What most people don't know about our boxing club is it's literally steps away from the apartment we were supposed to live in -- a place I once let my friend poop on the doorstep. Yup, that's right. It was definitely not a high point in my life but that's what happened. The plan was never originally to move into our current apartment, Mi Gung, but instead the plan was to move into this other place right by the station which, as it happened to turn out, is right across the street from Hulk's. We had put some money down, told our landlord we were moving out and then, upon discovering we had been scammed, had only a couple of days to find a back-up place to live. Our current apartment ended up being our back-up pace, a random fluke find that at first I really, really, REALLY did not like.
Here's the link to the entry I wrote about the scam discovery and how it got... hmmm... "dirty".
Every once in awhile I am reminded of this situation and tonight was one of them. I was sitting outside after midnight, waiting for Snickers to return to pick me up when I glanced up at the place that just over a year ago Panty Boy the Original squatted down and pooped on.
I just had to giggle at this. Life is so full of irony.
A week or so ago a former sponsor of mine stumbled across me on Facebook and added me as a friend. I thought it rather ironic too because I had invited him to our boxing club opening but he declined my request, telling me that he'd come see our "cute little" boxing club another day. Well, nothing about our boxing club is small, it's rather super sized, nor is it cute. Perhaps it's a bit on the pretty side with it's wallpapered sections, but it's not cute. It's not small or cute and now he's all curious as to how he can get involved in it.
My highschool sweetheart also discovered me on Facebook, several months back. I remember when he drove me to my highschool -- I was then a second year university student at the time. He told me to get out of his car and in the parking lot he said he wanted to end it. After cheating on me with a girl he had invited to our New Year's Eve party and me never really confessing to him that I knew about it, he was dumping me. Rather ironic. But what was really ironic was what I told him when he said he wanted to end it. I told him I only stayed with him because I thought I could make him a better person, and that was true, but in doing so I let him hold me back from the greatness I felt I was always supposed to become. "In ten years I'll come back here and you're going to be the same miserable person because you can't figure out yourself for yourself", I told him. "In ten years I'm going to be something really great... and maybe I'll give you a job!" Throwing in "give you a job" was a low blow to an ongoing issue he had but I was so mad so I threw it in there. It's now 14 years later, I'm 4 years late, but now I CAN give him a job if I wanted to and I have become something great. Isn't it ironic how saying something puts into action a truth, a reality?!
"I'm not going to end up marrying a Korean man", I told my boss at the bar I had put myself through university working at. "Korean men don't have chest hair and that's just not natural. That's one step away from being a pre-pubescent teenage boy for life!" I added. How ironic, no sooner had I made that claim one night at the club but then my fascination with Asian men really started. Actually, I think my fascination with them initally started back in grade 7 when I met my first Asian person -- a young classmate who was Chinese. I thought his jet black hair and how it stood up on end was so interesting. It was so interesting in fact that when I went to grade 8 grad with him I asked him if I could finally touch it, and then I did. His eyes were small like mine and I had always been teased for my small eyes so it was pretty cool for me as a young girl to meet someone with smaller eyes than me. In university I dated a Korean guy I was mentoring. My friends and parents could never quite understand how or why Koreans used their family names first so they called him "Kimmy", Kim being his family name. There's irony right there, now I'm the one who is called "Kimmy".
Upon registering into a Korean culture class, my fascination only grew more and my crew of friends quickly became Asian-bombarded. In 2007, a couple of years after living in Korea, I returned to Canada and, while out on a blind coffee date with a guy I had just met the night before, my purse with my passport, house key, money, former engagement ring... everything... was stolen. My date ended up inviting me to be his house guest and I ended up living with him for the entire duration of my vacation. He was mixed Asian -- Chinese, Malaysian -- and the fact that he spoke several languages, was super adorable, and rocked one hard body kept me interested in him even way after I returned to Korea. A year later I returned and so sparked "us" again. There were no real expectations or whatnot surrounding "us", we had merely become a "vacation-time-only" couple, no strings attached. But with most long-distance relationships, someone ends up attaching expectations, wants and needs, so we simply became more and more distant and then we both went on our separate ways. I don't know what became of him but I've since found the love of my life and, as irony would have it, it's a beautiful Korean man I am now married to.
Upon registering into a Korean culture class, my fascination only grew more and my crew of friends quickly became Asian-bombarded. In 2007, a couple of years after living in Korea, I returned to Canada and, while out on a blind coffee date with a guy I had just met the night before, my purse with my passport, house key, money, former engagement ring... everything... was stolen. My date ended up inviting me to be his house guest and I ended up living with him for the entire duration of my vacation. He was mixed Asian -- Chinese, Malaysian -- and the fact that he spoke several languages, was super adorable, and rocked one hard body kept me interested in him even way after I returned to Korea. A year later I returned and so sparked "us" again. There were no real expectations or whatnot surrounding "us", we had merely become a "vacation-time-only" couple, no strings attached. But with most long-distance relationships, someone ends up attaching expectations, wants and needs, so we simply became more and more distant and then we both went on our separate ways. I don't know what became of him but I've since found the love of my life and, as irony would have it, it's a beautiful Korean man I am now married to.
And as for my beautiful Korean man, once labelled the "bad boy" and shame of his family for having beaten a man so badly it landed him 3 years in jail, he now is the pride of his family and the envy of many who once were quick to throw dirt on his name. That one fight, which many had perceived as taking everything away from him and leaving him with nothing, ultimately gave him everything. If he hadn't got into that fight with that older man, he wouldn't have done hard time. He wouldn't have landed in the one jail in Korea that had a boxing club -- "had" being the key word here because the boxing club has since closed down and the jail has become foreigners-only. If he hadn't turned pro while doing hard time, I wouldn't have seen his fight. And if his coach hadn't quit his job to make a career out of Snickers' boxing, he never would have come to my club to spar with my teammates.
I think there's definitely a reason to why things happen. Things don't just happen because of luck because there's no such thing as luck, only an unrealized reason to why something happened. Meeting Snickers at UP Boxing Club wasn't luck and him landing in jail wasn't bad luck, there were reasons why they happened. I wouldn't be here right now -- here in Korea, here sitting outside a boxing club with my name on it -- if it weren't for events that fell into play and lead up to today. But in saying this, I can't help at giggle at just how ironic these events often are and the humor of the reality of it all.
Everything happens for a reason and often it's bombarded with irony to amuse us along the way.
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