klutzy May-June weekend

I've never thought of myself as clumsy, but when you factor in my immoderate and lazy behavior, accidents are almost bound to happen. 

I'm happy to announce that there have been no complications from my appendectomy. I'm completely healed. I have some hairline scars on my abdomen and some staple wounds which are still healing up, but apart from that I'm cured. I just need to avoid lifting heavy objects for six weeks.

I still think I'm going to die soon, though.  

I'm talking about last Friday night (May 30), when I was walking home—admittedly under the influence of makgeolli and beer—and stopped by a public restroom near the Yangjae Stream. The stalls were somewhat cramped, which I learned to my cost when I stood up somewhat abruptly and smashed my head against the toilet-paper dispenser. 

Just...don't ask. Please. It happened, all right? That's all you need to know. 

Anyway, my head was somewhat fuzzy (makgeolli or concussion, I don't know) so I didn't really notice that I had hit myself hard enough to draw blood. This precluded me from putting antibiotic ointment on my noggin, and...

...well, sure enough, I came down with a head cold on Saturday, May 31, which prostrated me all through Sunday. Even on this warm, damp, drizzly morning of June 2, I'm not still wholly back together. Infection-induced, no doubt. What a sap I am. 

And speaking of sap, what kind of moron doesn't use hot pads to remove a scalding-hot bowl of oatmeal from the microwave? Me, that's who. The same moron who, early this morning, touched the hottest part of the bowl, dropped the bowl, tried to catch the bowl and stuck both his hands knuckle-deep into said scalding-hot oatmeal. I am now typing on this keyboard with several first-degree burns on my fingers.

I hope there isn't a university-sponsored polo match this weekend, or I'm a goner. 

There isn't too much other news. Miss H and I went to see X-Men: Days of Future Past on Thursday evening, and both got a kick out of it. We also got our Hong Kong accommodations booked, so all the hotels 'n' stuff have been taken care of for my big Southeast Asia tour in July and August. (Now I just need to reserve my train tickets.) I had a lovely time with some of my work buddies on Friday night, drinking that aforementioned makgeolli and eating tofu (dubu in Korean) made from cactus in Achasan, near Gwangnaru, where Miss H and I used to live. Then I went to a barbecue in Maebong later that night with one of the dudes I brew with and his buddies, and nearly cracked my skull open in a public restroom around 12:30 a.m. Then I spent the weekend being sick. I'll spend the three days of my workweek (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday) conducting writing assessments. On Thursday evening (which is technically a Friday, as we have a three-day weekend this week) I'll have a drink with Sang-ook, the Korean fellow I shared a ward room with when I got my appendix out a couple of weeks ago. I promise I won't hit my head on anything this time. 

No, really. Honest.

Korean appendectomy, part I: the beginning

There is no abstruse meaning in the title of this post. I had an appendectomy in Korea. Here's how it came about:

Saturday, May 17, was a pretty typical day. I relaxed at home; Miss H went out with some friends. The only thing weird about the day, in fact, was the mild gastrointestinal discomfort I was experiencing. It felt like a case of bad gas or indigestion. I'm an intelligent human being and I know where my large intestine is. I didn't think anything of it. It was odd because it was persistent. I was still suffering when Miss H came home from her day out. Both of us were puzzled. 

On Sunday the mystery was solved. I woke up around 8 a.m., grabbed a brownie from the fridge and nibbled on it as I checked my e-mail. I noticed, with some annoyance, that my abdominal pain had not dissipated. It had, however, localized itself squarely in my lower right side, right about where my appendix should b—

Oh Jesus, Mary and St. George.

My appendix! 

