Once I get those wings in me.....

I get all antsy in my pantsy. My co-teacher told me today that they have a saying about wings in Korea. She told me that if you eat chicken wings you can become a playboy (or playgirl) with wings so you can fly around visiting your other girlfriends (or boyfriends) freely. But everyone wants to be a playboy. So, if there are wings on the table, they are prohibited to eat. Because if you eat them, others will be jealous of you. That's the Korean chicken wings taboo. However, for me, hot wings apparently get me fired up! WOO!...


It was the last Wings Night with Ron. I was having my fair share of wings and beer. And I was trying to keep my mouth shut for fear of what might come out. When we lost track of time, we missed the last train back to Bupyeong. So, we had to settle for Guro. When we arrived at Guro, all of the taxi drivers were trying to take advantage of us. Guro isn't that much further from Bupyeong than Bucheon is from Bupyeong. It's 15k max to Bupyeong from Bucheon. When we came out of the ticket gate at Guro, the taxi drivers were waiting like rats.

'I can take you where you want to go,' says one cabby in Korean. 'Where are you going?' says another.

'Bupyeong-yuk ulmayo (how much)?' I declare.

'50,000.' He jockeys.

'....5,000...wait, 50,000!? NO WAY.' Drake, John, and I exclaim. 'Let's look for another driver.' We spent a minute searching always getting an overpriced result, when a young driver approached us. 'Where are you going?'

'Bupyeong-yuk.'

'40000.'

'No. 25,000.'

'Enter some other ungodly sum.'

'Absolutely not.' I start walking toward the other bank of cabs, when he follows next to me. Where is he going? John suggests that he is going to tell the other cab drivers my price and tell them not to take us. I look at him to renegotiate, 'Ok. Bucheon-yuk ulmayo? Bucheon-yuk?' And he looks over at me and says, 'Talk,' while making a 'you're talking too much' hand gesture. You know the one. It looks like you are making a shadow puppet duck. 'Quack, quack.' Well, I didn't appreciate that very much. More importantly, my mouth was working without much thought behind it. Consequently, I let out a, 'Fuck you' in English. When he didn't seem to get that I issued a 'Fuck you' in Korean.

'Fuck you?' he replies. Oh, so now you understand what I'm saying. Nice-uh.


Needless to say, we didn't even stop to ask these taxi cab drivers their price. I am an easy target to spot, too, in my red North Face jacket. It's not hard to blackball the loan tall white guy in a red jacket on a late Tuesday night. We kept on walking after that idiotic display. Once Drake and John had done their business near a busy intersection, we flagged down a cab driver. 'Drake, you talk to him this time,' I suggest. Drake talks him into giving us the metered price on the ride back. The metered cab ride costs about 20,000. It's not the original dollar fifty it would have cost us if we had caught the train all the way back on time. But it's half of what those cabbies tried to milk us for. At least my first time to Guro was an exciting one. I always wondered what it was like around there. Now, I know that it's a cab infested rat hole. Next time, just keep walking.


Notes:
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Good thing I didn't ask him, 'Do you really want to fucking die?' Yeah, my vocab is vast. ...