Blog Thoughts

Where did the name Blog come from?
Bull frog on a log?

God is not a person
But is not less than a person.

Death is life's way
of telling us
to slow down.

"Life is sweet,
death is mystery,
It's age we dread."

Being cold won't make me sick.
Thinking, "Being cold will make me sick!" might though.

I just saw a client
Navajo man
from Shiprock AZ
who is a Morman,
a Blackhawk Helicopter pilot
who saw that I look like
Scott Glenn
his favorite actor
When I told him
we are cousins
and happened to
grow up
in the same town
He jumped up
from his chair
big smile on his face
and shook my hand
even though
Scott Glenn
Wouldn't know
Who the hell I am.
Life is funny that way.

In the moment
Everything meets
and balances
a picture of this
might look like
a star sometimes.
Other times
an asshole.

Love is Is
Lonliness is isn't.
Truth is everything that is,
Lies are everything that isn't.

"The pock - pock from the squash court
on the other side of the wall
punctuated the sentences
like a rain of periods
and the rattling
of the door-bar
was a semicolon."

Of all the forces
in the universe
the hardest
to overcome
is the force
of habit.

Youi never know
how the day
will turn out
or really
how it did
What you can know
Is you'll never know
And it's best
just to be
a kid.

I Wan to Make a Correction

Wan
is the basic 
currency of Korea.
Not yen as earlier misstated.
Yen is Japan's currency.
At least I think so.
Just as I think I'm in Korea.
South Korea to be exact.
Okay, the Republic of...

I was starting to feel embarrassed about any confusion I may have caused.
Well, about looking like an ignorant schmuck.
So I decided to set the record straight.

Now that's done I'm merely embarrassed with honor.

The name Wan is comical to me because it brings to mind a play on words which is completely out of context with anything having to do with Korea.
It reminds me of another play on words, in this case involving the Spanish name Juan. 

It reminds me of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, a trio of underground comic strip characters created by the U.S. artist Gilbert Shelton. One of the comic books which he created was entitled, Mexican Odyssey. 

In this story, the three brothers and their hippie chicks come into possession of a large amount of cocaine. This leads to a road trip (pun intended) in which their euphoric state leads them to Mexico where they purchased a beautiful Swiss Chalet-style house, high (not intended) among lovely wooded hills overlooking a gushing crystal creek.

Until they came down from the coke rush several days later.

Then they discover that the house is a dilapidated a-frame among ordinary dry scrub covered hills beside an empty arroyo full of old tires.

This good natured parody of a cocaine trip and the pleasant and often naive exploration of a kinder and more peaceful way that characterized the early hippy times of some of us, was funny as hell to me. I think it was, as the saying goes, right on, 
man. 

The humor also manages to make a wry comment on the chemical limits of euphoric sustainability when it comes to so-called normal reality that became clearer and more pronounced as rock n' roll morphed into rock, acid rock, and most sinister of all, disco.

Along the way, they encounter a couple of characters  who’s names have stuck with me over the years. I'm smiling now both at the names, the characters, and the story itself, at least as much as I can recall this far down the road.

Also, from the unlikeliness of them showing up at this particular moment i.e. as I'm lying in bed just waking up watching my ever bizarre mind dramatize a small mistake into an embarrassing blunder needing public correction and forgiveness.
Wan, Gar. Not Yen! 
What were you thinking?
Yikes! that's embarrassing.

Yikes! is making an exclamatory comeback, by the way.

Well, so in what is perhaps my survival instinct arising and a budding willingness to accept my own short comings as a human being, my mind says, "Wan... Sounds like Juan. As in, Don Long Juan." (Ha, ha. Get it?)
"General Douglas Disaster."
Furry Freak Brothers, 
Mexican Odyssey.


I hear myself think, "These are a kind of comic stunt double for Castaneda’s benefactor Don Juan, and a great irreverent caricature  
of the pretty theatrical General, Douglas MacArthur."
That's pretty good. 
Go write that down.


