Feed the kitty

After his plumbing repairs (and lung repairs, and eye repairs), Tug seems to be all better. I credit his stress-free lifestyle. (If he only knew about the numberless cats just on the other side of that wall trying to stay alive somehow through this icebox of a Korean winter...)

But he needs special urinary-tract-aid food that can only be bought at vets' offices, and we ran out. So after school today I walked to the new subway stop, took the train to nearby Yangjae Station and walked to a nearby vet's where I had bought his scratching post-- only to find the office wasn't there anymore. So I turned and walked straight into the awful north wind for the mile or so to Gangnam Station. (In this country, nothing good blows in from the north.) I figured to find at least one vet on the way.

And, my friends, it was cold. Holy toeloopin' Moses in the Ice Capades, it was cold. You know when you get a horrible pain-- brain freeze from a lime margarita, labor pains if you're a woman, a basketball in the castanets if you're a guy, somebody pulling your lower lip over your head-- and there just are no words that will convey how it feels? Yeah? That's how cold it was, walking straight into the wind and slip-slidin' away on the ice and snow underfoot.

When I finally got to Gangnam Station and hadn't found a vet, I gave in and decided to take the subway over to Tug's actual vet, even though that would mean another nearly-a-mile walk into the wind when I got there. But thankfully, there was another vet within a block of Seollung Station, and they had a puppy the size of my fist that went crazy for a touch and a kind word, and they had the right cat food.

So it just took two of my six waking post-school hours, four bucks for the fares, 20 bucks for three pounds of cat food, and nearly losing my nose and several cheeks to frostbite, but Tug's got his don't-clog-the-pipes food. He didn't show any signs of appreciating my effort.

If the little booger's not careful, I'm going to hollow him out and make a muff.

That darn cat

I've been in my new apartment for a week as of tomorrow (more of that anon). It's been very frustrating to be pretty much without my lifeline, the internet. I've had my Android phone (except for the day I lost it before I got it back; more of that ditto)... but that's no good for any real communication or surfing.  The problem is that, in moving in to my ex-colleague Mike Peck's apartment, I inherited his broadband service, which requires a password to sign on. Which I don't have.

It reminds me of my first month in Korea, when I had a few minutes a day of 'net access at my school... not a good situation when you're 8000 miles away from everything you know for the first time. (I thought all the businesses with "PC" signs were for sales and repairs; they're "PC bangs", where you can use a big-screen machine for a couple of bucks an hour. Doy.)

So imagine my pleasure when Jack, the school's new Korean staffer, said he could call my provider to hook me up if I'd only give him some paperwork with my account number. I rooted (and tooted) around in the drawers in my old place; imagine my further pleasure yesterday when I finally found the sheet the installer had left me when I got the service connected. All I had to do was get the paper to Jack today.

Now imagine my utter delight to be awakened at 5:15 this morning to the dulcet tones of Tug, my cat whose activity usually approaches meatloaf levels (as in, he might deign to swat at a shoelace if you literally drag it on his stomach), gleefully ripping my broadband document up with his claws and teeth. Apparently the little booger had found a remnant of the catnip I'd given him the night before. Stoner.

I found most of the fragments, but one large chunk is missing. I guess the cat ate my homework.

But, if I'm reading it correctly (which is dubious at best) the part that's still intact has my account number on it, so Jack should be able to call SK Broadband, and maybe... just maybe... I won't manufacture a small stripey tiger-skin rug after all.

Little bugger still owes me an hour's sleep, though. Dope fiend.

My Eyethiopian Caturday

After a bit of a mix-up, on Friday I semi-volunteered to host this month's Seoul Veggie Club get-togethers. Hosting involves scouting restaurants, choosing one, and making arrangements.The problem was two-fold. (Yes, I am aiming at the record for most hyphenated words in an opening paragraph.) Rapid-fire. Camera-ready. Cats-eye. (That'll come up a little later in this entry.) Smoot-Hawley.

First, I know virtually no veg-friendly places other than the ones the Club has introduced me to, and nobody would want to go someplace we've been in the last couple of months. Secondly, we usually have two schmoozefests a month, two weeks apart, and it was already the twelfth of March, so I'd have to either arrange just one or do two on consecutive weekends.

So both before and after my (50-minute! Hooray for me!) run, I spent way too much time online, investigating dozens of places on the veg restaurant map Ken of the SVC had kindly provided through Google Maps. Every option was too far away or too expensive or too hard to find from the nearest subway stop. Finally I stumbled on a really cool blog about being vegan in Seoul. It provided me with a lead on an Ethiopian restaurant, which would at least be a novelty, in Itaewon. Just in case, I also picked out a backup, a Middle- Eastern place in Itaewon called the Dubai.

That seemed right up my alley, as every time I go to a store, a little voice whispers "Do buy this" and "Do buy that".

But before I could go scout in Itaewon, I had to get Tug to the vet. It's a boring story about a boring two-plus hours of my life, so I'll just say he's got conjunctivitis, it cost me 25 bucks for the vet and almost 20 for the cabs, and now I have to drop and oint (shut up, I'm declaring that a word) his eye a cumulative 16 times a day (an oint oint here, an oint oint there, here an oint, there an oint, everywhere an oint oint...)

A vet in St. Augustine once busted my cat JP's eye. (Nuff sed.) Tug is virtually JP's identical twin, so messing with his eye brought back some bad memories... at least so far Tug's been quite cooperative, although the cab rides did get a bit old after his thousandth plaintive cry.

As soon as I got Tug home, I took off for Itaewon, which is a unique area. I've written about it before, but let's just say it's right by the biggest US Army base in Asia and it's chock-a-block with street vendors, restaurants, bars, convenience stores, storefront food stands, and people from Nigeria, Turkey, Pakistan, Russia, Kuwait... every place in the world, I guess, but Ithaca, US of A. I stopped, as always, at What the Book and the Foreign Food Market, where you can get Bollywood DVD's, Lebanese spices, and Kraft Mac and Cheese.

