Big White Barbie Does Busan

I am jet lag's whore. I'm confident that in time, I can flip this relationship on it's head. For now, I float through the day slightly groggy. My first flight left Busan at 7am Wednesday morning; my last arrived in Toronto at 8pm the same day (so to speak). Were it not for the 10 hour layover in Incheon, or my completely failure to fall asleep, this might be an easier transition.

Two Gravol pills are usually enough to get the ball rolling on my barf-free journeys. I learned my lesson from the 6 hour barfathon that was my 2004 New York bus trip. Not yet having appreciated the full potential of my motion sickness, I neglected to bring any antinauseants with me, and began keeling over the bus shit hole not long after the border crossing. This continued for the remainder of the bus trip and, after a brief respite sitting on the filthy Port Authority floors, on the number 7 train to Queens. There's nothing like discovering a hole in your vomit bag across from the family of three that you've been putting on a Hurl Show for, to teach you the value of always having some puke meds on you.

In November 2008, prior to my first plane trip back to Canada, I discovered that rather than getting drunk on Gravol, I could try these patches which I found at a pharmacy in Busan. I have no idea what their American equivalent is, though I imagine that one exists. Essentially they are small patches that you stick behind your ear and keep you in check, barf-wise, for about 72 hours. The first couple of times that I tried them out, I also used a little bit of Gravol, just to play it safe. This time I did not, hence my failure to fall asleep. As it turns out, I do not sleep like a baby on planes, as I have long boasted; I sleep like a baby when I consume large amounts of Gravol. Duh.

Where I failed to fall asleep, my seatmate was quite successful. Of course, the sleeping came after I fed him some Gravol to prevent further barfing. Thankfully, such things don't bother me much. My senses are so dulled on airplanes that I barely noticed him utilizing his barf bag in the first place.

The Gravol was more or less a trade-off for the No Jet Lag pills that he'd been passing me. Apparently if you take one of these No Jet Lag pills every 37 seconds while in flight, you will feel like a golden pony once you touch ground. I read the package with suspicion, which prompted him to assure me that they were legit. I suppose that it looked like I didn't trust taking pills from a stranger, which would probably have been true, had it not been outweighed by my suspicion that whoever was responsible for the pill's packaging was full of shit. In the end, I can't say whether they really helped or not, but I've felt worse. So, maybe.

It was brought to my attention that my blog was out of date. I leave Korea, possibly for good, in just under two weeks. The lead up to this has been stressful as Hell, so I more or less forgot that my blog existed. Now that I've remembered, here is a summary of where I'm at:

When I finished my first contract in Korea, my boss honoured my contract, paid me in a timely manner, and personally delivered me to the airport. While I didn't expect the same treatment from a much larger, less intimate institution, I expected something more than what I'm getting. Still, in the end, I will more than likely get paid what I am owed and return home in one piece. It's not all horrible. I'll provide more details on what went down after the dust has settled; if I write about it now, I'll produce a 10 paragraph mess of angry gibberish.

(producing 10 paragraph messes of angry gibberish is not below me, but I may as well save what little energy I have to fight the incompetence directly)

In light of all this stress, I developed shingles. Again. For those of you not in the know, shingles are really, really sexy. In this particular case, it's basically a line of herpes down my neck. Or, as I prefer to call it, my "neck AIDS". Unsurprisingly, nobody else at works finds this as amusing as I do. Thankfully, it's only been a minor hindrance. This is the second time I've had shingles. The first time, I reacted badly to the medication and ended up with a head-to-toe sunburn like rash in addition to unmedicated shingles itch and pain; this time I have no idea what they gave me, but it seems to be working. It must have been the butt injections that did the trick. I'm going to miss those!

I am really, really looking forward to flying out on March 3rd. I will be posting about Korea for a while after I land, so the blog should be active for a while. There are a few things that I refuse to post about while still in Korea, for various reasons. Some of them actually make good stories. Others, less so.

Until then... Happy belated Lunar New Year, Valentine's Day, Family Day, and all of those other holidays between last time, now, and then.

I hadn't been sick in well over a year. When 2010 rolled in, bringing with it my first bout of the flu since first moving to Korea, I was due. Cold or flu? Whichever, it was my turn. I have no qualms about starting off the year on my ass. Again. It happens.

I've been very accepting of the fact that sometimes, even I get sick, since I woke up with this last Saturday. I've been very patient. I slept away the entire weekend, took vitamins, ate soup, and even enjoyed the down time a little bit. Not that this did me any good. My cold, flu, or whatever has stretched its way through another weekend. This time, I'm not enjoying the down time quite so much. As I took in episode after episode of The Sopranos today (Season1 - I'm new to the series. Apparently I wasn't around last decade), a friend of mine was getting married in Daegu.

I absolutely love weddings. Good food. People looking slightly better than they usually do. Happiness. Hope. Me, drunk. What's not to love? I will never understand how anybody could hate weddings. I'll pass on lengthy ceremonies and picking up the tab, but the rest? Yes, please.

As much as it bothers me that I had to miss it, I'll take this moment to be less self centred than usual and realize that the wedding surely went on gloriously, even without me hiding in the back corner; I can be happy knowing that some folks I know just had one of the best days of their lives.

Congratulations to Diana and Min Gi!

I'm staying in tonight to eat cheesecake and catch up on Season 5 of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. If the mood strikes, I may also start Deadwood; I just finished Sons of Anarchy Season 2, so I'm due for another drama. As far as I'm concerned, this is a pretty excellent way to bring in 2010.

I've reached that point in my stunted emotional development where I start to think that coming back would be a good idea. It really wouldn't be. At least, not without trying something else first. I know that. Still. It would be nice if what is best would coordinate with what is easy for once.

Aside from my weekend trip to Jeju Island, which I will post about later this week, nothing of note has happened to me lately. Something of note did happen to a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago, so I'm going to tell her story, in the way that I tell all stories - by making them all about me.

This has been the best Monday ever, and it's not even 2 pm yet. I almost want to go to bed and call it a day. It can only go downhill from here. There have been at least three great moments of quality what-the-Hell-just-happened for me so far today. This was just one. We were discussing anti-smoking regulations in one of my favourite classes this morning. It went something like this: