Wow, looky here. Two posts in two days. I'm impressing myself. This is all part of OPERATION BLOG REHABILITATION. This place used to be a happening party of reflection, silly stories, and abuse on the comments board, but FACEBOOK had to come along and shit in the soup. Well, these posts show up over there as well these days, where they are, sadly, much more read than here. Screw it, I'll bask wherever the sun is shining. It's unlike an attention-slut such as myself to be picky about where it comes from.

Let me relay you a story about my first day of the year:

Last Thursday - New Year's Eve - I left my house in a frenetic sprint (I was late) and began the evening in PNU, which is the big university are in Pusan for any and all of you unKorean people out there. Sammy and I dined on Turkish food in a frigid basement restaurant. We were the only guests, save a table of about 15 chain-smoking Pakistani guys, who surreptitiously swigged off a whisky bottle (if you drink fast enough, Mohammed can't catch you) and shouted demands at the beleaguered proprietor of the joint, a squat Turkish guy who looked like a sweating meatball.

After dinner we headed to The Basement, for their big New Year's Party. My band was playing, so it was kind of a gig for me, as well. Sam felt sick and went home early, thinking he was coming down with the flu. The place filled up and I proceeded to drink beer like water at an oasis, and by the time we went on, you could say that I was indeed, totally caned. But we played and rocked and the people seemed to like us or be too drunk to care, and around 4AM the buses pulled up to take us to the beach.

Matt, the owner of The Basement - also owns a small bar called Blowfish out on Seongjeong Beach, so he chartered two buses to take the party out there. The idea was that we'd end the night at Blowfish and catch the first sunrise of the new year, a tradition in Korea. So before I knew it we were at the bar, drinking more beer and yes, watching the sun peek out from behind the horizon. It was beautiful, stirring, and really, really cold.

It had been cold the whole day before, with a Siberian wind whipping down onto The Peninsula. It hadn't let up in the morning, and the result was a painful beach. The wind cut through my clothes and made standing outside of the bar pretty much unbearable.

But all of the entering and exiting the joint had made the inside of the bar frigid as well. At one point I was talking to an English girl. Her face is a grey blur to me now, but she was very cold, and wanted to warm up in my coat - a big fuck off army parka I bought in Seattle last year. So, being a gentlemen of the highest stripe, I accommodated the lady and let her try it on. In the meantime, I had to pee, and went to the bathroom at the back of the place. There was a bit of a line, and it took me a few minutes to get back inside. Once I was, I saw the Little Miss Britain was nowhere to be seen.

"Have you see an English chick wearing a big black coat?"

"Oh, you mean *****? Yeah, she just went home."

She went home. With my coat, which also contained my phone. And my keys. I was fucked.

Some of her friends still lingered at Blowfish, and they gave me her number, which we tried calling, but English girl wasn't picking up. We then tried my phone as well, but, no luck.

"Oh, she's really flaky," her Irish friend confided. "She often gets really drunk and does stuff like this."

Great.

Not knowing really what to do or where to go, I hung out for a few more hours into the late morning, badgering her friends, turning evil and cranky, and generally being a miserable tit who managed to make myself well hated by this crew of degenerate Paddies and Brits. Eventually Pat, who owns The Crown, offered to share a cab with me back there, which we did, and then promptly passed out in the dank, cold bar.

I awoke that evening in the dark, shivering, to the smell of stale beer, cigarette smoke, and the faint scent of urine. The first thing I did was track down the slip of paper where I had written this girls' number and proceed to call her via the house phone. Again, no answer. My phone, no answer.

So I had a bit of an episode, a meltdown, as it were. I screamed. I attacked a chair. I repeatedly employed the word "cunt."

Pat woke up, gave me a look of death, and poured me a beer.

Happy New Year.

After half a beer and most of a cigarette (There goes my resolution, shit!), I dug through my wallet and found another piece of paper with her friend's number that I had barely managed to scrawl down in my drunken state. I called it. She picked up.

"I just want my coat. I really need my coat."