I realize I'm actually enjoying watching this little odyssey my brain is on and so I decide to share.
Lucky you.


Anyway, just a few minutes ago I googled (not capitalized because it's become synonymous with "searching the internet" as "kleenex" is with tissue)The Furry Freak Brothers. I found not one reference to them...

There was/is a whole bunch!  

Of course.
I'm not the only one with a weird sense of humor.
Just like I found it possible to get all the TAXI episodes,
And Arrested Development episodes,
And Firefly, and 
Cheers, etc.
Voila, et. tu. 
Furry Freak Brothers. 

I may not be sophisticated but I know what makes me laugh.
I'm going to explore my Freak Brother options as soon as I post this.
And I'm excited because I fully expect to obtain the whole collection, not to mention it would be a great (hint) Christmas or (hint) birthday present (end hint).

So, I have a yen to stop now.
I won to get surfing before 
I succumb to further punditry.

What's The Point?

I've been taking a writing class here on post.

It seems now that that's happened, I can't seem to just write. 

Instead, I try to write. Like the old SNL skit about Acting! I've taken to writing in a Word document so I can rework what I write and then cut and paste it into this blog. 

When it's perfect, don't you know.

As if that's going to happen.

What ends up happening is that I just never get it from there to here.

Thus the title of this entry.

So, I've decided to actually do here what we did last class:

Stream of thought - or - Free writing.

Which is what I mostly end up doing when I don't think too much.

And which is much more fun for me,

maybe even to whoever might take the time to read this.

I want to put down here some bits and pieces of stuff which I've been thinking about, experiencing, observing. What's the point?

I guess just to exercise some urge within me to do so.

Maybe the class clown factor.

I break this up like I'm doing because I tend on paper to do what I tend to do in conversations, i.e. run on until you and I are both lost and probably confused, not to mention exhausted. 

Awhile ago, I was walking back to the hotel where I am housed, Humphrey Lodge it's called. It is just dusk, the sun was doing that really big round orange-red thing just above the horizon. temperature and air like early Fall anywhere where Fall comes - warm with a hint of coolness. The streets were pretty much devoid of traffic, no one walking my way or the other way. Walking was feeling good after being inside reading, writing, talking to people on Skype, on this Sunday afternoon. I felt peaceful and it WAS peaceful. No planes flying over head, no loud traffic noise from Pyeongtaek, the city surrounding this post. To highlight the quiet mood, a dove started cooing and flew off over head from somewhere. I thought how strange to be here in the middle of a military base located in a country both of which exist because of the insanity of war.

I felt like I never wanted to turn on the TV again or listen to another word of political bullshit, or have to judge another person's point of view as bullshit, or to try to make my point of view theirs, or the right one, etc. 

I get all my news from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report because there is more likelihood that they'll at least give me something to laugh about and they even occasionally present both sides of whatever their point of view is, which I'm not sure i actully know or that they do either.

So, just after the dove flew over, a magpie flew up from the lawn I was passing, you know, the one by the Super Gym I think I've mentioned somewhere before. What the dove did for auditorally, the Magpie did visually, i.e. heightened the feeling of pleasure and absurdity  in the paradoxical experience i was having. Magpies are just so cool looking!

And, at that moment, I noticed the name of the Commander of some Battalion or Brigade (a little foggy still on the Army contractions) posted at the gate of a wire fenced enclosure filled with "Duce and a half" trucks, generators, etc.: Maj.Woo N. Joo. Really. Korean? Porto Rican? Vietnamese? I've encountered all of these in the Army here. The Vietnamese chaplain who I met my first day here was raised in the US, looks more like a Buddhist monk than Buddha, and puts out a staunchly Christian view of life, near as I can tell. "What a world!"

There's a section of this post called Sentry Viallage. Somehow that just sounds cute, like one might find them all living standing up in little phone booth-like houses.

