10 day working week, Six60 & Great Caesar, Thanks giving etc!

It has been a loooong couple of weeks. Boy, do I miss my 5 day working week with the regular 2 days off I had in NZ!! I had 10 days work straight, Wednesday - Saturday, which included 2? 3? doubles and for that pay week (so 7 days) I had clocked 80 hours. Amba says to toughen up but for those who know Amba will also know thatI'm nowhere near tough and shit as her. By the end of the 10 days I was delusional and making silly mistakes. Not fun. At the end of all that though the pay check looked pretty damn good.

Sunday comes, and FINALLY a day off. I slept in like a little baby. The combination of fatigue, eye masks and ear plugs are like a big hit of valium for me.  

Sunday was just the perfect day to have off. There was a free Six60 gig in Brooklyn!! We went out to Williamsburg trying to go to the famous pizza joint Roberta's. It was packed (as expected) and we were told the wait would be an hour and 20 minutes. Yea...Nah...

So we made our way down to a small bar named Tutu's which we had walked past earlier. It was a nice little place with really delicious burgers so we were very happy. I really like it that people ask to what temperature we want the burger patties done! According to Amba, people die from eating undercooked burgers but medium rare burgers just taste so much better!!! 

Oh and what a small world. I met Renee & Brian's friend Mou? Mu? (I'm still not sure how to say his name) who was from Germany and is working for the Maldives mission. I introduced myself and he knew that I worked at Ambeli! Turns out he flatted with one of the chefs (Marty) and I had met him once before. Such a small world. 

Anyways, after dinner, drinks and a pickle back (for those who don't know, it is a shot of whiskey followed by a shot of pickle juice, Brooklyn thing apparently), we went on our way to a free gig at a bowling alley. When I saw the name 'Brooklyn Bowl' I imagined something similar to the Hollywood bowl in CA but perhaps smaller. No. It was a bowling alley with a (reasonably sized) stage to the side. 

While waiting for Six60 to come on, I heard a song that sounded little like a cross between Beirut & Fun. which I really really liked the sounds of. 

Hail Great Caesar! 

Great Caesar

It's been a while since I've been wowed by a band and these guys were AWESOME! They were a six piece band which included a trumpet player and a sax player, who also played a larger, bassier instrument I don't know the name of. Great original songs, energetic and fun. We (Sam) bought their CD for $5 and that's all I've been listening to in the past week or so. Check this video out!!

After Great Caesar was The Griswold or something. They were pretty 'meh'. Pass. 

Six60 was pretty awesome actually. To be honest, if they were in playing in Wellington I don't think I would have ever paid and made time to go see them. But when you are in a foreign country you become all patriotic and shit you know. It was pretty cool to see the scarfies reaching out to the world on a stage, albeit a small, free one.  

And then my work week started again. Now the work has become a routine and I feel much more comfortable. The thanks giving service was a killer though. We started at 9.30 am with a big family meal of turkey and didn't stop till like 12 am. Two highlights of the day were:

Family of four dine in for thanks giving. It's a $195 four-course pre fixie menu (not including tax & tip) with $95 supplement if you want a pasta dish with fresh white truffle as your appetiser. This little girl who looked to be about 8 or 9 orders one saying 'truffles are my faaaaavourite!!' Awesome. She follows that up with a little picture and a poem about truffles to the chef. Brilliant. 

After service we had another big family meal of, you guessed it, turkey (this common theme continued for the next four days or so). I see Dustin (our wine director, a master sommelier and an indie film star) drinking PBR. Let's say Double Brown equivalent in price but considered 'hip'? It made me happy.  

Family meal pt. 2

I also made some friends at work! We often go out for drinks after work and here are some photos from one of those nights. I'm using their names and photos without permission. COME AT ME BRO! 

Looking back at the photos we also went to K-town one of the days. It was a lot of fun eating Korean food and drinking soju! Except it felt so much like I was in Korea with foreigners and no Ally...sad face... 

Soju & Samgyupsal

What else...what else...oh we decided to try Roberta's once more on Sunday. There were 9 of us this time but still had to wait an hour and half. We were little more prepared though. We went earlier so we wouldn't starve and didn't have a gig to go to after. While waiting I tried this thing called Michelada which was kind of like a beer version of Bloody Marry. Unexpectedly delicious! 

After a while we got our table and had some delicious food. The pasta dish I had with oxtail was super yum but super tiny portion :( The pizzas were great but I am yet to find a pizza that , for me, is better than Gambaretti at Scopa! All and all, it was a pretty cool place with good food but would I wait  1.5 hrs for it again? Probably not. There are just simply too many placed to check out in this city. I'm glad I have been though. 

