Caveat: 절에가 젓국을 찾는다

This is an aphorism from my aphorism book.

절에가            젓국을           찾는다
jeol·e·ga        jeot·guk·eul    chat·neun·da
temple-LOC-SUBJ  fish-sauce-OBJ  look-for-PRES
[Like…] looking for fish sause at a temple.

You can’t find fish sauce at a temple, because Buddhist temples in Korea keep a strictly vegan rule. So this aphorism means to look for something where you won’t find it. I’m not able to think of an English equivalent at the moment.

I found a slightly different version of the same aphorism online: “절에 가서 젓국 달라 한다” = “Go to the temple and ask for fish sauce.”


Sheepless_in_seattle_groan

I had a kind of bad day. I woke up coughing a lot, after an insomniac night. I felt lousy. I decided to take one of my internet holidays and kept my phone and computer turned off. I made beans, cooking them for many hours but then felt like I had too upset a stomach to eat them. I’ve suffered from a gradually increasing problem with nausea, these last few weeks. I don’t know what’s going on – is it just a sort of psychosomatic manifestation of my frustration with food and phlegm (which is how it feels), or is it something more than that? I tried to study Korean for a while but I got depressed with it. I did some laundry. I read some chapters in a novel, and some appendices to Beowulf.

[daily log: no – I feel sick]

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