Well. That was a pretty crappy xmas. I would have rather been made to work, honestly.
Walking to work today, I passed a spot where they've been doing some construction, a big hole in the sidewalk. They were burning some scrap wood in a barrel, and the wind was bitingly cold. The smell of the burning wood and the temperature evoked some late fall camping trips in northern Minnesota. Fond memories.
I went into the Rotiboy (a Malaysian / Indonesian chain of coffee/"bun" vendors that seems to be doing well in Korea). I got a caffe latte and a rotibun. They were delicious. I'm high on cold-medicine at the moment.
Xmas eve I spoke on the phone for a long time with Basil. I like Basil well-enough, and I know he's a well-meaning and decent person. But he seems to obsess on and dwell overmuch on the shortcomings of hagwons in general, the negatives of life in Korea in general, and on the admittedly numerous horriblenesses of LBridge (my current and his erstwhile employer) in particular. I found myself feeling very depressed after talking to him. I often find myself depressed after talking to him, so when he called me on xmas day, I ignored his call and turned off my phone. That's rude, I know, but I just didn't want to cope with his obsessive negativity — I was feeling low enough as it was. I stayed at home and watched some downloaded episodes of Hawaii Five-O (really? why?).
And I finished that novel, Native Speaker, by Chang-rae Lee. A pretty good read, and an interesting take on the immigrant experience in the U.S., specific to the Korean experience but hardly unique to it, I'm guessing. All cached in a spy/politics thriller type plot. I wonder if sometimes one of the reasons I like living in exotic places (like Mexico or Korea) has to do with my desire to somehow understand better that "immigrant" and/or minority experience, which, as a native-born American of the majority, I never really can.