I have been observing people for a while, and as a part time teacher, I believe my observations have become more astute. I regularly depend on my ability to read a dozen faces at any given time and to try to pick up on what is there and what is not. I also walk around a tattoo-less country as a heavily tattoo'd ethnic minority -- I can read a subtle reaction 20 feet away.

For about six months now I have known a girl we'll call S.. When I met her it was a mere exchange of pleasantries on several occasions with mutual acquaintances and I made the mistake of forgetting her name, and thus was slightly embarrassed on what was the third or fourth meeting which was a more formal lunch time drinking session. She seemed disappointed, though in a way it seemed she was not surprised, and I did what any man of worth does: I took special care to seal her name away in my memories. Most other people indeed can be disappointed with name forgetting but her disappointment was different, almost as if my forgetting was some sort of morbid confirmation of something else.

S. is of average height, a little too skinny, none of the curves men look for; she has a soft, youthful face devoid of all healthy color yet also missing the silliness and fatigue that accompanies the pale vampires whose skin is so white due to their commitment to nightlife. She has just enough pimples on either cheek to go noticed but not to necessarily mar her plain looks. She has braces, still, at the age of 20  or 21. Her hair is plain, dyed a subtle color of brown and she has a perm that is an attempt at a classic, timeless look that only serves to remind me of the late 1990s.

I did not see her during the summer break but my second week back I went to a small dinner party where she was at, and after some initial conversation she gave pause for a second and asked me, using my full name, "Do you remember my name?" I said her name, faithfully remembered, back at her and an unexpected smile came on her face and I used the opportunity to talk about how hard it is to remember names, as if to emphasize the fact of my memory of it.

10 minutes later another man arrived and he received the same question at some point, during introductions, "Say, Jinseob, how are you? Do you remember my name? We've met a few times." He did not remember her name. Understandable, really. She is an unremarkable person making typical small talk, the sort of person who usually sits at the end of the table.

Today I saw her in the hall -- I saw her see me and look forward. I knew what she was waiting for. I pulled my earplugs out and bowed slightly, she bowed deeper, I exclaimed her name and she smiled sincerely and warmly with a glow in her eyes I hadn't seen before, and she gave me a bow more befitting a 7 year old student of mine than a peer, and I told her we'd talk later. Really, I should have went over and began chatting with her to savor the moment longer, but I had Nargaroth at a very loud volume.

On the way home I thought about it... There is some sadness to this tale. A very kind, gentle, friendly soul who feels as if she has no name, no place. I imagine she has a beautiful sister or cousin or brother and gets to hear her family fawn over them while she gets questions like 'how is class?' I imagine she is amongst the ranks of women who have never had a "real" boyfriend, and if they had had a boyfriend it was certainly a boy of similar caliber whose name is seldom remembered.

The next time I see her I will get her phone number. She deserves to get text messages at 10:30 PM on Tuesday night, "Hey, where are you? We are drinking!" She deserves to get an invitation every time I decide to roll out on the town, and she deserves to have her name somewhere in all of the stories that my mates and I are making; and if she is quiet, meek, shy, or Hell, if she does not particularly enjoy my company, the mere fact that she was invited is a pleasant gesture.

The least we can do for one another is to remember each others names and invite one another for a drink on a cold winter night.

It is Chuseok. No work until Sunday. No school until Sunday. Drink some booze, have some laughs, rock on.

I will do a lot of reading and a lot of... Other things? Hopefully not too much drinking.

Going out with Yongho and whomever he has with him; we will have a good night, I am sure, as it always is.

Thought of the day: A wise man does not lament the living nor the dead. (Bhagavad-Gita, 2.11).

There was a girl that I was off and on dating (the one from the miserable week) and she has just gotten with a different guy, so that has ended. I overcompensated and went too slowly (or something like that).

Now I just need to relax, sit back. Reorient myself. She had simply begun ignoring me and when I confronted her today about it over messenger no less she was unapologetic and merely matter of fact. Unapologetic about the way she simply stopped answering calls.

There is anger and a sense of inadequacy -- it is the inadequacy that kills. Normally I would translate the inadequacy into sadness but I have decided to try to transform it into coldness; cool, distancing coldness that I can put into my heart and hopefully quench the fire that exists there.

Contact with others can produce pain because we attach some sort of hope and dream; a hope and a dream that they did not necessarily ask for us to attach. Perhaps that is ultimately impolite of us but it is so human.

