ladies[heart]tk

I was walking down the street the other day and saw a little kid repeatedly punching his father in the crotch. The father protested feebly but the little kid could not be deterred from landing haymakers on his dad’s apparatus. I had a good laugh at that. I enjoyed it so much that I followed them around for a while snickering to myself.

Fast forward to today. My uncle took me and my nephews out to a fancy seafood restaurant in Seoul. During grace my nephews started to whack each other in the crotch. I was all, “what are you doing that for?” And they were all, “it’s the ‘bearclaw’ technique!” I guess it’s something they learned in Taekwondo class.

Later that afternoon I was hanging around my sister’s apartment. I got up to get a drink of water when this happened:

That’s my namesake nephew applying the Bearclaw technique to his dear old uncle. The little scamp. I guess this is what is sometimes referred to as “just desserts”.

Speaking of dessert, I forgot to mention that the aforementioned fancy restaurant had freshly baked madelines in the dessert table. Madelines please me much more than Bearclaws.

…it can be eaten.  As I was gazing at this refrigerator case I was gripped with a compulsion to move the two stick-less wieners into another area so that the be-sticked foods could all be together.

After the convenience store, I walked to this water park in the middle of downtown Seoul.  This little plaza used to be a fetid cesspool of decay.  Then the former mayor of Seoul made it into a promenade with running water and green things that aren’t algae.  The former mayor is now the president of South Korea and everyone hates him for no reason that I can fathom.

There’s a street market called Insadong with a huge building full of musical instruments.  Korean people must love to shred because there were literally hundreds of thousands of guitars. This is one shop out of maybe 500 similar shops.

Lots of downtown Seoul looks helter-skelter with new and old buildings all jumbled together.

Here’s a weird mall that’s like the Guggenheim in that you walk up a circular ramp to get to all of the stores which all seem to sell some form of worthless knick-knack.  There are a lot of tourists here.

Some parts of downtown Seoul are very modern.  Downtown is more like Vancouver than New York.

I took a cable car up to the top of Namsan mountain.  There’s an observatory there where lovers go to profess their undying love.  The intertwined-locks symbolize that nothing can ever tear the couple apart.

Seoul is a city of 11 million people - almost 50% bigger than New York City.  It’s unimaginably huge.  The observatory where I took this picture is circular and for 360 degrees it looks just like this.

I ate shortribs for dinner and I was doubled over in pain from eating too much.

So we all piled into a van and drove to Pocheon which is about 90 minutes outside of Seoul. Korean people customarily bury dead people in the mountains, and we were going to my grandparents’ graves in the mountains around Pocheon. This is a nearby rice paddie. I guess the paddies are full of leeches.

Here’s another view of the paddies. They go all the way to the little town at the base of the gigantic mountain back there.

These stairs go up to a burial site and the signpost says who’s buried up there.

Here’s where my grandparents are buried. On the back of the tombstone there are inscriptions which basically map out a geneaology of their family line. I’m on there too along with all my sisters and cousins. When nobody was looking I chiseled a big “#1″ next to my name.

Afterwards we went to lunch in this little town. We went to a restaurant that specialized in blood sausage. I really wanted to take a picture of the blood sausage but it seemed too socially transgressive to pull out my camera during a solemn occasion. Instead I wandered around and found these big-ass pots. I don’t know what they’re for.

After lunch we went to this mountain preserve-type area. I guess my grandfather was a dedicated naturalist and he locked down thousands of acres of forest land which can never be developed on. He also planted a lot of pine trees. There’s a kind of retreat center there and some walking paths.

On the way back to Seoul we got stuck in traffic and I noticed this ad on the side of a truck. I wish pumping gas made me feel this sassified!

The little kid pointing an accusing finger at me is my nephew. I took my niece and nephews to a children’s park and promised them that Harry Potter would swoop out of the sky and give them each a pound of ice cream. After standing in the sweltering sun smelling elephant turds for an hour this little tyke ran to mommy to accuse me of false advertising. Little kids will believe anything! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!

The kids park has a “Barefoot Garden”. Basically you walk around on these pointy rocks in order to stimulate your circulation. It’s excruciating. I don’t think the design means anything but each color is a different size of rock. The big rocks are the most painful.

Animal exhibits are scattered throughout the park. There are a lot of monkeys in an enclosure next to this tiger. I stood around for a while hoping that a monkey would get into the tiger pit but nothing that I want ever happens.  Nature is so stupid.

Weird statue. Somehow this little kid’s weenie fell off.

I saw this on a subway sign…

I can’t read Korean but I think the gist of this is that if you’re suddenly overwhelmed with misery during your commute to work you can simply put a bag over your head to end the pain.