IMPROBABLY

A Gothic Tale of Feral Cats...

2011-07-01T18:53:00.000-07:00

My neighborhood is plagued with feral cats; many neighborhoods of this country are, as pet abandonment is as prevalent as rice over here. My house is sort of a magnet for the roving cat gangs, since I have nice balcony ledges which make nice launching/landing pads for inter-house leaps.
The other night I came home, actually it was just pre-dusk, but a little bit darkish, and while climbing the steep stairs that lead out of the darkened garden up to my top-floor of the 3 story house, when out of the corner of my eye I spy what seems to be a squashed rat. Not wanting to directly 'see' this horror, I kept moving, but as I entered my house, my brain continued to churn the image over and over; it seemed like there had definately been squiggly guts all over, and the creature was splayed out like a dead dog.
Now all I could think about was that, how I was looking at a major cleanup job, and that I had no shovel, only a one-foot midget broom, that would probably need itself to be cleaned or thrown away. Plus there would be gore and the smell, depending on how long I procrastinated.
I decided to put it out of my mind. I would find a way, somehow. Maybe the neighbors whose door it was closer to would man up and do the job. But no, I'd seen dogshit right in front of their door and they did nothing. They were hopeless. But maybe a rapacious cat, not necessarily the mother, would eat the damn thing...it was meat, after all. Don't cats eat weird shit like dogs do?
So after just letting all these thoughts fester in my mind for a while, and trying to busy myself to keep those images out, I had to go out again for shopping. This time I assiduously avoided any direct gaze, but again, in order to avoid stepping on the thing, I had to catch at least a part of it out of the corner of my eye.
Hurrying out of my house, my mind began reprocessing the eyecorner image, like Nasa scientists poring over the latest shots of Mars...actually my incessantly morbid mind was now coming to a new conclusion; those squiggly bits were not guts splayed, but actually it was a stillborn cat fetus, and the squiggly thing was umbilical cord, and the non squiggly bit must have been a placenta. I'm not sure the idea of a stillborn fetus was any less unsettling than a squashed rat, but somehow at least the idea of cleanup began to appear more cheerful.
I stayed out shopping an unusually long time, not wanting to have to go home and deal with the fetal removal by cruelly short broom implement....Somehow in the back of my mind I kept clinging to the 'roving scavenger' theory- although in all my time in Seoul I had never witnessed an eagle or a hawk, I was never more ready to witness a raptor swooping in than now, sort of like people in North Dakota waiting to see the UFO's....
So on the way back in my house it was dark, and I had to get my little red keychain light out, had to be very careful not to squash the fetus, or I would be back to square one on the cleanup nightmare. So I stepped gingerly through the garden, and this time it was almost impossible not to look directly at the pile of meat on my step, if I wanted to be sure to avoid stepping on it, plus the spotlight effect of the light in the dark, and then i shit my pants.....

THE THING WAS MOVING! A little head reared in the red light like a demon from hell....

I rushed back upstairs to pour myself a whiskey. Now I really had a mess- I have to 'put it out of its misery AND clean it up! I sat there for an hour, thinking hard about how NOT to think about this...maybe a nighttime scavenger would still come and eat the thing, but I really hoped it didn't make a mess or even a horrorific sound as it did so....

About an hour later, I stumbled down the stairs to re-assess the situation, prepared for the worst, and the kitten was gone! Apparently the mother had just chosen the WORLD'S WORST NEWBORN PARKING spot while she recovered from partum- I remembered that cats are always doing that, moving their babies all over Shit-dom.

Later after the second whiskey back in my house, I realized I had missed my chance....now there was one more feral cat in my neighborhood....

NAKED Breakfast Experiment.

2011-06-03T20:18:00.000-07:00

I remember learning, a long time ago in school of some sort, that the difference between Naked and Nude was that Nude meant you had intended to be seen naked, as in Nude beaches, Nude art, etc. Naked was a synonym of unprotected where the viewer's gaze was unwelcome and even uninvited.
I found little evidence of this distinction remaining in my breakfast experiment this morning, where a recent news blurb from wacky Florida got me thinking: Is there a gender distinction when we say Naked Man/Naked Woman or Nude Man/Nude Woman?
As is often the case with Breakfast Experiments, asking the question simply opened up deeper questions :
Experimental Proceedure:
Coffee: 100 g. of Panama 'Boquete' green beans was open flame-roasted in a skillet three days prior to the experiment and set aside. On the morning of the experiment, an aliquot of the same beans were ground and extracted with boiling H2O using a crude beaker/filter arrangement. Milk and sugar were titrated generously in preparation for the next phase.
Data: A web portal-search engine service known as "Google" was consulted for the four combinations of phrases, both with and without quotation marks to act as controls.
Perusal of the headlines often led to some amusing/ironic examples such as
"Man Caught Making Coffee Naked in His Home." (wait, can they see me through internet?), as well as some disturbing examples, such as:
"Naked Sultan Woman Waving Severed Dog's Head Arrested and..." -in such instances as the latter, coffee was diluted with single-malt whiskey to help assimilate the information. The author will leave it to the reader to fill in the ellipsis.

The results are shown in Table 3, below:

Gender	“Man”	“Woman”	Ratio
Naked X arrested	4,600,000	1,800,000	39%
Nude X arrested	6,320,000	1,630,000	25%
“Naked X arrested” (with quotes)	1,410,000	416,000	29.5%
“Nude X arrested”(with quotes)	268,000	93,400	34%

What is interesting is that, consistently, there are about 3 to 4 Naked or Nude Men for every Naked/Nude woman. Curiously, this confirms the author's casual observations on nude beaches at various locations around the world. The question that it arouses, however, is whether this gender differential is more of a language, cultural, social, or biological function. That is, are there actually more Nude/Naked men arrested because they are naked, or because they are men? Another way of phrasing this is, Do more men than women get naked in public in the first place, or is it more illegal for a man to be naked in public?

Any thoughts on the reasons behind this phenom? or is it just an artifact?

another WTF moment from Google maps....swimming pools IN the DMZ?

2010-11-27T21:27:00.000-08:00

recently while looking at North Korea on Google, I found what appears to be not one, but two giant swimming pools on the South Korean side of the DMZ....they look nicer (e.g. emptier) than anything else in the republic....maybe I should sign up for the army so I don't have to bump elbows in the pool all the time...
Google gave the address as San 168 Jajak-ri, Jangnam-myeon, Yeoncheon-gun, Gyeonggi-do but I think you'll have better luck with the coordinates. (37.991794,126.840302 ) The two pools are literally 'across the street' from the DMZ (that denuded border running along the north of them is the southern limit of the 'strip' aka The No Man Zone, which also allegedly has deer and other mammalian fauna pretty much extinct in the two Koreas...

Non zero sum games, Relativity, and other ramblings....

2010-11-26T00:05:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in some time, but the recent rumblings of warmongering in the north (Yong Pyeong Island, 2 minutes by artillery shell from my house) have given me some momenti mori, and reminded me that it might be my last chance to blog (I know, it's a waste of one's last moments)....
Recently in class we were covering a chapter about the environment (titled "Carbon Footprint"), which was actually a lot of fun to do with Chemistry and Engineering majors, since they actually are studying Thermodynamics and Entropy in English and actually 'understand' that our options are severely limited as we pass into the period of Peak Oil...it boils down to that the best battery we've ever known, millions of years of solar energy built into Carbon single and double bonds in the form of dead flora/dinosaurs trapped under the earth, is running out.
If the age of Industrialism and Post Modernism could be said to be limited only by imagination, increasingly we must concede that we are being limited by resources; space, energy, water, etc. These sorts of limitations naturally lend themselves to the stringent qualities of the Prisoner's dilemma, The Peace-War game, the dilemma of the Commons, and so forth. While I don't want to go into the nitty gritty of the P. dilemma here, what interests me is that precisely it becomes more relevant as we run into resource limitations here on this planet.
How does Relativity come into all of this? Well, it seemed to me that just as two people cannot observe the same phenomenon in exactly the same way unless they are in the same reference frame, so we humans seem unable to observe the world from another person's viewpoint, or more importantly, from the external viewpoint of what is best for the human race, namely to avert a self-created climate change disaster scenario. This larger dilemma is repeated in so many micro dilemmas, such as the one which confronts this country and their more aggressive brothers to the north.

