2004-04-13 - 12:38 a.m.

Catching Up - March 31 to April 10, 2004

March 31 - 11:30 p.m. - I seem to have misplaced my journal; so here's a new one. Got home from work about 20 minutes ago. This is my latest night, Wednesday (¼ö¿äÀÏ)|sue-yo-eel|. Had a late supper at a sidewalk stall, ddook and tempura-style nori rolls, the latter stuffed with veggies and sweet-pototo vermicelli. It hit the spot! I talked with the cook for a while and then her son came by for supper. She gave him quite a talking-to. Near's I could tell, she doesn't like some of his friends.

Coming home, the only place I had to wait quite a while was Express Bus Terminal station. Chulsan was just a short wait and I caught the newspaper guy as he was closing, got the Herald, which he had a job pulling out of the bundle he'd tied tightly to return. He finally dug it out just as the train pulled in. We laughed and I ran for my ride. The good thing about coming home late is that there are enough seats for everybody on the subway train.

During the morning rush (7-9 a.m.) it's Sardine City, for the first 15 minutes anyway. After Shindang where lots of folks transfer to Line 2, I can usually get a seat. A bunch more transfer to Line 5 at Chonggu, the next stop. If I don't get a seat by then, it's standing room only as a wave of folks get on at Yaksu, transferring from Line 3, the major north-south line.

Seoul has 9 subway lines, so sometimes, homeless people get on and go round and round for hours. It's warm and an easy place to sleep, rocking along. I've fallen asleep several times myself. It's normal to see passengers sleeping, in fact. That's because Seoul is such a safe city.

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April 2 - 12:30, noon - To Do: hang out laundry and finish lunch. I stopped eating to take one load out and put another into the washer.

I'm trying to teach the cats to beg at the bathroom window and eat outside it. This should keep them from jumping on the roof over Mr. Lee's girlfriend and scaring her in the night. Whenever he complains, it's because of her fears, I've noticed. Either he is a "rescuer" or he is using her to hide behind. Thank heaven it's their problem, not mine. All I have to do is keep my head down and my nose clean, that is, to sweep my side of the street.

About lunch today, I'm having pan chan and 3-grain rice. The pan chan dishes are from the Ha-an-dong (Shipsam Danji) deli I wrote about the other day (an entry that's lost in space). One dish is anchovies, jalapeno peppers and carrots in a light vinigrette marinade. I have to take an occasional sip of milk as the peppers are really hot. The anchovies (plus vinegar to free their calcium) is probably very healthy for my bones. The other dish is fried tofu, sliced onions, onion tops, ham, carrots and jalapenos in a marinade of sesame oil, red-hot pepper flakes, vinegar and a little sugar, I guess. The 3-grain rice is the same recipe as what I took to Nolan's cookout.

By the way, later that day, I bought a rice-washing dish from a sidewalk vendor (to use for the few times I fix white rice). Otherwise, it makes a good salad bowl or mixing bowl. Whate makes it a rice-washing bowl is lots of horizontal rings (like latitude marks on a globe) which you rub the rice against with your hands. It also has a "pouty" lip on one side to pour off the water. It's much faster and more efficient than washing rice in a sieve to get the white dust off.

Speaking of dust, the yellow dust was irritating yesterday, so I picked up a multi-hued pastel silk scarf to wrap over my nose. It worked pretty well, too. It's in shades of peach, yellow and pink, with a paisley pattern that's thicker near the ends. Goes well with yesterday's clothes which are tan, sand, and orangey-yellow. That last is my jacket, which is like the inside of an acorn squash. That is not a practical colour in Seoul, as it needs to be washed every week, especially during dust season. But I like it; I don't want to wear grey and black like everyone else except the grannies. Most of them wear embroidered felt jackets in bright colours during cool weather.

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2004/4/4 Sunday |eel-yo-eel|

One good thing I did today was make a sports worksheet for the 6th graders. It's a mix of basic facts and some items that were in the sports pages in the newspaper last week. I've got 4 girls and 8 boys in that class. Everyone should be able to answer the first 7 questions correctly. They are all multiple choice, also, so random answers on the last four questions should get one right.

I had a late lunch of ttuk kalbi, which is chicken, cabbage, sesame leaves, and rice ziti in a fiery sauce, stir-fried in a pan at the table. When I say "rice ziti", that's not exactly what they are; they aren't tubes, they are solid, short rods of compacted rice flour, but they are the same size as ziti.

