Back in college they taught me that the best way to write hard news articles was to use the "inverted pyramid style." Put the most important information first, and then the next most important, and so on, all the way down to the piddling stuff at the end.
For the sake of your attention span and my carpal tunnel, I'll use that structure for this big-news-updatey post.
Here's the biggie: Miss H has a job. Her recruiter contacted her last Thursday, and arranged an interview last Friday. It was a whirlwind. By Monday she had the job, and her first day was yesterday. It's a kindergarten-age academy, basically glorified babysitting. The schedule is long, but the pay is incredible: 2.3 million baseline salary, plus a 400,000 housing allowance stipulated in the contract. That puts her base pay at 2.7 million. Think of the savings!
She's quite nervous, but like me, it's good for her to be free of that suffocating desert purgatory. She's glad to be out on her own, with gainful employment and an apartment that she can call home. Our days up to now have been filled with the purchasing of proper foodstuffs (apparently I was living a more bacheloresque lifestyle than I'd admitted to myself) and various furnishings and fitments for the apartment. That will change now that we're on different schedules. (She's 9-6 and I'm 2-10.) But we'll be staying close on the weekends. We've already made several exciting trips into Seoul. A while back we went to Yeongdeung-po (and the Costco located there) to bulk up on cheese, oatmeal, sour cream, tortillas, and other hard-to-find necessities. The Saturday after that we went to Yongsan and explored the electronics shopping mall, supposedly the largest in Asia. Not content with that, we went to Jamsil that Sunday (remember Jamsil?) and I returned, after an absence of three years, to the largest underground mall in Asia, COEX.
The two of us are just like peas and carrots again, as the man said. The pain and torment of our long separation have melted away like sugar cubes in an old-fashioned. We've resumed our lives together with hardly a ripple. We've attended several functions and get-togethers, and it's been a sight better going as a twosome than alone. We went to see some stand-up comedy at the Park (that pub I keep mentioning, which someday I shall take some pictures of and do a proper travel article on) two weekends ago, and had some godawful tiny hamburgers which cost 8,500 won apiece. The weekend after we attended a delightful rooftop Cinco de Mayo party hosted by Smithy. I was riding quite high that night, feeling more laid-back and relaxed than I had in months. I had a tin cup that I'd bought for less than a dollar at Daiso, a small general store a block from the apartment complex. I filled it with gin and tonic and cut loose. There were lots of familiar faces—all the foreigners from two different academies, plus some newcomers and even a few of our Korean coworkers. It was marvelous. We started with homemade Mexican food in Smithy's apartment, a sumptuous feast; and then moved to the breezy rooftop where we watched the sun set over the city.
...and on Monday it was back to work for tests, comments, assessments, and a lot of end-of-semester randomness. It's run me ragged. The new semester begins next Friday and I can't friggin' wait. There'll be a lot more vacation time, and the naeshin and holding periods are coming up mighty quick.
Okay, update completed. I would like to inform you that I'm starting a new writing project (labeled Project 25 for no apparent reason). I'm not writing a new piece of work; I'm merely collating all the hundreds upon hundreds of notes, both digital and physical, that I have lying around and compiling them in a blank notebook. Hopefully that notebook will become my master blueprint to completing this here novel series, and not just an untidy jumble of scribble. Time will tell.
Postie out.
P.S. Miss H and I made nachos for dinner a few weeks ago. Don't they look scrumptious? Thank gosh for Costco!
I'd like to tell you that this post will update you fully on what I've been doing during my recent lengthy absence, but alas, it won't. It concerns what Miss H and I did today (Sunday).
It all began, obviously, when I woke up. I may or may not have been hung over from the beer and whiskey I may or may not have drunk at the dinner-party-slash-night-on-the-town I may or may not have attended with the rest of the gang. That's immaterial. Miss H and I had a lovely lie-in, punctuated by a bowl of honey-nut frosted flakes (my new favorite Korean cereal—it's the shizz). Then we looked at the clock and noticed it was 4 p.m. Concluding that we'd had enough of our lazy morning, we cleaned up, got dressed and caught the big red Samhwa Express (bus number 1300) into central Incheon.
