Merry Christmas!

There are still dozens of people in the United States not currently on my Christmas card list, so for you...

Merry Christmas!

(Yeah, it's like that around here.)

The Harrigans

(Note: picture will expand to full size when clicked.)

Pat

Waiting for Kenny

"You call this a snowstorm? Why, when I was a kid..."

We lived in Ashland, Ohio for a couple of years in the late '70's. Ashland is about halfway between Cleveland and Columbus (just off of I-71), so winter storms from the west sometimes steer under Lake Erie and hit hard. That certainly happened in January of 1978, when we got a blizzard they still talk about there.

On winter mornings we boys would get rousted out of bed early by my dad to shovel the driveway. This storm was different: we'd gotten close to 2 feet of snow - schlunk! - and the wind was blowing so hard that there was no way we could keep the driveway clear. After a while we gave up and went back inside, where my dad uncharacteristically accepted our excuse for not finishing a job. (I suppose, too, that it didn't seem useful to him to just drive to the end of the driveway, since the road was impassable.) School was canceled, of course.

One truck driver pulled over to the side of a road in nearby Mansfield during the storm, and his truck got drifted over. No one knew he was even there, so he was stuck in his cab for six days, but was eventually rescued -- cold and hungry, but otherwise OK:

There were cars stranded all up and down the interstate, and the state troopers had been corralling drivers to any rest area they could. The truck stop on the outskirts of Ashland -- the "Stop 250" -- had over 200 people in it. The local radio station was calling for people in town to take some of these stranded travelers into their homes for a day or two. We volunteered, since we were good citizens, and the truck stop manager was a neighbor of ours (Mr. Thurkettle. Really.)

Back then few people had 4-wheel drive, so the local "4x4" club was called into action. They ferried people from the truck stop to various homes around town in their Jeeps, and delivered groceries where needed. I'm sure they were thrilled to be put to work, their hobby suddenly becoming an important asset.

Our houseguests were a woman, her sister, and her young daughter. It turned out that they were traveling downstate to pick up the woman's husband, Kenny, who was being released from prison. My mom took that bit of news in stride, at least outwardly, but it was a secret thrill to us kids. Prison! Ooooh!

The visitors were as nice as could be, of course. We all spent a lot of time playing cards or board games; the only task for us boys was to keep a path shoveled to the end of the driveway, which we had to repeat (thanks to the wind) every couple of hours. I don't remember any of our guests' life stories, if they even shared them; they were pretty frazzled by the whole experience, and just looking forward to the reunion and the trip home.

After a day it worked out that Kenny had made arrangements to have a friend pick him up, and they were going to come to Ashland to get the family when the roads cleared. So we spent Day 3 holed up again, keeping the path shoveled to the street, waiting for Kenny.

By Day 4 the wind had died down, so we got to explore outside a little. The snowdrifts were freakishly large -- swooping sculptures at the corners of houses, from the ground to the roofline. With the other neighborhood kids we made the most awesome snow forts.

Kenny came that day. It was a pretty short visit; they wanted to move along back home, so our guests gathered their stuff and headed out. The only thing I remember about him was his tearful gratitude for taking care of his family.

At the time I didn't really identify with him, as he was a bit player in our four-day drama. (Prison! Ooooh!) But now I try to imagine what Kenny was feeling: stuck in prison after his release, probably watching the news on a crappy little prison black-and-white TV, seeing the storm's death toll mounting (it eventually hit 51). His wife and little girl were out on the road somewhere, and he was powerless to do anything. I'm guessing he said a prayer or two, or ten, and maybe made a bargain with The Big Guy during the ordeal.

His family wound up safe and sound, so I'd like to think he kept up his end of any bargain. Who knows? We shoveled the driveway, the roads got plowed, and after another day or two we got back to school.

Pat

Duke Tumatoe is Not a Real Doctor

Casinos thrive on illusion -- some more than others. But a good bar band is an authentic thing.

I’ve been to Las Vegas a few times, and enjoyed it each time. My favorite thing is the artifice -- the fake gondolier taking you down a fake canal to the fake St. Mark’s Square in the Venetian. Or the fake steam (dry ice) coming from the fake street grates in the fake Greenwich Village in the New York, New York resort/casino. You get a slice of pizza, chuckle and say, “How about that!”