Best case scenario 1: nothing significant will happen. North Korea will achieve its mysterious goals of either garnering the West's attention, achieving greater internal solidarity, or the successful coronation of a new prince (Kim Jong Eun)in the dynasty. Or, they will attack in a similar manner a few weeks or months down the road. (I give this one more than 80% probability)
Best case scenario 2 (from a Hollywood film, actually Moon Over Parador):
Kim Jong Eun will take the helm and lead the country in an unexpected direction of openness to the West and democracy. (I give this about 1% probability, like most Hollywood plots)

Worst case scenario 1: nothing significant will happen....minor escalation in the form of iterated, isolated attacks and counter attacks from North and South, or in the form of increased sanctioning. I give this one about 18%
Worst case scenario 2: (from a Video Game plotline): North Korea goes balls-out for invasion and ultimately their own extermination, including a possible scene involving the first-since 1945 use of nuclear devices on a battlefield. (this one gets the other 1% probability). I also find this one interesting considering the most recent history of sneak attacks:

1. Serb separatist assasinates Archduke Ferdinand- (Semi-Fail!) Greater Serbia did become a reality (e.g. Yugoslavia) only forty years later, but look at it now....still messed up...)
2. Hitler invades Russia (Uber-Fail!)
3. Pearl Harbor (won the battle, lost the war)
4. 9-11 (garnered enormous sympathy for the US in Europe and elsewhere, goodwill soon squandered by George W.) - but ultimately too soon to decide if this sneak attack was successful - far more successful than the actual attack has been the reaction of the US to label a priori all of its own citizens as terrorists (AQ FTW so far).

So if Kim Jeong Eun decides to start lobbing shells at us in the wee hours when I'm watching Boardwalk Empire, well, then, I have to say, you got me there...but it seems rather improbable statistically, so I'll stick to the big killers here, and by way of comparison:

Traffic: (2 friends killed in last ten years)
North Korea: (1 cousin once removed killed in the last sixty years)
Pollution: (ongoing, statistics murky)

2010-04-16T06:18:00.000-07:00

aint she beautiful?

2009-07-21T20:15:00.001-07:00

happening in our town....

2009-07-21T00:52:00.000-07:00

Would you ride this?

2008-08-03T06:15:00.000-07:00

So far, Ive had nothing but positive experiences riding the low- cost carriers. But when I saw this Pegasus Airlines plane I had a few....hesitations shall we say?

Sunset over the Golden Horn

2008-07-23T19:14:00.000-07:00

Sunset with, fittingly, a mosque minaret and a modern light fixture (unless you chose to see the resemblance to the monsters in War of The Worlds) with the seagulls massing overhead (or The Birds, if you prefer to see that movie)

Taken from the North side of the bridge linking the two sides of the Golden Horn, the river that divides the European side of Istanbul in two *(Istanbul is further divided into Europe and Asia by the Bosporus)

Yın Yang Converted

2008-07-22T23:03:00.000-07:00

A unique pattern on a Ming (or was it earlier?) dynasty pottery at Topkapi Palace, Istanbul

Istanbul, Crossroads between east and west

2008-07-15T16:56:00.000-07:00

This Turkish girl is wearing a half-length jean jacket, cut with a high midriff. Since I often proofread for people involved with Korean traditional clothing, I couldn't help but notice the striking similarity of this style with Koreas 'hanbok' jackets, which are also cut with a high midriff.

Stuffed Bell Pepper (Paprika)

2008-07-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

A Turkish chef greets customers at a 'See Your Food' type cafeteria establishment on Istiklal Street, in the Manhattanesque Taxmin Square district of Istanbul. These bell peppers are stuffed with meat and rice, and topped with cheese and tomato....they taste as good as they look; but eating in a cafeteria is by no means cheap....a typical meal here costs about 7 euros, or about 10 dollars.

2008-07-14T22:32:00.000-07:00

an angel, not sure which one, from the left side of the altar inside of the Greek Ortho church, which was full of images of St. Theodisius

2008-07-14T22:19:00.000-07:00

the gate of a Greek Orthodox church near my apartment in Istanbul - loaded with symbols (does anyone know what the triangle is?)- I believe the swastika is the doing of 'turkmen aryan' skinheads - that is, not aryans per se, but turkish borrowing from Hitler's pure race ideology. They may have chosen this church to deface because the Greeks, their hated enemies historically, are actually the same bunch of people, give or take a few empires...probably causes their skin-tight heads to ache a little bit.

Baba Joe, AKA Banana Joe

2008-07-12T07:31:00.000-07:00

This Classic Trash Film poster decorates the room I now rent in Istanbul. Someday I will have to obtain this film just to see what sort of Neocolonial Exploits Banana Joe gets up to (by the way, those of you who have seen the way bananas grow on a 'branch', and who have attempted to lift one of these branches, probably realize that the load of bananas depicted is not only too heavy (about 100 kilos) but would never balance (three stems in evidence) on one shoulder, no matter how wide.

I'm not the only one.....

2008-07-11T23:00:00.000-07:00

Yes, its a bottle of fermented carrot juice. And you thought I was strange.....

parade of the Ottomans

2008-07-11T17:56:00.000-07:00

A random parade on Istiklal street in Istanbul, is headed up by some local 'boys' dressed in some of the traditional Cashew-fruit hat, and carrying the curvy scimitar that we always associate with arabs, but which actually belong more to the period after the middle ages...

This guy has got a bit of a beer belly but is a great example of the helmet with the neck covered by chain mail *(as is the rest of the corpulescense)

From the rear a good example of the tiny tiny shield and bow, which apparently was an adaptation of the powerful mongol bows, but just before gunpowder made the whole outfit rather redundant. So in between the period that knights roamed the earth and the appearance of armorless musketmen, these guys were wreaking havoc in the east (and they stopped at the gates of Vienna, thus changing the history of the West forever). This was also about the time of the French Rout in Agincourt, where the supremacy of the English longbow and of guerilla strategy over the might of the horseman was proved once and for all- that is, until the Nazi tanks cut down the Polish cavalry in 1939.

Had my cake....and I 'et' it too!

2008-06-25T14:04:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of a typical Slovenian pastry called Kremna Rezina, sort of a custard cream cake, topped by filo leaves and powdered sugar. It is served at the lakeside resort of Bled, a beautiful location with an island church in the middle of a lake, towered over by a fairytale castle. Schweppes bitter lemon optional (I washed mine down with Laska Pivo - the local brew!)

Save from What??

2008-06-24T11:40:00.000-07:00

the lifesaver of a vaporetto is a little ironic; the canals of venice are so full of human waste material that I doubt this device could prevent you from the real problem of falling in the water: human caca

Murano

2008-06-23T18:18:00.000-07:00

hot, hot, hot....definately a ten-beer day on the canals

Stinkin Canals of Venice

2008-06-23T15:50:00.000-07:00

Photo taken just moments before a fight breaks out between English kayakers and Gondoliers in the stinking green waters of Venice. The Gondoliers, who regularly make about 100-200 Euros per hour, are a sort of trade union, and no longer do their own singing - rather they contract out for musicians. Most of them are middle aged and distinctly middle class, and they pretty much act as if they own the waterways - so when freebooters (or is that freeboaters?) like these pull into the waterways there is inevitably friction.

Coming in to the city by vaporetto

2008-06-22T16:11:00.000-07:00

approaching St. Marc's square...

