Deutsche Post

I just had breakfast with the managers of DHL's consumer division for Southern India, who happen to be staying in the same guesthouse as me. They were very pleased to hear that DemiDec ships about a thousand boxes a year with DHL.

I didn't mention the lost alpacas of Texas.

Over pancakes, the conversation turned to politics.

"India is a democracy," said Ragu, the older of the two. "Short-term, China will grow faster, because it is military. Government says what to do, people do it. But long-term, India will succeed more. Here, we debate, debate, debate, then in the end, do the best thing."

Laptop Service

I couldn't find a bank that would take my ATM card anywhere within walking distance of my guesthouse here in Bangalore, but I did locate a Chinese restaurant and a Toshiba Authorized Notebook Service Center.

Notes for Future Travel

Notes to self:

1. Always print out the address of your hotel before arriving in an unfamiliar place, particularly if the hotel is a tiny "inn" in Bangalore that no one at the airport has ever heard of.

2. If the hotel is a tiny inn in Bangalore, don't be surprised if they're out of rooms, forgot they were going to pick you up at the airport, have lost your reservation, and proceed to send you to another tiny inn in Bangalore, which they assure you is even nicer but has people sleeping in the hallways.

3. Always carry toilet paper, even if it means carrying fewer alpaca finger puppets.

4. Always bring a towel larger than your hand (and softer than your Lonely Planet.)

5. If there is a bucket placed near a showerhead, be ready for low water pressure. This likelihood is reinforced by signs offering dire warnings such as, "Please save water; it is precious."

6. If the sign at an airport bank advertises, "We buy and sell all currencies," bear in mind before bounding up to them that they may not consider Korean Won to be a currency.

7. You don't really need sheets for sleeping.

Hot and Sour Soup

I've sat here before--about fourteen months ago, on my way home from my first stint in Korea. I'm at a lounge in the Singapore airport, once again drinking hot and sour soup and, this time, writing TOEFL listening questions. (Dean Webb wrote the lectures and conversations on which they're based, which means the depicted professors and students are clever, and a little sassy.)

On that last visit, I had just spent an entire night first wandering downtown Singapore overeating (to recover from three weeks of Korean dorm food) and then catnapping in a public lounge facility. I recorded a "farewell" to my "1% camp" students using a webcam I purchased downstairs--but I have no memory of what I said to them. I probably aimed for profound and achieved melodramatic--or aimed for funny and achieved confused.

Speaking of drama and humor in combination, I've now seen two Korean romantic comedies, When Romance Meets Destiny and Two Hundred Pound Beauty, and I liked both a lot. These Korean films seem to combine the funny and the melancholy in just the right blend to suit me. Maybe that's how I perceive the story of my own life... or maybe they're just good entertainment. It's also true that the subtitles force me to focus on them. I can't multitask, as I do even while watching 24.

Tonight, I'm on my way from Seoul to Bangalore. Earlier I stopped in Bangkok, which had a beautiful and almost empty new airport. I never imagined my first visit to India would be for a three day teaching conference--let alone one that DemiDec is helping to sponsor. I'll be presenting to about two hundred teachers on the Scholar's Cup, which is our new academic competition for Asia that is off to a tough but promising start. I'm hoping that some of them will want to be coaches this coming year.

Meanwhile, next week is the Korean national competition. It remains to be seen how many teams show up.

Leaving Korea on that first occasion last January, I had no idea that I would be back over a dozen times in the little over a year since. I lost track at my fifteenth trip or so. Sooner or later, I'll have visited it more often than my family's home country of Chile.

This latest visit (from Monday until this morning, and resuming next Monday) has been a little harder than most. For one, I'm still, as Tom put it, traveling on "a bad wheel." Healing from knee surgery turns out to be a little more challenging than I imagined. Every so often the knee gives out, or I slip in the rain and yelp. The hardest part is sleeping, because the bruised area contacts the mattress. (In the end, I gave in to an opiate after all.) Second worst is getting out of taxis. Nonetheless, I'm better by the day, and expect to be running through airport terminals again soon. But another reason the trip has been harder is that our first Korean curriculum projects are due next week--and it's always hard to pull together good work in time for a deadline, especially in a whole new field. (In addition to the Scholar's Cup, DemiDec is delving into producing curriculum materials for the TOEFL and other ESL-related areas.)

Nothing has gone exactly as expected since then, from Seoul to Evanston, which may be why I find a familiar (if lukewarm) bowl of hot and sour soup in Changi International Airport kind of comforting. At least it's better than its equivalent at the Kong.

Mishaps

This morning, I had surgery on my right knee, five months after falling (for no particular reason) at an Academic Decathlon camp in Northern California. Since then it's hurt to run and to climb steps, both things I like to do (for example, to catch a flight at the last minute.) The surgeon found, and removed, a centimeter-diameter "rock" jammed in my knee joint.

Naturally, I gave him and the nurses alpacas.

I now have a bottle of Percocet I hope not to take, two crutches I probably won't need to use, at least not at the same time, except when I'm avoiding falling down the stairs, and a pouch of ice that I won't let out of my sight for at least another day. All in all, it's been a very relaxing day, with episodes of 24 sandwiched around mailing out of DemiDec applications. By Sunday I'll be on my way back to Korea.

In fact, my only post-operative mishap involved stepping in a puddle of puppy pee, which isn't uncommon, given that my dad likes to keep a special rug for the puppies to pee on (he claims otherwise, but it is the perfect color, fogettable brown, to hide nearly anything unmentionable.)

Mouthwash

After eating fish and chips, I needed something to make the taste go away. A pickle didn't do it, so I went to my room, where I took a swig of hotel mouthwash.

Except... I misread the label. The mouthwash was shampoo.

Aircraft Downgrade

Behind me, two men are arguing; one, about 60, figured out that the other, about 80, had sat in the wrong row. Says the older one, who has a cane and a dog: "I'll have you know, young man, that I'm a Marine, I fought in World War II, the Chinese Civil War, Korea... but I'm eighty now, I'm a little befuddled."

"Young man," responds the younger older man, "I didn't do as much as you did, but I also served my country."

Meanwhile, everyone in rows 23 and beyond has discovered that their seats are missing. An apologetic flight attendant just announced that a last-minute switch to a smaller aircraft means that all passengers in the last five rows need to disembark and ask for new seat assignemnts. "I think there'll be enough," she concludes.

The passengers in question are fighting to get off.

"That's not my dad, it's my dog," says the older older man, now one row behind me, in response to a question he must not have heard quite clearly.

I can't wait for this one to be over.

Library

I'm pleased to report that the Library in Alexandria has recovered handsomely. There's even free wireless--and Turkish coffee.