"I understand that. I'll try to reach my friend."

"I just want my coat. Where the fuck is my coat?!!?

"Why are you shouting at me? Don't shout at me!!" (click)

Oops.

Ten minutes later the phone rang. I pick it up. It's English girl, on someone else's line. She was sorry. She had lost her phone. She'd get my coat to me that night.

And she did. It took about four hours of phone tag and talking to drunken vegetables, but eventually she put the coat in a taxi and I guided the driver to my location, the saddest bar in Busan.

Finally! My jacket! Warmth! Communication! Keys... keys? No, keys.

My keys were gone.

"Sorry, I never saw any keys," English girl replied during that last conversation.

Sam joined me at The Crown and we got good and fuzzy on shitty beer. Later on we shared at taxi back towards his place. We live near each other (heterosexual life mates) and I considered sleeping on his floor. Earlier, though, a Korean friend had text me the number for a locksmith, so I gave it a call and he picked up, agreeing to come over. I got out of the cab to wait for him.

It was then that I realized I had no money. So I walked three blocks to the bank, but the ATM's close down after midnight. I then jumped in a taxi over to Sam's, borrowed 40 bucks, and went back to my place, just in time for locksmith ajosshi to pull up in his van.

He got out. We boarded my elevator and made our way up. We stepped out of the elevator, and approached my door.

There, in my keyhole, hung ALL OF MY KEYS. They'd never left the building. In my mad rush out the door, I'd neglected to pocket them at all.

Happy New Year, Chris. Keep settin' that bar high.

Happy New Year.

It is finally Sunday night (or Monday morning, actually), and I'm now alone. This long New Year's weekend chewed me up, passed me through its rotten booze-ulcered guts, and shat me out an a cold cold Sunday. I've been meaning to get reflecty about the last ten years but have been too engaged with parties, concerts, comedy sets, rivers of beer, and a grand quest to regain my coat, phone, and self-respect that ended oh-so-ironically. Yes, we were barely a day into the decade before my first grand redner was committed. More later.

Instead, like every other narcissistic navel-gazer on my friends' list, I'll take the opportunity to write about this last decade...

It's been a herky jerky ride in which I've seen my youth slip from me faster than the bodily fluids of a guy with typhoid. No longer am I that fresh faced kid out of art school, armed with a useless diploma, a smoking habit, and 'I'm gonna change the world' convictions, but I'm now a man pushing forty, with skid marks of grey above my ears and an ever-increasing web of crows feet around my cynical eyes.

I started "The Oughts" in Seattle, where I stuck around long enough to load up my Geo Metro and head to sunny Hell-A, despite the fact that I had just gotten together with a girl that I was nuts for and was regularly performing all over town. I regretted the second I pulled out of the city, but Hollywood's suck could not be resisted, and soon I was esconced in a big house in the Echo Park Hills with my fellow theater comrades, the boys from Piece of Meat Theatre.

2000-03 was spent in L.A., where I came face to face with that frightening visage of Failure, along with her bitch of a sister, Complete Fucking Misery. Despite a productive couple of years - we did a load of shows and cranked out scripts and waited for that day when Ben Stiller would be on speed dial - I LOATHED L.A. The place literally made my skin hurt. So in February of '03 I unceremoniously bailed. It was sudden and ugly - like the last helicopter from the American embasssy in Saigon; any semblance of dignity was puked up in front of everyone to behold, and soon I found myself back in green,wet Seattle. I remember spending my time eating discount Chinese food while watching footage of W's new Iraq War. Despite the fact that I was utterly broke, I magaged to sort out a place to live and pick up work, and spent a reasonably happy 9 months back in a place with clean air, good bars, and four distinct seasons.