ıntegratıon

2008-06-22T09:30:00.000-07:00

I caught this lovely combination of skin and fabric pattern on a lady's arm on the shuttle bus goıng to the Easyjet airplane on the way to Venice. Im not sure she understood my intentıon to photograph more than just the tatoo itself.

The Pıcture speaks for ıtself.....

2008-06-22T09:08:00.000-07:00

on the wall at Schonefeld airport, berlin - makes you wonder what fundamentalist 'hellfire and brimstone' preachers would make of this

SWEPT CLEAN IN BERLIN....Almost

2008-06-22T08:33:00.000-07:00

A typical superclean German street in the East German side of Berlin, giving only scant evidence of last nights solstice revelings.....this shot taken only meters away from the Reichstag on the river Spree

Where the rivers are clean, and you can...into the stream

2008-06-22T07:24:00.000-07:00

Like that old Firesign Theater song goes,

Im back from the Shadows again

Where an Injun can be your best friend

Where the rivers are clean,

and you can PEE into the stream

Im back from the shadows again.

Since its probably a capitol (pun intended) offence, I wont tell you what I did from an overhanging bridge involving the beautiful River Speer in Berlin. This is a picture of the crime scene which is just a two minute walk from the famous Reichstag....

Noısy Dreams

2008-06-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

When I went to sleep ın thıs Berlin Kunsthotel, I had just finished walking around all night and thus my dreams seemed to have a strange effect on the room.... thıs place was quıte a bargaın for 50 Euros even though ıt had a shared bathroom

mystery image

2008-06-22T02:18:00.000-07:00

I think you, dear reader, can guess What this is, and Where this is, even though my LUMIX portable totally sucks at night shots. The question for my viewers is,

How large is the structure? Bigger or smaller than the Arc de Triomphe or the Washington Square Arch? Which vehicles would/would not fit through the portals?

and, ...how far from Hitlers former bunker site is it?

High over Mongolia

2008-06-21T15:19:00.000-07:00

The distinctive wingtips of an Air Berlin Airbus 330 from Shanghai to Dusseldorf (where I left 8 packets of kimchi rushing to make the connection to Berlin) make a nice contrast with the vast plains of western Mongolia

A picture that needs no comment

2008-04-19T18:28:00.000-07:00

End of Lunar New Year

2008-01-31T05:29:00.000-08:00

A performer wearing an LED light suit, framed by green lazers, performs onstage at a nightclub in Apkujeong, Seoul.

the sea near 'Macondo'

2008-01-02T07:11:00.000-08:00

Sunset over the Caribbean, January 2007. This little bay of Tagatana, near Santa Marta, Colombia, was one of the loveliest little beaches I had seen in Colombia. Unfortunately, the water isn't caribbean blue like next door in Cartagena, and it's actually quite deep - better for looking at than for swimming. The mountains drop quite steeply into the sea here, and this village is not far from Gabriel Garcia Marquez' home town of Aracataca, a.k.a. "Macondo"

Street Angel- Merry Christmas!

2007-12-28T20:40:00.000-08:00

I took this pic for my mom and sis, who are veteran 'cute kid' junkies. Actually, there are so many cute little Korean munchkins running around, I don't normally take pictures, but I was killing some time, so...

This little cutie was with her mom, who was waiting to meet a friend for dinner, just as I was doing the same thing (people use the main gate of my former university as a kind of meeting place).

This little girl was no slacker on manners and charm, either, for her mom had apparently taught her well, and she kept bowing over and over when I said 'what a cutie!' in Korean to her mom. Frankly I was embarrassed by her extreme politeness, but that's just a typical western reaction to Korean Formality.

(taken with my LG CYON 1.2 Mpx phone, which is weird, because although it takes better nightshots than my 6 Mpx LUMIX, I STILL can't figure out the menu enough to be able to email photos directly from the phone - LG, if you need English Menu designers, you know where to find me!)

Thank you , Disk Knight - problems are not just for solving.

2007-12-04T21:34:00.000-08:00

Perhaps you are aware of the new Worm, 'Disk Knight'. This little critter recently took my university network like the Sacking of Jerusalem in 1099. The reason for the great success of this relatively weak parasite lies in the typical use of computers for students, professors and staff; nearly everyone these days carries around a USB drive with them, that contains their word files, pictures, and, in the case of my Screen English class, movies. Right now my 'thumb drive' contains an AVI copy of Meet the Parents. And the first thing everyone does when they log on to a computer is stick their thumb drive in it.

Grateful to the Worm

What I appreciate this worm for is the way it shows up our complacency. I don't know how many of my students said, as they handed me a virus-pestilent thumbdrive, "But it's not a real virus"....
This attitude allowed the virus to completely take over my school and about 500 computers. A real digital bubonic epidemic, caused not by a super-cleverly designed virus, just one designed to hit us where we are weakest.

wow, a long time between posts!

2007-11-14T17:38:00.000-08:00

For those (three) people in the audience, let me apologize for the delay in posting- just losing momentum, I guess. A lot of friends are pressuring me to join Face-Book, and the only reason I can possibly come up with for doing so is to drive more traffic to this site....why? Not sure. I'm just not the Facebook type, and obviously, not the regular blog type, either. Too busy with my other hobbies (plants, movies, and wasting time) to do something like this. But I'll continue to string out these photos....
By the way, the last picture was a SUNRISE in PAGAN, Burma....so one of you gets half a point for guessing that, and Angkor wat was a reasonable guess.

here's some odd bit of packaging I came across in Korea... No, they're not medicine, or even antacid tabs, but breath mints.

Next posting will be pictures of Rabbit In The Moon, a music/performance group.

Random ??? Sunrise/Sunset - guessing game

2007-09-23T21:03:00.001-07:00

I had wanted to upload the latest of my journeys, the Amazon, with a random beautiful sunset, but those pictures are buried somewhere on my other storage drive, floating somewhere in hundreds of .avi files (I'm going totally digital, sort of a hopeless, endless project of replacing my 1000 plus dvd's with big black stacks of hard drives).

Anyhow, to keep you from saying I'm a hopeless tease, here is a random sunset, certainly not as spectacular but no less exotic. Any guesses as to what ?? city?? this is? And is it Sunrise or Sunset and how do you know?

For My Internet Angel

2007-09-14T18:09:00.000-07:00

Years ago, when I was involved in helping Chinese students pass the horrific F1 visa interview to study in the U.S., my sister asked for my help. She wanted to know how to get a visa for a family with a sick child who needed heart surgery only available in the U.S.. I threw a wet blanket on her party at the time and basically told her it was impossible.

About one year later, ceaseless internet work paid off for my sis. She managed to bring this case to the "internet tribunal", where, as it turned out, some important people had children with the same condition. They pressured the power structure, and the kid was allowed to have the surgery. His family still lives in Los Angeles today.

I sort of forgot about it, even though my sister was invited on the Oprah show to congratulate her internet heroism. Then the other day, I was using a photocopied version of an Oxford press 'learn idioms through stories' book, when I saw this picture (click to enlarge it enough to read the story). No mention of my sister, but that's definately the guy that called me up when I was living in L.A.

Congratulations, Durian lovers!

2007-09-14T17:57:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to those of you below who correctly identified the fruit as Durian. However, did you Wiki it? I was surprised to find out that Durian comes in red (actually yellow-orange) colors, in a nearly thornless version, and that recently a Thai scientist invented an odorless Durian species (where's the fun in that?). I wasn't able to identify the species or type of cultivar from the article, but my guess is that it is an ordinary D. zibethenius.

Other fun facts:
Most exotic animal believed to eat Durian: Orang Pendek, the Sumatran version of Bigfoot.
Most unexpected animal involved with the plant: bats, which pollinate the flowers.
Most common substitute (used to bring down the cost): pumpkin
Most unusual food use: this one is a toss up, since one could say all uses of durian is unusual, but I'd have to go with using the burned rind as an additive in baking.

