Jiu-Jitsu Tournament

I’m in the finals of the 2011 Daegu Machado Jiu-Jitsu Gi tournament, heavyweight division. I toppled a redwood Canadian in the first round, and then was immediately put back on the mat to fight a tenacious Korean in round two. Now, my opponent with a bull’s chest and eyes rounded and wrinkled like the dawn from a lifetime of smiling is posing for pre-match pictures with me. My victory is all but assured.

                “One more, funny,” he laughs, his voice rising at the end as he wraps his arms around my waist and squeezes lightly while I put him in a headlock.

                “Sure,” I say. The ride to the technical high school was tense. Our master told us he had rented a bus for the ride, but in his fumbling English, he meant to say he had bought us all bus tickets on the same bus as all the other competitors in Daejeon. We rode with our possible opponents, everyone staring around the cabin on the hour long ride looking for who they’re going to fight first.

                “Okay, Brian, you’ve got this,” James, a short, thin New Zealander who’s been my coach today, says patting me on the back. “You’re going to run through this guy.”

                I move towards the mat and I tell myself, repeating it like a mantra that this is all for fun. The gymnasium has railed-off row of bleachers above the floor, making it feel as if we were gladiators in the Roman coliseum preparing for possible death. Also, being tucked behind a labyrinth of metal shops and open garages filled with drill presses, table saws, clamps, vices, and other devices that look like medieval tools of torture makes my heart and stomach twist inside my torso like two anacondas trying to swallow each other.

                “You’re up,” a Korean woman sitting at the scorer’s table says in her staccato, chopping board English.

                As we step onto the mat I fix my gi jacket and tighten my belt. The thick, coarse linen jacket feels like a metal vest, a wire brush coat that will push me on the ground. I try to breathe, I tell myself this all for fun, and no one takes it too seriously. Across the mat I look at my opponent and smile, but his eyes are locked on the floor. He begins to punch out breaths and flexes his arms like a pit-bull. He’s almost shouting as he breathes. His eyes look like crosshairs, he has the eyes of a soldier now as he steps forward to shake my hand. But I’m sure it’s all in good fun. The bell rings and he grabs my collar and thrusts his forehead into my lip. I can taste the copper of my blood as it trickles onto my tongue. His hands are as tight as the vice grips bolted to the tables in the adjacent building. My heart starts pounding, and I bite my lip and try to push my skull through his. He pulls at my jacket as if he was whipping a rope, and I shove him back. He’s strong, like your-father strong when you were a little kid. I grab him and push and remember that I’m strong too. We head butt and push and twist each other trying to throw the other one to the ground. He rifles a right palm into my chest and I rifle one back. We grip each other’s gis and go back to our bull horn twisting, grinding head butts. The ref blows his whistle and steps between us.

                “No pushy,” he says punching his fists together, “fighting,” he says addressing only me.

                “If we get any more aggressive this is going to be a fistfight,” I say shrugging.

                “You’ve got to take him down,” James says from the corner. I snarl and tell myself this is no longer just for fun. I’m here to win. I jokingly told Sung, my master, if I didn’t win this tournament I was going to burn the building down. He didn’t laugh at first, he only stared at me out of the corner of his eye and told me all my competitors were going to be more experienced and prepared than I. He then suggested maybe I shouldn’t compete. I patted his shoulder and assured I knew I was probably over matched and I just wanted to try it. But now, after being head butted and thrown around like a child, I’m determined to win.

                The ref waves his hand and I shoot before the large man can grab me. He sprawls and his crotch is pressed to my cheek. He snakes his arms across my trachea and tightens his guillotine hold. I wheeze but I keep my fingers dug into his thighs.

                “No, no, no,” I say. I push forward, and he flexes. He flexes and I tell myself to keep pushing. I push and I pull, and I turn and I take him down. The ref says, “Two points.” I scream, “Yes.” He struggles, but I run around his guard and gain side control, and the ref raises three fingers. I press down on him and wait for the clock to run out, hoping he has nothing left. He wiggles and pushes and gasps and wheezes and the ref blows the whistle and we both collapse. He stands up and grunts out his disappointment. I keep watch him as we walk back to the center. The ref raises my hand, and as if we had just finished having lunch my opponent smiles, grabs my hands, and says, “Congratulations Brian, very fun, yay.” He then skips off and hugs his friend wrapping his large camera around his neck like an Asian tourist.

