It's been a newsworthy past couple of weeks. The weather has started warming up with the spring deteriorating into summer. That means that the beach has become the most popular weekend destination, replacing Kino Eye (Bar). This also works out well since my favorite chill bar, Rock and Roll, is right next to the beach; as is another popular destination, Paradise casino.

Cinco de Mayo also took place last week, but in Korea it's called something slightly different, but the idea is the same. Instead of celebrating a major Mexican military victory, they celebrate the children for Children's Day--parents have to buy their kids video games and there is no school that day. I was happy, as was my mustache.



That picture was taken a while after Cinco de Mayo, but I'll get to that later; I'm also not sure what's going on with Torie there. In celebration of Children's Day we all went to the beach. I also bought the hat you see above. As per usual a frisbee was brought and then proceeded to be thrown around. In the process of the fun, I was chasing a frisbee that I thought I had a chance to catch so I dove at full speed, completely laid out with my right arm fully extended. I didn't catch the frisbee, but my right shoulder did catch the weight of the rest of my body. At first I thought it was just a minor shoulder tweak so I stopped playing frisbee and dug a person sized hole--I'll see if I can track down a pic of that. After a couple of days I was concerned that it might have been a bit more serious because there was very little improvement. Sleeping hurt and I couldn't move my right arm outward or beyond a few inches from my side without sharp shoulder pain. Turns out that it was only a sprain, and one week later I've regained a bit more movement but I'm still missing my strength; sleeping isn't as hard anymore, but mornings suck.

One of my coworkers (Nikki) is leaving in a few weeks, so she said she is going to throw two more big parties. The first took place on the eighth and was thenceforth known as the Ocho de Mayo party. I won Best Costume, but Chris had a better mustache:



In my gift bag for best costume included some roman candles, and in the same foyer that the first picture was taken was where all three were lit off. Fireworks and soju are a bad combination, especially for me. I was pretty close to being arrested. At the time it was hilarious, but looking back it was a poor decision--yeah soju. Thankfully, another of my coworkers, Kyeung Hae, had brought her boyfriend, who speaks fluent Korean. He defused the situation; not literally, the fireworks were still going off while the cops were yelling at us, and then after I stomped on my roman candle it exploded--that part would've been way cooler it we had been at the beach like Nikki, the party thrower, had intended us to be; it was still really cool though. I bought beers for all those I involved in my stupidity; Carlsbergs all around.

Later that night we wound up at the casino; I don't have a picture of that because they don't like it when you bring cameras inside. I lost 40,000 won, ate three sandwiches, acquired two packs of smokes, had several drinks, watched my friend, Jesse, purposefully get kicked out, and all before 8 am. It was a good night.

Some final thoughts: I am happy to be running Mac OS X again which is so much better than Windows. Also, I have a 10K on Sunday, and I ran twice in the past two weeks, so I've fallen a bit out of shape. It's really hard to get motivated to go running when you wake up and have a strong sore pain in your shoulder, but that's just an excuse. I'm not too concerned though, I just have to pace myself in the beginning and focus on finishing rather than finishing at a certain time.


Till next time, whenever that'll be

Aaron