I was going to cop out and say that I'm too sick (weird throat, nose, achey body affliction), have too much work (on top of the regular 2-6 job, I'm continuing to do the freelance textbook writing), am worn out from vacation (always a strange oxymoronic feeling), and am down in the dumps, but I decided, "Ah fuck it, just write something, ya lazy bum."

Re: sickness -- don't worry, I don't have a cough and I don't have a fever, so it's highly unlikely that I have SARS. But I do have a memory about infectious diseases that I'd like to share: about a year ago, I attended a series of lectures at NIH about infectious diseases (free! I love government), and one of the several experts who spoke rhapsodized about viruses to the effect of "There's no other organism that continues to baffle and try humanity, to frighten us and decimate us, and continues to have such mystery about it. Perhaps they do not trespass on our bodies, in our world, as much as we trespass on theirs."

(Yah, obviously I don't remember it to this extent, but you get the drift.)

Yesterday I came back from a two-day trip to Jeju Island, the southernmost island of Korea. It's called Korea's Hawaii; some people insist it's better than Hawaii. I don't remember Hawaii well enough to contest that, but I sure was charmed by Jeju. Popular destination of honeymooners, it harbors no factories, relying on fishing and farming in the past and tourism today for its economy. The island lived up to everything I'd heard about it.

It is said that three things are abundant on Jejudo ("do" means "island"): wind, rocks and women. The wind was balmy while we were there, but I did see a basketball hoop with a concrete base that had fallen over; I'll take that as evidence that the wind can be fierce. There were tons of rocks. Tons! All the fields are neatly framed by rock fences, which brought to my mind the line from the Robert Frost poem "Good fences make good neighbors" (probably because it's the only line I can remember from that poem). The fences are constructed with space between the rocks, so that the wind goes through the fence. And though I didn't take a survey, there did seem to be a lot of women. I think the reason for this part of the saying is because in the past many men died in fishing accidents, sort of like Gloucester in Massachusetts.

The women of Jejudo are famed for their diving skills, and I saw several divers while I was there, both in and out of the water. I was pretty freakin' impressed, lemme tellya.

I'll have some pictures up on ofoto.com in a few days, and more descriptions of stuff I saw there tomorrow.