Regardless, we have to channel this differently. I have been burning myself. I've had too much passion and not enough rational thought or patience, not enough discipline. This is something perhaps borne of the days of money when nothing could frustrate me because I had my outlets, and in my poverty I have become a shorter, meaner person.

Regardless, that's that.

It seems I only write here when it concerns pain. That is bad form. It gives the wrong impression.

Something hilarious happened today, but was understandable...

Today in my modern German philosophy class a girl I did not know asked me if 'Bo-bil' (the Koreanization of my actual last name) was my Buddhist name... At first I almost laughed, but then it suddenly made a small amount of sense...

A caucasian man studying philosophy in Asia with lotus flower tattoos visible on his arms and a non-anglo sounding last name... Put it up against some of the basic Indian vocabulary and names with Koreanized pronunciations -- Gumal, Puligandla, Abidya, Gobal, Balma, Benales, Belubanya, Bobil... It does not sound out of place and when people are learning English in Korea they get typical anglo last names in texts (Brown, White, Johnson, Smith, Richards, Simmons, Irving, etc.), many not having much of a concept of how diverse anglophone last names can be.

I guess it vaguely made me nod my head a little. It was understandable if you go White Guy > Asia > Philosophy > Lotus tattoos > Buddhism > Indian Buddhist name?

In actuality... I am somewhat impressed on the long line of thought. It reminded me of some Sherlock Holmes logic.

She went on to ask other vaguely interesting questions that you normally didn't get, (e.g. 'Are you living here with your whole family?') I committed her face and name to memory and made a mental note that we need to talk more in the future.

A great series of catastrophes.

My guitarist is in so much financial turmoil he likely will have to leave the country. It is just annoying and I want it all just to come to an abrupt end as opposed to being painfully dragged out.

Eunhwa sent me a polite text stating that she could not meet Monday night as we had arranged, and that we should meet Tuesday. On Tuesday she did not answer any phone calls. On Wednesday she did not answer my solitary phone call in the evening, and tonight as well she did not answer my phone call.

How can things go from gracious and decent to this?

And now Yang Yang hates me. I spoke to her on the phone for an hour and convinced her to meet me the next day and then she got bipolar quickly.

Really, I am sick of this stuff. When I am not messing things up they are.

What a miserable week.

Tomorrow there is going to be a party -- here is to hoping it is not shit like the rest of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9bdbLWZlqg

Very solid song and good video from Coldworld. Really masterfully done.

The voice of the singer itself seems to sound like frost personified.

Going out with Eunhwa tonight. Should be fun.

Qpawn is starting back up and I am playing as South Korea. google the game if you are interested at all.

My home computer is having problems but, Oh, OK; it is only 35 cents an hour at my favorite internet cafe.

I am a street fight watcher. I live in an area where 4 colleges converge within a 5-6 kilometers and I live right near all the best bars; the rent is cheap for the students and the only other folk who bother living in the immediate vicinity are pensioners and the sort of Korean working class folk that only speak in the mean tones of Kyeongsang.

I get to see fights about once a month, while I am walking home from here or there or sometimes I get the pleasure of viewing one while I am sitting at an outdoor table getting wasted.

Last night I catch the tail end of a fight; almost all the action has died as the Police are there, but one man is too intoxicated to care and the others are willing to engage minimally.

I stop dead in my tracks. There is always that one part of the brain that says, "You should just keep going. The action is pretty much over." But there is the more primordial part of the brain that is pumping testosterone at the sight of swinging fists and angry faces which keeps saying "There's still more! Enjoy it while you can!"

My eyes study the faces of each person in those bits where people are between them half-heartedly trying to break it up; even the cops look unmotivated. At one point the short, homely man breaks away from everyone and grabs the tall, pretty boy by the neck and smashes him a few times in the side of the head while slamming him against a car. These were the last throws of the battle and soon the Police isolate the belligerent, shorter fellow and begin writing him up. He protests and at one point drags a cop with him down to the ground before the other can smack him; two other cops shortly thereafter pull up.

The tall, pretty boy's girlfriend is crying and examining his neck for marks while his friends are now acting courageous by insulting the subdued man; I laugh to myself. You're kidding me? You are going to heroically insult the man who was smashing up your friend [i]after he is arrested?[/i] Wow, you guys are a real bunch of winners.

It was easy to judge by clothing: the pretty boy's entourage were in their latest metrosexual polos and capri pants (yes, Asian men wear capri pants). Short man is a bit older and is wearing an oversized t-shirt and no name brand shorts; it looks like he had no dentist work during the 1990s or 2000s and the way he says 'Shyang' and 'Shwi' instead of 'Ssang' and 'Sshi' spells it out more plainly; this is merely the Asian equivalent of the rural versus the urban.