I clicked on WebMD (porn for hypochondriacs) and got the lowdown. Yep—it was appendicitis, all right. I'd had abdominal pain centered around the upper abdomen and navel, which had become sharper and more severe as it zeroed in on my right side. I had [ahem] been unable to pass gas for about 18 hours—which is, if I may be so bold, quite unusual for me. I didn't have a fever, wasn't nauseous and hadn't lost my appetite, but my imagination was already running wild with visceral terrors. I was now certain that one of my heretofore-faithful organs had abruptly transformed into a dirty bomb and was now ticking away inside me, waiting for the right moment to spitefully splatter the rest of my innards with glowing radioactive goo. 

Basically the polar opposite of this picture. 

I stood up, marched stiffly into the bedroom, shook Miss H's shoulder, and said "Honey...I think it's my appendix." 

She bolted upright. Let me be quite plain: she shot up faster than a horny teenager's erection in a horror film, and that's saying something. Miss H is not the sort of person who bolts upright. The only time I've seen her do something remotely similar was when we were watching The Amazing Spider-man in a CGV cinema in fantabulous 4DX two years ago and the chair hit her with a little puff of air on the back of her neck the moment that saphead Peter Parker got bit by a spider at Oscorp Labs. She about leaped out of her chair. And that's exactly what she did the moment I said the word "appendix." A student at her school had been taken out of commission by a burst vermix a few weeks earlier, so the word was already on her radar screen. Hearing me say it switched her to red alert mode. In a record-breaking five minutes she was up and dressed with brushed hair and a locked-and-loaded purse, and we were out the door. 

The cab ride was torturous. Every time we hit a bump (and bumps are plentiful on Seoul's aging, sinuous streets) my lower right side screamed for clemency. I gritted my teeth and tried to look brave, even as my subconscious regaled my psyche with every disturbing scene from that Madeline episode I'd watched as a kid where the titular character's own appendix starts swelling and pulsating. 

The only reputable hospital in the area that we knew about was Asan Medical Center in Songpa-gu, so we headed there. We were directed to the emergency clinic, where my name, temperature and blood pressure were taken (but not given back). Miss H and I then sat and waited two hours until blood and urine tests, an electrocardiogram and a CT-scan were made and three hours until the results came back. My panicky, inchoate suspicions were confirmed: I had appendicitis. Appropriate phone calls were then made to appropriately-alarmed family members. Then the nurse dropped the bombshell: every bed at Asan was full, and I couldn't be operated on there. Fortunately, there was another hospital ten minutes away which specialized in appendectomies. 

So Miss H and I waited another antsy hour for the ambulance to show up, endured another bouncy ride to Songpa Cheong Hospital near Olympic Park, and—

—and then waited another six hours until it was time for my surgery at 9:00. 

It was the brownie. 

The stupid brownie did me in—the one I'd had for breakfast, remember? One of the first questions I was asked upon arriving at the hospital and alleging that I had maengjeongyeom was "Have you had anything to eat today?" 

Well of course I had: a brownie (I said "cake" to make things simpler) at eight o'clock. Because of this, we had to wait two hours for the tests to be conducted, and had to wait until nine o'clock at night to have the offending organ excised. Splendid—not only had I sabotaged my only chance at speedy diagnosis and treatment, but now my poor dietary habits were on display for the entire Korean medical community to see. 

Culinary indiscretion aside, at nine o'clock I found myself walking from the three-bed fourth-floor ward down to the operating room on the third floor in the company of a cabal of nervous, squawking nurses. The cluttered operating room was clean and bright. Shiny steel tools were laid out on trays. Green cloth covered every pertinent surface. A fat housefly, which I could only assume had been sterilized beforehand, buzzed about the disc-shaped UFO of a surgical lamp. The young, skinny surgeon and his pie-eyed assistant spread-eagled me on the operating table and inserted a syringe into the IV tube already conveniently embedded in my arm.

"You go to sleep now," the surgeon said.

It would be my first time under general anesthesia. I wondered how long it would take for me to— 

Pop.

Fade to black.

I'll tell you what happened next in part II. 

