signs, signs, everywhere there's signs...

when in a foreign country, you can spend so much time on the embarrassing end of translation errors that it's twice as fun when you get a chance to look at one from the other side...

...and goodwill to them.

i'm not sure what the idea is here, but in the states the words "intimate" and "scouts" don't have a real pleasant ring when used together.

(...don't stop believin')

the saks fifth avenue grand open... is this a golf tournament?

not a sign, more of a cultural gem- everyone in korea puts these pads on their car doors to prevent parking lot dings. i still get a laugh every time i see a nice new sedan with wrestling mats glued to the doors.

of course, if i had to sum up our asian adventure in one sentence...

oy-gummy

the international terminal in tokyo has a kicking origami display. (pronounce "oy-gummy" by penelope.) we had to take some pictures for pen and eli, who are fanatical origami enthusiasts...

pretty in pink

it is impossible to know how deeply or in how many ways i ruined the wedding of kelley's sister sun-lea to busan local and all around stand-up guy jong seok, but i can at least conclude that i played a role somewhere between amusing foreigner and myopically offensive american swine. it started (as do so many awkward cross-cultural encounters, i suppose) with a simple misunderstanding of dress standards. there is, in the korean custom, a formal dress ensemble used in certain traditional rites known as a hanbok. our children, for example, have each donned the garb on their first birthdays for a tradition known as the "tol". though i knew the hanbok was also integral in korean weddings, i was ignorant as to what role it played, exactly. specifically, what was our role, and the role of our hanboks.

you see, having not been present at our wedding, kelley's mother had felt obligated to furnish the two of us with our own set of hanboks upon kelley's first visit. while the hanboks seemed to be of superior quality and make, they also seemed, well... clownish. i speak of course, purely from an american perspective. the hanbok is a well recognized and distinguished look in korea, one that i would be proud to wear in a formal korean setting. nevertheless, just as you would not wear a tuxedo to the beach, or a football uniform to a fine restaurant; neither would you expect to walk down any american street wearing a hanbok without fear of physical violence.

further complicating the situation was the fact that my research was yeilding conflicting results. while one source suggested that only the bride and groom were adorned in hanboks, another claimed they were worn by the entire wedding party; another still, they had no place in modern wedding ceremonies. with the wedding approaching, and efforts to contact kelley's family regarding the situation proving fruitless, it was time to make an executive decision. and so, concerned about the myriad dangers of lost, stolen or damaged luggage and the possibilities of weather damage among the stormy tropics of southeast asia, i opted to leave the finely tailored hanboks safely at home, reasoning that if needed, we could surely rent wedding attire in korea. it was at that moment, my decision- now unalterable and forever enscribed in the annals of history.

there was noticable disappointment on the part of kelley's mother when it was revealed that we had left our hanboks in the united states. and so, naively setting aside the frenzied mindset of a mother-of-the-bride, i concluded that my rental plan still had efficacy. the very next day, we set out to find proper wedding vestments, escorted by none other than groom-to-be jong seok. we quickly settled on a ddress for kelley, but when it came time to sort through the men's collection, things got a bit stickier. as it turns out, clothing stores in korea carry very little in the way of a 42 regular (which in korean, i believe is known as a "triple x freaking l".) in fact, they had but one choice for me- an ensemble consisting of fire red hammer pants with a matching silk shirt pinker than a hostess snowball. still, i was willing to swallow my own hubris and don the traditional regalia, assuming that with the blessing of the groom upon me, the clothing would suit the occasion.

thinking we were out in the clear, it was all the more upsetting when we came home one day to find that kelley's mother had found the rentals and had them sprawled out on the floor, eying them with unmasked disdain. realizing we were headed for a conversation well beyond my linguistic abilities, we phoned a local bilingual contact, who informed me that i should just wear my suit to the wedding.

problem...

