big trouble in little Thailand

Paul Theroux was right. We have a tendency to judge every place we go by whether we could stand living there or not. There are few places on my list, believe it or not. One of them, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is Sapporo, Japan. Fascinating spot. Beautiful in summer (I hear) and absolutely enchanting in winter. I finally found a place that gets the epic, biblical, phantasmagorical amounts of snow that everybody who lives in a wintry place always brags about to newcomers and out-of-towners. Something to do with the moist winds from Siberia meeting the frigid Sea of Okhotsk...or the frigid winds from Siberia meeting the moist Sea of Okhotsk, or something. I dunno. But it's a pretty town in a pretty valley with pretty mountains and pretty dang fun to spend a few days in, the more I think back on it. I sure wish I could live there for a year (at least) and get to the bottom of its charms. 

...not to mention all the world-class sushi, beer, and venison I'd consume, or the skiing I'd do, or the ban'ei events I'd watch, or all the Russia I could see from my house. 

Anyway, I find that Hokkaido and its legendary snows are crossing my mind more and more as the Korean weather heats up. It's getting warm and muggy out there. Every day I step outside my door, give my best Charlton Heston squint, and then walk to the subway through a hot, bright, hazy city that would do the film Soylent Green proud.

I can only imagine how it's going to be in Southeast Asia as I trip through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong during the peak of summer. 

Well...maybe not Thailand. 

Have you been keeping track of what's going on down there? 

Source: The Times. 

That's right, it's a military coup. Another one. Thailand seems to have a yen for coups. The last one was in 2006, I believe. I'll spare you all the details, because that shit is readily available online, including the link under that picture of all them stern-lookin' Thai military dudes up there. You can get the rundown from somebody else. All I want you to do is sit right there in that chair and listen to my First World Problems. 

Did they have to have a bloody coup in Thailand just two months before I'm slated to travel by train through it?  

I think it's about time I shared with you the itinerary for this big Southeast Asia train trip I've been yapping about for weeks. It'll make this bitchfest easier. Plus it'll make my mum quit worrying about exactly when and where I'll be. So here you go:

 Saturday, 7/12: Gimpo to Shanghai by plane (there to spend the night partying)

 Sunday, 7/13: Shanghai - Kunming - Nanning - Hanoi by plane

 Monday, 7/14: explore Hanoi, catch the 11:00 p.m. night train to Ho Chi Minh City

 Tuesday, 7/15: slow train through Vietnam (pass Huế at 10:30 a.m.)

 Wednesday, 7/16: arrive in Ho Chi Minh City at 4:30 p.m. 

 Thursday, 7/17: HCMC

 Friday, 7/18: HCMC

 Saturday, 7/19: HCMC to Phnom Penh by bus

 Sunday, 7/20: Phnom Penh

 Monday, 7/21: Phnom Penh to Siem Reap by speedboat

 Tuesday, 7/22: Angkor Wat

 Wednesday, 7/23: Siem Reap to Paoy Paet by bus (Cambodian-Thai border); Aranyaprathet to Bangkok by train

 Thursday, 7/24: Bangkok 

 Friday, 7/25: Bangkok

 Saturday, 7/26: Bangkok

 Sunday, 7/27: Bangkok to Butterworth by night train

 Monday, 7/28: arrive in Butterworth; ferry to Penang; explore George Town

 Tuesday, 7/29: George Town

 Wednesday, 7/30: Butterworth to Singapore (train departs 8:00 a.m., arrives same day)

 Thursday, 7/31: Singapore

 Friday, 8/1: Singapore 

 Saturday, 8/2: fly to Hong Kong at 1:30 a.m. 

 Saturday, 8/2 - Thursday, 8/7: Hong Kong with Miss H

I planned this minutely. The timing has to be just right. It's a journey of nearly 9,000 kilometers, and I have social engagements in Ho Chi Minh City and Hong Kong which I need to arrive on time for. I haven't reserved my train tickets yet, but a few days ago—before the news of the coup broke, back when this was all just a bunch of Thais in red shirts rioting—I finished booking my hotels. All of them. Even the one in Bangkok. Argh.

