farewell to Korea...again

It's 7:15 a.m. 

The sky is still pitch-black. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm in Bellona, the nightmarish, eternally overcast city from Samuel R. Delany's novel Dhalgren. 

In one hour, I shall be boarding a China Eastern flight to Shanghai (Pudong). After a five-hour layover, I'll jump another jet plane for San Francisco, where my parents will pick me up and take me back to their new place near Sacramento. After a few days with them, I'll drive down to Las Vegas on the 13th of January to reunite with Miss H after four long months...and have a job interview with a tech start-up the very next day.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, I depart Korea for the second time, this latest stint having lasted three years. Was it time wasted? I think not. I made another bucketload of disreputable friends, proposed to the girl of my dreams (in Tokyo, but hey), wrote two-and-a-half novels, began to take my writing career seriously, kicked off the quest to get a book published, and (completely by accident) fulfilled my childhood dream of becoming a professor in a foreign land. 

Now it's time to move on to a new set of dreams: marriage, family, a writing career, a commercial pilot's license (and a floatplane rating)...and after that? A steady writing job in Las Vegas, seasonal work with Grand Canyon tour companies, a published novel, a dozen syndicated short stories, two or three troublemaking kids, and a big mongrel dog. Wish me luck.

So long and farewell, Korea. You were awfully good to me and mine. I'll see you again someday. Let's do gimbap. 

2014...as it relates to 2015

The Akashic Records. Okay, no, not really. It's actually Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. (Photo courtesy of navitascoach.com)

Once again it's time for my customary look back at the previous year, and a peek ahead at what's to come next year. Without further ado, here's a list of the things I accomplished in 2014: 

•  brewed a bunch of beers with the guys, including a lip-smackin' ginger IPA
•  completed The Art of Manliness's 30 Days to a Better Man challenge (January)
•  submitted a query, along with 10 pages of my manuscript, to Ace & Roc Science Fiction & Fantasy in January; sent in the full manuscript in August; rejected in October
•  took a trip to Sapporo, Hokkaido in February
•  rode the train through all the way through Japan (took a full day and then some) 
•  said farewell to Adam in Busan
•  moved to Gangnam-gu in March
•  got my appendix out in May
•  sent my full manuscript to Baen Books in June; rejected in December
•  traveled through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong from July 12 to August 7
•  took the Reunification Express through Vietnam, from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City
•  ate lo mai gai, bun cha, banh mi, and pigeon-heart pho in Vietnam
•  traveled across Cambodia by bus, and ate khmer amok and beef loklak
•  drank cocktails at the top of Bangkok's tallest building and watched a thunderstorm
•  took the train from Bangkok to Butterworth, and hung around in the Hong Kong Bar on Penang Island, drinking cheap Tiger beers and talking to Chinese, Brits, Russians, and Brazilians 
•  rode a miserable bus through Malaysia
•  spent a hot, humid, overpriced weekend in Singapore drinking eponymous slings and riding open-top buses (and the Flyer)
•  met up with Miss H in Hong Kong and spent four lovely days there, eating Hokkaido ramen and Moroccan lamb and MSG-laden Cantonese and English beer (and going to Disneyland)
•  saw Miss H go back home before me in September
•  moved into a oneroomtel in Gwangjin-gu that same month
•  finished reading Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina in November
•  read The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, The Terror by Dan Simmons, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and Kowloon Tong by Paul Theroux, Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks, Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, The Korean War: A History by Bruce Cumings, Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, Dune by Frank Herbert, The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, The Book of Wonder by Lord Dunsany, and some other stuff
•  found the best burger in Seoul (at Bartwo, a beer-and-burger pub in Oksu-dong)
•  ...and the best Mexican in Seoul (Gusto Taco, near Sangsu Station in the Hongdae area)
•  tasted seolleongtang, makchang (large beef intestines), fermented soybean paste, hoe deopbap (raw fish over rice), chicken bulgogi, shrimp gimbap, and barbecued ox hearts
•  ate at the Casablanca Sandwicherie in Itaewon (lamb chili sandwich and a Berber omelette, yum!)
•  completed the shooter challenge at Gecko's Terrace in Itaewon, and now have my name inscribed on a brass plaque above the bar with the following motto: Bibo Ergo Sum
•  discovered Jack White, The White Stripes, Jeff Buckley, Sky Sailing, Cage the Elephant, Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis
•  took up pipe-smoking and honed my appreciation for good pipe tobacco (with a nip of bourbon or rye)
•  completed another NaNoWriMo and took my first steps toward becoming a paperless writer 
• started two new novels and abandoned a third
•  submitted ten short science fiction stories to Clarkesworld, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Asimov's Science Fiction, Space Squid, Daily Science Fiction, 3LBE, and Fiction Vortex (all rejected)
•  joined Twitter (11 followers so far!) and revamped my blog and Google Plus pages (to build my writer's platform)
•  added some delicious dishes to my cooking and baking repertoire, such as chicken piccata, vegetarian lasagna, penne pasta with vodka sauce, New York cheesecake, and stuffed bell peppers
•  wrote and submitted pieces to ElectRow magazine
•  went to the HBC Festival and drank beer and ate doner kebab
•  rode my bike all the way to Gwacheon 
•  walked from Gwangjin-gu to Itaewon 
•  walked 10 miles in one day 
•  went to the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art
•  hiked Achasan and Yongmasan
•  hiked Namhansanseong, the ninth of Korea's UNESCO World Heritage sites I've seen (out of 11 total)
•  tried the hamburgers at Fire Bell, Libertine, and Left Coast
•  visited the doctor about some heart palpitations, and started taking magnesium supplements for excessive stress
• on a related note, I lost 20 pounds between August and December
• visited a buddy in Gunsan, North Jeolla (and rode first class on the KTX back to Seoul)
•  planned a wedding in April 2015 (my own!)
•  scored an interview with a tech start-up in Las Vegas 
•  made dozens of new friends in seven countries
•  finished my final semester at Sejong University
•  prepared to depart Korea on January 7, 2015

