Category: Banalities & Journaling

Seven years ago, today, I landed in Korea to begin my new teaching job. I only intended to stay for a year or two. Now, six jobs and a bout with cancer later, I see this as my permanent home. Weird.

[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]

My Sunday was a bit strange. When I got home from work yesterday evening, I was very tired, and I fell asleep at the unusual hour of 6 pm. Instead of a short nap, I slept until midnight. The consequence of this was that I then didn't really sleep well the rest of Saturday night into Sunday. I napped fitfully and had a strange dream that I was on a city bus in a snowstorm and trying to talk to a group of mentally disabled Koreans. It was challenging, as they all had speech impediments on top of the fact it was in Korean.

I was feeling disoriented all of the day. I was trying to draw something but it didn't work out. I read some of my Mesopotamian literature-in-translation. Enkidu went to "Earth" (which means Hades, too, interestingly, in Sumerian-Akkadian myth). 

[daily log: falling down, 1m]

Yesterday, after work, Curt invited me to “drive around” with him. We have done this before, though not that often – I would say it happens once or twice a year. Often, it happens when he has his two kids because his wife has to work.
So we go do something hopefully fun with them. I would say this time, it did not really work out. For one, I was not really up for it. I felt tired after work and eventually I developed a beastly headache. By the time I got home, I felt the worst I have at any point since the dregs of my radiation treatment. It was not any particlar fault. . . just how it worked out.
I do not think the kids really had that much fun either. First we went to a temple – Curt seems to find my interest (as a foreigner) in temples fascinating, so he often suggests it. We went to one I visited before with my friend Peter, some time ago, in northern Paju, called 범륜사 [beomryunsa]. I like it there because it is in a steep mountain valley, but there was not much to do if one was not planning on hiking.
So we drove down into the town of 적성면 [jeokseongmyeon], ate some ramyeon at a bunsik joint, then we drove east to the Hantan River north of Dongducheon, where there was a cheesy “prehistoric village” – one of those classic Korean roadside tourist traps. I find the plethora of these tourist traps clustered right along the DMZ fascinating.
The little one, Curt’s son, had fun, but his daughter was bored. We saw statues of cavemen, fake grass huts, and some mammoth-hunting talbleaux. Were there mammoths in Korea? I do not know. I was definitely puzzled by the collection of international flags flying beside the wild-boar hunting scene. The shoot-your-own-bow-and-arrow booth was closing, so we did not get to do that.
Finally, we left and came back. The sun was setting and I stared at the barren hills of North Korea right across the Imjin River as we zoomed along the 8 lane expressway back to Ilsan. I pondered the contrast.
When I got home, I went to bed and passed out, well before my usual bedtime. My blog post yesterday was one of those “pre-queued” ones, which was not really meant to go live. But. . . oh well.
Fortunately today, my headache was gone. I still felt lousy though.
[daily log: walking, 1 km]

I walked home with my coworker Ken from work, because he lives near me. Normally he doesn't walk, but today he did, as we were talking about some things. When we were walking home from work together, this old woman marched passed us walking in that very typical "old Korean person" style, kind of pumping her arms and half-marching. 

Ken laughed and said she walked like a communist. I was trying to think how a communist walked. 

[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]

Yesterday I was announcing the end of monsoon, but today by 4 pm it was rainy and so overcast that it was prematurely twilight (see rainbow, previous post, from phone).

I have been obsessively writing the history and politics of one of my imaginary countries. I do not really talk about this much, because, as a hobby, my imaginary world-building is difficult to explain or justify to others – everyone wants to ask, “what is the point?”
Guess what? There is no point. . . That is why it is a hobby and not a job. It is merely a kind of creative self-entertainment. So normally I tell people, more generically, that I am “writing,” and if asked to elaborate, I will say something vague about “novels-in-progress,” but lately, I am feeling impelled to be more “out-of-the-closet” about it.

