Tis the season of Christmas parties and talk of holidays.  If you work at a university and aren’t teaching during your break, you could have up to 10 weeks of paid vacation coming to you.  So naturally the talk at said parties is about up coming plans for the break.

Now, for some reason, I’ve befriended numerous divers, which is great, but I don’t dive.  And the really painful part is that the new ones don’t remember that I don’t dive so end up asking me (when I mention about our trip to Malaysia) about where we are going and specifically mention sites that have great diving.

Then there are the new-to-me folks that ask me why I don’t dive.  I generally say that I can’t handle the pressure on my ears – which is true.  But there is another, more pertinent reason why I don’t and to quote Axl Rose:

I discovered I scream the same way whether I’m about to be devoured by a great white shark or if a piece of seaweed touches my foot.

And!  I jump at nature shows when something comes flying up on the screen.  SO I can only imagine that in real life I’d end up swatting some endangered fish and smash into fragile, 1000 year old coral in my attempts to get away from a slug.

So, no.  I don’t dive.

I do sit on lovely beaches.  I do drink wine and eat really expensive food and appreciate my surroundings. I am, generally, a good conversationalist.  But can we please change the topic to something that I don’t need to emphasis due to embarrassment over.  (Secretly I blame my parents for not desensitizing me to ANYTHING as a child.  No scary movies.  Hands over eyes during sex scenes in movies.  No violent shows – minus war movies — because they’re authentic???).

Anyway.  We’re going to Malaysia for our honeymoon!  How exciting.

Hubby is in the US for a business trip.

Us being foodies, we generally talk about all the wonderful things that he eats while away.

Recent conversation:

Hubby:  We just got back from dinner

me:  How was it?  What did you eat?

H:  Steak.

me: Yum.

H:  Black Angus beef.

me:  That must have been so good.

H:  Actually, no, it wasn’t.

me:  Oh that’s good!

H:  What!  You’re so mean!!

me:  No.  I’m jealous and immature.  There’s a difference.

H:  Oh.  I’ll call you back.

hahaha.  I need to get out more.

1)  It takes me at least 1 hour to get anywhere in Seoul

2)  There are some lonely expats out there that really need an ear to listen to them

3)  I really like my new neighborhood

4)  I don’t really know where I live (ie turned too soon in very slow traffic, at night, from the other direction and was super lost in the winding hills but the driver was so nice and when I hopped out at the market he was a bit concerned that I actually knew where I lived from there.  Shout out to you, super nice man)

5)  Blows me away how the combination of music, ambient noise, paint colors, organization of a room, drinks and snacks can make you feel as though you’re in NA.

6)  Great conversation.  I’ve missed it.  New topics about things that I know nothing about.

7)  Cold weather.  It really debilitates me.

 Sunshine!

9)  Although the new sofa is comfortable to sit on, to read, watch a movie etc not so good for sleeping

10)  I make damn good banana bread ^^

Why is it that if something isn’t quite right here we automatically assume that we’re getting ripped off?  I generally try to wait things out but some times with pay … grrr it can be so frustrating when there’s a bottle neck mentality to the flow of information here; why not be forth coming with the rules and regulations?

I also finally went to the bank again today.  I honestly tried to mentally prep myself for it.  I tried to think of the easiest way to explain what I wanted.  I ate extra healthy food so, should I be trapped there for extended periods, that my blood sugar wouldn’t drop too low and I wouldn’t fall out of the chair in angst.   I got there at 3:32.  I wanted to wire money home.  I left at 4:27.  The teller’s English was very good… her computer/banking skills not so much.  BUT I didn’t get angry.  I did regret not taking a book to read but thought that she might panic more if I looked like I was setting up shop at her wicket.

It’s freaking cold out.

My new apartment/villa thingy is far too breezy.

I hate when people say “… but you’re from Canada!  Aren’t you used to the cold?”  Why in the hell do you think I left?  I’m not sure that I’m ever going to move back… the thought of death by freezing looms large from a Canadian authorship education — does that make sense?  I mean from being forced to read incredibly depressing Canadian novels about winter, snow, hardships of Canadian winters, darkness of winter, BLEAK, more snow, did I mention that it’s dark … right … and I lived it … well, not so much the hardship but I did live in NWT for 5 years so that sort of counts.

