Vatican't!

Today began with much screwing around, to use a technical travel term. The POSSLQ and I had planned to visit the Vatican Museum, but we didn't really get going til about 11 and then learned that the museum closed at 2:45. Since we hadn't even begun walking over to the place, the plan was killed. Turned out this was probably a good thing, because when we did get to the museum the next day (at opening time) we left at about 12:30 and the line to the museum snaked all the way around the Vatican and nearly back to St. Pietro Plaza.

So, couple-day destroyed, we went with the parents and quickly despatched three sites you "must see" in Rome, just in case someone back home asks you about them. These are the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, and the Pantheon.

I'd say the Pantheon was the coolest of these spots; the POSSLQ would disagree - she was angered that it had been catholocized. No amount of arguing that if it hadn't been catholocized it would have been knocked down as a quarry could un-knot her tiny little fists of balled impotent rage. The Pantheon was originally built (in 27 BC-25 BC) as a temple to the seven deities of the seven planets in the state religion of Ancient Rome. The original was destroyed in a fire in AD 80, and the current building dates from about 125, during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian,but it has been a Christian church since the 7th century. It is the best-preserved of all Roman buildings and the oldest important building in the world with its original roof intact. Although the identity of the Pantheon's architect is uncertain, it is traditionally assigned to Apollodorus of Damascus.

The Pantheon is not well-served by the fact that Rome has built right up to it on three sides. If you approach it from the rear, as we did, it looks like a tatty heap of bricks infested with a tattier collection of pigeons. Not to mention the tatty Italians, who swarm about the place like they live here. The front, on the other hand, is pretty cool, and the inside is cool in a physical sense, so it is a nice break from the Italian sun.

As you turn around and look the other way there is a traditional apartment building with stores below, and a lovely swath of bouganvillia (sp?) flowers cascading down it. There is also the unavoidable obelisk, right in the middle of things.

We moved on to the Trevi Fountain, 85 feet high and 65 feet wide. Very pretty, but swarming with people. And I just hate people, so that didn't work at all for me.

I was impressed by the gladiator dude over there to the left. Who knew that Gladiators smoked delicious Marlboro cigarettes.

We watched idiots cavort in front of the water and then walked down this exceedingly lovely alley -- lovely because it leads away from the Trevi Fountains. We wandered about for a bit, both because we have limited map reading skills and because Bax was trying to figure out why he could no longer use his Wells Fargo card. Apparently Wells Fargo has decided that it has been stolen and has cancelled its use. He gets a message saying that he must contact his local branch, which is certainly not in Rome. This is a slightly worrisome thing for me, since my card is also a Wells Fargo one and if the swine were to hold me up I'd have to have the parents..... pay...... wait a second... have the parents pay....... for everything!

Come ON Wells Fargo!

Anyway, we wandered around looking at various things and as we got closer and closer to the Spanish steps the shops got tonier and tonier and also more expensive. Nothing I would buy in any circumstance, but just like around the Vatican it is funny to watch tourist money inflate prices.

The Spanish Steps (Scalinata di Piazza di Spagna) is 138 stairs ramping a steep slope between the Piazza di Spagna at the base and Piazza Trinità dei Monti. The Spanish Steps were designed by Francesco De Sanctis after generations of argument over how the steep slope to the church on a shoulder of the Pincio should be urbanized.

Unfortunately, when we were there the church at the top was under some kind of reconstruction and its facade was covered in scaffolding and canvas. This made the steps rather unnatractive, except for the young couple which was canoodling at the edges of the thing.

The steps are supposedly more colorful at other times of the year and they also have some sort of historical provenance among hippies, but today they just looked like steps.

POSSLQ and I ran up the steps, looked down them, ran down them, and then it was off to a rather fine lunch.

After lunch we decided to walk back to our flat, a thing that took just about 3 hours to do and included a fortuitious and completely accidental trip up a hill to the Borghese gardens (once a vineyard, now the second largest garden in Rome). These are on top of a hill and we had a lovely view of Rome looking towards the Vatican. The gardens are studded with busts of famous and not so famous Romans and are nicely shaded in addition. A nice place to have a picnic, really.

After a walking tour we descended to the city floor and soldiered back to Aurelia.

POSSLQ and I ended up having a lovely pizza dinner by the flat and wandering out to take pictures of St. Peters at night, one of which you see below you can click here for a big version)

I Got Blistas on My Footsies!

So then, as you do, we went to check out the interior of the Vatican. A pretty impressive place. As I said yesterday it is amazing what you can do with millions of dollars of stolen money and the functional equivalent of slaves.

All we did was walk into St. Peter's itself as the line to the basilica was too long for us to consider at that time. We fought our way in past the tour-groups which clot everything up. Each tour group is identifed by a harried looking man or woman walking around with some kind of identifier on a stick; handkerchief, banner, in one case even a garter. When these tours stop to regroup their members, they cause an enormous hiccup in the flow of people through the church. I suppose they make a ton of money for the cause though.

Almost the first thing you come upon when you enter the Nave is the famous "Pieta" (the Virgin Mary holding in her arms the body of the Christ right after it was taken down from the Cross) to the right. Unfortunately you can only come within about 100 feet of it and from a bullet-proof glass type barrier. This is, as romaviva.com puts it in amusing language, "Following the gesture of a silly person, who in 1972 damaged the work with numerous hammer beats, after the restoration it has been decided to protect the sculpture with a crystal wall." It's still an impressive work, but from so far away and with the dull lighting of the church, the effect is a bit muted. It is a bit odd in one way, and that is through a long lense or binoculars it looks like the Virgin Mary is Christ's age or younger. Which, I suppose, is just another miracle and I should let it alone.

As we walked through we were just about buggered by the size of the church, you could probably fit several conventional churches within it, and pretty much everywhere you looked there was something to goggle at.

POSSLQ ran around until she found the "Eye of Sauron" and then wouldn't leave until I consented to take a picture of her. That's over there on the right. She is puny, sly, and surprisingly quick and I have to be equally sly and quick to get any photos that she is not in. The moment she sees the glint of a camera lens she is off like a deer to interpose her swollen head between that lens and whatever historical object I am attempting to photograph.