My recent burst of creativity in this realm has been brought about, in part, by the discovery of several websites that host collaborative “fictional” encyclopedias – imagine a cross between Tolkien’s or Frank Herbert’s voluminous appendices and. . . wikipedia.

[daily log: walking, 2.5 km]

This little holiday has been an experiment of sorts – what would my life be like if I quit my job (because of the stress), and did not replace it with another job (because any other job would be stressful too)?

The answer is that I would neverthless find many things to stress about: my health (or lack thereof), my progress (or lack thereof) on artistic pursuits, my financial situation. Et cetera.
My job is not so bad.

I was careful to avoid certain bad habits – in particular, I kept my “minimum internet” rule, because it is so easy to waste an entire day absorbed in the various blogs and art and culture sites I habituate. I keep the rule for Sundays, normally, because it is too frequent that I wonder where my day went, afterward. Keeping the rule for 5 days was difficult. It was like a chain of five Sundays, and by today I was vaguely restless and missing work.

I took a long walk in the drizzle down past Madu to Baekseok, this afternoon, and did something unexpected. I ate at a McDonalds. This might seem to be a bad move, but I had been struck by a compelling thought: I used to frequent that type of American fast food restaurant – it is partly how I managed to reach 125 kg in 2005 – but now that I am struggling not to lose weight, there is no longer any reason to avoid it. Unfortunately, my transformed taste buds and swallowing problems meant it was not the nostalgia trip I had been hoping for. It was my first American fast food experience since before my cancer – the last time I was inside a McDs was during my US trip 2 years ago. This visit went poorly. I guess mostly I do not miss it. . . this was out of curiosity.

[daily log: walking, 4 km]

I took a picture of a rainbow from my apartment window. I have been having some weird technical issues with posting pictures to my blog. So. . . maybe later.

I am not really enjoying my vacation. Trying to relax in my apartment, my post-cancer hypochondria kicks in. Grr.

[daily log: walking, 1 km]

I am better at acquiring books than reading them.

That is not to say that I do not read. . . I have been reading a lot, lately. I am finishing Charles Mann’s book, 1491 (review: not bad, but mostly stuff I have read or learned elsewhere), and I keep craving more history books. I have several novels in progress as well as my standard half-dozen philosophy texts, but those all seem to move very slowly (I spent 2 hours on several pages of Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy, this morning), whereas I seem to zoom through history.

I took the subway the full hour and a quarter into Gangnam (infamous Gangnam, Seoul’s Hollywood and Times Square and Beverly Hills and Park Avenue, mashed up together), not because I particularly like it there, though it is interesting, but because I remain convinced that the Gangnam branch of Kyobo Mungo (a sort of Korean book superstore, run by a life insurance company) has the best-organized, most diverse selection of foreign books in Korea.

I was partly inspired to do this because I rearranged my shelves in my apartment yesterday, and ended up with – lo! – free shelf space: . . . must. buy. books.

As usual, I bought books that I might not actually read. But some things I probably will read were included, too.

Walking up to Sinsa station for the subway home (just to walk it – it is maybe 2 km from the Kyobo tower to Sinsa), the air was remarkably clear, despite the hot, muggy conditions, and the mountains at Bukhansan were jagged and starkly beautiful as I was looking north up Gangnamdaero – normally one hardly notices the peaks lurking across the river in the haze.

I am writing this as I ride the subway home – sharpening my phonetyping skills, clearly indispensible for life in the 21st century. The man across from me has a shirt that says, in gold cursive letters on black cotton-polyester: “Liberate Wide Normal.” What did someone believe this might mean, such that it merited citation on a shirt?

[daily log: walking, 4 km]

I had a kind of bad weekend. Mostly due to food, which I try so hard not to complain continuously about on this blog. It is always some ill-calculated food texture that brings on the worst of the coughing and gagging. I made some rice to go with my soup I had made before. Something did not work. Bleagh.

[daily log: walking 2 km]