Goodbye Pusan, Hello Poch'un

LG metro city, the largest apartment complex in Korea and our home for six weeks. LG stands for Life's Good. Just like an American stadium can take the name of its corporate sponsor, a Korean apartment may be named after, say, a consumer electronics and home applicances conglomerate. We found that LG metro didn't live up to it's corporate slogan.

Bookworms love to read; bibliophiles love the materials and formats of books; bibliomaniacs love to hoard books of no intrinsic value and occasionally eat them. Our boss suffered from bibliomania, an obsessive-compulsive disorder "involving the collecting or hoarding of books to the point where social relations or health are damaged." We estimated that in his apartment were at least 20,000 books. The perimeter of every room was lined with locked bookshelves. Over the course of the six weeks that we stayed with him, he added a few more bookshelves, only there was no space for them - one went in the kitchen, between the dining room table and the kimchi freezer, another went behind a bedroom door and significantly blocked the entrance.

Our workspace. As you can see, the line of bookshelves extends onto the porch.

Unfortunately, bibliomaniacs don't actually read their books. If only our boss would have read that one.

After leaving dr jun's, we stayed in a goshitel, a kind of student boarding house infamous for its economical arrangement of space. Our room was 5ft x 7ft. In the picture you can see three walls; the room was the length of a table, and we slept partially under it. Even still, it was our cube, and we came to rather like it.

For a hilarious 3 minute tour through a goshitel: http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq1aAsjYOBg

Our goshitel was near a university, and the area was full of restaurants which specialized in carnivorous treats. Nearly every establishment had a cartoon animal on their sign to advertise which meat was most prevalent on their menu. It might be a chicken with an imperious facial expression being boiled in a black metal cauldron, or a pig with a bandaid on its arse, or, in this case, the two meats are in a death struggle, and clearly the beef shank is tastier than the craven chicken breast.

Our business relationship with Dr Jun ended at 10 pm on a train from Pusan to Seoul. Here we are, relieved.

Monastic-ware being sold at the train station.

And now we're back in poch'un, where Stephen began four months ago. The people here are kind and welcoming, and you can't put a price on our peace-of-mind. Stephen has two dogs to romp with, there are two Buddhist temples within walking distance, and there is nothing but trees and crisp air.