Christmas

So, yesterday was Christmas and it was initially set to be an alright day, not terribly christmasy, but okay.  One of my friends was coming over from his town and we were going to hang out.  However that did not occur, he got ill and the plabs became null and void.

So I was a little down about that, but my spirits raised somewhat when I opened the few cards and presenets I had held onto from home, they were not much but they helped me feel better and marginally like it was Christmas.

Now this is not a story of gloom however, the day got better from that point on.  One of the guys from my building had invited me for a traditional Christmas meal.  It was really good, granted it was not exactly what most people are used to, but given the rarity of this sort of food and sort of cooking appliances, it was exceptional.  I got to sit back and eat ham, chicken, mashed potatoes, stuffing and drink rice wine.

After lunch we all went our separate ways for a bit, you know for the after meal sleep that is a standard tradition on Christmas.  But later on we got back together and went out to have a few drinks.

Now there is a fairly standard procedure with going out at night in Korea: go to a few bars and then go to a noreban (Kareoke to you and me).  And yes that is exactly what happened.  Now I'm not a fan of Kareoke and never have been.  I am one of those people that knows full well that they do not have a good singing voice.  Now that's not to say that I don't like singing, I do, I'm pretty sure everyone does, but I like to either do it within the confines of my own home or maybe with people I am quite comfortable among.  But no, you can't do that here.  Everybody is expected to sing.

Well I escaped most of the night without singing, not exactly because I was refusing to do so, but unfortunately my musical tastes do not include generic Kareoke music, I just don't know the songs well enough to sing on que.  There ARE plenty of songs I know off by heart, but you'll almost never find them on a Kareoke machine.  Anyway in the end I was reduced to singing something because I was being presured into it by my new friends and the random Koreans in the place we went to (amusingly called casablance).  So I eneded up doing Imagine and Yesterday.  Not my favourite choices, but I knew them well enough.

Now I suppose that's sort of an interesting evening to some degree, but the random Koreans I just mentioned made things more entertaining.  There were three of them, the guy that owns the place that loves music and playing his guitar alongside the singers, a guy whose name I've forgotten but had a pretty good grasp of English and then there was Skybird.  By far Skybird was the most entertaining, he has a baner of flapping his hands when he introduces himself to westerners to try to make them understand his name.  Of cousre we're pretty sure this is not his real name, but really who cares?

The guy was pretty mad, he would get up on stage and dance/prance around as others sang, but in such a bizarre manner.  To be honest I can't really think of a propper way to describe him, you would have to meet him to really understand.  Strangely enough as crazy as he is, he actually has a pretty good singing voice, in Korean, but when he sings a massive grinn appears on his face and it's somewhere between amusing and scary.

I have some pictures to acompany this, but I have misleaid my camera, so I shall get them added shortly.

Well that was my christmas, boxing day, today has produced nothing of any interest so I'm just tagging it onto the end here.

Later all.

*Addition -

This is Sky Bird

Pictures as promised.