Club Zion, which in the daytime allegedly hosts the Ethiopian restaurant, was just a block away from WTB and FFM, but the restaurant was gone; apparently they were only open for a few months. Perhaps the fact that the proprietor and his girlfriend are the only two Ethiopians in the country cut into their business. But the Dubai will work out fine; us vegheads love us some hummus and falafel, though if you eat too many of those, you feelawful.

Some of the SVC members are really strict vegans and they may not want to go to a place that serves lamb, so for the following week, I'll book a vegan buffet. At least the restaurant I picked is, for once, impossible to miss: Itaewon subway, exit 3, walk a block to the corner: it's right over Dunkin Donuts, with a huge red sign in English.

On the way home, an American couple approached me on the subway platform: could I help them get to Express Bus Terminal? I could; my stop, Yangjae, is one stop past EBT. He's in the army and they had taken a four-hour train ride from Busan, and were going to take a four-hour bus ride back, because she wanted to go to the Hard Rock Cafe in Itaewon. The "Hard Rock Cafe" in Itaewon is actually a little t-shirt shop that stole the chain's name and logo:

But he'd never been on a train before, so he was happy with his day. They were almost like little kids; it was kind of sweet. Also cool was that I actually know enough to help somebody over here. I wrote "Seoul Station" in Korean for them in case the bus was full and they had to take a taxi back to the train depot.

Today, Sunday, has been a little more low-key; I had coffee at *bucks with Lauren and bought a basketball and some bananas at E-Mart. (By the way, in a triumph of commercialism and overpackaging, you can now buy a "Starbucks Premium Banana" in a plastic pouch for only a dollar. Starbucks is okay, but Bananabucks? A fruitless expenditure.)

And now I guess I gotta do some dishes and some grading. Or I could sit here all day and try to come up with a clever final line for this post... wait for it... nah. Bye!

Wanted

("Missing cat. Light orange, altered, very frightened. Please call (053) 754-0584 if you see him. Reward: 100,000 Won.")

Fri Sun Sat

...is the name of a Korean clothing company. It's been an active Fri and Sun and Sat.

(No Tiki; he escaped fifteen days ago and I haven't found any evidence of him whatsoever in the last ten days and nights. I'm still trying; the next-- and last-- step is to put up posters in Korean around the neighborhood. In the meantime, I can't just sit around home all day and fret, so...)

On Friday morning and into the early afternoon, we teachers from the Manchon school judged the big semi-annual debate competition. That's all I have to say about that.

After that, Joanna, Luke, Jesse and I went to lunch (on Heeduk's dime... sorry, Heeduk's 100 Won) and had wonderful pizzas at Papa John's, where the pizza is way better than anywhere else in town or at Papa John's in the States, since (as far as I know) that's all delivery. Joanna, Jesse, and I were going to go to hike Palgongsan... Jesse and I had been trying for three weeks to get there... but they were both exhausted and the day was brutally hot and humid, so we didn't.

Instead, I walked the half hour to the theater in the Chimsam neighborhood to find out when Up would be showing in English (Western movies are always in English with Korean subtitles, except the animated films, which are generally but not always dubbed in Korean; I had already gone there myself to see it only to wait two hours and then find out that that particular show was in Korean.) The posters and displays were still up, but Up was out. That is, it stopped running the day before.

The theater's a couple of blocks from the yagu jang (ballpark), so at least I grabbed a couple of tickets for my friend Cliff and me for today's game.

That evening, my coworkers and I settled for Johnny Depp in Public Enemies, which I didn't much like. I have gotten to enjoy going to movies again, though, as I did in days of yore. (Yore is somewhere in between the Good Old Days and the Dark Ages.)

I was determined to get back to Palgongsan (Mountain) and Donghwasa (Temple) one more time before I left town, so yesterday I went by myself. I finally got smart and wore a t-shirt, changed into a running shirt that lets the sweat wick through for the (arduous) hike, and changed into a fresh t when I was done. I hadn't been there in summer before, and it's like a different world; there's water cascading down the mountain, the birds are out in force, and the lower stretches are packed with wall-to-wall tents... not backpacking tents, either, Quidditch-World-Cup-sized tents, with families sitting out grilling food, and with a brand-new water cascade, which as you can see, was delighting a lot of local kids. (Stay tuned for the "Hello!" at the end.) Daegu has put millions of dollars into beautifying itself in trying to become an international city; this facility is just one example.

The trail up the mountain, however, was pretty quiet. It was a hot day, but not humid, and in the woods on the slope it was actually pretty pleasant. As usual, on the way down I detoured to Donghwasa. I have such mixed feelings about the ideas and presentation of Buddhism; as a philosophy, a lot of it appeals to me a great deal and I rarely take off the bead bracelet I bought on a previous Donghwasa trip, which has become a talisman that keeps me calm and centered. My Protestant soul, however, finds a lot of the iconography unsettling. I have learned a lot, however, and you can put "Buddhist" on my personal list of hyphenate religious influences. On Facebook, I call myself an "eclectic freelance monotheist", and I guess that will do.

When I got back to town, I was exhausted, but didn't have time to go home and rest before I was due to meet Rob, Cassie, and Molly (new or newish teachers) for dinner. So I went and slumped at a coffee shop for an hour and thought about Tiki, Buddha, and as James Taylor wrote, women and glasses of beer. Then we all went out for a nice dinner and then we (okay, I, mostly) showed Molly, who's been here for three days, around.

