Progress Report 13.1

Amyongh hasseyo, chaps.

How's it going? That's good to hear. How am I? Very well, thank you. Very well indeed.

Just a brief update this week, as I'm busy preparing to pay a flying visit to United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland later this week. And as flying visits go, this one must be up there with the flyingest. I arrive at Heathrow on Thursday morning, get the train to Durham on Friday, wedding on Saturday, train back to London on Sunday and fly back on Monday. On that schedule, I calculate that I'll just about have time to fit in forty-eight proper British cuppas. Plus, of course, a gross or so of proper British pints.

Gosh, I miss decent beer. I haven't had a passable pint since 2.30pm, Sunday May 29th, when I had a Stella in some hideous departure lounge bar. (Do you think, by the way, that such establishments are required by law to maintain a clientele of at least fifty scratter scumbags for twenty-four hours a day?) Korean beer, whilst being vaguely potable at a pinch, just doesn't scratch your back like a European brew can. In its two most common incarnations, it calls itself either Hite or Cass. Two names are perhaps superfluous, as both beers are equally flaccid. Weighing in at 4% abv, they're both safe to give to babies, but you have to drink a Bradford gutfull before you get anywhere near steaming. Once you've got there, you really have to make the most of it, as such imbibing secures you a hangover like a nuclear winter. I suspect this is because the miracle of industrial chemistry plays a leading role in the brewing process. If it can be done with chemicals, think the Koreans, then why bother Nature?

So pouring back a icy cold pint of something continental will be a special pleasure indeed. ('Special' is my current word of the moment, by the way. It has been scratched into my brain by one of my students - a high school principal - who uses it at least once in every sentence he speaks in English, and seeing as he can't or won't shut up in class, I hear it in triple figures three times a week. It is a very special thing. It makes lessons a special time.) Hopefully some of you shall be able to watch this special pleasure as it happens on Thursday evening, as I mentioned in 12.3. You shall then be able to partake in some dried squid, which I have bought in bulk this morning, just for you. You'll love it, honest - it's fishy and delicious.

I'm also very much looking forward to getting my hair cut. It's not that I'm precious about it, but I'd sooner lick a dog's bottom than let a Korean near me with scissors. I'm sure there are some very well-trained hairdressers in this country, and I'm sure they're professional and skilled and creative, but I'm also pretty sure, based on strong first-hand visual evidence, that none of them ply their trade in Beomgye. Well they're not having me, damn it. Not this time. Not like this.

So there it is. Come Thursday, I'll be all trimmed and freshened and drunk. And the trip will serve as an excellent gauge of my affection for this gosh-forsaken country. Expect an expansive and reflective report next time.

If I'm seeing you on Thursday, I'll see you on Thursday. If not, er, have a special week.

That is all.

Amyongh kasseyo,

S

PS I am now able to reveal that the name of the TV programme that had me stumped is 'Highway to Heaven', starring The Little House on the Prairie's Michael Landon. I actually found this out through my own extensive research and without the help of any of you. Saying that though, Christopher 'Ginger is a Way of Life' Laity came through with the correct answer, but a week too late. I suppose he deserves some sort of recognition: Respec', Chris.

Progress Report 12.3 (FAO London types)

Amyongh hasseyo,

This is purely for the attention of London types. If you are not a London type, stop reading this instant.

As I said in 12.2, I shall be back in London for one day only this Thursday (24th). It would be absolutely super to see you, so why not come along for a beer at the John Snow on Broadwick Street, Soho at or shortly after 7pm? Here's a map: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=W1F+9QP&spn=0.005,0.02&hl=en Nearest tube is Oxford Circus, though Piccadilly Circus is also pretty close.

My mobile number should still be 07746 806473, though this won't work til Thursday morning, when my flight gets in.

I shall bring some dried squids for you all, so don't worry about tea.

That is all,

Amyonghi kasseyo,

S

Progress Report 12.2

Amyongh hasseyo,

Oi! ... Oi!!... OI, YOU!!!

What the f*ck you lookin' at?

Just kiddin' wiv yer. Sorry this report is being submitted four days late, but as I explained last week, I've been away for a few days, though not as I originally claimed to Pajeon (which is actually a type of Korean omlette), but to Paju. What is there in Paju? Significantly less than what there is in a Korean omlette as it turns out, but I wasn't there for sightseeing anyway.

