I’m back home in Ilsan. And going away, then coming back – that kind of makes it feel more like home, strangely.
A picture from Hong Kong. More forthcoming. I really like Hong Kong. I definitely want to go back and spend more time there.
Category: Hiking & Travel
Caveat: Hong Kong
I’m in Hongkong overnight, returned from Cairns today. The flight was OK, despite the noisy baby in the row in front of me.
Hong Kong is essentially the opposite of rural Queensland, by any standard of comparison: population density, first and foremost. I have a pretty posh hotel, here, in the Kowloon area. I’ll go exploring tomorrow and then fly back home to Seoul, and post some more.
Here is a picture of Val (my mother’s good friend), me, and Ann (my mother).
Caveat: Quilts
I spent a good portion of the day today driving around with my mom and her friend Val (who’s visiting from Apollo Bay, Victoria) meeting some of my mom’s friends who she does quilting with. I saw a lot of artistic and beautiful quilts, both in-progress and completed.
Here is a picture of my mom standing next to my bright orange rental car that I drove up from Cairns, parked in the carport beneath her house.
Caveat: Ockers?
My flight to Cairns was diverted by a Typhoon, so instead of changing planes in Hong Kong I switched in Brisbane instead. I picked up my rental car in Cairns at around noon instead of the scheduled 8 am. I was rather tired, but I managed the drive up the hill (via the Kennedy Highway through Kuranda, Mareeba and Atherton and, after getting lost on the road leading to my mother’s house, I arrived at 3 pm or so.
I realized that if I’d driven the same amount of time at the same speeds in South Korea, I’d have nearly crossed the country, diagonally. Australia is a huge country, and very sparsely populated. I have been in a strange sort of culture shock since I got here – much stronger than during my previous two visits to Australia. I think it has to do with having come here after living a full year in Korea – my previous visits had been coming from the U.S., which really isn’t that culturally different from Australia, when you get right down to it.
For one thing, both countries have lots of ockers. But in the U.S., we call them rednecks, I think. Or some word like that… I’m not sure that’s the right translation. “Ocker” is an Australianism, and means a boorish and annoying person, from what I’ve gathered. My mother used the term to complain about the idiotic patrons in a store she’d been in, I think. I like the word, anyway. Maybe I can find an excuse to teach it to my students.
In the first picture, you see a wallaby. They congregate at the top of the hill above my mother’s house, where the driveway starts at the dead end of the road. In the second picture is a friend of my mother’s named George, a female kookabura, who often comes to visit seeking handouts and snacks.
-Notes for Korean-
외국에서 살기가 재므있을 것 같다.
=”seems like it’d be fun to live abroad”
잘 하기는요=”Ha, I do it well? Not really.” (very idiomatic translation)
Caveat: Off to Oz
I'm going to Australia, now.
Caveat: 도스타코스 (K-Mex?)
I went into Seoul and shopped at my favorite bookstore – Kyobo, just north of Gangnam station (on the Green Line) in the massive Kyobo Tower, along Seochoro. I bought some manga books, a Korean language grammar, and a novela by García Márquez entitled La hojarasca – yes they have Spanish language books at Kyobo, although the selection is only about a single shelf’s worth.
So… I was walking southward back toward the subway station, feeling pleased with my purchases, and lo! there was a taco and burrito joint. Really. In Seoul. I took a picture of the sign:
The place is called “Dos Tacos” (in Hangeul, 도스타코스 = doseutakoseu). I went in and had a delicious veggie burrito. It’s definitely Americanized-style Mexican food, passed through a slight but perceptible Korean filter, but it was a nice change. I wonder if there’s a future in K-Mex cuisine?
I’ve noticed that my blog host seems to be inserting my picture uploads differently than before – it appears to be placing them inline rather than making thumbnails and linking them out. I wonder if I like this better. I’ll have to think about it, and try some things out.
Earlier, I had been wandering, a bit randomly as is my occasional wont, and I saw some flowers growing through a fence near a railroad right-of-way, also in the Gangnam area. Here is a picture:
Caveat: 저는 오늘 수원에 갔어요
Today I went to Suwon. This once-upon-a-time walled city is now a bustling exurb of Seoul with almost a million inhabitants, and is the capital of the province of Gyeonggi, which is where I live. Gyeonggi is a horseshoe that wraps around Seoul on all sides except the direct west, so although I live northwest of the city, Suwon is directly south of the city, and the subway journey took slightly over two hours.
It was a grayish, overcast day – perfect for exploring, as it was neither too hot nor too cold. I got off at the Hwaseo subway station, and walked, mapless, east and south until I found the north end of the old city walls. Then I climbed the hill called Paldal along the walls on the west side, and finally drifted down to the south gate and worked my way out to the train station (and the main Suwon subway station). By then, it had started to drizzle.
I took the train back to Insadong and bought my weekly fix of magazines. Then I came back to my humble abode, and prepared myself some delicious gimchibokkeumbap – the best I’ve made for myself so far.
I was surprised to learn today that it is possible to go much further than Suwon on the subway – you can actually go as far as Cheonan on a subway ticket. Cheonan is in the next province south from Gyeonggi, called Chungcheongnam (South Chungcheong, but actually mostly to the west of “North” Chungcheong). This would be like being able to go to Richmond, VA on a DC metro ticket, or like being able to go to Madison, WI on the Chicago Ell. And it means that you can traverse nearly a third of the country’s north-south length on the Seoul subway (looks like well over 100km on the map). At this rate, they could eventually cover the whole country in a single subway system. That would be cool. I would ride it.
Here are a few pictures from Suwon.
A parapet.
A wall.
A path.
The south gate.
Caveat: Flowers in a Largely Urban Setting
I went exploring today, and attempted some shopping. And I took some photos.
First, I walked eastward from my apartment all the way to Baekseok station (two subway stops eastward from my own “home” station of Jeongbalsan). I took some pictures along the way.
Some public art near the Jeongbal hill.
The Ilsandong district office (or “borough hall” – a government building).
Spring plants and advertising.
Near Madu station.
The entrance to Baekseok.
I went to the Yongsan electronics market, but I didn’t buy anything. Just kind of browsed around. I walked to Samgakji. This is the entrance to that subway station, taken near dusk. Note the faint view of the landmark Namsan tower (iconic of central Seoul) in the background.
Inside the Samgakji station I watched TV – yes they have large TVs on the walls of the subway stations, and these play banal advertisements and sometimes funny cartoon thingies, in continuous loops.