I’m not much of a gambler, as I just can’t get past the fact that every game is designed to take your money away. But when in Vegas I play blackjack; if you play “basic strategy”, hitting, splitting, and doubling down when you’re supposed to, it has the least bad odds of any game -- a house "edge" of about 0.5%. You can usually sit at the table for a good long time before those relentless statistics catch up to you. And if you’re sitting with friends, laughing and having fun, it’s money well spent.

I’ve read a couple of blackjack books, and you can actually turn the odds in blackjack slightly in your favor through card counting. It doesn’t require prodigious memory (like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man), just concentration, but that makes it like a second job. No thanks.

The first time I saw Dr. Duke Tumatoe’s band was about 20 years ago, when they played at Biddy Mulligan’s in Rogers Park, just a block south of the Evanston/Chicago border. (It’s been shuttered for at least 10 years now, sadly.) My old roommate Mike was a big fan of live music, and they’d played his college town (Dayton) regularly, so he knew what fun they were. Off we went.

They were a very good bar band -- lots of upbeat songs and audience participation, and decent musicianship, as far as I could tell. Duke himself was an old man, bald, with a pot belly and a bushy white beard. He looked like Santa Claus, if Santa played a mean electric guitar, sang old and new rockin’ blues songs, and was a dirty old man. (The album he released in 2001 was titled "It's Christmas (Let's Have Sex)", which I don't think Bing Crosby ever recorded.)

The highlight of the show was when Duke switched over to his wireless electric guitar and strolled through the audience during one song. He then strolled right out the front door and into the middle of Sheridan Road, where he stood and whaled away for a minute or two, with cars passing by on either side, and everyone inside pressed against the windows watching and cheering. Crazy!

We did Thanksgiving in Michigan again this year, and had our usual wonderful time. There's a casino/resort 20 minutes away in Manistee (the Little River Casino), which I'd never cared to visit before. But I found out beforehand that the band playing at the bar that weekend was -- you guessed it -- Dr. Duke Tumatoe and his Power Trio. So we all went on Friday night, leaving the kids behind with Grandma.

When we got there we had a half-hour before the show started, so we split up to explore and gamble a little, according to our own preferences. I went looking for the blackjack tables, naturally. They were surprisingly crowded, and I didn't see any table I felt like joining alone, so I just watched.

The rules of casino advertising dictate that everyone is young, thin, beautiful, happy, and having a ball. I'm not a snob, but my observation of the Little River Casino: eh, not so much. A more typical customer is older, plain, heavy-set, and morose, smoking and joylessly pumping coins into a slot machine. (OK, maybe I am a snob.)

Duke's show started at 9pm, and was as fun as I expected. The solid blues songs, the comedy, the audience call-and-response -- it got more crowded as the night went on, as he seemed to pull people in from the casino floor. Duke himself didn't look any older, which is one virtue, I suppose, of looking like Santa Claus when you're in your forties. By his second set he had a fair number of people on the dance floor, off and on. (At one point, though, the lone dancer was a scraggly biker dude flapping wildly by himself in the middle of the dance floor, a cigarette in one hand and a beer bottle in the other. Go figure.)

We chatted a little with the keyboard player between sets. The band is based out of Indianapolis and plays over 200 gigs a year, almost all driving distance. They tour from Wednesday through Sunday, spend a couple of days at home, and then head back out -- almost all year round. It's a living, I suppose, and they seem to have fun doing it. They'll actually be back in Chicago on December 26th, playing at Kingston Mines in Lincoln Park.

So go see Duke Tumatoe and Co. if you get the chance, if live music's your thing -- I don't think you'll be disappointed. And remember to always split your aces and eights, and double down on 11, unless the dealer's showing an ace.

Pat

Coopers and Fletchers

The second largest law firm in the world is Baker & McKenzie. I'm sure Mr. Baker was quite proud of his accomplishment, especially given that the ancestor whose name he carried was a baker -- you know, a guy who baked things. Way back when a "dusty baker" was probably covered in flour.

The surnames I've always gotten a kick out of are the ones related to a trade or profession. Many end in "er", of course, meaning "the guys who does..." Some end in "ward", as in "the guy responsible for". A "wright" made things, while a "smith" made or refined stuff, especially metal.