The Air Force has bases, the Army/Marines have posts, the Navy has bases and ports, and the National Guard and Reserves have weekends away from home at these other places, unless they happen to do four or five deployments in Iraq or Afghanistan. 

Here's a thought I had: Truth is everything that is, lies are everything that isn't.

I went bungee jumping yesterday.

I think I have always felt curious about how it would feel

to free-fall. Standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, e.g. or some other high place. The idea of the sudden stop at the bottom has been something of a hindrance to exploring this possibility. The idea of bungee jumping came to my awareness about twenty years ago. One time there was an opportunity to do it in Flagstaff but I didn’t take it.

When I became aware of the opportunity here, in Korea, it seemed a bizarre  thing to do vs. say going to see a Buddhist temple or the DMZ or the islands in the China Sea.So, naturally, I took notice and signed up for the trip (offered by Army Outdoor Recreation who's motto might be, "When war isn't enough!")

So much for my cultural motivation.

There were six of us, five young soldiers and me. In the old WWII movies I would have been the one they called “Gramps,” played by Ernest Borgnine.

On the trip there and back, I sat beside a young twenty year old warrior from PA. I don’t think I ever looked that young. He was from near Valley Forge. His military plan was to go “Airborn” because it would be easier to get a deployment (Afghanistan or Iraq) which he wanted to legitimize himself as a soldier was my impression.  After that,  he would get into the reserves, go to college, get a degree, come back in with a commission and retire from the military twenty years down the road.

My military plan was to survive basic training, A.I.T., Vietnam, and figure out what I would do in “the world” when I got back to CONUS (military speak for Continental United States).

He was going bungee jumping because he said he was afraid of heights and wanted to confront this fear before going airborn, i.e. jumping out of airplanes as one of his military qualifications.

I still don’t have a plan by comparison. So it was easy to tell him that I admired him for having a plan and the willingness to step into his fear in order to overcome such an obvious and significant obstacle.

Our conversation ranged over the typical topics, , e.g. comparing notes as to places we’d been in PA, and the atypical, e.g. agreeing on how surprisingly different life turns out from what we imagined when we were 18 (I realize it is my prejudice the “kids these days” don’t think deeper than text entries. Had to realign yet another prejudice/generalization.

Of course, it took me 66 years to arrive at this and him 20.

I guess things speeding up in the world is a good thing too.

He and I both wanted to go first, pretty much for the same reason. Too much waiting and thinking seemed not to be the friend of courage.

We flipped for it and he won.

However, LIFE had another coin and when we got to the top of the tower we were to jump from, they made him go last (the other five of us could be accommodated with one bungee cord, he needed another).

What was it like to step to the edge of a two hundred foot drop?

I felt a moment of incredulity that I was going to step off,

A moment of fear,

And an inner shrug that felt like I’d already done the hard part getting there; now I could trust the process. They weren’t going to be killing off the customers, after all.

The Korean man who was standing just behind me, coaching me to not hold on, began counting down from 5, during which time, time seemed to change to something more like a state of something else, one in which I was simultaneously aware of the physical reality of looking down 200 ft, and the existential reality that every risk I’d ever taken felt just like this and was no more or less dangerous.

Hesitation – countdown: 5…4…3…2…1…step off

Instantly, it was total exhilaration -

over in the next instant.

The moment of stepping off into space, too late to step back, this was IT!

What I had really come for without knowing it.

The falling seemed to end before I could really comprehend it.

Bouncing and springing up and down which followed was both fun and physically uncomfortable (lots of pressure as gravity forced blood from my feet into my head, the ankle straps tightening.)

Then the adrenaline shaking sense of satisfaction and the physical relief of resting as I was lowered into the raft floating in the pool below the jump.

There was disappointment too, that the experience of free-fall had not been long enough.

Over the next few minutes while I looked up at the next of our group getting ready to jump, another emerged as well: I felt proud. Good enough for me. By the end of the trip, they stopped calling me sir, so long Gary worked.

