Today and the rest of my life

I just got back home and I want to get this down before the feeling fades.

I feel so alive, you guys. It's spring again today, temps in the mid-fifties, and sunny. I'm not fooling myself; I'm sure we'll have more cold and nasty stuff before the real spring, the one with the cherry blossoms, arrives. But right now it's gorgeous.

The hash this morning was a lot of fun, though it criss-crossed some earlier chalk marks and everybody got lost and either (raising hand sheepishly) faked the way back to the start or insisted on going back and finding the real trail and running the whole thing, which entailed... well, let's say it was a longer way than to Tipperary. But it was beautiful, good company, gorgeous weather, a lot of fun.

My plan, as I posted here, was to go on down to Songtan for the Osan Bulgogi hash, but we waited so long for our Yongsan Kimchi after-run circle to start, and it went on so long, that we clearly weren't going to make it down for the actual run. A bunch of us took two cabs to Nambu Bus Terminal, which is most of the way back from the YK location to my place, and when we got there, I decided I just couldn't justify the time and money investment to go all the way to Songtan. There would be a couple of hours of revelry that I'd have to leave early anyway to get home at a halfway-reasonable hour.

So, I said my excuse-mes and decided to walk the two miles home. The most direct way was up. I still had a lot of energy and decided I was going to go over, not around, the hountain.

***ATTENTION PLEASE: the big bumps in the ground here are called san, mountain, but most of them aren't any bigger then East, South, or West Hill in Ithaca. Too big to be a hill, too small for a mountain: hereafter, the proprietor of this blog is calling them hountains.***

Well, this one was a big hountain. My GPS watch pointed the way and when I got high enough I could see the LG Electronics building, the Hyundai and Kia headquarters, and the Hi-Brand (E-Mart) building that define my neighborhood. A hard climb, but I've had worse... but then... but then.

A directional sign pointed the way up to "SUBANG TOWER 500 M". I thought, hey, a quarter mile to a tower I've never heard of, only a bit over a mile from my place? This I gotta see! So after about 300 meters of uphill struggle, I found another sign, pointing to the right, "SUBANG TOWER 400 M". And then, 300 meters later (and higher) "SUBANG TOWER 300 M".

And finally I got to Subang Tower, which was not, as you might think, a tower. It was this:

I'm not quite sure what its purpose is, though often Koreans build cairns as memorials. I saw a couple of people walk around the pile, clockwise, methodically, so it may be a meditation aid or have spiritual significance.

I'm not sure how high Subang Tower is, but it's higher than the 70-story apartment building next to the Yangjae Cheon. So there was a view:

The green Frisbee-roof in the foreground is the Seoul Arts Center; I could also make out the Marriott Hotel, which is across the street from St. Mary's Hospital, the Han and a couple of bridges across it, and way off to the north, Namsan and Seoul Tower (which, contrary to what you have been led to expect, is a tower.)

And that's part of what made me feel so alive: the sense that this enormous city is mine. I've walked so much and run so much of it and ridden the trains under the places in between, it belongs to me now. We hashed through the wine festival, and the school saw Wyeths and Warhols, at the Arts Center; I visited the Buddhist temple just above it; I get my meds at St. Mary's; I've walked and run over the Han; and I've hashed many times and hiked once, on our first date, with Kyung, on Namsan. It's not my hometown, but it's my home.

And best of all, there are these peaceful trails up and over these hountains, all around and through the second-most-populous metro area on the planet.

But the best thing of all today came as I was descending the south slope toward home. Coming up, there was a man with three little kids, all five years old or not much more. The little boy broke out in a big grin and called, in English, "What's your name?" I said, "My name's Steve. What's your name?" He said, very proudly, "My name is Bak Jae Sung." I answered, "Hello, Bak Jae Sung!" and he smiled and smiled. The two little girls waved shyly to me and, when I high-fived them, giggled. Dad beamed. And I smiled all the way down the slope, which was so steep and rock-strewn that it needed every inch of the guide ropes strung up alongside.

