But Where's The Missing Link???

A couple of weeks ago Quirky quill snagged me with a tag that was deceptively simple. I was in a blue funk at the time, but I did promise I would take up the tag when I returned to humanity. So now it is time to pay my dues.

The tag instructions were to recall five previous posts, pertaining respectively to my family, my friends, myself, my love, and anything else I like. I did consider taking the easy way out, which would have been to link five times to a post about myself. But where would be the fun in that? So I'll do it the hard way.

My family, then. A little over a year ago I wrote about the monster in my life. And then there was the one about my dog. I've been really lucky that both of them are seriously eccentric creatures with enough character to make up several different alphabets. There's never a dull moment when either of them is around. Oh, how I yearn for dullness. (Not!)

I hadn't really ever written about friends until a very odd phase in January when several things happened almost simultaneously. They made me re-examine the friendships that I had and acknowledge how fragile they can be. And (which was the best part) they reminded me that it's always a good idea to let the people who matter to you know that they matter to you. These posts are so recent that it seems superfluous to link to them. So as a bonus I've also flashedback to a rather embarassing reunion from a year ago.

How do I link to a post about myself when this entire blog is really about me? The only way to choose a particular post would be to do it with a touch of whimsy. And since I just happened to buy some seriously funky t-shirts today, I suppose I should cast my memory back to the day Hollywood awakened my inner fashionista.

A post about my love? You won't find one. You will find fleeting references. I'm generous enough to tell you that, and jealous enough to not make it any easier for you to find them.

As for likes, I have many. One I have a particularly soft spot for is coffee. back in college I had painted onto one of my t-shirts a picture of Garfield holding a steaming mug, and captioned it with "Happiness is a poor substitute for coffee". There are still times when I think that might be true.

Oh, and the final part of the tag is to tag five others to take it up. But I've been so slow to complete this tag myself that anyone I might have thought to pass this onto has already recieved it from someone else. So I'll be the terminus on this particular line (QQ - hope you don't mind). Regular service will soon resume with a new post.

Language, Timothy

I'm standing at the counter at Subway, waiting for the guy in the green cap on the other side to wrap my dinner and slip it into a plastic bag for me to carry away. He has an odd accent which I simply cannot place. I pride myself on having a good ear for languages and accents (it compensates for being blind to other peoples' faces), and I don't like being unable to place his accent. So I unobtrusively lean forward to read the name on his tag in the hope that it will give me a clue.

It turns out his name is "Sandwich Artist". Sure, that would explain his accent and my inability to recognize it. After all, I've never before met anyone from the Sandwich Islands.

(Irrelevant geographical note - the Sandwich Islands, currently known as the Hawaiian Islands, are not to be confused with the South Sandwich Islands which are in the South Atlantic.)

Seriously, what is it with these ridiculous job titles? I could even accept the guy being known as a sandwich technician, but an artist? I'd love to walk up to him one day and ask for a toasted post-abstract neo-classical club with extra cheese and sweet onion sauce. Oh, and can I have some French impressionist fries with that? I'll concede that his sandwich tastes good, but what does it mean?

I'm convinced that the sandwich artist was dubbed thus by some dimwitted business school graduate. I was taking job interviews at a business school last weekend when one eager young newbie proudly told me that he had run something called Schmeezer (name changed to protect the asinine).

"What the hell is that!?" I asked, momentarily relinquishing my usual suave dignity. "That", he told me sagely, "is our communication platform". I asked him to try again, in English this time. He did, and confessed that "communication platform" is idiot-speak for "college magazine". And on that high note, the interview ended.

I wonder where it will all end. My poor pet dog will probably mutate into a canine social accessory. Bless her shaggy little soul, she does love her tissue-based dental resistives (that's chewy bones to you). She's asleep now, sprawled on the domicile/inhabitant ambulatory interface (floor), blissfully unaware of the perils of human language.

I'd like to take all this dumbass jargon, bring it back to the weeds who invented it, and get them to make a solar-deficient depository credit.

Oops. What I mean is that I'd like 'em to stick it where the sun don't shine.

Redemption

We live embedded in a mosaic of people. And some of its parts matter more than others.

The one who who seemed so alien until the first time you talked...
... deep into the night. And then you realized that you could have been twins. Years later you have the same connection. You spend months in silence. Then you pick up the phone and in an instant it’s as if you’re in the same room again, talking about the discoveries you’ve made and the life you’ve lived since the last time you talked. Everything's changed around you but nothing's changed between you.

The one whom you did not expect.
Lunchtime conversations. Exchanging notes on movies, on food, on the past and the future, and on yourselves. And just like that, you were friends - long before you realized it. And when you did realize it, what a delightful surprise!

The one who was cool and then became warm.
You were boys who thought they were men and together you set about making mistake after mistake. Back then it seemed better to be clever than to be wise. Back then it seemed style was substance. When your paths crossed again you had both realized it was okay to not be as cool as you used to pretend to be. You sat across a table and showed yourselves and you liked what you saw and it felt good.