Then I went to Itaewon to that English-language bookstore there (at the top of a hill where you have to walk past a gamut Russian discotecs, African street vendors, south Asian food stores, and Korean women selling… stuff).
I browsed for a while, and bought some used novels to read. After that I went on to Insadong to buy trinkets to give away as prizes to my students. They like these little colorful handcrafted pens and pencils, with ends in the shape of animals and things like that.
On the way, I decided to record why it is that Line 1 (purplish) is so easy to get lost on.
Now I’m listening to Kings of Convenience (an alternative group I guess you might classify them); and Peter Murphy (old emo/goth stuff, always reliably narcotic for my soul). And that not-so-long-ago-released album by the group Spoon, called Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. I love that name. It’s very late (almost 2 AM). I should go to sleep.
Caveat: Here and There
I felt I really needed to get out of the apartment.
I took the subway two stops to Baekseok, to look around. I found where the new frequently advertised Costco store is being built. I walked around and enjoyed the late afternoon illumination on the clouds.
I then took the subway two more stops to Hwajeong. I found a few department stores. Walked around some more.
Then I got on the subway and went to Anguk, and strolled around Insadong. I found things to buy, maybe they would be good xmas presents for my nephews, if I can get it together to mail them. Soon.
Caveat: A Sunday Walk
It was the first day that the high temperature was below freezing, I think, since I’ve been here. And a strong wind from the northwest.
So I thought, today I’ll take my camera and take a walk around my neighborhood. I took almost 100 pictures, and here are some I particularly like. All these pictures were taken within about a kilometer of my apartment, as I walked a roundabout route past the subway, up through the park with the little hill, around past near where the Tomorrow School is. They’re shown in the order I saw them, roughly.
This is a street about 4 blocks east.
This is the entrance to the Jeongbalsan subway station.
This is a government office near the subway station.
This is the same office from the other side, and a flower on a trellis.
This is a path up the hill.
This is a view looking northeast from near the top of the hill.
This is a friendly dog I saw in someone’s yard.
This is a rather posh American-looking house.
This is a backhoe and a tree.
And finally, proof that my students have opportunities to apply their hard-earned English skills out in the real world, right in their neighborhood.
Caveat: Rurality
Perhaps I was inspired by my previous post. Yesterday afternoon I took the subway to Daegok, and boarded one of the regional commuter rail trains, bound for 임진각역 (Imjingak station). Imjingang is basically the end-of-the-line to the northwest of here, and lies just about 3 kilometers from the DMZ (North Korean border).
I had in mind the idea of actually seeing Camp Edwards – but I couldn't find it. My geographic memory clearly isn't perfect – I had a recollection of it sitting right on the railroad, near the main highway. But two factors intervene: I don't know which railroad it sat on, but I don't think it was the commuter line, as I remember having to take a taxi into central Munsan when I wanted to take the train into Seoul; also, Camp Edwards may not actually exist, now – the US Army has been significantly rearranging its Korean deployment over the last decade, especially moving away from major towns (such as Munsan or Dongducheon).
So I didn't find Camp Edwards. But I walked through territory that was more than a little bit familiar, and covered the distance from Imjingang to downtown Munsan on foot (about 8 kilometers, given my roundabout route). I enjoyed the scenery.
Above is the Imjingang bridge. In typical South Korean fashion, they have placed a major amusement park ("recreation park") here up against the DMZ – sort of this weird institutional tendency to pretend it's not really a major, militarized international border. So right behind me from taking this picture, on the north side of the river, there were zillions of families on Sunday outing, a little amusement-park train going around some veterans memorial statue, a ferris wheel….
The concrete pillars are the old railroad bridge, and I remember these pillars vividly. But just beyond, there is now a new railroad bridge that wasn't there in 91, and there has been much talk in the press of the new workable (but not currently actually working) rail connection with Pyeongyang. Not to mention the talk of eventually hooking South Korea's KTX (high speed rail) with Russia's! That would be cool… you could take the train from Seoul to Moscow!
Looking down, there were lots of men lazily fishing in the Imjingang (i.e. Imjin River)
Walking south, I saw lot's of lovely trees, changing with the fall weather.
Above, these are some scarecrows I saw in a field. I had this weird feeling that I spent a cold April day in this field, or one nearby, fetching a Humvee that some insane G.I. driver had flipped like a turtle into the mushy muddy rice. I worked in "vehicle recovery" here… which is to say, I had a large green tow truck (named – not by me, but appropriately – "Rocinante"), and one of my jobs was to go out and rescue stranded Army vehicles from various spots. This flipped Humvee was one of the most memorable, as it was the only instance where I was personally involved where there had been a major injury – the G.I. who'd flipped his vehicle had a broken back or something. Made me somewhat paranoid about cruising around at too-high speeds in the soft-top Humvees that were so popular then. Not so common now, since they're mostly "hardened," based on experience in Iraq, etc.
These are some flowers I saw.
I saw a man on a tractor, and he waved to me.
Later, as I walked farther south, I saw the man again, working with some others unloading a rice-threshing gadget from a truck. He hailed me, and I discovered he spoke extremely good English – he'd lived and worked 8 years in Dubai, and also in mainland China, more recently, and wanted to talk politics. It was interesting. He was worried about the "red menace" and was extolling the virtues of George Bush's hard line with North Korea. Perhaps typical of his generation in South Korea, I think.
He observed that given how South Korea is a U.S. client, geopolitically, and how the Chinese still viewed North Korea as "theirs," the DMZ was, interestingly, the place where the U.S. and China had a common border. This was fairly sophisticated thinking for a Korean farmer. I wonder how typical it is?
I kept walking…. I passed the 운천역 (Uncheon rail station), and this sign.
As the sun set I got into the outskirts of 문산읍 (literallly Munsan village, though it's clearly outgrown what we would call a village), which appeared much grown from my recollection. Here is a fairly typical sight everywhere in Korea: cranes building high-rise buildings in the middle of nowhere.
Now I'm listening to a streaming Mexican radio station from Estado de México, and thinking about the commonality of rural lifestyles, all over the world.
Caveat: Seoul
Not feeling in a writing mood. But I promised to post something everyday. I’m listening to some new music I downloaded – LCD Soundsystem’s “Someone Great” which reminds me a bit of a kind of hyperactive Magnetic Fields song, actually.
Here are a few pictures.
This is Seoul, looking north across the Han river from Yeouido Island toward downtown, Yongsan and Namsan – see the tower, right horizon?
This is the main south gate of the old city – the walls no longer exist, and so it’s just a gate in the middle of a giant traffic circle. It’s called Namdaemun.