When I got home, this guy was happy to see me:

I'm very fond of Tug, but he wouldn't voluntarily leave this apartment for any reason whatsoever, and I missed the wonderful dogs I've had in my life. Booker, Wylie, and Bodhi: not one of them would have missed this walk for the world and I wish any one of them, or as long as I'm thinking magically, all of them, had been with me.

I want to remember this feeling I have when I'm hip-deep in laundry and grading and the fifteenth TV showing of Iron Man 2 in a month.

It's nice to be alive, not just breathing, once in awhile. I will try it more often.

Hashing and hearing

Yesterday, Thursday, was a bee-yoo-ti-ful day. It was Independence Movement Day  here, a national holiday commemorating the initial uprising of the Korean people against their Japanese occupiers. Our school has a four-day weekend, and nearly all schools and hagwons were closed, which means one thing in the tight-knit hasher world here: time for the ESL Hash.

We met at noon at Triangle Park, at the base of Seoul's most prominent mountain, Namsan, near the foreign-friendliest neighborhoods in Korea, Itaewon and Haebongchan. The weather was incredibly gorgeous, in the mid-fifties and sunny, and I had the kind of Spring Fever that I never got living in North Florida. Hashing every week through the winter here can be a real grind, and it was wonderful to wear shorts again! If anything, I was overdressed, with two shirts on.

We scrambled up a gully toward Seoul Tower. It was hard work and for a while I wished I'd worn warm-up pants after all; who knew bushes were so scratchy? The long jog down on the road was gorgeous, and we would have had an incredible view of most of Seoul if the air had been clear. (This year's clean air in Seoul is scheduled from 5 to 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday, April 8.) But, oh, the sun and the breeze. People in the American South can have no idea of the feeling of the first spring day.

After the hash, Tirty, VVD, Encyclo, WOPS, T3 and I walked to the Wolfhound Pub in Itaewon for brunch, beers, chat, and drinking games. I stayed too long and ate too much. (I wasn't going to order the apple crumble, but, you know, somebody else did, so I had to.) I didn't get home till dinnertime, at which point I fell, exhausted, into my bed for a nap.

 

 Apropos of nothing, I'm rockin' a goatee now. 

I may look distinguished; I may look like a billy goat. Your call.

Today was not nearly as bee-you-ti-ful. It was cool and spitting rain most of the day, and it was time to head to the hospital. I've had a stuffed-up left ear, periodically with a loud whining noise, for almost two weeks. (It's ringing now; if I hooked up my webcam, you could hear it.) It's very wearing and even more bothersome, especially when I have to ask my students to repeat what they said, and it hasn't done a very good job of going away.

I go to Dr. Choi at Seoul St. Mary's Hospital, a branch of the Catholic University of Korea, for my BP meds; with nobody in the school office today to phone them on my behalf, I thought the best thing was just to head over there (45 minutes by foot, bus, and subway) and at least make an appointment.

St. Mary's has some doctors who speak good English and a small International Medicine office to help foreigners. I went there first because the receptionists in Family Medicine, Dr. Choi's department, don't speak it very well. The woman in IM got me an appointment with Dr. Choi ten minutes later, which is amazing, and the doctor suggested I have tinnitus and wrote me a referral to otology.

Incidentally, when you're waiting for your appointment, a monitor shows your name and your place in line; they black out the last syllable of your name to protect your privacy. So you will see (in hangeul letters, of course): 1) Bak Ji *  2) Geem Yeon *  3) Kor Maen Seu Tee Beun *. I am so relieved that the 20 Koreans in the waiting room might have thought it was some other Seuteebeun Kormaen who was having health problems.

She re-upped my prescription for BP meds; you take your sheet to a desk, wait, pay for the visit, feed the paper they give you into an ATM-like machine, then take that sheet to one of the dozen yakguk (pharmacies) within a block of the hospital. All in all, it took five minutes for my appointment and 30 to get the drugs. This was the first time today for that, but not the last.