And here's what I hope for 2015: a job in January, a wedding with the love of my life in April, a wedding in England (congratulations, Jeff & Jenn!) in July, Wasteland Weekend in September, a literary agent by December, and burning off the rest of my gut at the gym. And keeping it off. Twenty pounds gone already, as you saw above.

Postie out. 

walking to Oksu

Hey there, blogsphere.

I'm going to start posting on this here blog more regularly. One of my Facebook friends put me on to Young Adventuress, and I tell you: it's hard to find a cooler travel blog. I've visited lots and they were all pretty insipid, or were glorified travel brochures, or spent way too much time trying to look cool instead of focusing on the important stuff like quality writing. YA doesn't bother too much about that crap. And she belongs to the same philosophical school of blogging that I do: nice, long, wordy, florid, descriptive, opinion-driven posts with scads of luscious photos, breezy language, profound ideas and whatnot. So hey, follow along. She's gotten some intense recognition for her blog 'cause she works darn hard at it. 

Anyway, she also offers advice for wannabe travel bloggers, and part of it is to blog frequently and build a platform (Instagram, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest...everything). Awful similar to the advice I keep reading for wannabe novelists, too. Build that platform, build that platform. Create ways to get seen and get contacted. 

So I decided to get serious. I now have a Twitter account, and I went through and revamped my Google+ pages (both my writer's page and my blog's page). As soon as I get home and get a smartphone I'll update my Instagram account and start posting photos regularly there and let you folks know how to find me. I've updated my contact info on this page, too—see the about me page just underneath the big title up top. 

So...what to post? I don't believe I've shown you nearly enough of South Korea or Seoul. So here's some pics from another long walk I took on Saturday, November 8. All told it was about 7.3 kilometers, or 4.5 miles, on a grey, misty day that couldn't really decide what it wanted to be and just sort of hung there like it was waiting for its ship to come in.

I love walking around this town. Since I started doing all these long walks last month, I've discovered so many strange and wonderful things hiding just around the corner. A couple of weeks ago I saw a guy sitting on a bench by the Jungang Stream with a big blue macaw on his wrist. No explanation, no signage, nothing. Just a guy and his parrot. This particular Wednesday, as I walked from my oneroomtel to my new favorite burger joint in Oksu-dong, Seongdong-gu (near Oksu Station on Line 3), I saw this—some kind of dredging operation going on near the northern bank of the Han River, about level with Seongsu-dong, not far from Seoul Forest. 

Looking east along the bicycle path on the northern shore. You can baaaaaarely see the incomplete Lotte World Tower in the misty distance, in Jamsil.

Looking west, downriver toward the Seongsu Bridge.

Han River Park beneath Gangbyeonbuk-ro (North Riverside Road) in Oksu-dong.

Now I simply must tell you about this burger place, kids. It's called Bartwo. It's a beer-and-burger pub, and one of the absolute finest places in Seoul to get a goddamn good burger. It's right at the interesection of Deoksodang-ro and Hallimmal 3-gil, just a few steps up a hill from Oksu Station (go out Exit 4, turn right, pass the Paris Baguette on the left, and walk up the hill; it'll be on the right at the T-junction). I've been there a few times and have never been let down. The owner, Jeremy, is a gyopo and speaks really good English. He's a friendly dude and he keeps his bar stocked with excellent West Coast craft beers like Ballast Point and North Coast, and some I'd never seen in Korea before (Widmer Brothers anyone?). The Bartwo draft beer is only ₩2,500 a pop and tastes surprisingly good. The extensive menu includes stuffed peppers, tortilla pizza, chips and salsa, hot dogs, burgers, sandwiches, and salads. Also these, the fried mandu (Korean dumplings) with homemade salsa, three for ₩7,000: 

One word: INCREDIBLE.