This is the infinite stairway in my building, looking down. I often take the stairs, as it’s more exercise that way.
What I’m listening to right now.
[Update: I added this youtube video 2011-08-03 as part of background noise.]
Caveat: Wandering Around
I didn’t really do much yesterday. I wandered around the Sinchon district, a university neighborhood that has that same feel of university neighborhoods anywhere – lots of young people, trendy stores, interesting hairdos in multiple colors, individuals toting musical instruments to gigs, people standing on streetcorners preaching damnation or salvation or other stopping places in between.
I finally got the gumption up to dive back into the subway and work my way over toward the area where I had heard a lot of electronics stores were (thinking in terms of shopping for a new mp3 player, among other things) – but I decided on a whim to a rather roundabout route, and by the time I got there, I was feeling listless and unmotivated.
So I came back home and have been tinkering with solving my photo-archive problem online. My photo database that I’m hosting on my own server has run into size-maximum constraints, and I’m looking for alternatives. I recently discovered that the typepad website that hosts this blog also hosts photos, and so I’m going to see if that provides a workable photo-hosting solution.
I did succeed in finding a conveniently placed bookstore where I can buy my magazine fixes – better placed than the one at Itaewon I’d found a few weeks ago. I also bought some stickers and pencils for my nephews, and will try to post that today or tomorrow.
This picture shows the doorway to my humble apartment. Looks like a prison, eh? But it’s workable. Has a snazzy electronic lock so I don’t have to use a key to get in, though I carry it around just in case there’s a power failure or something (not that I’ve seen one yet).
This picture shows what I see when I step out of my building to walk to the subway station at Jeongbalsan. There’s a parking lot space right to the east, then some buildings. In the distance between the buildings, down the street, is the large Lotte department store. The main subway entrance is behind that building, but it’s possible to enter the subway station from the basement of the department store, where there is also a very upscale grocery store.
So soon I go off to work. I’m having a little lunch of instant noodles and drinking nice cold boricha. Outside is sunny but with the coolish bite of fall in the air. The trees have finally begun to change.
Caveat: Silvio, Soft Cell, SavingJane; Seoul Subway Snapshots
I took the subway into the city today. It was grey and overcast – lovely. I listened to my mp3 player, and watched people. I’d love to go around taking pictures of people, but it doesn’t seem very polite to do so without asking, and my shyness, compounded with linguistic and cultural issues, prevents me from asking people. So… here are some verbal snapshots from the Seoul Metro.
1. The train isn’t very crowded. The bench seat across from me is full, however. Each bench seat, lining the wall between each set of doors on each side of the standard subway carriage, seats seven people. Six of the seven across from me are watching television on their cell phones, absorbed and in weirdly parallel poses: a disheveled-looking and too-skinny young man with a pink tie, watching tv; a woman with one of those bangs-to-eyebrows anime-inspired haircuts, and deep brown liquid eyes, watching tv; another woman, older, with permed hair and a floral pattern dress, watching tv; a man in “exercise clothes” – not sure how to describe, but all the fashion these days here – slick sweatpants, sneakers, a windbreaker, black “gilligan” cap, watching tv; a school-age kid, glasses, with his cell phone down between his legs – the odd man out, since, instead of watching tv, he appears to be playing a game of some kind; two girls, one in a pink sweater with little hearts on it, the other in a sweater with brown and black stripes, apparently comparing notes on the show they’re each watching, as one drapes her arm tenderly on the shoulder of the other; a woman with long hair in “church clothes” and a rather large crucifix hanging around her neck, watching tv. The train rocks around the bend after Wondang-yeok, and, since it runs aboveground along there, there’s a nice tableau behind these symmetrically posed people of the green hills of the suburban landscape, interspersed with 8-lane streets, winding country lanes, vegetable stands and an uncountable number of cleverly-named convenience stores. On my mp3 player, Silvio Rodriguez sings about the Allende years in Chile.
2. Sometime later, the same bench across from me has changed character. Two people are sleeping. A girl is sitting on the lap of her boyfriend, the train is more crowded. The same limpid-eyed woman is there, but now she’s reading a book – I can’t make out the title (nor could I necessarily decipher it, if I could). The man next her is reading over her shoulder, more avidly than the woman herself, who glances up with great regularity, as if in thought or distraction. A man standing in the aisle is staring at my shirt, which says: “mi taku oyasin” – I’m always in favor of presenting linguistic enigmas to those around me, and I brought this old t-shirt with me to Korea knowing it would be a one-of-a-kind item. “Mi taku oyasin” is a proverb in the Lakota dialect of the Sioux indian language, and translates roughly as “we are all in the same family.” I wonder what the man is thinking. He hasn’t shaved in a while. On my mp3 player, Soft Cell is singing it’s punk anthem “Frustration:” “I am so ordinary / Frustration / I was born / One day I’ll die.”
3. I’ve changed subway lines at the Jongno3ga station, to the number 5 from the number 3. I’ve decided to go explore Yeouido today. There’s nowhere to sit on this train, it’s quite busy. A gang of young men dressed as if prepared to play football (soccer) has boarded with me. They’re roughhousing a bit and poking each other and peering at each other’s cell phones. There’s an African-looking man standing at the far end of the car, in an olive-green suit, smiling distantly. Suddenly the sound of a cat yowling fills the car, and drowns out the music in my earphones. Looking down the length of the car I see, just next to the African, an unhappy white cat is escaping from a box that a woman has placed on the overhead shelf. She’s a large woman, but not tall, and dressed, improbably, in a miniskirt and one of those fashionably torn-on-purpose red sweatshirts. The African looks amused but does nothing. The woman can’t reach her cat down from the shelf, and finally another man stands and helps her fetch the cat down and stuff it back into its box, at which point it begins to quiet again, eventually. But not before a woman sitting across from me makes a rather loud remark of apparent disgust, and, standing quickly, stalks from the car, passing through the door at the end into the next carriage. The two girls next to where the angry woman had been seated giggle, and continue to gaze down toward the fat woman and her cat-in-a-box with evident curiosity. The African looks like a handsome Buddha, smiling beautifically. On my mp3 player, Saving Jane begins singing “One Girl Revolution.”