I was there to visit the New Yorker I met at the rock festival as reported in 10.1, who trains teachers at the English Village, which is just outside of Paju. The English Village, in case you don't know (and I think it's fair to assume that you don't), is a meagre theme park of Englishness built for the express purpose of 'creating global Koreans'. Designed to be a facsimile of a typical quaint hamlet, the Village provides a temporary home for a week at a time for groups of disappointed middle school students so that they can experience rustic Britannic life first hand, and thus improve their English and anglicise their bearing without the risk of being interfered with by scrumpy-drunk farmhands. The phone boxes are red, the lampposts Victorian and the streets cobbled. I even had a pang of nostalgia when I spied a genuine Royal Mail post office sign (of highly suspicious provenance, incidentally, as I doubt that the Royal Mail just give these to anyone who asks for one). However, these frills are as far as the Englishness goes. Maybe I'm underfamiliar with heartlands of Albion, but I've never visited an English village with a Mongolian barbecue restaurant, a pizza restaurant, a Chinese restaurant and Museum of Fun, but nevertheless, we should all be proud that the UK continues to live on in the popular imagination of foreigners beyond the misdeeds of our football hooligans.

Even though the English Village is an utter nonsense to anyone who's actually visited one, I'm secretly happy that Englishness is still framed in such terms, and as long as it continues I shall do my utmost to trade upon it. Koreans are usually delighted to hear that you're from the UK. To them it means that you will be charming and courteous, as well as reserved, intelligent and cultured. Even though I do my best to shatter this illusion in every 6.30am class, I'm generally only too happy to play up to the stereotype. It grants one licence to not prepare for lessons, to not listen to students' responses and generally behave in a shiftless and British way. Any accusation of unprofessionalism can be met with effusive and hammy charm (though it has to be said this works best on the women). Greater sins require a higher level of Hugh-Grantitude, but so far, there has been no misadventure that has gone unforgiven.

I'm not saying I like it. I'd much rather respond to indictments with obnoxious belligerence, as served me so well for the first twenty-nine years of my life. But whilst the weapon of charm is in my arsenal, I shan't hesitate to see how far I can push it. I don't expect you to forgive me for this, and nor do I want you to, but I do feel better coming clean about it. I'm really glad to get it off my chest. Anyway, I shall be brought sharply back down to earth when I make a temporary visit to the UK next week, for the occasion of my sister Katie's wedding. It shall be interesting to see if a hardened Heathrow customs officer is convinced when I try the 'gosh, ...ah, ahem... I say... how embarassing... how did that get there?' line on him.

It certainly shall be interesting to be back in Britain, albeit only for a weekend. First port of call will be the kettle, followed shortly after by the mug tree, and thenceforth directly to a proper British cuppa. I'm by no means a bigot when it comes to tea bags but the only foreign bags you can get here are Lipton (beloved of Australians, and marketed with the slogan: "Tea's just not tea until it's been swept up off the floor"), and for three months now, I've been gasping - gasping - for a steaming mug of Yorkshire Gold, with proper British semi-skimmed, and nothing else will quite get me off. Then on I shall go to the white bread and tins of Heinz, whereupon I shall feast upon a heaping plate of beans on toast (with added chilli, naturally), and thence to a bowl of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes and then maybe to the pub for a pint of Carling. I'll listen in to conversations conducted in English accents, and read about immigrants and gays in the Daily Mail. Then I reckon I'll be ready to head back to the airport.

That I want to come back to Korea at all might surprise you once you've heard the tales about to follow.

Here is what I shall call the Korean Animal Misuse Cycle. It is composed of a triptych of tales related to me last week. The first two take place in The Countryside (which I've long suspected is a Korean metaphor for some otherworld where one can play out the darkest fantasies of the soul), and the final part of the cycle took place here, in the city, in Anyang. If you're eating, go and spit it out. Ready?

I. My student was a child, staying for the summer with his auntie and uncle at their home in The Countryside. They had a pig that they were fattening, and towards the end of his stay, my student's uncle suggested that the time was right for slaughter. To prepare for this, my student had to tie a rope tightly around one of the pig's back legs and leash it tightly to a tree. The pig panicked at first, but once it realised it was unable to move around, it laid down calmly. The uncle then presented my student with a heavy hammer and the instruction that he should hit the pig on the forehead with all the strength he could muster, with the intention of rendering the pig instantly dead. This my student duly attempted, but being just a child, was only able to leave the pig with a massively cracked skull and thrashing and squealing in a way that no doubt reflected its discomfort. The uncle comandeered the hammer and finished off the excited beast with a series of well-aimed blows.