with no proper means for traveling through southeast asia with a full suit in tow, i had opted to pack a slacks and tie ensemble with no blazer, although i guess i should have seen the problem inherent in this scenario. you see, korea is a very image conscious place. your most die hard abercrombie-wearing, chest-shaving, eyebrow-plucking american pretty boy has got nothing on your run of the mill street korean. standard dress for even a casual outing typically consists of designer jeans, fitted leather jackets with sleeves rolled to three-quarter length, salon-styled hair- and that's just the men. so to think i could get away with any less than a suit was naive at best. indeed, the very next day, a few of kelley's aunts came over to the house to have me model my two outfits and decide upon which would be more appropriate. after much animated deliberation, it was agreed that i would wear the hanbok to the wedding.

but plans are always subject to change. the day before the wedding, we were told that kelley's aunt would be to the house to pick us up at 12:30 the next day- and i was to wear my western wardrobe. to be honest, i was a bit disappointed (i had hoped that my efforts at assimilation would have been better received) but i was not going to rock the boat any further- i would dress as instructed. there was, however, one final obstacle of my own doing- i had neglected to pack a dress belt. and with limited time, i would have to run out on the morning of the wedding and find a suitable cincture. still, with a planned 12:30 departure, an a.m. trip to the market would not be beyond my means. and so, i felt no overwhelming sense of urgency as i strolled from vendor to vendor looking for the perfect waistband. nevertheless, when i walked back into the house around 10:30, i was surprised to find the entire family dressed and ready to go. had there been a misunderstanding about the schedule,or was this a last minute change? i dressed as quickly as i could, but the significance of this delay would soon prove drastic.

we first went to a hair salon where all the women (and the men, now that i think of it, although i sat it out) had their hair coiffed. after this was over, we set back out into the most gruesome of weekend traffic which busan had to offer. as we sat in the veritable parking lot which were the main highways of busan, it began to seem less and less likely that we would arrive on time. as my mother-in-law's mood became more despondent, i sheepishly dwelt on the fact that everyone had been waiting at the house while i ran my clandestine belt-seeking mission. at one point, kelley's mother actually hopped out of the car and started running frantically through the street. although we eventually caught up to her in the car, we soon found ourselves in the street and running alongside her. we made it into the reception hall with not a moment to spare, which is where i made a puzzling discovery. we were in a very crowded wedding hall at the peak of korean wedding season- there were probably fifteen or twenty weddings going on at once, and guests from all the events crowing the busy hallways. there was not a single man wearing a hanbok. the married women all wore the traditional dress, (which makes picking out the single ladies a walk in the park- if you happened to be an eager bachelor, of course) but, to a man, every single gentleman was wearing a jacket and a tie.

i was suddenly overwhelmed at how truly close i had come to being the only person wearing a hot-pink clown suit to the wedding. i would have been mortified. i had to wonder what the conversation was when i was modeling my two outfits for the women a couple of days before.

"he really seems to want to wear this pink hanbok- maybe we should just let him do it."

"but it'll ruin the wedding, and he'll be a laughing stock!"

"why pink?!"

i had to snap a shot of the shirt i almost wore to the wedding, although i didn't put on the matching pants and vest for fear that someone would come in and see me taking pictures of myself in my pink shirt, but it only gets better from here.

the munchies

the account of any vacation can, for me, be told through its meals. we all have our individual favorites- i never go home without a stash of xylitol candies, korean gummies, and a belly full of grape soda. but, we always look forward to discovering new epi-korean delights. the week in junkfood...

a more cultured person could probably tell me the name of the little cookie sandwiches in the blue box, as they are sold at all the upscale bakeries in l.a. (think soft-shell flavored oreo for $1.75 per cookie.) the orange bag on the counter is also full of snacks.

i don't have a name for this one either, but those are carmel-coated pork rinds in that bag. i've always said that everything is better deep fried- i just never knew it was better deep fried in carmel. as much as kelley's grandma purports to be put off by snack foods coming into the house, i watched her nullify a half a bag of these things like they were enron financial records on audit day.

