30 Days to a Better Man, Day 8: start a journal

This sure was an easy day! As it happens, I already keep three journals. One of them is this very blog. It's not updated daily, but it's at least semi-regular; if ye doubt, take a look at the blog URL up there. I also keep a food diary in a little blue notebook, keeping track of my meals and occasionally my workout schedule, and a regular daily journal in a larger black ring-bound notebook.

I've tried keeping journals before and always failed, because I wound up writing novels: describing my feelings at length, opining on various topics, recapping each happenstance in excruciating detail. Inevitably my creativity would burn out, my hand would cramp up and I'd abandon the exercise.

This time, though, I've been a lot more successful. I started a simpler daily journal about halfway through October, with bullet points denoting the things I did and saw that day, and who I did and saw them with. It was intended to document the useful things I accomplished during the Facebook hiatus, actually. But when mid-December rolled around, I didn't stop. I found that keeping a journal inspired me to accomplish more. (It sure beat writing "loafed around and played Steam games" every day.) I was remembering things more clearly, too. Not to mention that I am, you know, a journalist. I should be keeping a journal, particularly if I live in a foreign country, and a country at war with its neighbor to boot.

So there y'are. It's nice to find out that I've got a leg up over the average man already. Now excuse me, I have to go update my journals.

Watch out for Day 9... 

2013...as it relates to 2014

Dear Blogsphere: 

Miss H has flown home for her brief winter break. I just saw her off at the sparkly, well-lit Incheon Airport. I now have eight lonely days to devour pungent seafood, scratch myself, burp, shower every 72 hours and just generally act like a mangy orangutan an unwed male twentysomething.

This was originally supposed to be a post about what I did during my recent Facebook hiatus, but then I thought I'd go one better and tell you what-all I did during 2013. (It's becoming a tradition.)

So here, as noted in my little black spiral-bound notebook, is what I did during the two-month break from the Book o' Faces:
 

• read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• started reading The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (which are the reasons I didn't read more during the break)
• wrote, printed, administered and graded midterm exams
• wrote, printed, administered and graded final exams
• bet on the winning horse and scored ₩1,200 at Seoul Racecourse Park (about $1.10)
• watched the sunset from Gwangjin Bridge (pictured below)
• toured Seolleung and Jeongneung
• found and ordered Coleman waterproof matches (for my pipe) on Gmarket
• joined a gym
• rode a two-person bike with Miss H for the first time (at Ttukseom Resort)
• watched Red Dawn (2012), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), Wrath of the Titans (2012), The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013), Catching Fire (2013), The Edge (2010), and In the Fog (2012) 
• had the fraying cuffs of my two coats repaired (our tailor's a magician)
• assembled a bug-out bag (in case the NoKos invade)
• discovered a bitchin' new bar in Cheonho (Heaven's Key)
• tried to catch the O-Train and failed
• edited Novel #2
• got nearly 40,000 words into my NaNoWriMo project
• took my computer to Gangnam to be repaired
• failed at NaNoWriMo
• brewed my first partial mash beer with the boys (a British red ale)
• drank expensive cocktails on the 41st floor of the Sindorim Sheraton Hotel with Miss H
• explored Gapyeong and Namiseom
• tried a new shrimp-rice dish at the corner diner
• dumped the red ale down the toilet (suspected bacterial infection)
• bought a new backpack for Australia (₩58,000)
• went to the Seoul Lantern Festival
• took several glorious naps
• bought my own set of beer-making supplies
• had corned beef hash at Butterfingers in Gangnam
• went to Incheon for our customary Thanksgiving dinner at Fog City Diner and bought sourdough bread from the proprietor
• had my first halfway-decent conversation with a Korean cabbie
• brewed (and drank) a nice chocolate porter with the fellas
• finally mailed those souvenirs from China to my parents
• rode down to Busan on the KTX for a Christmas party; met up with everyone on Geoje Island; had tapas and wine, watched a football match at an Irish pub, and wound up at a noraebang
• watched the sunset from the top of the Lotte Department Store in Nampo-dong, Busan
• caught the night train to Seoul
• booked my Hokkaido junket
• reconnected with an old friend (my illustrator)
• came down with rhinitis
• went on the Itaewon Foodie Crawl (French, Spanish, Russian and Italian)
• picked new names for the fictitious cities, countries and continents in my sci-fi series
• brewed a nice ginger IPA with my beer-buddies
• did 18 hours of extra classes during finals week
• took Novel #3 to 81,000 words and Novel #4 to 38,000 words