I don't know what to do now. Should I cancel my hotel reservation in Bangkok and reserve a flight ticket from Cambodia to Malaysia? Fly from Phnom Penh to Kuala Lumpur, take the train north to Butterworth and do my Penang thang, and then go back down to Singapore by train and meet Miss H in Hong Kong for her week-long summer vacation? Or do I stick with the original plan and hope things cool down in Thailand between now and late July? As I've previously pointed out, coups are nothing new down there. Last week the BBC pointed out that Thailand has seen 12 coups since 1932. I'd venture to suggest that, compared to places like Libya or Somalia, Thailand is remarkably stable despite such frequent upheavals. On the other hand, dire warnings from the U.S. State Department (and, I anticipate, my own parents) will urge me to reconsider my travel plans and skirt the country altogether. 

Grmf. I don't know what to do, and I don't like it. Guess I'll just have to use the Polaroid approach: keep an eye on the situation and see what develops. 

Postie out. 

Korean appendectomy, part III: the end

The previous post's title was a little misleading. The "beginning" and "middle" parts of this tale covered only the first day—Sunday, May 18—and the hospital visits and surgical operations that were performed on that day. In this post I shall tell you about the three days that followed. "End" is something of a misnomer here, too: I'm still recovering. My abdomen aches a tad yet and I still have metal staples in my belly button. (Those get removed on Monday.) 

So: let's begin. Monday, May 19. The morning following my appendectomy.

A recovery ward room in a Korean hospital, similar to the one I stayed in (only way too big). Photo courtesy of Ask a Korean!, who has a rather interesting post on Korean healthcare.

I awoke at dawn. To my relief, I didn't have constant pain in my stomach anymore. The aches, however, were infernal. Sitting up took a good 30 seconds. I wasn't exaggerating in the last post when I said I felt like I'd done a million ab crunches, run a marathon and sung an opera without a drop of water in between. I didn't notice my hunger too much; I guess I'd reached that stage of starvation where the bellyache settles down to a dull, ignoble drone. I was, however, burning with thirst. Jeremy (my Korean roommate, remember?) ominously hinted that I might not even get a sip of water until the following day. Fortunately that proved untrue. At high noon, after a long dull morning of Jeremy watching bad daytime TV and me trying to plan the Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore leg of my Southeast Asia trip, lunch arrived: a bottle of ice-cold water. 

Splendid. Hospital dining at its finest. To be fair, it was a haute bottle of water: crystal-clear beads of sacred moisture gleaned from volcanic rock springs on the distant tropical island of Jeju, bottled by the purest maidens and spirited away to Seoul on the gossamer wings of azure dragons or some shit. 

Jeremy, on the other hand, was chowing down on a full tray. So I unfolded myself from my bed like a rusty pocketknife and hobbled to the door to call the nurse. 

"Shiksa?" I asked. "Lunch...?"

She explained to me on no uncertain terms that "Lunch water. Dinner food." 

Wow, she cleared that up for me in a hurry. Who needs verbs?  

At 5:00 a heaven-sent tray clunked down upon my rickety folding table: juk, sludgy plain rice porridge, accompanied by a bowl of spicy white radish soup and smaller bowls of soy sauce and crunchy vegetables in brine. I was to eat this exact same meal—the only variation of which was the type of soup—a further four times during my stay at Songpa Chung. It was bland, but substantiating, and it tasted like a king's feast after my 33-hour fast. 

Miss H finished work at 6:00 daily, but she'd obtained special permission to leave after her last class finished at 5:20. She arrived just after 6 p.m. and bore with her a load of mercy: orange juice, a huge jug of water, yogurt, and my laptop computer. I was past ready to see her. It had been a long, hot, sticky, muggy, sweaty day, and I must've looked and smelled as crusty as I felt. But she was her typical angelic self and made no mention of this fact. She and I spent several happy hours together, playing Monopoly on her iPad and casting the occasional glance at the utterly incomprehensible Vin Diesel film Babylon AD on the idiot box. 