I wandered over to the Central City underground mall to kill time, then went back to the hospital and up to the third floor, where I was late because the signs were in Korean and the helpful lady in International Medicine sent me to the northwest corner (obstetrics)-- where I got an odd look from the receptionist when I came in for my appointment-- rather that the southeast corner.

Finally I got it straightened away, by stopping in another department, pointing to my ear, and looking pitiful. I may or may not have said "ow". Anyway, after navigating the linguistic maze in otology, I eventually got in to see Dr. Park. (As an aside, Korea is extremely backward when it comes to women's rights and role in society, but both Dr. Choi and Dr. Park are women. I try to do my part.)

She shoved a camera-probe in my ear and showed me the problem: my ear canal looks like what Tim Robbing crawled through to escape Shawshank Prison. She cleaned it out-- there is no truth to the rumor that she shone her light in one ear and it came out the other side of my head-- and told me it was just fluid in the ear, with some inflammation. I told her Dr. Choi had suggested tinnitus, but she wouldn't hear of it. (Har har!) The tinnitus is brought on by the primary problem.

So she gave me another prescription, for nasal spray and steroid pills, of which I must take 11 a day for the next week, and an appointment for a follow-up. She also told me to hold my nose tight, puff out my cheeks, and blow as hard as I can, ten times a day. She may or may not have been funnin' me, but I'm gonna do it.

I  ran the linguistic gauntlet again and went back to the yakguk, got my drugs, and finally, finally, tired and grumpy, headed down into the subway--where the turnstile refused to take my T-Money card. So I went to the info booth, which was empty. So I waited. Then I went back up to the street, walked a half-mile to another entrance (the Express Bus Terminal Station is laid out with its three subway platforms forming a huge "U") and went to that info booth, which was empty. Finally I found the station office, and a guy helped me out.

So I rode back, walked the half-mile home from the stop, and collapsed onto my bed for a nap again. When I woke up, it was dark out. I don't know if it's the ear thing or what, but I'm just tired all the time lately. I guess I'm not 55 anymore.


Tomorrow will be an exhausting day. I never miss my Yongsan Kimchi hash (71 times in 14 months, baby!) I almost never go down to Songtan, an hour south of Seoul, as I'm always sore and exhausted when I get back, 11 hours after I left. But tomorrow is the on-out (final hash) of one of our core people and I can't miss it. Also, they've kidnapped Dick, YK's mascot, and are corrupting his morals, and we have to get him back.

The fiends posted this on Facebook, with the caption "Dick payin strippers".

Tug had better not be on the bed the moment I walk back in the door, or he's gonna get collapsed on.

Bundang it all

A couple of weeks ago, Mr. Park, the school's director, called the faculty together to make a huge announcement. A few days later, he met with the students' parents to relay the news to them: the owners are planning to buy land, put up a big new building, and move the school to the southern suburb of Bundang ("Boon-dahng"), all by the start of the spring semester next year.

 Beautiful downtown Bundang.

I've been waiting until my feelings sort themselves out before I blog about it, but my feelings refuse to sort. It's like herding cats on amphetamines. (I mean the cats, not I, are on amphetamines, although maybe you need to be on uppers to herd those hopped-up cats... ah, forget it, this simile has been extended past all reason, like the 100-Years War, the Oscar telecast, and... ah, jeez, it's just getting longer, like a roll of toilet paper being played with by a rambunctious toddler who... ah, hell, never mind.)

Anyway, here come the hyperkitties:

I tend to be inert in my living arrangements; in fact, I despise being ert. I lived in Ithaca for 41 years and in St. Augustine for 13, and have been in Korea for 3 1/2 thus far. I am so used to my neighborhood. I'm right near E-Mart and Costco, I walk to school, and I'm a minute's stroll from my beloved Yangjae Cheon (stream), which runs for ten solid miles, from Gwacheon City to the Han River in the middle of Seoul, without a single car.

