::A Geek in Korea::

I just wanted to note the highlights of my trip.

• I got to spend time at home with my family and just relax.
• We got to see my extended family on multiple occasions.
• I got to hang out with some old college friends, and go to an art museum and musical with my brother.
• We got to go to my grandmother’s amazing cabin. This place lived up to the hype.
• We got to go shopping in Chicago and buy many things unavailable in Korea.
• My entire family got to spend time with my daughter.
• My daughter started walking at my parent’s house.

I had a great time, despite not being online often to give updates as we traveled on a daily basis. I had fun, and I’d rather be out doing something on vacation than writing recaps of my day. I think the time offline was good for me. I need to get away more often. There was a week where I didn’t have a computer to use and had to go strictly mobile for Internet access. I didn’t even listen to every podcast I brought with me because I was too busy with my family. That’s awesome. I was too busy having fun and spending time with people to have something in my ear.

WiFi access sometimes wasn’t free everywhere I thought it should have been, which was annoying, because I didn’t want to pay for data fees while roaming. I’m cheap like that. Luckily nothing pressing came up during my vacation that required me to do anything while away from the computer. I got used to replying to things with, “I am on vacation and I am not available to deal with such an issue at this time,” when people sent me things that they thought were urgent via email. That was really nice.

The biggest negative of the trip was the process of getting from one place to another. It was greatly hindered by the poor airline service. As a final note, they damaged two of my bags. One piece of luggage will need to be thrown away, and they refused to replace it or compensate us in any way. Any other airline would offer a replacement immediately at the airport. I can’t believe poor service of United Airlines. I will never fly with them again. If I have the option in the future, I will avoid checking any luggage when I fly to Chicago. The baggage service at that hub is totally incompetent.

I have three weeks of low intensity teaching, then a month of hellish children’s camps to pay back the hours owed from my vacation. I’m not looking forward to that nightmare, and I’ve put off thinking about anything work related until I show up later today. I really just want to stay on vacation for a few more weeks and enjoy some stress free time. It is so rare. Last semester was great, but the vacation at the end was a great reward for all my hard work. Being able to be free of all my obligations for a few days and just enjoy some free time abroad was a precious luxury I haven’t had in a long while. I’m not anxious to started working when I know my next long vacation trip abroad is months, or more likely years, away.

I might not travel as much as I used to, but I can still return to a house, and a job. Not everyone can say that. My trip to the United States reminded me how lucky I was being able to make a living doing something I enjoy. My family here in Korea, and in the United States, is has their health, and we can be thankful for that being true. I hope the situation doesn’t change, and my family can continue to make plans into the future like we have been since I started living in Korea. Just that alone is worth celebrating, no matter if I have to work hard to see them again or not

Flying down a dedicated public transportation lane, blogging on a high speed data connection,watching a satellite live feed of the World Cup. AKA Back in Korea. Long, terrible flight over.

Whirlwind shopping. Lots of packed bags. Really tired. Can’t wait for the hotel room.

Glow and I saw a group of Amish people at the store nearby. There is a nearby community with members that ride together to get items.

We had visitors to the cabin.

We had a GPS assisted drive up to my grandma’s exclusive and ridiculously nice “cabin”. I was the navigation device operator while my parents drove one of the two vehicles needed to transport everybody and everything up to the destination. My dad and I even bonded over the latest Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me episode.

At the cabin, we ate like we are on vacation, drank like we are on vacation, and napped as aggressively as possible while still finding the time to chat and have fun.

It was a perfect day spent on vacation.

We’re going on a vacation during our vacation. Having actual “paid vacation days” during my school year is awesome. 

My family will be setting off for a trip to a remote cabin near a lake for a few days to relax and spend quality time together, then we will be off to Chicago to do some sightseeing, some shopping, and then catch our flight out of the United States to go back to South Korea once more. We’ve acquired enough stuff so far to fill all the bag’s we arrived with, along with another extra large bag we’ve gotten along the way. We’ve still got our upscale shopping to do as well. On the way out of the airport it’s going to be difficult to haul all our stuff home. (YAY!)

