revamping the vlog

As you (should) already know, I'm a blogger. What some of you may not know is that I attempted, for a embarrassingly short while, to keep a vlog as well. I've linked to it a couple of times, but I try to avoid saying too much about it, because it's incomplete and poorly-kept, with overlong and badly-edited videos. It's as underdone as chicken tenders at Chili's. 

Well. 

I'd like to change that. 

I need a decent microphone and some updated video-editing skills. But once I master those, I'm going to revamp that blog of mine. 

How?

Well, since I already cover everything related to travel, cocktails, flying, and writing on this here blog, I'm going to take a different route with my YouTube channel. Oh, of course I'll put up interesting travel videos (should be plenty of those coming from Southeast Asia). Once I move back to the USA, I'll also set up a camera in the kitchen and start making video cocktail reviews instead of just text. (Perhaps once I reach Cocktail Review No. 85 or 90 or 100, whenever that may be.) And when I get back stateside I'll resume my flying career, too: specifically my quest for a single-engine commercial pilot ticket with instrument, floatplane, taildragger, and high-performance ratings. I'm sure that'll make for some interesting video fodder too. I may even need to get a GoPro...

But all that's in the future. For now, while I'm here in Korea, I can definitely do better with the vlog. 

I've been watching a lot of vlogs on YouTube lately (specifically the QiRanger, KWOW, and HowTheWorldWorks), and I love 'em to death. Here are some things that they all do well:

• they supplement their speech with text, music, and hi-def images, artfully edited into the video as a whole
• they talk about pertinent, up-to-date, and interesting subjects
• their bedside manner is engaging and fun, and their speech is practiced, fluent, and clear

I can do all that stuff, easy. Might be a little rough once I first start out, but I'll get into the swing of it. 

So what kind of topics will I talk about, then?

Something that people keep telling me I'm great at discussing in an interesting, meaningful way: history and wordplay. 

Once per week, I'm thinking, I'll do an installment called 5-Minute History, where I'll talk about some obscure and little-known topic that nonetheless had far-reaching consequences on our civilization and society. As the title suggests, these videos will be about five minutes in length. 

On certain days of the week, I'll have shorter and supplementary columns: Slang Saturdays (wherein I discuss the origin of an idiom or colloquialism) and Word Wednesdays (wherein I discuss the etymology, cultural significance, and historical context of English words). In short, I am going to create a whole new world for me and others to play around in online. And maybe learn something along the way. 

Sound boring? It won't be, trust me. 

I'm not sure when all of this will get started. My first order of business is to create a neat channel trailer for this vlog and inform everyone of its revitalization. I need to get familiar with video editing and figure out how to insert music, voice-overs, images, video clips, and so on. But you guys here on the Sententious Vaunter will be the first to know when the new-and-improved Vaunter-vlog starts up. And who knows? This might be a nice segue into the world of radio, something I do on the side that could get me hired one day. 

Stay tuned, vlogsphere. Ex Post Facto is going to get a whole lot sexier. 

Nope, even sexier than that. 

Facebook update

Well, it's officially been a week since I quit Facebook. More than that, in fact: since I live in the future, it's Saturday here, and I quit late last Friday.

The first couple of days went well. I was out and about, getting fresh air, exercising, watching sunsets, scribbling, and generally being productive.

Now, however, I've noticed that things are starting to slow down. Instead of clicking on the Facebook link all the time (which I've since removed from my list of bookmarks), the junkie in me has fallen back on other tactics. I'm beginning to fill the void which Facebook left with other sites: YouTube, TV Tropes, and other vacuous time-wasters. I blew one-and-a-half days of my four-day weekend, Thursday and Friday, doing nothing but staring at screens. As usual. (The remainder of Friday was spent bottling our second batch of home-brewed beer. Then we went to Taco Bell. Sweet!)

This indicates to me that Facebook—as well as the other stuff I do online, even Wikipedia—was never about keeping in contact with my friends. It was about my brain satisfying a craving for input. I'm no autodidact. All the hours I spent on Wikipedia educating myself about the Taiping Rebellion, Mondragón rifles or the Registan were just the fulfillment of an unworthy part of my brain, the information addict. Now that Facebook is gone and I can't satisfy myself with the doings and thrashings of my friends and acquaintances, my mind has begun to toke on my other Internet drugs of choice.

Apparently, I need to meditate more. More walks, more workouts, more bike rides, more contemplative smokes down by the Han River (if my friggin' Coleman matches would ever arrive from Gmarket). Studies have shown that meditation can be as beneficial to your health as sleeping, and even more so. It helps clear your mind of white noise and file everything away, categorizing and sorting, a sort of mental disc defragmentation, if you will. 

Oh, and there's also the O-Train this weekend.

What's the O-Train, you ask?

This.

It's a train line that runs in a big circle through three provinces in northeastern Korea. Just got started in April. There's actually two trains. The O-Train (above) does the complete circle (about four hours); the "O" represents the round shape of the route. The V-Train (below) is a little diesel engine that only runs through a particular slice of the route, but that slice is one of the prettiest, rockiest, most mountain- and stream-filled valleys in Gangwon Province. The V-Train (the "V" stands for "valley") moves slowly but scenically, and on board you'll find nostalgia like hot stoves, wood detailing, and baked sweet potatoes. It's all about atmosphere, you see? If you want the feel of a quaint old narrow-gauge steam railway (without a quaint old narrow-gauge steam locomotive) then you take the V-Train. If you want to sit in comfort and take in all the scenery that Gangwon, North Gyeongsang and North Chungcheong Provinces have to offer, then you take the O-Train.

You know how much I love trains. I've been agog to ride on one of these babies ever since I first heard about 'em. A good long train ride through gorges and over rivers, past trees clad in autumn colors, would do wonders for stress, mental clutter, and ennui.

Now, someday I'd like to ride both, but for the nonce, Miss H and I will content ourselves with the O-Train. (I can always come back and ride that zebra-striped beast later.) Tomorrow (Sunday) morning, my lady and I shall waltz into Seoul Station, grab a mugunghwa train for Jecheon, Gangwon-do, and then hitch a ride on the Big O. That ought to put paid to my inner Internet addict.

going dark

Let's get straight to the rat-killer: I have deactivated my Facebook account.

I did this for several reasons. First of all, National Novel Writing Month is coming up again, and though I'm not sure if I'm going to do it again this year, it'd be nice to have Facebook out of the picture for the duration.

Second, I must detoxify. Facebook is by no means the only way I get my kicks out online—there's TV Tropes, YouTube, Wikipedia, IMDB, and a half-dozen other sites I visit regularly (perhaps too regularly). Shutting off Facebook for a spell will, however, reduce the amount of time I spend staring at screens every day. Seriously, I've got a disease. My right hand automatically clicks on Facebook even when I've just closed that window out a few seconds earlier. If Facebook is part of my muscle memory, then I need to take a step back and reevaluate my life. And that creates a nice segue into Reason No. 3.

