A mishmash of thoughts

Because I have not much time, with work and everything else swirling my attention, I can only write scatterbrained, pseudo-reflections for now...

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H for Humanity

My days for the past week were all about work, or activities related to the company I’m working for. The weekend found us at the edge of North Korea, in the Demilitarized Zone for our work team’s volunteer activity. I have always wanted to try joining a Habitat for Humanity house building project. I thought it was cool and fulfilling, to help build a home with your own hands, helping fulfill a person’s dream of a place to call home. Well, what do you know, it was what we did last Saturday. Although to be honest, it was a bit dissapointing. A whole day of digging , clearing out bricks from old stone paths, and 87 members did not yield a house at the end. I guess, it was a bit foolish to think that such a thing is possible. But I kinda was expecting more concrete results, instead what we had for results was a fixed roof in one house, the installation of hot water tubings in another, and the removal of bricks and plants in a square plot between unfinished houses. Still, it was a good experience, so good and challenging that on the way back to my home I was yawning like crazy, tired, a bit sore and definitely sleepy.


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Why Fall?

The trees are finally turning all beautiful, the city parks a palette of tangerines and yellows, my favorite colors. It’s fall and all I could think now is my wish to climb a mountain or at least visit a park before it becomes too cold to savor autumn. Maybe when my dad and brother come here in three weeks, we'd be able to go to the nearby Seoul Grand Park for them to see fall.

I love fall for the simple reason that everything becomes so beautiful, the sun becomes less rabid, the air cool but not freezing, and there’s the sad yet hope-filled death of the trees, a fitting metaphor for all of us who need assurances that all is not lost, how losses are almost always just precursors to some bigger, better blessings.

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A bookworm confession

If only for one thing, I could thank Korea for the return of the bookworm in me. There is a bookstore near my office with a pretty good collection of english language books and magazines (including Donna Hay and Gourmet! Yay!). So it’s become my habit to buy a book or two per week. Most often, I read one book on my way/coming back from work, then the other, usually more treasured one I read slowly, thirty to one hour worth of pages each night before I sleep. It does seem extravagant no, spending so much on books? But here’s the secret, my company pays for all the books I buy through a welfare point system (each point corresponds to a thousand won). So far I still have about a hundred points left till the end of this year which means I can use it to buy about six to ten books more, yay! Only thing left to do is find out where in Seoul can I get a copy Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book ASAP.

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Making Magic with flour, eggs and little stuffs

We’ve began a baking session/lesson of sort, me and my Pastor’s wife otherwise referred to as my ate. Since I don't have an oven at my flat, some weekends I stay over at their house to test out recipes with her and use her new oven. We began simply enough with a a batch of brownies and banana muffins, they turned out okay albeit a bit too wet owing to my imprecise measurements and the fact that the knobs in the oven are labelled in korean so it was really a bit hit and miss. Still,we have another baking session scheduled this coming Saturday. Hmmmm, I wonder what would be a good thing to bake. Maybe a few cookies (ginger? chocolate? oatmeal?), a banana or vanilla inspired cake or a cinnamon and nutmeg infused peach cobbler. I’m thinking of something that invokes autumn—a bit earthy and musky, something not too light nor feathery. So maybe I’d go for a recipe of apple muffins, a peach cobbler and if we still have time and energy, some of those thin chewy ginger cookies that I used to bake in London.

To be honest, these baking-cum-sleepover sessions are also our only chance to bond closely, since in church she’s busy attending to the other members and I’m busy chatting with the other girls too. Haha. And there’s still nothing like having a no holds barred, sister to sister talk. I can always tell her my fears and anxieties and aside from advice, she tells me what to read, where to get my strength to decide on matters at hand. In most ways she's become truly my ate, the one who would all to often give me packets of longganisa and tocino that she's made herself to sustain me for the week. So yes, I may be teaching her how to bake, but I’m learning more about my faith and my resolve to do good this time, thanks to her. Makes me think that despite being single, I am so lucky to have people like ate and her husband who all too patiently welcome me back into their lives and treat me almost like family.