Stalking Chicken Again..

That lovely chicken stock I made the other day has now been made into two delicious breakfasts of tofu and mushroom soup. It looks like this:


And is surprisingly delicious. I think the chicken-stock thing might become a regular part of the old repertoire.....

And, unrelated, if you don't think that looks tasty? I've snapped the lovely photo below in which you are WARNED!

Does it make me a dirty stinking animal...

That I'm just about to take my first shower since before I left the US?

If I'm going to see my new buddies today, I might as well not smell like the Bowery...

Back to the Grind!

After a long and exhausting vacation, we are back in Seoul and attempting to settle into our own little domestic blister. The Lovely Wife is off setting up a doctor's appointment, while I putter around the apartment...

First step is to finish the reduction of my chicken stock. The night we got home the grilled chicken man was at the bottom of our hill and we grabbed two chickens. Yesterday, with what was left of them, I started a stock and today, with the grease removed from the top, it looks a little like this:



A bit of reduction and then into the freezer!

I also got my iPhone, which makes me feel super cool and with it. Today is all about learning how it works and syncing it to iTunes on my computer (I have been without portable music for about four months). This should also be good for my Korean study, as now I will have something to listen to when I am on the treadmill at the gym.

I also found a super-cool program (Bento) that will help me with my book-buying campaign here in Korea, and with the KTLIT thing. I've started databasing all the Korean translations I have (by "started" I mean I figured the program out, laid out my database, put two books into it, then became bored!). But once I get this inputting done, I will no longer accidentally buy duplicate books, and when I am looking for a particular short story I will be able to find it in whatever books it has been published in. Should simplify things vastly.

School begins next Tuesday, and after two years of having unspecific goals, I think it is time to go back to the model I used the first year here, and set out some very specific goals about work, play, travel, health, etc... because that first year I pretty much accomplished everything I listed, but in the next two years became a bit ad-hocish....

Tomorrow should be a great day - I'm going out to lunch with Bruce Fulton and Stephen Epstein and a whole crew of translation/blogger dudes and dudettes.. These are heavy hitters and its nice to be invited to hang out with them..

I Have a Whole New Personality

It still sucks, but it turns out I'm not a Sagittarius as there are now 13 astrological signs, instead I'm apparently on the cusp of Scorpio and Ophiuchus/Serpentarius.

I'm still trying to figure out what it means.. but since I'm either the archer, the scorpion, or the snake-bearer, I'm pretty cool with it...

Piss off all you crabs, twinned fishies and sea-goats!^^

I wrote a little song:

With the sun in the ninth constellation
Mere concern burgeons to aggravation
Stupidity rules our mighty nation
and peace is only found in bars

this is the dawning of the age of Ophiuchus
the age of Ophiuchus

Ophiuchus
Ophiuchus

Agony misunderstanding
treachery and lust abounding
revealing falsehoods and derisions
horrific and satanic visions
and the minds complete submission

Ophiuchus
Ophiuchus


With the sun in the ninth constellation
Mere concern burgeons to aggravation
Stupidity rules our mighty nation
and peace is only found in bars


this is the dawning of the age of Ophiuchus
the age of Ophiuchus

Ophiuchus
Ophiuchus

It's a Deep Purple Kind of Day!

Beauty.... it won't get below negative 8 today... some incredibly light snow flashing around horizontally. A fusion breakfast of half a tortilla, an orange and a tuna kimbab. Now, with the coffee in the cup and the rock and roll blasting on the office speakers, as is temporarily well.

Navigating the campus today is a bit ragged as it seems to be one of the days that freshmen and their families come on campus and the traffic control guys are all over the place - like epileptic rats on speed, attempting to cope with something they never thought possible: an entire generation of older Korean who are incapable of reading traffic signs, even those as simple as arrows.

I'm safe for now. And my office is clean, since the Arirang TV people came by last Thursday to film intro and B-roll for my upcoming show. They were super-pro; in and out of the classroom in less than 20 minutes, and then interviews with two students and Rob, from Roboseyo, whose interview answer was one-take and complete (and awfully nice). I commented on that, and he said, "toastmasters." LOL.. when he had to teach a speech class he enrolled, just to perfect his own skills.

Now it's time to print out some stuff for a writing job, go bookshopping and get home to clean the place up - we have a couch-surfer coming in tomorrow and I want to make an entirely artificial impact. ^^

Money and Fame

Got a gig with the big Womans University here...... the faculty of Buddhist University and the big Womans University are slightly intertwined, at least in translation and the big Womans University translation unit needs editors.

I turns out I have skills in this area...

I turned out a massive intergovernmental project in a few days, and it looks (hard to tell because the people who send out the money info aren't as "Englishee" as the translators) that my first job will be about $1.6k.

This would help me and my enchanted bride in our trip to Oz....

Later, I got a call from a local TV station. They would like to interview me about my interest in Korean literature.

This sent me directly to the gym, as though one hour there per day could take away the pounds and ravages of the last semester. ;-)

Eternally optimistic in the short term, and dead pessimistic on the long haul. ^^

The Last Days in NZ

Ho hum...

Been lazy poster...

NOW the end of the New Zealand (LOL the imperialist Blogger spell check tool refuses to accept that "Zealand" could be part of the English language) trip.

