Am listening to UK Classic FM, my favourite radio station, so uhh nicely British. The announcers are comforting and typically laid back British. We have a copy in South Africa too resplendent with the same signature tunes and all. Its freezing today, too cold, commuted to work by subway, it was about -3 C and me ears froze off, will need one of those fuzzy, wooly scarves my mom knits that I normally would not be seen dead in.

Coming back I caught the bus as it’s closer, assume the usual crash position. Talking about busses I caught the taxi on Saturday evening to The Outsider and we passed a bus and a car tried to cut in front of us and swerved back to miss us and bang, slammed into the back of the bus, not too bad but how do you command a Korean taxi to stop and help, he just accelerated. I know chik chen for straight and yogi for stop here, the scope of my taxi navigation, and 'Yuksam Bilding!'.

Talking about The Outsider, two things struck me on Saturday evening. First is kids are allowed in sometimes with their parents, have seen this a few times in Korean bars, does not happen back home, very strict with the under eighteens. I know that because my nineteen year old daughter has had a running battle with the bars in Cape Town, they knew when danger was approaching. Then secondly they were playing very serious English Christmas music, all the Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby oldies and even some Mormon Tabernacle Choir stuff. Now it’s quite disconcerting to be quaffing a pina colada to this type of music. The CF bar on the other hand was playing regular Korean pop and I did not feel so guilty. I don’t think anyone notices the Christmas music, it’s just played this time of year, tradition, everywhere. I must state that I enjoy Christmas music, there are some amazing songs but they don’t work for me in a bar.

Not sure if I will see the blog again this week, tomorrow is going to be a very busy day, typical last few days work rush. I have informed all and sundry that come Thursday midday I am on the plane. I told Chi Ho that Thursday was ‘bye bye Korea’ but he retorted that ten days later it was ‘Hello Korea’ again, he won that round. He was very off colour today, ate something bad over the weekend, one would think that with their constitution that accommodates kimchi that they could chew rusted bolts and survive. His hello/goodbye jokes were very weak but he managed a soft chuckle. I dragged him out for a galbi-tang just to get something into his stomach, it was freezing cold, the coldest I think I have ever been. In South Africa, once a year at four or five in the morning when it has snowed on the Drakensberg or Malutis miles away and there’s a gale blowing from the mountains it might be -3 but not at mid day, crazy.

Bought a grilled chicken at the roadside in my mad rush to get home, 5,000 won, smelt divine. I think the only way the hawker survivies is by sticking his hands into the chicken when no one is looking to keep them warm, he battled with the plastic packets and condiments. Took some photographs, wonder if the nice looking sealed pack of stuff is a pack of pears in syrup, doubt it, this is Korea and the land of pickled veggies, will check it when I get back and need something to suppress the depression of being on my own again. Whenever I go away I always envisage myself walking back through the door alone again, my imagined return is normally quite accurate. Chopped the chicken in half, shame, small bird, it must have peered out from underneath its mom and just stuck its head on the chopping block, rolled it’s eyes and given up. Lo and behold it’s stuffed with rice ala samgeytang-style. Was quite nice, I like roast chicken, at home we usually take one with as padkos (road food on a long trip), full-size though, no abuse of the young there, along with sandwiches and coffee and stop by the roadside 400 kilometres or so from home and munch. I suppose 400km from Seoul puts you in the ocean except if you’re going to Busan or North Korea and somehow I don’t think you will be welcomed in the northerly direction. On my way home I stopped by my favourite bakery and bought some delightful custard pastries, anything custard works for me. Also got some fine Italian espresso coffee and put that on the perculator.

So now I need to do some packing and blasted ironing. I do need to get around to buying toilet paper, have not had for weeks, been consuming two boxes of tissues. My dad once, upon appearing form a roadside toilet at a filling station, quipped that it was tough to go to the toilet and the only paper you had was a ten rand note, at that stage about twenty dollars and a small fortune. I was glad he did not use it as we still had a long way to go.

I see this blog machine is making my big photos smaller, must be because I am approaching the limit, might be hunting for another blog site, damn. It messes them up too if you insert them large and not as thumbnails, the template does not like that. Drat it, don't want to battle with computer stuff in my off time, eats into my gaming and ironing time.

This is get ready for holiday weekend, washing stuff and I need to start doing some ironing, right after this, my favourite job, so favourite that I need to do a bit of it every morning before I go to work. Most favourite after washing dishes, which I have done over and over this weekend, like there’s a genie in the place walking around dirtying stuff, stopppp. And the dust and grime, vacume, wipe. I did not go out today, sleeping late, doing stuff and made some srumdidlyumptuos bacon and eggs. Need some food now again, might sneak out for something just now, ahh dang, the ironing.

Friday night was wander around a bit night, I had a cocktail at the CF2 bar in Yeouido, all on my own. They make excellent cocktails. Then went for a beer at The Outsider, all on my own again. Was sociable, some people chatting to me. Saturday Jo texted me and we went for a meal and drink at The Outsider, chatting to one of the girls who spent some time in Europe and the UK, Sung-Hui, looks like she’s lost her heart to another foreigner. After that we went for a cocktail at CF next to the Yuksam Bilding. Was good fun.

I’m getting into real expat-going-on-holiday mood, the type of mood where you’re packing and there’s only one thing on your mind, getting on that plane, the going home syndrome. I used to do a bit of one to three week assignments in Southern Africa in earlier years and that going home feeling was always great. This is only my second long term assignment, having spent five months in Sydney before. I was meant to stay a month or two longer and it was Christmas time and the going-home mood just overran me, my youngest was going into her last year at school and I did not really want to be away for that so I got on the plane and went home. I arrived without warning and phoned my wife from the airport and said ‘Are you not going to fetch me?’. My wife then fetched my kid from a part time job and she wanted to know if my wife had heard from me, she said no and it was a great reunion when she walked in the door. So I’m itching to hit the road again.

