Thus comes the end of my staycation :( One more day and it’s back to work. *le sighs* Next time I’ll request two weeks off! Or something like that. The latter half of my staycation proved to be just as busy as first half where I ran around here and there and ate yummy food. Here’s the last part of the adventure.

October 18 — Sunday
* Stayed home for the most part and bummed around.
* Went out briefly to meet my co-worker for dinner. We went to Navy Club, and I tried their version of pho, half a cheeseburger with onion rings, and half a brownie bottom pie. All that was about $20. Here, drool over the richness of the brownie bottom pie.

* Came back home and watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. All that sugar and chocolate from the pie must have influenced me into watching this.

October 19 — Monday
* Nearly was blown away to Oz with all that wind around me. I wonder if there was a typhoon nearby.
* Went to the Immigration Office in Jongno. Pulled out a number that read 1216, and it was on 1070ish. Nearly had a heart attack at the huge gap. Luckily, I only had to wait an hour.
* Came back to my neighbourhood and then went to the PX and bought stuff. I am in love with my sake/soju set. :)

* Decided to try Le Saigon for their lunchtime session and had pho for the third time in three days. Really delicious. Much better than Navy Club’s! That and spring rolls cost me 10,000 won ($8.50ish USD).

* Went back home to relax a bit.
* Decided to go to Itaewon. I bought my daddy a NY Yankees hat for 10,000 won ($8.75ish USD) and three pairs of fuzzy socks for Mum, which cost 5,000 won ($4.25ish USD).
* Went to Hell Beans where I typed up more to my fic and chatted with a couple people I know.
* Stopped by Manna Teriyaki and ordered take-out for dinner.
* Came home. WHOAH. LONG DAY.

October 20 — Tuesday
* Saw that the driving range was . . . damaged. We had some heavy duty wind blowing through Seoul the last few days, and the support system of the driving range collapsed, making it look like a tornado went through it.
* Picked up cake, flowers, paper plates, and forks at the commissary and dropped it off in the choir room.
* Visited my former APUSH and AP Gov’t teacher.
* Celebrated my former band teacher’s (late) birthday with her seminar class, something I’ve been doing since 2004 or 2005. I like traditions!

* Went to renew one of my many cards I need in my life. And no, it’s not a credit card.
* Went to Hell Beans to type some more to my fic and discovered Open Office Writer is a much, much better programme than Microsoft Works ever will be.
* Ate dinner at Noxa by having garlic bread and this grilled herb chicken sandwich thingie for 12,500 won ($12.00 USD). Yummy!

* Came home and decided to try the Amazon Trade-In programme by ransacking my DS game and DVD collections.

Conclusion
Are you guys tired of my pictures? XD Especially the food pictures? Hope not! Well, I have one day left on my break, and this time I will stay home and be a bum. I plan to sleep really late so I can wake up late tomorrow. Why? My apartment will not have power from 10am to 2pm. So I plan to wake up around 2pm XD. I love my logic at times.

Wow, I feel like my staycation is flying by. Maybe I should have requested a longer break . . . maybe I’ll do that next time! I’ve been keeping myself busy, though! I’m glad I decided to do this. I really needed this break. Here’s what I’ve been doing for the first half of my vacation so far.

October 14 — Wednesday
* Tried a new sandwich place in Bogwang-dong called Sandwich story. I had a bulgogi sandwich and iced green tea latte.
* Am familiar with all three Yongsan village buses. Whoo hoo.

October 15 — Thursday
* Went to the commissary to order a birthday cake for my former band teacher.
* Visited the high school where I was quizzed on some musical term and was given a free hot dog.
* Walked over to the bank to withdraw some moola.
* Rode a bus to meet my friend in Huam-dong.
* Rode another bus to my neighbourhood where we encountered and were stuck in an air-raid exercise. All traffic were stopped as some announcer blared out instructions and his life story for a long fifteen minutes.
* Ate some yummy beef and lamb tortilla kebab set at Istanbul for 6,500 won ($5.50ish USD).