I have taken to identifying my photographic object, turning around 180 degrees and feigning interest in some object off in the far distance. As POSSLQ races off to find the right spot from which to insert her head, I whirl around and rapidly shoot three shots of my real objet d'art.

She hasn't got wise to this yet, although I am slowly developing a case of whiplash.

As we walked on we saw little figures of interest almost everywhere. Your eye tends to be pulled towards the enormous statues in the (enormous) cubbyholes of the church, but sometimes it is the little things that are most interesting. As we wandered past an enormous marble pantheon bearing the inscribed name of all the Popes and on towards one of the many "pay per view" museumettes that the Church has placed in the Vatican, the POSSLQ darted over towards a wall and started jumping up and down like a Punch and Judy doll being operated by an epileptic puppet-master.

She had identifed something worth a photo and now, unfortunately, had decided to pre-emptively get in the way. This is a terrible sign for me in the long run, but in the short run I just yelled to her, "look, over there, a stigmata!" and as she ran over to the water fountain I was pointing my lense at I snapped around and took a picture of what I imagine to be the first Hell's Angels insignia known to western man.

Just more evidence of why the Pope is one of those "not to be fucked with" type of dudes.

POSSLQ came back soaking wet and looked at me speculatively. "This doesn't taste like blood?" shehalf stated and half asked and I just nodded gravely and responded that God works in many varied and mysterious ways.

Our death march through the Vatican continued and I saw evidence, as though I needed it, of why the works of art are generally protected from sightseers. One of the statues of some Pope or the other sits out where the public can touch it and there is apparently something of a foot-fetishist in your average Catholic. I noticed that almost everyone who passed the thing reached out and caressed its foot. I sidled over the POSSLQ and whispered to her that I had seen a hulking albino with a knife skulking about on the other side of the nave. As POSSLQ shot off with her "Da Vinci Code" backpack trailing in the air behind her I took the following shot of the statue with (inset) his foot clubbed by centuries of caresses.

In case you wonder, the statue does not have "CLUB-FOOTED SAINT?" inscribed at its base, that is a thing I did with a clever application of Photoshop. Next step? American Currency baby!

Well, given where the dollar is? Maybe Euros.

After a bit we all became tired of being buffeted about byuncaring Catholic brutes (where is the love?) and we slowly worked our way back towards the exit.

As we exited St. Peters we came back out into the light and got an interesting view of the plaza from the "other side."

Below is a picture of something like the "Pope's Eye View" of the Plaza St. Pietro, and as I stood there looking out over the imaginary crowds, I began to feel a bit Pope-like myself as I composed, in my head, the text of my sermon on why we should all love each other as though we were brothers. As the text mutated uncontrollably in my head into an angry screed demanding that I be brought unbeliever's heads firmly placed on stakes, I realized that I was probably not cut out to be a Pope, and took just one last photo of one of the really cool statues that ring the upper rim of the pillars that outline St. Pietro Plaza.

Then it was off to food, drinks, and a fan to lull me to sleep in a Rome that has also cooled down a few degrees. If I weren't getting a cold, all would be well here in Romeania.

I will mention one thing left over from Korea and that is that each time I enter the apartment here in Rome I have a sudden compulsion that I have to take off my shoes.Weird, the one day I was at home there was no such thing, in fact I rather revelled in stomping my dirty shoes all over everything.

TOMORROW: "More On Modern Rome Antics"

The Wireless at the Hotel is Working!

After all the frenzy I was whipped into about the threat of pickpockets? Not one ravening horde of gypsy kids descended on me to denude me of all earthly possessions. I must admit to being a bit dissapointed. In fact, during the whole first day we saw no one who even looked vaguely like a gypsy with the exception of two beggar women and one guy passed out on some steps. And I'm only calling him a gypsy to try to attach some bit of romantic allure to his unconscious state.

Because I care like that.

We rolled down to the Plaza San Pietro in front of the Vatican. The Vatican looks something like that terrible panorama I have stitched together at the top of this page. And if you want to look at my shoddy stitching skills up close and personal you can click here to see an enormous version of the thing (Warning 332 KB!). As it was Sunday morning the lines to get in were monstrous. We lollygagged around a bit and then began to walk. And walk and walk.

I'm not sure all of the places we actually walked to except it included the grand road leading up to the Vatican, which we heard was all built by Mussolini prior to World War II. That makes sense looking at it, as it has that "big facade" but "semi-sterile" look that I associate with fascist architecture.

Along one side of the road there was hourly parking, God alone knows what time you would have to get to the Vatican to get that, but since we were (easily amused) by the puny size of Italian cars, we posed the puny POSSLQ next to one so that those who had never been to Italy could scoff at the Italians. The sun was beating down quite ferociously, and by the time the day was done I had a pretty dramatic sunburn on my face and the top of my head. I think I need to look into hair-transplant surgery.

To protect my head!

I'ts not vanity. ;-)

Continuing to walk down some semi-random streets, we eventually ended up in a warren of alleyways which reminded me a little of the alleyways in Korea. Much wider, of course, and a few less businesses per square meter (see, I'm adapting to this savage land already), but I guess alley-life is alley life, and I was not at all suprised to turn one corner and find the ubiquitous vegetable peddler set up on the corner where two alleys met.

Unlike Seoul, I have already seen a pretty wide variety of what I would characterize as street people, though like Seoul you also see a sprinkling of beggars who are trying to make a living by exposing their handicaps. Clubfoot seems to be a popular choice amongst the gypsies hereabouts. The other notable thing about the street-peddlers is that the ones who lay out blankets and sell semi-modern things (sunglassses, small tripods, Snap-on ClubFoot Kits for the begging trade) all seem to be African. The ones who are selling softer items (scarves, handkerchiefs) all seem to be Asian women with a sprinkling of possible gypsies thrown in.

I have no idea what this means, I just note it.