Working in an Eastern country like Korea is quite a shock for a Westerner. Apart from the language and culture issues the corporate atmosphere is quite harsh and uptight. The ‘do not loose face’ at any costs rule seems to apply. People will quite often argue a point, in my case most often some computer issue, and then we relent and I will often find out later that it never has been done, smoke screen. The boss rules and everyone else basically sucks up to him. Even Western companies with offices in Korea seem to suffer from the same malady, I have heard many young guys complain that they do all the work while the boss takes it easy. The working generation is typically made up of very sweet people and I am very fond of the working crowd at the office, just don’t know how to tell the boss to ‘Fcuk off!’. One of the phrases I hated the most when I started here was ‘This is Korea, we do it differently’. It seems that you sacrifice all your individuality in pursuit of corporate nirvana. My favourite memory of my younger adult years was going home to our first born when she was one or two at five in the afternoon, in that cutest of stages, and having her waiting at the gate and just wanting to go and cause some havoc, a play in the park, a drive to the shops, whatever, no money in the world can buy that. That does not happen here, working parents only get home after nine or ten when the kids are most probably sleeping, sad, best part of life. Quality of life does not seem to be an issue, every thing moves in packs, that’s why I enjoy my colleague, Han Yeol. He is the exception, humming, laughing, trying to enjoy life. I have spent some time in working in Indonesia and will most probably spend more time there during the next year and the atmosphere there is much more relaxed. They are not as advanced and wealthy as South Korea by far but perhaps more happy, coolest of islands too. In the African countries I worked too the atmosphere was perhaps too much of ‘If you can do something today put it off for tomorrow’ but they are a smiling happy people.

So counting days till Thursday, four sleeps.

Have been a bit busy this week so blogerall blogging done, got home early last night intending to do some and fell on my bed at 8 pm and woke up at 6 this morning, nice sleep, bit of a headache though from too much of it. So this is a bit of a catch up. It was still dark and I was checking my emails quickly and looked outside and for the first time noticed the logo of one of the Korean Christian channels on a building across the half a dozen roads in front of my apartment and it has a yellow cross in it that had such a warm looking glow, was quite comforting.

Nice walk to the subway this morning in the cool air, no lift with the boss. This weekend rain and some snow is forecast and good cold weather. Next weekend should be a nice weekend for skiing, drat it, wont’ be here, my poor sore knees need recovery time. Yesterday morning there was a nice bit of sunshine and took a few photographs of the river. The one with the trees in front contrasts nicely with the background. Earlier in the week I was high up in the LG Twin Towers monitoring a training session and we had nice views over Yeouido Park and the river. LG has a humungous cafeteria in the basement where the hordes feed, food was not bad though, they even have a section doing Western food but I had already taken some nice looking noodles. I had to go back to the office in Mullae later and could not resist a cappuccino and slice of divine Chicago cheesecake at the Yeouido Coffee Bean, another comfort place, nice-huhh. My punishment was that I had to go back to the LG towers later in the afternoon and rained wet.

We had some nice galbi-tang this week again, Chi Ho, Han Yeol and myself, my call again. The boss said it’s strange that the English can call hot soup cool, I had never thought of it that way. He asked who paid for our food when we go for lunch, I said we all pay, ‘You go Dutch for lunch’, strange-i, that rhymes. Night before last I was invited to attend a dinner with him and his alumni at a box in the World Cup Stadium. They beamed a sign up on the big screen of their get together and I have a photograph of me taking the photograph on the big screen, get it? Food was a real nice buffet mix of Western and Eastern foods. The stadium is impressive, even when empty, they were playing Christmas music on the PA system. Korea does not really celebrate Christmas but there are Christmas lights and music and decorations everywhere. The trees are adorned in myriads of tiny white lights, poor things, they can never go to sleep.

Last Friday the boss’ car burst a water pipe on the way into work. The heater radiator self destructed and instantly filled the car with steam, weird. We managed to crawl to work and he took it to a repair shop. New word he picked up was anti-corrosive, the qualities of anti-freeze, jots them down on a piece of paper and practices in the office. We had nice Japanese food for lunch. On Friday evening the consulting firm Chi Ho and myself work for had their Christmas lunch in the Marriot Hotel, nice five course meal with not a chopstick in sight and no Soju, the guys looked quite forlorn. We had one bottle of red wine between about eight of us and I managed about four glasses of it, they were rather downing water. The food was very good, in a grand hotel way, small fancily dressed portions, very nice rib eye beef. We don’t eat rib eye in South Africa really unless it goes by a different name, mainly fillet, T-bone, sirloin and rump steak and then lots of pork ribs and lamb.

On Monday night I tucked into instant spaghetti and nice fresh strawberries, currently the season, and Dunkin Donuts. Dunkin Donuts and the nice custard pastries in the Korean bakeries are my comfort foods. The donuts are not fried in oil, more a baked variety so not as unhealthy, Koreans abhor food done in oil, KFC is decidedly evil, but there are quite a few outlets though with Koreans guiltily and quickly chomping down their chicken. To admit to having KFC in the office normally extracts gasps of 'Oh, that's bad for you!'. The boss was doing training this week so I was commuting to work, nice and cold, the cheeks are starting to freeze up a bit. The office is boiling though, jacket and jersey come off and sleeves go up, same with the subway, the further you descend the warmer it becomes, must have something to do with proximity to the warm place where all of us sinners will be consigned to.

In South Africa temperatures inside and outside during winter are quite similar because the houses are built for summer so one tends to be warmly dressed inside too. We don’t have central heating, just tend to use portable heaters. The houses most often have roof insulation but windows are single glazed and walls are not typically cavity walls. Floors are quite often ceramic tiles without under-floor heating. The under-floor heating in Korea is refined to an art. The old style ondol was done by a fire in an urn type thing outside leading warm air under the floor and then sleeping on the floor on some form of bedding. On our ski trip we slept on the floor, not my favourite place for sleeping, like at least nine inches of inner-sprung padding between me and the hard stuff. It was warm though, like having an electric blanket on permanently, I kept throwing off the blankets. They have a nice bedding kit with a thick underblanket type padding you sleep on and a duvet type covering with a wrap around sheet over this. There were five guys sleeping in the room so propriety prevented me from taking a picture, particularly as one guy pronounced that he slept in the nude and there was no way I wanted to first do a check on whether all the proper bits were covered before I took said photograph. Guys never want to be accused of looking at other guys.

Twice a day in the office someone’s computer starts playing an exercise video with accompanying blaring music, the type that will awake a lost soul in the deepest pits of hell. This happens on instruction from the CEO and everyone is compelled to participate, the boss usually running around scolding defaulters. I would like to see the reaction to this in South Africa. It would be labeled undemocratic and staff strikes would result in demands for the CEO’s firing. When the boss is not around most people just ignore this cacophony. Today I sneaked out to the LG 25 convenience store in B1, all buildings having some form of convenience store in their B1’s in Korea. For the second time I was addressed by a Korean not on our project since I have been working here (nine months now) and this time it was a five year old on the instruction of his mother – ‘Hi’, but the mother said nothing.

Need to start packing for the Christmas holiday and hunt or some gifts this weekend, I was married for twenty six years yesterday as well, poor long-suffering wife. Trying to see how I can arrange for her to spend more time here with me, tired of being alone. Boss wanted me to golfing with him at the Pristine valley golf course we were at a few weeks ago but I declined, citing sore knees, need for travel preparations and the high cost (200,000 won green fees) as reasons. The course is eye-poppingly beautiful though in wonderful mountain country. It might be covered in snow come Monday morning.

