Lloyd Visits Korea
March 19, 2007 @ 3:13 am | Listen to this post
My old friend from college came to Korea for a two week vacation to explore his Korean roots or just get away from medical school. It was good to see him after a couple years since I came to L.A. for a winter trip to sunny California. When ever I get together with Lloyd, things happen. It all started with a night in Apgujeong with his cousins and their friends. Drinking, talking, and having a laugh. A couple pitchers of beer and 4 bottles of soju later, Lloyd began to show his “enthusiasm” for his ethnic pride by raising his voice and knocking things over. Soon after that, he would see what a bathroom in Korea was like. I never saw him the rest of the night, but my evening continued. Jeong-in came at 10:30pm and Lloyd was already out of the picture. But I became friendly with the other guys and we decided to move to another bar. One guy in particular was very fond of me, even though we just met that night. He was recently married to a very attractive woman who came with him, but she just sat the whole time without saying a word. Her husband though, was quite the talker. He kept saying to me “Why do you hate me?”, only because I was a little freaked out when he asked Jeong-in and I if we would want to do acouple party with him and his wife early into the conversation. I knew that he meant to say, double date, but sometimes Koreans use English words and make their own meanings. Like for example, oneroom, which means a studio style apartment. Anyway, we all got drunk together and I found out he was a lawyer or judge (it’s hard to decipher in Korean), so now if I ever get in trouble, he will bail me out. Sweet.
The next time Lloyd and I got together, we met near my house in Sinchon and he came with his cousin. We just had some dinner, took some pictures, and went to a really crazy sit down bar called Moo. It was like I was on an early set of a Star Trek episode with white skeleton interior and glass tables. But there’s nothing like a little alcohol to kill the weirdness. It was a Wednesday night, so it wasn’t a late night for me.
The last time I got together with him, we went to Hongdae on an eventful Tuesday night. The bars were empty, but we managed to still have a good time. We started at a foreigner friendly bar called U2, yes like the band, and met up with a former classmate of mine named Kevin. After that, we would try to move around and go to another bar called Tinpan 2. It is a famous foreigner bar that was close. Everybody was feeling good and doing fine. Then Lloyd decided to go against the usual practice of “liquor before beer, your in the clear” and ordered a gin & tonic after drinking a fair amount of beer. Soon after that he was at the bar, c-blocking a fairly high ranking US Military officer from the cute bartender who he had been flirting with ever since we got there. After laughing my ass off, it was time to go. So we sent Lloyd back to his relatives in a taxi, hoping he would make it back safe. I would later find out that he made a little detour before making it back. Good times, good times.