ODTS

I’m fairly certain there is mold growing in my ceiling. My ceiling has the texture of a melting bag of ice cubes, and it has a pouch of papyrus white paper that’s coming up like a shirt that’s shrunk too small at the bathroom wall. A long pipe into the protruding phone booth of my bathroom, and after a few months of trying to figure out who was pissing in the alley behind my house each night, I realized there was a hole in the ceiling boards that was dripping water.

                I ignored it at first, but the dripping kept coming like an impatient businessman in wingtips clicking on the sidewalk. I’d wait up at nights and pretend that it wasn’t the dripping pipe. “It’s just someone walking by,” I’d tell myself, or, “Someone just turned on their stove upstairs and the ignition just won’t turn over.”

                I didn’t want to tell anyone. I didn’t want to move from my quiet building. The only other option was the frat house of teacher across town where Julian blasts his music drunk at three in the morning from Friday to Monday, Koreans have a church gathering with choir music at six in the morning every day, and there are constant rumblings and arguments between the teachers on the stairs.  I saw my solitude at first drifting into nights clutching my pillow over my ears and rocking back and forth in my bed to stop myself from throwing a chair into the hall and charging at anyone yelling in the cavernous stairway.

                But the dripping became persistent. It bothered me late at night like a girlfriend with too many thoughts and no job. “What do you think about Aliens?” it’d drip at two in the morning. “Do you think Korea would be called Korea if it weren’t filled with Koreans?”

                I had to try to fix this. I told Tommy that my ceiling won’t stop dripping. Tommy is like the foreign teacher’s bitch at our Hagwon, any problem we have Tommy has to take care of. He would be better at his job if he wasn’t constantly sucking his lips, scratching his head, and showing up to work with hangovers.

                The next day a man came with a plunger and a coiled, metal snake. He bowed, slipped off his shoes and ran past me before I could point to the ceiling. He moved so quickly I really thought I had clogged the toilet. I tapped him on the shoulder and pointed at the ceiling, and then he sucked his lips and got on his cellphone. He pulled a chair over—he had the slouched shoulders and small build of a mole in glasses—and squinted at the ceiling. He got down from the chair, mumbled something into his phone, and then said to me, “Upstairs.” He bowed and ran up the stairs. He never came back.

                For a few days the pipes were quiet, and then they came back. The dripping became louder, and after talking to some of the other teachers I realized the patches of green were probably mold. I told my boss about this, and asked why no one had fixed it. Her reply was, “Tommy said if you don’t say anything not to worry about it.” She smiled. I thought again about moving, and told her to forget about it. You can’t read Mark Twain in a Frat house.

                As the months drew on I became curious about the changing bruise in my ceiling. I began spraying bleach mixed with water over the bulging hematomas of fungus growing through the ceiling paper. Everything was going fine, I had suffered a few colds but nothing serious, until I wondered what it felt like. I pressed my index finger into the dry oatmeal board and made a bullet hole through the wood and paper. Water began pissing out, and I ran to the store to get duct tape. The only duct tape they had was bright green. I bandaged the ceiling, and sprayed bleach over the duct tape.  Next, the paper began to pull back, and I fought this by spraying more bleach on the paper. I thought several times about telling Tommy, but I really don’t want to move into a noisy building filled with all of the people I work with. I like them, but they tell stories about the noise. The Korean church group apparently has an organ of some sort, and they liked to clap a lot.

                I spend most weekends staring at the wound in the ceiling. This weekend I finally decided to look up what diseases I might get from long term exposure to mold. The most common disorder is ODTS and it just resembles the flu—itchy eyes, runny nose, fever. I could also contract bronchitis, which I already had, but I think I got it from someone at work. The last illness I could contract is pneumonia. Nothing in my research—I looked at least three webpages—said there would be long term effects. Also, I became certain that if I continue spraying bleach on the ceiling, everything will be fine. Anyways, at this time, I have bigger problems, yellow dust—toxic dust from the Gobi Desert in China—is invading the city like tiny snipers hiding in Oxygen particles. I wanted to air out the smell of bleach from my apartment, but I didn’t want the yellow dust to get in. My solution: I’m wearing a surgical mask and running the air conditioner. I feel this is the best route; my only other option is to have maniacs yelling outside my door. That just sounds horrible.  

