Sundayosity

This Friday is the 6th mensiversary of my arrival in South Korea. Several things are happening or have already happened to mark the occasion:

-The mayor of Busan, Hur Nam-Sik, has declared next weekend to be a municipal holiday. There is to be a kimchi-tape parade downtown, and work will commence on a statue, 75m tall, in my likeness, to be placed on the summit of the highest mountain in the city.


-Kim Jong-Il is expected to resign as leader of North Korea and rededicate himself to his first love, yahtzee.

-I bought a winter jacket. In truth, this wasn't done specifically to commemorate my time here, but it seemed like a good idea, what with the encroachment of winter and so forth. The jacket itself is not entirely unattractive, should keep me reasonably warm, and was less than the price of a meal at a local Thai restaurant, assuming a glass of wine was consumed along with the food in said meal. So I'm satisfied with my purchase overall. What really, truly, delighted me about the jacket, though, is the descriptive blurb on the tag, reproduced here for your reading pleasure:

Leader's
The everything world mountain for acid is tracking, hiking, Seunosyuing, and until walking that is adventure and expression of travel in line of exploration! Offer everything. Experience culture that is different from nature and walk the earth. Express your happiness in step that step forward step by step. Open mind that is humble and respect. Finally, find your self, and supplement energy, and meet new place, the new world and new people and give meaning in your life at the street end.

I've been trying to stay away from posting about "konglish," as the Korean-English mishmash is known, for the simple reason that it's far too facile a topic to write about. It's a "what's the deal with airplane food" level of easy comedy, but the paragraph just appealed to me, and so I thought I'd share. Seunosyuing, incidentally, is snowshoeing, or so I would guess.

Last week's American Thanksgiving festivities were excellent. We bought a turkey dinner from The Seamen's Club, a USS centre which caters primarily to American military personnel and sailors, and it was delicious. My intended cheesecake was to be lime with a ginger snap crust, but due to supermarket restrictions it turned into a lemon cheesecake with a coconut cookie crust; also excellent, but my heart still prefers the lime.

Now that it's December, my thoughts have really started to trifurcate. I've been reflecting on the year gone by: North Bay, Kenya, Korea, and so on, thinking about my options for the second half of '08, while simultaneously wanting to stay grounded in the next 6 months. It's quite the juggling act, let me tell you. On the other hand, it's rare that I'm able to use "trifurcate," so this mollifies me somewhat.

More later today. Maybe.