That’s it.  Nothing interesting to report as of late.  My natural hibernation mode is beginning to kick in … 3 weeks left of classes and then I won’t be leaving the house again until it’s warm out … or when my dad arrives for the wedding …

I haven’t been doing anything of interest as of late beyond readings for my masters which won’t be of interest to you.

As you can see to the right there, I won an award!  Yay me!  I have no idea what it means but I got to re-figure out how to post stuff like that to my blog so that was worth it (albeit the thingy is in the temporary blog name … but it still counts right? haha).

Angry katusa kid now calls me his counselor; make of that what you will.

The evil memories of the old place are pleasantly fading and being replaced by new joy from things like this:

We found out there are no grocery stores around us, in fact we have to cross the river and head up to Yongsan to the Emart.  BUT, there is a market area around here where at one of the stores, you know those red bowls/plate things they have here?  The plastic ones?  Yeah, those, one of them filled with veggies costs 1000 won, for the whole thing!  All this pictured above, cost 4000 won (for ease of math about $4 CND).  In the old hood, first off we didn’t have an open market like this.  Secondly, the prices at the neighborhood grocery store were similar to Homeplus/Emart.  I’d wondered how people were feeding themselves here, now I know.

Home made seaweed (not in my home, some grandma’s home) 2000 won.

King dumplings, 5 for 2000 won!

These things that I can’t remember the name of.  The one on the left are meat and veggie the ones on the right are squash.  That and this -

0.5kg of radish kimchi cost 10,000 won.  Shocking.

We’re still in need of furniture but are hopeful that we can find something decent this weekend.  We looked at a bunch of different places but they were all way too expensive (ie 2.1 million for the couch that I fell in love with).  With the wedding, honeymoon, my masters, and paying off this loan … well, I kinda just gagged thinking about all that so no, the lovely chesterfield will need to wait a while longer and a crappy one will needed for now.

OOoooo~ and did I mention that the house owner is going to renovate our entire bathroom?  He’s a tad slow on getting things organized but sometime next week it’s supposed to take place.  Very exciting.  He also asked us to point out any other problems so that he could get in here to fix them.  We feel really comfortable and happy with the dude, so yay!

OH!  And since I’ve been on a customer service rant as of late let me express my very positive experience with 2 different companies.  The first is our washing machine guy – he remembered us because he did a custom job of hooking it up.  He congratulated us on moving to a larger, nicer apartment.  Ha!  The second was the stinky sewer blocker guy – it didn’t really smell here but every once in a while I caught a whiff and so we asked him to come down.  He too remembered us, congratulated us, but then told us we could move to Bucheon and buy a place for the price that we have our deposit for on this place … yay (?).  Anyway, they were really nice, polite and friendly.  I still highly recommend the stinky sewer guy.  I’ll scan his business card later for you.

So, that’s it.  Cheap veggies, new blinds (oops, forgot to mention that), still hunting for a good dry cleaner as the super old people cut one of my shirts and didn’t tell me , but becoming really comfortable in the new place.  Now we just need to plan a house warming, which I think will be more of an open house in the afternoon, and we’ll be all set (you know, after we sort out the void in the living room and kitchen).

I can smell the difference in air quality between where we live now and where I work (and I can only assume from where we lived before).

There’s a mountain (?) (big hill with trees?) behind our apartment!  We went for a walk on Sunday night and walked up some of it but it was dark and the path diverged and there are those super dangerous trenches (?) that cut across the path (and hubby is a bit clumsy and there’s no way I could carry him out of “the forest” should he twist his ankle).

When we were walking up there I realized that I had never been “in the dark” in Korea; there’s that much light pollution here.

We now live south of the river but the closest grocery store is back north of it.  There are so many street markets here – reminds me of Taiwan.

We also live on the busiest street in the neighborhood

I haven’t heard the dog in 2 days …

There’s a sewing factory next door to us – so old style Korean love songs play starting at 9:00 in the morning and many international people work there (I think the women I saw were Vietnamese but I’ll need to eavesdrop to confirm).  But apparently those ladies don’t get too much dry cleaning done as the label on all of our clothes was “foreigner” — funny for hubby’s shirt to have that label, kind of reinforces for him, the outsider that I am considered, given that he dropped off that set of dry cleaning! — he always tells them my name so that it’s easier for me to get the clothes, drop them off etc).

