"Toot-too-TOO Medi-gah - Seventeen!"
"Groo-PEE-ska - Lobby"
The elevator here talks to me that way and I appreciate it. This morning I went down to the Groo-PEE-ska before my first solo ride on the Seoul subway to Itaewon. I wandered around the Shinsegae department store basement where all the food is. Did I tell you they have big packages of ginseng roots for 300,000 won, $300? You don't dare look at them or someone will be there to help you. Like Chancy Gardener in Being There, I like to watch and that is damned near impossible in any store here. Worse than a Circuit City with starved vulture salespeople on commission. Here, if you make eye contact, six people will bow to you, 33% more than in Japan. I like to be the invisible man when window shopping and it's impossible here. Every square yard in Shinsegae was manned. You look at the Beatrix Potter floor mats - why the hell is Peter Rabbit so big here? - and someone is there to help you. A teacup. The guy chipping white chocolate all day, using huge scissors and a chisel, why is he doing that? Don't stop to look, not for a nanosecond, someone will be there to help you.
Don't get me wrong. I am the one out of place and I know it. The mores determine that you are involved when you enter the store, you are there to buy. Still, it makes you wonder how the stores can afford the human resources to stock these areas. The kitchen store would have one salesclerk for a similar area in the US, here there are twelve. When they weren't bowing or helping, they were polishing and cleaning the wares, busy, busy. If you even touch something, they will straighten it out again.
I got out of there and on the subway, heading the wrong way. No big deal, just get off and catch the train the other way. Adjust your mental stop count to compensate. Instead of eight stops to Yaksu, now it is 10. Except it wasn't really 8 to begin with, the stops on my map were incorrect, it was 6 so now it's 8 anyway. Helpful video screens by the doors tell you the next stop and right/left door exit. Yaksu, get off, transfer, then 3 stops to Itaewon.
Last night, the reed guy in the trio played an exceptionally fine solo on "All The Things You Are", saving the high register on the soprano sax until the very last phrase, then he belted it out. Following the laid-back, reserved, "en la manera", understated (do you get the point or do I need to get a hammer?) context he'd built through two choruses and a solo, this was like a burst of tears at the end of an objective reading of a tragic news story, pure genius of form. I applauded, and then I gave him a thumbs-up sign when he looked. Immediately, I recoiled, what does the thumbs-up mean here? Is it like Australia, where it's worse than giving the finger?
I was relieved when the subway video commercial for the daily lotto showed a guy giving the thumbs-up for the 6:45 lottery drawing. Whew! - I didn't give the sax man the finger.
Itaewon. Not bad. Not good. Leather. Silk. Sidewalk hawkers, like a Mexican border town. Everybody wanting to show you their goods. Too overwhelming for me, I don't buy those sort of things anyway. Better prices than at Shinsegae. I bought Liz a Tweety and Sylvester sweater at Hamilton Shopping Center (now it won't be a surprise) and scurried away to the subway.
Back at Central City, I went to Pietra Spaghetti and Pizza for lunch. It's Oyster Festival time at Pietra's, you can have oyster spaghetti with Cresson cream sauce, Possam Kimchi spaghetti (think about that a second), Butter rice with oyster and vegetable, Oyster spaghetti with rucola (a green salad vegetable) and celery, Romaine lettuce salad with deep fried oyster, fresh oyster with spinach gratin, or oyster carpaccio with cabbage (Mmmmm) and caper sauce.
I bought a draft beer for 2,700 won and after some thought, ordered a cheese pizza with shimeji mushrooms and sausage. What would that sausage be? Probably pepperoni...maybe ground sausage because another option was ground beef. The beer arrived, then the pizza. The sausage was a wiener, sliced lengthwise in thin pieces, one per slice of thin crust pizza. Hot dog pizza and I swear the sauce was more of Stephane's ketchup. Just a light painting of it, but the taste was unmistakable. Or maybe it was the side of sweet pickle slices that got me thinking of ketchup, but once you've had ketchup-glazed carrots you look for it everywhere. Sweet pickles as a side for pizza, a whole bowl them, yes, you read right, sweet pickles like sweet gherkins.
Sigh. I'm just observing, not judging. It's like a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces got fit together but the picture is not quite right. It takes as much work, maybe more, to fit it together in an alternate universe sort-of way as it does to do it the right way. I'm definitely the one out of place, Pietra's is always packed, with a line waiting outside.
2:20:06 AM 
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