electronics fail

Does anyone remember last summer when I killed my computer and my camera was broken (not by me!)? Well this month has been pretty similar. Someone, again not me, dropped my camera and broke the lens on Christmas Eve. It was kind of on it's way out anyway, so I opted not to fix it and just buy a new one. Paul and I head over to the electronics mart (behind Emart my favorite place in Korea) on Saturday afternoon. This place is a scene. It's 4 or 5 floors of individual vendors selling anything from cameras to laptops to mp3 players etc. Paul and I just wandered from vendor to vendor seeking out the cheapest digital camera. After 6 or 7 stops we found a dude who was willing to sell me a black (I wanted blue) Fuji 10 megapixel for 100,000 won. And the case was service. And now I have a camera again! On the way to Emart, through a sky walk, Paul and I found the best artwork! A guy was selling holographic pictures of tigers, jesus, rabbits, you name it. At first I kind of walked by and laughed thinking "who would buy this crap." After we pased, Paul asked, "Did you see the bunnies getting married?" NO I did not!! So we go back, and there they were, two perfectly in love bunnies getting married. You could tell because the man bunny had on a tie and the woman bunny had on her finest pearls. There was no turning back.
I asked the guy how much (almayo), and he came back with 5,000. What!? We say too steep and go to walk. "Ok, ok sacheonwon (4,000)" Eh, still not convinced. "OK samcheonwon." $3, it's a deal!! He tried to throw in another 3D bunny picture and charge us 5. But honestly, how much bunny art can one keep in their home!? One's just fine.

New camera. New bunny 3D art. Kindle trouble.... :(

I am just now able to talk about it without losing it. I've been carrying my netbook with me everywhere because I am studying for the CFA. I figure it would be safe to put my Kindle in the same cover as the laptop so as to protect them both. I guess this was stupid because I took my Kindle out and the top 1/5 of the screen is blacked out and the text in the rest of the screen is a lot darker! I don't know if it was from magnets or just pressure from being in my backpack against the laptop, but I do know it's devastating. Krissy got one for Christmas and was super hesitant about it. I secretly had my fingers crossed that she hated it so I could have hers. But alas, she, like everyone who's owned one, has become obsessed with it. So now I just sit on the subway reading 4/5 of the book and just imagine all the wonderful details I am missing. [Side note: Im reading Cutting for Stone and it's really good!]

Onto other things. This weekend was pretty low-key, as are most throughout the winter. Friday night I stayed local. Galbijim dinner and soem beers at Orange Tree which is the bar above Indigos. Saturday was the electronics mart adventure followed by Indian dinner with Chee and his buddy DC. We went to this awesome restaurant in Hongdae, Ustav, and had a bunch of different curries. Its definitely the priciest Indian I've been to, but it was also the best. Yum. Then we all went over to Sincheon to a bar called iPub. Its usually hopping, but was totally dead on Sunday. We went to meet up with a different group of friends and they pretty much kept to themselves. We watched some soccer and called it a night. [Note: Korea is going to the semi finals for the Asia World Cup this weekend. We beat Iran on Saturday.] Sunday morning Paul and I got groceries and made an elaborate brunch and watched Top Chef. Come 5 pm we thought we should get out of the house again. We opened the door and there was 3" of snow! How did it snow that much in the past 3 hours!? We tried to go to 3 different magkeolli bars, all to no avail. We finally went to a seafood restaurant on my street and order magkeolli and pajeon only to be shut down again! "No pajeon." We got eel instead and as we drank a second bottle of magkeolli they came out with a plate of pajeon! Service!! Alright, we'll take it....although it wasn't very good. Clearly not their specialy.

Now here it is Monday again. Im at ZOO Coffee which is by far my favorite coffee shop in Seoul (Ill write more about it some other day). Time to study. Head to Suseo to tutor. Home to watch Narnia (which I fell asleep to last night). Tomorrow night is going to be super exciting. Paul and I are going down to Gangnam to watch a screening of a new bboy movie and then it's meet and greet with the director. Maybe my dream of becoming a bboy will finally be realized!