Someday We'll Know

I hope its appropriate for me to post this.

Yesterday night, crystal recounted to me on an event that happened in the evening. She and her roommate were going out for dinner, when her roommate received a call from her mum in the Netherlands. She was informed that her father was in critical condition. I was told, she broke down crying and started packing her bags to return home but her mother insisted she stayed.

As we were walking back to the university, contemplating the frailties of life, it never occured to me that sometimes things strike closer to home.

I went back and sent an email home after a reminder from my dearest karen. Turns out, I have not been sending emails back for more than a month. Time sure flies here...

So I got the email sent in a routine procedure before going to study and sleep. This morning, I got an email back from my mum who told me my dad was hospitalised for internal bleeding a few weeks back. It totally broke my heart. First thing that shot into my mind was how incompetent I was as a son, to be so late to know, oblivious to such a catastrophy. Second thing that slowly ebbed into my consciousness...was how helpless I was in somewhere far away. Unable to hear reassurance of my father's health. Or how my family was coping.

Some things are just strange. 2 sons in Singapore and nothing ever happens for the longest time. 2 of them leave for overseas and something like that happens. Its just low on probability ya' know?

I ran out of coherent things to type. My mind is pretty scrambled right now. uh, enjoy your lives people. For my friends studying, enjoy your exams too.

To the stars and back

Hello my dear readers. I am sure I have been conspicuous by my absence and I apologise for that. Seems like my blog has a little bit of a problem, sometimes I just can't access it. Well no matter... I do have alot of photos from my recent trips but I decided to change the style of my blog- no more emphasis on photos. Instead I have decided to put in a more introspective look at the events swirling around me.

For those who prefer the previous style... sorry? Lol. I got bored of it.

On a bit of good news. My brother who is currently working in the US has been interviewed on the Sunday times most recently. The interview was about tagxe.com, a company which i think he set up with his friends. If you would like to save on transportation time in singapore by finding people to share tagxe with, this is the website you SHOULD visit.

I am proud of my brother.

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Pusan Train Ride Special

Annyeong haseyo! This is Winston here. I know that there are many diehard Ariyo readers who faithfully refresh his blog every minute to check for his updates. I apologise if you are disappointed that this is a guest blog entry (Aww..) but I will try my best since its my first. I'll just be blogging the ending segment of our trip.

The group of us were waiting for our train at the rail station, getting ready to head home to Seoul after an eventful trip to Pusan and Gyeongju. The train that we were supposed to be traveling in, was not the clean and spacious KTX express train; instead it resembled more of an ordinary subway train. Reason being we were cheapskate tourists who opted for the KR youthpass, unaware of the 'surprises' that was in store for us.

The train doors were blocked by a mob of ajummas and ajeossis (aunties and uncles). So we had to push our way through this pile of humanity to get into the train because we didn’t want to stand on our wobbly legs throughout a 3 hr ride. We were seoul..seoul tired after days of walking and late nights. And being a 好公民 was the last thing on our minds.

Despite our valiant efforts, we were left with no seats. While placing my belongings on the floor, Ariyo exclaimed to us that that an ajumma just walked past and molested him.

The ajumma flashed a flirtatious smile at us as she friskily hopped back to her seat beside her hubby.

The ajumma was at least 50. We tried hard to get a good shot of her but she kept siamming.

Ariyo recounted between sobs of humiliation that the ajumma deliberately bumped into him, slid her hand and groped his butt. I suspect that there might have been an additional squeeze in that swift action sequence but Ariyo didn’t want to go into details. Poor Ariyo. He’s still awful traumatized right now. Holed up and shivering under his blanket in his dorm.

It seemed like this ajumma's skill with men was an innate faculty, nothing she had deliberately cultivated--that certain half-smile, a quirk of the brow, a careless, as if accidental, caress that drew men to her like a sexy queen bee, oozing oomph. The lascivious ajeossis in train started to flock to her, engaging in some incoherent banter, flirting, giggling, patting. Which soon transformed into hugs and lewd, indiscriminate acts like riding on their laps and slapping each others asses..it was so wicked that I was speechless.

The unbelievable part was that the ajumma played along with them, with her husband beside her! (in fact, the other couples behaved in the same manner, oblivious to their spouses’ reaction ) Harbouring some bizarre sort of tit-for-tat mentality, her husband went around the train, looking for prospective girls/women/anyone that he could lay his hands on by deliberately colliding into them. It was as if they were issued a guilt-free pass along with their train ticket. I forgot to mention that the folks were really drunk and high on soju, which probably explains their liberated and heightened state.