The crowning glory is the Oksu Burger, ₩9,000. Beef patty cooked to perfection before your eyes, fresh red onion, lettuce, dill pickle (not sweet), tomato, melted cheese, fresh bun, a pile of fries, and all the ketchup and mustard you want. Add in the seasonal import beer (Sam Adams OctoberFest, ₩8,000) and the pickles I got as a side order (₩2,000) and my total bill came to ₩27,000 for one evening's debauch. 

  

How's that for a slice of fried gold?

Hong Kong, day one

By mutual agreement, Miss H and I decided not to do much today. I was exhausted from my losing battle against Singapore's confounded autocracy, and my other half had just come off a startlingly harsh week at work (and a long flight). So we went to bed early the night of Saturday, August 2, and had a lovely lie-in Sunday morning. 

The weather was a factor as well. I hadn't expected Hong Kong to be the hottest, most humid, most stinkingly sweltering destination on my journey, but that it was. We could hardly breathe. The heat and wet were living things, clawing at your throat, clamping your clothes against your body, blocking your pores like some invisible blob monster. I've always been prone to sweating when the temperature's anywhere above 70 degrees, and whenever the humidity's above 40 percent. You can imagine how I felt in Hong Kong, with the temperature hovering around 85 and the humidity at 81%. Even Miss H was melting. 

Nonetheless, we hadn't come all this way just to sit in our air-conditioned room. We practically sprinted the ten feet between the hotel lobby and the entrance to North Point MTR station, and then we were on our way to Central and the IFC Mall. 

The view from the roof deck. We'd been planning to have cocktails up there, but the prices were exorbitant.

Pepero is the Korean version of Pocky, a Japanese biscuit stick covered with chocolate. So weird seeing it labeled in English in Hong Kong...

We did a bit of shopping (Victoria's Secret, Dymocks Bookstore, Godiva) and ate a hefty lunch of salads, sandwiches, and smoothies. Then we went to see The Guardians of the Galaxy in 3D. It cost about $15 per person—not including the glasses!—but what the hell, it was a date. In Hong Kong. 

Back at our hotel—ibis North Point—we switched rooms. I'd gotten one of the cheapest double rooms, but 1901 was a closet-sized space with a view of the building behind. So we paid an extra hundred HK$ (about $12.89 US) per day and moved our stuff up to 2504, which had a gorgeous view of Victoria Harbor and Kowloon. 

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. 

Hokkaido diary: a weekend in Busan

2/8: 

11:30 a.m. This'll be the last entry. Meant to write it last night, but a lot of stuff happened.

Landing and disembarking [from the New Camellia] were a breeze. I'm getting to be an old pro at this. Out the hatch, down the ramp, along the skyways, through immigration and customs, out the doors to the ₩1000 Busan Station bus, and through traffic to the station. I stashed my stuff in lockers, grabbed a snack (odeng and ddeokbokki, ₩4000) and spent the next three hours flailing around the area of Nampo, Jungang and the station trying to find a hotel. Busan Tourist Hotel was cheap, but the rooms were old and shabby and reeked of secondhand smoke. Tower Hill Inn, a hundred yards away (so named because it sits at the foot of Busan Tower in Nampo-dong) was way too expensive—₩220,000 per night. I settled on the Tokoyo Inn—cheaper, cleaner, brighter, and near the station. Then I met Adam and his girlfriend Stacey for wang galbi and beer and soju. Adam is reading my novel manuscript. He described it to Stacey and it was like watching a machine I'd built start up and go for the first time. It was wonderful. Stacey expressed interest, and Adam did nothing but praise me (he always does that). I walked out of there with my head the size of a Buick. 

Then I grabbed Miss H at the station, took her to the hotel, and we both passed out. Now we're up and around, getting ready to see the tower, the park beneath it, Nampo Shopping Street, and just make a day of it. Postie out. 

THE END

And so it came to pass that Miss H and I enjoyed a wonderful weekend in Busan. On Saturday we shopped, ate and drank to our hearts' content, toured Yongdusan Park and Busan Tower (pictured above), had dinner with our lovely friend Jenn (congratulations on your recent engagement!) and sped home on the KTX on Sunday happy and fulfilled. 

The view south from Busan Tower, looking over the fishing fleets in the portion of the harbor west of Mount Bongrae.

And now I'm back in Seoul, taking walks, exploring the city, reading, writing, and frantically trying to extend my visa, switch my status from E-2 (foreign instructor) to E-1 (foreign professor), notify the immigration authorities of my impending change of address, head to the Driver's License Authority to get a temporary international driver's license so Miss H and I can rent a car and move our stuff from our apartment in Gwangnaru to our new two-bedroom apartment in...

...drum roll, please...

...GANGNAM!

