Of Trophies and Games

Went to my taekwondo buddy Olga's birthday party late last night, and saw a glimpse of the Spanish embassy life. Olga's Ukrainian, but her boyfriend is Spanish, and they live the beautiful life of beautiful people in their two-story house with a garden (unheard of in Seoul, at least for Koreans) behind the Spanish embassy. Olga is a stunning Russian beauty -- bright blue eyes, tousled tawny hair, golden skin, figure of a lingerie model. She majored in Spanish and (I think) met Javier in the Ukraine (apparently they had a house there too), and moved with him to Korea, where she gives private lessons and does the housewife thing, cooking lunch and dinner for Javier.

Forget the Foreign Service Exam -- I'm gonna get MARRIED to a diplomat! That's the real ticket. Well, except the cooking and stuff.

I went with a work colleague, and we only stayed an hour or so, but it was still very interesting. I sort of felt like I was in a different world. It reminded me a little bit of the parties that the Ringleted One has -- the guests varied widely in age and professional status. I usually feel a little awkward at those kind of parties, and by all rights should have felt really weird at this one, but I just sat in the garden, drinking my sangria and smiling at the sky, and felt happy.

It could have been the several glasses of liquor I had at dinner before the party, I suppose.

While eating cake, drinking sangria, and smoking Marlboros, I people-watched. There were two Latin-Korean couples there; in each, the man was fat and Latin and the woman was young (or young-looking) and slender and Korean. One woman said she used to work at the Chilean embassy in Korea, where she presumably met her husband. Another older gentleman, who kissed my and my colleague's hands when we came into the party (Ja-young was so funny: she whispered to me, "Well, even if there are no handsome men here, at least I got one kiss"), was German but spoke Spanish and some broken Korean. He was rather elegant-looking, with graying hair and a tall, trim build. He also had a girlfriend (wife?) who looked about 25 -- another Russian beauty like Olga, with white blonde hair and a dress cut down to there...

I just happened, I think, to be sitting with the age disparity couples, because there were other couples who were about the same age. On the way home, I asked Ja-young, my colleague, what she thought about the older man-younger woman couples, and she said, practically, "Well, I just think that they wanted something that their partner provided."
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The TELL hk WHAT TO DO! game

Speaking of wanting, um, stuff, I have a fun and delightful task for you. Is it as fun as, say, whitewashing a fence? Even better, if you can believe it!

The thing is this: yesterday, I got an email from KB. A flirty, short email, two months after I wrote a flirty, long email. At the end of it, he asks (translated from the Korean):

"So, what are you up to these days? Do you have any plans to come to [oops, almost wrote the name of his country!] You know, to learn real English?

"Um... in any case... write back... I'm wondering.

"KB"

Your task (look ma! hk in seoul is going interactive!), should you choose to accept it, is to tell me what you think I should do. Should I make the farthest and most expensive booty call in history? Should I wise up and spare myself the inevitable heartache? Should I ask him what -- ahem! -- his intentions are? Should I propose a trip to Papua New Guinea instead? (I'm joking. Kind of.)

Let me know what you think on the guestbook. Your reward for playing the TELL hk WHAT TO DO! game? Why, the glory of having some input into the life of the most famous blogger who writes on Korea and has an "hk" in the title of her blog!

Oh, all right. I'll also buy you a bowl of kimchee stew (offer redeemable only in Seoul, Korea).

Oh, okay, so you don't get anything (unless you're in Korea, in which case, I will buy you the kimchee stew). But it is a chance to tell me what to do, which might be kinda fun for you, and helpful for me. Tell me by next weekend.