II. Another student, who grew up in The Countryside, once witnessed a dog being slaughtered. The dog had one end of a rope tied around its neck whilst the other end was thrown over the branch of a tree. The dog was then hoisted into the air whist two burly country types beat the living daylights of it with heavy sticks. This, he explained, was to get the dog's adrenalin flowing through its muscles, which makes the meat all the more tender.

"Didn't the dog make a hell of a noise during all of this?" I asked him.

"Oh yes," he beamingly replied. "It screamed like a baby."

III. Yet another student described to me an incident that had happened the Friday prior, at his workplace. He works in laser research for a small company that hopes to market its technology to medicine. His boss asked him to go out to the butchers and fetch back a pig's head. In the spirit of unquestioning respect of one's superiors, this my student did. When he returned with a pig's head in tow, his boss cut the edges of the pig's eyes and mouth 'to make it appear as if it were smiling'. He then called his employees around whereupon they were required to join him in prayer. He muttered some Shaman imprecation and then took out an envelope full of money. This he placed in the pig's grinning mouth. After another prayer, he then took out a variety of notes and rolling them up, placed them in the pig's nostrils and earholes. Then, having once again led his underlings in prayer, announced that the ritual would guarantee the firm good fortune in the coming financial year. (I may be being too Western, but I sincerely hope that my owm employer has a more conventional business development plan than this.)

These three tales were all illicited in the space of one regrettable conversation class, which on the one hand reaffirmed my commitment to vegetarianism, but on the other hand made me laugh with horror much more than would be considered professional. I had to work the charm very hard to reassure the females in the class that I wasn't of unstable mind. And in case you're wondering, despite my best efforts, my dogmeat bedsheet continues to remain unbloodied. After hearing the second part of the Cycle, you're no doubt thinking this to be distinctly for the best, but you needn't worry - they don't kill dogs like that anymore. They just electrocute them.

ANNOUNCEMENTS: Any London-types in the capital on Thursday evening (24th) and with a clear diary should stand by for an announcement concerning the drinking of alcohol in my company. For one night only, I shall be consuming booze somewhere in Zone 1. Perhaps Islington, or maybe somewhere central. If any of you have an express preference, state it quickly. A venue shall be decided within the next two days.

Sam 'Porn Baron' Pinney is this week once again the recipient of lukewarm gratitude, this time for sending me a book which he himself describes as 'SH*T' - Essays in Love, by Alain de Botton. After reading the first of these cloying, undergraduate, cod-philosophical essays, I'm inclined to think that Sam's being far too kind in his review.

Next week's report should hopefully be submitted on Monday as normal.

That is all.

Amyonghi kasseyo,

S

PS I was reminded by the New Yorker last weekend of something hilarious I did at the rock festival that I'd forgotten about due to drunkeness. It involved going up to a random whitey and telling them with faux-concern: "Look, mate, I don't know what you've done but that girl over there says she's going kick your head in," and then pointing at a completely unaware New Yorker. This would cause whitey to panic and plead innocence, to which I would respond, "Not my business mate. It's nothing to do with me. I'm just telling you."

I would then stand back and watch events unfold.

I really deserve a kicking, don't I?

Progress Report 12.1 (PENDING)

Amyongh hasseyo,

This is notice that Progress Report 12.1 will be submitted towards the middle of next week at the earliest. This is because I am Going Away For A Few Days.

Included within the report will be The Korean Animal Cruelty Cycle, a triptych of tales of Crimes against Nature as detailed to me by my students in the week hence. Also included will be a Summary of my Contined Thwartation with regards to the consumption of dogmeat. (Yes, I'm afraid that as far as eating dog goes, my bedsheet remains unbloodied. It's almost like God doesn't want me to do it or something... Pfff. What does He know?)

I bid you all a Good Weekend, and send you this message in the most Assured Hope of both your Good Health, and that I shall have dropped this Affected and Unnecessary Capitalisation of Nouns before I return from where I'm going (which is Pajeon, by the way, to see a Certain New Yorker.)

