The first time I heard this woman addressing the crowd I was completely smitten. I could stand and watch and listen to her for hours. Meow meow, meow meow meow.
The lady is wearing a wireless headset mic. The speakers are way up on concrete pillars under the eaves of the building and the strange reverberant qualities make her voice less intelligible but more musical. She has this detached, robotic, melodic voice that sounds a lot like an analogue synthesizer. It’s scary how perfect it is.
We crashed a foreigner birthday party at Island Stone downtown in City Hall. I was thinking “Not bad for a Friday night… but what this place really needs is some lazers.” When all of a sudden… PEW PEW PEW. And fire-breathing too. That’s how we party on Jeju Island.
A drunk blonde came up to me and said “What’s your name.”
“Philip,” I said.
“Philip,” she said. “Philip. How about Phil. Is it all right if I call you Phil?”
“No.”
“Phil…or how about… Peter? …Phil, Peter or Eric. Which of those names do you want me to call you?”
“Philip.”
And that was the end of that conversation.
I got a new pocket videocamera and took a stroll down Jeju Cultural Street looking for something to point it at. I don’t know street names in Jeju and usually I just make up my own, but Jeju Cultural Street is the actual name for the pedestrian strip in Sinjeju and I know this because it has a sign at the top in both Korean and English.
That ajosshi who sat down beside me and tried to light a cigarette was still there 20 minutes later when I walked by again, slumped over but not quite unconscious. I did see my share of conked-out Korean dudes on the street on my way home though. Including one guy who was parked beside the sidewalk passed out at the wheel of his car with the engine running.
Watch this video all the way through to get to the dirty parts.
This is not really much different from the dude who used to drive around North End Halifax yelling at the whole neighbourhood to come and buy some fresh fish out of the back of his pickup truck.