The Final Weekend Before...

Have you ever had a dream wherein you're lying restlessly awake in bed? What gives? I was dreaming about not being able to sleep. That's what my life has come to. Why can't I have exciting Inception-esque dreams full of espionage and intrigue?

Let's see. August is upon us. How did that happen? On the positive side I have some pictures for you from this weekend. Let's get started...

I think this picture would be really cool if you didn't look at it so closely. Back off, buddy. Stop examining ma shit. I've got some good framing, just the quality sucks. A couple of things. First, isn't that the story of my life: going the wrong way down a one way street. I'm not the only one, though. This is cell phone street in Daegu at 1 AM. Notice the cars (one going the wrong way) parked completely on the sidewalk. And, if you look closely at the stores, you might be able to make out that they're all cell phone stores. Korea has this nice way of being subtle about what they're trying to sell. "Hey, guys," one industrious Korean with a California surfer accent says, "I think it would be a great idea if we just had entire streets that sell only one thing. Think of it. Music street, pet shop street, power tool street, cell phone street. It would be really convenient if customers had to walk an unnecessary distance to get anything they want. Oh, and let's add hawkers who call foreigners very handsome all the time."

On Saturday, I went to the Hot Festival at Suseong Lake. The lake looks like this.
Pretty nice little park area. On the right side of the picture you'll see a few duckboats lined up. Those would be there for the sole purpose of racing. Did this guy do it? Yes. An Englishman, a South African, and two American'ts competed in duckboat races...and won. That's right. I am good for something.

"What did you win, Steve?"

We won a bike, thankyouverymuch. A fullsize functioning bike. I'd say that it's not the best prize for a team of four since a bike doesn't really split four ways, but I let the South African team member have it. I figured he needed it more being all the way out in the boonies of what still may be considered Daegu.

After that and a both entertaining and very awkward belly dance show (a group of attractive females followed by a group of maybe first graders), we headed down to the street where most of the festival was taking place. Water everywhere.
Kids with super soakers, pools, fans, waterfalls, waterslides, balloons, pandemonium, apocalyptic chaos, a bear with dreadlocks, and ice sculpting. It was good, wet fun. Well deserved too, because it was also really damn hot. That evening we had a rooftop party party on a friend's apartment building. It was good until I crapped out early and found a taxi to take me to the wrong place because "Banwoldong" sounds like "Beomeo" to him. Sunday I didn't even leave the apartment because I tried out my new prescription contacts, and lo and behold, they're not right. Too weak. I spent the day not being able to see to full capacity so I didn't want to chance getting run over by a sidewalk scooter. I have to go back to the eye doctor today and see if we can't remedy it. Maybe I should bring a baseball bat. I just want to see Hawaii and the Philippines when I get there. Only smelling them is not what I had in mind.