Did the medical circuit yesterday and today am the walking wounded and the boring writer.  It’s a reading day.  It’s an editing day.  It’s one of many packing days.

Started the day off with a tea party.  Harmless.  Went to the acupuncturist to try something new on this nagging neck injury, a result of being hit from behind over five years ago in my car.  No treatment been working for a while, so I decided to get drastic: herbal injections.  It’s a three day cycle of ginseng and 20 other herbs and roots.  Only one of the .01 mg injections really felt like a wand fire being put into my neck.

Next up was the dentist.  A standard cleaning with sonic blasters of cold water on my front teeth.  Minor discomfort.  Later in the day, my teeth were sore.

A couple hours later, we visited the dermatologist to zap off some warts on my hands.  Worse than anything in the entire day was the four needle pricks needed for the local anesthetic.  But then I got to watch the doc Exacto-knife the top layer of skin and then get all Star Wars on my viral infections.  The worst one, which is on my right palm near the pinky side, is about the size of a BB.  And a BB could fit in it it is so deep.  I blame this wound for my inability to write well here today.  Also, I will be unable to ride to today’s errands in the balmy 48 degree weather, my throttle hand being tender to the touch.

To round out the day, we spent an hour and a half getting the prescriptions for travel, the most important being the preventative medicine for altitude sickness.  My wife is pretty amazing at organizing in such a logistically sound manner, all things completed before rush hour began.

Better writing tomorrow, I hope.    I wonder if it’s the warts that I no longer have that gave me my powers of writing.

A boring topic, I know.  You really don’t know how boring until you live in Busan in the winter.  Sun, wind, cold.  That’s it.  Okay, sure we’ve had a couple anomalous snow flurries, yet somehow it was still sunny outside.

Did a little survey of the weather in places where we’ll be next month.  Ko Phagnan in southeastern waters off Thailand is 84.  As Nic says, “Yes, please.”  Chiang Mai in the northwest is steamy and 84.  These conditions are excellent for crotchety old knees.  In addition, humidity seems to be conducive to beard growth; fear not, the patchy left side will fill in over the coming month.  If it doesn’t, I’ll just use some shoe polish.

A bigger issue presented itself to me today as I braved the searing wind for a little jog: with no internet access, I may have to talk with my wife about the weather.  We do talk about it quite frequently here, always guessing if we can make the autobike ride  to work without a summer rainstorm catching us mid-journey; currently, we gauge how knifing a 15 degree windchill would be in addition to the wind we endure when riding.  The point is this: in a matter of seconds, I can get weather from all areas of the world and write pertinent notes to a friend near Brisbane to see if he’s surviving the floods (last I checked, all was okay for him); I can also send a note to my father-in-law in WI who gently scoffs at my thinking 1 to 3 inches of snow is a big deal.

Again, I will try to make my point: without allowing myself internet access for three months, my wife becomes the bearer of this sort of news.  All news, in fact.  I never really asked her if she’s okay with that, but she’s been supportive of my unplugging experiment since the beginning.  It is only natural that I make assumptions that she’s thought through all the pressure that will be on her.  How’s the weather going to be, honey?  How did the Sharks do in the first round of the playoffs?  How’re the Giants doing in spring training?  Did Giffords live?  Is the North shit-disturbing again?  Did I miss another first for my nieces or nephew?

There is great potential here for me to be even more annoying than I already am.  Having said that, one of my aims in this experiment is not to be distracted by things that do not immediately or urgently affect me.  The Sharks will still bow out in the second round.  The Giants will still be playing in May when I come back online.  Important people will live on and die.  The North will undoubtedly be up to their old shenanigans.  Ella, Lexi, Audrey and Ian will have more firsts that I will be there for.  The more I think about this, the more of a vacation it is sounding like.  My only hope is that my family doesn’t feel I am abandoning them; but those concerns should be allayed by the letter-writing campaign.  In the meantime, I’ll absorb my surroundings and write to people about them.  I’ll try to use my crotchety knees to predict rain or find a newspaper to glean some news (weather and otherwise) from or, gods forbid, I talk to someone other than my wife about the weather.

22 days until departure/vacation/evacuation.  It’s as good a time as any to bring you up to speed on many important categories.

