Saturday, November 14, 2009

Ith a small world, after all

Yesterday, I made a grand and massively crowded tour of half of the Seoul subway system, First, I visited Tug, who's in the shop having his oil changed. (Actually, he has a bladder infection; I'm going out on a limb and saying that cats, unlike Robin Williams, look better before their bellies have been shaved.) Then I went to Seoul Station to buy a KTX ticket for a trip tomorrow to Daegu; I want to visit Emma and Joanna before they fly away to their nearly antipodal homes, in New Zealand and Alaska, respectively. Then I met Murphy, who's up from Daegu visiting a lady friend, for a vastly overpriced dinner at a fifteenth-floor restaurant where you can see the skyline a lot more clearly than your dinner.

Koreans don't have much of a personal space, and when the tube is so packed... let's just say that a couple dozen people, according to the rules in some societies, have to marry me now.

Anyroad (very British word, but I love it), in one of the mobbed subway stops, I was going up a long escalator and a friendly-looking, middle-aged Western guy was hurrying down the stairs. He saw my "Ithaca is Gorges" hoodie and called over his shoulder, "I went to school there!"

In a day so far from home in which I saw perhaps ten Westerners out of 10,000 people, it made me smile. Ith a thmall, thmall world.

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