That is All,

Amyonghi kasseyo,

S

Progress Report 11.1

Amyongh hasseyo,

How's it going? Yeah? Wicked-bad.

Phewf, I'll tell you what - it's sweltering hot here. Summer's got under way in proper fashion in the past week, banishing the rains to vague recall and heating the air to the mid-thirties. Coupled with the high humidity, it's led to an outbreak of uncontrollable perspiration from your moist correspondent here. The weather makes your British (snigger) "heatwave" look like a brief break in the clouds. Tropical nights, dragonflies, sweaty balls - these are the things of the South Korean summer. It's a shame that the Koreans don't also share the peculiarly British inclination to stop working and decamp to the pub at the first sign of sun, but then the British don't respond to summer heat by butchering and barbecuing their dogs, so I'm perfectly happy to permit some give and take in this instance.

And as World War III begins in preface amongst the summer madness and Israel continue their attempt to cement their reputation as the world's least popular tourists, I may as well mention now that my chances of witnessing a nuclear explosion from a distance that will vaporize me are currently significantly raised by my location. It was not a point that was emphasised before I came here, but my adopted country of residence is still effectively at war with its bad neighbour to the north. North Korea is at present the most closed and secretive regime in the world, poor, totalitarian and effectively friendless, and they have of late upped a gear in their campaign to agitate the local area by test-firing a range of missiles and rockets - the geo-political equivalent of dragging their telly into the back garden and turning it up full blast. South Korea, ever aware that if there's a dust-up, it will be its windows that get put through, have responded with moderate condemnation through clenched teeth, whilst Japan indulgently talked up a storm, suggesting pre-emptive strikes and increased defence budgets, safe in the knowledge that they're far enough up the street to see the North Koreans coming. The Chinese, knowing that they're meant to be the North Korean's friends (even though they've been trying to get some healthy distance lately), tutted and clucked, and the Americans did the same, but with a rottweiler leashed to their fist.

The North Koreans remained unrepentant, refusing to attend meetings and not answering the door, and in the end, the affair looked set to fizzle out without confrontation or resolution. But then there was a brief skirmish on the border last week when the North fired a couple of bullets across the DMZ (the demilitarized zone, which marks where North meets South and presently the most policed border in the world), and the South, having got no response from a demand for an apology over a loudspeaker, fired a few back. No-one was hurt, but it served to further aggravate the South, who are desperately trying to be patient with their disfucntional neighbour, and with whom it seemed relations had previously been becoming more cordial. As the North Koreans run out of friends and defenders on the right side of the 'axis of evil' (the test-fired missiles were most likely supplied by Iran), there is an increasing fear that they will soon feel that they have nothing to lose and go on the rampage. If they do this, there's only one place they can get to - here.

The South are all too aware of this. Until it had been pointed out to me, I hadn't noticed the speakers secreted in public places to sound air-raid warnings, nor had I suspected anything in the spaciousness and depth underground of the pedestrian subways - almost air-raid shelter-sized, you might say. Personally, I don't think there's any particular risk of things kicking off, but that's because I'm an optimisitc Libran. Some people I've discussed it with are only too happy to prophesy doom though, pointing out that if the North decided 'f*ck it, let's rush the border', the most likely response from the US (in their role as defenders of the South) would be nuclear. In this eventuality, it's most likely that Seoul would be lost in the resulting exchange. I know it's not the loveliest of cities, but it would still be shame. Especially if I got irradiated before I've used up all that toilet roll I bought. (By the way, I finished the second roll on Saturday, fully ten weeks after their initial purchase.)

All of this makes South Korea feel a little insecure. In the past, it has been passed between Japan and China like an Albanian whore. The Japanese were running the show in brutal fashion right up until 1945, but then were rendered a little more kitten-like by the simulatenous deaths of 220,000 of their citizens in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and decided that the Koreans were welcome to rules themselves. There's still a good deal of enmity towards the Japs amongst the older generations here as a result of their cruelty as colonial masters, and a great deal of suspicion about the motives behind their sabre-rattling at North Korea. The way the Koreans see it, as soon as Japan is allowed anything more than a defensive military force, they'll be setting sail for their former stomping ground, eager to enslave the minguks once again.