We continued on until we came to a gigantic plaza. I couldn't get the picture I wanted because in my paranoia about pickpockets I had left my satchel of lenses at the flat, but this picture is of an enormous statue which certainly commeorates something noble or the other and was absolutely certainly constructed by some hack like Bernini or Michaelangelo. It is amazing how many brilliant pieces of art are just plunked out there in public. The Rennaisance was an amazing confluence of skilled artists and cheap labor. It made quite a great deal of beautiful public are possible, and while I am not one to (publicly) suggest we bring back indentured servitude, squalorous poverty, or even slavery, I am certain it would create much better vacation destinations down the line.

More wandering around ensued and we ended up on the banks of the Tiber, a quite green river, and walked down it until we were back in our little neighborhood. Then it was lunch at a pretentious and very expensive little joint about a block away from the Vatican. While everything is surprisingly expensive in the little shops here (2 Euros for a liter of Coke) prices do drop as you move away from the big church. When we had lunch on the second day, just 3 blocks farther out, the food was better and the price was about half of the Vatican-side cafe.

After lunch, violently stuffed and all about to explode, we headed back to the flat. After a bit the POSSLQ got all antsy and she and I headed down to the plaza again. I took pictures and she wandered around staring at the architecture.

I had a beer from a street vendor, and as the last rays of the afternoon sun continued to napalm my face, all was well in our little corner of Rome. We returned, yet again, to the flat, drank beer and tequila, and all fried that night as the temperature never dropped below 77 degrees in our rooms (Bax has a watch that tells time, speed, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, level of grace with God, and severity of the Fitzgerald Contraction, among other measurables.)

We awoke cranky and unrested, but ready to face the Romulans one more time.

Wherever I may roam: From Seoul, to Home, to Rome

Sunday morning comes early in Rome - a cacophony of bells to bring the faithful to their knees. It explodes at first and trickles out as though each bell is rung by a different altar boy and some of the cheekiest ones want to ring the last bell. This was a gentle awakening compared to my one morning back home.

The Korea trip ended with the standard plane-flight home (For no earthly reason I did begin my long awaited "photos from car mirrors" exhibit of photography - you can see the first photo to the left). I was separated from my Korean friends, so I slept as much as I could. We arrived at SFO at about 2:30 and I was back home by 4:30 and in the house. Kept myself up until about midnite and then slept til 9;15 or so, with interstitial moments all about sleep and schoolwork.

At about 4:30 am I woke up and looked around and didn't rcognize a thing. I looked out the window by my head and saw a lawn and unfamiliar trees. I KNEW this wasn't Korea or Rome and it startled me. I got out of the bed and walked towards the bedroom door. It led to another door, and that door was open to someone else's room. An office of some sort. I walked back to the bed an the POSSLQ was in it. This snapped me back - I was in my unrecognizalbe home.

When we awoe in the morning I was no longer confused and it was up to house of some relatives of the POSSLQ for a trip back to SFO.

In essence, I had a 22 hour layover.

Some slight confusion when we got to our ride... POSSLQ's brother wanted to come with us but, upon hearing that we were on our way, had mysteriously run off to do errands. We waited around and he showed up, so it was off to the airport and on to a KLM plane. This was a different experience. The last eight plane trips I had taken were on Asiana airlines and these flights were primarily made up of Koreans. Since Korean social structure is based upon relationship, these rides are stiff and a bit unfriendly. As no one knows anyone else, there is little conversation and most of the flight is spent involved in the screen on the back of the seat in front of you. Asiana spends quite a penny on in-flight entertainment - we had both modern versions of King-Kong, a movie from the hideous Harry Potter series, golf coverage, several Japanese fantasy/action movies, and a couple of other assorted movies. Til I took the KLM flight this didn't mean much to me, but it became clear after I saw how the Dutch worked the thing that Asiana's excellent entertainment was to keep people from interacting.

When I got on the KLM flight I was disspointed to see no back-seat screens and only very small screens hanging over the aisles. And there was only one movie offered for the entire flight. Once we got on the plane, however, it became clear more would have been lost on our largely Dutch passengers. As soon as the plane took off the flight attendants came by with drinks, including mini-bottles of wine (the man two seats to my left clearly knew the schedule and took advantage of it to get politely drunk). Soon after they came by with dinner, and the booze, soon after that they came by with refresher drinks, and after dinner they came by with coffee, tea, water and the booze, but this time including VSOP, Bailey's, and two other kinds of after-dinner drink. As soon as that was done there was an apparent MASSIVE rush to the bathrooms. I could see up to 10 people mulling around outside of them but, oddly, the "occupied" signs were not lit up on the wall. Then the captain came on and announced "You know, I am required to announce this by the American authorities. Please do not congregate in the aisles. They do not want more than three people in the aisles at a time. Now that I've said that, enjoy your flight."

And indeed, the people congregating were all just making introductions and talking. After dinner the stewardesses just parked the drink carts by the mid-cabin exits and left them there. So all flight long there were informal little parties in the planes, and anyone who put on the headphones was likely trying to nap.

The stewardesses were also quite different. The youngest stewardess on the KLM flight would have been about a decade too old for the Asiana flight, but they were much more personable.

Anyway, we landed in Amsterdam without time to go out and get stoned. :-( Then a short hop over to Rome, a quick ride to Aurelia in Rome and we were there. I got to my seat for that flight, second row from the back, sat down in it, and it flopped backwards into the poor person behind me. I was in the second to last row, so the poor person behind me could not decline their seat and we had to tackeoff anyway. So I grabbed the back of the seat to pull it forward and gave it a yank.

Swiiiiiiiiish!

It came all the way forward and put my face into the unreclined seat behind me. My seat back was completely loose. I called the extremely gay flight attendant, demonstrated the problem and shrugged.

He said, "air bubble" and vigorously slammed the seat forward and back about 15 times. This had no effect. He looked puzzled, tried it one more time to confirm it didn't work, then patted me on the shoulder in a friendly way, and walked off.