I had contacted the assistant director of the General English Program at Sejong University by this time to inform them of my circumstances, and he had kindly canceled both my Monday classes for me. Tuesday, May 20, was a school holiday, and I never had any classes on Wednesdays. But Thursday I would have a full load, and my usual two on Friday. I still felt beat to hell. Time would tell if I would be okay to return to work. 

I wrote down some questions in Korean for the nurses and Miss H delivered them. It seemed that I would be released when my fever disappeared: a brace of nurses appeared at our ward room door every hour to check my, Jeremy's and Sang-ook's temperature and blood pressure. That could be Tuesday or Wednesday. I was informed that the surgeon himself would speak to me on Tuesday, the next day, and let me know either way. 

It was right about the time that Miss H had to leave (at 9:30 p.m.) that Jeremy and I got a new roommate, whom we would later find out was named Sang-ook. He was accompanied by a skinny, shriveled old bat with a hectoring voice and a face like thunder, whom I took to be his mother. She hardly spent any time by his bedside except to kvetch at him. "Poor sap," I noted in my journal. 

Just as Miss H was about to head out that Jeremy came back. He and his girlfriend had stepped out for a while. That is correct: Jeremy, in his hospital-issue PJs and with his clattering IV stand, had taken to the public streets. This is something done in Korea. No one looks askance at it. Countless times I have seen hospital patients, still in their whites, wandering zombie-like along sidewalks and storefronts. The first time was back in 2008, not long after I'd arrived on Geoje Island. Some bony middle-aged dude with a sour look was standing in his pajamas on a busy street corner, in the ridiculous plastic bath sandals they use here, IV stand by his side, smoking a listless cigarette. 

Anyway, Jeremy and his lady had been to a nearby juk restaurant. My faithful roommate promptly informed me that the hospital's official breakfast had been canceled on Tuesday morning for reasons unknown. He brought me and himself a huge heaping takeout portion of beef-and-vegetable rice porridge, plus sides. I nearly wept. What a guy. I had had Miss H bring him and his girlfriend a bottle of soju and a chocolate bar (respectively) to repay them for their kindness on Monday, when Jeremy had unhesitatingly given me some of his snacks and orange juice. Now they'd doubled down on me, the ungrateful bastards. I immediately fell to scheming about how to get even with them, generosity-wise. 

After a long, humid, stagnant Tuesday morning spent trying to call my mother on a phone card that Miss H had generously brought me, and finally getting through, I was ready to go home. I was fed up with lying still, trying to get comfortable on a rock-hard hospital bed and watching bad daytime TV with Jeremy and Sang-ook, who had the most arcane taste in comedy/variety shows. Not only was changing the bandages a painful thing, but the tube—

Oh, right. Didn't I tell you that I had a tube in my stomach? 

I did. I had three keyhole incisions, one on the bottom rim of my navel and two below it, right about on my waistline. The tube led into one of these waistline incisions. More embarrassingly yet, it emptied into a little plastic squeeze-bottle that was clipped to the stupid belly-band I and all the other recovering appendectomy patients had to wear. Looked exactly like the Velcro straps you'd wear to keep yourself from getting a hernia while lifting heavy objects. Anyway, this little squeeze bottle, the nurse explained to me, was to collect...er...seepage. Yes, seepage. Sure enough, there was a minute amount of blood and intestinal juices in it, which sloshed hideously whenever I moved. I tried to avoid looking at it. It reminded me so much of Bailey's and grenadine that I thought I might be put off bartending forever if I stared at the bottle for too long. 

Anyway, about 1 or 2 in the afternoon I went downstairs to have my bandages changed. The tube was taken out. It felt like they were pulling a tapeworm out of me. It was slitheringly uncomfortable and painful in areas that I'm too polite to mention. "Felt like my wang was being turned inside-out," I noted impolitely in my journal. 

The surgeon was present, however, and he answered my most immediate questions: I would be released upon the morrow, Wednesday. I could go back to work on Thursday if I felt up to it, and I had a follow-up appointment on Friday—at which time, I hoped, the metal staples that had been used to seal up my incisions in place of stitches would be removed. 

