Trials of Travelation

Welcome friends and family and strangers! This is about how I got to Seoul, in the Republic of Korea and what I am doing here.

For those of you who know my circuit bending exploits, (whereheremeetsthere.blogspot.com) you can imagine getting through airport security was a bitch. The lady took one look at "The Awesome-ator" and said "Are you kidding me!" She didn't even say anything else before that... Well they let me on the plane after I played all the instruments for them and they ran samples to test for explosives... you know the usual. The first flight from Newark, NJ to Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN was really smooth. I didn't have to go through security for the transfer to Tokyo but the plane was behind. They said there were some "minor checks" that had to be run; nothing important, 'just for their paperwork.' Well, with the hour delay it was a fat chance i was getting through security in Japan in order to get to my connecting flight in Seoul so I was a little stressed. I had no cell phone or any way of contacting anyone.

It was supposed to be a 14 hour flight. I was really happy when the hit TV show "The Office" had an episode on my plane. I was laughing obnoxiously while all sorts of people were trying to sleep around me. The flight was supposed to have sunlight the entire way through. I thought that was awesome: No nighttime for 32 hours or so! I thought I might not go to sleep but the first movie was Spiderman 3, which I saw once and knew it would be more enjoyable to sleep through even if I wasn't watching it. So I fell asleep and I wake up to that horrible feeling of your head crushing itself while a plane descends. "Holy Crap," I thought to myself, "that was easy! I slept through the whole thing!" Moments later the pilot came on the intercom and said "Uhhhhhhh, folks, you've probably noticed" in his pilot-type voice "that we have begun a decent a little earlier than expected..." He continued to give no information except that we were making an emergency landing in Anchorage, Alaska and that he was going to be too busy to tell us what was going on while they landed.

I had to stop myself from writing letters to all my loved ones and putting them in plastic bags, which I consider doing about three times before I thought I would just accept my fate and see them all somewhere on the flip side... To make a long story short, Anchorage looks nice from inside the cabin of a plane and everyone on the flight missed their connections. We stayed in a Radisson Hotel in Narita, Japan where I saw these guys:



Oh man, totally cool Japanese Jazzers. They were layin' it down and I was soaking it in. Also I told the bartender I was with the airline and he accidentally gave me my beer for half off because he thought I was on the crew = Colin, the pilot. The bass player had this sparkly, America-colored bass with 'fuckaholic' and 'thc' stickers on it. When I turned on Japanese TV, I saw the phenom of saw players ripping it up on the saw with a bow and a hammer. ( I will post a video of this later - I almost cried because of how awesome this guy is. ) So I got free dinner and free breakfast and a free trip back to the airport. Also with a crap coupon the airline gave me I bought a beautiful bottle of Japanese 'shochu' which I am still not sure of, except that it tastes flowery and alcoholic.

I told the security at the Tokyo/Narita airport that I needed to see a supervisor because of the suspicious nature of what was in my bag but she said "just try once." So they pushed me through the detector and I saw them scrutinize my bag full of wires and buttons in homemade cases for all of two seconds before passing it through like it were a bag of candy. What a huge relief and a horrific reality at the same time. That shit could have been anything. They could have at least asked wtf it was.

I got to Seoul on Sunday afternoon after leaving home early Friday morning. A driver was waiting for me at the airport with my name (customs didn't even bother with me) - and I took some pictures on the way in to my crazy new life...






The pictures are from the airport to my place bottom to top, jsyk (just so you know)

While I was in the airport I spoke to a Chinese woman who said that Seoul buildings were too big and too small at the same time. I saw what she meant and someone here elaborated: 20 story buildings go up 10 at a time, all right next to each other in such a small amount of space. And all the buildings are the same. If they didnt all look exactly the same they would be ugly plain buildings with no relation to the land or skyscapes but because there are so many all next too each other, they create this weird bouquet of buildings that is at least interesting to see all uniform and scattered over a small space.

I want to tell you about the rest of my week but alas there is so much and my time here is but little in the scope of life. So until next time, Annyonghi gase yo (stay in peace)