Bangkok, day one (part I)

Not my photo. Obviously.

Travel Truth #5: Take time to take time.

For what? Well, to relax. Or to get stuff done. Either one. Don't be rushing around trying to see everything all the time. You have to slow down and sacrifice some of your precious vacation to housekeeping. Or precious oblivion. Either one. 

The first half of my first full day in Bangkok was devoted to errands. Administrative stuff, such as: 

1. laundry
2. acquiring a tourist map, a pen, a small notebook (for taking notes while I'm walking around), floss, and sunblock
3. get a tuk-tuk to take me to Hua Lamphong Station to buy tickets for Malaysia
4. find a bookstore and pick up some reading material to replace The Catcher in the Rye, which I'd finished on the bus from Cambodia
5. eat Thai food, as much as I can hold
6. buy and send postcards, if possible

The second half would be devoted to...well, whatever the hell I wanted. I have a couple of things I like to do when I first get to a city, like:

• climb some high thing and get the lay o' the land
• take a stroll in the neighborhood immediately surrounding my lodgings and get a feel for it
• find out where the nearest bus, train, and cab stations are
• eat local food and people-watch

I'd picked up floss and sunblock and notepads and pens when I went to 7-11 last night for water, so that was already done. I dropped off my laundry at the front desk for 100 baht, picked up a tourist map, grabbed a tuk-tuk to Hua Lamphong, and bought a second-class sleeper ticket to Butterworth, Malaysia (only 1200 baht, or $40). 

I walked out of the station, ignoring the cries of the ravening tuk-tuk drivers who yelled that it was too hot and too far to walk anywhere, and crossed the canal. I'd intended to trek northwest to find Wat Traimit, the Temple of the Golden Buddha. I found it quickly, but unexpectedly found that I didn't feel like going inside. You have to pick and choose your wats carefully, you know. But here's where the day began to turn frustrating. 

Nobody in Thailand, or all of Southeast Asia for that matter, believed that (a) I knew where I was going, or (b) that I was capable of getting there under my own power. I stopped a street corner to ask a portly man in a dark blue security uniform about the way to the Temple of the Black Buddha, and he pointed me in the direction with no fuss. But after wandering around aimlessly down Charoen Krung Road for 30-45 minutes with no temple in sight, I began to get annoyed. I sat down on the steps of the Robinson Shopping Center and consulted my map. After a few moments, an elderly Thai gent stepped up to me and asked in perfect English "Where are you going?"

I told my balding, liver-spotted interlocutor that I was trying to reach the temples near the Chao Phraya River. 

"Oh!" he exclaimed. "You must hire a tuk-tuk. He'll take you around for the whole day for a very reasonable price. What did you want to see while you are here?"

I said, "I'd like to see the temples."

He told me that it was no good—today was a "Big Buddha Day" and all the temples would be jam-packed with celebrants and gawking foreigners. 

"You really must get out of the city," he admonished. 

"I don't know what's out th—"

"All of the most beautiful things are to be found there: the floating markets, the crocodile farm, the rose garden, and the ruins of the ancient capital."

"I don't think I—"

"You can hire a tuk-tuk to take you around the city for only 30 baht per hour!"

"I believe I'd rather—"

"You should also stop by the fashion district. You want to get new clothes, right? All the best tailors can  be found there."

"I don't need any—"

"Here, come this way. We'll hire a tuk-tuk to take you to a tour company where you can book a tour."

I tried to demur. I tried to protest. I tried to balk. All to no avail: the Thai gent took me by the elbow and steered me toward a waiting line of lime-green tuk-tuks at the curb, and fell to haggling in Thai with the driver, a young man with a shock of black hair and a paunchy stomach. Then, without knowing how, I was inside the vehicle and we were rocketing through traffic. A few minutes later I stood outside a blue-painted shopfront with five jaunty stone steps leading up to the threshold. In the dim interior I could make out other foreigners sitting at desks, and on the other side Thai clerks who were taking notes and making suggestions and gestures. 

Oh well, I thought. I don't really have anything planned for Day 3 anyway. 

I walked in. The kindly old lady behind the counter, her shoulder-length hair dyed ebony and her insectoid eyes magnified by thick spectacles, waited patiently while I pored over the catalog. I booked a tour to Kanchanaburi, the province northeast of Bangkok near the Burmese border: the River Kwai Bridge, the floating markets, and something called the "tiger temple." It looked promising and only cost 2,200 baht (around $70 at the time). The River Kwai Bridge was actually on my Thailand bucket list, but I hadn't figured it was so close to Bangkok. This was going to be exciting. 

Then the tuk-tuk driver took me to MBK, a fashionable men's clothing boutique in the tailor district. I didn't even set foot on the sidewalk. I'd been warned about this kind of thing. The doorman and the proprietor both came out of the glass doors to try to cajole me inside, but I stayed put. I looked my tuk-tuk driver square in the back of the head and said, "No way. I hate shopping. That was the old man's idea, not mine." I ignored every attempt by the driver and the shop owner to entice me from my entrenched position. Instead, I calmly and civilly requested to be taken to the nearest foodie neighborhood. That royally pissed off my driver. At the time, I wasn't sure why, but then I realized that tuk-tuk drivers usually get a commission from shop owners for delivering customers to their doors. I had just cheated my driver of his bonus, and now he was snorting and looking for any excuse to buck me off. Testily he drove me to the seediest, dirtiest, loneliest, most dubious-looking streetside eatery in all Bangkok: a few dingy tables with cigarette-scarred plastic tablecloths, meats fried into blackened oblivion, desiccated-looking vegetables, flies, heaps of refuse, scrawny women and sinister customers lurking in the shadows beneath rain-stained awnings. I was just glad to be out of the damn tuk-tuk, and the feeling was mutual. 

"After you eat, where you go?" the driver asked as I stepped out of his rig.
"Here," I said, pointing to my hostel on the map.
"Too far," he said.
Bullshit, I thought. I knew for a fact that we were in the Riverside district and it wasn't but a hop, skip, and a jump to Pretchaburi Road, my hostel's neighborhood.
"You get taxi," the driver continued. "I'm done with you."

That's fine, I was done with him too. I paid him the 100 baht he demanded was never gladder to see the back of anyone. Fuming, I walked a block and grabbed a (blue) tuk-tuk driven by someone who looked like the Southeast Asian version of Ernest P. Worrell. He was older than God and his rig in bad need of service. We coughed, wheezed, and lurched rheumatically through the streets back to Boxpackers, with me holding on for dear life and striving to hold back my temper and the contents of my stomach. The driver only gave me 40 baht change out of the 200 I'd given him, but I didn't care. I practically sprinted back up to my room and the air-conditioned sanctuary of my cubicle and my journals. My laundry was waiting for me, clean but stuffed unfolded into a plastic bag. 

