The Story of Little Budda and Other Bullshit

Positive thinking is a load of bullshit. It's worth only for exceptional liars or in fiction, but in the real world it just doesn't work, no matter how hard you try. In the last post I mentioned that the company at the construction site is cool. It was a lie, but I tried to convince myself that it is so. It hit me back hardly.
And here goes the story of Little Budda. He's a friend of Ssang Pyeong and it seems he's the chief of the construction, some kind of supervisor or what the hell do I know. He is a small fatso and with Ramon we nicknamed him Little Budda also for his appereance, but mostly because on his cellphone the ringtone is the Heart Sutra. Later we changed the nick to Pudding (based on an Italian wordplay, being Il Piccolo Buda e' un Budino). After few days he was only and just Asshole.
Warning: If you're an architect, carpenter, mason, free mason or even Perry Mason, DO NOT continue reading. If you do, forget everything you ever learned about building and don't try to sue me for writing nonsense.
Disclaimer: All the events and characters described in this post are real. All similarities are intentional.

Let's start with a quiz. Suppose you work on a construction site. Before you start making the concrete floor you neatly even the gravel tampon, you put the water piping and you're supposed to cover the tubes before the trucks with concrete come. I wanted to fill the wheelbarrel with gravel to cover them but I was told not to it that way, just to use the gravel that is already in the basement. OK, I can handle that, it's even easier! WRONG! When I started covering them - cleraly I had to dig holes around them to do that - I was told not to do it that way because the surface must stay even. WTF? That was the first time that I suspected Asshole is not only stupid but completely insane. To make everybody happy I took the rakes, removed the gravel from the pipes and filled it back in the holes I made and I continued raking close to the pipes. I didn't cover them a milimeter but Asshole seemed so happy that I learned something new about construction!
Few days earlier I tought he's just stupid because there was a stone wall that needed quite a lot of concrete to fill all the holes. A not very important wall so we did the job with hands, nothing fancy, but when we finished Asshole decided it needs a good washing so he took the high pressure pump and washed the wall. Can you guess how much fresh concrete remained in the holes? But it was all OK, he didn'd do it to make us redo the work, no, I will never say he's evil or bad, just... stupid.
We had many jokes about him but now I remember only one. When doing something we were in constant fear he will come to instruct us on how to do it and thus complicate our life to the top. So we kept watching for him and once Ramon asked me what is Pudding doing. I looked around and saw him on the roof. He's doing shit, I told him. Oh no, is he cloning himself?
The worst of all was that we had to live with him for a week.

On the way to Pudding's place, backpacks full of beer

The house we are building - for a priest - is in Okcheon, more than an hour drive from here, so it's really a waste of time (and sleep) to go there every day. We had our daily little scruffs with Asshole and more than one time I told him - with a big smile - that he's a fucking moron, clearly in Slovene, sometimes in italian or Serbian - and he just smiled back. Then the carpenters came. Of course he knew better then they how and what to do with wood - and they all ackonwledged his wisdom and continued to do whatever they were doing the way they were doing it. Everybody was happy. Except Ramon and me. We were given orders by asshole and, luckily, there was always a carpenter neraby to save the day. He kept giving us the wrong coatings or wax for wood but that was OK even for me, for three days we were stoned all the time for inhaling the vapors.
The real fun was watching the carpenters. They were measuring everything ten times, cutting with a precision of half milimeter, yet when they tried to assemble the stuff together it just wouldn't fit.

So the finishing was always done with the chainsaw and huge hammers.