This insecurity means that nationalism is pure and rife. On the whole, it's expressed in healthy and safe ways, like maniacal support for the national football team (even though they're rubbish), or an unscientific belief in the panaceaic powers of kimchi, but it can be a costly mistake to misjudge any Korean's attitude towards the deprecation of anything remotely Korean. I learned this about two weeks into my adventure when I was discussing conditions at the DMZ, where one of my students had completed his military service, posted as a guard. The North, he told me, would attempt to rile the border guards by broadcasting Commie propoganda over the loud-hailers. The South responded with Korean pop.

'Oof,' I remarked. 'That's a bit harsh.'

'Why?' he wanted to know, in a distictly hurt tone.

'Yeah, why?' chimed in another student, a tad aggressively.

'What do you mean by that?' demanded a third.

I almost had an open rebellion on my hands, until some frantic backpedalling and some unguent charm pulled me back from the brink. It illustrated to me starkly that you josh about anything the Koreans regard as being part of their identity at your peril. (Incidentally, all Korean men must serve two years in the military, and they bear this intrusion upon their liberty with staunch and hardy pride. They might not like it particuarly, but they see it as essential for the defence of their nation. Rather them than me...)

This national pride was also displayed to me in the form of an aggressive defence of the consumtion of dog meat by a passionate Korean barmaid in Itaewon on Friday night. I've no idea how we got onto the subject, but she somehow read me all wrong and assumed that I was being critical of the practice. I then had to sit through her ten minute counter-argument, as she told me that Westerners just don't understand and that the French eat horses and it's Korean tradition and so on. 'I know,' I told her, but still she gushed forth.

'I know,' I protested in vain. 'Yes, I friggin' KNOW. I'm going to eat dog next week!'

This stopped her dead in her rhetorical tracks. Her fight dissolved and she became weak-kneed and impressed. After hearing details of my other adventures through the Korean gustatorial pantheon, she could have been mine for the taking. Had I not been with the New Yorker I met last week, I would have gladly obliged the dog-eating freak.

Yes, all being well, this Wednesday shall be my Dog Day. It almost happened today, as one of my students was going having dog for lunch and invited me to join her. Unfortunately, I had to decline the offer owing to the catastrophic effects a barbecued squid had upon my intestines on Saturday night, which has left me pooing fluid at half-hour intervals. She's going to get me a card for the restaurant though, and on Wednesday evening, I shall go along and have the waiter fetch us up the full works. I was also told today that if I ask nicely at a dog restaurant, they will serve me a steamed dog's penis.

'It looks like a man's penis,' I was informed, 'but bigger. And a different colour.'

I wish I was joking about this but I'm not. Apparently, women like eating dog's penis to increase their sexual appetite. As far as I'm concerned, any woman who is willing to put a dog's penis in her mouth has sexual appetite enough.

Right, I'm sad to report that not one of you has been forthcoming in my appeal for information of that TV programme that I want to know the name of. Rather than judge you, I shall help you out a little more by giving you some further info. The main character, it now seems, might not be a small-town cop but a different stereotype in every episode. His face is orange and his cheekbones ludicrously protrusive. His partner from the cop episode may or may not be a regular fixture, but in case he is, he's quiet and has got a beard and looks like the sort of man who would use his superior upper body strength to make you do things you don't want to. There seems to be some sort of supernatural aspect to the show, as I think the protagonist has magical powers. In fact, I think the whole project is religiously informed. Is this ringing any bells with anyone? I suspect it's the sort of show that would be on on a wet Sunday afternoon when there's really nothing else on at all worth watching. If you can provide any information on this at all, please email me straight back in the strictest confidence.

Right, that's her for this week. I shall get some pictures of the dog feast and post them as soon as I can. If any of you have any last minute moral objections to my meal plan then please get them in a.s.a.p. I shall be happy to hear them.

That is all,

Amyonghi kasseyo,

S

Progress Report 10.3

Amyongh hasseyo,

What up? Just a quick note to let you know that there's some photos of last weekend, plus some pictures of where I live, plus a photo of a dried squid, plus a photo of some 'penis fish' now available here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tentaclesforbreakfast.

They're in reverse order and there's nothing I can do about it so if you want some sense of a linear narrative, then please go to Page 2 and work backwards. Thank you.

That is all.