It wasn't even noon yet. 

Ho Chi Minh City, day one

Travel Truth #2: It pays to have friends. 

The light in which you first see a city is important. No unfamiliar metropolis looks attractive under grey, cloudy skies. Maybe some of the towns in Western Europe could pull it off, but definitely not Asia. 

I first saw Ho Chi Minh City (which from hereon I shall interchangeably refer to as either "HCMC" or "Saigon") under the pale pink light of dawn, and it was already bustling. Scooters—even more numerous than they'd been in Hanoi—warred for room on the roads with trucks and cars and taxicabs. Shopkeepers, fruit sellers, noodle-mongers, and other vendors were just opening their doors. The city was stretching and yawning wakefully under the warm, steamy, slanting light of the morning sun, which leaped above the horizon with equatorial swiftness. I observed all this as I rode in a cab from the Saigon Railway Station in District 3 to Cong Quynh Street in District 1 (which, I believe, was named after a popular scholar who lived during the Le-Trinh dynasty). 

It was barely six-thirty. Check-in time wasn't for another nine hours. But my road had been paved ahead of me. A Geordie friend whom I knew from my Geoje days, Adam, knew the morning receptionist at Green Suites. He'd greased a few wheels for me, and she admitted me to the hotel for no extra charge. Pays to have friends, see?

I had to wait a couple of hours for a room to be cleaned and prepared for me, but hey—no extra charge! 

Green Suites was infinitely better than the Asia Star in Hanoi—bigger, brighter, cleaner rooms, an enormous bathroom, a double bed whose mattress eschewed the usual Asian adamance, and more tasteful interior décor. Gratefully I flung my baggage down and took a long shower. I considered a nap, but I was too excited. I hadn't seen Adam, Jeff, or Jenn in something like six months, and now here we were in an entirely new city in an entirely new country and about to go exploring. Hell yeah. Just you try to sit still, mister. 

Adam showed up to get me at half-past noon, and we walked through a crooked series of shade- and sun-drenched alleys to Jeff and Jenn's hotel. They'd had a hell of a time getting to Vietnam from Indonesia; their Tiger Air flight had delivered them safely but their baggage was still stuck in Singapore. To mend their stressed souls we wended our way through the twisting alleys to a nearby café and had us some Vietnamese coffee. 

Now perhaps you haven't heard about Vietnamese iced coffee, or cà phê đá in the local lingo. To quote Wikipedia, it's "coarse-ground Vietnamese-grown dark roast coffee individually brewed with a small metal French drip filter into a cup containing about a quarter to a half as much sweetened condensed milk, stirred and poured over ice." 

And that's about all you need to know, really. Aside from the fact that it's freaking delicious.

And you know what else is freaking delicious? Bacon sandwiches. 

This place was called The Hungry Pig, started by a wet-behind-the-ears English university grad who obeyed the call to "Go east, young man, go east" and, like so many of his British peers, became an entrepreneur in the Orient. This little grub shop at 144 Cong Quynh was the flagship store for what is hoped will be a country- (and perhaps continent-) spanning enterprise someday. If they keep making sandwiches that good, they'll do it just fine. You could order any fixed item on the menu or even customize ingredients to create your own Frankenstein of a sandwich. I had maple bacon and chorizo on whole grain bread with lettuce, tomato, green pepper, and red onion, plus cheddar cheese and HP ("brown") Sauce. And a little Saigon beer, of course. Fantastic.

But who can be satisfied with only one breakfast? This was HCMC and we were all on vacation. We walked down Cong Quynh, crossed Nguyen Cu Trinh, and had some cơm tấm Sài Gòn—Saigon-style broken rice, a signature dish. I got shredded pork on top of my rice and some kind of soft tofu ball with meat inside. We had 333 Beer and some excellent conversation with Stacey, Adam's girlfriend. 

By and by Stacey had to leave to do lesson plans and Adam had to go to work, so that left Jeff, Jenn, and me free to do some exploring. We wandered through District 1's notable areas, including Twenty-Three September Park and Bến Thành Market. 

Bến Thành Market, one of Saigon's oldest buildings, is that building with the clock in the left background. 

There were some pretty cool T-shirts that I wanted to buy, including one with a silhouette of a B-52 and that famous quote by General Curtis LeMay—"They've got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression, or we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age"—but as usual, nothing fit me properly. Even the XXL shirts fit me like a tailored vest, with my ample stomach sticking out by a mile. So I had to quit on the business. Jeff and I wandered through the vast shopping arcade with its lofty French colonial ceiling, humid air, overworked oscillating fans, its overflowing shopping stalls stuck way too close together, and the stumpy saleswomen who kept plucking at our elbows and sleeves as we walked by. To escape these personal intrusions Jeff and I went across the road and waited for Stacey at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf (yes, they have those in Vietnam) to sample what Westernized commercialism has done to indigenous culture. Then we went back to our hotels for a rest.

At 5:45 we met Stacey at a place called L'Usine on Dong Khoi. It was a French-style wine and cheese sort of place, with faux-stucco walls, iron rails, potted plants, and strange realist paintings of geared devices on the walls. ("L'Usine" apparently means "Factory" in French.) We drank wine (house red and house white) and ate baguettes, cheese, figs, quince jam, marinated olives, frites, and calamari. The prices were exorbitant—for Southeast Asia. For foreigners like us it was dirt cheap. Leave it to the Brits to sniff out French wine-and-cheese joints while they're on holiday. I added L'Usine to my mental list of "places to take Miss H later" and enjoyed myself to the fullest. 

Then it was time for another break. Walking around in the hot streets and still, humid air of Southeast Asian megacities really takes it outta ya. 

We met Adam (finally off work) at 10 p.m. near my hotel. Green Suites occupies an alleyway just off the main thoroughfare of Cong Quynh, and said alleyway happens to be full of streetside eateries. One of these, Oc Trang, seats its customers on little blue plastic lawn chairs and stubby metal tables beside a cracked, crumbling, white-plastered cinderblock wall. Then it gives 'em as much phở and Bia Saigon (83 cents a bottle) as they can eat. The four of us sat around, staring out at the brightly-lit street behind us, tucking in our elbows and knees whenever a scooter roared down the alley, enduring the stares of the old women and young boys skulking in corners, watching geckos crawl across the cinderblock wall to eat gnats attracted by the floodlights, while the patrons of Oc Trang ate gaily-colored snails, prawns, and frog legs. I think that's what I'll remember most about my time in southern Vietnam, besides the cheap beer, dirty streets, and hordes of honking scooters—those geckos. They were everywhere in Vietnam and Cambodia and Thailand, sitting under the eaves near light sources and gobbling bugs by the bushel. 