I haven’t been to the cabin we are visiting in over 23+ years. I only remember the visit vaguely. The entire family keeps talking about how awesome it is since it got remodeled, so I hope it lives up to the hype. We’ve only got a couple days in Chicago, and a tight schedule to keep. I hope we all have fun and we check those last few items off our shopping lists.

My brother took me to the Shepard Fairey, of the iconic “Andre the Giant has a Posse” and “Obama HOPE” poster exhibit at the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center. I can confidently say that Shepard Fairey’s art was on my radar before most people. I remember running into the “Andre the Giant has a Posse” stickers/meme in the wild and becoming fascinated with the “Obey Giant” propaganda close to ten years ago. I didn’t know he had been around for such a long time. I was pointing it out the meme to my brother when we would see it in Europe.

I know Shepard Fairey has his detractors, but he has produced some iconic images and his viral marketing awareness intrigues me. The exhibit stated that people that see the art will cling to it and try to purchase it to show they are “in the know”. I’ve been “in the know” for 10 years, and I still I walked out with some stickers and an overpriced T-Shirt. Even while reading some of the hyper-aware “This is a meme I am spreading and you know it and still love it” sorts of displays, I was a victim of culture jamming. Despite being a “victim”, I enjoyed the exhibit and plan to spread the meme to others.

We met up with one of my college friends and after the art museum headed to a Scottish restaurant. This is a bit of cuisine I’ve never had, save for a single dish in Korea. I introduced them to a Scotch Egg, which a Korean friend once made for me by wrapping bacon around a quail egg and deep frying it in batter. Yeah, instant heart burn. The Scotch Egg at the pub was a fried meatloaf around an egg, served on fried noodles and a bed of lettuce. We split it three ways and still ended up with approximately 10x times the recommended sodium allowance for the week. When I asked for the “best plan of attack regarding the fried noodles”, the waitress stated that most people simply give up and don’t try to eat them. HAH! Undaunted, we finished not only the fried noodles, but also the entire set of offerings in their Gastroburger line. I’ve had better burgers in Korea.

Anyway, we listened to some Jazz, got harassed by a guy who wanted to dance with Ellen that I assume was a viral marketing prank, and came home early. Now I have to decide what to do with all my sweet new stickers.

Every vacation spent with my folks at home will eventually reach the point where I will be forced to “volunteer” with some work they need done. Usually it is something physical and takes place in either the house, or our rural farm. We’ve got lots of tasks to do to keep the place in working order, so when I was growing up there would be a day a week spent doing work on the farm before we could relax and enjoy swimming or hiking. Even on my vacation this tradition has continued. This week we are going to spend time on the farm, so we went there and got some of the mowing done.

I got put on weeding the pond dam, which meant I had to use the weed eating device. This was often the case when I was younger. I used to be able to just put on some safety goggles, start up the thing and get to work. That’s all they required before doing dangerous work with power tools. It’s not that we were dangerous, but safety sometimes was second to getting a job done when pressed for time. Luckily I avoided major injury my childhood.

Today my dad actually thought to bring some safety equipment along for a change. Ear protection! A face guard! Heavy gloves! It was intolerably hot to wear, but prevented me from losing an eye, or having something permanently embedded in my face on multiple occasions. I was impressed that my dad had the right tools, along with the right safety equipment for once. It took three tanks of gas to do a good job. By the end, my back was sore and my hands had the pins & needles feeling of falling asleep. I used to hate this job when I had to do it for work, but to help out the family it wasn’t so bad. My hands hurt, and I sweat a lot, but at least I got it done on a nicer day. Had the weather been worse I would have been miserable.

Eventually my wife, daughter, and grandmother showed up with my mother, so we got a chance to relax and talk after all the work was done. It was clear they spent the last four years working hard to improve this place, and it was great to see the results. My dad had a novel idea. He had picked up a few tree saplings and wanted to give my daughter, Glow, her own tree. That way when she returns to the farm, she’ll be able to mark her height. Some day, her tree will give shade to people that visit the farm. I thought that was a really awesome tradition. I don’t have a tree for myself at the farm, but if I did it would have been really cool to watch it grow.