I should have known that this was to be an omen of what was to come, the sign opposite the spot where the bus collected us in Hongdae. ‘Where did you buy your BMW?’ ‘No, it came out of Kolon Motors’, ‘You gotta be joking!’.
I have two enduring impressions of the ski trip. First one is having skis, boots, ski pants and what else shoved into my arms and told to get onto the slope, ‘What about instruction?’, ‘No, go!’, like an obstinate adjuma ordering you to chew a live squid, you don’t argue with them. So I went, like a lamb to slaughter. Boots on, waddled to the slope, ‘How do I attach my boots to the skis?’, stood on them, they clicked in, gee, I’m clever, gripped the ski poles, slid forward gingerly on the flat, that was ok, crept up to the ski lift, standing 4 abreast with Koreans half my size, my 100 kilograms on their regular skis, doing all I can to stop from falling on my face before I could get my bum onto the seat, get scooped off the ramp, ride up the gentle slope, nice ride, beautiful scenery, wish I could get my camera out with my artic ski gloves, ‘Oooh, sh*t, there’s a dismount coming’, ready steady slide down the three foot high dismount, crash, boom, bang, face in the snow, legs in the air, worried hands gripping me and getting me up out of the way of the next four pair of oncoming boots and shoving me onto the slope, retreat to the back, lick my wounds, pride all gone, take a photo.

That was the first, the second was waking up at five on Sunday morning, getting up and going for a walk on the slopes, just an awesome feeling, not a single person in sight, rare sight in Korea. It has not snowed yet and everywhere were huge snow machines blasting snow into the windless sky to have it drift down gently. Only two slopes were open, the others covered in a wonderful brown layer of frosted grass.

We don’t see much snow in South Africa, one foot of it one every ten years which wrenches the whole country to a halt, but I did grow up on a farm in the coldest area just about and we had these frosty brown winters and that’s what I enjoy about Korea the most at the moment, the brown winter, the cold in the face and warm jackets and woolies. It’s strange that one can actually long for the cold, I have, and I’m getting it in significant doses at the moment. I am a farm boy who has adapted to the city life so this was my natural environment. Any body can build a nice shopping centre with the right tools and imagination but it takes someone very creative to build a rusty brown treed and grassed Korean mountain.

I also now know where the 4000 Koreans per square kilometer that are not in the Hangang park on the banks of the Han river are, on the snowless ski slopes, all of them, as the photos attest. The ski resort is a wonderful testimony to Korean efficiency as I expected, well organized, huge equipment rental shops, lots of eating places including a well frequented Burger King and Starbucks, massive apartment blocks, a bit reminiscent of the nicer ones in Seoul but still similar design.

The one industry in Korea that’s obviously got some serious brain-drain problems at the moment is apartment architecture, the designer of the first one has left the country, just whip out the blueprints for the building next door, adjust slightly and build. And my greatest fear was not realised, the English phrases, they were non-existent, totally, no English whatsoever, barring the fact that I was in the company of thirty or so twenty something mostly English speaking school teachers and one computer guy besides myself, a very delightful and enjoyable gang. One, the other British computer guy, lives near my work subway station, Youngdeungpo Gu Office, pronounced Yongdungpo like in dung nearly, more i-ish. I ordered a pizza and coke at a take-away and was redirected to place my order at the beer and chicken counter, strange, ordered paid and sat down. Suddenly this guy pitched up with an arm full of beer mugs and a huge pitcher of beer and one coke, my order. They had confused my pizza with pitcher. I had to wait a while for the real Macoy, got sympathetic stares though. I should have drained the pitcher, the pizza was not very good.

The group was strangely made up of mostly Irish, a Frenchman, an Aussie, the Pom, some Canadians, a Californian and even another South African teacher from Cape Town too and two or three other Koreans. One forgets what it’s like to be in a group of English speaking people so it was great. Everyone chatted to everyone, as if we were all getting full monies worth, stacking up for the long English-less nights, one of the girls said she hated skiing but just came for the escape from Seoul and company. We stayed in a youth hostel, must have sold me as a chaperone, five to a room sleeping on Korean bedding on the warm floor. Going back into the room after my early walk with four guys around you who imbibed copious quantities of Soju mixed with all the other natural emissions guys make was quit a shock. I fell asleep quickly though, natural anesthesia.

In spite of the hazardous start to my ski life I enjoyed the rest of it, extremely hard work though it was, bit of a sanity check. Our clothing was an overkill as it wasn’t that cold. I did succeed in the ski lift dismount every time after the first failure. I also learnt that turning is difficult, that I had no idea how to stop, turn, fall properly and remount after a fall and that pointing myself downhill resulted in jet-like acceleration and an eventual flameout. I took to trying the lower portions of the slope and managed some nice runs that did not end in too much disaster, great fun. To be attempted again but I will go for a lesson first. The scenery was astounding, stunning, beautiful, breathless. Can understand why Koreans love the outdoors and put great effort into equipping themselves for all possible forms of outdoors activities, a flourishing industry pouring out designs you could never possibly imagine.

Then there was the traffic jam to get back into Seoul.

I now have ski gloves and goggles and a ticket to the ski resort but no snow. Weather has been too warm, too warm for a jacket and jersey/sweater to work but just too cold at night for only one, but has made for nice days though. I might take a golf club along as a contingency in case their snow machine has broken down and their par 3 golf course on the ski slope is open. A good sign is that my colleague, Han Yeol, is going to the same resort, like what they say about Chinese restaurants in South Africa, if the Chinese eat there then it’s a good place. At least he will warm up the atmosphere. His English is not too good and when the discussion gets a bit tricky he starts looking around for Chi Ho to translate but I chase him away often (Chi Ho) and then try to explain in more basic English.

He bobbed into the office this morning and rolled himself up into a ball on his chair. I had to take a photograph. He was moaning and groaning because a job he ran failed, ‘Ooh, I now am in trouble’, with a grin and a laugh, most other guys in the office would have been perched on the window ledge outside already. It pains me to come in some mornings and see the exhaustion written across their faces. Life to them just seems to be more of the same, I asked another guy how his weekend was, ‘The same’, metronomic, it seems. I feel guilty that I, at my age, try to bring variety into my life to make it interesting and survivable and take on jobs in weird places and pack my stuff at 7 pm and go home because we Westerners believe in living at home and just earning a living in the office. Are we lazy? I have heard it said about us in the office. I do skip the evening dinner hour though.

