After a year and a half of cheap online internet telephony calls with Yahoo! Voice, I’ve decided to go a different direction and sign-up with the most well known companies in the VoIP market, Skype. This will bring about the following changes:
+ New local KC number: 913-812-5555 to 913-871-8093
+ Any call that I do not answer with my computer will be forwarded to my Korean cell (*Korean music will play)
+ Online status indicator availabe on the Contact page
It’s really early in the morning here, but I went to study after work today and drank like two grande Tazo Chai Lattes to get a boast. Well, 5 hours later, I’m still wide awake. This will allow me to write about a couple cool things that happened last weekend.
Instead of having individual holidays for each parent, ie. Mother’s Day, Koreans have a day called “Parents Day” which is on May 8th. Typical presents from the children are usually carnations and/or money. Jeong-in asked me to come with her to meet her parents, grandmother, and sister’s family to celebrate Parents Day with them. Before Saturday, I had yet to meet her sister (Jeong-su), brother-in-law (Yu-shin), or her 5 year old nephew (Jin-hyeok) so I was excited to meet them. They were really nice and kind to me. Jin-hyeok, was a cute kid who really liked me after I gave him a mini-soccer ball for another holiday, Children’s Day. We had great food at a buffet style restaurant and when Jeong-in’s father and uncle came late, all the men drank soju, including me of course. Her dad has been so nice to me ever since I first met him. Actually, there was a little drama about it on Saturday when her father seemed a little more favorable to me, than Yu-shin. I think it’s just a little teasing and I think it’s unfair because Yu-shin has a lot of responsibility as he is married to their oldest daughter and had their first grandchild who is a boy. Something else that took place that night was one of the best things of all. Jeong-su asked me if I had a Korean name, since using my real name while speaking Korean is odd, and I said that I’ve thought about one, but never found a good match. After a couple seconds she thought of the best Korean name for me. The way it would be romanized to English is “Ma” taken from the first sound in Meagher and “Geon-woo”, which is very similar to Conor as a given name. But family names go first, so it would be written or spoken like this: Ma Geon-woo. It would be a lot easier to explain if everybody could read Korean writing, but I did my best. I can show you that my name is not legal or anything, but somewhat official as I got my registered name change on cyworld.com, a Korean website that has 40 percent of the country’s total 49 million population registered.
To break away from the madness of preparing for the GRE, Jeong-in and I went to a KBO (Korean Baseball Organization) game. The same league that produced such baseball stars as Chan-ho Park, B.K. Kim, Jae Seo, and Seung-yeop Lee (Japanese League). I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was nothing crazy or really different then going to a Major League game at home. Even the 5′4″ Korean players were on steroids. The only difference that comes to mind are the player depth and fan support. Each team has their own cheering squad and they take turns according to who’s up to bat. Then even have cheerleaders. I had to take a video.
I’m not a big believer in the phrase, “No news is good news”. Any kind of updates are always good. But the last couple of months have been extremely busy. After I take the GRE writing section on Friday, I will have a little more breathing room and let everybody know what’s going on.
Well hello. I’m getting bad at blogging these days. My time is divided into a thousand different little projects that never seem to end. It’s not like the good ole days of one post per week. Now I just squeeze in what I can. I will say that I’ve been religiously following my selective sports teams the last couple of months. Watching the Hawks go deep in the tourney, the Islanders squeezing into the playoffs, Manchester United making it to the UEFA Champions League semi-finals, and Royals starting the much anticipated regular season. I actually wanted to write a running diary of opening day, but I wasn’t feeling too creative at 5am and Bill Simmons wrote a much better one when Daisuke pitched in the third game against Grienke (Roll of Daisuke). I could write a book on how this baseball season has gone so far, but I will say that it’s really not helping me sleep normal hours. Other then the meaningless sports that enslave me, I am doing some important things for my future. In my second year of teaching English as a second language in a business environment, I’m being to feel the need for a new challenge. Living in Korea has made me aware of all the different opportunities for me, but after taking Korean Language classes at a local university, I became pretty confident that I wanted to go back to school and pursue a MA degree. Thankfully, I feel that I’ve found a pretty good fit with an dual masters program with Cleveland State University and Chung-ang University in Seoul. Right now I’m in the application process with both of these schools and won’t know the results until after I take the GRE in June. That’s the biggest time consumer of my life, outside of my job, is preparing for the GRE. When I finish with all my paperwork and send it in, I’ll post more information about the program and the details behind it. Also, I got a little better idea of when I would come home next and when I return to Korea for school. I’m predicting my last day at work will be July 20th, which is the last day of the July session making a smooth transition for both the school and I. I’m also guessing that my visa will expire soon after that, so I’d be on a plane in a matter of days. I’ve also found out that fall classes in Korea at CAU start September 1st, making my return home a longer one then 2006, which is good to know. When I confirm the dates better, I will be sure to update!
