farty-foyve

Today, I turn 45. I'm told, on occasion, that I look young for my age. You decide:

If I do look young, it's doubtless thanks to the fat that fills out any potential wrinkles.

To celebrate my birthday, I just ordered a pizza/fried chicken combo set from the local pizzeria/chickeria—a place called, humorously and nonsensically enough, Pizza Land, Chicken Princess. This sounds like a play on "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" to me, but really, I can't make heads or tails of what the name is supposed to mean, or how it's supposed to combine the ideas of pizza and chicken. The restaurateurs may as well have called the place Pizza and Chicken to convey the brute reality of what they do.

When I was first practicing ordering pizza on the phone and in Korean, years ago, I stumblingly requested a pepperoni pizza. Proud of myself, I waited for my prize to arrive, but when it did, I discovered to my horror and fury that the Korean notion of pepperoni pizza—at the time, anyway—meant that you got a pizza with pepperoni, ham, and onions. I fucking HATE onions on pizza (and on burgers, and pretty much everywhere else in Western food, with only a few exceptions). So today, after ordering the pizza/chicken set, I called the restaurant back and asked whether the pepperoni pizza would have onions in it. Thankfully, the dude said no. So I'm looking forward to chowing down on some bird and 'zza while I finalize my lesson plans for the coming week.

Forty-five doesn't feel any different from forty-four. Yet. It was in 2011, back when I was forty-two, that I began to notice the gray hairs arriving in earnest. I have no plans to color my hair, of course; coloring is for pussies with vanity issues.

Ah—my meal arrived while I was writing this, and I've delayed posting this entry so that I could chow down. Here are some pics of the food:




The chicken was surprisingly good. I loved the crusty, crunchy skin, which didn't look that impressive at first blush, but which proved to be quite addictive. The pizza was just OK, but it was still edible, especially after I'd spruced it up with a splash of hot sauce. The entire meal, drink and all, set me back W18,900, which isn't too horrible of a deal: a full load of chicken normally costs around W14,000, and so does a typical "large" (which is to say not so large) Korean pizza. So since the Pepsi cost me W1,000 (very cheap for 1.5 liters), each component of the meal—chicken and pizza—cost only W9,000. Truly not bad, if you'll pardon my modest litote. I'll very likely be ordering this unhealthy combo again, though not anytime soon, as I'm on a strict budget for the next few weeks.


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