Some obvious ones:

• Food and drink: Baker, Brewer, Butcher, Cook, Miller
• Clothing: Tailor (Taylor), Weaver/Webster, Shoemaker, Glover
• Housing and building: Thatcher, Carpenter, Sawyer ("the guy who saws"), Plumber, Bricker/Brickman, Mason, Waller
• Farm and Field: Farmer, Hayward, Gardener, Shepherd, Shearer, Parker (in charge of a game park), Woodward
• Transportation: Wagoner, Carter, and Porter all moved stuff around. They were dependent on the Wheelwright/Wheeler, Wagonwright (now Wainwright) and the Cartwright, any of these sometimes shortened to just Wright.
• Making music: Piper, Harper, Singer
• Gentry and clergy: Lord, Knight, Duke, Abbot, Bishop
• Craftsmen and tradesmen: Turner (lathe operator), Smith (often short for blacksmith), Goldsmith, Coppersmith, Potter, Tanner, Barber, Stringer, Roper
• Boating and seafaring: Keeler (bargeman), Fisher, Boatman, Waterman

The less obvious ones are the best:

• A Cooper was a barrel-maker, and a Hooper made the hoops for the barrels. They were buddies, I'm sure.
• Mr. Fletcher made arrows. His best customers were probably Mr. Archer, Mr. Bowman, and the guy who made the bows, Mr. Bowyer (now Boyer.)
• A Faulkner was in charge of falcons.
• Tucker, Fuller, and Walker were all names of people who cleaned and thickened cloth.
• Barker worked in tanning. Using tree bark in the process, I guess?
• A Dexter dyed cloth.
• Peterman was another name for Fisher.

Interesting, too, that there are feminine versions -- in English these end in "ster" or similar. So Brewster for Brewer, Baxter for Baker, etc. And another name for judge was Deemer, whose feminine form was Dempster.

It was the same in other European countries, of course, so Smith is Schmidt in German and Lefevre in French, while Miller is Molina in Spain and Molnar in Hungary.

Fun, huh? I think very few people who carry a profession or trade surname would want to go back to that line of work, in this day and age. Unless you wanted to make and sell knives instead of playing football. Eh, Mr. Cutler?

Pat

And Now for Something Completely Different

"Dinsdale?"

That's what my brother Ed would say when peering through a doorway to see who was in the room. It's from Monty Python's Flying Circus, this particular skit about the London gangsters Doug and Dinsdale Piranha. The line is spoken by the creature Dinsdale fears the most, an imaginary 12-foot giant hedgehog named Spiny Norman.

I'm guessing you readers fall into two camps: Those who think "Ummm -- pretty weird, Pat", and those who remember the skit (and all the others) with fondness. You either got Monty Python or you didn't, and we certainly did growing up.

Our first exposure was the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", which we boys saw in the theater with Dad. It was absurd and hilarious, and we loved it. It was also unlike anything else; what crazy writer would have King Arthur travel the English countryside with his aide using coconut shells to produce a horse's clip-clopping? Or meet up with the fearsome "Knights Who Say Ni" (keepers of the sacred words "Ni", "Peng", and "Neee-Wom")? We quoted from the movie constantly.

A few years later we were living in New Jersey when the public TV station started showing reruns of the original "Flying Circus" almost every night. We got to be big-time Monty Python geeks, along with a few of our friends. I wonder if our buddy Al Freeman still goes by the nickname "Throatwobbler Mangrove"?

I just watched Holy Grail with the kids, and they loved it, too. It was surprisingly kid-friendly, with only one short scene I had to skip over. They've since watched the movie again a couple of times, and already have a few favorite scenes or lines ("You know much that is hidden, O Tim.")

So here's a test -- you, too may be a Monty Python geek if:

• You can recite long sections of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"
• Your favorite parrot is the Norwegian Blue
• You like your Camembert cheese a little runny
• You like a good argument
• You've ever had a really weird job interview
• A good breakfast for you is Spam, eggs, sausage, and Spam
• When you meet someone named Tim you add (in your mind) "...the Enchanter"
• You think it's boring to just walk normally
• You know a joke can be too funny

I could go on, thanks to the wonders of YouTube, but I'll stop there. Have fun watching some old favorites, if you're a fellow geek, but beware -- because nobody expects...the Spanish Inquisition!

Pat

Dinner Club, Apple Pie and Blind Squirrels

Just over 10 years ago Rachel and I started a monthly dinner club with 5 other couples in Evanston and Wilmette. The group had various individual work/neighbor/college connections, but overall we didn't know each other that well at first. It didn't take long.

The hosting responsibility rotated each month, and duties included a) picking a cuisine and/or theme, b) assigning out appetizers, side dishes, desserts, etc., c) preparing the main dish, and d) hosting. The first year we enjoyed Italian, Mexican, German, Fondue, Hawaiian, and Diner, among others. Everyone also brought beer and wine, and little of that was left at the end of the night. Dinner Club nights were raucous, fun affairs, and we all arranged our calendars to make sure we didn't miss. It was a big part of our social lives.

