I’m heading out to the airport now and will be in Beijing for the next several days. Email or web access isn’t likely. Catch me here after August 1st.

I’ve been dealing with a persistent sinus problem for a while. I figured it was just the typical allergy stuff. However, since I busted my face last year in Mineral Wells, its been chronic. I’ve been off and on seeing a Ear-Nose-Throat specialist here in Cheonsang since I arrived in January. He gives me a few antibiotics and other drugs, the junk goes away but then eventually comes back. To be honest I can remember only a few weeks when my left nostril didn’t feel like I had a three-pound booger lurking up there.

Well, the ENT dude decided to do some extra tests today when I went to see him. Normally, I pay him about $8. But today, it was significantly more – a whopping $11. I mean damn, that’s a37% increase in fees! But, hell, it’s still only $11 – and that’s just walking in the door, no appointment, and NO insurance. (Suck it, all you Americans with poor or no insurance!)

He’s determined that after last year’s broken nose, my septum has become deviated. It matches the rest of me now, I suppose. Sometime after I come back from China, I’ll have him rip open my face, rebreak my nose and fix the deviation, which has been causing chronic rhinitis. It’s not a huge infection or anything, but just a little post-nasal drip and constant talking during the day and its wreaking havoc with my throat. I hope to be rid of it soon. If it turns out it really is a three-pound booger, I’m gonna put it on eBay. You can sell anything there.

Following in the footsteps in my elder brother John, I, too, am going to the Great Wall. I booked tickets for my girlfriend and myself for a 5 day trip to Beijing beginning this Saturday. In addition to the Wall, we’ll also see Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City, the Summer Palace and the Temple of Heaven. We’re on a package tour, so we’ll have to follow the guy with the flag to keep from missing the bus everywhere we go. I’m not fond of guided tours, but it was cheap. We do have a free day to explore parts of Beijing on our own and we’re still trying to decide what else we should see.

MyeongHee has never been out of the country or even on a plane, so she’s both excited and nervous. Last weeks’ Brazillian plane crash didn’t help. We’re on a tour primarily for English speakers here in Korea, so I might be having to do some translating for her. She understands quite a bit, but not when they talk fast. I’ll bring my English/Korean dictionary, which also does a nice job on Chinese – it even speaks phrases in Chinese.  That might come in handy on our free day. She doesn’t speak Chinese, but like all Korean students, she had to learn Chinese characters in school and she reads fairly well.  That was pretty much the deciding factor on where we’d go for a vacation – neither of us spoke or read Japanese. All the other places in Asia we considered we’re pricey just to get to. Asia is big. Real big.

I won’t spend any time blogging while we’re there, so I’ll save my pictures and video for when I come back.

There’s something about the nighttime skyline in any Korean city. If there’s a church, you can see it from miles away. Maybe that’s the point: to call in the lost and wayward should they need a guiding light after a night of Soju and Noraebangs. Since none of the churches that I’ve passed by late in the evening appear to be open and waiting for the inebriated and needy to come seeking succor for the soul, I must consider alternate explanations.

Whatever the reason, each and every church in Korea bears the same fixture atop its edifice: a gleaming red neon cross.  The neon cross is de rigeur, as if in order to proclaim one’s  existence as House of God, there must be a red neon cross, as specified in Chapter 3, paragraph 4, Subsection 6e of the Korean building code. I’m sorry, sir, since you don’t have the requisite neon cross, measuring no less than 2 meters high, using red neon #23, displayed in a prominent position on your structure, we’ll have to revoke your license. You may, however, continue to hold weekly bingo games in said establishment. until compliance is obtained and duly notarized. Since a building code or zoning laws most likely doesn’t exist in this country (that’s a whole different discussion on this blog I’ll have to do later) I’d have to give that option little consideration as well.

Perhaps its a tax consideration. Should one wish to remain tax free as a place of worship, its status must be visible to all, night or day.