I really really really need to start studying Korean.  I prank called my dry cleaner last week to see if they were open.  I kind of blame hubby for not even trying to help me and so now realize that he won’t be much help for vocab and grammar structure but is more willing to help with pronunciation.

I’ve started my masters and am already forgetting if I’ve read certain books/articles … yikes.

We get blinds on Friday!  Yay!  Goodbye Korean Air blanket taped to the bedroom window.

We’re getting a marble island built for the kitchen and will go hunt down a dude in the area this weekend.  We’re also going to buy a couch, a tv stand (although we don’t own a tv we have a large computer screen that we watch movies on and a DVD player).  We also need to get new bookcases as the ones we have a super cheap and falling apart — as in I accidentally ripped the top off of one of them, when it was empty, buy picking it up to move it to another room.

Oh!  Chuseok was so relaxing.  The family came over for a lunch that lasted 5 hours.  His mom cooked/reheated some of the things we bought at the market the day before.  We sat around eating and drinking all afternoon and laughing and talking.  It was very family like with no pressure.  Yay!

Well, I think that’s it.  I have a feeling my blog posts will be decreasing due to a lack of time management on my part and all that needs to be done for my masters.

OH!  and I realized that my natural hair colour is the same as one of the t-shirts that I own, which in and of itself isn’t a big deal except that when wearing the shirt in natural sunlight it’s more green than brown.  That’s right, my natural hair colour has a green undertone to it.  It has all my life.  And no I don’t swim in pools all that often.  Time to go see Johnny and get this fixed.

AND! For some reason the bossum (sp?) in this area, is flavoured with cinnamon…. nasty.  I kept thinking that the smell was coming from the bakeries but now I know the truth.  Have you tasted it?  Not a good fusion.

In Taiwan I came to the realization of how important food is to me.  Of course you need to eat but I mean good food.  Food that makes you stop chewing to just savour the flavours and remark on the fantastic combinations and layering within it.

Today has not been a good food day.

Scratch that.  The last 2 weeks have sucked for eating.  I finally finished that business class and things are looking up BUT eating sandwiches everyday for 2 weeks has begun to piss off my taste buds.  AND we’ve been eating a lot of Korean lately which is fine but after a while it all tastes the same to me.  The same ingredients, the same cooking techniques, the same textures.  BUT we did have some of the worst bosam ever; marinated with cinnamon.  Yeah, don’t recommend it.

Then to top off my grumpy “the freaking house is devoid of anything good to eat and if I have one more freaking sandwich I’ll snap” mood, some dumbass bitch on the elevator pressed the close button and I literally got slammed between the 2 doors as I was getting on.  OK.  I can forgive that your insanely impatient and want to get the hell out of the building.  What I refuse to forgive is that you didn’t fucking apologize.  That’s right.  I fucking chased her down the hall and said “Excuse me!  You could at least apologize for slamming the doors on me in the elevator!”  Her reaction was benign indifference as she mumbled out an “Oh, sorry” and walked off with her boyfriend.  I am “immature mad enough” right now to hope that you take one of my classes so that I can fail you.

Right.  And where does that leave me?  Still hungry!!!

Korean friends kept telling us that moving into a new house that we are happy with will bring us good fortune etc.  And, well, we do like the place but the move was not so good.

It started with the hungover Mongolian that was literally tossing packed boxes into the hallway of the old apartment.  We then moved on to “raising of the voices” competition about an expensive piece of furniture (it comes apart into 26 different pieces and scratches quite easily – we had specifically asked all the potential moving companies to take extra care when wrapping and moving it).

When the Mongolian guy was unhooking the washing machine and water started to spray all over the kitchen, I didn’t think I could get any more frustrated.  But then he pulled out a piece of the pipe from under the sink and didn’t replace it – nice.  He started yelling for someone to turn off the water and they did.  But remember that it was Saturday morning around 9:30 and so then we had 2 or 3 people from the building in the apartment grumbling about why the water was off and to check out the havoc.