Third, and most important, there's better stuff I could be doing. I've resolved not to venture back onto Facebook until I've made some serious lifestyle changes, and taken concrete steps toward advancing my life goals. Exercise, fresh air, literature (I'm way behind on those 30 books I need to read this year), writing, home improvement projects, beer-brewing (I haven't told you about that yet, have I?), and taking better advantage of my weekends. By "take better advantage of my weekends" I mean "take advantage of the fact that I live in freakin' South Korea and I need to get out and see some stuff during my last 18 months here." I still haven't seen Hwaseong Fortress, down in Suwon; I haven't set foot in Gangwon Province, nor sunbathed on Sokcho Beach on the Sea of Japan (or the East Sea, as the Koreans insist it be called); I still haven't visited Seoraksan National Park or explored Ganghwa Island or spent a day on the Incheon seafront. Oh, and Korail has a new sightseeing line up and running now, too: the V-Train. Now that I have a kick-ass camera (that Canon EOS Rebel T3i I keep going on about), I really have no excuse not to see any of this stuff, especially as it's all draped in autumn colors.

So that's it! I'm off Facebook. I'll still blog, of course (lots to blog about!) but I shan't show my face around the rest of the Internet until I get some stuff done. Not sure when I'll be back. Hold my calls.  

33 things I'm no longer allowed to do on Fridays

1. Sing along to The Planets suite by Gustav Holst.

2. Give my characters names like "Rita Book" and "Justin Thyme" on The Oregon Trail.

3. Argue that the main characters of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann are the pinnacle of manliness.

4. Croon "O Tannin Bomb" as I'm opening a bottle of red wine.

5. Watch Monty Python sketches on YouTube for hours on end.

6. Or Bugs Bunny cartoons.

7. Or episodes of Cheers.

8. Liking the Black Keys does not make me an "honorary hipster."

9. Consume a can of mixed nuts and a bottle of beer and call it an appetizer.

10. Demand that my students use the phrase "sock puppets" in every essay they write.

11. Watch the climactic scene in The Road Warrior while listening to "Yakety Sax."

12. Not listening to K-pop does not make me Nietzsche's Übermensch.

13. Finish all my sentences with the word "TOASTY!"

14. When cooking bacon, I am to actually chop the bacon into bite-size pieces rather than thwack at it with a blunt knife until it's in barely-digestible chunks.

15. Walking down five flights of stairs does not count as exercise.

16. Advance the theory that Jim Morrison is actually kind of a poet.

17. Refer to Kim Jong-un as "Jackie Flan."

18. Hang a sign on my cubicle wall that reads 'THE DOCTOR IS IN' during office hours.

19. Pretend I know jack squat about British, Irish, Australian or New Zealand politics.

20. Complain about the mysterious brown and green stains in my copy of The Bartender's Bible.

21. "To Serve Man" is not the best Twilight Zone episode.

22. Refuse to shave and claim that I'm saving money on razor blades.

23. Before spraying the bathroom walls down with bleach, I must remember to remove towels and toothbrushes from the area.

24. At the Mountains of Madness is not H.P. Lovecraft's annual family camping trip.

25. Intimidate my pupils with French if they complain that English is too hard.

26. Clean my glasses with my necktie.

27. Cooking with vodka is not an excuse to do frequent taste tests.

28. Name every chapter of my novel after a classic rock song.

29. I am not permitted to sell the extra pistol ammo I pick up during side missions in RAGE. This is called war profiteering.

30. Play air piano along with David Bowie's "Life on Mars?"

31. The fire alarm does not signify that North Korea is invading.

32. "Motorcycling through South America" is not a valid reason for a sabbatical.

33. Use hashtags on Facebook in the name of satire.

football updates

I remember I said something a while back about how I was going to keep better track of football season this year, and even blog about it. I didn't do so well. Apart from a maudlin post about how my beloved San Diego has lost one of its Holy Offensive Trinity (LaDainian Tomlinson) I haven't said much.

Preseason recap: I don't pay much attention to preseason games, usually, because they're usually on when I'm doing something important, and let's face it, the preseason don't count for much anyway. It wouldn't have done me much good to watch the Chargers' preseason games anyway, because they SUCKED. Except for a slight win against Chicago at home (25-10), we lost to everyone else: Dallas (ouch), New Orleans (well, okay), and San Francisco (are you effing KIDDING me?!).

Thankfully, the pain of preseason didn't last that long, and after Norv Turner knocked a bit of sense into the Bolts, the regular season started and I began to sit up and take notice. Which leads us to...

The season so far: The first game was September 13, against the Chiefs at Kansas City. I didn't see it, because Dad is a Dolphins fan and I believe their game was on at the same time, and Dad had sovereignty over the remote control. It was an appreciably close game (14-21), but still a loss. Rivers threw for 298 passing yards, which I like to see, but surprisingly Darren Sproles didn't take the record for rushing. That went to Ryan Mathews, one of the rookies we picked up this summer, currently signed to a five year contract. Though described as "accident-prone" in college (and in fact, he's already bunged up his ankle this season) he still remains a gleam of hope in Tomlinson's wake.

Second game was September 19, at home against Jacksonville. Puh-leez. It was a 38-13 win, and I'm surprised the Jaguars got that much. I didn't catch much of this game, either; I believe Heather and I were out doing stuff (like buying six used books for $10, awesome-sauce). Rivers topped himself with 334 passing yards, but the real surprise was Nick Kaeding: all five kicks he made that day (four extra points and one 41-yard field goal) were good. Heck, I was surprised that Kaeding was even still on the flipping team. This was the same man who bungled no less than three field goal attempts in the last round of the playoffs back in February, and cost San Diego their shot at the Super Bowl. I felt certain the S.D.P.D. would find Kaeding's mutilated body hanging from the tip of Ocean Beach Pier by mid-March. I imagine Coach Turner has kidnapped Kaeding's family and is holding them at an undisclosed location, releasing one of them every time Kaeding gets it between the uprights.

The third game was another loss. Despite Rivers's stellar 455 passing yards and Gates's 109 receiving (I swear, that man is a ball magnet...he can catch anything), the final score was 27-20 at the Seattle's Qwest Field. My beloved Bolts went down swinging, though. Linebacker Brandon Siler sacked Seahawk QB Matt Hasselbeck in the end zone and scored us a safety in the third quarter; and in the fourth quarter, Rivers and Gates made a respectable nine-play, 65-yard drive to a touchdown in less than five minutes.

Next in line are the Arizona Cardinals, at home on October 3. I'm going to be working, unfortunately, but maybe I can convince Mack to let me turn the game on. Then I can watch it over my right shoulder as I scrub the pots and pans. (Mack usually keeps the TV on Fox anyway.) I don't know much about Arizona, players, stats, what have you, so I'm drawing a blank as far as pregame predictions are concerned. But I have a feeling it's going to be a good one. These are two decent teams, we're on home turf, and I don't hate the guts of the opposing team for a change (in fact, I have something of a soft spot for Arizona now, due to certain laws they've passed regarding illegal immigration).

Still, I'm no traitor. You know who I'll be supporting. The Cardinals are going to get thunderstruck.

six-day weekend

Working where I do can be a bit weird sometimes. The schedule is and must necessarily be flexible, of course. I just didn't expect it to flex quite so much.

Due to the Fourth of July, we had a short week last week (Tuesday through Thursday) and now, it seems, I have a six-day weekend on my hands. Friday to Thursday. Almost a full week. And here I am, sitting smack dab in the middle of it, wondering what I'm going to accomplish during that time.

So I thought, Heck, why don't I blog? Gives me a chance to listen to that Eric Clapton song I've been searching for on YouTube for, like, forever.

At some unforeseeable point in the foreseeable future, I will get around to filling you in on those two weeks in the U.K. and Ireland. First post's already in the pipeline. But for now, I'll tell you about some other stuff that's been going on.

