Free lighters, Gangnam, and other sights in Asia…(videos included)

It is Sunday and the sun is shining.  THE SUN IS SHINING! I hate when people complain about living over here, I really do.  However, I am about to do just that for a bit.  The sun rarely shines here.  We often go 20-30 days between sightings of our big burning friend in the sky.  There are a lot of theories as to why this is the case. . . cloud cover from the mountains, pollution, even the outlandish one that the people running the country in from the capital controls the weather and doesn’t like this city.  As for me, I have no idea.  I just no know that we RARELY have days like this.

In light of the unusual sighting of, um well, light, I thought I would tell of two other “different” things that I/we have noticed here the past few weeks.

The first one was at the airport a few weeks ago while picking up our friends, the Littlepages.  Ever wonder what the airport does with the lighters they confiscate from people whom futilely try to take them onto planes?  Well, here they simply place them in a container where arriving passengers exit the airport.  You can fill your pockets with free lighters if you like.  I guess if you MUST have a quick smoke from your air travel, this is great!

I don’t know why this struck me as so funny, but it did.  It is actually a fairly stand up thing to do.  However, in a world where smokers are increasingly ostracized and marginalized, here they are still encouraged in many, many ways, like free lighters at the airport.  As I type this, I am in one of the only “non-smoking” coffee houses in this area.  There are signs all over the place that says “no smoking.”  Yet, when smokers come in and light up, no one does anything to dissuade them.  To the contrary, the guy across from me was just given an ash tray from an employee.  Why do they even have ash trays in a non-smoking establishment?!?!?!  Anyway, sorry to go off. . .

The second sighting was not my own, but from a friend of mine here.  Kelsey Brown and a few others were having dinner in a different section of the town a few nights ago.  They came across the hilarious spectacle of several hundred locals doing the world-wide phenomena dance “Gangnam”.  It was in a large walking street area of the city and a little girl was leading hundreds in this dance.  I thought it was too funny not to pass along to you. . . enjoy!  Her leg at the end kind of creeps me out, but it’s entertaining nonetheless.[pb_vidembed title=”Gangnam Asia style” caption=”Here is Kelsey’s video from the public Gangnam session!” url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EPpYEf4hSo” type=”yt” w=”480″ h=”385″]

Side note, I do love how this kind of stuff goes on around here all the time.  Collective mass public dancing is a nightly occurrence in every city in this country.  Usually it consists of the elderly.  They take to the city-parks and street corners after grand-kids are put to bed.  In this case of the “Gangnam”, it seems like a pretty good cross-section of people.

Finally, the SUN really is an unusual sighting around here this weekend.  One of the beauties of rarely seeing it is that when you do, it becomes a time of internal celebration and external activity.

Today, I went out riding on my motorbike to enjoy the weather.  I thought it would be fun to simply mount my video camera on the front of my bike and drive through an outdoor mall near where I live.  It is situated between three universities, so you will notice mainly students walking around.  Hope you enjoy a little of my Sunday here in Asia.[pb_vidembed title=”John Gunter driving around a local mall” caption=”Me driving around and enjoying the sun today on my motorbike” url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E_QeO9Phz8″ type=”yt” w=”480″ h=”385″]

I’m going to take the week off from blogging.  With the holiday week, it will be a busy time here.  Also, I am taking a graduate class which I am way behind in right now, so this week is a catch-up week.  I will post my final article on my Asian college basketball team just after the holiday.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!