By the way, I haven't had much to say about all the beauty I've observed in Korea because I haven't really observed much. I have said in the past that with attention, I can find much that is beautiful in any three cubic meters I'm observing. I admit to having been out of integrity with that notion. I'm not sure why, other than it may be that I just can't yet get a hold of the energy of this country and see it through Korean eyes. Frankly, I've been too preoccupied with overcoming jet lag and getting to know the job here to really have energy to care, let alone explore Korean society.

This trip took us out into Appalachian-like mountains and the facility was located above a large lake nestled among these hills. The soldier from PA and I agreed it was very reminiscent of where we grew up. He mentioned the Poconos and I thought about the Delaware Water Gap and Lake Wallenpaupack. Even the two-lane roads winding along the contours of the mountain above the lake were like those back East. I felt grateful to be in theses surroundings, like a vacation for my eyes and a touch of familiar beauty.

Confession: the bungee jumping part was cut and pasted. Oh, well...

I think I've come to a truth for me: I don't resonate with some cultures and others I do. That sounds so, "well duh" to me. But, I've been feeling remiss in my duty to stay open to all possibilities. 

This seems to go beyond just not knowing the language or understanding a different view of life. That may be true and there also seems to be something more to it. What that may be maybe I'll come to see. More may be revealed. For now, what I do know is I am glad that I feel at home on this island in the middle of a foreign place. I have enough energy for that. It's enough for now. I'll let you know.

Waiting For R.L. to Show

I woke up noticing how I am in the waiting mode.

I can tell from the anxious feeling that is located 

just behind my breast bone 

and at the back of my neck.

Waiting for Real Life to show up.

Waiting for this rotation to be over.

Waiting to find out what’s next.

This isn’t the right moment.

This isn’t the way I should be waking up.

This isn’t the time I should be having.

This isn’t the best I can do.

But just now, as I was thinking about this,

I noticed that if I drop the judgements,

If I say to myself,

Everything not only changes,

Has changed,

Is at this moment in the process of changing,

I notice that I’m not anxious any more.

I notice that I’m breathing again,

I notice that I’m just in a moment that

By the time I notice,

has passed.

And I’ve survived again.

I’ve gotten up and come over here,

And I’ve started flowing with what is

instead of what isn’t.

I notice I feel glad now.

I notice I’m not waiting.

I notice I’m not judging this.

I notice I’m just talking out loud

To you and to me….

And to no one and to everyone

And it requires no one and everyone to do this

Because,

Well, nothing actually is required here.

It’s just that no matter what you are doing or feeling

At this moment…

You and I are in the same moment 

and this doesn’t require anything of us

Except to notice.

Hello out there.

Hello in here.

I feel us rubbing shoulders

Holding hands

Gazing out at what we’ve created

Looking into one another

Smiling,

Breathing,

Smiling.

Sufficient unto this moment is this moment.

I am I am.

Loving you as myself is loving our shared moment.

And the shared life

Which is the same.

I read these words, these symbols

And smile at how many it takes

To express something so

Expressly simple as

Being here

Now.

:-)

DiceLife Korea

Well, hello boys and girls.

Today, we are going to take a virtual dice trip.

I have written down six topics and/or instructions on my hotel stationary with the logo Army Lodging at the top.

I don’t think it means I’m in a barracks.

If so, it’s my kind of army.

I just realized that my brain is pretty much always on it’s own dice trip and that what I call “consciousness” is those moments when I realize that I can actually pick up the die and throw it again if I don’t like the direction I’m heading.

I can also change the options.

I can also choose not to roll at all.

That the die, no matter what, isn’t controlling any of this without my cooperation.

That when I get into the space of trusting this process I feel relieved and curious, rather than worried and anxious.

This is meditation with a sense of humor.

