Running With Glocks

They say that the most common topic of conversation in the world is the weather. I find myself ceaselessly amazed at mankind's ability to observe the obvious and make an appropriate statement about it.

It's so cold today! 

It's so hot today!

Fascinating.

It's time for Lee's Korea Blog to jump on this merry bandwagon and participate in this quaint aspect of human behaviour. I suspect I'm not alone in the opinion that the highs and lows of Korea's weather are a topic worthy of complaint. The summers here are as humid as a sauna at a Hades resort, while the winters are as cold as a welldigger's feet.

I was going to say as hot as a stove and as cold as a fridge, but opted for a fancier simile.

I'd rather be cold than be hot. Uninteresting as it may be, it has (nonetheless), been selected as the opening trivial self-referential fact by which I have chosen to begin this paragraph. Wait, what has? Well, the fact that I'd rather be cold than be hot.

This talking-about-the-weather thing is proving to be more difficult than first imagined.

One thing I like to do on a cold winter's night is go jogging around campus. Cold air has a higher oxygen density than warm air, but getting a headspin is not the only reason I enjoy it. The main reason is because a lack of degrees Celsius allows me to do a whole lot of running without getting all hot and bothered. Hot and cold are opposites, you see. It's fascinating.

But one bad point about running in the cold is that my hands get extremely numb in the cold air. How numb, you ask? Well, I can't think of a very colourful simile for numbness. 

So let's just say that they're as numb as a really numb thing, in a land of numbness.

What on Earth am I doing in these photos, you ask? That's a great question. You've just unwittingly witnessed a pictorial solution to my hand-numbness problem. Shira MacDonald, a person whom I have never met, is a secretary of a running club called the Seoul Flyers, that I have yet to join. She told me through email that she runs with what she calls 'glittens' - glove/mittens that keep her hands warm.

Because I don't have glittens of my own, I decided to make my own 'glocks' - glove/socks. They work quite well.

I deliberately failed to lodge a patent for their design, so that everyone can make their own without fear of litigation.

I still have a vast reservoir of unused socks from my days as an English teacher. During that time I received more than my fair share of comically unimaginative (yet wholly appreciated) gifts of socks on Teacher's Day. The little sock patches in the photo above are an interesting by-product of the manufacturing process. The only idea I can think of for using them is to stick them onto coloured glocks, for a leopard-skin pattern.

One person who is noticeably less enthusiastic about glocks in general, is my lovely wife. She politely declined my offer to make her a pair, free of charge. At the time, she was immersed in her pregnancy health calendar and various informative brochures bestowed upon us by the maternity clinic. 

Some deep primal instinct within my subconcious murmurs contentedly whenever I observe my pregnant wife learning about pregnancy health.
Is that you, evolution?

When pregnant, it's important to eat a balanced diet. Ramyeon is cheap and delicious, but it doesn't have a whole lot of anything except palm oil and our recommended daily intake of monosodium glutamate.

So, on the occasions that we do eat it, I fortify it with beansprouts and cruciferous vegetables. You can make some pretty good fried noodles by discarding the water and seasoning it yourself.

Anyway, that's all from me this time. Happy glock making to you all.