4. I get out of the train at Yeouinaru and follow the crowds up the stairs, my ears popping at the change in elevation (the subway is quite deep here, as it has just burrowed under the river from Mapo to the Yeouido island). On my mp3 player, the Beatles begin “All the Lonely People,” which seems so relevant and appropriate it sends shivers up my spine. I stand on the long escalator, watching the masses in slow motion. There are two Indian gentlemen in front of me on the escalator chatting in very soft tones, and climbing the stairs next to me is a trio of American-looking tourists, probably heading for the “63” building (the tallest building in Korea). I was thinking of going there myself, to try out the observation lounge at the top, but as I climb the last set of steps myself, I see that it has begun to drizzle, and I think about when I was climbing steps on pyramids at Teotihuacan, not so long ago. A lot of steps. Catching my breath. I come out next to the park on the south bank of the Han River on Yeouido island, and suddenly recognize the locale where the movie “The Host” filmed the first emergence of the monster from the river. That was a pretty funny movie – a female Olympic archery champion hunting the giant mutant monster through the Seoul sewers and desolate industrial neighborhoods along the river, after the creature has kidnapped her younger sister, who meanwhile, in her disheveled classic schoolgirl uniform, pluckily saves a fellow victim, a little boy, from the monster’s apparent wrath. The Beatles fade from my mp3 player and are replaced by Beck’s “Loser.”
I walk along the river in the rain.
Seoul Subway Map.
Caveat: Fall
Thursday was windy and rainy, but there was an unexpected coolness to the air, and the wind was from the northwest. It tasted of fall, for the first time, I thought. Friday was partly clear and breezy, and the humidity had dropped substantially. I keep looking for changing tree colors, but I think that happens later here than in Minnesota.
I went into Seoul yesterday, and walked around. I really love this city, I’ve decided. An infinite collection of neighborhoods. I started walking at Gyeongbokgang, the old palace at the north end of the old city, where the kings ruled during the golden age of Korean civilization in the 1400s. Seoul was founded to be a new capital in the 1300s, and this palace was the first and largest built, though later dynasties and regencies moved to other palaces.
I ended up walking all the way to Itaewon, the touristy area east of Yongsan, which is the old military base used by the Japanese during their occupation/colonization and subsequently by the Americans. Slowly, pieces of real estate have been repatriated, so the base is much smaller than it was even when I was here in 91 – for one thing, the golf course was given back and turned into a park. But the base is still huge, and the long walls topped with concertina wire are eerie in the midst of the bustling city. The base has often been a point of contention, and the intention is to eventually repatriate all of it and have the American Forces Korea headquarted elsewhere. It seems a recurring imperial pattern of the Americans, not really in keeping with the stated objectives of milatary operation, that our army often makes the former rulers’ palaces and bases into their headquarters – think of the Green Zone in Baghdad. And I doubt it is ever a very smart idea – leads to unnecessary resentments among the people being “assisted.”
I saw the war memorial. I think this is new… I don’t remember it at all. It’s quite monolithic, and saw the Namsan tower looming in the background, lighting up the night.
So Itaewon is mind-blowing. That inescapable smell of “down-range” (the old military slang for “off-base entertainment zones”): leather and food. And lots of Americans – not just off-duty soldiers, but hippies and tourists too. Stores and nice restaurants. And, surprisingly, zillions of thirdworld immigrants – this was unexpected and new to me. I would hazard a guess that Koreans are a minority in the area. Especially south of the main drag, I swear it was “little Africa,” with Nigerians and Congolese and I overheard plenty of Arabic too.
The contrast of American crewcut soldiers buying trinkets from a middle-eastern-looking, long-bearded, youthful vendor in Itaewon was strange.
I was trying to find a foreign bookstore Marlene (from work) had mentioned – still shopping for a place to get my weekly fix of news and commentary magazines. I didn’t see it – might go back in today and spend less time wandering aimlessly, and more time trying to follow the directions she gave me.
Caveat: Tuesday Morning
A few blocks south of here there is a large park with a Lake in it. Everyone seems to call it the Lake Park – I’m not sure if this an official name or not. I walked down there this morning, and there’s a nice little pedestrian bridge that gives some good views of the area. Below are 5 photos all taken from basically the same exact spot standing on this pedestrian bridge connecting the Ilsan neighborhood to this large park.
Looking east (well, kinda east-north-east, I think) there’s this weird looking bit of public art on the large plaza on the north side of the boulevard between Ilsan and the park.
Looking north you can see the Homever store I mentioned (a Walmarty sorta place), and the little Jeongbalsan hill. My apartment building is a few blocks behind the Homever store, and the subway station is a few blocks toward the little hill.
Looking northwest, North Korea is only about 20 km thataway – after you go through Munsan on highway 1, which is where I was stationed in the US Army.
Looking southwest, toward the Han River and then Incheon (which is where the international airport is, about 25 km), and then the West Sea (also called Yellow Sea) and, much beyond, Qingdao and Shanghai.
Looking southeast, toward downtown Seoul (about 25 km) – it’s city all the way.
In other news, I am coming to the stunning realization that most Koreans don’t know the names of their streets, and don’t particularly care – they often don’t put signs, they don’t put the names on maps, etc.. This is difficult for someone like me, who has always loved being able to study a map and then navegate around on this basis, and it’s surprising to me that it’s taken me so long to realize this. Regardless, it leads to an interesting, networked-node sort of view of the world, an interconnected web of buildings and landmarks on nodes, with unnamed spaces connecting them. I’ll get the hang of it, but getting directions is, well… interesting.
Caveat: Korea
Location: 경기도 일산구 (Ilsan-gu, Gyeonggi-do)
Soundtrack: mostly sounds of crickets, cicadas, citysounds
I really meant to post more, sooner. I am entering my 2nd day here in Korea. I start my teaching job later this morning. Right now it’s 3 am and I’m unable to sleep, due to the confusion induced by the time-zone change. But I’ll adjust.
Last week was very hectic, in Minneapolis, getting packed up and all my stuff moved from my apartment to the storage unit I’ve rented in Eagan (near the airport). I got checked out of my apartment on Thursday afternoon, and Friday morning I was on my way, Minneapolis to Chicago and direct from there to Incheon – a 14 hour flight and a 14 hour time difference meant 28 hours in a suspended state of intraplanetary teleportation.
I slept a little on the plane, but never do much. I watched two movies – from the Korean movie channel on the plane, to get myself in the right frame of mind. They were actually very good movies: “Highway Star” (Bokmyeon dalho) and “Miracle on 1st street” (1Beonga-ui gijeok). Subtitles in English, so I wasn’t completely lost. If you want to get a taste of contemporary Koreana these would be excellent choices, I think.
The flight arrived at Incheon almost 40 minutes earlier than scheduled, and by 5 pm local time on Saturday night I was through immigration and customs and boarding a bus for Ilsan. I rented a temporary cellphone and was thus able to connect with my contact from my new job, who met me at a bus stop just west of Madu Station in Ilsan-gu and drove me from there several blocks to my apartment.