I worked this morning and this evening I went to the ballgame with Cliff. It was a great time, just about the most exciting game I've ever been to. There were five home runs, an interference call in a rundown that cost a run, a dropped liner in right that cost three runs... the Kia Tigers were up 10-1 in the third inning, only to have the Lions bring it back to 10-8 with the bases loaded and one out in the ninth but fall short. Cliff is good company for a game; he had never been to one in Korea.

...and that was the end of my career as a Samsung Lions fan; a week from right now, I'll be living in Seoul, where there are four teams. I have just been traded to the Doosan Bears.

...but I may be back in Daegu a lot more than I'd expected; Heeduk asked me today if I'd come back and tutor kids and shoot videos during my breaks at the new school, and I said in principal I'd be open to it. Of course, I will have a cat to arrange matters for... or, if I can just get a miracle this week, two.

Come home, Tiki, before it's too late.

Not yet

The boys in a happier time.

...still no Tiki. It's 9:30 on a Tuesday night, ten days and twelve hours before I leave Daegu for Seoul. Something's shifted in me about finding Tiki; when I first felt it, I felt terribly guilty, thinking that maybe I had taught myself not to care. But that's not it; I want him back as much as ever. Rather, my desperation seems to be gone. I am going to let him come back rather than trying to force it. I'll go out as much as ever, maybe moreso, as I don't have to work this Saturday. But I'll be open to his return; I won't try to will him to do so, thus transmitting my desperation. Maybe I'll sleep better too.

And so it's time to talk about other things. Let's see...

Heeduk's asked me to continue working the morning shift through my last week at LIKE, which is next week, even though the school as a whole is going off the summer schedule and back to evening hours. I'm actually relieved, as I've benefited from the early hours (except for waking up ludicrously early and worrying about Tiki) and in just one more week I'll be doing the early morning thing at St. Paul Prep.

***

Chris, who used to work at Manchon and has come back to help in the summer session, and I got into a discussion today about Koreans and their lack of English skills, and Anglos and the converse. His point of view is that we're in Korea, so it's our job to learn servicable Korean (fair enough) and mine is that, since all high school and college-age Koreans have taken English classes for years, they could try to help us out more often if we're having trouble, just as I helped a French tourist family rent a car in St. Augustine despite having gone over 30 years since my last French class.

Chris suggested that to start getting a better feel for the language and culture, I watch Korean family tv shows, which tend to be somewhere between soaps and sitcoms. (Each show does, I mean.) So I watched one just now. I didn't catch a word, but apparently Korean moms like to teach their teenage sons a lesson by hiring guys to move them onto busy subway platforms while they sleep. Who knew? (Actually, Hu Nu is a student of mine.) (Not really, but I do have a student named Yu Min [pronounced "you mean"].)

***

There's a letter in Korean that is the equivalent of "S", except when it's in front of the "I" letter, when it becomes kind of an "SH". Korean students should never say "Sit down."

***

I've been meaning to post something about this for many months: the most annoying thing about Koreans day-to-day is that they refuse to acknowledge that other people exist. What I mean is that in a crowded place they often fail to notice that they may be impeding someone else. The most egregious example was when I was on the elevator at E-Mart with a middle-aged couple that had a little two-wheeled cart. When the elevator stopped, I nodded to them to disembark first, they took two steps off the elevator and stopped to sort out their groceries, completely blocking the way so that I couldn't get off the lift. Another time, Ray and I were striding manfully along one day and a little guy, whom Ray literally outweighed by a good 150 pounds, crossed his path, a foot in front of him, without looking; if Ray hadn't stopped on a dime, he would have knocked the old guy's brain into Mandarin Chinese. The kids in school have no concept of single-file in the hallway; I feel like a humpback in a sea of swarming halibut every time the bell rings. And so on...

***

Since an optical computer mouse has no tail, why isn't it a hamster?

***

Come home, Tiki. Soon.

Spiraling down

This is not how I wanted the end of my tenure in Daegu to go. I had all these plans to see people and do things I haven't gotten around to doing. Instead, I can't pull myself out of the funk over Tiki. It doesn't help that I wake very early every day (sometimes awakened by Tug) and can't go back to sleep. The night I saw him, I couldn't get him, and the "cat detective" the ladies brought down from Seoul blamed me for driving him off. He's probably right.

Unless Tiki comes back (increasingly unlikely, as he hasn't eaten any food I've put out for the last three days), my best intentions have only resulted in misery for him. He was better off before I got him; he was living on the street, but he was fed regularly and he was with his two brothers. He is the most timid cat I've ever known, but he won me over by being so affectionate, funny, and playful. He's certainly the only cat I ever had who's played fetch. If he doesn't come back, it will never be all right.

Meanwhile, Tug has no life at all, alone almost all day with nothing to do. He demands attention about two minutes a day and otherwise lies around.

And I find myself just kind of spiraling down to the end of my stay; I'm moving in twelve days, I'm tied up emotionally and temporally with Tiki (I try not to be away a lot in the evening because that's when he'll be moving around), and the weather is often so gray and humid, that I don't feel much like doing anything. Obviously, I'm not as detached and enlightened as I'd believed.

Meanwhile, I've found out that my next apartment is not a largish place in an Officetel (modern office/apartment building) with all the other teachers, but a one-bedroom studio off on its own. But that pales in importance compared to Tiki, who is lost for good if he doesn't let himself be caught in the next twelve days.

This is the summer of my discontent.

Tiki

Tiki has been missing for five days and is somewhere nearby, certainly terrified, maybe hurt or worse. The women who caught Tug and Tiki as strays, had them neutered, and gave them to me came to visit on Saturday and Tiki went berserk, scratching and biting me to get away. (He is the most timid cat I've ever had-- he spent two weeks under the couch when I got the boys-- and nobody ever comes to the apartment.) He hopped into the window, pulled the sliding window aside trying to get away, accidentally popped out the screen, and jumped down 15 feet into my landlord's walled, jungly yard and disappeared. He showed up crying under my window that night but I had no key to the gate and by the time I got over the brick wall (via a stool and the hood of a parked van) he had gone.