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.
Just a friendly reminder that you can watch NCAA March Madness on Demand from your computer for free! All you need to do is register an email address. I guess money hasn’t totally corrupted college athletics yet.
I don’t know what it is, but I have a love affair with online forums. So much so, that I’ve created my own. Call me a narcissist, but I think the Conor Meagher Fan Club needs a section for interactivity. Ok, it’s not as self absorbed as is it sounds because the other side of me wants to being people together. Besides the forums devoted to yours truly, there are other forums for my families and friends. Making it a central point of information with the hope that people will be more connected with each other no matter the distance. That sounds like something Steve Jobs from Apple would say, but I mean it on a minor level. It’s great for posting upcoming events such as birthdays or family cookouts and on the other hand you can post funny YouTube videos (ie. Interviewed on Korean TV). So anything goes really!
Family, old friends, new friends, friends of friends, coworkers, ex-coworkers, classmates, or whoever are all welcome to join in and partake in the discussions. The more the merrier, so take a second and register and let me know that your alive!
This weekend was a three day holiday for celebrating the Lunar New Year (Seol-nal). It’s typical for Korean families to spend time together at home and visit relatives tombs to pay their respects. This usually means that Seoul is dead and traveling outside of the city is wall to wall traffic. I had a 3 day weekend planned with lots of sport watching, beer drinking, and male bonding since Jeong-in was busy with her family. Well, that would all change when Jeong-in called me on Saturday and asked me if I wanted to meet her whole family for dinner. Apparently, they were asking about why I didn’t come with her and her Grandmother was hoping to meet me. This was all very flattering, but I wasn’t sure if I was ready to do something like that. Fortunately, I had other plans for that night and decided that lunch the next day was a better idea. When the time arrived, I was a little nervous because all of her family who could come, did, which was around 12 people in a cozy apartment. Everything started with greetings and a hug for Grandma because Jeong-in said she liked to give hugs, but I think when she saw me in person she was a little shy since I was 2 feet taller than her. After that, we sat down for lunch and her parents made me feel extra special since they had already had Christmas dinner with me before. The food was great, even though we were eating while sitting on the floor, a typical Korean style of eating. Also, I partook in drinking with the men. It was a little bit early to take 5 shots of Korean rice wine (So-ju) at 2pm, but it made things a lot more interesting. One thing I really need to work on are my Korean manners. There’s so many rules on how to be respectful to someone older than you. Especially, your girlfriend’s parents. Just pouring Soju has strick rules. Never, let someone pour their own drink. Pour with your right arm and support it with your left, so you don’t shake. I shook. If your sitting on the floor, always pour while sitting on your knees, never while sitting on your bottom. That’s always a fun one when your 6′4″. But with only a couple shakes, I did a pretty good job and had some good laughs. After lunch, I tried my best to learn a popular game Go-Stop with Jeong-in’s Grandma and cousins. Go-Stop is played with small thick cards with flower designs. There’s a bunch of rules about matching cards, even though all the cards look different to me. I tried, but I would of lost all my money if I played with the men. After I lost a couple games, all the cousins and I went to another room and played a traditional Korean board game called Yutnoli. I’ve seen it played before at my old school, but never got to play it. First, we played a couple of games for fun. Then we started to wager some money until the last pot was 20,000W (~$21). I didn’t want to take her cousins’ money, but that’s nothing new to gamble a little. So after an hour or two of playing it was time to go, but one tradition on New Year’s is to bow to the elders. So all the nieces and nephews, including me, lined up and bowed to Halmeoni (Grandmother) and the 3 uncles. In return, the elders give some kind of gift, usually money. They were so nice to treat me like family and gave me the same gifts. Each uncle gave a 10,000W bill and Jeong-in’s Dad also gave a Lotto ticket. Her cute Grandma gave everybody socks. That was the best gift of all. So after saying goodbye to everybody, Jeong-in and I left along with some cousins. It was a day to remember no matter what happens in the future.
