Be prepared

Last Friday, the Institute threw a farewell party for me and some of the visiting postdocs. We won't start leaving until next week, but everyone else already has. The Berkeley faculty are starting to trickle out and, I think, by next week even some of the Korean faculty will be vacating for slightly cooler climes, at least for a month or so (when I took this job, my grandfather, who'd been stationed here during the war, promised two things: "It'll be colder than hell in the winter and hotter than hell in the summer;" he wasn't wrong). Like all good parties, this one featured cake. Like all great parties, it actually featured two (pie doesn't seem to be a phenomenon here, so I've had to renormalize the scale). The first cake arrived as a solitary piece delivered to my office. This is what I was given to eat it.



"Big deal," you say, "it's a spoon." Oh, non, mon ami. Look again....



That's right: it's a spoon with a detachable plastic toothpick built into the handle.

The second cake was shared by all in the atrium. This one appeared as a whole cake with three candles (one for each of the imminently departing postdocs). The cake was laid out. The candles were firmly placed. How are we going to light them? Bam! Using the matches hidden in the secret compartment in the handle of the disposable plastic cake server.

Sir Baden Powell just had an orgasm.

For those of you confused by the pink elephant in this post: yes, I am leaving Korea. Yes, it is for good. My official return date is July 15. The reasons shouldn't be surprising to anyone. I'm not really designed for living in a place that I don't consider home. I've flown back to Seattle twice already in the last month: once for my ex-girlfriend's birthday. Once for a good dear friend's wedding. One more time and Al Gore is going to hunt me down with a baseball bat.

If I had principles, I would change the title of this blog, but I really like the title of this blog.

For those of you confused by the other pink elephant in this post: it is what it sounds like.