Thursday night was rather interesting. I wound up at a friend's house for the evening. Or perhaps I should say, for the sake of strict accuracy, that I would up in my friend's swimming pool. I had a marvelous time. The sun was warm and the water perfect. I swam about and talked with my friend's pretty sister-in-law about everything from marine biology to zombies to the hotel business to the weather in Maryland.

Friday was (ahem) a pretty good night too. It too involved swimming pools. One of my best female friends, V, had a birthday last week, so on Friday we all went out with her to celebrate. She's a fan of the comedy show How I Met Your Mother, so, since we'd be playing laser-tag, she decided we should all "suit up." Everyone got dressed up in their Sunday best and then we put on the electric vests and ran around a room filled with black lights and shot each other for a few hours. Playing laser tag in a suit and tie is something everyone ought to try at least once in their lives. Makes a guy feel like a Secret Service agent from the year 2134.

After this, we went out for pizza at Oggi's, a local micro-brewery that just happens to do pizza on the side. (Or perhaps it's the other way around, maybe they're a small-time pizza joint that does beer as a sideline.) Delicious stuff: the combination of the Heavyweight (meat lover's) Pizza and Oggi's own Sunset Amber Ale is tough to beat.

Then it was over to V's house for some night swimming. (There were no American-flag bikinis in evidence, though.) Nobody had informed me about this little part of the adventure, so I was forced to run into Target and buy some swim trunks. (My house was 10 miles out of town; I'd never have made it out and back in time to get the pair I already owned.) The errand made me extremely worried. I'm afraid that, in a few years, it will be impossible to find any men's swim trunks that don't hang below the knees or some other absurd length. I had a horrendous time trying to locate some men's swimming products that were not excessively baggy, coated with inane patterns, or board shorts. I eventually settled on a simple black pair of trunks, purchased them, and beat feet back for Oggi's, still wearing my suit and tie. That must've been a sight.

We had to clean V's pool before we could use it, but this being the desert, where things like algae and frogspawn are practically nonexistent, all we really had to do was give the thing a once-over with the scrubber and skim some leaves and pine needles off the top. I went the extra mile and dived down to the bottom for some loose leaves and bark that the vacuum couldn't suck up. Then the party spent a few happy hours disporting in the pool, making fun of Paul (who couldn't hardly see without his glasses, and had to swim by echolocation), congratulating V's little sister K on her recent marriage, and talking of this and that. Then it was over to V's hot tub (very, very, very, very hot tub) to poach ourselves into a contented frame of mind. I came off the night a few bucks poorer, but a pair of swim trunks richer. At least this new pair isn't flesh-toned like my old one...

Saturday was spent in assisting my buddy John with buying up the remaining materiel necessary for the huge party he and I would be throwing on the evening of the Fourth. We hit Stater Brothers and Vons and between the two of them picked up about thirty bottles (and one mini-keg) of beer, a bottle of rum, a grande bottle of bourbon, some mojito mix, and some sweet 'n' sour, plus some napkins, plates and plastic silverware. (Can I just start calling it "plasticware"? "Plastic silverware" is, at the very least, a material oxymoron.)

Then I went back home, having blown a good portion of whatever savings I had left over after England, and went over to Lucerne Valley with the parents to watch their fireworks show. Yes, Lucerne Valley has their fireworks on July 3rd, for some reason. I didn't care. The more fireworks shows I get to watch, the better. And I hadn't seen one in two years, mind you. I was in Korea for the last two Independence Day holidays.

The show was excellent—much more than I was expecting. It went on for 20 minutes, used a plethora of different kinds of fireworks, and was accompanied by live music from a local swing group, Phat Cat Swinger, replete with suspenders, fedoras and zoot suits. I sat and marveled at pyrotechnic technology (and the unceasing wonder of a country, people, and democracy as great as the United States of America, now 234 years old) as the band played on, the cool breeze blew, and the sizable crowd of Lucerners hollered and cheered.

Sunday was great. I lazed around the house until about 3:00 (watching the excellent musical 1776 with William Daniels), then went over to John's house and helped him set up the pool table and the barbecue. The bar was all ready: a flat board placed on top of two bookshelves in the garage, with two buckets of ice behind, one filled with beer, the other with hard liquor and mixers. A blender on the workbench rounded out the manifest. Guests began to arrive, five o'clock rolled around, and the evening mellowed out. We refreshed ourselves with Fat Tire and Tostitos, taking occasional breaks to toss the Nerf football around, play a pick-up game of basketball, or shoot pool. The stereo kept us entertained with a steady stream of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bruce Springsteen, Van Halen, Foghat, Van Morrison, Foreigner, and AC/DC. The hamburgers and hot dogs were grilled to perfection and consumed with gusto. John's girlfriend Rebecca had baked a red velvet cake, which went down mighty fine with some Shock Top Belgian ale.

The day died and the fireworks lit up the valley below. We could see the bombs bursting like tiny flowers blooming in the sky above town, and hear the bangs and booms as distant thunder. Occasionally, from some unseen point in the neighborhood, smaller firecrackers would pop and explode illegally, to the whoops and yells of drunken suburban merrymakers. All of us were fairly well along by this point, and the inane commentary and bad jokes were plentiful. The night concluded around a card table in the middle of John's driveway, drinks in hand, blankets about our shoulders, and quite a lot of giggles and chuckles. Our eyelids began to droop about 12:30, and after helping John clean up the considerable mess we'd made, the party broke up.

And now here I am at home, on the floor of my (newly re-carpeted) room. For the remaining three days of my weekend, I'm planning on reorganizing my dresser (so my clothes will actually fit into it); pounding the pavement for a bartending job, resuming the long hard search; and, let's hope, blogging about England. It's about 97 degrees outside, and my chamber lies on the sunnier side of the house, so things are kind of warm in here. I woke up, ordered a pair of pants off the Internet, washed the glass doors where the dogs have wiped their noses peeking in from the back porch, and took a four-hour nap. I'm bleary, creaky, grubby, and probably quite fetid. I should really take a shower and brush my teeth, but hey...it's the weekend.

Happy Independence Day, everyone.

new job, new followers

One of my favorite movies is a little-known Howard Hawks project named Hatari!

Made in 1962, it chronicles the adventures, love triangles, drinking and chain-smoking of a game company in East Africa. This "game company" is a group of expatriate specialists who catch African animals and ship them overseas to zoos and circuses. The methods by which they accomplish this feat are rather novel. They jump into cars and trucks and Jeeps and go out and chase these animals all over creation, lassoing them with ropes on poles. Here, look:



The movie contains vicious animals, skyrockets, sultry Italian girls in the bath, fisticuffs, baby elephants, high-speed pursuits, a whole lot of drumming, romance, a bit of chauvinism, and John Wayne. What more could you ask for in a movie?

Hardly anybody I know has ever heard of it, though. If anything, the score became more famous than the film. This is where Henry Mancini's iconic "Baby Elephant Walk" first appeared.

Hatari! has thrilled me since I was in grade school. I was once convinced that I would do exactly what I saw good ol' Red Buttons doing up there on the screen: drive a beat-up pickup truck at ridiculous speeds across the African savanna while John Wayne sat on the bucket seat up front and roped in wild critters. The film exerted a more powerful influence on me than even I know. It was about this point that I began to wear chiefly khaki and neutral colors (as the characters in the film do). Red Buttons's character, Pockets (my favorite, if you hadn't guessed), inspired my love affair with cargo pants. I still buy and wear them regularly.