Hokkaido diary: the Camellia Line to Busan

2/7:

6:54 a.m. The Kodama 857 leaves at 7:11 a.m. for Hakata. I didn't even bother getting a ticket this time. I'll just sit in one of the non-reserved cars (1-4, 7, or 8). The only thing a ticket would have told me is what time the train arrives in Hakata. 

Last night was certainly the low point of the trip. Just before midnight I stepped out of Shin-Yamaguchi Station. I noticed three things. One, everything was slick and spit-shiny with recent rain. Two, there were hotels everywhere. Three, it was COLD—not the relentless 0-degree chill of Sapporo, but something worse—a creeping, drafty, moist cold that seeped through my clothes—every layer—and into my bones. 

The station was closed from midnight to 4:40 a.m. (4:40 - 0:00, the sign said, showing the Japanese trend of reading right-to-left and the NE Asian one of using military time.) There were no Internet cafés. There was one izakaya, but it was only open until the three and you had to take your shoes off. The first train to Hakata didn't leave until 6:27 a.m. So I started checking hotels. The Hotel Active, Hotel Amuze and Toyoko Inn were all full. I didn't even bother with Yamaguchi Station Grand Hotel—looked way too rich for my blood. I walked a bit further west and saw a familiar sign blinking at me in the distance—McDonald's! Lame to spend six-and-a-half hours there in a foreign country but any port in a storm. Stepping through puddles I made my way up to the door. It was locked. A sign on the door said something about the place being closed between midnight and 5 a.m., despite the big garish sign out front advertising "24H OPEN." 

I made a semicircle about the southern entrance of the station, looking for an Internet café or a comfy place to park my ass and finding none. I wandered the silent, dark, empty streets. I had just finished reading Theroux's Ghost Train in which, as the title suggests, he compares himself to a ghost, traveling unseen. I now felt the same way, like a lonely ghost seeking a warm building to haunt. I settled on a convenience store with tables and chairs inside—no wi-fi but at least light, warmth, and nourishment—but when I'd finished buying snacks I saw that a chain barrier had been strung around the tables and chairs, invisible from outside. Demoralized, I sat on the steps of the dark Japanese restaurant next to the Hotel Active and ate, watching a lone cab sit fruitlessly in front of the station. It was cold and the frigid tiles beneath me wicked all the heat away from my body. I drank the warm coffee I'd bought (not knowing why I'd bought it) and was on the point of heading into the izakaya when I saw a pedestrian bridge sneaking under the tracks. I took it. It was stark and bleak with high chain-link fences acting as suicide prevention. It could have been the setting for any hard-boiled Japanese crime novel or film, especially on this cold, damp night, steam flying from the actor's mouths whenever the [sic] speak. Beyond the bridge were three more hotels. I picked the shabbiest, oldest-looking of them all and got a quote—¥5,500 yen. A bit steep, but worth getting out of the weather. I paid up and went to my single smoke-scented room, tearing off my clothes and collapsing into bed. It was one-fifteen in the morning. 

Here's where that hot can of coffee I'd drunk began to bite me in the ass. 

In the end I was SO tired and So desperate for a rest that my brain overrode the buzzing caffeine and went to sleep anyway. The bed was the softest, most comfortable one I'd slept in (apart from the Karasuma Hotel in Kyoto). 

I woke up at 6:30 (let myself sleep in a bit), washed my hair, threw on my clothes and skipped out. The sky was dark purple, illuminating the jagged, silver-edged, pine-clad hills surrounding the town, as well as more of its ugly buildings and jumbled streets and alleys—rather like Korea, especially under overcast. I could see my breath. The hills had received a light dusting of snow. The damp spots on the pavement had turned to black ice. I hurried to the station, flashed my pass at the agent, and arrived on platform 12 in time to see the 6:49 for Hakata pulling away from me. I felt a bit mad at myself. I had a ship to catch. Dawn was coming and this ghost needed to flee. Should have woken up earlier. 

