The Stars at Night! Are Big and Bright!

April 18, 2009 – 7:51 am

Our plane landed just one hour after leaving Busan.

I looked outside my window and laid eyes on Jejudo, the largest island in South Korea.

Travel had been a whirlwind ever since we arrived in the country, less than one day before the United States squad started their first round World Cup schedule.

I was still coming to grips with how small South Korea was compared to my home state of Texas.   In fact, it occurred to me this might be just the second time I’d ever been on an island, the first being Honshu just a week before.  Up until that point, life had been spent 100% on continental masses.  Although Jejudo was only 50 miles away from the mainland, I felt a sense of remoteness and isolation.

As we taxied, I looked out my tiny window.  Although the hazy weather thwarted any attempts to survey all but the landscape closest to the aircraft, I still strained to pick out features like the new World Cup stadium or the island’s famous volcano.

Soon we arrived at the terminal, and I started to get excited.  Waiting for us inside was Shupe, an old friend of ours from the Bruce Hall days.  He had been in South Korea for several years, living simply while teaching English and scuba-diving.

Jim and I deplaned and found ourselves in a moderately-crowded terminal.  As expected, a majority of those present were Korean, although we did encounter some of our fellow football fanatics.  We had just touched down before a separate plane carrying the Slovenian squad, which was scheduled to play Paraguay the next day.  Their fan contingent was gathered just outside security, waving all sorts of banners and signs written in their native language.  Despite all of my years learning Spanish, Japanese, and German, I was fascinated at how foreign Slovenese appeared.

We still hadn’t encountered Shupe.  Jim and I started to question if we had gotten something mixed up.

Suddenly, a leather-jacket-wearing dude with sun-bleached blonde hair and glasses jumped out from behind a thick column.  It was Shupe.

Thrusting his forefinger high in the air, he belted out at the top of his lungs, “THE STARS AT NIGHT! ARE BIG AND BRIGHT!”

And like any good Texan, Jim and I instinctively dropped our bags and responded. Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! “DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS!!!”

All surrounding Koreans turned their heads and looked upon us with wonder.  Awe-filled whispers of “Ahhhh! Texas!” filled the room.  Flashes went off as some captured the moment in photographs.

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The First Folio

April 2, 2009 – 8:49 am

I drove down Church Street while Yancey kept a lookout for Mason Croft. I was still getting used to shifting gears with my left hand.

“There it is!” he gulped at the last possible second before I was to drive past.  Making a hard left, I pulled our car into the parking lot across the street and got my bearings.

The car had been so warm that I found myself reacquainted with the English chill when I opened the door.  I slipped a cap over my ears, zipped my jacket, and set foot in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Mason Croft was your typical English building, red-brick with white-trimmed windows and the air of dignity that came from age instead of notoriety.  Nothing on its exterior was remarkable or obviously declared it was home to The Shakespeare Institute.  I remember feeling slightly disappointed, figuring that any such facility located in the birthplace of such a great man should have been showier.  After all, everything across the pond screamed with some sort of advertising plastered on its facades.  “McDonalds!” “Taco Bell!” “UNT!”

Yancey and I walked inside Mason Croft and were greeted by several people.  Before we could introduce ourselves, one of them quickly figured out who we were. “You’re Jim’s friends?  From Texas, correct?” she said  We nodded.

“Texas!” she declared once again, with a tone of disbelief.

“Umm, yes,” we said.

The others in the room picked up on our origin and soon came a fount of questions about our home state. Everyone present was a student at the Shakespeare Institute, and Jim was famous for being the Texas boy who wore cowboy boots each and every day.  The most detailed questions centered around pronunciation, a stickler for descendants of the inventors of the English language.

“You all don’t have Texas accents.  ‘You all’.  It’s ‘y’all’, isn’t it?”  They continued to practice as if they were participating in a foreign language class.  “Y’all.  Y’all.  Y’all,” this mantra they repeated until satisfied they could pronounce it better than us natives.  Others not y’alling were practicing the way to pronounce oil. “Awll! Awl!”

Once sufficient mastery on their part and mocking on ours, we graciously informed them of their success in properly vocalizing our state’s trademark colloquialisms.  At least we weren’t asked the inevitables such as, “Do you ride longhorns to school?” and “Where are your cowboy hats?”