Man, this introduction is getting lengthy. Maybe I should do a movie review about this film later on, huh?

To get to the point, Pockets is in love with one of the female characters, Brandy. But he's shy. He doesn't know how to approach her. One day, when he's helping John Wayne's character (Sean), Pockets falls off a fence. Brandy runs up and kneels down next to him, all concerned. Pockets sees his chance. Actually unhurt, he acts as if he's dying. Brandy insists that Sean carry Pockets into the bungalow while she runs ahead to prepare a sickbed for him. Sean (who knows Pockets is playing 'possum) asks "What are you trying to do?" Pockets replies, "I don't know, but whatever it is, I'm doing it right!"

Over the past few weeks, the number of people following this blog has quadrupled. It seems like only last month there were just eleven or so faithful minions hobnobbing here. As of last Saturday, the total was up to 40.

To say that I am shocked, stunned, flattered, abashed, grateful, excited, pumped, pleased, and amazed by this would be a gross understatement. All I can say is "thank you." Thank you, those faithful few who have been with me from the very beginning, and stuck with me so long. Thank you, those of you who have only recently signed on, and have decided to see where this goes. I hope I don't disappoint; I shall do my utmost not to. Thank you one and all, my followers. I'd likely be blogging anyway, even if you weren't around. But you guys make it that much more groovy around here. Thanks for feeding my voracious ego.

And now for a little news. As I mentioned earlier, I have a job at last. I am no longer unemployed. People don't have to buy me drinks whenever we go out on the town. (But they still do anyway; I have a host of friends.)

What is this job, you ask? The one I hinted about so delicately before? Full-time, decent pay, benefits, and flying-related?

I chase UAVs. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. I keep my eyes on them, the skies near them, and that little black collision-avoidance box. The one with the two yellow concentric circles. As long as there isn't more than one yellow dot on it, everything's golden. That's my job. I sit in the passenger seat of a small plane and make sure the UAV doesn't bump into something. Or vice-versa. In between flights (one in the morning, one in the afternoon) I sit down somewhere comfortable, switch on my benighted laptop and attempt to further my writing career. (Results thus far have been mixed.)

I'm enjoying the heck out of it. The chasing thing was the easiest to learn. The hard part has been trying to figure out what to write, how to query, and where to submit during my off-hours. That'll get better, though. And in the meantime, as long as I don't eat anything greasy for breakfast, I can avoid airsickness, which is the only downside to flying for a living. We've pulled some pretty hectic maneuvers in that little plane, following the UAV. My boss, the pilot, used to fly F-15s for a living, which explains his facility with aerobatics.

That's the run-down for the moment. I could explain more, but that would make this post even longer, and it's already stretched a bit far. Maybe I'll tell you some more later. Some interesting tidbits about the airplanes we're flying, for one thing. They're Mooney M20s. Mooneys are...interesting. Quirky, some might say.

Stay tuned...

the best of times in South Korea

Picture this:

Four people crowd around a small table in a one-room apartment on a tilted, crooked street. The street is in the second-largest town on the second-largest island off the southern coast of South Korea. Two of these people are English, one is Canadian, the other American. The lights are low. The drink has been flowing for several hours, courtesy of yours truly, your friendly neighborhood expatriate bartender-in-training. There's a bed, a few poles with clothes hung on them, a dresser, a derelict TV, a refrigerator, a tiny kitchenette, and a bathroom around the corner. By now, the linoleum floor is gritty with tortilla chip crumbs and dropped peanuts. The air is filled with the smell of alcohol, salty snacks, laundry detergent, Korean pepper paste, citrus, and maraschino cherries. The laptop is on. Several YouTube videos on the screen, one playing Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly"; Groove Armada and Oasis wait in the wings. Jokes are being cracked, stories told, laughs exchanged, fun had. Four plastic highball glasses (filled with rum daisies, tequila moonrises or Chelsea Hotels) are making the rounds between table and lips. Occasionally, one of the four people leaves to use the lavatory; sometimes the entire company adjourns to the rooftop to stargaze, or to look out over the uneven, haphazard, Mary-Poppins skyline of the city. All of us are in a drunken stupor, a happy haze. We've had a hard day of teaching hyperactive Korean children the finer points of the English language. Perhaps we graded 30 journals at a stretch, having to add in all the articles (or subtract all the excess) ourselves. Maybe little Tommy was acting up again and gave us a headache. Maybe it was hot as hell in the classroom because the head secretary's too goddamn cheap to turn on the A/C. Maybe we just had a bad day. But it's all gone now.

We're having a damn fine Friday night in.