In the car I once said to the boss that the guys were tired, they should go home earlier, 9 pm I suggested. The next morning I was reading a note he made of our conversation and changed the 9 to an 8, he looked at it and shook his head but said ‘ok’. Somehow the message never got passed on. He also said ‘IT professionals like to work late’, the same guys with the exhaustion on their faces. The human body is designed to only function properly for a certain continuous stretch of time, most probably eight to ten hours, after that it’s wanting to say ‘bye bye office’. Last night I looked around at the office just before 7 pm, it was full and people were bustling around as if it was 10 am in the morning. I was in trouble once because I caught a 4 pm flight to Hong Kong on a weekend without informing the boss, I had told my direct boss though. In Western countries it’s mostly a case of ‘Do you mind if I…’, in Asian countries it’s a serious negotiation, I have learnt to my peril. I once overheard the pair of Texans asking to leave at 6 pm to catch a plane to the US on their two monthly break, it was an arduous negotiation. My thought was ‘Fcuk!’ (Play the TV advert)

Yesterday I had bibimpap, for the first time, I am ashamed to admit, and perhaps not again too soon. It was ok, just a real mix of Korean stuff, I ate most of it and it was not too bad, I insisted on a MacDonald’s strawberry milkshake afterwards, Han Yeol and some one else also had one. It was my idea to have Korean food as we had laboured through some un-interesting KFC the day before. Last night I headed for the café Pascucci in Yeouido and wolfed down a pannini sandwich, cake and cappuccino, there was not much wolfing to be done with the sandwich, small but very tasty. I looked at the menu of the Mexican place next door that James had said was not worth while and I could only recognize one or two real Mexican dishes, the others were hybrid meals, and expensive. Now one of the about two dishes I have made myself has been Fajitas including making the pancakes and everything myself. I should try it again. Here’s a photo of the food display at the Homeplus foodcourt. I marvel at the exquisitely crafted food models, some arty people must make a good living out of making them as you see them everywhere. I am not too sure if they actwualy make you buy more food. I prefer the nice colour photographs some people have on their walls and menus, English names help a lot too.

Today the boss’ car overheated in the middle of a busy road, so we limped to work, stopped a few times. For lunch we went to investigate the progress of the repair job at a small repair shop resplendent with sexy Asian model on a spark plug poster. The boss’ new word for the day was ‘corrosive’ like in antifreeze anti-corrosive fluid. He is good at pursuing new word, will drop everything in the middle of a busy intersection and write a new word down on a scrap of paper, then look it up at the office on his Korean-English dictionary. Quite often the words or the context will not be listed and so far reference.dictionary.com has not let me down yet. After that we went to have Japanese food at a nice place across the road we frequent. They have lovely colour menus and posters of their food, will take my camera along next time. The boss promised to take me for raw fish again, sachimi. Then we ambled to Homeplus to look at the golfing equipment. Women take golf very seriously in Korea, and they excel at it, one thing they consistently beat men at in Korea and world wide, good for them.

I’m off for the weekend so the blog daemons will not have to contend with me. Let’s hope I hear no ‘good fall’s. And my Christmas break is only 13 days away, it seems that my tolerance for Seoul in one stretch is about six weeks, then I start itching to get away and get home, mostly the loneliness and isolation demons.

First things first, I went to The Outsider tonight and yes, it was still there. I had my favourite pasta and a single Cafri, not ‘one more beer’. But I was afforded special treatment, I am now an honoured member of the gambling club, that is the club with Outsider chips with no monetary value, just practice chips for the day when Koreans are deemed mature enough to gamble by their government, concerned as they are about the well being of their people. I say that tongue in cheek because if they were concerned they would mandate a 40 or 45 hour work week like most of the rest of the developed world and kick all the staff out off their offices and let them go home to the kids, my pet gripe about Korea, don’t have many more except that I also don’t think they treat women very well. The Outsider visit was really nice, Jo was down with an ailment so he could not come and I was left to communicating in English and my half a dozen Korean words. At least not once was I referred to as ‘James-I friend’, I have an identity.

The boss’ new word in the car was brunch. We were talking about a breakfast place in Hanamdong I had been to with my wife once. The two Texans on the project used to go there every Sunday morning for breakfast, the distinction being that it is just about the only place in Seoul that serves hash browns. I have never taken to hash browns so that distinction never really got me but Puffin Café is a nice English style coffee shop-ish place owned by a Canadian. The boss wants to take his daughter there on Sunday morning for an English breakfast. Last night he asked me what ‘liquor shops’ I went to in Itaewon, meaning bars, so we set off for Geckos and had a beer there – him a US Millers and me a Korean Cass. He was quite taken with the place. Koreans in general avoid Itaewon, I think they see it as the bastion of the evil GI and avoid it. After that we went to 3 Alley Pub where the patrons are more or less our age and had a meal. It was actually quite nice to have a Korean capable guest, he was quizzing the staff a lot. That’s when he wanted to go to Puffin but it was out of walking range. I had a real nice beef stew. The barman is English and most of the customers were older business types. Geckos is more for the younger set, noisier too. The Korean version of brunch is atjum, a hybrid of atjim for breakfast and chomsum for lunch, something like that, shiksa is a meal. He wanted to know if I had had a traditional Korean breakfast before, I said my stomach was still asleep at breakfast time. I have seen Koreans eating noodles, spiced veggies, funny looking fishes and what-not for breakfast. I think my Western throat would just constrict if I attempted to feed it such cuisine early in the morning. ‘Nope, that’s not going down here!’.

It fascinates me how inquisitive Korean people are about Western ways. They have a huge and ancient culture of their own that predates Western culture by centuries yet Western culture and English ways are held up as the norm to aspire to. If you go by age and maturity the reverse should be happening. Thank heavens we don’t though as the thought of trying to feed Western infants kimchi is unimaginable if I recall how we battled to feed our babies ‘normal’ food. Mr Kim says his youngest of about eight does not like kimchi (wow, join the queue!) but loves pasta. At eight our kids had not even tasted pasta let alone decided whether they liked it or not. If you go to Korean facilities like their golf courses it’s amusing to see how Western they try to make them along with a huge range of locally developed creature comforts, the ‘good shot’ calls are still ringing in my ears. I was watching Korean golf on TV and straining my ears for the ‘good shot’s but could not hear any, I think they have an editing device that removes them. It’s very sweet though, I enjoy the child-like interest though they have in things Western. The girl at the gambling table waved her hand Jedi-like and said ‘No more bets’. I personally think we have a very dull and boring culture. I miss the mix of Western and African culture we have in South Africa plus the element of chaos that sometimes introduces into life. When I worked in Australia I enjoyed a documentary on AIDS in South Africa, sad as the topic is, but the sight of naughty little rascals causing havoc at the traffic lights in Cape Town warmed the cockles of my heart. I am quite inquisitive to see how the ski resort is organized, not that I have ever been to one, hopefully they will not be calling ‘good fall!’ after me. The closest I have ever been to a ski resort was in a valley in the Maluti Mountains in Lesotho, Southern Africa (I’m sure most people have never heard of Lesotho) where there was a collection of Sotho mud huts they called a ski resort and the closest thing to a ski lift was a Sotho on a Basuto Pony to take you to the top of the mountain bareback.