I was on my own. I can't imagine it was safe, and I had to try not to shift in the seat (takeoff was particularly interesting), but obviously I survived the trauma. ;-)

The flat is outstanding. Two full bedrooms, a full kitchen, bathroom, and foyer. We are right next to a train-line, which worried me at first, but Baxter demonstrated the totally cool slatted wall that you can pull down over the windows. Not only does this plunge the room into total darkness, but it also largely blocks outside noise, not a small issue in downtown Rome. Over there on the left you can see the view from our foyer out past the deck

Breakfast is on the solarium, and other than the idiots sitting next to us loudly disagreeing with evolution (we are right next door to the Vatican, after all) and explaining how useful AOL has been to them (I can't decide which stance reveals more stupidity) it is an outstanding venue. We can look over the wall and see the dome of St. Peter's Basilica (photo). The breakfast features local ham and produce and coffee I like but the parental units sniff at.

They don't spend much time at the 7-11, I guess.

The bells are ringing again, and I'll take that as my call to get down off of the roof here, take a shower and head over to the Vatican. I am told that the pickpockets are every bit as efficient as international rumor gives them credit for, so I will only take a small amount of money and perhaps this first day I will not bring my lenses until I've been out and about to figure out how dangerous they might be to goods.

All over but the crying...

Bits and Pieces • Last night for the Seoul Man • Alley Life

• How polite are Koreans? I'm watching TV and a guy breaks in to a home intent on raping the woman inside. He takes of his shoes and socks before he enters, though, cause he's a guy who cares!

• Soju, the "other" breakfast drink. Because if there is some left over in the morning? I'm going to drink it!

• Happy Fluffy, Fuck You! When I see the street-sweeper go by with a big happy face on the side of it? I want to pick up a Korean drifter and take them for a one way ride. Good thing there are no Korean drifters.

• The Importance of Numbers. Before I come back to Korea, as a tourist or with a job, I will learn the number system, to read Hangul, and the names of the top 20 restaurant foods. These things work together. I hate walking past some of the cool alleyway joints when I'm hungry and not being able to hop inside and have a casual bite. As the dude might say, this will not abide.

• Off to Italy. The next step begins. I am sad to keave Korea. As I was attending to various tasks in the bathroom ;-) I looked at how small, undecorated, and odd it was. And missed it already.

•

Wanted to go to sleep early last night.. was getting ready to do just that when Jongkuin showed up. I thought about ignoring his knock on the door and his call on the cell, but couldn't do it. He's the classic Korean who will do better when he leaves Korea. Expatriation (if there is such a word) is in the heart, and he has it. So I stayed out til midnite drinking beer... thank God he isn't a soju fan, since I am already rocky enough from lack of sleep and over-abundance of booze. It was a good farewell though. If I do come back to Korea to work, I will certainly spend some time teaching him to speak English. He needs to pass the TOEFL to go to the Academy of Arts school in SF and I can just see him blowing up if he gets there.

•

Alley life. What can you say? It is completely key to Korean urban existence. So here are some quick snaps.

"mmmm" some "sick on a stick!"

"Sick on a stick" before preparation.

A door off the alley reveals a toilet bowl holding flowers. That must be some kind of metaphor for something.

End of the Alley transpo.

Eating on the avenue.

Heating coals for on-table barbeque.

MEME from the road

Intriguing answers from iTunes, which I is the modern equivalent of the magic 8-ball.

Simple directions: use the shuffle function on your music player and see what you come up with in answer to the following questions.

Starting with "Sugar, We're Going Down" by Fall Out Boy

How does the world see you?
Rock & Roll Queen, The Subways

Eh, I guess that's good.

Will I have a happy life?
Ticket outta Loserville, Son of Dork

When does the train leave, again?

What do my friends really think of me?
Shipbuilding, Elvis Costello

Er.. the 8-ball equivalent of "outlook hazy, try again?"

Do people secretly lust after me?
Laid, James

Imagine how dissapointed they would all be in the actual event.

How can I make myself happy?
Still Take You Home, Arctic Monkeys

Ummm.. sure.. "what do you know? Oh you don't know nothing."

What should I do with my life?
You Are The One, Him

Start a religion then?

Will I ever have children?
Chocolate, Snow Patrol

Black ones?

What is some good advice for me?
The Way, Fastball

How will I be remembered?
Pretty in Punk, Fallout Boy

well, I guess I can't bitch about that...

What is my signature dancing song?
The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret, Queens of the Stone Age

What do I think my current theme song is?
Clash City Rockers, The Clash

cool...

What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
Veronica, Elvis Costello

damn!

What song will play at my funeral?
Smooth Criminal, Alien Ant Farm

I only regret I won't be there to hear it.

What type of men/women do you like?
Broken Box, Queens of the Stone Age

Don't like that much. ;-)

What is my day going to be like?
Another Girl, Another Planet, The Only Ones

Hmmm.. interesting, since I'm in Korea, which is another planet. I guess I'll take that tour at 1:30 and see who I meet. ;-)

Sleep?

Beewon the rest of us Zero • More Wedding pics with Character Assasination included •

•

The Beewon Guest House may be the best travel deal I've ever come across. I have a slightly dingy room for only 30 dollars a night. By dingy I mean smallish, and not at all decorated. The wallpaper is second rate. But this is my second stay here and it is clean and quiet, has air conditioning, a washer, a kitchen, and a wireless network. There is a small refrigerator in my room as well as a television. If I could rent a room like this in San Jose I'd probably live in it.

The staff doesn't have great English and I have very limited Korean, but when I forgot my electrical adapter we were able to communicate enough to get me pointed to the right store.

I'd never bring my mother here ;-)

but I will return.

Holy Crap, I just channeled McArthur!

•

The Ham dinner with "year-long marinated ammonia fish" pointed out for your enjoyment.

Ed "Bogie" Park

Moms walk in, where angels fear to tread.

Satan follows! My favorite part is how the stewardess on the right is checking out Ed's muscular ass.

