i lol'd

"We go out to lunch every once in a while. So we went to a place called Hooters, and there were eight or nine of us. Somebody told the manager that I was 100 years old. So the manager said that they’d pay for the meal — we didn’t have to pay for the meals. Then we took pictures with the waitresses. I thought it was very nice of them."

-Phil Damsky, 100, on being 100. Printed in today's New York Times.

Read this to yourself in a 100-year-old man from Brooklyn voice. How can you not laugh?

View

Above are a few photos, stitched together into a panorama using Picasa, that I took of my neighborhood from the top of a hill nearby. Nearly anywhere else in the world this neighborhood might be a city in its own right, but in Seoul, with a metropolitan population of 24-ish million, it's just a neighborhood. My apartment is in a non-descript grayish building about a third of the way over from the left side, just under and to the right of the leftmost building with a red white and blue chicken logo. The building I work in is the blue one just to the left of center.

Interesting things I've learned (kinda) recently:

1. The Korean word for "login" is "로그인," which, transliterated, is roughly something like "rogeen"--the koreanized version of the same word in English. Taken as separate words, those syllables (로 그 인) mean "As it is."
2. The Korean word for the Arial font, 굴림체, translates literally as "grooved oyster body."
3. The Globalization and World Cities Group publishes an annual list of "World Cities" that is structuralized and heirarchicalized in a way that is, to me, scarily similar to the social heirarchy in Brave New World, complete with Alpha Double Plus and Gamma Minus castes of cities.
4. Since September 1, my father has been mowing the lawn about every six days.
   

kilts

i know, this should be the title for one of meggo's posts, but it instead it's coming from praha.

the last few days there have been little pods of kilted-men wandering around the city center. and i'm not talking 1 sighting a day, i mean like 50. at first it was really confusing because i didn't think kilts were everyday garbs (they're not, right?). after the third day -- i'm slow on the uptake -- i realized that it's for this big soccer game tomorrow against czech republic and scotland. it's cool going out at nights and seeing all of the pubs half-infested with loud, singing, kilted men. i walked by a pub today (noonish) and i heard them belting out a song from "the sound of music." ahhhhh, i love men who aren't afraid to sing songs originally solo-ed by julie andrews. it was the one that goes, "doe, a deer!" etc

one last thing. you'd think that a gang of 6 or 7 kilted guys my age would make me laugh, and it does (not in derisive way of course). i guess i think it's endearing and a great example of moral support. except when 1 of the guys is just sporting heans, and then all of a sudden he's the one i find most amusing.

spreading the goodness

ways i am corrupting my flatmates:

1) felicity

ways i am improving my flatmates

1) felicity!
2) the youtube battle of kruger

they think im a god. mission accomplished; check! (czech!)

ps. that check/czech pun is on OVERKILL here. i automatically think about saying it whenever someone inadvertently uses that unfortunate word, but ive refused to indulge the impulse. im afraid that after this semester i will have the impulse to make that pun for the rest of my life..... scary