Christmas Papa frita

Our vacation south to the states of Goa and Kerala was a welcome, two week escape from Delhi and the cold. These two weeks included both Christmas and New Year, so from the first stages of planning we knew we were going to have to do something awesome for New Year. Christmas is great, but it really is a family holiday. New Year, however, is an awesome holiday to celebrate the promise the future holds and that promising future can be enjoyed with friends, family, strangers, or by yourself if that’s your jam. We had run through a few different ideas of how we wanted to cross over into 2014, but the idea of hiking to the highest peak in South India was quickly realized to be an impossibility with just a quick internet search. Next was the thought that we could spend the night on a houseboat on the backwaters of Kerala (Houseboat = boat with a hotel room on it, Backwaters = an elaborate series of canals and lakes spotted with islands which runs directly into the Ocean making much of it brackish.) That became unfeasible because traveling south turned out to be more difficult than we figured it would be so we wouldn’t make it to Alappuzha (one of the centers for backwater tours) in time. Finally, after much painstaking research (talking to someone at a tourist center), we decided that we would extend our stay in the city of Kochin to include the 31^st to the 1^st. This would mean returning to Kochin after just one night away in the beautiful, mountainous region of Munnar. And why, pray tell, did we decide to do that? Because, gentle reader, we wanted to see Santa burn.

At around 10:00 New Year’s Eve, after dinner, we hit the street and headed down to the beach front. It was crowded, but not the busiest I’d seen it even in the short time we had been there. We walked down the beach, but the crowds of people seemed to be evenly split between walking towards and away from where we believed the festivities were to be paramount. This seemed odd as I figured this was really the big celebration in Kochin – the south Indian Ball-Drop, if you will. Just as I was starting to consider turning us around or asking directions, assuming I had misunderstood the instructions I had gotten after our tickle massage (don’t wanna talk about it), Carrick pointed ahead and off to one side and said “There.” That we had arrived was evident by the large crowed gathering around a raised concrete area surrounded by police with “Lathis” which are basically nightsticks only longer. On this concrete platform, behind the police and busy with officials and drummers entertaining the masses, was the reason everyone had gathered. In the center of it all was a nearly thirty foot tall Santa Claus. He wasn’t dressed in the traditional Red and White that we have come to know but rather a brown hat, a greenish-brown corduroy jacket, and a cane in his hand. 

As the time got closer to midnight the officials started to stir and he was draped in a garland of firecrackers. This most combustible of accessories was to be the ear-busting fuse to start the effigy. Now, I’m pretty sure I’ve done my part to express how loud and concussive the firecrackers here are, but just in case you’ve missed that particular PSA, here it is again in summary: “Very.” So with that in mind when I saw them wrapping Mr. Claus, or Christmas Papa as Wikipedia would have me believe he is known in this region, in yards and yards of firecrackers, I became a bit weary of how near we were standing. Which could be described as: “quite.”

The crowd filled in as time brought Santa closer and closer to immolation. At one point a police (I finally got around to watching the first season of The Wire) came over and recommended that Saadia, our female travel cohort, coworker, and friend, move over to a different area. She declined and the officer moved on. We later figured out that the officer had been directing her to a women’s only area which had been boxed off with heavy metal barricades. It was a good idea she didn’t accept this advice as what happened next actually managed to bend and topple several of these dividers. Knowing Saadia she would have been pressed right up against them, with her camera held high, only to get excellent footage of her own tragic death.

At ten seconds ‘til, someone struck a flare. The fuse was lit moments after and then, rather unsurprisingly in retrospect, the Christmas Papa ignited so quickly that it was really less of an effigy and more of an anthropomorphic bomb. The people in the crowd in front of us pushed back hard to escape the blast and intense heat. This created a human crush which knocked Carrick and Saadia and many others lesser than myself down. I managed to keep my feet, either through concert experience or dumb luck, and I and everyone else who managed to stay upright began hauling people to their feet. Once everyone was up I finally had the mind to look up and see what had become of the old man.