Next walks in some random dude looking for work — wth?  So we turned him away.

The house owner’s husband came down and I knew he was a bit off his rocker to begin with but when we picked up a hammer and randomly started tapping walls, I raised an eyebrow.  When he went into the bathroom, closed the door, and started the shower … well, I mocked him.

Begin mocking replay now:

“Hmmm, I wonder what it’s like to shower down here?  Well, let’s just see….. Ah, that’s it!”

It was funny at the time due to stress, hunger, and being tired.

We got to the new place and of course it was a mess.  I won’t mention the yelling match that went on when we went to pay for the lack of service that we got (we didn’t have them hook up the washing machine or the air conditioner for fear of damage to them).

UGH.  It’s done.  The place is a mess – from our stuff.  Random silly things that should have been fixed years ago that are driving me crazy already.

BUT it’s so~ big!  for us!  We actually can’t see or hear one another at times!  (Relatively speaking it’s not that big but our last place was tiny).

AND!  It’s so~ bright!  But kind of in a bad was as I now realize that we lived in a cave for the last 17 months and I can’t sleep because of all the light – need blinds/curtains pronto.

But back to the whole luck thing… yeah, haven’t experienced that yet.  On Monday morning I some how managed to spill the kitchen garbage all over the floor – nasty.  After cleaning that up I then tried to take a bus to the 2nd train I need rather than transfer but I got on the wrong one and ended up after about 45 minutes, only about 5 minutes away from where I got on.  Then, in the bathroom, on some of the western toilets they have those … um, what do you call it, plunger like flushers, rather than the handle ones (you know what I mean?) yeah, I managed to pinch my hand – the fleshy bit between your thumb and index finger in that and gave myself a wee blood blister.  All this before 11 am!  AND I started to teach a new class!

And with that I’m done.  I’m tired.  And my new place is a disaster.  I start my masters in a week.  We’re having the in-laws here for Chuseok again this year … but I told hubby that I can’t even think about what to feed myself on a daily basis right now and so we’ll either order in something (ha! that’s how relaxed we are!) or that he’ll cook!  (HA!  that’s how much I love this guy!!!).

(too tired to edit, sorry for any typos … etc).

This is just up the street from me and I walk past it to take the bus.  I’ve watched it grow all summer and am a tad disappointed that I won’t be here to see it drop!

I recently watched the BBC/Disney movie entitled “Earth” .  First off, great movie.  My parents were always keen on us learning about nature and wildlife and so I have seen literally hundreds of hours of nature programs throughout my life – as I still like to watch them now.

The second thing I remembered while watching it was how much control Korea has over it’s physical environment.  The woods here aren’t …. woody… not like a Canadian knows woody to be.  Although I am sure that it could happen, it’s hard to imagine people becoming lost in “the forest” here when there are so many, heavily frequented hiking trails (with soju and beer tents as a half way rewards).  Not to mention the lack of wildlife – but I fully admit that I haven’t gone to areas looking for wildlife….

Actually, now that I think about it, I suppose it’s because my husband isn’t really “into nature” as most people have such little contact with it here.  Sure, they enjoy the outdoors to go snowboarding, hiking, mountain biking but do you see the pattern of controlled areas where they use the land for their needs?  Coming from such a large country as Canada we have the ability to do all that but also to preserve nature and appreciate the simple aspect of baby birds in a nest chirping.  Why that example you ask?  Well, we were in COEX one afternoon taking the escalator and I heard birds chirping and thought “What a strange soothing sound to be playing in such a loud fabricated environment but soothing none the less.”  What did hubby say?  ”What the hell is that annoying sound?”

Right, not a nature lover …. he certainly doesn’t stand in my way for me to be able to enjoy it but I know that he gets a bit bored by it all.  I’m thinking that for our honeymoon, which I decided will be in Malaysia in case I didn’t mention it already (although ironically enough in a completely controlled environment … ha!), that I want to go see some nature… smell some wet soil, ooo and ahh at some wildlife, slap a few bugs, get annoyed at the humidity and then get the hell out of there ….

OK, so I suppose all of this is a moot point since I’ve basically just stated that I’m an “indoor girl” that appreciates nature for a vacation and then desperately needs to be back in the city for culture, food, wine etc…