Roberta's

So true...so true...

Pizza!

I think that about wraps up my couple of weeks. Hopefully Ally will write a post too so you guy more stuff to read! Looks like she's got exit if couple of weeks ahead of her :p 

Gyeongju, Crazy Children and Too Many People

Hello again!!! 

Look it didn't even take as long this time!

Things have settled down into a bit of a rhythm so I don't feel like I have as much to post about these days.

My typical week is as follows:

Monday: Urgh....fuuuukkkkk it's monday.....why am I working with kindergarten children this early on a monday....well good thing I have my Korean lesson tonight and can have a beer and some good dinner after!

Tuesday: Seriously, this week is too long. Tonight will be fun with my language exchange with Eric and having a nice pot of chamomile tea.

Wednesday: OOOHHHH!!! Hump day (giggle) and also Korean lesson again tonight! Busy day is a good day!!

Thursday: Hmmm....what am I doing this weekend... hey everybody who wants to go to that party in Seoul on Saturday? Only one more day until the weekend!!!

Friday: It's friday motherfuckers!!! Drinking time!!!

Saturday: Well I'm not too hungover, thats a good sign, better cure it with another beer!!! Ooohhh...it's sunrise? I guess I should go to bed...

Sunday: oh jesus....why did I agree to tequila slammers with the guy who bought and shared the WHOLE bottle of tequila...Home Time!!

AND repeat. Sometimes interspersed with shopping. At this point the only reason I haven't been doing that has been when I have gone places like Gyeongju.

Me and Tom striding up the mountain in Gyeongju!

Top of the mountain being all peaceful and shit.

Sneaky Jess and her awesome photography skills

This photo was taken at one of the famous temples in Gyeongju. I love going to temples and seeing all the different Buddhist things. I usually feel a sense of serenity there. Same goes for old churches etc. The people who are there are usually there to pray or be at peace and that is a beautiful feeling even if you are there to do it yourself. However, this was the first time I was really annoyed and frustrated by the enormous number of people there are in Korea. Honestly there must have been over 1000 people at the temple and this ruined any chance I had of feeling that serenity. I'm fine in the cities with the literally millions of other people, it's ok on the squishy trains and standing for a 45 minute bus ride because so many people are travelling to Seoul is bearable but when you are overwhelmed at the number of people at the temple and you can't experience the feelings that you usually go there to feel, it's frustrating.

Beautiful sunset from the mountain.

I'm about to tell you about the single most frustrating class I have ever experienced. See below at all the children lying on their desks. This is them giving absolutely no fucks about the class or the teacher. This is not usual however these children are a nightmare. Usually you can scare the living daylights out of them when you go and get a Korean teacher however they just didn't even care about that either.

Now that I have started making some korean friends, my fb wall often has occasional korean status updates. I do my best to translate them myself but sometimes i need a bit of help from the interwebs. This has by far been one of the funniest translations that has come up. In this case she's talking about her dog Ggamji not nigger cock. Why the word 'nigger' is even in a translation dictionary as an option baffles me.

Bus selfie with Hanneke on our way to Seoul!

This is me and Jae's Cousin Seyun, I had a lot of fun with her that night!

11/11 is Pepero day! these are all the pepero that came to school for everyone just from my kindergarten class

This is the handmade pepero that I got from one of my awesome elementary students :) Thats my name followed by 'ssaem' on top which is like an affectionate word for teacher.

My favourite kindergarten kid and his pepero haul.

This my friends is heaven on a plate in the form of Fried Chicken Tenders from Frypan. Super unhealthly but so god dam delicious.

This is the crazy that happens at school sometimes.

Now for some of you who don't know, Korea is weather extremes. It was already started snowing here. Literally two months ago, it was too hit for a jacket or closed in shoes and now its so cold that any skin you have showing the world is in pain. I was not equipped for this magnitude of cold. SO I got a new jacket and am stocking up on all things warm!

New jacket. I was only a little bit swayed by the fact that G Dragon was wearing the jacket in the ad also.

First snow!

I'm thinking about buying one of these....

So they are so advanced here that this is how they mix drinks. you just leave it sitting like this for a while and bam! mixed. I'm scared that i'm going to try and do this myself when I'm drunk and want to look cool...

So now is the time of year that everyone makes kimchi! We had a kimchi making day at school and fun times ensued...

Ingredients

Prior to the chilli sauce

Mess after chilli sauce..

SO MUCH MESS!!