And here, included as a...supplement? Addendum? Appendix? Well, whatever. Here's the rest of what I accomplished in 2013:

• read Hiroshima by John Hersey, Skybreaker and Starclimber by Kenneth Oppel, Distant Thunders and Rising Tides by Taylor Anderson, Dubliners by James Joyce, The Last Time I Was Me by Cathy Lamb (part of a book-exchange program with Miss H), and five or six other titles I don't recall...far short of my goal of 30
• tried and failed to keep a book diary (obviously)
• finished my contract at Avalon English in Bucheon
• moved to Seoul, the world's most populous city (proper)
• got a job at Sejong University (and successfully completed my first year there)
• got straight A's on all my teaching evaluations, too
• started the semester with tonsillitis, though
• attended a family reunion in Iowa in July
• swam in a man-made lake
• went to see Jesse James's childhood home
• finally got to eat (and drink!) at the Yardhouse in Victoria Gardens
• fired a Smith & Wesson Model 10 
• traveled through western Japan on the Shinkansen in August (Tokyo → Kyoto → Kumamoto)
• rode the JR Beetle from Hakata to Busan
• ate horse meat
• got into home brewing with my coworkers
• toured Beijing and the Great Wall of China for the Chuseok holiday
• ate fried scorpion (that was on the bucket list!) as well as roast duck and bullfrog soup
• picked up a pile of PC games on Steam
• wrote humor pieces for Rabble Rouse the World
• bought a Stanwell beechwood pipe and Captain Black tobacco
• purchased a bottle of 10-year-old Ardbeg single malt Scotch with spare change
• started Novel #4
• submitted a dozen or so short sci-fi stories to e-magazines like Space Squid, 3LBE and Daily Science Fiction (publication still eludes me, however)
• grew a beard (bucket list!)
• received an e-reader (a Nook) from my significant other as a gift; haven't touched it

And that's about all I can think of for now.

Here's the part where I'm supposed to tell you what I've got planned for next year. Alright, here you go: another two semesters at Sejong University, the Sapporo Snow Festival in Hokkaido in February, a summer trip to Alaska and some other destination as-yet-unchosen, e-publishing Novel #2, shopping Novel #1 to publishers, finishing Novels #3, #4 and possibly #5, smoking the dickens out of my pipe, moving out of this hellhole villa, brewing the tastiest beers this side of the East China Sea, planning my wedding, and growing this beard down to my sternum.

Postman out.

Noshember (No-Shave November)

I'm participating, in case you didn't know. I'm going to try and grow myself a full beard. Never done that before. I got pretty close last spring, when I was looking at the cherry blossoms in Jamsil:

Then I shaved most of that horrid thing off and cultivated a sort of Gordon Freeman-esque Van Dyke for the intervening summer and autumn:

When November rolled around, I put my razor to bed. In the past few weeks, I've sprouted a bit. You saw how scruffy I looked when I went to Namiseom:

But get this: I'm not going to shave when we reach December. I'm going to keep going through January and possibly February. I'm going to grow this baby out. It took me two months to achieve that Van Dyke; now I'm going to see what four months can do to my entire face.

Hopefully this:

Say whatever you like about Robert Redford, he can grow himself a beardly beard.

Jeremiah Johnson-style. Yeah. Now we're cooking with gas. That's what I'm aiming for. By the time I tromp back to Korea from Hokkaido, Australia, and New Zealand (latest addition to the itinerary), I wanna be sporting a full beard.

Wish me luck...

Gapyeong and Namiseom

Yesterday, my usual day off, I was up early and thought the weather too nice to spend inside. So I went forth to Cheongnyangni Station and caught the ITX for Gapyeong. It's a small city on the Bukhan (North Han) River in eastern Gyeonggi-do, right on the border with Gangwon-do and not far from Chuncheon.

