Tidbits from Geumho 4ga

You walk down the road from my school and you get to a large four way; a sa(4)goree. Crossing the road on the same side I begin my climb upward. Its not so bad from this side of the mountain. The road follows the mountain upward in a bow like fashion.

At the base of the mountain I pass the aja-maz(married women) working in the fruit store and hair salon. They seem to always know when im passing as I make eye contact with them almost daily. Up past the construction site of a very large church and towards the spot a man confronted me while I was walking my now ex-gf down to catch a cab. Up. Up. Up. Yup, up all the way to the 4th left.

Hanging a left, you are abruptly confronted with a very steep slope. When it rains, the tar they use to fill the cracks becomes slippery and one must use caution. Depending on the rate of rainfall, you might have to deal with a swift moving current.

Halfway up the profound gradient the smell is overwhelming. Handling sewage and rainwater is the duty of one pipe in Gumho, and my street provides the mountain with its pipe down towards the river. Because of the rainy season, huge steel grills are placed across all roads every so often. If you stood and watched the mung flow by, you are amazed at how much shit and piss is produced by the people of this mountain neighborhood.

Once up the steep slope the road levels off and its flat all the way to my apartment. I can walk from work home in about six minutes comfortably. Its really not that far...just steep.

I see lots of life on my street. Like most areas in Seoul, the ammount of young children running about and playing is pretty high. Its the elementary and up aged kids you never see doing anything but walking somewhere with a backpack. There are a few kids who use the street infront of my building as their playground. Their mob usually consists of about four kids, but on some days, that bubbles to almost twenty. My only relationship to them is that they say "helloooooooooooo" and I say "huggajibbagoogoo" or something to that effect and jump around and make them laugh. They are funny kids.

This past weekend there was a fire in one of the buildings just down the road from me. At the time I was cleaning the storage room out and thought the smell of smoke was dust and other crap rotting in my storage space. When I heard the sirens, I knew shit was going down, so I grabbed a can of beer from the fridge and went upto the roof to see what was going on.

I got upto the roof and did a walk of the perimeter to see where the action was. It was just down the road; maybe six buildings away.

While there was smoking coming from the building, it really wasnt all that thick. I was nervous when I heard the sirens. I live in a really dense neighborhood. Buildings literally hug the sides of other buildings. The possibility for serious fires is high I'd imagine. It's no wonder buildings here are framed using concrete, walls are made of concrete, and just about everything else is made of concrete. My nervousness increased as I watched a good number of koreans dash from their own houses with fire extinguishers of all shapes and sizes. In addition to that, I saw at least a hundred fire fighters, fifty police officers and another group of men and women armed with video cameras filming the whole thing.(Korean "officials" with video cameras are almost everywhere. Cops video tape demonstrations, soccer games, and all sorts of other events. I think is creepy and scary.) The smoke stopped and I was relieved. I went back down and finished cleaning out the storage room, which looks great now!

This morning as I was looking out my window, I noticed a couple of women who live across the road from me. One is a grandma, and one is a granddaughter. They opened the gate and climbed the stairs to their apartment. The grandma moved all the way to the door, and the granddaughter took her shoes off and climbed in through a window. A few seconds later the door was open or grandma. It was cute and I smiled.

A beautiful white with gold splotch cat likes the yard next to my building. It likes to sun itself just beside the red pepper plants near the traditional kimchi pots. It is a beautiful thing staring down into the overgrown garden, with kimchi pots glistening with rain reserves and the yellow blossoms of the unknown vine draping over the blue gate. It is a lush green plot with spots of colour inhabiting its terrain. It is a tiny piece of unkept nature. Something you really dont find much of in Seoul.

At night the blue flicker of Televisions can be seen eminating from most apartments. By midnight the silence is intermittently broken by drunk men and women walking home. By four that silence is broken by garbage trucks, scooters, and automobiles. By six Gumho is once again alive, and by nine so am I.