Last night I had one of the most interesting Korean lessons I've had so far. Our usual teacher was away from class and one of the more advanced students was teaching us. It's actually really good to have someone who is also learning the language to teach you every now and then because they can explain the things that the native speakers can't. Anyway, one of the things that I have noticed with Korean is that you never really say 'I' or 'you' and this has been a hard adjustment for me because I feel like 'I' and 'you' give context to the situation. However as it was explained to me last night, it's part of the way the culture is here. The western hemisphere is very 'I' and 'you' focused whereas the eastern hemisphere is very 'us' focused and this is very evident in the way that people talk around you. We did an exercise where we spoke english in the same sentence structure as korean without saying 'I' or 'you' and the amount of effort that took was really surprising to me. 

I'm leaving you with the weirdest birthday card I have ever come across. I have no idea what the original Korean was supposed to be but lets all celebrate Happy Mind Control!

Much Love!

More work stuff & adventures

Work this week has been good. Much better and easier than the last. Either something just clicked in my head or it's the fact that I'm not constantly under someone's watchful eyes so I can be myself a little.

Speaking of being myself, I have come across one relatively question in particular that I found difficult to answer. 

'Where are you from?' 

If I say I'm from Korea, it is almost always followed by another question. 'Where does your accent come from?' Then I have to explain that I moved to NZ when I was younger and tell them my life story.

If I say I'm from NZ, it is usually followed by 'Were you born in NZ?' Then I go back to the first answer. Not winning here. 

It has made me feel somewhat like Erik.  For those who don't know him, he was a Dutch guy whom I worked with at WHR. He used to pull in tips because he was foreign and people were interested to talk to them, not because of his superb service. For which some of us resented. But now I am that guy. I don't know how much impact it has on tips at EMP but people seem to be very interested in my accent. At least 5 tables a night will ask me where my accent is from. It's fine and I'm happy to talk to them for now but according to Amba it get pretty old pretty quickly. 

Another thing about this country, when it comes to Koreans, especially the younger ones, I can't assume they will speak Korean. More than often they are second generation American Koreans who are basically Americans with Korean features. There are many Korean people at EMP and about 75% of them don't actually speak Korean. It makes for an interesting dynamics because between Koreans we would normally treat each other differently depending on age and rank etc. 

As I mentioned in the last post Samba are here in New York!! I got two days off in a row(!!!!) so we went on a little bit of an adventure (after ample sleep in of course).

On Tuesday we went to the famous Katz's Deli. One of the oldest deli's in New York and where the famous fake orgasm scene from when Harry met Sally was filmed. It was absolutely packed when we arrived with 4-5 deep lines to get a sandwich. Of course the crowd disappeared as soon as we got our food and sat down at a table.

He is clearly having such a great time

I got a Ruben with pastrami. It was like $18 but I didn't really need the whole thing. I read a lot of reviews saying it's over rated and over priced but I thought it was worth it for the atmosphere and and the GIGANTIC sandwich you get. While our guy was carving the meat another dude bumped him from behind running past him. 

'Ay yo! WTF!!!!' (With a big chef's knife in his hand) 

I was sure this would be the moment I experience the 'real' New York I've been seeing on TV shows and movies. My first stabbing. But (un)fortunately this did not eventuate. The Ruben sandwich was amazing though!

What else did we do..the photos tell me we went and had some delicious oysters in Williamsburg. They were massive! And they were a dollar each! A DOLLAR!!!! A dozen of fresh, giant oysters for all of $12. I was in heaven. After that we went to Duff's where they had a dollar PBR. A DOLLAR!!! As far as I know PBR is what all the poor hipster artistic type drink cuz it's 'cool' and cheap. Probably only cuz it's cheap. I wasn't complaining though. It was beer all the same.

Oysters!!

After that, got some more booze and carried on at home. I'm sure other exciting things happened in there somewhere but can't remember. Sorry!

Lame.. I had written another few paragraphs about what we did the next day but it's all gone!! (Rage face) I can't be bothered re-writing it so I'm just gonna put up the photos. Feel free to make your own story up. It involves walking, booze, Harlem, lots of meat, dogs, bone marrow poppers and monochrome photos (because I'm like all deep and artsy as fuck). 

Left foot

Right foot

Very subtle guys.... 

Employees Only

I also had other rant ready about how unreliable NY train system is and how it will end up getting me fired but I might leave that to the next time. Hopefully Ally will put up a post about all of her adventures too soon!! I do have a couple of different thing I want to write about re: work and life so stay tuned peeps :)