The Korean Thor ^_^

But do not think they are some amateurs or apprentices, hell no, they are the flower of Korean carpentry!
Urgh. Argh. AAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Now this is a real horror story, even His Horrorship THE King Stephen couldn't make a more scary one. It happened to me to have almost a heart attack many times when some joker went boo to me out of the dark, but this time I almost shit my pants. You see, I'm writing this in my outdoor kitchen, drinking beer and fighting with frogs, mosquitos and flies that are invading my place, listening classical music from the radio. The only other sounds are the frogs from the rice fields, so I fell pretty much like there's nobody miles around. And then... Hello. Mr. Dag! Out of the darkness.. No, it's a hallucination! It can't be real! Asshole! No, not me, it was Him, THE Asshole. And he was real. I didn't notice when he came to visit my neighbors, but he payed me a visit when he went out for a smoke. And he sat in front of me, we were smiling politely at each other, and he was gone. It was like a dream. Hell no, it was a nightmare! Uh, I had to drink half bottle of beer to set my mind on the rails again...
And it was just during my last Korean lesson that I learned the word 정도 - which means an approximation, about, by the eye and so on. A very important word for Koreans! I knew that already, without knowing the word itself. It's their way of doing. I call it sloppiness. I was asked by the carpenters if I'm intersted in learning their trade, with them. I was tempted to accept but Ramon put me on the ground, saying: Yes, you are sloppy when you do things, but only from a western point of view. For them you're too accurate and you'll get your ass kicked for trying to be perfect!
And again this 정도 is another load of bullshit. Just another excuse. The same person that explained me how important is 정도 in Koreans' everyday life was pretty upset when she asked me the recipe for my bread. Um, usually I take something less than a kilo of flour, add enough makkoli and water and some salt... But Dag! You can't do it like that, you need exact measures!
Go figure.
The clou of idiotism on the job came near the end. It was time to fill the gaps on the roof with the allmighty Korean hwangto - THE clay. So to prepare a good mixture I was instructed to mix 20kg of baek cement (have no clue what it is, just that is completely white), two shovels of honest-to-God Portland cement, twenty shovels of sand and twenty shovels of dry clay. And 정도 half liter of water. I swear, it's not a joke nor is irony. It's a fact. And I was mixing that dry crap for half an hour and Asshole came to see the result. He took a handful of it and held a war council with Ssang Pyeong. The verdict: it's too dry, we need to add more water. Wow, how come you can see that? And fuck me, Asshole added less than a glass of water. Another quiz: can you guess how the mixture looked like after another twenty minutes? Yes, completely dry, as it was in the beginning! Dag, more water please, but just a little bit! OK boss, here I go, half of glass will do? Perfect! And when they turned their backs I sloshed two full buckets in the shit and in five minutes they decided it was good to use. And since I was doomed to prepare the mixture for all the day it was troublesome to put secretly the water in it every time. You see, the mixture was too moist only the times when I was seen to put "too much" water in it, otherwise it was perfect. And don't think I'm bragging about this, I've prepared tons of hwangto with Challenger and I DO KNOW how it is supposed to be the real stuff.

The last day on the site was like a holliday: Asshole was sick! It was such a joy working!

We arrived home late and a message was waiting for us: the next day Challenger will pick us at 7AM, work to do. Cool, we go to finish the roof we started two weeks ago! More than a roof we did an artwork. Not to mention the chimney - the guy really is an artist, everything is made from old broken rooftiles!

And the best of all, I made me a new friend!

After two weeks I was off for three days. The first day I did nothing, too hangovered since I had a farewell party... well, a farewell drinking with Ramon till 4 AM, we slept till 10 and after lunch Ramon was gone. The second day - yesterday - I spent the morning on my field, pulling and cutting the weeds and picked the first lettuce for lunch. In the afternoon we had some storms during which the internet connection has gone. Has not been reinstalled yet so we are all offline for the time being and I will post this as soon as we go online again.

Busy Time

Sometimes even more than busy.Today, for example, I was on my field at 5.35AM prepairing the beds to plant hot peppers, perilla and the third round of tomatoes. The early hour is nothing special in the farmer's life, but at 8.00PM I was already stomping on the last tomatoes I planted because of the dark. And didn't manage to plant a single pepper or perilla today. OK, I don't have so many tomatoes. It's just that besides my little farming hobby now I work also on two constructions sites. One is in a village nearby so I can do an hour or so on the filed in the morning and the same in the evening when we come back. But tomorrow we go on the other that is pretty much far away so usually we don't even come back home every day. And when between all this work I can manage a day off, the only thing I want, I can and I actually do is to drink myself unconscious. I'm not complaining - we work with nice people, on one site the boss is my host Sang Pyeong and on the other is the many times mentioned Challenger. There's a lot of beer all the time and even more in the evening when we end the working day. Only my field looks really disgusting compared to the others nearby and it became a common mockery that I'm growimg weed (not THAT weed, but the common nasty green crap you can use for nothing, not even in Korea).
The worst is with my Korean lessons. You haven't done your homework? What? You haven't studied a single minute? But I really didn't have time, in the evening I'm so tired I go to sleep at nine... How can you say that, I saw you today going to the village to buy beer! You have time for THAT and no time to study?
Ah, these harsh Korean teachers! Of course in a way she is right, I'm not arguing about that, but, as I explained to her, my mental sanity is first. And I also know that the Korean educational system and their way of teaching/learning are less than perfect, to use an euphemism.
What I really start to hate are the bugs. All kind of bugs. Flying, crawling, digging, they're everywhere. It's just no fun sitting outside, drinking beer and writing this. Maybe next time I will be more productive on writing another post...

