Live octopus.

Unreal...I was trolling the Net and found this little vid...yes, that's me! Thanks Yusheng (who visited me in Seoul)--you da man!

Why is James Not in Yeouido???

For the explanation, read here.

Title Scorer

This morning I read about a Title Scorer. I put in Hometown: Yeouido and got a paultry 35.9% chance of a book of this name being a bestseller. Island of Fantasy, however, got a 69% score...damn!

Cool Korea Pics

My bud Kelvin posted these pics on his site.

Very cool.

Check flights

Very cool. Just read this in the Wall Street Journal. Now you can check how tardy, canceled or diverted your chosen flight might be. FlightStats noted that my little jaunt from Vancouver to Seoul (which I took like 20 times without incident) was, as I found, never cancelled and hardly delayed, ever. Good place for stats.

Kids, kids and more kids.

Yesterday my wife was wondering why I cranked the heat up the night before. I hadn't the foggiest idea what she was talking about. Then we saw Winston doing this:A-ha! So that's why we were like a Thanksgiving turkey in the oven! Time to baby-proof this place.

And for friends, family and those who like kid-pics, here is a selection of recent snapshots:

Korean Back Treatment

I guess I have myself to blame. I mentioned to my wife that my back was a little stiff (probably from sleeping so much on account of my cold) and she told her mom and dad...who then made an appointment at a Korean doctor to treat me. I was told it would be a massage (which is fine, in my books) but it was something a lot more.

First, there was this weird smell coming from the "doctor's" office (a real doctor? Hmmmm). It was like incense...which made me wonder what kind of druid I'd be seeing.

They took down some basic information...name, phone number and talked to me and my mother-in-law. Then it was on to a bed to lie face down. Hmmm....no mention of a health card number or vital signs (pulse, respiration) that seems to be the norm in Western clinics.

The doc attached a couple of suction cups to my lumbar region...and created two strong vacuums. I had seen this, it actually tensed up the muscles quite well. Maybe this is ok.

Then the cups came off and I felt a series of pin-pricks in the same area. What the heck!?!? Is this accupuncture? I thought it wasn't supposed to hurt! Anyhoo, on again with the suction cups. Ends up...there is 'bad blood' in your body and you need to get it out from where it sets (which happens to be whereever you're hurting). If you leave this blood in it's bad. Uh-huh. Sounds like a throw-back to leeching, to me.

Here's a pic of my lovely back after the 'treatment'. Ai-yai-yai! My father-in-law said that many people in Seoul have these on their back...you can see it in the men's lockerroom. Ok, well, I work out in Canada, not Korea...so I imagine I'll get a few stares.

After the suctions came the accupuncture. About a dozen needles were fired into my back. Some of them had little shots of insense (hence the odor) attached to them. The advice was: tell me if they are feeling hot. Let's see, burning needles in my skin, how could that be hot!!??!

Then on the back for another treatment on my front. Needles in my left foot and leg (not the right, but then the left was on her side of the table...so maybe it had more to do with convenience. Let me tell you...she put them needles pretty far South, too. Even lit one pretty close to the nether-regions--yeow! Then a heatlamp on my torso. I asked her if she was cooking me...indeed, she was. Huh?!?! Ya, cooking one's stomach is good for the back.

Then it was over. They had a little pharmacy there...and I got some pills of some sort (looked more like rabbit turds) to take 3 times a day. Apparently they are made from bear liver (that sounds very legal, doesn't it?)--and smelled like bear crap.

Well, my father-in-law says just 3 or 5 or 7 more treatments (no suction, just accupuncture) and I'll be good as new. He's seem some guys with 6 or 10 suction-marks on their back and even Gwyneth Paltrow has had it done (but, then, she's a Hollywood star--she'll do anything that's in fashion).

I'll let you know how it goes.

Cheong-Gye Canal Opening

Here are a few pics sent to me from a bud in Seoul. I remember this thing (the canal) when it was under construction. (UPDATE: Here is a cool posting of the whole process.) Would love to go there and see it finished. As the sign says, there was a stream here before the city paved over it...but now Seoul is going a little retro/nature (read: they want to get land values up) so they exposed it again. Might make living in the downtown core fashionable...and we know what that means: incredible fad leading to irrational exuberance. Stay tuned!

Just got this from my Mom...guess she wants me to make sure I stay healthy or something. You got to wonder how liked the guy was if it took five days to figure out that he had expired.