Seoul-ah, annyung

My time in Seoul is coming to an end and as much as certain aspects of this maximum city drive me to the brink, I always feel a little ah-shi-wuh (sadness, a feeling of slight incompleteness, a mixture of regret, sadness and missing someone/something) when I leave the motherland.

Being here has reminded me once again of the importance of language - I wonder if certain words only exist in a certain language because the concept or emotion embodied by the word is only present in that culture, or because the word is created, the concept/emotion follows. In any case, a Korean word that I've never found an adequate English equivalent for is jung, which means something along the lines of fondness, a tie that can't be broken, care or love for someone. But there are different kinds of jung, including mee-oon jung, which quite literally means "dislikeful fondness" or "ugly fondness" (mee-wuh in Korean means both "ugly" and "dislike"). Mee-oon jung basically encompasses the concept of developing fondness for something or someone that you can't stand. The jung I have for the country of my ancestors, and especially for Seoul, which is most aptly described as a maximum city (I recently read Maximum City by Suketu Mehta, about Mumbai - it's such an apt description for Mumbai, but also a perfect way to describe Seoul), is half regular jung and half mee-oon jung, but at the end of the day, it is jung. As much as this place drives me nuts, I love it. And hate it. In any case, I'll probably be spending a lot more time here in the next couple years since it's so close to Nihon.

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Whether it's superstition, faith or craziness, I don't know, but when I feel completely at a loss, I look for signs from God. Actually, I don't think I look for them so much as they come to me. I think to look for signs would encompass going to a fortune teller or something along those lines. I don't actively go out and seek out someone or something to tell me what the future holds, but when something strange or unlikely happens, I take it as a sign. Last month, everywhere I turned, I would encounter something Japanese. I'd turn on the TV and Anthony Bourdain's show would be about Japan. I forget all the instances, but in the span of a week, almost every day I kept getting signs pointing to Japan. Which is how I knew I would get a job in Nihon even before I officially got it - all signs pointed to me ending up there.

The impending move to Nihon has evoked bittersweet feelings - I'm excited about living in Asia for a bit and extremely thankful and relieved to land a job during the global meltdown but also sad/stressed/anxious beyond words about the possibility of being apart from El Hombre. Yet my gut keeps telling me that somehow he will also end up in Asia. And yesterday while I was eating breakfast a hockey league team from Japan came and ate at my hotel's restaurant. They sat a table away from us so I unintentionally eavesdropped and found out they were from Japan although the team was made up of mostly gaijins. And I took it as a sign. That my favorite hockey player will end up in Japan with me. Call me crazy, but I truly believe it was a sign.