It was a good scene that made me think:

A rural man in cheap clothes outnumbered by taller, more cowardly men with feminine appearance and demasculating self-restraint is arrested. Then, the tall girly boys suddenly lash out now that the dog is on a leash and can't come near. Perhaps this will be the theme of the 21st century.

All of the Western powers talking about environmental protection to keep the impoverished nations from industrializing properly, walking about fat and sated, lazy, indulgent libertines that spend billions of dollars on legislation and political movements concerned with health care plans for fat, elderly people and legalization of gay marriage while in Uganda people struggle to get clean water and the biggest issue facing Cambodian politicians is, "How can we stop people from having sex with all of our child prostitutes?"

Oh, and the posing! All of our politicians are tall, pretty boys in capri pants painting themselves as noble and strong yet dignified, intelligent, restrained and modern. They wouldn't share an original, heart felt thought if it didn't reflect well in the polls (and then, they'd hire someone to re-word their thought so as to gain the maximum appeal and to take out all of the parts that would make it seem that there was some sort of ideology present that might alienate the smallest segment of the population).

I would like to announce that I am going to drink alcohol less in the future.

I am limiting myself greatly. I might even spend the entire month alcohol free. The reasons are as follows:

(1) I like to jog; when I haven't gotten drunk for 3 days, I can run 10K and feel good. When I got drunk yesterday and I jog, I run 4K and want to die. I do not need to have a chicken & beer night twice a week to simply put on weight I will have to burn on continuous jogging. If I did not get drunk so often I would be far healthier and thinner.

(2a) I was nearly arrested for walking into an old woman's apartment last week; it was 4 AM and I was doing a beer run and I got lost, and an old woman began screaming and knocking on everyone's doors while I was still so intoxicated I didn't know what was going on and I searched her apartment for my friends. I was in a blacked out state, and luckily, it was at least the right building and my friends saved me.

Next time I could be arrested and deported.

(2b) 3 weeks ago I woke up and there was a woman's, thin, light hoodie on my floor. I drank too much at a friend of a friend's birthday party the night before and remember it being a hell of a time. I have no idea what happened, but I do know that in all likelihood there was a woman who wears a smallish hoodie at my house. I did a quick search of the premise for used condoms. There were none; perhaps I flushed them down the toilet. Perhaps I did not have sex. Perhaps I had sex without a condom. Perhaps a beautiful woman came to my home and wanted something from me and I fell asleep. Shameful. Perhaps an ugly woman came to my house and I contracted a disease. More shameful. Perhaps I impregnated a college aged woman in a country where abortion is illegal. Ultra shameful.

We will never know. None of my friends can give me information.

The possibilities are as endless as the consequences.

(2c) Last week I met someone for the first time... For the fifth time. I had gotten drunk with this character four previous times and have zero memory. He was very upset, to say the least, and I am sure there are others like him. Forgetting and blacking out is not charming. He forgave me but I doubt others will be as forgiving as him.

(3) I could be a better student and a better worker if I drank less.

(4a) If I spent just one night a week working on my novel instead of drinking I could potentially fulfill a dream.

(4b) My writing has been limited by alcohol. The themes become all the same and they are easily pigeonholed. I do not think I would be good at writing a book where the primary plot is "Let's get drunk and find some girls, bang them or miserably fall on our faces, and then talk about it and insert coffee shop pseudo-intellectual observations for 500 pages."

(5) I actually do have a religion. "Not being a hypocrite" is probably a good idea.

Basically, it is simple:

I can continue doing this and end up with long term health problems, forgetting a lot of cool things and doing a lot of stupid things, not productively studying or writing and potentially facing legal problems.

Or, I can drink less, get a better, healtheir body, not forget people nor forget events, learn a lot more and maybe even fulfill my dream of being a published author.

I am 25 -- I should establish good habits that will stick with me for the rest of my life; I should buckle down. I properly wasted my early twenties in a sea of alcohol & immaturity. Now, I need to be productive for a time.

I think I have the willpower to do it. I admit that yesterday I even just saw a soju bottle and I felt it call out my name, but fuck, I am stronger than a bottle. I'm going to do the right thing because it will better my life.

I want to be 40 years old and not wonder... "What if I tried hard to write that book when I was in my 20s?"

Perhaps I will use this as a place to put all of my failed writings and other random musings.

Drank too much yesterday -- I had a cold so that was a bad idea.

Good punk show in the park.

I am currently fascinated with the antarctic.