From the monthly archives:

May 2006

Low, low prices — and peanut butter!

by Cat on May 30, 2006

It should go without saying we aren’t proud our first major outing as new residents of Korea was to WalMart. But dealing with cat poop in a strange land will drive you to do things you ordinarily wouldn’t.

As I’d read that this was a likely site to obtain things from back home we just couldn’t live without, we headed there on Saturday with the goal of purchasing that apparently uniquely western item — the litter box.

Shopping at grocery stores–and even pet supply stores–in Seoul you will see huge varieties of dog food and dog accessories, and very limited selections of cat food and cat littler. But. no. litter. box.

I’d been warned before that Koreans traditionally loathe and are suspicious of cats. They love dogs. (Both to eat and to pet, apparently, though they only eat a particular breed. Sort of like the way Americans are with pigs, except that we eat most varieties and only keep one breed as a pet.)

We had no luck at the Korean version of Sam Walton’s monument to mass consumption, either.* Two varieties of cat food and one brand of cat litter amid a sea of dog stuff. The day wasn’t a total loss, however, as we did discover a few things at the Gangnam WalMart that made it worth the trip: they have a pretty good selection of decent wine and imported beer at affordable prices. They also carry some name-brand American products dear to certain hearts. (Peter Pan Extra Crunchy for my love.)

I also found another apparently elusive food item not stocked by most Korean grocers (at least the ones in myneighborhood south of the Han) and that is real, honest-to-goodness cheese. They had cheddar, mozzarella, pepper jack …. they had it all. They even had baby Swiss. The drawback? The cheapest we found was a small six-ounce block of cheddar for $9. I guess I’m going to be cutting back on the dairy.

We did pick up some decent yogurt and cow’s milk (in addition to some beer, wine, the peanut butter, and packaged Korean dumplings), but left the cheese for another day. At least it’s there if we get an insatiable craving. Perhaps we’ll spring for it when company comes.

*This could also be because the discount chain just sold out to Korean retailer, Shinsegae, and all of the stores are to be converted to their discount chain, EMart.

An aside about the asides . . .

by Cat on May 28, 2006

I’m running a version of Matt’s Asides in my own weird beta test. Tarski has support for the hack built in to the main template code. But I want to run them just in the sidebar.

As you can see, I’ve got them in the sidebar (see left) but can’t seem to figure out how to get them out of the main loop (see below). Yes, that’s right, I want them to be out of the loop. Heh. OK. /geek humor. It will just have to be redundant for awhile.

For anyone who’s curious, but couldn’t care less about my coding deficiencies, the category ‘Quick Asides’ just feature interesting links that I find while web surfing, that I either lack the time or the knowledge to write a lenghty post.

That is all.

The first day of the rest of our Korean lives

by Cat on May 27, 2006

We are here and adjusting to both the jet lag and with every other word ending with ...mnida. I still know very little Korean, so I sometimes have to fight the urge to just add the polite ending to my English words. (’We’d like to find something to eatmnida?‘)

We had quite an adventure getting here yesterday, but everything really went as well as could be expected. The plane from Atlanta was packed. Lots of people were flying through Incheon to Vietnam and Thailand as well as other cities in Korea. So much for Thursday not being a big travel day. After spending an hour and a half in the line to check in–cats in kennels perched atop a mountain of bags . . . (we fit right in!), we dropped off Obi and Sam to be taken to the live-animal hold. We then lucked out and were seated behind two very cute little girls who were thrilled we brought a cat (Dmitra, in her stylish red sherpa bag) with us.

All three cats did really well. A Korean Air agent hand-carried Obi and Sam to us at baggage claim at Incheon and the check at animal inspection went very smoothly. All the pet papers it took me so long to assemble were in order, so they breezed through. We picked up Dave’s rental car from Avis and were on our way within an hour of landing–cats, bags and all. Things took a brief turn for the worse when we hit Friday afternoon rush hour in Seoul, which really is its own circle of hell.

We got home about 9 p.m. local time (Friday), let the cats out to explore–they are fascinated by all the pocket doors–and unpacked. We then went out for some yummy food at this Vietnamese place in the neighborhood. For me, some good Bún Xao can always make things better.

We managed to sleep in until about 5:30 this morning, which is pretty good considering the last time I was here I kept waking up at 3 no matter what. Dave got up for a run and I did my usual slow-motion version of that. There is a really nice walk/bike path near our apartment that leads through some neighborhood parks and then down by the Han River. When I am more rested, I’ll definitely take pictures.

Regrettably, this is probably the only time I’ll be awake before six. It’s really neat to be out walking around, seeing all the shopkeepers opening up. I saw lots of older folks out by the path getting in the morning constitutional. It is a little humiliating to have a five foot tall Korean woman, who looks to be at least 60, breeze past you in her coordinated jogging outfit.

But, hey, she probably didn’t spend all day yesterday flying with cats…

Update: Dave wants me to add that we came in on the same flight as Hines Ward. He’s back in Korea to make good on his promise to help improve conditions for biracial people here. We didn’t see him until we got off the plane and noticed the gaggle of press photographers. If I’d been braver, I would have snapped a picture but a line of tough-looking (and big-gun wielding) security guards posted down the hallway made me think twice–then I’d lost my chance.

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We two are one

by Cat on May 23, 2006

Name change, originally uploaded by cathilee.

The lady at the Social Security office seemed surprised, then pleased, as if we’d just made a boring day a lot more interesting.

She took David’s form, frowned slightly and started typing . . . then she paused, looked back at our papers, looked up, and said,
“Oh, you guys are married.”

We nod.

“And, you want to change your name so it will be the same?”

Double nod. She smiles.
“Oh, that’s nice. We get people changing their names for lots of different reasons, it’s usually not just for this. And, it’s usually not [she gestures toward David] So I wanted to ask . . ”

The whole thing took five minutes.

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