Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Greetings from Korea!

I'm posting from an Internet cafe in Incheon International Airport, having recently alighted from a 14 1/2 hour long-ass flight from Washington.

Dinner for Breakfast: It smells like money in here. The sleek and calm international transit lounge is lined with high-end shops such as Coach, Burberry, Chanel, and Zegna. My internal clock says it's 5:45 a.m., (although it's 6:45 p.m. here in South Korea) and I just ate a big bowl of bibimbap. That's steamed spinach, mushrooms, carrots, bean sprouts and a fried egg over rice, along miso soup, spicy sesame seed paste, and of course, kimchee.

You read that right. I ate kimchee for breakfast.

Northerly Route: We flew over Canada and Juneau, crossed the International Dateline and the Kamchatka Peninsula. On the flight - in which E. and I were in middle seats, (!) - I watched two movies ("The Wedding Date" and a weepy Korean film about a boy with cancer), read one novel and "The Best American Sports Writing 1994" from cover to cover, and watched Korean newscasts in which the anchors bowed deeply at the end.

Yet: After that, we still had 6 hours left until touching down in the airy, futuristic steel-beamed confines of Incheon Int'l. So I got up and walked around. Did some deep knee-bends, much to the amusement of the other passengers. Read the latest issue of "The New Yorker" and took photos of E. asleep with his mouth open.

Working Stiff: Almost 'til the moment we boarded our flight, I was talking to my editor and a flack to fact-check a story. Unfortunately, the flack (that's a PR spokeswoman) didn't e-mail me the answers until after I left for the airport, so I still have to read her email and get back to my editor with changes.

At this point, I could let my editor just deal with the story. But I want to see the final edits. Yes, a bit of a control freak. But that's my byline on that story. If something is incorrect, guess whose skinny ass is on the line?!

That's right, baby. Mine.

3 comments:

  1. Eeeeewwwwwww! Kimchee for breakfast! GACK! Heck, eating that stuff anytime is not a good idea. You are made of iron, or at least your stomach is.

    And I love it when you do high-power-reporter talk. You so rock, Bex! :)

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  2. wait a minute... didn't you just get back from vacation? must be nice to be on it again... I don't feel sorry for you having to work a bit on the way. Kimchee rules.

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  3. It was just a little bit of kimchee! Then again, a little goes a loooong way.

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