Today is a holiday. After my trip to Suwon yesterday, I'm feeling unmotivated to go exploring today, especially given the vast crowds I'm bound to encounter out and about, anywhere I might go. So I'm having a lazy day at home. I cleaned my bathroom. I've been reading an adolescent-lit book, a novel called Warriors by Erin Hunter – about feral cats living and fighting and stuff, sort of a la Watership Down.
I turned on my television, and found myself watching – yes, actually watching – a Korean baseball game. Normally I don't watch sports on television. Normally, I find baseball exceptionally boring. Perhaps the combined factors of my own strange state of mind and the fact of baseball being played and announced in a foreign language so enthusiastically caught my fancy. The teams playing were the Doosan Bears and LG Twins, both sharing the same home stadium at Jamsil, which was the 1988 Seoul Olympics baseball venue. The pitcher for the Twins was a guy named Oxspring, from Australia, of all places. I didn't know baseball players came from Australia. I liked the fact that the name was hangeulized on the back of his uniform: 옥스프링 (ok-seu-peu-ring).
Footnote to the above: I did go out, just now. The "La Festa" (pronounced Ra-peh-suh-ta) shopping mall two blocks away was indeed crowded – it looked like Times Square, or the State Fair. I didn't even bother trying to go into a store – there were sales like mad, and lines to go into popular ones. Good to see everyone having so much fun. It is strongly breezy, clear, sunny.
I saw a cat someone had tied to a string, sunning itself and licking a paw and washing its face, behind a cooler on the sidewalk from which a woman was selling icecream. Six soldiers in freshly pressed, highly starched, bright green-brown-black-spotted fatigues – on leave for the holiday I expect – were chatting and smoking cigarettes nearby. The cat watched them warily, and ignored the fact that I had stopped to look at it.