The landlord gave me a key and every day I've tried to get a nap and then I've sat out very late, calling softly. I've set a humane trap; caught a feral guy (who may have hurt Tiki or driven him off) one day, otherwise nothing. I've put out food and water; it's gone mostly untouched, though on two occasions somebody or something has eaten some. I' ve been following the advice of the cat ladies, who've been relaying the advice of the "cat detective" in Seoul, whose profession is finding lost cats. On his advice, I've refrained from printing up reward posters because they say that would only make people look for him and terrify him further.

Nobody involved speaks any English except Hyeonjong, one of the cat ladies, who lives across the city from me.

Now the cat detective is coming here to look for Tiki. I'm hoping for a miracle.

This is a horrible, horrible country for stray cats. A lot of Koreans despise cats. I've never seen an outside cat here that wasn't scrawny, injured, and/or terrified of people. I got Tug and Tiki in the first place not for the companionship, but as a humanitarian act. But of course they became my family. Now it's not a million poor anonymous animals living short, miserable lives; it's my boy, if a miracle doesn't happen soon.

And I'm moving to Seoul in 16 days.

Let the sunshine in

Here it is, the last day of April, and I just took all the plastic sheeting off my windows! I'd almost forgotten what outside sounds like; I can even hear a bird, one of the two dozen birds (not species, birds) in the city. I feel instantly 50 percent more alive.

The cats are reacting to all the new noises in ways that I could have predicted: Tug's up in the window, looking out, and Tiki's back under the couch.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

This place is full of surprises.

Downtown Daegu is funny, a grid of major highways, little narrow streets with sidewalks where cars and pedestrians commingle, and little dark alleyways lined with teensy shops, or sometimes just bricks; you never know.

Luke, Ray, Joanna (teacher at our Samduk school) and I went down one of those alleyways today, to a nice little Mexican restaurant, very cozy, good food (I had nachos grande, as I knew that was one thing not cooked in lard). The cook speaks Korean, English and Spanish (as his grandfather is from Spain). And it just isn't a real Mexican restaurant without free side orders of Korean popcorn and vanilla-tasting herbal tea, is it?

The restaurant is called Yeon Chow, which I understand is a traditional Mexican name.

Just down the alley from Yeon Chow is a little restaurant with a round sign that depicts a cartoon cat head, out of which are sticking an apple stem and leaf. What is in the restaurant? I'm glad you asked. In the window, driftwood and cat condos, covered in a collection of cats (live, fluffy ones, that is). Further back? People having lunch with cats perched on the backs of their chairs. Considering that most Koreans apparently consider cats to be vermin, I thought that this was one of the most amazing and delightful scenes I've seen in this country.

Later, in my tenth quixotic attempt to find jeans that fit me, I went to the department store attached to the movie theater we frequent and actually found some that are close enough! I was about to give up and ask someone back in North America to just buy me some Wranglers and ship them; I've looked and looked, but hadn't found any that didn't have flowery stitching or "FUBU" or "Ask Enquired" writ large in swirly English letters across the ass, and that also were both big enough in the waist and short enough in the legs to fit. I finally did. (LEVI'S!) They fit fine, as long as I don't want to breathe and don't mind wearing platform shoes. I've already breathed many times during my life, so they'll do.

By the way, it's good to be able to ask (in Korean) "Men's jeans you have?" and be pointed to the correct floor. I even used the correct syntax.

I was waited on by a jolly middle-aged Korean woman; to try them on, I had to go behind the counter, which sits right out in the middle of the store, let her pull a curtain around me, and change really fast, as she wasn't all that patient before deciding I'd had enough time and she should open the curtain. (Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!) Then, after running my Visa, she motioned that I had to follow her up a floor on the escalator. Why? Credit card declined? Jeans warranty? Complimentary snapshot from behind the curtain? No; she picked up a scratch-off card and scratched it off for my magnificent surprise prize: a small tube of Vaseline hand lotion. Can't use it; I need some take-years-off-the-face lotion. Oil of Oy Vey, perhaps.

On this trip downtown, I also found a book I've been looking for ("Inkheart"; really liked the movie) and got Kyobo Books to order me a copy of the nationwide events magazine (in English) I've been looking for for months. And I see there's an exhibit in town: etchings and engravings by Picasso, Warhol, Matisse, and others I should know more about. Now I just have to figure out where the dang building is. Oh, and Luke gave me a half-dozen cans of tuna for the cats.

All in all, a pretty good Wednesday, though Hump Day has not thus far lived up to the promise that term implies...

Sorry. I'm so ashamed.

What's eating you?

I had somewhere between twelve and seventeen cats in the States over the last quarter-century, depending on what the meaning of "had" is, and none on them did what my two vocal locals do. Tug and Tiki both like being petted, of course, but they both very quickly start gnawing on my hands every time I scritch their heads. It never hurts, they're very gentle (and, for what it's worth, neither has ever scratched me in the three months I've had them), but they both just love chewing on me. Ironically, Tug just gnaws, but Tiki tugs my hand to his mouth, using both paws, somewhat like grasping an ear of corn(man).

So... what up with that? Anybody reading this ever have a cat that continually chews on you?

Is it just a family thing, or have I happened upon another curious Korean custom?

Frustipation

Tiki can lick any guy in the house. (This picture is, of course, almost completely irrelevant to this post, but note the clipped left ears, more visible on Tiki; vets do that to cats upon neutering, as a symbol that the cats should not be killed or molested.)

This post is rated F. (Frust-rated, that is.)