On Wednesday I was up early, ready to be liberated. The nurses handed me a note which they'd obviously gone to great lengths to translate properly, and which told me to avoid foods with flour, fizzy drinks, and alcohol for one week. Working, showering and "normal activities" were okay. 

Jeremy was out all morning. At about 10:00 a.m. Sang-ook looked over at me and said "When you go home?" 

I said, "I wish I knew," turned around, marched out of the ward room and down to the nurse's station. I asked them when I could be let go. They asked me when I wanted to be let go. I said, "Right now." They told me to go downstairs and settle up. I did. Then I hurried back upstairs, changed out of my PJs, put on my normal clothes, shook Sang-ook's hand, wrote Jeremy a note and wished him well, and fled the building. I took a jouncing, sickening cab ride back to the apartment, where I changed back into my (proper) PJs and collapsed. 

I didn't feel up to working on Thursday, so I sent out a mass e-mail asking my coworkers to cover for me. The response was overwhelming and heartwarming. I was able to take Thursday to recover, and went back to work on Friday. 

It's Sunday now, and I feel right as rain. I still have staples in my stomach. My Friday appointment was intended merely to change my bandages again. I get the staples out tomorrow, and not soon enough. The dietary restrictions shall lift on Wednesday, and I shall celebrate by having one of those hazelnut-vanilla ales that the boys and I brewed a few weeks back, which matured on Monday but which I was in no shape to drink. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my Korean appendectomy. 

Whoof. 

Korean appendectomy, part II: the middle

Midsection, more like.

Were you wondering why my mind jumped to appendicitis so quickly on the morning of Sunday, May 18? Well, to be honest, I've always had a secret fear of the disease. It wasn't just that episode of Madeline that I mentioned, though it played a part. Ever since I was a boy, I've worried that I was going to get appendicitis. More precisely, I worried that I'd get it, wouldn't catch it in time, and die from it. As a lad, whenever I'd get a mysterious pain in my side, I'd panic and think that it was my appendix swelling up with toxic waste. Side stitches and gas attacks gave me undue pause. It was my worst and only venture into the world of hypochondria, and while I won't go as far as to say that it spoilt my childhood, it did put occasionally put a damper on things like playing sports, swimming, and eating baked beans.

Before we get back to the action, I think it's time I described the scene: Songpa Chung Hospital. 

What comes to mind when I say the word "hospital" at you? A big building with patients, right? 

Well, not Songpa Chung. Picture a surgical hospital specializing in appendicitis and hernias crammed into a skinny glass-fronted seven-story building with a single elevator and only four or five rooms per floor. The first-floor lobby doesn't have enough room to swing a cat in. The second floor does, but that's because the inner walls have been knocked down to create a reception/waiting room. The third floor has just enough space for an operating room and a...I don't know, bandage-changing room? The fourth floor has two ward rooms with three beds each, one male and one female, plus a recovery room with four gurneys, a nurse's station, and a unisex lavatory. Space is so limited that the microwave, water cooler, trash cans, and spare wheelchairs and IV stands are stashed in the corridor outside the elevator. As for the fifth, sixth and seventh floors...I couldn't tell you. Never got up that high. But I can imagine they weren't much different from their predecessors.

Now that I've set the scene, let's get on with the story.

I woke up in the most intense pain that I've ever known in my relatively short life. The first things I noticed, apart from the screaming, clawing agony in my midsection, was that I was on a gurney in the recovery room, the nurses were clustered all around me, Miss H was seated by my head trying to catch hold of my flapping right hand, and the clock on the wall read 10:40 p.m. I remember wondering why that was. I'd gone in for surgery at 9:00 and the procedure was only rumored to take 40 minutes. The extra hour left me with a sinister impression. I was too distracted by pain to take much notice of X-Files-esque time dilation, though. I was busy pounding the nearest wall with my left fist, thrashing about like a gaffed fish and screeching at my fiancée to go find whatever goddamn nurse was in charge of this cockamamie place and get her to cook me up the most powerful painkilling speedball on the pockmarked face of the earth, for the love o' Gawd. Finally, after barely three minutes of my bed-shaking, wall-rattling tirade, the near-panicked nurses stuck me with something. The anguish in my belly quieted down somewhat and I was able to converse like a normal human being. With saintly patience, Miss H and the nurses escorted me a few steps down the hall to the ward, where my roommate Jeremy—

Aw crap. I haven't told you about Jeremy yet, have I? I'll get to him in a minute. 

