It snowed seriously in Seoul on Wednesday.

Instead of trying to take cover like everyone else did, I lingered out in the open, enjoying the feel of snow falling on my face and my clothes, taking endless photos at the risk of hypothermia to myself and my brave camera, who didn’t even flinch when snow fell into its lens.

The snow fell intermittently the entire day, not persistent enough to turn me into a snowman; it melts after a while.

Not that I would have stayed out in the open long enough to be turned into a snowman. But I might have tried for half one.

It was the coldest day I’ve experienced since coming to Seoul about three weeks ago. The temperature hovered at just under zero the entire day.

It’s fortunate that I just bought this fleece coat, which turned out to be really warm. I might have died if I’d gone out with the smaller jacket I’d brought from Singapore.

Of all days, Kay picked this coldest of days to go sightseeing.

We first went to the Japanese Embassy to witness a weekly protest by a bunch of old Korean women who had served as comfort women during the WW2 Japanese occupation.

The surviving victims who are still healthy enough (most of them are between 80 and 90 years old now) gather outside the embassy every Wednesday at noon to pressure the Japanese government into compensating them for their past sufferings and taking action against their tormenters.

They have been doing this weekly for almost 19 years now, to no effect. The Japanese government has all these years refrained from even offering an apology.

Weird.

Only three victims attended this rally (maybe it was too cold that day for the others). The rest of the people around were their supporters and helpers, I suppose.

It was a very peaceful protest, even more peaceful than the anti-North Korean one I witnessed.

There was one woman speaking into a loud hailer, occasionally getting the small crowd to yell out in unison, but they were all rather gentle about it. After that, a bunch of young women got to the front and started singing Christmas hymns.

The brown building is the Japanese embassy. You can see some policemen stationed outside it, heh. Seems like policemen in Seoul are always sent off here and there to stand by at rallies and protests.

I wonder if some of them occasionally think, “Aww man, not again!” when dispatched for yet another such assignment.

The next place we went to was Changdeok Palace (or Changdeokgung).

After my last palace visit three months ago (to Gyeongbokgung), I decided that visiting Korean palaces is quite boring and not really worth the time. It’s just building after building, each building looking exactly the same as the one before.

All the buildings are restored to perfection so you can’t even feel any historic aura. You just feel like you’re visiting a movie set but there are no props or actors. You can’t go inside the buildings to look around and, even if you could, there’s absolutely nothing inside to see. They are all empty.

If you have a guide, it could be mildly interesting listening to some historical facts and trivia, but I still wouldn’t recommend it.

Kay didn’t heed my warning and insisted that he needed to see at least one palace since it’s supposedly one of the things you have to do if you come to Seoul.

So I went with him to Changdeokgung and we spent an hour freezing our butts out together with a bunch of tourists who didn’t look all too impressed, either. (The palace conducts two scheduled tours a day for each of four languages – Korean, English, Japanese and Chinese – each tour lasting an hour).

After the tour, Kay said, “I’ve come to the conclusion that palace visits are boring,” which gave me the opportunity to tell him, “I told you so!”

He had visited the Forbidden City in Beijing in 2007 and found it rather boring, also, so I can’t imagine what could have moved him to want to visit a Korean palace.

Anyway, it wasn’t all for naught. I took some photos in there.

After the tour, we went to sit in a nice cafe (within the palace) to thaw out a bit.

The cafe is classy, with nice decor and mood lighting. They serve all manner of hot drinks — coffee, tea, chocolate — all of which are produced from a variety of instant coffee machines.

The two counter girls stood there the whole time just collecting money and pushing buttons on the machine.

You can get a nice paper cup of instant hot chocolate for KRW3000 (S$3.50).

Awesome.

We had a nice buffet lunch at a small vegetarian restaurant called Hangwachae (in Insadong) so that Kay could have some healthy, wholesome food that’s a lot tastier than whatever we can cook up in our meagre kitchen with our meagre talents (or lack thereof).

It’s a buffet, so I took a little bit of everything to try, except those that looked too gross to try out.

Most of the stuff weren’t really to my taste. I can’t quite describe them. I guess it’s just me because this place has got some good reviews by vegetarians on the Internet. But it was alright, overall. I felt very healthy eating this meal.

I did particularly enjoy the sweet potato fritters (not too healthsome!) and the boiled potatoes (with a nicely normal salty seasoning). And I liked eating the brown rice with something that tasted like preserved bean curd sauce.