Progress Report 10.2

Amyongh kasseyo,

Sorry - just a quick addendum to the earlier report: One of my students is flying to London at the end of the week to start a grand tour of Europe. She's travelling on her own and is worried that she'll be out of her depth in London - especially as she's been learning English from me. I told her I'd ask around and see if anyone was free on Sunday afternoon to show her around.

She was absolutely thrilled at this idea. She's a really nice girl and her English is quite good and so if any of you London types are free for a couple of hours, I'd be really grateful if you could help her out. And so, no doubt, would she. All you'll need to do is show her Soho, Oxford St, maybe Trafalgar Square and Covent Garden and show her how the Tube works, and then if you take her to the pub, she'll probably shout you a pint or two. And Jesus will love you for it.

If any of you can help her out, please email me back as soon as you can.

Komapsumnida,

Amyonghi hasseyo,

S

PS In pre-emptive response to the inevitable enquiries from the boys, pfft, not bad, but you shouldn't be even thinking about that - this is purely a charitable request.

Progress Report 10.1

Amyonghi hasseyo, bugger-lugs.

First up, let me apologise for the late submission of this report. I've spent the weekend at the Portapoint Rock Festival in Incheon (just outside of Seoul), and I was too poorly to attempt to write anything yesterday. In fact, I spent all of yesterday laid prone in bed watching rubbish American TV shows, apart from four hours in the early part of the day, during which I'm led to understand I went to work and taught English.

One of the programmes was about some craggy-faced cop in a small American town whose partner has a beard. Issues of international importance seem to regularly come to a head in this small town, and are always resolved inside of fifty minutes, thanks mainly to the application of small-town, down-home common sense by the aforementioned Hasselhoff-a-like officer. For instance, in yesterday's saga, the difficult issues of Germany's postwar guilt and Jewish forgiveness of the Holocaust were figuratively but thoroughly addressed when a Jewish peace-campaigning Holocaust survivor received a heart transplanted from a newly-dead neo-Nazi. The Nazi had come a cropper when his own son had accidentally shot him with the automatic assault rifle bought to celebrate the shooting of the Jewish peace campaigner's son, who in turn had taken a bullet for heckling a neo-Nazi rally which he had been advised against attending by our smalltown but worldly-wise cop-hero. It was all challenging stuff that never once veered into utterly ludicrous and toe-curlingly melodramatic nonsense - even the scene where the recently-bereaved peace campaigner was told that he had a Nazi heart pumping in his chest and discordant strings swelled over his shouts of 'no!!' as the camera tilted, zoomed and panned was tastefully and delicately handled. Anyway, the reason I mention it is because I want to know what this televisual treat is called. I can't tell you, as the titles are in Korean. Does it ring any bells with anyone? I think it's from the mid to late Eighties, and I imagine it would have occupied a similar timeslot to crap like The Fall Guy or TJ Hooker. Any assistance will be gratefully received.

Yeah, that was yesterday. I had sunstroke and a hangover and ninety per cent of my body was mosquito bites. I've displayed my usual man-of-steel capacity for sunlight by suffering both sunburn and -stroke only a matter of hours after summer began. Up until Sunday lunchtime, the rainy season was still with us and as it has been siling it down for the past three weeks, the festival ground was a mire of mud and water that would have made the Somme look like a golf green. But then, like a click of the fingers, Sunday went from grey to blue and the rain went away to wherever it spends the summer. However, little good this did us - we only had tickets for the Saturday.

This entitled us to see, in reverse temporal order, Placebo, Black Eyed Peas, some K-Pop nonsense and some Korean metal. I had only agreed to go on the basis that I would get to see Nuno Bettencourt's new band, but he'd been moved to the Sunday and so my post-ironic appreciation of Extreme's ex-frontman was foiled before it began. However, I did get to laugh at Placebo, yawn at K-Pop and witness a fascinating and once-in-a-lifetime statistical anomaly during the course of the Black Eyed Peas performance, of which I'll tell you shortly.

We arrived at the ground at the precautiously early hour of midday and spent the first hour wondering at the mud. There was not a blade of grass to be seen anywhere; it was all ankle-deep filth. Wondering gave way to drinking, when, after lingering on precipice of sobriety for precisely an hour too long, I demanded we decamp to a beer tent and procede to juice up. This we duly did, and to the best of my recollection, this is where we spent most of the rest of the day. I recall the occasional sortie to the main stage or, until drunkenness had chased off decorum and we'd started weeing anywhere, to the portaloos, but this small beer tent remained our base of operations for the better part of the day. Here company came and went, and here I met a nice girl from New York. Unfortunately, she embarassed me in a mortifying way.

