I'm using facebook now.  i think thats the link, anyways. http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=642380706

 

Short and simple go to my other place: myspaces.com : http://www.myspace.com/manuelabroad 

It's too difficult to update two pages always,

First Food Journal Entry: Tuesday, September 9th, 2006 (I guess I'll stick these in periodically between my extremely rare blog entries)

Samgyeopsal:

Pictures of a typical Korean meal: Normally the bacon looking meat is double or more the portion and eaten by 2-4 people, but since I was alone (eating alone in Korea is not too common, at least not for Korean bbq), I got a smaller portion. However, the side dishes were as many as they are for 4 people, so this was a bit much food.  The fish pics are from a few days ago, when I went with some coworkers to a place. they ate the fish, and I ate rice.

So the meat meal is called Samgyeopsal, and it’s basically barbecued bacon type pork but much meatier than bacon, and just very different in general, however, still slightly of the same family.

It only cost me 7 bucks for the whole mean with all the side dishes, and in the end they give a free bowl of spicy or non spicy very thin and fine cold noodles along with a cup of some warm cow bone soup. The soup/drink is supposed to counter the spiciness of the noodles. But I didn’t' like it so much. By this time i was very full.

As to how to eat the meal, you simply wrap the mean in the lettuce (I don't know if you can see it in the pics?). The lettuce comes on a plate and is in 4 varieties. You also dip the meat in a salt liquid juice or the chili bean sauce and place it in the lettuce. I like to also add some grilled garlic cloves and some pieces of each of the side dishes. Then you eat it. So this goes on for as many pieces of meat wrapped in lettuce that you can eat or until it runs out and you order more meat and lettuce. Since I was alone, I didn’t need to do either, because I got pretty full.

Well that’s it for this meal. See my next email for my next meal

"excuse me for an hour or so, I have to go try to crush my skull - I have a headache",

Fucking headaches, sure the meds kinda work when i remember to take them! No so stupid, I forgot today and bam another hour long battle with the demons. There I was, my right hand plastered to my head and my right eye appearing as if swollen shut, all the while trying to bite my tongue and fight any hint of a painful moan or scream till I was safely home in the taxi--the taxi I had to rush home in before the demons took full control and caused me to lose all composure, crumpling to my knees, tossing and turning, whining like a little baby, and yes even causing that strange, and completely foreign salt like fluid to leak uncontrollably from my right eye. What did I do? I Swallowed double does of any medicine or pain pills I had, including the tablets for quick digestion (since in Korea there is no legal form of injectable imitrex or nasal spray for that fast acting effect), and then just rode the attack out in manic fashion which I am incapable of putting into words at the moment. But you can easily get plenty of good descriptions at that http://www.clusterheadaches.com/  site. This song/story from the site is a great metaphoric example:

Hey, Mic ... can I borrow the mike? A-a-a-ahem. is this thing on?

Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of death and waste. I've been around for a long long year - stolen many mens soul and faith. When Im around men scream "Jesus Christ!" in their moments of doubt and pain make damn sure doctors ... wash their hands and seal their fate. pleased to meet you ... hope you guess my name.

but what's troublin' you is the ... nature of my game.

YA-HOO ... YA-HOO

Uhhhhh ... scuse me ... but those arent the right words, there, friend.

Oh. Hi-i-i-i-i-i there. Yes, I know ... Ive changed a few of the lyrics ... it makes such a great theme song for my band.

Yea? Whats the bands name?

Cluster Headache. Were real headbangers. We play every night to a crowd of thousands. Our fans hate our music. Theyre sort of a captive audience. But we just LOVE to play. Would you like to join our fan club?

Your fans hate your music? Why are they still fans?

Maybe fans is the wrong word. Theyre really our prisoners. We make them listen to our music even though they hate it. The best part is when they tell other people about their captivity nobody takes them seriously ... I mean - just get up and leave the bar, right?

Right. So why do they stay ... and remain "fans"?

hmmmm. Lets see. Well, we give them lots of drugs!

Ooooh. I see.

Well, its not exactly like you think. Actually, they need lots of drugs because of our music.

Let me get this straight. They listen to your music and it makes them take drugs because they hate it so much? Thats crazy.

Heheheh ... yea. Isnt it cool? Most other people think theyre off their rockers too.

Cant they just walk away from you and get away from your music?

Sometimes. Usually, we follow them. Everywhere they go. In between songs some of them think theyve lost us. Thats really fun. We can wait until they think that and then crank up a real head bangin tune at the least opportune moment. It makes the music so much worse when theyre not expecting it.

Worse?

Yea ... like I keep saying ... they hate the music. We love that they hate it. The more they hate it the happier we are. Every musician wants his music to be appreciated.

Thats sick.

It gets better. You see, theyre the only ones that can hear our music. Even better, they can only hear it on side of their heads!! In a crowded room with all their friends and their family and coworkers, we can get down on a tune and make them look like complete boobs.

I dont understand.

