1. Arirang TV keeps on changing their schedule and telling me as I arrive what the heck we’re suppose to do that day and so when I arrived at the boxing club today and was told we were heading out to the beach as supposed to the temple, I wasn’t surprised. What I wasn’t impressed with though was how they had gathered some of the UP Boxing club members to take us with us. Let it be known, I train with them, I don’t hang out with them outside of the occasional boxing dinner party or attending a wedding or a game of theirs. It wouldn’t bother me if this weren’t the third TV show I’ve been focused on where they’ve totally left out my real friends here in Korea, like Buff Boy the Original and Pro Star.
2. Word got out pretty easily among my friends that they hadn’t been invited out to this “friend-beach trip” and so on route the beach I ended up having to do damage-control with text messaging my friends and apologizing on behalf of Arirang. I know it’s for a TV show but the key word in this TV show is “documentary” so it’d be nice to not have to change my answer to suit their desires and have nonsense play dates with people who I don’t even hang out with. I know Arirang TV means well, I know they do but having them constantly film me feels so unnatural and the timing for this filming is so hard. I swear, if someone else dares asks me “Amy, how’s your condition now?”, I’m going to go buck-style and give them a good old one-two-hook! I'm trying to stay positive about it, after all, I do think the translator they've hired is pretty cool and the camera man is funny, but they're quite demanding of my time and I just wish it could be more "real".
3. I don’t get homesick or miss Canada unless you bombard me with tons of questions about Canada or continually treat me like I’m so foreign… both of which occurred today and so by noon I had turned into Miss Grumpy-Pants and wanted nothing more than to walk along the beach and run into my friends from Canada. Of course that never did happen but I did walk along the beach, Snickers joined me… and so did the Arirang TV crew. Snickers wrote my name in the sand and then humoured the camera crew with trying to dig up this massive rock as a gift for me… hahaha.
4. I knew the bad vibe for the day was courticy of me but these past couple of weeks the best word to describe what I’ve been feeling like is a trained circus monkey. So when we loaded up the van to head back to Cheonan, I was incredibly pleasantly surprised when they stopped the van and Snickers told me to get out with him. “What?! Where are we going?” I asked him. “They’re going to Cheonan but we’re going to have a date here… now” he responded with. Leave it to Snickers to be the hero of my day, God this guy is awesome!!!
5. So that’s what we did, we had a date. It was definitely nice to part from the crew and be allowed to breath. Our date started off with us finding an empty restaurant where we got overly flirty over some cooked octopus. Ice cream and a walk on the beach followed. It had rained last night and the rainy weather was returning, so the beach quickly filled up with fog. Snickers thought it funny to run through the fog with me on his back… hahaha.
6. I was quite apologetic to Snickers about my manner earlier, and lack there of it. I’m just not cool with pretending to be something I’m not and I really wished they had let me bring my friends out today as supposed to making this picture-perfect scene for the camera that turned out to be quite sour and uncomfortable.
7. Later in the evening we took the train back to Cheonan. It was an hour and a half ride but the train seats had sold out and so we were stuck sitting on the dirty seats. Snickers is quite the romantic gentleman in that he treats me like a queen and so instead of allowing me to simply sit on the floor, he insisted on standing and let me sit on his knee.
8. Snickers’ and his newly acquired English slang came to be quite useful tonight when we met probably the ugliest couple on the train. I know that sounds mean but trust me, they were so beyond fugly it was scary. I didn’t see them at first but had noticed that two people had gone into the train bathroom unit together. My curiosity got the best of me and so I stood by to see them exit. That’s when both Snickers and I caught sight of them… dang!!! Snickers yelled out “Fugly!” and I just about peed my pants. I would have peed my pants had I not feared Mrs. Fugly joining me in the bathroom… hahaha. This situation stirred up quite the sarcastic conversation between Snickers and I. We imagined them having kids. I argued that two fuglies don’t always make a fugly baby. Some of the cutest babies I’ve seen have come from ugly parents actually. Anyways, Snickers thought it funny to gave Mrs and Mr Fugly’s children quite the “colourful” names… hahaha.
9. Upon returning to Cheonan we then headed out to dinner… pasta! It would mark the last massive quantity of carbs I’d be eating for awhile. No sooner did we head out to dinner but we ran into Jae Min and boy did that situation ever kill the evening!!! You see, Jae Min isn’t exactly known for his good manners and he overly works his strange charm but he’s one of the first people I met when I came to Korea and so he’s kind of got a special place in my books. Anyways, I ran into him downtown and no sooner did I run into him but then I noticed Snickers’ manner totally change. It’s like he went into fight-mode and so I excused us from the conversation and off we went.
10. Snickers was so not impressed with Jae Min’s manner toward me that he couldn’t even stomach his food and instead he let the plate get cold. I didn’t really know how to explain Jae Min to Snickers and I understood Snickers’ point but I didn’t think I should have to pick sides. Snickers never did come out and say “It’s him or me” but instead he called up his sister to help with translating what he was struggling to say. Me, being the overly proud Polska, mistook his phone call as him inviting someone into our business and so I got all embarrassed, insulted and then let my plate go cold, too. So while Jae Min walked around downtown with not a care in the world, there I sat with frustrations eating me from the inside out and then I brought those frustrations home with me. Snickers followed me home, hoping to talk it over with me but we both were taking two different angles on the story and I was in no mood to talk. So when he stepped into my building, I pulled a childish move and hid behind a parked car. Ended up sitting outside for the next couple of hours, hoping it’d just pass. I knew Snickers wasn’t in the wrong but I also knew he didn’t know the whole picture… nor did I really know how to explain it to him. It wasn’t a simple situation and of course I know I made it all that more worse by playing the fool and not addressing the situation like I should have. It’ll cool off by tomorrow. By tomorrow we’ll both see this was all a stupid misunderstanding, or so I told myself. I hate going to bed angry and I'm usually the person who insists on talking things out but partly because of my last relationship, I've become very use to keeping things bottled up and dealing with them in my own head. I'm really trying to change this. I struggled to go to sleep tonight, knowing that I had upset him and acted quite childish with hiding. He had tried so hard to change my sour day and then here I went and made it a sour evening… dang.
QUESTION OF THE DAY...
Who's the owner of your "first-last kiss"?
QUOTE OF THE DAY...
Kisses are like tears, the only real ones are the ones you can't hold back.
-- Author Unknown
As the story has it, one day I headed to the opposite side of the globe – the Flipside. I arrived in Korea February 16th, 2005 and thought I’d do a year, then leave. I was wrong. I stayed, launched my first company, Flipside Fitness, and then opened Korea's largest boxing club, Hulk's Boxing (now called Hulk's Club).
After 11.5yrs in Korea, I then picked up one day and returned to Toronto, Canada. But then I left again.
Now I live in the Philippines where I am the CEO and head coach of Empowered Clubhouse, the Philippines' first and only boxing clubhouse exclusively just for women. I also am the founder of the Lil' Sistas Project, CEO and designer of Slay Gear and Baa Baa Black Sheep .Ph.
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