Thankfully, I’m a guy so I watched with amusement at the entire sexual pantomime unfolding in front of me. Hey I have seen lots of bizarre stuff but this definitely makes it into the top 5. It seemed kind of surreal. And it made me a little queasy, it was as if..I was watching some uncut scenes out of an awful, anachronistic ream of porn that was marked as “XXtremely Taboo” . All the ajeossis and ajummas are old enough to be grandmothers and grandfathers. I cant imagine if their children/ grandchildren were to see them.

If I am girl, this would undoubtedly be my most miserable ride in Korea. Lol.


The smell on the train was pretty bad…the dozen of ajummas besides me whipped out a bottle of soju and a container of kimchi, and began their own party. Needless to say, chaos ensued.

The drunk people on the carriage would get into drunken arguments, shoving each other, screaming and yelling. Ajummas would be cursing obscenities at their hubbies or random ajeossis who try to take advantage of them, women giggling incessantly as men piled on them, and some of them breaking out into impromptu karaoke performances.

Not to forget inane and wanton acts: There was this ajeossi who had a rip in his pants and he went around, exhibiting to the commuters his gaping hole and slapping his ass like some experienced, dirty pornstar who wanted to be punished.

My words can't do justice. The entire scene was so crazy. I think that the Crazy Horse act is nothing compared to this. This was so risqué, so bawdy and yet amidst all the debauchery and intoxication, there was a palpable sense of euphoria, which I secretly envied them for and wished that I were a part of.

The Busan Chronicles Part I

Hello my dear reader, never did expect me to finally update did you? No no...its alright, there's no need to apologise for lacking faith in me. I thought I would never get to update either. So yes, no need to feel guilty. Just buy me some chocolates next time you see me ya?

Just to keep you guys informed, I went to Busan last weekend from Friday morning to Sunday 11pm. Shortly after, I had mid term exams for many of my subjects in the past week...so thats why I am updating only now. That, and my tendency to play DOTA.

Alright so enough of my excuses, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: The Busan Chronicles Part I!

*Warning! Biggest ever number of pictures in a single entry! 39!*



Mandy, Linda, Winston, Crystal and Maggies after we alighted from the Subway "Seoul Station"

The view outside the Railway "Seoul Station". Nothing extraordinary. I thought this picture may add to the extra bandwidth, and cause untold suffering on my faithful readers with constricted bandwidth.

Still a view outside the station. BUT this picture actually has a point. If you would squint your eyes hard enough on the top of that beautiful building, you would notice it has a Yonsei Logo on it. Apparently Yonsei University is just part of a large corporation and this building is some sort of a company headquarters.

Artistic/ Slightly shaky photo of the day. Look at that.

The view inside Seoul Station. It looks like an airport, has some shops and fastfood chains. Very big and spacious, very modern. It must have cost alot to build this place...because they couldn't afford to hire someone to check the tickets. Anyone could have boarded the train. Anyone. Even that shifty looking terrorist strapped from top to bottom in dynamite. Oooh the horrors....
Couple clothings in Korea is very popular. Most of the time you get to see couples decked out in utterly obiang looking clothes so no one has the chance to resemble them. Its quite a good logic too. Imagine you and your partner are walking down crowded Seoul in a plain looking couple T-shirt. What happens if you lose sight of your partner and mistakenly grabs hold of another girl with the same shirt? What happens if you grab hold of ANOTHER GUY with the same shirt?

Think about it.

For couple clothes. The gaudier the better.

The KTX train. Quite a pleasant train, modern and clean. I had no other impression of it because I started eating my Macdonalds breakfast before it moved and fell asleep for 3hrs as soon as it left the station.

And when I woke up, we were are Busan Station. See the 6 grannies at the bottom right of the picture? They were protesting. Its a national past time here. Everyone wears some sort of sash and stand in a prominent place to protest. Age is no barrier. Apparently, neither is the amount of protesters.

Walked a bit, took the subway a bit. And lo and behold, our new home for the night.

The magnificent view from our new home. Its so beautiful, diamonds pale in comparison. Lol.

A slightly more eye appealing picture. The Girl's bedroom.

The living room. We were sort of living in a HDB apartment type of guesthouse and we had the whole house to ourselves except for this strange looking east european woman who we immediately ignored. I thought she looked like a witch.

Then we took the subway a bit more and was shocked to find out that in Busan, the subways and stations were almost empty most of the time. In parts of Busan, you couldn't even see people under the age of 40.

Anyway that cute little dog (all stray dogs in korea are cute) was resting it arse on a cabbage when we arrived at a town market. It looked like it was trying to hatch the cabbage and no one around me thought that was strange. I thought it was strange.