Anyway, we had a nice long talk about rural concerns. Downed trees. The local fried chicken festival, and how it lead to all the giant stone chickens on Main Street in town. How the weather has been. All of it was low key, relaxed, inconsequential Americana. AKA: BORING SHIT. Coming from a news hungry, well informed, Internet connected office to a small town where the biggest news has been the burning of the local “Touchdown Jesus” (Locals call it “Big Butter Jesus” too) statue has been a hot topic, requires quite a bit of patience on my part.

People just consume media differently here. If you were so inclined, you could spend an entire day learning about and watching nothing but sports news. When commenting about current events, people will say, “Oh, how do you know that? I didn’t hear THAT on the television,” when I make an informed comment. You actually have to preface things with, “I read on the Internet about X topic for Y months for Z reasons, and I know these things to be factually true.” It isn’t assumed that people know about “The Google” here when you cite something you’ve read in another news paper.

My folks still site the local newspaper as a definitive source for information. Talk radio on the ride home today had an entire HOUR conversation devoted to whether people working to sell beer at baseball games should get tipped. They took calls and had arguments for an HOUR. People were losing their shit over it, and the only other thing discussed was “Weather and Traffic on the tens!” I get that local radio is like a cork tamping down the anger of people without another source to vent their frustrations with their life, but seriously? An hour? I’m sure there is something else worth talking about of a bit more heft. Perhaps it would require people to actually research an opinion on a topic, but I (perhaps naively) think that is in the grasp of most people.

When Wikipedia finally hits this place and they discover the world at large has interesting things going on, it’s going to be HUGE.

William Gibson describes jet lag as “the time it takes for your soul to catch up to where you are” in the book “Pattern Recognition.” Pattern Recognition is the worst book by William Gibson I’ve ever read by a wide margin, bit I do have jet lag. My sleep has been unusual for the past few days. I get food cravings in the middle of the night. I eat enormous breakfast meals when I would usually be having dinner in Korea, and my snacking doesn’t really follow normal times here. I sleep from the early evening to the middle of the night, get up and watch stuff on the DVR, then wait for people to get out of bed. Glow sleeps better than I do. I have urges to nap after 5pm. It’s weird.

My parents kept their promise to keep us busy. We went to see a few sights as a family and had a huge meal. I can’t get over the sodium and sugar content of every single meal I eat. My portion sizes have already been thrown for a loop, but I’m trying to watch all my excessive consumption. I find putting the work into preparing my own meals keeps me mindful of how much I eat, and where to draw the line. So much of the food in my parent’s house is easy-prep, or pre-cooked meals. The basic ingredients of food have been replaced with sets of food that let you cook exactly what is in the box easily. I can still put together a wicked sandwich from scratch, but my enthusiasm for yet another sandwich tends to run thin after a few days.

I’m not at the “missing Korean food” phase, yet, but I am certainly no longer a fan of processed or fast food in the States. Most of the commercials I see have me scratching my head. The worst product I’ve encountered so far is in a grocery store. They sold individually wrapped, pre-sliced apples pieces at a substantial markup. The fact that there is a market for people too dumb to use a knife that want to eat apples just leaves me shaking my head.

There are other annoyances too. My parents do not consume media the same way I do. I need a WiFi signal to function at full capacity, or at least a fast data pipe to push podcasts to my ears. My parents still have a dead-tree newspaper delivery service and listen to AM radio. They primarily watch cable news to stay informed. (Yes, it leads to lots of annoying problems.) I’m so busy with activities and playing with my daughter, I’ve had to drop the majority of my “swallow all the firehose” style RSS news consumption.

I’m even a day or two behind on my podcasts because there has been a lot going on. That’s a welcome change. I’ll always have plenty to listen to when I get back. Tomorrow I am going to be kidnapped and taken to a rural location and forced into manual labor. (It’s the WORST! It happens EVERY TIME I visit my family!) This farm has no electricity at all! I’ll certainly be listening to something while I ride in the car, and while they have me doing tedious things like cutting grass or hauling water. I have a short tolerance for yard work.

I’m trying to stay positive, despite a few headaches from the airline and the family. (See tweets for more frequent snark.)

I should thank Running with Chopsticks for the mention about my musical tastes though. That got me through the day.