There's one more Korean language class to go and I have to decide whether to invest another 100,000 Won for 12 weeks at the next level. The thing is, I don't feel I'm making a lot of progress. Part of it is that I don't practice every day, but also, the instructor, while very nice, manages to both go too fast and not cover enough. Her English isn't great, either. The class, which has 20 students, has had only about a dozen show up each of the last few weeks, so I suspect I'm not the only one who's a bit disenchanted.

The other thing is that taking the series of classes from entry to advanced takes a year and costs over 500,000 Won in all. The other other things are that it gets me up too early and takes three hours out of every Saturday, which is a working day at our school. I have the book and CD from the course, another book and CD I bought months ago, the (useless) Rosetta Stone program, and an online flash-card program called Before You Know It. Whether I sign up for the next class or not, I won't give up on Korean.

But, oh my gars and starters, guys, it's hard. For example: for some purposes, you use Korean numbers, for others Chinese. Also, when you mention a quantity of anything, you use not only the name of the item but also a special counting word that means, more or less, "thing", so to count pencils, f'r'instance, you say, "Pencil three kae", but there are different "thing" words for different items, so for books you say, "Book one kwan", cats, "Cat two mari", and so on. There are different counting markers for small paper items, bottles, cups and glasses, numbers, money, people, animals, books, large things and small things.

I said it before, I'm sayin' it again: everybody here crazy.

Either way I decide about the class, I will regret it. I don't like to be a quitter and I won't learn the language too well on my own. I also wouldn't see my new friends Cliff and Joelle as often. On the other hand, it's a lot of money and it's two hours of frustration with, so far, little payoff. So, in the words of Paul and Artie, "Any way you look at this, you lose." Everyone I in the class whom I talk to is either leaning toward or leaning against continuing, but nobody's sure what to do.

Saturday also brough a trio of metaphors for my situation Saturday. First, I caught a different number bus to the class, as it was headed in the right direction and the sign said it went to Banwoldang, the junction where the YMCA and the class are, but it headed to the far far south of town, where the driver turned around to me, the only passenger, and said to get out. I had to take an expensive cab ride back to Banwoldang and missed the first 15 minutes of class. Avid readers of SJCintheROK (that is to say, I) may recognize this as a reprise of something that happened in my first week or two here.

On Saturday night, I was going to a bar near Kyungpook University to see a band and talk with Joelle and Cliff, and Joelle and I missed connections and I ended up standing at the wrong subway stop for 40 minutes. We finally made connections, though, and we sat so close to the band that I couldn't get out of my seat till breaks between songs. On the first song, I kept thinking the guitar player's back was blocking my view of the singer; turns out he was the singer. Something deep there about forests and trees...

But we did have a good time in a tiny funky bar with 95% American clientele, and I figured out a way in the wee wee hours (couldn't help it, I'd been drinking beer) of the morning to tell the cab driver how to get me home, so there's that.

Meanwhile, the principal up on the outskirts of Seoul sent me email today to say that they will have an opening in the fall and he's definitely interested in my services, so there's that.

And Tiki, who was so scared, likes to stand on his back legs, pull my hand to him with both paws and nuzzle, so there's that.

So it goes.

Best. Weekend. EVER.

(Don't you hate it when people think that their cats-- who, after all, look like a hundred million other cats-- are so cute they'll stick a photo up even when it has nothing to do with what they're talking about? Me too.)

...well, maybe not the best weekend ever. (My honeymoon was pretty good.) But I'm teaching the kids to use strong, interesting words, and I didn't think "A Really Nice Weekend" would cut it.

As there may be one or two Anglophones to whom I haven't whined about how I got offered my dream job (with 600,000 Won a month more in salary) six hours after I'd sent my degree to Daegu and how FedEx promised to redirect the package but didn't, and how they actually called me to apologize for delivering the package faster than promised to the address on the label... I should put in all the tragic details here. But if I do, I'll be up all night and my tears might short out the keyboard, so I'll save it.

But I've been in touch with the aforementioned dream school (St. Paul Preparatory Academy, an elite international school in Bundang, a new and ritzy Seoul suburb) and this weekend I bought my bullet-train ticket for next Sunday to go up, see the school, and meet my contact there, Tony, who sent me the contract last August with the note: "Please please tell me you haven't sent your papers to Daegu yet." He says that they've expanded their enrollment a great deal already in their first year, there's a good chance they'll need another English teacher, and mine is the first name he'll present to the headmaster... so we shall see. I couldn't spend the rest of my career at LIKE school, but I might could maybe do so at St. Paul... I also hope to see Margaret, one of my ex-St. Joe students and cross-country runners, who is teaching up there.

Besides that... I found Korean class on Saturday morning to be difficult, possibly because I didn't glance at the materials all week long, but I made some friends: Joelle and Cliff, though half my age, have let much more adventurous lives than I, including stints in the Peace Corps. We arranged to meet at Club That on Saturday night for the launch party of Daegu's first magazine for Anglos and locals. (Check it out online at daugupockets.com).

During the afternoon, I did my teaching, then skipped the health club (for the first time in ten days!) and went downtown. I was too late for Joelle's birthday dinner, but met them at Club That, along with their friend (my new friend) James. It was less than ideal, as it wasn't so much a party as a shouting match over the band, but then we went down to the first floor (where Hami Mami's is in the daytime) and had a nice talk. Joelle asked if I wanted to come to the Writer's Group at the same place at 2 on Sunday, and being a decisive sort, I said, "Maybe."

Today (Sunday), I went for a run in the park, then showered and headed downtown. Joelle and Cliff were there, as were Emma from New Zealand, Jeremy from California, Justin the Yankee fan and Princeton grad (who despite it all seems like a nice guy), and Pill-kon, who, as you may have guessed, is local. We had 90 minutes or so of people sharing good writing and exchanging commentary. I hadn't brought anything, so I recited the only thing I've ever written that I've memorized:

***
Tom
(once sperm a secret's size
and egg a whisper's width)
Spoke knowingly today.

"God is dead,"
Thomas said.
***

(That poem, by the way, is older than anybody else in the writer's group and shorter than most Koreans.)