Anyway, the nurses helped me into the rock-hard hospital bed. I stretched out, bent and twisted and feeling like a scarecrow after a pack of flying monkeys had finished with him. Miss H never left my side. At no point during this debacle was the surgeon present or even visible. I imagined that he was likely at the nearest bar, smoking a fat stogie and reading the sports news or maybe getting some action from his pie-eyed assistant.

The most painful part of the whole affair was that Miss H wasn't dressed like this when I woke up.

After a time I was able to lie still and the pain, having lived a long, full life with a steady career and a loving family, decided to retire. I could still feel him down there practicing his golf swing, though. I managed to talk Heather into leaving at about a quarter past eleven. She had work in the morning, I argued. I would have happily had her stay the night, but I didn't like the look of the hard green cot underneath my gurney, nor had she any supplies, cosmetics or conveniences on her person. She didn't want to leave before I fell asleep, but I knew that sleep was a long way off for me. So she left and I was alone in a dark, stuffy ward room with no one but Jeremy for solace. 

Oh, that's right: Jeremy. I guess this is as good a time as any to talk about him. He was a Korean fellow, too old to be a student and too brassy and buoyant to be a salaryman. Like most young Korean men he was the perfect juxtaposition of physical fitness and frailty. He was tall, lean, muscular, and wore glasses. He had a deep, rich, resonant voice, and in pidgin English we got to know each other during our stint together in the hours leading up to my surgery, which he had just survived and I had yet to. I was encouraged by how hale and hearty he seemed so soon after the procedure: he didn't seem to be groggy or aching. 

Groggy and aching, however, was all I could manage during that long, dark Sunday night. I couldn't seem to find a position that was comfortable. My guts hurt in at least four distinct places. Only then did I notice that my throat was dry and I was ravenously hungry. I felt as though I'd done a million ab crunches, run a marathon and sung an opera without a drop of water in between. After an hour (two? three?) I managed to force myself to lie still. Whatever remained of the anesthetic in my system then took hold of me, and I slept until dawn. 

Learn about the long, dull, and somewhat sticky road to recovery in part III. 

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. 

writing updates, 5/14/2014 + sci-fi art, entry #4

This post is all about my scribbles, yes, but since I write science fiction, it's a good place to give you some more sci-fi art. So here you go:

Now, on to the meat of the matter.

June 29 is the day that's circled on my calendar. On that day, it will have been exactly five months since I submitted a query to Ace & Roc Science Fiction & Fantasy, imprints of the Penguin Group. I'll know for sure by then if Penguin is interested in my novel or if they aren't. If the latter is the case—and their continued silence indicates to me that it is—then I have a backup plan. 

Baen Books, a renowned sci-fi press, doesn't just accept unsolicited queries: they accept unsolicited manuscripts. I checked their submission guide and it seems they prefer works between 100,000-130,000 words. Mine is 114,000. They prefer a simple style and judge works primarily on plot and characterization, and if it's one thing my work is oozing with, it's plot and characterization. My style is simple, with a few sesquipedalian terms scattered in here and there (crucial to the plot, of course). Baen also offers "competitive" payment rates. Vague wording, yes, but then Ace & Roc didn't breathe a word about payment at all. 

The only downside is that the "reporting time" (response time) is 9-12 months. Ouch. 

Well, can't win 'em all. As Baen sheepishly admits, they get a lot of manuscripts. So I'd basically have to wait until next April or possibly next July to find out if Baen wants to publish my baby or not. Miss H and I shall be gone from Korea by then, and hopefully installed in a tasteful, spacious two-bedroom apartment in Henderson, Nevada and engaged upon entry-level jobs with wondrous prospects, blabbity blabbity blah. 