Lighting of the Candles (Other mom also did this and, no, I have no idea what it means)

Exeunt all, stage left, covered in confetti

The room prepared for the traditional ceremony

Jae enters

Ritual Obesiance.

Macbeth Sisters look on from stage left

An envelope drops... and that thing in front actually is a watermelon

Some part of the ceremony I don't understand

BEST WEDDING EVER...
;-)

Pickups and Throwaways...

Hamming it up • Bad Kwangju-ju in the Monsoon Heat • An Honor I don't deserve • Sammiches Redux • Sir Gaylord and his Queen

•

The pics from the pre-weddding "ham saseyo" party turned out pretty badly. They were taken by another photographer and his light meter was focused on the nice bright and shiny outside. Still, to the left is a picture of me during pre-game preparation. Traditionally I would be wearing a dead squid with eyeholes punched in it, but the guys I was with decided it would be too smelly, and I only had one coat and one shirt to get me through three days. I wanted the squid and as a compromise they went out and got me this thing.

After a few beers we headed over to the home of Jae's parents. My job was to carry the box containing the dowry, yell "ham saseyo" (buy this!) as loudly as I could, and only move a step forward if the bride's family provided me with an envelope containing a bill or bills. The yelling also has a secondary point, to let all the neighbors know that a wedding will be happening next day. While Jae's mom would never be so rude as to brag about the upcoming wedding, when my hollering forces the neighbors to pop their heads out (as it did) the wedding is "announced" to them. After that Jae's mom can brag about the whole thing as she had not introduced it. Finally, I was never to give up possession of the suitcase containing the dowry, because that is what they were bribing me to bring in.

We got up to the 5th floor and started hollering at which point the game began. Jae's family started out by basically pretending we weren't there. This gave us a good chance to embarass ourselves, maybe get a little itchy to get inside, and also yell a lot (see above). The family finally peered around the doorjamb. By gesture Ed and I (technically Ed should not have been there, but technically there shouldn't have been a miguk anywhere near the place, and the fact that I was wearing the Ham mask sort of moved everything beyond the merely technical) debated moving away from the door and that brought them out. First Jongkyou tried inviting me in for a drink. This is sort of the formal start of the debate. From then on, probably 15 minutes, we bargained over each step. Jongkyou would wave an envelope in the air, and after much to and froing, decide where to put it on the ground. If the envelope was acceptably close I would step towards it and pick it up. At some points members of the family tried to pick me up and drag me in or push me forward. My considerable bulk compared to the older Korean men, stood me in good stead. They also bribed me with Soju and Kimchee (one out of two, guys!), tried to deke me out with envelopes containing only one coin, and in general tried to hasten my entrance and thus decrease the cost. All for play, of course, since I already had an informal idea of how many envelopes were prepared, but a lot of fun anyway. During the Soju bribing process I comitted my one faux-pas; as I was holding the dowry in my right hand and consequently accepted the Soju with my left.

Oops.

As I got closer to the door things heated up and I took more steps as they laid down more envelopes per go-round. As I leaned down to pick up the last envelopes someone placed both hands firmly on my back and shoved me through the door, to the ground.

Turns out the brute who knocked me through the door was Jae's elderly aunt!

I felt a bit of animus behind the shove and since I still had my shoes on and the shove pitched me into the house it was probably the wrong thing for the old lady to do, but..... soju awaited, so I forgave and forgot!

•

The Kwangju Prince Hotel is not only a relic from another time, it's a relic from many times. I asked Ed what it was originally intended to be, and although Ed is Korean, I have no reason to believe he was lying when he told me it was an early attempt at a Western-style hotel in Korea. And if you squint hard enough, wrinkle your eyes so hard it hurts, you can see the outline of this.

The public areas are built in grand-hotel style, high roofs and large spaces. The hotel has gone to the trouble to cover the flourescent lights that are ubiquitous in Korea (typically the bulbs just just hang out there. But the carpet is tatty, the doors are shoe-scuffed by generations of drunken clients, and the shower curtains (how Western!) are a nice idea, but they are exactly one-inch too short to do anything to control water from the shower head - Essentially you have the worst of both worlds. The windows only open a slit, but coffee costs 5 bucks a shot.

I think I mentioned the computers earlier. A nice touch and no doubt this was very popular with visitors when the computers were first installed. But as they run pre-secure Internet Explorer on Windows 98, they are not very useful. Can't hit secure sites, blogger crashes (admittedly this would probably not be a big deal to most business customers), and no plug-ins worth mentioning. All things considered, and the main consideration being that Ed probably shelled out some big money for these rooms, the next time I come to Kwangju I will be staying at a more traditional hotel.

There are also polite lies because things don't work - it is very hot and humid in Kwangju and Jongkyou, Eddie, Jae and I are sweltering with a 1.6 liter bottle of Oriental Beer and some anju on the floor between us. Jongkyou slowly becomes pissed that it is still warm at almost midnite and calls the front desk. He gets (I know because I go down to check) the very sleek and attractive woman who has unaccountably, by western standards at least, been working since before noon. Jongkyou asks how we can get the enormous refrigerator-fronted AC on the ceiling to work. According to our wanna-be stewardess at the front desk the "air conditioning is controllable by the individual controls in each room." A nicely redundant statement. And you can rest assured that if a Korean starts repeating things, they are lying or trying to explain away something inconvenient.

You can't blame the receptionist. She's been there 12 hours already by my reckoning. I look at her and it doesn't take great eyes to see she would like to be somewhere else... in a Korean Airlines stewardess outfit, hell, they make her wear something like that already. But the money sucks and she's working in Gwanju. In a hotel which, as monsoon season approaches, does not have working air conditioning. She has no social status. And a bunch of drunk old men call up to find out how to get cold?

I'd lie too.

•

Previously that day I was accorded some sort of honor or the other - or that's what they said. This is still all related to the fact that the families and friends are all boggled that a Miguk would come over solely to attend a Korean wedding. Apparently it rarely happens. Ed partly had me come over as a shield (on both of these trips) but I turned into the tie and crest as well.

