Most people name their aiports after artists, generals, hamlets, mayors, and other nice stuff, like goats.
Chicagoans prefer to name their airports after killing fields. Two of the busiest airports in the world and both martial themes.
O'Hare is named after Butch O'Hare, who shots down more zeroes than anyone else. Would you name your airport after a mass murderer?
Midway is named after the Battle of Midway, the turning point in the Pacific war during World War II.
Incidentally, one of the Japanese admirals thought their battle plan doomed for failure and wrote in his diary: "He who pursues two hares catches neither."
04 December 2010
05 November 2010
Can you recapture the days gone by?
22 October 2010
How hot can you cook without cooking yourself?
In Korea, dining and washing both require cooking yourself.
In Korea, when you eat, you cook it yourself. You sit down by the seashore. They bring you boiling broth. You place it on a flame and boil and boil until the fish is soupy and the soup is fishy.
Each bite is special. Each bite is prepared just so. (This explains why Candace eats her fajitas just so, lining each tortilla with sauteed onion and then pepper and then steak and then salsa, so each bite bites just right.)
You eat your kimchee wrapping up a bite of rice, for the perfect combination of salty and sugary, spicy and chewy.
You eat your eel wrapped in sesame leaf, wrapped in romaine leaf, filled with spicy tofu- miso paste with a slice of garlic with a slice of pepper with slices of ginger -- all in one bite.
All in one just so bite.
In Korea, when you bathe, you cook yourself -- in hotter and hotter water, sometimes with salt and sometimes baking soda. This dish is called jimjilbang.
Jimjilbang comes in many courses.
The first course of jimjilbang is removing your shoes and securing them in #257. Then removing your clothes and securing them in a separate locker, also #257. (Shoes and clothes must be locked in separate lockers in Korea.) You cover your head with a towel. You tie the towel in buns at either side of your head (so your head is just so). You dress yourself in a toga t-shirt and loose culottes. (Don't wrap too tight so the salt seeps in. You need to be just so.)
The course concludes when you see Candace at the foot bath.
At the foot bath, you soak your feet in salt water to loosen your foot skin. You walk on hot rocks to loosen your foot muscles.
Jimjilbang continues with yellow ochre room. The clay hut of yellow ochre room and the ionized heat of yellow ochre room remove the tension of city from your skin and the tension of the city from your body and the tension of the city from your brain.
The next jimjilbang is hotter and saltier. You place yourself prone atop yellow bricks of Himalayan salt glowing clear with heat. As they say, it's not the heat, it's the salt.
To tenderize your corpus and remove the toxins, you "foment" at 80 Celsius amidst red bricks. You freeze at 10 Celsius amidst blue tiles and jelly fish. You foment and freeze alternating every five minutes. It's like basting a Thanksgiving turkey.
To tenderize your brain, jimjilbang doses you with Wave Dream Room and 52 Degree Pyramid Room (the angle of the walls, not the degree of the temperature) and Electron Light Room and even the much renowned Mind Sound Room, with patented Korean rays to induce meditation and sometimes prestidigitation. (It's Zamfir muzak from walls that flow from neon yellow to neon blue to neon red to neon yellow to . . . )
All these courses of jimjilbang desiccate the typical western human (while humecting his skin to mouth watering salty smooth softness). Like a dry turkey, the typical western human at this point in jimjilbang requires rehydration with multi-mushroom stew and bone-dry beer.
Now your jimjilbang is ready to cook. Boil it in salt at 47 degrees for 4 minutes. Bake it in baking soda at 57 degrees for 5 minutes. Bubble in "bade" at 67 degrees for 6 minutes. Dissolve in steam (77 degrees).
Thus is one cooked in Korea at jimjilbang. Koreans call it relaxing. I call it dissolving. Who wants to join me tomorrow?
In Korea, when you eat, you cook it yourself. You sit down by the seashore. They bring you boiling broth. You place it on a flame and boil and boil until the fish is soupy and the soup is fishy.
Each bite is special. Each bite is prepared just so. (This explains why Candace eats her fajitas just so, lining each tortilla with sauteed onion and then pepper and then steak and then salsa, so each bite bites just right.)