This.

After the initial panic, everyone had started cheering, yelling, and dancing. The drummers were pounding away and the atmosphere, not the one filling with cubic kilometers of smoke but the figurative atmosphere, was one of incredible mirth and camaraderie. The fact that people’s reaction to the panic and push was to stop and help those who had fallen is really worth noting. Not every crowd I’ve been in is like that, so when you see it you know you’re in the right kind of place; a fact quickly juxtaposed by the place we ended up about an hour later.

The flames and the crowd began to die down, so we decided to head back towards our hotel but through the back streets so we could see the festivities as we went. Turns out that other than the beach party there wasn’t a whole lot to see. Many families had created their own normal sized Christmas Papa effigies to burn at home, but those had long since died out. We decided on our way back to grab a beer before settling in for the night. Carrick doesn’t drink, but Saadia and I both do. We swung by a restaurant or two, but they weren’t serving alcohol for one reason or another. Finally we found a place that had people in it drinking, but it had closed its gates for the night. Saadia managed to talk our way in (Carrick and I assisting with what he calls the “white pass”), assuring them that we would not order food. We got our drinks and sat happily watching the waiting staff making use of the openness of the restaurant and the fact that it was closed to dance and throw water on each other. It was a wonderful scene, but all the while people had begun to gather around the outside of the fence surrounding the seating area. The growing crowd would come over and try to bum alcohol or cigarettes. Some just stood and stared. Slowly the mirth died away as more and more of a mob started to form outside. The final straw was when a number of drunks on the outside broke one of the gates, which had been chained shut off, of its hinges. Much of the outside crowd was run off by the employees, but that somehow led to an internal conflict. It’s hard to say what happened, but it might have been because one of the workers stopped another from going after the people who damaged the gate. From here the tension grew, so Saadia (yet again demonstrating her impressive abilities of persuasion) managed to convince them to give us a second round for the road. There was a while before the crowd outside thinned enough and some of the tension subsided so that we could actually leave without (or with less) fear of being mobbed for attention or possibly violently. Finally we left and walked, quickly, across the gravel lot to our hotel. It took me a few embarrassing minutes to manage to get my beer opened without a bottle opener (the solution, turns out, was to give it to Saadia AKA the problem solver), and I had just taking my first sip when more fighting broke out in a small house next to where we were staying.

At first it just seemed to be a yelling match, which Carrick and I watched closely, but the second a punch was thrown we ran down the stairs (four flights) and onto the property of the kerfuffle. The violence of the fight shocked us both. Two people were curled up on the ground with separate groups surrounding them being kicked, stomped, and punched. We immediately split up and each went to a group, pushing people off and dragging the downed people to their feet. There were others in the group helping us to break it up, and others still who were fully focused on trying to get Carrick and I to leave. I went into pacification mode and tried to calmly direct the people who seemed to be causing the most problem (either as the focus of much abuse or the primary aggressors) to separate or just leave. It’s hard to do when you don’t know what has happened or who belongs where. As the yelling continued I realized that these were the same people from the restaurant. Apparently after closing down, they had brought the fight to someone’s ridiculously nearby home and continued it there. I was working with a group of other peace makers trying to convince some he should just leave and “common dude let’s just get out of here”, when I turned just in time to see Carrick, surprisingly deftly, sidestep around someone who was going after a third party and put them in a triangle choke (that’s a rear-naked choke in some circles (or octagons)). The guy didn’t let up at Carrick’s restraint, continuing to thrash and swing at no one in particular, so Carrick put some pressure on and dropped the guy in less than two seconds. Carrick immediately let up the pressure, pulled the guy to his feet (he only went limp for a moment) and then turned the figuratively punch drunk, literally drunk attacker around and just walked him off the property. We got involved in a few more little dust ups until enough people left or just gave up that we were pretty sure the violence was over. One rather big guy with no shirt got right in my face and started trying to scare me off the property. “This is not your business why don’t you just…” knots up his brow looking for the English “…Fuck off…” there it is “…and go to your home.” I told him that I just didn’t want anyone getting hurt and that if people started to get hurt it becomes my business. He didn’t like that but I had already decided to leave as it appeared to have calmed down. He was clearly challenging me, but I wasn’t there to start more conflict I was trying to defuse it. He got to feel like he won and I got to prevent yet another person from being badly beaten that night. We moved to the sidelines and just kept an eye on the place to make sure that the fighting was actually over. That was the end of the violence for the night, unless you count what I was about to do to Michael Jackson.