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 25: start a debt-reduction plan

Whoo-ee. Yesterday's playtime went very well indeed. I got my tax stuff done, though I had to wait around and sip a coffee frappé while the T.A. finished his lunch. He was quite thorough and efficient, having done tax forms for several other professors before me. It took him just 30 minutes to fill in and print my forms. I was out of there by half past one.

I hopped Line 7 to Line 9, and thence to Yeouido Island. I strolled down Uisadang Boulevard and through the long, echoing pedestrian tunnels under Yeouido Park. A young couple was learning to skateboard down there, their skin jaundiced from the glow of beat-up incandescent lights. Despite signs warning him not to, a scooter driver zipped by as I walked along, filling the air with exhaust fumes. Upon emerging back into the diffused daylight, I found myself across an intersection from the National Assembly. Standing near the guardhouse at the gates were four cold, bored-looking policemen in black-and-yellow uniforms. The grounds seemed dead and shriveled under the muted sky, the grass brown and the fountains bone-dry. The National Assembly building itself, however, was magnificent. Apparently it's the largest building of its kind in all of Asia. I made a mental note to book a tour there with Miss H at some point.

Then the real fun began. Hungered by my walk, I hurried back down the boulevard to a tiny little mandu shop I'd noticed earlier. I sat down at a narrow red table (with recessed steel trays for kimchi and pickled yellow radish) and ordered the ₩3,500 assortment. It was delicious, though the last two dumplings were so spicy that I had to gulp down some water. I retreated back into the subway and took the geumhaeng (express) train to the last stop, Sinnonhyeon (New Nonhyeon), just a block or three north of Gangnam Station. I entered the enormous brown Kyobo Building, delved into its basement bookstore, and purchased a copy of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka for ₩6,900. With the book between my knuckles I jogged across the road to the Urban Hive, which Miss H and I have nicknamed "the Swiss Cheese Building," and Take Urban, the coffee shop on its first floor. I sat down with a cup of Darjeeling and read Kafka's whole story, soup to nuts. It was fascinating, moving, grotesque, poignant, unexpected. I don't know why I didn't read it sooner.

I had intended to walk a few blocks north to the old Nonhyeon Station on Line 7 and catch a train for Gwangnaru and a little izakaya (Japanese-style pub) I knew near my apartment, but I got a call from Brant — you know, the fellow I brew beer with. A buddy of his, Marcus (born in Texas but attending college in Cairo, Egypt), was in town and the two were bumming around together. I'd challenged them to a game of billiards the previous evening. Brant told me to meet him and Marcus at Gangnam Station at eight o'clock. To while away the intervening hours I went to an old nemesis of mine, WaBar, a "western-style ice bar" and sipped their infamous saeng maekju (draft beer) for ₩4,000 a glass. To kill time I read Kafka's story "In the Penal Colony," which was even more disturbing and emotional than The Metamorphosis.

At 7:45 I wobbled down to Gangnam Station. Brant and Marcus showed up on time. We sipped Jack and Cokes for ₩6,000 apiece at a bar called Whiskey Weasel, jockeying for position amid a group of young foreign men and Korean girls having a language exchange. The three of us shot pool and eyed the sultry goings-on. Following my resounding victory, we adjourned to Woodstock, a nearby LP bar. We requested Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Who, Warren Zevon, Wolfmother, Led Zeppelin, George Thorogood, and many more. Bourbon, Scotch and at least four pitchers of beer were consumed. We went back to Whiskey Weasel and shot more pool, our aim now a great deal unsteadier. I vaguely remember getting into a cab at 2:30 in the morning and collapsing on my couch at three. Undoing the ramifications of this bender has been today's sole concern. 

Well, not my sole concern, truthfully. Today is Day 25.

I already have a debt-reduction plan. I fork over $114 every month to pay off my college loans, the total amount of which is now (thanks to years of hard work in South Korea) four figures and dropping fast. My first year at Sejong University was so remunerative that, a week ago, I paid off a whopping $1400 of my debt in one fell swoop just to expedite the process. For the sake of this challenge, I calculated that if I pay $500 a month into my loans, starting in February, I can be totally debt-free by this time next year.

...at least until I marry Miss H and take on all of her debt.

Whoopee. Welcome to married life, Postie.

Stump up for Day 26... 

the Kamo River and Pontocho

Having had a full first day in Kyoto, and having accomplished everything on my to-do list—

Okay, that's a bald-faced lie. I didn't accomplish everything on my Day-One-of-Kyoto itinerary. There was one thing I missed.

Do you know what kaiseki ryori is? No? How about kawayuka/kawadoko (down at the bottom of the page)? Not ringing any bells?

Someday I intend to write my memoirs, and then I'll have the pleasant privilege of explaining in great detail what all these things are, instead of lazily linking you elsewhere; but for the sake of brevity, I'll just provide links and you can peruse them at your leisure.