Oh well. The time is now 7:35 and we've passed Asa and Shimonoseki. I'll be there in time. I think we just entered the tunnel to Kyushu. 

7:50 a.m. Definitely on Kyushu now. Next stop is Hakata. I'd forgotten how pretty this place was, even under gray skies—lofty green mountains wreathed in fluffy cloud boas, everything looking moist and damp, even the people and their tiny houses with multicolored tile roofs. Like Jeju Island, but roomier. 

8:26 a.m. Eating another breakfast sandwich in another McDonald's in Japan. Excessive? Well, you can't beat the availability—or the price. I don't much feel like paying ¥500 for a bowl of ramen this morning. 

The train pulled into Hakata just before 8. I crossed the road and headed to the bus stop to check what bus I need—88, it seems. That rings a bell. I'll just stop at a combini (convenience store) to grab supplies for the six-hour Camellia Line ferry ride and then I'll head for the port. 

9:26 a.m. At the ferry terminal. I must be getting tired. I put my ¥500 coin into the change slot (instead of the fare hopper) and thought I'd paid. The bus driver had to hold me up and pluck the coins (¥220) from my open and clueless hand. 

I decided to skip buying snacks. The terminal has shops, and the ferry I'm taking is so huge that they'll have convenience stores and even a few noodle shops aboard. I'll probably be sleeping the whole time anyway. Already bought my ¥500 terminal use ticket (what a racket) and my ferry fare is prepaid ($90) so now I'll just have to pay the fuel surcharge at the check-in desk and head upstairs to the departure lounge...when the check-in desk opens at 11:00, that is. 

10:32 a.m. Checked in. Much smoother this time now that I know what to do. Fuel surcharge was only ¥1,200—barely more than $11.40! (Check my math.) The Camellia Line is six hours in duration but man, the price is right. I'm now sitting in the exact same terminal (2F) on the exact same gate (11) which I took last time. Only difference is that I took the JR Beetle, a Boeing 929 Jetfoil that reaches Busan in 2.5 hours, and it was summer and the weather was hot, muggy and sunny. Now it's cold and rainy and I'm eating the last of my Sapporo Beer Crackers and am anxious to be away. Exchanged money and got ₩188,000 back. 

The New Camellia car ferry. From Wikimedia Commons.

11:46 a.m. 24 kilometers per hour, 522 people and 20,000 tonnes. That's how much this vessel steams, holds, and weighs. The whole damn ship smells like piss, except the lavatories—they're fresh and clean. I'm in Room 439 on Deck 4. This being a ferry between Korea and Japan, there are no berths—just 10 alcoves with space to stick small bags, valuables, and hang coats. We'll lay out pads, lay our heads on the brick-shaped green vinyl pillows, pull a thin comforter over us, and snooze the crossing away on the brown-carpeted floor. Our shoes are in the requisite compartmentalized shoe-cubby seen in all the more civilized restaurants, bars and houses. Looks like there's six of us so far. I'm the only foreigner. The deck and rail are visible outside the porthole, and the roof of the ferry terminal with its enormous trombone-shaped glass canopies, and the dreary town of Fukuoka sitting sullen under the wind and drizzle. My iPod is charging. I trust Koreans enough not to molest it in my presence (it's 3 cubbies away from me). Almost 12 now and we'll be leaving in 30 minutes. I hope I sleep the whole way. 

 

 

Final glimpse of Japan.

  1:32 p.m. Trying to sleep, but I can only manage a light doze. It's hard to believe those whitecaps out there could make this big ol' boat rock 'n' roll so much. I'm not sick—never been seasick except that one time in 2008—but I just can't get used to the swaying, rollicking motion. It's like trying to sleep on a camel's back—moving and yawing and pitching and rolling on 3 axes. It doesn't help that the lights in here are all on, the TV is blaring softly (inexplicably showing the 2010 Olympics on SBS) and this ship is warping and twisting so much that the portholes and bulkheads are making clicking, snapping, creaking noises. I tried the light switch, but it either doesn't work or it isn't a light switch. I'd put in earplugs but I want to hear an abandon ship order if there is one. Best I can do is pull my hoodie over my eyes, pretend I'm in a howdah on an elephant's back in India, and pray the next 4 hours fly by like the howling wind outside. 