As we headed back up stairs and were getting settle back into our beer, a few others who were staying at the hotel came over to chat. One of them said, rather out of the blue, that he really liked Michael Jackson. Saadia, being a rather talented communicator, said quicker than I could recover from the whiplash of the subject change, “can you moon walk?” He immediately does the most spectacular moon walk I’ve ever seen in person. Turns out he is a dancer. He then proceeds to show off his moves, then invite Saadia up to dance with him, who then invites me up to dance with both of them (to take some of the attention off of her as we had begun to form a crowd) and we end up dancing for something over an hour (although I wasn’t dancing the whole time) playing follow along to the guy who actually knows what he’s doing. At one point I looked up from trying to follow along to see something like a dozen people standing or sitting around watching (Carrick, standing on the sidelines, got a count of 18 at its peak). I haven’t a clue where most of them came from. Now, there are many things which are unsure in life, many things which wax and wane, things which seem to be in a constant state of flux; I’m a terrible dancer. That’s my pillar. Fortunately I’m a light-weight and two beers and some homemade wine is enough to make me ignore that pillar and make an ass of myself in front of, apparently, 18 strangers and Carrick with my camera. Oh god. Carrick had my camera…

After the dancing and Saadia’s photo shoot, which was every single guy there wanting a picture with her including some following us back to our room and knocking on the door, we finally got to bed. We slept hard.

Welcome to 2014. Let’s do this.

-Connor

Promethean Refund

Set up:

                As Carrick and I were negotiating the price for the apartment we wanted, one of the issues that came up was the propane tank used to fuel the stove top. It was nearly empty, apparently, and needed to be changed. The landlord agreed that he would get it taken care of along with having the place cleaned before we moved in.

So for the month of November I was taking an intensive Hindi class at a local institute. It takes me about 25 minutes of travel time one way. The class itself was two 90 minute sessions with a 30 minute break in between. On top of that I was still volunteering part-time at the Human Rights Law Network. A typical weekday for me then was: Wake up as late as possible, rush to get ready, walk to the metro, metro ride to Greater Kailash, class, return home, change and go to work, then come home around 6:00 and study until going to bed between 11:00 and 1:00.

                It’s not a very exciting routine, but it is just that – routine. I had two fully-engaging tasks which really dominated my brain space, and everything else sort of turned to background noise.

The con:

                One fine day about three weeks ago I was walking back from class with my mind filled with some Hindi grammatical structure or possibly planning out my lunch. As I was coming up the stairs to our third floor apartment (what would be fourth floor in the States), I heard someone on the steps behind me. Now, there are only three apartments in this building, and I was already at the second floor, so it really only could have been my neighbor or brother. I turned to look and was greeted by a twenties something man coming up the stairs behind me. He told me that he had come by earlier, but that I wasn’t home so he was glad to have caught me this time. He went on to say that he was with the gas company and needed to check the gas cylinder. Remember what I said earlier about the propane tank arrangement we had with the landlord? So did I, so that actually fit with some of my expectations. I let the man in, he checked the cylinder and then told me he would be back in about 15 minutes, he left and came back, to my surprise, pretty much when he said he would. By this time my brother had gotten home, so I let him take care of the rest while I changed and otherwise got ready for work. I heard the exchange through the door of my room, and it was pretty straight forward. The gas guy was going to take the cylinder and come back with a full one in five minutes. In fairness to him, he was completely honest and truthful about the first part. He did take our gas cylinder. It was the second part where he got hung up. It’s now been nearly a month.