Here are the options for today that I’m just now making up: (note: above I said that I had already made them up. That was a lie, in the sense that I wasn’t telling you the truth. It was, however, what led me to realize that I actually wanted to see where this line of thought would go. Thus the following list):

1. Eat breakfast and then roll again.
2. Go read my book and forget about this.
3. Share a secret, i.e. something that I really haven’t ever told.
4. Call someone on Skype out of the blue.
5. Go Walk for an Hour and then see if I want to continue to roll.
6. Go buy those sneakers I’ve had my eye on.

 So, now I will go get the die which I always carry with me.

Ooops! My colleague MFLC just called about our pay being screwed up.

Turns out she is the die of the moment and life IS a dice trip anyway.

And I choose to honor my dedicated commitment to getting paid!

Back later, die willing.

HOW DO YOU THINK LIKE A HUMAN?

 Wanted to acknowledge at the outset that before I ever got to S. Korea and Camp Humphreys, my daughter Lauren found the  official web site for this place.

Here it is now: http://humphreys.korea.army.mil/

I’m passing it on because, thanks to Lauren, next to this site, my blog is starting to look like great literature. 

Or, not.

In fairness, I should say that I haven’t actually spent much time browsing the site because, well, I’m doing it non-virtually, as it were.

Like, I’m here, man.

Far off!

Anyway, I forget that EVERYTHING, EVERYBODY, and EVERY PLACE is on the internet. Just the other day I found out how to make all the programs that were now being encrypted in Korean, including Google I might add, go back to good old English, and not just that, but American English, not that British version either.

I typed the question, “how do I get my programs…etc.”, and guessed at the “enter” button which was now designated in Korean.

Miraculously, I got onto some site which was a chat about other people having the same issue in other non-English speaking places like Holland and Amsterdam and the Bronx. Someone had the “fix”.

Here it is should this ever happen to your computer:

• Go to www.blogger.com/language.gt
• Click on Settings (third option from the left, in case they are written in the foreign language).
• Click on Formatting (6^th option down)
• Click on the desired language.
• Click on apply.
• Read: Pray, Burp, Fart (the book).

Somehow, this not only fixed BlogSpot but Google as well.

Or else I figured that out separately and am getting confused again which happens any time I get more than one or two clicks away from Start.

 I wonder if I try http://www. findGarysmemory.huh.what.gone, I might just discover a whole lifetime that I spent doing something or other which, until now, only my sister(s) and children remember,

far better than I. 

Maybe it would be like the www version of the old TV Show, This Is Your Life.  As it is, my current show is on only sporadically and it’s often unclear who’s memories I’m actually having.

It’s as if I was channeling a past life and got someone with Alzheimer’s?

The title for today’s entry is part of a quote from a book I was reading by Terry Pratchett, entitled, Only You Can Save Mankind.

It’s about kids playing a computer game and find that the game is really happening to some real aliens when one of the kids begins to get messages from the enemy and then begins to enter into the game, and sees it through the aliens’ eyes, through his dreams.

It was written back during the “first” Gulf War when the nightly news was showing all the game-like footage of smart bombs being dropped down the chimneys of the enemy of the time.

It was still pretty new, this often real-time presentation flickering across the screens from CNN, et. al.

Anyway, at one point, the nerdy hero kid who has been contacted by the aliens, is asked by the woman alien in charge of the mother ship,

“How do you think like a human?” Meaning, how can I understand human thinking.

The kid’s response, “Go into madness first, probably, and then out the other side.”

See, the alien has surrendered her entire fleet to him but he can’t get the other game players to stop shooting them anyhow.

So, later, he says to the brilliant uppity nerdy girl who gets pulled into the drama through messages on her computer, commenting on how confusing and crazy feeling it is to see things from the enemy’s side, from inside their reality (i.e. being the objects of a game in which they are merely targets),

“See, that’s what I mean. Games look real. Real things look like games. And…and…it all kind of runs together in my head.”

Nerdy girl responds, “That’s not crazy, that’s shamanism.”

She adds a little later, “There was an African tribe that I read about who’s closest word for enemy meant “a friend we haven’t met yet.”