Since Kyoto seems to be famous for kaiseki ryori (tea ceremony food) and kawayuka (rickety-platform-over-running-water dining), I figured I had to try 'em both while I was in town. My hotel (the Karasuma Kyoto; that's my own review down there on the left of the webpage) was centrally located. I wasn't very far from anything, including Pontocho. Pontocho is a narrow alley running north-south from Shijo Street to Sanjo Street, one block west of the Kamo (Duck) River. Apparently they do kawayuka dining there a lot in summer, running a platform out over the river and letting the water cool people off as they eat. Plus there's a lot of kaiseki ryori restaurants there. Two birds with one stone. So I waited until the dusk was falling and strode out of my hotel.

...in the completely wrong direction.

Soon I realized my mistake and turned back east. After quite a bit of walking (the alleys were longer than I reckoned), I made it to the Kamo River. A quick right turn before the stone bridge put me onto Pontocho. It was, if I may speak plainly, one of the most charming little corners of the Earth that I've ever seen. I cursed myself for leaving my bulky Canon Rebel behind. This would have been one sweet opportunity for a picture. Running parallel to both the alley and the river a block away was Takase Canal, a narrow waterway utilized by merchants to bring their goods in off the Kamo and offload them. It wasn't used for much except urban decoration now, but it was still mighty pretty. If you can picture the low-hanging branches and green leaves of the cherry trees by the canal; the birds twittering and the cicadas buzzing; the waters gurgling; the sinking sun reflecting off the surface; well, then you might get close to what I paused and witnessed that night.

From Wikimedia Commons. Obviously this was taken in broad daylight in springtime, when the cherry trees were blooming. But hey, it gets the point across. Pretty, eh?

A lot of the restaurants along the canal had menus posted out front. Unfortunately, they also had prices. Turns out my little idea of eating kaiseki ryori would have required a $40-$60 bill. If I'd been with Miss H or a group of friends, that wouldn't have been a problem. But by myself? Nah. The evening was too romantic to dine alone. I resolved to bring Miss H back some other time and dine kawayuka style with her. Maybe in late summer. And we'll hang around until fall, when the leaves start to turn. I bet Kyoto's really pretty then.

Chagrined, I turned around and headed back to an izakaya I'd noticed earlier, just a few yards down from my hotel. I had some galbi and side dishes and beer, and retired for the evening.

I probably should have waited until autumn to see what I saw the next day, August 5: ARASHIYAMA AND TOGETSUKYO BRIDGE.

simple as sleeping

I went around in 2009 loudly proclaiming that living in South Korea wasn't all that different from living in the United States. Pardonable, in context. I'd lived there for a year and was sick and tired of it. Eagerly, I would point out that everybody drove on the right side of the road ("right" meaning both "opposite of left" and "correct"). The signs were mostly in English. They had stuff like coffee houses and convenience stores and pawn shops and shopping malls. They were fond of things like soccer and baseball and pizza and hamburgers. They showed American movies in theaters and had English-language radio stations and bookstores. Korea, to some extent, was little America.

Well, I'm here to amend that assertion. It turns out that my research wasn't complete. My opinions were somewhat premature. Even something as simple as sleeping, it turns out, is different in Korea.

The first thing I noticed when I got back to my folks' rambling three-bedroom tile-roofed stucco house in California was how well I slept at night.

                                                                                                                       from Tumblr

Now, sleep and I have had a rather torrid relationship. She first began to welch on me in 2005, when I compressed a disc in my back while tobogganing down a dike in Fargo, North Dakota. (Don't ask.) I was not to find a wholesome, restful night's sleep for two or three years after that incident. I reached some species of equilibrium after some visits to the chiropractor in early 2008, but I never really found true relief.

Matters were exacerbated in mid-2008 when I moved to Korea.

Why's that, you ask?

Because Korean mattresses are rock-hard, that's why.

Seriously. They're like iron. Adamantine. Obdurate. Stony. And all them other hard-sounding adjectives.

The dictionary defines the word mattress thus: "a large pad for supporting the reclining body, used as or on a bed, consisting of a quilted or similarly fastened case, usually of heavy cloth, that contains hair, straw, cotton, foam rubber, etc., or a framework of metal springs."

The reptilian part of my brain defines a mattress as "something soft and squishy that you sleep on and which bounces or yields when you sit down or jump on it."

Korean mattresses fit the first definition but utterly belie the second. I quickly learned not to leap or spring onto my mattress, or even to sit down on it in an abrupt fashion, for it was like leaping into the rubberized bed of a truck. The shock would bruise my brain and jar every joint in my body.

The reasons behind the excessive firmness of Korean mattresses are unclear. Tradition, I suppose, has something to do with it. Koreans only recently started using mattresses. A lot of them still sleep on the floor, on a thin futon-like pad with a blanket and a pillow. I suppose Korean mattresses were created with the hardness of a linoleum floor in mind, not the comfort of the sleeper. 