It’s just a little studio, hotel-room-sized, but with a kitchenette. And even has a washing machine. It’s in a highrise apartment building called Urim Bobo County. I have no idea what they mean by this – bobo means, roughly, bourgeois, but without any negative connotations. And “county” seems to imply a pleasant suburban living environment – it’s a transliteration of the English word, not the Korean word that means “county”. Overall, I expect the intended effect is like the infinite number of apartment complexes in the U.S. with names like “Park View Terrace” or whatever. Basically meaningless, but meant to evoke a kind of suburban arcadia.
But, unlike suburbs in the U.S., Korean suburbs (and postwar urbanization patterns in general) are overwhelmingly high-density – thus this suburban community (45 minutes by train northwest of Seoul) feels more like Manhattan than like any socio-economically equivalent American suburb, e.g. Thousand Oaks in L.A. or Burnsville in Twin Cities.
This picture (above) shows the main street a block north of my apartment, and the fire station that will be my landmark for finding the place. The school is northwest, about a 20 minute walk – I wasn’t able to find it yesterday, walking around exploring, but I did find a nice park with a little hill in it, called Jeongbalsan (which is also the name of my rail station), and I had a strange moment when the pine forest smell and the humid, red, sandy soil evoked memories of marching through Korean woods on infantry exercises when I was stationed here in the U.S. Army all those years ago. Smells are weird that way, so evocative.
Above is a picture of the big buildings peeking through the trees of the park.
Anyway, I’ve been trying to get a lot of sleep since I arrived, so as to at least be well rested if not quite on schedule when I go into work later today.
In computer news… I am trying to get my Linux installation to allow me to type Hangul (Korean writing system). I’m having some frustrations, but I can kind of get it to work through a bit of kludge at the moment, by typing in the one application I can get it to work in (gedit, the opensource equivalent to something like Wordpad under Windows) and then cut-n-pasting into the destination (e.g. Firefox browser, where I write this blog), hence: 정발산 (=jeongbalsan).
Caveat: Blueberries, Beer, Boxes, Boxes, Boxes.
Locations: Whitewater, WI; Chicago, IL; Minneapolis, MN; and roads in between
Soundtrack: various, mostly NPR
I haven't written in a while. Last Monday I got notification that my work visa number had come through from the Korean State Dept., so I drove to Chicago to shepherd my paperwork and passport through the consulate there, in order to ensure I had the actual paper visa in time for my departure for Seoul (now in 5 days!).
I spent 3 nights with Bob and Sarah in Whitewater, WI, and it was good to see them before my departure. I enjoyed my time with Henry (their son of 9 months, now). Bob is into this show he had DVDs of, called "Corner Gas" – a Saskatchewanian sit-com, basically. Rather dry, but quite funny and entertaining. My last night there, we watched a few episodes, and ate blueberries and drank beer (I know, I'm supposedly a teetotaler, but seems like I've been relaxing my dogma a bit, lately).
So then Thursday I drove back up to Minneapolis, but didn't get out of Chicago with my visa till nearly 5 pm, and between rush hour and the severe weather they were having (thunderstorms, high winds, power outages), I didn't get into Minneapolis until about 4 AM. Oh well. So Friday was a lost day, I was tired. And so much to do!
Boxes, boxes, boxes, boxes. I have packed 75 boxes with books (almost exclusively books!) over Saturday and today, and placed them into my storage unit. Why couldn't I have opted to collecting something small and light, like stamps? No… I collect books. Oh well. They're all packed away, now. Must work on all my electronics stuff (5 computers, CDROMs, doohickeys galore), my paperwork (taxes for 2006 still due!), clothes, kitchen stuff. But the worst is out of the way – all them dang books.
Meanwhile, I have a pleasing announcement to make: I've got my new Sony Vaio running a "triple-boot": Ubuntu-Linux, Windows Vista Business, and Windows Server 2003R2. This is VERY cool. And I've transfered my email to Mozilla Thunderbird (ending my last horrible Microsoft addiction), and I'm doing most of my work most of the time under the Linux platform. I feel so… liberated!
I'll try to get my Win2K3R2 working well enough to run SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio, so I can continue to do my .NET development hacking and website stuff there – I'm not ready to take the huge step of migrating my DB work to Linux just yet. But my desktop is FREE!
Ok… back to all that stuff to pack.
Caveat: A Wash
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Soundtrack: NPR News – debate about the replacement for the 35W bridge proceeds apace, already. There’s a big hue and cry about trying to ensure the new bridge is “light-rail” ready or incorporates a light-rail line, which to me is freakin obvious – they’re gonna have to build a bridge for the “central corridor” light-rail line at some point anyway, and if you just study the map, the 35W crossing would actually work quite well, allowing them to then use the old railroad right-of-way thru the U of MN campus (instead of tunneling under Washington Ave, which would be humongously expensive I suspect!) and integrating the north end of campus and Dinkytown to the LRT route, too, where you know you could accommodate lots of public-transit-minded residents. God I hope they don’t “pull an L.A.” as I call it, and allow short-sighted thinking to lead them into building transit component (bridge, etc.) that actually works against long-term needs and logic (I call it “pull an L.A.” because the L.A. “green line” is the most poorly planned piece of public transit I’ve ever examined).
Ok, enough ranting about local public policy – I’m leaving MN for a bit, now, anyway, right? I face an enormous task in the next several weeks getting my stuff together for the move to Korea, and I’m not feeling motivated, rather, kind of exhausted from the long drive back. And now that I’m in my own place again, I miss my cat. But I spoke with my sister on the phone and she says Bernie is adapting well, assiduously but successfully avoiding the dog and behaving in a friendlycat way with the boys. I’m so glad for that.
Yesterday was a complete wash, as far as getting things done.
I love being back in the Midwest , despite the hotsticky weather – there was an enormous thunderstorm on Monday night, which was wonderful.
Caveat: Pretty good plains
Location: Bismarck, ND to Minneapolis, MN
Soundtrack: surfing the radio; Radiohead (great for road trips), Dylan (of course), Mexican Institute of Sound (something new)
On the radio, I heard: an opera called ‘The Greater Good’ as I drove into a vast cloud of forest-fire smoke west of Billings; a christian radio station that turned out to have a less-than-conventional twist, which lead me to evolutionarychristianity.org – very interesting; the news that Karl Rove (AKA "Bush's brain") is resigning; a country music top 20 countdown; a new version of “la guantanamera” in which the role of pure cuban girl is played by some innocent named “habeas corpus”; and more, more, more! Listening to the radio while driving cross country is second only to television as a way of sampling the cultural insanity that is the USA – and it’s easier to do while doing other things, e.g. driving across Montana, which, at 700 miles, is interminable and occasionally dull.