Stop by next time if you want to hear about the Cu Chi tunnels. 

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 13: declutter your life

Hoo boy. Aside from memorizing that dang poem, this is the only one of these challenges that's actually been something like hard work. I am a pack rat and it's high time I ditched some of this junk.

What junk, you ask? The Art of Manliness says to focus on things like books, papers, mail, and clothes, but I also paid attention to useless things like cheap toys and gewgaws and stuff that just takes up space. I combed through the apartment and I found this crap: 

• piles upon piles of old receipts
• an empty key ring
• miscellaneous plastic tools
• a heap of old Airplane Owners & Pilots Association magazines
• two or three wrinkled, ripped old Seoul tour maps
• heaps of ticket stubs, travel brochures, and maps from cities across Asia
• my derelict Nook
• some fatuous Diversity Amid Globalization textbook
• tax forms in need of sorting
• my old blaze orange travel wallet with the Norwegian flag
• a much-abused trail map of Bukhansan National Park
• an unread copy of Sky & Telescope magazine I picked up in a Korean bookstore ages ago
• a plastic bag of dead AA batteries

...and plenty more besides. So I bagged it all up and got it out of the apartment. Or at least I will, when I figure out where I'm supposed to get rid of batteries. And I kind of want to burn my old receipts instead of releasing them into that fraud-stricken world.

But the point is that I feel much better. I do feel like a more organized and less cluttered person now. I went ahead and re-folded and reorganized all the clothes in my closet while I was at it, and it's all squeaky-clean. It's strange what a little tidying up will do for one's psyche.

Now if only it would help me write the climax of Novel #3...

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 2: shine your shoes

from Flickr

Thank goodness I have a father who has nice shoes and takes care of them, and taught me how to shine properly. This daily challenge was a breeze.

I followed the instructions in AoM's article to the letter, right down to the swabbing-with-rubbing-alcohol-to-rid-the-shoes-of-any-dirt-jammed-into-cracks-along-with-the-old-polish bit. I didn't do every pair I own; my black Oxfords are secure in their dust-free box, waiting for me to trot out my best (and only) three-piece suit. Not to mention that it's already 11:19 p.m. and I want to finish this challenge before midnight. I got up at nine o'clock and left the house at noon to head to Yangcheon-gu to brew beer with Brant and Joseph and we watched Hatari! and drank beer and had a great time and I only just got home —

Hold on a minute. This is sounding like an excuse. Integrity is one of the values I put down yesterday. So I went to the trouble of digging the Oxfords out of their hidey-hole and looking 'em over. They didn't need shining. Honestly. They didn't.

So, to business. I got out the bottle of rubbing alcohol that I normally use for cleaning my pipe...

 ...and my trusty old six-piece shoe polish kit from Target, given to me many moons ago by my parents as a Christmas gift (and never used)...

...and got straight to work. I've shined shoes before, so I wasn't bumbling my way along. The time flew by. I didn't have Blue Lincoln Wax that the article recommends, but I buffed and buffed until the shoes shined. See the results for yourself:

Stick around for Day 3!

happy November

Halloween was fun. I had five classes that day, and I knew I had to scare the daylights out of my half-dead students. So I bought a Venetian-style masquerade mask for ₩3,000 at E-Mart, packed a Nerf gun in my briefcase, got dolled up in my best three-piece suit, and leaped into the classrooms brandishing the pistol like some kind of madcap bank robber. Quite a few of them jumped or yelped—even the boys. Mission accomplished!

But I didn't come here to tell you that. On to the meat of the subject:

Chalk up another failed attempt to get on the O-Train.

Miss H and I rose up at 6:00 a.m. this morning, grabbed a ₩13,000 cab to Seoul Station, arrived with mere minutes to spare...only to discover that the 7:45 to Jecheon (the railhead in Gangwon-do) was sold out.

On a whim I made my way onto the platform to watch the dratted train itself pull out of the station, and I found out that it's only four cars. No wonder it sold out. Next time, Miss H and I will have to book tickets in advance. We'll try for next Saturday (November 9), I guess. I hope we don't miss out on the autumn hues.

Looks like the cosmos wasn't having any of it today anyway. The sky is overcast and starting to drizzle. I don't know about you, but I was hoping for a train journey through sun-washed valleys and over sparkling rivers, not gray, leaden hills and water the color of gunmetal. Let's hope next weekend has better weather, too.

To pass the time, Miss H and I have decided to grab a few more hours' sleep, then head down to the newly-built Starbucks a few blocks away and work on our respective NaNoWriMo projects. Remember, I'm not officially participating. I'm just penning the first 50,000 words of Novel #4. I'm a thousand words in, so I'm a bit behind. I need to write 2200 more today to get caught up. I also need to keep editing Mugunghwa and finish writing Novel #3. I should have plenty of time to work on those today too.

Aside from a workout at the gym this evening, Miss H and I plan to sit down and get caught up with the TV shows we missed: the new season of Castle and the last few weeks of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Can't wait to find out what happens with both of 'em. I'm hooked.

Happy November...

Insadong gets me every time

It's July 1, and the day after tomorrow I'm boarding an airplane and flying back home. Not permanently, oh no. There's a family reunion in Iowa that I'll attend for five days, for to see all the aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents. Then it'll be three weeks in the desert.

As so often happens, a multitude of emotions war within me. I feel excited by the thought of seeing my long-lost relations again (I haven't seen some of them in three years or more). I'm dreading the transcontinental flight (always a killer, that). I'm psyched for spending five days at a lakeside resort and the inevitable water sports that will ensue. I eagerly anticipate seeing that pack of reprobates (um, I mean my old pals) from the desert once more. Though flying is out of the question (I'm not current anymore and haven't the time or money to spend on a biennial flight review), I'd sure love to go shooting. I'm a tad forlorn at the thought of leaving Miss H here all alone while I'm gone, and doing without her for nearly a month. (Okay, I'm positively heartbroken.) But I'm pumped at the thought of seeing Japan (and possibly Mongolia, I haven't decided). Think about it: I'll finally be living like I've been meaning to live since I graduated high school. Footloose travel and all it entails. That warm, sunny, bubbly feeling of a dream being fulfilled—like sun tea brewing on a hot day—is welling up inside me.