The aftermath:

                We talked to our downstairs neighbor, then to our landlord, and they both said the same thing. “Hello.” But then after that they said the same thing again “Okay, talk to you later.” In the middle of those two things they said something very similar to one another, and that was that it was a trick and we’d been robbed. Apparently the gas cylinder had been changed before we’d moved in and now our basically brand new one was gone forever. The next day at work we mentioned this whole situation to our co-workers and one of them said “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of that scam. I read about it on Yuni-net.” (Yuni-net is the local ex-pat community website). So it turns out that this is a thing. People come, steal gas, and then resell it for a fairly tiny profit. Oh well, we got duped. It happens.

The bad part:

                Both Carrick and I have a sort of “it’s the principle of the thing” mentality when it comes to a lot of issues in the third world, and Carrick in particular has worked in “rule of law,” so going through the proper channels is rather important to both of us. After this occurred, we went to the local police station to try and file a report. We didn’t expect that anything would come of it, but it’s good to make the report so it’s there. That’s all. I once told the Eugene police about some change that had been stolen out of my parked car. Nothing was broken as the lock on the driver side door was nonfunctional, but it was a crime so I reported it. Maybe it was the start of a trend, who knows?

                We left work a little early to get this thing sorted out with the police and still have some day left on the other side. We went to the police station for our region and found it strangely empty. The receptionist was friendly enough even if she did laugh at me when I explained the theft. I laughed too, it seemed good-natured and not malicious, so no biggy. We were told we would need to wait to file the report, called an FIR here, so Carrick went to grab some food for himself and an ice cream for me. I had a feeling this was going to be a long one.

                Before my brother had returned, an Inspector of the Police, I think his title was, came down to speak with me. I explained my problem to this officer, and he immediately said, “Wait here” and walked off. A short time later a different officer walked over. This would be the man with which I had the majority of the interaction throughout, even though these officers, who are notoriously “overworked”, seemed to have nothing better to do (as there was literally no one other than me and something like a dozen officers in the station) than stand around and watch or ask me to explain, AGAIN, what had happened. This officer was a short, balding man whose uniform begrudged his shape, especially around the middle. I remember that he came to speak to me with a thin sheen of hostility already upon him like one would expect maybe of a detective gearing up to play “bad-cop.” Strange, as I was merely a victim of a crime hoping to file a report. A truly small act which should, seriously, be no more difficult than filling out a piece of paper. I explained the problem to this little man and he went from sitting at a 3 on the hostility scale and jumping, immediately, up to whatever number sits just below physical assault. He immediately started berating me for the incident saying it was not a crime, it was my own fault and how could I be so stupid. I’ll admit that I missed a beat when that was the reaction I got. He began explain all the things I should have done (called my landlord when the gas guy showed up, check for his official gas guy identification which apparently they are supposed to carry). I interrupted him by stating that I’m new to India, and don’t know all the ins and outs. Especially when it comes to gas cylinders, since we don’t have set-up at all like that in the states. Sure there are barbeques, but those tanks you deal with on your own by going to a store or calling your local Hank Hill or something. I don’t know, I don’t have a gas grill! The angry little man increased the severity of blaming me and continued to say that it was not a crime because I’d just let him have it. I explained, not rudely but trying not to appear like I would back down, that what he was now doing was called “victim blaming.” In my case it was a cheap cop-out (get it?) but this is the kind of tactic that is a huge reason such a high percentage of rapes go unreported. Sadly, this is a fairly common occurrence around the world, but India, especially considering that it is the world’s largest democracy, is really behind in women’s rights (Click here to see Progress!). Me as a victim was being told I was dumb for letting someone take my cylinder. Yeah, it was kinda dumb, but it was a con, I fell for it, whatever. If you tell a rape victim that it’s their own fault? That the worst thing that’s ever happened to them was their own doing? Can you even imagine? I certainly hope that you can’t, but still you can see why this is completely inappropriate behavior for an officer whose job is to protect people from crimes, not facilitate them. After a bit more back and forth, the buck was finally passed from me to the landlord because I was not technically the owner of the gas cylinder. I call my landlord and he spoke to the police officer, who then told me that everything was fine because the owner was coming down and I could go home. This seemed much too simple and I was dubious of his dismissal. My brother got back with food and ice cream about this time and I caught him up on what was happening, but stayed right in the station as I did not believe Officer Dismissive McVictimblame. Shortly after I got a call from the landlord asking if he could speak to the officer again. I asked him if he was coming down and he told me of course he wasn’t, why would he? Nailed it. The officer hadn’t even asked him to come down. Haha, jokes on him. He’d blamed me, told me it wasn’t a crime, and then blatantly lied to me to get me to leave so he could continue not doing his job. Little did he know that my Yale Law Graduate brother was now back. Gloves = off.