I had a head-on collision, somewhere west of Bismarck, ND – with a butterfly. I noticed it when I got out at a rest area (see picture).
The sky transitioned from the hazy, smoky mordor of Montana’s forest fires to the wide-open hugeness of the plains, as North Dakota gradually flattened out to the utterly circular horizon of the land just west of Fargo. They call these the Great Plains, and, although I like them a lot, calling them “great” seems extreme. Let’s call them the Pretty Good Plains, and leave it at that.
Caveat: Eastbound
Location: Portland, OR and environs; then EAST on I-84 to US-395 to I-90 east east east, Spokane, Missoula, etc.
Soundtrack: NPR and then the MP3 player on shuffle: tracks of KoRn, Grateful Dead, Jobim, Suzanne Vega, Chemical Brothers… all strung together.
I had those famous waffles for breakfast yesterday morning at Juli and Keith’s, and Latif and Peggy were there. It was a short visit, though, but good to see them. Then I drove into Portland and had lunch with a friend, Arun, and his family – he’d prepared some very good Indian cuisine in the style of his home, Tamil Nadu, I think. I enjoyed it. Arun left HealthSmart not long after I did, he was one of the best programmer/developer types there, and now he’s moved on to bigger and better jobs – unlike what I’ve done, wandering off into yet another adventurous but not so remunerative career. But I want to try to stay in touch with him.
After a long afternoon taking a walk around his neighborhood with him and his older son Kiyosh (about 3 and intermittently charming and mischievous), I departed for the long drive east and back to Minneapolis. I drove until I got to Spokane, but was feeling quite exhausted and decided to splurge a bit and stay in a motel instead of my normal sleep-at-the-rest-area routine. So now I’m in Missoula, and the air is filled with smoke from forest fires, and it might as well be L.A. or Mexico City out there. Lovely.
Not sure if I’ll make it to Minneapolis now in one straight shot or not. But I’ll give it a try.
Caveat: River of Madness
Location: US-101 and roads from Humboldt to Cherry Grove, OR
Soundtrack: KSLG (Nine Inch Nails, the new Modest Mouse, etc.) and then my MP3 player on ‘shuffle’
I drove up yesterday after getting an oil change for my truck and spending a bit over an hour out at Mad River beach west of Arcata (in picture). I used to go out there a lot when I lived here, just to meditate on the ocean and be on the edge of the world. I’ve actually rather enjoyed being in Humboldt this visit, but I still think there’d still be too many ghosts here to be able to live here permanently.
I have never seen the highway between Arcata and Portland up the coast quite so sunny – it’s almost disorienting.
Caveat: Firewood
Location: Arcata, CA
Soundtrack: Inner silence.
This is my home town – I was born here and, with a few interruptions, spent much of my first 18 years here. There are some ghosts, still, but mostly, when I come back, I’m overwhelmed by the natural beauty of this place I grew up, and the warmth and centeredness of the home I grew up, though now Peggy and Latif own it, they were part of the broader community that was involved in my upbringing all those years ago, and there’s huge continuity in things.
The house where I grew up now has gardens all around it, and is very different from when I lived here, but it is strikingly beautiful – Peggy and Latif have done spectacular things with both the internal and external spaces. All surrounded by gardens and greenery, the redwoods off to the northwest still, but both front yard and back now filled with paths and patches of plants.
Drove to David and Vivian’s “up the hill” and helped David move some firewood, and talked for a few hours.
Old books were found – I’ll take them with me back to Minneapolis to put into storage while I go off to Korea.
Caveat: Tree flesh [Cold – End of the World]
Location: US 101 to Humboldt County
Soundtrack: Cold’s “13 Ways to Bleed on Stage” (on of my favorite albums of all time).
[I retroactively added this embedded video on 2011-06-24 as part of my Background Noise project]
But then Beck’s “Loser” came on my MP3’s shuffle, and I remembered when that song first came on the radio, in 94-95, and I was commuting every night on the I-35W bridge across the Mississippi – the one that just collapsed – and I imagined that if the bridge had aged a little faster, it might have been me sampling the river bottom’s mud with my bumper… so I said goodbye to the bridge, even though I’m in Northern California.
By the time I got onto US 101 at Ukiah, the litter on the roads was no longer tomatoes, but instead the familiar fragments of redwood bark that falls off the log trucks. Because of the fibrous nature of the bark, and its reddish color, this, too, looks a quite a bit like road kill, at times.
I think I would not do well, moving back to Humboldt (which is where I grew up) – but I always love that feeling of “coming home” that I get driving down into the greenness that is the far north coast.
Caveat: Tomatoes
Location: I-5 Up the Central Valley
Soundtrack: NPR via various valley stations
I left L.A. early – 4:30 am., to beat the traffic out of the city. Dawn at the summit of the Tehachapis. Then tomatoes littering the sides of the highway all the way up the valley, falling off of trucks from the harvest, I guess. A sort of vaguely macabre asphalt marinara.
Quote: “No animals were humped during the making of that song.” Meredith Brooks, regarding her 97 hit “I’m a Bitch”, during a discussion of a recent New York City Council initiative to “censure” the use of the word “bitch” in public discourse, in which she suggested the label was as much empowering as derogatory.
Caveat: Chupe de pescado [Korn – Evolution]
Location: Newport Beach, CA
Soundtrack:
KLoVE (Spanish soft rock station in LA: más romántica);
KoRn’s new single _Evolution_
[I retroactively added this embedded video on 2011-06-24 as part of my Background Noise project]
I spent the morning in Burbank again, catching up with a few people (Vesper, Diana, Luz…) who I didn’t manage to see yesterday. Then I drove all the way down to Newport to have lunch with Tyler (colleague from HealthSmart) at my favorite Peruvian restaurant, Inka Grill just across the line in Costa Mesa. I love their Chupe de pescado, it’s possibly the most delicious soup in the known universe, in my opinion: potatoes, egg, onion, fish, spices, something that makes it chowdery – I ate here often with Tyler and the rest of the HealthSmart crew during those long months now memorialized as the “battle of Lytec” (which we lost spectacularly to the enemy forces, which fought under the banner “poor project scoping and planning”).
