I've joined the 21st century - I know someone on a reality TV show

E., that lady of indefatigable spirit and excellent taste, decreed that we should celebrate my passing the bar exams with Laurent Perrier rose champagne, strawberries and Camembert in her flat.

I enjoy house parties because you always meet very interesting people. I haven't yet been to a house party where I didn't find someone interesting. I suppose that must be because all the hosts of the parties themselves are interesting. I also suppose this is why I am only ever a guest and seldom a host of a house party because I am not yet that interesting. But I digress (and I have also used up my quota of 'interesting's for today).

About two hours later than everyone else, someone came through the door. It was Hae-jin, a girl I'd seen briefly before on my previous visit to Seoul.
"Do you know how difficult it is to find your flat?" she said as she hugged E. I found myself on the sofa with Hae-jin in a little while.
"I'm here because your friend J. told me you are the cool-est girl in town," she drawled. She has a way of drawling that I didn't realise you could do if you weren't Texan.
"Er, J. must have been drunk when she told you that," I said, making a mental note to self: tell J. that just because she's at Berkeley, it doesn't mean she has to take dope. I also wondered why I didn't have a blue mohawk, or something that would at least make me look/feel/be cool.
"No, she wasn't drunk. It was daytime in the West Coast. She didn't just say you were cool, she said you were the cool-est. So I said to myself, 'I really must go to see this girl'. And here you are," she said, patting my hand. I would have sung for the girl but for the fact that my singing makes Cameron Diaz's off-key performance in 'My Best Friend's Wedding' sound like a Sarah Brightman recital.
"Indeed. Whatever she said, it is all my fault and I take full responsibility for her condition," I said, finally.

It was amusing that J. described me that way to Hae-jin, because it turns out that Hae-jin is the Genuine Article, the Real McCoy. She can put all the Paris Hilton Wannabes in the world who don't have their own TV show to shame. Hae-jin comes out in a reality TV show titled 'Singles in Seoul' which puts a spin on 'Sex in the City' by showing four glamourous single ladies out in town on their dates. She goes on fashion shoots and gets to wear Ferragamo, Gucci, the works. She probably has men throwing themselves at her feet. She is probably also most likely to receive a dozen bouquets of red roses (and she's not allergic to flowers, either, so she can actually enjoy them, unlike me).

I should explain for the record that all the girls at E.'s house that night were very glamourous (including E. herself, who looked like a cross between Kate Beckinsdale in 'Van Helsing' and a fairy). So in a fit of rebellion - I was wearing a T-shirt and jeans with trainers in the midst of all that razzmatazz - my relatively less well-decked friend M. and I declared the sofa a 'T-shirt and Jeans' zone. Anyone who wanted to sit on it had to be either wearing a T-shirt and jeans, or strip. We offered to record the inevitable nudity with a camera but no one took up our offer. Shame, really.

The cast of 'Singles in Seoul'- starting with Hae-jin