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.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Craving Killed, Now Get me Home... Saturday, April 13

I made the mistake of heading out to Little America tonight. I say mistake because after meeting up with a friend for coffee, my ride back to Cheonan didn’t go through and consequently I missed the last subway. I had SIX HOURS to kill before the morning subway would start running… nice. I had initially gone there because a friend invited me out but I was really craving English – live in Korea for 9 years and you’ll know exactly what I mean!!! My craving for English however left me craving for Korea. Little America is in Korea, sure, but it’s definitely not Korean.

In a mini bubble world of English-speaking air force Americans all out on a Friday night, I was approached by random men.  I was even followed into a coffee shop bathroom too actually. I thought surely I had gone into the right bathroom but when I heard a guy walk in behind me, I apologized and then went into the next one. I walked in on some guy at a urinal and suddenly it was me who had become the strange bathroom pervert… great.

The coffee shop where I had embarrassed myself at closed at 11pm so I opted out of sitting in some smoking bar to wait for my ride that never did show. I sat down outside on a park bench and no sooner did I sit down but some American dudes up in the window of a second bar started to throw some peanuts at me. I tried to ignore them but then when they started to yell down to me, insisting I come up to join them, I responded by yelling back, “If I come up there, it won’t be to sit with you. It'll be to beat you!”

If following girls into public bathrooms and throwing peanuts at them is what’s become of the dating scene, woozers, I’m happy I got out of that while it still involved giving them candy and flowers.

A couple of minutes later, some random American guy approached me and said “Annyoung Haesayo” -- “hello” in Korean. “I’m not Korean” I told him, “but nice pick up line”. He was actually quite embarrassed, apparently he honestly thought I was Korean. Next thing I knew it, I ended up getting into quite a long conversation with both he and his buddy and we were heading out to a bar because I was freezing by then. Turns out the two dudes I talked to apparently knew everyone, or so it seemed, and we’re quite the funny guys. Hung out with them till it was time to catch the first subway out of there.

Arrived home around 6:30am, crashed for a couple hours, then woke up just before noon and headed over to the boxing club to resume work.

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