While my flatmate was studying Tae Kwon Do in Seoul I was lucky enough to meet some of the other members of the TKD club in Shillim Dong. One of these especially was Rim Chong who while out at a TKD club night out asked me if I liked to go mountain climbing. With this kind of question I thought that I was speaking to an experienced Korean climber - but nothing could be further from the truth.

Here's Tom Brannan from California. He's an English teacher at a Korean foreign language high school in Seoul and he's been in Korea about five years now. We met at the Korea Herald Korean language classes with Mr. Shin our Korean teacher who likes to eat 'Chicken lips' (ribs). We spent most of our time going on to extreme tangerines (tangents) and straying far from the point of the lesson. Co-incidentally I met Mr. Shin again while working at the Cutural Expo in Kyongju in Oct '98.

Back to Tom, well.. we are very much on the same wavelength. I think we concern people around us as we can often break into fits of laughter from the simplest look, sound or comment. I go so far to say as he is my American brother in Korea.

So Tom and I became very good friends and recently I've been waiting for him to get in touch but as yet I don't know what's happening in Seoul. I helped him move some of his stuff into Steves place before I left in December so I know that he's been house moving. I guess his life's busy as usual.

Below you can see from right to left Ray Smith, myself, Steve Gold and Tom at the Nashville in Itaewon, December '98 just after Steven had announced his very recent and proud 'uncle-hood'.

I met Mr. Jang through his sister when a group of us Koretta's stopped into her coffee shop, The Blue Hawaii in Soedaemun, Seoul. She told me that she was interested in English lessons so I returned to the Blue Hawaii one Saturday afternoon and lo and behold there was her brother, Mr. Jang. He's very keen on climbing mountains on a Sunday morn so we arranged to do a bit of climbing. However his way is to set off around five in the morning, Climb, have brekky at the summit and get back before lunch avoiding the mid-afternoon traffic back into Seoul. This way we have the rest of Sunday to do whatever we choose for the remainder of the day.

Mr. Jang is manager of the camera department at documentaries at the MBC (Mun-Hwa Broadcasting Corporation)TV company in Seoul. Through his work he gets to meet a lot of famous and influential people such as Jackie Chan here.

Both he and his sister lived and studied in Taiwan for a number of years so his Chinese is excellent and I often ask his advice on the language as I help him with his Chinese.

Over the time we've known each other I've gotten to know his wife and two children and have always been made very welcome at his house. Because of Mr. Jang and his family and the selfless hospitality they've shown me and countless other experiences I've grown to consider Korea as a second home
(If only immigration would agree.)