So, basically, it was mostly starch for me that meal.

The price was quite reasonable for a buffet, at KRW12,000 (S$14) per person.

Latest update on Kay’s condition:

His swollen hand has finally subsided to almost normal after he diligently massaged it all night.

But he’s got the most gigantic, horrendous, evil-looking bruise at the back of his arm.

I’m considering entering him for the Guinness Book of World Records. What do you think?

Sometimes, in the middle of a subway ride in Seoul, you might get entertained by a peddler pushing a trolley of goods into your carriage and speaking in rapid Korean to pitch his or her product.

I always find it interesting to see what they have for sale.

Each peddler usually sells only one cheap product. I’ve seen them tout stuff from woolen tights to thermometers to magnifying glasses. And the cool thing is that people actually buy them.

In the photo, you see a lady showing two elderly commuters how well her magnifying glass works. It comes with an LED light which you can turn on and off to shine on whatever it is you’re trying to magnify.

The lady went around the carriages, passionately extolling the virtues of her product, using a small subway map as her subject for magnification.

She managed to sell a few in our carriage, including one to the two elderlies in the photo, and one to us. It costs KRW3,000 (S$3.50).

We think it’s very useful for reading pocket subway maps, and also area maps in our Lonely Planet guidebook, which feature words so tiny that they hurt my eyes to read, especially when I’m outside in the dark and cold, trying to read them under a street lamp.

By the way, I have a little story to tell about the two elderly ladies who bought the magnifying glass.

Kay and I were originally in their seats. When they came onboard the train and stood in front of us, Kay got up to offer his seat and I followed suit.

The two ladies were so thankful and apologetic, one of them held my arm and touched my shoulder in gratitude just before sitting down. (Generally, you’ll find that elderly people in Seoul are very expressive in their gratitude whenever people offer them seats.)

Many stops later, the passenger beside one of the ladies got off. Quickly, the elderly lady took my arm and urged me to sit down.

I smiled at her and nodded my thanks but asked Kay to sit down, instead, so he could rest his arm to ease the crazy swelling in his hand. He wasn’t using his sling and was wearing a coat so it wasn’t apparent that he was handicapped in any way.

The two ladies looked slightly shocked when he took the seat, lol.

But, soon, they noticed his swollen hand and pointed at it while looking at us questioningly.

I mimed a chopping motion on my own arm to gesture that he has a broken arm. I think they understood and started looking at Kay sympathetically. The one sitting beside him even gave him a motherly half hug and “aww-ed” at him compassionately.

It was so sweet!

And then Kay asked me to show them the photo in my camera of his wound with the stitches and I was like, “Don’t lah! You’ll freak them out!!”

He insisted that they wouldn’t, so I showed them and they nodded sympathetically again and patted his shoulder.

They alighted before us but, before doing so, the lady beside Kay grabbed my arm again and made sure I sat down in her place.

Awww!

In other news, I went to the supermarket on my own yesterday to buy fresh fish for dinner. I told Kay to rest in the apartment because his hand was still as swollen as the day before, so he needed to lie down and prop the arm up as much as possible.

When I came back with the fish, Kay looked at it and said, “Alamak, you bought salted fish!”

LOL. The fish was coated in what looked like rock salt which I had thought was ice chips. Well, there must have been ice, too, because the fish was partly frozen. I didn’t think at the time that partly frozen means it’s not “fresh” cos the fish in Singapore wet markets are always covered in ice, aren’t they?

Anyway, I can’t be too sure of anything because I didn’t touch the fish. I just pointed out what I wanted and the fish guy at the supermarket packed them for me.

But I don’t think it was salted fish like Kay said. The fish still had their guts intact. So we washed them thoroughly and gutted them, then pan-fried them without marinating them.

They turned out to be really fresh and tasty without seasoning. And we didn’t mangle them too much this time.

Anyone knows what fish they are?

We ate them with sweet potatoes (boiled) in lieu of rice. Sweet potato is tasty but so filling.

And these veggies again, which we ate three times in a row because the packet we bought lasted three rounds.

I am now quite sick of the buttery fragrance in my food which at first I loved so much.

I always use butter when I cook (which is not very often and usually only involves eggs). So I have wondered many times why people don’t cook with butter more often since it makes food taste and smell so good.

Now I know. It can get really sickening to eat butter-flavoured food for days in a row.

We still won’t buy cooking oil because we only have about 9 days left in Seoul and we won’t be cooking in all of them.

