This last weekend, I had my first weekend out recording my approaches and what happened in trying to look at it more analytically. Overall, it was not a spectacular success or failure, but it did give me some ideas on how to improve my data collection going forward. I’ll start with telling what happened though the night, then give my thoughts on how I can improve this project in the next post.
My Saturday started off by having lunch near my home with my regular local. She’s been my regular for around two or two and a half months now, and probably one of my favorites that I’ve been with since coming to Korea. While she’s not the hottest Korean girl I’ve been with, she’s certainly one of the nicest and most pleasant to be around. I have to say though, the fact that she doesn’t speak English does make it slightly more difficult, but her personality makes it worthwhile. Anyway, after lunch, we went to my place and had a little afternoon delight, which probably didn’t help my motivation for trying to hook up later in the evening.
After that, I went into central Seoul at around 3, where I had to attend a wedding. While there, I got three different phone numbers, but I had to leave before the reception, so I already knew I likely wasn’t going to pull anyone to come with me from there. While one of those 3 girls at the wedding did make plans to meet with me the following Friday for drinks, as I detailed in my post about the 3-Day Rule, there’s a very good chance that she’ll flake out.
I left the wedding around 6:30 and went to my friend’s birthday party nearby in Apgujeong. This is one of the trendier and fancier parts of Seoul, and honestly it’s a place that I usually avoid. I don’t really click with the crowds that are more interested in their handbag brand than having an actual conversation, but I agreed to come down since it was my friend’s birthday. We all met up for dinner of Korean barbecue and drinks, and against my better judgment, I brought along a girl who wanted to meet up with me. I had never actually met her before, but she found my work online and messaged me saying what a fan she was. I’ve never hooked up with a groupie before, and she seemed relatively good looking so I figured it could be a new experience for me at best or just a waste of a couple of hours of approaches if she was a bust. I was exactly right about her being a waste in that regard too. She hung out for dinner being a bit awkward, and when we moved to a local bar called Bunker, she ditched to go home. No real loss there anyway, most everyone at dinner was some sort of couple, so I didn’t miss anything there.
Once at Bunker, we started drinking a bit more, but I kept it relatively controlled throughout the night, as I was trying to avoid the biggest cockblock. The bar itself was relatively devoid of talent, with the only moderately attractive girl being a brunette in the corner with her fat blonde friend. I generally don’t deal with white girls, and this wasn’t much of an exception at first. I went over and gave a very half-assed opening asking if one of them could be my partner in a game of 2’s pool, and was summarily dismissed. A short time later I decided it was time to leave the sausage fest and go on a search for greener pastures elsewhere. As I left the bar, I encountered a pretty cute Korean girl that looked like she was about to go into Bunker. I made a joke about her being out on her own looking for cute foreign boys, and she laughed. Seemed relatively receptive, and we started chatting a bit until her boyfriend walked up. He started speaking Spanish to her, much to my surprise, and was asking her about me and why we were talking. I picked up on his southern Spanish accent and asked him what city he was from. They were both equally shocked that I also spoke Spanish, and we hit it off pretty well chatting for a few minutes.
The girl said she was going to get her girlfriends and invite them along to all go party together somewhere else, so that seemed very promising. She emerged from the bar minutes later with the mediocre girls that had shot me down inside, but they were much more receptive once they realized I spoke Spanish and that their friends were cool with me, so we all moved to grab a taxi over to Itaewon, the foreigner party district of Seoul. Before we could get into the cab though, the boyfriend and the fat blonde chick started arguing about something inane and stupid, so I quickly tuned them out and turned my attention back to his girlfriend. We sat around chatting and drinking beer on the street for about an hour while the others argued, and I eventually decided to leave them and go somewhere else alone, but I made sure to get her number first. I don’t usually poach girls from guys that are standing right there, but she was clearly so turned off by the way he was acting that she was actively interested in meeting me again, so I went with it.
I hopped into a taxi and headed toward Hongdae, which is another foreigner-friendly area of Seoul, but with a much stronger Korean presence and a much weaker American military presence, which are both good news. It’s also much closer to my home, making logistics easier to deal with. Once I arrived there, I ran into a buddy of mine who had a small harem of white girls in tow. This night was not looking very promising for meeting decent Korean girls, since it had been raining all the past week and it was already 3am. I scouted out a local spot where K girls will often go looking to meet up with foreigners, a place called Thursday Party, and it was almost completely dead, so I went with my friend and his not-so-lovely ladies to a singing room where I was sure to have my eardrums assaulted for the next hour. True to form, and further reminding me why I just generally don’t deal with white girls, they proceeded to drunkenly belt out horrible renditions of Taylor Swift, Shaniah Twain, and whatever other garbage they could find in the rather unfortunately well-stocked songbook. At this point, I was only there to wingman for my buddy and make sure that when he decided to slip out the back with his chosen girl, the others would be sufficiently distracted. When it looked like he was ready to make it happen, I put on Bohemian Rhapsody for them and he slipped out entirely unnoticed. At least that part of my night was successful, albeit for someone else.
By this time, it was around 6am, and time to pack it in to go home. I made my way to the subway station and, in one last attempt to garner at least something from my rather unproductive night out, I approached a girl waiting for the subway who was clearly also taking the early train home from a night out partying. I cracked a joke about her being up really early on a Sunday morning, and asked where she went to church. Once she got that it was a joke, we started chatting a bit but I had to transfer soon so I just took the number and left. I was pleased by how well I was received considering the time of night/morning, so decided to keep trying and see what I could find. I used the same line on another girl on the next leg of my trip, but since the sun was now up, she didn’t find it nearly as funny… Because she really was up early to go to church. She ended up giving me her number, but it will almost certainly not turn into anything. Once at my station, I met a girl looking around frantically for a bus, and it turned out I was able to help her because we were taking the same bus in the same direction (yes, travel times in Seoul can sometimes be excruciatingly long). We talked for the 15 minutes I had until my stop and we got along quite well, exchanged numbers, and set up a time to meet again a few days later.
Overall, it wasn’t either a great or bad Saturday out. I had fun with my friends and met some new people, but in terms of picking up a new girl, it was a failure.
The analysis and reflections of the weekend will be continued on the next post.
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