My money is on homogeneity. Korea is one of the most homogeneous populations on the planet. Close to 97% of the people here are Korean. China, for example, has more than 90 distinct ethnicities. Japan has several as well. The US, well, that’s the classic salad bowl. But Korea, well, its a quintessential one trick pony with a lemming-like population. If a couple of Koreans get together and decide something is a good idea, you can bet the rest of the society will follow suit, right over the same cliff.

My guess is that someone, somewhere on this peninsula, decided that his church would look pretty darn fancy with a nice red neon cross on the top. Soon after that, red neon crosses (blue, green or purple just isn’t done) popped up all over the land like pimples on a teenager’s face after a chocolate binge.

And why not? Red neon is splayed throughout most other parts of any Asian towns, particularly on restaurants, bars, nightclubs and noraebangs. Why not a church? After all, it’s a fairly  accurate depiction of the crucifixion itself: poor, tired, beaten down Jesus, struggling to carry his old, rugged, red neon cross up the hill, trailed by throngs of wailing disciples and one very long extension cord.

As I mentioned in an earlier post…Just a short video I put together from a recent hike in the Yeongnam Alps, a small chain of mountains west of Ulsan. We hiked Mt Gaji and then went to Seok Nam Sa temple, stuck into a valley at the headwaters of the Taewha River that runs through Ulsan.

It’s been raining for the better part of two weeks here, but Sunday was fabulous weather. Too nice to stay indoors so we decided to head out and do some sightseeing.  We went up to Mt. Gajinsan, the highest peak in what the locals call the “Yongnam Alps,” a chain of mountains to the west of Ulsan. We drove up to Mt Gajinsan and took a short hike up. With all the rain we’ve had, the mountains were lush green and the foliage thick. It was difficult trail and we were only sparingly rewarded with glimpses of the countryside.

We did catch a few nice spots with a view toward Ulsan. The peak in the distance in the right is Munsu Mountain, a place I’ve written of often and climbed multitudinous times. Ulsan is (barely) visible in this shot, but becomes quite evident as we climbed further up the mountain. Yesterday, Typhoon Man-Yi rolled through south and east of Korea, sweeping much of the funk from the air, so it was relatively clear.

As the day wore on, however, the clouds returned. Just in time to make for misty shots of Seok Nam Sa temple, nestled within the folds of Mt. Gajinsan. The temple is renowned as a training ground for nuns. All of the accolytes there are females, their heads shaved and their clothes austere. The temple dates back to around 680 A.D. with various refurbishments and reconstructions throughout the centuries. Centuries – that word just astounds me, since our own history in America is limited to a just a couple of them. What few historical places America does have with that distinction, such as the Paleoindian cave dwellers in New Mexico, Utah or Colorado, have not been continuously occupied and are mere relics of a past age,  a page in a history book.

I took several pictures. This one doesn’t come close to showing the beauty of the place, but I liked the little family taking portraits in front of the stone stupa.

None  of the pictures show the place as beautiful as it is in person. I have far too many, in fact, to due it justice here. I’ll put together a short multimedia clip for this trip. I hope to have that done in the next day or so.  I should have time – the rains are back again today.

Well, not all of it. I’ve had issues with the post office here and their delivery abilities.

This week I had to send off my passport to a travel agency in Busan.I sent it registered mail on Monday and as of Thursday evening, it still hadn’t made it the 60Km to its destination. I went down to the PO today with receipt and tracking number in hand, ready to rip heads off shoulders. I was worried that not only would I not get to go on the vacation I’d setup to Beijing this month (more on that later) I’d have trouble getting anywhere until I got a new passport.

Well, long story short, the local PO not only tracked where my letter was, they also negotiated with the travel agency as to who received it, who shipped it from there to the Chinese consulate and who’s getting my visa ready. I’d have had a hard time communicating with all the Koreans if they simply gave me a name and number of who signed for it as Fed-Ex or similar would have done.

Minor catastrophe averted. Score one for the local post office.

At half-time, the score remains tied at 1:1. Film at eleven.