Although these people we were meeting were quite interesting, there was one person I was dying to meet: Kate.  A Shakespearean from Hungary, Jim and Kate had struck up quite a relationship during the time both were studying in Stratford.  In the emails and phone calls I received from Jim, he spoke about her in ways he rarely had done for anyone else. It was definitely something more than just friends. And because Jim didn’t own a camera, I had never seen what she looked like.  So I scanned the room, trying to guess which one was Kate.

Then Jim finally arrived.  Upon his entrance, his classmates boomed, “Texas!,” the nickname he earned due to said boots — or to his green pullover emblazoned with “NORTH TEXAS” in giant letters.

It had been several months since I’d seen Jim, as I was in transition between Dallas and Austin while he had moved to Alabama — then England — during that time.  I had to travel half the world to meet up with him!  Our reunion was heartfelt as we gave each other a strong hug.  Jim turned to Yancey, an even older friend of his, and likewise welcomed him.  It wasn’t unusual for me to be in England, but Jim was somewhat surprised Yancey had made it.

Jim took a moment to ensure we’d been introduced to everyone present.  After getting the name of the final person present, I was disappointed to find out that Kate was not present.  We would have to meet her another time.

Soon, someone popped up to leave.  Several other people said their goodbyes to us then also disappeared. We asked Jim what was going on. He asked his classmates to wait up then turned to Yancey and me.

“Do you want to go see Shakespeare’s First Folio?”

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Cleaning Up Old Stories

March 5, 2009 – 12:17 am

Doing a bit of blog maintenance tonight, mainly republishing older stories that had remained in the status of draft since my latest blog relaunch.  Take a gander and let me know what you think:

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WordPress for iPhone: Test Post #1

February 21, 2009 – 6:29 pm

This is a test of creating a new Post from my iPhone using WordPress for iPhone 1.2.

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WordPress for iPhone 1.2 Testing

February 21, 2009 – 6:11 pm

My hobby goal for 2009 is to get more involved in the WordPress community. As part of that effort, I signed up to test their latest iPhone client (version 1.2). Ergo, expect to see a bunch of test posts and pages posted onto this blog. Most of them will be under the “WordPress” Category, but I also plan to see how well it handles maintaining existing content. If you have anything you want me to address, let me know. And if you can, leave comments, as remote comment moderation is one of the items I need to test.

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Five Years Ago Today

February 20, 2009 – 7:49 am

Five years ago today, I went to meet a new friend for dinner.  We had been talking on the phone for a month, but we hadn’t met face-to-face until then.  I wouldn’t call it a blind date, as neither of us went with any expectations besides enjoying some good food and company.  Little did I know that one night would change my life forever, as it was the evening I met my wife Jenn for the first time.

Awhile back on my blog, I wrote about how we fell in love.  Here is that story again, presented in three parts.

I love you, Jenn!  And I love you, Zachary!  Both of you have changed my life for the better in so many ways I can never deserve.

After the Wedding

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Blog Suicide

January 4, 2009 – 4:37 pm

“Wha’ happen?”

Chances are if that question is going through your mind, you were one of my few fans wondering where the heck my old website disappeared.  Unfortunately, several months of inactivity have left this website dusty and unvisited.  It was time for a change.

The Whys

This marks reboot #5 of my website since it first began in 2002.  Back then, it was a generic personal site.  Over time, it evolved into an online book.  But even then, the site itself kept me from writing as often as I wanted.  Specific reasons for the change include:

  • Because my site is powered by WordPress, the need to keep its version up-to-date is imperative.  However, because of my custom template functions, this could not be easily done without taking away time from writing actual content
  • The way I structured the stories relied on WordPress 2.0, the first version I used.  On my end, lots of hacking permitted me to display my tales in multiple parts.  The current version of WordPress is flexible enough out-of-the-box to handle this without most of my customizations, which I can gladly back out
  • Because of these customizations, I could only publish stories.  Anything else I wanted to talk about — musings on the day’s news, art projects I am working on, or my own desire to contribute to the WordPress community — couldn’t be displayed.  This new blog permits me to do all of the above and keep them distinct and separate from one another

What Next?

My previous website was centered around stories, both one-off tales and their combination into a never-ending biography called The Book of Spam.  New chapters will be written, while those from the past will be republished as soon as they are modified to be WordPress-future-proof.