The resort we are going to is Vivaldi Ski Resort, bless their seouls for the English version. It seems very large and as well organized as only Koreans can be regarding their leisure activities, even has an indoor water world and a set of golf courses. One of these is a par 3 course run on the ski slopes in summer. I hope they removed the flags and picked up all their golf rakes and other paraphernalia, closed the holes and sand traps, etc. I do not want to be reported in the press as having crashed out at pot bunker on hole number five of the par three golf course at Vivaldi, ‘good shot’. The locals say ‘Bibaldi’ I hear. I am really looking forward to getting out of town a bit. The Korean country side is extremely beautiful, if you somehow can avoid the rush hour traffic back on Sunday nights. I need a larger memory card for my camera as well as a pair of ski gloves and goggles. It hasn’t really snowed yet but they make artificial snow, the weather unfortunately having warmed up quite a bit.

Today I again had galbi-tang beef rib soup with Chi Ho and Han Yeol. Yesterday Chi Ho had frog marched me to the KFC stall in Homeplus so today was Korean day, my choice. I told him a joke about prisoners who had been in prison for so long they referred to their jokes by number, just shouted out a number and everyone laughed. Could not bring myself to finishing off the joke where a new prisoner had joined and shouted out a number and no one laughed, then was told it was because of the way he had said the number. Koreans understand mathematic and scientific English jokes well. Chi Ho shouted out ‘Number 1’ and laughed like I have not seen him laugh ever and to get him to really laugh is quite an accomplishment. I wish I could remember all his funny ‘hello something, bye bye something’ references, they stream out every day. The project finishes in three months and he’s counting the days and already saying ‘Bye bye project.

And now I need to play one game and go to bed and I have'nt ironed my darn shirt again, bye bye blog.

Seoul is being winter as it should, temperatures today between 0 and 3 degrees C. Its raining and I fumbled my way home with a blown out umbrella I keep as a spare in the desk. I walked into the apartment like a bit of a freezing wet duck. Hope the weather lays down a few feet of snow for the weekend, must be the top end of the storm that has just gone through the Philippines. I’m nearly thankful for the morning ride with the boss, robbing me of my morning walk as it does.

After an unsuccessful weekend’s cooking attempts I headed for the Outback opposite Yeouido station and had my usual Western side salad and riblets along with their delicious dark bread and honey butter, long live the US copy of an Australian steakhouse. I did spend a great amount of time washing and cleaning up my darn kitchen and cursing a very unstasty can of New England Clam Chowder soup I had lovingly purchased after searching for it for many months. I really need a good recipe for the stuff but try to buy tinned clams in a Korean shop! I am not a cook by any long shot, even tried it sans clothes like the infamous Jamie with no luck, got burnt with oil! I do sometimes take a fancy to a particular piece of food and then hunt down and try a recipe for it with most often great success, an example being Italian Risotto made with rice style fine pasta the name of which escapes me now.

Until I worked in Seoul I did not really know many US restaurant brand names but after spending about 7 months on the project with two Texans who were hungry for anything US I have been through most of the Benigans, TGIFs, Dunkin Donuts, Outbacks, etc. ‘Is that another US brand name?’ ‘Yahhh’. Pizza Hut died out in South Africa about fifteen years ago but is very active here, resplendent with the obligatory little bowl of pickled something with every Western style meal you get in Seoul. It is hard to believe Outback is a US steakhouse chain with a name like that, must refer to some Jeep four by four model although the place is pasted with Australian photographs, I can even identify my old apartment near the harbour bridge in Sydney on one of them. Food is good though. Another American standard I also appreciate is the bottomless Coke, something not found often in South Africa, only one I can recall is at a dingy pizza chain.

The weekend was very domestic and Sunday more of the same, just relaxing, defrosting the freezer and attempting and messing up more cooking. I went for a bike ride around 2pm, it was sunny but there was a frigid wind blowing. Bike riding is not really winter stuff I have discovered, the icy wind gets in everywhere and the first to freeze over are the ears. Yeouido Park was empty, Seoul residents mulling around in underground shopping centres no doubt, one of the nicest being Coex which I planned to go to just to browse and shop a bit at. I gave up fighting the wind and came back, then thought I would explore the suburb on the other side of the Yeouido ‘island’ behind the Yuksam Bilding. There’s a driving range there I have been trying to figure out how you get to, so went hunting down the back alleys on my bike, much fun type exploring. I wish the Seoul architects would stick to the old Korean style architecture, particularly the old roof styles. When you drive in from the airport you know that you are in Asia when you see the first such structure in the country side but once you hit the city it’s a very monotonic square building style with predominantly white tiling. The millions of apartment blocks that keep the 4000 bodies per square kilometer stacked on top of one another all look the same, how you identify yours beats me. They are building new ones near the office and they all are the same, makes me understand why the work people stay at work as late as possible or hang around in restaurants and bars. Problem is there are many kids growing up there who don’t get to see much of mom and dad. There’s a lady in the office with a one year old boy and she seldom leaves the office before 10 pm, although in her case she’s always very hard at work. We were invited to his first day birthday party which was a bigger affair than a marriage, very festive, I wonder if he knew which of the smartly dressed ladies was mom because he spent a lot of time hollerin. Korea must be one of the few countries in the world where the most spoken death bed words are ‘Ahh, I should have spent more time in the office…’. And I did just about die when I got back from the ride and dreamt myself though the dregs of the world.

My bike ride was too long, as my sore knees attested this morning, and still remind me about tonight. It must be a combination of my 47 year old frame and the fact that that 6 foot 5 inch frame has to fit onto a Korean mountain bike. I managed to scrounge an awful looking extension for my saddle so that has eased the knee strain a bit. The fact that I walked down seven flights of stairs this morning at the office to get to lunch as Chrys’ otisosis so accurately describes a full Korean elevator at her delightful Word parking lot blog http://wordpark.blogspirit.com/, of which we have six such elevators, having attributed to my discomfort. I have worked in the building for eight months now and the only non-member of the project team who has spoken to me in the mostly full elevators was a salesman visiting the company who had lived in the US and a very friendly Korean staffer whom I had met at a soccer game, his name in Korean meaning one star, wonder if there’s a one star American general in his genealogy. Otisosises spend the ride contemplating the days work or mulling over some dark thought as not much is spoken in an elevator.

