When It Rains It Pours

Well, as I said, it was a rainy Saturday night, and our plan was to get properly smashed and go to some local Hofs, followed inevitably by a song or two. As we drank, I was aware that I had a really hot face, but thought this was just from the intense concentration that it was taking to ignore the pain of my toothache. After all my pre-Korea visits to the bloody dentist in order to avoid a Korean dentist chair, it seems that is where I am destined to wind up. Luckily, the phrasebook actually has the line, "Under no circumstances do I want my tooth extracted", but that leaves a lot of other barbaric practices open to them. They'll probably dump leeches in my gob to seek out the problem area.

Here's me, prior to the rash discovery, looking a bit drunk, and in retrospect, a bit pink in the face.

Anyway, as the night progressed, I felt hotter and hotter, until Lynne noticed a red mark on my neck. On closer inspection with the lights turned on, we were shocked to see my whole neck and face were bright red, except for white rings round my eyes! As you can see below, I was quite shocked indeed!




The only thing I could think of doing, was getting naked and standing under a cold shower with my beer, until my skin stopped feeling like it was going to stretch apart and explode. Even now, it's a bit of a mystery what caused this temporary rash of death, but I can narrow it down to a few possibilities....

1) We had been out in the rain all day, maybe I was unlucky and strayed into an acid rain shower. It might happen!

2) I was mixing Soju, Out-of-date Korean Beer, and Gin. Given the price of the gin it can be considered just as dubious as the other 2 poisons. Perhaps mixing the three creates some chemical compound akin to liquid Anthrax, and should best be avoided.

3) In the morning, I put on a T-Shirt that I hadn't worn since getting here, only to take it off after 2 minutes due to an itchy sensation around my neck. But, that was about 9 hours ago, and seriously only for 2 minutes. Hmmm....

4) The excitement of watching the final episode of Lost was just too much for me.

5) During the drunken activity of running naked down the apartment block corridor, some shocked, unseen, Korean neighbour witnessing the performance through a cup of bleach over me.

Luckily, either due to healing power of booze or the cold showers, I went back down to my standard level of ugliness after a couple of hours, and we made it out for a little drinky. So my fears of turning into an exaggerated Gorbachev were unfounded. Phew!