Ewwphony of the Night

"If you have nothing to do tonight, I invite you to go sing to singing room with us together." This message was sent to me by my 1st semester Korean buddy Kim JinHyeong. It was April; I am very fresh in Korea, Korea is fresh to me. I didn't know what a singing room is but I gladly obliged. I went with the other ASEAN students to meet JinHyeong downtown. He was with two other Korean buddies, Chaehun the Taekwondo champ and YeongHun the Shy Guy.

This room was unlike what I've seen before. We don't have a singing room with an interior like this in the Philippines. I thought it was uniquely Korean.

Alas, inside the sound-proof walls of the Noraebang I sang like I have never sung before. It was a wild night! And I am not showing the photos!

1 hour later, the ajjoshi (mister) entered the room to announce a "free service". Koreans broadly use the word "service" to mean freebies, extras, and discounts. The mister was kind enough to give us 20 more cacophonous minutes for free. But we were kinda worried about the curfew actually; the dorm closes at 11pm and we started walking back at 10:30. The dorm is 20 minutes away from the Noraebang by foot if we walk leisurely.

"Horeb, gwenchana", says YeongHun. I asked him what "gwenchana" means. He said that Koreans say gwenchana to mean "It's okay. Don't worry." YeongHun told me that the dorm administrator would let us in because they're friends. haha.

Ooh. I learned three Korean words today, aside from discovering my hidden talent worth hiding: noraebang, so-bi-su (service), and gwenchana. ^^; The boon of informal learning begins here.

We made it to the dorm on time, yearning to go back again to the Noraebang.

The Chronicles of the Northern Kimchi 1 of ~

It really didn't feel like going to another country. I never considered North Korea as symbolically severed form the South, though geopolitically speaking, they are. The two Koreas were divided by a truce line called the 38th parellel after a ceasefire was declared by all the involved parties. After this line was drawn, the peninsula has never been the same again: lives were erased, families were separated, in the North, tyranny and poverty set in. Today is a very momentous day because I am crossing that line, a product of the human mind that does not imagine better. In my heart, there was a mixture of fear and joy, hope and despair for all that this line has cut through.

We rode the bus at around 9am and went northwards. It was a very long drive. But the seats in the tour bus were so comfortable that I really didn't mind siting for hours. The view was unspeakably magnificent for it was Summer. The hills and mountain ranges were green with life, farming areas teeming with ginseng and other growths, condominiums sparsely dotting the landscape. We're divorcing form the city, I thought. After about 2 hours of wheeling continuously, I thought I should get some sleep. But my brain's sentimental hemisphere nags at me to look outside the bus' window because it knows that I won't see the landscape again the same way as it is now. I guess the reason was well-founded so I resisted the urge to close my eyes. However, these days, try as I may to recall what were seen, all that appears is a whipped-up imagery of greens and browns and the monotonous grayness of the road; the beauty wasn't preserved at all in my head. I should have just gone to sleep. As I always say, my mind is so fragile as to keep the subtleties of nature, friendship, and virtually all other things, intact for a reminiscence anytime.

to be continued~~