12.8.97
I felt pressed for time today even though, really, I wasn’t.

I remember a while back seeing a woman standing near the doorway of a building using a public phone. She was totally dressed in Goth and I turned all the way around to look as long as I could because I’ve never seen anyone dressed like that in Korea.

I went out early to the little underground store to find some bathroom cleaner. The new grocery just down the street doesn’t carry the brand I like, so I thought the little store might have it. It didn’t. Now I guess I’ll just use the stuff I got from the new store, even though it’s the worst cleaner I’ve ever used. It leaves residue wherever it goes. I mean, serious residue. I cannot get rid of it. No matter how much I hose down the whole bathroom gritty white stuff remains. I guess I could follow the advice of a smart friend and just use a 10% bleach solution to clean everything. She said something about how it kills the most pathogens across the widest assortment of conditions. It’s a good idea, I know, but for some reason things just don’t seem clean unless there’s suds.

I was gone to that little store for only five minutes, during which time Joon from Thailand called. Left a message saying that all email to us is getting bounced back to him. Hmpf. His poor luck that he called during the only five minutes of the day when I wasn’t in the apartment.

If I’m thankful for one thing it’s that all of my life I’ve had the luxury of sleeping in a warm comfortable bed and always having well-constructed shelter to call home. I've never been cold.

It snowed the first snow today. I don’t know when it started; Dave called and told me it was snowing so I looked outside to see huge flakes swirling around. So peaceful a scene it was, I felt compelled to make a large cup of hot chocolate, open up the blinds in the living room, light a candle, and just sit. I was glad then for the common architecture of Korean apartments where the windows in the living room stretch floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall. What luxury. I am lucky.

I was supposed to have a family chat around noon but no one showed up. While I was waiting I decided to see if Yahoo had added my pages to their directory. They have, at least one, but I had little luck in typing in anything specific to topics represented within the site. When I typed in my name with "Korea" I got a bunch of other stuff and my resume. How weird. If I typed in Korea related stuff, none of my pages came up. When I just typed in my name, I found out that there are way too many other people with pages whose name is also Helen. But none of the results were mine (at least through the first several result pages). Oddly, just querying my name brought up pfr’s main page. ???? What the hell?

Every single paragraph starts with the letter "I" - except for this one. Boy. In my defense I’ll report that I spent several hours writing the book review. Progress has been great, even though I’m worried that it’s more of a report. Anyway, I felt so confident that I called up Mala and told her I was coming in this week. Actually, all I have left is the intro, which is always the hardest. In group projects in college, I never volunteered for the Intro. Discussion, Method, Results - anything but the Intro.

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