Soju have fun last night?

I really don't know why we didn't think of it before. I think adding soju to the home karaoke party really helped take things to a whole new level. And now all we need is a young Korean fellow to pop his head in occasionally and look at us like we don't really belong in my living room. Then the experience will be complete.

A thing that I've seen people do in other blogs is give "ups" to people who helped them out somehow. So, major "ups" to Chun for directing us to the K-town Galleria for late-night soju purchases, all the way from Pitchfork fest. And "ups" to Yank for having the following encounter at a liquor store in K-town:

Korean store clerk: Can I help you?
Yank: Hi, yes. Do you have any soju?
Korean store clerk: Any what? I don't think so.
Yank: Soju?
Korean store clerk: What?
Yank: Soju.
Korean store clerk: OH!!! SOJU!!! You like soju!?!
Korean policeman: Come with me! Let me show you where the soju is kept!
Korean store clerk: SOJU!!!

And here is the generic recipe I found at http://daisylee.blogspot.com/2004_06_13_daisylee_archive.html for making soju cocktails:

1 part soju, 1 part flavor, 1 part sparkly. Here, flavor is whatever the juice is that you're using (or yogurt or whatever). And "sparkly" is like sprite or fanta or something (depending on the flavor). And in some cases, you are supposed to add a little bit of simple syrup (water + as much sugar as you can get to dissolve in boiling water -- roughly equal parts water and sugar).

A variant I saw on wikipedia is also:

1 part soju, 2 parts sparkly, and a packet of something (like lemonade powder). In this case, 1 of the parts of sparkly is being combined with the powder to make the flavor.

Another interesting thing to know about soju is that there is "distilled" soju and "diluted" soju. Diluted soju is basically just ethanol with some stuff added. Distilled is more like other liquors, coming from rice and wheat and stuff. Supposedly, the fact that soju is often just diluted ethanol is the reason why it's is so cheap.

And if you are drinking soju in the presence of a senior, you are supposed to turn your head away, so that they can't see you drink it. Oh, and you shouldn't fill your own glass -- pretty sure I broke that one about 40 times last night.

Also a hit: Hite.
Not as good as Hite, I thought: OB
Both beers were improved though, by being served in the "pitcher" sized portions.

Not screwing around

So, I got pretty tired of screwing around with IRC. I just don't have time for it. It's still great for getting obscure songs, but it's not an efficient way to get large collections of songs, which is what I'm most interested in. I'm currently downloading about 22 gigs of karaoke songs from bitcomet. 12 gigs are for the first 242 sunfly hits disks (most of which I already have, but it will be good to get a solidified archive) and 10 gigs of which are Sound Choice songs (which I don't have very many of). This should help the balance the collection with songs that are a little more American.

I also downloaded some new karaoke hosting software. Haven't tried it out yet, though.

On the way to work this morning, I sang "Wake Me Up When September Ends" to myself at least 4 times. I think I need my fix.