PC Bang Signage (30)

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Welcome to PC Bangs!

Hello, welcome to the PC Bangs website and my apologies for the delay in getting things started. I have now been in Seoul for what seems like an eternity but which has actually only been two weeks. Over time, I hope to describe some of the aspects of Korea's unique 'PC Bang' culture. Here, 'bang' is a word that means something like 'room' so 'PC Bang' translates roughly as 'computer room' or, more helpfully, 'internet cafe'. Over the course of the next four months I'll be visiting various examples of the PC Bang phenomenon and hopefully taking some pictures of the really cool signwork they have here (you can see an example on the top right of this page). First things first, though. I arrived at Incheon International on Saturday 27 August on a hot and muggy day. The only thing that I can really remember about the airport is seeing a sign reading "Gateway To Asia" and thinking - hang on, isn't that Darwin's claim ...
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imaginary cities: vorti --

> Page not found. Viva! >> Vera blissful and breathless in daylight's profusion, singing through grass streets stretching seawards to the pipelines, shoves the matter deep in her coat pocket and marches, unfollowed, along cool bitumen avenues, her feet seeking skin prints in the improbably husked net. >> Brims of water and the morning, sirens from the soft ward of someone's conscience, eradicated. >> Human city of bacterial plants, filled with ripe organisms, dead organs and the ghost of a tissue, like a frozen sheet of snow, in the smudged sky, the toxic sky, called home. >> Clothe me in the colour of my departure, then sew up my eyes with city needles, urban thread. >> Dusted with a subway smear. >> We will make stories from the pork and vinegar, roll these in the plotlines of sesame and salt, dip once into the ever-changing vinegar bowl, now greasy with pork fat, picking up where we first left off, being sure also to grab in our shinin...
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So long and thanks for all the soju ...

Well, the time has come to cease talking of many things, to stop going to PC Bangs, to pack up my bags and head for different places, to leave behind many happy and strange memories of my time here. It is hard to believe that four months ago I arrived in Seoul in the middle of summer, and that now this city is goign through its coldest December in a century. How much has changed, both for me personally and in the world in general during that time. How people have grown older, or younger. People I will never see again. Parts of me I will never know again. Stop me before I get too sentimental. But let me just say, one thing I will really miss is my Korean phone with its ringtone, these lines from "The Girl From Ipanema": Tall and tan and young and lovely The girl from Ipanema goes walking And when she passes, each one she passes goes - ah ... I still have some poems to finish (especially my planned epic ode to Starcraft) but I think I will post them on my home page instead. For...
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