Day Two

My back-rib pain, from getting slammed repeatedly and not asking if I was falling correctly during Judo last night, has receded to a whispering numbness. I’m still going to compete in the jiu-jitsu tournament on May 14^th; I have no reason not to. My back twinges as I wait for the light to change, and I promise my back I’ll go light tonight.

                “I’ll only work on technique,” I assure my back and ribs.

                As I walk up the stairs I hear the patter of foot movements and the slap of gloves snapping out punches. I enter the gym, and see two men sparring in MMA. No one is rolling on the mat, and besides the two men circling each other in the cage, everyone else is inert on the mat and by the weight benches watching the show. I rush into the locker room—a close with five lockers and a shoe bin behind a dust covered fan—and pull on my shorts.

                “Nah-say-oh,” I say greeting the people on the mat. They reply in a unified zombie-moan as they watch our head MMA instructor snap a jab into his opponent’s jaw that makes the other man look like a grandfather that just ate a lemon. I call him Big-Guy-Purple-Shorts, because he is a big guy who always wears purple shorts—our head MMA instructor that is.

                I sit down and begin to stretch as Big-Guy-Purple-Shorts taps out his opponent. He stands up and begins speaking in Korean to the men sitting on the red square a few feet away. The cage is a large rectangle with black mats running around two squares of red and three heavy bags running along the windows of the far wall of the gym. Big-Guy grabs his opponent and tells the men on the floor what he did wrong. He then slaps the other man on the shoulder, smiles, and stands up. I twist to my left and my back becomes hot, screaming and shouting that it’s not fine. I grunt and turn the other way, and my ribcage bites together and asks if we can leave.

                “Briayawn,” Big-Guy says singing my name in his Korean accent. “Sparrring?” he asks putting one too many r’s in the word.

                I jump up and say yes before I think it through. I’m pulling on the gloves when I hear my name a second time, spoken in the raspy, Godfather voice of the Buddha-built mobster that gave me a hangover from a drinking game the week before.

                “Brian…” he says and then loses me in a labyrinth of Korean and fist pumping.

                “He says put on a show,” someone translates.

                I pull on the gloves and my hands twinge and my fingers dance excited to finally hit someone for the first time in a long time. I start hopping, and the threads and sinews of my muscles pull tight as if they’re going to snap. They keep pulling tight as I move in, and they pull tighter when Big-Guy rockets a jab into my cheek. I laugh and we start trading punches. My back soon goes quiet as the rest of my body bobs and weaves trying to land a big punch. He grabs me and we go to the floor. We’re twisting and coiling when Master Sung yells, “You can punch him in the face…Punch him in the face.”

                I climb on top of him like a schoolhouse bully and start dropping axe-blow right hands. He tries to get up and I punch him flat again. He laughs something to the mobster sitting outside the cage on a weight bench, and I punch him in the mouth again. He twists and moves using the years of experience that got him a purple belt in jiu-jitsu and helped him knock out more than a few people in the cage. But none of them were as strong as me. I don’t even mind that he’s locking up my left leg in his half-guard. I hook several fast shots into his ribcage. I’m not worried as he rolls onto his side; I uppercut a few lefts into his chin and drill a few rights into his spine. His foot on my hip means nothing as I jackhammer my right hand into his temple. Then somehow, whipping his legs like the twirling flags of Olympic flag twirlers, I’m locked in a deep triangle while he punches my face like a speed bag. All I can do is laugh as I turn over trying to pop my head out. His legs go tight as two anacondas and I have to tap. We both collapse on the mat and my ribcage curses me for being an idiot. But I couldn’t be a punk ass bitch; I can’t show weakness in front of the Koreans, they might think Americans are soft.

                I heave and place my hands on my hips as Big-Guy, in a show of respect takes both my hands and bows to me. I bow to him, and the Mobster laughs something at him while he points at me. Then Mobster gives me a big thumbs up. I drop my gloves, and wipe some blood from my lip. I look up and a smaller man with cannonball shoulders and MMA trunks slides on Big-Guy’s and starts hopping while he stares at me.

                “I think you have a challenger,” One of the other Americans says pointing her eyes at the other guy.

                “Okay, enough,” my ribs and back plead, “You didn’t even win the first time.” My back and ribs can be very rude when they’re feeling discomfort, and just mean when they’re in pain. I nod and wave a hand asking for a moment. The Challenger sits down in the Lotus position on the mat next to the sprawled out body of Big-Guy, laying with his forearm over his forehead and sucking in all the air he can.

