luncheon/dinner update

Some food pics from my boss's apartment first:

my salad, deployed; silver container at left = spaghetti noodles; my two dressings, pomegranate seeds, wrapped veggies belonging to the Missus; Fig Newtons

slightly different angle; pie and cookies now visible

nacho chips (not mine) and my almond-flour cookies

lots and lots of carbs, none of them mine—chips, guac, salsa, crackers, salami/bologna, dip, baguettes

a wider shot, with baguettes, cake, etc.

Even more food came in after I got to the boss's place around 1:50 p.m. The get-together was scheduled to begin at 2 p.m., and I had originally thought the meeting was supposed to be just the boss, my Korean coworker, and me, talking about the future. Instead, the boss's friend J came over with his Korean wife; his preteen, half-Korean daughter; and his little, half-Korean son (age four or five). J also brought food—crackers, spicy bologna, cheap grocery sausage, and wine-infused cheese. The daughter brought along the family cat, who was surprisingly chill given that my boss has two cats of his own (who are also pretty chill). J and his family didn't arrive until 3 p.m. My Korean coworker apparently had a late start and fought traffic. He was also coming to the Suwon/Yongin area from Gimpo, meaning he had to drive diagonally southeast through Seoul. Another compounding factor was that he'd brought his own daughter with him, and she apparently had to go to the bathroom at one point, meaning they had to stop at a store and find a restroom, then go back to fighting traffic. My coworker didn't get to the apartment until close to 5 p.m. We fed the kids spaghetti so they wouldn't starve, but we adults gamely waited for my coworker's arrival before eating. By that point, the luncheon had become more like an early dinner.

I set up my food—the quiche, the salad, the pie, the cookies—and the boss's wife set up her food: appetizers (chips, guac, salsa), her own salad, and spaghetti with meatballs. My Korean coworker brought along another of his goddamn apple pies, which he insists on baking the exact same way every time despite my complaints (too much crust, too little filling—literally like a centimeter of filling and two centimeters of crust). J, I think, brought along a cake of some sort (Baskin Robbins?) which may have been to celebrate his son's birthday. J and I had more of a chance to talk one-on-one this time; it turns out that we have a lot in common in terms of teaching philosophy and a love of walking. As for my food: the cookies were a hit, but that wasn't even my recipe. My quiche didn't seem to be much of a hit; even I was disappointed: when I cut into it, I immediately saw it was cooked through but still not really firm. It could have used another(!) thirty minutes in the oven. As I said, the thing was huge. Despite my disappointment, about half of it got eaten. I'm not sure how much of my salad got eaten, but I think nearly half of the pie was consumed. There was so much other food as well: the pile of carby appetizers (I had only a couple bites), the spaghetti with meatballs (not bad, but one of my meatballs was gristly), the second salad by the Missus (which I didn't have), the baguettes (which I didn't have), and the birthday cake (which, again, I didn't have). So people were stuffed, and there was no shortage of eats. Introvert that I am, I ate little and spent a lot of time with a glass of water in my hand, just staring at the TV while everyone around me jabbered away. I did talk sporadically with J, my boss, my coworker, and the two wives: my boss's wife and J's wife. So I wasn't a total zombie.

I found myself wondering, though, if or when we were ever going to sit down and have ourselves a meeting about the startup and our future. This did happen, but only after J and his family left with half the birthday cake uneaten (they left a bit after 7 p.m.). I had to wake up from a nap in front of the huge-screen TV (during which time the Missus very kindly washed up my containers and bagged them up for me), and most of the meeting's conversation was in Korean since my coworker speaks only a little English, and the boss is Korean-fluent, leaving me a bit at sea. We discussed a tentative schedule to begin developing materials for the startup, but nothing is set in stone, and there's no rigid timeline at the moment. I told the boss I'll be in the States roughly from the end of March to about mid-April. Our team might be in better shape to try doing stuff in late April. I won't be moving to Suwon until July at the earliest. Yay: a hot month! Great for moving heavy boxes.

So all in all, I kind of felt the day had been a waste of time. We didn't get much done at our meeting; the meeting itself felt like an afterthought and ended up being unsatisfyingly vague; if the boss had told me earlier that more people would be coming, I'd have made more food, but I guess he and his wife had anticipated the extra-guest problem because they'd made food of their own, and the guests also ended up bringing things to eat. Plus, the food I'd brought was inconsistent in how it performed: the cookies were a hit, but little else was. Maybe part of the problem was all the extra food. On the upside, I had a chance to get to know J better. His daughter strikes me as smart, and while his little boy seemed like a whiny little bitch at first (a lot of boys are that way at that age; I know I was), he soon got used to the people around him and became cheerful and a little over-energetic. While the TV was broadcasting some godawful kids' show, I was reminded of why I don't watch TV in Korea: it's as stupid as, if not stupider than, the garbage on American TV. I have a TV, but it's not hooked up to any antenna or cable; I use it only once in a blue moon to watch Blu-rays and DVDs.

Sunday (technically today) will probably be a "Cobra Kai" marathon day, with a review happening later in the week. As for the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant review... we'll see. That's coming along very slowly, and I'm thinking about breaking it up into parts so it doesn't become too intimidatingly ponderous for the two people who will be arsed enough to read it.