blogshot

My personal motto is "I'll try anything twice." That's because I rarely enjoy something the first time I do, try, eat, or experience it. I was utterly terrified when, at the age of 15, my dad told me to get into the driver's seat of the car. Now I jump at the chance to go into town, just for an excuse to rip up and down the dirt roads in my new Jeep. I only like one or two songs when I first buy an album; after a week or so of listening, I gradually come to love the rest. I only appreciate new cocktails the second or third time I try them. It's the same with many foods, too (except for asparagus—that I do and always will hate). Even so I was startled to discover, here on this cool, cloudy October afternoon in the Mojave Desert, that something similar has happened to me with blogging. There was a time when I wouldn't even have considered keeping a blog, and would've scorned the suggestion. Blogs, from what I'd heard of them (I didn't have the open-mindedness to actually seek any out and read them), were merely wasted Web pages where pretentious know-nothings spouted off about their feelings and political opinions. (Gee...that sounds familiar, actually, he said with a guilty grin.) Any bug-wit high school student could start up a blog and opine about whatever mattered to him or her, which, as I believed, would be uninteresting, self-centered, fatuous, poorly-written tripe. Boy, was I ever barking up the wrong tree. Then I started coming around. With arrogance resembling a god complex, I mused thus: "Hmmm, well, if a pack of louts can do it, why can't an intelligent, sophisticated, literate man like myself give it a try and show them all up?" So I started a video blog to cover my Korean sojourn. That didn't last long. I'm sure there are more streamlined ways to do it than I did, and much better equipment and Web sites and editing programs, too, but vlogging was a pain. I used a $20 USB video camera, Windows Movie Maker, and YouTube. That will likely tell you everything you need to know about just how difficult, time-consuming and vexing the process was. Needless to say, I didn't do it often. When I did, I always had so much to speak about that (because of YouTube's asinine 10-minute video length limit) my vlogs turned into "serials" consisting of five or six videos. Filming, editing and uploading a serial vlog could and did routinely turn into an all-day nightmare. So I quit on the business. Then, a few months later, I was discussing my literary career goals with my Geordie coworkers Adam and Elaine. Adam suggested something that struck me as odd at the time. "You should start a blog, man," he said. This would, he argued, give any prospective editors or employers something to review in regards to my writing skill. It might also be fun. I'll admit that I was first inclined to laugh. Me, a blogger? I'd sooner blind myself with a hot needle. Blogging, to me, represented everything about the Internet (and society in general) that I detested. The uninformed and downright stupid should not be given free rein to voice their useless thoughts. Blogging's deplorable lack of grammar and spelling, the laziness in style (or complete lack thereof), and the disastrous miscarriage of proper word usage were all anathema to me. I could, of course, avoid such things myself, but by even consenting to blog, I'd be stepping into a world where such things were permitted, even overlooked. I'd sully my literary endeavors in so doing. By becoming a blogger, I was convinced, I'd soil myself. But Adam's suggestion stayed in my mind. I didn't know it at the time, but my omnipotent urge to write was ready to boil over. I was making slow, piecemeal progress with the novel, and my journalistic pursuits were limited to two articles I'd submitted to free e-zines. My creative juices had nowhere to flow. Moreover, I'd always known that I loved to opine. In the end, that selfish need won out. So I decided to start a blog. And now, seven months later, I have gone from dubious to joyous, guilt-ridden to content, blogshy to blogshot. I have happily found that, thus far, none of my superstitions about blogging or bloggers have rung true. I have discovered political opinions being voiced aplenty, but backed by conscious thought instead of ignorance. None of the bloggers I have talked to, and none of the few blogs I have read in any detail, have exhibited any kind of stupidity or silliness—quite the opposite, in fact. I have found little of the bad grammar and deplorable spelling which I had so feared. The blogsphere, for the most part, seems to be a veritable latter-day Roman forum, where ideas, concepts, instincts, beliefs, and philosophies are exchanged in a healthy, accessible environment. (It probably isn't; but I'm feeling effusive at the moment.) In the beginning it was lonely—I had no followers, and (I believed) no audience. I got no feedback on my posts. I couldn't be sure whether what I wrote was reaching anyone, or I was just whistling Dixie. But now I have people who read my own blog regularly (I'm blushing as I write this) and who leave some of the most helpful and interesting comments behind. What began as a solo foray has now truly transformed into the best thing possible—a community experience. But something else has happened, too—something I never, ever would have believed, even after I began blogging back in March. I have come to honestly enjoy reading other people's blogs. At the outset, I was (and on some level, probably still am) a selfish blogger: Nah, I don't care about anybody else's scribblings. I just want people to read my stuff, and be correctly awed by it. That was my philosophy, sad to say. But little by little, the magic seeped in. I started clicking around, sometimes in Blogs of Note, more often on the people who left me comments. Gradually, I found a few works that struck me as perusal-worthy. I began to read them, slowly and fitfully, then more thoroughly, then more routinely. I just consciously noticed today, for the first time ever, that my eyes always dart down to the Reading List at the bottom of my homepage whenever I log in. I'm actually, intentionally, checking for other people's latest posts. And when they come up, I gleefully click on them and go to read them, satisfied that these authors, whose styles I have come to know and adore, have got something else new and wonderful in store for me. Take smithyblogs, for example. It's run by an Englishman I happen to know personally from my Korea days. A native of the Manchester area, he's got the lot—a sanguine drawl and a fanatical devotion to Manchester United. He's a really entertaining guy to be around. His bone-dry wit is omnipresent, both in conversation and his blog posts. His incisive observations about work, play, food, travel and people are always dead-on and good for a chuckle. The Whole Blooming World, nourished by the Pollinatrix in the American Southwest, contains beautiful, intelligent insights and poetic verbal imagery. She covers everything from the stately gourd bees that pollinate pumpkins to reflections on the lives of Catholic saints, with never a dull moment in between. Much has already been written about Ramblings of the Bearded One, but I will reiterate that his blog ("he" being a married-with-children gent living in Scotland and working in photography and visual media) is a winning blend of humor, fatherhood, family, love, photography, dreams, ups, downs, life, and...ramblings. I'm not saying this to suck up to these people (sorry, Smithy). When I like something, I get effusive—even florid. I'm saying this because, heh heh, I, heh heh, have been corrupted, heh heh, by the intoxicating atmosphere of the blogsphere, heh heh, and I want you...TO THINK ABOUT IT. (Picture Peter Lorre rubbing his hands and chuckling evilly as he says this.) Maybe, if you were skeptical before, this will give you the impetus to start up a blog of your own. It's really quite something in here. As e.e. cummings said, "Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go."

