Costco Runs

There are a few theories floating around as to why leaves change their colour in the autumn. Americans would call it changing color in the fall. But I don't like that as much, because Fall sounds a little like fool, and one could easily make a fool of oneself in the ensuing confusion.

Hypothetical conversation

American: "Hey man, do you like, like the Fall?"

Englishman: "May I so inquire as to which 'fall' you are referring? The fall which has fallen, or the fool that has just fallen?"

Australian: "You blokes talk real funny."

Some say it's an unintended consequence of anthocyanin production. A more recent theory suggests that because they're going to lose their leaves anyway, some trees change colour in order to expose camouflaged green aphids to predators. It might be the tree's last laugh at the sap-suckers that have been tormenting them throughout the summer.

My personal theory is that the colour comes from an absence of rainbows. Just as angular momentum is conserved, so too are colours that are nice to be looked at.

Ever seen a lot of colourful trees at the same time as a double rainbow? Me neither. That's because there's only so much paint in the world. 

Anyway, I have no idea how I'm going to smoothly transition this thought process into shopping at Costco. I would suggest cleansing your mind's palate with some imaginary lemon sorbet.

Going to Costco is more than a mere event. It is a sacred journey of consumerism, to be undertaken only when the trade winds of finance are billowing prevalently into the sales of the season.

No other place on the peninsula offers three kg cans of gherkins, a year's supply of dried blueberries or five litres of mustard in a single bottle.

What Costco lacks in carpet, ambient music and marketing, it makes up for in sheer industrial-sized packaging and epic trolley traffic jams.

W2,000 here will get you not just a hot dog, but a hot dog set. Granted, a set is really just an additional Coke, but still, that's unfathomably cheap. Some more conniving places would make their money in such a deal by selling you a rather tiny hot dog, after misleading you with their zoomed in macro shot of the same product. But not Costco. At Costco everything is enormous, including the hotdogs, whose photography probably required a panoramic lens.

If it weren't for all the carcinogenic n-nitroso compounds, I'd most certainly have bought one.

Every few months we do a Costco run, always after payday and often resulting in us purchasing more than we can comfortably carry. This forces me to carry more gross tonnage than I was anatomically designed for. The following day, I often have sore back muscles and tender tendons. These injuries I refer to as CRIs (Costco-Run Injuries).

But it all pays off in the end, for when we return home, a festive spirit erupts as we browse through our winnings and gleefully restock empty shelves.

Occurring only once in a blue moon, a Farrand Costco run is generally less financially regulated than your average weekly trip to the Wondang markets. As such, we find it much easier to convince each other of the need to buy things like six tins of Altoids or two litres of Kikkoman (arguably the world's best soy sauce).

I've learned that Heather likes Perrier mineral water. Coincidentally, so does Kim Jong il. The similarities seem to stop there.

A well stocked fridge makes a grown Farrand happy. One thing I enjoy in the mornings is opening a heavy fridge door with a pleasing amount of gravity. It helps reassure me that even if the North invades the South, I'll have eggs and juice with which to bribe our way out of the capital.

They say you can tell a lot about someone by the contents of their fridge. From ours, I guess you can tell that we still haven't gotten through our bi-monthly supply of Busan mother-in-law's banchan.

Perhaps I should be eating more banchan and less Altoids.

Cheese Neurons and Tea-fee

Since coming to Korea, I've noticed that I enjoy kimchi much less than I used to. When I was young, my sister and I used to go nuts for kimchi and basically run a victory lap around the house at the mere mention of its existence. We even used to make amateur kimchi using the wrong cabbage (western 'round' cabbage), which was technically more of a poorly-sliced chilli sauerkraut. Our youthful imaginations learned to compensate, and to us it was nearly as good as the real thing.

But because I eat the stuff everyday now, the neuron cluster responsible for kimchi enjoyment in my brain has been overstimulated and desensitized.

The opposite appears to be true for my cheese neurons. Korea is quite possibly the most cheese-deprived nation in the OECD, and it's a well known fact that an extended sojourn in Korea can increase one's cheddar hypersensitivity. Patrik from Sweden arrived in the country with a much higher dependence on all major cheese groups than me, and it was only a matter of weeks before the tell-tale signs of withdrawal set in. He was soon trekking all the way out to COEX mall from SNU station, just to buy New York Fries.

I'd never had these before, and he led me there one day. New York Fries is a Canadian franchise that sell all manner of kamjatwiggim topped with melted cheese, sour cream and whatever else your impending myocardial infarction desires.

We periodically receive banchan from lovely mother-in-law, who expresses her affection for us in kimchi kilos. It's not uncommon for us to receive more than we can consume, leading to Overstocked Fridge Syndrome.

Here's a typical spread of a mother-in-law-sponsored breakfast. Sometimes when I'm by myself, I get too lazy to make rice so I just whack some banchan in between two slices of bread.

I call it an EMW sandwich (East Meets West).