Along with the adults-only dinners we mixed in some family get-togethers, since our kids were all pretty close in age and got along wonderfully. This included a few road trips over the years, to Galena in Illinois, Lake Geneva and Elkhart Lake in Wisconsin, and even the maternity ward at Evanston Hospital, where in October of 1999 three Dinner Club Kids were born on the 1st, 2nd, and 4th...

Nothing lasts forever, though. After a few years one couple moved to California, another to the western suburbs of Chicago, and a third to the northwest suburbs. The clockwork monthly dinners became "a few times each year" for those of us still in Chicago, and "every couple of years" when the Californians came to visit. But we'd all gotten so close that there wasn't any talk of drafting replacements and re-forming an Evanston/Wilmette club; it would have felt like...cheating.

Four of the six families got together last Saturday at Kara and Rob's in Deerfield. We did our share of "My, how you've grown!" with each other's kids, and retold stories from the early days, especially about the folks who weren't there. It was a great meal and a great time.

I had been assigned a dessert, and I'm not really sure what Kara was thinking -- she has a pretty good idea of my cooking limitations. Was it an invitation for me to just bring something from Dominick's, like a quart of ice cream? Or was she mad at me for some reason? Or maybe it was a challenge, to see if I could rise to the occasion and really make a dessert?

I chose the last of these possibilities, and picked a recipe out of our recipe box: Sour Cream Apple Pie. We had loads of apples already, and it didn't seem too complicated. I remembered that we had an apple peeler/corer/slicer in the closet, which I figured out how to use, and it worked wonders; the apples took all of 5 minutes to prepare, sliced perfectly. And the rest of the recipe did seem to come together easily -- almost too easily. It goes like this:

Sour Cream Apple Pie

Filling:

2 Tbs flour

1/8 tsp salt

2/3 cup sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup sour cream

Topping:

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 cup butter

1/3 cup flour

1/3 cup sugar

Instructions:

1. Spread 2 cups thinly sliced apples evenly in a 9" pie shell. (Note to guys: you just buy the pie shell frozen, you don't make it.)

2. Combine filling ingredients, pour over apples.

3. Combine topping, sprinkle over pie.

4. Bake 25-30 min. at 425 degrees.

I had a friend whose expression for someone's unlikely accomplishment was "Well, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then." No one said that Saturday, but they'd have been justified, as the two pies turned out way better than I could have hoped. And better than everyone else was expecting, I'm sure. What else is in that recipe box?

So Dinner Club will continue meeting a few times each year, and I just may be able to hold up my end. Maybe.

Pat

Cameroon: Nah So!

Time for another Cameroon story, eh?

I lived and worked in the English-speaking western part of the country, but that description isn't perfectly true. The official language was English, but everyone who grew up in a village spoke his or her tribal language first, and there were over 200 of these around the country. And the real lingua franca of western Cameroon was Pidgin.

The history is interesting, dating back hundreds of years. Traders who went from port to port around Africa and Asia couldn't learn each local tribal language to do business, so a simplified version of English developed for trading purposes. It incorporated words from the local languages, and from other European colonial languages. Cameroon Pidgin is similar (but not identical) to Nigerian Pidgin, but apparently pretty different from, say, Malaysian Pidgin.

So in western Cameroon kids grow up fluent in their own tribal language and in Pidgin, and then they have to learn English starting in grade school. If they stay in school they also learn French starting in 7th grade ("Form 1"). A smart high school kid in my town of Mamfe would think nothing of speaking French with his French teacher, in English later with someone else, walking home chatting with his friends in Pidgin, and then talking with his grandmother at home in the local language, Kenyang. Imagine!

I shouldn't overstate the average Mamfe kid's French ability, though. The smaller English-speaking West is dominated politically and economically by the larger French-speaking East, and there is plenty of resentment over this. More than a few Anglophones wear their ignorance of French as a badge of pride -- it wouldn't shock me if the same were true in Toronto or Edmonton...

Back to Pidgin: We received some instruction in the language during our model-school teacher training -- just a few hours each week, to learn some of the basics. We certainly could have gotten by without it, but it's kinda fun, and useful in the many places you might not be dealing with formally educated folks, like the market or the bar. It's also a cultural touchstone, so being able to speak some Pidgin shows an effort at fitting in. That's especially true if you can use the right proverb or saying at the right time.