                We were summoned to talk to the officer yet again, but this time Carrick took the lead. The man begin to explain that it was not a crime and Carrick shot him down. The man began to blame me and Carrick let loose. He wasn’t yelling, or even raising his voice, but you could hear the vehemence in his voice. “You are a worthless piece of garbage. You are what’s wrong with India. Even in America there is a reputation of how awful and corrupt the Indian Police Force is and it’s because of people like you.” Oh, it was glorious. One officer standing nearby had to translate the part about garbage, which was pretty awkward for the messenger. To add the little surreal spin that India likes to put on things, this whole exchange was happening in the room near the back of the station where the officer who was attempting to further bully us was getting undressed. Straight up just taking his clothes off. There was no explanation save the little shower basket on a chair next to him. After realizing he was beaten, he just sort of checked out. He stopped talking and just slunk off towards what I presume are the showers. We went back up to the receptionist area and continued to press. Eventually we talked them down to letting us see a higher up in five minutes rather than two hours (Ugh, you have to haggle for EVERYTHING here).

The resolution:

                This was the turning point. We were seen rather promptly around the promised five minutes. We spoke to the Superintendent who was polite, professional, offered us tea, and above all apologized for our treatment. At one point officer-strip-tease came in and tried to explain to the Super that it wasn’t a crime. Eventually there were four or five officers in the room backing up their comrade, trying to explain to their boss that it wasn’t a crime to con someone, but the Super quietly but with absolute authority put them down. He took our statement and sent us on our way. Later he dispatched three or four of the officers to come over and speak with the landlord, who was the owner of the tank, and we were brought in to have a say in the conversation. One officer referred casually to Carrick as Mr. Angry Man and then tried to explain how the law in India and America is different. Carrick casually explained that it was not because common law and shut up.

                “I just want to file the FIR because it’s the right thing to do and I believe in going through the correct channels.”

“But if you file the report, and we catch him, you will be required to come back to India for the court case.”

“That won’t happen because you won’t catch him.”

“What makes you say that we won’t find this man?”

“Because here all of you are, after all of these hours, putting in all of this work in order to NOT do your job. I have absolute and complete confidence in your not doing your job.”

                In the end the owner of the propane tank didn’t want to go forward with the FIR, but settled for a more easily dismissed ‘complaint’ and we called it a day. We wanted it done properly, but our landlord is actually a really sweet man, and we didn’t want to put him in a more awkward spot than we already were. A week and a half later we got a new tank and all is well. And on the plus side I can now say, without a hint of irony:

Fuck the Police.

Delhi Almost-Cut

Hey all, I typed this up just after it happened a couple weeks ago. Hope you enjoy it.

