If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person? - Fight Club

    Technically, I should be lethargic by this point. I've been traveling since 7:15am on Thursday the 13th. It's now 3am on Friday East Coast time, but I'm in Seoul, Korea so it's actually 6pm. The flight from Boston to JFK was uneventful, however that airport is for suckers and if you don't have to go there, I highly recommend you go anywhere else. The people behind me were bitching about how long it took to get to an exit and the people in front of me were just lost.

My second connecting flight was JFK to Seoul, which was fourteen hours. I was seated between a husband and wife who I wrongly assumed would like to sit next to each other...but they didn't..or at least the wife didn't want that. Anyways, we ended up chatting for awhile even though I never actually got her name. She told me how she's returning for a month to visit family and this the first time she's been apart from her twenty-eight year old daughter who lives in Flushing, Queens with her. She then went on to tell me how she is concerned her daughter may be getting fat due to her preference for American food over Korean food, particularly pasta. She also explained to me how to make kimchi, which if I could explain to you I wouldn't because it's confusing. From my understanding it is somewhat of a cabbage based layered dish that at some point in its life goes in a jar, but don't take my word for it because I don't have any idea what I'm talking about. Come to find out she owned a Korean restaurant right by the twin towers, but closed it shortly after the attacks and opened a nursery school. When it came to our in flight service she insisted I order the 'Western Meal' because she didn't want me to go hungry if I didn't like the Korean style. She told me I could just try hers, which I wasn't planning on because that's weird eating off her plate. Instead it was more awkward as she insisted on physically spoonfeeding me these samples. But YOLO, right? Anyways, my western meal ended up being a steak, that at first bite definitely tastes like a men's dress shoe, but then proceeded to taste more like steak. After we each had two glasses of wine, she popped a sleeping pill and I ate my Western chocolate cake and watched the news.

                                                                

Since there is few sources for international news that people actually read, I'm going to hope you're still reading this and give you a clue as to What's Happening?

What's Happening in Korea?

• The country has declared a war on sex crime. A surge in violent sex crimes against women has led police to crackdown on internet cafes, porn service providers and those found to possess child porn. There is also a growth in Smartphone Apps used to protect women. One of which informs police of an emergency upon shaking it a certain way and another that tracks your location while in taxis and pushes notifications of your location to a family  member.
• A six month old child hung itself playing with the strings that pull up blinds.
• Massive tax evaders seem to be hiding their money in real estate in NYC.
• There is growing concern for the number of single households in Korea, largely due to divorce.

In my experience watching the news followed by The Lorax in Korean made me feel like Koreans are a much happier people. I have no idea whether that's true or not, but I wasn't interrupted with anti-depressant commercials every five minutes like in the states so that certainly helps.

Well that's all I can muster up for now, can only be so clever at 3:30 AM sober. Now only five more hours to Phnom Penh and then I really don't care what happens as long as I can lay down.