But chief amongst those feelings warring for primacy in my innermost soul is...well, sheepishness.

Let me explain.

There's a particular street in a particular part of Seoul called Insadong. Insadong-gil, this street is called. Gil, as I understand it, means "lane" or "alley" (though some Korean alleys bear closer resemblance to the Snickelways of York).

Now, I'm not stupid.

Well, okay. Yes I am.

But I'm not a blithering idiot.

I can tell when someone's trying to fleece me.

But the merchants of Insadong-gil get me every time.

Here's the thing: Insadong is a tourist trap. It's a little neighborhood stuck somewhere east of Gwanghwamun (the main and largest gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace) and the Cheonggyecheon (a lovely low-lying landscaped stream that runs east-to-west through the downtown area) in the Jongno ward of Seoul. This street is filled with everything that is innately Korean—or rather, everything that foreigners think is innately Korean, and everything that savvy Koreans know that foreigners think is innately Korean. Catch my drift?

The winding lane is less than a quarter-mile long, but it's packed to bursting with quaint little tea houses filled with wood trim and farming equipment; one-room Korean restaurants tucked under latticed awnings or hidden in bamboo groves; and coffee shops and cafés that were probably avant-garde fifteen years ago. The lane's main feature, however, are the stores and street vendors peddling their multifarious wares: "traditional Korean snacks," jade necklaces and silver rings, handmade wooden puzzles (and other wood crafts like spoons, combs, toys, and statuettes), celadon pottery, metal works (such as bells, wind chimes and assorted sculptures), and oodles upon oodles of folding fans, pincushions, compacts, bookmarks, purses, clutches, handbags, letter openers, ballpoint pens, jewelry boxes, and figurines. Every item is decorated with customary and venerated Korean motifs: cranes, tigers, kings, cattails, women washing, scholars in their crenellated hats, children playing in hanbok, soldiers marching, misty mountains, red-gold suns and redoubtable warships.

                                                                                                       Not my photo, but a dang good one.

A lot of it's junk and I know it. It's touristy stuff. You'd never find it anywhere but here. No self-respecting Korean has a little pewter figure of Admiral Yi on his bookshelf. The stuff looks pretty, and it was probably made by hand, and it would look jolly good in a cupboard or on a mantlepiece. There are exceptions, of course. Some of the merchandise is drop-dead gorgeous, delicately made, and encapsulates Korean culture to a beguiling extent.

But is it worth the money they're asking? Noooooooooooooo.

Do tourists pay the money they're asking? Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.

Do I know better than that? Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.

Do I know how to bargain? Noooooooooooooooo.

Do the vendors know that I don't know how to haggle? Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.

Has that ever stopped me from buying something pretty for myself? Nooooooooooooooo.

The merchants probably know me on sight by now. I'll heave into view, marching around the corner from the subway station, and they'll exchange a look and make the habitual remarks.

"Look, here comes that saphead."

"Hey, the palooka in the blue T-shirt is back."

"Whaddya know, it's that pigeon who always drops a boatload of cash!"

"Bust out the compacts and the jewelry-boxes, Marge! Our favorite schnook's comin' down the street!"

Honestly, I might as well just get the word "SUCKER" tattooed on my forehead. I was wearing a blue T-shirt today with the words Beginner in Korean, please speak slowly splashed across the front in Hangul. All the vendors loved it. They saw it, read it aloud, and burst into laughter. I knew why they were really laughing. They weren't charmed by my earnest attempt to learn their language and fit into their culture. They just knew they'd be able to snow me in two languages instead of just one.

If I was a bit better at Korean and knew how to haggle, I muttered to myself, things would be different, mark my words.

I mean, seriously: two thousand for a tarnished old Chinese coin the size of a silver dollar? Give me a break!

I shall cease my invective here. I'm sure you came here for other things, like my mouthwatering descriptions of food or the salaciously lovely photographs I put up. Tune in for more of that next time on...

THE (SWINDLED) VAUNTER

movers, tailors, professors, and dust

Well, wherever should I begin?

                                                                                from Wikipedia

Saturday was in the sixty-degree range, the warmest of the year, and our lingering winter blues were demolished in a wave of warm breezes and sunny skies.

The yellow dust from China (a cloud of sand, heavy metal particles and chemicals that blows off the Gobi Desert every spring) has blanketed Seoul. The air is a sickly yellow color, and Miss H and I have been coughing and sneezing like nobody's business.

Yesterday I went to a tailor in Itaewon to do something I've never done in my life: get measured for a suit. Not a full suit, mind you. Just a blazer. I'm a professor now, after all. I need to look the part. So I located a tailor whom all my expat friends recommended. His nickname is "the Jokeman." He always has a new zinger to tell you whenever you go see him. He has a joke for every U.S. state (and probably a few for Canada and England, too). He's a short man, but wiry, with a hard-lined face, well-defined cheekbones, and short gray hair. He looks something like Daniel Craig, if Daniel Craig had been born in Korea and was 20 years older. If photographs are to be believed, Roger Clinton once visited the Jokeman, got fitted, and bought a suit. A slew of other minor luminaries have been in and out of the shop, too, according to the gilt-framed pictures adorning the walls of the Jokeman's basement shop. Anyway, I was fitted, I heard the spiel, I paid my money ($313 U.S.) and got a California joke.

"So," the Jokeman said. "Judge Judy was speaking to a criminal. She asked, 'Why did you break into the same shop three times in a row?' The man said, 'I stole a dress for my wife.' Judge Judy asked, 'So why did you go back again?' The man answered, 'I had to get it taken in twice.'"

Those are the blurbs and tidbits from our life thus far in Gwangjang-dong, eastern Seoul. As you may have already gleaned by now, Miss H and I moved from our comfortable bailiwick in Bucheon (west of Seoul, abutting Incheon) and came here, seeking better jobs and opportunities. I have accepted a job as an assistant professor of English at Sejong University, and Heather is now a kindergarten teacher at the NOAM, just down the street from our new apartment.

This is how it came about:

I had handed in my notice at my old hagwon in Bucheon. My last day would be Thursday, February 28. Meanwhile, Miss H received some disastrous news. Her kindergarten was downsizing. Henceforth it would focus on after-school elementary-age kids. The kindergarten levels would be dissolved. This meant Miss H would lose her job on February 15. Things were looking desperate. We would both soon be out of work (and therefore out on the streets, too, since our apartment was commensurate with my job).