3:00 p.m. No such luck. Still can't get to sleep. My iPod is charged though, so I sneaked off to one of the lounges—by the staircase on Deck 5—to watch the rollers and troughs and crests. The sea is gunmetal grey as far as the eye can see, with streaks and flashes of white everywhere. The sky looks like old snow. Hard to believe wind and temperature and currents can create such force. This is like being in a big honking Winnebago going up and down hummocky hills. Still not sick, but I think my stomach believes I should be by rights, and is making inroads. We'll hit a big hillocky wave and go up, up, up...but what goes up must come down, and down we go with a gut-wrenching drop and what must surely be a huge gout of white spray. That in itself wouldn't be too bad, except that the waves are coming at us on the perpendicular, so as we rise and fall, we're also rocking from side to side (why I compared it to a camel's gait, actually). The fun part is—apart from staggering drunkenly down corridors, floating down staircases, and watching the great swells rise and fall as over the backs of unseen Leviathans—is that it's still drizzling outside and there are several pearlescent drips clinging to the railings just beyond my porthole. As the ship rises and falls, these droplets slide back and forth on the undersides of the rails, looking for all the world like bubbles in a carpenter's level. 

I think I'll step outside, get a breath of fresh air, and try to find the observation deck (up top somewhere, probably). 

3:39 p.m. As I figured—the doors to the outside deck are locked tight. Makes sense. They wouldn't let anybody go outside in these seas. No more of these rough winter crossings for me. Can see land to the west—must be Tsushima. Means we're getting there. 

5:07 p.m. Land ho!

I went back to my cabin and slept for a while. That beat back the impending nausea. I woke to see several cargo ships and the gray-green mountainous shores of K-Land in the distance. I also saw the JR Beetle passing us. He left two hours after we did—no surprise the little hydrofoil caught up—but he must have had to slow down due to the conditions. Looks like he's getting jounced around out there plenty. 

And so ends February 7th. There's one correction I should like to make: the New Camellia did indeed have berths with bunks, but they were in the first-class cabins. My paltry second-class cabin had the accommodations depicted above. 

Tune in tomorrow for the final chapter of my Hokkaido diary. 

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 29: conquer a fear

I thought long and hard about what I'd do to meet this challenge. I mean, there's not much that frightens me. In desperation I compiled a list of fears to help narrow the field, and I discovered to my dismay that it was narrow enough to begin with. 

Here are all the things in this world that frighten me:

• Solifugae (or sun spiders, as my family calls 'em)
• stalling or spinning a small airplane
• murky water
• Raiders fans
• tuberculosis
• senility
• progressives
• some schmuck plagiarizing my unborn novel
• starting a novel
• finishing a novel
• not finishing a novel
• having someone read my novel
• having no one read my novel
• submitting a novel to a literary agent
• submitting a novel to a publisher
• submitting a novel to an editor
• querying literary agents
• being turned down by literary agents
• being accepted by literary agents
• having my novel rejected 
• having my novel published

Wow, that turned into a longer list than I thought. Okay then. [cough]

You can easily see the pattern, however. Most of those fears are location-specific. I can't conquer my fear of sun spiders over here in Korea, nor can I stall an airplane and face my fear of falling out of the sky. But maybe those aren't my highest priority. As you can see from the list, most of my fears revolve around writing. Some of them I have already conquered and beaten back; they're still floating around in my soul, but they've been hamstrung and crippled. They're harmless. Some, on the other hand...

