I went to Insa-dong, and all I got was

random red skull somewhere in Insa-dong

Wednesday afternoon, despite a vague threat of rain, my boss kindly drove me to Insa-dong, the artsy-fartsy district across town, to look for some antique items to send to my French Papa, whose birthday is coming up in under two weeks. Whatever present I send now will likely arrive a few days late for his actual birthday, which makes me think I might be better off sending Papa my gifts around Christmastime instead.

This idea of sending antiques came to me as I pondered my long-standing shame about something that had happened in the home of my French "parents" years and years ago: I accidentally destroyed an ancient wooden ladle that had been in the family for centuries. The thing was so dry and fragile that, when I accidentally bumped into it where it was hanging on the wall, it leaped off its wall hook and shattered on the floor into a million pieces. There would be no gluing the thing back together. It was as if the ladle had been made of something slightly heavier than cigarette ash and just as frangible. And I've lived with the shame of that incident ever since. The ladle haunts my dreams.

My original idea was to go to Insa-dong and find an equivalent Korean ladle made of wood. My boss, who is an antiques collector, warned me, though, that old Korean ladles would all be made of metal, not wood. Sure enough, at every antiques store in Insa-dong that we visited (and we visited four, every one run by people familiar with my boss), the proprietors all confirmed my boss's warning: all they had, as far as ladles went, were metal ones.

I began to waver on the prospect of getting a ladle for my Papa, but at the fourth and final shop, where the shopkeepers were the friendliest, we found both a ladle and an ancient (as well as giant) wooden paddle for stirring and scooping rice. The boss joked the paddle would be great for spanking kids; the shopkeepers (an elderly couple) said the wood of the paddle was of note because of how it was discolored where people used to hold the paddle. And because the paddle was so big, people would never hold it by the extreme end: they'd choke up their grip and hold the part of the handle that was close to the flared-out paddle itself. You could definitely see that fact by the coloration.

So I ended up shelling out W250,000 for a metal ladle (the boss told me to tell my French Papa that this one wouldn't break) and a rice paddle. I now have to find a way to box and wrap these items to send them to France. I'll put up photos of these gifts soon.

It was while we were walking back to my boss's SUV that I saw the above skull.

Memento mori.