I find I appreciate and am tickled by finding unexpected gems for thought lying around in unexpected places.  They usually turn out to be related to and reflective of current aspects of my life that are paradoxical or perplexing in nature.  And I can’t tell if these gems are all around all the time and I’m just noticing them now because of what I’m thinking about. Or, am I just reading meaning into things that really don’t have anything to do with anything.

Perplexing and paradoxical and amusing.  Being the mental health helper on a military base in a foreign country that, in my childhood, was associated with the image of an evil giant (Joseph Stalin) floating above a huge “Iron Curtain” somehow suspended across the sky just waiting to engulf and enslave everyone good in the world.

It would be like the scary movie The Manchurian Candidate that came out in the fifties (I think) where the evil North Koreans tortured people (or was it the Chinese egged on by the Russians, or…never mind) and did something to their brains with water called “brain washing”, etc.  

Something that the good guys would never think of doing.

Childhood in the early 50’s started from there and ended up under a desk in the classroom during Atomic Bomb attack practice.

I rest my case.

The one about why we turned out to be a little jumpy from time to time about communism, Koreans, Russians, and the under-side of desks.

It has seemed odd to me that over here in Korea and Vietnam, we determined that the baddies were in the north and the good guys lived in the south. The arbitrary line kinda like the  magical line in airplanes and restaurants that kept the cigarette smoke from drifting into the non-smoking areas.

I’ve wondered in past about why the south side of many cities (thinking here, for example,  of South Philly, South Side Chicago) are the bad part of town – Bad, bad, Leroy Brown.

Oh, yeah. And that tribe mentioned above.

They were attacked by a neighbors who killed and ate many of the tribe before they could get to know them.

The rest eventually were captured and sold into slavery.

Talk about paradoxical.

I didn’t see that one coming either!

That’s just wrong!

Question for god: What the…?!?

Now for something completely different, e.g. hopeful: http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex.html

Peaceful Co-existence of Nature and People in Pyeongtaek

Pyenogtaek is the city within which Camp Humphreys is located.

I like their motto (see Title above).

Seems to me somewhat paradoxical given that I’m living on a military base.

I get to see the city bird out my window and it is still exotic to me: the White Heron.

Again paradoxical in that they are ambling and pecking around in the grass on top of the bunker into which we will flee should the peaceful part of the co-existence  suddenly evaporate.

I haven’t seen the city flower, the pear blossom as of yet, except in the nice picture I'm looking at at the moment.

Wrong time of year for that.

The city tree, the pine (not sure what kind), is in evidence here and there on the base but not so much in the parts of the city that I’ve actually been in so far, which is hardly any place at all.

Respectively, the symbolism is “peaceful human dignity” within the face of a “clean and charming image” fulfilling the “potential of Pyeongtaek.”

There’s also a city mark, i.e. logo, which I don’t know how to reproduce here but is a kind of yin-yang swoop above a three pronged upside down Nike-like swoop merging into one.   

Say, that sounds better than it looks!

It symbolizes the cities “Transformation into one the best (sic) cities in the world, backed by the citizens’ united power and hope.”

It’s early morning, I’ve only had a half cup of coffee, and so the immature side of me  wonders who it is that writes this stuff and who in the city, e.g. exactly which citizens, even think about let alone believe that they personally or even collectively feel powerfully and hopefully responsible for making this into one of the best cities in the world.

Have you ever heard of this city?

It’s just like, say,  down town any-city in the U.S., only with a few more Chinese restaurants.

But, it’s not as if people living in the “Big Apple” or “New Orleans”, etc., don’t like to crow about living in one of the “best” cities in the world.

For example,I was told not long ago, that Glenview, IL, and more specifically, The Park within that city, was the most beautiful place on Earth.

That’s a quote.

It seems to be quite human this desire to feel as though where I live contributes to my sense of belonging and importance, and visa versa.

Well, that sounds nice, actually.

Being human and feeling pride and appreciation.

Okay, i'm feeling better now.

This IS one of the best cities in the world.

Everyone i've met has been friendly and helpful.

I don't know what my little problem is this morning.

Could it be...........SATAN!?!?

And I’m down with the idea, if that is still a functioning phrase, to see wherever happens to be in this moment, really present, and notice there is much beauty to be found within any three square meters. 

It’s a matter of perspective.

And sometimes the right medication.

Well, I admit that I haven’t exactly seen much of the city to date but on my first two excursions out to get something to eat with the other MFLC’s, we ate at a place serving “Turkish” food and one serving “Brazilian” food.

I didn’t see any obviously advertising Korean food. 

Maybe they all went home.

Apparently, the Golden Arches merged with BK and the Starbucks River Goddess to give the symbolism of the G.I. desire for the familiar “American” nutrients available in the great cities back home.

Also, the Koreans like them this stuff too.

Me too, particularly when I’m too lazy to cook and want the feel-good rush so reminiscent of  my care-free teen years when the mouthwatering taste of  a Hot Shoppes burger (it's an East Coast thing predating McFoodlike Substances), fries and a Coke could momentarily distract me from the pervasive angst and depression of caring freely as a teen.

Mostly it appears that S. Koreans are pretty much like the rest of us and just hope they have a job and a place to live come the start of a day.

There is also a city Mascot which is a cartoon figure of an ocean freighter with a face on it's  bow, a la The little Engine Who Could, heading out of the drawing on the map towards the viewer and is “expressed in the shape of Pyeongtaek Port and Sechaedaegyo Bridge (drawn in the background, looking quite beautifully modern) utilizing the initials P and T of Pyeongtaek,” placed just below the bow like this: P.T. Quite clever.

I’ve learned all this from a handy little pocket-size folder that opens up into a tourist sized map and even has magnets which hold the cover together assuming that one can manage to fold the thing back the way it came, which never happens. 

It shows a whole map-full of points of interest. Such highlights as Sosbeol Reports Town, Monument for Enforcement of Uniform Land Tax Law, Pyeongtaek Farmers' Music Training Center, The Seated Stone Vairocana Buddha of Simboksa Temple, and the Paengseong-eup Guesthouse where, presumably one might belly-eup to the bar for local drink made from distilled grape juice. There are some notable intersections also, highlighted in yellow. It's not clear if that's so you can easily find them or be sure to avoid them.

I have no idea.

Camp Humphreys is not on the map. 

Maybe there's a message here.

Maybe not.

  

They have major four-lane roads marked like U.S. interstates.

Guess what! I’m still living just off Interstate 40.

Since Korea is pretty much the same latitude as the U.S. it may be that the road was designated the same as if I-40 were extended across the Pacific.

Anyone with a globe want to check that out and get back to me?

I started out this morning to share with you my adventures in learning how to use public transportation in Korea.

There weren’t any.

Adventures, that is.

We just did the hard and exciting work of getting on and off public transportation.

A very nice Korean woman has a job working with the Army Community Service (where the MFLC office and Point of Contact person is) taking people new to Humphreys out into the world and giving them the skills to go further than one square block from the base. 

She does this over the course of several weekends, i.e., on five different little jaunts on Saturday, to various places of interest. It includes getting a credit card that allows one to get on and off public transportation without cash and costs less than paying cash, which Is Yen, and which only the Italians have bigger numbers for, e.g. 23000 yen = one 16oz. Koke.

Really, almost $23. 

Not the koke.

I cleverly divide the number by ten and then freak out anyway the moment someone asks me to pay 8000Y for a happy meal. 

Maybe I should divide by a higher number. 

Where did those third grade math skills go?

I got a Hello Kitty card in honor of the fact that I didn’t want the card with a cartoon Hog on it (?) and the Mickey Mouse card seemed, well, kinda Mickey Mouse.  Besides, Hello Kitty is has been a favorite commercialized symbol located on the clothing and other items of granddaughter Cyanne and daughter Hilary, though I suspect that she has grown tired of this (mainly because I think she told me she had).

