A Little Calm Before the Storm

For some reason my Firefox browser is not on communicative terms with our hospital wireless connection, so I've resorted to blogging with Internet Explorer. It's mildly disconcerting, although not quite as newsworthy as the fact that we're currently sitting in a birthing ward at a maternity clinic in Busan.
We came in at 10pm last night and in between a flurry of medical staff, broadcasted sounds of fetal heartrate and various kinds of saline drip, we've gotten a couple of winks of sleep despite an environment unbecoming of a bedroom.

Time passes slowly in this place, like we're trapped in some kind of wormhole vortex at the gateway to a new dimension of parenthood. Positive and negative thoughts come and go, generally lingering around before being contemplated with a grin or dismissed with a mental flyswat.

So I thought, what better way to pass the time than to catch up with the blog while my wife dozes in and out of sleep. I've neglected this old thing a little lately, and as the peppering rainstorm of unusual thoughts circulating my brain appear to be unhelpful, perhaps a little productive output will help put them at ease.

A week before Heather arrived in Busan, we went to the Han River to enjoy the breeze. There are many rivers nicer than the Han, although none quite so suited to the character of Seoul.

Hey look, it's my pregnant wife. Heather is lying in a hospital bed next to me right now, eyes closed and breathing slowly. But she's awake, occasionally opening her eyes to inspect the drip tubes running into her arm or to lightly complain of the labour-inducing harness around her belly.

Heather is a star. She's only 155cm in stature, and the doctors say that it's easier for tall people to give birth. But she ignores such notions with characteristically pleasant passiveness.

On the Han, you can hire boats with buffets on board for weddings or indulgent corporate gatherings.

That day we had a pleasant walk and had a paddle on the 'duckboats',  a misnomer since they're clearly representing some kind of goose. I'm constantly bewildered by how my wife responds to me pointing out such trivial matters with a smile.

The duckboats are on the north side of the Han, and will cost you W13,000 for an hour. They're surprisingly easy to paddle, and even have room for two in the back. We'll come back someday when we have two kids, I guess.

Last night we saw Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the title of which comes to mind when I see this photo.

In this case it would be Escalators Near The Han: On Tides of Strangers.

Our good man James Lim got married to his lovely partner Jinkang recently too. They went for an exotic honeymoon in Spain, of which they both deserved.

They make a great couple and have an abundance of people wishing them a happy marriage. James just bought a new apartment for his newlywed, making him much more of a man than myself.

The most I can come up with is a mossarium.

Once nice thing about starting a family is that people send gifts for the baby. In the photo above, I'm demonstrating how not to hang a mobile. 90% of the time, gifts are baby clothes. My personal theory is that people enjoy purchasing baby clothes because they're comically small.

Well, we've reached the end of this group of photos, but there's more to come. I'll see if I can squeeze them out before Heather wakes up and squeezes out our baby girl. She was actually due last Friday, but is biding her time in the cosy confines of Heather's womb. She'll enter the busy world of the 21st century soon enough.

As Pooh would say, what's the rush?