                I slide on the gloves and touch hands with the Challenger. He starts changing levels and sliding his feet like a trained fighter. He throws a one two combo with a low kick and I realize he’s a trained fighter. He moves in and I snap out a jab to keep him away. He throws a low kick at my thigh and I jump back. I plant my front foot and whip a leg kick at him and my ribcage bites down on my muscles and spins me across the gym with my hand planted in my back as if I were ready to give birth.

                “My back,” I groan. The Koreans mumble things to each other, the big man sits up on his elbow, and the Mobster waves claps his hands asking for a show. I slink out of the cage and sit down on the weight bench while the Koreans look away me with accusative-slit eyes. They whisper things and smile, and I’m certain they’re all calling me a big sissy. I spend an hour apologizing and trying to stretch before I pull on my post-workout shirt and then hobble out onto the street to look for a cab. I tell Sung that my back is hurting and he smiles and says, “Feel better.”

                Now, I’m lying on my bed reclined like a Roman Emperor with my calves hanging over the edge. I’m worried if I lay down on my back I won’t be able to get up. I’ve left my door unlocked and I have my phone in my hand just in case when I wake up I can’t move. I just hope I can compete in the tournament in two weeks. If I can’t, I’ll tell them I was hit by a car during after fighting off five, no seven guys. I just can’t tell them I went to bed biting my pillow to stop myself from crying. I’m also certain that I am never doing Judo again. I know those repeated slams are the cause of this. I will never do Judo again, unless one of them challenges me to Judo sparring. I can’t look weak. They need to know Americans are strong, even if they’re hobbling around on canes at the age of 28.

Judo

I was repeatedly slammed during Judo practice at the Jiu-Jitsu school last night. The school is a group of grapplers, muy-thai fighters, and Judo fighters that come together to trade styles and moves and spar. Instruction comes in the form of short bursts and corrections during sessions. The school had a party on Thursday, and I was drinking with the Judo teacher—who’s a black belt and looks like an old Army sergeant with a flattop haircut and diamond cutter jaw. I told him I would try out Judo, it couldn’t be much different from wrestling.

 I flew and thumped like a sack of rocks shifting as it crashed into the mat. My partner was a twenty-one tall and lanky with arms and legs that are like long bundles of wire, he had the build and demeanor of a farm boy. After a short session of sparring in which I lunged for double leg takedowns, and ignored the use of the gi, we had a short session of throw practice. My partner grabbed my shirt sleeve and collar and hoisted me over his back like a sack of mulch and then slammed me onto the mat. He swung me like an axe and I fell in splinters with each throw.

“Brian, are you okay?” he asked after I stood up holding my ribs.

“I’m fine, fine,” I wheezed extending my arm and trying to look tough while I bit my lip and held in a short, painful puddle of tears.

 In Judo you are supposed to land in one solid, heavy motion, with proper posture: you brace yourself with one leg wrapped around the other which is planted to absorb the impact; your arm falls straight out and slaps the ground and you land along your ribs and not your back. I was bouncing, flailing, clutching the man’s gi as I flew over, still ignorant as how to fall. My ribcage quickly let me know that this was ridiculous. It surged with pain, howled, and pressed into my flesh as if it wanted a new set of organs to hold.

                I snorted and wheezed as I was pulled off the mat, the other man, smiling, still clutched my sleeve. His fingers were dug in and coiled the cloth into a fist as if he were worried I might try to escape. He kept smiling like a sadist or a torturer enjoying the practice of his craft.

                “Are you all right?” Nate, another American, called from outside the cage.

                “I don’t think I’m falling right,” I admitted. The conversations inside the school resemble the world after the fall of the tower of Babel. Korean and English are spoken over each other, and often translated by someone sitting nearby. If something needs to be explained it’s done with the hands and the legs and the twirling and pointing of the eyes.

                After ten throws, the man, twenty-one-years old and wearing glasses with the constant smile of someone who’s never had to pay rent, held out his sleeve. “Your turn,” he said.

                I grabbed the sleeve and slumped him onto my back like a load of laundry and then tumbled him over my shoulder almost falling to the ground.

                “Brian,” said the master fumbling over my name as if there were greased ball bearings in the consonants and vowels. “No,” he said strutting over with his hands locked over the knot of his black belt.

