Well, it was a long week, followed by an interesting weekend. All last week I was in Field Sanitation Class, laughably easy since most of what is taught is part of 68W… other than the stuff about inspecting a Water Trailer, and how to chlorinate it for safe drinking. High point of that class was having to give a 3-5min presentation on the health-hazard of your choosing. Had to sit through five different briefings on frostbite, and then I got up and knocked ‘em off their seats with a briefing about Depleted Uranium munitions. Even had a fun l’il slideshow with lotsa’ gross pictures of birth-defect cases.
Saturday I was supposed to have joined an MWR bus-trip down to Dongdaemun, a shopping district down in Seoul. The trip got cancelled due to lack of interest, but as I was griping about it, PFC Choi, one of our KATUSAs (Korean Augmentee To United States Army), volunteered to act as a tour-guide/translator. Sunday the two of us took off for Seoul, hitting Dongdaemun and Yongsan to shop.
Now, Dongdaemun’s all about clothing. Three major malls, and about six square blocks of street-vendors. Additionally, they’ve got a ton of street-food vendors, selling everything from normal ribs and chicken to various bits of seafood on skewers, to boiled silkworm pupae in gravy. Needless to say, I passed on the silkworm… Choi agreed with me. He may be Korean, but he’s not up for eating bugs either. Only street-snack I partook of was some kind of fish, and I haven’t thrown up within the past 24, so I think I’m safe.
Funniest event of the day was walking around Dongdaemun… we find this street-art sculpture of this bronze cartoon-looking monkey wielding a box wrench. I snap a few photos and then check the base of the sculpture. There’s a plaque, but it’s written in Hangul, so I ask Choi, “Hey, can you translate for me, please?”
Choi looks at me askew and pauses before telling me, “It says ‘Please Don’t Throw Your Cigarette Butts Here.’”
All I could do was laugh. It turns out that street-sculpture in Korea is kinda’ like decorating your living-room… they don’t care about what the sculpture’s called or the artist’s name, they just want something that looks cool.
I didn’t want to buy clothing that day, so we hopped a taxi to Yongsan, which is apparantly the electronic-wholesale-outlet
Choi’s an agreeable kid, speaks fluent English, and he’s willing to continue this schtick as a guide/translator as long as we’re up for it. Next weekend will probably involve a mass-platoon trip to Seoul to some cool restaurant at the top of a tower overlooking the city. All we have to do is split the costs of Choi’s train fare and food, since KATUSAs only make around $62.00/month. No shit.
Other exciting news is that I’m now Promotable. Yup, it’s SPC(P) now… somewhere, in some DA computer, there’s a flag set showing that I passed the E-5 board, and since I didn’t lose the rank due to UCMJ action, I’m on the company’s Promotable Personnel roster. Means I don’t have to go to the Board again… cool, huh? What it does mean, though, is that I’ve got an appointment at Brigade S-1 to get my ERB updated… it don’t show any of my records from my previous service; none of my awards, no secondary MOS, no previous duty-stations, none of my schools, nothing. Scuttlebutt this morning amongst the NCOs is that they’re looking to lateral me to Corporal, since we’re about to lose two of our E-5s.
Aside from that, I finally received my laptop yesterday, though I’m doing this on the library computer… I still don’t have an antivirus program installed yet, and I’m not taking her online until I do.