We went back to the Newport Beach offices and I chatted briefly with some of the other folks there, and I had weird flashbacks of T-SQL code as I walked the aisles between the cubicles. Too many very late nights practicing slash-and-burn database programming, I guess. Visiting ARAMARK was better for my sense of accomplishment, and it stoked my ego to see the accomplishments of my era still percolating on the screens of the National Account Reps, but visiting HealthSmart’s IPM offices has served to remind me why I’ve decided to change careers and try something different: more people-oriented, perhaps less remunerative, but hopefully more spiritually fulfilling. Not that I’m particularly spiritual person, as many of you know, but I don’t know how else to express the idea I’m trying to get across.
Why do I listen to Spanish soft, romantic rock, when I abhor the same genre in English? It’s a nostalgia thing, I think. It was the soundtrack of too many hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Mexico, too many 2nd class bus rides. Not the same songs, 20 years ago, but the genre is full of songs that, 20 years on, can’t be differentiated from those older ones… it’s all a sort of weird slightly enchilada-flavored aural blur.
The smog in downtown LA was atrocious, driving down, I couldn’t even see downtown from the 5 as I went by – much worse than anything we saw in Mexico City last week. But this is smog season in Lalatopia, while this is precisely NOT smog season in Chilangolandia at the moment – which is why we went at this time, of course. Which is why I always go to Mexico DF at this time of year.
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Caveat: No sé nada, pero me la sé muy bien
Yesterday we returned from Xalapa. A very clear day, but despite this the descent into the City from the east was still a sort of diving-into-smog.
I've been struggling with a bit of bourgeois guilt (or first-world guilt if you prefer) – that feeling one gets when traveling in places like Mexico City (or south Chicago for that matter) when one resides comfortably. The guy named Colin whom we met the other day here at the Casa accepted the label "freelance anthropologist" but my question is: how is this different from being a sort of "cultural daredevil" – i.e. someone who goes out into the world from the safety of middle-class America, whether the urban nightmare labyrinths of Tepito or the destitution of rural Guatemala?
Not that I'm placing a value judgement on it – but let's not fool ourselves into thinking we're somehow helping or even showing solidarity with the "masses" – all we're doing is "having fun" exploring alien cultural spaces, aren't we? Is this wrong?
Phil and I went to the main modern art museum at Chapultepec this morning, but he wasn't feeling too hot (maybe a bit of elevation sickness finally hitting? not sure…), so we returned to the Casa for a few hours of relaxation before we run off to the airport this afternoon for the flight back to L.A.
I took a long walk toward Metro Hidalgo, the little park there where Aura and I used to rendezvous and go on our "dates" all those years ago. Such fond memories of such dysfunctional relathionships… but haven't all my relationships been dysfunctional?
I then zig-zagged my way toward Chopo, enjoying the feel of the little neighborhoods; the streets; the school kids loitering; the policemen (and a few policewoman, in fact) chatting, guarding inobvious things; the vendors selling aguas and jugos; the old women begging; the young men with punk haircuts and a lot of body jewelry cursing; the dogs sleeping; the smells.
I love Mexico City.
Caveat: Jalapeños
We are in the Mexican city of Xalapa (or Jalapa), Veracruz. This is where jalapeños come from, of course. But it is also one of my favorite Mexican places, right on the edge of the altiplano as it drops to the rainforests of the gulf coast, it is a bit steamier and much wetter than mexico city, but still not like being at sea level.
This morning we went to the state anthropology museum, which is one of the best outside of the main, national one in the DF. Lots of giant heads and interesting masks and statues. I found myself thinking of a story that could develop in relation to confusing the statues with reality, somehow. A hallucinatory experience inside the museum. It was sunny when we got there, and cloudy, sporadically thunderstorming, when we left. We had some chicken at a chain restaurant, and walked toward the centro again. Stopped in a spectacular park, all jungly and in a sort of arroyo, birds and koi swimming in ponds at the bottom and flowers and children running about playing. Quite idyllic and earthy.
It began to rain quite hard, and we sat on some steps of a building under construction, and watched the sky wash some motorcycles on sale on the sidewalk. I took a photo of the license plate of the car in front of me, with a flower fallen from some tree above it on the bumper like a dead creature. Striking and strange picture, I was thinking. I will post when I get a chance to upload pictures.
So now we are back downtown xalapa, and Phil is resting in the hotel while I strolled downhill to this internet cafe. Got an email from my new employer in Korea, confirming receipt of a photograph I emailed him since I had failed to include one with the packet of other documents sent by courier last week with the signed contract. An emergency ad hoc photo taken by someone at the Casa in mexico city, I find it striking/weird that my visa photo for my new Korean job was thus taken of me standing against the wall of the lounge of my first overseas job 21 years ago. I love little synchronicities of that nature.
Caveat: Historical Revisionism
I ask myself, what is this process of going back to "old" places (where I once lived or traveled) that I've been doing so much of? Being here in Mexico City causes me to examine my "agenda" in remembering things, reciting old narratives, visiting with old people or remembering people. Many people (most) acquire a sort of rose-tinted vision of the past, and conversations about "old" things seem fraught with "it used to better" kinds of remarks. I, too, practice this rose-tinting – I know I do. But perhaps that's the difference – it's intentional on my part, and there are other times when I can revise my own historical narratives in profoundly negative directions, too. I feel that, objectively, the past is merely different – neither better nor worse.
I went to see Guti Aviles this morning – she was a former member of the Casa staff, and was a sort of godmother to me during my year and a half here, feeding me garlic and papaya ("para tu salud m'hijo") and such. A very caring, gregarious person, now over 70 and with an inoperable brain tumor, nevertheless she seemed cogent and after a bit of chatting seemed to remember me at least enough to repeat my name a few times as we talked.
Yesterday, an afternoon in the Casa like so many from so long ago – long, long hours of political and cultural debate or discussion with interesting, engaging people – a young man named Colin from Seattle, anarcho-socialist and with experience in developing-world communities from western China to Guatemala. Another mellow world traveler Yaniv from Israel (though currently resident in Madrid) with fond recuerdos de la casa and a very generous, wide-open personality. These sorts of people and the wonderful, brief relationships that can be build are part of what make this "casa de gringos" (entre otros) so unique in my traveling experience.
Today Phil and I are going to leave for Xalapa for a day or two, so as to experience something external to the gran ciudad podrida.
Luego, más.