                He nodded and kept his eyes wide looking at me while he grabbed the young man’s collar and sleeve like a scolding father. The master jerked him towards him stabbing his ass into his torso and then in one, smooth graceful motion slammed him into the mat. The long limbed man fanned out above him like a peacock displaying its feathers. The young man fell in a solid, reclined position with the same expertise as the master had shown in the throw. Both were done as if part of some long practiced dance.

 He took him again, and instead of showing me the same move twice, pointed at me and said, “You…you.” He then wobbled and grabbed the sleeve wrong and pattered his feet as if he were drunk, he didn’t lock his elbow under the man’s armpit or stab his ass into his stomach or pick him up in one smooth motion. He dropped him onto the floor and then picked him up. He showed me the wrong move several more times, and then showed the correct move and walked away. Like most explanations in Korea it focused on what not to do adding in at the end, very quickly and with no explanation, what to do.

                “You go,” the master said as he walked back among the heavy bags at the head of the room.

                I fumbled through the move, working in a one, two, three and four manner trying to teach my body the correct movements. In the demonstration the throw looked simple: you ball the collar of the gi in your fist while holding their sleeve at the wrist; you then slide your right foot across your body and twist into them throwing them over your shoulder and onto the ground; at the end you remain standing while they are lying on the ground. Put together it looked like a simple wrestling throw—throws which I practiced as a child until they became rote and unconscious. But, as with most things in martial arts, there is more than just the one motion, there are the little motions that come together to make it happen.

                After a few more slow, staccato throws, where my feet patted around trying to keep balance as the man went over, my turn was done. My ribcage and back pleaded for me to sit down, but I offered my sleeve. They were throwing and slamming each other into the mat as if the floor were made of cushions. I couldn’t give up now and let them whisper and point at me behind my back, could I? I offered my sleeve and took a deep breath. As he grabbed me I saw the landing in my mind, but I was stuck at his ass because my left leg and left arm were snaked around his gi.

                “Sorry, my fault,” I said as he plunked me back on the ground confused.

                “Okay,” he said patting my shoulder. I told my body not to be rude, and that this man needed to practice just as much as me. I tried to distract my limbs and torso while he grabbed my collar and sleeve, but halfway up his back they realized they were in the air. My arm slid across his back as I crested over his shoulder, and then, coiled with force, I slammed into the mat like an axe falling on a block of wood. I bounced and bit my lip like a pro wrestler selling a slam. If the WWF has mats as hard and solid as the ones we practice Judo on, I understand why those big men hold their backs like pregnant women collecting the mail. He pulled me back, patted my shoulder, and then slammed me back onto the mat. The two Americans standing beyond the cage snickered and oohed; I could hear their cringes as I crashed again and again onto the mat.

                “Your turn,” the man finally said. I did five more throws, gaining confidence with each throw, the master even told me I was doing well. I tucked my elbow under his armpit, turned my feet and threw him over my shoulder. Besides my feet patting a little after he hit the ground, I had the fundamentals correct. Then he went five more times. I crawled up, hoping the torture was over. The rest of the group smiled and we formed a circle to finish the practice with some calisthenics. As we went through the jumping jacks I made a note to remember to show up at ten and not nine thirty on Tuesdays. My back, like a preacher bloodied and bruised, reminded me of the old cliché: Pride comes before the fall. Or in this case, pride continues the fall over and over and over and over…..

Travel Preparations

Next weekend I’m going to go out of town. I say it each week, but I know this about myself, it takes me twice as long to do things that are not in my normal routine. My process goes like this. First, I get the idea of what I want to do. In this case, we’ll say it’s go to the port city of Busan. I ask my co-workers about it.

                “It’s a wonderful city, they have a casino where only foreigners can gamble,” one says.

                “They have a strange nightlife, and there are a ton of Americans there,” another says smiling, insinuating pleasures that are inappropriate talk at a school filled with children watching Peter Pan and discussing the merits of staying young forever.

                “They have a group of women that sell fireworks at night,” another laughs leading into a story about haggling with someone’s grandmother over the price of a Roman Candle.

                The end of the first phase is imagining going. Taking a long train ride and snapping pictures of the passing countryside, stretching at barren train stations overlooking tilled fields and lonely people waiting for a loved one on the platform, and the arrival and relaxing on the beach as I read a novel, drink a beer and watch the sun. Now, I’m certain that I will go.

