SEOUL BY NIGHT

I've settled into a pattern. Usually, I come back to my guest house room fairly late, although last night was an exception. Still, no matter when I come back, I listen to music, watch TV or read until later. The last few days the guest house is filled with young Russian women studying in Korea who hang out in the living area of the guest house watching Korean television and chatting in Russian. Ah, if I was only twenty years younger and from one of the former soviet bloc countries, I say to myself, and then cheerfully trundle off to my cubicle. No matter what, I sleep from 5 am to 1 pm. Why? I have no idea. I am trying to alter my pattern, but my addled internal sleeping clock remains fixed and I don't drop off to sleep until the sunlight creeps into my room.

Yesterday was our first gig at EBS Space. This is one of the gigs that brought me here (some of the others are kind of fill-ins). It's public television but without the television part last night. Just an audience in the concert hall. On Monday, we do it again, with a different audience, but that time they will film it for later broadcast. It was interesting because they provide an interpreter and this allowed me to make my usual dry and witty comments that are part of my gig-leading persona. I re-learned something that my years of being married to my Japanese wife had already taught me -- not all of my jokes are funny in translation. (I mean, some of my jokes aren't funny anyway, but that doesn't deter me. It's a little like scratching a mosquito bite, you know you shouldn't do it, but you can't help yourself.) Particularly when I couldn't remember who wrote It Could Happen to You, and told them that I would Google it and then call each one of them individually and tell them the name of the composer later, there was a distinct look of suppressed panic on their faces and only a few titters. Had I only followed that up with, with  'I have all of your addresses, I know where each of you live', I probably could have had quite a few bolting for the door.

Jokes aside, the gig went well and the band continues to develop. On a more personal note, I am extremely happy to be staying right next door to a vegeterian restaurant and will be eating there daily from now on. Did you know that Brad Pitt, Pamela Anderson, Martin Luther King and Albert Einstein are (were) all vegeterians? Great minds think alike, apparently. I am not, although I have dabbled in the past. As a kind of residual effect of those fish-eating veggie days (I never gave up fish because then traveling would have been awfully difficult--when you are on the road you can't always control where you eat to make sure there are good veggie options, although of course commited vegeterians like Pamela A do just that and my hat's off to her, for that reason as well as many others ) I don't eat beef, pork, lamb, etc-- just chicken and fish. Still, finding a veggie restaurant here is a nice oasis for me. In fact, I am feeling a bit peckish for wheat gluten and tempe soup right now so I think I'll sign off. One last note on club names here. Tonight's gig is at the Water Cock. Enough said.