On the side, I will be dedicating some time to several projects I’ve wanted to present online.  These include:

  • Some of my photography experiments
  • My latest artwork, including sketchbook jams that are part of my 2009 resolutions
  • Explorations of my WordPress ideas, including some nifty site ideas I have in store

So thanks for bearing with me.  Yet again.

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The Friendly Skies

August 26, 2008 – 9:37 pm

The flight felt brutally long. Unlike the last time I flew overseas, when Continental Airlines had been kind to stock their planes with in-flight time-wasters such as movies, video games, and friendly flight attendants, their codeshare partner Northwest Airlines had skimped on such amenities, ensuring that they would continue living up to the nickname of “Northworst“.

Normally I sleep on international flights.  But this being a flight of firsts for me — first westbound overseas trip and most timezones jumped at once (ten, including a penetration across the international date line) — I was too unsettled to doze away the hours.  I had nearly completed one of the two novels I had brought for my entire two week vacation and there were still hours to go before we land. I began to worry how I’d kill time when I was on terra firma, as finding things to read in English is not a trivial task where I was heading. I worried even more about my return flight in two weeks, as I would once again be blessed to fly the same airline.  With my current and future flights, a full 24 hours of my life will have been wasted flying such unfriendly skies. Despite my upcoming destination, I craved entertainment now lest I die of boredom. Sitting in my aisle seat, I returned to my book and tried not to think about the endless amount of flight time remaining.

After an hour more of reading, I paused to rub my dry eyes. My will to read further was waning, so it seemed like a good time for a break. I put down my book and took a moment to survey the cabin. All shades were drawn tight, as it was still daylight outside. The actual time of day was lost on me, thanks to a combination of no wristwatch, no cell phone, and the fact that I would have been half-a-dozen time zones off were I to guess. Everyone but me was alseep, the lucky bastards. I planted my elbow on the armrest, buried my chin deep into my palm, and sighed.

An elderly Japanese lady walked down the aisle past my seat. Right as she passed me, she halted and slowly turned around. I took notice and looked at her face. She seemed slightly bewildered, reaching a hand up to her forehead as if she was starting to feel queasy. She used her other hand to grip the headrest of the seat in front of me. Then her leg quivered and she tumbled over, falling to her side.  She bounced off my lap, flipped back the opposite direction, and landed on the floor with a dull thump, coming to rest in the aisle next to me.

Pings echoed across the cabin, as I and several others quickly jabbed our “call attendant” buttons.  The ceiling was a constellation of blue call lights. Two flight attendants rushed to the lady’s side. Even more followed, carrying oxygen canisters and a defibrillator. Passengers nearby stood up in order to get a better view.

I was not one of them. Inches away from me was a comatose woman, being poked and prodded into consciousness by highly-trained professionals. As I seriously pondered the possibility of someone dying next to me, I curled my body towards the left, putting the spectacle to my back, and did my best to bury myself in my book.

Tokyo couldn’t get here fast enough.

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Saint September

July 30, 2008 – 9:17 pm

Jenn and I were walking along the path, underneath a patchy canopy of trees that bordered the coastline. In a clearing of burnt grass and exposed earth, we encountered Matt, a groomsman from our friend Bob’s wedding. He was sitting alongside a faded green Ford Escort that likely dated to the early 1990s.

From a keyhole atop the thin back hood grew a scraggly fruit tree just a few feet tall. Although the summer air was unbearably hot, the tree was covered in a thick frost, like the walls of an old freezer that had not been defrosted in many millenium.

The two of us asked Matt if he could explain, and he simply said that the tree was known as St. September. An odd feeling rushed over me, as if this woody creature, with a name like that, had something to do with the local art and music scene.

Upon closer examination, I could see the tree was broken at its base but not completely severed from its roots. Typical of most broken trunks and branches, it remained attached by thin, stressed strips of bark and wood, its upper half resting on horizontally on the trunk. I reached out to touch it and could feel the cold — and also the sweat as it thawed under the sun. The tree was definitely laboring.

I grabbed the tree and raised it back vertical, but realized it needed some support to stay in that position. Looking around, I saw in the dirt what looked like soda can tabs with rubber rims, like the colored jackets people buy to put around their house keys. I jammed two of these in the gap between tree and roots, then let go. The gap was filled up sufficiently that the tree once again stood tall.

