Articles by mgedwards

I have nothing to write about

I don’t have much time to write tonight, so…
 
  • The blog entry about Wolchulsan will have to wait a bit longer.
  • The responses to blog comments I was supposed to write will get pushed back again.
  • The entry I’d planned to write about Jeju will remain unwritten.
  • The entry on Seodaemun Prison will stay in my mind for another day.

I’m tired after a long day at work today, so not much is popping in my mind right now except nothing in particular. 

Maybe I should write about things other bloggers blog about.

Hmm, let’s see…

How about plagiarizing song lyrics and applying it to my life?

I’m talking with the man in the mirror (ooo),

I’m asking him to change his ways (ooo),

And no message could’ve been any clearer,

If you wanna make the world a better place,

Take a look at yourself and make a change!

Um, why can’t I get the image of Michael Jackson and little children out of my head?  How’s Bahrain, dude?  Korea’s good.  How’s Bubbles?  Our pet outdoor golden orb weaver spider, Charlotte, just crawled away and died, three days short of making it to December.  I’m so sad.  She was a good pet, just like Bubbles.
 
I could always gossip online about myself, friend, or family.  I did see two people I know well together tonight about 10 p.m.  I think they’re dating, but they act like friends.  I saw him drop her off tonight.  I wondered if they kissed…  Yeah, but I can’t tell you who!  I know you’re dying to know, but I can’t.  Believe me, it’s juicy, though!
 
Maybe I can blog about some big, lofty goal I have set and am striving to achieve.  So I begged my wife to get me a pedometer watch to measure my movements and inspire me to move and burn calories, hoping it will help me achieve a svelte figure.  She gave me one for my birthday.  My goal is to burn 2,000 calories per day through pedometric exertion!  I’ve reached as many as 1,850 calories in one day.  Yeah, but just 1,152 today, as is more common with me.  Drats.  Why can’t desk work be more aerobic?  Sometime I really wished I were on some highway construction crew doing manual labor for a change.
 
Let me ooze about my favorite hotties.  None to speak of on the silver screen, except for those cinematic moments that make your jaw drop.  Ingrid Bergman in the "Bells of St. Mary." Donna Reed in "It’s a Wonderful Life." Cameron Diaz dancing in the mask.  Katherine Zeta-Jones in "The Mask of Zorro," before the world found out she’s actually Welsh, not Hispanic.  Liv Tyler with elven ears in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy.  Elven ears and blue robes are stunning.  Can’t forget my crush on Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman," until I learned she used a body double.  Well, in my humble opinion, none can top Bambi Francisco.  Bambi still rocks.
 
Let’s discuss some intellectual, technical topic designed for three people to enjoy.  The dysentirious curvature of the Gobstopper Theorem juxtaposed twixt the lower arc of the radiospectral anarchic random theory of total chaos leads one to surmise that this theoretician could be quite possibly the sole figure with an inate interest in the subject at hand, with exception to those who also find such mundane hypotheses ambiguously intriguing.
 
Then there’s always conspiracy theories.  Tom Cruise may have very well broken up with Penelope Cruz after discovering in the Scientology family tree archives that they are in fact related and that her surname is a latinized version of his.  Plus, he couldn’t bear marrying another foreign-born actress after his failed marriage to Australian Nicole Kidman.  Either that, or [put politician’s or political group’s or renegade country’s name here] is the real cause of the break up through covert special operations.
 
So there you have it.  My 15-minute rendition of what other bloggers blog about.  Now that was fun.

Featured Blog: Girl in the Rain

"Girl in the Rain" (http://intherain.wordpress.com/) is a blog written by one of my colleagues.  She is a very nice lady, and I’m glad I met her and had the opportunity to work with her, however briefly.  We’ve worked together for about six months, since she arrived in Korea.  She will be here for another year and a half or so after I leave the country.  If you want your weekly fix of life in Korea written from another expat perspective, check out her blog.  World Adventurers will slowly shift gears away from Korea and East Asia towards focusing on Paraguay and Latin America, so if you want a continuation on life in Korea, have a read.
 
Girl in the Rain is also a fellow Seattleite, albeit from a another suburb often overlooked by us uppity Eastsiders who think that the upscale Eastside ends at Coal Creek Parkway (Seattleites will know what I mean).  We see eye to eye on things only Seattlelites can understand, although she would be quick to point that I’m not a true Seattleite, because I’m not native to the area.  Still, a conversation with her about Seattle is like rekindling a mutual identity that no layman Starbucks patron or Boeing pilot could understand.  From the Fremont Troll to the Renton Train Depot, she knows it all.  She peppers her blog with Seattleisms too, some too subtle for outsiders to catch.
 
She isn’t a frequent poster, but she has plenty of photos and stories to share with you.  She’s posted some memorable moments from our collective experience that I haven’t talked about on my blog, like this year’s Marine Ball.  Virtually everyone pictured is either a colleague, acquaintance, and/or friend of mine.  We all had a ball, figuratively and literally.  Great people, all.  And yes, the goofy looking Asian dude pictured is aware his photo is on the blog, and he’s one of my good friends.  One of the sharpest guys you’d ever want to meet.  If you want more of an inside scoop on Foreign Service life in Seoul, stop by her blog from time to time.  My blog is typically more vague and eclectic, musing about whatever whimsical topic comes to my mind on a given day.  While I have not devolved into recounting the number of countries and states I’ve visited (24 and 29), I have accounted for plenty of minutiae.  Girl’s blog is a much more straightforward view of life here.  Enjoy!