Lunch today was a more seafoody variation of pokumpap, not as good as the original but the bit of a crumby place we have it at really gets a good fried taste to their rice, hope its not the layers of grimy old oil in the wok, what the eye doest not see... Chi Ho was his usual Monday busy depressed self so I had lunch with a very unusual member of staff who fortunately sits next to me, Han Yeol. He is about thirty-ish and not the typical Korean run-in-the-pack staffer, he exhibits a mind very much of his own, he moans and groans when he’s battling with work, packs up and goes home when he’s done, no matter what the time is and the expression on the boss’ face. He does not bother about the enforced exercising we do every morning under orders of the CEO, he just rambles on delightfully on his own and gets the job done, I wish there were more of him. The others are all really nice people but they hunt in a pack and get hunted as a pack by the boss sometimes and will not really rock the boat as, in their eyes, jobs are scare in Korea according to the FUD factor, fear, uncertainty and doubt. The Korean work place is very tiered, every body consults his boss before doing anything, individuality is not encouraged much. Every one has a narrow band they focus on. Seeing the big picture is not really encouraged. I am not a good pack animal and it has taken some getting used to. I still rock the boat but my age is a mitigating factor in a very Confucionistic society. One does realise, after quite a few moths working here, that this is a very different society and culture, nearly as if Western and Asian people evolved totally separately but just shared some technologies. We have totally different mind sets, am not saying one is good and the other bad, just very different. I have given presentations and stressed the points I think are important to have the audience run away with what I imagine to be the most insignificant technicality. Perhaps that is what adds to the fascination of Asia, it’s different, really different and one has to approach it with a very open mind or frustration and cynicism is going to be a large part of your unhappy life here. I think this wisdom strikes you some time around the time you make the switch from being a tourist to an expat, perhaps around the time you start ordering Korean beers instead of Western brands.

Time for bed and I have'nt ironed my damn shirt for tomorrow, not gonna have time for breakast again.

Today has been my housewife day, rather yesterday, Saturday, as it’s now 12:07am Sunday morning. I am listening to a DVD of Pavarotti and Friends 2, the best show in the series according to moi and a copy of which I bought in Indonesia for $1 as I have been looking for it since the first time I heard Bryan Adam’s raspy voice belting out O Solo Mio with Pavarotti’s super smooth liquid voice on radio a number of years ago. I am also chewing my way through a packet of Ghana chocolate which I doubt originated there as there is a Lotte reference and much Korean on the wrapping. If I struggle to master Korean imagine how the poor Ghanaians are going to battle.

I now know why the Koreans have perfected the art of eating out the way they have. You do not get invited to a meal at their homes, you eat out. No one brings a lunch box to the office, they eat out. They don’t go home for dinner, they eat out. I did not eat out tonight. In a fit of home makers delirium about three months ago I bought a whole pile of frozen foods to cook myself, oven French fries, chicken and pork fillets, calamari rings, cheese fries, little Korean style savoury pancakes, and other tidbits (oops, always spelt this with a t not a d, thanks Word) that appealed to my nesting instincts. Jeepers, what a disaster! The French fries have to be done in oil as I have no oven, so I poured nearly a bottle of olive oil into a pan and set fire to it. No sign that it was boiling when I poured the fries in, goodness gracious me, super heated oil splattered oil all over the place including my spectacles. Ever since then I have attempted another cooking session only in moments of insanity, and I have had a few, as well as attempts at emptying the freezer and conserving budget. I did not eat today, washing clothes, catching up on sleep, etc and by the time my internals signaled hunger it was to late to go out so I decided to finish off the French fries and attempt the chicken filets and the last of the little Korean pancakes and cheese fries. So, bearing in mind my first attempt at doing fries I did not over heat the oil, actually not quite enough either so they ended up very soggy with oil in spite of leaving them on absorbent paper towels for a while as my wife and daughter do. At least I can make filter coffee, if I can find the damn filters. Many biscuits and pieces of chocolate later to get rid of the oil taste my innards rumble no more. Koreans do know better sometimes. Meals are relatively cheap anyway, a lunch time plate of pokumpap fried rice or galbi-tang beef rib soup is only 4,000 won, just under $4 US as are most of the meals within striking distance of the office, except for the very nice but over-priced Italian restaurant nearby with the divine bread, their cheapest pasta being about 12,000 won. The bread nearly makes up for it though. Their green bread is spinach bread, the only time I will tolerate vegetables in anything but a vegetable dish.

My friend James has gotten me onto this food photography track, except that my food fetish is not ice cream but Korean style biscuits. They come individually packaged in many different styles and flavours. Here is a shot of some that I finished off with some excellent filter coffee tonight to get rid of the oily taste. Biscuits are judged by their dip-ability, in other words they must not dissolve on contact with coffee but only soften after about 5 seconds and remain firm enough to make the trip to your hatch. Any that stay hard are instantly consigned to burn in hell. The ones from the blue and white box on the right qualify and are excellent, sort of firm wafery texture with a nice filling. The Margerets biscuits from the red box unfortunately don’t make the grade, they dissolve instantly and you end up dinking biscuits. The wafers are nice but a bit buttery. In Indonesia recently I had similar chocolate and vanilla wafers and they were excellent. The honey-roasted cashew nuts must be the best snack I have ever had, every time I go back I stock up at the airport. Mocambique in Africa is a major cashew nut producer and when I worked there I used to buy them raw in one kilogram packets for a dollar or so and then roast them myself. The effect raw cashew nuts have on the intestinal track does not bear describing so roasting is a must. I see that in the US they make Pringles with Korean labeling too, strange-i. The hot chocolate is another example of individually wrapped servings as most of the instant coffee is also packed.

I am not going to attempt the Korean names but I have dusted my Korean language book off and started going through it. I need to have logical associations with things otherwise my computer mind does not store the information so I read with interest that many of the Korean letters are shaped according to the shape the tongue contorts to when making them and their position in the mouth and where the sound is made. So instantly I know the difference between ‘n’ and ‘k’ as well as that the funny upside down ‘y’ resembling squiggly letters have some relation to been formed near the teeth like s’ and ‘ch’, weird looking teeth those people must have had. This information is contained in an addendum to the book, why not in the very first chapter beats me. I discovered this information when I had given up on memorizing the strange shapes and paged through the rest of the book.