You eat your kimchee wrapping up a bite of rice, for the perfect combination of salty and sugary, spicy and chewy.
You eat your eel wrapped in sesame leaf, wrapped in romaine leaf, filled with spicy tofu- miso paste with a slice of garlic with a slice of pepper with slices of ginger -- all in one bite.
All in one just so bite.
In Korea, when you bathe, you cook yourself -- in hotter and hotter water, sometimes with salt and sometimes baking soda. This dish is called jimjilbang.
Jimjilbang comes in many courses.
The first course of jimjilbang is removing your shoes and securing them in #257. Then removing your clothes and securing them in a separate locker, also #257. (Shoes and clothes must be locked in separate lockers in Korea.) You cover your head with a towel. You tie the towel in buns at either side of your head (so your head is just so). You dress yourself in a toga t-shirt and loose culottes. (Don't wrap too tight so the salt seeps in. You need to be just so.)
The course concludes when you see Candace at the foot bath.
At the foot bath, you soak your feet in salt water to loosen your foot skin. You walk on hot rocks to loosen your foot muscles.
Jimjilbang continues with yellow ochre room. The clay hut of yellow ochre room and the ionized heat of yellow ochre room remove the tension of city from your skin and the tension of the city from your body and the tension of the city from your brain.
The next jimjilbang is hotter and saltier. You place yourself prone atop yellow bricks of Himalayan salt glowing clear with heat. As they say, it's not the heat, it's the salt.
To tenderize your corpus and remove the toxins, you "foment" at 80 Celsius amidst red bricks. You freeze at 10 Celsius amidst blue tiles and jelly fish. You foment and freeze alternating every five minutes. It's like basting a Thanksgiving turkey.
To tenderize your brain, jimjilbang doses you with Wave Dream Room and 52 Degree Pyramid Room (the angle of the walls, not the degree of the temperature) and Electron Light Room and even the much renowned Mind Sound Room, with patented Korean rays to induce meditation and sometimes prestidigitation. (It's Zamfir muzak from walls that flow from neon yellow to neon blue to neon red to neon yellow to . . . )
All these courses of jimjilbang desiccate the typical western human (while humecting his skin to mouth watering salty smooth softness). Like a dry turkey, the typical western human at this point in jimjilbang requires rehydration with multi-mushroom stew and bone-dry beer.
Now your jimjilbang is ready to cook. Boil it in salt at 47 degrees for 4 minutes. Bake it in baking soda at 57 degrees for 5 minutes. Bubble in "bade" at 67 degrees for 6 minutes. Dissolve in steam (77 degrees).
Thus is one cooked in Korea at jimjilbang. Koreans call it relaxing. I call it dissolving. Who wants to join me tomorrow?
19 October 2010
Did I disturb you?
Beer with raw snail (of two varieties) with complimentary sea squirt and sea penis, as we were sitting on the docks watching the fish boats unload and the fish trucks load
Beer with walking and then kogi mandu, id est, steamed bun stuffed with meat and cabbage
Soju with maewoontang, Korean spicy cioppino
Beer with strolling through jewelry stalls and buying Alex a "Nike" hoodie "made in Thailand" and "made in El Salvador" (two labels, for extra authenticity)
Beer with billiards
Beer while searching for a cocktail, unsuccessfully
Imported beer in a bar with darts and fusball with movie-making Swedes
Jaeger booms (sic)
Beer strolling to dukpoki (rice cakes in sweet chili sauce) with odang-duk (fish tempura broth)
After all of which we arrived at the hotel and were surprised not to see our "do not disturb" sign hanging on our door knob.
You see, we'd talked with the maid that morning. We didn't want her mussing through our stuff when we weren't there. So we exchanged our own towels and emptied our trash before leaving our room.
To keep the maids out while we were out, we hung a sign to leave the room undisturbed.
Imagine how disturbed we were to find "do not disturb" not on our door but on the floor of our room!
Candace even photographed the evidence, up close so you can see the disturbing words.
As further evidence, CJ documented how each bed has two pillows apiece, not the three and two as we had left.
We had evidence. We were disturbed.
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