It's time for the old Fruit Guessing Game!

2007-09-06T17:31:00.000-07:00

Known as the King of Fruits, this is the only fruit that, on a regular basis, kills people by falling on their head (unless you are one of those sticklers who insist that Coconuts are 'fibrous drupes', when anybody can tell they are 'nuts').

Coconuts bean people who are walking, napping, or sunbathing unawares under the tree (and some can be 20-30 meters high!). This was notably documented by Captain Cook in the 18th century.

According to a kind of urban legend, this fruit beans people who are waiting for it to drop (for maximum freshness and marketability) from the tree, which can be up to 50 meters high. According the version I heard, the reason they are directly under the fruit when it falls is that the high price of the fruit (according to Wikipedia, in Singapore, some species can be as much as US$40/kg of flesh.) creates a sort of cut-throat competition among the harvesters.

Again, I heard this story travelling around Asia, and have repeated it many times, and it just seems like it should be true, looking at those cruel, medieval spikes that will puncture your hand quite easily. A vendor once tossed one of these heavy, dangerous things at me as a kind of joke, and maybe to test how quick my reflexes were.

So, I'm assuming that all of you know this fruit, right? Hint: it smells awful to most people.

Long time no publish

2007-08-29T00:52:00.000-07:00

The Disney accessories notwithstanding, I thought this Landmark Victorian era restoration house (a.k.a. "The Boat House") to be a perfect place to rest up after the rigors of Shanghai. All this for only 23 dollars a night; my room was just to the left of the door at center.

Summer Harvest

2007-06-23T03:07:00.000-07:00

Summer. The time when people fail to check in. Out enjoying the weather, the email drops almost to nothing, blogs go without posting. Recently, I've come to see that as a blessing and not as some sort of abandonment issue.
This summer, instead of traveling, I've decided to stay, save money and focus on domestic things (like reading, which I admittedly haven't done much of....still working on proofreads). But I also managed to get up early every day and water my basil farm, and here are the results....
I got an early start this year because of my miniature 50 dollar two-by-four-and-plastic greenhouse, but ran head on into soil leaching, caterpillars, and even a self-imposed drought (I was afraid to overwater again and leach the soil). Finally, however, thanks to a greenthumb friend and a 'compost tea' that I make on the roof from kitchen scraps, you can see the result; big meaty green leaves the size of a baby fist.

I especially love the dark, emerald green color of the basil oil as it is extracted into the olive oil, emulsified by the high speeds of the blender knives. There is something heavenly about the smell of this fresh basil oil, twenty times more intoxicating than the smell of freshly mown grass, or even of jasmine perfume wafting on a summer night...

Pesto:
sinkful of basil leaves, fresh
XXX virgin olive oil, enough to keep the blender from clogging
fresh peeled garlic, 10 cloves
pine nuts, handful
walnuts, a baby's fist (optional)
parmesan or romano cheese, 4~5 ounces.

With any luck, I'll be able to get a bumper crop in August before I leave to God knows where....

How Old are these Students?

2007-05-26T19:19:00.000-07:00

One of the chapters of our Academic English course textbook deals with research on sexual attraction and body types. Koreans have been infected with the usual amount of fashion magazine propoganda; their models are nearly as anorexic looking as western models and so on. What I found interesting, though, is that it appears that in this class of Freshmen the females overwhelmingly prefer a skinny guy to a muscular one. Or, and this is my more likely theory, the person doing the survey was a skinny guy, so more girls picked that drawing so as not to hurt his feelings.

Just a bit of clarification on the drawings; obviously they are two different sets, made by a group of females and males, respectively. The votes are made in the chinese style (adding hashmarks to a 'tree' until five marks makes the tree full- the completed character actually means 'correct') So the vote tallies, from the top, are:

Guys voting for female body types:

Coca Cola bottle: 4
Twiggy: 1
Chubby: 1

Girls Voting for female body types:

Cola bottle: none
Twiggy: 4,
Chubby: none

Girls voting for male body types:

Muscular: 2
Skinny: 6
Chubby: 2

Something looks a little fishy with the numbers on that last one, so I suspect that the surveyers conflated the girl and guy votes on the male body types - a shame, since it was supposed to be a survey revealing differences of gender - but typical of how off-task an English class can become.

Friendly Spam

2007-05-06T22:51:00.000-07:00

Today I got a 'friendly spam', that is, spam sent by a friend who doesn't realize that he/she is technically spamming. Some people like to call it 'forwarding', but I just call a Spam a Spam.
It started out...

"20 Ways to Maintain a Healthy Level of Insanity 1. At Lunch Time, Sit In Your Parked Car With Sunglasses on and point a Hair Dryer At Passing Cars. See If They Slow Down. 2. Page Yourself Over The Intercom. Don't Disguise Your Voice. 3. Every Time Someone Asks You To Do Something, Ask If They Want Fries with that. 4. Put Your Garbage Can On Your Desk And Label It "In." 5. Put Decaf In The Coffee Maker For 3 Weeks. Once Everyone has Gotten Over Their Caffeine Addictions, Switch to Espresso. 6. In The Memo Field Of All Your Checks, Write "For Smuggling Diamonds"
... ... 20. And The Final Way To Keep A Healthy Level Of Insanity.......Send This E-mail To Someone To Make Them Smile It's Called! Therapy"

When I hit number six, I remembered that when I was a freshman I used to write "for oral sodomy" on my checks - who sees those things except people like me? (I worked a summer job processing checks once for Bank of America)....but the tameness inspired me to write my own 'ways to keep a healthy level of insanity'....

Dear (Spamming Friend)

That's pretty tame. I'm working on a list of whammy's I like to do from time to time.

Something like....

1. create a little shrine in your workspace, but on the altar put oddly shaped twigs, small pebbles, or bits of lint. Pretend to worship them from time to time, make sure to appease your 'gods' with Starbucks or whatever offerings are at hand. The adding of celebrity photos, condom wrappers, used theater tickets and other detritus of modern living can only increase the weirdness quotient. If anyone asks you what the meaning of it is, just glare at them for a long time in silence, then say "you wouldn't understand" and walk away.

2. Always write in check boxes that say "Sex M F"....circle one of them and make an arrow to your current gender. (that's only if you're tired of writing "Yes, Please!) over the top of it. You can also scratch both the M and the F and replace them with a question mark in the middle.

3. Whenever people relate some information to you, respond quickly with "Is that what they told you to tell me?" and then quickly change the subject.

4. Always leave a lit cigarette in the fingers of mannequins you happen to be passing by, so it looks like they are having a smoke.

5. Always tease children and tell them crazy exxagerations to test their sense of reality. Tell them you have a neighbor with a talking cat, or whatever you can come up with. It makes them stronger, and prepares their minds for the crap to come, and helps you to be more childlike.

6.

7. Always leave an item blank on the list, to annoy the obsessive types.

10. Make sure to skip a few numbers, too, and getting them out of order can seriously derange some people.

8. When people are telling you long stories, take out a small black book from time to time and make mysterious check marks in it, nodding as if you have confirmed a theory about them as you are listening to them. If asked what the book contains, tell them it is something involving your shrine. Always maintain the book completely empty and leave it laying around. (bonus if you tear a few pages out at random)

9. Only respond to these kind of friendly spams if they seriously inspire you.

.

Teaser

2007-03-25T15:50:00.000-07:00

Mysterious conspiracy theory? Does anyone out there recognize the symbol? Taken from the street in Arequipa, Peru.

