Got up and luck was with me. Even though Changdeokgung Palace is supposed to be closed on Mondays the fact that it is Children's Day means that it will be open. I noticed folks queuing up as turned the corner towards the subway station and quickly altered my quick escape from Seoul plan. Grabbed a cup of coffee from the cafeteria (which mysteriously serves no food - just a small selection of appalling looking candies). I have toured this before, but it was on a Korean tour and in the middle of a freezing winter. In addition, many buildings were closed and I'm hoping that is not the case today. The only bummer so far is that they are out of brochures in English, but my scheme is to get enough pictures to create my own brochure and so this should not be a problem. There are several specific pictures I want (based on memories of the last trip) so I should keep the tour nice and slow ;-)

Today is glorious - dead blue skies and a slight wind cutting the heat. The tour is a half-an-hour away and so far I don't see many waeguk, though I suppose it is foolish to assume that they all plan as incompetently as I do. They might even have known the place was open, and the time the tour begins.

The dinner with Ms. Shin was excellent, in a grill in the Marriot and we chatted for about three and a half hours, even though I never was served my wine. Turns out she feels responsible in some way for the collapse of the "Yi-Saeng" translation and no amount of explanation seemed to convince her that I had fun through the entire process and that just having done it gave me cred at the conferences I was going to. Shin is nicely honest (at least with foreigners) and we talked about the "status" of BPU (which is more or less negative) and she said, "well, you know, I’ve never even heard of that school." I laughed and did my best to explain what BPU was up to (as far as I can tell). Her thought is that after this first year, with the kind of other things I am involved in, that I should try to work as a "visiting lecturer" which is in some way better than the position I have now. I'm not sure how, but Ms. Shin was certainly convinced.

We parted about 9:30 with the promise that when the OAF lands we will come back up to Seoul and eat dinner at Mrs. S's house. She asked me, "do you like Korean food?" and I answered in the strong affirmative (while snickering inside about the OAF's stance on that cuisine – it could be a long night for the OAF!)

Perhaps it's time to totter down to the sidewalk and see if anyone is serving any ick-on-a-stick, since I am pretty hungry. Then try to get that rare shot of the place with no one in front of it.

That latter never happened although I did procure a lovely breakfast of whole-fried potatoes (boiled first for extra-delicious softnosity!), but the tour was outstanding. The guide-woman checked to make sure that no one was Japanese in our tour and then talked trash about them for 80 solid minutes. Highly entertaining.

Got out of the Palace and took a hard right to go to the Buddhist Art Museum. This was rather sparse, maybe 40 items in all. They kind of made up for this by comping me three postcards, but that only kind of made up for the lameness. I suppose I should be happy there was anything in a Buddhist museum – it could have been eternal nothingness and I wouldn’t have had grounds to complain. Then there was the fact that I was the only person in the whole place and so until I noticed, when almost done, that there were no-camera signs in the place, I did take pictures. The most interesting of which were the Golden Buddha and the rowboat mysteriously constructed out of pencils. What in the world this has to do with Buddhism was entirely opaque to me, but then I am far too much of this world.

Then it was into the subway, off to Seoul Station, and onto the train, which according to my computer should have departed a minute ago, but according to my rough physics, is not moving (relative to the earth). I didn't realize that seats were assigned - duh!- but thankfully the confused person whose seat I had taken spoke excellent English and it all got sorted before I had to come to blows with all of Seoul. I'd have taken them. No doubt!

And then home with no incident, and to IMs that I had tragically missed