Blethers

Wanna try and guess what I was up to at 4am yesterday? I'm gonna bet you can't! I was sitting in my room, belting out the lyrics to Carmen (love google). I think the choice of music was inspired by all my reading of Sofiya's blog lately, though if it wasn't Carmen, it would have been something.

I love living alone. I love that freedom to do what I want, when I want. To have no complaints about my late-night loud music, or my choice of bedtimes, or eating funny things at funny times. I love it. It makes me ponder why I was in such a rush all those years ago to move in with someone else. How silly it was to think that I would be bored living alone. I am the furthest thing from bored. And lonely? Sure, sometimes. But generally I am simply alone, not lonely. I like spending time with me.

I've been thinking a lot about the past lately. I think breakups do that to you. What I would like is to get past the horribleness of the breakup itself and just remember all the good times, which is proving to be remarkably easy, as long as I don't speak to the ex in anyway, cause that brings back all the nastiness of the recent past. But we had lots of good times and they are worth remembering fondly.

Carmen also made me think of the past. It was the first opera I ever saw and I saw it with a really good friend, who I have since fallen out with. I miss her sometimes. The past is a funny thing, as are those people in it.

Back to the present, I went for dinner with Laura after work in HomePlus. It was an odd meal, the Korean attempt to imitate western food I think. Doncas (pork cutlet), some sort of other pork patty, some spagetti with sauce that was far too sweet, cream of nothing soup (which is odd, cause it should be cream of something or other!), cooked corn, rice with a tiny bit of seaweed, a salad with very mayonnaise-y dressing, and of course, a side of kimchee. Then we went shopping. And oh, my god, the hilarity. First off, it is Chuseok next week, Korean Thanksgiving. The gift baskets of food are not to be belived. Can you imagine getting a gift of mushrooms? Even special Korean mushrooms??? Or a gift basket of fish? A whole pig's foot? A basket of beef? Or maybe one of spam and tuna???

Then there was just the sleep-deprived hilarity. A gift basket of plastic cheese (processed, for those not familiar with my terminology) cost more than one of brie and camembert! There was free plastic cheese with my mozzarella purchase! The multipacks of toothbrushes. The spectacle we made of ourselves spraying the room spray samples. The lenghty debate on dish washing liquid. (it was so much easier when I could chose my products based on whether the Queen endorsed them.)

I met Laura's new friend Grace and her coworker Joshua. Yep, my grocery shopping was likely the highlight of this week's social calendar (not including the weekend, i certainly hope!) They are fun, it made shopping fun, and I once again have some food.

Korean TV is bizarre. The channels dedicated to education-English, math, Korean. Guys with chalkboards. The channel of computer games. The channel with the cheerful looking monk. The commercials on all the channels! The show of cute, little poppets dancing around in hanboks. The odd English shows. Oprah after midnight making me teary-eyed about the horrible conditions in American schools. My god, I can't imagine that I went 5 months without watching TV. I love it soooo much now. Granted, I surf the internet at the same time!