At least I have a timeline. 

No joy yet on the short fiction front. Daily Science Fiction is considering my 1,100-word short story "Boxing Day," which I submitted on May 2. I expect a reply within a fortnight. 

In the meantime, to keep myself busy, I've conducted yet another full-blown proofread-and-line-edit of Novel #1. Gawd, this feels like the zillionth one I've done, and it probably is. When I finish I'll do the same thing to Novel #3 (not for the first or the last time) and then following that I'll finish Novel #4. (Novel #2, as you'll recall, is a work of historical fiction unrelated to my humongous sci-fi opus). I really want to get started on Novel #5 before the year's out. That one's going to be fun. I've been taking long walks and brainstorming it for a long while now and I've had some spectacular ideas, wheezes which will keep the fans happy and my fingers busy. 

As for nonfiction, well...Korail just instigated another scenic train route. You remember how I told you about the O-Train and V-Train? Well, those were so successful that they started up another sightseer, the S-Train, down in the southern part of the peninsula. There's talk of G- and B-Trains to travel up the east and west coasts of Korea as well. But the big one is the DMZ-Train, which...well, I don't know much more about than you do. But I do know that the end of the line is the infamous Dorasan Station, a fully-equipped and squeaky-clean yet abandoned and ghostly whistle stop. It's the last one before the DMZ, and the railway line stretches on emptily into the distance, a high road to nowhere. It was part of the USO tour that Miss H and I did in 2012. It'd be cool to roll up to it in an actual train, though, and see the countryside in between Seoul and the DMZ. Dorasan Station was built during a rare period of amity between the two Koreas and was intended to serve as a gateway for trade and industry (and perhaps passenger service) between Seoul and Pyongyang, but the creeping enmity between the two nations killed the dream and left the station derelict. I imagine I could write a pretty travel article about a ride on the DMZ-Train and submit it anywhere I liked, using some of the vivid imagery and florid prose for which I am renowned. 

Oh, and I imagine the big Z-shaped train trip I'm taking through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore this summer (not to mention the week I'm spending in Hong Kong afterward) would be fine travel-journalism fodder too. 

So. That's where I am. 

Wish me luck. 

Fox Broadcasting can go pound sand

It's Blade Runner-slash-every
buddy-cop drama ever!
What's not to like? 

This is not a political rant. I don't give a split fig about Rupert Murdoch or Bill O'Reilly or what all the puffed-up bubble-headed self-important liberal college professors and community organizers refer to as "Faux News."

No, my beef is with the television executives who sit around in board meetings and decide to cancel my favorite TV shows.

It's been recently announced that the science fiction police procedural Almost Human, which aired last fall, won't be picked up for a second season.

This is the same depressing news that I got in 2012 when I heard that Terra Nova had been canceled, and the same monstrous injustice I and the other Firefly fans who came late to the game execrated when we learned that this fantastic show consisted of just 14 episodes.

Thank goodness Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is on ABC, and is therefore safe from Fox's meddling, or I might have a complete psychotic breakdown.

Seriously, what gives? This is becoming such a trend that "Screwed by the Network" and "The Firefly Effect" have become official tropes. To quote from that life-stealing wiki, "Incidentally, many of these [canceled] shows (including Trope Namer Firefly) were on Fox — basically because Fox was likely to give the sort of show that gets this effect an initial run, but tended to be too Nielsen-sensitive to be patient."

Let me repeat that for you:

Too Nielsen-sensitive to be patient.

That's gotta be it. The ladder-climbing, insecure little weasels (I'd say "network executives," but that would be redundant) over at the Fox Broadcasting Company are so obsessed with making themselves look competent and keeping their stock high — in more ways than one — that they'll cancel a brilliant show if the Nielsen ratings are anything less than stellar.

Now, I know what you might be thinking, particularly if you're like everybody else on the face of the freaking Earth and think Almost Human and Terra Nova were terrible shows. (If you do, then what are you doing here? You should be pounding sand, too.)