She was sitting across from me under the canvas of the tent as darkness came to Incheon. We were chatting away pleasantly for some time. Until she let herself down, things were going very well for her.

The tables and chairs in the tent were arranged upon a raised wooden platform (some might say precariously arranged, but I wouldn't want to offer any pre-excuse), to prevent them being swallowed whole by the quagmire. It might be said that this platfrom was not of sufficient dimensions to hold all the furniture that it had been asked to, but I would dispute this, as nobody else seemed to be having any problems. Nobody except this New Yorker.

She had somehow contrived to unwittingly manoeuver one of the back legs of her chair a few inches proud of the platform, seriously reducing the stability of the apparatus. As a result, she concluded an anecdote by leaning back in her chair and, with a squeal, promptly disappeared from view. As two Koreans rushed to her aid, I did what any British person would do faced with similar circumstances - I lit a cigarette, picked at a hangnail, pretended I didn't know her. What else could I do? I was mortified. All the while, the kerfuffle remained purely in my peripheral vision. I monitored the helping-up, the recovery of the chair, the removal of mud, but was simply too embarassed to assist.

'Where've you been?' I demanded to know when she was helped back into her seat. This provoked her to come around the table and slap my back and shoulders.

Comeuppance was mine later in the night though. I went for a burton on the way into the dance tent at 4am, leaving me to try and retain verticality from a foot-deep puddle single-handed as she marched on ahead. No manners, these Americans.

But before then, I'd witnessed a singularly singular occurrence whilst the Black Eyed Peas were on stage. Despite the fact that the Black Eyed Peas manage to be the least cool black people in the world, the crowd were massed. This made what happened next all the more strange. They walked out, trying to shout 'Republic of Korea' in Korean ('Dae-ha-min-guk') but getting it laughably wrong. Still everyone cheered. They performed 'Let's Get Retarded' (renamed to 'Let's Get It Started' in the UK for obvious reasons of taste). Still everyone cheered. There was only one voice of dissent. Herein lies the miracle. As the Black Eyed Peas gave it their all in their own particular glakey way, there was only my own voice heckling.

Can you imagine that happening anywhere but Korea? It would be like getting struck twice by lightening whilst getting your sixth number on the lottery. Try and visualise it and you'll find it impossible to actually imagine: The Black Eyed Peas finish 'Shut Up (Just Shut Up Shut Up)' and only one voice out of ten thousand is shouting 'Get off!... Get OFF! You're SHIT!!'.

Later, the Korea Times would remark in a review of the festival that their perfomance was marred by "three white American boys throwing themselves into other revellers as they danced". No mention was made of the single voice telling it like it was - the journo obviously didn't want to risk their credibility. That, by the way, was the only off-colour note reported from the whole day - three Americans moshing a little. Compare British style - "the performance was slightly marred by hundreds of bottles of piss being thrown at the performers, the portaloos being up-ended and set alight, and a full-scale riot in the campsite in which several revellers died." You can tell this is Korea's first ever full scale festival, can't you?

Right, I should be getting along - I'm going to the gym. Just time to say express my keenest gratitudinal wishes to Keren 'Meow' No-Fixed-Surname for her extremely generous donation to my appeal. She sent me: Manhattan Nocturne, by Colin Harrison; The War Zone, by Alexander Stewart; Memed, My Hawk, by Yashar Kemal (not too sure about that one); Midwives, by Chris Bohjalian, and, because she evidently thinks I'm some sort of sexual pervert, The Story of O, by Pauline Reage. Frankly, this little haul makes Xanthe's contribution last week look positively ordinary. Think you can do better?

I would also like to thank Rob 'Llanelli Boy' James once again, as I particularly enjoyed his contribution - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon. In the spirit of bi-directional giving, I'd like to send this book to the first person who emails me and asks for it. (Unless Rob wants it back of course, in which case, he's got first bagsies on it.)

Later this week, I should have some pictures for you, promise. Also, I hope to eat dog either this week or next. If you really, really don't want me to, let me know as soon as possible.

That is all,

Amyongh hasseyo,

S