We considered various solutions. We even (briefly) entertained the idea of going home and trying our luck there. But the hand of fate intervened, in the form of a generous benefactor (one of my coworkers, whom I'll nickname Jules). Jules appointed himself my unofficial agent, and assiduously combed the classifieds in the Korea Herald on my behalf. Lo and behold, he found something: an assistant professorship (one-year contract, non-tenure track) at Sejong University, in the Gwangjin borough of eastern Seoul. What the heck, I thought. I'll go for it. So I applied.

I was contacted a short time later and asked to come in for an interview. Sejong University sits across the street from Children's Grand Park, an enormous amusement park-cum-zoo where urban kids frolic on the weekends. The park is on the same subway line as Bucheon (Line 7), but it's 29 stops away. This takes 60-70 minutes. To get to Gwangjin on time for my interview, I had to abandon my usual languorous paradigm and get up at 7:30 a.m. to shower and shave. I rode in and had the interview. It was disastrous, or so I thought. I had zero experience teaching at the university level. My career as an educator extended to two nonconsecutive years of elementary and middle-school students in two after-school academies, and no further. I felt I had nothing to bring to the table, and began to wonder at how stupid I'd been to apply. When the interview was over, I slunk from the room and crawled off the campus.

You may imagine my surprise when, two weeks later, I received a phone call during my lunch break. I was hired. I was to be an assistant professor (조교수) of English for the 2013 academic year, which would begin on March 4. In the meantime, there was an orientation for new teachers on Thursday, February 21, and a general staff meeting the following Monday. Both of these required hour-long rides into eastern Seoul, and a lot of scrambling to return to Bucheon in time for my first class at my soon-to-be-former hagwon. It was stressful and not a little intimidating, but it was exciting as well. I would be exchanging a thankless, drudge-filled academy job for a genuine, honest-to-God teaching position with full benefits, six weeks' summer and winter vacation, 15 hours a week (plus four mandatory office hours).

The only hard part was leaving Bucheon. I'd come to love the community: the broad avenues, the green trees, the plentiful parks, the abundant public transportation and the wealth of shopping and eating venues. Not to mention that our apartment there was spacious, bright and airy. We'd be moving to a three-story brick villa that had to be twice as old as Estima Officetel, and whose rooms were tiny and dark, if considerably more airtight.

Fortunately Miss H and I had a three-day weekend to finish packing and physically move. March 1-3 was a commemoration of the Samil Movement, or Three-Day Movement (the first organized and voluble protest against Japanese colonial rule), which took place in 1919. It was violently put down by the Japanese military, and many Korean protesters were killed or sent to the infamous Seodaemun Prison. A dozen Korean flags fluttered in the windows of the apartment complex behind Estima as Heather and I sweated to pack all our things. In all, our worldly possessions amounted to new fewer than 45 small- and medium-size cardboard boxes. Where had it all come from?

Then the mover arrived. Miss H had arranged for him. He was actually the business partner of the man who was supposed to move us, but since the man himself was tied up in prior engagements,  his partner came in his stead. He proved to be a wiry old Korean man with crooked teeth who shifted boxes like they were feather pillows. In less than 40 minutes our things had been transferred from Room 908 to the basement level, where the moving truck (a humble Kia Bongo III) awaited. Little by little our precious boxes, lamps, shelves and folding chairs were stacked aboard and secured with a cargo net. Miss H took our cat, Charlie, and a backpack full of valuables with her on the subway to endure the hour-long ride to our new apartment. Our new home was a block or two away from Gwangnaru Station on Line 5 (only three subway stops and one transfer from Children's Grand Park on Line 7). I rode in the Bongo with the old Korean man. An awkward silence persisted as we chugged along the Gangbyeonbuk Road (which straddles the northern shore of the Han River). I hunched forward in my seat, cradling my schoolbag in my lap and my backpack on my shins, watching the glowing skyscrapers of downtown Seoul on the left and the darkly glittering waters of the Han River on the right.

After half an hour, we reached the Gwangjin area. Thanks to an oversight on my part, I had written down the wrong address, and therefore our mover's dash-mounted GPS proved useless. Fortunately I had a rough idea of where the apartment was in relation to Gwangnaru Station, and I managed to direct the mover there after a delay of only 20 minutes. Our new apartment was separated from the street by a meager six-step staircase. In less than half an hour the mover and I shifted all of the boxes and bulky items to the apartment floor. I made a quick dash to a nearby ATM and paid the man 100,000 Korean won for his troubles. Then he drove off. Miss H arrived some 15 minutes later, and the three of us (Charlie, Miss H and I) bunked down as best we could amid the detritus of our material lifestyle.

And that was the move. Sometime in the next few days I'll tell you about my first week as a professor.

Stay tuned...

bog bodies

Breakfast on the morning of June 17 was a somewhat muted affair. It occurred rather late in the morning, and only after large amounts of water had been drunk and hot showers had been taken.

Jeff and I, despite our fuzzy heads, still weren't finished with Dublin. There were some things we figured we had to see before we left, and had no excuse not to, since our flight out didn't leave until the afternoon.

That pretty much left the National Museum. It actually wasn't too far away from us, over on Kildare Street. We didn't know it going in, but the Museum actually has four branches, all in different places. We were walking into the archaeology branch.

...which happened to be right next to the houses of Irish Parliament. There was a big ol' protest going on outside its gates as we approached. Camera crews were busy filming it, policemen were busy guarding it and spectators were busy gawking at it. A bunch of elderly folks were walking up and down the sidewalk, hoisting signs that said PRESERVE THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE and SAME-SEX MARRIAGE IS A SIN.

Some things apparently don't change too much between continents.

We entered the museum through a metal gate and walked up the steps into the domed lobby. Outside there were a bunch of school kids (crisply uniformed) all hanging about, either waiting to start a tour or just having finished.

Nothing makes your day like hearing a little Irish girl singing a Taylor Swift song, let me tell you.

So, we walked in. Admission was free. The museum was rather small (at least this particular branch). Nonetheless we saw some cool stuff. There was a whole Viking longboat found somewhere over near Galway or something that had been almost perfectly preserved. Or maybe it wasn't even Viking, maybe it was just a big effing wooden canoe that the early Irishmen had built. I don't remember, I was hung over.

They had a nice little section on ancient Egypt on the upstairs floor with a bunch of articles, artifacts, artistry, artisanship, and all those other words that start with "arti."