You're thinking, "Where's the injustice in that? Almost Human didn't have good ratings, so it was canceled. QED."

Ratings aren't that simple, buster. Evidence suggests that Almost Human's ratings were out of its control for half its run. Firefly's doom was spelled out when Fox aired its episodes out of order and inexplicably stuck it in the "Friday night death slot." Terra Nova had 10.8 million viewers and a 3.6 rating, but the execs were worried about the price tag, and they also (wrongly) believed that a mid-season addition called Touch would be the next big hit.

It's Lost with dinosaurs! What's not to like??

I'm not a critic. I'm not going to launch into a big long spiel about why these shows are lost treasures. I'm not going to tell you how Terra Nova was "unlike anything else on TV," and that it "found its creative legs late in the season" (the article I linked to previously does that quite eloquently). I won't mention how Almost Human was just what the doctor ordered, a by-the-book police procedural with a lighthearted, humorous undercurrent, with the added zest of its dystopian-but-somehow-still-gorgeous futuristic backdrop. I have no need to declare Joss Whedon's script-writing talents godlike, and that the cinematography, dialogue, acting and story of Firefly are second to none. That's been said before by irate fans and gushing magazine columnists the world over. 

It's cowboys/Civil War veterans IN SPACE! What's not to like???

Almost Human and Terra Nova have their shortcomings, I know. The special effects and the acting aren't perfect. Pacing, characterization and story are sometimes lackluster. Everyone I know at my workplace and on Facebook loves to point out how shoddy, unengaging, static, formulaic, boring, unbelievable or artificial they are, with flat characters, unsatisfying stories and flawed concepts. But as the Guardian's pithy Glaswegian Graeme Virtue points out, the first seasons of these shows are like "the early, rough-and-ready EPs of your favourite band." Yeah, sure, the lyrics are canned and superficial, the garage-band sound is fuzzy and inexpertly mixed, the guitarist's fingers are still bleeding and the drummer hasn't found his rhythm yet, but isn't that the fun of it? Getting in on the ground floor? Liking a band because of that raw, pristine concept, the fundamental sound down deep beneath those shaky riffs and uneasy vocals? Following them while they mature into the next KISS or Zeppelin or Floyd? Watching them find their cadence, their vibe, their niche, and fill it out like a piece of loose clothing they're growing into?

That's been one of the joys of watching Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Yeah, sure: it was soulless early on. A lot of people tried watching it and quit in disgust. But if they'd had the patience (unlike your average Fox network executive) to stick with it, they'd have discovered a true wonder: a flower blooming, a vine twirling its way around a beanpole, a seaweed-strewn ship emerging from its watery grave where once only the rotting, sun-bleached mastheads were visible. Watching M.A.O.S. get into its stride, establish its characters and its world and then cut loose like a slipshod stallion kicking his way out of a barn has been...well, a real kick. It's probably true that you have to be a fan of the Marvel Universe (or at least Agent Phillip Coulson, or at the very least Clark Gregg) to like the show. And you have to sit through those awkward first few episodes wherein the groundwork is laid. But then the show gets its hooks into you. Firefly and Almost Human did it during their pilot episodes, and Terra Nova managed it in the season finale.

It's just a travesty that these three shows will never have the chance to revel in the worlds they worked so hard and long to build, thanks to the pusillanimous, apple-polishing, money-grubbing swine at Fox.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is called injustice. And it's also the reason that television sucks so hard in this day and age.

Rant over.

the death of Neo-Confucianism in Korea...?

All eyes are once again on Asia this week, President Obama having wrapped up his four-nation Asia tour (leaving hearty Filipino protests in his wake) and the Sewol disaster fresh in everyone's minds. However, yet another disaster—or near disaster—in South Korea has stolen the public eye. 

You might have heard about the subway train accident we had this Friday. QiRanger does a very thorough video update about it here, where you can get all the facts.

I'm not here to debate particulars, cast blame or express relief that everyone aboard those two trains survived. I'm not here to tell you that I travel on Line 2 all the time and could have easily been involved in the accident. (I have, actually, been aboard a Line 5 train that braked so hard and so unexpectedly that all six dozen people in the car with me went sprawling like dominoes, and I wound up flat on my back with a rucksack full of booze under me and my livid fiancée on my stomach.) 