2007-02-16T11:40:00.000-08:00

a new map over at my new travelbog address, telling me I've been over 20,000 km so far:

http://www.travelblog.org/gmaps/map_2ZX.html

for photos of cartagena, see the blog address below. I've also added some more of the Amazon if you go back in time about a week. Good luck at figuring out the interface;its not very intuitive.

k

Follow this blog on a new venue

2007-01-29T10:35:00.000-08:00

After having used Blogger for about a year and a half, I only now stumbled upon a much better, and more suited-to-travel style blogging page, Travel Blog

http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/TheRambler/

where I can give a better accounting of my rambles day to day.....

see you there!

YET ANOTHER NEW FRUIT! WAHOO!

2007-01-28T10:33:00.000-08:00

This fruit is very cactus-y looking and is from Oruro, Bolivia. I just chanced across it in the market place. One pile is selling for one boliviano, or about 15 cents. In the lower right hand corner one can glimpse the inside of this fruit, whose name will forever be lost, since it was 'jacoroto', 'jorocoto', something along those lines. If I may describe it, the flesh is white with black seeds, but nothing like a kiwi; sweet but foamy, the most delicate (soft) fruit I've ever tasted. As soon as I gathered to take this picture, a bunch of market beggars surrounded me, so I only got to eat one before giving the rest to them (they all seemed quite grateful, so it is tribute to the deliciousness of this fruit)

A Promise Made is A Debt Unpaid.

2007-01-24T13:50:00.000-08:00

The small Cessna plane that represents the completion and closure of a promise I made to myself 16 or 17 years ago. At the time I was running out of money, backpacking around and staying in three dollar hotels, not sure what I was going to do, and when I came to Nasca I really had to chose between doing a flight or Machu Pichu. I´m glad I chose the latter, for I paid only $10 to get in (the admission is now $40) - but the cost of this flight was only $38, the same or less than it was then. Of course, neither monument has changed that much- except that perhaps Machu Pichu is even more overrun with tourists now than it was. The Nasca Lines have been there thousands of years, so 17 more hasn't made any noticeable difference.

George really gets around

2007-01-19T10:13:00.000-08:00

Here's a picture of a nifty little project I came across from the real world. (usually we get links from the cyber world, right?) The red stamped info is a link to a website www.wheresgeorge.com , a clever little currency tracking project for god knows what reason- but the fun thing is their website has some sophisticated tracking stuff....hopefully they'll add a world map with red lines showing george's trajectories in the future.

This picture was taken at the bus terminal in Arica, Chile....somebody gave me this bill in Peru as part of my change....most likely a vendor at the duty free market in Tacna. If you are really keen on it, and have nothing better to do with your time, go and check out the great software on the wheresgeorge site...

One of the Last pics from a busted camera

2007-01-14T08:28:00.000-08:00

This is one of the last pictures taken with my little replacement camera which lasted a total of ten days. I liked how this street in the small town of Nasca just ended abruptly in the desert and the mountains...I almost expected coyotes and other critters to be wandering around here on the fringes....this place kind of reminded me of my dad´s descriptions of Tucson in the early days.

Nasca

2007-01-09T15:04:00.000-08:00

This is the view from my hotel room, I kid you not, I can hardly believe that I´m paying only a few pennies more than 6 dollars a night to have this view, my own room with bathroom. It also illustrates a typical latin courtyard(copied from the roman atrium) like those described in One Hundred Years of Solitude. For those botanically inclined, the interesting white flowered bush on the left of the picture is something I thought for years to be a tropical variety of datura, a dangerous alkaloid hallucinogen, and a member of the nightshade family. (Nathaniel Hawthorne referred to it in The Scarlett Letter as "apple peru"....kind of odd considering this is Peru. ) But thanks to the miracle of Wikipedia and second guessing from clues in that, I surmise that it is a member of Brugmansia - an academic distinction, since it still contains the dangerous cocktail of scopolamines and atropines...

NEW FRUIT OF THE MONTH

2007-01-08T16:49:00.000-08:00

I never feel like I'm travelling unless I see a new fruit. This is called "lucuma" and from all appearances is a kind of zapote (mexican word), a member of the rubber family (on hearsay). Shown next to it, for the purposes of scale, is an ordinary cantelope melon. Picture below is a cross section showing the large, avocado-like seed.
The taste is rather dry and not unlike a half-cooked pumpkin. It's mostly used in milkshakes and ice creams..

2007-01-06T21:21:00.000-08:00

The main reason I love South America and the tropics... this particular variety has the popular name of "Mango Blanco"...compared to those hybrids you get up there in the Northern Hemisphere, this has a mango taste that is seven or eight times more mango-like...it is really impossible to describe, you just have to put it into your mouth to feel the difference.

Language Study Memories in Lima

2007-01-04T13:54:00.000-08:00

Just seconds after I asked the girl at the hotel for water, she went out the door, followed by the sound of screeching tires, the horrible impact sound, and the buzz of rubbernecks...This was actually the first picture I took with my new camera in South America, but it has another special meaning for me; when I was learning Spanish for the first time, I remember one phrase that was pivotal in my development of proper pronunciation: "Se choco con el autobus en la esquina!" (they had a collision with a bus on the corner)
Thankfully the girl didn't die and leave me with a karmic debt for having sent her to her death....but she was very close to the accident, about a meter or two away, she said.

2007-01-03T09:43:00.000-08:00

Does this need a subtitle? Make of it what you will...it's just a back alley of Portland near the train station, I was testing out my new $150 camera. tomorrow or later today I'll post the first photos of Lima....

on the road

2006-12-29T12:41:00.000-08:00

I'm in Portland Airport, looking at all the cool turbaned sikhs. One of them works at security, sending out waves of cool-osity to all the people coming in to P-town for the first time. I'm not leaving, exactly; my nephew David is leaving the nest for the first time, lancing out to Ohio to meet his internet-met girlfriend (not the first time, BTW) and start a new life there. Impressive. Me, I'm just hopping a train to Vancouver, B.C., to visit a dear friend and soak up the Coove's unique brand of coolosity. The coolosity meters over here in Contemporary Northwest Coast are all off the scales....

that's all for now, hep-cats, I'm sorry about the no photo situation but my camera absquatulated on me....

K

Little Bathroom Pet

2006-12-10T07:56:00.000-08:00

The eensy-weensy spider, crawled up the spout again....
This is a little pet I discovered crawling around my bathroom (and apparently the office room) - that explains the mysterious disappearance of the little flies that seem to spontaneously parthenogize from the drain. He's about 2 cm across and very quiet.

Moon Over Seoul

2006-11-06T19:43:00.000-08:00

"Moon over Seoul" was the name of a popular TV show in the nineties, on which my best buddy Robert was the 'token white guy'- and apparently had a bit of a following of his own.

Here's to you, Robert.

Sorry for the lens artifacts ('flaring') visible to the right of the building. Too lazy these days to do any photoshopping.

A Dempish, well vestilated place

2006-11-01T04:44:00.000-08:00

This was taken from the 'cheese information board' at a local Carrefour supermarket, shortly after the French superchain was nationalized into a Korean company called 'Homever'. I was worried that the nationalization would bring about many changes, such as the removal of many imported items like cheese, and with it, this fabulous information plaque. I wasn't able to get a good single shot of the whole board, employees kept coming by to try and stop me from photographing this; apparently they were worried that a European-looking man might try to steal the "secrets of How to Eating more Delicious Cheese"....
Please enjoy this purloined dairy information deliciously....and don't forget that Giving cheese after Sweet things is Very, Very Bad....

COSTCOMMUNISM 101

2006-10-23T19:36:00.000-07:00

While this may strike most people as just weird, conspiracy-theory paranoid blathering, I really AM afraid of a creeping political phenomenon which I believe is taking over the world.

I call it Costcommunism, or in the style of abbreviated American speech, more simply Coscommunism, which rolls off the tongue a little more easily.