I'm beginning to entertain the notion that the Korean people harbor a deep-seated streak of masochism. They define mountain climbing and hiking as "climbing an endless series of uneven stone steps," for one thing. They eat mouth-searing, uvula-melting foods like gamjatang in summer, for another (and have the brass neck to claim that it cools them down). And now this: ossified mattresses. Forget everything you think you know about firmness and box springs and backaches; I've got you beat. I used to wake up feeling like some beefy prize fighter had used me for an accordion. My lumbar region throbbed like a bald-headed salesman hit on the head with a frozen salmon. It was miserable. I tossed and turned and ached and moaned for a year on Geoje Island, then went back and did it again in Bucheon. Things improved when I moved to my new place in Gwangnaru in late February of 2013, but it was the moment my head hit the pillow of my old bed in my old room in that old freakin' desert that I really conked out.

Now I sleep all through the night without stirring, and let me tell you: I never did that when I lived here before, when I was in high school. Some nights I'd wake up every hour with my mucus membranes drier than a Bedouin's beard, and have to ninja my way out to the kitchen for a glass of water. Not so anymore. It's like my pillow is soaked in chloroform. I'm lovin' it.

                                                                                                                www.dailyotter.org

Of course, the location of said pillow (in my old room in California, a familiar, peaceful setting) might have biased the experiment.

Anyway, I stand corrected. It's the little things that you tend to notice. Things like talking, traveling, cooking, eating, and (as we've seen) sleeping are all vastly different in Korea than they are anywhere else.

Now you know the rest of the story.

birds, fish, and onomatopoeia

                                                                                     This image belongs to Adam Koford on Tumblr.

Sometimes I catch myself wishing that I had a cooler surname. (Sorry, Dad, but it's true.) "Post" seems kind of basic sometimes. It's a one-syllable word, for one thing. It sounds chunky and awkward. Post. Not much you can do with that. Whenever I get into these moods, I wish for a longer last name, one less bereft of imagination or dignity.

I've compiled a list, in case you're interested. Just so you can say them out loud and compare. Heck, I'll even give you my first name. Feel privileged: this is the first time I've shared it on this blog. It's Andrew.

So take Andrew and match it with some of these babies:

• Shackleton — as in Ernest Shackleton, the polar explorer.
• Rackham — as in "Calico Jack" Rackham, the pirate; I'd suggest using my nickname "Andy" for this one.
• Livingstone — "Andrew Livingstone, I presume?"
• Sullivan — Ed Sullivan.
• Longstreet — James Longstreet, Confederate general.
• Minogue — I had to throw that one in there, 'cause my mom reads this blog and she'll get the joke. It refers to Kylie Minogue...
• Remington — after Eliphalet Remington, who founded E. Remington & Sons in 1816...yes, that Remington.
• Winchester — 'cause that wouldn't sound too bad either.
• Hightower — after quip-and-quote author Cullen Hightower.
• Hillary — Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Mount Everest; and while we're on that subject, "Tenzing Norgay" is a pretty badass name too.
• Beckenbauer — nobody in particular, it just sounds cool.
• Faulkner — if you don't know who inspired this choice, I'll smack you.
• Fitzgerald — ditto; there's a film based on one of his books in theaters right now!
• Driscoll — Jack Driscoll from King Kong.

They sound so austere, don't they?

Then I remember that some of my favorite people in the world—particularly writers—have one-syllable last names. H.G. Wells, Mark Twain, Howard Hughes, Gustav Holst, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Ringo Starr, Orville & Wilbur Wright, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Thomas Hobbes, Howard Hawks, James Burke, Dave Grohl, Mungo Park, Captain James Cook, and H. &  H. Fritz. (Those last two are my grandparents.) Every single one of my Korean students, past and present, has a one-syllable surname—be it Choi or Han or Lee or Kim. And there's a lot of fictional characters who are near and dear to my heart who have 'em, too: Martin Riggs, Arthur Dent, Bruce Wayne, and (of course) Professor Henry "Indiana" Jones.

I can't forget that Post is my parents' name, too. And my brother's. And all my ancestors, going back to Germany or the Netherlands or wherever the heck they're from. And that's all right by me. I guess "A.T. Post" wouldn't look too bad on a hardback cover in a bookstore.

Speaking of sounding more austere, I did something interesting in one of my free-talking classes yesterday. I have just one single student, whom I'll call Justine. (I always liked that name. I'm angling for it to be the name of my first daughter, but Miss H isn't budging.) We got to talking about animal names, somehow. If it's one thing I'm short on, it's Korean vocabulary. So we started swapping names. I'd come up with an animal and she'd tell me the Korean name. In this way I found out the words for cuckoo (ddak-dda-guri), owl (bu-eong-i), ostrich (tajo), flounder (gajami), eel (jang-eo), oyster (gul), stingray (gwang-eo), and jellyfish (haepari). This was partly for our enjoyment, partly for my education and partly so Justine would be able to impress her future employers with her English vocabulary.