So I have friends (my first in Asia with whom I don't work!) and will be going to the meeting next month. They're all smart, friendly, and talented, but I think I could take 'em all in a 60s-sitcom trivia contest. Maybe.

Afterward, Cliff and I went to see Inkheart at the movies. I liked it very much indeed; it's gotten mixed reviews, and it won't be any hit: too dark for little kids, too fairy-tale for a lot of adults, but it's the best movie I've seen in a long time. Right up my alley, anyway.

...and then I stopped at Kyobo Books, bought a gorgeous, 19th-century-looking hardcover journaling book (Tradition notebook: Precious Memories, Magic Spells), complete with placemarker ribbon, for seven bucks, and came home to begin my procrastination over writing this post by Facebook Friending everybody I just met... and now Justin tells me via Facebook chat that...

There. Is. A. Regular. Bar. Trivia. Night! (As you may know, the only things in the world I'm good at are writing, trivia, and one other thing that modesty and a solicitous concern for the sensitive reader prevent me from sharing with the public...) It occurs to me that I work nights, so I might not make it to trivia... but maybe I can work something out; it doesn't start till 11 p.m.

So, to recap, this weekend brought me:

A ticket to check out my dream job
A magazine that might help me find out what the hell is going on socially in this town
A beer
A writer's group, meaning:
a) a kick in the gluteus for my writing, and
b) FRIENDS!
A good movie
A gorgeous journal
Hope for a rebirth of trivia

...and, oh yeah, spring. It's been in the 50s Fahrenheit through all of late January and early February. (Jealous much?)

I feel as if, after over five months of going to work and going home, my world is opening up...and next Friday starts a three-day weekend! So... sometimes you eat the bear. Or, in my case, the bear-shaped block of tofu.

Tiki Tiki boom boom

(Tug says, "As a matter of fact, I am the boss of you.")

The three cat women (not Julie Newmar, Eartha Kitt, and Lee Merriwether) finally came yesterday to visit their erstwhile charges, and as expected, since I haven't had any guests since I got the boys, Tiki (the scaredy cat) freaked. He went ripping madly around like a furry pinball, running along the walls like an atom in a cyclotron, ripping down the plastic sheeting at eye level (my eye level, not his) on my window, caroming off the stovetop and ensconcing himself behind the microwave on top of the fridge. It was very much like my favorite scene in Tom Sawyer, in which Tom feeds a spoonful of his medicine to the cat, which goes ripping around like... well, like Tiki... and sails, yowling triumphantly, out the window.

Once I extricated the Teekster, he was okay. He allowed himself to be petted without struggle, though he did hide his head in the crook of the lady's elbow, muttering "I'm not here. I'm not here." Tug, of course, was considerably cooler. I had wondered what the ladies and I could possibly talk about, especially as only one of the three speaks English, but they stayed an hour and mostly the head cat lady just kept nuzzling Tiki and murmuring, "Koya, koya" (kitty, kitty). They connected the dotes and decided that Tiki and Tugeu (as they call him) have a good life with me.

***

I've gotten a reputation among the LIKE teachers as the social director. (Yeah, I know; I'm about as social as Ted Katcynski.) In not quite five months, I've arranged for some people to watch the election returns at my apartment and I passed on email about the Christmas buffet. Be that as it may, I did send out invites for dinner downtown last evening, not knowing if we'd end up with two people or ten. Turns out Ray, Joanna (new girl at the Samduk school) and I went out for coffee, bought movie tickets for Yes Man (yeah, I saw it already; shut up), bumped into Kristen (newish teacher at Manchon), had pizza together, and went to the movies, three of us to Yes Man and Kristen to Twilight. Then Ray and Joanna went back to the dorm, I went to Kyobo books and bumped into both Kristen (again) and a guy from Sayre, Pennsylvania, right near Ithaca, who saw my "Ithaca is Gorges" sweatshirt... and I found the British paperback of the last Harry Potter book. For me, all this is a dizzying social whirl. Social director, my flat... never mind.

***

I guess enough time has gone by for me to not be too embarrassed to tell you something totally insane I did on my first night here. George and Glory had picked me up at the airport, brought me to the apartment, driven me on dark, winding streets to E-Mart (where there was a crazy Korean pushing a shopping cart every foot and a half and an army of employees screaming "Come buy my battered octopus or I'll kill you" in Korean) and bought me an odd assortment of stuff... soy milk but no cereal, bread but no butter, and so on. Then they dropped me back at the apartment and left. So.

Here I was, pacing alone in this strange apartment at 11 p.m. (10 a.m. on my body clock), having, in the previous two days, driven from St. Augustine to Atlanta (for my work visa) and back, gotten back home at 10 p.m., gone to bed at midnight, gotten up at 4 a.m. to make my flight in Jax, and made a 26-hour trip. I was half past exhausted and wired like a terrier on speed, and had the brilliant idea to walk back to E-Mart and complement my compliment of food. I thought I kinda sorta knew the way back there. (This was a spectacularly stupid decision, as I can't find the bathroom in a new place without a GPS.)

I walked a block, saw a cab, made the split-second decision to take it, and madly tried to scribble down "Go three blocks, turn past the school..." I bought some more stuff, realized that I couldn't get another cab back because I had no address to give the cabbie, and guessed my way back. I walked for 15 minutes along my best guess of a route, turned down a hilly street I thought might just be the right one (it wasn't), and turned back and walked most of the way back to E-Mart to try again. All this was while I was simultaneously half asleep and fully wired, of course. This time, miraculously, I found the apartment, a bit past midnight. (The first time, I had turned around one block too soon.) Well, actually I found my neighbor's gate, which looks just like mine, but I made it. What in the name of Syngman Rhee would I have done if I hadn't found the place? Wandered the streets all night? Checked into a hotel and called George in the morning? The mind boggles.

