I did indeed have Kimchi and rice for dinner on Friday. Thank you so very much for thinking of me while enjoying your grade A Alberta beef Mr. Porco. You may have made me jealous on Friday night, but you won't win my envy for meals on either Saturday or Sunday.

Due to a recent bout of homesickness, I opted for a familiar weekend of western style eating. To Toby's usual delight, it was a homemade hasbrown, scrambled egg, and soysage skillet, topped with South Korea's finest, commonly found white chedder, the Australian import Strong and Bitey for breakfast/lunch on Saturday. It rivals the cody scramble, I tell you, and the soysages have nicely replaced the longing for 9th ave that I experienced in Twillingate. This excuisite dinning experience was followed by a trip to the traditional markets of Gumi in search of a variety of things, including some of the most pungently garlic kimchi I've come accross. After wiling away the remaining daylight in the main shops downtown, we returned home to our tired apartment to instill a temporary vigour via the preparation of our victuals. Last weekend, Toby made the greatest discovery of our Korean adventure so far (well at least as far as the comforts of home go): he went to COSTCO in Daegu. At COSTCO he found such important items as swiss cheese, bagels, cranberry juice, dill pickles, chicken breast, quaker oatmeal, and familiar frozen foods. While we were both hoping for pizza pops, the four cheese ravioli more than made up for it. Alors, on Saturday night we feasted upon ravioli marinara and ceasar salad (thanks to my mom for sending the dressing), accompanied by a decent bottle of Australian cabernet-shiraz. Decent by affordable Korean standards, mind you, not something that would ever touch Mr. Porco's lips in Calgary. As for the remainder of the evening, we ventured forth to see the late late show of Daredevil at the local cineplex, during which we enjoyed combo 2 (note not combo 3 - details to follow later) consisting of dry popcorn and softdrinks, and then proceeded to the local foreigner hotspot where I had my first g & t since leaving the big C in November.

Sunday morning (actually afternoon as it was circa 1:15) began with the labor intensive preparation of fruit smoothies for breakfast. I've been concocting these with the help of only a ginsu, large bowl and whisk for about two months now. If anyone would like to send me my starfrit manual food processor in my next package, they would be forever adored... Toby has begun to call these chunkies, as the slices of orange and kiwi seem to get larger on each occasion. After a few hours exploring great sunny Gumi by mountain bike, it was back home again to prepare a meat and potatoes Sunday dinner. Well, it was meat for me with homemade breaded chicken breast, while the vegetarian ate his soy cutlets with heaps of mashed potatoes and salad on the side.

It was a food focussed weekend for me, and now it's back to the grind of the alarm clock at 5:30 am and hurried kimchi filled lunches in the LG cafeteria. I'll be thinking of you, Mr. Porco, with your Happy Plate Special in Mac Hall as I go for that extra heaping helping of kimchi.

Pap mohgeyo.

It only took me 12 tries to figure it out. 12 tries and some help from a friend. A friend who, funnily enough, was trying to get me to resign from my job about this time last year....

I think I'll spend the next few days trying to decide whether or not I'm too forgiving...

One day last fall I went to see a great little German film with a dear friend of mine. Shortly afterwards, I embarked on a journey that carried me first to the other side of the country, and then the world. During the first month of my trip, a catchy little Italian song from the film insisted on finding its way into my head on a regular basis. The name of the song is Via Con Me and it is sung by Paolo Conte. The only thing I could hear in my head every time I went near a restaurant, kitchen, store, beach, bar, anywhere was the following line "chips, chips, chips... du dee du dee du," which comprises part of the addictive little refrain. I eventually killed the incessant looping by purchasing the soundtrack to a different movie from a basement record shop in downtown Daegu. It's a great little song, and if I knew how to do anything with mp3's, I might be directing you to it right now. But since this post is just to try to correct my links, none of this is important.

I am a copy cat.