2-0 South Korea! but 1-0 North Korea...

Nestled between the dumpling-eating giant that is China, the smaller robot-filled island-nation of Japan and below the absurd “North” our humble hero has not for at least a month told you, his army of beautiful readers, what he’s a been doin’. Many notable and noteworthy news items have passed this small peninsula like the rainclouds over Seattle lately. Some of which were probably already noticed by nearly all of his more “up on it” fans.

The biggest would have to be the leading news item of the WORLD other that big black eye that BP gave the Gulf of Mexico. That would be the sinking of a South Korean battleship by (we’ll say presumably) North Korea. Now not to belittle the situation at all but when confronted by South Korea and the majority of the nations of the Earth, North Korea was all like: ‘What? We totally don’t even know about that battleship we destroyed that you’re talking about. You should go ask the US. They probably did it. Yes, you should ask them. We were here just minding our own business and stuff.’ The author thinks this was possibly the most immature reaction to an act of war one could ever come up with—even off the top of their head. Flying false colors went out with the swashbuckling kind of pirates because, well, we have science now and it points fingers squarely at North Korea. I know they don’t have electricity but have they forgotten about science? Galileo and those dudes didn’t even have electricity.

Now it’s time to sing the body electric. You know the part more about me and not just the Kim “Kanye West-sunglasses” Jong Il and his hermit, semi-communist, dark-at-night democratic people’s republic.  Though, they did make it to the World Cup, good for them—seriously.

So for Mr. Buddha’s birthday, which was in May for all the folks not living within semi-Buddhist borders, I plotted a trip down to the island of Anmyeondo for myself and several colleagues. 2 Koreans, 2 Canadians, 2 Americans, 1 Irishman, 1 Australian on a bus that doesn’t have a bathroom and don’t stop, not even for pedestrians that at times seemingly jump in into harm’s way as if they were Superman.

What we saw: One day of great sun and picturesque walks on the beach with new kinds of starfish (sea stars?), millions of hermit crabs (second time I’ve dropped ‘hermit’ in this blog so far), and white sand covering several miles of beach. Then the rain…

…it kept raining all weekend on and off but we still managed to have some fun. The rain wouldn’t have been all bad if there had been more taxis and fewer tourists. We visited a national park which had some amazing pine trees unique to Korea which have an umbrella shape at the top. The down side was that most of it was devoted to cabins for staying the night or well manicured flower gardens and ponds. I managed to lose the group and get lost in the woods for a while which was heaven. Nearly… nearly like hiking but not quite.

Basically the weekend would have pleased Mr. Buddha, equal amounts yin (good) and others yang (bad). 

Moderation is the key to life I suppose. Overall, it was a good trip and well worth getting out of this concrete jungle.  Just too bad that after a solid week of hot, muggy sun this past weekend was quite rainy. I think the US should officially celebrate more religious holidays. Koreans get both Christmas AND Buddha’s birthday off… we need more Buddhists. On the way back the kid on the bus next to me slept on my shoulder (normal here) and I saw more rice patties than Iowa has corn fields.

Umm, there was an election and stuff. Nothing much changed politically though. Seoul’s mayor is the same. The candidates have cheerleaders. Check the videos/photos. They consist of old women who apparently have nothing better to do than learn chants and choreography that usually just add up to repeating the candidates name over and over. They also send little flat bed trucks with sound systems all over, even on back country roads on little islands like Anmyeondo. These trucks again, just blast the candidates name over and over. Sometimes, if you’re lucky one of the trucks will have the candidate making speeches from the back—sometimes while moving! Either way, it was definitely a new way of doing elections for me.

And then the World Cup! My friend David is in South Africa presently and I’m sure is having a great time. He is seeing the South Korea-Argentina game and I am very jealous. I went to World Cup Stadium here to watch the game with no fewer than half the stadium worth of other fans all decked out in Korean red. Others went to the malls or city hall to see the game. I can’t even imagine Americans going together somewhere to watch sports on a screen together—never mind in the rain. Anyway, Greece got their hummus handed to them by Park Ji Sung and the Korean squad. The US got a tie against England, and I was very tired and dehydrated the following day…

Anyoung!