If you want to lose five pounds fast, go to Korea and tell them you don’t want to eat any animals. We were served something at sushi that would still writhe if poked with a chopstick.
We had Chinese food for lunch, I considered stealing the menu so Beloved Spouse could enjoy the legend of the Frog Congee and Fried Mud Carp Balls and Pig Giblet Soup- alas, I spilled soy sauce on it. I was reading the traveler warnings for Avian Flu, and they pointed out to me that I should avoid eating any raw duck’s blood while in Korea, which was not in my plans to begin with.
Despite keeping me hungry, Seoul is beautiful and ultra-modern. I was annoyed that we missed Hugh Jackman visiting to premiere X-Men 3 at the movie theatre attached to our hotel by a scant five hours. I would have liked to wave at Wolverine in a sea of excited Koreans. We went out to drink and sing karaoke with people from work, (Favorite odd title: “Don’t It Make My Brown Eye Blue?”) and they sang me a song based entirely on the melody and rhythm of Cyndi Lauper’s She-Bop, but the lyrics are not about masturbation at all. They are about rice. That seems to happen a lot here, there is a video by a k-pop star called Jacky about Korea winning the world cup, and in it the pop star is running around playing soccer heroically, and the Superman theme is in it, totally without irony.
In the gym in Korea, they have a gravity machine that lifts you upside down, a wooden-beaded massage machine, and the vibration machines with the belt that you see women using on postcards from the thirties, and I saw people using all of these apparatus. They also let you borrow workout clothes *and shoes*, so the overall effect of being in the gym is a little Gattaca.
I left Korea at 2PM Friday, then traveled backwards around the world and returned to PDX around 12:40 PM on Friday, an hour and twenty minutes before I left. Oh, I could never get used to space travel. Anyway, I am back home, and someday I will no longer suffer from jet-lag.
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