Thursday, April 07, 2005

Jet Lag and Best Health Care

I have never had trouble when flying from USA to Korea as far as jet lag goes. However, this recent trip back seems to be an exception. Monday afternoon I was sleepy, and took a nap at 4pm, and didn't wake up until 9pm! I went to my favorite bar and ate a fruit tray for dinner (Mrs. Stumbler would be proud). Tuesday went okay until about 2pm, when I was so tired I needed another nap. This time I didn't wake up until midnight! And to make matters worse, I couldn't go back to sleep. I also had a flurry of messages and missed phone calls from SY, who was planning to cook dinner for me Tuesday night because she had the day off. It seems she was worried that something had happened to me. Anyway, yesterday, Wednesday, was a VERY long day, but I went to sleep at a normal time 9:30pm and woke up this morning normally at 6am. I think I am finally back on the Korean time zone, but only after two days of messed up sleeping and missing two dinners and two days of no treadmill.

Yesterday my colleague CH and I drove to Gunpo (군포) for all day project, and arrived back in Seoul around 8:30pm. We were both too tired to go out for a dinner, but we were hungry. So we chose a place on the ground floor of my officetel. I should go back a couple of months and tell the story of this place. As it was being built, my buddy John noticed it first, and told me one day about the new chicken store being built. A few days later, I finally remembered to look for this new place. I couldn't find the chicken store, but I did find a small doctors office being build called "Best Health Care". It was another week or so before we connected the dots, and realized there was no doctors office - "Best Health Care" was actually the name of the chicken place! Kind of funny, since the menu doesn't seem particularly healthy - most of the chicken dishes are fried. Last night we had something called "vegetable chicken". Picture pieces of boneless fried chicken, except instead of using regular batter, they used batter heavily laced with vegetables. Unusual, good, but probably not the "best health care" dinner possible.

But despite the sleep problems, lack of proper Korean dinners, and good exercise, I had a great day working yesterday. This project has been frustratingly slow, and suddenly yesterday many things "clicked". We made such good progress that we will probably wrap things up today after one final trip to Gunpo.

I should end this by wishing Momma Stumbler a happy birthday. She has been stuck at 39 years old for almost as long as I can remember, and several years ago I passed her age. Strange to be older than your mother! Have a Happy 39th Birthday (AGAIN) Mom.....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thank you kindly! I've decided it is really unseemly for a mother to be younger than her son, so I guess I'll just have to be 49 for a while. ;>)

I'm trying to learn how to make kim chee. Do you have a recipe?