My mother once told me that I might be afraid of success. At the time, I had no clue what she was talking about. Afraid of success? What did that even mean? Success is a good thing. It means you've won. Victory is yours. You've hurdled all the obstacles, mowed down the competition, beaten the odds. You've paid your dues and now you're finally being recognized for your hard work. How could that be frightening? 

Now I see what she means. Novel #1 was finished in late 2011 and is only now, in early 2014, ready for publication. I think there may be a reason for that. I was just too chicken to edit and fix it and send it off to someone. I just kept making change after edit after rewrite, spinning my wheels and chasing my tail. On a subconscious level, the thought of some stranger I'd never met sitting in a remote office and gazing down at my poor, puny manuscript with objective, merciless, scrutinizing eyes just made me shrivel up. The looming specter of the publication process — criticism, revision, endless rewrites, discussions of intent and purpose and characterization and prose and style — or worse, rejection — was like a hooded cobra rearing its ugly head at me, and it put the same look on my face that poor ol' Indy has in that photo at the top of this post.

Well, no more. Time to shove a torch in that ugly viper's face. Time to get that monkey off my back. Time to take the bull by the horns and hitch my wagon to a star and all them other syrupy metaphors. It is time, in other words, to chase down my lifelong dream.

So today, I am querying literary agents. I've spent the last nine days painstakingly editing and proofreading Novel #1, making sure that it's polished and ready for an agent's (and editor's) remorseless gaze. As of 1:14 a.m. this morning, it's finished. I trimmed the fat: 2,000 words and seven pages expunged. I tightened the prose. I removed every single discrepancy and inconsistency. I beefed up dialogue, removed unnecessary description, rounded out characters and fleshed out the story. It's ready. It's finally, finally ready.

Now I just need to conquer that fear of success. Off them e-mail queries go, then. I'll let you know how it all turns out.

Start the final countdown for Day 30. 

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 19: schedule a physical exam

I've been so wrapped up in this challenge that I've neglected to tell you about the other noteworthy happenings in my life. There've been a few. I still have to explain my Hokkaido itinerary. My beard's thickening up nicely. I may have a new line on finding the location of the army base where my grandpa was stationed during the Korean War. Most importantly, I've decided to take the bull by the horns and find a literary agent for Novel #1. I'm a third of the way into the final edit/proofread; when I finish I'll start sending query letters. "Exciting" simply does not describe it.

But I'll explain all that later. Let's get back to the subject of manliness.

I can't remember the last time I had a complete physical checkup. I think it was after I got back from Korea in 2009. That was almost five years ago, and according to The Art of Manliness, it's time for me to go back and get another one.

But there's a problem.

It's not that I don't trust Korean doctors. Far from it. They've helped me out a lot. They saved my life in September. I had tonsillitis and a 104-degree fever, and the capable folks at Asan Medical Center in Songpa-gu put me to rights.

But there are minute differences in the medical practices between East and West. Korean doctors believe some things that American practitioners don't, and vice-versa. There's also the language barrier to consider. Most Korean physicians are at least halfway fluent in English, but some of them have accents as thick as cold butter. I want to understand the diagnosis when it's given to me. Completely.

So I think, in spite of the interminable wait and the added cost (thanks, Obamacare), that I'll wait until I get home to the States to have a physical.

I'm still meeting the parameters of the challenge, never fear. Today's goal is to schedule a physical exam. That's precisely what I'm doing. I'm just scheduling it for March 2015. It's going down on my invisible calendar. [scribble] There. All done.

What I will do as soon as possible is schedule appointments with a dentist and an optometrist. I haven't had my teeth looked at or professionally cleaned in ages. And it's been a year since I got this latest pair of glasses, so I suspect it's time to get my subscription updated. I'm going to be staring at screens a lot this winter: editing manuscripts, typing up novels and short stories, reading other peoples' work (sorry, Olivia, I'm going to finish that dang story of yours if it kills me) and blogging about Japan. So I'd better make sure my spectacles are up to the challenge.