I toppled twitching into bed at 1 a.m., woke up at 4 a.m., fresh as a dead daisy, hung over with jet lag and exhaustipation, and went to work for the first time and got my photo taken, looking like Eeyore on a bad day. (This is the photo that hangs in the school lobby now, of course.)

And now you know.

***

Luke and I have had two Saturday-morning Korean lessons so far. They've gone pretty well, as I already knew 95 percent of what we've covered (vowels one week, consonants the next). I have learned to say "Seu-tee-beu yay-yo." (My name is Steve.)

The coming weekend is the biggest holiday on the Korean calendar, Lunar New Year. We have Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off work, though Heeduk's asked me to come in for a little while on Saturday. The regular Korean class won't be held, though I'm attending their special cultural class, where we'll learn Korean drumming. I've seen the sheet music; it reads "BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM". The teacher says we'll be learning "drumming like Nanta".

Nanta is astonishing. Between Christmas and New Year, the school gave Ray, Luke, and me tickets to Nanta's show at the Daegu Opera House. It's a huge Korean tradition, mixing slapstick, juggling, magic, more slapstick, and drums drums drums. And kitchen knives kitchen knives kitchen knives. And a lot of flying vegetables. We had fantastic tickets, third row center, so close I was scared they'd pluck me from the audience for their mock Korean wedding. It was a pretty astounding show. They have five troupes at all times, playing all over East Asia, and I found out later I'd heard of it before; it was a hit off-Broadway under the name "Cookin'".

So after next Saturday, when I'm all trained, come see me in New York, okay?

***

Finally, finally, after ten days of a cold and two weeks of the flu, I think I'm all better today. I'll be testing my energy level soon, as the 37-year GWB presidency will end in 37 hours (as I write this), and I wouldn't miss the inauguration for the world. I'll be up till maybe 3 a.m. Wednesday to watch it, and it will be worth every minute. I'll probably be pretty wired at 3 a.m. Sadly, E-Mart closes at midnight, so I'll be on my own.

It's been that kind of Sunday

Fighting the blahs (blah blah blah)

It's the Sunday night before Christmas and I'm battling the blahs, the blues, and the bleeeeughs. Nothing big; it's just that the newness has worn off. Funny: six months ago, Korea seemed so exotic, such a huge adventure, and now it's just where I live. It doesn't seem a whole lot more exotic that a drive to Wal-Mart back home.

I realize that the corollary is that the blog hasn't been too fascinating lately. Maybe I need to break my face again...

It's okay; it's just life. The weather's turned cold and nasty and I work six days a week, so I'm stuck inside most of the time. Also, today is officially my last anniversary as a married man, and it's almost Christmas and I don't even have a chimney. Ray's gone to Seoul for Christmas with his son's family and Anna's tied up with her mom and sister. Anybody know "The Only Living Boy in New York" by Simon and Garfunkel?

Today was actually pretty nice. I met Kristen and James, the new teachers (a young couple who met at McGill U) and we had a nice lunch at Italy and Italy and I showed them around downtown, just as Ray did for me on my first weekend here. It's nice to pay it forward, as they say.

I've had the cats for four weeks and Tiki let me pick him up for the first time yesterday. You probably have guessed he's named after my favorite football player... I just discovered he's got a chinstrap! He has a thin orange line right across the white under his chin. Tug wants up in my lap a lot while I'm at the computer, which is really nice, except he pushes my hands with his head while I type and he gave me a little love nip on my throat today. Don't like that so much. (And the expression is vampire BAT, not vampire CAT.)

I'm actually doing fine; my lows are higher than my every day used to be. And today's the solstice, too, the day with the most darkness. There will be a little more light every day from now on.

Tiki time!

Big deal chez moi today... I've had the cats for three weeks, and Tug is usually affectionate. Sometimes if I approach him and he's near the couch, he oozes under it, but usually he likes being petted and picked up. Tiki, though, has been much shyer. It's been really frustrating to have him with one paw out for a handout and the other flipping me the bird. (It's a metaphor, kids; a cat doesn't even have a middle finger.)

But Tiki let me pet him today! This is a big deal; just like Mary Richards, we're gonna make it after all.

(Yeah, pretty weak blog entry, but nice double tie-in with the picture, don't you think?)

Come Saturday morning

It's 10:20 on Saturday morning, and I'm slumped like a zombie on Prozac in front of the computer, desperately sucking down coffee and trying to revive enough to do something more useful than cruising Facebook. (Not to knock it, though; I keep finding friends and remembering that life is a web of relationships, not a few tenuous strands to just a few people.) That would be more poetic if I were awake. Still, a simile and a metaphor in the first paragraph: not bad.

I end up going to bed around 2 every night, even though I'm not drinking. So no hangover; there's that, at least. I did find the Daegu Friendship Club on Facebook, so maybe I'll meet some more Anglos locally. Also, I got a link to a blog by one of my former students, which is very nearly as delightful as mine (j/k, omg, lmao!) -- (btw, I HATE it when people use Internet initialisms in practically every sentence, and I don't believe you're l'ing your a off; you're probably barely smiling. And it's spelled "heeheehee", morons!)

Grumpy, much? I need more coffee. brb.

I've constructed quite a series of lifelines; I don't know another English speaker within a mile of my apartment, and I could get lonely, but I have Skype and Facebook and Windows Messenger and the Web, and I'm doing fine. The furboys might as well not exist till noon or so; they sleep silently under the couch, and if I didn't have a catbox to clean, I'd forget they were here. But all these communications apps help me remember that I'm only alone in a geographical sense.