Last photo. Do you think this baby looks kinda mature?

Something about his features just makes him seem non-babylike. Or maybe it’s his expression. What do you think?

Today’s blog will touch on delicious topics as well as very unpalatable ones.

I supposed I’d better show the food first so you can enjoy the photos before your stomach gets turned by the other photos.

Because we were out yesterday (hospital in the morning, shopping afternoon, theatre performance evening), we had to eat out.

After three days of icky hospital food and two days of bland home-cooked food, Kay went at the tasty offerings outside with wild abandon.

Lunch wasn’t too bad. We ate at the food court at Coex Mall (largest underground shopping mall in Asia).

He had omu rice with grilled chicken breast. It was quite nice. We come across omu rice eateries in Seoul quite a lot.

I was persuaded to try New York Fries.

Kay used to eat it when he was living in Canada and he said, “You must try it at least once if you have the chance.”

I think he just wanted a chance to nick some fries for his deprived palate.

It’s not too bad. There are different kinds of powders, sauces and spices you can add as you wish, but when you throw the condiments in your cup, the fries at the bottom don’t get seasoned, so it’s annoying. But they do give you little cups to store more condiments to take away if you want.

The hotdog was a bit of a joke so I wish I hadn’t ordered it.

So far, in all the Korean food courts I’ve been to (which amounts to a grand total of two), I noticed they give you electronic devices that you can take back to your table after ordering so you don’t have to wait at the counter for your food. Your device will beep when your food is ready.

The only time I’ve seen this in Singapore is at Marche VivoCity. I think it’s a great tool which all food courts should implement.

For dinner, we had Indian food. Kay’s suggestion.

It’s a restaurant called Taj Mahal (surprised?) just outside Line 1 Jonggak Station (I think Exit 7 & 8 – underground mall exit).

It was empty when we went up (the restaurant is located on the second floor) but then it was 9:35pm, just after our show.

We ordered a totally ruinous diet of samosas, tandoori chicken, butter chicken masala and naan. It was a set dinner.

I suppose we have to give poor sick boys a break sometimes.

The samosas were a bit hard to photograph, insisting on looking mildly obscene no matter which way I turned them. But they were quite tasty, especially with the greenish dip they came with.

True to Korean style, they served us little side dishes, although we thought pickles and jalapeños were a bit strange to see in an Indian restaurant.

The tandoori chicken was awesome. Most tender tandoori chicken I’ve tasted. It was spiced just enough too.

But the naan and butter chicken masala were mediocre. Naan was quite tasteless, but it didn’t matter that much after dipping into the masala, which was slightly too sweet for my taste.

I know it’s very weird eating Indian food in Korea but it was a good meal, overall. Cost KRW36,000 (S$41) for the set meal for two.

But now the sick boy has to pay penance by eating bland food for the rest of the week! lol.

I did a bit of shopping at Coex Mall in the day. Bought three pairs of boots and a warm coat. I don’t know if it’s a winter coat because it’s not one of those shiny bulky ones with fur around the hood but it’s warmer than anything else I have.

Will get a photo of it next time I wear it out.

I can finally wear boots again!

The pair of boots I brought from Singapore to wear here fell apart on the second day of our arrival in Seoul, so I have been wearing my Nikes the whole time.

I’ve been looking at boots at the cheaper underground malls around Seoul but haven’t been able to find any nice ones. Coex Mall has really awesome ones, so I ended up buying three pairs when I only wanted one.

I bought both of these although they look very similar (differences only in calf height and heel height) because I’m sick and tired of boots that I like falling apart on me.

But now I’m worried about carting them home. I don’t think we have enough luggage space and we’re going to be so grossly overweight.

Tried on some cute Wellington boots but they didn’t look good on me.

So I went book shopping, instead!

Coex Mall has a hugeass bookstore (Bandi and Luni’s) which has a decent section with English books. The books are priced about the same as you’d get in Singapore after conversion.

I’ve gotten interested in reading about North Korea recently. Just finished reading Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick.

It’s really good, very well-written and engaging throughout, offering a very detailed look at the harsh conditions North Koreans are born to and subject to all their lives.

At Bandi and Luni’s, I bought a book called The Aquariums of Pyongyang, the memoir of a young man who was incarcerated in a North Korean concentration camp for 10 years just because his grandfather was suspected of engaging in political activities.

I was going to buy two more books but Kay stopped me, saying we can buy more in Singapore. Boo.