We also talked about animal sounds. I discovered that the Koreans have quite a different set of these, and in many cases, the sound is more faithfully reproduced than they are in the Western lexicon. Over here, mice don't squeak, they say jjik-jjik. (To make this work properly, your Korean pronunciation has to be flawless. Speak the words rapidly in a high-pitched tone, pronouncing the double-j with a grin on your face and barely scraping over the k at the end. The result sounds remarkably like the cheep-cheep noise which mice actually do make. Now, please record yourself doing this and send it to me. Tee hee.)

Cats don't meow, they say na-ong. Try it. Nah-oh-ng. Roll it together with the same rising and falling inflection that you'd use to say "meow" if you were imitating a cat. NAONG! Crazy, eh?

Dogs don't growl, they say eu-reu-reong. (The "eu" vowel sound is manufactured by saying "oo" without making  your lips into an "o" shape. "Reong" sounds like the English word "rung." Blend it all together in a dog-like voice and you'll get the idea.)

We also talked about onomatopoeia. Once I'd conveyed the meaning of this bewildering word to her, she smiled and started ticking off sounds. It seems that, in Korea, old men don't grumble: they say "Jujeol-jujeol." This is what inarticulate kvetching sounds like—sort of what the word "jewel" would be if you replaced the "w" with another "j."

It's common practice, especially among poor male college students and young bachelors, to go down to the convenience store at night, buy a bowl of instant ramen, and prepare it and eat it right there in the store. Most shops and corner marts have a microwave oven and a small counter on-site. It doesn't surprise me anymore when I see a crowd of schoolboys (or even elderly couples on weekends) standing over matching bowls of steaming noodles in a 7-11 or a Mini-Stop, slurping them up contentedly.

The sound effect for slurping is hu-ru-ruk. Again, go real lightly over the k at the end. Don't think of it as a sound, but rather as the place where sound stops. Blur the syllables of the word all together, as fast as you can. Slur it. Better yet, don't use your voice: whisper it. Breathe it in. Try to make a slurping noise with your mouth as you say it, and you'll hear it.

As with other Asian nations, the Koreans have onomatopoeia for states and activities that normally don't even make a sound. I think I've mentioned on this blog that the Japanese (and likely the Koreans) have sound effects for staring (jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii), standing still (shakeen), jaws dropping (gabeen) and falling in love (mero-mero). A lot of these probably come from comic books and aren't in the general lexicon, but you never know. One of the ones that Justine told me about yesterday was kkeunjeok-kkeunjeok. It sounds like "goon-juck," if you say the g and the k REALLY QUIETLY. Bounce over them as if your tongue was a tennis ball oscillating between two rackets. Kkeunjeok-kkeunjeok.

This is the sound of stickiness.

I kid you not. For the full effect, place your spread fingers on a tabletop and retract them as if you were putting them in dried maple syrup, and say this sound. Kkeunjeok-kkeunjeok. You can just hear the sticky.

To me, these noises sound more accurate than the ones I was brought up with. Maybe that's just me, but it's undeniable and it's maddening. I don't know what to attribute the eerie accuracy of Korean onomatopoeia to: perhaps it's because the language is so full of glottal consonants and versatile vowels that they're naturally disposed toward making sounds with their mouths. Or perhaps it's just because the Koreans are an ancient Confucian people that take pride in actually listening to sounds and reproducing them accurately—and have had several thousand years to practice.

Anyway, I thought you might find that interesting.

A.T. Post, signing off.

some words about the bailiwick

In line with my New Year's resolution to tell you more about Korea and the things that happen to me here, I've got some news for you.

I might as well start with the building I'm living in. You caught a brief glimpse of it a year ago when I arrived here, in this post (the tall one on the left).

But the surface of a building, as with most other objects, only tells part of the story. In the year that's passed since I first came to this city and started living in this Estima Officetel, I've gotten to know it rather well, and I'd like to describe it here.

First of all, I should explain what an officetel is. Like the Wikipedia article sez, it's a multi-purpose building. It has both commercial and residential space available for rent. People like to have business in officetels because they're cheaper to rent out (I think) than a spot in a purely commercial building. The tradeoff is that their business is not very visible.

Up until a few months ago, the utility bills in officetels were calculated using a system of averages. Instead of each apartment paying for what it used in heating and electricity, the utility use for every apartment on a particular floor was averaged out, and each person on that floor paid the average. This wasn't exactly fair, as you've probably already realized. I hardly use any heat in winter, though other people run it 'round the clock. Conversely, I run my A/C all the time in summer, where other folks hardly use it at all. Fortunately that law was recently changed, and now people who live (or work) in officetels pay their for their own.

Okay, enough of the boring stuff. Let's talk about the building. Then I'll talk about the people in it, which is where it gets really interesting.