The side dishes included dried fish slivers that had been dipped in a sweet sauce and then re-dried, kim chi, yellow pickled daikon radish, and macaroni salad with whole kernal corn. This last one was to counteract the hot barbecue sauce that the pan-fried chicken (etc.) was smothered in. This was the best ttuk kalbi I've ever had because of the added cabbage. That gave it a sweeter flavour.

Tomorrow is Arbour Day, so we get the day off. Mikyung asked me to go see "The Passion..." movie, but I opted out. I think that film is too gory for me. I tend to suspend disbelief and get too wrapped up in a movie. That can lead to nightmares for weeks afterwards. Seems to me there's more than enough terrible tragedies in the real world. Why pay to see manufactured carnage!

Okay, I'm dismounting from my soapbox now. ;-)

This is the Flower Month,- magnolias and forsythias are in bloom, cherries, plums, and all sorts of fruit blossoms are opening their buds. There are pansies thickly planted and blooming in the parks and sidewalk flower boxes all over the city. I'm sure I've mentioned before that forsythia grows wild here in Corea. It's scattered over the lower slopes of the mountains, mixed in with the hardwoods and conifers. There's also a small tree that looks like the Maine shadbush and blooms about the same time, too. Cherry trees are much more vigourous here, and live to become huge and gnarly. I could never understand how they could get enough wood from a cherrytree to make furniture until I saw the ancient cherrytrees here and in Japan. A Maine tree is lucky to live until it gets as thick as my forearm before the scab-blight or the winter weather kills it. One of the trees I saw in Osaka last April was over 350 years old! I'd venture a guess that it would measure 3 meters around its "waist," probably a cord and a half of wood in its main trunk.

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April 5, 2004 5:30 p.m. |wol-yo-eel| Monday

Just finished breaking my fast with tuna and rice, plus a banana. The tuna and rice I wrapped in dried laver (seaweed, aka "nori" in Japanese, "keem" in Corean). Keem is my leafy veggie of choice. It has a crisp texture and tastes good,- green and like a sea breeze, with a nutty undertone because it has a bit of sesame oil in it.

Now I have to run and meet Mikyung.

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April 7, 2004 9:15 a.m.

"To make your family happy, please try the heart-warming delicacy of Shilla Myunggua. Our efforts on little details will help you create a peaceful, harmonious family life and share pleasant conversations." -- Seen on the side of a delivery truck

The English is technically next to perfect, but the message is culturally Corean. (There was a little interruption there as students began to arrive for "Moms' class.")

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April 10, 2004 Saturday |toe-yo-eel|

Late afternoon: Returning to Pusan on the Beetle 2. A dust storm has lowered visibility and made it pleasant to be inside breathing filtered air. The ride is okay, bumpy enough to affect my handwriting. I'm "upstairs" for the first time. Being further away from the water seems to decrease the sensation of speed.

It's quite balmy here, outside temp is 24 degrees Celsius (75 F), and we're clipping along at 77 kilometers/hour (~ 48 mph). I went down to use the "head," and noticed the gauges on the bulkhead. This is the Beetle 2, the first hydrofoil, and people were more curious about data when the technology was new.

I was amazed that the KTX didn't have a speedometer where passengers could see it. Yes, yes, I rode the "bullet train" last night and shall return on it tonight. It's not up to top speed yet; they need to finish building a length of new track. When it's completed the train will go between Pusan and Seoul in under two hours. Last night, it took 2 hours and 40 minutes. Frankly, the seats are too narrow. My seatmate's elbow was in my ribs and we were rubbing thighs involuntarily. He fell asleep by the time we sped through the edge of Suwon and snored (not in Louie's volume, though, so I wasn't bothered by that). What bugged me was the proximity. After he awoke and made his bathroom run, he sat in the row ahead, since there was a vacant pair of seats. Oh, yes, the train's bathroom is "state of the art," very nice.

Back to the Beetle: There never was a Beetle #1 in commercial service. Starting the numbering with "2" was a publicity stunt, to make folks thing it was an older business. This boat was built in 1991. It's registered in Japan, which means very draconian inspection rules apply. I like that in a ferry-boat; don't worry that it's going to malfunction and kill us, like ferries in South Asia do all too often.

What with all the speedy vehicles, I'm probably going to finish this visa run in less than 27 hours. It's costing more though. My round-trip combination ticket cost pretty close to 220,000 won, and then you add on the excise tax, which they call an embarkation fee. It's 1,200 won in Pusan, up from 1,100 this winter. Coming back the Japanese nicked me for 400 yen, a little over 4,430 won.

