KLB - Deja-Dinner


This PC bang near my home is actually pretty nice. I guess it should be considering it's name: Luxury PC Bang. It has lightening fast computers with LCD screens, Windows XP (which means I can upload pictures by simply plugging in my card reader) a smoke free section (though it's still smoky) and free coffee. There's also a time-out lounge, which cracks me up. There's a sofa and a table where you can take a break and have food delivered (there's a guy eating Kimchi Chigae there now) while you watch movies on the giant flatscreen TV. Not only is the place that nice, it's also only 1,000 won (95 cents) an hour. All the other places around here stink, literally, and they're charging more. Anyway, I'll try to take a few pictures the next time I come. I remembered to bring the memory card and reader this time, but not the camera.

So, here are some pictures. I call them deja-dinner photos because I've eaten these meals recently and also posted pictures of them too. Why am I posting them again? Because there's just not a lot of new stuff going on these days. Also, I want to make people feel hungry.



I made spaghetti for Julie again. That's the usual bottle of wine that I cook with and like to put in the photos to romaticize them...3,000 won ($2.85) at Walmart.



Shh, don't tell Julie. She doesn't get home from work until 10PM nowadays and I have to eat without her. I hadn't been able to stop thinking about that dinner we had on Christmas Eve, so I cooked it up again (minus the shrimp at least.)



Julie really missed out. I felt guilty stuffing my face with all of this wonderful food without her. Also, in order to hide the evidence I had to eat everything including all that broccoli. In case you don't know it, broccoli is a famous fart food. So is milk, and I had a tall glass of it. Poor Julie...not only did she miss out on this great dinner, but she also had to endure an agonizing night of endless, unpleasant flatulence.



One of the great parts about living in Korea is that I rarely eat fast food anymore. When I lived in America, I ate burgers and fries and tacos and everything else on a daily basis. In Korea, you can still eat like that if you want. But there is an ever-abundant availability of cheap and healthy food. This is tuna kimbap. I bought this at the little bun shik jeom that opened in our building. The ajumma there loves me and Julie and she always loads up our food. It's hard to tell in the photo just how big and thick she made this for me but I was stuffed after I ate it. Price: 2,500 won ($2.25). Where else can you eat something that good, healthy and filling so cheap?


To be honest, I was shocked after watching Super Size Me, the documentary about the guy who eats at McDonald's three meals a day for a month. Julie was even more shocked. You should have seen her face when she saw how big some Americans are and how big all the food is (though I heard that McDonald's stopped super sizing food shortly after this documentary). And living here so long, I sometimes forget myself about those things until I go home for a visit and find myself stupified by all the fat people. Thanks in part to westernization, Asian people are also getting bigger. But thankfully the staple meal is rice and vegetables and the percentage of obesity is still very low. It makes me sad to see the endless McDonald's commercials on TV here and how they market to children. My advice (and I know you're dying for advice from me) is to stop eating fast food period. Especially for those of you in Korea - there's just no need for it. It really is just like eating garbage.

In other news, I received 5 more orders for my book yesterday and am about to go to the post office again. Whoo hoo! Thanks everyone.