Just for fun, a few weeks ago I put in a link to Clustrmaps on the bottom of each page of my site. Maybe you noticed. Over the past several months, I had been monitoring the traffic I get on the site and it’s steadily grown. I found a link to Clustrmaps on another site and decided to use their stuff. It graphically points out from where  web traffic originates for  this web site.

It only logs those hits since I installed it, but in the past I’ve gotten traffic from Russia, Seychelles, Bulgaria and other semi-exotic locales.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and check it out. I’ve gone global. Is your location marked on the map?

Today was good. A normal start to the day followed by a fun day at school. The other teachers bought me some nice gifts: a coffee pot, a beautiful wall hanging and some Korean books (one for learning the language more, one for traveling around.)  Even a couple of the kids bought me gifts and had them wrapped: One gave me a small notepad and another gave me a pencil-case. A third gave me her soda and some candy – a little impromptu, but gratefully accepted nevertheless.

After work, Jessica called from Texas. That was cool. Always good to hear from one of my young ‘uns. Then, my girlfriend and I went out to one of our favorite restaurants for  dinner.  No big parties or anything and I’m totally fine with that. It’s 11:30pm and I’m ready for bed.

Another fine birthday and another year passed. At 47, I don’t feel old. At least not yet. Maybe it’ll kick in tomorrow.

This is what it takes to grow big-ass pears without the bugs and birds picking it to pieces. A few months ago, I took pictures of the infrastructure required to hold up the branches for these large fruit. Yesterday, on our way to the Munsu to do some rock climbing, we passed by this pear orchard. Each one of the small fruit has been bagged with a breathable cloth/paper covering big enough to hold the expanding pear as it matures.

They still use chemical pesticides here, but just early on, before there’s anything to bag. After that, they forgo the chemicals. I suspect its simply economics and not any adherence to “organically grown” or other marketing buzzwords. Chemicals cost money to buy, but there’s an abundance of cheap labor, mostly old folks, who tend the fields.

Soon, those bags will be filled with larger-than-softball sized Ulsan Pears (called Asian Pears back home.)

Several months ago, I shipped a few cases of Korean ramen noodle soup to Sam, who was then stationed in the middle east. The soup wasn’t all that expensive. In fact, the shipping cost nearly as much as the soup. She never got it, though. The Korean postal service, in all its wisdom, unilaterally decided what the postal code meant. Her military “state” abbreviation of “AE,” they decided, must mean United Arab Emirates. I mean, who cares if there’s really a “U” in front of the AE in that abbreviation? It’s close enough. So, sure enough, nearly four months later, the package of soup arrives back here as undeliverable. The good folks in the UAE had no clue where to send it, so they sent it back.

That in itself wouldn’t be so bad. But what really angered me is that the Korean postal service wanted additional funds to cover the cost of shipping it back. 50% more, in fact, than the original shipping costs. Had I been there when the package arrived, I’d have sent the delivery boy back out on his ear. Instead, our school receptionist received the package. Not knowing what was in it or from whence it came, she paid the costs. I’d rather not have her try and decide if future packages should or shouldn’t be accepted, so I quickly repaid her. This wasn’t her fault.  The Korean postal service is to blame, and if their English was better or my Korean was better, they’d get an earful.

In all, I paid the equivalent of US$16 for the soup. Another $16 for the first shipping to the UAE and then another $24 for it to be shipped back. That’s some pricey soup I now own – $56 for a case of  soup I bought at the corner store. But this case is special! It’s been halfway around the world and back!

Sam did receive the second package of soup I sent. But it was near the end of her tour of duty in the middle east and I just sent it to her home in Kansas. She probably could have purchased it there much cheaper. Or I could have had a friend ship some from one of the many Korean stores in Dallas.  In return, she sent me a nice bit of middle eastern garb – an authentic dishdashi, complete with red checkered head scarf. Perfect for Halloween or the next time I want to play  terrorist.

I’m working on my next book. It’s on my Writing pages if you’re interested in a sneak preview.