Scan the card getting on the bus, then getting off, and it shows how much you used and how much you have left.

It also x-rays you for weapons, wishes you happy birthday, and reminds you you are riding the bus in one of the best cities in the world so smile like you mean it, ride like your butt is happy, dance like standing in the isle is your first choice, and don’t offer your seat to anyone because, apparently, it’s impolite.

Yesterday’s trip, a subway ride to Seoul.

Mostly not under ground except coming out of the station in Pyeongtaek (admission: I just tried to type that without looking. Result – neither spell-check or me got it right. But, we’re hopeful, symbolized by another cup of coffee).

Did I mention that this train station is as big as about three Grand Central Stations? Big and shiny and glass and bright aluminum with really long escalators.

There was a power outage the other day and twenty tourists were tragically trapped on the escalator for hours  because they didn’t know the Korean word for “walk!”

At least 8 stories high and maybe as many below ground, with a mall, a movie theater complex, and a whole bunch of foreigners who can’t speak English.

They even have a place where you can get tickets to get on the train!

Honestly, this is an impressive, well documented place,

Where the tour lady left her folder, took us on the entire tour to Seoul and back, and where six hours later, she retrieved it from the restroom (in Korean: rest room) and the folder was still exactly where she left it!

Not one train schedule or tourist map was missing!

Thank heavens that trash isn’t handled with the same expediency, if that is the word. 

It just came to mind.

Speaking of which, the Korean's keep things pretty darn tidy. 

Even  on the side streets we went down in Seoul, full of people buying and selling and moving and shaking, because Seoul is a modern city in a modern world. And they have recycle receptacles on the street too which I can't say I've seen on many U.S. city streets.

This IS great.

And I still haven’t heard any car honking. No poop!

Maybe it’s the Buddha factor.

When I showed up at the gate for the tour, I almost got on another tour which was going to the Korean War Memorial.

I didn’t because at the last moment, something told me that a tour to teach us how to use public transportation wasn’t probably going to be leaving on a chartered bus. I’m alert to these subtleties. Not to mention that I wasn’t apparently on the list of people that the lovely assistant-to-the-bus-driver Korean woman was checking off.

So, I had to go back through the gate onto post and who showed up was me and another man, a young soldier who had done some of the other tours but not the one to Seoul. When the tour lady showed up, they knew each other by name.

Speaking of which, I’ve managed to forget both of theirs, of course.

Maybe by the time I leave….

It turns out that she comes into the center where my office is once a week to check in with her boss and to teach a Korean language course.

I thought about signing up but thankfully it passed.

Turned out that the soldier is from the unit that had the recent death that I’ve been interacting with. He and I were at the memorial service together and I even had the sense that he looked familiar to me, though that may just be after the fact illusion.

Over the course of the next few hours, these “coincidences” led me to “do my work” of being able to ask really personal questions about their lives. Besides which, one of the men from the other tour that I had spoken with, turned out to be from PA, and we reminisced about fall. (later in the day, we met again in the Commissary and he told me his story about being a contractor deployed similarly to MFLC’s, how his spouse was back home with the last child who was going to med. School and did I think his wife could get a job like mine, etc.)

These contacts, in other words, are kind of the work I do as an MFLC and when I turn in my daily reports on contacts I’ve made, they show up as what we call, “direct, casual!” I get paid to have conversations. Pretty  good, huh!?

And, I can now get to Seoul and back on the subway.

What a life!

I even figured out the time/calendar thing.

Anyway, the caffine has run out and I’m moving to another room today because the vent in this one is too noisy.

I’ll be going back to Seoul again and I will regale you with that fascinating journey the moment it turns out that way.

Or, maybe I’ll turn out to be like poor old Charlie “’neath the streets of Boston….”, the man who never returned.

Life is hopeful.

Have a nice day.