Got up on Sunday to walk in for the session I was hosting.

This was a bit traumatic as I wanted a cup of coffee and at 9am on a Sunday THE STARBUCKS WAS CLOSED! Those of us who live in civilized countries will not believe this, so I snapped a photo.




Then it was performance time. Our little Ph.D. student did well despite the fact her English is difficult and that she held on to the podium like it was a life-preserver. In between was an SNU professor, and then my colleague showed the room what a second-language performance should be like.

It was a small audience, being that early on a Sunday, and I was able to be the avuncular host when questions came.

Then my Korean buds headed off to check out more of the town, and I waited around for my performance.

It was some stuff I've done before, and other than missing the "two minutes to go" cue, it went as it always does.

After, with the Koreans still on the town, I found a nearby bar with wireless and had "jug" of beer.

With that concluded it was off to the NZ house of Parliament, or some other important thing, where the conference had miraculously placed its dinner. The opening speech was by the minister of culture who amusingly apologized for his absence the previous day as he was also the minister of "redress" (or something like it) and had spent the previous day with the Maori, as NZ continues to try to sort out its relationship with them.

His speech was funny, he noted that there were many issues to sort out, and mercifully short.

The outside of the Parliament (or whatever) building looked like this:





And where we ate, like this:



The next day I dithered around in town, had two beers, the squirts, and a dwarf hooker, before catching the bus to the airport.

One hour to Auckland, and then a shuttle ride to my hotel. The hotel was surrounded by closed liquor stores (alas), so I couldn't get shitfaced and puke on my evolving memories of NZ.

The next day to the plane.. an uneventful ride home... LOL, since Korea is home....

and for that day? The rest was silence.

This little piggy Kiwi-wii'd all the way home...

Friday night I waited up until my Korean co-conspirators got in, talked to them briefly, and then went upstairs to watch stupid sports on TV. Saturday was a day to wander around. I headed down to the conference just to get registered. For the second straight day I was walking into a violent headwind. I made sure to hit just as the morning food break was put out, and after a cup of coffee and some nosh, I headed back out to check out the quays and the big museum.

On the way over I spotted the vessel the Steve Irwin, which was, appropriately considering what happened to him, all decked out in black.


The quays are beautiful and the water in the harbor was whipping itself frothy

I passed by something like a Korean outdoor/indoor market, a parking lot turned into an art market. Kind of cool, but not my thing, so I continued on to the museum without purchasing a single nicknack, gee-gaw, or nasty rubber novelty.

The museum was grand - 6 stories tall, of which about 4.5 were cool and totally free. I saw some dinosaurs, took a ride on the earthquake simulator, saw the bad news about the un-greening of New Zealand.

Then, exhausted, I went by the local for a “small” burger and a beer. The burger was, in fact, massive and the beer tasty. Then it was off to do a bit more book-shopping (alas, no books) and a nap back at the hotel.

Later on it was out again for dinner, and when I returned the Korean contingent were sitting in the parlor of the hotel, so we chatted for a bit and then retired. Like an idiot, once again, I stayed up late watching obscure Kiwi semi-sports. I would pay at 7:30 the next morning…

It should come as no suprise...

That in a country not dominated by loathsome boy and girl bands?

The bar soundtracks are superior....

More news as I break it... ^^

My Escape From Fiery Death!

Speaking of bookstores… as I did last post…. There are some grand ones here. As soon as I got off the bus from the airport I walked by an enormous two-story used bookshop and even though I had my luggage, couldn’t help but go in. Unfortunately the fiction was not categorized other than by last name (i.e. any translated Korean fiction would be folded in with the rest). But my second question revealed that some collections were collected by region and a quick visit upstairs netted me a hardback 1974 edition of “Flowers of Fire” of which only one seems to be available on the intarwebs (LOL - I should snap it up to own then ALLZ!). I also found a 1974 UNESCO version of “Virtuous Women” of which 3 seem to exist?

A nice haul, but it probably means I’ve cleaned out Wellington since I’m sure no one else has ever looked for translated Korean fiction and that these two books are the result of decades of buying. Too bad I won’t have more time in Auckland, which supposedly also has some good used bookstores.

Just to alienate my lovely wife, I also include this picture of yet another used bookstore that I just walked by:



The hotel is in the hipster section of Wellington, with many music stores, bars, performance venues, art-stores, and holistic health type stores. It makes a nice contrast with most of Seoul. Still, too many shit tattoos. ;-)

After that, it was just wandering around, watching TV, and then sleeping.

Well, sleeping til about 5AM, when the fire alarm went off and the entire hotel was evacuated. It only took about 30 minutes, but it was a slight drag.

I grabbed my laptop and coat.. fortunately it was my ultracool Dongguk coat with Yvonne's camera in the pocket, so I took some out-of-focus "why the hell am I not asleep" photos, of which one follows.



Got back in the room before 6 and slept til 11. I pride myself on the fact that I touched nothing in the courtesy bar, because drinking at 5am would probably be a sign of something, narrow escape from fiery death notwithstanding...

Still, unaccountably, tired, but with nothing to do til Sunday, I should be able to catch up on my sleep.