I have a very intriguing friendship with Chi Ho and I owe much of my sanity to him as he has such a nice friendly disposition and cosmopolitanly open mind that does not only see things from a Korean view point but does understand why some things are difficult for foreigners here and why we are weird creatures. He speaks quite good English, having learnt it at school and then for nearly a year in the UK, but like other Koreans can be very staccato-like. When we started communicating via email about the project I said the project is something nice I can sink my teeth into, in other words a project to get involved with and work at. ‘We are only taught grammatical English at school and not idiomatic English, today I have learnt a new idiom, you must teach me’ was the reply. Now my English is a mix of the worst of all the English speaking nations’ with a Dutch and African tilt thrown at it too so I relish in teaching him weird stuff. He believes now that TTG is an official abbreviation for Time To Go and constantly makes up new variations. He has the knack of cracking ‘hello xyz, goodbye xyz’ jokes too, for example ‘hello sir, goodbye sir’ to some one who was’nt on the project for too long and I am amazed at the variations on this theme he is capable of. As for most Koreans work for him is hard labour and not much pleasure is gained from it, what a waste of life sometimes, and I think much of it is due to the hard management styles inherited from the Japanese. There does not seem to be much of the Western style progressive management techniques in Korea one finds in some large companies in the West where staff are treated more as equals than subjects and encouraged to think laterally. This is my major criticism of Korea, great country and friendly people it has in spite.

Thank heavens for the dictional skills of Microsoft Word (except for the fact that it’s dictionary does not contain ‘dictional’ but was confirmed to be correct by http://dictionary.reference.com which I have open constantly, right click Add) this blog would be unreadable. My English teacher spent much of my last two years at school messing up my essays with red pen circling the words I miss-spelt. I have an ongoing war with Word when typing, dreading that fearful red or green squiggly underline, reminds me of my poor English teacher, she haunts me still.

In three weeks time I am going to meet my family in London for a week’s Christmas holiday and am counting the days off, only two weekends left, and I am really looking forward to that. I get to seem them every second to third month. My children have never traveled abroad except for to neighbouring African countries and I’m keenly anticipating the affect London will have on them as it had a mesmerizing affect on me the first time I went there on a work assignment about three years ago, which was also my first trip abroad. Tomorrow or rather just now as it’s now 01:42 am I will see what the weather looks like and try to get my log outstanding bike ride in or if the weather looks bad perhaps head for Coex Mall.

Friday nights are the best time of the week, from about an hour before knock-off time till an hour after you get home, relief, release, escape. For Westerners the hour before knock-off time starts at around 3 pm in the afternoon, not in Korea, sad to report. Last night Chi Ho and I left the office at 6:30pm and he said it was the earliest he had left work since February, had something to do with the boss being out of town, I think. I have never seen him so relaxed, melancholy being the most common emotion in the office. I normally leave at 7 pm but do not have dinner at the office, the locals start leaving from about 8pm until midnight, every night. Friday’s the office is normally empty by 8 though. Korea does not know the concept of flexi-time. Working hours are strictly stipulated and adhered to under sentence of death, yeah, if you don’t have work you can chat on MSN (that gets done even if there is work, I marvel at Korean programmers abilities to debug a difficult program while conducting half a dozen MSN chats) but be sure your butt is glued to the seat. I’m used to leaving after 8 hours if I have nothing to do or staying late if I do, also made the mistake on settling on a daily and not hourly rate for pay. If you are busy installing a computer server and you have a million buck system that you are carrying up the stairs you may drop it in mid-air if it’s lunch time, please don’t put it down gently, just get out of the office.

Today was our pizza day at Homeplus, Chi Ho and myself. It could be a place in a Western country except for the staff, so is quite comforting. I enjoy the local food thogh and miss it if I have not had it for a while, petrified of loosing my chopstick skills. Approaching a Korean style table though is an exercise in contortionism for me, like a giraffe drinking at an African waterhole, done in phases and reversed when the boss barks ‘Let’s go’ (another thing I find weird in Korea, the host does not ask ‘Shall we go?’). Why do my joints always ache for about 100 yards after getting up, and my 30cm shoes in the shoe row are not difficult to find.

Koreans don’t walk, they shuffle, their shoe laces are generally never untied, they just walk the back down until it resembles a slipper. In the office I can identify certain people walking behind me by the sound of their shuffle already. I have sworn that the next time I buy shoes here they would be slip-on type, have to finish off the lace-ups I so proudly bought in South Africa before I came with the two inch soles, made from buffalo hide I think as they don’t want to wear out.

And Chi Ho and I did go to The Outsider for a light meal and drinks. Had not been there or more than half an hour when Jo, James’ Korean friend, phoned and said we must go or a drink and I said ‘I’m already here!’. It never rains but it pours, when you get to go out as an expat you maximize on the opportunities, they don’t come easy. So in the time it takes to get rid of half a Budweiser he was there. The Budweiser was inflicted on me as they do not sell my favourite Korean beer Cass, ‘a’ pronounced nearly like the English say arse (not in Word dictionary, right-click, add) or father, and a heavy ‘k’ excuse the example, not American ‘a’ like in caast a but more Dutch-like ‘a’. We had a nice chat, it’s nice to have Korean company in a Korean bar. James’ name did come up a few time in the conversation, Jo admitting that he missed him a lot. The speed with which he got the telephone number of one of the girls at the bar made me think he had some excellent training too! I regretted not having my camera there, next time. I did have it to work though and here are a few photographs of the commute, again the autumn colours being the main attraction. I also met another expat, he plonked himself down on the seat next to me on the subway train at Yeouido station, doing some English teaching in the area, got his number. ‘Hello, where the h*ll do you come from?’

I took a cute photo of a dog perched on a concrete pole, resplendent with winter comforts. Dogs in Korea are a very sore point as they often end up as meals, not the type in the photo though, these are revered often more than humans, there is a whole suburb of doggie shops and parlors. As most Koreans live in apartments the smaller the better and there’s quite often many dogs leading their owners around along the Han River. They do also specialize in breeding the smallest varieties possible and fussing over them with abandon. We were climbing mountain with the boss and a guy came around a corner with a cute dog on a leash and I joked ‘He’s got his lunch with him!’. The boss took great pains to explain that Koreans do not eat dog anymore, but did let slip a few months later that there was a restaurant across the road form the office that has it on the menu. As abhorrent as I find the idea as I am a great dog-lover, of the live variety, I realise (right-click-add, don’t give me a ‘z’) it’s a culture thing and needs to be understood in that vein, like jackal hunting in the UK, game hunting in Africa, turkey shooting in the US, etc. Again, I am a visitor in Korea, not a critic of lifestyles. We did eat sheep intestines on the farm too as kids.