(I wish I could give you more details, but as has previously been mentioned, I was hung over. And it's Wednesday afternoon as I'm writing this and I just woke up from a three-hour nap and there's a thunder cloud hanging over my house that's making a whole lotta noise and I'm trying to finish this entry before it starts crackling and pouring and frying my motherboard.)

The pinnacle of the museum's collection was its exhibit on "bog bodies." These were the mummified, mutilated remains of Irish kings, slaughtered by their political foes and dumped into bogs. The peaty composition of the Irish bogs meant that the decomposition process was slowed or even halted, resulting in some of the best-preserved bodies you'll find anywhere in the world. Indeed, some of these guys (except for the fact that their skins looked exactly like leather, and they were, as has previously been mentioned, mutilated) looked almost...well, alive.

It was creepy, dude.

I highly recommend the exhibit if you happen to be in Dublin. It's not going anywhere. It's by far the most exciting thing ever to have come out of an Irish bog (except when they pulled Old Patty Flynn stone-drunk out of the Ardee bog last year; that was a hoot).

So we left the museum about eleven and headed back to the hostel. We made a brief stop in Waterstone's (a bookstore chain found all over the Isles) to check the price of a copy of Ulysses...

...saw this thing maneuvering around streetcars...

 ...zipped back to that souvenir shop on O'Connell Street so I could finally get my Ireland T-shirt...

(Feel privileged, this is the most recent photo of me. Like, ever. I just took it five minutes ago.)

Then we our hostel a fond farewell, had one last tributary pint of Guinness in Doyle's (as Argentina slaughtered South Korea up on the TV), and headed for the airport.

And so we departed Dublin the same way we'd come in: tired and hung over.

We were sitting behind some little Geordie kids on the way back. I tell you what, I like hearing English, Scottish and Irish accents in general, but hearing them from kids...well, that's an extra kick. Makes the little tykes seem extra cute, you know. It was two little boys and a girl, and they were all talking about what makes airplanes stay up. They were pointing out the window and watching the Boeing's flaps go up and down. It kind of took the hangover away for a while.

Ryanair, being one of those cheapo airlines, doesn't give out free drinks and snacks. You have to buy them. And they cost a lot of euro. If you're a smoker, though, and you don't think you can go the 45 minutes between Dublin and Newcastle without a puff, they sell smokeless cigarettes. Yes, on an airplane. They were sellin' cigs. Wow. Neat.

We got back to Newcastle, hopped at cab back to Tynemouth, and were home and dry in Adam's mum's house before the sun set.

But as you already know, that ain't sayin' much up there in the northern latitudes.

Next up: I try to host an American barbecue for my gracious hosts...with British charcoal and a British grill. Witness the disaster next time on British barbecue blues. Don't miss it.

down by the quayside

Our stomachs filled with the English breakfast, our hearts buoyed up by a tour of the old priory, and our bodies purified by the frigid waters of the North Sea, we were sitting pretty. There we were, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on the afternoon of June 14th, in Tynemouth, Newcastle, England, fresh off a tour of the priory and a dip in the North Sea. Now to head south along the coast, turn west at the mouth of the River Tyne, and head down to Fish Quay.

"Quay" is an archaic word for dock or wharf, and it's pronounced like the word "key," in case you didn't know.

So how does one get from the priory to Fish Quay, you ask?

Hadrian's Cycleway, of course.


You've heard of Hadrian's Wall, right? Well, this is Hadrian's Cycleway. Same principle. Keeps the marauding Picts at bay by making them run themselves silly just trying to find something to pillage.

The breeze from the North Sea sprang up as we strolled to the cycleway. It whipped my fedora off my head just as a car was driving by. The trusty Stetson blew into the middle of the street and was caught under the front tire. The driver never even stopped. I was frozen in place. It was as though my best friend had been struck down by a hit-and-run. Jeff valiantly ran into the street and snatched the crushed piece of headgear before further harm came to it. Heart in my mouth, I inspected it. Except for a few grease stains, it was perfectly fine. I whacked it into shape and stuck it back on my head, my heart filling with the warm bubble bath of relief.

That fedora is quite precious to me. It's my Indiana Jones hat. My mother bought it for me in Wyoming from the "thirds" section of an outdoor clothing store. It was third-quality, a throwaway, something someone hadn't wanted and had returned. I loved it from the moment I saw it. That hat and I have gone places. Together we've braved the blizzards of North Dakota; staved off the hellish suns of the Mojave Desert; plundered the blue skies over California; navigated the mean streets and leafy trails of South Korea. Now we were in England together, and in a moment's carelessness I'd nearly lost my faithful companion.

It pays to invest in crushable hats.

We took a right-hand turn once we got on the cycleway, and went up a grassy hill to snatch a peek at the Collingwood Monument.


Admiral Lord Cuthbert Collingwood, as I've explained previously, is a god among Geordies, Lord Nelson's second-in-command at the Battle of Trafalgar, who took over after Nelson was killed. Did a darn fine job of it, too.


His statue stands eternal sentinel at the mouth of the Tyne, keeping an eye on the North Sea and any naughty Vikings, Spaniards, Franks or Huns that might try to sneak over and get up to their old tricks. A couple of "radgie lasses" were helping Collingwood out that particular afternoon.

Then we strolled on another mile or two and found ourselves in Fish Quay. Though the fishing industry in Newcastle has long since passed by the wayside, the neighborhood still smells predominantly of icthyoids.

Adam directed us to the second-best shop in Tynemouth, Waterfront Fish and Chips. It was voted the best in the region by some newspaper or other, but Adam insisted that there was another place elsewhere in the city that was a lot better. It wasn't in walking distance, though.

Besides, who could argue with this?

(Smithy, this is strictly NSFW.)


Even though we were still stuffed to the gills with breakfast, we ordered up the largest helping of cod we could get. And it was delivered to our table promptly thereafter, with mushy peas, a heaping pile of chips, and enough curry sauce and malt vinegar to drown Moby Dick.

Couldn't hardly fit it and Jeff's head in the picture frame together.


Man, it was good. Real English fish 'n' chips. I'd finally tasted 'em, with mushy peas and everything (think creamed corn, but it's peas...with just a tiny hint of sugar). Suddenly my list of things to eat before I die was one item shorter. (Next up is scorpion on a stick.)

Then it was up the hill back toward Tynemouth centre, passing by some of the quaintest house fronts you could hope for in a seaside town. Mom, if you could've only seen them...


