This past weekend was pretty good. Friday night, work treated the foreigner staff to dinner and drinks, which is always nice. Nothing crazy happened, luckily. I did find out, conclusively, that our online overtime will be outsourced to the Philippines, which takes about $400/month from me, but there's nothing I can do. No one likes it, except of course the higher-ups, who will be saving a buck or two.
Saturday I finally went into Itaewon. Itaewon is foreigner central, and supposedly has the largest amount of crime in all of Korea. I wouldn't doubt it, the place looks downright shady. I had wanted to not go there ever, just because the stereotype about foreigners there is not very good, but I am planning on going there next Saturday to get some shoes custom-made, so I might as well go now. I met some people there for dinner and discussion. It was a group of atheists, and I suppose they assumed I was an atheist, too. I went because I had nothing else to do, and I wanted to have a decent discussion on religion. Religion being a don't-ask-don't-tell topic for many people, my friends and I don't discuss it. I really enjoyed the discussion, but at times it was all I could do not to laugh at some of them. They of course complained about Christians just regurgitating what they've heard others say without trying to think about it or research it themselves, but some of them did the exact same thing, and I had to correct them on some of their false assumptions. I don't really know what I'm going to do, I'm sure they'll ask for my religious experiences sooner or later and I'll have to tell them the truth, but until then I guess I'll just add another perspective (i.e. one that is well-versed in Christianity).
The group dynamic was pretty interesting. There was an ex-orthodox Jew, a couple of ex-Protestants, and a couple of people who'd never been religious. The ex-orthodox Jew of course knew a lot about Judaism, but the ex-Protestants knew about what the average Protestant knows, and the others knew even less. The next meeting is in two weeks and the discussion will center around a debate between a rabbi and some news guy. According to the ex-orthodox, it's pretty good and the rabbi holds his own.
Sunday, I met up with some fellow musicians and we had a 5-hour jam/improve session. It was pretty cool. Some of us were quite good, some of us were quite new, so laughs were had sometimes on purpose, and sometimes on accident. Afterwards a few of us went to an open-mic night in Itaewon (twice in two nights...) where one of the girls performed a couple of her songs.
Still on the quest for a good friend that I can share things with and just hang out with. As Grace gets closer to quitting Topia, she is becoming more involved with church. She is the kind of person who enjoys being busy, and she knows once she quits work she'll be bored, so I think that's why she's doing this. Seriously, she's probably doing something "churchy" at least 20 hours/week now, on top of working at least 40. It's sickening, actually, because at her church I see very little concern for working outside of the church. Everyone likes to sit in circles and stroke their god-ego. People are constantly trying to pull me in and get me more and more involved, and I just want to shout at them to leave me alone, that I'm fine without their useless Christian backrubs.
I bought an Xbox in early July and have never been able to connect to Xbox Live to download things. That means I can't download updates to games and therefore can't play them online. Basically, the Xbox is useless to me. I've spent at least 6 hours on the phone to Microsoft, and at least as many hours on the internet googling for solutions, and found nothing. I've tried to call my ISP here but I can't get through to anyone. I'm very close to just selling the thing and counting my losses. That'll give me more money to buy an eBook reader and/or iPod.
P.S. It's finally happening! <http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/13/cell.phone.wallet/index.html?eref=rss_tech>
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