Some Pidgin tidbits:

• Many common words are straight from English: house, book, foot, eye, etc.
• Some are clearly from English, but pronounced or used a little differently: "waka" for walk, "tree" for three, "beeya" for beer, "dis" for this, "ee" for he, him, it, and his. A funeral wake is called a "cry-die".
• Others are from various sources, including some tribal languages somewhere: "mimbo" means alcohol, "chop" means eat or food, "nyanga" is decoration, "Ashyia" is Sorry, "kombi" is friend, and "biabia" is hair.
• The future tense is made by putting "go" before the verb, while the past tense uses "bin" or "dun".
• "Fo" seems to be short for "for", but it's the main preposition used. "Ah de go fo mocket" means I'm going to the market.

We Peace Corps types showed a range of skill levels with Pidgin, as you'd expect. Early on someone (I forget who) tried to barter for something in the Bamenda market in Pidgin, and the woman vendor told him "Ah no de heeya dat kine French tok" -- I don't speak French...

As for me, I got it, but I didn't really embrace it like I did French. Teachers were generally careful to only speak English to students, as a matter of educational pride, but I felt free (as an outsider) to mix a little Pidgin in for fun in the classroom. Instead of always using "That's right!" as an affirmative to a question, sometimes I'd say "Nah so!" with a smile, and get a laugh from everyone.

I get a little nostalgic from time to time about Cameroon, as you can tell. Let's just say "Ee bin be some obah-long time wey ah neba chop fufu an eru", and leave it at that...

Pat

From the Bleachers

I've spent hundreds of hours over the last 8 years or so watching my kids play sports, but my favorite moment (so far) involved someone else's kid, and a very good coach.

Fiona's first softball season was in 3rd grade, and her team was a good mix of St. A's classmates and girls from Evanston public schools. No one had much softball experience, so it was a learning year, with modest expectations. The team played about .500 ball, but you could see steady progress over the course of the season.

For most of the girls, anyway. It was clear early on that we had a range of athletic ability on the team, and softball was a real challenge for some -- there's nothing natural about hitting or throwing. That variety of players' skills has to be the hardest thing for youth sport coaches to deal with, I think. How do you challenge the good players and keep them interested, give the bad players the right opportunities and enough playing time, and win enough games overall to keep everyone encouraged and having fun? And keep all the parents at bay?

On that last point Coach Tom set the tone in the very first game, when some of our team's parents jeered the umpire for his balls-and-strikes calls. The coach called time out, came over to where we were all sitting, and said sternly, "Folks -- we're NOT doing that this year." He was a big guy, with a serious demeanor, and we all thought "Yes, Sir", even if we didn't say it. And that was that.

The worst player on the team was pretty clearly M., a quiet, chubby African-American girl. She just couldn't hit, and wound up striking out looking just about every time at bat. This went on for the better part of the season, and Tom never said a word to her when she came back to the bench. It seemed a little cold, but that was just his style of managing -- I'm sure he gave her plenty of instruction at the practices, but games were different. (I wonder: are kids really helped when you say "Nice try" or "Good swing"? Does it take the sting out of failure, or does it just lead them to mistrust or ignore what adults say?)

In one of the last games of the season M. was at bat in a late inning, and the parents in the stands all knew what was coming next, when she surprised everyone by swinging at a pitch and hitting a ground ball. The shortstop bobbled it, and she was safe at first -- her first "hit" of the season! The next batter made an out, ending the inning, which hardly mattered to her or any of us.

When she came back to the bench for her glove she got some congratulations from her teammates, of course. And as she started to trot out to her position in the field she was stopped by Coach Tom, who said to her (a little less sternly), "See, M.? Good things happen when you swing the bat, don't they?"

She beamed the biggest, most beatific smile you can imagine.

I wonder what she's up to now, 5 years later? I wonder what she'll grow up to be? But I have no doubt that she knows what accomplishment feels like, and approval from someone who matters to her, and that that experience will stick with her forever. It's for moments like those that I encourage my kids to stay involved in sports, and that keep me in the bleachers watching.

Pat

No Way!

I was an engineering intern ("co-op") at Procter and Gamble during college -- three terms in Cincinnati and one in Sherman, Texas. During one of my Cincinnati semesters I roomed with three young P&G engineers, two of whom had been in the same fraternity at MIT a few years before. This story is from them, and has stuck with me ever since...