a wedding in Masan

Charles and Anne tied the knot this weekend in Masan, just north of the island of Geoje, on the mainland, west of Busan, in a beautiful ceremony on the fifth floor of a wedding plaza which overlooks the spacious, sparkling harbor. To clarify, Charles is the head teacher at my hagwon, and a close personal friend and mentor. He invited Adam, Elaine, Jeff, and myself up to his wedding to his girlfriend Anne, whom I have also had the pleasure of meeting, and who is a very lovely young woman. They've been engaged for a while; I'm just glad the wedding occurred before my contract expired, and I was able to attend. We'd planned in advance to get the bus to Masan on Saturday (the wedding was at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday morning), shop around for some gifts and see whatever sights there were, and then clean up in the morning and don our spiffy duds. Here's what happened. We rode the bus up (a very equable ride compared to the last one, and for only ₩9,000; they kept the A/C on the whole time, at least), and managed to find a cheap motel with a little creative wandering. It was the Nox Motel, and the price was similar to our usual base of operations in Busan: ₩35,000 per night. The only difference was, this place was nice compared with what we were used to. It was still, technically, a love motel. There were tissues by the bed, condoms in the top drawer of the nightstand and porn on the TV, but the sleaze ended there. The bathroom was up to scale with anything seen in Motel 6 or Super 8, back in the States, if not better; the bed and room were both clean, bright, spacious, and tastefully outfitted. There wasn't much to speak of in the mini-bar, but hey. So we checked in and immediately sallied forth into downtown Masan to go wedding-present shopping. It was a bit embarrassing: we got into a cab and said we wanted to go to E-Mart. After approximately sixty seconds, we went around a corner and arrived. The cab driver must've been laughing his head off inside as we handed him the fare. Must've been the easiest 2,200 won he'd ever earned. We had more than a little trouble navigating once we were inside the store, even. It was a five-story building, but get this: the main level was just a convenience store. You know, the quick stuff: cleaning supplies, snacks, batteries, all the things that people want to get in and get out with quick. That makes sense to have that on the first floor. But the parking lots were above this level, and the main store (food section, home supply) was below it. Look me in the eye and tell me that's a logical way to run a railroad. I dare you. After our tour of the parking lots, we finally wound up where we needed to be (subterranean) and got straight to shopping. E-Mart is like Homeplus, but generally has more departments, more selection, and is larger in size overall. We didn't meet with much success. As far as useful, tastefully appointed wedding gifts go, E-Mart was skint. The best chance we had was the hoidy-toidy home furnishings section on the second floor, but there wasn't much choice. Adam and Elaine picked up a nice set of chopsticks and soup spoons in a velvet-covered case, and they were set. I got meat on a stick. We then headed to Lotte Mart, with higher hopes. After some similar difficulty locating the main store, which we suffered for a second time despite the eye-opening E-Mart experience, we emerged onto the main shopping floors and had a look-see. Lotte Mart was much bigger than even E-Mart. There was much more selection: sporting goods, electronics, liquor, a grocery store that looked like any major Western supermarket chain we'd ever been in (to the point of inducing nostalgia)...but no hoidy-toidy home furnishings section. We had a look around the proletarian home furnishings section and located some promising potential: a cutlery rack/holder/board (or whatever you call it; one of them wooden things with slots for holding your knives). There were also some wine glasses. We resolved to take note of these discoveries and go nosing around town for anything that might turn up. In the meantime, we looked to our own needs. As you're probably aware, I am (or was) in dire need of a camera since I lost my previous one (a Fujifilm S8000, purchased for three-hundred and twenty-eight thousand won, or about $220, at Homeplus a few months before) on Jirisan. That problem was solved when I spotted a Canon on sale for ₩169,000. It had a whopping ten megapixels instead of the previous eight, and most of the (important) features of its predecessor. It was also light and infinitely more portable. I was fortunate that it came with a similar package that the Fujifilm did: case, two-gigabyte memory card, recharger, instruction booklets and CDs...all included in the list price. The case, most attractively, is tight and closes securely with Velcro, meaning that I stand a better chance of not "losing" this one... We were getting hungry by this time. We waltzed out of Lotte Mart (pausing to retrieve Adam's backpack from a locker; E-Mart allows you to carry personal bags and packs onto its premises but Lotte Mart is more stringent, and demands that you rent a locker for a hundred won) and into the hazy late afternoon. It was inevitable that we should happen upon a McDonald's. I finally got a chance to try the Shanghai Spicy Chicken Burger, and was not as let down as I thought I'd be. I don't know whether that had anything to do with the quality of the preparation, or whether McDonald's was actually giving a crap about the food it served now, or what. (I will say that I believe Korea is really on the ball as far as fast food goes. Domino's Pizza tastes much better over here than in the U.S., I firmly believe. It makes sense that McDonald's would as well.) Suitably fortified, and having discussed our options thoroughly over greasy fries, Jeff and I elected to return to Lotte Mart and snag the aforementioned gifts we'd noted earlier. That done, we returned to the Nox, dumped our treasures off, and met up with Charles and Anne, who'd arrived in the city before us and completed their wedding preparations. They were anxious to meet up and say hello. They were also tired, run-down, depressed, and physically sick. Their respective employers had worked them to death for the preceding two weeks in light of their impending vacation (bosses are merciless like that over here), and they were so exhausted that their immune systems had packed up and boogied, leaving them diseased and wretched. Poor Anne got to the motel and collapsed (in the room she and Charles rented; they were without accommodation, so we politely informed them about the competitive rates at our place). Charles stuck around with us and drank a little beer. Then we all went out for samgyeopsal in the thriving "new" downtown area, replete with bright causeways, well-lit shops, and respectable-looking food vendors. Charles and Anne ate, then left (at our urging), citing exhaustion and the need for a full night's sleep before tomorrow's festivities. A, E, J, and I hung around for a bit, checking out the sights, and the market. Masan was Charles's hometown; he told us that, 30 years ago, the market we were walking through that evening would have been wall-to-wall with people. You'd have had to shoulder your way through the crowd nonstop from one end of the place to the other. Now it was nearly a ghost town. Those same gigantic superstores we'd passed through earlier that day, E-Mart and Lotte Mart, had snatched away the custom from these small-time merchants in the open air bazaar and relegated them to a sort of shadowy, tourist-trap existence. It was really quite pathetic ("pathetic" here having the meaning of "emotionally provocative," not "pitiful"; well, okay, it was a bit pitiful too). Then we all sat down and had a quiet drink. Or tried to. The first place we went, Billy Western Bar, was way overpriced, despite having enough atmosphere to put Cheers to shame. We went across the street to Beer Mart, and that was better. Shaped and colored like an adobe hacienda on the inside, with faux stucco walls, domed ceilings and exposed rafters, the place had charm. More than that, its imbibing protocol was unique, too: instead of ordering glasses of beer, you went up to the counter, picked out the bottles you wanted (everything from Tiger to Hoegaarden), paid up, took 'em back your table, cracked 'em and drank 'em. It was a rather intimate experience, to be sitting at a comfy table in a comfy seat with a view out the window at the narrow crooked street, sipping comfy cheap beer. We stuck around there for a couple of hours, went and grabbed some mandu (dumplings, remember?) at a stall on the way back, then went back to the hotel to Adam and Elaine's room and sat around and talked. Adam was testing out his new iPod-compatible ghetto blaster (whatever it's called; iSound or something); so we had Kanye West, Curtis Mayfield, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Groove Armada to keep us company as we talked and laughed. We hit the sack at midnight, mindful of an early start the next morning. The next morning proceeded without a hitch. We woke, prepared and were at the wedding plaza, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (as Adam would've said) at a quarter to eleven or so. I should stop here and explain exactly what a wedding plaza is. Apparently there's no such thing as a "single" wedding in Korea. All of 'em are doubles, or group weddings. They are perhaps not simultaneous, but you can bet there'll be another party moving into the wedding hall after you move out of it, within minutes or seconds. Heck, there was another bride fully dolled out in her gown wandering around besides Anne, that's for dang sure, as well as another set of relatives hanging around the darkened wedding hall across the lobby from ours. Upon spotting Charles, who was cutting a dash in a rather fetching white tuxedo and gloves (and obviously sweating in the sticky heat of springtime Masan and a building that wasn't exactly climate-controlled), we made our way over. We shook hands, congratulated him, and then he promptly thrust the camcorder into my hands. Oh, didn't I tell you? I'd agreed to be the cameraman. I was fairly sweating myself by this time. Agreeing to do the camera work at somebody's wedding is one thing a month or two in advance over beers in that somebody's apartment, but once you actually step into the chapel and take the camera from their hands, the full import of your choice hits you. If I screw this up, I thought to myself, I'll have ruined one of their most precious memories, the start of their life together...or something like that. Nonetheless, I accepted the camcorder and went to work. I got some footage of Charles with his mother, and Anne's rather staid and dignified parents. I also got a lot of footage of Anne, who was sitting in her gorgeous wedding gown in a small room off the main lobby, on display, as it were. Seriously, that's how it was. It was just this closet-sized room, tastefully wallpapered and decorated, in which the bride sat in review and people came up to greet and congratulate her, while the groom ran around attending to all the last-minute crises, an attendant following him around and dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief. That's Korean custom, apparently. I shot some film of her and her friends, and just got some obscure statements from her about how she was feeling and so on, like I was some kind of half-baked amateur reporter or something. That having been done, the real nerve-wracking stuff began: the ceremony proper. Instead of entering on foot, both bride and groom rode into the hall on a sort of raised trolley-like affair, in appearance almost like a bower, wreathed with flowers and a gate supposedly made to resemble old-fashioned wrought iron (in the European style). It had a smoke machine on it, which was going full blast as bombastic music played on the speakers. Charles and Anne stood straight and solemn as this contraption bore them into the room, traversing one entire wall (tastefully and skilfully painted with some Renaissance-style landscape), bowing occasionally. They then exited (with the help of formally dressed yet feverish attendants who unlatched the faux wrought-iron gates and gathered up Anne's train frantically) and arranged themselves at the end of the aisle. Charles walked down first, bowed first to his mother, then Anne's mother (both of whom were wearing hanbok, traditional Korean formal clothing, and seated on either side of aisle at the very front), then the chaplain, and then waited. Anne and her father then proceeded down the aisle, to the accompaniment of music and applause (similar to Charles's progress), and did a similar amount of bowing. Anne's father joined his wife and Anne joined Charles, and the ceremony proceeded. It was short and sweet. The whole "I now pronounce you man and wife" bit was, needless to say, indiscernible, even despite my five months of Korean lessons. After that, there was applause, Charles and Anne cut the cake, drank wine, and regally exited the hall. ...during all of which I was running around desperately trying to capture it. It was no picnic dashing from one end of the room to the other to maximize my chances at getting the best shots of Charles and Anne as they rode in the trolley, walked up (and down) the aisle, and cut the cake. Matters were complicated (by default) by the official wedding photographer, who was likewise walking about and getting shots; he kept getting in the way of mine. Given the aforementioned gravity of the situation, I also had some difficulty holding my hands steady. I think I did pretty well, though, except for a bit of camera shake and perhaps accidentally deleting the part with the trolley and the first procession down the aisle when I tried to zoom in and instead switched photography modes. (Whoops!) Drenched with sweat, I handed the camera back to Charles and gratefully went with Adam, Elaine and Jeff to snag some eats. The food was delicious, and who ever had ordered the catering had spared no expense. There was tender boiled octopus; real, actual ham; and gimbap and kimchi in plenty, of course, as well as several other delicious dishes I couldn't even identify, both Korean and Chinese in origin. I held myself down to one plate of food. We'd resolved to hit up Meat Home (since renamed Meat Rak), one of our regular haunts, a meat buffet restaurant in Gohyeon, that evening for the last time before my departure from Korea. In the meantime, instead of getting to rest from their incessant labors, Charles and Anne had (per Korean tradition) changed into hanbok of their own and were now meeting and greeting the guests at the dining tables. Charles spared us a few moments to say hello (to our relief, both Charles and Anne looked better, and said as much). When we'd finished eating, we congratulated them once more and left. Within two hours they'd be on the plane to Bali. Maybe there they'll finally get their rest. I hope so. We hit McDonald's once more on the way to the bus stop, of course. (Elaine's not too keen on Meat Home and needed something for herself.) But we did board the bus and survived the ride back (which was even more equable than the ride up, unbelievably; perhaps I've been too hasty in my judgment of buses here). We changed out of our things at our respective apartments. Jeff came over to my place briefly so he could show me the ropes of Hostel World, a nice website devoted to the location and reservation of cheap hostels worldwide; and I gave him a super-compressed 20-minute crash course in Korean. His brain was porridge by the end of it, but I think we made some definite progress. Then Adam, Jeff and I hit up Meat Home and took our best shot at making a Bacon Bomb. (I'm too tired to explain to you what that is; look it up on YouTube.) We were marginally successful, despite a deplorable lack of proper equipment. After two hours of feasting, we parted, eminently satisfied with the weekend's proceedings. It hit me, as Jeff and I walked to Meat Home in the cool, moist evening air, the soft reddish glow of the sun rebounding from the low-hanging cottony clouds, that the curtain was truly closing on my Korean sojourn. I felt regret, be certain of that. But I also felt that I was doing the right thing by getting while the getting was good. I couldn't shake the feeling that re-upping my contract (which I'd seriously considered at one point, and still lightly entertained) would be a mistake. Things would begin to pall for me soon enough. I might as well go before I get tired of it. Still, I got the unshakable feeling that I'd be homesick for this place after I left. That would be a complete turnaround, but I suspect its truth regardless. I'm going to miss going out to Meat Home and having a protein hangover in the morning, or getting invited to weddings in Masan, or having elementary-school kids greeting me at the door of Reading Town with ear-to-ear grins and punches in the gut. It's been magical, to say the least. Still is.

