Good Morning President

I walked around Seoul for a little bit this morning, taking pictures of buildings in good tourist fashion. Here's one now!

I like the billboard for the film Good Morning President, which, based on the trailer, is clearly a film about how an entire family gets elected President of Korea, and then the dad wins the lottery, and then the son finds true love with the presidential aide/secretly an investigative reporter trying to expose that there are too many Presidents.

The rest of my pictures from my walk are bland. I mean, even more bland than that one. I got something way better for you. Tiny bananas:

Or as I like to call them, reasonably-sized bananas.

Soju? I hardly know you!

And now, presenting my first photo direct from Seoul:

Annnnnnd it's a picture of some liquid yogurt and soju on my hotel room counter-top (not pictured, the cord-attached electric kettle labeled "cordless electric kettle"). Just to let you know how much I am absolutely KILLING it socially over here. But while this isn't the first time I've tried soju+yogurt drink, I guess it should count for something that I'm doing it in Korea? Maybe?

Anyway, it's been raining here for most of the day, and I'm trying not to get sick before my medical exam on Monday, so I've been handling a 10 hour time-shift and swine flu threats with a real tethered-to-my-room sensibility. Which isn't so bad: after all, the STORY ON network, when faced with broadcasting full-frontal, only pixelates the vaginal area.

Commuting to Work

Here are a list of things I liked about flying Korean Air:

• Watching Terminator: Salvation, Whatever Works, Back to the Future, and a weird German (?) documentary about Michael Jackson's wax statue collection, all on the back of the chair in front of me.
• Tricking my body into not getting jet lag by randomly winding my wristwatch and sleeping in strange chunks of time.
• Flying into a sunrise, which is when I realized we were traveling East and not West. Looks like I underestimated the size of the Pacific Ocean...again.
• All the stewardesses wore stewardess scarves, and none of them were stewards with Hitler mustaches and strange affected British accents.
• The endless free booze that helped me appreciate all of the above.

Things I didn't like about flying Korean Air:

• When the person in the seat in front of me would recline suddenly.
• Getting past two people to get to the aisle and the bathroom.
• Being welcomed to Korea by people passing out surgical masks.

And some things that I am deeply indifferent about when flying Korean Air:

• Duty-free shopping at 37,000 feet