The main tourist attractions in Gapyeong aren't in Gapyeong at all. They're in the middle of the river: Jaraseom and Namiseom, two tiny islands just a few hundred meters upstream. My target was Namiseom. I got off the ITX at Gapyeong Station, took a five-minute, minimum-fare taxi ride to the wharf, and stepped out into the autumn chill.

As I threaded my way through the bus parking lot and the crowds of chattering middle-aged ajummas and ajusshis (immaculate in their hiking gear and backpacks), I heard a hissing, rasping sound from overhead. I looked up. High above me, two hooting people in harness were sliding down a zip-line from a tall tower to Namiseom Island.

I was delighted. I knew I had to try this novel way of traversing the Bukhan; a humdrum ferry ride wouldn't suffice. I wanted to zip-line in like a ninja or a U.S. Marine.

After stumping up ₩38,000 (and stepping on a scale, to my shame), I and seven other would-be ninjas crammed ourselves onto a creaky elevator and found ourselves on a wobbly platform 80 meters above the wharf.

My zipping partner and I climbed into our chairs and placed our knees against the departure gate while the attendants gave us a safety briefing and strapped us in. Then, with a "three, two, one" (in English) we were off. I stuck my legs straight out as ordered. My considerably greater weight caused me to gain speed and outdistance my partner. I hissed down the 940-meter cable, whistling one of the triumphal numbers from the movie Dumbo, my hair flying off my brow and the greenish-brown river water gurgling by hundreds of feet below. After a spring-loaded halt at the bottom, I detached myself, snapped the only picture I could of the run, and entered Namiseom proper.

You can call it "Nami Island" if you're confused. "Seom" is, I take it, the Korean word for a smallish island. The big ones are just called "do" (Jeju-do, Ganghwa-do, Geoje-do)...but this is the same suffix used for provinces as well, causing confusion. "Nami" comes from the name of a general who is buried on the island. His story is...well, reprinted here for your convenience (click to embiggen).

I didn't know this at the time I toured the island, but apparently—and only half-jokingly—it considers itself a micronation. There were signs everywhere promoting the "Naminara Republic." I didn't buy a ticket at the wharf, I bought a "tourist visa" (for ₩8,000). There were flag-draped "embassies" everywhere on the island; it has its own minister of culture, foreign secretary, currency (though Korean bills are accepted), passport, and postage stamps; and, if Wikipedia is to be believed, the tiny island has sent emissaries to foreign countries. The island is a literal stone's throw from Gapyeong in Gyeonggi Province, but technically belongs to Chuncheon...so hey, I guess I can say I've finally been to Gangwon.

It's tiny. Namiseom is only 430,000 square meters in area and about 4 kilometers in diameter. (To give you some perspective, the New South China Mall in Dongguan has 430,000 square meters of floor area; most of it unused, sadly.) But the miniscule dot of land in the middle of the Bukhan is jam-packed with museums, art galleries, cafés, restaurants (even one that served Peking duck), scenic pathways, trails, open fields, picnic areas, open-air stages, ateliers, bungalows, gardens, ponds, even a friggin' ostrich paddock.

Here, take a look through my eyes (and camera lens):

The tomb of Nami, the boy general.

 

The east side of the island. That's Gangwon Province over there. Pretty, huh?

World-famous Nami sausage.

Your not-so-humble correspondent.

...scribbled by an Iranian poet.

The Metasequoia Path.

The Gingko Path.

The carpeting of the Gingko Path.

If I've read that sign on the left there correctly, this odd wigwam-like structures were once used for fermenting kimchi. Not sure how that works. Kimchi is usually stuck in a pot and buried for months while it ferments. These look more like smokehouses. Mmm...smoked kimchi. There's a vivid thought.

No idea.

Outdoor library (?) by one of the for-rent bungalows.

The west (Gyeonggi-do) side.

The ferry landing.

Some other zip-line ninjas came whirring overhead as the ferry crossed the river.