On the other hand, it's not really a neighborhood at all, in the sense that you could walk down the street and stop to look in shop windows or chat. The only street that even has a sidewalk is the one between the two big stores; everywhere else, you're counting on the drivers to not run you over. (Hint: Korea has the highest pedestrian death rate in the world.) It's not a very posh area; there are a lot of little mom-n-pop sit-on-the-floor restaurants and some folks wheeling handcarts around to pick up cardboard for cash.

Bundang,where the school actually started three years ago, is ten miles south of here. Unlike anything in Seoul, it's a planned community, laid out specifically to be an upscale exurb. (I suppose it's a suburb, actually, but I'm trying out new Words With Friends words here.) It has a ton of restaurants and stores, as well as a multiplex cinema, and the teachers' apartments are liable to be a lot nicer and bigger than we have now. Paradoxically, it's a lot more urban than where we are now, which is in the city. Bundang has a cheon, too, but I don't know if any of the paths are rubberized for runners or how far from it I'd be living.

But it will take longer to get to absolutely anything in the city, including all of the hashes that comprise 99 percent of my social life. Depending on exactly where the apartments are, I'd guess it will take between 15 and 40 minutes longer each way to go anyplace. And I'm told the apartments will be far enough from the school to require a shuttle bus to get to work.

We’ve been offered the option to stay in our current apartments and commute, but an hour each way from home to work, five days a week? Thanks just the same, as the patient with the DNR order said, but I’ll pass.

As for the school itself, it’ll be a whole ‘nother animal, going from 7-12 to K-12, from 120 students to 300—and eventually 600—and, if we get our first choice, just on the other side of the hill from, and competing with, the huge and prestigious Korea International School. It will mean a lot of new colleagues and a shiny new culture, the nature of which none of us can yet see.

That’s assuming it all happens, and I have to say it seems terrifically ambitious to think that it will all manifest in 11 months, without a signed contract for the land or final blueprint for the building. But Mr. Park is a good businessman, and this country didn’t get the fastest-growing economy in history by thinking small.

My attitude is que sera, sera—which Koreans never say. That may be why I don’t have the fastest-growing economy in history.

Chin/chiller

I love this.

One thing hashing's done for me is to help me be a little more chill. (That is what you hep young cats 'n' chicks say now, right? Chill? Chillax? Anybody?)

I've always been a worrier, someone whose monkey-mind won't stop flinging... ah, wait. ...someone whose wheels are always spinning. I remember being awake half the night waiting for Santa (I was 17) and not sleeping a moment the night before my first wedding. I figure by the fourth or fifth one I'll be cool with it.

Anyway, nothing ever goes as planned at the hash. Trail marks get parked on; I fall behind (frequently); I have trouble getting over a barrier and have to find a way around; somebody's late; I fall on my head. You know, the usual. This week is my 69th run, which is a big landmark, but the bar I'd told everyone we'd end at is closed. But between the welcoming nature of the hashers, a certain willingness to take a small nip of the golden lager, and the general devil-may-care (but I don't) atmosphere... it's all okay.

The photo isn't slightly out of focus, but I was.

Also, what the hell is that fuzz doing on my chin?

Between that and the [oh my God is he going on again about how much Buddhist philosophy has helped him shoot me now] I really have gotten better at not letting the inevitable annoyances get to me so much. Kyung's daughter moved out and Kyung left to live with friends in the States? I'm cool. The Korean class I've been waiting months to take filled up on the first registration day while I was at work? No sweat. I keep losing gloves and earmuffs? No big.

But the smallest challenges are turning into the biggest ones. I get really peeved at school when teachers leave their lights on when nobody's in the room or don't refill the bottles I brought so we could take fewer trips to refill the coffee maker, or kids come into my classroom at lunch and leave the door open, and goldangit to heck, you are not "laying" down for a nap and the past test of "sink" is not "SUNK"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Me? Nah, I'm chill.

Now get off my lawn.

Superb owl

...okay, I couldn't think of a snappy title for this post, so I imagined its topic as it would show up on a Korean hoodie, such as this one I saw in a store window:

"UNSTINTED FLAIR

You will step fourward one step to victory. I believe the thing that your happy day. 

