I get to look at Koreans all the time, but some of you may not have that opportunity. Here are some quick snaps from the streets of Seoul. Stare all you want.
Kumquat:
1. Any of several trees or shrubs of the genus Fortunella bearing small orange-colored edible fruits with thick sweet-flavored skin and sour pulp.
2. Small oval citrus fruit with thin sweet rind and very acid pulp.
Kumquats are in season and I'm eating them by the handful. I thought they were super-tiny clementines. Who could be bothered to peel those things? Clementines they are not, and one can eat the rind! In fact, the skin is the sweetest part while the inside is sour. Ever watch a nature film and see a monkey just chomp into a fruit without peeling it and you think to yourself "Damn Monkey! You're a crazy animal just eating fruit rind like that." Kumquats let me be that monkey. I am just an animal.
Also, if you eat enough the inside edge of your lips get a little tingly numb, similar to what the pulpy white rind of a pomelo can do. They share that slight grapefruit/tonic water bitterness too. Delicious.
Wanna know what's not delicious? 
Sliced cheese that comes taped to actual cheese as a sample. Bonus cheese. Processed cheese is pretty synthetic to begin with, but this goes a step beyond. This is bathroom caulking for your sandwich. This is cheese teleported through Brundlefly's transporter a thousand times.
MIDI isn't dead, old Korean men took it to the mountains. Rock on!
Yes, weather has warmed up and we've taken to our neighbourhood mountain again. Of course, the visor-faces never left. Cue the John Carpenter soundtrack.
Eeeeh~~! Quick! To the nearest helipad!
This is big plastic bag of puffed barley, not wheat. No sugar added. This is the cereal we buy off the street from vendors who sell only puffed grains and other light, dry, crispy things. I wonder how Koreans have this barley. With milk? For breakfast?
Here is our sheet of stickers from the corner store. We get some stickers with every purchase. We weren't sure what they were for until one of the cashiers gave us the sheet to stick them on. We're assuming that we can redeem a completed sheet for something, and the suspense is too much really. If all we get is a brand new sheet for more stickers, I will laugh and do it all again.
Here is a paper rendition of a traditional Korean mask. It kinda looks like Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, no?
Roti buns, oh me oh my. We love these things. We would spend our last starving pennies on one last roti bun, divvy it up and fill our angry bellies with its fluffy, salted-buttery, sweet, sweet nourishment. We've done it before. Apparently they're a Malaysian-Mexican thing? I think Malaysia and Mexico should marry?
This is a bar made to look like that clock tower thing in Prague that apparently has good goulash and Pilsner (the bar, not the clock tower thing).
We found a store that sells those expensive, resin-based figurines that some people collect. I like this one.
Oh yes, Saturday was White Day.
Important Japanese lesson:
honmei-choco = chocolate of love
giri-choco = courtesy chocolate
*** Update START ***
Friends and family have been making regular appearances in my dreams. I think it's my brain getting what it wants.
I'm slowly working away on a big paper bag of peanuts that I bought from a lady. She scooped them up from a tarp on the floor inside a subway station. It occurred to me that the interaction didn't strike me the least bit unusual, which I guess means I'm getting used to things here. This makes it more tricky to pick out little quirks to write about -- they don't seem so quirky anymore.
Work has got me pretty busy these days. It's a bummer. It has consumed me just as it has at home; a strange feat of teleportation of sorts. I'm trying to balance things out.
I am still totally in love with curry udon, although I think maybe I'm burning myself out on it, I'm way over that Kanye album, sort of, and I'm really looking forward to reading "The Savage Detectives".
I don't blink at the term foreigner anymore. Last weekend was full-on foreigner meeting frenzy. I'm just about the only non-teacher among them.
I felt pretty clever when I oiled my creaky chair with olive oil.
Today, I ate my 참치 김밥 straight out of the tinfoil, with my hands, alone, in front of the TV, watching an episode of America's Next Top Model. How un-Korean. I guess it could have been poutine or something.
*** Update END ***
Went gallery and shop hopping with new blogFF! It was art and clothing overload you guys.
TMGST:
Grapes are people. Tomatoes are rad.
The rainbow is sky blue.
You want more snake?