I did have some good news this morning; Heeduk contacted me via Messenger to say that two students with whom I worked (for hours) on their college application essays have been accepted, Dohoon to Seoul University, one of the world's elite schools in genetics (his specialty), and Jungmin to both Caltech and Penn! I had very little to do with their success, but Heeduk's impressed. And he's bringing cake today!

And now I'm relatively cheerful, so I'll stop writing and get a life. lol!

Cats, calves, and Christmas

(At least the cats emerge once in awhile; the tree never comes up from the subway.)

The preponderance of my nerves has officially been wracked by the cats. It's been ten days now, and I've been mulling over my options, as the boys were clearly not settling in and their yowling and crying was driving me crazier and waking me at night. Tiki (the orange guy) is still so scared that he almost never comes out from under the couch unless I'm gone or asleep. Tug is less shy and has let me pick him up, but never purred or seemed affectionate and spent a lot of time with his brother subdavenportally.

The mullables were fourfold: keep the cats and tough it out, trade Tiki for the boys' other brother, as suggested by the cat ladies, return Tiki and keep Tug, or return them both. (A reminder: back on the streets is a bad, bad place for cats in Korea.)

But then Tuesday night we had a bit of a breakthrough: I had found some Jinny brand cat treats from Thailand ("Great Taste for Great Happiness!") at Home Plus; I held Tug on my lap and scattered the treats on the computer desk and he went nuts for them. When I put him down he kept jumping up on the desk and walking across my keyboard (completely ignoring the mouse!) to look for more. Then he purred, loudly and beautifully, and kept leaning his head back into my hand and closing his eyes in bliss. Also, eventually Tiki came out from under and within a foot of where I sat on the floor to get his Jinny fix. (Tug's also a furry little stoner; I found catnip, too.)

So I'm keeping them. We'll work it out.

Meanwhile, I've enthusiastically taken up running again, now that I've found a good venue. For the last couple of days, my calves have been so tight I walk like Grandpa Amos (ask your own grandpa for an explanation of the analogy, kids), but still it feels good. My new bestest possession, an iPod Shuffle, goes with me, and Pink and David Bowie and Bon Jovi really do make the miles (or in my case, the yards) fly by.

On Saturday, running down by the river, I inadvertently became a scofflaw on my second continent, as I ran across the wood-planked footbridge over the river only to find a booth with a collector at the other end; the guy was holding his hand out and saying something gruffly, but, not having any money on me, I had to ignore him, choose to be deafened by the iPod, and just keep running. Can't hear ya, Mac: they're paving Paradise and putting up a parking lot. (They are, too, in Daegu, every minute of every day.)

I also stumbled upon the end of a marathon; at least I think it was a marathon, as the electronic clock was reading two hours, thirty-nine minutes; it may have been a 10K for people as fast as I.

It's getting Yulesque here; it reminds me of the Christmases of my childhood (Yules of Yore?), when the retail festivities were more restrained, before Wal-Mart started putting up the plastic trees as they took down the Valentine's Day stuff. There are decorations in the underground shopping areas and the department stores, and displays of artificial trees and their trimmings for sale in all the stores. The school has put up an artificial tree with dozens of little slips for the students to hang on it for the teachers. Unfortunately, they all write their greetings in Korean, but I'm hoping they're saying something nice.

Puss on Earth, everyone.

Nofurky Day

Hi, everybody. Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is raw and wet in Daegu, just exactly the kind of family holiday not to spend alone in your dark apartment thinking of family and pumpkin pie. Fortunately, a teacher named Robert at the Samduk branch has a lot of money and is very generous; he hosted Thankgiving lunch for us at the newest, fanciest hotel downtown. There was a nice eighth-floor view of downtown, though the clouds and haze hid the mountains.

And, OMG, you guys, the food! He had ordered two whole turkeys for the ten of us, nine if you don't count me, the carnscientious objector. (Too big a stretch there?) A waiter came and carved the turkey at the table. But also there was a buffet with clams, oysters, mussels, escargot, shark steak in cream sauce, assorted roast beasts, green beans, salad, fresh fruit, and about a dozen fancy desserts, including a passable pumpkin pie. I never met a carb I didn't like, so I made out great, though I have to go to work shortly and the sugar high is wearing offfffffffffffzzzzzzzzzzzz

No smashed or sweet taters, no tofurky, but still, wow. It's probably the nicest hotel I've ever been in, and that includes both the New York Hilton and the Fredericksburg Red Roof Inn. Mostly, it was nice to be with friends on the holiday. (If Luke e's me a photo, I'll put it up here.)

We're starting to plan some sort of a Christmas get-together. Anna is so lucky; her mom and sister will be here for Christmas. I hope we can all join in and keep the 10,000-miles-from- home Christmas blues away. Stores here are selling and displaying tinsel and lights and angels and such, and there are lovely, decorated trees in the underground shopping areas downtown.

At Costco yesterday, I saw a young Buddhist nun, gray robed, shaved headed, picking out Christmas decorations.

On the home front, Tug and Tiki cry and moan much of the time. They look at me and yowl. I give them food, they eat and yowl. Milk: drink and yowl. I guess they're just still freaked out by being closed up inside. (For an urban cat in Korea, outside equals danger, hunger, and misery.) I'm trying to keep my attitude aligned to "It's okay, guys, I'll make sure nothing ever happens to you" and away from "Shut up, you furry little bastards." It's hard on the nerves, though.

They are letting me sit within three feet or so when they eat, and have both resentfully (but without hissing or swatting) let me pet them a little, so we are making progress. Faster would be better.

At any rate, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, or if you don't see this till afterward, Happy Yemeni Independence Day.

There's always something to celebrate.