bright lights, big city

Bearing in mind that Seoul has, by some estimates, three times the population of London, it's fair to say that it's a fairly biggish city. I certainly wasn't expecting such massiveness when I came here - when I saw the first cluster of skyscrapers on my journey from the airport, I figured I had nearly arrived; an hour later (on the speedway) I was still sat on the 'express' bus. In fact, if you stand on top of a tall building all you can see for 360 degrees are the tops of other buildings. It's like looking out over the canopy of the concrete jungle.

Anyhow, on a micro scale all the different neighbourhoods have a lot of unique flavours, and it would be nice to have a bit more free time to explore them. My locale, Kwangjin-gu, is pretty staid in most terms, but is full of useful stuff like dry cleaners, video shops and pharmacies. The only serious landmark is Technomart (if in a taxi, pron. "tekka-no-marta"), a massive open-plan shopping mall - fifteen floors of open-plan consumer goodness, with some major high-tech equipment (as well as clothes, food, and, well, everything) and the atmosphere of a market, which is another aspect of Seoul reminiscent of Blade Runner: computers and mobiles have finally lost the status of luxury products, and are passed around, ripped off, sold on street corners, copied, modified and bastardised like any other consumer goods. Dixons it ain't. Technomart is a pretty awesome sight if you are into sheer Asian-style scale.

My second home here, though, is Itaewon, the Weigook (Western) ghetto, and the only place in Seoul where you stand a remote possibility of getting mugged. It's seedy, drunken, full of freaks and everything else that the nightlife area in this part of the world should be. My Hong Kong buddies will think of Wan Chai, but Itaewon is more like Patpong. If you can stomach it, 'Hooker Hill' has to be seen if only to see that Kubrick wasn't exaggerating with his "Hey G.I.! Sucky sucky five dollar" girls. Unlike in Saigon, though, Itaewon is still infested with not-very-clever G.I.s, but the little darlings have to be in bed by midnight, so it's usually OK to hide out in a non-G.I. bar until the cries of "fawk you man" disappear.

The markets are quite crazy here, and I went to one of the biggies, Namdaemun, last week. The highlight was definitely the black market, literally underground, which sells everything from Hershey bars to 3l bottles of whiskey to (shock!) deodorant. All off the back of a US Army lorry, of course.

Not finished...

i have a beat poet in my class

Can anybody help with this? My students do an 'English Diary' every week, but one of them appears to have had a knock on the head. I think he may have been possessed by the spirit of ee cummings.

"Traffic safety draws conference. Today all students are one thing. Difficulty will draw the picture in the below-mentioned large door and lye does the mind trembled. It will be like that why??? Truth it is strange. All and it sees the picture well it appeared to be becoming. But only that time doing well spread. Yuss Ji and the picture mees was thick and it rolled up. Afterwards department in order there not to be like this day which it shakes off, petty it is serious to all..."

Thank you Billy. More interesting than the usual "I have a dog. Dog's name Han Ju. I loves dog happy." There is another kid in the class who seems to lose interest in words after the fourth letter - random extract: "1 thing that 2 dogs it does but all, when it is to do it did to be how sess nya it does."

More later if I have time.