on the consumption of live octopus

You have not misread the title.

No, you're not going blind.

Yes, they eat live octopus in Korea.

Charles tells me it's the number-one surefire gross-out food for most foreigners. Most people can't stand the sight of it. For me, it's a dream come true. I like octopus; why bother to waste the time cooking it, or even waiting for it to mature? Just take some baby octopi, slice 'em up into bite-size chunks, then grab some chopsticks and some sesame oil and eat them, still wriggling.

That's sannakji: live baby octopus.

As soon as we learned of this delicacy, Adam, Jeff and I knew we had to try it. Come on: how many times in your life are you going to get an opportunity as bizarre as this?

I'd like to restate the principle of the thing for those of you who might be skimming this article in search of the juicy bits: sannakji is

LIVE BABY OCTOPUS,
EATEN WHILE IT'S STILL WRIGGLING.

Is that clear? Splendid. Let there be no further speculation on it.

Sannakji was on the "must-try" list for Korea. However, being Newbies, we were unsure where to go to obtain some. So we asked Charles, who, being Korean himself, was our resident expert on all things Korea-related, especially food. He said he'd look around. His first recommendation was just to waltz into any seafood- or fish-related restaurant and order up. We heard rumors about a full plate of bulgogi and sannakji served up at some eatery over in Deoksan, a burg somewhere between Gohyeon and Okpo, but didn't act on it.


Then Charles found something more material: sannakji being sold out in the local sijang (market). After some scheduling mishaps (Jeff, the poor sap, is being "rented out" to kindergarten by his employer; his mornings are taken up with teaching now as well as his afternoons), we managed to set a meeting time: Wednesday noon across from the market, outside Lotteria.
I awoke that morning agog with expectation, and everything I turned my hand to seemed charmed. It was certainly charming weather, a warm and sunny spring day with a breath of cool breeze to tone down the blossoming sunlight. I donned my most gaudy Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses, took a long walk, then went back to the apartment to fetch the camera. As I rounded the corner of the block the market sits on, I descried Adam standing in front of Lotteria, in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, his cap pulled low over his eyes, smoking a cigarette and surveying the market in front of him. Both of us acknowledged that we might need some water to wash some enterprising octopus down our throats, so we went in search of a convenience store. We'd heard that sannakji can be tenacious, wrapping their tentacles around your teeth or attaching themselves to your gums with their suckers. Adam's drink-sniffing nose led us to a shop just a minute or so up the street; we nabbed a couple of water bottles and nipped back to the rendezvous, where Jeff had arrived in the meantime. Soon Charles rolled up on his bicycle, and the three of us walked across the street to the market. We located our quarry after only three steps.

Charles, ever watchful for an opportunity for me to practice my Korean in a practical setting, called on me to conduct the transaction.
"Sannakji eolmayeyo?" I asked.
The woman held up four fingers (swathed in pink rubber gloves).
"Nemari man won," she replied. Four octopi for ten grand. We took out our billfolds and started up a collection for the Mollusk Consumption Foundation. Without further ado, the woman snatched four wriggling baby octopi out of the basket, sliced them into chunks, put them in a bag, and handed it to us with a container of wasabi. As we left the market and strode back to where Charles had parked his bicycle he suggested we adjourn to his place; he could procure some sesame oil and we could eat in comfort and peace. This we did. We installed ourselves and our precious haul of raw mollusk under a pavilion in a playground next to Charles's apartment (the same ill-fated playground in which I'd lost my wristwatch during a drunken dive out of a swingset after the housewarming party).

Charles dumped his stuff off in his apartment and reemerged with paper cups of sesame oil and chopsticks. Then we opened up the container and went to work. Inside was a moist, gelatinous mass of tentacles and amorphous chunks of octopus, the color of brain matter. Most of it was still writhing. Lesser men would have balked at the mere idea, to say nothing of the sight; but we set our teeth and went into the breach.

It was interesting eating. Uncooked octopus tastes and feels a tad rubbery, but regardless I believe that intoxicating oceanic flavor that pervades seafood (especially mollusks) was still present, and appreciable. My first bite wasn't moving perceptibly, either. So I made sure to nab a motile tentacle the next time around. This is most visible in the video.

The feel of a tentacle writhing away in my mouth, scraping roughly against my tongue, teeth and cheeks, is a feeling not soon to be equaled in this lifetime or the next. I strongly suggest you try it, if only once. I wound up eating a load of the stuff. Jeff took a huge bite the first time out and the magic sort of went out of it for him; Adam's views on the subject are perhaps best summarized by this picture, taken shortly after the one above.


