Top ten terrible songs

I like music, it's been a social and emotional crutch in my life at times. I used to play original Beatles 45s on my parent's record player from an early age which has resulted in two things. One, I'm a lifelong Beatles obsessive and anorak. Two, I'm a total music snob.

Growing up in the 1980s was an interesting time for a host of socio-economic reasons, not least the music  scene. For the large part the 80s was bloody awful in terms of fashion and hairstyles. I recall men with perms and girls wearing chunks of plastic as jewellery as two fine examples.

Navy Larks

April 2002 saw one of my finest pranks and practical jokes. I don't say this loosely either, I love to wind people up and if there is a shocking, risqué side to it then even better.

I was serving in the Royal Navy and based at HMS Collingwood in Fareham, Hampshire. This weekend in particular was a big sporting one. Middlesbrough were playing Arsenal in the FA Cup Semi Final in Manchester and it was the London Marathon too.

Finding Private Glass

For the past few months I’ve been meaning to visit the UN memorial cemetery in Busan and never found the time to do so. With it being on my list of things to do for so long I grasped the nettle a week or so ago and looked up how to get there on the web. What happened in the next few minutes was quite astounding, for me at least and made my visit to the UNMCK more of a personal pilgrimage.

Breaking My 찜질방 Duck.

A unique concept of the Korean lifestyle is the Jimjilbang (찜질방). Google will tell you all you need to know about these places but I’ll do my best with what I've learnt from my time in Korea and my recent visit to one.

The common sleeping area inc snack bar. 

A Jimjilbang is a bathhouse or spa where Koreans go to relax and unwind. It’s a place where you can have a sauna, a body scrub and bathe in the hot pools for health benefits. This is not unique to most countries I know, but what is different here in Korea is that once you've finished with the sauna etc. Then you can head to another area and sleep for the night or until you feel like heading home.  Think of it as a one stop shop for relaxation at a fraction of what you’d expect to pay.

War?

It's the 30th of March 2013 and I'm in my apartment in the South Korean city of Jinju. The city is located in Gyeongsangnam-do province down in the deep South of South Korea.

Today is like any other day of late, in that the spring sunshine and cherry blossoming provides a very pleasant experience to my day to day life here as an English teacher. People are going about their business as usual and there really is not a sign that anything is afoot.

A Change of Heart

So what happened? Did I move to Thailand or did I throw it all away and become a modern day pirate off the coast of Somalia?

I'm in the building in the middle

I did neither in the end and ended up staying in South Korea. I actually got more than 10 solid job offers in three different countries during this month but some were shady and others didn’t really appeal to me.

Leaving Las Samcheonpo

Last month was the second most busiest month this Blog has has since it's inception. I'm not going to quote figures but if I could be pestered to get a decent advertising link up then I'd have made a few £s that's for certain. One of the other sites I ran in the past either my music & movies or political Blog made me roughly about £100PM from Google adsense. I thought this very decent and paid for my cell phone bill as well as a few cheeky beers each month.