I feel dyslexic today. If you find spelling errors, keep them safe from sunlight, kids and cats and store them below 25°C!
18.
The number of days I have left in Seoul. Weather’s gotten warm again (>27°C every day), so that sleeping in my room becomes quite a sweaty process. Luckily, mosquitoes have not conquered the goshiwon yet so that I’m able to sleep through once I’ve fallen asleep.
On June 13rd, there are local elections in Korea, which means election campaigns and all corresponding fun observations! I’m not too immersed in Korean politics, but it seems that the political debates within the election campaigns are mainly focussing on the air pollution, gender issues and the education system and its role in the high youth unemployment rate. But the more interesting part is the advertisement politicians make. They have been handing out business cards for a long time, but recently you start to see transporters with modified cargo room roaming around (see the picture below; they kinda remind me of Pimp My Ride) and propagating speeches through megaphones docked onto the vehicles. The modified cargo room is rebuilt into a mini-stage with a big poster or a screen on the back wall, occasionally hosting some person with a mic busting out imperatives even while that thing is moving! The first news articles about angry citizens being robbed of their sleep because of the shouting starting at 7am are already making their way into national news papers.
My brother has been here and has returned home again in one piece, which slightly calms my mother. It was a nice time having him here, I forgot how well our senses of humor fit together! Besides food and sightseeing (in which I, too, discovered new places in the city), I also took him to the buddy program’s thursday pub, to karaoke, to arcade halls and PC bangs – pretty much everything he dreamt of seeing and experiencing in Seoul! While we both enjoyed the time together, we are also both happy to have parted ways after 13 days, as Seoul doesn’t offer more to see for him and I have other plans for myself so that I can’t constantly spend time with him (which, as with every person, can get very stressful without breathing room).
Fun fact: Just as expected, he came with way too much clothing for himself and me, thanks to our overly worried mom. Not that I devalue mom’s care, it’s just that I now have >20 sets of socks, underwear and t-shirts in my 3.9775 square meter room and I won’t be able to travel back with more than half of it.
With my brother, I played videogames for the first time since last October, which was probably the longest time without them since I got my first Game Boy when I was 5 years old. I think that with this prolonged detoxication period, I finally made my peace with online games which was a laster I took with me all the way from early secondary school. After having used up all my remaining hours on my PC Bang accounts, I will definitely play video games now and then, just not as regularly as I’ve used to back in Germany. I’ve just come to realize that even with cutting-edge equipment, playing online games (which have been always team-based for me) alone is dull. Concluding: Video games will always be a part of my life, but from June 22nd I will maintain enough distance to them to rightfully render myself a so-called casual gamer.
Two weeks of university left and I am looking foward to finally having them behind me, not because I don’t like my subjects but because my motivation to submit to these subjects’ way of progress is very low. At least, there’s frisbee in between! This weekend’s season finals will probably be the most intense flying disc session yet. Following up is a week of goodbyes before finally leaving the city, most likely for Busan and then four weeks of Japan.
51.
The number of days till I’m home again.