#12 spring’s warming up, i’m settling down and the world’s going crazy

Wanted to send out some joyous news yesterday of my new found stability but smacked in the head by a war instead. I was walking around techno-mart looking for stamps for my kids, hailed upon by fluroscent lighting when I suddenly got slapped by the enormous banks of enormous flat screen TVs I was walking past blaring out CNNs breaking news. Recalling Ani lyrics: "coming of age during the plague of reagan and bush, watching capitalism gun down democracy" as i staggered into work and laughed ruefuly at "little bush's" war speech. Some kids in my neighbourhood asked if i was from the USA and I was so happy to be able to tell them I'm australian until i read in the paper later that we have the third largest deployment of troops. Enough ranting and raving. Funny how the second generation of culture shock was beginning to settle in as i settle into my new neighbourhood, but the whole world looks strange now! What was that about a new neighbourhood. Yes folks, I have somewhere to live other than the kindnes of Dom's warm ad cozy floor. I now have my own heated luxury lino with a fridge, washing machine and TV to match. Ironicaly the only english speaking station i can get is AFN, yup, you guessed it Armed Forces Network, for the brave folks over here protecting the world from the other evil threat, the poor, very, north koreans. I turned it on this morning to laugh at the one-sided war coverage. Interviews with redneck america interspersed with domestic violence adverts for the military and requests only to use their travel allowance for work purposes. I've got to send some of these back. They'd be hilarious if they weren't so scary. Have almost finished the second week of my new job and have been installed in my own personal orwellian booth for almost a week. i kid you not. they're not very big and there's not much light but i have white goods which must make me a real person! its really excellent to have my own space and this will have been the first time i've been settled since six weeks in Bali with my beautiful hosts, many months ago. And its amazing what a packet of rainbow candles and a couple of milk crates can do to make a place homely! Next weekend I'm having a housewarming i reckon, so if you're invited drop by. Speaking of which my new address is: 67-1 Da-se-de 202 Songpa-Gu Munjeong-Dong Seoul Korea. If you're sending packages, hint hint, nudge nudege, wink wink, its better to send them to school: EWAS (english with a smile) 3F1, Academy Centre 150-20 Munjeong-Dong Song-ku Seoul And I'm getting the phone put on this afternoon: +82 2 408 4547. Walking around exploring in the mornings, as spring warms up the light is an icy blue which deepens into a dusky pink in the afternoons. The trees are budding and I've shed most of my twenty-zillion layers down to that old standard melbourne uniform: stripy thermal with a bonds t-shirt over the top. I live about 15 minutes walk from school (work) and as its reasonably flat around here i'm thinking about getting a skateboard or some rollerblades as quick funky travel. Have been polling my kids ad they're in favour of rollerblades which could be interesting as i've only bladed twice in my life; once in boots too small for me and once around a really dark gas station. Practicality and coolness are equally important in this decision but I'm concerned that i never figured out the ollie. maybe the lcal kids could teach me that would me cool. They're all out in the streets in the afternoons if i duck out for my break. I'm lucky in having 3 parks on my way to work, depending how I walk, but as I'm working from 1pm-7:30 the kids are all in school or hogwans. So i reckon I'm here until mid september when i'm thinking really seriously of catching the ferry over to China, exploring mongolia and catching the trans-siberian back to Beijing before heading over to Burma and the Thai-Burmese border to do some real work. Still looking for media savvy travel buddy for Burma and trying to get my hands on as much research material first before i go. So that'll leave me back in SEA around the end of the year.