single good hand.

Ok, that's a little over dramatic, but I think blackjack is pretty fucking awesome. To play it right takes effort, patience, and courage. So, what does it take to turn ₩200,000 into ₩3,000,000? 6 hours, 5 cups of coffee, 2 beers, 4 bottles of water, a pack of cigarettes and a free breakfast. Even then, you can't just make thousands of dollars playing $10 at a time. You have to build those winnings and know where to throw them down on the table. I made ₩600,000 splitting 8's against an 8. I lost ₩300,000 with 20 against a 3. It was a wild ride, but somewhere in there I got locked into the right mindset and more often than not I made the right bets.

Around noon (Snday), I had 30 ₩100,000 chips in front of me, a belly fully of alcohol and caffeine, and 4 Japanese business men staring at me, astonished, mouth agape. It was time to go. It was weird going home. I was completely emotionally exhausted. I just didn't feel anything anymore. Physically I felt OK, but common sense told me my body could only handle so much. I just sat on the subway with a blank stare and tried not to think or move too much. I made it all the way home without any problem, put my money away, and laid down.

At first I didn't even feel tired. I had just been through so much, sleep didn't feel like a reality any more. At some point the lights when out though. I woke up a couple hours later drenched in sweat. I walked to the bathroom muttering about "how stupid people were that didn't know anything yet" before I realized I didn't understand what I was talking about. I went back to bed, but had horrible nightmares that I had sleep paralysis and was laying in a bed in an old mansion, unable to move while shadowy unknowable entities walked around me and observed me. I might have woken up screaming. At least I got a few hours of sleep and was actually feeling pretty good after I shook off the dream.

I was pretty hungry so I made some ramen and ate it with a fork. That was my weekend.