As I'm crossing the bridge on my way back from the doctor's office, I see a couple of young men up ahead on the sidewalk next to a wall that is solid concrete blocks from the ground to about three feet up and vertical iron posts the rest of the way to its full height of 6 feet. These two men are rough-housing over a white textile bag, the style of which are very commonly used to haul around garbage. These two men are most likely Garbage-Pickers, a job which is common among the extremely poor. As I get closer I see that one of the young men is probably about my age (early twenties), and the other man is actually just a boy, maybe 12 or 13. I'm quite close to the pair when the man pushes the boy onto his back up against that wall/fence and suddenly the scene snaps into an adrenaline fueled focus. This is not happy-playtime. The man-bully has one hand locked on the bag and looks calm and in control while the boy has both hands desperately clutching the bag, his face twisted with desperation, tears, and that legitimate fear that manifests in the eyes. There is something about true fear that really separates itself from just being worried or nervous or even scared – and goddamn if you don't know it when you see it. The first time I remember seeing it was when someone I was eating with started choking on her food. The look that comes into the eyes brings forth survival instincts thought forgotten.

Once again the hibernating portion of my brain came forward and the rest happened as if it had been scripted. Like the event was on tracks and only later on the walk home was I able to look back and start applying conscious thought to what had happened. I hurried forward pushed the man-bully's free arm. It wasn't hard enough to move him, but enough to let him know that I demanded his attention. He turned to look at me, and words tumbled from my mouth. “Hey, man, what are you doing? What's going on?” He responded, of course, in Hindi and started to turn his attention back to the boy. There was little else I could do but give him another rather feeble push and step around to face him more squarely as he tried to turn his attention back to the boy. “Hey, what's wrong with you? Are you hurting him?” He turned back to me and said something different this time, but making the universal gesture for an alcoholic drink, his thumb towards his lips, his pinky extended, and the rest of his fingers curled closed. “Dude, what?” I replied cunningly. It was as I was saying this that I realized this man-bully was drunk. His eye lids looked heavy and I noticed for the first time that his face, which had a worrying number of scares on it, was being held with that lack of muscle tension you only find in those who are stoned, intoxicated, or zombies. He did the gesture again but as he did the kid used the distraction to try and rip the bag out the drunk-man-bully's hand with a full-body, double-handed tug. For all the effort of the kid the only thing he managed to accomplish was forcing drunk-man-bully to take an awkward step to keep his grip. Drunky immediately lost interest in me, turned and took a swing at the kid. It looked like it might have half connected, I didn't really stand there and wait to parse out the details. I stepped between the two, and turned to face the attacker. 

At this point I still don't know the story. I don't know what the hell is going on, only that there was a conflict. The gaps I was filling in were that this man was trying to take the bag from the kid, either because there is alcohol in there, or there is something of value with he deems might bring him alcohol. The kid is most likely the victim of what has quickly escalated from theft to robbery. There was a small chance that the kid was trying to take something from the man, but if you were trying to take something from someone much bigger than you and you got caught, would you keep desperately tugging at the bag and start crying? No, you'd run away. Clearly. 

