The Taxi Driver Who Fed Me Hoddeok
It’s November, it’s getting chilly and tonight the buses end earlier than usual. I cross the street, hear my stomach growling (I skipped supper), and hail a cab. I step into the best smelling environment I’ve been in all year. The driver is scarfing down a hoddeok, a gooey, sweet pancake that smells of melted brown sugar and baked dough (now, whenever I eat one I remember the elephant ears I used to eat when I was a kid at the Dunster Bazaar. They were covered with home-made jam and icing sugar, but these are not far off). So, I tell the driver how good it all smells and he decides to feed me one. He says, ‘Have some, eat up. I have lots’. I resist, but he insists, opens the bag 20 cm from my nose and tells me to take one. As I eat I ignore all the thoughts going off in my head, that my fingers aren’t clean, that 3 out of 10 people who used this taxi that day probably have influenza infested hands. I touch the door handle, touch the hoddeok, it touches my mouth, and – viola! you’ll soon know my fate and the reason why. All the while, the driver tells me to eat slowly but it’s too late. I succumb to the smells of a Korean pancake.
Texts: Austrade Profile on Korea’s Wine Market
Here’s an interesting profile/commentary of the wine market in Korea from the Australian trade ministry perspective. Give it a read, promise to suppress your snobby side.
Zara! Zara! Zara!
Finally found some clothing for tall people (I’m 193cm/6′4″ with abnormally long limbs). Zara, which is on the 2nd floor of that new massive shopping complex dubbed Times Square in Youngdongpo (a 40 minute train trip from Pyeongtaek), has plenty. Much of it is pricey, but their winter and fall coats are reasonable and more importantly cover 100 percent of my arms. Now any tall fellow can be just as well-dressed, rugged and mysterious as the man on the left.
British Columbia Pilgrimage
The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia
The Marine Building, Burrard Street, Downtown Vancouver
