Today was one of my former coworker’s wedding. My wife and I, along with one other person that used to work with the bride were given the duty of showing up and looking "good" to impress her mother-in-law from hell. The bride-to-be was a close friend to both me and my wife, so we had every intention of doing everything we could do to help her out.
I’ve got a bit of a problem when it comes to wearing suits. Either it means I am unemployed, someone died, or someone is getting married. I never wear them otherwise, so the suit I purchased for our wedding last year hadn’t been worn recently. A few factors came into play. I have a cohabitant that can cook a reasonably good meal from time to time. I can also to cook with an actual oven, which has broadened my culinary exploits. These things, combined with the lack of exercise apart from walking the dog, and an increased difficulty of eating healthy while still meeting my teaching obligations means I’ve put on some weight. I’ve put on enough weight that I can now barely squeeze into my suit from a year ago.
I lasted an entire minute before I unbuttoned my pants this morning. Since this was my only suit, I relied on the crazy old man’s lazy tailor solution: Keeping your pants up with a belt while keeping your pants unbuttoned and partially zipped up. That’s the function of a suit coat in my opinion. Hiding the fly of your pants so no one suspects how poorly you now fit into something people saw you wearing comfortable a year earlier. My wife, of course, was mortified, but hell, we had to look good and in typical Korean style, we hadn’t thought to put on our clothes until the morning of the wedding.
Tight fitting clothing, weddings, and riding in cross country buses has this effect on me. It’s called "extreme discomfort and likely nausea." The bus that was rented for the bride’s party to go to Seoul turned into a hellish ride across the highways of Korea. By this time, the belt was completely loose, and I was even pulling out my shirt. I hid this with my coat. I was always one layer away from indecent exposure as I fought my nausea for as long as possible.
I was in luck. We stopped in Cheonan, which has a lovely rest stop that our bus was going to be waiting at for exactly twenty minutes. I ran to the bathroom. The first fifteen stalls I tried were occupied, but eventually I found an Asian style squatting toilet sans occupant. There I performed the proper rituals of alignment and eventually deposited my donation. As I was getting up and was about to put back on my coat, I had a thought. "Man, I’d be lucky if I started vomiting now, for ten minutes straight, so that when I got back to the bus I’d have a chance to feel much better with an empty stomach."
Actually, no, I didn’t have that thought, but that’s what I did. I started vomiting, and didn’t stop until I could identify every single ingredient in my breakfast meal. It was one of those brutal, loud sorts of vomiting sessions that made everyone in the entire restroom gasp as if to share a heartfelt moment, "Man, I’ve been there. Too much booze?"
I left the restroom, eyes bloodshot from the stress of regurgitation, pants nearly falling down, shirt tails streaming behind me, while I held my coat together to keep myself from being exposed in front of the bride-to-be’s elderly mother who was sitting in front of us on the bus. "Look good," her daughter had said. I looked like a mess. So bad, in fact, that after I had gotten back to the bus, the woman gave me a piece of red ginseng candy. This was for my acidic breath, which probably could have damaged her perm if given enough time. Red ginseng candy is so bad I actually paused to think if this was going to be an improvement as to what was currently making my mouth taste like I had licked the toilet bowl clean after I had finished using it. I decided I’d better accept the fact that the others around me would appreciate any effort I could do to improve the situation.
Eventually we got to Seoul. There was a large Catholic wedding which took place at an actual church. This is a first for me in Korea. An actual religious wedding! We went in and gave the bride words of encouragement while secretly comparing everything to our own wedding. They scored some points, like having an actual church and quiet people at their ceremony. They also lost points having the group wedding pictures outside in winter, and having an actual mass when more than 1/2 of the people didn’t know what was going on. All and all, it was a positive experience however, and I’m very happy to see my friend married. I even got to see two of my old kindergarten students, who could only barely remember me now that they are the mature ages of five and seven respectively.
After the wedding we did some Seoul standard business. We went to our jeweler for some repairs and general upkeep on our wedding items in preparation for our anniversary. Then we met some of the people in our wedding party and walked around COEX mall for a few hours, gossiping and catching up on old times. It was a rather fun time, and the longest we’ve been away from home without supervision for our dog. We set him up as comfortably as possible, and I was happily surprised at the lack of major damage to the house when we returned. Today is the first day of significant snowfall for Daejeon for the year too. A rather memorable day on all accounts.