The frat house was having a party on Saturday night. The guys were trying to talk their Monday-through-Friday cleaning lady into coming in on Sunday to clean up after the party. She knew better, and rejected all of their pleas using her less-than-perfect English, but they were being very persistent. She finally said, "No! You're barking up a dead wall!"

Writers and public speakers know how useful a good metaphor is, but that mixing two metaphors is the sign of a hack (or at least a sloppy writer). It's the rare author who can mix three metaphors, though, in such powerful fashion:

• Barking up the wrong tree
• Beating a dead horse
• Talking to a wall

It has a certain ridiculous charm, doesn't it? So the next time you want to say emphatically "No way!" feel free to say "You're barking up a dead wall!" instead, and see what happens. It worked for her, and they had to do the Sunday post-party cleanup themselves.

Pat

Naked Seoul

The downside of making several trips to Korea in the last few years was the flight: Almost 14 hours on Korean Air (direct) , or over 18 hours on United, connecting through Tokyo or San Francisco. After you've had a snack, done some reading, watched a movie, taken a nap, gotten some work done, listened to some music, had a meal, done a sudoku puzzle, and napped again, you look at the time -- and you've still got 4-6 hours left to go. Ouch.

The upside was getting to stay at the nicest hotel I've ever been in, the Shilla.

Part of the corporate hotel deal we had with the Shilla was limo service from the airport, included. So when you ooze out of the Seoul airport customs area, tired, blinking and aware of your own breath, you're met by a driver with your name on a sign, and he takes your bag and whisks you off to your limo (a very nice Hyundai Equus). During the pleasant one-hour ride he'll make a little small talk if he speaks a little English, and he always touches base with the hotel via cellphone when you're getting close.

As you pull up to the hotel you're then greeted at the curb by a front desk clerk and a bellhop: "Welcome back to the Shilla, Mr. Harrigan. I hope you had a good flight from Chicago." They take you and your bag straight through the lobby and up to your room, hand you your key, and check to see if you need anything special this time. No front desk stop for paperwork (it's already on file), just efficiency. Now that's how to arrive at a hotel.

The rooms are done in clean, understated Asian luxury, as is the whole hotel, but the real treat is the fitness center/health club. Working out in the morning really helps me function when I travel, especially if I'm jet-lagged and not getting a full night's sleep. And this place makes it worth getting up at 5 or 6 a.m.

Again with the service: you check in with your room key at the main health club desk, get a locker key from the friendly attendant, and by the time you get up the stairs and down the hallway the fitness center guy is out of his office to greet you: "Good morning, Mr. Harrigan. Can I help you with anything today?" Half of the fitness center usage is from hotel guests, the other half from local members: very successful Korean business executives in their 40's through 70's, by my estimate. (I'm sure membership is super-expensive.) The gym is very well-equipped, especially by hotel gym standards.

After the workout it's spa time, where it gets interesting culturally. For me the perfect ending to a workout is a heat treatment of some kind, and here I get to do the trifecta of steam room/sauna/whirlpool, with a few additional variations available (medium- and super-hot whirlpools, cold pool, wet sauna, etc.) Plus showers with amazing water pressure, and scrubbing cloths and brushes, and a variety of soaps and shampoos and such, and plush, thick towels. You're warm, relaxed and squeaky-clean when you leave.

But in a dozen mornings at the Shilla I don't think I ever saw another Westerner in the men's spa; just me and a bunch of late-career Korean executives.

Naked. Really naked.

I understand that the whole naked-spa thing is part of Korean culture, but it did take some getting used to. I'm in a foreign country, tired from working out, a little muzzy-headed from sleep deficit, and surrounded by naked Korean businessmen strolling, chatting, and doing the spa thing without a care in the world. Since I don't speak any Korean (just a couple of words) I have no idea what my naked brethren in the whirlpool were talking about, but it's hard not to be self-conscious and imagine they're talking about me:

• "Hmmph. I'm not impressed."
• "Look at him -- if he were any more white he'd be clear."
• "I hope he's not in the whirlpool just to fart."

They probably didn't really care that I was there, and I shouldn't imagine the worst of anyone, but still...

I'm happy to report that in a typical Korean business setting everyone wears clothes, all day long. (I'm pretty sure it wasn't just for my benefit.) And the Koreans were polite, on the ball, and generally a pleasure to do business with.

The project that took me to Seoul ended, so I won't go back there for a while. If I ever do I'll try to stay at the Shilla, rejoining my naked brethren each morning, emerging self-conscious but squeaky-clean, ready to start the day.

Pat