This weekend, don’t know, don’t have much planned, housewife cleaning washing vacuuming day, must go bike riding or perhaps complete the Namsan mountain climb. Next weekend there’s a nice trip to a ski lodge for the weekend with an expat-type adventure club we went river rafting with once that I think I will attempt. Have never tried it and was assured that they have boots up to 31cm for rent. What about a ski suit for my 6 foot 5 frame?

Here's a shot of an ice cream wrapper, yeah I know I promised never to sink to these depths but it looked good. The ice cream looked good too, rice cake though. I've tasted green tea flavour ice cream, closest taste I can think of is the lucerne we feed cattle back home. Once also had sweat potato ice cream, now I dislike having liquidized vegetables as I don’t like drinking stew and I dislike vegetable flavoured ice cream even more, enough said.

Ahhh, I did not blog yesterday, what happens id one skips a day, bloggerall I hope. Somebody should start a blog-dictionary – bloginary or blogxicon. Blogstyles are interesting too, I have been looking at some of the newly modified blogs on Blogspirit at www.blogspirit.com, if you are quick you can post a new entry and find yourself listed there for about five minutes too. Many are very subjective, frank, heartsore, poetic, literary (like Chrys' on the side bar), cynical, funny. It seems that blogscanning has become another past time, like some weird reality show of what’s going on in peoples minds. For now I will just try to keep this as a record of life in Korea and wherever. My subjective deviations will remain secret.

Last night I had to escape Yeouido and caught the subway from Yongdeungpo Gu station to Itaewon just to get a Western-something dose again, my dose from Saturday had run out. Yongdeungpo is pronounced yondingpo, the ding is nearly like dung, mix of I and u, whoflungdung. If you say deungpo like in your English best you just get a blank stare ‘Where??’, try again, ‘yongdingpo’ ‘Haa, yongdingpo’. How do you get from eu to i? The problem is the language is Korean and written in Hangul so all the English is just a translation and there are seemingly no hard and fast rules. As a matter of fact there is still some arguing going on about how to translate some stuff. To say something Korean involves much courage and the sequence normally is say it in your best Korean, ‘Huh??’, then try again, perhaps again, then once your attempts at communication are comprehended ‘Ahhh, xyz!!’.

I still battle to say Yeouido, normally at least two attempts with an element of trepidation. It’s something like yoido in one quick word with a bit of an emphasis on the i, I dunno, but do not dwell on the e, but then why is it there? I have even heard it like yayido. I listen carefully to the woman voice on the subway announcing stations and try to imitate that but even that is not always good enough, after eight months. I have realised I must do something about my language skills. I attended some Korean classes for a few weeks but I had started three weeks into a semester and then was out of Korea for six weeks so gave up. I did learn quite a few words though and you pick them up in conversations, like shiksa – meal. The critical thing is to learn the script as most signs are in Korean. Thank heavens some have English versions too, like the subway maps. The hotel we stayed in at first had English Seoul maps from www.escortmap.co.kr - they leave them in the foyers of some hotels. I took half a dozen and carried one constantly in my pocket. I realised I had made the switch from tourist to expat when I stopped carrying them. You do not want to get lost in Seoul, you do not want to get lost in Seoul, rule number one, believe me. To be honest every subway station has a huge map of Seoul in it with a lot of English, and the subway maps in the subway trains are also in English. The bus maps at the bus stops have the subway stations in English too. My saving grace is that I live behind the 63 Building – ‘Yuksam bilding’ yuk = 6 and sam = 3. It’s quite difficult to make a mess of that, I hardly ever repeat it. Do not attempt to explain directions to a taxi driver, just bark out the name. Do not, however, say Yuksam in your best Texan as a colleague found out on her first day. The Yuksam came out as yeoksam in Texan drawl so that’s where she was taken, to Yeoksam Station half way across the city, twice in actual fact. A 26 year old Korean girl from the office who speaks quite good English once accompanied me to Coex Mall to buy a Korean language book, so we are going through the titles and she said ‘Ahh, that looks like a good book!’ and the title was ‘Making out in Korean’! She had no idea what ‘making out’ was, quite a funny moment, though it had something to do with being a good language book, was funny.

The boss’ new word this morning was ‘queue’. I told him that I had caught the subway to work yesterday and walked up the stairs (chil=7 floors) because the queue was too long for the elevator. That was a mistake, walking up the stairs and the new word as both my legs still hurt and I had to explain it’s meaning in detail and it’s spelling is quite confusing. The elevator announces each floor in Korean too so the chil for seven is ingrained. I picked up the numbers ok as I already knew the yuk and sam form Yuksam and chil from the 7th floor, just had to fill in the blanks. To make matters worse though Koreans have two sets of numbers, can’t remember the other set.

The Itaewon trip took me back to 3 Alley Pub, it’s cosy and not as big as Geckos, music not as loud, barman is American and the food seems much nicer. Had a tremendously huge bowl of onion soup, delicious stuff, and a huge steak sandwich. It’s in the alley behind the Hamilton Hotel. The English was American but beggars can’t be choosers!

When you’re a foreigner in a country managing to do small things is quite often a huge victory, finding goodies for the apartment being an example in case. Getting a Korean ID and bank account was another. A sugar pot, jam pot and milk jug eluded me for a long time and I did look everywhere. I eventually settled on more or less substitutes although I have given up on the jam pot thing, just realised that my sugar pot could work as a jam pot too, now where did I get the damn sugar pot! Here then is my new sugar pot and milk jug, yes the milk jug is just a regular measuring jug but I can assure you that Koreans do not pour milk from a jug or otherwise the milk jugs are in such demand they are always sold out as you can’t find them anywhere. I used a small coffee plunger as a jug for a long while as I use it to warm my milk for breakfast cereal. I do now take exactly one cup of milk every day. I have a sad story about salt too but will have to take a picture first to submit photographic evidence.

On the subject of food since the other expats on the project have departed Chi Ho and I have lunch together most days. The idea is to get out of the office and as far away as possible in our lunch time hour. There’s a large Samsung Tesco (of UK fame) Homeplus supermarket quite a few blocks away and he is fond of walking there, get’s him away from the office which is a very stressful environment for him as it is for many Koreans. Now Koreans are extremely health conscious, the virtues of Kimchi are extolled, fatty Western food is reviled, etc. The exception is Chi Ho, thankfully for me. Yesterday he forced me to even have a MacDonald burger, of all the evil junk food inflicted on this planet by Americans! Homeplus has a huge food court including a KFC as well as a nice pizza place outside. We go there quite often. We do also have pokumpap (fried rice), galbi-tang (beef rib soup), samgeytang (chicken soup with ginseng), fried rice, noodles, Japanese foods and other very healthy Korean foods so do not fear for my health.

Ah, nearly lunch time, where is Chi ho going to make me go today……