Briefly, Coscommunism resembles communism in the following ways:

1. ideology - you must be a member in good standing. (substitute the word 'party' before member)
2. choices - costco makes the choices for you. Usually there is just ONE model of every category, a sort of Noah's Ark of consumerism. Costco usually goes for what they perceive to be the common good or the common taste, or something in the middle. Inevitably, in the fashion department, this results in bland, mediocre taste that I call Coscommie Fashion (not to be confused with Commie Fascism)
3. imagery and propoganda...

Regard the image above. Disregarding, for the moment, the image of the star which is a communist ideo-staple around the world, let's look at the whole concept of a membership card itself.
Does it not resemble something that a communist country might come up with? I mean, the whole idea of 'false exclusivity' that they create with this bogus membership idea, is reminiscent of some of the rantings of North Korea or something. (aren't they always saying that they are 'the only communists left' and how they must 'continue the good fight', etc, etc..?)

Another thing which communists are famous for is creating shortages of goods, resulting in scarcity black markets and such. I originally became a Coscommunist because I live in the Republic of Korea, a 'non-commie' country that has created its own unique shortage of goods through a system of protective tariffs and trade barriers. So, things like pesto, grapefruit, avocados, etc, that you may take for granted elsewhere were simply not availiable here for many years, though the market has opened up considerably. For these rare organic status symbols (avocados, unripe, used to go for six dollars apiece here - and I've seen cantalopes for over twenty, with a little gift card from the farmer thanking you personally), there was Costco - a rare twist on fate and history, that a form of communism, even if it was Coscommunism came to the rescue of a non-communist country.

But that was in the beginning. Since it's opening, Costco has been shutting down all of its luxury imports and has gone on a pogrom against these foreign invasions: to wit, since I joined, they have either been out of stock or completely discontinued the following items:

frozen blueberries (now they sell frozen cherries, at fifteen dollars a bag)
balsamic vinegar
fettucine
Weber barbecues (during the heat of summer)
braided mozarella
spicy cajun sausage
Tillamook cheese (Oregonians unite!)

When one attempts to get help finding these non-or semi-existent items at Costco, when you talk to the Costco officials one encounters what you could only call a coscommunist work ethic or attitude:

Customer: "When will you have the Weber barbecues in stock?"
Costco: "Check back after summer"

or again:

Customer:"I can't find the frozen blueberries"
Coscommie: "What?"
Customer: "Frozen Blueberries. Blue...Ber--ies"
Coscommie: "What are those?"
Customer: "You know, like berries. Blue. Frozen"
Coscommie: (showing interest for the first time) "Oh! We have those? Where?"

2006-09-27T08:34:00.000-07:00

Does this need any explanation?
CLICK TO ENLARGE

Stolen memories

2006-09-23T20:25:00.000-07:00

Last night at a party I was trying to show my friends some pictures on my camera of the local Carrefour cheese information plaque, and inadvertently wiped the flash memory. So, I'm not sure how many of the mongolian photos I lost- but it could be substantial. In memoriam of the wiped photos, then, here is an excellent self-portrait (well, self posed) of The Professor, or so we called this retired French Canadian gentleman....sometimes we called him the Nutty Professor (with affection of course.) This is taken on top of the sand dunes in the Mid-South Gobi...

More Strange Fruit

2006-09-19T03:56:00.000-07:00

See if you can guess where these are from, and how the local people eat them there.

2006-09-15T19:30:00.000-07:00

I think this image is self-explanatory, for anyone who grew up in a large family. The manufacturer of this product included a nice little picture for those of us who had a hard time mentally picturing a 'nuthouse'.
Looks pretty sweet, don't it?

2006-09-13T23:39:00.000-07:00

Kevin gets his first taste of horsemilk in the ger. The lighting was always golden and great in these tents, unless of course it was raining, and then it was unbearably gloomy inside.

2006-09-12T00:16:00.000-07:00

Scenes like this one below of the wild horses on the lake were so commonplace in the Gobi that after seeing things like this, we hardly could get enough enthusiasm together to stop the van and pile out for picture taking (first picture above); At first I was so enthusiastic myself, that as a sort of postmodern joke about all of us, I took pictures solely of people taking pictures - the first dozen or so out of the 500-odd pictures I took on the trip.

Ironically, some of the best and most striking images of the whole trip were at the end -such as the horse and camel that we saw grazing with abandon on the sidewalk of the outskirts of Ulan Batur upon our return. Unfortunately, most of our memory chips were full, our batteries exhausted and our readiness to take those shots completely gone.

2006-09-10T00:23:00.000-07:00

Periodically I would go to the cheapest budget hostel in Ulan Bataar, the capital of Mongolia, to see if there were people interested in joining together to see the Gobi desert, the world's second largest. When travelling in Mongolia, it is prudent to travel in groups, not only for economy's sake, but because you have so much more fun with other people, because it is safer, and for a host of other reasons.
Still, we tourists mostly tend to be westerners with a strongly developed sense of individualism, a 'do-it-yourself' sort of spirit, and nowhere did I see this expressed more absurdly than on the wall of this budget backpackers dosshouse, where apparently some rock-bottom budget hunter was passing along this bit of 'wisdom'.

The bottom line is 12,800 tugrug, or about ten dollars at the current exchange rate. It's about what I spent on horsemilk every day -- or, more acurately, my daily budget which did indeed have a lot of horsemilk, but also included other more conventional goodies like cheese and chocolate.

So this bottom line on this notepad isn't a bad price for a two-day, all-expenses paid excursion to the Gobi desert, which cost me about 30 dollars per day on my trip (fairly standard, I'd say) - unless one reads carefully, notice the part where it says "Next morning Walk to "Khar Uul"....15 KMS"....."Walk Back"....

First of all, it's a FLIPPIN' Desert, Buddy! In case you'd forgotten, that means, "no convenience stores, no roads, NO WATER"....so you'll need to carry about 4 liters per day if you have the luxury of transport, about double that if you're walking. So, how easy is it going to be to carry 16 liters of water for the trip there and back, plus tent, sleeping bag, flashlight, iron rebar for the tent so the howlin' wind doesn't take your house away like Dorothy's, and anything you're going to eat to sustain you for the thirty kilometer DEATH MARCH that you've put yourself on?

Ten dollars. Hmmm...about what the taxi will cost when they take you to the hospital to treat you for extreme dehydration, I guess.

I guess you can tell my days as a dirtbag rock-bottom hippie budget traveller are probably coming to an end, right?

I'm Back

2006-09-01T18:39:00.000-07:00

First of all, let's clear up some things. the boy in the picture on the previous page is Tibetan. I was taking a bus, most likely from Xigatse to Lhasa.
The heavy-duty truck below was dubbed "The BEAST" by it's British creators, who have apparently driven it overland from Europe through Russia and China. It is parked on the banks of the Mighty Mekong River....no, not Vietnam, but Laos, in the cultural capital of Luang Prebang (I know, it has to be the funniest sounding city besides Timbuktu)
Now here's another mystery picture for you, this time I'll tell you the place...Ulan Batur....but what in the world is this 'fruit'?

I know I SUCK at Rewarding Reader Loyalty

2006-07-29T00:07:00.000-07:00

But give me a break- I'm still recovering from the Mud Festival, my skin is still peeling from the four hour ride in the countryside sun...and haven't quite gotten dry since then.

I had some photos of Seoul's recent flooding, showing the river nearly swallowing the expressway, trees and lampposts under water, etc, but I haven't learned how to work the video camera download function yet.

To make a short story even shorter, the Mud Festival this year was something of a washout for us. Not only did we feel like there were TOO many foreigners here (maybe 2000 foreigners) but that there wasn't NEARLY enough mud, so we had the strange feeling that we should have brought our own mud to the mud festival, or maybe should launch our own version.

In the next installment, I'll briefly relate our white-knuckle ride through sheets of rain, the forced rescue of a baptist church (we forced them to rescue us, that is), and the strangeness of returning to Seoul without our bikes. To pacify those of you who are still with me, another mystery picture is here presented. (guess what riverbank this car is parked on, and guess where the inhabitants are from!)