Pull up a stump for Day 20...  

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 11: perform a...self-exam

And I think you know what that little ellipsis there in the title is meant to represent.

Uh-huh.

The reasoning behind this exam and the directions for it are here. Let's just say that I did it, and that I have a clean bill of health. I think. I may have what the AoM article describes as a variocele, but I can't be sure. Without going into much detail, the signs are there. There's definitely something on the left side that ain't there on the right. I'll have to get that checked out when I go home, or possibly when I schedule that physical exam during Day 18 (or whatever) of this challenge.

Well. Now that that's over [cough], I must get back to memorizing Rudyard Kipling's poem "If."

Come back around for Day 12. 

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 10: memorize "If"

There's a splendid poem, which I pride myself on having been familiar with before I took up this challenge. 

“If”
By: Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

My task for Day 10 was to memorize this 'ere poem. Commit it to memory in its entirety. Which was just as well, as I had a touch of food poisoning today — either raw oysters or expired mayonnaise, I'll warrant — and there was precious little else to do. So I got straight to the memorizin', thank you very much. The website says it's okay if it takes you one or two days to complete this challenge, so I'll let you know how it went tomorrow.

All aboard for Day 11!

mid-September 2013 bulletins

Hey there, blogsphere. In the next few days I'm going to publish a confessional about the prejudices and preconceived notions I harbor about the People's Republic of China. Might be best to do that before I go there next week, you know?

Before that, though, here's the news:

• I am fully recovered from that week-long bout of tonsillitis that plagued me the first week of the new semester. 
• The weather appears to be turning. The dreadful summer heat has subsided, though the humidity is still sky-high. And speaking of the sky, the heavens have opened: the middle peninsula has been deluged with 120 millimeters (not quite 5 inches) of rain every day for the past three days. I'm surprised the subways haven't flooded yet. The downpour was so heavy yesterday that the lower half of my slacks were soaked through as I made my way from Gangbyeon Station to my final appointment with the ENT specialist. The rain bucketed down so hard that it was finding cracks and chinks in my umbrella, and icy drops were falling on my head at intervals. Yikes. Coupled with the unpleasant humidity (and the insane amount of sweating I do whenever it occurs), the situation has been untenable. I can't wait for fall to properly set in.
• In other news, the first two weeks of Sejong University's fall semester are over. Chuseok, the Korean harvest festival (roughly analogous to America's Thanksgiving Day) is coming up next week. It's three days, Wednesday to Friday, and that's when Miss H and I are actually going to China. I think this semester is starting out pretty well, but I feel tired already—the prospect of another four months of teaching is daunting. I think I'm finally starting to be well and truly burned out on education. I wanna go home and fly again. I may have some further news about that in the coming weeks, actually; Miss H is pretty burnt out too, what with her kids being so spoiled and unmanageable and all, so we may decide to go home early. We're going to talk it over.
• After many fits and starts, Miss H and I are going to start implementing some healthy habits around here: resuming our evening tea-and-yoga routine, for starters. It really helps us sleep. We've been looking around and garnering information about gyms, and tomorrow we'll probably stop by a few and ask about their rates and facilities. We've made dozens of attempts to get into shape on our own, but we've decided that forking over a membership fee and having personal trainers bark at us would overcome our lack of willpower and provide us with motivation. We have to start getting in shape for the wedding, you know!
• I also think I'm going to start keeping a nightly journal again. I keep buying blank journal books, excitingly leather-bound and full of blank college-ruled pages ripe for filling with life's intimate details, but I never write in 'em. It's difficult to get into the habit, for one thing. Our evenings can be so unpredictable. Hectic, too: I cook and wash dishes and plan lessons and so forth. Moreover, since I'm keeping a blog, there hardly seemed to be any point in keeping a journal...but I've realized that this blog is more like a twice-a-month thing (when I don't have travels to report on), while the journal would be every night. It'll be good to marshal my thoughts, clear my head, and sleep soundly knowing that the events of the day have been recorded and analyzed (in a non-electronic medium). Might help with penning my memoirs down the line, too. Journal-keeping rather sounds like a constructive habit to cultivate.
• Apart from that, there's not much news. After China, I don't have definite travel plans. I'm still considering doing a working holiday in Australia in January and February of 2014, but that might have to change if Miss H and I are going home early.
• Speaking of 2014, the World Cup qualifiers have begun. I was in a bottled-beer bar with a couple of coworkers last Tuesday and the Korea-Croatia game was on. I didn't stick around to see the whole thing, but apparently Korea lost 2-0. The national team has a rookie coach this year and this loss has made it warm for him. Korea will play Mali and Brazil in the coming weeks and they'd better put on a good show, or they might not qualify for the Cup. Golly, I'd hate to see what'll happen to that coach if that happens.

