Seoul Trips & Daejeon

For 2 weekends in a row I managed to escape from Gongju on a bus that went to Seoul. Some other people came with me too. I was glad to go there, as I could continue my research into Korean alcoholic beverages.
There was a wider range of beverages on offer in Seoul, and although the effect on the body was very similar to that which I experienced in Gongju, the cost of the research was much higher. Not to worry, as I have been putting aside part of my salary to fund this investigation. However, I was disappointed to find that the morning after the research, I had a bad taste in my mouth and a feeling of sickness in my stomach, and my head was also unwell. Once again it seemed some of the beverages I had consumed had 'gone off', and should never have been sold to me in the first place. It was fortunate for the venues that sold me the drinks that I couldn't remember where I had been. I also couldn't remember which beverages I had tried, which was annoying as I will have to start the Seoul Research Program again. I guess after drinking the bad beer it made me forget. I wasn't sure either about how I got back to the place I was staying, and worse still, I had no idea where I was anyway.

As it turned out, I was not far from where I wanted to be...which was near a vegetarian restaurant where I was to meet Mike and his girlfriend, JiYoung, who are friends of my best friend in Korea, Paul. It was only the third time I had met Mike, and the second time I had met JiYoung. Nevertheless, this was still enough for both of them to easily climb above Paul in my best friends ranking list, with Mike taking top spot. In fact the more people I meet, the further down the list Paul will fall, unless he finishes with his girlfriend and agrees to help me with my research project.

The following weekend was very interesting also. After a stop over in Seoul which was fairly similar to the previous experience, myself and best friends 1 and 3 (Mike and Paul) went to Daejeon, a city not far from Gongju. Here, we were to go to a birthday party of someone who was friends with BF1 and BF3, but whom I had never met. Indeed I wasn't invited, but went anyway as I only had 3 friends, as BF1 and BF3 kept reminding me. Soon after arriving and talking to the new people, Paul had slipped down to BF8. Later, in a bar, I met another good person, and Paul was BF9. He doesn't know this, but I will tell him soon. The bar gave me two new beverages to research. The first was a drink called 'Long Island Ice Tea', which I thought sounded refreshing. It was. Several hours later after thorough research had been carried out, I overheard someone order something called a 'Ling Ryeland Mice Pee' which sounded disgusting to me, but looked somewhat similar to the previous drink, so I had that too. It got a good mark. By the end of the evening I had lots of friends better than Paul (BF12), and had also been invited to the wedding of Paul's friends in Daejeon, Danny(BF4) and Mi Na(BF5), which he didn't seem to like. He can no longer say I have only 3 friends. I now have 12. That's not too bad, as I have only been in Korea for 6 months. That's an average of 2 friends each month, although 9 of them did appear only a few days ago. Escaping from Gongju has proven to be a good idea. I will try to do it more often.