*Extremely* Pissed Off

I mean really badly pissed off.
You know the feeling when you know in advance that you won't be able to do something you really wish... and you accept the Fate. And that's nothing to be pissed off. When things start turning to the better it's time to be afraid. But I'm making it too complicated, better to explain what exactly happened.
One year ago, saying our goodbyes to our volunteer friends in Iwanuma, Okano san promised to organize a volunteer meeting in his restaurant in Kobe this year. He fullfilled his promise, the meeting is this Sunday and lots of people will show up since it's the start of the Golden Week in Japan. Ramon also left for Kobe today. As for me, I knew it from the beginning that I'll have no money for the trip. I accepted my Fate. And then, suddenly, some money popped up from the sky. Yay, it's enough for the ferry ticket, for the ryokan and even a few beers! I felt like being in haven. And a call to the Panstar ferry operator dropped me in the abyss of desperation. The morons. The idiots. The motherfuckin' bastards. Who in his sane mind would suspend the line for the yearly check of the ship exactly during the Golden Week, when all japan goes on some kind of trip? Baka! So, no direct ferry from Osaka to come back in Korea. The other chance? By bus from Osaka to Hakata and to Pusan with the well known Camellia Line (I use it every three months for my visa run). When I added all the expenses for this trip I wanted to cry. I can't make it. The freaking bus is way too expensive - yet it's the cheapest transport in Japan. And I'm too stubborn to borrow money. The most stupid thing is that I have to make my visa run in these days anyway - and I can't make it to Osaka. To make things worse this evening I have Korean lessons. I hate myself and I hate the world.
I'm going to bake some bread and try to cheer up.

It's gonna be hard. Even the weather feels pity for me so it's raining cats and dogs. Great weather to be depressed.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Ricecooker

Gonna be really short this time but I just have to post some pictures.
Since my new ricecooker was only catching dust, Kyong Hee had mercy on me and she explained me how to use it. In English. She explained in English, not that I-m supposed to use it in English. The beauty of this kind of ricecooker is that it can be used to make a shitload of different food. Cakes and bread included. So even before I tried to make my first rice I made a cocoa cake.


Same day in the evening it was time for oregano bread.

And today was Kyong Hee's birthday. She loves bananas so I made a cake of bananas and yoghurt with banana cream and topped with sliced bananas.

It looked somewhat boring so I decorated it with cocoa water.

And here it's after we managed to spill coffee over the cake. 생일축하합니다!
There's just one thing I must take care of - to cook sober. Yesterday evening I was drunk as a skunk and made a loaf of bread that can be used as a mortal weapon, if I hit someone with it I can kill him. Looks like there's not gonna be lots of well baked loafs here ^_^