We were aiming for the Shinsegae Department Store. Miss H had some clothes shopping to do, and we'd heard from the girls at work that there were some likely stores there. We shopped around H&M, took a longing peek inside Tiffany & Co., searched for a liquor store that apparently didn't exist, and then left. We bussed ourselves back to Bucheon and headed to NewCore, a large outlet/department store not far from Estima. It is notable for having a large faux rainforest tree planted straight through its atrium, which goes up for five stories and has lots of plastic jungle animals concealed in its branches and packs of screaming Korean kids running around its trunk. We played some games at the arcade, took a look around the electronics and music stores, and split.
Then it was dinnertime. We moseyed across to Han and Yoon's, a tiny, charming barbecue restaurant run by two brothers who speak a smattering of decent English. We ordered the marinated pork, a bargain at ₩8,000. We grilled it up and ate it with lettuce slices, onions, garlic and ssamjang.
To assuage our sweet teeth (tooths?) we adjourned to the Strip, a long alleyway filled with bars and restaurants paralleling Gilju Road. There happens to be a Coldstone Creamery there. Let me tell you: after a huge dinner of Korean barbecue, a Like It-size bowl of Chocolate Devotion goes a long way toward assuaging one's sweet tooth.
We moved two blocks southeast to Jungang Park, and joined a lot of assiduous Koreans in working out on the exercise equipment. We pulled, pushed, strained, yanked, rotated and stretched, going at it like pros. Not even our rotator cuffs were spared. We resolved to visit more often, as a twosome, and continue the regimen. We shoved off for home, pausing to watch three old men play janggi (Korean chess) in the dim light of an incandescent lamp.
On the corner of Gilju and Seokcheon, just across from Estima, we were accosted by a couple of Christians. Neither Miss H nor I are particularly religious people. More to the point, we were tired, footsore and needing badly to collapse in our apartment for the night. This was not the best time for two clean-shaven Korean men in suits (one black, one grey) to come up to us and ask "Do you have two or shree minutes?"
Mr. Grey did nothing but stand in the background, adding a word or a nod to his partner's spiel. Mr. Black took a more proactive role. He whipped out an LG Tabletphone and treated us to a video (captioned in English) about "God the Mother." It explained how human and animal families are but shadows of the Great Family in the skies above Jerusalem, or something. Mr. Black stood there, tablet in hand, while Miss H and I stared in blackballed perplexity, watching the little green man disappear above the crosswalk we'd been about to walk home over. Mr. Black added a few words here and there as the video progressed. The word "Jerusalem" seemed to figure very highly. Apparently his sect—which, he proudly proclaimed, consisted of 2,200 parishioners—believed that God was a woman, and that the most apt model for Her worship was the human family, and that just as we are born on Earth with mortal mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, so the Heavenly Host sits above us in a similar arrangement—
After that it got kind of murky.
Mr. Black started to show us another video, which concerned some rather vague pronoun use in the Torah (the use of "us" instead of "I" or "me," and the literal definition of Elohim meaning "gods" instead of "God," singular). This, I felt, departed from the comfortable realm of annoying-but-familiar evangelism and jumped straight into kookery. So I said "Sorry, we have to go," and scooted in the direction of the little green man, Miss H in hand. I caught a glimpse of disappointment and surprise on Mr. Black's face—the merest hint of a frustrated sigh—and then we vanished into the crowd on the crosswalk. Three minutes later Miss H and I were in our apartment, grousing about how some things never change, even if you travel 6,000 miles and wind up in a country where the police cars go everywhere with their lights flashing, even if they're just heading down to the 7-11 for coffee. Even in Korea, it seems, you can be waylaid on the street by creepy people in their Sunday best, and bombarded with leaflets and pamphlets and (apparently) tablets with strange videos.
And now I'd like you to take a moment to consider this:
These are dinosaurs (gongryong in Korean): Styracosaurus, Tarbosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Velociraptor, Stegosaurus, Spinosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, and Pteranodon. I bought them in a small bucket at Homeplus for something like ₩8,500. (A full-size bucket would have been ₩13,500, which I consider a tad high for dinosaurs.)
Why did I buy a bucket of dinosaurs at Homeplus for something like ₩8,500, you ask?
Well, why not? I like dinosaurs. I bought them with the vague idea of putting them on my desk at work. Then I realized that my desk is already occupied by a firefighting helicopter, a large rubber Parasaurolophus, and a small yellow plastic frog which Miss H and I won at a Californian arcade.
So now they're on the windowsill in my apartment, and I must say, they do spruce the place up a bit. Every living room could use some of the old Mesozoic charm.
That's what I think, anyway.
