Mid-February

There is still absolutely nothing for me to do at work. Factor in a complete absence of English conversation, the Neil Young discography, and an entire pot of coffee and you have a recipe for introspection. As soon as wandering around in my own thoughts gets claustrophobic I'm switching over to King Crimson and Nightquil. I'm not even exaggerating about having no work to do. The past two days I started the morning hanging out with the janitors, cranking K-Pop, drinking soju, and smoking cigarettes. I'm not even a fan of drinking before noon and I hate cigarettes but it's better than eight hours of YouTube and my boss actually approves. Do Korean tax payers realize that this is where their hard earned money is going?

Lunch today was a pleasant surprise. Lately it's been spicy fish-soup by delivery, but today one of the secretaries interrupted the janitors and I in the middle of a paper-airplane contest and asked if we wanted to join the "special lunch plans." Was I in a position to say no? After a half hour ride in a fleet of those micro-buses the thirty or forty of us in attendance arrived at a spacious raw-fish restaurant. Lunch must have been about seven courses and included oysters, mussels, pajeon, baked corn, kimchi, two large trays of raw sashimi, tessa, shark, halibut, live octopus, eel, several other types of delicious yet unidentifiable fish, budae jjigae, and this wonderful bamboo liquor that tastes just like apple juice. I remember only months ago when I'd hesitate to dine on such fare but now I salivate over it.

My buddy Mike scored a motorcycle a few weeks ago for about $200.  It's a Daelim Magma 125cc.  At first it wouldn't start because it needed a new battery.  On Monday night we got the idea that we could push it up to speed in the parking garage and then pop the clutch to make the motor turn over.  It didn't work so Mike just bought a battery on Tuesday and we spent the afternoon cruising it around the neighborhood.  I have to admit that he got his money's worth of fun out of the thing.  It's a completely awesome bike with a surprising amount of get-up-and-go for the amount of engine displacement.  Here's a little clip so you can see what passes for a hog here in the ROK.


Cool Thing About Korea #46:

The Juan T. Trippe which was the second Boeing 747 ever made and the first to be flown commercially is now a rundown restaurant in a random Korean suburb.  I've been meaning to go track it down and take pictures for sometime now but lately I get the feeling that its just not going to happen.  Still, you can see a ton more pictures here.