* Exchanged some dollar into won at a money exchange place in my neighbourhood. The poor man there told me that recently a bunch of African-descent middle school students stole a bunch of won from him when he was distracted. Not cool. X_X;;
* Walked over to Hell Beans. My friend and I talked about animes and video games for a good two hours.
* Went to my job place to meet a co-worker. We decided to have dinner, and we chose to eat bossam at this place in Huam-dong for 20,000 won ($19ish USD). It wasn’t very appetising. I am not going back there.

* Came home exhausted.
* Received $100 from Daddy. Yay!

October 16 — Friday
* Cleaned Grumpy’s cage and the whole area around it.
* Met my friend at Dongbu Ichon-dong.
* Walked past Pizza Hand, which is small pizza chain. Well. It used to be a pizza restaurant. Now it’s a clothes store, but the people are apparently too lazy to change the sign. Oi.

* Went to Pho Bay to have have some Vietnamese cuisine. We made a mistake with our order. See, the menu wasn’t very clear. When we looked at the pho set, it said pho, pork chop, and two egg rolls. My friend thought the pork chop was in the pho. I was thinking it was . . . well, porkchop. Turns out it was a rice dish. We also ordered the spring roll, egg roll, and Queen something (Shomai?) starter, two set, and a separate chicken and rice dish. Needless to say, we had one extra rice dish that was rather unnecessary. Oops. This meal all together cost around 42,000ish won ($40ish USD). We were rather full after that.

* Had dessert at Red Mango. We had mango and strawberry yoghurt lattes for 5,300 won each ($4.80ish). We both thought it was pretty damn pricey for its size, but it still tasted delicious.

October 17 — Saturday
* Went to Hell Beans to work on a fanfic.
* Discovered how lovely it was to have a netbook and a wi-fi access at the cafe.
* Visited my co-worker and played the piano for a forty-five minutes or so.
* Had some database issues that was resolved easier than I expected.

Conclusion
That’s it! Tomorrow, I plan to stay home and bum around . . . but we’ll see what happens. I plan stuff, but I still do stuff spontaneously. :)

From October 15 to 21, I am on leave from work. I’m so happy my leave got approved. Originally, I had planned on going to Tokyo this week, but that didn’t work out, so I decided to just still take a shorter leave and enjoy some staycation time. I’m excited since I haven’t had such a long break like this since I think January. Time to start partying! I already have tentative plans jotted down in my planner. I hope to not just be a bum at home for the entire week. I want to go out and do stuff. Anyway, here’s a list of my plans so far.

October 15 — Thursday
* Go to Commissary to run some errands.
* Go to SAHS and talk to Jostens representative and stop by Coach’s room.
* Meet “Gina” at Huam-dong area at 2:00 pm and go to my neighbourhood for kebabs and coffee.

October 16 — Friday
* Go down to Osan Air Force Base to check out the BX, eat at Checkertales, and have fun with my friend “Alan”.

October 17 — Saturday
* Meet Gina and go visit one of the palaces — either Changdeokgung or Gyeongbokgung.
Believe it or not, I have never been to the two famous palaces of Seoul. At least I can say that I have been to Deoksugung.

October 18 — Sunday
* Meet a co-worker and go to Insa-dong.
If that doesn’t happen, then it’s going to be a day of relaxing for me.

October 19 — Monday
* Have to go to the Immigration Office to renew my visa. FUN, NOT.
* Since I’ll be in the area, I may as well check out the newly renovated Gwanghwamun Plaza.

October 20 — Tuesday
* Go to commissary and SAHS to do some errands.
* Anything goes here. Maybe I can get Gina to go somewhere with me that day.

October 21 — Wednesday
* Relax and try to get back into the mentality of returning to work. Ugh. T_T.

Dun, dun, dun! Those are my tentative plans. Better get my camera and the money ready for all this. Time to have some fun!

. . . But first, time to survive tomorrow. Another long day awaits me.

Dusty, dusty, toil and trouble.
Swirling particles, room is dusty.
ACHOOO!