1. Sales declaration: With almost all large items sold, the sales department crossed the 1.23 million KRW (aka 1,091 USD) threshold as of yesterday afternoon.  We would like to congratulate the salesman of the year; we would also like to encourage him to try and recoup a full 33% of the grand total original buying price of these items.
2. Itinerary proclamation: If you don’t know by now where we’re going on this trip, read past entries.  (Also, see item #6.)
3. Fitness revelation (the writer’s vital stats):  weight: 203.3 lbs (92.4 kilos).  Gut/around bellybutton, not to be confused with the waist: 38.5 inches (you metric users can do your own damned conversions).  Pecs/boobs: 41.25 inches.  Right bicep: 14.5 inches.  Cranial circumference: 54.97 inches (and shrinking).
4. Medical itemization:  Tomorrow is a busy day for the Nearly Homeless, Mostly Insuranceless, Virtually Jobless Power Couple.  Acupuncturist at 9am.  Dentist at 11am.  Dermatologist at 2pm.  Internist at 4pm to fill 11 travel prescriptions (for eventualities like flatulence, pink eye, diarrhea and other such pleasantries).
5. Marriage index:  For stats on how many times fornication has occurred since December 13^th, how many times the writer’s flatulence has been an issue, the number of times children have been discussed, and the spoken ratio of “love” to “you’re disgusting,” read Harper’s Index™ in the  Decembruary 33^rd issue.
6. This website’s stats (since December 8): words written 16,609.  keystrokes taken (not including deletions or calculations of absurd statistics on the cell phone calculator): 92,939.  Views of the site: 636 (not including the writer’s own incessant visits).  This means that I am writing 26.1 words per site visit; it also means there are 17.67 people visiting the site each day.  C’mon, let’s go, people!  Tell your friends.  Shamelessly promote the writer.  Create demand for attempted humor and perceived insight.  The writer is working his fingers to the bone here.  Loving every moment of it.
7. Food accounting (items to be consumed before the departure of the fridge on January 21^st; the assault on these numbers begins tomorrow.  Read further entries for updates): steel-cut oats: 6 cups.  Dry lentils: 8 cups.  Brown rice: 9.25 cups.  Popcorn: 1 cup (un-popped).  Shrimp: 1 lb.  Ground pork: 1 kilo (do your own damned conversions).  Ground beef: 1 kilo.  Frozen blueberries: 2.5 lbs.  Whole wheat flour: 5 lbs.  Salt: 5678 pinches (do your own damned conversions).  Paprika: 1.5 metric tons.  Cans of mackerel: 2.  Cans of tuna: 8.  Frozen slices of salami: 12.
8. Packing promulgation:  Since the bookshelf will be gone as of tonight, the packing will begin in earnest.  Books and clothes will go through an editing process, packed or donated.  Good thing the salesman had such a good month, so as to cover the overhead of shipping.
9. Russian tea house regalia:  The secret agent has successfully remained secret.  The inner-city excursions to meet-ups has been undertaken by autobike and subway without much incident (knock on wooden nesting dolls).  Only 12 more clandestinations.
10. Beard report (at one month):  Colors observed: orange, red, gray, white, blond/blonde.  Density observed: nice growth all around, with the left side lagging behind; sideburn regions at the top of their game.  Maintenance carried out: upper cheek region needs a razor swipe twice a week; neck and throat clear-cut thrice weekly.  Names the writer’s students may or may not call him: lion, cat, monkey.

Sometimes, I only look left once before crossing.  When the date said January 9th on my yogurt this morning, I ate it anyway.  I run the occasional red light if no one is coming (and if there’s no cop around).  And finally, there are times when I don’t return a phone call to my sister or my mom for more than 24 hours.

I live life on the edge, as you can tell.  You remember; you read about my train station experience last week.

Yesterday, though, I got caught up in the overabundance of marginal-quality information about our first stop, Ko Phangan.  I poured over the guidebook and the godforsaken internet for hours, even breaking my own rule by looking for images of certain beaches facing west.  Instead of writing a heartfelt letter to my family about old fashioned letter-writing, I tried to find the perfect beach with sunsets.  You’d think I’d never seen a sunset before.

