Step Back and Take a look around

A week maybe 2 ago, I posted a status on Facebook aimed directly at a former roommate of mine. His necessity for cleanliness seemed to only apply to us roommates and he had some sort of godlike exception. The status read “ I can’t stand hypocrisy, complain about a mess when you are the one leaving a snail trail.” I am not one to take this passive aggressive, but evidently being direct hadn’t worked and he is a Facebook whore for this kind of thing.

The arrogance and elitist attitude of this particular guy couldn’t handle a simple request of “ Hey man could you clean up after yourself” /ignore. A second attempt of “Hey Dude, I am not sure if you heard me earlier but you are leaving a mess all over the apartment” /ignore. My third request now came at midnight with requests being spaced by no less than 3 hours.  “ This is the third time I have asked today, clean up after yourself, you’re being a F’ing slob.” And to no surprise /ignore. I felt I would deal with this in the morning.

The morning started in a way I could never have expected. I was up relatively early for a casting with one of my other roommates. Who am I kidding it was hardly early it was 9:30 when shit went down. A hunt for coffee cups, led to the demise of respect for said individual early. A dark side appeared, an orange hurling, pillow tossing, raging pompous prick. 

When no coffee cups appeared in the kitchen, or either bedroom unfortunately the habituated themselves in the dark mysterious room of Princess (I use princess for just about every guy I know at some point but that’s how I will refer to him from hereon).  A few quick light knocks and no answer so my other roommate peaked his head in to the coffee cups on his bedroom. Quickly and quietly these dirty cups were plucked from the room and just as the door closed I could here, “Allo?”

Such a simple thing should be nothing to bad an eye at, unless of course you are the particular guy that aggression has been aimed at before. Luckily I am not the guy, but the other roommate sure as hell is. 3 or 4 minutes later a grape smuggling pumped up princesses comes out of his shadowy depths and throws an orange (yes an orange and for the record it was quite tasty) and a pillow. Ranting and snorting and raging princess screams about his territory.

I will help paint a better picture. Imagine a 6 ft. tall, 80 kg model, standing there in his nut huggers, veins coursing through his forehead, chest puffed threatening to beat up and even kill my other roommate. The other guy also 6 ft. tall as well but giving a 20 kg weight advantage to princess, sat on the couch in a docile surrendering position. In defense of the younger smaller guy I stand in the middle, preventing a confrontation that neither of them would win. 

Homophobic slurs are sent left right and centre of me, I personally took a stronger stance for as long as I could. My responses were mostly thank you, and is that how you really feel? My degree of calm only aggravated the beast more, it was time to give this bitch a reality check.

“Have you ever thought the world isn’t out to get you? Princess you are always playing the victim, yet you are the one attacking. If you don’t know who the asshole is, sad fact is that it’s probably you. Get your head on straight, you are the problem not the others.” That was my reality check for him. Shortly before saying this I was fed up with these antics and decided to get the owner of our agency on the same page as everyone else.  The owner scheduled a meeting with princess, to which I don’t know the outcome. Fortunately it was now time to disperse to my casting.

Wait! It gets better. In our contracts it explicitly says, no guests at any time.  There is a lot of trust in this aspect as we do not constantly have someone watching over us.  I have always treated this rule loosely as long as it doesn’t get in the way of my living. Well war was on between princess and the roomie who was threatened. 

This character from the most recent season of the ultimate fighter most closely resembles princesses attitude. 

The lack of foresight on princesses behalf shocks me. After the events of the morning he had the balls to bring his lady friend to the apartment that evening. The roomie was having none of it and immediately called the agency. More death threats ensued and a swore enemy was brought to attention. Followed by a literal evil laugh. Muahahahhahahaha. Muahahahahaha. Muahahahah, you’re going to die. Like I said no foresight for his words or actions. Fortunately the girl convinced him to go to her place. Disaster averted.

We all knew that princess was a little odd, but that just contributes to character. Beneath this evil beast he is a very nice guy. This same character made me breakfast my first morning in Korea, has no issues picking up a coffee for anyone or sharing in a bottle of soju. Negatives strike a longer lasting cord than positives, and for me this cord struck hard and boisterously. 

A few awkward days later, he departed. Things calmed down, underwear was no longer found on door handles, no more empty chocolate milk in the shower, and dishes/compost was kept up and clean. 

Who are you?

Knees weak, arms are heavy, mind racing, heart pacing, palms are sweaty; these are usually the reactions to an encounter with someone famous.  Naïve me, only managed to get a Hi how are you in before I was whisked away. Then again, I had no idea who I was talking to. To me she was a beautiful Korean model, to others she is a big time celebrity known as Nam Joo Kim.

In the eyes of a celebrity, I am sure that lack of recognition could be nice actually. I find myself by no means a celebrity in Seoul, but people take pictures of me on the street, ask for pictures at the coffee shop and congregate around me on the subway. And while I know that larger objects have a greater gravitational pull and I am bigger than the average Korean, I think those laws of gravity are flawed. Constantly afraid of letting this get to my head and develop an ego I fight that internal battle.

In the past week I have had 3 shoots, and actually have on more this coming Thursday. It was at the Macaw sportswear shoot where I bumped into this celebrity.  A fear developed quite early into the shooting when we learned that the wrong shoe size was brought for my monstrous feet. I walk around with a small clown shoe of 11.5 US. Unfortunately the much to small 9’s were sitting waiting for my feet to attempt to be jammed in. Thankfully there were alternative shoes that I could slide on.

Friday and Saturday I had the opportunity to shoot with Luel magazine again. This time I had 2 editorials in the magazine and will be on more than 15 pages. When there is that many photos of you in one magazine, you certainly need to be careful of avoiding the faces of Zoolander effect. This is a flaw in models where the fall back on looking the exact same in every photo. This Zoolander effect is what separates poor from successful models. The variation and ability to a demonstrate a chameleon like skill to transform and emphasize character in still frame is the key to success. 

There are times where I wish I could afford the clothes I wear in shoots, this shoot was certainly no exception. I had one Tom Ford set that was worth over 25k. But this wasn’t my favourite. A simple Turtleneck by Zegna made of Cashmere and Microsilk  and a suede jacket screamed Zach. I don’t know the price tag as of yet, but I know in a bellowing tone it beckons, HAHAHA when you win the lottery maybe. 

Relax, Happy Time at The Jimjilbang (D-a-i-y-e Spa)

 Relax Day Spa Scene - Zoolander

After a quick fitting and a casting, Meekus, Rufus and myself headed to a Jimjilbang. (Okay end of the Zoolander references). These are very popular in Korea. For a small sum of 10 000 won you can spend up to 24 hours in the public bathhouse and sauna.  

Not once in my life have I ever had an experience remotely close to this.  The facilities include an arcade, a pc room, a snack bar, a restaurant, amongst the standard spa services (which are extra of course) there are 9 different sauna rooms, and in the private bath part 4 maybe 5 tubs. Ranging from 5 degrees to 90 degrees the rooms can give you a full range of experience.

As if I don’t get enough stares in this country, walking around the Jimjilbang with 2 other tall white dudes; people can’t help but look out of curiosity. The sauna area is littered with mats and little blocks of wood to rest your head. The highly fashionable colour coordinated shorts and t-shirt, let you know your gender if you are ever confused (blue is for guys).  Many people will take a few hours out of their day to just stay there and nap, which is certainly easily enough to do when you don’t have silly ignorant foreigners interrupting the purity of silence. 

                                                 

After a few hours darting between hot and cold and lounging around, I partook in the bathhouse experience. Once you get over the fact that there are dudes walking around naked everywhere, this is easily the best part. Hot tub, cool dip, hot tub, cool dip, 90-degree sauna, hot tub, and shower are the optimal routine I discovered in my random quest to find psychological oasis.  The humidity is great for cleaning up your skin and scrubbing off all the dead dry skin. It’s been almost unbearably dry around lately so this just added to the experience.

Following the showers, I decided to indulge myself further. Each week we receive approximately 106 000 won. When I take out my pocket money I only ever take out 100 000. Slowly building up is that total. I used this additional money as a way to pay for quite possibly the best massage in human existence.  From head to toe, my entire body was relaxed (I actually drooled a bit), the intense pressure to release those stubborn knots in my back was much needed, along with the standing on my back, and crazy cooling face stuff.  

5 hours after I first walked into Central Spa Jimjilbang, I walked out in a state of euphoria. The ultimately relaxed form of myself was now ready to take on the world, or in this case some Korean BBQ. 

Restaurants have become more fun as well lately. I have taken to sharing soju shots with random people around the restaurant and the response has been wonderful. Every time we make new friends. 

Say you don’t know how to do it now, so you run

Silly hole in my sock. 

After a long hiatus from video/acting, last week I managed to squeak my way into a Samsung promo video.  The last video I filmed was the Thai Airways TVC in May when I wed a beautiful Thai woman. Oh lets get the right song on first. 

Like a flash in the pan this job was booked. Within 2 days I had a one to one meeting with the director, and started filming. The shoot took place on Wednesday, a day that originally was supposed to be busy. But, as if there isn’t always a but, Mother Nature decided to sprinkle a dusting of the fantastic white stuff. My eyes began to glisten at the site of snow.

Unfortunately most Korean drivers (from what I see) don’t know how to handle the snow. Hammering the gas and spinning leading to jammed traffic. It doesn’t appear like threshold breaking is taught here either as I everyone’s tires are locking up. I have never seen so many car accidents in my life.

                                              

Zooming up and down, swirling around a camera shot past my face. “Be natural” I am instructed from my booker/translator as I deal with the fear of a camera coming within inches of my face and swinging back out. Maybe it was a bit of film rust? Is that what you call it when its been a while since you  have been in front of the video camera and need to shake off the cobwebs? Either way it took around 5 or 10 minutes for me to fully feel comfortable with the environment and movements I needed to make.  

And as quickly as the job was booked, I was done. With less than 40 minutes in front of the camera the director was ecstatic about my performance and that we had finished far ahead of schedule.  I had fun and can’t wait to do another, hopefully the next one is a big TVC though. 

Double Face

I don't really have much explanation as to why I have been tardi with writing. So many idea have been floating through my head of late its ridiculous. To start with I messed up on my website ( I am writing a new one via HTML coding, CSS and Java and learning all along the way). That frustrated me enough to take a break from dreamweaver and start learning the korean language. 

To be honest, I think a lot of what I learn will stick. My approach to learning is different than my weak attempt at learning Thai. Korean is a phonetic language and I am starting with the alphabet. After learning the characters, I have taken to trying to read the street signs as I walk. Although my understanding of direct exchanges of words is rudimentary, I already feel as though my base of reading is coming along quite well. 

Flash back to the modelling world. My editorial shots from Luel magazine came out. I posted a few on my instagram and twitter over (follow me @wintonyk). Here are the rest:

After being slow, this week has really started to pick up with castings. We had a couple on Sunday, one of which was just for me (Hyundai TVC). Yesterday evening I had an emergency casting for Samsung Promo video, well its booked and I am working tomorrow evening. Coming up there is also a booking for Macaw golf and hopefully some more magazines. Only time will tell. After being slow things are starting to look optimistic.