The secret hobbies of Koreans

I was postponing this blog for a long time. I had lots of stuff to write about but not that many will to do it. This day's evening charged me up with another weird story...
It was a sunny Sunday, the really first day I can say sprig because it was the first time I worked in short sleeves this year, I was planting peanuts and garlic on my field and all in all it seemed to be another boring farmer's day. After I made dinner I was just too thirsty and decided for an evening stroll to the village, the granny that has the store in the village works 24/7, to get some beer. I bought them, along with some bottles of soju, had a completely misunderstood conversation with her husband (while some say he's her son) and left the creepy empty village with my backpack happily loaded. Why creepy empty? Well, Gahoe (or Kahue or Kahii or Gahui or Gahee or you name it, however I say it I say it wrong) looks like a ghost town at all times, but Sunday evening is something special. I met two grannies on the way to the store and they quickly crossed the street to not meet me so when I was packed with my beloved beers and was in a hurry to get back home, my thirsty son was waiting me...well, the beers...I was walking in this creepy empty street when from the other side someone is calling me. By name. Tak (that's me, if you don't know it yet), we have a party, open house, come! How could I refuse such a polite invite! Soju, makkoli and some other sweet alcohol, after that some of my beer with soju.. Well, the amusing part for me was just after I entered the open house and everyone wanted to introduce me to the others till they finally found out they already know me all, except two (out of fifteen). Luckily I got a lift home before i got wasted too much so I'm in the shape to write this .
One week ago my son came back from Japan. Looks like the weather was nasty even in the southern Japanese islands since this year's sugar cane harvest lasted less than three months, compared to the five of last year. I went to Busan to meet him and to have two days of drinking, without anyone worried how much food I consume with every sip of beer. And now he's here, for the next three months, in my room that looks more like a greenhouse with all the stuff that is growing in there. Spring has come, even if last week we had a snowstorm with wind so strong that it made some roofs flying.
A long intro, this time. Maybe by now you wonder what are those hobbies mentioned in the title. Frankly, one is merely annoying, while the other can be scary.
The annoying one is a somewhat compulsive behavior in moving the dishes with food. Most of Koreans I've met just can't stand that the gazillions of plates on the table should stay at the same place all the time. They keep them moving and moving, the only sacred is your rice bowl, no one will touch it.
The scary hobby is that they all want to be dating agency. You're single? I will introduce you my friend, she/he is also single. If you don't like him/her I have a lot of single friends. By any chances do you know a woman that would marry a farmer? Being a Korean means you just have to find a partner to every single person you know. No questions if he /she wants it. Two is better than one, together is better than alone. They do it, really. I just hope that it was a joke when they proposed a fifteen years old girl to my son. Of course I hoped it was a joke since I found that baby more fitting to me... khm khm. Never mind.
What about me? This blog is about me... I'm sad most of the time, but I feel cool. I feel really cool when I'm called for some works that are not supposed to be done by usual masons, but by apprentices in the traditional trade. Near Mo mountain there's a guest house that is expanding it's capabilities and building really fancy apartments. With a traditional gudeul - fire floor heated room.That's when we come to play with bamboo and clay.


The second day a few friends came to visit us while we were working and first thing they stole our beers. For revenge I took this picture and I'm posting it because this guy - he's the yoga master I mentioned many times - is supposed to have quit drinking. His wife forbid him.

And I know that sometimes she is checking my blog. And I know Korean women, there's gonna be some hard beating at their home. Yeah, I'm a petty bastard, I know that and I still like myself.
I had in my mind shitloads of very wise comments, but soju and beer made my mind much clear. There is no wisdom. Just the joy of looking at the moon without freezing.

After I wrote this few paragraphs I drank some more soju and beer and went to sleep at 3AM. So yesterday I woke with another colossal hangover, started working on the field and before noon we were drinking makkoli at the neighbor's house, in the afternoon beers on another friend's field and in the evening more beers in a nore bang - it's what you probably know as karaoke room, usually Japanese stuff is more popular and better known than Korean. And today is another hangovered day but it's OK, it's raining so I'm drinking makkoli under the roof. Spring is really in full blossom. Woods are full of pink flowers that are called "the true flower".

Oh, flowers. It was quite a shock here when they found out that I planted flowers in front of my house and some also on my field. I suppose it doesn't look really manly, but I don't care. I love flowers. And I love them even more if it's a cute little girl giving them to me.

Sweet little Jinny made a good deal, she got a huge chocolate for those flowers. And I managed to have a minimalist conversation with her, in Korean. Tomorrow I'm supposed to have a test in Korean and I haven't studied a single second yet. For the time being we put aside the grammar and I have to study more useful things - tools, vegetables and the like. The Challenger - he's really master of his trade, building floor heating systems and working with clay - said he would like to have me as his apprentice all the time but the problem is that I'm completely useless for working in a group. So I have to study Korean hard and fast. And he calls me for work only when he has small jobs so it's just the two of us (sometimes three if Ramon goes with me) and we have no troubles in understanding each other - I do know the trade and I can anticipate what he will do and what he will need. And he has only one complain about our work together - I'm too boring. When it's time for me to be bored I go on my field. The couer du boeuf tomato cultivar is already planted, same for the vienna blue rutabaga, along with welsh onion, green belt garlic, peanuts, oregano, sugar cane (as an experiment) and potatoes. In my room are sprouting sunflowers and the marmande tomatoes. And something I have no clue what it is, I got the seeds from a nun that visited here few weeks ago. She speaks no English at all so I had to polish my rusty French - her congregation is in France and she studied there. Even so she couldn't explain me what seeds she gave me and the Korean name meant less than nothing to me. I could have checked in my dictionary but I forgot the name the very next moment. So it's going to be a surprise.