Our final stop was the Cumberland Arms, in Front Street, where Jay and Elaine eventually joined us. We made a jolly night of it. The Paraguay-Italy match was on. We each had at least one glass of every single beer and cider on tap, excitedly recounting what we'd seen and done that day, laughing and jibing when Jeff accidentally spit up a gobful of beer, getting languorously buzzed as the sun outside refused to set. Three or four hours we were there, and it was still twilight when we left. The Land of the Eternal Sunset saw fit to bless us with one more heavenly tapestry, one more long evening to take pleasure in each other's company before Jeff and I departed for Ireland the next morning.


Good times to be had in the far north of England. The best of times, in fact.

how I tore my favorite coat

You know what this is going to be, right? You've asked someone about something and they replied, "It's a long story." Haven't you? This is case in point. What follows is going to be the original "long story." Fasten your seat belts and prepare for a tale of suspense.

Let me introduce the major players. First of all, you have my humble self, who fancies himself an adventurer and is known to take stupid risks at luckily non-critical junctures. Second, you have my favorite coat. It's a duster, in the style of the Old West, a long coat that comes down to my calves, with wide sleeves and two camel pockets and a slit up the back (for riding a horse). It's light brownish-tan (embarrassingly labeled "Mustard" in Sportsmen's Guide), and smells a bit funky, but it's very close to my heart. When I put it on I just feel like I'm ready for an adventure, whether it's a showdown at high noon or a pirate voyage or an expedition to Alpha Centauri. It looks rather like this:

My folks purchased it for me way back when we were still living in California, before I went to college; it's gone everywhere I have since then (North Dakota, Wyoming, and Korea). I love the way it flaps about me whenever I move erratically; as a result, I tend to move erratically quite often when I'm wearing it. I feel like no one will mess with me when I'm wearing it, 'cause you can't tell what I have (or don't have) hidden under it. I feel cool, I feel competent, I feel ready for anything...and just a little bit silly. That's all fine by me; means I can break new ground and push a few envelopes without taking myself too seriously.

Third, you have Charles, Gaia, Esther, Julia, Jeff, Elaine, Adam, and Anne; all the people whom I've mentioned in previous entries from Reading Town and the Newbies (except Erica, who was dreadfully sick on Friday and who had to bow out of...well, you'll see).

The setting is a housewarming party in an apartment complex in downtown Gohyeon, just across from Lotte Invens, the nicest set of apartments you'll find in the whole city. I mean Lotte Invens, not the apartment complex across from it. Charles's building is about twenty years old. Some people might think it's shabby; I call it "character." It's got two bedrooms and one bath, a decent-sized kitchen, and a spacious living area. Charles had already set up a couch, TV, and kitchen table before we arrived. Charles and his girlfriend Anne had recently moved in together (shhhhhhhhhhh!) and had invited the entire academy staff, sans the director and his wife, over for dinner and drinks.

A couple periods before the 9:15 whistle, Gaia surreptitiously passed the hat and sneaked over to Top Mart across the road to buy booze. After the closing bell we all slid over to the parking lot and divvied up the spoils. Jeff rendezvoused with us there, and he, Charles, your humble correspondent, and the booze went in Charles's three-cylinder Daewoo Matiz downtown to the complex. Adam and Elaine hitched a ride with Gaia, Esther, and Julia. We arrived and unloaded and then sat down for a beer. At Charles's invitation, Adam and I put some tunes on; I selected some jazz. I thought that seemed to fit the mood and I hadn't heard any for a while. (Despite there being a Western bar in this city called "Jazz Bar," they play mostly pop.)

We just sat and talked and drank for a bit. After the initial awkwardness of being in somebody's new and still somewhat bare apartment with a bunch of people you work with but who are from vastly different backgrounds faded, we got on quite well. Before we knew it, the food had arrived, brought up in a couple of metal lockers by a short and harassed-looking fellow in thick dark clothes. These last were obviously insulation: he'd come on a scooter, the usual method of transportation for delivery-men in Korea. You see them winging their way through traffic all the time, square plastic boxes printed with the logo of the establishment they represent fastened tenuously on the backs of their thrumming Daelim mopeds.

The lockers were unhinged and their contents arrayed on the table: battered pork with sweet-and-sour sauce, called tangsuyuk (commonly known as "sweet-and-sour pork" in the States; this was Chinese food) and seafood medley with wasabi. Gaia went a little overboard when she added the wasabi to the seafood and kneaded it in (donning a pair of amorphous, transparent gloves which automatically made me think "rectal exam"). I took my first bite and nearly incinerated my nasal passages. Man, it wasn't spicy going down, per se, but wasabi fumes rose to your nose and really raised some hackles.

Charles divvied up this bounty between our high table (what Adam had jokingly referred to as "the kids' table") and the Koreans' low one, distributed some chopsticks (Adam got a pair of handsome golden ones) and we all chowed down. I should mention now, before the time comes, that there was an added bonus included in the delivery aside from the food: goryangju, Chinese liquor, supposedly 100 proof. It was Friday night; Adam, Jeff and I were aiming to get drunk. This seemed like a convenient byway; needless to say, the revelation of it first brought out of the locker sent a ripple of interest around the kids' table. After everybody had satisfied their immediate hunger, we cracked it open and poured some shots. The result was disappointing. It reminded me, both in scent and flavor, of Jägermeister. That there may be no speculation, I cannot stand Jägermeister. It reminds me of mouthwash. Italian-sausage flavored mouthwash. This wasn't much better. It certainly wasn't 50% alcohol, either. Five minutes later I weren't feelin' no higher.

We had better success with the whisky. Turns out Charles had a bottle of blended Scotch socked away; we partook of it gladly. Well, by and by the booze ran low. According to Korean tradition, the youngest guests at the party make the beer run, so Jeff and I sprang into action. Following Charles's directions, precise despite his buzz, we headed out into the night and located a Kosa Mart, a marginally seedy convenience store chain omnipresent in Korea. We snatched up four more pitchers of beer and a bottle of soju and some cider (at Elaine's behest; she was "soju warrior" for the evening and was working on mixers). A few hours and some increasingly alarming conversation later, these too were used up, so Jeff and I sallied forth again, only in a considerably less coherent state than before. We were far gone. Kosa Mart had closed up shop for the night, which left us inebriated bozos to locate an ulterior venue and procure fresh supplies. It was in the cards that we'd locate a playground instead.