Judging by the look on the dog's face, he didn't agree with me.

The town market where no one under 40 years old roamed. We stuck out like sore thumbs.

Ironically in that old folk town, there was a huge advertisement plastered on the wall for plastic surgery. This kinda stretches it a little...plastic surgery is one thing. Reverse ageing is another.

My daily ice cream. And first in Busan. Its a vanilla ice cream sandwiched between soft bread shaped like a fish. Cost about 800won and taste great. I highly recommend it although most of you wun be able to eat it. Ice cream products here go by seasons, every few weeks they change the entire selection of ice creams so people like me will never get bored.

Busan International Film Festival. I have yet to see this movie but I heard its good. So here I am, shameless advertising a film out of nationalistic pride.

The Beach in Busan. The natural sand is soft but the weather was slightly autumny. It gave a slightly depressed mood to the atmosphere.

A bunch of girls making sand things. None of them looked hot but their sand pictures were pretty good. One group of them even sculpted a 3D frog statue that resembled a fat buddha. If thats not a useful life skill I dunno what is.

We boarded a ferry that took us on a 1.5hr boat trip to a nearby lighthouse for about 6k won? When the boat was moving, you could throw snacks off the back of it and seagulls would snap them up. There was a huge flock of them trailing in vessel in no time and you could even reach up to grab one if its near you.

Me. On a boat.
A lighthouse.
Our boat. Oh god. I feel so tired of blogging now. WHY DID I UPLOAD SO MANY PHOTOS. WHY!? I AM SO TIRED. NOOOO BUT I MUST PERSEVERE! I MUST PERSEVERE!

Next up! We ate Pig organ broth! It was an interesting experience! I loved the liver and the heart! But I hated its stomach! All of you should try it! It is expensive and not very filling! We ate Macdonalds after that!

Busan resembled Singapore....they were HDBs everywhere. Just look at this picture. It reminds me of Choa Chu Kang

More shots of pseudo Singapore. It was here that I sat down and felt a tinge of homesickness. Tears welled up in my dry eyes and I missed the hot humid place I call home.

I think the others were quite surprised with my sudden break down lol.

We tried to enter the Closing Ceremony of the Busan Film Festival but it was guarded by many professional looking body guards in black suits and wore sunglasses-at night. They also had this nifty looking ear piece and walking talkie concealed at the collars of their jackey. Woooooooow.

Unfortunately for one of them, I asked to use the toilet and he had to follow me to the Gents where I secretly laughed at his mundane job while I gave a woosh of pee.

Penguins with sunglasses. All flash and no substance.

Oh yah, the picture. Fireworks! This one is orange.

This one is green.

This is blue
This is red!

This is whitey, greeny with some sparkle. I would call this one shiny.

We have been to the Busan Film Festival! (Technically we haven actually went it. Who cares about technicalities anyway. They are so boring)

You would expect a crowd in the subway station. It was only 9pm. In Seoul, people would be charging you down for not moving and stampeding over your lifeless corpse.

We went to another beach with a great nightview. Bought some alcohol and proceeded to drink ourselves silly. Or rather, I couldn't drink alcohol so the others drank themselves silly.

A Jazz Band busking beside the beach. From what I could see, it was made up of young and old folks and their jamming was good. Very good in fact. They gathered a sizeable crowd who donated lots.

I believe Music should be free.

Beachview! At night!

Winston, Crystal and I bought some fireworks to play. More and better pictures were in Crystal's camera...but I will come to that soon...

We boarded the subway and sat down. At that time a young man was sitting beside the very drunk crystal who was happily slurring in her speech. She placed her camera beside her and that man took it, left at a stop, completely unnoticed by the 10 of us. This picture is of Liwei and Crystal happily unaware of her stolen camera.

I don't think Winston was sober.

So what happens when a camera gets stolen? WE WENT TO THE POLICE! YAY! How exciting can this get eh? Funny thing is, 10 young students walk into a police station. They can't speak Korean, and the policeman can't speak english. To even compound the extremely hilarious situation (to me, not to poor Crystal), half of them were very drunk. I dun think they took us seriously when we told them a camera got stolen.

Come on, imagine.

Imagine you were the policeman. A group of merrily drunk foreign students come to you trying to explain of a crime. Lol. Funny. Anyway he really did helped us and even sent crystal, liwei and gary to a police post who could document the crime.

We didn't recover the camera in the end. So I'm gonna end part 1 with this nicely concealed erotic picture hanged on the subway walls. For those of you who can't read whats in the white heart on the left, it says "Only love".

Korea is awesome.

The Busan Chronicles Part II

Alright I just woke up after sleeping eight hours. It a nice and shiny Sunday morning that is not freezing like yesterday. So I am gonna BLOG! Woo! YEAH!