Anyway, I became the only Miguk to be invited to see the restored household of the one-time provincial chief. This house belongs to... well, if I understand correctly (1 to 9, against) it belongs to Eddies' uncle, but the government now has a stake. Anyway, since no one could explain the house, it's role in Korean history, or why it was important that I was the first anglo in there...

Here is a picture of the 4-generation family shrine (you'll see the photos of the four generations - men only of course) and one of a building that hasn't been rehabbed yet, but looked great against the varied forest behind it.

•

A day or two ago I talked about the weird sandwiches in Korea and theorized wildly and drunkenly (and probably incorrectly) about the "whys" of the whole thing. Of course there are no "whys" to anything, so here is just some "what it looks like":

Note meat on one side and mysterious chopped up crud on other.

Internal View: Look at how the savages cheated on the "western" left side. The "cheese" actually looked like this (when I pulled up the "Soylent Green Miguk Meat Replacement Product" to look):

Nice... you guys deserve everything the Japanese did to you!

•

Finally, also picking up another loose end from a previous post - Ed and Jae in their cute-suit Tees:

Love in the Tower

The picture over there on the left is a picture of the night before. Jae clowning around before we she headed off to her parent's house for the hand-off of the dowry. I include it only to demonstrate how completely relaxes Jae seemed even as "The Hideous Event" grew inexorably closer.

The morning began with a hangover after the ceremony the night before - Essentially an organized extortion affair in which I was the extorter. I had some pictures of this taken by another photographer and I hope to get them up here in the next couple of days. In any case, it required us to drink until about one-thirty in the morning and we were all hungover and tired. I felt particularly sorry for Ed, who had to drink with everyone and then get up and go through the whole pre-wedding process. Jae, at least, as a woman, is allowed to avoid much of the drinking.

We went off to get something to eat for breakfast and although I was shaking in fear (and nauseau) that we were going to end up eating something like Haie jan Gook (coagulated blood soup) we ended up in a soup kitchen of an entirely different kind which featured rice and beef, both of which I can more or less deal with. This soup takes three days to make, and is simmered in enormous freaking pots that are always on the boil. That thing to the right would be one of these pots.. you really can't tell, but that pot is about four feet across. I'm not sure why Korean cities don't burn down regularly.. all of the resauraunts have open flames, many of them feature cooking at the table, and the buildings are piled on each other in bugger-all fashion. And it's not like everything is nailed down completely tight. As we sat in a barbeque joint after the wedding we heard a tremendous grinding and crash and as we sat watching a table of older women was sent scattering by the ceiling-mounted fan which disintegrated directly above them. The proprietor came sprinting out of the back, pulled the power cord from the wall, and the ladies all returned to the table as if this were the most normal thing in the world. And I suppose it can't be too out of place since everyone took it quite calmly and not on threat of a lawsuit spoiled anyone's dinner.

The wedding was grand, as weddings should be. And blessedly brief. We were in the wedding hall for two hours before the ceremony which was then accomplshed with alacrity.. maybe 20 minutes tops, and out. Everything went smoothly, the bride glowed, the groom beamed, and all the parents seemed happy with things. The wedding takes place in a building whose sole function is to hold weddings. The wedding is a package deal.. you get the makeup, the clothing, the photographer, the food, everything in one convenient bill. And because it's a business, the weddings are short, shovel-em-in and shovel-em-out affairs. The pre-wedding ceremonies are longest because they include a "showing" of the bride and the passing of the envelopes. The showing is basically a photo op for all the guests. The envelope passing is a social thing... each guest arrives, greets the families in an orgy of bowing and hand-shaking, and goes to the check in table. Here they hand off an envelope with money for the happy couple, sign in, and pick up their meal-tickets for after. That's a weird event and I'll get to it, but for now.. some pics of the wedding with occasional comment.

Ed and Jae in the makeup room -- both veeeery pretty in pink! And calm.

Eddie "burn em if you got em" Park relaxes like Bogart, pre-ceremony.

Ed makes a bit of pre-wedding money serving in the valet-parking corps.

The happy couple

Ed dances the Hokey-Pokey to demonstrate how his "shaking it all about' won Jae's heart.

The lovely bride in western fashion

The lovely bride in Korean Fashion

The lovely mother of the lovely bride

The lovely brother of the lovely bride (Jong-guin)

Ed joins the masons.

Tea for two -- Ed and Jae sit in a room and receive each member of the groom's family. More envelopes are passed over and the relatives each say a word of wisdom or two, while being served by the bride and groom. It is only the groom's family, because traditionally the bride is seen as "lost" from her family - her name is lined-out of the family book of genealogy. In a nice touch Jae's family took an additional family photo after the wedding and invited Ed to be in it. They were making it clear that they weren't losing touch with Jae and that Ed was part of their family as well.

Nice --- I have tons of pics and will post them all when I return to Seoul tomorrow. Each part of this ceremony deserves a bit more posting, so I'll try to get to that as well.

Pre-Wedding Jitters....

Day three begins as usual. I awake confused. Which reminds me of something that happened the first night that I have neglected to mention. My room is on the first floor, and you literally walk in past the reception desk and four feet to the right and you are at room 107. Room 107, as all inexpensive hotel rooms I've been in while visiting Korea, has an outside door, and an entryway with two doors. The one ahead, as you walk in, goes to the bedroom. The one to the right goes to the bathroom.

I have made a brilliant illustration, for your elucidation, out of nothing more than Photoshop and a burning desire to communicate clearly (and the beautiful, beautiful cup of coffee that is having its wonderful effect on my brain). So if you ponder that graphic very carefully you will see that when you wake up at midnite or so, in your underpants and that is all? And you need to use the bathroom

The percentage move is to exit the bedroom from the first door and immediately turn left into the bathroom. The percentage move is not to continue straight ahead to the second door and enter the main lobby area... in your underpants and that is all.

I did not make the percentage move.

Oh well.. that was day one and what is done is done.

After the beating? The police were quite polite.