And we will be able to put a wonderful life in the hand.

CORUSCATE

EAGERLY NECESSITY

You will step fourward one step to victory. I believe the thing that your happy day. 

And we will be able to put a wonderful life in the hand.

EVERY DAY STYLE"

Korean shirts' "English" text is legendary. It may be full of typos, it may make no sense at all, it may be unintentionally ironic (as in the text "H*A*S*H 4077th.", worn by a girl young enough she certainly never heard of M*A*S*H or knew it was set in the Korean War... and may not have been aware there was a Korean War.)

But I digress, and I haven't even started yet. This post is about the big football game that just happened.

In three and a half years in Korea, I'd never taken a day off except for illness. But my Giants upset their way all the way to the Superb Owl, a mere 48 years after I stood in line-- okay, first in line-- for Y.A. Tittle to sign my program at the Corner Book Store, God rest its soul, in Ithaca, New York. 

Yelverton Abraham Tittle.

I hadn't seen any of the Owls since I came here, but I wasn't going to miss this one.

So yesterday, I left home at 7:00 a.m. and caught the bus to the train to the train to Itaewon. I'd posted on the Harriers page on Facebook that I'd love it if anybody could join me at the Rocky Mountain Tavern, the Canadian-owned and -themed restaurant where many of our winter runs end up. To my delight, Choopa, Scared, and WTF made it and we settled in for some slobberknockin' football and camaraderie. (Oh... in proofreading, I notice that the "slobberknockin'" is meant to modify just the football, not the camaraderie. No slobber was knocked during our conversation.)

The game started at 8:30 our time and I'm not going to go into what happened; you either already know it well or don't care-- or both. But my guys beat New England-- again-- in the last minute. Tom Brady is to Elmer as Eli Manning is to Bugs. And there was much rejoicing. Poor Tom had to go home to his solid-platinum house and his wife Gisele Bundchen.

The RMT was perfectly populated, with just enough people to feel like a crowd but no sense of being packed in. (Virtually every bar in Itaewon was showing the game and the GI's at the Yongsan US Army base could watch it there.) The bar inexplicably wasn't serving brunch, as they always do on the weekends, so I missed out on the mushroom omelet and settled a delicious breakfast of coffee and Ore-Ida fries.

I was the only one in the bar in a team shirt, a cheap knockoff Lawrence Taylor jersey I'd bought Saturday, but just about everyone, including my friends because of me, was rooting for the Giants. So it was all very pleasant. It wasn't quite the same as sharing the Giants-Patsies Owl with my buddy Brian, the equally devoted Giants fan, four years ago, but it'll do very nicely.

In four hours, I had about five beers, which is at least three more than I usually have when I teach on Monday mornings. And then I went home for a nap, lamentably smoky and hoarse from the bar, slightly addled, and happy.

Did I mention that the Giants won? Even though Y.A. Tittle did not appear.

The Doctor, Regis, the Girls, and The Boys

My favorite all-time (snerk) TV show is Doctor Who. The Doctor travels through all of space and time in his TARDIS and, wouldn't you know it, sometimes bits of both time and space get squeezed together in, as the Wizard of Oz put it, "an arduous and technically unexplainable manner".

I feel rather like that now: Letterman last night had on Bill Murray in a New York Giants' uniform. (I've been a fan of the Giants for literally 50 years.) He had on my old Millionaire chum (from 2000), Regis Philbin. And he had Girls' Generation, one of the hottest of the K-pop groups that rule Korea and much of Asia. (I heard Girls' Generation blasting from a couple of storefronts in Taipei, as well.)

(If you don't know K-pop, it's all in this clip: dance in perfect but robotic unison, insipid lyrics, high energy and legs, legs, legs.) You should watch it.



In the context of my life, it's, as the Doctor said, "Pieces of Space and Time that should never have touched... pressed together."

I think I like it.

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.