Time appeared to pass, and I caught a future glimpse of the plant. Gone was the Ford Escort, and the tree was now planted firmly in the earth. A tight, 3′ x 3′ chain-link fence surrounded and provided it with all the protection it was missing. It was a taller tree, but it appeared to be just as skinny as before. Its greater height was reinforced with various hardware such as C-clamps and makeshift braces. But up it went, a truly magical thing.

Matt reappeared and informed us this would now be a magical and famous place. On cue, Jenn pulled out a sign that appeared to be printed from the side of a Pioneer baking mix container. It read “Texas Peachtree Memorial”. We posted it under the canopy of trees near the water, then stepped back to ponder/admire our work.

Then I woke up.

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Be the Reds!

July 22, 2008 – 8:31 pm

The flight attendant gently shook me awake.

“Sir, we’re about to land. Please return your seat to the upright position.”

It took several moments for me to process her words, I had been sleeping so deeply. On this leg of the flight, I was fortunate enough to have a window seat. I looked outside but could see nothing but the inky blackness of the Yellow Sea below. The lights of Incheon International Airport soon blinked into sight, and after a routine landing I was on the ground thousands of miles from home.

One-and-a-half decades of dreaming of Asia were finally coming true. I was in Korea on opening night of the 2002 World Cup.

We filtered out of the airplane and sifted ourselves into evenly-spaced lines at customs. Incheon was a brand-new airport, built on an island far west of the capital Seoul. Built as a shiny yet inanimate ambassador to those like myself that had never set food in Asia, it was designed to be large and efficient. No less than fifteen booths were manned with customs inspectors, a far larger number than I had seen in my previous foreign travels. Behind the booths was a broad balcony overlooking the lower floor of the airport and its baggage claims and shops.

Either I was still asleep, or processing passengers seemed to take longer than expected. Yet after moving in the air for fourteen hours, I was in little rush to move any faster than I had to.

Suddenly, the air was snapped by a sonic boom of human design. It began downstairs in the baggage claim area. Like an tsunami of sound, it swept upwards into the customs area and blew past us, so concussive that I felt the hairs on my arm snap to attention. It was a loud roar, a cacophony of humans cheering, and the building shook from its power.

Before we could process what happened, a door on the far right wall opened up. Out popped the customs supervisor.

He was yelling something in Korean as he briskly approached past each agent’s stand. Occasionally, he grasped an agent by their shoulders, looked steady into their eyes, and quickly exclaimed the same untranslatable news.

Several agents popped up and ran off downstairs, leaving their boothes unmanned and us standing in line. If we so chose, we could have snuck into the country illegally without gettng our passports stamped. Those agents remaining were high-fiving and hugging one another. Quickly, the roar subsided, the absent agents returned to their posts, and our processing continued. We still had no idea what had just happened/

I got through security, headed downstairs, and scanned the crowd, hoping to find the friendly face I expected. Behind me, I heard a familiar voice.

“Spam!”

Noone else in Korea could be expected to answer to that name. I whirled around, and there was my best friend Jim. He had been on a separate, earlier flight to Korea — he had apparently made it alright. We embraced in relief at seeing one another.

I asked Jim what the hell was going on. The roar, the ensuing chaos. “Oh, you mean everyone celebrating the South Korean team scoring?”

It turns out that the noise was the collective celebration of an entire scoring their second goal of the night against mighty Poland, during the World Cup opening game that was ocurring right at that very moment.

Jim waved his hand towards the several flat-screen televisions mounted in the terminal. Each was broadcasting the game live. Jim explained that when Korea scored its earlier goal, the entire building exploded in a similar celebration. The scary thing was that everyone, from security guards to shopkeepers and cab drivers — abandoned their duties upon each score. Each left their post in a rush towards the nearest television, which would replay the glorious, impossible moment several times. The World Cup was amazingly important to South Koreans, so much so that they’d be willing to leave the airport momentarily defenseless in order to share a moment as a nation. The place could have been robbed blind, or a bomb set off, and noone would have noticed anything but Hwang Sun-Hong pounding home what would prove to be the only goal needed by The Reds.

Now that both of us had arrived, we had a ride to meet. We went out to the curb, where Jim introducted me to our driver for the evening. He was to drive us the long route from Incheon to Seoul, where we would be staying at the home of a family whom we had never met before. We could only hope they spoke English.

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