I had a strange day full of small things, nothing quite routine.
I went to a movie in a theater for the first time in more than year. It was a treat for some stellar students that Peter-teacher engineered, and he invited me along. It was fun, and mindless. Here’s a picture of Willy, standing in a statue, saying “no,” afterward.
And also, I took a picture of a movie star we apparently saw. A Korean, of course. Not someone I recognized. And… of the various random figures in the picture, I have no idea who the actual movie star is.
I went to work, and ate an actual sit-down meal with some coworkers at the place-of-work (as opposed to off campus at a restaurant), for the first time since I used to work at LinguaForum. That was fun, too, listening to them talk in Korean, understanding some of what they said, even.
I went to a wedding of a (former) coworker, Niki. But not a single other coworker that I knew was there, and I felt very isolated and out-of-place. That wasn’t so fun. I fled.
I sat in a cafe and wrote some notes for my “If I ran the hagwon.”
I met Basil, and we went to Insadong and he went to a Buddhist temple gift shop. He was shopping for trinkets, I guess. I have a hard time completely relating to that. I also find the idea of “Buddhist consumerism” strangely uncomfortable, the same way I find overtly Christian consumerism. There’s some kind of disconnect between dogma and action, maybe. The temple neighborhood is full of stores selling Buddhist and “monk” paraphernalia.
We went to some bookstores, but I bought no books. That’s not my routine, either.
We went to a vegetarian restaurant. The food was good. I liked it. I daydreamed of someday becoming a vegetarian (as opposed to my current 5-days-a-week vegetarianism, I guess).
At the subway station, the train was stalled, because an old man had fallen into the tracks and had been hit by the train. A gruesome prospect… Basil was fascinated and had to go look. I walked the other way. We ended up separated and I went back home.
My computer pissed me off by crashing as I started it up, when I got home. What’s with Vista, anyhow? God I hate it.
Overall, it was a good day, though.
