Travail-ing....

This flight is ungodly long.. I have already watched Raging Bull (very slow and stupid – I’m not sure why people rave about it the way they do) and The 3:10 to Yuma (idiotically improbable but also high-level fun). In between I watched 25 minutes of Two and A Half Men as well as another 25 of Everybody Loves Raymond and wondered why I ever liked them. Stop watching TV for a year and sit-coms look entirely ridiculous and contrived.

I booked through Delta, but the flight is Korean Airlines so the food is good and the service appropriately subservient. It was somewhere around my second trip to the bathroom that I realized that I wouldn’t be seeing anyone for a very long time. This hits hardest with the OAF of course and I’m a bit bewildered about what I am supposed to do after work Miss her, I suppose. Just some mundane and predictable moments of doubt before I go back to concentrating on the things I am going to do, rather than the things I will miss. A 12 hour plane-flight is an excellent opportunity for navel-gazing, and I’m sure I will get over it once I’m on the ground and trying to get to the hotel. I did exchange my money at SFO, so at least I won’t have to go through that at Incheon. I will, however, have a sore butt, since it is already griping about the 8 hours or so we have traveled.

The window-shades are drawn in the cabin, but there are enough obnoxious Indian kids so that some are in a constant state of flux. It’s daytime out there and will be when I land. Something like 17 or 18 hours of daylight. I’m in some kind of science fiction story gone wrong.

The flight is, duh, mainly Koreans. I saw about three other Wayguk and a sprinkling of Indians. In some way I expected more Wayguk, because this would be the time we are coming over, but we’re really just spit in the wind, I guess.

Read an amusing article in the Wall Street Journal about the search for “space-safe” Kimchi. The Soviets are taking a Korean Cosmonaut on their next trip (Actually, I’ve worked with BKF on some news translations on this) and like all Koreans he doesn’t want to be without Kimchi. But Kimchi also contains live cultures, and there is concern that radiation might turn it into something inedible, threatening, or hideously mutated.

Kind of like Kimchi in the first place.

In any case, science has done this fine work and the Korean Cosmonaut will go into space with tins of Kimchi.

Also, in the airport bar I read an article about some trouble in recruiting instructors for Hagwons. It’s at http://koreabeat.com/?p=747 and it seems to indicate that if the OAF does come over here she will not have trouble finding a placement.

Now I’m watching the Skymap on my little screen and getting depressed that we aren’t moving faster. We seem to be stuck above some kind of major Ocean. I feel like the freaking Ancient Mariner, except with all the water I can drink, video, and a computer. So, not so much, really.. Still, we waited on the tarmac for at least 45 minutes due to my bad airplanema (Like Karma, but not in a car) and I’m therefore not sure when we are due.

The hotel should have wireless intarwebs, and I’ll post from it if I can.

And just like that I’m several bad sitcoms and most of one weird movie on, and sitting in the Incheon airport. I forgot how easy it was to go through this place. I was concerned that my prescriptions might be a problem, but then I saw the enormous cattle-chute of “nothing to declare” and the one guy frantically snatching everyone’s declaration forms and I realized I probably could have smuggled as many bricks of dope through as I wanted to. I don’t think I even saw a drug-dog in the whole airport. I did see a buttload (that’s a term expatriates use commonly) of hogwan people waiting to pick up newbies, so I guess they just weren’t on the SFO plane and a lot of planes land there this time of night.

Outside, it is snowing and beautiful. Incheon airport its pretty cool looking to begin with and the snow swirling under the high lamplights makes it seem very noirish.

The shuttle came to pick me up and I was reminded of one of my least favorite things about Korea – the smell old men get when they’ve been chowing down on Kimchi and smoking cigarettes. This was the man who took my bags and gave me a ride to the hotel. Which was nice enough. Korea has more than its share of inexpensive accommodation, although that is largely unbeknownst to the world. The TV, oddly, had 98 channels of static, but there was a wireless net to pick up and so I should be set for browsing. The bathroom is an odd combo of Korean and Western, but everything flushes and why not have two drains in the floor?

I wandered out to pick up some “sandwiches” and something to drink. I think I need to learn how to say “excuse me” and how to understand prices when they are spoken. Tomorrow it is off to Daejeon and my first look at BPU.