Traversing the expat world tends to lull one into a sense of isolation, being away from home and family on your own for long spells. I often maintain that at some stage on the long flight to Korea I morph from planet earth to planet Korea. When I get off the plane I'm in another world, can't read hardly anything, people, trains, neon signs, fax machines, photo copiers, washing machines, etc all speak a different language, like one had had a stroke and everything is mumbo-jumbled.

So it was with great anticipation that I headed home for a 'flyback', the company's term for our periodic home visits, more or less once every two months, nice company! It was my big five-oh birthday and Done` and I were going to have a combined birthday bash as she is my junior by only twenty days but junior she is, in that respect at least. Lots of family and friends were coming down to Cape Town too. The mother-in-law firstly, of course, along with two sisters-in-law were staying at a friends place while she was away. My brother Ian and family and me own mom also traveled down as did Melinde, the oldest, and appendage, dad-speak for daughter's boyfriend, whom we had not met before. Suffice it to say that she has good tastes! Then two sets of friends from our previous Gauteng home province also flew down. We had planned a big birthday bash for the Saturday when most would be there.

On the Friday night, however, we had an impromptu lobster braai (Safrican for barbeque) and some other delicious dishes and copious amounts of wine and other stuff. We were in a nice relaxed festive mood and festive we got. I can't remember my youngest, Lauren, ever being so friendly and telling us all how much she loved us, 'you are the best dad!!'. Now I would have believed that had I not been around when she lurched through her teens! The lobster was gob-smackingly delicious.

The main do was great too. South Africans do not know New England Clam Chowder soup which Done` and I have come to love in Korea, American though it is. Korea mimics America in most of its attempts at being Western and one of their better adoptees is Clam Chowder. The worst must be their adoption of the US accent, they walk around with little electronic dictionaries that get whipped out all day long and that even provide phonetics in American speech, claaass instead of stiff upper lip English class, in computer simulated American but made in Korea or China. Anyway, feeling that I should be the first to introduce this finest of American dishes to ex-colonial South Africa I hunted for a recipe on the Internet. Lo and behold all required tins of you guess what, New England Clam Chowder soup, and knowing that none such merchandise is to be found on our shelves I obtained fresh cleaned and de-shelled clams and proceeded to hack the recipe a bit. The bottom line is that it was declared delicious by my guests and emptied in no time at all, the fresh clams having done the trick, me thinks. The other stuff was good too, just can't remember what else we had!

I missed my dad though, first big family occasion without him lumbering around with a big stick as a walking stick, perusing the horizons and mumbling wisecracks and wise words and enjoying his family. Home was nice too, have not been there since October. The mountains and sea and wide open spaces do contrast a bit with Korea's 800 pair of feet per square kilometre!

We did a spring mountain climb yesterday with the people from our expat apartments, the done thing to do in Korea in Spring. We had looked a sorry sigh in our worst baggies and sneakers versus the immaculately dressed Korean mountaineers. We had the regulation Makoli drink and pjaon afterwards which was nice, in the newly landscaped Citizens Forest. The ubiquitous Asian cherry blossoms have come, blessed us with their blooms, and gone already too.