The one whom distance brought closer.
When you were in the same place you were unfailingly cordial. It was only after you went your separate ways that you started talking. Most bonds abrade under the twin frictions of space and time. Unexpectedly, this one matured and strengthened.

The one who laughed...
... who laughed hysterically with you as you traded whimsical theories on the extinction of saber-toothed tigers. You wouldn’t dream of saying that you value each others’ friendship (that would be too … transparent) but you show it at every opportunity. Perhaps it is time to put it in words?

The one you saw once and could never forget.
Maybe it was the tilt of the head. Maybe it was the open, utterly uninhibited smile. Maybe it really was the purple eyeliner. Who knew that two people so far apart could be so inseparable? Despite others. Despite even themselves. Perfectly unmatched, but a perfect match. The most important piece of the mosaic.

(There are others but these are the ones whom, over the past few days, I’ve had the chance to let them know they matter. I hope they heard me.)

Lament

We live embedded in a mosaic of people. It is much more than the sum of its parts, nevertheless some of the parts are more essential than others. And when they change, the mosaic changes utterly.

Sometimes unexpectedly...

The one who you took for granted would always be there. Adamant. A silent, reluctant inspiration. A role model despite never seeking to be one. When that piece is removed from the mosaic, suddenly you realize how fragile the rest of the pattern is.

Sometimes with sickening inevitability...

When you know things will not be the same again, when you watch the time pass by knowing that the change you dread is inexorably grinding towards you, when you hope wistfully that it will not come and at the same instant you can feel your spirit flag, and in your mind's eye you see the mosaic ripped apart a hundred times with sickening finality.

And then?

And then you tell youreself you're unbreakable, that new bonds will be created amidst the gnarled skeletons of the old. You tell yourself that you will dust away the debris like you've always done before and a new mosaic will take shape.

But still,

But still, in a corner of your soul, there is an ache. Will it go away?

Viva El Mariachi!

Yesterday I had the rare privilege of watching a master at the peak of his powers. Carlos Santana was performing in Singapore, and I was there.

He played without a pause for nearly three hours. And he had me on my feet without a pause for nearly three hours. To be honest, I had not expected it. I was apprehensive about going to a show where everyone was assigned a numbered seat. And I was not reassured when I got into mine. Sitting in the stands in the Singapore Indoor Stadium at the far end from the stage, I did not exactly feel like I was in the middle of the music. It felt more like watching a concert video on high-definition TV.

But a couple of songs into the set I realized that the place to be was at the back where there was room to dance. And from that point on the evening turned into magic.

I had a blinding flash of reality soon afterwards. It suddenly hit home for me that I was watching someone who had played at the legendary Woodstock festival. And in the time since then he has been making music for nearly four decades. He's been performing for longer than I've been alive. And last night he played with a passion that has not been dimmed by the years, nor been perverted by wave after wave of musical fads and fashions.

It must seem to him a long way from the days when he was an upcoming musician in San Franciso and was rather obscurely described as a purveyor of 'mariachi samba-rock". Whatever the heck that means. And I'm sure the width of a universe lies between a muddy field in Max Yasgur's farm southwest of Woodstock, and the crisp air-conditioned interior of an indoor arena in squeaky-clean Singapore.

I remember watching Woodstock, the movie, while I was still in college. (It remains for me the best Martin Scorsese film I have ever seen.) And the best part of that movie was Soul Sacrifice, an eleven-minute opus with which Santana ended his set. At some point last night, time contracted and distance disappeared when the beat of conga drums laid the rhythm for the flickering, insolent guitar intro to Soul Sacrifice, and I could pretend to myself that I had been transported back to the golden age of peace, love and music.

Losing My Seoul

This place is killing me. I’ve been in Seoul for five days now, and I just cannot stop eating. If it’s not the tabletop barbecue then it’s the sweet potato noodles. If it’s not the kimchi pizza then it’s the egg waffles. If it’s not … well, you get the picture. It’s got to the point where I can no longer pick a favourite food because everything I eat seems irresistible.

I do, however, have a favourite drink. It’s called muju. It’s a sort of thick wine with a strong cinnamon flavour and it’s served piping hot in a bowl. It works very nicely in the depth of winter because you get a nice warm glow outside from the hot bowl cupped in your hands, another one inside from the hot wine trickling down your throat, and a pleasant little tingle from the warm smell of cinnamon wafting in front of you face.

(I’m leaving tomorrow morning and I'm really going to miss the pleasure of having a hot meal and then stepping out into a breezy night while the temperature is -10C. Yes, that is a minus sign and yes it is that cold).

There was more to this trip than food, though. There was the historical incident at Namdaemun Gate. I was flipping through my Lonely Planet guide on Monday. It was especially cold outside and I had decided it was prudent to be a virtual tourist in the cozy comfort of my hotel room. But then I saw an article on the said gate, also known as National Treasure No.1. I am incapable of resisting a name like that, so I dragged my feet out of my room, squared my shoulders, and set out to savour the sight.