after kelley found these mini-puddings, we never walked by another paris baguette bakery without stopping in. at one point, kelley finally offered to share with me the ambrosially unparalleled last bite, which turned out to be about 90% vanilla extract. we spent the rest of our paris baguette visits arguing about whether or not the pudding is meant to be stirred before consumption- kelley did not offer to share any more pudding with me.

korea is peppered with "toast sandwich" stands, or as i like to call them, "we put anything you want in a grilled cheese sandwich" stands. while kelley and jong seok drank their equally mainstream korean smoothies, i polished off the last of my bacon, cheese, egg, onion, ginseng & horse-radish hoagie.

ghana brand chocolate milk. tagline: "it's ghana-rrific!" (i came up with that one.)

say wat?!

being stripped of our philippine vacation 10 years in the making, we scrambled to pick up the scattered pieces. we had suddenly found ourselves with packed bags, time off work, babysat children, books, movies, sunscreen, typhoid pills, and absolutely nothing to do. although we could simply extend our visit to korea, we were unwilling to drop in unannounced on family members already in the final planning stages of a large scale wedding. although no options seemed forthcoming, we could at least agree that we were now racing against a finite time constraint. every moment spent in indecision was robbed from the ledger of our vacation time.

then, kelley mentioned how she would like to see angkor wat and the temples of cambodia. now, i had never heard of angor wat, nor had i ever considered a holiday in cambodia beyond listening to the 1980 dead kennedys a-side of the same name, but the country did not seem to me the backdrop for a weekend of leisure and refreshment. still, i realized that while i could spend precious vacation days trying to figure out whether or not cambodia was "safe", i still had to load movies onto my ipod for the flight.

kelley riding in the "tuk-tuk", a motor-driven rickshaw.

the $2.75 i paid for dinner couldn't even buy the pineapple it was served in back home.

...and what a flight it was going to be. three legs of travel with a 1 hour 10 minute international connection in seoul, (meaning that if the captain so much as brought his lunch with him in the cockpit, we probably wouldn't get to our gate in time) resulting in around 24 hours of continuous travel by the time we set foot in cambodia. but if our plan was to use the 12 hour flight to seoul to rest up, we were surely banking on elements which we had no control over- starting with the uber-coach class seating we ended up with. so far in the back of the boeing 777 were we that we were crossing the international date line around the time the first class passengers were clearing customs in korea. i'm absolutely positive, however that we were not in the very last row of the aircraft, because every time i tried to recline my seat, i was reintroduced to my aft neighbor who would remind me that she preferred to have me sitting forward. though i had held it as fairly common aphorism that each passenger had domain over the inch and a half of travel of his own seat, the flight attendants seemed to side with my counterpart's philosophy of zonal dominion. but then again, who would want to recline and sleep for even a minute of any 12 hour flight where many of their personal entertainment system's chinese language stations had the functional audio which was lacking from its english channels? (i should look at the bright side of this one- as difficult as it was to watch sandra bullock underact ryan reynolds in cantonese, it would have been tougher to sit through it in english.) there were other forms of entertainment available, though; much of which was provided by the sixty-something korean gentleman sitting next to us who had a penchant for rule breaking. when the seat belt sign came on, his went off. when it was time to put our bags under the seats, his went on his lap. during a particularly rough patch of turbulence, he decided to go digging through the overhead bins. by the time he was buried in stowed baggage up to his waist, an equally stubborn (and english speaking) flight attendant took it upon herself to put a stop to his tom-foolery. when yelling at his legs as they kicked and dangled from the stowage compartment yielded no result, she began to pull. and when pulling proved inadequate, hanging. i watched on in amazement as the flight attendant shook and shifted her dangling mass from the body of a grandfatherly man demonstrating his curiously impressive hanging prowess. when he was not doing p90x off the aircraft's internal framework, he was stretching out across three vacant seats, and snuggling his feet under my left leg. which is not to say that i didn't appreciate the extra warmth, as the air inside the cabin was apparently being ducted directly from the ambient tropopause outside the aircraft. it was, to date, the only flight on which i have worn my hooded sweatshirt cinched tightly around my face like a police sketch on the 10:00 news for the duration.

landing on time in seoul, we were able to make it through international re-screening and across the terminal to our gate right as they were boarding our flight to siem reap. as he printed our boarding cards, the ticketing agent checked with us to ensure that we had arranged for our cambodian visas.