While they are important, sunsets will not be the only determiner.  There are basic facilities that must be present.  And sand and turquoise water and opportunities to snorkel and a short walk to the beach.  Surely, there’ll be times when we’re roughing it (3 weeks on the trail in April, for example), but the first week is not one of those times.

There are just so many options when it comes to travel, so many things to do, that I feel I am missing out on something great if we don’t choose the right place.  A similar concern comes when trying to anticipate all the dangers.  Just yesterday, when writing about Thorung La, I was driven to anxiety about this danger or that.  It’s been a long time since I really traveled.  It’s been a long time since I didn’t have to be anywhere.  It’s been a long time since I didn’t try to make people and time bend to my will.  This is not just a vacation, a honeymoon; it is also a departure from the regular ways of doing things, a study of how to go without.  This undertaking is to try to find a way to integrate this new-old way of doing things, a way to add dimensions to the relationships with my friends and family.  This departure from old habits and certain addictions could add dimensions to my relationship with my Self.

This Self of mine may soon be no more; he’ll be departed.  In his place may step a greater being; in any case: changed, different.

The idea for the first week is to plant our asses on a beach; knowing me, that probably won’t keep, and I’ll be looking for a trek to go on.  As much as we can plan, not everything will go to plan.  All we can hope is that we get an opportunity to say, “We couldn’t have planned this better.”

I had appointments for 4pm yesterday to sell the couch—which I did—and some kitchen items—which I did.  I am salesman of the 2010-11 year here in the Busan Holmberg Family.  There are speculations on whether I should become a furniture salesman.  The speculations are not my own.  But I am good.

Let me try and sell you an idea: climbing to 5416m (x 3.3 feet=roughly 17,769 feet; 100 feet higher than Everest Base Camp) for a vacation.  With all puns intended, there is one part of the upcoming journey that both literally and figuratively looms above all others, and may indeed be the height of the three month experience.

This is not to belittle the beaches, jungles and forests of southeast Asia.  Certainly, the relaxation is needed in sand and surf; and additional training is needed in northwestern Thailand.  But what is it that possesses us to leave the relative comfort of any other place in the world below 3000m?  I imagine it has to do something with the five-mile-high snow-covered Annapurna massif around which we will be hiking.

We are voluntarily going to a place where air is sparse.  The five or six days before summiting Thorung La (la=Tibetan for mountain pass) are short but steep treks; one must allow time to acclimatize to the elevation lest edema strikes and kills you.  Yes, quite literally.  We have the luxury of time and astounding surroundings, so we will spend 3 nights near 3510m Manang, taking short day-hikes and resting.  The going is slow thereafter.  Manang to Letdar is only a 720m ascent, but a snail’s pace will be best since fatigue and sparse oxygen are a trekker’s worst enemy: injuries happen more easily.  After a couple more nights of acclimatizing in 4230m Letdar, we ascend only another 240m to Thorung Phedi (phedi=foot of a hill).

All this sounds fun, right?  Well, the push over Thorung La is supposed to be the most grueling.  Depending on your fitness—surely a question mark for me and my knees, Nic and her slight asthma—this is a six to twelve hour day on the trail, the longest day of the entire circuit.  The ascent is a whopping 1040m followed by a 1620m descent.

All of the above info was garnered from the Lonely Planet Nepal trekking book.  I read over and over some of these numbers and wonder, really wonder, if I am capable.  Even with the hikes Nic and I have been on in Korea, nothing will prepare us for the altitude.  For example, yesterday, we had a bit of an outing.  It was supposed to culminate with summiting the highest peak in Busan.  We did not make it.  Although time was an issue (the salesman had to work at 4pm and we got a late start), we cheated by taking a cable car up 400m or so before starting the hike.  Had we made it to Gumgeongsan, the summit is a mere 801m.  What good is this training going to do us in the Himalaya?

I’m not really selling this to you.  I’m hardly selling it to myself.  I have to believe that we are capable of more than we think we are.  I have to believe that the spectacular views will forever be burned into my mind from the Annapurna Circuit; these images and the experience in general will be worth the inherent challenges.  Now, I must spend the rest of the day trying to write a convincing letter to my family that going off the electronic and phone grid for three months is a good idea.  The hardest part for some of them will be when we are on the above-described section of the journey.