Okay, and now the gross part.

Kay’s splint was removed yesterday and his arm and hand swelled like a balloon.

Here’s another close look at his wound as it looks now. Click here to view only if you can stomach it.

The stitches will be removed next Wednesday.

His hand got bigger and bigger throughout the day. It’s very disgusting to look at, although what’s more disgusting is the fact that he keeps trying to make me touch it, knowing that it makes me feel eew.

It’s eew because firstly, I imagine that’s how a bloated corpse would feel like, and, secondly, although I know it’s illogical and impossible, I fear that if I press down a bit too hard, his hand will burst.

Kay is not freaked out by it because he’s experienced bloated hands and feet from past surgeries. So he enjoys freaking me out.

Suddenly, out of the blue, he’d go, “Give me your hand.”

I’d give him my hand thinking it’s an innocent request, then he’d put my hand on his bloated hand and give me a wicked smile.

So evil!

After a while, I started remembering and stopped giving him my hand.

But then he’d just randomly grab it and touch it to the bloated hand, anyway. Argh!

Okay, I’m going back to bed to nap for a little bit! (It’s now 11:10 am in Seoul, 10:10 am in Singapore)

Sleeping times are erratic now because we have to wake up early in the morning to feed Kay so he can take his medication. Then it’s sleep a bit more, then wake up to buy some groceries, then prepare lunch. Then sleep a bit more, then wake up to prepare dinner.

That’s when we’re indoors of course. When we’re out we don’t get to nap. But when we’re indoors, we get into a cook-eat-sleep routine through the day, lol.

Well, okay, for me, there’s blogging also. Cook-eat-blog-sleep.

OMG I just checked the weather. It’s -3°C outside now! CRAZY. Time to hibernate. Bye!

In a bid to feed Kay nutritious food that will aid healing after his surgery, we decided to do simple cooking in the apartment.

We’d be staying in Korea for two more weeks (till Dec 16), and Seoul seems to have a dearth of eateries that serve healthy (bland) food.

Our kitchen is quite limited. There’s only one single induction stove, one microwave oven, one pot and one frying pan. And very limited cutlery and crockery.

But the biggest problem is that neither of us are much good at cooking. And, besides limited tools, we are also faced with the challenge of limited ingredients because many foodstuff and condiments are restricted, such as red meat, seafood (except fish) and salt.

With all those obstacles circling dizzily around our heads, we went shopping.

We couldn’t buy too much on our first trip to the supermarket because Kay only has one free arm and our apartment is about 10 minutes’ walk from the supermarket.

We were mostly only picking up stuff recommended in articles for convalescing patients (as much as we could find in the neighbourhood supermarket) with only scant ideas of what meals to cook out of them.

So far, we’ve cooked three meals and they’ve been quite laughable attempts. Our incompetence in the kitchen has never been more pronounced, especially when faced with limited resources.

During our shopping, we decided that brown rice is more beneficial to Kay than white rice. Besides, all the white rice in the supermarket come in, like, 10kg bags.

But we didn’t know what brown rice looked like. There was this section full of small packets of mixed grainy stuff that we couldn’t identify because it was all in Korean.

(On a related topic, we cannot find a single loaf of wholemeal, whole wheat or multi-grain bread in Seoul, which is quite puzzling.)

Anyway, we settled on this “rice” (left):

But, it was, like:

“Is this a ricey thing? As in, used as a substitute for rice?”

“I don’t know. Seems like it.”

“Do you know how to cook it?”

“Should be the same as white rice?”

“I heard this kind of rice takes a longer time or you need to do something special with it.”

“Should be the same.”

“Okay, let’s try it anyway.”

We also bought some soy bean paste (above picture, right) to use as soup stock since we couldn’t use salt or pork bones or whatever the heck people use to cook soup.

I think it’s miso paste, although the packet has English words on it that say “soy bean paste”.

Day 1 – Dinner

Even as we started cooking, we still didn’t have a clear idea what we were going to cook.

Of course, the rice was the most obvious first step. But we were kinda undecided whether we wanted to cook rice, porridge or a rice-in-soup thingy.

In any case, we weren’t sure how much water to use for any of the above, so it was more or less like, “Let’s try this level of water and see what turns out.”

We washed the rice, then squeezed some bean paste into the pot together with the rice. We still didn’t know what we were going to make at this point of time.

Of course, we needed a veggie dish so we thought eventually that the easiest way would be to just dump it in the frying pan and cook it.