                Phase two begins next a few days later. This is where I read about my destination and find out everything that could go wrong. In this case there is a large Russian community there. It seems odd that a Russian community would emerge in a country that has nothing in common with Russia. This leads me to believe there is more there than what the book is telling me and they are hinting at something. The books and websites—the few that I read—also worn of some seedy night actions. Muggings, stabbings, street attacks by roving Taekwondo masters looking for revenge—who knows what this could mean. I now have to plan for this by thinking about every scenario. Scenario one: I meet one of these local street toughs and they attack me and beat me and leave me lying beneath a crowd of disgusting onlookers as I curl around my bag and wish someone spoke English and they stopped trying to sell me fireworks, or worse that a large crowd will gather and I will become anxious and worried that this trip was some sort of rouse by Busan to humiliate me by making a fool of me somehow.  When I was seven my brother embarrassed me in front of a group of people by asking me repeatedly if I was going to urinate in my pants and then I did. Since then, large crowds have scared me, and I worry that I might pee my pants. I go through scenario until I find the two possible conclusions. First, the street toughs attack me as a show of strength. It begins when I exit the train station and they are pushing around some small child or young woman. Everyone walks past disgusted and dismayed that no one will do anything. At first I want only to walk past, but one of them yells at me. It’s at this moment I notice they’re all wearing Affliction t-shirts and other apparel with the name of the local fight school. They surround me, and using some quick footwork and objects lying around—bottles, chairs, a monk’s staff from the time of the Ming dynasty—I’m able to defeat them.

Scenario two: they only have one main fighter who challenges me to a one on one battle. He is a goliath, far larger than any Korean, his face cast in silhouette with fight and toss each other against brick walls until we fall in a respectful exhaustion and declare the match a draw. With phase two of my travel preparation complete, I move onto phase three.

                It’s here that I do no budgeting whatsoever, and tell myself that I will spend no more than a certain amount. The idea of spending all of my money could bring unwanted stress. But if I don’t know how much money is in my bank account than I won’t be certain if I have spent all of it. This part takes full commitment in not noticing at any point how much money is in my bank account. To make sure I don’t go broke I make sure to keep my credit card in my wallet. If I start a few weeks before I leave and continue keeping it there I can be certain that it will be in my wallet when I leave. This way if those local toughs do appear and cripple me I will be able to go to the hospital.

                With the planning and budgeting set, it’s now that we begin part three: Procrastination. I can’t leave on the first weekend, but I say I will. This will make people ask me about my trip. I’ll laugh and say that I woke up late, or that I meant I was going next weekend. But really this first weekend was a trial run, in that I wake up and judge how I feel before I leave. My Saturday routine involves a lot of nothing, and it is important that I keep this up. It’s also during this time that I look up how far away my destination is. I often find it is far away, and that once I get there, if I am planning a day trip, I will be forced to leave before I have really done anything. It’s at this time I change my destination.

                “But I thought you were going to Busan?” Co-workers will ask me.

                “I was but then I decided to go to Daegu, because I just want to take a day trip really,” I say. They nod. I tell them that I will leave for Daegu that Friday. On Monday, if someone asks if I went to Daegu I tell them I meant the following weekend.

                Phase four is next. This is the actual trip. The weekend has finally arrived and I’m ready to go. I go to bed early the night before and wake up before eight. I’m packed and ready to go. Before leaving though I check my bag several times to make sure everything is in order. I have my passport, camera, all forms of ID, Nyquil, Dayquil, Zantac, both cell phones, my computer is hidden in a box in the dresser and covered in clothes the back window is shut and shielded with clothes, I’m wearing my hoodie and the gas is turned off. I leave the apartment. I now re-enter the apartment to make sure the heat is off, and then I check to make sure the water in the bathroom isn’t running and the light in the washing room—the size of a closet—is off. I check to make sure the heat is still off. I check to make sure the gas on the stove is off. I check the heat again. I now check the lights by turning them on and off to make sure that I’m not seeing them as off because of the sunlight. They are off. I check the heat one last time, and then I put my wallet in my back left pocket and my key in my front right pocket. My cell phone goes in my front left pocket and I lock the door. I test the handle to make sure it is locked and tell myself everything is off. I now run to get away from the apartment before I check it again. The joys of travel are for everyone, and as soon as I reach the train station and note all possible routes of escape in case of a terrorist attack I buy my ticket. At the last second, I decide to go to Busan, then change my mind and purchase a ticket for Daegu. Once on the train I take out a book, drink a cup of coffee and stare at the passing scenery. I enjoy nothing more than seeing new things, except of course for not seeing them at all.