Testinpatience Day

Our Thanksgiving didn’t go so well, and it was my fault.  On Thanksgiving morning, we drove out to Goyang (a one to 1-1/2 hour trip) to take our car for a full checkup before shipping it to Paraguay.  My plan was to drop off the car in the morning, go with my family to our community Thanksgiving dinner, and then go alone by mass transit to pick it up in the late afternoon.  My wife tailed me in our other car so I didn’t have to wait in Goyang while the car was being repair.  Why did we do it on Thanksgiving?  Well, Thanksgiving’s not a holiday in Korea, so for me, it was the ideal day to get something done.  I needed to take the car to Goyang because the dealership is the only one that does alignments.  The car pulls sharply to the right, and I was certain that it needed an alignment because it has 40,000 miles and has never had one.  I wanted the dealer to do everything that needed to be done to ready the car for five months in transit and for the cobblestone and potholed streets of Asuncion Paraguay.  I estimated that it would take five hours for the dealer to finish our vehicle.  During that time, we would go home and enjoy Thanksgiving, and at the end of the day, I would go alone and pick it up.  That was the plan, anyway.
 
It didn’t turn out that way.  Turns out that the tires are worn, and the spare tire I was using on the rear of the car likely caused the car to pull to the right.  If an alignment wasn’t necessary, then I could have saved a lot of time by having the car fixed much closer to home.  The dealer ended up doing little more than looking over the car and making a small list of future repairs contingent on buying new tires (I bought new tires yesterday).  They said that they can determine whether an alignment is necessary after getting new tires.  30 minutes later, we were finished and late for the Thanksgiving dinner.  I suggested going late, but my wife decided that it was too late and suggested eating near the dealer.  I found a really nice, trendy district in Goyang with a variety of restaurants.  My wife picked a "guksu," or noodle restaurant.  I thought the soup was fine, but it was far from what we expected on Thanksgiving.  I apologized for dragging my family all the way out to Goyang and missing the community Thanksgiving dinner.  We had also planned to put up the Christmas tree, our annual ritual, but I fell asleep.  We put the tree up this weekend.  It looks great, but it reminds me that Thanksgiving wasn’t what we expected.  That’s my fault.
 
Because my wife thinks I will only blog my point of view, I thought I would share how she feels in her own words.  Stay tuned to find out whether I get in trouble and have to remove this because I shared something too private on a blog.
Our Thanksgiving… hum… was a near disaster or at the best a non-event.  I have to take comfort in the fact that I did get today off after begging to my boss.  It also could have been worse had I not resolved myself to be more flexible (as we are living overseas) just a few days ago…  But it was memorable…Maybe Mike will blog about it in the next few days, but then that will just represent his feelings.  My Turkey dinner?  It was a spicy Korean soup with a hodge-podge mix of a few pieces of beef, overcooked cabbage and bean spouts with a side of white rice.
Well written and true.  Thanksgiving wasn’t going to be normal, no matter what we did here.  The truth is that we live overseas, and it’s difficult duplicating the holiday experience away from home.  Your family is far, far away, the weather and surroundings are never what you remembered when you were younger,, and you’re likely to be in a locale that either doesn’t celebrate the holiday or celebrates it differently than you like.  Holidays, among other facts of life, are truly a test in patience when you live overseas (automobile maintenance is another).  We had dinner last night with a family who lived in Paraguay for two years.  We talked to them about what to expect when we arrive there next year.  They emphasized that as long as you are flexible and keep an open mind, you can have a great time in Paraguay.  If you enjoy the outdoors and can get to know people who can show it to you, you can have a great time.  If not, or if you expect it to be America, you’ll probably be miserable.  That is definitely true.  If you impose your expectations and preferences on another culture, you’re bound to be disappointed.
 
I thought it ironic that my wife would be unhappy about Thanksgiving this year, because Thanksgiving is a holiday she adopted when she immigrated to America.  Like Koreans, Chinese do not celebrate Thanksiving.  She built up expectations of what Thanksgiving should be from her past two decades of enjoying American culture, and Thanksgiving this year did not meet her expectations.  She remembers Thanksgivings in the states when we invited friends over for turkey and fellowship, or when we went over to friends’ houses.  She doesn’t remember the Thanksgiving celebrations I knew when I was young, when I was home with my parents, brother, and sister, sharing a traditional, family Thanksgiving get together with turkey and western-style trimmings after Thanksgiving church services.  To me, those are my fondest Thanksgiving memories, not the Thanksgiving gatherings in Seattle when we shared western- and Asian-style potlucks with Asian American friends.  When we lived in Seattle, we usually saved our trip to my parents’ house for Christmas-time.  The more time passes, the more memories of an ideal Thanksgiving recede.  I doubt they can ever be duplicated again.  My family has scattered to the winds, and we are lucky to be together once every couple of years.  We now have famiies, and our children have no memories of those Thanksgivings.  Why try to bring back the past?  Why not accept that time changes, and it’s important to make the current reality the best it can be?
 
This year, Thanksgiving was less about giving thanks and appreciating our blessings and more about testing our patience and flexibility.  That is why Thanksgiving Day this year was Testinpatience Day.  (Many days are Testinpatience Day–like yesterday, when the power went out for four hours and we had to eat a restaurant).  My wife has had nary a normal Chinese New Year or Mid-Autumn Festival since she left China, but she has adapted admirably over the years, celebrating them any way she can.   I am very proud of her for her resolve to be patient and flexible overseas.  I have a feeling that Paraguay will test our patience more than Korea has.