We had trouble identifying vegetables when buying them.

“Let’s get spinach. I like spinach.”

“Is this spinach?”

“Looks like it.”

“Or not.”

“Well, it looks closest to spinach.”

“Okay.”

Finally, we settled on rice, vegetables and canned mackerel. (We wanted to buy sardines because it’s recommended for bone healing but there’s no sardine in Seoul, so we figured mackerel should do the trick.)

The pathetic fruits of our hour-long labour:

The rice took the longest but it was fortunately edible:

We didn’t have garlic and cooking oil, so we just cooked our mystery veggies with butter and a few drops of light soya sauce:

The mackerel just needed to be removed from the can and microwaved:

The meal actually turned out quite tasty. I love the funny grain rice thing. The veggies tasted good enough with just soya sauce, and the mackerel, being canned food, was of course tasty, although not the most healthy.

Day 2 – Lunch

Lunch was better because I went out to buy garlic and eggs for it.

Slicing and dicing the garlic (the supermarket sold ready-peeled ones):

Dates are stamped on each individual egg. I think this is maybe the birth date (if I can call it that) because there’s a later date on the lid of the crate, which I assume is the expiry date.

Our lunch took 90 minutes to cook because we tried to soak the rice for 10 minutes before putting it to boil, thinking that might make it softer.

But it turned out to be harder. I think maybe we didn’t use enough water this time.

And we had one more dish than the night before, a plain omelette.

The one in the middle is our leftover canned mackerel:

Our garlic-veggie dish was a bit burnt cos we overcooked the garlic and the heat on the pan was too strong at one point of time.

Day 2 – Dinner

We decided to make a soup meal this time because Kay didn’t want to eat too much rice.

Also, we went out to the supermarket again and bought a fresh fish – a mackerel – cos we know we shouldn’t eat canned fish too much. (The canned ones are just calcium cos you can eat the bones.)

I don’t know why Kay likes mackerel that much. He chose the fish because I’ve never cooked fish in my life and the only edible fish I can recognise (in the uncooked and whole state) is pomfret because of its unique shape.

We marinated it with soya sauce. Trying to restrict salt in Kay’s diet. Soya sauce is not as bad, I think.

We sort of mangled it. The fish stuck to the pan (maybe cos we used just a bit of butter instead of cooking oil). And we didn’t have a spatula and had to pan-fry the fish using a spoon and chopsticks.

Our veggie dish was better this time. We didn’t burn it.

Our soup, though, was quite, erm, let’s say, tasteless.

Inside the soup:

- Soy bean paste
- Some green leaves
- tofu
- canned chicken breast meat

We didn’t expect the canned chicken breast to be oily, so it made our soup oily. Unfortunately, we can’t seem to find fresh chicken breast in the supermarket. They only have the fatty parts or the whole chicken.

The soup was very bland but we still ate it since our priority is health and nutrition, and not taste.

But we’ll try to cook something more tasty next time.

Tonight, we’re eating out. We found from the Internet this vegetarian restaurant not too far away. Hopefully it’s still around.

Our kitchen gets a break tonight.

Of all days, we’re leaving the hospital on the day it’s the coldest outside, Highest temperature at 3°C, lowest -2°C.

The doctor came in this morning to redress Kay’s wound again and to remove the haematoma bag.

Here’s a closer look at the part where the tube goes into the skin: Click here to view.

It’s not as gory as yesterday’s photo of the stitch but I’m making it optional viewing just in case.

At around 6:30 am when the doctor came to pull out the tubes, his painkiller had already long worn off, some five hours or so. The next dose wouldn’t come till 8 am.

He said the tube removal was painful but he tried to imagine that the doctor was just yanking sticky tape off his skin. And then he talked about military victims again having to endure worse pain.

There will be many more visits to the hospital in the coming year. He’s supposed to see the doctor next Monday, then two weeks later, then two months, then six months, then a year.

One year later, he will have to undergo another surgery to remove the plates and screws holding his bones together (he’s going to beep at airport security checks!), plus receive a ligament reconstruction that involves harvesting tendons from his wrist.

Sounds scary!

About two more hours before we check out of the hospital. Gonna get some sleep now.

Sleep is very sporadic at the hospital. You gotta snatch an hour here, two hours there, even at night. I imagine it’s a lot worse for patients in shared wards because there would be a lot more distractions and visitors throughout the day.

Till the next update. Toodle-oo!