Our little story continues after the first night of our Busan trip. On the 2nd day at 1am, we reached home and the 10 of us waited ini line to use the single toilet till 3am... Charming stuff indeed. Next time I book a guest house, I would have to inquire on the toilet to occupants ratio.

*Warning! Only 14 pictures with some beautiful ones!*

The next morning, with most of us tired and grumpy, we booked out with all our luaguages and silently walked to a bus stop to hail a bus. As you can see, the weather wasn't any better. It certainly didn't help my mood one bit. Fortunately...the bus ride was one hour to the tip of Busan where there was some sort of an Island with a great sea view.

The place, of which I have no idea what its called. Lets call it Treasure Island.

We were carrying all our luagages and it seemed ridiculous to lug them around with us. So we ask ayoung guy for his help to look after our luagages. To our damm surprise, he spoke to us in halting Chinese. Turns out the kind soul was in the army, and his job was to look after a cone on the road leading from an army base to Treasure Island.

Utter waste of talent... A university student who can speak 3 languages, moving a single cone for cars to pass through a tiny road.

We also took a tram ride.

The sky view in Treasure Island. Its beautiful aint it? 2nd most beautiful picture in my blog. Also! I realised blogspot has this nifty function where, when you click on the picture, it enlarges to full size!

Come on, give it a click. Make it your screen saver or something.

The view of an island from a lighthouse in Treasure Island. We are looking at the Pacific Ocean here.... An entire horizon of water. Vaaaaaaaaast and Biiiiiiiiiig. Huge. Gigantic. Titanic etc.

After walking down a bit(15min of climbing down) from the lighthouse, we can see platforms near the base of the seacliffs. This is a photo from a position higher up. The ocean looks like a giant slab or bluish marble...

On the way down from the top of the cliff, they also have signboards with pictures to illustrate the kind of creatures that can be found nearby. About 3 kinds of ferocious sharks roam the shores here, silently waiting for the dumb caucasian blonde tourist to go dipping in...

Me. On a seacliff with huge wind messing up my hair. We were about 1 one metre from the edge but thats the furthest i would go because I'm afraid of dying. Wouldn't want to die for a nice, adventurous photograph.

It would be really sad for my gravestone to read:

" Here Lies Ariyo
Loving son
Saved a starving shark from imminent death"

A nice beach view. Notice the beach is black on areas wet with water? Thats actually a granite beach, granite worn down into fine sand through millions of years of erosion.

We left Treasure Island where almost everybody were in high spirits and no longer tired and went to a wet market in the city. It was pretty crowded.

Older folks in Korea are as romantic, although I noticed that wife beating is prevalent here. Give and take perhaps?

On a neutrally relevant note. If you would glance at the background, you would notice a white stray dog. In korea, if the stray dogs aren't small and proportionally cute, they are large and have fur of pure snow. There is something funny with eating dogs here, they look gorgeous.

I hate Chihuahuas. Giant eyes too big for the eye sockets, head too big for the bodies. Attitude too weird for their size. They are the embodiment of everything gone wrong with a dog, with the exception of the poor poodle.

I would kill and eat a chihuahua, then string their skulls around my neck like a necklace.

All the food talk made me hungry, so we decided to have lunch. This picture my dear readers, is our lunch. We still have no idea what it is, but its sort of tubular, has a sucker for a mouth and blind. It looks like a giant worm but is really a fish type of thing.

Cost about 10k won( $15) per person. They skin the fish live in front of us. Then butcher it into many pieces which individually, start to wriggle, lol. The wriggling bits are then wrapped up in front of us with sauce and heated on a BBQ plate. 3min later, they are unwrapped, and........the marinated bits are still wriggling.

The Hong Kong girls were grossed out and refused to pay. They then went to have lunch somewhere while we ate this nice fresh seafood. I think Crystal ate some too even though she was pretty affected. Brave girl.

I have the video of the entire cooking process, if you would like I can send to you. Takes 10min through skype ya?

And we left the wet market and crossed the street to reach.....Busan's version of Orchard road. The stuffs here were expensive and loaded with branded goods in branded stores. Some small stalls however, sell pretty nice things at a cheap price compared to seoul. Yet again, I have no idea where this place is but I bet you can easily check it up somewhere.

A store named Singapole. Obviously a pun. Ironically selling autumn and winter clothings.

We left for Qing Zhou (Geongju) in the evening on a train and reached there at night.

Then we had a very fun session of drinking and very much later, penalties for losing card games where I drank coffee in replacement of alcohol.

I didn't sleep that night.