Elephant Flu

No, it's not a new disease, it's just how I felt it. As if a virus the size of an elephant had fallen on me. Broke all my bones, crushed my head, set me on fire. Have no idea how a falling elephant could set me on fire but I surely had a severe fever because I was on the verge of hallucinations.
The worst of all was that I just couldn't have a beer. Just thinking of beer made me sick, the fever rose, I quickly had to have some tea and disappear under doubled blankets. It took me four days to get back to normal and I'm ashamed to admit that I really had to stay one day at home, in bed. There's so much to do. When I started hallucinating I was drilling holes in logs. Thousands of holes. For planting Lentinula edodes, better known as Shiitake mushroom. Here's a small sample of the work, a hundred logs.

Multiply by five and you have the work of two days for four workers.
The other thing that is keeping me busy is the field I inherited. Do you remember a little chap, riding the bamboo stick, that moved away with his parents? I got one of their fields. It's near, less than a minute walk, and few weeks ago it looked like this.

I actually worked on it only in my free time, two hours here and an afternoon there and in five days I repaired the fence, made a gate and managed to do some cleanup. And already started planting, mostly exotic plants like Brassica napobrassica, Brassica oleracea (the Gongylodes cultivar), Origanum vulgare and Solanum lycopersicum (the Marmande and Coeur De Boeuf heirloom cultivars). Also some more common Allium sativum found a place on the field.
I took this picture today, when I've had enough of working in the mud and rain.

Yes, in the lower left corner is a beer bottle. Empty. Well, empty of beer; full of cigarette butts in water, stinking like hell and it will make a great pest repellent. And to fight the moles I will try what I saw last year in Eomsa-ri, Gyeryongsan.

In windy weather the sound made is supposed to scare the moles. I will try to make them with beer bottles, for sure.

Hardest Homework Ever

Few days ago Kyong Hee came to visit me with her husband. And a rice cooker. The fancy stuff, you know, the one that looks like a small space ship (if you're lucky) or some Giger's nightmare (if you're unlucky. I consider myself lucky. I was speechless, touched by their kindness... BAKA! Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes!
"Thanks, I'm really grateful, " I said. " But you'll have to show me how to use this thing, I have no clue!"
"Well, that's something you'll have to figure out by yourself. It's all written on it. That's your homework for today." And they were gone.

In the evening I had a chat with Ramon and told him what happened.
# did you eventually figure out how to use it?
# well, i cleaned it and i think it can make a nice trinket in my room. i will stick to my happy time pressure cooker
To tell the truth, my Korean study is finally starting to be more interesting. I learned enough to have some grips. I found out that what all grammar books call just "special particles" are simple declension enclitics. OK, it lacks the vocative and ablative, but it has the comitative (which is really a conjunction added to the stem of a word, be it verb, adverb, adjective or noun). Not that this knowledge is of any help in my daily struggles with conversations, but I find it easier doing homework knowing exactly what I'm doing.
And I have some good laughs when I open my textbook and take a look at the drawings in it.

칡 is translated to English as "arrowroot". Wrong. Arrowroot is Maranta arundinacea, while what we dug, washed in icy streams and diced, is Pueraria lobata (and possibly other species in the genus Pueraria), by the common name kudzu. I posted a pic of its roots a few months ago.

It's not only a medicine used to mitigate hangovers, but also as a cure for alcoholism. I have troubles to believe that. I dug, washed and diced more than half a ton of it but I still enjoy my beer. The last few days were pretty much crazy. The first time, in January, we did something less than 200 kilos and froze our hands in the icy stream while washing the roots. The day after the washing we drive the roots to a place some 50 kilometers away to be sliced by machine and at home we finish by cutting them in small dices that go in the dryer for a couple of days.



When dry, we neatly pack them in 200g bags and sell them. Sounds nice, slice and dice. For something less than 200kg it took 10 hours to 5 people to cut it. The last two "contingents" were of 250kg each and 3 or 4 of us to cut. We actually needed two days for the last one and don't ask how many blisters I have on my hand.
Maybe the Spring really started. We go sub zero only one or two times a week. But I learned not to trust Korean Spring, I still remember the snow on April 12th.
I got a hint what to cultivate besides rutabaga on my fields: Sorghum bicolor and Zingiber officinale. Easy to sell.