Out on the trail early. Later Dave said he thought jogging (or walking,for me) in the morning made the day seem longer. Mmm…. Yeah, I think so too.

I observed a family of three walking together. Mother and father were smallish folks, whose son towered above them though he was probably only 13 or 14. He was really chubby too, in that really cute way Korean boys so often are. While his parents walked along admiring the greenery of almost summer, the boy dribbled a basketball from front to back, back to front between his legs. He wasn’t so skilled at it and each pass-through meant near loss of the ball, which caused the boy to shudder a bit as he struggled to control it.

Fifty yards later I saw an ant hauling a section of large worm. Really huge worm with startling diameter. Lately walking on the trail, the wetness of this time of year - the time just prior to the formal monsoon season - brings out all the creatures who either revel in all the wet or flee from it when it has saturated the earth. Sometimes I see worms and think they are long blades of damp grass, not caring if I step on them until I get almost over them and see this slimy thing wriggling laboriously across the pavement. I saw one the other day that was over a foot long and it reminded me of the snake I once saw out there. I feel like a giant walking on Dune, except my world is gooey.

Later, after lunch, we broke from our usual Sunday habit and actually ventured out into the world. Caught a cab to Lotte World, where we got on the subway for Technomart, which was two stops down the line. Really crowded, that area. It wasn’t hot, but it reminded us of that first summer here when we didn’t know any better and wandered out into the oppressive heat and humidity, invariably finding ourselves standing, waiting on subway platforms where there is no air conditioning and the air does not even so much as circulate except when pushed by a train barreling through the tube. Miserable; so salient still that even being in that section of subway brought us back to that time.

Technomart is a new tall building in a section of Seoul where I have never been. The building is supposed to be a mega-shopping center for all things "Techno" I suppose. What it is, really, is an updated version of the traditional electronics market, which is located way on another side of town. I don’t know if I can adequately describe it, but one thing to know is that Korea is a market culture. Markets exist for everything; there are markets for herbal medicine, antiques, plumbing supplies, etc. The old electronics market is seriously run-down and, these days, deserted. Row after row, stall after stall of people selling the same shit, whether it’s computers, stereos, light bulbs, household appliances, or even RAM. Same products displayed in exactly the same way from store to store, though it can hardly be said to be "displayed" because it’s really more like piles of crap - even if it is new crap.

It isn’t done this way because consumers like the traditional market atmosphere. If that were true, department stores that mimic more what I’m used to wouldn’t be such huge successes. The truth is that vendors don’t build actual stores, don’t put any effort into display, because it saves them overhead. Margins are ridiculously low on all product and merchants are all crammed together in a way that promotes such absurd masochistic practices as competing oneself into bankruptcy. (It’s more complex than that, but I’m trying to just set it up for the Technomart thing.)

Technomart is a shinier version of the old. In fact, the very same people who have stalls in the old electronics market have stalls here. Imagine a really tall building housing hundreds of retail stores. There are no walls, only sometimes little dividers about 3 or 4ft tall that delineate one person’s pile of crap for sale from another’s. Imagine eight stories of this, plus two basement floors. Floors 9 and 10 are a food court and a bunch of movie theaters.

The first thing is that it’s the same old shit, only wrapped more pretty. Business as usual in Korea, a place where their home-grown practices are driving the economy into the ground. Technomart was an opportunity to change all that, but the planners and the vendors didn’t grab it. Eight floors and the place is mostly not full. A few floors have stalls with dividers, but so many have only a few vendors with the remaining floor space standing wide open. I can’t think of anything equivalent in the States to which I can compare it. Hmm… it would be like going to some mega-Sears or something, but there are only a few displays right around the escalator while the rest of the floor space stared blankly at you: an island of merchants in a sea of linoleum.

Yet, the place was filled with people all moving efficiently up and down the escalators, which were the best part of the whole building. They were designed so that regardless which side the escalators are approached, people can choose to go up or down. There were, on each side of the escalator section, two escalators going up and two going down. I thought it was very good planning for a country where people jams are a way of life. Still, people crammed into the elevators which ran smoothly along one side of the open area in the very center. There were bubble windows allowing those of us cruising on the escalators to watch crammed bodies smear the glass as the cars raised and lowered. For some reason, it reminded me of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I don’t know why. Was there an elevator in the book/movie? (I can't remember.)

Unfortunately, lots of folks were moving, but not so many were shopping. The most crowded places were the movie theater and food court. People will buy food, indulge in a movie, but have a hard time these days justifying the purchase of electronic goods (I guess).

On the fourth floor Dave surprised me by buying a new 28-80mm zoom lens for my camera. I was so totally shocked and thought, "What kind of cosmic alignment is inspiring this serious birthday windfall?" It was a nice surprise.

Although, whenever buying something of Japanese origin in Korea, it pays to beware. The vendor didn’t have a box nor instructions. We figured that since a lot of Japanese product is illegal, they employ the suitcase-import method. When we got home and I took out the lens to put it on the camera body, I noticed how different it felt from my other 100-300mm zoom; I thought it was fake. I started to get upset, angry that we may have gotten cheated and angry that Dave’s gift-giving joy would be ruined. (He takes a lot of pride in being the perfect gift giver - a role which he has nearly perfected.) But then I got out the book of lenses I have for the Canon Ultrasonic set and found that there are considerable differences between the two lenses not only in capabilities, but even in motor construction. There was a picture of it in the book, and it looked the same. Whew! I feel much better, but then that whole session of doubt left me feeling like there’s a possibility it could be fake and not just contraband - it can happen. I’ll compare it to one in the States while I’m home this summer, just to see.

It works anyway; I’ve already taken some pictures.

Yesterday the woman at the soojaebee place gave us some kimchee to take home. The kimchee with our meal was on the verge of being too ripe, which made us think that when she was giving us some to take home she was trying to get rid of it. We took it and actually dragged the plastic bag all the way back home. (I wish I had just left it in the putrid seeping.) By dinnertime, each opening of the fridge exuded the stench of overripe kimchee into larger spaces in the apartment. What to do? The ongoing trash problem in Korea now requires that no wet garbage be thrown away with regular trash. Instead, we have all been issued buckets into which we deposit our wet garbage. The bucket has a grate in the bottom that allows the liguid to drain out, leaving the chunks behind to dry up. Only after they have dried can you put them into the trash, or as is the case in our neighborhood, into the wet garbage bin next to the other recycling bins. I never use the bucket because we don't eat a lot of Korean food, which tends to be very liquidy, so our food garbage is rarely very wet. And if it is wet, I just put it in one bag, wrapped within another to conceal it from the outside. I'm not going to jump through hoops (read: I'm not going to let wet garbage drying stink up my house) for the government's inadequacies . Well, we had this kimchee sitting in the fridge, contaminating other perfectly fine food and increasingly polluting the air we breathe. It had to go. Finally, I just took the whole juicy wad, put it in a paper bag surrounded by a plastic garbage bag, inside yet another plastic bag. Then I filled the trash bag up with big things, emptied the bathroom trash, shoving it in too. Anything to help conceal the stench of undrained and undried kimchee from passerby outdoors. I doubt that it worked, but at least it sort of concealed our flagrant rule-breaking. It's been raining too, which helps: It makes everything look wet, so that if the kimchee leaks out while the bag is sitting in the trash bag pile at least it won't be so obvious.