I woke up and watched more TV while I did some homework. Yesterday I mentioned advertisements on Korean TV. There are two things that really hop out as you watch Korean TV, one is that there are very few advertisements, and the second is how utterly opaque they are.

Ed says that TV originally had no commercials and that, therefore, Koreans are loath to watch them, particularly since they have to pay for cable. Weird, I never thought of that before, but in the US we pay for our Cable television twice. We pay the cable company to deliver it, then we have to watch commercials every 12 minutes. I suppose we pay three or four times if we have Comcast -- there has to be a price for the stinky service and rotten programming. But back to Korea... I'm not sure what the formal limits are, but if you watch a movie made in the US you will start to notice that every once in a while it fades to black for .5 seconds and then hops back. These are the network breaks inserted in the movie when it went to TV in the United States. The versions Koreans see still have these breaks, they just don't put commercials there. It makes movie watching a much nicer experience. And it is totally out of character since the rest of Korea is pretty much a full-time advertisment. Step into any public area and you will be deluged by ads on billboards, buildings, enormous screens on the sides of buildings (in the big city) and people agressively hawking all kinds of stuff on the sidewalks and in the subways. Just not on TV.

As to the content of the ads - very difficult to determine, until the very end, what the heck is being sold. And ad will set some kind of weird tone. One ad features a white guy playing the violin in the middle of the field. He is being observed by a Korean woman. As he plays, the ground grows grass, columns grow towards the sky and then ivy grows up and overtakes them.

It's an ad for a housing complex, though why it would make me want to purchase a house is completely unclear.

TV got boring and homework got done, so I headed off to Gimpo airport and reprised the first day's moment of Zen in the Starbucks there. An uneventful flight down to Kwangju ended when I was picked up by Eddie and Jae's older brother Jongkyou who drove me off to lunch, some delicious barbequed fish. Here's a picture of Ed with Jongkyou (and now the official documentation begins!). You will notice they are doing the only two things Koreans do besides breed like rabbits - using cellphones and eating (those of you with long memories will remember my claim that all Korean daily life is consumed in eating, discussing food just eaten, and beginning to plan for the next meal). We headed off to the hotel which has Ondol style beddings. Eddie and Jongkyou headed off to get haircuts and I played around with the old and relatively worthless computer in my room. It runs Windows 98, some version of IE that isn't 128 bit secure, and it won't read its own USB ports. Alas. So it's back to the PC Bang wit me!

I went off on a fruitless attempt to find some burnable CDs. When I returned Eddie, Jae, and Jongkyou were on the floor signing an enormous stack of tickets. After the wedding at the wedding place there is a reception, but no tickee no eatee...

NEXT UP: Hamboned and THE WEDDING!

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.

 

Out of Order? You're all Goddamned out of Order!

My computer is locked up in Ed's room and this sack of shit computer in my room couldn't handle Pong if you added RAM and a real monitor. It's 7 in the morning in Korea and we had the "pre-game" festivities last night.

That means I'm hung over. I don't understand.. I outweigh every Korean who was in the room last night by 50 lbs but I know that that the wretched swine will be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when I see them this morning. I took copious notes last night, and one of the boys took copious pictures I hope to get my hands on today.

I was beaten up by an old woman.

I ate something Ed called fish that was "marinated in a bad way" (I can't believe a Korean said something like that about marination). I'm not sure that's a fair analysis because, after all, who doesn't like fish that tastes as though it had been soaked in ammonia?

I was the belle of the ball.

I "earned" $200 and then gave it back (that would be convenient right at this moment for a hooker or a western breakfast... actually, bugger the inscrutable swine... breakfast eaten off of the stomcach of a hooker....

This morning we will be off to get Ed made up and to the wedding. There is the promise of an afternoon off. Jae says there is a PC Bang right next door and if so there will be pictures.

For now I can only look out my window at the early morning smog which obscures the Sun and feel the White Man's burden..

It feels like a hangover...

Part Two: Flexible Spines, It's in the Bag, Meeting with Eddie's brother

The Theme of this trip will be "happy, happy, Jae, Jae" and in that spirit I include a picture of the Joy Mart

My heart sings with the voice of thick liquid barely squeezing by fatty deposits!

Jae and Ed and I headed off on foot to Insadong (a nice artsy shopping row) and lunch. We wandered a bit and then Jae had to head off to the bullet train to go back down to Kwangju and her parents. Eddie and I headed towards the new bookstore in town ("Something and Lundi") and he looked for pieces for possible translation and I looked for the book I would use in my Survey of Critical Approaches course. I found one and then headed back to email the prof to make sure it was ok. Eddie stayed at the bookstore because his job was a bigger one. I spent the remainder of the afternoon doing coursework and having inexplicable trouble with font-loading in Word, a problem that is also going on today.

Tomorrow Ed is heading off to see some of his teachers. This has cause a big ruckus. There is a pre-wedding exchange of valuables to a Korean marriage and rather than try to explain it myself I will indulge in a bit of copyright infringement.

Before the wedding, the groom's family sent presents to the bride and her family in a box called a Ham. Additionally, the Hamjinabi (person who delivered the Ham) and a small group of close friends of the groom also took a pot of Bongch'i Deok (red bean rice cake) from the groom's family. The bride's family would have a small party for the group, offering them food and drink for their efforts. The ceremony of delivering the Ham has evolved into a major event for friends of the groom, with the bearers "selling" the contents of Ham to the bride's parents. (In recent years, the groups have become very boisterous, demanding large sums of money that they promptly spend on alcohol.)

