October 7th 2007 - Music Festival
October 7th 2007
World music festival in Ulsan
This week I starred (?!) as a substitute in the international pool tournament here in Ulsan. International because there are a lot of foreigners playing ... nothing fancy. And it was no brilliant debut . I lost 3-0, but at least I lost to a better opponent and did give him a bit of a match even if it doesn't show on the numbers. With a bit of practice I hope to do a better show in the future. I also played squash with Jay this Sunday. It's been a couple of weeks since my last game, but we still managed to play a few close games. Since my play-pal Ray left, I have not been able to arrange any regular sporting event, but I have hopes that I will find a tennis partner and that the squash games will become more regular events. We still haven't been out bowling since our venue burned down - hopefully they will hurry up with the rebuilding of the bowling alley, because we don't really like the other alleys that we have seen.
Friday Paula went on one of her shopping sprees to Busan. Thank god she isn't a big spender !! She went with Pauline, Stephanie and Christine. They had a good time, I'm sure. Saturday Paula and I went to the World Music Festival in Ulsan. We spent the afternoon looking at Korean painting (of cell phones, amongst other), clay sculpturing, kids playing with boomerangs and of course - listening to music. For dinner we had German style sausages though I still don't know which part was from Germany. Sometimes we forget that we are in Korea and actually believe that a German style sausage will resemble a German sausage! I was contemplating having a whale meat dinner, but my diver heart won that battle. So I guess the German sausages weren't such a bad choice after all. We met Nicola and Ruaraidh and their visiting friend Linda, then Cambell and Jerome and later Carolina and Peter. Together we all went to hear Tiempo de Guitarra - a Spanish guitar trio joined by a drummer, a singer and a dancer. They played in the big Concert hall and apart for the appalling control of the lights and spotlights and the equally appalling singer, we were well impressed with the band and the dancer. Very capable and obviously enjoying to perform. Later at night we sat on the grass outside and listened first to Karibe - a Korean band playing Brazilian inspired rhythms, and then Ska Cubano - an international band playing Cuban music with a Jamaican twist. We had actually decided to leave ten minutes into the last concert as we were quite chilled (we were wearing afternoon clothes, having arrived at 14:00, and now it was 23:00), but the band got us dancing and thus we warmed up and left at midnight instead. What a great day !! It's so rare for us to hear good live music here - probably because we don't know where and when to go.
Tonight we are going to eat out with Paulina and Stuart, so I'm not sure I will have time to upload the photos today. If not, they will be here tomorrow.
School kids off for an excursion.
Pauline, Stephanie and Paula at the Shanghai street in Busan.
This street is a lively market street with all sorts of things you simply can't live without !
But it is not all work and no play ... here are four guys playing Mah Jong on the street.
The festival was pretty small. We were lured by a wine festival, but it turned out that there were only two small tents with wine - one with Korean raspberry wine and another with poor international wines !
Still, there were a lot of different activities all day. Here we were on our way to one of the concerts, so I didn't have time to investigate the purpose of the rice hammer !
Here we have a head-rolling Korean dancing group.
Ruaraidh, Paula, Nicola's visiting friend and Nicola enjoying Ska Cubanos rehersal before heading off to see the parade.
The parade was better than expected and much bigger than one would expect for such a small festival.
There were patriarchs ...
... workers ...
... and floats.
Carolina and Peter are back from their Malaysia vacation and met up with us for the evening music.
We enjoyed Karibe's concert sitting on the grass right in front of the stage. Cambell, Nicola, Linda (?) Jerome and Ruaraidh.
Ska Cubano got us off the grass and moving. Excellent music and a good chance to kick off some dust !