– Tara-Chan from “1001 Ways to Butcher Shakespeare“

On Saturday night, around 11:00 pm, I decided to clean my room out thoroughly. Actually, I’ve been thinking about doing it lately, so why not do it over Columbus’ Day weekend? Normally, I don’t do this major cleaning until December (Christmas + Relatives = Gathering at TC’s place), but I decided to do it a bit earlier this year. I stayed up until Sunday morning at 3:30 am, and then in the afternoon, I finished the rest.

Well, after about three garbage bags full of trash, several piles of wet and dusty rags covered with about five years worth of dust, and one exhausted room owner, here’s the visual result of the room. Be glad I didn’t take pictures of the messy one. I decided not to traumatise my readers.

Random Facts

• Under the piano, I have at least seven bags of books that doesn’t fit in my bookcase.
• On top of the DVDs/CDs/video tapes cabinet are all bags of stuffed animals.
• I decided to get rid of the stereo, which used to be on the vanity set because I don’t use the bugger.
• See those piles of books and mangas on the thing next to the bookcase? Those are all my to-read piles.
• I still need to read those Death Note mangas, its boxset sitting neglected on the piano.
• The display on top of the piano is only 1/4th of the stuff I want to display. The rest of it are in boxes, packed away.
• I discovered my best friend’s AP Statistics assignment on top of the DVDs cabinet. I can’t remember how it came into my possession. O_O;;
• I found plenty of books Grumpy — my bunny — had chewed on. I wonder if she finds paper and cardboard to be that appetising.

Honestly? Another reason why I cleaned and threw stuff away? I’m slowly starting to pack things up for when we move to a smaller place next year. I’m not looking forward to it. I’ll miss this apartment and my huge room.

What do typing, playing piano, and playing video games all have in common? Buttons, buttons, buttons! Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to announce a new and unusual pseudo-disease and mental illness called Chronic Buttonitis. I’ve self-diagnosed this particular problem on myself, and here are the medical reports.

Symptoms
A person who has the extreme tendencies of wanting to push anything that is button-like, even more so when there’s a reaction that follows the action.

First Diagnosis
Age: Four or five years of age.
Setting: Daddy’s office.
Why: Daddy needed to his daughter be distracted while he did something work-like.
Solution: Daddy set his daughter in front of an old computer that displayed in two colours — typical of old DOS computers — and he let his daughter type away on the keyboard, who watched in fascination at the nonsensical letters that popped up on the screen.

Second Diagnosis
Age: Five or six years of age.
Setting: Bowling Alley arcade game area.
Why: Daddy’s daughter was bored.
Solution: Daddy gave quarters to the bored daughter and let her play old arcade games like Pac-Man and pinball machines. Daughter fell in love with video games after that and became an expert at button mashing — which led to crappy game playing skills in the future.

Third Diagnosis
Age: Six years of age.
Setting: Piano school.
Why: Mother wanted her daughter to be like every other Korean child.
Solution: Mother sent her daughter to piano school, and the daughter began to push down the keys and learn Do-Re-Mi. She didn’t really learn much at that age, but she tried piano school again in sixth grade and learned repetitive piano exercises.

Conclusion
Daughter grew up to be very obsessed with buttons

// End medical report.

Bottom line, I like pushing buttons. Any time I go into an elevator with someone, I usually want to push the button. Any time I pass by a piano, I am sorely tempted to push the keys to make harmonious sounds. Any time I am playing video games or I am typing on a keyboard, I am happily pressing down a key or button! Call me strange, call me unusual, but that’s me! Ever since I was a kid, I always liked to push stuff with my fingers. I guess I like the feeling of being in control.

Oh and one place you should never take me to? A toy store. See that toy cash register? Having those near me is quite a dangerous situation. Whenever I see a toy like that or a toy that makes noise . . . I’ll push it, especially if it says “Try Me”. It tempted me, so I will push it!

Anybody else has a weird trait like this embedded in them? Just wondering because I find this trait of mine to be rather fascinating. It’s strange how a lot of my favourite hobbies are tied into this strange habit! I wonder if I should just call this a Button Fetish? It probably makes more sense . . . but I don’t derive any sexual pleasure from pushing buttons, so probably not. Ahahahaha!