With that story in my head, and having just watched the man take a swing at the kid, I face drunk-man-bully and push him back. Not hard or with much power (i.e. acceleration), but enough to make him let go of the bag and realize that he now has no say in what's happening. I'm not a big guy, but I'm strong. 5'7”, 175 lbs and about 12 or 13% body fat. Before India and moving got in the way of my regular lifting, I was squatting (below parallel) 315, sets of five; dead lifting 310, set of five; pressing 140, sets of five; and benching 230, sets of five. I have a black belt in Taekwon-do; wrestled in high school; and have trained Jeet Kun Do, Muay Thai, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at several instances in my life since college. I'm not saying I'm a good fighter, I've never even been in a real fight, but as Jeff Winger says in regards to physical conflict: “I've got theories.” So although I didn't lay into the guy, he certainly became aware that he was being moved. He took the three or four steps required of him to not fall as I pushed a little harder to keep myself between him and the kid, while putting some distance between us so I would have time to react if he tried anything. Now that he was a few feet away I chanced a glance over my shoulder to see if the kid was okay. Still with his face smeared with grime and tears, the kid has the bag in one hand, but now slung over one shoulder to free up his other hand which is otherwise occupied – holding a fucking brick. My left hand is extended out towards drunk-man-bully to make sure I've got something between us, especially since I'm mostly looking at the kid now. I quickly point and the kid and say with three parts authority and two parts surprise “No! Put the brick down” and point to the ground. The latter gesture hopefully being clearer than the gibberish my mouth keeps throwing around without bothering to check in with my brain. I glance back to make sure drunk-man-bully hasn't moved, then back at the kid who has now dropped the brick. I swing my hand, tossing my fingers out a few times in a shooing gesture while I, again despite the fact that it is not becoming any less unhelpful, say “Go. Leave”. I look back at drunk-man-bully as he starts to try and walk around me. It's not an aggressive move, just a move as if he is planning on sauntering right past me. I step in front of him and push him back again, pointing behind him “No. Go, go.” Much to my surprise he steps one foot back and reaches his hand quickly around his hip and into his back pocket. I remember that my brain didn't register the fear it probably should have, but rather a heightened sense and a single summary thought. “fuck.” This next part, much like everything else only more so, happened without any consultation of the rational part of my brain. It's really nice that it worked, because the probably-knife he was reaching for wouldn't necessarily win him the fight, but would definitely leave me cut and was almost certainly filthy. I took a quick aggressive step forward and slammed my hand down and forward unto his collar bone. My arm had already been mostly stretched out in a pacifying/warding gesture, and when my hand landed it was open and turned so that it might seem like I was reaching for his throat. The combination of those two things made it less of a strike and more of a proverbial chest-beating. When my hand connected I looked straight at him and yelled “No!” As he stumbled back a few paces I adjusted my footing so that I was facing straight at him, my arms halfway up and ready, but not yet in a fighting stance. His hand stayed in his pocket. I didn't move, but again shouted at him to leave. He turned his body so that he was still half facing me and slowly walked away, his hand not leaving his pocket. I watched him until I deemed he was far enough away and, keeping one eye over my shoulder, turned to go find the kid. He was standing around a corner towards an alley not far from the confrontation, but he was nearer to people now. I again gave him the shooing motion, this time accompanied by my best, and hopefully most cross-linguistic, look of “come on kid, get the hell out of here”. The kid turned and walked down the alley, looking back every few steps (smart kid). I too turned to go, keeping an eye out to avoid being Julius-Caesar'd.

After walking about ten steps I noticed that drunk-man-bully had turned from where he'd stopped a minute ago and took a few testing steps in our direction. I stopped, turned around and starred at him while I, seriously I did this and cannot believe it worked, rolled up my sleeves. I'm really glad I hadn't changed out of my button up after work because the effect would have been completely lost in a tshirt. He had been watching me the whole time, of course, so when he saw this he stopped, turned, and left, walking a bit away and around the corner of the last building before the bridge I had come off of about one or two minutes before.

After that I rode the ensuing adrenaline wave home, keeping my head on a swivel to make sure I wasn't being followed, and finished up my errand by buying medicine and Gatorade for my sick brother.

Here we go again.

Hello hello, my name is Connor and welcome to my blog. I've played around with the travel blog thing before, but I'm thinking of trying something a little bit different here. I'm wanting to start this off as a travel / fitness blog. I'll be posting about my adventures and happenings as I travel, but also things related to fitness, specifically mine. I'd like for this blog to be varied so that it'll keep my attention, and therefore may include anything from links to sites that I find to be useful in the pursuit of health or xkcd comics that I find amusing. This may change drastically in the future, but let's give this a go.

My brother Carrick and I left very early in the morning in the first week of October. My girlfriend was kind enough to drive us to the airport despite the hour and the fact that it's a drive to the airport, for which we were very grateful.

