lunch outing

I baked a batch of Toll House cookies yesterday and took 21 of them (the other nine were under-baked) to my ex-boss and his family today. My ex-boss lives right on the border between Yongin and Suwon, but his address says he's technically in Yongin. That area is pretty built up; I'm not sure that I'd want to live there. I'm lucky, I think, to be in a quiet, southeastern corner of Gangnam—the old, beaten-up part of Gangnam, that is, not the modern, ritzy part that everyone associates with the name Gangnam.

Getting to my ex-boss's place is a bit of a chore since I don't have a car. I had to walk up the street to Daemosan Entrance Station (대모산입구역/Daemosan-ipgu yeok), then take the Suin Bandang Line down to Sang-gal Station. Luckily, there were escalators up to the street level, so I didn't have to risk a heart attack getting to the surface. I had wanted to take a shuttle bus to my ex-boss's place, but when the tiny bus arrived, it was chock-full of elderly people, so I said Fuck that and got a cab, which took me straight to my ex-boss's apartment complex, and even right up to his building.

We won't talk about the crowded subway ride or my problems trying to get into the destination apartment building's front door. It's enough to know that nothing in Korea is ever straightforward; nothing ever goes smoothly from A to B. Anyway, the boss let me in. The apartment was quiet, and the ex-boss's two sons still act like quiet, shy, awkward teens around me despite being large enough to tackle me to the ground (half-Korean, they take after their big, beefy dad). Once I was inside, the ex-boss gave me some cold iced tea, and we talked about where to eat lunch. Turkish? Amurrican? Korean? I picked Korean, which was kind of an expensive choice since meat has always been at a premium in this country. But Amurrican food would've been expensive, too, and Turkish as well. Nothing is cheap in a rich country.

concrete design at the bus/taxi stop by Sang-gal Station

the front door of the building where my former boss lives

the resto: Yangshim So

I joked that Yangshim So could mean "Conscience Cow" or "Cow with a Western Heart." I confess that I'd confused yangshim with yangji, which means "brisket."

Humble smile promising deliciousness or smug smile promising the last laugh?

We were told there'd be a few minutes' wait because a large group had come in. In the end, though, we were served relatively quickly, and the food was good. The boys talked with each other and their dad a bit, but otherwise concentrated on their cell phones. I offered several times to help pay for the meal, but the boss insisted that I was on his turf and had brought cookies besides, so I shouldn't contribute anything.

before we were seated—a peek through the slats

meat selection at our table, L-R: the Yangshim So platter, half-platter, ribs, skirt steak (really?), sirloin, tartare

one son

In Korea, you pay at the restaurant, but you often end up grilling your own food. By strict Texas standards, what we do in Korea is grilling, not barbecuing (which is low and slow).

the other son (fraternal twin)

the ex-boss and his Pepsi Zero

I had ruined my blood sugar the previous night by eating a bunch of deformed, under-baked cookies (horrible texture, but delicious as hell), so I got a regular Coke. In Korean restaurants, when you order a Coke, don't expect refills. Only certain very Western restaurants do that, and only grudgingly. So save your Coke for the end of the meal.

the vacuum-tube setup

Because this sort of meatateria gets smoky, most such places have a vacuum-tube setup that gets extended until it's just above the flames of your grilling meat, and from that position, the tube sucks up most of the smoke. Plenty of smoke still gets away, and diners usually end up smelling pleasantly smoky when they leave a meat place. It's all part of the experience.

In the end, the ex-boss and I didn't talk about much of substance. He says he's teaching part-time in various locations, and he's got some adult classes coming up. Part of the reason why I'd even bothered to visit him was to get his letter of recommendation for my current round of university-job applications, but he hadn't written it, so he says he'll be sending it to me via email, along with a photo or scan of his signature. I had originally suggested that the boss write the letter, send it electronically, and send his signature as a scanned or photographed image, but over the phone, he'd insisted on doing things the old-school way (he's in his sixties, which may factor into his thinking; to be fair, I do a lot of things in old-school ways, too), i.e., physically writing and printing out the letter, signing it, then physically handing it to me. I, of course, deliberately didn't remind the ex-boss about the recommendation letter because I wanted to see whether he'd make it a priority. He obviously didn't. I guess I can't be too hard on him, though; I've lost track of things before myself. On the bright side, lunch was a good meal, and and my ex-boss had been a decent (if often difficult) boss. And I'm pretty sure he'll send me a recommendation letter soon. So today was basically just a chance to step out, have lunch, then come back to my place to keep on toiling in obscurity.

On tap to do:

1. two more short stories for next week
2. finalize cover of dead-tree version of movie-review book
3. finalize content for dead-tree version of movie-review book
4. mock lessons should I be called in for an interview
5. sample lessons to show to KMA people next week (PPT + MS Word packets)

The work goes ever on and on.

Oh, yeah: My cheap-ass Sony headphones are dying. If I can't figure out how to repair them, I'm going to have to replace them. Another expense.