Nocturnalia III: One Night in Korea
It was part of a whirlwind of a cultural exchange programme sponsored by the Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The hosts, local NYAA alumni; the participants, 27 Korean students from various universities. I had nothing to do with it but I'd met two of the Korean students at a youth forum in August last year, and I couldn't resist crashing.
We brought them through Chinatown, showing them the lights, night markets and auctions. We lit almost 50 sparklers by the roadside and sang the birthday song for one of the Korean girls. From the hotel, we went by car and cab to China Black and danced our fatigue away. Earlier in the day, before I joined them, they found bizarre stopovers in the National Youth Council, Botanic Gardens and the Regional Language Centre. By this evening, they will have touched down in Kuala Lumpur.
They didn't see Singapore, but perhaps saw how small the world was.
The high point of the night for me was being briefly reunited with friends I made in Korea last year. I don't travel much, and the experience of meeting people I realistically never expected to see again was simply unreal. It was also rather special because they came into my life through the intense camaraderie of a student conference, untainted by the tensions and antagonisms of real-life interpersonal relations.
One of the girls, a sweet lass whom I'd been keeping up a kind of pen-pal arrangement with, gave me a calendar from her university and four packets of Korean instant noodles. Before I left, we hugged at the steps of the hotel, clinging on to the fleeting miracle that was our correspondence come to life.
Never mind that I missed a defining soccer match between my sociology honours classmates and the economics honours students. Never mind that the elderly taxi driver misheard "Holland Drive" as "Marine Drive", and never mind that I was so full of the last few hours that I didn't notice until it was too late. Never mind that I really shouldn't have slept at 5am.
Last night, I was in Korea again.
We brought them through Chinatown, showing them the lights, night markets and auctions. We lit almost 50 sparklers by the roadside and sang the birthday song for one of the Korean girls. From the hotel, we went by car and cab to China Black and danced our fatigue away. Earlier in the day, before I joined them, they found bizarre stopovers in the National Youth Council, Botanic Gardens and the Regional Language Centre. By this evening, they will have touched down in Kuala Lumpur.
They didn't see Singapore, but perhaps saw how small the world was.
The high point of the night for me was being briefly reunited with friends I made in Korea last year. I don't travel much, and the experience of meeting people I realistically never expected to see again was simply unreal. It was also rather special because they came into my life through the intense camaraderie of a student conference, untainted by the tensions and antagonisms of real-life interpersonal relations.
One of the girls, a sweet lass whom I'd been keeping up a kind of pen-pal arrangement with, gave me a calendar from her university and four packets of Korean instant noodles. Before I left, we hugged at the steps of the hotel, clinging on to the fleeting miracle that was our correspondence come to life.
Never mind that I missed a defining soccer match between my sociology honours classmates and the economics honours students. Never mind that the elderly taxi driver misheard "Holland Drive" as "Marine Drive", and never mind that I was so full of the last few hours that I didn't notice until it was too late. Never mind that I really shouldn't have slept at 5am.
Last night, I was in Korea again.
posted by The Empty Signifier @ 1/30/2005 02:09:00 am
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