Day Toodle... ooodle..oddle...ooh... that must have hurt!

I woke up and my clever plan had worked. By staying up the previous day I had completely reset my internal clock. Unfortunately I don't live in the Gobi desert, and that seems to have been where my clock was set to. And smashed by Bedouins just thereafter. I was a bit groggy.

Of course the day started with the Prince of Lies changing our plan. I went wandering out in the neighborhood and called Eddie who said he was sleeping in until 10. This was odd since I thought he was supposed to meet his mother at the bullet-train station or something. But I wandered to the store and bought a sandwich for breakfast. This is always a bit of a crapshoot, since I can't read what's in them and the sideways view doesn't give much hint. Since Koreans put things in sandwiches that I wouldn't normally consider (crab, fish eggs, ginger, etc) the first bite can be quite alarming. One other odd thing.. the sandwiches are built in two parts and these parts do not contain the same ingredients. So you eat half of your sandwich and you'll have one meal, eat the other and you'll have a different meal. My cheap analysis of this is that it is the Korean way to try to replicate the bazillions of dishes that are served at any sitdown meal. Sandwiches, while convenient, must have originally struck Koreans as moronically uniform. So they did what they do with everything: they made it Korean.

Who knows what these wise savages have made of pizza? I'll have to try some while I'm down here - there is no shortage of Pizza Huts nor of demented Korean men riding scooters on the sidewalk delivering pizzas, over the flattened corpses of innatentive pedestrians, to a waiting world.

Anyway, I finish my breakfast and Eddie eventually wanders around. In the meantime I've been watching TV and it suddenly occurs to me that last trip every third station was showing some kind of ultimate fighting show (e.g. 'Pancrasse'). I haven't seen a single such show on this trip. Baseball everywhere (Korean, Japanese, and USA) but no pummeling. Some WWF, which I suppose I'll have to take as weak tea. Oh, and the weird porn.

Eddie tells me he has called off the day-trip to see his teachers down south. Which is probably good, because I was slowly evolving a plan that featured Soju and Korean porno which would have been enjoyable, but perhaps not the best use of my limited time here - Why do the two things here that I can do better back in the USA? Day-time drinking and gnarly porno is just plain better in the US. Bars open at 6 am and the porno includes such odd things as actual sex acts.

Anyway, Ed runs out to get himself some breakfast and we head back downtown. A bit more bookshopping (I purchase "Aloft" which has just been a great read so far) and then I head off to what is advertised as an "Irish Sports Bar" in the Westin Chosun. I'd really like to catch the NBA game. But the bar, predictably, is both empty and showing Korean baseball. I order a beer with my lunch salad and since this is still the workday it convinces my waitress that I am a hard core alcoholic and I can't eat three leaves of salad without her returning and trying to get me to order more beer.

I guess I actually like that.

Afterwards I walk back and hook up with Eddie for a brief period. I walk back to the Hotel and spend the afternoon doing schoolwork, yapping a bit on IM, and cleaning up some loose ends at work. Eddie shows up about 5:30, after having snuck a nap in and he hops across the street to pick up some munchies and Soju. We do the standard yap, drink, nibble, and watch Korean TV. Korean TV is notable for its ads and for its not ads, a Zen-like riddle I'll get to explaining sooner or later. The word is Jae's brother is gonna creep back into town, so we don't want to get too full or too drunk.

It's all about the balance!

A few hours later the boy calls and says he has been dragooned into staying late at work, so Ed and I go across the street for some barbequed bacon (which sounds weird, but think of rashers of bacon, not the US style) and more Soju. At about 9 or so we are both overwhelmed by a wave of sleepiness and return to our hotel rooms to crash. By 10:15 I have finished my schoolwork, have the iPod blaring louder than the airconditioner and am slumping towards Gehenna.