"uh..........."

this was just one more indicator in a list that had been piling up that our choice of destinations may have been imprudent. (like when i tried to get a few cambodian riel in san francisco and the woman at the exchange booth told me it was a specialty currency which had to be ordered two weeks in advance. or when a friend's advice, although she had been away from cambodia for decades, had been "don't leave anything in your hotel room, and never leave the immediate vicinity of your guide.") even though the airline employees assured me that i could purchase a tourist visa in the siem reap airport, i couldn't help but wonder where he got is information, and what assurance i had that it was not misguided. and what happens if i show up in the heart of cambodia without the required international documentation? does some khmer rouge leftover take me into another room for reassignment?

on arrival in cambodia, however, my anxieties began to be assuaged, as the "visa" turned out to be little more than a "pay to stay" tourist tax. (they charge $20 to get the visa, but $25 for the "airport departure fee" figuring, i assume, that they can squeeze $5 harder once you've already arrived and want to go home.) in fact, as siem reap began to unravel to us, it proved tourist friendly, even to a fault. if i thought we were lucky to find an english speaking cab driver (mostly because it was around midnight and i had yet to make any lodging accommodations) we wouldn't meet a single local on our trip who wasn't fluent in english, german, italian, or some business-useful tongue. (like the man in our hotel lobby who introduced his family before a cultural performance to a room full of delighted bavarians, "das ist meine tochter, heidi, und mein sohn, gustav") and although i spent the cab ride to the hotel counting white people, (trying to figure my odds in case of an anglo-kidnapping) i soon found that the only way i would have felt like a minority was if i had actually been cambodian. in short, siem reap was a lot like cancun without all the senor frogs. if the folks at the hotel were a little awkward at changing my currency, it was only because everything for sale was priced in american dollars. i changed $20 the first night, and spent the rest of my trip trying to find somewhere to offload a fistfull of useless riel.

notice the faces in the stone towers.

still, the temples were nothing short of spectacular. of the seemingly endless sprawl of 900 year old stone structures, virtually none of it was roped off from touching, climbing or exploring. in the ta pram temple particularly we could see the jungle pouring in over the stone walls and doorways. just considering how such towering and expansive structures were constructed without any sort of modern equipment was hard to wrap my mind around.

of course, kelley always rates a vacation by the plenty and accessibility of the coconuts, and at around $1 a piece, well, i had to cut a sizable check to al gore just to offset the carbon footprint of the section of jungle she so voraciously depleted through her limitless consumption. but as plentiful as were the coconuts, the souvenirs were ever more so. and the local kids pitched their wares with all the ferocity of so many early evening telemarketers. in fact, the average siem reap trinket peddler has the tenacity of an entire band of tijuana chicklet pushers. sadly, we became so hard wired to say "no", that we blinded ourselves to many items we ended up regretting. like the hand woven wicker christmas ornaments which we picked up at 5 for a dollar. though at the time we were just trying to work our way through an army of persistent youngsters, we realized later that another 4 dollars would have knocked out christmas shopping for both our extended families.

which is not to say that we were unhappy with the trinkets we walked away with, or the hour long khmer massages we ended our trip with at $6 a piece. (if anything will make you not want to pay your $25 airport departure fee...)