The Ham usually contained 3 items. The Honseo (marriage paper), wrapped in black silk, specified the name of the sender and the purpose (marriage) of sending. It symbolized the dedication of the wife to only one husband. The wife was to keep this document with her forever, having it buried with her when she died. Ch'aedan was a collection of red and blue fabrics, used to make clothing. The blue fabrics were wrapped with red threads, while the red fabrics were wrapped with blue threads. The two colors represented the philosophy of Eum/Yang (Yin/Yang)

So, as always seems to be the case with me, the issue is Ham. This has to get to Jae's family on the day before the wedding, but Ed can't really carry it around while he is visiting old colleagues. And the option they had come up with, which is really untraditional and had everyone on edge, was to drop the Ham off tomorrow. But that ruins the whole idea of the delivery of the Ham (and I have now lived a complete life if I can type "that ruins the whole idea of the delivery of the Ham" and not be making it up). I have suggested that I take it on my flight and thus protect the sanctity of the entire commercial venture. ;-)

That seems to be where we are at this point.

Ed and I went out and got two beers, some soju and some mango juice and sat in his room, which is 3rd floor and was very warm, drinking and talking guy bullshit until Jae's brother showed up. We drank a bit more and headed out for a bit more soju and dinner. I fell apart at about 10 and slept until 4 or so in the morning. I was able to get back to sleep for another 3 hours and consider that a pretty good job, considering.

And the last pic is of the identity-obscuring bits of rubber that surround the row of love-motels which surround our hotel. They are the things that look like the should be hanging in a car wash. Ed says they are still used to provide protection, but I think they're more like advertising now. In the old days they used to be low enough to hid car license-plates, but now they are creeping up a bit.

Korea: Part Deux, Day il

Not quite so much drinking on the way over to Korea this time, probably because I was not in the company of any Koreans I know. Had a beer at home when the packing was over, the birthday presents for POSSLQ hidden in various areas she'd never check (In the dishwasher, in the dryer, where the cleaning fluids are in the cupboard -- I think you see the point of those places?). Then I had two beers at the airport but couldn't drink more because I was being watched by the scary "happy, flying taco guy" who might has well have come from Korea himself with his forced happy dementia and strategically covered crotch. In any case, I had two more glasses of wine on the plane. Well, thimble-fulls really, as Asiana has moved to cups which contain less than an average sized swallow. Then I tried, pretty unsucessfully, to sleep. No screaming kids, and the seat between me and the Korean woman next to me was empty, I just didn't sleep well. But I wasn't hungover on arrival, which has to count for something.

Like not having drunk enough.

On the plane I worked on the long-fiction piece for my fiction class. Funny, you can pretty much date the death of this blog to the day I started my first class in the Master's program. It just sucked all the fun out of writing anything but a check.

Anyway, flight was uneventful and I arrived in Incheon at about 5 am. Eddie (the prince of lies!) had emailed me with a plan change.. he wanted me to come to Gimpo airport and then give him a call as he would be in town on social calls. So, at Incheon I cleared customs, exchanged money, rented a cell phone, and caught a bus to Gimpo. On the flight I had already moved over to Korean food (Asiana offers meals in Korean *or* English, so to speak) in an effort to have less bowel-extrusion on this flight. So when it was time for breakfast at Gimpo I went with some glutinous rice concoction covered with unidentifiable (and likely a good thing)meat. It was about 7:30 at this point and I had decided not to call Ed until 8 or so. I went into the men's room to change shirt and put on my belt. I packed my belt so I wouldn't be hassled at security --- it was bad enough I was stupidly wearing my "Bad Boy Bail Bonds" T-shirt, which the TSA people thought was hysterical as they repeatedly cavity-searched me. Once on the plane I immediately got my traditional effort to lose my tickets and money underway. Thankfully the woman who was sitting next to me noticed, as we deplaned, that I had left my portfolio containing tickets and all contact info on the seat.

I'm a maroon. But I got to Gimpo.

And, as I was tired of having my pants fall down and my T-shirt was coated in Korean red bean paste I went in to the bathroom, changed, and came out looking for a outlet to hook up the computer when.... Kaboom! Ed's mom caught me from behind. Eddie had been at his dad's house in Gimpo and up since 5 as dad is ex-military. Now, see.. if Eddie would just share little things like that with me? We'd have met up an hour earlier, no one would have been confused, and Ed's dad would have paid for my breakfast. But it's never that simple with Ed, who must always take into account the demands of his Dark Lord and Master when he makes simple plans. It makes me sigh...

Eddie and Jay were dressed in identical shirts purchased from the "Extremely Gay" collection. Bright pastel shirts, plaid internal collars, and some unidentifiable animal over the breast. I must get a picture of them in these. As I hope I will get to later, these shirts were just one part of a wild onslaught of clothes that Ed and Jay have been given by relatives. Anyway, Ed's parents went off to do whatever they do and the three of us were alone.

We had a brief moment of Zen at the airport Starbucks (Ed and Jay were happy to get a second away from the family) and then caught the 5 line into Seoul to find our extremely inexpensive (30 bux a night) rooms in the semi-hostel Beewon Guest house. Not a place I'd take my mom, but perfectly adequate. Has cable and a wireless network, so I really can't bitch. We got my room first, then Ed's. I checked his out and headed back to mine. Ed said he'd be "down in 5 minutes." I'm not sure what wer were going to do, but there it was. In three minutes Eddie called me from upstairs and said he would "be down in a half an hour." I knew this would be more like 45 and so I checked out the TV (Yes, I have totally lame Korean Porn, which you will see soon) and pulled out the computer. Oops, forgot to bring the power adaptor. Eddie and Jay were still completing the mysterious tasks that they could only do alone after finally getting out of their parent's house and...oh... I guess it isn't that mysterious.

Anyway, I had my first foray out into Seoul and found and purchased an adapter after a torturous communication process featuring gestures and hand position that must have included something insulting in most any culture. Then it was home to watch more TV and wait. I came across a porno so completely Korean that I filmed it from the TV screen with my video camera. It is available here in QT and here in WMV (WORK WARNING -- no real naughty bits, but some breasts and simulations of things you might or might not recognize).

Anyway.. that was the morning.... I was deadly tired, but wanted to make it through the day to start on the resetting of my internal clock.

NEXT -- Cheating on the POSSLQ - Bookstores in Korea.

Alviso Snaps

WATER STRIKE


BRAVE BIRD


CHOO-CHOO


BIRD IN FLIGHT