Think of it ... were hammerin out a lick, louder and louder, they cant react because nobody else hears us. But they cant NOT react, either ... heheheh. Eventually, they cant ignore us anymore cause we REALLY get rockin. Our drummer has a way of doing a rif you would NOT believe. He can keep it up for hours, if need be.

He sounds very talented.

He is. The poor bastards punch themselves, scream, bitch, moan ... we actually get alot of them to try to run from us ... you should see them ... hahahaha ... its soooo funny ... they walk from room to room, shaking their silly skulls as if they could bounce the music out of their heads. Its pathetic. Its hilarious. So all those people, their friends, their families, the people they work with, even the strangers who just happen to luck into the show think theyre seeing the personification of insanity. Can you imagine?

As a matter of fact ... I cant. I would think they wouldnt go out if they thought you were going to start your ... music ... to torture them.

youre right. Unfortunately, after a couple of those concerts our fans tend to stay home. I mean, we can still play for them, but theres nobody there to see how funny they are. Except their families, of course. That makes up for some of the loss of public concerts, though. Families can be as much fun as public humiliation.

How so?

Well, it can go 2 ways. First, we establish the fact that our fan doesnt have both oars in the water. Piece of cake. Our music is sooo bad, no one that hears it has a chance of appearing normal in any sense of the word. Now if the family is strong, we can be as distasteful to them as we are to our fan ... theres just nothing they can do for this wretched groupie that they love so much. And our music makes our fans want to be a million miles away from everything ... to be alone ... its like if they sacrifice their whole existence, all of reality, well go away too since were part of that reality. They dont want to be touched, spoken to, or acknowledged in any way or sensation will bring them back to the music. That shit drives family members to tears. I love it!

And if the family is not strong?

Isnt that obvious?

Oh, yea, I guess so.

Weve given new meaning to "the band split up". In our case, thats followed by "... another marriage."

So theyre damned if they go out, and damned if they dont. ... Damn!

Pretty much. And then theres always work. They HAVE to go out to work. At least until we convince their boss that theyre worthless. Sometimes one or two midday concerts is enough.

This song of yours must be just awful.

Its not just A song. We play a lot of tunes. Our friends become connoisseurs of the pain ... they can tell which boogie were going to play just from the way we do the intro. But we have different songs. Variety is the spice of life, right?

Not a variety of pain causing music.

Why not? Its a trip. Sometimes a fan will find a way to block out one of our songs. If we played the same one all the time they might drop out of the fan club. So we move it around.

Move it around?

Yea. Different songs have different effects. Some produce a simple feeling of having half your scalp removed, some are painful.

I think having half my scalp removed would be painful.

Childsplay. Thats one of our opening numbers. Simple burning on the scalp. Just getting started. The real metal songs go inside.

Inside?

Yea, inside. Inside the head. Those songs can really rock. The guitarist can make you think hes using your optic nerve for his E-string. Thats really entertaining. The drummer stuffs one stick into your nostril and the shoves the other one up through the roof of your mouth and plays paradittles on the back of your eye, then finishes up with an Inna Godda da Vita solo on your upper teeth. And our bass player can put a note on the bridge of your nose that defies description ... it feels like a black hole in your forehead, mining its way through your nasal passage and cerebellum. Each song features a different band member. Sometimes we feature more than one member in a tune ... there are even some numbers where we all get into it at once - what a rush!! And we do ballads. Loooooong ones - not too loud - kinda quiet renditions of the songs Ive mentioned. Just to let our fans know we havent left the stage, you know - background music. So, you see, we have different songs that produce different results, and we play those songs at different volumes at different times. But its always the same band ... the same band. Every fan hates us in their own way. But they all hate us.

Cant any of them get away from you?

Like I said, sometimes. Were really busy, you know. Cant keep track of all of them all the time. some of them get away from us for a couple of months or years at a time. but mostly we find them again and bring them back into the "fold". Heheh. Its a blast to play again for a fan that hasnt heard us for a while. It just sinks their heart when they realize "were ba-a-a-a-a-a-ck!". God, I love this band.

Cant they have your music masked somehow? Its amazing how many things modern science can do today.

Even when one of them goes to a doctor theyre hosed. We dont have many fans. The chances of a doctor having heard about us are practically nil. Most doctors think our fans are as looney as their friends and family do. Sure, every now and then some high falutin medical student sees more than one of them and starts to think he can help them stop listening to us ... but none of them can - so far - and they only see a few fans anyway so theyre only a minor threat to the bands tour. No matter how you look at it, we have our fans behind the proverbial eight-ball.

... what about those drugs you said your fans use?

A sham. No drug company worth its stock is going to invest funds to help such a small clientele. All the drugs we get for them have been produced for other ailments or for pain in general. Some of those drugs just happen to suppress the ability to hear us play. But not to worry, most fans dont have the coin for the dope, and since its in the direct interest of insurance companies to deny coverage whenever possible, they wont be covered for anything that can be explained away as substance abuse or insanity.

Substance abuse?