Motorcycle Diaries' Maintenance

2006-07-16T06:46:00.000-07:00

I don't own a motorcycle, but the protagonist of this story, as of so many other romantic Road Trip stories (cf. Zen and the Art of...) is a motorcycle. My Little Scooter That Could often acts like it believes itself to be a real motorcycle, especially on this 'mammoth' road trip I took for the three day Korean Constitution Day Weekend.

The Mud Festival was on in Chung Chong province, about 350 Km from Seoul, and I had never, ever even thought of taking my scooter, which is decorated to look like a 'Ska-mobile' and elicits a lot of jests from my friends, for more than a five minute spurt to get groceries or go to work, etc. My friend Lex insisted that scooters were underrated, and that he had once driven a 'Tact' brand scooter (that's a 'Pinto' to those of you not in the know about them) across the mountains of Kangwando to the East Sea (that's the Japan sea to those of you not worried about offending Koreans), and that it had done just fine.

After an hour of haranguing me to get off my arse and follow him and his motorcycle down to the festival, Lex finally came out with a soliloquy worthy of Captain James T. Kirk - a very moving piece of rhetoric, actually, and so I threw together a change of clothing and we whisked across the river to try to find our way out of this stinky metropolis of 18 million.

After three hours of exasperating zooming around in the dark, sharing six lane highways with eighteen wheelers and breathing their smog, the white-knuckling had finally got to me. Lex agreed to stop in the next town, which turned out to be a little village named "Paran". We expected to see the usual generic Korean mish-mash of stores and corporate names, the completely ubiquitous face of the Korean countryside.

Instead the first thing we saw was a sign that said: Store: Russian, Uzbekistan, Kirgizstan, Thailand, Indonesia, Mongolia food. So we stopped in and admired the cheese and sausage, the packets of Nasi Goreng mix, and the curious Usbekis who manned the store. They told us about a cheap hotel around the corner, so we turned the corner and discovered even more foreign stores. For those of you who don't know Seoul or why it should be astonishing to find so much ethnic diversity in such a small place like Paran, let me just say that Seoul has never, ever really had decent and affordable Chinese cuisine, and until very recently only had one Thai restaurant where dinner cost twenty dollars. This is not because Koreans don't like eating out, or not because they don't like 'ethnic foods' - but rather, because they have never had much exposure.

So that night, we REALLY felt like it was 'vacation', since after all, we were eating Adobo chicken, drinking Red Horse beer, and sing-a-longing to Tagalog songs with a bunch of very friendly filipino guys. One of them turned out to have a voice identical to some seventies pop icon, but I cant think of the name just now- but the effect was quite astonishing, and as we talked to him we realized that this dude worshipped the music of the seventies and eighties...as do many filipinos.

The next day we hit the road again, this time it wasn't such white-knuckle driving; just a nice pleasant three hour cruise to the mud festival town, Daechon near Boryung.

This festival has been going for a few years now, this will be my third time I've gone, and though I'm going to say a lot of negative things about it, it is hands down the closest thing Korea has got to real, honest-to-goodness 'fun'.

It was originally modelled on the Tomatina in Spain; the town fathers undoubtedly were quite interested in the story of this little nothing town in northeastern Spain whose only resource was tomatoes in harvest time....so they decided to make what became one of the world's quirkiest festivals; the largest tomato throwing event in Christendom (or under any religious hegemony, for that matter, though I'm sure the Korean buddhists have thrown a few pickles at eachother, and Japanese Zen masters have flung a few grains of rice around from time to time).

That was the concept. But unfortunately it was the corporation, not the town pushing the event. Poryung mud company is a cosmetics manufacturer that makes a panoply of soaps, scrubs and creams from the tidal flat alluvial ooze near the town. Their idea, I suppose, was to drum up a little publicity for the product by highlighting the naturalness of its source. The nearby beachtown, Daechon, was ideally situated to host such an event.

At first their approach was open minded and experimental. They offered amusements like a mechanical bull covered in mud, mud wrestling and climbing a mud covered plank. It attracted mostly foreigners, and the first three years consisted of about twenty of us, covered in mud and shreiking to the delight of about 150 photographers, who couldn't get enough of the images of bodies covered in mud.

Now it is a corporate dream come true, a mud-covered freak show of epic proportions. Unfortunately, though the number of people attending and mudding up for the cameras has increased tenfold, and the number of people participating has finally leveled out....
to be continued

2006-06-20T12:30:00.000-07:00

my friend who was contemplating a trip to burma has already gone on to the phillipines, but I find myself and my thoughts returning there.....this is a particularly intriguing snack to munch on with your spirulina beer....green tea salad!...the sesame and soybeans all being other things to throw on top of the salad.
CLICK TO ENLARGE

2006-06-11T07:09:00.000-07:00

To be fair, lest the reader think Burma is all beauty, here is a picture from 'real life' Burma - a fried bird vendor on the street. I bet they're crunchy....ewwwww!
CLICK TO ENLARGE

2006-06-07T16:59:00.000-07:00

a flashback to Pagan, Burma, for a friend who is considering going there....
CLICK TO ENLARGE

2006-06-04T20:06:00.000-07:00

a junk floats through Hong Kong harbor; the red sails are just red spotlights that are shone from the deck.
CLICK TO ENLARGE

2006-05-16T06:43:00.000-07:00

Can you guess where in the world this child is from?
(Hint: not from a country featured previously on this blog)
CLICK TO ENLARGE

2006-05-13T08:09:00.000-07:00

every now and then I like to get pictures out like this to relieve the crowding and claustrophobia of Korea
CLICK TO ENLARGE

a little bit gross

2006-05-08T19:52:00.000-07:00

Dear reader, I'm sorry to subject you to the grotesque or unneccessarily graphic parts of my life. I'll just say I've been posting much less than I had anticipated, because of the pain resulting from a minor (throat) surgery I went through recently.

So much pain, actually, that I had to go back to get more of those green and red pills that are just hopped up Tylenols (with a little codeine phosphate thrown in for good measure).

But today I felt like I passed a significant milestone in the pain reduction tunnel-without-light-at-the-end syndrome; e.g., the pain hasn't significantly lessened in five days, but this morning I did spit out a tiny plastic suture. wow! those guys had time to laser me AND tie little tiny knots in the two or three minutes they worked on me? That was pretty slick.

DITTO

2006-04-27T15:36:00.000-07:00

I can really empathize with the sentiments of this prayer written in French on the center tile. These copper tiles were purchased by visitors to a buddhist temple on the side of a mountain in Korea's Soraksan National Park. Money from the tile sale will probably go for more than just keeping the rain out; since monks eat a pretty simple diet (rice and kimchi for the most part) and grow a lot of their own food up here.
CLICK TO ENLARGE

2006-04-16T18:00:00.000-07:00

SNEAK PEEP
This is sort of what I'm working on these days - I don't know where it's leading, though.

You'll need to click on the image to see it clearly. What you are looking at is a screen shot of the Wordsmith Concordancing program of the top 30 movie scripts in my database (330 scripts) containing the F word. This is a kind of representation of all the instances of the word in the entire script. On the left you have the names of the movie, sometimes abbreviated for convenience. The plot on the right, looking something like a DNA test, is a graphic representation of where exactly the word appears in the script; dark clusters represent scenes where the F word appears in rapid succession; usually scenes where two or more people fight together.

Kevin Smith (Jay and Silent Bob strike back and Chasing Amy) and Quentin Tarantino manage to fill up quite a few of the top slots. If they aren't Tarantino films, then a case could be made that they are Tarantino wannabees, or very much like Tarantino films. Well, OK, Scorcese was doing that sort of stuff long before him. But the really weird thing is the football film (Any Given Sunday, Oliver Stone), in which no one is actually killed or blown to pieces. IMDB describes it as "An aging football coach finds himself struggling with his personal and professional life while trying to hold his team together." - no indication of the potty-mouth level of the film, which comes in at #10 out of 320 films.

