It's been a while. But I've been very busy, so I hope to make up for lack of quality and frequency by giving you quantity tonight. It's 1:20 am and I've had a beer or two. The new downstairs neighbors aren't liking me that well because before they moved in I'd started the Beer Bottle Bowling League (BBBL) in my apartment. But the league hasn't found a new home yet, so we have to finish the season in my apt. Sorry down there. We play Wii rules. 10 rounds and we add a back row each frame. I've been leaving gift baskets with earplugs outside their door.
Last weekend I started out by going to check out a coworker's studio. His name is Paul. And as the small world would have it, he knows many people that I met (and whose couches I crashed on) in Vancouver when I installed the show there. I'd hang out with him more, except he spends all of his spare time in his studio making music for his band in Vancouver, and somehow he's got a gig writing a K-pop (Korea pop) song for a mini-series here. The song is supposed to be one that a 12 year-old band could write and play. Anyway, I can't wait to hear it. So friday night we hung out and I visited his roof and had a crappy beer. But the view was stupendous. You can see my neighborhood on the horizon in the panoramic. the building that is totally lit on far right is directly above my subway stop. It's about 8 miles or so from where I took these pictures.
The next day Mitch and I brewed beer. Actually, Mitch did all the work, I was just a grunt. We're bottling Sunday. We're making an IPA. That will be too hoppy for my tastes but I get to choose the next batch. I'm thinking some sort of ale. We'll see.
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| Sterilized brew pot. |
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| Sterilizing the fermentation chamber |
So there's something unusual about Mitch's shower. I've been wanting to share this with you all for a while now. See if you can see what it is in the picture above before scrolling down. Let me just say that if this place had ever had any kind of building inspector come through, it would have been flagged.
Give up?
Can you see it here? I bet you can.
If you couldn't see it, here's closer shot. Now, I'm not sure what was installed first the shower head or the electrical outlet directly below it, but somebody was not very clear on how electricity and water interbehave with each other. Either that or they'd had one to many beers. And the last time I tried plumbing after having a couple beers I almost flooded the Achtens' basement. That's not a joke either. Just ask them yourselves.
Back to the beer. Here's the malt in a can, under a drawing of Jonathan's.
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| Making the wort |
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One of the 15 alley cats that Mitch feeds in his kitchen was on hand to help and generally keep an eye on things. I think his name is Mousey. But it could be Eekey. I don't really know. Eekey Mousey?
Here's the wort being cooled so the yeast could be added.
The wort was taking its sweet time so Mitch killed some time by playing some online Smurf game that he's totally addicted to. And I made fun of him. To be perfectly honest I'd much rather be addicted to Starcraft (which I'll have you know is no longer a problem for me) than to a Smurf game. But I've always been an elitist that way. To each his own.
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| Adding more sugar to get it up to speed |
After we finished, we went out to play darts. There are dart bars here, I'm totally into it too. I'm starting to get the itch right now in fact. I almost bought some darts, but managed to resist somehow. Mitch killed me in 701 multiple times. Check the score below and guess who was player 1 and who was player 2.
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| Deadeye |
This is a bar snack. It's a combination of Trix and saltless buglesque things. We played til 3 am then I crashed on his couch, and caught the early train to meet Jonathan's Korean mother. I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't know her name, or those of any of her family members. Luckily I didn't really need them because I wasn't really able to talk to her. Her daughter (who's name I also forgot) was translating.
I love riding the trains early on weekends because there are always plenty of exhausted subjects to be photographed. The trains here shut down by 12:30 which makes absolutely no sense, they could operate til 3 and still have plenty of riders. But maybe maintenance takes priority. Who knows what the logic is there.
I was rambling. Shortly after taking this shot of sleeping revelers, the man whose head you see on the far left of the shot seemed to think I was some kind of pervert. (that's not to say that I'm not a pervert, just not the kind that he thinks I am) Because as I was re-framing the shot for another snap he stood directly in front of my camera and stared at me until he got off the train. I was wholly ashamed. It hadn't occurred to me how perverted I must look trying to take stealthy pictures of high school or early college aged girls on a train at 10 in the morning. Lesson learned. I just need to be more aware of my surroundings in the future. But anyone passed out on a train or in a station or the street will always be a target. More about that topic later.
Anyway, On to the subject of this post. When I set up this meeting I thought it was just with Jonathan's Korean sister. And I thought that we were just getting a quick lunch and then I could go home and sleep. I was wrong on many levels. Jonathan's adoptive mother and his brother were all waiting at the station when I got there. No shower, a little bleary, and wearing a Josh Norton original T-shirt, with a huge 6-shooter on it. I got off the train and was greeted with huge hugs and teary eyes by three perfect strangers. It was nice to be missed that much, especially when you're not expecting it. We ate an excellent home cooked Korean meal. Lots of octopus, beef and garlic-fried flat fish was eaten.
As I said before I was expecting to have a bite to eat and then take a nap. I was a bit sleep deprived and overwhelmed. Since it seemed to mean so much to (I really wish I knew her name) I cancelled my afternoon plans and we went for a hike. I think I've commented on the hiking here before, but Jon's mother was unbelievably adorable in her hiking kit.
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| a ring of violets |
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| Natural spring for refilling the water bottles |
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| Grant's tomb |
It was a yellow dust day, so some of my distance shots are hazy. But as our conversation progressed, and I answered lots of questions about Jonathan, and whether we fought as children. We talked about his beard, and living in a tent last summer. Then she pointed at this little hut on the opposite hill face and said "Jonathan's home." I hadn't laughed that hard all day.
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| Don't ask, cause I don't know |
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| Incomplete bridge over the Han |
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| In case of forest fires |
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| Lamp post disguised as a tree. They did a damned good job. |
Now this was a culturally strange thing. It's a series of compressed air nozzles for blowing dirt and dust from your clothes. It's not the concept that I found strange, just the setting. But after seeing it in action I realized how wrong we Americans have been approaching hiking and cleanliness in general. Maybe when the economy is back on an upswing and the national park system is flush with money again they can have these stations installed in all of the major national parks in the U.S.
Spring is in the air.
We probably hiked 7 miles or so, and on the way home we bumped into another temple getting set up for Bud's B-day. It's on Tuesday, and I get the day off!
The tags hanging from the lanterns are prayers.
The white ones are for ancestors and the dead.
Then we got home and had second lunch and I learned how to make my favorite stew.
Ten chang sheegae. (I'm not really sure how that gets romanized so I wrote it phonetically.)
It's spicy bean paste, anchovies, onion, tofu and noodles. MMMMM!
Then they walked me to the bus stop, and I went home. We saw this amazing sunset on the way there. It was amazing for completely different reasons than you'd think. Because of the absence of color.
Oh yeah..... I wish I could end on a sunset, but I couldn't really fit this in to the narrative.