After a sad, brief – to avoid bawling the whole way through security – goodbye, we headed to our gate and on to San Francisco and then Seoul Korea from there. If you or anyone you know is planning on heading across the Pacific anytime soon, I highly recommend Singapore Airlines. The service, food, and entertainment are all quite exceptional. It was a 12 or 14 hour flight, I didn't sleep at all and had no problem with that.

Despite the pampering we'd received, after deboarding the four-star restaurant the travel weariness became apparent. Travel time is such an odd experience. It feels like both less and more time has passed.

As we worked are way through the airport, a kind of surrealistic filter slide down between my tired eyes and manic brain, and continued on all the way through customs, down to the ticket office, and on to the shuttle/train which would take us to the metro station to continue on to the stop nearest out hostel. The best part about all of this is that I got to ride on the Seoul Train. Let that sink in for a moment.

Now, if you're thinking “why bother continuing with the blog, you've already reached your peak. Seoul Train. That's it, man.” then let me just tell you that A: you're probably right, but B: the rest of Seoul was amazing enough to warrant pressing on despite the odds. First off, the trains are quick and clean, which is nice, but they also go everywhere. Everywhere. Just looking at the metro map is fairly exhausting. I'm sure the buses are good too, but honestly we never needed them. Between the metro and walking we got everywhere we wanted to be. Including our hostel, which was of course the first stop we made. From the airport we had to transfer once, but overall it wasn't a particularly confusing or stressful trip. We got to where we needed to be, hauled our bags up out of the metro station and started down the street to the hostel. The first impression I had of Seoul was a lot like my first impression of Tokyo, which was good news. I really liked Tokyo, but my time there was measured in hours, not days. Between that and a few other things that came up, it was a moderately unpleasant experience. Seoul had the potential to be a similar environment, but with fewer of the negative aspects. And the first negative experience I sought to avoid was sleeplessness. We found our hostel, managed to get a room despite the fact that we had accidentally booked the wrong days online, and promptly went to bed. It was a long flight after an early morning after a late night, and I hadn't slept at all since we left for the airport. It was a welcome rest.

The next day we got up early (not that I'm one to get up early it's just how the jet-lag and fatigue lined up). We hit the streets and spent the whole day walking. Metro, walk for several miles, metro, walk for several miles, metro... You get the idea. We covered serious ground. We went through the royal palace, through various centers of different regions of the city, and the old town area. To be completely honest, a lot of it is a blur. I remember the subway, massive streets surrounded by massive buildings, swollen feet, a giant buddha at a temple where we meditated, and a huge vacant olympic stadium with a tourch you could just barely see at the right angle through the bars of the gates. We had less than three full days to see as much as possible, and we definitely got around to seeing a lot. Seoul is an awesome city, the people are incredibly friendly and helpful, the language is both odd and an isolate which appeals to the linguist in me, and much this massive sprawling metropolis is surrounded by high hills of textured rock and deep green trees. It's a beautiful place and I could absolutely see myself spending more time there somewhere down the road. Another reason to consider Seoul as a destination is the fact that for those three days for the two of us doing whatever we wanted it cost around $250. Total. That's food, hostel, travel, and activities. The single most expensive thing was eating out, but everything else was cheap cheap cheap.

Highlights of that trip? Seoul train, The night walk down by the river and longest building I've ever seen (it stretched for... I honestly don't even know. It was about three stories high, was filled with mostly clothing shops, and seemed to stretch on forever. It had breaks for blocks, but the blocks were exceptionally long and the building would pick up again on the other side of the street), and getting to hum the M*A*S*H theme as a military helicopter flew overhead.

Sorry this isn't particularly detailed, but that was almost two months ago and I've been spending a lot of time thinking and planning this but only now got the chance to sit down and crank it out. I'll try to update regularly, but you know how that goes.

Night folks, lots of love

Connor