You can imagine what happened next. Jeff and I, yelling our fool heads off, sampled some of the playground's motion-related delights. We found this one gizmo that I suppose was a stealthy attempt to tone students' abs while ostensibly giving them the ride of their lives. It consisted of two handles, stationary, over a platform on a hinged metal arm that swung laterally back and forth. There were two of these machines, facing each other. Jeff and I hopped on and did our dangedest to swing that mother into a 360. We couldn't quite get the trick of swinging in the opposite direction in perfect coordination; unsurprising given how much liquor we'd consumed. Hooting and whooping, we exited the playground with jubilant minds and throbbing abs.

And then, lo and behold! There was a GS25 (or a Family Mart, or whatever) just down the street. We entered and purchased some alcoholic reinforcements. I got more beer (and soju and cider for Elaine) while Jeff nabbed some baekseju (literally "thousand-year wine"), a finer Korean liquor distilled from rice and flavored with a variety of herbs. It's more expensive than soju but more highbrow. I'm not fond of the flavor; it reminds me of potpourri, to be honest. But it's fine sipping, especially when you're too drunk to really taste it appreciatively.

Somehow Jeff and I made it back to Charles's apartment. Esther and Julia and long since departed; Gaia was tenaciously hanging on to the bitter end. Finally we capitulated. We walked out into the night in search of cabs. Charles gallantly escorted Gaia to find hers while we waited. In the process of waiting, Jeff and I looked over and noticed yet another playground, this one attached to Charles's apartment complex. There was no denying the primal urgings of my inner wellspring of joy, which commanded me on no uncertain terms to go swing on the swings. Jeff and I, in a whimsical repetition of our escapades earlier that night, ran over and leaped into the saddles and in another moment were swinging through the cool night air. After a few seconds of this my inner wellspring of joy commanded me to jump, so I did. I leaped from the saddle at the peak of a particularly energetic swing, went flying through the air, hit the ground, couldn't sustain the Superman impersonation, lost my footing and landed heavily on my shoulder, rolling for a few feet before coming to a jolting, exuberant halt.

Finally, we foreigners flagged down a cab and went back to my apartment. When the chips are down and brains are at their soggiest, all roads lead to my apartment. I had to promise not to brew up any cocktails to coerce Adam and Jeff to come 'round. We sat around my place, listening to tunes, sipping baekseju and discussing God knows what. The party finally broke up at around 4:30 in the morning. I'd fill you in on the details of everyone's departure, their demeanor and parting words, and the thousand other small joys of the host; but I'm afraid I simply can't remember 'em.

It is here that we finally approach the principal reason I ripped my favorite coat, which up to this point had been hanging safely in my room for the entire evening, unmolested. Shortly before everyone left I somehow mustered the cohesiveness of mind to notice that I'd lost my watch. I'd stuck it in the breast pocket of my short-sleeved button-down after work and hadn't touched it since. After Adam, Elaine and Jeff lurched through my door and back to their respective domiciles, the realization came. Through the cloying, lethargic waves of drunkenness my brain somehow managed to put two and two together. The swingset. The leap. The roll in the sand. My watch must've fallen out at that crucial, asinine juncture and was probably even now lying embedded in the sand of the playground adjoining Charles's apartment building. I vacillated. I was still drunk as a lord. The hour was ungodly. Dare I stride down to Shinhwa Apartments, bold as brass, and search? Or should I await the sobriety of the morning and venture down in the full daylight, at the risk of chance passersby claiming the watch during the delay? In the end, stubbornness and an idiotically severe sense of frugality won out. I wanted to shut the book on the night in good conscience. I couldn't leave my watch lying on some playground. That would be like leaving a fellow party-goer out in the cold. More importantly, I'd paid 19,000 won for the blasted thing. I wasn't going to lose it to some schoolboy who noticed it glinting in the morning sunlight on his way to school. (Yes, there's school on Saturdays here.)

So, throwing caution to the winds, determined to get the thing over with, I donned my favorite coat, the aforementioned mustard duster, and strode out. I cursed myself for a fool almost immediately. The soonest glimpse of the eastern sky revealed it to be a shade of dark blue. The night had gone; dawn was approaching. Tomorrow wasn't a school day, but under the tenets of my recently-instituted code of conduct, I still planned on making my weekend days productive. That meant waking up sooner than noon, and in the state I was in that would be a tall order indeed. The last thing I needed to know was that I wasn't even getting a jump-start on daybreak.

Nonetheless, I pushed on. I'd come too far. I had just the sense to realize that I looked as ridiculous as I felt. My new ascetically-short haircut clashed horribly with the long, sweeping dimensions of my coat. When put to it, I couldn't even come up with a halfway sound reason why I'd donned it. Perhaps the half-articulated idea that I looked somehow fiercer and tougher when wearing it had dictated my choice. That instinctual need to conceal my true proportions and fool prospective enemies with the illusion of increased size, like a cat arching its back and raising its hackles, had impelled my hand to the coat-rack. Or maybe it was that goofy feeling I mentioned earlier in this treatise, and the readiness for adventure and the thirst for a quest I always feel when I put that coat on.

Whatever the reason, it was immaterial at the moment. I looked for cabs and there were none. Before I knew it I'd walked all the way to my destination, the better part of a mile, without incident. The sky was getting lighter all the time; I quickened my pace, fired by the urgency of a good morning's sleep. Instead of taking the long way around to the parking lot and entering the playground by the customary route, I hopped the fence. I passed the swingset and found my watch with absurd ease, even given my intoxication. I felt as Renton did in Trainspotting, discovering the opium suppositories on the "floor" of the Worst Toilet in Scotland: "Yes, a f---ing godsend!"

Then the unthinkable happened. Tragedy struck my seemingly foolproof attempt at lending closure to the night's festivities. As I hopped the fence to leave the playground, the voluminous sleeve of my favorite coat caught on one of the bars of the fence and ripped. For a moment my mind couldn't process that catastrophic bit of information. Then I examined the rip in the stark light of a streetlamp (and the soft glow of the burgeoning day) and cursed myself again. I found the watch, but it was small consolation. All the way home I chunnered away at my own stupidity and clumsiness, silently for fear that the cab driver would boot me out for a loony.

Home again at last, the light in the east now changing to purple and pink, I took off the coat, hung it up (fortunately it faced the door, so the right sleeve was nearest the wall and concealed from my view, meaning I would not be reminded of my folly), undressed and fell into bed.

There is now a four-inch gash in the bottom of the right sleeve, and I have nobody to blame but myself. I took out my paltry miniature sewing kit and surveyed the damage in the light of day (and sobriety), but it was a pointless exercise. The gash is too wide, and my needle and flimsy thread are not up to the task of repairing the heavy canvas. My only hope now is to access a clothing repair shop, either here or in Anchorage. Judge me as you will.