This is the first time I've indulged myself with souvenirs, a pack of cards with watercolour prints on them and 2 pairs of noodle chopsticks. They had two different patterns of china saki cups, too, which I passed by. One set had dignified portraits you could serve to your Aunt Matilda; the other was bawdy sketches of the "Why don't you come up to my place and see my etchings" type.

The clouds are obscuring the sun, so I suspect we're in for one of those "muddy" rains we've been getting lately. I'm not sure, but I'll venture a guess that the extremely fine nature of the dust allows storms to build up quite a good-sized drop of water around each speck of dust.

~~~~~~~~~~~Later, 21:10 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Had a good (but expensive, a manwon!) shrimp dinner at a tent restaurant near "Busan Station." This is the new structure which has replaced the neo-classic, colonial-era one. The powers-that-be have just done the same thing in Seoul, built a large glass and steel tube structure that looks like it would be bette placed on "The Jetsons." It's sort of an artsy-industrial style, sanitized "Alien" or Refinery Deco architecture. Sure the old buildings are out-dated, but they work and you would not be able to afford to build them as solidly today.

I left Pusan at 8 o'clock on the KTX (short for Korea Train Express). Up to now, 9:18 p.m., it's been puttering along between 30 and 50 mph. However, now we are accelerating at a great rate, feels like an airplane taking off. It's a lot quieter though, cause it's electric. According to the newspaper it peaks at 307 kph. That's 191 mph! 9:23, it's between 80-100 mph now, I'm guessing, by the the way the streetlights are flicking by (the old telephone-pole speed gauge). The sensation of speed is particularly acute when we streak past a station platform.

We're getting some kind of harmonic sound in the train car. Sounds like a tuba. Whew, relief. No, it's back. It comes when we are accelerating at a certain rate. The engineer "went through it," just accelerated a little faster and it stopped. Whatever that speed is, we hear an echo of it, at a lower volume, when he decelerates through that vibrational frequency, too. I'm just guessing, but it could be around 160 miles an hour. That is a bit more than the takeoff speed for a C-119, as I remember, and that's about what it felt like. We are coasting now, 9:36 p.m., well below 100 mph. There go the brakes, applied very gently. We must be near a stop. The slowdown is very gradual. My seatmate is sleeping like a baby. 9:40, speed about 50 mph, we're in the outskirts of a large city, still slowing down. 9:46, it's announced that we are arriving in Daejeon. 9:52, we're leaving Daejeon, doing about 30 mph / 50 kph. This is de rigeur for within city limits, I suppose. That's been how it's worked yesterday and today, anyway. Of course, the bullet train is on its own separate track. That's the construction I have seen on former trips to Pusan; now I'm riding on the results.

The railroad managers calculate that the bullet train will save having to build another super-highway. It's going to pay for itself by the increased ticket price, 45,000 won versus 32,000 won for Samaul. They are cutting back on the lower-priced passenger trains and plan to run more freight-trains instead. The idea is to cut into the tractor-trailer trade. There have been a couple truckers' strikes since I've been here, and it's pay-back time!

We're out in the mountains and accelerating again. We are running on a terrace built on the side of the mountain, and crossing valleys elevated on concrete piers, sorta like a viaduct. I can look down on villages and roads as we ghost by in the night. We're just generating a hum and the sound of wind on the waxed surface (well, it looks waxed,- very shiny). The wind sound is most noticable when we go through a tunnel. Another bullet train passed us going in the other direction in this tunnel, the wind buffeted between us. It's very stable and handled that very well. It's got a low center of gravity, looks like a shark, head-on.

10:31 p.m., we just went by a station that looked remarkably like Garibong. Yup! We just went past Guro and Shindorim, so my guess is that we will get into Seoul Station a few minutes early. That makes up for being a little late going down. Hey, we're crossing the Han River at 10:37 p.m. That leaves just Yongsan and Namyeong before Seoul Station.

10:40 on the nose! That's what it said on the ticket; the Pusan bulletin board said 11:10. (Does the right hand know what the left hand is up to?)

11:15 Home! Went right to the subway station and caught Line 1 train to Jegidong, then took a taxi home. Delightful, good-humoured cab driver who encouraged me to speak Corean more. [ Note on outdoor temperature: The daily low is what the high was 3 weeks ago, about 10 degrees C, 50 degrees F. It's shirtsleeve weather, short-sleeve weather days! ]

My sincere apologies for such a long entry!

Happy Trails!

~ Sil in Corea

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