I have been doing my best to stay away from too many pictures from the trail where we’ll spend three and a half weeks.  However, for further reading, nytimes.com has some good articles that, in addition to the Lonely Planet book, have helped give me some perspective about the realities of this endeavor.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/travel/21nepal.html?scp=1&sq=annapurna%20circuit%20march%202010&st=cse

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/03/21/travel/03212010-Nepal-Interactive.html?scp=2&sq=annapurna%20circuit%20march%202010&st=cse

Months and no word.  Everyone thought he was dead, drowned in a sea of paper and gristle of gridlock and shit of administration.  But he’s returned.  He’s a killer.  He’s a god.  He creates and destroys.

He’s still afflicted with technological addiction, slipping off the written page to check stats at wordpress, to see if a flaky foreigner has decided to follow through with a proposed purchase of furniture, to get mailing addresses via email, to see who’s engaged and who’s eating cheese and who’s watching the paint dry.

His target: a woman named May who was born circa 1928.  She’s the oldest of five children; she disappeared in San Francisco when she was in her early 20s, then returned to her family home outside Modesto.  A few years later, she helped her father cover up an affair with a migrant worker by traveling with the pregnant teen to her home in southern Mexico.  Documents indicate she died in a hiking accident in Costa Rica.  The killer knows differently.

The killer takes a quick peek online to get his fix, return a few emails.  Then he begins to plot his attack  He trains his mind while he trains his body, walking 3.48km for 30 minutes and sculpting his guns for another 20 in temperature-regulated environment.  He steels his mind against the idea of killing an 83 year-old woman, but her existence must be eradicated.  The killer will use May’s youngest sister, Clara (aka Gretchen) to cover his tracks.  He’ll make Clara/Gretchen the oldest, he’ll make her go off to SF, he’ll make her go to Costa Rica.  He’ll slice useful parts of May and carefully discard the rest to make a better, more streamlined Clara/Gretchen.

May must die.  Clara/Gretchen’s eternal life depends on it.  May must die.  The killer approaches May with his blade, intending to cut precisely through the nebula that she creates.  He expects her to go with a fight.  She may know, however, that she is superfluous; she may concede quietly.  Nonetheless, the killer is ready for anything, his faculties deft, his skills ruthless yet artful.  He deletes a high school “friend” who updates every day with his thoughts on watching the grass grow.  Then he gets to work on May.

The Super One is the individual who holds the Super Couple together when Kryptonite has temporarily crippled the Other Half.  The Super One is also the individual who accomplishes a vast number of tasks in lightening-quick time when the sheer number of tasks to be accomplished can produce Kryptonite-like effects: paralysis, wall-staring, incessant internet-surfing.

To my credit, there have been times in the two years with Nic that I’ve had to be the Super One.  Super Cook, Super Earner, Super Editor—to say nothing of Super Guy—are all capes I have worn.  In recent weeks, I’ve been Super Seller (not to be confused with Super Earner, mind you): all but two big items have been sold and we have three and a half weeks left.

Though I did sell a couple items yesterday, I may have faltered in my task at the train station. Not only that, I was trapped in a string of multi-tasks: trying to write yesterday’s entries, dealing with a couple interested buyers, trying to move all four and a half years of my Korea pictures over to Flickr.  All of these took way longer than they should have.

On the other hand, Nic’s focus was one of the Super One, ticking off things that we had talked about and put on a to-do list.  As you may know by now,  I am not the most logistically sound person (due to ADD or lack of sleep or idiocy), so the number of items Nic took care of yesterday would have taken me a week, the headache of dealing with bureaucracy causing apoplexy in the mornings and procrastination in the afternoon, and general anxiety in the evenings.  My Super Wife filed 2010 taxes, bought traveler’s insurance, bought boxes so we can start sending books and clothes home, worked out some logistics on getting visas for Vietnam, reserved two sleeper berths for Kuala Lampur to Hat Yai, typed up currency conversions for five countries and typed up flight itineraries.  All this and she still had the energy to read aloud a chapter of my first novel that is going through another revision.  Oh, she wasn’t done yet.  She also consoled me about my 24 hours of general ineptitude.