Estima has 15 floors above ground, four parking floors below, and an open rooftop common area. The view's pretty good all around. Something like this:

My apartment was meant for a couple to inhabit, and is palatially spacious compared to the tiny studio apartment I was living in down on the islands in 2008:

Now, I mentioned that this is an officetel, which means that commercial space rubs elbows with private residences. On the second floor there's a brand-new home furnishings store, mostly sofas and coffee tables and stuff. It's pretty sparkly and tastefully appointed, but otherwise nondescript. Putting a shiny store like that in a beat-up old building like this is like hanging a pearl earring from a swine's ear, anyway.

There's some more scattered businesses on the other floors. I think there's a music instructor over on the north side of the ninth floor (mine). And just down the hall from me is something called "Georgia Immigration Services." It's run by a young woman and I never see anyone going in or out. There's a few other business on the third floor (which is where Avalon's lunchroom is, also) but I don't know what they do, since the signs are all in Korean.

On the first floor are the usual corridors, lobby, mailboxes, and elevators (three of them). The hallways are frigid. For some reason the Koreans decided it was a good idea not to heat the lobbies or entry spaces of their buildings (at least not the cheap-ass officetels, anyway). There are three entrances on the north, south, and west sides of the building, each defended by a double pair of slender glass doors. Those are the interior's sole protection against the elements. The tile floors are perfectly flush and become treacherously slick when wet—which, in wintertime, they always are. Mats are sometimes laid down, but sometimes not. Your only chance of warming up is when you finally walk over your own threshold and into your warm apartment.

There are seven businesses on the first floor of Estima. On the south side (the main entrance, off Gilju Street) there's BHC Chicken and some fancy-pants bike shop that sells ridiculously overpriced mountain bikes to windburned fitness freaks in skintight polyester. (Seriously, they're like $5,000 apiece.)

BHC Chicken is just one of a dozen national fried chicken franchises. Koreans are nuts for fried chicken. You can find a chicken joint on every corner. They usually deliver, too. You'll see the suicidal delivery boys (usually young guys working their way through college) swooping through traffic on their scooters, blowing red lights and mounting sidewalks, the little red cargo box riding high on the seat behind them.

Over on the north side of the building, at the back entrance to the building (across from the police station, on a quiet little side-street) are some more businesses. Embedded within the northern exit corridor, right across from each other, are a convenience store and a Chinese apothecary. The convenience store is called Good Mart, and it's open 24/7, which is handy for us apartment-dwellers if we get the midnight munchies. Though small, it's got everything: six-packs, Q-tips, lighter fluid, ice cream, chewing gum, canned tuna, and a bazillion different kinds of ramen...not to mention a few small bottles of blended Scotch.

The Chinese apothecary really defines the first floor, though. That's not because it has an imposing façade, though. It's mostly just because it smells funny. The thirtysomething woman who owns it is always brewing up some foul-smelling medicine in there, often inundating the entire ground floor with noxious odors. Sometimes I'll see the proprietress sitting in the waiting room with her friends, space heaters cranked up and glowing red, chatting and drinking tea as something that looks eerily like witch's brew simmers away in a stainless steel pot over a blue flame. Behind the counter are dozens of wooden drawers excitingly labeled with mysterious Chinese characters. It doesn't matter to me what they mean. They could read "gout" and "pox" and "boils" and "chlamydia" for all I care. They still look cool.

Down at the end of the northern corridor lie an octopus restaurant, a twigim shop, and a gimbap joint. I've never been to this particular octopus restaurant, though I probably should. I love molluscs and I love the way Koreans prepare 'em even better. Twigim is sort of like Korean fast food: various bits and bobs deep-fried in oil and covered in a delicious greasy crust. I've only eaten at this shop once, and that was with my predecessor, whom I loathed so much that I swore off everything that she professed to like.

The gimbap joint is called Sumirak, and it makes the best stuff in town, in my opinion. Gimbap is sort of like Korean sushi, but you won't find a hint of raw fish in it. Mostly it's got ham (more like Spam), imitation crab, pickled radish, and slivers of cucumber and carrot, all wrapped up in rice with a seaweed wrapper. This is formed into a roll and then cut into slices, just like roll sushi. Sumirak is owned by a middle-aged woman who has aged as gracefully as Helen Mirren or Julie Andrews. Her face is lined, but in that endearing careworn way we all imagine when we think of our beloved grandmothers or great-aunts. She does not stoop or hobble, but stands tall and proud (at sixty-five inches). She rolls gimbap at lightning speed, sets it down in front of you with a smile, and says 맛있게 드세요 (masissge deuseyo—"enjoy your meal").

Maybe I'll put up pictures, and maybe I won't. Maybe I'll just do like Hemingway would have and let you imagine all this stuff for yourselves.

Now you know a little bit more about my bailiwick. Next up: some of the people who inhabit this place. And maybe a bit more about Jung-dong in general.