Sure. Insurance companies rule! They make the doctors afraid to prescribe addictive pain suppressing drugs that make our music harder to hear, and label non addictive treatments ineffective and unproven. They collect the bread and tell our fans to go pee up a rope. Epidemiological studies are even used to describe our fans in such specific terms as to make the whole idea of research laughable. Like, theyre all male (loada crap - we LOVE female fans!), hazel-eyed (that one really slays me), bad complexioned (that ones sort of offensive), 20-something (we do NOT discriminate on the basis of age) drunken smokers. Those last two are really useful when insurance companies are determining the reason our fans can hear us. If the fan brought it on himself, so much better for the stockholders.

Pretty depressing for your followers.

You are the master of understatement. We can send our groupies lower than whale poop. They have to look up to see most ordinary peoples shoelaces. We kill a lot of them. Well, we dont actually kill them - the musics not fatal. But they off themselves because of our music. The great thing is no one ever blames the band - they blame the fan. Who ever heard of taking your life over a little headache ... ordinary people figure it must have been something else. By then most ordinary people think our fan was nuts anyway.

So what do your fans have to look forward to?

Up until lately, nothing. Last year this one smart ass fan thought he could start an insurrection, but its mostly crap.

Whatd he do?

Oh, he setup this website called http://www.clusterheadaches.com to let our fans know how many of them there are. That really pissed me off. The nerve of that creep.

You dont think that was justified? I mean, youre pretty hard on those people. Wouldnt you expect them to ... revolt or something?

I thought we had that covered.

How?

Well, the name of the band is Cluster Headache, right?

Right.

Does that suggest some indescribable, horrific, debilitating, other-wordly pain to you?

Well ... no.

PRECISELY! So calling it a headache makes it sound so normal, so known. But theres just no other word our fans can use to describe the feeling our music brings to them. I mean, its a pain in their head (most of them have a lower opinion of it ... nyuk nyuk) ... and a pain in your head is a headache ... and everyones had a headache, right? You just take 2 aspirin and lie down, right?

Right.

So when they say, "excuse me for an hour or so, I have to go try to crush my skull - I have a headache", their credibility goes right out the window. So they keep their mouths shut as much as possible and try to hide their ability to hear us play. So they never find out about each other. So they suffer alone. We like it that way. It makes it easier to make them feel and look like idiots.

And this website brings them together?

Yea ... they even tried to come up with another name for the band. See what I mean? Give those fans a little commiseration and they figure out one of our most successful ploys. Didnt work, though. There just isnt another word for a pain in your head. Its a headache. Pure and simple.

But the sites still online?

It is. We even targeted the webmaster. Tore his family apart. But he wouldnt bend. Hes even adding new shit to the site all the time. Boy, he pisses me off! And now hes got this guerilla group organized that think theyre gonna mount some sort of offensive against the band. Callin themselves OUCH or something. But its all a bunch of bull. Theyll never pull it off.

You seem pretty concerned about the site and all this activity against you.

Naaaaaa. Screw them. How can they fight us when we can bring them to their knees so easily?

They would have to be pretty tough hombres.

..... yeah .....

Damn Hot in Seoul: But going to Germany for two weeks, where I hear it's also Damn HOT!shootme

---At least airconditioning is standard in Korea, but not in Germany!!!!--------

 

Yup in Seoul Korea for people those who dont know,

much easier to get a job teaching English at a University then in the US, plus better pay and vacation. Far less taxes, nice life in general. Just needed a good resume, an MA, and to get lucky on the interview.

 

Ive never blogged and I dont think I will start now, but just to keep y'all  informed:

 

I just finished a 5 month contract teaching Elementary kids in Seoul, Korea (which was really tough! due to large classes), and will begin my new job in September. There is too much to tell, and Ive not the time, as I have to prepare those lesson plans but here are some links if you have time and are curious-

 

My new job: Teaching English to Education Majors at Korea University in Seoul

 http://www.korea.ac.kr/~eng/main.htm

 

Some new pics, check under august 2006 for the latest (however I want to edit and add, but for some reason the page comes out in Korean and I cant yet read, write or understand Korean (I now Im a fool for having been here 5 months and not yet made an effort, but really Ive been so busy and just need a pause from studying for once in my life):

http://manuellarashomepage.spaces.live.com/

 

Send me your skype name and Ill add you:

http://www.skype.com/

Ive got a Germany number and will soon have a US number as well, and with skype both will auto transfer to my cell phone if Im not home.

 

A site that is so Party Boy (Thomas of Canada) style, that you just have to wonder why he didnt do it first. Why didnt you do it first PB? Note: the dancing is better in the 2005 version.

http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/dancing.html

 

Some Blogs Im currently reading:

http://www.justin-klein.com/wordpress/post190

http://www.zenkimchi.com/index.php

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=77542571

http://youtube.com/profile?user=lonelygirl15

 

 

Some Freaky News to keep me away from those chat forums:

http://www.thekimchipot.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1278

 

About Those Headaches, no it isnt acting, but the new meds seem to be working for this years attack, anyhow:

http://familydoctor.org/035.xml

http://www.clusterheadaches.com/

http://homepage.mac.com/justinott/clusterattackclip.htm