Here are the dusk silhouettes of Heather and me during one of our campus strolls. Heather wanted people to call her Ka-Hee for a while, but she seems to be less mindful of it these days. I started calling her Heather again in real life and the worst that happens is that I get tickled for punishment.

So, Heather it is.

I had to go to immigration to renew my F4 visa last week. I've now been in Korea for 4 years and my visa was renewed for another 3. Am I sick of this place yet? Well, not really. Korea has it's frustrations, but that isn't unique to any particular country. And thanks to the hard work of GOA'L a few years ago, the process for obtaining an F4 visa is refreshingly easy.

That's Heather's Yogi Bear shirt. She likes to wear different old shirts around the house. There are three main ones, which I've entitled Yogi Bear, Lonsdale and The World. It's like having a different theme for each day. I like The World best, because it has a small amount of geographical information.

After you get married, you tend to do less grinding in the hip-hop clubs and more grinding of coffee at home.

Which is great, if you like coffee.

Sometimes in the mornings I have difficulty deciding whether I want tea or coffee. Tea is higher in antioxidants, but coffee has more of a caffeine-happy kick. The optimum solution would involve the best of both worlds.

To resolve this dilemma, I often fill a mug with 3/4 hot tea, and then 1/4 coffee. I call this drink Tea-fee. It tastes a little strange, I must admit. But variety is the spice of life.

You may like to try it for yourself sometime.

MBC Marathon

Marathons always sound like a good idea when they're scheduled to happen a few months later. A typical plan would consist of slowly getting back into shape over the generous amount of weeks beforehand, before blitzing the track and setting a few local records at the same time.

But reality always has more realistic ways of doing things. A week before the MBC marathon was scheduled to happen, I finally decided it might be a good idea to go for a practice jog. 

On the morning of the event, we woke up at an inappropriate hour and went to a subway station that was a lengthy distance from our comfortable dwellings in Gwanak-gu. While waiting in the freezing air for the shuttle bus to arrive, I wondered why so many people would willingly sign up for such an ordeal.

I concluded that it was because the act of monetary payment and boasting to friends of involvement is a subconscious way for us to trick ourselves into having to do something that we'd normally make excuses to avoid.

At the venue were a large amount of people who had found themselves a victim of such self-trickery. The ones who really did want to be there were identifiable because they wore specialized running singlets, rather than the complimentary 'Run Yourself Better' shirt.

In the end our times weren't too bad. I only stopped to walk once, and that was because of a hill. And the good thing about the MBC Marathon is that everyone who crosses the finish line gets a medal.

With three sponsor's logos on it.

There were a few thousand participants at the event, and they had booked over a hundred coach buses to transport us from the subway to the location, which was around 5 kilometres away. Next year I'll just run from the subway station to the course and back, thereby saving time and money.

That is, if I choose to endure three days of post-traumatic thigh disorder.

A week passed between the marathon and the time this photo was taken, which was when this particular baby was one day old. It's Heather's newest niece, and technically my niece-in-law. In Korea, they often don't give names to babies until some time after they're born.

Heather has a slightly worrying, endless fascination with babies. I don't mind the things.

Especially when they're sleeping.

I think it would be a very rewarding job to work in a maternity ward. But you would have to like babies a lot, and put up with an unnatural number of halmonis trying to communicate in baby language while tapping on the glass.

It was Heather's second sister's first child and she seemed pretty relaxed about the whole ordeal. We hung around in the recovery ward for a while, and Heather administered one of her famous temple massages.

Heather's parents were happy to have another grandchild. They took us out for barbecue pork and encouraged us to drink copious amounts of soju. After that we went to the noraebang together, which would have been a little odd if I wasn't so tipsy.

Another odd thing that happens when I go to Busan is that I always borrow Heather's dad's old clothes to sleep in.

Heather's mother can speak Japanese. I studied it for a few years in middle school, but I can only remember how to say "I understand a little bit of Japanese."

Heather's parents have planted the lettuce seeds that my dad brought from Australia for them. Dad calls this kind of lettuce 'fancy lettuce'.

What a lovely wife I have. She used to try and hide from the camera when I first started blogging, but these days I think she's beginning to enjoy the publicity. Occasionally we'll be walking somewhere and she'll say "Hey, take a photo of me over here."

We went back to Busan on the Sunday without having time to catch up with friends. I don't mind the odd trip down there, but it's pretty exhausting. Typically we sleep little, drink lots and are enthusiastically fed too much apple, melon and obscure banchan* that only Heather's mother makes. Of particular note is her salt crab dish, which is so salty that raw crabs are perfectly preserved at room temperature for months on end.

*preserved traditional Korean side dishes, the family recipes of which are passed down the generations.

But the good thing is that we often get to choose which homemade banchan we take back to Seoul with us. A treasure chest like this will last us for quite some time. In some ways, banchan is the perfect gift, because it's cheap to buy the ingredients, but takes a lot of care and experience to make. 

Hmm, now there's some food for thought.