It's quite extraordinary how quickly the human mind adapts to new situations. Miss H hasn't even been here two weeks and already she's gotten the hang of shopping in Korea (necessities: an old lady's wheeled shopping cart and a strong elbow for shoving one's way through crowds).
Oh yes...Miss H is here. She had a hell of a ride across the ocean. Our little black cat, Charlie, was quite a trooper during the whole affair. Thanks to some directions I had a coworker translate, Miss H found herself a cab from Incheon Airport to my apartment building (for 70,000 won!) and installed herself there forthwith. The two of us have spent our time getting reacquainted, purchasing needful things for this bachelor pad, and exploring greater Seoul.
(The name of my apartment building, by the way, is Estima Officetel. I shall refer to it simply as "Estima" from here on out. I'm getting sick of typing "my apartment building.")
Speaking for myself, it's taken a remarkably short time for me to fit back into the expatriate lifestyle. I go to work in the afternoons and evenings; get home and cook something non-Korean for dinner; read a book, pen a blog post or add something to the novel; go to sleep at some obscenely late hour; wake up late and do errands; nod to my fellow round-eyes in the street, as though we're members of some secret society; and observe the oddities and idiosyncrasies of this foreign nation with bemused eyes.
What oddities and idiosyncrasies, you ask?
I'll tell you.
Korea is the only country I've been in where you have to ask the street vendor not to put sugar on your corn dog...
...where wailing ambulances stop for red lights and city buses routinely blow them...
...where you'll find old folks in the city park at midnight using the free exercise equipment...
...where scooter-riders can't seem to decide whether they're pedestrians or vehicles...
...where things like turkey, limes, and clothes-drying machines are needless fripperies...
...where trucks mounted with loudspeakers drive slowly through urban neighborhoods blasting ads for various products at annoying decibel levels...
...where political candidates hire people off the street to dress up in flamboyant colors and dance the boogie outside subway stations to drum up support for their campaigns...
...and oodles more.
I'd really like to be able to show you this stuff instead of tell you, but I gotta get a better camera. My small, cherry-red Canon PowerShot A480 just doesn't have the aperture or the F-stops to capture the essence of Korea.
Ah, how do I explain it? How do I delineate the charm, the wonderment, the magic of being back? Being abroad once more? Being in a new town, a new(ish) country once again? How can I describe what even pictures cannot capture, like the party we expatriates (and a few lucky Koreans) had on the roof of Estima for Cinco de Mayo?
The infinite majesty of King Sejong's statue at Gwanghwamun (the largest gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace...yes, that's me in the picture)?
The breathtaking beauty of the Cheonggyecheon, the murmuring stream that runs through central Seoul, glowing at night with colored lights?
Dining at Gwangjang Market, a smorgasbord of the most delectable Korean street food?
The endless glittering labyrinth of the COEX Mall in Jamsil, the largest underground mall in Asia?
Watching shifty Korean guys play cards on a makeshift table on the streets of Itaewon (when they saw me, they hid their faces)?
The mind-blowing view from the observation deck of N'Seoul Tower?
The enormity, variety and diversity of the Nakwon Music Mall in Insadong?
I suppose the whole experience is encapsulated in the walks I take every evening. Some nights are so cool and moist, and the stars so obscured, and the distant silhouettes of apartment buildings so dim, and the streetlights so bright, it's almost as though I'm walking along the bottom of the ocean. The depth, the scope, the full import of the fact that I'm here, in East Asia once more, living and working in a foreign country, breathing foreign air and eating foreign food, existing day-to-day in a place that's incontestably alien and yet somehow not so—it all hits me then.
Someday I'll post a picture. A good picture.
No, I'm not dead. Yes, I've let this thing slide for a while. Whenever I vanish for a while, you may assume that I am having oodles of fun in some obscene and irreverent way, and will have a host of scintillating tales to relate to you upon my return. In fact, you may anticipate it without doubt. I shall soon regale you with a master litany of my assorted doings during this lamentable lacuna, but for the nonce, content thyself with the knowledge that I've lapsed into Shakespearean English for no apparent reason. ...no, seriously, content yourself with the knowledge that I am still extant, and plan to update this blog thoroughly before the week is out. Just gimme a while, okay? One more thing: it seems, judging by that Sheep Counter over there on the right, that almost 90,000 people have viewed my blog at some point. The number has been rising at a growing rate over the past few months; I anticipate breaking 100k before autumn comes. Now if I could just find some way to make 90% of those visitors stay longer than 1.2 seconds...
