Ruminations in Korea

These are not headlines I wanted to wake up to this morning.

I first became aware of Hunter Thompson after getting a copy of "Hell’s Angels : A Strange and Terrible Saga" from a friend of mine back around 1985. It is a remarkable piece of "embedded" journalism. Although his last job was working as a columnist at espn.com, his columns were still witty, irreverent and caustic.

Anyone who is or aspires to be a journalist and/or and author who is not familiar with Thompson should get their hands on a book of his and read.

UPDATE:

Top Korean Actress Lee Eun Ju Commits Suicide

Lee Eun Ju, star of several hit Korean movies, including Oh! Sujung! and Brotherhood (태극기 휘날리며) committed suicide(article in Korean) by hanging herself in her dressing room by a belt. According to her family she was suffering from insomnia because of filming a recent movie and suffering stress after doing a nude scene. (article in Korean).

The other day my brother and I went to pick up Warcraft III. This seemingly simple task required us to cross a street via an underground walkway.

To get to the stairs going down, we had to push our way through a group of three men standing at the top of the stairs for no readily apparent reason.

At the bottom of the stairs was a set of four doors. There were no signs indicating such, but three of the four doors were locked. We discovered the doors were locked after our first three attempts to pass through them failed. We were confronted with exactly the same situation at the stairs going up; three doors locked and no sign.

At the top of the stairs, there was a large delivery truck parked on the sidewalk between the stairs and the entrance of the computer store. To get into the computer store, we had to semi-circumnavigate the truck and wind our way through a few stacks of computer equipment on the sidewalk and stairs.

The experience was best summed up by my brother’s plaintive cry of, “[expletive]! Why must crossing the street be a stressful event??”

N.B. While writing this entry on my Palm Pilot on a train to Taegu for a meeting, l was in the first class car of the KTX. About 30 minutes into the 1-hour trip, the train waitress tapped me on the shoulder. She checked my ticket and informed me that I was sitting in seat 5A rather than seat 6A where I should have been. I was politely asked to move to the proper seat, so I collected my gear and moved one row back. I smiled and took my proper seat in the in the 36-passenger train car that was occupied by only myself and one other person.

We regret to inform you that Groundhog Day has been cancelled in Korea this year.
The groundhog froze to death.
Winter could go on forever.