Alright, it's time for me to run. Miss H and I are meeting our friends Josh and JB (my coworker and his North Korean wife) for a double-date today: coffee, the Paul Gauguin exhibit at the Seoul Museum of Art, and samgyeopsal for dinner.

What's samgyeopsal, you ask?

Barbecued pork belly—strips of thick, streaky bacon fried Korean-style and eaten with lettuce leaves and ssamjang (meat sauce). Very fatty, very delicious and very popular among the locals.

Toodle-oo!

save me from the tonsillitis!

I suppose I should really thank Miss H's students, because when they're not driving her up the wall with their spoiled behavior (we live right next to Walkerhill, a rich, hoity-toity and upscale neighborhood of eastern Seoul, so all her seven-year-olds are complete brats), they're infecting her with a litany of diseases. One of these was tonsillitis. Miss H herself got over it easily enough, with antibiotics prescribed by a local ENT specialist, but then she passed it on to me. I started coming down with the symptoms on Sunday, September 1...the day before the fall semester began at Sejong University.

Well, crap.

I figured I'd ride it out. It was just a fever and a sore throat, nothing to worry about. I stuck it out for nearly a week, refusing treatment even when I had to cancel classes because I couldn't speak. Despite feeling like death warmed over, I kept at it, believing a turnaround was right around the corner.

Matters came to a head on the night of Thursday, September 5. I took my temperature and discovered that I had a whopping 103.3° F (39.6° C) fever. That tore it. Miss H and I climbed into a cab and rode to the emergency room at Asan Medical Center across the river in Songpa-gu. A quick examination by the attending physician revealed that I had a heck of a case of bacterial tonsillitis, which had turned my tonsils all splotchy-white and driven my temperature through the roof. Three IV drips put me to rights: a fever reducer, saline solution to rehydrate me while I sweated it out, and a hefty dose of penicillin. I went to the pharmacy the next day to pick up some antibiotics, and then visited the ENT specialist (the same one that Miss H had seen). This articulate woman sprayed and swabbed some vile-tasting concoctions on the back of my throat, prescribed me some more drugs, and called it even.

I'm finally feeling back to normal now. I have my last appointment with the ENT specialist tomorrow (Friday), and I expect her to give me a clean bill of health. That's good, because in the middle of next week I'm jetting off for China and would hate for an infection to muck up the trip.

Anyway, this little episode impressed upon me two salient facts: (a) that Miss H needs to find a new job away from those bratty petri dishes, and (b) the Korean healthcare system is well-oiled, efficient and cheap. The visit to the ER cost me around $84, and the drugs and ENT visits were almost negligible. We sat around in the ER waiting room for quite a while, but that had more to do with my slow IV drip than any sort of patient backlog.

I sure wish the insurance situation in the U.S. was such that our hospitals could offer this kind of cheap care without a boatload of illegal immigrants creating a logjam and the creeping cancer of Obamacare driving the costs up, but hey...at the end of the day, I'm just glad I have my health.