| While I was gone, my trial version of WebEdit expired. Well... since we're all tapped out from our trip, I don't quite feel like shelling out 50 bucks for the thing. Instead, I thought I'd brilliantly download it again, except that when I did it I wasn't being very brilliant. For one thing, the stupid company changed their program so that some features are not available if you haven't paid. Uhhh! Also, I lost all my preferences, which I had carefully selected and which I had totally forgotten since I'd been gone on vacation. Man, you always get screwed through the drive-through. |
We’re back from our trip and I’m in re-adjustment mode. The plane ride was particularly hellish and even though I don’t want to be on this continent, I’m so happy to be on the ground that I don’t care where I’m at. Oddly, despite the fact that I hate flying, I’m getting better at it. Seems every time I get on a plane these days I’m on for about 10 hours. I’m learning to plan activities, wear the right clothing, and bring the right foods so that I don’t feel totally nauseous until about the 9th hour.
Flying between the States and Korea is like some weird reincarnation cycle for me. Crowds of people boarding a metal tube with wings heading toward who-knows-where. It reminds me of packed subways speeding by as I wait on the opposite platform for my train. I always think of movies about the holocaust and images of livestock cars packed with people heading toward their deaths. Well, that’s like getting on the plane. The flight itself is like some wretched purgatory with horrible food and stale air. It actually hurts hour after hour. Upon landing we all file out of the tube like some mass birth into a different plane of existence, our eyes red and most of us gasping for air. I’m sure some of us would even wail if it was socially acceptable. What makes this seem so real is the complete and total difference between the starting and ending points. It’s like dying and coming back to life in another place in time, except that each time I die I’m toggled between just two places and two lives; one heavenly, one hellish.
Gotta love the Christian influences of my native culture.
Dave likens traveling between Korea and the US to time travel. It’s definitely a more scientific and less spiritual analogy than mine. I think I like it better; it’s more accurate. If you think about it, time travel would be painful. If humans ever accomplish that technology, you can bet it will hurt. None of this Star Trek crap where you can zing in and out of exploding ships, get stuck in space time continuums and come out without a scratch. I mean, it will hurt. He says, "Something happens to my mind when I do that." Yeah man, I know it. Flying 11 hours across the world to a completely different culture from the one in which you originated is SO counterintuitive. It always feels like it should take a lot longer than that. The fact that the interim between the two cultural encounters is so short makes the transition bizaare. How can I have been chatting with my friends in their super-duper hot tub one evening and the next be walkin’ out of the airport yellin’ to a taxi driver in Korean? It ain’t natural.
The trip was awesome, by the way, which made coming back here even more of a nightmare. I thought for sure something cosmic was gonna happen to ruin the whole thing, but there was nothing. I died, I suffered in the air, then was born again in Puget Sound where I frolicked until I once again had to march down that tunnel to the tube where I traveled back through time to precisely the spot I had occupied just two weeks before. Not a thing had changed, except for the fact that our mail had been stolen and there were a gazillion spammed advertisements in our inbox. What’s up with that?
Oh: and when we turned on the computer the monitor didn’t look right. I mean, it was dark! We panicked for a moment until we saw that some color was finally coming through. Poor thing, it’s so old! It just takes a while to warm up. You know, like when you gotta go out and start your car before you drink your cup of coffee in the morning so that by the time you're finished your car will be warm. But this baby doesn’t have a pedal to pump. It’s a good thing we use it so much; it never has a chance to cool off!
I will say one thing though: Landing at Kimpo this time was amazing. It was just sunset when we descended through the clouds, which were a fiery orange. These are the type that you ooo and aaah at from the ground, but I actually got to be in them. It was cool to be a part of the sunset and not just an observer.
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