I've used charts like this to show my students about language usage, since they all know the F word, and have more than an inkling about it's power and mystery, they should at least have the benefit of knowing how directly, statistically linked it is to the onset of fights and fighting, killers and killing.

At least that's what I think I'm teaching them.

Oh Fuck it!

2006-03-29T15:33:00.000-08:00

as you might suspect, this dog is indeed half-wolf. a rather friendly looking wolf, though. I took this shot at an Indian Pow Wow in my home town...
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2006-03-14T01:38:00.000-08:00

If anybody can figure out how to 'on dive', please let me know.
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2006-03-12T04:19:00.001-08:00

Here's a picture of Willem Da Foe at the Bangkok International Film Festival.
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2006-03-12T04:19:00.000-08:00

What I found interesting, however, was his choice of footwear - check out these 99-Cent Store Flip-Flops...Way to go, Willie!
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2006-03-09T15:15:00.000-08:00

I can never resist aging wood set off by pastel, I'm a texture junkie...
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2006-03-08T23:32:00.000-08:00

A Monk peeks from behind a temple in Mongolia
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2006-03-08T06:06:00.000-08:00

If you remember the "Spirulina Beer" billboard from Burma a few months back, you'll understand my penchant for taking pictures of weird bulletin boards that we may NEVER understand, even if translated.
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2006-03-06T18:16:00.000-08:00

I couldn't find the picture of the arrow shooter, so here's The Hun (and a bloated, squinty-eyed looking one, at that) for you. Or is it more of a Tatar?
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CHEESE PILES

2006-03-05T19:49:00.000-08:00

Not an exciting title, I know. But these piles of dried, hardened, cheese piles (most likely from yak or sheep) was about the most you could hope for by way of snack, by way of variety in the Mongolian outback. I found this drying rack near the archery target...I suppose the idea being that when you tired of watching the cheese dry, you could allieviate the tedium by shooting arrows or watching them be shot by tourists like me. * (tomorrow I'll post that)

Trivia At The Airport

2006-02-28T05:01:00.000-08:00

"Trivia at the Airport", the man said to me, "That's what you ought to call it".

I had just returned to Chicago from my first trip abroad, a full three month circumambulation of Ireland, where I had picked up a tin flute and learned a few simple tunes on it. I was waiting for the airport bus, and playing Brian Boru's Song, I believe, when this impromptu-commenting man had walked by on the way to his parked car. I remember the initial sting of the 'Trivia' comment (or was it not a sting? Trivia would be a valid name for a jazz improvisational, would it not?) being followed by the thought, "Hey, if you like it so much, why not give me a ride to the subway?"

That was so many years ago that all the emotions I felt at that time are now distant and alien. But I had forgotten that some of my weirdest - and thus most precious experiences - happened to me at the beginning and ending of journeys, and so many times at airports.

Yesterday I was at Taipei airport (officially CKS airport) in Taiwan, coming back to Korea after two weeks in Thailand (at "Resort Khao San" , as a friend likes to call it). I had a layover of about three hours, so I changed back to winter clothing, cruised around and checked the layout of the place, and finally went to my gate, where I immediately ferreted out an electric wall socket, plugged my laptop in, and started to do lesson prep for this upcoming semester.

Before long I realized that the people I had previously assumed were not interested in this little corner of the waiting area, where they had some luggage scattered about, were actually incredibly interested in it, and in fact started stretching and doing warmups over there. Before long there were all kinds of people going in and out of this corner that I had cloistered off with my power cable, and each time someone stepped back and forth across it, I anchored my laptop and prepared for the worst; that someone might trip on it, ruin the laptop and sue me for damaging their face when they belly flopped...

But each and every time, they gracefully lifted their foot without looking, like they were some kind of ballet dancer...

After a while, I found it impossible to ignore the constant stretching, and warmups, and before I knew it, I found my self trying to type in the middle of a full-blown yoga class. The instructor was this big, buxom n blonde california type; the rest of the people looked like your basic Weekend Workshop crowd; hardly Republicans. So I unplugged the computer, put it away, pulled off my shoes and soon found myself obeying commands like reach high, feel the energy in your sternum chakra, just sort of let that foot come around and rest on your thigh, if you feel comfortable with that... and actually loving every minute of this high energy, high pace bhakti yoga class in the departure gate.

Only then did I think about gurus, India, turbans....hey wait a minute, howcome everyone, or nearly everyone, on this flight to Korea were wearing turbans? Holy Shit! I'm in the wrong gate! I hurriedly gathered my things which were scattered over three chairs and the floor, hurriedly made a gift of some fresh-squeezed Khao San Orange Juice to my new yoga guru, and ran off to the right place.

When I got there they were just boarding, but I couldn't help noticing the big change; there were no people stretching, and it even seemed like no people smiling over here. Suddenly I felt like I was in the wrong gate, that somehow like I had been unnaturally, preternaturally separated from my family....

Windows on the World

2006-02-23T21:09:00.000-08:00

This gilt window was apparently a work of inspired genius

Look carefully at the upper left hand corner, however, if you want to delve a little deeper into the Thai Psyche.

Unrelated Conspiracy Theory : today while watching CNN, they had a special report from a Rolling Stone reporter who had infiltrated the Church of Scientology. She was in mid-revelation of their innermost, most carefully kept secrets when the entire segment was yanked off the air, apparently pre-empted by the phony Phillipines coup, of which there was really nothing to report. Weird. Do they have people working at CNN as well? She was about to get into the churches strange creation myth, which truly rates as a work of science fiction (no surprise, considering that was L. Ron Hubbard's true calling)

MORE EFFECTIVE THAN IT LOOKS

2006-02-21T03:40:00.000-08:00

Here was the 'Asian English' find of a lifetime. Apparently the word for 'staple' in Korean is pronounced 'hipi', sometimes spelled in this delightful way. How does it remove hippies? Just look at the bottom of the package.

2006-01-29T19:55:00.000-08:00

Riders on The Storm...
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2006-01-27T11:41:00.000-08:00

a drying heap of bellflower root (to be made into kimchi for winter months) contrasts plastic with wood outside of a temple in Sorak San park.
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2006-01-17T06:15:00.000-08:00

found this one among my ....electronic belongings....wow, guess I'm old, just looking at this convinces me like nothing else...
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2006-01-13T22:34:00.000-08:00

A random sign from Kangnam in Seoul, for the amusement and possible mock horror of my semitic friends around the world - honestly I'm not sure what this word construction is intended to convey- the 'free' is obviously borrowed from English, but the second part is just a phonetic spelling of a korean syllable cluster ('J' plus 'you' sound equals 'jyou')
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2006-01-12T05:08:00.000-08:00

walk on it
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2006-01-06T15:06:00.000-08:00

A young boy is all ready for the morning Burmese sun, his face paint is a powder made from a kind of tree; Burmese believe it not only protects from UV rays, but also softens the skin and looks 'beautiful'. It's great to occasionally warp the whole magazine image of beauty.

2006-01-04T15:38:00.000-08:00

Have I shown you this before? This is a concession stand (e.g. tourist trap) beside White Lake, Mongolia. (good luck at finding it on the map, there are at least 7 of them)

SUSHI GAYDAR

2006-01-03T14:20:00.000-08:00

My Friends always think I'm gay when I prepare a meal like this - but all I did was unwrap pieces I bought at Carrefour and plunk them down on a wooden platter I found at a flea market. And yes, it did taste as good as it looks.

2005-12-02T23:16:00.000-08:00

the interior of the 'healing fruit' , bol, revealing the honey-like syrup interspersed with the dry, pumpkin-like meat, and a thick, impenetrable shell.
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