In late 2003 I was coaxed into heading out to Chicago, to go on tour with a washed-up industrial band whose music I didn't even like. This proved to be a shitty idea, as my friend who invited me into the band lost his mind in a spiral of serious paranioa, convinced that government agents were trailing his every move. I did the tour - which pretty much sucked - since everyone hated our band and our singer was a douchebag, and at the end of it I was abandoned in Chicago by my increasingly unstable friend. I stuck out a very lonely and cold winter - spending much of my free time holed-up in the room I was subletting and reading travel books that I borrowed from the public library. I had always been passionate about travel and had done some to England, Ireland and Germany. I then felt stuck, and every line I read in those books just made me want to escape on a molecular level. There was a giant real world outside of the borders of America and I wanted to see it. So... I decided then and therefor that I would.

I was soon back in my hometown of Olympia - where I hadn't lived in over 13 years - suddenly shacked up with a girl that I had know when I was a teenager who came back into my orbit. This proved to be very short-lived, thank God, as we quickly found out that we in fact hated each other, but I am thankful to her for helping to extricate me out of a terrible situation. The fact that I replaced it with another terrible situation somehow didn't bother me at the time, or maybe I was just trying to tred water.

By that June of ('04), I was splitting time by staying at my friend Scott's place and spending time with my parents, whose health was already beginning to slipt. But after some years of being far away, it was great to reconnect with my parents. The time we spent together was just lovely, full of great, long meals and honest talk and laughter, real laughter. Nobody could laugh like my dad. He had a deep belly-laugh that could shake a mountain. After answering an ad on the internet, I found myself on a plane to Busan, Korea, supposedly for "just one year" before I headed to grad school. Well, five have passed and I'm still here.

Coming here was a revelation. I was immediately happy, in fact, I had regretted not doing it sooner, when I was younger. Not only did I have a decent-enough job with a free apartment, but within a week I had a set of friends AND a hot girlfriend. It was as if, when arriving at immigration, I was handed a big bag containing a BRAND NEW LIFE.

Since coming to Korea I've traveled to following countries: Japan (3 times), China(3 times), Vietnam, Laos (3 times), Cambodia (twice), Thailand (3 times), New Zealand, and Myanmar (very briefly but I got the fuckin' stamp). I've been back home five or six times and am heading to The Philippines in a couple of weeks. I've managed to save some money, despite spending a grip. I've met some great, great people. I've played music, done a lot of comedy (once getting arrested for it). Most importantly, I've done a lot of writing, especially travel writing, and have been published for real and all over the web and even won an award last year (hooray for me). This is what I'm most passionate about and where I'll be focusing me energies in the future. New Decade's resolution? Write, write, write! ...and don't go ever go to the casino again. Oh, yeah, don't get too fat, either.

Out of all of the craziness of "The Oughts" - and it has been fucking nuts - losing both my parents has been the most seismic event, one that I'm grappling to comprehend every day. I miss them both incredibly. There is a deep sadness that I carry with me everywhere, but this has given way to some peace and joy even. I sounds like a cliche but it is true, I assure you. When they're gone, the memories live on. Especially the good ones.

Ten years have passed in an exhilation, the speed of which does horrify me. Does this perception of time just speed up exponentially with age? If that's the case, it just reiterates that we don't have too much time down here, so we gotte enjoy our allotments the best we can. And that's what I will continue to do, whatever the hell comes my way. Given the state of the world, I'm not terribly optimistic, but I still won't let it get me down.

Biggest Korean news story of 2009? (pick up to 3)

Fmr. President Roh committing suicide 69 (73%)
SMOE firing 100 teachers before arriving in Korea 20 (21%)
Naver / Anti-English Spectrum spat 16 (17%)
ATEK forming 2 (2%)
Swine flu infection / protection / quarantine 42 (44%)
'Haeundae' piracy - and irony 3 (3%)
Fmr. President Kim Dae-Jung's death 16 (17%)
Dokdo, round whatever 4 (4%)
Minerva 9 (9%)
The economy going kaput 15 (15%)

Total votes cast: 94.
Not scientific, poll based on people who wanted to respond, yadda yadda yadda.


© Chris Backe - 2009

This post was originally published on my blog, Chris in South Korea. If you are reading this on another website and there is no linkback or credit given, you are reading an UNAUTHORIZED FEED.