an ajoushi is an old married man. soju is korea's contribution to the realm of alcohol. it tastes like alcohol. that is not good. im politely saying that it tastes like shit. it costs about 2 bucks a bottle and one can easily get totally pissed on one bottle. i would take about half a bottle. i greatly dislike soju. i also greatly dislike the ajoushi when he has consumed too much soju.
now let's talk about public drunken-ness. it is more or less a daily occurrence to see an ajoushi passed out on the street or in the subway. i once saw two drunk men in the jegi-dong station, completely passed out. they had taken off their shoes and prepared a small home with newspapers. then they went to sleep. carla and i once took a walk at lunch and saw a homeless bum completely sprawled out on the sidewalk. we were unsure if he was alive. he wasn't there the next day, so either he was buried or he woke up, sucked down some more soj, and found a new place to pass out. the thing that is strange is that if one passes out in the street here, they are likely to wake up with all of their belongings. if you passed out in public in most other places in the world, you would wake up without a wallet. but here, people just leave them be. i hope they wake up with the taste of vomit in their mouths. it doesn't matter; a quick swig of soju is likely to kill any germ.
now the reason i bring up the drunk ajoushi is because of an incident this afternoon. i was walking to my gym late this afternoon. i saw a man (we'll call him man 1) feeding some damn pigeons in the sidewalk where i normally walk. as i hate pigeons and am scared of getting shat on, i turned and took a different route. but then i saw another man (and he'll be called man 2) grab man 1 and drag him away. see, man 2 sets up shop on the sidewalk every sunday. he has some weird machines that puff rice and make these weird, bland rice cakes (america rice cakes are much nicer, chock full of artificial flavorings and colorings...mmm). i always avoid him because his machine seems to blow up about every 5 minutes when one of these strange rice cakes pops. its weird and im always scared that im going to end up with shrapnel in my body. anyway, man 2 was popping his cakes and im not sure what man 1 did, but he suddenly man 2 was dragging him off. man 1 had man 2's small metal stuck stuck on his foot. it was all rather bizarre and i wasn't really sure what was happening. i just figured that soju had been part of the equation.
as i walked home from the gym tonight, after completely forgetting about this incident, i saw man 1 lying on the ground, completely passed out. he only had one shoe off, but i believe that is because it just fell off of the old bugger as he was being dragged away.
i walk the same way when i go to the bus stop tomorrow morning for work. i pass that corner about 6:20 am everyday. i wonder if he will still be there. maybe i will kick him. he probably needs a good, firm kick in the ass. or another bottle of soj.
No comments:
Post a Comment