I just want to say two things. 

First, subway accidents in Korea never happen. They are the exception, not the rule. Korean railways are tightly and safely run. The Seoul metro is one of the cleanest, safest, most efficient and easiest-to-use metropolitan light rail systems in the world, despite being one of the busiest. Its safety record was, to my knowledge, flawless up to this point. There was a nasty incident in December 2013 when an inexperienced train operator filling in during a strike ordered the subway doors closed too early, and an 84-year-old woman was dragged a short distance and killed. Oh, and the Daegu subway fire ten years before that, I suppose. But those were freak occurrences brought on by circumstance: a vengeful cab driver and an unschooled scab, as it were. This recent subway accident took place during regular hours, and wasn't caused by a mass murderer or a strike. It just happened. I would have said it was impossible.

Second...you may be witnessing the death of Neo-Confucianism in Korea. 

An Hyang (1243-1306), widely
considered to be the founder of
Neo-Confucianism in Korea.

As I discussed in my previous post about the Sewol sinking (which I linked to above), Korea's guiding star has been the Neo-Confucian model ever since the early days of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). Some of Confucianism's central tenets are filial piety, respect and reverence, loyalty, and shame. It is unthinkable to disobey or show disrespect to one's elders. There is a very strict social hierarchy wherein each individual is classified according to age, experience, seniority, and other factors. Someone who's above you on that scale deserves the highest respect; anyone below you is yours to command. 

And in fact, this system, which served Korea well throughout its long and often brutal history, was just what caused the deaths of so many children during the Sewol debacle. The children and other passengers were told to stay put in the cabins and corridors, and bowing to the captain's lofty position and experience, they obeyed. Unfortunately, the captain proved to be an incompetent and untrustworthy coward, and many children met their fates as a result. This event, as I noted in my blog post about the sinking, has shaken Korea to its roots, particularly the younger generations. Many in Korea seem to have begun to doubt the worth and universal applicability of Neo-Confucian values. 

Nowhere is this growing doubt more apparent than in the subway train passengers' reaction to the drivers' instructions in the moments following the collision at Sangwangsimni Station. They were told to stay put, and hardly any of them listened this time. Quite a number of passengers pried open the train doors and leaped down onto the tracks and into the tunnel.

Now there's something I never would have believed possible. Korean folks disobeying instructions from a competent authority? Prying open doors and leaping onto train tracks? Anarchy!  

Does it mean that the Neo-Confucian underpinnings of this country's culture and society are beginning to erode? Only time will tell, but I think the signs are there. Goodness knows what will happen if I'm right. A complete paradigm shift might be in the offing. You may rest assured that I'll keep an eye on things over here, and let you know if I see anything noteworthy. 

But now you must excuse me. I have a four-day weekend to get back to. Children's Day is Monday and Buddha's Birthday is Tuesday. Two unrelated lunar holidays in a row. That never happens here, either. The unexpected double-whammy has convinced all the foreigners on the peninsula to throw a grand Cinco de Mayo bash. Colored lanterns are strung up all across the city, Seoul's high society are turning out in droves in their best tailored suits and tulle skirts, and the Americans and Canadians are getting blitzed in the bars and staggering around Itaewon wearing sombreros in broad daylight. Me, I'm taking introspective walks by the Yangjae Stream and meeting friends from out-of-town for a bite of Thai-Japanese fusion and a sip of beer. Oh, the expat life. 

Postie out...

down by the Yangjae Stream

There's a lovely little...ah, screw it. Just look at the dang pictures.

I see these occasionally in the broader areas of Daemosan Station or out here in the secluded shade of the Yangjae Stream: group exercise classes. Always elderly or middle-aged women and always with sugary American pop music playing in the background. 

Not only does Korea go to the trouble of landscaping all these marvelous stream- and riverbanks, but they stick up exercise equipment as well...completely for free! Even halfway up the sides of mountains!