About half an hour later I got my first sight of the gate, and I have to admit I felt a little disappointed. The gate seemed to have collapsed, and the monument seemed in remarkably bad shape, especially given it’s rather grandiose designation. The big striped blue-and-white scaffolding really did not make the picture ny prettier.

Then I noticed the news crews. There must have been a dozen TV vans and as many groups of cameramen and carefully-groomed anchorpersons. I thought of asking someone what the big deal was, then realized my folly. This has got to be the least English-friendly city I have ever been too. They even do sign-language only in Korean. Rumour has it there was once a Scottish tourist who spent thirteen years walking in a very large circle because he could not ask for directions. It’s so extreme that they actually have Korean-to-Korean language dictionaries.

Anyway, the point is that all I could do was take pictures of news crews and walk away.

I found out later what had happened. A certain Mr. Chae had decided to turn the gate into the world’s most historic bonfire. He’d been ticked off at not being paid in full for some land that he had sold, so he decided to vent his spleen by destroying a six hundred year-old monument. That’s right, folks. He went to a beautiful wooden building that had survived wars, invasions, and six centuries of inclement weather, and set it on fire with paint thinner. He did not even give it the dubious dignity of dousing it in petrol. He burned the poor old building with half a dozen cans of glorified nail-polish remover!

Here’s the kicker: apparently a couple of years ago he had set fire to Changgyeonggung Palace, another ancient monument. The guy is a freaking serial-offending land-selling monument-killer! Jokes apart, it really is very sad. Most of the classic old buildings in East Asia are extremely elegant and extremely fragile wooden structures. It’s a miracle that some of them have survived bombings and fires in multiple wars and revolutions. To then destroy one of the prettiest ones in such a callous manner, for such a petty grubbing reason, is simply unforgiveable. It’s a crime against a nation, a culture and millennia of history.

I guess I should be thankful to have seen the things that I have seen while they still exist. Can you imagine not being able to see the Taj Mahal or Stonehenge anymore because they were fire-bombed by football hooligans? It's disturbing that it can be so easy for disgruntled louts to ravage the milestones of human civilization. Now I'm even more determined to see as many of them as I can, while I still can. The milestones, that is, not the louts.

Next stop, Egypt.

Food for the Seoul

The coldest spots in Seoul are the exit tunnels that lead from the subway stations up to the street. It takes less than a minute to traverse one of these. But in that little time the cold seeps in from the concrete up through your legs, through your spine and all the way through to the tips of your ears. I learned this many times over the past two days.

It's been pleasant enough despite that. Yesterday I went to the Gyeongbokgung palace in the northern half of the city. It was built six hundred years ago. Since then it’s been damaged, rebuilt, damaged again during Japanese colonization, threatened during the Korean war, but still stands today with a quiet dignity that gives no hint of its beleaguered past. I spent the morning tramping through the grounds. The maze of corridored walks was lined with leafless trees and scattered patches of late snow. There were hardly any other visitors, possibly because of the lunar new year festival (and possibly because few others were fool enough to venture out in the cold). The absence of tourists set off the quiet wintry dignity of the building and grounds in a very fetching manner.

The cold did not bother me too much, because luckily I was able to insulate myself from the stomach out. I enjoy Korean food at any time. But when it comes piping hot from a roadside vendor on a frigid day, it is simply irresistible. Barbecued chicken skewers, sweet potato wrapped in a blanket of minced beef and dunked in spicy red sauce, pan-fried buns stuffed with cinnamon cream – and those were just a few of the things I ate. I won’t even bother to mention the food I passed over longingly because I was too stuffed to eat it.

Did I mention the ice cream? I went into a shop and asked for a banana ice cream with cinnamon topping. It turned out that the term ‘topping’ was misleading. The girl who took my order dunked a scoop of ice cream on a cold slab of stone. Then she sprinkled a small heap of cinnamon on top and used a pair of scoops to knead the cinnamon into the ice cream as if she was kneading a lump of dough. Divine! Of course my left hand nearly froze and broke off at the wrist because it was holding the icy cone while I walked down the street at night. But that was an acceptable risk to take for the gastronomic plesure.

I got to enjoy more than just amazing food; I also had one of my more unusual shopping experiences. I was browsing the wares at a stall selling fashion jewelry in hopes of finding something nice for my better half. The salesgirl helpfully asked whether the style I was looking for was elegant or cute. “Elegant”, I repled. “Elegant”, she muttered to herself as with great satisfaction she handed me a pair of Mickey Mouse earrings.

Mickey Mouse! Not even the most ardent Disney fan could call Mickey elegant! He wears red shorts, for crying out loud. The only person who comes close is Superman, and we all know what a dork he looks in his scarlet lingerie. Fortunately for the better half, and even more fortunately for me, I managed to overcome the salesgirl’s attempt at assistance and find something suitable. Something that I considered elegant despite its lack of rodent motifs.

So now I'm back in my hotel, and tomorrow the work part of this trip will begin. I do hope it lives up to the tone set by the last two days, because they were really great!