Nonetheless we all continued to pick at the stuff. We'd come this far. By now, at least, it had stopped moving. Finally everyone declared they'd had their fill and I was left to finish the remainder.

I'm known as something of a walking garbage disposal in these parts. Jeff is the accomplished master in dealing with leftovers; it is my lot to eat any and all strange, odd, unusual, revolting or disturbing foods. Put us together and we'll eat anybody, anywhere out of house and home.

So ended the Trial of the Octopus. We came, we saw, we sampled. For us all, it was the realization of a dream; we'd finally gotten our chance to challenge and master sannakji and the principle of stuffing still-moving food into our gullets. For me, moreover, it marked the first steps toward the completion of a pet ambition (sample the weirdest food of every country I visit, and then write a compendium).

We said a hearty thank-you to Charles, our guide, teacher and minister, then departed for our respective apartments.

We can now all die happy men.

a rain of strawberry leaves

In recognition of the fact that I am a gosh darn coward and have been rationalizing like a bloody fool about not buying something at Gohyeon Sijang (the open-air market in the northwest-central part of town), I decided to cut the Gordian knot, take the bull by the horns, carpe diem and all those other turns of phrase and do it. I also decided to get some pictures; I haven't been to many open-air markets in foreign countries, but Gohyeon's strikes me as a charming sort of place, and iconic in its way. Some of the Asian markets I've seen on documentaries (be they Japanese, Chinese, Malaysian or otherwise) all seem to have some common themes: narrow lanes, overhanging awnings and umbrellas, goods and wares arranged in an orderly fashion every which-way, exploding out of the shops and onto the walkway, and crowds and crowds of people milling around, haggling, buying this and that, while vendors hawk their wares or busily prepare them.

Gohyeon Sijang embodies that ideal and manifests those attributes. So I decided to get some pictures and buy some stuff. Any stuff. Just to prove to myself that could do it.

It worked.

Sunday had been a semi-big day already. I woke up at nine, got some milk at the corner store, then came back and made some pancakes. It's true I made them from a mix, but hey, they were recognizably pancakes. I burnt 'em a bit but they still tasted great. I cooked up some bacon, too, and poured the generic Korean brand of maple syrup (still recognizably maple syrup) all over everything. Delicious, I'd forgotten how much I'd missed it. Back home in my folks' house there's a big pancake breakfast every Sunday; it got to be a tradition, like homemade pizzas on Wednesday nights.

Anyway, that was that. Then, after doing my exercises (over the span of an hour; I can't be bothered to really push myself), I put on my camera, grabbed Michael Palin's book Hemingway Adventure (on loan from Jeff) and strode out. First I thought I'd return Jeff's book, but either he wasn't in or he was still asleep. Then I walked up to Adam and Elaine's and knocked on their door. I wanted to get some pictures of Bo Jenkins to send to the relations. While I was there, Adam and I thought we'd finally attempt to trim the rabbit's claws; they were monstrously, hideously long. Either its previous owners had neglected it or it had been on its own for a long time. Bo Jenkins did well on his left anterior paw, but when we switched to his right he became somewhat skittish and darted back into his cage. We decided to leave his remaining two limbs for later. I was beginning to sneeze from the alfalfa anyway.

It happened that A & E were on their way to Homeplus to do some weekend food shopping as well as restock on rabbit supplies, and I was headed that way myself to attain some gifts for my grandparents. I'm sending some acacia honey, a Korean specialty, to my grandfather, some coffee mugs, some red ginseng tea for Grandma, and some assorted snacks such as they always kindly send me: nuts, cookies, and the like. I'm sending that off tomorrow with my brother Harlan's twenty-first (yikes!) birthday card. I also wanted to secure a high-capacity USB drive; I realized that my laptop is aging rapidly and if it goes I'll lose all of the high-definition photos I've taken while I've been here. So we all strode down to Homeplus together. We stopped to check out a couple of pet stores along the way, but they were devoid of rabbit-related products.

Adam was starving, so we dropped in at Lotteria (the Korean fast-food joint) and ordered up. I thought it was high time I tried a bulgogi burger. I got it and found it rather good, actually. It tasted like a regular burger with bulgogi sauce, but bulgogi sauce ain't bad: kind of like a sweetish, tasty barbecue sauce. Elaine decided she didn't like her chicken sandwich, so Adam and I split it. It was soggy but palatable. Adam and Elaine pronounced themselves more satisified with their Lotteria experience this time around; last time they'd complained of small, soggy, old, stale burgers, some of the worst quality they'd had. This time around was better. Perhaps it's best to go later in the day when the staff have had time to clear out the day-old stock.

After a few more detours to appliance stores and ATMs for camera pricing and cash (respectively) we arrived at Homeplus and did our shopping. Then we returned in a cab, and I came back down to my place, dumped off my USB drive (four gigs) and my other shopping, then hauled my camera back on, got some cash out of an ATM, then went to the market to impulse photograph/buy. I'm still a coward. I didn't take nearly as many photos as I could or should have, simply because I was scared of ticking off the vendors or shopkeepers. Heck, I'm going to be gone in a few months anyway. What are they going to do, lynch me?

Still, the shots I did get were good. Have a look:

In the meantime, I also did some impulse buying. A few days earlier I'd seen a hat I'd liked at a clothing stall for 8,000 won. I jumped at that one first. I bought it up and couldn't be happier about it. I'll get a picture of myself wearing it up here soon.

Then I thought I needed some food. I wanted to buy a stingray right then and there; the catalyst for this new expatriate inadequacy complex of mine was the fact that I'd considered buying fish from the fish market. Adam suggested I just look up a recipe on the Internet, buy a fish and take my chances. That was such an astonishingly good and simple idea that my insecure brain immediately collapsed into a miasma of self-deprecation and reproach. Hence this whole trip to the market. I was having salad that night, and my freezer was already stuffed with a couple of left-over gray mullet, otherwise I would've purchased the strangest fish I could find, no matter the cost.

Given the circumstances, though, I settled for strawberries. I was walking along the main street and saw an elderly lady vendor offering strawberries. I asked the price: 14,000. That was stiff, but I went for it. I didn't realize I was supposed to haggle. I didn't realize I'd get a whole basketful of them, either, along with two plastic bowls for carrying. The whole affair was loaded into a plastic bag and I, overwhelmed but nonetheless elated at my achievements, took the load and soldiered on. I made a loop around the outside of the market, doubled back through the fish vendors, and wound up back at my starting point by the clothing stalls. This time I noticed some cargo pants that looked like they'd fit me. I was starting to get low on usable pants, so I purchased them for 11,900 won.

Thus laden, I snapped a few more pics and vamoosed. I got back to my room, took a shower, washed up the strawberries, took them up to the roof with my copy of 50 Great Short Stories, then sat, read and munched in the evening light. The put the strawberries in my mouth, tore off the leaves with my hand, and sent them fluttering in the breeze down to the street four stories below. There was a veritable rain of strawberry leaves falling on that street this evening.

Now I'm blogging, cutting up a tomato for my salad, listening to Herbert von Karajan conducting Beethoven's Eighth Symphony in F Major (whaddya know, YouTube is good for something), and will soon load up another dubbed episode of One Piece to enjoy before I go down to the pub with Brian at eleven.

Oh yeah, I need to look up some fish recipes too.