August 13, 2011 [Incheon/Seoul Intl] -Episode One, Part Two-

    I did forget to mention to my nonexistant, invisible audience yesterday, the reason I was at the international terminal at LAX. I am traveling to Kathmandu, Nepal. Why? Well..."I choose to go to Nepal. I choose to go to Nepal in this decade and do the other things (grad school), not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of my energies and skills, because that challenge is one that I am willing to accept." Obviously paraphrased, but significant nonetheless.

    I am travelling to Nepal because I want to, it's really as simple as that. Ever since that first cultural anthropology class (did I mention I'm a novice anthropologist? Fully accredited to boot!) I've always wanted to immerse myself in a foreign culture ( I am from the United States, bugger, I should probably put that in my profile at some point) and I wanted that culture to be on the other side of Earth. (You know, the blue green marble, nice place, Mostly Harmless)

Korea is interesting, at least the airport and Korea Air are. I don't have tome to really get into the country now. Everything feels hyper-westernized. The stewardesses remind me of a nostalgic 1960s flying experience, the advertising is over the top in the airport, gigantic screens chock full of western ideas and influences. Efficiency is everywhere in the airport. From the way planes are boarded and disembarked, the separation of passengers is explicit. One group leaves a different way than how the next group arrives. Departures are isolated from arrivals. It is, in this "scary!" post 9/11 world, a security designer's wet dream. Isolation, impenetrable isolation. The only way you can transfer between the two is with an escort by an authorized person.
     However this is all complete wild speculation by someone sitting in an airport and is no more valid than, say trying to discern the cultural psyche of the average New Yorker by spending 6 hours at JFK. For more information see: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html

  

    One quick complaint down here at the end. Damn blogspot has everything in Korean! I can't tell what tab does what, where links lead, and I hope at the end of this I don't delete everything I've written...er....typed. Wait...wait! Hope! Google Chrome to the rescue! "This page is in Korean would you like to translate it?" ....Yes!

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....Success!

Look at that ladies and gentleman! Life as it happens! 

-END TRANSMISSION-