stupid lupit

indulge me now to rewind my narrative back to mid-october when we were preparing for our trip to korea for the wedding of kelley's half-sister. as we would be going kid-less, i had for months been planning a stop in the philippines, a destination which has many times evaded me over the past decade. although the southeast asian archipelago had been recently ravaged by the worst typhoon in forty years, my local contacts assured me that most of my projected destinations were in tact and navigable. it was, in fact, less than 24 hours prior to our anticipated departure time when i was informed of another storm typhoon, named lupit, (or ramil to the filipinos) tracking westward towards the philippines with its expected time of touchdown around six hours before our arrival. even still, its track appeared to be curving northward, on course to graze the northern tip of the island of luzon, well beyond the bulk of our outlined itinerary. i felt confident that we could react dynamically. sure, our vacation might be plagued by peripheral winds and rain, but it would be a shame to let a little rain cancel our whole trip like some pre-season baseball game. if worst really came to worst, we could always just leave, anyway. nonetheless, i continued to monitor the situation...

it was not until around "t" minus 8 hours as we were arguing over stuffing the final superfluous items into our bags that i received a troubling report of lupit's development. not only was this cyclonic harbinger of destruction building in intensity, there now appeared to be a second storm building south of lupit, with forecasters fearing that the two storms might combine, forming what meteorologists refer to as a "super-typhoon". (unable, though i may be to scientifically quantify the difference between a typhoon and a super-typhoon, think "freak". now think "super-freak"... see.) even more discouraging was the fact that if the two storms merged, the latter might wrench lupit southward, changing its trajectory towards central luzon (also known as "our vacation") and possibly even manila proper (also known as "our only way home".) suddenly, the storm had gone from possibly spoiling our vacation to potentially ending our lives.

this is how we stopped fighting over whether or not to pack the second hair dryer.

cousin camp

the kids always appreciate a trip to see their cousins. considering that we had an average of three people sleeping in each room, a nap occurring somewhere in the house at all times, and an endless stockpile of toys to be fought over, they got along with each other surprisingly well.

at any rate, it was better than this...

"[cotton] candy man, tell 'em the truth..."

part of our spooktacular phoenix phestivities included an october 30th "trunk-or-treat" held in the parking lot of mark & anne's church building. although the close proximity of the individual stations provided for maximum trick-or-treating efficiency, it is generally not a good idea to go to any activity where the central focus involves rapid mobility through a crowd when your hosts are as socially connected to said crowd as are mark & anne in their church. eli was less than understanding about any sort of fraternization which detracted from the amassment of candied delights, and he set out early to find the source of a cotton candy bag he saw in the hands of one of the guests. despite his repeated pleadings, we contented ourselves to slowly meander through the crowd, even stopping at the hot dog bar for a frank and a cup of root beer. when his pleadings became unbearable, we finally asked around for directions to the cotton candy stand. having been pointed towards the source, i assured him that we would not further be deterred until we had achieved our goal. although it seems like the stuff of movies, we walked up to the stand at the very moment the confectionery philanthropist at the helm was passing the last bag of cotton candy off to the little boy immediately in front of us.

although the candyman (a personal friend of mark & mary) apologized profusely, you can imagine how much comfort to the disconsolate five year old was his generous, if unnecessary expression of mea culpa. still, to mute the effects of the sweet scarcity, he offered an invitation to trick-or-treat at his home the following night, where he would be running the machine with a restocked inventory.

the side trip to the cotton candy house ate up most of our available daylight trick-or-treating hours. still, getting the kids excited about any type of activity would have been impossible without it, even if that activity was running from house to house to claim free candy. further, the generosity of the candy man knew not limitations of age, and he benevolently spun his sugary staves for the parents as well as the children.

(uncle mark overindulges.)