Caveat: Lev Bromstein is still dead
This infinite city repossesses my soul. Each street is a neighborhood, same-yet-different from any other: poor or bourgeois; green with trees or grey with concrete; festive in colors of political advertisements or gang graffitti. Last night Phil and I walked back to the 'casa' (the Casa de los Amigos, AC where I lived and worked for over a year in 1986-87) where we're staying as guests now, across the plaza that's in front of the Monumento de la Revolución, and at 8pm there were: 1) a marching band practicing (sound of cars crashing); 2) some boys playing football (americano! – not soccer – los chilangos love american football); 3) a permanent political protest encamped and playing traditional music through loudspeakers; 4) taxistas loitering; 5) men and women selling trinkets or candy or videos or music; 6) tourists strolling (that would have been us, I suppose). It all felt vibrant, and so typical. A city full of lives being lived.
This city. And Manhattan, where I was a month ago, too. These places always recall to me my untold tales of the truly infinite city. A city in a Borgesian mode, genuinely devoid of limits or boundaries. Some authors of science fiction have postulated cities that cover entire planets (Asimov or Walter Jon Williams), but I think there's a germ of something different, unique, evocative (and personally compelling?) in the notion of a city-universe.
Yesterday, Phil and I took the bus from Autobuses del Norte (terminal) out to the pyramids at Teotihuacán. We climbed the piramide del sol, saludabamos a los dioses moribundos y mirabamos a la muchedumbre de turistas que estaba ahí. Sacabamos unas fotos.
We returned to the city, amid the haze of the north side of the valley and the grey suburbios climbing the hillsides, which were punctuated with occasional brightly colored declarations of incipient middle-class wealth in the form of well-built two story houses amid the slums. Without map or guide I took us from Metro Indios Verdes to MA Quevedo at the south end of the city, and found unerringly but instinctually my favorite Mexican bookstore, la libería gandhi. Once a sort of counter-cultural institution, this business has in recent decades grown to a sort of Border's-of-Mexico, with multiple locations and a very nifty website from which I've even ordered books from the states, although the cost of shipping is a tad exhorbitant – oddly, it's cheaper to order books shipped from Spain than Mexico.
I bought a spectacular book of short stories, very recent (2004?) entitled El materialismo histérico, by Xavier Velasco. More on this gem, later?
This morning we went to the museo and casa de Leon Trotsky, who lived his final days here in exile before being murdered by a proto-KGB agent in 1940. We walked around Coyoacán, had some lunch, and returned. I met with Rosita, a woman who was one of the cleaning staff when I worked here 20 years ago, and now, despite her 70 years, is still spry and works occasionally to make ends meet. We chatted and walked over to try to find Guti, another person who was like a godmother to me during my time here, who has been ill. But she wasn't home or didn't hear us yelling up from the street ("mexican doorbell"). I know where she lives, though, and will try to come back to see her at some point again before we return to L.A.
Caveat: Mexicopolis
Greetings from mexico city. Walking around with my father, showing him my old haunts, moving efficiently through the subway system on kinesthetic autopilot. We went to the torre latinoamericana this morning and up to the observation deck (floor 42), but the view was hazy and only a few kilometers visibility – couldn't make out chapultepec or popo, but could just see congreso to the east and torre pemex to the west.
This afternoon spent a few hours at the museo nacional de antropologia.
Had dinner just now at a traditional style argentine parrilla – I had a pretty nice steak. Anyway, I'll meditate on my experience and post more later.
Caveat: Obsolescence
I guess I was expecting this to happen, at some point. Last night, my beloved little laptop computer (a Sony Vaio) decided it was done. It's display gave up the ghost – I've seen LCD screens die like this before – something about a just-not-quite-right impact, or too much extreme of temperature (heat, in this case, sitting baking in the heat of my truck cab), and suddenly there erupts an orthogonal rainbow of colors, while the background washes out. If you bonk it around a bit, squeeze where you know the contacts are inside the plastic case of the lid of the laptop, you can get the colors to come back and make out what's on the screen, but the rainbow remains, and each reboot brings in a few more streaks of color, widening from a mere inch to nearly 50% of the screen in the last 5 reboots.
I've managed to rescue my data, my website development files, pictures, email, but I don't think I'll be getting in there again. I'm confident not to lose anything, as I'll extract the harddrive and slave it to my desktop when I get back to Minneapolis, but meanwhile, I'll be computerless for at least a short while – though I hadn't been planning on taking the thing to Mexico anyhow, and I leave for thereparts tomorrow morning.
It was a good run – by far the most pleasing laptop I've ever owned: amazing battery life, compact and lightweight (under 4lbs) and with enough processor power and memory to run my database applications slowly but reliably. I've definitely recommended Sony Vaio to many people because of the experience over the last several years.
So. I'd actually been toying with the idea of buying a new machine before taking off for Korea next month, but this, obviously, decides it. The real question is whether, given my strong concerns about Windows Vista (which is the only Microsoft OS being offered now on PCs), do I make the transition to Apple? I've been on-and-off considering it, but, given I just ported my entire website apparatus to a Microsoft-only platform (ASP.NET 2.0), I'm not sure I want to face re-migrating the thing to something I can maintain on a Mac. Of course, there's the dual OS option, but there's a learning curve there, too, running some old copy of XP on a Mac – plus, I've heard about performance issues with Windows-on-Mac, even under dual boot (as opposed to virtual machine).
So… we shall see. I have the next week, in Mexico City, to think about it, and meanwhile, I'll stay "connected" via internet cafes and borrowed computers – I'm writing this from my father's computer here in the hills of L.A.
Caveat: Desert and Smog
The drive from Minneapolis to Phoenix went well. Bernie really got into it – here's a photo: I've never tried posting a photo to this blog before.
We saw mostly clear, hot weather on the drive, but between Flagstaff and Phoenix met some spectacular thunderstorms and downpours, gorgeous summer "monsoon" as they call it in Arizona.
I stayed a few days at my sister's in Phoenix, watching the cat go through the initial stages of adjusting from a one-human household to a two adult humans, two child humans plus one dog household. I think she'll do fine, in the long run, but the short term involves substantial time camping out in her litter box and behind the refrigerator in the kitchen where no one could get to her.
I managed to spend some time messing things up on my sister's computer, in the name of trying to help her fix it. I'll blog this bizarre technical experience seperately, perhaps – I've definitely reached a new low in my level of respect for Hewlett-Packard.
Jameson and Dylan, my nephews, are great fun to interact with and watch. It was particularly fun to see them playing "dog" – where Jameson led his compliant and cheerful brother around on a leash:
This morning I left Bernie the cat in Phoenix, adapting to her new home, and drove to L.A., across the smoggydusty desert. It was a sad parting, for me, as I've grown quite attached to my cat, but my commitment to go to Korea to try my hand at teaching is complete, now, so I'm glad to have found a new, caring home for her.