I’m not late in posting here.

It’s 430 in the afternoon and I haven’t been drinking since 3.  It all didn’t start with a Kahlua and coffee.  It didn’t move on to a beer and then a Beam and coke.

The absurdity of fictitious Wednesday afternoon drinking was not brought on by the madness of the Busan Train Station this morning, the first availability of tickets for those wishing to ride the rails during Lunar New Year Holiday (February 2 thru 4 attached nicely on a natural weekend for a full five days with family and paying respect to ancestors at their graves).  There weren’t the grubby, yelling lunatics that train stations seem to attract.  I didn’t stand in line from 915AM until 1100 knowing my objective: February 2 one-way tickets for two on any available train.  When asked to write down the date and time on a piece of paper just before reaching the head of the line, I didn’t write 2/1.  I didn’t get tickets for the day before we were to travel.

I didn’t curse at myself after realizing my mistake.  I didn’t berate myself for my failed attempt at a coup for this highly-sought-after travel day.  I didn’t talk to myself like a crazy person in any of the world’s train stations.  I didn’t call myself a fucking old moron.  I didn’t have a little crisis.  I didn’t tell Nic.  I didn’t hear consoling words from her.  She didn’t give perspective, saying a leisurely jaunt up to Seoul would be better than the madness of Lunar holiday travel and trying to make it to the airport when time was a factor (the day of our Korea departure).

I don’t worry about my non-senility.  I don’t still console myself with Nic’s perspective.  I don’t feel a hell of a lot better now.  I don’t have to prepare dinner now.

The Bard wrote:

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day…”

Mondays are still tedious.  Running around town, tying up loose secret agent ends at Russian tea houses.  Also, at the university, I relinquished keys to an office with a view of the Nak River Valley; I also ceded books with notes, recycled two and a half years of unclaimed student papers and exams, signed final papers for legal and monetary reasons.  It was much more of a grind, too, since it was too damned cold out yesterday to ride anywhere.  I took the Silla shuttle up the hill from the subway, giving me flashbacks to my first month or so at the university.  You’d think I’d sleep like a baby, but I had a workmare last night, one that doesn’t stop completely and seems to go on half the night because you just cannot wake up from the nagging dream that you’ve forgotten something or are being asked to do something that you really don’t want to do.

“To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death.  Out, out, brief candle!”

I still have to return a couple research books to the library today and may have to return other research books used for my new novel before the end of the month, but all official business is complete.   Nonetheless, I still had that damned workmare.  Will I shuck off this coat of professional responsibility in full, or will it stay strapped like a straightjacket?  A dusting of snow last night is still on the ground.  As I walked back from the gym, I still couldn’t comprehend that a month from now I will be in the midst of summer sitting on beach in Thailand, bleaching my mane and cheek-locks with sunshine.  Also, over breakfast, Nic read a little to me about a section of the Annapurna where you reach the highest pass, over 5400m.  You must take two or three nights to acclimatize to the elevation and then head out early on the day of six to eight hours of walking in which you ascend over 1000m and then descend another 1000m.  In a departure from our routine, we dusted off our trekking packs.  Things suddenly became a little more real.

“Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard from no more:…”

I’ll slip back on to campus today to take care of library business.  My last few weeks at the university have been quiet.  Came down with a mysterious case of “I don’t give a fuck” Syndrome (IDNGAFS) for the last faculty meeting and didn’t attend.  Was still feeling a few symptoms of IDNGAFS for the Christmas party and didn’t attend that either.   I’ve strutted and fretted enough for paltry monetary gain and a pat on the back; I suppose this is a side-effect of many jobs.  At least in my experience.  I need to find something that pays and that I am passionate about.  The idealist never dies.

“it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

I’ve still got student loan debt.  I’ll return to the US in roughly the same economic shape I was in when I took off all those years ago to come here.  Having said that, I don’t think this has been a tale told by an idiot.  He’s just an idealist that still believes the lack of home roots and monetary sustenance, ironically, has allowed him to thrive, grow in ways that the direct path to “domestic bliss” could not have provided.  The struggles of my 20s and the expatriatism of my 30s signifies everything to a solid future for family, home, roots.