(eli & mary at the pre-halloween event.)

phoenix rising

after some consideration, i have concluded that the only feasible way for me to recount the past few weeks is by starting with halloween. for as a chronological account would read more smoothly, it would ultimately lead to my posting halloween pictures sometime in mid-november. and if i must choose between giving precedence to the tales of my aimless wanderings in southeast asia or pictures of fructose strung out children in fluffy animal costumes, well, let it not be said that i don't give the followers of this blog what they want. of course, our initial plans had included a trip to norman, oklahoma for a third annual halloween visit to our good friends and loyal crimson sooners, the castillos. although our travel prospects looked very good leading into the holiday, the view from our front yard on october 29th looked something like this...

at the close of the day, a final flight into oklahoma city was cancelled, rolling disgruntled travelers over to the following day's flights, and dashing our hopes for an oklahoma christmas. "but will," you say, "halloween's festivities don't begin until the evening. you still have the better part of the 31st to make it out to norman and have no less to show for it." not so, as the city of norman, in deference to an october 31st ou sooners football game, had officially mandated that trick-or-treating be observed on the evening of the 30th.

well, it was either that, or set the world record for most "please take one" candy bowls set out within a single community.

we sulked for around 24 hours, (reference the above picture) then set out to pick up the scattered pieces of our shattered holiday, finding that while oklahoma was of the table, we could still make it out to visit the kids' cousins in phoenix... phoenix!!! (again, reference the above.) so, throwing the costumes in a bag, we pulled into town just in time to make the festivities.

we had opted this year to have eli's costume made by 5¢/hour filipino children commissioned through target and sold at a roughly 1,000% mark up. he had expressed enthusiasm over a dragon costume, which he had become interested in after he and pen watched sleeping beauty at grandma's house. (a movie, which aside from making very little sense, perpetuates about every misogynistic stereotype you hope never to expose your daughter to. as an example, on the day of her birth, three fairies are able to bless princess aurora with one gift each. so what would you grant a future sovereign of a vast kingdom? overwhelming compassion towards her subjects? a functional understanding of political affairs? aptitude for foreign diplomacy? no. first fairy up to bat grants her physical beauty. number two- musical inclination. the third fairy is interrupted before she can bestow her planned gift, but we can only assume it has something to do with "d" cups.) although eli was certain it was a dragon costume, it more closely resembled a tyrannosaurus rex. this, however, was not the most puzzling element of the costume. it is unclear whether eli is supposed to be riding the animal, (in which case, where are eli's legs?) or whether he is actually supposed to be the creature itself. (in which case, why is there a boy growing out of his back? the costume as i see it, is a sort of dino-dragon centaur with two heads, although, i can't imagine there is a strong market for such a thing.

penelope's costume was designed by grandma, and in order to satiate her personal tastes, i requested only that it be the most gaudy and sickeningly pink princess dress possible. (hey, isn't this the same guy who was talking about misogynistic stereotypes?) to say grandma knocked it out of the park would be an understatement. the result was an absolutely hideous garment which penelope will wear every day until it fits like a mini-skirt.

lucia was a bit tougher. we thought we had done well on a cute, if hackneyed "furry jumper/ baby's face through the neck-hole" magical unicorn. whether it was the fit, the awkward head-piece, or the general indignity of it, she was less than cooperative when it came time to wear the said costume...

looking to throw together a last minute ensemble for the little one, kelley grabbed a tutu from cousin mary's dress-up box, which lucia donned not only with acceptance, but surprising enthusiasm. on seeing this, aunt anne scrounged up a crown and a starry scepter which lucia received with delight. as it turned out, she just wanted to be as elegant and womanly as her sister, pen. (you saw the picture.)

while halloween is largely seen as a holiday for either small children or alcoholic adults of poor moral fiber, kelley and i were able to parlay the kids' enthusiasm to our advantage. since we only let the kids eat a couple of pieces of candy, everything they do after about three houses is basically slave labor. dividing the spoils is no trouble either- kelley takes the almond joys and i get the laffy taffies.

(the kids were joined by cousins mary the mermaid and skeleton sammy. lucia proudly displays the costume she worked so hard to get.)