Shennanigans

It's been a long week.

I have been doing an intensive class at eleven-fifteen, and working on evaluations after work until ten or eleven for the past week. I haven't been to the gym in over a week. This weekend marks the culmination of the "Battle of Hansan" Festival. How naive of me to think I wasn't going to drink.

Last night, around 2 AM. Here's the scene:

Some friends and I are sitting around near the turtle ship. We are drinking and smoking and passing around the guitar under the soft blue light leaking from the massive stage erected for Sunday. The light technicians are tooling around, making sure everything works.

We set out for a nori-bang about an hour ago, and never quite made it. There are a couple Vancouverites that we met earlier in the crowd. I didn't notice it happen, but the crowd of three or four hundred has dissolved almost entirely.

There are some high school student milling about us, practicing their four-hundred English words, and having a good time. We offer them beer, and they decline. There are a couple of ajossis too (old men), drunk to the gills, and making a nuisance of themselves. The older the ajossi, the more he feels he must drink, and usually the more obnoxious he becomes. Last month, I had an ajossi sit down next to me, rambling in incomprehensible Korean, with one eye caked in blood. He repeatedly made grabs for my penis.

The ajossis around us this evening, helped themselves to our beer and drank deeply. The wife of one of them bought us food and apologized for her husband's rude behaviour. He responded by yelling at his wife and ignoring her. The same guy began harassing one of the male high school students. We diffused the interaction before it became a problem. He responded by throwing a chair at one of the two high school girls. After that, we decided it was time to leave.

Imagine my dread when coming upon a road block (despite taking the back way to avoid this kind of encounter.) Well, I figured the worst that would happen is that I would have to pay a fine to get my bike back, to I took a breath and went through the block.

To my utter shock, I didn't blow over. The officer posed to Luke (who I took along for the ride),

"helmet?" To which he replied,

"Meh."

And off we went.